[Special Valentines Day Guest Blogger] My Boyfriend Played an Otome Game?!- Roommates: Max’s Side

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY… or Singles Awareness Day all you wonderful Heroes and Travelers, today we have a special guest post from my BF… Yeah, ya’ll read that right, I convinced my boyfriend to play an otome game for a very special Valentines Day Game Review!! WOOT! Since, he puts up with my constant fangirling on a regular basis, I figured why not let him experience the wonders of otome games… So, I picked a few games for him to try out and he fell asleep on all of them, except Winter Wolves’s slice of life romance visual novel, Roommate! Since he doesn’t really play otome games, I didn’t make him play through the whole game, that would have been cruel and unusual punishment on my part… Anyway, I’ve done enough talking, so, I’m gonna turn things over to my BF, Myles!

Greetings to all you awesome people out there. I don’t normally blog or write about things like dating sims games including stat raising of all things, but its Valentine’s Day and my girlfriend, Pokeninja90, insisted (coerced) me to play one. I have played a few games like this before, but more for the nude pics I could get not for the fun of the story (hentai sims). I’d like to say that despite not seeing any hot pixel skin, the story was on point. I’m kinda happy she forced “asked me to play a route”. Besides with all of the stat raising I did, maybe I can earn a few points myself.

Roommates follows the new college student Max as he begins a new chapter in life you all know as college. Like any new college student he has money issues so he picks the least expensive housing for his first year which lands him a room in a boarding house. In his new home he meets his roommates which are Sally, Anne, Isabella, Rakesh, and his RA Dominic. They go through wacky events from concerts, study dates, parties, to everyone’s favorite drinking games. As all these events unfold, your goal is to set things up perfectly for the right events to take place to get that special someone.

Gameplay and Features

During the game players take control one of two protagonists: Max a punk rocker that couldn’t care less about school or Anne; a nerdy shut in looking to explore the college life and spread her wings. Choose one and follow them as they go about their day to day life; divide your time between part-time job(s), various extracurricular activities, and romancing one of the four potential love interests.

Each protagonist has four potential love interests that range from traditional heterosexual relationships to same sex  relationships. If you choose Max, then you can romance Rakesh an eccentric art student, Sally a vegan activist, fellow protagonist Anne, or Isabella a pan-sexual Latina. If you choose Anne you sub Sally for Dominic the Latin House RA. You also have the option of befriending each of the characters  regardless of whether or not you choose to pursue them (ie. Dominic is a friendship only route for Max and Sally is the same for Anne).

The game takes place over the course of one school year (4 quarters with holidays and vacations included) and like most Winter Wolves visual novels (or so Naja tells me) includes a mix of stats-raising and visual novel story segments. Each of which are equally vital to completing the game.

Each activity corresponds to a specific stat and each potential love interest has their own stat, so tailor your activities to the love interest you wish to pursue. However, each activity takes a unit of gameplay time and certain activities can only be preformed during specific periods of the day (ie. going to the pub can only be done at night, while going to work can only be completed during the daylight hours).

Each activity either corresponds with six specific stats (Organization, Rational, Creative, Spontaneous, Reflective, and Active) or a one of three protagonist specific stats (grades, money, and energy). The stats are determined depending on which activity you choose, but having energy  and high affection points improves your chances of having a favorable outcome and you can choose between three different gameplay modes that also significantly effect your stats raising success: Easy Difficulty, Normal Difficulty and Hard Difficulty.

Character Routes

I chose Max as my protagonist, because he was a guy lol. I figured if I was going to play an otome game I might as well be a guy since I had the choice. Other than that I had no real reason of picking him besides the fact that I didn’t want to be a girl. Since I don’t usually play these types of games I didn’t know what to expect so I didn’t really have a plan going in. I spent the first couple of weeks just playing around with the mechanics and getting a feel for the gameplay. It wasn’t until week 6 that I really started to pursue Sally, Isabella, and Anne. I wasn’t going for any of the male options, so I skipped their events any chance that I got.

Out of the three female options I was most interested in Sally. She appealled to my typical taste of women so I took a chance. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough affection points for her so I was forced to pursue Anne. I have nothing against Anne, but girls like her are harder to crack. Anne is your typically shy and innocent school girl that is just asking to be seduced so she can let out that wild side (in my opinion).She takes her education seriously so she spends most of her time studying and reading books. She actually reminds me of Naja a bit since we met in college and she refused to give me the time of day until I got more affection points and made the right stat raises lol. Essentially Anne was a hard puzzle to crack and needed a lot more persuasion than what I was used to. I say that to confirm how I got the alone ending *lone tear slides down face* To my surprise it turned out that it didn’t matter because I didn’t get either chick *cries manly tears* or more importantly the sexy time Spring Break event.

I wound up getting the alone end, my first ever otome game and I end up alone! I thought I answered the questions correctly and raised the stats correctly, but I guess it wasn’t enough. Instead of having an elaborate confession scene, the game kind of just ended. I was disappointed, after all of the stats and affection point raising, reading, and thinking I thought I would at least get a normal end. The alone end was crap, it was a few minutes of Max talking about what happened after college and how his former roommates went their separate ways.

Final Thoughts

In the end even though I didn’t get the end I wanted, I enjoyed this game that Naja so gently placed on my lap. It was literally 10 hours of my life that I don’t think I’ll be forgetting anytime soon. I’m not saying that as a bad thing because I genuinely enjoyed it. Compared to the other games she gave me, Roommates was a pretty interesting game. She gave me a few other games to play, but this was the only one that I stayed awake long enough to get through. That was mostly because I felt like I could really relate to this game because it was similar to my own college experience.

All of this begs the question; should I play a few more routes to get that happy (sexy time) ending? Maybe, but will I? Maybe. I have to figure out if it’ll raise my stat points with the lady aka Pokeninja. Side note, the art and music were awesome. Even though I don’t play these games often I do know good art when I see it and man was that theme song catchy. It kept getting stuck in my head as I would walk around collecting my thoughts for the review. Curse whoever created the theme song because damn is it good.

So what did you think of the review? How did you like the male perspective on an otome game? Have you played any Winter Wolves game before?   Let us know what you think in the comments section. If you like what you see, like this post or follow Nice Job Breaking It, Hero! As always THANK YOU FOR READING!!