Season 1 Release: May 2015
Season 2 Release: January 2017
Season 2 Mina (Hunter) is much more popular, and so many of the new characters and events revolve around her. In fact, Witch Mina has only 9 Love Interests while Hunter Mina has 22! Σ(･口･)
Plot
While the worldbuilding seems interesting, I found Season 1's Prologue to be extremely lackluster. Witch Mina just strolls into a foreboding castle and then is attacked. She eventually wakes up in a dungeon surrounded by two vampire brothers named Alfred and Rupert, who talk about making a lowly human like her their "belonging" and then drink her blood while she struggles in her bindings. Now she has 10 days to drink the dew of Rosapast or she'll forever be a vampire. These guys are 2 of the love interests she can pursue by the way, despite their first reactions with each other.
I can understand the "Do-S" appeal since that was still a popular trend in 2015, but it honestly felt like the Dollar Store version of Diabolik Lovers, and this prologue alone made me quit the game lmao.
Unlike the Season 1 Prologue, Hunter Mina's Prologue did not want to make me rage quit the game lol. She too comes from a line of witches, but she is unable to really harness her power, and thus is unable to make powerful medicine for her sickly sister. While looking for ways to help cure her sister, Mina is tasked with investigating the reason for villagers going missing, and her mission takes her into the Idora Forest where Hotel Libra Sincera lies...
In my opinion, the Hunter Prologue is more interesting and can open multiple possibilities for how Mina will meet her Love Interests.
Art
Both the art for Season 1 and Season 2 are pretty and are unique in their own way. Season 1 uses sprites that have a subtle gradient shading and are "flatter," but still have an almost gothic feel to it. Season 2's art is more of your typical mainstream-y ikemen art, which can be a double edged sword. The art of course is very pretty, but runs the risk of looking like any other game on the market. Across both seasons, some characters also suffer from "same face syndrome."
Each style is lovely, so it's a shame that the sprite art for characters clash when you have characters from different seasons standing next to each other.
BGM
There are some nice tracks for this game, and they portray a range of emotional scenes. However, it's obvious when the track repeats from the beginning, and it can get pretty repetitive since they're so short. If you're prone to getting annoyed at background tracks, then you may have to occasionally mute the game while playing. One of my favorite tracks through is when Mina and her love interest are sharing a tender loving moment with each other.
Interface, etc.
Similar to Love Tangle, Blood in Roses uses a 5 free ticket system, with a replenishing time of 4 hours per ticket. This means that depending on when you play, it's technically possible to use more than 5 tickets per day. A newer feature allows you to occasionally watch ads in exchange for reducing the replenish time by 20 minutes. If you're someone who prefers to have all your tickets at once rather than waiting for a cooldown, this may be a bothersome system for you.
BnR's premium currency are Coins. If you purchase coins or a set during a sale then the price is pretty decent, but otherwise they're a little on the expensive side. A single ticket for example costs 150 Coins, and 300 Coins costs $2.99 USD. Some game items in general can be purchased with the free currency Tokens, but the choices are extremely limited, and are usually for activities like events or gachas.
In addition to saving up currency for the Avatar Challenge, you also need to be participating in the "Miss Rose Contest" in order to have enough love points to pass the Love Challenge checkpoints.
Events use up your free tickets as well and need avatar items to proceed through checkpoints, so you'll have to choose to divide your time and tickets between the main story or events.
Even though you receive 5 free tickets per day, they can go quickly since the chapters are rather short. Sometimes you might not even make it halfway through a chapter since a chapter can have up to almost 20 parts. Each character will always have 10 chapters + 1 ending (chapter "11") per playthrough, but it's difficult to estimate how long it'll take to finish a route since there's no map either detailing how many parts are in a chapter. Each character also has 3 endings depending on which choices/stats you choose: Serenade, Toccata, and Farewell. Like most other mobile otome games, receiving another ending means playing the route again from the beginning.
Between currency and various challenges, the game can get pretty grindy at times. Sometimes all you might be able to do is farm those Miss Rose love points. If you play completely free without any micro-transactions or participating in events, I'd estimate about a month to finish each route. This can vary of course depending on how well you're able to pass love challenges, and if you're going for Premium vs Normal attire. Note that if you do not purchase premium outfits, you will not get the CG.
If you plan to play multiple characters, I would maybe recommend choosing Premium only for your absolute favorites. Another thing to note with playing multiple characters is that you cannot switch to Character B unless you are prepared to start from the beginning of the route when you return to Character A.
The game will give item bonuses every now and then, but they're usually not enough to substantially help with a route.
Besides the freemium ticket system, something that I noticed was that sometimes the game tends to lag a bit when navigating through the UI. It's usually just a mild inconvenience, but it's something to still be careful with to avoid accidentally tapping something you don't want to. I'm also not a fan of the giant menu bar that's visible while playing chapters since it makes the story a little less immersive.
If there's one nice thing about the system, it's the glossary of terms available in the menu.
Overall
Both a pro and con of this game is its huge cast of Love Interests. On one hand, there's numerous to choose from so you'll never be without something to read. However, it can also be overwhelming trying to choose a route, especially since you're "stuck" on whoever you choose unless you don't mind restarting. Characters can be hit or miss, but with a cast this large I'm sure there's a story or trope that appeals to anyone.
It'll take a lot of work to play through routes - especially if you only aim to play for free. However I would recommend the game if you're interested in numerous supernatural love interests like vampires, werewolves, wizards, and devils, just to name a few. Mina being an independent and self-sufficient heroine is a nice bonus too!
Until next time~
Original PV:
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