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This website is intended to be an easy way for me to write reviews, commentary and general opinions and post them without having to worry about losing them. I'll figure out a better layout soon, so it's not just a giant wall of text on the first page. I might even link images or show openers, but we'll see. I don't want this to become work, just something fun to do while I enjoy stuff.
For now, new sections will be added to this page at the bottom, and slowly sorted into their pages. If you're looking for new stuff, scroll down - I bold every new section.
To Do
Add separate pages, sorting by medium, add relevant images and screenshots to reviews. This isn't a job, just a side hobby, but I'd like some organization and flair.
Cupid Parasite - Raul's Route (Full Spoilers)
Last year in November, I finished up the worst route in the game, fired up Raul's route, ready for something cute and funny, and immediately ran into issues. I threw my hands up, let ADHD take me away, and basically didn't touch my switch for months. I've been off playing other games, reading other novels, and enjoying stories that don't frustrate me nearly as much. But - well, Fate/stay night is releasing in a few days on PC and Switch, and I got it for the Switch! So I'm back to using it, and since CupiPara is still installed, I'm back to this mess. I blew through Raul's route in two days - and even better news, that prompted me to remember I was writing up this game.
Raul! He is a himbo. Big, brainless, cheerful. Then you ask him about mythology and he turns on his hyperfixation and you discover he's an autistic himbo. Cute! The game does not say anything about autism or diagnose him, but given his hyperfixation, poor social skills (especially when it comes to infodumping about mythology) and how he doesn't recognize an emotion without a lot of prompting - well, intended or not, I get autistic vibes from him. As a person, I'd enjoy hanging out with him - at least until I ran out of patience with him talking about mythology! As a romantic partner for Lynette he's generically nice, but I don't feel like there's any real sparks flying here. It wasn't as forced as Ryuki or Gill (thank god!) but at no point did I think that these two people were in love, despite the characters learning to love each other, having sex, and saving each other's lives. Probably my own bias, but mneh! Didn't feel it.
The first thing that turned me off here was the plot's setup: Raul's an actor, and his agent hires Lynette as a coach to teach Raul how to experience love, so he can improve his acting. He's a method actor, see, and he can't pretend to be in love for this romance movie he's working on. Standard romance comedy premise, blah blah. I'm not interested. But I plow on. First thing we learn is that Raul is also a (affectionately) slut! Literally all the time other actresses ask to hook up, and he takes them home for some meaningless sex. It feels good, it's fun, and he doesn't care about the lack of anything longer term. Good for him! I'm not personally into casual sex like that, but I have no problems with two consenting adults having a good time with no strings.
Unfortunately for me, instead of a sex positive story, we get Lynette being horrified and convincing him to stop. She can't even think of a good reason for him to stop outside of how it's not right? I think? Lord I was mad at that part, I am not going back to it to check for details. I almost understand her point: he's trying to learn about true love, and casual hookups aren't condusive to it. I guess. Whatever. She convinces him to abstain, and tries to teach him how to fall in love. This involves going on dates with other people, watching romance movies with Lynette at his place, and general life advice stuff from her. He calls her teacher and I almost find it cute - he is genuinely trying to understand an emotion he doesn't feel yet, and she is genuinely trying to teach him something that's really hard to teach.
Raul convinces her to have sex for fun twice, and she enjoys it but isn't comfortable with it. I think. This is about when I put my switch down and almost a year went by before I resumed the game. There was no specific ragequit point, but rather mounting frustration. The Gill route was garbage, and here's a rom-com that's trying to be cute but is instead rubbing me the wrong way.
I'm happy I came back and finished it, though! Because when I picked it back up, I discovered the writers stuffed all the plot into the back half of his route. In order we have: a stalker, Lynette revealing she's Cupid to protect Raul, food poisoning halting filming long enough for Raul and Lynette to fly to Greece in a private jet and help with an archeological dig there, them falling into big caves under the dig together and having to survive, Raul fist-fighting a manticore while nude, them confessing their true love for each other and kissing, Minerva taking them direct to Celestia to heal Lynette's wounds, Raul losing his mind at being in Celestia, Minerva revealing she's secretly evil, stealing Cupid's bow n' arrow, and shooting Raul with them, so she can suppress his personality and replace his soul with that of Alexander the Great's.
Did I lose you? I lost you. It goes batshit VERY quickly. Minerva being secretly evil works more than you'd think, but the rest is just pure goofiness, and I spent most of it staring at my switch in disbelief. I know this game is silly, but it's too silly at times, which makes it hard to stay invested. Do professional archeologists actually invite people at random to come help with digs?
Anyways, right, Alexander the Great. Minerva has been in love with him since forever, and specifically set everything up so she could find a body that would be a good host for his soul. Don't worry, the writers did ZERO research. Alexander is written to be a generic villain who wants to conquer the world, and is ready to kill anyone to get it. And like, broad strokes, historical Alexander was out to do that, but this felt hollow. To help him, Minerva causes all kinds of weather phenomena - storms, flooding - and Lynette tries to talk Raul into taking control of his body, but no dice. Instead she wins by revealing that Alexander died young to malaria... which makes him remember that the ACTUAL reason he died was because Minerva gave him an immortality potion that was flawed: it ruined his immune system. Yep. So he stabs Minerva, Lynette gets the bow and arrows back, and shoots him again - and Raul's back! Woohoo! They kiss, it's revealed this was filmed - and the director is stone cold crazy, so he decides to replace his entire movie with "Raul playing Alexander the Great falls in love with Lynette" and you bet it's a smash hit. Lynette and Raul vow to get married, wear rings while walking the red carpet and credits roll.
It's a rushed mess of a plot with absolutely no emotional weight despite the voice actors doing their damndest, and I found it funny but not actually good. Yep!
I wish, looking back, I had stopped after Shelby's route. It's the right mixture of silly and serious, and it had a romance I could believe in. Raul, alas, was just goofy. Which I think I knew to expect, given that his hyperfixation on mythology isn't even a deep one: he reads coffee table books on mythology and stops there. No actual study of the cultures that worshipped the gods, no actual delving into anything more than a "Zeus was god of thunder" level of factoids. And like - I am being judgmental! But this is the ONE THING he cares about, and he doesn't seem to actually care about it. Wild.
So - yeah. Am I going to finish off this game? Yes. I've got two routes left. I'll blow through them, then reward myself with a visual novel I actually like. It helps that the writing is breezy, fun to read, and overall the routes aren't long. -8/6/2024
Cupid Parasite - Allan's Route + Secret Route + Overall Thoughts (Full Spoilers)
I finished it! I then took a while to think about it, instead of writing it up immediately! I'll give the verdict first: I ultimately believe my favorite route (and the best one) was Shelby's route, as it was the best mixture of goofy melodrama and believable romance. It genuinely felt like two adults falling in love and learning to live together, and I enjoyed all of it. Still - Allan and the secret route gave it a run for its money, and I'm thrilled I pushed through and read them.
Allan's route! You have to play through one of the earlier ones to unlock it, and it's recommended as the final route in most walkthroughs. Why? Because it has the largest amount of plot / setting reveals. It involves the most mythology, and answers multiple mysteries. In most of the game, Lynette being cupid is kind of a sideshow that explains her character, and most of the routes end with her giving up her powers to live as a human with her beau. In this route...well, last chance to turn back from spoilers.
Allan presents himself as a horrible jerk: he only wants to date woman who are already taken, seducing them into cheating. Almost immediately in his route Lynette learns that he is an incubus, who must feel on the dreams of women in order to eat. He can't taste food at all, and derives no sustenence from it. He runs a pillow store in order to help him find victims, and it's overall very... beign? Kind of? The women receive erotic dreams, seeing their true love, and he receives food. Conflict arises immediately as more and more women are dropping out of Cupid Corp to live in dreams, but this is really just an excuse for Lynette to try investigating him.
Wait, you might be thinking. An incubus? In a setting that's established to be run by the Greek Gods? Are we about to get YHVH in here? I'll tell you right now: no. It's a weird fusion of mythologies that I wasn't expecting. The route will teach you how this world's cosmology works: at the top are the Dii Consentes, a small number of Greek gods who are immortal and in charge of their areas of worship, with Jupiter at the very top. Below them are the minor Greek gods, who are mortal, and replacable - like Cupid. Every few centuries, minor deities die and the Dii Consentes replace them. Where do they get the replacements? By choosing an angel from Heaven. Heaven, here, is a realm just below Celestia, and the angels are kind of... plants? Extremely simple innocents who float and fly around Heaven's weird beach, and are selected at random by the Dii Consentes to be given identity and powers. It's never explained where Heaven comes from. The other minor gods aren't explained, but in Cupid's case, Cupids have two outs: fall in true love and lose their powers and live as a human, or vanish when their time runs out.
Below Earth is Hell, and we only get a brief glimpse of how this works - Lucifer exists but never shows up, and we're not told where demons come from...except for one. Allan is a fallen angel, and through hard work (and sin) he's become a Greater Demon. Alright. That's a lot, but it's all part of the crux of how this route works. Here we go.
Lynette and Allan are two halves of the same soul: two angels born together sharing a soul. When the Dii Consentes chose her to be Cupid and separated them, Allan lost it and rebelled. He fell from Heaven, became a Demon, and has been working his tail off to learn how to rescue her. He is a sweet, kind person with a playful streak who only wants to be good - but he's forced to harm others in order to survive and gain the power necessary to learn how to save his other half. Yeah. ;;
In all of the other routes where she falls in love and becomes human, Allan wins. She's free and happy. In Allan's route, when she falls for him, this is a nightmare. He's not human, and so the condition where she loses her powers and becomes human doesn't apply. Local incubus losing his mind trying to un-seduce her, because he desperately wants her to live.
This all collides in multiple ways: first, during some of these revelations, Lynette winds up shooting Allan with her arrow - except that demons will vanish when shot with Cupid's arrows! So she panics, saves him, and gets shot by her own arrow and falls for him. Cue a month of Lynette learning to love, and Allan enjoying it (as he does love her) while panicking. At the end of the month, she's still in love. Of course. Allan has to use the nuclear option: he obtains a magic dagger, stabs her, and takes her soul to Hell. There, he enacts a magical ceremony that lets her be reborn as a human... but in the process, other demons discover how pure and tasty her soul is, and begin to hunt her. Allan has to spend Lynette's reincarnated life secretly protecting her from constant attacks, while hiding himself from her, and... yeah you know how this goes. She finds him and falls in love with him again. Which reawakens her Cupid powers, and the time limit is back on. Jupiter finally finds her too - he's been looking for the missing Cupid, and it all collides in supernatural fights, revelations, and lots and lots of tears.
The ending is perfect: Lynette ultimately chooses to rebel, thus falling and becoming a demon herself, and she and Allan live together happily in their pillow store, having lots and lots of sex with each other while matchmaking couples via pillow sales. Goofy, but - gosh, they earned it.
I think my only real gripe with this route is that it doesn't have enough room to do everything. The reincarnation part doesn't have enough time to breathe. It's so jam-packed, and so aggressively tragic, that it doesn't land the way I want it to. But - god. Allan. He suffers and all for the sake of helping his beloved be happy. I easily see why he's a fan-favorite. If not for how much I adore Shelby I'd have him as my favorite.
Ready for the secret route? It's a doozy. If you were paying any attention, it's obvious who the secret beau is - Jupiter himself, of course. A pretty masked bishounen with green hair who masquerades as the mascot critter Jupiter sent to protect Lynette? Yeah, of course she gets to date him. His route has no choices, only unlocks after you've done all the others, and is surprisingly long and fully fledged! It's an AU from the common route as well: in this one, Cupid is sent to Earth as a human to learn why the marriage rates are failing (as Juno is missing) and there's a time limit on the time she can spend on Earth. Jupiter, masquerading as Chii (the mascot critter) experiences college with her, and her internship at CupidCorp. So we meet the Parasite Five all over again - Gill (ugh), Raul, Shelby, Ryuki, and Allan. It's weird and nice to see them from their Common Route days. Jupiter decides to become way more involved, and accidentally reveals himself to Lynette - but she thinks he's Chii. So he lets the lie go, and lives as a human with her. In fact, he actually becomes an intern with her, living as Peter. Which is where we learn that Jupiter isn't cool - he's actually a giant bundle of nerves, a huge scaredy-cat who panics at the drop of a hat.
The route continues - and oh yes. We get them living in the reality show house again, but now it's the Parasite Six, as Peter accidentally included himself, and everyone knows him as a terrified parasite who's too scared to catch a girl. But - oh lord - the drama and revelations can't stop for the finale. Why is Jupiter so terrified? Why is Juno missing? Because he has a twin brother named Zeus, and Zeus is a psychopath! He believes he should be the only god, will brainwash humans, and had to be sealed away in Hell by the efforts of all the gods combined. Juno, though, loved him (even though he was a womanizing cheating bastard) and she's missing because she went to free him...and got murdered for her efforts. Zeus is free, and he immediately sets to getting revenge and conquering Earth.
Chaos. Jupiter realizes (thanks to learning about love types) that the Parasite Six embody the multiple types of love, and with the aid of every dude in the game (they're ALL confused) they stop and successfully seal Zeus away forever. Lynette is promoted to become Juno, thus living forever (and getting her man) and we get a happy ending.
While this route worked surprisingly well as a victory lap, and it tied up loose ends nicely, I confess I didn't go for Jupiter nearly as much and so it was a good route and not a great one. But - no regrets! It was fun!
So we come to my ultimate conclusion: this game was bright, poppy, and fun! Most of the love interests were totally worth pursuing, the world-building and plots were interesting, and while it's flawed, it's still a worthwhile romp. I loved having this on my switch and reading it whenever I needed a pick me up. The voice acting was stellar, the art was gorgeous, etc etc etc. It's exactly the kind of trashy romance comedy I enjoy, and I'm super excited to get the fandisc when I can. But... boy, the flaws. Gill is probably the worst otome love interest I've ever seen, as his behavior is presented as a good thing when it's not. Problematic love interests in these games are common, but usually they're the actually-crazy type (thinking of one guy from Amnesia for example) instead of this...seemingly benign but super problematic guy. Gill sucks. Don't date a Gill.
I can see myself rereading Cupid Parasite in a few years as a comfort game, and I highly recommend it - even with the spoilers I've given, there's still so much to experience. - 9/13/2024
Dairoku: Agents of Sakuratani
Every buy a book for the cover? That's me and this otome. I came for the art, and stayed for the art, I'm thrilled to report that despite a rocky start, I finally clicked with this game.
The concept is a little unusual: supernatural creatures are real in Japan, and in order to coexist in modern times, they live in a side-dimension that is managed by their government as well as the Japanese government. This is not a choice: wild yokai are captured and forcibly relocated here. It's a supernatural critter sanctuary and prison. Our heroine is a lady who can see spirits, so she's recruited to work as a special agent / liason / police officer for this dimension. She spends her day to day work life patrolling the different districts, managing human-yokai relations, and trying to quell any troubles.
Yeah, what? This seems like it's set up to be a hard-hitting social commentary drama, with messages about segregation and more. It's not. It touches lightly on these subjects, but 90% of the game is a chill slice-of-life as a government worker goes about her job and gets to know this strange community.
It took me many months to get through the common route because of this. I'm glad I stuck with it, though, because it is surprisingly sweet, and the game structure is fun to explore. The common route often stops and gives you a map and makes you choose who you're going to hang out with, so if you want a specific love interest, you should be picking them as often as possible.
For an example of the atmosphere of the game, one early scene is "two yokai are arguing with each other, do you intervene with a spell or verbally?" - choosing a spell angers one of the yokai officials (who is also a love interest) as it's way too heavy handed. Intervening verbally helps everyone cool off peacefully, and the official appreciates that. Another scene is literally just the heroine and some characters shopping in a specialty shop run by a kitsune. When a plot with stakes appears, it's often low-key with low-level stakes "will the community dance event go peacefully?", and most high-level stakes are dealt with by the heroine's bosses...which makes sense, they have the rank and power to handle potential government corruption. This is not a game that is out to make you solve a giant mystery or survive a big adventure - it's literally just a special small town cop getting to know her community and protect it, and find love or friendship along the way.
I have completed two routes so far, and am excited for the rest and the finale. Here's two quick overviews of them and how it works! First: every route has three endings, the love ending, the friendship ending, and the broken love ending. It's so cool you can choose to just be friends with some of these dudes? I've never seen an otome do this before and it's really cool. The broken love endings are also interesting, as they've shown how things can go wrong when our heroine hasn't built enough trust with the hero during their route's plot.
The love interests available are: all of the Shires (leaders/officials of the supernatural communities) and your boss. I'm curious and concerned about that one, because dating your boss seems like a conflict of interest... anyways! No routes are locked, but there is a finale that requires you to do everything else.
Hira's route. Hira! He's the Shire of the tengu, and is a very old tengu who has lived for so long that he's depressed. He doesn't want to be Shire. He spends most of his days sleeping and ignoring his best friend and aide Takao's attempts to make him do things. I.. confess I picked him because his plight spoke to me. I get depression myself, and I almost immediately went "...he's not lazy, is he" and was gratified to see the route explain that he isn't lazy at all. Most of his common route and then route is the heroine trying to get through to him, trying to make him engage with life again, and it's a huge reward to see him slowly open up and then begin to not just do things - but WANT to do them again. I can't get him a therapist, but I can get him a loving and thoughtful partner who will be his friend (or love) as best she can.
I'm curious if any of the other routes will stand up to this one, because it's just so - so - good. Lowkey, slow burn romance with an interesting plot and good character growth on everyone's parts.
Shu's route. Shu. I heard he was the fave-disfavorite and no one liked his route, so I figured I'd find out for myself, and knock it out early if I didn't like it, and whoops everyone was right. He looks like he's a teenager and acts like one too and does not get better at any point. Like, he's a cute teenager, but similar to Ryuki from Cupid Parasite I don't want a teenager. I'm an adult, give me adult love interests. On top of that, his entire plot is "I'm powerful and I want to rule over this entire place" and working towards that because his aide is a smart snake man who will do anything for him. When the heroine convinces Shu that it's a childish desire in some endings, he tries to stop his followers, but they don't want to stop trying to conquer things, so, well, conflict. It's... not very well written either, as some of the plot beats require the heroine to be stupid or stupidly naive. Overall I found his storyline to be extremely disappointing, and I'm happy to leave him behind.
I have plenty more to read, but honestly? I'm just happy I stuck with Dairoku and gave it a chance, because Shu aside it's a really interesting setting and the chill pace is really refreshing. It's a fantastic palate-clenser inbetween intense routes in Code Realize or the other myriad games I'm playing. -9/13/2024