Rear Pheles ~Red of Another~ - Review

リア フェレス ~レッド オブ アナザー~

Game: [Rear Pheles ~Red of Another~ ]

Genre: Otome Visual Novel.
Developer/Publisher: Matatabi

Platform: PS Vita.

Official Site: http://matatabi.tv/rearpheles/roa/

Release date: 2015-08-27

TL;DR
I liked this otomege for what its worth, its story is nothing special but if you
can get passed the long loading and minigame its quite fun, like a game should be.
The higher the difficulty the bigger the maps get and Pro is literally a fricking maze with
too many locked doors. Easy and Normal are doable and Hard is okay... I guess.
The difficulty trophies are BS though, you have to like sit through the common route of
Blanc,Toujou and Itsuki's(maybe Ayame sorry I forgot) on EVERY difficulty and there are four.
Thankfully both the escape and hunting minigames during the actual route
can be done through chapter select, still a pain to platinum 
and there are only a few who managed to do it, I raged quit twice but when I came
back I was one minigame away from completing pro difficulty(lmao) so I only had Hard left.
 I can't really recommend this game... story's average if anything.

 Pro's
 - Semi-interesting story based on red riding hood.
- Most guys are likeable.
- Romance was decent but kind of cringy in some route.
- Guys are Yandere but this is mostly reserved for bad ends, though some of it
 can be seen during normal play, atleast to me the best ends were satisfying.

 Cons
- Heroine is sorta stupid.
- Game is rather short.
- Minigame is a bit unforgivable, aka its difficult at first because no good tutorial.
- Long loading for minigame.
- Lag during minigame.
- BGM while some can be creepy like the one during the minigame but overall its forgettable.
 Btw the BGM during the minigame doesn't loop after 30 sec it just ends.
 

More rambling and possible spoilers after the jump.

Rear Pheles Red of Another is an otome game loosely based on 

the tale of Little red riding hood, it has a 3d escape minigame which might be a bit difficult.
Sadly the rules aren't explained very well...

Sometimes you need items but their locations is always random same for the map, so no memorizing.

There is also the hunter minigame, where you have to sneak up on the wolf from behind

sometimes you need an item for it, had some issues here because either I am blind or it didn't spawn at all meaning I have to restart.... after I do I can find it just fine good thing is that
there is only one hunting minigame where you need to find an item and its during Itsuki's route.

Sadly being Matatabi's first game it isn't perfect, the OP/ED movies screentear...
there is long loading for the minigame and also a bit of lag, the minigame might be confusing
at first because there isn't a good explanation or tutorial, that doesn't help at all, the BGM is creepy
during the minigame and it doesn't loop it ends after 30 seconds or so? the rest of the BGM
 doesn't really stand out that much and the image/artquality is kind of blurry in the game...
 As you can see this game is terribly optimized and IDEK why Matatabi didn't make it for PC
instead of making it for the PS Vita while obviously not knowing how to develop for it.

This is mostly also what the japanese complain about in their reviews... sounds kind of bad right?
The patches are also bad I mean 1000 mb? for both patches?
Geezus... I swear Matatabi really needs to learn how to compress.

Story wise IMHO its decent, the routes do not overlap with each other.
The routes are very character focused but somethings never change I guess.

The routes are very different as there is very little repeat content as far as i'm concerned.
They each have their own unique story. This is good, very good, no one wants too much repeat content in their VN.
The cast is also very likeable, the art while a bit blurry on my PSV is beautiful.

Overall Rear Pheles Red of Another does not deserve all the hate its been getting.
I get that people are discontent because the minigame is a bit unfair but still as
someone who plays lots of jrpg and other games this is nothing I can't handle except the long load.

I can't give it definite a score... this game is just average and the system doesn't make it better.

Matatabi tried, they really did too bad its not well received which most likely will scare off 

alot of people into trying it... If you don't mind dying horrible in the minigame a few times

I recommend this otome game to you, if you don't like minigames of any kind, stay away.

Oh and the Kiss CG's are sangoku rensenki level except for Ayame's wwww.
You might want to wait till its cheaper...if you ever plan on getting this.
Anyway I liked this otome game, it was rather short but I still found it fun despite the minigame.
To each his own I guess? ^-^;
 
 My play order was Chitose > Itsuki > Tojou > Ayame > Akazukin
I recommend saving Ayame for later you can probably switch some of them around..
Except Akazukin route ofcourse since its locked.

I somewhat enjoyed Chitose route despite being the obligatory childhood friend character, his
bad end was pretty tame compared to the others but still bad, his route is best done first?
There are some triggers for child abuse in Chitose route so be careful but I thought it was OK overall.

 ~

Itsuki's route was fine, fangirls aside his route was strangely interesting... what is his motive?
Oh and he becomes a pimp in his bad end, that aside he is actually a pretty nice guy in the best end?
 IDEK but after that bad end I want to stay far away from him but its nice
that in the good end things do work out normally.

-

Tojou's route dealt with his sister. This route was okay I guess? He's rather nerdy about twintails
the whole scene about it was absolutely hilarious! sadly I managed to predict what his
 bad end would be about, which was terrible creepy though... www.
Toujou's bad end was kind of like how Toma from Amnesia was which left a bad taste in my mouth.
Atleast Toujou's love end was still satisfying so all is well that ends well? since
 the thing only happened in his bad end I could get over it easily.

-

Ayame... the school doctor, while I'm usually not into teachers I like him alot!
His route is best saved for later, because his route takes an interesting development, I know I
said no spoilers but NO ONE CARES Ayame is the hunter and he apparently met the heroine as a kid. either way I really like it this route! his happy end...didn't feel that happy
but it can't be helped his love end is where it at if anythig.
His bad end... aren't as bad as Tojou & Itsuki's but again still bad. www

-

 Blanc's route, well if you thought this was a yuri route you'd be disappointed spoilers aside
 let's just say our little red riding hood had an identity crisis. lol
He's a huge idiot and the quarrel he has with Ookami-san which is rather stupid
 and I know from Ayame's route that the big bad wolf isn't so bad.

I had trouble liking Blanc at first and the whole identity crisis thing didn't help, Oh well
in the end he grew on me...  and it was really sad the love end made me feel so empty. T_T
 Atleast there is the happy end but its just not the same, and the bad end... meh,
You know its bad when the best end aka love end for the truth end doesn't feel satisfying, even then
from the way it ended it might be for the best, there's a certain sweetness in letting him go
because he can't truly exist outside of the book, no miracles can work it out and I liked this take.

 I don't think Matatabi can afford making another game because this one got horrid reviews mostly
because of its GAMEPLAY issues, well Matatabi I a gaijin still liked your game
even tho its not that good... and super average some people may even question what da point of
romancing blanc if you're gonna have to part from him anyway >_>.

There's one end where he offers her to stay which is tempting but is that really such a good idea?

Anyway... That was the truth route, in all the other routes the mystery of Akazukin is never completely solved.
(Like oh so many VN/Otome games do the same.)
Sigh at the very least it was an interesting take on the tale of little red riding hood!
Its also worth noting that the guys are only yandere in their bad ends which
are actually quite bad like it should be but other than that they're all likeable in some way?
atleast I was able to like them so that is a good thing I suppose.

Fav route?
 Ayame> Akazukin > Chitose > Tojou & Itsuki.
 I liked everyone but I think I am biased towards Ayame.

I also like how everyone got 12 cg's, usually someone got the short end of the stick...
(I'm looking at you Otomate/Quinrose)but thankfully that's not the case here.
This isn't all of them and I don't want to spoil the whole set.

Characters ★★★☆☆(The message I got was there's a wolf in everyone.)
Art  ★★★★☆(Great, no complaints.)
Scenario/plot. ★★★☆☆(Okay but nothing mindblowing.)
Music★★☆☆☆ (Average... some was grating.)
System  ★☆☆☆☆ (Sigh... could be fun but the loading times...)
Enjoyment overall ★★★☆☆(Its okay but was it worth the suffering? probably not.)
 Well that's it, I liked this game for what its worth, its not stellar and I don't think a lot of people 
will bother with it though unless they want to suffer and I do not think its worth it all that much.

Akazukin... T~T

~