Shall We Date? Pirates — Heine Review

So, after all my praise for SWD over Voltage they end up releasing the most half-assed game I’ve seen in awhile.

• No music – Like seriously? Yes, I end up getting annoyed by the music in these games so I turn it down usually, but for it not to be there at all? Especially for people who like it?
• 12 chapters – Most of the games I play have at least 16 chapters to read.
• Lazy prologue — You don’t meet any of the guys outside Leon, Nagisa, and Abel. Instead, Nagisa gives you the deets on all the men and it’s done over a black screen. Really? You couldn’t throw in a background just to make it look less plain?
• Nagisa — Okay, this is actually a positive. As he’s going through the men, he talks about “eating him up” “I want to top him” “That look he gives you turns me on” and I’m like “!!! Gay character in a cell phone otome game from Japan!?” and then he concludes with “Or you could choose me” and I’m like “!!! Bisexual character in a cell phone otome game from Japan!?” So that was pretty cool.

I love pirates. I just read a pirate themed route in Arabian Nights and I could read some more. It’s not like you an go wrong with a pirate theme. You have action, adventure, danger, with a bad boy with a heart of gold heading it all (usually). So a game full of them isn’t so bad.

To make up for the lack of presentation, almost all of the routes are translated and available. Of course, it could also be that the routes are so short they’re able to churn them out easily.

I guess I’ll find out.

Who to pick, who to pick? Well, in the introductions there was a pirate who commands a ghost ship. Paranormal mixed in with my pirate theme? I AM THERE.

His character archetype screen mentions… he’s a yandere.

Oh.

Oooooooooooooooooooooh.

Uhhh…. well, it can’t be that bad. I don’t think it’ll be a true yandere. I mean, these games are pretty mild. In case people don’t know what a yandere is, I’ll quote TVTropes and spare you the rabbit hole.

The word “yandere”, a term that blossomed in moe fandom, refers to a character who is crazy about someone else…often literally and violently.

The word violently is key here. Yandere characters are extremely jealous and if others are caught flirting or talking to the object of their affection, they’re murdered. Even the object of their affection isn’t safe in some stories, sometimes they’ll kill them so no one can have them. Granted, I’ve usually seen this in females. I think some of the more… unique otome games that are Japan-only at this moment have true yandere in them.

Err, anyway, that, in what seems to be a normal otome game?

So, you’re a princess of a small farming community. I know what I said makes no sense. But yes, princess, small tiny farming country, and your family’s claim to fame is guarding ancient ruins.

It’s always a princess. Not the lowly cleaning girl gets a harem of beautiful men. Gotta be born into it. I’m just a working-class girl, throw me a bone sometime~ But she’s a poor princess so she knows how to clean up after herself. That’s how she phrased it in the second chapter. hahaha none of this game makes sense

Anyway, Abel and Leon are there to take you away to King Lorenzo who presumably wants into the ruins to get a super powerful ancient weapon. But you’re the only one who knows how to activate it, so he’s forcing you to marry him.  I don’t understand why he isn’t forcing it in general sense. Marriage seems like it’d be an extra step that’s unneeded. It’s not like her farming kingdom is going to be able to fight him, and it’s not like her marrying him is going to guarantee cooperation. Plot, I guess. It needs to be so for plot.

Since I picked Heine, he appears in her dreams and asks if she needs help, to which she does. The ship he commands is known as a ghost ship, but it’s really a ship with advanced technology, or in the case of the story, the ancient technology. This is one of those settings where the distant sci-fi-like future is actually the past. I love this~! (See also: Norn9)

So knowing this, the little hints it gives about the true nature of Heine makes it pretty easy to guess. Trouble showing emotions. Lives on super tech ship/submarine his entire life. Doesn’t eat real food, only soylent green type stuff. Doesn’t understand feelings, or rather, can’t understand why his chest hurts when he thinks of MC. That sort of thing.

That doesn’t make it any less gruesome when it is revealed.

My cells were artificially cultivated, and through them my body was duplicated. Manufactured, again and again. However, the HIGHEST series has a poor cloning success rate. They stop growing mid-way or fail to function even when grown, among other issues. So the cells were cultivated, again and again, making precious few successful bodies. I am one of them. When Heine dies, his replacement is manufactured in this laboratory. Hundreds of replacements. Once created, the bodies that have properly grown can awaken as Heine. By the way, my backup parts are in this vat. [ed. note — they stumbled onto a bunch of glass tube-like containers containing hundreds of Heine clones] It would be a terrible shame to die from a bit of damage, considering how rare successfully grown bodies are. So whenever I’m deeply wounded I take parts from one of the bodies in this vat. All I need to do is get a new replacement for wherever I’m broken. Handy, isn’t it?

But this is all confusing, if he’s a clone, he’s organic, and he states as such, but then he talks about being programmed and that would make him more like an android then a human. But he’s also said that he’s more advanced than the robots he commands. Even at the end I’m still not sure if he’s supposed to be an android or a human clone.

The romance bits are nice, the few there are. The situations they’re forced into are as contrived as they come (Haunted House at carnival, picnic outside) but Heine’s unusual reactions are cute.

I admit I could only get the normal and bad endings on my own. I have noooo clue what sort of responses get you the good ending.

Favorite? Perhaps? Notable Moments?

Errr, he’s supposed to be pinching her cheeks in this scene, for one, but it looks like he’s cupping her chin.
And uhh.. what is going on with his hand!? D: DUDE IT’S BROKEN TO THE DOCTOR

 

I do love the blushing sprites. His little shy smile is the best.

This scene cracked me up. Basically, he was expressionless and she teaches him how to smile. And this is what his smile looks like!

What does the mask do? IDK, he just puts it on and takes it off whenever. His heterochrome eyes are never explained either. Just aesthetics, I guess. This is also the closest we get to a true yandere face in this route.

 

Now that this review of the plot is over, I can talk about more of the bad that I didn’t get to comment on above.

• Boring and poorly drawn backgrounds.

Look

at

this

s–t

It’s so lazy! It’s like they didn’t put any effort into it. I didn’t even get all of them. Where they had their picnic included some laughable blobs that I think were supposed to be livestock? LOL The first image is supposed to be uhh a merry go round, I guess? It was when they went to the carnival. The haunted house was just a plain black background. The bar, did they just copy and paste the same two bottles over and over again? What?! I don’t even know what the blue thing on the side of the screen is in the last one.

• The characters only seem to have about 2-3 variants of the main sprite, which is disappointing, considering a lot of other SWD games’ sprites show a multitude of emotions.
• There aren’t any indicators of what ending you’re going to get. So when you play through you have no clue if you’re getting good, bad, normal ending. Which some may not see as a bad thing, but if you’re actively trying to get a certain ending it makes it really hard to do. The only clue you get is at chapter nine, after you complete it, you’ll see a “____ Ending” attached to the mail.
• HE IS NOT A YANDERE
• NOT EVEN CLOSE
• HE DIDN’T EVEN GET JEALOUS
• He was more of a kuudere, in my opinion. I guess it’s not as eye-catching in adverts as a yandere, but he’s not a yandere. (Kuudere are those archetypes that are really quiet/cool and slowly warm up to you)

So, despite the fact that I liked the idea of the setting and the idea of Heine, I can’t say it was executed well. And to make up for all the technical mishaps the story needed to be fantastic and sadly, it’s not.

Two hearts

Rating:

My heart scale is defined as follows – 5 hearts = a story everyone will fall in love with, regardless of preferences; 4 hearts = a well-done story that people who love the concept will adore, and people who don’t may end up liking it; 3 hearts = if you like this type of story or this type of hero, then you will enjoy this, but those who do not like either of those things will probably not; 2 hearts = it had potential, it squandered it; 1 heart = just a waste of time from the get-go; 0 hearts = why was this made?

 

and just aside

z

I got this from the prologue. OUCH his wrist! D: does that hurt dude like owie