Loved Kinkoi: Golden Loveriche? Then you’ll be glad to know that Saga Planets’ romance comedy visual novel doesn’t end with just that. Kinkoi: Golden Time is a fandisc, adding three new routes and seven bonus scenes. Most notably, it gives an alternate direction to a certain beloved character’s original route.
For The Fans
Have you not played Kinkoi: Golden Loveriche yet? It’s a really great character-focused visual novel, with great humor. And while Kinkoi: Golden Time is a standalone purchase, I’d strongly recommend that anyone plays Golden Loveriche first, as it’s essential to understand the story. Not played it? Go check out our review of that first.
Kinkoi: Golden Time jumps straight into it. It’s been three months since Ouro started at Noble Academy and it starts with some casual slice-of-life scenes. Ringing in the new year, playing cards, and visiting the shrine are the sort of things that this visual novel opens with. It gives a few flashbacks of important story points, but it’s limited enough that it’s more of a reminder for those of us who may not have played the original for some time and a way to refresh our memories of the character’s personalities. It works quite well to ease into the fandisc.
The prologue of Kinkoi: Golden Time changes a few things from the original story. It takes place over the Christmas break and a few important events happen or change to accommodate the new routes.
Ayaka
What I didn’t expect going into this, is that Ayaka would be the highlight for me.
While I’m unsure of word count, Ayaka’s route felt the longest to me. She also was given a lot of screen time in the prologue, which works as a common route. It starts with an event that causes Ayaka to feel the need to help Ouro to make amends. This worked well to pave the way to an actual romance between the two, which would have never worked without something to force the two together due to Ayaka’s animosity. It’s a rather slow burn in terms of getting to the relationship itself.
This route explores Ayaka’s backstory, with a focus on her family situation, the difference in social status, and feelings around it. It also shows a lot of Ayaka and Ria’s history. While covering serious topics, it still leaves plenty of time for comedy, with hilarious scenes of chatting about robbing banks or other silly ideas with Ria. I enjoyed how it slowly showed Ayaka grow as a character and brought her and Ouro closer.
I’m personally not a fan of Ayaka’s archetype, but her route managed to get me to understand and actually like her. If nothing else, her route being the highlight despite this shows just how good it actually is.
Mina
Mina is the youngest (and cutest) princess of Sortilège. She’s taken the role of trying to teach Ouro how to conduct himself in polite company, and this has them grow closer.
Unlike Ayaka’s route, there is very little talk about different roles in society here. It’s unusual, considering that a relationship between a princess and a commoner would be much more of a problem, but it keeps it fairly light and comedic in this route. That and sex-focused. This route of Kinkoi: Golden Time doesn’t really have any major events or problems.
One thing I did like was that almost the whole group of friends show up often in Mina’s route. Others tend to focus on the character and a smaller subset of the group. There are frequent scenes of discussing the relationship with Reina, Sylvia, and Elle who support them, and a few with Ria.
This route is enjoyable and includes a lot of cute relationship moments, but it’s ultimately quite short and forgettable.
Ria
After playing the Ayaka’s and Mina’s routes, it unlocks Ria’s route. This acts as an alternate version to Ria’s route in the original game, which was one of the most touching visual novel routes in the moege genre. Being somewhat vague to avoid spoilers of either game, I’ll talk mostly about feelings invoked here.
Ria and Ouro get into a relationship within the first few scenes. There is some hesitancy, but to quote the game, “When you find the ideal moment to do something – your Golden Time – don’t let it get away”. They take this to heart.
There are a lot of emotional moments in this route, with it being drama-packed. Depressing topics are often brought up and many of the romantic moments are bittersweet. Even for more positive things, the idea of suffering later in exchange for current happiness is often brought to mind. It’s not exactly a fluffy and light route, despite some happy moments.
I enjoyed this route, but it didn’t impact me as much as the original. It felt quite short, though extremely eventful, so there was very little in terms of more casual moments. This was a slight pity since the moments of casual banter between Ouro and Ria are some of the more enjoyable moments in either Kinkoi.
Append
Aside from the three routes, Kinkoi: Golden Time includes ‘Append’ scenes for all characters with a route in either the original visual novel or fandisc. I went into this expecting it to be primarily sex-focused, but I was pleasantly surprised.
Most appends include a short story that in most cases could usually fit into their route – more or less. To give an example, the exercise-loving Akane’s append shows Ouro watching over her training and refers to several of the events in her backstory not explored in Kinkoi: Golden Time. While it does include a sex scene, it also shows Akane helping the baseball team and Ouro’s efforts to help her.
Ayaka’s is notably different, taking place near the start of the original story with a lot of fourth-wall-breaking and absurd comedy. It also nicely shows what happens if a certain piece of information that was never revealed in her route came to light. This was the one thing that felt unresolved in her actual route, so it was good to see what might happen if it was, even if it’s a comedic take on it.
Some of the append stories are more about moments between lovers, while others have a more solid set of events, but they’re all about more than just the sex scenes.
Short and Sweet
As mentioned above, all the routes aside from Ayaka’s felt quite short comparatively. Overall Kinkoi: Golden Time is reasonably long, with my playtime clocking in at sixteen hours. To compare, my time for Kinkoi: Golden Loveriche was twenty-five hours.
I would’ve liked to see Ria’s route extended, especially since she’s the focus of this fandisc in a way. That said, it’s still a decent length. There’s not much reason to replay here either, with only one choice in an append making much of a difference. The few choices in the main story all just give a slightly different scene at most.
Sexual Content
For those purchasing Kinkoi: Golden Time on Steam, a free patch is available via the NekoNyan shop to enable the adult content. Purchasing via alternate storefronts such as Denpasoft will include all of the content by default.
There are seventeen H-scenes, mostly taking place in the Append section. Only one of these is possible to miss, with a replay of Ayaka’s Append being required. On that, while I can’t confirm, I’ve been informed that Ayaka’s append isn’t in the Steam version without the patch.
Most of the adult content is fairly vanilla, though there is some light fetish content. This includes threesomes, anal, cosplay, pet play, and masochism. It’s all uncensored with no mosaics.
Graphics and Audio
The sprites and a few CGs from the original make a reappearance in Kinkoi: Golden Time, but there’s plenty of original content here too. Much like the original, the quality is overall excellent with lots of animation used to convey energy or feeling. The audio follows in the same lines as the original too, with plenty of variety in the music and both voice acting and sound effects being used well.
Verdict
If you enjoyed Kinkoi: Golden Loveriche, I’d certainly recommend Kinkoi: Golden Time. While it might not reach the same high points that Golden Loveriche does, it’s consistently great throughout and explores some new characters that we didn’t see enough of the first time.
KINKOI: GOLDEN TIME IS RECOMMENDED
Want to see more Visual Novels? How about our review of Renai Karichaimashita: Koikari – Love For Hire?
Many thanks go to NekoNyan for a PC review code for this title.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
