Nameless was a game I was looking forward to since Cheritz announced it. I was a fan of Dandelion and I thought, "Oh man, this game is going to be so great!!" Sadly, I was left with disappointment. I know there are many people who will disagree with me, but hey, I disagree with their opinions, so whatever.

There are SPOILERS below so if you have not played the game, you may not understand why I cannot recommend this game.
I will not cut this game slack just because it is one of the few translated visual novels or because it's one of the better ones. I will judge this game as I would any other professionally made game.

If you are reading this, this probably means you have already played the game and so it's not necessary to explain it.

One of the big issues with this game that I've had is probably the the typos and translations (I am Korean so I can understand what they're saying). The typos are abundant and sadly there are quite a few typos even in very serious moments which ruins the immersion of the game. I understand if there were a couple of typos here and there, but this game is just filled to the rim with them and for a game that's supposed to be professionally done and so painstakingly advertised, I would have expected better. The translations aren't terrible, it's just some lines are awkwardly translated into English. Almost as if they were put into google translate, and were translated literally from Korean to English.

Another problem I had was the art. The sprites were great but many of the CGs were honestly pretty lackluster. The characters faces would look distorted or strange, as well as their proportions. The background art was also pretty mediocre at times, it may not be too noticeable but if you give it a second glance, you can see how awkward it was. But I guess most people don't really care about that, unfortunately I still do.

Now the biggest issue I had with the game is definitely the story. They tried to imitate what they did in Dandelion by having a surprise character like the Wizard, except in the game, he was always there giving us knowledge of his plans and when everything was revealed, we were expected to be surprised. If we weren't expected to be surprised, then probably unimpressed. The ending isn't as touching when you know exactly what is going to happen. I guess the true surprise plot twist was the ending where the Heroine always disappears at the end of every route except for Red.... This is where I got mad. The ending, I'm sorry, was nonsense. The game completely disregarded the fact that it's an otome game by telling you that the other endings you got with the characters literally do not matter. It made all the characters seem like side characters and all the routes you played were irrelevant.

The true pairing is supposed to be Red and all the guys from the different "dimensions" appear in the same world and let's not forget, they believe they are in love with our Heroine and she loves them, too. Wouldn't that create conflict and mass confusion between the characters? Apparently not because the game just ends! Did anyone think this through? WHY DID ANYONE THINK THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA!?

Similar things happened in Dandelion but the thing with Dandelion is that they don't deny that the characters got together. Each ending belongs in a different dimension so it did happen, it still exists somewhere. However, in Nameless, that's impossible because the Heroine and all the characters are transported into one world and therefore denies the existence of their relationship.

So yeah, every route played beforehand didn't really matter. Red is the only one that matters. Don't get me wrong, I still like Red, but it's still disappointing to find out that everything was meaningless.

Also, how the ♥♥♥♥ did the Wizard continue to make new dimensions when in Dandelion he said it took a ♥♥♥♥ ton of effort and I doubt that one doll or one person had enough memories to restart everything five times......... >_> But I'm just nitpicking....

(I don't have many hours on Steam because I got it before it was on Steam)
So is it worth $32.99? No, not until you fix all the typos, coding error with the names, and PLEASE FIX YOUR AUTO TEXT!

Nameless is a step up from Dandelion ~ my opinion. There are no god forsaken stat building in Nameless like in Dandelion.

Pros:
1. Unlike Dandelion there is an in depth story rather than the majority of it being stat building like in Dandelion.
2. I guess the artwork is good. I definitely cannot draw this well, but when Yuri closes his eyes...what the heck is that?!
3. I am not sure IF it is a better story or not. There is MORE story, which is good, but I feel less silliness in dandelion...if you can believe that. I am not sure if that is really accurate though, if Dandelion had more story, would it be as silly?! Who knows? They are both pretty silly if you think about it.
4. I like how they kept up the mystery of the nameless doll the MC had forgotten about until the end.
5. Funny moments... Yuri is funny in that he is an extreme flirt to the point that even though he is a teacher he has no shame in flirting anyway. So, yeah, that was sort of funny. Lance does the play with Red in the good end of his route. Red being all jealous in thinking the MC liked someone else was sort of cute and funny when he splutters nonsense for a second and everyone thinks he has the hots for another guy. "sigh" Yeah as far as I remember these were the only moments that stood out.
6. You have dialogue options...unfortunately not many as several other otome games I played. =/

Cons:
1. I often feel like this story was written by a 12-year-old (actually I felt that way about Dandelion too, but stat building hides it better). Some of the concepts are so ridiculous, but I suppose it is entertainingly funny in how some of the concepts are so ridiculous. I cannot, nor will not, ever enjoy the idea that a. dolls came to life. b. become nicknamed the hot5. c. apparently so "breathtakingly gorgeous" the MC can barely talk to them without all the other girls wanting to threaten her for being so lucky to hang out with them. "gag!" I think with all this combined I had often sat there wondering about my own life choices in playing this game, as well as wonder if the MC, in truth, has mental issues. I do not say this to make fun of those that truly have issues, but I have a hard time understanding how I can relate to these fictional people to real people. All the girls at the school freak out when they see these characters. You might as well put a cow bell around their necks and imagine them as dogs drooling over their loved ones. I have never seen girls act so shameless and pathetic in real life. Especially not so many girls all at once comprising an entire school. Since people DO NOT NORMALLY ACT THIS WAY...I wonder if the MC is just imagining seeing these dolls alive and human. Yeah, I am sorry for this rant, but this was hard to choke down. They need to step up with better conflict than this headache.

2. The end is abrupt I suppose it was meant that way. The MC wins the love of her chosen doll and the wizard takes her to another alternate reality so she can try to win another piece aka another doll's love of these five. They all get together for the finale - all the dolls remember loving and giving their love to the MC, but apparently, none remember not having her love in the other routes. My guess? There are alternate non-loved dolls that just disappear to who knows where. If it sounds weird. It kind of is. Sorry, this is pretty much how this story goes.

3. The MC is not totally bad as far as some go for otome games (whyyyy??! do they do this???!), but so far the MC from dandelion is actually the best.

4. I hate that one character that keeps calling the MC 'master'. What kind of weird fantasies do these writers think normal people like?! Okay, okay. I get it is his character and that the MC is apparently owner of the dolls and that is where it is coming from...but gees. I dunno.

5. These dolls all have personal issues, but resolving those issues with the thing they needed (learning to trust, learning to love, being honest, etc.,) seem to fall short. I ask myself...did they really resolve them? I think it falls short because they combined the MC earning their love at the SAME time as these characters resolving their personal issues. As a result, it sort of downplays how they actually and truly resolve their issues. Future reference: save the acknowledgement of love for a bit later in the story instead of rushing it at the same time these characters overcome their personal issues.

6. The whole point of the story? Some dolls have souls (or all of them? This was never clear) and they are important so you should not forget them and remember to love them or they might get upset and have issues. I suppose as a side note there is a wizard who needs memories to retain his powers, but this time the wizard stands in the background in comparison to Dandelion. This is the w h o l e point of this story.

7. Dialogue options are few and the few choices you have can so easily lead to a terrible end or a boring bad end. The terrible ends are not so bad per say, but the boring ones end so abruptly and with little explanation. They might as well, in those ends, immediately bring up the "bad end" sign and add a "you suck" to it.

I guess I could go on, but getting tired of writing. I just hope I wrote this well enough to make an honest review. I do not hate this game, but I do not love it. I wish Steam let you have a middle ground choice instead of "do you recommend this game or not?" Since I have mixed feelings, I won't pick the recommendation.

i really wish there were more trigger warnings for this game. i know that asian visual novel/dating sims usually have very dark horror twists but its near impossible to detect at a glance. none of the reviews i read mentioned anything of the sort and the steam page for the game had no horror tags either.
if you play dating sims to escape femicide and violence against women this is definitely not the game for you. i was unable to complete the game after looking up guides and finding out about the dark turns it took. most notably there is r*pe. i didn't actually play through those endings (thank god) but just merely reading about it is enough to trigger me knowing it exists within the game and makes me feel unsafe knowing the characters canonically do these things.
im really not a fan that violence against women is so popular and a staple of the horror genre. it's weak writing at best.
i enjoyed the game before i realized what kind of game it actually was. if youre into these dark games more power to you but if youre someone like me who is easily triggered by femicide, skip this game for your safety.

Edited version of the review:

For some reason this game is among favorites for many visual novels fans. Why is that so, I have no idea, since "Nameless" has almost all problems that "Dandelion" had with little improvement in terms of story (basically tiring and pointless stat-raising is gone, hurray!), and much more unpolished overall feeling.

I tried to finish every route, I gave up after fourth one and I didn't feel like I've missed anything important. The concept is very similar to "Dandelion". If you like dating your pets, maybe you will like dating dolls too. Good luck, enjoy, oh and backstory is also, almost the same, with extra "dramatic" character from protagonist's past.


The game is long. And no stat-raising here, so it's actually all story. Bland, boring and not interesting, but story nonetheless.

Good graphic.

Extras. Gallery, diary, phone, that seems pretty pointless most of the time, but it's there.


Music. Once again, it's not fitting what's going on and it adds absolutely nothing to the atmosphere.

Very low number of CGs. This is a pricey game, that almost never have any discount, yet there is so little going on in terms of graphic. Sure, it looks great, but CGs seems lacking, there are few scenes when it was obvious that CG was intended to be there, but apparently ended up not being created.

Price. Low resolution. Don't even get me started. Unless your game is an old-time classic, there is absolutely no justification for 20$+ price tag with this quality. This is outrageous. Whether you like the story or not is always a subjective thing, but this sort of practice is a pure laziness. Add bugs to that and you'll come to the conclusion that there are many better games out there for much lower price.

Bugs. Yupp. Player's name isn't always showing correctly, for example, issues with phone, and so on.

Idea isn't original anymore. It's Dandelion 2.0, just without stat raising and with dolls.

Very cliche characters. You have your flirty type, your caring guy that turnes out to be a bit of a creep , you have your energetic eats-a-lot character, your cold but with golden heart and your child-looking one. Nothing I haven't seen. And as much as some aspects of their routes were touching, again, it's nothing I haven't seen or expect.

Unlikable protagonist (again). She's a victim. Again. Because her grandfather died, which is tragic and I know that very well, but she really isn't the most suffering girl in the entire world and this game paints her that way.

Drama. Besides the thing I will mention right below, there is way too much drama regarding protagonist and her constant being a victim and when you don't buy that and you don't get attached to her, it gets pretty much meaningless. There are no stakes really.

Humor. Dramatic tension is gone, when this game tries to introduce a little bit of humor. Mixing humor with drama can have great effect or can be poor and ruin the mood. In "Nameless" it's the second thing. Humor it typically absurd and anime-ish. I don't remember smiling even once.

Bad endings. Wait. How did I end up with this weird love triangle? Or as this... doll-slave? How did that happen? How is that possible? When we established that this may happen to me or at least hinted at it? Are those purely for shock-value? Because they don't make any sense.

I've completed all storylines of this game and I cannot say that I liked the game.
Of course it's only personal opinion but I can think I can share it.

The main reason of not liking the game can be summarised by word "boring". What this means:
1. Gameplay: it's a visual novel but it has too many reading and too little interactions, too little choices that I could make to influence the story.
2. Music: it's repetitive and sometime it's completely missing. Adding to huge amount of text it only increased boredom to read it in silence.
3. Story lines: I found them too similar. All boys unconditionally love MC from the start, so stories come up to her acknowledging her feelings for the boy of choice and for boys to overcome one (only one) inner problem they have. Boys naturally struggle with different problems but stories felt similar.
4. Boys: sure they have different archetypes, but there were no boys with negative traits, no "bad boys". Despite all of them love her they never fight over her and always support her regardless whoever she chooses. It was kinda boring.

There were some aspects that I've enjoyed:
1. Voice acting is really good.
2. It was funny to read how boys argue with each other in their daily life.
3. Cannot deny that I enjoyed Lance storyline. Maybe it was because he was the first one I've played and I wasn't completely bored from repetitiveness.

art pretty but man does it read like a 13 year old's wattpad self insert fanfic
(disappointing because it's really quite an interesting premise)

I would make this neutral if that was an option, but ultimately I didn't really enjoy this game. I do think I would have liked it more if I played it when I was younger (maybe middle school).

My issues were:
- fair amount of typos
- the game was glitchy, I had to back track due to glitches a few times and restart my computer a lot
- I didn't like how many abusive/controlling/yandere love interests there were
- It was stressful to me that all of the love interests want to date her in all of the routes, I felt bad for characters in every route when they lost out
- The endings for the love interests were not great, they seem happy and then the main character disappears. I would have loved it if after you completed the last route, it unlocked happy epilogues or something
- Some of the love interest voices didn't match their characters in my opinion. I also thought the male/male duet ending song was a little too much for those voice actors to take on, although I do think they are both good voice actors
- The plot did not do it for me, pretty much all of the routes felt like a real slog with occasional interesting parts thrown in
- Ultimately, I walked away feeling like I just played an 11 hour ad for crobidolls (which is a real company)

I have bought this after seeing many good review about it and soon feel very regrettable. It is a lot lower than my expectation. Especially, it’s price is high but the quality is poor compares to most of the same-priced otome games.
The story may going to be a great challenge to your stamina by its forceful, blunt, boring and illogical. There are A LOT OF repeating, nonsense, unnatural argurements and pointless scences which are very irreverent. Moreover, those character building could have been seen a lots in otome university (Especially those from Chertiz), which is very disappointed because it seems that there aren’t many investment on creativity compare to this company’s previous games.However, the translation was ok.
I believe that the art was one of the most advantage of this. There are many sprites but somes are unnecessary, the background are nice. On the other hand, the quality of CGs are mixed.
I think music quality is mixed as well. Somes soundtrack don’t fit the atmosphere while there are some very nice. Although OP was lovely to hear but didn’t don’t give me much memorizable impression. However, this game has good voice acting.
I know this is a long game so it may take me more time to fully consider it but mehh~ i don’t think that i could tolerant it anymore. Even the pretty artwork and voice acting aren't worth having to force my way through the painful story that's barely believable(especially at this price). A friendly suggestion for anyone considering in buying this, please play the demo first to make sure if it suit your taste or not.

+ Points for using a premise that justifies the characters' "love involves wanting to own the other party" thing--they're literally dolls; what are they supposed to think? (Still, calling someone your "owner" or "doll" in the middle of a confession scene is definitely a mood-killer, if not kinda creepy.)

+ Both of the MC's friends genuinely care about her in every route and are pretty great overall. Even if Soi frequently goes beyond the pale.

- God, so many typos. Who was responsible for proofreading this? Were they doing double duty on some other role in the localization team?

- One of Yeonho's bad endings involves the MC picking up where his previous abuser left off. Having to intentionally choose to do that if you want to 100% the game is....icky, to put it lightly.

- A noticeable number of the CGs have kind of weird proportions.

- I enjoy the horror-movie-esque feeling of seeing MCs miss behavioral red flags, but not quite to the degree shown in Tei's route. Did she ever actually figure out how manipulative he is...?

- Not being able to date Shinbi is tragically disappointing, since she's clearly better than any of the actual love interests.


Overall, unless you like controlling, obsessive love interests, I'd say give this one a pass; it won't be worth $30. But I haven't played many otome games...maybe it's the best of a bad lot?

3/10

Although the game has some solid voice acting, characterization and the true, true ending of the story (there are 2 secret endings) is surprisingly sweet and philosophical, this game is a below average game.

The writing and story is a clear step up from Dandelion, the company's other otome game, but that says more about how bad Dandelion is. Nameless is still a needlessly long and convoluted story with a bad pay-off since there are no real conflicts or much of a plot. It's more of a slice-of-life, and although the banter sometimes can be enjoyable, it's boring more often than not. The relationships are also all accompanied by forced, manufactured drama, i.e. the guy misunderstands a situation and becomes stupidly jealous or the MC is just so blatantly gone in the head that she can't see the obvious: namely, that the guy she's interested in is interested in her as well. The romances are also all very dull and predictable, with little to no excitement or innovation.

It's a translated game, and it shows. Since I understand Korean, I can ignore most of the errors, but the writing really comes off as both poorly translated, with grammar errors, typos and just Korean letters that have not been properly translated, as well as amateurishly authored. There is no finesse or prose whatsoever: what you see is what you get. The UI is also terribly sloppily made and not optimized for bigger screens, with the text messages only barely distinguishable and overlaying the message boxes in the most immersion-breaking of ways. The names are never centered in the name boxes either, and will annoy you. The narrative font is so tiny you can barely read it without squinting. Do not go fullscreen if you have a large monitor.

The art quality varies, oscillating between acceptable and bad. Most disappointing, however is that the character sprites are much better than any CG and even then, only their eyes blink at times during dialogue: their mouths aren't animated at all, which I really don't like. They're also greatly lacking in expression. I think they each have a smiling, a neutral and a serious face with minor variations, but that's about it. Yes, I'll repeat it again: the character sprites are much better than any CG in the game. The screenshot of the title screen in the slider above is a misleading representation, and it's a huge stepdown from Dandelion, which, despite its many shortcomings, actually had some really, really pretty CGs.

The five guys you can choose from are all boring and flat. Character progression is not one of this company's big suits and you won't feel satisfied at all by their endings - not even the true one, which ties up all the abrupt endings each of the guys' storylines have. And even though Tei, Lance and Yuri were kind of interesting, my heart never beat fast for anyone of them. I know I should have more to say about them since the "bachelors" are the most interesting part of an otoge, but they didn't really leave any impact on me. In fact, I completely skimmed over Yeonho and Red's stories because their characters were so uninteresting. The school nurse was creepy, and though I know that's supposed to be his thing, he just became way too uncomfortably creepy for me, and the café manager will also be an annoying character due to his excessive rudeness and just general unfriendliness. However, they do get a big plus for the MC's female best friends, especially Soi, the confident, feminine and gorgeous girl who really shows a broad spectrum of emotions throughout the different gameplays and who proves what a good friend should be like. As for the MC herself, she was a typical otoge heroine with an innocent, kind heart and absolutely no insight.

TL;DR: Plot-less story with dull romance, poor art and little else to go on except for the reverse-harem concept but with dolls, a really odd idea - but then perhaps not, since the game is sponsored by a overpriced ball-joints doll factory that doesn't hesitate from advertising itself in-game. Not worth the cost, not unless it's for less than 5 dollars/euro, and even then, there are much better otoges you can waste your time and money on.