I'd like to welcome you all to another post where I spill my thoughts on the game and the routes and all that nonsense.
So, let's start, shall we?
Since I last wrote, a lot has happened in Napoleon's route. He got some bonding time with MC in the kitchen, where he made her this stew thing out of random stuff in the kitchen. It didn't really sound like something I'd like to eat, but our MC enjoyed it, so that's all that matters. They even put tofu in it! The tofu was featured earlier when Osamu Dazai brought it to breakfast in one of the earlier chapters.
I'm actually quite interested in Dazai, so I hope they bring his route out one day. I dunno if I mentioned this before, but he really reminds me of Collar X Malice's Okazaki, with his mannerisms and that. Even their designs sort of look similar!
I went and read the real Dazai's Wikipedia page, because I had absolutely no idea that he existed before this game. He seemed to have lead a super interesting and rather tragic life. He also went off with a lot of women, so I wonder how the game will handle that, because I feel like otome games often stay away from making the love interest have prior relationships.
Anyway, we were talking about Napoleon's route, weren't we? So yeah, some more stuff happens, and one day MC meets up with Isaac outside. I think that Isaac's quite cute, so I'm also excited for his route.
Isaac takes MC on a carriage ride, where they meet up with Napoleon and a lot of kids. It's like a mini school, where Isaac teaches them science and all that, whereas Napoleon teaches fencing and stuff. This is one of those "Hey, look how good (insert love interest name here) is with the kids!" scenes.
One of the kids, this boy named Gavroche, he thought that MC and Napoleon were dating. I had predicted that this was going to happen as soon as the children had appeared in the scene. MC felt a bit awkward, like people normally do when this occurs, but Napoleon was just too lazy to explain that they were "just friends", so he just went along with it instead. He told MC that it was easier than telling Gavroche what was really going on, and I was like "Come on, it's not that hard! Kids need to know that a boy and a girl can be friends without dating!".
On the way back in the carriage, Napoleon falls asleep on Isaac, which is funny because I would've expected him to nap on MC instead for increased romance, but whatever. Then he wakes up and gives our MC a ribbon or something, because he saw it in a shop and thought of her.
Everything's sweet and all that, until the next day, when the route's main conflict occurs. In the morning papers, they find out that a murder has occurred. Oh dear. What makes it worse is that the person who got killed was Gavroche's father. (I really hope that I'm spelling this name right.)
So Napoleon decides to take matters into his own hands, like people do when these things happen. He's scared that Gavroche is going to want to take revenge, because little kids normally like punishing the people who killed their parents. The murderer's some friar, so he decides to go around every single church in town until he finds him or Gavroche.
MC, Isaac and Napoleon all go out on their search for a church. The first one they go into just happens to be where the friar is, and Gavroche is there too, unsurprisingly. So they watch the small boy approach the friar with a knife, who monologues about how fun it was hurting people and all that. MC's like "Oh no, we must save this poor innocent boy!" but Napoleon just watches, because he knows that the boy doesn't have it in him to murder.
Gavroche almost scores his first kill, but he doesn't have the guts to do it. So Napoleon's like "Do you really want this man killed?" and Gavroche is like "Yeah." so Napoleon gets his sword out to do the job himself. He says something about killing a lot of people and that if you draw a knife on someone, you should be prepared to carry out the job until the very end and kill them.
Gavroche just runs off before he can tell Napoleon to do anything. Then the police arrive and arrest the friar, so I suppose justice has been served.
MC's like "Oh no, Napoleon's so scary, he almost killed a man!" and I'm just like "What did you expect??? He's Napoleon Bonaparte, of course he's going to be alright with killing someone! You've read the history books, haven't you?". I suppose she got used to him being some nice guy, forgetting who he actually is, or was. She knew who he was dealing with when he began to get close to him, so I just don't know why she's so surprised.
Napoleon didn't really understand why she was rejecting his kind gestures and acting all weird towards him, and that's when I ran out of chapter tickets.
I'm now going to predict what's going to happen next. I think that MC's just going to act all annoyed with him for a bit, then he's gonna confront her and be like "What did I do wrong?" then they're gonna have a conversation where Napoleon reveals his backstory (even though you could probably read it in a history book or whatever) and MC's gonna be like "You poor thing!" and they make up and they're all lovey-dovey. There might even be a chance that they kiss, because I heard that the romance gets going quite early in this. Then maybe Napoleon's vampire half makes him go all funny and he gets a craving for blood or something? Maybe it'll be like the scene earlier in the story where Jean D'Arc goes nuts for blood and makes a beeline for MC.
You know, for a game called "Ikemen Vampire", there's not really much vampire stuff going on, is there? Maybe there is in the other routes. I know I'm not really that far into the game, but it sort of feels like the vampire thing is like an excuse to get a bunch of historical people from different times together for the MC. But still, there might be more vampire stuff later on. Napoleon is one of them half vampires, so maybe the route might touch on that a bit? Sorry, I just really like vampire stuff, especially the blood sucking scenes. It's probably because I've spent too much time with the Diabolik Lovers franchise. Oh no, why do I have to mention that series in every post about this game? I think it's because I'm listening to the character songs whilst writing this.
It would be so cool if IkeVamp was released as a full paid game on the Switch like Ikemen Sengoku got with the Vita. But then again, it'd probably be a Japan exclusive and it would be for a console I don't even own. It would just be great to have this game fully voiced, and it would allow them to make more of that lovely artwork. Plus I could play the game at my own speed, instead of spending a whole month on a route because of those silly chapter tickets. I suppose if I want to hear the voices, I could just hunt down the drama CDs, because I think they've made a few.
Even though I nitpicked a few problems, I'm still enjoying this. Like I mentioned in an older post, it's like watching a daily TV show. The intimacy checks and avatar challenges haven't even been problematic for me yet. I remember when I played IkeSen, it'd be a few days before I had enough gold to pass those things, even earlier in the game.
I think there are IkeVamp story events going on right now, but I never bother with them. I sometimes read a bit of them, until there's another avatar challenge or whatever, and you have to focus on clearing that instead of clearing the checks for the actual route. I don't really care about the avatar clothes and that, I'm just here to play a regular otome route. Normally, I like dress up games, but these ones suck, they're just money grabs and the avatars look like poo anyway. I only do the bare minimum to pass through the route, that's all.
I know we all complain about these free-to-play mechanics, but I suppose the developers have to make money somehow. They are giving us a proper game for no charge, after all. It does cost a lot to make these things. I could just spend money on this game, but I don't like spending on something I can physically touch, plus it is actually more expensive in the end than just buying a game for the Vita or the Switch or whatever.
I listened to a bit of the IkeVamp soundtrack on YouTube the other day. It's just so pretty. The piano pieces made me feel a bit nostalgic for some reason, a bit like when I listen to songs from the Wii. Some of it sort of reminds me of my old primary school, when the music teacher would play the piano, and we'd all sing Christmas hymns in this massive church for the parents. Maybe that's just because they're all played on the same instrument. Whoever composed these songs did a really good job though. Hopefully they'll release the soundtrack on CD or iTunes or whatever. Oh yeah, iTunes is going. OK then, hopefully it'll go on Spotify whatever Apple's online music store is going to be now.
This post is very long, isn't it?
That's all I have to say for today. My next IkeVamp post will be in a few days, or at least it should be!
Maybe I should start properly editing these posts. I never really bothered just because I never thought of this as some professional blog or anything. I don't know, I'll think about it. At least I have Grammarly turned on, but it's pretty useless most of the time.
I suppose I'll see you all later then. Goodbye for now!
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