A very visually alluring visual novel that also happens to be one of the most boring things ever devised by a man. …But it’s not really bad otherwise, I think.

Release: 2016 (Tone Work’s)
Writers:  A bunch of Key writers (Clannad side routes and other shit)
                    Bethly – 2/5
                    Hinata – 1/5
                    Momiji – 1/5
                    Yuzuki – 1/5
                    Mizuha – 2/5
Japanese difficulty: Easy
English: Not Available
Ratings: VNDB (8.28); EGS (7.68)

There is really not much that can be said about this game. It’s kind of similar to last year’s Pure x Connect in how it doesn’t have a story… or even much of a plot; Gin’iro is just five times longer, not funny, and with less interesting characters. Well, to be fair, it might handle romance a little bit better, spanning ten or so years of its characters’ life, from middle school to adulthood, so at least there’s ample time for the relationships to develop.

But then it makes you think of an actual romance-driven game like White Album 2, that had conflict, twists, lots of angst, gut-wrenching scenes of drama, lots and lots of character development, analysis of the more negative aspects of love, and all that other smart stuff that requires talent and effort… while in Gin’iro you have neverending club activities interspersed with ero scenes with no conflict or anything of significance happening at all for all eternity. I’m not even kidding; the individual routes are pushing twenty hours each.

Anyway, the only routes that at least have a mild pretense of something happening are Bethly’s and Mizuha’s, but don’t expect miracles. Ironically, the game itself is not that poorly written with individual scenes coming off not half bad, especially at the beginning. I was even kind of invested for the first half of the common route until it started repeating itself and I realized I was actually in hell.

My recommendation is to go for Bethly or Mizuha first and see if you can reach the end, then only read the rest if you found yourself really feeling this game for whatever reason, otherwise just ctrl through it and collect the pretty ero scenes.

I can assure you, your brain will come up with more plot looking at the sprites dance on the screen as you ctrl through anyway.

Positive:	Negative:
Beautiful artwork, especially the character designs	Breasts are oversized to an extent it looks unnatural on some sprites and HCGs
Pleasant and effective, if a bit forgettable music	Excruciatingly boring plot in which literally nothing ever happens
Interesting concept of covering ten years of character lives	Insanely slow pace almost makes it feel like the game is in real time
A couple of nice romantic scenes	No story to speak of, seriously
A couple of nice ero scenes	Mostly one-dimensional characters that develop very little over ten fucking years
	You must be the most patient man in the world to complete this thing in full