Sentimental Trickster: Yaoi BL Gay Visual Novel

TL:DR: If you like your cute romance games to be balanced with some surprisingly dark situations, you'll love this one! It's cute and sweet. But it's also dark and terrible. It'll make you go 'UwU' as easily as it'll punch you in the gut. Heed the trigger warnings. Seriously. DO NOT ignore them. Overall? Recommended! It's really good! Reviewing this one is going to be very difficult without sounding negative, and I REALLY don't want to sound negative because I truly loved this game. I do recommend it...just not for everybody. DO NOT get this one if trigger warnings apply to you. This game deals with some really deep, traumatic things like loss, suicide and abuse of the most horrific kind, and it pulls no punches. It's not scared of dealing the emotional hits... and for the most part, they hit HARD. And they keep coming, right up to the very end. So, don't treat this like it's going to be just a bit off fluff to while away a few hours. Seriously. Heed the trigger warnings. If ever there was a game that justified having them, this is it! You have been warned. That said, the characters are (mostly) lovable (except when they're written not to be), and it dishes out plenty of cuteness and laughter. Who these characters are shines though in the writing. The artwork is decent if sometimes a little odd... but I don't think it detracts from the game much. The main thing that carries the game is the story. Yeah, there's young-person angst involved in it... but there's also some surprisingly adult (and by adult, I don't mean sexual) themes being dealt with. There are some truly toxic side-characters in this game. Even some of the mains can be surprisingly cruel. There's a lot of mind-games going on in some of the paths and those can lead to some dark places. So if you, like me, like your romance stories to bite back, this is the game for you! You won't find a better one.

Now that I have finished everything, first of all, great job making the game, it is seldom that I force myself finish a yaoi game, Jin's route is lively, and Kanae's route is something. I think I like Kanae the most, you save someone that can only be saved by you, it has a satisfiying feeling to it. Though most of the time I want to strangle him and bury him alive. I'm really not adapt to yaoi games, but I still finished it because the whole dialogue is charming, the structures are easy, and the MC is a caring, wholesome human being, though sometimes too much of a pushover though the game try to make him otherwise. Ok, I will stop complaining and say that it is overall good experience, addictive, and relaxing. ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————— I basically finished the Shinyaa route, and here's some of my experience. Let's talk about positive first, the whole writing is great, so light-hearted and funny, every character makes me want to have a go, and the MC is lovable and not just a typical, I don't know the word, sub? in the whole relationship but actually capable of facing his problem and strong enough to fight back. But the bad things are, the MC is so typical in another sense. Funny and lively but ultimately just a way to avoid facing himself, have issues, prone to crying (not that human beings shouldn't cry, but other characters in the game don't apparently), and in Shinyaa route, such a dismal-in-distress. The game was also teased about it but that does not make the problem go away. What makes it dismal-in-distress is actually not that he's actually being saved, but the change of his whole emotional state: oh I'm so powerless, this is so terrifying, oh you came to save me, I'm gonna cry. And the problem with Tsundere when the MC is sub is that they are freaking jerks and you can't have power over them anymore. MC's argument: I should give more because I'm asking him of the impossible, and he's doing a lot for this relationship. the Tsundere's: ok. No? Not enough? How about I give you a tiny smile, do you think all your efforts are worth it now? This is why I love Japanese dating some more than English ones, at least in Japanese, a fetish is just a fetish, you don't like an old man because you have daddy issues, that's discussing I don't even want to think about it. And you don't help someone who's mean to you because you see yourself in them, you can just help them. Not everything has to have a reason, and people don't have to pity themselves and indulge in those childhood traumas all the time. But, despite all, after I have so much to complain about, I do like this game. I don't normally do games with no voice-over and the painting seems nice but kinda low-budget, but instead, I didn't sleep for a whole night to play it. So what if I'm not satisfied, still it got me addicted, and it's a good experience overall.

I just finished Shinya's route and I had a lot of fun! One moment that I really liked was toward the beginning when the player can repeatedly choose the choice "Shinya" and Haru keeps rejecting the thought. Eventually, Haru thinks, [spoiler] "Weird. Despite my best efforts, I can't shake off the urge to ask Shinya. It's as if some external force is compelling me to act contrary to what's reasonable." That moment of breaking the fourth wall was very entertaining. [/spoiler] I ended up relying on a guide to reach Shinya's good ending after I wasn't able to reach it the first time. I only just found out about a patch for the game, so I may replay his route. I also just learned that Jin's route was already added (in June 2021). I had only read the summary on the main page, and I thought that there were only 3 love interests, with Jin's route upcoming in 2022.

love it

This game seems like it would be lighthearted but it can get surprisingly dark. Especially in Kanae's route, which is the darkest in my opinion. Shinya's route is the safest one out of all of the routes. I honestly enjoyed all of the romances in this game, they were all unique and well written. Not sure which I like more. Would love to see more games like this!

Sweet bl romance, no smut just cute scenes.

i just finished shinya's good route! really loved it the only thing i noticed that left me a bit disappointed is that during his graduation there should be the painting of him his mother and Haru but it gives an error instead

The game deals with some dark stuff, so be mindful of the trigger warnings. That said, I was not expecting such a deep story! It's quite like a coming of age story for the MC and a story about healing. Healing yourself, healing others, healing each other and moving on from bad experiences. It can be quite wholesome, if sad.

nice

Overall a fun little experience, not too time-consuming or guilty of overstaying its welcome, but there were just some very odd things about it that kept me from wholly enjoying it. I played - in this order - Jin, Shinya, and Kanae's routes. I didn't play the "landlord's" route because he just didn't appeal to me, for several reasons. (And I've forgotten his name even though he's present in every storyline, so that shows that he didn't particularly leave a big impact on me in any way.) Jin's was fun, he was a nice guy and was easy to like. His story got a little boring and I felt like it drug on a bit too long, and I wasn't a huge fan of the sister character, but overall an enjoyable route, and his was a good, simple one to start with. He was cute and offered a pretty good idea of the quality of the game and writing overall, which was honestly better than I initially expected. Shinya was by far my favorite, if you don't mind getting past some of the somewhat cringe-worthy fights between him and your character at the beginning. He's actually quite sweet and had the most compelling story, in my opinion. From the 3 routes I played, it seems like his had the most time and effort put into developing their story, as well as the scenes, the character models, and the romance. He had the best resolution, artwork, characters, backstory, and storyline. Kanae's was my least favorite. His story was absolutely bizarre, in my opinion, and very emotionally heavy compared to the other 2. I'm not saying that every route has to be flowery and fairy-tale-like, but the way he acts and the reasoning behind it was... jarring, to say the least. The development was all over the place, and he wasn't especially likable throughout the story. I felt like the player character was FAR too forgiving, and strangely accepting of (SPOILERS) mentally abusive behavior if you want to get the good endings. Maybe I'm just being too touchy, but after having such positive experiences with Jin's and Shinya's routes, this one caught me off guard in a negative way. I played every route without a guide and got the good ending every time, so at least it isn't too difficult to get through without risking getting the bad endings. It's also quite nice that you can save as many times as you'd like, as well as go back at any moment in the story so you can choose different dialogue options. Overall, I'd give this game a 6 to a light 7/10. Not bad at all, enjoyable enough, just very few options, and really only 2 if you just want a feel-good story with some cute romance and no extremely heavy themes. A good fix if you've already played every possible route of DRAMAtical Murder and just want to play another BL game. (Not to mention, the MC gives me heavy Aoba-vibes, from the vibrant hair to the snarky personality, so at least he's not too whiny or obnoxious. A little bratty and stupid at times, but not unbearably so.)