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bi-starprincess · 4 years

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Visual Novel Reviews: Black Closet (Althea’s route)

Althea arguably has some of the most rounded-out special scenes in Black Closet (on her route, that is). She’s already a childhood friend of Elsa’s, and has loads of experience seducing her targets. Perhaps accordingly enough, Althea seems to be the one Elsa is the most obviously attracted to once their relationship starts.

Unsurprisingly, this means that Elsa and Althea’s relationship is the most physical one in the game. The saucier scenes in Black Closet don’t become too detailed, but two major events while pursuing Althea involve ‘messing around’ in the planetarium, and an unclothed adventure at the lake that can vary in intensity by the player’s choice.

In every route, most of the cast will have something to say about the relationship/friendship between Elsa and her chosen Queen. I bring this up for this route in particular, because when Thais finds out you’re dating Althea, she will angrily quit the student council, and you will lose her as a minion. Its possible to get her to come back later, but even with that her loyalty will drastically drop and she’ll only be able to complete tasks every other day or so.

Thais will also let Althea’s fanclub know about her involvement with Elsa, putting another case on your hands as you deal with petty prank after petty prank. You’re lucky its not a difficult case to solve, Althea...

I know I’m talking about Thais an awful lot for Althea’s route, but their dynamic is important for Althea’s backstory. Before being the local heartthrob, Althea was the top bully and Elsa was a part of her gang. When Thais came to school, Althea turned her focus onto scaring away bullies from her little sister, which looked dashing to a school of all girls, and so began Althea’s fanclub. Pretty ironic, considering what things are like on Thais’ end of the situation...

Althea also seems to have the most variety when it comes to endings regarding her relationship with Elsa. As soon as her route starts, pretty much every interaction with her has point values attached to it. I think this is true of every route, just the most obvious with Althea. In the game’s epilogue, Althea will either leave Elsa for someone else, break up but reunite with her years later, or go on a trip with Elsa and stay with her. Of course, there are a lot of details I’m leaving out, because I don’t want to ruin the route for anyone wanting to play it.

There’s an entire walkthrough for this, but basically these guidelines will help you rack up Althea’s points:

1. Althea is used to shy, bashful girls who are completely in awe of her. Elsa needs to challenge her--don’t reject her advances, but don’t be afraid to be aggressive in return.

2. Althea will enjoy talking about she and Elsa’s childhood connection, but not in terms of living in the past. Again, don’t act like you’re part of her fanclub and show that you’re her equal.

3. There are a couple times where bending the rules for Althea will result in more points, and it can be difficult to tell the difference between this and letting her walk all over you. (Hint: Tattoo, Caffeine) but don’t commit blindly, either.

Honestly, Althea is kind of a pain in the butt in every route that isn’t hers. Already being rebellious and carefree, she becomes more flakey if Elsa doesn’t choose her. She’ll also tease Elsa about her relationship with another girl, which can range from funny to annoying. Actually if you don’t romance either Althea or Vonne and neither of them are expelled...well, I’ll go over that in Vonne’s route.

Overall, Althea’s route is definitely one of the most fun in Black Closet. She has obvious chemistry with Elsa, takes her on adventures and tries to be a supportive girlfriend. Towards the end of the game, well...That’s when she starts to revert back to her old ways. I may not like Althea as a person, but I no doubt had fun reading her and Elsa’s story.

Next Up: Thais’ Route

#hanako games #black closet #review #visual novel #althea #black closet althea

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bi-starprincess · 4 years

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Visual Novel Reviews: Black Closet (Introduction/Overview)

Visual novel reviews are something I’ve wanted to get into for a long time now. So, for my first attempt, I’m going to be covering the game Black Closet by Hanako games, a noir mystery visual novel with yuri romance.

I’ve been following Hanako Games for years--they’ve been my first love when it comes to visual novels. Black Closet, I believe, came out around 2014-2015, and as a young queer girl I was very excited to see an exclusively yuri game be released. Black Closet features two art styles--each beautiful in their own way--an intriguing all-female cast, several cases to solve, a choose-your-own personality main character, and much, much more.

Continued under the cut!

You play as Elsa Jackson, a student at an elite boarding all-girl school called St. Claudine’s. Elsa has just acquired the position of Student Council President, and instructor Miss Talmage (who is very obviously The Villain) informs Elsa that it is her job to solve mysteries within the school in order to keep scandals from ruining the good reputation of St. Claudine’s.

Elsa, however, does not have to do the dirty work--that’s the duty of her “Minions”, the other student council members. (Yes, they’re referred to as minions!) Which, to me, was the first signal that this was going to be a delightfully creepy game. Not to mention these tasks consist of interrogating other students, searching their rooms, stalking them, and even expelling them if they are truly a threat.

But that’s not all--according to Miss Talmage, one of Elsa’s minions is a traitor! This traitor will do anything to sabotage St Claudine’s, and Elsa will be the scapegoat if they succeed. Of course, Miss Talmage won’t just tell us who it is--that’s our job to find out.

Who is the traitor, you ask? Here’s where it gets interesting: Upon your first playthrough of the game, the traitor will be randomized. After you beat the game once, you can choose who the traitor is in you following playthroughs. I’ll explain the significance of that as well as how to snuff out your first traitor later in the post, but for now, lets go over exactly who our “minions” are.

There are five total:

1. Althea, a flirty laidback senior who is also a childhood friend of Elsa’s and has a habit of seducing freshman girls one after another.

2. Thais, Althea’s bold and sassy younger sister with a captivating sense of style and a love of artistic expression.

3. Vonne, Elsa’s dutiful and loyal Vice President who refers to her by the nickname “Captain” for reasons unknown (at least in the beginning of the game).

4. Mallory, a bubbly freshman girl who is new to boarding school life. She quickly becomes popular for her friendly personality and is elected to the student council as a ‘Hospitality Officer”.

5. Rowan, a mysterious, quiet, detached girl that takes care not to draw too much attention to herself.

Take note: Thais and Mallory do not have full romance routes. They are freshman, and Elsa is a senior. You can kiss Thais and become cuddle buddies with Mallory, but that’s as close to romance as you’ll get with them.

Of course, you don’t HAVE to romance anyone. You can just start their friendship routes as well, even for the characters that do have romance routes (Althea, Vonne, and Rowan), but you won’t get all the CGs and special scenes without the romance routes.

Now I’ll go over the significance of the traitor, how to snuff them out, and how to start each girl’s route.

Three things play into the selection of a girl’s route: The identity of the traitor, loyalty scores, and who you chose to be your fellow Queen during the Harvest Festival.

I don’t want to spoil too much of the gameplay, its also a bit difficult to explain through text. More or less, the girls each have four stats at varying levels (intimidation, observation, stealth, and social), which will all be useful for different activities in investigating potential scandals.

I’m not going to lie, even on normal difficulty, Black Closet is hard. There is a debug command to change the values of the girls’ stats--which, honestly, I have always used. But I will continue on under the assumption that you want to play the game organically--the debug codes can be found on the Black Closet steam forum boards. (Yes, Black Closet is on Steam!)

Tips to find the traitor:

1. While solving the cases, you also have the option to send a girl to the supply closet--the traitor is the most likely to bring back lemons, the one item that won’t boost your stats.

2. The game will you probability ratings of successfully completing a task--if this score is 100%, and the girl still fails, she is likely the traitor.

3. About a week before the Harvest Festival, there is a dialogue option at a meeting to say that there is a traitor. Elsa will notice that two girls look guilty. One of these is the traitor.

On weekend days, you have the opportunity to visit two girls in order to increase their loyalty, through a variety of scenes. The girls will also occasionally stop by to give you feedback about the council or to ask questions, giving you a better feel for their personalities. The answers you choose will shape Elsa’s own personality--she can range from being a caring President to a black hearted leader.

If you happen to max out the traitor’s loyalty (45 points, I think), she will confess her involvement to you about a week before the Harvest Festival, each girl has a different motive. At that point you have a choice: expose her and get her expelled, or protect her and choose her as your Harvest Festival Queen.

“But what if I want to pick a different girl as my Queen, and also keep all my minions?” You can’t. (Edit: With the exception of Mallory) If you protect the traitor and choose a different girl as your Queen, she’ll still sabotage the Harvest Festival, and the game will end.

This is why the “Choose your Traitor” feature is handy--because if you don’t want to pursue your traitor’s route, you’ll have to expel her, which will leave you down one minion and make the game significantly more difficult, and will not benefit you save for...a certain route, which I will go over in a future post.

There is much, much more of the plot beyond this, and many more layers. But I’ll stop here for the sake of spoiling further, and because this is where the game breaks off into each girl’s route. I will be making separate posts reviewing each girl’s route, which will contain some spoilers.

If you’ve read this far, thank you! I’ll be posting soon to talk about Althea’s route.

#hanako games #black closet #visual novel #visual novel review #review #walkthrough #please like #or reblog #if you read

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