National Park Girls Preview – Using Cute Girls to Save the Planet

As someone who looks forward to yuri visual novels, I was very excited when I first heard about the release of National Park Girls, a game developed by the same studio who released another yuri visual novel that I enjoyed titled Highway Blossoms. National Park Girls seems to be built on a unique and hilarious premise that I just had to experience.

Being that I am also a fan of romantic comedy, in general, having interest in this title was a no brainer — I mean one character is a cute girl with a volcano on her head, which is already more than enough of a reason to get curious about the story. After finishing the game’s first episode, I found an enjoyable experience that has me excited to dive into the later episodes, but the messaging might catch readers off guard.

You should keep in mind that currently there is only the first episode of National Park Girls available. For those who might be confused, the episodes function as chapters and the first episode only introduces the characters. It’s good to mention that this game is not complete yet and the runtime of the first episode is kept pretty short. The developer has already announced that the game will have five episodes in total which will each be released in the future. This is why we opted to preview this title instead of giving it a proper review. The next episode of National Park Girls is slated to release this summer.

National Park Girls follows the story of a girl, named Eve, who is a park ranger and just got assigned to a remote cabin post. Her characteristics portray her as pretty tired as she has doubts about the true purpose of her job. Furthermore, there just so happens to be rumors that the remote cabin she is stationed at is haunted. In the mix of her dealing with the coming to terms with living in a haunted space, three girls suddenly show up and totally throw her off. What’s more surprising is how the girls introduce themselves, you see, they claim to be manifestations of Zion, Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks.

As aforementioned, the first episode only features the introduction of the characters, so this game does not contain a real storyline yet and you only get see a small preview of the character’s personalities. The scenes are all light-hearted so far with a touch of comedic moments and the girls are all come off as adorable. I ended up enjoying the close relationship that the three national park girls have as they really seem to support each other while trying to solve their problems together. There are also some themes of pollution brought up during the story as the game critiques humanity in general and shows us how cruel people can be to the planet — without even noticing themselves. With that said, I found some of these scenes to be a bit over dramatic as the characters merely push their ideas of humans onto the reader.

Surprisingly, there is English voice acting available in National Park Girls, which I thought was done very well and ended up benefiting the immersion of the story. The voices matched each girl’s respective personalities and it all sounded very natural even during emotional moments when they were sobbing or getting upset. I’d also like to point out that the soundtrack is very calm and matches the nature theme of the story perfectly.

National Park Girls used cute girls to make me questions humanity all over again and it worked. I ended up admitting that even I am not always aware of the consequences of some of my actions. Still, the writing can be overly dramatic with its messaging and that might make rub readers the wrong way.

While the first episode was very short and I only had a small insight into the entire story, I am already looking forward to the next episode — and of course its romance as well. This game definitely has the potential to become a great visual novel of decent quality and a unique plot to top it off.