Recent reviews by MarshmallowyGoodness

(Friendly reminder to add the adult 18+ patch after downloading the game.)
If you're a grown adult otome fan that wants more elicit content mixed in with relationship development look no further! I was afraid the plot would be forgone in favor of the smut but I was pleasantly surprised that the story was fluid, consistent and hilarious. There were some moments, especially in the beginning, where the stupidity came off a little more cringey than humorous but once they set the premise of the plot everything just naturally flowed better. The voice actors did an amazing job (though I have a pet peeve against lip smacking so there were quite a few lines in Miki's route that I just had to skip past and go read the back log, fair warning to others with similar pet peeves.) All in all this game was really fun and worth the buy. Not to check out the creator's next title Fxxx Me Royally!! Horny Magical Princess(Which is also here on steam), haha.

TL;DR - Not a visual novel. Expect over half of your time;
>"Femininity", "Beauty", and "Artistic Skill" stat building,
> raising affinity gauges for Love Interests, and
> managing your stress/pressure bars.
- BE SURE TO START FRESH AND SELECT "NEW GAME" EACH AMD EVERY TIME, OTHERWISE THE STAMPS YOU COLLECT TO UNLOCK THE SPECIAL IMAGES WON'T SAVE. (It's a glitch in the game, I lost hours of game play and had to replay it because I made this mistake and it burned.)

If you're more into visual novel otome games where all you do is select a dialogue choices, this might not be the game for you. For an entire year each day you need to select certain activities to raise your Femininity, Beauty, and Artistic Skill levels to the acceptable amounts the spouse you're chasing requires.
On top of raising those levels, you need to actively court the character you're interested in and raise their individual affinity gauge (be sure to follow the requirements of your desired love interest, for example Jisoo and Jiwoo are extremely jealous individuals so if you have even one heart with another character you'll get a bad end. Or Jihae and Jiuen love interest, you need to get one heart of the opposing character to successfully access their individual happy endings.)

It's a lot of click, click, clicking. And you have to be sure to utilize the quick save and quick load options if you want the smoothest play through possible. (Save before each interaction and reload when you don't get the yellow heart, reload and try again. Blue hearts don't give you any affinity points.)
On top of all of that you have to also make sure you manage your Stress and Pressure levels or you'll get a bad end that way too.

It's not a difficult game to play, but it can be tedious doing all the clicking and work between the cut scenes.
I wasn't expecting this game to be what it was, but it didn't deter me from playing it.

I wrote a pretty detailed review on Kyoto Winds so I'll put a TL;DR version here.
Wonderful game, wonderful music, wonderful art despite being a little inconsistent, incredible story that goes to great lengths to fill in context for all routes to come together. My biggest complaint is the localization or more directly the translation felt like the skimped out on us. I'm sure it's not easy translating word for word, and trying to 100% portray exactly how the script writers intended it to be considering there's a language barrier and certain idioms can lack context in differing languages. However, when cutting corners negatively portrays a personality of a love interest, (Examples being Kazama and Okita) , it grates on me a little bit.

For some reason they decided to translate words like ばんけん (banken in romanji) which directly translates to "Watchdog", as "Little ♥♥♥♥♥" instead. While I understand Kazama may have used the term watchdog in a derogatory manner towards those of the Shinsengumi because he saw them all as guard dogs protecting Chizuru who he declares was his future bride, not fully translating what certain words mean in lieu of simple crude insults felt lazy to me and hurt the true meaning behind a lot of what they say. They did the same with Okita as well, and some lines by Harada too.
I'd like to elaborate that it's not the cursing specifically that I have a problem with, if that's how someone's personality is then by all means I'll soak it up. My issue is with translations dropping the ball with elaborating on what's genuinely trying to be sad. If that makes sense.

Most of the translation is spot on, but there were a lot of scenes that just fell short for me because of improper translating.
So much for tl;dr, huh? haha.

The long and short of my opinion is yes, and no. I played Hakuoki: Memories of the Shinsengumi on the 3DS years ago and was so ecstatic so see it revamped. This game is incredible, period, if you like a lot of story and depths behind that story. They did a fantastic job on the detail they put into the politics surrounding the time period this game takes place in. My only complaint was for some reason the English translation for Kyoto Winds/Edo Blossoms isn't the same as the 3DS variant and they made characters like Okita, Kazama, and Harada's dialogue a LOT more crude. Throwing in curse words in certain contexts that I felt hindered the experience rather than amplified it. Everytime Okita said "Stop having a ♥♥♥♥♥ fit" left a bad taste in my mouth when in the 3DS version he was a lot more casual saying things like "There's no reason to get so worked up." While technically yes, they both have the same meaning, one just settles better than the other.
The only one who truly cursed the most in the original translation was Hijikata, and I sort of wish they kept that going in this one too.
Don't even get me started on how they disgraced Kazama's dialogue in a similar manner. While yes, his character is supposed to be demeaning in some routes, they gave him the tongue of a lowly sailor versus the eloquent speech of a respected head of a prosperous Demon clan in this particular translation. In the 3DS while he spoke in a derogatory manner it was much more graceful, akin to Sanan's manner of phrasing things, one can easily insult another without the need of constant cursing. This translator was just particularly fond of easy insults like "♥♥♥♥♥" to portray Kazama's angst. A direct example pulled from the game would be the Japanese term ばんけん (banken; in romanji) which directly translates to "Watchdog", instead of putting watchdog in the text they translated it as "Little ♥♥♥♥♥" which I feel pulls away from the fact that he was insulting the route's love Interest as nothing more than a watchdog for his Bride-to-be. Rather than directly insulting him for the sake of insulting. Yes Kazama has a negative outlook on human's as a species, but no he doesn't constantly curse at them every time he sees them. He just treats them like ants he can't be bothered with.

The translator probably just did the easiest way of portraying the emotions with similar English phrases, over translating it word for word directly. Which I'm thankful for, but it also feels like a shame.
I get that "Puppet for the Shinsengumi" and "Dog for the Shinsengumi" are in all technicality the same meaning. But if they very clearly said dog, why not just put dog instead of puppet? Does that make sense?

Other than that, everything about Kyoto Winds, and Edo Blossom are amazing. The sound track is incredible, I hum the title screen song all the time. The CGs are really nice, although some of them you can tell weren't created by the original artist, they still did justice to the game. And the story line is good about wrapping up lose ends (when you play both Kyoto Winds and Edo Blossom since KW is the first half and EB is the second half of one entire full route per character.

Not sure if anyone actually reads reviews like this but those are my two cents!