I gave up...

So...one of the very first otome I tried (based on a number of reviews I found online on various blogs) was Shall We Date? Niflheim. It sounded promising. Kind of a mythical fantasy set up. Basically, you are awakened and totally confused. You don't remember anything. It appears you are now in the land of the dead and have been resurrected (kind of) because the King of the land (who is a very enthusiastic but douche-y kind of guy and, quite frankly, dumb as a post...maybe the worms ate his brains) wants to take a new queen. You.

And you? You're...um...sweet. And not the sharpest tool in the shed either. And don't appear to have much free will...you kinda go along with everything that everyone tells you and you don't question anything. Like, who were you? Why were you picked? Why does he need a queen? Who are these other guys? What connection do they have to you?

And the other love interests...(I'm doing this from memory, as I deleted this one)...there's a literal skeleton guy named Bones or Mr. Bones. A Victor Frankenstein type that runs hot and cold. A writer/poet type who may or may not still be alive and may or may not have some connection with your old life that you can't remember. And a zombie guy.

It's pretty, I'll give it that. The art is nice. It didn't work for me because the MC has no agency or backbone (hey, maybe it rotted before they resurrected her). And the love interests...I had a hard time imagining it. A skeleton? A zombie? And the zombie-ish guy was kind of sad. Well, I guess I would be too... The route I tried was the writer guy. And he was nice enough but everyone (other than the King) was so wishy-washy I just gave it up.

I can admit I have a bit of a love/hate thing with the Shall We Date apps. I keep trying them and I keep getting frustrated for the most part. The two in this review also had the whole dress up / ticket-y kind of set up and the princess/queen/tea lesson mechanism.

The Shall We Date? Lost Alice one was no exception.

It's pretty obvious what this one is about. Alice. In Wonderland. Even though the art in this one is really lovely, I gave up on this one almost immediately because the text was horribly translated and so, so awkwardly clunky. And the MC was like a space cadet. I mean, I love Alice in Wonderland. I've studied it at university. I can quote the poems at the drop of a hat. But that, if anything, made me enjoy this one less because I was all WTF is going on here anyway? It didn't make any sense. I did like the Hatter character but the scenes just went on and on without any real resolution or progress and the translation was so UGH I just gave up. Pity. The art was really nice.

So, nothing great to report on either of these. I can SEE why people like them, because they are pretty. But that wasn't enough for me.