I feel bad for kinda ignoring this blog for the past month and escaping into FF14 so here’s a post! Since FF14 my interest in otome game news has been under a rock though I’ve been trying to keep up with site updates and magazine scans. I decided to take a look at Cool B’s release calendar to analyze what’s coming our way in 2014. (And by no means is this list complete since new games get announced all the time.)
I’ve made a PDF with color coding for all the releases in 2014 based on that calendar (cause trying to do a table in wordpress is like plucking nose hairs.)
I realized after the fact I have 2015 in there either but they’re just double score (lol) and some BL games so we can ignore that for now. So while it seems like there’s a whole lot of games, if you really go through it there’s not actually that many. At least not for me. The only category that matters to me is yellow.
For green, aka sequels/FDs/series fodder I realized that once makers start to go beyond 1 or 2 they’re just milking it and spreading content. They don’t care how much they put into 1 game because you’ll want to buy more games with segmentation and half assery. The pink category is R-18 pr0n which is usually terrible and I’ve made the decision to stay dafuq away from all the rape. (Because an R-18 otome game without rape is like a ham sandwich without the ham apparently.) Purple stuff is just ports. Again I realized that no matter how much I like a game I’d rather play something new than play something “all over again”. Blue is BL which is part of the calendar but I don’t play BL games so that’s also out.
So let’s look at the yellows. Five of those yellows are quin rose games. Based on their terrible track record and me having enough of their shit, all of their games are pretty much out of the horizon for me. That leaves me with the following games:
- Chronostacia – The world’s gonna end so you might as well find a hot guy to end it with. I’m a little eeehh with Sanctuary after that Miyako FD but the promo movie for this looked really nice.
- Alice = Alice the Game – Rejet’s take on Alice in Wonderland but after QR basically shat in my face with the Alice series, not sure if I want. Started as a drama CD series.
- Walprugis Song – A girl has to transfer school and moves into a mansion inhabited by werewolf boys and finds out their secrets! This plot is so original I don’t think I’ve ever played anything like it! Art looks nice though maybe it will be ok if we don’t have a plot centered around mommy issues.
- Bad Medicine the Game – Yet another Rejet drama CD series turned game. This one features crazy psychopathic doctors who should be nowhere near any medicine cabinets or medical equipment. But for some reason they are and now you have to just deal with it. Not sure if I want to deal with it though.
- Absolute Rank Academy – After porting Sangoku Rensenki 6 times, DaisyDaisy finally decided to create a new game. Art looks catchy but what the heck I only see 3 potential guys on the site. I hope there will be more than 3??
- Prince Pia Carrot – I WAS SO EXCITED FOR THIS MAN but then they delayed it like 2 times. I had to cancel a pre-order at least once. My excitement is slowly withering…
- Princess of the Evening Forest – Brand new company, brand new game, which feels like the cross over between Akazukin (the terrible pron game) and Snow White lol. Also there’s 7 dudes in army uniforms. I guess I could use this to make up for the fact that I won’t be playing Snow Black.
- Enkeltbillet (One Way) – Now this looks interesting. Girl goes on a vacation to an exotic European country and gets stuck there because of some issues at airport. Now she gotta stick it out! 😆 Also I love any games that portray the west so this is one of the few games I’m really looking forward to.
So there you have it, after all the filtering out, there’s only a few games on my shopping list and even so because of stuff like crazy yanderes and delays, it makes my to buy list even smaller. I think if I didn’t have FF14 I might be more open to playing other stuff but now that I have more enjoyable things to occupy my time with, I guess I can’t force myself to sit through every game that comes out. I hope this clears up on what’s in store for this blog in 2014 and I’ll try my best not to slack off too much with the reviews ;).
かわいいじゃなきゃダメなの！ 
yea I’m glad there’s a ton of porn cause lol less money for me to waste! 😆
It’s estimated for “fall now” but yea I’ve kinda stopped caring lol.
2014 has a ton of releases for PC which makes me happy (my Japanese level won’t let me take on PSP/vita games). I’ll just have to settle for reading through your lovely reviews for the new console games _> Man now that I think about it this year has a ton of new 18+ otome games @_@
And agree with you about Prince Pia Carrot- I was also happy to hear about this game and preordered it but now they don’t even have an estimated release date. Really, delaying a game several times and now not even having a release date is making me really iffy about getting this D:
also Hakuoki, Chou no Doku, Amnesia and Diabolik Lovers Ports.
Uh, two ps vita only came….. hakuoki and amnesia world…. huoh.. maybe I really need to buy that console…. nnhh..
More like, the only times I use my laptop, I’m usually too lazy to change the OS. And if I change it, I’ll just keep using it until I’ve finished the game, which means I can’t do anything else on it until then. (lol) Because my laptop is like my reference picture database, so it’s kind of annoying. I really should just get myself another laptop for otome games and RPG.
I, by no means, am interested in the R-18 porno (and have never been), so except for Rejet’s games, I’m not missing out too much. I hope.
I’ll still play those. I’ll just have to find “other means” of obtaining them.
I paid money for this shit so idgaf anymore (´し_｀〃)
no decent laptop eh? there’s a lot more PC games coming out now but probably cause a lot of them are R-18 porno
Enkeltbillet sounds pretty nice and I’m kind of curious on Chronostacia but I’m way busy playing all other games so by the time I’m done with all that I can imagine it’s 2015 X3 It really sucks that -8 and Ninkoi got lost in the mail because I was really looking forward to watching the broadcasts (LOL Right when I’m free!). Welp, I guess I’ll go back to torture myself with Custom Drive, rage at Jewelic Nightmare for its bad writing and secret character and actually enjoy Beyond the Future…
Enkeltbillet + Rejet games are pretty much all I’m interested in myself. But since I can’t play Windows games, all I’m likely to get is Enkeltbillet. Well, I have a huge backlog to get through anyway so maybe I should just spend time playing some older otome games! (lol)
I haven’t heard much opinion on JE so I guess I”m glad you liked it? I heard the story was a bit weak.
and yep I heard about the new game from Kagerou yesterday, I hope it’s as good as WOF was!
There hasn’t been anything to truly catch my eye since I enjoyed Jewelic Nightmare. I’m happy to see Usuba Kagerou working on a new game Reine des fleurs as I’ve missed her since her Wand of Fortune http://www.otomate.jp/reinedesfleurs/
i’m still playing ALice because my real games are lost in the mail somewhere -_-
*is on Vivaldi’s route while typing this comment* ＿ﾉ乙(､ﾝ､)_
lol have fun with the porno bees |D I’m sure without even getting to the bad ends you’ll encounter a gold medal worthy rape marathon!
お久しぶりです！アリスご苦労様でしたｗｗｗｗ お気の毒にｗｗｗｗｗ
Ahhh, I see what you mean about the release calendar… I was never efficient enough to constantly play otome games to begin with, but recently I’ve been following releases less as well. Out of the ones you mentioned I’m probably only interested in Chronostasia and Enkeltbillet. 😛
I’m actually going to try and get my hands on 女王蜂の王房though wwww I wasn’t expecting much of anything, but I played their free demo recently and the plot line seemed surprisingly solid, and both the main characters were quite intriguing. The bad ends are all going to be horrible, though. xDDDD
That’s true maybe they’ll let us try at least lol. I’m on behemoth now.
Yeah, for what it’s worth they do seem to have an unique take on the Alice theme so far. And the two rabbits and the male Alice are pretty hot. Unfortunately it appears to have some sadistic characters, so I’m expecting abuse to be part of the game. Which I’m so not up to after DiaLo MB. Even if I’m wrong, like I was about the “dark” side of jewelic nightmare, the Mad Hatter always has two doormice at his side, one of them being female. If the abuse part is true, then expect to see some awful crap from those two so yeah…not really sure even want to try the game. Maybe if it has a really good skip function to skip everything with the characters I don’t care about.
Man, nothing interesting with otoge, going by the omochikaeri blog, nothing interesting with eroge either. There has been some yaoi translations recently, mostly of good games, but it’s games I’ve already played. On the brightside, the way things are going I’m so not gonna be sad if the otoge scene soon moves over to the PS Vita. Because it’s not like I would want to play the games even if I had a PS Vita.
You know people were doing turn 4 in Darklight back in October, so I’m sure you’ll be fine :p People are so picky nowadays. What server are you on now?
hey hey and yea Chronostacia looks interesting!
I actually didn’t like the bee game’s art because its the same artist as Shinobazu 7 and I’m still bitter about how that game series turned out 😦
I hope you enjoy it though!
No because I couldn’t even find a static until we switched to American server and now that I finally found one they don’t need my geared healer so I’m back to once again gearing my dps who’s barely ready for turn 4 –;
Long time no see!
I’m looking forward to ChronoStacia mainly for Ryouta Ohsaka. Hopefully Otomate won’t ruin that one. I’ve also ordered the Queen Bee pron game hahaha because the art looks nice and the demo was quite good. Hopefully we’ll get to see more reviews!
So are you on Turn 5 yet
oh a male Alice huh, interesting. I didn’t look into detail on what it’s about since I was busy raging over Quin Rose’s.
If you have games you haven’t touched that you paid for …yea it’s best not to buy anything new. Most likely your interests are waning xD
Only thing I have preordered atm is Project Diva f2nd.
Despite my current relationship with the Alice series, I still love the wonderland theme so much that the new Rejet game is giving me some slight interest. Mostly because there’s a male Alice in there, and I’m interested about that. I haven’t listened to the CDs or followed the site, so I’m all like “what is he? A male clone? An alternative version of Alice from some other confusing continuity? Some kind of doppelgänger? A relative?” Probably nothing as interesting as what I’m thinking, but either way female Alice + male Alice=super hot for some reason.
However…..I really hate the art style. I want to give it a chance since it’s unique, but those character designs, I hate them so much. Especially the Cheshire Cat, compared to Boris he’s like a 4 at most. Also, given that I paid so much for Jewelic Nightmare and I haven’t touched it yet, I’d rather save my money for something else. If I like the demo and see some good reviews, I may get it way later. Yeah, not even the Alice theme can be a sure purchase from me anymore.
12GB of photos (2700 of ’em) to go through… Currently doing Phase I: Removing the poor shots before moving to Phase II: Which ones to show…
cool I can’t wait to see your photos.
and it’s not a bad addiction because I know when to stop
problem is my games are lost in the mail and I have no reason to
Reblogged this on nakonu's Blog.
SNOW MIKU THEME!!!
FFonline is a very bad addiction. Hence why I’m resisting, otherwise my life would turn upside down. Now have to figure how to unpack…
The pr0n is pretty negligible, to be honest. I don’t know why they put that in, except to make it more….’this cast of characters are grown up’-ish, I think?
And yeah, I’m enjoying it greatly. 🙂 Too bad it isn’t what you’d like, but it’s pretty much the otoge I’ve been looking for all this time, sans the shortness.
If you like to search for kanji you don’t know, you’ll have a great time with Mebiusline.
That’s. Basically. The entire game.
Even for Japanese people.
I also play without translations, so I understand how you feel. 🙂
Thanks but I’ll play without translation. I like to search the words and kanjis I don’t know ^^
I study Japanese for 4 years, my Japanese isn’t perfect, but I prefer this way. But thanks! =)
My friend played Taishou M. already, she said the sex scenes are different but she loved the game =P
I play BL games for a long time, I’ll try to play on Psp too XD
I enjoy reading r-18 (dem steamy scenes) but seriously, they should stop with the rape
Not all r-18 stories are about rape! *rage* Again, I had so much lols reading your description, too funny LMAO! I also like reading otome stories with the heroine having relationships with professionals (aka teacher/doctors, sounds wrong tho :lol:) but ughhh why must they make em yandere 8(
*Will wait patiently for your next review :3*
yea what you described sounds exactly what I wasn’t Looking for xD
If it didn’t have the pr0n I’d probably be interested though
Bummer about it being short, but I hope you enjoy what’s left of it!
Hmmm so far I don’t feel like she’s stealing thunder from the guys, it’s just that the game is undeniably ABOUT her. It’s a story about a woman solving her problems and the guys help her through with it and she falls in love with one of them in the process, the focus is on her and if you’re looking for ‘intense love story between two people’ or ‘a visual novel where the focus is on the captureable characters’, that’s not the case here. But it’s not as if the guys are not important, either, it’s just not their story.
I think it’s very refreshing and I really like it so far. Tomoe’s cute with the guys and the guys are cute with her. It’s not like Tsubasa no Oka at all where I feel like the guys and their relationships with the heroine are mostly an afterthought.
You know what it reminds me of, in terms of girl : guy role value?
Tangled. Except with a really badass version of Rapunzel. (And in thematic values it has some similarities to Frozen, lol.)
I don’t think you can say that Eugene wasn’t important in that one, or that their relationship weren’t well-developed, or that they aren’t adorable together. It’s just her story, not his. And I think that’s really refreshing in otome games, which is nearly ALWAYS about the guys’ stories that the heroine just happens to walk in on. If you end up not liking it, though, I guess it’s really not your cup of tea after all. It IS rather short, after all. (After I wrote that comment I finished a route.)
oh my god I think I might cry after hearing this NO ;_; not that I doubt you but do you have a source?
Yea I’m just waiting till end of February to buy it so I can time with getting it when my Miku game arrives (and hoping the yen value will drop a bit)
From what I saw & read of Sanzen, it seems like the heroine is awesome BUT it seems like they also focus too much on HER herself? I mean yea I get it she’s a badass but from what I read the game is really short and she basically steals the show from the guys. This kinda reminds of Tsubasa no Oka no hime in a way and I really don’t like it. I guess it’s the other end of the whole “meek heroine with no personality” scale…which is nice for a change but not exactly what I am looking for.
Taishou Mebiusline PSP will (FINALLY FOR GOD’S SAKE) have a glossary function for all the old terms in the game, though, which is actually a pretty good tradeoff for the sex scenes IMO. No, really. I’m being perfectly serious, my Japanese is good and I’m not any sort of prude when it comes to sex in BL games.
It’s just that Mebiusline’s ero can be…………awkward (more awkward than usual!) and the writer CLEARLY wants to destroy your brain with oldass kanjis more than she wants to melt it with porn.
Otherwise, have fun, you’re in for a treat. 🙂
/scurries out of threadjack
P.S. Just in case you don’t know it yet, somebody has translated the Common Route if you’re interested!
Congrats on making the decision to grab a Vita! I own an OLED model for (mostly) non-otome purposes and it’s a startlingly wonderful machine. Could use more software apps, but pretty much everything else is unexpectedly well-designed.
That aside : have you looked into Sanzen Sekai yet? I know it’s R-18 which is like a red flag to you when it comes to otome games and to be frank I haven’t gotten to the R-18 parts yet so I don’t know if it’s good or bad on that front, but so far Tomoe has been everything I’ve ever wanted from an otoge heroine. I’ve barely gotten past the prologue (busy schedule) but there are already so many screencap-worthy moments.
I don’t really listen to drama CDs (except the ones that come with my games) so I pretty much go into these things blind /based on stuff I see in magazines. Not sure what to think honestly.
And yea there’s quite a few BL games for you so you have a good pick this year 😀
yeaaa after all the quin rose Alice’s not sure if I wanna bother with Rejet’s Alices.
Also after Dot Kare I realized that drama CDs turned games aren’t always so great.
(Well then you have Diabolik Wifebeaters which they just milkmilkmilk with Otomate now)
Also since Rejet’s games are all on the PC I have to use forwarding services to import them which is really annoying
haha you like the wafuu stuff, I don’t so that one was easy to avoid. Also I really don’t like games where women are treated like trash and well seeing how it’s a game about “a prostitute who melts the rapist bishie’s heart” makes me want to punch a baby 😆
Otomate party is usually in June or July so they will probably make their big announcements then. The only thing is that usually those announced games don’t come out until the following year so I’m not sure what they plan for the rest of 2014.
I know there was more announced than the ones listed but I guess since they don’t have concrete release dates Cool B didn’t bother putting them up. I’d say this about covers maybe HALF a year and in 3 months we’ll see the “rest” of the 2014 lineup.
All of Quin ROses’s games have and always will be the same. They don’t want to break out of their “template” so essentially everything will always follow the same format. Girl meets a bunch of badass guys but she’s so badass they fall in love with her and immediately screw as she denies the fact that she’s in love etc. Though recently their heroines have been getting more do-M and guys more do-S which pretty much defeats QR’s uniqueness anyway.
At the moment no otome games I care about, but I preordered project diva f2
I always raise an eyebrow when it comes to time travel and Otomate because they can’t properly write it so I’m hoping for pretty art and adorable characters at least xD
And I’m getting a Vita mostly for project Diva f2 and there’s no otome games at the moment for vita that interest me.
Marginal 4 I’m not sure but Norn9 FD definitely yes, I need more Akito and Natsuhiko *_*
Playing that kind of game is like going to a dinner party, and shoving my face into a giant bowl of olives. (I hate olives.)
Besides here’s a preview which I’m sure will be 99% correct: You gotta rape or get raped! 😆
Also I don’t feel like dealing with trolls who get pissed off every time I shit all over their shitty porno games (and since this one is obviously a game I will dislike they’ll be like “lolol why you play it if you hate it” which is the question I’d pretty much be asking myself at that point)
Chronostacia and Enkeltbillet are the ones I’m looking forward too 😀 They seem really nice!
Yeah, that Alice = Alice hm, I’m not so convinced even though the drama cds were nice.
I’m looking forward for the BL games =3
Specially Taishou M., but I bet they won’t add the sex scenes on Psp version, like all BL games XD
I don’t play otome for a long time and until now I only played one game from Otomate XD
Their heroines are so blah ><
Thanks for the post =)
Ahahaha… I love Rejet, but I’ll have to say no to crazy sadistic teachers and ear pr0n Alice in wonderland… The CD’s were uhm… yeah… a bit weird as I heard. xDDD I’d rather go after the new CD series, they announced recently. I’d be happy, if they’d release a game for Lip on my Prince though… It would lift the “sane” quota for Rejet. LMAO
The only game I’m really interested so far is Yoiyomori no Hime, because eterire totally got me with their not so happy story, nice seiyuu and nice art… www And German names… Okay… no, not really. 😀 😀
Maybe I’ll get Yoshiwara Higanbana as my first R-18 game? I like the plot revolving around an oiran. Sounds tragic and twisted, so I’m in! 😀 (<- totally do-M for 和風 games and dem Kanji /_\)
I think Otomate might make the big announcement for the year in March or in April? Because they did last year… Though… I'm not really that interested in Otomate so far… I might get older games like Musketeer or Death Connection or something like that. Fufu~.
That’s awfully little titles for this year… But as you said, they might announce more as time pass so i’m still anticipating some nice ones. I’m getting Chronostacia for sure since i’ve been eying that since last year when they announced it. But as for the other titles with them do-S guys… i wouldn’t even touch ’em with a long stick. XD
And i didn’t realize Hakkenden’s by QuinRose. Whoops. Ugh, i wonder if i should still get it… it’d be horrible if it ends up being like their current Alice series. =/
So you’re planning on getting a Vita? Does this mean that there’s a possibility you might try out otoges that are exclusively released for it? Though i know that there’s none right now ‘cept for ports and sequels.
I guess for new games, the most anticipated one for me is pretty much Chronostacia cuz I love games related to time lol xDDD as well as Yoyori no hime cuz its pretty interesting. I’m not really anticipating playing the VITA crap and im just probably gonna buycthe digital copies so im not feeding Otomare too much money for crap 😀
Also do you have any plans for the ones with only teasers like Marginal #4 and Norn9 Las Era?
Btw Urakata is enjoyable, cept for the RPG part which keeps getting annoying as eachnroute passes. The plots pretty okay except for the RASETSUS and MORE SHINSENGUMI.
Hinano, I would like to humbly request that you play the pr0n bees game. Your R-18+ game reviews are so much fun to read, and I can actually read a sensical review for once, I feel you make people realize a lot of stuff instead of trying to make everything look “romantic” or “sexy”. But really, I wished you could play that game, I played the trial and it seems interesting, and I’m sure a lot of your readers will be pleased if you did 😛 Please consider
For some reason Cool B didn’t list Akashiya or Buccaneers in the list which I guess makes me think they don’t consider them “otome games” but more just “adventure games for women” or something? I was wondering about those 2 after I was going through my post.
I’m doubting every quin rose game. They have a tendency to “follow template” and their template is
1. release game with only 6 dateable characters, great sprites but derpy CGs because we can’t afford to pay our main artist to do all the art due to blowing all the money on seiyuu
2. release fandisk with the chars you couldn’t date in game 1 with routes/relationships reset and poorer quality that original
So yea even though I think a snow white otome game is awesome (and I’ve wanted one for years) I’m gonna pass on QR’s. It’ll be dejavu of everything I dealt with their games in 2013.
Too bad you don’t like Chronostacia’s art. I quite like it actually and I’m worried more about the story than art or music tbh xDDD
Honestly speaking, I haven’t had time to look through the table you made but thanks a lot! I need to check out what I’d like to play myself.
My personal preferences for this year (from what is known) are: Akaya Akashiya Ayakashino, Jyuuzaengi 2 (I’m buying these two for sure), and Princess of the Evening Forest.
Walpurgis looks interesting but its characters really look suspicious, I mean, kinda… corny and sadistic >.>, I hope it turns out better than DiaLov.
I’m also still doubting QuinRose’s Hakkenden, what do you think? I’m a big of fan of Hakkenden in general, but I think I’ll weep if they ruin the story.
Chronostacia has great music but art turns me off, unfortunately and I suspect it’s gonna be not as good as they promote it.
Alice=Alice has an awesome soundtrack so far, that’s the only thing I can say about it. I’m wary of titles made into games from drama cds.
lol yea I saw that but I mean isn’t it strange to just suddenly redo the entire team? How can they keep the “feel” of Double Score with completely different people? It’s like kicking out the main chef in a restaurant under his name and saying that they still plan to serve “his dishes”. It’s not the same! 😛
They have already announced a new team of staff to take over. I don’t know if this is good or bad, but hopefully the new team will make it better. lol
I actually was looking at the site today.
If you’re looking for a more otome rhythm game then I think Uta no Prince-sama handles that a lot better.
I wasn’t really fond of the art style and genre. It seems more like a gag music game I guess?
Instead I have preordered Project Diva F2 🙂
Not exactly an otome game but have you heard of Bakumatsu Rock? It’s a rhythm game with the Shinsengumi and some other historical figures from the Bakumatsu period. I’ve never played rhythm games but it seems pretty interesting.
http://bakumatsu.maql.co.jp/
I don’t know if you heard but Blue Moon fired the entire Double Score team.
They fired artist, and writer and in my head that pretty much says DS is over lol.
Supposedly the writer said they wrote all of the next upcoming game but the art’s been lookin’ kinda derpy becuase I guess they got some copycat to try & mimic the art style (aka Otomate and Hakuoki.) If I were you I’d give up on the series ^^;
oh so its the Death Connection staff! In that case woo hoo my excitement just got even higher xD Surprised they didn’t use the same artist like with that NYC game haha.
I actually like mini games oddly enough they break the monotony of tl;dr text walls (aka my complaint with the Alice remake)
lol well I’m glad to hear that people are still willing to follow my lazy self 😉
〜Rose×Lotus〜 on 2015?, Oh BlueMoon come on!….give me a break ;^; , I’m 100% sure that Sano is actually the Lotus (based of what I saw in CattleyaXNarcissus) so it’s kind of frustrating wait that amount of time to play a route from a character that has been so active and crucial (and interesting) in these first Double Scores.
Omg. Even if you just end up playing those games, I’ll be a happy happy reader *_*
Enkeltbillet is my most wanted otoge of 2014. I have high expectations of it, since it’s by the same writer as Death Connection and Hanayaka Nari (which I urge you to play, since I see you haven’t)
I also heard that Enkeltbillet has a story mode, so you can skip the life simulation and mini games if they’re not your thing. The werwolf game, Pia Carrot and that take on Snow White also look pretty interesting.