The Men of Yoshiwara: Kikuya Critic Reviews

Overall this is fun, but the gameplay mechanics will ensure it isn’t for everyone. The solo aspect gets a little tiring and some design decisions like you having to bend down to collect loot instead of auto picking up things when walking over annoyed me.

As the first otome game on Switch, Men Of Yoshiwara: Kikuya is both excellent proof of concept and an enjoyable piece of electronic erotica in its own right. With a memorable cast of courtesans, a generous amount of content split over several discrete routes and sub-scenarios, and affection-based unlockables, there’s plenty here to keep you busy and blushing. The backgrounds and music give off a bit of a budget feel, and occasional text encoding issues and some steep (but infrequent) quality drops are blemishes on an otherwise well-written script, but overall, we’d certainly recommend a trip to Kikuya for otome fans.

The menus are confusing, it's not animated or dubbed, not even to emphasize the reactions of the protagonist to the bawdy phrases from their courtesans. However, the quality of the dialogue, the good structuring of the text and the option to be able to choose between characters allows any dirty girl (or boy, of course) to find the material to build their fantasies with.

While its audience will of course be niche, this is a genre that the Switch needs to start seeing more of. Less a game than a Kindle app, the medium is perfectly suited to visual novel titles like this.