Well, I finally started playing it. The otome game I've wanted to experience for so long, Diabolik Lovers: Haunted Dark Bridal. Even though my Japanese absolutely sucks, I'm not going to let the language barrier stop me from enjoying my abusive vampire boys.
And it's amazing so far. Right now I would still be playing it if my PSP didn't die on me. So I decided to write my initial thoughts on it instead, and share a little bit of info on how I manage to get through it with my bad Japanese skills. Hopefully some of it might help someone else if they feel like playing it without knowing the language that well.
Enjoy a random dump of my thoughts down below! Beware of spoilers though!
It feels super weird playing the PSP again after months with the Vita. The screen is nowhere near as good. The artwork in this game, which is super nice by the way, would look so much better on the Vita. But I'm too cheap to buy the new remastered version, so I'll just have to settle with this.
Here's a tip for those of you starting the game for the first time: On Japanese PSPs, I'm pretty sure the X and O buttons are swapped. I had forgotten that today when I started playing, so I was really confused why me pressing the X button kept putting me back to the title screen. If you want to select anything or advance in the text, you have to click the O button instead. It took a while to get used to, but if you play Nintendo consoles a lot, I think the buttons work like that anyway, so it shouldn't be much of a problem. It also took me a while to figure out how to save the game, since it works a bit differently to the other Otomate titles I've played. You have to press the Start button instead of the triangle, which is what you normally press.
At first I started using a word-for-word translation of the dialogue, but it started to become a bit annoying looking at my PSP then my phone and switching back and forth, so I decided to read a huge chunk of it, then just go back and read the translations. But then I got tired of that too, so I settled for reading a summary occasionally instead.
I can comprehend some sentences, and sometimes I can understand the general meaning of what they're talking about, but there's always a lot of stuff I miss that I use the summary to understand. There's a lot of phrases and words I know that I have no idea what the kanji for them are, but luckily the voice acting pronounces everything for me. There's no furigana here, but that's expected. Yui's dialogue is harder to understand since she has no voice acting, but I don't mind because since I self insert, it allows me to put my own thoughts in there instead, if that makes any sense.
The plot so far is that Yui's been sent by her father to some creepy house, so she goes inside alone and meets a lot of mean vampires. She thinks she's gone in there by accident, but she's actually at the right place. Then they have a bit of discussion, and Yui finds out that they're all vampires. She's a bit shocked, but she just has to deal with it. Next, it was time for her to choose her love interest! Only the triplets, Kanato, Ayato and Laito are available to pick at the start of the game. I think that you have to clear one of their routes first before the others are available. I'm so glad that there's not one massive common route.
I picked Ayato because he's one of my favourites. He's not very nice to Yui (but they all are like that) but I still find him interesting. Then you have to select a chapter to read, but there's only one available right now so I chose that one, the prologue.
The prologue starts off with Yui in her new school. It's a night school (she was forced to go their to fit with the schedule of Ayato and the other brothers) but it's still full of humans. Then the lights go out, and Ayato appears to take her home. And then my PSP died.
Even though it's kind of awkward relying on a summary to understand most of the plot at times, I'm still having fun with this. I'm just still getting used to the buttons and the screen quality of the PSP, which is a lot worse than the Vita's. It's super hard to see all of the little details in the Kanji characters, they all look quite blurry to me. But it's fine, I can manage. You can take screenshots but I have no way to transfer them onto my computer. :(
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I wrote all of this earlier, then never got around to finishing it. Now my PSP has some battery life again, and I played a bit more of the game. So far I've been using headphones the whole time to take advantage of that wonderful dummy head mic. It sounds so nice to have people whispering in your ears, but it feels weird listening to it in public because it feels like someone's actually there and that everyone else around you can hear it.
Sometimes I feel quite proud of myself for being able to understand small bits of the dialogue! My Japanese has now ascended to the level where I could probably survive basic conversation and stuff. Mainly I can just only understand the sexy bits where they talk about blood and stuff. I have no idea why the word "omae" is written with Katakana instead of Kanji though.
Each route in this game has been split up into multiple chapters that you have to select instead of the game automatically opening them for you. You unlock each one by reading the one prior to it. Right now I'm on Ayato's second chapter, but each chapter's really short, that's why there's so many. So far each event has been a bit like the drama CDs, but I think it's supposed to be an adaptation of them so it'd make sense if they're the same. Like the bit in the first chapter of Ayato's route where you wake up in his weird iron maiden thing. that's exactly what happens at the beginning of his drama CD, but this time there's sprites and backgrounds to make it more immersive, although when the voice sounds like it's right behind you or on your side, the sprites just stay right in front of you. It's a bit like the thing that's going on in the screen is different to what you're actually listening to.
Not much plot has happened so far. I know the Diabolik Lovers anime has a plot, but I dunno what it is because I only watched the first episode. Even if the plot sucks, I won't care because I just came here for sexy sadistic vampires.
I heard that Yui's a bit of a doormat, but she's not that bad to be honest. At least she tries to tell them to stop when their being nasty to her. Most people wouldn't be able to fight back very well if they were in her situation. She's meant to be like fifteen or something. When I was fifteen I would've reacted the same way she does. In fact I don't think I would've even had the guts to say anything at all. Honestly I don't know how Yui copes with these vampires without going mad. She must be quite strong to withstand all that.
I'm super excited to read more though. My PSP's battery seems to not be lasting that long even though it hasn't even been a year since I replaced it, and I've hardly even used it. I think it's just my imagination though.
For most of the day I've had "Fanatic of Night" stuck in my head. I think it's the theme tune to one of the newer DiaLovers games, but I just found it on YouTube. All of the Sakamaki brothers sing on it, and they have really nice voices. My favourite bit is when Ayato channels his inner Toma and decides to randomly shout in English "SLEEP IN MY CAGE". It made me laugh out loud. The theme tune to Haunted Dark Bridal is pretty good too, but I can't remember how it goes. All of the brothers sing on this song too. It's nice getting the characters to sing it instead of some other unrelated artist like most other otome games. Diabolik Lovers songs are absolute bangers though. I ought to get them all on CD one day.
Anyways, that's all I have to say on the game so far. It's quite a good otome game, and I think there's going to be wayyyyyyyyyyy more romance than some of the localised games that I've played before. I think I was hyping the game up so much that I actually had slight butterflies in my stomach whilst starting it up. I really was originally going to wait until my Japanese got better before purchasing it, but screw language barriers.
Well, today was a good day. This blog got two posts! I think I'll finish this post off now. See you all later!
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