TW: violence, torture, sex, sexual assault, rape, drug use and gore

If you haven't played Dramatical Murder, a lot of what I say is gonna make no goddamn sense. This isn't really me saying you should go play it cus I don't exactly recommend it? Just letting you know that this game is kind of insane, and there's lots of things that don't even make sense *after* playing it.

Now, if you're in the *know* you may be thinking, oh my dear goodness Kai! An nsfw game? My poor eyes! Why would you put this on your site?

Just kidding, no one fucking cares, but I'm gonna explain myself anyway. I ain't here to talk about no nsfw, I played the steam version which while it's definitely 18+ and explicit, nothing's really shown and it's really toned down from what I've heard. Which is fine for me cus I was here for that story, that juicy juicy lore. I'm the type of person to play Hunie Pop for the gameplay ok? You're gonna have to believe me here. Oh, and obvious spoiler warning for just all of Dramatical Murder, I got a lot to say. Another thing, I'm probably gonna use BL and Yaoi interchangably here, sorry if that bothers you.

Anyway, I did not enjoy Dramatical Murder through a lot of my time playing it. I've known it existed for a while but didn't really look into it besides knowing it was fairly popular as a yaoi visual novel. Then my friend reminded me of it's existence and I looked it up on steam, and there it was. I thought the premise seemed interesting and the art style was pretty, and a great bonus, it happened to be on sale so I got it. I was definitely thrown off by the menu being right click, I fr thought for a while that I just could not access config and stuff while in game. But shoutout to the game for having auto quick saves when there's a choice on the screen, and allowing you to save at choices in the first place, a lotttt of games don't do that and as someone that is 1. very indecisive, and 2. wants to experience everything I can, I appreciate it a lot!

I played through my first route mostly without a walkthrough and ended up on Noiz's route, when I was pretty firmly into his route though I pulled up a walkthrough cus I was scared of getting the bad ending. Noiz's route is... I don't really like it that much. I don't like how he pushes himself on Aoba, especially since it's kind of a form of self harm for him in a sense? Yeahhhhh, non con is a recurring issue in this game and it goes completely unpunished. ESPECIALLY in Mink's route but we'll get to him, that's a fucking doozy. Anyways, Imma be honest, I don't really remember that much of Noiz's route, I feel like overarching story wise, it's kinda the most boring route? I'm pretty sure you don't even SEE Toue in his route at all. Oh also, I won't be talking about the bad endings cus I haven't played them, but I'll probably add a section for them at the end when I have. So it is possible he's there in the bad end but I kinda doubt it cus Noiz's route feels very seperate from that, besides the Rhyme stuff. I think that's all I have to say for Noiz's route? Like I said, kinda boring? It did notttt leave a good impression of this game on me. Even after playing Mink's route as well, which was my second runthrough, I literally dmed my friend saying "I don't know how this is considered so important in the bl/visual novel community. I understand it's older so it's just more basic because of that..." I really did not get the hype. I still don't really get the hype, but from what I understand it's just one of those things of 'You had to be there'. It doesn't really do anything that crazy, but it was one of the first big bl visual novels to get an English translation that was easily accessable. That's what my friend said at least, don't quote me on that.

Onto... Mink's route. Now this. Where do I begin. I have a lot of problems with this game, and a lot of them have to do with non-con and rape. And Mink's route just takes those two things and runs with it. Firstly, I wanna say, I had a feeling Mink's route would be baaaaaaad bad. Which is why I did it second, I wanted to get it out of the way. But like, I was lowkey hoping it'd be better then what I thought it was gonna be after experiencing the rape scene in the common route (the stuff before a route is chosen). But no, they decided to go all in. Mink's route is *easily* the worst route in the entire game. I suppose it's possible that one of the bad endings in a different route is worse, but as a route overall his is the worst. I don't know if it's just a product of it's time, or because this game was made in Japan and maybe this kind of stuff is more normalised there, but none of the rapey/non-con stuff that he does to Aoba is EVER explained or like, apologized for??? Like at the end Aoba's like "Now I understand why he did all those things to me" and I'm like ???? Boy WTF are you talking about?? There is no good explaination for why he raped you MULTIPLE TIMES??? Like maybe some people don't see those sex scenes as rape but they at the *very least* are non-con. One of the times Aoba is literally drugged. BECAUSE MINK LED HIM TO THAT PLACE, which by the way WAS NEVER EXPLAINED. Please explain Aoba, how does any of this make sense to you?? What are you seeing that I'm not??? Genuinely, this route is so infuriating. And the end is so weird and rushed like. I was getting goddamn whiplash. You are just gonna abandon your whole life to chase after this man. And then somehow you find him in the middle of fucking nowhere? I don't fucking get it dude. Maybe I'm missing something but this shit makes no goddamn sense to me. Anyway, easily worst route in the game, moving on.

The next route I did was Clear's and he is my FAVOURITE route and romantic interest (Ren's is technically my favourite route for the story stuff and explainations, but Clear is my favourite besides the obvious true ending, and he's still my favourite romantic partner for Aoba for reasons I will get into when I talk about Ren's route). Now going into this after Noiz and Mink, I was not feeling hopeful. I was like, this guys a weirdo and I just wanna get his route over with, then I'll do Koujaku last cus it seems like it's gonna be some typical childhood friends to lovers stuff (which I wasn't exactly hopeful would redeem the game at all, but at least it couldn't be worse then what I'd experienced so far). But boy was I so wrong. Throughout Clear's route I was like, eh this guy's weird, but he's cute so whatever. I wasn't really that into it. I clocked on pretty early that Clear wasn't a human, which kinda made me like him more I think. When we got to see the Clear Alphas, that was fucking cool as hell. Cus I remember in Mink's route I was thinking, huh that guy dressed in white kinda looks like Clear, but I brushed it off. BUT I WAS RIGHT. That was a really cool moment. When Clear stabbed himself in the goddamn head to get rid of that thing that stops him from hurting the Clear Alphas, from an artistic standpoint I was like that's cool as fuck that looks so fucking cool with the whole eyeball just out like that, from an emotional standpoint, OWWWWWWWWWW. Anyway skipping to when they get back to the house, this is the only time I will mention a sex scene because it's relevant. All the other sex scenes, don't really care for them tbh. This one, made me cry my eyes out. HIS FINAL WISH IS TO TOUCH AOBA? CYRING. HIM LITERALLY FALLING APART WHILE THEYRE DOING IT? SOBBING. THE LIGHT IN HIS EYES GOING OUT AT THE END. IM DEAD. IM ON THE FLOOR. This was the most emotionally moving part of the ENTIRE game for me. There's something about stories about rorbots wanting to understand human emotion and intimacy. There's something about that (it's the autism I can almost guarantee). The stuff after I'm just 'meh' about? Like, yay he's back but also, it's so rushed to the point that it feels lifeless compared to how moving the last part was. And I get they can't go on and on, and all the endings are rushed like that but it was just especially disappointing because of how much I liked that scene I guess. Anyway, Clear is love, Clear is life. If the true ending didn't exist, this would feel like the most 'correct' ending for the game.

Now, time for Koujaku. So, following Clear's route is certainly a tough task. And Koujaku is just. Meh. He's just ok. He's literally right in the middle of my ranking (which I will show at the end but it's pretty obvious by now). He's defintely not as bad as Mink's. But he's no where as good as Clear's. I will say, one thing I did like about Koujaku's route is the ending of him confessing and being all shy. That was cute as fuck. And him and Aoba in bed together with him obsessing over Aoba's hair. I also loved that. I had hoped there would be an intimate thing between them to do with Aoba's hair since he's a hairdresser and Aoba's so sensitive about his hair (I mean, if I could literally FEEL things through my hair, I'd be pretty fucking sensitive myself). But other than that. Meh. I don't like him just constantly walking off without explaination, and then Aoba just has to take that as "Really?? He's having sex with random girls at a time like this???" because there's literally no other explaination for his behaviour at the time. It's just annoying. I get it's explained as he didn't wanna burden Aoba with all the knowledge but idk. It just pissed me off. And then there's the weird rapey scene. Really giving "Sorry, my inner alpha took over! I had no control". Was not a fan of that. Overall, could be worse, the cute confession scene is really carrying it here.

Ren's route, With this route you have to play completely from the beginning again, not getting to skip past the starting part because there's a few new choices to be made, revolving around Ren unsurprisingly. For this one I used a walkthrough all the way from the start cus I did not wanna mess up and have to start all over again. Before starting this route I didn't think there was going to be romance, I thought it was just going to be the 'true' ending, explain more of the story then the other routes. Boy was I wrong. This route defintely made me enjoy the overall story a lot more, and you can very much tell this is the 'true' route because of the contents. So I have a quote of me saying "I've never vouched for selfcest more than now" (completely unrelated to this, I do not remember the context), and that's literally this route. I'm not gonna go too deep into this cus honestly, it's hard to wrap my brain around, but I was NOT expecting Ren to basically be a part of Aoba that was seperated from him? It honestly reminds me of what people pretending to have DID think DID is. Anyway, ignoring the mind sex and all that, tell me how the fuck things are gonna work post-game hm? Like, Ren's conciousness was transferred to Sei's body right? Don't even get me started on how the fuck that's supposed to work when Sei's soul was supposedly obliterated, and somehow this is a gift from him? How the fuck? So like. That body that Ren is using now, that's legally registered as your brother no? Like the nurse refers to him as Sei. So how's your little selfcest thing gonna work babe? THATS LEGALLY YOUR BROTHER AND TECHNICALLY YOUR BROTHERS BODY. I don't care if you brother's soul is gone, the GOVERNMENT does not care if your brother's soul is gone and was replaced with some part of you that was seperated but is now his own seperate thing and also lived as a dog allmate for years. Or maybe they do, idk how that works in this universe. But like, I'm supposed to just sit back and not question how the fuck that's gonna work? Nuh uh. Anyway, that's why I prefer Clear as a romantic partner for Aoba. Ren would defintely be my second choice, just because of how mid to bad the other choices are. But it's still... hard to get my head around. So... shoutout to selfcest I guess??

So, overall. I prefer the plot over any of the romantic relationships to be honest. I don't know if that's how it's meant to be? Cus how I found out about this game was more centered around the yaoi aspects, so idk. I am kindaaa intrigued about the steam patch, cus I wonder how much of the lore stuff was cut. I assume that it's mostly just sex scenes but I've just heard people say that the cut version is lacking (but they could just entirely be talking about the porn). I probably won't get it, just cus it's not really worth it considering I'm not interested in most of the characters.

I really like the overall aesthetics of the game and all the art is absolutely gorgeous, it is defintely one of the highlights. I like the changes in UI in different sections, like for Rhyme or when you're talking to Sei in the white void. I think it was translated pretty well from what I can tell, there wasn't any stand out times where I was like "This doesn't make any sense" or anything. But there's a lot of things I don't like. Pacing is one of them. The pacing in this game is all over the place. At the beginning it's pretty fine, but once you get onto character routes it's very rushed (like, I get their on a time crunch but there's no shot Aoba can fall in love THAT quickly). And the endings are the WORST with this, they are extremely rushed and just cram a bunch of things into small text blocks and then wow look happy ending. I think that Mink's endings is probably the worst at this, especially considering he has no redeeming factors. I don't care your family died, that doesn't excuse rape! It's also not a sound explaination for rape, no matter how much Aoba seems to think it is. Anyway, the normal routes are kinda boring and by the time you've done 2 you can already see a pattern and predict how things are gonna go. I guess I like that each boy has a different part of Platinum Jail that you go to, but it's just kinda funny how predictable they were. Ren's route is defintely much better in terms of explaining story stuff, but I feel like there's still a lot of plot holes (and we've discussed my problems with the romance aspect of that route). So overall, I don't really recommend it? There's defintely way better bl visual novels out there by now (maybe I'll do review type things on more?? idk it's kinda embarassing). If you really wanna experience it, it's probably better to just look up a video. And if you're just in it for the porn, I'm sure you can find the CGs out there.

Oh, and ranking the best to worst routes goes, Ren (purely for the story and lore it adds), Clear, Koujaku, Noiz, Minx.

So yeah, a weird experience of a game. If I end up playing the bad ends, I'll add them under this!

I did the Virus and Trip Ending first cus I had a quick save right at the choices I needed to fuck up. Don't really have much to say besides fuck Virus and Trip. It's simple and it's sad for Aoba. I'm gonna have to watch the credits so many more times while I do this ughhhhhhhhhhhh. At least the music's banger.

Ren's bad ending, aight this is where the gore warning comes into play I see I see. I mean, it makes sense to me, if you got those simple questions about Ren wrong, you clearly don't even know him. I have a feeling I'm not gonna have a lot to say about these bad endings, they seem very simple and to the point. Which makes sense, they're the bad ending for a reason. The other boys are gonna take a bit longer to get to though cus I didn't make saves at their final choices, maybe I should have. Shoutout to fast skip.

Being mean to Clear for his route was hard, that's why I did him first cus I actually do like him. THE FUCKING LINE WHERE HE'S LIKE "Where my legs USED to be". Actually crazy, I was like WHAT. THIS IS NOT MY CLEAR. So yeah that was fucking sad as hell. I mean, it's not sad in the way that made me cry, like the good route, but it's just, very depressing. BANGER music though goddamnnnnnnnn.

Mink's bad end. First of all, insane that he just fucking RIPS AOBAS HEAD OFF?? Also crazy that he's more romantic with Aoba's decapitated head then he ever is with Aoba when he's alive. Again though, BANGER music. I don't know why they decided to go off for the bad endings.

Koujaku's bad ending. Soooooo, other Aoba's a freak. We already knew that though. Interesting having other Aoba take over and now he's the bad guy in this one I guess. But really, working for Toue? Smh man. Again though with the banger music. I gotta put this soundtrack on my playlist.

Ending how we started, with Noiz. So... is Noiz's bad end just. IT PUTTING YOU ON THE MAIN MENU???? Legit gonna have to pull up a guide for this, I didn't have to with any of the other bad ends. I think... it's deadass broken cus it just keep repeating the same few things over and over and not giving me the next choices in line when I say yes on the question that actually has a choice, and when I say no it takes me to the main menu. That's crazy. Ok so I did the route again but with choosing his good answers up until the black screen part and that worked. Weird as hell imo. Anyway, first bad end I got was the retro game end. It's actually cool asf, I'd play an rpg with Aoba as the mc. It seems a lotttt more fleshed out then the other endings. Like I guess, nothing really happens? But it feels longer, even though a lot of that is just because of the slow text speed. Other ending is just lot of blood, pretty much as expected. I liked the retro game ending though since it was actually different from the rest.

That's everything then! 100% complete. My opinion hasn't changed, still don't really recommend this game despite all the time I put into it. I really want to like it, and maybe it'll grow on me (like mold) but at the moment I'm just like. Meh, take it or leave it.

Ok after reading some of the Liner Notes (idk what that is/means? i assume its like an authors note) I feel kinda bad for how much a ragged on this game. It's not a bad game! It's very visually pretty! Even if a lot of the visual effects are very simple things. Just ya know, there's a lot of parts that are not to my taste. And you know, the endings are rushed n stuff. It's just not for me. But it's not bad ok! (Except like. The amount of non-con, that's inexcusable for me personally.)