Playing London Detective Mysteria filled me with newfound respect for Otomate. Sure, their stories are sometimes utter piles of horse manure, and I roughed them up more than once on this very blog; however, when it comes to gameplay, Otomate offerings boast a sheer accessibility that other developers such as Karin can only dream of. Otomate games have everything nicely streamlined, to the point where even complete otome noobs like me can land the good endings and unearth the true route without fail. Which, oh dear, is so not the case in LDM.
LDM's gameplay suffers from a painful lack of clarity and readability. There are just too many systems at work: a bit of flag system here, an affection gauge there, branching paths left and right, a hidden 'detective gauge' in the corner, timed choices sprinkled on top — and a throroughly confused player in the end. Because of all these conflicting features, it's extremely difficult to pinpoint the requirements for a given ending. You'd think that zeroing in on a given beau to get locked on their route and then being more or less nice to them would land you the whole range of romantic endings, but that's not the case: you also need to factor in the detective gauge, and maybe one or two flags as well. Weirdly enough, bad romantic endings are actually harder to land than good ones; and don't get me started on the non-romantic routes, whose requirements are even more impossibly arcane. Mind you, the fact that most endings play so hard to get wouldn't be an issue, if not for the fact that viewing pretty much all of them is required to unlock the True Ending. Since I gave up after uncovering the five good romantic endings, I cannot say if going through all these loops is ultimately worth it.
This segues nicely into the next point, namely LDM's story. I'd like to say that all things narrative are that game's saving grace; but alas, it's not the case. (Spoilers!) I could expand on the tone shift issue, which sees the story go from light-hearted comedy to gritty noir in a matter of chapters; but that's far from being my biggest problem here. Said biggest problem would be the sheer unlikelihood of the romantic entanglements, which defeats the very purpose of that game being an otome rather than a mere VN. Ironically enough, that very issue stems from something that could be seen as positive, namely MC Emily's very developed character. The game goes to great lengths to give her a depth properly unseen in the genre, and utterly succeeds; and that succeed turns out to be l'amour's downfall. Emily is no mere placeholder for the player indeed: she's a noblewoman with duties aplenty and a grisly past to deal with. Not only does she seem almost too busy to fool around, but the fact that she's determined to become the head of her house in a near future and do a great job at it obliterates all her possible relationships with the game's beaus, whose extraction is certainly not noble enough to court a lady. The power imbalance between Emily and the boys is so massive that jaded old me cannot see those relationships last, let alone flourish; and that's a tad depressing to be served with love stories that are so obviously bound to fail. (End of spoilers)
So I'll take my french leave and drop LMD for the time being — and maybe forever, because let's face it: my initially warm feelings for that game have sadly grown cold. Sure, it has really pretty colours and gorgeous art; but so do many VNs with better stories in my precious collection. I may write a route report if I feel like it, but no promises here. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!
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