Hakuoki: Memories of the Shinsengumi

Genre: Visual Novel

Players: 1

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Review:

The Hakuoki series is as long-running franchise of otome-style Visual Novel games that have only occasionally been released in the West. Hakuoki: Memories of Shinsengumi, the sixth mainline title in the series, is one of those few to release outside of Japan, coming to the US in 2013. This game takes place during a somewhat fictionalized version of Japan’s Edo period, and has players taking the role of a young woman disguised as a boy to search for her father, who finds herself caught in the middle of a deadly battle and subsequently forcefully taken to the headquarters of the titular Shinsengumi, secretive protectors of those loyal to the shogunate. There she must make choices to keep herself alive, discover the fate of her father, and woo one of the hot guys who forcefully kidnapped her and threatened to kill her.

Yeah, whoah, wait, what? The very notion that this is a dating game where your romantic options are not only the men who are acting as your captors, but a group of guys who are actively threatening to kill you makes this game’s decision to aim for “dating sim” to go well beyond “ill-advised” straight through “problematic” and “toxic”, and straight into “what the hell were they thinking!?” territory. That this game has a historical setting and a somewhat romanticized view of the titular Shinsengumi does not change that this is basically “Stockholm Syndrome: The Dating Game”. Yuck.

Even beyond this, the fact that this is a game so late in its series seems to have led to the game assuming the player is both familiar with the era, its politics, and its various factions, and also familiar with this series’ characters, as none of these really get a proper introduction. To the game’s credit, you are provided with an encyclopedia of terms to use as a resource, but it’s hardly a proper way to tell a story to require the player to constantly be seeking out information regarding who is who and what various terms and organizations are.

The game also goes quite a while between different options the player can make, with the entire story estimated to last roughly 9-10 hours for one playthrough (and the branching story inviting additional play-throughs). However, even in these choices, the player character’s agency seems somewhat limited, what with her being a weak, pathetic girl surrounded by big, strong men… yeah, shaking my head right now.

I suppose at the very least, the quality of the writing here seems decent enough, and the story is accompanied both by some nice anime-style artwork, a sufficient anime-style soundtrack, and some decent Japan-language voice acting for all voiced lines except the protagonist’s.

However, good presentation aside, I found Hakuoki: Memories of the Shinsengumi to be a pretty miserable experience as a Visual Novel. Not only is this a pretty gross choice of a story to turn into a dating game, but the game’s refusal to properly introduce its characters, setting, or major organizations involved in the story make it hard to get into. I don’t doubt that some will be able to look past this game’s flaws to enjoy its better qualities, but I think there are plenty of better Visual Novels that don’t have these flaws. Play those instead.

tl;dr – Hakuoki: Memories of the Shinsengumi is a Visual Novel set in the Edo period of Japan where players take the role of a young girl kidnapped by the Shinsengumi and trying to decide which one of her captors she wants to woo. It’s not bad enough that this story’s premise is gross and ill-befitting the otome genre, the game does a poor job introducing its setting and characters. And while the presentation is overall pretty good, you’re much better off finding another Visual Novel without this game’s nasty issues.

Grade: D+

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