Okay… I really liked Crescendo. The graphics, the involved story, the deep characters… but they did a really nasty thing at the very end.
Having clawed my way through the various characters’ endings (actually, finding the “good” endings wasn’t too tough, if you thought about it), I’d have to say that most of them were good. They all had a bitter-sweet element to them (well, most of them, anyway), since, in some cases someone had to be hurt in order for Ryo to find his love (although, I like the Kyoko ending, since Kaho has Tomanori waiting for her–Tomanori is just too good of a guy…), or, as was the case in Yuka’s ending (which I also liked–something that surprised me, since my feelings for Yuka mirrored Ryo’s… I pretty much despised her in the beginning, and only played her path to complete the game, but came to find her inner purity and fragility something to be cared for), there was a great deal of angst, and a nearly fatal tragedy that led to Yuka’s ultimate "redemption."
There’s a scene, though, that should have given me a warning… I “went to the movies” with Kaori, and found that the movie playing, which they called “Love of Life,” was Kana: Little Sister. It kind of cracked me up at the time, but it was an indicator of things to come…
After finishing up Kaori’s story, I was feeling pretty good about the game–lot’s of happy endings, you know–and started up again to fill in some of those missing CG’s. And I had a new option! So I took it, and found Miyu. As soon as they started talking about her being in the hospital, I thought to myself, “No… she’s a ghost!” because of the surrealistic nature of their encounter. Turns out I was wrong, but not far off. It’s not hard to play through Miyu’s path, either, and by the time she had made love to Ryo and begged him to forget about her as he falls asleep, and then her death is announced at the graduation ceremony, I’m starting to get all misty-eyed. And then her mother gives Ryo the picture, and Ryo realizes that he was Miyu’s first and only love, and runs to the music room to find it empty except for the recording of her preformance…
Well, anyway… what had initially been a game that ended on kind of an up note was now a game that ended on such a melencholy note that I was thoroughly depressed. The story writers oughta be shot… Now I’m going to have to go back and play through one of the other stories nice and slowly again just to cheer myself up about the whole game…