My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- Review (Switch)

Let’s be honest, Catarina’s true love is food.

Another day, another otome game for me to be completely sucked into and disappear until I finish it. This time though, there’s a first for me. I have never played an otome game based on an anime (or I guess more accurately a light novel since the anime is an adaption) before! That anime in question is My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom, which I actually didn’t know about until I saw the news about the otome game based on it. It’s mostly because I don’t read isekai stories where the main character gets plopped into being the villainess, but in this instance it pertained to an otome game. The one genre I can’t resist. I checked out the anime as a way to see if I would like the visual novel and, as you can guess, I liked it. So, it was full steam ahead for My Next Life as a Villainess: All Roads Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance-!

Before I go into the review proper, I’m going to shorten this game’s title to just HameFura Pirates. The full title is just too long to type out multiple times.

Also, there will be slight spoilers.

For those that haven’t watched the anime or read the light novels, I’m sure you’re asking if you need to have knowledge about the source material. HameFura Pirates does, after all, take place between Catarina’s first and second year at the Magic Academy; which would be after the anime’s first season and after Volume 2 of the light novel. Honestly, you don’t need to. I found that HameFura Pirates does a good job on telling you what happened in Catarina’s life before the events of the game and there are even flashbacks to scenes that happened in the anime. I still do recommend at least watching the anime though. While it has its own problems that brings it down, the anime is honestly cute and starts out strong. Not to mention that I felt like I ended up liking HameFura Pirates more since I already knew everyone’s dynamics and I was expecting it to be written and structured much like the anime was.

HameFura Pirates puts you into the shoes of a young woman known as Catarina Claes. Her name is fixed since she is an already established character, but don’t worry she’s a lovely protagonist. Coming right off of the events of Season 1’s finale, Catarina is happily relaxing as she was able to dodge countless doom flags. Oh, there is a bit of backstory you probably need to know. HameFura is an isekai story where our protagonist met an untimely death and suddenly found herself in the last otome game she was playing: Fortune Lover. Except, instead of being put in the body of Fortune Lover’s protagonist she was put into the story’s villainess Catarina Claes. A villainess who ends up exiled or killed in every route she’s featured in. Luckily, she was able to awaken her previous life’s memories while she was young, so she had plenty of time and opportunity to change her fate and dodge her doom. This not only causes Catarina to be an avid farmer (as a backup just in case she gets exiled), but the other characters are quite different from their otome counterparts.

Catarina does worry a lot in the anime about the doom flags, but honestly, she dodged them long ago. I think it was a combination of getting tunnel vision and still holding onto the otome events that she didn’t realize how different her timeline was.

Anyway, Catarina was successfully able to pass her first year at The Magic Academy and dodge all of the doom flags. After getting a quick nap in where she dreams of being her friend Atsu looking at a Fortune Lover fanbook (totally not hinting at what’s to come), she gets reminded that it’s now spring break. Bad news, all her friends are going to be busy and a cold has been circulating around the Claes estate. While everyone is getting better, her parents aren’t quite ready to go to a planned social event so they’re sending Keith, Catarina’s adopted brother, in their place instead. Good news, Catarina won’t be left all alone at the academy after all, as she’ll be joining Keith! It turns out that the social event their parents were going to attend was a week long voyage on a newly built luxary cruise ship called The Vinculum. This event is an especially important one as Sorcier, the nation where nobles are born with magic and where Catarina lives, and Quid, a powerful nation focused on inventions, built it together. Quid attributed more to the big picture, as well as adding some of their culture in for Sorcier nobles to experience, and Sorcier helped with fine tuning like using fire magic for heating or wind magic for the sails so it could still make stable progress on its voyage even when there’s no wind blowing. It’s really a magnificent cruise ship and it’s perfect to be Catarina’s first.

Oh, and did I mention that all of Catarina’s friends are going on the voyage too? They’re all here since most of them are nobles with the exemption of Maria who got invited due to being a rare light magic user. It all worked out for Catarina. She’ll be able to hang out with her friends, be able to try delicious food from another nation, and just have to worry about not embarrassing her family with her usual antics. Catarina also meets some new people, both from her own nation and from Quid.

However, this voyage is not going to go according to plan as, just as the title suggests, pirates come along to disturb the peaceful atmosphere. Though, you will soon learn that there is more than meets the eye.

I quite liked the Common Route. It acts as a setup for what’s to come as well as giving us some cute scenes before everything goes down. I didn’t know how much I liked the lighthearted, slice of life scenes HameFura had until I played HumeFura Pirates. It was wonderful seeing these characters I got to know over 12 episodes having fun in a different setting and it certainly helped that it was fun to read. I was smiling all throughout the Common Route and it carried over into the routes. It’s even better since Catarina wasn’t stressing over doom flags so she was able to fully enjoy it.

Talking about Catarina, I really like her as a protagonist. As I already mentioned, she was isekai’d into the world of Fortune Lover and she more or less did a good job carving out a new life and turning her doomed fate around. While she has weak earth magic and isn’t that great at fighting, she makes it up with her fierce determination that helped in her befriending all the characters in Fortune Lover, having them develop crushes on her, and helped her flourish in farming. I’m certain it also helped her be unabashedly her as she stayed the same over the seven years she was living in Fortune Lover rather than acting more like a noble so she doesn’t embarrass her family. It’s honestly impressive that she still doesn’t have the manners nobles should have. Catarina is pretty dense and oblivious to any flirting that those in her group throw at her, but she really will do anything for her friends. She also loves sweets and food, and I mean LOVE, which gets played up a lot in HameFura Pirates and she has a habit of tuning everyone out as she’s thinking. It can be a bit annoying, but that, combined with Catarina’s habit of just blurting stuff out and having strategy meetings with different facets if her personality, helps you get in the mood for a story that doesn’t take itself seriously. Oh, I loved the fact that she was an otome player and had a friend (Atsu) that was one too. The game does well in incorporating it into Catarina’s personality and not making it obnoxiously in your face about it.

Girl same, I’ve never played a fandisc too

HameFura Pirates also uses perspective changes. You’ll see the majority of these in the LI routes, but you’ll often see perspective changes so you can hear their thoughts or be able to see what happened when Catarina wasn’t there to see it herself. Some of them are redundant, but a lot of them do add to the narrative. Though, the only complaint I have with these is that I do wish we got to read what they were saying when Catarina tuned them out.

There is a Common Route Normal End, which I ended up getting first. It was a nice ending and I would say it’s on the same level as the route endings. I liked having interactions with the girls, and, honestly, I feel it’s the canon ending considering how oblivious Catarina is and that she’s not with anyone in the source material.

There are six love interests, and thus routes, in HameFura Pirates. Four of them are from the anime and the other two are game original characters. I did see that Otomate recommended playing the LIs that come from the source material first before going into the game original LIs. Specifically, Geordo is recommended to play first (which you’ll see why once you play the game). The route order I did basically followed the order they were in on the chapter select menu (which, funnily enough, is Otomate’s recommended order).

As always, I’ll talk about the routes in the order I did them in.

Geordo

I went for Geordo Stuart’s route first and he’s Sorcier’s third prince who became Catarina’s fiance when they were both eight. He also possesses fire magic which I assume he’s proficient in despite not using it as much. In Fortune Lover, he was the sadistic yandere that kept up his reputation of being perfect and was forced into the engagement with the villainess Catarina. In the timeline with isekai Catarina, he is still the perfect prince and is engaged to her, but his sadistic side only comes out as him being possessive, he genuinely loves Catarina as she is so different and kindhearted, and you see how he’s not as perfect as it seems. Though, Catarina is completely oblivious to his feelings, partly since she’s too dense to realize her timeline is different than the otome timeline. It also doesn’t help that Mary and Keith blocks him from getting some alone time with her.

Every route starts shortly before the pirates take over the Vinculum and after Catarina steps out to clean a stain off of her dress. When you go into Geordo’s route, he finds you as you’re trying to go back to the party and he uses this as a way to talk to her privately. He even turns on the charm which didn’t push through Catarina’s obliviousness, but certainly got me. Of course, Geordo’s luck eventually catches up as the pirates interrupt their talk and they are soon locked into a room with their other friends. Geordo is tormented with the usual Mary and Keith blocking him, but also Silva, the pirate captain, who didn’t hide how much he loved seeing Geordo upset. It also doesn’t help that Catarina is, well, Catarina and befriends Silva; making him more jealous and antsy to tell Catarina his feelings.

Yes

Geordo is probably the route that I’d rank last, mainly because Catarina doesn’t really do much, it felt the whole middle was filler, and it doesn’t advance the overarching mystery, but I didn’t enjoy it. It is a nice introduction to the mysteries that you’ll slowly uncover and it does have some details that you don’t get in the other routes. Not to mention it was so cathartic when Geordo finally let his feelings be known, which makes Catarina finally realize he likes her, not Maria, realize she likes him back, and the cute reactions she has when around him. It also does have some nice action that incorporates some smart thinking. This route also had my opinion on Geordo change. He’s pretty creepy in the anime, but he’s so sweet here that I can’t dislike him. Though, that doesn’t mean I don’t kind of love how all the other routes just has one of the guys stealing his girl. Though, I especially love how he tells the other LIs, and sometimes Catarina, that he’ll steal her back in a heartbeat if he finds out they’re mistreating her. Sure, this is great karma for him being such a creep in the anime, but at the same time you have to admire him for letting Catarina go when she realizes she loves someone else. He takes the “If you love her, let her go” saying seriously.

Me, when I slept through a tornado warning

Keith

Next up is Keith Claes and he’s Catarina’s adopted brother. He was adopted into the family seven years ago after an incident where the constant bully he suffered from his own brothers caused his powerful earth magic to manifest. In Fortune Lover, Keith wasn’t able to escape torment as Catarina ended up bullying him and their mother turned a blind eye due to her thinking Keith was their father’s illegitimate son. Due to this, otome Keith locked himself in his room and grew up as a playboy as a way to deal with his loneliness. All isekai Catarina had to do was be nice to him and she was pretty enthusiastic to welcome Keith into the family. There was a hiccup that caused Keith to lock himself up, but isekai Catarina fixed it and now he’s her really cute adopted brother who is protective and…has a crush on her. He’s not a playboy in this timeline, but he still has the looks.

Anyway, his route is different from the other four due to what happens to him during the Common Route. Catarina ends up getting sick due to pulling a classic Catarina move where she overeats so much she gets sick. So, she’s sent to the infirmary where Keith is at…and where she pulls another classic Catarina move where she eats more sweets that she snuck into her dress. Anyway, this allows you to have more interactions with Keith than you would be able to in other routes and you get to see what happened in the infirmary. Well, mostly since Catarina is like me and sleeps through disasters. This is also when you get provided with clues and answers to the overarching mysteries; with this route specifically focusing on why a lot of people are getting sick. And, well, this also provides the plans and motivations that some of the antagonists had.

Keith is one of the more dubious LIs. While he isn’t really Catarina’s brother, they did grow up as siblings for seven years and call each other brother/sister. Nonetheless, Keith was my favorite character in the anime and would have been my favorite candidate if he wasn’t the adopted brother. I even wished we saw more of Catarina’s childhood just for cute Keith (he was a really cute kid okay). In HameFura Pirates, I really liked Keith’s route. Other than navigating through him being Catarina’s (adopted) brother, I really do love the moments where Keith and Catarina are spending time together. I especially love how Silva still comes in to mess with the LI, but this time she compares Keith and Silva fighting like brothers which was so accurate. I did also like the mystery that this route had Catarina solve and the clues we got for the mysteries. Oh, and I surprisingly did like the romance here. It was really sweet, cute how much they get embarrassed, and the route’s great story really helped both in being suspenseful and showing how great they are together.

Alan

It’s Alan Stuart time and he’s Sorcier’s fourth prince, Geordo’s twin brother, and has water magic. Alan and Geordo don’t look like twins, but they certainly take their looks from one of their older siblings. Anyway, due to being a twin to the perfect Geordo, Alan had a bad case of feeling inferior as he was always compared to his brother. It certainly doesn’t help he was sick until he was five and thus grew up with his parents being overprotective. This caused his Fortune Lover counterpart to develop an inferiority complex, caused him to be competitive, and had a near inexistent relationship with his brother who he had a rivalry with. Isekai Catarina solved this as she was able to get Alan to be confident in himself by being genuine when she complimented his musical skills and showing him that everyone has things they’re bad at, even Geordo. This also helped Alan and Geordo actually be on good terms and funnily enough, Alan is just as dense as Catarina is. In both timelines, Alan is engaged to Mary, which isekai Catarina befriends of course. However, Mary doesn’t love Alan but Catarina due to Catarina stealing Alan’s lines which is so funny.

In Alan’s route, Catarina gets lost and ends up finding the gallery lounge where she falls asleep and wakes up to Alan finding her. Catarina eve convinces Alan to play the piano and right as the song ends the pirate attack comes. Alan and Catarina manages to hide in a room and this introduces you to one of the new characters, Liliana, who didn’t have a chance to make an appearance until now. Liliana is a powerful water magic user and she kind of smuggled herself on the ship for reasons that’s hinted at and then revealed later in the route. And due to some events happening differently, we get to see what some of the other characters would do which allowed us to get some more hints on what’s really going on as well as a backstories and motivations for some of them.

Alan’s route was pretty great. I did like the focus on the story and while there’s not many cute romance scenes, the scenes we did get were made even cuter with Liliana also shipping Alan and Catarina together. Though, Alan did get the short end of the stick with him only getting one kiss CG, whereas the other three got three, and Catarina doesn’t get a chance to confess her love for him until the ending scene. I do love how Silva was the one that made Catarina come to her senses that Alan is romantically in love with her, not platonically. Though, I wish Alan was still dense about his love for Catarina rather than being aware of it from the start. Alan may not be my favorite from the anime, but I certainly liked how he was one of Catarina’s friends that just wanted to be friends. I feel it was a missed opportunity to have both the protagonist and the LI realize their feelings at the same time.

Nicol

Next up, and the last character from the source material, is Nicol Ascart. Nicol is the son of a prime minister with a cute little sister and strong wind magic. He’s very quiet and stoic, but that partly stems from the treatment he and his sister gets. His sister, Sophia, has her unusual white hair and red eyes caused the people of Sorcier to think she’s cursed. This caused Sophia to isolate herself and Nicol to not show emotion so nobody would take pity on him. Since isekai Catarina didn’t play Nicol’s route, not much is known other than he has devilish looks, the way to his heart is befriending Sophia, and that Catarina doesn’t appear in his route. Isekai Catarina actually meets Sophia first and befriends her over their love of romance novels. Nicol was first skeptical of Catarina, but he was turned around and developed a crush after seeing how genuine Catarina was and how happy she made his sister. Sophia is the other one in Catarina’s group who isn’t trying to date her, but she is an avid supporter of the Nicol-Catarina ship and tries to encourage her brother to go for it rather than being respectful of Catarina and Geordo’s engagement.

Nicol’s route is pretty different from the others, and I don’t just mean in the vein of Keith’s. Catarina still finds herself lost, but she finds herself on Vinculum’s deck where she sees a mysterious woman with eyes that flicker as she looks at her. However, this woman disappears when Nicol finds you. A lot of aspects actually change and honestly, I feel it was with Nicol since he’s the one least likely to make any moves since he respected her engagement with Geordo. It lets him have some cute moments while also giving us some drama once they reunite with everyone and Geordo is there to see. We also get to see a bit more of Rozy here, hints towards the connection Rozy and Silva have, and get to solve who the mysterious woman Catarina saw is and why she appeared. This route is more focused on a mystery that was in the background, one that you may not even knew was one, with the overarching mysteries you were getting answers and hints towards taking more of a backseat.

I feel like I’m going to say this for every route, but I liked this route as well. I do feel it took a bit too long on getting to the route’s main focus, but otherwise I liked the romance between Catarina and Nicol. It was so weird seeing Nicol speak so much, but it was so cute having Sophia being their little cheerleader as Nicol made more progress in winning over Catarina. I also did like the focus on the folklore around the Blanc Sea and did a Chekhov’s gun with something that you might have forgotten about if Nicol was your fourth route. The path this route went down was interesting and it was a nice change of pace.

Also, after this route you’ll see why Otomate had the recommended order like they did cause it has the perfect segway into Rozy’s route.

Rozy

Ah Rozy, one of the new characters added just for this game and one of the locked LI routes. As you go through the other routes, you’ll get bits and pieces on who Rozy is as a person though he still does remain a mystery. What you do know is that Rozy is part of Vinculum’s staff as one of the engineers. Catarina befriends him in one of her classic moves where she gets hungry and accepted sweets from Rozy. Though, she got a flashback on Keith lecturing her to not take food from strangers (to be fair, Catarina is too trusting especially if they give her food) and they become fast friends. Though, you do learn that there’s more to Rozy than meets the eye. You see, Rozy is suspicious. He’s supposed to be a simple engineer, but he makes sweets, well versed in everything that’s displayed in the gallery lounge, is a super fast reader, and strangely knows about healthcare. And this isn’t even going into the fact that it seems Rozy and Silva know each other, the other Quid nobles have slip of the tongues, and it seems like Rozy already knows Catarina.

In this route, Catarina gets lost like usual, but as she’s trying to find her way back to the party she passes by one of the doors leading to the deck and spies something glittering on the horizon. When she goes to get a better look, she finds Rozy there who tries to make an excuse, but that doesn’t exactly work. Not that Catarina really pushes it though. Events more or less remain the same, but different events happen so Rozy and Catarina will have more interactions. This allows Catarina to learn more about Rozy and, well, gives an excuse to lead you to the surprising second half of this route. If you played the Normal Ending and the routes for the four LIs that come from the source material, you may even spot some elements that were incorporated for this route. Even if you picked up the hints on who Rozy actually is, and guessed it, this route does still have surprises in what else happens in this route and the other revelations you learn.

This route is a mindfield of spoilers, spoilers that ruin the other mysteries and revelations that this and other routes have. This route really makes you understand why its recommended to play the game original characters after the original characters. Plus, it was fun in itself picking up all the hints over the previous four routes, putting in guesses, having it build up, and then finally having it revealed. Anyway, this route is really good as well. The interactions between Rozy and Catarina were nice, it was nicely paced between the two halves, the conflict had me invested, and learning more about Rozy was interesting (as well as learning more about some other characters). It was a really interesting route and it handles the various changes it has well. I also did not know how the ending would turn out, considering they’re from two different nations that are weeks away by boat, but I really liked how it was written.

Silva

And finally, we get to Silva who is another new character and the last LI route I did. Silva is the captain of the Weiss pirates who prey on boats that go inot the Blanc Sea. The Blanc Sea has constant, dense fog so the Weiss pirates uses it to their advantage. Silva is another character you don’t learn much about as you go through the other routes, but you learn that he’s known as the Demon of the Fog due to his eyes glowing purple. You also learn that Silva was able to gather info before the Vinculum departed, he knows the gossip around Catarina (which is so funny once you learn how he knows), and he’s actually pretty kindhearted as he treats everyone well and lets the sick be taken care of. Though that doesn’t mean he won’t deal with problems himself as his glowing eyes enhance his already existing fighting abilities, he’s intuitive, and seems like a good strategist.

Silva’s route starts similar to the others, but definitely has the most differences that you can track to one small action that Catarina does. Like most of the previous routes, she ends up lost after cleaning off her dress. However, she ends up in a staff hallway, opens up a random door hoping an employee is there to help her, and there’s Silva changing. Catarina, being classic Catarina, rationalizes it in a way only she can in this world, keeps Silva behind too long, and Silva takes her hostage once he officially takes over the ship. It’s so funny how Catarina gets Silva interested in her since he already appears a lot usually. It also interesting to see what a small change caused, as something that was just hinted at comes in to put a wrench in things, and the additional Silva interactions were so great. Not to mention that this route was a good sister route to Rozy’s and it did well at revealing information it hasn’t yet (which, of course, included completing Silva’s backstory).

Yes lol

I really enjoyed Silva’s route. It’s crazy what a small change caused and it was caused by a classic Catarina move. It’s also like Rozy’s route where it switches at the halfway point, but this time you focus on another aspect of this conflict since Catarina is leaning more towards liking Silva rather than Rozy. The antagonist here was just okay, which I feel is due to this game having so many other antagonists that get more focus than this guy. Funnily enough, my first thought when I saw him was also that he was a total loser even though he made sure his encounter was imposing. The way he’s defeated also doesn’t help his image haha. Anyway, my favorite aspect was definitely the romance between Silva and Catarina. This route does well in balancing the romance and I loved how Silva was the only one who didn’t already love her. So you get to see him go from just messing with her to developing a crush as the route goes on. Even better, you see Catarina subtely developing a crush too. Their romance was so cute.

If I had to rank all the routes:

Silva > Rozy > Keith > Nicol > Alan > Geordo (sorry Geordo)

Honestly, I’m really happy with how all the routes turned out. I was a bit worried that the events would more or less be the same with some differences or it would be much like the anime where it starts strong, filler in the middle, and then an unsatisfying ending, but it wasn’t. Really only Geordo’s route felt like the anime. All the routes were great, set up the mysteries well, put in hints in a way that were both easily to look over and easy to pick up if you’re tuned in, all the routes were different enough to keep you engaged, and all the routes had their own revelations. Not to mention it was so satisfying having Catarina realize the original boys romantically liked her, have her come into liking them back, and be able to see them all cute and together. All that was missing was her realizing the girls liked her too, but they are the main focus of the Normal End route and there is a cute alternate ending.

I’m also pretty surprised how well the writers did to have the writing feel like an extension of the source material. I’m not sure how the light novels are written, but the writing in HameFura Pirates feels just like the anime and all of the characters are written just like they were there. The writers did a really good job in making you feel like you were still watching the anime, except you’re doing a lot more reading. Otomate also continued to write action scenes well and I’m so happy they incorporated magic into it as well. The humor was also pretty spot on, replicating the balance the anime had so it wouldn’t be obnoxious and not being afraid to not take itself seriously like the anime.

There are a few different additions that I didn’t mention yet. There are four different ending types (Happy, Good, Another, and Doom) with each route having four endings. Though, not every ending has one of each type. The Happy Ending is the best ending, while Another Ends are just alternate endings, and Doom Ends end in Catarina’s doom which were kind of funny to read. The weird thing, though, is that the distinction of you getting the Happy or Good ending is just determined by one choice as the Affection level only matters in the Common Route to determine which route you’re going down. Upon completing most of the routes, there are also additional scenes that get added in the Common Route (don’t worry, nothing is added to the prologue). These scenes give more context on where certain characters were at that time, what they were doing (which would be a spoiler if you didn’t just do the route that revealed that information), and what they were thinking. There are also some choices added in which were so you could get Love Catches for Rozy and Silva. This was honestly really interesting especially as someone that was trying to put all the pieces together as it helped shift through the lies and deceptions those characters said.

HameFura Pirates also incorporated the strategy meetings Catarina has, where the Council of Catarinas (or the different facets of her) talk through what she should do. I wouldn’t say these affect the story more than just regular choices, but a lot of them do determine if you’d go down a Doom End or Another End and if the choice that gets you the Happy Ending will appear. There’s also Memory Scenarios. As you can guess, these are memories that are told in a short story format. The icon for these pop up every so often when a character remembers something from their past. You can actually skip these if you want, and the icon even disappears after a couple seconds, but they do add some more context and I do think they are a good read. The Happy Ends also gives you Memory Scenarios, which basically act as epilogues, and will give you a CG at the end. Epilogue for the epilogue I see.

My only complaints are that I really think that Rozy and Silva’s routes should have been locked until you did all four of the LIs that come from the source material. And maybe even have Silva’s be locked until you do all the others as it has a lot of the same elements and it feels like it was written with you already doing Rozy’s route in mind. I also do think the Happy Ends and the Good Ends each route had should have just been combined into one single Happy End. For each route, the Good and Happy Ends felt they were an extension of one another. To me, the endings to each route felt truly complete when you combined them.

HameFura Pirates’ translation is pretty good. There are a few mistakes, like missing a word and using the wrong word, that I found appeared early on in my playthrough, but after a certain point the mistakes do disappear. I also did run into a two bugs, but they were small enough to ignore or fixed itself when I pressed the button that advances the text. The art was also really nice and the artist(s) did do a good job at replicating the art style. There were a few weird angles and I did wish Sophia had a bit more detail to capture more of her cuteness, but overall I really liked the background artwork, character portraits, and the CGs. The voice actors also did a great job here.

Verdict

My next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- really surprised me. I was not expecting to like this otome visual novel as much as I did when I was just two routes in. It does carry over some annoying aspects of the anime (like overplaying Catarina’s love of food) and some weird choices for the locked routes and having two separate happy endings that really should have been combined; but overall the game is really great. The story was really good and engaging, a certain twist was expected (at least as someone that watched the anime) but nicely handled, I loved piecing together what’s really happening before it got revealed, and Rozy and Silva were great additions to the cast (so much I’m going to miss them). Not to mention that there were so many great character interations, I loved the many cute moments there were, and it was so satisfying having Catarina realize the feelings the boys held and reciprocating them. It was also so nice diving right back into HameFura’s world and reading Catarina doing many of her classic Catarina moves. As someone that became a fan of HameFura shortly before playing HameFura Pirates, I absolutely loved it by the end of my lenghtly playthrough.

If you like visual novels, especially otomes, and up for a really lighthearted story HameFura Pirates is worth picking up whether or not you read/watched HameFura before. This feels like it was very much written for HameFura fans that are also otome visual novel gams, but the game does do a great job in welcoming in those that are new to the series. I still recommend at least watching Season 1 of the anime as I feel you’ll get more out of it, but you don’t have to as the game will get you up to speed.

Also…I can’t be the only one that really wants Fortune Lover to become a real otome game. I know they made a short trial version of it for the anime’s blue-ray release, but I want a full blown Fortune Lover release. I really want to see villainess Catarina and play through the events of Fortune Lover.