There’s not much of a bigger no-no than importing Japanese-language visual novels. The genre almost entirely consists of talking heads. Without the ability to comprehend the text, it’s likely a waste of time and money.
With that said, I stand before you today having completed a 100% run of First Kiss Story – a 1998 visual novel for the PC-FX home console. It was, unsurprisingly, never localized. As mind numbing as that might sound, I somehow came to enjoy it way more than I expected. Maybe too much.
I didn’t exactly set out to play First Kiss Story. It just kind of happened.
The spark was an in-world fictional fighting game called HuneX Fighters ’98. Instead of just being mentioned by name, it’s fully playable with a surprising amount of depth. It’s far from content complete, but features Street Fighter-like specials as well as super moves that burn meter. In the real world, it also seems to be the only traditional fighter released for the PC-FX.
While there are some details online of how to unlock this mini-game, there’s also a lot of misinformation. In the end, I dumped a good five hours into First Kiss Story before I found it. During that process, I nearly got one of the girl’s endings. So I decided I’d finish a story arc to consider the the title “beaten” in my backlog.
I got my first kiss… Then my second first kiss. After about a total of ten hours and three completed endings, I felt like I had to commit. With a whopping 12 date-able girls, that’s not a small task. I don’t think I realized I was enjoying it at first. I assumed I was simply trying to have a mental check mark on the game. Yet the more I played, the more it consumed me. It was pretty much the only thing on my brain for a good two weeks. I listened to the soundtrack for most of my commutes and spent hours looking at artwork.
First Kiss Story suddenly had become a weirdly important focus of mine.
Why did it come to this? How did a relatively straightforward romance visual novel I can’t even read get planted so deeply into my life? I have a bare minimum knowledge of the Japanese language, but nowhere near enough to consume more than the occasional word or concept. Even now, I don’t feel like I have a full understanding of how the title ensnared me. Though I’ve come to a handful of conclusions about the game and myself.
Some text-heavy imports I’ve recommended in the past, like Team Innocent, ride a line of being too difficult to appreciate without an understanding of the language. However the animations along with gameplay elements keep them engaging. First Kiss Story, on the other hand, is a traditional visual novel filled with mostly static portraits. It does have voice acting, which helps make it more digestible. Yet the main character is mute for self-insertion, so it’s like missing out on half of the conversation.
From what I can tell, the plots are fairly straight forward. If you’ve been around anime enough, then these will be familiar tropes. I have confidence that I understand the core conflicts of each character along with how they develop. Problems like mourning over the loss of a parent, struggling to achieve dreams or trying to resolve a romantic conflict in a love triangle are all pretty easy to follow. If you want to play a visual novel you can’t read, this might be the one.
At the same time, because the plots seem so straightforward, there’s not much that sets it apart from others in the genre. We’re not starving for English translated visual novels anymore. Don’t be me. Look at the wealth of options available.
I spend a lot of time chasing the obscure and unknown. By their nature, text-heavy Japanese games will have less available information on the English speaking internet, so it makes them easy targets. A lot of them are impenetrable, though I like the challenge of trying to understand something that I shouldn’t be able to.
That being said, First Kiss Story made me realize how much Japanese I have retained from my classes years ago. Automatic translation tools are fantastic resources, but not replacements. When I can map out the general idea of a conversation without assistance, it feels like a triumph.
I think most people can relate to the satisfaction of utilizing a foreign language they’re learning. What might be harder to understand is how First Kiss Story offered something rarely available to me.
I literally cannot talk intelligently about this game.
A bit of a peek behind the curtains here: sometimes I get incredibly stressed for weeks or months on how to best communicate my feelings about a title while also being aware of others’ expectations. I have weird standards and typically like games for different reasons than most people. As soon as I start something, it activates the “how do I talk about this” process in my brain. Video games are my main hobby. So as a side effect, the more I play the more work I create for myself. Rarely can I simply relax with one. I had no expectations that I would ever be able to do anything with this title, which partially spared me from this process.
Yet here I am on my website writing about First Kiss Story. Still, even though I did put time into thinking about why I like it, the lack of known facts limit my ability to do much more than type out the stream of thoughts in this post or ramble about it on a podcast.
Nevertheless, this likely isn’t the last time I’ll talk about this title. I’ve dug quite a hole for myself in trying to make some actual content surrounding HuneX Fighters ’98. After some searching, I discovered a PC re-release of this fighter with some enhancements. In purchasing that, I ended up with three discs full of First Kiss Story branded mini-games for Windows 98 that I need to figure out how to run in the modern day. These discs are also full of concept and production art that I kind of want to get archived. That’s not to mention that I have a copy of the visual novel’s Dreamcast port as well as the sequel.
First Kiss Story gave me a well-deserve rest while also opening up a whole new nightmare of projects. For now, no more kisses.
