[review]Yo-Jin-Bo (PC/PS2)

Title : Yo-Jin-Bo

Publisher : TWOFIVE

Genre : Otome, Dating Sim, Visual Novel

Platform : PC, PS2

Released :  

[PC] 25 July 2005

[PS2] 30 October 2006

Official Site : TWOFIVE

Story:

In this game you will be playing as Sayori, an ordinary modern high school girl who traveled to another era where samurai still exists. The story starts when you found a mysterious pendant laid on the ground. You took it and at night a ghost soul appear in front of you. Then it will change to the story about a Princess from Mochizuke clan named Hatsuhime who's died on her journey, the ghost soul itself is Hatsuhime.

The purpose of Hatsuhime appear in front of you because she asked you to help to change her fate. Before you could say yes, you already inside Hatsuhime's body and the story rewind to the time before Hatsuhime dead. It's your job to change Hatsuhime's fate, if you are can't save her you can't go back to your world and even you will die. 

Then, you help Hatsuhime by running away from the enemy castle with your bodyguard, Muneshige. On the other side, because Hatsuhime had dissapear for several days, the chief asked some strong people to find and save Hatsuhime inside the enemy castle. Later, in the middle of your runaway, you would meet those bodyguards. Then the love blooms while you're escaping from the enemies, find your true love and decide your own fate !

Review :

I just realize that this game was on hold for a long time, i was planning to play this game a year ago but ended up forget to play it because i was busy. ( Actually, i just start playing otome games & visual novels again last december, i was on hiatus for several months or even a year ) Yo-Jin-Bo is a old game that's interesting for me. Yo-Jin-Bo itself means bodyguard, besides that they also use Yo-Jin-Bo as the name of the main bodyguard characters. 

I really love the comedic conversation between the characters in this game. It's really funny, i couldn't stop to laughing while playing the game, especially for Yo's route. LOL. But it's really hard to get the happy ending for each characters, i mean you won't know whether the answer correct or not, so you just need to try your best and depend on your instinct and luckiness or you can play over and over again to get the happy ending. Another easiest way is, find a walkthrough. 

Another thing that i love from this game is, there are a voice for every characters except your character, Sayori. I really like it, that's why the conversation become even more funny. The background music and the graphics all are nice, the CGs also nice with some of them are for fan-service. There's one mysterious option that can be choose from the extra but it's still locked. I don't know what it's, maybe if i finish all the endings then just it will be unlocked? Anyway, TWOFIVE also provides a convenience play button, so if you're too lazy to click all the time, the text will be played, and keep going by itself until you click the screen to stop it. Not only that, it also have skip button. you can skip the story if you already read it, but you can't skip it if it's new route.

If i have one thing that i don't like about this game, it's the answer options. They put a timer when it's the time for you to choose the answer. If you run out the time, it will pick a random answer, and i really hate it. And for the answering guide, it's quite easy until middle of the story because some of the answer are pretty obvious. I mean, if you're choosing Yo's route, just pick every answer that is related with Yo, but in the end there are still some options that you need to choose carefully. For the ending, there are several endings for each characters, i guess it's about two or three endings, first is happy ending and the rest are bad ending and normal ending(?) So far, i only get Yo's happy ending, it's so hard to get Jin's T-T

Overall, i love this game very much because of the conversation between the characters and the voice actors, it makes the game more lively. And i just want to tell that this is not really an otome game, i mean it doesn't have too much romantic story-line, almost all of it is comedic story-line, but in the end, it still has a romantic scenes when you get the happy ending. I would recommend this game because it's very entertaining.

My Score  :

Story : 5/5

Graphic :4/5

Music & Sound :5/5

Control : 5/5

Gameplay :4/5

Overall : 4.6/5

Challenge : Medium

Completion Time : -

Characters 

Sayori

'Main Character, you'

Hatsuhime

'Princess of Mochizuke Clan'

Bodyguards

Shiranui Yozaburō a.k.a. Yo

'The Youngest'

Job: Ninja

Murasame Jinnosuke a.k.a. Jin

'The Temperament'

Job: Samurai

Tsubaki Tainojō a.k.a. Bo

'The Elegant'

Job: Samurai

Tsukuba Muneshige 

'The Fail Joker'

Job: Samurai

Kadokura Monzan a.k.a. Mon-Mon

'The Pervy'

Job: Buddhist Priest

Tatsunami Ittousai

'The Sociopath'

Job: Assasin

Additional character on PS2

Fuuma Kasumimaru

'The Enemy'

Job: Ninja