My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- review — A cute and cozy book

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- is a dating sim/visual novel based on the anime based on the manga based on the light novel My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!. The story follows Catarina Claes, a noble girl who, after falling and hitting her head, remembers her previous life as a high school girl. She and a friend would obsess over an Otome game (story based games that are generally targeted towards women) called Fortune Lover. In Fortune Lover, the player takes on the role of Maria Campbell to woo the various boys, who each have an “I can fix him” energy about them. However, after truck-kun does its thing (long story, it’s a genre staple somehow), our heroine is reincarnated as the villain of Fortune Lover, Catarina, who dies or is exiled in just about every ending. Hence the lengthy title. Over the course of the story, Catarina changes the lives of each of the characters simply by being a nice person. Eventually, all of the characters, including the girls, fall in love with her. Catarina realizes none of this and is constantly trying to set her friends up with each other in order to avoid her doom. Hilarity ensues.

Villainess isn’t a groundbreaking or profound story, but it’s funny and cozy. While watching the anime I was afraid it was going to go full harem rather than somewhat subverting that trope, but the story thankfully sticks to its guns with very little fanservice. I affectionately refer to it as “Bisexual Disaster: the Anime” and although I fell off part way through season 2 I do plan on coming back to it eventually. For now, we can finally talk about the subject of this review, Pirates of the Disturbance.

Pirates of the Disturbance follows Catarina and crew as they board a luxury cruise ship built in partnership with the neighboring nation of Quid. As members of the nobility and royal family, most of the gang is here for diplomatic reasons, to forge relationships with foreigners of similar status, but that doesn’t stop the hijinks. You’ll be seeing (and moreso reading) the group hang out at the pool, attend lavish parties, and most often discuss or eat food. Thinking about it now, Villainess could also fall into the genre of “pretty people doing things well” save for Catarina, who is still dumb as a rock.

Occasionally, you’ll be given choices that will affect the story. Most of them will raise your affinity with one of the six boys Catarina is able to romance (which is why this game isn’t canon), with four being mainstays and two more newcomers. To my dismay and disappointment, you cannot get with any of the girls despite the game at times cutting to their perspective only to think about how much they love Catarina. Maybe in a sequel, but I digress. Get enough points in a single boy and you’ll be on their route to see the romance blossom or end in disaster based on further choices. The game will always begin on the Common route, with branches depending on your choices. My first run through the game I stayed on the Common route the entire time and got the Normal ending, successfully avoiding any romance whatsoever. There are a total of 25 endings to reach, some of which are indeed Doom Ends in which Catarina will meet with one of several fates she’s spent her life trying to avoid.

The game makes it as easy as possible to fully control your experience. You have 100 save slots at your disposal not including the additional quick save slot, can view your affinity with all the boys at any time, and can even adjust the voice volume on an individual character basis. In fact, the entire game outside of Memory Events (flashbacks from other characters’ perspectives), narration, and thoughts is fully voiced by the Japanese cast. Pirates of the Disturbance isn’t terribly long, but given the decent amount of choices and routes that’s still a hefty amount of voice acting. I am a bit disappointed there’s no English dub, but having watched the subbed version of the anime I probably would have chosen this anyway.

Even without an English dub Pirates feels like a lavish visual novel experience. Each character has multiple, well drawn portraits that are even lip synched to their dialogue. There’s a somewhat animated opening to kick off the game, and there’s even some visual effects during action sequences. I especially liked how character portraits would get closer or farther away in certain contexts, such as Geordo taking Catarina’s hard to escort her to the party before Mary can get an opportunity. A lot of visual novels don’t go this extra mile for a lot of understandable reasons, but the little details are very much appreciated when they do show up.

Unfortunately, Pirates falters in the most crucial part of a visual novel: the writing. It’s not bad, and far from the worst I’ve seen in this genre, but you can clearly tell it was translated from a foreign language. Clunky sentence structure, odd word choice, and the like show up frequently. Some of that is unavoidable in a game with this much text, but ideally I want a localization to be barely noticeable rather than looking at a sentence and thinking “oh this must have been super hard to translate”. Still, if you’re playing an otome game, you’re probably used to some jank, and it’s perfectly readable as is.

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