Title: 俺の瞳で丸裸！不可知な未来と視透かす運命
Developer: Hulotte
Release Date: 28th July 2023
Age Rating: 18+
Length: 15+ Hours
Links: Official Site, VNDB
When he was a child, Kuze Shinra and his five friends all decided to venture into a nearby forest in search of the witch whom supposedly lived there. Surprisingly, they come across a strange cottage deep within the woods and are greeted by the self-proclaimed witch who allows them all to take home one of her magical artifacts as a reward for their adventure. However, Shinra refuses a gift and boldly asks to become the Witch’s apprentice. She laughs and agrees to make him her “slave”.
A decade later and the events of that day are but a distant memory for Shinra’s friends – the group now attend highschool together and are as close as always. But Shinra has secretly been visiting the Witch Eliska since that fateful day.
However, his peaceful daily life is interrupted when a foreign exchange student Lucie transferrs to his class and announces her goal of eradicating the area from witches.
Just what will happen to Shinra and his master now?
Thoughts
Hulotte are a brand I’ve had my eye on for a while – they produce moeges with nice artwork and memorable heroine designs. When Ore no Hitomi de Maruhadaka! Fukachi na Mirai to Misukasu Vision (Orefukachi for short) was announced, the setting intrigued me but I mainly bought this because Eliska’s design is S-tier. So how did it turn out?
Beginning with the common route and the introduction to the “plot” and character interactions were fine. I do have problems though with the fact that for most of the common route it feels like the protagonist and Lucie begin almost “dating” after a certain incident. This just makes me feel really sad for picking anyone else but her, especially because the protagonist doesn’t actually tell her that he has feelings for someone else early in a number of the heroine routes. There are also H Scenes for all 5 main heroines in the common route which was excessive and not needed for most.
As an aside, the game has an unusual route structure. Upon first playing the game, only Koume, Hikaru & Honoka routes are available to play. Finishing one of those unlocks the side heroine routes for Mizuha & Honoka. Completing all 5 of these routes unlocks Lucie & finishing her route finally unlocks Eliska.
Moving onto the heroines (and their routes) so I’ll begin with childhood friend #1 Koume – a tsundere who works as a shrine maiden in her spare time. Her magical item was stupid but I guess in a game focused on magic and ero, they could get away with it. I just didn’t really like Koume a lot and found her route forgettable.
Hikaru is another childhood friend and, despite being a kouhai, absolutely loves to spoil and pamper Shinra. She’s very openly physically affectionate towards him. Is also a member of their school’s swim team. Oh Hikaru, you poor thing. As a heroine, she’s adorable – her entire presence is very “healing” (or relaxing I guess) and I enjoyed whenever she popped up on screen. However, the issues she has with her magical item are so wildly severe/life limiting and yet played off for fetish points that her route is unpleasant to read. Ugh I hate eroge sometimes.
Honoka is yet another childhood friend and another kouhai. She was already smart as a kid and the magic glasses she got as her magic item made her into a bona fide genius so she spends her days doing weird experiments at her lab in the school. Out of the three main childhood friend heroines, Honoka has the best route. It’s still dumb and has some obviously forced H but at least it had some semblance of plot.
Lucie is the transfer student from France and is a member of the holy knights who want to eradicate the world of witches. She’s typically pretty level-headed. Shinra accidentally walks in on her changing clothes in the classroom shortly after her arrival, so she asks him to take responsobility and be her husband. Lucie was surprisingly cute, I just felt bad for abandoning her in all the other routes (especially because her route was locked!!). Her route was actually pretty decent though.
Eliska is the Witch who lives in a cottage in the forest near to Shinra’s town. She is a playful woman who, despite her appearance, has lived for many centuries. She treats Shinra almost like a son. Eliska was the reason I bought this game and I can’t fault her design (her old-fashioned speech style is *chef’s kiss*). The main problem in her route is hinted at thoughout the game so heavy-handedly that it ruins any sort of tension early on. The romantic development is kind of awkward also but I can kind of forgive the route. The actual plot was decent, if a little predictable. The ending was cute though. She’s still an adorable heroine.
Mizuha is another childhood friend of Shinra and is relegated to sub-heroine status. She’s very shy and worries that everyone else forgets about her. She can usually be found reading in the library. Mizuha is without a doubt the biggest mistake this game made – she’s an ADORABLE heroine, has one of the more interesting back stories, and her magic item (alongside the drama surrounding it) fitted the tone of the game. Her route was just too short to really capatilise on what a good thing they had here and to this day I am annoyed the the other 3 childhood friends took precedence over her (although I see the irony with her being “forgettable” in universe). Justice for Mizuha!
Homura is the other sub-heroine and is Eliska’s maid, and is the last of her race of dragon-folk. She’s pretty deadpan but her witty quips and great banter with Shinra really carry portions of the common route. Homura is also an excellent, interesting heroine who was hampered by her lack of a full route. Perhaps not as badly as her story arc is a lot simpler, although the romantic development could’ve been handled better with more time. That being said, she did have one of the better endings.
As with most Hulotte games, the artwork was handled by Ikegami Akane. I like her art-style and found the quality of the sprites and CGs to be fine, but there was a definite lack of SFW CGs.
The voice acting was one of the few areas where Orefukachi actually excels and all the heroines sound great (Sazanami Suzu as Eliska & Anzu Mitsu as Hikaru were highlights). The BGM was pretty forgettable but the vocal tracks were very nice, I preferred the opening song but I am glad that I bought the version of the game that came with the soundtrack.
Speaking of bonuses, the deluxe version of the game also game with an “Artbook” of their Ponkotsu series (I bought the DL edition so it was a pdf version). I don’t know what I was expecting but it was just a CG dump from the games in the series? It’s genuinely very lazy and has no exclusive artwork or text. Maybe the physical version is a novelty since it’s a printed book but the digital one was a real let down and was not worth the extra 3000 yen for this + the music discs considering the Maxi single is the best part of the set by some margin.
Conclusion
My Score: 5.5/10
Whilst I liked most of the heroines, Orefukachi is just a game of missed potential. Sadly, the two best heroines are confined to shorter side routes, and the three childhood friend heroines are generally pretty disappointing. Lucie and Eliska’s routes were somewhat better but it was too little too late to rescue my opinion of this game.
I wouldn’t really recommend this game, as there are better moege out there. I guess if it was on sale and you really like a specific heroine then go for it but be aware that it lacks in some departments.
Sadly, Hulotte did not leave the best first impression with me. That being said, I will give them another chance – maybe I’m swayed by their cute heroines but I do see glimpses of what could’ve been. It also helps that I have more than a few of their titles in my library. I very recently bought the download edition of their first title – With Ribbon. I’ve wanted to play this game for years so that’ll probably be their next title I get around to. Hopefully it’s a little better than this!
Thanks for reading
Zettai Renai! 