It’s time for more classic hentai games!

This week, we crack open the Milky Collection.

First of all, let’s talk about why it’s the Milky Collection.  May Club and Nocturnal Illusions are games developed in Japan by Excellents under its Desire and Apricot brands, respectively.  They were published by Milky House, which only had two other releases: Legend of Fairies and Fairy Nights – both of which have also been released in English, making this collection annoyingly incomplete (but it’s okay; Legend of Fairies and Fairy Nights were both godawful).  May Club and Nocturnal Illusions were translated by the short-lived RCY Brothers company.  When the company closed, JAST USA snatched up the rights.

May Club has an interesting premise revolving around a virtual reality service that allows members to hook up outside of the terrifying confines of the real world.

You play Hajime Kudo, a 23-year-old college graduate who has two months to kill time before he starts his career at the CAT Group.  If you feel like punching him in the face already, that is perfectly normal.

Hajime learns about May Club and accidentally spends all of his entertainment budget on credits.  Since he has nothing but time on his hands, he figures he’ll give it a go and try his hand at finding a girlfriend before he starts work.

Seriously, he has no other hobbies.  If you choose not to enter May Club, he’ll just sleep a few hours away before deciding whether or not to enter May Club.

Basically, you start out in mid-February and a limited amount of May Club cards.  You can use a card to enter May Club during the morning, afternoon or evening.  The goal is to encounter girls with the limited amount of cards you have, and there are a LOT of time slots where there just aren’t any girls to meet.  But once you get the hang of the system, you realize most girls tend to stick to a set schedule.  By the way, most dialogue choices are pretty braindead-easy, so all you really have to worry about is encountering girls at all.  You don’t really have to worry about using the Look or Talk options; just move between areas and hope you trigger an automatic conversation.  To get a girl, all you have to do is bump into her enough times to progress her story to its completion, and don’t pick any stupid choices.  Again, the tricky part is bumping into her.

I’ll be listing the girls by their ending number.

Ending 1: Misato

Everything about Misato’s route is spoiler-worthy, but I don’t care.

You can bump into Misato during the day throughout the first couple of weeks.  As long as you don’t actively avoid May Club or visit strictly at night, you’re guaranteed to meet her and set up a date for March 8.  If you show up for the date, Misato won’t appear.  Instead, you’ll be pestered by a little girl named Satomi.

Interesting fact: there are two loli scenes that were removed from the game.  The first is Satomi’s, which was technically still in the game, just disabled.  A fan patch re-enables it and translates half of the scenario.  It’s really just the regular path, but with an option for a sex scene added in.

Anyway, it turns out Satomi is in fact Misato, who enlists the aid of a hacker to change her May Club appearance as a girl that only Hajime can see.  This is because she’s pissed that Hajime didn’t recognize her as his childhood friend he promised to marry.  *coughbullshitcough*

Interestingly, when Hajime bumps into Misato for the second time, in the unpatched version he realizes Satomi is Misato, and Misato asks how he knew.  In the patched version, Misato reveals the fact to Hajime, much to his surprise.

Anyway, if you forgive her, you have sex and live happily ever after.

Ending 2: Kirara

Kirara is probably the sexiest character in the game, and the first character you meet (if you enter May Club on the first available shift).

Kirara acts a lot younger than she looks and is obsessed with a video game character named Pokopen.  She screws up and admits she’s a high school student… then admits she’s actually using her older sister Haruka’s account (meaning what you see is Haruka, not Kirara)… THEN admits she’s actually a MIDDLE SCHOOLER, not a high schooler.

Before this reveal, you do get the chance to have sex with her… before it’s revealed that for THAT NIGHT ONLY, the role of Kirara was being played by the middle sister, Hikaru.  So, to recap: by the end of Kirara’s path, you’ll be in a relationship with Kirara, but had sex with Hikaru, who was using Haruka’s body.

By the way, Kirara is the second loli whose H-scene was removed from the game.  Unlike Satomi, Kirara’s never had a completed H-scene – but her H-CG was still left in the game and made available in the gallery via a fan patch.

Despite her seemingly being set up as the main girl of the game, Kirara is one of the trickiest girls to get simply because she lacks a set schedule.  There’s no telling when she’ll be available during the morning, afternoon, or evening, or what day of the week she’ll be on.  It really doesn’t follow any sort of logic.

Ending 3: Akiho

Akiho is an office lady with a bit of a violent streak.  She is ALWAYS available in front of the station at night on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays in the first half of the game, which makes her one of the easiest girls to get a handle on.  She’s also my favorite girl by far.  She has the most expressions, and the gradual way she warms up to Hajime is just adorable and feels natural.

Her story is pretty simple.  Every time you see her, she has something new about her job she gripes about.  She’s mildly annoyed by how pushy Hajime is, but she eventually grows to trust him with more and more of her problems until she realizes Hajime is the only person she’s ever shared her true feelings with.

There’s a weird mistranslation where she kinda offhandedly mentions she has a husband.  She doesn’t have a husband.  I think the original intention was that she told Hajime things she would only tell the person she intends to marry, but it was translated as she told Hajime things she only told her husband.

Anyway, after the two make love, Akiho tells Hajime that her company won’t allow her to use the May Club service anymore, and that would be the last time they ever see each other.  True to her word, you never see Akiho for the rest of the game.  If you make it to the end of March without completing an ending for any other girl, Hajime starts his work at CAT Group and finds out that the job Akiho has been complaining about all along was there.  The two reunite and rise up the corporate ladder together, and everything ends happily ever after.  Honestly, as far as destiny-based romance scenarios go, Akiho’s route is one of the best I’ve seen.

Ending 4: Rei

Rei is a shy girl that logged into May Club to practice talking to people.  She seemed to be under the impression that it would be easier to talk to people in virtual reality since they “aren’t real,” but she soon found out it really isn’t all that different.  On the surface, she doesn’t seem all that different from .hack’s Natsume, but Natsume is FAR more optimistic, energetic, and naive.  Rei, on the other hand, is more defeatist and cynical.

Rei shows up every weekend afternoon, which makes going after her a little frustrating since it’s only two days a week.  It takes four weeks to clear her route.

Anyway, Rei’s story… oh wait, that was most of it.  Once Rei trusts Hajime more, she reveals that the secret behind her shyness goes back to her first relationship.  Every time she had sex, she never felt good, and her boyfriend left her for a sex friend.  So, lucky Hajime, he gets to help her by making her enjoy having sex.  Turns out, all he had to do was have sex with her.

Rei has a pointless branching ending.  Basically, the ending takes place at a s&m shop.  If you leave early, she gets into some kinky stuff.  If you leave late, she becomes a total dominatrix.

Ending 5: Keiko

Keiko is a gaudy lady that works at a high-end bar.

Keiko shows up pretty much every weekday afternoon and is the only girl whose path you can clear before you even reach March.

Keiko’s story is booooooooring.  She’s a country gal that followed a guy she liked to the city.  She later finds out the guy turned into a real jerk.  She somehow forms a connection with Hajime and either has meaningless sex with him or gets him to join her when she returns to her family farm.

I really don’t have much to say about Keiko’s path.  It seems like she was created to fill some kind of quota.

Ending 6: Hiromi

Hoo boy…

Hiromi becomes available weekday afternoons in mid-March, and the soonest you can finish her path is March 31.  Reeeeeeally cutting it close there.  The background info she shares with you is that she was in a relationship with a guy, he stopped contacting her, and the next time she saw him, it turns out he married.  Totally don’t give a crap.

Hiromi’s path seems pretty generic, but something seems off when they attempt to have sex, and Hiromi is kinda extremely conscious of her body.  At first, I thought she was hiding something.  Like that she was a man.  But then the second time they try it, she very clearly has a vagina.

Anyway, despite finally having sex, Hiromi isn’t sure about meeting up in real life.  Turns out, Hiromi really is a man.

Well, if you decide to go and finish Hiromi’s path, Hajime doesn’t care that Hiromi’s a man, and the two fight to legalize homosexual marriage.  They get married one year later.  That is insane.  One. Fucking. Year.  To legalize same-sex marriage.  This also means if you go with any other path, you set back the same-sex marriage movement I dunno how many years.

Ending 7: Mikoto

Mikoto is part of a morality group that ensures VR programs like May Club comply with decency laws.  Basically, she chastises people who start to get it on in public.

May Club is completely fraught with typos and script errors, but Mikoto (or, uh Kikoto?) has by far the most.  It’s seriously embarrassing just how little testing was done for this translation.

Anyway, Mikoto starts showing up in mid-March.  Unlike the other girls, encountering her doesn’t result in immediately logging out for that session; you can meet Mikoto and instantly bump into another girl.  Also, you will meet Mikoto A LOT.  She only shows up mornings and afternoons, but you WILL have to meet her twice in the same day if you want to progress her story to her ending.

Mikoto doesn’t really have much of a story, though.  After bumping into her enough times, she’ll start to have feelings for Hajime.  This is immediately ruined when he accidentally gropes her, and she loses her trust in him.  In order to gain her trust back, Hajime agrees to undergo a background check.  Now here’s the fun part: he fails the background check if he has had sex with ANYONE in May Club, so the only way to get Mikoto’s ending is to not touch any other girls up to this point.  Totally worth it, though.  She’s got some great CG.

Ending 8: Rieko

Rieko starts showing up evenings at the end of February.  She’s actually a married woman that thinks her husband is cheating on her, so she wants to get even and cheat on him.  That’s… pretty much all of her story.

In the end, Rieko’s husband isn’t cheating on her.  He just has problems getting it up unless he’s being watched.  Thus, we enter one of the most amusing endings of all time: Hajime moves in with the couple so they can have regular threesomes.

Ending 9: Kazumi

Kazumi is the closest thing to a hidden character in this game.

Kazumi is a hacker that causes a lot of mischief in May Club.  She’s mentioned by Akiho as “that woman in the white coat,” and is how Akiho finds the hidden amusement park area.  She’s also the hacker that turned Misato into Satomi and turned Hiromi into a woman (well, inside May Club).  Oh, and she does this to Hajime:

Turns out, Kazumi is only interested in girls.  After she turns Hajime into a girl and has her way with…. her… she’s never seen again…

…until you get sufficiently far enough in Hiromi’s path.  Once you’ve progressed to the dead end in Kazumi’s path, you need to do Hiromi’s path and figure out that Hiromi knows Kazumi.  After you have sex with Hiromi, Hiromi tells you that Kazumi is a former classmate, then tells you where you can find her.  It’s partly through Hiromi that you learn some backstory about Kazumi.  Basically, she had a bad experience being surrounded by guys who were jealous of her intellect, so she fell in love with a girl instead.  But through Hajime, she learns to love guys.

Yeah, it’s a pretty terrible scenario.

It also turns out Kazumi’s VR self is a facade.  In reality, she’s more like this:

So, Kazumi learns to like the D, her father finds out she’s in a relationship with a guy, and he hires Hajime to a cushy job in his company.  It’s all very bizarre.

So, that’s all the paths in May Club.  Overall, it’s a great concept, even if it is utterly simplistic.  The music is unexpectedly great; I find myself humming many of the tunes, and I find myself humming the title tune before I even start up the program for a session.  My only gripe regarding the music is that the horns in the love-making scene track are out of place.

Graphically, May Club has room for improvement.  There are some limited color palettes, and it is difficult at times to distinguish Rei from Kazumi.  Interestingly, May Club had an update in May Club DX, which boasts better graphics.  And not the fake updated graphics from the JAST USA Collection: REAL updated graphics.

May Club DX also has voice acting for all the girls and a new girl to go after.  There’s a hack out there that transplants the old script to the DX version, but it disables all the content that wasn’t in the original, including the new girl, so… eww.  Especially since the old script had some blatant errors in it.

It’s honestly kind of mind-boggling that we don’t have a translated complete version of May Club DX.  May Club still holds up pretty damn well, probably has enough recognition to sell well enough for its niche market, and the remake has no problems running on Win7.  MAKE IT HAPPEN, DAMMIT!

Next week, we wrap up the entire collection with an old favorite in Nocturnal Illusion.