Cute Girls Doing Yuri Things: "A Kiss For The Petals: Maidens of Michael" Review

Player(s): 1
Platform(s): PC

Boy, I love me some good, wholesome yuri titles. I’ve never heard of this series prior to reviewing it and at first I wasn’t too excited. I’m the type that judges a book by its cover, or in this case, a VN by its cover. It looked basic and it even started out slow but OH MY GOODNESS. If I was allowed to, this review would end up like one of those Facebook posts full of jumbled up words and emotions about how wholesome and amazing A Kiss for the Petals Maidens of Michael is. Instead, let’s review.

GAMEPLAY/STORY

The start of the game revolves around Risa, a first year class representative, and her troublesome yet bright classmate, Miya. At first, Risa was annoyed by Miya because she would constantly skipped classes, tease Risa, and disappeared to parts of the school where Risa wouldn’t be able to find her. As the days go on, Risa and Miya’s relationship develop into something more than just classmate acquaintances. Besides Risa and Miya, we also have the Best Couples of St. Michaels including Nanami and Yuuna, Kaede and Sara, Mai and Reo, Eris and Shizuki, and the teacher-student couple, Rena and Takako.
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I can admit that the story was very slow in the beginning but if you keep with it, it’s so wholesome and all comes together in the end. I’ve never fell in love so quickly with the characters and the growth seen in Risa and Miya’s relationship. Risa and Miya started off as an annoyance to one another then grow from a platonic love to something more. I also feel they equally distributed different character interactions with one example being The Freshman Club. Risa, Nanami, and Kaede formed a special freshman’s only club within the events committee to better get to know each other. It was never 100% just Risa and Miya interacting and developing but the whole cast helped develop one another.

While the start of the game introduces the Risa and Miya route, the routes of the other couples are unlocked after finishing. I was only able to finish the Risa and Miya route for this review but, I look forward to starting the other routes!

Also, visual novels where my decisions change the story are the absolute best. I love mapping out my decisions to see what kind of endings I can get, what I can do to get another ending, and other factors. I went super safe mode with the decisions I made and did map out my whole progress. I haven’t experimented with the “obvious bad” choices to see what would happen. I will possibly update this later with my findings.

UPDATE: It seems the decision’s made effect if the next story will be unlocked or not. I was lucky enough to get through Risa and Miya’s story perfectly thus unlocking the next route. Be sure to keep this in mind when playing though!

GRAPHICS/ART

The art style used in the character graphics weren’t something I wasn’t to impress about. It felt very plain and ordinary but I guess there’s really nothing wrong with it when it’s depicting high school girls. I also feel a lot of the characters suffered from the dominating “Same Face” syndrome that’s becoming more pointed out these days. Again, I can’t really blame them much for these kind of nitpicks since the game originally came out in 2012 for Japanese audiences. The times have changed a lot since then and new styles have come to light since six years ago.

While the art style of the characters weren’t as prevailing, can we talk about the beautiful backgrounds? I especially loved the design and style of Risa’s room. So much detail went into this background versus the others used in the game. I guess that can lead me into saying that I wish there was an equal level of detail for all the backgrounds used. I’m a sap for some good backgrounds and Risa’s bedroom might now be my new computer background.

SOUND/AUDIO

The song played in the introduction movie, “Innocent Flower Fortune Telling” by Anzu Hana, has become one of my favorite songs currently. Super cute and fits the vibe of the story! The background music as well set the right mood for each moment. You can find each tune in the music potion of the extra’s along with the English translation lyrics for the introduction song!

Wow this is probably super minor to many but easily impressed me the most. I’m so happy they decided to voice background characters. I believe it really improves the overall gameplay of visual novels when they take the extra step in voicing background characters. Sure, they may not have art like the main characters do, but interactions between side and main characters feel complete. It’s so satisfying for me and I couldn’t be happier about this.
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One thing that was constantly bugging me was the different voice volumes of each character, specifically Eris. I wasn’t sure if I accidently touched a setting that made her voice harder to hear or if it was a bug but I could barely hear her.

VALUE

A Kiss for the Petals Maidens of Michael goes for $34.99 on mangagamer.com with other games from the A Kiss for the Petal’s series also available. I believe it’s an amazing value considering you can complete 6 different routes and unlock loads of extra content once completing all these routes. I would also like to mention that it was available on Steam but was reported and is now taken down. I wasn’t able to get an exact price point for the Steam version while writing up the review and as I’m not too sure when they will bring the game back up I will update with the exact Steam price once it’s available again.

OVERALL

A Kiss for the Petals Maidens of Michael is a pure story filled with character and relationship development that connects all the couples together. A lot of effort has been put forth by the St. Michael’s team to bring this project to the states and I can’t thank them enough for exporting such a loving and wholesome story. I really do hope they can bring it back to Steam because everyone should play this. I will definitely be looking into the two sequels.

-Konaru

A Kiss for the Petals Maidens of Michael is now available on MangaGamer HERE

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Graphics: B-
Sound/Audio: B
Gameplay/Story: A+
Value: A
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OVERALL: B-

Pros:
+Pure story with heavy character development.
+Great opening and background music.
+Perfect value for six different routes and extras.

+- Beautiful backgrounds, but some didn’t receive as much detail as others.

Cons:
-Art style used was pretty basic.
-Some characters' audio was quieter or louder than others.
-Currently not available on Steam due to take down.

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Disclaimer: This game was provided to us by the publisher for the purpose of this review.