Period Cube: Poyo-Poyo's route — The best for last

Heck, I love Poyo-Poyo's route. It was the very last route I played, and it was so darn good that it somehow redeemed the whole game in my eyes. It roused me from the comfortable slumber the other routes had put me in, blew my mind and made my heart skip a few beats; and as far as I'm concerned, it's the only route worth its salt in Period Cube. Let's get on with the praise! (Spoilers ahead!)

Why Poyo-Poyo's route is the greatest: 

— Of all the bachelors, Shiki is the one we get to know best — as a matter of fact, he's the only beau we get to know extentively before we can romance him, and that makes all the difference in the world. By the time his route becomes available, we've heard about him so much that we already formed an opinion about him and that he feels somehow familiar to us; yet at the same time, we can't help but be curious about what he's really like and what makes him tick. As a result, Kazuha's romance with him feels much more natural than her romances with the rest of the crew and flows much more effortlessly. Also, the whole story is kickstarted by Kazuha's strong desire to find Shiki; so it feels only fair that said story should end up with her getting her paws on him at long last — in all possible ways.

He's bringing sexy back.

— Shiki is a vibrant mix of tenderness, affection, passion and lust — and so is his route and his relationship with Kazuha. This is the only route that explores the full emotional spectrum of a romantic relationship: the combination of Poyo-Poyo's kindness, cuteness and good-natured banter and Shiki's intense love and repressed lust for Kazuha creates a potent and heart-wrenching mix that has way more impact than anything you can find in the other routes. And talking about Shiki's intense love and repressed lust, this guy simply delivers the single best declaration of love I've ever read in an otome game. Every otome beau can come up with run-of-the-mill sentences such as "I love you so much" and "I want to be by your side forever"; but Shiki cranks up the passion and comes up with a declaration that makes you feel the love & the lust. Heck, I swear I fell in love with him for a split second when I saw him bare his heart in such an ardent way.

— This is a route that respects its peers. I usually despise true routes for their annoying habit of casting all the routes that preceeded them as redundant and pointless and making the player feel like they've been betting on the wrong horse all that time — and I like Shiki's route for abstaining from all that. As a matter of fact, all PC routes have the exact same outcome, namely the destruction of the Period Cube and World V and Shiki's return to the real world sans memories; the only thing that varies is the beau that winds up on Kazuha's arm. Shiki's route is what all true routes should be: a route that explains the story's ins and outs while coexisting peacefully with its fellow regular routes. The fact that it can be unlocked at the halfway point depending on which routes you played first is quite telling: this is but a mere route amongst others, a route that ain't a league of its own.


How Poyo-Poyo's route — and by extension the whole story — could have been better: 

— Scrap the whole Akashic Records deus ex machina. It's a fascinating concept I'd certainly like to learn more about, but it has no place in PC's story. If we assume that Shiki could have discovered a way to separate the soul from the body on his own, we have to admit that the Akashic Records have been implemented solely to allow Kazuha to go back in time, avoid the accident and spare Shiki the whole descent into madness he had to endure after said accident; and not only is it a frustrating plot device that comes completely out of left field, but it also cancels the whole Shiki route and makes it null and void. Now look, game: I don't want to be told that all the developments I witnessed and rooted for never happened, nor do I want to be fed a bloody ellipsis and told that Kazuha fell in love with Shiki this time around without getting the opportunity to see said falling in love with my own eyes. What I wanted was to see Kazuha uncover and acknowledge her love for Shiki in Shiki's route. If she fell head over heels in love with Hiroya in a couple of days despite never seeing him as anything more than a friend before that, then surely it would have been possible to do the same thing with Shiki, now wouldn't it? Just let her realise that her feelings for Shiki are deeper and stronger than she thought and come to terms with them, and voila! Definitely less far-fetched and more believable in the story's context than that whole time travel crap.

— Concurrently, tone down Shiki's endeavours in Arcadia and cut down on the insanity, so that he can live on without being tortured by remorse and doesn't require a reboot to live a happy life. Scrap the player killing, the nocturnal fondling, the experimentation on Natsu, the jealousy bouts and the overarching sick desire to preserve Kazuha's soul and memories forever like a twisted trophy — all the more so as it's highly improbable that someone could be driven over the edge so severely just because their stepsister landed in a non-lethal accident and lost a couple of trivial memories. Replace those twisted antics with more interactions with Kazuha in Arcadia, and let the girl realise that she sees Shiki as more than a mere stepbrother. Proceed then to reveal that Kazuha loves Shiki and that they can be together in the real world, and make Shiki drop his mad plan to focus on his dream come true. Arcadia players are spared, everybody is freed from Server V and can go on with their lives, Shiki and Kazuha become an item, The End. More romance, less craziness, and happier players — both Arcadia and Period Cube ones.

— Better still, scrap the whole World V, Amadeus and Period Cube shebang entirely, and also scrap that lame accident while you're at it. Use the following premise instead: Shiki is buckling under the pressure of his unrequited love for Kazuha, and he's recently become an hikikomori that plays some Arcadia all day long to get away from the dire reality of his life. Everybody is at a loss, but ingenious little Kazuha comes up with the idea of creating her own Arcadia avatar to reach out to Shiki from inside the game. Proceed then to slowly reveal Shiki's feelings and make Kazuha realise the true depth of her love for him, which she had never dared to acknowledge in earnest because of their family situation. Then crown it all with a good ending in which they end up together and Shiki goes back to his happy straight-A student self, and a bad ending in which he doesn't dare to confess to Kazuha and retreats even deeper into his room and Arcadia. The beauty of that premise is that it would also make the other routes more interesting, by allowing Kazuha and her beau du jour to interact both in Arcadia and the real world and get to know each other over a much longer time period. Cherry on the cake, you don't even need to alter Shiki's destiny in these other routes: just make him loose his memories because of the sheer shock of seeing Kazuha fall in love with another man, and you're covered. (Heck, it's not even that improbable IRL.) Call the whole thing 'Arcadia: Shackles of Love&Despair' and you're good to go! Such a straightforward and unfussy story would flow much more naturally and spare us the many plotholes PC bristles with.

So, you may ask, you declare your love for Shiki's route yet claim in the next breath that it should have been entirely different? Yup, that's totally what I'm doing. I loved Shiki's route, the passion and intensity of it; but had it unfolded the way I just described, I would have adored it. I would certainly have adored the other routes as well and ultimately purchased a physical copy of Period Cube, which is something that's definitely not going to happen with the story being the mess it is. That's sad, because there was some potential for stellar love stories and even — let's dream wildly — dashes of RPG-inspired gameplay. Well, maybe the next romantic VN will prove better — because indeed, I got my paws on a couple more of these during the January PSN sale; and since I'm still very much in the mood for love, I'll put them to the Shall We Get Physical test without delay. Better strike while the iron is hot, indeed! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!