Thank you PQube for sending us this game to review!

Before MAGES (from the former 5pb.) became famous for their Science Adventure visual novel (VN) series like Steins;Gate, they released the first Memories Off game in Japan. Most of that series is even available on Steam now, though sadly they are all only in Japanese and Chinese. This standalone spin-off, SINce Memories: Off The Starry Sky, takes place ten years after the main series in the same town of Sumisora, though outside of a few small cameos, is otherwise unrelated to the main series. As a standalone title, it's also the first one we get in English.

In many ways SINce Memories is a 'traditional' visual novel. It has a slice-of-life style, with a main male protagonist Junya Mizumoto who has or develops relationships with five girls who he can then chose to get closer to. Choices are made in the story that allows the player to choose what happens next in a simple branching storyline. There are a fair amount of choices, though not overwhelmingly so. Some chapters have many, while others have few. All of them serve to progress the plot, while the images, music, voices, and of course dialogue serves to move the story along.

As the story begins, we quickly see a flashback to Junya's recent traumatic experience, where he is riding along in a car with his brother Takaya, who gets into a car accident. Junya survives, while Takaya does not. Junya nearly idolizes his older brother, who was an amazing person who seemingly could do no wrong. Poor Junya has terrible survivor's guilt, and his childhood friends Chihaya and Hinata support him the best that they can, while also dealing with their own problems, like Chihaya's arranged engagement because her powerful, politically-connected father wants to carry on the family name.

Like most VNs, the story starts with a common route, where most of the main characters are introduced. As the story progresses, you can choose between Chihaya and Chunyu, which then leads to other routes like Hinata, Azusa, or Yuriko. One play guide I saw online recommended the route order of Chunyu, Yuriko, Hinata, Chihaya, then Azusa. I played it in that order, but I would recommend one adjustment: I would recommend Chunyu, Yuriko, Hinata, and Azusa, saving Chihaya for last. The best ending for Chihaya is an amazing standout route, and feels like a 'true route', though it is not labeled as such. I recommend saving the best for last.

Each route shows some alternate future for Junyu and his chosen partner. Chunyu is a great first route because she is a friendly, outgoing, and brilliant young woman who contributes positively in almost every other route. Yuriko's route is sweet, and as a branch off of Chunyu's, is a nice heartwarming story, though mostly standalone. Hinata's is a branch off of Chihaya's main branch, and I recommend that next because you get to learn a lot about her family situation and her extremely close childhood friendship with Chihaya, Junya, and what that meant. Her route has most of the inappropriate outfits in it. Azusa is a later branch from Chihaya's route, and her background and who she is is a major mystery that is explored through both Chihaya's and her own route. Chihaya's route and Azusa's are tightly coupled, so they can be played in either order, even if I have a preference different than my experience.

Each route has multiple endings, with some good and some bad. I was surprised that a few of the bad endings were really bad indeed. The game tracks everything you complete, including those bad endings, so it's worthwhile to see them all. Sometimes the best endings require careful choices, as a seemingly innocent choice earlier on can lock you out from them. I ended up following a guide I found online that helped me see everything, since an earlier seemingly innocuous choice prevented me from seeing my first best ending. They are usually worth the effort.

It's important to note that while romance certainly plays a part, this story is not primarily about romance and outside of a couple of notable (negative) exceptions, sex does not play a major part in the story. Endings do take on a romantic character, as you might expect. Even still, each character has some difficult struggle that their route addresses in some key way. There are several overarching mysteries that each route plays a part in revealing, with no one route covering everything. The scenario writing is very well done, and every route is worth playing through. It is a shame that there are a fair amount of typos throughout, but thankfully with context you can usually figure out what was meant to be said. I do believe another editing pass would do some good, though it's been long enough since release that it does not seem unlikely to happen.

Like most visual novels, there is very little animation, though this one perhaps has more than most. While you only very rarely if ever hear Junya's voice, the other characters talk and their mouths move to the fantastic Japanese voice acting, and their expressions adjust and shift based on emotion. The art itself is in an anime style as you might expect, and is nothing short of wonderful. The same can be said of the town set pieces, which have no lack of colorful details. The music is also excellent, with the character themes being particularly memorable. Even now as I write this, music from SINce Memories is stuck in my head.

From a technical perspective, the visual novel engine is perfectly serviceable, as it works great using keyboard and mouse or controller. The only goofy thing is that I couldn't figure out a way to exit the game without hitting the Esc key on my keyboard. There might be a simpler way, but I didn't find it. Also, the key prompts don't seem to switch to controller input and only show the keyboard; otherwise it works fine. It's worth noting that as a Steam release, it lacks support for Steam Cloud, which is a huge miss since so many of us game on multiple devices like the Steam Deck. It is rated as Playable on Deck, but it may take extra manual effort to sync your save files. I found them in the Documents\My Games\mages_steam\SINceMemories file path. I was able to manually copy them between two Windows machines without issue. It is possible to copy them to a Linux/Steam Deck install as well, but it's more involved since you will need to locate the game's system prefix directory.

Morally, it was not as bad as many VNs I've reviewed, but as expected not without issues. I was grateful to see that premarital sex is not an issue at all in this story, unlike many contemporaries. I also found it interesting that fathers or grandfathers play a major role in almost every character's life. While some are positive and others less so, I found this quite unusual since in our modern day mothers are often given more prominence.

There is some sexual content, but not a lot as far as VNs typically go. One character does wear cosplay, and as such, shows much of her breasts, though of course nipples are missing as expected. This is unusual in that everyone else dresses quite modestly, though his sister does wear a tank top with exposed belly button a few times. A couple of characters do discuss pornography, though nothing is shown. Sadly, porn use by a character is shown in a neutral, almost positive light (though the women don't like it), and again nothing is shown. The dark side of that is also discussed. Blackmail and sexual assault are discussed, though not shown on screen. One woman is threatened to have her clothes torn off, though nothing is shown.

As for other moral issues, there are minor curse words used, like 'p*ssed', 'd*mn', and 'h*ll'. 'God' or 'god' is used a handful of times. There is some violence as described in the story, though not shown. blood, knife stabbing, and a few other similar acts are described but not shown. The death of loved ones is a major plot point and central mystery. Characters are also hurt or tied up against their will, which is shown in some scenes. Alcohol is used by several characters, including to inebriation, but everyone is of age. Lying and deceit are also present.

SINce Memories: Off The Starry Sky was a VN that at first I didn't know what to think of it, but after a several hours, I was absolutely hooked. The farther I got into it, the better it got. It took me just shy of forty hours to see everything with the help of a guide and using the fast-forward feature for already-read text. At the asking price, that is just about right in my mind, and a good value. While I don't think it's quite at the top of my all-time VN list, this story does a whole lot right. So much so that I am truly grateful that I was given the opportunity to read through this story. If you enjoy stories about college-aged young adults just as they are about to launch into the rest of their lives as they tackle challenges with a nice helping of romance, then I can easily recommend SINce Memories: Off The Starry Sky.