A game for idiots by idiots, starring an idiot as the main character. Dream C Club Portable
It would be one thing if the MC was a rich executive, but he works at a convenience store, making about ¥20,000 (~$260 USD) a week. Since all that money is at his disposal, I’m guessing he lives at home, sponging off mommy and daddy. And yet he’s not ashamed to go out every weekend and waste that money on overpriced drinks and inane conversations with brainless bimbos. What a disgrace to the human species.
Let’s see, $260 a week. All work and no play and all that, let’s give him $60 a week to play around with. That’s $200 a week left over. Excluding sick days and public holidays, let’s assume he works 50 weeks a year. If he saved that $200, he’d save $10,000 every year. In 10 years he’d have $100,000 in the bank. Now that’s hardly Bill Gates material, but how many 30-35 year olds do you know with $100,000 at their ready disposal? And that’s assuming he just tosses it in an account with no interest, makes no investments, buys no bonds, nothing. Not bad for a bumming mooch, yeah?
But nooo, instead he goes out every weekend to a hostess bar. A hostess bar that’s all about pretty girls ripping you off with $15 glasses of beer while chattering pointlessly away. There are 8 different girls in the game that you can have attend to you, and they’re all working in the bar for different reasons. You know, like how strippers always have some “reason” for stripping, they never go “‘Cos I’m a skanky ho”. Yeah baby, whatever you say. But I digress.
It’s not real money, so I wouldn’t be getting worked up if MC was squandering it on something fun. But Dream Club Portable isn’t even any good! As you can see from the chart on the left, the girls aren’t much to look at. Conversations with them consist of the MC macking on them with the cheesiest pickup lines ever while they struggle valiantly to conceal their utter disdain for him. I know exactly how they feel too.
Apart from chatting, you’re also forced to buy drinks for yourself and your chosen hostess, and the more you can get her to drink, the greater her affection for you grows. The game even measures your capacity for alcohol. Now at 35 you’ll be broke and have a wonky liver. Wonderful.
So anyway, you work all week, then at the weekend you go to the hostess bar, chat with a girl, waste money on drinks, maybe get her to sing you a song on karaoke, then you leave. Repeat the cycle the next week. And again the next week. And again the next week. And again and again and again for one whole in-game year. It would be quite the formidable feat if DCP managed to keep the chat topics fresh and new from beginning to end, but since I quit after one month, I will never know.
Apparently you can learn more about a girl and help her work through her troubles. For example one of the floozies claims she’s training to be a pro bowler (yeah right), so you’ll probably support her till she fulfills her dream. So there’s a story mode of sorts, but the MC is a pervert and a loser, and the girls can’t be that bright if hostessing is the only way they can pay their bills, so I’m giving it a miss anyway. Next please!
…there’s an otome game equivalent for this… called Last Escort, and there are 3 games out in the series. They did try to give the heroine a legitimate excuse for going to a host club (at least, in the one I played).
A legitimate excuse for going to a host club? Let me guess, she’s searching for her missing dad. She’s a spy for a rival host club. Or she’s been cursed, and if she doesn’t go there she’ll die. I vote d) All of the above.
You guessed correctly. She’s doing research for a rival host club…
Cool. See, that’s a million times better than a basement-dwelling freeter wasting his meager salary on random bimbos.