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Dungeons and Lesbians, Loneliness, Beware of the Villainess!, Takane to Hana, I Hear The Sunspot
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Looking at the list of stuff I want to review, there's a bunch I didn't super enjoy, so I'm going to silo them off into their own post, and people who only want recs can scroll by.

I'm feeling depressed right now which makes me pickier/more negative, and many of these seem plenty enjoyable to other people. So maybe you'll find a rec in here anyway ;)

Below: Misc little puzzle games, Obey Me, Blue Flag, Mage & Demon Queen, Rainbow Days
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I felt inspired to collect all the romance games for a poll, then decided I couldn't be bothered with the poll after all, but since I'd already made the list here it is anyway!

EDIT: So the number of games has doubled and I am too lazy to go through them all, but have added the ones I noticed.
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In 1912, an earnest Japanese girl from the country slowly gets to know a mysterious horror writer, and learns about what hides beneath the masks people wear.

This was mostly pretty good, it was exploring Japanese literary tropes and historical prejudices in ways I'm sure went over my head a lot, but I got the gist enough to enjoy it, especially the way it had fun with some gothic and fairytale tropes I did recognise. It reminded me a little of Northanger Abbey, though playing everything a lot more straight, and with a rather heavy handed PREJUDICE IS BAD message.

It's free with ads on Love365 for the next few days.

Content note: Xenophobia. Also the game's prologue has consent issues, though this route only implies them vaguely in a flashback, and the love interest himself is fine.
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A maid at a fancy casino finds herself sold in a black-market auction to her mega-rich, cold-hearted boss!!

This is free this month, and didn't seem like my sort of thing at ALL but I got caught up in the prologue and ended up playing the whole route. It didn't really work for me as a romance, but I'm not into this sort of thing, and it was fun as ridiculous melodrama. I can see it being enjoyable for people into stockholm syndromey M/f with asshole LIs who are sorta squishy deep deep down but even at the end are still all "I own you, do as I say".

It was way less rapey than I expected though, no worse than your average otome. If anything I can see people with a "man literally owns woman" kink being a little disappointed. I mean there's still consent issues and a few sexy dubcon kisses but considering the premise it's pretty tame.

(Making a separate post cos it got long)
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It looks like Love365 will be the game of the month at 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.
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I finished the Shinichi route of After School Affairs and quite liked it. Here's the previous post I wrote about After School Affairs. This route is free for the rest of January.

I tried the prologue of My Sweet Bodyguard, and the American remake To Love and Protect, and didn't click with either of them, though it was fun to compare.

I played the free Nagito route from Scandal in the Spotlight, about being a ghostwriter to a boyband, and it was compelling, but I'm not sure it was good. It's also free for the rest of January.

One thing I'm liking in all the stories I've played so far is the MC having a supportive female best friend. It's a bit of a cliche, but I like how it affects the dynamic.
( No spoilers, just more details )

So as I mentioned before, I played some of Love365's "Irresistible Mistakes", about a woman who wakes up realising she had a drunken one night stand with one of her coworkers and DOESN'T REMEMBER WHICH.

If that premise appeals to you and you have a high tolerance for consent issues and heteronormativity you may have fun, and Shunichiro, the main guy I discuss, is free right now.

Here's the trailer, which is all about Shunichiro (the actual game is not animated and you don't usually see the main character)

Anyway, here are the somewhat edited reactions I made to my friend over discord.

Content notes: Consent issues. Spoilers for Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker because I made a joke I am too happy with to cut.
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So! Voltage Inc is a Japanese phone romance game company with an app called Love 365. There's a US off-shoot, Voltage USA, with it's own app Lovestruck which has different games and a slightly different pay structure.

I've been playing around with both of them and having a lot of fun! I'm compiling a list of all the games I try at the end of the post.

From what I can see, both always have female protagonists, and have "free" romance phone games that encourage you to spend money but you can genuinely have fun with for free by slowly accruing currency or playing free games. They all also have autoplay, so you don't have to click too much.

Voltage USA:
Mildly diverse, has some games with female or even non-binary love interests.
You mostly spend money to avoid inconvenience, and have to go through the same rigmarole to replay episodes.

Voltage Inc:
VERY tropey and heterosexual, like interactive illustrated Harlequin romances.
You generally pay for a route outright, and can replay it at will, but there's some with the "pay to avoid inconvenience" model. Has free games.

All my posts about love 365 games

No spoilers below, just talking in general about what games I tried and how it all works.
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The pretty art drew me back into trying Julian's route and...well! I can articulate why I didn't like that, and suspect that freemium dating sims of this sort aren't ever going to work for me. I went in not expecting to like it very much and was still disappointed.

The story is basically linear, choices affect the player's experience and the ending but the optional scenes don't contain any real plot. And the really appealing, fanservicey, romantic moments cost money. A lot of money.

Not only is the basic, free story unsatisfying, but I'm pretty sure that even if I paid the HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS required to see all the paid scenes, the story wouldn't hold together emotionally. I only saw one paid scene, but it feels unavoidable that since they can't affect anything plotwise they are emotionally static, bursts of romantic candy devoid of any further value to the story.

Which is frustrating because I really liked Julian's character. He's a self-hating cursed masochistic bi plague doctor inspired by Jeff Goldblum, and suffers beautifully.

Finally: even though the player character's gender is customisable, and I was playing mine as masculine leaning non binary, the dynamic drew heavily on het romance tropes. Fun tropes, mostly, and nothing contradicted the PC being a guy or non binary. And obviously this is fine for anyone playing a woman. But it made me feel a little weird. (You would think I'd enjoy the female LIs more, but they seemed very...toothless f/f as written by het writers)

Spoilery discussion of Julian's route below the cut. I only played through the first two and a half chapters of fourteen.
( Spoilers for Julian's route )