It’s 3 a.m. Do you know where your daughter is? If you live in the world of Duel Love
Failed parenting aside, Duel Love is way more fun than I’d expected when I picked it up. It fit all the things I like in an otome game: dialogue-based progression, some amount of gameplay in the form of mini-games, affection-based, not flag-based, an easy way to check affection, the art is a bit iffy but manageable and I found at least one person (Nagao-kun!) to pursue. I just got his ending, and it only took me 3 hours and 45 minutes.
The “Duel” part of the title refers to a school-sanctioned martial arts tournament that takes place in the school the MC just transferred into. After watching one match, MC barges her way into the locker room and insists on rubbing her hands all over him helping the fighter cool down. If she hangs out with the same guy long enough, one thing leads to another and she ends up barefoot and pregnant as his second, helping him train so he can win the tournament.
Nagao’s route
I almost went wrong early on and got too friendly with Yuma in chapter 1, but the game gave me enough time to recover and get Nagao’s love up to full by the Final Round. Nagao’s story is that he wants to be a vet and his family is against it. Since his dad runs a karate dojo, he wagers the right to choose his future on winning the tournament. As his story progresses, he learns to take responsibility for his own life and actions and fight because he wants to and because he enjoys it, not because anyone told him to. It’s a small, but significant amount of character development. He just opens up a little more and grows a pair, nothing radical. His personality doesn’t change 100%, just enough to be believable, which I like in such a short game.
The good
It’s nice and short, 3 hours for a full route without skipping any text. It’s probably finishable in 1 hour if you fast-forward duplicate text, which means I could do all 6/7 routes if I wanted to. The story moves fast, there aren’t that many choices and it’s not the end of the world if you pick wrong once or twice. I got the ending just fine without consulting a FAQ. If Nagao’s route is any indication, all the guys have good reasons for competing in the tournament and they get good character development as they go along. The voice-acting is sparse, but good. Apart from Yuma and the shota kid, I could see myself dating all the other guys, including the King. Especially the King.
The bad
I like that it’s short, but it’s a little light on content.
The mini-games are far too easy.
All the canon fodder in the earlier stages could have been done away with in favor letting the all major characters face each other.
I could also have done without “boy’s love” fanservice scenes like the screenshot on the right. The art-style isn’t hideous, but it’s not really my thing. These guys are too skinny to be MMA fighters.
And since I’m looking for stuff to complain about, I guess I wouldn’t have minded having some input in the battles. Make it a simple skill-based mini-game with increasing difficulty as the tournament progresses, and make the results of the previous mini-games actually matter.
As it is, all the battles are boring and play out the same way, especially in the latter half. Nagao attacks, he misses. The other guy attacks, he connects. He puts Nagao in a submission hold. I play a mini-game to get Nagao out. Nagao with a critical hit! It’s super effective! Enemy bad guy has fainted! *ding ding ding ding*
The utterly objectionable
Apart from the shower game, the mini-games aren’t quite as steamy or lascivious as the adverts and reviews made them out to be. Yeah the guys look naked, and they do blush and whimper and moan a bit as you touch them, but you’re not doing anything exciting to them. Just icing their bruises and applying bandages, that sort of thing. I think Tokimemo Girl’s Side is a lot more dangerous with whatever unspecified thing you do to the guys that makes them threaten to lose control. Ooh, scary. This might disappoint gamers who play Duel Love because of the prospect of making cute boys squirm. They’re not that cute and they don’t squirm that much.
What bothers me is how pushy the main character is. Damn girl, you need to learn that “No” means “No” and “Don’t touch me” means “Don’t touch me!” This is sexual harassment, plain and simple. How would you like it if some guy you weren’t even dating barged in while you were showering then started huffing and puffing because he couldn’t ogle your naked body through the steam? I was going to complain about a double standard in gaming and how a male character would never get away with half as much, then I remembered games like Dokidoki Majo Shinpan and Criminal Girls and just shook my head. Oh, Japan.
So yeah, the MC lets the game down by being so damned insistent. So damned self-righteous, like she’s doing them a favor by ignoring their express wishes and running roughshod over their objections. Years from now Nagao will be standing in divorce court going “I don’t know what happened, she just changed overnight…” No she didn’t, she was crazy all along. She’s a psycho ex-girlfriend in the making, you heard it here first.
The summation
Duel Love wasn’t as bad as I expected. It’s closer to decent, except for the main character. Nagao’s route was okay because he doesn’t mind her ministrations so much (he even invites her to join him in the shower), but I’d feel like a criminal if I forced my attentions on the other guys, so I’m not going to play any more. In the future I’ll have to choose my otome games with a little more care.
