Bad/machine translation has usually turned me off before.
Mobile monetization. Tried a mobile otome once because I know I am more likely to pick up and play a game on my phone out of sheer convenience. Gave up rather quickly.
I’m all for otome games with more gameplay than your typical visual novel, but if the gameplay is unskippable and annoys me… I think I saw a promising otome… with card game mechanics, which drives me nuts. Jack Jeanne will not be happening because rhythm games usually drive me crazy. It is sad because a lot of more modern otome games with other gameplay that I’m aware of just so happen to fall into the few kinds of gameplay I’m very uninterested in, instead of the many genres I do enjoy.
If there’s stuff like MC being dismissed/ignored by an LI because she’s a woman (this happens in Tengoku Struggle), I’ll be skipping. I can handle some “low-grade” sexism but active hostility, especially from an LI, isn’t something I want to see in a game I play for fun. Same for games that hit too close to other depressing hot-button real-world issues today. The exact line can vary, but that’s a good general rule.
- bad translation as well
- non-existent MC (aka yumejoshi games)
- LIs who constantly belittle/disrespect the MC or call her pet names (e.g. “kitten”)
- tropey writing (especially that trope where the MC has to constantly get saved from random bad guys or a creep by a LI)
That bottom trope is both annoying but I can deal with it. The third bullet is mostly the same aside from pet names, I think because MC is not myself so my own reaction to being very selective about what names feel weird and which don’t is gone, I can still genuinely believe he likes her.
Non-existent MC? Do you mean a blank slate self-insert one? I’ve seen the term yumejoshi before but I have not seen it used for blank slate self-inserts.
i used that as a short hand for games meant for self-insertion, that have a very thin MC characterization as a result. Yumejoshi is generally a term for fans who like to self/oc-ship instead of having a defined MC, so blank slate-self inserts fall into that area.
I think the only game where that kind of worked for me was mystic messenger 🤔 But thats because you have a lot of opportunities to voice your opinion there, so it felt more natural to identify myself with the MC.
Our Life is a great self-insertion game.
I thought “yumejoshi” applied to any fan who liked to self/OC-ship. So if there was a game with a defined MC, a fan who liked to imagine themselves instead of MC with one of the LIs would be a yumejoshi. Please let me know if I’m wrong! I don’t have an understanding of Japanese fandom the way a lot of otome lovers do (wonder if they gained it through being bilingual?) and I’d like to learn.
I’m not really an expert for otome terminology myself, thats just based on my own interpretation of the term ^^;
I may or may not have poked my head into English-speaking yumejoshi communities and I think they use the one I said. Sorry if I came off like I was demanding something, was just curious!
