Our Two Bedroom Story’s Shusei Route Impressions and Review – Slight Spoilers

Up next on the Our Two Bedroom Story tour is Shusei. Overall, I enjoyed his route.  I found Shusei himself less compelling than Kaoru, but the story had much fewer “wait a minute” moments.

Positives

• The banter between the MC and Shusei can be adorable. They feel like friends before any romance starts.
• Shusei is kind and functional already. He doesn’t need the MC to fix him.
• The parents are mentioned throughout the story.

Negatives

• The MC keeps describing Minato as secretly kind. He’s not. It feels like the MC wants to will him into being something more positive than objectively assessing his behavior.
• Every so often, two of the guys talk about the MC like she’s a thing. It doesn’t go on for long, but I wish the MC would point out that she was her own person who could make her own choices, thank you very much.

Spoilers Ahead!

• The MC is harassed by an interviewee, and she returns to apologize to him. No…just no.  Shusei tries to take the blame as well, saying he should have been there.  The only person who does not take any responsibility is the harasser. You have got to be kidding.

Recommended to those looking for a sweet, angst-free story. Voltage’s Our Two Bedroom Story is available on iOS and Android.

Speakeasy Tonight’s Neil Route Impressions and Review – Spoiler Free

If you’re looking for a general opinion on Speakeasy Tonight, here you go.  This review focuses solely on Neil’s story. It may sound scattered because at the moment I’m spaced out on cold medicine.

Positives:

• The main character is the sharpest I’ve found in the past year. She knows how to handle people and business while still feeling like a twenty-something.

• Thomas Joyner (the author) obviously knows his Bible references and philosophy. I grinned throughout the Plato discussion as the MC held her own and called him on his bull.

• Joyner’s dialogue is funny. Some of the conversations sound like a screwball comedy; the temperance meetings in particular made me laugh.

• The MC treats Neil as a person, not a project. I loathe stories where an individual has to be “fixed” by someone else. *cough* Kyosuke *unconvincing cough* Neil is both a doctor and a war veteran, but that’s not ALL he is.

• The mystery plot kept me intrigued.

Negatives:

• A couple of “wait-a-minute” moments. In the prologue, the MC tells Uncle Charlie and others that she graduated from secretarial school. One minute into Neil’s route he asks if she graduated, and she says “no.” In front of the same group. And no one calls her on it. Neil also manages to be 30 on the character screen and then 32 in his story.  Fixed in the most recent patch.

• The story’s best ending has Neil much chattier about his past and the MC than in the regular ending. It didn’t break my suspension of disbelief, but the regular ending felt more in line with his behavior from the previous chapters.

Overall: Recommended.  The main character alone makes it worth trying.

Voltage’s Speakeasy Tonight is available on iOS.