Love Unholyc (Season Two) -- No Spoiler Review

Love Unholyc (Season Two)

System: Phone 

Price: Freemium (Free to play with in-app purchases available, but not required) 

Voice Acting: Partial (Korean) 

ESRB Rating: T (13+) 

Overall Rating: Stole 6.5/10 ♥s

Pre-Game Perception: The individual routes for the men that fell in love with MC, probably going to focus more on each person than the lusty pyramid they had going in Season One.

Morning-After Reflection: An interesting turn of events that brought up more questions than the first portion of the game. Unfortunately, it’s even more demanding than the previous season if you’re aiming for the best endings.

Story: “You’re an ‘Unholyc’, a race born between a human and a devil. As befitting of a descendent of the mighty devil himself, you are equipped with the power to charm and seduce others to do your bidding. However, in order to become a fully-fledged Unholyc, you were seeking partners for your coming-of-age ceremony when you accidently managed to form a contract with not one but three handsome humans….”

Interest Rating: 8/10 After playing the first season, I really enjoyed this game and was looking forward to individual routes. However, the issues from the first season were still present and my expectations were lowered.

MC: MC’s default name is Mir, a name that you are prompted to change or accept before starting the story of the game, but since we’re on Season Two you should already know that. Her name is never said but is typed out in text, so there are no goodies if you keep the original name. As the story said, Mir is a descendent of a race of half-blooded devils known as Unholyc. Because of this, Mir is supposed to be extremely attractive, and though I don’t think she is plain by any means, I don’t find her character design to be more attractive than any other good looking female character. She’s cute, overall, imo. I’d do her. Mir is not voiced, but she appears in more of the CGs in Season Two than she did in Season One, so nearly half of the CGs involve her in some way.

Mir appears to be somewhere around early-twenties, but it is implied she is much older though she doesn’t really act as such. There are several hints and confusing moments that would bring one to believe that Mir is much more than she appears, so don’t get down if you didn’t really enjoy her naivety in the previous season. Saying that, however, she doesn’t get much better through Season Two, so if her being passive and allowing everything to happen around her was a problem for you, you’re likely not going to enjoy this season. Mir has a background that has only been partially uncovered through the story, and you really don’t get a whole lot more in Season Two. They’re waiting for Season Three to unload all of the background (you can read the prologue for Season Three already, which explains many, many things).

Her personality was developed a little more in Season Two, but it still comes off as completely uncaring and unconcerned. If you’re looking for the damsel in distress, Mir fits the bill almost perfectly. There were a few stories where she ended up a BAMF at some point, however, for the most part she is rather uninvolved despite the story revolving around her and her relationship with the LI whose route you ended up on. This season seems to be more about the LIs themselves, and their unholy obsession with Mir. I had a harder time enjoying Mir as a character in this season, since she just seems aloof in most situations this time around.

Likability Rating: Yu. I still enjoy the premise of a demon descendant MC who is an introvert and gamer girl, but this season really focused on the LIs and the story surrounding MC. She still gets points for being a protag type I haven’t gotten the chance to see until now, however, she’s sliding towards a Ryo rating.

Plot: If you’re reading this, I assume you’ve already read through my Season One review, or at least played it to this point. As such, you should be aware the plot has changed quite dramatically after that cliffhanger they left us with at the end of Season One. I think I yelled at the game at that point, to be honest. I had many theories involving the story up until this point, and I enjoyed uncovering the truths behind those theories, but that’s not really going to give you an idea what Season Two is all about.

So, without saying what happened at the end of Season One, just know the game picks up exactly where you would expect it to. This time there is a much more defined plot than simply making men horny. Don’t worry, the horniness is still there. Moreso, in fact. This time we get to go down the route of each LI and see how the group as a whole deals with the issues that arose in Season One. That’s about as much as I can say without giving away details to new players. Some routes did this well, and others just made things more complicated to the point I was left wondering if Season Three was going to give us some answers or just a lot of implications much like this portion of the game did.

Unfortunately, Season Two is more demanding with time than Season One was. There are several ill-timed VN portions that can be easily missed and cost you tickets to replay. There are also endings that can come with literally one wrong answer, or one missed chatroom. And to get the best ending (there are 3 last day endings for each route, and 3 early/comical iirc) you have to have 100% chatroom activity and bypass every early ending. I’m not sure if you have to have 100% correct answers, but it’s still taxing to get every chatroom. Not cool, PrettyBusy.

As a note, Season Three has been pushed back several times, but PrettyBusy promises that they will be releasing it. Currently (June 2022) it is slated for winter 2022. I believe they’ll try to get it out for the two-year anniversary of the game (October-ish… I can’t remember the exact date).

Replayability Rating: ★★★★☆ I found myself really involved in the story and wanted to see every outcome that could happen with Season Two. I played each route several times, and took my time going through them all. Even making a spreadsheet of answers to try to get every possible CG out there. There’s a lot to this game, but that also requires a lot of time. I won’t say the time is worth it, but it certainly has a lot of replayability in order to see the 3 separate endings on the last day per character.

Love Interests: While Love Unholyc Season Two doesn’t bring us any additional bachelors, we get a route with each one, so there’s more to say about these hot husbandos than there was previously. Season Three will give us two more additional routes and men, but for now I’m going to have to leave them out. If you want to see the bare basics of the three main men of this season, you can check out what I had to say in my Season One review.

As I’ve mentioned before, there are a number of early Bad (called Comical) Ends in this game before reaching the end of each LI’s route. If you manage to bypass them, after seven days you will find yourself on one of three endings for the LI you’re on. Ideally, you’ll get the best ending, however, I already mentioned that you need 100% chatroom completion in order to manage that. You’ll most likely get the normal ending, which is still a decently good ending in most cases. And if you didn’t vibe with the LI, you’re going to collect the Cursed Ending - I’m sure you can decipher what that will entail. There is no route order, or suggestion order. I went with who I was least interested in, which turned out to be a better route than I thought. With that, let me get onto into the trifecta of temptation that we’ve come to know and love from the common route (Season One).

Last time I introduced Jung Hi first, so I think I’ll keep with that. As you may have figured out by now, Jung Hi is the kinkster and idol of the group. Hi has an assortment of “toys” he likes to talk about, and isn’t shy at all expressing his kinkiness to everyone. You may or may not have found out what his idol groups’ name means by this point, depending on how much of the content you’ve done already. Keep in mind that this game is still rated T, so I was surprised with how spicy the game was with Hi’s route. The CGs are certainly suggestive, and the fact that kink is included at all was surprising to me. For some reason, kink often earns a higher age rating as if there’s something inherently wrong with characters into kink-culture.

I honestly had high hopes (pun intended) for Hi, but it ultimately didn’t meet my expectations. Despite the game giving a clear and present plot, Hi’s route turned a different corner and explored dating an idol. Okay, this is probably cool for people that fantasize about dating an idol, but for me I was bored by how normal it was when there was so much more that could have happened, especially since I didn’t start Season Two with Hi, so I knew there was a lot more story to explore. Hi still manages to hold onto that darkness churning under his sweet and sexy exterior, and I’m still willing to swallow the poison he offers, but I was ultimately underwhelmed by the plot of his route and felt he was done dirty because of it.

Speaking of done dirty, Sol is the poster boy for that. I’m not kidding. Readers were so displeased with Sol’s route that PrettyBusy (the devs) rewrote part of it and gave him a “What If” story that diverges from his Season Two story, in order to give a different, more involved and affectionate Sol. Both are available in the game, the original and the additional “What If” route. Maybe it’s because I found his constant unspoken, internal struggles relatable, or perhaps I just want an emotionally detached LI because I do tend to gravitate towards characters that hide their true feelings, but I actually enjoyed his original route and didn’t feel the need for the “What If” route. Sol does suffer from continuing to try to put distance between MC and himself so he can take care of her, and he does interact with other people more than MC during his route, so if you wanted a story where these two are constantly making out, you’re not getting it. I do want to say that Sol’s few steamy scenes were very steamy to me. I had the hardest time with Sol’s route getting the best ending, falling into an early bad ending first, and then getting the Cursed Ending. I was shocked I did so poorly, but it was worth it, imo.

Leo made the most improvement from the common route to the end of his route, imo. While Hi took a nosedive due to the story, and Sol didn’t change much for me, Leo started pretty low on my love-meter and turned out to be one of my favorite routes. I think this route actually has MC in it the least, but there was a lot of story and tropes that I dig in it. I have a newfound respect for Leo and the way he presents himself. It’s not really spicy, and ends up being unexpectedly sweet, which was a good enough combination for me to feel happy and content with the normal ending that I managed the first time through. At this point I didn’t realize you had to 100% every chat, so I landed firmly in the normal ending.

Boy Crazy Rating: 90%. I still think these men deserve my attention and affections, but they dropped a little from Season One because I might be falling in love with the next routes before they’re even out. Good boys. Hot husbandos. Sizzlin’.

Romance: I made an analogy in my previous review about how Love Unholyc’s romance is love by 1,000 cuts, and it filled my romance requirements for a romance game. I think I can say that Season Two goes harder on the romance than Season One did, and that makes sense since you’re in a route instead of getting tag-teamed by the three men in the game during the common route. Some routes have more romance than others, and the romance is expressed differently depending on the LI, so it might not be your love language and might not come across in the same way, but I really enjoyed it.

Heart Palpitation Rating: B. I still got the feels from the individual routes, but I found it manifesting in different ways. Sometimes I had to look for what this action or that comment meant, and could convince myself it was love, while others it was super clear.

Spice: Is this or is this not the part you’ve been waiting for? I know I want to get the deets on how flushed I’m going to feel at the end of a route, so let me put those curiosities to rest: Love Unholyc is horny. Season Three promises to be even more horny. It turns out the Korean game rating system forced PrettyBusy to raise the rating on their game, so PrettyBusy said, “Okay, we’ll make it Mature and not Teen,” and decided to rewrite it to allow for all the steamy, sexy, spicy hotness they can get away with with a higher rating. This is one of the reasons the next season is taking so long to be released. But that doesn’t tell you how hot this season is. I was surprised time and time again that we’re reading a T rated game, tbh. There is implied sex, and not always a fade to black before the act but other language to keep from outright saying that some guys’ D was in some girls’ V. I’ve certainly read games that get more explicit, but this is supposed to be T-rated and I see why it was dangerously toeing the line before the rating system pushed for a higher rating. On a spice level, I’d put this as that burning feeling when you eat some good curry or pho and your mouth is pleasantly painful but it doesn’t keep you from going back for more.

Cold Shower Rating: Pass. Get some ice to cool you down while reading, you’re bound to flare up at some point. Maybe keep a misting bottle on hand to bring that temp down so you can keep your cool during the VN portions. Turns out reading while in a cold shower is harder than it sounds.

Angst: I said Love Unholyc Season One was full of drama of so many types, and while that does continue in Season Two, it gets separated out by LI and you don’t get as much of a delicious mix as the common route gave. The very real threat that we got from Season One gets moved to the back burner to just simmer while the stories focus more on the relationship being built between MC and the LI in the route. I get it, they want to give you the romance without making it about the plot that will surely be covered in Season Three. But this leads to an overall lower drama rating for me, because you can almost forget that there’s really a problem here.

Drama Llama Rating: 6/10. The drama llama is calm enough to be part of the petting zoo, but I’d still watch for nipping or shoving. They’re still ornery, just not dangerous.

Voice Acting: Just like the previous season, there isn’t a lot of voice acting in this season of Love Unholyc. The game is listed as partial, and they mean it. You only get voice acting in phone calls, including video calls, but none is supplied for the VN portions, and of course there isn’t any for the chatrooms either. Basically, the bulk of the story is silent beyond BGM, even side stories. Considering that there are a number of calls, you do get more than other games that claim partial voice acting. But compared to a game of similar make :cough:Mystic Messenger:cough: it is lacking by a mile.

What we are given, however, is pretty good. Since my first review on this game, I’ve learned more Japanese, but Japanese is not Korean, and I still don’t understand anything they’re saying. I just don’t play enough Korean games. So I can only really go off context clues on whether or not the voice acting sounds the way I would imagine the conversation would. It doesn’t move me, but I guess it’s good.

Expression Rating: Ryo. Pretty average rating for a partially voiced game. I’d like some more feeling or interaction, but we get what we get.

Art: Season Two brings us nothing new on the art front. I mean, we do get some new locations and new characters, so there are new backgrounds and appropriately new sprites, but the same chatroom and same sprites are used for the LIs and main cast. It makes sense since it is just a continuation of the story, and I wouldn’t expect more sprites for the main cast just because there’s more story. I don’t expect it with any other game that adds more content. That being said, the art is what drew me to the game originally and I’m still down for it. I really liked the designs of the characters because they felt different than other mobile phone games, mainly because Hi has kink incorporated in his outfit, and William (not a LI) is covered in tattoos - which is a huge deal and super uncommon in Japanese games due to the historical relationship between tattoos and Yakuza.

Still Picture Rating: ★★★☆☆ Many characters. Such unique. Very unorthodox.

CGs: I’ve changed my stance on this portion from Season One. I was in love with the art before, and I thoroughly enjoyed how they put together every picture to make it feel as real as possible; that hasn’t changed. I just am in love with the art for a different reason now. They feel so Love Unholyc and there’s no way to really explain that. I can’t imagine another game doing the art the way Love Unholyc does their CGs. Sometimes the art is just black and white, almost sketched pictures that I figured they released before they were finished. But I don’t hate them, in fact I kind of enjoy the way it comes into the game like that. There are more chibi CGs put into the game, and I loved the way those looked, so I’m also not complaining about that. It just has this feel that makes the game have its own personality.

Look at this Photograph Rating: 95% There are a lot of good CGs and they’re easy to locate in the game. I even had some as my phone background because that’s how much I enjoyed them.

UI/Mechanics: Love Unholyc is a chatroom-style game, with visual novel portions and very few phone calls interspersed throughout the game. If you’ve played a game with this setup, then there’s not much to explain. If you haven’t, then Love Unholyc can be overwhelming at first. The good news is that PrettyBusy has put in an in-game tutorial. The bad news is most players don’t think to hit the ‘?’ icon and expect to be told how to navigate the game, so they don’t touch it and are lost. Personally, the first thing I do in any game, phone or not, is familiarize myself with the layout. Sort through options, menus, figure out how to get to everything. I know a lot of people don’t do this, but I suggest you do with Love Unholyc.

I don’t find the menus hard to navigate, but everything is named thematically so I did click things a few times before I memorized how to get places. I really enjoy the different menu screens and the themes they use, so that’s a plus for design. However, it doesn’t seem to be intuitive for players that haven’t played a game like this before, and I often field a lot of questions on a reddit sub on how to progress through the story, or where to find DLC. Meaning the mechanics for the game brings this score down.

As for gameplay, I said before that this is a chatroom-style game. Love Unholyc runs in real-time, meaning not when you have the time, but when the game wants to run. And Season Two is more demanding and less forgiving than Season One. Important chatrooms and VNs can be during sleeping hours, and if you’ve played Season One, or read my previous review, you’d know that you cannot miss VN portions of the game without paying in-game currency to play through it. The game will continue to move on, but you won’t be able to join in any chatrooms until you play the previous VN. In order to get the best ending for Season Two, you have to 100% complete the route, which I’ve never been forced to play with such a strict timeline before. I would suggest looking up a chatroom time guide. And if you don’t want to worry about finding yourself in an early bad end, or straying from the best ending, following an answer guide will keep you headed the way you want.

I enjoy playing blind a time or two, but once I decide to mop up all the endings I turn to a guide. There is nothing wrong with playing with or without a guide, it all depends on your style of play. I also have been logging into Love Unholyc from Day 1 launch, and received many compensation packages for the errors and bugs along the way, so I can stand to miss VN portions and pay to play them later. A new player won’t find the game as easy to manage. Not only that, but birthday packages that were given out over the year and a half since launch has made it even easier for me, who was already over inundated with currency. My tip for attempting to play f2p as a new player? Save often. Saving is free (after you purchase the save slots with in-game currency). Loading from a save is not free, however, so keep that in mind.

What’s this button do? Rating: C. Although the game has received a tutorial, the rating has gone down from my Season One review because Season Two is difficult to manage as a free to play player. I find forcing players to pay for missed portions without offering a way to bypass the story a shady practice when you can’t grind out currency in a meaningful way.

Errors: First, the good news: Love Unholyc went through many updates since Day 1 launch and a large portion of bugs have been beaten out of the system. I won’t say that it is bug-free, because there’s always a chance for data to get corrupted or be copied in a way that no one expected when transferred from one platform to another (read: from the app store to your phone). However, I do know that there are much fewer complaints these days, and only one known bug that exists as far as I know; notifications can be finicky and you may not receive them, but no one knows why, and I’ve managed to play around with the options enough to find a fix for myself, but it might not work for everyone. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the Apple store updated roughly a year ago and several players were affected with data loss. Entire accounts erased. PrettyBusy has a continuing compensation for those players, but it still sucks to lose literally everything, and there’s no guarantee that it won’t happen again. It obviously was not supposed to happen, and wasn’t entirely Love Unholyc’s fault, but it happened.

The bad news? Well… translation hasn’t gotten much better. And in fact has gotten worse in some cases such as the prologue to Season Three. I mentioned that I understand Japanese better than my first review, and yes, I know this Korean, but Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are similar in their core concepts of language. What this means is I have an easier time understanding what a translated sentence is supposed to mean because I understand how a sentence is put together in another language that is similar in form and function to Korean. So when someone gets misgendered, or they refer to the wrong person, or perhaps put the wrong form of the verb in the sentence, these are things I can understand. But if you didn’t know that a lot of the language is contextual and not as specific and literal as English is, you might find it hard to follow the story because these mistakes run rampant in the game. I believe this is a problem with someone that is not a native English speaker localizing the product, but I don’t know who PrettyBusy uses, if they use anyone at all. They might do it in-house. They might machine translate it.

Here there be Bugs Rating: Fail. If poor translation is going to frustrate you, I’d give this title a pass. Hard pass. There is a serious infestation in these parts. If you can follow a story without full comprehension, then Love Unholyc is a great game, imo.

Background Music: I still thoroughly enjoy Love Unholyc’s BGM. I did purchase the OST I had mentioned from my previous review, but you can listen to it for free on their YouTube channel. It isn’t my favorite OST, but I think the music is a great fit for the feel of the game. You can easily play this without any sound if that is your preference. But if you’re a fan of instrumental music, it’s pretty cool.

BY OUR RATINGS COMBINED!: Oh ho! You thought you were done, didn’t you? Don’t worry, this will be short. Sometimes my individual ratings do not always add up to my overall rating; this is because I find a reason to rate the game based on things that are not listed in my (very) long review. I couldn’t section everything. Sometimes price factors in. Sometimes personal tastes. Basically, what it comes down to is would I buy this game knowing everything I know? Would I recommend it to a friend? Well, here we are. I said I wouldn’t recommend this game to friends if there were still many issues, and while the big, game-breaking issues have been ironed out, the translation is still pretty poor. I would pick it up knowing this, but I also forgive small companies that provide free games with crappy localizations, since I don’t technically have to pay for the quality. I expect better from bigger titles where I fork out the dough, and I expect better from OELVNs. So, yes, I’d do it all over again. However, I would cautiously recommend it to a friend. The real-time chatrooms, unforgiving gameplay, and translation issues would only really appeal to a certain type of player. It’s me. I’m that type of player. But there are others like me out there, and they might be interested in Love Unholyc and all the bad parts that come along with the good. Just approach with caution.