A nakige with a G-Senjou no Maou vibe that starts extremely strong, but sadly almost completely falls apart mid-way through.

Release: 2017 (Uguisu Kagura)
Writers: Lucle (Kami no Ue no Mahoutsukai)
                    Common – 4/5
                    Yuura – 1/5
                    Yurugi – 1/5
                    Sayo – 1/5
                    Kukuri – 1/5
                    True – 2/5
Japanese difficulty: Medium
English: Not Available
Ratings: VNDB (7.88); EGS (7.67)

Written by Lucle, known for his depressing stories, Suisou Ginka no Istoria (History of the Sea Burial Coin) is set in a fairy-tale-like city of water where people have lost their ability to cry, and follows the struggles of Chigasaki Eishi who despite his young age has managed to live through a few lifetimes worth of tragedies, and is on the track to live through more.

The beginning of the visual novel has a G-Senjou no Maou vibe where a relatively able protagonist is stuck in a crappy situation and, mostly against his will, has to resort to morally questionable methods to get out of it. In this case, it’s returning a giant debt by playing poker and otherwise serving the local crimelord-like entity.

You’re introduced to a bunch of likable characters, the plot is tight and full of effective twists, poker battles are awesome, tension is in the air… and then mid-way through the story just stops, and you’re thrust into abysmal heroine routes which, completely undermining the whole premise, solve all of the complicated problems in one lousy sweep, hastily give you a bunch of ero scenes, and roll the credits.

Although the amount of bad things that happened and keep happening to the protagonist is ridiculous to the point of comedy, I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the story as despite all the contrivances it was both genuinely entertaining and touching with some pretty good character banter on top of everything.

Unfortunately, it felt like the author had zero interest in writing the heroine routes, and although you unlock a true route later (not tied to any heroine for some reason; a giant missed opportunity when the best girl Kureha was RIGHT THERE), it just doesn’t live up to the initial buildup.

You are exposed to a billion flashbacks that repeat things you already know ad nauseam up until the story fizzles out with a whimper that’s barely enough to raise you from sleep. Things get solved, but that’s about it.

What’s worse is that with heroine routes being worse than nothing and true route having no romance, all the pent up sexual tension and relationships go absolutely nowhere. The true route almost feels like a “normal ending” you get when you fail to meet the conditions of any of the girls in other games of this kind.

The only things I truly enjoyed about the visual novel past the common route were the poker battles, Kureha, and one of the scumbags finally getting beaten to death with a baseball bat.

That said, I’d still go as far as to recommend checking Suisou Ginka out if it sounds like your kind of visual novel, if only for the great common route alone. And who knows you might even enjoy the true route more than me if you’ve got higher tolerance for repetition.