Seduce Me 2: The Demon War is the sequel to the popular free-to-play otome game, Seduce Me the Otome. It follows the story of Mika Anderson as she is suddenly thrown into the Abyssal Plains right before she is about to be married to one of the five Incubi Brothers featured in the first game. What's even worse is that she is thrown there in the middle of a Rebellion against the Evil Demon Lord and must not only assist Diana and the Rebel Leaders in the war, but must watch as the man she loves fights alongside them after he comes to rescue her.
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the sequel of my favorite visual novel ever
(Full disclosure, I was a Kickstarter backer for this game because it looked like an improvement on the first and I wanted access to it when it released. However, I never got around to playing it until now.)
After revisiting the first game, I'd tempered my expectations going into this one. As it turned out, that wasn't fair of me since this game is a massive improvement on its predecessor. The odd art style choices and unfocused storytelling from the first game isn't present here - what you get is a great collection of epilogues focused around the titular demon war. The art style update works extremely well now that there's finally style cohesion between the sprite assets and the CGs, and the voice acting continues to be fantastic. The writing in the routes that I played addressed a lot of the storytelling issues I had in the first game, filling in the blanks while still providing some great dramatic buildup. There's even a polyamorous route, and off the top of my head I can't think of any other game in this style that offers that.
As a result, my complaints this time are much smaller. There's still some random unpolished elements, like the occasional typo slipping through or the parts generically written so that they can be reused regardless of route ("my incubus"). I'm also not quite a fan of having a narrator character immediately pop up to tell the player a list of things that they need to know before starting the game. Clarifying which route was chosen made the most sense, since it's not clear in the main menu, but it made for a strange first impression and I wonder if the disclaimer part could've been handled differently.
I also have mixed feelings on The Wives. They were Kickstarter backer rewards for a big chunk of money, and on paper it sounds like a great idea - let someone have their OC or self-insert be canonically married to the character of their choice when the player isn't on their route. That's fun! I love that the player character isn't the boys' only chance at love, and it's a concept I'd like to see in more dating sims. However, in practice the inclusion of The Wives feels awkward. Outside of their introduction, they don't participate in the main story, and also bring up a lot of questions. Why would their husbands bring them to an active war zone? If all the brothers have significant others, then why is the main character the only one to be kidnapped and cursed? The player character says that they're all friendly, but we barely see them interact. Without knowing the context of the backer rewards, I imagine The Wives confusing players. It was pretty clear that there wasn't a lot of thought about how they would interact with the story, and as a result they're just kind of...around. There was an opportunity here to have all of the couples use The Power of Love to defeat the Demon Lord, not just the player character and her partner, and I'm a little disappointed the game didn't take it.
All of that said, I still think this is a far better game than its predecessor, and I enjoyed my time with it far more than the first. The good endings bring a satisfying close to the series, and I'm happy that I saw this series through to the end after all.
After revisiting the first game, I'd tempered my expectations going into this one. As it turned out, that wasn't fair of me since this game is a massive improvement on its predecessor. The odd art style choices and unfocused storytelling from the first game isn't present here - what you get is a great collection of epilogues focused around the titular demon war. The art style update works extremely well now that there's finally style cohesion between the sprite assets and the CGs, and the voice acting continues to be fantastic. The writing in the routes that I played addressed a lot of the storytelling issues I had in the first game, filling in the blanks while still providing some great dramatic buildup. There's even a polyamorous route, and off the top of my head I can't think of any other game in this style that offers that.
As a result, my complaints this time are much smaller. There's still some random unpolished elements, like the occasional typo slipping through or the parts generically written so that they can be reused regardless of route ("my incubus"). I'm also not quite a fan of having a narrator character immediately pop up to tell the player a list of things that they need to know before starting the game. Clarifying which route was chosen made the most sense, since it's not clear in the main menu, but it made for a strange first impression and I wonder if the disclaimer part could've been handled differently.
I also have mixed feelings on The Wives. They were Kickstarter backer rewards for a big chunk of money, and on paper it sounds like a great idea - let someone have their OC or self-insert be canonically married to the character of their choice when the player isn't on their route. That's fun! I love that the player character isn't the boys' only chance at love, and it's a concept I'd like to see in more dating sims. However, in practice the inclusion of The Wives feels awkward. Outside of their introduction, they don't participate in the main story, and also bring up a lot of questions. Why would their husbands bring them to an active war zone? If all the brothers have significant others, then why is the main character the only one to be kidnapped and cursed? The player character says that they're all friendly, but we barely see them interact. Without knowing the context of the backer rewards, I imagine The Wives confusing players. It was pretty clear that there wasn't a lot of thought about how they would interact with the story, and as a result they're just kind of...around. There was an opportunity here to have all of the couples use The Power of Love to defeat the Demon Lord, not just the player character and her partner, and I'm a little disappointed the game didn't take it.
All of that said, I still think this is a far better game than its predecessor, and I enjoyed my time with it far more than the first. The good endings bring a satisfying close to the series, and I'm happy that I saw this series through to the end after all.