Now, ‘My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!’ is back and it’s time for you to step into Catarina’s shoes. She’s reached the end of the Fortune Lover game and managed to avoid all of her potential pitfalls. She should be free and clear to survive with no more Doom Flags to take her down. But things aren’t that easy when you get sucked into a video game world. My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- from developer Otomate and publisher Idea Factory picks up here with Catarina relaxing after her close brushes with death and feeling happier than ever before in her new life. For fans of the show it’s important to note that the game is not canon. The light novels and manga are officially unrelated to this release so enjoy in peace and don’t expect things to cross over here!
As Catarina, you’ll be interacting with the cast of the TV series including her fiancée Geordo Stuart and all her friends. There are six romance-able characters in the game including two new ones. If you’ve seen the show, you’ll be familiar with Geordo, Alan, Keith, and Nicol, and there are two new characters that are introduced in the first chapters of the game. The entire supporting cast are here too with Marie (Fortune Lover’s protagonist) and all of the other girls making appearances as well. It’s a full house here and if you haven’t seen the anime, there’s a bit of catching up to do in terms of who’s who and what the interpersonal dynamics are in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance-.
Since this is a visual novel, there’s no sense in ruining the plot. That’s kind of the whole point, right? Catarina and her friends are on the maiden voyage of a new cruise ship called the Vinculum and Geordo, being the prince, is there to open up diplomatic relations with the neighboring country of Quid as the ship was co-constructed by Quid and Catarina’s home country of Sorcier. Quid has no magic and the Sorcier nobility are something of a novelty onboard as well. Catarina and her stepbrother Keith are there because her parents became unexpectedly ill before the cruise and asked Keith to keep an eye on Catarina while he takes their place diplomatically. He’s also supposed to keep an eye on Catarina’s behavior and that’s a challenge because she’s an absolute shameless glutton and does not observe the standards of high society since she’s really an otome fan from another world.
There’s a lot of story buildup here before things get going but what you’ll start noticing early on is that your choices generate roses of various colors. Those roses flicker in and out on the right side of the screen as you make selections. Each rose indicates affinity for a potential suitor and eventually enables you to start choosing which romance route you’d like to pursue. The game is somewhat biased towards Georgo as he’s both your fiancée already and the prince, but you have autonomy in which way to go. It’s just easier to end up with Geordo than anyone else.
This is no kinetic visual novel and there are plenty of minor story options that lead to different endings. That being said, there’s still a lot of reading and the common route that takes up the first couple of chapters doesn’t leave a huge amount of choice. That’s ok because the dialogue is fun and irreverent and Catarina is silly and fun throughout. But this game is called My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- and one would assume that pirates of some sort will eventually make themselves known in the story. This is also an otome game with romance in the air and you never know quite what opportunities are likely to come your way, so be careful with the skip features built into the UI.
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- has an excellent interface with touch-enabled gameplay that also shows a sparkle onscreen every time you touch the screen in order to indicate where you’ve touched. Most of the time it doesn’t matter but if you’re making decisions this way, you’ll appreciate it. Either way, it’s nice to have touch controls enabled. Not all VNs use this and it’s incredibly handy, especially if you want to minimize your Switch’s footprint. The only downside is that the menu system is not touch enabled, leaving you to need buttons to access the conversation log, saving, loading, and text hide functions. Conversation logs are accessed using by pressing down on the left stick, an oddly unique way of accessing them and more than a little confusing when the d-pad or left face buttons are required for selecting any menu options or decision choices.
Regardless of how you play it, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- is a polished game that very much resembles similar offerings in the Otomate library. Backgrounds are minimal locations that serve as staging grounds for character portraits that are shown with each character and character portraits look like they came straight from the anime itself. During key romance segments, you’re treated to still images of the various characters and Catarina in various outfits and situations from swimsuits for formal wear and more. These are turning points in the story that accentuate each situation and help you to decide which romance you’d like to pursue. It’s unfortunate that these aren’t more frequent though as the regular backgrounds, while well drawn, are somewhat bland and lifeless most of the time and you’ll end up bored by a fair bit of the visuals.
The soundtrack for My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- is somewhat average as well with songs repeating frequently and noticeably during large portions of each chapter. While there are a number of themes, they simply feel too simplistic. Sound effects are also fairly minimal and fade into the story’s background as the character voices take the forefront. My Next Life as a Villainess features full voice acting in Japanese with English dialogue boxes so hopefully your Japanese is sharp! The voice actors are absolutely excellent here but not everyone likes to listen to dialogue in a foreign language and menu options are built in to allow players to turn down or off voices they don’t like or even all voices if that’s your preference. Accessibility is high on the game and that’s always a welcome surprise.
The biggest disappointment from My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- isn’t the art or the sound or the gameplay though. It’s the pacing. Some visual novels start off high (like Anonymous; Code – review here). Others build unique and strange character relationships to pique interest like Gloom and Doom (review here). MY Life as a Villainess does neither, instead opting to open the story with a very short intro that mentions the events of the anime series and only partially sets the stage for the activities of the game. In other words, the pacing is slow and it’s hard to get a feel for what’s going on, especially if you’re walking in as a new player that isn’t previously familiar with the series.
It’s hard to be patient with Catarina as she consistently obsesses over food and tells you how great all of her friends are and how she never thought her life would turn out like this over and over again. There’s a point where you simply want things to get moving again and by the time they do, it almost feels like you’ve had to wait a hair too long. The romance pathways are certainly fun for each character, but it’s like pulling teeth to get there at first and by your second or third playthrough, you’ll be skipping all the early exposition to get to the good stuff. That’s a shame because the dialogue is quite good but the story just doesn’t keep up as well as it could. There’s even extended backstory in the form of Memory Scenarios which give you further insight into the characters by pressing a book icon in the top left corner when it appears during dialogue. As neat as that may be though, it throws the pacing off even further.
Whether you’re the patient sort or not, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- is a solid otome visual novel that gives you enough choice to be fun and has some excellent overall character development. It’s not Collar X Malice Unlimited (review here), but it’s still a solid story that’s going to keep Otomate fans engaged and grinning as they romance their way to the end. With solid controls, easy saving and loading, and crisp static HD imagery as your love blossoms, it’s tough not to have My Next Life as a Villainess grow on you through the game’s 36 hours (each route is about 6 or so hours, longer if you read slow). For $50, that’s some decent bang for your buck and replayability too. If you like ‘My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!’ or you’re just an otome fan who wants some light fun, this is going to be another solid Idea Factory game that’s right up your alley.
This review is based on a digital copy of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- is currently a Switch exclusive.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.