Well I’ve been pretty silent from the forum due to various reasons, but in the meantime I’ve been playing quite a few VNs to cut off my backlog a bit. I even got myself a Surface Go so I can play modern VNs on the go now. I highly recommend it btw 
but I digress, I came here to talk about one VN I read recently which I absolutely enjoyed: Muv-Luv.
I am sure that anyone who has forayed into VNs has at least heard of this series. It is, after all, one of the highest rated VNs no matter where you ask (or, at least, Alternative is). I’ll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible and thus try to keep it quick as well. So I figure it’s best to give a quick rundown of how I felt about each of the three games. So, let’s start.
Muv-Luv Extra:
I came into this series very well warned: The first game is hot trash. You will have to trudge through it but the payoff is worth it once you reach Alternative. Yada yada yada. And at first, I believed it! Seeing things as ridiculous as, say a character entirely dedicated to be a ripoff of Initial D(with a matching eurobeat BGM). I did realize early on that most of the absurdity spurred off from interactions with Meiya, so I finished off her route first and tried out the others. And after reading the other routes, I thought “hey, this isn’t as bad as everyone makes it out to be”. Sure, MLE isn’t anything groundbreaking, but it’s a halfway decent charge, with some of the routes having pretty good messages in them (shout outs to the class prez route).
Muv-Luv Unlimited:
Unlimited is what I would consider the prelude to the main story. It sets up the new plot really well, and gives you a whole new view of characters from the first game. It did what it needed to do really well. It introduced enough for the next game, left a lot of interesting questions, and still managed to have a conclusive ending. It even changed my views on Meiya who I absolutely hated in the first game (it also changed my views on Mikoto but we don’t talk about that). My only gripe is how all of the character endings were essentially the same thing just with different characters. Wasted a lot of time getting those, heh.
Muv-Luv Alternative:
And now we go to the grand story of it all, whose length overshadows the first two games combined. It’s really hard to describe just how grand a story this is, but I think the best word I can come for it is that it’s a struggle. MLA is a grand struggle of the world against itself and it’s adversary, and of our protagonists struggle against that world but, most importantly, against himself. Ever since the story begins, we are meant to question what it means to be determined, and what pushes us as human beings. Up to the end we question this, and what we must sacrifice for our aspirations. It’s something that, while taking place in an otherworldly setting, we can apply to our own hopes and dreams, and remind ourselves that we are human, and all those other humans who have achieved all that we dream of are human too, with their own motivations pushing them. And it reminds us not to forget the little things that make life worth living: The people we hold near and dear to us.
I came into this series having no idea what to expect, and I came out wiser, I feel. It has reminded me what to fight for in this short life we live, and has given me a newfound appreciation for all the characters involved in the series. The epilogue, which was just as ridiculous as the first game, was something I couldn’t get angry about; I could only feel happiness for the characters, that they are able to once again smile and crack stupid jokes.
Overall, Muv-Luv is a great experience and deserves its place among the top-rated VNs. 10/10 would recommend
