Thank you Sekai Project for sending us this game to review!

Hoshizora no Memoria - Wish upon a Shooting Star has an interesting story about a teenager named Kogasaka You who moves back to his childhood home after the sudden death of his mother. Now that he’s back in town, he sets off to reunite with his childhood girlfriend whom he kissed and promised to marry as a young boy. All he knows about this girl is her first name, but he quickly forgets it after running into a female grim reaper who reaps nightmares/memories. Ironically, this grim reaper who goes by “Mare” looks a lot like the friend he’s after, though You isn’t convinced that it’s really her.

In school Kogasaka You quickly makes new friends who have ulterior motives to have him join their various clubs (astronomy, occult, and school council). The town of Hibarigasaki is known for its beautiful starry sky that You is fascinated with so joining the Astronomy Club is a given no matter what storyline/route he takes. One of the story arcs has him juggling between the Astronomy Club and the Student Council.

There are only a handful of choices to make in this game and depending on the ones you make, you’ll wind up dating one of the seven girls and the first choice doesn’t appear until you’re a couple hours into the game. In order to date Mare, you’ll need to complete all of the other story sequences first. While I really wanted to see Mare’s route, the sexual content in this game has made me reconsider pursuing that option since it requires starting an incestuous relationship with You’s younger and barely adolescent sister beforehand.

Not that I’m excusing the adultery/premarital sex with the different females in the other routes, but Biblically pursuing a sexual relationship with a half-sister is wrong on two counts (Exodus 20:14 and Leviticus 18:8-10). To make matters worse, the sister is only a freshman in high school and barely developed as the naked chest artwork reveals. Other than various breast shots, there are plenty of bikinis and underwear shots, leaving little left to the imagination when it comes to female anatomy. 18+ DLC is available from the developers for an additional fee. I’ve seen enough with the vanilla Steam version though.

It’s a shame really since the characters are really well developed (story wise), especially with some of the side stories of the different females You can date (and quickly consummate in a matter of days). Chinami, his sister, is extremely happy, loud, and annoying as most younger siblings are. The sibling roughhousing is rather humorous with the noogies, neck chops, forehead flicks, and eye pokes she gets in the beginning of the game. I liked the maid café girl that I wound up dating during my first play through. Not only is she cute, but she’s got a good personality and back story. I didn’t care too much for the next door neighbor girl who kept telling me to hurry up and die every other time I talked to her. There is a reason for her attitude and I found her story was engaging. There are also attractive twin sisters who are shrine maidens. They have an interesting past and one of the twins is quite feisty while the other seems to be attracted to her sister sexually, or at least she seems to fondle and tease her inappropriately often.

Other than the fan service moments, I did enjoy the artwork. I like how expressive the characters are and many of them are associated with animals. Some of the love interests are described as a dog, hamster, and a horse. Asuho the waitress pouts and gets excited like a dog and she is sometimes drawn with puppy ears and a wagging tail. The starry sky the students are drawn to looks beautiful and I would love to see that many stars in the sky by me, but there’s too much light pollution for that to ever happen.

The Japanese voice acting is well done and I appreciate the subtitles since I can barely understand it. Sometimes the characters do curse in English though. Every cuss word and blaspheme imaginable is used in this game. There’s a ton of text in this game and apparently a few typos did slip through the quality testing. The background music and sound effects are well done though.

Other moral issues to note are the use of Tarot cards by one of the girls and there are references to various deities. There is a lot of silly sibling violence, but there are some scenes with blood and death. While the sex acts are not shown, the fact that they happen are pretty clear and there are some suggestive and barely clothed scenes shown.

Though the game ran fine for me most of the time, I did experience several crashes that required switching to and from windowed mode to get the game running again. Steam integration doesn’t appear to be functioning as of this review. I wish I knew how much time I put into this game as I know I put in way more than the two minutes Steam shows for me.

Despite the many moral issues, I did enjoy the first half of the game which can be fast forwarded for future playthroughs to save time. The fact that they cannot be skipped outright is annoying, but I do like how it will slow down and make you read scenes you have not seen before. If you don’t mind excessive foul language, blaspheming and sexual content, there is some good storytelling. Sadly, the bad outweighs the good in this title for me though.