Bad Apple Wars is a visual novel for the PlayStation Vita. It is an otome visual novel, with a target market of the female players but everyone can enjoy the game and story. Rinka is the protagonist and is a self-insert character for the most part. You can name her whatever you want. At the beginning of the game, we are told that she died in an accident and wakes up to find herself at Neveah Academy. We’re quickly explained that there are two factions in the school, Good Apples and Bad Apples. Good Apples are the ones who follow the hundreds of rules, some of which are ridiculous, and Bad Apples are the ones who constantly break them.
The twist here is that by strictly following the rules, Good Apples eventually lose their identity and are stuck at the academy until their graduation as a faceless generic student. Graduation is promised to be their release, allowing them to move on. With the Bad Apples, there are a number of “unbreakable” rules, with the ultimate one disallowing them from eating the forbidden apple. They believe that if they manage to break all these rules, they will be able to escape Neveah Academy and go back to their own lives from before they died.
Students here cannot die. They are instantly healed whenever they are hurt. They cannot escape from the grounds of the school as a mysterious force will magically redirect them back. Food is tasteless, although both food and sleep is not really required, they are purely done out of habit. The teachers are extremely weird and seem to have a hidden agenda but their true nature is never satisfactorily explained.
Bad Apple Wars is a pure visual novel. There is a lot of reading with very limited interactive elements. There are choices from time to time, and also the “soul touching” mechanic. During certain segments, you use the touch screen to touch specific areas of the characters. These segments will advance the story and even determine the ending that you are going to get. Unfortunately, the limited number of choices make it seem you’re a passive viewer rather than the game putting you forward as the actual heroine. The game has a unique aesthetic that looks great although the text font can be hard to read at first. The soundtrack is surprisingly good in certain scenes, you’ll find yourself taking notice.
While it depends on your reading speed, each route is fairly short, taking around 3-5 hours each. In each route, you will focus on one character, who will inevitably be the love interest of the protagonist. Due to the short length, the bond that is created is not strong and the romance feels weak as a result. However, learning about the characters’ previous lives while they were alive can pack a surprising emotional punch.
All the routes share a massive amount of content. They all go through the same types of events, with near exact text. This means that you go through their routes even faster. Since there are five routes in total and the structure and events of each route are exactly the same, it gets really repetitive. It likes to repeat the same text but at times does not recognize that it is the same as other routes and the option to skip already read text does not work. It becomes extremely tedious by the time you complete the third route, let alone all five routes.
Despite the promising concept, the story is bland and never peaks above “mildly interesting”. In an early part of the game, you decide whether to become a Good Apple or Bad Apple. Pick the Bad Apple side and you’ll be spending time with the rest of the Bad Apples, devising strategy plans in order to break all the unbreakable rules. The group of Bad Apples is significantly large. Not all of them are from the same time period. Furthermore, someone from the 1900s may arrive at Nevaeh later than someone born in the 1950s. Like so many other concepts, this is not used to its potential in the story and it becomes a throwaway concept.
Pick the Good Apple side and you become a Prefect to uphold the multitude of rules. Despite having the potential for a completely different story beat and direction, you end up encountering the Bad Apples and befriending them anyway. You once again help them break all the unbreakable rules and caused the choice to become pointless. That said, it is interesting to see their exploits from the other side… to a degree.
None of the five love interests are particularly interesting. The game tries to break the typical character archetypes but doesn’t do it enough for it to be effective. We have the tough guy who turns out to be really sensitive and is a softy inside; another who loves to paint and is more of a neutral participant to the Bad Apples; and one who is a natural leader of the cool type. Then we have the awkward type who is obsessed with one thing; and the “evil” character who turns out to have a hidden side of them and a sad backstory. None of them jump out as memorable and the character development is poor.
Apart from the five character routes, each with their own true ending and a “bad” ending, there’s nothing else to do. The limited branching paths, with no additional side stories, means that this is a short game that can be finished within 10-20 hours. Overall, Bad Apple Wars is an average game. It has a mediocre story that is repetitive and tedious at times. The introduction provided so much potential but it feels like the developers were working on a tight budget, being forced to reuse so much content within the game. If all the routes were condensed into one, then it may have been better.
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