Title: Cherry Tree High Comedy Club
Genre: Simulation/Adventure
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Atelier773 (doujin)
System: PC
Release Date: Nov 8, 2012
A review code was provided by MangaGamer.
A simple stat raising game centered around conversing with others, with the ultimate objective of befriending enough people to form a club. The guys who localized the popular Ace Attorney series helped with the localization of this game.
A long time ago, the Cherry Tree High Comedy Club gave birth to a famous comedy duo. However, after said duo graduated, the comedy club disbanded and was never reformed again. That is until Miley, a carefree and easygoing senior at Cherry Tree High, decides to start the comedy club again. However, the regulations regarding school clubs have gotten stricter, and a club requires at least five people to gain recognition. Miley has a little more than a month to recruit three more people (because her roommate was forced into this whether she likes it or not), if she really wants the comedy club to happen.
There are a total of six potential club members to recruit, and although you only need to get three of them for a good ending, acquiring all six members rewards you with something closer to a true ending. Each potential club member has a friendship level starting at 1, and they formally join the club at friendship level 5. In order to increase Miley’s friendship with a candidate, she must converse with them. She can choose from one of 12 conversation topics to talk about, or engage in idle chat. Every person has topics they like and dislike, and each of the 12 topics can only be used once per person per playthrough. That means you can’t just repeatedly spam the conversation topic the opponent likes to increase friendship faster. The higher the friendship level, the harder it is to level up.
There is a simulation aspect to the game, in the form of stat-raising. Miley has a level of expertise in each of the 12 conversation topics. They go to a maximum of level 5, and basically how this works is that the higher the level of expertise in a particular topic, the easier it is to raise friendship using that conversational subject. For example, if Miley has level 5 in music and chooses to talk about music with someone who really likes it, the opponent’s friendship can increase by an entire level even at level 4. Compare that to using neutral conversational topics with an expertise of 1 or idly chatting, which would take much longer.
The player controls Miley, who can move around town, talk to NPCs and potential club members, and do stat-raising activities. Each day is separated into three timeslots: morning, afternoon, and night. In each timeslot, Miley is allowed one action that passes time. Anything that raises stats or friendship consumes time, whereas activities such as shopping, moving between maps, and picking up things on the ground do not. Miley has access to the map of the entire town in the afternoon and holiday mornings, whereas nighttime activity is limited to within the dorms at night. Mornings on school days are limited to movement within the school building. The key to winning the game is time management: the player must find the perfect balance between raising stats and making friends within the time limit of one month and a bit. Finishing the game with at least three members recruited gives you access to New Game+, where Miley retains her stats, making conversation easier this time around.
I think the localization team knew what they were doing.
The story is simple in that Miley never strays from the goal of starting the comedy club, and everything she does directly relates to getting more people to join her. Each potential club member has their own issues that they face before officially joining the club, making Cherry Tree High Comedy Club very much a character-driven game. The characters readily fall into pre-established stereotypes with backstories and character development carried out in conventional ways. The localization effort isn’t consistently funny, but has enough quirks to be enjoyable and avoid the yawn-inducing or cringe-worthy categories. I blame the game’s length, since the jokes and humor didn’t have enough time to truly kick in despite some decent one-liners and poking fun at itself. The game is also heavily westernized in the localization, with the setting being changed from Japan to America (cherry blossoms and Japanese shrines are handwaved by claiming that Cherry Town is the sister town to a place in Japan). Music is forgettable, but the sprite graphics look decent. The character art is not bad for a doujin game, and has some appeal in its simplistic look.
If you don’t expect too much out of this game, it can be an entertaining time waster for several hours. It’s on the short side with a playthrough lasting less than three hours, and doesn’t offer too much in difficulty. If you’ve been craving a stat-raising simulation game that doesn’t get too convoluted or dragged out in length, Cherry Tree High Comedy Club might be able to scratch that itch.
