Chemically Bonded – Review

Visual Novels aren’t always the most popular gaming genre, but they definitely have their fans, and while many similar titles have failed to capture my attention a few have delivered an entertaining evening or more of gameplay.

Chemically Bonded follows the story of our teenage Japanese male protagonist (who I called Ri-i), who’s caught between two highschool girls with a bit of a turbulant past.

Kiyoko is a smart and intelligent student with a love of science, while Naomi is a star athlete and one of the most popular girls in the school.

Once great friends, their relationship broke down after a misunderstanding, so while building your own relationship with each girl, you’ll joins Kiyoko’s science club and over the next week or so, help rebuild the friendship between her and Naomi. There’s also a handful of other characters, with some (such as the teacher) feeling a little flat and at times uneccesary, while others such as the jock-like Ken, and the mysterious Same, who work well and add more depth to both the story and the main characters.

The story is mostly based around the school with a few other locations such as a cafe in the nearby town and at Ri-i’s home where he’ll often reflect on conversations through the day and choose to call or message either Kiyoko or Naomi.

The overall storyline is pretty involving and while I wish these visual novels would deliver more of a “choose your own adventure” Chemically Bonded does at least have a handful of decisions which effect the direction and outcome of the game giving you a total of 4 endings, with a “good” and “bad” ending based around each of the two girls, though the separation for these endings are only based one 1 or 2 specific decisions. Compared to other visual novels I’ve played, I did find the overall story and presentation of Chemically Bonded more than good enough to hold my attention, and engaging enough to return to discover all endings and achievements, which is something I’ve never done with a visual novel game before.

this was helped by plenty of options allowing you to do everything from determine the text speed, to exactly how loud each individual character was which is a nice touch, especially when you have Kiyoko and Sae together, I think the only option I would have liked is to have the choice of Japanese voices, while maintaining the English subtitles.

Graphically, it’s very impressive in screenshots, character models and locations are all incredibly well drawn and detailed, however apart from the overall art clarity, it doesn’t feel any different to many, many other visual novels.

Id love to see a developer add more animations, maybe comic-like scene changes as people move through the area, and then a still background as characters are shown.

Likewise, the main characters are very well done, but I would have loved to see some more animation. Equally I would have loved to see more poses for each character, especially Kiyoko and Naomi to make every scene or conversation feel more unique, but despite wishing these games would step forward and strive to improve, it’s more the current standard of the genre, so specifically with Chemically Bonded, there’s nothing really significant to complain about.

Being a Japanese story, there’s obviously a handful of awkward translations, but these are few and far between and the entirety of the text is mostly very readable.

There’s a good amount of voice acting from Kiyoko and Niamo, and while Kiyoko’s voice made me want to scratch at my ears with a cheese grater, once I’d warmed to the tone a little it was definitely better than nothing, I think the main difference is Kiyoko’s voice is intentionally immature to match her innocent character, but I just wasn’t a fan and I’m guessing the voice actress struggles as much with fluent English as some of the subtitles do.

Naomi feels better voiced, even with the added hurdle of mixing both a brash exterior personality with a more soft centre, although for overall delivery it’s not bad and far better than many visual novels which have attempted anywhere near this level of voice acting.

There’s also a handful of soundtracks, which toddle along in the background, I can’t say any are really memorable enough to tell you to listen out for this or that, but I never found them distracting or annoying, they’re more melodic or verging on elevator tunes, which suit the background fine when you’re reading lines of text.

Obviously with a visual novel, there can be a lot of reading, and a few of my only complaints are the lack of voice acting for the main character (Ri-i) and a little too much time spent on reading his thoughts, rather than reading (or listening to) actual conversations.

Estimated as a 6-9 hour game, it’s a pretty accurate figure, even though I read very quickly, it still took me about 6 hours to play through (using the skip mode to bypass lots of text after the first full playthrough, which took about 5 hours), so I’d guess around 6-7 hours will be the average, which again is pretty good length for a visual novel.

It’s also worth noting the overall flow of the story, we’re talking about students in their latter teenage years, exploring relationships and ultimately romances, theres obviously a few more mature scenes, but it never feels seedy or unnecessary, likewise the few times a couple of curse words pop up, it didn’t feel out of place. In fact with visual novels it often seems all or nothing when deciding to throw in more sensitive content, so it’s actually really refreshing to feel like it’s there, without being rammed down your throat.

As is often the case, there’s the occasion scantly clad photo, or questionable pose, but it’s nowhere near as bad as some novels I’ve seen.

Visual novels are never going to bring in millions of players, but it’s unfair to judge them alongside some games and genres, that will. It’s more about discovering the personalities and relationships of a very small group of people and I feel Chemically Bonded does a really great job of not only introducing you to each character, but seeing how your friendship with each, and their own personalities reveal themselves and evolve over the course of the game, the individuals especially outside of the main three are never really deep and engrossing, but they are mostly interesting enough to keep you engaged.

Overall Chemically Bonded is a game that proved to be far better than I was expecting, especially at only $9.99, there’s a few shortcomings which are more down to the way the genre is at the moment but if you’re a fan of visual novels, I can definitely recommend helping these two girls out.

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