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My Forged Wedding : PARTY

Saturday, August 22, 2015 / No Comments

There have been a surge of otome games for the past few years. I am one of their fans for their every new launching games, be it Voltage or Koyonplete. Most of the otome games are similar where they target the female audience to play as a heroin and she has to choose a male character to continue the storyline. All the male characters in the game are handsome and they make the girl's heart throbs by going along with the plots.

There are a few series of the same title on the IOS Store but the latest one is My Forged Wedding Party. I used to play most Otome games but after one free chapter you will need to pay to unlock the story which I am reluctant to do so. This edition allows the player to read about 5 short stories per day where it generates 5 Love Passes at 4am UTC time (+4 hours and reverse the AM/PM).

The story began begins when you need to meet up with your fiancé in Kunian Bar with your parents. However, you receive a letter from him to cancel off the engagement on the same day. You become very depressed and has nowhere to go but your uncle Kunian (one of the eligible bachelor) offered you a job where you need to be a fake bride for one of the guys in the bar to help them with their individual issue. This is where you need to choose one male character as your potential suitor.

Each character has a different characteristic and career. As a heroin in this game, you may go through each character's profile before you decide who you want to help. When you have made your decision, you will be staying in the chosen's house. This title allows you to purchase clothes and items to raise your status in order to forward to unlock their story.
You will be given an avatar in the beginning and you will need to dress her to complete the story mission. Images that are posted in this post belongs to my game-play and I am in Episode 7 at the moment. There are few activities in the game such as Cooking Battle, Request Wife Mate, Dress up Avatar and House Decoration which I will discuss further in this post.

Cooking Battle
Cooking Battle is used when you want to increase your Wife point, Mari (Currency) and Gacha Point to progress in the storyline. The stamina is increased every 2.5 hours to generate 50 points. One battle takes about 50 points so in total you will only get to play 2 times every 5 hours. Wife Mates are girls who play the game and you will need their helps to boost up the earning in Cooking Battle.This game requires a stable internet connection to play.
Gachapon is popular in Japan and there is no doubt that most otome games have this function to increase their sales. Popular items are very expensive and they can boost your status tremendously. There are fashion gacha and interior gacha on of different themes and styles which you can choose to suit your fashion sense.
Some of the items which you can purchased through Mari and the colourful furnitures which I owned through Gacha.

House Decoration
Interior items which you have purchased through Gacha will be placed inside this house. You can arrange the items accordingly to your preference but in a limited area. When you progress through the story, you will get present (fashion, interior item, Mari, Gacha and etc) from other male character every time you login to the game. This is a very refreshing idea that attracts player to return to the game to obtain these presents.

In conclusion, such games are doing better in term of retaining player and their new strategy does not force us to purchase the story with real money. Female who has such fetish into good looking guys are welcome to give this game a try.
Written by SnoringSeal

「Mobage」Ikemen Sengoku

Saturday, August 19, 2017 / No Comments
The main storyline of this game follows our cute little talented heroine who just landed her dream job as a fashion designer and was on a holiday in Kyoto before she starts work. One stormy night when she was visiting tourist spots in the area, she chanced upon a man in a lab coat at the monument of Honnou-ji, the castle where Oda Nobunaga was betrayed and committed suicide. At that moment, lightning stuck the monument and the two were thrust back in time to 500 years ago.

The heroine meets Nobunaga in the fire and manages to save him, thus changing history. Nobunaga then labels her as his "lucky charm" and demands for his troops to bring her back to his castle. Along the way she meets both his allies and enemies, which are also coincidentally the heroine's other choices), as well as the guy in the lab coat. The latter arrived 4 months prior to the heroine and has settled into the warring period well by taking up the name "Sasuke" who was a fictional ninja, to prevent changing history.

It is then that the heroine finds out that history has already been changed due to the presence of people like Takeda Shingen in this timeline, when they were supposed to be long dead. Still adamant on returning to the present, she then plans with Sasuke to be in Kyoto three months later, when a wormhole will open again and return the two to the present.

However, for the three months that the heroine has to remain in the castle as chatelaine... can she resist falling in love with the Ikemen?
First off, let's just put it out there that this is an Otome game (a visual novel for girls where they "date" guys) and is quite distinct from the anime which does not feature a heroine.

Next, let's talk about how PC and handheld control Otome games differ from mobile Otome games such as Ikemen Sengoku. For the former, you purchase the full game and play it from start to end at your own time and target. For the latter, you usually have to use chapter tickets to unlock the stories, which means that you will have a limited number of chapters parts you can read per day. In Ikemen Sengoku's case, this is rather slow--5 tickets per day, which means that you need 2 days to clear one full chapter (10 parts each).
If you are thinking that's very slow, I agree with you. In addition, it has a dramatic ending, romantic ending and an epilogue, which all adds up to making progression on the main story itself to be very, very slow. But hey, they make up for it!

How?

Through side stories. Ikemen Sengoku has an event as well as 2 gacha systems where you can get voiced side stories which will be archived into your "memories" so you can listen to them again anytime, any day.
Castle Gacha (similar to friend point gacha) would give voiced cards and decoration items for your castle (so you can have a beautiful love nest for you and your lover, apparently). 





Fashion gacha (with gems) will give both of the above as well as attire (for aesthetics and "beauty" stats).


Who would say no to kimono, right?!

And most importantly, most of the gacha in Ikemen Sengoku has no doubles. So if you roll enough (not that it costs much to roll >_>), you will eventually get every single goodie in the gacha.
Secondly, Ikemen Sengoku also lets you increase "Grace" stats via Princess Lessons (a PVP system, stamina bar refills every 5 hours) and by clearing the lesson with excellent bonus, you will gain gacha points too. Again, it's a pretty slow system for gaining gacha points this way (unless you have luck to get the bonus all the time), but you can get gacha points from login or through paying too. In comparison, gems are given only through login and paying.

But the main draw of the game is not just through these features but the heroine. The heroine isn't a pushover like those in many other games (I'm looking at you diabolik lovers!) and that is extremely pleasing for someone who enjoys playing Otome games to find one that steps out of the mold of spineless heroines and having something more unique.
As of now there are only three main routes (Oda Nobunaga, Date Masamune and Sanada Yukimura) but more are to follow (Takeda Shingen, Tokugawa Ieyasu, etc.)

Choose your favorite guy and let's play the game together!
Currently, I'm on Date Masamune's route =w=)b


Written by Reina

RoomMate- Otome Anime

Sunday, June 4, 2017 / No Comments
WARNING: some topless photos especially on last set please avert eyes if uncomfortable ;;

Welcome back my nuggets~

Holidays are almost here and while I was looking for new anime, I chanced upon Room Mate! The description provided was super vague, so I had to do some googling to check up on it. Turns out it's the same as One Room, but in the opposite gender. 

SO CUTE RIGHT
One Room is a harem with a male protag, and with Room Mate, you get an otome style anime. Granted you can't choose any options, but the episodes tend to go in a 3-in-1 episode, mostly solo, solo, solo, then back to 3-in-1, so you can sort of skip and choose I guess. 

Right, so you come in as their dorm manager, staying in the same mansion and basically taking care of them. Duh, if not how are you ever going to get some budding romance?  

kirakira
As with otome games, Room Mate plays out from a first person perspective, and it's quite clear when the video is from your direct view because there will be some sparkle bubbles surrounding the frame. Sort of like a 'kirakira' view. See the gif above! I actually went and gif-ed this part, just so you know it's your view and not a normal pan of the room. 

There are 3 main guys: Takumi Ashihara, Aoi Nishina, and Shinya Miyasaka.

first line: Takumi



Takumi is sort of your lone wolf character, the rather aloof and keeps to himself sort, that occasionally will have that 'what was that I feel??' moment. He's a rock climber, pretty athletic, and your typical I-didn't-know-I-look-cool kinda of guy. 

first line: Aoi

he looks so much better without the headband
Aoi is an actor, sort of the shouta-ish character, baby-faced, cheerful, etc. He tends to get kind of overly into his role, eg if he were playing a samurai, he'd sit and speak like one, but he'll usually end up breaking character because of you.

first line: Shinya
Shinya is a businessman? I'm not too sure, but he does wear plenty of suits. He's the tsun? of the group, insulting you, teasing you, and basically being an pain. I can't pin-point him yet, is he a true tsun? Or just a player? We'll have to see when he actually falls for you. Right now he sort of does this playful teasing like calling you an idiot but a nice idiot, that sort of thing. He also likes to strip a lot, usually without meaning to. 






NO SPECS
With that, can you guess which one I'd gun for? DING DING kudos if you guessed Shinya!! His aesthetic is not what I'd usually go for (see Okita of Hakuoki) but considering the small selection, eh well. He's definitely my choice out of them all the moment he takes off the bloody spectacles though! No contest. The frames are so ugly! Couldn't he have chosen something better, tsk. Some people go for the megane aesthetic, so well.



their personalities are shining through
While there are no choice options since, anime version, it's still quite cool how there's a pause after they address you, as if you're actually going to respond. So if you feel up to it, go ahead and respond to them. I didn't particularly like the artwork, but it's good enough. Some frames were just WOW and some were sort of meh, especially since you'll be staring at their faces A LOT but I'm just nitpicking.

I don't understand the low rating though, I like Room Mate a lot! It's refreshing, and it's only 4 minutes, so it doesn't get boring at all. Plus if you're like me and like to watch at a faster speed, heck, it ends up being less than 4 minutes. You wouldn't need a huge attention span at all. Plus it's relatively interactive, win-win! 


omg stop the skin
I'd advise you to watch either Room Mate or One Room, whichever floats your boat. GO NOW. 

Nerd out to find more otome games!

Written by: ninetylives


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On Voltage and Otome

Wednesday, June 18, 2014 / No Comments

So. Um. Hi. I was told to write an introduction about myself, but thing is I'm really bad at introductions and usually end up just blushing and trying to get out as soon as possible. My name is Dee, a fine person, friend to cats, and member of the I'm in love with a fictional character again foundation. I'm the newest writer here, and for my first post I figured I'd introduce you to the hobby that's been taking over my life.

I play a lot of otome games.

A lot.

Otome games - ren'ai targeted towards females - is like, I don't know, crack cocaine? That's a bad example. It's addictive, is what I'm trying to say. It's usually cheap (or free!), entertains me for at least a couple of hours, and sometimes I get overly attached to characters. I've cried during a route once, and I never cry. I didn't cry when my bunny died, but I sobbed when playing a visual novel route! I don't know what that says about me, but it says something.

There are a lot of companies that make otome games. The more notable ones are Idea Factory's Otomate, Koei, Winter Wolves, and NTT Solmare's Shall We Date?. Instead of talking about those, I'm here to talk about Voltage Inc.

Recently I have been playing a lot of Voltage games. They produce visual novel otomes for iOS and Android in both Japanese and English, although updates and new games tend to come to Android a day or two earlier than iOS. The app and prologue itself is free, but the individual routes cost 3.99 USD. More on that later.

Because they follow the visual novel style of otome rather than the RPG style, Voltage games are very basic. You select a character and just tap through, occasionally choosing a dialogue option. Depending on the choices you make, you can receive one of two (or three) endings. There is a Good Ending, Happy Ending, and Super Happy Ending. Most routes only have two of the three, but in some cases - like in My Forged Wedding's wedding stories - there are three endings.

Each game has sequels, epilogues, and substories. For example, this is the selection screen from one of their games, My Forged Wedding:


I select Season 2, pick a character, and it leads me to this. 


As if that's not enough, there are also substories!


That is actually only the first page - there are another six substories on the next page. 

The main stories - excluding epilogues and sequels - range between 13 to 18 chapters. Each chapter is roughly ten to fifteen minutes long. The sequels range from 8 to 12 chapters, and substories are between 2 to 5 chapters.

Sprinkled through the routes are CGs of the characters. Here are two of my favorites, Kaoru Kirishima from Our Two Bedroom Story and Yamato Kougami from My Forged Wedding.



There are also some... risque CGs. None of them ever cross the line to true nudity, but there are a lot of topless men. I suggest not playing Voltage games in public. People look at you strangely when you start gushing over a pixellated guy.

When you start up a route, they'll ask you to choose your name and enter your email address. The second part seems a little unnecessary until you check your email and find emails like this:


Yes, the characters email you in real-time as you play. Depending on what you're playing, you can receive between one (for substories) email to five or six (for main routes).

As for their user interface, it changes depending on when the story you're playing was released. The older the game is, the more obviously outdated it looks. Love Letter From Thief X was one of their earliest games, and it looks like this:



Those little bars at the side is because the game was intended for older phones with smaller screens, and I'm playing it on an iPhone 5S. If you're running a newer phone, before you even start the game there's a pop-up warning telling you the game is not optimized for your phone and there might be crashes and instability. I haven't had any issues though. Run at your own risk.

Moving on to one of their newer games, this is what the interface for In Your Arms Tonight looks like. Incidentally, In Your Arms Tonight is also one of my favourite games they've made so far. My favourite soundtrack, too. Yeah, there's music. Really nice music! Here's the opening movie and theme song for In Your Arms Tonight.



This is pretty much the standard for most of their newer games.

Their very latest game, Metro P.D, has the nicest interface in my opinion.



When I looked it up on Wikipedia I was surprised to find out Voltage is actually pretty old - they originated in Tokyo in 1999, and only started releasing English translations in 2011. They have an American subsidiary, Voltage Entertainment USA, that heavily alters the existing Japanese games to appeal to a Western audience. For example, in Voltage's Ten Days With My Devil, the Japanese characters became Caucasian and received name makeovers (Kakeru and Meguru Kamui become Xavier and Kieran van der Belt). The art style also changes drastically, from this:


- to this. 



For various reasons (I don't like the Westernization of the names; I prefer the anime-style art) I'm not a big fan of Voltage USA, but that's irrelevant.

So far, Voltage Japan has released English translations of these games:

  • Pirates In Love
  • My Forged Wedding
  • Ten Days With My Devil
  • Seduced In The Sleepless City
  • In Your Arms Tonight
  • Be My Princess
  • Be My Princess 2
  • Love Letter From Thief X
  • My Sweet Bodyguard
  • A Knight's Devotion
  • Office Secrets
  • Kiss of Revenge
  • Dreamy Days In West Tokyo 
  • Class Trip Crush
  • Our Two Bedroom Story
  • Kissed By The Baddest Bidder
  • Serendipity Next Door
  • Metro P.D: Close to You
And an upcoming game, Enchanted In The Moonlight. 

For the most part, the title tells you what the premise is. Ten Days With My Devil is about, well, devils (although for some reason, in-game they're called demons. In that case, shouldn't they just change the title to Ten Days With My Demon?), Kiss of Revenge centers around a surgeon getting revenge for her mother, and My Forged Wedding is about a fake wedding for reasons that change depending on whose route you play. 

Translation-wise, the English translations are pretty good and are only getting better. Some of their newer games have puns! Puns, one of the hardest jokes to translate! According to an ex-Voltage translator, an individual game - excluding add-ons and special stories - costs upward of $10,000 USD to translate. I'd say they're getting bang for their buck there. 

Maybe I'm just so jaded from years of crappy translations that I'm overjoyed by a joke that makes grammatical sense.




Moving on to price: each game lets you play the prologue and first chapter of each route for free, so you get to meet the various men (or boys) and get a taste of their personalities before paying. Each main route is $3.99 USD (roughly $5 SGD), while the epilogues are $2.99 and the substories range from $1.99 to $3.99. 

(Sidenote: I just did the math, and I've apparently spent roughly $210 on Voltage games, excluding substories and sequels. Remember that cocaine metaphor? Maybe it's more accurate than I thought.)

Alternatively, you can play the GREE versions. So far, I think only Celebrity Darling, My Sweet Bodyguard, and Be My Princess is available on GREE. 

GREE is free to play, and with a lot of patience and effort you can play the entire game without resorting to microtransactions. On the other hand, it's a time-based game. You get five free story tickets everyday at 4AM Tokyo time, and each ticket pays for a scene. 

There are tests - for example, a love test, or an elegance test, that depends on your statistics. The statistics are based on things like what your avatar is wearing - a dress can give you 100 charm points or 50 elegance. And guess how you get your avatar's clothes? Yep, through paying.

Generally, those five tickets are worth five minutes of playing, and if you're not paying your way through you'll have to do a lot of social networking and grinding to get points. I've only tried a GREE game once, and I ended up spending $15 on one route because I was too impatient to wait 24 hours. On the other hand, the same route in the paid version would cost me $5. I spent more on the free game than on the paid game!

I've seen many people play the GREE versions, though, and they seem quite satisfied with it. If you have the patience and determination not to pay a single cent, then play the GREE version. If you're like me, stick to the paid versions. It'll cost you less money and frustration. 

Wow, this post turned out longer than I meant to. Anyway, if I've convinced you to try out Voltage games, my recommendation would be In Your Arms Tonight's Shohei Aiba - the route that made me cry, if you're curious. There are lots of other games and routes you might want to start with. The first Voltage route I ever played was Kiss of Revenge's Issei Sezaki, which is another emotional route. 

Really, do download them from the Apple store or Google Play and try the prologues and first chapters. It's free, and the only thing you'll lose is thirty minutes of time. 

Written by Dee