Chou no Doku Hana no Kusari ~ Overall thoughts

Published by: PROTOTYPE 
Available for Nintendo switch & Steam (ENG/JP) 

Hello!

Feel like I have started too many games at the sametime...ooops.
Anyway I finally bought Choudoku from Steam sales and wanted to start playing it because couple of my friends have talked about it a lot. Before I started playing this I already knew this was originally R18 game. And not going to lie I wished this eng ver. would be R18 one too but because it first had the Nintendo switch port no can do...oh well lol. 

Summary from steam

Tokyo, 1918. World War I is coming to an end. Yuriko Nomiya, aristocratic by birth, is suddenly struck by a series of misfortunes. Is this fate brought about by the changing times, or is someone plotting against her? The dark, bittersweet tale of Yuriko and five young men is about to unfold...

Overall thoughts: 

I try write this blog post spoiler free as possible BUT there still might be some spoilers so you have been warned lol. 

The story takes place in Taisho era Japan. The story begins when Yuriko has her birthday party and she is wondering why her parents wanted to have big birthday party for her, because their family was on debt. But later she realized that this party is also opportunity to find future husband for her. 

Later when Yuriko was outside taking some fresh air, suddenly she hear horrible sounds from the mansion. Group of unknown people attacked their home and there was a big chaos. After polices arrived and took criminals away. Yuriko's mother scream and everyone wonders what have happened. And then she finds out her father was murdered in the chaos.

~ 

So like always I looked up some walkthroughs which route I should play first and I started from Shiba. 

After Yuriko's birthday party chaos, on next day Shiba visit her and propose Yuriko. But the propose wasn't very romantic and Yuriko found Shiba very annoying and didn't want to mary him. 

So Shiba route kinda goes around Yuriko's approval for the propose and for her to starting to like him. 

While I played this route I found Shiba kinda annoying. Also Yuriko & Shiba both were kinda silly/idiots to be honest. At least this kind of feeling I got when I played the route. I also laughed a lot for all ridiculous drama what happened in this route. 

More I played the route there wasn't really any big "plots" for the main story. Or at least it felt like it but when I was playing "Good ending" for Shiba and I thought it ended the game suddenly was like "HAHAA here is actually some plot". Which made me feel a little bit like ???

This time I wanted to play all bad endings because I was more interested to see what happens in those, which sound kinda ironic lol. "Regret" named bad ending story was very heartbreaking & I almost cried. In the good ending we get to know more about Shiba's past and why he wanted to marry Yuriko. 

Overall I have a little bit mixed feelings for Shiba's route. At the sametime I liked his route but then I also found it kinda boring(?). As character Shiba was this typical "I'm cool guy but in the end I'm actually very awkward". Like I already mentioned I found Shiba very annoying but more I played his route I started to like him. 

~

Second route was Yuriko's butler, Fujita. 

First I though I would like Fujita a lot because I usually like butler characters heh. 

I talked a lot with my friends about Choudoku when I was playing it and of course we talked about Fujita's route and they told me he have this "cursed fetish" & her opinion about Fujita changed a little because of the R18 game sex scenes. 

Of course my curiosity took over and I started waiting for this "cursed fetish" while I played this route.

Do I feel like clown,yes. 

 

In the route Yuriko wanted to get know Fujita and her interest in him grew more. Of course this route had this typical "you're my master and I'm your butler it's not okay to have relationship together" type of drama. 

When I was playing Fujita's route I started wondering if all the routes are short or does it only feel like it because there is not sex scenes and other spicy stuff. Because felt like I played most of the routes very fast. Or maybe in the end those routes wasn't that long. When I was playing bad endings for Fujita I started to doubt if I was playing bad ones because some scenes felt like those belong to good ending. BUT later I got my bad ending stuff buahah. 

And again I laughed for the bad ending and I was there like "ah now I undestand what she meant with the fetish" LMAO.

After playing all endings I wasn't sure what to think about Fujita routes. I guess I kinda liked those but then I had kinda same feeling after finishing Shiba endings. Not sure if I was expecting something else from Fujita routes or was Fujita as character a little bit disappointment? But he really felt like this "under the highheel" type of character lol. 

Not saying it's bad....I actually like those type of characters asdfg.

~

Third route was childhood friend, Hideo.

To be honest I don't have much to say about his route lol. 

Overall story for Hideo route was something like this: " we already engaged to other people BUT our heart say differently!". The route was nice and there was some cute tsuntsun moments too (kinda). But like with other two routes it was also a little bit boring.  

First I was curious to see what type of tsundere route this was going to be. I mean sure Hideo kinda had those very bitter sweet routes and endings. And not going to lie I might have cried a little bit for one bad ending but most of the routes were kinda eh. 

~

Then it was time for the Onii-sama route.

Mizuhito felt like this elegant & calm type of character but then at the sametime I was there like "what are you hiding". Most of the time there was this bitter sweet feeling while playing this route. Both Mizuhito and Yuriko both had this possessive type of attitude to each other. But I'm not sure if there is much to say about this route, without giving too much. In the end it was this typical "forbidden love" type of route....kinda of? : DDDD

While playing Mizuhito endings I had this same type of feeling like with other routes too. But I still liked his route more than other ones. 

~

So next was Kyoko route

BUT before I played Kyoko's route (which I wasn't really that intersted in) there was this "true ending" one. Which gave all the details for the Yuriko's father murder case but also her mother "mysterious" death. I haven't mention this yet but later in all routes Yuriko's mother also dies and she is surrounded by chinese bellflowers and Yuriko tries to figure out what those flowers means. Because they also found those flowers when her father was murdered. 

So in this route we get to know more about Yuriko's parents pasts & of course she gets to know who the murderer is. Which conclusion came out of nowhere...but I guess when you're reading the story you can already guess who it's. And well in other routes it's also mentioned : DDD

But to be honest first I thought this "true ending" would not interest me at all but in the end I actually liked it more than I thought.

 

After this true ending I played Kyoko route. 
When I started plaing this route it felt more like I was going to Majima's route but of course later it switched to Kyoko. This route felt more like random "culture/bad ending" and in the end I didn't really care about it. Maybe it was supposed to be "bad ending" for the true ending route?

~

THEN 
It was finally time for Majima route!

Before Majime route you get to know about him a little bit in the True ending route and also in other routes too. Even though it felt like I already knew everything about him I was still curious to see what type of routes he is going to have. 

In prologue parts we already know that Yuriko has feelings for Majima and in the beginning of Majima route she decides to confess her feeling to him. This makes Majime feel a little bit troubled and runs away from situation. Yuriko feels sad about the situation but she decides not to give up and want to prove to Majima she is not just "arictocratic lady". 

Bad endings for Majima were interesting but I also liked the good one. Even though good ending was happy one it still left kinda bitter sweet feeling, I guess from Majima point of view. 

There wasn't any new big plots in Majima route because you get to know a lot of stuff from this True ending. 

But I still enjoyed his route too!

    

Final thoughs:

Well....this blog post ended up to be very short and in the end I didn't have much to say about the routes asdfghjklö....sorry I guess?

But to be honest I'm not sure what to say about this game. At the sametime I enjoyed playing it but then also something bothers me? I was wondering if I didn't know before starting this that it was originally R18 game would my opinion & game experience be different. Maybe knowing that there is missing content because of the censoring made the routes mmmm boring and short. 

Also felt like most of the routes were kinda of boring or at least okay. None of those didn't really stand out for me. I found it very ironic how I didn't find the bad endings that bad (well there was couple which made me feel a little bit heartbroken).  

Not saying I didn't enjoy this game even though it ended up to kinda "okay" type of game for me. 

But I still recommend to give try for this game! 

It was also hard to say if I had any favourite ones in this game. But after trying to figure out my favs list it's probably something like this: 

Majima,Mizuhito, Fujita (I feel like clown), Shiba & Hideo. 

I don't count Kyoko's route in this list because her route felt so random.