Mitch’s Otome Corner: Sympathy Kiss Review
Sympathy Kiss might have been my most highly anticipated Otome title to come to the West, as I love the idea of having an older cast and it being set in the workplace. I was ecstatic when it was finally announced for localisation, but was it worth the wait? Well…
It’s not quite so much the enthusiastic “yes” that I wanted to give, so we’ll dive into why this one let me down a little. Your character (Akari, although you can change the name) is a high performer but has no idea what she wants to do in her role as a designer at Estario.
The app company’s flagship app, a news app called Estarci, has become unprofitable, and you’re poached to join a small, elite team to help relaunch it back into success. Rumours are flying around that this is an elaborate way to lay off some talent though, hmm…
Most the cast still lean on the far younger side of what is considered an “older”* cast, and this was a little disappointing to me as it didn’t feel that it differentiated itself from other Otome games in the way that I hoped it would. I appreciate the effort though, and hopefully we’ll continue to see Otome games with older casts/a wider variety of ages in the future.
*The protagonist and most of the romanceable characters are in their early to mid 20s, with a couple of exceptions over 30.
Let’s go over the cast a little, although I’ll exclude the secret routes for this one so you can find out about them for yourselves. There are five core love interests — secret routes excluded — and taking a loot at them you can probably get an idea of what their character will be like. Tsundere, antisocial, social flirt, princely, etc.
I liked them all a lot for the most part, as well as supporting cast Oe, Usui and a few others, but the only love interest I never got along with, from beginning to end, was Nori (pictured later in the review). He’s a moocher, has little sense of boundaries, and is just a bit uncomfortable to be around. He offers something different as he’s not directly related with your work or project, but at the same time I could’ve done without him considering the number of routes we do have.
If you’re not a fan of common routes, then know you’ll be on your way to romancing someone in pretty much a handful of minutes. It doesn’t take long at all to get onto a romance route, and things move fairly quickly, but there’s a large number of routes in Sympathy Kiss to make up for it.
It’s incredibly grounded and focuses more on personal relationships, although it does move at lightning speed and maybe could’ve slowed down a tad. It is very much about you and your love interest, so the cast doesn’t feel quite as cohesive as the whole, although I really liked the short snippets of when they actually were together. I just wish we had a little more time with them all.
It plays generally like any other Otome game in that you only have to interact with a few key choices for different endings (all of which are generally good, with no actual bad endings in sight), otherwise you’re simply reading, but it does have an odd emoji choice system that’s a little baffling to read, which is sometimes used in lieu of dialogue choices.
This system is pictured above, and as the heroine has no spoken dialogue, you sometimes have to choose a facial reaction. Sometimes both reactions left me confused, and it’s another aspect of the game really pushing self-inserting onto the player in an awkward way that undermines our protagonist’s own agency.
As implied above, I’m disappointed that our heroine doesn’t have any spoken dialogue, instead she seems to mime things, although she has many thoughts shared only with the player. It’s implied she does respond to things sometimes, but there’s no text for it (unless it’s a love interest-related choice), and instead a character will ask you a question then immediately respond as if you’d responded to them. There’s a lot of “you point”, “you bite your lip” and “you shake your head”, and it feels like it infantalises the protagonist.
She’s also eyeless, which I hadn’t realised feels a little cheap until now, although the game itself feels high quality. I don’t really play Otome games on mobile, where this is usually prevalent. Again, this makes some of the lovely CGs feel odd, as they often hide her face or, well, give her a face with no eyes, like some sort of odd but well-designed mannequin.
I’m not sure self-inserting works when you have no say over the character design, and I don’t think the eyes is going to make or break a player’s engagement or suspension of belief, especially as the heroine is fully designed outside of her eyes already.
Other than that, I think the character designs, environments, UI, and colours are lovely and eye-catching, and I enjoy that it focuses on making the mundane more beautiful, rather than steering away from its grounded roots.
Bit of a footnote as I don’t feel like I have much worth saying on it, but the soundtrack is great — especially the vocal tracks that sometimes play during CGs — and the voice-acting is terrific. You might notice a few voices from other Otome titles.
On the whole, I’ve enjoyed my time with Sympathy Kiss and I’d recommend trying it out, but there are elements to it which feel a little more mobile at its core, and it is a shorter and faster-paced game than many Otome. Maybe it’s on par with Bustafellows when it comes to length, but doesn’t quite boast the same blockbuster quality.
I wish that there was a bit more of a common route to Sympathy Kiss, even if it was to get a better idea of who to pursue and to make some of the romances (which, again, happen quickly) feel more natural, but I enjoyed it all the same. I think the weakest part is how the protagonist was handled, and it makes much of the dialogue feel clunky and unnatural, despite the rest of the game being pretty good.
I was just so excited for it, you know? I actually forgot that this was an Otomate title as it lacks some of their usual qualities, and although I’ve had my fun with it, I hope they don’t pursue this sort of approach to Otome games going forward often. Sympathy Kiss doesn’t reach the potential of its concept, and I hope it doesn’t sink the boat for other Otome games to feature older casts.
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Sympathy Kiss is developed by Otomate and Design Factory, and published by Idea Factory. You can buy it now on Nintendo Switch. A copy of the game was purchased for this Sympathy Kiss review, and was not provided by the publisher.
