From the wonderful publisher Aksys Games comes Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, the latest Idea Factory game to be released on the PS Vita, proving to fans that the PS Vita has not yet reached its end. Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly contains quite a lot of mystery with romance being only a side dish to this rather intriguing game. Whether or not you are in it for the plot or the boys, we’re sure you’ll find something in this game that might be for you. If you are a fan of visual novels, otome games, or mysteries, Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly is a game for you.

Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly features a branching storyline with many endings. Of course, your choices do matter to get the endings of your choice. One feature of Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly allows you to go back to old chapters that you have already played through. If something went wrong somewhere, you can always go back and try again.

Like many visual novels, be prepared for a text heavy game, although there is some actual gameplay involved outside of just making choices. Variously throughout Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, you will get to fight against the black butterflies, too. If you are tired of the usual visual novel that only has text and a somewhat linear story, then Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly might be a refreshing breath of air for you.

The main character’s default name is Minato Ai and she awakens inside a large mansion unaware of who she is and why she is in this strange place. Before she can go about trying to recall her own name, Ai is suddenly attacked by a strange monster, which causes her to flee. While Ai tries to figure out her own predicament, she will come across a few boys who find themselves in the same situation as her. Will Ai be able to figure out what is going on in the background or will the possibility of love distract her?

As we stated earlier, since Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly is a visual novel, a majority of the gameplay is text based, so it’s not for those who do not enjoy reading. However, one nice thing about Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly is the lock and shoot gameplay that is featured every few chapters when you have to fight a monster. All it involves is clicking the screen to lock onto a black butterfly and pressing the shoot button to eradicate them. This really helps to break up the monotony of the text based gameplay, although we really don’t believe the story is all that mundane at all. This mini game is only a small side dish as it doesn’t actually occur that often, but the point is to allow you to earn points that you can use to unlock memories or short side stories. Sometimes you will have to go back and replay the mini game a few times to earn enough points, however you can also skip the game entirely for a smaller amount of points. Whether you play it or not is up to you, but it’s a rather easy mini game compared to other games.

A lot of the story really revolves around trying to unlock your memories and building relationships with those around Ai (you). You actually do not have to make choices for a good part of the beginning, and even then, your meddling is minimal. The story is quite interesting as certain things are hinted at, but nothing is outright revealed right away. You just have to keep playing to see if your guesses are right. Like we stated in the previous paragraph, you will use the points you earn from the shooting mini game to unlock memories and side stories. If you haven’t bothered unlocking them, the game will make you unlock them. You aren’t even forced to unlock particular ones, but you will have to play through a few of them to progress the story at certain parts, and they are generally really cute. You may think the side stories are inconsequential, but the characters will reference certain stories from time to time and they will provide some clarity as to the importance of some things. Some of the side stories will also unlock a CG!

Storywise, Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly contains a lot more plot than actual romance compared to other otome games. There’s no way to track your romance with other characters, but it’s clear that they all have some sort of attachment to you regardless of what route you are on. Being the only girl, Ai gets a lot of attention on all sides. All the same, though, the focus of the game is on you attaining your memories and trying to form bonds with these people you find yourself with.

The game itself is reminiscent of The Nonary Games where you are attempting to break yourself free while finding out about the people around you, but story-wise, it reminds us a lot of Sweet Fuse: At Your Side, which had some of the best story telling in localized otome games. As you find out more about the boys around you, you really feel for them and not in a trope-moe way. While the characters follow very set tropes in otome games, they feel very real with extremely realistic problems and complications in their lives, which made each of the stories rather enjoyable as they unlock more and more of the plot. Even the main character, Ai, who follows that rather overdone otome game perfect-in-every-way character does not get boring. It actually works well with the setting and we can see why the boys fall in love with her. Unlike other otome game main characters, Ai can actually take care of herself and even when she is lacking in some skill, she works hard with very minimal interference from the boys. Often times, we found ourselves empathizing with her as we understood some of the emotional struggles she was dealing with.

Probably one of the most surprising features outside of the shooting mini game has to be the fact that Minato Ai is fully voiced, which doesn’t occur too often. Of course, if you prefer your main character to be bland without any real presence, you can turn off her voice, but that’s up to you. It’s a bit stranger, too, that the other characters will call out her name Ai in flashbacks when the name can be changed, but we stuck with the default name so we’re not sure how this will affect others.

With all the branching storylines, Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly has made it extremely easy to track your progress and all of the side stories and memories in the game by providing you a flow chart. At any point in the game, you can go to the flow chart and see exactly where you are and how the story branched off. If you die, it’ll specify that you got the bad ending, and if there was a particular story that is important to a particular character, you’ll see them linked to that chapter. That being said, it’s still easy to get lost with all of the branches, but it makes for a more organized approach to this game.

One thing that is advertised really heavily has to be the artwork, and upon playing Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, we’d really have to agree. The bright colors appear even more vivid against the dull backgrounds making CGs and gameplay beautiful to look at. It’s very clear why they are so proud of it. We even really appreciate the character designs as there is a lot of detail involved in everyone’s design. There is no place in which this falters. However, we think that something that Aksys Games should have advertised was the soundtrack. While we wouldn’t say it’s one of those ones you want to jam to, the music in Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly was perfect for setting the mood at certain parts of the game and helps to evoke the right type of emotion that the game is trying to get from you.

As far as otome games go, Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly has to be one of the most well thought out games out there. While it does have its faults, it’s still a very enjoyable game to play regardless if you’re interested in the romance or not. If you want to play it for the romance, you will find yourself fairly disappointed, but the plot is well developed with plenty of things happening that keeps you from being bored like if you were playing a regular slice of life visual novel. The characters break the mold and the other details for Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly really suit the game well. As an added bonus, the staff did a great job proofreading it so that there were almost no errors that would break you out from the story. Overall, we have more positive things to say about the game than negative and hope you enjoy it, too.

Thank you for joining us here at Honey’s Anime for yet another look at a great game that’s on the market. Hopefully you have gained some insight about whether or nor Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly is for you. If you are interested in the game, love otome games, or love reverse harems, be sure to let us know in the comments below! And of course, be sure to check back in with us again.