June 2021 Game of the Month: Diabolik Lovers: Haunted Dark Bridal

[alias_sqbr]

The game of the month for June is Diabolik Lovers: Haunted Dark Bridal! This is the first game in a gothic horror romance series from Otomate about a girl who finds herself trapped in a house with a family of vampire brothers.

“The girl learns her fate amongst the beautiful scent of wild roses. The girl encounters them, as if being drawn there by the threads of fate. ‘Yours Truly is going to take her every first experience.’ ‘Tell me, do you hate me? Do you want to learn more about me?’ ‘Does it hurt? You poor thing... Okay, I'll make it hurt even more, little bitch.’ ‘I know why you came to this house. This blood (of yours) is of the finest quality.’ ‘Humans are nothing more than containers of blood.’ ‘Stay out of my business! Come any closer, and I'll destroy you!’

I haven't played the game myself but hear that these vampire boys are all sadistic assholes and their angsty backstories contain common triggers like rape and incest. But it is from all accounts a lot of fun if you're into this sort of thing. There's also a mechanic which allows the player character to be the sadistic one, which sounds interesting.

It's not available officially in English, but there's lots of fan translations. Here's a patch for the PS Vita, and here's a video of the prologue with English subtitles.

There'a an anime, which does have an official English translation, as well as manga, drama CDs, music CDs and fanbooks.

It's suffered a bit in the West from the post-Twilight "women can't recognise that dating creepy vampires would be a bad idea irl" discourse, which I feel obliged to push back against on principle as someone into plenty of Terrible Otome Boys, even if these particular ones are too much for me. Also I love that the sequel is called MORE BLOOD in allcaps. This is a game series that is what it is 100%.

Has anyone here played it, or otherwise experienced the story? If the links I found via a brief google are wrong, please let me know!

Comments

[caramarie]

I am into vampires and okay with terrible love interests and sadism, so I checked out the anime when it came out and quite enjoyed it. I'm not sure I can say it is any good, but there are some quality bloodsucking sequences and the episodes are very short, so I was happy. I didn't enjoy the second series as much – I was too invested in the first set of terrible boyfriends to wanna care about a second.

I played Dark Bridal after that, but only Laito's route all the way through (he's the one in the fedora). Somehow I don't feel this speaks well of my tastes haha. The game is quite vignette-y in terms of a structure ... or possibly some of the connective tissue was lost on account of my poor Japanese. There was enough bloodsucking to hold my interest anyway.

I have some of the tie-in manga too. That's a bit closer to the game experience in terms of following the different routes rather than the more route-neutral way the anime did it.

[alias_sqbr]

Is the sequel anime set after the events of the first anime? I can see that making it hard to get attached, yeah. Looking it up MORE BLOOD is set a month after the first game in an AU where the protagonist didn't do any of the routes, which I guess I can sort of see working.

I am a big fan of bloodsucking myself and have a moderate tolerance for sadism but based on the first episode of the anime these guys are a little too much for me, and worse I have issues with incest, rape, and underage which I can see the backstories setting off, based on what I know of the plot. So I just pine sadly and think about playing Hakuoki again. I did enjoy your vid and am happy the game/anime exists for people who it suits better than me.

[caramarie]

I assumed it was set after the first, although maybe it would have made more sense not to ...

I can totally understand it is not for everyone! Thank god for non-asshole vampire boys whose angsty backstory is being left-handed ;)

[alias_sqbr]

Hey! Don't forget the complex historical situation! (Don't worry, if you have, the game will explain it to you at length)

[scytale]

I read some recaps of all of the routes except Laito and Reiji.

I'm honestly impressed how many different kinds of sadistic assholery they fit into there. I also laughed quite a few times over the recapper's side-comments.

The art is very pretty and from what I've heard of the voice acting, it's great.

I'd like to play it some time; I feel like I would actually enjoy Shu and Subaru's routes (and voice acting!), and it's a coin toss on how I'd feel about Ayato and Kanato.

It's funny because Shu would not be a character I'm interested in generally (too much parenting needed,) but parenting the LI sounds like such a good deal for Yui compared with living in a constant state of bloodsucked terror. After reading Ayato's and Kanato's recaps, my terrible love interest meter was recalibrated. And I actually did like Subaru; from the recap, he mostly felt more Emo Poser Angsty Tsundere Vampire.

[alias_sqbr]

Ha yeah I remember thinking Shu seemed the least stressful after watching episode 1. I always seem to go for slackers in all asshole games, at least they don't put as much effort into being mean.

Do you have a link to the recaps? I'm a bit cautious about watching a LP since there's triggers to look out for but a recap offers more distance.

[scytale]

I always seem to go for slackers in all asshole games, at least they don't put as much effort into being mean.

Haha, yeah. Learning the joys of non-slacking dubcon sadism is part of his arc, though. :P

https://yumemirusekai.wordpress.com/tag/haunted-dark-bridal/ is the blog with the recaps! I felt like they did offer me more distance, but reading four of them in a row was still a bit of a downer. The plot is a bit hard to follow from the recaps, which I think is more about the game than anything else.

[alias_sqbr]

Thank you!

Learning the joys of non-slacking dubcon sadism is part of his arc, though

Haha, of course it is.