datingsimreviews

[datingsimreviews]

Backstage pass, is yet another stat raiser dating sim, but it makes up for that by being very LGBT and also the first if only very ace dating sim I’ve seen.

No joke, if you’re ace and looking into dating sims get backstage pass, not only is there one asexual character but you can do the friend routes if you aren’t interested in any romance.

Summary: Backstage Pass is about the entertainment industry and what one girl chooses to do with her life. If she wants to be a make up artist, producer, blogger or so forth. It’s filled with choices.

It has many romancable characters and non-romancable ones and independent endings, but I think what’s most endearing is how it handles mental illness. It focuses on things like social anxiety and some of the side characters have very realistic psychosis that can make them do very scary things, but they aren’t demonized for it by the characters.

 Gameplay: The gameplay is my major gripe with this game, not only is it a stat raiser and a hard one at that, it also has just too many endings and options. One CG involves you having to buy all the outfits and then dress up your character and different varioutions of it. It’s why this is the only dating sim I won’t 100% complete. Sometimes too much overwhelms players and in this case that’s definitely it. Not only that but since the stat raising part of the game is so long it’s annoying to try to get all the endings, like the friend endings. It takes hours to get through the stat raising part and when you’re only getting one or two new scenes it feels not worth it.

 Protagonist/Sian: Sian is a freshman in college which is also nice cuz it’s sometimes hard to find dating sims with adult characters. She’s a make up artist in her free time, but isn’t sure that’s what she wants to do with her life because she gets horrible panic attacks in crowds. Throughout the routes she finds herself and her passions while standing up for herself and her social anxiety and also showing the players around her world and the entertainment industry.

 Adam: The childhood friend of the protagonist, he grew up on the island of Hawaii and is now a Rockstar. I was wondering if in his route they’d go the route of him always having a crush on the protagonist but they didn’t seem to do that. In fact at the end of his route when he proposes he worries that he just wanted the heroine in his life, and thought romantic meant she wouldn’t leave him but then truly realized he wanted her to be with him in a romantic fashion forever. This makes their friend route good too.

He’s a Rockstar and I would have loved to see more of the students react about him being a Rockstar but being a stat raiser game it feels like there was less dialogue. He’s sometimes lazy when it comes to writing his songs and needs to be pushed into it.

John: I was worried about John. He’s Adam’s music producer and an actor. But he’s also 35 while the protagonist is 18. Luckily they handle the age gap in an okay manner. The protagonist is the one to make the first move and the media does hound him about the age gap. He says he’s attracted to creative people and doesn’t really think about the age even though the heroine is insecure about it.

He’s a British guy who’s very much a gentleman, but also very dedicated to his work. He’s been type cast as good characters and throughout the game he works to be a villain in his latest role.

Matthew: A shy model, Matthew doesn’t really like being hounded by girls because he’s very shy. Because of the heroine’s social anxiety she helps him get to know himself and what he wants out of life. He’s worried about how he can only model for so long and eventually decides to help his mom in the administrative capacities and stand up to her, since she’s the one who’s pushing him and his sister in modeling.

I liked him, but as usual I would have appreciated just more if this wasn’t a stat raiser.

Benito: Benito was the character I was most worried about because he’s 15. Did the game handle it okay? Not really. I think I would have enjoyed his character a lot more if he was an adult like the rest of them.

Benito is a magician who’s living on his own so he’s performing for money at the college. The protagonist eventually starts using her blog to advertise publicity for him and the two become closer.

What is Benito’s tragic past making a fifteen year old live on his own you might wonder??? Well you see Benito’s rich parents kept sending Benito off to different boarding schools because Benito would get bored of them, so Benito thought his parents didn’t love him jumped on a flight and said that he was going to a boarding school when he actually just ran away. His parents have no clue what’s up and haven’t for a year. It just feels very rash and childish which doesn’t particularly make me feel like he and Sian are at the same relationship level.

I like magician characters but not this one.

Alvin: Alvin on the other hand is one of my favorite characters and one of the few dating sim characters who is an ace character. Alvin is a complete nerd so he mostly just talks to you about the shows you’re working on. He dresses as comic book characters and writes fun little message boards about movies you two go to watch. He’s really fun and very nice, trying to pay kindness forward.

He went through a hard financial time earlier in his life so he’s helping you as much as he can too by just buying pizza for you or little gifts.

His route was a lot slower romantically than the others because he’s dealing with the fact that even though he’s in love and he likes the protagonist he doesn’t feel like kissing her or any of those heartbeating moments, but the protagonist loves him anyway. His ending line that the protagonist gave him that being with him was worth more than a million kisses was so cute.

 Nicole: Nicole is the female romancable character and as a lesbian I am very biased towards her. But on the other hand I’m a little disappointed with how she came out too. She’s 16, only one year older than Benito and the way she was introduced makes me feel a bit uncomfortable?

She was introduced as Matthew’s girlfriend, so since she was romancable I assumed she’d be the “romancing the villainess” route which I’ve always been a fan of. That she’d get jealous about you romancing her boyfriend Matthew. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. You see she’s actually his sister. Her mom told her to pretend to be his girlfriend to make it so Matthew’s life was easier. And it’s just very uncomfortable that a mother would put her children in a circumstance where they would have to pretend to date and nobody would say it was wrong.

Not only that but even though the heroine and Nicole were dating their interactions didn’t feel very romantic? Nicole said she was into girls and was very up front about that which I loved but the heroine was like “I never thought about girls that way, I guess if it’s you it’s okay.” I like that the heroine is bi but I’m not sure.. Her dialogue felt very straight girl-y.

Nicole’s path consists of her trying to be an actor and a model to prove herself to her mom but realizing she’s horrible at that and getting into administration. I do love her and I love her interests in slasher stuff but I just…Wish she was handled a little better.

 Lloyd: A completely platonic route, Lloyd is a producer for the TV series you start working on and also John’s friend. He’s a gay man so you can’t romance him though and luckily you never “change him” or something.

I really liked Sian and Lloyd’s friendship. It was fun to see it develop. Lloyd was a funny guy, very easy going and just a good adult role model and mentor for Sian. I loved him helping her become his co-producer.

I just love Lloyd.

 Overall this is a great game even if you don’t like stat raisers. If you like the entertainment business I’d suggest getting this and if you’re asexual I haven’t found a game better than this one for you. I like the writers despite the flaws I’ve listed, I love re:alister their other game after all.

I would definitely suggest picking this game up because there’s no other like this!!!

[datingsimreviews]

Dandelion wishes brought to you is a great game- provided you can get past the stat raising elements of it.

 Summary: Dandelion follows a Heejung a girl who is in college and tries to make her mother proud, even if it means sacrificing her own dreams. She’s kinda suffocated under her mom and doesn’t really want for much. Then she meets five animals that she finds in her home and starts taking care of them as pets. They turn out to be five guys from another world competing for her love in order for this wizard to grant their wish. She however doesn’t know that she is this focal point in this game to get a wish granted.

It’s a very interesting game, at the end the guy the protagonist has chosen always goes back to his own world and she realizes she has a wish to seek them out and goes to the wizard to get her memories deleted in exchange for being in the same world as her loved one. It feels like a fleeting love, like a dandelion.

It’s got great art, no incest and is overall a great game however…

 Gameplay: I don’t really like stat raisers. And this game is a stat raiser where you can only progress if you raise your stats. This is fine in itself, after all just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean others won’t. However dandelion itself is a stat raiser that’s infuriating. You have to constantly save scum for the guys to show up so that you can raise affection with them, because it’s random. And the spawn rates of the guys feels extremely low. It’ll take hours to get through a route and I doubt the actual dating sim part of it is more than like 20 minutes or so.

I would have loved this game so much more if it just played like a normal dating sim. I feel like it would have allowed you to get to know the guys even more than you do in the game. It would have allowed more character interaction and personality.

But that of course is just me. My thoughts aren’t going to change anything

Heejung/The protagonist: After coming off of Nameless, I didn’t like Heejung as much as the last protagonist. But she grew on me. She’s very grounded. Her parents went through a bad divorce and now she’s determined to get her mother’s love, but her mother puts way too much pressure on her, having planned out her whole life and being a classic “tiger mom”. By the time the story starts Heejung has moved out so she doesn’t crack under the pressure and her mom continues to be mean to her but she still wants her mother’s love.

She loves art and besides that she’s extremely stupid. I was laughing with a friend over the part of the game where she hears from a friend that cats eat rabbits (because she has two cats and three rabbits) and she panics and doesn’t believe him, but then realizes the fact that cats are in fact carnivores something she didn’t know before.

She’s kinda fun after you get to know her.

Jihae: The long haired rabbit. He’s the classic gentleman/ silent loner but sweet princely character. Despite his princely attitude he is not a prince, but in fact a knight. He sticks by Jieun a lot because he’s tasked with protecting him.

He’s a sweet character and a lot of his art is really pretty. He starts working as a model early on so he feels the most put together.

I wish we had gotten more normal visual novel interactions with him, just because I would just love more of him.

The wish that he was so desperate to grant that it sent him to another world is the resurrection of his lover. This made his route feel particularly weird because he’s romancing another girl to resurrect the girl he loves. So at the end of the good route when he’s fallen in love with the protagonist it’s kinda hard for me to fully….feel it if it makes sense? It was pointed out in Jieun’s route that he wants to resurrect his girlfriend not to see her and be with her but out of guilt because he blames himself for her death. In his world he’s apparently discriminated against because of his silver hair color because he’s the child of nobility and a commoner and when his girlfriend fell in love with him she faced harassment and killed herself.

I would love to learn more about his girlfriend and just see more.

Jieun: Same with the above, I just want more. He was the only guy without a kissing CG.

Jieun is the tiny white rabbit and is always sticking around Jihae. He acts like a bit of a shy child in everyone’s route besides his. In his route it’s revealed he’s a prince with the power to see the future but it takes awhile to actually feel that. Most of his route consists him of getting drunk off apples.

I do like how his route is the only route where he manages to outsmart the wizard. The heroine never desperately yearns so much to return to him that she seeks the wizard out for a wish and Jieun ends up summoning her to his world to make her his queen. Would love to see more of that.

His wish is the same as Jihae’s he wants to resurrect Jihae’s girlfriend to help Jihae with the guilt. He also blames himself for her death because he saw it with his future vision and never did anything about it.

Jiyeon:

Jiyeon was someone I was excited to romance, he was an orange cat and he seemed playful and fun in the other routes. However in his route he turned abusive, manipulative and his chronic lying started uncovering himself. He’s not a bad character by any means, but he is a lot to take in. Being an evil character doesn’t mean a bad one and he does redeem himself by the end of his route, I just wish we would have gotten more dialogue and stuff to feel that out.

Jiyeon grew up poor so he had to trick people into giving him things like food. He carries that same feeling into this world hanging out with girls and sobbing about how he doesn’t have any food and money so that they’ll give him stuff. When the heroine confronts him about his lying he gets mad and he turns more abusive forcing a kiss on her.

He eventually changes his ways, but he’s still a lot to handle.

His wish is for revenge against a friend who killed an old woman who was actually caring for him. It feels like because he wished for revenge he doesn’t care as much about the game and if the heroine likes him, he’s just so mad that he’s lashing out.

Jisoo:

The black cat and another abusive character if you get the bad ending. If you get the good ending he’s very jealous and possessive but it’s a little less extreme.

In the other routes Jisoo was the only one actually trying to win the heroine’s heart and working towards affection, something I appreciated because I was spending hours save scumming to get the guys to show up. Unfortunately he was doomed to not be romanced because it wasn’t his route. He didn’t put as much effort into his own route.

It becomes clear in all the routes though that the reason he’s putting so much effort forward is because he’s the most desperate to grant his wish. His wish is revealed to be in his route to save his younger sister’s life who is dying from sickness. In return for romancing the heroine the wizard will cure her.

This made him a very sad character because in the other routes he doesn’t get to return to his own world to be with his sister and she doesn’t get cured.

I liked him overall despite the horrible jealousy so much so that he gets mad at Heejung interacting with other guys. I would have loved for him to realize that was wrong but alas the game wasn’t long enough to do that.

Jiwoo:

Jiwoo was a character I didn’t think I’d like. He was the spotted rabbit. It was very clear early on that he’s the classic tsundere character, constantly belittling the protagonist and calling her an idiot. Over time though he grew on me. He loves romance books and sometimes the protagonist would tease his love for romance books too.

I loved the part where he was meeting with a romance novel writing group and all of the group was teens just trying their hardest.

His ending was also very sweet, when he realizes he’s won the game and he’s going to leave the heroine he starts writing his own romance book about their time together so that if she goes to the wizard to find him sacrificing her memories in return for being in the same world as him, she’ll read the book of their love and get her memories back.

It was extremely sweet.

His wish was to bankrupt his family. His life was kinda like Heejung’s making them very good characters together, he had a lot of pressure put on him to be the heir to his family, forcing him to be perfect at everything and not following his passions. (His family was aristocrats). However once his father died his mother who he thought loved him revealed he was just adopted and she was nice to him for the father’s sake. She abandoned him and made one of his brother’s the heir. So he knows what pressure is like.

  The wizard:

My favorite character, I wish he had gotten a proper route. I wish he had been a secret sixth character like some other dating sims.

He’s arranged this game because the only time he can speak to anyone is when they have a desperate wish something so strong that they’re willing to give up their memories of their wish to fuel him and let him grant it. He’s been watching Heejung for a while and has fallen in love with her but she wants nothing so he knows he can never see her.

So he’s arranged for this game so that she starts wanting something and he sees her. However their interaction is short lived so after one route he resets everyone’s memories and starts a time loop so she can romance all the boys.

In the end he realizes he doesn’t want to see her fall in love he wants to see her with him and he gives up all his memories ever, undoes the game and ends up in the same world as her.

And that’s how the game ends. I really wish there was more.

 It’s a great game with a lot of potential I just wish there was so much more

[datingsimreviews]

Hustle Cat

Hustle Cat is a Short but cute dating sim that lets you choose your gender and date either male or female characters!

Beware spoilers incoming!!!

Summary:

So first of all I’d like to say I very much appreciate having a game where you can date girls as a girl. That always makes me happy to see.

Hustle Cat is about a cat café which is actually a coven of witches. The employees are cursed to be cats when they leave the café unless they can figure out their own individual magic. Each route focuses on a character discovering their true selves, a bit of romance with the main character and their chosen partner dating and defeating this rust witch named Natch that’s trying to get the café for himself.

It’s a good game, but it’s very short. Compared to other dating sims I played each path felt kind of rushed, I wanted more information on the characters and more development, but I very much appreciated the fact that there were cute cats and that this was a very pro LGBT game.

Not everything is perfect though. I encountered a lot of bugs while playing which hampered my enjoyment. My game crashed once minimum every route. Luckily they had a great auto save feature so I barely lost any progress but it feels like the auto save feature was there for the crashing. I wish the crashes just didn’t happen. There’s also images in the gallery that are glitched or at least all walkthroughs say you can’t find anything because they’re glitched.

 The protagonist:

Avery is our protagonist and you can choose their skin tone and gender which is fun. You would think that with so many choices this protagonist would be someone you could project on and all. And I’m sure it’s easy for some people to project on Avery but I had a little trouble because I couldn’t change Avery’s name despite the game not being voiced and the fact that Avery’s magical talent is trash. It’s funny to think about but it doesn’t scream epic to me. I like it, a lot of people would have the magical power of “bending trash” but I wish we had seen more of it. Avery’s never able to beat Nacht the rust witch on their own despite their forceful nature. I would have loved to see the power in the player character.

Avery’s fine though.

Landry:

Landry was the first character I romanced, a sweet and sensitive sort of guy who helps you during work. He likes building cat trees which is fun.

Out of all the guys Landry has the most backstory I think or at least, the most “feels complete” backstory. Landry is an Adept so he has innate magical ability that lets him see through glamorous. He saw a kid at a bar once who was a witch and was trying to be invisible and the kid cursed him in to “have his heart explode if he ever lost his temper.” He felt a burning in his heart and ran off and met the owner of the cat café who’s solution to the problem was to double curse him into a cat??? Idk why this guy’s solution to everything is to turn it into a cat.

Landry hates magic because of this so he’s reluctant to learn magic from you. He eventually does and develops powerful lightning magic. He finds the kid and after a fight the two talk it out and kinda become friends? Turns out the kid just cursed him to have heartburn for an hour and he panicked.

He’s pretty strong and I like the side character of the kid in his route. I also like how he and the main heroine love pizza together. His route feels the most complete.

Hayes:

Hayes is the introverted barista character. I always like the shy glasses types so I was really interested in romancing him, and it was nice to see his character type!!! He’s got horrible anxiety which is why he doesn’t really talk to people and enjoys being a cat to de-stress. His anxiety is portrayed as an actual mental disorder instead of just cute shyness and he and the main character learn good coping techniques to help him through it.

His magic is to…Make anything he speaks through Poems happen??? It sounds OP and I’m not quite sure how it works but I would love to see how his magic developed more. He liked writing poems but if he messes his poems up and can’t find a rhyme his body turns into static.

I love that despite his anxiety he loves big romantic gestures. That’s cool.

Finley:

Finley was my favorite character because her interactions and dialogue just felt so organic. Once the main character and her got into a romantic relationship her relationship felt like a real relationship, or at least something I would like to experience. When she thinks that the main character and her might not make it she asks if they live if Avery will cosplay with her.

Finley’s really into video games, and is kinda nerdy. In the other routes she ships the main character and the person they’re pursuing. She’s also just really bubbly.

She’s the social media expert and to get traffic for the café she’s become an internet famous cat because she can control what her internet persona can do to do cat stunts that normally wouldn’t be online. Good for her monetizing that curse for cash.

She can block people in real life or report them, that’s her magic. If someone doesn’t really care about the internet though she has to come up with a phrase that resonates with them in the same way #blocked does.

I also like how at the end of her story she and the main character become vigilante superheroes.

Mason:

Another lady character! And this time she’s the silent and buff type. I loved Mason in the other routes because she was the only one who didn’t learn magic and still stood against Nacht because he never seemed to predict someone would punch him and was just so strong.

She does end up learning magic in her route (fire magic) but I’m not sure why it’s fire. Everyone else had something else that mimicked their personality or what they liked to do besides Landry. Mason’s really into cooking and I thought she’d have cooking magic.

Her route was very sweet and made me cry. It focused on her and her grandpa and how he thinks she’s just a delinquent so they don’t talk anymore so now to spend time with him she’s been visiting him as a cat instead. It was sweet to make them close again. But it was also the route where I realized how short the game was, or just how short it felt.

Mason was sweet and I love the muscle-y lady type but I would have loved more development between her and the main lead. I just wanted a whole lot more.

Reese:

Reese is Graves’s Apprentice and the only one who knows about magic before all this. I always wondered in the other routes why he turned into a cat if the reason they turned into cats was because they weren’t practicing magic.

In his route you learn that despite his boasting he’s not very good at magic because he’s practicing his father’s type of magic- drawing. His father is a designer and loves to draw. Reese’s talents actually have to do with sewing though and he develops sewing magic, which lets him open up portals or enchant clothing.

I wanted to see more of his magic actually happen because I’m still not sure the rules of his sewing magic. But his route was nice. He felt like he played off of Avery’s stubborn personality well.

He’s kind of a tsundere and very full of himself. In the other routes he has a crush on Graves despite knowing him all his life so it’s nice to help him out of that. In his route you barely talk about his crush on Graves and it’s only implied in the other routes. It feels like there should have been more drama concerning the fact that he has a crush on someone else in his own route.

Graves:

The final character is Graves the manager of the cat café and the oldest character (I’m not sure how old but there’s definitely a significant age gap there). He’s the one who cursed everyone into being a cat and the reasons weren’t clear until his route. I was excited to see all the secrets be uncovered like why Nacht is after him and why he doesn’t really teach you anything and why he curses people.

In his route however it feels short and rushed. His and Nacht’s relationship is only implied. It could have possibly been romantic and Nacht was just a jealous ex who turned to hunting people because he was mad??? I’m not sure.

He explains he cursed everyone to be cats because witches can sense magic and they weren’t strong enough to defend themselves so he glamoroued them. And apparently he’s cursed to not talk about magic??? I’m not sure his route just feels so rushed.

He himself isn’t a bad character. He acts very gothic and vampire like when in reality he’s not a vampire or scary he’s just a dorky LARPer. It’s funny. His magic is cat magic so to deal with Nacht he takes Avery’s advice to just curse him into a cat. When his solution to everything before was to turn it into a cat. Should have come up with that yourself buddy.

His route was by far the weakest for me, not only because it felt extremely short and didn’t answer a lot of my questions but also because I couldn’t get into the romance. There’s this line he uses when he learns Avery’s 19 where he’s like “I had no idea, you’re so mature!” which is just a classic…bad line to make people feel like they’re older and get in an age gap relationship.

I feel like he could have been done all right but he didn’t gel with me.

  Overall the game is a good game. Very short but cute especially if you like cats. I really wish there was just…more content in the game though. But it’s very LGBT friendly which definitely is cool!!! I’m always desperate for w/w content in dating sims because it’s rare to come by. So thank you Hustle Cat for that. And I’m sure other people feel represented by it too.

The bugs definitely annoyed me though. Also side note that I realized while writing this review, the gallery is very clunky and not organized by characters. And in a dating sim that’s definitely something that they usually have.

[datingsimreviews]

Steam prison is genuinely a good game. Like the world and fantasy of the whole thing really immerses you, and each of the love interests are complex well written characters. Not only that but each of the endings adds more to the story and some of the “none good endings” can even be seen as better if you’re more interested in the world’s politics instead of smooching some guys.

Plot:

The plot is as follows. 400 years ago there was a big flood. All of the scientists made a tower in the sky to escape the flood. They left for their new country and didn’t allow the rest of the people to join them because they didn’t have enough room. The flood came and killed most of the people, their culture and animals, but they managed to rise up anyway and create steam punk land.

The main character Cyrus is from the heights (the tower), one of the descendants of those scientists that left. She’s a police officer and people only descend to the lower level nowadays if they’ve committed a crime. They’re exiled to the “depths”.

After checking out the depths on an observation mission after passing a police exam, (Because police are required to look at the sanctuary district in the depths if they move up in rank) Cyrus’s parents are murdered and she is charged with the crime of their murder. She’s immediately exiled with no formal investigation into the depths.

Each route focuses on her exile in a little different way uncovering a little bit more of why her parents were murdered and about this world.

  Ines:

Usually I firmly advocate for players to choose their first character to play and not get a set of guidelines or something. However in this case I really like playing Ines’s route first because he’s the only route that lets you truly punch your parent’s murders face (besides just uncovering who ordered it or why).

Ines is the second in command of the HOUNDS, the police who monitor the criminals in the sanctuary district. The HOUNDS are basically the definition of police brutality, killing and hunting their criminal victims as much as they want and beating people up. Ines follows the Head’s orders knowing it’s evil under hope that he can go back to the Heights someday and investigate the crime his partner was charged with.

The Hounds don’t come to the depths themselves out of choice, they’re moved dishonorabley there too, making most of them very very bitter. In the Heights Police work in pairs and if one police officer commits a crime and is exiled their pair isn’t reassigned they’re moved discharged and moved into the Hounds. But Ines never believed his partner committed a crime and thinks it was falsified charges sort of like what’s happening with you.

He’s lowered himself into a monster in hopes that he can get justice for the dead.

The romance in Ines’s route makes a fair bit of sense, given that Cyrus (the protagonist) becomes his teacher in the ways of nobility and is just given time to sit around all day thinking about him so her feelings develop. I don’t know why Ines loves her but the romance in this game isn’t as great as the story and that’s honestly okay.

Ines also has the added bonus of being the police officer who inspired Cyrus to become a police officer.

Also he’s one of the few good Fins paths (more on Fins later.)

 Adage:

Adage is another criminal in the depths, but he gets by a lot better than the rest because he’s a doctor so he has a lot of money and doesn’t starve as much as the rest of the criminals. He’s rather cold and cynical and Cyrus becomes his assistant because she needs a job to get money for food.

Adage has no bedside manner refusing to help patients he believes he can’t save, but he’s still a good person trying his best to save the ones he does think he can save. A lot of other reviewers said that his path was terrible romantic wise, but I think his path was honestly a lot cuter and fluffier when it came to romance. Adage’s a big fan of romance novels so even though most people who come from the heights don’t know what love is, Adage does (Despite romance novels being banned because love is a crime there and arranged marriages prevail)

His route focuses on why Cyrus was convicted of a crime she didn’t commit, his father the HOUNDS doctor saw her during her observation and wanted to use her in his experiments because of her rare blood type.

Adage and Cyrus have to confront his father together and take him out. Which his father rightfully deserves. He’s been killed and dismembering people to make a Frankenstein child.

I was shocked by Adage’s evil father because he was a good guy on the previous route except at the very end where he randomly went to jail. I always wondered what he did. It was cool to get more of the world.

 Ulrik:

Ulrik is the only character who’s actually Cyrus’s age so that’s a plus. (they’re both 18). However he’s also the only character that fits into a normal otome cliché personality of “the tsundere”

Ulrik isn’t from the Heights. He’s from deeper in the Depths and is not one of the criminals. Past the sanctuary district wall are the survivors of the original flood and steam punk town. He is one of those survivors.

It turns out that Ulrik’s father was one of the main people who built the Heights but decided to stay behind despite being offered the position because he didn’t want to abandon his family. Through the generations this story has been twisted over and over again to say that the heights abandoned him and Ulrik’s family now hates the heights and anyone who comes here, causing him to initially hate the protagonist.

Still he eventually comes to understand that the heights just has people in it just like the Depths and realizes the truth of his family.

The protagonist never learns about why she was sent to the depths instead focusing on just surviving in this route but it tells us more about the flood.

Eltwood:

The ruler of one of the districts in the depths. This guy is your classic rich playboy businessman, but he still had an air of eccentricness that made him fun. He’s enamored with the heights despite not being from there and immediately falls in love with Cyrus’s knight like ways and makes her his bodyguard. This route had a lot of knight/prince or bodyguard/person they’re guarding vibes.

Eltwood’s route focused more on the relationship the depths had with the sanctuary district with the criminals and the other districts. It had an epic conclusion and was genuinely very cool.

I didn’t like the romance in his route as much as the other routes though. Probably because he immediately convinced Cyrus to kiss him instead of hours of build up and although Cyrus consented she didn’t really know what kissing was due to the harsh censorship of the Heights and situational consent ain’t cool. I mean I was happy she consented but it felt off to me.

Still the only scene that made me cry in this dating sim happened in his route. It was in one of his not good ends, where he ends up talking about his backstory and how his father and him were invited to the heights to celebrate the saint’s 400th anniversary. His father was enamored with the heights just like him and was so excited. He finally got to the Heights and everybody made fun of him and pranked him into doing embarrassing things in front of the saint and spoke behind his back. On the way back down in the lift to the depths his father cried for the first time and through out all stuff about the heights after.

It was just such a sad scene.

 Yune:

I was really excited for Yune’s route because Yune had saved me a few times in the other routes reforming the government and exposing that Cyrus had been exiled due to false charges. Yune himself is a saint and is worshipped like a religion. He’s immortal and nobody can hurt him. Both the depths and the heights love him even though he’s only in the heights.

Yune’s route….I had some problems with the good ending maybe because I wanted Cyrus to stay in the heights. But the other endings were very good. Less a dating sim and more political intrigue in the other ends. But I love immortal characters.

Yune saves Cyrus from exile in his route to hire her as his personal attendant instead. Not because he believes she’s innocent unfortunately but because he wants her to figure out a way to kill him because he’s grown tired of immortality and nothing he does can harm him.

Over time because he’s able to be his true self with his hired assassin he grows to love her and soon realizes that the only thing that can stop his god like heart is love and when he’s close to her he grows closer to dying. Various endings do different things with this and in the good ending he’s able to take out the god rock from his chest (Because he’s like a mechanical doll it turns out and a magical rock has been put in him which requires a key to remove that’s in the depths) and restart his aging just enough so that he can live with Cyrus like a normal human.

I like the endings a lot more where Cyrus ends a relationship with him, he doesn’t die but he does reform the government to take out all the corruption that caused Cyrus to have a false crime. But if you want good things for Cyrus just wait until the Grand Ending.

 Grand Ending:

The grand ending is the route with no depths that is unlocked after you play the other five routes. I loved it despite the fact that it had no romance. Cyrus’s parents don’t die because she stops the person who tried to kill them with her fighter skills (who turns out to be her ex-fiance). Yune helps root out that he won’t be charged properly because his father is a rich noble and that he needs to reform the government so he sends Cyrus to the depths to bring back delegates so that the depths can be represented and so that the two communities can work with each other and share their various technology.

She brings back all four of the other love interests who all fight off the evil police force and reform the government.

And there is no Fins death unlike most of the other routes.

 And finally:

Fins:

Oh poor Fins. Fins is Cyrus’s partner in the police force who gets sent down to the depths to be a HOUND because she committed a crime.  He was a good boy before that.

I didn’t really understand all the love towards a side character who wasn’t romancable but…This game seriously should have just made him into a main character. He’s a romancable character in the Japanese exclusive psvita version but alas I can not speak Japanese.

The reason I think why Fins is so beloved is that during the common route after you beat one route it skips to Fins being tortured just at random moments. I just had to be like “poor buddy why am I in this POV?”

Because Fins was such a good boy he didn’t gel with the police brutality so the head of the hounds beat him up, didn’t let the doctor give him pain medicine as they healed him and then beat him up again until he was a loyal dog. And instead of just telling us that they show us that…Over and over again.

Luckily Fins believes in one thing! That Cyrus the protagonist will save him or that she’s still the only good light in his life that he’ll find someday and then he’ll be happy and whole again. Unfortunately he’s not romancable in English so that never happens.

There are a lot of bad endings that involves this guy going full yandere but in most of the canon love interest ends he dies. Brutally. Before confessing his love to Cyrus and then dying to protect her.

Fins you see was always in love with Cyrus. The game makes sure to remind you of that in all the routes he dies in brutally (Adage, Eltwood’s and Yune’s. He makes no appearance in Urrik and come in the very end of Ines’s to be Cyrus’s good friend) It continues to switch to his pov throughout other guys routes just to remind you “hey!!! Your friend is suffering and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

It was good writing but harsh. I think it would have felt a lot more whole if his route was included in the English version. And a lot of other people agree.

Luckily he never gets tortured in the Grand Ending and he and Cyrus remain police officers and he tries unsuccessfully to confess to her but she’s just too dense.

 This game had some great writing but I truly recommend playing it not for the characters but the world. The dystopian Heights doesn’t feel truly like a dystopia and I love the world about the clouds sort of thing. It’s a really cool game and the art, music and interface all make it just a lot more beautiful.

[datingsimreviews]

Nameless the one thing you can recall was a great game. Honestly it’s easily become one of my favorite m/f dating sims. It’s got great relationships that have all sorts of hurt/comfort and feel very much like the found family trope.

If you’re into doki doki literature and want to find games like that while enjoying normal dating sim elements play nameless. It’s got an unromancable character that deletes paths and changes the script while having good romancable side characters. It even references you the viewer watching things and deletes saved files.

 Initial premise: So you play a girl who collects dolls. She’s embarrassed about collecting dolls because they’re childish. Then her dolls come to life and become humans and she’s shocked. They start going to her school and are dubbed the HOT5 because of they’re beauty like any Chinese or koreon drama ever. Everyone at school is trying to figure out the heroine’s connection with the male leads. But she’s much more embarrassed about how she collects dolls and is focused on that than the fact that they became human.

It’s got all the knight/master or owner devotion thing without it being creepy because these people are literally not human. The story also touches on abandonment and loneliness since the protagonist has been using these dolls to cope with her grandpa’s death and that her parents are never around. The dolls themselves feel like their owner will abandon them for anyone because they’re just dolls.

And of course after each route the heroine’s memories are reset and she’s taken to a new route by the Monika of this game so that he can possibly see her.

It’s a pretty cool game. Also no incest because they’re dolls.

The protagonist: I mostly covered her in the initial premise. She’s a girl who focuses more on the fact that she plays with dolls and likes dolls than the fact that her dolls have become human. It’s surprisingly realistic for a supernatural game.

Her real strengths come from her relationships, like with her dolls, her grandpa (who died) and her parents who she know are working to help her but never see her and so she feels sort of lonely but doesn’t want to whine about it. I’m sure a lot of other kids with parents who only work and don’t spend time with their kids will find her relatable.

I really liked her two best friends. Soi and Shinbi. Soi was big in every route for her crush on one of the love interests. She’s that typical boy obsessed girl. But she never faltered into the evil rival character instead giving up on her crush to support her friend and saying that her friendship was more important to her.

Shinbi should have been the real sixth route. She’s a cool calm and composed girl who models. All the girls in class are in love with her and the heroine’s heart skips a beat when she sees her. This should have been a gay game thanks to Shinbi.

Yeonho: The first love interest I romanced. He’s one of the few dolls that the heroine bought on an auction. The entire school calls him a “Chick” because he sparks their maternal instincts to protect him with his cute act.

His route mostly focused on the fact that he feared abandonment because his previous owner scratched him up and told him to be a “good boy”. Every time the heroine leaves he fears that she’ll abandon him and so he becomes obsessive over her. Eventually though he grows and realizes their relationship won’t just wither away if she isn’t there 24/7 and lays off and they form a real romantic relationship and he becomes more mature.

I really liked how realistic his feelings were. Honestly mental illness and trauma portrayed realistically and then people healing is really good stuff.

For some reason he had powers to speak to ghosts and talk to animals and I’m not sure why??? It’s because his personality was designed that way as a doll but it felt out of place.

Yuri: Yuri I was very ready to like because of his design, but once I started playing his route I didn’t like him. Luckily he redeemed himself by the end.

He’s the classic womanizer character. But as an adult teacher! (Kind of. He is a doll and has only been alive a month so he doesn’t really have an age so it makes me feel a bit more lax on this verses other dating sims)

It’s revealed though that he’s a womanizer because he was designed to be every woman’s perfect man. And because he was designed to be that way he doesn’t know how to respond to sincere love and real feelings which makes his route with the heroine very romantic. He had a lot more romance in his route than the other routes I think since the heroine realized she had feelings for him pretty early on after he made her into cinderella with a make over.

He refuses to date his student though and quits being a teacher so that’s nice. (because he gets a job as a teacher when he turns into a human)

In the other routes Yuri was someone who would flirt with the heroine but would be an unlikely shoulder to lean on and give advice so he overall ended up being good.

Lance: One of my favorite routes was Lance who was described as being an ice prince by all the other characters. He’s very smart and cold and distant. But the reason he is that is because he wasn’t designed to have a personality. He feels inferior to all the other dolls for being designed with personalities while he sees himself as uninteresting and nothing.

The heroine helps him by giving him memories and things he likes though even though he wasn’t designed with likes or dislikes. She helps him have a life. They also share a bond because he was the first doll she had out of the main love interests and was the only one there when her grandpa was alive. So she finds him special.

Tei: Tei was interesting because he was the big brother type. (Or Mom type as all of the characters tried to describe him) He always acted like he was trying to help and was the mature and kind one. However in most of the bad endings he ends up killing you so I knew he was straight up crazy and was a little worried for his route.

His route ended up being much better than expected. Sure it had some drama of him dating your friend because his fan club was putting you in danger and he didn’t want them paying attention to you, while trusting Soi because you talked about her so much when he was a doll, but besides that you find out he’s crazy fairly early and just want him to explain why he’s suddenly saying mean stuff.

You see Tei was put in a box most of his life and was only shown an hour a day by his owner. His owner would always say he was clean which he realized was a curse. Because once someone broke him and he became unclean his owner started telling him he was dirty and crying and being mean to him. She then sold him off to the heroine. And because he was a limited edition doll his dirty part (his knee) couldn’t be replaced.

The trauma made him him…different. He loves the heroine in all routes but believes he’s too “dirty” to be with her. If people start harming her though he gets mad because it isn’t him that is making her dirty so she can’t be on his level because abuse = love to him.

In his route he starts feeling urges to hurt her so she can be on his level because she’s too clean for him. So he distances himself by dating her friend.

Of course the heroine helps him come to understand that he’s not dirty or damaged. And they get together and are happy. Before she disappears that is like in all routes.

Red: Red could only be played last and although I love him I feel like he was shafted for main plot stuff.

Red is an action hero doll. An action figure. So he acts like every shonen hero ever talking about defeating villains and using the power of teamwork to work together. Except that isn’t this genre. Only one of him was made and given to the heroine and his makers decided to give him in his personality the delusion that he had hidden special powers. Which never triggered.

His route consists of the fact that he has delusions but the heroine still thinks he brings cheer and love to people. Of course then she starts losing her memories because the Monika of the game (or just the villain) starts tearing apart her memories in that route and she starts gaining amnesia.

Red is a hero though and doesn’t abandon the heroine. Eventually by the end he does start getting special powers and giving her memories back and saving her- even if he doesn’t know it.

It was a sweet route but I wanted more of the focus to be on Red, just like how the other routes were focused on all the characters.

 Overall this game was super fun!!! It’s connected to the dandelion wishes brought to you universe and I’m gonna play that next I think. It genuinely made me happy and I can’t count how many times I said something to myself, shocked.

It’s good for anyone who likes dark themes or games that focus on helping people from trauma, abandonment, or loneliness. The characters were very fleshed out too.

[datingsimreviews]

Have you ever played Sweet Fuse? It's a personal favorite of mine. It's got a great storyline. No incest. Unfortunately no childhood friends either. The worst is a 14-year age gap.

I have not!!! I heard it’s one of those great dating sim games, and I have my eye on it. Unfortunately though I do not yet have a psp. I have a game for a psp but no psp. I’ve been looking out for one at old video game stores though. Someday I’ll get my hand on it!!!

Thanks for the ask!

[datingsimreviews]

Norn9 for the playstation vita is a wonderfully interesting game that I surprisingly haven’t heard much about and I’m not sure why!

Initial premise: norn9 is a game about kids with superpowers traveling aboard this giant ship under the mysterious instructs of “the world” (a being like god) on a peace mission to stop various wars.

Immediately I was drawn in by the fact that it’s a game about superpowers, making it easy to bond onto characters because they would each have a power that would make them more defined.

I think the thing that I’ve heard turns people away from the game initially is the weird beginning prologue where you don’t play any of the female heroines you instead play this kid named Sorata who has a bunch of lengthy dialogue about sci-fi premises but eventually time travels to the time that all the superpowered kids are in and gets involved with them. He had an interesting storyline but it didn’t really…mesh with the dating sim elements? It was just kinda weird and hard to get through. I mean he’s interesting but they never stuck with his stuff, and there’s a lot of mysteries that he presents that aren’t really answered until the end, like why does the era he time traveled to have people with super powers?

Anyway if you’re able to make it through his prologue the game gets really fun and interesting and norn9 has one gameplay mechanic that I’ve never seen in any other dating sim which makes it feel stronger than a lot of visual novels.

That gameplay mechanic is choosing your heroine. A lot of dating sims get criticism because their heroines are pretty much just cardboard cutouts for you to project on. They have very little personality except being in love with the lead. Norn9 has none of that. Since you can choose between three protagonists to follow, each one has different feelings, personalities and backstories which makes the girls in this game one of the strongest parts of it. (Unfortunately you can’t romance the girls as another girl but hey not everything is perfect.)

My major initial complaint about the game was actually the fact that there were too many boys to romance. Norn9, like it’s name, has 9 people to romance. And I love a lot of different choices in the beginning it felt like I was drowning in too many choices, especially since all the boys wear uniforms and besides their hair colors they all look similar. I was actually having trouble remembering who was who, so I had to give them nicknames.

 Protagonist:

I’ll break this section up by sprinkling in the three protagonists throughout sections, since each protagonist gets to choose between three boys (which makes it kinda easier to break up the different playthroughs and I appreciated it since I felt there were way too many boys) In the game during chapter 2 after you have chosen your protagonist there is the threat of a traitor having sneaked onto your ship, the norn, and possibly putting the rest of the passengers in danger. You all decide that the best thing to do to find the traitor is to partner up in pairs of 2. This is how you start your pathway to romance, partnering up with someone who’s in your chore group (and there’s usually three boys to choose from in that group)  I thought this was an interesting way to justify choosing a guy, because you’re not really choosing your guy in the beginning, your choosing a partner to watch to make sure they aren’t the traitor.

Koharu:

Koharu was the first girl I played, and she is by far the most like other otome protagonists. She’s simple, she’s sweet and always cheerful. That’s basically her personality. She has the added extra trait of knowing very little about the world and being incredibly naïve and childlike since she has lived her life in isolation and hasn’t dealt with people at all- to the point of even forgetting her own name since she hasn’t spoken it so much in the beginning. This is both very interesting because it gives her more of a character backstory and depth to her character, and very unsettling in a game about romance, since there’s the fear in all of her routes that she’ll find a guy who will teach her “All about the adult world and how to act” and basically kind of father her before a relationship develops, or at least teach her a lot of things and take a role of authority in the whole relationship. I don’t really like “born yesterday” relationships that rely on the person teaching someone else instead of having a relationship based on being equals so this made me really worried about Koharu’s romance paths.

Luckily there are other things to focus on about Koharu. For example her powers are a major focus in all the routes, not just hers. Because despite her cheerfulness and kindness, Koharu has the strongest powers out of all the characters and the most offensive making all the villains in the game fear her and becoming determined to turn her to their side before she can basically kill them.

Koharu has the power of fire and they are by far the most offensive in the game. It’s interesting to see a female protagonist get the power of fire since it’s usually very strong. I like having powerful female characters. It’s also interesting that she’s not a hothead like many other characters with fire powers.

Kakeru:

Kakeru was the first boy I romanced on Koharu’s route. Wikipedia implies that in the anime they get together and he’s the canon romance or something? I just romanced him because he had an earing and that was the one feature that jumped out to me between any of the boys  because I couldn’t tell them apart at this time.

Kakeru has the power of vines, or plants, I liked the part of his romance route where he taught Koharu how to grow strawberries, because it seemed sweet and like they were actually bonding as a couple. However overall I didn’t really like Kakeru’s route because how much he bullies the other characters and makes them uncomfortable and how the game frames him as this being right and how ‘nice’ he is for bullying people. No joke, he bullies someone with social anxiety because he’s trying to force them to interact…by constantly twisting his arm around his neck. The character being bullied says Kakeru is worse than hell and nobody really tries to help out or tell Kakeru that seeing people as toys is wrong. (He literally does call multiple people his toys, but the game doesn’t frame this as him being a jerk they frame this as him being a kind person which seems odd? If you’re going to make a jerk at least commit to it)

He of course has to teach the protagonist about romance and I might have had some bias and dislike from him at the very beginning because of how he was responsible for everybody pairing up, except girls couldn’t pair with girls because “we couldn’t have that now could we? A girl can’t protect another girl!” It’s your fault this game is heterosexual Kakeru, this could have been gay if not for you.

The one interesting thing about Kakeru I think is the fact that his earring actually plays a big role in his route. It’s a keepsake from his father but it turns out it’s been brainwashing him the whole time because his father is evil and wants to use the superpowered kids instead of letting them go on a peace mission? He’s been sending subtle orders to Kakeru the whole time like the order to make Koharu fall in love with him because he’s the most powerful. I did not expect Kakeru’s earing to be important at all or for Kakeru to in fact be a brainwashed minion.

His route seemed very plot heavy which makes sense since it was sort of the canon one for Koharu.

Masamune:

Masamune was one of the characters I was most afraid of romancing. For one he’s an adult, unclear how old he is. He says he’s in his 20’s but one of the character’s confuses him as 30. The protagonist, Koharu, is 17, so you can see how this was problematic. And I’m still not exactly sure how old he is.

However in all of the routes, except his own, he holds an important purpose. He’s the only person who can communicate with the World (the entity that has sent everybody on a mission of Peace) It is unclear why he has gotten this duty, and only one route goes into his backstory that he’s part of the society that is maintaining the World (An artificial super computer) and he was the one chosen to have powers and eventually lead the other people with powers to the World to go through a reset of society thanks to their powers, but unfortunately his route does not actually go through any of this.

In fact his route doesn’t really go into his backstory at all, or even his powers really. His powers are that he can see someone’s past if he touches them. But apparently that wasn’t important. You know what was important though? The fact that he gets drunk off sugar!

Yes, the only thing I really learned about Masamune in his route is that he gets intoxicated from sugar which causes some skeevy scenes to happen where he force kisses Koharu thanks to her making cookies for him? It’s weird.

Besides that he’s the responsible type, and mature, and a lot of his romance is just pretty cliché tropes about a naïve girl knowing very little and him having to teach her the ways of the world.

Senri:

Senri was my favorite of Koharu’s romantic partners. For one he never really taught her to be adult, or had a sense of authority over her. Instead their relationship was built on Koharu helping Senri overcome his anxieties and shyness.

Senri’s the dude I was talking about that Kakeru bullies. In the beginning of the game he isolates himself so much that he never comes out of his room in the ship, he constantly has a cynical view of the world and snarks at people believing they will only bring him misfortune and just not trusting him.

Koharu helps him better his life by proving to him through kindness that not everybody is like that, and just being a positive and optimistic force. Their early chapters focus on friendship first instead of romance, and Koharu desperately trying to become Senri’s friend because she understands what isolation and loneliness feels like and she doesn’t want him to experience that.

I liked that Koharu was the one who taught Senri something, instead of the other way around. And I appreciate the romances that start as friendships instead of having belligerent sexual tension from the very beginning.

To my memory Senri’s the only guy who kisses the protagonist after she herself confesses her feelings to him, so he knows things are mutual instead of just forcing himself on her or something.

The only thing that disappoints me in Senri’s route is that we don’t really get Senri’s backstory in his route. We don’t get even a little bit of his backstory in his own route. Instead we get it in Akito’s.

We do get the fact that Senri’s powers is water, which I think fits with his and Koharu’s relationship of being positive and sort of negative. It’s completely opposite of each other, and at the end of his route when Koharu is kidnapped and forced to kill it’s Senri who’s the only one who can stop her.

Nanami:

Nanami is the second protagonist I played, and she’s a lot different than Koharu. For example instead of displaying the ‘naïve cheerful protagonist’ trait, she instead is the ‘emotionless and cold’ sort of character. She’s not emotionless or cold because she’s cruel though, she just doesn’t really know how to state her feelings in words, making her appear sort of out of touch.

Nanami interested me the most when I played Koharu’s route because she would confuse things like “finding people” as assassination missions because she’s also a ninja. Her ninjaness doesn’t really play into her route at all. It’s still cool though. I appreciate that they gave one girl a knife.

Nanami’s powers are erasing people’s memories, and she’s able to have a lot of emotions and feelings towards these powers in the various routes. She hates them for one thing, believing erasing people’s memories is worse than killing them because of a time in her past where she erased someone’s memories under her father’s orders and realized how cruel it was, even though it was too late to take her actions back.

A lot of her routes focuses on how she tries to escape her powers or not use it, or repenting for the mistakes she’s already made making her one of the most purpose driven heroines.

Akito:

I’ll start with Akito sense he’s the character you get the most Nanami backstory in. Akito’s the person Nanami hurt in the past by erasing his little brother’s memories of him (Senri). We get Senri’s backstory in this route, Akito’s and Nanami’s.

I liked the beginning parts of Akito’s routes because it gives us a lot of Nanami characterization. She partners up with him because she believes he’s the traitor because she knows he doesn’t have any powers. She wants to help him not be found out though because her idea of repenting to him is to spend her life for him, doing whatever this wants. To her this means eventually having him kill her.

It was interesting to follow a protagonist who had such an interesting reason to spend time with the person in their route, it was also pretty dark for them to focus on Nanami’s guilt and I liked it.

However Akito’s route overall is not very good. He’s constantly abusive to Nanami and cruel to her because he hates her, but then because this is a romance game he gets mad that she hates him? Everybody else in the game tells Nanami Akito’s being cruel to her but she simply doesn’t care because she thinks she deserves it.

In fact when Akito’s romance stuff starts up and he kisses her, she feels that he has a right to do whatever he wants to her and pretty much assault  her because she ruined his life by taking his brother from him.

Akito himself as a character isn’t terrible, it’s just when he’s with Nanami that he becomes terrible and abusive. In the other routes he’s served as the cook on the chef and someone kind of buff, those are basically his only two character traits. However when he’s with Nanami he takes on a much worse tone.

I just think Akito and Nanami aren’t good together as a romantic relationship because of how he treats her. Their relationship is interesting, very interesting because of how she has in fact hurt him and how he hates her, but it shouldn’t turn into a romantic relationship.

Oh! Akito’s powers are also water btw, he stole half of Senri’s powers so that Senri couldn’t be used by people. Unfortunately he can’t use the powers without hurting himself because they aren’t originally his.

Heishi:

Heishi was one of my favorites in Nanami’s route. For one he wasn’t abusive to Nanami unlike the other two routes, for another his relationship with Nanami developed on friendship first.

I was very afraid of Heishi’s route because the other routes when their relationship was platonic described them as “like brother and sister”. They ditch this in his route. He never once gets treated as her brother and they just don’t see themselves as anything like that.

Heishi is constantly happy go lucky and open about his feelings and trusting because of his powers. His powers are some of the most in depth and funny of all the powers. You see, he has telepathy, but not any sort of telepathy that can let him hear other people’s thoughts or communicate with them mutually. He can only send his own thoughts to other people, loudly in their head, anywhere. This makes it so he can never keep any sort of secret about himself and he always has to be 100% transparent about his feelings because everybody will know anyway.

Heishi and Nanami were friends before they chose to be partners, they play card games together in a lot of different routes and they just try to support each other. Nanami tries to protect Heishi from the fact the traitor since he himself can not suspect anyone or else everybody would know he suspects them and Heishi tries to protect Nanami from abusive relationships in other routes. He’s just a good guy.

One of the tropes this game likes to do is when the protagonist doesn’t exactly know what love is the guys kiss her to “show her what love is” which is a little gross. Heishi on the other hand, when Nanami displays confusion on what love is literally sends his feelings of love to her via telepathy so she understands the feeling which is just more fun and less like kissing someone without their permission.

At the end of Heishi’s route he and Nanami run away from their duty because Heishi realizes how much Nanami is afraid of using her powers and how she doesn’t want to hurt anyone with it. In one part of his route she had to memory wipe him because the traitor was threatening Heishi’s life if she didn’t and he immediately forgives her when he finds out and only blames the traitor and not her.

Overall Heishi’s route was really good.

Ron:

For every good character there is a bad character and that character is Ron. I had high expectations for him, I’m going to be honest. In the other routes he was shown as rather funny always forgetting everybody’s names despite having been on the ship for a while. In his bonus pictures that I unlocked before I played his route the artists would change his sunglasses out for googly anime eyes so I thought he’d be humorous.

However he immediately becomes very abusive in Nanami’s route telling her that if he can’t remember her name she’ll just have to become his lover. He forces her into uncomfortable sexual situations telling her to just erase his memory of her if she wants to get out of the situations and just giving her very little room to escape.

He belittles her and hurts her on numerous occasions. He’s evil. Like really. He’s the traitor who doesn’t even have a power, he just sneaked onto the ship.

His tragic backstory for trying to turn everyone into tools, attempting to kill them all and just being a horrible person? “I can’t see faces! Wah!” That’s his reason. He’s going blind and the only way he can get a cybernetic eye is by killing a bunch of teenagers.

Does he grow as a person and learn to stop treating everybody horribly in his route you might wonder? Nope. The ‘happy’ ending, is Nanami erasing all of his memories of everybody else except her in his mind upon his orders that he just ‘really wants to kill and he’ll always be like this unless she erases his mind.’

She lives with him in happiness and none of her friends visit her because Ron has stolen at least one of their powers and traumatized them and they worry he’s going to kill them. Heishi himself tells Nanami her relationship isn’t love it’s co-dependence.

I’m not sure why they route Ron as so horrible. He’s the closest the game gets to assault to my memory. And he’s just an…absolutely awful person. He even manages to screw up people’s lives in other routes, kidnapping people, making them feel scared, all sorts of things.

He’s just a bad person.

Mikoto:

Mikoto is the final protagonist and has been seen as one of the leaders of the ship in all the routes. She’s this sort of rich girl, strong willed stubborn type making who has the urge to protect everyone and a strong sense of duty.

Her powers are barriers, which in a lot of comics or shows I’ve seen is one of the classic ‘girl’ powers. However Mikoto’s are shown as one of the strongest of powers being able to fend off missiles, bombs and all sorts of natural disasters. She’s seen as a goddess and even managed to protect a whole country with her barriers.

She has a strong will which is seen as stubborn by everybody. Her barriers strength is linked to her willpower so she has to have a horribly strong will.

She’s been raised as something amazing but acts humbly, instead feeling shackled by her duty instead of privileged. She stresses herself out to the point of sickness because she knows that she’s the only one in the world that can protect a lot of people. Relaxing means death for so many.

She was very main character like, and I really liked how important her barrier powers were. In one of her routes she even learned that they could be dangerous by placing barriers inside other things, like even bodies, and enlarging them to explode something. It was nice to have such a strong character.

Not to mention all her romances were very good.

Itsuki:

Itsuki is the classic flirt character, and that made me a little worried. A flirt character can either be done fun after all or incredibly misogynistic forcing himself on the heroine during her route or something.

I’m happy to say Itsuki never forced himself on anyone and was one of my favorite characters in the game. He had a lot of depth to his backstory, coming from the sort of opposite place in life as Mikoto, he was born and raised in poverty living in a brothel while Mikoto was incredibly rich.

Itsuki doesn’t see his flirting as harmful, he just sees it as complimenting beautiful women like he’s been taught since he used to work in a brothel. Mikoto is annoyed of course by his flirting and initially acts ~tsundere~ in the initial parts of her route.

Itsuki however tells Mikoto that she doesn’t have to always act strong or tough, something she’s always wanted to hear, because true relationships aren’t based on seeing someone’s strengths, it’s seeing their flaws and weaknesses that brings people closer.

This I think is a good sort of message, it’s okay to show your significant other your flaws and weaknesses because they need to be able to love you even with your flaws.

In the initial parts of Itsuki’s route, despite his flirting he isn’t ever trying to get together with Mikoto. In fact he’s trying to present himself as a villain to help wingman her with someone else, her childhood friend who he believes she’s in love with. He’s trying to help someone he cares about achieve happiness which is a sweet thing to do, although it causes Mikoto to become annoyed when she does fall for Itsuki and he’s still trying to pair her up with Sakuya because he’s dense.

Itsuki is also one of the characters who gets a deep backstory, he didn’t initially have his power, his twin sister had it, but she died and transferred it over to him.

His power is controlling dreams, which I initially thought was the stupidest power in the world. Like…How can that be useful in anyway?

It is surprisingly useful. Parts of Itsuki’s backstory revolves around the fact that he’s been selling his abilities to people who are unhappy and giving them happy dreams to live in.

This helps concrete parts of his character, that Itsuki is not the sort of person who grounds himself in reality. He would rather escape to a dream, or escape confronting any sorts of feelings. He tries to pair Mikoto up with her childhood friend even though he likes her because he can not confront anything.

There was only one part of Itsuki’s route that I was horribly afraid of, when he trapped Mikoto in a dream where she and him were living together happily. It felt like he had kidnapped her and trapped her someplace against her will and I became very worried. Luckily there was a good reason for him doing this- he was dying at that point of the route and this was the only way he could think of to make her happy and buy more time with her.

(He lived because I got the happy ending of course)

Extra note: Ron of course causes unnecessary problems and horrible stuff in Itsuki’s route, but he does that in everybody’s route and that’s not Itsuki’s fault.

Natsuhiko:

Natsuhiko is the only guy who’s not initially on the ship, nor does he ever pretend to have powers. He’s a completely normal human…except he has a gun.

I thought this was hilarious that all he had was a gun to combat all these powers.

In the other routes that aren’t his own, Natsuhiko has appeared as a villain who tries to kill all the people with superpowers because theres plans by various people in the world to use them to cause wars and he thinks the only way to stop millions of people dying is to kill them. In his route he eventually sees the error of his ways and that he’s been viewing all the superpowered people as tools too which is wrong.

Natsuhiko, despite being a villain desires peace more than anything else which makes him mesh incredibly well with Mikoto who sees it as her duty to protect everyone she can. They have similar interests and when Mikoto does get captured by Natsuhiko, despite hating him because of his view on the superpowered guys, is very happy to aid him in protecting citizens who have been caught up in wars.

In the early parts of Mikoto’s route she spends time looking for Natsuhiko after he attacks the ship and threatens everybody’s life. She eventually finds him when Ron pushes her off the ship into Natsuhiko’s plane, getting her captured.

The beginning parts of Natsuhiko’s routes are kind of uncomfortable because Mikoto is incredibly scared of him because he’s captured her, obviously. She also views him as a sadist because Ron, who messes everything up ever, tells her he gets off on pain (Which is an absolute lie and Natsuhiko can’t figure out for the life of him why Mikoto is terrified of him). Most of Natsuhiko’s beginning route problems aren’t his fault, they’re Ron’s.

Natsuhiko’s captured Mikoto because he needs her help stopping wars and Mikoto is more than happy to oblige although she still sees herself as a prisoner. The first half takes on a beauty and the beast like appearance of her being a captive.

Natsuhiko and Mikoto slowly start forming a bond though over their similar interests and stargazing together. Eventually though Mikoto’s kidnapping ends when she fails to put up a barrier around his ship when he’s being attacked, because she’s wondering to herself if it’s better if he dies so that her friends won’t be attacked by him.

They both almost die but Natsuhiko saves her life and loses his memory as a result. His route then switches gears as she becomes the capture and he becomes the captured as she tries to keep him away from remembering his past so that he won’t hurt her friends.

Somehow over the course of time they fall in love and he reveals he’s actually gotten his memory back a while ago but he didn’t want to hurt her and has decided not to hurt her friends.

I do like how Mikoto captured him at some point in his route, or else their relationship would feel incredibly unequal and somewhat stolkholm syndrome like. Overall I did like his route though and a lot of secrets in the world were resolved.

Sakuya:

Sakuya is Mikoto’s childhood friend and throughout all the routes most everyone has thought they were in love. However they aren’t or at least Mikoto doesn’t want them to be.

You see, Sakuya’s power is to see the future and the first prediction he ever got was that he would die protecting the person he loved. He told Mikoto immediately as a child because he was excited because Mikoto’s always protected everyone for as long as he knows and now he’ll finally have a chance to protect someone he cares about.

Mikoto, like a sane person, was terrified because she knew that would mean she would lose her precious friend. She made Sakuya vow to never fall in love because if he doesn’t love someone it means he won’t die.

Most of their route resolves around the angst that they can’t be together and Mikoto doesn’t want Sakuya to love her because he’ll die even though it’s obvious he’s already in love with her.

Itsuki also tries to ship them together until he realizes it will literally kill Sakuya and that’s why Mikoto and Sakuya aren’t together.

Eventually though Mikoto learns that there might be a way to change the future and if she relies on everybody’s help Sakuya can be saved and he can live through their relationship.

Sakuya isn’t too keen on this but Mikoto tells him he isn’t making very much sense because real love would be wanting to spend their life together being happy instead of sacrificing yourself and leaving the other person alone.

She eventually saves Sakuya after learning he dies by gunfire and figuring out how to destroy guns with her power.

Sakuya’s character besides being Mikoto’s childhood friend, (which is most of his character) is being a refined and princely character. He does tea ceremony and calligraphy and has a much weaker constitution than Mikoto. She’s the fighter, he’s not.

Despite his entire character revolving around Mikoto I still like him. But that’s maybe because he has a pretty character design.

 Overall:

Norn9 was a very fun game and I’m glad I played it. I’m very confused why it isn’t more popular or talked about more. It even has an anime adaption and the superpowers thing is very cool.

The music was beautiful, the artwork was beautiful, the premise was fun, there was a lot of world and there was this fun minigame to do.

Most of the characters were very likable and there would be a side pairing in every route that would be also focused on and different so that if you liked a pairing you’d be able to see it again after the character’s route.

If you’ve played norn9 and haven’t gotten into it could you tell me why?

[datingsimreviews]

All right, let me talk about Period Cube, shackles of Amaedus for PS Vita. Which will be my first review on this site, and the game that broke me betraying my dreams with crap. HUGE TRIGGER WARNING FOR SEXUAL ASSAULT MENTIONS AND INCEST

I’m going to be honest, before I beat the game I loved it. I had nothing but praise for this dating sim because of just how much time and realism was given to the video game like mechanics. The premise of the dating sim is simple, and very much like Sword art online, you’re a young girl stuck in an MMO where if you die in the game you die in real life. Simple stuff. The only way to free all the players trapped inside is to beat this huge maze like dungeon, in SAO it was the tower like thing, in this game it’s this ark that floats in the sky.

Now although the initial premise of the game is simple enough, it has some added details into it’s world that makes the fake game mechanics more believable. For one it goes into great detail about the classes that each player individually  has, letting you feel like you’re actually helping your party members in battle with your minstrel skills. (Kind of like a bard in dnd, you inspire people to have greater attack power). Although you don’t get to choose your race or class like an actual video game would let you, the details in different races are very interesting and I enjoyed it.

There are two main races in the game, Angels and demons. The plot of the initial game was that the two factions were fighting and only one side would get to seize the ark, and the heritage of the gods, the end room in the ark. This causes conflict and player vs player battles that you’re supposed to be taking part in. It also makes you feel more involved in the world, like you have the power to choose who to side with.

However since all the players are trapped in the game the angels vs demons conflict is no longer just safe fun, it’s life or death. Since only one race can seize the ark this means that only one race can leave the game for good, pretty much abandoning all the other players to die from comas. This makes your choices have so much more weight in them, towards demons and angels.

You the player, do not play as a demon or an angel, interestingly enough. You are a unique race called the Almighty. In the game there are three special swords that are useful for clearing the final dungeon the ark. The demons have one sword and the angels have another. Somehow you’re the third which causes all of the people in the game world to fight over you because you’re necessary to complete the game.

Another thing I appreciated about this game world that made it feel more realistic is that the people trapped in it aren’t trapped because they played the game, they simply got logged in to the wrong server which trapped their minds in the video game. It was nice that it was a server instead of the full game, because it gave a good explanation for why some players were better than others- they simply had played longer on other servers before being dragged in and had more experience, verses just being naturally good at all video games. It also made me feel like the mastermind of the whole thing was more realistic since it’s much easier to set up a server for an MMO than actually make a whole MMO.

(Look at how pretty the menus look)

The last thing I liked about this world that was interesting, was the fact that you can actually log out unlike most “You’re trapped in a video game and might die” plots. You can only log out for a limited amount of time before  you’re dragged back into the world but every time you complete a special quest you’re awarded time in the real world so you can wander around and not have your real body die. A day in the game translates to an hour in real life though,

Anyway I’ll get into the starting plot for the game, your brother goes missing and in his apartment you find a computer that says “Accessing world V” from his favorite video game. Your childhood friend who is a gamer tells you that this is a mysterious server that’s rumored to not exist on his favorite video game. You decide to try to log into the game for the first time to find your brother and you and your friend somehow get dragged into World V, your race is immediately changed to the almighty and the entire world starts fighting over winning you over to their faction.

Most of them are surprised to learn that the Almighty is in fact a player, but the thing most surprising to all characters is the fact that you are level 1 and are a complete newbie to video games. It turns out the mysterious World V only drags in players who have played the main game for a good amount of time and it’s the first time they’ve seen a complete newbie.

The rest of the game is pretty simple, you have two objectives 1. Beat the ark and escape World V. 2. Find your brother.

Art Style:

When I was in my puppy love stage of this game I would compliment the art style. “Oh!!! Look!!! They actually blink!!!” I would scream. “No other game I know has people blink.” I realized how dead and unrealistic not blinking felt. And the people blinking had an extra bit of realism. It made them feel prettier.

Now that I’m petty though and hate the game (which I will get into later) I can tell you some petty complaints. First off, the kissing CGs are ugly. I don’t know why but they just don’t draw the people actually kissing. It’s like their nuzzling their mouths. It’s weird.

And at first I accepted that like, drawing kissing is hard. Maybe they just simply didn’t know how to draw kissing.

But the thing is….There is one guy who gets a normal kissing drawing. Like the mouths are actually kissing. But how…? How did he earn this kissing animation you might ask? By sexually assaulting the heroine of course!!!

So I guess consensual kissing is not okay but forced kissing is…Why are you so bad game?

Love interests (AKA The part that ruined a good world)

Radius:

The first guy I romanced was Radius, and he’s honestly the typical dating sim guy. There’s nothing really special or bad about him that I would talk about in great detail. I’m sure he’s someone’s type out there but he wasn’t exactly mine and that’s okay. He was a great step up from a lot of the guys though so I liked him.

The initial premise of Radius is as follows, he’s this angsty guy who doesn’t form parties with anyone and solos the game because of his high level. Apparently before he was dragged into World V he played the game a lot making his level one of the highest in the world and him super good at the game. The detail of why he was so good at this game isn’t really there and considering his occupation (which I’ll get into later) it doesn’t make much sense.

Anyway he’s Mr. “I work alone”. He’s the top demon player and holds one of the three swords but he doesn’t play with anyone. However he sees the heroine dying in a forest and joins a party with her as she’s dying because he’s about to be dragged into the real world and he knows all damage is nullified if you log out. He’s angsty but he doesn’t actually want to see anyone die.

His romance path is pretty simple, the heroine try to help him through his fear of the people close to him dying in the game because he has a tragic past, those sorts of things.

In real life he’s a famous idol though which makes everybody jealous of your sudden connection with him. But…Although the famous idol thing makes him cool, it doesn’t exactly make sense how he would get so much time to get so good at this game.

Either way he’s not terrible, he’s cool. I’m happy with him.

Astrum:

This guy, right here. He was the reason I fell in love with this game in the beginning. Even now I wish I could discard the bad things about the game and keep him. His name is Astrum and he’s the leader of the angel faction. Before I played the game the only thing I could look up about him was that he was “A jerk with a heart of gold” which made me play him pretty quickly because he sounded boring and I wanted him out of the way.

I was wrong. This guy’s reason for falling in love with someone at first sight is such a riot and honestly so good for a video game premise.

You see, I think the game was going for some sort of prince charming type, who always tries to save you and protect you no matter what. Someone who worships the ground that you walk on because you are the All Mighty. And to do that, they made this guy a roleplayer.

This guy is known for his roleyplaying throughout the server. He’s become entagled with his persona of this strong, prince like angel leader and he decides from the very beginning that the almighty is more lore in this game and he must follow your every wish because you are granted to the game by the gods. He acts in love with you at first sight because that’s just how he’s roleplaying his character, and he’ll put his life on the line for the roleplay.

It’s made clear too pretty early on that this guy is one of the other top players of the game and has the special sword that the angels own. He has a much better reason for being so good at the game than Radius though. You see, this guy is basically a let’s player. He uploaded walkthrough videos of his character beating dungeons before anyone else online to help other players. And now since everybody knows his name he’s locked into the persona he created for himself online.

Throughout his route I was constantly frightened that they’d put a cliché reason in of why he was so obsessed with the heroine, besides that he was just a roleplayer. Perhaps he was a childhood friend in real life that my character just forgot about and he swore an oath to her?

But nope, the game does not do that. His real life persona is exactly what you would imagine someone who’s super dedicated to a fantasy online to be like, gloomy, socially anxious, and very afraid of talking in real life.

It turns out he’s a programmer who goes to the same school the heroine’s brother does and he’s been always trying to one-up-him. He gets very frightened of you seeing him because he’s no longer “Astrum, leader of the angels.” He’s just a normal guy with horrible anxiety.

I felt like his route was rather deep. He was able to remain optimistic throughout the death game because he liked being online more than being in real life. Nothing to him is as scary as real life and real interaction which I’m sure is relatable to a lot of people.

Overall Astrum was my favorite character and I wish he could have existed in a better game.

Demento:

This guy was about the time I started to get the warning signs that, hey! This game is bad. Demento’s premise itself was interesting. He’s a player killer, which in an actual MMO game wouldn’t be that bad, but in a game where if you die in the game you die in real life it’s much worse. It makes him a straight up serial killer.

In Astrum’s route (bless his soul) we got some snippets and ideas of Demento being someone more…deep than what we’ve seen in the other routes. He used to be in a party with Astrum before he accidentally killed a demon during a battle. Now, the game actually is supportive of this and he didn’t get any punishment but everybody else saw it as actual murder despite it being an accident.

Demento was thrown out of the party and abandoned by all his friends from something I assume was only done out of self defense. However he killed again and I wish the game made the second murder another accident to make him more likable but he did it just because “Mwahahah I’m evil now! I have the taste for blood.”

He killed an angel player which the game doesn’t support. If you kill your own race you change races and get dropped down to level 1, can only use a knife, can not join parties or be healed by other people and are not allowed to enter towns anymore (The only safe zone).

Since Demento changed races into a fallen, he realized that he was no longer an angel or a demon. And he got scared because if one of the races clear the ark the rest get abandoned in the game. Since he wasn’t an angel or a demon that meant he was guaranteed to die and I guess he decided to clear the ark on his own and abandon the rest? It could have been interesting if the reason he was killing people was because he knew they were going to die anyway from him clearing the ark and he wanted to get rid of the competition. This makes his murder less of a “Blood!!! Oooh!!! I’m so evil!” and more of a just scared video game player.

Anyway he starts killing people just because he wants them to die because it’s fun, and he becomes a feared player killer. And the angels can’t kill him because then they’ll get all those problems and racial changes so they can’t fully defend themselves either.

His route is kinda sucky but at that point in time I still had faith in the game. He kidnaps the heroine because he needs the almighty to clear the ark and constantly insults her, beats her and tells her she’s his.

The only thing rather interesting in his route is his real life persona, which turns out to be just a retail worker who has depression and just is working to survive verses working because he wants to. I like to think his retail worker job drove him to madness.

Of course he’s also the love interest who forces the heroine into several uncomfortable situations and sexually harasses her by forcing her to kiss him just to scare her. It’s a really disgusting scene and uncomfortable. I’m still not sure how they fell in love.

His route could have been interesting but than they added harassment and sexually assault because of course that would be interesting!!!

Zain:

Oh Zain. Poor Zain. The first half of his route was pretty good, and his initial premise was pretty interesting too (And I liked his character design! It was pretty!)

Zain is an NPC, and throughout the first half of his route he slowly begins to realize it thanks to the heroine’s friendship that he is an artificial intelligence and that he’ll never be able to go home like the heroine will because he’s not alive to begin with.  It’s kind of heartbreaking to watch but it’s an interesting premise too of an npc falling in love with someone and trying to figure out if any of that love can be him or if all of that is due to his programming because this girl is the Almighty that he has been tasked to lead to the ark.

The first half of his route is cute, he’s aloof and slowly learning what things like happiness or loneliness is. He’s trying to just be the heroine’s friend but he has no idea what personal space is because he wasn’t programmed with that unnecessary information. Everybody but the heroine treats him like he’s just a thing because he is in fact an NPC. The heroine’s friendship and how much she care about an NPC is charming though.

However then the second half of his arc happens and he gets infected by The Crazy ™.  He dies by being impaled on a horn with Demento (The guy above the sexual harasser) and his data corrupts and Demento and he merge somehow? He gets Demento’s real body but he’s stuck with parts of Demento and his mind along with his stats.

Suddenly he becomes forceful and harassing and doesn’t listen to the heroine as he just tries to force her into things and becoming one with him. He then decides that he’ll delete the rest of the world so that just the two of them can be together.

Yucky!! His route became pretty unbearable after that.

An obsessed crazy AI isn’t a bad thing per say, it can be done interestingly enough, but when you write every scene where the AI tries to merge the two people’s data as a rape scene it becomes disgusting and uncomfortable.

This made Zain pretty terrible.

Libera: 

Libera was the reason I bought this game. You see, Libera’s character online is a girl. And as a lesbian I was desperate for any yuri in any sort of dating sim because I can barely find any w/w dating sims.

I knew of course that Libera was a boy in real life, I had looked up the spoilers but I thought “Well the beginning of her route will still be pretty gay because my character will think she’s a girl and fall in love with her. And I can headcanon her as a trans girl maybe…”

So I was super excited for Libera’s route.

Libera was a beta tester in the original game so she knows a lot about the game. However she’s a pretty low level because she enjoys networking more than fighting and likes being showered in gifts by everybody who thinks she’s a cute girl. If she’s stuck in a game with this design she might as well enjoy it and exploit it right?

She’s kinda a shady character, she’s well known for being lazy and that’s why she’s not fighting and at several points early game she  seems to have the desire to scam people out of money.

The early parts of her route were just as I envisioned. My character’s heart was beating faster and faster being near another girl and it was pretty gay.

But then…Heterosexual bullcrap attacked. The game was sure to tell me and reveal the fact that Libera was a boy and only have any sort of kissing CGs in real life so that I could be sure not to kiss the girl. There were lines implying that the only way my heroine could love Libera was if she was a guy and that she had to be manly. The game tried to remind me over and over again that the only way two people could be in love was if they were a boy and girl and the reason all the heroine’s friends were supportive of her early game friendship with Libera is because they weren’t jealous because she was just another girl. (This game has a thing where all the guys, get jealous of you mentioning other guys, even if it’s something completely platonic like your worry for your childhood friend or your brother they’ll get jealous)

The thing is….Libera didn’t really need this stuff in her backstory. She didn’t need the extra thing of being a guy in real life for the drama, because she had so much else in her backstory. Libera is chronically ill and has to spend a lot of time in the hospital. Because of that their older brother played video games with them which got them into gaming. (which I completely understand! I’m ill too and it’s hard to do normal things and it can be good to have a distraction)

Their brother eventually went on to develop the full game that the characters are stuck in for Libera, which was why they got the chance to beta test it. However he died in a car accident which caused Libera to  wonder why they hadn’t died instead when they overheard their parents saying “I thought Riku would die first!” (Their name, and their parents thought they would die quickly because of Libera’s sickness) Libera decided that their parents wished their brother had lived instead of them, even though they were uninvolved in his car accident.

She’s been lazy in the game because she thinks it’s her punishment for living that she’s trapped in it, she’s convinced her brother programmed the server to punish her. But she’s also sort of okay with that because being in a video game is still better than real life where she’s sick.

This stuff was all really dramatic and much deeper than a lot of other backstories. I think the only reason they gave the “I’m secretly a dude in real life” plot line to her was so they could make sure everything was good and heterosexual.

 Hiroga:

Hiroga is the heroine childhood friend and the person the player starts the game with. He’s trying to help the heroine find  brother but at the same time protect her because she’s extremely under leveled.

I wanted to like him more because he was the childhood friend who always secretly had feelings for the heroine. That’s a trope that I like! It’s cute. However because of his possessiveness and anger at the heroine’s worry for her brother because “He’s another guy” I couldn’t fully like him. He also doesn’t let the heroine fight much because he wants her to depend on him but it feels controlling.

Hiroga is a demon but he surprisingly isn’t very high level. He’s level 32 with the top players being in the 80’s making his desire to protect the heroine odd and recklessness and actually pretty weak and getting him constantly beaten up and belittled by the stronger players.

He also tries to force himself on the heroine in Radius’s route and kidnaps her, so there’s that. However in Astrum’s route (bless his soul again) he’s pretty good and goes along with the heroine to the angel side despite knowing that demons can’t win the game with angels. He displays fun characteristics in that route like just enjoying the game because he likes it and being ultra-excited to see the angel capital and learn about the angel races because he’s never been able to see them as a demon.

I didn’t hate Hiroga as much as the true route and because I knew exactly what I would have to do afterwards (because I had to beat his route to play the true route), I was hanging onto his every word and announced he was “The last good route before my spirit was truly broken”

End of game plot:

So it turns out that the reason people have been uploaded to the server is to collect their souls to create a digital world where people’s consciousness is uploaded onto a computer and never die?

Uploading people’s consciousness onto a computer is an interesting subject so I liked this plot. It turned out that clearing the ark was just a lie and the demons and angels were never really competing against each other, it was just a ploy to get strong people into the ark to decide who would be inputted in this virtual world.

The heroine’s brother is the creator of this server and has been driven mad by his friend’s death and a car accident that the heroine was in when she was little, causing her to forget most of her memories. He’s decided to create this virtual world where the two of them will be eternally happy and have a paradise.

I thought this was pretty sweet in the beginning, but still crazy. I was like “What a nice brother! He just cares about his little sister!” (I was still unaware that this plot was for creepy incest) Still it’s a better reason than the guy who created sword art online had to make a death game. It also makes players dying necessary because he needed their souls and that’s why things were inputted in the game to make players die quicker.

The heroine being the almighty means that she’s the only race that the game’s code won’t really recognize as a player in the final death room with all the code and the floating cube (The period cube) that holds everyone’s souls. The final part of each route revolves around the heroine choosing to stop the period cube and freeing everybody’s minds or to make a new world where the people important to her are stuck in an eternal paradise.

This was all really interesting until…The true ending where everything interesting was ruined.

 THE TRUE ENDING (POYO POYO)

THIS FRICKER!!! He’s why I don’t like the game!!!

You see, I love spoilers, I try to do my research on dating sims before buying them because of mishaps before such as the charming empire (because you romance your brother in that one and incest is disgusting and just horrible. Incest in one route can ruin a game for me.)

I did a lot of research on this game, but for some reason the truth was out of my grasp, probably because of the lack of spoilers out there. I knew the true ending was with this little monster thing named Poyo Poyo that was present throughout all the routes. He was an intel monster who was like a mascot and provided you information.

I also knew however that he was my character’s brother in disguise and that was where her missing brother had gone.

I was stupid. I thought they wouldn’t make this route a romance because of this dude’s squishy mascot like appearance, and the fact that he the heroine’s brother. I thought “Oh! This route is a platonic one that uncovers the remaining mysteries in the game.”

I was wrong. Halfway through the game I got scared because every so often Zain would get possessed by the spirit of the heroine’s brother. I was afraid the NPC was actually the heroine’s brother and did some research because I knew he was romancable. Luckily he was not. However something much worse was around the corner.

You see the heroine’s brother has been trying to make this paradise for her not because he’s been worried for her because she were in a huge accident and he just wants to make her happy, but because he’s in love with her and wants her all for yourself.

He goes full on obsessive for her in his route, killing people who insult her, killing people who like her including her childhood friend and his friend, just because Hiroya wanted to help the heroine but her brother couldn’t have that, she’s all his! And he does other things like that.

You can maybe try to get by in the first parts of his route because Poyo Poyo, the mascot character that he’s taking the form of is pretty funny and tries to explain mechanics and doesn’t act romantic to my knowledge but they ruin that pretty quickly by throwing the incest at you and letting him molest you every night because you “don’t wake up” (Oh! Did I mention that yet? He turns back into his normal self while you sleep to kiss you and touch you. Disgusting!)

I hate him. I hate this game so much. I can’t believe it. It was like the game developers were like “How can we ruin this more? Oh, we got incest, let’s have multiple assault scenes in this game because that’s even better!”

They try to give you this bullcrap thing of you’re not actually blood related, like all bullcrap otome games do.

The heroine says at some point that her and her brother look nothing alike and are step-siblings, having never mentioned such a thing and only referring to him as her brother in all of the other routes. Also I call bull crap because they look very alike!!! Why is this game lying to me??? (Although even if they weren’t blood related that wouldn’t make the whole situation better, she still sees him as her brother and he still molests her)

At the end of the game the heroine talks to her brother about his feelings and he tells her it’s gross that he likes his sister and has wanted to kiss her since he met her (and we get a flashback of him meeting her AS A BABY!!! Because this game had to get even grosser!!!)

The heroine is not freaked out like a normal person should be, but she tells her brother calmly that she loves him but not the same way that he loves her because he’s her brother. She tells him he’s an important person to her but not like that.

In my heart I rejoiced because maybe the game was trying to save itself. But not one sentence later she kissed him, not even taking back what she said about loving him as her brother.

 If I swore outwardly I’d yell more. FRICK THIS GAME! FRICK ALL INCEST DATING SIMS!!! NEVER PLAY THIS GAME AND BURN IT IN A FIRE! I HATE THIS I HATED HOW I ENJOYED THE BEGINNING PARTS AND THEY TOOK IT ALL AWAY WITH THIS STUPID END ROUTE!!! I HATE IT SO MUCH!!!

Anyway I’m sorry this is my first review on this site but I had to make my hatred known. This is disgusting, incest should not be romanticized and neither should sexual assault and harassment.

 Overall this game is a 0/10 for incest and sexual assault obviously (maybe a.1/10 for Astrum)