The Devil on G-String / G Senjou no Maou (2008)

The story opens up with two characters. 'Maou', or the 'Devil', is shown walking through the city's bustling streets during a cold late October night, ready to soon begin with some kind of criminal event he's been planning through for years along with his group of loyal 'followers'. At the same time a high school girl with a long gray hair passes by with the intense will and intent to catch the person who killed her mother - to catch the person known as the 'Devil'.

G Senjou no Maou (The Devil on G-String) is an adult (R18 due to H-scenes) thriller and mystery visual novel produced by AKABEi SOFT2 and was first released in 2008, and now re-released in 2015 by Sekai Project. It's available for purchase on Steam for a decent price (voiceless edition is even cheaper). The story consists of four chapters and the epilogue, and multiple end-games, in other words it has something called branching storylines, but most of the game is spent just reading through the text. From the information I can gather the game had quite positive reception in Japan when it was first released, even though I see barely anyone actually ever talk about it.

Our main character (the one we play as) of this particular visual novel is Kyousuke Azai, a high school student and the adopted son of a ruthless yakuza (mafia) boss, but he for some reason has memory problems and heavy headaches. During the day our protagonist usually goes to school like normal, a school filled with quite quirky characters such as the almost too cute-looking boy Eiichi Aizawa and bunch of girls our main character gets close to, such as a diary-keeper, daughter of the schoool's owner, and a world-class ice-skater and real daughter of the protag's adoptive father. Kyosuke though was actually forcefully adopted in order for him to work under the mob as a president of of one of his adoptive father's (Gonzo Azai's) corporations to collect money that he can pay for the immense debt left behind by Kyousuke's real father, and ultimately after doing that he wants to reunite with his mother. Kyousuke is also quite a fan of classical music which mirrors the honestly beautifully atmospheric OST that this VN has.

The real story's gears kick off as a messy long-haired girl by the name of Haru Usami transfers into Kyousuke's school. Haru is the main heroine and a detective-type character with notable powers of observation and knowledge of criminal psychology and negotiations. Too bad she's absolutely awful at dealing with social situations. Haru is the character with a history against the game's primary antagonist and villain 'Maou' but she's not willing to talk about it, which cuses the game to not progress as smoothly as it perhaps could have had the characters just been more front about what's on their mind.
By the way, Haru (The Devil on G-String, 2008) reminds me of Kyoko Kirigiri (Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, 2010).

Now, while there is this sense of mystery regarding the motivations and pasts of our main cast, the main conflict the player bumps into is more psychological regarding Maou's and the protagonists actions. As Maou gets closer to Haru and our protag, the mob boss (MC's adoptive father) orders Kyousuke to catch Maou. This leads to different types of "showdowns" with with our antagonist, but there's something wrong as we always see Maou during times when Kyousuke gets memory lapses and headaches - there's even a scene in which his psychiatrist ponders about this memory problem of his, and we get some scenes about possible alter egos.

I remember when this series was called "Death Note on steroids" by certain group of people a long time ago, but it's really not, the story isn't that special by today's standards and would probably even come off as a poorly plotted if it was a light novel. The visual novel format definitely helps it. It's a fairly compact story with a small cast of characters, but at least it doesn't feel like a drag to go through. And in comparison, G-String does at least have some mysteries to ponder about, such as who this assumedly cool villain could possibly be, and what do our main characters and the yakuza have to do with him, and whatever it is that moves our characters forward?

I'm not sure if I can get behind all the writing choices in this story. I actually first played this game in around 2011 if memory serves right, but even then some of the red herrings and character writing just didn't click with me. Kind of like how I feel when reading a generic crime fiction. But hey, at least it has great music to create an entertaining atmosphere. I'd say it's a game worth playing if one wants to play a visual novel as it's a surprisingly easy read and nothing too big, but still decent enough. That's not something I can say about certain other games in this medium. As a last note, the title of the game is actually neatly symbolistic regarding what happens with our main heroine in this story.