Nameless ~ That Which You Must Recall ~

Nameless

“My honey.”

oh my god

help

Nameless

A friend kindly gifted me a copy of Nameless ~ The One Thing You Must Recall ~ and I am wallowing and/or thrashing about in it. I am not ready for a proper review, but I would like to mention I just finished up Yuri’s route/endings and I am s h r i e k i n g and it has nothing to do with Yuri at all.

Like what the fffffffffuu

Is there a WORD for this thing Otomes do? That moment where you’re abruptly creeped out and intrigued in equal measure, and you’re like, That person appears to be a psychopath. Let us date.

Nameless ~ That Which You Must Recall ~

Nameless is an otome about a teenager named Eri who collects dolls and loves carbs. She has lived alone ever since her grandfather died, but she has her dolls to keep her company. Then one day, they come to life.

The game is fully-voiced with CGs and full intro and ending FMV. Playing through one of the three unlocked routes opens two more and there are over 20 endings. The player pieces together the entire story through all routes as well as diary entries that are periodically unlocked. Nameless uses Unity and the main technical issue is a lack of keymapping or controller support. There is a somewhat arbitrary quiz minigame as well as a match game.

The translation needs polish and the script seems a bit more rushed in the later routes but it doesn’t detract from the story. There is a bit of repetition in dialogue, but they do add new things to the common route each playthrough and there is a skip button. One thing that does bug me is the game uses a few filtered photographs for backgrounds, and these clash with the drawn backgrounds.

I was originally going to do a master post, but this game has quite a bit of meat to it so for now I’ll just cover the first four.

Lance is a prickly doll in the midst of an existential crisis. I played his route first because he kept saving Eri from Yuri’s lurid weirdness, which endeared him to me. Lance’s insecurities, which stem from being a really popular mass-produced doll, were compelling and Cheritz did a good job with the concept.

When Lance takes over the play, I lifted my fist, my eyes shining, and whispered, “There is a God.” Alas, no CG of Lance in a dress (and apparently no LancexRed kiss), so maybe there isn’t a god after all, but I enjoyed the route. The parent in me screamed silently when Eri and Lance moved into the same room, but eh. What are you gonna do. Lance’s “doll” bad ending is gravy. I should add that I felt like several of the choices in Lance’s route are quite arbitrary, but that’s a common issue in this genre.

The highlight of Yuri’s route is his VA, who utters delightful endearments such as, “darling,” and “my honey.” I did not like Yuri at first. He’s a consummate ladies’ man who consistently invades Eri’s space, but I found his common route dialogue funny (and Lance always shoos him away, so his up-close-and-personal act isn’t terribly distressing). I decided to play his route second with the understanding at any given point I might be compelled to take off my slipper and throw it at the monitor. After I got to know him his antics didn’t bother me at all. It’s just Yuri.

I’m a bit on the fence about his route. Some aspects of it were really interesting. It bothers me that Eri felt the need to dress up for him and change herself (Lance verbalizes my concerns, actually), but when you add in the weirdness of their relationship–he is the doll accustomed to being dressed up, she is the owner–it just adds another layer to it. Yuri liked being dressed up by Eri, and now he is dressing up her–it’s more complicated than “girl makes herself over for guy.” The route felt really uneven overall, and that might be because I kept hitting one of the bad ends so I kept having to replay various sections until I got it right.

Yeonho is a cute, younger-looking doll who calls Eri “Master” and is terrifyingly codependent. Eri bought Yeon-ho as a used doll and we are perhaps not so surprised to learn his previous owner has left her mark.

This one went about as I anticipated. I personally found the route pretty claustrophobic, but we got some interesting clues about the main plot and some of the bad endings were D: It wasn’t always obvious how to handle Yeonho’s abandonment issues, so that’s an aspect I liked.

Tei and Red are locked routes, which means they have more goodies, so under a cut they go. (Tei, anyway, I haven’t finished Red yet.)

If you play this game “right” and play Tei’s route fourth after getting the previous bad endings you go into it knowing the guy is some flavor of psychopath. One thing I really liked about the setup is Cheritz does a great job of telegraphing before the player picks the route (unless they play Lance -> Tei, in which case you go from tame, fairly standard otome to WHEEEEE). Unlike Toma in Amnesia, who masquerades as “the well-balanced guy” and ends up, you know, we get the red flags on Tei.

The thing that’s kind of great for Tei’s route, for me personally, is his background actually helps quantify his behavior while making it no less creepy. Tei is an extremely high-functioning psychopath, a result of solitary confinement and psychological conditioning. He is categorically dangerous and I don’t feel like the game makes excuses for him, but he is sympathetic. I actually have more to say about him, I’ll probably do it in a separate post. Let’s just say I have complicated Tei feels, but also, I felt like his route still doesn’t explain a lot of what’s going on with him.

Overall, Nameless is a fun and delightfully creepy otome. The concept presents an owner-doll dynamic which allows tropes to play out a little differently. It’s long, though I admittedly idle quite a bit I’ve already got 30 hours logged. 35 hours might be a good average playtime.