Kimagure Temptation (きまぐれテンプテーション) Review

Kimagure Temptation (きまぐれテンプテーション) is the new release from Silkyplus Wasabi, a Japanese studio known for horror-leaning games. Most of their past output has been dark, gory, and supernatural, but this one unexpectedly looks like a moe nukige—probably because they switched their main artist to Kimishima Ao.

Also, the price is absurdly low for an eroge. After playing it, a lot of moe fans loudly declared it a landmine. Which brings me back to something I’ve said before: “A game that moe fans call a landmine is guaranteed to be interesting.” So I decided to take a look. Having played it, I’m conflicted—not because it’s “especially brilliant,” but because it mostly left me feeling baffled. So here’s my breakdown and my take.

Q: What’s Kimagure Temptation about?

A: The story is very easy to summarize. In a shared apartment, all four tenants die by mysterious suicide—by disembowelment, no less. The protagonist, an onmyouji, goes to the apartment to investigate by summoning their spirits, and eventually discovers that the landlady used her own invented religion to incite them, telling them that suicide would turn them into “angels.” That’s the tragedy: a cult’s martyrdom.

Q: But the cover has this big-breasted girl on it. What’s her deal?

A: The big-breasted girl on the cover is someone the protagonist meets after arriving at the haunted apartment. She claims to be a succubus and helps him investigate, but it turns out this “succubus” was summoned through a ritual by the “martyrs” after their suicides—so you could say she’s one of the masterminds?

Q: I get all that, but why does a horror game use a big-breasted girl as its cover?

A: That’s what I don’t get either. The game feels schizophrenic. On one hand, it pours resources into the big-breasted girl—she gets Emotion technology, several outfits, incredibly rich expressions, and a very erotic voice performance. But story-wise she leans toward being a villain, and she even has a twisted CG with a “broken expression” that’s genuinely creepy. Compared to her, the other supporting characters get shafted hard. They have CGs and voices, sure, but each one only gets a single CG. Yes—apart from the big-breasted girl, every other side character has exactly one CG, not even proper sprites. If this game is supposed to be horror, why dump 80% of the budget into a moe villain while skimping on the mystery? It’s baffling. And to emphasize the “detective” element, they added some “investigation” features, but those are… really dumb. You just click on everything one by one; most of the time it’s just a CG with a few clickable spots. There’s no sense of investigation—better to leave it out.

Q: You said this game is horror—so how’s the atmosphere?

A: The atmosphere is decent. The distorted expressions, scene transitions, and music are all well done, and it’s easy to get startled—you can tell the team has experience. But the story itself isn’t really scary, and it’s full of holes. Plenty of illogical bits. The game mainly says the landlady of the shared house was abused and abandoned by her parents as a child, so she craved “family.” When she became a landlady, she’d tell every tenant “from now on we’re all family” and force her “family” theory on them—that a family should be neat and tidy, eat together, be together, etc. She’s also used by one of the female tenants, who creates an entire cult, assigns everyone a “dharma name,” and uses a tenant involved in drug dealing to force injections that cause hallucinations and brainwashing, making all the “disobedient” tenants obey her and become “family.” Eventually things go too far and end in mass suicide, after which they summon the big-breasted succubus. The story as a whole isn’t broken, but “it could be better.” First, the “tenant” setup itself doesn’t make sense—I think it’d work better as a “mad mother” killing her “four children,” because it’s hard to understand why tenants wouldn’t run away from such a crazy landlady. The game’s explanation is that “the landlady picks tenants who are timid and willing to be brainwashed.” What the hell—you can tell at a glance whether someone’s willing to be brainwashed? That’s god-tier. The protagonist’s setup is also dumb as hell—forced into being an “onmyouji,” maybe for Japanese “national pride.” In the game, what he actually does is closer to a pastor, repeatedly telling the spirits “you’re not to blame, you’re forgiven.” That’s straight-up Christian vibes, but they force him to be an “onmyouji.” Apart from waving a sword around, there’s nothing onmyouji-like about him.

Q: So what level is the story at? Are there any hidden elements?

A: If you posted it on a Chinese ghost-story forum like Penglai Guihua, it’d be below average—and it’s a rushed ending. At the end, the game just drops an easter egg telling the player that the protagonist and the “succubus” have formed a contract and the story isn’t over. There’s basically no proper ending otherwise. There are also some hidden elements, including crossovers with the same company’s previous games, Nana-iro Linkanation and Ake-iro Kaikitan. There’s also the “landlady’s gruesome death,” and the fact that the landlady herself is pitiful—just used by the tenant who created the cult—but that doesn’t raise the overall quality.

Q: So the story is just okay. Why does this game seem popular? Is it the “gap moe”? Or because it “feeds players shit” and is a landmine?

A: I think anyone who knows anything about Silkyplus Wasabi wouldn’t think this isn’t a horror game. And from the content, there’s no reason to feed players shit—there’s no real malice. The only problem, I think, is that the marketing tried to target two groups: story-focused players and moe fans who “buy anything with cute characters.” I’ve noticed before that in the Japanese galgame scene there’s a huge crowd that buys games just because the characters look good—they prop up half of all sales. So Silkyplus Wasabi probably did this for sales. But they forgot that even players who don’t play the game will read online reviews from those who do. When they see the game is full of horror CGs, they’ll feel cheated—backfiring completely. If they’d polished the story a bit and spread the resources instead of dumping everything on one big-breasted girl, it’d probably be much better.

Q: Does this game have any highlights at all?

A: Sure—the big-breasted girl! And the OP, a new song by Koharu Meu that’s got this full-on melody rap feel with trap-style production—she could break into “Japanese New Rap.” Of course, if you’re interested in the game, I’d suggest keeping some fast-acting heart medicine handy, since some CG transitions are pretty creepy. And if you’re only interested in the big-breasted girl, just watch the OP and check out her HCGs—those are the real essence of the game anyway.