Those that don’t know, My Candy Love (or Sweet Crush in the UK version/ Amour Sucré in the original French version) is an online otome game which you can play by logging on the website everyday to get Action Points and Money in order to proceed. It’s divided into “episodes” and your choices are consequential episode by episode as the story goes on. There are also around 6 main love interests (up to now; and I’m not counting the guys that you can flirt with only in one episode like Jade/Dajan or Alexy…for…obvious reasons for those that know him… though I’m not sure where Chinomiko, the author, is trying to go with him yet. Who knows..hahah ). The heroine is also completely customizable with hair, eye color and clothes.
Currently it reached to episode 29 and it’s still ongoing.
I was into this game a long time ago, mostly during my highschool years and I recently got back to it and I saw how many people still have difficulty dealing with the guys of this otome game…By that I definitely do not mean that I’ve mastered the ways to deal with each and every one of them, but I do consider myself to have a certain type of “feeling” when it comes to it and I would like to help you, if possible, to get through the game faster without going off the route of the guy that you like or loose any event with him/them (? when pertinent XD).
My main reason for coming back to it after 2 years is that My Candy Love‘s guys are quite unique. You can still put them in some archetype category, like Castiel – the bad boy/Nathaniel – the nice guy, but Castiel is not only a bad boy and Nathaniel is definitely not always the nice guy, so the options aren’t always obvious, on the contrary. Unfortunately, My Candy Love is kind of underrated by the otome game community.
Firstly, because it’s online and you need patience to be able to go through it.
Secondly, because the art of it is not exactly “typical” or one when a person would be able to say “oh this is an otome game”. They’re definitely not bad though, I personally love them! But it’s not something that catches the eye. (Or it might just be me, personally I thought it was a webtoon when i first saw it, rofl).
Thirdly, by some people it’s considered to be quite childish. This is again a personal experience, but I’ve been told off by a bunch of 14 years old playing the game, that they are horrified and I must have no life for playing My Candy Love at 20 (now 22) years old. I never understood the “You’re too old to do this, you’re too old to do that” type of mentality. While it’s true that My Candy Love is directed to 12-16 years old girls and it is indeed quite juvenile on certain aspects, me being too old to play it was one of the last things on my mind. I have no shame to leave my age in full view on the website, nor to scream it out to the world that YES, I LOVE PLAYING MY CANDY LOVE. And YES, I DO actually impatiently wait every Sunday for the new episode of The Adventures of Ladybug and Chat Noir ! Don’t judge me! But I digress…It’s ALL WORTH IT! 
COUGHS.
Going back to the announcement, the walkthrough series will start after I complete the walkthroughs for Men of Yoshiwara: Kikuya and Hatoful Boyfriend. There’s not much left to do, so I think I’ll be done by half March! Till then, you can go check out the game HERE (USA version) (or get re-directed to the websites hosting the game for different languages. They have it in French, Italian, Spanish, English (UK), Romanian, Brazilian, Japanese, German, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian and Swedish).
Lastly, please feel free to add me as a Candy-Love friend! You can find me:
- My Candy Love (USA version) – MaiMew
- Sweet Crush (UK version) – Nekocchii
- Dolce Flirt (Italian version) – MaiMew and Nekochan (this second one is my oldest)
- Sweet Flirt (Romanian version) – Nekochiin
(Yes, I have more accounts on more languages for convenience reasons while doing the walkthroughs so I don’t have to make 10 e-emails or switch account depending of what guy I’m going for, all the time.)
OtogeMeow 
I used to play this game all the time, but after a while I got frustrated with the Action Point system. I would always end up wasting Action Points after having to repeatedly enter the same room over and over again until a certain person/item would appear…
The game is fun and I agree super underrated, I may go back if they fixed the AP system.
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From what I played, the Action Point-strategy (there’s no other way to call it because the encounters are random so this is simply a strategy to make you buy Action points in the end) has not been fixed (safe for some points where people were complaining) and I don’t think it completely will, but I developed my own strategy to avoid getting frustrated as much over it: save up. XD I log in everyday for like 2 weeks, while playing the Flower Pawer-roulette mini-game and start consuming my AP every 2 weeks. It’s still annoying when you end up wasting them, but at least there’s that feeling of progress remaining. XD The only unfortunate problem with this technique (and the game in general), is that it looses flow when you’re forced to stopped playing.
Which might be one of the reasons you stopped, I assume.
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Yeah that was one of the reasons that and I ended up with Nathaniel…ps. I also watch Ladybug every Sunday and I’m 25 so no shame!
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*hugs you for being a Ladybug-mate* I love you! 8D
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I agree that these games are exhausting. I played a bunch of them and I reached a time I just said “I’m done”. Even the ones to buy routes are sadly not the same quality as console/PC/portables ones. I got specially surprised when some console games got ported to Android and removed audio, sound effects, voices and done with bad translations. Why bother if you’re stripping the games and leaving husks?
But I digress.
I found it interesting a lot of otome gamers nowadays discover the genre through Android, I do wonder what their perspective is on the genre when they came from there instead of like me, who came from RPG and then got into VN until I found otoge.
Sorry if I babbled/didn’t say anything very pertaining to the game itself >_<
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Omg you’re voicing my thoughts about the whole “porting” issue. This was one of my main issues with Men of Yoshiwara and Scarlet Fate ports to begin with, there’s an overall lack of atmosphere. Plus the GUIs, menus and transitions from one scene to another horrified me when I first saw them. And then you’re stuck between doing your duty as a Western otome game fan that wants to support the otoge industry and the “wtf am I actually paying this much for?” feeling.
You put out an interesting point that would be nice to discuss overall. I wonder as well…They would probably be amazed at how much work and quality is put in the original otome games, unless they already got tired of the same-faced Voltage.inc guys or the overall bad quality solmare is providing.
I come from the times when, maybe, nobody but a very niche western community even knew that otome games were a thing. Back from the La Corda D’oro otome game and the whole AGTH text hooker -ATLAS and coding methods to be able to actually google translate these stuff hahahaha
That’s ok! I love babbling! XD
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I remember trying AGTH to try to play Umineko, it was before I even knew otoge existed. I knew La Corda was a manga and a game, got really frustrated I couldn’t play but never noticed it was an actual genre heh
God yes, the porting/GUI, menus and transitions are all same-y and crap. Let’s not even talk about the ones that function on phones but not good on tablets, either by being too small or buggy/not loading sprites and BG. Which happened to me, I facepalmed hard.
I don’t do my duty as a western otome fan if it’s by supporting work done bad. Voltage and Solmare have not impressed me with what I played for free from them, so I don’t know why I should pay for it.
I tried a bunch of demos back then and all suffered from being what I perceive as incomplete or even shoddy. Can’t expect me so shell out for games that aren’t finished, or good.
I’ve spent money buying games for my Vita and such, but I wouldn’t if they were bad.
I’ve been seeing the whole Norn9/Code:Realize localization problems and I’m not buying if they did bad work. I’m not forced to support bad work, and I don’t want to encourage it either. Bad enough that Hakuoki had problems (I didn’t like the game because it bored me, personally) and instead of improving they’ve gone even worse ಠ_ಠ
I liked Sweet Fuse, but I actually am scared to know if they did a bad job on it and I was just ignorant to it back then. Because now I’m not, I’m studying JP ffs
I think maybe it’s why otome fans got such a hard on for Hakuoki and Amnesia when they released on Android, it was heads over shoulders above the other crap published. They really stand out for good art and good systems, plus being finished. Though Amnesia has a better translation, from what I’ve been told.
I’ve also found that if they become otome games fan and decide to branch from Android, they’ll in the end need to learn JP because really, what’s localized or even fan translated is a drop of water from what exists in Japan (⌒_⌒;)
I have a tendency to babble and hijack conversations/threads away from the point xD (no wonder it’s part of my nickname xDD)
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Omg I totally agree and understand your points about solmare, Voltage and I think 3D publisher can also join their table, now that I think about it (They were in charge of Men of Yoshiwara right? and i’ve seen they got their hands on some other titles too which sound so totally uninteresting and…expensive. ). Oh I didn’t know Norn9 and Code;Realize (or Hakuouki) had localization problems. But I am not that good in Japanese as I wished…though I did notice some “off” translations, but at the time I didn’t think of it as such a bad thing. (And I personally adored Hakuouki XDD to be honest, at the beginning it bored me too because I really wasn’t into the history part of it, but then Souji Okita happened and the rest..who cares about the rest? LOL). Since all these games were released by Aksys Games, it must be lazy work from their side. Amnesia was released by the Western Idea Factory, so who could actually do a better job at it than they did with their own game? XD Unfortunately, I have NO IDEA how Amnesia did, but I’ve seen some mad sales for it on Steam sometimes (like going from 25$ to 3$), but I really wish for more localizations coming directly from them.
Well, whatever the reason or topic, I’m glad to be able to speak to people and share some impressions! ^^ So I was really happy to see you took your time to write such lenghty replies XD Thank you!
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Norn9 is the one that has the biggest problems with memes and choking sounds for kissing. Maybe check reviews to see in depth the localisation issues? I read some and got a bit…yeah. Like Hakuoki gets called Barkuoki and Code Realize had some coding issues, typos and such. But I don’t know in depth about all of them cause I didn’t play CR nor Norn9 and I’m not sure I want to when they have issues. But on the other side I do want to support localisations, so I end up not buying or playing because I can’t decide /facepalms
Hakuoki…yeah, like I’ve been thinking I should give it another chance but I’m not sure I’m up for it truthfully
Aksys did good on Sweet Fuse, I think because I played when it came out and so I don’t know if they did or not. I have fond memories of it heh
Amnesia was a job well done, but from what I understood people pirated the Steam version a lot and I don’t think the Steam version did as well as they hoped. I saw Amnesia at 2$ in Steam, which is crazy cheap but since my laptop died I didn’t buy it >_< I think overall Amnesia didn't do as good as they hoped, perhaps not even to cover costs, and that's why Beastmaster is getting a kick starter (which isn't doing so well right now
)
Thank you ❤ (though I don't think they're particularly lengthy, I just do extra spaces and it ends up looking longer xD )
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Oooh I’m totally dejected to hear that about Norn9 lol…but a point to maybe consider is that maybe they’re not doing that much of a proper job exactly because it costs too much to do it. Maybe supporting what “higher quality” we get is a good choice for now, till they actually realize that there’s a market for it in the West, because as shitty as smartphone otome games are, they are still cheaper and are more successful because they’re cheaper; I wouldn’t like otome games to get that path when it comes to the west….It’d be awfully sad.
And yes, I did see that 2$ Amnesia sale….And I thought it was a mistake. I personally bought it at full price and I have no regrets because Idea Factory deserved it…now about Beasmaster, I supported it and I’m sad it’s not doing well, but I like to believe that the unsuccessful kickstarter was because they failed to be concrete when they organized it. Also, I heard that many people suggested a re-launch of the project with all the informations, but it’s still to see if they actually want to take the chance to do it again though…
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From what I understood, it was that they hired an outside team to do the translation for Norn9 and Code Realize, and with two games to translate and crunch through…Norn9 got shafted, which is sad
Omg I so dislike mobile otome games. They have some of the worst UI design ever >__< )
I've seen feel people are removing pledges they did and said they wouldn't support/pledge again if Beastmaster relaunched ._.
I'm just hoping they'll try again with another game and work out the issues before it. Also, prepare some buzz and some news websites to make anticipation happen, and hopefully it'll go smooth. I just hope they aren't giving up after this fails
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OOOO this is awesome! Never played it but I am looking forward to this!!
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