Lovekami: Useless Goddess Switch Review – A Familiar Charm

The Lovekami series continues to release on Nintendo Switch in the west. Now, we get Lovekami: Useless Goddess on the console hybrid, and with it comes all the comedic hijinks and random outings of these characters. While I wouldn’t say it’s worth returning to if you’ve played it before, I do think the series holds its own as a comedic and well-thought visual novel.

Lovekami: Useless Goddess introduces our faceless protagonist Sho as he gets involved with a trio of girls. One of them is Akane Tsubaki, an Aragmi goddess who has some electrical powers. Akane is motivated by food and is the reason for some of the rolling blackouts around town.

To help rehabilitate her is Kamiki Inori, a calm goddess who typically follows all the rules but is also very clumsy and doesn’t always get things right. Then there’s the tsundere childhood friend and landlady Kunugi Maika, who also lends her assistance to helping Akane.

As you could have guessed, each girl plays a role in the overall plot, but they are also romanceable. The story is light but attempts to get emotional as Akane opens up more about why she can’t control her powers. It’s not going to blow you away, but it’s just enough to keep players interested in the narrative and the romance between the characters. I think Maika’s route is the best in terms of romance, but the most well-rounded route revolves around Akane.

The entire narrative highlights the rehabilitation of Akane, and it’s actually a great direction for the pacing. Akane is extremely stubborn and only thinks about herself. It makes it easy for the writers to show character growth, but it’s more than one could ask for from a comedic eroge. Sadly, not all the routes are created equally, and Inori suffers because of it. For an already visual novel that only features three routes, I would have liked them to be balanced.

Players don’t have to worry about choosing routes, though, as only one choice determines which character you end up with. Depending on how fast your read, the game will probably take 6 – 8 hours to finish, but it works to not overstay its welcome. I appreciated this approach as I can typically only take so much fluffy romance and clumsy characters before I want it to end.

Lovekami: Useless Goddess features some great illustrations for the characters and pushes what I even expected could be shown on console eroge in terms of CGs. I also liked the subtle Live 2D animation that doesn’t overdo it with the breathing animations. Further, there’s a decent level of backgrounds, but nothing to stand out. Finally, as usual with the Lovekami titles, I liked that the terms pop up during the story to shed some light on what the characters are talking about.

Lovekami: Useless Goddess is a well-paced comedic romance that doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s not going to surprise you, and it might be tough to remember a week after you played it, but it’s fun while it lasts. I would have appreciated balanced character routes and possibly an additional character to help round out the story. It’s okay for what it is, but it’s nothing special.