I know I promised in the last post to write my final thoughts on Diabolik Lovers once I had completed it, but I really can't be bothered. I really enjoyed the game, but it feels like I've been playing it for years so I'd really like to move on now.
Today I started Period Cube. It's basically almost exactly the same as Sword Art Online, but instead of having big breasted anime girls as characters, there's just a lot of bishounen instead. Even though it sometimes seems a little bit too similar to SAO, I'm actually really enjoying it.
I'm actually halfway through a route even though I only started to play it today. It's probably because I was playing it without the sound in public most of the time and because the common route is super short, probably the shortest I've ever seen. I'm a bit sad that I've missed out on some of the voice acting (I hardly actually know what my chosen love interest's voice sounds like!) but it's like that with other games, I can't listen to the voice acting 100% of the time, because I don't like carrying headphones around. If the game's completely in Japanese though, I'll bring my Earpods and listen to the voices because it helps me understand it better.
Period Cube just happens to be based off of a drama CD series that I haven't listened to. I think that I might be tempted to try them out, maybe on YouTube or I could just buy them. I dunno if there's a fan-translation for it though, so I might not be willing to spend money on them until my Japanese improves.
Anyways, since I've played enough of this game now to form a basic opinion on it, what do I think so far?
Keep in mind that as usual, this post is just going to be a random dump of thoughts.
(Beware of spoilers!)
Let me just say first that the art here is super colourful! The character designs are a bit different to what you usually see in otome games, they look a bit more cartoonish but I think it works for the theme they're trying to go for. The MC looks super weird in CGs when at a side angle though, her nose is just unnaturally pointy. I absolutely love the backgrounds and the sprite animations. Everybody has hair that moves with the wind, blinking eyes and mouth movements. The UI looks good too, and it works the same as your typical Otomate titles do, but since I've been playing a Japanese PSP game for a while with slightly different controls, I've had to get used to things again, like using the X button to select instead of O. Using X feels really unnatural to me now! I think this game also has a "skip to next choice" feature, which I really appreciate because it's gonna save me so much time when re-playing the common route, even though it probably wouldn't take that long to skip through it.
The story is quite interesting, but I don't really know much about it yet. Basically you have your MC (I can't remember her name, was it Haruka or something?) and her childhood friend Hiroya who get sucked into this RPG game whilst looking for Shiki, the MC's brother. I think this brother has a route, but it's not like Finis' route in Code: Realize where it's just sibling love, I heard that you actually get to date Shiki. The game did say something like they're not actually blood related, but it's still a bit weird. The writers must've got that love interest idea from Sword Art Online.
The players are somehow magically transported into this RPG called Arcadia, whilst they get put into comas IRL. Everytime they complete a quest, they're allowed to come back to reality until they're suddenly whisked back into the game. I dunno how any of this stuff works because it hasn't been explained yet. I thought it was gonna be like SAO with the NerveGear and all that, but I'm glad it's a bit different because otherwise it would seem like a knock-off.
I have no idea how the choices in the common route work. You only actually meet one of the potential LIs properly in it (well at least I think you do, I don't actually know who's a love interest and who isn't yet) and you make like two choices before you're thrown into the route of someone you've never even heard of. It keeps it more of a surprise then though, so I'm glad. I'm also glad that the common route isn't five chapters long like some of the games on my Vita....
The route I landed on was one of some man named Radius. I think he's the one on the cover, so that probably means he's the main guy or the canon route. EDIT: Upon closer inspection, I have realised that it's actually Hiroya on the cover. Oops.
Radius seems like an interesting character, but I don't really know him that well because I've hardly even seen him! Like 80% of this route so far has been spent with others. Maybe I'm not used to not seeing the LI because I just played a game where your chosen boy is in every single scene of his route, but it feels like the MC has spent more time talking about him than she has actually been with him. Every time they actually do meet, Radius just tries to push her away and just acts really cold towards our poor MC.
In real life he's an idol, and the MC (I really should learn her name) ran into him in the real world not long after they met in the game. As soon as I saw his IRL sprite I knew it was him, but Kazuha (that's the MC's name, I think) was like "Who the hell's this??" and it took her at least a few lines of dialogue to actually recognise him.
I have no idea how on Earth this girl's going to get anymore time to hang out with Radius, because right before I put my Vita down, Hiroya (I had forgotten his name so I had to check the top of this post to find it!) just went and locked her in a bedroom. Shouldn't he leave the yandere stuff for his own route? I predict that Kazuha's gonna be stuck in here for a couple of days until Radius rescues her or something.
One thing I haven't mentioned yet is Kazuha's personality. She's really just a blank canvas for self insertion, you get to change her first name, last name and username, which I don't mind. I often like it better when there's a blank slate MC, and I don't mind this one, but I wish she wasn't so stupid! For some reason she doesn't know some of the most basic terms about technology! Kazuha has difficulties using a smartphone, something even a two year old can work without issue! People have to explain every single RPG term to her, which doesn't do anything for the player because if they needed something defined for them they could just use the in-game dictionary. This MC hasn't really done much in the story yet, but that's probably because her Arcadia avatar is at such a low level.
I don't really know why they made her some powerful in-game item that everybody's after, but I suppose I'll find out later on. Maybe her brother's the developer or something, because he seems to know a lot about the game from what I've heard Hiroya tell Kazuha. I think I read online ages before I decided to play this that Poyo-Poyo's her brother? I suppose you can disguise yourselves to look like anybody in an online game, so it would make sense if this were true. I also may have read somewhere that the shy boy Kazuha runs into for one second in the prologue is actually in the game and is called Astrum or something? I dunno. I wasn't really trying to avoid spoilers for this in the past because I didn't know if I was ever gonna buy it.
Out of all the possible love interests so far I've met Hiroya, Zain, Demento and Poyo-Poyo, if he does have a route like I heard. Hiroya's a bit of a tsundere, but of course, I like that trope so I don't really mind. Zain I don't really know that much about, but he looks like a cutie, I think I'll like him. Demento I've heard about in the past, he's one of those boys who uses "ore-sama" all the time and is a bit of a dickhead, but that means that his route's probably gonna be so bad it's funny. I literally just met Poyo-Poyo for the first time before putting my Vita down, so I dunno much about him, but I hope he's not going to be one of those annoying sidekick characters. There's such a varied collection of love interests so I'm happy, plus I heard that at least two of them are yanderes and that the MC can turn yandere in a bad ending if you wish, so that's awesome! EDIT: I also forgot that Libera was a love interest. I didn't realise that he was a boy until I turned the voices on!
Even though it sounds like I'm criticising Period Cube in places, I'm still really enjoying it. I heard that it's a really short game though... It may not turn out to be my new favourite otome, but that doesn't matter, as long as I have fun with it, that's alright.
Well, that's all I have to write today. I'll see you all later, probably when I've completed my first route. Goodbye!
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