Karifean's Blog of Visual Novels

Having just finished "Muv-Luv Extra", which believe it or not is the first entry in the Muv-Luv series, I thought I might as well speak my thoughts on it a bit.

I'll preface this by saying that I do not regret having spent my time reading through it. But it certainly has problems, and you won't see me recommend Muv-Luv Extra (on its own) to anyone else, probably ever. So... what's so bad about it?

To put it bluntly, it was pretty forgettable. The plot I mean. Not a single one of the ~6 arcs stood out, and none of them I would actually recommend to anyone. It really is the worst visual novel in this regard out of all the ones I've read that are more than 3 hours long.

The first part of the story, which is everything until the sports festival, is somewhat generic. Maybe it's because it feels oh so unoriginal, as it's filled to the brim with anime tropes; typical anime ridiculousness, typical anime situations, typical anime humor. If you like this, you'll probably enjoy this part. If you're mostly indifferent to it, then presumably you'll use this time to get to know the characters as well as possible, as I did.

The characters are really the meat of Muv-Luv Extra, and the thing I think it did best... but I still can't say it was particularly good. I didn't dislike any of the characters, but they don't stand out much. In a nutshell, Miki, Marimo and Chizuru I don't care about at all, Ayamine I'm rather indifferent towards, Meiya I liked somewhat, and Sumika I actually liked. The problematic point here is that the two heroines I did enjoy - Meiya and Sumika - are the only ones with basically no character development. Sumika is essentially the same person from beginning to end, and while Meiya changes to a degree, it's still nothing special. The others actually get a decent amount of development, but again, I don't really care about them.

Meiya and Sumika are the main heroines, and the guide even recommends you to skip all other heroine routes. Because once you've read both their routes, you've 'cleared' Muv-Luv Extra and can move on to Unlimited. All other routes are just a bonus - so I'll recommend that if you read Muv-Luv Extra to skip the character routes of any character you aren't interested in. They most likely won't change your mind.

As for the soundtrack, it was good. Some catchy tunes, some good tracks, no outright bad tracks. Solid enough. But again, it doesn't stand out.

One thing I do need to mention is that I experienced quite a few technical difficulties while reading. First off, Muv-Luv is impossible to read without setting your computer to Japanese system locale. I've found that JP system locale isn't really much of a hindrance, but it's still worth noting. AppLocale does NOT work. Secondly, the game has the unfortunate habit of crashing at specific points if you're on Windows 8. It crashes during ALL the credit rolls, and at one point if you go on a date with Sumika. The former is quite problematic as it means you can't really 'clear' any routes, and thus can't unlock Muv-Luv Unlimited without downloading a savefile. Fortunately, it doesn't ALWAYS crash. I got through the credit rolls of both Meiya's and Sumika's ending with just turning off BGM, SFX, voices and graphical effects, and keeping the game minimized for the duration of the credit roll. It still took a few tries and I didn't want to go through that for any more paths than I had to, but I at least unlocked Unlimited that way.

So where does this leave us? Well Muv-Luv Extra certainly had its moments. It has a distinct style of comedy that at least resonated well with me and made me laugh quite a few times. I liked Sumika, she reminds me of characters like Rikku or Haruka, and I very much liked her character sprites. Meiya was fine, I enjoyed her rather unique way of talking, and one scene involving her during Ayamine's route had me like Meiya even more. And that's about all the good points I can think of for Muv-Luv Extra.

I won't even comment on the Marimo Bad End...