Expensive tuition
Summer Lesson: Hikari Miyamoto
A novelty game to show off the PS VR, but too little content for its $79.90 fee.
It seems like every PlayStation generation has a kooky, off-beat weird game for it. The PS1 had Tail of the Sun, the PS2 had Katamari Damacy, and the PS3 had Eye of Judgment. Well, the PS4 has Summer Lesson, and it requires PlayStation VR too.
Summer Lesson is a sliceof-life simulation game. You have a week to tutor a girl called Hikari Miyamoto so that she can pass her examinations – with the game broken into different sections per day. Lesson planning is done in the beginning, where you pick a subject to teach. You can see what skills the subject will raise, making it easy to gauge what you want Hikari to improve on. You can also use conversation topic cards (which you get from successful lessons) and optional consumables, which will trigger special scenes after the day’s lessons are over. These items are mainly of the fan service variety. Literally. In one case, it triggers a scene in which you must fan Hikari from a heatwave.
Once the whole rigmarole is done, you are taken back to your café/home base, where you are presented with the day’s summary. After that, you repeat everything all over again until the week is done.
There are a few notable issues with missing translations or late subtitles, especially if you’re not a native Japanese speaker and reader. Luckily, the subtitled dialog in Summer Lesson is much better than other Asian English translated titles, such as Gundam Breaker 3 or Super Robot Wars OG. It’s much more organic and natural, which makes it more enjoyable and believable.
For a VR title, Summer Lesson isn’t bad looking. Environments are well rendered and are believable enough. However, the star of the show, Hikaru, looks a tad plastic, like a Barbie doll for the lack of a better description.
It’s puzzling who the game is targeted at. There is, quite honestly, too little fan service to please the otakus, and barely any gameplay for serious gamers to be interested in. As it stands, Summer Lesson is nothing more than a VR curiosity. Here’s to hoping character and content DLCs will be added soon.