Shall We Date? The Niflheim+ Skeletiano Review

So… the let’s play of this route is over. Long story short, I was updating from where I last left off to the end. I had close to forty-something tickets to use, so I was blowing through it all. I tried to upload photos and my phone hiccuped and started restarting. No biggie, that’s happened before. Nope. Restarting loop. Over and over. Not even booting it in safe mode and factory resetting it fixed the boot problem.

Oh, I never linked my account. So… yeah. Either start over (with my horrible habit of not playing the daily games daily) or pull an Elsa.

Did I mention I was on the LAST CHAPTER when that happened?

That was it. The ending was a few tickets away.

Gone. GONE!

I lamented to Strawbarely about the situation and she linked me a youtube playlist that recorded Skeletiano’s story.  It’s not the same as playing through yourself, but I just don’t have it in me to replay through all of that again, especially considering the amount of time and effort that goes into all the stupid little shit for the freemium games. And I had taken several hours to grind for coins to buy the premium CG at the end ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

So, anyway, here’s the final review, sans pictures.

I’m conflicted on Skeletiano’s route.

Skeletiano is the light of Niflheim. He’s witty, dramatic, hilarious, sweet, everything you could ever want in a character. He steals scenes in everyone else’s stories, but his… I feel like for much of the story they’re more BFFs than anything. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love friendship in my love stories, but I didn’t feel like there was enough love parts to balance out the BFF parts. The second half remedies this by having a lot of really cute scenes between them. But despite that I still feel like there’s a “spark” missing between them. Perhaps this is because I’ve normalized Skeletiano as the BFF in my head before this story even started, if that makes sense. The romance with Skeletiano veers entirely on the cute and comedic side. You’ll find yourself laughing a lot at the scenes together, which makes this a good story to play if you want to relax and have a good laugh to cheer you up.

My only problem with Skellie is his lack of growth. We have glimpses of potential character flaws to work around, but they don’t matter at all. The conflict is external until the very end, when we come into conflict with his identity versus his perceived identity.

In the romantic ending Skellie comes to terms with the major character flaw he had, though that flaw wasn’t anything particularly bad. He’s just too pure for this world.

The romantic ending is a storybook sweet ending. It’s beautiful and lovely. I feel like after all the hubub about Skeletiano finding his body, we ended up cheated out of it (He didn’t get a new sprite, though he gets a CG with it). The ending is just as grand as Skeletiano’s life and will put a smile on your face.

The second ending is really sad. Part of me likes that one more. I know it’s weird, but I have a fondness for stories with sad endings.

 

Final Thoughts

Grading this is difficult because Skeletiano, as a character, is absolutely a joy. If you enjoyed his character in any of the other stories, having more to love is a good thing. But I also can’t shake the feeling that the romance aspect faltered in comparison to the other Niflheim routes I’ve read. Despite all of his greatness, it still falls short.

I think, just this once, I’m going to do 3.5 hearts. It’s not solidly a three or a four in my heart. Skeletiano being outside of the box fits well with his personality too.

 

Because I didn’t have anything to get a header image from, thank you for the feature image, Spooky Scary Skeleton.