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Thursday, 23 January 2020

Hakuoki: Edo Blossoms - A Review (Part One)

Good afternoon, blog readers. Welcome to the first part of my Edo Blossoms review.

 Due to the massive length of the game, I have decided to split the review into two parts. Instead of properly summarising each route, I just rambled on about each one, throwing in a few screenshots here and there. This review is only on the first six routes of the game. I haven't played the others, yet.

Let's begin the post, shall we?




(The cover art for this game is so pretty, but Blogger had to put an ugly white border around it.)




I'm glad that I've finally gotten to Edo Blossoms, where I can actually play some full length routes. For a game that mostly contains a common route, Kyoto Winds seemed to take forever to get through. Most of that was just skipping through, trying to unlock every character-specific scene and CG.

For some reason, I expected Edo Blossoms to have a different UI and soundtrack, even though that would make the game a lot more costly and time-consuming for the developers to produce. Everything's the same, except for the new sprites and the opening and ending themes.

The new opening song is so good! It's done by the same singer as the one for Kyoto Winds, and I just found out yesterday that she also sung the opening for Demon of the Fleeting Blossom, the new Nintendo Switch fandiscs, and probably the other Hakuoki games too. The best part of the song is when she sings really fast, it's sort of hard to explain without playing it for you, but it sounds really good. The ending theme's alright too, but I prefer the one used in Kyoto Winds.

I like the Western outfits that the characters wear much more than their original clothes, except for the hair. Why did they cut it all off? The long hair looked so much better on everybody, instead of maybe Heisuke. He's probably the only one who looks better with a shorter hairstyle.

Before I actually start discussing the actual story instead of the game's design, I just wanted to mention something. After completing some routes, I always found that I was missing a very early CG. After a bit of digging, I found out that a lot of characters have a hidden one that you wouldn't necessarily get if you aim for a perfect ending like I do. In case you missed them, you just have to load early on in a character's route (make sure it's a character who has drunk the Water of Life), and make normal choices until the bloodlust scenes come up. Then select the option "Make him endure it" and boom! you get a scary CG of your chosen bishie going crazy with bloodlust while Chizuru basically does nothing. I like it when you get CGs for making bad choices, even if I have to do a bit of thinking and looking at walkthroughs to figure out how to get them.

Anyway, let's get onto discussing the routes! Every mini "review" I wrote straight after playing each route, so I apologise if some of my thoughts contradict the others. I didn't really want to wait until finishing everything before writing, otherwise I'd forget everything.

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Iba's Route

Iba's route was absolutely awesome, it was something I couldn't put down! I played it first and it seemed so much more romantic to the routes that I had played in Demon of the Fleeting Blossom. The plot of this one is basically that the magic demon arms that have fused with Takeda and Iba cause them to start craving Chizuru, because she's a pure-blooded demon lady and all that. The arm makes them keep having some very suggestive dreams about her. This causes Takeda to want Chizuru as his bride, just like Kazama did. For some reason, Kazama's not in this route and just disappears for some reason, even though I thought he was still trying to marry her.



Iba ends up getting badly wounded by those fury-proof bullets, and Chizuru has to take care of him for a while. His demon arm causes him to push our heroine on the bed and she doesn't even resist because she likes him too much. There are a lot of steamy scenes in this route that were really good. Let's just say that I'm so glad Chizuru's easy to self-insert into.


There's one point where Iba tries to push Chizuru away in order to protect her (which I swear happens at least once in every otome game), but she goes out and proudly tells him that she loves him and won't leave him, instead of the other way round. They become a couple halfway through the route, instead of like some of the original Hakuoki routes where the romance happens in the last chapter...

Eventually they go back to meet the Shinsengumi, but at this point most of them are dead. Even Hijikata dies. Kodo also gets murdered by Saito, so that's cool. Chizuru hardly even mourns him because he turned out to be truly horrible, he was even the one turned Takeda into a fury in the first game.

The final battle with Takeda was so dramatic. I didn't expect Chizuru to sacrifice herself by letting Iba stab through her to get to Takeda like that. The game ended so abruptly after that, so abruptly that I thought it was a bad ending where she died, but after the credits it continued. There wasn't really an explanation of what happened to the Shinsengumi or anything, Chizuru just woke up and Iba was just like "Oh yeah, the war's over and Takeda's dead so we can all live happily ever after!" and then it ended. I would've liked a bit less of a sudden ending to everything, to be honest.


Unlike my predictions, Iba did not turn out to be a secret yandere. Oh well, there's always plenty of other games I can play if I want that. Sen was in this route quite a bit, which I didn't expect to appreciate so much. She's quite a supportive friend here. I'm still wondering what happened to Kazama though. I don't think Iba even battled him in Kyoto Winds, either. Maybe he just gave up on Chizuru in the end, but I still sort of wanted to see him react to Takeda, since they both want the same thing.

I thought that Takeda was gonna be one of those villains I sort of wanted a route for, but that never happened because he was quite awful. I'm still curious to see whether there's any bad endings where he manages to kidnap Chizuru for good...

In conclusion, I absolutely adored Iba and his route. He's one of those characters who loves Chizuru in every route, which I also really love. When I initially started Kyoto Winds, I didn't expect Iba to turn into one of my favourite characters in the entire Hakuoki franchise. It's a shame that there aren't any other games in English with him in. There is that new fan-disc coming out for the Switch, but I've already learned my lesson on attempting to play Hakuoki FDs with my Japanese level...

Now, please excuse me while I add Iba to the blog's sidebar with the rest of my otome banners.


Okita's Route

After playing this route again, I can see why it was my favourite one from the PSP game. It focuses less on the history stuff and more on the characters as well as Chizuru's past. I believe it was the only one from the original six (there were six, weren't there?) routes that had Kaoru in it and explained Chizuru's full backstory and the fact that Kodo is not actually her real dad.

During this playthrough, I ended up getting a bad ending where Okita goes crazy with bloodlust and kills Chizuru. Now I remember why I decided to use a walkthrough for the whole of Demon of the Fleeting Blossom. I thought that since I'd played this before, I would know what the right choices to make are, but I suppose not...

In this route, I loved how Chizuru actually got to drink the Water of Life and experience the pain for herself instead of watching someone else go through it instead. It's really cool because the Fury powers she gets cause her to actually do some fighting! There were some action scenes in the story where I wasn't expecting her do anything, but then she surprised me by getting her sword out and killing some enemies, even if Okita did say she was rubbish at it.

Kazama had no presence in this route outside of one part where he's a bit of a dickhead. As soon as he finds out that Chizuru's a Fury, he just gives up on her and calls her worthless. How nice of him! He doesn't even ask her why she drunk the Water of Life or anything, he just immediately throws his opinion of her in the bin and walks away. It really shows how much he cared about her. I can't believe I'm saying this about someone who used to be my favourite character, but it's all true!




Okita had some decent development in this route, and I feel that him and Chizuru are quite a good match. I had forgotten how much he liked to talk about Kondou, but at least there's a reason why he admires him so much. In this new game Otomate even gave us some new CGs (or probably just ones I can't remember from before) of Okita as a child with Kondou, as well as some more romance CGs that I have a very distant memory of seeing in Zuisouroku.

One of my favourite CGs is the one of Chizuru and Okita sucking each other's blood. I know it sounds a bit weird, but for some reason I really like the dramatic CGs like this. Actually, one of my favourite Hakuoki CGs is another one from Okita's route in the previous game, the one where he's surrounded by blood after slicing a load of people or something. I don't know why, I just thought it looked cool.


Kaoru's a big part of this route, but even though he's absolutely horrible, I can't really hate him as a character. I think I just get drawn to the brother characters because I find them interesting; I've never actually had a sibling myself. I sincerely hope that he gets redeemed in one of the other character routes, because I have a desire for him and Chizuru to get to know each other properly.

We'll have to see if Okita's route remains a favourite after completing this game. I may say that some of the other routes are my so-called "favourites" immediately after playing them, but that's just because they're fresh and new. In the second part of this review, I'll list which ones are truly my favourites.

Earlier in this post, I wrote how I thought that Iba's route had a super abrupt ending, but this one did too. I don't even think that they mentioned anything about the war ending after the credits at all! I suppose I'm just used to Code: Realize and those other games where in the various endings, they usually explain what happened to the rest of the characters and all of that. But nope, we don't get any of that here. 



The so-called "good ending" is a bit depressing in this one. When I had originally read it, I didn't think much of it, but Chizuru mentions how one day Okita's just going to die from tuberculosis, which is super sad. Now I'm very curious: are demons immortal, or do they at least have very long lifespans? Does that mean when Chizuru drunk the Water of Life, her lifespan decreased or she became mortal?? I suppose I'll have to wait for Kazama's route for those questions to (hopefully) be answered, or I could just look them up on the Hakuoki Wiki.

I found my original blog posts on Demon of the Fleeting Blossom; all I wrote about Okita's route was "I completed Okita's route earlier, and even though he isn't my favourite love interest, his route is my favourite so far. It felt like there were more interactions between him and the main character, whereas in the other routes I've played sometimes there was more historical war stuff instead." 

I think I was a bit too embarrassed to write more because I remember some person I didn't like was looking over my shoulder while I was typing it.



Sanan's Route


Well, this was certainly an interesting one. It must have been if I managed to finish it in two sittings without getting bored. I don't think this one had as much romance as I was expecting, it didn't have as many fluffy scenes as the two routes I completed before. I did enjoy it quite a bit though, even if my opinion on Sanan fluctuated heavily throughout. I am still unsure if he's actually a decent person or not, to be honest. 

First, there was the problem where everybody suspected him for murdering random people. Chizuru constantly defended him and insisted that he had done nothing wrong, and I was like "Are you really sure about that?" I was convinced that he was the one behind all of it, but nope, I was wrong. Apparently he was just helping Amagiri kill off escaped Furies from the other side. 

The main problem in this route is that Hijikata bans the Furies from basically doing anything, so Sanan just leaves. He then creeps into Chizuru's room in the dead of night, and I thought he was going to do something shady, but all he does is kisses her goodbye. Throughout this route I kept suspecting him to be doing something bad, only to be proven wrong! 


Chizuru then just decides to leave the Shinsengumi to look for him, and then she runs into Sen and Kimigiku. I'm always glad to have them show up in a route, because unlike most otome women, they're not love rivals or annoying fangirls. 

Near the end, Sanan just works with Kodo and Kaoru and gives Chizuru up to them. Also, he pretended to kill Heisuke, which annoyed me until I found out that it was fake. Poor Chizuru is just forced to be locked up in a room, while her father wants to harvest her for his blood. I really couldn't stand Kodo in this route, in fact I think I absolutely hated him by the end.

 It turns out that he just pretended to work with Kodo and then betrays him in the end with this dramatic battle scene involving him, Sen, Kimigiku, and Heisuke, who rises from the dead. When I found out that he hadn't actually been murdered by Sanan, I was so relieved because I was quite put off by that. 

Kaoru killed Kodo in the end, so I thought he was going to turn out to be nicer to Chizuru in the end, but nope, he just turned on her afterwards. I hope Kaoru gets a chance to be reformed one day...

The reason why Sanan worked with Kodo was revealed to be because he wanted to help the rest of the Fury Corps gain their humanity. It turns out that Furies slowly become dust, which is illustrated by a CG of Sanan almost shirtless. 



In the end, everything's alright and Chizuru and Sanan just run off to Europe, because the water there's supposed to help Furies or whatever. They say that over there, the Furies are known as vampires. I never really thought of them as that before, because I thought the game wouldn't have called them "Furies" then. Now, if people ask me what Hakuoki is, I suppose I can just tell them that it's a historical vampire game. 

 I hope they planned on returning to Japan, because he promised Heisuke he'd work on a cure for the Water of Life for the Fury Corps. The war isn't actually over in this ending, and they never go back to the Shinsengumi or anything. 



Did I just end up summarising the whole route? Oops. 

I like Sanan as a character, but I still find him a bit odd and questionable in places. I still didn't entirely trust him, even at the end. I honestly was starting to think of him as the villain at some points, and Heisuke was starting to look like the hero. Even after it was confirmed that everything he did was for a good reason, I still think he's a bit shady. It's weird though, because I usually don't care what an otome love interest does as long as the romance is good. At least he didn't murder Heisuke, that's all that matters really.

I think that this route in general was pretty good, but I wish that there were more fluffy romance scenes in it, and more CGs. I know creating art for these games is hard, but a lot of the new routes have hardly any CGs compared to the older ones! (I think I already mentioned this in my Kyoto Winds review, oops.)



Souma's Route

Well, this was a depressing one.

Souma started off the route with some confidence issues. He used his Fury powers as a crutch to help him in battle instead of relying on his own skills. I don't even remember anybody warning him that using them eats his life away, so throughout the story his lifespan must have decreased dramatically.  The numerous deaths he had to witness (I'll talk about them later) affected him, but eventually he moves past them and "finds his purpose" thanks to Chizuru. 

There are a total of two deaths and two sacrifices (that lead to an off-screen death) that you get to witness in this route. First it's Kondou, who gives himself up to eventually get beheaded. Then later on, Chizuru, Souma and Nomura run into Harada and this bloke from the prequel game in Edo. In order for them to escape, Harada distracts the enemies and most likely dies from that. After that is a graphic description of Nomura (who I really liked) getting peppered with bullets and falling into the ocean. Then finally, Chizuru and Souma get to watch Hijikata die. At least in the other Hakuoki routes, the deaths and sacrifices just happen off-screen, but these ones are more painful because you have to actually watch them.


There's also this scene where Kazama comes to take Chizuru because he says that he thought she had been taken hostage or something. Yeah right. We all know he just wanted to kidnap her again. Him and Amagiri almost kill Souma, but let him go because Chizuru threatens to kill herself if they do. I know she really loved Souma, but is his death really worth dying over? If I were her, I'd want to live on for his sake. Kazama just gives up and leaves because he's not allowed to let Chizuru die.

The supposed "good ending" was also so sad that I thought it was a bad one. After the war ends, Souma becomes the leader of the Shinsengumi (or what's left of it) and goes off to some prison somewhere. With no guarantee that he'll survive, they spend one last depressingly romantic night together. I'm pretty sure they have sex, meaning that Harada's now not the only one who gets to bang her during a route. There's also a CG of Souma's chest, as a bit of fanservice during the angst that is his route.


I honestly thought that Souma was going to leave and never come back, but after the credits he makes his return, three years later. They get to live happily ever after, except not really because Souma's a Fury and nobody told him about that place which has that fancy water or whatever that can help reduce the pain.

My one question about this ending is, how did Souma cope with the bloodlust for three years when Chizuru wasn't there? Did he kill random people to get their blood, or did he just do nothing? If he didn't drink any blood at all, he would've gone mad. He also didn't get Chizuru to send some blood over, because the game said she had absolutely no contact with him. I really want to know how he managed to cope with his Fury powers while he was away, but the game has no mention of it whatsoever.

In the middle of all of this route's sadness, however, there was one part of the route that was so lighthearted and comedic that I almost forgot I was playing a game about war and death. I ended up chuckling quite a few times during this part.

 You may have expected some kind of heartfelt confession scene where Souma admits his love for Chizuru, but nope, it turns out a lot different to that. Hijikata takes Chizuru into his office and asks if she likes Souma, and she says yes. Then Souma comes in and Hijikata asks him if he likes her, and he, luckily, says yes. So then they just sort of look at each other and become a couple, if I remember correctly. Oh yeah, and Nomura, Iba and a few others are listening in behind the door.

I was wondering how Iba would react to Souma and Chizuru's relationship, considering he's the one who has been in love with our heroine since childhood. He accepts their love but threatens to come after Souma if he ever hurts Chizuru. I wish there was a CG of this interaction...



Iba also spreads rumours around that Souma and Chizuru act like kittens when they're together, which results in the others using a lot of cat puns and the word "nyan" a lot. I think Iba was just jealous that he didn't get Chizuru for himself.

Nomura later asks if Souma's kissed Chizuru yet, and when he says no, Iba then realises that there's still hope for him to get with her. It would've been funny if there were dialogue choices to flirt with Iba here, just to see Souma's reactions. All of this just makes me miss Iba and his route so much...

The comedic scenes do not end there. There's this wonderfully awkward scene where Souma and Chizuru attempt to kiss, but they're both too nervous so they just give up. I don't really have any good screenshots of that interaction, unfortunately.

These scenes were probably the best parts of the entire route for me. The tone of them didn't really match up with the rest of the story, but whatever. They were fun, so who cares?

I was very excited to start this route, because I knew Miki would be in it. If you read my Kyoto Winds review, you'll probably remember that he somehow became my favourite character in the entire game despite having hardly any screentime. (I'm not alone, either, just do some digging online and you'll find that he has a very small but passionate fanbase.) Sadly, Miki didn't really have much time in the spotlight here. I thought he was going to be after Chizuru like Takeda was in Iba's route, but things were a bit different. Off-screen, he got arrested (I can't remember why, I think it was for tax fraud or something??) and then ran into Kodo and took the Water of Life. He never really did anything wrong, he just went after the Shinsengumi to get his revenge on them for killing Itou. I can completely understand why he wanted them dead so badly, because I think anyone would if their brother got killed. It's just a shame that the people he desired to kill were the heroes of the story.

He got one initial battle scene with Souma at the beginning, and then just completely disappeared until the very end, literally seconds after Hijikata's death. I expected him to get in another intense fight with Souma, but what happened instead was just sad. He started to fight, but then Souma noticed that he wasn't putting much effort into blocking his attacks. Miki had lost the will to live and I felt so sorry for him. He had nothing left in his life to live for, and all of the Shinsengumi members he wanted dead had already been killed elsewhere. He didn't even care to fight Souma at all. In the end, they just let him walk away, and he's never seen from again. There wasn't even one last CG with him in it. :(

I honestly expected Miki to be a bigger threat, like how Takeda was, but at least he didn't end up having a final battle scene with Souma that ends in his death. I still wished for him to have more of a screen presence, however. At least there's still that bath scene in Kyoto Winds for me to replay...

This route was a good one, even if it was quite depressing. To be honest, I enjoy dramatic, angsty stuff, so I didn't really mind the sad scenes that much. It's a shame that so many people had to die though, but you could say that about every route in this game.

I feel like this route maybe could've had more fluffy scenes in it, but I'm still quite satisfied with the ones we got. One thing it definitely did need, however, was more of Miki.



Hijikata's Route


Hijikata's route ended up being as good as I remember. This one was the first one I played, and because of that, I never noticed how much longer it was than the others. There's a whole extra chapter in this one, but that's typical of otome poster boy routes.

This route is composed of about ninety-five percent plot, five percent romance, but I still don't really seem to mind. Like I said before, in my original Hakuoki PSP blog posts, sometimes when the romance takes forever to develop, it feels more rewarding when you actually do get it. In Edo Blossoms, they did make it slightly more romantic with the addition of some of the Zuisouroku scenes, but that's not really saying much. The other routes have way more of it. It's weird, because in other Otomate games, they really push the romance with the poster boy in the common route and even in the other character routes, but in Hakuoki, Hijikata doesn't really seem to care romantically for Chizuru until the very last second.

Chizuru's pretty persistent in Hijikata's route. If it weren't for her, I don't think the romance would've progressed at all. I loved how she didn't give up and chose to stick by him until the very end, no matter how much she was told to leave. Sorry, I just had to mention her because I don't think I've really spoken about her that much here. Even though Chizuru's such an easy character to self-insert onto (I'm not joking, I forget she exists until I see her in the CGs), I don't think she's weak or a shit MC or whatever. Yes, she can't fight, and she does do a lot of cleaning and cooking and all that, but that doesn't mean she's useless. She's quite sweet really, and I just genuinely like her. (Also, I'm a lot more forgiving of characters like her because I'm pretty sure they're meant to be blank self-insert canvases anyway...) I just wish that she would stop thinking "I'm so useless, I can't do anything for the Shinsengumi", because that does get a bit annoying. Also, I wish that she had a better memory. She sees Iba in Hijikata's route and she completely forgets his name! HOW CAN YOU FORGET THE NAME OF SUCH AN IMPORTANT CHILDHOOD FRIEND?

I'm not really going to talk much about the plot, because it's complicated history stuff where I'll get all of the facts wrong. I had forgotten that Kodo appeared in this one and even kidnapped Chizuru in it. At one point I thought that it was a new addition. To be honest, most of the things from my original PSP playthrough that had stuck in my mind were the romantic scenes.

The route is very much the same as how it originally was. I heard that there were some dialogue changes to the original Japanese, and I think the voice actors had to re-record the whole game instead of the developers reusing the audio from the older games. They also added the new characters into this route, like Souma and co. I'm glad that they're here, because I had all traces of them to just disappear in all of the older routes. I never realised that these routes had been edited so extensively, I just thought that Otomate were going to add in the Zuisouroku scenes, a few new CGs, and call it a day.

I am super glad that they didn't kill off Souma, because I honestly expected him to die like the other 99% of the Shinsengumi do in this route. I don't really know why I'm mentioning this, but I'm just glad. It's still a shame that Iba died, because I wanted to see more of him. He has an entire route to himself that I just played, so I don't really know why I'm complaining.

The kiss CG between Hijikata and Chizuru is nice, but their lips aren't even touching! It just looks like they photoshopped Chizuru on top of somebody else's kiss scene! I dunno why so many otome games have their kisses looking like this.


Luckily, they included the much better, more romantic kiss CG from Zuisouroku. At least I think I remember seeing it there. I dunno why it wasn't in the main game to start with, to be honest, because it seems like such an important moment that shouldn't be left to a fan-disc. Yes, I'm talking about the scene where Chizuru feeds Hijikata blood through her lips. It's sort of disgusting when you think about it too much, she could've just shoved her bleeding wrist in his mouth, but it's more romantic this way.


The final battle scene with Kazama looked really pretty with the cherry blossoms. I swear I remember him appearing in this route more, but I think because of the game split, it seems like less. I actually got a bad ending here for some reason. Even though I kept making Chizuru give Hijikata blood, for some reason he got super corrupted and just turned to dust. It's things like this that were the reason behind me relying almost entirely on a walkthrough back when I played this on the PSP.


This is a great route, but the overwhelming amount of plot compared to romance means that it isn't a personal favourite of mine. I think that it's good for a poster boy route, because it wraps up the plot nicely. When it ends, it feels like a grand conclusion to the whole game. It's too bad that I never leave this one for last! During my PSP playthrough, I chose Hijikata first because (this sounds really shallow) he was really attractive, and I hadn't unlocked Kazama's ending yet. The only reason I played it this early on the Vita is because the random name picker deemed it so.



Heisuke's Route

I have a feeling that once I'm done with this game, this'll end up being one of my favourite routes. Heisuke never really used to be my favourite character, but now I seem to appreciate him a lot more. His route is just... well... really good! The plot's interesting and the romance is decent. I think he's a good match for Chizuru, since they're of a similar age and they actually have a bit of chemistry.

I am quite glad that I didn't play this route before doing Sanan's, because he is super creepy in this. He kidnaps poor Sen and there's even a CG of him forcefully kissing her. I'm sure I remember them having another one in the PSP game, an even creepier one, but for some reason it wasn't in this game. Maybe my memory is incorrect. I've played so much otoge this past year that I may be recalling something from another game.



 I'm just wondering, why did he capture Sen anyway? Why go through all the effort, when he probably could've saved a lot of time just getting Chizuru instead. She was right within his reach for years, and she really would've been quite easy to kidnap!

Originally, I had predicted Sanan to act in his own route how he did here, like a creep. I thought that Sanan was going to be the token "trashbundo" of the game, but nope. Poor Sen didn't deserve this. I know this sounds really bad, but if he had done all this to Chizuru instead, I probably would've felt less bad. But then I suppose the route would've spent a lot of time with the heroine stuck inside a castle with Sanan instead of bonding with Heisuke, who is supposed to be the star of this route.

Kazama was in this route too, but he seemed to have given up on taking Chizuru as his bride. Actually, he may have said something about that in Kyoto Winds that I've forgotten. His banter with Heisuke was cute. (Actually, I wouldn't be against shipping them.) 

The scene with Kimigiku getting stabbed by Sen in place of Chizuru was so sad, yet so beautiful. I had forgotten about it until today. I can't really remember my original reaction to that scene in the PSP game, but I'm pretty sure that it probably surprised me.

There was also a cameo with that person from the prequel game, Ibuki. His girlfriend's also here too, and she has a sprite. This scene wasn't from Zuisouroku or Demon of the Fleeting Blossom, so it's a new addition just for this game. I dunno if they wanted to advertise Hakuoki Reimeiroku (the prequel game/anime/stage musical), or if they just wanted to pad the route out with more romance. It was a cute, but also very angsty scene. Heisuke just watched Ibuki in the shadows and talked about how being a Fury means that he cannot live a normal life and have a normal family. :(  Luckily Chizuru was there for emotional support, and they had a sweet little moment with each other.




I'm so glad that not many people died in this route. I actually expected Kazama to die in the final battle with Sanan, but it was a bit stupid of me, because Demons don't die that easily. I am also happy that this route had it's own little plot instead of focusing on the war and historical stuff. The war isn't even over at the end of the route, Heisuke and Chizuru just leave and let the rest of the Shinsengumi deal with it. Souma and Nomura were also in this route, I don't know why I'm pointing it out, but they were there.



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That's me done with the first half of the game. It's a good start so far. I'm quite excited to play Sakamoto's route, but the random name picker tells me that I have a long time before I start that one. It even told me that I had to leave Kazama's route until the end... I could just throw the random name picker in the bin and pick whatever route I want, but that wouldn't be fun, would it? I'd end up picking my favourite characters first instead of leaving the best until last!

This post ended up being a lot longer than I had expected it to. If I had reviewed the whole game in one go, it would've turned out to be absolutely massive, the large amounts of text scaring people away. I should probably work on keeping my words more concise.

Stay tuned for the second half of this review, coming soon (hopefully!) to Misty's Blog!














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