Diabolik Lovers: MORE, BLOOD - A Review (Part One)

I'm back for another round of everyone's favourite abusive vampire simulator. Yes, I'm playing the original PSP version, only because I'm cheap. (Have you seen how expensive it is to import the Vita version?) Going back to this old handheld after playing my Switch Lite isn't actually that bad. It feels worse using the PSP after the Vita because they're more similar. 

This time I'm going to split this review into two. The first post will be about my main thoughts on the game and the Sakamaki routes, my next one's just going to be what I think of the Mukami routes as well as my final opinion. It may seem strange to split it up, but if I don't this blog will be without content for much longer. I don't want it to seem dead around here.

I wish I had the limited edition version of the game, because this cover would look so nice on my otome shelf...

As always, there'll be loads of spoilers down below. Also, there are no screenshots because I still don't have a way to transfer them off of my PSP. Be prepared for a massive wall of text.

If you have followed this blog for a while, you may remember that I reviewed the anime adaptation of MORE, BLOOD. I liked it so much that I watched the whole thing again a couple of weeks later. The fact that I hadn't played the game beforehand probably caused me to enjoy it more than the Haunted Dark Bridal anime.

I wanted to play MORE, BLOOD so much, but the Vita version seemed super expensive to import. In the end, I settled for the PSP version which cost a fifth of the price. Plus the cover looked nicer in my opinion. It also came with a full colour instruction manual, which I am pretty sure most Vita games do not have. The only thing I was going to miss out on was some extra after stories, which doesn't bother me that much.

Most of the artwork and BGM is the same as Haunted Dark Bridals, except the sprites and songs for the new characters. The Sakamaki brothers also get new outfits, which is nice. The new opening song, Unlimited Blood, is alright, but it wasn't so good that I had to listen to it every time I booted up the game. The remix they used for the Vita port I like more. On the other hand, the ending song is an absolute banger and nobody can convince me otherwise. It knocks Parthelion Logic (which is also a great tune) right out of the park. Yes, I listen to it outside of the game because it's just that good. The new themes for the Mukami brothers are also good, but I haven't heard them enough to form a solid opinion on them.

I've never been the biggest fan of the CGs in Diabolik Lovers, because I find 90% of them to just be the same picture of Yui being sucked against a wall or whatever. The CGs so far (of course I cannot speak for the Mukami routes yet) are a mixed bag for me. Some are good, some make me laugh because of Yui's expressions in them.

What annoys me about MORE, BLOOD, however, is how it just makes Haunted Dark Bridal useless. OK, maybe "useless" is a bit of a strong word to use here, but it just completely throws all of the romantic development from the first game down the toilet. The only thing from HDB that's canon is the prologue. That's it. You have to start Yui's romance with the Sakamaki brothers all over again, meaning you have to wait for their personalities to soften one more time. So all those cute moments from the last game happened in a different timeline.

I just don't really understand why they had to do this. This basically means that they could've just not made HDB and released MORE, BLOOD as the first DiaLovers game instead. I would've made it so that M,B is like a fandisc, where it contains after stories for the Sakamaki brothers, as well as new routes for the Mukamis. That way you can start a new romance with the new characters, or continue one with those from the last game. But then again, I don't work for an otome developer, so what do I know?

The plot of this game is the same as the anime, but in more detail. Yui lives in a universe where she hasn't yet fallen in love with anyone, she just exists as the Sakamaki family blood bank. But one day the Mukami brothers appear and announce their intention to take her away. I believe there is a separate prologue for them, but I have no idea how to select it yet. In HDB you had to select a vampire to suck Yui's blood, this time you have to select someone to protect her. Like before, I used a random name generator to pick my routes for me.

Like before, the routes have the three sections, Dark, Maniac and Ecstacy, with the "scenario" chapters followed by the "story" chapters. The Scenario chapters remind me of the drama CDs, they're just small little events that generally have no effect on the main plot. The Story chapters are when the real stuff happens. A lot of the time I found myself slightly bored during the scenarios, because I just wanted to continue on with the story. I wish they had just done what most otome games do, with regular chapters that contain a mixture of fluff and story. It's slightly annoying when you're interested in the plot, but suddenly it's put on hold for six scenario chapters that you are required to read. It's not that I don't like the romantic bits, I just wish that they had mixed them in between the plot to make the route flow a bit better. Some of the scenarios were good though, it just depends on the route.

Below is my opinion on all of the Sakamaki routes, written immediately after I completed each one. I haven't finished all of their Heaven scenarios yet. In fact, I haven't unlocked all of them and I'm too lazy to go back through the routes to do so. I try to play to get the Vampire Ending, which is supposedly the happiest one. It's not that the tragic endings don't interest me, but like I just said, I am too lazy to skip through everything to unlock them. DiaLovers games have an easy chapter selection system, but it carries over your romance points from a previous playthrough and I can't be bothered to start from the beginning to reset it.

Ayato's Route

The random name generator told me to start with Ayato. I started the drama CDs with him, as well as the last game. It seems like I'm doomed to always pick him first. His route in MORE, BLOOD is quite similar to his Haunted Dark Bridal route, except there are more things going on. I thought it was going to have a proper story, but it was really just 80% blood sucking. The "situation" chapters all followed the same pattern as before, Yui's doing something, Ayato comes in, Ayato sucks her blood, Yui says "yamete!", rinse and repeat. The most hilarious scenario for me was when he cornered our heroine in the music room and pushes her onto the piano while people outside are very confused. Don't ask me why I found that hilarious.

It's hard for me to say whether it was better than Haunted Dark Bridal's route, because I played that a year ago when my Japanese was at a worse level. But it does feel like Ayato's a bit more angry in this one. I thought that there was hardly any romance, it was just heroine abuse until the very end when suddenly Yui's like "I love you!" and he does a complete personality flip and suddenly cares about her. I'm sure in HDB the romance wasn't that sudden... or was it? I don't know.

Yui seemed to be in love with Ayato from the start, I have no idea why though. Maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome? But Ayato constantly refers to her as "prey", but she wants to be more than just food to him. Then Ruki comes into the picture and this causes our chosen love interest to get extremely jealous, even though he doesn't really appear that often.

Ruki sucks Yui's blood once, but other than that he seemed to act nice towards her. Or he might've actually treated her horribly and I didn't pick up on it. Eventually Yui just moves into the Mukami mansion where she can have a much better life. (Also, their mansion looks way cooler than the Sakamaki one) But you'd expect then that we'd have a bit of a break from Ayato, but nope. The next chunk of the route is just filled with scenarios where he abuses her in school. If I had written it, I would've made it so he doesn't see her at all, and he ends up missing her. Then he'd realise that he's in love and goes to rescue Yui from the Mukamis like he does in the anime. But I'm not a professional writer, so what do I know.

If I were the heroine, I would've run away with Ruki much earlier on. He had more of a romantic connection with her than Ayato did! Maybe there's a bad ending where they get together instead. I thought that Yui wasn't going to be allowed out of the Mukami mansion, but nope, Ruki just let her walk straight out after she admitted her love for Ayato. What a nice guy.

By that point I was done with Ayato. I tolerated him for two thirds of the route, but now he was starting to get on my nerves. Then he went and stabbed Ruki, and I was getting more frustrated. When Yui takes him to the school hospital or whatever it's called after the attack, you can either choose to say "oh, I stabbed him" or Ruki will say he did it. Why couldn't they have just told the truth and got Ayato in trouble? But then again... Karlheinz is the school doctor so he probably wouldn't have cared what his son did.

After that, there was a dramatic love confession scene, and Ayato became all soft and romantic. At that point I just stopped being annoyed with him and gave in to his sexy voice.

The Vampire Ending was weird, I didn't understand it too well. For some strange reason Ayato turns into Sleeping Beauty, then he suddenly wakes up and marries Yui. Why he fell asleep I do not know, but I suspect Karlheinz had something to do with it...

I had fun with this one, it was quite trashy, but that's DiaLovers for you. I wanted there to be more Mukami scenes, but I've got to wait until I start their routes. It was certainly an interesting start to my MORE, BLOOD journey.


Subaru's Route

I wanted to save my all-time favourite otome boy for last, but the random name generator said otherwise. Subaru's route in Haunted Dark Bridal I loved so much, so I was hoping this one would be just as good.

And... I enjoyed myself a lot with this, in fact at times I couldn't put the game down, and it's silly to compare it to something I last replayed many months ago, but... I think I prefer Haunted Dark Bridal's Subaru route. Well, I like that MORE, BLOOD has more drama and stuff going on and the other characters actually make appearances, but the romance is a bit lacking. Yui's confession scene was pretty good, I'm not gonna lie, and I mostly loved the Vampire Ending (except for the CG), however, like Ayato's route before, there sort of wasn't enough cute romance fluffy stuff. I know this is advertised as a hardcore Do-S game, but Haunted Dark Bridal had a mixture of that and a bit of fluff.

With Subaru's route they turned up the angst and anger levels super high. I like angst more than the average person, but 99% percent of the "situation" scenes were just Subaru getting angry and punching stuff. Yes, I know that's sort of his personality, but in the last game that wasn't all he did. There was better romantic development, he got more cute moments with Yui and the romance didn't suddenly start near the end. It was still better than in Ayato's route though, I'll say that. And at least we got to witness Subaru's shirtless sprite.

But like I mentioned before, I did love some of the angst in this one. Sometimes it was a bit depressing though. Subaru's backstory is super sad for me especially. The plot was there, I didn't understand bits of it, but Kou was there. I think he was trying to steal Yui for himself, but in the end he couldn't but I don't know why. His relationship with Subaru was interesting, hopefully they might become actual friends in later games? I think they had some kind of meaningful dramatic conversation about halfway through, but I didn't understand much of what they were saying at all. At the end they had what sounded like a fistfight, it was actually pretty funny to watch.

Kou I actually thought was going to turn out to be an alright person in the end, but he's actually a scumbag. At least I got to make Yui push him at the end. He seems to act nice to her, but it's probably all fake from what I saw in the anime. I bet, no I guarantee he's going to treat her terribly in his own route. Kou's one of those people who acts all nice on the outside but behind closed doors is a nasty piece of work. But I feel like I might warm up to him. When I watched the anime I didn't like him until that one scene where he had that nightmare. Yes, I know I change my opinions on characters very quickly, but I just felt sorry for him at that point because of his tragic backstory. Isn't that what tragic backstories are meant to do, make you feel sorry for a character?

The scene in the last game where Subaru gives Yui his silver knife was repeated (but in a different location), I know it hadn't happened before in this alternate universe, but for the player we're just hearing the same stuff again. I've listened to him explain that knife three times now, in both games and the drama CD, in fact, maybe four times because I'm pretty sure it's in the anime too.

I don't know what more to say about this one, which is funny because Subaru's my favourite character. It's hard to pick a favourite scene too. At least I can say the voice acting was great, especially with the dummy head effects. But I just can't take the blood sucking seriously anymore in any of the routes, now it just makes me laugh. I know it sounds like I'm complaining a lot, but I actually liked this route, honestly.


Shu's Route

 This was the third route I played, and since three is my lucky number, I hoped that this one would be good.

Shu's so popular, but 99% of the time I forget he exists. But I do find his character quite interesting. In this route, I didn't even care about the romance at first, I just wanted to explore his friendship with Edgar/Yuma instead. The situation chapters I didn't care for that much, I wanted them out of the way so I could get to the real meat of the story.

Eventually, I did care for the romance bits, and I enjoyed them. The Shu x Yui development felt a lot better in this one than in the last two I did. There were some great scenes and at the end Shu made a cute boyfriend. I don't remember much about his HDB route, all I remember is Yui having to wake him up and force him to go to school all the time and learning the word "面倒くさい".

The CGs were actually interesting here too, which surprised me. I love the character designs for Diabolik Lovers and I generally think the art is beautiful, but I always found the CGs a bit boring because a lot of them were just "character X sucking Yui's blood". But Shu's route had some good ones.

There was a lot of drama between Shu and Yuma, and some of it I didn't understand. Near the end of the route, Yuma takes Yui to the Mukami mansion and then sets it on fire so that Shu comes. I was super confused, I thought he did it so Shu wouldn't save Yui because he would be too scared of the fire or something. I honestly thought it was Yuma doing this to be horrible, but then afterwards Yui was like "thank you so much, Yuma!" and I was very, very confused. So I read a route summary and apparently he was doing it to be nice so that Shu would save her because of love?

...I honestly thought that Yuma was supposed to be the antagonist at the end. Oops.

This route was great, but I was just slightly bored during the those non-story chapters, because the plot and all that was interesting. It also made me excited for Reiji's route, which is strange because he's an awful person. (But of course I always like those sorts of characters...)

Laito's Route

At the start I wasn't too interested in this one, I'll be quite honest with you. I've always preferred Laito as a supporting character rather than a love interest. But during the later half of the Maniac chapters, it started to get interesting and more drama filled. Before that it was mostly just Sexual Harassment: The Route. 

Yui even dies at the end, I thought I had accidentally stumbled into a bad ending, but Karlheinz just brings her back to life because Eve can't be dead or something. Kou was the featured Mukami brother of this route. He didn't do anything bad, and at the end he sort of just disappeared. 

I preferred Laito near the end of the route when he was suffering from extreme bloodlust over when he was his usual flirty self. At times his voice went deeper and his personality went all angsty, it was great. 

The situation chapters were slightly more entertaining than usual, but that didn't stop me from wanting to get straight to the meat of the route. The best one (in my opinion) was where Laito forced Yui to act like a doll. I don't know why it's my favourite. The final CG in the Vampire Ending was rather cute, too.

This one was probably better than Ayato's route, but not as good as Subaru or Shu's. On the day I finished it, I'm quite sure I spent four hours just playing the Maniac and Ecstacy parts. I don't know how it took so long, maybe it was because I decided I wanted to read some of Yui's lines out loud? 

Kanato's Route

This route... I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. Yes, there was a lot of Yui abuse and it felt more like I was babysitting a problematic child instead of trying to romance someone, but I still loved it. Kanato's one of the most abusive Sakamaki brothers and I think he seriously needs to grow up a bit (I didn't even feel sad that his beloved teddy got burnt), but I still like his character a lot. He's grown on me a lot since I first started getting into this series. 

The yandere drama in this one was top notch, I had a lot of fun with it all. (that's probably not a good thing, however) Even the dreaded situation chapters actually felt like they were progressing the story for once. I even got to see the torture room again, it hasn't made many appearances in MORE, BLOOD at all so far. My only complaint was that at the end there wasn't really much of a dramatic romance confession scene, Kanato was just like "you belong to me" and then in the ending they were suddenly a happy couple. I think I prefer the ending I got in Haunted Dark Bridal, but this one was good too. Also, why did Yui's dad suddenly try to kill her at the end there? I know he said she had been taken over by a vampire or whatever, but still, isn't that a bit out of order? 

Kanato had so many tantrums in this though, way more than he did before. But then I suppose it's because of those hardcore cravings he had for Yui's blood. I'm just glad I didn't play with my headphones too much, because there was a lot of screaming...

If I were Yui, I probably would've ran off with Azuza, but she obviously can't do that because it's not his route. He did die at the end, didn't he? It's sad, but maybe I read it wrong and he might just be unconscious? The other Mukami brothers didn't show too much of a reaction to it, so I'm guessing he's still alive. 

This route could even end up being my favourite once I've finished the game. I know a lot of people find Kanato absolutely awful, but I enjoy yandere stuff. Not because I find it hot, I just like it like a someone would a horror film. (Also sometimes I do find it slightly attractive...) I have high hopes for Kanato's routes in future games, although I bet his personality's going to be softened down now that he's in love with Yui.

Reiji's Route

Finally, we've gotten to the last of the Sakamaki brothers. I wanted the random name picker to choose him earlier, because I wanted to play his route so much. Reiji's one of my favourite boys in this franchise. I remember him being quite awful towards Shu and of course to Yui as well, but of course that didn't stop me from growing fond of him.

In the middle of this route I had to take a few week break, so some of it might not be as fresh in my memories. But like in Haunted Dark Bridal, Reiji uses a lot of big words that I cannot understand. This means that I again found the plot a bit difficult to follow at times. For example, I have no idea why on Earth he decided to take Yui and move in with the Mukamis. That scene with the CG of Reiji and Ruki discussing something, I had literally no clue as to what was going on.

I was glad that most of it took place in the Mukami mansion, because it was a bit of a change of scenery from the last five routes. (Perhaps I shouldn't have played all of the Sakamaki routes together to mix things up a bit...) The Mukamis didn't feel like antagonists in this one, they were more like friendly supporting characters. At least that's what they felt like to me. Except for Kou. He was annoying.

The romance was decent, there were plenty of cute moments with Reiji that I appreciated. I have no idea who his seiyuu is, but his voice sounds absolutely lovely. The love between him and Yui didn't just suddenly start right at the end, I could feel some progression there. Reiji wasn't that terrible or "sadistic" like before, he mainly just insulted Yui verbally. It was a breath of fresh air after what I had to deal with in Kanato's route.

I didn't mind the ending because it was quite dramatic. Reiji was like "Because I hate you, Shu, I'm going to kill Yuma!" but then Shu said "If you kill Yuma, I'll kill Yui!", which he actually attempts to do, but Reiji protects her and gets stabbed instead. There's a lot of blood, I thought I had accidentally stumbled into a bad ending where he dies. But no, he has this scene with Yui where they both admit their love for one another, then some stuff happens and I think at the end him and Shu sort of get along? If that's true, then that's good. It's nice for them to finally get along.

The Vampire Ending is a bit like Ayato's, where Reiji's asleep for a long time, but eventually he wakes up and they all live happily ever after... until the next game. It ended with a ball and I always love balls. Plus the background music was pretty.

This route I loved so much, it didn't get boring for me at all. Now I'm just interested to see what Reiji's like in future games. I heard somewhere that in Dark Fate he grows his hair, which excites me for some reason.


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I suppose now I've got to start romancing the Mukami brothers. Out of all the routes I've done so far, I'm not sure which one's my favourite yet. All I know is that it's probably not going to be Ayato's.

Yuma I am quite excited to romance, because I like him quite a lot. I wonder if it's going to be similar to his drama CD? Ruki is starting to interest me a lot more, but Azuza and Kou I am not sure about. They were mostly like antagonists in the Sakamaki routes, so perhaps the roles will be reversed this time?

Thank you for reading this review. In the next part, I will write my final opinions on MORE, BLOOD, as well as on the Mukami brothers and their routes. It's weird, in the past I've read a lot of negative opinions on this game, but I seem to be enjoying it a lot.

See you all in the next post!