[PS Vita] Diabolik Lovers Dark Fate – Review

Title: ディアボリックラヴァーズ ダークフェイト
Developers:  Otomate & Rejet
Release Date: 26th February 2015
Length: ~22 Hours
Links: Official Site, VNDB

This story takes place after the events of “More, Blood” and follows Yui living in relative peace with either the Sakamaki or Mukami brothers. However, one day the two Tsukinami brothers transfer into their school from the UK and Yui is asked by the teachers to help them with their transition back. At the same time there have been reports of wolves wandering the streets at night, as though in search of something.

With the upcoming lunar eclipse making the other vampires act strangely, the Tsukinami brothers are revealed to be “First Bloods” aka founding vampires whom possess stronger abilities than the current vampires. It transpires that they were imprisoned in the underworld many years back for starting a war and have recently escaped and are searching for Yui for some reason. Just what is their objective?

Characters

I’m not going to talk about Yui or the Sakamaki/Mukami brothers since I’ve already written about them in past reviews.

Tsukinami Carla (CV Morikawa Toshiyuki)

Carla is the older of the two Tsukinami brothers and is the King of the First Bloods. He tends not to speak a lot, preferring to observe but due to his royal upbringing he has a tendency to order others around. He looks down on other vampires and despises them. He is able to use very powerful magic. He enjoys collecting fine works of art and has a love of cooked ham.

Tsukinami Shin (CV Morikubo Shoutaro)

Shin is the younger of the Tsukinami brothers and follows his brother around a bit like a puppy. He tends to do most of the talking for the pair and won’t allow anyone to badmouth his beloved older brother. He has the ability to transform into a wolf and also uses wolf familiars. He has an excellent sense of smell. He enjoys playing pranks on others but has a very cruel sense of humor.

Sound

Opening: Guilty x Guilty! – Midorikawa Hikaru, Kondou Takashi & Toriumi Kousuke
Ending: S.O.S -ΑtoΩ- – Morikawa Toshiyuki & Morikubo Shoutaro

BGM was composed by Sugiura Yuuki as usual, there 32 tracks in total with a few being new, including themes for Carla & Shin.

System

 

Unlike previous games, the title screen changes randomly between all 12 characters.

 

The system is pretty similar to the other “main” games in the series – there are 3 prologues in total but once you finish them then you are free to pick any of the characters upon starting the game.

Each character has 3 endings: Vampire, Manservant & Brute.

My Thoughts

As soon as I figured out that this was a sequel to More,Blood an actual shiver ran down my spine since that game was horrendous but I shouldn’t have feared since this was actually a lot better! Since most of the characters had done their over-dramatics/emo-ing/whatever in MB we were left with guys who had actually gone through their “character development” and come out of it generally better, which was a blessing.

This game is actually significantly shorter than MB with all of the routes being just under 2 hours long. Normally I would complain about this but since there are 12 characters the game actually ends up being quite a good length so I wasn’t too mad. However, I do wish that the Tsukinami brothers had gotten longer routes since this game was an introduction to them, compared with the rest of the guys who have been around for 2/3 other games.

One thing that I did enjoy in particular was the fact that the other characters do show up a lot/play reasonably important roles in each others routes. Since I’ve always enjoyed the character interactions in this series I really appreciated this. The Mukami brothers in particular have the most adorable interactions and I thought it was too cute that it was mentioned that they have framed group photos in their house and all have colour-coordinated crockery & plates. Little details like this are weirdly heartwarming to me, haha.

It’s probably worth mentioning that there’s generally a lot less violence in this installment compared with most of the previous games since the guys do care a lot about Yui by now. Some of the routes even felt *gasp* quite romantic which I definitely approved of.

Okay, am I the only one that thinks Ayato (unfairly!) seems to get really good routes compared with a lot of the other characters? I still find him a little annoying but he definitely showed a cuter side to himself in this game.

On the opposite side, I feel like Kanato was really screwed over by his route ending – it was pretty terrible compared with pretty much everyone else & it genuinely felt like they’d forgotten to give his route a proper conclusion. He also had a lack of romance in his route which was also a disappointment. I genuinely feel bad for Kanato since I really like him but let’s be honest – his most complete ending/route was from the original game and everything since has been a bit “meh” in my opinion.

Laito was…Laito? I don’t think he’s ever going to be a character I like but he wasn’t as annoying as usual in this game and he definitely dealt with some of the past issues he had which was about time. He also got a disappointing ending CG.

Subaru’s route was definitely one that felt quite romantic & he was very adorable here. His ending was also very sweet! Reiji’s route was pretty decent (as it normally is) and I really liked his ending~ Shu’s route was also good – I thought the family-esque scenes with their adoptive cat were utterly adorable.
(I feel like I’ve commented pretty much the same things for these three but I literally don’t have much else to say without spoiling stuff?)

Alright, onto the Mukami brothers now~ I hated Ruki so much in MB but he’s been slowly improving in my estimation since then. I feel like I was able to better understand his reasoning and principles in this game and enjoyed his route quite a bit more than I was expecting. However, he had such a brutal bad ending it was horrendous!

Kou was also improved in this game & had a really sweet ending. I was looking back and his CG set was generally quite disappointing though.

Yuma had a pretty good route too & had a fair amount of cute scenes. He also had a weirdly horrible bad ending compared with most of the guys.

Last of the Mukami’s is my precious angel Azusa who is too good for this world. His route could be a little over-dramatic but I still really enjoyed it, especially the Ecstasy chapters. There were plenty of cute scenes though & I’m so glad he and Yui got a super sweet ending~

I literally cried during this scene ;~;

Finally are the Tsukinami boys. I actually really liked them both and found them to be interesting characters. I thought that they both weren’t too violent but then when I was looking back through the CG set I was like “Oh yeah, maybe there were violent scenes whoops~” so maybe they aren’t as sweet as I remember (at the start of the game! They both had cute endings).

Carla was my favourite of the pair even though I’m not sure why? I enjoyed how kinda regal(?) he was & thought that the character development he had during his route was enjoyable to read.

Shin was also quite cute, he’s really weird to me though because even though he can be mean I have a hard time taking him seriously because Morikubo Shoutaro has such a cheerful and happy voice, haha. His puppy-like side in particular is good (even though it’s a rare sight).

I don’t know if it’s just me but I feel like the artwork in each Dialovers game gets slightly worse each time? A lot of the CGs are kinda lacking or look awkward and some characters just have really bad CG sets overall *cough*Kanato*cough*. I’m not sure if Satoi was still working on the series at the time this game was released (since Carla & Shin have decent sprites despite their super “extra” designs) but I’m pretty sure at the least most of the CGs themselves weren’t illustrated by her. Each character only has 7 CGs in total too which is a noticeable step-down from previous main titles. I do still think that Carla/Shin should’ve maybe had an extra couple since they’re new.

The music was more or less unchanged from the previous installments but I did like the new BGM tracks. The opening & ending songs are typical Dialovers fare – I personally preferred the ED song.

There’s still some scenes recorded with dummy head mic & since most of the scenes are romantic/sweet/cute they’re actually pretty enjoyable to listen to which was a bonus!

Final Thoughts

My Score: 8/10

Despite some initial misgivings and a couple of disappointing endings/CGs this is overall a really enjoyable, almost satisfying game to play with great routes & endings for most of the characters. Most of the routes actually feel quite “complete” so the series probably should’ve ended here but I guess the cash incentive was too strong (fair enough).

Even though I did like it a lot, I don’t know if I’d actually recommend this game though since you do need to play through More,Blood first and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

I’m really sorry if this review was a little on the short side/repetitive – I genuinely just enjoyed most of the routes & thought they were full of surprisingly cute scenes but don’t have a lot to say about them without summarizing the whole thing and spoiling everything.

I’ve currently moved onto playing Black Wolves Saga ~Weiss und Schwartz~, I am actually finished with Bloody Nightmare (it was surprisingly great!) and need to move onto Last Hope at some point.

Next week’s review will be Amatsutsumi~

Thanks for reading! ^_^