Welcome back to Celebrating All Things Romantic 2023. Today we’ll be discussing Taisho x Alice, an otome visual novel available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.
It is split into 4 episodes, each with its own love interests, but that doesn’t mean you can play the episodes in any order you want.
No, the Taisho x Alice episode order is there for a reason. While you might get away with skipping episode 1, playing through the episodes in order is important to the overarching story.
The story begins when you find yourself in darkness. While trying to find your way out, you meet a young man named Alice who calls you Arisu. The two of you find a strange mirror, and you fall through into the Looking-Glass World where your prince awaits.
If you haven’t already guessed, it has a fairytale theme. The love interests, though all men, are named after classic fairytale heroines like Cinderella, Snow White, etc., and this plays into their stories as well. That’s about all the detail I can go into about the plot, because this is the sort of story that’s difficult to discuss without spoilers.
Episode 1 was pretty lighthearted, with a lot of humor and wacky dialogue (and while some people criticize the jokey and meme-y dialogue that shows up at times, apparently that’s true of the Japanese script as well, so the translation kept the same tone). Episode 2 got much more serious and significantly darker, and then Episode 3 and the Epilogue left me marveling over the story.
Click for Taisho x Alice spoilers
I was pleasantly surprised that everyone got a happy ending, too, although I still feel sad for the Wizard.
It’s an unusual one where I find myself not feeling too strongly about several of the love interests (Red Riding Hood and the Wizard are my favorites, although I enjoyed every route), but the story as a whole is enough to overcome that and make it a favorite.
I also absolutely love the opening theme song, to the point where I let the intro play every time I started up the game.
I haven’t played the fandisc yet, but that’s something I’ll want to check out someday.
Taisho x Alice is the sort of story you want to experience for yourself, as long as you won’t be put off by the sometimes-quite-dark subject matter. Even if you aren’t a big fan of otome games, I’d still recommend this one for the story itself.
In fact, since I enjoyed Taisho x Alice so much, I’ve added its episodes to the list of prizes you can win in this year’s contest! Meanwhile, Idea Factory has announced an otome live stream for tomorrow, so here’s hoping we have some exciting news to discuss soon!
As I predicted, we’re talking a break from our romance celebration today because the Nintendo Direct on Wednesday was too exciting not to cover!
I won’t go over every game that was shown, but you can watch the entire Nintendo Direct here.
I went into the Nintendo Direct hoping for at least one of three things: the rumored Ghost Trick remaster, the rumored Baten Kaitos remaster, or Ace Attorney news.
Well, there hasn’t been Ace Attorney news yet, but otherwise the Nintendo Direct delivered more than I ever expected.
The first thing to catch my attention was the announcement of a February 15 release date for the third piece of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 DLC, along with a teaser for the story expansion that I tried not to pay too much attention to since I haven’t finished the game yet.
Then it happened: Ghost Trick.
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is back! Capcom later released a full trailer confirming that Ghost Trick will be remastered for Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC (Steam) this summer. While largely the same as the original, this remaster includes a few bonuses (like sliding block puzzles for some reason).
If you’re unfamiliar with Ghost Trick, it’s a puzzle game from Shu Takumi, the creator of Ace Attorney. You play a ghost able to manipulate objects in the environment as well as rewind time to shortly before a person’s death, which you do while in search of answers about your own death.
It’s an incredible game and one of my favorites. Now that it’s coming to modern platforms, you definitely should play it.
(I was hoping to order a physical copy, but after mistakenly saying it would be available physically, Capcom corrected themselves and said it will be digital-only. Although I’m disappointed about that, I’m still getting it, of course.)
That was it, the Nintendo Direct was already won for me. I was so excited over Ghost Trick, I nearly missed the game shown directly after it, DecaPolice.
DecaPolice is an upcoming detective game, and it appears to be a combination of an investigation game and an RPG. Once I calmed down enough from the Ghost Trick news to pay attention, I realized it actually looks pretty cool.
What really surprised me was seeing the develop of DecaPolice. I actually missed it in the trailer (Ghost Trick hype), but then I saw people talking about it being a Level-5 game.
I’d more or less given up on Level-5 after their new content over the past few years consisted of unlocalized Yo-Kai Watch games, an unlocalized Megaton Musashi game, a couple mobile games, and an ever-lengthening list of delays for Inazuma Eleven. Things didn’t look good, especially with the reports that their North American offices had shut down.
So to see a new Level-5 game in the Nintendo Direct? That was quite a welcome surprise!
A few other interesting-looking games followed, including a narrative adventure game called Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, which I didn’t realize was from Don’t Nod until I wrote this post (and when did they change their name from Dontnod?), Octopath Traveler II and Sea of Stars, both of which look appealing to me as a classic turn-based JRPG fan, and a full-scale remaster of the first Metroid Prime game, which has me trying to decide if it’s worth playing over the Wii U version I already have.
The Direct included another trailer for Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, as well, which I’ve had preordered for a while now.
And then the trailer was shown for the Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster. That’s right, it’s real and it’s a collection of both Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean and Baten Kaitos Origins! I had a great time with the first Baten Kaitos, although I haven’t played Origins yet. I’m so happy to see these often-overlooked JRPGs return!
Sadly, the Baten Kaitos remasters have been confirmed to have Japanese voice acting only. While this might be a good thing for the first game and its rather terrible English dub, I’ve been told the English voice acting in Origins was much better. Still, I’ll take no dub if it means a Baten Kaitos revival!
And then they immediately followed that with the headline “A New Fantasy Life Awaits,” and I spent half a second thinking, “No, they can’t possibly mean that Fantasy Life” before the trailer made it abundantly clear that yes, it’s that Fantasy Life!
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is a sequel to the 2012 (2014 worldwide) JRPG life sim from Level-5. While it technically received a sequel before, Fantasy Life 2 was a short-lived mobile game that was shut down after a couple of years. Now this new game looks to be a full sequel worthy of the name and incorporates time travel into the gameplay.
Fantasy Life was a lot of fun, so I’m happy to see it get a true sequel at last (and disappointed at the number of online reactions I’ve seen where people see the title and dismiss it as just another farming game; you don’t even farm in Fantasy Life!) and hope it lives up to the original.
And then they followed that up a short teaser trailer that made me freak out the second I saw a top hat wearing silhouette… Professor Layton is BACK!
Professor Layton and the New World of Steam is a new entry in the series, and you know, despite my mixed feelings about the last game in the series, my excitement at seeing a new Professor Layton game announced was on the same level as if it was Ace Attorney.
(Maybe even more, since I’m not among the doomsayers who believe Ace Attorney is dead, but I did believe the Professor Layton series was probably dead outside of my faint hopes for a Layton Brothers remaster/sequel because of the manga.)
So yes, I’m thrilled beyond belief that Professor Layton is back… but since the announcement, my excitement has been tempered with caution.
A lot of fans seem to think that because this game stars Professor Layton himself (and Luke, as revealed by the official website), it will be a return to form. But I’m not so sure. Layton Mystery Journey’s problem was not the protagonist. Katrielle would have been fine if she had a better game around her. The low-stakes writing, lack of story, and weak puzzle direction were the game’s actual problems and won’t necessarily be fixed just because Hershel is back in the protagonist’s role.
But you know what? I want to believe. I want to believe they saw the mixed reception and sat down to write a solid Professor Layton story again. I want to believe they brought in a good puzzle designer to make this game’s lineup of brainteasers. I love this series so much that I want to believe in it again, with as much excitement as I felt when Layton’s Mystery Journey itself was first teased.
The Nintendo Direct continued after that and closed with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but I don’t care about that nearly as much as the other games here.
Ghost Trick and Baten Kaitos remasters, Fantasy Life and Professor Layton sequels… I can hardly believe all of these things happened in the same Nintendo Direct. (Also, is it just me, or did this Nintendo Direct have an unusually large number of mystery/investigation games?) It was an incredible Direct, and 2023 is shaping up to be an amazing year of games.
What did you think of the games shown in the Nintendo Direct?
Today we’re going to talk about an unusual indie game I picked up in a bundle, Doodle Date.
Doodle Date has a unique central gimmick: you draw the character you’re dating.
After being pulled into the world of your sketchbook, you are asked to draw your ideal date. You draw several different expressions/poses for this character, who is then named Sketchy and goes on a date with you. At certain points in the game, you have to draw other things, as well, like your waiter at a restaurant.
The drawing gimmick is entertaining, and I liked seeing how it was implemented at various points. My terrible artwork just made it funnier.
On the other hand, I’m not sure I’d actually call this a romance. It’s a short game, taking about 30 minutes for one playthrough, and the romantic development generally consists of being told you’re going on dates with Sketchy and growing closer. Instead of developing a romance, it spends more time playing into the darker implications of entering a world of sketches and creating someone to fall in love with you.
Click for Doodle Date spoilers
In the Sketchy route, you become upset that Sketchy won’t have sex with you and learn that Sketchy is distressed over every aspect of their existence being created for your benefit. You get a divorce.
It’s also possible to instead end up with Claire, the pre-existing sketch who tells you how the sketch world works. In that route, you get her pregnant, and the implications of a human-sketch hybrid baby are apparently so horrifying that she tries to kill you, so you kill her. Then the baby shows up years later and kills you in revenge.
Doodle Date is a romance game in the same way Doki Doki Literature Club could be seen as one, except that game devotes a greater amount of time to developing the character relationships first.
That’s a shame, because drawing your own love interest for a visual novel is a fun idea that I would have liked to see played out in earnest instead of from this meta perspective. It’s still interesting, but not what I was expecting.
Update: By popular demand, I’ve uploaded my drawn Sketchy.
So far this February I’ve reviewed a Nekopara game that focuses more on personal growth, and now a meta horror take on visual novels. At least Wintertide Miracles was a good romance story! Friday’s post has a good chance of being supplanted by Nintendo Direct news (fingers crossed), so let’s hope I manage to find another genuine romance for our review on Monday!
Welcome back to Celebrating All Things Romantic 2023. Today we’ll be discussing Taisho x Alice, an otome visual novel available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.
