Now I've got to get on with writing more about my adventures with what is turning into one of my favourite otome games: Collar X Malice. But you knew I was going to write about that because you read the title. After getting two bad endings I eventually got Sasazuka's good ending today. His route wasn't easy like Okazaki's, I had to actually use a walkthrough because I always do after getting bad endings; I'm just too lazy to figure out how I went wrong. Since I played this route over many days, the plot isn't as clear in my head anymore, like I state in almost every post now, because I'm scared people'll expect me to remember every single detail of the plot.
As always, there's spoilers down below, so beware. I don't want to be accused of ruining surprises for people.
A quick note: I promised to include more screenshots in my future posts but I only took two rubbish screenshots this time round. Sorry.
Oh dear, my laptop just died whilst typing the last sentence, even though the battery was still really high. Oh well, let's just get on with the post, shall we? I feel like I will have forgotten most of what I wanted to write, but I'm going to try to let my thoughts out anyway.
I'm probably not going to write much about the actual plot here, more just my opinions on the rest of the route as a whole. I do pay attention to it whilst playing, it's just it's really hard for me to write about a game's story when I haven't binged it all in one day. That's why my posts on the Code: Realize fan-disc had so much plot summary, because a lot of the short stories I played in no more than two sittings.
On Saturday morning I turned on my Vita to play Collar X Malice and almost immediately was greeted by one of those bad endings where you can't really escape it unless you go really far back in the game. Poor Ichika walked into a crime scene and got shot dead. So I had to use a guide on someone else's blog to figure out where I went wrong. Most of the choices I had gotten right, except the ones relating to the investigation. So I had to start from the beginning again with the walkthrough until I got to the bit where I left off, where I would use my own brain to choose the right options from then on. It didn't take me very long to skip through three chapters, surprisingly. Once I was done I made a save so that I could go back if any other bad things happened, which I am really glad that I did.
I'm going to try and rack my brain to remember what happened after that. I remember that Ichika had to interrogate a game-addicted X-Day criminal, tell her brother that his friend was working with Adonis, capture said X-Day criminal, watch Sasazuka video chat Akito, and a lot of other things. There was still quite a lot of time to fit some romancey stuff in there too. Oh, I almost forgot, Sasazuka joined the police again. It's kind of an important plot point so I can't really leave it out!
Takeru also told Ichika his tragic backstory. His mother got shot dead when he was younger, causing him to really hate guns and the law in Shinjuku that let regular people carry them around. That's why he decided to investigate the August X-Day incidents, because it was the one that caused the government to allow Shinjuku residents to carry firearms. I felt really sad during this backstory exposition scene, more than I usually am when otome characters reveal their pasts. It was probably partly due to the voice acting and music, or probably because I really like Sasazuka and I felt bad for him. Adonis used is tragic backstory and his desire to get revenge for his mother's death to try and convince Takeru to join them. In my initial playthrough, the convincing worked. I got a really depressing bad ending where Sasazuka took Ichika's collar off whilst she was sleeping, apologised, then left. Nobody managed to track down Adonis, so X-Day ended up arriving, but the game ended before I could see what was happening.
I got this bad ending because my affection points weren't high enough to convince Sasazuka to stay. It's a shame because I was actually trying hard to get him to like Ichika, and I was getting loads of points for it. Again, like earlier, it was the investigation related stuff that I got wrong. Most of the time I'd select the right choice, think it was wrong, and go back and pick the incorrect option instead. But I just fixed my mistakes in no time by using my extra save file from earlier and just using a walkthrough. If it wasn't for the Internet, I'd be stumped with all of these these games. I know cheat books exist but I dunno if they'd make them for something as niche as otome.
In the good ending, Ichika and Sasazuka manage to track Adonis down and solve everything, but all of the criminals related to it get their memories wiped before they can say anything. The free government guns also get taken away from all of the Shinjuku residents once the X-Day mess has finished, since that was one of the things that Sasazuka was promised if he re-joined the police.
The story then ends on Christmas Eve. Ichika still has to go to work, which is sad, but I understand why because it's Japan and Christmas is probably not a massive holiday there. But Takeru takes her out to a fancy restaurant after work, which was when I could tell that the love confession scene was coming up. After dinner, Ichika confessed her love first, because Sasazuka thought that they were already in a relationship but didn't bother to ask her. Then the major final romance scene happened. I'm only calling it that because I can't remember if they kissed or not. I think they did. I was really happy because I love romance scenes, but also sad because I really, really didn't want this route to end. Usually even if I'm really enjoying something I'll still want it to be over quickly, but it wasn't really the case here. It's because I really liked Sasazuka, probably more because I saw that he was super popular before playing.
There was still more to go after the final kiss scene though! I think that Ichika went home with Sasazuka, I assumed that they had sex or something but they probably didn't because this game isn't that mature.
Takeru became Ichika's super possessive boyfriend. It wasn't like yandere possessive, but just cute possessive. It's a good thing that I like boys who are like that in my otome games. He still calls her "baka neko", in fact I'm 90% sure that it was the last line in the entire route. They don't move in together at the end because of Kazuki living with Ichika and all that. There's also a short story afterwards which is just cute fluff, the "situation" section which is really hard for me to explain, and the voice recording function. After Okazaki's route I ignored the voice recordings because I thought they would just be captures of dialogue from the game. How wrong I was. It's actually just original content where you unlock it after completing a route. It's just the love interests talking about themselves for a bit, but it's a nice extra feature.
One of the only screenshots I took. I put it here so that this post doesn't look like a massive wall of text.
I also took this screenshot down below, because I thought that it was weird that the phrase "Never Forgive" deserved a definition. When was that ever Internet slang? Maybe it was in Japan or something.
This route was really good though. I say that about every route, but I really liked this one. It might be better than Okazaki's actually, because I liked Ichika better in this one. Sasazuka was not a complete dickhead for 99% of the route like I thought he would be. It was also way more romantic than I expected. I think when you read online about these games and you see "romance is only a side-dish here", you expect the worst and little to no cute fluffy bits, but then you get surprised when there's a lot more of it than you expected. I completely forgot about Ichika's brother when writing this post, but I liked it that the route focused on him a bit. In Okazaki's route he was there, but his presence wasn't as large. At least he's not an Adonis member like I thought he was gonna be.
I really want more of Sasazuka, I liked him so much. It's going to be sad seeing him in other routes now, but I always get over it. At least there's a fan-disc. I won't let the language barrier keep me from playing that. Later today I started Enomoto's route. I was going to do Shiraishi instead, because he won't be around Sasazuka as much so I won't have to see him and feel bad, but the common route walkthrough for him said that it's best to leave him to last or second last. Enomoto's alright I suppose. His hair looks nice. So far he's a bit awkward with Ichika because he doesn't trust her yet, but I;m still at the very beginning so things will change.
To be quite honest with you all, I might actually be starting to like this game better than Code: Realize, one of the best Vita otome out there. Normally I prefer fantasy settings, but recently I've been liking more realistic otome better because I find it easier to self insert and relate to. It might even be better than Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, my all time favourite title out of the lot.
That's all I could manage to write today. It sounds like I'm not satisfied with what I've written, but I shouldn't be because my fingers managed to type out a lot. I suppose I'll write about Enomoto's route later. But until then, I have to go. Goodbye. :)
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