Otome Game Review: Diabolik Lovers Haunted Dark Bridal

Intro: Kotomori Yui’s dad is sent by the church to Europe and he hands Yui over to some “relatives” at the famous “haunted mansion” where she meets 6 vampires who aren’t all that sparkly…

The game contains 3 parts per character: Dark, Maniac and Ecstacy — or 30 chapters per character and an additional epilogue. From the guides I used, it’s best to select all of the “love choices” so you can quickly unlock the Best End and then get the Do S & Do M over with to finally unlock the Heaven End.

I’ll be combining all the parts because you don’t want to read pages of text and I don’t want to type pages of text 😛

*Final thoughts below

Rip EardrumsKanato:  Carries around a stuffed bear named Teddie that is… filled with the ashes of his dead mother. He has a very short temper and is infamously known for his fork scene, in which he proceeds to stab Yui with one for being “late” with his French toast. But things take a change when Kanato realizes that his mother’s (Cordelia) heart was put into Yui’s, he doesn’t need Teddie anymore when he can have both!

Yui tries to placate Kanato by answering with only what she believes he wants to hear but he sees through her and “punishes” her for that – as well as for talking to other guys… Eventually she succumbs to the pleasure she feels whenever he drinks her blood.

There were parts where he’s like I’ll help you clean or look at this flower but then twisted it into some BDSM scenario – but here’s where I felt a little weird about it. BDSM requires consent. Several times, Yui says STOP but he twists her words to make her say she enjoys it like wtaf sir.

Ultimately, I felt bad for him because of his awful upbringing with Cordelia – but then he’d go around and abuse someone else because of his tragic past and it didn’t sit right with me. Compared to Ayato, however, Kanato loved Yui.

Ayato: Finds it hilarious to pour hot wax on Yui and throw darts at her. Unlike Kanato, this guy tries to assault her, but thankfully Reiji walked in on time to stop it. He has an awful past but again this doesn’t allow you to treat others like dirt. A few times it seemed like he could be redeemed (like when he saved her from Kanato) but then he turns around and strangles her.

Cordelia is like one of those narcissistic reality tv women who needs to be #1. She hates Beatrice and is always trying to sabotage her. Which backfires tremendously because Cordelia never thought that the way she chose to raise her son would turn him into this selfish guy who wanted to be the best like no one ever was! And now her son hates her too.

Laito: It kills me to see two of my biases voice irredeemable assholes. I did my best to focus on Hirakawa’s velvety voice but every time he said “Bitchchan” I just *sigh* Here’s the thing: He had sex with his mom.

So as you can imagine, the way things go down with Yui are really gross. I was hoping he was Do-M but NOPE gotta make him both at the same time! As such, I felt sick to my stomach because after he slept with Cordelia and she ran to him going “Save me! I need to have sex with Karl!” the poor guy broke.

Now he equates love with killing the person you love. Like the ultimate 告白。Yui tries to take her life when she realizes that Laito just wants Cordelia to take over her so he can kill her again… or smt? Things spiraled into having sex in front of mommy’s grave, violent sexual assaults, having his brides attack Yui and then deciding NOPE because seeing her covered in blood is so damn hot （ಠ_ಠ）

Excuse me while I scrub my brain from Laito. Hirakawa’s voice is too lovely for this.

WHY ARE YOU A LIE?!

Reiji: I saw the megane and thought there was a chance at a good route!!! It’s a trap. This douchebag is the biggest ass to ever be conceived and I doubt anyone will ever top this mega-douche-fedora-reddit-user.

Unlike the bros, who at the least had pasts that could illustrate why they were the way they are, Reiji has nothing to explain himself. A  tragic past is never an excuse to abuse someone, but the fact that Reiji didn’t have even that is why he has become the number 1 dick of all time.

His mom Beatrice preferred Shuu over him so in his anger he hired a vampire hunter to kill her but plot twist! She wanted to die all along! As you can imagine, Reiji was pissed because YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO SUFFER so guess what? He’s been working on a drug TO WAKE THE DEAD SO HE CAN KILL HER AGAIN LIKE WTAF?!

Plot twist: the vampire hunter was Yui’s dad, Richter – except he isn’t her real dad cuz she was some unwanted baby the stork flew in. Apparently she was just lying around because this is when Richter put Cordelia’s heart into Yui…

After horrific “experiments” are done on Yui, Cordelia is done with Reiji’s shit and takes over Yui’s body. As if it couldn’t get any worse, we find out that Cordelia has been watching her own sons sleep with Yui… and also Reiji wants to marry Cordelia. WHAT.

His aniki, Karl, married Cordelia and she loves Karl. But Karl only wanted her powerful bloodline passed down to his children. So Reijii’s forever screwed over and he becomes Do-M for Cordelia and then plot twist 2: Cordelia’s own plan is the reason why Yui was brought to the mansion in the first place.

Shuu: The oldest of the Sakamaki bros. He loves music and putting the least amount of effort into life, like Shikamaru from Naruto. When he makes it clear to Yui that he has no intention of turning her into a sack of blood, Yui gets her hopes up. If she can get on his good side he might help her escape!

She has to work hard to get him to even acknowledge her: saving him from drowning when he goes for a nap in the bath lol, getting him to attend classes, etc. and for someone who’s soooo lazy he certainly teases her a lot 😉

The one thing that pissed me off was there was a point where Shu left her on her own in the city and she didn’t escape! Oh well, she awakens as a super Do S when he asks her to lick his wounds (eww) and she discovers she enjoys the pained look on his face. To each their own, I suppose.

Shu was friends with a shota named Edgar but he was burned to death when Reiji set his village on fire. So now Shu has PTSD and when Yui’s cooking, he flips out when he sees the stove flame and kisses her. By this point, Yui’s all YOLO and they bang the next day.

Reiji’s gets upset and destroys the food she prepared for Shu. She tells him what happened and says “She wants to step on his head” which makes her aroused… I mean, good for you? Here is where Shu realizes he cares about Yui as a person and doesn’t want her to be hurt if she remains with him. HOLY SHIT IT TOOK 4 ROUTES JUST FOR SOME ACTUAL ROMANCE!

His bro just couldn’t handle not being # 1 so he kills Yui in one route then Shu kills Reiji. He turns her into a vampire cuz somehow she survived the blow? He kills his cousins cuz he’s the ruler now and Yui is the Dark Queen.  In another end, Reiji and Shu end their lives when Shu finds a diary entry about how Reiji killed Edgar. In the last ending, there’s a portal in the forest so they were never in Japan to begin with. WUT. They move to Transylvania and live in peace.

Shu wasn’t an ass and didn’t want another human to get close to him because then his bro would kill her. But he fell in love with her anyway so it all worked out!

Subaru: Youngest Sakamaki bro and a huge tsundere. He is one of the sweetest, most precious cinnamon roll angels in this entire game. While the others find it amusing when they hurt Yui by drinking her blood, Subaru immediately stops and tries to amend for what happened. Poor guy tries to act tough and all but the moment he notices Yui’s uncomfortable or in pain he does everything he can to make the situation better.

Shu has some of the more suggestive lines, but Subaru don’t know wtf he’s doing. Because of this it’s so hilarious when he gets flustered over everything and he tries to apologize:

In other words, to apologize, I’ll show you my body.

Unlike every other guy with mommy issues, Subaru has daddy issues, which I can relate to lmao. His mom Christa was sadly forced to be Karl’s bride and was forced to have his child. She’s constantly having flashbacks so the poor woman begs her child to kill her with a silver knife. It got so bad that I had to honestly lower the volume because of the poor woman screaming at Subaru to kill her – but he could never bring himself to do it.

As you can imagine, that’s a lot of shit for a child to deal with. So in order to release all of that, he violently smashes stuff. Thankfully, he’s a cinnamon roll and doesn’t hurt Yui and tbh, other than Shu, Subaru was the only one who actually cared about Yui. So after they realize they both like each other and bang in his coffin, he sets off to free his mother like he should’ve done a looooong ass time ago.

End 1: After killing Christa he’s like omg we gotta go… but you know, it’s cool when your cousins killed Cordelia and all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ End 2: Subaru kills Christa but he’s upset that he can’t face his dad so Yui says if he drinks his blood he’ll go super saiyan. He tells her he’s already over 9000 and that he’ll drink from no one else. End 3: He dies so Yui goes berserk because Cordelia’s like TIME TO RISE MUWHAHAHA but because Subaru wouldn’t want that to happen she takes her own life.  I’ve a huge bias for tsunderes so I enjoyed this guy’s route more than Shu’s.

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Final Thoughts: 

I’d never have played this if not for my friend in Japan who sent it to me for my B-day. She loves this game so I decided why not? This isn’t for those looking for romance. Just like Amnesia, the main plot of this is darker and focused on other things. Where this differs from most otoge is that it tries to implement elements of BDSM. The problem is that BDSM requires consent. Fiction and reality are separate things and you’re allowed to enjoy things. I just didn’t like how certain elements were written (like the BDSM) and so I had issues with it. Ultimately, this game just wasn’t for me. There were some good parts though, like Shuu, Subaru and Yui.

I’ll talk about the positives first:

Heroine: Yui! Holy crap girl! The anime is a lie. I couldn’t finish the show because this poor girl doesn’t stick up for herself but in the game she does. I’m surprised at how daring she was. I could never. She is incredibly brave and does things I would be too scared to do in her situation. Though there are also plenty of times where she’s so terrified that she resorts to self-preservation and cowers, which is totally understandable. Once she realized she liked getting her blood sucked, though, something awakens in her.

Here’s where the problems start. The first and most important one being that I don’t self-insert in otome games. Everyone is allowed to play otome games the way they like. I just happen to enjoy otoge when I’m viewing the game from an outside perspective. It’s like reading Y/N fics. There’s something about the second POV that I don’t gel with, so similarly, I can’t do that with otoge. I’d also never want to be in Yui’s situation, but to each their own. Personally, I’ve never been bitten by a sexy vampire, but constantly reading about how “painful” and “horrible” it felt is not for me. Yui later starts to derive pleasure from that, so good for her.

So the only time I actually was like ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)‎  with the dummy mic was in Subaru and Shuu’s routes because that was the only time she wasn’t being stabbed/strangled/yelled at/sexually assaulted/etc… (Also, I didn’t realize this until going to therapy years later, but sexual assault is a HUGE trigger of mine, so you can imagine how it was playing this game and just becoming this shaking, horrified mess and not really understanding why I was reacting that way because I lacked the necessary words to express that)

Subaru and Shu: Tsundelicious and Moecake.

Art: Honestly, it’s beautiful.

Music: Haunting, gorgeous, and fits the game perfectly. Wasn’t a big fan of the ED song but liked the OP song because that right there will tell you that you’re not playing no fluffy otoge.

Cons: So now that I’ve been to therapy (for reasons unrelated to this game LMAO) and can articulate myself better many years later, my main problem is how this game was marketed to me by others. I was told this is an exploration of BDSM, and so when Yui was attacked, everything that happened to her was okay and that it was just part of BDSM. The problem is that for the majority of the routes, Yui isn’t consenting to any of this. She screams, begs, cries, for them to stop. She eventually becomes so used to their treatment that she unconsciously turns her pain into pleasure in order to survive. She’s trapped in a house of vampires and does what she can to please them in order to escape their torture but they still force themselves on her, experiment on her, etc. The exception would be Shu. He never attacks her so I was able to get behind the fact that she did enjoy it when he bit her and she loved him because she wasn’t forced to adapt to it. I also can get behind Subaru.

BDSM is all about consent and making sure the other person is willing. In a lot of dark romance, there’s no consent. That’s what you sign up for. Same with that dead dove tag on ao3 lmao. If you don’t like it, don’t click on it! As someone who had no idea that sexual assault and other things were triggers going into this game with the knowledge that it was just a fun exploration of kink… I felt completely blindsided, to be honest. I thought this was going to be an edgy vampire otome game and that’s it. That would’ve been cool, cuz I enjoyed the Black Wolves Saga a lot! I knew going into that game there were things I might not be comfortable with, but the game took its time to explore that and it was so well done that I ended up really liking the game. Had I played Diabolik after when I was more informed about things, I don’t think I would’ve been as upset as I was when I first played this. Does this make sense? I feel like I’m rambling. All this to say that everyone can enjoy what they want to, I’m not judging you for it. I just wish I’d been warned that there were rape scenes… That would’ve been nice lmao.

At the end of the day, this game wasn’t a fun time for me. If it’s something you enjoy, I’m happy for you! Don’t let me yuck your yum. I wish I could be part of this, but this just had way too many triggers for me so I’ll not be touching the rest of this franchise. So, if you want play this game but don’t know Japanese, don’t worry! There’s a fan translation you can use! Go find it if you want but remember you gotta buy a copy of the game first, which you can do CDJapan. If you use my link you can help support my blog. I sincerely appreciate it. It’s been a wild few years coming back to this review only to cringe and die reading it because Idk how anyone understood the keyboard smashing I was doing. I sure hope I’m more articulate now lmao. Anyway! I don’t hate this game. I had a bad time playing it, sure, but that may not be your experience.  Just look up the trigger warnings in case you need them.

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Want a darker otoge with romance? Give Nameless or Sweet Fuse a try. I also recommend Amnesia Memories.

Or if you want super depressing get Hakuoki! ^^

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Have you played this? Did you watch the anime? What did you think? Any recommendations?

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