Review: My Next Life as a Villainess Switch Made Me Want to Be a Villainess

I often admire the protagonists of stories where a regular person is reborn as the villain or villainess of a fantasy world. They can always find a way to dodge death flags and avert their gruesome fate in creative ways thanks to their intimate knowledge of the world they are reborn into. Catarina Claes from My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom manages to do this in the most hilarious ways, and as I played through My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom Pirates of the Disturbance Switch game, I realized I wouldn’t mind being reborn as a villainess if I could spend my time eating good food and being unknowingly romanced by a bunch of cute guys on a cruise ship.

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom: Pirates of the Disturbance is a spin-off otome Switch game by Otomate and Idea Factory based on the light novel, manga, and anime by Satoru Yamaguchi. It features Catarina, a young woman born into nobility, who awakens to her memories of being an otome game-playing high school student after hitting her head as a child. As she remembers her unfortunate death in her past life, Catarina realizes she has been reincarnated as the villainess of the fictional otome game “Fortune Lover,” and that means a number of horrible and deadly fates await her.

After avoiding all of the potential death flags and bad endings that were present in the fictional otome game, she survives and makes it to spring break where Catarina and her friends set sail on the maiden voyage of a luxury sea liner, but danger lurks in the horizon. Not too long after they make it out on the open water, Catarina finds herself thrust into another potential death flag as pirates hijack the ship. Catarina realizes that this is eerily familiar to a side adventure based on a fan book for “Fortune Lover,” where pirates attack the luxury liner and hold all of the noble guests hostage. As she begins to recognize the familiar plot line, Catarina must find a way to avoid new death flags while also discovering new truths from the different love interests surrounding her, and also learn more about her own feelings along the way.

Having played through many otome games in the past, it is always refreshing to be thrust into a story with a protagonist that has an active role in her story and has an actual personality. Often times in visual novels, the player character is meant to serve as an avatar for the player themselves, which often means the player character is a bit of a blank slate who feels passive even in their own story. In My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom: Pirates of the Disturbance on the Switch, Catarina absolutely has a defined personality that radiates comedic energy mixed with considerate wisdom due to her foreknowledge about the events of “Fortune Lover.” Every action Catarina takes is done with great consideration for her friends, ensuring everybody else gets the happy ending they deserve, all the while trying to avoid triggering any proverbial landmines that could lead straight to her death or exile. In order to do this, she often makes rather silly choices or avoids any conflict by focusing on her plants or eating lots of food. Without even realizing it, Catarina’s actions endear many of the characters around her into either having a crush on her or wanting to be her friend.

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom: Pirates of the Disturbance has six main romantic routes that players can choose from: Geordo, Alan, Keith, Nicol, Rozy, and Silva. For players who have had experience with the series before, Geordo, Alan, Keith, and Nicol are the four main male leads of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom. All four of them have known Catarina since their childhood, each with their own unique relationships with her. Geordo is the prince of Sorcier and also Catarina’s fiance. He puts on a friendly, yet distant facade, around others but is secretly extremely obsessed with Catarina. Alan is Geordo’s brother who has always felt like he’s lived in his brother’s shadow. Catarina has always stood by his side and encouraged him since they were young, which has help improve his confidence considerably. Keith is Catarina’s adopted brother who has been her steadfast companion for years, often trying to ground Catarina and keep her from getting in trouble with their parents. Nicol is the son of the prime minister of Sorcier who also happens to be extremely devoted to his younger sister Sophia. He keeps on a distant facade around others, but is drawn to Catarina and finds himself opening up to her throughout the years.

The other two, new romance options are Rozy and Silva. Rozy is an engineer from Quid. He works as a crew member of the luxury liner that Catarina is on with her friends, and who also happened to meet Catarina as a child after she shared candy with him. Silva, the other romantic option, is the captain of the Weiss pirates who have taken over the ship. He has a harsh exterior, but is very loyal and caring to those who he is close with.

One hurdle My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom: Pirates of the Disturbance had to overcome is the fact that the other four romantic options already have a considerable amount of backstory with Catarina prior to the game’s events. For anybody who has read the manga and light novel or watched the anime, they already know what sort of experiences these characters have had with Catarina prior to the game, but for anybody fresh to the game, they would have to jump on board a romance that was already half-way developed thanks to the events earlier in the series. Even though Catarina herself was not aware of her own feelings for the male leads around her, at times it could feel like the game was relying too heavily of previous events outside of this game to sell the romances between Catarina and the male leads. The other hurdle the game had to overcome was to make Rozy and Silva appealing choices for fans coming into the game having already likely chosen a favorite male love interest from the show to be biased toward. More character development work had to go into creating a well-written romance between Catarina and the two new male romantic choices.

Even with these hurdles in mind, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom: Pirates of the Disturbance does manage to make all of the romantic choices feel well-developed over the course of the Switch game even without spending much time developing the four existing male leads. With Catarina’s romantic feelings being fairly underdeveloped for all of these characters, it allows the player to watch the organic growth of Catarina’s own feelings as she and the other characters attempt to break free of the pirates’ hold on the luxury liner. Every route also feels fresh because there is very little crossover between each path. They all have their own unique storylines that reveals different information about the events of Pirates of the Disturbance.

My favorite of all of the routes ended up being Silva’s route, due to the fact he is the only character of the bunch who didn’t already know Catarina, which allowed the most room for some interesting character development between them. Meanwhile, the only storyline I was least interested in was Keith’s, because I wasn’t interested in seeing Catarina fall in love with her adopted brother. Early on in the game he displays a very responsible brother role for Catarina to keep her in line, and I preferred that side of their relationship.

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom: Pirates of the Disturbance also has a friendship route where Catarina does not develop any romantic relationship with the six male leads. This was actually the route I unlocked first as I played. I considered how Catarina would approach the story herself as a character trying to avoid any death flags. She would have misinterpreted any romantic flag as a death flag, and thusly avoided any of her six potential suitors. As I progressed through the friendship route, though, I couldn’t help but wonder why the game only allowed the female friends of Catarina to only be friends as it is abundantly clear they also have crushes on Catarina and would do anything for her, similar to the crushes that the male leads have on her. While I understand that the game chose the six male leads specifically because it falls in line with traditional otome games, I think there were some interesting storylines left unexplored due to not allowing the female friends to also be romantic interests.

As I played through the game, I never experienced any issues on my Nintendo Switch. The visuals were crisp and clean without any blurry assets. Transitions between scenes and chapters never felt sluggish, and any save file for My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom: Pirates of the Disturbance would boot almost instantly from the main menu.

The high quality art direction in this game matches up well to the art design of the anime, making it easy for anime fans to transition between the show and the game without feeling like there is a major contrast between the art styles. My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom: Pirates of the Disturbance also feels like it has a good budget, which allowed for well-drawn characters, backgrounds, and CGs.

Despite the fact that the game expects players to have watched the anime or read through the light novels and manga, this Switch game stands on its own well enough without having prior knowledge about the My Next Life as a Villainess series. As I mentioned earlier, the game does assume that the player has watched the anime or read the manga or light novels, but the game is good about establishing who each character is and what their relationship is to Catarina. Anybody who loves playing otome games should have no problem diving into the world of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! with this game, and it can be an interesting gateway into the rest of the series given that the game is treated as self-contained story. Fans of the series will absolutely find this game delightful for the new storylines of their favorite characters and get the chance to see Catarina accidentally stumble into more hilarious situations thinking they are death flags when they are actually romance flags.

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom: Pirates of the Disturbance releases on the Nintendo Switch on November 28, 2023.