NinNinDays

NinNinDays, by qureate. Localised by MediBang (English), published by DLSite (all-ages version), qureate (all-ages and mosaic versions) and MediBang (uncut version). Voiced by Mikan Nonaka.

Key art and portraits taken from official Twitter posts about the game (key visual, portrait, CG sample, promotional art).

Hi again! I said I'd review games occasionally, and here I am. Well, VNs are arguably games, but I'll still put them into that category in the meantime... Anyway, back to business.

The story begins as the protagonist, a part-timer, bumps into a girl and soon meets her again lying in the middle of a small street on his way back home in Akihabara. After hesitating to help her get back up, he notices she's hungry and gives her a half-eaten meat bun. She then declares she's Sumire, a ninja who's come to town to finish her training by studying society, and that she'll repay her debt by working as his shinobi... The main character doesn't believe her and flees away, but she catches up effortlessly. Only then does he see she's honest and clueless (both too much for her own good) and accepts her offer.

That's about all I'll say, since the game is pretty short (a few hours long) and nice. You will, however, encounter typos that probably shouldn't be here in such a short game, but on the positive side of things the translation seemed very good to me. Just slightly lacking in terms of editing. The overall quality makes up for these flaws though, notably a wholesome script with lots of slice-of-life situations, funny moments, and H-scenes. CGs in particular are high quality with wonderful shading and are this VN's spotlight. Voice acting is on point no matter the scene, and is particularly sweet during H-scenes. Background music, while not very varied (only nine tracks) nor memorable, is also great and fits the story's various scenes.

Routes depend on the few choices you can make throughout the novel, resulting in the bad end in any case if you don't choose the right answer on any of them and three different endings (two good plus the bad one) if you're good all the way. Fortunately there aren't many prompts, and you need to go through almost all choices to get all CG variations. The gist of choosing wisely is "do it for Sumire".

There are six H-scenes with fairly standard content (bath scene/handjob, footjob, masturbation, sex, blowjob, sex) but great voice acting and gorgeous CGs (did I say I like this game's art?). The first two come up around their respective third of the story and are kind of short, while the latter four are two different endings (two scenes each, including a longer sex one per route), so they don't just all happen near the end. Despite that, some lines are shared between both endings, which I found to be a nice detail. Also note that you can replay them through the gallery, so that's always nice to have.

Onto the technical side of things... The game runs on the Artemis Engine, which seems to be used by a handful of games. It's by no means a cutting-edge or optimised engine, so there might be some hiccups here and there. It also appears to render at 720p even in "fullscreen" mode, but still looks fairly crisp (at least artworks do, the UI not so much). Unfortunately, CGs could benefit from having higher quality versions, but even if they are already in the game's files these can't be seen in-game due to the resolution lock. Finally, e-Mote support adds some motion to the heroine, and does a good job even though obviously not perfect.

(Note: all screenshots were taken from the game's website and store pages, hence the difference in quality.)

As to which version you should buy... As much as I'd like to recommend the Steam and DLSite releases since they're on my usual go-to platforms, they are unfortunately censored ("all-ages" on Steam, and with mosaics with the patch or DLSite version) and make the one published by MediBang the de facto version to get. It's available at least on Denpasoft, Mangagamer and IndieGala, so you should check it out there. It's also worth mentioning that it seems to be compatible with Steam features (testing required) due to some Steam/achievements-related DLLs in the game's folder. In any case, if it sounds too expensive for the short length, you might want to wait for a sale.

On a side note, the Switch version is listed as having another voice actress playing Sumire's role. After checking a video of the game and comparing it to the PC version however, it seems to be the exact same voice lines, unless they added all-ages scenes with a new VA. Considering the Switch version is cheaper, it's safe to assume it's not the case and that it's just a port of the Steam all-ages version. In case you haven't read through it and want a comf all-ages story, or want to share it with someone who can't/doesn't want to play the 18+ version, then I'd recommend it; otherwise the full uncut release is also wholesome and has the best of both worlds.

And that's it for this review, thanks for reading this far! If you liked it, please spread the word about this blog and follow my Twitter account to know whenever a new article is out (as well as see occasional ecchi/hentai retweet outbursts)! Until next time: Red, signing off.