Mobile games (including on your PC/Mac!)

[alias_sqbr]

For anyone else who doesn't have a decent phone and has been pining over all the cool otome games only available for phones: Blue Stacks lets you emulate an android phone on a Mac or PC for free.

It's quite easy to install and use. The only real downside is that it makes my Mac laptop run pretty hot. There's other emulators out there but I haven't tried them.

It connects to your Google Play account so it's quite easy to pay for game content. (Almost...too easy)

And now for some game recs!

Some otome phone games I have (partly) played and enjoyed, with links to posts I made about them:

• Helix Waltz: Patchy but surprisingly involving dress-up game about a girl in a fantasy quasi-European city. Romance hasn't been implemented yet beyond some flirting, but there's 6 female love interests and 20 male ones.
  
• Mystic Messenger: Blank slate girl stumbles into a chat room of friends. High quality writing, annoying real-time chat mechanic. Several love interests are free, and you can grind to pay for the rest, but the deeper you get the more likely you are to shell out real cash. One ambiguously romantic female love interest, six male love interests.
  
• Shall We Date: Demon's Bond: a Hakuoki prequel about a ninja bodyguard who is also a demon chieftan AND a sheltered teenage girl, dealing with a bunch of politics and demon social dynamics in the Sengoku period of Japan. $5 US for each of the five male love interests.
  
• Everlove Rose: A modern woman travels back to the past. This was adequate. Three or four male love interests, I think?

Games I haven't played yet but hear are fun:

• Voltage: Love struck: A variety of games. I played part of "Astoria: Fate's Kiss" years ago just as my phone was giving up the ghost. It turned out not to be the kind of immortal romance I like but was otherwise ok. I hear the pay structure has gotten annoying. Male, female and non binary love interests.
  
• The Arcana: I hear this is well written but that the paygates get frustrating the further in you get. Male, female and non binary love interests.
  
• Dangerous Fellows Zombie apocalypse survival. Zombies FREAK ME OUT, so this isn't for me, but it's an interesting premise. All men.
  
• Ikemen Revolution As far as I can tell this is based on Alice in Wonderland and has fourteen male love interests.
  
• First Love Story (link to clover_zero's review) Highschool romance. Can be played for free but it gets frustrating. m/m, f/f, and f/m!
  
• Shall We Date: Blood In Roses Vampires! Several guys, plus there's a female character who seems to have her own endings, and is into the MC, but I can't tell if she has a full route.
  

Any other games you've enjoyed? Any feelings on games I've mentioned?

Here's an old post talking about phone games I stole some recs from.

Comments

[chrry]

I haven't touched Bluestacks in years, so I don't know how it works currently. But I'd like to recommend MEmu as different option. It's my favorite out of all the emulators I've tried, it's easier to use and it loads faster, at least in my experience.

Though some otome games don't work there*, for example Voltage's paid apps didn't use to work, I'm not sure about Love 365. Their new game Ayakashi RR doesn't work (I tried). But their Party apps should be fine (Samurai Love Ballad Party, Be My Princess Party...). Cybird and Solmare games should work too.

*Some games don't work on rooted devices and I'm guessing it's because to be able to record videos of the screen, you need to root your device. Or at least you had to before? My current phone is not rooted and I can record things, so I'm not sure how this whole thing works now. But yeah, I'm mentioning this because most emulators I've tried are "rooted devices" so they have that issue with some games.


Helix Waltz looks so pretty but I'm not sure I have the energy/patience for a game like that right now orz I can say the same about The Arcana.

Demon's Bond... I bought one of the routes when the game was just released. The white haired boy, I don't remember his name or anything else from the story lol except that it was so... dense? There were so many names and things happening, it was overwhelming. I felt the same playing Hakuoki but I think Demon's Bond is worse in that regard. At least Hakuoki has a glossary lol
I also remember that there was very little romance, at least in the route I played, I'm not sure about the rest. Though I did enjoy the story.

Lovestruck's system can be very frustrating but if you don't mind that, it has many different stories and characters and they're very entertaining. Most people seem to focus on newest stories but I'd recommend giving Speakeasy Tonight a chance too.

I tried Dangerous Fellows a few months ago even though zombie stories are generally boring to me. It was entertaining enough but I found the system too annoying to keep playing.

Blood in Roses has two different MCs and each has their own story. The female character you're talking about is Bridget and she has a full route with CGs and everything. From what I've seen generally she is included in events too and she gets short event stories and clothes, like the guys.
I'm honestly a bit surprised BiR is still getting new content, but I guess it must be popular. I always see people complaining about the game's writing on the facebook page though lol

I was going to mention other games but I feel that my comment is already too long _(：3 」∠ )_

[deborah_judge]

Currently playing Demon's Bond, just finished the Chitose route and loved it. But yes it is very history-dense and while I did like the romance it wasn't really the main focus.

Since I'm Hakuoki obsessed, I got the phone version as well as the PC version. It was worth it, the phone version has the older versions of the routes which were different in some ways, and also some extra scenes. But I wouldn't recommend getting the phone version instead of the PC version, the routes are shorter and there are fewer of them.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, that's interesting, I guess it at least means people can still access the old version if they want.

[alias_sqbr]

Long is good! takes notes

I'll try MEmu, since Bluestacks refuses to download properly on my PC. Thanks!

Helix Waltz requires a LOT of patience, yeah. Especially when it refuses to load at all mutters

I'll check out Speakeasy Tonight!

I can handle a fair amount of bad writing if there's a lady vampire >.>

[chrry]

I hope it works for you! Once I found about MEmu I dumped bluestacks so fast lol.

oh geez.. guess I'll just keep enjoying the memes from the official social media accounts until I have the motivation to try the actual game.

Hope you enjoy Speakeasy Tonight! At first I wasn't too interested but I decided to read the prologue on a whim and I'm glad I did, the story is very entertaining.

lmao go for it then~ Bridget is gorgeous and there are some fanservicey scenes iirc 👀

[chrry]

Is it the same translation in both versions? I heard the one for the PC/Vita release was kinda controversial, so I'm curious now~

[deborah_judge]

No the translation is different and there are a couple important scenes where I thought the phone app translation was much better, in particular on Saito's route and Heusuke's route.

[chrry]

Oh, good to know! I've been wondering about the PC/Vita translation for some time but I don't know japanese so I can't read the original, or understand why some people thought certain translation choices were bad. Reading a different translation might shed some light on that~

I actually got this version years ago but never touched it (too much for my phone at the time, too lazy to use emulator), and then I played the PC version instead.

After Edo Blossoms I considered trying this version too, but I wasn't sure if it'd be different enough to be worh it (I don't usually replay games). But after reading your comments I definitely want to play it and see those differences you mention. Thank you!

[deborah_judge]

To be fair, I don't speak Japanese either so I am not sure how many of the differences because of the translation and how much it's just that the original is different. There are definitely also plot-related changes (a somewhat major one in the Heisuke route) that aren't about the translation.

Happy to talk more about this, especially if you do end up playing the different versions.

[chrry]

Good point, I'll keep that in mind too.
That sounds so intriguing! I guess I'll have to read Heisuke's route first 👀 tho I'm not sure when I will exactly because when I have time to play stuff, I like to prioritize games I haven't completed/played yet. But I'll definitely play this version at some point. And I'd love to talk more about this topic, I find these things very interesting~