Visual novel review: Littlewitch Romanesque

Shoujo Mahou Gaku Little Witch Romanesque, was released in English by JAST USA a few months ago under the title Girlish Grimoire Littlewitch Romanesque. At the time I didn’t think it looked very interesting, but because I kept reading that people liked it I ended up picking it up.

An all-ages version will be available on steam in the near future.

Story/Setting

The story takes place in a fantasy world. Domino is an archmage living in an ancient tower, he has to teach Aria Vancliff and Kaya Xavier to be fully fledged wizards within 3 years, a task that would usually take decades. A few more women come to live in the tower to help with maintenance and teaching the girls, including a princess, a catgirl, a saint, a knight, an elf, and an angel.

Gameplay

Quests are events which help advance the story and meet the requirements for the character events as well as various endings. To start a quest  Aria and Kaya must know the required spells for that particular quest. To learn spells there is a dice minigame.

Aria and Kaya throw three dice each, previously learnt spells can be triggered by dice combinations which trigger effects such as spawning extra dice and point bonuses. Points earned from this minigame are used to teach Aria and Kaya the spells required to complete quests.

It is easy to manipulate the types of points generated from the game by either bumping the dice with the mouse or by choosing particular dice combinations from a list of previously learned spells.

Artstyle/Characters

I was never a fan of the artstyle of this game, I got used to it pretty early on but I never got to the point where I could say that I liked it. The character designs weren’t that appealing either, the personalities were ok even if slightly bland at times.

Littlewitch Romanesque is pretty character focused as there isn’t really any story at all besides each characters final event. Most of the content has a slice-of-life feel, as most of the non-quest text is short exchanges between the tower inhabitants during spell-learning events and in-between each changing of the date.

Sound

Voice acting was done quite well, each of the characters I thought were well represented by their respective voice-actors and all the emotional parts were done well. Domino is voiced, which is unusual since most protagonists remain unvoiced in visual novels for various reasons.

Overall impressions

I should probably make it clear that I don’t really think much of this game, my initial impressions were pretty neutral but it kept getting more and more clear that it wasn’t really for me. This isn’t to say it’s bad, the score I gave it is much lower than the average so most people like it more than I did. If you think it would be something that might interest you, it might be worth a try.

I’ve decided to stop listing my ratings in my reviews, they don’t really mean much and I still haven’t figured out exactly how I want to score visual novels yet. (I currently have this game listed as a 4/10.) I’ve decided instead to try listing positives and negatives at the end of each review and see how that goes.

Positives:

• somewhat ok fantasy setting
• voiced protagonist
• soundtrack isn’t terrible
• a few of the characters star events are pretty good

Negatives:

• bland characters
• minigame gets incredibly annoying, especially when going through a second playthrough
• felt like a chore to finish
• sex scenes seemed unnecessary and out of place

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Info:

Title: 少女魔法学 リトルウィッチロマネスク | Shoujo Mahou Gaku: Little Witch Romanesque
Aliases: Girlish Grimoire Littlewitch Romanesque
Developer: Littlewitch
Scenario: 桐月 (Kizuki)
Art: 大槍葦人 (Ooyari Ashito)