The Fruit of Grisaia and The Labyrinth of Grisaia are available on both Steam and Denpasoft from Sekai Project, and the Steam version of The Eden of Grisaia is scheduled for a March 2017 release. Last updated: March 06, 2017 18:06. This version of the game is a port of the Vita version of Fruit of Grisaia. It never had the content to begin with, so a restoration patch is impossible. That being said, this version has some CGs unique to it, and there's nothing story related cut in the H scenes, so it's a perfectly fine version of the game.

Author’s Note: The version of The Fruit of Grisaia referenced in the following review contains numerous hardcore sex scenes. An all-ages version of the game is available as well.

I love The Fruit of Grisaia.

Ordinarily I’d start off a review with some background information, maybe establish context, and slowly ease myself into it and take my time to explain how I feel about the game in question. But this is an exception. There’s a lot for me to say here, but at the same time my opinion is very simple. Therefore, I will keep this review concise so that my core point gets across as clearly as possible. There ultimately isn’t much to be said.

The Fruit of Grisaia was originally released by Frontwing in Japan in 2011 as the first part of a trilogy of visual novels, followed by The Labyrinth of Grisaia in 2012 and The Eden of Grisaia in 2013. The English localization was released on Steam in its all-ages form by Sekai Project in May 2015, followed by an eroge version by Denpasoft in August. A free fan-made restoration patch to add the 18+ elements to the Steam version was released by Imouto Works in February 2016. I played the Steam version with the restoration patch. The English version comes by way of a Kickstarter project by Sekai Project to release official translations of the entire trilogy. Only the first game has been released so far, with the others following at some undetermined points in the future.

About This Game This is the sequel to The Fruit of Grisaia.It is strongly recommended to play the first game before starting this. “Are things OK as they are?” In every second of every minute of the life the young man had lived, the same thought recurred in his mind. Jan 26, 2017 This initial patch provides full English text for all routes. Restoration patch that will restore all adult content is in the works and will be released SOON™. This patch is based on Steam release of The Fruit of Grisaia. All credit for TRANSLATION goes to Frontwing and Sekai Project. UPDATE : Fixed bugs in 'Xtreme Typos' chapter.

This is actually a remarkably accurate translation.

I knew very little about The Fruit of Grisaia going into it. I was utterly unfamiliar with the Grisaia series, and any descriptions I’d seen online did little to show what the game was actually about. Any official plot descriptions rely heavily on metaphors, making the actual plot quite unclear. Keeping that in mind, I’ll describe the plot in no uncertain terms.

The story follows protagonist Yuuji Kazami (a very mysterious character in his own right, but I’ll get to that) as he enrolls in Mihama Academy, an unusual, isolated private school on the outskirts of a small Oceanside town outside Tokyo. Upon his enrollment, he discovers that entire student body consists of himself and five eccentric girls: the nurturing, motherly Amane Suou; the childish yet oddly foul-mouthed Makina Irisu; the obedient, obliging maid Sachi Komine; the airheaded pseudo-tsundere Michiru Matsushima; and the aloof, hostile Yumiko Sakaki. As you go from the lengthy initial common route into their individual stories, you learn that each of them has a very troubled past, and their own reason for being in Mihama Academy, a school that seems to double as a mental hospital.

This is Makina, the loli. I think she’s my favourite character.

The game’s structure is fairly standard, if simple; it starts out with a common route, and the individual routes break off one by one at the end of the common story. There are relatively few choices, with three choices throughout the common route where their only effect is to provide additional scenes for the player to watch. The choices that actually matter come later, with the branching to each route dependent only on a single choice, with another towards the end to determine if you see the good end or the bad end. The structure is decidedly simpler than other games like CLANNAD, with many choices and a lot of smaller branches and variations on each scene. It’s comparatively easy to see everything The Fruit of Grisaia has to offer. There are no hidden routes, no unlockable endings, and no “true” ending. The heroines’ routes are completely separate, with no bearing on each other whatsoever.

The Fruit of Grisaia takes an interesting approach to the presentation of Yuuji, keeping him somewhat mysterious and never outright explaining his backstory despite being the perspective character. Everything we learn about him is told bit-by-bit in some of the routes, and is never completely exhaustive – in the end, we know a lot more about each of the girls than we do about Yuuji. There are large gaps in our knowledge about Yuuji’s past, and even in our knowledge about his “part-time job”. Makina’s route tells us the most about Yuuji, mostly concerning his professional life, but there’s still a lot of details that we don’t know.

Every route in The Fruit of Grisaia has a different length and structure and follows a completely different path. Even events that are seemingly independent of any route happen differently, such as the summer festival only happening in Amane and Makina’s routes, and everyone going on their own vacations in Michiru’s story. While the common route leans very heavily on comedy and rarely shifts to a more serious tone, the individual stories shift quickly into the darker tone, although even this varies between the characters. The biggest thing that all of the routes have in common is that they all have at least one flashback, and although the flashbacks are always important, the length and nature of the flashback also varies wildly from one route to the next. Amane’s flashback is the longest by far, making up the majority of her route, while the others’ are mostly there to fill out their backstories, with most of the route then focusing on how Yuuji plans to redeem them. Each route contains a single choice between a good end and a bad end, often close to the end; however, Michiru’s choice happens unusually early in the route, with an early bad end or a much lengthier good ending.

Some scenes, mostly flashbacks, use a full-screen text box.

The translation job is outstanding in its own right. Conversations flow smoothly, without any lines coming out as awkward, unnatural or translated too literally from Japanese to English. I noticed a single typo in the entire script, in the form of a single incomplete sentence. There’s also a few small, scattered sections with voices and no text, which is a problem considering the voices are all Japanese. Generally, these are single lines that I can understand with my basic understanding of Japanese, but there’s one particularly nasty sequence near the end of Michiru’s route which has what amounts to entire monologues without text, with only Japanese voices and an empty text box. It seems to me like a somewhat glaring oversight in an otherwise stellar showing.

The sex scenes are some of the better ones I’ve seen. They don’t seem particularly forced, and they are actually somewhat important to the game, primarily for Amane’s route. Even if the dialogue surrounding them is somewhat cheesy (and it is), their presence doesn’t detract from the overall experience. More specifically, Amane’s route would be definitely lacking something important in the all-ages base Steam version, especially in one particular scene which would lose a lot of its impact if the sex was off-screen.

The music is generally good, and the tracks are used to fit the situations well, but none of them particularly stood out to me. The exception is the opening theme, “Shuumatsu no Fractal”, or “The Final Fractal”, by Faylan (also known for singing the openings for the console versions of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend, Chronophantasma and Chronophantasma Extend, as well as the BlazBlue: Alter Memory anime series, among other things). Every character gets their own ending theme, and much like the rest of the soundtrack, while they’re all good, none of them stood out to me in particular. As for the voice acting, it’s the same problem as with other visual novels; since I don’t speak the language, I can’t tell if it’s particularly good or bad.

The sprites can move freely around the screen, to great comedic effect.

The visual presentation is unusually good for a visual novel, as well. The sprites freely move around the screen, expressing the action remarkably well for static images. This is used to great comedic effect and is particularly funny to watch while the auto-skip is active. In addition to standard CGs, there are also super-deformed ones (SD, or “chibi”, in case you don’t know the term), also with slight animation, used for humour. Even in regular scenes, when the ocean can be seen in the background, there’s a very slight animation in the light hitting the water – something very easy to miss, but a show of attention to detail that I appreciate.

If you want to read The Fruit of Grisaia, prepare for a major commitment; when I finished, my playtime was just under 70 hours, and that was me reading quickly. If you want to listen to the full voices, or read through the entire common route more than once, your playtime can easily go much higher than that. However, there’s no need to, since the three choices before the routes branch off have no bearing on the story, and the heroines’ route present themselves one at a time; if you refuse the first route, the second choice will branch off into another route, and so on. Since everything is based off of single choices, it makes it very easy to not miss anything once you’ve seen everything in the common route. The text skip is also one of the fastest I’ve ever seen.

The Fruit of Grisaia will run you $39.99 USD for either the 18+ version direct from the Denpasoft website or the all-ages version on Steam. Somewhat on the pricey side (although still less than CLANNAD), the relatively high price is worth it if you have the time to invest. At times the story is lighthearted and funny; other times, it’s sad and depressing; and sometimes, reading it can be downright stressful. This isn’t a visual novel where a walkthrough is needed – be sure to save on every choice, and you’ll be able to see everything the game has to offer no problem. This is a nice change from the overbearing complexity of others like Little Busters and CLANNAD (and don’t even get me started on Fate/Stay Night), though it doesn’t change the fact that it’ll likely run close to 70 hours, if not more, to finish all of the routes. If you don’t like visual novels or romance stories, you can probably figure out that The Fruit of Grisaia isn’t the game for you; as is the norm with visual novels, the format itself, as well as the sheer length, makes it impossible to recommend to everyone. However, if you do like visual novels and romance, I see no reason not to check out The Fruit of Grisaia if you haven’t already.

Grisaia No Kajitsu Game

Step through the gate into a new, meaningful life.

Fruit Of Grisaia Restoration Patch

Review copy provided by publisher; fan-made restoration patch used