Otome Game Review- AMNESIA

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Just when you thought you could forget about this series…

Don’t get forget about Amnesia just yet! …Even though I completely forgot that I had written this post. I think I said this would be out, what, a month ago? I have the game summary here just so you can see how much they left out of the anime. …Or if you dropped the series early, this is why you should or shouldn’t go back to watch it since they followed the game pretty closely, but still left a ton of things that would have made it better out. …Or you could just substitute watching the anime for this review, you might get more out of it. 

 

Basic Summary 

The heroine (who has no default name, nor was given one in the anime) suddenly  wakes up to find herself in between worlds and missing all of her memories. However, she’s not alone since a fairy named Orion is there with her profusely apologizing since it’s apparently his fault that she has no memories and that the two of them are now fused together. …I don’t know how that works either, but it happened. The heroine (who has no personality whatsoever) says it’s okay though and so she has to choose a world to exist in from now on and to get memories back from. However, she has to be careful about how she goes about it since she needs to proactively and constantly get them back or else she’ll loose them all and wind up an empty shell. …So in other terms, it’s a bad idea to let anyone know that she has amnesia since they wouldn’t be able to find a cause (since it was caused by a fairy and that isn’t exactly easy to explain that and sound sane) and sitting in a hospital wouldn’t help her at all.

You’re probably familiar with the characters due to the anime, but I’m going to explain them over again anyways. …This post turned out way more sarcastic than I intended it to be, but I think I got out the serious things I wanted to say while blogging the anime. Oh and another thing is that I skipped the normal endings. Only the ‘good’ ones are mentioned here because I was lazy and other games constantly distract me.

Shin

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The heroine’s childhood friend #1 and …deadpan tsundere? I don’t know. I wonder if they told Kakihara to act with as little emotion as possible, because Shin had the most monotone voice I have ever heard. It worked out okay overall, but at the beginning, Shin was just a really boring character. Anyways, he’s younger than the heroine, doesn’t sugarcoat his words and he likes to call the heroine (and Toma) idiots (… though to be honest, they more often then not deserve it).

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Ikki

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Ikki’s the popular guy with more psychotic, possessive fangirls than you can count, but he doesn’t tell them to go away because them forming a fan club keeps them from straight out murdering each other. Isn’t this game wonderful? He’s not exactly a play boy though (he just looks like it and having girls clinging on to him practically 24/7 doesn’t exactly help this image) and he’s been dating the heroine for about 2 months before the game starts. The fangirls are due to his… uh, magic eyes which make any girl he sees instantly fall in love with him.

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Kent

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Kent is the no nonsense glasses character who seems intimidating, but he’s actually just socially awkward. He’s all about logic and reason and I have to say that his route is the most adorable thing ever. He’s Ikki’s friend and the two spend their free time challenging one another to puzzles in a dramatic fashion. …Because that’s the only true way to display friendship. Hell, he even gave the heroine (grade school level) puzzles as presents, until Ikki told him that puzzles weren’t what he meant when he said that ‘guys should give their girlfriends homemade presents as signs of affection’.

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Toma

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The older brother figure towards the heroine and childhood friend #2. Uhhh… what can I say? He’s really protective towards the heroine. Really, REALLY protective. I honestly don’t know what to make of his character since on one hand, there’s the cage thing, but on the other, his route was hilarious. His route is worth playing for the laugh value (man, I have a horrible personality xD).

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Ukyou

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…You know, the game opening gives his name as ‘Ukyo’ but then gives him the ‘u’ character right at the end of his name where everyone else is just 2 kana. Why the ‘u’ at the end if they’re not going to use it? Did they really need to make every guy’s name 4 letters when romanised? …Perhaps this is the true mystery of the route. …Anyways, yeah. Ukyou has multiple personalities (one that wants to kill the heroine and one that doesn’t) and his route makes the entire game depressing. …But then doesn’t. I also apologize in advance for the text wall.

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Definitely not my favourite otome game out there (since the heroine is SO bland), but this was pretty much the perfect mix of dark, angst ridden romance that I like. Yeah, Ukyou’s route ruins the others for me (since he most definitely died in them and the heroine never even knows what he’s done for her), but that just makes his own ending feel like THE best one overall. There’s no doubt in my mind that Ukyou’s route is the OTP.

The music? Soundtrack wise, it was decent (I like it better than what was in the anime for sure). For the opening song though, it doesn’t even compare to the anime’s (though it did eventually grow on me). Nagi makes everything better. The art is obviously amazing and after a while, you don’t even notice that Shin is wearing mismatched thigh high boots or that Kent is in a trench coat. I liked the variety in the sprites too and while the lip synching wasn’t accurate whatsoever, the sprite placement was cool (if Shin and Toma were in a conversation, they would make it look like Shin was facing Toma and Toma would be placed slightly more in the background to make it look like there was room depth).

For me, Ukyou’s story the best (and I always love a good psychopathic love interest), but out of all of the characters though, I found myself liking Mine. Not only because I really love her outfit, but her petty shallowness was actually a mix of adorable and hilarious. One day she’d be ignoring the heroine for being Ikki’s girlfriend and the next she’d be supporting them because that meant that she could have Waka and Shin to herself (because obviously two good looking guys are better than one). And then of course, the initial impression of her would be proven wrong since she’d worry about the heroine when the fangirls (or any other accident) might have harmed her. Mine was just a great character. Screw the heroine, this game needed more Mine. Rika was actually pretty funny too when she was the heroine’s friend (…not when she was sending the heroine death threats in other routes) with her overly …sophisticated(?) (I don’t know how to describe it other than she used the ‘watakushi’ pronoun and other language like that) speech and “ohohohoho~” laugh. Waka was just awesome throughout. I didn’t mention it at all, but in Ukyou’s route, it’s like all of his other personalities are combined, so he’s this kind yet intimidating individual who is rumoured to have been part of a secret assassination squad in the army (and he does things like say he’ll ‘take care of’ anyone harming the heroine or threatens Sawa with death if she messes up again… with a smile). I dunno, the route choices were all interesting characters too, but I didn’t have a chance to talk about the side characters above.

The only other thing I have to say really is that Orion’s character was POORLY translated to the anime. He’s just so much more useful and funny in the game. He was like the ray of light for every terrible situation the heroine found herself in and basically her only source of moral support. His goodbyes actually meant something every route. It’s a shame that the anime ‘goodbye’ didn’t quite get that same emotional reaction for me.

About

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.
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14 Responses to “Otome Game Review- AMNESIA”

  1. joojoobees says:

    Interesting to see what the source material was like. Thanks for the post!

  2. BlackBriar says:

    I saw the whole anime so I at least have to pay a little tribute by checking out the source material. Listening to Nagi’s OP “Zoetrope” was worth watching the episodes. I’m sure you forgot because you were busy with other otome games. After seeing Devil Survivor 2, it’s surprising a name wasn’t chosen for the heroine. For me, the the choices for her would be between Shin, Ikki and Ukyou. They seem to have a deeper bond with her than the other two.

    Persona 4, Arcana Famiglia, Amnesia and now Devil Survivor 2. Looks like a lot of stuff is being animated (particularly games) and surely some that are closer than most think. I’d be overjoyed if Bloody Cross got an adaption but the only recent news about it is that it got licensed.

    • Karakuri says:

      Zoetrope was probably the best thing to come out of the anime. Ahahaha I’ve been busy with other games in general (finished Black Rock Shooter the Game the other day; it was alright). My guess for the heroine’s name was that they wanted to make her as blank as possible, so that anyone could fit themselves in there. As for the choices, Ukyou’s a given, but I’d also say that she had a pretty deep bond with Toma (since she followed him pining over him around since the beginning of forever.) Unfortunately, he turned out to be a psychopath.

      Summer has 2 more~ Danganronpa (which is my favourite game ever and you’ll see why) and then another otome game adaptation called Brothers Conflict. As for that particular bit of news… I knew there was a reason I liked Yen Press. That’s awesome!

  3. Gecko says:

    Kent had the compassion of a rock

    Omg, so perfect, sounds so right based on what was in the anime.
    It seems like Kent’s route is still goofy and cute, although I think his very serious face ruins it a bit for me.

    EVERY TIME YOU PLAY AMNESIA, UKYOU DIES. DO YOU FEEL GUILTY YET?

    Wow, I get the feeling I would feel guilty if I played Amnesia. I read all those walls of text to see how it compared with my memory of the anime. Seems like Toma was even worse, but if she was stalking him…

    I’d say the choices for her are Kent and Ukyou in my opinion. Shin is too wacky, and Ikki -while he turns out nice and all- couldn’t even figure out the fan club’s workings on his own. With those eyes of his, he could have forced someone into telling him.

    Neil and Orion got some good punishments, I wish they had that in the anime. All the trouble they caused was pretty annoying.

    • Karakuri says:

      Yep, Kent’s route was the cutest. …Or at least it had the least heavy content compared to the sheer ANGST in Ukyou, the tension of there possibly being a murderer (or at least, the heroine’s suspicious injuries) in Shin’s, the fangirls of Ikki’s and the cage in Toma’s.

      …Yeah, I certainly felt guilty. And then I played it again a couple months later to write this post. I apologize for the walls of text. I really do. OTL But I’d rather not cut too many parts out and then end up with 5000+ word posts. Yeah, having the heroine be kind of creepily obsessed with Toma was probably their way of distracting away from the fact that he threw her in a cage. “Hey, he did this. But look, if the situation was reversed, she might have done the same thing.” … Maybe.

      I thought the solution to Neil and Orion was dealt with nicely. And hey, with the fact that they’re now human, there was totally the possibility for an Orion route in AMNESIA Later.

  4. zztop says:

    I found some cutscene rips off the new Amnesia:Crowd game on Facebook.(spoilers!)
    https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.534060353312359

    For those of you put off by Toma, he finally gets a taste of his own medicine in this installment…muahahaha

  5. kuroneko says:

    I’m kind of in awe many murder attempts and strangulation is sugoi for you, but yeah. Ukyo’s romance was horrible since it happened so fast it was contrived as heck. Doesn’t this guy have familly in that mansion? Didn’t care for his romance, thought he was just as bad as Toma. His psycho side is fun though.

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