Otome Game Review: Nameless

Intro: Eri loved dolls as a child and after her grandfather died, her parents left her alone to go off on business. She wakes up one morning to find 5 strangers in her home claiming to be her Crobidoll dolls…but she’s forgetting something important. And it just might cost her. The characters are voiced in Korean.

***My recommended play order from least spoilery to most:

Lance–>Yeonho–>Yuri–>Tei–>Red–>Nameless.

If you want to play some out of order, stick to first playing through either Lance, Yeonho, or Yuri. Yuri’s bad ends reveal a little more than the others. It’s imperative you play ALL of the routes. Because you can’t unlock Red and the answer to everything unless you do this. (Exactly like Code Realize and Lupin.)

If you’re new to otome games, you can’t “shop around” and then choose a route. You have to be set on one guy each play through. You’ll need to make several saves to get everything. If you need a guide, click here.

Final thoughts down below. If you just want to skim through the routes I’ve summarized please feel free. Keep in mind that Tei, Red, and Nameless will be nothing but spoilers.

Lance:  the“Ice Prince” Tsundere ❤ is gorgeous and prioritizes studying and manners. He’s a prickly fellow who has an inferiority complex with Red because he feels that he’s just going to be tossed away. He’s not special or unique and can’t inspire others like Red. Red was created as the only doll of its kind, whereas Lance was manufactured over and over again. His route doesn’t reveal much except there are instances where the heroine notices parts of her diary entries have been erased. And she can’t remember the missing parts.

As Lance opens up to her, we see him overcome his anxiety and inferiority complex with Red, and how he becomes his own person. His initial design made Lance worry he was forever stuck to be what Crobidoll made him. He tries several times to step out of his box and be his own person but it terrifies him. He’s shocked Eri pays attention to him. When he starts to fall for her, he’s so scared of messing up. That in the end he’ll become a doll again and he’ll just be some useless toy. That he can’t become important to others. He’s so precious. His bad ends were creepy because in one he dies and they find black feathers in his body.

He gets really bold for a tsundere though. He panics when Red asks her to be the heroine in his play where they have to kiss. To get her first kiss before Red, he tries to get her out of the role several times haha. When that doesn’t work he tries to talk to her about it in her room but gets too embarrassed. He decides to bring her to the school rooftop before the play to kiss her but she completely ditched him like wtf. As she’s changing lol he barges in and kisses her. Then, rofl he puts on the dress and ends up kissing Red in the play like omg lol. He was the only one who encouraged Eri to show her friends her interests in dolls.

And they totally did it at the end 😉

Yeonho: poor baby was abused by his owner and when he arrives at Eri’s house in a beaten up package, she’s horrified to discover all these carvings on his body. His previous owner caused him PTSD so severe that he latches onto Eri like a leech. He smothers her with unrelenting kindness and gifts and breakfasts and calls her Master. At first it was cute, but the more the route went on, the more it became obvious  Yeonho was messed up in da head. And who wouldn’t after what he went through? The poor guy has several PTSD attacks and in one of his bad ends, he decides the only way to make sure his new master won’t leave him is to strangle her to death. Tei walks in to stop him but turns out he’s yandere! So he kills Yeonho, Eri, and himself. Like holy crap. Not only that, but Eri has a yandere moment of her own in one of the bad ends and it was hard to read. Like holy shit.

Like Lance, Yeonho struggles to overcome his preset personality. It takes him a long time to  finally realize he doesn’t need to worry about her abandoning him. I was so glad he got his happy ending (even though it was bittersweet) because he went through waaay too much and I was literally so creeped out by his bad endings. Like I couldn’t even in them. It was too much. But they were necessary to piece together the plot.

Yuri: created to be the man to fulfill a woman’s desires 😉 He believes he’s “God’s gift to women” and is constantly wooing women, donning on facial masks, or lavishly spending money on people. So much so it freaks out Eri because it seems like he’s doing lewd things to get cash. I don’t like the flirty trope, so he wasn’t my favorite. At least they spun it a little differently. Since he was designed to love all women equally, he doesn’t actively seek them out to flirt with them. He’s just designed that way. He doesn’t know what it means to really love someone and be loved. He takes on the role of her music teacher and he honestly was hilarious. He says sexual things to the students when describing how lovely music is, and then they shove this pic of a horse onscreen because he crosses the line with his suggestiveness lol. He gets frightened about his feelings for Eri and tries to ignore them when he realizes she likes him back. Tei ends up becoming involved in his route and holy crap guys yanderes just don’t do it for me. Like no. Tei freaking kills her in one of the bad ends and in another “less creepy” one, it’s implied there’s some weird ass 3p going on. There’s a CG and everything.

Tei tells her that Yuri is waiting for her and she runs to him. He’s about to start his music when he sees her and announces he’s quitting his job cuz he fell in ❤ If Eri doesn’t go into the music room, Tei kills her. It’s revealed that each time she dies the wizard restarts everything. If she goes in, Yuri he kisses her against the freaking door where anyone can see them. The descriptions were lewd af but then we get this CG and I’m squinting at it going, “Are they even kissing?” lololol. Tei interrupts cuz he’s still a teacher until he turns in resignation paperwork and waits 30 days. While on a date he muses to himself about how he has to wait until she’s “legal” ehhhh. He proposes but Nameless is like too bad and the game ends after Yuri can’t find her. Can we take a minute to say that he can’t sing? Like no offense. I can’t sing to save my life but I was cringing listening to the ending song.

Tei: I’m not a fan of yanderes and his route was super messed up and he pops into other routes to kill Eri. She finds her journal has been blotted out and hears a voice mocking her. She passes out and finds Tei when she wakes up. At first things seem normal until she’s shocked to find she has a cellphone. Every night Tei gives her ZZZ tea to make her sleep. It’s obvious he’s spiking it cuz he’s always barging into her room so she can barely write in her journal. Even if she was able to, Nameless (who we still haven’t met) is ripping those pages out. At Banjul, she remembers some stuff and panics. Her friends leave with her but when Tei comes home he makes her drink more tea. She mentions how quickly the tea works and jokes that he spiked it. GIRL WTH?! That’s NOTHING to joke about. Eri heads to her room and Tei emos to himself about how he’s trying to protect her from danger/himself.

Because this is what true love is.

They go to the amusement park and due to girls getting all jelly, they flee to the ferris wheel. Eri’s scared of heights, so Tei takes the opportunity to confess how he’s scared of someone hurting her cuz of jealousy over him and proceeds to hug her to death. Tei distances himself and Yuri swoops in and I honestly was thinking Yuri should ntr her cuz holy crap. I knew where it was going the moment we heard about Tei’s damaged knee and his “dirtiness” and just NO.

Soi dates Tei, then he drugs Eri, drags her into his room, and she never questions it. He tries to force himself on her saying he wants to hurt her. HELL NO. While thankfully he doesn’t mean rape, he does intend to scar her and stuff cuz TRU WUV.

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Eventually Soi breaks up with Tei and he confesses his sobstory just so Eri can decide that YES PLEASE DESTROY ME teehee, or that she isn’t stupid and wants a relationship with him (please just run away, girl) If you want all his CG’s you gotta play those bad ends!!! I wasn’t too shocked since he freaking creepers into other routes and freaked me out so much in Yeonho’s bad ending. Ironically enough, Tei doesn’t have any “suggestiveness” in his good ending-just a gross ass kiss. Like idk I was expecting him to be one of the guys who did get it on, but whelp, it was the tsundere who got it lol.

Red: an action doll who’s genki for justice and pretty stupid. He’s the only Red that was created by Crobidoll. And he has the most spoilers. I was genuinely surprised at how quickly he fell for Eri and how he knew what his feelings were. He didn’t bumble around wondering what the FEELS meant. Eri wakes up to find she can’t remember much and exams are next week. Meaning the festival is super close. Talk about a flash forward. After a kidnapping incident Eri goes to school early every morning with Lance. But after Red realizes he likes her, he steals her away to go to school with her. Eri is also in the play. Soi asks Eri to give Tei her present. Tei doesn’t deserve you, Soi! He accepts the gift but Red misunderstands and thinks Eri likes Tei. And Tei thinks Eri likes him back too lol so when Yuri talks about how Red is realizing what it means to have a crush he suddenly gets up and confesses his feelings to Tei.

Nameless starts tearing up her journal cuz he’s too impatient to finally see her. The Wizard says if he wrecks the journal too much, he might ruin his chance of his wish coming true but YOLO. Nameless messes up her memories. Eri gets locked into the gym by the jelly girls but Red saves her. And then she starts passing out, forgetting who people are and hearing Nameless’s voice. Red believes he MUST be special since he’s the only one of his kind and was made to be a hero. But reality slaps him in the face: he prolly doesn’t have powers, he’s naive, and he doesn’t know who he is if he’s not a super hero and loved by all.

And ugh Eri wtf girl? Like I get it. Bullying sucks and having jelly girls threaten you with knives and knocking you out ain’t cool. But like all she does is go “Woe is me. What did I do to deserve this?” When that’s ALL U SAY and never fight back-even speak up!!-just NO. Yeah, we want genki Red to help, but you gotta at least tell them to stfu. Tell a teacher. A parent. Someone! Don’t wait for the situation to get so bad that one of the guys has to suggest telling a teacher.

Somehow she ends up getting her memories back thanks to Red and HNNNG this route was freaking adorable. Like just do it for him. Srsly. Even his moments of jealousy didn’t bother me and I really enjoyed his route.  Usually I can’t understand why most of the “canon” couples are even together cuz of issues and stuff but this one worked! They both mutually supported each other, there was no abuse, no questionable stuff it was just nice, sweet and healthy.

 

Nameless: Once you finish this route and enter the name of Nameless several times for the true end, all of your files will be deleted. Please back it up or copy your files if you wish.  I feel super conflicted. Like damn this GAME WAS BRUTAL when you piece it all together. “Sweet Solutions for Female Gamers” my ass.

SPOILERS:

This is literally an otoge in an otoge. The Wizard requires memories to keep him alive and have powers so he appears to Nameless. If you’re desperate enough, the Wizard will come to you, and boy is Nameless desperate.

Crobidoll takes pieces of SOULS and put them into their dolls cuz girls get attracted to certain attributes and it encourages them to buy the doll with their desired personality type. So imagine Toy Story-the toys can feel and experience everything. And yet they can’t move. At all.

Every traumatic thing they go through, they feel. And they can’t stop it. And their owners don’t know this cuz like lol how would a child realize that hey, ur teddy bear actually is alive!

When the owner abandons their toy/forgets their name, the toys go to some kind of purgatory. Only the ones manufactured with souls. They can either die off or to escape they must remember their own name or their owner must. Eri completely forgot about her first toy who’s going insane in purgatory so when the Wizard tells him make her fall in love and you can see her again! Why? Because she’s empty inside-she lacks parts of her own soul. Each time she “captures” one of the guys she literally TAKES THEIR SOUL. Nameless is like dude how the f does this benefit me but don’t think too hard guys. This is an otoge.

Each route takes place in some alternate world cuz it’d be too “wrong” for Eri to have 5 boytoys despite the fact that in this game there is: abuse, drugging, kidnapping, possessiveness, creepy ass stalkers, murdering jelly girls, attempted rape, sexual assault (not rape-it’s forced kisses and touching. This is assault guys. Don’t romanticize it. It’s not cute). Tei apparently was so messed up in da head that he kind of knew what was going on.

I felt awful for Nameless. Like holy crap this was messed up. But I gotta say it-he mentions he found her attractive when she was a child and they reveal he’s a teddy bear and I couldn’t not think:

Maybe he grew up and aged like her-NOPE. Like shit what am I supposed to think after he says this? And they flash a teddy bear staring at Eri and you can’t help but stare at his button eyes and go shit Eri get out of there. He’s lusting.

The boytoys get together to rescue Eri from Nameless and because it’s justice, Red tosses acid at pedobear and freaking melts him. So while he’s slowly dying in agony, they skip happily away! Later Eri lol somehow remembers there’s a closet in her kitchen and finds the mangled body of her first toy…

 

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Final Thoughts: Keep telling yourself this was a sweet otoge. Lol wtf like it’s cute in some parts but it’s so messed up. I enjoyed it a LOT and really hope you pick this game up. It’s worth the market price and the art, voice acting, music, etc were great. Keep yourself braced for the bad ends because they’re worth it and get you cgs and journal entries-but they’re intense.

Red was my fav!!!!  Lance was next followed by Yeonho, Yuri and…Tei is just no. Don’t go near that dirtbag. 

Highly Recommended!!