A community for otome/dating sim fans

Review: Lost in Secular Love

Sat, 22 Jan 2022 22:54:48 GMT

Posted by: alias_sqbr

This is a very enjoyable Chinese m/f dating sim from the makers of "My Vow To My Liege", about being a poor noblewoman who pretends to be devoutly religious to get an arranged marriage with a rich not!Buddhist monk to save her impoverished family.

There are three love interests:
1) the Perfect Not!Buddhist fiance, at first MC feels defensively guilty about her pretense but then he shows himself to be a mean dom and she is confusedly into it. This was not entirely my thing but was certainly an experience, with Sexy Priest tropes that are probably hotter if you grew up Buddhist. At one point she worries there's going to be consent issues but it ends up fine.
2) Fiance's pure-hearted younger brother who was raised to be Above Worldy Desires. This was DELIGHTFUL, full of angsty repressed pining with a solid foundation of very cute friendship.
3) MC's grumpy childhood friend who happened to become a monk, he is pissy about the gold-digging and also aware she's engaged to his kinda-boss so there's a lot of complicated tsundere pining. This was pretty cute!

There's more other female characters than you might expect given the premise. In every route MC is encouraged to seek her own happiness instead of just caring about her family, and be honest instead of saying what people want to hear. There was some interesting philosophising about balancing worldly needs like money and love with 'enlightened' detachment, but mostly it's just slice of life romance without much plot.

The sex scenes were all a little no-no-yes dubcon but in a way I could roll with, she's overall very happy and into everything. I did one bad end and found it a bit meh so didn't do the others.

You can choose whether the monks are bald, and I chose to give them hair, because I am shallow >.>

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Review: My Vow To My Liege

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 07:59:30 GMT

Posted by: alias_sqbr

I really enjoyed the Chinese fantasy m/f romance visual novel My Vow To My Liege, historical RPF set in the 5th Century BC Kingdom of Ng/Wu about various real and mythical people. The protagonist is King Fuchai, a woman cross-dressing for Reasons (to do with Evil Dragons)

It's well made, with good art, UI, music, and (Mandarin) voice acting. The writing is pretty good, too, a little repetitive in parts and with some pacing issues but made with a lot of heart. The English translation was done by one of the writers and is a little clunky and in need of proof-reading but has some moments of real poetry. And the game is LONG, you get a ridiculous amount of story for the low price.

Content notes for the game: suicide, violence, incest (not a love interest), rape (not from a love interest), age gap ships, slavery, fatphobia, hurtful gender reveal, master-slave relationship, major character death, violence between love interests

Here's the masterlist of my reaction posts and a character guide.

(More thoughts at my blog, no spoilers)

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Not Quite Otome

Thu, 03 Jun 2021 12:54:00 GMT

Posted by: alias_sqbr

I know I'm not the only one who keeps wanting to talk about/rec games here but they're not quite otome, even though they feel otome-ish in their appeal.

So this is the post for discussing our favourite not-quite-otome! There's no objective definition, any game (or almost-game) counts if it feels otome-ish to you. I imagine we'll all draw the lines differently, but that's fun to compare in and of itself.

I'll put my own examples in a comment, and would love to hear about yours!

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7'Scarlet Review

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 04:34:38 GMT

Posted by: alias_sqbr

7'scarlet is a mystery m/f romance game written by Tomio Kanazawa, the producer of the Twin-Peaks-esque Deadly Premonition, for Otomate, makers of Hakuoki, Psychdelica of the Black Butterfly etc. The protagonist, Ichiko, is investigating the disappearance of her brother in a small country town.

I overall quite enjoyed this, some of the plot was a bit silly or repetitive, and the heroine is a bit of a blank slate everyone loves Just Because. But I got romance feels and enjoyed trying to figure out the mystery, and it is a lot more good-hearted and compassionate than most murder mysteries. Except the final Secret End, which was squicky and blah and imo is fine to just skip.

I wrote up a longer review and a bunch of reaction posts at my blog, including some content notes.

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Top 10 Visual Novels to Play on Valentine’s Day!

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 00:53:37 GMT

Posted by: alias_sqbr

Top 10 Visual Novels to Play on Valentine’s Day! via VNGameDen

I thought this was a cute and timely article, even if I don't 100% agree with their tastes.

I personally enjoyed Code Realise, Akash: Path of the Five, Hustle Cat, and Mermaid Splash! Passion Festival (which is f/f) But while Roommates, Arcade Spirits, and Our Life: Beginnings & Always weren't terrible they didn't click for me, and I haven't played the others.

What about you?

I recently discovered VNGameDen, who post regular Visual Novel reviews. Does anyone know of any other visual novel/otome etc review sites?

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Cafe Enchante: Review and Reactions

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 13:59:48 GMT

Posted by: alias_sqbr

So 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???

( Read more... )

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Akash: Path of the Five

Sun, 04 Oct 2020 13:40:48 GMT

Posted by: alias_sqbr

This is a fun m/f dating sim set in a fantasy world. You play The Only Girl Elemental as she decides how she feels about magic, love, and the expectations placed upon her to Make Magic Babies. It's not super deep but is fairly well written, with ok art and voice acting, an entertaining fantasy plot, and cute romances. I laughed out loud a few times and had mild but enjoyable feels. While mildly sexy, it uses it's premise for The Most Special Girl power fantasy, not dubcon porniness.

It gets a bit repetitive plotwise, and has a lot of cute, bantery, low-conflict friends-to-lovers. But it's a lot of fun for what it is, and I'm surprised I haven't heard more people talking about it.

My full review

Buy the game for $25US

It was also in the Bundle for Black Trans Lives, if anyone else bought that.

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Code Realize!

Fri, 02 Oct 2020 03:25:57 GMT

Posted by: alias_sqbr

A dating sim about a young woman who destroys everything she touches teaming up with a group of men (loosely based on fictional characters like Victor Frankenstein) to save Steampunk England from her mad scientist father.

Overall I really enjoyed this game! It's a wild, romantic, and well-made ride. Lots of completely ridiculous sexy science and scientists :D Some parts didn't click for me but generally for reasons specific to my tastes (eg I'm not a fan of serial killer plots or love interests who are sure the heroine is into them from the start) I have very mixed feelings on the treatment of trauma and genocide/war crimes but...it tried?

Here's my reaction posts.

Looking over them again made me want to dig out my Playstation and do some of the DLC I never got around to playing.

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Brothers Conflict, a rec post

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 07:03:48 GMT

Posted by: 22degreehalo

Over the last year and a half, Kaylaslovely on youtube has been translating Brothers Conflict via youtube video subtitles, though a lot of people still don't seem to be aware. I've been enjoying it a lot, so I've meant to put together a promo post, but never got around to it. But she just finished Masaomi's route all the way up to the epilogue (after starting with Tsubaki's, which also covers the common route), meaning that the next video will be the vote for which character will be translated next! If you've been interested in Brothers Conflict at all, now is a great time to check it out! :)

Anyway, for a brief summary, Brothers Conflict is an otome game that was first released on PSP in 2012. It was actually split into two different games, though - Brilliant Blue and Passion Pink. That was because of the huge number of love interests - 7 in each game, for 14 overall! (Two characters are introduced late into the story, and one is an outright secret character.) Over time, it was released on Vita and Switch, where they were combined into a single game Precious Baby where you date everyone.

( More info and character bios below! )

Okay! I hope this post has given a pretty good introduction, so anyone who might've been interested will have a good idea at this point whether to check it out. It definitely won't be for all otoge players, but for those looking for a sweet, low-conflict everyday romance (who don't mind stepsibling romance), I'd definitely recommend it!

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Favourite Otome with LGBTQ+ Characters

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 10:50:43 GMT

Posted by: alias_sqbr

I love otome, but since it's primarily about m/f relationships it can be a bit heteronormative sometimes. But not always!

To celebrate Hustle Cat as game of the month, let's talk about our favourite otome games with significant LGBTQ+ characters. That's games with variable gender protagonists and female or non binary love interests, but also m/f romances where one or both characters are trans/bi/asexual etc, or where there's cool LGBTQ+ side characters.

I tend to personally only classify games as otome if they're aimed at women and let you play as a woman romancing at least one guy. But if it feels like otome to you then rec it!

My personal recs are under the cut, with links to longer reviews/guides where I have one.
( Read more... )

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