NEKOPARA vol1.

NEKOPARA!!!!

CATGIRLS!

NEKOPARA vol1. made a lot of fuss arround itself lately. The game is now aviable on steam, physical limited editions sold out just a couple of hours ago (I secured mine! Yes!), and people who already downloaded the game keep dying from the moe overload (well, almost).

I bought the game, played it and enjoyed it A LOT, now it's time to talk about it.

At first, take your time and enjoy the opening sequence, it plays right after the prologue when you play the actual game too!

Art for the entire game was made by noone else but one of my favorite catgirl artists - Sayori (さより)! She may be familiar to you by her doujinshi work, pretty much all of them are named with variations of catgirl paradise name, Sayori herself calls catgirls "neko", which usually translates simply as cat. In the demo version of NEKOPARA "neko" was kept untranslated, in final release we got it swapped with "catgirl". Apparently some people got mad about that, personally I find that totally reasonable.

Translation

With neko problem being mentioned, it'd be stupid not to talk about language of the game itself. Like every japanese visual novel, NEKOPARA is released in japanese onl- NOPE.

NEKOPARA got released on 3 languages at the same time, there is only one version (well, ok, 2, but we'll talk about that later) and it contains all three languages - Japanese, English and Chinese. I don't know enough Japanese to reliably comment on translation, but you still get to laugh at those little finds like "Proffesor Master-sensei" for "goshujin-sensei", and generally, from time to time you see lines that make you think "yup, this was translated by japanese". Translations are generally quite literal, and I like it, it's not Commie.

Characters

Chocola

Characters! Yes, the strongest point of NEKOPARA is definitely (visual) character design. Right from the very beggining you get greet by two super adorable catgirls - Chocola and Vanilla. Designed but noone but Sayori, her two most distinguishable characters. Both of them love sweets, catnip and - their Master (Kashou)!

Chocola is a catgirl of mixed breed, always cheerfull and honest to her feelings brunette sister of Vanilla. We don't know her exact age as apparently she was found together with Vanilla as a stray cat in past, but thanks to Shigure - protagonist's sister - she became a splendid catgirl. Chocola is voiced by Himari.

Vanilla

Vanilla just like her sister Chocola is a catgirl of mixed breed. She's much calmer than her her sister and she enjoys teasing her owner. She's very witty and slightly more intelligent than Chocola. Together with her sister they are the youngest catgirls in Kashou's family. Generally she seem to be more interested in Chocola than in anyone else. Vanilla is voiced by Nakamura Amu (中村あむ)

The remaining catgirls are:

(top-left) munchkin Azuki

(top-right) scottish fold Cinnamon

(bottom left) american curl Maple


(bottom right) maine coon Coconut

Game

And there we have it, before you leap into the game itself, there is one more thing worth noting. In the settings window, there is one interesting slider....

Chest bounciness!

What is chest bounciness you ask? Well, the game uses system called E-mote. This allows characters to  - well - move. It's not as advanced as putting actuall 3d models into the game, but it looks fantastic, and this slider here, well, it specifies how much the boobs bounce. And they usually bounce a lot. In case you want to bounce them some more, press "P" while playing the game, every movable character will jump!

While playing NEKOPARA, you may experience feeling of pain on your face - don't worry, that's normal and it's a result of constant grinning for prolong period of time.

Well, I don't want to talk about the gameplay itself, instead I will redirect you to a certain person playing that game on YouTube. His reactions are priceless, so if you somehow don't enjoy the game itself (which is pretty much impossible), you will at least enjoy this dude, propably...

Entire playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZLY-65da7WbVpFKT5YnQoZpE225wgjnb

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, NEKOPARA is eroge which means that regular game versions (as well as the limited one) have sex scenes with catgirls, and generally a lot of lewds. If you prefer to keep it down and just enjoy the awesome cuteness of the game (which is pretty much enough anyway) then you should get steam version, which is slightly censored and rated for all ages with sex scenes removed. 

Have fun playing NEKOPARA! I definitely recommend it. While the plot is rather shallow, and the game itself is rather short, the excellent visual design combined with decent voice acting etc makes the game extremely enjoyable and worth every cent.