I honestly adore Kissed by the Baddest Bidder. Even though I've played loads of expensive, fully voiced, plot heavy otoge, I keep coming back to this series. Before yesterday, I had played Baba, Eisuke and Soryu's routes, as well as Soryu's epilogue. Each one was great in my opinion, although it's been a while so I can't remember the plots all too well.
So last night, I was replaying old games. Then I began to really want to replay Soryu's route. So I opened Love365, like you do, and I found out that one of the routes was currently available for free. It was a route I wanted to play for a while, so I was like why not? And that's how Soryu got pushed aside for the Mad Hatter.
The Mad Hatter is the bloke who holds the auction that the MC gets sold at. I believe he was originally nothing more than a side character, until the Voltage people were like "get this man a route!" So he became a love interest, but only in the Party version of the app. I think that was a version of the game with chapter tickets and avatar dressing up. But when Love 365 rolled around, you were able to purchase the whole thing. But you can't get this route on the Nintendo Switch port of the game.
When I found out the Mad Hatter had a route, I was a bit surprised. But then after reading the synopsis, it looked quite interesting. So when it was out for free, I seized my chance like the freeloader I am, and read through it all. The adverts weren't even that annoying, it was just like when you watch TV and a break comes on.
And this is my review of the route. Of course, there are going to be spoilers, so brace yourself if you haven't played it yet. I'm going to do a basic summary of the plot, but I'll probably miss a lot of details, sorry about that.
The Mad Hatter is an interesting, and sometimes relatable character to me. In the other routes he's just there occassionally, he doesn't hang out with the main gang of love interests. His job, like I mentioned earlier, is holding the black market auctions that go on in the basement of the Tres Spades.
He also lives in the basement of the hotel, in this pretty room with a fake sky and a very low-res background. There are these two random blokes he hired off of Craigslist to be his March Hare and Dormouse, but they end up nicking his stuff. The Mad Hatter puts on his makeup everyday and spends time in his room having tea parties and pretending to be the character he's dressed up as.
When he buys the MC, he calls her Alice and makes her live with him and do his housework. The heroine is actually decent in this route, I liked her quite a bit. At first she's really skeptical of the Mad Hatter and his weird lifestyle. He's been living in the basement for four years without going outside. I dunno if he pays rent or if Eisuke just lets him stay for free.
Of course, any mysterious character like this has a tragic backstory. The Mad Hatter is actually called Rhion, but I knew that because I had heard about this route before hand. He's some duke from England, but his parents died when he was young so he had to live with his grandmother. During his childhood he dealt with a lot of pressure and abuse from her, so he used fairy tales and cosplay as escapism. Rhion eventually couldn't take his family anymore, so he went to Japan to live in Eisuke's hotel.
Did I mention that he also has a cat called Cheshire? Even though she doesn't have a sprite, she's still super adorable. Sorry, I just love cats too much...
Once the heroine starts living with Rhion, she uncovers bits and pieces of his true personality. When he's the Mad Hatter, he's confident and eccentric, but when he's Rhion he's timid and cute. She tries hard to get him out of the basement, and there's this scene where they go to the hotel Casino and Ota is truly awful to him. I did not like Ota here, he was horrible throughout the entire route.
Rhion also has this brother (who is a recoloured version of his sprite) who has been looking for him. They both fight in the hotel lobby, but then in the next meeting they make up. Oh yeah, at the end there's a sudden earthquake and then a fire that they have to deal with. That was a bit random, I know they wanted to add drama, but still... At least the heroine didn't get kidnapped this time. She did get attacked by crazy Mad Hatter fangirls though. Why does it seem like every otome has crazy fangirls in it?
In the ending I got (the Happy End), Rhion and the MC live happily ever after. I think he goes to confront his family in England, but we don't get to see this happening. It was romantic and all that, but it just ended abruptly.
I know I glossed over the plot a bit, but it was honestly quite good, maybe even better than I expected. The problem with me and unvoiced games is that I read them too quickly. This reduces the effectiveness of the dramatic moments. But the romance was great, and just fluffy enough for me. Honestly, I needed some fluff like this.
Rhion is absolutely adorable, he had plenty of moments with the MC that were so cute. He's one of the few characters that would probably get along with me well in real life. His problems I could sort of relate with sometimes, especially the escapism and all that. I can understand why he'd want to lock himself underground like that. Who wouldn't want to live in that hotel though? It sounds so grand, I'd want to live there. But not in the basement. Maybe the penthouse cause it has the best view.
But we actually have a lot in common, like we hate cold vegetables as well as cucumbers in sandwiches, we drink a lot of tea, we're shy, and our writing in English is way more beautiful than our Japanese writing. Seriously though, everyone compliments my handwriting, it's all curly and joined up, but when I write in Japanese it looks like a toddler did it.
In the future, I'd like to see Rhion's relationships with characters other than the MC more. Like with his brother (they could've probably got more scenes together) and Eisuke. Maybe even Ota too. The other characters didn't play a too big role in this route, but I did like Mamoru. His character never interested me too much, but he seemed decent and caring for the MC here.
The art was OK, it's just standard Voltage art. The CGs in the original version of this route were designed for a portrait screen, and the Love 365 version is in landscape. This means that a part of the image gets cut off! I found this webpage that shows the original, uncropped art. You can even see Cheshire in the corner of one of the images!
I think the music was different compared to the main routes. It sounded nice though. To be honest, I actually like the jazzy tunes they use for KBTBB. It fits the theme nicely. The translation was OK, it had a few errors as well as a line from the MC that really cracked me up. It's something like "So the Mad Hatter's from England. His Japanese is really good... I wonder if he's British?" Please let that be a mistranslation, because if the writers actually wrote that...
It looks like Rhion has an epilogue. Maybe I'll play it one day. But I'm supposed to be playing through DiaLovers MORE, BLOOD right now, but it's sort of getting a bit samey and slightly maybe boring. At least this route was a nice breath of fresh air amongst the endless blood sucking and Yui abuse.
This concludes my review. Thanks for reading. This blog is almost three years old now. Should I bake a cake or something to celebrate?
My next post is going to be the second part of my M,B review, but it's probably not going to be around for a while yet...
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