My 5 Least Favourite Otome Games

As a “special feature” celebrating five years of this blog, I figured that it would be fun to have a look back and check out some of the worse games that I’ve had the (mis)fortune of buying & wasting my time playing.

Despite playing quite a few Otome Games & reviewing them for this blog, I actually don’t have many games that I really “hate” or “despise” but these five really did (and still do) annoy me more than normal!

Just a note, obviously these are just my opinions and are subjective so take everything with a pinch of salt.

5th Place – Gakuen Club ~Himitsu no Nightclub~

Review

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Surprisingly, there wasn’t really anything that stood out as particularly terrible in this game. It was just overall a very underwhelming experience which pains me because the artwork & voice acting were actually of a high standard (clearly this is where the game’s entire budget went).

My particular gripe is with the PS Vita version of the game, which was very over-priced compared with the other versions yet offered little in the way of additional content, although, without the little epilogues I bet the end of the routes feel very underhwelming.

If, for some strange reason, you wish to play this then I would recommend buying the PC version on steam because it goes on sale quite regularly.

4th Place: Enkan no Memoria -Kakera Tomoshi-

Review

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This is currently my first and only experience with the A’s Ring brand and it did not leave a very good impression. The game has an interesting set-up and prologue, however, the actual writing itself is pretty dull and long-winded which makes the entire thing a chore to read through. The resolutions of the “mysteries” are also underwhelming, if even gross at times.

Whilst most of the characters are okay, if even likable, the game struggled in Riku’s route and completely chickened out of doing anything remotely decent in Touma’s route. The game has lots of forced love triangles/squares which were clearly just for fanservice in the original R18 game but feel awkward as hell in the console port.

Outside of the writing, there were also major problems with art consistency and horrendous special effects noises.

The only thing that stops this game being further up this list is Minato, whom is one of the better big brother characters I’ve come across. You deserved so much better~

3rd Place – Utsusemi no Megumi

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Review

The fundamental problem with this game was that it was released in a broken, unplayable state where it continuously froze and somehow managed to crash simply when you wanted to read the next line of text. Considering that the producing company (Matatabi) had this happen with their debut game & obviously didn’t learn their lesson makes this pretty unforgivable to me. They persist in putting silly mini-games into their titles when its clear that their team aren’t the best at programming or debugging + these mini-games literally add *nothing* to the player’s enjoyment of the game.

Aside from this, the storytelling and characters were generally pretty dull. The game is meant to be an action/supernatural title with themes of prejudice and delivers on absolutely none of this. They were too busy trying to shoe-horn in terrible yandere routes to actualy pay attention to good world-building and characterisation. Which is a shame because this title did have potential.

2nd Place – Hoshi no Oujo

Review

Considering this is an older game, perhaps I am being a little harsh on this title. Although, it is worth looking at just to see how much better value for money modern otome games are compared to this steaming pile of garbage from 15+ years ago!

However, while the artwork can be forgive for being dated, there’s no excuse for terrible and rushed writing, with the game jumping around so much that it can be hard to keep track of what’s going on. This also has the effect or completely negating any emotional impact some of the game’s more tragic scenes because the entire start of the game is going at 100mph.

There’s also a huge problem with too many characters, however, only 3 actually get properly written and developed routes. The rest normally just get gross H-scenes or even just friendship endings which makes no sense. I’d rather that games focused on fewer characters and gave them more depth – typically, games with more than 6 routes means that there’s been comprimise somewhere.

I also wasn’t impressed with how genuinely unpleasant the H-scenes were to read – the situations themselves were bad but the prose was even worse!

1st Place – Diabolik Lovers More, Blood

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Review

Whilst the previous game could perhaps be forgiven slightly for being a product of its time, Dialovers MB simply cannot use this excuse. The creators tried to capitilize on what was actually a pretty interesting and unique concept in the original Diabolik Lovers but somehow managed to make both the original characters and new additions broadly unlikable in this installment. There’s a balance in Do-S characters of making them mean but not repulsive, yet, this game completely crosses the line. Giving characters tragic backstories does not give them licence to be complete and utter assholes!

I think the thing that annoys me the most about this game though is the fact that the storyline that takes place is completely “canon” with the subsequent games following on from this, thereby making this game the most important plot-wise. However, this is such a long, painful game to sit through that it genuinely puts me off recommending the Diabolik Lovers series to others.

The only thing I remember being remotely enjoyable in this game was Azusa’s route + his epilogue added in the PS Vita port.

Phew, that was a bit of a list to get through. I hope no one is too offended by my tastes!
Please let me know what your least favourite Otome Games are so I know to avoid them, haha!