A Sky Full of Stars comes from the same publisher that has released several other titles on Steam, notably If My Heart Had Wings and the very recent Cross Channel.  They are known for releasing some of the more interesting games inside the visual novel genre, but question remains how well this one stacks up.  Because when it comes down to it, visual novels normally fall back on two main aspects in all things: the story and how well the art in the game itself is presented.

This first aspect is the story, and this game has that in spades.  The game is expertly written, mainly with how well every character in it is developed.  Each person feels like they have their own motivation for doing any one thing, and drive for acting in the ways that they do.  It makes the world that everything is happening in feel almost like a real place, and the people inside it feel like they have purpose.  The only aside is some oddity during the scripts every now and then that would randomly feel out of place; it was never clear if this was slipped in while the game was being localized or something from the original that just felt odd.  Either way it broke the pace every time it happened and slightly detracted from the experience.

The art itself managed to be on point through the entire run as well.  All the characters are well drawn in a pleasant style, and the backgrounds manage to blend well with them, unlike other games that try to blend several different techniques together and simply fail.  There isn’t much to lose your mind about, as every it very moe and functional, but that is pretty much the exact strike zone that they were aiming for so they cannot be faulted.

The only issue to bring up is that the game has been censored for a western release.  It is annoying, as the main audience of this game pretty much knows what they are going in for when they sign up.  The game itself is a more adult situation to begin with, and removing the rest is slightly annoying.  Leaving the patch to the fans to restore everything to the correct state is mildly annoying, and time consuming, but that seems to be this publishers approach.  If it is a deal break for the game, that should be pointed out.

A Sky Full of Stars is a good game, with a great story.  It would be a stand out visual novel on its own if it wasn’t for the simple fact that there are so many hoops to jump through to simply restore it to its natural state.  If the publisher had taken the same steps as, say, Nekopara there would not be an issue and fans would rejoice that the chance. Sadly, it mainly just leaves a community split and arguing if they should even be supporting the games when they do manage to make it to our shores.  If you long for the story, though, it is worth a play through.