This is the only Hakuoki game in the series I have played. It's a incredibly lengthy visual novel; I believe this has added content, namely the "stories" section after you complete the main routes. It is heavily influenced by real places, events, and people. (I didn't realize until later, how much it was influenced.) Historical fiction isn't my favorite in any media: games, TV, books, etc. That's not a negative towards this series; I want to make it clear, it's just not for me personally. Thus why my rating is more average.

You have six main plots to choose from. They do follow the same overall script because it is based on real events. Major story events like the outcome of battles, moving cities, etc are all the same. What does change in the different routes is your playable character. You learn more about her, her backstory, and how she bonds with the men.

Unfortunately my main resentment with the main character is how every. single. route. she talks about how useless she is in these fights. Which fine, she wasn't trained as a samurai. She doesn't know how to use a sword. But here's the thing; she's not human. She has an innate ability that is proven in one of the routes to be useful. But she never does anything to strengthen that further. It's only used to jab at her. It's incredibly annoying to read anything for hours and your protagonist is constantly beating herself up, saying she's useless. She shouldn't be there. She's holding them back. Their injured solely because of her, etc etc. Like damn girl, maybe you're right. Maybe you should just walk away and disappear. I'm so sick of hearing it. I don't want a negative passive protagonist.

The other thing, I can't get past personally, is how influenced the game is toward real people. The date-able men are all based on real life men in this group called the Shinsengumi. There's nothing really wrong with that... But can you imagine, dying for your country as one of the last samurai and years later some jerk company makes a game with your name and history for someone to kiss. Nahhh wtf LOL.