Review: Love Spell: Written in the Stars Is a More Humorous Otome Game

A lot of otome games end up dealing with outlandish situations, but then attempt to play it off as ordinary and approaching things seriously. With Love Spell: Written in the Stars, Great Gretuski Studios knows how silly the premise is. It embraces it by having an outspoken heroine who is a character all on her own, imperfect love interests, and a script that ends up filled with quick quips. Now that the Starlight update that brings it all to a new game engine is here, it makes for something of a definitive edition of an often entertaining story. However, since it can go so over-the-top, that might mean it isn’t for everyone.

Luna’s all alone during the most romantic time of the year, and she’s had one of the worst days of her life. Her childhood best friend and first love, who she didn’t end up with, is back home with his put together life and steady girlfriend. Her college professor keeps picking at her and singling her out, especially in front of the whole class. The new barista at her favorite coffee shop is so gorgeous and alluring, she can’t get any work done there. Also, some rich jerk ran into her, blamed her for ruining his expensive suit, and seems to want her to pay for it. The one highlight was helping an old woman, who gave her an unusual notebook and pen as a gift to thank her.

However, it turns out that notebook was the romantic equivalent of the Death Note. The person whose name is written in it will fall in love with the owner until the next full moon. Luna’s way of recovering from that mess of a day was to get blackout drunk, and she wrote in a name of one of the four men she encountered that day. As a result, players spend the rest of the otome game dealing with the aftermath of that decision.

The base Love Spell: Written in the Stars game includes four love interests. All of them are takes on various familiar character tropes in otome games. So Enix is the childhood friend, except he ended up with Luna’s frenemy instead of her. Florian is the gorgeous teacher, but he’s demanding and sadistic. Jamie is that guy who just looks so familiar and is fawned over, only with multiple secrets. Marcello is the mysterious and suspicious bad boy, except he’s a jerk.

What’s refreshing about Love Spell: Written in the Stars is that many of the characters aren’t perfect. Characters like Florian and Marcello are good examples, and even the protagonist herself falls into this. It means we see their flaws throughout the routes, which lends itself to well to humorous and exaggerated situations. It also can make it easier to appreciate love interests’ finer points, because we have the juxtaposition against them also being arrogant or insensitive. It keeps them all from being exactly what you’d expect, and I found that interesting.

It’s also reassuring to see the additional work that went into the game. I came to Great Gretuski Studios’ title following its Starlight update. This meant I could see the full vision of the game. The character designs are all great and distinct, and the new expression work serves them well. The UI is clear and easy to read, and it is also easy to save before important moments. I especially enjoyed the Extra Stories in the gallery, as it felt a little like the sort of content you’d get in a follow-up fan disc for an Otomate release.

I also was pleasantly surprised to see a whole accessibility menu. In addition to text to speech for self voicing and the ability to adjust the text display and font. Being able to turn off animations is a nice plus as well. The only issue here is a personal one. The Opendyslexic font option was difficult to read due to its design and the color of the text boxes and UI for me.

My only criticism is that sometimes Love Spell: Written in the Stars seems to include references and asides that might leave it feeling a bit dated or exclude some readers. It is absolutely a funny game with a humorous script and silly situations sometimes, but it can go overboard in the pursuit of that. Luna very much features a very outspoken and independent personality, rather than having some nuances left more vague to allow for self-insertion. She’s a fun, outspoken character, but some of her interjections and responses made me cringe a bit despite being the target audience. The use of some memetic references and phrases in dialogue can come up so much that it may be off-putting to some. The fact that there are some wild and off-putting sound effects also lean into that. When unusual text effects and sound effects are happening regularly in routes, it can detract from the experience and make it less novel and entertaining for some readers.

Love Spell: Written in the Stars is an otome game with a sense of humor. It’s often a very lighthearted tale, though some routes can get more serious. In a way, I felt like it could get carried away with trying to be contemporary or funny, with Luna being a bit too exaggerated. But it’s generally a lot of fun, and this Starlight update really makes it a story worth reading if you want a title that plays with character tropes.

Love Spell: Written in the Stars is available for PCs.

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