Tottemo Pheromone

"Beautiful.. Better than the sum of its parts..."

In many years playing H games, I, as many other players, discovered the 3 sub-genres of H games:
1. The “let's rape all the female characters in the most vile ways we can imagine without risking legal action” a-la “Virgin Roster”, “Tsuki possession” and “Sensei”
2. The “let's moderately rape every single character in the game, but throw in a sappy love story to make you feel better about it”, of the “Slave Pageant” and “Jewel Knights” elk.
3. The “let it sap” type, who usually contain a moderate amount of (usually consensual) sex, torture you with many hard choices on your way to a happy ending, and try to squeeze your heart for all it's worth. Those contain the mind-numbingly dull “Heart de Roommate”, the beautiful “Crescendo” and of course: “Overrated: little sister”

On this scale, “Tottemo Pheromone” is about a 2.5, as getting a semi-happy ending requires you sleep with each female character at least once, but giving you the option to feel about it after you do. Being as jaded as I am, and sitting through as many hours of clicking as I did through various H games, very rarely do I encounter a game that manages to arouse, captivate or move me anymore. Tottemo Pheromone managed to do all three. And in my detailed review below I will explain why.

Tottemo Pheromone is a sequel to a game that will probably never be played by us English speakers, for as far as I can tell no company saw fit to translate it. You play Takuya, a country boy who came to Tokyo for college. As Tokyo is far from the backwater hole Takuya hails from, he is sent to live with his relatives, who own a coffee shop in town. As fate would have it, said relative is protagonist of the previous game, and is married to its heroine, Silk, a witch who was cursed to travel eternally between worlds until she finds love (which she did with your relative, Takashi), so when a hot blond witch (the same one from the first game, no less, through some weird hole in the time-space-logic continuum) appears out of thin air one day, Takeshi and his wife (an older version of said witch) can easily explain everything happened so we can get straight to business. What is business? Well, our new Silk discovered in her travels a way to get back home. However, to apply it, she must gather magic power from young girls through… well, you know. Since Silk lacks the… errr… parts to perform the acts required to harvest magic, Takuya is recruited as her “servant”, to do what has to be done. Takuya, however, is by no means a playboy (which I like), and to help him help her, Silk makes him irresistible to woman.

So much for background. Sounds pretty rape-esque, no? Well, no. First of all, Tottemo Pheromone makes it all seem very innocent. Second, it doesn't overbear with it's sex scenes. You will not be sitting through hours of reading “ah… uh…no…yes…” as you would (and did) do in many other H games. The focus here is interaction. You can see the ending (any of them, and there are at least half a dozen. 2 per girl + the really bad one) coming a mile away, and the happy ones will still pinch at your pump (the blood one, not the other one). The story, once done making you sleep with every character once, unfolds beautifully and is quite tender, especially if you choose to go with Silk. The other characters include various waitresses and clerks in the mall you work in (5 of them), and manage to be stereotypical yet very unique for most part.

The graphics are simple yet beautiful. As I said, the game did manage to arouse me. The reason for that is not elaborate sex-scenes (none of the moving ones, and not that many images for the ones that are there), but rather the character design. The first thing you need to do when designing characters is to make them attractive, otherwise the idea of pursuing them will not be appealing. Many games have made that mistake (Virgin roster, Sagara family, Chain and Come See Me Tonight to name a few), and I found the characters beautiful. There are few environments, but what's there certainly gets the job done.

Sound is exactly what it should be. My Japanese is nonexistent, so I can't comment on the acting, but I think it was decent. The music get's the atmosphere though very well. There are some fluttering, ruffle and zippers unfolding effects which are a nice touch, but nothing to write home about.

Two things I found hilarious were the need to make up for sound effects that aren't there with text (such as swww… swww… to describe oral sex), which throughout the game repeat themselves very rarely. A sexual act in this game will always consist of at least one screen of 2-3 random letters connected with dots. I swear at some point I had something like:
“I did so and so” (something sexual)
“Zuuuuuuum…. Zuuuuuuuuuum” … priceless…
Also for what I assume are translation reasons Takuya feels it necessary to explain to us occasionally thing that are beyond obvious.
Silk: “This room is narrow”
“Silk described the room”
It was somewhat annoying, but doesn't happen that often…

All in all? Not the most original of H game, but something about it just managed to hit just the spot… The whole is for some reason much superior to the sum of its parts… It's the feeling of the game, I suppose… Maybe it's because I'm just a big softie 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/02/07