Mystic Messenger, V’s Route: Review

Mystic Messenger is a messenger style Otome game made by Cheritz. I’ve played a bit of a couple other Otome games, and Mystic Messenger is refreshingly different.  You feel more immersed in your interaction with the characters.

There’s still visual novelization, some that you interact with and some that you just watch, but a lot of the gameplay is in the chat rooms, messaging, emails, and phone calls. I originally started playing Mystic Messenger about a year ago.  V’s route, which just came out in September, is the first additional character route that has been created.  Warning, spoilers ahead!

For those familiar with Mystic Messenger, V’s Route is probably the most dramatic and heartbreaking.  He does still fall for your character in the Good and Normal endings, but it’s more focused on his, Rika’s, and Ray’s (aka Unknown, aka Saeran) story.  Saeran is a lot less creepy and much more tragic in this storyline, and really, Cheritz still needs to give us a route for him!

I have no problem admitting that I personally hit on Ray a lot, especially in the beginning of the game.  It does become harder and harder to leave him behind and go with V.  It’s so obvious how brainwashed, lonely, and ultimately sad Ray is, even if he doesn’t realize most of it.  This also may be why I got the Normal Ending, rather than the Good Ending that I was hoping for. (It is probably guest number related. Some people believe you may need as many as 15 to get a Good End)!

I wasn’t a fan of V at all in all of the other routes. I felt like he had too many secrets and made too many terribly misguided decisions which resulted in a lot of pain for all of his friends. Plus he never came around much to the chatroom anyway. So, I started the route not really expecting to enjoy it much.  In the end, though, I really did come around. V ended up being just a tragic and in as hard of a situation as other characters like Seven, Jumin, and Yoosung were.  He was still making terribly misguided decisions and trying to handle everything on his own, but since this route takes place in the past – only six months after Rika “left” – your character is also able to help intervene before V has gone too far to come back from all of his poor decisions.

Personally, Seven is my favorite character in the game.  And you get a ton of interaction with him in V’s route. He’s fun to chat with nearly the entire route. Seven is involved in more chats, sends more messages, and answers the phone more often. And yes, Seven still loves you in this route. He always does. Probably the most frustrating and sad part of Seven’s story in V’s route is that he never quite knows for sure that the hacker who is making things difficult for him is his own twin brother.  He suspects, but everything is just out of his grasp. That is the one thing I do have a problem with V about. He has no problem lying to Seven about Saeran.

Perhaps the only downside about V’s route is that I felt it was a little long.  It’s eleven days of game play, and there is visual novelization and a phone call and/or multiple messages after each chatroom.  It is an excellent story, but a little inconvenient if you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to game play.

All in all, I really enjoyed playing V’s route and learning more about him as a character. I hope Cheritz continues to add new storylines and routes for other characters, especially Saeran.  (Seven’s co-worker Vanderwood would be fun too!) I hope to see more quality content from this game in the future. There’s definitely the potential for it to branch out even farther. More information on Mystic Messenger and where to download can be found here.

Author: Jessica Rae

Jessica has a BA in music with an emphasis in voice and spends her day typesetting, editing, writing, and moderating webinars. Jessica primarily reviews anime and comic book series. She also offers insights on various movies, books, games, and other geeky topics.

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