Clover Day's Plus - Review - NookGaming (2024)

Clover Day’s Plus tells the story of Yuuto, a young man who was adopted by a businessman and brought to Japan. It’s a story of childhood promises, reunions with old friends, and forbidden love. While more grounded than some of ALcot’s other titles, there’s still plenty of humor to be found here.

The Spark that Ignited the Powder Keg

The tone is set right away in this visual novel. Clover Day’s Plus starts with Yuuto’s younger sisters (non-blood-related) having an erotic dream about him in his bed, while he appreciates the view of their thighs. It’s soon followed by an erection and a joke about porn. Not long after, they meet his friends who make it quite clear that they’re interested in him too, even if it’s unstated.

Everything is kept in balance with no one making a move until a sudden surprise reunion with Hekiru and Hikaru, two twins that they all used to play with as a child. Hekiru’s appearance triggers a panic; she’s not one to wait around and do nothing about her feelings.

While the tone can be quite lewd with comedic flirting and plenty of innuendo, there is a serious story here too with drama between characters and romantic moments.

Depending on the route, themes of jealousy, self-sacrifice, family issues, and other topics appear, along with some serious events occasionally, particularly in the heroine routes. The story is generally structured so that each heroine route has two distinct parts, the latter of which tends to be more serious. That said, many major issues do tend to be resolved quickly and the tension never lasts too long, with jokes breaking it up even if the issue is coming to a boil in the background.

Back to the Past

The actual romance in Clover Day’s Plus can be traced back to their childhood, of which there are plenty of flashbacks.

All of the heroines are childhood friends and have quietly liked Yuuto since that time, but have never done anything about it. One thing that Clover Day’s Plus does well is it shows some of the key incidents that led to this happening.

An adoption and joining a new family is a difficult time, not only for the adoptee but also for the new family. Yuuto’s new sisters Anru and Anri certainly had reservations about someone new joining their family and some of the events revolve around this time. As well as the difficulties though, it shows silly little moments like playing pretend with friends and the initial sparks of childish romance from a time before they understood it.

While the common route plants the seeds by setting up the current situation and showing some of the past, not much of note happens until the heroine routes start.

Friends, Family, and Futago

There are elements of paired routes and symmetry in Clover Day’s Plus.

Hekiru and Hikaru who share a route are mirror twins, identical but opposite. This extends to their personality and how they display their feelings. Anri and Anzu are non-identical twins, who have very different personalities and whose routes both involve each other and another family member. Izumi and Tsubame are close friends, who again are near opposite in many ways and whose routes involve each other. Beyond that, even the two sets of twins have the older sisters as more willing to express their desires, while the younger sisters have their similarities too.

The characters being paired to some extent made for some interesting interactions and drama down the line. It also worked well for a good balance of heroine personalities, which in turn made a lot of the group scenes a lot of fun, due to all those diverse personalities either coming together or occasionally clashing. Beyond the heroines themselves who are all charming, the key strength of Clover Day’s Plus is those interactions between the group and just how fun they are to experience.

Systems and Choices

One unusual choice here is the textbox. It uses a floating textbox, which moves about depending on who is speaking and color-codes the text. I personally like this and find it helps to quickly show who is speaking, but some people aren’t fans.

Clover Day’s Plus is a standard visual novel in terms of systems. Near the end of the common route, you can make up to three choices over a short span of time. If you don’t accidentally get locked onto a route with your first choice, the second and third are fairly obvious.

If needed,you can find our route guide here.

Hekiru and Hikaru – Mirror Twins

Hekiru is rather forward about her love for Yuuto, while Hikaru proclaims to not like him and does not approve of Hekiru’s feelings for him. The fact that Hikaru seems to have an obsessive love for her twin sister is probably part of why. They’re quite different beyond their proclaimed feelings too. Hekiru is an art prodigy and could be described as spacey, showing little emotion, and oblivious to social cues, while Hikaru is a model and quite sensible when it doesn’t come to Hekiru.

I found the first part of the route to have some sweet moments with Hekiru and Yuuto getting to know each other again, but the second part of the route was much more interesting. It focused more on Hikaru and her feelings, with a focus on the drama and some of the reasons behind Hikaru’s actions. I did feel it could’ve used more drama to make it more interesting and I would’ve liked to see less reliance on tropes, but it did manage to make sense of certain things that I questioned by the end.

While I’m sure twin heroines on the same route is definitely an attraction and certainly enjoyed much of it, I did find it one of the less eventful parts of the story.

Izumi – A Failed Tsundere

Izumi is my favorite heroine in Clover Day’s Plus. She’s energetic, a hard worker, and is terrible at hiding her feelings. Despite often claiming that she doesn’t like Yuuto, she’ll often completely slip and directly mix in words showing just how much she likes him. It’s not just Yuuto she sometimes acts badly too, she can be quite aggressive at times, which isn’t always justified.

She’s best friends with Tsubame, which causes some high-tension moments as romance develops. That said, more focus is put on a plot involving Izumi’s family and the struggles she faces having to work and being a scholarship student. It nicely builds up the plot for this in the background, while dropping a lot of hints with a focus on things like the meaning of family.

This route is one of the better ones in terms of plot and there are touching moments, but the standout here is Izumi herself. Her tsundere-like behavior can provide constant laughs, along with the cute ones in quieter settings.

As a bonus, Izumi’s route gives Mizuho a lot of screentime, a new friend to the group. She’s a somewhat reserved girl with some otaku interests, who sadly doesn’t have a route.

Tsubame – The Reserved Friend

Tsubame seems very confident and outgoing at first, with her over-the-top flirting acts with Yuuto and playing along with his sexual innuendos, but we soon learn that she’s quite reserved. Her main issue is that she cares about others too much at times and holds herself back because of it. Considering that she’s aware her best friend also likes Yuuto, it’s difficult for her to make anything happen with him.

While there is a plot around the drama club and the use of a play to draw some rather blunt parallels with her situation and the need to put herself first, I mostly consider this as the horny route.

The plot is somewhat forgettable despite some nice romantic moments. Tsubame is certainly sweet though and her Kansai dialect is adorable.

Anri – Smart and Serious Sister

Anri is one of Yuuto’s adopted sisters and tries to come across as rather serious and mature. She’s the one pushing Yuuto to study and be responsible. Despite enjoying his attention, she often rejects his affection, but much like Izumi, she doesn’t hide her feelings well and she gets jealous easily.

She is sensible enough to realize there will be issues with a romance with a family member even if not blood-related, but at least to herself, acknowledges her feelings. Her route has some of the most serious events, which include the repercussions of a romance between siblings. Unsurprisingly, there’s also some focus on family here.

I enjoyed the contrast between Anri’s serious personality and when she gave in to attention. There are also several times where she shows her love for Yuuto quite aggressively which I liked.

Beyond the topic of romance, some of the more sinister moments happen in this route. Considering the tone of the rest of the story, I was particularly surprised by one.

Anzu – Lover of Headpats

Anzu is Yuuto’s other adopted sister and Anri’s older twin. Unlike her serious sister, she’s more interested in playing around and openly asks to be fawned on by Yuuto. She’s kind of innocent around sexual topics (despite mentioning Yuuto’s “impressive thingy” in the opening) and somewhat high-energy and childish. There are a lot of cute moments with Anzu, whose needy behavior is endearing.

Unlike Anri, she thinks that romance with a sibling is wrong and doesn’t consider it as first. That said, she does go back on that or seems to act otherwise at times. Despite this, it isn’t a big topic in this route. Instead, it focuses more on family, past events, and jealousy.

Similar to Anri’s, it has some of the most serious topics here. This is the route with the best dramatic conflict of any of the routes in my opinion. I’d also consider it the closest to a ‘true route’ based on certain important plot-relevant information revealed and the ending.

Crashes and Errors

Unfortunately, Clover Day’s Plus has launched with quite a few technical issues. I’m writing this about a week after launch and there hasn’t been an update yet.

It crashed five times in the 23 hours I spent playing it, but this was the least of the issues. Sprites sometimes appeared in the wrong place or as the wrong size. CGs sometimes were tiny, half off the screen, or didn’t appear at all. Transitions sometimes don’t work properly either. While I imagine some of these issues will be fixed through a patch soon enough, it’s not great to launch in this state.

Update: Six weeks post-launch, an update was rolled out which fixed most of these issues and significantly improves the experience. NekoNyan have confirmed no further updates will be made.

I still enjoyed it despite these issues, but it did break immersion at times.

Graphics and Sound

Clover Day’s Plus stands out for its use of the E-mote system, with animated sprites and CGs. Having blinking eyes and slight movement from the body really helps to bring characters to life, adding to the more typical ‘jumps’, slides, and changing expressions. It can be a bit disconcerting if you look too closely though. For example, if you just watch the necks, they’re seemingly getting longer and shorter.

In terms of voicing, they all fit the characters well and visual novel fans will likely recognize many of the voice actresses involved. Hekiru and Hikaru are both voiced by the same voice actor (Kitami Rikka), yet manage to sound unique. She also voices characters from Aokana,Making Lovers, andHello Ladyto mention a few. She’s not the only one with an illustrious credit list though, with most of the voice actresses for the main heroines having voiced over a hundred visual novel characters.

The music is pleasant. I can’t say it particularly stood out, but between the 38 tracks, there was always something that fit the scene well, helping to raise or lower the mood as needed.

Adult Content

NekoNyan themselves have directly suggested playing Clover Day’s Plus with the adult content, due to some severe cuts to the Steam version. You can do this by buying it directly via astore that supports adult contentor by installing the free adult patch. The adult patch isn’t a straightforward drop into the base folder and has caused some confusion, so you may wish to readour guidewhich includes how to manually install it.

With a few mild exceptions, the content itself is fairly vanilla, with cosplay, sex in public, and the use of a foot being as far as it goes. Much like the other CGs, these are slightly animated scenes, which depict both the ‘jiggle physics‘ and the back-and-forth movement of the characters. It does bring it to life well.

There’s always some relationship development between when the routes start and the more physical side of the relationship, though it does sometimes still fall right after the first kiss. Each character has a few scenes, with an unlockable extra scene post-route too.

Verdict

Clover Day’s Plus has plenty of comedy, and most routes pull off an interesting plot and serious moments along with it. While some routes are stronger than others, with Anzu’s being the standout, each heroine has their charm points. The E-mote system helps to showcase these too.

The technical issues and weaker routes are a pity, and I would’ve scored it higher if the former didn’t keep taking me out of it, but I still certainly enjoyed my time with Clover Day’s Plus.

CLOVER DAY’S PLUS IS RECOMMENDED

Want to check out more visual novels? Why not check out our review of KamiYaba: Destiny On A Dicey Deadline?

Many thanks go to NekoNyanSoft for a PC review code for this title.