Link to game on steam: Secrets of Me on Steam
Link to game in the app store: Secrets of Me on Google Play
You Apple folks are on your own, I don't know shit about Apple.
For anyone who is unaware, otome games are essentially visual novels that are tailored towards women. That means that you can expect 3 things: you can expect a plot, you can expect romance, and you can expect implied physical affection. Since the stable "otome games" can house a fairly diverse herd of products (I'm so proud of that metaphor), the actual implied physical affection piece ranges anywhere from "and then they hugged" to "he ran his hands up my thigh and I felt a jolt of electricity run through me". Secrets of Me (and, in fact, all of the Dogenzaka Labs games) tends towards the latter.
Fair warning: I'm probably going about this in the wrong way, because Secrets of Me is easily my favorite Dogenzaka Labs game. I imagine that there's some sort of marketing secret, where you don't introduce your audience to the best product first, in order to keep them from being disappointed with the later offerings. On the other hand, I'm not involved in marketing this game, so I don't give a fuck. Sorry, Dogenzaka Labs.
Secrets of Me follows the exploits of a young lady who, after a lifetime of being overweight and extremely plain, decides to use all the money she saved up from not dating to get extensive plastic surgery. She's now one of the beautiful people, and fit to be engaged to a beautiful man who she apparently agreed to marry prior to the opening of the game. The only problem is that she doesn't seem to know much more about him besides his name. Solution? Stalking! The problem? The thing she finds out is that he's actually a scam artist who is no longer interested in her now that she's used all her money. Oh no!
If all that seems confusing, don't worry--it's just the prologue. If all of that sounds an awful lot like the plot of a soap opera, congratulations--you know what you're getting into. Secrets of Me is basically a visual novel version of a Korean soap opera. It's a Japanese made game, but I don't watch Japanese soap operas, so you'll have to live with the comparison.
After the prologue, you as the player are given a choice of 5 different guys that you can romance (don't worry, the scummy ex-fiance isn't one of them). You briefly meet all of them in the prologue, but in the interest of brevity I didn't list that part. The 5 romances are extremely diverse, and have a little something for everyone--because of this though, I found that they ranged from "extremely fun and good" to "Ok, I guess". Everyone's opinion on which story fits where on that scale is going to be a little different.
I want to mention one of my favorite things about this game: the main character is absolutely adorable. She's an adult, but she's extremely naive and has no experience with romance or men in general (but in a very narrative appropriate way). She's spunky and a bit stubborn, and falls in love very easily. She can also be kind of creepy (I'll get to that in a moment) but it always comes off as being a product of her innocence. She's just sweet and endearing. I love her.
This game itself has two separate gimmicks: one is that our main character stalks each of her potential lovers (I did warn you), and the other is that the lovers in question are all involved in relationships. As I mentioned, the stalking itself never crosses the line into being genuinely uncomfortable, and each guy more or less consents to it in a fashion (I can't explain it any better than that). In fact, the game constantly uses the word stalking, but I really hesitate to even describe a lot of her actions in that way. As far as the existing relationships thing goes, it's as expected for a soap opera-esque game. Since none of the existing relationships are good or healthy, it's okay for the main character to proceed. She does feel guilty though.
For some of the downsides: the art is... passable, but not exactly brilliant. The translation is pretty good (I laughed at several well written jokes/scenes) but is still a bit sketchy in parts. There are also a couple of places where something happened and two sentences are outright mashed together. However, I enjoyed my overall experience with each story so much that those translation issues never bothered me.
As far as the guys go? Well, like I alluded to, there's something for everyone. My personal favorite is the brilliant doctor with a wicked sense of humor, swiftly followed by the guy who used to bully the main character in high school (or did he?????). My least favorite is the rich guy, as that's the only story that pretty much proceeds exactly like you think it's going to.
Final verdict? Secrets of Me is the only Dogenzaka Labs game that I can, in good conscience, recommend that you buy at full price. Do it.
