IkeSen Sasuke romantic route
Jan. 24th, 2020 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waterscrollI really liked this route. I'd been using IkeSen as my fluff break while playing Samurai Love Ballad, but this route was really quite engaging. It was I think a good choice to replay a SLBP route while doing this one, because getting this involved in two routes at once might be more than I want.
Sasuke is the guy who comes back in time with you from the present. Not exactly with you, he lands four years earlier, which is why he has time to become a ninja before you meet him. The backstory is, just like you immediately saved Nobunaga's life when you arrived, he immediately saved Uesugi Kenshin's. Except while your response was to pick who to date, his response was more or less: Kenshin!! How cool!! Can you teach me how to fight???
You get the impression, he's a bit detached and somewhat careerist. Also, and importantly, he's working for the other side.
He's quite an agreeable friend, fun to hang out with and good for explaining facts about the time MC has landed in. But for all his fanboying, he doesn't seem to really connect to people. And although he's made friends among the Uesugi-Takeda alliance, he's perfectly willing to leave it all and head back to the present, because his attitude towards friendships seems to be easy-come easy-go. He's also willing to let history go on as it did, which means letting his friends die. He doesn't have a lot of angst about this because he sees everything as about fate, which helps him detach.
Good thing he found MC.
Once she learns a little about the time period she's in, she gets to work. Because she has friends on both sides - Oda through saving Nobunaga, Uesugi-Takeda through Sasuke - she realizes that she is able to trade on these connections to get everyone to show up to negotiate. Turns out it works, because they are both able to figure out that there's a third party who is trying to sabotage both of them.
Yes, that would be the evil monk Kennyo, my actual true fictional love in this universe, who I am writing fic for right now. And he's pretty interesting in this route, because you see his relationship with Ranmaru, who is extremely loyal to him but also can't bring himself to completely betray Nobunaga. Ranmaru himself is also interesting and I'll look forward to his route too. And it turns out there's an even bigger big bad who had done some of the bad things we'd previously ascribed to Kennyo - Motonari Mouri, a pirate. So yes, the final battle is ninjas vs. pirates. You can't claim this game doesn't give enough fanservice. Since Mouri himself is also going to be a love interest eventually I imagine we're one day going to get an even bigger big bad so we can ally with him too.
As cracky as this all is, it's also kind of serious, because Sasuke is trying to figure out how to be able to really connect - to the MC, to his friends, to the place and time that they are in. They take longer to get together than in any other route I've done yet, and you can see it's because Sasuke is very good at being friendly and kind and feels unable to go past that. But eventually they do, and it's beautiful. And they are able to decide together to stay in the Sengoku period because they have friends there and those friends matter.
So: excellent route. If you're considering starting it's the one I'd recommend to start with, out of all the routes I've done. I'm sure I'll replay it eventually to do the dramatic route.
Next up I think is replaying the Mitsunari route. I have a few reasons for this:
1. I'll be doing the Shingen route next in SLBP and expect it to be brutal. IkeSen Mitsunari made me happy all the way through.
2. I'm curious to see how a replay works and how different the dramatic route is from the romantic route that I did.
3. Oh who am I kidding - because Kennyo has a major role in it, and I didn't pay much attention to him the first time around because all my attention was occupied by the shocking novelty of Mitsunari being alive and happy.
And after all those good reasons, I ended up picking the Kenshin route because his relationship with Sasuke made me so curious about him. Bring on the God of War!
Sasuke is the guy who comes back in time with you from the present. Not exactly with you, he lands four years earlier, which is why he has time to become a ninja before you meet him. The backstory is, just like you immediately saved Nobunaga's life when you arrived, he immediately saved Uesugi Kenshin's. Except while your response was to pick who to date, his response was more or less: Kenshin!! How cool!! Can you teach me how to fight???
You get the impression, he's a bit detached and somewhat careerist. Also, and importantly, he's working for the other side.
He's quite an agreeable friend, fun to hang out with and good for explaining facts about the time MC has landed in. But for all his fanboying, he doesn't seem to really connect to people. And although he's made friends among the Uesugi-Takeda alliance, he's perfectly willing to leave it all and head back to the present, because his attitude towards friendships seems to be easy-come easy-go. He's also willing to let history go on as it did, which means letting his friends die. He doesn't have a lot of angst about this because he sees everything as about fate, which helps him detach.
Good thing he found MC.
Once she learns a little about the time period she's in, she gets to work. Because she has friends on both sides - Oda through saving Nobunaga, Uesugi-Takeda through Sasuke - she realizes that she is able to trade on these connections to get everyone to show up to negotiate. Turns out it works, because they are both able to figure out that there's a third party who is trying to sabotage both of them.
Yes, that would be the evil monk Kennyo, my actual true fictional love in this universe, who I am writing fic for right now. And he's pretty interesting in this route, because you see his relationship with Ranmaru, who is extremely loyal to him but also can't bring himself to completely betray Nobunaga. Ranmaru himself is also interesting and I'll look forward to his route too. And it turns out there's an even bigger big bad who had done some of the bad things we'd previously ascribed to Kennyo - Motonari Mouri, a pirate. So yes, the final battle is ninjas vs. pirates. You can't claim this game doesn't give enough fanservice. Since Mouri himself is also going to be a love interest eventually I imagine we're one day going to get an even bigger big bad so we can ally with him too.
As cracky as this all is, it's also kind of serious, because Sasuke is trying to figure out how to be able to really connect - to the MC, to his friends, to the place and time that they are in. They take longer to get together than in any other route I've done yet, and you can see it's because Sasuke is very good at being friendly and kind and feels unable to go past that. But eventually they do, and it's beautiful. And they are able to decide together to stay in the Sengoku period because they have friends there and those friends matter.
So: excellent route. If you're considering starting it's the one I'd recommend to start with, out of all the routes I've done. I'm sure I'll replay it eventually to do the dramatic route.
1. I'll be doing the Shingen route next in SLBP and expect it to be brutal. IkeSen Mitsunari made me happy all the way through.
2. I'm curious to see how a replay works and how different the dramatic route is from the romantic route that I did.
3. Oh who am I kidding - because Kennyo has a major role in it, and I didn't pay much attention to him the first time around because all my attention was occupied by the shocking novelty of Mitsunari being alive and happy.
And after all those good reasons, I ended up picking the Kenshin route because his relationship with Sasuke made me so curious about him. Bring on the God of War!
