-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Otome Community Thread: A New Era of Beefcakes
- Thread starter Shizuka
- Start date
OP
OP
I've played most of them, but I don't think I finished all their routes other than the first Code Realize.
Period Cube felt shorter than several others (Code Realize, Collar x Malice) but it is still in the medium length category on vndb.
OP
OP
But most of what I've played was so bad... Guess I'm paying my sins with that one next.
Depending on what you have left to play, it gets worse! PC is the only Vita otome title I parted with because I disliked it so much. Above it somewhat is 7'scarlet.
Otomate new titles video presentation set for July
Idea Factory will release a special video in July to introduce the latest titles in its Otomate brand, the company announced.
www.gematsu.com
Shinobi, Koi Utsutsu: Banka Aya Emaki coming to Switch on August 27 in Japan
Idea Factory will release a Switch version of otome visual novel Shinobi, Koi Utsutsu: Banka Aya Emaki on August 27 in Japan for 6,800 yen under the title Shinobi, Koi Utsutsu for Nintendo Switch, …
www.gematsu.com
With the New Game Expo happening next month as well, here's to an announcement or two by Aksys (and maybe IFI will pity us and announce something as well).
It sold less than some of the Switch ports did in Japan and Aksys has not done any marketing for it yet so I am not surprised that there is not much info. A few of the reviews I have glanced over by English speakers note that the game does focus more on the story than the romance:
Otome Game Review: Fantasy Cafe Enchante
Awaki Kotone decides to take over her late grandpa’s cafe Enchante and instead finds herself surrounded by non-human ikemans from another world who were regulars when grandpa was the master. …breadmasterlee.com
幻奏喫茶アンシャンテ Gensou Kissa Enchante – Review/Summary
The heroine is a girl named Kotone who inherits her grandfather’s cafe after he dies. Upon entering it, she looks over the entire cafe having nostalgic feelings coming back from when she was …yuscake.com
Gensou Kissa Enchante // Canus Route and Initial Thoughts
It’s been a surprisingly long time since my last actual otome game thoughts post. At first I looked at the time stamp on my Sanzen Sekai Yuugi post and thought “hey December last year i…uguucageoflove.wordpress.com
Thanks for these!
Otomate new titles video presentation set for July
Idea Factory will release a special video in July to introduce the latest titles in its Otomate brand, the company announced.
Shinobi, Koi Utsutsu: Banka Aya Emaki coming to Switch on August 27 in Japan
Idea Factory will release a Switch version of otome visual novel Shinobi, Koi Utsutsu: Banka Aya Emaki on August 27 in Japan for 6,800 yen under the title Shinobi, Koi Utsutsu for Nintendo Switch, …
With the New Game Expo happening next month as well, here's to an announcement or two by Aksys (and maybe IFI will pity us and announce something as well).
Normally I'd think it's too soon to announce another otome, but it feels like there's not a whole lot out there for Aksys to localize these days? I'm pretty sure they'll localize the second C;R fandisc since that's easy though.
If Iffy announces anything otome it's gonna be Hakuouki on Switch lol. I've given up hoping for the Amnesia fandiscs to get localized long ago.
What's Hakuoki?
Aksys isn't going to bring it because it's fluff and IFI doesn't even know what Hakuoki is anymore.
Rough year for EN Otome releases.
Looking forward to finally playing Collar x Malice Unlimited soon at least.
How in the hell are they going to make Shiraishi work. How.
So I'll vent a bit about mobile (pseudo-)otome gacha games I am currently obsessed with instead.
A3!
https://twitter.com/MankaiCompanyEN
The EN version is trucking along, every new event adds new story beats and interactions (and cute/sexy boy cards), I am very happy with this one and made it my main game. There's an event upcoming where they make a theatre play based on some nonsense Yakuza honor story, and I AM LIVING FOR IT. Saved up 2.000 gems to pull the card of my best boy in a gaudy mafia suit. Perfection. (The theme song gives me chills too.)
The JP version recently started adding a new story "act" - the Acts normally add four new chapters, last time they added a new act was 2 years ago, so it's a pretty substantial update. With the new story line they are also adding new characters, although it seems that they will not be added as actually "playable" character cards and will only appear in the story beats? (My info is from fan translations and looking at memes, so I do not claim any accuracy here.)
Here's the intro with pics of the new guys (the old summer troupe leader is voiced by Daisuke Ono, which is, of course, amazing).
I super enjoy A3! and all my money goes into this franchise at the moment - haven't spend anything on the mobile game, but bought a ton of merch.
Obey Me!
https://twitter.com/ObeyMeOfficial1
I recently picked up Obey Me! since the game has gotten huge. Like, I don't even understand why, but it's huge. Huge on Twitter. Huge on Tumblr. Huge enough to have it's own pinned thread for questions on the game in the "otomegames" subreddit.
The game is bad though. The gameplay is bad, and there is 0 gameplay reason to roll in the gacha except that some cards give extra event points, so you can get the event card. However, there is 0 reason to go for any specific cards since your bog standard starter team can steamroll anything once you fully upgrade them, and since the card art is so inconsistent and off, there's also no reason to go for them for the art. The stories that come with the cards are short and bland. And what's worse, you can't unlock some of the stories unless you randomly own some of the normal cards from the giant pool of normal cards. I have over 500 cards and still a third of my stories aren't unlocked because I still miss some.
The voice acting is... okay I guess, but some of it is bad. The story is pretty entertaining, but throwaway. I'll keep this installed to collect ingame currency and roll when I'm bored. New story chapters also give you something to read for a day or two.
I have literally no idea whatsoever why this is as popular as it is.
I got some sweet outfits for Satan though with cat ears... yay?
Ayakashi: Romance Reborn
https://twitter.com/AyakashiRR
This is actually the closest to an actual Otome game out of the ones I play. It has romantic routes and VERY good voice acting (ONLY fully voiced the tutorial chapters and for voice lines on the main screen though). No choices, just story. Unfortunately it seems dead. There's a few people playing the events for their respective best boy, but it's really hard to find anyone talking about it. They only released about half the available routes so far, and they are just now celebrating their first anniversary - I hope they get to the last story before this closes down, where all the boys I'm interested in are featured.
I'm playing this one the side since I have some best boys in there, and one of them (Oji) should finally have his route released next.
The gameplay is a lot like A3! where you just do your dailys to get ressources to upgrade cards and then find optimal team combinations for specific event sets to score as many points as possible.
The card art on some of the cards is pretty bad, and the card stories are bland, however the main story and the routes are actually good.
You can ignore the gacha and just play it a bit daily to get story keys from levelups and the login bonus.
More people should check this one out.
Mr. Love: Queen's Choice
https://twitter.com/MrLoveMobile
I think we talked about MLQC in this thread before. They are releasing new story chapters soon, and in endgame this app is very casual for me now. You rarely have to do anything once you got 6 or so SSRs upgraded a few times, except maybe have the phone run all night for City Stroll (which is the absolute hottest ass feature I have ever seen in a game, literally just "put phone on auto-pilot for 20 fvcking hours a week"). Events are almost always exclusively about spending the ingame currency you hoarded on grinding some random event currency for cards. Since the game is more or less following the Asian releases, it's easy enough to keep an eye out for upcoming events and save up for the cards/side stories/dates you want.
The game is based on a Chinese game called "Love and Producer" which garnered a lot of attention after fans bought a huge advertisement space on a skyscraper in Shenzhen to wish one of the boys a happy birthday in 2018.
Devotion!
It's become a bit of a thing for the fans of each of the 4 boys to try to trump each other on the respective birthday, feel free to google the nonsense.
The game is also pretty popular in Japan and Korea and released the EN version (with the above bad name) last year in March.
You can jump into the game, but unlocking all chapters takes some dedication to work on your cards/team and to gather a lot of resources for that.
I played daily and reached max level after around 100 days. It's not an easy feat.
There are 4 main boys, you can opt to have the Japanese voices or English voices - they actually paid for proper voice actors (if anyone wants some Joe-Zieja-aka-Claude-from-Fire-Emblem-ASMR, get on this game), however the translation quality of the text is... questionable.
It doesn't help that the story delves into a very confusing plot of superpowers and time line shifting. I won't lie, I read the last few chapters scratching my head as to what even is going on, thanks to both stuff just going off the deep end AND the translation literally making no sense at the same time.
The gameplay is pretty basic, mostly grinding resources to upgrade your cards. You get frequent free pulls and can get useful SSR cards by grinding specific modes, so if you stick with it, you'll eventually get to a competitive space as a free to play too.
Just beware that some of the cards are straight up for purchase. "Spend 20$ to get this card."
Either way, I'm still excited for the new chapters and nice new cards. Some of the dates you unlock with the cards make me all warm and fuzzy inside. Stuff ranges from "you and your childhood friend go shopping at Ikea" to "some flimsy excuse to dress up in wedding gowns, whatever, then you kiss on a merry-go-round, who cares". Meanwhile, the main story is angst central.
(That's a nice love interest you have. How about we make him stab you with a knife. In multiple time lines. You get to kill him too a few times, why not.)
If you're interested in Love and Producer / Mr. Love but can't be arsed to deal with gacha nonsense, the anime will supposedly start airing in July under the Japanese name of the app "Evol x Love":
Thanks for letting me get this off my chest. Not like anyone I know cares.
Oh, I'm still waiting for Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 4 by the way. It has to come one day. Right?
Looking forward to finally playing Collar x Malice Unlimited soon at least.
How in the hell are they going to make Shiraishi work. How.
So I'll vent a bit about mobile (pseudo-)otome gacha games I am currently obsessed with instead.
A3!
https://twitter.com/MankaiCompanyEN
The EN version is trucking along, every new event adds new story beats and interactions (and cute/sexy boy cards), I am very happy with this one and made it my main game. There's an event upcoming where they make a theatre play based on some nonsense Yakuza honor story, and I AM LIVING FOR IT. Saved up 2.000 gems to pull the card of my best boy in a gaudy mafia suit. Perfection. (The theme song gives me chills too.)
The JP version recently started adding a new story "act" - the Acts normally add four new chapters, last time they added a new act was 2 years ago, so it's a pretty substantial update. With the new story line they are also adding new characters, although it seems that they will not be added as actually "playable" character cards and will only appear in the story beats? (My info is from fan translations and looking at memes, so I do not claim any accuracy here.)
Here's the intro with pics of the new guys (the old summer troupe leader is voiced by Daisuke Ono, which is, of course, amazing).
I super enjoy A3! and all my money goes into this franchise at the moment - haven't spend anything on the mobile game, but bought a ton of merch.
Obey Me!
https://twitter.com/ObeyMeOfficial1
I recently picked up Obey Me! since the game has gotten huge. Like, I don't even understand why, but it's huge. Huge on Twitter. Huge on Tumblr. Huge enough to have it's own pinned thread for questions on the game in the "otomegames" subreddit.
The game is bad though. The gameplay is bad, and there is 0 gameplay reason to roll in the gacha except that some cards give extra event points, so you can get the event card. However, there is 0 reason to go for any specific cards since your bog standard starter team can steamroll anything once you fully upgrade them, and since the card art is so inconsistent and off, there's also no reason to go for them for the art. The stories that come with the cards are short and bland. And what's worse, you can't unlock some of the stories unless you randomly own some of the normal cards from the giant pool of normal cards. I have over 500 cards and still a third of my stories aren't unlocked because I still miss some.
The voice acting is... okay I guess, but some of it is bad. The story is pretty entertaining, but throwaway. I'll keep this installed to collect ingame currency and roll when I'm bored. New story chapters also give you something to read for a day or two.
I have literally no idea whatsoever why this is as popular as it is.
I got some sweet outfits for Satan though with cat ears... yay?
Ayakashi: Romance Reborn
https://twitter.com/AyakashiRR
This is actually the closest to an actual Otome game out of the ones I play. It has romantic routes and VERY good voice acting (ONLY fully voiced the tutorial chapters and for voice lines on the main screen though). No choices, just story. Unfortunately it seems dead. There's a few people playing the events for their respective best boy, but it's really hard to find anyone talking about it. They only released about half the available routes so far, and they are just now celebrating their first anniversary - I hope they get to the last story before this closes down, where all the boys I'm interested in are featured.
I'm playing this one the side since I have some best boys in there, and one of them (Oji) should finally have his route released next.
The gameplay is a lot like A3! where you just do your dailys to get ressources to upgrade cards and then find optimal team combinations for specific event sets to score as many points as possible.
The card art on some of the cards is pretty bad, and the card stories are bland, however the main story and the routes are actually good.
You can ignore the gacha and just play it a bit daily to get story keys from levelups and the login bonus.
More people should check this one out.
Mr. Love: Queen's Choice
https://twitter.com/MrLoveMobile
I think we talked about MLQC in this thread before. They are releasing new story chapters soon, and in endgame this app is very casual for me now. You rarely have to do anything once you got 6 or so SSRs upgraded a few times, except maybe have the phone run all night for City Stroll (which is the absolute hottest ass feature I have ever seen in a game, literally just "put phone on auto-pilot for 20 fvcking hours a week"). Events are almost always exclusively about spending the ingame currency you hoarded on grinding some random event currency for cards. Since the game is more or less following the Asian releases, it's easy enough to keep an eye out for upcoming events and save up for the cards/side stories/dates you want.
The game is based on a Chinese game called "Love and Producer" which garnered a lot of attention after fans bought a huge advertisement space on a skyscraper in Shenzhen to wish one of the boys a happy birthday in 2018.
Devotion!
It's become a bit of a thing for the fans of each of the 4 boys to try to trump each other on the respective birthday, feel free to google the nonsense.
The game is also pretty popular in Japan and Korea and released the EN version (with the above bad name) last year in March.
You can jump into the game, but unlocking all chapters takes some dedication to work on your cards/team and to gather a lot of resources for that.
I played daily and reached max level after around 100 days. It's not an easy feat.
There are 4 main boys, you can opt to have the Japanese voices or English voices - they actually paid for proper voice actors (if anyone wants some Joe-Zieja-aka-Claude-from-Fire-Emblem-ASMR, get on this game), however the translation quality of the text is... questionable.
It doesn't help that the story delves into a very confusing plot of superpowers and time line shifting. I won't lie, I read the last few chapters scratching my head as to what even is going on, thanks to both stuff just going off the deep end AND the translation literally making no sense at the same time.
The gameplay is pretty basic, mostly grinding resources to upgrade your cards. You get frequent free pulls and can get useful SSR cards by grinding specific modes, so if you stick with it, you'll eventually get to a competitive space as a free to play too.
Just beware that some of the cards are straight up for purchase. "Spend 20$ to get this card."
Either way, I'm still excited for the new chapters and nice new cards. Some of the dates you unlock with the cards make me all warm and fuzzy inside. Stuff ranges from "you and your childhood friend go shopping at Ikea" to "some flimsy excuse to dress up in wedding gowns, whatever, then you kiss on a merry-go-round, who cares". Meanwhile, the main story is angst central.
(That's a nice love interest you have. How about we make him stab you with a knife. In multiple time lines. You get to kill him too a few times, why not.)
If you're interested in Love and Producer / Mr. Love but can't be arsed to deal with gacha nonsense, the anime will supposedly start airing in July under the Japanese name of the app "Evol x Love":
Thanks for letting me get this off my chest. Not like anyone I know cares.
Oh, I'm still waiting for Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 4 by the way. It has to come one day. Right?
OP
OP
Otome visual novel My Butler coming to Switch on June 18
Otome visual novel My Butler is coming to Switch via the Nintendo eShop on June 18 for 998 yen, D3 Publisher and developer Dogenzaka Lab announced. It will support English, Japanese, and Simplified…
www.gematsu.com
I don't see how this year is any worse than the last, especially since we're finally getting new console otome this year.
I hope every future Dogenzaka Switch release has the "you should play if" section, even if the first few bullets are all the same.Otome visual novel My Butler coming to Switch on June 18
Otome visual novel My Butler is coming to Switch via the Nintendo eShop on June 18 for 998 yen, D3 Publisher and developer Dogenzaka Lab announced. It will support English, Japanese, and Simplified…
You're not wrong... EN Otome on consoles is merely an irregular drip feed, and I'm just too sad to admit that it always has been.
So, has anyone tried out Palais de Reine and can report back?
(What the hell is that cat that Felix is holding!?)
Junichi Suwabe and Taniyama Kishou are voicing knights in it, so I'm really tempted (nearly all my favourite UtaPri boys are in there, huh, Suzuki Tatsuhita too). The reviews on Visual Novel Database are middling at best though. But I do love a good stat builder dating sim.
Decisions, decisions.
(Won't get to play it anytime soon, since I'm waiting for "Death Come True" this week, starring Yuki Kaji. And two of my favourite Seiyuu are also voicing faction leaders in Brigandine, so of course I'll play the heck out of that too.)
OP
OP
My Bewitching Perfume for Nintendo Switch - Nintendo Official Site
Buy My Bewitching Perfume and shop other great Nintendo products online at the official My Nintendo Store.
www.nintendo.com
I wonder how OperaHouse is picking which Ciagram releases to port.My Bewitching Perfume for Nintendo Switch - Nintendo Official Site
Buy My Bewitching Perfume and shop other great Nintendo products online at the official My Nintendo Store.
Uhhh just completed Shiraishi's route in Collar x Malice and my only reaction was
???????? WHAT IS THIS -10/10
The first proper otome I played was l Mystic Messenger, which set a very low bar for my expectations on the emotional health of the love interests... and plot escalation... but man, I wasn't ready for that ending.
???????? WHAT IS THIS -10/10
The first proper otome I played was l Mystic Messenger, which set a very low bar for my expectations on the emotional health of the love interests... and plot escalation... but man, I wasn't ready for that ending.
Glad you enjoyed it! Yes, there is quite a gap plot wise between the otome offerings on mobile and console.
That route still makes me angry.
They actually endeared his abusive ass to me, only to have it end like this.
The only bigger "the hell?" moment in that game is the big bad ending with the mastermind.
Glad you're enjoying it, it's a pretty fun game overall. The true route with Yanagi was worth sticking with it. I liked him a lot (with some "despite..." thrown in), roof smoking goes a long way for me I guess.
OP
OP
I've been meaning to get back to the batch of otome titles Aksys released for the Vita's last few years and decided to start with Bad Apple Wars.
It's not a bad game, but it's not particularly good either. Just got Alma and Higa's endings, still three to go and almost sure I'll lose all motivation before I'm done with the game.
It's not a bad game, but it's not particularly good either. Just got Alma and Higa's endings, still three to go and almost sure I'll lose all motivation before I'm done with the game.
That's the one with the awful looking, not exactly comfortable to read font? That alone was enough to make me hesitate with it.
OP
OP
That's the one with the awful looking, not exactly comfortable to read font? That alone was enough to make me hesitate with it.
That's the one. I thought I wouldn't be able to read the text at first, but I guess the human mind will find a way and it's not distracting me anymore.
I really liked most of the characters in Bad Apple Wars, but the setting was super odd. Like, the actual hell was up with these teachers - I appreciated the whacky, but it truely was just there for whackyness' sake at times I think?
(If someone ends up completing all routes and finding out it does make sense, feel free to correct me.)
I bawled like crazy at some of the endings though, so I'd say I enjoyed it?
Mask dude made me drop the game eventually, the scenes where you have to guess where to poke him became too fiddly for me.
(If someone ends up completing all routes and finding out it does make sense, feel free to correct me.)
I bawled like crazy at some of the endings though, so I'd say I enjoyed it?
Mask dude made me drop the game eventually, the scenes where you have to guess where to poke him became too fiddly for me.
That's a good summation of the game. It has a really cool aesthetic, I like the character design and the concept (even if it's pretty much just Angel Beats) but it grows awfully repetitive by the end and doesn't really do much with the concept. I didn't like the touch stuff either. I only spent $12 on it though so I didn't mind it that much.
I finished the game, and yes, it was totally worth it! The true route was so good. I was already looking forward to it, thanks to all the little interactions with Yanagi in Shiraishi's route, and I'm glad it didn't disappoint. The dynamic between the leads just melts my heart.
Waiting for "Serendipity Next Door" or "In Your Arms Tonight", those are my Voltage faves (in the case of "Serendipity" I would call it a problematic fave, there's only one route I like, the rest is crazytown).
I'd take a bunch of the others too, I can't believe they keep releasing the ones I really don't care about...
I'd take a bunch of the others too, I can't believe they keep releasing the ones I really don't care about...
OP
OP
Just finished Bad Apple Wars. It was thoroughly mediocre. The romance was okay, but the rest was either undercooked, underdeveloped or poorly planned.
Also:
You don't get to unravel the mystery of the school, the teachers, who started the Bad Apples movement, etc. The game doesn't tell you how White Mask dies, it's very unclear, etc.
Also:
Last edited:
I am guessing this was the new content that was in the Vita version and will be in the crowdfunded Switch version?
Yeah - his route was Vita exclusive. If they're porting it it means SP sold well enough.
OP
OP
Since Aksys didn't have a lower price on their LEs this time (shipping cost makes it more...), I opted to go with Best Buy, and crossing my fingers that it doesn't come in a bubble mailer this time :/ Gamestop apparently didn't have it pre-orderable in stores, so there goes that idea.