As you can also tell from the title, I'm going to go through the common route, Isora's route, and my initial thoughts on the game here. It's a good idea to stay away from this post if you don't like spoilers!
The spoilers start below this line.
So, where do I start? Maybe I should give you some background information on the actual game? But the people reading this likely already know what it is... Oh well, I'll just type it all anyway. 7'Scarlet is an Otomate game, on the Vita (and the PC too), and it was localised in English, of course. It was part of Aksys Games' "Summer of Mysteries" event along with the two Psychedelica games, meaning that the game box comes with free collectible cards! I still have no idea how to display mine yet...
7'Scarlet of course follows the typical otome structure. There aren't any exclusive mini games, and things work the same as literally every other Otomate game, except for some reason some of the features like the quick save and the skip require different buttons to be pressed than usual.
The artwork of the game is interesting. The UI uses lots of purple, and since that is one of my favourite colours, I obviously appreciate it quite a bit. In the prologue and opening film, there were a lot of animated/real life clips used, which I've never seen in an otome before. They looked a bit blurry from what I remember, but I don't mind because they added to the experience. Oh yeah, some of the visual novel backgrounds also moved, which was cool.
The character art and CGs are very... meh. I think it's just the art style that I'm not sure about, maybe. Some of the sprites look really nice, whereas others are a bit off. The CGs are the same. Some look a bit awful, whereas others are alright. Some even remind me of mobile game CGs. The character designs sort of remind me of some Western comic designs, especially those that try to go for a more anime/manga inspired look.
What I really want to talk about is the plot, before I forget all of the little details!
Our heroine this time is called Ichiko. Don't ask me for her last name, because I don't remember it. I've seen a lot of people online say that her eyes are a bit terrifying, which I very much agree with. She does look a bit scary. Personality-wise, there's not really much that I can say. The only facts I know about her so far is that she has a brother, she's in college, she hates strawberries, and that her eyes are always red in every photo. Ichiko was just sort of... there. She's not a fleshed out heroine, she's more of a blank canvas for self insertion. That's fine for me, but I'm sure the non self insert people won't like that.
The plot is that Ichiko's brother, who she never names, went missing about a year ago. (I think the character cards spoil who the brother is, but I can't remember what he looks like) Ichiko doesn't have any pictures of him, because for some reason, he doesn't like being photographed. Maybe he's a vampire who doesn't show up in photos??
This unnamed brother got lost in this small town called Okunezato. For some reason, the police there never really bothered to find him, so the case was just left unsolved. Ichiko wants answers, so she travels with her childhood friend Hino to the town to find out more about his disappearance. Hino just goes for an online meetup. Okunezato's the home to these weird supernatural mysteries, so someone set up this forum for them, and for some reason they're deciding to meet up.
(This all seriously just reminds me so much of Period Cube)
Hino's a bit rude at times, but he's fairly harmless. It's pretty obvious that he has a crush on Ichiko. Apparently it's a good idea to play his route first, but I didn't really want to. I don't really have much of an interest in him.
In Okunezato, Ichiko and Hino stay in this tiny hotel, the only one in the town. There are only three staff members in the hotel: Yua, pretty much the only major female character in the story, Yuki, this cute kid who seems to be super intelligent for his age, and Isora (there'll be a lot more on him later, I promise) the hotel's very flirtatious chef.
Yua basically forces Ichiko and Hino to work for the hotel, so that they can stay in the town for longer. I don't even remember her giving them a choice. So they're technically on holiday, but they have to wake up at six o'clock to work? That sounds pretty horrible.
The hotel's boss just sacked a load of people, that's why they're so short staffed. Speaking of the boss, he's also a love interest. Yuzuki's his name, and he's a very, very scary person. If I could describe his personality, it would be "hardcore tsundere". He shares a voice actor with Hijikata from Hakuoki, and since I literally just finished that game a few weeks ago, Hijikata's voice is all that I can hear. I haven't really seen much of Yuzuki so far. Even though I would be absolutely terrified of him in real life, I am super interested in him. Unfortunately, his route is locked for me right now.
In the meetup of the online Okunezato Supernatural Club (who really only just hang out and eat food), you get to meet all of the other love interests. There's Sosuke, and all I really know about him is that he has glasses and is a medical student. He doesn't really appear that much in the common route yet, because his route is locked. Next is Toa, who is totally 100% my type. He sort of reminds me of myself, but a in more exaggerated, bishounen form with purple hair and glasses. I really, really, really want to start his route. He's a very shy character who seems to love cats. His route is also locked from the beginning, unfortunately.
The common route is basically Ichiko hanging out with everybody while learning a bit about the town. I must say, I really do love the setting of 7'Scarlet. If the town didn't have so many weird things going on in it, it would actually be a place that I would quite like to go to.
After first booting the game, the only routes available are Isora and Hino's. I still do not know how much the common route changes after unlocking the other routes, but I suppose I'll just have to wait and see. The story branches into individual routes once the town festival starts. The game gives you the option to either go with Hino or with Isora. I don't know if you have to have sufficient affection points for either character for each choice to work and not give you a bad ending, or if it's just one of those games where the common route choices don't matter because you just get to pick your route anyway.
So, let's start talking about Isora and his route, shall we?
Isora seems like a nice, normal person, but since this is an otome game, it's obvious from the start that he's going to have some kind of dark side to him. Throughout the story, I was getting the vibe that he was A. Ichiko's forgotten childhood friend and B. probably going to be a yandere. (I was proven right on both points, but we'll get to that later!)
One thing that puts me off a bit is that he's still in high school, compared to Ichiko, a college student. I just tried hard to forget all of that so that it didn't ruin my experience of the route.
The route starts at Okunezato's summer festival. Isora promises that if Ichiko comes with him, he'll tell her a secret. "Ooh," I thought, "I bet this is going to be some kind of dramatic tragic revelation, or some new clues about Ichiko's brother!" I had high expectations for this "secret". Oh, how I was disappointed.
Do you want to know what Isora's little secret was?
The secret was that he had actually lived in this town his whole life, instead of being an outsider like he had told Ichiko. Wow, what a horrible revelation that was! This fact changes everything!!
....
Honestly, that secret was like something a little kid would have. Luckily, this disappointment was partly cured by a bit of tragic backstory of Isora's.
Apparently, his parents used to own a restaurant in Okunezato. His dad then died, and eventually the restaurant had to shut down. Isora's mum worked for Yuzuki's hotel (I'm sorry, I can't remember the exact name of it), but then she got ill, so Isora decided to work in her place.
Also, apparently Yuzuki's family basically run the town. They own all the businesses, and really don't like outsiders. They also have this "vigilance committee" or whatever it's called, who are basically like the police or the mafia. So yeah, things are really corrupt.
After the festival scene, some more stuff happens that I can't really remember. All you have to know is that Ichiko finds out absolutely nothing about her brother, and a few people get murdered. Isora also acts really jealous towards Hino and sometimes has these random angry yandere outbursts.
Then, one day, Hino and Ichiko visit Isora's cafe. He gets really suspicious, and hands them both strawberry tarts to eat. (Remember, Ichiko doesn't like strawberries, and Isora is very much aware of this) Hino just offers to throw Ichiko's tart out to this stray cat, while he eats the other one.
The very next day, stuff gets really weird. Hino is feeling ill, and the stray cat is found DEAD right next to that strawberry tart. That poor little cat... and poor Toa, since he was just left to deal with the body. People begin to suspect Isora, but Ichiko's like "There's no way he could've done that!" and I'm like "Are you really sure about that???"
It turns out that Isora was actually innocent, Hino just had a funny stomach from eating too much, and the poor cat was murdered by this bad guy I'll talk about later. However, Isora still seemed very suspicious to me.
During this route, I was thinking "Yes, this is all interesting, but this route isn't that special, really, is it?", but then, near the end, things really ramped up and got super exciting! Well, at least in my opinion they did.
The shit really hit the fan when Yuki goes missing during a trip to the shops. The restaurant has hardly any food left, so Ichiko (with much protest from Isora) goes out to get the shopping herself. That is when she decides to do something very, very stupid.
Instead of going straight back to the hotel, she stays outside (where there could be a possible kidnapper/murderer on the loose), gives the shopping to this weird pervert photography guy (I forgot to mention him earlier, sorry!), and goes into this dark alleyway to find some more clues about Yuki and her brother's disappearances. What a terrible idea...
Of course, it doesn't end well for our dear heroine. This random creep almost murders her, but she gets saved (luckily?) by Isora. And then she faints.
When she wakes up, she finds herself in a strange room. The only person in there is Isora.
You already know where this is going, don't you?
Isora locks her in this random basement to "protect her", cooking for her and taking care of her in between doing shifts in the cafe. Ichiko is surprisingly OK with this. She just accepts it. Whenever she even suggests going outside, Isora goes absolutely ballistic. There's also this random scene where he licks her leg. Yep, that happens.
Of course, I absolutely, truly....... enjoyed all of this. Finally, the route was getting interesting. Initially when meeting Isora, I didn't expect him to be the yandere. However, once I started his route and got a feel for his personality, I could see it coming from a mile away.
So, Ichiko just lives in this basement for a while. One evening, Isora leaves to get something, and we, the player, get to choose: shall the heroine run away, or stay inside the room? I really wanted to stay, but I just chose for her to leave, because I thought it was going to be the correct choice, and because I wanted to get an angry reaction out of Isora.
It turns out that the right choice was to stay... Choosing to leave got Ichiko murdered, and I realised that I hadn't saved in hours, meaning that I had to skip through a quarter of the route to make the correct choice instead. It didn't help that the skip function, at maximum speed, felt like it moved at a snail's pace.
Staying in the room causes the murderer to come anyway. It's this bloke in a cat mask. I was trying to figure out who it was. It's probably Ichiko's brother, but I also think that his voice sounds a lot like Yuzuki's... I dunno if Yuzuki can be the murderer though, since he's supposedly just a regular love interest.
The murderer is the person who hurt Ichiko in the dark alleyway, and the one who killed that cat, hoping to frame it on Isora. I dunno what he gets out of framing him. It's not like Isora's some kind of famous person or something.
Anyway, the murderer person tries to hurt Ichiko, but Isora comes in and goes absolutely bonkers once he finds that his waifu's in pain. I mean it when I say he goes absolutely bonkers. His voice goes all crazy and he starts violently smashing this cat mask bloke's face in. I would've let him keep doing it, but of course Ichiko stops him.
(I really enjoyed this bit because of the extreme violent yandere stuff, I think I need help...)
(For some reason this is the best looking CG in the game so far.)
At this point during my first playthrough, I got the normal ending, but it was boring so I don't want to write about it. (It sort of reminded me of Toma's normal end from Amnesia, even though they have very few similarities now that I think about it.) I only got this ending because it took me a while to notice the flower thing that pops up when you make the right dialogue choices, meaning that I never ended up raising enough affection points.
In the good ending, the bad guy dies, thanks to Isora's violent outburst. It turns out that there's also a fire in the basement they're in, but instead of actually, I don't know, ESCAPING THE FIRE, Isora and Ichiko sit there and have a dramatic chat.
It turns out that Isora, is in fact, our heroine's childhood friend, from when she went on holiday to Okunezato while her parents had fun overseas. The whole reason why she hates strawberries is because one day, a young Isora accidentally made her a tart with some rotten ones in it. How can you not notice that you're cooking with rotten strawberries? For some reason, Ichiko had completely forgotten about this memory.
Even though Isora had met Ichiko only a few times as a child, he somehow was in love with her for his entire life. His only memories of her were as a young girl, so he was basically in love with a child, technically.
While the fire behind them is threatening to burn them to a crisp, Ichiko and Isora kiss. The CG of this moment is absolutely hideous, I'm sorry.
After snogging for a bit, the couple finally decide to get the hell out of the building. They get found by the local idiot policeman, and Isora is shipped off to the hospital. Luckily, Yuki is alright. He just got taken to Yuzuki's family's house to be scolded for not stopping the Supernatural Club.
After that, Ichiko accepts that she found out absolutely nothing about her brother, and begins dating Isora, who apologises for all his yandereness. He states that if she stays with him, he might end up doing much worse things to her, but Ichiko's totally fine with that. Then the route just ends. What happens next we'll probably never know. I sincerely doubt that there's going to ever be a sequel to this game.
The final kiss CG was decent on Isora's end, but Ichiko just looks very strange. Those eyes of hers don't look very human...
This route was certainly a roller coaster. It didn't give us many clues about the main mystery of the game, but I expected that anyway. At first, I thought it was going to be like your typical otome route, but it really ramped up the dramaticness near the end! Honestly, I was really enjoying those bits. The part where Ichiko got hurt in the alleyway actually felt a little bit suspenseful.
Isora certainly is a messed up, manipulative character with some obvious mental health problems, but I didn't seem to mind. In real life I would, but as you all probably already know, I absolutely love terrible love interests like these. I still dunno why Ichiko let a high school student manipulate her like that, but she's a doormat heroine, so of course she's going to be like that. She hardly even questioned Isora's actions, and when she did, she was just like "Oh no, he can't possibly be a horrible person like that!" and suppressed all of those thoughts. Actually, a quote from her earlier in the route is "I guess I like being manipulated", so she probably just didn't care what Isora did to her.
I suppose I'm supposed to play Hino's route next, but apparently Toa might be unlocked now, so.... I try so hard to get the least interesting characters over with first, but Toa's just too interesting to me...
I've heard a lot of people say that this game was a bit "meh" in their opinion, but I'm having a good time so far. Sure, it's not perfect or entirely original, but it's decent. At least there's some yandere stuff. I haven't read a yandere route in a while.
This concludes my review/summary thing! I sort of typed this all really fast, so there's probably a lot of errors, but oh well! It was super fun to write all of this. It's probably easier on the reader to just write one singular review, but these are way more fun to create.
I'll see you all in the next 7'Scarlet post, then! That is, if you're not burnt out by reading all of this and are actually interested in seeing more.
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