Cinderella Phenomenon - Otome/Visual Novel
If you are a male button-mashing adrenaline junkie, have no patience, or simply no time nor understanding for romantic sentimentality, please leave this page. Now. This offering is not for you. For everybody else, I cannot recommend this highly enough, and that opinion would not alter even if it was for sale at £20. What you get for downloading this game is 5 unique, engaging stories for the price of none.
After completing my first route and perhaps inevitably getting a bad ending, I decided to have a read through the negative reviews and see what it is that people were finding to dislike about it.
– Real player with 51.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Free to Play Visual Novel Games.
Ladies, meet the best rated otome VN on Steam. It was a pleasure playing it and to write a review for it.
I kept thinking a lot on why this game might be free- because it’s way too good to be FREE!. There could be many explanations but to support the creators for now I recommend buying the Digital Artbook.
Story
You follow the life of the ice princess who has no kindness in her heart and helps her break her fairytale curse. Along the way, you’d have help from one of the “hot” male characters who would help the princess be kind and achieve the happy ever after ending. After being affected by the “Cinderella” curse- Lucette, joins the Marchen with hopes of ending the curse and going back to the palace. Little did she know that she would need to complete 3 good deeds to break her curse. With the help of other members at the Marchen, Lucette goes on a journey of understanding what true love and friendship means. The story has an extremley original concept where the Grimm brothers orginal fairytales are utilized as a curse for each male character you can be with. Even though romance is the main plot- the VN would also give priority for friendship as well. Basically, the story is a fight between good an evil, witches and fairies.
– Real player with 37.8 hrs in game
Tailor Tales
Neil: In comparison to the rest of the routes its not my favorite but its not bad at all. it was fun to play. Its a relatively cliché rich boy forced into the family business but wants to do something else. The conflicts are mundane compared to the others but on its own its a fine little story to read. His cousin is probably my fav character from his story line and her antics are pretty funny and shes got more personal problems i sympathies with more and got attached to her, wanting her to have a good ending as well. If Neil had more of that he would be a more memorable route because HE would be more memorable but still would recommend playing his route just to read. As an opening story it got me interested in seeing the other route’s stories.
– Real player with 99.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Free to Play Visual Novel Games.
Overall I like Tailor Tales. The Writing is solid, The UI fits the genre and The Gimmicks are cool.
Design portion Pro:
I like the “design portion” of the game. It’s really cool to have to be a tailor like the protag.
There are SOOO many choices for everything I really like it.
Design Portion Con: Sometimes its really difficult to understand what the colors/designs are Supposed to be in the studio. I wish we could pay to have it precisely identified to finish the client.
When it gets too complicated, I’m just too frustrated by every little detail that I just delete the clients till it’s just one, no patterned piece.
– Real player with 54.8 hrs in game
Magical Otoge Ciel
This is a very cute, harmless little otome VN with a very nice artstyle, good humoristic elements and a lot of warmth. You shouldn’t expect anything ground-breaking when approaching it, but it still manages to be a pleasant, charming experience, with likeable characters and mostly comedic, but meaningful storytelling.
It’s very relaxed when it goes to pacing and might seem boring if you’re not into the formula it offers. However, I’ve managed to enjoy it quite a lot in all three routes - and especially the bonus Irvin route that unlocks after you finish your first playthrough. His story was probably the most surprising and interesting one, while his sarcastic personality makes dialogues more interesting than in other story arcs.
– Real player with 11.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Free to Play Visual Novel Games.
I give this game a 1000 out of 100. I’m not exagerating, I had a blast while playing it!
First of all: if you are looking for a good, ol' fashioned otome game… you won’t find that here. This game is not to be taken seriously and you should not be angry or disappointed just because of it. In fact, I invite you to sit, read, laugh, and relax with it.
So… let me try to point out three good things - at least, because I think there are more - about this game:
No. 1: This game doesn’t take itself seriously (I think it even breaks the 4th wall a tiny, itsi-bitsy bit if you pay attention to what the characters say). I said this at the begining, right? After playing otome games for a long time, you start to expect a pattern… you can even start guessing correctly which is the best answer to achieve the best ending without even paying attention to the story, just to the displayed answers in front of you when it’s time to make a decision; and then “playing” just becomes automatic… which feels a bit dull. But this game, makes fun of itself… so much, that it gives you - and itself - the chance to “not take into consideration your choices” (I’ll try to talk a bit more about this in the next point).
– Real player with 7.5 hrs in game
Seduce Me the Otome
The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible. - Mark Twain
This is the first of Michaela Laws' games, and apparently, there is a whole fandom around it. It also was one of the earliest examples of the otome genre here on Steam. I wanted to see what the fuss was about for myself, and started playing it years ago, got bored and dropped it - and now I’ve revisited it for the sake of completion and making a decent review out of it. Guess what, I was right the first time around. There REALLY is nothing interesting here. It simply is some bad writing, with adolescent pheromones attached to it.
– Real player with 22.9 hrs in game
I wrote a really indepth review and then it didn’t post and my heart shattered into two.
Liek if u crie evrytiem ;(
I’ll try to sum up what I said before:
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Really interesting characters. They all fit into a certain stereotype, but after finishing Sam’s route you can delve deeper into his personality and I’m sure the same goes for all characters.
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Surprisingly good MC. Not annoying, meek or plain dumb like in games such as Remember Me or Dandelion. She can kick butt, stand up for herself and for the boys, and generally acts quite logically about most things. (As logically as one can when surrounded by hunky demon males, anyway).
– Real player with 15.4 hrs in game
秋色的記憶(體驗版) / Fall…in Love (Demo)
*Sorry for my bad english
Story & characters: Pretty cliché but the characters make it not boring. It’s nice to see the balance of screentime between main characters and side characters! And more girl friend in otome is always welcome! I’m bored of most girl in otome game just there to support the MC/being there just to take the bad role or just being there with most of the time no screentime. This dev treat the girl much better than what D3P did to Storm Lover I’m currently playing. I didn’t dislike any of them! But I got a small issue with the heroine. They make her like… she miss the old school just bcs she must take the summer class.
– Real player with 9.2 hrs in game
Yup. Good.
However one thing bugs me the most. The company is Chinese. The translations are in English. Why are there so many Japanese cultural bits thrown in? I can understand kuroneko since -neko- words kind of became a part of universal pop culture, but voices never call franki ' franki', awa ' awa', or senpais ' senpai'. If the game is being made in Chinese, i would very much like to have the Chinese versions of ' senpai' etc instead in the text box, if not English versions. when there is no connection whatsoever between the text and the audio, it feels like the speech doesn’t matter at all, like it’s some alien white noise. But maybe it’s just me. I just like respecting original languages overall.
– Real player with 7.2 hrs in game
Winter Worm, Summer Grass
‘‘Art is man’s nature; nature is God’s art’’ - Philip James Bailey
Arahitogami is a Japanese word meaning a deity as a human
Ameshiko’s Winter Worm, Summer Grass is an original Japanese otome Visual Novel that centres around the horrific curse known as the Great Mistletoe where the afflicted will have seasonal greenery (such as plants or weeds etc) merge with their body parts and painfully germinate until fully blossomed resulting in the person returning back to nature in their death. The only known way to ease the pains is to have the person visit the shrine’s sacred grove during a Festival.
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game
The art is pretty nice in many parts. I think whoever illustrated this game is extremely talented. But the story itself was lacking in substance. I found myself wanting with all 3 endings. I completed the game more confused than anything and not satisfied. The writing was okay. The choices were inconsistent with the theme, and I’m not even sure I was able to grab at what the themes were supposed to be aside from horror and sort-of-historical-fiction. Is it entertaining? Yes, for a free game. But I definitely won’t be playing it again. Oh yeah, there’s a walk through in the game files if you’re privy to grab it. Otherwise the guides here on Steam are fine too. Cheers!
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
Mystic Destinies: Serendipity of Aeons
TLDR: Recommended, especially if you are just getting into VNs but you can’t/are hesitant about dropping 20/30/40 bucks on one of the bigger titles. Great story and character development. Hours of play time for each route. Ability to read some of the story without paying for anything ahead of time.
I count myself as fairly experienced when it comes to VNs these days; I have read quite a few at this point and continue to read them as often as nursing school has allowed me. (Done with that soon, though, so yay! More reading time and more money!) Mystic Destinies: Serendipity of Aeons has been a nice find and add to my VN collection and I’ll explain why I think so!
– Real player with 73.8 hrs in game
I was very torn about whether or not to recommend this game. On one hand, it’s very clear the studio put a lot of effort into it and I think they have a really great concept on their hands. The content is sizeable, the art is beautiful, and the music is great. On the other hand, those things alone do not make a quality game, and I found Mystic Destinies to be incredibly unpolished.
First of all, each chapter of every single route in the game was peppered with errors! Sentences like, “I thought knew he felt that way,” where you can tell it was originally written one way then was changed and just didn’t get edited properly. This happened so many times, it was absolutely ridiculous. A few mistakes here or there are expected, but their number of errors far surpassed the amount you would expect to find in a product you paid for.
– Real player with 57.3 hrs in game
Once Upon an All Hallow’s Eve
Hello Steam user who is wondering if this little visual novel is worth their time. I’m going to tell you right now that the short answer is… not so short.
Pros
– it’s free.
– The concept. Like I explained in my Date Warp review, I’ve always had a thing for locked room mysteries since I feel like thats good way to add tension and even make the tiniest misstep into a life or death situation so the idea of as injured girl being chased by will-o'-wisps and wandering into a mysterious mansion with three boys that are tightlipped about something sounded like a good start to me.
– Real player with 4.4 hrs in game
Play as the female protagonist in this Visual Novel, a great game if you are new to the Visual Novel scene. Story starts out with you on a hiking trail heading towards a mountain house with your friends when suddenly a landslide causes you to go off course, injured you try to find your way back and recover.
You meet three boys, one shy, one doctor and one rude all with different coloured hair and personality. As you stay in their mansion longer your trust grows, or weakens as you become sceptical and anxious about the haunted blue flames around the area and harsh rainfall events when you try to leave.
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
Paths Taken
This game is… Okay for a free game. I didn’t learn anything new, but I don’t think this was actually for ME. I think younger people and adults who turn off their brains who just want to read something simple… That could work for them.
There wasn’t much characters development… I can only tell them apart by drawings. I didn’t get attached to anything and anyone and… there is no romantic connection/ tension. When it does happen, it’s out of nowhere. You CAN fix this if you pretend the characters were in love all along. But then again… There would be more trust in what is going on… I’ll stop my plot hole exploration there.
– Real player with 3.4 hrs in game
I didn’t expect much from this game since it’s a free visual novel and yet I was still let down.
This is hands down one of the most boring visual novels I have ever played (The only game more boring than this is Alice in Stardom that is coincidentally by the same people :)
I really wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone. For people who never played any visual novels, this would be a horrible introduction to this genre (If you want a good free visual novel play Cinderella Phenomenon)
and for people into these types of games, this one has nothing interesting or even remotely fun to offer.
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game
Chronicles of Tal’Dun: The Remainder - Act 1
This is the first chapter in the story and new chapters will be released in the future. It’s pretty short, but it packs in a lot of beauty and story-building.
The characters are very mysterious and surprisingly fleshed out considering how short the story is. The music is beautiful and the art is amazing. This story also has characters that use different pronouns (they/them, xe/xir) and it’s refreshing to see.
If they make the next chapters cost money, I would pay for them because I love this so much. 10/10
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
This is one of my absolute favorite visual novels. Esoteric, foreboding, and romantic vibes beautifully written and rendered in digital ink. Playing and replaying (which I’ve done several times now) gives me a feeling similar to watching Mushishi at 3am or reading too much poetry before bed: strange, melancholic, and sort of comforting all at once. Goes well with tea.
– Real player with 3.4 hrs in game