More Otome Game Ramblings...

Cheritz, the creators of Mystic Messenger, are going to be releasing a new game soon, and it sounds really cool. So far it's only in BETA on the Google Play Store, but it should eventually come out of BETA and go onto the iOS App Store.

I didn't really know what it was going to be at first, so I did a bit of research on it. It's called the Ssum, and it's a calling/texting game like Mystic Messenger, but still a bit different. Apparently it learns your schedule so that you don't have to miss chats anymore whilst you're at work or school! And it sounds like you have only one relationship that never ends, so you don't switch routes or get any bad endings or anything.

The artwork is pretty, but it's a lot different looking to the art in the other Cheritz games. From the screenshots I've seen, the UI looks very similar to Mystic Messenger's, with the same fonts and everything.

I'm guessing that the game is going to be free to play, but it doesn't concern me that much because Mystic Messenger is one of the most generous F2P games I have ever played. It's probably not going to have any advertisements or anything like that.

I could play the BETA on my spare Android phone if I wanted to, but I'm just going to wait until it comes to iOS. Who knows, it might even turn out to be better than Mystic Messenger!

Speaking of Mystic Messenger, I'm having a break from it now. But on Saturday, I'm going to try Ray's route for the third time. The Max Speed feature would really help me here, but I'm too cheap to spend any money on the game! Another Story doesn't even give you Max Speed on the first day, unlike the other routes.

I was bored yesterday so I downloaded this F2P otome game called "Several Shades of Sadism". The UI and the fact that the love interests were all brothers kind of reminded me of Diabolik Lovers. It's an alright game, and it runs exactly the same way as Midnight Cinderella and Ikemen Sengoku, meaning it can also be a little bit laggy.

The interfaces of these F2P otome games feel like old fashioned HTML pages that use graphics as buttons. They even load like webpages too. Sometimes when I've been playing IkeSen on a slow connection, one part of the character's face will load before the other, so I just see a floating face for a few seconds!

Several Shades of Sadism (The name sounds like movie name you'd hear in a TV show that's trying not to get a copyright strike for using the name Fifty Shades of Grey!) has your average otome plot where the heroine ends up in a situation where she has to choose what attractive guy to start working for. At least the game still entertains me. It'll probably end up being deleted once I come across a "love challenge" that gets too difficult.

It reminds me of the first otome game I played, about two years ago. It was called "Shall We Date? Blood and Roses". The game was another boring F2P mobile app that I only downloaded because I saw it advertised on Facebook. I think I had it on my phone for almost a week, before I deleted it because I thought that the "love challenge" system would eventually become impossible to beat. The only thing I really liked about it was the art.

I then became curious of this strange genre of Japanese female dating games, so I searched for them on the App Store. They all intrigued me, but I was a bit put off by the F2P features that they all seemed to have.

Then I think I downloaded one of those F2P historical otomes, but I can't remember for the life of me what it was called. All I know is that I played through the prologue and it was about some girl who had a brother or something and that I chose the route of some guy with a red outfit and long, black hair. One of the character names from IkeSen sounded like it was from that game, so it may have been set in the same time period. It may have been that Samurai Love Ballad: Party game, but I don't think that game has the guy in the red outfit. That game was deleted off of my phone very quickly, too.

I forgot about the genre, probably because the only games I had seen were the crappy mobile ones. But then Mystic Messenger came along, and I became interested again. At least now I'm able to get some of the fancier paid otome games.

I was thinking of getting the one other PSP otome game that's in English, Sweet Fuse, but I'm not sure about the love interests that are available. I thought the PSP would have more games in the genre in English than just Hakuouki and Sweet Fuse, but I was wrong. Most of them are for the Vita, PC or Switch now.

Wow, I've rambled a lot in this post, haven't I? We might as well call this place Misty's Otome Blog from now on...

Here's another abrupt conclusion to this very long blog post. Goodbye!

ANOTHER BAD ENDING??

So I tried to play Ray’s route again, and I participated in all the chats and everything! But just before the Day Four branch, I got a bad ending! At first I thought that I was getting V’s route instead, because I was nice to him in one of the later chats, because a few of the other answers required me to sound very annoying.

This ending was actually quite romantic, so I’m not complaining, but how on Earth did I get it? I was in as many chats as I was the last time I played, so it’s not because of low participation levels! It might be because I got an equal amount of hearts for both V and Ray. But I was only nice to V a couple of times, and that was mainly by accident!! However, this time I did choose less of the answers that made it clear that I was in a game, and I think some of them gave out purple hearts.

I’m starting to think now that this game doesn’t want me to get a good ending at all!

(Spoilers below!)

In this ending Ray thinks that you care about the RFA more than him and starts crying (Which made me sad!) then he starts acting a bit like a yandere and says that you can be his assistant forever or something like that. It’s like the bad ending you can get in the regular story prologue where Unknown takes you away as his “assistant”.

I liked this ending, even though Ray was acting a bit creepy. It’s a shame that I couldn’t pass the fourth day, though. I didn’t expect that at all!!

Hopefully next time round, I’ll be successful. I wanna get enough hourglasses to unlock the Christmas DLC before the holidays are over, so I’d better start gaining those hearts quickly!

Oh Poo...

(Read posts below if you have no idea what I’m on about!!)

Well, those hourglasses were wasted...

I tried to reload my save at the right time so it wouldn’t make me miss any chats. But it just turned out that I have missed almost all of day five. I didn’t see it all because of the game branch.

I can’t be bothered to read all these chats. It’s getting late now. I might just restart from day one tomorrow. Goodnight!


(Typing on the desktop version of Blogger with my iPhone SE is a pain!!)

I Did More Research on That Bad Ending "Glitch"...

So, I did a bit more of the research on Ray's Bad Relationship Ending 2 (See the post below!) and apparently, whether or not you get that ending (if you even make it to the tenth day) is decided by the game in the first four days. I don't know if this is true or not, but I'm just going to believe it for now.

The trouble is, I just spent five hour glasses to go back to the fourth day, because I didn't have any other save files for Ray's route. I know you're meant to save the game often, but I never bother because you have to spend hourglasses to load the game.

So, if what I read online is true, then if I try to get to the eleventh day again, I may end up getting the same ending. I'm thinking of just trying to aim for one of the other bad endings instead now, maybe the one where you end up being locked up and abused by Saeran for the rest of your days.

It's such a shame that this glitch exists. So many other people have had it too, and there doesn't seem to be any solutions to it other than starting again. I think that the glitch may be caused by starting the first day quite late in the afternoon, missing most of the chats. Except apparently the first day of the game doesn't count towards your endings at all. Normally, I tend to start a new game at around 15:00 on Friday evenings, but doing that has never given me any bad endings before.

Hopefully I'll find a solution and write about it here, so anybody in the future who is having trouble with the game can read this. Well, that's if Mystic Messenger is still around in the future. I think it will be. But I've always wondered, since Mystic Messenger requires the Internet to open, if Cheritz ever shuts down their servers, won't that stop the game from ever working again? Or would they modify it so it won't ever require the Internet at all? I don't want it to be gone forever if the server  dies. But because it's popular, I'm sure somebody would create a custom server for it, like they did with stuff like Club Penguin and the Sims Online. (Side note: One of my favourite virtual worlds that closed never had anybody make another server for it and it makes me sad, because it was a really fun game...)

Maybe one day I'll make a Mystic Messenger guide on my website or something, even though there are already plenty of them on the Internet already.


I spent so many hourglasses on Another Story so it's sad that I got a bad ending the first time round. Maybe my character's relationship with Saeran was never meant to be...

Actually, it reminds me of the first time I played Mystic Messenger, and I got the bad ending on the common route where Yoosung thinks that he's a robot or something, then he gets kidnapped by Saeran. It was because I had no idea that you had to keep up with all of the chats. I had never really looked up the game online or anything beforehand, in fact I knew hardly anything about it, except that somebody I knew played it and it was some kind of anime texting game. The only reason I downloaded it because I came across it one day whilst browsing the Google Play Store before going to the mall.

I'm rambling a bit here, aren't I?


Maybe I should end this post now, it's getting quite late...

Unintentional Bad Ending?

Well, that was disappointing...

 Today my Another Story journey ended when I was on Day 10. For some reason I got a bad ending unintentionally.

(Spoilers below!)

I didn't choose any incorrect answers or nothing. Everything was going smoothly, until I got to a game branch. I didn't even save at that point, because I gave up on saving my games months ago.

Some Mint Eye follower came up to me and gave me some drugs or something, and the next thing I knew I was stuck in some dungeon. (Why am I referring to the MC in first person??) Then Saeran/Ray/Unknown or whatever you want to call him appeared. He was like "I'm gonna get you out of here, just take these sleeping pills!" and I was thinking "Wait a second! How do I know Rika hasn't manipulated you into tricking me?? And if I'm leaving, what's gonna happen to you??????" but there were no options to protest against him.

Then Saeran was like "I'm gonna miss you!" and the screen went blank. Then I saw the background for Rika's old apartment! At this point, I thought I was still heading for the normal ending. (I messed up a lot of the emails so I knew I was never going to get the good ending.)

I tapped my screen, and this was what came up.

"The messenger game will restart." What does that mean? And then I got the Bad Ending screen.

Is this ending like a fourth wall break or something? Because my messenger technically restarted straight after that.

According to the Internet, to get this ending you need to have participated in less than 30% of the chats that occurred since the last game branch. But that's weird, because I've taken part in most of the chats so far, except the late night ones! After doing some more digging, I found out that other people who have been playing the game often like me have also gotten this ending. It must be a bug. A very annoying bug.

I was really enjoying this route so far too!

It's such a shame that I have to replay it all from the beginning.... :(

What Should I Call This Post???

 (Spoilers below for about two different games.)


Another Story is amazing so far! I managed to get onto Ray's route without any issues. The romance comes so quickly compared to the other routes, but I'm not really complaining, because I downloaded this game so I could see some of that. However, now I'm at the bit where Rika "cleanses" him and turns him into an abusive douchebag. I'd watched some of the scenes from this part and I kind of enjoyed them, but now that I'm actually playing it, I realise that if I was treated that way in real life, I would feel really uncomfortable.

The game is giving me choices where I can either act a bit wimpy towards Saeran or try and stand up for myself. I chose the options that I would do in real life, but they are mostly the pushover options, so I won't be surprised if I get a bad ending.

In the Casual Story and Deep Story I didn't really think much of V, but now that I'm seeing him often in the RFA chat rooms, I want to play his route a bit more now. Before Ray's route existed, I had no desire to get Another Story at all. I wasn't interested in V enough to want to save up for it.

The chats are so much longer now, which is good because you have more content, but bad when you're busy and you want to get through the chat quickly. The new soundtrack is great, but I don't get to hear it often because most of the time I'm playing the game in a public place.

I almost finished Seven's secret ending, too. The voice acting was so intense during the emotional scenes, when the characters were angry or depressed, it even made me feel a bit sad and uncomfortable, like in real life, where I feel weird when somebody nearby is really upset or annoyed. But I played most of the later parts without sound, but I might go back to them just to hear some of that acting.

And I've almost done every good ending on Hakuouki now. I'm almost at the end of Harada's route. He's a nice guy and all that, but I was never really interested in dating him. I don't really find him that attractive either. His route is the most normal of the bunch, because he doesn't have any problems or anything and only a few minor characters die. He doesn't even drink the Water of Life, so you don't have to decide whether to feed him blood or not. I think if you don't give them blood or medicine they get corrupted which leads to a bad ending, but since you can't do that on Harada's route, the bad endings must work a bit differently.

Kazama isn't even present that much either during Harada's route, you get Shiranui instead. I don't really mind because I like Shiranui. I actually thought that he was a girl at first. He's quirky and somewhat interesting. I thought that he might have been one of the new characters you can date in Kyoto Winds/Edo Blossoms, but I was a bit disappointed when I found that was not the case. Maybe there wasn't any romantic interest in him amongst fans so the developers decided not to add him.

I dunno what I'm gonna do once I've completed this route. I could replay and and try to get bad endings. Every time I've started the common route again, I've been skipping through all of the bits I had already read. Is that technically cheating? Do normal people do that, or do they just reread every thing? To  be honest, I don't know why I'm concerned if that's cheating when I cheat everyday by using a walkthrough to check whether I'm selecting the right choices.

Next time I play I could just make my own choices and see what route I get, but I fear I might end up with the normal ending again. Maybe I should also stop writing posts about the same two games, too...

I just want a PS Vita so badly so I can play more of these games. My PC could easily handle visual novels but if I get them on Steam, I won't play them as often since they are not on a handheld. But I could always save up to buy one of those handheld Windows computers, like that one for gaming, I can't remember its name, but I think it begins with GPD?

It's Christmas soon, so who knows what kinds of games I will get. I was thinking of getting Forza Horizon 4, but I think I'll wait until the price goes down before picking it up. I got my Xbox One last year but I find that I am hardly using it! I'll go through phases where I don't game for a couple of months, then I'll be playing all the time for a few weeks, then I'll go back to not playing anything.

I have so many games I have started and not finished, especially on my Xbox 360. Ever since I upgraded I've been neglecting it a bit. One game I got really cheap on Amazon for the 360 is Kameo, it's really good but I only managed to play it about three times over a span of about six months. Some of these games get too difficult for me sometimes, so I lose my motivation to keep playing.

This post is really long. Someone even looked over my shoulder (I'm typing this at school, unfortunately) and commented on how much text there was.

Maybe I should stop writing now. Goodbye. Have a nice day!