Nicole

Nicole is one of those games that I have a hard time understanding exactly why I like it as much as I do. With tedious gameplay that is neither engaging or interesting and a predictable storyline riddled with clichés and unbelievable situations, you'd think I'd have played an hour or two and tossed it in the "File and Forget" bin of my library. On the contrary, I found myself plugging 15+ hours into the game, playing through all four character routes, and falling in love with each of the guys along the way (well, 3/4 of them anyway). Perhaps this review is my way of figuring out just what makes Nicole so appealing to me despite so many flaws. Our story begins with the title character arriving for her freshman year at college. She's a plucky, perky 18 year old girl who has spent most of those 18 years loving fashion, getting straight A's, and finding herself amongst the popular group of girls in high school. Oh, and she's never had a boyfriend or been kissed before. Not exactly the mo...

Eventhough the game has it's charms, the game mechanics and timing ruin it. I, like many others who have played this game, have followed the games directions of: 1.Romance the person to 100% 2. Get the character trait that corresponds with that romance up to 999 3.Get your clue bar to 999. However, even if you do all three, if you don't do them in a specific order at certain times you will not get the good endings. It is infuriating to put in so much work and get none of the rewards. If the developers would fix this I would reccommend playing it, but since it is a common problem with all of their games I will go ahead and say save your money and buy a well constructed dating sim.

This is a fun and breezy otome game. In it, you play as Nicole, a college freshman, who is investigating the abductions of three girls at her university. The goal is to collect clues throughout the semester in order to solve the mystery by winter break. Since this is an otome game, you also need to build up your relationship with one of four guy characters. Without giving too much away, the romanceable characters are essentially: -Kurt - a flirty jock on the football team -Ted - an obsessive workaholic -Darren - a painfully shy classmate -Jeff - an intelligent upper classman My only complaint is that even if you collect enough clues by the end of the semester, the bad end seems to trigger if you don't have a relationship with one of the guys. I would have liked to have seen an alternate ending where, if you gather enough clues, Nicole effectively handles the mystery by herself without needing to also be in a relationship. All in all, this was a fun otome game that I would recomm...

The story is incredibly shallow and so are the characters. Predictable stereotypes. There is no 'mystery', anyone can figure it out immediately after you meet all the characters. Solving the mysteries involves leveling up a 'clue' stat that unlocks cutscenes, and doesn't have any interactions related to solving the mystery yourself. The game is easy because it's predictable, but if you're not immediately sure who to date, it's punishing. All-rounding stats is simply not possible because of the sheer amount of points you need in a single stat. Overall, VERY disappointing. When I bought the game, the reviews were positive. It's at least a relief to see it sliding to Mixed, already.

This VN was so bad, oh god. Not only you have to raise status (clues + status related to the character you wanna romance up to 999), but the story was bad and the characters were also bad. Like other Winter Wolves games, this one fails because it gives more importance to status raising than story and character development. Having a nice art style, BGs and decent BGM is for naught if the characters are empty shells and if the gameplay is annoying instead of being fun. This game was really boring in my opinion, and I don’t recommend this even for free. Also, after you raise the clues + status related to the character you wanna date up to 999, there’s NOTHING else to do on the VN. You simply gotta wait for the limit date to watch the ending. Argh. 1/10.

This game is literal trash. Don't spend $20 on a slow paced, badly written game. The "mystery" is easily figured out within 20 minutes of gameplay but for some reason I spent 6 hours STRAIGHT playing this crap. I has playability sure .. But I hated every second of it. Main character is an unlovable whore and the characters you're supposed to romance are all autistic spastics. In particular Jeff. This motherfucker The game tells you "Don't worry about clues just get you other stats up" I had 966 clues on december 20th. I got the shittiest ending. I could have spent that $20 on a pack of cigs and it would be more enjoyable than this game was. Slowly killing myself with tobacco is more enjoyable than this game.

Its a good game however know it's too expensive not enough choices to make relationships are short and shallow the plot is there but the execution is not good art though

I am always very hesitant to voice my opinions online like this, but I wanted to find someway to express how I was feeling about this game. I will admit, I did not make it very far into Nicole but I don't intend on playing more of it. The daily tasks options isn't what bothered me, although I would have preferred a more involved game play in that sense. The issue I have with Nicole lies with the fact that I had a really hard time taking the characters seriously- specifically Nicole and Ted. This mainly stems from the really stilted dialogue. Most of the interactions I read through were awkward and painful, and even just Nicole's internal dialogue was a bit too much for me. I understand wanting to have a relatable protagonist but in a visual novel where so much of the story is told via these interactions it was difficult to read and enjoy. Also, I would like to add that the first interaction with Ted was so cringey to read through I actually had to stop playing before coming back. Him ...

Do. Not. Buy. This. Game. I paid 20 dollars for this game expecting a fun dating sim where you controlled a girl who could date one of 4 guys, solve a mystery, and even possibly end up dating the wrong guy and be in for an interesting plot twist. I got none of that. Every cent I spent on this game was money wasted. Not a cent of fun was found. What I got was annoying task-managing, boring as heck characters with choices, and even the kidnapper is obvious. There's no mystery to it, he's only the kidnapper to add shock value and intrigue to his character. The endings are all pretty much drivel. You even at one point end up having a romantic route with the kidnapper, who by early on you should have ditched, making it a romance in the league of that of Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey, to say creepy and shallow. The other characters are bland, and even the "bad" endings aren't even bad, just disappointing. You're wondering what horrible things might happen to Nicole if she dates the kidnap...

If you're into otome/dating games, like a bit of fluff, and don't want to think too hard, this is the game for you. It's not a perfect game, but it's fun and charming if you're willing to enjoy it without over analyzing it. The mechanics can be a little challenging at first, only because it doesn't clearly explain that in order to get the best 'true' endings, you have to really balance the order in which you max your stats by a certain time frame, and not before, or the game won't give you the 'true' ending, much to my chagrin. There's a lot of walk-throughs and guides out there for the game, but most of them fail to mention that first you work your guy's correlating stat, but not to maximum, then spam the clues stat to full, then complete your guy's stat, all before November. It's pretty simple to do on 'easy' and seriously, there's no negatives to changing the setting to easy, seriously, it'll save you a lot of headaches if you do, in case the random stat generator isn't kind to you...