Otome Game Review: Cendrillon Palika

Our heroine Hairi who is the lives in a glass town of Tokyo (literally Crystal Tokyo ripoff lol) where she helps out with a task a magician named Kashika asks her to do. There’s a curse that If anyone leaves the turn they’ll turn into glass but Kashika brings her out as long as she is wearing special glass items. The catch of course is she must be home by midnight or she will turn to glass regardless. When Hairi goes into the woods outside she gets lost and ends up in an old shack that is inhabited by a bunch of ikemans. To stop the curse Hairi has to move the hands of time – the astrolabe – because only she has the powers to do so being the legendary Astrolabi that was born after 200 years.

Klone Spinel – Tsundere who likes to be alone in his study. Hairi asks him to help her with breaking the glass curse but he immediately tells her to bugger off. He’s so tsun he whines that she talks too much but eventually gets used to it. He then agrees to help her with the clock tower but only if she figures out a way to get into it. He has 2 older sisters which is why he gets so irritated around women lol. So after Hairi finds the back door she has Klone make a key but when she tries to take it, it doesn’t work. He makes some adjustments and Hairi is able to get in. Curious to what his deal is about hating people from Tokyo, Hairi follows him trying to pry into his feelings only irritating him further. Her airheaded replies make him laugh though and it breaks the bad mood. One day his friend Karigane tells Hairi how 7 years ago they were once a group of 3 glass makers in training and the 3rd was a girl named Banka. She was the reason he became a glass maker. Then one day there was an the infamous accident in Tokyo which caused the curse.

They didn’t think anything of it and went outside the town into their usual meeting place in the woods… But Banka was hit with the curse and soon as she stepped foot out of Tokyo she turned into glass and died. So of course after this it’s basically obvious that Klone is stuck on his dead friend and gets all pissy the moment Hairi mentions her name. Hairi tells him to chill the fk out and that they should work on resolving the mystery of this curse. She died from buying a certain glass item and it was supposed to be one that was “safe” so someone had given her a cursed one intentionally. She was the final victim to die from the curse 7 years ago up until they started finding bodies again now. Hairi manages to get him into a better mood again by getting super excited when she sees the glass jewelry he made. 😙 He finally deres it up and admits he wants to get to the bottom of the glass curse and deaths, and offers to fully help Hairi. He gives her his ikeman smile and she suddenly realizes she’s in love with him 😂. I mean who can resist the dereing tsundere? Unfortunately another glass curse victim appears right in front of the 2 of them and it triggers Klone again and he decides it’s best not to ever see Hairi so she never leaves Tokyo and won’t have a chance of dying to the curse.

Hairi sends him pigeon letters while he cries in his studio but she’s a woman of action so she decides to break the curse to resolve everything. She also runs to see him but he’s not home so she leaves him a memo saying she refuses to not see him. On her way back she bumps into Klone but he acts cold to her telling her to leave him alone. She tells him to stop lying and if he really hates her to say it straight to her face… But if course he can’t do it. When she visits him again the following day he starts crying about Banka again and says how he can’t accept death an is more scared of it than the people of Tokyo. Hairi tells him that everyone is scared but they aren’t gonna stop living their lives because of this. So things get a little better between them and he even gives her an earring he made just for her. Unfortunately she wakes up the next day and finds a glass vine growing around her finger.. The sure sign of the glass curse. Not knowing who to turn to she asks Kashika for help… but despite this she still leaves the city to see Klone even though it could mean her death. The curse starts to turn her body to glass over time rather than instantly and while there’s no pain she starts to lose feeling in the parts that have turned to glass.

Doesn’t help that every time Hairi talks with Klone he keeps babbling about his dead crush while she’s hopelessly in love with him. He even takes Hairi to Banka’s “grave” where he dropped pieces of her glass shards. 💀 Fortunately Hairi gets him to admit that his feelings for Banka are in the past and that he loves Hairi now. Anyway they come to the conclusion that Karigane is shady at so they catch him red handed using Hairi as bait… And when he tries to capture her, Klone who’s been watching the whole time jumps in and kicks him off Hairi. He rambles how it’s so cool to see people turn into glass and is the one who killed Banka. If you don’t forgive Karigane for being a shitstain, unfortunately while it breaks the glass curse it turns Klone into a yandere. 😓 Hairi also continues to turn to glass further and further. She tells him if he’s tired of her always leaving home then he should take her away where oniichan won’t even find them. But you know, yandere, so he end up killing her brother instead. 😱 After he takes her away she tells him that when she turns to glass and dies to turn her into some pretty accessory or something 😂. To avoid Klone turning into a yandere you have to forgive Unkogane for all the bullshit he’s done. But the dudes cray af so he decides to turn himself into glass and die so he doesn’t have to get arrested. Before he can do this though the guards grab and arrest his sad ass anyway. Suddenly Hairi’s curse is broken and the glass falls off her hand. The curse of Tokyo also breaks and Klone claims it’s all the power of love lol. 😂 After this people can safely leave and entire Tokyo. The two of them watch the stars together and kiss at the end.

Shien Clinochlore – I feel like it’s been years since I heard Hino Satoshi voice a guy in an otome game since he got married. Shien reveals to Hairi that he’s got amnesia. He saw a photo of Tokyo that Hairi had and remembered he used to live there… But Hairi wonders how it’s possible if he’s been living outside of it and is still alive. He constantly has trouble sleeping so she brings some aroma oils to his house. It doesn’t help his nightmares that keep telling him that he’s a criminal. He figures it must be part of his forgotten past and asks Hairi to help him uncover it even if he’s done something bad. After many nightmares Shien finally remembers that he’s the one who set the curse on Tokyo. He also then remembers that the guard named Rindo was the one who arrested him and is now looking for him outside of Tokyo. The reason they consider him the criminal is because he has a glass disc that can only be obtained from a room accessible only to the Royal family. Turns out Shien has the royal blood in him and while the family died out years ago he is the last survivor. Most people had forgotten about the royal family due to a spell bonus that came with the glass curse. Rindo however managed to have the memory of them and tells Shien to GTFO because his relatives put the curse on Tokyo. So they pushed him out of the glass dome assuming he would die immediately to the curse but he managed to survive…

Probably because the curse doesn’t work on him. Also since Hairi lost her glass shoes running back to the city, Shien gives her a new pair that he mysteriously got in the mail that said “the wearer of these shoes will make your wishes come true”. Since his wish to regain his memory had come true thanks to Hairi and her photos, he gives the shoes to get and of course they fit probably cause the shoes were sent from Kashika the fairy godmother 🤣🤣. After this Hairi kinda blurts out her feelings for him and since it’s mutual he gives her a kiss. 😚 He ends up hiding at her house for a bit and then they both realize that they met years ago at the shoe store when young Hairi was excited by a pair of glass slippers. Unfortunately the next day Rindo catches them when they try to sneak into the clock tower. Shien asks what evidence he has of accusing him of the curse and Rindo just says that he’s just accused him because the criminal is “someone of the royal family” and cause he was morbidly curious what would happen if he kicked Shien outside.😑 They end up running into the clock tower away from him and run into the royal family library that Shien is able to open the door to. They find a book that gives them hints of how to break the curse.

They need a special astrolabe that this lady named M has and she must be part of the royal family as she is able to enter the library too. If you decide not to steal the astrolabe from M you go to the good end. With the help of her friend and brother, Hairi runs back into the clock tower with Shien one last time to break the curse. They run into Rindo again who says this time he will not only exile Shien but Hairi with him which means her death. They run into the room to move the astrolabe and accidentally discover that all that was needed was a drop of Shien’s royal blood on it. And so they break the curse and the glass dome around Tokyo vanishes. Hairi then runs outside without her glass items to test that she’s ok. Poor Shien runs after her in tears happy and terrified at the same time 😂. In the epilogue, Shien returns to living in the church outside Tokyo and asks Hairi to spend the night with him since she doesn’t need to be back by midnight. (//ω//) Well he almost let’s her sleep alone until she grabs him to get his ass back cause she didn’t come all this way to not spend the night with her man. 😎😍 In the bad (or what I’d like to call the yandere ends) end they accidentally stop all time and end up in an eternal limbo with each other until they both go crazy.

Natra Peony – The first impression of Natra is he’s a massive brocon and argues with Hairi that his brother is better than her brother. 😂 He and his brother Rindo have different last names because they were raised apart. Actually his design, voice and broconness remind me a lot of Madoka from Clock Zero lol. Hairi asks Natra to become her friend so she can gain access to the clock tower. They both end up becoming foodie friends instead lol. So as they hang out more somehow she gets roped into being his fiance lol.　Unfortunately the time comes when he finds out it was all just in his head and gets really upset. Hairi chases him down apologizing that even though at first she just used him to get into the clock tower but she did enjoy being his friend and spending time with him. She also tells him more about herself and how her parents died from the glass curse cause they didn’t return from work on time. After hearing her stories Natora tells Hairi how he didn’t intend to allow her to break the curse and only figured he’d let her do it half way. Apparently Rindo is doing some shady shit with the curse and Natora wanted to support him. Of course once Rindo finds out that Hairi heard about their secret he curses her and she loses her voice. Which is pretty stupid cause ok she can’t talk but she can still communicate via pen and notepad. 😂 Well Rindo figures this out and a few days later demands they bring Hairi to their house so they can make sure she doesn’t spill the beans.

Natora for once gets upset enough and refuses and that’s when Rindo breaks the truth that he didn’t really give a shit about him at all. So once again poor Natora completely idolized his brother for no reason. He then runs crying to Hairi that he couldn’t get the cure for her and cries that his brother was just using him. The following day they confess their love and Hairi even manages to crack out a すき through her suppressed voice. (*ﾉ∀`*) They then get a hint groom Rindo and it lies in the stuffed bear he gave to Natora. They take the bear apart and find the cure for Hairi inside it. Her voice comes back after drinking it and she’s able to walk again. So then they find a book that tells them about judgement day where someone has to sacrifice themselves to break the curse by getting locked up inside the tower forever. He tells Hairi that just moving the clock needle won’t break the curse. Just then Rindo shows up trying to be the cool nice aniki and says he’ll be the “black rabbit” that will lock himself in. He also admits he lied and actually loves his otoutokun. And so in the epilogue Natora and Hairi are working on figuring out a way to rescue Rindo one day. In the yandere end as expected he goes oc, puts the curse on her so she can’t move and locks the 2 of them inside. The end was soo fast and sudden that honestly you could tell they couldn’t think of anything interesting 😂.

Ulen Muller – Ulen is another tsundere so like with Klone, Hairi has to try extra hard with him. 😂 He doesn’t believe at all that she will break the curse and he’s convinced that he will find a way first in his research lab in the forest church. She ends up convincing him by giving him his favorite book from the Tokyo library. He then keeps asking for her to come visit him and also asks her to stop moving the clock needle because he feels his research is a safer bet. Hairi refuses saying she doesn’t want to give up and wants to break the curse ASAP. So when she has a dream of moving the needle because someone else did, Ulen gets angry and tells her to never see him again. Hairi keeps trying every day but when she gets there he just tells her to GTFO. He finally gets a fire lit under his ass when Hairi gets lost in the woods at night, and terrified that she’d die to the curse he rushes to find her. After he finds her and gives her a giant bear hug she gives him the diary she found in the library regarding a town that perished because of a Stone curse. He also then breaks one of her glass slippers to give her the one he received before meeting her 😂. Unfortunately when Hairi confesses that she loves him in a romantic way he just rejects her saying he has no interest in a relationship with anyone.

Hairi then freaking owns him by being like then why are you always jealous of when I talk to other guys hmm??😂 Upset and frustrated that he’s emotionally constipated Hairi runs home. After she leaves the gears slowly start turning in his head… And he realizes he can’t stand the idea of Hairi being with another guy. So the next day he cries that his heart aches and Hairi is like yo this is cause you love me too you dumbass 😂😂. And so he rambles how he wants her to be with him and can call it whatever she wants… Hairi then knocks him into the lake saying this is for all the ignorant things he’s said and for ignorantly stomping on her feelings. 🤣 So then after this Hairi meets Harmonia, a celestial being that they were looking for to assist with breaking the curse. Harmonia tells Hairi about who set the Stone curse and it was some gge who wanted revenge on the stoned town. This also helps Hairi and Ulen realize that a blood sacrifice is needed to set off a curse. A few days later Ulen has some NTR dream and goes yandere rambling negative shit in his room to the point that Shien asks her to come over and check on him. She finds him raging in bed with his futon over his head and calms him down telling him she only has eyes for him.

He then insists to leave a hickey on her shoulder and she’s like sigh ok but since he’s a nerd he just bites her shoulder 😂😂😂. Hairi forgives him though cause his nerdiness is endearing lol. Harmonia then shows up in front of Ulen and gives him”the seed of hate” which if combined with blood would set of a curse. He wants to “test” to try because Harmonia said it would “make his wish come true”. He decides to do it at the lake where they first confessed their love thinking it would break the glass curse. In the good end Hairi thinks this is a bad idea and they might create another curse… So instead they kiss and cry and the seed turns into a glass rose and breaks the curse. Whew good thing Hairi stopped her boyfriend from creating another calamity. And so after she falls asleep to his scientific rambles, the following day they go back to Tokyo for Ulen’s first ever visit. He ends up spending the night cuddling in bed with her 😊. In the yandere end they set off the curse with his blood. It causes Hairi to go yandere for him too and they spend the rest of their lives sticking to each other like glue. The kicker is though, Ulen becomes invisible to everyone but her. Ulen even ends up killing Shien in a jealous rage not Shien has no idea who stabbed him before he dies.😨 Idk man like I was really getting into Ulen, he was really cute/tsundere etc but then he just takes a U-turn into yandere land and that kind of left a bad taste.

Rindo Westeria – After Rindo was a huge asshole in 2 routes I finished I was as excited to play his route as cleaning cat poop. In this route door some reason the town gets a butterfly infestation and anyone who touches them falls ill and dies. Coincidentally Rindo just happens to have an entire room filled with his dead butterfly collection. (；￣Д￣) In addition to his dead butterfly collection he also keeps a dead glassified person collection. 😑 When Hairi finds it she’s horrified because in there is a boy whose grandma came to her asking her to find him when he went missing. He then forces Hairi to touch the glass corpse but she gets so sickened by this she passes out and suddenly gets amnesia. He even lies to her saying he confessed his love and was waiting for her answer. She ends up staying at his house being a housekeeper but can’t recall anything. Eventually he tells her about his dead body collection. He even forces her to help him “clean them up” with him (and obviously if you say wtf no you creep you get a bad end 🤢). The moment she sees the little kids body again though she passes out again. After she escapes from his house to turn the clock he gets really pissy and then reveals to her that if she keeps moving the clock it will not break the curse but instead spread it all over the world. Also if the curse breaks people won’t die anymore so oh noes he won’t be able to keep up his sick hobby how sad! (￢_￢;)

Suddenly Hairi goes into the past to talk to young Rindo who apparently was a victim of child abuse from the guard training. After this Hairi goes to the corpse room and regains her memories but they try to make it endearing and shit and I’m like… Really you think I’m gonna be convinced that this guy who traumatized her with his necrophilia and forced her to stay in his house is sweet as pie?? Because you had some cake together??😨😨😨😐😐😐 Man I liked Hairi as a heroine until we get to this route and all common sense is out the window. I mean granted, the common sense choices lead you to bad ends I gracefully avoided like the black plague thanks to there being no more trophies with the Switch. What’s funny is even Rindo is like bitch are you crazy lmao but she just stands like a log babbling her Stockholm love for him. 🤦‍♀️ Only thing this route reveals is apparently the cause behind the curse is the Cherry blossom tree growing inside the clock tower. Wtf is this, Da Capo??😂😂 And to break the curse they need a sacrifice so they sacrifice a random butterfly to the stupid tree and yay everything’s fixed! Yadeya they live happily ever after let’s forget that he’s still got a storage of dead bodies. The only interesting thing was that Rindo mentioned that Kashika’s goal was to spread the curse throughout the whole world. Welp way to ruin a character for me before I even started his route!😐 In the yandere route Rindo can’t deal with the curse breaking and him losing his dead body hobby aka clearly the true end. Hairi is also now assigned the task of moving time backwards.

Ela Amarlic – Ela seemed the most mysterious because up till now all we knew about him is he was the random library boy. Hairi decides the only way to get into the clock tower to do her thing is to apply for a job to be an assistant to the highest person in town – M. Somehow she easily gets the job and becomes M’s maid. Ela also then reveals to Hairi the next day that M is actually his older sister. Apparently she and Ela were childhood friends with Natra and Rindo as well. At first Ela seemed like this nice innocent dude but he thirsty AF. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) M also gets really friendly with Hairi but M’s mother Mei gets pissy that she should only be a maid not M’s friend. The Mom also accuses Hairi of moving the astrolabe but even though this is true, M still defends Hairi. The Mom is also a crazy jealous bitch who couldn’t become the “M” but her daughter did. Both Ela and his sister find themselves suppressed by their mother and feel like Hairi offers them the only freedom and choice they made on their own by being friends with her. Wanting to leave his glass prison Ela asks if Hairi will bring him outside even if for a bit so Hairi asks her forest friends to let them both visit. And so when he visits turns out Ela was Ulen’s pen mail buddy lol. After this the good times come to an end because M’s mom fires Hairi from being her maid. Additionally Ela is now on break from his library job due to “a bone fracture”.

Hairi runs to Rindo and Natra in hopes of getting more info but they don’t seem to know anything. Natra thinks it’s their mom finding out that since Hairi took Ela outside she’s banned them from having contact with her. Turns out it’s true and both Ela and M have been locked up in the clock tower. The Mom also took her seal that shows that she’s an important leader of Tokyo so she’s been reduced to just a regular kid. Hairi tells Rindo and Natra that she wants to save both siblings. They come up with a plan where they carry Hairi inside a box of fruit and bring it to Ela’s room. While Rindo distracts the stupid mom, and Natra searches the dad’s room, Ela and Hairi get time for a brief reunion where they confess their feelings to each other. After this they run up the royal library to look for any clues on where his authority badge may be. They find it hidden inside the cactus of M’s room. Just then though Mei comes bursts into the room raging to give her the badge of authority. Just then she reveals that M is in fact not Ela’s sister but Ela himself. (I honestly kinda predicted this from the start.) He only has an older brother that went missing in action. Everyone in their family has the ability to move the astrolabe but for some reason the Mom never got it and Ela being a man was unable to move the needle but he was able to stop it. Apparently the clock wasn’t broken it was intentionally stopped by Ela. Apparently if the clock reached midnight bad things would happen so that’s what the M family has done up until now. So Mei wanted to keep Ela’s gender a secret so she dressed him up as a woman and told him not to talk. Ela tells her back off and that he’s going to break the curse.

A few days later Ela reveals that he’s a man to the people of Tokyo. Hairi is also allowed to visit him anytime as he works on trying to break the curse. Unfortunately due to him using the astrolabe powers he starts to lose his vision and uses up a lot of his strength to keep the time frozen. Well apparently it gets worse when Hairi moves the needle forward so uh actually she’s the reason this is happening. Feeling kinda shitty about this Hairi confesses to Ela that she’s been moving the clock needle forward. She was told by Kashika the curse will break if the clock strikes 12 and apologizes. Ela confirms that this is wrong and that moving the clock needle was done backwards to stop time so there wouldn’t be any bad things like plagues etc. And so the 2 of them break the curse together because their astrolabe powers resonate together. ❤️ In the epilogue, Ela says he will continue to work on being a proper M instead of leaving everything to his mom. And so they become the hot new couple of Tokyo and live happily ever after. In the yandere end Hairi doesn’t tell him about her powers and he does the ceremony alone. Seeing him in pain Hairi can’t stand back anymore and decides to bring our her astrolabe to help but instead she screws up and mass Ela’s eyes explode. She also breaks the astrolabe because this method is only for men astrolabe users apparently. So now once the clock strikes 12 the world will perish. I hated how they made Rindo seem like this good guy in this route yet he’s a complete douche in the others.

Kashika Galle – Kashika calls himself a plain old person who just happened to figure out how to break the curse. He says he has no real magic skills or he’d just use them to break the curse. Harmonia randomly shows up in front of Hairi telling her that Kashika is like a wandering spirit stuck in the past. After Hairi finds his magical tree hideout he tells her how he’s thousands of years old. A witch placed a curse of eternal life on him and the only way to break it is to break the curse in Tokyo. The witch by the way is Harmonia. So the deal is that Kashika the prince of Tokyo 200 years ago and fell in love with an astrolabi (like Hairi)named Ruri. He didn’t wanna be king at all. However his father, the king, didn’t think this was a good idea so he wished misfortune to happen to her. So the girl, Ruri, ended up getting that glass disease that Hairi got in the first game. Then the dad somehow forced moved the clock forward, Ruri died (cause she was the first person to ever get it), and then the disease ended up sprouting up in other parts of the world. So then Kashika got pissed, and Harmonia showed up in front of him and told him how to set a curse. Apparently it was super easy so Kashika easily put the glass curse on Tokyo for 200 years.

The price for the curse was for Kashika to never age but he was fine because his goal was to spread the curse beyond Tokyo. So he waited 200 years for Hairi to be born even though he said he could have just KILLED THE M FAMILY to stop them from keeping the clock from ticking?? But he instead told Hairi to move the needle??? And then he reveals all of this to her completely ruining his plans like???? 😂？？Whut. Clearly deep inside he didn’t want this and that’s why he sent Hairi-size glass slippers to all her other man-candidates and that’s why she’s able to break the curse in different ways in all of their routes – and why Kashika always poofs whenever this happens. So after hearing this suddenly Hairi is in wuv with him and tells him to love her back even if she can’t be Ruri’s replacement. Great, another “PAST WOMAN” trope I didn’t realize I needed~! Anyway I pretty much zoned out after this but apparently Kashika fell in love with Hairi despite obsessing over his dead girlfriend for 200 years. The best part is how he says he’ll never stop loving Ruri but actually he’s gonna love Hairi too 🤣🤣🤣. And so when Hairi breaks the curse and also starts moving Kashika’s time again. Also while she does this magically she hears Ruri’s voice tell her to take care of Kashika. Sigh. So now they live happily ever after aging together etc. In the yandere end well… He continues his plan for revenge and everyone turns to glass and dies. Oh well whatever. (ᇂ∀ᇂ╬)

Honestly I’m actually incredibly disappointed. The art was beautiful, the heroine Hairi was great but the guys….whut. My favorite ended up being Ela with Shien not too far behind (but I got a bit of pedrobear vibes from him lol.) Everyone else…..let’s see: Klone and Kashika got that “unforgettable past woman” bullshit trope I hate. Natra is too much of a brocon, he was alright himself but constant brocon stuff and even though he’s a huge guy and is 24 years old he acted ilke some 10 year old child. He seemed pretty normal in other people’s routes so it’s like ??? Ulan started off a cute tsundere nerd and somehow veered into a yandere and well Rindo..ew. A trope I didn’t really want to see in an otome game. Then there’s all the amount of dumb plotholes like “Who the fk is Harmonia and what hole did she/he crawl out of?” Also they basically mention Hairi’s parents in 1 person’s route in a brief 1 liner but that’s it. Hairi is also constantly being like a therapist to these guys, and basically doing everything herself for them….while they sit around moaning about their problems (or past girlfriends ಠ_ಠ). So while I can’t truly say it was a kusoge to avoid, it felt like if they had changed a few things about the guys to make them more appealing and done away with the landmine tropes and yandere ends I might have enjoyed the game more? I mean what was even the point of having yandere ends for characters who aren’t even yandere? Like literally the dude would turn a 180 and suddenly become a completely different person. Then there’s the whole thing about the glass curse and how at first Hairi is told there’s only 1 way to break it but actually there’s multiple ways. And then the whole thing about how in some routes she just waltzes into the clock tower but in other routes she barely is able to go in more than 1or 2 times because of ~reasons~. Then as a cherry on top when I went to go post my review for this game, my SD card reader died so I had to order a new one before posting this. 😂 It was so terrible it killed my drive!!

Well jokes aside, overall can’t really recommend it. It has it’s nice parts but because it has nice parts, you really start to feel like you wish it was slightly different or done in a different way. Also the game has like 40+ bad ends?? Apparently but yea no trophies? No fucks given. Once I got the full CG for every guy I moved on and never looked back. Without trophy motivation these bad ends are just a waste of effort for the creators, but then again back in the PSP days I never did bad ends either unless they had a CG…so I guess just going back to the status quo! Kinda disappointing that this ended up being the first Switch Otomate release…feels like they really put effort into the heroines like with their initial Vita releases but the guys are rather meh. I think the whole “new take on the cinderella” plot was actually really great but ultimately the execution is what really killed it. Maybe those who don’t have a lot of otome games behind them might think it’s interesting though, but unfortunately it’s nothing that I’m going to really remember years from now.