Pia♥Carrot e Youkoso!! Review:

Having to work at Pia Carrot, his father's restaurant, after losing a bit with him, the protagonist of this game is after all finding himself in a pretty great and memorable time with his female coworkers. Pia Carrot he Youkoso!! or in English Welcome to Pia Carrot!! is a Dating Sim in which the primary goal throughout the game is to come together with one of the female characters. With the game being a Dating Sim you are more or less setting a weekly work schedule for the main character and in addition to that he has stats that can be raised through certain options, those stats in return can affect the varying heroines of the game and your chances with them. Personally I found that whole system to be fairly well implemented in the game and overall pretty enjoyable throughout the game, and it definitely has some really nice moments with the characters. Pia Carrot really gives you the feeling of being in the game, and with each passing day in the game I personally felt relatively immersed in the daily life of the protagonist and the varying interactions with each character of the game. Through my playthrough of the entire game I truly found myself really loving and enjoying Pia Carrot. Especially the whole vibe and feeling of the game is absolutely great, and one aspect I really appreciate about it. It just has so much of this certain charm that makes it quite special and a pretty memorable game, at least in my view.

As this game is primarily a Dating Sim one of the most important aspects are certainly the characters, and regarding them I can say that they are really charming and have all of their own individual and interesting personalities and characteristics that quite sets them apart from each other. Within the relatively short playtime of each playthrough the characters definitely have quite some personality and feel fairly well written, along with the stories of the varying characters also being fairly nice. They all feel quite distinct and each character with their respective route offers a fairly nice experience. While the game isn't telling something totally groundbreaking, it still absolutely delivers with what it wants to be. And that's a great Dating Sim that features really nice and interesting characters with some nice character dynamics. To some of them there was even a surprising amount of depth, which I initially wouldn't have expected, especially with one playthrough of the game not being extremely long. Especially Saori and Yukiko were in that regard, at least in my opinion, really memorable, and had some great moments within the game. My personal favorite characters are probably, in no specific order, Saori, Shiho, Reika, Yukiko, and Kiyomi. I specifically really liked them, and found their routes to be quite interesting, but the other characters are just as good as well and offer a similarly really nice experience. And while already having spoken about the length of the game, I found it to be quite pleasant and fairly nice. Going through the game and playing one route of the games takes up around 2 to 3 hours, probably something under 2 hours if it's not your first playthrough and you're skipping the prologue. With the game having overall 9 characters that have a route, it's really nice and enjoyable to play the game once a time and it doesn't take up too much time.

Otherwise especially the graphics of the game are absolutely charming and, in my opinion, really beautiful and great. The whole art is really gorgeous and definitely looks beautiful throughout the entire game. I really love the artstyle of the game, and it has this certain charm of PC-98 / PC-FX titles to it. The animations are especially in the PC-FX version really great too and also have this certain charm to them, and I think that they are all things considered pretty well made. As for the artstyle and art for the game it's probably no wonder that I love it so much considering that some of my favorite artists like Nakamura Takeshi, and Amazuyu Tatsuki have worked on this game. They are such talented artists and you can absolutely see this throughout this game too. Visually speaking there were also certain elements that reminded me of other later works that they have worked on, which was really nice and interesting to see throughout the game. So yeah, seeing that was for me really nice, and definitely another reason as to why I really enjoyed the game, and it being certainly worth it for me to play it. Additionally the whole soundtrack of the game is really nice and offers some pretty charming and fitting tracks. Throughout the game the varying tracks were quite fitting for the different scenes, and I think it overall just added up to the really nice charm and atmosphere of the entire game.

What I otherwise found to be quite nice and charming about the game is that at the beginning you can select between three different work uniforms for the characters who work in the Pia Carrot. All the different variations of the work uniforms look pretty good, and personally I quite liked all of them, they really have pretty nice designs. Having the option to select these different uniforms definitely makes each playthrough of the game a bit more unique, and it's nice to see that the developers have done the extra work to have these three different work uniforms with the sprites of the characters and the CGs in which they wear these uniforms. I really appreciate that about this game and I think that's one aspect that adds up to the certain charm this game overall has, and partly shows that the developers have put love and work into this game. Though while I really like that aspect of the game I have to say that it can be quite annoying to unlock all the different CG variations of certain characters since for some you have to go through a route three times with the respective work uniforms to unlock all the versions of the CGs. In my view it certainly would've been nice and convenient if you didn't have to do this to unlock all of them and instead unlocked all three versions of the CGs of a character with just one playthrough of a route. While it is really cool to have the option to pick between 3 work uniforms, it just can be pretty annoying that you have to play through certain routes three times if you want to unlock all the different CG versions, and I wish that you didn't have to do that to unlock all of them. But despite that it's nonetheless a really nice feature that just adds up to the charm of the game and can make each playthrough a bit more unique in that regard.

Regarding the different versions of the game, and the differences between them, Pia Carrot originally released on the PC-98, with it later receiving a Windows and PC-FX version, and the latter adding things like voice acting and new animations, and for some reason making the protagonist no longer visible during sex scenes, which is a pretty weird choice through which some CGs can feel a quite incomplete and in my view worse than the original PC-98 and Windows versions. Aside from that the game also received a Sega Saturn version that also added one new heroine, although I can't say much about her since only the PC-FX version has an English fan translation. And while I'm at it I'm also really glad that this game has an English fan translation through which I could experience it in the first place. So having said all that Pia Carrot left me with a really wonderful and charming experience that I found to be quite memorable. The characters are really nice, quite unique, and interesting, as well as the whole atmosphere and general feeling of playing the game. With the gorgeous artstyle, and fairly nice soundtrack of the game, all of that adds up to this game being a really nice experience, and with it having originally been released in 1996, I think that it still holds up fairly well for the most part, and you can feel that the developers have put love into this game. Considering all of that I really love Pia Carrot and the experience I had with the game. It's definitely one of my favorite dating sims, and I'm glad to have played it, Pia Carrot is a really nice experience that I quite like.