I have, just yesterday, done every route in Nameless, and I have already done the same with Dandelion a while ago. With that said, I think I can now properly reply to this thread.
Since I want to start on a positive note, I'll talk about Dandelion first: it was a mediocre or okay game, to be honest. Aesthetically, it looks really nice, especially its character art. I also liked the opening and some of its BGM, and the voice acting was not bad to listen to, despite the fact that it would sometimes drown with the volume of the BGM (which I unfortunately had to turn down a notch); I would like to highlight the fact that Heejung, the protagonist, had a voice actress, which was something I really liked. I liked that Heejung had her own internal conflict (which made me understand her actions well), but she was also really emo about it, so much in fact that my brother got amazingly annoyed and didn't play further (I tried to make him play this, but it didn't really work out): I mean, she sometimes says the most amazingly depressingly hilarious things, like, "(...) If I don't, I think I might not remember what the purpose of living is anymore," I just couldn't help but laugh at that. Heejung is also extraordinarily dense, and has to always get a clear explanation of the situation which is pretty annoying. Overall, I didn't hate her, but I didn't like her either: she had both her good moments and bad ones, in my opinion, so I only dislike her (hate is such a strong word).
The guys in Dandelion were meh to me, but if I had to organize them by who I liked the most, it would go something along the lines of this: Jihae>Jieun>Jiyeon>>Jiwoo>>>>>Jisoo (Jisoo was kind of an asshole...). Despite that, my enjoyment of the routes in themselves was pretty different from that order: Jiwoo>>>>Brick Wall>>>>Jihae=Jieun>Jiyeon>>Jisoo. Putting Heejung being dense to the side, Jisoo, Jiwoo and Jiyeon being meany faces and some pretty awkward or simply bad scenes to the side, the routes were okay, and despite the fact that each one followed a similar template, said template was not so bad to see, and I would usually be satisfied with the endings. I found it strange that I ended up liking certain characters instead of others, since I had heard things about them that made me think that wouldn’t be the case: I’ve heard that Jiyeon was an awful character or route, but he wasn’t even that bad; he was actually a bit predictable… I’ve also heard that Jieun was really nice, but he was only okay.
The biggest problem I had with this game was its writing: who proofread the English translation? Because that person did a poor job at it: sure, it’s a Korean game and translation is hard but come on, it’s a commercial game, you’d expect better from that kind of quality! Well, thanks to that, I was able to have a lot of fun screencapping the stupidest typos and showing them to my brother and, in a way, the awful writing might’ve been the one thing that made me bear through the whole game (to give examples of some gems: “he would still talked and behaved the same (…),” “You want to out to eat?”); I think the amazing typos were one of the main reasons I greatly enjoyed Jiwoo’s route. To be honest, I would get eventually bored without typos to screencap throughout the routes I’d go through… Story-wise, the reason behind the main plot, when you find out what it is (if you get to the secret chapter), is full of holes: this was obviously because the writers wanted an excuse for a man-harem while accomplishing the developments they wanted in the secret chapter, but it just didn’t work well and ended awkwardly so the true ending left me disappointed, despite the fact that the game was mediocre to begin with. The stat grinding part was okay, but it also felt really useless: after getting to a certain level, you barely have to try hard in order to meet the requirements, and there wasn’t even a need for said requirements in the first place; weren’t they supposed to go after me instead of me after them?
Now to talk about Nameless: simply put, that game was terrible. I mean, I wouldn’t put it next to the worst otome games I’ve played, but it was really bad. I remember having complained about the soundtrack in the “What are you currently playing” thread, so I’ll at least retract that complaint now (and in that post as well): the soundtrack wasn’t that bad, and its more lighthearted tracks were somewhat fitting. Whatever the case, this game really likes making shout-outs to Dandelion, but one of them is canonically impossible since you later find out that this game is occurring in the middle of Dandelion (lol why was one of Heejung’s drawings hung on Eri’s house). The writing in Nameless is as terrible as it was in Dandelion, with no signs of improvement: unfortunately, since I couldn’t have it in windowed mode, I couldn’t screencap the amazing gems I’d find in the game (like, for example: “Tei’s Diary 1 has discovered”, “(…), you’ll always be by me side.”). I considered changing the language to Japanese but in the end, I stuck to English just so I might have the chance of at least laughing at something.
As for the writing scenario-wise, it’s also really bad, at least for me: a lot of the jokes or funny moments were either stupid or just not funny, so I’d get unbelievably bored most of the time; sometimes, I felt like the game was saying, “Hey, aren’t I so clever?” when it really wasn’t, though it did have a moment or two of such things (“So you were going on a date with an angsty jerk all this time”). The guys were fairly okay in Nameless (except Tei; I don’t like him at all), and to its credit, Red is actually my favorite character out of both games (my favorite route is still Jiwoo's though). Before I talk about how bad the routes were though, I’ll go ahead and order the characters by how much I liked them: Red>>Yuri>Lance=Yeonho>>>???>>>>Tei. Now, just so you can see the difference, I’ll order the routes by how much I liked them: Red>>>>>>>>Very thick titanium wall>>>>>>>Yuri>Yeonho>>>>>>Lance>>>>Sturdy brick wall>>>Tei. Just what happened here…? A lot of the routes were painful to go through, mostly due to dull scenes, predictability, awkward conflicts and equally awkward resolutions to them, strange pacing, bad romance, fangirls, good and/or useful scenes getting constantly interrupted so the game can drag itself further and remain vague with backstories and conflicts and last but definitely not least, the heroine being stupid and/or clueless.
I found that many of the problems I had with the routes usually originated from Eri, the protagonist: personality-wise, she’s okay, but her actions and thoughts were sometimes amazingly stupid, and she would make some scenes very awkward for me; she also had no voice acting, much to my disappointment. Seriously, Eri made me regret having not liked Heejung in some instances of Dandelion: at least Heejung had some good moments despite her flaws, while Eri did not. In the end, I could not like Eri, no matter how much I tried. Despite that, I ended up liking the supporting characters a lot instead: while Heejae from Dandelion (basically the only supporting character in the game) was kind of pitiable, Soi and Shinbi were great friends, Zion was a nice guy, and Mr. Yujin would make the game less dull whenever he was around because his interactions with Eri (since he doesn’t really like anyone beside his skeletons, he does not at all care about her) were enjoyable to watch; this is one of the few things Nameless did better than Dandelion, to be honest.
Speaking of Nameless mostly being inferior to Dandelion, its art is very inconsistent in terms of its quality: while most sprites look decent or even good (except for the Wizard, what have they done to the poor Wizard in Nameless?!), all of the CGS with the exceptions of the common route and most of Lance’s look really bad for the quality they seemed to want to put out. The quality of the CGs amazed me to the point where I didn’t know whether I wanted to see them or not, since they would make the scene more awkward instead of intense. The CG choice in the game is also poor in comparison to Dandelion: while Dandelion would usually have CGs where you’d want them, Nameless would have many instances of useless CGs and scenes where a CG would’ve been appreciated (or not, since the quality was pretty bad). Seriously, Eri had her head on the lap of a certain dude once but you’d rather have a CG of him surrounded with like, 4 fangirls?!
The story or plot of Nameless is terrible: the Wizard is re-utilized as a plot device as if the writers had run out of ideas, and the plan conceived by him to help out the secret character (which was basically the premise of the game) doesn’t make much sense; it also has some holes… The secret endings, much like the secret chapter in Dandelion, were made to tie the loose ends and serve as the true endings, but the secret endings still left me with questions and were also pretty awkward and stupid: at least the secret chapter in Dandelion, while full of holes, was pretty serviceable as character development for the Wizard (to be fair, the secret chapter in Dandelion also had an awkward ending). Sometimes, while playing Nameless, I’d find myself unable to advance the text for a short amount of time until it would finally advance (this wasn’t lag, I’m sure of it), and Eri’s name would become %s in the name box: I guess the one thing the game must recall is Eri’s name… *ba dum tss*. I also came across freaky glitches when pressing enter very fast, glitches that made my game crash (the pictures in the saves were replaced with question marks that, if loaded, would crash my game): needless to say that from the point on, I made sure not to forcefully skip through the game again, no matter the circumstances… unless I’d like to see the principal being covered by a random school uniform arm except his face again (*shivers*).
All in all, the best Cheritz game is definitely Dandelion, which was quite disappointing since I’d expect improvement in their second game. I honestly surprised myself for having done all routes in both games, especially Nameless… I would’ve gone into more detail about a lot of the statements and claims I made, but I don’t want to spoil anything and it would get even longer than it already is, so… I guess I’ll hope for a discussion thread of both games in the future.
