The Otome Experiment.

So I read a lot of manga, shoujo manga to be specific and watch anime and I've seen these Japanese dating sim games in them. I've also seen them available for sale and decided to try them out as an experiment. From what I've gathered people really get into them. So I got two and decided to give it a go. First of all, these games require a lot of reading. But that's fine, I love to read. Second of all, the circumstances your character finds themself in are unbelievable to the point where, in one game I said, "She's getting kidnapped... again?!" She had already been kidnapped 3 times. While you are reading the game and watching the dialog every so often you get a choice. "Yay," I thought, "it's like a choose your own adventure book!" I used to love those as a child and would often try to read every path in the books. But... this is not the same thing. You make a choice and the game re-aligns to the path it wants you to take. What your choices affect is the outcome at the end. There are three different endings. A bad ending, a normal ending and a true ending. The less affection you manage to win from your chosen guy, the worse your ending is. Navigating what is going to buy you more affection among the choices was difficult. One guy kept calling me his slave. WTH?? I couldn't tell if he wanted me to show spirit and tell him I wasn't his slave... or he wanted my character to be meek and accept the title. To be fair, I played more than once path on both games. One game was... more tolerable than the other. But still, I'd rather find a good shoujo manga or anime with decent characters. I suppose when I am not choosing the path I have a little more tolerance for girls who spontaneously trip over nothing. Fun? A little. Insanely addictive? No. But that's just my opinion. Send me yours in the comments section of my website.