Black Hair Girl is Best Girl is a combination of two different games, Reverse Memories and Brave New World developed and published by Never Knows Best and Kikai Digital.
Reverse Memories:
In Reverse Memories we find ourselves moving back to the city we used to live in as a kid. We decided to do so because something we felt was missing in our new home. With coming back, we hope to find again what we miss from the old times.
By attending our first class-day we sit on a window and watched out while it was raining outside. Suddenly our sight is attracted by a black-haired girl with an umbrella. Suddenly she looked up to us and the umbrella was blown away by the wind. Immediately we had to rush out of the classroom and try to find the girl standing there, but she was already gone.
With our friend Soy Sauce and the Librarian Lilice, we were able to find out more about her such as which class she is in and knows now, her name is Yiyao. We wrote her a letter and confronted her to come to the rooftop if the rain would stop before school ended.
Once we got to the rooftop, it was still raining but after some time the rain stopped and the girl came out. Our result at the rooftop after a failed attempt to confess love, at first sight, and a realization that something was wrong with Yiyao because she didn't remember anything that happened the previous day, was then a date on a festival in a nearby park in hope that those memories won't be forgotten by her.
But the day after, she did again forgot everything... What did go wrong and why does she forget everything that happens the previous day? Her sister, working as a school nurse explains that she is suffering from a rare kind of disease making her forget events
But behind all this, there is a scheme hidden behind it which Yiyao cannot accept and where she wants to show us what and why.
Brave New World consists of Moon and the same location as the previous novel Reverse Memories, where Moon runs into a black-haired girl at the library. He sees her trying to pick up a book on a higher showcase tiptoeing and with Moon approaching her she loses her stand after being caught off guard and falls on top of Moon.
In the moment of shock, she ran away. Moon, curious to know who that girl was asked her old friend and librarian Lilice about her, but she kept playing around and stayed if you really want to know come to the library tomorrow again. Which he did and that's how we started to stay with the girl named Xi.
Both did understand themself very well and quickly but after a date Xi confessed everything to Moon, which all of his spirits were taken away at once. Searching for clues, Lilice said she will have to come back to school to give back the books she loaned, that's where Moon will be able to see her again, and so together they schemed a plan to save Xi from her predestined world.
In a new chapter though, things were going differently.
Being amazed by the tech world and manga world after following Moons traces of loans in the library, Xi decided to have Moon and Lilice have join her club, she wants to create a project which is to build a real-world game in which we can immerse to live like in real life, free from any possible chains and cages by exploring past memories, imagination, and eventually even being able to heal illnesses, Xi also did go ahead of her already planning everything, from school funds up to investment partners and company building.
Moon is surprised by Xi's advanced and clear step plus her motivation is being drawn to her and is also motivated to be able to finally do that what he dreamed for, to produce his very own game.
A time after, the progress was important enough that Xi decides to build a company and had already subscribed Moon and Lilice as company workers and also the later coming friends of Moon, Soy Sauce, and Fried Rice. Together they led the project further to its affinity, while more and more doubts kept popping if it is really the right thing to do and that the program will not be used for malice doing.
Reverse Memories:
I did enjoy the story, for the most part, just the ending found it a bit hard to follow, especially with the setback to another event which ended up confusing me a bit.
We had beautiful CG's, translation was alright and the story plot kept being a mystery until the end of the story. The past friend of Moon Soy Sauce played along with Yiyao's scheme and also her sister in which she is on bad terms with made it even more real to believe that the mystery behind her was truthful and nothing could be done to help her.
Brave New World:
The story had a good theme, Beautiful CG's and character sprites, but sadly I found it not well interpreted, with too many confusing parts, where I ended up getting lost as to what event was real and what event was, in the end, a game. Besides this, there were a large amount of translation errors, which made it feel like a machine-translated game making the flow of the story even more difficult to follow and understand. The fact that the game kept switching from the real world to the game world on a repetitive basis without notice caused me to lose orientation of which world I was even in while I read through the story. The only thing I could do was continue to read on hoping that I would figure things out, but this was not the case, simply leaving me in confusion most of the time.
In addition, the menu seemed to be incomplete. There seems to be no ability to simply load a saved game file from the main menu as you would expect from almost any visual novel. Instead, you have to start a new game, then use the ingame menus to load a saved game. The same issue is to be found for quitting the game where a button is missing to shut it down. I'm not sure if this was simply overlooked, but this is critical "miss" if they simply forgot to add it in.
Conclusion:
Black Hair Girls are best Girls has two different story themes, which I think is worth noting, but they fall short from being two truly great titles on their own, nor do they make the game feel complete.
For the Reverse Memories, the overall story-building, the evolution of content, and the plot itself could be improved by having more elements with a better chronology and reworking of the plot. These changes could make this an amazing title to read, especially knowing that friendship is one of the most important things one can have.
For the Brave New World, which is also an interesting theme, unfortunately I was left confused and disoriented. The game's direction for a new Utopia for the population is a futuristic idea which seems feasible in the future. However, the way the storyline is executed with events overwriting themself over and over again prevented me from fully enjoying the story.
I ended up with mixed emotions as I did enjoy the story in Reverse Memories but there were just too many shortcomings in Brave New World where I could not recommend the game as a whole.
Check out the game at Steam
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