Muv-Luv is told in 2 parts: Extra, and Unlimited. In both parts you are series protagonist Takeru Shirogane. Your job is to ultimately pick a girl to romance by the end. Easy enough, ya?
Having the option to choose where you want to start, I recommend starting with Extra. This lays a fantastic foundation for all the characters and is quite a funny high school romance story to boot. There are 5 girls which you can pursue: Sumika, Meiya, Chizuru, Miki, and Kei. All of these characters are very well developed and learning about each of their respective predicaments helps to better understand the universe. There are numerous supporting characters too, and thankfully they are all pretty well developed.
I had to go through this several times to get all the character routes and, for the most part, all the comedy holds up. The character routes themselves vary in length and whether or not you like a particular girl or route is completely dependent on you. The downside to this half of the story is the beginning chunk takes a lot of time and you have to see it every single time you want to start a new route. It is also very possible to completely screw up a route and go down the wrong path by mistake; it literally happened to me. Get a guide after your first run. It can end up saving you a ton of time. There are very subtle things that make a difference.
Moving on to Unlimited, we get an alien invasion tale. Yes, you read that correctly. This is very different from Extra in almost every way. The only thing that remains the same is the cast. While these are all familiar faces, they are not necessarily familiar people. If you want to move from Extra to Unlimited I would suggest that you do, at least, Meiya and Sumika's routes, first. In fact, I believe this was locked until just such conditions were met in the original.
In this half of the story you are in a military academy training to become a TSF(Tactical Surface Fighter) pilot. These are basically combat mechs from any number of other media. The use of the TSF is critical in the fight against the alien invaders; the BETA. Just as with Extra, you are able to romance any of the leading ladies. The routes are also a bit more simplified here so if you have certain saves strategically placed you will more easily be able to go through them all.
As for the protagonist himself, I am not really sure I see much of myself in him. Of course, this will vary based on your own personalities. Choices were sometimes confusing. I know there were multiple instances where the choices given would be things I would never say in those situations. I understand it is an interactive narrative but I should be able to more easily relate with the protagonist. One thing that absolutely broke my immersion was him suddenly getting a voice, randomly, in Unlimited. Fortunately, you can turn that off. In fact, I recommend it since it is so infrequent you will likely be accustomed to hearing your own voice.
Gameplay is pretty simple. Click/press enter on the keyboard to advance dialogue. Click to make choices. Enjoy the narrative. If you plan to do all the routes just be prepared for a huge time investment(100+ hours). You can hold CTRL to speed things up, though it does not have a feature that stops fast-forwarding when you run across brand new dialogue(like in Steins;Gate). This is from 2003, just keep that in mind. It is easy to miss dialogue you have never seen.
Conclusion
I have spent an absolutely ridiculous amount of time on this. I went through every Extra route before I hit Unlimited and that just makes me want to move into Alternative but that's not out yet(locally). For the most part, I have enjoyed every moment I spent with it. As soon as I hit Unlimited I just buried my head in it and got through it in a few days. I could not stop myself. I may not love all the characters equally, either, but they make up a pretty fun little universe.
Recommendation
I do highly recommend this to anyone that likes slice of life and science fiction. Both halves of the story are basically self-contained so they are to be enjoyed entirely at your leisure. The only caveat I would add is that there is some fan service in Unlimited with the flight suits on the lades. If you can handle some boobs, though, you will probably survive and get a pretty decent story out of it.
Link: Muv-Luv
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