Divine Slice of Life

Developer: AJTilley.com | Publisher: AJTilley.com | Release Date: 2015 | Genre: Visual Novel / Casual / Indie | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam / MangaGamer

Divine Slice of Life is the story of a young man named Aaki who is a normal, if somewhat reserved young student. Despite having a crush on a fellow classmate and being childhood friends with another cute girl Aaki doesn’t consider himself particularly lucky with the ladies. However, one evening while strolling through a local park on his way home his world is turned upside down by the arrival of two demi gods. The two not only claim to be descended from Greek goddesses, but also inform Aaki that he is of divine descent and must marry one of them to take his rightful place amongst the pantheon of gods.

Aaki is naturally somewhat taken back by the arrival of two beautiful girls, both vying for his attention and trying to pressure him into marriage. While trying to figure out what to do about the two demi gods crashing into his life he still tries to continue on as normal with his studies. Naturally the divine duo decides to stick very close to Aaki, forcing him to enroll them as foreign exchange students just so he can keep an eye on them. This obviously causes a lot of upheaval in his life as Aaki suddenly finds himself with five romantic interests to pursue. The choices you make during the game will not only determine which one of the girls he ends up with, but also whether it is a happy ending or not. Let’s just say that there are multiple endings that range from very, very good to very bad.

While the story, which features two divine girls showing up and turning a young man’s world upside down shares some similarities with Sakura Angels it is a lot more tongue in the cheek. The script remains fairly humorous throughout and although we didn’t really encounter any laugh out loud scenes the story was definitely entertaining. Divine Slice of Life features a branch story, so depending on the choices you make the game can be over in a couple of minutes or last for about four hours. It is certainly worth playing through multiple times in order to see and experience the different branches of the story. We also didn’t spot any obvious spelling or grammar issues with the script, which is always good when it comes to visual novels.

The Steam version of Divine Slice of Life has been censored to make it an all ages title, so we recommend grabbing the uncut version from MangaGamer for the full experience. The MangaGamer version also comes with a free Steam key for the all ages version. The developers have also released a patch to uncensor the Steam version, which is available to registered members of their forum. Since the game is a Western visual novel the adult version features uncensored sex and nudity. The overall art style, while not as detailed as some of the bigger releases in the genre, is still very polished and quite good overall.

The game features quite a few CGs and there is enough nudity to keep fans of the genre happy. The censored Steam version doesn’t suffer too badly as most of the scenes where the girls are actually nude are replaced with images of them in their underwear. Obviously the sex scenes are all gone though, as well as some of the more graphic descriptions of what is taking place, so the game is best experienced playing the MangaGamer version or by running the uncensor patch. We should mention that even if you opt for the MangaGamer version you can still choose to disable the adult content.

Divine Slice of Life can be played windowed in its native resolution of 1280×720 or full screen if you don’t mind a bit of stretching. We like the fact that the game features full English voice acting for all the girls, but had to play around with the music and effects volume to hear the voices clearly. It was nice to hear quality voice acting for the male antagonist in the game as well as most visual novels tend to only focus on the females. A gallery viewer is accessible from within the game to view unlocked CGs, but no music player. Instead, the 15 track soundtrack is available as a separate DLC purchase. The interface for the game is very polished with text that is clear to read and character portraits shown in the text box on the bottom of the screen. Although the game unfortunately doesn’t have any achievements, the Steam version does have trading cards, which is always a bonus.

Divine Slice of Life delivers exactly on what it promises and while it doesn’t excel in any particular area it is quite enjoyable overall. A bit more variation for some of the endings would have been nice and the story feels rushed in a couple of places, but was engrossing enough for us to play until we have seen all of the endings.