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otome_gamesSo I just finished the game of the month and it was great! It's currently only available for the Switch.
Here's all the reaction posts I made while playing, these summarise the key events of the story.
The heroine is a 19 year old Japanese office worker who has inherited her recently deceased grandfather's coffee shop. But when she arrives she discovers a SECRET DOOR TO OTHER WORLDS: it turns out the cafe was popular with SUPERNATURAL CREATURES, specifically a VARIETY OF HOT DUDES.
Since they're all very fond of the cafe, and were close to her grandfather, they offer to help her out. But then a foxy middle aged SHADY GOVERNMENT AGENT tells her these creatures are DANGEROUS and she should SHUT THE CAFE DOWN!!
WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT???
Answer: a bunch of cute slice of life magical coffee shop slice of life, splitting into one of five routes that also start out very cute...and then quickly escalate to INTENSELY BATSHIT FANTASY MELODRAMA with lots of ANGSTY MASS MURDERERS and SURPRISE TWISTS.
The melodrama is all a lot of ridiculous fun, and the romances are very cute. All the guys are basically sweet and decent, with Secret Angsty Guilt, and some plot elements get re-used, but there's still moderate variety and it all combines together into an enjoyable, if implausible, fantasy story.
Good things:
Great art, design, writing, voice acting.
Endearing cast who have lovely friendships with each other.
Thrills, plot, worldbuilding, heartwarming moments, moral complexity, and angst with a happy ending.
The final route, Misyr, ties everything up pretty well.
YMMV:
Mild horror elements
Otomate are REALLY into redeeming well-intentioned mass murderers. I don't object on principle but it gets a little samey and not all of the redemptions worked for me.
More focus on story than romance.
It's all very chaste, with nothing more than a few briefly described kisses.
Half-assed attempts to subvert gender roles in some of the fantasy societies.
Thinly veiled Christianity as villain.
Intense, shippy, but no-homoed m/m friendships.
Violence from the love interest towards the heroine For Reasons.
Minor consent issues from villains but never the love interests.
While it's all fairly heternormative, the dudes are more protective and kind than domineering, and it's as much because she's a human civilian as because she's a woman.
One of the love interests is SUPER into otome games.
The heroine is a 19 year old independent adult, all the love interests except Ignis are MUCH older.
Lots of cultural/biological differences between species and heavy handed tolerance metaphors.
Bad things:
The translation is readable but patchy, with spelling mistakes and awkward wording.
Il pinged as quasi-austistic to me and the start of his route hit some very uncomfortable buttons with how everyone but Kotone treated him.
The treatment of a dark skinned character felt a bit unfortunate.
The worldbuilding is a bit inconsistent and silly.
The love interests in the order I played them, they're all kind hearted woobies with SECRET PAIN:
Canus the headless knight: polite reserved Knight type that gets flustered by flirting. Parts of his romance didn't quite click for me but he's a lovely guy.
Il the fallen angel: gentle eccentric who likes to stay in his room all day playing otome games and swooning about the beauty of love. I love him, especially because he felt a bit like The Girl of the relationship, but his route hit some weird buttons for me because his issues with social cues felt a bit like autism being handled badly. Also the plot is a little similar to Canus's so it might have been better not to play them so close together.
Kaoru Rindo the middle aged government agent: Gentlemanly and a little flirty, lives for his work. I don't normally like this kind of guy but enjoyed this route more than I expected to!
Ignis the fire beast: a sweet jock under a grumpy hotheaded tsundere warlord exterior. The most Manly and Dominant of the guys but still very endearing. This route was the sexiest and had the most confronting horror elements.
Misyr the ancient Demon King: Charming and wryly cheerful with a dark sense of humour. Very kind and caring towards Kotone right from the start. His route is a very romantic and effective ending to the whole story.
Clockwise from the bottom: Il, Rindo, Canus, Misyr, Ignis, and Kotone in the centre.
Here's all the reaction posts I made while playing, these summarise the key events of the story.
The heroine is a 19 year old Japanese office worker who has inherited her recently deceased grandfather's coffee shop. But when she arrives she discovers a SECRET DOOR TO OTHER WORLDS: it turns out the cafe was popular with SUPERNATURAL CREATURES, specifically a VARIETY OF HOT DUDES.
Since they're all very fond of the cafe, and were close to her grandfather, they offer to help her out. But then a foxy middle aged SHADY GOVERNMENT AGENT tells her these creatures are DANGEROUS and she should SHUT THE CAFE DOWN!!
WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT???
Answer: a bunch of cute slice of life magical coffee shop slice of life, splitting into one of five routes that also start out very cute...and then quickly escalate to INTENSELY BATSHIT FANTASY MELODRAMA with lots of ANGSTY MASS MURDERERS and SURPRISE TWISTS.
The melodrama is all a lot of ridiculous fun, and the romances are very cute. All the guys are basically sweet and decent, with Secret Angsty Guilt, and some plot elements get re-used, but there's still moderate variety and it all combines together into an enjoyable, if implausible, fantasy story.
Good things:
Great art, design, writing, voice acting.
Endearing cast who have lovely friendships with each other.
Thrills, plot, worldbuilding, heartwarming moments, moral complexity, and angst with a happy ending.
The final route, Misyr, ties everything up pretty well.
YMMV:
Mild horror elements
Otomate are REALLY into redeeming well-intentioned mass murderers. I don't object on principle but it gets a little samey and not all of the redemptions worked for me.
More focus on story than romance.
It's all very chaste, with nothing more than a few briefly described kisses.
Half-assed attempts to subvert gender roles in some of the fantasy societies.
Thinly veiled Christianity as villain.
Intense, shippy, but no-homoed m/m friendships.
Violence from the love interest towards the heroine For Reasons.
Minor consent issues from villains but never the love interests.
While it's all fairly heternormative, the dudes are more protective and kind than domineering, and it's as much because she's a human civilian as because she's a woman.
One of the love interests is SUPER into otome games.
The heroine is a 19 year old independent adult, all the love interests except Ignis are MUCH older.
Lots of cultural/biological differences between species and heavy handed tolerance metaphors.
Bad things:
The translation is readable but patchy, with spelling mistakes and awkward wording.
Il pinged as quasi-austistic to me and the start of his route hit some very uncomfortable buttons with how everyone but Kotone treated him.
The treatment of a dark skinned character felt a bit unfortunate.
The worldbuilding is a bit inconsistent and silly.
The love interests in the order I played them, they're all kind hearted woobies with SECRET PAIN:
Canus the headless knight: polite reserved Knight type that gets flustered by flirting. Parts of his romance didn't quite click for me but he's a lovely guy.
Il the fallen angel: gentle eccentric who likes to stay in his room all day playing otome games and swooning about the beauty of love. I love him, especially because he felt a bit like The Girl of the relationship, but his route hit some weird buttons for me because his issues with social cues felt a bit like autism being handled badly. Also the plot is a little similar to Canus's so it might have been better not to play them so close together.
Kaoru Rindo the middle aged government agent: Gentlemanly and a little flirty, lives for his work. I don't normally like this kind of guy but enjoyed this route more than I expected to!
Ignis the fire beast: a sweet jock under a grumpy hotheaded tsundere warlord exterior. The most Manly and Dominant of the guys but still very endearing. This route was the sexiest and had the most confronting horror elements.
Misyr the ancient Demon King: Charming and wryly cheerful with a dark sense of humour. Very kind and caring towards Kotone right from the start. His route is a very romantic and effective ending to the whole story.
Clockwise from the bottom: Il, Rindo, Canus, Misyr, Ignis, and Kotone in the centre.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-16 20:31 (UTC)Thanks for the rec, the non-spoilery summary, and the recaps! They've been such a delight to follow on your blog (I'm still holding off on reading Misyr's so I have some surprises ;))
His route is a very romantic and effective ending to the whole story.
I'm intrigued by this! Since I think I recall you mentioning in an earlier recap that you weren't sure about this one.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-17 02:16 (UTC)Ah it's so nice to hear you enjoyed them!
I was worried Misyr would be too much like Lupin from Code Realise but Misyr's angst turned out to be much more to my taste than Lupin's (I don't think "Otomate LI has secret angst" counts as a spoiler haha)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-17 00:51 (UTC)The romance in Cafe Enchante seemed very toned down as the game felt more story driven. The romance that was there was very cute, but I felt it could have been better.
But I agree! I loved the camaraderie in this game. The friendship between the main characters was very heartwarming, and it was nice to see how well they got along with each other.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-17 01:44 (UTC)That's a good point about it being story driven, I should add that to the YMMV section. But yes they are all so lovely together, and I am really happy that they're all still friends in every good ending.