slbp-rankings

[slbp-rankings]

pleeease can we rate amount of smut, level of heat, and extent of descriptions?? (or other measures we can consider) for each warlord and ninja?? thank you for listening to my thirsty cries.

Unfortunately, I haven’t played the game in over a year and I believe the same goes for the other admin. However, if anyone else wants to make such a ranking I’ll be happy to post it.

[slbp-rankings]

Remember when I mentioned hamster battle stats were happening on the SLBP discord? Now that the battle’s over, we have pretty graphs!

Above is probably the graph most people are interested in. It shows the number of 600+ servings to each lord over the course of the battle. We tracked this by looking to see what the lowest rank was for someone who had served at least 600 items to a character. (600 is how many it took in this battle to get a chibi, so most players will switch to another lord after serving 600.) The graph tops out at 300 because you can only look at up to 30 pages (300 players) of results.

Kojuro and Masamune were far and away the most popular, but that’s because you had to serve them each 500 items if you wanted to complete the monthly prizes. (Harp for Masa, dress for Koju, white hair if you got both and all the other requests.)

Hotaru was an early favorite, but he  was overtaken by Yukimura and sometimes Ieyasu once betrayal started. All three finished very strong and in the 300+ club. Could be a majority of fans prefer their otome boyfriends inexperienced in the ways of love, could be they made the best hamsters, could be with Saizo unavailable, fans devoted themselves to his little brother and best friend. (Or something else! This is why we need more battle stats - join the discord and help us keep track. :D)

Shingen stayed right in the middle of the pack the entire battle.

Mitsunari, Kenshin, and Inuchiyo consistently trailed, with numbers that were nearly identical for large portions of the battle.

Mitsuhide and Hideyoshi were consistently in the bottom (the puppy can take solace that he’s beaten the monkey at one thing). Sasuke was right there with them, but managed to pull out some extra numbers in the end to avoid last place.

Here’s what the raw data looks like. We tracked in six-hour increments for the sake of easy graph making, but some particularly interesting data points were added in a separate tab (like when East and West spent days within a few thousand items of each other). We fortunately had several volunteers in different time zones, but for the sake of accuracy I will point out that not all of the data was recorded at the exact times listed. The times may be up to three or four hours off for any given column.

Special shoutouts to Melana, who entered the bulk of the numbers and made most of the graphs, and Velociprator-Detective, who created the handy time-changing function.

West started out winning pretty handily, but as soon as betrayal started (like, within the hour) the battle became neck and neck. No being sure you were on the winning side this time! After betrayal ended, however, East took a slim lead and kept it until the end.

Perhaps also of interest is how many items it took to get T300/500/1000. The numbers were pretty steady with no large gaps. Would these numbers look different in a 6-way battle with bonus chibis on the line? Again, we need more data to find out!

The final numbers.

In conclusion, join the discord! We have math and statistics and hunger for more numbers. :D

[slbp-rankings]

An excellent question! Let us consider.

Shigezane His entire MS is about how devoted his people are to protecting his smile and how it makes them smile too. Can there be any question who's number one?

Shingen I think his is more of an invitation for men to smile and women to swoon. But Shingen definitely likes sharing jokes and anywhere he is is filled with laughter.

(Beefy) Saskue See: Shingen

Tora Kitten smiles are adorable. Just try not smiling when a kitten does.

Yukimura Look, all of Kai is basically one big smile zone. Yukimura is very serious about his training, but when he smiles how can you help smiling along?

Oboro Who's a good dog? Yes you are! Yes you are!

Hideyoshi His smiles can be kind of fake sometimes, but you can't help smile when he's smiling because he's probably doing his best to be charming (and succeeding).

Hotaru Aww, he's smiling! Makes you want to smile too.

Saizo Aww, he's smiling! He's either teasing Yukimura or else probably just escaped death and is being sentimental, but either way everyone else is probably also smiling. He is from Kai, after all.

Nobunaga He's in a position of ultimate power. If he smiles, (nearly) everyone will too, whether because it means something good is about to happen or because they're being ingratiating.

Masamune Doesn't show his emotions often, but his smile certainly spreads around a room when he whips it out.

Genya It's a very nice smile, but it's not exactly infectious, is it? It's not usually because he's sharing a joke but because he's talking about his MC or Masamune or someone else he cares about.

Raita If a cute little fox smiles at you, you smile back. But you have to know the fox well enough to see the smile.

Kenshin How infectious his smile is depends on how irritated you are that he skipped his work to play.

Inuchiyo I feel like SLBP wants us to think Inuchiyo has an infectious and fun-loving smile, but it never works for me on the same level as Hideyoshi's.

Kojuro He usually only seems to smile when Genya or Shigezane have proven themselves useful or someone has been nice to Masamune. Not really sharing-the-joke kind of occasions.

Sakuya Sakuya's a tricky one. If his smile is real, you'll absolutely feel like smiling back. But is it real?

Kiyohiro It's a practiced business smile, and it works well enough with his clientele. His natural smiles, like Genya's, are less the sharing kind and more the "I love these idiots" kind.

Haku Tumblr has well documented that snakes can smile and that it can be very endearing. Unfortunately, his audience is usually in no mind to appreciate it.

Ieyasu If you don't know him, you might take his smiles at face value and smile back. This would not go well for you, but you wouldn't know better until afterwards.

Mitsunari His smiles are for the satisfaction of being right, doing something right, or the existence of Hideyoshi (sometimes MC). Not very likely to spread unless his audience shares his passions.

Hanzo Hanzo's smile is infectious only to the gullible and his MC, who for some reason spent an entire ES laughing with him at nothing.

Kohaku Birds don't smile. They don't have lips.

Mitsuhide Poor Mitsuhide's "smile" is so frightening that there is actually a side story about him freaking everyone out with it.

Tobimaru Monkeys freak me out. Smiling monkeys freak me out more.

Today (February 5th) is 笑顔の日 (Smile Day!)

Which samurai or ninja do you think has the most infectious grin?

A: Shigezane B: Kenshin C: (Beefy) Sasuke D: Oboro (Ninja… dog?)

[slbp-rankings]

Hello everyone!! First off: huge thanks to everyone who filled out/shared the survey I posted a little while back. There were nearly 200 responses (190 to be exact) - MUCH more than I initially expected! So, I really appreciate it :)

Without further ado, here is the first set of results from the survey! This post is a basic report of average character ratings. More analysis to come!

IkeSen

Cybird’s Ikemen Sengoku was the single most popular game in the survey (85% of you have played the game before!). Let’s take a look at the average warlord ratings. Ratings were given from 1 to 10, with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best.

It’s safe to say that most of IkeSen’s cast has been really well received by the fandom! Although meme-lord Sasuke leads the pack (by less than 0.01…), Team Nobunaga rates higher than Team Shingen+Kenshin by about 0.6 of a point on average (8.0 vs 7.4). …And then, there’s Kennyo. Poor guy. I’m not too surprised, though, tbh, given the monk’s self-imposed angsty villain status.

What’s funny is that neither of the top two warlords have main routes, at the moment. Seems like IkeSen fans have a lot to look forward to in future updates!

SLBP

Next up we have Voltage’s super popular Samurai Love Ballad: PARTY app (played by 74% of you)! Here are the average ratings:

Unlike with IkeSen, where a good half of warlords were all rated more or less equally highly, there is tons more variation in the SLBP ratings! The entire Date clan is almost universally adored, with an average rating of 8.2 out of 10. People don’t seem to be quite as fond of Team Nobunaga - the Oda clan+allies have an average rating of 6.5 (the Takeda clan averages out at 6.9).

The three ninjas (Saizo, Sasuke, and Sakuya), haven’t been overly well received by the fandom either, with an average rating of 6.5. Voltage has been pushing the ninjas on us pretty hard, so it’ll definitely be interesting to see how future ninjas are received by English-speaking fans!

Final SLBP thoughts: it’s the “gentle” warlords that lead the pack in terms of ratings! Takeaway? Nice guys don’t always finish last, after all. ;)

MysMe

Let’s move on to the super famous Mystic Messenger app, brought to us by the lovely Cheritz. A good 73% of you have played this game! It’s pretty time intensive; props to everyone who'a finished all the routes. Based on what little I know about the fandom, the resulting ranking probably won’t be all that shocking to you. 707 is an extremely popular fan favorite; I’m only surprised his average rating wasn’t higher, to be honest.

MidCin

Next up, we have Cybird’s Midnight Cinderella! All you Wysterian princess seem to really like your nobility, seeing as we have a duke, a king, and an archduke leading the pack. Those mysterious Stein boys (excluding the spoiler) are also slightly more well loved by the fandom overall, with an average rating of 7.5, compared to 7.1 for everyone else.

IkeRev

Last but certainly not least in our list of otome games, we have Ikemen Revolution, an exciting app from Cybird that’s less than one month old! Given how new the app is, it is truly hilarious how quickly opinions have already formed. Let’s take a look:

…Well then. The fandom seems to prefer the freedom-loving Muggles over the tyrannical wizards in general: Black Army ratings average 7.9, compared to 7.3 for the Red Army. To be fair, this survey was released two weeks ago, when the app was still pretty new, so I wonder if opinions will shift over time as more information about the armies and their conflict come to light!

Final observation: neither Oliver nor Yoosung from MysMe seem to have been all that well received by their respective fandoms. They are also both the most childish. Coincidence? I think not.

Bonus: MC ratings

Boys are cool and all, but if you’re anything like me, MC’s play can play a huge role in your enjoyment of a route. So which MC’s do folks like the best?

Turns out that while there are exceptions, IkeSen’s sass queen MC reigns supreme in most people’s hearts. Actually, if you think about it, the sass levels really start dropping the further down that MC ranking list you go.

So… the MC’s at the top of the list definitely strike me as much more Westernized, for lack of a better description, than the MC’s at the bottom. Which is fascinating, when you consider the fact that all of these games were developed in Asia. Just some food for thought.

That’s it, for now! I hope you found these results as interesting as I did. But wait! There’s more! Curious to see which characters are the most polarizing? Ever wondered how powerful character trope preferences actually are? Stay tuned for the next post in this series!

Pinging @akari-dangos @alternative27angel @alva-radio @aomarill @aromantic-misguide-to-romance @belxsar @blairextraordinaire @candidquip @chasingforgottendreams @cinderella-cass @cookieframby @dear-mrs-otome @dopeassjaqjack @dreamfar628 @emigotchi @eternallymitsunariishida @forallyourikemensengokuneeds @foxybread @fraeuleinfulltime @ieyasuslbp @ihavenotfallenyet  @jaciinclays @jindalraekarkki @kanon-chii  @kanookied @kay-otome @kindervenomtoo @kitsune-mana @kitty-kat-ty @laslilis2000 @lilster360 @lyra-ame @memiskypirate @mysticdaddies @mysticmessofcrap @ohsaizo @otohoe @otomeprincessstuff @perfectruffian2389 @pseudofaux @puppieee @randomchick29  @raspberrais @rose-of-yonezawa @rubyleeray @saizoswifey @saralilanimemanga @scrappingandyelling @sharksmirk @slbp-gamer @slbp-owns-ayame @soulfeather-universe @space-romantic @tardisgrl50 @the-divine-equalizer @thegreenfairy25 @twirlingintheabyss @uxoremmikael @valkryie-nyte @wrynnfall @yoolee @yuyuisakura-hime @zay5238 . Message me if you want on/off this list!

[slbp-rankings]

I don't know if this has been asked before, but how would you rank the SLBP ninjas (both from Radiance + Shadow, you can even add in Shadow!MC if you want) in terms of overall skill? Like, which ninja is objectively the best at what they do :0?

Ooooh I love this question!! So based on who I recall has kicked the hell out of who from ES…and their skill/powers overall:

Saizo

Hanzo

Genya

Sasuke

Hotaru

Sakuya

Kyoichiro

Kaede

Yuki

Kiyohiro

Kotaro

Tsuki!MC

Hotaru was tough, I wanted to place him under Yuki and honestly he’s not as strong as many of the others but the intense power of his Kotodama alone really puts him up the list!

[slbp-rankings]

Who blushes the most in SLBP?

The latest Lord of the Draw brings up an interesting question: which lords (and ninjas) are most prone to blushing in SLBP, and which the least? It’s definitely a matter worthy of analysis!

1. Yukimura Does anyone in SLBP blush more than Yukimura? Fandom's sweetheart is unused to the ways of love and women and his face (and Saizo's running commentary) makes sure everyone knows it.

2. Inuchiyo A close contender, Inuchiyo blushes every time he has a dirty thought about MC, acts on a dirty thought about MC, or feels guilty for acting on a dirty thought about MC. So, you know, constantly.

3. Mitsunari The first of the tsunderes! Mitsunari is usually quite matter of fact, but when love is involved his face lights up like a tomato (...if tomatoes lit up).

4. Masamune Our shy boy doesn't blush so much at romantic love as the thought of anyone loving him at all. Compliments are the quickest way to an embarrassed but pleased red face.

5. Kyoichiro He wouldn't be blushing at all if you hadn't gone and done something so stupid, baka!

6. Ieyasu I'm sure Ieyasu would be outraged to be so high on this list, but otome tsunderes need some way to convey their true feelings. If he's gonna lie with that mouth his cheeks will have to do the truth-telling for him.

7. Hotaru Like Yukimura, Hotaru has very little experience with love or women, but unlike Yukimura, Hotaru doesn't know enough about societal norms to be embarrassed (most of the time). Most of his blushes are guilt-induced rather than MC-induced.

8. Sakuya Sakuya's a reasonably good actor and can keep his face impressively stony under most circumstances, but just let MC bare a little bit of flesh when he's not expecting it and there he goes.

9. Genya He's an easy-going guy with a lot of life experience. He's not gonna blush at the little things (though he'll tease you for doing so), but he's just as susceptible as his twin to MC's charms and not nearly as dedicated to hiding it.

10. Shigezane All of Omori loves his smile, but his blushing face is quite nice too. Like Genya, he's both experienced with the world and open with his emotions.

11. Kojuro He strives to always look neutral, but he's still a red-blooded man and just can't help it sometimes.

12. Mitsuhide Ditto. Out of bias I have concluded he'd be ever so slightly better at hiding his blushes than Kojuro, plus he's got that reputation as a “perfect” samurai to uphold.

13. Saizo Wishes he was lower on the list, but can't help it when MC wears that ribbon dress.

14. Sasuke It takes a lot to make Sasuke blush after everything he's done in life (and the bedroom).

15. Nobunaga What do you have to blush about when you're the best in the world, the grand unifier, and deserving of everything?

16. Hideyoshi He's had a thousand lovers and is amazing on the battlefield. What's to blush about?

17. Shingen See: Hideyoshi (but older).

18. Kenshin Completely lacking in shame. Probably the only person who can make Shingen blush.

19. Hanzo If he blushes, I assume it's through careful ninja makeup trickery and is somehow part of a plot of tease either Ieyasu or MC.

[slbp-rankings]

Welcome!

Samurai Love Ballad Party has a lot of things to offer, including over 18 romanceable characters. Faced with that many options, there’s only one thing to do: rank the hell out of them.

Whether it’s who’s the strongest to which lord is most likely to blush in any circumstance, it’s ranking time! Got an ordered list of the lords and ninjas? Submissions are wide open.

Submission rules and guidelines:

Please don’t be mean. It’s one thing to say Ieyasu probably couldn’t take Saizo in a hand-to-hand fight, but another to rag on him for that.

Have some kind of criteria for your ranking. Random lists are no fun.

Feel free to include supplemental evidence, even if it’s just your favorite fanfic.

Use the suggested tags.

Major spoilers must be tagged and hidden using "Keep Reading."

Be creative! This blog exists for fun.

[slbp-rankings]

Kirigakure Saizo (17.2%, 71 votes)

Date Masamune (15.3%, 63 votes)

Tokugawa Ieyasu (14%, 58 votes)

Sanada Yukimura (10.9%, 45 votes)

Katakura Kojuro (9.9%, 41 votes)

Takeda Shingen (9.4%, 39 votes)

Oda Nobunaga and Maeda Toshiie (5.6%, 23 votes each)

Ishida Mitsunari (4.4%, 18 votes)

Akechi Mitsuhide (3.9%, 16 votes)

Uesugi Kenshin (2.2%, 9 votes)

Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1.7%, 7 votes)