Select Oblige (セレクトオブリージュ) Review

When this game was first announced I was hyped as hell. Madsoft at the helm, so you know the production values are solid. Yuzuna on art, easy on the eyes. And the premise—a “comeback story”—was exactly my shit. The writer had previously done all sorts of training-and-humiliation eroge, which made it even more promising. Pair that with the absolutely fire OP from the initial promo, and my expectations were through the roof.

Then the game dropped. I dove in full of hope, and pretty quickly something started feeling off. The “play dumb, crush the elite” / “poor dude climbs to the top” power fantasy I was promised? Nowhere to be found. Instead the whole game turned into the usual Otome-soft style routine—the protagonist becomes the school’s incubus, every woman goes crazy for him, and he even gets a direct invite to join the student council.

The story then headed in the direction I was most familiar with but had zero desire for. The protagonist says he wants to climb the ladder, but his method for crossing class lines is to bang some upper-class young lady—works out great whether you’re talking bloodline or marrying in. He even starts fantasizing—oh, he’s fantasizing again—about becoming the school’s stud horse, every woman becoming his wife, and he’s already picked out how many kids they’re gonna have…

What kind of Shandong peasant logic is this…

The story does set up this one asshole second male lead who loves bullying people, but the protagonist—the first male lead—somehow devolves into a top-tier cuck in his own routes. Take Akino’s blonde route: she’s an undercover cop, but because she started dating the protagonist she gets outplayed by her own junior, then claws her way back on her own. None of that has anything to do with the protagonist. He’s standing there next to her like a completely worthless weakling. Then the pink-haired route is the same old “cute girl scientist” shtick—Pink needs to research an AI chip, and for realism’s sake it just so happens she doesn’t know how love works, so she tests it on herself by sticking the chip in and dating the protagonist. Again, the protagonist contributes nothing. He’s basically a talking dick. And the student council president route is even more bullshit. She straight-up says she’s into the protagonist. Turns out both she and the protagonist are products of some “designer baby” program—elite sperm and eggs screened and cultured into so-called “top-tier talent freaks.” The game even hints the president might be related to the protagonist. But none of that matters, because once she falls for him the story has nothing left to offer. She just becomes a woman in heat, and the protagonist becomes a talking vibrator.

What really got me mad was the “little sister route,” if you can even call it that…

First it establishes that the sister and the protagonist both come from a slum orphanage, then clarifies she’s a step-sister, no blood relation. Then it says the sister got sent to this school by the orphanage’s nun, while the protagonist got in through a lottery draw… So I gotta ask—if the nun is that connected, and the president route also implies she’s actually upper-class, then why the hell does the protagonist need a lottery at all? Why not just send him in the same way as the sister? Like, answer me that.

But whatever, none of that matters. Once you enter the sister route it’s full-on reverse-thirst. They hook up, everyone knows, brother and sister become lovers. And then? The sister’s story is basically over. The game suddenly pivots to someone trying to start a mobile game company at the school and needing an accountant. The only suitable accountant just so happens to be that bullying second male lead. So the protagonist goes to find him and discovers he’s at the slums getting a happy-ending massage—and he’s addicted. Because the second male lead and the protagonist don’t get along, the two take the opportunity to reconcile. While getting his rocks off, the second guy gets threatened by the mob, who want to blackmail the school. He does a hero turn, gets fully redeemed, and everyone happily comes back to start the mobile game company and fleece the whales. As for the sister? Left in the dust a long time ago. Is this a sister route? Are you sure it’s not the second male lead’s route?

I was furious after finishing this game. This was the first time a visual novel gave me that “product does not match the advertisement” feeling. Where’s the promised “underdog comeback”? How did it become a simp marrying into some rich girl’s family? The protagonist barely does anything in any of the heroine routes. You can’t see the point of his “struggle from the underground” at all, nor any special quality he supposedly has. Even the early confrontation with the bully second male lead in the common route is just painfully ordinary.

Where’s the “rebellion”? Where’s the “power fantasy”? That’s it? Is that all you’ve got? Do you have any idea how much you owe your OP animation?

The protagonist even shows symptoms of erectile dysfunction in some routes. In a porn game. The protagonist gets ED. You’re telling me that’s the power fantasy? That’s hook fiction, bro. Is the protagonist a bottom from Chengdu or something?

Of course, I have to give credit where it’s due—the art and production values are absolutely on point. Yuzuna’s style still slaps, the BGM and system are as high-quality as ever, the voice acting is solid, and the marketing followed Madsoft’s usual resource playbook. Honestly, everyone except the writer did everything they could.

But you can’t get around the fact that the scenario is too stupid, too deceptive, too off-topic.

I thought I was getting a comeback power fantasy. Instead I got cuck literature. I gotta say, when the protagonist announced after the common route that his goal was to find some chick to mate with and achieve his comeback, that was the first time I felt the urge to do the “explosive elephant tribe” reaction.

Apparently this game even got an official Chinese release on Steam, and someone reviewed it as “Genshin-impact-level writing.”

All I can say is that’s the worst Genshin has ever been slandered.

Pros:

• Art, art, and more fucking art
• Voice acting, voice acting, and more fucking voice acting
• Production, production, big-budget production

Cons:

• Writing, writing, and I’m talking about the writing