What was your first Otome game?
What was your first Otome game?
Mine was cinderella phenomenon. I have no recollection of how I stumbled across it. I was obsessed with Ouran high school host club as a teen so it probably looked intriguing to me as second time I'd seen a "reverse harem" on a cover. I played the entire thing within a single weekend. Then... I didn't play another otome game until Piofiore came out on the switch. No idea why I didn't. I vaguely recall not being able to find any other free games that were of similar quality, but I was an adult when Cinderella Phenomenon came out so it's not like I couldn't buy things online.
Anyway, like many others I bought a ton of switch games during the pandemic and one of those was Piofiore; I've been playing otome ever since.
Pacthesis dating sims! It was one of her earlier anime sim date games back when I use to be on new grounds almost daily. I started actively looking for games some time after that and ended up playing yo jin bo and then hakuoki. I’ve been obsessed with this genre since 😅
Had to look up who that was and found a nice biopic that polygon did if you're interested. From the thumbnails the games look really cute.
Thanks for sharing, this was a great read! It made me all emotional and nostalgic. And old too lol it’s been over 10 years since I first played her games.
My first Otome was Mystic Messenger in 2018 because a close Dragon Age fan highly recommended it. I was into it for two months and then went back to regular life for 2 more years without playing any visual novels. Unless The Walking Dead by TellTale counts as a Visual Novel but I think that was before 2018. If Telltale counts, then they were my first visual novel. I just didn't think of them as a genre I would seek out per se, since I was still loving in Dragon Age and Detroit Become Human, the Witcher, and Mass Effect so I was busy with all those.
Then during the pandemic I tried Cupid because it was free, then Confines of the Queen got me intrigued enough. But then I found Cinderella Phenomenon and absolutely fell head over heels for the genre and have been burning through VNs like crazy ever since.
I was lucky enough to not find mystic messenger until the pandemic, so the odd hours it required weren't too big of a deal. I could just mute myself on zoom.
I think the tell tale games are usually called adventure games or walking simulators depending on how much you like them lol.
“Walking simulator” actually is a term for a genre, not just a derogatory term to toss at games you don’t like.
They’re mostly movement and environmental interaction, often without elements such as combat, puzzles, or even a win/lose scenario. (Taken off Wikipedia)
I hate them, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad. They’re just not to my taste.
- Crimson Spires is absolutely an romance visual novel (3 guys, 1 lady) and had walking around interacting.
- Echoes of the Fey has walking around the town, clicking on NPCs, and turn based battle mechanics and it's considered a romance visual novel/ otome.
- Loren the Amazon Princess has turn based battle mechanics and is consider a romance visual novel.
- Boyfriend Dungeon is definitely considered a romantic visual novel but has hack and slash fighting all the way through.
I'm not seeing how it's not a visual novel. I'm no expert of the genre by any mean, but I don't see much difference between Telltale's Walking Dead and the above games I just listed. Can you explain what you see as the distinction?
Heavenly Playgirl! I was under 14. It taught me I would be into female-oriented dating sims and visual novels, but I didn’t learn about otome being a whole genre until far later.
Ooh fun. I never got into deviant art because as a teen we had one desktop that my entire family used. My mom would have seen the word "deviant" in the search history, and I would have been toast.
I always thought it was funny, even when I was little, that a site for art was just straight-up calling its users deviants. Not talking about the site title DeviantArt so much as that they actually did refer to its users that way, in the same vein a Reddit user is a Redditor and a car user is a driver. I got it on the level of “artist, yeah, nonconforming is a Big Thing for creatives, they’re deviants from the norm” but it still felt funny that the website would use that word full of negative connotations as the same word for its users. Thanks for the insult lol
My first otome (without really knowing what a otome game was) was Princess Debut on the DS. I was intrigued but got too busy so I’m not sure if I finished it. I do remember the “dancing” part.
My first otome that I did finish was… Hatoful Boyfriend, because I’d heard of its hilarity (and Shuu specifically). The BBL (not brazilian butt lift) route made me interested in visual novels as a whole (only other exposure was Phoenix Wright) and I then picked up Hakuouki for 3DS… the rest is history. (And my enduring love for Okita and hoping he’ll be okay.)
I was very surprised and impressed at the quality of Cinderella Phenomenon when I played it.
I wish there had been more visual novels on the DS and 3DS! I would have gotten into them earlier.
There were more but sadly not localized in English. There are some fan patches for Tokimeki Girls’ Side, the Prince of Tennis otome games (2 of them), and Love Revo and recently the Vampire Knight otome (for DS). All other English translated otome sadly went to PS Vita/PC at the time (my reason for getting a PS Vita other than Danganronpa lol). I would have loved more English localizations for DS/3DS…