How do you innovate in a genre that is largely resistant to that kind of thing? If you’re the devs behind NEKOPARA Vol. 2, you keep everything in line with the first game and then expand upon what people loved about that.
How to Download Nekopara Vol. 2
You can download the game from Steam. Click on the Download button located below the review. Check out also our reviews of Nekopara Vol. 1 and Nekopara Vol. 0.
The Game Review
That might not sound like the most noob-friendly approach, and it isn’t, but, then again, this genre does assume kind of familiarity with the common mechanics of each game. Whether you’re looking for fun dialogue or beautiful artwork, we’ll tell you what we liked and loved about NEKO Works’ latest project.
For those who aren’t familiar with the series, NEKOPARA is a visual novel. A visual novel is basically a detailed choose-your-own-path story with video game elements and typically a mange-informed art style. That’s all present here and the game really sticks closely to what players expect in terms of tropes and interaction.
But one thing it doesn’t have that might scare away people new to the genre is overt sex and graphic depictions of that. You do get a little bit of innuendo and sexually-charged humor here and there, yet that’s to be expected. More often than not it adds to the overall vibe that NEKO Works desires.
Given that the game centers around choices and story, what kind of story do we have here? Well, it’s anything but traditional unless you’re familiar with manga. You and some of the friendliest catgirls around help run a popular cafe called La Soleil. As you can imagine, things tend to go awry in a family business when you mix personal relationships and the needs of day-to-day operations. And that’s very much case here but it provides you with a unique opportunity to get to know our catgirl heroines that much better as well as help mend the rifts driving them apart.
The extent to which each character is different from one another helps you not only gauge the depth of the storytelling here but also clues you in on how to best resolve their differences. Naturally, all of them are voluptuous and beautiful. This fact can’t help impact how you, the player, make your choices in the game. One aspect we really appreciated here was how restrained things are in comparison to how they can often be in these games.
This is where the game either works for you or will sorely disappoint. Because of how much time you have to spend with each character talking and living in the moment with them, the story is at a premium.
If it doesn’t click with you quite quickly, it might not ever because it only ramps up from the beginning. There is an assumption of familiarity with the last game implicit in the story but it isn’t heavy-handed. Easily one of the best games out there in this genre, the charm of the writing and the sheer humor of some of the situations with which your character will be face make this a title not to be missed.
