Otome games are a genre of game I didn’t really think about or realize existed until this year (more or less). After playing a few dating sim games and Phoenix Wright with my girlfriend in the living room, having fun mocking the story, or doing voices for characters, it suddenly became one of our favorite things to do in the evening. But dating games like Being a DIK are only so long and definitely geared more toward a male audience. What about games for her? I didn’t have to ponder this question long, because Steam immediately answered that question for me. As if Steam was role-playing as the FBI and listening to my private conversations without my approval, Steam miraculously had a bunch of Otome games on sale as soon as I had a demand for them. I quickly looked through a few curator lists and added some recommended ones to my library. Thus, the first one we decided to play of the bunch was Nightshade.

I expect my review of this game to be relatively short in comparison to other video game reviews. This is partly due to the fact that there aren’t any in-depth mechanics to learn or explain. This is also due to the fact that we only played one scenario in a game that has multiple scenarios to try. She was mostly interested in one character, so we have not really found another that suits her interests enough to “cheat” on him yet, but maybe one day we can revisit it and see how different the experience is.

The Short of It

What I Played

• One full playthrough of the story via Chojiro’s path

Pros

• Japanese voice acting is rather good, even though we were giving the characters our own impressions of their personalities when we read the lines aloud

• Translation to English is quite good; very few grammatical errors

• Plot manages not to drag and is also willing to have some dark outcomes

Cons

• Everything is explained at the end in an exposition dump, leading me to suspect that there’s not too much of a difference in the story, regardless of whom you choose as your lover

• Plot takes up more of the attention than the romance, which wouldn’t be a problem if Nightshade was a slightly longer game

• Romantic options all have something of an awkward detail tied to them

The Rest of It

Since this is a visual novel game with no real gameplay mechanics, the focus is the story. For that reason, I have no intention of spoiling the events of Nightshade in a review for those who would be interested. So, I’ll keep my synopsis and details vague.

Nightshade’s story opens with a brief bit of exposition about how the country of Japan during the Sengoku period was torn apart by war, with noble houses and their loyal ninja clans against each other. One man eventually managed to reunite the country under a single banner, with many of the warring ninja clans forming a truce as well.

You play as the daughter of the Koga ninja clan’s leader, who goes out on her first mission with her friends and comrades. You’re the typical timid personality type who is hoping to do a good job and impress everyone with your Ninjutsu talents, earning yourself a permanent spot on the team. Based on my limited experience with other stories like this and based on what my girlfriend has told me, it’s uncommon for the protagonist to be a very capable individual in these games. Having this be a ninja romance in which your character is a novice ninja with spectacular talents is a good, simple way of making the protagonist not feel like the completely useless blank-slate character type designed specifically for players to project their emotions and personality into her, while all the dudes compete for her attention. She’s still relatively meek in terms of her personality, but she’s not completely helpless throughout the story.

The mission starts out simple enough as a task of flushing out a thief in the nearby city that is causing a ruckus. You choose which of the characters you want to work with and the areas of the city to explore on your mission, making various choices along the way to determine which guy you want to pursue romantically. Looking back, it doesn’t take that long for the big turning point in the story to occur. However, you should have found the guy you want to join you on your journey by then—my girlfriend certainly did. Once that happens and the plot takes a turn, it quickly becomes a story of intrigue, betrayal, and, of course, romance.

Of the potential list of boyfriends you can have in Nightshade, the options include:

• The childhood friend who never grew up and doesn’t seem to understand boundaries

• The simp who wants to suck your toes and wash your feet, in no particular order

• The charmingly optimistic bad-boy who likes getting into trouble and needs to cut his stupid rat-tail

• The mysterious and brooding ninja from another clan who believes in honor and loyalty and who has BDE

• The quiet, damaged guy who doesn’t talk much and will likely choke you during sex (who is also your cousin, for some reason, but you should ignore that detail at all times)

Obviously, I’ve inserted some of my own opinion of the characters into those archetype descriptions, but I’m sure you should be able to figure out which one you would prefer for yourself, even if you disagree with my assessment. I only have gone down the path of the character that my girlfriend found attractive so far—ignoring that ‘cousin’ detail at every turn in the dialogue. So, we haven’t seen if the story drastically deviates by the end if you choose someone else. There is plenty of room for it to shift in one direction or another, but with how everything is wrapped up by the end, it seems unlikely that the story’s end is that different. (If I’m wrong, please let me know.)

All that being said, the story was pretty interesting. I was engaged in the struggles of the protagonist and her journey was more harrowing than you would expect from a simple dating simulator. The quality of writing and presentation helped add to that as well. Having just started another Otome game, I realized how good Nightshade’s translation and presentation were by comparison. The voice acting is quite good. There were very few translation errors. There were also very few moments in which the story dragged or felt like it was recapping information too much.

In addition to all the writing and voice acting, the art was quite good as well. Sure, there were only stills of the characters, but the backgrounds and characters themselves were well-detailed in a way that helped Nightshade’s appeal. It would have been nice to get a few more images to match some of the text descriptions, especially during the climax, but it was a good-looking game, regardless.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

As the first real Otome game I’ve played (Dream Daddy doesn’t quite count), Nightshade was a pretty good experience for what my girlfriend and I wanted. The story was entertaining, the art was commendable, and the surprisingly dark turns everything takes made for an interesting plot. Sure, the characters are archetypes, but I don’t hold that against this genre as much. The player is expected to make their choice for whom to woo early on, and archetypes are well-suited for that task. If you’re into Otome games, or you wanted more romance in Naruto, or maybe never watched Naruto because you didn’t want to be a ninja-nerd but still secretly like ninjas and romance, Nightshade might be worth your while.