First Love Story (Hatsukoi Signal・初恋シグナル) from favary

(This is an ongoing post and will be updated as I play.)

The two characters meet in their 2nd year of high school…
The beginning of their “First Love Story”.

❤︎ A love that blooms slowly but surely …
❤︎ A love that began from a lie…
❤︎ A love where both are unwilling to stay friends…
❤︎ A love that is reciprocal and complimentary on both sides…

Love can come in many forms.
What will happen to their First Love story?
Enjoy the different kinds of love, all in a single app.

Get the game at Play Store (Android) ♪ App Store (iOS)
Social media: Twitter ♪ Facebook ♪ Instagram ♪ Website

First, the character art is very pleasant to look and well-coloured. Personally, I feel their character designs have a flair of their own which set it apart from other games. The game also features an otome (GxB) route and same-sex relationships (Yuri (GxG) and boys’ love/yaoi (BxB)).

The game uses a story ticket system and there are two different parameters. ‘Trust’ is raised via a mini-game (strolling). The other is ‘Impression’, which depends on the choices you make throughout the route. Better choices give you 20 points and 10 for not-so-good choices. (However, I’m not using a walkthrough so I can’t confirm this.)

On the more technical side, the game lets you transfer your play data. Just set up a user ID and password but keep in mind, your ‘gems’ and in-app purchases are not transferable between iOS and Android.

Being a free-to-play app, there are ads in between story sections but you can pay to have it removed. You get a gem at random for logins and there are chances to gain extra gems/points for your parameters just by watching videos. The pop-ups show at random.

Akira and Sou’s route:

It felt interesting that the story is proceeding through the viewpoint of the male protagonist and depending on your choices, actually behaves like he has a conscience (LOL).

Sou is a popular and good-looking boy in class which gives him an upper hand among his peers. He realises how he could utilise to his advantage and yet feels a sense of wrongness (depending on your choice for this scene) when girls want to know his reaction about being asked on a date or confessing their feelings to him. That’s interesting.

Akira reminds me of another character who shares the same name and doesn’t lack a backbone for now. She has a crush on their class teacher and being tied to Sou with their fake relationship isn’t 100% comfortable for her LOL. I’m curious to see how their story will turn out.

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Now, the finer details of the translation seem to need more work. Typos and lack of smooth sentences. However, if the translation has been rushed, it’s quite understandable, but it’s still preferred to have a well translated and edited release instead.

Fast forward to several story tickets later, the translations seem even clunkier than before. They are so literal that I can imagine what they are in Japanese. Maybe mobile users would just write it off seeing they are free to play so why bother, yeah? I don’t feel the same way which is why I still play otome games in Japanese and enjoy OELVN with female protagonists.

In a nutshell, if you’re interested in one or all of the routes, play it and tell the devs to improve the English release. I don’t know if they’ll listen but you can always try.

Disclaimer: favary has provided a copy of the game in exchange for my honest opinion.