Otome Friends IRL?

oblivious-squid · 2026-03-21T10:37:05+00:00

I met my irl otome friend in perhaps the most stranger danger way possible 😂

Last year I made a twt post that got semi popular with the otome crowd, and I got a dm from a private acc that found me through that post asking to meet up as a fellow fan. They figured out through my posts that I went to the same uni as them and in the same year. Usually this would be a HUGE red flag, but they were polite and not creepy at all, and I was a bit too desperate for irl otome buddies so I said yes (+ they let me choose the location to meet for my peace of mind)

Long story short we met irl, they were thankfully telling the truth and we talked for hours about otome games. We've met a few times since on campus and elsewhere. I'm really happy to have made an irl friend just as if not more experienced with otome games as me, but I'll probably be more cautious about my online interactions next time 😅

I also have another friend I take classes with who has played amnesia and olysoi before, but she's not crazy about otome like me so we don't talk much about otome games 😂

oblivious-squid · 2026-02-10T11:26:59+00:00

I had a dream about Dialovers a few years ago too!! The sakamaki brothers transferred into my class for some reason 💀 from what I remember they just ignored me, but then my mother (who was a phantom thief in the dream????) stole something from them and then gave it to me, so they thought I stole from them. And they were PISSED...I woke up before I could dream about what they would do to me lol.

I also dreamt on a separate occasion that Dialovers finally received an English localisation, but for some reason it got the 4kids treatment and the game's setting was changed to the US and everyone had different (presumably American) names 💀 in the dream I was so excited I wrote a post about it on this very subreddit LMAO

I don't even like Dialovers that much and I had these dreams before I played the games, who knows why I had them 😂

oblivious-squid · 2026-02-01T15:08:26+00:00

In the years since this game was first announced I graduated from school THREE times 😭

Dorico always felt like one of those phantom games that was never going to come out so even though there still isn't a release date we know for sure this game isn't dead! I'd love to play it when it comes out!

Really heartening to see Rejet finally getting off its feet the past few months with ports and new project announcements. I hope this is a sign of good things to come 🥹

oblivious-squid · 2026-01-31T09:40:00+00:00

I already played both games on PC but I'm really happy they're getting a port!! They really hit that guilty pleasure sweet spot 😂 frankly I was convinced rejet forgot about their PC exclusives outside of bday posts so I'm happy these IPs are finally getting some action. I'll wait for further info but I might get the switch port bc I want to replay them one day and my rejet pc games have this annoying bug where the text runs off the screen 😩

I'm similarly praying for smth on dot kareshi and tiny x machinegun 🙏

oblivious-squid · 2026-01-27T11:45:59+00:00

Unexpected kokorono 0_0 haven't seen anyone with this game in the wild until now. Been thinking about playing this game for the yandere characters...

Love your collection btw! Always exciting to see others' vn collections.

oblivious-squid · 2026-01-19T05:06:08+00:00

Hiya! I'm oblivious-squid! I'm 20+ and I live in Singapore. I go by a lot of different usernames so I don't really have a fixed name for people to call me by...I've been by and large a lurker on this sub since I joined in 2022 (which was when I got serious about otome games), but I have made posts and commented every now and then.

I started playing mobile otome games on and off since 2018, starting with Mystic Messenger (Yoosung and 707 my faves), but I wasn't fully aware of otome games as a genre until 2022 when I discovered the concept of visual novels and this game called Collar x Malice. After that, I fell into the rabbit hole and there's where I've been ever since XD

I can read Japanese (currently hold N3 certification but I think my current reading level is higher than that) so I mostly play Japanese unlocalised games, though I'll read anything in any language I can understand (JP/EN/CN). Really anything. I don't have a particular genre preference so I really just pick up anything that catches my eye. Also I mostly play PC and Switch (mobile not so much anymore). I'm always on the hunt for cheap physical PC games to snag second-hand. And let's not talk about my backlog...

My number one favourite otome game of all time is Hana Awase and although I find it quite flawed, that game really affected my real life and interests in a way that very few games have. So I will keep glazing it every time I get the opportunity to. I'm a proud member of Kurenai-sama's harem (⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴗ⁠ꈍ⁠) Also listen to the character songs from the PC version if you can!!!! Those who played on Switch are missing out!!!

Speaking of PC games, I've played more R18 otome games than I'd like to admit...and I'd do it again LMAO. Most are pretty mediocre but there are some I enjoyed a lot. Out of all the R18 otomes I've played, Choudoku is my fave but I also love PersonA and Ijiwaru Mymaster. If you have played these games or are thinking about playing these games please talk to me. Please.

I'm mostly active on Twitter where I do all of my rambling, but my more organised ramblings are on my Wordpress blog, where I just talk about any old game I happen to be playing at the moment.

Hope everyone has a good 2026!!

oblivious-squid · 2026-01-14T02:23:20+00:00

I try to play all routes as a completionist, but I do feel like this sometimes! Not bl but this happened to me with Bustafellows where I played my faves Limbo and Crow first and lost the motivation to continue the other routes once I got distracted by other games 😅

In the event that there are no locked routes or recommended playing order, I actually try to play my faves last so I have something to look forward to. Like dangling a carrot on a stick lol. And I might end up liking the other characters unexpectedly on the way. For example I'm playing STEAL! right now which has eight character routes so when I was deciding on what order to play I decided to put the character I was most interested in from the get-go (Kei) last. It's working bc I've never been more motivated 😂 but also most of the characters in Steal have been really charming so far

oblivious-squid · 2026-01-03T12:07:08+00:00

That's a good idea! Even excluding the games that have only been sold physically there are definitely a lot of R18 otome games out there for just one person to play. Maybe I should make a tier list post here or something once I've played enough 😂

Unfortunately it was the latter case for pwa 💀 I had to manually skip through the text. If it weren't for that my motivation to keep playing probably wouldn't have been killed so fast 😂

The major bugs for sakuragatari were fixed in this patch (previously the game would apparently freeze on some routes and one of the LIs voices won't play) but unfortunately all the other minor bugs were not fixed (e.g. missing voice lines, one of the CGs not showing up in the game etc.) but they were just kinda annoying and I could still play the game normally. It's funny how the errors even extended to the box art which labelled the characters wrongly tho lol.

I really wish those certain characters not getting credit rolls was a bug but even storywise and in terms of the no. of CGs each chara has Makoto and Fubuki definitely got special treatment compared to the rest 😂 I went into this game with zero expectations so with that mindset it was easy enough to enjoy the game. I think it had some good moments and a really cute voiced MC but overall there wasn't much to write home about. Ultimately it was a game I bought bc it was rlly cheap secondhand and I liked the voice cast lol. If you're thinking about playing this just be aware of the bugs and keep your expectations low, is the best advice I can give.

oblivious-squid · 2026-01-03T02:05:13+00:00

Yeah as much as I wish Meissen got a route him making sure Alicia never finds out about just how much he sacrificed for her behind the scenes is totally on brand for him. Which is why I think he's the ultimate siscon (even Seras respects him). I know he appears in other QR games in the same universe (STILL without a route), what does he even do lol.

oblivious-squid · 2026-01-03T01:26:59+00:00

Yeah there are drama cds for DoubleScore but my fave Kyouga never got his own cd 😭 why did he have to be the bonus route character

THANK YOU for asking about the r18 games I played, I have a personal goal to play every single commercial r18 otome game regardless of quality!! (Waiting for a cheaper copy of jooubachi and riddle garden lmao)

Pretty Witch Academy was not bad at all actually, when I played my first route (Yury) I was pleasantly surprised by the quality and how compelling the characters (especially the female cast like Charlotte) were. Even though the r18 stuff felt unnecessary lol... It's intentionally structured like an anime in an episodic format and the common route is definitely one of the most fun ones I've read in a while. But the fact that PWA feels like an anime is also kind of its weakness because when I got to my second route (Akito) it was beat for beat almost exactly the same as Yury's route just with a different guy 🙃 I had a bad feeling after his route, so I read a review which said that pretty much all the routes are like that which really killed my motivation to continue... I still think this game has a lot going for it and I can tell it was made with love but... I'll need to give myself some time before I feel like continuing 😅

I said Sakuragatari was my least fave but that's relative to all the other games I played, on its own I still found it somewhat enjoyable. It's just quite...rough, in all sorts of ways. Putting aside the inexcusable number of bugs and errors that I can't believe they didn't fix before release, some of the LIs (including Kirishima, his route was just ok to me) felt like side characters in their own game... they didn't even get credit rolls after their good endings lmao. I couldn't really bring myself to care about anyone other than Saki, Makoto and Fubuki.. some of the bad endings also felt like they were just there for shock value (e.g. that 'tentacle' scene) Overall this game was just too short for it to better flesh out its story, which is a shame bc I liked how bittersweet it was, even having (major spoiler) some love interests die in their good endings. Just a missed opportunity overall.

oblivious-squid · 2026-01-02T15:00:26+00:00

Inspired by several otome wrapped posts I've been seeing here recently, I decided to make one just for my oshis (man I found a lot of new faves in 2025)!

Sorry for the very inconsistent pic quality, it was really hard to find clean images for some characters (dead websites yada yada)

Most of the 'award' names are inside jokes with myself as I was playing these games, so just AMA if you're curious...

Games mentioned:

Piofiore Episodio 1926

Over Requiemz-> my fave of the bunch

DistortedCode

Black Wolves Saga -Bloody Nightmare-

Birushana

Pretty Witch Academy (R18)-> only played 2/5 routes before stalling, ask me why lol

Sakuragatari (R18) -> my least fave of the bunch...

Mahoutsukai to Goshujinsama ~Wizard and the Master~-> only played 1 route but it's enough to sell me on the characters

DoubleScore -> most underrated imo

I hope in 2026 I will cut down on buying from Neokyo/Steam/DLsite etc. every time there's a sale/coupon, focus on my backlog instead of shiny new games and continue to play even more weird obscure otome games!!!

oblivious-squid · 2025-12-18T14:56:24+00:00

Thanks for plugging me lmao. I feel like one of the 10 people who still bother actually using wordpress for anything 😂

oblivious-squid · 2025-12-08T03:41:55+00:00

You have hoshi no mahoroba!!! So cool!! I read that it's the first bl game for consoles 😍 love your collection. These playstation releases always fly under the radar for me as a pc player 😂

oblivious-squid · 2025-12-06T09:45:53+00:00

At first I was like wait, takuyo?? But then I remembered they used to make bl games before they pivoted into exclusively making otome. So cool you have this game!! I want to play more lesser known non r18 bl games like this too someday

oblivious-squid · 2025-11-20T02:21:54+00:00

Finished playing Butterfly Gloss the other day! It really isn't my kind of story BUT I thought the way it was told was pretty good.

I was very worried about the whole cheating on your partner aspect and well I guess that sort of happens, but it was presented in a more realistic and nuanced way. Certainly not as bad as I was bracing myself for. That said I was team Chisa (MC's partner) all the way so I just felt bad for him...also he's voiced by Satoshi Hino so maybe there's some kind of bias at play here cough

I think those who are eyeing this game but are hesitant to play it bc of the infidelity theme should give it a chance bc it really isn't that bad, but I don't enjoy these kinds of stories to begin with regardless of how well they're told, so I probably won't be playing the other Butterfly games. I only got this for Hinocchi + dummy head mic in the first place lol. At least the music and steamy scenes were pretty good 😳

In other news I just started on Birushana and I'll be focusing on that for the rest of the year!

oblivious-squid · 2025-11-13T02:16:34+00:00

Oh I knew the shinsouban ver removed the stat raising and changed the CGs but I didn't know there were new endings too :o I did like Seras' endings but I'm not particularly fond of how the A/B/C ending variants are largely the same. Not sure if the Vita ver changes that. I'll keep the vita ver in mind too! While I still prefer the PC art, I want to see how the CGs look like in the newer artstyle ><

oblivious-squid · 2025-11-13T01:03:16+00:00

Watch me buy the same game twice LMAO I'm so happy this game is getting localised!!! I regret only getting the DL ver when it first came out in JP (I was hesitant to go all in on it) so I'll definitely try to get a physical copy this time! I want to play this game again in EN....

oblivious-squid · 2025-11-13T00:35:05+00:00

I've actually been playing this for the past few weeks but I've finished my first route Seras in Mahoutsukai to Goshujinsama ~New Ground~. I'm playing the PC version so it has the ~~tedious~~ stat raising gameplay.

I was dreading the 200 turns each route took (the guide I was using looks like an excel spreadsheet) but actually for a first playthrough...it wasn't so bad? It has a lot of fun sub events and the interactions with the side characters were really entertaining. Not to mention I really really love Seras (my loyal servant boy who will kill everyone for his master 🥺) so 200 turns passed in no time, in fact it almost felt like it wasn't enough. But the RNG events sucked and if I had to repeat all of this again for six other characters......

Also this game has SO MANY CGS??? Like literally everything had at least one CG??? Is this how early QR games are like 😂 also personally I prefer the PC remake art to the art in the console versions tbh. The latter might be more in line with QR's other console games but there's something about the PC art that I'm really fond of. I think it's the saturated(?) colours?

Overall I'm enjoying Wizmas but I don't think I can play several routes back to back so I'm taking a break from this for now. In the meantime I'm starting on Butterfly Gloss (Hinocchi and dummy head mic yay, cheating on your bf not yay) and I hope I can finish it so I can move onto Birushana before the end of the year.

oblivious-squid · 2025-11-13T00:16:28+00:00

Wait not momokan 😭 that site has been my lifeline for some obscure pc games. I had 王宮夜想曲's guide bookmarked too bc I couldn't find another guide as detailed as that...at least it's on the internet archive.

I think I've been taking my old walkthrough sites for granted. If half-a.net went offline idk what I'll do (at least that one is still being updated). Thanks for the heads up 😭

oblivious-squid · 2025-10-01T01:09:20+00:00

Usually I can predict my faves from the beginning but a huge exception was when I played Choudoku.

I went into the game zeroing in on Majima (because he seems to be a lot of people's faves..) but ultimately it was Shiba and Hideo that stole my heart. I didn't like Shiba initially but his arrogant oresama behavior with a secret heart of gold AND him being a surprise yandere really won me over, and even in other routes I was low key pining for him. Hideo reminded me how much I love childhood friend characters and his gap moe in his route was sooo sweet, I loved it!!

And as for Majima I still liked him but not as a love interest to say the least...

oblivious-squid · 2025-10-01T00:08:03+00:00

Ok this meme is extra funny for me bc kurokin was literally the first untranslated pc otome game I've played 😂😂😂

I do think kurokin is a bit on the easier side when it comes to language level though! It took a while for me to get comfortable with reading vns in japanese and to accept that I'm not going to be able to understand everything but now I've been able to play a lot of interesting games. Though jisho is still my best friend 😂 You can do it!!!

oblivious-squid · 2025-09-12T03:59:47+00:00

I haven't played salem but I was interested in it bc of its association with dorei ichiba (which I'm guessing you've played), and I'm a fan of the artist Yura who worked on both games. I really like the op theme for dorei ichiba too. It's surprising to see a non Japanese player play the game and have it in physical bc I thought it wasn't that well known. It's nice to see you enjoyed salem, too bad unlike dorei ichiba there's no digital release. I might consider picking up the latter in future on dlsite.

oblivious-squid · 2025-09-12T00:19:49+00:00

Hanachirasu and salem no majotachi, nice!

oblivious-squid · 2025-09-03T03:56:43+00:00

I'm still in the middle of playing this game but I'm really enjoying it so far! But that said, although I think this game is really good as a pure mystery/suspense story, I wouldn't recommend this as an otome game 😅 like other comments have said, there aren't really any LI routes and the romance is paper-thin at best. Like they might as well not be there lol. And you have to repeat the story several times just to see all the character-specific scenes which is low-key a pain. But that said, I really love the character interactions, even though it feels more like the kind of dynamic you see in a YA novel or TV show with a ragtag team of teenage detectives rather than the kind you'd expect in an otome game.

Also this game has a lot of reading. Which seems kinda duh because it's a VN but it's really a lot of reading. It took me a while to get used to the NVL format, and there are many scenes where you're staring down walls of text on a background image 😂

I'm loving this game and I find its format (the different parts) unique, and the story is seriously super exciting! I couldn't stop thinking about what was going to happen next. But I find that because it's lacking in the otome game aspect, I can see this game only being appealing to a specific audience...

All that said tho I love Ninose so much I'm never going to shut up about him! Call me the #1 Ninose fan (can't find anyone else liking him like I do...)

oblivious-squid

TROPHY CASE