Lilium Triangle

Huzzah! It's review time for a visual novel! Perhaps the most linear one I've done but, keep in mind, my list is incredibly small. This time we're gonna talk about...

This won't be a spoiler free review, so also keep that in mind. At the same time I'm only gonna review it from one of the two paths you can take in the game. So, without further interruptions, let's dive right in!

The Story

The setup is very simple. A succubus, Haruka, winds up living with two sisters, Sana and Yūna. From there the novel takes off where you, through a few selection points, decide whom Haruka basically forms a relationship with.

The Characters

Like I said, Haruka is a succubus who magically appears in the neighborhood of both Sana and Yūna. She follows the basic trope of cluelessness but somewhat forward.

Sana is your typical tsundere type, as in typically someone with a tough outer s

hell but a very soft and emotional inside.

Yūna is the carefree and very forward type who also happens to have large breasts. Not much of anything, but it's an eroge, so...that's a character trait. Just as Sana has small breasts.

The Gameplay

There's really none to speak of. There's four or five options you make throughout the story and that's it. Everything else is given to you. So in a better way of putting it, it's like a choose your own adventure book but between each choice there's 10-15 pages of text. The choices do dictate which of the two sisters you're going with so there's that. That's the replayability, to basically go back and make opposite choices. The game took about 2-3 hours to beat in one round so add in another hour or so for extra scenes you wouldn't be skipping through and you get roughly 5 hours for a complete playthrough.

The Review

Right off the bat I should point out that Haruka being a succubus doesn't have anything to do with the story. They mention her tail being out every now and then, but you hardly see it in the scenes, and it's not like she's working any charm on them to get them into bed sooner. Sana is her closed off self even toward the end and Yūna is where you'd expect her to be at the end right at the beginning. So Haruka could've been anything and the story would've been the exact same with a few lines of dialogue removed or replaced.

Everything is voiced. Everything. Even the sex scenes and sounds of kisses. It sounds great but the novel goes 50% story and then 45% sex with the remaining bits being story thrown in between scenes. Therefore, while the sex is hot and steamy and the voice actresses do a tremendous job, it's sorta like watching the opening of The Simpsons for five seasons over and over just to get the different couch gag. Eventually you're gonna get tired of that saxaphone solo, if you're doing it pre HD version.

The scenes themselves were all fairly different, there weren't any positions repeated. Although things do swiftly pick up almost immediately, at least with Sana because my mindset was “Yūna was already in love with Haruka, let's chip away at Sana so we can maybe get into a three-way relationship”. Sisters, but there's a whole subgenre of anime dedicated to incest so maybe only fling a single torch at me here and save the others for later.

The other concerning part, at least brought up in the game and not my mental viewing of the story, are the characters ages. It's not explicitly said that they're in high school and therefore underage, but they do attend school with uniforms. Though we never see anyone else around so there's no comparison and the fact that Haruka and Sana have sex in the living room of their home and their only concern is Yūna overhearing them...kinda makes me think they don't have any parents around. There's also the trope of students living alone, but again unlike some series (*cough* Valkyrie Drive Mermaid*cough*) they don't come right out with their ages. So mental gymnastics for sure, but you can work them into being of age. If JUST of age.

Now to compare it to Return of the King. How? This game has so many ending points, yet it just keeps going on and on and on until you think “how could they end it?” and like with Sam just closing a door, for me, it's Haruka and Sana walking down the sidewalk holding hands and saying they aren't ever gonna leave one another. Though comparing it even more to the movie is quite apt. Setup, tons of action with light breaks, never ending, and then over.

Unlockables for after the game is over is your standard scene repeat affair as well as images from the scene. Although that doesn't make very much sense considering you can just set the dialogue off auto and close the text box. There's even a screenshot feature built into the menu. Although you do have to be playing in a smaller window box for the screenshot to work. Otherwise you're just capturing a small portion of it. But it's still nice and you only see what you've unlocked already. Not surprising. Meaning you go through the Sana timeline then you don't get to see the Yūna timeline until you play through that one.

Closing Remarks

So in the end, do I regret the purchase any? Because I'm not gonna give a whatever out of ten for reviews. I don't. I was a bit let down that there weren't any mini games, but again my experience in visual novels is incredibly sparse so, if anything, this one just told me that others with simple choices exist. I had fun with it overall, and while the story did seem to drag on at times and the auto feature doesn't work for aside dialogue, it was cute. I think it would've been nice to add on a feature where Haruka could use her succubus powers on one of the girls during dialogue to just break into a random sex scene. The feature could be controlled by players and be a little button. But using it too much would lead to a bad ending where Haruka is ultimately kicked out. It'd be a fun addition especially in the world of instant gratification. It'd be a struggle to not push that button while hearing about Sana designing her plush toys and giving Haruka the cold shoulder or Yūna wanting to instead go shopping and just gushing over Haruka but not do anything about it. I think that could've been kinda neat.

Anyway, here are a fair number of screenshots. A lot of them are Sana focused, mainly because (like I said) her path is the only one I took. As for that planned three way relationship? You'll just have to play to find out how Yūna reacts or Sana, if you go for the big boobied blond. Hope you enjoyed and look forward to my next one! I'm working on Demon Master Chris ever so slowly, but I might throw that one up and just not discuss the ending, for reasons I'll get to. It's not bad, just...yeah. I also got another one while Blackberry Honey has been catching my eye recently. We'll see what comes next in these visual novel/eroge reviews.