Variable Barricade - Nintendo Switch

I'm still fairly new to the otome world, but I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of writing in this romcom game. The MC is intelligent, bold, and not another submissive led through the story like far too many of these protagonists found in this genre. When I started playing, I didn't like any of the LIs, their flaws were very glaring, but as the game goes on, the MC gets to know each of them individually a little before you get to the point of choosing a route. Some of the best bits of the game is how familial all the characters become with one another. The game mixes funny scenes well while not going overboard and ruining the atmosphere of the serious points where the drama unfolds. Wonderful character growth archs for both the LI and the MC. Quite an enjoyable experience! (And my biased opinion with no spoilers, Ichya! Wow! 2nd board reveals left me enamored with him! Ha ha! Thank you game for giving me so many feels! :D)

This is probably my newest favorite otome, haven’t played Cupid parasite yet, but I hear good things about it as well. This one had me laughing for beginning to end. The protagonist is very solid, she has strengths and weaknesses as a teenager which are very believable. I like that we are starting to get more of these types of protagonists instead of ones that are blanks. The love interests seem typical in the beginning but they do really get fleshed out well in each of their stories. It does introduce a new gameplay system I never have seen before in an otome, but it wasn’t anything that detracted from the experience for me. Just a neat quirk. The barricade battles were pretty amusing actually. The only thing I think I disliked was the the scenario involved with the true end. I’ve seen this in otomes before and it’s just not my cup of tea, It was handled better in this game than I’ve ever seen before, which I think helped saved the true end for me. The protagonist being one that doesn’t take any crap and telling it how it is was just so refreshing. Thanks aksys for bringing another gem over to the US

I love so many darker otomes (Collar x Malice, Nightshade, Taisho x Alice, Steam Prison, etc) that I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy this. This game is excellent. I'm constantly bursting out laughing and then showing and trying to explain it to my very confused husband. He has mentioned he prefers me laughing to the sobbing I did during Nightshade. But I digress. I described this to my husband as a romantic comedy of errors and I stick to that the more I play. I haven't played Cupid Parasite, though I absolutely intend to ASAP, but I've seen a lot of comparisons on reddit. From the screenshots of CP, I am absolutely sure it's going to be my next after this. For the serious part. The storylines and characters are deeper than I expected. Even the characters I couldn't stand initially became far more real and sympathetic the longer I played. I pre-ordered this, and Amazon again delivered my package to the neighbor, likely so they didn't have to walk up my driveway. But I'm not knocking off anything because this game deserves every single star. I love it.

Really enjoyed this one because the setting was more grounded. Also can't resist playing a game with VA's who also voice Genshin characters (Albedo and Kaiya). Some other players may find routes to be triggering (Ichiya/Taiga), but I personally was able to detach myself enough to enjoy all the routes. I think it helps that the main character Hibari has a very strong and dominant personality. I love that Hibari is voiced by an incredible voice actress, and it's easy to relate to her no-nonsense personality with a side of vulnerability.

Fav Guy: Shion Fav Story: Nayuta This is actually my first full otome game! I loved the mechanics of this game especially the board & each story was a lot of fun to play. Although I will say the heroine was really frustrating in the main love interest Ichiya's story. But I didn't mind her so much in the rest of them. I also thought it was good feature to play a mini story with each guy before selecting which route you want to take first. The only reason why it's not getting a full five stars is just some of the writing was pretty cringy & the main/common story took so long to get through before we could actually start. But overall I loved all the guys & the romances between them & the heroine.

Great game! Lots of funny bits, solid voice acting (Japanese), and a charming cast. It also has the best art I've ever seen in an otome game. I especially liked Hibari Tojo's intelligent, no-nonsense character. She has a voiced option, which is a huge plus for me. Variable Barricade is a good intro to the otome genre. I highly recommend it!

Full disclosure: I have finished exactly one route of this game but I also felt it was all I really needed to play. This review contains spoilers for that route. The art direction is really great, the character art is dreamy and the guys are cute. I don't like legal adults being romantically involved with literal teenagers (IRL or in fiction) but given it's a game about arranged marriage and the MC is going to wait until she's graduated college to get married I can KIND OF give it a pass. That said this is one of those times where the romance and the character chemistry were imperative for this kind of thing to work, and unfortunately it just wasn't there. The one character I felt she had some connection with was the sort-of antagonist of the one route I played. Or maybe that's my personal bias blinding me, idk. The guy seemed designed and written to appeal to me specifically. He's exactly the type of fictional man I like. The set-up for the game is that Grandpa wants MC to pick a guy and marry him (someday) because of pressure from the rest of their obscenely rich family. MC is the heiress to this family and her parents were not part of an arranged marriage but instead eloped. You're fooled into thinking Grandpa wants to avoid that nonsense again and arrange a marriage, but really he wants her to choose her husband herself. It's just that because of inter-family pressure he can't let her know this, so she goes into this thinking she has no choice (except for four guys who all have criminal records, oh god I just dissociated from remembering that) and so is very prickly to the lot of them. Totes understandable. Every bachelor is his own flavor of annoying. I absolutely hated all of them. I kept wishing the MC would get together with her butler, or the sort-of-kind-of-not-really antagonist of the blue-haired guy's (pardon; I do not remember his name) route (who says and does some really reprehensible stuff but gets let off the hook for it by the end, natch). Every time I thought the game was going to pleasantly surprise me it instead played this or that cliche absolutely straight. I really liked it when the MC bullied the blue-haired guy but unfortunately she stops doing this near the end and instead becomes an enabler of his man-baby antics. He threatens to kill himself if she doesn't marry him. It all gets laughed off and they look back on it in the epilogue like it's some cute little quirky bump in the road. I WISH I was making that up. Characters being unlikable is usually not a barrier for me enjoying something. As long as they're interesting I don't give a crap. Some of my favorite characters are utterly despicable people. My mistake is expecting the narrative to address it in a meaningful way. This game acknowledges that its characters have problems but nothing really comes of it. Blue-haired guy starts off as some smooth-talking ikemen but you gradually find out he's really a man-baby with an inferiority complex that would make Asuka Langley Soryu blush. The ikemen you meet is merely a persona he's concocted in his quest to show up his (much cooler) twin brother. His entire route is an identity crisis with a "be yourself" message, unfortunately the real blue-haired guy is a whiny little binch with no redeeming qualities. He is mentally and emotionally stunted. Admittedly this might have been the best way to go with an age gap romance (he is about ten years older than the MC) but on the other hand I got really bad "wife is doomed to raise her incompetent husband" vibes from it. I don't even usually mind this kind of thing because I like cool woman/uncool man pairings but it fell kind of flat for me here. If he was just a tiny bit more mature it would have been right up my alley, yet he is literally stuck in the mental and emotional mode of a child. At 26. This man don't need a wife he needs a therapist. Admittedly, the MC bullying him kind of Did Something for me but I am one of those women who are completely turned off by incompetent man-children. This is a big no for me. To add insult to injury his identical and much more mature twin brother plays an integral part in his route. You find out the twin brother was the original pick for the MC's arranged marriage and blue-haired guy is only here to steal MC away from his much cooler brother. No I'm not kidding; literally he made an agreement with Grandpa to steal this girl away from the twin brother, because Grandpa doesn't like twin brother and because it would serve the same purposes as MC marrying the twin brother. The cool twin is the heir to some rich family but since his brother is, ya know, his brother, this would mean MC's family could still be tied to them through marriage. Grandpa doesn't like the cool twin brother (shame on him) so sends blue-haired guy in to sabotage the rest of MC's family's plans. I kind of liked this subplot but blue-haired guy was insufferable. Oh and he threatened to suicide so the MC will marry him. Never forget that. I wanted to bully him, too. He was a pain in the butt. You can choose to marry the twin brother but it's a bad ending. FML. So I mentioned the bachelors all have criminal records. I have no clue about the rest of them but blue-haired guy was specifically sued for marriage fraud. As soon as you find out he has a twin brother you can see where this is going: there were some twin-switching shenanigans. You find out blue-haired guy married a woman to get her to leave his twin brother alone (and to stick it to him, partially, because of that inferiority complex) and this is what made any remaining goodwill I might have had for this guy tank. To the game's credit it does portray this as morally wrong but it's just done in the service of showing how effed up the guy's family life is and to show that the twin brother is not a great person. Well fine - but blue-haired guy isn't, either! lmao. And later in the route the twin brother suggests some freaky twincest stuff with the MC, too. "I don't care if you have an affair with him, we're identical so any kids you have can be written off as mine" girl what in the crummy soap opera is this. There are no hard feelings between these characters btw. Everything turns out peachy by the end. Huh??? Ultimately, however... I did enjoy myself while I was playing this game. It's not great but it is entertaining. The stupid soap opera stuff in blue-haired guy's route frequently had me howling with laughter. That I can remember nearly all of this almost a year after playing it should tell you just how memorable it was. All that said I wouldn't say this was good by any stretch of the imagination - but if you're looking for silly entertainment it's worth picking up imo. Discounted. Heavily discounted.

Variable Barricade is one of the funniest otome games I've played! Each character has an issue with them romantically (similar to Cupid Parasite) but it's still super enjoyable--the game is a just nonstop romantic comedy! It feels well made too; the artstyle and menu design is eye-catching. Very happy with my purchase! 😍