Secrets of Me

Genre: Visual Novel

Players: 1

.

Review:

Secrets of Me is a Visual Novel released on PC in 2016 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2020. More specifically, this is an Otome game that has players taking the role of a young woman with severe self-image and self confidence issues who has just gotten extensive plastic surgery to please her fiancé, who she shortly afterwards discovers to be a con-man courting multiple women at once.

I’ll get right to it – Secrets of Me is a deeply ugly and troubling game. While on the surface it looks like an average example of an Otome game, and the premise is certainly interesting, this game is constantly sending disgusting message after disgusting message, both with how the protagonist thinks and behaves, as well as the way the men around her behave.

The protagonist feeling like she needs to get plastic surgery to be worthy of her fiance is already bad enough. However, she also constantly approaches everything with a mentality that she’s unworthy, and then corrects herself with the equally gross mentality that she’s somehow more worthy of being treated humanely now because she’s beautiful. However, even beyond that, in her desperation to please her fiance, the game begins with her getting talked into stalking him to learn more about him. No, the logic doesn’t make much sense, and yes, this sounds exactly like what a dangerously mentally disturbed person would do… and that’s the role players will be thrust into in this game. I can’t remember the last time I had to play a protagonist that I found this distasteful.

The guys in this game don’t fare much better – virtually all of them feel like this girl’s beauty permits them to touch her, grab her, force her into hugs (which apparently she’s never received before, despite being engaged?), force her into kissing them… and at the same time, dismissing her wishes time and time and time again, and repeatedly objectifying her.

“Oh! This cute girl got her clothes all dirty! You’ve lost most of your charm because of it too.”

“Like I said, you’re too close.” “This is just how close I like to be around other people.”

“She’s so cute, I couldn’t help it.”

“Then again, beautiful people are allowed to look stupid once in a while.”

“Oh? You’re playing hard to get? That’s so hot!”

And look, I get it – in real life, guys can be huge jerks, they can treat women like objects… but every single guy she comes across in this game acts like this. I kinda’ feel like they had to make her cheating fiance cartoonishly evil just so he would stand out as more despicable:

“No matter how much plastic surgery you get, there’s no saving your face. You were only worth something because of all your money.”

I’d be outraged if it wasn’t just so over-the-top it was… I dunno, almost funny?

The stalking element is not just a way for the protagonist to discover her fiance’s cheating, by the way – one of the romantic interests is the private detective who recommended she take that course of action, and regardless of which romantic interest you pursue in the game, stalking seems to play some part in the story. Great.

Again, as I have said in reviews of other games with an odd approach to the genre, I’m not here to tell other people what to be into or not be into. If you’re excited at the prospect of getting plastic surgery and suddenly being treated like an object by every guy around you and repeatedly touched and fondled by strangers without your permission… well, okay. To each their own. But I have to feel like this game’s handling of this topic matter is so ham-fisted, awkward, and frequently cringe-worthy, I have trouble imagining many finding this to be good fuel for fantasies even if this is something they dream about. Another issue here is that the localization is just plain bad, and even if the game was originally well-written (I highly doubt it), it reads very stilted and unnatural here, with extremely poor grammar.

I suppose at the very least, the 2D artwork for the characters’ portraits and backgrounds are good. The synthesized, repetitive music… not so much. Also, I will take a moment to note that both the gamepad controls and the touchscreen controls work well.

In my time reviewing games for eShopperReviews, I have reviewed a lot of Visual Novels, many of them Otome Visual Novels, and I don’t think I have ever been so repulsed by an Otome game. The terrible messages that Secrets of Me sends about physical beauty, about how stalking your love interest is somehow a good thing, and the ways the game treats as acceptable for men to treat women and talk to women … and with these topics all handled with the delicacy of a bull in a china shop, and then mangled further by a terrible localization… no. Just no.

tl;dr – Secrets of Me is a Visual Novel and Otome game about a woman who gets plastic surgery to please her fiance, only to discover he’s cheating, while her newfound beauty leads to countless other guys taking an interest in her. Perhaps fitting for this game’s topic matter, it looks nice enough on the surface, but it is absolutely ugly to its core when you look any deeper. The horrible messages this game sends about body image, proper dating practices, and how men should treat women is chilling. And the game’s poor writing and terrible localization just make things worse. I strain to think of a more repulsive Otome game I’ve played.

Grade: F

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