otome games – Manga Report

I think I’ve figured out why I originally burnt out on Otome Games when I started playing them a year ago for just a few months. I generally tend towards games of the “freemium” variety, but they are so slow to progress that I end up playing a bunch of them at once, which then results in me deciding that I’ve been playing far too many otome games, so I just stop and go back to more productive pursuits like knitting, watching k-dramas, and not putting away the laundry. So this time around I’m going to give up on games I find a bit boring a bit earlier in the process, and just go ahead and write a review. I figure playing one storyline all the way to the end is enough, if the game isn’t that great, right?

All that being said, this game Love! Sushi Rangers is bonkers, because it features the typical reverse harem scenario of any otome game but with sushi ingredients. Sushi ingredients given human form and personalities. Japan, everybody!!!!!!

Love! Sushi Rangers is available on android and iPhone

This game starts out with a premise familiar to any manga fan – someone’s parent is going crazy and abandoning them for no logical reason. It is almost as good as the plot device where a sudden marriage where the heroine gets an annoyingly attractive new sibling. In this particular case the heroine’s father, a world class sushi chef, announces that he is going to walk the earth to bring the gospel of sushi to foreign lands, leaving the family restaurant in the hands of his daughter, who is absolutely inept at making sushi. Yukari, who is a sensible girl except for her habit of falling in love with sushi ingredients, is angry and upset about this turn of events. She finds some unlikely helpers, as the sushi ingredients her father left behind turn into handsome young men, prepared to help her keep the restaurant running.

Other than the nutty aspect of dating sushi ingredients, this game is pretty boring. There isn’t really much of a plot to speak of in either of the routes I tried. Salmon and Tuna are engaged in a petulant rivalry with each other.

This rivalry sometimes becomes violent. Sushi fight!!!!!

While there is no plot to speak of, this game did at least have a sense of humor, as when the sushi ingredients ponder the morality of sushi ingredients eating sushi.

I did appreciate the heroine’s tendencies to yell in all caps when she’s upset.

As a free game, I think you can play up to three character’s story lines for free. I only played through all of Tuna and part of Salmon. It is very very unfortunate that Shrimp and Avocado don’t have routes. The power expended to get through the game for free is about the slowest to regenerate that I’ve ever encountered in a freemium otome game. You basically get only 2 chapters a day, which is a very slow pace. I didn’t think that the character designs were very attractive. Often the game presents you with empty rooms and subtitles, I’m assuming to save on the costs of doing additional illustrations. Lackluster art combined with almost no plot to speak of doesn’t really add up to a game that I’d be interested in playing much further, even though there are flashes of humor due to the wacky premise.

Kiss of Revenge

Kiss of Revenge is available on the iphone and on android.

This is another Voltage game like Pirates in Love which I reviewed previously. I’ve decided after playing this game that there was not nearly enough kissing or revenge, so the title was a bit misleading. Also, while the story is certainly going to appeal to fans of melodrama, I found the hospital setting to be not very interesting in the absence of pirates or ninjas. Perhaps I would have enjoyed this game more if it was a ninja hospital.

The storyline focuses on a young doctor who is determined to get her REVENGE after her mother was killed in a botched operation many years ago. She went to medical school and selected the hospital that was the site of her mother’s death in order to expose injustice and coldly execute her revenge. Unfortunately she is surrounded by a variety of handsome co-workers.

The current director of the hospital was the surgeon who botched the operation many years ago, so one easy course for revenge on the part of the heroine is to target his son.

Although she is occasionally distracted by the presence of her childhood friend, who just happens to have a salesman job pushing medical supplies.

While there are plenty of dramatic descriptions of close calls digging up ancient medical files and surgical preparations, I found the real world setting of this game to be a bit humdrum. Also, I was expecting more revengy antics earlier in the game but there’s more of a slow build to all of the emotional trauma that occurs in the later episodes. There’s also a narrative device that is interesting due to the branching storylines, but at the same time a bit annoying because it represents another set of episodes that has to be paid for. At one point in the story the heroine is prompted to chose revenge or give it up, and if you want to play the non-revenge ending (who wouldn’t choose revenge!) you have to buy those separate episodes.

The other thing that I found less than interesting about this game is that while there are other characters to play, clearly the one where the heroine concentrates on the son of the evil hospital director is going to be the most interesting one. I wasn’t all that invested in finding out what the story variations would be if I picked a different character. Overall, this game didn’t really capture my interest. The storyline also ensured that there wouldn’t be as much humor, and I wasn’t very entertained. If you enjoy more melodramatic stories with real world elements though, this might appeal to you.

Be My Princess

Be My Princess is available for itunes and android

This is a game that is actually fairly easy to play without spending any money on it, and after an attempt to buy game credit that didn’t show up in my account, I would really recommended that people do not even attempt to spend money on this game.

Be My Princess is the story of a young fashion designer who ends up in a tiny imaginary European country that seems to be bursting at the seams with princes! They all seem to be strangely attracted to her! They are also somewhat bland and fairly interchangeable, but their prince outfits have a hilarious amount of ruffles.

The storylines so far in this game are really not that interesting. So far I’ve played through three endings of a special event storyline, where the heroine runs off with a prince, and in each variation Their Love is not accepted so there’s an elopement scandal but it all works out in the end.

The virtual paper doll aspects of the game are probably the most entertaining aspect of it all. Here’s a screenshot of my character.

And her extremely cluttered room.

If you play this game you get five passes to read further along in each chapter that reset every morning. There are often checkpoints where you have to swap out your clothes for more elaborate clothes, and have to exchange your free virtual game money for a new handbag or dress. If you do not spend money on the game your closet and furniture storage is limited, thus you are Less Charming. I haven’t found this to be a tremendous hardship so far, although it sometimes led my character to have incredibly wacky outfits as she went through checkpoints. Overall, this game was fairly bland, and I wasn’t happy about the snafu that denied me the opportunity to buy more closet space. At the same time, it does seem to be ideally set up for very casual gaming. The plot might not be all that interesting, but it is entertaining enough to login for 10 minutes a day or so and progress through the princess rankings system.

Here are some random out of context screenshots from Pirates in Love, which I continued to play after my initial review.

Up next: the very entertaining Love Letter from Thief X, which is probably my favorite game so far.