Game Assessment: Ikémen Sengoku: Romances Across Time by CYBIRD Co., Ltd.

I know, I've been a slacker and haven't wrote anything in quite a while. I was thinking today about a topic to write about. Summer, my experience at the Chicago BTS concert, which I will do as it was amazing, or something else entirely. I ended up thinking about the games I play and decided to do an assessment on them. I'm going to start with the first one I started.

My assessment (Spoilerish?):

Ikémen Sengoku: Romances Across Time by CYBIRD Co., Ltd.

Honestly, I don’t know why I started playing these games last summer, but for some reason, I stumbled upon them in the app store. The rest is history. This story, like others, is written as you are the female protagonist. You put in the name you want, and then it’s like a first-person story, with your pick of a romantic or dramatic end. On the second run through, you get the option of reading parts from the guy’s prospective, which I love.

I like the storyline, no matter how unbelievable it is, and that comes from, for the most part, well-written characters. After playing this game for a year and going through every available character route (well I’m in the middle of playing my last one as it was just released), I feel as if I know these characters.

So about the game. First, I cannot say this enough if you really plan on playing it, set up a Transfer ID. It will save you. I hadn’t planned on switching out my phone as I liked my old phone. However, as with everything it went wonky when it was time for an “upgrade.” I made sure I had backed up all my games before I switched over. It worked perfectly—I went from an IOS to another IOS—and everything was saved. So if you’re on the fence, do it!

Now to the actual game. It is completely playable without spending any money.

You get 5 chapter tickets every day. If you’re fine with reading a story at a leisurely pace, you’ll be good to go, plus there are daily check-in bonuses, which sometime is a chapter ticket. When you finish a route, you also get extra tickets for your next story. If you can’t wait, they are available to buy in the store for 100 coins each. There are discounts if you buy more. 5 for 490. You will have to spend real money to buy the coins. Personally, I just use the 5 a day. There’s only been a couple of times that I’ve bought some chapter tickets, usually a couple as I had like 3 from the bonuses, so I needed 2 more to get the 5. Each chapter is divided into 10 parts. After 5 parts, there’s kind of a little break so it gives you a good stopping point.

There our avatar challenges where you can get the premium story or the normal story. Premium costs coins. The benefit is the story is kept in your records. I have bought premium stories. Having read the normal stories from a friend, there are differences, but nothing that effects the entire story. You also have to be careful as if you do both the romantic and dramatic ending of a character’s route, it will cost you 3600 coins, which equals out to $34.98. That’s not bad for a game, but when there’s 14 characters, it will end up costing $489.72 if you get the premium on every story. I understand the company has to make money or there would be no game. Plus, they do offer a way for you to play it for free, but just be careful, or you might end up spending more than you want.

Also with these avatar challenges, you get clothing, hair, accessories for your avatar. You only have a limited amount of closet space. To get more, it costs coins, not the gold that is the game currency. Gold you can earn by playing the game, and by greeting your friends each day. Now you can always discard items for new ones, but in the game, there are grace checks. You do the grace checks by princess lessons. The higher your beauty, the better your chance of “winning.” Beauty comes from, you got it, your avatar items. It’s cumulative, so even if your avatar isn’t wearing it, if it’s in your closet, it will count for you. Now, you don’t have to win them all, but you get more grace points if you do win, which will help you on the grace checks. If not, it can take you longer to pass those checks, thus making it so you can’t read the next part of the story.

There are also events. The story events do not use your chapter tickets, but you will have to use your “grace” for glamor instead to meet challenges. Also there are avatar challenges, but the items here can be bought with gold, so you don’t have to spend any money. You can make friends just for the event. Do this! Their glamor will help you with your glamor checks. I love the events when there are stories to win involved. If you win a story, it is kept in your “memories.” They’ve started new stories that are in parts involving all the characters. I love those. They are so fun and light-hearted. There is only one time I have finished an event, and I had to use actual money to do it. Perhaps you could if you’re a person who will set their alarm to do their glamor (every 5 hours), but I’m not. I don’t want to spend all my time on my phone, so I do what I can when I get to it.

Now let’s get to the characters. The game takes place in the Japanese Sengoku period. There are 2 factions that are enemies: The Oda forces and the Uesugi-Takeda alliance, plus there’s 2 freelancers. Each one of these warlords have their own distinct personality.

The Oda Forces:

Nobunaga Oda

Hideyoshi Toyotomi

Masamune Date

Ieyasu Tokugawa

Mitsunari Ishida

Mitsuhide Akechi

Ranmaru Mori

The Uesugi-Takeda Alliance

Kenshin Uesugi

Shingen Takeda

Yukimura Sanada

Sasuke Sarutobi

Yoshimoto Imagawa

Freelancers:

Kennyo

Motonari Mouri

I did them in this order: Hideyoshi, Shingen, Nobunaga, Yukimura, Ieyasu, Kenshin, Masamune, Mitsunari, Sasuke (I’m on him right now.) The rest of the routes aren’t out yet. Plus, when I started Ranmaru, Yoshimoto, and Motonari weren’t a part of the stories. They were just recently added.

I’m going to assess the routes, trying to not spoil anything, in the order I did them. But first, I can’t stress this enough, do the Gacha every day! If you get the premium gacha piece, you get story part from his prospective, plus it’s saved in your memories. You want these! To me, these are gold. Also in each story, another one of the male characters falls for the female lead, and sometimes it can be heartbreaking.

Hideyoshi Toyotomi: This was the first route I did. I had no idea what I was really doing at the time. When I got chapter tickets for login bonuses, I used them, getting off of the correct breakdown, so I was really left hanging a lot! Don’t be like me! I love Hideyoshi. He’s a very developed character. Each character I have found, has a tragic backstory, which isn’t overdone, but goes along well with the time period. It really adds to them, gives the character layers. Hideyoshi has a lot of layers. If you play the events or even in some of the other characters’ routes, they play down a lot of his layers and make him something of a joke in his devotion to Nobunaga. Now, don’t get me wrong, in Hideyoshi’s story he is completely devoted to Nobunaga, who is his lord, but Hideyoshi isn’t cartoonish about it. It’s well-developed and makes sense. It’s sort of played as a joke in the event stories. If I had read them first, I don’t know if I would like him as much as I do. Thankfully, I didn’t, so I really like him. He’s wonderful and he was my favorite until…well, I’ll get to that. Hideyoshi is nice. He’s not a wild roller coaster of emotions. It’s like falling for your best friend. You could “see” it gradually happening on both sides. I loved it! I also like the way the female character is written in his story. I’ve only done his dramatic ending. My plan was to go through all the characters’ dramatic endings and then finish on the romantic. I haven’t made it yet as with new routes being added, and event stories. But this is one I’m really looking forward to playing a second time through as I want parts in his perspective. But I’ve learned from doing one romantic ending, I personally like the dramatic the best.

Shingen Takeda:  Shingen was my second route. I had read all the reviews and gushing online about how romantic he was, how dramatic his “dramatic” ending was, so I had high hopes. Those hopes were not met. Yes, his dramatic ending was very dramatic. And I have friends who cried at his ending. Me, who cries easily, didn’t shed a tear on this story. Shingen is cheesy, spewing pick-up lines left and right. I got right off that he uses it as a defense mechanism to keep people at arm length. He likes women though, so he uses the lines to get women. And it works, easily. I cringed. However, all I really got from him was that he’s a flirt. I didn’t feel the depth that much. And while he as a character is very likeable, the reason I didn’t like his route was because of how the female protagonist acted around him. I wanted to smack her. Her behavior, how easily she fell for the cheesy lines just because he was handsome, made me not like the route. She was so different from Hideyoshi’s route. I just couldn’t handle it. I thought she came off as weak, and I didn’t want to read that. Also, I didn’t get how the two characters ended up in love in this story. Now, maybe that was because I was so biased against the female lead, but I really don’t think so. I get that the two characters spent time together, but I didn’t get where they really got to know each other to fall in love. Sexual attraction can lead to love, but I still didn’t get it.

Nobunaga Oda: Nobunaga was my third story, and he’s the one I would wait up until 2 AM—the time when a new day starts in my time zone, so more chapter tickets—so I could read. I also spent some money on his route to get more tickets, as his story had me hooked. Reading his summary, and reading his behavior in the other 2 routes, I didn’t have high expectations. I was so wrong. I loved him. Yes, he is very cold, but he is so well developed. And you could “see” him falling for the female protagonist as the story went along. His dramatic ending, I cried, a lot. It was heartbreaking. Both he and Hideyoshi make me wish I would have done romantic ending first as I can’t image it will be better than the dramatic. Nobunaga gave me renewed faith to keep going in this game. The female lead was once again strong, which I really like. I’m not saying a lot about him as I don’t want to spoil anything at all; it was that good.

Yukimura Sanada: Yukimura is Shingen’s vassal, so I’ll be honest, I really didn’t have high expectations. Granted I did see him in Shingen’s story, and I liked Yukimura’s character there. I should have had high hopes. This was another story that I loved. Not only was the female character good and strong, but Yukimura was so well done. It really delved into his character. I liked him. And I wish I would have done Yukimura before I did Shingen’s route, as I liked Shingen in Yukimura’s story, a lot. To me he had more depth than in his own story. And some of things that should have made me cry in Shingen’s own story…in Yukimura’s when it referenced what I knew would happen, I cried. I might have liked his route better if I had done this first. But back to Yukimura, he is a guy the exact opposite of his “master” Shingen as in Yukimura has no clue how to act around women. He stays true to that characteristic in other routes, too. Yet, it was endearing. Yukimura’s ending had me in tears, too. Not in the same way as Nobunaga’s did, but Yukimura’s dramatic was still really good.

Ieyasu Tokugawa:  I went in with mixed emotions to Ieyasu’s route. I liked him in the other stories as he’s so sarcastic, but I still didn’t really “see” it, that thing that would grab me and make me love him. Again, I was wrong. I loved his route. I loved him; I loved the female lead. She’s a little clueless as to the fact that he likes her when he starts, but that’s cute. It doesn’t come off as annoying. Now, some might get fed-up with his endless sarcasm and his just overall unpleasant disposition most of the time. However once you learn his backstory, it’s so completely understandable, and it gives him more layers. Honor, duty, loyalty, that’s Ieyasu. And I love him. Plus, he had one of the funniest scenes in one of his chapters. It involved Kenshin Uesugi. I loved Ieyasu’s route.

Kenshin Uesugi:  So after Ieyasu, I was going to start Masamune, but Kenshin’s route was going to be released in a few days after I finished Ieyasu, so I held off. Why? Well, if you finish routes by certain times, you get free gifts for your avatar, and, well, Kenshin’s color is blue, which is my favorite color. I wanted the stuff, so I held off starting a new story so I could start Kenshin’s the day it came out. I remember looking forward to it, though I really didn’t know why. I had read about it online, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like this story. I knew it was going to be dark. I’m talking forced captivity dark, which I didn’t know how he could be redeemed from that to where I would want my female with him. But the little I saw him in Ieyasu’s story, I liked him. I braced myself and went in. Yes, I LOVE Kenshin. He is my favorite. And let me tell you, he does some awful things to your character. I will not go into details again to save for spoiling, but it’s pretty bad. At times, I was like “I don’t want him, let alone like him.” Yet at the same time, my heart still went out to him. I knew he had to have a tragic backstory to account for why he turned out like he did. He broke my heart. Kenshin is the only character I’ve done both the romantic and dramatic endings for. Again, you got stuff if you finished both endings by a certain time. Hands down dramatic ending is so much better than the romantic, but I liked them both, and both of them had me in tears. That man broke my heart with everything he went through, but I love him. He’s my favorite. He took Hideyoshi’s place, which was hard to do. Kenshin is another one that I don’t care for how he’s portrayed in the events. It’s too cartoonish. But my love for him makes up for it. I just think of how he was in that story. Yes, I adore him, for some foolish and insane reason, but I fell in love with him just as the female character did. You love him even though you shouldn’t, but the outcome, it was definitely worth it.

Masamune Date:  So I wanted to do Masamune from the beginning. I was saving him. The eyepatch…sexy. I was ready. Yeah, I didn’t really care for his story. While I really liked him, and I understood the reason he was the way he was. Freaking tragic backstory, that about kills you, once again, I didn’t like how the female was written. Her personality did a complete 180 in this story. She was never a risk-taking, adrenaline junkie before, but that’s how she was in this one. I didn’t care for her, and I honestly thought Masamune deserved someone better than her.

Mitsunari Ishida:  So Mitsunari was another route that I started as soon as it came out. I like it; I like him. It’s very different as it’s very sweet, which goes along perfectly with the character of Mitsunari as he’s been portrayed in all the other stories. He’s a bit clueless, but actually, you realize he’s not. The man is just nice, but at the same time, he’s portrayed as sexy, he just doesn’t know he is. Actually, he would be up there as near-perfect partner. After Masamune, Mitsunari was a refreshing change of pace; he was just so vastly different from the last two characters I did. Also, I liked the way the female lead was written in this. She was strong without being the reckless loon I felt she was in Masamune’s story.

Sasuke Sarutobi:  Sasuke’s route just recently came out. I’m not finished with it yet, but so far, I love it. It’s so different from the others which makes sense since Sasuke is from present day, just like your female lead. It’s hilarious so far. I love how the other characters are written, too. Sasuke is clueless as he himself has said he’s a nerd. I just really like this story, and while I want to know what happens next, I’m forcing myself to not buy chapter tickets. It’s hard, though.

Those are the characters I’ve done so far. My ranking for my preference of the ones I’ve completed:

Kenshin

Hideyoshi

Nobunaga/Ieyasu

Yukimura/Mitsunari

Masamune

Shingen

Final analysis: Is it worth playing this game? Heck, yeah! The characters are well written—even the 2 I don’t really care for if you read online other people love them—good overall story and plot. It does deal with the history of the period in a way, which I liked. But do me a favor, and don’t go look up the real people these characters are based on. It depressed me and squeaked me out in a few cases. All in all, I love this game and look forward to more routes!

#OtomeGames #IkemenSengoku #Kenshin #Hideyoshi #Nobunaga #Ieyasu #Yukimura #Mitsunari #Masamune #Shingen