and say which one you chose and why in the comments ;)
It would be so easy for a genie to grant in a way that sucks for me, but that blue-violet sounds really good right now. The world would be the world of Angelique :D Which is nigh-utopian (if you live on the right planet)
I do not exactly remember everything I have heard about Angelique but I do remember that everything I hear about it just makes me want to play it more. I think it is supposed to be one of the first otome, right? How did you play it?
How did I play it? Definitely not with the most legal methods, I’ll tell you what. But I believe anything that isn’t on the market in a way where the people who made it would get the money is free real estate. So only Angelique Luminarise for Nintendo Switch (which has a free demo, but you need to have access to the JP eshop) I paid for like a normal law-abiding citizen.
But!! They recently added Angelique, the first game, the game to Japan’s Nintendo Switch online. If you make a Nintendo account where your region is Japan, you can go on the JP eshop with it and download Super Famicom online. Then you can open the app just fine with your account that has a NSO membership. Of course, it’s in Japanese… If you’re really dedicated, you could hold Google Translate camera up to your screen for every dialogue box. Even if you don’t want to play an entire game like that, if you have NSO I think it’d be nice just to try and see what the first otome game played like for a bit. It’s kind of made me less excited to play visual novel games when other types of gameplay existed for otome games existed in the early age. But I like reading, so I swear I haven’t abandoned VNs or anything.
I think I asked mostly as a “what platform” question that in retrospect, I probably should have looked up on a search engine. (Released on Super Famicom. Also, apparently “A Game Boy Advance version was released on March 21, 2003. A full remake titled Angelique Retour (アンジェリーク ルトゥール) was released for PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita.”) I too am interested in otome with more gameplay than just making choices. I do like interactive fiction and visual novels, but I also play more genres than just those, and I wonder why otome has trended towards being a visual novel without having any other genres.
I know people talk about how the manga about being transmigrated into an otome game don’t reflect otome very well. But given the amount of manga with otome RPGs… part of me wishes it did reflect otome better so that I could have an otome RPG lol. I think Love and Deepspace is supposed to be like that, but the 3D models just don’t resonate with me well. They feel weird and off, but not in the uncanny valley THIS IS CREEPY kind of way… I’m also deathly allergic to freemium.
Love and Deepspace doesn’t have a guy who is my type, but I’m glad it doesn’t because I would cry if a game that was so interactive and had my type in it existed but was a gacha. I hate gacha games. I don’t even like blind bags. Someone needs to make these things illegal internationally. I don’t read “otome” manga on principle, but it’s funny they made up an idea of what otome games are and everyone has followed suit. I don’t even read Villainess stuff, and after playing Angelique I feel even crazier seeing them because Rosalia, the rival character supposedly spawning the villainess phenomena, is nothing like that. … More people who aren’t Ruby Party should make otome RPGs though. Earnest ones with unique settings, no parodies or anything.
I may be talking out of my butt because I didn’t consume that much shoujo content as a girl, I remember reading Shugo Chara! and Kitchen Princess, but I’d bet that the “villainess” phenomenon might come from the bullies seen in shoujo?
As for otome with gameplay, I just found this link with a ton, including a section for RPGs. I’ll probably make a separate post for that in a few days. In a dream world I’d make an otome with this, in reality time constraints, my terribad fiction writing abilities (will there be spelling errors? No. Will it be fun to read and will I have any idea of where to take the plot? Also no), and my programmer-tier art (I was one of the “good artists”… in middle school) means this isn’t happening. At best I program for someone else’s otome game.
They kind of fused Rosalia, various mean girls and bullies, and other rich girls from older manga (like from Aim for the Ace or Oniisama e or Glass Mask, who were sometimes bullies, sometimes rivals, sometimes role models and allies). Threw in the aesthetics of The Rose of Versailles and misc European nobility too. I think it’s strange it presents itself as a parody of something that doesn’t quite exist, but people really like those stories! I could be missing out, but I’m usually too focused on history to check out a lot of new things.
A lot of those games are on my backlog, but I have to get through all Ruby Party games first. Just doing that will knock out a lot of those, but there’s other interesting games I’m excited for too. For example, Dear My Sun!! is a game where you have to raise twins while romancing men. Princess Debut is a rhythm otome that made it overseas, and I feel I missed out by not playing it when it was new. Back then the games I played were up to my parents’ whims at the store, but now the gaming world is my oyster…
I totally forgot to add that I also don’t like gacha games. I had more of a tolerance for it when I was younger, though I was still annoyed by it.
I am one of those people who really likes those villainess stories. They’re entertaining!
I also notice that my gaming tastes spend more time looking back to pre-existing games (often I got there following a recommendation thread) than at new ones.
I tried Princess Debut and honestly, the rhythm aspects annoyed me a lot (it’s really ironic that I’m a musician who doesn’t really like rhythm games), and I did not like the game’s rearranges of the classical music. That alone stopped me from replaying different routes.
Where do you find out about these games, just curious?
(Also, I hope I’m not annoying you: I really do like discussing this stuff, hence me making the community :) )
Don’t mind me, just saving that link for later use 👀
Hmmm i ruminated a lot on this one but I’d pick “Play your favorite Otome game for the first time again”, except not to play a “favorite” but to play the Vampire Knight otome game for DS again, which is an incredibly entertaining train wreck.
I’m very interested to hear about the game. I’ve been trying to English patch it and it’s not working.
Aww I hope you can get it running!
It vaguely follows the manga’s plot and covers about the same arcs as the first season of the anime, except that it’s turned the narrative into a reverse-harem and inserted fever-dream like filler arcs (like the protagonist dreaming up an entire beach-episode??) There were also a bunch of mini games, one of which had you literally stalking your love interest of choice.
I chose to go for a non-canon route for my only run so far, the love interest (Aidou Hanabusa) of which was originally obsessed with one of the canon love interests instead of the heroine. I failed to seduce him and he recruited me into the fanclub instead. I cried laughing when I got to the end.
On top of that the protagonist is just very… juvenile, which I really dislike, but all of the LIs adore her for her weird antics :/
It’s just…hilariously bad, but it has very high production value. It’s even fully voiced!
I’m a sucker for things that are so bad they’re funny, and I also love drooling over high production value items. Absolutely need to step on trying to English patch it.
