Tester’s Corner: No Thank You Ed. Vol 2

So I just finished beta testing No, Thank You!, the first game by developer Parade and the first yaoi game to be released in the already diverse selection of games in MangaGamer so here are my thoughts:

You play as Haru, a young man (Who’s quite kinky, trust me) that after trying to save a man from getting hit by a car gets amnesia and the man, Kouchi (Or “Pops” as Haru calls him), gives him a job at his bar while he recovers his memory. The twist is that the bar and its employees also work as a detective agency which turns what could have been an average slice of life/comedy VN into a mystery one at many points.

Talking about this game in detail is quite complicated since there’s lots of twists and turns and no one’s intentions or motives are clear until the end of each character’s routes (This is an open ended game). Including the tone of the game itself which can get pretty dark in a few parts. It’s still mostly light-hearted mostly due to Haru himself since he’s not particularly brilliant.

There are 4 possible love interests: Hiroyuki, Ryu, Maki and Kouichi each with 3 different endings (And an additional 2 alternative endings) achievable through the average choice selection of most VN’s and what’s featured on the title: The “No, Thank You!” button. This button appears during some points at the upper left corner of the screen and depending on the context and how the conversation and actions of the characters are going you should decide whether to press it or not. Sometimes experimenting with it can prove some absolutely insane results and it does change whether the story continues or not (There are bad ends).

As you might have noticed the presentation, particularly the art by Hamashima Shigeo, is absolutely stunning. The soundtrack is pretty good as well, having a jazz-like ambience and some genuinely great songs (“We’ll Meet Again Someday” and “Little Joy” are my favorites). The game also comes with a fantastic looking UI too.

Something worth noting is the large amount of sex scenes (There’s over 3100 CG’s and according to my calculator 2624 are dedicated to the h-scenes) so frankly if you don’t like yaoi you could try another game since it’s a good chunk of the experience. Don’t get me wrong, the focus is the plot but the sexual element is quite prominent and a lot of the sex scenes do show a lot about the character’s personalities.

I also have to mention there’s a body hair switch for every character and it’s quite flexible as well so you can easily customize your experience.

At 30-40 hours of length this game offers quite a lot of content and I recommend it to anyone interested on yaoi and shocking twists. It’s the first BL game on MangaGamer’s catalogue and it’s definitely a good addition so if you liked the demo check it out.