(For clarification: I have played Amnesia on both PC and PS Vita, but there's no real difference between versions so there's no need to make differing logs.)

Amnesia was my first otome and (somehow) one of my first games in general, and it's remained my favourite of the genre the whole way. I have some nostalgia for the game for sure, but I am predominantly basing this review off a 2021 replay where I wanted to judge the story on its own merits and not just my hazy memories of it. Amnesia absolutely excels at its darker theming (that of trust, broken relationships, hidden desires and dedication), and the characters are a huge part of this - often why Amnesia is regarded as "problematic/sexist" in my opinion. I definitely respect that some won't find any fun from this game due to the subject matter running contrary to most otome, but I personally adore it for this, especially with how it's executed!

I feel aside from this theming with the characters, Amnesia's strongest point is atmosphere, combining paranormal and thriller aspects with a minimal, gothic aesthetic - all fitting into a Tokyo suburb unexpectedly well. The soundtrack is perfect for every scene, and despite the unfortunate circumstances surrounding Amnesia's artist, the colour palettes are still worth discussing as on-point for this tone. Everything comes together for a clean, consistent experience that left me hooked the whole way even on a second playthrough.

As for the characters (the core of Amnesia), I can safely say I've cried at all of them and Ukyo specifically may be one of my favourite characters ever. The mains all have troubles that run deep throughout their routes and lay waste to their relationships, romantic and platonic, and each route explores how - or if - those relationships can be repaired, and I found this theming to be incredibly unique, especially with the paranormal aspect adding another layer to these troubles as well. I even find the certain... controversial love interest really interesting and often misread (even by his fans), I can't think of a route I didn't love - and this comes from someone who used to hate said controversial love interest before my replay! The side characters are also worth a mention as they're just really fun, and I adore both Orion and the heroine too as the main leads.

I also wanna make a shout here real quick for how Amnesia handles the multiple-worlds plot, I think it's awesome (though that's all I can say without spoiling). Pretty much Amnesia probably isn't the best as a gateway otome (even as someone who had it as that) or for people who just prefer more chilled, sweet romance-focused stories, but it is brilliant for what it does and it remains as one of my favourite games in general.

My first VN and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Problematic subject matter aside, I found all the routes different from each other and enjoyed the nearly 40 hours I spent with it.

The art was all really cute as well.

It's a solid game to stream to your friends on Discord and laugh at the ridiculous scenarios that pop up and get a surprisingly well told VN.

I think this game was widely misunderstood.
I can't rate it as a 5-star otome simply because of two routes that weren't as well-written as the remaining.
This game portrayed some disfunctional relationships and tried to teach readers how to speak up for their own needs to improve the relationship, which is something most otome games don't do. Some routes were basically about this. I really loved this about the game. Indeed, Amnesia had other flaws, but darn, in certain aspects it was way ahead of its time and the writing still feels pleasant to these days.

Also, the art direction is superb. I enjoyed the most its soundtrack, though. I've yet to find another otome game with such a superb ost.

If you speak Italian, I wrote more about the game on my blog :) You can read about it here: https://diveintofantasea.wordpress.com/2024/05/18/lamore-attraverso-i-ricordi-perduti-amnesia-memories/

Amnesia was my first proper otome game a few years ago and still remains my favourite. It's such a product of its time yet so timeless. The game makes great use of somewhat common tropes like memory loss and parallel universes to create a distinct sense of unease and mystery that even the more "serious" and mystery heavy titles in the genre haven't been able to replicate for me. At the same time it has plenty of lighthearted moments to balance out those aspects so the game never feels too serious in tone. I love the use of playing cards as a motif for the love interests and the ridiculousness and colour coding of the character designs. The sprites blinking and moving their mouths is also a really nice touch, and even though the mouths obviously don't match the spoken words I think it still looks very well done—especially compared to the few other otome games that were doing animated sprites at the time (looking at you, PS3 Hakuoki). Personally I don't have a problem with the nameless silent protagonist. It's a nice bonus when otome games have good MCs but it's not something I look for or expect. In this case I felt that the abundance of choice prompts and Orion serving as your internal monologue do a pretty good job at making you forget about the heroine being a blank slate (and to be fair, she does have a pretty good excuse for it). I think Amnesia is a must play for everyone who likes or is looking to get into otome games. Half a star off only because Kent's route is a bit anticlimactic compared to the rest of the routes, and because I don't like Ikki as a love interest. My recommended play order is Shin > Ikki / Kent > Toma > Ukyo.

It took me a minute to get into this one but I’m glad I didn’t give up on it! Best boi Kent stole my heart and it was worth it sticking to the end for the whole story to come together with Ukyo’s route. At first I found the story boring and kind of silly, but the more you play the more it makes sense. At least it did for me! Not my most favorite Otome game ever but worth a play through! Also the artwork is lovely, same artist as CxM so that was enough to hook me!
Final thoughts: Toma can go to hell 🖕🏻

I really enjoyed the art style (and aesthetic in general) of this one - it had a very specific, unique sort of vibe right down to the way the date looks in the top left corner. The characters being themed around both colours and card suits is interesting and hits on some tropes I love, and the visuals and art in general were pretty gorgeous; some of the proportions on the hands in certain CGs were questionable (and Kent's sprite makes his left arm look 50 metres long for some reason), but other than that they were great.

In the order that I did the routes:

KENT: I enjoyed this one way more than I thought I would. My general pattern with dating sims is to go for the one that least interests me first to a) get it out of the way, b) balance that out with the interest of seeing the story unfold for the first time, and c) save the best ones for last, but I think Kent might actually be my favourite of the options looking back on the game as a whole. He's endearing and very unintentionally funny in that sort of deadpan, dry way I love in my characters, and he's also very definitely a fellow autistic. This route was pretty sweet and low-drama from what I can recall, with the issues mostly centering around figuring out your communication with Kent, your amnesia, and how you'll approach him moving away at the end of the month.

IKKI: As a counterpoint to Kent's, I thought I'd like his route more than I did. The latter half of it somewhat made up for it, but the first half was pretty uncomfortable and wasn't particularly making me root for the relationship at all. I'm not a huge fan of Ikki's whole superpowered eyes thing he has going on - it might sound strange to say it considering there are other fantastical elements in the game, but it felt a little out-of-step with the tone of the rest of the story. His fan club is also cartoonishly evil and malicious, not just in his own route but in others too.

TOMA: Unfortunately I kind of knew the spoilers around this one before going into it thanks to recognising his name. Part of me wishes I hadn't so I could've experienced it blind, but there were still elements of it that surprised me, so I'm not too bothered by it. I'm pretty open to dark and toxic elements to fictional relationships - in fact, it'll probably pique my interest more than the alternative - but I will admit there were moments in this route that pushed a little too far into discomfort than I was anticipating. I'm not sure I buy his good ending and having him be forgiven so easily, but that's otome protagonists for you, I suppose.

SHIN: This one was genuinely pretty interesting. Each route has a slightly different genre focus - I'd say Kent's is more slice-of-life, Ikki's is romantic drama with some horror elements in the back half, and Toma's turns psychological thriller - and Shin's kicks off a heavier 'murder' mystery/detective angle that I thought was neat. I'm not entirely sure why he's so focused on in marketing and on the cover because there was nothing that made his route feel more 'canon' than the others, especially in comparison to Ukyo, but there were some good twists in here and I love Shin's design. He really was an asshole, though - there were a few things he said to the protagonist that were too far IMO and frankly crossed the line into verbal abuse for me.

UKYO: There's a lot I could say about the harmful and incredibly inaccurate depiction of DID here, but it's a game from 2013, so I'll try not to fixate on it (plus that would devolve into an entire generalised rant about its portrayal in media and I'm trying to keep this review more focused than that). This was a very different take than the other routes, which was to be expected, and I can see why he's a popular favourite, though he didn't quite take that spot for me. The ending ran into the same "forgiven far too easily" issue I had with Toma, but the good ending did actually make me pretty emotional (it was seeing Nhil and Orion in the human world that got me), so it was a pretty good beat to end on. It does leave some questions unanswered, though - to my knowledge, it's never specified whether 'the other Ukyo' is gone or not; there's no reason he would be, but he's never brought up again and it's treated as an uncomplicatedly happy ending with no more relationship issues, so is he no longer around? Is it not an obstacle anymore?

The only other criticism I have of this game is the frequency of the... I guess I have to call them loading screens? They're not there to actually load anything in, because they're instantly skippable, but for some reason the game has these fade-in fade-out screens pop up whenever a location changes or a new day begins, which sometimes results in you getting past a screen, reading 5-10 lines of dialogue, and immediately dealing with another screen, which gets especially irritating once the art on them starts to repeat as well. That's a minor nitpick, though, and once I figured out they responded to the skip function it was much less of an issue.

The minigames are pretty much nothing modes - it's a pretty tedious rock-paper-scissors game (that does admittedly get slightly more engaging once it speeds up, I believe once you've beaten 3 characters) and a clunky but minimally more fun air hockey contest. I'd only really advise doing them if you're going for the 100% like I was.

The soundtrack is also pretty ignorable - had some nice tracks, most notably the softer piano that played during more emotional moments and the more eerie chords that played during some scenes with Ukyo, Rika, or Toma, but it was mostly just inoffensive background tunes.

Favourite Male Character: Kent, but also shoutout to Waka who was hilarious. Almost regretted him not having a route, but I think I like him better as your mysterious manager
Favourite Female Character: Sawa and Mine, though I was pleasantly surprised by friendly Rika on Ukyo's route
First Character I Liked: Toma
Favourite Character Design: Shin
Favourite Moment: Seeing Nhil and Orion at the very end of Ukyo's good ending
Least Favourite Character: The random Ikki fan club girls, I suppose? It feels like cheating to say them, but there are no major characters I particularly disliked