Love365 Free games for February 2019
Feb. 1st, 2020 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrIt looks like Love365 will be the game of the month at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
otome_games, so as a good mod I decided to try out all the free games for February. Alas, I didn't like any of them (except Dui, who I'd already played), but they generally weren't objectively bad, just not my jam, so hopefully this will still help people find something they like.
Here's my general Voltage/Love365 post. Links below lead to my reactions posts, where I've written one.
Note that there's some variation in when these games are free for, and what "free" means.
Irresistible Mistakes: Shunichiro: The protagonist wakes up realising she had a drunken one night stand she can't remember with one of her coworkers. Shunichiro is her cheerfully hedonistic boss, it glossed over the consent issues too much for me but he had a certain skeezy charm. This seems to be permanently free.
Irresistible Mistakes: Yukihasa: a brilliant but emotionless doctor who thinks love is a delusion and just wants to be friends with benefits. I had complicated feelings on him as a character, but the route seemed to be going in a "fix the neuro-atypical person with loving sex" direction which, no. Free for February.
Butler Until Midnight: Yuma: The protagonist finds out she's the daughter of a prestigious man and is bullied into letting a butler train her to be a refined lady. They were so manipulative and mean in the prologue it felt more like a butler themed horror game, but it's probably fun if you like domineering butlers? I've heard there's a lot of fat shaming, though. Yuma is apparently extra mean to start with but becomes nicer. Free for February.
Star-crossed: Dui This is a cute romance with the god of the star-sign Gemini, who has two sides to his personality. Free with ads until February 11.
Destind: Araya: the protagonist matches via a dating app with a younger friend from highschool who's been pining over her. He's rapey and manipulative and I'm not sure the game even saw it as a flaw D: It's "Love Choice" which means the good choices, leading to the super happy end, cost money. Normally you'd also have to wait or pay to read the episodes, and that part seems to be permanently free, but unlocking the super happy ending still costs like $30 and even people who liked the route gave it a low score for the poor value for money.
A little more spoilery detail about the routes with no posts of their own under the cut. I made it like 3 episodes in to all of them before giving up. I describe Destind: Araya at the end, and mark where it's going to start.
Irresistible Mistakes: Yukihasa:
He's kinda pushy about how she should be friends with benefits with him, but also good-naturedly accepting when she says no. They have a cute philosophical conversation about the nature of love, and he's a mix of annoyingly smug about his own cleverness and endearingly odd. Him being such an odd duck means she feels comfortable being blunt and free of the pressure to be cute/girly/chaste etc. Also, he doesn't think she was that drunk when they had sex, she just blocked it out because of embarrassment, and sure enough once he says that she remembers. And since he has no direct power over her, it's relatively unrapey for this game.
But uuurgh, she explicitly has sex with him hoping to teach him how feelings work to "fix" him. Which is messed up in both directions. I mean he's ok with her trying, and clearly does like her a lot already but ehhhh.
A unexpected detail that appealed specifically to me is that her job for this route is making ads to promote disability access! Everyone's pretty enthused about it as an important thing for society, which was nice.
Butler Until Midnight: Yuma:
THIS WAS SO CREEPY.
She's manipulated at every turn and by the end of the prologue is locked in an apartment with five butlers saying she has to accept them training her to be a proper lady for a month or she'll be homeless and lose her job. They are cheerfully unempathetic to her evident distress, and she collapses to the ground, wondering how she can live with a guy who's been this manipulative. Romantic!
I can see it being fun if you're into polite yet very domineering guys? And butlers? I guess?
**** description of the rapey route ***
Destind: Araya:
The protagonist gets drunk and angsts to him about how she had feelings for another man and had a one night stand she's regretted for ten years. So it's very clear she (a) doesn't have feelings for Araya right now, asides from some vague hey he feels nice and comfortable (b) Doesn't want to have sex outside a relationship. She's also very evidently very drunk.
But he declares his feelings and kisses her, and she blacks out. When she wakes up they're naked in bed and he responds to her horror and self reproach with with "I'll take responsibility, it'll be ok if we're dating right? I know you don't have feelings for me yet but you will." Which. WOW. THAT IS FUCKED UP. And she didn't see him as being manipulative or at fault at all and I just...NOPE.
I would skip ahead to see if the ending has him turn out to be a stalkery yandere but Love Choice games don't let you skip ahead.
otome_games, so as a good mod I decided to try out all the free games for February. Alas, I didn't like any of them (except Dui, who I'd already played), but they generally weren't objectively bad, just not my jam, so hopefully this will still help people find something they like.Here's my general Voltage/Love365 post. Links below lead to my reactions posts, where I've written one.
Note that there's some variation in when these games are free for, and what "free" means.
Irresistible Mistakes: Shunichiro: The protagonist wakes up realising she had a drunken one night stand she can't remember with one of her coworkers. Shunichiro is her cheerfully hedonistic boss, it glossed over the consent issues too much for me but he had a certain skeezy charm. This seems to be permanently free.
Irresistible Mistakes: Yukihasa: a brilliant but emotionless doctor who thinks love is a delusion and just wants to be friends with benefits. I had complicated feelings on him as a character, but the route seemed to be going in a "fix the neuro-atypical person with loving sex" direction which, no. Free for February.
Butler Until Midnight: Yuma: The protagonist finds out she's the daughter of a prestigious man and is bullied into letting a butler train her to be a refined lady. They were so manipulative and mean in the prologue it felt more like a butler themed horror game, but it's probably fun if you like domineering butlers? I've heard there's a lot of fat shaming, though. Yuma is apparently extra mean to start with but becomes nicer. Free for February.
Star-crossed: Dui This is a cute romance with the god of the star-sign Gemini, who has two sides to his personality. Free with ads until February 11.
Destind: Araya: the protagonist matches via a dating app with a younger friend from highschool who's been pining over her. He's rapey and manipulative and I'm not sure the game even saw it as a flaw D: It's "Love Choice" which means the good choices, leading to the super happy end, cost money. Normally you'd also have to wait or pay to read the episodes, and that part seems to be permanently free, but unlocking the super happy ending still costs like $30 and even people who liked the route gave it a low score for the poor value for money.
A little more spoilery detail about the routes with no posts of their own under the cut. I made it like 3 episodes in to all of them before giving up. I describe Destind: Araya at the end, and mark where it's going to start.
Irresistible Mistakes: Yukihasa:
He's kinda pushy about how she should be friends with benefits with him, but also good-naturedly accepting when she says no. They have a cute philosophical conversation about the nature of love, and he's a mix of annoyingly smug about his own cleverness and endearingly odd. Him being such an odd duck means she feels comfortable being blunt and free of the pressure to be cute/girly/chaste etc. Also, he doesn't think she was that drunk when they had sex, she just blocked it out because of embarrassment, and sure enough once he says that she remembers. And since he has no direct power over her, it's relatively unrapey for this game.
But uuurgh, she explicitly has sex with him hoping to teach him how feelings work to "fix" him. Which is messed up in both directions. I mean he's ok with her trying, and clearly does like her a lot already but ehhhh.
A unexpected detail that appealed specifically to me is that her job for this route is making ads to promote disability access! Everyone's pretty enthused about it as an important thing for society, which was nice.
Butler Until Midnight: Yuma:
THIS WAS SO CREEPY.
She's manipulated at every turn and by the end of the prologue is locked in an apartment with five butlers saying she has to accept them training her to be a proper lady for a month or she'll be homeless and lose her job. They are cheerfully unempathetic to her evident distress, and she collapses to the ground, wondering how she can live with a guy who's been this manipulative. Romantic!
I can see it being fun if you're into polite yet very domineering guys? And butlers? I guess?
**** description of the rapey route ***
Destind: Araya:
The protagonist gets drunk and angsts to him about how she had feelings for another man and had a one night stand she's regretted for ten years. So it's very clear she (a) doesn't have feelings for Araya right now, asides from some vague hey he feels nice and comfortable (b) Doesn't want to have sex outside a relationship. She's also very evidently very drunk.
But he declares his feelings and kisses her, and she blacks out. When she wakes up they're naked in bed and he responds to her horror and self reproach with with "I'll take responsibility, it'll be ok if we're dating right? I know you don't have feelings for me yet but you will." Which. WOW. THAT IS FUCKED UP. And she didn't see him as being manipulative or at fault at all and I just...NOPE.
I would skip ahead to see if the ending has him turn out to be a stalkery yandere but Love Choice games don't let you skip ahead.
