The Shortest Common Route Ever

I've been continuing to play Collar X Malice, and after less than a day of playing, I've actually gotten somewhere!

 I didn't have to do any in-game flirting or nothing, the prologue ended and I was immediately locked onto someone's route. This is probably the shortest common route that I've ever played through! I'm so glad because that means that I don't have to spend half an hour skipping through it before starting my next route. But because I had absolutely no idea what choices give you points for which love interest, I'm probably going to have to use a walkthrough next time...

Through selecting the choices that I would probably make in real life, I ended up landing on Okazaki's route. I'm quite glad because he seemed like the nicest LI out of them all. Usually when I try to act like myself in these games, I just end up with a bad ending where I get nobody. This probably means that Okazaki is the one that I'd be the most compatible with in real life, and I think that would be true. The others would probably have no interest in me whatsoever if I had met them in reality instead.

Down below I'm going to spill my thoughts on this route I've just started. It's going to be spread out through multiple posts, because as I've said many times before (I'm super repetitive, aren't I?) , if I don't write my thoughts down almost immediately after playing, I'll quickly forget everything.

(This post contains spoilers, like usual.)





I feel like each route is going to be super easy to play without a walkthrough, because the game tells you what choices are probably going to give you affection points. A lot of the newer otome games don't tell you anything anymore, so you have no idea what's going to give you a bad ending or not.

So... I suppose I'd better tell you all what's going on in Okazaki's story. Even though Ichika was told not to get close to him because of the collar and all that, she finds it really difficult not to because she keeps finding him everywhere. It's a bit like he's a stalker or something. He says that he's not following her or nothing, but that he would like it if he could. It sounds like Okazaki's a bit yandere like, but I don't think he's going to be a proper one. I looked up online before I even bought the game to see if there were any yandere love interests, but it didn't seem like there were going to be any.

I must admit that Okazaki is a bit strange. He sleeps in the middle of the pavement and he somehow can climb through fifth floor windows, but I still think he's really sweet. He feels like a generally nice person, and it seemed like he cared for Ichika a lot from the start. I feel like his route's going to be a bit different from the others, since he's not as connected to the other LIs and their detective agency as much, and because he doesn't know about Ichika's collar at first.

So far, I've hardly actually seen the other love interests at all. The story has mainly been focusing on Okazaki, because it is his route after all. A lot of it's also just Ichika doing stuff on her own.

There's a lot of investigating going on, and it can be hard to understand all of the information at times, but it's still quite fun. After Ichika and Okazaki witness an X-Day incident, they start trying to research the case themselves. These bits can get quite interactive. The game will show you a crime scene and you have to tap stuff to find out what they are, and you have to deduce stuff on your own by selecting a choice that you think is the most true. I've got most of the deduction stuff wrong, but luckily it doesn't affect my affection points. I'm glad that there was a bit of interactivity there instead of making it your bog standard visual novel.

The plot is going good so far. I'm not as good at talking about the story as I am with the characters. There's a lot of crime scene stuff going on, with a bit of character stuff here and there. It's one of those otome games where there's a lot of mystery that can only be solved by playing every single route. I'm interested to see what's going on with Ichika's brother, whose name I cannot remember right now. I have a feeling that he might be doing something illegal, or maybe he could even be part of Adonis? I'm going to predict that Adonis is actually going to be made up of ex-policemen or the families of wrongly convicted criminals or something, or just a group of people who have dark backstories that have made them want to really hate the police. Maybe Ichika even has some backstory that hasn't been shown yet? I think that she might also have some ties to Adonis too, even if she doesn't know it yet.

I don't know how long each route is going to be. The average otome route lasts around five chapters, but this game might have longer ones because the common route's so short. I don't think it really matters, because I don't think that this game's going to turn into a boring slog.

Don't you think that it would be a good idea if I changed the title to something that better represented the content? Probably. I dunno what to change it to though. I would include an image to jazz it up a bit, because nobody likes boring text, but I'm unable to get any game screenshots from my Vita at the moment. I haven't actually screenshotted anything yet, either.

As you can most likely tell, I'm getting quite into Collar X Malice now. I was going to buy it over Christmas, but I was feeling like a cheapskate then so I decided to wait. This one has been on my list for a very long time. Online I see people raving about it a lot, so finally I'll be able to understand what they're going on about!

There might be another post later on about the rest of my thoughts on Okazaki's route, but if not, there will definitely be one tomorrow. Until then, goodbye, my dear readers!

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Have a fancy dotted line to cap everything off with.