this game is absolutely bonkers, off the wall, insane. it's highly problematic. it's also POWERFULLY ICONIC. the otome community simply would not be where it is today without it.

i see a few current reviews complaining about how much money you have to spend. the fact that i'm not able to relate is basically thanks to day one privilege. i played this game on release, holding no expectations that it would flourish the way it did, and especially not so immediately - back then, i was in the firm belief that the western otome community was destined for obscurity. clearly, cheritz thought the same, because their servers were not prepared for the extraordinary influx of players on day one. everything crashed. it was carnage. only the chosen ones were able to actually log in and start playing, and the rest of us suckers were stuck staring hopelessly at the eternal loading screens or server error messages. it took a solid two days for them to fix this initial issue, followed by weeks of frantic updates to fix bugs, crashes, glitches, even more server problems, the works.

let me tell you, it was a wild ride. but it was a wild ride that came with a lot of free hourglasses. in those early days, cheritz was handing them out like candy with every update as compensation, and i hoarded the hell out of them. i only ever spent them on phone calls; i adored the immersion of playing in real time, so i never bought access to future days, and i was already a depressed teenager with no life and a horrible sleep pattern, so i rarely missed chatrooms. hell, i was so obsessed with the game that i accidentally subconsciously trained my body to wake itself up consistently around 2-3am just so that I could nab that late-night chatroom and then put the phone down and conk back out. like many others, i had this terribly unhealthy art honed to a fine degree. sure, it wasn't good practice, but there was a sense of comradery the community shared over it, and i was so thrilled to have a community to share anything with at all that i cherished this experience.

the chatroom mechanic itself was revolutionary. never before had i seen so many choices and so many CGs in an otoge. everything about it was built to be addictive and the chokehold it had on me was painfully real. the amount of time i spent just sitting around waiting for the next chatroom to open up was pathetic.

and wow, was the story absurd. if you play in recommended order, you go from 'help the only sane character work up the courage to quit her job' to 'help this secret agent recover his secret twin brother who's been drugged and indoctrinated into a cult which is run by the former leader and friend of the RFA who everyone thought was dead'. it had an unapologetically dramatised portrayal of mental illness and treatment and it very much required you to turn part of your brain off in order to embrace the insanity. yet, despite all of this, the game was oozing with charming personalities and gut wrenching moments with deeply flawed characters that against all odds, i wanted to root for. 707 had my heart from the very first announcement and still holds a piece of it to this day. i never actually played yoosung's route, though. sorry yoosung.

this game took over my life and i'm not even mad about it. all things considered, the mysme experience wasn't exactly unlike being brainwashed into a cult.