Akash: Path of the Five (2019) - :|

Did you ever watch the Smurfs, look at Smurfette and think… I wonder how that might play out if…? Good news! Now you can get a taste of that life in Akash! I will note that the scenario does have interesting implications that are worth being looked at such as: what happens in a culture that sees a decline in the birth of their women, how does it feel to be put in a situation where you are both revered and yet also coveted, and so forth. While I think Akash started to scratch at some of these concepts, it isn’t really attempting philosophy in most of the content though you can get more of the world building and general flavor of the setting if you read the Appendix in the extras menu.

Aurora is the sole female in hundreds of years to appear in her species (elementals). Since this transition to a fixed sex only happened when she was ten, and she doesn’t reach her age of majority culturally or magically until age twenty, she’s had ten long years of having her entire culture’s hopes be pinned on her to eventually marry and start popping out babies. The titular five are all elemental boys who have grown up with her since early childhood in what amounts to an elite training program, which is why they are still going to what has the feel of a high school even at twenty. When it comes to the romance itself, there is really only one progression of events so I would recommend playing your favorite bachelor trope first because for archetypes you’re less interested in there won’t be gads of new content. That being said, I was rather fond of the majority of them and none of them pressed any of my “creep” buttons, which happens so often in these games.

I could have done without the central conflict that was presented in the story and just stuck with the tension that could easily have come from so many expectations being forced on a single person in an insular and diminishing community. There was enough material there, and would have kept the focus on Aurora instead of a much less relatable inter-species agreement with the humans. I was also constantly disoriented by the blurry background contrasting with the crisp sprites, it made me think I wasn’t wearing my glasses. Things this game did very well, however, were presenting dialog in a conversational and organic fashion, and superlative voice acting. Despite faults, I do think this game was enjoyable, but when the deepest emotional connections I got were from extra (text) epilogues that tells me this one isn’t quite on target.