The magic academy-themed yuri visual novel Perfect Gold: The Alchemy of Happiness is the third game by the Philippines-based indie studio YangYang Mobile, and the Nintendo Switch and iOS/Android ports have just been released just in time for Pride Month. As a short and sweet romance with gorgeous visuals, I couldn’t resist checking it out!
I’ve been following YangYang Mobile’s titles since their first release, The Letter, a horror visual novel. Their second title, Love Esquire, is a romantic comedy dating sim with RPG elements with a clear bishojo influence. It’s really fascinating to see their trajectory (they currently have a new horror title, Saint Maker, coming out later this year), but I was admittedly a little apprehensive about how a company without any yuri titles in their lineup might handle the subject matter.
A lot of properties have gotten the Warriors treatment, from The Legend of Zelda to One Piece, but Touken Ranbu might be one of the best-suited series for the Warriors format from the premise alone. Originally a free-to-play browser game released in 2015, Touken Ranbu features a huge cast of anthropomorphic historical swords in the form of handsome men designed by various artists. Since then, it’s become immensely popular, particularly in Japan, and has multiple adaptations in the form of anime, manga, stage plays, and even a live-action film. There is now also a mobile version, as well as an English localization of the game that was released in 2021.
The premise of Touken Ranbu is that the Touken Danshi (“swordsmen”) are elite fighters sworn to protect history from the History Retrograde Army, who are threatening to change the course of history by going back and time and interfering with significant battles and historical events to further their own goals. Players of the browser/mobile game take on the role of the Saniwa (“master”) to manage and deploy the various Touken Danshi on missions to protect the timeline – and, of course, create new Touken Danshi as they’re added to the game through the gacha mechanic.
Just going to put it up front – Tomoegata is my fav in Touken Ranbu Warriors!
While the source material has limited gameplay that is mostly automated, it’s easy to see how a bunch of sword boys fighting forces that are trying to change history makes for a natural fit for the “1-on-1000” action format of Koei Tecmo’s Warriors games. Of course, Warriors developers Omega Force are behind Touken Ranbu Warriors, but Ruby Party, Koei Tecmo’s team best known for their otome game titles, also assisted with this release. That effectively makes it the first Ruby Party game to come out in English for PC and Nintendo Switch!
Marcus and Anne sit down to discuss all things Garage: Bad Dream Adventure, breaking their previous streak of only doing spoiler casts of visual novels! This obscure cult favorite deserved more than a short, spoiler-free discussion on the regular podcast, so the pair take a deep dive into this weird and wacky game, discussing everything from gender dynamics to ego and id. As with all our spoiler special episodes, the first half of the podcast is spoiler-free and includes background information about the game as well as our general impressions. After a clearly-marked break, we dive into our full spoiler-filled thoughts, so stick around until then if you’ve played through the game!
Idea Factory International’s first otome game localization in years, Cupid Parasite, is out today in North America, and Europe on November 5! This romantic comedy otome game is full of vibrant colors and a really fun retro pop Americana vibe, which is why I’ve had it on my radar since it came out in Japan. To celebrate this exciting release, I’ll be sharing some first impressions of the game, with a full review coming once I’ve completed all routes.
In Cupid Parasite, you play as Lynette Mirror, a top advisor for the marriage agency Cupid Corporation who takes on the 5 toughest clients at the company, known as the Parasite 5. Lynette has one thing up her sleeve, though – she’s the actual mythological goddess Cupid, and she’s come down to earth to prove to her father Mars that she doesn’t need godly powers to succeed at matchmaking humans.
The members of Parasite 5 have a range of extreme “quirks,” from the Thieving Parasite Allan who’s only interested in girls who already have partners to Ryuki, the Glamor Parasite who won’t even acknowledge a woman’s presence if she doesn’t satisfy his strict beauty ranking system. But Lynette isn’t going to let that stop her, and soon the group find themselves at the center of a sharehouse reality show focused on finding the Parasite 5 love!
So far, I’ve played through Ryuki’s route, which is generally recommended as one of the routes to start with because it’s pretty self-contained. On your first playthrough, the only characters available are Ryuki, Shelby, and Gill, and after your second playthrough the ability to play Allan and Raul’s routes will be unlocked. After clearing all five of these characters, there’s one more secret character route at the end. While I’ve seen some variation in the suggested route order, it seems like Ryuki, Shelby, and Gill are pretty interchangeable, while Allan should be saved for last due to the story elements in his route.
While I can’t yet comment on the story as a whole, I’m quite enjoying this game as a lighthearted palette cleanser after Olympia Soirée. Though both games are heavily focused on marriage, Cupid Parasite is so goofy it’s hard to take seriously most of the time. In fact, the Parasite 5 are all pretty unlikeable from the beginning, at least for me, so the game’s fun really comes from discovering the charming side of each of the characters.
Ryuki, in particular, is extremely difficult to like at first due to his focus on beauty, to the point that he won’t even speak to people he feels aren’t pretty enough for him to associate with. While his behavior is quite toxic, the whole game plays everything off sillily enough that I didn’t take him very seriously, but at times it still made me rather uncomfortable, and I can see him really turning off some players. Despite this, I still found him growing on me more than I expected over the course of his route!
It’s important to note that as of this post, and the launch of the game, Ryuki and Raul’s routes have unedited English text in them. Idea Factory International has announced it will be patching this, along with any text overflow, in about four weeks. For their full statement, see below.
— Idea Factory International (@IdeaFactoryIntl) October 29, 2021
Unfortunately, these textual issues are quite apparent in the latter half of Ryuki’s route, with pronouns being mixed up and many rough lines of text. Since IFI has already announced they are addressing these issues, if you can wait for the patch or want to play through other routes first, such as Shelby and Gill, I would recommend doing that. I’m not saying the game is unplayable by any means, but I did feel the unedited text in Ryuki’s route marred the experience for me.
An example of the rough text and overflow in Ryuki’s route
I’m planning on replaying the latter half Ryuki’s route after the patch is implemented to see how it’s been updated. It’s a shame, but IFI has shown great transparency by sharing exactly what sections of the game are affected and how/when they will be fixing it.
For now, I’m looking forward to playing through the rest of the routes in this extremely fun and silly otome game!
Magic Mike, male Viera announced for FFXIV, Marcus and Anne are mad at BOTH Apple and eBay… It’s going to be a rowdy one! Marcus has also been busy with new Collector’s Cabinet and Checking the Score pieces, plus he checks out early access for that hot new Konami game, GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon! Note that Anne says the all-new bunny race in FFXIV is for player characters in the news segment, but they’re NPCs only. Sorry about that!
15:00 – Media Minutes: New Pokemon Snap, Resident Evil 8, Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet, Fried Barry, RetroTink, Giant Bomb 44:00 – Notable News: Apple says Itch.io has “unspeakable games,” eBay banning “sexually oriented materials,” male Viera coming to FFXIV, Famicom Detective Club out now, Game Builder Garage announced, Bustafellows release date
♫ “Willie Lomans,” “5 minutes pleasure,” and “6 pence and moon” from Alphabet Planet by Hiroki Kikuta
Your regular scheduled Pixel pals are back for another episode of Pixel x Pixel! Finally, Anne has done the unthinkable – convinced Marcus to play a Monster Hunter and streamed a horror game (RE Village demo)! In addition to getting his Monster Hunter Rise on, Marcus reviews NISA’s new shooting game Poison Control and celebrates the recent Switch port of The House in Fata Morgana with a Checking the Score article on the soundtrack. This episode also marks the first time we’ve discussed the same film in three different episodes!
22:00 – Media Minutes: Mortal Kombat, Yentl, Hairspray, Monster Hunter Rise, Air Ranger: Rescue Helicopter 49:00 – Notable News: PS3 and PS Vita storefronts no longer closing, MechaPwn PS2 exploit (Marcus’ tutorial), RetroTINK-5X Pro, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles announced for Nintendo Switch
♫ “Willie Lomans,” “5 minutes pleasure,” and “6 pence and moon” from Alphabet Planet by Hiroki Kikuta
DRAMAtical Murder may very well be the most well-known BL (boys’ love) game in Japan – it’s even inspired an anime adaptation and stage play! The third game from developer Nitro+CHiRAL, DRAMAtical Murder was originally released in 2012 and received a fan disc as well as a PS Vita port that removed the graphic 18+ content. Now, the game is finally available to purchase in English thanks to JAST BLUE as part of their ongoing endeavor to localize Nitro+CHiRAL’s complete game catalog.
Since I’d never played the Japanese release beyond the first few hours of the PS Vita version, I couldn’t wait to see if DRAMAtical Murder lived up to all of the praise!
