Even if no one talked about it when it was released, I’ve always been curious about Yoiyo mori no hime: the opening shows a dark forest and hints some kind of mystery, so it seems definitely my type of game.

So, after a few years, I decided it was worth a try.

Every route is made up of 5 chapters, two of them being the common route, where you get to know better the characters and the mystery surrounding their past.

None of them stood out for me, they were nice but kinda generic: the annoying shota who wants to grow taller, the grumpy one, the playboy molester, the gentle but awkward type and the untouchable prince; oh yes, there’s a random priest (or he looks like that).

The heroine is pretty generic too, her family died but she seems to care most about cooking and cleaning the mansion. I guess she gets over tragedy really quickly, decide if you’d call her strong or dumb.

I went for Klaus first since he seemed the main guy and wow, so much twisted stuff happening in a few scenes! He’s arrogant, bossy and even violent; I really don’t get how the heroine could fall for a douche like him, she should just run away.

This route (well, the whole game in general) gave me the feeling of “missing scenes”.

I’m not talking about plot-holes, but there are scenes that should be showed but aren’t, while other important ones should be longer, but they just…… happen. In a second, barely explained.

I don’t want to spoil, but to make you understand I’ll just talk about a scene: Klaus is imprisoned in a tower and the heroine goes there to save him. But while they talk, another guy enters and says something like “I came here to rescue you. Let’s go” and Klaus suddenly becomes the prince.

I’m not even kidding, there’s no battle scene, no further explanation, just…. we won, you’re safe, it’s over. High quality writing!

I admit my attention span at this point was already low, since I wanted to kick Klaus’ face instead of confessing my (nonexistent) love to him, but…please.

I won’t talk about the crazy guy since he’s kind of the secret route, but I suggest you to play him last. I made a mistake while playing him right after Klaus and I realized too late this route was the best ending for the whole game.

I went for Harolt next, because I always want to get rid of annoying the shota soon.

Some scenes were funny, for example when he didn’t want to admit he was falling in love and he came up with weird excuses, but I still couldn’t enjoy that much his route: he got angry too easily and his annoying screaming voice was a huge turn off for me.

When I met him again in the epilogue, grown up and more mature, I couldn’t help but wish his whole route was like that.

I have mixed feelings about Lambert.

I imagined him to be a tsundere, so I was excited to see when he would finally start to open up to the heroine and act awkwardly cute; sadly, it didn’t happen.

I kinda felt his affection, since he protected the heroine while putting his life on the line (I actually thought he was going to die in the good end, they trolled me), but still his romantic words came out as empty to me. I couldn’t feel his love and emotions, at all.

Even the last chapter made me question if he really had deep feelings for her: actions speak louder than words and somehow he seemed ready to let her go without even trying. Disappointing.

Miriam is the typical Hirarin’s character, so I went into his route looking for sexy times or perverted lines; I wasn’t wrong.

But somehow, I felt there was something sad about his personality, he didn’t look genuinely happy when he tried to seduce her. Maybe he was just depressed because of the curse, or maybe he wasn’t even trying seriously. The heroine acted shy, but she was probably going to give in immediately, even if he acted like a creeper most of the times.

Ulrich was cute, in a childish way…. I don’t know, it was actually weird.

He was too young and always grumpy or silent, so I couldn’t see him as a love interest; maybe more as a little brother.

Thinking about it now, at the end, “weird” is perfect to describe most of the routes; Lutz is not an exception.

I thought his happy and loud personality was annoying enough, but then he showed his true self and it was creepy as hell. Well, that was unexpected and probably the only surprising revelation in this game otherwise kinda predictable, so I guess I should thank the writer, despite….. well, the cringe.

I left Yulian’s route last cause he had a huge flag on his head with a “yandere alert” written clearly on it, right from the start.

I was expecting the heroine to be locked somewhere and hysterical jealousy scenes, but this route exceeded my expectations and the messed up ending was the perfect ending for the whole game.

I’m even sad I can’t spoil, since everything was so wild and over the top, that I needed to share it with friends or I would never be able to overcome the facepalming.

I don’t know if it was meant to be some kind of troll route or if the writers were serious, because the level of creepiness was so high, I was sure I made a mistake and got the bad ending…. but everything was solved in the most cliché way possible and it seemed too stupid to be taken seriously.

Would I recommend this game?

I don’t think so.

The plot made barely any sense, nothing was properly explained; the individual routes were too short to feel any kind of attachment to the guy, but the common route only consisted of random everyday life scenes; the CGs were cute, but not amazing. Some group interactions were funny, but I’m sure I’ll forget everything about this game in a few months.

My favorite parts became memorable for wrong reasons, like Yulian’s route, so maybe you should try that for the WTF-factor, just don’t take it seriously.

Overall, it was just a mediocre game that can be entertaining on the first playthrough, if you don’t mind too much the plot holes, but it gets predictable immediately.

Next, please!