Love Vampire Flowers

Love, Vampire Flowers was one of the VNs I have been looking forward to, if only because Lovesick Puppies (by the same company) was such a hidden gem at the time. I won't say this approaches Lovesick Puppies for impact, because it doesn't. In comparison, it begins much more slowly and the problems tend to be more of the 'classic charage' type (well, the heroines' ones anyway). The big draw of this is that the protagonist is about as psychologically mature as you could hope for from a 'good guy' vampire, lol. Unfortunately, that very maturity is the cause of most of the boring parts of the early part of this VN. Not only that, but the makers of this VN indulged in a rather heroic effort to avoid getting to the point when it came to the common route, lol.

So far, I've played two heroine paths, Chris's and Rie's. About two thirds of the VN is repeated text (since the actual choice to cause a split-off is in the prologue, I'm unsure if it would be called a common route, lol). This is the main reason why I felt like they took forever getting to the point. To be honest, in the two paths I've played so far, the biggest disappointment has been the somewhat hurried nature of the heroine paths in comparison to the overly drawn out common route. There was room in this for a story with a lot more depth and impact, and the protagonist himself would have provided more than enough ingredients for this, even without the heroines' own personal issues.

That said, by charage standards, the heroine paths are quite good... it is just that there is so much potential in the setting that it can't help but be wasted on a 'normal charage'. This VN's setting would have made for a first-class nakige, if they'd gone for a heavier emphasis on emotional drama in general. I also felt that they misused the protagonist's flashbacks to his distant past, as the one in Chris's route would have fit a lot more in with Rie, considering her background. There were points where a clash of wills and ways of thinking should have occurred, logically speaking, but didn't, even though Haruto himself isn't exactly a weak-willed person.

Basically, it was my impression that they started out trying to create a truly dynamic protagonist to drive a more in-depth plot... but probably had to downsize everything except the common route, most likely due to budget constraints. There are hints all over the place that they meant to create a much deeper plot but for some reason didn't do so, and that is immensely frustrating for me, given my fondness for a good story.

As mentioned above, this VN is a mass of wasted potential. Yes, there are really good points... but between those good points is an interminable amount of pretty much pointless ichaicha, slice-of-life, and a number of other things that made me want to scream.

First, neither Lisa's nor Koharu's routes escaped the trap of mediocrity that Chris and Rie's were taken by. Sadly, both routes are fairly standard charage romance with predictable turns of events... so predictable I fell asleep during Lisa's route, lol. To be honest, at times I really hate the Japanese's fondness for considering being average to be a good thing. That said, I did like that Lisa's, Rie's, and Koharu's paths all had epilogues that touched on a future more than half a decade in the future, when the characters are set on their new life paths. This is a huge plus... that would have been better off in a more interesting VN, lol.

Kureha's route, on the other hand, manages to escape at least some of the difficulties the other routes had, if only because it is the only route where the protagonist actually has a deep history with the heroine beforehand. At the same time, there were some bad moments - the typical osananajimi 'I love you but you don't consider me to be of the opposite sex!' scenario *sighs* - that left me wanting to tear my hair out. The ending was good - for once they didn't chicken out - and the epilogue went twenty years into the future, which was nice. Sadly, it still suffered from an overall lackluster 'intermediate stage' during which you had to wait interminably for the two idiots to figure out that they loved each other, which is a huge - massive - downer.

Overall, this VN is perhaps the most frustrating charage I've played in a year or more, in its near-continuous failure to use the setting and indulgence in the usual anti-exceptionalism and excessive story archetype use (that felt awkward, to boot). To be blunt, Haruto had the potential to be a first-class protagonist, but he showed up as a third-rate one because they were unwilling to make this a somewhat (it would have only taken a little effort) darker themed story. The simple introduction of an antagonist or the protagonist facing his personal issues without the filter of the heroines would have been a huge boost to the plot, overall. They spent way too much time minimizing the vampirism issue.