Review - Kiyori City and the Takai Hotel ⭐️
Kiyori City is an immersive and truly stunning creation that you need to go and visit. In fact, here’s the LM if you don't want to read any further.
Especially if you like neon, urban environments and incredible design, you will love it.
OK that's the ten second summary. Here's the full review, where I'll also talk about the Takai Hotel in Kiyori City, where Ulrika Ferraris and myself have been staying over the last few days..
Kiyori City - What you need to know
Kiyori City is an extension of another Asian urban sim also called Kiyori, owned by Jasmine Kiyori. Jasmine's original sim is a blend of various Far East themes.
Her new sim, Kiyori City, (the two are connected by a bridge) is meant to be a mix of Seoul and Tokyo. I’ve talked in the past about the difficulty of faithfully recreating an RL location in SL, and theming it like this, rather than trying to make a replica is for me the right way to go.
As well as being brand new, it's designed to be the cleaner of the two sims, with the original Kiyori now having more of a red light district feel about it, complete with a Love Hotel.
I'm a sucker for neon and urban environments and a few lag issues aside, I enjoyed visiting the older Kiyori sim.
But the new Kiyori City? I’ve loved discovering it over the past few days. So much so that I'm giving serious consideration to actually living here.
Jasmine brought in her long-time collaborator Megan Prumier to work with her on the build and the end result is astonishing.
The level of detail, down to the billboards and ads is amazing, and I can't even begin to imagine how much work went into this.
Hopefully the images will tell their own story, but the sim includes a K-Pop bar (a good tip to hang out with friends, LM is here), a Maid Cafe, an art gallery a cat cafe, a Japanese blues and rock bar and the Takai Hotel - more on that in a moment.
Kiyori City is immersive, it draws you in. And as well as the level of detail I loved walking around the streets and discovering little corners, alleyways and alcoves.
Whether you like SL hotels or not, go to Kiyori City. It deserves the traffic, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
The Takai Hotel
Onto the Takai Hotel, one of the centre-pieces of Kiyori City.
Unlike the Hotel Eroyado in the original sim, which is a love hotel, this is meant to be a proper Asian themed luxury hotel.
It only has a handful of rooms and suites starting from 695L a night, but it has facilities that are pretty unique.
Yes, other SL hotels have a restaurant, but here the restaurant looks out over neon signs and you have a group of mesh sushi chefs going through a routine at the front.
Other places have a spa, but rather than having RP spa attendants, Jasmine has put in a bot masseuse. Pay the tip jar, and she'll do her (PG!) stuff.
And then there is the casino. Which is bright, big, loud and outrageously fun.
The rooms
We stayed in the biggest suite, the Sora Penthouse Suite. This has a downstairs with a kitchen, living room and huge bathroom. And then the bedroom is upstairs.
The bedroom has a Maddox Adult bed, and a jacuzzi that overlooks the city lights.
Other things to note
These are small things, but some of the PG anims (like in the restaurant) did not look 100% right. And there is a bit of lag, though I found it less of a problem than in the original Kiyori sim. For reference, I use Firestorm on a 2019 Macbook Pro, with a 5G wireless Internet connection.
As mentioned, hotel rooms start at 695L, you pay at reception.
The rooms have adult furniture as does most of the rest of the hotel. However the wider sim is moderate (there are adult venues in the originali sim, get to it by crossing the bridge).
Conclusion
Visit Kiyori City. That's the conclusion. And bring your significant other to the Takai Hotel. They will thank you for it.
Scores
Overall look and feel - 5/5
The facilities - 5/5
The rooms - 4.5 / 5
The animations - 3.5 / 5