[Nintendo Switch] Jakou no Lyla ~Trap of Musk~ Review

Title: 蛇香のライラ ～Trap of MUSK～
Developer:  Otomate
Release Date: 19th September 2019
Age Rating: 17+
Length: ~20 Hours
Links: Official Site, VNDB

This game takes place in the kingdom of Shanasa, where there is currently a gathering of royals from across the world. The protagonist Shirien works as a dancer in the Show Bar Kamal but also undertakes work as a spy. Somehow, she gets caught up with the arriving royals…

In Episode 1 ~European Night~ Shirien is tasked with going undercover to get close to Prince Vince in order to find out the whereabouts of Rolan’s younger sister Pamela.

In Episode 2 ~Asian Night~, the normally uninterested Korei falls head over heels for Shirien because she reminds him of his favourite fictional character. So, in order to keep his brother’s head in the game during the gathering of royals, Kirei hires Shirien to accompany Korei for the duration of the event.

In Episode 3 ~Arabian Night~ Shirien is asked to pretend to be King Lizaru’s fiancee until the original girl has managed to elope with her lover.

This is the switch port of the original PC games, which contains all three games in one package alongside a couple of bonus stories (one of which has a CG).

Characters

Shirien

Shirien was orphaned in a fire as a young child and was picked up by the owner of the Show Bar Kamal. She has spent years training and is regarded as Kamal’s most talented dancer. Shirien also works as a spy and is quick-witted. She may be comfortable with men in regards to her job but does have a surprisingly pure side too.

Vince Lugan (CV Taniyama Kishou)

Vince is the crown prince of the country of Lugan. Lately, he has been cold and distrustful of anyone apart from his childhood friend/right-hand man Theodore. He’s skilled with a sword and is feared as the man who single-handedly murdered the Crydelle royal family and took over their kingdom. Vince appears to have little interest in women and generally lacks patience.

Rolan Crydelle (CV Tachibana Shinnosuke)

Rolan was the third prince of the former Crydelle empire. The empire was unusual in that women were in charge so from a young age he was locked up in a secret room within their main castle, which is how he managed to escape the massacre that befell his siblings. He’s currently searching for his younger sister Pamela and carries around a doll in her image. Rolan is a quiet, almost shy young man with little experience of the outside world. In order to hide his true identity, he takes up work as a servent in the royal residence in Shanasa but is incredibly clumsy.

Rin Korei (CV Okitsu Kazuyuki)

Korei is next in line to the throne of the Rin Empire. However, he has little interest in real life and spends most of his time fangirling over the myth of the white snake girl. He believes Shirien to be her reincarnation and falls in love with her at first sight. He’s actually a very thoughtful young man who’s hobbies include archery and painting.

Rin Kirei (CV Satou Takuya)

Kirei is the younger of the Rin brothers and is second in line to the throne. Unlike his brother, Kirei is very much interested in all women and is a definitely a flirt. He cares a lot for his brother and would do anything for him but cares little for the throne.

Lizaru Shanasa (CV Morikawa Toshiyuki)

Lizaru is the current ruler of the country of Shanasa. However, until 7 years ago he was sickly and not seen in public. Since then, he has built Shanasa into a prosperous country and continues to strive for co-operation between all countries. He’s a very intelligent man but can be tough to read. He has a pet big cat called Karuu.

Jemiru (CV Murase Ayumu)

Jemiru is an orphan who was picked up by Kamal’s owner and nursed back to health by Shirien. She considers him to be like a younger brother but he’s always grumpy and often rude to her but, of course, he does care for her really though. He works undercover as a spy and assassin & for some reason seems to have Lizaru as his current target?

Artwork

Character design and artwork for this game was handled by Yuuya, whom has worked on a few of Otomate’s other games (normally the collabs with Ichicolumn) as well as a couple of other otome games under the name “Y at”.

Sound

Opening: Lyla – Itou Kanako
Ending: Aika no Fajr – Shimamiya Eiko

The BGM for this game was composed by Kagawa Kyousuke, whom also worked on Cendrillon PalikA.

System

Since this release does contain all 3 of the games, you basically just pick which one you want to play when you load up the software. Each individual episode has its own title screen & seperate CG gallery.

As per usual in Otomate games, there is system that lets you view your affection levels for the characters – the brightness of the lantern corresponds to their affection level.

While each game only has 3 routes – one for each character & the “true” spy ending (3P route), there’s a few bad endings so you may want a walkthrough. The flowchart makes it easy to jump back to choices & there is actually a skip to next choice/unread text option for once.

(Also the gallery screen was just really cute ;v; )

My Thoughts

When the Triangle Project games were first announced, this was the series I was most interested in but due to my old laptop being a piece of trash I decided not to get the PC games so I was super glad that there were console ports announced for these games. Even though I’m not a big fan of love triangles, the setting & more mature theme appealed to me but was it worth the wait?

I’m going to deal with each game individually because they’re pretty much seperate entities (there is one overarching storyline that they make a big deal out of in the “true” endings of earlier games and then attempt to deal with in the final game but I’ll get to that later).

Overall, the story in European Night is not great, to say the least. I feel like they try to get too political in Vince’s route (it was getting a bit boring imo) & the last part of Rolan’s route was just straight up random. There’s also a “truth” revealed in the spy route that honesly was easy to guess but it basically just builds up to this chapter called “The Real Truth” (or something along those lines) and has the most anticlimactic plot reveal ever – although it still makes me chuckle so maybe that’s a win? The rest of the 3P route is just Rolan annoying Vince so that was A+ content.

As for the characters, I’ll start with Shirien and she actually disappointed me a little. From the promo material she seemed like a confident and intelligent individual, which she is to some extent. However, during the romantic parts of each route she reverts to your standard “1000% pure innocent” otoge protagonist which just felt really out of character?

Vince just never grew on me at all – I guess he’s meant to be a kuudere but there’s just not enough cuteness to go with his icy cold exterior for my tastes. Like I said, I found his route to be boring, as well as just slightly distasteful with that one ~dubious consent~ scene. His bad ending was honestly my favourite & I preferred him as a side character in the other games.

Rolan, on the other hand, intrigued me by being the game’s only “cutesy” type character but (not gonna lie) the obsession with his sister’s doll was putting me off a bit. I am pleased to announce though that he’s actually just a really sweet boy, honestly more lonely than anything else which makes you just want to give him a hug. He’s my favourite from the game and one of my favourite characters that I’ve come across in a  while! He’s also really funny as a side-character in the other episodes.

Asian Night was actually the installment that I was least looking forward to before playing since neither of the main characters really interested me. Weirdly enough, it actually ended up being my favourite volume as I felt that the romance was better, there was no over-arching plot to complicate things and the 3P route was much more lighthearted. The character interactions in this volume were super fun and I really enjoyed the dynamic between Korei and Kirei.

Korei is definitely the more serious of the pair so I found his devotion to his fictional waifu to be downright hilarious. He’s surprisingly pure in his intentions at the start of the game and is completely adorable most of the time. I found his route to be really intriguing, political but in a good way – just like a period drama! He also looks too beautiful for his own good.

Kirei initially comes off as too flirtatious for me but ends up being unbelievably cute and almost puppy-like (although I’m sure he’d rather claim he was a wolf haha). His route is actually pretty great romance-wise as it was more of a slow burn and the payoff when the two finally get together is so worth it. His route does suffer a bit from the “villain” being quite annoying but I can definitely forgive him!

This game also gets major bonus points for the Spy (3P) ending basically just being comedic & fluffy, as opposed with the stupid drama forced into the other games’ spy routes.

Finally we have Arabian Night, which is the final game in the series & you should probably play this last if you want to experience the… glory… of the “true ending”. Also, route order is only important in this game where you should play Lizaru’s route first as Jemiru’s route does spoil a plot point for it.

Lizaru is first up and given that he was on the box art & was highly rated in the character polls I had really high expectations for him. After finishing his route, I can definitely understand why people love him and story-wise it was generally a pretty decent read (he’s just not really my type though!). However, there is just one plot point that does not make sense whatsoever and has been annoying me ever since so be prepared to just ignore it like the writers did.

Jemiru was another character that I had high expectations for since I love the rare otouto character type. His route went in exactly the direction that I expected (not necessarily a bad thing) but it also brings up the same key plot point that the writers just expect you to ignore????? Anyways, he’s pretty much a typical tsundere, heavy on the tsun side but definitely had some cute scenes. My one disappointment is the absolute lack of smut in his route.

Okay, hear me out here – normally I don’t complain about this kind of thing but when the game was basically sold on being smutty I found it really disappointing that Jemiru’s route completely failed in this regard. The game’s excuse for this is his age (17) which is fair enough BUT there’s no reason why there couldn’t have been a fluffy epilogue set a year after the main story (there’s actually not even really a reason why he’s 17 in the first place, he only really needs to be younger than Shirien (whom is 21) so I don’t see why they didn’t just make him 18?).

Right, time to stop being salty about Jemiru’s route and get onto the game’s true/spy route. The first half of this was basically a complete copy paste of Jemiru’s route with a couple of extra lines thrown in for Lizaru (about things that you, the player, already know) that you couldn’t normally skip because even though you’d read it, it was classed as a different chapter of the game and so technically unread. Therefore, I slowly just force skipped my way through this until finally getting to the actual new content which took a surprisingly long amount of time.

After all that trash, we finally get to find out the true villain of the game and what’s been going on behind the scenes all along. And it was a bit of a shock actually, a weird one but okay. I wasn’t a huge fan of the introduction of the random fantasy elements hastily tossed our way at the very end of the game but I guess they did technically clear most questions up with the additional diary entries in the game’s special section also adding some back story (poor PC players).

Overall, this spy route tried to be the most plot-heavy and was slightly underwhelming in the end as it felt like you still wanted to pick one of the guys in the end, rather than a 3P route since their personalities don’t exactly go well.

As far as the exclusive switch content goes, it was okay. The bonus group story was my favourite & was pretty hilarious. Each character also has a couple of bonus side stories – essentially events in their route shown from their perspective instead of the heroine + a sweet letter addressed to the heroine. These were very short but enjoyable nontheless. As I mentioned earlier, there is also a diary section which adds a little bit of extra backstory which was nice.

I wouldn’t call myself a big fan of Yuuya’s art style but the artwork itself was generally of good quality, with many of the CGs being slightly spicier than those typically seen in console otome games. There was enough CGs in most of the routes, perhaps with exception of the third game’s spy route as it was the longest.

The BGM was pretty forgettable to be honest but I really was a big fan of the opening song. As you can probably tell by the fabulous voice cast that Otomate assembled, the voice acting in this game was top notch & probably one of the highlights.

Finally, the system was decent. I did find the game to be a bit laggy at times, which is something I might expect from my old PS Vita but not the newer Switch so that was annoying. The skip to next choice/unread text feature also refused to work if there were no more choices which meant a lot of slow skipping in some of the routes. I genuinely have no idea why a working version of this feature is only in some of their games??

Final Thoughts

My Score: 7.5/10

While there may have been some problems with overcomplicating some stories and underwhelming plot reveals, the characters themselves were surprisingly likable as well as there being a lot of interesting world-building about each individual country. Asian Night in particular was a wonderful balance of romance, comedy & plot with both love interests being great so if you just want to play one game then I’d highly recommend that.

Character Ranking
Rolan > Korei > Kirei = Jemiru > Lizaru >>>>> Vince

Next week’s review will be for SoiKano, here’s hoping that I can get back into a weekly posting schedule!

Thanks for reading~