[b]Art:[/b] 9/10
[b]Music:[/b] 4/10
[b]Storylines:[/b] 6/10
[b]Characters:[/b] 6/10
[b]Overall:[/b] 6'25/10
An easy cliche otome VN with a slight twist. Buy it on sale to complete your Dogenzaka Lab collection or directly in the bundle itself.
The MC is a girl full of insecurities regarding her appearance, so obsessed with it that she goes through plastic surgery right at the start of the VN just to be pretty for her boyfriend. After discovering that he's a scammer, though, the MC sets her sights on another man out of the 5 that she meets right after her surgery, deciding to take the dubious advice from one of them and stalk them in order to gain information and seduce them. Also, all of those men already have a girlfriend or fiance, so it's the MC's job to ensure they break up to fill the gap.
That's basically the premise of it, however the "stalking" itself takes a backseat in 3 out of the 5 routes and, though it [i]is[/i] still part of the story it's easy to forget about it. Heck, in one of the routes she's actually hired to do the stalking by the guy himself, I personally don't consider it stalking when the other party knows about it and encourages it. Also, despite the game apparently wanting to play that card as if it makes the game twisted or something... In the end it's actually just a way to make it far more credible how the MC keeps meeting with the romantic interest of each route and being at the right place at the right time, something that always happens in those games except in all those it's blamed on it just being a "coincidence".
The other element the game tries to pride itself on doing differently and thus "being a twist" is the fact that the MC is "the other" and causes break ups to happen in order to stay with the guy in question. Unfortunately, this isn't such an original twist as the game thinks, the only "original" thing is that it's a cliche that's shared in [b]all[/b] of the routes. Many other otome VNs usually have at least one guy with a girlfriend or a fiancé, often forced on them due business deals or something like that. And this game actually plays on that card as well, none of the guys really seem happy with their respective current girlfriends/fiancés and it ends being as if the MC is saving them from a life without love by tempting them.
The translation job could use serious improvement, but it's not as worse as many others on similar simple otomes. There [b]are[/b] several glaring typos that seem to suggest there wasn't even a simple proof-reading before putting them in the game rather than just hit the spell-checker tool, but their presence varies. They seem to run rampant on two of the routes while the other three show a welcomed lack of them (there still are some of them but they are so rare that it's easy to forgive).
The VN is full of cliches and troupes common in the genre, though the use of those elements depends on the route, which is what makes the quality of the storylines fluctuate. In my opinion one of the routes was simply terrible, with barely any direction and sense of flow in the story, events just kept happening and being thrown around and the progression of the relationship felt plastic and mechanic. Two of them, however, were much better, presenting actually interesting characters and conflicts and a depth I didn't expect in this kind of game. The MC herself varies slightly in personality and intelligence between routes, being quite sharp and quick in one and a complete idiot in another.
The worst part, by far, is the music. Just mute it and put some playlist or something else if you want to listen to something while going through the game. There are about 3 tracks, maybe more but the game abuses the heck out of 3 in particular and they aren't even very good, just a few notes set in a constant loop. That coupled with the annoying chiming sound whenever advancing the text is basically a guaranteed headache. This kind of soundtrack is acceptable for a mobile game (in fact this game [b]is[/b] a port from a mobile game), but not on PC.
The art is good, but only regarding the characters' designs and the CGs. The backgrounds are blurry and highly limited in number, and the game doesn't even try to make it seem as if it's a different place just looking similarly. Your whole life in this VN is going to center on the MC's room, a street and a cafe, with a few more places added depending on the route you choose but that's about it. It's not great, but it's sufficient as the focus of the game is in the storytelling, unfortunately, as I mentioned before, that by itself isn't that great.
Not a purchase I regret in the slightest (though two routes, one more than the other, made me experience physical pain to get through) but definitively one I'm not going to return to any time soon.
