| Symphonic Rain | |
| Genre: | Rhythm game, Visual novel |
| Modes: | Single-player |
| Platforms: | Windows |
is a Japanese musical visual novel developed by Kogado Studio and first released as a limited edition version on March 26, 2004, for Windows as part of a series of "music adventure" games done by its Kuroneko-san Team; the regular edition followed on August 27, 2004. The game is rated for all-ages, and contains themes which revolve around romance and relationships. The game was later published and released in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Mainland China by T-Time Technology. Symphonic Rain was released twice more in Japan, first on June 24, 2005, as a collector's edition, and again on November 22, 2007, as a popular edition at a reduced price.
Similar to other visual novels, Symphonic Rain is highly text-based and most of the game requires little player interaction apart from clicking a few options presented to the player, usually dealing with where he wishes to head to after school. At certain points during the course of the story, the game switches into a "song-playing mode" where the player is required to hit keys to the beat of a background music track, usually sung by one of the heroines of the game, guided by different-colored musical notes scrolling from the right of the screen to the left. Each one of the notes are inscribed with a letter on the keyboard, which the player has to press when the note reaches a boxed-up region beside the treble clef. Points are awarded for the accuracy of keyboard input, starting with zero points for an inaccurate attempt, eight points for being slightly off, and thirty-five points for being exact. The value of each exact attempt increases as the player successfully creates chains of such accuracy, breaking the chain when an error is made or becomes slightly off.
Exact attempts also raise the evaluation meter at the bottom left corner of the screen by a single point each (marked by a small ring, which lights up with every point earned). When ten of these rings are lit, a large circular lamp directly above lights up while the rings revert to their darkened state. Similarly, an inaccurate attempt will darken a ring or a lamp should there be no lit rings. A minimum of four lit lamps are required for the song to be evaluated as a "pass", and this directly affects the story in a usually positive way. Players who are not proficient with this "song-playing mode" can switch on the autoplay function in the menu to enable the computer to hit all the notes. However, in this mode, the score will remain at zero.
There are a total of six good endings and three bad endings. The player would have to complete the three main heroine's story (also known as the Da Capo scenario) before the Al Fine scenario is made available. In Al Fine, the world is shown through the perspective of Tortinita Fine, and many questions about the story are finally answered by the end of the scenario. Chris, the original protagonist, is voiced in this scenario while Tortinita is not. Da capo and al fine are actual music terms and are both appropriate names for the story's parts in relation to the game's nature, as the story has to be repeated three times (one for each heroine) before ending with Al Fine's part of the story. After going through both the possible endings for Al Fine, players who return to Da Capo will make available Phorni's scenario (the "true end" of the game). The events that make up this scenario highlight the truth about Phorni and finally tie up all the loose ends of the story.
Symphonic Rain takes place in a fictional city of Italian heritage named Piova where rain falls every day. The locals there have adapted to this peculiar phenomenon, and carry on with their lives as if the rain were never there. No one uses umbrellas, or rain coats. The main character of the story is seventeen-year-old Chris, a Fortelle student of the famous Piova Communal School of Music (Scuola Comunale di Musica Piova, in Italian). Separated from his childhood sweetheart Arietta when he left his home town for the city, he keeps in touch with her through weekly letters. Penning their thoughts on these letters, Chris treasures and keeps her weekly writings, for he had promised her that should his drawer become totally filled with them, he would return to her. The story begins during Chris's third year as a student, a few months before he has to take the school's final graduation examination: a stage performance. As an instrumentalist, he is required to search for a vocalist partner before he is eligible for the examination.
Symphonic Rain was produced by the Kuroneko-san Team, one of seven development teams that make up Kogado Studio. Symphonic Rain was the third game in a series of games produced by the team, and Kuroneko-san is the only team to produce such games in Kogado Studio.[1] Art direction and character design was headed by Shiro, and background art was provided by Kazuo Ebisawa of Ufotable.[2] The game's scenario was written entirely by Maoto Nishikawa who is credited as Q'tron for Symphonic Rain. Music in the game was written and composed by Ritsuko Okazaki through the music producing company Copyrights Bank, including collaboration with King Records.[2] This was the last project, as well as the only visual novel, involving Okazaki due to her sudden death in May 2004.
Symphonic Rain was first released as a limited edition version in Japan on March 26, 2004, as a DVD for Windows, and came bundled with a small figurine of Phorni.[3] The regular edition of the game was released in Japan on August 27, 2004.[4] The game was released abroad in Taiwan[5] and Hong Kong on November 11, 2004, and again on May 25, 2005, in China.[6] A collector's edition of the game was released in Japan on June 24, 2005,[7] and was later released in Taiwan[8] and Hong Kong on December 22, 2005. These versions were similarly made available to the Malaysian and Singapore markets around the same time. A downloadable version of the collector's edition was released in Korea on September 18, 2007.[9] A popular edition of Symphonic Rain was released in Japan at a reduced price from the original release on November 22, 2007.[10] An HD version of Symphonic Rain was released worldwide on June 14, 2017, with English, Japanese and Chinese language support.[11] [12]
An art collection entitled Symphonic Rain Digital Picture Collection was released as a CD-ROM on August 26, 2004, by Kogado Studio.[13] A single manga anthology volume entitled was released by Kogado Studio at Comiket 73 on December 29, 2007, as a limited edition, and thus was not widely distributed. The anthology contained four chapters written and illustrated by different people. The first chapter,, was done by Sakuya Yūki; the second chapter,, was done by Mū; the third chapter, "To Coda", was written by Maoto Nishikawa and illustrated by Shiro, who also drew the volume's cover art; the fourth chapter,, was done by Pen-chan. Nishikawa also wrote a series of short stories for Symphonic Rains five heroines which is available online at the game's official website.[14]
In Symphonic Rain, the ten songs available for the player to play during gameplay were released on an image song album entitled Rainbow released on May 26, 2004, by King Records.[15] The songs on the album are sung by the voice actresses of the game's five main heroines, and the late Ritsuko Okazaki. A cover version of the album entitled For RITZ featuring Okazaki singing all the songs was released posthumously on December 29, 2004, by King Records.[16] The disc was produced as a memorial towards Okazaki, and included all ten songs from the original game, and "For Fruits Basket", the opening song of the anime series Fruits Basket.
In Getchu.com's 2004 Moe Game Ranking (based on user votes), Symphonic Rain won fourth place in the Overall, Scenario, and Music categories, as well as tenth place in the System category and 15th in Artwork. Kogado Studio was voted the sixth best game maker for that year, outranking other well-known companies such as NekoNeko Soft, Nitroplus, F&C, and Studio e.go!. Phorni was selected as the fifth best heroine from games released in 2004.[17]