Norn 9 var commons is a port of the playstation visual novel of the same name.
This actually was the first time I learned about otome, while I've started off with Jack Jeanne, and my other first romance visual novel I started off with being Date A Live Rio
Reincarnation this along with Bad Apple Wars were the first time I really learned about otome games I believe sometime or when I was still only new to the visual novel genre.
It focuses on a group of characters that are caught in a mysterious realm through time travel to the taisho era and must figure out the mysteries of said realm.
It’s a very lengthy game and one of the longest visual novels I've played and the story isn’t exactly the most easiest one to follow either cause of so many things can happen at once from time to time.
The game gives you a recommended route to follow based on which character you choose to go with and the more you play the more potential routes you can unlock.
The sci fi time travel concept for an otome is interesting and while I'm sure there's other vns like steins gate out there that I've prolly covered for this game’s case I'd say this is pretty unique at least from what I've seen for otome so far.
Like many visual novels interaction is minimal, focusing more so on dialogue choices than anything else.
Of course, like many visual novels too there is quite a bit of extra content and routes you can follow to see what else you can discover in game.
Some of the decisions are timed so you have to be quick to decide which choice you would want to go for.
The game has something I hadn’t really seen often in visual novels as the new game apparently has 3 voiced mcs instead of just one which was pretty interesting.
Apparently the original game was full of some really odd and low-quality translations while here the translations I found to be serviceable enough.
The music was pretty good it’s done by Kevin Penkin who you may be familiar with their work on Made In Abyss and Nobuo Uemetsu worked on the game too, which I found kind of surprising since he’s mainly noted for JRPGS especially if its Square Enix games otherwise it was pretty good.
Norn9 quest is kind of like Danganronpa’s side game and like in the story, you can use the norn points you get from norn quest to purchase extra in game content.
Norn ensemble is mix and matching words with characters for some pretty interesting conversations.
The art was good too and so were the character designs. The background art was pretty decent too and its set in a spaceship so its not like lets say, a visual novel from broccoli or date a live rio reincarnation where there's lot of variety.
The characters were generally ok nothing really unique just the atypical romance characters we’ve seen done a lot.
Overall it was a decent visual novel.
It ges 4 out of 5 stars.
Out of any visual novel I've played that has to be one of the most confusing yet still engaging ones I've played would be this one, its not the nonary games level of confusing or kingdom hearts either that’s really a huge stretch as those games have their own reasons that they can be pretty messy to follow but still it’s a pretty decent game with albeit complicated playthrough to it.