Hello and welcome to another visual novel
review.
Today we'll be looking at First Snow, developed
by Salty Salty Studios, published by Studio
Elan, and released on August 19, 2020.
We'll look at what it does right, what it
does wrong and normally I'd answer the quintessential
question of “is it worth your money?”
but seeing as it's free...
I'll figure something else out.
First Snow is a kinetic yuri romance story.
For those of you who have no idea what 50%
of those words mean, a kinetic story simply
means one single storyline.
No choices, no way to impact the outcome of
the story.
Yuri is another word for lesbian, meaning
this is a romance between two women.
Ok?
Got it?
Good.
Ok, so I'm currently editing the video and
real quickly, I'd just like to say that the
music may sound a bit off to you.
I couldn't actually find the soundtrack available
anywhere, so I had to extract everything directly
from the .rpa files.
Well for some reason, the equalization was
all kinds of fucked, so I had to adjust things
manually.
I did my best, but I'm no audio engineer so
while I think it came out alright, if it sounds
a bit strange to you, that's probably why.
Ok, back to the video.
From First Snow's Steam page:
“Having moved away from her friends and
family to attend community college, Allison
Merlo is a fresh student struggling with the
day to day challenges of life.
Faced not only with living independently for
the first time, but also having to get past
her nerves and find new friends in an unfamiliar
environment, she finds herself falling in
with a group of eccentric writers and artists.
As she pushes through this new stage in her
life, the art of the cold and enigmatic Eileen
Turner takes her attention, setting her on
a course she never expected.
First Snow is a prequel spinoff of the currently
unreleased visual novel Twofold, focused on
Allison and Eileen's first months in community
college in the leadup to Christmas, and the
many varied people who surround them.”
This isn't my first visual novel review, but
it does bear mentioning that my visual novel
reviews differ from my game reviews.
I usually break things down by technical,
visual, sound, story, and gameplay.
Naturally, there will be no gameplay section
here as First Snow is not a game, but I will
also be going much deeper than usual on the
story and writing, because that is the meat
of the final product.
Still no spoilers, but expect nerdy writer
talk.
And for clarity, this review is based on the
Steam version of the visual novel with the
18+ patch installed, which you can find on
the developer's website.
Ok, with all that out of the way, let's start
with the technical bits.
First Snow, on a technical level, is a pretty
standard visual novel on the Ren'Py engine.
The system requirements are on-screen, but
Ren'Py software runs on potatoes, so if you
somehow can't run it, it's time for an upgrade.
It runs fine with no noticeable stutters or
hitches for me.
A few users have reported crashes, but Salty
Salty Studios recently released a hotfix that
supposedly addressed the issue.
Unfortunately, that patch happened to break
the save file I was using, forcing me to start
from the beginning again.
Now, that wasn't too much of a hassle as I
could just skip through the text up to the
point I was at, but the fact that bugfix patches
can break saves is worrying.
That being said, they're currently working
on an upgraded fallback system to prevent
saves from breaking like that in the future.
Overall, nothing too ridiculous, but worth
mentioning.
On to visuals.
Like most visual novels, the presentation
of First Snow is sprites on top of a background
with CGs interspersed throughout.
One thing I did like is that the background
was actually drawn as opposed to the fairly
common tactic of taking photos and applying
filters to them.
The art itself was pretty good, but definitely
lacked some polish.
I found myself more consistently impressed
by the inanimate objects and how the different
backgrounds had not perfect, but pretty solid
perspective work.
The sprites are pretty good, and I think a
little more care was put into each of those
to make them as uniform as possible.
The sprites all have these little white outlines
around them that gives off this really neat
effect like it's a paper cutout.
It really goes a long way toward making the
visual novel feel stylized, which I'll admit
I have a bit of a bias towards.
The characters do have some noticeable issues
in the CGs, which I think is a bit of a shame.
They're not at all bad, but sometimes proportions
were just a bit off, in particular, I noticed
that characters tended to have abnormally
large heads.
Also, some of the shading and lighting work,
particularly on faces, didn't really achieve
the desired result and instead just made the
characters look older.
Again, not particularly bad, just a little
sloppy.
Also, in the CGs, there are no white outlines,
so the characters feel much more like they're
actually a part of their environment.
As far as design goes, there was nothing particularly
outlandish, but I think the characters looked
pretty good.
I do think they drew some inspiration from
Katawa Shoujo for the protagonist Allison
and the love interest Eileen from the characters
Hanako and Akira respectively.
The reason I think this is because the writer
for First Snow, Suriko, actually wrote the
Lilly route and co-wrote the Hanako route
in Katawa Shoujo.
That existing connection plus the striking
similarities immediately convinced me that
there was some inspiration there.
They aren't carbon copies, but it's almost
like they were two interpretations the same
initial design idea.
One thing I did really like was the overall
stylization at play.
They utilized a lot of camera pans, zooms,
little animations, and other small effects
to accent different pieces of the scenes.
There were also a lot of little stylized bits
of storytelling, like when two characters
were passing notes in class and doodling on
them, or cutesy little text messages you can
see on the phone.
It was really nice and I found it quite charming.
Overall, on a visual level, First Snow was
pretty good.
Could be better, but still good.
On to sound.
The music of First Snow is... well, it's alright.
It did its job, but nothing stood out to me.
Honestly, as I'm writing the script, I can't
even remember the melody to so much as a single
song in the soundtrack.
It served mainly as background noise to fill
in the silence.
It definitely wasn't bad, but it wasn't really
all that good either.
It was pretty standard fare as far as visual
novel soundtracks go.
That being said, I did like the other aspects
of sound design, namely the ambient noise.
There were other little bits and bobs like
a car horn or a bird flapping its wings, but
let's be real here.
Those are incredibly hard to screw up.
But taking it back to the ambient noise, I
found it was all done very well.
I don't know if they licensedthe sound assets
or if they were done in-house, but they were
very high quality for the purposes of a visual
novel.
They did a great job at setting the scenery
without being distracting.
The sounds of nature were really nice and
the background chatter they placed in the
school scenes had voices that actually blended
well with one another, meaning no one voice
stood out.
Having at least one standout voice, either
due to poor mixing, imperfect recording environments,
or simply due to one of the voices being unique
is unfortunately fairly common for these kinds
of chatter tracks, but I didn't notice any
of that in First Snow, which was really nice.
Overall, I found the sound design to be nice
and subtle so that it accented the scenes
rather than dominating them.
Ok, story time.
Now as I mentioned earlier, First Snow was
written by an individual who goes by the monicker
Suriko.
Suriko's claim to fame was for her work on
Katawa Shoujo.
And just to be clear, I'm assuming that Suriko
is a woman because Suriko is a female Japanese
name, but I spent like 45 minutes searching
around and I couldn't find any solid evidence
either way.
So I'm just going to assume to avoid confusion,
and my apologies in advance if I'm completely
wrong.
So back to the writing.
First Snow is a yuri romance slice of life
story, so that means character-driven storytelling
and cute shit.
Now, I've got a bit of a weakness for cute
shit.
I know I make videos talking about brutally
violent games a lot, but god damn I'm a sucker
for an adorable romantic visual novel.
That's what First Snow more or less markets
itself on and that's pretty much what you
get.
As far as actual plot, there's nothing too
outrageous or ambitious there, though don't
take that as something inherently negative.
So naturally, when you're doing a slice of
life story in a familiar setting, that means
that you're gonna need strong characters to
make a good story.
Let's start with the protagonist Allison and
the love interest Eileen as these are obviously
the most important.
Now, one thing I liked about how these two
were portrayed is that they're more or less
normal, if somewhat quirky.
Allison has moderate social anxiety and an
aversion to conflict while Eileen is fiercely
independent and headstrong.
These elements are played up a bit, but not
to the extent of being a caricature.
Another nice thing is that in addition to
being normal, they have normal people issues
as opposed to what's known as a “fatal flaw.”
In a lot of these character-driven stories,
I notice that the writers like to insert a
piece of past trauma or what borders on a
personality disorder to incite future conflict.
Allison and Eileen don't have this.
Their various issues stem from things like
differences in perspectives or a need to focus
on their individual personality weaknesses,
which is something I think we can all relate
to.
For example, Allison has a degree of naivete
and has trouble being direct at times whereas
Eileen has trouble opening up to others on
an emotional level and can often be hurtful
when she wasn't really meaning to be.
Naturally, these things can cause conflicts,
but they're pretty mild flaws all things considered,
and a cool thing about them is that they're
all things that can be worked through without
this massive, epic emotional journey.
It's a nice shift in perspective from the
ultra-dramatic stuff you can read in a lot
of other romance stories and it feels a bit
more down to earth and allows us to focus
more on the dynamic between the two of them
than on each's personal issues.
I do have more thoughts about Eileen and Allison,
but I don't want to get too spoilery.
Suffice it to say that they're pretty good,
relatively complex characters and I definitely
like them and can relate to both of them despite
the fact that they're borderline foils of
each other.
The supporting cast is a bit of a mixed bag
at times, but overall, I found myself very
impressed with the side characters.
Allison's roommate Rose is fucking fantastic.
She acts as an incredible stabilizing point
for Allison's character as well as a solid
balance of a gruff, biker persona alongside
a caring and almost motherly one.
To be clear, she absolutely does not fulfil
a maternal role, but acts more like a peer
that Allison looks up to.
At various points, she acts to lighten the
mood, be the voice of confidence, and when
it matters, she's the supportive shoulder
to cry on, leading to some of the most wholesome
moments in the visual novel outside the actual
romance.
Ever see a picture of some big scary guy holding
a kitten?
That's kind of what I get from Rose.
She could have so easily fallen into a one-dimensional
personality, but she ended up personifying
genuine care and kindness as one of the best
characters in the story and honestly, I wouldn't
mind seeing her get a standalone story.
I also have to praise the character Wallace,
who is basically this quirky hipster gentle
giant.
But what I like about him is not necessarily
his character, which is... ok I guess, but
he has so much great chemistry with Eileen.
Throughout the story, he and Eileen have this
great series of banter and I was really sold
on them being long-time friends.
Everything about that solid blend of teasing,
wholesomeness behind the other's back, and
that general unspoken closeness and appreciation
for one another contrasting their outward
expressions of disdain just really works.
And I will say it's pretty cool for this level
of chemistry to exist and not involve our
protagonist, but the love interest.
And just as a quick aside, I do also really
appreciate how the characters as a whole exist
outside Allison's sphere of influence.
They interact with each other and feel like
their own people with lives and aspirations
that don't directly connect with our protagonist.
They feel like actual characters rather than
just devices to prop up Allison's story, and
I love that.
Ok, back to Wallace.
Now fortunately, there's no jealousy component
with Wallace, either from him or Allison.
I do think a lot of writers would have added
that in for a bit of extra spice in the story,
but in my opinion, that would have been a
huge mistake.
It's just not in his or Allison's character
to be jealous and any jealousy would have
felt extremely artificial.
Of course, there's also the fact that Eileen's
a lesbian, so it's not like anything could
have happened there in the first place, but
still.
I wasn't entirely sure about Wallace when
he was first introduced, but he really really
grew on me as the story went on.
The other side characters are a bit hit or
miss for me.
I don't hate any of them, but I don't particularly
like them for the most part either.
Caprice is the excited best friend.
Fun, but kind of one-dimensional.
I think she served an important role to the
story, but I'd have liked to see a little
more of what makes her tick.
We really didn't see very much characterization
of Caprice's roommate Millie, even though
she was almost forcibly inserted into the
story.
Though to be fair, I suspect Millie will probably
feature more heavily in Twofold, so that's
probably why she's even a real character in
First Snow.
I do really like Eileen's little sister Eve.
She is abolutely adorable, and actually feels
like a kid of an appropriate age, which sounds
like I'm being patronizing, but children are
fucking hard to write well.
So often, they end up being an adult in a
tiny body or a toddler in a slightly bigger
body.
I think Eve was actually done well.
She's cute as hell, but it didn't feel forced.
It's just that she was only featured in a
relatively small portion of the story, so
we didn't really get to see all that much
of her or really examine her character.
But I mean come on.
She's just so fucking cute.
Ok, so while I definitely spent some time
praising the story, there were some noticeable
flaws as well that I have to mention.
First things first, I'm just gonna be straight-up
and say that they should have proofread this
better.
There were a couple noticeable instances of
typos and incorrect word choice that stood
out like a sore thumb and it broke my immersion.
For example, there was a line where it went
something like “the bird took off with surprisingly
speed.”
Now, that should have been “surprising”
not “surprisingly.”
To me, that feels like the sentence was initially
going in a different direction, but it was
revised at some point, and Suriko just messed
up that one word.
I do the exact same thing in my scripts sometimes,
including this one by the way, though I have
the luxury of actually recording what I write,
so I can usually catch mistakes like that
before they're public.
There was also some awkward phrasing here
and there, stuff that really just didn't sit
right with me, but wasn't awful.
This was mostly the case at the start and
definitely improved as the story went on,
so it's not a huge issue in my eyes.
Also, one thing that kind of annoyed me is
the consistent misuse of “This person and
I.”
Let me explain.
Prepare for grammar Nazi Adze.
Let's take a hypothetical of a sentence that
could have appeared in First Snow because
I'm too lazy to search for an actual example.
“Rose talked to Eileen and I.”
This sounds fairly natural, but it's wrong.
We're taught in school that you're always
supposed to structure it as “X and I.”
But they fail to explain that this is only
when “X and I” are the subject of the
sentence rather than the object.
The subject of that hypothetical sentence
is Rose.
When that phrase is the object it should be
“X and me.”
Now, normally I'd give it a pass, especially
because First Snow is in a first-person perspective
and people make grammatical errors in real
life speech and to be perfectly fair, it's
not a major error.
But in this case, Allison is a massive nerd
with a passion for learning and she's also
highly intelligent.
One of her little quirks is that she learns
a bunch of stuff out of pure curiosity, like
lockpicking and hacking.
I do not believe that she as a character would
make such a grammatical error on a consistent
basis.
She just strikes me as the kind of character
who would be well-read and would have made
an effort, maybe even a subconscious one,
to speak correctly.
So I think this error was actually stemming
from the writer Suriko rather than from the
character Allison.
Overall, not something that kills the story
or even takes away from it very much, but
it highlights that there should really have
been a separate pair of eyes combing through
the final draft to clean it up a bit.
On a somewhat more serious note, First Snow
suffers from some pretty significant pacing
issues.
Now, First Snow is a fairly short visual novel,
both in actual length (I finished it in under
3 hours) and in in-universe time.
Based on clues from the story, my guess is
that the story probably starts in mid to late
November.
Basically, snow is starting to come down and
it's the leadup to the Christmas holidays.
This lines up with the story and with the
real-world weather patterns of Utah, where
the story takes place.
The story ends sometime around Christmas time.
So we have an entire romance story, from “first
meeting” all the way through, taking place
in the span of a month.
That... poses some difficulties.
It's hard to have a full, complete romance
story on such a tight schedule.
I mean hell, Eileen and Allison go from dating
to sex and saying they love each other in
like two weeks, which feels really out of
character for both of them, especially considering
that for both of them, it's their first real
relationship.
Also, just like most romance stories, there's
a section where things are a bit rocky once
the honeymoon phase ends.
There's some conflict that ultimately has
to come to a resolution.
This is normal and expected, even in real-world
relationships, but the fact that this entire
arc happens in only a few weeks makes it feel
unnatural.
And if I were to see a real-life relationship
progress at hyperspeed like this, I would
probably characterize it as unstable and possibly
a little toxic.
I think that starting the story so late in
the semester was a big mistake.
Really, I think it would have been better
for it to start in mid to late September rather
than late November.
This would have given a bit more time to allow
the relationship to properly develop and progress
in a way that feels realistic for these characters
while also not taking anything away from the
story as a whole.
And it would allow for the conflict shown
towards the end to feel like the result of
a buildup of unresolved tensions, which is
what it was supposed to be, rather than something
that just pops in out of almost nowhere and
tries to retroactively justify its existence.
To be clear, every individual facet of the
relationship and story makes sense and it
works, but not the fact that it happens in
the span of a couple weeks.
Also, as a result of this insane in-universe
time crunch, the conflict and resolution,
which I won't spoil, is never properly explored.
The ideas are there, and they're genuinely
good.
But the fact that they just show up and are
quickly resolved without all that much introspection
just doesn't feel right.
And very quickly, I'll just go over a bit
about the 18+ content.
So the 18+ patch adds 2 sex scenes and a bit
of nudity.
In short, the sex is tasteful and it's done
for the benefit of the story.
If it weren't for the aforementioned pacing
issues (after all, I think they go from dating
to sex in like two weeks if that), they'd
feel completely natural.
They also were not designed to be stimulating.
They're a part of the story, not fapping material.
I was initially gonna make a “Come On Eileen”
joke right about now, but I realize that probably
would have been in poor taste even by my standards,
so I'm gonna spare you that atrocity.
But it was too funny to not at least mention
it.
Overall, the story of First Snow is pretty
good, though there are some noticeable issues
holding it back.
I did genuinely enjoy my time reading it,
but I'm always left kind of disappointed when
I see so much unrealized potential.
So overall, First Snow is alright.
It's certainly not the best visual novel I've
ever read, but it was still enjoyable.
I will say that my expectations were pretty
high due to my existing familiarity with some
of Suriko's work and unfortunately First Snow
did not quite meet those expectations, though
I don't regret my time spent reading in the
slightest.
Now normally, I'd let you know if it's worth
your money, but the damn thing is free.
I still refuse to give it a numerical score,
so on a scale of “don't bother, maybe if
you're really bored, worth picking up, amazing,
and must-read,” I'd put First Snow at a
solid “worth picking up.”
Don't go in expecting a masterpiece, but you
should enjoy yourself.
That being said, as this is a prequel of Twofold,
which is currently in development and seems
to be a much bigger project, I'm hoping that
a lot of the issues I noticed in First Snow
are due to the small-scale nature of this
project.
I'm definitely interested in the world and
characters and I'm almost certainly gonna
be checking out Twofold when it eventually
releases.
So at least First Snow accomplished some of
its goals.
Thanks for watching.
If you enjoyed the video, don't forget to
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if you want to see me edit these videos.
I mean, I didn't edit this one because I didn't
want to accidentally leave a titty in there,
but I usually edit my videos on-stream.
Once again, thank you all for watching and
I'll see you next Monday.
