I finished Holmes's route in London Detective Mysteria on Vita, earning the "Destined End", which I believe is this game's terminology for the best ending. That surprised me, as I rarely get a character's best ending the first time through their route. Per usual, I made no effort to pick the answers that would increase affection. I know a ton of otome visual novel players use outside resources when they play, like trying to get a consensus on the "recommended route order" and consulting a walkthrough to get the routes and endings they want in whatever order they want. Some others prefer to self-insert and make decisions based on what they themselves would do. Me, I prefer to play blind and let the chips fall where they may. I usually play in a methodical method, simply choosing the first option listed every time I'm presented with a choice. Then, if I get the normal/bad ending with whatever character, I get on the same route, then pick all the options I didn't previously, keep doing that until I've seen the results of every choice, and then try to pick all the affection-boosting answers to get the best ending. Then I start picking the second options listed on the common route to end up on a different character's route and so on. But trying to get on Holmes's route again while not boosting affection to the point of getting the Destined End seems like a pain right now, so I restarted the game and am already picking different answers on the common route. If I go straight into a different character's route, that's fine. I can always tie up loose ends at a later point in time.
I've noticed that, early in the game, there are a lot of points where you choose between Holmes and Watson. I always picked Holmes (the first choice) my first time through, so I guess that explains why I had high affection with him early on. Now I'm going with Watson every time, and I've already racked up a lot with him, so I won't be surprised if I end up on his route. Seems like getting other routes would require switching back and forth on these choices to balance out the gains, keeping either from getting especially high. And I gotta say, I don't like how this game handles choices overall. I think I've played otome visual novels from a decent variety of developers (as opposed to, say, the fans who stick with Otomate almost exclusively), but I believe this is my first from Karin. This game has timed choices, which I think I heard is something Karin tends to do. I prefer to take my time, and it's not like it automatically picks whatever is highlighted when time runs out. Instead, it defaults to a particular choice or sometimes even takes you in a different direction than any of the selectable options. So in that regard, there's an extra, invisible choice sometimes, and there's no way to know without either a guide or letting the timer run out on every option. But what really irks me is that, while the regular text is highlighted when it's already been read (it shows up in red, rather than white), choices don't change color even when they have been picked before. There's no way to know if you've already picked something until after making a choice and seeing what color the subsequent text is. I suppose you could use the navigation options to jump back to the previous choice, but that's a pain itself. So this is where it really helps that I have a systematic approach to picking choices. Even though it's been years since I did the early chapters of the common route, I'm pretty confident that the choices listed first are what I've picked before.
Anyway, getting back to the actual story, I thought it was cute that the end of Holmes's route mirrored Emily's first encounter with Holmes. It's also fun skipping through the early chapters, stopping to read some new text here and there because it's refreshing my memory on what occurred in these early chapters.
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