This review will be divided into two sections: the regular visual novel part, which consists of the after-stories of the six main heroines, and Rewrite Quest, which is this game’s unlockable JRPG minigame.

My overall, TLDR thoughts of Rewrite Harvest Festa are: the visual novel after story portions are overall a 7/10, with one really good route and the rest ranging from decent to mediocre. Rewrite Quest is a surprisingly solid, short-and-sweet dungeon-crawler JRPG, with perhaps a bit too much required repetitive grinding, which I’d give an 8/10, and I’d happily play it again over many modern JRPGs.


The visual novel part of Rewrite: Harvest Festa is… fine, serviceable? These are basically moege-like fandisc stories for the six main heroines. While they’re mostly lighthearted and each can be finished in a couple of hours at most (if you read slowly), they’re good enough if you just want to see the heroines in more lighthearted scenarios, especially since all the main routes of the original Rewrite were incredibly depressing at times. If you loved Rewrite specifically for its dark, serious drama and don’t care for or dislike the humorous parts, you might want to skip this fandisc.

That said, I thought Rewrite’s humor was generally pretty good, so naturally, that was enough for me to enjoy it. I would say all six routes do their jobs well, considering they’re relatively short, but they’re inconsistent in quality.

The best route by far is Kotori’s after-story, and it’s not just because I’m biased toward her (though helps she's a top ~5 favorite VN character of mine), hers is the only route that explicitly continues after her original route, furthering her emotional development while slowly reintroducing lighthearted elements into her timeline.

The other heroines’ routes are… all alternate universes in some way.

Chihaya’s after-story seems like it was going to be a direct continuation, but it mostly feels like an Occult Club slice-of-life scene you could’ve seen in the original’s common route, which was fine but heavily limited the romantic moments between Kotarou and Chihaya, which was kind of disappointing.

Lucia’s Harvest Festa route was… kind of dumb? While I’m glad it’s more lighthearted, the plot revolves around a brand new clone of Lucia, with scenes reminiscent of the twin drama between Mion/Shion in Higurashi or Kanon/Shannon in Umineko (referencing these cuz Lucias routes was written by Ryuukishi07). However, since this is a short route, the developments are incredibly underdeveloped and rushed, and any potential drama, like possible cheating, is overlooked and sidelined, so I didn’t feel much besides wanting to facepalm at how dumb the route got. Still, it didn’t outright piss me off like the last 1/3 of the original Lucia route, so I guess that’s a slight improvement?

Shizuru’s after-story has the weirdest premise, taking place after the… Oppai joke route, for some reason. Choices slowly turn it into a pseudo-sequel to Shizuru’s route somehow. It’s weird since Kotarou randomly starts hanging out and low-key dating Shizuru in this oppai universe, and while things moved a bit too quickly for me to get super emotional, I weirdly liked how it eventually linked to Shizuru’s original route. That alone made me like her route more than Chihaya’s or Lucia’s.

Akane's route is the most clear alternate-universe route, set in a world where Kotarou is somehow the only consistent Occult Club member. It incorporates some of the original VN’s supernatural elements as a backdrop but ends up surprisingly enjoyable, mostly because it shows a more lighthearted and, at times, surprisingly deep side to Akane without getting depressing like her original route. I kind of wish we’d seen more of this in the original VN.

Kagari’s route is another explicit alternate universe, with the implication that it’s one of many potential routes leading to Moon and Terra. It provides a surprisingly fun way for Kagari to have an actual personality, calling herself “Miracle” Kagari, leading to some of the better new humor in this game with her quirky, random, blunt commentary while learning about humanity. Honestly, I kind of wish this Kagari had a full-length route in the original because she was surprisingly fun, and the ending to this route was pretty interesting.

Overall, the alternate-universe or after-stories of the six heroines were perfectly fine. Your enjoyment of them heavily depends on how much you like the lighthearted slice-of-life interactions they had with Kotarou in the original visual novel or, in Kotori’s case, how much you wanted a romantic resolution from her original route, and in Kagari’s case, if you’re interested in seeing what she’d be like with an actual personality.

Sadly, you can’t pick and choose which routes to read at first. You start with Kotori, Chihaya, and Lucia’s routes, having to complete those to unlock Shizuru and Akane, then finish those two to unlock Kagari’s route, and finally Kagari’s route to unlock Rewrite Quest. Speaking of which…


As a JRPG fan, I found Rewrite Quest in Rewrite: Harvest Festa surprisingly fun, though it’s skippable if turn-based JRPGs aren’t your thing. It mimics old-school titles like Dragon Quest (which it clearly parodies) and requires grinding and strategy to tackle tough bosses.

Rewrite Quest is an alternate-universe retelling of the Moon route, reimagined as a dungeon-crawler JRPG. You explore 10 non-randomized dungeon floors, roam a map, collect items, and fight monsters. The turn-based battle system is straightforward: You select the 6 member party's actions then stats like Agility determine which ally or enemy attacks though you can customize your own ally party turn order if you want someone to apply party buffs before everyone else goes for example. Other stats like STR, DEX, INT, etc common in JRPGs are here as well.

Your home base outside the dungeon fully heals you (thank god), and includes a fun “Atelier Kotori” (a nod to Atelier Iris?), where you craft items, equipment, and familiars (akin to Final Fantasy summons) using monster-dropped materials. Character progression is simple yet customizable. Skills unlock via leveling and skill points (two for basic skills, five for tier-2, 20 for powerful tier-3). Stat growth is fully manual, like in Bioware games like Star Wars: KOTOR, letting you tailor builds. Beating certain floors unlocks more features in the home base and a few more party members.

Equipment is vital, with accessories offering minor stat boosts that can be crafted into gear with bigger gains and perks like status effect immunity. Each floor has 1 main boss each, demanding careful stat and gear management, which makes Rewrite Quest tougher than it looks. Its goofy visuals—low-effort animal drawings and reused sprites—might seem like a joke, but don't underestimate them, they have the goofy Rewrite charm while still posing a challenge at times, even in random battles.

What sets Rewrite Quest apart from other turn-based JRPGs is its visual novel integration. Holding the CTRL key speeds up battles, and combining this with auto-battle lets you breeze through random encounter grinding in 1–5 seconds. Characters’ stats and skills reflect their role in the original story: Kotarou is a versatile attack-oriented off-tank, Kotori a nurturing healer with familiar-related skills, Shizuru a jack-of-all-trades with a heal, single target and AOE attacks, debuffs, etc.

The only minor downsides I have for Rewrite Quest are that some grinding is needed to beat bosses; and ultimately while the character interactions are fun, the actual story is non-canon fanservice.

Overall Rewrite Quest is a fun, lighthearted distraction ~10 hour JRPG featuring the Rewrite cast. I personally like it more than other KEY mini-games, since it doesn't get in the way of main story progression and is easily skippable if you don't wanna play it.

I was the main QC tester of the full retranslation with 18+ content (which you can find on Reddit's /r/IMHHW). I heavily recommend this version if you want to make sure you read the original Japanese version as intended without MoeNovel's odd localization changes.

As for the main story itself, I'd been really excited for this VN ever since I heard the concept of a wholesome glider-focused slice life romance story. I ended up liking it even more than I expected to. I think right now it's my top 3 visual novels of all time.

I'm a HUGE sucker for super feel-good fun inspiring slice of life stories. I have since read A LOT of visual novels with wholesome feel-good slice of life like Sky Full of Stars Trilogy, Marshmallow All the Way Home, Full Kiss S, Aokana Extra 1, etc. However, the original If My Heart Had Wings/Konosora pound for pound is probably still my favorite VN in this particular sub-genre.

Despite it being an obvious feel-good story where everything will be alright in the end and cheesiness and blablabla I think what makes the VN even better is how real and relatable all the characters are (even the quirkier ones like Amane). In addition, it's not like everything is always convenient, there are definite struggles, both in what needs to be learned and just stuff about their personalities that I enjoyed seeing being developed.

Obviously one of the appeals is the main heroine being disabled and on a wheelchair. I'm kinda glad they didn't get too melodramatic with this, kinda similar to show Katawa Shoujo didn't get melodramatic with the disabilities themselves. It was cool to see how it was worked around and even utilized in interesting enough ways in the story.

It was nice to see a more futuristic-looking school for once. And of course, I learned a lot more about gliders than I would've in my entire lifetime if I didn't read this VN and they were pretty interesting. All the stuff seemed pretty well-researched and stuff.

One of the absolute best things of IMHHW is the overall presentation. The graphics are amazing, easily some of the most detailed and bright in the medium and really fits the setting and whatnot. I think the occasional use of 3D CG movies are nice. The backgrounds are super detailed, the CGs looks nice and the sprites are well-done. The voice acting (from what I can tell) are good. The music is overall solid, albeit maybe a bunch being just remixes of the main/ED themes. There's a few themes I REALLY like though, they usually play towards the end of the route or IN the end. The rest are fitting and nice enough.

I legitimately liked just abut all the characters in the game, minus Tobioka, though he was purposefully written to be unlikable in a way. There's a good variety of personality and development among a lot of them, though more good supporting male characters would've been nice. Yeah this is a harem romance moe charage and blablabla but if MajiKoi can at least try to have cool male supporting characters I dont see why others can't...

This visual novel is pretty long at around 50 hours after every route but it doesn't feel that way cuz for the most part the game is a blast with great characters, good humor, solid character development and engaging plots related to the glider club.

Even though IMHHW is in my top 3 visual novels, even I can admit there are some flaws I can't overlook.

As much as I love most of the routes, they follow a VERY similar familiar formula, slice of life that leads to a confession that leads into drama that leads to an epic final glider flight. Ageha's route just flat out sucks which is unfortunate since she's a good character in every route that's not hers. I get what they were going for but she was just frustrating to deal with and the 'justification' of this drama was not worth it, especially since she was kind of a beeyotch even after the drama was over.

While some people don't like Yoru's route because it ends up as a 3some, I actually thought it was fun the way they implemented it, and I'm generally not a fan of polyamory relationships. My issue is with Asa's route which was fine... but ultimately pointless when you consider the ending. I think they could have combined the drama of both routes to make BOTH character arcs satisfying in the same timeline and still have the great conclusion from Yoru's route.

Overall though, I don't have too much to complain about with If My Heart Had Wings. It's extremely wholesome, has solid character-driven development and drama, excellent presentation, and has a vision it executes mostly well. It's easy to see how the writer Konno Asta made many memorable VN stories like the rest of the Konosora Trilogy, SFOS Trilogy, ATRI, and Ginka.