developer: ebi-hime
year: 2023
a disgrace to gay gaming
it had been years since I'd last read ebi-hime's works, having read the sad story of emmeline burns years prior. given her recent dive into the world of BL, I decided to give one of her more recent releases, in fair spirits, a try. despite it being a side story sequel / story set in the same universe as some of her other yuri games, this game said it could be played by anyone even without playing the prior entries, so I dove in.
upon starting it, I was greeted with a somewhat long lore drop catching me up to speed for this game, most of which I kind of glazed over (and have definitely forgotten by now). the plot is that the main guy, a blonde brit, has been given a second chance at life after fairy & fantasy time shenanigans bring a medieval man to the present day england. Edmund lives with an elderly woman (a distant relative of his, I think?) and lives a quiet life while adjusting to modernity. one day when he goes to the local store, he encounters someone new - an emo kid who's around his age and a real yapper. this guy loves to TALK and loves to make other people listen. to the detriment of us readers, our main character is a very passive man who speaks with silence more than words.
much of their relationship is just the love interest, Abel, yapping about anything and everything to our poor main character who responds with only a few words to every paragraph Abel throws his way. this wouldn't be terrible if the conversations were enlightening, or if we got more of a thought process behind Edmund's feelings, but instead it's some pretty asinine conversations, like "inbred Mormons" and "cousin fucking" (yes, these were real conversations).
after a few scenes like this I was getting kinda bored and wondering where the actual romance part of the boys love romance was going to come in - so far, we'd wasted some time with random ass topics that could be misconstued as "bonding time", but no actual chemistry had happened. that is until Edmund goes into Abel's place of work and he leaves some, uh, rather choice comments about a patron.
these are not the only interesting parts of this scene, but to save your brain (and my storage space) I'll leave the rest to your imagination. basically, a mother comes in the store with her young child, and once they leave, Abel goes on this incel rant objectifying her to Edmund. it gets to the point where even the quiet Edmund has to ask him to stop because it's not cool, at which point Abel counters back essentially with "bro why are you stopping me? why wouldn't anyone be attracted to that? what are you, the thought police?". Abel then somehow ties it to how his high school friends used to make similar comments about his mom and it made him super uncomfortable but by that point I wasn't listening anymore, I was just tired.
I like shitty characters. I like hypocrites. but after reading for 2~ hours, I'd yet to be given a single reason to like this little shit, let alone a reason why the main character should like him. he's a little bratty shit, plain and simple. he yaps nonstop about cousin fucking and doesn't really care to learn more about Edmund or the feelings of people around him and he's a major incel.
not only that but by that point where was no hint of romance. nothing of these two actually connecting on some level, where I might not like them as characters but can at least understand why they're spending time together or why they might fall in love. this isn't an eroge so there's no sex scenes, which means the crux of this is on the romance. the entire point is the characters and falling for them while they fall for each other, which has utterly failed here. I cannot imagine BL fans actually enjoying this unless they like incel shits.