Technical Information

Developer: Ascension Dream
Publisher: Sometimes You
Release Date: August 28, 2019

Kenji is a young guy who has just started college and takes on various odd jobs to pay his bills.
However, what he really wants is to find true love… and in order to win over the woman of his dreams, he steals panties! Through a pair of panties, Kenji is able to see the personality of the girl who wore them. From then on, he uses this ability to try to find the love of his life.

Pantsu Hunter: Back to the 90s is a light and casual visual novel, with touches of humor and a 90s aesthetic that will definitely please anyone who used to watch anime back in that era.

Final Thoughts – Analyzing the Game as a Whole

Graphics and UI

I absolutely loved this game’s aesthetic! The art style and pastel color palette bring a completely 90s vibe.
The environments follow this same style, further reinforcing the sense of nostalgia for those who enjoy anime from that period.

The only visual flaw is the timing of character transitions in some parts. For example, in the moment when Anko is about to sit on the couch to watch soccer, the image of her sitting down appears before the image of her standing disappears.
Aside from a few very specific moments, the transition timing is generally fine.

The main menu is clean.
When pausing the game, it’s possible to restart the current chapter from the beginning and return to the main menu.

I didn’t like the fact that there is no colored background area behind the text. In many moments, the dialogue gets lost against the scenery, making it somewhat hard to read. I understand that the intention was to keep the illustrations visible while the dialogue is displayed, but an area with around 70% transparency would have already solved this issue.
Another way to fix this would be to enable a button that hides the dialogue box and text altogether. The vast majority of visual novels use this kind of setup.

Soundtrack and Sound Effects

Great soundtrack, with calm music that keeps the game very relaxing. In my view, the music does a great job of reinforcing the game’s casual spirit.

The girls’ voice acting also turned out great! They speak in many moments, which made the game much more immersive and less static.

Gameplay

The game has two main objectives: discovering where all the panties are hidden and completing the chapters.
The chapters have multiple endings, with most of them being bad endings for the protagonist.
It’s not possible to save during gameplay, but this doesn’t really matter, since the chapters are very short and some endings can be achieved in just one minute.

The game has a strong sense of innocence, don’t expect fan service or anything like that. It’s a very pleasant game to play without any worries.

At certain moments, you’ll have to search the environment as if it were a point-and-click game. I found the mouse sensitivity to be way too high, personally, I think this kind of cursor control feels pretty bad. When porting the game to consoles, they should have included an option to adjust the sensitivity.

It’s not possible to view your inventory, nor can you choose which item to use at specific moments. The correct items are used automatically when you click on the spot where they interact.
On one hand, this is bad because it makes the story very linear, without allowing the player to really rack their brain. On the other hand, it keeps the game fast-paced and very casual.

As you progress through the game, you’ll unlock scenes and some endings that can be viewed again.

In Anna’s puzzle, it’s not possible to exit until it’s solved. This is a game design issue, because once the player is stuck in a puzzle, the ideal approach is to allow them to leave and explore other areas of the game to try to find a clue.

During my gameplay, the same freeze bug happened at least five times.
By rapidly pressing the “X” button to advance the dialogue, the screen froze. I even reported this to the devs, but they weren’t able to reproduce it. 🙁

Replayability and Game Retention

After unlocking all the chapters, what’s left is to complete all the endings and earn the trophies.

Unfortunately, one of the trophies lacks proper balancing. You have to click on all the worms on the computer within 20 seconds. For those playing on PC, it’s pretty easy, but on console it becomes very difficult, since cursor control and precision are quite different.