I felt like reading another VN, so I checked out Class of ’09 and its sequel Class of ’09: The Re-Up. Both are very short and supposedly subvert the genre. The core idea is not bad: the MC is a spoiled teenage high-school girl in the late 2000’s who enjoys messing with the people around her. In particular the first game had a few moments I found rather amusing, in particular when those teenage whores put down teachers who hit on them by pointing out that they are beneath them. Yet, the second time a teacher comes on to the MC is not quite as amusing as the first time.

Both games are short. A play-through takes only about an hour and you can even manage to get a bad ending in about 15 minutes. There are a few branching paths but sadly you cannot skip scenes, which greatly limits replayability. The first game struck a pretty good balance with the humor. It is crass but, at least in the two routes I played, there was a good flow between bitchy teenage-girl banter and edgy content. The second game, unfortunately, tries to be edgy for the sake of being edgy and puts you in situations that are not predictable based on story cues. (Spoiler alert!) For instance, when given the option to skip classes, the MC ends up sniffing crushed pills from her mom’s medical cabinet. This includes he last pill the mother needs for her heart. The mom comes home, has chest pain, gets a heart attack and dies. There is also a sub-story where a cocaine brick falls on the MC’s foot, so she ends up making crack from it and sells it in da hood.

The first game does not require a lot of suspension of disbelief, but for the second one you will need a lot. I would even go as far as to say that the sequel is not worth your time. It tries to be bigger and edgier, cover more topics, but the end result is a less coherent story. Instead of “The Re-Up” is should be called “The Rehash”. If you are a frugal gamer, you can play through the first one at least once, possibly twice, before the Steam refund window closes.