Aokana – Four Rhythms Across The Blue Review

Aokana – Four Rhythms Across The Blue is a visual novel first and foremost. It follows the tale of Masaya Hinata, a student at the Kunahama Institute. The institute is located on an island far away from any of the major city centres of Japan and has been designated a rather special place. Why is it special ? Well the answer is quite simply because of anti-gravity shoes.

The discovery of Anti-Gravitons led to the development of anti-gravity shoes which are used by the population to travel freely between areas in the island archipelago. Our hero was once an avid gravity shoe user but has developed a distaste for them due to some backstory that is learned throughout the course of the game.

As with most anime and visual novel media, the writing in Aokana – Four Rhythms Across The Blue is filled with some tropes and clichés however, if you’re a fan of Japanese media and are accustomed to the stories told in visual novels and anime, then this game will definitely appeal to you. If you cannot stand anime or manga tropes, avoid this game completely because it will simply annoy you to no end with its character personalities.

Our hero Masaya encounters a brand new exchange student named Asuka Kurashina and within the first few minutes of the game a friendship is kickstarted when he becomes her flying coach. The other major characters of the game are introduced slowly and these are Misaki Tobisawa who is a rather tsundere type character, Mashiro Arisaka who is an energetic groupie of Misaki, and Rika Ichinose who is Masaya’s neighbour and overall an extremely polite and proper student. There are of course other characters as well but the four major heroines and their respective stories are what visual novel fans are here primarily here for.

Aokana’s main plot device lies with the anti-gravity shoes and the “Flying Circus” event that the main character and the girls themselves get involved in. However, the “Flying Circus” event is pretty lacklustre when compared to the character development and scenarios that play directly into it. There is a lot of content in Aokana and the choices players make will affect the overall outcome of the game leading to an ending with each of the four girls based on whether or not you choose to romance them. Players will therefore have a lot of new story and additional backstory explained to them if they play through all the routes and eventually unlock the true ending. The quick save and quick load feature is immensely useful in this regard as well as the ability to skip through text to save time.

Aokana – Four Rhythms Across The Blue has downright gorgeous artwork throughout the entire game. Whether it’s the characters, the sprites, the backgrounds or the animated cutscenes, this game is a beautiful work of art and looks flat out amazing. This coupled with the worldbuilding and the game’s more poignant plot points will keep you entertained for hours and hours on end. The worldbuilding and backstory in particular has had an immense amount of attention paid to it since it really does captivate you.

While the gameplay is incredibly simplistic in just making choices when the opportunities arrive, it doesn’t need much more than that to keep you engaged. Aokana’s story is well worth it even if some segments are hit and miss because it makes up for this with its overall content. Being on Nintendo Switch, the game still carries a mature rating. Expect a lot of lewd or suggestive imagery interspersed throughout the game especially since this is a romance visual novel.

The soundtrack used in the game is great with an enjoyable main theme and background music that suits the game’s story segments. The voice acting is also performed by veteran anime voice actors that fans of anime may recognise immediately. There is no dub here though.

Overall, if you’re a fan of visual novels and have played visual novels before, Aokana – Four Rhythms Across The Blue will be quite a treat to you. It has plenty of great artwork and an entertaining, if not trope filled, story.

You can grab this version of the game on the Nintendo eShop for 24.99 right here.

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