Bells Toll For My Youth:
A sweet pool Review Content Hub
This "hub" for my sweet pool-related content has been adapted from the original Bells Toll For My Youth
post, published to WordPress on March 15, 2020. My opening remarks have been preserved below with some light grammatical edits, and the plot summary section has been isolated from my analysis and review for the benefit of readers already familiar with the story. Certain jokes or diction in said analysis and review may land better having read my plot summary, so I still recommend checking it out.
hub last updated: October 2, 2022
walkthrough (forthcoming) // plot summary // analysis & review // credits
Completing my playthrough of sweet pool was not only my first time playing a BL game, but was the first VN/dating sim that I’ve played in which saving at crucial decisions eliminates the need for you to re-do the first half of someone else’s route later. I learned the art of a timely save the hard way by not saving during Makoto’s route in one instance and, tragically, only making one save that got corrupted and was unusable in another instance. Since my quicksaves also refused to load at one point, I bet you can imagine the sheer number of hours I spent toiling away at this game. If I have to hear Makoto say Omega Meat Burger
one more fucking time, I’m going to McFricken lose it.
All that is to say, part of the reason for my delay posting the review was me being a huge fucking n00b to the genre and not knowing wtf I was doing. If I didn’t have such a longstanding history with this story, I’m not sure I would have had the will to survive, so it’s good that the bulk of my trial and error happened this go around and not with a different game. Imagine fucking up your saves during Lamento or something. Christ.
Anyway, it turned out to be serendipitous that I took so long, since I trolled the JUST USA website for shits and gigs immediately after finishing the game and discovered that Togainu no Chi was released on February 25th [2020]! Yes, I already bought it, so my blog has more BL game content on the horizon.
Before posting this review, I recommend that everyone give 4shiki’s review of sweet pool a look. I genuinely have no idea how much I ripped her off just by accident after years of living and breathing her review. Please note that I did deliberately use some of her diction here and there based on the assumption that readers are familiar with her body of work and would thus understand I was making references and paying homage.
Without further ado, let’s just ~*dive*~ right in, shall we?