Sympathy Kiss is a slice-of-life office romance otome game developed by Otomate and published in English by Idea Factory International. Move over Voltage Inc., Otomate is coming for your bag! Balance work and play with Akari and her coworkers at Estario in this mature office romance.
Game Details
- Genre: Office Romance | Modern | Slice of Life
- Rating: ESRB T
- Developer & Publisher: Otomate & Idea Factory International
- Where to Get the Game: Idea Factory Intl (SE) | IFI (LE) | Amazon | Nintendo eShop
- Similar Games: Oops I Said Yes?! | Everyday Love | Irresistible Mistakes
About Sympathy Kiss
About a year has passed since you started your new job as a designer at Estario, a mobile app company.
Just as you were finally getting used to your job and the routines that came along with it…You were suddenly asked to switch departments and join the product team for a failing app that’s slated to be discontinued.
Switching into this new role, you find yourself surrounded by some of the most highly qualified (and highly eccentric) men Estario employs.
To add to this new work challenge, you even have to pair up with one of them!You and your idiosyncratic partner will be working together to revamp the app and get it back on track. This is all so new to you, and things are moving so fast… Will you be able to handle it?
And who knows, maybe by the end of the project, you’ll find yourself with more than you could’ve ever imagined…
Characters of Sympathy Kiss
Sympathy Kiss has a total of six romanceable love interests and two hidden romanceable characters. All of the love interests either work at Estario or you meet through your job. Saotome, Minato, and Kobase all work with you at Estario on the Estarci team. While, Yoshioka works at a rival app company, Tempesty; Usui is a bartender at the local bar, Evergreen; and you literally pick Tainaka up off the street.
Saotome, Minato, Yoji, Tainaka, and Yoshioka‘s routes are all unlocked at the start of the game. While Usui‘s route is playable after playing through at least one of the first five routes. The two hidden romance routes are playable at anytime and are off shoots of Yoshioka and Tainaka’s routes.
Mitsuki Saotome (VA. Fakuto Kajiwara)
Saotome is a genius at work, creating hit app after hit app for Estario in his short time with the company. He is extremely casual with his coworkers and doesn’t seem to care for the usual office politics. He is quick to joke or tease, especially the MC and Minato (their bromance is so good, I 100% ship him and Minato). On paper, he should be great, but then he opens his mouth and IDK if I want to slap him or yeet him off the office roof. Saotome is the king of subtle negging. His tough love advice comes off completely disrespectful and downright insulting. He is a friggin child, and I’m no one’s mom. I’m not here to raise nobody’s son…
Saotome is the best at what he does and he knows it, which is part of the problem—the ego on this man is insane. He is usually the smartest in the room. So instead of “wasting” time explaining the method to his madness, he’d rather just do everything himself. Which gives off the impression that he thinks everyone else is too dumb to function, which inevitably rubs most of his colleagues the wrong way. But, because he’s so good at what he does, no one can really complain… It’s an uphill battle for Akari to prove that not only is she capable at her job, but also a good partner for him. Honestly, it feels like Saotome is a dick solely to facilitate the MC’s growth as a character.
He is the “I” in Team. If mansplaining and negging is your kink, you’ll love Saotome. For the rest of us, this man is insufferable. Though I did like how his awful personality pushes the MC to be more emboldened in her work… so win?
Kohei Minato (VA. Yuuichirou Umehara)
Minato is not here to work as efficiently as humanly possible. He has his routine and it has served him well in his career. Minato is not one for mingling with his coworkers, only interacting with them when necessary—so having to “babysit” the MC throws a wrench in his 5-year career plan. He is initially very hands off with her, she handles her tasks and he handles his, only interacting when she has a question. But, in the name of efficiency, smaller details fall through the cracks, so he has to learn to rely on the MC, who is much more careful and detail oriented. They surprisingly make each other better.
Minato isn’t one to mince words, but he is never rude. Unless Saotome is involved, because he does not hold back with him. To everyone else, he’s pretty respectful. While he can come off pretty stiff, Minato is surprisingly playful. Once he’s comfortable with the MC he lets his guard down and becomes such a little tease! He is super playful and a bit possessive. It’s always the quiet ones that you gotta look out for, because Minato has some pretty kinky thoughts in his POVs (and a biting kink). This man is a damn househusband. He cooks, he cleans, he sews, and he’s good with kids. Wife him up!
Favorite route all around! A nice balance of work and play, and Minato is written so well! He is husbando material! While his conflict was kinda dumb, Minato and the MC’s relationship more than made up for the iffy plot. Also, gotta love a gentleman in the streets and freak in the sheets.
Yoji Kobase (VA. Kazuyuki Okitsu)
Yoji Kobase is the department head of the Estarci team, he handpicked every member of the team. As your boss there is a huge power imbalance, the man controls your paycheck and his intimidating demeanor makes it hard to get close to him. Yoji doesn’t hold his position over you, treating everyone with respect in the office. But, he can be a bit stern and blunt, so it’s not easy to go to him for help. Anyone who has ever worked with a supervisor knows how hard it can be to bridge that gap. But, working under your boss can be a great learning experience. The MC grows so much in this route, seriously the best part of this story is how confident Akari becomes.
Yoji really cares for his team and he believes in the potential of everyone. He wants his subordinates to grow in their roles, so he challenges them to pursue tasks outside of their comfort zone. While he can be intimidating, he does work tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure everyone on his team comfortable, even if that means he has to do more work. However, once you get Yoji out of the office look out, boss bae is a horny beast. This is the type of guy who will take you out for a nice dinner and then blow your back out. The sexual tension in this route is insane! Yoji is literally ready to smash at every opportunity, but because he’s you’re boss he kind of has to keep his hands to himself (he fails… repeatedly).
Who’d have thought dating your boss would be so horny. 🤔 If you were looking for a steamy route, this is it! Yoji is DTF! His route is probably the best overall in the spice department, even if his route conflict was kind of ridiculous and contrived.
Rokuro Yoshioka (VA. Seiichiro Yamashita)
Yoshioka is the son of the President of rival tech company Tempesty and the point of contact for the Tempesty/Estario partnership project. Handsome, rich, personable, and diligent in his work, Yoshioka is a modern day Prince of the office. Women literally throw themselves at him, but he only has eyes for his work. He is kind to everyone and is super accommodating. In his route the MC when she is chosen to be the liaison between Estario and Tempesty.
Yoshioka is a SIMP! This man is devoted, showering the MC with all the love and affection. It’s honestly hard to not like Yoshioka, he’s an all around great guy. So if you like being wined and dined, this is the route for you. Which is great, because the conflict in this route is on par with the juiciest, angsty-est K-drama.
This route has K-drama levels of drama, literally, I feel like this is the plot of one I’ve seen before. The romance is well written and Yoshioka is a delight! I’m not super thrilled by how long the drama drags on in this route, but it’s surprisingly handled well. Yoshioka and the MC’s relationship is super solid and I was invested.
Nori Tainaka (VA. KENN)
Okay, Tainaka’s route is unique. Tainaka is a wandering sugar baby stray you pick up off the street one night on your way home from work. Because this is an otome, you let this strange (handsome) man live in your house rent free. Though the MC mostly treats him like an abandoned puppy. This is literally Tramps Like Us (Kimi wa Petto). Office lady takes in stray pup and they eventually fall in love.
Tainaka is a sweet talking who knows what to say to get you to let down your guard. He molds himself into whatever you need, whether that’s a friend, a confidant, or a lover. He doesn’t ask for much, just a place to stay and food… like a pet. And after dealing with a hard day of work, sometimes just knowing that someone or something is at home waiting for you makes it all kind of worth it. The MC isn’t really looking for love, rather companionship. Someone to listen to her complain about her day and give her cuddles and Tainaka fills that role perfectly. Back massages, bubble baths… the whole nine.
But, Tainaka is careful to never reveal anything about himself. Mysterious and alluring, the MC is immediately drawn to Tainaka and tries to break down his walls and get closer to him. Both the MC and Tainaka go through a lot of great character growth in this route.
If you’ve read Tramps Like Us, that’s pretty much the whole dynamic between the MC and Tainaka. He’s sweet and loveable like a puppy and if they’d stuck with that everything would have been fine. His route conflict was kind of meh…
Shuya Usui (VA. Yuuya Uchida)
Shuya Usui is the 45 year old owner of the bar, Evergreen. He’s mature and handsome and always there to lend an ear when his patrons need someone to talk to. And that’s pretty much all there is to Usui.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Usui. But, Otomate has a really hard time diversifying their “mature” love interests. They all read the same. Old man starts to feel an attraction for a younger MC. But, rather than letting it play out naturally. They push the MC away because they believe someone as young and beautiful and talented as the MC should be with someone her own age. So the MC has to convince the old man that yes, she wants him in a romantic way and YES it’s okay for an old man to be happy with a younger woman. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Thankfully, this route is super short. Because the writers had no clue what to do with this man outside of the age gap romance. That said, I really liked that Usui’s reluctance to admit his feelings forces the MC to be much more aggressive in her pursuit of him than the average MC. Akari is down bad for Usui from jump. So she creates situations for them to be alone together (much to his frustration). But, because Usui is so against it, the romance feels very one-sided and kind of sad. However, I will admit that this route had some of the best endings that force Usui and Akari to look realistically at their relationship without sacrificing their careers.
This route could have been an email. Usui could have been an interesting character but he gets bogged down by the predictable premise.
Hidden Character 1
Click for Details on Hidden Character 1 (Spoilers… obviously)
YOFY (VA. Soma Saito)
YOFY is the programmer Estario contracts to help with their programming projects. He’s a genius programmer, but no one has ever seen his face and he only communicates via email. In this route, Akari is made liaison between Estario and YOFY. Her first act as liaison is to immediately disregard the status quo by scheduling a virtual meeting with him.
This route is the embodiment of “this meeting could’ve been an email”. I don’t know why this route exists or who gets off on this, but it’s a whole NO for me. YOFY is a creepy stalker and a yandere to boot. Nothing about his actions is redeemable and I feel worse off for having read this route.
I hate it. I didn’t want this. No one asked for this… and how dare you drag Soma Saito into this dumpster fire. If you like baby yanderes this is the route for you.
Hidden Character 2
Click for Details on Hidden Character 2 (Spoilers… obviously)
Tsukihiko Higa (VA. Kohsuke Toriumi)
Tsukihiko Higa works in the sales department at Tempesty. He’s more of a background character in Yoshioka’s route so you don’t really get to spend much time with him in the main game. But, he is super sweet and hands down the best guy in the whole game. This is what I expected from an adult, office romance game, an actual route with adults dating!
Higa is a single dad so he has to balance his work, raising his son, and a potential romance with the MC. It’s a delicate balance, because unlike the other LIs he can’t just jump into a relationship, he has to consider what’s best for his son. I love everything about this route, my only complaint being that I wish it was longer! It’s awkward and sweet and so wholesome. This route made me cry a little, I felt so many emotions. PLEASE PLAY THIS ROUTE!!
After the YOFY route I was ready to completely write of this route—I am so glad I didn’t skip this one. Tsukihiko is the best love interest in the game. This is how an adult romance route should be!
Sympathy Kiss Review
Sympathy Kiss is a modern office romance otome game from the team behind Lover Pretend. There isn’t a deep overarching plot like some of the other Otomate titles I’ve covered, instead it offers a more casual slice-of-life vibe. Honestly, Sympathy Kiss reads like a Voltage Inc. game, each route focuses on a self contained character driven story with no overlap between routes. So, you can pretty much pick a route and run with it without having to worry about play orders or spoilers.
In the game you play as Akari, a young woman who works as a designer at a mobile app company, Estario. She is chosen to work on a special team tasked with revitalizing the company’s failing flagship app. The team consists of the best and brightest of the company. As the newest edition, Akari is given the chance to partner with one of her teammates on a project to save the app. This is made all the more challenging, as each of her teammates has their own “interesting” quirks that make them a smidge difficult to work with. Akari will have to work hard to keep up with her new workload and her eccentric partner.
As someone whose 9-5 involves working in an office setting, I was a little on the fence about how much I’d enjoy Sympathy Kiss. I play games to get away from the stress of my job, so playing a game that revolves around office politics and work is not high on my fantasy immersion bingo. There’s a lot of business lingo and office politics/dynamics at play—for better or worse. Some of the office meetings are boring and when they’re talking about the technical aspects of creating a business proposal, scheduling meetings with clients, and drafting emails… It all reminded me too much of my own job so I kind of zoned out a bit.
There was a specific scene in Yoji’s route where Akari is overwhelmed by all the tasks she has to complete so she falls short on some projects. In the midst of her crisis she gets chewed out by Yoji for messing up a project. That whole situation hit a little too close to home and I had to walk away from my Switch.
But, outside of the basic setup and framework of the routes working on the app really doesn’t factor into most of the routes all that much. Like we follow Akari and her partner through their day to day interactions, but the central conflict is more often than not a personal thing that the pair have to overcome together.
Sympathy Kiss is a very low stakes otome game. There aren’t really any bad endings. All of the conflicts are resolved by the end of the route. Which after the angst fest that is Virche Evermore is a welcome change of pace.
In a unique twist, this game is more of a self-insert story. Akari doesn’t have eyes and she doesn’t really have dialogue. All of her speech is expressed as thoughts that the LIs respond to. It’s very much like how the MC is handled in Amnesia Memories. It’s a bit weird at first since I’m used to more dynamic heroine characters, but I didn’t hate it. As a Black woman I rarely feel like I’m being represented in otome games. So I kind of viewed it as an interesting gimmick and let it go.
Though, the game really works hard to make this feel like it’s your story, by including more personalized choice gameplay mechanics. Most of the choices exist to kind of craft Akari’s personality rather than raising affection.
The Emotion Select system lets you react to character actions by choosing between two different emotional responses: happy face, anger face, sad face, etc. And depending on the choice you make it effects conversations between you and the LI later on in the game. Like, in Yoji’s route, he brings you a black coffee, you can choose to be happy about it or sad about it. I personally hate coffee, so I went with the sad face option. A few chapters later when the two of you go on a date Yoji remembers this and brings you a sweet latte. It’s really cool and makes it feel like the guys really get you.
There are other choices that are more or less flavor text, since they have no bearings on the plot, but still convey (at least on a surface level) a sense of personality. Like choosing to be more accommodating or just smacking a character for being rude (guess which options I chose). Usually being more aggressive in an otome is a sure fire way to land a normal or bad end. But, you aren’t punished for being yourself in Sympathy Kiss. It’s very much the same as the indie game, Our Life Beginnings and Always. It encourages you to really craft your own experience and make Sympathy Kiss your own. You really can just kind of play Sympathy Kiss at your leisure.
Of course this is an otome game, so you do have to raise affection with the LIs. In keeping with the office theme, these choices are divided into Love and Work stats. Life is about balance and unlike other otome games where you spam the “romantic” choices to bag the best end with your bae. In Sympathy Kiss you have to actually maintain a healthy work/life balance to get the best end. Keeping the Work and Love meters even will net you the Perfect ending, where Akari manages to find love with her partner AND fulfillment in her career.
Though, you aren’t punished for favoring either Love or Work. Each option yield their own unique endings. The Love ends favor Akari’s romance and usually involve her work life taking a small hit. While the Work ends prioritize Akari’s career and show her reaching new heights in the workplace. It’s a cool concept and very fitting given the setting.
Storywise, Sympathy Kiss is somewhere between a K-drama and a run of the mill Voltage Inc. otome. Not a dig at Voltage, but some of the routes feel a bit half baked, if you know what I mean. There are a lot of clichés and unnecessary dramas in the game, so you’ll either find it entertaining or frustrating. While I loved most of the characters, some routes work better than others. While some just felt kind of one note. Because the routes are short, some of the problems are wrapped up too quickly without fully dealing with pesky things like consequences. And others just go nowhere.
Because Sympathy Kiss is a slice-of-life story, there really aren’t any huge stakes. So, the conflicts don’t always have the appropriate weight to them because you know from the start that everything is going to end on a high note regardless of the drama in the routes. The writing in the individual routes is at times inconsistent, some routes are really good and others could have done with a little more time in the oven (or not exist at all). Sympathy Kiss kind of feels more like a pay per route mobile otome game than a bigger budget Otomate release. Which has its charm, but can be a bit frustrating if you’re expecting a more polished story. So, you’re mileage may vary.
As far as romance goes I was expecting a more mature, and by mature, I mean adult romance. It’s an office romance, everyone is an adult, so having a steamier story would have been perfect. I hate to say it, but was expecting something like, Voltage’s Irresistible Mistakes and Liar Uncover the Truth. Where you have grown adults balancing real world problems with the highs and lows of adult dating. Sympathy Kiss does a great job of exploring Akari and the LIs navigating their careers and their budding romance.
However, the story kind of falls flat in regards to giving us a more mature romance story. Voltage has really found their stride in balancing the sensuality and drama of mature romance stories, that are both believable and entertaining in a way that Otomate (at least in the titles we’ve gotten in the West) still struggles with. Sympathy Kiss reads like a regular Otomate game. I wanted more spice from Sympathy Kiss and sadly, they decided to play it safe with the T rating. With a bit of tweaking, this easily could have been an M level otome release.
To be clear, I’m not asking for smut, but give me a little something. If you’re looking for “spice” Yoji’s route is by far the most sexually charged. I wasn’t lying when I said boss bae is horny. Usui’s route also had some nice sexual tension too and surprisingly Minato’s route. But, even those toe the PG-13 line. There are some and I say this loosely sexual scenes with each love interest. In most routes, it happens only at the end. The writing does get steamy, but it’s not really descriptive enough and left me wanting more.
The Verdict: Is Sympathy Kiss Worth Playing?
Overall, Sympathy Kiss is gorgeous! The art is beautiful and the CGs are stunning! This game has a very modern, polished look to it that really makes it stand out. The slice-of-life story and lower stakes make for a more relaxed experience. I love the commitment to the theme, the Work/Love choices are a fun touch that really make you think about how you want to prioritize your gameplay. While the self-insert heroine may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I have to give credit where credit is due, they do attempt to make Sympathy Kiss feel like it’s your story. It gives a lot more autonomy than your typical otome games and I’ll be honest, there were times where it felt more like an indie game (the highest complement I can give) because of how immersive the experience felt.
So, yeah, I do recommend Sympathy Kiss. It’s not perfect, and it’s not my favorite game. I probably won’t stay awake at night thinking about it, but it’s fun and that’s really all that matters in the end. A very solid office romance that’s a welcome change from the usual fantasy otome releases.
Thank you to Idea Factory International for providing me with a copy of Sympathy Kiss for this review.
