Aksys Announces First Otome Game, ‘Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom’
This weekend’s Aksys panel at Anime Expo revealed some very exciting news for English-speaking otome game fans: after a series of surveys, they have decided to localize Idea Factory’s Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom for the PSP. This will mark the first “real” otome game to be released in English (Princess Debut for the DS doesn’t count), and it’s definitely a good choice–the Hakuoki series is by far one of the most popular of the genre in Japan.
What is an otome game, you ask? Well, VGW’s resident otome expert (that’s me, by the way), is here to enlighten you! Otome is the term most often used in Japan to refer to romance, or dating, simulation games that cater towards a female audience. In these games, you control the actions of the main character, who is always female, as she navigates through the game’s narrative, making decisions along the way that will ultimately decide which male suitor, out of a number of possible options, she will end up with at the end of the game. Many otome games, Hakuoki included, would be categorized as a subcategory of visual novels, which are a genre text-heavy games that often feature voiced dialogue and a number textual options for you to choose from to advance to plot in various ways.
Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom takes place at the end of the Edo period in Japan, and is rooted in actual historical events. As the shogunate begins to dissolve, a special police force, or shinsengumi, is founded to protect the city of Kyoto. You control Chizuru Yukimura, a young woman searching for her father in the town of Hakuoki. The shinsengumi are looking for him as well, and together they uncover the mystical secrets of the town. As Chizuru, you make decisions throughout the game that will effect your relationships with the various members of the shinsengumi, allowing you to change the course of the story and eventually leading to one of multiple endings. Will Chizuru find her father and the man of her dreams? It’s up to you!
Text-heavy visual novels have always been a hard sell for Western audiences, and as a result some fans are worried about the decision to localize Hakuoki over other otome games that feature more simulation gameplay. Hakuoki was probably chosen over other otome games due to the fact that it has very successful manga and anime adaptations, and it’s almost guaranteed that we will see them come to the US around the same time as the game’s release.
Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom will feature the option to choose subtitled Japanese dialogue or dubbed English dialogue, and will be released for the PSP as both a UMD and on the PSN sometime in the first quarter of 2012. The game probably won’t get much coverage with the PSP on its last legs pretty much everywhere except for Japan, but it is still a triumph for many who have been hoping that otome games would eventually make their way over to the US.
Anne will tell you whether or not you’re missing out when it comes to those pesky Japan-only releases. When she isn’t researching gender and sexuality in Japanese popular culture, she’s playing the quirkiest games she can get her hands on. Region locking is the bane of her existence.
I have to Say! I am pretty Happy with this!