Wherein I get distracted by nerdy delights ~ Nicole Game Review

This is a story about a girl and a game called Nicole. (Winter Wolves get really creative with their names - sorry, but truth!)

My downfall all started when my good friend and fellow otome lover Nim e-mailed me yesterday with a delightful surprise, one of her favourite english otome making companies Winter Wolves released a new game. Being the awesome friend that she is, once discovering that the game had a mystery to solve, she naturally thought of me and my sad sad love affair with the epic Nancy Drew games, except in Nicole alongside solving a mystery you can seduce cute boys!

So of course I was interested.

Just FYI - I kind of hate, yet love you for bringing this game to my attention Nim. :)

I was interested but after playing a few english created otome doozies I wasn't expecting anything great. With nothing else to do I decided to play the free demo... and was hooked.

Here were my first reactions to each guy introduction.

Jeff - ooh hot, five seconds later... wow he is so creepy. He is forever dubbed as Creepy Lab-boy.
Ted - aww, tsun~tsun I like you the most so far, I wanna focus on him!
Kurt - eww what a massive Jerk, I'm playing him last. I dub you Jerkface!
Darren - aww so adorable, I like you but I will play you near the end. Dubbed Megane-chan.

So these were my first reactions. Prepare to be astounded by my wishy washy feelings!

(an example of Kurt's eloquence)

After the demo I e-mailed Nim my reactions about the guys and feelings on who is the culprit that kidnaps girls on the university campus and then releases them a few days later with no memories.

My deduction at the beginning was Jeff because he was the logical assumption since he worked in a lab and experimenting on girls with his creepy personality wouldn't surprise me. (I admit I had a bit of a trauma flash back to fat pigeon creepy doctor experiments: explanation here) But I admitted I hoped it wasn't him because that would be too obvious and boring.

Since I just recently made a really big purchase (which I'll blog about another time) I have limited funds atm and was pretty iffy about buying the game, I knew I would eventually buy it - hot guys and a mystery added together with a decent storyline is a massive weakness of mine. But I was all I'll write a blog post, be productive and do a few other things first.

Yeah, that didn't happen.

Literally at the end of my e-mail  with all of the above to Nim I said 'Screw that, I'm buying it now."

I blame it on my compulsion to solve mysteries.

Now let me just quickly talk about costs. If the game was $30 I probably wouldn't have bought it. It would be on my list of things to buy when I actually get a job, then I probably wouldn't buy it anyway - I'm cheap like that. But I buy Nancy Drew games for $20 whenever one comes out so hey buying Nicole for the same price didn't bother me. (Actually $21 AUD)

So I bought the game, started playing and suddenly turned into an idiot who liked all the guys and didn't know who to choose. So naturally I was making them pretty much all like me - except for creepy lab boy - he still creeped me out until a touching moment with Ted and then I fell in love with his creepy diabolical ways - pathetic I know.

I even started to really like Jerkface by the end of the Demo, sure he was a jock with stupid one liners and constantly trying to get into the heroines pants, but he would have these rare moments where you realised that wow he did have a personality and he wasn't as stupid as everyone, especially he himself thought he was.

So after these revelations, and even though I love Ted and his tsundere ways I decided to go with Kurt first, or I wouldn't be able to seduce the other guys with peace of mind.

Yeah I have a thing for tough guy acts or assholes with a soft squishy center.

(my exact feelings for Kurt!)
Tips on Jerkface Kurt - to get his normal ending you need 900 zeal. To get his special ending you need 900 zeal and 900 clues. 

Also you need to give him all his presents. The mp3 arm brace, the football pillow, the earbuds, the underarmor and the school pennant. Why? because its fun to seduce people with material objects!

Of course due to me wanting to seduce all the guys and create my very own harem, I got the alone ending first, where I didn't get 900 clues or 900 zeal. Joy for being all alone! after getting the alone ending a few more times, I got the very bad ending...  all I have to say is, it could have been worse! So after getting that ending a few more times I got 900 zeal and 765 clues and got the normal ending, which although cute, I kind of wanted to throw up a little... but it was a nice little yay moment for heroine Nicole and jerkface Kurt.

Okay so after i got the normal ending twice I gave up and started a new game (I bow down to the skip button) and played until I unlocked the special kurt ending! YAY, finally! I think I was more excited to find out the mystery than anything else and why they did what they did, etc.

I was disappointed.

I still really liked it, and enjoyed the game immensely. I just would have liked a little bit more to the mystery. I wont spoil but I'm hoping for different mysteries or more detail into it with the other guys routes.

(This is the kiss for the normal end, special ending is much more steamy and I'll let you discover that for yourselves ;) )

The special ending while although lacking in the mystery section was really adorable with Kurt and he got to be all manly and save Nicole etc.

I applaud you Winter Wolves, Nicole so far is the best english otome game I have ever played and can't wait to play more of it and your other games.

But as an avid reader, writer and lover of mystery this is what I would have done differently - for Kurt's game anyway.

I would have had a few more interactive scenes with Kurt, just a few little ones near the end - there was a massive gap between the end and the last Kurt scene where you just constantly try to up your zeal and clues. While I understood this reason it just got a little boring.

Instead of us just knowing that the heroine 'found' clues in the stats bar I would maybe have a few scenes where we the player found some clues with the heroine so we get to to try and solve the mystery ourselves also.

Hell maybe after a few of the creepy scenes where Nicole gets those messages have her run into Kurt, so that we get more interactive Kurt action as well as have Nicole happy to see Kurt and feel relieved and 'protected' or even after run ins with Kurt have her doubt him near the end after she gets more clues and wonder why she always ran into him at those moments.... just good for the mystery!

I'm by no means an otome expert, but everyone who loves otome games should definitely check this game out! You can find more information about it here, at least check out the demo!

Next up, Creepy Lab-boy!