The Princess, the Stray Cat, and Matters of the Heart (PC) review"A purrfect port denied over Royalty issues?" |
This is going to be a bit of a mess.
Okay. So.
Nora to Ōjo to Noraneko Hāto is an eroge visual novel released over in Japan back in 2016. It’s the story of Nora, a normal schoolboy in that special way that Japan depicts such normality; as a young man surrounded by a bevy of beautiful women who look like they’re smuggling basketballs under their blouses. He finds himself having to deal with those everyday issues all students do, such as an oppressive school regime, making time for study groups, and the discovery of a really cute emissary from the netherworld that has come to destroy all life on the planet.
It was kind of a big deal, back then, doing well enough to spawn a sequel and small handful of anime adaptations. Predictably, this was met with an eventual translation and Western release and The Princess, the Stray Cat, and Matters of the Heart was born. It’s more or less the same game except it falls under different umbrellas of censorship depending on the platform. Herein lays the problem suffered across the board: this is an eroge visual novel containing no eroge, with no effort made to disguise the fact that there are massive holes where all the adult content should be.
Sometimes, it’s not that big a deal. During his adventures primarily revolving around helping to climate the adorable would-be destroyer of worlds to life among the living, he has the chance to pursue four different girls, decided through the game’s very limited number of choices. Some of these paths certainly orbit the now-removed R18 content harder than others, but they all leave any and all references to the absent adult sections intact. Sometimes, it’s just a little clumsy; propositions are thrown down and, rather than present all the graphic details, assumed sex just happens off screen. Only, usually, it’s much more blatant and you’ll have to puzzle through direct references being made to scenes that you have no way of seeing, or you’re presented with a rare choice with one path obviously leading to passages that no longer exists.
It’s either brave or short-sighted (or both) that every risqué conversation, double entendre, or indecent block of flirting is left fully intact while the scenes they’re point blank written to support have been exterminated to coddle our sensitive Western sensibilities due to licensing issues. There will be a large slice of this game’s would-be target audience who will vow to never purchase this game without an 18+ restoration patch. But because of the way it’s handled, some of them might actually mean it when they say it’s less to do with their oppressive need for all of the anime breasts, and more because it genuinely hurts the story Matters of the Heart is trying to tell.
More’s the pity, because the visual noveling that survived localisation is often commendable. Every line is excellently voiced (the voice actress alone assures that Michi is best girl; any contrary views are simply wrong) and each journey towards having off-screen sex with any of the four girls is laudably unique, veering off in ways you’d never predict. What they all share is the unfortunate ailment Nora’s accidently saddled with as punishment for meddling with the netherworld envoy. Every time he’s kissed by a girl, he turns into a cat. He needs a follow-up kiss to turn him back into a human.
It’s obvious with that in mind that the bulk of the story is going to invest in a heavy comedic turn and, thanks to the strength of its cast and its unapologetic commitment to the material, it manages to do just that quite handily. It’s not a short read; the game blurb boasts up to 45 hours of content should you hunt down every path available, which is something I did only partially because it’s, you know, my job. It’s a fun read, but it’s also not afraid to delve into more serious situations, finding the ability to pull at your heartstrings because it allows the oft-goofy cast to really establish themselves enough for you to care about. This, obviously, is a trap for when things inevitably start to go horribly wrong.
Who knew that could be the case when the main focus of the game is trying to have sex with a well-endowed blonde zombie in the hopes of distracting her from destroying all life as we know it? For long stretches of Matters of the Heart, you won’t even notice massive chunks of it are openly missing or somewhat edited. PC gamers get the best of this, obtaining extra ‘mewsing’ cut-away scenes which have little to do with the main plot and act as self-contained comedy skits largely focused on the supporting cast. It’s not enough to make up for having so much of the novel absent, but it could always have been worse. As the new Cali-based Sony and its weird war against the homeland has helpfully proved. It’s a pretty standard VN trick to hide any unfortunate bouts of unwanted nudity behind something like a handy plume of steam or a convenient lens flare, but imagine being so afraid of presenting an attractive girl in a bikini that you inflict the anime equivalent of the sun exploding to ensure you have enough light beams present to protect innocent eyes from the horrors of thighs and navels. Observe the following!
Staff review by Gary Hartley (June 20, 2019)
Gary Hartley arbitrarily arrives, leaves a review for a game no one has heard of, then retreats to his 17th century castle in rural England to feed whatever lives in the moat and complain about you. |
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