Nekopara Volume One: First Impressions

NekPara was on a long, long list of games I wished to play once finally owning a Nintendo Switch. The artwork really attracted me and who doesn’t want to play a game full of adorable catgirls doing adorable catgirl things.

Overview:

NekoPara is a visual novel which is set in a world where humans live side by side with catgirls. People can keep them as companions and love and take care of them. The protagonist of Nekopara is Kashou Minaduki, a guy who has just moved out of his family home to live by himself and set up his own bakery. Back home his family had six catgirl companions in the family which he assumed he left. Turns out that Chola and Vanilla, two of said catgirls have snuck into his moving boxes in order to be with their “master” as they love Kashou dearly. Kashou ends up letting them both stay with him and help out in his newly opened bakery.

First Impressions:

I’m not sure if I could really call Nekopara a game, as a player I don’t really do much other than press the A button in order to read through the dialogue and there is even a button that allows me to do it all automatically so I could just sit there and read without doing anything at all. Whilst it’s a visual novel in one sense it hardly interactive as I, the player have no influence on how the story pans out. I cannot even pick a character route but I can however pet them which is a ridiculous but adorable feature. In theory all of these elements combined may make it seem a little dull as I don’t get to do anything other than read and look at the visuals. That being said the story, characters and visuals make up for that fact.

So far the story has been pleasant and enjoyable. It’s not an intense or gripping story which sucks me in and doesn’t let go until it’s over. Instead it has a sweet, slice of life flavour to it and makes for a relaxing play through if I want to relax because I raged too hard on another game. The graphics are truly the crowning jewel of this game. The visuals are bright, crisp and have this beautiful 3D effect to them which I cannot get over. I usually wrinkle my nose when combining the word anime with 3D. This game somehow made 2D graphics slightly 3D in movement which creates small but cute movements from the characters making them more than just an image on my TV screen. For me this really helps to bring the characters and story to life. Their mouths move and everything is fully voiced with the exception of the protagonist Kashou. This is my first true experience with playing a visual novel style of game and I think I have truly stuck gold with this one. I’m really excited to continue playing Nekopara and seeing where it goes!

Until next time thanks for reading and I hope you’re having a great day!