Mine was cinderella phenomenon. I have no recollection of how I stumbled across it. I was obsessed with Ouran high school host club as a teen so it probably looked intriguing to me as second time I’d seen a “reverse harem” on a cover. I played the entire thing within a single weekend. Then… I didn’t play another otome game until Piofiore came out on the switch. No idea why I didn’t. I vaguely recall not being able to find any other free games that were of similar quality, but I was an adult when Cinderella Phenomenon came out so it’s not like I couldn’t buy things online.

Anyway, like many others I bought a ton of switch games during the pandemic and one of those was Piofiore; I’ve been playing otome ever since.

  • phorayz@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    @Catch42

    • Crimson Spires is absolutely an romance visual novel (3 guys, 1 lady) and had walking around interacting.
    • Echoes of the Fey has walking around the town, clicking on NPCs, and turn based battle mechanics and it’s considered a romance visual novel/ otome.
    • Loren the Amazon Princess has turn based battle mechanics and is consider a romance visual novel.
    • Boyfriend Dungeon is definitely considered a romantic visual novel but has hack and slash fighting all the way through.

    I’m not seeing how it’s not a visual novel. I’m no expert of the genre by any mean, but I don’t see much difference between Telltale’s Walking Dead and the above games I just listed. Can you explain what you see as the distinction?

    • Catch42@kbin.socialOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      Genre’s are by definition somewhat fluid and only exist as a concept to help communicate what a piece of media is about beforehand. So I can’t claim to be an expert on the genre either. In video games the main genre tends to be based on game mechanics (ie RPG, shooter, etc.), then a secondary genre identifier marks theme (romance, sci-fi, etc). Of course lots of games have multiple mechanics. I’ve noticed that when games mix multiple genres they tend to be defined by their most dominant one. So Crimson spires gets marketed as a “visual novel with adventure elements” and Loren the amazon princess gets dubbed a “visual novel with RPG elements”. I’ve seen it the other way too. I’ve heard the recent release Loop8 called an “RPG with visual novel elements”

      The Telltale games could very well be visual novels as my response was based on what I’ve heard other people call the telltale games. Do they have novel aspects to them? Looking at the screenshots of telltale games I don’t see anything that looks like a visual novel, but again I haven’t played them.