Vehura Reviews – Starstruck Love by Arithmetic

Picture: Just keep telling yourself, it’s not incest if there’s no blood relation.

(This game has been discontinued and can not be played at the moment.)

Your parents suddenly die, leaving you with debts to pay. Now alone without a single relative, you are offered help by your childhood friend’s father. Your new father is the gifted CEO of a major entertainment company. Your pop star debut comes with a spacious room in a huge mansion, and your own private butler. You begin the coveted and comfortable life of a celebrity. What’s more, a hugely popular pop star group has become your siblings! You must keep secret the dangerous fact that you are siblings… and possibly more than that!?

Starstruck Love is a free to play otome game by Arithmetic.

Oh…. Starstruck Love. Nothing is as it seems in Starstruck Love. Everyone is a little off or, in some cases, A LOT off. I found myself going: “Jesus, are these seriously my choices?” several times while playing this game.

The story itself might be too much for some people. One of the guys has no qualms about straight up going for you even if you aren’t in his route. Another guy just ignores you and then, when he does pay attention to you… Well… I don’t want to spoil it. One you are warned by the butler to stay away from him. (Hmmm…..) And the last, is not your brother? He’s just some random pop star what works for your new father’s company. And he seems nice and normal until…? Also, there is a crazy girl who is in love with one of your brother’s even though he could care less about her. She’s cray. Back away slowly.

The User Interface is pretty straight forward. There is music playing, which I don’t care for at all, that can be turned off by scrolling almost all the way to the bottom and selecting ‘Sound Settings.’

The game is a pretty easy play through. Like most games of this genre/from this company, you are given five tickets daily for free to play through the story where every few scenarios you will be asked to make a reaction choice through 3 selections with affection ratings of one, three, and five. The one thing that is different here is two characters share a route for the first 70% of the game and then branch off. So, you might have to make choices that will get you in good with love interest and get you no points for the other.

Now it’s time for me to break down my opinions about Starstruck Love Pro/Con.

Pros:

1. Free love gacha is nothing but affection boosts with clothes. Why is this pro? Because free clothes AND affection! After finishing one route with so much affection, I could stop worrying if I was making the +5 decisions about 2 chapters early. When I started another, I was already up a lot of affection points, which is pretty awesome. You get love gacha via logging in 7 days consecutively and dressing up your friends.
2. Scenario Re-reads. At any point, if you want to go back and re-read a scenario, there is a place on the menu to do that.
   
3. Double your… pleasure? No, that’s not the right term at all when it comes to this game. There are two routes in the game that then split off at a point into a solo route. Which is a bit interesting to see how one character expects you to act while the other might think the complete opposite.

Cons:

1. No CG gallery. You’re just gonna have to screenshot it. 🙁
2. Picking your route blind. In some games, you get to meet your potential love interests; not here (or with most OKKO/Arithmetic games). Read the little blurb on their graphic and just hope for the best. Nobody is as they seem and sometimes the character doesn’t show his cards until late in the game.
3. There is a good chance you aren’t gonna have a good time. You think that’s a joke… Cute. You might need to be a bit of a masochist in order to play this game because you are gonna be held down, bit (literally), and the character that you might feel is the safe choice is more than likely not.
4. There are two in-game mechanics and I still don’t understand 100% how one of them works. Chic, as long as you max it out and keep you affection points at a certain level, gets you an ending that I haven’t played yet as of this review. Also, depending on who you choose, you’ll get an alert telling you to raise black or white fate for a character. I have no idea what this means or how to do it and the FAQ tells you nothing about it.

Tip(s):

• Friend as many people as possible (50 max). Yes, it is a bit of a chore to spend a few minutes every day saying hi to all your friends, but you get love points for the free capsule that can give you clothes to up your affection rating. It can come in handy if you are trying to play without a walkthrough.
• Login in everyday. Just open the app, tap past the login in screen and then, if you don’t plan on playing, exit. You get 500 free love points every 7 days of logging in to use in the love capsule machine.
• Pick a character and stick with him. You’ll have to make choices that will affect one or the other in the main route, so make your decision about who you are going for… probably before you start the route.

TL;DR This game doesn’t have a lot going on it, so it’s a pretty basic/casual otome game. The story itself might be too much for some people.