War: Valentine Edition -- No Spoiler Review
War: Valentine Edition
System: PC
Price: Free
Voice Acting: None
ESRB Rating: Not Rated, Reviewer Suggests E10 (10+)
Overall Rating: Stole 5.5/10 ♥s
Pre-Game Perception: Valentine’s dates with awkward men, hopefully with lots of romance and some good laughs.
Morning-After Reflection: A smooth integration of choices with no need for prior knowledge on the characters. All one-shot, one-day romances, that I wasn’t upset to have spent some time doing.
Story: “Are you ready to go on a Valentine date?
Choose your Valentine from the men of Beauty and the War (X Playing Pieces). Each date is like a box of chocolates - you'll never know what you'll get! Will he take you for a romantic walk down the beach or on an adventure of a lifetime?
Prepare for laughs, cute moments, and sweet romance in this dating simulation, which was made in a month for Valentine's Day.”
Interest Rating: 3/10. I decided to raid itch.io for all the free to play otoge that’s in there (and there’s a lot) and this happened to be one of them. The art isn’t my style, I don’t know the game the LIs are from, and really the only thing that put this game on my list is “free otome''. But, let’s give it a go.
MC: I have no idea who the MC is supposed to be, but the first screen I came to that I could interact with was asking what you want to name her. So I named her. The game has no voice acting, so any name will do, it just comes out in the text anyways. But I was going in blind, I didn’t know if she was 50-feet tall or a 12-inch pianist. And so I started the game. There’s really nothing to tell you what MC looks like, how she acts, or any identifiers until you stumble on a CG. Finally! Finally I know she is a red-headed, stylish girl; she’s probably short, as that seems to be the norm, but I never got to really see her next to the LIs, and who knows how tall they are?
The reason she’s so hard to get a hold on, is because she is practically the ideal self-insert. The game flawlessly integrated the choices with no consequences; you can pick anything and everything and it will only matter in that moment, but further down the route no one will mention what MC might have done, or not done. And the options cover a variety of choices as well, from outright rude, to thirsty, to shy, to whatever you can think of. I got to see everything MC could be, and it was kind of neat to have that much influence over the game at that moment, even if the story didn’t care at all if I chose to bleed the king dry, or refuse every gift.
Likability Rating: Yu. Be whoever you want to be! Be bold. Be demure. Be all of them at the same time. I like that I get to be thirsty and no one is offended by it. MC has no initial personality, it’s whatever you make her to be.
Plot: Right… So there's apparently this game called Beauty and the War, and someone (I’m not even sure if it’s the same developers) made a Valentine’s Day otome with those LIs (I think) and the whole thing was done in a month. That should give you some insight on how much I know about the game before getting into it. All the “dates” are one-shot, one-day adventures with the LI you picked. Most revolve around an amusement park (probably because that was one of the only backgrounds they had), and the “plot” is to just make the day however you want to make the day. You can talk about how terrible it was, or you can say it was your dream come true. It’s your choice on how you and the LI feel about what happened that day. And really, it’s exactly like the MC, it’s whatever you make it into.
Replayability Rating: ★★★☆☆ Each LI has their own self-contained story, so play who you want however you want, but there doesn’t seem to be a real reason to play different choices. I managed the same ending with two different personalities, so I assume it concludes the same way whatever way you go.
Love Interests: The neat thing about this short one-shot game is that you don’t actually have to know anything about the LIs because at the beginning of each of their routes it explains the situation, and a few sentences about their personalities. Then while along the route it seems like you don’t even know who these guys are for the most part, so you can go in completely unaware and still manage to have a good date. There are six secretive studs(?) in this game. The reason that’s a question is because there are a few that I’m not entirely sure they’re… well, you’ll see. There are no bad endings, so pick whatever answers you want. And they are all self-contained stories, so go with whatever order you want. I went from bottom up because… Uh… Because!
Barium is a smooth criminal king. I thought the way the route started was really cute, and the way it ended as well. It’s a very short route, each route runs about 10-15 minutes, so you’re done with this game in about two hours if you’re on the slower end of reading (like me). To be honest, I can’t be serious with that name. Barium being a metal and used for many medical imaging procedures, it is not a smooth anything. But perhaps there was a reason for this naming in the original game. King Barium apparently comes from an island with lots of natural gems and minerals. So, this King sweeps you off your feet from the beginning, or you can be greedy and nothing is enough to please you, or you can be annoyed and cut him down at every corner - it doesn’t matter! He never loses his cool and he continues to dote on you through the end of the date. After completing the rest of the routes, King Barium turned out to be my second favorite. It was a really chill route.
Next I did Wind, who is apparently a tsundere and you two do not get along. But I wanted some romance, so I went with being cautiously polite, instead of being constantly insulting. It was an interesting little date that played out rather naturally, imo. With the choices I made, at least. Wind, besides being a tsundere, is some sort of beast-man or something? I didn’t get a whole lot of info from the dude who didn’t talk much. And everytime I attempted to compliment him, he just tsun’ed a bit harder. He does do nice things for MC but claims that he didn’t put any thought into it, or anything else for that matter. Classic crabby behavior. It was a little bit of a strange route, but it turned out okay. Wind ended up pretty middle rung for me.
Right, so then we have Onyx. I’m pretty sure he’s not human, not that Wind was fully human either. Onyx’s “date” is probably the most action-packed and plot-heavy one-shot that the game has, and you didn’t necessarily get a date so much as kidnapped and Onyx trying to make the best of the situation for you. Which was sweet. Yeah, it was sweet, but weird. It was super weird. The funniest thing to me is that despite this route being the least like a date, and the most with action, it actually felt like it adhered to most otome tropes. There are some very trope-y things that MC gets as choices, and the script played something between an epic action adventure and cute slice-of-life moments. I’m not sure how to feel about the overall experience with Onyx.
Things took an even stranger turn when Night showed up as my Valentine. I guess he’s supposed to be the bad boy, and sure, he has a motorcycle and breaks into an amusement park so the two of you can have a good time, but I wasn’t getting much “bad boy” vibes from him - especially if you decide to go along with everything. The writing, though, changed for this route, so I’m not sure if they had a different person do the route, but it was very this-happens, now-it’s-over, then-this-happens. I found it choppy and strange, and that made it harder to fall into the romance in Night’s route. At the end of the night, I was left wondering if it was all some sort of fever dream.
Now Arsenik, he’s a good boy that I rather enjoyed. Exactly on the money for what he was supposed to be. Gentlemanly and a little self-conscious, giving us glimpses of his background and story while still keeping things romantic and sweet. What? RJ? You don’t like the bad boy? You picked the good boy?! Yes. Yes, I did. It was a cute romance! Plus, I had the most fun in this route because of the way they allow you to make choices. It made me laugh. This route was just the highlight of the game. It wasn’t as romantic as King Barium’s, but it was sweet and I dug it.
Lastly, we had Chase of the Trold. Yes. If you don’t see where this is going, let me further explain. Chase is supposed to be funny. He has a “big sense of humor” that I somehow failed to grasp. His humor was less humor, or even “trolding”, but instead a series of monologues about everything that he was doing, and his very unemphatic reactions to it all. It was annoying for me to hear a running commentary about everything you guys did on the date. Was that the trolling? Probably. As strange as some of the other Valentine’s daters were, Chase hit dead last on my list - and not because his humor knocked me dead, but because I would have rathered kill myself than spend the night hanging with him. Maybe he’s just good in small doses.
Boy Crazy Rating: 71%. There were so few I actually enjoyed in this batch that I’m not too keen on husbando’ing any of them. I know it was a short one-shot story, but no one truly caught my eye. I’m sure I’ll forget them all next week.
Romance: If you’re idea of romance is being deferred to for every decision on what you do and don’t do, this game is chock full of romance for you. Besides getting into the dates, MC gets to take control of almost every situation, and it’s kinda cool to have someone give me a list of things to do and I ultimately get to pick from them. Of course the story does take liberties to move the date along, but there are more than a few places where the date will play out based on what you choose and not the way the writer wanted you to go. You’re bound to find a romance that’s for you in one of these six LIs.
Heart Palpitation Rating: B. Cute one-shot stories where you get to make the Valentine’s Day you want to have with what you’re given. Maybe not the most romantic, but sweet enough to be more than bittersweet chocolate.
Spice: You know… I’m not even sure where to go with this. You’re allowed to be thirsty and get some steamy scenes going, but since the game is so short that means that you only get the scenes going and then you have to move along to something else. I wouldn’t call this game spicy, but it isn’t totally absent either, if you so choose that. It certainly doesn’t get further than some kissing, so no heavy petting if that was your aim.
Cold Shower Rating: Fail. It’s not the chilliest game I’ve played, as it gives you glimpses of possibilities, but you’re not going to get a fire going with the tiny sparks that come from the short and sweet writing. Take a hot shower to heat yourself up.
Angst: The game tries to keep things light-hearted. It’s clear these characters come from a complicated background with some deep-seeded issues, as a few of them are brought up in a quick moment of angstiness, but also quickly moved on from because they don’t want to ruin the date you two are on. One route is nothing but action and angst, but the rest usually stick to the aforementioned structure. With that being the case, it’s getting a low drama llama rating because the devs weren’t looking to angst it up, they just wanted you to have a nice Valentine’s Day.
Drama Llama Rating: 2/10. We can almost ignore the drama llama for the day, except it’s our day to feed it. Don’t worry, the drama llama isn’t feeling well, so it’s rather docile. No angst today.
Voice Acting: None.
Expression Rating: N/A. Can’t rate what isn’t there.
Art: Did I mention this game was put together in a month? Well, it was. That kind of explains things. All the LIs have one sprite and one pose. The art is kind of messy. And though I know absolutely nothing about art on the computer except for the immature f*cking around I’ve done in MS Paint, and that good artists have tablets which I’ve only ever seen but never used in my life (because I’m not even an artist) the art reminds me of what can be done on MS Paint. I’m not saying it’s bad, because I think “good” and “bad” art is subjective, I’m just saying that I didn’t care for most of it.
The backgrounds were a bit random at times. One looks like a tiled public restroom, but it wasn’t supposed to be. Sometimes they’d lay very dark sprites on black backgrounds so the sprite melted into it, and I doubt that was intentional because they weren’t supposed to be doing any cool ninja tricks like shadow stepping. Overall, it felt juvenile, like the artist didn’t have much experience, but had some talent.
Still Picture Rating: ★★☆☆☆ Many inexperience. Such random. Very room for growth.
CGs: The CGs were really well done, in contrast to the questionable art choices. Wait, no. No, the CGs were primarily well done, but inconsistent in some cases. Sometimes the CGs were way off the mark on what was happening, because there is certainly one that looks a bit triggering and creepy/rapey non-con despite the situation being full on consensual. But that’s not the only issue. Let me show you two pieces of the same characters and how off-the-wall the art differences are.
Then we have this other one that is clearly telling a story of passion and lust. And that’s cool to me. But I want more of the latter and less of the former. Good news is that most of the CGs are the latter, so you won’t get the former but a few times.
Look at this Photograph Rating: 67%. There is no gallery, so no way to see the art you’ve already discovered. And the inconsistency drags this rating down a ton.
UI/Mechanics: Well now, this one was a fun one. The game is a standard VN with clicking choices and hitting the go button until the next choice, there is no additional gameplay besides reading. When you load in, you’re thrown into naming the character, then you’re taken to the LI choice screen. You can go back after reading each LI’s little info page, but I just went with it. Everything played out fine, but there is no backlog, so if you skipped you just have to hit the back button to go back. Unless you’re on a choice, then you can’t do anything except make the choice. Which could be awkward if you clicked too fast and don’t know what you’re actually answering.
There’s a place to save, but no load button. You have to go into save, then choose load in the save menu. There’s also no way to load a save on launch, it just tries to get you to start a new game. But I did eventually find the main menu, which wasn’t a screen that popped up for me until I sought it out. Impressive that they hid that so well in the string of clicks and it wasn’t, you know, introduced before you started the game or given a button to return there easily. The good news is that they tell you how to skip text! Holding CTRL will skip read text, so that’s pretty advanced for what I’d expect from everything else missing or being complicated to figure out.
What’s this button do? Rating: D. Some explanations on how to manage the game, but the weirdness of not being able to find the main menu, plus missing other features knocks this game down a bit.
Errors: There were absolutely no errors that I found, unless it wasn’t intentional for the Main Menu to not show up on launch. Then that’s an error, but since I can’t say one way or the other, there’s nothing here of note. There were a few choice words used that gave me pause, but they were correct, if not a little archaic and rarely used.
Here there be Bugs Rating: Pass. Literally nothing. Pristine. You’re basically taking the plastic wrap off this house that was somehow built in a bubble.
Background Music: It is crazy, man. It’s all over the place. The first song I heard had lyrics and didn’t suit the mood at all. Then they jump from one theme to another with many different tracks, and I felt like I was zipping around FM stereo channels. It’s completely incomprehensible in choice and I muted it after my first route of not knowing what was going on with the music while I’m just trying to make out with a King.
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