Thank you Visual Arts for sending us this visual novel to review!

Visual Arts/Key is one of my favorite visual novel developers. I've been blessed to review almost all of them, and I am never disappointed. While I would place their longer epics above their shorter kinetic (no choices) visual novels like this one, LUNARIA -Virtualized Moonchild- is still really well done. Honestly, since they have never failed me, I still looked forward to it, but I have to admit that the subject matter didn't seem that interesting to me. And yet, they somehow still managed to write a moving story that I enjoyed quite a bit.

LUNARIA -Virtualized Moonchild- starts with the high-stakes racing of SkyOut Forever, where our main man T-Bit is one of the top eSports racers. There is a world-wide virtual reality system called COZMO, and T-Bit is growing in popularity with his rising successes. His main rival is a girl who goes by Myau Myov, and she has very deep pockets - enough so that often her opponents get blown to bits with the powerful items she deploys. T-Bit's incredibly skilled however, and rarely cedes victory to her. It helps that T-Bit is supported by his incredibly skilled and reliable best friend, whom he calls Gaya. He prefers a female avatar in VR, but is his best (male) friend in real life.

During one of his races, he suddenly finds his Wolfgear, his super-powered virtual bike, acting up and finds himself glitched out of the race - and he appears in a strange field of flowers. He meets a bubbly girl there who calls herself Lunar-Q, and claims she is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) created on the moon, living in one of the servers there that's running the solar power grid there. He is able to return to the race and still win, though many mysteries are unexplained: how did he win after being on the moon for several minutes, and just who is this Q girl - and how did he end up on the moon anyhow?

It's not long before he ropes in Gaya to research more into this mystery, and Lunar-Q has taken a liking to T-Bit, as she is a long-time super fan of his. It's not long before Q starts assisting Bit with his races, helping him not just win, but setting multiple course records.

This story explores the budding romance between them, and the story takes multiple turns that surprised me both in their narrative, and their emotional impact. Going into this story, I really didn't think much of the premise. And yet, the execution is excellent, enough to make me a fan. The first half of the story is a bit slow and light-hearted, but the second half is riveting, and it was hard to pull myself away from it once it really got going. The entire story is around eight and a half hours long, a decent length for a kinetic story.

The story itself is really well written. I have generally been pretty happy with Key's localizations, and LUNARIA's didn't disappoint me. I did catch several small grammar and typing mistakes, but thankfully nothing that made anything unclear. I do hope they give it another editing pass, though.

I played through LUNARIA -Virtualized Moonchild- on my large 42" 4K IPS monitor that tends to expose every stray pixel and I have to say the art in this game is stunning. The music is also really good, and the Japanese voice acting is full of emotion, really helping to drive the impact home. All spoken lines are voiced, while thoughts and narration are not. I find that balance perfectly fine and a good, consistent choice.

Morally, LUNARIA -Virtualized Moonchild- is one of the cleaner visual novels I can recall, and generally safe for audiences old enough to enjoy a teenage romance. There are a few jokes that suggest refraining from sex to keep things clean. Hugging and kissing are visible on screen. When Myau rides her vehicle, she wears a skirt with bloomers underneath to keep it relatively modest. There is some violence and explosions, and bombs and other things are used and things do indeed explode. None of the violence is deadly, only expensive. Hacking a server illegally is an important part of the plot.

From a technical perspective, this game will work on nearly any Windows PC, and also works flawlessly on Linux and Steam Deck (I played most of the game on desktop Linux). It works great with a controller or keyboard and mouse. I experienced no glitches or crashes in my playthrough.

LUNARIA -Virtualized Moonchild- surprised me with how enjoyable of a story it presented. It took a somewhat cliché subject, an eSports competitor, and took it in an interesting direction, leading to not only a touching romance, but an emotional story all the same. I'm also pleased to say that the moral concerns are fairly light as well. If you enjoy emotional stories, I'd say that LUNARIA is likely worth your time, especially on sale.