I recently finished playing Butterfly's Poison; Blood Chains and thought I'd leave a review to get some conversation going in here.
I'm not sure how I even heard about this one honestly, I just remember grabbing it "for later," forgetting about it for a while, and finding it like a forgotten $20 bill in last year's winter coat one day. Sweet.
I'm surprised I haven't been able to find where I saw it mentioned, as after playing it I can't believe there aren't certain segments of the internet up in arms about it. There's quite a bit of "problematic" content especially with regard to age gaps, consent issues, and family relations. I personally can enjoy that sort of taboo content as I have a good solid wall between fiction and reality, but this isn't an otome for everyone, and I'm surprised people aren't madder about it. In particular, the bad endings can get very dark.
It's an interesting setting I feel like I don't see much of - Taisho era Japan, when the country seems to be struggling with its identity and how much western culture to adopt. The player character is a girl who's just come of age in a financially struggling noble family, and the story opens on a lavish birthday party meant to find her a good husband before the household collapses. Of course, the party doesn't go as planned, but I won't spoil anything until I warn you (and even then I'll only talk about personalities and content flavors, not actual events). The story is written in third person, for those who find that sort of thing important (makes no difference to me), and the MC has a canon name that's voiced in the dialogue if you choose to use it instead of changing it.
As for the love interests, we have:
- Shiba, a nouveau riche businessman who's obsessed with the MC
- Fujita, the gentle and reserved family butler who's watched the MC grow up
- Hideo, a brash soldier and the MC's childhood friend
- Mizuhito, the MC's older half brother, a lazy artist who appears to have little care for anything but the company of prostitutes
- Majima, the distant family gardener and MC's first crush
- Kyoko, an elite businesswoman who's the subject, and dealer, of numerous illicit rumors
I enjoyed all the routes, found the setting and mystery pretty interesting, didn't feel like the guys who didn't catch my interest dragged the story down, and didn't regret any of my time spent with this VN. However, I didn't come out of this one with any new figures for the "fictional men's hall of fame" in my heart.
I was also kind of disappointed to learn the original JP release was R18 with numerous NSFW scenes, while the English translation I read was a PC port of the (understandably, but sadly) censored Switch version in which entire 15+ minute scenes are reduced to a vague description line or two in which you can tell something sexy happened but see almost nothing about the character of how the guys approach it. There is NO H-patch for this one that I could find (or find mention of), but there are fan TLs of the NSFW scenes online that I was grateful to find.
Overall, I would give it a good 8/10 or so since I enjoyed it throughout but didn't get that "special something" that would leave it on my mind for years to come the way some other stories/LIs have.
That's about all for the spoiler-free stuff, but I want to end by saying more about my impressions/opinions of the love interests, and while I won't spoil the actual events of the story, you might still prefer to discover this stuff on your own, so here is your...
!! SPOILER WARNING !!
...since I still don't know of any hideable spoiler markup here on the threadiverse.
- Shiba is SO obsessed with the MC that several of the routes have "bad ends" that have her marry him anyway. As someone whose favorite LIs are the confident scheming relentless sorts with big fat bonuses for yandere and villainy (note: Shiba does NOT check some of these boxes and I'm not saying which ones), he ended up my favorite. This route is rife with consent issues with a dash of age gap; those who like a good hate-to-love arc will enjoy him.
- Fujita was too gentle for me, but others will super appreciate his reserved sweetness and submissiveness. He has one bad end that's really not my cup of tea, but it's a pretty unusual one for an otome, so I can still appreciate that it was included. His route's problem content is the age gap as he's roughly twice the MC's age. Those who like to wear down a distant, professional LI until his control breaks will have a great time here.
- Hideo... Now, this is the LI I felt the least for, but I appreciated that the obligatory childhood friend route wasn't all sweetness and simpering in this otome as he's pretty grumpy and tsun at the start. This route also suffered by blundering into the big mystery in a way that felt pretty unnatural to me, too. Right, as far as content warnings (bonuses? hee) go... the route definitely still has content some would consider a problem, but I said I wouldn't spoil the story events, so I can't mention it directly... those who really want the gist of it despite it spoiling a mild reveal early in the route should read back over this paragraph about Hideo and pay attention to the first letter of each sentence.
- Mizuhito's route was surprisingly bittersweet; there's more to his listless lazy attitude and constant escape to the red light district than meets the eye. He probably has the most character growth of any of the LIs, and I appreciate that. The spicy (fan TL) version of one of his bad ends is really wild (and fun, IMO). His problem content revolves around the family relation; I have a high tolerance for fictional squick, but even I felt uneasy when he blurted out the line "I remember when you were a newborn" (or something to that effect). Those who like a broken LI they can "fix" will enjoy Mizuhito.
- Majima... Based on my pattern of thirst in most otomes, this guy should have been my favorite. But something about him, while absolutely top-tier fun, wasn't as satisfying as he could have been, which let Shiba steal my top spot. The romance almost seems to interrupt his character arc rather than being the goal of it. Majima is enforced by the game to be the last route you have access to; you have to finish at least one ending from each of the other LIs to access his. His route has some consent issues along the way, as well as some other things I wouldn't dare discuss; by the time you get there, you'll know what you're in for. (I will say this route doesn't need any NEW content warnings, at any rate.) Majima's big appeal is, as you might guess from him being last, unraveling a mystery and discovering the layers under the MC's first crush.
- I list Kyoko last because the romance on her route is left implied rather than direct (even though it's a very "Sappho and her Friend" type of obvious). She's a very fun character, and I give her a tie for my personal third place with Mizuhito. Her routes are short, and both the good and bad ends are important in their own ways, though I would say Kyoko doesn't have a "romantic" good end as hers focuses on the mystery instead. Only a broken MC can get truly close to Kyoko, and I want to give her bad end the trophy for darkest in the game (of course very debatable given some of the other awful things happening here).
Thanks for reading - feel free to strike up conversation about your experiences with this game, whether this review piques your interest, suggestions of other otomes that someone who enjoyed this game might also be interested in, or whatever else strikes your fancy.
FOMO is a weird term to use here because it implies some anxiety that I could be seeing more stuff than I am.
I get bored sometimes. There isn't enough content here to keep me super engaged, and interesting niche subs about certain small games and whatnot are missed. I end up swapping back and forth between my front page here and my youtube recs, willing something interesting to appear.
But I'm not feeling the slightest anxiety that I'm missing some stranger's idea of wit on a site I don't go to. There's way too much internet for me to ever think I was seeing it all in the first place, so I'm more than fine with missing the latest lyric or pun comment chain or the hottest new AITA fiction.