Thank you Sekai Project for sending us this Visual Novel for review!

While I have played other games with visual novel aspects, this is the first time that I played a game fully in the visual novel category.  There is no game here – it is a choose your own adventure book with pictures.  Despite this simplistic description, the story written here is anything but simple.

The main protagonist is a character called Azai Kyousuke (in Japan, last names come first).  His real father got into trouble with the yakuza, and owed them a massive sum.  His adoptive father is Azai Gonzou, a notorious yakuza boss that is tough as nails and always gets what he wants.  Thankfully, Kyousuke has a brilliant mind, and has found himself in a very important role in the company, and earns a hefty paycheck as a result.  He has been doing this work to slowly get his family out of debt, as well as take care of his mother, if he can.

Over time, he does start to 'think' like a yakuza.  While he tries to avoid outright crime most of the time, he is willing to make back room deals and exert undue influence to get what he wants.  And, the occasional thug is still employed to accomplish various tasks.

Azai Gonzou is an intimidating and powerful man.  Though he has taken Kyousuke in as his son, he treats their relationship as more business than personal.  His 'love' is more approval based on his successes rather than anything else.  He also seems to have an uncanny sense of what is going on, with contacts in many places, high and low.  

Many legitimate businesses are a front for various yakuza organizations, and their moneymaking arms.  There are various other ways that they make or bleed money, including splitting territories between other yakuza branches, or siphoning money from famous people and others with connections.  The novel does a great job of making the world of the yakuza seem alive and interesting.

The story revolves both around Azai Kyousuke's work life, and the diversions that he can enjoy with his classmates at high school.  The school they go to is generally for those who miss grades for various reasons, including those who are too busy taking care of their careers at a young age.  There are several famous stars there, children of politicians, and so on.  As a result, it is not unusual to find older students, even into their early 20s.  While most students find school as the most stressful part of their life, Kyousuke goes there to relax and take a break from his grueling work career.

Kyousuke makes some very good friends.  There is his buddy Eiichi, who is a pretty boy with a rather selfish streak.  He also makes friends with several girls: Tsubaki, Kanon (who is also his adopted sister), Mizuha, and Haru.  Each of them can become a love interest, with another girl Tokita playing a major part, but is not usually a love interest (she is lesbian).

There are in the area of twenty choices the reader can make, and some of them make only small changes, but a few of them are critical, and lead to either each girl's special branch, or towards the one true ending.  You can also get a few bad endings if a few certain choices are made while going down each girl's path.

* minor spoilers below *

Each girl's path seems to focus on healing and personal growth in a certain way. Tsubaki's is probably the 'happiest', with Kyousuke seeing what a good family looks like, and having it help heal his wounds.  Kanon's is a bit odd, but he helps her resolve conflict and turmoil in her past and present.  With Mizuha, he helps take a very shy and insecure girl and make her into someone great.  The main/true path is a bit more complicated to describe, and I would rather avoid spoilers in this case.

* end minor spoilers *

I must say that the story is really compelling and very, very well localized.  It also has a decent length, as I was able to clear the shortest path in around 12 hours, and I saw all of the various endings in around 35 hours.  I did see the occasional typo, but overall, the personality of each character comes through really clearly.  The art is also great, as is the music and voices, though only in Japanese.  Despite this, the character's personalities come through clearly even in another language.  I found this visual novel very memorable and I doubt I will forget about it any time soon.  

Despite all of this excellent writing, it's absolutely full of adult content, including nearly everything but visible sex itself.  (That was in the original Japanese version, but was thankfully removed for the Steam release.)  In a few cases, a woman's body parts are in view, but critical parts are covered or obscured.  Girls in only underwear are also shown.  There are several instances of fade to black sex.  Sometimes it's implied, and sometimes it's much more explicit, with descriptions of how much or often they did it.  It is always premarital, though there are also cases (usually around bad endings) where it is borderline consensual.  In those cases, you can see the results, as people can have their lives ruined as a result.  Consensual premarital sex is not shown as a negative.  

Some of the characters, Eiichi in particular, are incredibly selfish and say some pretty ridiculous things, like 'I'm going to mount her a*s', 'fooling around with those stupid sl*ts', and 'I'm at the age where I just want to penetrate something'.  Curse words are very common.  This includes words like 'b*tch', 'a*s', 'sl*ts', 'hell', 'd*mn', 'f*ck', and God's name in vain is used, including Jesus (with and without Christ).  There is reference to a 'booty call', and Gonzou even tells his adopted son to 'tame' his own daughter, which is of course incestuous.  If you go down that character's storyline, they joke about being siblings, and don't feel guilty about their sexual relationship.

There are cases where characters choose to betray their friends for the money, though there is some self-preservation going on there also.  People can and are used in the worst sense.  People are murdered, and one is murdered because he is homosexual.  One character is lesbian, and she seemed to have an unhealthy relationship with another of the major other characters.

There are many mentions of the devil, and people acting like or being him.  There is also a line 'unheard prayers to a useless god as I used to', implying that the main character is now an atheist.  How the darkness is people's hearts can be manifested or restrained is a major part of the plot of this visual novel.

G-senjou no Maou – The Devil on G-String is an incredibly fascinating and well written visual novel with an equal amount of incredibly inappropriate content. (For the record, G-String refers to a string on a violin, not a certain type of undergarment.)  It surprised me how hard it was to pull myself away from my PC while I was reading it.  However, it cannot be understated how much inappropriate content is contained within.  No child should read this.  There may be cute anime graphics, but this is incredibly mature and not for children.  I have mixed feelings about recommending it at all, for this reason, but it is a very compelling story that really makes you think.  You may lose a small amount of faith in humanity in the process.  It's hard to get a peek into that amount of darkness and evil in the human heart without stepping back impacted.  Even still, somehow, there are glimmers of hope in even the darkest circumstances.