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IdolDays is an erotic vanilla visual novel telling a feel-good story of a delinquent girl becoming an Idol and turning into a star with the help of her producer. Developed by qureate in collaboration with iMel, the makers of KukkoroDays, and many other anime visual novels, IdolDays was released on Steam 5th of August 2021.
Enjoy a romantic story of a life-hardened girl deprived of her dreams who by chance meets a talent seeker scouting for the next girl to become an idol. What transpires is a close-to-earth story of two ordinary human beings who find themselves living together under unusual circumstances. Interact with the story by choosing which path to take when the opportunity arises and find out how the story ends with three different endings!
Table of content:
IdolDays Gameplay
In IdolDays you get to follow the story of Tsubaki who occupies the screen as the only animated and fully voice-acted character. The story is told from the perspective of a faceless protagonist hidden behind the screen who you get to name yourself.
Every now and then, the player is given a chance to influence the story by choosing a path between two or more options. The choices always change the narrative for a short while before returning to the same conclusion, up until the ending which is affected by the overall choices that you have made along the journey. Even when the branching paths end up leading Tsubaki to the same result, they are often different enough to make them feel meaningful.
The Steam version provides several ecchi scenes typical to romantic anime shows, mostly consisting of tasteful panty shots, but if patched with the qureate’s official R18 patch, the story will provide adult scenes in between the main story, few of which are hidden within specific alternative story paths waiting to be discovered.
Story
Tsubaki is a troubled girl with a sympathetic past who lives without a dream to chase, that is until she is met by a talent scout who discovers her lovely singing voice by chance and is determined to make her the next big idol. The problem however is that Tsubaki hates being one and thus refuses the opportunity. Soon after the two meet again and find themselves working together under the same talent agency, and even shortly after that, living under the same roof as two strangers. What follows is not a typical comedy but an entertaining romantic drama with decently enough eye candy to feast one’s eyes upon.
Visually stunning, IdolDays spares no budget in providing eye-pleasing artwork and environments for its audience to enjoy. Despite revisiting the same old places multiple times, no scene overstays its welcome, thus keeping the story fresh and constantly moving forward.
An odd decision from the developer, in the English version of IdolDays, the comma sign comes with no space, thus presenting text with no breathing space that in a result may make the text unpleasant to read to some extent. Having said that, the writing itself is more than decent enough to carry over this small hiccup.
Branching narrative
Not just a mere story to be followed, IdolDays lets players choose their own path to walk by providing an alternative narrative every once in a while. The choices you make affect the ending which there are three in total: good, bad, and a mystery ending that requires more than just following your heart to discover.
The alternative story paths often provide a unique dialogue that can reveal new sides of Tsubaki and the way she sees her producer, meaning you. Even though all of the alternative paths ultimately lead to the same exact conclusion, some of them can be entertaining to experience on their own, thus giving reason to think over the presented choices before answering.
Unfortunately, the alternative paths are not strong enough to warrant a second playthrough as there are not enough significant scenes worth going the entire story over. Having said that, as a play-once kind of deal, IdolDays’s alternative story paths do help make the first-time experience an interesting one.
Settings
From the settings menu, there are several choices to personalize the story experience. Typical of many visual novels, the text display speed can be manipulated to suit both slow and fast readers. Already read text can be colored to help the second playthrough to see what story paths have already been experienced. While the voice acting remains Japanese only, the text can be changed to Japanese, English, or Chinese.
Sound settings let you tweak the volume of background music, sound effects, Tsubaki’s voice, and system sound effects.
From the guide menu, you are able to see all the shortcut keys for fast and easy access to different elements of the game like saving progress, getting back to the title screen, auto-read mode, and so on.
Music gallery
IdolDays has 10 soundtracks offering both upbeat and sorrowful music fitting to each story scene. The soundtracks can also be enjoyed outside the story in a music gallery which is accessible right from the get-go.
IdolDays Hentai
A short romantic story providing a small handful of ecchi scenes consisting mostly of delicious panty shots, IdolDays requires an R18 patch before unlocking the hentai scenes for the game. Once done so, there are 4-5 unique vanilla hentai scenes to enjoy on top of the ecchi ones, all blended into the story seamlessly.
Unlike Tsubaki who is animated throughout the story, the ecchi and hentai scenes are static images that continue to provide visual novel-style storytelling and voice acting. You can expect softcore hentai offering: handjob, blowjob, and simple intercourse, followed by a few cosplay fetishes; sexy policewoman and idol outfit.
Even without the hentai, IdolDays manages to deliver a satisfying experience but leaving it out naturally holds no benefit for the customer and only serves to offer less content, so before starting the game via Steam, remember to download the R18 patch provided below.
IdolDays R18 Patch
To patch the game to have the adult content, all you have to do is download gureate’s official R18 patch from their website and place the file inside the installation folder. The website provides more detailed instructions on how to do this in case of having trouble.
After having successfully patched the game, you should now be able to witness hentai scenes during the story and unlock them to the gallery upon the first encounter. If you have the gallery already unlocked, the fastest way to see if the patch was successful or not is by seeing 5 new gallery slots added, waiting to be unlocked.
Unfortunately, the R18 patch removes the version of Tsubaki standing in the bathroom half-naked in favor of the naked version. Even in the gallery, the alternative version can not be viewed.
The R18 patch comes with censored genitalia, albeit very light ones, fortunately. As of right now, there is no way to remove the blur effects.
IdolDays manages to capture Tsubaki as a troubled girl living in a society in which she does not seem to belong. No dreams, no one to guide her, she feels like a real person which makes her sympathetic and interesting to follow. The only downside of IdolDays is the story’s short length that deprives it of the chance to take time for the audience to follow Tsubaki’s rise to become an idol that feels rushed for the most part, albeit still an enjoyable one. With adult content included, the story can be completed in 5-6 hours, a satisfying way to spend a long evening alone.
For more erotic vanilla visual novels, check out Maitetsu Last Run!!, Robolife-Days with Aino, Nekopara Vol.1, and KukkoroDays.
