It took me nearly 6 years to play Little Busters! after I purchased it in Japan during 2010 (right before starting with RPGFan, as it happens). It sat on my shelf, wrapped in plastic, until last year, but was ultimately back-benched for Clannad. Fortunately, I did finally play this other well-known KEY visual novel and it was worth the wait. Little Busters! excels in a way few VNs manage to: it feels like a real game.
Like many visual novels, Little Busters! is focused on a slice-of-life Japanese high school experience. Unlike many others, it feels like a more genuine reflection of what the school experience can be when surrounded by a great group of friends. There are unbelievable moments, like the main male character being invited to a girls-only slumber party, but the majority of the game feels real. The story follows a group of childhood pals who decide to start a school baseball team on a whim. The actual baseball takes a backseat to the relationships that develop between characters, but their goal to recruit enough members drives the story forward successfully.
There’s a large cast of characters to meet and engage with and a dozen or so varied endings to enjoy. I won’t pretend the characters’ personalities are original, but Little Busters! portrays many of the usual archetypes in a less in your face fashion. Yes, there’s the clumsy girl and the sickly girl and the mildly-tsundere girl, but those stereotypes feel like additions to, rather than the core of, each character. Three of the four original childhood friends are actually male, and while none of them have their own endings, many of my favourite scenes in the game centred on their manly friendship. I actually most enjoyed the brother and sister relationship (no, not the weird kind) of Rin and Kyousuke who are almost opposites but get along so well. For a change, it was relaxing to enjoy a KEY game that didn’t feature a dozen heart-wrenching tear-inducing stories. Little Busters! is generally light-hearted and I laughed out loud frequently during the 15 or so hours the first playthrough took.
The core gameplay of Little Busters! is simply reading text and making occasional dialogue options that both directly affect the following scene and contribute towards which ending you see. Little Busters! even manages to incorporate a few novel elements like a fighting and baseball mini-game, among others. Throughout the game there’s an ongoing battle ranking where you can choose to spar with any of your friends in a text-based battle to top the leaderboard. There are even consumable items to find to maximise your stats. When a battle begins it’s all automatic, but the usual HUD is replaced by something you’d find in Tekken or Soul Calibur.
Once per in-game day, the friends go out to practise baseball where a mini-game begins. Balls are pitched to you and you can try and hit them out to the fielders. Not only was it fun to try and score combos and hit home-runs, but the adorable 2D sprite animations of the other characters as they chased the ball continually brought a smile to my face. It’s quite possible to finish the main game with different baseball results too. On my first play, for example, I was short one team member and was destroyed in the final match.
Visually, the game isn’t too impressive. The character designs and backgrounds are serviceable, but there’s nothing that particularly stands out. Again, while there are an adequate number of event CGs that show more aesthetically beautiful images, few feel like they’re the ‘reward’ quality usually intended for reaching certain event-related milestones. The audio is much the same with satisfactory background music and generally solid voice acting, but no real star performance.
If you’re after an easy-to-read and light-hearted visual novel, I can highly recommend Little Busters! It may not have standout sound or art, but the script is silly and enjoyable, and additional mini-games are a welcome diversion from the large quantity of text. It doesn’t have the heart-wrenching emotional depth of Clannad or Air, but Little Busters! achieves exactly what it sets out to be: fun. And yes, it’s natively an all-ages title.
