[PS Vita] Dance with Devils – Review

Title: Dance with Devils
Developer: Rejet
Release Date: 24th March 2016
Age Rating: 15+
Length: ~25 Hours
Links: Official Website, VNDB

The heroine of this game, Tachibana Ritsuka, considers herself to be a pretty average high school student. She lived a boring life with her mother and older brother, until, one day she is attacked and her mother kidnapped. It turns out that a group of Vampires are targetting her family as they are apparently the key to finding the “Grimoire” – a powerful spellbook that will allow its holder to conquer the world.

Shocked to find out that beings straight out of storybooks seem to exist, Ritsuka then finds out that the seemingly helpful student council at her high school are Devils. Unlike the vampires, these guys seem helpful and offer to help Ritsuka get her mother back in return for finding the Grimoire. However, do they have ulterior motives?

Characters

Tachibana Ritsuka

Ritsuka is a second year student at Shikou Accademy and considered herself to be a pretty average girl. She’s a very bright, cheerful and positive girl who values family above all else. Despite the danger she’s currently faced with, she tries to keep going as best she can and is very pragmatic. However, she’s surprisingly forgiving when it comes to betrayals. She can often be found hanging out with her best friend Azuna.

Kaginuki Rem (CV Saitou Souma)

Rem is the student council president at the accademy, and is also the leader of the devils there. He comes from a high-ranking family so has an air of superiority about him. Rem is a hard-working young man who usually comes off as cold and disinterested, however, he has taken a special interest in Ritsuka. He enjoys playing Shogi.

Sogami Urie (CV Kondou Takashi)

Urie is the student council vice-president and Rem’s second hand man, as well as his childhood friend. His family have worked as servants to Rem’s for many generations and Urie is expected to uphold this tradition, leading to some secret animosity towards Rem. Urie is a complete and utter flirt, who’s popularity is such that he has a fanclub within the school. He’s interested in Ritsuka because of Rem’s actions towards her and nicknames her his “butterfly”. His true form is an incubus that can create elaborate dream worlds.

Nanashiro Mage (CV Kimura Subaru)

Mage is the secretary of the student council & is the brawn of the bunch. His athletic prowess is unmatched but perhaps he has a tendency to rush into things without quite thinking them through. He can come across as quite arrogant but perhaps there’s a kinder side to him deep down. He was forced to become Rem’s subordinate after the death of his family.

Natsumezaka Shiki (CV Hirakawa Daisuke)

Shiki is the treasurer of the student council, although the other three find him insufferable to be around so he tends to be alone most of the time. Unlike the others, whom are born devils, Shiki is actually a fallen angel so is treated with some level of discrimination in the demon world. Shiki essentially enjoys messing with people and has a slightly sadistic personality, with little concern for anyone else’s feelings. He can also be cunning and manipulitave at times, making him a dangerous person to be around.

Roen (CV Suzuki Tatsuhisa)

Roen is the servant of Lord Maksis, the former ruler of the demon world. Once Rem’s family took over, they also inherited Roen but he’s not the biggest fan of his new masters. Roen is a Cerberus, a hellhound, however he appears in the human world as a pomeranian. In this form, he quite enjoys a cuddle from Ritsuka. In his human form, on the other hand, he’s prideful and calculating and seems to only view Ristuka as a tool for his own goals.

Tachibana Lindo (CV Hatano Wataru)

Lindo is Ristuka’s beloved older brother, who completely dotes on her. They lived together until he went over to the UK in order to attend a church boarding school. He’s actually an exorcist working for the church so is pretty suspicious of all the Devils suddenly surrounding his precious sister and would like them to stay as far away from her as possible. Lindo is very proficient at cooking and cleaning, often making lunches for Ritsuka.

Artwork

Character design for this title was handled by Maeda Hirotaka, whom has worked exclusively with rejet for a number of years. However, the actual in-game artwork was done by anime production company Brain’s Base.

Sound

Opening: Unmei no Coda – Hatano Wataru
Ending: B(L)UCK BASIS – Pentacle*

The game’s 16 BGM tracks was composed by Elements Garden, a pretty prolific music composition group that have worked on plenty of anime/games over the years.

System

The game’s system is fairly standard, with a few little twists. After the prologue, you’re given a choice between two sets of routes – Rem, Lindo & Roen + Urie, Mage & Shiki.

The guys have three sets of stats – “Favor Rate”, “Human Level” & “Devil Level”.

Favorability increases when you pick that character’s choice & the other two increase depending on what you pick during special choices :

These sections of the game feature binaural sound.

Each character has 4 endings – Human good/bad & Devil good/bad.

My Thoughts

As I think we all know by now, I have a pretty love-hate relationship with rejet. They have made some of my favourite games but, other times, they get so distracted trying to be “unique” that they ruin the whole experience. That being said, I enjoyed the Dance with Devils anime back when it came out and was originally excited for this title, to the extent that I pre-ordered the Animate set (a surprisingly common occurance on this site). I actually originally played some of this game back when it was released but found Urie’s route so annoying that I dropped the game and tossed it into my neverending backlog of despair for the better part of 4 years.

However, I finally dug this relic up out of my backlog and decided to give it a second chance. Did it end up being worth my while or should I have left it to rot for eternity?

Let’s start with Ritsuka, whom was actually a decent enough heroine for once. Considering the weird situation she found herself in, I think she managed about as best as she could. Considering she was voiced in the anime, I did think that having her unvoiced here was a bit of a missed opportunity as that would have given her even more personality. That being said, she’s easily one of rejet’s better heroines.

If you’re at all familiar with this series then you’re probably aware that Rem is the “main boy” of the game. He’s essentially your classic kuudere, and when you eventually crack his shell and get to his sweet side, it’s ever so worth it. His route was quite satisfying but sadly Rem is just not my type, but I’m sure many people would like him.

On the other hand, we have the criminally underrated Lindo, aka the rejet Onii-chan ™ of the game. Therefore, I’m pretty sure you know exactly what to expect from him. I will say that he is one of their tamer onii-chans but, considering the others in this group, that’s not saying much. As per usual with this type of character, I appreciated just how much he cared about Ritsuka, despite how dramatic everything gets. One of his bad endings was just horrendously tragic.

Roen is the final guy of this group, he probably comes under the definition of gap moe given the distinction between his personality in his two forms. Despite most of the guys technically being differing levels of “villanous”, Roen is the character who most fulfils the trope of “villain as love interest”. He’s a pretty interesting character and this being one of my favourite tropes means that Roen was my favourite guy from the game. He’s just a good boi.

Then we have the three henchmen of the student council, who have the funniest group interactions and the better of the two common routes.
Starting us off is Mage, whom comes across as the typical ore-sama character that’s pretty much a given in most rejet games. However, despite a bit of a rough start, he’s actually probably the sweetest guy in the entire game (which was a bit shocking!). I think he’d be an easy character to like and his route was well worth the read.

Shiki is, to put it frankly, a weirdo. He almost seems like he deserves a place in one of rejet’s other games with his sadistic and sarcastic personality. If I had a dollar for every time he said the words “zoku zoku”, then I’d be a rich woman. I actually really enjoyed his route and the character development he had along the way. I would imagine that Shiki is a very polarising character though. His devil route is wild. Simply crazy. But his human route was actually realy enjoyable.

Finally we have Urie, the reason why it took me so long to play this game in the first place. Flirtatious characters are very rarely my “thing” and Urie is definitely on the more annoying side at the start of his route. However, I am pleased to say that he improves throughout his route and actually isn’t that bad/annoying by the end.

The side characters were fairly non-descript but I did really like that Ritsuka’s best friend Azuna was actually super supportive of her.

I’m not usually a fan of games that split routes like this, but for once I actually enjoyed the difference between the Human and Devil routes. What I liked was that the themes of the routes related to their name but, on the other hand, the game kept it interesting by not having the Devil route always be the “bad” choice. It did seem unfair to certain characters though that only seemed to get one happy ending, and others got multiple.

I’ve said before that I’m not the biggest fan of Maeda Hirotaki’s artstyle but it’s a shame that their art wasn’t used for this game. Don’t get me wrong – the anime artwork is pretty decent, although slightly more simplistic than usual. I just personally prefer the usual, more detailled artwork found in otoge.

The BGM in the game also felt very much of “anime quality” as the songs were all very short compared to what you’d expect (under 2 mins). That being said, it was decent enough but you could definitely tell that some songs were looped mildly badly. I inadvertantly bought the OST along with the ED song single but I can’t say that I listen to any of the tracks.
On the other hand, the vocal tracks from the game were of great quality (as expected of rejet). I particularly enjoyed the ending song.

The voice acting was as high quality as you’d expect from any rejet title, with the voice cast being pretty well-known. I particularly enjoyed the dummyhead mic scenes, which were nothing short of a blessing to my ears~

The game’s system was alright, it ran fine. However, there’s this super stupid system whereby each time you open the game, it “gifted” you an art card that’s essentially a still from the anime. This would be a fun little thing if there weren’t literally like 100 of the darn things to collect! I don’t know about anyone else but I tend to only open a game like 10 times when I play it. It seemed like a better way to do this might be to give you a card every time you finished an ending/chapter of a route as well.

Final Thoughts

My Score: 8/10

With surprisingly likable characters, whom all have long and developed routes, Dance with Devils ended up being a thoroughly enjoyable experience that I’m honestly quite sad I never played fully back in 2016. Unlike most games related to an anime series, this wasn’t a half-hearted cash grab and is generally of comparable quality to rejet’s other otome games.

Despite this being a more action-orientated title, there’s not a huge amount of gore or general rejet-esque disturbing content (outside of Shiki & Lindo’s Devil routes) so this is definitely a good choice if you want a rejet onii-chan without playing something like BWS or MoshiKami.

I really must get around to playing the fandisc at some point soon-ish!

Overall, I’d definitely recommend checking out the anime first to get an introduction to the series & if you like it then check out the game for sure!

Thanks for reading~

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