Hakuoki: Edo Blossoms is a visual novel otome game and a direct sequel to last year’s Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds. The main character Chizuru Yukimura is still trying to find her missing father and is still hanging out with the Shinsengumi, a military police unit made up of hunky ronin. The game tells of a time between the waning fragments of the old Shogunate and the rising tide of Imperial Nationalism.
When you start the game you can select one of thirteen different routes and each one has a very different story to experience. Each route has a unique prologue tailored towards what happened between you and your chosen man in the previous game. Whilst this does a reasonable job of summing up what happened in past events, we’d still recommend that you start off with Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds before diving into this one.
Hakuoki is a visual novel with the main aim being to develop a relationship with one of the many eligible bachelors, but it's so much more than just a romance game. It’s set in a fascinating era of Japanese history, with members of the Shinsengumi struggling to uphold their principles in a period of rapid social change.
Japan is beginning to open it’s doors to the rest of the world and this brings with it plenty of new things, ranging from simple changes like Western fashions beginning to make an appearance through to more complex things involving science, military tactics, politics, and social attitudes. It’s against this backdrop of turmoil that our protagonist and their chosen love are trying to survive and it means that they are influenced by much more than just their love for each other.
That said, the game isn’t completely historically accurate and there is a healthy dollop of fantasy thrown in to the mix with things like demons making an appearance. However, the historical and fantasy elements actually gel together quite well to create a really compelling story with plenty of political intrigue, bloody battles, and, obviously, a lot of romance.
Regardless of which good-looking man you choose to pursue, your journey is likely to be an exhilarating one. All of the men have their own unique personality and narratives, but there are common plot points that take place in each story. Viewing these from different perspectives will add layers and depth to the narrative as you play. At certain points in the story, you’ll get to make dialogue choices and these will drastically influence how events pan out. There are a lot of different endings to experience, and the game is interesting enough that you'll want to see them all.
As this is a visual novel, all the typical things you’d expect to be able to do are here, such as being able to skip text you’ve already read, which is very handy when you’re replaying storylines to see different endings. You can also rewind time, so if you pick a dialogue option which doesn’t give the response you wanted, then you can jump back and pick a different option to try to get a different reaction.
As for visuals, the game looks beautiful on the PS Vita. The backgrounds are detailed and do a great job of showing off a historical Japan, while the character designs are appealing with plenty of alluring and charming looking men. The voice acting is all in Japanese and it’s extremely well done. All the voice actors used fit the characters they’re playing perfectly, and they really bring them to life. The game's music also deserves plenty of praise as it produces an incredibly fitting ambience and really aids your immersion in the story.
Conclusion
Hakuoki: Edo Blossoms offers a very satisfying conclusion to the Hakuoki tale. Boasting a fascinating narrative filled with bloody battles and political intrigue that's topped off with plenty of alluring characters and romances that feel deep and meaningful, this is an easy game to recommend to those who love a good story.
Comments (15)
looks at third image GINTOKI?!?
I like how this review differs from that of the first one. A guy wrote it, and was proud to avoid the different romance options, while this review enjoys the game for what it is lol being written by a woman.
@Jaz007 It constantly amazes me how people can be so icky about such things. Probably why Lara Croft has never had a love interest outside of the big screen.
@Jaz007 Our review of the first one was also written by a woman. Unless you're getting mixed up with another site?
@ShogunRok I was thinking of the first game on the PS3: Stories of the Shinsengumi. Didn’t realize there was another one.
@RogerRoger I’m the same way, I’m not about the otome romance some guys myself. I don’t think it’s wrong that it’s there, it’s just not for me as a guy personally. (Nothing wrong if another guy wants to play it though.)
@Jaz007 I guess it all depends on where you draw the line in gaming immersion.
If you're playing as a female character, are you only allowing her to do things you, the male player, are comfortable with, shaping her potential personality with your own? Or are you giving yourself over to supporting and executing the personality of the fictional heroine and using your gameplay skills to allow her story to unfold?
In simpler terms, when you reach a section of platforming gameplay, for example, do you say to yourself "I've got to get my character over to that door!" or do you simply say "I've got to get over to that door!" It's a very unique situation that books, films and television simply don't allow for. If this game were instead an anime film, perhaps, it'd likely show romance whether you wanted it to or not. It's incredible that this crisis of audience self-identification should only exist in gaming, an art form consumed primarily by straight males (or so we've historically been led to believe).
Chizuru Yukimura is obviously open to the idea of dating guys, because she has the in-game option to, and character paths carefully crafted for each potential romance... and yet, for many players like yourself, she'll remain single, a large chunk of her story untold and a large chunk of the game's content unseen. I'm glad this review explored the game to the full, to be able to provide as much opinion and feedback as possible.
This really isn't a criticism, by the way, despite perhaps sounding like one (apologies in advance if it does). Another unique beauty of games is that the player can play them however they want to (within the parameters for completion). So, best of luck avoiding all those handsome men!
@RogerRoger @Jaz007 I always find it a little amusing when men feel slightly awkward about playing otome games. I don't feel awkward playing videogames or watching movies from a male characters perspective, so I feel like guys should be able to enjoy games from a female characters perspective as well! I do get that romance isn't to everyone's tastes though
@Jenny_Jones Bang on. That'll teach me to write comments at 0200 hrs. because you've said in a single paragraph what I was driving at with my rambling reply.
My best friend is a gamer who happens to also be female, and she's been overjoyed at the amount of characters and storylines that she's finally been able to relate to in recent years, way more than she was ever able to with Nathan Drake or Solid Snake. Before, it was pretty much Lara or bust, but we're really starting to see more female protagonists nowadays. One of the best examples is Horizon: Zero Dawn, a game where nobody seemed to have a problem playing as Aloy... but then again, there's no romance with men in her story. Unfortunately, straight men would seem to be the most insecure when it comes to acknowledging understanding different forms of emotional and physical relationship, whereas women are far more empathetic (that's a generalisation, for which I apologise, but it's one supported by a lot of cultural evidence and personal experience).
When I first played Mass Effect, I played as "my" Shepard, a guy named Jason, and he made the choices (including in matters of romance) that I would have in the same situation. He was cold towards the characters I didn't like, and made fast friends with those I did. When I played it again, I created a female Shepard named Kathryn and based her on one of my favourite fictional characters of all time, Captain Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager. Her personality and choices were totally different from "my" Jason Shepard for two reasons: firstly because I wanted to see the other narrative paths available in the game which I hadn't explored myself, and secondly because I wanted to experience things from a different perspective and grow to love a brilliant protagonist all over again, for different reasons than before. Playing as Kathryn made me change my opinion on certain secondary characters and some of the major events in the story, and she initiated and explored romances that I'd never, ever personally pursue, in some cases with characters I couldn't even stand.
Actually, that reminds me of a more recent example, namely Life is Strange: Before the Storm (spoiler warning).
When given the option to admit romantic feelings for Rachel, I personally would have never dreamed of doing so, because I disliked the character at that point in the story... but Chloe could, and it was very evident (from facial animations and the linear dialogue between player choices) that Chloe did have feelings for Rachel, and so I went for the romance and that's how it played out. After all, it's Chloe's story. I'm not Chloe, but I'm trying to relate to her and understand her character better, and I felt like I did that by picking to pursue the romance with Rachel.
Your review of Hakuoki and this subsequent discussion has genuinely gotten me curious about this franchise and "type" of game, so thank you. I put "type" in quote marks because I get the sneaking suspicion that if this were a game about a man seeking romance with women, it'd simply be called "a game", but I guess we need special classification for things that aren't the dudebro shooters that made gaming what it is today. It made me laugh when I did a bit of Google research and the first three descriptions of otome said something along the lines of "these games are designed for women, but men can play them too"... well thanks, Google! I'm glad you've given me permission!
I suppose all this is what I get for being a diplomat. It's probably why I also type out dangerously-off-topic essays like this, for which I apologise profusely.
@RogerRoger Samus Was a pioneer as one of the first female MC's in a game, besides Ms. Pac-Man I can't think of any others earlier outside of JRPG's.
@Jenny_Jones @RogerRoger I don’t feel awkward playing as a girl in general, I love Metroid and whatnot. I am able to feel a difference sometimes in the same way that @RogerRoger’s friends feels from playing as a girl, her own gender. But my thing with the Otome romance is it’s designed more for one gender than another. Recently I was watching some J-pop videos, and one thing that strikes me is how geared they are toward one gender. The girl groups are very much for a male audience first and foremost, and the boy bands for girls. It took me a few trys to find a boy band one I could get into because of that.
Now take regular male and female masuicans. Like Linkin and Cary Underwood, a gender isn’t really targeted. It’s just music. That’s the difference between say this and Metroid. I’ve played a visual novel I lied, and it had attractive girls. Reverse that to be handsome guys, and I’m getting lost on the appeal of the alluringly and strong men.
Short version. This targets a specific gender a lot more than something like Metroid. I’m not part of that target.
Though I do wonder what a girl what think playing If My Heart hd Wings as the protagonist thinks about how the girls are hot. In a darkly realistic manner. (That sounds worse than it is though lol.)
And guys never call each other cute in the same ways girls due, so there that too.
@RogerRoger And none taken! Interesting thoughts.
I’ve rambled enough lol.
This review feels less like a review of "Hakuouki: Edo Blossoms" as it does a general description of the otome game genre (a subsection of the larger visual novel genre). The only actual game review here is mostly a quick wikipedia skim could tell you about the series' premise in general.
I'd like to say that while this review is accurate, Edo Blossoms thus far (2 routes in - both not in the original) has taken a steep nosedive in writing quality. Hakouki franchise has always given us consistently good quality writing, but of the two entirely new content routes I've played so far, one was a flaming dumpster fire from start to just before finish and the other ended so abruptly it felt as though they'd chopped an entire chapter and skipped to a confusing epilogue that answered nothing. Which is very un-Hakuouki in style. Kyoto Winds was consistent with past entries in the series, which is why I'm doubly disappointed with Edo Blossoms so far. It's probably got a similar issue to Bad Apple Wars (2017 otome game, also for Vita), which was different writers for each route with notable variance in quality.
That said, I'm not giving up on it yet. It's worth buying over any of the cheaper originals just for the huge QoL updates to the Record of Service mechanic (basically lets you jump to the beginning of any cleared chapter - beginning in Kyoto Winds, you could adjust the romance + corruption level of that route's character) and the original routes could only be improved -hopefully, at least- with the integration of scenes formerly exclusive to the PS3-only fandisc.
@Jaz007 Visual novels are definitely one of the gaming genres with a huge gender split. Eroge/moege/straight male-oriented VNs tend to be very very written (and drawn) with a straight male audience in mind, likely because they don't expect that girls will want to play it. Likewise, female-oriented VNs tend to be romance/drama-heavy and chock full of hot guys because that's what the devs think girls want. As someone with experience on both sides the only thing I can say confidently is, well, gender roles, man. Straight male-oriented VNs tend to sacrifice characterization + plot/writing quality/execution for sexual teasers and wish fulfillment. Straight female-oriented VNs tend to sacrifice the same stuff for the sake of sappy romantic good endings. Screw good writing/character development, we have wish fulfillment that doesn't make sense in context!
This, I think, is what VNs as a whole suffer from - being targeted too heavily at either straight guys or straight girls. (And yeah, yaoi and yuri games are definitely targeted at the usually-straight opposite sex of the game's cast.) The only time you get consistent hits from multiple devs are when it's a VN where romance isn't the point, like Lux-Pain and the Zero Escape trilogy.
Actually, I'm now fired up on this topic, but comments section isn't the right place to do so at length, I don't think. Feel free to hmu on discord??
@Jaz007 I do think this seems to be more of a male issue. While I haven’t played If My Heart Had Wings I don’t think I’d have any issues playing a romance game from a male perspective. I enjoy reading books, many of which have male protagonists (and so have romance/sex scenes from a man’s perspective). I enjoy it if it’s well written, regardless of whose point of view it’s from.
Maybe, as @RogerRoger says, this is due to women being more empathetic and so being more able (or willing) to see things from viewpoints that are not the same as their own. Although I would argue that maybe this is also partially due to women being more used to experiencing things from a man’s point of view. Many popular games & movies have male protagonists (or female protagonists that could easily be swapped for men). As we’ve grown up with these games & movies, playing or watching something from a male perspective (including romance/sex) is not something we’d instantly think of as being exclusively for men and we probably even consider many of these things to be fairly gender neutral.
I guess my point is that I feel like marketing these kinds of games as “made for women” is doing a disservice both to men and the games themselves.
I’ve very much enjoyed this discussion, it’s been fun
@geckcellent sorry to hear you weren't so keen on my review. I try not to give in-depth analysis on character routes as I don't want to give out spoilers. Also it would end up being a pretty long review if I commented on every single character route! I take your points on board though
@Jenny_Jones Thank you for (again) effectively summarising my word salad and making a key point in a very clear way.
It's a tricky subject for me to try and elucidate, simply because I'm a man and would never presume to speak on behalf of a woman or all women, but there really haven't been any substantive options in games to explore romance with male NPCs and I wish there were, at the very least for narrative diversity. I really do think a lot of this comes down to the point I mentioned earlier, whereby if this were a game with a male protagonist romancing women, it would simply be called "a game" rather than classified under a specialist term to help publicly define its target audience demographic and shoo others away from it (and don't even get me started on the restrictive terminology that it would be buried under if it were a male protagonist seeking romance with other males, whereas I think there wouldn't be any fuss if it were a woman romancing other women).
@ReanSchwarzer7 Good point, I'd forgotten all about Samus (that's what you get for being a Sony fanboy). But I'm also reminded of how the first game's manual referred to Samus as "he" and that you'd only see her take off her helmet if you achieved the most challenging win conditions, almost as if the game wanted to hide Samus' gender from most people (and then, if you completed it even faster, she appeared in a bikini, rather undermining the whole point of revealing this kick-butt space warrior as a kick-butt female space warrior). Indeed, one of the most searched-for questions relating to Samus on Google is still, to this day, "Is Samus really a girl?" as though disbelieving what their friends told them in the playground back in the 80s and 90s.
@Jenny_Jones
That is true, haha. Implying that was not my intention - sorry! I feel like in general, while still avoiding spoilers, a review should include more than the basic premise of the game (eg what the game dev's website would tell you), my point was more this review had a lot of that (which is good! otherwise new players would be quite lost I'd think) while not mentioning anything that would set it apart from the original game formula (eg new/improved mechanics, thoughts on the quality, cost/quantity ratio of new content, and such). Hakuouki as a franchise also makes a point of doing new OP/EDs for each release, so some fans judge that too haha.
That said I'd also like to amend my initial judgement to include one new route (I've now cleared all the new routes sans one) that blew me out of the water. Clearly we are seeing a similar issue to Bad Apple Wars, for better or worse |D With I think, 12? routes now, half of them new in addition to old routes being reconfigured slightly, the writing team has gotten bigger (or hopefully not, a bit lazy), leading to some rather inconsistent route quality.
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