Amnesia: Memories

Weaving a complex tale of deception and love, Amnesia: Memories is an engaging visual novel which will guarantee multiple playthroughs to squeeze all the content that it has to offer. A pleasure to play, the game gives heartfelt emotion as well as frivolity throughout, earning its status as one of the best visual novels that the Vita has to offer.

This visual novel tells a good story, but a big flaw ruins a lot of the experience.

Amnesia: Memories is a must-play otome title even if it shows its age.

If you are enchanted by the prospect of Amnesia: Memories, delve right in and see how it subverts otome expectations.

From a gameplay perspective, Amnesia Memories and Amnesia Later x Crowd have translated well to the new platform, with this being the first time Later x Crowd is available to fans outside Japan. Unfortunately, as a newcomer to the series, an incredible story about a girl's journey to recovering her memories and discovering the truth is grossly overshadowed by the love interest side of the story where she is often subjected to very poor and sometimes disturbing treatment.

I think Amnesia: Memories is just a tad cold, a bit too mean, and left me feeling restless and unresolved. It hits the notes, but it hits them in the wrong key. A classic, certainly, and I’m glad Switch owners have the option to play it. I just don’t know if it’s one I’d pick up if given the choice.

I can see why Amnesia: Memories ended up as a breakout hit for the developer, even if I had to bite my tongue for most of an evening working my way through a route. It contained a lot more of the little quality of life items I took for granted in their later works, and if you're curious about romance games, this is a fine starting point.

There’s not much more I can say about Amnesia without going heavy on the spoilers, and part of the reason it has been re-released on Switch is so people can experience them for the first time. However, what’s important here is that Amnesia: Memories is a well-written visual novel, and in so many ways epitomises the qualities of what you might expect from a “classical” otome game. For that reason alone, genre fans, and anyone interested in learning about it for the first time, owe it to themselves to check this game out.

Overall, despite an interesting mystery concept and the routes' variations, Amnesia: Memories is one of the otome games I liked the least ever since I started playing titles in the genre back in 2012. The absence of quality of life elements, the little development of the characters and the various small issues make the experience a very average visual novel that isn't worth a highlight when compared to so many works with much better quality on the console, like Cupid Parasite, Variable Barricade, Code:Realize, Collar x Malice, etc.

Amnesia: Memories was refreshing and I enjoyed playing it. One of the reasons is that some of the characters are not the generic Otome types you normally see, they really had some depth to them. Even the side characters were well-written and enjoyable. This would be the perfect game to get into Otome games. It is easy to follow and the plots are not difficult to understand. It is a must-play if you love Otome games in my opinion.