While ef-A Fairy Tale of the Two is actually two titles which have been available since 2012 and 2013(although the visual novel originally released in 2006 and 08 respectively), recently both volumes have been re-released as a physical hard copy bundle. And like the title suggests, it's a quite the tale. 

The visual novel is actually a very long story that because of it's length, was split into two volumes, The First Tale and the Latter Tale. It's comprised of four chapters, and a Final Epilogue Chapter. The Epilogue chapter is weird though, as it's actually two more chapters crammed into one, with the actual epilogue at the end. I feel like perhaps it might have been better to just make a third volume, but I digress. The story is about a mysterious man and woman who reunited in a church after a long period of time apart. They ask each other what they've been doing lately, but the woman, Yuuko, goes first. And so they begin to tell each other about encounters with young couples they've met, and their blossoming love stories. And that's the real story of the game. A collection of tales of other people meeting and falling into love with each other, and more importantly, how they relate to Yuuko and the man. As an aside, you won't learn the man's name until the third chapter.

While the first chapter is a basic light-hearted, slice of life love story, with chapter two being the story that resolves that particular arc, Chapters 3-6 get a bit darker and more dramatic. In fact, there isn't any resolution in chapter 4 until the actual epilogue. I think it's also important to state that chapters 4 and 5 have trigger warnings, so brace yourselves. And even though this visual novel does have sexual content, it's extremely light, but also tasteful. Most of the sex scenes are shown at the conclusion of each chapter, so if you came expecting ecchi, be disappointed. This visual novel exists for those who want a beautiful story with interesting and deep characters. It should be noted however that the games uses mosaics to censor the genitals. I guess it was done at the author's request, or else the localization didn't have the resources to un-censor them. The localization is well done, although you might have to mess with the font type facing for The Latter Tales. This is because usually a lot of words can show up in the text box, and the size of the font can often have some words get cutoff. Also there are some minor typos, but it's mostly spot on. The collection is an interesting hybridization of both a kinetic visual novel and branching paths. While the first two chapters have branching paths, most of them lead to bad endings. And In chapter three, there a couple choices that don't actually matter in the end. Chapters 4-6 are read only. 

There are some issues outside of font troubles though. The fact that the game is so long is one. The length could have been shortened if there weren't as many filler parts of the story dragging the game a bit. While those extra parts are nice, it belies the novel's title as a tale. Tales are supposed to be relatively shorter. Also the fifth and sixth chapters have sub-chapters with titles for easy reference, but this feature isn't present in chapters 1-4. Save files do have the ability to leave notes though. It would have been nice to have some type of chapter selection as well. On another note, the game's GUI is actually somewhat primitive, even by 2006/08 standards. There's a pop up menu, but interacting with the buttons can be difficult, as you have to be within the hit-box, otherwise the text window collapses or the dialog advances instead. Thankfully right clicking a menu box is still possible, as is the top menu. But even with these flaws, ef-A Fairy Tale of the Two is a great visual novel to check out, despite it's length and hefty price-tag, digital or hard-copy(which comes with some extra swag). 

The Bottom Line: A great visual novel with an interesting story that spans a good length of time, and is light on the sexual content for those not really into that. 

Acquisition Method: This game's review copy was a digital code provided by MangaGamer.