Exact attempts also raise the evaluation meter at the bottom left corner of the screen by a single point each (marked by a small ring, which lights up with every point earned). When ten of these rings are lit, a large circular lamp directly above lights up while the rings revert to their darkened state. Similarly, an inaccurate attempt will darken a ring or a lamp should there be no lit rings. A minimum of four lit lamps are required for the song to be evaluated as a "pass", and this directly affects the story in a usually positive way. Players who are not proficient with this "song-playing mode" can switch on the autoplay function in the menu to enable the computer to hit all the notes. However, in this mode, the score will remain at zero.
There are a total of six good endings and three bad endings. The player would have to complete the three main heroine's story (also known as the Da Capo scenario) before the Al Fine scenario is made available. In Al Fine, the world is shown through the perspective of Tortinita Fine, and many questions about the story are finally answered by the end of the scenario. Chris, the original protagonist, is voiced in this scenario while Tortinita is not. Da capo and al fine are actual music terms and are both appropriate names for the story's parts in relation to the game's nature, as the story has to be repeated three times (one for each heroine) before ending with Al Fine's part of the story. After going through both the possible endings for Al Fine, players who return to Da Capo will make available Phorni's scenario (the "true end" of the game). The events that make up this scenario highlight the truth about Phorni and finally tie up all the loose ends of the story.
Plot
Symphonic Rain takes place in a fictional city of Italian heritage named Piova where rain falls everyday. The locals there have adapted to this peculiar phenomenon, and carry on with their lives as if the rain were never there. No one uses umbrellas, or rain coats. The main character of the story is seventeen-year-old Chris, a Fortelle student of the famous Piova Communal School of Music (Scuola Comunale di Musica Piova, in Italian). Separated from his childhood sweetheart Arietta when he left his home town for the city, he keeps in touch with her through weekly letters. Penning their thoughts on these letters, Chris treasures and keeps her weekly writings, for he had promised her that should his drawer become totally filled with them, he would return to her. The story begins during Chris's third year as a student, a few months before he has to take the school's final graduation examination: a stage performance. As an instrumentalist, he is required to search for a vocalist partner before he is eligible for the examination.
Development
Symphonic Rain was produced by the Kuroneko-san Team, one of seven development teams that make up Kogado Studio. Symphonic Rain was the third game in a series of "music adventure" (ミュージックアドベンチャー, myūjikku adobenchā) games produced by the team, and Kuroneko-san is the only team to produce such games in Kogado Studio. Art direction and character design was headed by Shiro, and background art was provided by Kazuo Ebisawa of Ufotable. The game's scenario was written entirely by Maoto Nishikawa who is credited as Q'tron for Symphonic Rain. Music in the game was written and composed by Ritsuko Okazaki through the music producing company Copyrights Bank, including collaboration with King Records. This was the last project, as well as the only visual novel, involving Okazaki due to her sudden death in May 2004.
Release history
Symphonic Rain was first released as a limited edition version in Japan on March 26, 2004 as a DVD for Windows, and came bundled with a small figurine of Phorni. The regular edition of the game was released in Japan on August 27, 2004. The game was released abroad in Taiwan and Hong Kong on November 11, 2004, and again on May 25, 2005 in China. A collector's edition of the game was released in Japan on June 24, 2005, and was later released in Taiwan and Hong Kong on December 22, 2005. These versions were similarly made available to the Malaysian and Singapore markets around the same time. A downloadable version of the collector's edition was released in Korea on September 18, 2007. A popular edition of Symphonic Rain was released in Japan at a reduced price from the original release on November 22, 2007. An HD version of Symphonic Rain was released worldwide on June 14, 2017 with English, Japanese and Chinese language support.
Reception
In Getchu.com's 2004 Moe Game Ranking (based on user votes), Symphonic Rain won fourth place in the Overall, Scenario, and Music categories, as well as tenth place in the System category and 15th in Artwork. Kogado Studio was voted the sixth best game maker for that year, outranking other well-known companies such as NekoNeko Soft, Nitroplus, F&C, and Studio e.go!. Phorni was selected as the fifth best heroine from games released in 2004.
