Variable Barricade is an otome game for the switch by Idea Factory.
It focuses around Hibari the sole heir of her Grandfathers wealth and her Grandfather wants her to get married so he arranges a group of eccentric criminals and its up to Hibari to chose who she will be with.
Its almost like a Ouran Host Club type story where a relatively “normal” girl gets caught up in a bizzare situations with the friends she has and also romance stuff too.
The characters themselves are as bizzare as one expects them to be and also scum of the earth too as well from gaslighting to manipulation like one such case even includes the ultimate bitch made move imaginable called suicide baiting, even Hibaris own friends in the side cast is borderline fujoshi like with their in real life type shiping scenarios too and the pushiness just came across cringey than endearing.
Hibari herself, is pretty much the anti Haruhi basically the insufferableness of Haruhi Suzumiya and the girl in a private school type scenario of the other Haruhi from Ouran if you ask me but to be fair though, lot of the dates jus feel forced on and not really that organic in comparison to say something like code realize.
The story also has age gap stuff too and i honestly didn’t really mind it at all as at the end of the day its just drawings and pixels with no concept of human rights period.
Pacing wise get ready for the story to take quite a while for things to really get going and things set up at last minute too.
Also a lot of miscomunications,shit testing and other types of misunderstandings too that just makes the story a slog to get through and story tropes like that really are beyond nerve grating and just overall lazy storytelling period.
Tonal wise its NOT always romcom stuff as it does lean into more melodramatic territory later on as time goes by.
The music itself is pretty decent.
Voice acting wise its ok too.
The artstyle was good and so was the user interface too honestly its one of the best artstyles I've seen for an otome tied to Jack Jeanne if you ask me.
Gameplay wise its atypical of an otome game, theres the flow chart multiple endings and occasional outside of the story moments like the spying on the characters and phone text conversations too with its own dialogue choices too so its substancial to say the least.
Theres its extra content too like the gallery section.
Localization wise its as cringey and awkardly translated as any Askys game is.
Overall it was an average otome game.
It gets 3 out of stars.
This was not it chief, go for Collar X Malice instead of this.
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