Ikemen Sengoku (Uesugi-Takeda Alliance Edition) -- No Spoiler Review
Ikemen Sengoku (Takeda-Uesugi Alliance Featuring: Kenshin Uesugi, Shingen Takeda, Yukimura Sanada, & Sasuke Sarutobi)
System: Phone
Price: Freemium (In-app purchases available, but not required)
Voice Acting: Partial (Japanese)
ESRB Rating: M (17+)
Overall Rating: Stole 8/10 ♥s
Pre-Game Perception: Fashion designer goes to Sengoku era Japan and teaches samurai how to love, and probably some modern-day tricks as well.
Morning-After Reflection: A modern-day woman manages to touch the hearts of every influential man in the Sengoku Period, and there’s quite a bit of kidnapping.
Story: “You've just nabbed your dream job as a fashion designer when you're sent hurtling back in time to an alternate version of Sengoku era Japan!
After accidentally changing history by saving the warlord Nobunaga Oda from near death, you must survive 3 months surrounded by Japan's most famous and handsome Sengoku samurai and ninjas before your next chance to make it back home. But here's the catch: you can't fall in love with any of them!
Can you handle the challenge? Or in a world where it takes one man to conquer a nation, will you conquer his heart?”
Interest Rating: 9/10 Since this is my second review on the game (Oda forces can be found here) I knew I loved it already. I’m honestly not big on the dating a warlord part, as I’ve never been into dating samurai, but the characters are great and I couldn’t wait to meet this batch.
MC: The MC for Ikemen Sengoku is still one of my favorite nameless protagonists I’ve ever come across. I’m less surprised about her personality this time around - since I’ve had six other routes to get to know her - but she’s still so relatable to me and I enjoy getting into her headspace. She has an established personality that you get a taste of in the prologue, but it’s very clear once on a route that she changes from one guy to the next. Since there’s no character development before the story starts, I’m not upset that she displays different facets of her personality in each route, because it allows for the ability to keep MC separate per warlord, or similar enough that MC never really is different at her core.
Let’s get to the mechanical details. MC doesn’t appear on screen, she has no sprite, and she is unvoiced. She appears in ⅔ of the CGs, in most cases, and has eyes, which I think is always funny when I specify, but if you’ve played any mobage (mobile games) you’d understand what I mean. The eyeless MC has long been used to help with self inserting, though I’d much rather my MCs have windows to the soul rather than emotionless-looking monsters. Physically, MC is short, probably around the average 5’ otome MCs tend to hang around. She has long pink/brown/is it a light auburn? I’m-not-even-sure hair. She’s cute, and I can get behind that. But it isn’t her looks I’m in love with, it’s her personality.
MC is proud and even when she’s terrified she tries her best to put on a front, but isn’t infallible, and I love that. She was about to start her dream job of being a fashion designer, and this comes out probably a bit better in this section of dateables than in previous ones I reviewed. Perhaps this is why I liked her better in this group of guys than the Oda forces? She doesn’t seem to have any friends or family back in her time, since they literally are never mentioned. She’s not keen on cooking or cleaning, which is a relief, as I’m tired of MCs that love being domesticated. And since we’re dealing with the opposition to where MC ends up in the prologue, she’s very “friends with everyone” in these routes, which isn’t a bad thing. I think it honestly makes the story a bit better because I enjoy the angst that comes with having to pick a side.
Likability Rating: Shu. MC edged her way into the Shu rating due to being more consistent and more likable to me in this group of guys than the last. Her personality is strong and she rarely falls into the background of whatever is going on at the time.
Plot: The plot is very straightforward. MC finally gets her big break doing something with fashion, which is her dream job; there’s some sort of event that causes her to suddenly be thrust 500 years in the past, right in a burning building where Oda Nobunaga is... sleeping? They never really go over this, but he appears to be sleeping, like, in all his armor, which makes no sense, but whatever. At which point MC wakes him up and is like, “Dude, the building is on fire. We gotta go.” The prologue is great, in my opinion. MC is stellar in the way she is written with reactions to this absurd set of circumstances and Nobunaga is his confident, self-assured self, leading to hilarity with the two of them finding the other extraordinarily odd.
Anyways, MC meets all available LIs (save two who are introduced, but not to MC) and eventually ends up being kidnapped to go hang out with Oda Nobunaga and all his fellas. From there she finds out that in 3 months another wormhole will open to bring her back home to the present, so she just has to make it until then. Each story is different enough that it doesn’t feel same-y. Although this is happening during the Sengoku period, historical accuracy is very not happening. So every LI path you go down is going to be different than every other. And all of them focus on the LI and their involvement with the warring period MC has found herself in. The only issue with repetitiveness is starting out (after the prologue) when MC is getting her footing in the new time period, and that there are certain plot points that seem to always come to pass, just in a different manner. For example, but not necessarily included in every route: there’s a battle/war, some moral wrestling with murdering people, MC gets kidnapped, and of course, the confession scene.
Replayability Rating: ★★★★☆ Since each LI has their own story, the routes aren’t exactly the same, but there are commonalities between the stories as if certain aspects are expected in the script; like the kidnapping bit, that’s in every route. Either way, I’ve finished (nearly) every released route, and I’d gladly continue following the game to find out about the new additions.
Love Interests: Boy, do I have a lovely list of love interests for you! In this review we’re going to meet the sexiest, most secretive men IkeSen has seen - barring Mitsuhide, ‘cause he’s over on the Oda forces. If you haven’t already fallen in love with these men, I’m sure you’ll find at least one in this group you’ll like, and there are only four of them. And if you don’t, you’re bound to fall in love with someone on the Oda forces, because I think that these routes do the best to highlight the best attributes of all the LIs on both sides of the war. I’m certainly more interested and I already played them! To be honest, it had me reminiscing about the good each previous LI brought, because I get to see it in the routes these four have.
As of right now (8/2021) Ikemen Sengoku has 12 of 14 more LI routes released. For serious, they started Act Two which brought in more warlords to add to the list. I’ve already done the Oda forces, which included six men on Nobunaga Oda’s side. Today we’re being held captive by four fun frenemies that turn into something more. I hope you like confusing romances, because this is your group. Yoshimoto hasn’t been released at this time, which would be the fifth in the Takeda-Uesugi alliance. The next review I do for IkeSen should include the new LIs, and the third-ish faction that currently exists + Yoshimoto, because that gives us like five or six more dudes. I don’t know. Too many men. Can’t keep up. Since this is an alternate historical setting - ya’ know, since you’ve gone and changed history by saving Nobunaga - there are no story spoilers from simply knowing history. There are also no spoilers in anyone’s route for anyone else’s route because each route gets to explore a different “what if'' with the freedom to make anything happen in this new history. I really love how every route is different enough that I never know what’s going to happen.
After the prologue, you’re thrust into the “Choose your Route” screen, where you pick a man you know nothing about and the story works its way to bring you two together. Each route is 13 chapters long, with a split between a Romantic or Dramatic ending at the end of chapter 10. Act Two (which doesn’t include any of these dudes) is what happens after all the stories covered in the previous act (which would be the routes I’ve reviewed plus these right here - these are Act One). More information on gameplay will be covered in the UI/Mechanics section. To make it less confusing: just pick the guy you wanna do, because you will do him. There is doing in this game. Pick any order you want, including Oda forces if you so desire even though they aren’t listed here. You can find those LIs on my other review of IkeSen. By the time I got to these fellas, I had a plan of attack to have the best sandwiching what I believed would be the worst. It turns out there are no “the worst'' in this group. I’m going to list the LIs by order of introduction in the prologue, ignoring the Oda forces, of course.
That leaves you sprinting into Yukimura Sanada’s awaiting arms, or something equally romantic and dramatic for a spin on “he saves you in the prologue from running off a cliff”. It was a weird scene, okay? Either way, Yukimura is the inadvertent hero, and inadvertent love interest that snuck his way up to the top tier of my list for this game. Let me tell you what Yukimura is in so many other routes: He’s a jerk. He has this young naivety about him that screams “I don’t understand girls!” Actually, he says it a lot too. He calls MC names, or ignores her feelings because he’s just “so dense”, or really fails at all the romance stuff because “women, amirite?” and I was just… not interested. I didn’t want to date a guy that thinks girls are gross and have cooties. I really like women, so we were not vibin’ there. But having said that, I can’t even begin to explain how not like that he is in his route. Sure, the teasing keeps up, but he was incredibly romantic and hot and I’m absolutely in love with him. I liked his frank attitude and he’s the hero in his route unlike the side-kick character he plays in so many other routes. Yuki is great. He’s surprisingly good.
So how’s the MC? She was great too, imo. A little lovesick and felt younger because of her younger love interest, but I easily got behind her and the story. Yeah, I thought I’d have more to say about MC here… She was great. :shrug: I guess I could say that she played well off Yuki, and perhaps more emotional than most other routes, but it really was a great pairing.
If Yukimura isn’t your thing, perhaps the sweet-talking Shingen Takeda is. I’ll be honest, I thought this route was going to be so very different than it turned out just like Yukimura’s, but this time I was left with a kind of… mediocre feeling by the end of it instead of a deep love for the man that I thought was going to woo me with words more saccharin than the hard candies that Nobunaga likes to eat. Holy run-on sentence, Batman! Yeah, eff it, I’m keeping it. Shingen has so many layers that don’t get explored until his route that it was impossible to peel back everything. I liked this flirt in all the other routes, and MC tended to as well, but in his it was this serious side that we got to see that enticed MC to dig deeper, while I just wanted romance and spice. I did like the way he danced around every conversation, and clearly took control, exhibiting his skill at strategy and manipulation. I just wished it was hotter than it turned out. Especially since the MC noticed every time it happened too, and purposely went in the other direction.
MC in this route was okay. She spends a lot of time in her head, since Shingen won’t give her answers to her questions, she hypothesizes and postulates often, filling in what she believes to be the case, and I never like that. She also was incredibly into Shingen, but refused to admit it, even denying it several times over for story reasons; but still... just give in and be a lust bunny for that lusty love interest, please! If he’s as sexy as MC claims in every route, I just wanted a taste of that sexy. I’m not disappointed in MC, and I don’t dislike her, I just wanted to get to the f*cking earlier than it eventually happens.
Do you like severe men? Do you like yandere-lites? Do you want some gap moe that’ll make you squee and make you want to rename Kenshin Uesugi as Kenshin Usagi? Oh yeah! Do you like heterochromia? Kenshin has got it. He has all of it. Kenshin is not a surprise yandere; you can tell from the get-go that something is not quite right with him, which is why I don’t think it’s a spoiler to mention it. Kenshin also has nothing nice to say about women, which almost marked him as a misogynist in my book, but it’s simply complicatedly misplaced anger at his misunderstanding of events in his past that makes him believe women are delicate flowers that wilt if you so much as turn your gaze from them. Or on them in Kenshin’s case. His eyes cut like gems and I love that. Ngh, I’ll let you stab me if you know what I mean. Do you see where we’re headed? Yeah, MC is from the 21st century and not that women are “stronger” now, but they are certainly different than they were in the 16th century. Anyways, I knew I had to have this man, and his route didn’t disappoint me. Possessive, obsessive, domineering, and his dual-colored eyes have caught MC in his sights. It was a good ride.
Speaking of MC and not being a delicate flower, that’s the type of woman you get here. She isn’t afraid to speak her mind. She is proud. She is not really a force to be reckoned with, but does have character development and makes an impression on Kenshin, the woman hater. I like her spunk and her attitude in this route. I like the drama that came from this extremely unhealthy relationship. It’s not pretty, but it is so delicious.
So I lied a little, technically you meet Sasuke Sarutobi first in the prologue, but he’s from your time and not actually introduced until you go back 500 years in the past. With that being the case, you get to meet him last of all these boys on this side of the fence. And I waited for him to be my last in my play order, as well. I waited because I figured he’d be just my type. Come on, megane (glasses), able to deadpan any line, awkward, and a cool f*cking ninja? Yeah, warlords might not be my type, but ninja can assassinate me any day. I’m down for it. If you’re not into nerdy things, Sasuke might not be your cup of tea, but I am and he was mine. The amount of puns and jokes had me literally laughing out loud. And that wasn’t the best part, because Sasuke is probably the most romantic route in the entire game, imo. I literally teared up at how incredibly sweet and beautiful it was. I don’t do that often, not even once a game, and Sasuke’s route just got me. Also, it gets hot in there. Very hot. Even my yandere-lite husbandos can’t compete with the enjoyment I got out of Sasuke’s route. Best boy in my book.
It also helps that I liked the MC a lot in this route. She didn’t catch every joke, and she certainly did some not so bright things from time to time, but I still liked her. I mean, I like her in pretty much every route, but I think having someone she felt she could connect with and being able to banter in modern-speak helped with liking and relating to her, because she liked and related to the LI so well. You’ll get a little damsel in distress, you’ll get a little proud and assertive, and you’ll get many awkward moments that MC attempts to puzzle out and understand. So it’s all good to me.
Boy Crazy Rating: 95%. These are such good routes and good boys. They’ve all earned a spot in my husbando harem (not that that’s hard to do). I wouldn’t give up a single one if you asked me to choose. Okay, I might just pick Sasuke, but I’ll at least fight for the rest.
Romance: For such a short story, it has a surprising amount of romance. It’s not all fluffy and full of dates, but the relationship blooms quite organically through the three months in game time that the story covers. Some develop quicker than others, and in this group I think we see varying degrees the most, whereas the Oda forces all seem to be roughly the same speed. One route has making out within a number of days, and another waits until practically the end of the story to get to the kissing. Which was a disappointment for me, but I guess you don’t have to have lips touching in order to have romance. The point I’m trying to make is that your romance mileage varies significantly depending on who you’re attempting to do the Do with.
The good news? For a game you complete at the slow pace of a month per route, that only covers three months inside a game world, that has constant warring and the threat of death in every route, you’re going to find romance a plenty. I found it interesting that this group of men (compared to the Oda forces) gave me more feels and made me fall harder than I had previously. Perhaps it’s because I knew the dudes before I tried to get in their hakama. Perhaps it’s because they were just written better. Whatever the case is, I became a messy puddle from the stories in this section.
Heart Palpitation Rating: A. It made me teary in a good way and not in my twisted tragic-loving-ass way. I think it deserves an A for managing that. It did more than melt my heart, it moved me to the doki dokis.
Spice: I feel like every time I get to this section I just heave a big ol’ sigh and try to find a good way to promote a game that requires payment for sexy scenes. IkeSen is a freemium game, giving you a taste of the spice and locking supposedly racy scenes behind a paywall. You also get very few chances to earn the premium currency in this game compared to other Ikemen Series games, so I’ve yet to spend my coins, and I have veeeery few comparatively. I’m sure there’s some website out there that will tell you which pay portions are worth the coin and which aren’t, but I haven’t gone that deep because I certainly can’t afford what IkeSen is going to ask of me.
Fortunately, you still get a taste. You can build spice without resorting to the hottest of hotness, because I find sexual tension pretty hot as well. First, you do get to teh sechz with every LI, it’s just that all are “fade to black” before it really gets into the goods. Ikemen Vampire certainly wins out on the spice when it comes to free smut content. Second, this batch of boys has more smutty content than the Oda forces did, which surprised me. Some of these guys f*ck like rabbits. I’ll give you one guess on who that is. :eyebrow waggle: And there was some flowery speech in another route when referring to things being teased and inserted, so it does get hot outside of pay stories. I certainly felt something getting warm. But, keep in mind that if you’re a f2p player, you’re not going to get the juicy details, and even if you pay I can’t assure you that there will be good content there since I have yet to spend my currency on it.
Cold Shower Rating: Pass. Surprisingly, this mobage gets the go ahead for a cold shower rating. You’re likely to get a little heated and might need a quickie. Shower that is. Cool yourself down with a glass of water, and some strategic splashing. Like your lap, or your head.
Angst: This game is about the Sengoku Period in Japan, you know what that means, right? Murder and death, war, betrayal, this game has it all! Except that it kind of glosses over most of that because the writers actually do something right and focus on how it affects the MC and the route, so the story can give proper time and space to the romance of the game. Yes, there’s a big war in every route, there’s no avoiding that, and yes, MC is usually somewhere in the middle of it; if you want to hear about how frightening it is for a woman who wants to be a fashion designer and abhors violence to be surrounded by it, you get that, but she tries to pretend it doesn’t exist because she’d completely break if she really thought about all the dead.
I think the biggest angst factor in this portion of the game is that everyone on the Takeda-Uesugi alliance is considered an enemy to the Oda forces, whom the MC is staying with at the start of the game. So you get this angsty taboo relationship between enemies, and I dig that. You also get to hear about the shitty things that happened to the LIs, being on the opposing side of the Oda forces, so there’s plenty of background angst for all the LIs here. It’s a really good balance between the heavy and the light-hearted drama. It could certainly be turned up a few degrees, but I don’t think I’d enjoy it as much if MC spent her time mourning all the dead people we were never introduced to, instead of trying to find a reason to bed the boys who are winning over her heart.
Drama Llama Rating: 7/10. The drama llama looks scarier than it is. You can give it a pat, but I wouldn’t get too close to the mouth, they’re a bit bite-y.
Voice Acting: Yep, this is a partially voiced game, which means you’re not hearing any lines in the actual route of your LI. You get some in the prologue, and if you manage to snag some voice clips for your background (also labeled “His Room”) you can have some whenever you visit the homepage. Whomever you have selected for battles also gives you a line when you win, but nothing if you lose. Thing is, you’re not likely to be battling 24x a day because you’ll probably manage it in groups of five or four, and if you give yourself some time for sleep you’re not hitting all 5x a day, so 3-4 times a day on average you’ll get one line if you win. That’s so, so, so so so few.
Because of the aforementioned lack of actual lines, I find the voice acting very limited. All the guys are stoic, badass warlords, so typically they’re all rather bland in delivery because they don’t get to whisper sweet nothings to you or give you anything with real emotion. They have to keep face, of course. And I know voice acting is expensive, and I know that this is a free to play game, but IkeSen has the least voice acting of the Ikemen Series, so it just bums me out. Especially when they have names that I recognize and want to hear in the line-up.
Expression Rating: Ka. Give me more sexy lines. Give me more lines with emotion. We get so little that there really isn’t even enough for me to consider it a voiced game.
Art: The age of Ikemen Sengoku kind of shows in the art, it’s very five years ago mobile art. That’s not to say it is bad, because I certainly don’t think it is, it just isn’t as beautiful as Cybird’s other Ikemen games, imo. It has detailed backgrounds (that get reused often). It has unique characters where none of them look like another. Everyone has their own color scheme, and I’m sure keeping to the theme of the game wasn’t easy when designing pretty eye-candy for the masses. Each LI sprite gets a few outfit changes (I think three at most), and a few facial expressions. Unnamed characters do not show up (not surprising). And overall the quality is spot on.
Still Picture Rating: ★★★★☆ Many thematic. Such dated. Very eye-candy.
CGs: I’m actually surprised at the lack of CGs that come with this game. Unlike Ikemen Vampire and Ikemen Revolution, Ikemen Sengoku doesn’t rely on cards to pass beauty battles, but instead dress-up and room design gachas. This means there are much fewer CGs available because they don’t need to make pictures for cards. So you get about three per full story (both endings) and then every once in a while (roughly once every 6 months) they do a boyfriend gacha that gives you more CGs for your room they decided to stop doing the boyfriend gachas, so I haven’t seen one in a year. Kind of ridiculous, especially since they still give out orbs for them, and you can’t do anything with them. However, events do give out “His Room” backgrounds if you manage to sneak your way into the top tiers of the rankings. Something I find difficult to do, in my few attempts at it I was eked out by a few last minute pushes by those who either saved more items (since I’m free to play) or paid to win the ranking (totally viable, just not my style). Keep in mind I’ve been playing for a year and a half and can’t seem to get in the top 500 without many months of saving, and it seems to be getting harder now that Act Two has been released.
CGs from the story are exactly what I would expect from the art-style. They’re detailed and typically cute or dramatic moments that make a big impact on the characters for the route. I don’t notice any inconsistencies, so I think they’re great. The CGs you can get from gachas range from standard, to beautiful, to low-effort sprite pasted on a solid background. Each CG is easily found under the warlord’s picture in “His Room”.
Look at this Photograph Rating: 78%. Not many CGs for how long I’ve been playing due to limited availability. Nothing I’d care to revisit outside of the game, so all-in-all it’s good for what it is, but not good enough for me to want to come back to.
UI/Mechanics: It’s kinda fun to me to see how Cybird has figured out what works and what should be pushed aside in order to make a mobile otoge that brings in money. IkeSen came before IkeRev, which came before IkeVamp, and it wasn’t the first game either, but that’s not here nor there. The point is that Ikemen Sengoku is older than the others so it has some features that were adapted in later games to be better for the user, and some that are gone. The dress-up aspect, for instance, is still going strong in the newer games. The castle decorating was canned for card collecting. Basic instructions for how to play are given if you choose the right routes first (which I didn’t and they’re not in this batch of guys) but if you’ve played other mobage it isn’t hard to figure out how things work.
In IkeSen you collect items from gacha, sign-ins, and stories to dress up your avatar and decorate your castle. Your points from both get added together for your strength in defeating other players in the player battles. You do not have to have items displayed in order to gain the points from them, simply hold them in one of your storage areas (you have two different storages). Through player battles you gain intimacy to pass love challenges and continue on with the story. In this game your intimacy is reset every route change, however, you keep all your beauty items so you still have a decent time passing player battles.
The game is pretty easy to manage as a free to play player, but all the good stuff is locked behind premium currency, which is difficult to accumulate. You can watch ads each day for 10 coins, but the ads sometimes cause problems and even if you get 10 a day the content you can purchase costs many hundreds of coins compared to your 10... You’ll be dropping some dough if you want those premium stories, or epilogues to events.
The UI isn’t complex, though some things are not optimized the best; such as news and events being in different sections that both need to be looked at to get rid of the announcement marker. Once you learn where everything is, it isn’t hard to navigate. The menu pretty much has everything you could possibly want with little digging to find anything. And no matter where you go, the home button is (almost) always at the bottom of the screen so you can start over if you get lost. Some screens can take a few seconds to populate, so there is loading time. And certain things are never explained even with hitting all the possible explanations, like event stamina is the same as main story stamina (which I see get asked often on reddit).
What’s this button do? Rating: B-. Not the best menu I’ve seen, and some mechanics are not explained well or at all. But it’s pretty easy to navigate if you have experience from other games, or are good at mapping and deducing on your own.
Errors: The quality for Cybird games is top-notch. There are the occasional spelling error or missing word, but these are rare occurrences - so rare I can’t even tell you what routes have them. I’ve seen this issue in events more than the main stories, but I know there was at least one in the main story of… someone. I’ve only seen a few actual errors with the game mechanics itself, and those are typically links to events. Again, this is a rare occurrence, probably fewer times than fingers I have on one hand. Basically, there’s some good quality in this game.
Here there be Bugs Rating: Pass. If language and translation mistakes irk you, you can rest assured that this game won’t raise your blood pressure from errors. Nothing but a few of the typical household pests, so enjoy your time.
Background Music: I honestly don’t even listen to the BGM in this game. There are like, three tracks that get repeated constantly, and I’ve long since grown tired of them. Plus, this game is SO LOUD compared to my others - even others by Cybird - by 200% at least. I remember thinking once that it wasn’t so bad, but it has been 18 months and eventually you’re going to get tired if you listen to the BGM daily. Or at least I did.
.png)
Comments
Post a Comment