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Variable Barricade - Nintendo Switch

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Each of the love interests has a short after story. Since the main story focuses on how they got together, I expected the after story to give a window into Hibari and her partner’s life as a couple. I suppose it does, but not in the way I hoped. The after stories consist primarily of Hibari and her partner rehashing and reflecting on important scenes from the main route. I would have preferred to see new material here. As heir to the wealthy and prestigious Tojo family, Tojo Hibari (name changeable) lives a life ruled by appearances and expectations. She attends an elite girls’ school, and her schedule is meticulously managed by her personal butler Kasuga. Hibari has the best of everything–except relationships. People care about “the Tojo heir” rather than Hibari herself, and her relationship with her grandfather, the family head, is strained. Hibari keeps her guard up and trusts no one apart from Kasuga and her best friend Tsumugi. While Hibari imagines a future in which she’ll be married off to seal some corporate merger, it seems far off. That is until four dashing men show up outside her school roses in hand and shout: “Please marry me!”

Even if I didn’t like much of the drama, there’s still enjoyment to be found in the different romances. Nayuta’s is cute because he’s innocent in the sense that his heart is always in the right place, he’s just terminally dense. Shion’s presents an intriguing contrast between his and Hibari’s view of work and societal expectations. Shion won’t work but Hibari won’t relax. Is that any better? Ichiya ends up as an interesting take on the prince charming type, though unfortunately the good ending to his route is appalling. Taiga’s romance was enjoyable in a familiar way. The gruff exterior hiding a softer interior is something I’m used to from Western romcoms. The comedy is good, and there are a couple of running gags, like Nayuta’s masochistic kink and Ichiya’s overly sappy flirting, which sometimes can be a bit much. But, I did laugh a lot while playing and it did make for a fun read. Hibari is also prone to having a wild imagination, some of the scenarios she comes up with are so ridiculous, it’s laughable. This is definitely a game you don’t take too seriously all the time, and that’s okay, I like a game that knows when to laugh at itself.Our Variable Barricade walkthrough will ensure that you’re on the path to the best endings for each love interest, and obtaining their bad endings simply requires a re-run of their level 2 board, selecting successive REASON UP answers instead of ROMANCE UP. You’d think the rich girl’s suitors would be closer to her in status, but they’re actually poured straight from a box of “Oops! All Layabouts!” cereal. The love interests include Ichiya, a wannabe Casanova with a record of attempted marriage fraud; Taiga, a mischievous world traveler with a gambling addiction; Nayuta, a young man with a heart of gold and a bottomless pit of debt; and Shion, who’s highly perceptive but refuses to do even basic tasks and instead jumps from one sugar daddy to the next. This ragtag cast lays the foundations for one of the most hilarious sets of storylines in an otome game. Each scene makes full use of Variable Barricade’s pristine presentation to elicit enough laughs, gasps, and screeches to make you grateful your husbands are confined to the second dimension and can’t express concern over your reactions. The mysterious handsome men who appeared in front of Hibari, the only daughter of distinguished Toujou family, were the groom candidates who had been sent by her natural enemy, her grandfather. Variable Barricade’s love interest routes vary in their themes and the dynamic of the romance, but all have a similar structure. The opening is lighthearted and sees Hibari and her love interest grow closer. The humor continues to shine here. Banter is even better now that you actually like the cast, and Hibari’s tsundere tendencies lead to cute and funny misunderstandings. She also has fun girl talk with her friends Tsumugi and Noa. Tsumugi is a hopeless romantic eager for juicy morsels she can squeal over, while the more level-headed Noa serves as a practical mentor. The beginnings of the love interest routes were consistently my favorite portions of Variable Barricade and where I felt the game hit its stride.

I thought most of the side characters were great too. Kojiro is a top-tier dilf, will 100% date him!😤 Takamune is an adorable tsunderegrandpa, and Kazu was the unfortunate undateable side character that I’ll forever remain salty about. You just can’t cast Takuya Sato as this hot, eligible & capable bachelor, and not give him a route!😤 That aside, I enjoyed all the romance routes, and each love interest, as flawed as they are, had their own interesting stories to tell. I thought Taiga would end up as my oshi, but Ichiya pretty much stole the #1 spot after his that rollercoaster of a route!🤯 Taiga’s route in a nutshell! Variable Barricade has a fun phone app feature called, WHIS (it’s pretty much LINE). Characters from the game will occasionally send you text messages that you can respond to, though your responses don’t effect the story. It’s a fun feature, but seeing as it doesn’t really matter how you respond to texts it’s just kind of there to give you a little something extra to do between story events.

Its chess game motif interwoven into its gameplay mechanics

There isn’t much of Variable Barricade that I don’t love, but I’d say there are a few moments I experienced that were problematic. These generally involve the bad boy character, who especially in the early game drifts between aggressive and misogynistic pretty consistently. From forcing his helmet on my head so I’d “smell his musk” and refusing to tell me where he’d been because it was “man’s business, babe” I grew tired of him instantly. I understand that having varied suitors is important, but interacting with him was often disappointing. For the alternative endings titled Another End, we have marked in our walkthrough where you should save during the routes to more easily bag these endings by selecting REASON UP responses from thereon.

This is one of the biggest points in favour of the game. The character art and CGs are exceptional, and this is down to who is behind them: Kagerou Usuba, an artist probably best known for Wand of Fortune, Will o’ Wisp and Reine des Fleurs. Their work is widely beloved with good reason — and this is the first otome title with art by Usuba that we’ve seen localised. To say that seeing such high-profile and prolific artwork finally coming to the west is an exciting prospect is an understatement, and we hope to see Usuba’s work again in the future. Please, I’m asking nicely! The voice acting is likewise excellent. Hibari is even voiced, which is unusual for an otome protagonist, but welcome and adds a lot of expressiveness to her character. Her bashful whispers when she finally starts to open up and express her feelings simply pull at the heartstrings. The love interests are all well-acted too, from Nayuta’s machine-gun cadence to Ichiya’s schmaltzy chutzpah.Around the halfway mark of each route, Variable Barricade swerves sharply into melodrama. A romance story will always have some obstacle for the couple to overcome, but Variable Barricade works hard to make it as big as possible. There are lies, schemes, and reveals aplenty. It’s effective at delivering a big impactful conclusion at the end, but getting there can be a bit of a slog. Mayuzumi Shion: The trashiest bachelor. Shion is an animal-hating sugar baby who believes that his air plants have souls and can talk. He needs massive therapy, but instead he rather just be a bum. If you are a sugar mama or want a toxic trophy husband, then Shion is your doll/man. I’m still playing the game (I’ve completed the common route and I’m partway through my first route), so there won’t be any spoilers (yay!). These are just my first impressions of the game before I get in too deep~ Game Details Variable Barricade, the latest otome visual novel from Otomate and Idea Factory localized by Aksys Games, is a romantic comedy about a girl guarding her heart from a gang of overenthusiastic suitors. It’s a blast when it leans into humor and lighthearted fun but less effective when it veers into melodrama. My overall playtime for Variable Barricade was around 50-60 hours, give or take. I found the common route longer than I expected, and it took me three days to clear everything (RABI scenes included)before I started playing the individual routes. As for the LI routes, it took me around 4-5 hours to finish each one of them.

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