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my-current-obsession · 2 years ago

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Winter’s Wish: Spirits of Edo - Final Thoughts

HEADS UP - below the read more, I’ll have spoilers for EVERY route in the game!

I enjoyed this game quite a lot, though I don’t absolutely love it by any means. PERSONALLY I’d put it at about the level of Olympia Soiree - so it’s pretty good and I’ll come back to it occasionally, but it doesn’t measure up to my favorites.

That said I liked the unique elements of the story - vessels, formfolk, blightfall - and how they were handled... for the most part. I feel like the story somehow hits both ends of the spectrum in being VERY logically thought out/developed and making good use of foreshadowing... and yet sometimes there are things that don’t make sense at all or seem contradictory. There’s also a bit of a consistency problem in how certain characters and issues are handled depending on the route. I’ll get into that a bit in the spoilers.

My play order was Genjuro > Kinji > Kunitaka > Tomonari > Yoichi > Ohtaro.

Common Route(s): While I was partially disappointed to have to immediately narrow down my route choice to two guys (or rather, ONE guy except for Castle Town due to two routes being locked initially), I did enjoy seeing the different stories play out and how Suzuno was utilized differently each time. The “pre” route split also gave the story more time to get her closer to each love interest, IMO.

I appreciated that she was taught to fight in the Castle Town route, which then carried forward to her contributing a bit more in battle for Yoichi and Genjuro. It’s a shame she couldn’t fight in the other routes, but thankfully they found other ways for her to be useful anyway.

I’ll admit the Entertainment District route frustrated me a bit, since the conflict was so... avoidable. Yabuta cast suspicion on himself by not revealing his connection to the case and then had the audacity to get upset when everyone confronted him about after finding out the truth. Thankfully this stupidity IS pointed out at the end and he basically says he won’t make the same mistake again... but honestly an apology or acknowledgement that HE was in the wrong would have been nice, instead of treating him as justified for being secretive and then upset at the consequences to HIS OWN actions.

The Samurai Town route was surprisingly funny. The epic music and tension given to Suzuno just trying to impress the ladies and get an in with them was hilarious, as was Tenichibo immediately falling for her and outing himself as a mostly harmless loser. This route also showed another, sweeter side of Kyoshiro, which was lovely. It’s a shame that only carried into Tomonari’s route and not Kunitaka’s.

Genjuro: This route was a sweet and wholesome slowburn. I could really tell they were getting closer as time passed, and it was clear Genjuro was starting to open up and depend on Suzuno for guidance. I also think this route probably handled the vessel issue the best. More than anyone else, Genjuro starts out like what I expected a heartless, memory-less person to be - aloof and focused entirely on his mission. Several other vessels just seem too... emotive, right from the start - and to be fair there ARE reasons for some of those (which I’ll get to) but in some cases I can’t figure out where their depth of perception and emotion is coming from.

Meanwhile you can SEE the transition with Genjuro from being focused on his work (while still devoted to the people of Edo) to starting to feel more. First comes the reveal of how much time and effort he’s put into interacting as casually/normally as he does with people - and to be clear he’s still pretty awkward, showing that despite his progress he still has a long way to go - and then he slowly gets anxious and upset about essentially being on house arrest, but as a vessel, he needs Suzuno to RECOGNIZE what’s he’s feeling and help him understand and work through it. Long before his seal breaks, you can see he’s slowly starting to feel and certain emotions are bleeding through.

If I have one complaint, it’s just that he could have used one or two more “romantic” scenes to justify the ending. I feel like their relationship jumped from around 60 to 100, really quick. Even just giving them a few more minutes to interact after the seal on his heart broke and indicating then that he DID have feelings for her (that he hadn’t fully felt/recognized until now, of course) before Hanzo showed up would've been enough. As-is, I personally found the big romantic declarations of love and wanting to be together forever to be just a tad unearned.

Kinji: So this seems to be a bit of a hot take but I didn’t really care for his route. Or at least, I didn’t like his relationship with Suzuno. Something about the way he interacts with and treats her just feels condescending to me. It feels like he “likes” her because she amuses/entertains him, which... I don’t find romantic. And on her end, while it’s VERY clear that Suzuno is attracted to him, it seems purely physical. She’s into his looks which is valid (he’s 100% the hottest guy in the game based on appearance alone), but it’s hard for me to take her falling for him seriously because it just feels like they haven’t bonded at all. He teases her, she gets flustered, this repeats like four more times... and suddenly she realizes she loves him. WHY?

They don’t seem to have opened up to each other at all so it doesn’t feel like there’s any reason for her to like him more; she’s just infatuated with him. I DID like him outright telling her to make him fall for her - that felt good and I thought at least his half of the romance might feel earned. But it seemed like in no time at all he was reciprocating - or rather the story suggested he was ALREADY into her by the the time he made that suggestion. And again I couldn’t see it, because to me it feels like he’s toying with her rather than CONNECTING with her.

Outside of the romance that I couldn’t get behind, I DO like other aspects of this route. I liked the espionage/spy angle of Suzuno infiltrating the brothel, as well as the makeover that came with it. And I liked Okuni quite a bit. This route was also like the only one to have a red herring for the antagonist unless we’re counting the Man Behind the Man, the true Big Bad for every route, which I’m not at this point. It was nice having to try and solve a mystery instead of having an obvious conflict to overcome from the beginning.

Kunitaka: In isolation, I think his route is very solid and I like it. Taking the entire game and other routes into account though... I have several issues. First of all, Kunitaka gets SUCH a raw deal. Even though it makes sense for the Oniwaban to doubt/suspect him considering the evidence, they take it too far - at least compared to other routes. This is where the consistency issue pops up.

In other routes, characters are trusted or forgiven for FAR WORSE considering there is NO doubt in those circumstances that they’re guilty. Yet Kunitaka is merely suspected, with NO concrete proof, and literally everyone turns on him and is ready to kill him basically immediately.

What really bothers me is that logically, this makes SENSE from the vessels at least - they wouldn’t have the hearts to truly care about/trust him, so they’d be ruthlessly logical about it (which makes their quick turnarounds/trust in OTHER routes that much more grating). As the prime suspect it makes sense to take him out. But even the HUMANS in the Oniwaban don’t give him the benefit of the doubt. This is PARTICULARLY frustrating with Yabuta, considering he’s a damn hypocrite. He suspects Kunitaka and wants to kill him WITH NO HARD EVIDENCE, yet he had the gall to be upset that the Entertainment crew was suspecting him AFTER HE WITHHELD INFORMATION from them.

Even Tomonari, who should know him best, doesn’t trust or care for him at all and ONLY joins him due to his trust in SUZUNO. It was so frustrating playing this route and having everyone doubt Kunitaka. What’s worse is that there was an opportunity for Suzuno to be (RIGHTFULLY!!!) angry towards everyone on his behalf, but instead she was just... sad and didn’t know how to think/feel about everyone. Honestly this route would have been ten times better if Kunitaka and/or Suzuno actually HELD IT AGAINST the Oniwaban instead of instantly forgiving them. Since the trust and relationship was BROKEN, they needed to EARN it back, and that didn’t happen.

My other huge issue is just that I struggle to wrap my head around Kunitaka as a vessel. Genjuro and Kinji actually do seem initially aloof/detached/etc. before they start emoting more throughout their routes, and the other three have good reasons/explanations for why they’re so emotive. But how/why is Kunitaka so emotive and perceptive? I understand that a lot of his personality is inherited from his owner, but even if he’s compelled to live a similar lifestyle I just struggle to think that without the capacity to feel and understand emotions, he’d be able to act the way he does and even more, be such a good teacher to children.

It’s also odd how... back-and-forth he is in regards to Suzuno. Sometimes he can tell what she’s feeling (such as when he deliberately tries to shut her down so she’ll stop loving him, since a relationship with a vessel wouldn’t work) but other times he’s completely dense and has to be told what she’s thinking.

Finally I have a minor nitpick - Kunitaka’s relationship with Genjuro is a fairly important part of his character and route, yet doesn’t have ANY role or importance in Genjuro’s route. Just one more way in which the poor guy is shafted.

All these complaints make me understandably ambivalent at best about Kunitaka’s route. That said... I actually DID like the romance here! Yes, it was a bit rushed in the beginning, but it made sense - due to the accidental kiss and Suzuno’s lack of experience, she fell fast and hard. But the route took a turn I’d never seen before when Kunitaka NOTICED and shut her down since he didn’t (and couldn’t) feel the same.

I genuinely liked Suzuno a lot in this route. It took a lot of determination for her to turn against everyone else to support Kunitaka, especially when she was suffering a broken heart at the time. But she KNEW it wasn’t him and she trusted him, so she willingly put herself in a painful situation to support him.

She shoved her love aside to be there as his FRIEND, and then was confident and spunky enough to reject HIM when he confessed to her. Because he’d broken her heart and she was trying to get over him, she issued him a (justified) challenge to win her over. What followed was basically a role reversed version of what I’d wanted/expected from Kinji’s route, where Kunitaka clearly started making moves and she was into it even as she tried to force her feelings down.

So yeah, I really liked the romance in this route. I also loved Tenichibo coming back and playing a big role. He’s easily my favorite non Oniwaban character. It’s a shame about... everything else.

Tomonari: Yes, I played his route before Yoichi despite him being the intended penultimate route. I actually blindly ended up on Tomonari BEFORE Kunitaka, and got pretty invested in the beginning of his route before I was forced onto the early bad end. So I was eager to get back to him as soon as possible.

By design, this route was darker than the rest. The pressure to use her power to contribute and catch the murderer BROKE Suzuno in a way nothing else in any other route did. It’s interesting they chose the poster boy’s route for her to be so weak/helpless, but it’s clearly intentional as she and Tomonari have clear arcs on this route where she has to accept what’s happened and just try to do what what she can while he has to learn to LET her try instead of sheltering her from everything and everyone that might hurt her.

Tomonari is interesting in that’s he’s pretty cold/aloof... towards literally everything except Suzuno. But his soft spot for her is clearly explained as a result of their shared past - even with his memories sealed, on some level he recognized and loved her from the start, and wanted to do everything he could for her. I appreciate that this is present in basically every route too - he consistently puts her wants and well-being above his duties in the Oniwaban, which is very NOT vessel-like behavior.

The romance is pretty well-written and believable in this route, but it IS a bit uncomfortable with the context of them kind of being raised as family. I know that physically/mentally/emotionally they’re the same age NOW but it’s weird to think Tomonari existed pretty much at the same state he is now when Suzuno was a child, and he was essentially her older brother (considering in Ohtaro’s route he explicitly calls Suzuno’s parents Mother and Father, indicating they were HIS parents too).

I also don’t know how to feel about the fact that he occasionally comes off as yandere-lite. Outside of the bad ends, his moments of jealousy/possessiveness are minor and played funny/cute enough that I can accept them, but I still recognize on some level that it’s not... good. And if he weren’t literally about to die in his sorrow end I’d be freaking out more about the way he’s rushing into sex with her as a way to “claim / leave a mark” on her”. It’s not explicitly said but I have to wonder if the implication is he’s wanting/hoping she gets pregnant (since the scene very much had a vibe of him wanting her to remember him forever, and that would leave her a lifelong reminder). If so, ironically his other bad end debunks the possibility.

On that subject, can I just say RIP Genjuro’s good ending. Since Tomonari’s bad ending heavily implies that vessels can’t reproduce, that means the desire to have kids/a family the Genjuro expresses in his good ending won’t go anywhere. This theoretically isn’t an issue for Kunitaka or Tomonari in their good endings since they turn human, but Genjuro is explicitly still a vessel since his memories are still sealed. Kinji and Yoichi are too, but at least neither of them outright says they want kids and might not get to have them.

Not to harp on my issues with Kunitaka’s route again (and I’ll do it AGAIN in Ohtaro’s route), but the Oniwaban is very quick to forgive Tomonari and Suzuno for running away. Even worse is that Yabuta specifically apparently was concerned for them and vouched for them to the shogun - even if you chose NOT to run away and thus Tomonari took matters into his own hands, which leads to a confrontation with Yabuta as opposed to him just letting you go peacefully. Once again, Kunitaka got a raw deal.

One aspect of this route I really liked was the relationship between Miharu and Kyoshiro and how they were basically a beta couple. The two are VERY different and have a long way to go towards understanding each other, but just seeing the baby steps (and comparing their strained, bickering relationship with how easy and loving Tomonari/Suzuno is) was satisfying. THAT SAID, Kyoshiro coming back to life at the end was... convenient, to say the least. He was the ONE major character to die in every route (not counting bad ends), and it got undone.

While it was emotional and I’m glad to see Miharu and the shogun so happy... his death was a very important moment for Suzuno and something that should have weighed on her forever. It’s something that she and Tomonari were partially overcoming when they defeated the blightfall, so having it just undone felt cheap. Especially when it was explicitly stated there was no chance he’d come back.

Yoichi: I ended up liking the relationship and dynamic he had with Suzuno a lot more than I initially expected. Especially since the route started on a trope I’m NOT fond of - fake dating.

Thankfully that was only a small part of the route, and even while pretending to date, the two got to have several REAL conversations. I appreciate Yoichi’s blunt and straightforward attitude, and how he helped Suzuno grow.

I really liked the twist of his route and how it sets him apart from the other vessels. Because Yoichi had his memories from the start, he can fall back on that knowledge/experience to better interact with people. Even if his own feelings are muted, he REMEMBERS emotions enough to be able to recognize (and even manipulate...) them in others and fake them himself. Even retroactively, I feel like applying what I learned about him here helped me understand his actions on OTHER routes.

When it comes to Yoichi’s feelings... that’s where the water gets muddied in the context of the game as a whole. Even at the end of the route, Suzuno can’t see his threads, which suggests that his heart is STILL sealed. However, Yoichi gets offended/upset when she suggests he can’t feel and is pretty insistent that he CAN. Also, considering how... besotted he gets once he and Suzuno actually get together, it’s hard to deny that he’s feeling something. It’s too radical a shift, and there’s no reason for him to be lying at this point.

I can understand and sympathize with the idea of “whether I have a heart/feelings is up to ME”, but when it directly contradicts literally every other route, which clearly shows the threads as an indication of having a heart, it leaves me feeling confused.

Ohtaro: My first playthrough of his route, I was ambivalent up until The Reveal, for reasons I will shortly explain. After that, though, my primary emotion, for QUITE some time, was... vindication.

I’d been suspicious of Ohtaro for quite a while, for several reasons. Some meta reasons (his route ONLY unlocking after Tomonari, who already required completing 3-4 others, was obviously notable), some legitimate foreshadowing that I caught, and some things I was actually just wrong about (in the extras menu, I was CONVINCED his flower was a spider lily, which I know is associated with death. I was surprised and embarrassed when I beat the route and discovered it was a freaking DANDELION).

I figured there had to be some reason Ohtaro’s route came AFTER the poster boy, who in games with locked routes is almost always the final route. So I knew there must be big twists/reveals, and him being a twist villain made sense. So even before hitting his route, I was on the lookout for suspicious behavior from him. I actually caught the line in the Entertainment District common route about “black threads”, but it was so brief I wasn’t sure what it meant. Since the game moved on immediately I assumed it meant everyone saw Suzuno’s power (which is true) removing the threads (false).

I found it curious that in most routes, Ohtaro just LEAVES in the good ending. I thought his behavior in Tomonari’s route was ultra convenient - pitching a fit about being tired so he could leave just before shit went down. Being “useless” against the Divine Blightfall (which the others even call out!). I was primed and READY to catch him as a villain, and by the time I actually started his route I might have been disappointed to be proven wrong.

But I WAS still second-guessing myself and open to being wrong... up until he mentioned emotional imprints. It was then that I KNEW he was hiding shit and I was READY for the reveal. And it didn’t disappoint!

I’ve never seen another otome where one of the love interests is a twist villain big bad. I’ve seen twist villains (but not the main antagonist), and I’ve seen villain love interests that weren’t hiding that they were the enemy, but this was a first. The sheer novelty made this route enticing for me.

More importantly, this reveal retroactively fixed a huge issue I’d been having with his route - namely that the relationship/romance was moving VERY FAST on his end. But that was intentional, because he’s been purposefully trying to seduce her into joining him.

And at first I couldn’t reconcile WHY he wanted her on his side so badly, since it was clear he was manipulating her into joining him rather than actually being in love with her - but why would he care so much about her joining anyway, unless he DID like her? But there was a well thought out answer for that, too. Just like Tomonari, Ohtaro is deeply connected to Suzuno, except through her mother rather than her father. And he wanted her on his side because of that connection.

I think the sorrow ending is VERY helpful/informative on this route. Even after two runs of his good ending, I couldn’t quite accept his sudden shifts in mood and how he treated Suzuno. But seeing a good chunk of his route from his POV clarified a lot. Suzuno was actually RIGHT ON THE MONEY when she asked if he wanted to be stopped long before he was willing to engage with the idea, which is why he divulged as much information as he did and why he was so easily persuaded to give up revenge. And seeing when he started to genuinely like her made the progression of their relationship work better for me too, since from Suzuno’s perspective, there is a DRASTIC shift between before and after she rescues him from the Oniwaban that was a little too sudden for me.

But knowing that he was ALREADY struggling with figuring out his feelings at that point, knowing that he DID like her - and might have thoughtlessly kissed her because HE WANTED to rather than because he thought it was what she wanted, and thus he felt rejected when she bit him - made his falling to pieces when she saved him less abrupt and more believable.

The sorrow ending also just hits really hard in a good way. It fires Chekov’s Gun (which was brought up and NOT fired in the good end) with the netsuke being broken. Tomonari’s call out to Suzuno was SO GOOD and directly points to what DOES happen in the good end where the “correct” way to love someone is not by accepting and going along with your love’s sins but rather by addressing them and trying to do better. The CG of Ohtaro literally dying while he finally acknowledges his feelings and how he wants Suzuno to be free rather than carry on his revenge is painful in the best way. And Suzuno not even realizing she’s become a blightfall (paralleling Hibie, since both turned blightfall out of losing their love) and carrying on Ohtaro’s revenge anyway without meaning to, as she searches for him. God, that ending hurt and I loved it.

Ultimately the game handled basically everything with Ohtaro REALLY well. There was plenty of foreshadowing to his “true nature” and then again there was some foreshadowing in his route of his ACTUAL true nature and wishes. The Oniwaban’s behavior also made sense in this route. Again, there was subtle foreshadowing about them learning/suspecting the truth - there’s a great moment where after Ruriko talks about feeling a pain in her neck, which the vessels assume is important, and we get a text box of Kinji saying nothing, looking concerned. Since vessels have perfect memory, he’d remember that Ohtaro touched her neck and thus would suddenly have reason to suspect him.

The Oniwaban covertly planning and attacking him out of the blue makes sense - they wouldn’t show a blightfall any mercy. I also appreciate that Kyoshiro shuts Suzuno down when she tries to defend Ohtaro or get him to allow her to talk to him again, but then he’s convinced through a logical approach - getting information about Hibie. And it makes sense that Tomonari would help her since that’s in character as I previously established. And while I still think Ohtaro gets forgiven/accepted a bit too easily (especially compared to Kunitaka...), again the story is careful to have it make perfect logical sense.

Barring Tomonari, the rest of the vessels decide to give Ohtaro a chance only AFTER Suzuno’s conversation with him. And notably in that conversation, the concept of the cycle of revenge is brought up, as well as Ohtaro clearly leaning towards accepting Suzuno’s request to stop fighting. So the vessels ONLY give Ohtaro that chance because they don’t want to continue perpetuating that cycle and they know Ohtaro is similarly willing to stop. The shogun similarly chooses to spare his life for those reasons. And again, Yabuta is specifically noted to care about/vouch for Ohtaro, because he’s similarly a “redeemed criminal”, which considering this route FOLLOWS the Entertainment District story, makes sense. Having been forgiven for the trouble HE recently caused, he’s paying that forward.

(I’m still bitter he’s so quick to doubt and try to kill off Kunitaka though).

I’m quite torn on how I feel about what went down in the past as revealed in this route. It’s a messy situation where no one party is entirely guilty... but nor are they innocent. The story certainly tries to frame Suzuno’s mother Setsu as an innocent victim... but at the same time I can’t help but feel she should have tried harder to compromise with the clan or convince them of her way. Hilariously Hibina was kind of right when he called her out for making a bunch of radical statements simply because she wanted to marry an outsider. It doesn’t help that I really don’t like the idea of her praying for a god’s help (basically magical intervention) to ensure she marries a guy she JUST MET. Is that not like... the fantasy version of drugging the guy? And she chose to do that at the expense of EVERY other relationship she had.

I do appreciate that there is very mild pushback to her decisions/actions in how Suzuno does things DIFFERENTLY. In the good ending, she DOES NOT abandon everyone for love - rather she does what her mother failed to do and convince both sides to come together.

There are SO MANY ways the tragedy could have been prevented. If Setsu tried harder to convince the clan; if Hibie hadn’t favored her so strongly; if Hibina hadn’t changed his mind; if the clan had been more open to change. And maybe that’s the point, that this was so preventable, but I’m left frustrated.

The situation is genuinely complicated and I can’t tell if the story is trying to lay the blame anywhere specific or if we’re meant to come out of it with our own interpretation. Personally I align most with Hibina; the gods never should have gotten so involved with humans. He only granted Setsu’s wish before because he was swayed by Hibie, who loved Setsu too much, so it’s tragic that him deciding to reaffirm his stance partially led to everything that happened.

It took me quite a while and I’m honestly still kind of iffy on the middle of this route, but I LOVE where Suzuno and Ohtaro’s relationship ends up. While I *personally* would not have been able to give Ohtaro the chances that she did (I don’t think I would have outed him, but I would have probably stood back and let him die when the Oniwaban ambushed him, reasoning it was for the best), their dynamic by the end is very much up my alley. I like that Suzuno is the one who is confident and in control, while Ohtaro is easily flustered. I like that while he’s not AS cheerful/energetic, it’s made pretty clear that the “act” he had been putting on all the time isn’t so far from his true personality, especially when it comes to his interactions with Suzuno. It means that even while he was trying to seduce her there was a kernel of truth to their early interactions and it has a nice “full circle” feeling.

It’s also quite amusing how prior to his route, she’d been so embarrassed at Ruriko and Tatsu being lovey-dovey in public and couldn’t understand it, yet more than any other route, she’s very open and public with her affections towards Ohtaro.

Finally, this route is clearly something of a “golden” route, and it’s one of the few examples of such that I like. Typically, golden routes try and quickly address and resolve the conflict of all the other routes, which feels rushed and also lessens the importance/impact of those routes. Here, while basically every character (except Hanzo oddly enough) from every route makes an appearance, the conflict is unique. Instead, the other conflicts are resolved by realizing that Ohtaro was behind the issues in every route (he outright mentions he was considering things like fusing Hibie to other powerful blightfall (Genjuro/Yoichi) or sealing Hibie in a cursed object (Tomonari)), so there’s no risk of those issues happening in this timeline now. Meanwhile every other route technically deals with Hibie but Ohtaro is still potentially a threat; it’s possible he’d give up on revenge with Hibie gone, since deep down he already wants to, but who knows whether he’d be able to take that step without Suzuno’s influence.

In terms of my feelings on the routes as a whole, from best to worst:

Ohtaro > Genjuro > Tomonari > Kunitaka > Yoichi > Kinji

My feelings on the romances/relationship with Suzuno:

Genjuro > Ohtaro > Kunitaka = Yoichi > Tomonari > Kinji

#otome #winter's wish #winter's wish: spirits of edo #tldr it's a good game! i like it quite a bit. definitely doesn't crack my top 5 but MAYBE my top 10?#i have a love/hate relationship with kunitaka's route in that i REALLY like some aspects but hate others #but other than that all the routes are solid even if kinji's doesn't work for me. he's probably the only one i'd never bother replaying #yoichi's route has a solid romance and i really like him as a character. but IMO the conflict/antagonist was not great #which is why he's placed where he is because i was overall more invested in kunitaka's route even despite the issues

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