The Japanese eroge maker CUFFS has a whole pile of sub-brands — Sphere, CUBE, miniCUBE, SONORA, and HULOTTE, which looks unrelated but apparently isn’t. I hadn’t touched a CUFFS game in ages. CUFFS games are all basically the same: same engine, same font, same choice-navigation UI, same Duca songs covering everything, same marketing playbook, same coloring style, and… the only thing that really differs is the artist. So CUFFS games get old fast, because there’s just too much that’s identical. Sure, sometimes they roll out a “story premise” that looks decent, but the actual execution always disappoints. Well, not disappoint exactly — it’s more that there’s just nothing interesting there. CUFFS announces a new title, you look at the character setup and you can already guess how the plot will unfold. Beat the game and sure enough, it played out exactly as you expected. No surprises. If anything it’s less exciting than what you imagined… Which leaves you with disappointment… emptiness… and self-loathing for wasting your time on this game.