Well, now this blog is probably as old as some people playing otome games now which is surreal to say the least. 👵

Sorry if the title is misleading – no I am not retiring the blog. I probably should but I need a place to ramble about video games and honestly this is probably the best platform for me. That said there’s a few things on my retirement list.

I’ve retired from Otome Games

Ok so it doesn’t mean I am dropping them cold turkey, but to be honest I am not really buying or playing them either. The only otome game in my backlog is Despera Drops which I only bought because it was like 50% off on the Eshop. I figured I needed a game to auto-read while I lay in bed writing in pain post-op (more on that later.) I have only finished 1 otome game this year and that was the Cupid Parasite FD. That FD was so bad it effectively drove me into otome game retirement. All the O/C, the realization that otomate doesn’t give a shit anymore and the fact that otomate jacked up their game prices by 25% made me think man, why even bother? So what are my otome game plans now? Well a lot of stuff is being localized these days and localized games are 90% more likely to go on sale digitally on eshop or amazon than Otomate’s Japanese releases.

Therefore if I’m really REALLY REAAAAALLLY bored and out of games to play, then I would check out what’s on sale in the localization sector. I have no idea what the quality of otome localizations is these days, but hopefully it’s an improvement over that collar x malice FD disaster. ┐(´д`)┌ I’ve been checking amazon japan to see the reviews on all of Otomate’s games for the past year and most of them were really REALLY bad. Basically it looked like Otomate is back to their Edel Blume/Pandora era of releasing shovelware quickly but now they jacked up the price because I guess “well at least we can sell a few games for a lot than a lot of games for less!” I don’t know how much they are selling these days but if they had to jack up the price that much, I’m guessing not a lot.

I’m Old and Falling Apart

My health really took a nosedive since last year, and I mentioned this in last year’s anniversary post. After much unsuccessful PT I decided to opt for surgery. By the time this post actually publishes it will have been a couple weeks post my surgery but I expect that I’m probably laying in pain and chugging pain killers while watching some Japanese dramas or something. I’ve prepared this post before my surgery so I could focus on writing and not on pain. (Also typing with one hand would suck the life out of me. 😂) My only advice for all the youngins reading this post, take care of your health. Just because you eat healthy, if you sit on your ass all day in front of your computer or TV your body will literally atrophy. Then go you to lift something and suddenly everything cracks like an old dried tree trunk. I know my generation and generations after were all raised on computers and internet but I urge everyone to make sure you get up, stretch and do some kind of movement throughout the day. Also, throw out that shitty gaming chair (a special fuck you to DX Racer btw). A properly supportive ergonomic chair will go a LONG way.

Goodbye Lee 👋

With this anniversary I’ve decided to officially retire Bread Master Lee, the mascot that nobody remembers exists but usually comes out during these anniversary posts. The reason is: I associated Lee with my otome game hobby. He was kind of like a representation of myself playing these kusoges and collecting all the various game systems for them. With me basically dropping otome games outside of “I’m out of things to play/discount sale” he doesn’t have much of a place here anymore. As you may have noticed, most of my reviews now focus on JRPGs which I review with my husband Kanade. Therefore, I felt like the image for the blog is better to be an image of the two of us, rather than Lee. Lee will always remain in my memories, as a long standing representation of my otome game hobby but as I’ve decided to move on, so will he. 😌

Social Network Dumpster Fire

I mentioned last year that I wasn’t using Twitter much. I ended up coming back because none of the official accounts had moved over to Threads or BlueSky. However now I’ve come to the realization that no matter how shitty Muskrat makes Twitter, no matter how much he griefs its users, or uses their posts and art for his shitty AI, they will still come back and post. After what happened with the US elections and the block changes, I’ve decided to just move all of my things to BlueSky. My main account and my cats are now over there. I’ve stopped using Instagram as well because just like with Facebook (which I deleted ages ago), Instagram will continue to try and spam me with content I didn’t ask for even though I have turned all of those settings off. Zuckerbot is determined to make sure his platform shoves its ugly head into your life at all times and that people who pay money shove their content into your timeline whether you like it or not. For now, BlueSky seems reminiscent of old Twitter, everyone is pretty peaceful and the block feature actually works properly. I’ve created a Tumblr account for my FFXIV screenshots as well because the angry mob moved over to Twitter so now Tumblr is oddly peaceful too lol. 😂 So yea weird how things have shifted but we’ll see if that changes next year!

And now, not game awards just going to do the what was Good and what was Bad of the past year! And as always remember, these opinions are my own and probably disagree with 90% of what you find on the internet.

The Bad and the Not So Good

Cupid Parasite ~Sweet & Spicy Darling~

Everything about this game is just bad. The writing is bad and nothing like the first game, the UI is terrible, and don’t even get me started on all the landmines (*coughbeastiality*) that Otomate thought was a “creative new idea” to throw in. 🙄 This dumpster fire literally made me quit otome games.

Trails from Zero

Zzz…boooring! So much dumb crime solving and takes forever to get into the details of the main cast. The Lloyd and Elie shipping was probably the only memorable highlight.

Trails to Azure

Honestly I don’t know if I want to put this into “good” or “bad”. It wasn’t as bad as say CupiPara FD but it just didn’t have the “good” that I’d call it good. The only good was the funny beach episode because everything else was a giant political powers meeting between Crossbell, Erebonia and Calvard. I mean it’s safe to say this game is a huge necessity for continuing the Trails series but the plot just gets soooo overly boring and the pacing is so bad with the political meeting that I was literally falling asleep. That’s why both Crossbell games remain my least favorite Trails games to this day…though looking back at it maybe they weren’t as bad as Cold Steel II. 😹

Trails of Cold Steel II

The only memorable thing in this whole game is my Rean x Alisa ship. Everything else was a mindless Gundam battle every 10 minutes with random trash. Fortunately thanks to 3rd party tools I was able to 2-3 shot these things or I don’t think I would have ever made it through this nonsense of a game. This could have just been part of the 1st game, it didn’t need its own stage.

Trails of Cold Steel III

This video speaks for itself. That’s it. That’s the whole game. Wait no this is the whole game:

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed most of the story cut scenes in the game HOWEVER 90% of the game is you being Chadley’s quest bitch and mini game bitch for every other NPC. The fact that I had to grind out rage inducing mini games with terrible controls, just to make sure I get to see Tifa and Cloud kissing on their ferris wheel date was the final straw for me lol. It’s really a shame too because if they made the stupid mini games optional side content that was irrelevant to story completion I would have been less hatefilled towards the end.

Final Fantasy 7 (Original)

Everyone always talked about OG FF7 like it’s the best Final Fantasy game of all time but after having played it myself I now truly realize what a bunch of delusional morons they were (same could be said for people who think FFX is the best game of all time, LMAOOO). Clearly some people can just sit there with dogshit game systems and put up with that BS if the “story is good” but for me, it’s a massive deal breaker. I mean I’m not even talking about the story. I mean specifically in terms of game system. Aside the fact that if you talked to NPCs out of order you’d completely miss important dialogue or cut scenes (the bane of old games), the ugly graphics that I needed like 6 mods to fix thanks to dedicated fans — the worst offender was the map. I thought FF8 had some crappy 2D/3D background maps but man FF7 absolutely takes the cake for this one. I was stuck in the train graveyard for an hour because I could not for the life of me figure out which parts of the train you could “walk through” and which were an invisible wall. Eventually after running in circles I figured it out and by that point I was so furious I installed some 1hit KO mods to just brute force myself through the rest of the game. 🌚

The Good

Trails of Cold Steel I

I know I ripped into CS 2 and 3 but 1 was still pure and innocent for me. It was the introduction to the Cold Steel series so I was pretty much there with an open mind. It pretty much played like a galge visual novel (with a couple of annoying dungeons) and I got to ship him with the tsundere Hocchan character. This ship was literally the only thing that got me through Cold Steel 2 and 3 tbh.

Trails of Cold Steel IV

Aside my ship going full blast from the 1st game, I loved all the character cameos. And of course seeing one of my OTPs becoming full canon in the game (Olivier and Schera) with their wedding was the ultimate cherry on top. Pretty sure that kept me going through all the multiple Seymour enemies I had to deal with in this one….and the multiple deus ex machina character death revivals. 😅

Trails into Reverie

Reverie was even more of a fanservice game which had a bit of a segue into the Kuro no Kiseki series. Seeing all my Trails gang from the previous games showing up in 3D form from their original pixel selves though was a real treat. I just wish they didn’t constantly ship the Albarea brothers with child-looking characters. 💀💀💀 The game was very similar to Trails 3rd but they made the dungeon way less tedious and the mini games actually fun to play.

Trails Through Daybreak

Even though the final chapter of this game was an absolute disaster that made me really annoyed, I didn’t want to put the game into the bad category because I pretty much enjoyed everything up until then. I really especially like Van as a protagonist, he feels so REAL. I also like that the game is more realistic in terms of “people die when they are killed” rather than how in the previous games only like 1 or 2 bad guys ever permanently died and everyone else magically came back to life.

Little Kitty Big City

Admittedly, this game wasn’t as good as I had hyped it out to be, and it was even shorter than Stray. Still I had enjoyed it for what it’s worth and it was really cute. A lot of bugs were supposedly fixed in an update later on but I’ve already got my fill by then and decided not to revisit it.

FFXIV: Dawntrail

Ok hear me out: Dawntrail wasn’t THAT bad. I think the problem is most people are like “omg I hate Wuk Lamat’s voice acting” and just immediately think the rest of the expansion is bad. Was it worse than other expansions? Yes, but it was also better than other expansions like Heavensturd. Hell by the end of DT I was crying (and then laughing because SPHEEEENE LISTEN TO ME) but I still enjoyed the ride. This is only the beginning of the next story arc while Endwalker was a decade of a continuing story so I will give Dawntrail the benefit of the doubt. For all we know the later patches could redeem and get better. Besides, Wuk Lamat only sucked in English anyway. In Japanese she was basically furry Naruto. 🍜🦁

I don’t have much final thoughts other than I hope by the time this post publishes I’m doing a lot better in terms of my surgical recovery. I hope that one day I can be back into otome games like I used to be, but with my age I feel like at this point it may be very unlikely. I think the only thing otome related that’s keeping my interest these days is Love & Deepspace but weirdly enough not for the mans but for the stubbornness of wanting to clear the battle content lol. 😂 Like damn I already got this far, I gotta keep going. I mean that’s kinda how I kept playing Nier Reincarnation for 3 years. Oh yea Nier Reincarnation shut down this year too which left LaDS as my only remaining mobile game. Glad I was mostly F2P in that one but it’s sad that Square Enix forced the only remaining NierRein archive to shut down. 2025 will be focused on my recovery and clearing out what backlog I have left and then I’ll see where to go from there. Gaming is still a huge part of my life and I do enjoy keeping and updating this blog as an archive of my journey even if not many people drop by anymore.

As always thanks to everyone who still stops by the blog, the stream and any of my socials even if you just quietly leave a like or an RT. I appreciate you all. See you in 2025! 🥰