Our heroine Ran is a village girl who has trained sword skills with her father every day. Due to this she never really had time for romance and because daddy would scare all the village boys away :lol:. One day however, her village is attacked by the neighboring village and father is assassinated. Some faceless dudes attack Ran and her mother & sister demanding that she hand over the demon sword that’s in this village. Ran heard a legend about it but has no idea what they are talking about. She tries to defend everyone but is outnumbered – until she just so happens to awaken the demon sword sleeping in a shrine nearby! She kills everyone around her and then passes out, waking up at a military school by the name of Nirvana. The queen of her country, Kiora, informs her that she’s to stay at Nirvana so they can keep an eye on the sword that is now directly connected to her soul. They promise to keep her mother and sister safe, but a lot of sexist pigs at the school are butthurt that this little girl gets to have this badass demon sword. Ran now has to prove that she is worthy of this sword and snag a hot guy on her way to a happy ending.

Abel – Abel’s that kuudere (tsundere??) guy who’s all Mr. SRS because he has SRS family problems but then melts his icey heart a bit when he starts to fall for Ran. Unfortunately that’s too much for Ran to handle and she spent most of the route reacting as “…!?” to nearly everything he said. Abel is also the only one who is able to defeat Naruto-sword (who I call Naruto-sword cause he has the same voice as Naruto loool) when having a sparring match at school. After hanging out with Abel for some time she realizes she might be starting to like him.  The good news is Abel is all deredere for her too and indirectly takes her on a date.  He awkwardly babbles about if she likes other guys, then gets embarrassed and runs away lol. So then the next day Asaka days there’s a rumor that one of the students in nirvana is a spy from Romua the country they’re in war with. One of the classmates starts saying shit and accusing Nike. When Ran defends Nike he accuses her until Abel tells him to STFU and leaves. Ran follows him and thanks him for defending Nike but Abel is upset that it’s always Nike Nike out of her. She says that she doesn’t like him THAT way and he’s just a friend. Abel then grabs her and is like then WHO do you like? She’s like well it’s not Nike, or Pash or (a list of all the other classmates). Abel is like ? so then suddenly Ran’s like ITS THE GUY IN FRONT OF ME. Wow well I guess she realized what a hot sexy beast Abel is after “!?”ing for 3 chapters. Anyway Ran tries to run away out of embarrassment but Abel reels her back in and kisses her :lol:. That night Ran walks around spaced out thinking about Abel cause I guess it finally hit home that this is in fact an OTOME game. At the lantern festival Ran goes alone but then runs into Abel who takes her away from all the dudes hitting on her.  They get cockblocked by Pash so he leaves and Ran finds him alone in the classroom. He said he wanted to talk to her alone and then says that his father is the leader of Romua. His mother was a traveling gypsy dancer and his father set eyes on her and well the result is Abel. Of course to him she was just some prostitute for a one night stand and after he was done with her threw her away.

Some years later he was scouted during a colosseum battle competition and the guy told him that if he becomes a spy at Nirvana they’ll let him return to Romua. Romua needs a successor but the only other child is some weak little girl so they want Abel to be the next in line since he’s a strong fighter.  Abel was like screw this and pretended to agree but only so that he can take revenge on his shitty father. He’s never given the scout Igor any info about Nirvana so in fact he’s just kinda been hiding here. He also says that he has nothing to do with Ran’s village being attacked and he doesn’t want to be connected to his father.  Ran is surprised to hear that he doesn’t care about his blood related father but Abel doesn’t care because it’s his father’s fault that his mother died. He asks her to trust him and she says she does. With that he gives her a pendant gift from the time they were at the flea market. They kiss and he once again tells her that he loves her. A few nights later, Ran finds out from Xiaolin and Pash’s dad that Abel’s dad did not in fact THROW OUT his mother. They were apparently in love but she chose to leave because she knew that a ruler of a country couldn’t take a wife who was just some gypsy. And so she chose to leave on her own but when Ran attempts to tell all of this to Abel he refuses to listen. He starts whining that both his story and the one Ran heard can’t be “both right” and when she tries to explain he just shuts her up by kissing her. ABEL PLS. He then starts crying and so Ran gives him a hug while he says basically he got sick of people saying shit about his mom and wanted to become stronger. He figured he’d support the 2 of them but by the time he did, she had died from an illness. After that he just kept randomly entering competitions to get stronger and take revenge on his dad.

Ran says that his mom probably wouldn’t want him fighting his father but he’s like TOO LATE GRRR and walks away.  It’s ok Ran, you tried. The following day the war alarms ring and Leonidas tells everyone to get ready for battle against Romua. Ran kicks a bunch of asses but then sees some guy trying to attack Abel so she knocks him down too. Turns out that guy is Richard and he was trying to kill Abel. He gets arrested and then admits that he killed that teacher too because that dude had ties with Romua. He concludes everything with saying Abel is the spy student that was injected here by Romua. Everyone’s shocked including Pash who cries cause he feels like he was betrayed and then punches him in the face. Abel takes the punch then tells everyone that while he was injected as a spy, he only pretended to follow Romua’s orders but in fact was plotting to kill his father. The higher ups are like what proof do we have you’re not  lying so Pash’s dad offers to be a “watchman” for him. In the case that Abel betrays Nirvana, he would be the one to end Abel’s life. The next day Abel’s father shows up and Abel ends up fighting him one on one.  Good End: Abel defeats daddy and becomes the next king of Romua. He then says screw this war shit, we’re gonna all live in peace and work together!  He tells Ran to take responsibility and gives her an engagement ring saying she’s gonna be the queen of Romua ;D. He tells her that once his kingly training is done he’ll come back to get her. Bad Ends: Bad end 1, butthurt GGE kills Ran. Bad end 2 – the sword eats Ran’s soul and kills her.  Bad end 3 – Abel dies fighting his dad and Romua creates more endless wars.

Lustin – I thought I was gonna dislike Lustin cause he was kind of annoyingly flirty type but I actually found him to be adorable by the end. I guess the whole part of seeing his true self really made me change my mind about him. (✧≖‿ゝ≖) Lustin is the 2nd prince in line while his brother Bardia is the first in line for the throne of his country. Thing is Lustin has no interest in being the king and would rather just have fun with the ladies. This is all of course a cover up because in fact Lustin cares a lot about others which is why he’s part of a secret organization Akatsuki which basically goes underground and helps fight crime within. One night while Ran’s delivering flowers to the bar the master’s like lol why don’t you go put them downstairs…yea! And of course it’s so she purposely runs into a half naked Lustin down there xDDD  After he finishes changing she finds out that he’s part of the the justice Akatsuki gang who works behind the scenes to protect people from various crimes. There’s about 50 people in there so he doesn’t have to do this every night.  The bar owner Ghido was the one who asked him to do this.  Ran says she wants to join them but it’s mans only so she has to crossdress. Lustin is against it but Ghido makes fun of him and convinces to let her join. Lustin tells her that she must make sure no one finds out she’s a girl and she must NEVER use her demon sword cause that’s a dead giveaway. And so on her first night she’s introduced as “Shelvin”. Her first night is a bit rough because dudes aim for her for being the “smallest”.  The next day Ran and co. find out that poor Collet was attacked by a rapist and all her money was taken. Fortunately Solon heard her cries for help and rescued her before anything horrible happened. (´･ω･｀;A） Ran then offers to attack the rapist herself that night and she kicks his ass with the help of Lustin and Solon. They bring the guy back to Ghido’s bar after hours and Ghido knocks his lights out for attacking his daughter. That night everyone celebrates and they tell Ran to have a sip of some alcohol. She figures well 1 sip can’t be bad right but then she ends up passing out lol. She ends up having a dream where Lustin’s like “u love me don’t u” and she’s like NO I DON’T and apparently she yells it out loud. She wakes up with a very disappointed Lustin lying in bed next to her ((((((((((ﾉ∀`)･ﾟ･｡ ｱﾋｬﾋｬﾋｬﾋｬ

He says that he wanted her to rest in the bar so that she wouldn’t come back to the dorms drunk.  The next morning they get caught returning late and are forced on cleaning duty. A few days later, they’re called out to help aid a village that was attacked, which so happens to be the village where Yuriana’s boyfriend is from. They gather up the remaining survivors but her boyfriend isn’t among any of them. Ran tells Yuriana to hope and pray he was out of the village somewhere at the time.  The next day some crazy dude poisons Yuriana and Ran and captures them  both. Turns out this dude also captured Yuan and has him hanging off the ceiling. His aim is obviously to kill Ran so he can get access to her demon sword. He tells Yuriana if she wants to save her lover, to kill Ran. He stabs both of them and continues his creeper monologues until Ran finally pulls out her sword. Ran buys time pretending to fight Yuriana and just then Lustin shows up revealing that the creeper is in fact his older brother!  He saves everyone and then Ran ends up jumping into his arms crying but he’s like “well you did a good job going against my idiotic brother.”  When they get back to the inn, Yuan gets yelled at by Yuriana for not telling her that he’s researching about the demon sword. He says that his job is a historical scholar and due to that stuff about the demon sword pops up every once in a while.  After they finish their lovers fight Ran and Lustin leave them to hug it out while they go outside lol. That night Yuriana makes fun of Ran for hugging and crying in Lustin’s arms XD. While Yuriana goes to take a bath, Ran realizes she might be falling in love with Lustin but thinks he’s just “nice” to her like he is to all girls. A few nights later she finds out that Lustin wants to leave the crime fighting group and Solon asks her to confirm if this is true. He then cries saying that if Lustin leaves those who follow him may leave too and it will fall apart. She finds Lustin that night and asks him to gather everyone in Akatsuki so she can thank them for saving her and reveal that she’s Shelvin. He’s like umm they already have figured it out but if you come out straight and say you’re a girl you won’t be able to fight with us anymore since NO GIRLS ALLOWED.  And so a few nights laters, Ran apologizes for lying to everyone and all the dudes are like “lol it was so obvious you’re a girl but we figured you were just Lustin’s girlfriend” XD. Unfotunately the good atmosphere is broken when Lustin says that tonight is his last night with Akatsuki. Solon refuses to accept this saying he knows it’s because of his brother and that Lustin intends to just run away to some other continent. Lustin knows it’s the truth and silently walks out of the bar with Ran following him. He hugs her telling her about him and his brother and how he had no interest in being king but his brother did, but his parents wanted Lustin to be the king instead.

Lustin didn’t wanna deal with drama from his parents or his brother so he ran away to Nirvana. He does admit that he did want to train at Nirvana so he would become a better fighter and be of assistance to his stupid brother. He’s shocked at how nuts his brother had become and was hoping by him “leaving” his country, they’d feel his brother was more appropriate to be ruler. Instead it made things worse and oniichan lost all his marbles. She tells Lustin that it’s possible his brother is possessed by Diemos because when she and Yuriana were captured they were covered in black smoke. Lustin then goes “alright fuck it, I was gonna wait till I got this brother shit over with but not gonna wait anymore” XD He then confesses that he loves Ran and asks her what her feelings are. She says she loves him and he’s like ok good and finally kisses her.  And when Yuriana finds out she’s like FUCKIN FINALLY LOL. They go on a date to the lantern festival thing and he gives her a pendant necklace. He says it’s a symbol that he’s taking her back with him to his royal palace ;D. He tells her that it’s possible that they will have to fight his brother but he wants her to lend him her strength with the demon sword. He says he’ll get Akatsuki to come help but then admits the reason he didn’t want her to be in the group is so other dudes wouldn’t hit on her :P.  He then kisses her over & over saying that he don’t care if anyone sees cause that way everyone knows that she belongs to him. (/▽*＼)～♪ ｲﾔｧﾝ Good End: And so they go and fight oniitan who is obviously posessed. Thanks to the demon sword they manage to defeat Diemos and bring brother back to his senses. After this, Bardia decides to become a priest to append for his sins and the next ruler in line is decided upon Lustin. His king dad is still in good shape so he doesn’t have to be ruler just yet….but he proposes for Ran to be his future queen ♡. In the epilogue, Ran is upset that she always gets left out of all the manly man activities in Akatsuki. Lustin’s like it’s not that I wanna leave you out, it’s that I don’t want other dudes getting drunk and attacking you. He also mentions that he has to hold himself back from gettin’ all randy with her in front of his buddies and hugs her in an empty classroom since they have some privacy. Bad End 1 – Bardia kills Ran after she’s captured. Bad end 2 – Lustin says he’s returning to his home country and gonna fight with his brother.  He says he’ll always love her but wants her to find someone better since he might not be returning to her.

Pash – Pash was the one right which set a reminder that this is a game about military school and that they actually have to go to war where people will DIE at WAR. Otherwise I would have just thought they just go to some fitness training school so they can wield swords but never actually use them in real life lol. Pash is Yuriana’s childhood friend and his father is the ruler of a country which I guess would technically make Pash a prince too?? He doesn’t really act princely though. He has a run in on Ran changing and ends up nose bleeding for like a day afterwards :lol:. After this he’s really embarrassed being around her. So a time for their first battle against the enemy comes and they’re worried about Pash cause he’s not as mentally stable as the others. Ran says she’ll do her best to watch over him.  And so during the battle shit hits the fan and Romua is really after Ran and her demon sword. Pash rushes to save her and grabs her running away because she can’t control Wilhelm as usual.  They manage to meet up with their teacher but Igor is there to ambush them. Fortunately Leonidas uses the remaining alcohol in his bottle to set fire to the bridge to burn it off and die together with the other guy. He tells Asaka to take care of the rest of the army and to run away.  This causes a huge mental toll on Pash and he cries on Ran’s shoulder unable to accept Leonidas’ death. After the funeral everyone’s still out of it because it’s the first time for any of them to experience a loss due to war.  Wilhelm blames it on Ran for not fighting back and running away.  Meanwhile Pash is extremely down and thinks everything is his fault and that he’s the one who killed Leonidas. Everytime he thinks about what happened he bursts into tears. He thinks of himself as the family reject too because in his family people are supposed to be able to control a spiritual guardian but he hasn’t been able to. Once in a while a “failure” is born in the family and they typically leave the country so he thinks he’s one of those rejects. So while the 2 of them are busy thinking War, What is it Good for!? and crying over Leonidas’ death somewhere in there develop feelings of love for each other.

All it takes is for a brief misunderstanding with Lustin who tells Ran that she needs to clear that up cause if Pash gets a broken heart on top of the war trauma, he’ll never get back on his feet. ヾ(´▽｀;)ゝ Suddenly Ran finds herself staring at him the whole time and getting more and more embarrassed when they’re alone.  One night when they go out to get dinner some idiots attack them and hold them at knifepoint.  They say they were hired to capture Ran and her demon sword and bring her to some other country. While the dudes leave them tied up, Ran asks Pash to pull her hair pin out of her hair so they can use it to pick the lock to escape.  Unfortunately he tumbles over and falls on top of her and they both get embarrassed ((((((((((ﾉ∀`)･ﾟ･｡ ｱﾋｬﾋｬﾋｬﾋｬ. Fortunately he finds a broken piece of glass to help cut the ropes which breaks the awkwardness.  They manage to get out and Pash beats down all the dudes who captured them. After this he feels like he had some weight off his back because in the past he only ever wanted to win to “make himself look good.” Now he realized that he wants to become stronger not just for himself, but for others as well. So just thinking that he wants to protect Ran gave him some power to beat up all the durds who captured them. A few days later Pash asks Ran to go to night festival with him and when Yuriana hears she’s like U GO GUURL XD. When Ran gets to the festival she realizes the feelings she has for Pash are different than those she has for her friends and family. They go to a place away from everyone and Pash confesses that he loves her. (*´ω｀*) Ran tells him well that’s convenient cause I was just thinking I love you too! He then asks if she will let him kiss him after they defeat Romua.

Ran tells him he doesn’t have to wait but then his hungry stomach cockblocks them lol. After they get some food they see some other couple making out and Pash is like ZOMG WE MUST KISS TOO and so they smooch by some tree. Haha it was so adorkable .｡ﾟ+.(´∀｀○)ﾟ+.ﾟ。Good End: And so they fight against Romua once more but Pash asks if he can fight the leader one on one to take revenge on Leonidas. They of course tell him no, but instead Ran runs into Igor on the battlefield who is missing an eye but is not dead.  Ran whips out her sword and fights him and she almost loses but then she remembers she has to try her best for Pash. She gets up and with the help of Wilhelm’s strength she kicks the GGE’s ass.  In the meantime Pash ends up fighting against Logion (aka Abel’s dad) but he is victorious.  Ran also realizes that her sword is no longer shining because Wilhelm briefly shows up to say goodbye before disappearing.  After this Pash says after he graduates from Nirvana he’s thinking of becoming a teacher. He says that Ran should become one too so they can be together forever ♡.  She also finds out that the thing he painted on her hand was actually a method of proposal by men from his country ;P. Ran of course agrees and they kiss.  In the epilogue, they realize they don’t have much time to ichaicha in school so they take it to some secluded place in the woods :lol:. Though since its Pash they start off with just taking a walk holding hands. Bad End 1: Basically Pash decides to leave Nirvana so he packs his bags and says goodbye to Ran.  Bad End 2: Ran dies fighting the GGE. So overall Pash was cute but I feel like I felt more sorry for him throughout the route because he was so mentally unstable but at the same time I guess it’s something he & Ran have in common.

Tifalet – My problem with Tifalet’s route is that it revealed everything all at once at the end with no real pacing. So ultimately I was like what is the deal with this dude and then suddenly confessions, revelations and all that jazz and by then I was too confused to feel anything. Tifalet’s an ikeman mage who’s hated by a lot of people for constantly causing women to get into scuffles over him. He serves as the town doctor and people often come to his store to pick up medicine. He tells Ran that he lost his memories before coming to this town.  He was just being a medic but then realized he has no idea when and how he got here. He says it’s no big deal because he likes his peaceful life, but once in a while he wonders who he really is. A few days later Ran has a conversation with Maya who says she feels like the queen has made a contract with the devil.  She says she heard Kiora saying to someone that “even after I die make sure you keep the contract.” Apparently Maya wants to make a contract with Mephisto but he always ignores her so she asks if Ran can ask him in her place cause to her it seems like he likes Ran more. She has some wish she wants to come true and she’s willing to SELL HER SOUL for it! Maya tells  Ran that she once had a twin brother  who was always better than her and he said he’d protect everyone. However on his 20th birthday he died protecting a child. Maya tried to be the best in his place but couldn’t so now she wants to sell her soul to the devil to bring her brother back to life. Deciding not to beat around the bush Ran just asks Mephisto directly if he’s a demon and he’s like yep and? 😆  He figures out that Maya asked Ran to ask him about the contract but he once again refuses and won’t say why.  He also says he’s immortal and invincible but he has no intentions to fight with humans. After a battle, Ran and her classmates go to Ghido’s bar to celebrate and run into Xiaolin and Tifalet.

Tifalet’s really unhappy about seeing Ran with all her male classmates and gets all snippy. He asks Ran to come with him for a bit and he takes her to heal the wound on her shoulder from the battle earlier. He then admits that he’s fallen in love with her and seeing her talk to other dudes irritates him.  He asks what Ran’s feelings are but she’s not really sure what her feelings of love are. Tifalet gives her a descriptive explanation of what love should feel like and then kisses her saying he loves her over & over. (And wow that kiss CG was so terrible it ruined the moment for me :/). The next she sees Tifalet near the tree again and then he vanishes before her eyes. Ran freaks out and runs to his house to find him chatting it up with with Xiaolin like nothing’s going on. She says she saw someone who looked just like him. They shrug it off and at the lantern festival Tifalet gives her a ring saying it matches her eyes that he loves. He says he made a wish on the lanterns that he never get his memories back because that would mean he’d forget about his time and feelings for Ran. So then since the pacing in this game is garbage, they decide to just shove the revelation into your face like a speeding bus. After having an inner battle with himself about his feelings for Ran, Tifalet vanishes before her eyes. When she goes looking for him, she runs into Mephisto who takes her to the underground cemetery and says that Tifalet is here. Before Ran can figure out wtf he means, a rabit Maya shows up demanding that Mephisto contract with her or else she’ll kill Ran! Mephisto’s like lol whatever go ahead idgaf, but then suddenly a chained up spirit of Tifalet shows up and says he’s basically the SEAL that’s keeping the diemos sealed for the last 15 years. During the previous war he made a contract with Mephisto so he’s chained to this place for all eternity….and that the Tifalet that Ran was getting hot with was basically just an illusion. He was an illusion created so that he could just “watch over the town” on the condition that he’d lose all memories. The idea was that he’d never love anyone or get close to anyone.

In the case that he’d ever get close to anyone though, his memories of them would eventually vanish. Ran shits bricks and rages at Mephisto saying she refuses to believe this. Mephisto also says because of Ran’s sword, it’s causing instability for Tifalet’s seal so he wanted to wipe her memories of him to stabilize it. Tifalet’s like yea ok but asks Ran’s name just for the hell of it and she’s like NO :((((. She then jumps up and kisses him asking him to remember everything.  Somehow this triggers something from his illusion’s memory and he starts to remember her and call her name.  Tifalet then has an internal battle between telling Ran to run away, or between having her be sealed along with him down there forever & ever in the uguu graveyard of love. Good End: Ran gets pissed and charges at Mephisto with her sword but it’s not effective! He says the reason Lunaria flowers are wilting and students aren’t feeling well because the Diemos seal is melting. Mephisto tells her to choose her destiny but then is like “oh btw if you want I can use your sword to seal Diemos instead and free Tifalet lol. Oh btw since you’ll lose your magical sword you’ll be useless and everyone will be disappointed that you made this decision probably.”  Before she can make the decision, Kiora shows up and turns out she’s Tifalet’s older sister who made a contract with Mephisto to exchange places with Tifalet once she dies. So while they’re all busy arguing about who deserves to be sacrificed, Wilhelm comes out and is like enough of this shit lol. He goes and seals himself in Tifalet’s place freeing both Tifalet from the seal and freeing Kiora from her contract with Mephisto. Mephisto vanishes after this and Tifalet returns to his job as the town pharmacist. In the epilogue, Tifalet babbles about his uguu cage of love tendencies for Ran but then says he’s glad he held himself back 😆 I’m GLAD TOO LOL. Bad End 1:  Tifalet vanishes from everyone’s memory except Ran. She then makes a deal with Mephisto to see him but he doesn’t wanna see her and Mephisto just ends it with his trolling of what to do!  Bad End 2: Ran chooses to be sealed together forever with Tifalet. I dunno man the voice Kakki did for Tifalet reminded me a lot of that guy I didn’t like in Garnet Cradle, and when he starts babbling about wanting to lock her up and shit I rolled my eyes so far back any feelings I had for him rolled away with them.

Nike – Nike was my favorite character and route in the whole game. I felt out of all of them he had the best pacing and well frankly he’s just a QTpie. (*´ω｀*) (Though it also made me want to replay Mict’s route in Binary Star lol.) Nike spends a lot of time in the nurse’s office but thanks to a brief spoiler in another route he’s secretly a NINJA ASSASSIN.  Because of this, he has great experience with working with herbal medicine so he spends a lot of time in his meth lab working on various stuff. His joy in life though is visiting clip-art granny in town and buying her bread & jam. He takes his hobby as far as even baking his own bread in his lab. Shit goes to hell though once one night  one of the teachers is killed and Ran witnesses the killer to look identical to Nike. When she tells him this he just laughs that there’s probably someone who looks just like him. Nobody else can believe that it can really be Nike because how could a ninja like murder be done by weak and frail Nike!? 😆 On top of this, they discover after doing an autopsy that the wounds on the teacher who got killed  were identical to the ones that were found on Ran’s father. So then comes a huge revelation during Colette’s birthday party. Some rude customers come in and cause trouble then one of them says that Ghido used to be their leader in one of the Romua armies. They say that he took a baby and ended up running away and they figure that baby must be Colette. Colette knew that she wasn’t Ghido’s real daughter but didn’t know that he knew or not. Ghido kicks them out but afterwards Lustin tells Ghido to spill the beans. Colette admits she figured out she wasn’t Ghido’s real daughter cause she heard it from a traveler that her eyes only come parents who can only have been from a certain village to the east. Ghido then admits that he used to be in the Romua army and used to love killing people that they called him the 100 Man Murderer Ghido. At one village though some woman begged him to take and save her baby – which was Colette.  When he saw the blood covered baby something inside him broke and he decided to quit this war business to raise the baby. He apologizes and says she can hate him cause he might have been the one who killed her real parents. Colette cries and runs out of the bar followed by Ran and Nike.  Nike tells her to forgive him because he was just doing his job and then she passes out because she gets a fever.

Tifalet says he used medicine and his magic to heal her but she’s basically traumatized now. He says there’s an herb in the forest they can get for extra strength medicine so Nike and Ran go together, though Nike is worried about her getting bitten by snakes again. Nike tells her to wait outside the woods while he goes deeper to get it himself.  Colette recovers and afterwards asks Nike if he was from the same East village as her. He says he has no idea where he is from since he was adopted. Colette says that she’s happy to know that it’s possible someone else from her village was a survivor. After Ran hears this Nike flips out apologizing for lying to her and not telling her the truth about himself. Ran’s like its ok I don’t hate you and is really confused on why it’s such a big deal.  She hears a fortune from Tifalet who tells her that the man of her destiny is in love with her but there’s a “dark shadow” separating them. Ran isn’t sure who he means but then she starts to think if it’s Nike after Nike yells at Wilhelm for always yelling at Ran to go fight. Nike gives Ran a butterfly ring and asks her to promise him to never go deep into the woods. Worried about him, she ignores the warning and runs in anyway only to find him holding bloody ninja daggers and being like guuurl I told ya not to come here! He tells her that Igor from Romua is after her and her sword and tells her to run away. Unfortunately it’s too late and he shows up calling Nike a traitor and demands that he hand Ran over. Nike refuses and starts to fight with the GGE to protect her until Wilhelm pops out all like IS IT TIME TO KICK ASS YET!? After seeing him fight Ran realizes he’s the one who killed professor Modest and her father. He says his hands are dirtied by murders and he kills mercilessly but he refuses to hand over Ran or force her to fight to “stain” her hands. After killing Igor, Nike admits to killing her father and Modest. He said he was raised in a village where they train kids to be assassins. That’s the same village that Colette is probably from.  On his 15th birthday he was told to sneak into Nirvana but he only did assassination, he didn’t sell any info. He killed Modest cause the dude was selling info all over the place. However he made a mistake when he let Ran catch him in the act.

Nike also says that Igor was the one who forced Ran’s village to fight the neighboring one and then told Nike to kill Ran’s dad. He then starts to cry because Ran was the only person who treated him like a human instead of a killing machine, but he deceived her and feels like shit. He told her to stay away the woods so that she wouldn’t see him doing all these things and so that she wouldn’t be hurt. Just then Ignis comes running telling Nike to get away from Ran. Nike says he will never hurt Ran because he loves her and knows he doesn’t deserve her, but says if Ran hates him he has no reason to live. He says she doesn’t have to forgive him, but asks to commit one last sin, so he gives her a brief kiss. Nike then grabs his knife and slices his neck ｶﾞ━━(;ﾟДﾟ)━━ﾝ!!  Ran’s like omg NOOOO this isn’t what I wanted! Nike passes out and Ran says she’ll carry him back to town to treat him but he’s lost too much blood and will die soon. Just then Wilhelm comes out and is like we’ll use my magical sword power and then I’ll disappear. He says that Nike’s feelings moved him and made him realize there’s more to life than just killing things.  Good End: And so Nike is saved and he cries thanking Wilhelm as Naruto-sword disappears and says goodbye.  Ran apologizes to Kiora for losing the demon sword but Kiora’s like ain’t no thang, I had a feeling he was gonna vanish sooner or later. Ran and Ignis both ask Kiora to forgive Nike and loosen his punishment and Kiora says she’ll talk about it with him as well as telling Ran she can continue to be at Nirvana. Just then Romua decides to Ambush Ortisia and so everyone has to fight them including Nike. He somehow immediately recovers and then ninja kills Romua’s leader (aka Abel’s dad.) This gives Ortisia victory but since Nike has a terrible murder record, he’s kicked out of Nirvana. He figures it’s a good time to retire and become a baker in some other country. He bakes some bread and leaves a love note for Ran telling her goodbye. Ran finds the note and runs at the speed of light to find him near the ship docks. She’s like NO U NOT GOIN NOWHERE BEBE CAUSE I’M COMIN WITH YA. He’s like yay – until the credits roll then he’s like no wait if you do that everyone will be like wtf especially Kiora and your mom & sister. They decide they will first go tell everyone toodles and visit baking granny one last time before going off on their bread master journey together. 😆 Bad end 1 – Ran gets bitten by a snake again and dies. Bad end 2 – Nike kills Ran for going into the woods after him.  He calmly tells her he’s a hired assassin….until she dies and he hugs her crying that he’d rather her die quietly  than be tortured at the hands of Romua.

Wilhelm – Well Wilhelm is the obvious OTP of the game and once you finish all the other guys you unlock his “memories” which allows you to see his past. He used to be a shota born in some village that trained kids to wield swords at an early age. Mephisto was the one who created the sword to see how humans would handle it. Wilhelm got hold of the sword and killed a lot of ppl until he was killed himself and then his soul was absorbed by the sword. He was trapped in it like in a prison cell only to ever “come out” when he got new owners. After countless owners he found himself getting younger because his soul was slowly diminishing away thanks to the sword slowly eating it all those years. When he became a shota again was when he was finally awakened by Ran. So after seeing those memories, Ran wakes up one morning with a grown up Wilhelm in her bed confused as to wtf is going on. Wilhelm is like WOO HOO I’M FREE and runs around outside since he’s been pretty much in sword prison for the past thousand years. So then because apparently his soul disconnected from Ran’s, he’s now a human and is the owner of the demon sword. Ran feels like she has no place left but Kiora tells her to stick around and Wilhelm is told to stay at the boys dorms so they can keep an eye on him. Wilhelm just wants to battle though but he also likes Ran so he doesn’t wanna leave anywhere without her.  His oresama attitude gets him into fights with a lot of people. Ran tells him he needs to calm his tits and stop picking fights with everyone.  In the time that Ran can’t be with him, Asaka takes on the role to sort of watch over him. He also has some flute inside of his sword that he pulls out and plays randomly. He never wants to do anything with anyone but when it involves Ran he ends up swallowing his pride and sticking around.  She tells him that at first she didn’t feel like she belonged in Nirvana so she and Wilhelm are similar and that there is a place for him somewhere. Wilhelm also then gives his flute to Ran saying it suits her better and he can’t remember why he has it anyway.

That night Ran has a dream about Wilhelm arguing with some girl and she mumbles out that she’s sorry for deceiving him. Seems like the girl was the queen who had to act like a man since a male heir was not born and Wilhelm got all angry she fooled everyone. A few days later Ran goes to practice the flute and even though she’s never played it in her life, she can somehow mirror Wilhelm’s melody identically.  Tifalet says maybe the 2 of them knew each other in their past lives. So then a battle comes up and Wilhelm goes nuts and starts mercilessly killing everyone in front of him.  He then becomes really violent towards other students as well and they threaten to throw him in jail cell. King Ildas tell him that the current age is no longer the “age of war” and if he can’t accept it, then he’s just a senseless murderer.  To calm him down that evening, Ran plays him her flute melody that she somehow magically picked up.  Unfortunately for some reason it makes things worse and he yells at her to stop.  Suddenly he finds himself crying and has no idea why.  After asking Ran to play the flute again he continues to cry saying over & over why can’t he remember what’s making him so upset. For the lantern festival, Ran decides to go with Wilhelm and Yuriana is like hehe you go guurl. At the festival Ran tells Wilhelm that because of no war they can have peaceful events like this. She says that even if she has no “place”, she’d prefer there be no war.  She adds that she wants to try to get stronger now that she’s lost access to the demon sword.  When they go to another area of the festival they get roped into dancing together. Unfortunately the good mood is interrupted when some guy runs out saying he found dead bodies in the woods. Wilhelm says he’ll go look and tells Ran to go back to Nirvana and relay the message to the teachers. Once again Ran has a dream of herself playing the flute but realizes that she’s wearing a man’s outfit except for the wig and that she’s trying to hide her gender from everyone.  The next day Ran finds that Wilhelm has returned back to Naruto-sword shota form.  It lasts for a few days so they decide to cheer him up by having everyone have a small tea party with Asaka’s EXOTICS EASTERN TEA & SWEETS.

Later that night she hears from Mephisto that a long time ago a princess named Sapphire was born when they wanted a male baby heir to lead the country. The king & queen then decided to raise Sapphire as a boy to lead the country.  Sapphire would play her flute every night – the same flute that Ran now has. He adds that Wilhelm was around during that time as well, and it’s possible that at this rate he might disappear. Mephisto says he can’t control the sword as it’s out of his hands now, but there’s a possibility to erase the sword from existence to save Wilhelm. The next day they run an Igor possessed by Diemos who demands that Wilhelm show his true form. Asaka tries to fight him off to protect Ran but it’s extremely not effective.  Diemos then attacks Ran and she has a flashback of that girl from her dreams getting sliced in front of Wilhelm.  Just then both Wilhelm and Ran remember everything from their past selves.  Ran was the Sapphire “prince” and she wanted to protect Wilhelm so she took the damage from Deimos. And turns out this Diemos is some dude name Yorgus, and he’s been butthurt for years and wanted to take revenge on Wilhelm eventually. So finally Wilhelm returns to his adult form and is like fuck u dude, because of you Sapphire died щ(ºДºщ).  And so the two square off and Wilhelm finds out that the reason Yorgus betrayed him is cause he wanted his sword and didn’t felt Wilhelm wasn’t fit to use it (but really, what else is new in this plot line lol.)  Wilhelm says he got the sword from some prophet gramps and not like he wanted it badly. Because Wilhelm always said “I don’t trust anyone but myself” so Olgos thought eventually he’d betray them…so they betrayed him before he betrayed them! ヽ(。_゜)ノ And so apparently this is the logic on why Sapphire had to die…sigh stupid old timey man logic lmao XD. And so after Sapphire’s death Wilhelm became so depressed he didn’t give a shit and just wanted to kill everyone and eventually got killed himself and sealed inside the sword.

He was supposed to eventually forget everything and disappear but thanks to coming back with Ran, it made him realize what a pathetic idiot he is. Wilhelm also says he’s gonna disappear soon and he’ll be taking Yorgus with him.  In the meantime Ran is knocked out and she has a dream where she meets with her past self – Sapphire. She tells Ran that it’s too early for her to die and thanks her for saving Wilhelm. Good End: When Ran wakes up, she’s in her room with a crying Yuriana next to her.  She then runs out of bed to check on Wilhelm and he’s waiting outside for her all fine & well. He tells Ran that the demon sword broke and because of this he feels great because he’s been freed from it. He adds that he hated Sapphire because grr how dare this WOMAN try to be on the battlefield with us MANS!  But then yea realized what a dumb sexist pig he is when she saved his stupid ass.  When he saw Ran get hurt, he finally realized that a sword is meant to protect someone not to kill. Wilhelm then tells Ran that he loves her and he realized this the moment he knew he was going to disappear. He says from now on he wants to protect this country and Ran says she wants to fight beside him. Wilhelm then hugs and kisses her thanking her for everything (though for some reason the CG looked like her head was detached from her body and ruined the moment for me :lol:). In the epilogue, they hear that Igor is in a coma somewhere.  Wilhelm becomes a better person and is a lot less grumpy than before. Ran complains that she’s tired of wasting her weekends patrolling and wants to go on a date once in a while. Wilhelm apologizes and says he’ll try to take her to nicer places and they smooch in the forest. (He also tells her to forget about his shota self :lol:). Bad end 1 – Wilhelm decides to leave Nirvana. Bad end 2 – Wilhelm goes nuts raging that he’s not at fault and slices Igor to death before disappearing himself. I dunno I honestly feel like for the OTP of the game I expected Wilhelm and Sapphire to be lovers and some kind of comparison conflict for Ran & her past self. But none of that happened and suddenly I LOVE U MAN and well generally that’s how the entire game felt for me.

Son, I am disappoint. It’s like I don’t HATE the game, but I don’t exactly like it either. There’s just so many fundamentally bad things in the game it really took away from my enjoyment overall. Let’s start with the awkward pacing. The game starts off fast when Ran’s village is attacked and she’s thrown into this new military school environment. But then suddenly it halts to a stop and we’re in happy school life land. If I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea that we’re actually in a military school and there’s a chance of war happening. It was no different than any other school game, shit is peaceful and everyone goes on about their daily lives. The only hint of anything are the sparring matches between the students and well those were dull and boring to me. Only Pash’s route really highlighted the whole war thing but other than that the common route was long and boring and incredibly unnecessary. That said, once we got into the characters individual routes it got interesting! But! Soon as it got interesting, once again things went by so quickly before you knew it – it was over. That means when I was finally starting to feel like I’m getting to know the guy I’m going after, plot plot plot, confession, kiss, the end. Because of this every ending left me kind of unsatisfied and there was nothing “memorable” for me. The only memorable routes for me were Lustin, Nike and Wilhelm because the pacing was a lot better in those than in the others. The next issue for me was the sexism tsunami that plagued most of the game. All the NPCs in the game were like GRR STUPID WOMAN ON BATTLE FIELD, some of the evil characters were GRR LITTLE GIRL U DON’T DESERVE SWORD, and even Wilhelm had the whole GRR WOMAN GET OFF THE BATTLEFIELD THIS IS A MAN’S WORLD. Oh yea let’s not forget about Lustin’s little group and the you must hide the fact that you’re a woman in a boys only club. BLAH. Ok I get it we’re in some old timey exotic occidental-ism thing but Ran’s been taught sword skills by her father since she was a little girl, so surely if she’s being taught, and the fact that there ARE women at this military school, it can’t be too odd for women to be in battle right!?

My next problem is the artwork. You may think I’m crazy cause from all the promo images and sample CGs the art looks gorgeous right? I don’t know what it is, the art or the coloring or what but it felt like a lot of CGs were really awkward. A lot of kiss CGs looked like they were just “moved close together” (like in Quin Rose games) and the shading on some of the hands was really weird.  Xiaolin’s fingers looked like pocky sticks in some of his sprites and in some of the CGs Ran’s head looked like it was floating in the air @_@. The sprite art for those outside the main/sub cast was pretty awful too. The random dudes had no eyes, granny looked like she was free clipart grandma sprite so when you had these side by side to the main cast it was really weird lol.  It’s weird because in the omake CGs with the guys giving you bday gifts or sleeping – the art was great! I almost wish the whole game looked like that! As far as Ran goes I couldn’t really decide what they wanted us to feel about her. In some routes she’s really on top of her game, protects and fights and really tells the guy to get it together (especially Pash & Wilhelm.) But in other routes like Abel and Tifalet she reacts with a lot of !?’s and then does stuff that just makes me personally go !? lol. System wise, things were ok except the fact that one of the trophies requires you to see every choice and every scene, and there were 50+ choices in each route so NOPE’ed the hell outta that one. As far as my favorite characters, Nike wins by a wide margin. I also enjoyed Lustin’s route a lot and while I don’t really hate the others, I guess they didn’t stand out as much? Pash and Abel did have their cute moments though. Oddly I kinda wished I could get with Mephisto or Xiaolin because I liked them a lot lol. Obviously Wilhelm is the OTP of the game  and I expected something really amazing in his route but ultimately it felt really disappointing. Like they set him up to be this important conclusion and resolution to all the questions but then it just kinda…ends. That’s basically what the whole game felt like. Like when it finally felt like it’s getting good – it ended. Nothing felt unresolved or anything, and I think they closed the story decently but maybe it’s the way they paced everything, that it didn’t really leave an impression on me. I’m not sure how to describe it, but the feeling that I had after Code Realize, the emotions I felt playing through Lupin’s or Van’s routes – that same feeling wasn’t there in this game at all. In fact until I got to the “good parts” of the game, I was kinda bored and hoping that I could just finish it already.

I know this game got a lot of positive reviews but there’s just too many problems for me to recommend it myself. From derpy CGs, to terrible pacing, to lack of lasting impressions of most characters it just wasn’t enjoyable for me. Now that I know this is the same team as Princess Arthur, I will no longer bother playing that game because from what I read it suffers most of the same issues.

Edit: After listening to the preorder drama CD that came with the game I wished that the game was more like the drama CD. The guys were really having a lot of fun in it and it was pretty entertaining. It’s a pity this kind of thing wasn’t seen enough in the game itself.