So, was Eisuke's route worth years of waiting? Read on to find out!
When I first played that prologue all those years ago, Eisuke was the character who caught my eye. He was the one whose route I was going to play, until I realised you had to pay and promptly deleted the app because I was and still am very tight.
The plot of Eisuke's route is extremely simple. Everything seemed very rushed, but that's only because I read through it super quickly. It was super addictive. Basically he just buys the heroine to use her for some business deal, and some other stuff happens and they fall in love. It was nowhere near as interesting as Soryu and Baba's routes, that's for sure.
The heroine's always just put in danger so that someone can save her, she just randomly gets kidnapped. These damsel in distress scenes seem to happen a lot in mobage, it's like they don't know how to pad out the route with an actual plot or romance development, so they just add these in to attempt to show that the love interest actually cares about the MC.
Literally 90% of the women in this game are so horrible to our poor heroine! First there's the stupid cliché bully girl at work with her two followers who repeat everything she says, like it's some high school film or something, then there's this Italian mob woman who is absolutely horrible, and then literally all of these random background women say stuff to the MC like "How did a nobody like you get with Eisuke?" It's like the writers think that all other women are always jealous and wanting to steal your man! At least the heroine has two girlfriends who are nice enough, but they don't really have much of a part to play in the story.
Now, let's talk about the star of the route, Eisuke. I have a super high tolerance for questionable love interests like him, but even I still think that he is a bit of a twat. To be honest, I'm not really sure if I like Eisuke or not. His character just felt a bit flat to me. Maybe it's because I'm used to console games, but he just hardly had any development in my eyes. The romance development between him and the heroine was shit really. Like he treats her like rubbish but it's all OK because he's "protecting" her, and after Eisuke tells her a bit of backstory (which the MC immediately believes, he could be lying for all we know!), our heroine decides that he's actually a decent person and falls in love. He then harshly dumps her to """""protect"""" her, and the game actually gives you a choice to insult him, which I gladly chose. But then Soryu tells the MC that he did it to protect her from this random bad guy, but he could've dumped her in a nicer way! Then she just falls in love with him and they eventually get back together and Eisuke's like "you're my woman now".
If I were the MC, I would've picked that colleague bloke (I think his name was Takahiro?), because he actually seemed like a decent person who genuinely cared about her feelings. I thought he was going to turn into a creepy stalker who Eisuke had to save her from, but no, he was actually just a nice guy. But nope, she rejected him for a total asshole. This Takahiro was so sweet and just accepted her decision, even though he didn't agree with it.
I've heard people say that Eisuke actually develops, but I didn't really see much of that here. Perhaps he gets a bit better in the after stories then? I don't care that he treats the MC like dirt or anything, it's just I don't feel like the romance or his character depth were that good. The route was still fun to read, but it was all just a big meh. At the beginning of Baba's route I wasn't crazy about him, but by the end of the route I actually had grown to like him, but this route I feel didn't do that. Maybe I just read it too quickly?
The plot and the romance I can criticise all I want, but Kissed by the Baddest Bidder isn't trying to be some great work of literacy or anything. It's supposed to be for female wish fulfilment and a bit of fun, that's all. Of course it's not supposed to be played for the plot. If all you want is to pretend to win the heart of a rich guy, then it does its job well. A lot of the stuff in it seems to be stuff that a lot of people fantasise about, like going on an expensive shopping spree, being envied by a lot of annoying girls, and living in some posh hotel. It's just a nice bit of escapism, and I think that's alright. For me, that's why I play these games. When you're playing for reasons like that, you don't care as much about how well crafted the plot is, you just care about the enjoyment. That's why I tend to be a bit more forgiving on games that others think are written badly or whatever.
Really, I think if that something is enjoyable, that's all that matters. And this route, I enjoyed. It's just fun for me to nitpick the plot and write about it. Even though it's my least favourite out of the three characters I've played from this game so far, it still entertained me for a day. It was a nice break from Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk, which I am still working through, it just takes forever because of all the side stories and random NPCs you're forced to talk to.
I think that I might try one of Eisuke's after stories one day, because believe it or not, I'm still interested in finding out more about him. I'm just currently grinding for coins in Love 365, but because I hardly ever log on, it's taking forever. There's this other Kissed by the Baddest Bidder side story I won, but I'm not sure if it'll be long enough to write about for this blog. We'll just have to wait and see.
This concludes my review for today. I'm writing this quite late at night, so I apologise if there are any errors. This post seems super short, but I suppose that's because I didn't summarise the plot that much. There's not really any point in doing that anymore, since most of the people who read these posts have likely already played the game and just want to hear my thoughts.
Hopefully you all enjoyed this post, so I'll see you all in the next one!
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