I still remember my reaction, when I saw Piofiore’s first trailer: the mafia theme, the Italian setting and the beautiful art made me think there were all the premises to release a masterpiece; I was even more excited, when I saw the high ratings as soon as the Japanese players started this game.

Everyone seemed to loved it at first, the reviews were awesome… but then, people started to complain about the violence and the abuse that seemed to happen frequently and ruin the enjoyment.

You probably know how much I love dark themes, so I was even more curious to know how disturbing some scenes could be.

Since there are betrayals and revelations in every route, I won’t comment too much about each character separately, as I always do: I prefer to avoid any kind of possible spoiler, ‘cause the shocking effect is really important here and I don’t want to ruin someone else’ experience.

Let’s just talk about the game overall.

As an Italian, allow me some random comments first, I really must talk about these matters: Italian words and food.

I was expecting to hear basic greetings, like “buongiorno” and “grazie”, but I was surprised to see how the writers tried to use as many words as they could even with longer conversations.

The seiyuu’s pronunciation is not even that bad, I swear they are doing a better job in Italian than when they attempt to speak English in other games.

As expected there’s also huge amount of food names, from the basic “espresso” to“crostata” and “cannolo”, but they also talked about more peculiar stuff like “torta al limone” or other dishes that are not so commonly known everywhere.

There’s one thing I can tell you for sure: the writers, the director and whoever was responsible for those dialogues, really made researches about Italian different foods and they didn’t use google translate for sentences.

I don’t think the newspapers you can see at some point were written by a native Italian, since there were a few mistakes, but it’s obvious that they didn’t use Google translate, they searched for someone who could actually speak and write decent Italian.

They even searched for different curse words, I counted a lot and you can’t imagine how weird it seemed for me to hear them! I’ve never thought I would be able to hear my favorite seiyuus talking like that, it seems unreal.

Ok, enough for this, let’s talk about the game itself.

If you hope to play sexy mafia boys and have a nice time, this game is not what you are looking for.

But I don’t consider this a problem, honestly it makes me feel relieved: I bought a mafia game, not an high school one, and I want it as realistic as possible, even brutal if necessary for plot reasons. What is truly important to me, is the good writing of the plot, I want it to be engaging.

I dislike violence if it doesn’t make sense, but if it’s useful to show the true shades of some characters and the reality of mafia gangs, I’m not complaining at all.

I suggest you to start with Nicola’s route, it’s one of the safest and you won’t face many disturbing situations, not even in the bad endings. Well, thinking about it carefully I guess this depends on the games you usually play; but if you are fine with Rejet stuff, there aren’t more shocking scenes here, you can take it easy.

I love Nicola by the way, he’s husband material to me!

Be careful when you start Yang’s route, I don’t think you should descend in hell too soon…. play him second or third, but be prepared because you’re getting yourself into huge troubles.

If you play his good/best endings first, the situations you’re going to face aren’t even that bad, I expected worse; but his bad endings may be disgusting for sensitive people, so avoid them if you think they could disturb you. You’ll understand easily as soon as you enter his route, it’s quite clear what could happen to you if you make the wrong move, Yang is no joke!

Still, I couldn’t hate him, he’s really fascinating and his dark side attracted me from the start till the last moment, I even cried at the end. And trust me, it’s not something that happens easily, it means I was deeply involved!

Orlok is a good boy, but be careful of the MS you unlock while playing or you’ll end up in the bad ending first, as I did; and it wasn’t nice, trust me.

Dante’s route drops all the plot, so it’s longer and deeper than the others; I suggest you to avoid playing him first, or you’ll spoil everything.

Gilbert is locked and it’s easy to understand the reason: his route somehow explains briefly at the beginning everything we got to know while playing other characters, then the leaders decide to join forces instead of killing each other.

I thought it would be a great conclusion for this amazing game, but…………. there’s actually a True ending left to play! I won’t talk about this, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy it as I did.

Do I recommend Piofiore?

Why are you even asking? Isn’t it obvious?

I loved every second of this game, from the start to the very end.

There’s nothing I would change, it’s literally one of the best otome games I’ve ever played in my life: the plot is interesting, it’s well written and I never got bored even if it was quite long.

And let’s talk about the characters… those boys are amazing!

Their personalities are so different and the reasons behind their actions are completely the opposite, but still they all feel “real” and I grew attached to each one of them. I even loved the side characters.

I’m not a person who gets emotional easily, but some of the bad endings made me cry… this should be enough to tell you how great it is.

That said, this game isn’t for everyone: if you want your boys sweet and caring, if you want a funny game where everyone is happy and sparkly, stay miles away from Piofiore or you’ll be disgusted.

But hey, it’s mafia, what did you expect?

If this kind of bloody themes and dangerous situations intrigues you and your tastes are creepy as mine, I guarantee you’ll love every single scene.

Needless to say, this is my game of the year and it goes straight to my TOP10. (I still need to choose the position, it will be painful).