Review: The top of the bucket list (R.U.R.U.R. -petit prince-)

I know it's been a long time since I've reviewed anything, and after some encouraging words have decided to try to make the time to look at my backlog and get back into things. It sort of helps that I don't have much to do while I wait for the Final Fantasy XIV expansion to come out, too...

Anyway, console ports of eroge tend to be hit or miss when it comes to the elements that make them tick. The main point of contention is the inclusion of "clean" scenes and how the overall presentation is affected by adapting the game for consoles. In some cases, the transition is seamless and one can barely tell. In others, the result is not as good as one would hope.

To me, what this effectively boils down to is the effect on the story. Games like Comic Party are written in such a way that you can make a clean port and get away with it. Riskier story types along the lines of Tenshi no Inai 12-gatsu wouldn't work with a simple scene swap and require a rewrite of most, if not the whole, story. A game like today's review falls in line with the latter. Now whether light did what was necessary for R.U.R.U.R. to transition from eroge to console visual novel remains to be seen...

Game: R.U.R.U.R. -petit prince-

R.U.R.U.R. -petit prince- was released on September 22nd, 2010 by the game studio light for the Playstation Portable. Like with the original PC release, the PSP port features a scenario by Itou Hiro and Nakajima Hijiri, with contributions from Oota Yuu. Character designs were done by Izumi Mahiru. Seeing that I have already reviewed the original PC version, this review will be part recap and focus on the differences between the PC and PSP versions.


The Players

Ichihiko C.V.: Kasahara Jun Referred to as "The Last Mankind" due to him being the last human in the universe. Ichihiko was found in a stasis capsule by the robots of the St. Exupery many years after they thought humanity to have gone extinct. As humans are revered by the robots as their creators (the way humanity reveres a deity for the same), the robots decide to raise him and mold him into a suitable leader. Despite being told that he's 19 years old, his mindset is that of a young boy. As such, he has difficulty understanding the complexity of his situation once the truth about his world is revealed. On a funny note, the FAQ for this game explains that Ichihiko's age is determined by New Greenwich time and not by Earth Time as we currently know it. Which is supposed to explain why he looks the way he does despite being almost 20 years old in-game...

R-Hinagiku C.V.: Hinami Fuuka Ichihiko's next door neighbor. Called "Hina" for short, Hinagiku is a military-class chapekku that lives in the "town" created for Ichihiko. While she picks on him most of the time and often ridicules him for being short, Ichihiko's existence happens to meet a part of her initial programming: the protection of humans. As such, while she resents humanity and feels the society established by the robots no longer needs humans, she also feels a sense of purpose through having Ichihiko around. As a result of the slow development of her "heart", she has a tendency to err on the side of honesty and likes being straightforward about things.

R-Mizubashou C.V.: Nogami Nana Ichihiko's older sister and the "mother" in his family. Mizubashou is a commander-class chapekku that proposed the robots of the St. Exupery raise "the last mankind". Above all else, her goal is to make sure Ichihiko is happy and free of pain and sorrow. At times, this desire to protect Ichihiko from the dangers of life is taken to an extreme, causing her not only to harm/destroy robots that aim to reveal the truth to him, but also to take the initiative in hiding things from the protagonist (either by arranging things without letting him know or lacing Ichihiko's food with chemicals to erase his memory). Something to note is that her "heart" developed a mother-like mentality, but her lack of understanding human thought processes cause her to jump to conclusions and do more harm than help.

R-Shirotsumegusa C.V.: Aoyama Yukari Ichihiko's other older sister and the "father" in his family. Shirotsumegusa is a drexler operator-class chapekku. Aside from her role in Ichihiko's world, she is also in charge of maintaining the "town" the robots created for Ichihiko through the use of her nanomachine network. In fact, when she goes to "work", she's actually going to perform routine maintenance of the trees and plants in the area, as well as the giant ceiling monitor that is used to portray a sky. Unlike the other chapekku and saberhagen droids, Shirotsumegusa is in a class of her own as far as her development goes. She was relatively "new" when the robots were given "hearts" and free will, and found herself yearning for more than the mundane ways the other robots spent their time (playing games, watching TV). Her hopes are somewhat raised when Ichihiko's capsule is discovered, as she believes a human may be able to give her what she's been looking for. Incidentally, this means she's become a little too fixated on Ichihiko and wants him to like her better than the others.

R-Kobatomugi C.V.: Kawashima Rino The teacher at the school Ichihiko attends. Kobatomugi is a playmate model C chapekku that also happens to be among the oldest on the ship. Her background is far away from that of the other prominent chapekku in the story, as she is basically a "civilian" model that worked as a waitress (meaning she has no administrative powers like Mizubashou and Shirotsumegusa, nor combat options like Hinagiku). This in addition to her initial programming have given her a different outlook on things. As a result of her low ranking on the totem pole, she can be dragged into the plans of the others (Shirotsumegusa usually makes her take part in her schemes, and she gets drafted into the ship's military in Mizubashou's route).

R-Tanpopo 001 C.V.: Oosaka Kai The keeper of the corn field on the St. Exupery's deck N03. This is actually a different Tanpopo from the one seen in the PC version (R-Tanpopo 091). They share similar traits and are technically the same character, but 001 is confined to deck N03 of the St. Exupery and is responsible for caring and harvesting the corn that grows there, which is then processed for consumption by the inhabitants of the ship. Unlike 091, this Tanpopo does not get pulled from her crops to become Ichihiko's little sister, and instead bears a burden from a long time before Ichihiko awakened.

R-Benibana C.V.: Isshiki Hikaru The temporary antagonist. Like Hina, Benibana is a military-class chapekku. For a large part of the story, she cannot talk due to tampering of her systems to keep her from telling Ichihiko the truth. Upon getting her voice back, she resumes her mission of telling Ichihiko the truth and convince him to bring back humanity. Unlike the other robots, she has been unable to make peace between her own past actions and the ability to feel and have free will. In a way, she is emotionally burdened by knowing that as a military chapekku she can easily kill (and has killed humans when ordered to), and wants to be free of emotions and self-awareness so that she can no longer feel guilty. At the same time, Benibana feels that she should revere humanity and has a hard time understanding why Ichihiko treats her as an equal instead of as an object.

R-Dahlia C.V.: Mizukiri Keito Support character. A military-class chapekku of a model similar to Hinagiku. Despite being military-class, she's actually a coward when faced with enemies stronger than herself.

R-Kinpouge C.V.: Moegi Yui Support character. A chapekku that went through modifications to become military-class. She considers herself a philanthropist, and as such doesn't like to fight (though in reality she doesn't fight out of laziness).

R-Cosmos C.V.: Kanau A prototype chapekku that spent most of her time sleeping, unknown to most of the inhabitants of the St. Exupery. Administrator HAL calls upon her to detain Ichihiko in order to bring about the second coming of humanity. Before long, she comes to realize that the ship has not found any worlds suitable for humanity to live in and loses hope in the St. Exupery's mission. Appears only in the Grand Finale route.

Plot, Structure & Changes

The story takes place in the far future, several centuries after humanity has gone extinct. Given the nature of Ichihiko's world, there's not much to mark the passage of time, as things stay the same for the most part. The story is split into chapters, using Mother Goose nursery rhymes and passages from the Little Prince at points relevant to the story.

Because the routes are character-centric, circumstances lead to Ichihiko fully discovering the truth about his world, while in other cases he learns only part of the truth. As a result, most of the endings focus on the "now" and give little thought to the big picture, since Ichihiko in the end cares about being with his chosen girl without much concern for his duty as harbinger to the return of humanity.

The setting and majority of the terminology in the game borrows heavily from established science fiction works, prominently R.U.R. and The Little Prince. Aside from the two works that are the foundation for this game, numerous homages and references are used in the setting. For example, nanomachines in the game are called "Drexler" after K. Eric Drexler. The robots use "Lem" as a term for thoughts, feelings, free will, self-awareness and their "hearts", which is a reference to Stannislaw Lem. Technology in-game also does this, as the chapekku are named so after Karel Čapek and the saberhagen droids are named after Fred Saberhagen.

Structure-wise, the game is pretty much the same as it was with the PC version. The player gets to play through the game once without any choices presented, leading to the "bad" ending. After clearing the game once, the other routes open up and dialogue options begin to appear. While most of the story is told from Ichihiko's point of view, the story will shift to the point of view of one of the heroines or a narrator. It also switches back and forth between the story and past events that explain why the things in the current story are happening.

As far as the PSP port goes, the main routes (Hinagiku, Mizubashou, Shirotsumegusa) have been kept largely intact. There have been some scene swaps and relatively minor changes to the routes, but the endings remain the same. The sub-heroine routes are a lot more fleshed out and have been rewritten for the most part, with my personal favorite being R-Tanpopo's route, followed by R-Kobatomugi's route, and then the new Benibana route. Ero scenes and several events that lead to ero scenes have been removed; I say "several" because in some cases the set ups were left intact only to fade to black or do a scene swap using non-ero CGs.

Something to note is that the "reformed" Ichihiko that was advertised by light is seen more in the sub-heroine routes. I can see the difference between PC Ichihiko and PSP Ichihiko, as the latter is a little more assertive. It sort of helps that the sub-heroine routes remove him from the influence of his caretakers. Needless to say, PSP Ichihiko does shine during the grand finale route.

One of the criticisms I have on the story is that the main routes have small disconnects between the new scenes added and the rest of the story. For example, Shirotsumegusa's route has an added "date" scene early on (that has Shiro mentioning she's on a date), but it happens before R-Kobatomugi teaches Shirotsumegusa that humans long ago used to go on dates. There's one such disconnect during Mizubashou's route as well (Ichihiko apologizing for things he did in the PC version of the game but didn't do in the PSP version).

My second and bigger criticism is the new Benibana route. It makes me a little sad to see that despite being a key advertising point for the PSP port, the ending is not that different from its PC counterpart. Benibana still dies from lack of maintenance, and instead the route focuses on her discovering love in Ichihiko and choosing to elope with him to a planet that can support life (because if the last mankind is not on the ship, the ship cannot land on the planet and thus the second coming of humanity would be averted, allowing the robots to keep their free will and "hearts"). I guess having Benibana live 10 extra years before dying is a good thing, but seeing her still die is just not satisfying. I can also imagine that SF fans would have a corollary at seeing our protagonist and the heroine performing an atmospheric entry without any of the necessary equipment.

Artwork

While Izumi Mahiru's designs are still decent, there are slight inconsistencies between the original CG artwork that was used for the PC version and the CG art added for the PSP version. It's relatively easy to tell what was added.

I can appreciate the fact that more backgrounds were added as well as the new character designs for R-Dahlia and R-Kinpouge (in the PC version, Dahlia and Kinpouge were presented using Hinagiku artwork). I also sort of wish R-Dahlia and R-Kinpouge had been given routes of their own, though I guess having four routes involving military-class chapekku would have been too much.

Audio & Video

Light brought back the original cast to record replacement lines for the clean scenes along with the new content (the rewritten Tanpopo, Kobatomugi, Benibana routes and the Grand Finale). The transition on that end has been relatively seamless, though I've noticed Ichihiko's VA slip into a deeper voice pitch here and there.

Music-wise, the game's score is unchanged. I do have to say the sound cues are a bit off, but this only applies to the clean scenes that were inserted to replace the ero scenes in the main heroine routes. Really, background music used for ero scenes in the PC version being used in a scene where Mizubashou is reading a story book to Ichihiko just don't work.

The OP and ED are the same, though light used a version of Rose!Rose!Rose! (the game's OP) performed by Gojou Mayumi instead of Rin. They kept the ED song performed by WHITE-LIPS untouched.

Omake

The two main extras to the game are the "new" Benibana ending and the "Grand Finale" route.

Like in the PC version, Benibana's route is unlocked after getting Hinagiku's ending. The Grand Finale route is unlocked after getting all endings and CG in the game (heroine endings, as well as the bad ending for Mizubashou).

Verdict

I was originally not impressed because of how the main heroine routes were handled. The sub-heroine routes, to me, are the true selling point of this PSP port. I felt legitimately sad at Kobatomugi's ending, and Tanpopo 001's route had a lot more substance than its PC counterpart. This being said, the new Benibana route left a lot to be desired. The grand finale was alright, and was a somewhat fitting end to this story (even if it's based on the ending of the book Tau Zero).

I'd say this game gets a recommendation from me, as it can conceivably stand on its own to those that never played the PC version. From what I've heard, you can still get it on the PSN store (Japan region, obviously). Anyway, that's my two cents on the matter.

-Moroboshi Yuumei
*drawing a blank, so no funny quote this time*