More Switch gaming, this time Qureate’s visual novel “TroubleDays”.

No, there’s no space in the name.  Yes, it bugs me too.

If I had a nickel for every story I’ve seen where the plot goes something like “Succubus is sent to the human world to take her first victim but is super naive and can’t get the hang of the whole draining-the-life-force-from-men thing” I’d probably have between fifty cents and a dollar, which may be more of an indictment of the sorts of manga and anime I consume than it is a reflection of how common the trope really is. It’s no “teenage boy must pilot giant robot to save the world”, but it still seems to come up fairly often.

TroubleDays, at any rate, drops another nickel in that metaphorical jar. Much like the last Qureate visual novel I played, KukkuroDays, it’s a neutered version of an 18+ VN and falls into the same sort of reverse-isekai magical-girlfriend category. It’s fluffy and not particularly deep, mostly there to give you about three hours of time with a constantly-embarrassed succubus named Lovelia, and doesn’t charge much for the experience.

I have concerns about my comma usage in that last sentence, but none of my primary school English teachers are likely to ever read this.

There’s a bit more than three hours here if you want to chase down all of the story endings, of course. I finished the game with an ending that wasn’t entirely bleak but was still a bit dark, then went back with a walkthrough to see the mega-happy and 100%-depressing endings.

There are a few side characters, but the game is a little low-budget when it comes to character sprites and the only character you ever see outside of rare CGs is Lovelia. I suspect this is because the game uses the E-mote system to give the characters some motion and facial expressions, and rigging a character up for that system is much more costly than just slapping together a static 2D sprite like you’d get in older VNs.

It does make for some unintentionally-amusing scenes, though.

Lovelia’s supervisor doesn’t get a sprite OR a name.

Likewise, while Lovelia has full voice acting, everyone else is mute. I did like the voice actress quite a bit, and combined with the E-mote system it made for a very expressive main character, so my only complaint here is a personal failing and that’s that I tend to skip through text-only dialog before I’ve actually read it. At least there’s a log I can look at to see what I missed when I realize I’ve done that.

There’s considerable reuse of background images from KukkuroDays in TroubleDays. At least, I’m assuming this is the more recent of the two games, so maybe the reuse actually went the other way. Both use the gag of being set in Akihabara to excuse the fact that the main heroine is dressed extremely provocatively but it’s cool because everyone just assumes that it’s cosplay, and you get the same street scenes and some reused interior backgrounds.

The billboards changed a little anyway.

No change here though.

TroubleDays has far more settings, however, making it a little more interesting than the “main character’s bedroom – Akihabara main street – BookOff interior – Akihabara back streets loop” that KukkuroDays went through. The characters go to a hot springs! And an Animate!

Still, even the cases where the lower budget makes itself evident aren’t deal breakers for me. I have never really had the patience for the Big Name VNs with hundreds of hours of reading and intricate decision trees and so on. I own a few, but I’m going to actually read the fluffy short ones that know what their audience wants and gives it to them.

And what we want is a succubus in glasses.

I haven’t tried either of Qureate’s other “Days” series. I’m just going to assume that NinNinDays is a magical girlfriend story set in Akihabara where your magical girlfriend is a ninja and IdolDays is a …wait, that’s probably not a reverse isekai and the girlfriend probably isn’t magical. So maybe it breaks the mold. Unless she’s a magical idol? It’s set in Akihabara at least.

Also Ninjas technically aren’t magical either. Whatever. I’m going to ignore all evidence that goes counter to my theory.