The Sad Story of Emmeline Burns

In order to find out more about where you come from, you can research your family’s past and dig into your ancestors, although both good and bad things might come to light. Even so, it’s pretty exciting to read about a great-great-grandfather who maybe was a war hero, but the opposite can be true as well. This might not work for everyone, mainly because papers get lost all the time.

The Sad Story of Emmeline Burns is a visual novel in which you cannot do much of anything other than read the story and look at a handful of hand-drawn images. However, the writing is pretty good, especially for a visual novel. Unlike in a dating sim or an interactive story, there is no way to influence how the tale end, so you might as well just sit back and watch it unfold.

As it happens, it all starts with a girl by the name of Toma, who has a fascination with death and cemeteries. During one of her walks through the cemetery, she stumbles into an odd girl who appears to be a ghost from a long time ago. One thing leads to the other and the ghost girl offers Toma the chance to listen to a tale, and that’s how everything starts.

Not many characters are part of this story, but at least this makes it easier to track. The entire plot revolves around the romantic relationship between two girls, so there’s not much action going on. On top of it all, even if the writing is quite solid in most cases, it would seem like the characters are a bit hollow sometimes, although part of that is also by design.

In the artwork department, you should expect the usual anime art style, which is not at all a bad thing. The whole game is very colorful and cute, sporting a lot of bright colors and about every shade of pink there is. A calm piano soundtrack plays in the background as well, which helps a lot with the general atmosphere, although it might make you sleepy if you are too tired to follow the story.

The Sad Story of Emmeline Burns is not the perfect visual novel, but it has plenty of upsides as well. The writing is nice, the artwork is decent, and the entire thing just feels very eerie and dreamlike.