In this post, I'm going to go straight into giving my first impressions on the app as a whole, then I'll start getting into the actual route. Let's get to it then, shall we?
A few days ago, I thought about logging in to do some grinding before starting Jonah's route, but I thought that the tutorial wanted me to read a chapter first before doing any of that. It turns out that I was wrong. Today I managed to do love battles, get gacha cards and complete missions, all before reading anything. I'm glad that I got a little headstart before running into any intimacy challenges and stuff.
I found that this game is super laggy. It seems like all the Cybird games I've played except Ikemen Vampire are like this. The voices in IkeRev seemed to have a few seconds delay before playing, and I spent a lot of time stuck in loading screens. I know I'm playing it on an older iPod Touch, but even on my iPhone these games are slow. I've said this before, but I think it's because they load most of their assets straight from the servers, so it takes longer to load than something that's saved on a local hard drive. Even when I'm right next to my router, it's not fast, so I feel like maybe the Cybird servers are just busy. Ikemen Vampire seems to not have this problem, but I feel like that's because it downloaded a lot of files to my iPod before starting a route, so maybe less of it is loaded from the server?
The UI in Ikemen Revolution is pretty much the same as most mobile otome, even ones that aren't by Cybird. I heard that it's because they all use an identical game engine. You've got your main menu, the gacha, the shop and all that other stuff. It looks quite pretty, I suppose. The love battles, I mean Destiny Duels, they actually have little animations for them. The font they use in the visual novel segments looks super generic though. It's easy to read, but it just looks like Calibri, the default font you get on Microsoft Office. I know it's a bit of a nitpick, but I feel like it doesn't really fit the game's theme that much.
(I know that at the top of my screenshots the clock and the battery icon is still there. I could just crop them out, but I like leaving them in because it gives the screenshot a bit of character. That probably sounds stupid, but I really do think that.)
From what I've heard, IkeRev's soundtrack is quite decent. It suits the setting quite well. So far, I wouldn't say I like it better than IkeVamp's pretty piano pieces, but it's certainly better than IkeSen's. The voice acting's good too. There are some big actors in this game, so that's cool. I just wish that the voice files would load quicker!
I like Ikemen Vampire's art style. It appears to be the same artist who does the other two Cybird games that I play. The character designs are all quite unique here. I feel like the Black Army boys have more individual designs though, but maybe that's because I don't know the Red Army as well yet. I think that Jonah's probably the prettiest looking bishounen here. That's partly why I chose his route first. I'm really shallow, I usually pick routes based on looks...
The backgrounds are decent. There's actually this really pretty one that I love, that I've attached down below for you all to see. It would make a very nice wallpaper.
So, let's get into the story, shall we? I'm not gonna touch on the common route much because I played most of it months ago, but I'll give you a basic rundown of it. We have our MC, who I think is called Alice officially, but you can change it if you want. I'm just gonna call her by her official name for the sake of these posts. She lives in London and works in a bakery because she has a very sweet tooth. One day she meets this man called the White Rabbit, and eventually this leads her to fall down into a world called Cradle. It's not actually Alice in Wonderland though, it's supposed to be set after that. So our MC is supposed to be the second Alice. In Cradle there are these two armies fighting, and they of course run into our new Alice, and I think she has like magic-stopping powers or something. In the end, she just gets taken in by the Black Army, because like Cybird's other games, she has to wait a month or so before she can return to London. The White Rabbit also warns her not to fall in love, just like Sasuke and Sebastian do in their games. So yeah, that's the basic plot of Ikemen Revolution.
Jonah's route starts off with Alice going off to hang out with the Black Army. I don't know much about them yet, except that Seth is really adorable and that Luka is Jonah's brother. They all seem to be quite nice people, so nice that they throw a little feast to celebrate Alice's arrival. All the food they eat sounded so yummy...
During the party, a mysterious letter arrives for our dear Alice. Well, it's not really mysterious, I just felt like using that word. It's from Jonah. He kindly invited our heroine to the Red Army headquarters for a little chat. She's not allowed to bring anybody else, because otherwise he won't be very happy. Jonah did say that he'll do something if she takes a member of the Black Army with her, but I cannot remember what that thing was. Oh well.
So Sirius drops Alice off, and she makes her way up to meet her future love interest. The transition from being at the feast to her first meeting with Jonah seemed so quick for some reason. Maybe I was just having too much fun...
So, what did Jonah want to talk to Alice about? He wants to steal her heart and make her fall in love with him! With that announcement we got a very lovely CG. I did not expect the romancey bits to happen this quickly!
It's not really that romantic though, because Jonah actually just wants Alice so that he can use her to win battles and stuff. He also wants her to become completely devoted to Lancelot and the Red Army. So he's not really doing this because he's in love with Alice, but maybe he still likes her a little bit? It's really a bit selfish, but whatever, I like stories like this.
My reaction to this news was entirely different to our heroine's. I was actually completely fine with this, because I'm a silly self-inserter who would be quite happy to be Jonah's girl for the entire route. Alice, on the other hand, was absolutely furious. She didn't want to be forced to become some man's toy and made to love someone she hardly knows.
Our reactions differed because we were both in different places. Alice was just thrust into this world and just approached by this random bloke who is forcing her to love him, whereas I'm a person who chose Jonah from a list of fictional men because I wanted to start a in-game relationship with him. I want him to love me, whereas Alice doesn't. I can completely understand where she's coming from, but that just means that the real romance bits will come a lot slower if she's not into it. Oh well, at least she's not a doormat MC who lets everyone push her around.
Jonah drops a few lines in this chapter that sort of made me swoon because I'm weird. One such line was "I'll have you submitting to me and loving it before you know it!", which I thought was really hot. If I were an editor on this game though, I'd remove the final "it" from the sentence, just to make it sound a bit better.
Even though Jonah's supposedly a busy man, he's nice enough to make some time for him and Alice to go out on their very first date. Our heroine is not excited, but she offers to go just to protect the Black Army and all that. I think that if she had denied all of this they would've just kidnapped her by force anyway. Oh yeah, he also tells her that she won't be able to go back to London either, instead she just has to stay with him forever.
Alice tells Jonah that there's no way that she will ever fall in love with a man like him, but he just tells her that she'll be all over him and the Red Army eventually. Then their little meeting is over.
Alice returns to the Black Army and tells them about what happened. They tell her that it's actually a really gentlemanly move for the Red Army to not kidnap her, and that she just has to play along with it for a bit. As long as she's not actually in love with Jonah, it'll all work out fine.
Then they all just decide to teach her how to fight, because she's gonna need it if she's staying in Cradle for a while. It's just really hand-to-hand combat, not any stuff with actual weapons.
I just realised that I took this screenshot while Seth's eyes were in the middle of changing. It looks a bit funny...
This was when I ran out of chapter tickets. I'm excited to find out what happens tomorrow. I want the story to be good, but not so good that I get impatient and frustrated that I only have a mere five tickets to use each day.
There was also an intimacy check, but I passed it immediately. The first few checks in these games are usually really easy until the end, when they get super difficult. I find that once you're on your second route, everything gets way easier and you can usually pass avatar checks almost straight away.
I hope that this game is quite generous with it's premium currency. So far it seems nicer than Ikemen Sengoku in that department. Maybe I'll be able to actually afford a premium story instead of the boring old normal ones?
I'm really enjoying this game, actually. I haven't seen too much of Jonah yet, but I'm liking him so far. I believe he's supposed to be a tsundere, but there's something about him that makes him feel a bit different to most characters in that trope. It's hard for me to pinpoint what it is, but maybe it's that he seems slightly... nicer than most tsunderes, considering it's the beginning of his route? Usually at the start of a tsundere route, they're always really not interested in the MC. Jonah is, but then again, if he didn't want to use her as his pawn, would he have any interest in Alice then?
I saw a drama CD for Jonah for sale online. Maybe if I can find it for cheap, I'll buy it. It'll be nice to have some physical merchandise for a free download game. I'd rather support the developers by buying something like this rather than in-game currency.
I suppose that's the end of my first Ikemen Revolution post. Wow, my blog has really been on fire these past few weeks. Really, I should set up a posting schedule, but it's more fun to write when I feel like it instead of waiting for a specific time. I suppose a posting timetable would give me more time to work on a single, good quality post instead of multiple rubbish ones, but I just prefer doing stuff the way I do it now.
That concludes my post. I just realised that I hardly ever thank my readers in my posts, so I should start doing that more often. I never really bothered before because I thought I was the only person who read this stuff. So, thank you all very, very much for reading this far. Hopefully this blog has been of some entertainment to you! Thank you and goodbye!
💗
No comments:
Post a Comment