Want to escape to experience a slow life in the countryside with your sister? A Sex-obsessed Brother in the Country, and his Traditional, Sickly Sister (also known by the much shorter title: Country Siblings) lets you take it slow while working together to build up your sister’s health.
Considering the official title of this visual novel with raising-simulator elements, you might expect it to be a nonstop marathon of sex scenes and adult content. While there’s certainly plenty of that, you’d be wrong if you think that’s all there is to it.
Life with Asumi
Asumi has extremely severe asthma and has been hospitalized for most of her life. With even the smallest amount of exhaust fumes likely to trigger an attack, she’s been unable to live a normal life or experience life outside of the hospital.
Her brother has been working to support her ever since their mother died, enough so that they can barely see each other. Then one day it all changes. Their absentee father passes away, leaving them an inheritance with a single condition: that the brother takes care of Asumi for the rest of his life.
With this, they finally achieve their dream of being able to live together, buying a rundown house out in the countryside away from any fumes or pollution. But there are plenty of challenges to overcome. Her condition means that she’s one bad attack away from the grave, and so they need to prove that Asumi is living a healthy life to keep living together.
According to Doctor Ane who frequently checks in on them, leading a healthy life isn’t just about physical health: it’s about happiness too. Living in the middle of nowhere with a shaky electrical supply and nothing to do isn’t a particularly good life. They need to strive to lead a healthy and happy life or Asumi will be sent straight back to the hospital.
Healing Together
Before we even get to the more notable sexual aspects of A Sex-obsessed Brother in the Country, and his Traditional, Sickly Sister, it spends the first couple of hours establishing their new life. It doesn’t just establish it and then move on to the adult scenes though. There is an actual story with a level of emotional depth to unveil here.
With various healthy life goals set along the way, Asumi and her brother set about improving the house and making their life more convenient. This gives the opportunity for plenty of slice-of-life moments as they make repairs, find hobbies, and explore their new circumstances.
Asumi is incredibly happy to live with her brother and never misses a chance to show this. There are plenty of sugary sweet scenes between the two throughout where she mentions little things like wanting to walk with him, cook for him, and how she never really wants to be apart for even a day. Even before they establish a romantic relationship, she sounds really enthusiastic about the idea of taking a bath together when it comes up as a joke. Her brother is just as attached and often reflects on his desire to protect her and the memories of their childhood, alongside pure gushing about how cute and sweet she is. They both clearly show throughout the story how they’re willing to work to make sure this new life together works out, even if they might make a few mistakes along the way.
There are plenty of funny moments as well. The doctor occasionally visits and brings a lot of energy to scenes, especially when Asumi treats her like a kid due to her young appearance. Asumi ends up in an (obviously one-sided) rivalry with the robot vacuum too, which did get me laughing. There are also plenty of moments of Asumi trying new things too, which may not always work out. Not only did this add humor, but it helped to show how life is changing for the better and expanding for them.
Most impactful however were the more serious moments. Grief over their mother and reflections on their lack of relationship with their father are explored, as are topics like their lack of freedom until now due to both of their circumstances. Less somber but just as serious is their desire to do everything to stay together and the romance that develops between them. But they’re always reminded that this life could end at any time, no matter how hard they work for it.
Country Siblings really surprised me with just how powerful some of the moments were, despite supposedly being about a sex-obsessed brother. There’s plenty of lust on display here, but even more love. And even though Asumi is the one who is sick, her brother has his own issues that she can help to heal.
Raising an Asumi
Moving onto the simulation gameplay for a moment, Country Siblings uses a mix of systems to progress through the story.
As adorable as Doctor Ane can be, she’s used as a looming threat throughout the game. She’ll visit you at set intervals to set goals and check your progress. These involve raising Asumi’s maximum HP and sometimes completing a task, which may involve using up more HP than the current max depending on your progress.
Each time she visits, she’ll give you a countdown of days until her next visit. Any activity you do takes up one day, including resting to recover HP, so it’s a case of balancing activity cost in HP, the benefits received, and her remaining HP.
Activities either raise maximum HP, happiness, or both. Generally, the pattern is that adult events raise HP the most but don’t raise happiness, despite how happy Asumi seems in the scenes themselves. Instead story-related or slice-of-life scenes raise this.
Doctor Ane is kind enough to allow you to postpone visits a couple of times (three if you complete a certain event), so it’s not the end of the world if you don’t meet a deadline.
Thrown into the mix are Asumi’s feelings which change not quite randomly, but fairly unpredictably. These add buffs or debuffs, leaving you using more or less HP on certain types of activities. They do sometimes feel a little odd narratively though. Due to their nature, Asumi will sometimes be fine, rest then wake up tired, or be tired, do something exhausting, then wake up fine. It’s forgivable as it does happen in real life too, but I was a little offput.
There aren’t too many factors to keep track of here, so the balancing act is fairly simple. If all you’re doing is striving to meet requirements by that deadline, it’s actually really easy even without using postponements. However, reaching the true end (done by raising both HP and happiness) requires keeping close track of everything, despite the simplicity of the mechanics themselves. It’s just fairly tight to meet the requirements within the timeline and possible that you can get unlucky with Asumi’s moods.
Of course, it’s only simple if you understand what you’re doing and this is a weakness of Country Siblings. It often doesn’t explain the functions well enough. It doesn’t help that even in the English version’s tutorial, it shows Japanese screenshots. We’ve provided a guide with some hints and tips to help.
Escalating Scenes
As you complete events and pass Doctor Ane’s exams in Country Siblings, it may unlock further events. This is the case for both regular scenes, adult scenes, and combinations of the two.
To give an example, you can repair the indoor toilet as part of fixing the house, which unlocks the chance to install a bidet as a convenience, which then leads toward a path of escalating anal scenes. Some are more innocent, such as exploring their family history or getting to know more about their doctor.
Country Siblings boasts 54 normal event scenes and 74 adult event scenes in its advertising, but the latter is a little misleading. It’s 37 initial adult events and 37 more which are essentially slightly different reprises of them with minimal lead-in. It’s still a lot though, especially considering the low price of this title.
I did enjoy the escalating nature of this system, with it feeling like there was often a natural progression between events. It worked well to build up the storylines about their family and circumstances, along with increasing the intensity of the lewd scenes.
With that said, it’s not perfect. As you can flexibly choose scenes at any time, this occasionally leads to moments of mismatch. In one example, Asumi and her brother were acting shy about nudity around each other in the bath. In that playthrough, this was after he suspended her from the ceiling in bondage gear at her request. We were long past the point of blushing and averted looks.
Asumi is Horny (Not Just Her Status)
As mentioned, there are quite a few H-scenes in Country Siblings. It includes oral, anal, light S&M, watersports, outdoor activities, and more general types of scenes. Most of the scenes are reasonably short, which I prefer as I do find in some visual novels they drag on too long.
While fetishes are escalated and explored, there’s always an undercurrent of love for each other and most scenes have some sort of lead-in where this is expressed in some form. While it might fall into the nukige type of visual novel with a lot of sexual content, even the adult content keeps that sweetness more typical of the light-hearted moege type.
When it comes to the adult side of Country Siblings, I particularly liked how it showed Asumi becoming more open about her desires, researching things herself, and starting to initiate, despite being reserved. The title refers to a sex-obsessed brother, but it felt like it should be a sex-obsessed sister due to how much Asumi becomes interested in sex. It’s suspicious how Asumi just so happens to keep finding S&M books.
Beautiful Countryside Life
A Sex-obsessed Brother in the Country, and his Traditional, Sickly Sister has some absolutely beautiful artwork, which is primarily by K-ko, the same artist who worked Onii♥Kiss: Onii-chan, Where’s My Kiss?! and Hold Me Tight All Night Onii-chan! both of which have the same director as this title. There are 60 CGs and every one of them looks amazing, though I particularly liked the expression on Asumi’s face during some of the later H-events and the portrayal of some of the more casual moments together. If you keep your eyes open, you’ll also see a homage to a certain classic visual novel.
Amachi Haru, the voice actress for Asumi, also has quite a resume having played parts in titles such as Da Capo 5, Nukitashi, and Hentai Prison, among many others. The music is certainly nice too, helping to establish the countryside atmosphere. It is a little limited with only 19 tracks (13 of these as BGM tracks) but it works well.
You might be surprised to hear that the opening song is in both English and Japanese. It’s by Kitty-tama, an American who has sang songs for a number of untranslated titles (primarily by Appetite) but also works for English-language publishers in editing and quality checking. The ending song is by Maki Nanari, who has worked on a number of titles, notably Fureraba ~Friend to Lover~.
Minor Snags
While I certainly enjoyed Country Siblings, not everything is perfect. Aside from the little things already mentioned, one to point out is the translation.
Sister Position’s previous title (Desperate Virgin Brother & Rebellious Little Sister) was translated via AI translation, which fortunately was not the case here. Country Siblings got an actual human translation and for the most part, it’s very good. It could do with an editing pass though. Some little mistakes in the text occur along the lines of typos, small mistakes like using me instead of you, and so on. It’s enough that it’s noticeable, but not enough that I felt it affected my experience much most of the time. Occasional scenes have a higher frequency of errors though, to the point where it causes a little frustration.
There are also some other very minor issues, like highlighting the BGM button changing it to the wrong language variant, and rare occasions where the text box sprite is covering part of a word. At one point some menu text remained in place until a restart. Nothing that was really a problem, but just things that show it could have used a little more checking.
Verdict
A Sex-obsessed Brother in the Country, and his Traditional, Sickly Sister really was a surprise. It has emotionally touching moments, characters who are easy to root for, and actual romance, along with an abundance of adult scenes. Its alternate title of Country Siblings really feels more apt as this does not come across as the tale of someone who is sex-obsessed, but as a pair of siblings who are really in love and need each other for their goal of a happy and healthy life.
A SEX-OBSESSED BROTHER IN THE COUNTRY, AND HIS TRADITIONAL, SICKLY SISTER (COUNTRY SIBLINGS) IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another 18+ visual novel, you might want to check out Angelic☆Chaos RE-BOOT! We have also covered a wide variety of visual novels both original to English and localized from Japanese and other languages, which you can check out here.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
