I have so many otome games on my To Play list that if I don’t start playing them soon I’ll soon be left with nothing but otome games to play. The sooner I start clearing them away, the better. First up: Hanayaka nari Waga Ichizoku, brought to you by Idea Factory and Vingt-et-Un Systems, the same team that brought us Kanuchi: Futatsu no Tsubasa. It seems like Vingt-et-Un Systems specializes in otome games with gameplay – or at least they did, before they went belly up – so I’ll make their stuff a priority where possible.

First the story. Our main character, Haru-something (actually I named her Mama Kina, but she turned out to be an idiot undeserving of the name so I’m going to call her by the default name) takes up a job as a maid at the Miyanomori household. The rich, powerful and eccentric head of the household has 6 sons, each by a different mother, and has promised to retire within a year and give his fortune to whoever entertains him the most before the deadline. Of course it’s not so simple and there’s a lot of drama and violence going on within and without the family, but that’s not that I’m going to talk about today.

Today: gameplay. In this game’s case, stat-raising and simple questing. And some other optional stuff. It doesn’t have a lot going on, but it’s just enough to break the occasional monotony up. Your starting stats:

Unlike most stat-based dating sims, your love interests don’t care one bit about your specs. Haru is a mere servant and so far beneath the heirs that she could have 99 in every possible stat on the planet and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference. The real reason you need to work on stats is to pass the bi-monthly servant review, which checks your current stats against the bare minimum expected of a maid in the Miyanomori household, like so:

I haven’t failed one yet, but if this game is anything like Kanuchi you’ll probably get a Game Over if you fail the regular stat checks. It is extremely advisable to make a separate save at the start of every month for this and other reasons. Stat-raising itself is a basic affair, just pick your activity and watch it play out:

Most activities will raise one stat by a lot, lower another by a lot and give minor boosts in other stats (but they don’t tell you which). E.g. helping prepare for a dance party will raise your Loyalty and lower your Health, sweeping will boost your appearance but lower your dexterity, etc. By the way, helping to prepare for events is very important, because the head maid won’t let you attend any event you didn’t help prepare for. You’ll miss out on CGs and possibly route flags as well. And if anything important happened at the dance party/concert you’ll never hear the end of it. Pay attention when the head maid tells you there’s an event coming up.

That’s it for the forced gameplay. In contrast to all that mucking about, wooing the bishies is a simple matter of making the right choices in conversation. You can quick-save before choosing. That, and the game lets you know with little hearts when you’ve got things right so you can’t really fail. And you can check the affection rankings any time:

Affection at the start of the game and at my current position

The first 6 months are spent on the general route and then from October to March you get locked into the route of whichever guy you’ve been nice enough to. As you can see on the right I am well into Susumu-no-baka’s route right now. Getting there wasn’t easy though, because I accidentally went on Shige-no-baka’s route instead. I had a save at the start of September so I reloaded and blitzed through, being as mean to him as possible and STILL, no dice. I had another save from August. Reloaded, did everything, STILL got stuck with Shige. My last resort was my July save, where I refused to do a critical scene with him (the one with the geisha, you’ll know it when you see it) and finally got to hook up with Susumu instead. Even then I was dangerously close to going on Tadashi’s route (but he’ll get his, don’t you worry). Now you see why I tell you to save every month separately?

Other activities you can do: 1) Questing. Roam the mansion and the Ginza township looking for people who need help and then help them:

The yellow smiley means I’ve completed the quest and am about to claim my reward. I usually enjoy questing, but those ones in this game are rather annoying. Hunting for quests takes forever, especially since Haru walks really slowly (no running in the hallways!). I wish the quests would at least auto-complete so you don’t have to report back to the quester every time. But hey, all quests are  optional so I’m just doing it for the lols. The rewards you get are mainly used for Activity 2: Decorating your room.

I forgot to get a screenshot of the dump this place used to be before I turned my decorative charms on it. Activity 3: Collect pressed flowers. Because. Activity 4: Sneak into the master’s music room and listen to records you looted from suitcases scattered around the mansion. It would take too long to explain all the reasons why Haru is a terrible maid who should have been fired ages ago. Activity 5: Assemble a working camera from junk quest rewards and wander the rooms at midnight looking for ghosts to take photos of:

“Why?” What a silly question.

All these activities are 100% optional, but I keep doing them anyway. Hanayaka nari Waga Ichizoku is blessed with a fast-paced plot, snappy to-the-point dialogue and a cast of really interesting characters, but even that wouldn’t be enough to keep me going without occasional gameplay breaks. More likely I wouldn’t even be playing this if not for the promise of stuff to do, so despite my complaints I’d rather have them than not.

In story news, I am at the end of December and the game will end in March, so I should be done with at least one route soon. If it doesn’t end horribly I expect to raise this game very highly. But this is from Idea Factory so… yeah, I’m not holding my breath. We shall see.

Related posts:

Hanayaka nari Waga Ichizoku – Isami GET! Hanayaka nari Waga Ichizoku – Masashi GET! Hanayaka nari Waga Ichizoku – Final roundup Hanayaka Nari Waga Ichizoku Kinema Mosaic – Sometimes a bad sequel is worse than no sequel at all