Finally, after I don't know how many months, I finished this game. Of course, I did take a few week break, but it still took me forever. And these are my final thoughts on the Mukami routes. They weren't really that different from the rest of the game.
Yes, there are going to be spoilers below.
Yuma's Route
Before starting this game, Yuma was my favourite Mukami brother. I liked him so much that I went out and bought his drama CD. His route is... OK, I suppose. Perhaps I'm just feeling burnt out from the other six routes, but this one doesn't seem that different to the others.
The same as most of the others, Yuma is horrible for 90% of the route until he suddenly has a change of heart and falls in love with Yui. Is it just me, or did it feel like not that much was going on in this one? It was nice spending time in the vegetable garden and learning about his past and his reasons for wanting to become Adam and all that, but there wasn't that much of a plot. But then again, who plays Diabolik Lovers for the plot?
At one point Yuma was like "I need to talk to Shu about my past!" so he dragged Yui to the Sakamaki mansion and Reiji was a twat and said "no, he's sleeping, go home". Then I was expecting that later on there would be some dramatic confrontation between Shu and his childhood friend, but no. Yuma just dropped the subject and stopped caring.
The best part of the route was the ending where the romance started. Yuma's proposal scene was rather cute. I don't really have much else to say, which is strange considering that I literally just finished it minutes before writing this paragraph.
Kou's Route
I did not like Kou very much in this route. Yes, I am aware that the game is supposed to be full of evil, sadistic vampires, but Kou is absolutely terrible. In other routes he's not as bad, but in his own he's awful until the bit the end where he suddenly falls in love with Yui.
It took me almost TWO WEEKS to finish this one. My motivation to continue was so low. There was this one scene where there was a dog in the park and Kou said something along the lines of "stupid dog!" I didn't want to see the aftermath of that, so I put the game down and played something else.
Kou's supposed to be an idol, but you don't even see him do any idol stuff! Apart from his horrible fangirls and the one time you see him on TV, they might as well not have even bothered. If you're going to make your character a pop star, at least do something with it, like make Yui have to deal with the pressures of dating a celebrity. We don't even know anything about his idol career. Is he a soloist? A band member? I hope they touch on this in future instalments.
I suppose Kou's personality was interesting. He puts on an act, you think he's going to be sweet but then he flips and gets angry with Yui. If I knew him in real life, I would be terrified of him.
The one good thing about Kou is that he has good taste in food. I tried Vongole Bianco in a restaurant a few months ago and it tasted amazing. (One of the reasons why I like Reiji so much is probably because we share a favourite dish...)
The "story" of this route is either non existant or I didn't understand it. It just goes over Kou's tragic backstory and then there's a bit of drama with Subaru (who doesn't show up again) and there's stuff about Kou wanting to become Adam or something. To be honest, I didn't read the Vampire Ending for this one. I got the "Bruto" Ending on purpose. It's technically a bad ending, but it finishes happily with the romantic BGM, so...
I played it in the dark on my TV for maximum effect. (If you are wondering how I played my PSP on the TV, I bought these AV cables for it. The picture quality is rubbish but it works well.) It wasn't really scary, it was just so dramatic and weird that I actually found it funny. It inspired me to play some of the bad endings for the other routes.
In Kou's "Bruto" Ending, I think he kills Yui for some reason. Then he's sad and he begs Karlheinz to save her. He's like "no, sorry," and Kou offers to give up his magic eye in return. It's still not enough, so he rips out both of his eyes, meaning he'll never be able to look at the sky again. Then Yui gets revived and everyone lives happily ever after. You even get a CG which is nice. I saw the CG for the Vampire Ending, it's actually pretty but I'm still not going to play it. Otome games are supposed to let you choose what ending is canon, right? Therefore I choose the tragic one as the "true end" for Kou's route.
This route was OK, but I don't care about Kou. In the anime he grew on me, but here my opinion of him started low and ended low. At least I got some entertainment out of the bad ending. Hopefully in future games Kou will be better, but it'll be a while before I play one of them.
Ruki's Route
I'll admit that at this point I was about done with the continuous blood sucking and didn't want to hear the phrase "omae wa ore dake no mono da" (which it seems like every character in this series likes to repeat!) ever again. So it took me a while to get through Ruki's route because my motivation to continue was dropping.
This is another one of those routes where the scenario chapters don't interest me at all, but then my brain suddenly turns on for the story. There was a sort of love triangle with Ayato and Ruki but it wasn't really explored as much as I would like, which is a shame.
Ayato shows up to take Yui home in one of the chapters. As soon as he appeared on the screen, I knew his first line was going to be "Yo, Chichinashi". Even though he's probably one of the trashiest in this game, Ayato's personality is endearing to me. I was wondering if he decided to find Yui because he actually loved her, but nope, he was just like "she's my property and her blood tastes really good!" Maybe I just missed his love for her, but I'm doubting that. It's always like that with DiaLovers, I think "oh, is this character actually doing this because he cares about the heroine?" but then it's revealed that they have some kind of douchebag motive behind it.
But it would be cool if they had serious love triangle routes. I just really wanted Ayato to show sincere feelings for Yui and start a proper love triangle. It's slightly like that in the anime, I suppose. Perhaps I just want this because Ayato's actual route in this game had rubbish romance.
Yui gets locked in a dungeon for almost a third of the route, and gets called "livestock" all the time. One time Ruki says something along the lines of "you're just a cow who gets fattened up for slaughter". Nice. At least Kou's nickname for Yui was sort of cute, but Ruki's is sort of mean. Yes, I know the game's all about mean, scary vampires, but being compared to a cow doesn't appeal to me. He still calls Yui that even in the Heaven scenarios, but by then it's supposed to be cute.
The only scenario I really liked was the one where Yui goes looking for Azuza's knife. This is only because we find out the Mukamis have a pool, a massive one. The Sakamakis do too (I think only in the anime though?) but this one is a lot nicer. I would live there just so I could go swimming all the time. The mansions in this game are all so cool looking. Who cares about the hot vampires when there are rose gardens and pools and ballrooms?
Even though he killed a kitten (there was some reason behind it but it still made me sad), I like Ruki a lot. His backstory's interesting and his voice is lovely, but his route is meh. At least it picked up at the end. I got the Bruto ending by accident. It was another one of those where everyone dies. Ruki murdered the Sakamakis (a bit like in Reiji's ending) and Karlheinz burns Yui. The good ending was OK, I suppose.
Speaking of Karlheinz, I know he's not a decent person at and all that, but I sort of like him in this game. When he's pretending to be the school doctor, he's the nicest towards Yui out of everyone. I know he has ulterior motives and his niceness is probably all fake, but oh well. He does encroach a little bit too far into the lives of the students, however. In Ruki's route he just turns up outside the front door to see Yui. I don't think teachers are supposed to do that...
Anyway, the romance in this route again came suddenly. But there was a really cute line that Ruki said near the end. I don't really know why I liked it so much to be honest. A rough translation of it is "If there is an angel in this world, it would be you." It's now forever saved as a screenshot on my Memory Stick. Too bad there's no cable for me to transfer it over onto my blog. If I get to future DiaLovers games which have more romance, I'm probably going to enjoy Ruki more.
The CGs in this route were a bit meh for me. Sometimes I think that the sprites in this game look better, when usually it's the opposite. If I were to pick a favourite, it'd probably be the final kiss with the sunrise in the background. That was alright. Apparently vampires that were originally humans can go out in the sun fine, but purebloods (or whatever they're called) can't? But I don't think they burn in the sunlight, I think they just don't like it? The way vampires work in this series confuses me.
Now we only have one route left, Azuza's. Ruki's is probably better to play last because it explains the "Adam no Ringo Keikaku" (the only reason I know what "keikaku" means because of this meme) properly, whereas in other routes Yui has no idea what on Earth is going on behind the scenes.
Azuza's Route
Although Azuza's a bit different to the rest of the cast, his route still was sort of similar to the rest. I thought that was going to be a lot less blood sucking, but unfortunately I wasn't that lucky. However, this one had loads better romance, and it felt more "otome" than the others. There were a lot of cute moments instead of just endless abuse.
I always wondered why none of the other characters seemed to care about Azuza's issues, but here they sort of seem to notice them? At least at the end there was actual character development and I think he stopped self-harming? I don't know. The plot shared a few similarities with Kanato's route, like with Yui's dad suddenly appearing and wanting to kill her.
I thought Kanato was going to play more of a role, but he just disappears in the third part. Maybe he plays a role in the bad ending, but I didn't bother to play that. The good ending was alright though. It shows Yui and Azuza living a nice life together with their adopted kids. I will say that Yui felt a bit too lovesick in that one, it felt like she had been dragged out of one of the bad ends.
This was probably a good route to end the game on.
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So, what's my final opinion on Diabolik Lovers: MORE, BLOOD?
It's complicated.
I don't know if it's the language barrier or the fact that 90% of the time when I picked up my PSP I was tired, but this game was a bit of a drag in places. Sometimes I would play maybe a chapter a day, compared to usually when I can keep going for about an hour. Most of the time this would occur when I was stuck in the scenario chapters. The story chapters usually interested me enough, but the scenario chapters... I've complained about them enough, but they are annoying. I know they're supposed to be "romantic" and similar to the drama CDs, but they suck. Most of them are the same old stuff that does nothing to the plot and doesn't make me want to read on. Apparently they only get axed in the very recent game. But if they got integrated into the main story, it would be so much better in my opinion.
Yes, I know that this game is called MORE, BLOOD, but there was a lot of blood sucking. At first, I didn't mind it, but after a while it got a bit old. And most of the characters say the same stuff to Yui, so it grates on you a bit more. I suppose some people found it romantic, but usually I didn't. The last game had way less of it, unless you played Ayato's route. A lot of the time I was just so tired of M,B that I'd replay another otome instead. Usually I never do that, ever. I'm one of those people who won't touch anything else until I finish, but I broke the rule with this.
Don't get me wrong though, this game did have good moments. The bad endings were especially fun to go through. My favourite route out of the lot might actually be Reiji's. It's funny because I heard a lot of people saying that his was boring.
I did like the fact that the characters interacted more. In Haunted Dark Bridal, the routes felt sort of isolated because Yui just spent time with one character. The fact that there's a bit more going on with the plot is also a plus in my opinion.
Even though this game is a bit of a mixed bag, I still want to play Dark Fate someday. I feel like that one might be better. At least the situation chapters might have less abuse and boring blood sucking. But I suppose I could always just play Vandead Carnival, that looks like it'll be more fluffy.
Let's end the review here. This'll probably be my last PSP game. Usually I would be more sad, but I literally only got the thing a few years ago. It's not like I grew up with it. To be honest, I'm scared the disc drive will break soon anyway.
I hope you enjoyed this post, even if it was devoid of screenshots. Bye!
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