Before I dive into the Routes, I have to rant against the prologue. What were you thinking, Otomate? Why did you make the prologue so darn hard to navigate? In most otomes, landing on your route of choice is merely a matter of hitting the right flag, or simply choosing your wooing material; but not so in Piofiore. Here, you have to hit a character flag and give very precise answers to a bunch of questions. After I tried and failed to get my routes of choice a half-dozen times, I finally gave up and ran to an FAQ — pretty ironic, knowing that I navigated the rest of the game without resorting to an FAQ. With that rant out of the way, let's move on to the Routes, which I'll lay down in the order I played them. Just for the record, I renamed the MC Monacia Orezza — a name I didn't create, and which I totally encourage you to google just for curiosity's sake. With that said, on with the show! (Giant SPOILERS ahead!)
Nicola Francesca — Smooth Operator
Nicola's Route is by far the easier to snatch, which is why I landed it first. It was bound to leave a deep imprint by sheer virtue of being my first steps into Piofiore; but even after playing the whole game, it remains my second favourite route. The feeling of danger is strong with this one, and my breath hitched more than once as I was faced with tricky choices over and over. Nicola may look kind and charming, but he's probably the most treacherous of the bunch: he's a liar through and through, and he'll lull you to complacency and bad endings if you don't pay attention. It should make sense that his Attribute is Honesty: only through sheer, blunt frankness can you melt his armour of lies and deception. With such a clear-cut Attribute, the best answers were easy enough to figure out — like, when you're busy baking dolce for Dante and Nicola pops up asking whom you're baking for, should you answer 'Dante' or 'Nicola'?
With Honesty firmly in tow and a crap ton of vigilance, I landed the Best Ending on my first try, which made me feel like a million. Mafia survived, yay! I enjoyed the fact that the main source of danger and obstructing factor to the relationship was good guy Roberto de Feo — all the more so as his slow descend into madness was riveting to watch. Last but not least, Nicola is one of the most deliciously fleshed-out characters in the whole game; his deep and intense relationship with Dante is the stuff yaoi fanfics are made of, and it gave him very believable motivations. In fact, Nicola is probably the most 'human' and relatable beau: his goals are nicely sentimental, and it was sweet to help him reach them while keeping myself alive and winning his affections. And talking about winning his affections: after a whole lot of denial, the guy is ultimately forced to face his own feelings for the MC, which leads to a very steamy kiss. I cannot express how much I friggin' dig that trope, as cliché as it is; repressed love and lust really makes for the hottest, most intense make-out scenes ever.
Dante Falzone — Hot as Ice
The game's poster boy boasts the dubious honour of being my least favourite route. This already happened in Collar x Malice and Sweet Fuse, so we definitely have a pattern here; and it makes perfect sense, given that Dante is very similar to Yanagi and Shidou. He's an ice queen-meets-tsundere, a man of great principles and coldness whose facade breaches ever-so-slightly once in a while yet never quite cracks. Warm feelings that never show are akin to no warm feelings at all; and it should surprise no one that Dante's Route is the chilliest, dreariest and most uneventful of them all. Heck, you hardly ever meet the guy during the first half of the route!
To make matters worse, Dante's Attribute is by far the murkiest and hardest to pinpoint in the whole
game. It's supposed to be Respect, but it's really just a mix of deference, gratitude, propriety and aloofness that varies depending on the circumstances. A typical example would be this: you're taking a stroll with bodyguard Leo Cavagnis and encounter Gilbert Redford, who asks why the heck you're cruising with the Falzone posse. The choice is between "Things have been happening" and "Leo's my friend"; and the best, Respect-raising answer is the latter. Not mightily obvious, methinks.
Mind you, this didn't prevent me from snatching the Best Ending upon my first try — Mafia survived again, yay! As for the main obstruction, it was none other than Nicola, still as cousin-obsessed as ever — except that this time, I was clearly on the wrong side of his attentions. He was not happy at all to see me hover around Dante, oh no precious; I had to fend off his barely veiled animosity and keep it in check — and I totally lapped up that tricky balancing act. Dare I say that I enjoyed it more than the Dante-related business? That would be a bit exaggerated — but not by much, really. Dante's long-suffering, reluctant-Mafia-boss leitmotiv didn't touch me quite as much as Nicola's devotion-filled, anything-for-my-cousin one.
Yang — Sir Psycho Sexy
Well, colour me surprised: once in his natural environment, Yang is not nearly as insane and unsufferable as his behaviour in other routes may indicate. He's actually pretty lively and witty, and his route packs a good amount of welcome jest; not only that, but the whole Lao Shu posse is much kinder than expected, leading to some pretty light-hearted scenes. We're still dealing with the Mafia though, and with a seriously nutty boss to boot; so one must stay on their toes at all times, no matter how kind Yang may (wrongly) seem.
Wisdom is by far the easiest Attribute to figure out, as the answers are really clear-cut: in most cases, you'll have to choose between a shrewd and sharp answer and a dumb and breezy one. That should make Yang's route a complete walk in the park; alas, it's anything but, due to a specific feature I'd dub 'delayed paybacks'. In VN, branching bad ends independent from affection levels usually unfold pretty fast after picking the wrong choice; but not so in Yang's route. Here, the branching bad ends are slapped in your face two or three chapters after picking the wrong choice. Worse, the main endings themselves operate on that system; this is absolutely infuriating, as it means that you can get them even with a perfect Status screen.
Of course, I had to fall prey to that vicious trap: I first got stranded in both the Bad Ending and the Good one — just because I foolishly trusted Yang at the wrong time, or because I failed to realize that now was the time to give him my body after fighting to stay chaste the whole route. Sure, the Bad Ending was not nearly as gruesome as I had feared, and the game was kind enough to give me convenient hints about my failures; and so I finally managed to snatch the Best Ending from the jaws of repeated defeat. Still, this kinda soured my feelings towards what could have been one of my favourite routes, making it merely my second least favourite instead. And the ecchi factor was so nicely strong with this one, too! Jeez, what a pity.
Orlok — Diamond in the Rough
All hail my favourite Route! Orlok pierced my heart, and instantly became one of my favourite otome characters ever. It's not just the fact that he's intensely kind, sweet and loveable despite being a more skilled assassin than all the Mafia bosses put together; it's the fact that you spend his whole route teaching him what it means to be human, to feel and to love. The combination of sheer ruthlessness when it comes to fighting and total cluelessness about everything else is a very potent one, bound to make Orlok a memorable character no matter what. I'm still trying to wrap my head around him to his day. Like, how can his route be so darn lovely and touching despite the fact that he slaughters the whole Burlone Mafia — bosses et all — by the end of it? And how can he feel so sensitive and vibrantly alive despite his cold demeanour and hardly expressive face? Well, the latter may be because he's not an ice queen, but rather a genuinely repressed boy learning to feel.
Orlok's Attribute is Tolerance; but really, it's just plain old kindness. Be as nice as possible to the guy while being just and fair, like the holy figure you are in his eyes, and everything should work just fine. It did for me, and I sailed straight into the Best Ending with a piena fiore to boot. Orlok's route was a real breath of fresh air that could have belonged to a totally different otome; and boy, did it feel good to allow myself to be just gentle and affectionate with the beau du jour for a change. My only regret with that Route is the fact that Orlok and the MC don't get down and dirty at any point. Of course, that's fully understandable given Orlok's life story; and it'll probably make for real juicy fandisc content, when the boy will finally wake up to his long-dormant sexual urges.
Gilbert Redford — Golden Boy
This is by far the most mellow and relaxed route, the one in which the 'Survive the Mafia' factor is at its lowest. See, Gilbert is such a wholesome and charismatic character that everybody loves him and bows down to him — including his fellow Mafia bosses. This route sees everybody collaborate to save Gilbert himself, and by extension the whole town of Burlone, from a nasty framing scheme. Landing the Best Ending requires not only raising Affection and Trust, but also being at the right place at the right time to gather intel and evidence.
While I managed to perform the latter just fine, I failed to pull off the former; despite my many experiments with answers, my flower plateaued at the second stage below piena fiore, which led me straight to the Good Ending. That ending was nice enough, with Gilbert and Monacia being both alive and an item; since I was starting to feel a bit burnt out with the game at that point, I decided to take it easy and jump straight to chapter 6 with high Affinity and Trust in order to land the Best Ending. While Gilbert's Route was quite entertaining, it sorely lacked the jeopardy factor present in other routes, that whole 'fight-for-your-life' thrill; and Gilbert himself is one of the most one-dimensional and superficial characters of the cast. Still, it remains my third favourite route, if only because it was so light-hearted and gave me such leeway to act.
Finale / Henri Lambert — Filler Time
Let's cut to the chase: that extra route feels like it was shoehorned into the game. Not only does it branches out of Gilbert' route at the halfway mark, meaning that you can literally spend hours looking for it (disclaimer: I used an FAQ to reach the starting point), but it adds nothing of value to the story. The Finale Ending is pure fan-servicey pandering, delivering a harem ending of sorts that's both cliché and completely improbable in the grand scheme of things; as for the Henri Ending, it doesn't provide enough character development to be truly satisfying, despite Henri being a genuinely haunting character. (So haunting, in fact, that I prefer his Route to Yang's and Dante's despite the fact that it's truncated.)
My guess is that the writers wanted to tone down the gruesome overall tone of Piofiore through the inclusion of that light-hearted Finale Ending; as for the Henri Ending, it seems to be there solely to provide a 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' kind of character. Pretty unnecessary, methinks; there are already enough fruitcakes in the main Routes — but hey, whatever floats your boat, Otomate. As for myself, I navigated those extra Routes just fine, despite the growing Piofiore fatigue I was feeling at that point. And I have to commend them Routes for giving me the most meaningful choice in the whole game; a choice that didn't lead to a bad end for once, and could instead kickstart two vastly different outcomes into existence. And it was delightfully straightforward, too: either I could forgive Henri and I ended up with him, or I couldn't and I didn't. Pretty simple, ain't it? Sure, there were obstructions and pitfalls after that; but I liked how plain logical that choice was for a change.
There you have it, dear fellow gamers: my deeply enjoyable and fulfilling experience with Piofiore's Routes. Navigating the Piofiore shoals was not nearly as difficult or gruesome as I had feared; in fact, the deeper I went into the game, the more the danger factor evaporated, both out of my playing experience and out of the game structure itself. I especially enjoyed the story's simplicity, as I prefer games with simple yet sound premises; letting the heroine opt out of her destiny was a nice touch, and saved us from the bore of a canon route. I enjoyed even more the fact that characters that were allies in one route turned into foes in another; relationships were thus based on character dynamics rather than on mere personalities, and it was a nice change from your usual otome where everybody fawns over the MC no matter what. Now I wonder if the planned Piofiore fandisc will ever make it to our shores; but I'd wager it will allow us to romance Roberto de Feo, Leo Cavagnis, Lee Hsi-shan and Oliver Haas — and probably get into Orlok's pants at long last too. And now that I successfully survived the Mafia, it's time to sail towards new gaming shores. I'll see you soon with my gaming instinct's next catch, dear fellow gamers; in the meantime, keep playing and take care!
