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.