Star-Crossed Myth: Zyglavis - Day Two (Otome Game) (Meghan)

Meghan: Confession time: If it wasn't clear before, otome games are my favourite thing to play just because they combine my two favourite things: romance tropes and manga/anime style men. That, and I'm a sucker for men who look like elves and such.

Most of this review was played on my bus rides home from stupid night classes, and for the people who saw me physically trying to not scream when I was playing was a good part of the story, I apologize for looking like a spastic noodle.

Me when playing a new otome game.

Day Two of Star-Crossed Week was my review on Zyglavis, who evidently, was the Instagram ad that kept showing up on my timeline. And, I like his hair. Like, a lot. Like, that's the part of him that attracted me to him. And my experience playing otome games are that you go for the one with the best hair as a starting point.

Like, oh mah god that hair and attitude are a dangerous combination.

The Story:

Players play the route of an MC who works at a planetarium. She loves the stars so much that one day she makes a wish upon one and just like that, six men fall out of the sky claiming to be gods outcast from Heaven for committing a sin that only the MC can erase. You see, she's got "stars in her eyes" meaning she's the reincarnation of a goddess.

There are two different types of gods, those that work in the Department of Wishes, and the Department of Punishments. Guess what they do?

Olga: I think I would be in the Department of Punishments and you would be in the Department of Wishes. Punishing people is fun.

Meghan: That’s fine. I get Leon then, and he’s one of my favourite routes for the game. :D

ALSO

I like this already. I wanna be a goddess myself, but hey, I’ll settle for reincarnation.

Olga: I’m already a goddess. And a queen. At least in the “dungeon” *wink wink*.

Meghan: We shouldn’t have let you watch Fifty Shades...

My Thoughts

Zyglavis is such a weird name. Also, fuck him because he is so full of sass and he says it with a smile and I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO FEEL RIGHT NOW!

NOTE: I totally found a post on Tumblr that said Zyglavis was Greek for "justice" or "balance", or "scales" (I forget exactly which but hey! That's clever! BECAUSE HE'S THE GOD OF LIBRA)

Firstly, a few thoughts I had on this route:

GODDAMN, THAT HAIR IS BETTER THAN MINE. I need that hair. Fuck my life.

FUCK YOU ZYGLAVIS YOUR SASS IS SLOWLY KILLING ME. ALSO DAT FUCKING SMOULDER DOH.

LIKE LOOK AT THIS SASS

THIS WAS ALL IN THE SPAN OF A FEW EPISODES!

My initial reaction was like...

Now that that’s out of the way...

ZYGLAVIS’ STORY

SPOILERS AHEAD!!

Zyglavis’ story is actually pretty interesting, although, in the beginning, I thought it was dull. Thank goodness that’s this is not the case, otherwise, I’d be complaining about that. As the Minister of Punishments, he’s one of the more powerful deities (as well as one of the most with secrets).

For these games, I hate using my own name so I use another. For Star-Crossed, I went by the alias Shiya Hanamori. What can I say? I like to be involved in the story completely.

From the beginning, our MC is being stalked by some “malicious shadow”, as she refers to it. She believes this to be the “Dark King”, an entity created by humans who feeds on negative emotions that harbor in our hearts. Naturally, that means he must be fat as fuck in this day and age. Considering the angst (I love that word), that we all carry.

Actual footage of the Dark King feeding on your soul. And mine. Black as fuck.

This show has a gif for all my feelings.

Actually though. Dark King may need a route for me to play.

At first, the MC thinks she’s made a mistake picking Zyglavis. He’s cold, sassy, and talks like I wish I could talk during an academic presentation. One of the major things she harps on is that he is merciless when he hands out punishments.

GOD WHY DO YOU HAVE TO LOOK FUCKING GORGEOUS WHILE BEING A DICK.

There’s a whole subplot with this one man, a nameless CEO of some company, who has sinned grievously, and Zyglavis’ punishment is to have his company go bankrupt. And burn their house down, thus leaving him, his wife, and their tiny son homeless. 

Naturally, this is where MC makes an actually good point. Well, the boy hasn’t done anything, why’s he getting punished? (Answer, spoils of war, I digress, because reasons)

But this CEO the MC is convinced is worthy of being saved. Zyglavis is skeptical, but that’s because in the past he used to punish humans to show them the errors of their ways (i.e. to make them get on a better path), because unlike the other gods, he genuinely loves humanity, and wants them to be good. When the humans came to him begging him to stop the punishments, he did, only because he thought they had seen the error of their ways. Yet, after he promised to do so, and even larger war broke out.  Thus the humans let him down and betrayed him.

The Dark King was born because of this, and when the gods decided to fight him (and then later give up because he was too strong), Zyglavis was the last to leave. But he has little hope for humanity. Hence his merciless punishments, and stoic behavior that he has (and all the gods, save Scorpio, know him as).

The MC still believes this family is worth saving, so their plot actually gets intertwined at the end (I won’t say what happens, but I did actually like it). I think if anything it shows the MC (and gives us some good story development) that not everything, right away, can simply be solved by believing in someone (as a lot of Otome Games are reputable for using).

That, and Zyglavis is doing everything he can to stop her from getting too attached to him. Gods can’t favor one human over another, so he must remain impartial. We all know that’ll be broken by the end of the story, but it’s a plot-point that’s huge in Leon’s route. Not so much here, but I don’t know why. I would’ve preferred some consistency in that regard, although it’s not that big of an issue, all things considered.

The main issue of the story is: Can Zyglavis overcome his “confusion” in his heart and find it in him to destroy the Dark King and his preconceived notions of the past? 

One thing I appreciate is that instead of focusing so much on our MC we’re focusing on actual (albeit fictitious) issues that CAUSE character development. 

It is both something that I used to find myself wishing for in otome, and something I felt is done fairly well. I could feel the harsh debate Zyglavis has, and he makes some fair points to why he’s the way it is. I felt the need to point this out because I thought it was extremely well done. A+ for consistency on that, Voltage.

MY THOUGHTS

Voltage is notorious (but not the only one), who has a rep for giving out clueless, dumb, helpless, MCs. I have, and will always hate that. You can be strong and still be attractive. I did a whole paper on this in my rhetoric class. Well, my favourite thing is that Zyglavis full-out calls MC out on it. I refer you to some more sass.

Also, I appreciate some pseudo-fourth-wall breaking at the beginning of this route.

Coincidence? I think not!

Like I said though, while we have a “kinda clueless, pure MC” she does go through some harsh realizations, mostly brought about by Zyglavis. I give you points for that, but I thought it could be better developed as well. 

What I loved most about this game (having played Leon’s route and Scorpio’s too), was that these stories actually took their time and developed a relationship. Too often I’ve played routes that were rushed out, and were shorter than the first round of routes. Unfortunately, I think Zyglavis’ route was like this. The sad part? It has sooo much potential. 

His personality is killer. Yeah, it’s dull in the beginning, but so many times (sass included) he made me laugh out loud. He tells it like it is. I can appreciate that for many reasons. I need to point this out a lot. Seriously, I have not played a route equivalent to the sass levels of Zyglavis (or Scorpio) ever, and I enjoyed every minute of it. His personality SHINES here. 

I love that he has a nickname too-Zig. OMG, I laughed at this part. Reminds me too much of Ziggy Stardust, and what would’ve made this route perfect is a reference to David Bowie. Alas, we did not receive.

Too bad. Ziggy played guitar….*sings Ziggy Stardust*

Can you imagine Zyglavis with a guitar? HOH BOI.

Meghan wants fan art of that. Right now.

Yet, having said that, the romance felt a) rushed, and b) not...enough. Like, I know Zyglavis is “that” stoic character every otome has. Not tsundere, but just stoic (if there’s a better term for it please let me know). I think having him open up more, or show that affectionate side more would have been so wonderful, and would’ve made the route feel more real and deep.

Having played other routes (Scorpio and Leon’s, and I will be playing Ichthys just cuz’) those felt more developed than this. Perhaps that’s because he was released later but I don’t consider that an excuse.

This is probably what bothered me the most was that I kept waiting for that “moment” when he would become this debonair prince. Not that he didn’t (although he does have a satisfying development), but it didn’t feel complete.

I know people LOVE him on Tumblr. There are fanart and pictures galore. Or at least that’s what I thought, so I went in hyped about this route. That and in the story, he’s fairly shrouded in mystery, so I naturally did want to know what his deal was.

Leading me to the climax of this story. It was a good payoff. Our MC is actually captured by the “Dark King” when Leon leaves her to return to the Heavens. Which is pretty cool because it introduces us to that whole side of the story.

. I couldn’t help myself though. Dark King makes the best sounds in the story. 
I imagine the Dark King having the voice of like, Gollum, or Cobra Commander. Can’t you see it, being all like...

                                             

                                                                          COBRAAAAAAA

So he wants to rip the MC’s immortal goddess soul from her mortal form to resurrect himself. But, in true otome fashion- our MC’s crying becomes actually useful (throughout the story all this girl does is bawl. And for once, it was actually a plot-point. Good for you, story.)

Well then. DID I mention I’m still distracted by that hair goddamn? And no, it doesn’t matter whose hair in this particular picture. 

And you know, Zyglavis won’t allow that shit to happen. And his heart is free.

Can we have a route for Crow (Dark King's henchmen dude)? His hair calls to me.
Then Zyglavis saves you, and you go to the Heavens and meet the King of the Heavens who just happens to be…

LEGOLASSSSS

You go back and share a heartfelt kiss, and then it moves on to the epilogue. So that’s it, that’s the story.

MY RATING

You know, if you were expecting me to tear this a new one, you’d be wrong. If I didn’t like it, I’d say so. That’s not true. The story was fairly enjoyable and made me smile sometimes.

Having said that, I don’t believe in lying about ratings just because I love something. So for ZYGLAVIS’ MAIN STORY (a paid route), I’d give it a hard 3.7 stars.

If I’m being generous 4 stars. It has a good story, but I think it lacks some.

HAVING SAID THIS: This is not the rating of every story. My personal rating for Leon’s is actually 4.5 stars.  So if you have money to burn, and like otome games, it’s worth a download, but choose your story wisely. Not all of them are of the same caliber, and that’s just too bad. Personally, Leon and Ichthys’ stories are two routes that I would really say “give it a buy”.

(if you do wanna try otome as a first timer I can recommend some fun “free-to-play”, story-ticketed ones.)

~Meghan