Tricolour Lovestory is a Visual Novel that follows the life of Ashley, a Chinese student with a troubled past. He is a grim and frankly unlikable fellow who prefers to be alone, but does have a friend who is always pestering him with his cheerful attitude. His unbearable demeanor does make sense given that he comes from an abusive household which you will soon learn from the intro showcasing his childhood. Used to following all their commands to the letter to avoid punishment, his parents one day leave on a business trip, leaving him completely alone and giving him a taste of freedom. Ashley decides to take an art class which he knows they would never allow him to do, so he must keep it hidden as well as avoid getting into any trouble in case a teacher decides to call them.
It is quite a predicament that he got himself into and a major factor to most of the game, however in this class he can start to find some form of happiness as well as meet up with new and old friends alike. The most important people he will meet are his former childhood friend called Daisy and a new girl in his class known as Violet. Each are the polar opposite of one another with one being calm & quiet while the other is as noisy as can be. Through Ashley, they eventually meet and all three become quite fond of each other after some initial struggles. There are a couple of other side characters that all play an important role into the story and the life of our protagonist. Impressively, all of the characters are fully voice acted (in Chinese) which does quite a bit to draw you into this world.
More remarkable is the fact that this game features over one million words and according to Google, that is nearly as long as all of the Harry Potter books combined. That is a ton of voice work to capture and is needless to say, a very long title. It also features two routes to take depending on what you choose to draw throughout your game. This is a slice of life type of novel, so don’t expect much action, intrigue or anything of the sort. Minus the looming threat of Ashley’s parents discovering what he is up to, this tale is pretty chill throughout, featuring mostly drama and some humor. The drama typically comes from the fact that most of the characters are dumb teenagers, all too prone to mood-swings as well as making a huge fuss over the stupidest things. Eventually, the sheer length does start to grate on your patience due to that, there are only so many times you can put up with them creating a dilemma out of nothing before becoming fed up with the lot of them.
It simply tries too hard to always have an issue at hand, no matter how easily sidestepped or darn near unnatural they may be. Having more downtime where characters could enjoy life without forcing a problem into the plot would have done wonders. The thing about words is that they are cheap, yes a million of them may sound impressive, but how many are actually worthwhile? Well, not a lot in this case which is where the type of genre they’ve chosen saves it. There doesn’t need to be pacing or a reason for having them doing things in a slice of life narrative, allowing them to write freely and even if ultimately pointless, it still adds to the overall package. It also serves as a sense of scale to see how that dense kid Ashley slowly heals from his past and learns how to lighten up from time to time. One can’t help but root for the guy despite his poor judgment.
This isn’t the type of game with a lot of lewd scenes. Not until near the end do things become slightly ecchi, though even then it is very tame and believable stuff which is a rarity in anime. It has the name Tricolour Lovestory but it is not until the final fifth chapter does any romance come into play. The rest of it does feature plenty of other emotions as they squabble, have fun, and get to know each other until Ashley comes to realize his feelings for one of the two girls. Its endings are definitely this title’s high-points where the boiling tensions and everything else finally culminates. After that, there is another side-story you can read involving all of the characters struggle to keep a certain someone from destroying a shop that sells Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid accessories. It is just as silly as it sounds, with this self-contained story not having a shred of seriousness to it and allowing you to spend even more time playing this title.
The amount of CG artwork and backgrounds is quite high. You will definitely be getting your monies worth with the price of two dollars. Yes, two dollars for a fully voice acted, one million word visual novel that will last you well over 30 hours if you try both routes. So what’s the catch? I’m afraid it is a rather big one. Their English translation is horrible and it only gets worse as it progresses. It has a ton of problems ranging from simple typos, to things sounding very strange, and flat out changing the name plus gender of a character at one point. That latter part effects the art teacher called Mr. Huo who is later referred to as Mr. Prune and is then called a “she” which was surprising, to say the least. Other characters can have their names temporarily replaced such as Daisy briefly and suddenly being called Juo or something.
It never gets to the point where you flat out don’t understand what people are trying to say, though it isn’t rare they’ll say something that will cause you to take a second glance. This is a pretty serious issue for a visual novel, especially one containing so many words you will have to go through. On the plus side, it can lead to unintentional humor, but it will definitely drive people that take their grammar seriously mad. Whether you can deal with that comes down to the individual person. If you can however, Tricolour Lovestory is simply a steal for what it is priced at and features as much content as titles that cost multiple times more.
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