Otome Game Review: Koi no Hana Saku Hyakkaen

Koihana Sora starts a new job at a flower garden after meeting up with a human spirit trapped in a cat’s body. He gives her the powers to hear the words of flowers, asking her to revive the dying garden by giving all the flowers some positive vibes. Sora now tries her best to do her job as a gardener along with her ikeman coworkers and visitors.

Aoyagi Sakura – Aoyagi always acts like Mr. lonesome and says he brings bad luck to others so to him it’s better for him to be alone with his plants. He has a special flower he likes called Forget me Not which is associated with the fact he had met Sora when they were children at this garden. His family is one of those ikebana traditional families and his brother does most of the work but his family wanted him to return to the main house to help out. Aoyagi kept refusing but finally convinced his bro when it was obvious that he had feelings for Sora so the bro was like alright you got me there! xD And so Sora’s flower turns into a Forget-me-not which also apparently means “eternal love” and they end up confessing their feelings to each other on his birthday – and also the day that they had met 12 years prior. In the extremely long epilogue they basically iron the wrinkles in their relationship and plan to move in together. Honestly it felt way too long and draggy for me.

Fujimura Kanae – Kanae is the garden owner but he mostly just wants to eat his red bean snacks and sleep. He and Aoyagi often get into arguments with each other but still manage to get along. Apparently Kanae is a distant relative of Nekota because of Nekota’s brother who had kids. Apparently he was always good in school and was really smart without putting much effort into it…so when he got a well paying job and messed up he realized for the first time things don’t just get handed to him. He felt so shitty and out of place not knowing how to handle it so he ran away and became a gardener. So then some drama happens with his old company but it’s resolved and suddenly he’s like making out with Sora and then she gets all depressed?? Like I have no idea when he fell in love with her, and her feelings for him felt so watered down. I don’t know it just all felt so random and underwhelming, it was almost fun having Kanae be a side character in other routes instead.

So then Sora starts wangsting how she has to confess to Kanae (even though he already likes her ??) And even after they become a couple it drags into the boring long epilogue where it feels like Kanae suddenly turned into some immature 13 year old going on her first date…which is like extra awkward when she’s dating a much older guy bleh. I feel like with a lot of Takuyo’s games whenever they bring in the “older” guy (or the sensei) the heroine turns into some kind of blob. I wouldn’t mind as much if Kanae was interesting but other than “im the ossan who likes monaka and drinking and sleeping” he had nothing interesting about him. Not even a prominent seiyuu to distract me! 😂 Oh the other thing is, apparently he had met Sora when she was a child and he was a salary man and somehow fell in love with her then?? Which is pretty gross lmao.

Miyazawa Shion – Shion is the same age as Sora since we’re now done with the 2 “older” guys. He’s one of the other gardeners there and is very quiet but diligent in his duties. He’s also good at sports and plays with some kids who come to visit. He’s been working at the garden for about 3 years and knows of Nekota as a “cat” only. Shion gets a crush on her first and ends up basically blushing the entire time as her dense ass sits there not realizing it and friendzones him lol. When Nekota asks her if she has feelings for Shion she continues with her “he’s my friend” bullshit which is completely inconsistent with how she was in the other 2 routes. So while she’s trying to figure this out, Bungou decides to try to move things along and instead Shion falls off a tree and injures his arm. After this Sora takes care of him and even spoon feeds him his lunch, poor guy lol. Then they help some crying tree spirit and Shion is able to hear the voices too.  So then after Sora finally realizes she finally has a crush on Shion – she thinks that he only likes her as a F R I E N D. (　´_ゝ`)

The flower in the garden turns into a sunflower – the one that represents Shion. After Sora confesses to Shion she’s all like I’m so sorry for liking you and he’s like wtf I’ve liked you the whole time. ಠ_ಠ And also like with the other guys, he had met Sora earlier but fortunately only like a few years earlier not when she was a child. This route had a great example of why this game is so frustratingly boring. When they drink at Sora’s house together it’s supposed to be like some romantic night together right? Instead Sora gets drunk, but instead of it being some silly/funny scenario, Shion just gets angry and irritated and she starts crying like a drunk idiot the whole time. So then when he kisses her to shove water down her gullet so she’ll stop being a rambling drunk, some car honks outside, and hes liek FUCK WHAT AM I DOING AAA and runs away and ignores her for several days. COOL so romantic. 😂😒 But then thanks to Nekota and Bungo shipping them (by literally shoving them between tree branches) he’s like “damn gurl I really just wanna bang you I’m sorry” and she’s like “oh no its okay I wuv you uwu” and then they actually bang and I’m just….HOW DID WE ARRIVE AT THIS CONCLUSION SO FAST LOL. ~Fin~

Iogi Kazuma – Kazuma is the template younger guy who has a huge crush on Sora despite somehow being really popular cameraman at his high school. She had graduated from the same high school as him and sometimes saw his photos. He often comes to their garden to take photos of the flowers there. They go to the summer tanabata festival together but nothing happens because Sora only sees him as a little brother and sadly it’s all a one sided crush for him. Even though he kinda gives her hints that he likes her and only has eyes for her she’s just like “derp?” like she was in Shion’s route. She comes with him to their school’s festival and there he tells her that it’s because she was a fan of his photos it gave him confidence to continue photography. So basically he’s pretty much had a crush on her ever since because every guy in this game somehow walks by her ~x years ago~ and instantly falls in love regardless of whether or not she even remembered them. 😩

Because he spends the entire time basically stalk-watching her, he notices that she’s been talking to a cat and to a tree and figures she must have some kind of special power. So uh a little bit later Sora apparently falls for him as well and confesses to him first which he obviously accepts since he’s liked her the whole time. After this the koihana flower turns into a red tulip to represent Kazuma. In the epilogue 2 years go by and Kazuma graduates from high school. So then for no fucking reason Sora’s like “I gotta break up with him because I’m just in the way of his happiness!!” ಠ_ಠ And it’s all cause she saw him with some girl from college and because she feels like it’s her fault that he’s not hanging out with girls cause she will get jealous lol. And so she tells Kazuma they should keep their distance for a while and hang out with other people to see if they still ~love each other~ after that. So then like some time passes and Kazuma says actually nothing changed, and that he still loves her and still gets jealous seeing her talk to other guys. KAY. And they make up and he comes to her house and they only make out because I guess only Shion gets the sexy times ending lol.

 

I am so utterly disappointed I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve played so many Takuyo games that I’ve enjoyed but this one just felt so half assed. Like come no you guys had like 3 years to work on this game what the hell??  Let’s start with the fact that all the backgrounds and BGMs are literally ripped out of Kaeru Batake de Tsukamaete.

And if they had intended it to take place in the Kaeru Batake world, they should have done character cameos from the other characters!!!!!! But no this was just some half assed BS lol. Secondly the system is horrendous. I couldn’t get a lot of the “many options” they had put in to work. The options menu was really weird and confusing, they had a skip to next choice option but I couldn’t get that to work. Despite setting it to be “skip read dialogue” it would skip unread dialogue, just a huge mess blah. While it was nice that the heroine was voiced, she was so watered down and immature, despite being 19 she felt like a 12 year old child sometimes. The entire game just felt so immature because of that. Like cool she has this cool power to talk to trees and stuff, but other than talking to Bungo and Nekota, and that one angry whining tree in Shion’s route, there was nothing else really special about her powers.  The other thing was Shuuji – man he seemed pretty damn interesting, but alas, he has no route because he only has ~love for plants~ OKAY THEN. Also apparently Nekota had a “route” in the short story at the end but I couldn’t be assed to read it because no voices, no auto mode, no sprites just text on a dimmed screen. Bye.

The other thing that bothered me was the way the story went in a sense where Sora would finally confess/become a couple with the guy – then you get this lengthy epilogue where they would get into a fight for no fucking reason, and then resolve it, and bam THE END. That kind of shit needs to be in the MAIN route not the epilogue what the hell?? Also what is even up with every guy having met Sora ~in the past~ and somehow this suddenly influenced their whole life….meanwhile Sora is like “who are you again?”😒 The seiyuus were all complete noobs but that didn’t even bother me, the story and writing being crap pretty much ruined everything. Anyway overall a huge disappointment. Will this impact me buying HimeHibi? Probably not. Seeing that there’s a love interest with a paper bag over his head gives me hope Takuyo will bring back their sillyness/humor in all their other games. If you like the feel/mood of this game though, I’d recommend just playing Kaeru Batake and its FD instead.