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estiroseI finally finished "The Expression Amrilato", a yuri (f/f) isekai (transported to another world) educational visual novel that teaches the language Esperanto. (Named Juliamo in the game, but it's Esperanto.) Thought I'd write a tiny review. Some small spoilers are inevitable.
First of all, if you're going into this to learn Esperanto, it's not bad. You get the basics of the language - quite a few useful verbs, some nouns (a lot of which are either food or parts of the body), and how to derive words from other words using prefixes and suffixes. You'd be able to have a decent, though somewhat limited, conversation in Esperanto after finishing this game. I bought it to shore up my rusty Esperanto, and I learned quite a bit from it. I wish that the second part was a bit less romance and more learning Esperanto, but I digress.
If you mostly got into this game for the romance... I liked it. Not loved it, oddly enough, but liked it enough to root for Ruka/Rin and was happy when I got a happy ending for them. (There are three, apparently, two good and one bad.) Rin feels indebted to Ruka for taking her in, and tries to decipher her feelings along with deciphering this new language. It's sweet, it was just not quite my thing.
(And if you just want the yuri without the Esperanto/Juliamo quizzes, there are a way to switch those off. There's also a way to change the weird Juliamo font off in the text if you find it annoying as I did.)
I love the worldbuilding for this game. I won't say much here, but there's a reason why people are speaking Juliamo in the middle of what should be a Japanese-speaking area, and it has to do with visitors to this world like Rin. There's also a reason why it's called Juliamo and not Esperanto. (The word "Esperanto" has been co-opted in the game as the name for visitors who hope for a certain thing, as "Esperanto" means "one who hopes".)
Nudity and sex-wise, there is a scene or two where breasts are obscured with bubbles, and Rin picks up what seems to be a semi-adult magazine. In the ending I got, Ruka and Rin have sex, but it's not described in detail. Rin is 17 and Ruka is 14, incidentally.
I did have an uncomfortable moment late in the game in one exercise. You learn parts of the body by touching parts of a (fully-clothed) Ruka who's teaching her girlfriend/roommate Rin about them. Rin might be 17, but I am far older and I am not comfortable touching a 14 year old's body, even if it's a fictional 14 year old. (Credit to the writers for creating a character that was real enough in some way that I would have that issue!)
Basically, I recommend this if you like teenage f/f or you want to pick up a little Esperanto (or just want to enjoy the worldbuilding).
First of all, if you're going into this to learn Esperanto, it's not bad. You get the basics of the language - quite a few useful verbs, some nouns (a lot of which are either food or parts of the body), and how to derive words from other words using prefixes and suffixes. You'd be able to have a decent, though somewhat limited, conversation in Esperanto after finishing this game. I bought it to shore up my rusty Esperanto, and I learned quite a bit from it. I wish that the second part was a bit less romance and more learning Esperanto, but I digress.
If you mostly got into this game for the romance... I liked it. Not loved it, oddly enough, but liked it enough to root for Ruka/Rin and was happy when I got a happy ending for them. (There are three, apparently, two good and one bad.) Rin feels indebted to Ruka for taking her in, and tries to decipher her feelings along with deciphering this new language. It's sweet, it was just not quite my thing.
(And if you just want the yuri without the Esperanto/Juliamo quizzes, there are a way to switch those off. There's also a way to change the weird Juliamo font off in the text if you find it annoying as I did.)
I love the worldbuilding for this game. I won't say much here, but there's a reason why people are speaking Juliamo in the middle of what should be a Japanese-speaking area, and it has to do with visitors to this world like Rin. There's also a reason why it's called Juliamo and not Esperanto. (The word "Esperanto" has been co-opted in the game as the name for visitors who hope for a certain thing, as "Esperanto" means "one who hopes".)
Nudity and sex-wise, there is a scene or two where breasts are obscured with bubbles, and Rin picks up what seems to be a semi-adult magazine. In the ending I got, Ruka and Rin have sex, but it's not described in detail. Rin is 17 and Ruka is 14, incidentally.
I did have an uncomfortable moment late in the game in one exercise. You learn parts of the body by touching parts of a (fully-clothed) Ruka who's teaching her girlfriend/roommate Rin about them. Rin might be 17, but I am far older and I am not comfortable touching a 14 year old's body, even if it's a fictional 14 year old. (Credit to the writers for creating a character that was real enough in some way that I would have that issue!)
Basically, I recommend this if you like teenage f/f or you want to pick up a little Esperanto (or just want to enjoy the worldbuilding).
