The Language of Love Review

Over the last year or so there has been a greater influx of visual novels, a genre that is infinitely popular on the other side of the world and also a genre that is easy to play on your phone. Telltale Games published many story and choice-driven games but in those titles there was an equal amount of gameplay vs the choices you made, in visual novels there is generally not much traditional gaming but choices to be made to direct the plot. The Language of Love is the latest visual novel to drop onto my lap but it the first game I can remember which requires zero input from the player.

The plot of The Language of Love concerns Tanimura Mitsuki who has to put on his education and life on hold because of an accident that happens to his mother. He spends five years living at home with his parents using his time to help them run their family business in the countryside. Unfortunately his friends leave home to pursue their dreams and lose contact with him. When Mitsuki finally leaves his home, he’s now 23 years old and quite a bit behind on his education. To get accepted into university he needs to relearn everything he had forgotten during those five years. Mitsuki decides to move to Tokyo to attend a school where he has to pack all that lost learning in one academic school year. However, the other classmates start to treat him like a social outcast due to his older age. Mitsuki is unable to break the social outcast image and consigns himself to a lonely school year. Soon though he meets a single mother, Himuro Kyouko who lives in the same apartment complex as Mitsuki. Mitsuki offers his help in regards to babysitting duties, to say thanks Himuro helps Mitsuki with his upcoming exams. What starts as a convenient relationship, turns into friendship and possibly much more.

Well that’s The Language of Love story and you’ll get to watch all of it in its entirety. You see The Language of Love is the most basic of visual novels. I’ve played many visual novels in the past year, I think the lowest amount of decisions I have had to make is about five, in The Language of Love you make no decisions, there are no choices to choose from, you do not influence the story. So is The Language of Love really a game? That’s a difficult question to answer, you have a menu and you can change the settings. In fact you can change the settings so it speeds through the text and transitions at full speed, you can’t actually follow the story as it is going to fast turning The Language of Love from a five-hour experience into a ten-minute experience. For Platinum Trophy hunters out there this is the easiest Platinum you will ever acquire.

With such limited interactivity in The Language of Love, once you’ve played it you won’t want to watch the story again. The narrative itself in The Language of Love is well written and can get quite deep in the romance stakes. Graphically there are lot’s of nice background scenes but the character models and expressions lack a bit of variety. Musically The Language of Love goes through quite a few mood changes and the music reflects this by moving from a fast-paced tempo to a slower more warm melody.

The Language of Love is not really a game, it’s not really an interactive experience you would expect from a game classed a visual novel. The Language of Love is just like reading graphic novel on your television and in that respect if you like simple visual novels then The Language of Love may tick a box or two but for everyone else who enjoys tense decision making The Language of Love is not something you will want to “play” if that’s the right word for it.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Playstation 4 code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.