Six of the best reasons to be excited for Paradigm Paradox

Paradigm Paradox is set to release on the October 28, 2022 in Europe, putting it less than two weeks away from the time of writing. As the next big, original localised otome title for this year, heads have been turning for its unique magical girl premise, an impressive serving of many love interests, and the superhero action it promises.

We’re here on the front line to give you just a bit more information and details on what you can expect from the game and why you should look forward to it — and we’ll have a full review for you once we’ve had a chance to get our teeth into it properly!

Eight love interests

It has been a while since the west saw such a big offering of love interests within a single otome game, with Norn9 and the Kyoto Winds/Edo Blossoms games in the Hakuoki series being previous strong examples. Paradigm Paradox is here with eight love interests and routes of its own, with three different endings for each including Happy, Normal and Bad endings.

While the majority of these routes are quite short, the love interest pool offers a variety of different characters to woo with varying storylines and themes, some of which may be more your cup of tea over others.

For example, there is the rather refreshing love interest Ryo Tomitsuka, the oldest candidate available at the age of 26, who works on the Academy grounds. Every other guy is younger, but each have their own temperaments as one can expect for the genre — such as the tsundere Mihaya Araki or the jerk with a heart of gold, Hyuga.

Be a hero or be a villain – you decide!

The eight love interests are split into two “sides”: four for heroes and four on the villainous side. The game’s common route does well to point exactly where you should be going for which side and love interest, such as selecting which locations to explore in early chapters to bump into said love interests. Which path you end up proceeding down is helpfully illustrated visually with a character bar found in the game’s main menu.

This bar represents how heroic or villainous our heroine, whose default name is Yuki Takanashi, is shaping up to be as a result of your choices. Thankfully the built-in flowchart does a brilliant job of keeping track of each and every chapter for these important key decision-making moments, because there are loads of branching points. Once on either of the two main sides, more plot points will begin to develop and reveal the secrets of the story’s world regarding the segmented colonies, the Vermin monsters who run rampant across the land and, most importantly, why some of its love interests are transforming into magical girls. Speaking of…

Magical girl inspired otome

Where Paradigm Paradox is really its own, distinct thing is with its focus on providing action-packed magical girl battles. Our very own heroine has her own transformation sequence indicator and character design change whenever she does so. It’s an extremely cute instant makeover for her that you can always appreciate any time you see it.

Paradigm Paradox also happens to be one of the very few visual novels out there to feature cross-dressing magical girls. Neat! It’s a niche within a niche and it certainly makes Paradigm Paradox have its own identity.

Unassumingly adorable visuals with a dark underbelly

Like any good romance game, Paradigm Paradox hides its more emotionally scarring elements with pretty visuals and bright colours. The Magical Girl Raising Project comparisons drawn by some weren’t kidding. This is the exact reason Japanese audiences gave the title mixed reviews for the most part, so it very well may be the most important takeaway from this write-up. If you would like to avoid reading some examples of what you can expect from the game’s darker material, please skip this next paragraph.

Themes and plotlines revolving around grief, psychological trauma, revenge, confinement, unethical research and doomsday are just a few worrying elements to be found within the routes and overarching story of Paradigm Paradox. Don’t tell us we didn’t warn you — because the game sure does go to dark places that you might not have expected!

A one-of-a-kind experience in more ways than one

We’ve only been plugging away at the game for a short while now as of the time of writing this, but it already comes across as an unconventional creation for the genre. We’ll get into why that is in more depth with our full review, but it’s safe to say that it will likely be a more polarising experience among otome fans. This can likely be attributed to the creative minds behind it — including a few apparent newcomers.

Character designer Natsuo, director Seki Mao and chibi artist Nozaki Tsubata are all seemingly making their video game debut with Paradigm Paradox, and scenario writers Touko Fujitani, Saya Ougi and Yuzuki Tachibana are largely unknown within the visual novel medium; only the latter is credited as a writer for two video games, those being Paradigm Paradox itself and Shuuen no Virche -ErroR:salvation-. It’s certainly interesting to see what these unfamiliar writers have created together, and worth celebrating their first venture into the medium.

Voices that are familiar, and voices that highlight underutilised talents

As always, the voice cast deserves mention by themselves — for two main reasons this time. For the first, we have familiar voice actors such as Junya Enoki (Hansel in Ozmafia!!, Ryuki in Cupid Parasite, Dill from Nekopara: Catboys’ Paradise) as the green-haired tsundere Mihaya Araki and Taku Yashiro (Raul from Cupid Parasite, Adolphe from Shuuen no Viche) as Tokio Takato.

But alongside these well-known names, we have some less familiar voice actors who have previously primarily been seen in the role of supportive characters. We have Shou Nogami (Passy from Code: Realize, Dromi from Café Enchanté and Mitchell from even if TEMPEST) as villainous love interest Ibuki, and Shoya Chiba (Hugo from even if TEMPEST) as perfectionist Ayumu Mamiya. It’s always exciting to see more unfamiliar voices get their time in the spotlight as love interests, while also having a few well-known names to draw the crowds.

Also, God bless the game for bringing all its male cast members together to form the band 8P. On a final note, the blog of patriciaselina translated the voice actors’ interviews about the game, so be sure to check those out if you want to know more prior to the game’s release. Their opinions and excitement will definitely leave a more than positive impression on its readers.

That’s all we have for why you should be excited for Paradigm Paradox for now. How interested are you in this latest, upcoming otome from Aksys Games?

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