Recent reviews by Rae

I love cats and there's so many cats to find as befriending them.

Great sequel to beloved first game and contains more cats than I expected from the video. I liked the additional rooms and secret floors.

I enjoy the cats, calming music, drawn apt rooms for every floor.

As a fan of Interactive Fiction and VN, I figured that I'd be an ideal audience for the game but I found the entire experience to be lacking. Although I played Fallen London in the past for several years I felt that the constant grinding for items got to be tiring so I hoped I'd have better luck with MoTR with the same setting and writing style.

Unfortunately, I feel like as with the other reviewers noticed the extremely strange pacing issues and the general lack of directions on how to complete the side quests. I feel like I could've used a guide or just any hint to make progress on the murder investigation but I didn't find out anything useful at all. Also, it felt odd to have them ask if I wanted to romance a new person right away and I feel like even when we were friends it didn't matter much to the story.

I did try the writing story mini-game but I wasn't able to hand in anything to Rachel who rejected them each time but I still wasn't sure how to fix them either. Also, I feel like maybe the player could've had like being able to do more than 2 outings a day since we're pretty much unemployed in the setting.

The gameplay did remind me of 80 Days which used Inkle too but I feel like I did so much more as Passport as he traveled the world with his master and sometimes I got a complete story arc at the end depending on my choices. Meanwhile, so many of the side quests I started here had no real ending or just direction that I regretted starting them in the first place.

Now I'm just waiting for the updated patch to improve the timing and consider starting a 2nd play through or just waiting for a detailed guide to help me out.

I remember the day when it was announced as an April’s Fools joke on Twitter and 4 years later I experience one of the most boring VN I’ve ever waited months for its release. Usually, I see the word “catboy” and I’m there and I like cafes so what happened? I have no idea but there’s zero romance in this intro or the routes. MC is a faceless café owner and some catboys exist peacefully in the world and that’s all. There are so many questions for the reader it’s 50% replied with “Because he is a catboy” and nothing else is explained well, to be honest, MC doesn’t have any thoughts or voices either. Also, the lack of reader connection to the MC’s setting made it extremely tedious to play through where it’s a kinetic novel to ridiculous heights.

According to Steam, I played 2.8 hours of the game but I wish I could say anything positive beyond my VA bias and catboys. Also, none of the women have VA in the game anyone from NPC to clerks are all men. Even if I considered it as a drama cd the actual writing is so dull it’s like just monologues of cooking and doing grocery shopping where the VN abruptly cuts off the final scene since it’s already over. The individual scenes with the LI were pretty pointless as we don’t learn much about the catboys and not even that entertaining since I’ve had to sit through the extremely boring parts like 3/4 of the game already.

TBH, I feel like even as a free game I feel like the waste of the reader’s time is pretty unforgivable, and calling it an otome? Eh, the actual VN would’ve been better if the catboys just interacted with each other than an MC who has no thoughts or choices on her own. The closest idea would be this is general cafe-sim VN where you do chores with catboys who pretty much have no depth.

Finally, some of the scenes were creepy how they always mentioned wanting to be a “House Cat” and finding a “Owner.” There’s definitely moments where I felt MC’s personal space or boundaries were often pushed or overstepped like Laurier keeps trying to sleep in MC’s bed because he could and at first everyone resisted this idea but then … they kind of left him to his own devices? What.

When I first heard the announcement back in 2018 I felt iffy since there hadn’t been any reviews of the original VN even back then when I searched for it. At the time of the release date, there were no reviews anywhere so I figured I’d review at least one otome before 2020 ended. I looked up the VNDB and it had some VA I liked and art was OK not my favorite style ofc but it was fine.

According to Steam, I clocked in 2+ hours before hitting the refund button, and here are my thoughts on the intro and the characters. Marika is a pretty outgoing MC and her maid Sanae provides a serious foil to her antics as her caretaker. Then the two LI Kaoru and Ryuusei which mostly were opposites and oddly had a lot of good chemistry with each other than the MC. I got a good sense of the writing but I got sidetracked with other games since I felt that there was a lack of momentum in the story. I’m aware that the story isn’t the most adventure/action genre but I felt it fell into a sense of why do I care about these characters? Why do I care about the MC’s struggles? The overall feeling is I didn’t find a connection or reason for the cast or story at all.

Meanwhile, I see someone has written a steam review and I read it before I decide to refund the game for their specific reason how there was a problematic scene that wasn’t mentioned at all from the store page. I can deal with problematic scenes but it bothered me in particular since it was un-tagged in an ocean of keywords “romantic comedy,” “Proactive MC,” and “Light-hearted” I felt was complete tonal whiplash and there are days where I just rather not. If I had been aware from the beginning I wouldn’t have considered buying the game due to this content. I’m aware that a majority of R18 otome faces the same problem and it’s one of the reasons I’m always cautious about localization of new titles. For now, I’ll keep waiting for a decent R18 otome and hope for better titles in the future.

A interesting card-based convo game where the MC travels to different towns for trading and talking to unique individuals who tell their stories. I remember looking at a short review of the demo several months ago but I actually played it just a few weeks ago when I saw that it would be released soon. I’ve played through the demo and comparing it with the full game it’s pretty much identical except for that you will be at the mercy of the RNG. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt frustrated when I had the right shapes but the hand that I’d been played was just unlucky.

The full game is pretty short and I managed to clear it 4x in a few days but there’s no ending gallery so I’ve only gotten 2x variations of the same ending. It starts out as a calming and chill game that has a great OST but quickly I felt railroaded as there’s a lack of certain square/diamond cards and I found that halted my progress. So far I’ve made a mixed, circle/triangle, and circle/diamond decks so I’ve spoken to most of the NPCs at this point and visited different towns. Although I found it very relaxing there’s definite moments where I felt lost and the overall plot is mixed. We’re searching for clues about our late mother but I’ve only gotten brief convo and so much of is just filling in the blanks using my imagination. For a story-based convo game I’m baffled at the lack of a main plot details and even when I found out the answers they were lacking.

There are mini-stories along the way but they were also pretty open-ended with the details as I followed different NPCs around town. I didn’t feel like interacting with them changed much of their stories and even I didn’t get any sense of closure from their final outcome. There’s so much potential in the game but it’s just oddly empty or obtuse. The silent MC where we don’t see their replies is just a mystery and I prefer any kind of personality vs nothing at all.

I would say there’s some replayability with the different towns but I felt that if there were most options they were locked behind some serious RNG and it didn’t help that there’s only one save slot so no real way to try again w/o starting over each time.

Do I recc’d the game? Maybe just for the colorful artstyle and OST but only for a few times since I’ve been stuck on the 4th playthrough for few hours w/no progress.

Stylish outfits for your favorite avenging team.

Cute VN with a long story. This is my 2nd game from the company and it's closer to a pure VN vs stat-raiser kind of game like Dandelion. I admit I bought this before the former one out of curiosity since the doll theme appealed to me more at the time. IIRC you can go in any route order but a few of the characters are only unlocked if you clear the game 1-3x and not before. Art is nice and reminds me of water colors along w/CGs. VA is very good too for the different scenes. Story can be a bit confusing but makes more sense after you clear the game and gain info. Side characters are well-deveoped and have their own personalities/goals. UI is clean and functions well based off Ren'Ai and I can read the text w/o any problems.

If you're a fan of otoge or VN-style games I think you'll like Cheritz's games. I look forward to their future projects~