Review: YU-NO (Elf, 1996) (NSFW) 👎

Gameplay and Presentation

Most sources classify YU-NO as a “visual novel.” But YU-NO is a completely different type of video game than the original “visual novel,” Shizuku, which came out earlier the same year. Nor is YU-NO what English-language writers usually identify as a “visual novel.” In reality, in the Prologue and Epilogue, YU-NO is a menu-based adventure game and, in the main ADMS section, a point-and-click open-world adventure game complete with an inventory system, occasional puzzles, and a sprawl of branching and interwoven story paths.

YU-NO stands at an interesting spot partway between a standard adventure game and what “visual novel” has come to mean. With deeper choice and interactivity than most menu-based adventure games, YU-NO is in some ways less like a “visual novel” than Kanno’s earlier work like DESIRE. This suggests the incoherency with which critics and fans tend to apply the term “visual novel” to a variety of distinct genres.

Many eroge feature different story routes based on different player choices. The design encourages the player to see every ending and so every girl naked. YU-NO takes this design path and may have helped codify it. The “romanceable” characters of the ADMS section—that is, the characters with sex scenes—are Arima Ayumi, Shimazu Mio, Hatano Kanna, Takeda Eriko, Ichijou Mitsuki, and Asakura Kaori. Of them, Ayumi, Mio, Kanna, and Mitsuki have their own distinct routes, each longer than most movies. Multiple routes feature Eriko prominently, her role most important in Kanna’s and Mitsuki’s. During the latter, she receives an H scene. Kaori is most involved in the Ayumi route and the Kanna route. The “Kaori route” that features her H scene functions more as a branch of the Kanna route to attain the Hypersense Stone from Geo Technics so that the good Kanna ending can be achieved, as opposed to the cohesive dramatic arc the other routes offer. Takuya also has sex with Kaori on the Ayumi route, but oddly enough, there is no porn scene. Each story route features a good and a bad ending and possible dead ends along the way that demand the timeline be restarted. After the true true ending with Yu-no, the “true endings” of the Mio, Ayumi, and Kanna routes are unlocked. These endings are a short scene that follows a given route’s good ending and features Takuya, rather than restarting the time loop, enjoying a happily-ever-after with the player’s chosen partner. There is also a hidden Easter egg called the music room available for 100% completion, but even I never found that.