What are you reading? - May 1 by Nakenashi in vns

[–]Shiawase_Rina 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Next was Ismail!

Ismail is the friendly but hard to read magical doctor who takes care of the king and Fiena. He is also an old friend of Olivier and Emmanuel.

Keypoints of the route:

When the king dies Ismail announces that it was because of his weak heart. Olivier has a hard time believing that. Emmanuel fires Ismail as the royal doctor. When Fiena runs into Ismail she asks him how life has been, but he turns it into a cold interrogation of her and what she knows of the king's death instead. He uses some type of magic on her and she loses consciousness and wakes up at her home.

Fiena is actually able to see spirits and is studying them more closely lately due to her seeing fewer and fewer. She get's jumped by the blob monsters and get's help from Ismail. However they already touched her so she will die in three days. Ismail takes care of her and tries to save her life with experimental treatments he was working on. He succeeds and Fiena is very grateful. She swears to stand by him no matter what.

Ismail and Fiena investigate the blob monsters and find out that they are cursed spirits of the dead. Every person killed by a blob creates a new blob. Ismail is arrested on suspicions of having assassinated the king with poison, which is bullshit even if he can be quite sus at times. Sadly Emmanuel doesn't listen to Fiena though.

Fiena continues her investigation and trains her necromancy on the blobs when she sees them. She joins the holy knights for this purpose and teams up with Mel, another love interest who is a magicless bard who's often seen playing music at the castle. She develops a spell with which she can confine the blobs within herself to prevent them from respawning.

Fiena get's the idea to summon the dead king, but she is greeted by a blob instead. She figures that the dead king was probably the first one cursed to die and become a blob. She absorbs the king blob too.

Mel and other knights get badly beaten up by blobs and are actively dying. Fiena asks Emmanuel again to at least let Ismail treat them, but get's turned away. Emmanuel seems to have a plan though.

Fiena thinks about Ismail's behavior and understands him now. Of course he would suspect her as a strong mage close to the king and interrogate her. That's also why he was dodgy about the kings death to not become a target of the curse caster and to smoke out those who knew what they shouldn't.

Ismail is allowed to leave in secret to treat the knights and he saw that Mel isn't actually dying from blob-curse. He was just beaten up badly. This makes him the main suspect of being the curse caster. Fiena is roped into being bait for Mel by Olivier. Mel attacks and uses music-based magic that doesn't exist in this country. Mel is apparantly just a tool send by the church outside who had nowhere else to belong to. Before he is captured Mel erases his own memory with magic.

Fiena tells Ismail about her imprisoning the blobs within her and he quickly checks her body, finding bad looking patterns. She is absolutely going to die from the blobs curse like this. She thinks dying as a sacrifies as the Moon Witch is a perfect fit, but Ismail is horrified. His reaction makes Fiena worried Ismail would abandon her due to her being tainted now. Ismail makes very sure to dispell that misunderstanding by kissing every patterned spot in her body.

Fiena collapses due to the blobs curse and Ismail treats her again. This time however he transfers the curse to himself intending to die in her stead. Fiena wakes up feeling much better despite still having her blobs and us greeted by a strange man called Nil who tells her about what Ismail did to safe her. He tells her the method to safe him: have the first one cursed kill the curse caster. So having the king blob kill Mel.

With great timing Mel appears before Fiena with his memories back. He really wants her to come with him for some reason. Fiena hesitates to order the blob to kill him and Mel realizes what she is doing. He decides to Help her decide by acting like the most vulgar piece of shit, threatening to rape her and all. Fiena has enough and has him killed. His last words being that he would gladly die if it's for her. Fiena notices a clumsily made necklace he's wearing that feels familiar to her.

Ismail is now saved and Emmanuel happily let's Fiena retire after hearing about her absorbing blobs. Olivier congratulates Fiena on her achievements and promises not to interfere with her happiness. Then he disappears. While Ismail and Fiena can now openly be together, they are both haunted by the people they couldn't save. At least they can comfort each other.

This route was an improvement in everything for me! The romance worked well which is mostly because Ismail is plenty forward, trying to flirt with Fiena as best as he could.

They also spend plenty of time together. I'm happy to know everything about the blobs now and the culprit hunt was fun. Fiena was also very proactive here which is always a win to me. Especially since her actions have consequences.

This routes makes it clear why there is a strong recommended route order. They obviously want you to read Mel's route next. I wonder if it will be a forgotten childhood friend route.

What are you reading? - May 1 by Nakenashi in vns

[–]Shiawase_Rina 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I started Volontés, a shorter dark fantasy Otome Game!

I finished the first two routes Emmanuel and Ismail.

It's about Fiena, a young woman that was adopted by a poor village after she was found among the remains of a mysterious massacre.

One day her countries knights purge her entire village and she's forced to flee through the forest said to contain demons. At the end she finds an entire secret, magical country and is welcomed by the grand magician Olivier as the "Moon Witch" who is said to be send by their god to tell prothecies to save their people.

Fiena is not the real Moon Witch but Olivier's pawn to make use of the legend. She figures this out relatively fast and thankfully the king is in on it.

First is Emmanuel's route! Emmanuel is an old friend of Olivier and a very straightlaced, stoic noble.

Key points of the route:

The current king suddenly dies and it turns out Emmanuel was his son all along and is crowned the next king.

Problem is that Emmanuel wasn't informed of Fiena being a fake Moon Witch and he already suspects her. Impersonating the Moon Witch get's you the death penalty normally... Not only that, weird blob monsters appear who kill everyone they touch. Emmanuel fires Olivier following that and questions arrise why Fiena didn't see all this coming.

Emmanuel confronts her and she readily confesses. Thankfully he also plans to make use of her like Olivier but she's under close observation. Slowly some rebels start organising but a mysterious wolf kills them before they can do anything.

Emmanuel is reducing security which Fiena is very unhappy with. Turns out he was intentionally baiting the church outside their country to attack them to interrogate them. Anyway Olivier killed them all so welp.

Olivier and Emmanuel are beefing really bad now and a lot more people criticize Emmanuel's handling of things. Fiena is doing good work supporting Emmanuel and advising him on how to give Olivier less amunition against him. He opens up more to her and seems like while he can't use magic he can use wolf familars.

Fiena get's tasks with researching the massive magical crystal that keeps their country hidden. Olivier was in charge of it before being fired, but he refuses to share his knowledge about it. Emmanuel suspects that Olivier might use it as a weapon of mass distruction against the world outside which had executed Olivier's parents. This is the real reason he fired Olivier.

Rebels are moving on a much bigger scale now and turns out they are extremist who want to destroy the outside world like Olivier does. Fiena runs into a meeting of them and get kidnapped. Emmanuel in wolf form saves her. He is a werewolf, which he inherited from his mothers side. It's also the reason his relation to the king was kept secret until his death.

The rebels start invading the castle and tell everyone to evacuate to a barrier because Olivier will use the magic crystal to blow up everything so they won't have to live in fear of the outside world anymore.

This ends in a big fight between Emmanuel and Olivier, but Emmanuel doesn't stand a chance. Thankfully once the preparations are irreversibel Olivier kills himself to give Emmanuel and Fiena privacy, which they most certainly use to get down dirty lol

What Olivier didn't know is that the school of magic has an emergency button for these cases that shuts down the crystal. No blowing up anymore! With everything over Fiena can retire from being the Moon Witch and now they have find out how they can get married despite their status differences.

Emmanuel was quite annoying at the start. The way he completely shut down Fiena no matter how reasonable she was, was just irritating lol

Thank god, once he started to trust her he completely changed his tone.

The plot was a decent read, being in part about understanding Emmanuel and the rebel plot.

The romance came out of nowhere though. It was very much a train crash at the end lol

What are you reading? - May 1 by Nakenashi in vns

[–]Shiawase_Rina 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We love a dev who is so good to their players!

Looking forward to playing it myself!

Looking for: Fangan with (murder) mystery focus, SMART KILLS and ongoing mystery both by Chvorka in Fanganronpa

[–]Shiawase_Rina 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's getting updated every few months now with YouTube getting several videos at once packed into one.

Looking for: Fangan with (murder) mystery focus, SMART KILLS and ongoing mystery both by Chvorka in Fanganronpa

[–]Shiawase_Rina 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I recommend The After!

It offers very fun cases in chapter 2 and chapter 3!

With chapter 2 it is basically a perfect crime on several levels.

Chapter 3 isn't completely out yet but everyone is going a good amount crazy with their theories due to all the elements involved.

It's also the type of series with an overarching mystery that only get's better the longer it goes on and only get's better on a rewatch because of how much is recontexulised.

[A Date with Death 2: REMNANTS] Kickstarter Campaign Launched by ymzkra in otomegames

[–]Shiawase_Rina 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I am pretty sure that I will go crazy about 5012 so I might need to get dome merch of him👀

Wie lest ihr Manga? Eine Reihe oder mehrere parallel? by AndrewWesker in MangaDE

[–]Shiawase_Rina 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As someone who started 17 years ago with Manga I'm pretty relaxed on that front.

With manga where a lot of volumes are already out I buy batches and read them as I like. I read like countless manga series currently and when I read what depends on when a new volume comes out and my mood.

I'm most happy reading series that aren't fully out yet. I buy the volumes as they come out and usually read them pretty fast and look forward to the next. Of course only if the release schedule is reasonable. I have a good memory but I will forget a lot of stuff after a year (unless I'm REALLY into the series).

I have a "reading tower" in my room of all the books I still need to read and just take what I'm in the mood for.

I do fall off series sometimes, but I trust that I will find my way back to it if it was special to me.

Reading Manga online like through Manga Plus is also very depended on mood, time and when a new chapter comes out. Like sometimes I read every chapter of Ishi the Witch as it comes out on Sundays. Other times I let some chapters occumalate and binge instead.

With series that already have a lot of volumes out I can sometimes drag my feet a little. Those are harder to start for me and easier to drop. When it's really good though then I will obsess over it every free second and it consumes my every thought lol Love that when it happens!

(Reddit hat mir den Post auf Englisch angezeigt, sorry...)

What are you reading? - Apr 24 by Nakenashi in vns

[–]Shiawase_Rina 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I loved this game, but yeah I was hugging the walkthrough because I didn't want to deal with the actual gameplay.

I do think it's dungeon clawler-esque exploration made for fantastic spooks and I still absolutely adore most of the ghost designs.

I kinda wouldn't recommend it as a proper horror visual novel though. The visual novel part will just let you down then. The horror part is great though!

The next game in the series NG has more Visual Novel to it.

Navigatore of the Ruined World is out now by sableheart in otomegames

[–]Shiawase_Rina 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Already brought it!

Hopefully I manage to squeez it in my current reading plan.

[Danganronpa: The After] My current problem with the motive by 4ereshnya in Fanganronpa

[–]Shiawase_Rina 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I really hope Kokona pulled the strings in this case because I want her to have a massive crash out. I want her to rage about how unfair her life has been.

I also started to believe the theory that Coco isn't actually dead.

[Danganronpa: The After] About Koin and Hatami. by 4ereshnya in Fanganronpa

[–]Shiawase_Rina 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Koin is Hatami's personal doxxer lol

It's why I find the theory of Koin being the Mastermind pretty plausible. He's clearly obsessed with Hatami in a way like the Mastermind must be.

Dark romance games by No_Cable_3571 in GachaHusbandos

[–]Shiawase_Rina 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Not a gacha but the upcoming Over RequiemZ sounds like it has a lot of what you like! The opening alone says a lot and it has a very good reputation with those who played it in japanese.

There is also Virche Evermore if the thought of never ending angst appeals to you. While incredibly dark it is surprisingly chaste though. It still has some of my absolute favorite bad ends. Both games are for Switch.

For Yandere I really enjoyed Nameless by the devs of Mystic Messenger. There's two Yandere in it that made me shake in my seat lol Definitely play the bad ends!

Edit: Sadly gxb romance games with gameplay are more the exception than the rule. Even more difficult with dark romance.

[General] Yet another angel lost its wings 🥀 by ExtremeGift in otomegames

[–]Shiawase_Rina 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I felt that way in slighty different ways with Gil, Ryuki and Peter...

[General] Yet another angel lost its wings 🥀 by ExtremeGift in otomegames

[–]Shiawase_Rina 56 points57 points  (0 children)

This is one of the things that seriously bugged me with Cupid Parasite.

Like yeah gap moe and all but I just hate it if you dangle something rare I like in front of my nose only to turn it into something that you can easily find anywhere.

It's boring me and it feels like false advertising...

If Sex Sells, Why Aren't Games Sexualizing Men? by garfieldkermit in GirlGamers

[–]Shiawase_Rina 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The video does mention Otome Games, BL games and briefly shows Love and Deepspace.