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• overall: B. enjoyment: B.
• dorakone is an extremely short but very sweet VN about a girl meeting new friends who play the same mobile game as her and getting closer to them while preparing for a tournament. its a straightforward and cute game with great art, sweet romance, and a surprising amount of variability for its length. its also completely free! its definitely worth a play, and you could probably get all the endings in a couple hours.
• plot: B. its a simple little set up. you are a lonely girl whos late to play the hot new game draco (pokemon go but with dragons). your only friend wont play with you or spend much time with you at all, so you set out to play alone and meet new friends along the way. shortly after beginning, you decided to join a tournament. its a very basic premise, but it gets the job done! the care given to designing the game the characters play gives it some bonus points.
• characters: B. theyre very charming and well-developed, as much as the short story allows. not all are to my tastes, but theres something i can appreciate about each one. rayen was especially sweet. the main character was very good as well, though she reminded me a bit of korra from avatar looks-wise.
• writing: C. the dialogue is funny and more or less realistic, the emotions raised in the short story are poignant, and the romance is charming and sweet. overall its a well written story. its so short, though. theres only so much that can really be done with such a tiny narrative. and the one bad ending was a bit jarring -- yes a bad ending should obviously be bad, but its... a bit of a let down that she could so easily lose touch with everyone over such a basic choice. it makes the relationships feel retroactively superficial. i feel it may have been better off without that option altogether, especially as theres no way to know ahead of time its a game-ending choice.
• routes: rayen > honoree > brin
• gameplay: C. its mostly VN scenes, with a mini-map allowing you to go to various locations to trigger said scenes, with little icons indicating which girls can be found where. that little bit preventing it from being pure VN bumps it up a notch, for a charming little experience. there arent many choices in the VN scenes and they dont change much aside from affection points, but the fact that you can win or lose the tournament independent of whether you get the girl is a nice touch.
• art: S. i dont know how else to say it. the art is fantastic. its a very cute style to begin with, but its fantastically done. all the character portraits are beautiful and expressive, the character designs are lovely and unique, the backgrounds and CGs are standout. the UI is cute and innovative, going beyond the standard renpy layout that even other games with objectively good UIs tend to stick with. overall, its just a beautiful game to look at.