Surprising nobody: it was terrible and I didn’t think it was going to be anything but. Still, due to lack of console games lately, I was bored out of my mind (and lured in by Uchida Yuuma) that I decided to give it ye’ old free 2 play only experience to see how far I could get before rage quitting.
I decided to try out Ikemen Ouji as my first Cybird game. I knew these things had stupid avatar missions/affection ratings but as long as I got free daily login currency/did some battle stuff I was able to complete and move on. I didn’t mind that i could only read 5 chapters a day and I kept going this way for a couple weeks. Ikemen Ouji had voices when you flipped between different parts of the app, but there was 0 voices in the actual game (aside the prologue) and therefore to me, other than the pretty art, there was no real value to spending money therefore I continued to play for free for what it was worth.
Eventually though I hit a wall. The amount of required affection required me to basically spend an entire week doing the battles (aka the Salon) so it meant all my daily 5 tickets would go to waste because the tickets don’t “pile up”. You either use it or lose it. Ok fine. A week went by, I finally passed it and was back to my 5 day ticket reading schedule. Then finally I hit the ULTIMATE paywall: literally cannot pass the avatar requirement because it actually requires an insane amount of currency both paid and free to be able to purchase:
Even the “NORMAL” non Premium story required me 22,000 coins while I currently have 20,000 thanks to some login items over the course of the last couple of weeks. At this point the only way is to slog through getting like 100 coins a day from battles or hope that one of the daily logins gives you random diamonds or coins. I’m basically 2 chapters away from the end so I’ll keep trying for daily login bonuses for a week or so but I’m pretty much ready to uninstall this app.
In an ironic twist of events, I also ended up downloading Ikeman Vampire due to a collaboration campaign with IkeOuji. IkeVan, which has been localized in English, works basically the same way. The difference is because it’s been out for 3 years, it has way more pointless money chugging events, gachas and random advertisement popups in your face the moment you login to it. I picked piano-man Mozart and it took a REALLY long time for this dude to actually be dere to her, but of course the moment things get cute:
Again, I had to wait a few days before being able to continue and ONCE AGAIN even after I climbed over this wall I reached the same paywall issue I had with Ikeman Ouji:
Even the Normal outfit still requires 450 of the paid currency or insanely large amount of grinded free currency. So basically when you first join you get a bunch of free stuff that lures you into the game but as you keep getting further it starts to become obvious that this is definitely not free to play and eventually you basically have to spend money if you want to as much finish 1 route. At least IkeVan had partial voicing in the stories but still not enough in my opinion to justify the money you spend – especially because you spend money on completely pointless avatars. I know some players love the avatars but it’s a huge waste of time (and money) to me and as someone who just wanted to read the story this entire system is balls.
Ultimately at least I can say I’m not knocking it without trying, but also I guess it wasn’t really worth it in the end anyway. I’ve paid for mobile games where I could pay to see an entire route faster – but the way Cybird does things you will probably end up paying more than you would in a fully voiced console game. It boggles my mind how/why these games are popular and I can only imagine is people will get hooked on them, realize they gotta pay and then quit before repeating the cycle with another game – and I guess enough whales spend money that it still keeps the game running despite all the f2p ragequitters. ┐(´∀`)┌ If you want a good “free” otome game, this definitely isn’t it, and if you have money to spend, you’re better off spending it on a console game with full voices and probably better written stories.
かわいいじゃなきゃダメなの！ 
I’m not sure about the quality of the localized ones since I played in Japanese so I can’t comment on that.
I’ve played a few OEL otomes and some were fun. I liked how the english ones typically had a very strong heroine with a personality.
That said the ultimate draw for me in otome games are Japanese voice actors so I haven’t really bothered to look into any new ones these days.
Geez how rare a mobile game sucking and allegedly free , I remember how I was put off for otome mobile games because of this and the awful awful translations, thanks to god people start to localize more otome games though is debatable whether the translation will be good o bad how that awful awful machine translations of sakuragames . Btw I want to ask you something hinano since you have so much experience in otome games , what are you thoughts in english otome games? because they diverge in so many things compared to japanese otome games that I am a bit curious , also if you have time I suggest you to play Lost in secular love! is a funny game where you romance monks
Yeah that makes more sense. Always been wondering what the draw is, though I guess part of that fix is feeling like you need to know what happens next so you’re willing to leap through the hoops the game provides to not pay. Rofl I’m glad you didn’t have to spend actual money in the end it sounds like a disaster xD
I can see instant gratification with gacha games but these types aren’t necessarily instant since I feel like the cards to very little and it seems to be mostly focused on the dumb avatar system and how slow/fast you can read the stories…hence why I can’t even see it from a “gambling addict” POV it just seems like a shitty model to me….but it must be working seeing how IkeVan’s been running for 3 years. Anyway I finished the story today finally after some login bonuses and well i can certainly say it was not worth the time or any money (that thankfully I did not spend XD)
“It boggles my mind how/why these games are popular and I can only imagine is people will get hooked on them, realize they gotta pay and then quit before repeating the cycle with another game”
I wonder if this has something to do with the, “instant gratification” that comes with mobage? Doing x or y will ensure you don’t have to pay for this one section, but later on you run out of these options and eventually have to pay to continue. A friend of mine explained to me how addicting these systems can be to him and how he’s lost hundreds playing card gacha games. I personally don’t get it since I’m always pinching pennies and I’d rather just make a one-time purchase on a game and just enjoy it, but for some, I guess it almost seems cheaper if it’s a mobile game? Of course doing the math shows that’s not always the case, but this is just me rambling.
It’s too bad. I like the name “Cybird”. Say it out loud. Cybird. Cybird. Cybird.
yea I thought the point of “paying” was to say read a story faster or get rare cards but the fact is you really just cannot even read the story (in a slow manner) for free anymore really kills the whole free to play aspect because in fact, it’s not free lmao
yea even if you greet other friends you get maybe what 120 coins? and you need 22k to finish someone’s ending. i mean it’s pretty reasonable up until the VERY end so I’m not sure why it jumps up like that in both games none the less
Abolish mobage 2020!
In all seriousness, I don’t understand the appeal of this kind of games. The only advantage is its accessibility, kind of? Since everybody has phones. The argument that people don’t have a lot of money to spend and want free content doesn’t work: as you said, console/PC games may turn out cheaper in the end.
I havent played IkeOuji and IkeVamp but ive been playing Ikemen Sengoku for 3 months and honestly never had much of an issue. The battles in IkeSen are called princess lessons and they give you grace, i was never held back more than a day to gain enough grace to progress. The normal currency for attire looks insane but is very easy to get just by greeting friends everyday. So im sad to hear that Cybird is so much greedier with the other games, especially since i was hoping IkeOuji would get localized someday. I guess i’ll stick with IkeSen…