Akash: Path of the Five

Along with Pub Encounter, I installed a number of other otome games on little dude's PC...some of which I picked up quite awhile ago. Ahem. Steam sales. amiright? One of those I don't actually ever remember buying, though I do remember looking at it, so I must have picked it up as Lo! There it was on the list. Akash: Path of the Five!

I have to admit that I didn't totally love the art at first, but it's grown on me. Especially in comparison to Pub Encounter. Ahem. There are no wrinkles here. Of course, all the character are about to "come of age" at 20 (though the water dude Caspian totally looks and acts about twice that). 

Let's start this over. You're a (very extremely) rare female elemental. There hasn't been a coming of age ceremony for one in 200 years. All the other elementals in your village (and other villages) are male. In order to keep the species going, there's been a truce of sorts with humans where (happily this was stressed) willing human women can mate with elemental males to have half-breed children. But an actual female elemental is so rare and so coveted that literal wars have been fought over them in the past. Strengthening the bloodline, etc. etc., not to mention that marriage between humans and elementals is forbidden. 

So. Yes. Imagine an entire village of all dudes looking at this poor elemental girl like she's the only game in town -- because she is. 

She's still attending school and has five classmates (conveniently) all of the same age, one from each element: air, fire, water, earth, light. Oh, and btw, she can currently work ALL the elemental magics but will have to choose one at the coming of age ceremony. Yet another thing for this poor girl to stress about as she's also beset on all sides by all the village vendors that want her to pick their stuff for the ceremony. 

At any rate, I gather that the peace treaty with the humans is about to come to an end (or maybe it was supposed to be re-negotiated after the ceremony?) and the village recently captured a human (male, of course, and the same-ish age...also, of course...). He's the son of the human's village chief? So things are tense. 

This otome is fully voiced and it's actually kind of refreshing. It truly is *fully* voiced -- including shopkeepers and the father and random people. Often, if an otome is voiced, it will just be the main characters (and not always even the MC). The voice actors are decent as well. 

The interface is good -- easy to use and figure out. Whenever you hit a decision point and you get a "point" with one of the guys, you get a flower blooming. I do like that -- I like some kind of indication when you make a choice. 

There's also a sidebar on the save screen where it shows a symbol for each of the five elements (but not one for the human, which is interesting, since you can also apparently get "flowers" from interactions with him) and (I think) the symbol that is "most lit up" is where you're headed. Not entirely sure how it works -- I've been mostly picking answers for Lux (the light element dude; he seemed nice and is the "childhood friend" and I was NOT in the mood for the super shmexy flirty air elemental Rocco) and his symbol is well lit. But one chapter I did pick something that apparently led to a point with the fire element guy and his symbol was also briefly lit --- but a few chapters later, it's dark again. 

Anyway, I did find a spoiler-free review on Reddit that lays out the guys perfectly:

Love interests are: Sirocco (Wind elemental, your typical otome womanizer), Rowan (Earth Elemental, your typical himbo), Lux (Light Elemental, childhood friend trope), Ignatius (Fire Elemental, tsundere), and Caspian (Water elemental, your typical cold guy - which also happens to be voiced by Sungwon Cho, which is why I found it hard to not call him TV-senpai when I played his route). I'm glad to tell you they're all best bois.

I've played for roughly half an hour and I'm not sure how far along I am in the story (no idea how many "chapters" there are) or whether things radically change when you go after a different guy. I started with Lux as he seemed like the "easy" choice (followed by Rowan, who seems very similar). There haven't been a ton of decision points, honestly, and it already feels like I'm "set" in Lux's route. I think I'll definitely have to do at least two routes to see how the re-playability is. Maybe for the next go I'll try a completely different character type like Caspian or Ignatius. 

I would say that I'm enjoying the humour in the dialogue and that the choices you can make have enough variety in them to keep it interesting. I'm also excited that this is a native English game and not translated and comes from a small independent studio. We need more of that, please! 

Will write up more after I've finished a route...

Edit: Okay! I completed Lux's route! And discovered a few more things...

Firstly, the storyline was good and I can see that the choices you make must, by necessity, change how the story goes (i.e. peace talks vs. fighting), so right now it seems like it will have a fair bit of replay value. I don't think that there are necessarily "good endings" and "bad endings", though maybe there are. The marriage question, for instance, seems to be a "you do you" thing and you could still be together but not married if you wanted. 

Hello, I'm Lux, and
I'll be your Sun God
this evening...

Also, there's definitely some re-playability in that, even though I finished his route, I only unlocked about 2/3 of the CGs? So if you wanted to go back and collect the rest by trying different answers, you could. Some of the full body CGs are ultimate cheese-y. I mean, look at that. It's just ridiculous down to the well-positioned little cover up solar flare.

That said, Lux was a fun route if you like too-innocent, I'll love you forever best bois. Like, I'm sure even in the other routes he's probably all "I'll support you however you want!" because he's just too pure for any world. 

Oh -- and one thing I discovered is that there's a way to go back and re-try choices without having to go back to a previous save. You can just scroll through the dialogue and re-do a choice on the fly if you want. So I will try and make use of that in my next go through to see if I can maybe unlock all the CGs in one go rather than having to go back. 

After you finish a route (the game proper stops basically at the Coming of Age Ceremony where you choose your element -- which I had picked "light" earlier, but I kinda thought I'd get another choice at the end, but I didn't...so maybe next time I'll try the "I haven't decided yet" when asked as I'm curious what happens if you pick an element that isn't the same as the dude), you then get a brief epilogue as well as a bonus story. The bonus story is an actual story -- it had two CGs but was mostly text you read on screen. 

In Lux's case, it involved the two of you preparing for a baking contest sometime in the future vs. his dad & his dad's partner and this whole side thing about his grandfather's pact with a rather horny demon. The weird thing was that I swear there was a part in Lux's route where he reminds you of when you first met and it made it sound like his dad was dead? So very confused. It was interesting, but a bit weird. 

Overall, I think this game definitely seems worth it. I spent just a bit over 2 hours on this play through (the Steam tracking says 2 hours 30 minutes, but some of that was me leaving the game on while I was doing chores). I won't spend that entire time on a route again, I imagine, as I'll fast forward through text bits I've already done, but I still have to think there's a good hour in there per route, maybe more, especially if you go slow and try and unlock every CG and read every epilogue, etc. Or, if you take time in between plays and read through everything again.

The art did grow on me. The sprites are all great quality and even change expression in the text bar area. The iffier art are the actual moving background scenes, which are a bit fuzzy. But I was wondering if I should play it in a smaller window? As I'm playing it on little dude's PC, with the really good graphics card, maybe I've just got the window too big and that's making things a bit wonky? I dunno. I didn't re-size it, but maybe I should. Everything else is crisp, though. 

So, am I glad I bought it? Yes. The MC is a particularly good one -- resourceful, take charge, etc. etc. There's even a bit when the village elders are falling all over congratulating Lux on saving the both of them and then take MCs testimony and realise it's really more on her -- and actually apologise and offer a commendation to her as well. Given how much of a wilting flower most otome heroines are, this one is a good contrast. She even initiates any shenanigans (in Lux's route, anyway...otherwise nothing would have happened because he is too pure for that).

Will I play it again? Yes. I'll probably finish every boy's route, even the flirty one, though I may not unlock every CG. Will update this with brief summaries of feelings about each, but so far, Lux is a total cinnamon roll -- a massive mountain of a sun god who likes to bake, is loyal to a fault, and wouldn't hurt a fly even though he looks like he could Hulk Smash the Hound. 

Edit: Okay, so I went through Ignatius' route and I have to revise my opinion a bit on the replay-ability. While there were some differences (and somehow I wound up in a strange mini-game that I totally sucked at as I wasn't prepared where you have to dodge barrels), the story is largely almost exactly the same. Ignatius is a slightly tsun-tsun little muffin who likes to draw and is an awkward little cinnamon bun, but the feel is pretty similar to Mr. Sun God Lux. The only really noticeable difference was in their escape from the human village taking a bit of a different path, but everything else seemed much the same. 

So, I'd say that it's still a decent game, especially if you pick it up on sale. I wish they'd even just made it so you could pick different vendors for the cake, dress, and jewellery, just to get some extra choices/flavour in there though. But I think what I'll do is let it sit for some months before I try to play another route to give myself time to forget the nitty gritty details. Of course, I haven't tried going "evil" and all "kill the humans!" so maybe that would make things go drastically different. 

Pub Encounter: Yuze Ryunosuke

So...er...I finally found the time to install Pub Encounter on little dude's Windows PC and played through a route today. I had to go through the Prologue again which reminded me how, er, little the art charms me. I mean, seriously?? These characters are all my age and they've basically just given them a shed-load of wrinkles. Some more so than others. As I'd noticed before, this isn't an otome where you gradually fall into a route -- you have to actually select a character. So I kind of randomly picked the one that seemed like the "shy businessman" type partly because he was the only one that had a "Season 2" as far as I could tell and his wrinkles weren't as bad. So, meet Yuze Ryunosuke.

I got about 2/3 of the way through his route and realised that I had no idea how I was doing other than a mystery intimacy % score when you save (which I just did after every chapter). So I did look up a walkthrough just to see if there's even any way to tell how you're doing and apparently I was picking all the "good" answers for the best ending naturally, which was good. There were, eh, two in the last bit I probably would have picked a different answer for (so sue me, I don't like pink), but it was nice to see that I think I would have received the best ending no matter what. Though, to be fair, it looks like there are only "Good" and "Best" endings, so I guess you can't really get disappointed no matter what. I think the next one I'll try I won't do any of it with a walkthrough to see what happens.

But. Okay. Let's see...I'm not entirely sure how to write about this one. I mean, I liked it. I wouldn't say it wowed me. The storyline was okay -- basically, he was burned in the past by a stalker and now doesn't trust women but, you, of course, he soon finds himself falling for because you're different. Or, actually, just NOT an insane stalker. Because dude literally seems to attract these likes bees to honey. 

He's the owner of a lingerie company. He seems a, um, very unlikely candidate for this job, but okay. 

On the plus side, he's fairly sweet. Kinda stiff and shy -- except after you guys start seeing each other and then he gets a bit more...assertive. 

And, weirdly, you make the first move -- he's walking you home after you get a bit (a LOT) tipsy and...well...you basically practically assault him because he tastes like a Bellini. It's actually kind of horrifying and hilarious because THEY CHOSE THIS AS THE CG. And the poor guy looks completely scandalised and terrified. And this is at the very beginning of the route. 

I...just...did they think this was a sexy picture? 

Anyway, MC, being the patient, always altruistic gal she is, helps him sort out his (new and old) stalker problems as she dodges rocks and gets doused with cold water. She is the epitome of turning the other cheek. Sometimes literally. She also, apparently, works for free for him while also holding down her own job (that she hates) and he, er, pays her in lingerie? And shmexy times? Kind of? 

The best ending has him proposing in front of all the other regulars at the pub. I suppose it's fairly satisfying and his character was nice. I do wish that they'd made her a bit older. He's 41 (and actually, I think the youngest of the regulars at the pub? So this feeling will only get worse, I suspect) and she's gotta be in her twenties. It really would have felt better if she were in her 30's. The MC in general was decent -- not as wimpy as some, but not as ballsy as others either. I didn't want to smack her though (mostly), so that was good. 

The shmexy-times were fairly low key (mostly text-y "Oh my" and "Oh what are you doing?" kind of stuff) so not as cringe inducing as, say, Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome but not necessarily what you'd expect from something with the sub-title "Forbidden Romance." That's not the bits I read for anyway, honestly, so that was okay. 

Story-wise, it was really, really obvious who the (number 2) stalker was from the beginning. Actually, the whole route, once they set up the basics, was really obvious. I'm curious as to whether the others will be equally transparent or if this will hold any surprises. Definitely at least two of the others seem WAY more flirty, so we'll see where that takes the story.

Did I enjoy it? Yeah. I wouldn't say it gave a high level of satisfaction though -- I don't see re-playing this route in my future. I will do the second season and the date thing you unlock after completing the ending, but I don't think this is one that you'd replay again. 

Run On

Ok, I was bad. I know, I know, I said I'd try and stick to Chinese shows for a while...but I wasn't loving any of them. So, I started Run On. 

Ah, and darn it, I'm liking it so much. I know exactly why too. The male lead, Ki Seon-Gyeom (played by Im Si-Wan) is delightfully off-kilter. He doesn't say the things people expect him to say. He doesn't do the things people expect either. The social contract that we all operate under -- he doesn't really have a huge amount of use for it. And I love people like that. He also plays Seon-Gyeom with a very deadpan, blinking style, another thing I am a sucker for. I haven't seen him in anything before, but I'll have to look for him again.

And it's not just him. The female lead, Oh Mi-Joo (played by Shin Se-Kyung) is a little off herself. She's snarky and she talks to herself. She's plucky but also a bit of a mess. I like her. I also haven't seen her in anything, though she's in some shows that are on my list to watch. 

Anyway, as for the story...he's a national athlete (sprinter) who's dad is an Assemblyman (and, even though I've barely glimpsed him in the first two episodes, is apparently going to be a jerk...seriously, is every politician in every show always an asshole?) and his mother is a famous movie actress. He's kinda steeped in wealth and privilege, but it hasn't made him a snot. He's dealing with a situation with his running where two members of the team are ganging up on a junior member...and, when I say "ganging up" I mean assaulting him so badly he winds up in hospital. Seriously. These guys should be arrested for attempted murder. But, so far, it seems like Coach doesn't want to do anything about it because one of them is a star runner. From what I know of the show, I imagine this is the incident that prompts our hero's exit from the sport. 

Oh Mi-Joo is a translator (mostly movies) and dealing with some jerkiness from an old professor and an old boyfriend both. She winds up being hired as translator to our runner boy, though they'd already had a few fateful meetings already.  Strange ones. Which I love.

Throw in the secondary couple -- the young & beautiful head of the agency Seo Dan-A, played by Sooyoung (who runner boy has some history with of some kind?) and an aspiring artist. She's a bit of a psycho. He seems like a total sweetheart...which feels really bizarre because the character is played by Kang Tae-Oh who was the Oh-so-Evil-Yul-Moo in The Tale of Nokdu. 

I'm not sure about her yet, though she's a bit "off" herself...it might be that she's a total dick to her brother and I haven't seen any reason why yet. He's played by Choi Jae-Hyun, who was the younger gay brother in Sweet Munchies. And I already feel bad for him because of that.

I'm just two episodes in, but so far it's charming. I honestly don't even really care too much about the plot (though I already suspect I'm going to be annoyed at Assemblyman dad). I just want to see them all being slightly odd and falling in love.

Edit: Okay, so I'm up through episode 6 of 16. I'm still liking it -- at least, all of the NON Assemblyman Dad stuff. Gah, I really don't enjoy the evil self-absorbed power hungry parent trope. But the 4 leads are all quirky and odd and I really do like that. Not entirely sure about the pace as I don't actually feel like much has happened yet so even though I'm enjoying it overall, I'm also starting to feel a bit antsy about it. And, honestly, the end of episode hint that Asshole Dad is going to try and make Dan-A and Seon-Gyeom seems absolutely absurd. Seon-Gyeom has already proven repeatedly that he's past the point of doing what his dad wants and Seo Dan-A is not even remotely a pushover. So it kinda feels like...why bother? I can't think of anything that he could threaten either of them with to make them bow to his will. 

Edit: Actually finished this one some time ago and didn't get around to writing it up. Overall, it was good. The last episode was the weakest -- the main couple had an "okay" resolution (a few scenes showing them growing closer) but the whole thing with the dad was...solved by the mom divorcing him? And then all his political machinations just...fell apart? And he retired? And was giving mom flowers again? I mean, WTF. He spent the whole show trying to meddle and even started a (fake) reporting scandal about his own daughter sleeping with a married opponent...just...eh. 

Though that was somewhat better than how they wound up the second lead couple. They had, oh, about 3 heart wrenching "we have to split up because reasons" scenes and then...in the last episode, nothing's ever said or solved but there they all are having dinner together like nothing has happened. So, what was the point? And nothing really happened with her half-brothers?

So...on the plus side, I really liked the characters and the actors. And the plot was mostly okay, a bit bildungsroman at an older age, but, eh, okay. It just kinda fizzled with the story at the end. I wonder if there was a reason for that? Dunno. Would I watch it again someday? Probably not. Looking back, I don't feel like there were any moments I was like "AH!! Love this!" but I'm glad I watched it once.

Somewhere Only We Know

 In my continuing quest to find Chinese shows to watch, I tried out Somewhere Only We Know. 

It's from China and I gotta say that I am having more luck with it than the last couple of Taiwanese shows I've tried. The description says: "Ph.D. candidate in Physics Mu Cheng He catches a third-year student in English Xue Tong cheating on an exam. When he even becomes the substitute teacher in her elective course Russian and makes her study with him after classes, her hatred for him only grows. Over time, however, Xue Tong discovers Teacher Mu’s true character and comes to secretly love him." though that's incorrect in an important way -- she wasn't cheating, though he thought she was (it was her friends who were). He winds up helping to prove her innocence.

It also leaves out an important character note -- Xue Tong's father was a normal man who died a heroic death and she's been living her life "as the hero's daughter" when she'd rather just have a father. 

It's actually been a week or two since I watched the episodes (I'm 3 in) and I've watched some other things since then. I can't say that I loved the beginning of this one, though it was leaps and bounds better than the Taiwanese ones I'd tried right before it. 

It reminds me in many ways of Put Your Head on My Shoulder, but it's a bit...pale in comparison? It's bit more over-act-y than that one and I don't like the main leads nearly as well (either of them--they aren't as engaging or sympathetic, nor does this show have the same level of humour). That said, it isn't bad. I've read some reviews that said the first few episodes were the worst, so that might be it. I am willing to give it another episode or two to see if it will grab me either with story or character and not be something I watch just to listen to Chinese.

Way Back Into Love & Queen of No Marriage

Sigh. So. I tried two more non-Korean dramas and one I couldn't even finish the first episode of. Er, actually, just checked and I didn't finish the first episode of either of them. Which is why I'm just doing one post for both. 

First was Way Back Into Love. It's a Taiwanese show, actually, from 2011. Not to be confused with (apparently) a new 2020 Chinese Drama titled the same thing with an entirely different plot. 

It's the story of a woman who returns home after a long absence living in the US. Since she's been gone, her mother has died and now it's just her father running a run-down B&B along with some friends (?) that the mother had taken in that are closer to the daughter's age. The father and daughter argue a lot. He's getting older. She'd left all those years ago with a boyfriend, which immediately made me wonder if there were a kid somewhere in the picture...though I didn't get to the point in the show where said kid was introduced...but I see now from a summary I just found that, yes, indeed, there is a kid. There's also an old love interest (now a local doctor). 

I was just...underwhelmed with the acting, the pace, and the story. I felt like I could guess the entire plot from the 38 minutes of the episode that I saw. It also had a couple of dudes that were obviously there mostly for comic relief. I didn't like any of the characters enough to invest my time in watching it, much like the 2 Fathers show I tried before this one. Especially at 22 episodes running about 65 minutes each (or more). 

I mean, there wasn't anything horrible about it. I've definitely seen worse. But life is too short. This just didn't grab me. It might also have been partly a production quality thing -- it's older and it shows.

The second one, Queen of No Marriage, has actually been on my list a long time. But I only made it 22 minutes into that one. And, honestly, wanted to turn it off about 5 minutes in. It's also Taiwanese and circa 2009. It opens with a mother (who doesn't look old enough to have a 33 year old daughter, but hey) at a temple trying to work up some good karma for her daughter to get married...by having the priest whip her with a stick. Yeah. It's played for laughs but...yeah. Then we get a glimpse of the daughter, who is a reporter after a scandalous story. We also meet who will obviously be the potential love interest -- a handsome younger guy doing whatever part time jobs he can find and his sidekick (who wishes he were as handsome). 

Again, totally underwhelmed by the acting. And the comedic stuff that I just...didn't find all that funny. It's cheap jokes, people. I'd liked the idea of a noona romance (which was why it was on my list to begin with) but since she seemed to have the mentality of a 14 year old...er...just a big NOPE from me. While the main characters acting was okay (not amazing, but okay), the minor characters were...very, very stiff. I've seen high school plays with better acting. And more clever jokes.

So both of these are moving immediately to the Ditch List.