Release: December 12, 2019
Become the master who brings the handsome demon brothers down to their knees and enjoy life at the Academy in the Devildom! You have been selected to become an exchange student at RAD, a school for demons. Awaiting you are 7 ikemen demon brothers and a mountain of tasks...?! There is only 1 rule you have to remember to survive... One Master to RULE them all!
I'm here today with a review of the latest entry into the Shall We Date series: Obey Me! One Master to Rule Them All. You play as a genderless MC who is 1 of 2 chosen humans to be an exchange student in the Devildom, yet there's a special reason the demon ruler Lord Diavolo chose you as his student. Befriend and make pacts with Lucifer and his brothers, and discover your secret along the way.
This game is all the mobile hype right now so I decided to download it and force myself to play for 2 months.. but honestly I only did that because I wanted premium currency in other mobages 😂
It's been extremely popular since its release but... I feel like I'm the only person who doesn't enjoy it? 🤷♀️ Below are my thoughts after playing about 12 chapters.
Music
It's alright personally. Does the job, but nothing remarkable lol. There were a couple tracks here and there I liked, but the way that beginning theme though looped when you first meet everyone in the prologue got annoying real fast.Art
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| Illustrations from AX |
The trading cards art? NICE. The clothing designs, especially the casual wear and demon forms? AMAZING. The sprites themselves however.... Something about the sprite animations of how they move is very unsettling to me??? I can't describe it. It looks like a ragdoll being pulled on strings. I wish that they had just went with completely 2D art like in the OP, and used more "traditional" otoge animations.
However I do like that each demon have different colored nails www.
As a seiyuu fan it was also a little disappointing to see there weren't any well known seiyuu voicing the characters. I've never heard of any of them??? In the beginning I thought Lucifer was maybe voiced by Konishi basing off the couple words I heard but... sike lol. Despite the repetitive lines, their acting itself is nice, so I applaud all the people chosen~
The cast for the main boys are Yamashita Kazuya (Lucifer), Kobayashi Hirotaka (Mammon), Kada Satoshi (Leviathan), Sumi Shinya (Satan), Miura Ayme (Asmodeus), Yaguchi Kyohei (Beelzebub), and Onishi Satoshi (Belphegor).
Outside of the main cast, I think Luke's "na-?!" when he's flustered is super adorable. Makes me want to pinch his cheeks. 😇
Obey Me's system can seem pretty overwhelming at first since the game bombards you with information, but it's pretty easy to adapt to.
However I do like that each demon have different colored nails www.
Voice
Obey Me utilizes partial voicing like grunts, laughs, small phrases etc. It's not bad, but it can get annoying pretty quickly. For example, Beezelbub's 腹が減った... 腹が減った... 腹が減った... Yes Beel tHANK yOu we get it you're hungry 24/7 because you're the Avatar of Gluttony. NEXT.As a seiyuu fan it was also a little disappointing to see there weren't any well known seiyuu voicing the characters. I've never heard of any of them??? In the beginning I thought Lucifer was maybe voiced by Konishi basing off the couple words I heard but... sike lol. Despite the repetitive lines, their acting itself is nice, so I applaud all the people chosen~
The cast for the main boys are Yamashita Kazuya (Lucifer), Kobayashi Hirotaka (Mammon), Kada Satoshi (Leviathan), Sumi Shinya (Satan), Miura Ayme (Asmodeus), Yaguchi Kyohei (Beelzebub), and Onishi Satoshi (Belphegor).
Outside of the main cast, I think Luke's "na-?!" when he's flustered is super adorable. Makes me want to pinch his cheeks. 😇
System
The messaging and call platforms are where you'll interact with brothers the most, and calls are voiced. You can change who appears on your home screen, and sometimes a "..." will appear where you can interact with them to raise their affection. The game of course has a backlog in both story and call modes, and is very simple to use.
While progressing through your "tasks" and the story, you'll have to clear multiple "dance" battles along the way. Some are trickier than others, so you have to make sure your cards are leveled up and you have the right element for the battle. It has 0 plot relevance but it's cute I guess lmao. Basically you time your attacks to fill up your bar, and you tap/slide all the hearts that appear for bonus points.
I don't know if anyone else had this problem or if it was just me, but there's a bit of a lag before activating their special skill... So I just make sure to always spam tap my screen to make sure I don't miss it, especially when I'm in the final seconds of a battle lol.
Something I found really annoying was that the bosses at the end thematically don't match what happened throughout the chapter??? For example, if it ends with Beel going on a rampage, then logically he should be the boss right? Wrong. Levi was, and he didn't even cause any problems. Majority of chapter endings did this.
Moving on! SWD is really blatant on their freemium microtransaction grossness. They have a "beginner's sale" when you first start out for a whopping $40. And everytime you lose a dance battle the game offers an item sale "just for you." Furthermore, there's a vip option for $9.99 that is completely not worth it due to the laughably small amount of rewards and just being a giant money grab.
(This applies to all gacha-oriented games on the market, but gotta start the gambling addiction while they're young, eh?)
I will admit that eventually there are super helpful ones that you can easily and cheaply "purchase" with some of the free currency they give you... but overall it's exploitative and gross. Considering their in-game shop is modeled after Amazon, I'm really not surprised lmao. Next.
I will admit that eventually there are super helpful ones that you can easily and cheaply "purchase" with some of the free currency they give you... but overall it's exploitative and gross. Considering their in-game shop is modeled after Amazon, I'm really not surprised lmao. Next.
Gacha rates aren't bad per se... The game usually gives you a decent amount of Rare-Super Rare cards, but of course anything higher than that requires work. I didn't see much of a purpose though since card abilities are so similar, so I stuck with almost the same deck the whole time. Some gachas are free after a certain amount of time has passed while others use game currency to play, pretty standard stuff. And of course like most card games, you have to gather resources and money in order to level them up. Some levels have an insane curve, so trying to grind and having to wait for energy replenishes can get rather tedious lol.
So overall, this game really isn't for me. Unpopular opinion, but it was pretty boring and a total drag. Also another unpopular opinion: Despite what NTT Solmare advertises, this isn't an otome game and in general is closer to joseimuke. Yes you raise your intimacy level with each devil but you're not actively pursuing a route. And outside of flirty chat messages and things, where's the actual romance?
Anyway.
That's not to say Obey Me didn't have its moments, because there were definitely times it made me laugh! But it was far outweighed by the dread I knew would come from grinding for stronger cards and the exasperation of story elements being drawn out for so long.
The game was nice when I had a bunch of free energy given to me by the game thanks to being a newbie (I had like 900 at one point), but it quickly gets tedious afterwards. Especially when you have to grind to level up and enhance cards so you can raise your point level to beat higher levels ugh. I mentioned this above too, but also if you're going to include a dance battle mechanic or whatever, at least make it relevant to the story.
The story is.. decent, but they mainly just feel like shallow caricatures. Each chapter basically follows the same formula: find something of interest for each demon to exploit (ex. Mammon's missing credit card), use that as a bargaining chip to make them form a demon pact with you, rinse and repeat. Some pacts also served no purpose other than being an extremely convenient deus ex machina lol. Beel's was probably the most interesting since his dealt with "family" but even then he went right back to being nothing more than someone who always mentions food every sentence. I know this is a mobage so it's not going to have a deep riveting plot but... with the way people constantly praise it, I thought there'd be a little more character depth??
You also have the chance to obtain a SSR (I think) card... but personally the requirements for doing so are so ridiculous it's almost not worth the time to do so. To get a SSR card you need to collect all the card pieces, which depending on the card can drop in a gacha or doing dance battles over and over and praying a card piece drops. It's a real hassle and it's not even the rarest card in the game. I'm a bit fuzzy on details since I never bothered with SSRs, but I could've sworn I saw one that needed like 80 pieces??? No thank you I don't have time for all that.
・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ
FINAL THOUGHTS
・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ✧・ﾟ
Tl;dr impressions of each demon brother:
Lucifer - Gotta hide all my family's problems Onii-chan. Also a suck up to Diavolo
Mammon - Greedy himbo tsundere afraid of ghosts
Levi - Hardcore Otaku & early 2000s texter
Satan - "My brother pushed me so I'm starting a kickstarter to put him down" vine @ Lucifer.
Asmodeus - Narcissistic Prima Donna & Snake Whisperer
Beelzebub - Cookie Monster, except hungry for all food 24/7
Belphegor - Rapunzel 2.0
So overall, this game really isn't for me. Unpopular opinion, but it was pretty boring and a total drag. Also another unpopular opinion: Despite what NTT Solmare advertises, this isn't an otome game and in general is closer to joseimuke. Yes you raise your intimacy level with each devil but you're not actively pursuing a route. And outside of flirty chat messages and things, where's the actual romance?
Anyway.
That's not to say Obey Me didn't have its moments, because there were definitely times it made me laugh! But it was far outweighed by the dread I knew would come from grinding for stronger cards and the exasperation of story elements being drawn out for so long.
The game was nice when I had a bunch of free energy given to me by the game thanks to being a newbie (I had like 900 at one point), but it quickly gets tedious afterwards. Especially when you have to grind to level up and enhance cards so you can raise your point level to beat higher levels ugh. I mentioned this above too, but also if you're going to include a dance battle mechanic or whatever, at least make it relevant to the story.
The story is.. decent, but they mainly just feel like shallow caricatures. Each chapter basically follows the same formula: find something of interest for each demon to exploit (ex. Mammon's missing credit card), use that as a bargaining chip to make them form a demon pact with you, rinse and repeat. Some pacts also served no purpose other than being an extremely convenient deus ex machina lol. Beel's was probably the most interesting since his dealt with "family" but even then he went right back to being nothing more than someone who always mentions food every sentence. I know this is a mobage so it's not going to have a deep riveting plot but... with the way people constantly praise it, I thought there'd be a little more character depth??
None of the boys gave me that ドキドキ feeling, so I had no motivation to read their text messages or devilgram stories lmao. Meanwhile Simeon looks like such a babe and I'm so sad you can't actually do anything with him outside of story chapters.
It's not a bad game to pass the time with, especially if you're someone like me who just likes to keep busy, but I had no personal investment in wanting to continue the story. I suppose if SWD made actual routes for them I might be curious, but I guess I just.. expected more from a game promoted so much and with such a big following? However if you are the type to like collecting cards just for the sake of pretty bishies then this may be a good game for you, especially with how interactive it can be.
Until next time! (・∀・)
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