meh, not enough blood

Otome isn't supposed to have blood.  It's supposed to have nice love stories and cool magic.

Oh yeah, that's the one where you're a musical instrument dating Charmie.

Haha very fun.

Viola's got some nice dresses.  And a nice intro about rising from the masses to this special school.  And yeah there are those scenes where you sing.

Ignoring tizio's... proclivities, this game is really cute! They have a bunch of animal fusions like beardogs and eaglemice and stuff, and they're not abominations at all - we don't talk about the mosquitobats, but most of them are adorable. And Viola has this thing where she launches into song and any nearby animals gather around her and start eating out of her hand. There's this one mean girl with a pet hummingbirdtrout that likes Viola better, and she makes the funniest face when her pet goes over to singing!Viola and accepts a treat. I really like the dev's attention to detail!

And the computer, let's not forget that wild AI computing with the villain.  Cuter than any of those animals.

shhh, don't slander my rhinodogs!

My parrotcats are way cooler than your rhinodogs!

The aesthetic is interesting. All of these fantasy elements, but I think it's secretly hard sf. There's this one book you can find that talks about why ships don't just crash into planets and kill everyone - the lightspeed limit gets more constraining if you're in a region of space with a lot of mass nearby. They had equations and everything.

Yeah nice setting if you like settings.  I dug into some of the econ one playthrough.  Believe it or not they had some real stuff there about trade between planets!  I think the devs like the setting more than the characters.

The prince's a way to feed you more setting info.  You're falling in love with the setting.

Who's Charmie?

Prince Marius.  The guy halff of us are fallung in lvoe with.

@fiction-the-science he's not THAT bad. sure he talks about the setting a lot, but that's because it's his job to take care of the people, and he wants to be a good prince. i'll admit the infodump about not!ramanujan and magical theory was a little embarrassing though. did we really need so many equations? he's an endearing nerd tho, i love him

@eelbat you got magicall theory?  Sorry 4 you!  I got histofies of all the nearbi villages!

@ohmydog wait what? how many versions of the infodump did the devs write??

@eelbat At least three.  I got interstellar trade.

Not saying hes BAD.  Just not as strong as the setting.  Even if he wants to stretch himself all over it like a charming dragon.

no, he's a cutie. im not playing for the setting. I play for the ROMANCE. and the weird animals of course :)

I started it up last night just to dive into Villarosa again.  Wish Id grown up there myself like Viola.

Was even thinkin of throwin the run - let that Lunetta have him long as I saw the world - till she hurt the critters singing my song with me.  Didnt wanna let Marius end up with someone whod do that.

@gryf-fun wait she did THAT?  I nefer saw she was THAT evil!

She literally kicks the dog! Beardog, whatever. It's after she starts to go nuts from jealousy, but she only gets this bad if you agree to hack her exam grades as a distraction in Act 1, and then lie to Marius and say she made that reporter harass Alessia on purpose instead of from carelessness. (To get the exam grade option you have to befriend Enzo, he's a hacker.)

@yellow-coward How'd you manage to hack any grades without that horrid Selvya AI finding you out right away?  And then hacking your own grades back again?

You're hacking the teacher's airgapped tablet through a physical connection. If you change her A grade to a C or a D, Lunetta never figures out she was hacked. If you make it an F, she talks to the teacher, figures it out, and decides this other girl with good computer skills must have done it. Felice, I think her name was. Then she trashes Felice's possessions and uses an illusion to humiliate her to her crush so she leaves the school in shame.

@yellow-coward oh there it was; I only figured out how to hack airgapped tablets later, after school was already on vacation and Selvya had already planted backdoors.

What's the weirdest route you all have gotten?

I got one where we I got us all really into the space races.  I got... I think five of them by the end?  And one of them was longer-range and Lunetta and I ended up trying to wreck each other's ships around that Moon of Ascension.  And that must've triggered something, because then she kept plotting to get her and Charmie out there again.  Not sure what those ritual components were for... surely the programmers weren't really planning to have her ascend to become a god?  I thought of accusing her of that, but nobody believed it when I tried to hint at it, so I ended up busting her for stealing some of the components instead.

The fuck?? You should write up a guide to getting that route. By the way, anyone else think it's weird how much detail this game has? I thought it was from a small studio.

Huh, one time when I extorted/hacked a datadump from that Selvya AI, there were some notes on the Moon of Ascension.  Let's see... yeah, someone posted them here on the wiki.  Not really detailed, too many question marks, but makes me wonder whether the programmers had something more than hints about it...

@yellow-coward Yeah!  Loev the detaul!  They must'fe been worink on ti 4 a while!

I'm going to send some of the cutscenes with equations to a friend of mine who's a physicist. I wouldn't be shocked if they're not just random gibberish. It seems like nothing in the game is random gibberish.

@fauntasee Thanks! Maybe they'll add more in later updates, or maybe there's a hidden route none of us have found yet;)

Yeah, they love their setting!  Checked out some of the types-of-star references from the interstellar trade cutscene, and yeah, it's all real.

I wish!  All real except the magic!

It's neat how you can just walk up to any character and get a detailed backstory (though some of it is gated on your reputation points), but they don't force it down your throat. Also, all the course material is fleshed out?? You can't read every book in the library but every class textbook is actually written.

The game is already like 40gb.. I thought it was poor optimization but i think it's the sheer level of detail. 

@yellow-coward - Huh, every class?  Might try to learn stats that way😆!  Or do they not let you take all of them?

Oh, we're talking about Roses of Villarosa!

I don't do otome games, but I was watching Villarosa over my girlfriend's shoulder this last week, and it's not bad!  Might even do it myself sometime! (Yeah, even without waiting for a genderflipping mod.)

Biggest thing is, I respect how they made a serious attempt at a utopian setting, and they take it seriously.  No hints at things falling apart here.  (Girlfriend nudges me to add, "unless you tear them down yourself."  Haven't seen that route yet - any of you have?)

They have to make some compromises to let the villainess be villainous, but it's not just a spiel about giving people room to achieve things - it really feels like it's real and Villarosa would catch things if they go too far.  But the game draws you in to where the "not yet too far" actually matters!

@elephantasm The only way I've found to switch classes is by taking the high kindness rep ruthless route and following the instructions here (I apologize for the writhing maggot video, but you can ignore it). But you can read from Marius's bookshelf if you want bonus textbooks, and IIRC he's in stats. If you try to learn statistics from an otome game please let us know how it goes!

king-art-os: A lot of it leans on divine and magical solutions for problems, but I think the herb they have for birth control is literally just sylphium, an IRL plant that was overharvested to extinction.

The magic stuff is less elegant but at least they think through the implications. Like the divinely-mandated third places leading to a higher trust society. They do rely a lot on divine aid though, which is ominous with the hints you get that the Gods want to retire...

Also, cool that no one gets sick under normal circumstances, and old age is much less crippling than in reality. Not many symptoms of decline, but you can do a ritual to learn how much longer you have left.

And if you do the ritual, it's counting down to the end of the game, right?

[padme-stare.jpg] Right?

No, really, I tried it once and it failed and threw an infinity.  Really.  One and only hole I've seen in the game.  Anyone else tried it?  I was on the "standard" nice non-ruthless route, fwiw.

sure it wasn't an 8, oriented weirdly?

Hah, now I'm wishing I'd logged off after eight hours or something just to make it work!

@yellow-coward, might try that!  Every girl in Villarosa knows reading the guy's textbooks is a fast way to his heart! 😆

Itt'd work on charmie. Maybe he's the most autistic (pos) worldbuilder's self-insert.

Told you, you're falling in love with the setting.

@fiction-the-science, wjat was that you ssid abut Charmie in that othwr thread?

My physicist friend has been totally nerdsniped by the equations I sent. Apparently it's quantum relativity stuff but the spacetime curvature is wrong, and he keeps poking at it trying to see why complex matter shouldn't exist but it continues to hold together. Another victim of the setting's wiles I guess, but now I'm guessing which reclusive millionaire hired a think tank of scientists for the game.

Huh, the spacetime curvature is wrong?  Wrong in a way that might have anything to do with hyperspace and hyperspace portals?  Or maybe that song from that fun festival about the future (what's the name?) where you sing about how the universe will keep growing forever?

! I forgot about that. I'm going to compile a list of any cutscenes that might have anything to do with spacetime curvature and send them over.

Has anyone made ebooks of the textbooks yet? I don't want to screenshot each page and wait through the slightly-too-slow page turning animation.

Hmm... the wiki's got two of the textbooks...

Huh, what's that?  They say you can actually read some pages of that one book in the back of that classroom too, and it's actually different between some of the routes?

Oh yeah routes!  Anyone got any other hidden bits that differ?  Or even a list of all those different routes?  I wantto play them all!

@gryf-fun Whag riutes hafe you gitten so far?  Djd you see tjat frurndship-all-aroind one?

the librarian, beatrice, has different backstories depending on your route. i think she's a compulsive liar - her mom died in a boating accident, and is alive in Mauritia and beatrice visits monthly, and her mom is a criminal

Or maybe the librarian's mom reincarnated.  Not that I ever talked much to her, but the game mentions reincarnation just enough I keep thinking they've got to have some content about that gated somewhere.

But yeah, I've been visiting different villages with Charmie, though no idea yet whether it's the different routes or an RNG.  Though I'm trying now to check the closest moons - I found some differences there once when I was extorting stuff from the Selvya AI; not sure what though.

ohh i didn't think of that.

I dont think the villages are rng, ive played from this one save at least five times and the village he takes us to is consistent

Girlfriend was on the vicious-social-fighting route yesterday - no idea if she's coming back to that save; she says she doesn't know how to get out of the disaster - and it seems some of the school's passageways have changed.  And the cake shop in the town next door started making more savory than sweet flavors....

I'm wondering if it goes beyond social fighting?  There were some hints.  Like that knife Lunetta let us see.

lunetta gets worse the worse you are, right? someone - not me! - needs to try the route where you always escalate the conflict

I tried escalating several times.  She kept getting worse and worse back, but I kept losing before I could really see how far she was willing to go.

so the game also gets harder if you push her enough?

Oh yeah, she's good at plotting.  Until you really get Charmie on your side, or subvert her AI, to help you get through them.  But if you're being worse, it's really hard to get Charmie on your side... till you've actually defeated Lunetta, I hear?  Haven't tried yet getting the AI first.

i almost want to try the evil route now

If you try it make sure to butter up teh teachers first and be visibly nice to everyone.  Whats a utopia without still some biases?

I'm making this my mission! What happens when you torture Lunetta as much as possible?

@fiction-the-science, as I was telling my girlfriend yesterday, the utopia needs some compromises for the plot.  And this's a realistic compromise - if most people grew up in utopia and are acting like it, the teachers aren't going to be expecting secret vicious undercutting!  

Also, @guilding-lilies, how do you actually subvert Selvya?

Oh heres this thread youre talking about @king-art-os!

Like I said those hints seem like youre enslaving not subverting her.  Not goinna do that with that rascally Selvya.

Made a new wiki page, Routes. Also if anyone wants to add a branching timeline I think we could use a good infographic.