Playing games with an emphasis on story.

I would warn for spoilers in this review but the spoiler is in the title, so I'm not going to bother.

Changeling is an otome game where the MCs is a changeling who doesn't know she's a changeling. She moves with her family back to her old hometown to be closer to an ailing grandfather, and on her second day back at school gets pushed into a magic clubhouse and told she's a "cryptic". It turns out that a large portion of the population in the little town where she grew up are also "cryptics," or supernatural beings of one sort of another. Most are either werewolves, vampires, fae or some sort of wizard/witch. Although the MC's friend immediately realizes that MC is a cryptic of some sort, exactly what sort of cryptic she is is uncertain to the characters through most of the game. The plot mostly revolves around the MC trying and failing to get a clue about herself, while also getting involved to various degrees with the story of the LI you've chosen to pursue.


 

I'm not really sure what to think about Changeling in the end. I sort of didn't have all that much fun with it, but it's also not significantly flawed outside of the tedium. I think if you want a long play where you can date guys and kind of like the supernatural but more as sprinkles on an otherwise mundane story this could actually be a game that goes down pretty well.

This is the third otome game I've played in the BLM bundle and I'm starting to see a trend. I go in, mildly apprehensive but willing to give the game a shot. Almost immediately a series of small moments is enough to squick me out and I think, ugh, ok, let's just get through this. Then, after playing for a little while those bad impressions tend to fall away, and the game becomes a little more interesting. Seduce Me fit that script closely, but it went a little further and I found myself actually enjoying my time with it once things got going, enough so that I started working towards completion without feeling obligated to do so. And the game is relatively large when you do this, so it's taken me some time to complete and move on from it. I'd say it's one of the largest games that I've played so far, with maybe Dry Drowning and Arcade Spirits beating it.