Mr Love: Dream Date

I came across this otome game recently while looking for new apps to install. Through the years I have played many such games from paid to free to play from all types of producers and game developers you named it. Some of the better ones I’ve written reviews about in my blog. Hence I have decided to take up my pen and add on for this recent game that has captured my imagination and deep interest for the last 3 weeks.

Mr Love is produced by a Chinese game company Paper Games. The game originally released in China under the name Love and Producer had been localised for English audiences since 2019 in the UK under the name Mr Love: Queen’s Choice and later on Feb 10 2020 in Southeast Asia under the name Mr Love: Dream Date. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised that a game of such quality and content was produced by a Chinese company, especially one that was decently generous towards free to play players.

This is because otome games have always been dominated by Japanese game developers and pretty much followed one of two genres – 1. fully paid game with deep story and different types of ending depending on the main character’s choice of words or actions. One of the most recent ones I played that was pretty good is Code Realize and Piofiore (for those who prefer a darker story) though my all time favourite is still Hakuoki. However as great as the content was, it ended when the story ended. You never really got to know the characters better or grow deeper attachment to them, 2. a free to play game where you only get to read a few chapters of the story a day and have to play endless mindless mini games to earn points to progress in the storyline at some point in time. No matter how interesting the story was, I could never continue long for these types.

Then there were interesting new genres that came up over the years – Mystic Messenger by Cheritz was one of the most defining ones as we learnt and realised how we very much love chats as our real world revolves around them. Many games since then have included this feature in them. There was also Liar! by Voltage which took this genre into a mystery solving, liar detecting game. It was quite fun save that it didn’t get rid of the endless mindless game bit to earn points.

A third game that deserved mention and probably had captured my attention and wallet the most thus far is 100 Sleeping Princes and the Kingdom of Dreams by GCrest. Instead of mindless mini games, this long running game uses interesting puzzle and speed mechanics to fight battles and score points. It was essentially a puzzle, gacha, never ending dating simulation game with ever increasing population of princes with weekly content updates. This would have been my favourite otome game of all time if not for one tiny detail – it was only available in Japanese, Korean or Traditional Chinese. I had laboured on for almost a year in this game reading so much Chinese! But at some point I got a little tired of the game. I had gathered all the skins of my favourite prince which allowed me to set up a pretty stellar team that breezed through most of the battles. Though I don’t play this much, I still keep an eye out for main story progression and also whenever my beloved prince has a new storyline.

So what’s next? Before I stumbled onto Mr Love, I played this other game called Obey Me by NTT Solmare Corp. It had an interesting story plot, cute and lovable characters and gacha system designed to suck you dry of money in order to win dance battles to progress the main story. If the dance battles were not so mindless and laborious and the levelling up requirements so steep, I might have continued on. The other thing was that the story felt like it was targeted at young teenage girls or those in early 20s. I was a little too old for this to appeal to me.

Hence when I stumbled onto Mr Love I didn’t have much faith in it. I figured I would pretty much soon lose interest for the many reasons I mentioned above. But I didn’t! I know it is probably too early to make that verdict since it has only been less than a month. However one thing it has done for me that other games have failed to do so, is actually make my heart flutter, face flush and smile inwardly whenever I get to interact with one of the four potential suitors in the game. I am so drawn to the characters with distinct personalities, interesting dialogues and handsome features that I sometimes feel like they are modelled after real people I know! As I progressed through the main story, I found myself changing my impressions, feelings and attitudes for each character several times as I get to know them and their back story more. Doesn’t this happen in reality too? It has made me questioned what do I exactly look out for in the man of my dreams.

Mr Love doesn’t dish out the storylines that easily either. Thus far, the main story has released 34 chapters, on an average of 4 new chapters every 3-4 months. To unlock each chapter requires you to level up your company by 3-5 levels. To do this, you either pay to play fast or you just have to be patient and wait daily for the missions to reset to give you the power boost in experience points. My current speed is one level a day and I just unlocked chapter 9 today. This means I have still a long way to go…

Surprisingly these daily tasks to level up your company are not boring and even after repeating them daily for 21 days I still look forward to spending the first hour of my day completing them. Perhaps it is in how they creatively design multiple mini games to achieve this instead of going with just one game format. I think there is also something addictive and weirdly satisfying about earning achievements after achievements by completing a set of tasks. Maybe it is the appeal of checking a box in our to-do list that has been wired into every corporate employee.

The game mechanics also requires some strategic thinking as every mission to earn experience points requires deploying employees and characters with different skill sets and temperament. This requires a bit of thinking and planning on how to optimise your limited resources across the many things you can do. As I aim to spend within my budget on this game, it does leave me quite a few things to think about how to allocate my resources around. And shop for the best deal even when I do decide to spend on the game.

I will say the game experience won’t be complete without complimenting the deeply moving soundtrack. They are composed by one of my favourite present day composer VK who contributed quite a few best pieces in Deemo. With such a stirring collection of BGM, somehow you don’t mind just fiddling around the game screen a while longer just to listen to the music. I also love the voice actors who bring the characters to life. Maybe it is listening to their voices that adds colour to my cheeks at times.

Mr Love also updates with new events at least twice a month to keep things fresh especially for those who have already reached the latest chapter in the main storyline. It is also another mechanism to siphon money from your wallet. Thankfully while I can say I do love the characters in the game very much, I have played enough of otome games to know not to pull for every darn SSR character. Knowing that you have spent a bomb on a game doesn’t make you feel good plus if you already have the best of them all, the challenges will eventually become a bore. Perhaps like in real life dating, you don’t win over your lover with money, but with time and patience.

So in conclusion I rate this game with a 9/10 because we don’t give perfect scores. The copywriting could be improved because some sentences come off choppy or have grammatical errors. But otherwise if you are looking for an otome game to love and play, from one hopeless romantic to another, go download Mr Love.