201.9 hours played
Written 7 days ago
Little Busters! is an exceptional story about friendship, personal growth, and several other values. Many of the routes are my favorite things I've ever read. It's characters and friendships feel authentic in a way that few writers have accomplished in my experience, with both positive and negative relationships between them that don't feel forced, and flaws that feel natural and well explored in ways that are both stated and inferred by the story.
It utilizes the medium in such a unique and interesting way, lending itself to being a visual novel quite well. There were many moments where I couldn't put things down and wanted to see how it all played out, even having been introduced through the anime and knowing the general story beats before starting. My playtime is definitely on the longer side, but this is a beefy visual novel that is best experienced by trying to see all there is to see. The soundtrack has a huge amount of variance with tons of songs that will forever cause me psychic damage for their emotional significance.
It is a beautiful, extreme and emotionally heavy work, with several idiosyncrasies and all-too-human imperfections. It is not for everyone, frankly speaking, and its age can often be felt with its style of humor and setting; there are some moments where there are questionable word choices with the translation, and has a few noticeable grammatical and text-based errors, particularly in the extra routes. It is very heavy in slice of life, but many of these moments also have their narrative significance. Little Busters is far more than meets the eye in spite of some of those imperfections, and often remind me of how human this works feels.
If you're willing to meet with Little Busters on its terms and take on the journey, it's baseball field, per say, then you'll come across something that is truly wonderful. I don't quite think any other work will ever stick with me as much as this one is has and I'm glad to have embarked on this journey. Little Busters are forever.