My new land

I wasn’t going to write a review about Oumagatoki, but I decided it could still be useful to save some poor wallets so…. at least, I’m going to write a short opinion about it!

I admit it, it’s not a complete kusoge: I’ve played worse stuff, which was so terrible I couldn’t even force myself to complete a route. (like Gakuen K for example… that was tragic).

Oumagatoki’s worst problem is the bad writing: it feels like only a couple characters have a proper route, with a decent plot and character development, while the others are there just as fillers.

I’ve started with Hayate, who was one of the lucky few with an interesting route, so I can’t complain about him: he was nice, there were cute moments, and when I reached his endings I was asking myself why so many people went as far as calling Oumagatoki a kusoge.

But it didn’t take me too much to understand.

Souta was meh. His route could have been interesting if he had good reasons to justify why he didn’t want to go back to the real world, but he was just “I don’t want to be a normal person, here I’m cool, I have great powers, I have girls around me!” and that was a huge turn off to me.

Yoimiya was just the typical sensei who denies his feelings for the student, until he goes “whatever” and tries to get her…. but she never understands, because this heroine is really useless.

Sorry, I didn’t like her much and the fact that the guys don’t even say her name made everything worse…. plus this route didn’t focus at all on the character’s tragic past, but more on random ayakashi attacking them and that’s why most of the time it was just plain boring.

I had great expectations for Tsukishiro, because he was the god protecting the Kakuryo.

Sadly, he was disappointing: he didn’t care at all about the world he was supposed to protect and he seemed to be more interested in the heroine just to increase his powers.

In the ending, Kakuryo is magically saved anyway and he’s also in love with her!

This game has no consistency and logic, I don’t even care enough to complain about the plot holes and the lack of character development.

Tokiwa is the main character, his route is the only one written properly, so I won’t spoil: if someone still decides to play this, even after my terrible review, just leave him last; he’s actually cute and interesting.

So……… do I recommend this game? Obviously, NO.

But it’s not even a complete kusoge: a couple routes were good, the art is nice…. well, I have nothing else good to say about it.

If you find a very cheap copy (and I mean REALLY cheap), maybe you can still give it a try; but if you can spare your poor wallet kun, it’s better just pass this game.

When Tierblade was announced, I wasn’t very interested: I don’t care about Gundams and the system looked pretty terrible, so I was already imagining myself wasting a lot of time to collect all the junk to obtain the platinum, and it wasn’t nice.

But my friends loved it, and I started regretting my choice; also, my inner Evangelion fan was curious to see if it was psychological and intriguing, so I finally gave up and bought it for my birthday. Well… it was a good present for myself!

At first, I was really excited: I loved the common route and the robot battles didn’t bore me at all; the stuff collecting that worried me was easy, I just had to visit certain places and pick them up.

I loved how all the routes showed a different aspect of the whole story, I truly wanted to go on and understand more and more about the truth: that’s something not all the games can do, and that’s what makes the difference between a “normal game” and a “good game”.

Tierblade got my interest in every moment of every route, there was nothing predictable!

Well, at least for the main characters. After Row, it all went downhill for me.

I’ve played Sud first, and I don’t regret it (even tho starting with Atharva could be good anyway).

I loved his personality, that’s what made him look like “the main” guy in my eyes.

It was nice to have someone I could always trust, even if he wasn’t that strong, he always did his best to protect Eve and make her feel loved; guys like him are pure gold.

Atharva’s route was sad and psychological, despite him having a funny (and embarrassing!) personality: maybe, it was overall the best route for me, at least I got my bits of emo stuff like I expected from this Evangelion-like game.

Yajur was…. wow. I don’t even know where to start, and I can’t spoil, so…. let’s just say it was unexpected. I don’t agree with Eve’s decision, even if I can understand her opinion: she’s too nice, my reaction probably would have been similar to the “true” Eve’s… am I a bad person? I can’t forgive easily………. I mean, let’s think about the poor onii chan! He was literally an angel.

Row was my favorite character, no doubt. I loved him since the moment he made his first appearance, he’s completely crazy and so desperate… how can you not love him? His life was hell!

Maybe I’m biased, but he also got the best CGs and the sweetest scenes, at least his route didn’t lack emotions at all.

After a few routes, I admit I started getting tired of the Tierblade battles, but I was curious until the end, because Cradle got his own route, even if he’s just a robot!

I was waiting to see how he could become human and what his appearance would be… well, let’s say I’m disappointed.

The writing here just gave up any kind of logic, and most of the time I was just ???? wtf am I playing ??? wtf did just happen ??? WHY??

I don’t understand how Otomate could approve this nonsense… after 4 great routes, with good plot, amazing characters, perfect writing, why trying to ruin everything in the end?

A route for Cradle could have been sweet and interesting, but…. not like that.

I basically spent 2 hours skipping, going through flashbacks, and then when I thought something good was about to start…. I got THAT.

I had a similar problem with the True ending: after all the patient skipping, my expectations were let down terribly.

It was so boring I was almost falling asleep, I was even missing the only important lines (about Gil) because I honestly didn’t care anymore: the fight scenes started to look all the same and seeing Arcadia defeated so many times obviously wasn’t interesting.

Despite the bad aftertaste left by the last 3 endings, I have to say I overall enjoyed the game, and I’m going to play the FD for sure.

All the endings were too short and didn’t explain deeper what happened next, to the characters and to the world around them, so I’m still curious to know more; also, I liked all the characters and I’ll gladly meet them once again. Well, the wait is short for me, since it’s going to be released soon!

I’ve played Toki no kizuna for the first time years ago, when I was still a newbie to otome games and my japanese was very basic: needless to say, I couldn’t understand most of the dialogues, so I ended up dropping it after a couple routes.

My knowledge of japanese history was also non existent, so even if I used a guide I couldn’t enjoy it at all: I spent most of the time looking at those old man speaking, asking myself wtf should I care about their wars instead of spending time with the boys… and I figured out that forcing myself to play it until the end was just a waste of time.

Years later, I’ve decided to pick it up again, to figure out if my tastes changed and I could finally enjoy this game.

Was it a good idea? Well…. yes and no.

Since I’ve started, I understood clearly why I had so many problems with those kanji: I can read them now, but games like this make our poor gaijin crazy!

My first route was Shin, because he was the only one I managed to complete back then too and I was really curious to see if my reaction changed.

I still had some flashbacks of the most important scenes, but overall it felt like playing a new game to me, and I enjoyed it at the fullest.

The plot was interesting and the characters too, Shin is also my type, so I was very happy about my choice!I also told myself “how could I hate this game?! It’s so good! The tragedy, the feelings… everything melts perfectly together!”…at least, this was my first impression, but it didn’t last too long.

Kazuya was amazing and I understand why most of my friends love him: you can clearly tell he’s a sweet guy, behind his stoic attitude. He reminds me a bit of Hakuoki’s Saito, this kind of character seems always to be the most popular!

Well, I can’t deny he’s good husbando material, his romantic scenes were really touching.

Chitose’s route had plenty of funny moments, he’s also really cute and I liked him as a character!

But………. well, at this point I started to get really bored of all the endless talking about wars.

I get it, it’s an historical game, I was prepared fot military strategies and actions scenes, but…. it’s still an otome, the plot shouldn’t push aside the relationship completely!

When the demons attacked, every scene started to look the same and they became very repetitive and boring, so I just put the autoplay and did other things while I heard the same stuff happening over and over again.

Kazutake was deeply affected too, sadly I couldn’t enjoy his route enough for this reason.

Also, I admit he’s not my type: he keeps protecting the heroine because she’s a woman, but…. hey, she’s strong! She can fight on her own, let her be!

I appreciated his concern, but it became almost offensive, since Yukina was trained and had no problems at all to defend herself.

Senkimaru needs to be played last, because his route features all the side characters who appeared in the previous routes, and also has huge reveals about the real plot of the story, explaining the heroine’s past and the villain’s true goal.

I admit I was expecting a similar revelation, but still it surprised me, so I liked a lot how this route was completely different from the others.

So…… did I regret my “replay”? (If I can call it like that)

I don’t regret it at all, it was overall a good game, but there are some lacking points too.

The good points of this game are:

• all the characters are interesting, and they have great seiyuu too;

• some routes will make you cry and feel emotional;

• the art is amazing.

The bad points are:

• too much war stuff; some routes are basically made ONLY of that.

• After the first run, nothing is really surprising. Even if the characters are interesting, many scenes give a deja vu feeling and it feels boring; (Senkimaru is the only exception)

If you decide to play Toki no kizuna, keep in mind that it’s more and “adventure game” than an otome game. Of course, there are romantic scenes too, but the focus is more on the plot (which is not even interesting, if you don’t care about japanese history and wars).

Even if I love plot-centric games, and the tragic ones most of all, I still find it difficult to keep my attention up for all the route: for example, the actions scenes when the main characters fight with the demons, honestly looked all similar in every route and I stop caring after a while.

I’m going to play the fandisk for sure anyway, because I loved all the boys and I need some cute moments with them, they deserve it!

Before I’ve started playing, I’ve decided to write a review about Haitaka, because I knew from the start it was going to be a game I would have loved; but then, I realized it’s too easy to spoil someone, and I don’t want to ruin anyone else experience.

I’m just going to write here my overall opinion, because sharing it on twitter is basically impossible.

First of all, I loved the medieval setting: it’s unusual for an otome game, but it was well handled and also quite realistic; the BGM also worked pretty well to create the atmosphere.

The characters were all interesting, everyone of them had something to hide and it was addicting to find out what leaded to the current situations, where the game starts.

Some reveals were shocking, as expected from the Psychedelica series, which always has an amazing plot and writing: characters who seem perfect, sometimes are not, while characters who look like villain, have actually a kind heart; or at least, they had it at some points of their lives.

I enjoyed this game a lot, but……….. well, it’s not flawless. Kokuchou was on another level for me, I couldn’t find even a little complain about it, while Haitaka had weak points too.

I didn’t appreciate that much all the useless talking I had to make for the whole common route: I understand that it helps to know better all the sub characters and also the situation of the village, but some of those small talks just felt like a waste of time.

Things like “what’s your favorite food” or endless talking about how everyone hates witches (I understand it’s important, but it gets really repetitive after the 3^rd/4^th time you hear it), get annoying quite easily, after a few hours.

I wasn’t satisfied with the endings too, I felt like there was some potential which was suddenly cut: just when the situations is getting worse, the characters find an easy solution to solve the problem and the game ends. Lavan was the most offended by this, I think he could have been way better and I was expecting something more from the vibes I got from him while playing the common route. Only Levi had a decent conclusion, at least it made sense.

Maybe this issue could have been solved by making this game a bit longer, but for weird reasons the writer seems to prefer to keep this series quite short; Kokuchou felt even shorter to me, but maybe because I loved it so much, that I just played it faster than I should.

Anyway, complaints aside, I highly recommend this game to everyone: the Psychedelica series is now one of my favorite, and even if it’s heartbreaking, I’m sure most of the players can enjoy it!

Be ready to cry, get shocked, upset, sad… but also, to experience an amazing story, which will make you drown in feelings much more than a typical otome game.