Well folks, it’s been one hell of a ride. Alas, like all good things, it’s time for this series to come to an end. I’ve played some good games, some great games, and some games that made me want to bash my head in with my phone. Through all of the good, the bad, and the ugly I’ve done one thing; date and smooch some boys. Also get murdered, but mainly date boys.
A reflection on the medium
Otome games, as well as most dating sims, are a market that are mainly seen as this weird fringe thing that only these weird lonely people play. That really isn’t the case though, they’re games that a lot of thought and effort went into.
They’re visual novels for a reason, many of the games have upwards of 150,000 words in them -- that’s three times the amount of words you’re supposed to write in NaNoWriMo. That’s not even getting started on the art, the coding, and everything else that goes into the games.
Is it fun to pretend to date some hot boys? Yeah, most of the boys in the games are boys I’d never date in real life -- too yandere and murdery for me -- but in fiction it’s fun. It’s like any other video game, yeah crashing cars and shooting up places in Grand Theft Auto is fun but I’d never do any of that in real life.
Most people, including me, don’t play otome games because they’re lonely losers who can’t get a real boy, they play it because the games are a ton of fun. It’s a stigma that surrounds the genre because it is just a really weird genre. There’s really no getting around it.
Otome games let girls live out a lot of fantasies. Nobody wants to date a guy who’s going to lock you in a cage “for your own good” or cut your head off because he’s crazy in real life. It’s different in fantasy, you’re not hurt in a game by a crazy guy, you get to see what happens if you get a bad end or if you can really change him.
You can’t change people in real life, but in a romanticized world where you have tons of hot suitors you can and that’s attractive to a lot of girls.
The games I’ve played
There were some really good games I’ve played over the course of this series. Though if I had to pick a favorite I think I’d have to put either Hatoful Boyfriend or Dandelion ~ Wishes Brought to You~ as my all time favorite.
Hatoful Boyfriend is a wild ride that is not only hilarious but heartbreaking and thought provoking -- something you don’t expect from a game where you date birds. Dandelion was something I didn’t expect to like, I thought that it was going to be awful, but it really ended up being something special.
The art was great and it was just really cute. It was really silly but it was lighthearted and cheerful, something that I can always appreciate.
Now the worst game I played in this series had to have been Seven Hotties, All my Husbands. It was just unplayable. I could go on a rant here, but I’ve already ranted about it on the article for it. I’ll give you the short version though: it was a free to play game that had an obscene model where you could play five parts of a chapter a day when there were I believe either ten or thirteen chapters.
If I wanted to read more than five parts of a chapter I would have had to spend a crazy amount of money that I didn’t want to spend. Mobile otome games can be a lot of fun, however I’d recommend a desktop game over a mobile game any day of the week.
Conclusion
This series has been a ton of fun. Playing these games each week was always a highlight, even when the games were terrible pieces of unplayable garbage. Otome games are dumb, they’re cliched and filled with a ton of problems, but they’re so enjoyable.
In the end, that’s all anybody can really ask for with any game. They’re not for everybody, and playing one a week every week is not something I’d recommend to anybody, but they’re one hell of a ride. This semester has been madness thanks to this series, but if there’s any madness I want to be a part of, it’s Otome Madness.
Otomonster update
So, I was going to post the game next week. That’s not going to be happening. School’s gotten in the way of making the game, and I don’t want to rush out a game that’s going to be a piece of poop.
The game’s coming, but I think it will be released over the summer when I have the time to really buckle down and make sure every part of it looks good and polished, not just something that I rushed because I wanted to make a deadline that everything else I have was due on. The game’s coming! It’s just not going to be next week.
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