Where do I even start? Love Spell: Written in the Stars is such a lovely otome game with a magical touch and I couldn't stop playing until I finished all routes. I always loved the fairytale theme and, therefore, I knew right away that this game will be right up my ally ever since I saw the Kickstarter page back then. The premise itself already sounds intriguing: A romance game where the heroine can cast her love spell on any guy she wants to date. Although the spell might not last forever, I would still kill for having such kind of ability. After all, one can always dream, right?


Love Spell: Written in the Stars opens with introducing the heroine who is unfortunate in many ways and has a lot of troubles. One day, however, something lucky happens to her for once when she saves an old lady who turns out to be a witch. As she is grateful to the heroine, she awards her with a book. However, it's not a regular book as it's, in fact, magical and can cast a love spell on anyone whose name the heroine writes inside. Anyway, before reading the manual of the magical book, and knowing its purpose, she gets drunk in a local pub and doesn't remember any happenings anymore after waking up.


So, Love Spell: Written in the Starts starts slow. There are a lot of slice-of-life events available at the beginning where the heroine slowly gets closer to her love interest. Understandably, a love story has to somehow develop at first, especially as the heroine wasn't close to most of the characters before. For every route, I had the impression that the feelings of the cast were genuine and I could easily understand the reason both of them started to fall for each other despite having a rough start.

Anyway, let's come to the next aspect: The comedy. I loved the writing style of Love Spell: Written in the Stars as it felt so refreshing. You see, the comments of the cast sometimes felt so on spot and I couldn't resist smirking throughout the comedic scenes. It was easily relatable to me because I agreed with one or another silly remark of the heroine as well. These scenes truly made the game feel so light-hearted which I appreciated as it was a joy to go through each route.


While this visual novel doesn't have a lot of story progression in the first half of the game, the second half greatly picks up its pace. It's almost as if there was a genre shift and twist and turns are getting introduced that spice up the happenings. I found this was a positive aspect as after the heroine grew close to her love interest, emotional scenes with misunderstandings, action, and, most importantly, drama start to take place. That being said, I found the plot twists were quite predictable, however, I still managed to enjoy the story and I absolutely loved that every route didn't only revolve around romance but it's still noticeably the main genre in this game.


First of all, I loved the heroine. As aforementioned, I could relate to her a lot and it's immediately noticeable that she has her own mind. It's refreshing in contrast to a lot of games where the heroine is rather quiet and rest assured: In this case, she is anything else than a passive character. Furthermore, she has her own goals and dreams she is determined to fulfill and it was easy to fall in love with her myself as I went through the troubles and struggles with her.

And that leads to my next point: Philia. You see, Philia is a penguin and a dear friend of the heroine. While they cannot stand each other in the beginning, thanks to the threats of the heroine, they slowly became closer to each other. It was noticeable when I started a new route and got very confused when they didn't like each other until I remembered that it was the same in the previous route I went through. Nonetheless, it was weird for me to see the two of them not getting along anymore, but that only means that the development well-done.


My answer would be yes and no. Overall, each route introduces a new story and each of them follows different events. While each love interest is entirely different from each other, there are still events that appear throughout the game again and again. Examples of that are the very first meeting of Philia and the heroine, the introductions of the love spell, and the happenings regarding it. I also felt like each route followed the same concept of introducing a villain and then defeating them which made the happenings less entertaining for me once I figured out the pattern. Furthermore, the same puns get used over and over again so I didn't find them funny anymore after playing through all the routes.


After the prologue, the player can select which guy's story they want to pursue. There are four routes and a secret route available in total. Whilst choices are implemented in the game, they have no impact on the plot except for the very last one which determines whether the player will receive the bad or happy end. However, it's very obvious which choice will lead to the desired end.


Graphic-wise, Love Spell: Written in the Stars is stunning. However, there are only four CGs in total available for each guy with one of them being the final screen. In short: I found there were way too few CGs available. Fortunately, none of the CGs are missable and it's possible to look at them in the gallery after unlocking each of them. Other than that, the game occasionally works with animations such as rain pouring or sakura blossoms falling or sound effects that enhanced the immersion although this visual novel sadly doesn't contain any voice-acting.

• First of all, there is no manual save available. While each chapter doesn't last very long, and the player can visit each unlocked chapter in the menu, it was still inconvenient for me that I wasn't able to save in the middle of the game.
  
  
• There is a loading screen coming up when opening the text log and, in addition to that, the game only shows the beginning of the scene's text. So that means I had to scroll all the way down each time I missed a sentence which turned out to be such a hassle that I skipped it entirely.
  
  
• The game doesn't remember the player's settings so each time launching the game I had to go into the options again to put the game on fullscreen. This greatly annoyed me, given that alt + enter didn't work and this issue sadly affected all settings.
  
  
• The secret route is incomplete as of now and there is only a prologue of it available.
  
  
• There are a few plotholes. Some things just never get explained such as why the spell suddenly didn't work the way it should, although that luckily doesn't apply to all routes. Furthermore, I wished the story of the witch was more fleshed out as the game tells its reader nothing about her story.

Love Spell: Written in the Stars is such a lovely visual novel that managed to entertain me through and through with its writing. However, there are sadly a few issues available in this game, although the technical ones were more significant for me and affected my immersion. Other than this, I had a great time with this visual novel which managed to make me chuckle more than once. That being said, Love Spell: Written in the Stars is a must-play for those who enjoy romancing guys, fueled with magic.

One thing I will say about this game: there's no false advertising going in to it. Judging from the art style and music alone, you can guess what the storytelling will be like; fluffy, lightherted, and not really pushing any boundaries. Except... in some ways, Love Spell does push some boundaries. I was pleasantly surprised by how sex-positive this game was! So many otome games write their MCs as too pure to explore their sexuality, or simply don't address it at all. In Love Spell, Luna is not shamed for engaging in a physical relationship with her love interest. That's not to say that the content of any route is "explicit;" all love scenes are written to be more sensual than graphic. In the end, though, I was just glad to get some steamy scenes along with the cute, rom-com plotlines. Are there cliches in Love Spell? Yes. Are some scenes and dialogue choices (pardon the pun) cheesy? Yes. Ultimately, however, I had so much fun playing this game that I just couldn't bring myself to care. I recommend Love Spell to any otome fan who's looking for a relatble MC with believable, age appropriate romances.

ETA: The game has been updated to address technical issues, but the story has not meaningfully changed.

I received this game for Games for Hopeless Romantics.

On the surface, Love Spell: Written in the Stars is appealing—the art is very polished (especially the sprite art, and I really like the ending CGs). Unfortunately, there are so many technical issues that it's hard to recommend—especially since I disliked half the routes, and didn't like the others enough for me to recommend them despite the game's overall flaws.

What you're likely to discover first is that, for whatever reason, the developer has made two design decisions which are both user-unfriendly on their own but combined are just bafflingly bad:
1. There are no manual saves, the game instead relying on autosaves which happen at the beginning of each chapter. With the exception of the prologue (which is longer), each chapter took between about 10 and 25 minutes for me to read; these numbers may be shorter or longer if you're a faster or slower reader.
2. Pressing Esc exits the game immediately, without bringing up a confirmation window.

Does nobody on the dev team own a cat? Have they never accidentally dropped their phone on their keyboard? Why would you want an option to immediately quit the game without saving, and why would you map that to the key which nearly every other PC visual novel uses to access the save function? That's basically taunting players with muscle memory. While I like the idea of the Navigation menu (which allows you to start from any chapter you've already reached), it's something that ought to be implemented alongside manual saves, not instead of them.

Bonus: There's no skip function, so when you accidentally quit the game in the middle of a chapter, you either have to click through the whole thing again or turn on the auto function. Even at its highest speed, the auto isn't as fast as the skip function in nearly every other VN is. At one point I accidentally quit the game near the end of a chapter, and it took several minutes with auto on its highest speed to get to where I was (with no indication of which text I had already read, so I had to rely on memory). You can skip text by pressing the Ctrl key. This is not stated either in the tutorial or in the control list in the menu, so the only way you can know it exists is if you pressed it by accident, you know that Ctrl commonly activates skip in several visual novel engines, or (like me) someone else tells you. Naturally, there is no option to skip only read text.

All this makes me wonder why the developer bothered implementing choices other than the final one in each route at all, since all these mechanics combined make the idea of going back and seeing what the other choices do extremely unappealing. The choices don't add anything to the narrative; they don't make me feel more "immersed." (Especially when the interface is unresponsive and it takes several clicks for my choice to register.)

There is a history screen, but unlike in other VNs where the log starts at the most recent line and allows you to scroll back, the log in Love Spell starts at the beginning of the current scene, and you have to scroll down to the bottom to see the most recent lines.

All in all, the technical aspects of this game gave me the feeling that I was fighting against a game that didn't really want me to play it. (And, frankly, I didn't feel it was worth the hassle.)

I admittedly went into this game not really expecting something I would enjoy, because the entire conceit (the MC uses a spell to make a guy fall in love with her) is a trope I generally dislike unless it's subverted in some way. Despite that, I was willing to give the game a chance. Unfortunately for me, only Enix's and Jamie's routes resolve the issue in a way I found reasonably satisfying (Enix was already in love with the MC from the beginning; Jamie isn't his real name, so the spell never affected him in the first place). The others gave me the impression that the LIs were still under the influence of the spell at the end of the story, which left a bad taste in my mouth. Even though the MC never intended to make the guys fall in love with her (she was drunk when she cast the spell and didn't understand the instructions), the fact is that that's what she did. I left Florian's and Marcello's routes thinking "But he doesn't really love her, does he? It's just the spell."

The MC herself has a basic personality (loud, impulsive, doesn't think things through before doing them, but has a heart of gold), but other basic facts about her differ based on which route you're on. For example, in Jamie's route, the MC is a huge fan of the idol Lumios, to the point of her room being filled with his merch, and she dreamed of being a singer despite having a fear of singing in public; in the other routes, Lumios isn't mentioned at all, her room has no idol merch, and she's not portrayed as singing in any notable way. In Enix's route, the MC is a lifelong gamer with merch of the magical girl Miss Moon in her room; the other routes don't mention games or Miss Moon at all, let alone as a driving force in her life. In Marcello's route, the MC is fired from her job and is extremely behind on her bills; in the others, she didn't have a job in the first place and she has enough in savings that she's not at risk of eviction or having utilities shut off. So while the MC on a surface level has more "personality" than some other otome game MCs, these inconsistencies made the MC feel more like a device tailored to complement the LIs rather than a full character in her own right (epitomized by the careers the MC chooses in the epilogues of each route—all very different {game developer in Enix's route, INTERPOL agent in Marcello's route, archaeologist in Florian's route, singer/Broadway actress in Jamie's route}, all perfectly complementing the LI of that route, none making any sense in the context of any other route).

On the more technical side of writing, while there are few outright typos (the kind of stuff that a spellcheck would flag), there are quite a few grammar errors and word mix-ups (e.g., "discretely" instead of "discreetly"). The script would benefit a lot from an additional editing pass.

Also, a big shout-out to Florian, who I absolutely could not stand and whose route was an excruciating two hours to go through. The way that Florian kept mocking/teasing the MC but the MC couldn't/wouldn't give back or even just tell him to knock it off made his route a painful read. Frankly, I can't imagine these two getting together without magic involved, even if the student-teacher barrier weren't a factor. (I didn't like Marcello's route much either, but at least the MC gets to yell at him when he's being a butt.) What a waste of a megane design.

Love Spell, despite some serious moments (especially in the latter half of each route), is light-hearted overall, with quite a bit of comedy; there's definitely some funny stuff here, but for me a lot of the humor was a miss. (The worst "comedic" bit is the scene in Marcello's route with the strippers coming on to him and the MC trying to drive them off, which is just incredibly awkward for so many reasons.)

While Love Spell is not an explicit game, it does have an unavoidable scene in each route where the MC has consensual sex with the LI. There are no explicit images and the text isn't very detailed either, but it's very clear that they're having sex. I didn't mind these scenes, but if you're looking for a game with porn, or for a game where nothing sexual happens ever, this isn't the game for you.

Route ranking: Jamie > Enix > Marcello > Florian

I have finally got time to play Love Spell, and this visual novel was exactly what I needed right now. Quite childish at times, cheesy at others, but also hilarious, cute and gosh damn romantic – the otome romcom I was able to enjoy to the fullest during the end of summer, and my sweet, sweet holiday *sob*.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2211765761


I would like to complement the writing. People who worked on it, you are wonderful stars! I really like this type of humor – not the one that aims to make characters feel miserable all the time or show them as complete buffoons, but light and kind jokes instead. This is the comedy I definitely approve. Oh my God, there were just SO many scenes that made me laugh like crazy! The penguin familiar is just a chef’s kiss, a cherry on top of the glittering rainbow magic-flavored cake. Magnifique! I also really liked when the perspective switched from the protagonist to her love interests and I was able to find out more about their feelings and thoughts. My only complaint here is that sometimes there was a bit too much of “lips crashing”. Literally, the phrase itself was overused in some parts. Um, yeah, that sounds strange, but you will understand what I mean once you read later episodes. Also, a small warning: there are no 18+ CGs in the game, but you will find some mild scenes for adults where characters…hmm, hug passionately.

Overall, the stories take place within just one month, so they can seem to be a bit short, but all of them are full of sweet accidents and even (lots of) drama. These romances are very heartwarming and cute while still touching various important topics. Yes, some interactions and scenes are a bit overused in this genre, but heck my anime life if I did not enjoy reading them! This is the type of romcom that leaves you with a nice fuzzy feeling inside of your heart, as if you have just witnessed something really good. At the same time, some romance paths made me angry. I absolutely despise characters who would rather become a martyr in a relationship than fight for what they love. This is a very bad attitude to life – to hide your own feelings just because “oh, what can I give him? He will be better with another girl” and etc. For God’s sake, protagonist, grow a spine already! Being a scapegoat will not help anyone. On the bright side, I was really happy to see that some antagonists came to their senses and actually got their redemption.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2210950552

Speaking of the main character, she is a traditional for otome romcoms cute girl prone to crying and doubting herself, but I still liked her personality in general as she reminds me of myself in some aspects (anime figurine collection, anyone?). Still, some of her actions really, really annoyed me. Why could not she stand up for herself even once? Why does she always have to say sorry even if the situation was not her fault? Why does she have to deal with crappy people around her without doing anything? Oh heck, now, when I wrote it, I understand why she rubbed me the wrong way at times…I am getting depressed because of just HOW much I am similar to her…Let us move on to something else, or you will need to buy me a bunch of boba tea to drag me out of this endless pit of self-condemnation.

What can I say about romantic partners? To begin with, I absolutely hate the childhood friend trope as I find this kind of love interests extremely boring and cliché for the most part. However, Love Spell was able to achieve the impossible and captivated me with its magic: the guy I wanted to romance from the very beginning (Enix, baby) was – surprise! surprise! – exactly the childhood friend and crush of the protagonist. And their romance worked perfectly! These two amazing people had wonderful dynamics and their interaction felt natural and fun. Also, why do I always fall for guys who just mandatory have a *insert female dog word here* girlfriend? And 99% of the time she is also my character’s main rival…Ah, the pain of love! But do not forget about other guys. In my opinion, all of them are equally good and interesting.

And the last but not least: the overall presentation. The artwork is splendid; some parts even surprisingly reminded me of Hayao Miyazaki’s films. The UI is very easy to navigate and blends perfectly with all visual parts. Character designs are wonderful; definitely on the cute girly side of the genre with traditional effects like flying hearts, stars, flowers and sparkles, sparkles, sparkles. But they did have a serious side, mind you. Music is also lovely – all tracks work well with various situations and enhance them.


Some of my Steam friends were particularly interested in this aspect of the game, and I am only happy to share my thoughts about it.

To begin with, there are no options to control what kind of text you can skip, so you will automatically go through everything no matter whether you have already seen this dialogue or not. This might be unpleasant, specifically because of the special saving system this game has.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2210009039

You cannot save your progress anywhere through the episode. Now, you might wonder, why does this visual novel have such a strange system? I think it is because the protagonist uses a magical notebook to write the name of her lover, so each character has his own chapter with many episodes. All paths are unique and really look like a different book, even if some events repeat. Well, but at the same time, I cannot for the life of me figure out why developers decided to remove the traditional save/load functions completely. I would understand it if there were no choices except for which chapter to start, but there are several of them through various episodes. All in all, this system reminds me of mobile titles, to be honest, because I have definitely played visual novels like this one there. Thanks God there are no microtransactions or extra waiting time in this game, which brings it leagues ahead compared to its mobile counterparts.

And there is one important saving point here. As far as I understood, most choices do not affect the story flow. They are here to add more flavor to interactions between characters. If you do not want to check out all dialogue options, then the saving system will not be a problem for you at all. There are only two choices that really matter: at the very beginning, when you select the chapter, and the last episode, which decides what ending you will get. And there is one very special feature that helps you read both endings without…oh, wait, it is a spoiler. Well, you will need to see it for yourself, sorry.


I can definitely recommend Love Spell to all fans of romantic comedy, drama and the slice-of-life genre with occasional magic and talking penguins. While I cannot say that the stories blew my mind, I enjoyed reading them a lot. This is the type of game that has a lot of fun moments to help you relax, but also makes you think about life, cry and sigh happily.

P.S. Special thanks to the developers for including the “Thank you for playing” artwork after the epilogues. You melted my heart with it, guys <3

I'm a hopeless romantic and generally not too picky with Otome (you know you're going to deal with cliche BS going in). That being said, this game was too disappointing considering the high reviews, I managed to play it for almost 2 hours when I threw in the towel.

First of all, the characters are drawn with different art styles, which look really mismatched when put together. I played the rout of the long haired foreign guy, who is drawn more semi-realistic/cartoonish, while the OC is drawn straight up Anime style with no visible nose and overly huge eyes. They looked freaking ridiculous appearing on the screen together.

Second of all, she watches the guy beat someone almost to death, and then follows him home and just FORGETS because he's rich and the food is nice? Uhhh . . . people were reviewing this saying the OC was tough and relatable and real. Not at all. She was just a ditzy, irresponsible idiot.

Save your money and time. Hopefully I can get a refund.

*Note: I received this game as a gift from my sister.

tl;dr: This isn't the worst game I've ever played. I would have given it a neutral rating if I could. But if you're purely asking whether I would recommend it to someone or not, then this game has too many problems for me to honestly say I would.

• Writing: During the prologue, you barely spend any time with the love interests, so it's hard to decide who you want to go for first if you didn't read the profiles beforehand. Additionally, sometimes the writing was inconsistent or just didn't make any sense to me. (Ex. Why is MC still auditioning for roles in student productions if it's been “several years”? Why does MC lament “forgetting” the spell was ending in Florian's route when Philia just told her ten minutes ago? She even told Philia she'd worry about the spell later, so we know she was paying attention! Why are Sergio and Marcello's groups referred to as the mafia late in the route when earlier they tell MC they're more like mercenaries/hitmen?) The writing in this game is also VERY trope-y and predictable. For some people, that's alright, but it was just something I personally didn't like. Sometimes the writing had some bad implications (like being single is the worst thing that could happen) and Enix's route as a whole made me feel terrible because he doesn't break up with Isla until WAY late. (Plus, MC doesn't know the breakup even happened until after things got serious! And since Isla comes by later, it was apparently a one-sided breakup...). One of the characters is obviously meant to be the “true” route, which I personally dislike.
  
• Choices: Choice dialogue doesn't always match with what happened. (Ex. ”Find another way out” ended with MC giving up completely. She never even thought about trying to find another way, much less, “Oh, she tried, but her attempts didn't work.”) The vast majority of the choices in the game are also just flavor text. The only choice that actually makes a difference is the one at the very end, and that's just not what I'm looking for in a visual novel. I don't have problems with endings that split off from one bad decision in the middle of the route, or occasional flavor text choices, or “options” where there's only one choice to pick in and of themselves, but when 90% of the choices are flavor text it just feels....empty. (Like others have said, almost more like a kinetic novel.)
  
• Save system: This one is a big one, and I nearly ragequit this game once because of this. (I completely lost 25 minutes of progress!) Having chapter navigation isn't bad in and of itself, but that navigation menu CANNOT be the only way you have to save progress in your game. It doesn't account for going AFK in the case of emergencies (ex. my sister's car breaks down and I need to go get her) and if the game suddenly crashes or you accidentally press ESC you could also lose a lot of progress, as the game never asks if you want to close it. It's also annoying if you read VNs slower than the avg. person and it takes you, say, 30 min. to get through each chapter. The game doesn't change the color of read text vs unread or have an option to Auto through only read text, so if you have to come back to the middle of a chapter later, you're stuck auto-ing to the approximate place you left off and manually clicking from there. Please, if you don't want to include a manual save system, at least include an auto-save.
  
• Lack of Skip/Jump: Even on the fastest settings for Auto Speed and Text Display, I disagree that Auto is fast enough to make up for the lack of Skip (fast-forward through text) or Jump (skip to the next/previous choice) functions. For comparison, the prologue took me 35 minutes to read on my own and 14 minutes with Auto. That might be fast enough for some people, but for me that means I have to play on my phone or get a snack or something while I wait for the game to get to the middle/end of a chapter, and it kills any motivation I might have once had to check out alternate dialogue choices.
  
• Click responsiveness: Trying to click on buttons in this game is maddening because the buttons are tiny and the custom cursor makes it a little tough to tell exactly where you're clicking. Often, I'd be trying to click LOG and accidentally advance the text, or AUTO would go further than I wanted because it would take me a few clicks to actually turn it off. It'd be nice if I could click elsewhere on the screen as an alternative to stop Auto, or right-click to get out of Settings the same way I right-click to get in. Click responsiveness also becomes annoying when you're naming the MC at the start, because it didn't necessarily register letters the first time I clicked on them and there's no way to input the letters with a keyboard.
  
• Log display: The log starts you at the beginning of a chapter and you have to scroll down, as opposed to starting from the most recent text and scrolling up. This would be fine normally, but the scroll bar suffers from the same clicking problems mentioned above, and it's kind of difficult to see the bar to begin with. (It's a white scroll bar on a pastel background, and if you're halfway through the chapter or something then it's tiny as well.)
  
• I don't feel that the trigger warnings for this game were fully accurate. I think the line about pills in Jamie's route should have come with a warning, as the implication seemed to be possible drug abuse and/or suicidal thoughts, and that could be triggering for some people even when it's a brief mention. Also, I wouldn't really consider the sex scenes in the routes to be fully consensual when 1) MC isn't directly asked in Florian's route, 2) Marcello doesn't wait when MC says, “Wait!”, 3) It always happens when the love interests are under the influence of the spell. The circumstances are technically a little different for Enix/Jamie because Jamie's real name wasn't used and Enix was in love with MC from the start, but given that the reader doesn't know any of that at the time, it's still kind of uncomfortable.
  
• Minor spelling and grammar errors: From what I can tell, the devs periodically release patches to fix these, but there are still a few left. Also, while it's not an error per se, “scantron” should be capitalized to avoid a potential trademark dilution suit.
  
• Philia's yelling could have been broken up better. The text here is giant, which is fine, but as a result she gets cut off in the middle of sentence clauses sometimes. It's just awkward reading sentences that are broken up like, “The handsome-->baker down the-->street waved-->to me today.”

• Artwork: The sprites are lovely and there's quite a few variations, despite the fact that some of them are only used for one scene in the entire game. The backgrounds generally blend well with the setting/sprites, and the end cards for the routes are cute. The kiss CGs can be a bit samey, and there's not a lot of CGs overall, but otherwise I liked them well enough. Menu graphics are a bit simple, but easy to navigate and generally look nice. The animations in the game were done well and gave the game a bit more of a professional feel.
  
• Music: While I wouldn't listen to most of it outside of the game, it fit the scenes. There were enough tracks used that I didn't get sick of hearing any particular songs.
  
• Pricing: I feel that this game is fairly priced for the amount of content it has, and if anything, it's a little on the cheap side. The devs could have put the price at $25-30 for the base game and I still would have thought it was a fair price.

I played the Love Spell demo a few months back--and while I wasn't exactly blown away by the characters or the premise, I felt it was promising enough to give it a chance once the full game was released.

As others have mentioned, the art is really appealing, and, while the UI is kind of basic, overall the game is pretty. The transitions and other visual effects enrich the environment, and it looks pretty professional. It's frustrating that there isn't a save or skip feature, but not so much that it makes me not want to play the game.

A bug prevented me from getting past the "choose your name" menu when the game was in windowed mode, but putting the game in full screen resolved that, so no big issue there (just maybe something the devs want to address in a future patch).

Okay, so... I have to address the reasons why I cannot recommend this game...

As I mentioned before, I played the demo before buying the full game. I knew from the prologue that this is meant to be a lighthearted, somewhat silly game about a girl and a magical love book and a pink penguin, so not exactly some genre innovating material. Just a sweet, casual romance visual novel. The reviews at the time that I purchased the game were all positive, and every reviewer recommended the game. I rarely ever dislike a visual novel, particularly a romance visual novel, and particularly one that has an established fan base. I was really not expecting to dislike this game. I've played so many (like 50+) visual novels (especially otome games--professional and indie), and they just don't tend to disappoint.

This one disappointed.

Let me mention now that I've only played through one route. I've fully completed Enix's story, but I haven't started any of the others. Frankly, I'm not sure I ever will, though I'm willing to give them a chance if they do not have the same issues as Enix's route.

I love romance tropes as much as the next person, and I understand their significance and importance in the genre. When used well, they can completely make a visual novel. I feel like Love Spell relies too heavily on outdated tropes that the genre has, as a whole, rightfully moved past in the last few years. Best friends-to-lovers? Yes, please! Build off of that and make the story unique to your game. But then you crutch on evil girlfriend who is rude to customer service reps and lied about the MCs feelings OH! And then have them also get hit by a car?!?! Are we for real right now? and MC is the only one who really gets Enix and he very nobly saves her from sexual assault and from having to take off her shirt during a naughty truth or dare game and, honestly, I swear it's like the writers put every visual novel trope in a hat and then pulled them all out one by one and wrote around that. No part of this story feels unique. I spent the whole time not only hoping that it was almost over, but also feeling like I've already played it before. I can tell how much time and thought went into this game, so it was just kind of disappointing that the story felt so... lackluster? I just did not care about what happened to Enix or the MC. You can have conflict in your story without relying on problematic tropes.

It also plays much more like a kinetic novel than a visual novel, and I feel like only one choice (of the very limited number to begin with) affects your story ending. This would of course be forgivable if the story were enjoyable.

I really wanted to like this. I love visual novels, even the cheesy ones. I just... was so bored. It's pretty, though. Just....maybe not $18 pretty.

I noticed that there hasn't been any Reviews about the updated version of Love Spell...so let me be the first one to comment...

I'll write about the positive aspects of the game first:

The game is great, even before the update...it had an interesting and hilarious story line, beautiful sprites and CGs and a nice range of background music...and what can be better than an adorable, cheese-loving, pink penguin in a story...

When I replayed the game after the update (I literally replayed the whole game from the beginning, and did not skipped through any parts of the story) I found a lot of additional content in the main story. These gave deeper insights into the thoughts of both MC and the males leads, and therefore, made the story a lot richer...

They are also some heart-wrenching parts of the story, which really pulled at my heartstrings. I cried the first time I read the stories, and again after playing the updated game (even though I already knew what was going to happen).

There is also an option to skip the R18+ part of the game if you want. But if you do choose to read the R18+ parts, it is also a lot more descriptive than before...it makes the scene a bit "sexier" but not overly sleazy, so I would say this is a positive change as well.

For the best part. the Extra Stories and Character Profiles...the former are, well, stories...the first 2 stories involves several male leads being together with MC, so there is a lot of sweet, sweet jealousy and fighting over the MC amongst the males leads...there's also one story with features our adorable little penguin friend, Philia.

Oh, I also recommend getting Aslan's story for completeness. It's not as funny as the others, but it'll help you understand a few things (like why MC can see Philia when humans aren't supposed to be able to to see the penguin)...towards the end of story, I actually cried a few times, because...well you'll find out...oh, it also features another cute little blue penguin, which is another great reason to get the game...

Now, I come to the not-so-great comments of the update:

First, there are much more spelling and grammatical errors in the game. Although they don't significantly impact the story line per se, if would be a much smoother read if the errors were corrected. (Perhaps I'll pass on this feedback by emailing the developers of the game, to make the game better for everyone.)

The other thing is the with regard to the new CGs...I'm really sorry to say this, after all the work the developers have done to improve the game...but I prefer the ones before the update actually. The drawings from the new CGs seems a bit...out of proportion...as in the body parts, I mean.... (This is just my personal opinion, and I'm no artist or professional art critic, so I might be wrong on this...)

do not buy this game if you:
- dislike romantic clichés. like k-drama, telenovela, wattpad levels of cliché.
- dislike ditzy, obnoxious weeb MCs (sorry luna)
- are bothered by an inconsistent art style (when it comes to the sprite art, at least)
- cringe easily
- are looking for all around three-dimensional characters with complex dynamics etc. (there's a character who's in all fairness a stereotypical overly the top mean girl, dating one of the MLs and the ML in question doesn't even like her. not much more depth to it than that)
- prefer visual novels with more choices that impact the outcome (there's only 1 in this one)

this was dumb, and i don't mean this in a necessarily bad way?

i bought this (without any further research) thinking it was going to be full of cliches and that kind of nonsense, and i was right. to me that's not really a problem because i grew up reading shoujo manga, i have a major soft spot for that stuff.
it wasn't the worst thing i've read through, but it wasn't particularly good either. can't say that i would really recommend this to anyone i know. it was fun, but mostly because it's that cliché (and a bit cringe), it really just slaps you in the face sometimes.
so far i've only read through enix's route. i'm probably still going to read through the rest of it. it wasn't that bad in my opinion, but it's possible it's only because i have shoujo manga brainrot.

i had fun, and i really don't think games have to be mind blowing and deep all the time. it's just not worth the money for most people, i think.

-protagonist is irresponsible, obnoxious (so much yelling and screaming and whining, OMG), and about as intelligent as a bag of rocks
-she is apparently shocked to find that not showing up for work can get you fired
-and that you have to pay rent to not get evicted
-or pay tuition to keep going to school
-seriously, how is she even still alive
-all the characters are pretty stupid, actually
-incredibly disrespectful attitude towards and portrayal of strippers (#sexworkisrealwork)
-heavy reliance on flashbacks (for things long past, things that could have easily been covered as they happened instead of in a flashback, and for things that literally just happened ten minutes ago, WTF)
-don't seem to know what "lifeless" means (hint: it means dead)
-the typos are just... "misreable"
-if you're going to have the villain monologue for us, don't have entire sentences of that monologue in another language the readers can't understand
-you cannot, in fact, punch someone so hard that the ground beneath your feet quakes, did I seriously just read that XD
-for real though, this might be the worst writing I've ever encountered
-it's definitely not a good sign when the game informs you you've unlocked an epilogue... and your response is pure misery because you were so looking forward to not having to read any more
-Philia is pretty great, though