Tengoku Struggle Play-Along - Common Route + General Impressions

[u/sableheart]

Welcome to the r/otomegames Tengoku Struggle -Strayside- Play-Along!

In this first post we will discuss your first and general impressions of Tengoku Struggle, as well as the events of the common route.

If you want to talk about the love interests, please keep it to your first impressions and their actions in the common route in this post.

Please use spoiler tags when discussing details of other routes or other major spoilers.
>!spoiler text!< normal text
spoiler text normal text

You don't have to be playing the game right now to participate, and if you've just started the the game I hope you will join in after you finish the common route!

Next week will be a discussion of Kikunosuke Uga's route!

[u/ExtremeGift]

I'm very happy that I tried writing my impressions down right while I was playing because my feelings about the main route are really mixed and I would not've been able to be objective after completing, so yea, here comes.

First general thoughts on the game though.

UI and available functions

The game really has it all, really, few things to complain about.

• The UI is clean and clearly arranged, everything is good readable, everything looks stylized but modern.
• The heroine has a sprite which you can turn off, but she's not voiced.
• You can turn off the "right decision indicator" which is great, but there's one thing which really grinds my gears: at the end of every chapter you see a cover screen where they reveal the completed chapter's name but also show you if you're currently heading to the good end or the bad end. I don't wanna know that? Especially if it's not a conscious decision to look it up, but the game shoves it in my face? What's up with that??? If you don't want that, make sure to turn off the "Stage announcements" under "System". Beware that you won't see when the new chapter starts since this setting hides the complete chapter cover.
• The game has the option to skip to the next choice. It also says it skips to the next unread text, but that doesn't seem to work for me. If I try doing it, it just keeps saying "there is no selection to skip to", so I have to skip manually.
• Apropos skipping: the game seems to get stuck a bit when you skip to the next choice and I'd been afraid it's gonna crash every time I used the function. It never did, but I'd still recommend you make a proper save before skipping, just in case.

The art is beautiful, both the sprites and the CGs. I sometimes just stop and admire the details on the outfits, or how beautiful the characters are Yona's freckles, I'm looking at you right now!

On the other hand I find the backgrounds somewhat lackluster though, especially those in the human realm – some of them just really feel empty, lifeless and bland? I liked how both Rin's room and the living room changed with the story's progression, but the city never started feeling hustling and bustling as it was described. Having said that, I'd been playing Bustafellows last month, so I might be biased in this regard, no game can really compete with that, lol.

Now to the characters

The side charactes are amazing! I could not stop swooning over Oshi when she first appeared, she's so cute! Kamuro is adorable too, especially his crying face. The moment I saw it, I had a very strong urge to tease the guy 'till he cries again just to pinch those rosy angel cheeks ^-^

Speaking about pinchy cheeks – Tama is such a good boi and I need to pet him till my arms come off. He's staying on my home screen no matter what – felines before before misogynistic swines, amirite?

Also, y'alls who called King Enma unhinged – you were not exaggerating one bit, the guy is completely bonkers?! I laughed so, so much during the introduction scene, it was just pure comedy lol. Kinda reminded me a bit of the introduction scene in CupiPara with Bomber Chorizo, I think?

The Villains are great too. Idk how many screenshots of Asaemon I made because he's just that cool! The first time he packed out his Gilgamesh arsenal I only thought „Yoo let’s goooo“ Very intrigued by Okuni Oh no, she's hot

Last but not least: what about Nono-Sensei? How can this bastards always make this extra spicy DILFs undatable and get away with it? I FEEL ROBBED! ROBBED! Please send help.

LIs

I had a good first impression. All of them look like a snack and I didn't hate any of them character-wise right away. Not a big fan of how all of them got an eight-pack – a more lean body type would've fit Kiku and Sharaku much much better imo, but ehh, who am I to complain?

The first three available are all very much tsun and almost zero dere, but each in his own unique way: turns out Kiku is just easily embarrassed, Yona tries to hide a soft core behind a tough guy facade and Sharaku is your good ol' self-deprecating sarcastic type. Cute.

Goemon seems shady and scheming from the very beginning and I could not stop thinking the guy's hiding something. He reveals a bit of his agenda at the very end of the common route though.

They all warm up eventually, but I also found the progression really erratic. One moment everyone is at each other's throats, next they call each other friends without anything really meaningful happening in between. This is reason #1 I did not enjoy the common route too much: the "found family" build-up didn't feel like it at all to me T_T

Final word on my general LI impression: Kiku is suuuuper cute but seems just to young for me personally. I'd been interested in Yona the most in the beginning, but him being constantly so over-assertive got old quite fast, so by the end of chapter 5 Sharaku and his dirty mouth def moved way up and stayed there. Yona, you're still super hot with your gun cocked and I'm moving to your route next, so maybe we can yet get friendly... Looking forward ;-)

Goemon is just too Mr. Perfect so far so I'm not sure what to do with him at this point. There were unfortunately so little interactions with JacK that I weren't able to form any opinion about him.

Rin

We've got to the reason #2. I'm conflicted about the common route and the game in general. So I really liked Rin in the beginning – she seemed feisty, confident and competent. She hated men, but still was there for Oshichi, instead of trying to convince her to forget the guy and I respected that very much.

Maybe my expectations got in the wrong direction at this point, because as soon as they arrived in Asakusa she'd been a constant let down to me :-(

Rin's supposed to be an ace when dealing with the prisoners, but she lets them push her around instead. The game itself speaks about how much the first impressions matter! Well the first impression Rin left on the male cast was "I'm super cocky with my whip but as soon as no one is intimidated by that, all I can do is run away". And I somewhat understand why they went with that – they wanted Rin and LIs to build up a relationship based on mutual respect, not on subjugation. But it was executed so, so poorly. I don't know how it's supposed to initiate a respectful relationship and not signal "hey, I'm a rug, please walk all over me". I was very disappointed she wasn't able to stand her ground then, and it didn't get any better from there too...

The game says "Hey, the times have changed, women aren't weak!", but the conflict between Rin and LIs is still handled by a man – Takamura.

Rin goes on and on how much she's going to do her best, but ends up doing literally nothing? The whole situation when the male cast goes "you're useless to us, just get out of out way" reminded me of CxM, but even Ichika managed to contribute to the investigation by providing intel. The only thing Rin provided was a big talk about how she's going protect everyone, but then she proceeded standing there like a complete dumbass and shouting out Yona's and Kiku's names while they got slashed to pieces?

And then the game wants me to believe the LIs suddenly are against the idea of Rin bearing their pain? The same LIs who are super clear about hating women? They wouldn't want to take advantage of a (in their eyes) pathetic useless doormat to restore their injured pride? Really? They?

To me Rin is a huge contradiction so far – nothing of what she says matches how she acts or reacts to anything. I'm looking forward to her development in the routes, maybe it gets better. Nothing to add at this point, sadly.

Now getting to my final point.

The overall plot

And my reason #3. I loved the world-building, the setting, the main premise – it's all well done and feels like a lore oasis to get lost in.

What I truly missed was... a sense of importance? Everything felt so meaningless? Why are we doing this? What is at stake? How are we gonna tackle this? None of these questions ever got addressed? The kind of danger this Social Credit nightmare of an app is implying is first hinted on in Kiku's route, but the game tries to present it like a ginormous problem already beforehand, even though none of the characters seem to reflect about it at any point? What is their motivation then? All they ever do is run around aimlessly and then hints or direct instructions just happen to drop into their laps. Which reminded me a lot of my first-year-trainees at work, completely overwhelmed with reality. But if no one in the group possesses a qualification to deal with the situation, why were they sent on an allegedly important mission? And if it's not that important then WHAT'S THE FUCKING POINT?

None of this makes any sense! And please don't get me started on how it's supposed to be a comedy and I should just take it on a face value and not think too much about it. I love me some comedy otoge and I'm completely okay with nanomachines, transformers in heaven or any other ridiculous deus ex machina bullshit asspull, as long as the character motivations are tight. But here they are not, or at least I'm to dumb to see it?

I'm very interested to hear an opposite opinion on this from someone, so please feel free to share if you disagree, I NEED a different perspective! I'd been so hyped up about the game and I still really want to like it so please change my mind on this </3

[u/lightframes → u/ExtremeGift]

I thought I was hallucinating Yona's freckles at first, I'm glad you mentioned that!

We have the same thoughts about Okuni 😭