Destiny Fails Us

[got_quiet]

Name: Destiny Fails Us
Status: Complete
Site: https://sbds.itch.io/dfu-otome
Pairing: f/m, the MC is canonically aro according to the dev
Description: Otome high school game with a fucked up undercurrent.



In some ways this game is a super typical high school Otome, where you're going through each and every tedious school day between the beginning and the end date, dealing with high school bullshit over and over again. In some ways it goes a little off script, particularly in the beginning, where it gives the player an entire opening music video, and then introduces in quick succession, stalking, some kid stabbing another kid with a fork over you, a single instance of child abuse, a missing person's case, possible homelessness... and then mostly goes back to the boring every day classwork. The tonal weirdness between clicking through actual math lectures and constantly being reminded that there's some girl missing in the neighborhood so don't stay out late or you could get murdered was kind of odd, because in both of the playthroughs I hit there was no real closure on the peripheral weird stuff. In every run at the very end the MC ran into a bloody person on the road, gets a little scared, and then goes home without anyone contacting the police or anything, the end. In another throwaway scene the principal gets too handsy with people and everyone feels gross.  In another run the MC notices some shadowy figure looking up at her room window and this is never mentioned again. There's just a lot of weird serious shit that just sort of happens, and then the game moves on to mean girl stuff and going to basketball games.

 

Some of this weirdness merges with the romance routes. The first two routes I took were the first two most benign LIs, but after that my options where the guy who stabbed someone with a fork because the MC was "his," the jock who threatens to beat you up, and a college student (the MC is at most a high school junior). I went through the stabby guy's route out of curiosity, and the fact that he went on a possessive rampage comes up, but then is promptly dismissed. And the final romance scene the MC feels like the LI is being too aggressive in a way that could have gotten bad, but then they get interrupted, the end.

Mechanically, Destiny Fails Us plays a little bit like a raising game. You do have stats, and a routine that will raise stats depending on what activities you pick, but the game straight up tells you in the beginning that those stats don't have a strong effect on the game, and "will be more important in later installments." So even though there's a creativity, intuition, athleticism stat etc, the only stat that seemed to possibly have any effect on the plot was the knowledge stat, because on of the main story lines is you're a bad student who's been grounded until you get your grades up (and I'm not entirely sure if that really has an effect either).


 

The game helpfully provides a screen for you to track those stats, along with the relationship status with all of the LIs and secondary characters. The relationship stats are a little more important. They start out uneven, as in, you have an LI who you kiss in the very first scene of the game and has a high score, and there are LIs that you haven't even met yet. It tells you that some people you need to spend more time with than others to get their routes, which is another interesting way to go about things. From there things fall into the typical VN structure of having to get a high enough affection score to get the romance ending for a guy. My first playthrough was significantly affected by the fact that the game keeps reminding you that it's not safe to stay out late, and so I tried not to spend too much time after school with my LI, worried that I'd hit some sort of horror end if I did. But the second run I didn't bother caring and no murder occurred.  In fact, it seems that the only way to get a romantic ending is to not take the rules that the narrative gives you too seriously.

There's nothing complex about how to get the guy you want. You just pick the after school activity associated with that guy every time, the end.

One small mechanical innovation that is semi-successful is a little cell phone element. During the story sometimes you'll get texts chats from characters. They work as side content, but if there is interaction possible I always missed it, and the "reply" button that would often show up always resulted in a notice saying that it was too late to send a message anymore. There's one exception where the game actually stops for you from progressing to have a text chat and waits for you to tell it you're done. This plot coincidentally is also another tonally odd one, because you're chatting with someone who is anonymous to you, won't tell you who they are, and starts oversharing almost immediately. At first I encouraged them because they had gotten a wrong number, but very quickly the entire interaction gave off creepy vibes, largely because of all the weird dark elements mentioned above. I can't stress enough how uncomfortable the vibe in this game was, not just because these elements were there, but because the main story itself had nothing to do with any of this and it all felt like it was being suddenly creepy for no reason whatsoever. I was in constant suspense of the possibility that I might just stumble onto a corpse in some random scene.


 

Since neither otome nor high school games are my thing, it's not surprising that I found this game a little bit of a slog. But after the first run going for completion is not that hard, because a lot of the scenes are filler that you can fast forward in subsequent runs. And the weird, brief creepy moments in the game compelled me go through a few routes just so I could see if any route provided closure there. There's also an Achievements list, which can help you explore the game for routes you might have missed. I enjoyed replaying the game a bit more than when I played the first time largely because so much of the filler was skippable, and when you replay you get almost exclusively the LI scenes which were paced nicely this way.

 

Because it appears that some of the elements of the story, maybe the weird dark stuff, and the side stories that all of your girl friends are going through, get no closure and the devs have said that there were sequels planned, Destiny feels almost incomplete. But the romance tracks are all there at least. I don't know how I feel about the whole thing. On the one hand the more out there elements were what kept me interested, but since in four playthroughs none of them ever came to anything, I can't say I was very satisfied in the end.