Birushana: Rising Flower of Genpei Review

Birushana is an otome game from Idea Factory that puts you back in time when samurai were prominent. You play a young girl who has been living in the mountains after the defeat of her clan. In typical visual novel fashion, you soon find yourself encountering the game’s different love interests and having to choose which one you want to be with.

Historical Fiction

Visual novels like Birushana don’t have a lot of gameplay aspects to them, so the games’ worth heavily falls on their story, character, sound, and art. Luckily, Birushana has a fantastic story that sends you on an adventure to find yourself. There’s plenty of action, romance, and plot twists to go around.

One of my favorite things about the game is how they handled the main character. Unlike heroines in other otome games, like Piofiore, the main character in Birushana is quite strong. She is masterful with a sword and able to hold her own in battle. If it wasn’t for special circumstances at the start of the game, she likely could have reclaimed her clan’s power in no time.

The game also uses a lot of real-world Japanese references and provides a dictionary to explain them. This helps the world to feel a bit more real and provides context to English-speaking players who haven’t studied Japanese history or geography. Birushana packs everything you need to understand its world into a helpful little package, and it’s delightful.

Pretty Boys Ahoy

If you like pretty art and pretty boys, then this game will meet all of your needs. Without going too deep into spoilers, every boy in the game comes from a different background and has a different personality. They all have their own story and personality type for you to uncover through playing their route multiple times.

Each character has multiple endings that will change based on the dialogue choices you make. You can see what route you are heading towards by seeing which lotus opens up when you make a choice. Once you have been placed on a route, you will be able to tell whether you are choosing the right dialogue, as a Lotus will bloom when you choose correctly.

There is also a flowchart that you can use to help get on another route and change your stats. This can be used to easily maneuver through everyone’s route within a few tries. There is also the standard skip dialogue option to help you speed through read content. If you want to see your favorite CG again, then all you need to do is visit the gallery.

Action-Packed Fiction

Birushana is a good visual novel and an excellent dating sim that was easy for me to lose hours while playing. While I don’t feel like it will dethrone Piofiore for me as number one, it is one of my favorite visual novels. If you love action romance stories, strong heroines, and gorgeous art, then this is a game that you should be picking up.