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By Manuel  Players: 1 Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC Meta Meet Cute!!!+ (Hereafter referred to simply as "Meta Meet Cute".) is a quirky little visual novel that is probably a bit too self-aware for its own good. Or maybe that's a good thing? Well, either way this visual novel was developed by Studio Thursday, and is finally getting an English-language release by way of Sticky Rice Games just in time for Valentine's Day! The time is right for love to be in the air, so we'll be taking a look at the game and see if it's worth disrupting tonight's dinner plans over. It's out now on PC and Nintendo Switch, but this review will focus on the Switch release. There's a lot to cover here, so let's dive right in!
Meta Meet Cute puts you in shoes of Mirai Minato, a second year high school student who is about to skip his first day of school. Fate has other plans for him as he is dragged out of bed by his childhood friend Meguri Sasazuka. Right before entering the school, Mirai then saves the life of a first year student named Rumi Tenmabashi. Rumi is a shy girl who has a rather scary split personality that comes out whenever she loses her "eye-lights". This trio is joined by third year student Mei Akihabara, an otaku who is interested in them because she realizes that they're all in a visual novel, and that she can potentially meet pretty girls if she hangs around Mirai. Rounding out the cast is Sumire, the sole member of the literature club who agrees to tutor Mirai in exchange for a date. There is no easy to define "plot" in the game, but players will go through the entire year with the cast, and maybe find love by the end. Along the way a lot of meta hijinks occur, but we'll discuss those in due course. While the cast is rather small for a game like this, it does give each of them their own time to shine. You'll get to know the main cast really well by the time you get into their main routes, and they're all quite the charming bunch. While they do all kind of fall into anime/dating sim stereotypes, they still manage to be very much unique nonetheless. As Mei would say, there's a reason why the common tropes are so popular. While I will touch on a few extended gameplay and plot elements here and there, I want to carefully avoid ruining the game for anyone who might be interested in playing it. Meta Meet Cute really surprised me with its story and I think it's best experienced directly if possible. Mixing together strange self-referential humor and actual touching romantic scenes seems like something that shouldn't work at all, but it's well executed here. I guess you'll have to judge that for yourself if you do decide to grab it, but let's hear my opinions on everything first!
Gameplay in Meta Meet Cute is standard visual novel stuff. That means you'll be mostly reading through dialogue, and occasionally directing the story in various directions via dialogue options/plot choices. There are a few special case moments where things get slightly more involved, but they are few and far between. Most of what you'll be doing is navigating through the game's various routes via your choices, and maybe creating many save files so you can eventually get the ones you want. Seeing as the game's angle is self-aware meta humor, most of the main characters seem to know they’re in a video game/visual novel. Meguri can read Mirai's mind via the game's text box, Mei refers to Mirai as "Protagonist", and Rumi seems to sometimes recall other potential routes the player has gone on in the past. The one thing that seems to be missing are direct callouts to the player, though there's still room for that yet! Besides the meta humor, there are some crazy scenarios that befall the cast throughout the main and sub routes. Most of the crazier antics are saved for the sub routes, but there are some standout parts in the main ones that I'd mention if it didn't also spoil some aspects of the plot. While this makes for a very unique game, I must say that self-aware meta humor is very much front-loaded. There's a lot of talk of it early on, but it all pretty much disappears by the halfway point. I don't want to make it sound like it never gets brought up again, but you'll be hard pressed to notice any hint of it beyond Mei still calling Mirai "Protagonist". This isn't necessarily a bad thing, there is a story to be told here and the wacky stuff can take away from it after a while, but the game's description and trailer might be a bit misleading on what kind of game you're diving into. Don't get me wrong though, the story in Meta Meet Cute is amazing and I played through most of the routes in a single 24 period because I really wanted to see what would happen next, but it's best to not come in expecting the humor to go fully off-the-wall 100% of the time.
Since the sub routes are arguably what makes this game stand out as much as it does, let's talk about them first. Now I say this as somebody who still needs to figure out how to get six of them, but it's often pretty easy to tell when a dialogue/plot option will take you to one. It'll usually be the one that seems to be randomly inserted, or the one where you're directly ignoring the main plot. See an option that says "Run Away"? Yeah, that will probably take you too one. Some of them are a bit harder to notice though. I got one very early on because I thought ignoring random students was the way to go, then I found myself literally falling in love with a desk. (And I've seen Code Geass and know how that ends!) Other times I'd choose to go for a walk, or choose something I think will get a funny response, and it would find myself accidentally falling into one. Most of these sub routes don't have full gameplay to them, meaning they're rather short and quickly get to the credits so you can get back to finding the main routes. Some of them do run most of the course of the game though, and I think it's these that can be a bit hard to uncover. Long or not, there are some that I felt were wasted as one-off jokes. Now I mean this in the best way possible, since I'm actually saying that some made me wish that they were more fleshed out, or even made into the full plot of stand-alone visual novels. Not all of them are like this though, but some stand outs include the Science Club Tournament, and the one where you fall for the Dragon King's daughter. You even can fall into sub routes for some of the main cast, though I won't go too far into that for fear of discussing spoilers. If you're just looking to fall in love with a pond spirit, make streaming content with an eagle, or haunt your school with Hanako-san, then this game has you covered. Keep in mind that there is far more to it than that, but I can positively say that all routes (at least the ones I've seen so far) are great additions to this game.
While I haven't cleared all the sub routes, I have cleared all the main ones, so let's talk about them next. Obviously I won't go into spoilers, but there some things that are rather obvious. You have four girls you can go down romanceable paths with, and each (mostly) have their own main ending. While you might think that you can simply go for whichever girl you prefer your first time through the game, that's actually not the case. You can get most of the sub routes on your first playthrough, but the main routes have to be completed in a specific order, one on each playthrough. This is due to the fact that new dialogue options/plot choices will only unlock after each main route is completed. This ultimately makes sense once you reach the final one, but I couldn't help but feel I was railroaded a bit by the story. While I eventually would've seen all the routes for the purpose of this review, I might've played totally differently if I was doing so simply for fun, and would've been frustrated when I realized I couldn't go for the ending/route I wanted to right away. Also, these routes are far more serious than the sub routes, or even the wackiness of the first part of the game. It may sound kind of silly saying that it goes into "standard visual novel territory" for the main routes, but that's what I thought the entire time. Each of them do have some of the meta elements that are in the game, but they feel far less important. This makes sense of course since not everything has to be a joke, but I felt that some plot elements could've been carried forward a bit more. These pure love stories could've still been told while including stuff like Meguri being able to read the in-game text boxes. This doesn't take away from the game as a whole though, so I was willing to overlook it. If you're worried that you won't get that perfect happy ending with each of the main girls, and some other surprise ones too, then you can rest assured that the game gives you exactly that. I just wish they maybe had a bit more fun with them.
While I think Meta Meet Cute has a lot going for it, there are some issues I want to discuss before we move on. I've already mentioned how the game's biggest selling point, its self-aware humor, drops off a lot after the opening sections, but there are a few other points related to story cohesion I want to discuss. I kind of touched on it earlier, but some of the sub routes are so detailed that I found myself enjoying them just as much as the main game. They pretty much all have unique characters within them, but pretty much all of them are represented by solid color silhouettes instead of new character designs. You might think that this would be outside the scope of this game, and it probably is, but then you'll see things like Hanako-san getting a complete character design and wonder why that wasn't done with other sub route characters. Besides that, it can be a bit hard to stay in the story when there are a lot of typos and grammatical errors, and unfortunately that's the case here. There were even some points where the text spilled outside the text boxes, which felt like it should've been caught before release. Oh, and all of the main route endings are left completely untranslated. I get that maybe the credit scenes couldn't be touched up because they might be movies, but each main route has two screens filled with text telling you what happened after the credits rolled and those are just left as is. I hope that they correct that soon via an update, but I can't be sure that they will. Lastly, this game seems to run rather poorly on the Nintendo Switch even though nothing ever takes place that feels like it would cause that. Even running docked, the game had a lot of hiccups, skips, and even crashed twice when trying to load a new in-game day. What's funny is that those crashes happened totally randomly within my first few hours of playing, but never occurred when I was using the skip option to speed through to new endings. These issues aren't by any means game-breaking, except for maybe those crashes, but they're worth mentioning nonetheless. Thankfully there's far more good things to talk about than bad, but I don't want it to seem like I completely overlooked this game's faults.
I feel like there isn't a lot to discuss when it comes to visuals, but I'm going to give it a go anyway. One of the things I was most impressed by was the sheer amount of backgrounds this game has. However, judging by the fact that they're not included in the gallery, and some odd credits when it comes to their creation, I'm not 100% sure that they were created exclusively for this game. Either way, there are a lot of cool locations to see, and though each route is a bit on the shorter end, you do get to see quite a few different areas of this game's world. It's sort of the opposite when it comes to the characters though, as there are essentially only four of them, though I am very much a fan of their designs. They all have different outfits, awesome CGs, and it helps make the player want to see their stories to the end. I especially want to single out Rumi, who can look quite different whenever her personality shifts. It's quite interesting to see, and I definitely wasn't expecting to find a character like her here. That said there isn't a whole lot in the way of animation and you can't expect to see much of it outside of the opening movie. That's probably my only real complaint about the visuals I guess, but I should also mention that there isn't a similar animated scene at the end of the game. That last point upset me, as it really would've put a nice coda to everything. Without it I can't help but feel a bit unfulfilled now that I'm pretty much done with the game. There's also the other issues I mentioned earlier regarding performance and most sub characters only being represented by silhouettes, but I think I covered that well enough already. Though there are a few things to fault the game for visually, I think it uses what it has to the best ends. This isn't a bigger budgeted visual novel after all, it's created by a three-person team and I think it's extremely well-done with that in mind. Nitpicks aside, I think the visuals are second only to the story and writing.
Though I literally just finished saying that the visuals were probably the second greatest aspect of Meta Meet Cute, I think the music and voice acting really give them a run for their money. While I also wonder if all the music here is originally created for this game, I can say that there are quite a few amazing tracks to listen to. I've said it before, but a lot of visual novels feature soundtracks of music that is just there, but Meta Meet Cute has music that adds and supports each scene. It's funny and upbeat when it needs to be, melancholic when the scene calls for it, dripping with romance when required, and even scary in a few key areas. While I don’t think I'll be running out to pick up the soundtrack at any point, there are more than a few tracks that I have stuck in my head as I write this. There's also a cool opening theme song that features vocals, which has a melody that also plays throughout the game, but I have to once again lament the fact that there isn't one for the credits sequence. I don't want to keep harping on that same point, but I really think that the game would've benefitted greatly from a closing theme song as well. When you add in the already mentioned fact that all the main endings are left untranslated, it makes for that incomplete feeling I mentioned before. It's not exactly the end of the world though, and the credits sequence is so brief (small team and all that) that I wonder if any song would've last more than 30 seconds anyway. Voice acting is just as strong as the music, and everyone plays their part well. Only the main cast is voiced, but that's usually the case in other games like this. Every scene is made the more powerful by the performances the actresses give, and there were many scenes that felt like they came to life simply through the performances themselves. Considering how I mentioned earlier that there is pretty much no animation to speak of in-game, this is no small feat. I'm not sure if these voice actors have worked on many other projects before, as they are not credited using romanized names, but it honestly feels like the development splurged a bit by hiring veteran talent. While I can't really be sure of that, and honestly would be surprised if my assumption turned out to be true, they all did an amazing job here. Naturally this game doesn't have any sort of English dub, but I'm sure that it would've taken away from the game if they had somehow managed to put one together for this release.
There are a total of 27 routes in Meta Meet Cute, 24 sub and 3 main, and depending on things like reading speed, it will probably take you over 10 hours to see them all. That time can also vary greatly if you use a lot of saving and loading, and if you implement the skip dialogue option. I actually give that estimate, but I currently still have to find six of the sub-routes as of this writing. There's a lot of content here, and the smoothness of the writing means that you'll probably be well into the game before you realize how many hours you've sunk into it. This is a highly replayable game by nature of getting all its routes, and it's also worth going back to try out some of the optional dialogue choices that don't affect routes, but have different dialogue attached to them. I've played many visual novels that have less content than this that cost more than the current asking price of $17.99, but part of me wishes that it was just a bit lower so more people can probably pick it up on a whim. That said, you definitely get a lot of content for your buck, and it's way more than your standard visual novel.
Straight to the point, I wholeheartedly recommend Meta Meet Cute!!!+ and hope that lots of people get to enjoy the game as much as I have. Even the Switch version is worth picking up in spite of the occasional performance issues. It's rare that I feel a visual novel really transcends the genre, but this one manages to pull it off. It almost feels like the developers crammed in too much content and ideas into one game, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing for players. I do wonder what they'll do for a follow-up though. I guess we'll have to see what that is if and when it comes, but until then we all have an amazing game to hold us over! Happy Valentine's Day, and be sure to keep track of Rumi's eye-lights! Check Out Meta Meet Cute!!!+ on Nintendo Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/meta-meet-cute-plus-switch/ Story: A+ Gameplay: A Graphics: A Music/Sound: A+ Value: A Overall: A+ Pros: + An amazing visual novel with a memorable main cast. + The meta elements, and wacky sub routes, make Meta Meet Cute+ stand out in a very crowded genre. + Some of the sub routes are good enough that they could've been expanded into either main routes, or even their own games. + Music and voice acting are among the best in the genre, notably of a scale you don't often see from a development team this small. + While the gallery doesn't show off all the art in the game, it's all on par with the music and voice acting. + 24 sub routes, and three main ones, mean that you'll be playing this one for a long time if you want to see everything. + Leaves you wanting more, but in the best way possible. +/- The Nintendo Switch version does not support the Pro Controller for some reason. Cons: - The meta elements drop off for long segments of the game, making it a "standard" visual novel for long stretches. - Several typos and grammatical errors, and all the endings being left untranslated, mar an otherwise excellent release. - While it may seem that you can tackle the main routes at any time, you actually have to complete them in order. - The Nintendo Switch version seems to be poorly optimized and has some performance issues. - Could've really used an ending theme song to go with the main route endings. A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.  It's today! #MetMeetCute
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