Intro

"Ninth Day Memorial" is a short visual novel developed by torichi using RPG Maker 2000. A visual novel with multiple endings, but reaching those endings might just require a guide of some sort since I only managed to find three of the endings over the course of about 30 minutes. Though apparently getting certain endings is also dependent on RNG. So getting the ending you want might not be possible in some cases due to a hidden dice roll that is out of your control, but I should probably focus on the basic outline of the story first.

Story
Summary

You play Stepho a man who can barely give a crap about an old friend of his. To be fair he hasn't seen Yuli in over six years at the start of the game. So it's pretty clear they aren't close. In fact, Stepho had to be talked into visiting Yuli by her parents. Otherwise he would have continued to avoid her. Though why they drifted apart is never explained. Though, I suppose drifting away from a friend every now and again is pretty normal, but after our visit Yuli is killed by a missile attack on the hospital. After visiting her grave and taking advantage of some free grub on offer from Yuli's parents we attempt to leave their house for work only to travel back in time to before the missile hit, but even with the knowledge the hospital is going to be blown to pieces. Our protagonist decides not to warn anybody and leaves after paying Yuli a visit to confirm his time travel idea.

Greatest Strength/Weakness

On the plus side the game can be a bit surreal at times.



On the downside a lot of the mementos appear to lead to the same ending. Though this appears to be because the endings can be influenced by random events that are outside the player's ability to control. A decision that makes looking for the game's various endings way more annoying than it should be in my opinion. After all, you don't expect a random encounter in a video game to potentially influence the outcome of a game's ending. And the main ending you'll get most often while playing through this game is ending C which involves your character just walking away. An ending that isn't that satisfactory even if the main character isn't in love Yuli.

The Font

One thing that really sucks about this game in my opinion is that the game is using a rather uncommon font. As a result the dialogue that appears in this game is harder to read then it needs to be.



And this issue can easily be fixed by simply including the installer for the font with the game itself. In fact, there are several games on this site that have done this over the years which has led to me acquiring more than a few fonts I'd never heard of.

Gameplay

There really isn't that much to this game in terms of gameplay. You simply walk around and interact with a few objects and are given the ability to make a few decisions here and there. That's really all there is to this game on this front.

Graphics

Graphically the game uses a lot of custom assets that while simple are nice to look at. So it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that this game won award for being the best eye candy on this site for 2022. Though I do question why the sprites for Stepho and Yuli are green and blue while their portraits are in greyscale.

Sound

On the sound side of things the game is a bit of mixed bag in my opinion. On the plus the background music that was chosen is decent, but rather forgettable in my opinion. The issue is that a decent chunk of the game is devoid of background music entirely and this section comprises a lot the stuff you'd experience while performing loops after beating the game in order to find a new ending. And while I suppose silence does serve a purpose every now and again. It's really annoying when it makes up a decent chunk of a game that isn't that long to begin with.

Minor Bugs

The game still contains a few minor bugs. For starters if you talk to one of the people in the graveyard from above it causes her text to appear outside of the dialogue box.



Secondly its possible to access a few tiles in this game that should be impossible to walk on in Yuli's home.



Conclusion

I'm not entirely sure where to sit on this one. On one hand it's a short visual novel with some nice visuals, but it feels held back by both being depressing and about a guy that wouldn't even try to use his knowledge about the future to save a life. Even if it's to save the life of a childhood friend. So it's hard to like the game's protagonist since he seems cold and detached from the rest of humanity in a way that makes him rather unpalatable in my opinion. After all, I'm a bit of a sucker for happy endings which is why I had to give up on a save file for "Suikoden V" right before the final boss when I realized I couldn't get the best ending because I hadn't recruited enough of the 108 stars of destiny.

At the same time it's pretty clear that some time and effort went into making the "Ninth Day Memorial". An effort that is pretty easy to pick up on when you look at the game's visuals, and while beauty is only skin deep. In my experience if a game looks good it's because the people or team behind it actually cared about the project being a success. With that being the case I'm assuming my middling feelings about this game largely come down to personal taste. As such I'm not going to score this review.