Let's lay it all down: This is, somehow, an otome game. A hardcore otome game, a game that is marketed towards ladies, by a company known for their visual novels brimming with bishounen. It's got the pretty boy protagonist in non-functional attire and a title that translates to "I will protect you", which insinuates some passionate affections will take center stage story wise... Except the story is quite bare and the camera is too zoomed out to catch a glimpse of that tattoo-laden midriff.

1: I AM BAD AT VIDEO GAMES

Ore ga Omae o Mamoru is a metroidvania that forces you to be good. You can't just sail on through-- You better get used to dodge-rolling, knife-throwing and the lack of blocking because if you don't, you're going to perish. No leveling up, so no powering on. Teleports cost money you don't have. Hits cost HP you can't spare. Early on, it can feel like you're treading uphill through molasses, especially if you have the platforming skills of a concrete brick. However, everything is still doable-- In the labyrinth lay powerups and goodies to make you feel less like a brick and more like Zeus. After much death, I began to memorize the positions of each and every pitfall/slime/platform in a way that had me pressing buttons in a meditated rhythm to victory.

The difficulty doesn't scale with you. By the end you'll be taking hits from bosses without a sweat thanks to the bajillion health potions you'll have no doubt acquired. Double jumping helps wonders, and newly forged accessories will set you ahead of the chase. The pain of crushing early game foes will have washed away into nothing but mild annoyances on your quest for plunder. Happily, you can skip a lot of the upper layers of the dungeon by making use of warp points (you can mark everything on your map all pretty, too!) All in all, a pretty decent romp with a pretty challenging start.

2: YOU NEED YOUR CARBS, SO EAT THAT CRUST!

This game is crunchy. There are some things about it that made me flashback to much older games on much older systems-- we're talking NES here-- but no, this is a DS game, made in the year 2009 and the developers just don't know what they're doing sometimes.

I can't say it's the prettiest thing I've ever seen. The otome portraits themselves are just fine (oh-so anime handsome, if that's your cup of tea) but you're going to be staring at these mutilated chunks of pixelated polygons for most of the game. It doesn't help that the enemies are heavily palette swapped. a larger pool of designs would've helped immensely.

Also, I couldn't tell if it was my DS acting up or not, but there is some slowdown. Too many enemies on a screen has the whole game go to syrup and my thumbs end up in a panic, wondering if I've just thrown too many knives for the little system to handle. The music can be pretty catchy, but the actually sound quality itself ended up being on the lower end. The game is voiced, but those voices ended up garbled to hell and back.

(Since we're here, might as well slide in a pleasant song you'll be hearing a lot of while adventuring)

An important thing to note is that there are points in this game where your momentum can grind to a frustrating halt. The crustiness began to really eat away at me when a certain moving platform seemed unreachable-- And this sentiment was shared with the three other people on Earth who played this game. It turns out you've got to do some parkour and murder a pesky bat to get across, but I only figured this out after some googling. There are some puzzles as well that'll be halfway impossible due to progress-killing bugs. It's possible to get past, but I'd prefer not to agonize about these things in the first place

3: LOOKING FOR OTOME IN A FLAVORLESS WORLD

And back to the otome. I'm sorry, it baffles me. You see, the otome genre is pretty staunchly visual novel oriented, which clashes quite hard with the startling challenge this game starts off with. A game characterized by pretty men (yet 90% of the game is dungeon crawling) from genre defined by romance (yet such tender loving is nowhere to be seen). The world itself is cut down to the essentials, the guild, shops and dungeons being the only locales. The story is not worth mentioning and the scenes delivering what little there is are few and far between. Because of this, you won't be latching onto any characters or getting any eye-opening twists. There's nothing wrong with a focused game. It's clunky, but serviceable-- I didn't not enjoy the ride. It's simply that the game feels like an archaic release dusted off and repackaged with a female demographic shallowly in mind. The lack of effort is apparent, and it hurts.

3.5: LOOK AT MY SON, HE IS ILL

I want to devote a section to the game's kuudere protagonist, Rei, who fascinated me not with his striking personality (ha! that's a joke) but with his very well-designed attire, perfect for barrel rolling on cold dungeon floors.

It's ridiculous. But I'm gonna be honest. The little guy, as portrayed mostly by a choked miasma of polygons and garbled grunts really began to grow on me.

Are those menorah tattoos? Is he wearing spandex? A mystery wrapped in more mystery, Rei-chan, you truly make me think.

4: THE TLDR

Ore ga Omae o Mamoru is not a work of great quality. It's got some bugginess and it ain't the prettiest girl at church. That being clear, It's a fairly straight-forward metroidvania that would probably be just fine for folks who want something as a snack between meals.The game isn't long-- Playthroughs out there clear it in a good 3 hours-- and it's for the most part pleasant. The most disappointing part of it all may just actually be it's neglected otome identity, which may have helped the story and characters (and in turn the overall impact) immensely.