Written in the Sky

If you thought that Mass Effect was unrealistic because a handful of trained soldiers managed to save an entire galaxy from utter destruction at the hand of an ancient race of sentient robots, you should know that it could be a lot more ludicrous than that. The game at hand features a high school girl as the one who must bring peace between species, and she doesn’t even have her own spaceship.

Written in the Sky is a visual novel in which you play the role of a girl by the name of Azure, who happens to be the daughter of a skilled detective. The game is barely interactive, on the other hand, since most of the time you just have to read the text popping on the screen. It’s the nature of visual novels, after all, but people usually put up with it because the story is worth hearing.

In the case at hand, however, it just might not be very true. In short, Azure stumbles into a box containing a ring while she is cruising around town. As it turns out, the ring is actually an alien artifact, and it has the power to bring peace between the planets of the galaxy. An alien girl approaches Azure and lets her know that the ring cannot be removed once it chooses someone to bind to.

This alien girl’s name is Sienna, and she is actually the daughter of the emperor of Mars. She was sent to retrieve the ring from Earth, but given the fact that Azure has already put it on her finger, there’s not a lot she can do. On the other hand, a romantic relationship sparks between the two girls, which gives Sienna a reason to stay and help Azure with the difficult task of bringing peace to the entire galaxy.

The visual design is quite decent, especially when it comes to the backgrounds displayed for different locations while you keep reading the text. Even the characters are nicely drawn, although you have to be a fan of anime to dig the trademark huge eyes and pink hairdos. On the same note, it must be mentioned that there’s mature content and nudity involved in the story, but you have the option to disable this at the beginning.

All things considered, Written in the Sky is a bit too random and convoluted, even for anime flicks. There are too many things added just for the sake of it, all of which make it difficult to focus on the actual plot. It would be more understandable if the target audience were children, but given the mature content, this was clearly designed for adults.