MY DRUNK OTOME GAME — THE NIFLHEIM+ FREEMIUM RAGE SIDEBAR

It’s been a while! Your girl Strawbarely is ready to launch back into some Let’s Plays.

Before that, though, I wanted to do a quick sidebar discussing Niflheim+’s actual gameplay. I’ve been playing this game for a while now, and I have a lot of thoughts about how it’s all laid out.

Niflheim+ is essentially a “freemium” game in that it’s free on its face, but navigating it without investing cash can be time consuming at best and infuriating at worst. I actually find this game setup less fun and significantly more annoying than simply being asked to pay $3.99 for a route. Allow me to educate you about why this system sucks so very much. (Side note: essentially all of Shall We Date?’s freemium games have an identical setup with slightly differing names for things, so this also applies to Blood In Roses+, Wizardess Heart+, Oz+ and more.)

To read your story, you’ll require STORY TICKETS. Each chapter requires about 12 STORY TICKETS. These replenish every 4 hours, which means you theoretically earn 6 per day. The problem is that they top out; the maximum amount of STORY TICKETS you can have at any time is 5. This means waiting for multiple days and allowing them to accumulate isn’t an option, you have to play a chapter fraction at a time and wait.

Additionally, your route is sprinkled with LOVE CHALLENGES. These require you to either purchase avatar items or reach a particular stat number. The LOVE CHALLENGES are where the game really prods you to spend money. You’re often given the choice of a premium route including a CG, or a shorter more basic route without one. Naturally, the premium routes can only be purchased with real money. The worst thing is when the avatar items you’re forced to purchase aren’t even unique, as was the case in a recent event story. Every route had the exact same avatar item requirements, just in different colors. You essentially had to buy the same dress 5 times. How much will all this run you? Well, a premium CG route will cost $4+ if you choose it, and you’ll often have 3 premium options in a single route.

Yeah, that means one CG scene costs as much as a full route with five CGs in paid games. Just wait, there’s more.

Your character is presented by a cute little avatar, along with an avatar of the guy whose route you’re currently using. Both of them can be accessorized and put into new environments through items you either win or purchase. Above is my avatar as of right now. I don’t mind this, in fact it’s quite cute.

Throughout the game you are given two stats: PRINCESS POINTS and CHARM LEVEL. The former is raised as a result of BRIDE IN TRAINING, which I’ll delve into below. It can also be augmented with items purchased with real money, of course. The latter is directly linked to your avatar items; how many and how expensive/rare.

The in-game currencies are GOLD and COINS. GOLD is earned from free play, but COINS can only be obtained through the N-Points system (which asks you to make purchases, sign up for crap or download apps to earn points) or purchased with real money. It’s worth noting the COINS are obscenely expensive. For example: a single STORY TICKET costs 100 coins. 100 coins cost $.99, which means that if you wanted to purchase the whole route in advance instead of waiting, it would cost 12 dollars per chapter. There are 10-16 chapters for every route. Yeah, I know: holy shit.

BALLS are sort of lottery style drawings where you can receive anything from gold to avatar items. The low level ball is free once a day, but the balls with better prizes must be paid for with BALL POINTS, which you earn from…

BRIDE IN TRAINING. This essentially pits you against other players and compares your stats (CHARM LEVEL and PRINCESS POINTS.) Each win gives you a little reward, and 5 in a row gives you a bigger one. There’s no great strategy here, calling it a “game” is really overselling it. I joke with Marvelle that it should be renamed “Hunt for Basic Bitches,” since the easiest method is just to pick people with less fancy avatars than yours. You can only play a limited number of times before your power runs out, and then you’re back to waiting for it to replenish. Of course, you could always buy POISON to replenish your power.

You can add people as friends and get small amounts of GOLD for interacting with them, but this isn’t a viable way to accrue in-game wealth because you’re literally being rewarded 10 GOLD at a time.

You can also win some items and GOLD by completing MISSIONS, like logging in 20 times or adding a certain number of friends. These are helpful at first, but quickly show diminishing returns.

If your eyes didn’t cross just reading about all that crap, congratulations. You’re more patient than I am. Outside of reading the routes, everything I’ve just written about feels like nothing more than an elaborate set of hoops to jump through. There are times it’s only mildly annoying, but sometimes it’s downright insulting.

Here’s a personal story to illustrate:

Since I had extra story tickets and had finished my current route, I decided to give one of the spin-offs a shot. Specifically, I went through J.J.’s Wonderland route. These stories are short and, frankly, not very good. They’re fine to kill time with, but I wouldn’t put any resources into it… which is why I was so angry when it continuously asked me to purchase avatar items to continue. GOLD is accrued pretty slowly, and it can take many days just to get 5,000.

The game started off mild, asking for a 2,000 GOLD purchase here and there. It quickly escalated. At one point the game required me to purchase a 12,000 GOLD item to continue reading. I did, because I happened to have it, but it brought me down to essentially no GOLD left.

3 story tickets later. Three. As in a quarter of a chapter… this fucking game told me I’d have to buy a 15,000 GOLD item to finish the story.

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

 

Here’s the thing… Niflheim+ is one of the most enjoyable otome games I’ve ever come across. It’s definitely the best Shall We Date offering. The art is awesome, the sense of humor is great, and the available routes are varied and interesting. The characters are genuinely lovable and the MC is about as perfect as you could ever wish for: smart, independent, strong and full of personality. Even its most lame, cheese-filled moments are endearing because it’s self-aware without being a parody.

This game could have been SO. GOOD.

The freemium model is the bane of Niflheim+. I wish they at least gave the option to opt out of this joke of a system and purchase a whole route if you want to. Hell, charge me $8 instead of $4. I’d pay it.

Even with all this, fans clamor and beg for all otome games to be “free.” We’re like the kids in the marshmallow experiment, totally willing to cast aside common sense if it means we can get a tasty marshmallow for free. Except this time the waiting time is money, or something. I don’t know where I was going with this.

In short: freemium otome games are complete bullshit. Fuck them and everything they represent.

 

[ed. note — this was put under Marvelle’s notes for lack of general posting category]