Shanghai Summer (Nintendo Switch) – The test

The Visual Novel (or VN) genre in video games is especially popular in Japan, but nevertheless has many fans in France. For those who are not familiar with this term, it refers to games where the player follows a story while admiring the characters and their possible animations, all against a musical background. You have to see it a bit like a book or even a comic strip. There is generally little interaction on the part of the player. But in some of them, he must intervene by moving the character to talk to others and even make choices influencing the rest of the story. As you will have understood, the Visual Novel is a very rich and complete genre. Shanghai Summer is therefore part of this genre but is developed by a Chinese studio based in Shanghai, FUTU GAMES. So is it any different from Japanese VNs?

Will summer be hot?

The game puts us in the shoes of Tu Buaichan, a student who will experience twelve rather unusual days. Indeed, he will witness strange anomalies, the first of which will be the appearance of a black cat who can speak. The design of the cat immediately made us think of the Persona series as the representation of it and the characters is in the same style. But Persona wasn't the only influence.

Buaichan will quickly realize that these anomalies all concern memories linked to his ex-childhood friend, Quiyu. For some reason, Buaichan is the only one who can't remember her, while even his childhood friend Fengyi remembers the three of them perfectly. In order to unravel all this, Buaichan will refer to his diary as well as that of Quiyu, which he will find during his research.

For the first time in years, Qiuyu returns to Shanghai and hopes to reunite with Buaichan. It is at this time that he experiences these strange visions. He just remembers that Qiuyu went abroad after they graduated. On the other hand, he has the impression of blaming himself for an accident which he cannot remember precisely. In order to find out what is going on, he will need to travel to parallel worlds with the help of the mysterious black cat and with the help of his current friends

Twelve days or nothing

Shanghai Summer's story spans twelve days, and like most VNs, it focuses on Buaichan's relationships with others. While you might have thought this was a story about reconnecting with your ex, it's (thankfully) much more than that. The main theme is to let go of the past in order to move forward. None of Buaichan's friends know what is happening and all they can sense is how much he has matured as a person.

One of the points that differentiates this game from the other VNs we have played is that in this one you can move the character. And not just Buaichan, because then we can lead Jingxian, a young woman whose father owns the bookstore where Buaichan works as well as Qiuyu herself. As Qiuyu, her parallel temporality was very interesting to follow and the fact that she tries to communicate with Buaichan strongly reminded us of the anime Your Name, for our greatest pleasure.

It was actually very pleasant to play through the game for a few hours with this feeling. It only takes a few hours to finish it (five in our case) and we can salute the developers for having included the possibility of returning to key moments of each temporality in order to explore the branches more easily. This allowed us to see different endings and easily understand that we could return to that specific moment to take another branch. What was particularly surprising but enjoyable was that the happy endings weren't the ones you were going to unlock initially. It was necessary to test several branches to obtain them.

An essential journal

In order to memorize all the events and the progress of relationships with the different characters, Buaichan's diary is essential. It allows us to easily track what we have accomplished and what we still need to do. This journal also occasionally contains photos of certain events as well as the maps you have found. Because yes, there are hidden cards in certain scenes of the game. Honestly, we did not understand why the developers added these cards in the game. They add nothing to the story and offer no reward if we find them all. A more than indispensable addition in our opinion.

The story is pleasant to follow but it is sometimes confusing due to more than approximate translations. We do not recommend playing in French as literal translations lose all meaning. And even in English, there are grammatical and typographical errors that would have been easy to avoid simply by rereading the translations.

There were also some visual glitches. Particularly during a scene where Buaichan and Fengyi are talking, sitting opposite each other. For some unknown reason, Buaichan was much taller than Fengyi even though they were the same height for the rest of the game. Another example is a cat used in the background in one of the scenes where the black cat was also present. . The one in the background was much less cartoonish than the black cat and really stood out from the rest of the decor.

Regarding the sound, the music was pleasant most of the time but the loops were too short and therefore too repetitive, so much so that it became annoying at times.

Shanghai Summer is available at the price of €14.49 oneShop.