Estimated reading time: 5 minute
Have you ever wanted to experience a college romance with a harem of good-looking exchange students from around the world? Then look no further because this game will make you relive the schooling experience you may or may not have had.
'cracks knuckles'
Where do I start?
The Plan
There's no such thing as an easy-going life for Jun Minase, our heroine of the story. What should have been a quiet life-style, turns into a year long chore for our main character as she is forced to take on the task of managing a dormitory for exchange students, which is run by her grandmother. Getting to be too old to take care of the building and the residents living there, Jun's tiny grand-mama pulls the ever classic 'I've raised you since you where a baby' act in order to place the responsibility on her shoulders. Unable to disagree, Jun begrudgingly takes responsibility.
Soon our protagonist is introduced to a flavourful basket full of unique individuals who stand out like a sore thumb. Regardless, Jun does her best to accommodate her new foreigners to their environment... Which should be straight forward, no?
The Roommates
Dormitory Love seems to give us a line up of guys to choose from. Six LI (Love Interest) are available at the beginning of the game and allows you to pick which one you'd like to focus on rather than the usual Otome format of picking specific answers that MAY lead you to a potential suitor.
Felix Scheider
Blond hair, Blue eyes? Check!
Lunchable
Maid Sempai
A 23 year old German student who excels in literary and military arts. He's polite and exceptionally skilled in the kitchen, which is why everyone calls him the house mother.
Guillaume Dubois
Baby Doll Trap
Fasionista
Cry me a River
A 17 year old Frenchman. YES! FRENCH-MAN! His love for cute clothes turned into a habit of cross-dressing. Even though he prefers to gussy himself up he tends to get a bit irritated when people talk about his height. Incredibly stubborn, sneaky, and whiny he's surprisingly skilled at sports.
Josh Raynolds
Playboy
Speaks very good In-grish?
Monotone
An 18 year old American who has a love for basketball, sweets, and women. Not much of a sweet talker, yet somehow manages to bed the entire neighbourhood.
Ling Wei
The Quiet Type
Megane
Old Man Taste
An 18 year old Chinese student who tends to keep to himself. If he goes more then a few minutes out of his comfort zone he will shut down.
Sasha Lebedev
Cloud 9
An Ar-TIST
Huggable Bear
A 26 year old Russian student who likes photography and a painter who wishes to paint the world in a pretty picture. Mostly a night owl as he tends to sleep during the day and will crash just about anywhere just to get some shut eye. However, he can become quite playful when he's around children.
Sean Orwell
Prankster
Rude
Weeaboo
A 20 year old Brit who likes to play good-for-nothing tricks on everyone in the dormitory. Arrogant, sarcastic and a bit of a brute to deal with, you wouldn't believe that this guy is a closet Otaku.
Simplicity at it's Core
If you like Otome games that are slow-going and easy enough to follow with little drama, then you've come to the right place. When it comes to character design, music, background art and storytelling Dormitory Love is a very simple visual novel.
As I mentioned earlier, the game pretty much allows you to choose your LI route. As you play through your future husbando's chapters, you'll have choice prompts showing up. Depending on your answer you'll either gain relationship points or just stay neutral.
The Highs and Lows
Considering this visual novel came out for PC back in 2011 I wasn't expecting it to stand up to more modernized titles. The game does show it's age unfortunately, with how slow paced the story drags you along. It also has some terrible scene transitions where you'll be in the middle of a scene and then are suddenly on a black screen and are thrown into a new event.
Another issue I had was the BASIC voice acting performance. Is it absolute garbage? No, but there are plenty of moments where the actors could have brought more emotion into a scene. It almost felt at times that they where told 'Hey! Scream into the mic, but very softly'.
Speaking of softly, I thought there wasn't a soundtrack to the game at first since the only music I heard was the opening to the game. Turns out that there is music but the default setting has it down low for some reason. You can fix this problem by adjusting the volume meter in the menu screen.
Finally, I noticed that after replaying through a previous romance route, so I could unlock other event moments, that your previous choices didn't show up as highlighted. I find this frustrating, because I will forget which answer I chose during my first playthrough and now have to go through the gripping effort of trial and error through saving and loading the file, just so I can change the outcome. Maybe I'm just grateful that the more recent Otome titles I've played tend to help us out more by reminding us what would previously choose as an answer.
What surprised me the most was the fact that the main female lead actually had a voice over done, as well. There is an option where you can keep her voice on or off, which is a nice addition.
End of Term
By the time I had reached the end of a couple of playthroughs I had a good grasp on Dormitory Love's performance. Is it a bad game? No, in fact I would go as far to say that it's a great beginner level visual novel experience for those who may want to try their hand at it for the first time. Or if you're someone who's just looking for a casual school life romance then this a nice comfortable good to snuggle up with. Does it reach peak story telling? No, and there are some areas that fall short, but the game was able to make me smile and give me the warm fuzzies, so it's definitely worth checking out if it's your cup of tea. Overall, I'd give this title a 6 out of 10. Gold star for effort!
Score: 6 / 10
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