Shall We Date? Blood & Roses

Blood & Roses is another Shall We Date? mobile app and, at least for me, the jury is still out though I haven't given up on it. Yet. To be honest, I think my enjoyment level could be categorised as 30%. Let me start from the beginning. (Edit below)

Techically, I think this is the point where she was screaming in terror,
which isn't actually what this image conveys, now is it?

In this one, you actually have a choice of two characters. You can play a pink-haired vampire hunter OR a black-haired witch. The prologue bit seemed like the MC might be a decent one and I kind of figured that, given that she's either a witch or a freaking vampire hunter, she'd have to be reasonably strong. Anyway...I picked the witch. She goes wandering in the woods one day (I think after having a psychic dream) and finds herself at a mysterious and slightly foreboding castle. So, of course, she goes in. And is quickly captured at knife point, thrown in a dungeon, and then two vampires come in and basically make out with her neck. Violently. She does talk back a little at this point and wound herself trying to escape but...

...the next day...and BOOM she wakes up in one of the hotel/castle rooms. There's a talking cat (which is also a romanceable LI option in his human form) who informs her she has a limited amount of time before she transforms into a vampire unless she locates some hidden rose garden and drinks the dew. Because, yeah, sure, that makes sense...(sorry, my first two books had vampires in them and I've researched WAY too much about them in multiple cultures and...yeah, no, this is not a thing). And then she wanders around and the two vampire guys--remember them? the ones that completely and violently violated her the night before? -- show up and tell her she's working at the hotel and try to do some mind control thing on her to make her their personal love slave or whatever. And, while the love slave thing doesn't work on her (possibly because she's a witch or something hereditary), the rest of it she just goes along with like, oh, okay, this is my life now, taking orders from you, okey dokey, that's peachy...

I'd randomly picked Daniel as the LI, who is obviously a werewolf, and she gets assigned to be his personal maid. What happened to all her witch skills? And her gumption? Now she's cleaning toilets and changing bed linens and delivering food and searching for the rose garden in her spare time. Man, the more I type, the more I'm wondering why I haven't deleted this one. There's been a lot of days where I've logged in to get the daily reward thing but haven't actually done any of the story. So I guess that says something about my interest level.

It's also the standard 5 tickets, dress up an avatar, rival showdown thing too. And lots of events and jewel collection.

Pluses: Daniel is interesting and reasonably nice. It seems like there's a fair amount of (nonsensical) mythology plot-y things to the story. The art is decent, if a bit washed out. I like that you can choose between two different MCs (and a plethora of LIs).

Minuses: The very rape-y introduction to the vampires. How the MC just caves immediately. The story itself is slow. And every time those two stupid vampires appear I really want someone to stake them in the heart. And so many of the MC's decisions just don't make sense.

I'm thinking I'll probably struggle through to the end of Daniel's story and then give it one more go as the vampire hunter MC and see if she's got any more guts and common sense than the witch. If not, I'll be deleting it. I guess I could sum up by saying I'm disappointed. I thought the MC might actually be strong (witch! vampire hunter!) but that doesn't seem to be the case.

He looks like he needs to be in an
Alice in Wonderland story.

EDIT: A new route for a character called Cecil was released and I thought, what the hey, I'll try it as I'm not all that enthused anyway and I'll get some extra prizes and stuff. So I switched to it and so far (on chapter 6 now), it's quite a bit better. It's the vampire hunter character instead (though it doesn't actually seem like she was a vampire hunter before she went in the woods? so a little confused)...basically, the bloodless corpses of fellow villagers began appearing and the MC went into the woods with her faithful dog Bear to see if she could find out why.

The MC appears as more together and there wasn't the rape-y scene in the beginning. And she's learning magic and isn't afraid to butt into the middle of fights and things like that. So I'm liking it better in general. I don't particularly find the Cecil character all that enticing (what the heck is up with that hat??) but he's not terrible. And there are "bad" vampires and "good" vampires and there's basically kind of a war going on, the plot bits seem fairly interesting.

I'm actually finding the character of Finn (he's a wizard) more interesting, so if I'm not ready to burn the whole thing with fire by the end of the route, maybe I'll try him next. I'm guessing, perhaps, that the witch route is just a weaker one all the way around (from my perspective) and I probably won't even try that side of things again even though there are more love interests on that MC's side.

Hullo there, sparkly wizard man

EDIT 2: I finished the Cecil route (the moonlight/serenade ending) and found it fairly good. Not groundbreaking but not bad. I really wish they'd ditch the hat...anyway, the MC "vampire hunter" (I don't know why they label her that when she really isn't--in fact, she seems more of a "witch/magic user" than the witch does) seems much better than the witch one and definitely more proactive. I've now started the Finn route. He's the wizard.

This one starts off with her stumbling upon him in the forest after she goes searching for the lost villagers again, but there's no attack by a vampire this time to start things off. I thought I'd skip doing a walkthrough and so far I seem to be headed down the "moonbeam/serenade" route. I'm still not entirely sure what the difference is between the two types of endings (the other being sunlight/toccata). I've looked it up but no one seems to know. One blog thought toccata was more romantic but then someone else said the opposite. Another thought serenade you become a vampire. As I've only finished Cecil so far and you do become a vampire in the serenade ending, that might be true. Though so far the MC in Finn's route hasn't been bitten, so I dunno. I do know that you get a guy avatar outfit in one ending and the other you get an outfit for the MC. I guess I'll just let it go and if Finn's route is good (I can't help it -- I just find him more attractive in general than Cecil) maybe I'll do it again for the other ending.

Edit (w-a-y later): I wound up liking this app fairly well, so long as I stuck to the newer routes. I did quite a few of them, but they are a bit repetitious, so I'm on hiatus now. They've also added a female love interest option, though I haven't tried it. Oh, and the "big bad" has a route now too...I tried it but...honestly, after playing so many routes where he's the enemy, I just couldn't get into it. I'd say my fav routes were probably Finn, Gerard (actually did both of his endings), and Gordon. I finished the Zephyr route and, eh, it was okay but I didn't love it. Rosario was decent but a little weird. Rogan was pretty good, as was Lionel (total puppy). A few I tried but then quit (Sascha, Bradley, Edgar (though I can't remember why I quit Edgar))