SweetieGames

Game: Cupid Parasite Sweet and Spicy Darling

Developer: Idea Factory, Otomate

Publisher: Idea Factory

Platform: Nintendo Switch

Year: 2024

Previously on this blog, I discussed one of my favourite otome titles for the Switch, Cupid Parasite. So, I’m sure you could imagine my excitement when a fandisk was announced, with bonus stories for each of the love interests and a brand new route, making what used to be the Parasite 5 into the Parasite 7. Did the fandisk continue the legacy of such a fantastic otome title?

Sweet and Spicy Darling continues Lynette’s story with each of the love interests after the good endings, showing off their new lives as a couple or as a pair of newlyweds. Of course, in typical CupiPara fashion, it escalates very quickly and hijinks ensue, with plenty of light-hearted comedy moments that we know and love. Each route has multiple “good” endings depending on the character, but all of them have at least 3: A Sweet ending, a Spicy ending and a Sweet and Spicy ending. As well as this, we are introduced to Merenice Levin, a brand new character whose parasite trait is that he is obsessed with fortune telling and “destiny”, labelling him the Destiny Parasite. Lynette is of course tasked with cracking his case!

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

What I Liked:

Sweet and Spicy Darling does a great job of maintaining CupiPara’s distinct aesthetic, with bright colours, gorgeous artwork from Yuuya and music and menus with a 50s diner feel. Something I really enjoyed about the original Cupid Parasite was that each love interest had their own theme song which would play throughout various moments in the common route, and then would be repeated at intense moments in their respective routes. Sweet and Spicy Darling continues this, and even had brand new theme songs for all the characters we know and love. They’re just as good as the previous songs!

I also loved that the energy from Cupid Parasite was maintained well in some of the routes, with otherworldly stakes, hilarious moments and the escalation from zero to one hundred. This is what made Cupid Parasite so enjoyable for me; you never knew what was going to be around the corner, and there’s definitely routes in this game that maintain that feeling. Gill’s route especially stood out to me for this; one minute you’re hearing about a dodgy oyster scandal, and the next minute you’re seeing Gill’s brand-new transformer suit that he made himself. To protect you from the scary oyster seller man. I missed this.

The standout from this entire game has to be Merenice’s route for me. I loved Uemura Yuuto’s performance; Merenice has a gentle and soft spoken personality that’s still firm when needs be. His initial personality is just as strange as the previous Parasite love interests, which makes him fit in perfectly with the existing cast. As mentioned earlier, he is obsessed with fate and has an unusual ability of being able to tell fortunes by looking through the hole of a donut. He then becomes obsessed with Lynette, as he can’t see her destiny due to her goddess status, but of course she can’t tell him that! The route then follows Merenice’s journey not only at Cupid Corp with Lynette, but also to discover the truth behind his fortune telling abilities. His destiny ability even allows him to see Chii, and they become great friends (which is hilarious when you know Chii’s true identity!) His route is fun and filled with Cupid Parasite charm, with a great balance of tense, funny and romantic moments. Merenice stole my heart very quickly and ended up actually becoming my favourite CupiPara love interest.

What I Didn’t Like:

You may have noticed that when I talked about the energy being maintained from the original Cupid Parasite, I said “some” of the routes. Truth be told, there were some routes I didn’t enjoy. So much so that it made me put the game down and play something else, as I was worried about my feelings for some of the characters being tainted by this game. Let me explain.

There are multiple endings in this game, and at least 3 of them could be classified as “good” endings. Sometimes, these “good” endings can be uncomfortable, or sometimes make the love interest act entirely out of character. For example, Gill is known to be obsessed with Lynette as the Lovelorn Parasite, but he’s never shown yandere behaviour. In his Spicy end, he ends up locking up Lynette in his family home in Boltamore, not even allowing her to leave his bedroom unless its for a movie night, also hosted in his own home. It just felt like low-hanging fruit to me; I liked that he was pathetically in love with Lynette but didn’t act super creepy or become a yandere over his feelings, which most games would have done with his character. Isn’t it a bit boring that the character who is stupidly in love with the MC is the one who becomes a yandere? Why did he suddenly change now, when he rescued MC from danger before this route? How is this a good ending, when Lynette has lost all of her independence? This ending really left a bad taste in my mouth, and it was very disappointing as Gill is one of my favourites.

Allan’s route is fantastic in the original Cupid Parasite, but works best as a standalone story; I found his after story particularly dull. A lot of Cupid Parasite’s charm comes from the fun dynamics between characters combined with way over-the-top moments and drama, but due to the timeskip in Allan’s original route, you’re not going to see any of the original CupiPara cast in Allan’s route except for Allan himself and Claris, and you get a brief moment with a new side character. It makes his route feel lonely and boring in places as there’s no variety. You eventually get angst later down the line, as to be expected in Allan’s route, but somehow even that is boring. Lynette dies and Allan is tasked with bringing her back, which sounds super dramatic and angsty, but we already did this in Allan’s original route. Doing it again is dull. What really rubbed salt in the wound was that during Allan’s Sweet and Spicy end, a much better premise was skipped over as filler text for another timeskip! Lynette and Allan have two children, one is an angel and one is a demon. They live on earth and hide their children’s identities but also the fact that Allan’s “day job” is being the ruler of Hell. There’s so much you can do with this premise! So much potential for whacky hijinks! The kids are even new characters that could make the route feel less barren! I’m so frustrated thinking about what we could have had.

In places, the writing in this game is slow and you feel like some moments are there purely to fill time. It’s great seeing wholesome moments from your favourite love interests, but there comes a point where you’re looking for something to happen to cause conflict and strengthen the bonds between the characters. This is the entire point of a fandisk; striking that perfect balance between fanservice moments and an engaging story with your favourite characters. Sweet and Spicy Darling has a tendency to give back-to-back-to-back wholesome moments, and then blast through dramatic moments too quickly so you can’t take anything in.

Closing thoughts:

If you’re in the mood for a lot of lovey-dovey moments with your favourite Cupid Parasite characters, this game is great. The new route also provides an exciting new experience for fans of the previous game, which is seamlessly integrated into the existing lore. However, there are definitely places in this game where you’ll be considering playing something a bit more exciting.

Rating: 5.5/10