[Otome Game Review] A Troll's Fairy Tale

A Troll's Fairy Tale is a game that was made for NaNoReNo, an event where people try to make games within a month. I'm actually participating this year (2016) so not only did I play it for fun, but also for some inspiration along with a few other non-otome VN's. The version I played was a bit polished up, released three months after the original version. I'm not sure what all's different, but I did notice the CG's had a bit more polish to them compared to the sprites (One noticeable difference being how the artist drew Acacia's hair in the CG's compared to her sprite.) But enough with the small bits, let's talk about the actual game here.

Acacia is a troll that is, if memory serves me, 25 years old (two years older than me?!) and has never found herself a mate after 6 years of going to meet and greets. Her mother keeps pushing her to find a mate, saying she'll never find anyone perfect to her ideals since she is a violent, and as the characters put it, ugly and fat? (I don't think she is personally, but I also like chubby girls so *shrug*) Her mom's husband also left her ass for  some fairy whore, so her moms ALL ABOUT marrying some rich guy instead of marrying for money, since it'll just stab Acacia in the heart anyway but Acacia ain't having none of that shit!! Unknown to her Mother and Sister Alaqua (for the most part) Acacia is a huge Princess and Fairy Tale fangirl! I can guarantee you if this took place in modern day she'd be a huge Disney fangirl with that one Frog Princess movie merchandise all over her room. Though this is more... Medieval?  Fantastic? So  the only Fairytales out there are ones that are.. ancient I guess. So she'd gonna go out there and find her fairy tale love story dammit!

The game divides into the two routes really early on in the game, to my relief. I was getting tired of skip fest games. There are only 3 choices in the game and they put you onto either one of the two main boys routes, or you get a bad ending. I went with Damine the first time but I didn't really know anything about the game going into it so it was more like I stumbled blindly into his route from my choices (I usually do honest playtroughs my first time if I'm going in blind)... I think I made the right choice doing Damines route first though because while he was sweet and gave me a good opening to the game, he only has two CG's while Edavine had, like, SEVEN. I guess that means Edavine is the canon guy LOL.

Damine's route

Damine is the typical playboy type of guy, and also a Unicorn Prince (wheres the horn though?) His route starts out with Damine making fun of Acacia for her temper and all that, often flaunting his large harem and amount of friends whenever he finds her wandering around or at the Meet and Greets. As you play along though, you start finding out he's a bit Dere for Acacia, and often lowkey stalks her and brings his friends along to try and get her attention what a tsundere. In this route you see a lot more about Acacia's thing with making pastries, see, her family runs a bakery and she's good at making some find sweets cause she believes food is the way to a man's stomach. (This is true! I can't cook for shit, date someone that cooks for me or bust!) Anyways, Damien asks her to make her good shit pastries for him to give to a girl and Acacia is a little Tsundere for Damine too so hearing that gets her pissed and she decides to troll Damine (pun intended) by putting spicy stuff in the pastry and watches behind a bush to get her top keks while the girl punches him. Unluckily for her she started Trollololing and Damine notices her.

The next night she's prancing around the woods when she hears all those hoes at the m+g's saying shit about her about how she's ugly and fat. Of course hoes that say that are just jelly and ugly inside, Damien gets the clue and tells them to shut it and leave her alone and they kinda get pissed for a sec but no ones gonna be rude to the prince cause obvs gotta be on good terms with him he's a rich bishie! Acacia gets dere over his actions and actually decides to make him a non spicy troll pastry! Damine then asks her to go to his ball but Acacia does a bitch moment and decides to do another meet and greet to get some boiz even though it's OBVIOUS she likes him.

At the next m+g there's this GIANT PRICK named Aeron that starts an eating contest to impress Acacia. Seriously. Aeron is the biggest asshole in this game. Okay, he's somewhat okay in this route I will admit but writing this I have also done Edavines and he's a GIANT DICKWAD BORN ON THE HOUR OF THE DICKWAD WHEN THE PLANETS OF DICKWAD ALLIGN ON THE YEAR OF DICKWAD IN THE MONTH OF DICKWAD.  Phew anyways, he's doing this to get Acacia to notice him and she is so Damine shows up like "grrr that's me women," so he participates in the eating contest despite it being made with troll food and also rum so needless to say he BTFO Aeron but is EXTREMELYYYY drunk as a result. Acacia winds up getting roped into taking him home and his Mom and sis are like "OH BOY ACACIA'S GONNA GET LAIDDDDD!" And leave her alone for the night with him sleeping in her bed XD

Damine wakes up in the middle of the night and asks why the hell Acacia didn't show up, Acacia didn't answer which got him butthurt and left. Seriously, Acacia? I'm with Damine on this bro.

Next day Aeron's mom and some other trolls come to her place to have a book reading club or something with her mom but they start talking about their family issues which gets her mom pissed and Acacia gets upset too cause his dads a DICK LIEUTENANT. She goes back to the forest like she always does, finds Damine, and asks him to talk with her despite him being with his friends and getting the death glare from some hoes. Damine promises to whisk her away that night and gets Acacia to go with him to a lake and they flirt a little bit until Damine throws her into the lake. ALL I COULD THINK OF DURING THIS WAS THIS. 

Needless to say, Acacia gets sick as a dog the next day and Damine offers to bring over some medicine. Acacia's lets him and then dick general Aeron shows up and apologizes for his moms behavior and then starts saying how it'd be great if they pretended to be a couple to get Damine jealous and confess his feelings! Suuuure thing dude! Another sign he's a dick cause he wants to go out with her while she's sick and assaults her outside on her porch to which Damine sees while carrying a bunch of expensive ass medicine. Like okay dude keep it in your pants! Wait a week for her to get better before you start obviously using this as a chance to slobber all up on her you creeper.

Damine gets pissed but when asked whether he loves Acacia he pulls the friendzone card but then quickly went "lol jk i love you but im a manwhore so I was afraid if I got you I'd treat you like everyone else." at the ball and proposes to her on the spot. Then Acacia's mom comes out all AWWW YEAH MY DAUGHTER GOT A PRINCE TO BE LAID WITH LETS PARTY! Damines route was nice and Fairy Tale'y, I kinda like him more too since the dick general wasn't as huge here as he is in Edavines. Shame he only got two CGs which meant I couldn't really show off them. That second CG was  my favorite of the game too....

Edavine's Route

Edavine is a fairy boy that Acacia overhears while in the fairy forest one night arguing with his dad. This routes got a lot of family problems from both Edavine and Acacia, btw. They actually REALLY meet when Acacia loses her Diary and he's got it on him. He then says oddly specifically about how the book he has is a diary about a Troll that wants a fairy tale romance, which gets Acacia to admit it's hers. He then goes on to say he never actually read the Diary, and the lock wasn't even picked. YO. There's no way you can be that on top of things unless you're a mindreader, so either come clean bout the mindreading or admit you're a liar that used some magic to unlock and lock the Diary!

Edavine and Acacia hit it off really well from the start and Aeron is much more of a douchenozzle in this route. I actually felt sorry for him (for the most part) playing Damines route but this route had me all "Nah fuck you, man."Most of the problems stem from either Acacia's dad leaving for a fairy hoe, which left her mom with a hatred of Fairies, so Acacia has to hide that she's friends with one. And then there's Aeron the fuckboy that lies out of his teeth about the most enraging things, picks fights with Edavine, and just in general is a controlling bastard.  On the bright side, Acacia's been receiving love letters from someone anonymously, and they fill her heart with warmth with each one she reads.

Aeron gets in the way of their labulabu dancing, and afterwards, Acacia opens up to Edavine about her family problems, but her mom comes in, sees a fairy, and slaps the shit outta Acacia. During Edavine's route, Edavine becomes a bum because of his mom and dad letting a fairy homewrecking whore stay with them, and Edavine isn't gonna put up  with any fairy whores. His dad also hates her guts but his wife won't listen sigh. It also turns out the fairy ho is the same one that stole Acacia's dad away! But before anything could happen with that Aeron goes into total dick mode and pressures Acacia to marry her. Her moms so happy that she feels bad about wanting to refuse. Then Aeron comes out and says HES THE ONE THAT WROTE THE LETTERS. But it's such an obvious lie cause he takes one of her letters she hasn't read away yet and she never felt anything for him in person so why letters? Though Acacia trys to believe him and marry him because of said letters. WHAT A DOUCHE.

Aeron continues to be a douche by whining about how Acacia doesn't trust him but he does the SAME DAMN THING with her. lmao. Edavine stops by and Acacia says she's marrying for his letters, Edavine gets pissed about him saying he wrote the letters and proceeds to beat the shit out of him. In the morning she finds abother letter that confirms that AERON IS A FILTHY LIER and Edavine was the one writting them all this time, because he was too nervous to say it himself.

 Then on wedding day Acacia runs in with the letter and asks if Aeron really wrote them, he lies through his teeth again and her sister Alaqua proceeds to beat the hell out of him. Aeron then threatens the family wont live it down but then Edavine brings in a gang of fairys to run him and his "friends(?)" off.  Edavine and Acacia  scurry off to the fairy forest and he proposes to her. DANG THAT BOY MOVES FAST. Acacia's like "wut." and then her mom and sister and a bunch of fairys pop out going all "DO IT GIRL." Needless to say they get married and everyone (including her mom and sister) go flying up in the sky with Edavine joking that he'll drop her.  I dunno, I felt like it was a fine story but Aeron just pissed me off to no end in this route. I'm so relieved he didn't get a route cause yo I don't wanna date a giant asshole, I wanna dump him into an incinerator more like

Final Thoughts

A nice short otome game to play on a day you're bored. I thought Acacia was really cute, with how she wants a fairy tale romance, and I could see myself in that too oddly enough with how I always wanted to be a prince when I was younger and how I'm working my way through my 20's without a  gf/bf pfft.  She also reminds me of one of my cousins to make matters weirder, right up to how my cousin is a huge Disney fan. I guess since I'm closest to my cousin that explains things!

One thing I noticed is some parts of the visuals looked... more like a draft? Earlier mentioned, Acacia's sprite, and I also kept looking at her Mom's sprite the same way. I think Damines sprite was pretty good, but Aeron also had that weird feeling to it. Either way the CG's looked fine. Another thing thats a minor annoyance is the page sound. Sorry, just had to mention it. Just hovering gets the sound and clicking does it too so I was just all "x.x" when I went to load something on the main menu or click through main menus.

I also have read the bonus notes by the creator saying how english is not her first language, and so in a way I can forgive the spelling errors, but she had two editors looking over it which makes me wonder if english isn't their first either cause there are a TON of spelling and grammatical errors. Reminds me of the earlier games translated by Tosiaki7. Though I suppose Tosiaki7's were a lot worse (play Akemi-tan and you'll know what I mean), Ask me for editing or something since I'm spotting so much of them lol. Despite these small problems, A Troll's Fairy Tale is still fun (as long as you imagine killing Aeron every time he talks)