It’s been a while since I reviewed a nukige, but the concept of this one caught my attention. Queen Of The Otaku: There Can Only Be One developed by Appetite and localized by Shiravune follows the events of an otaku club, where a competing ‘queen’ joins, and chaos ensues. As a warning, this is no fluffy romance; it contains scenes that some may consider extreme.
The Otasaa No Hime
The idea of an ‘otasaa no hime’, or princess of the otaku club is usually when a female student joins a primarily male ‘geeky’ club and gets treated as a princess. Everyone dotes on her, guys may act as her ‘knights’ and protect her, with events potentially leading to drama and jealousy. She may be sweet, or she may just be playing them for attention.
In Queen Of The Otaku: There Can Only Be One, we soon find that one isn’t as sweet as she seems. Ai who has the attention of the club is kind to everyone, but despite appearing cute, energetic, and friendly with everyone, Mahiro is rather devilish.
Ai’s things start going missing, the tension starts to increase, and the club starts to split into two; an Ai faction and a Mahiro faction. It suddenly escalates to an extreme.
Queen Of The Otaku: There Can Only Be One won’t be winning any awards for its story with much of its 90-minute playtime being sex scenes, but it gives appropriate context for each one, even if it follows hentai logic.
Mahiro’s initial coquettish behavior was a highlight here, as is her later sadism. I particularly enjoyed an event that happened later in one of the routes, as I began to like Ai more, who until that point had been far too passive.
Cosplay Queen and a Sadist
The adult scenes in this title are all relatively short, but there are many of them with 15 spread over the short playtime. After the first scene, this title lines them up one after another, with the minimal story surrounding it. The sadism constantly escalates throughout, leading to a nice build up of tension and wondering just how far it will go and what will be next.
There is a lot of rape in this title, primarily by characters other than the protagonist. With manipulation, blackmail, control, and sadism involved, it’s not the only darker topic that comes up. ‘Learning to enjoy it’ is a trope that appears too. On the lighter side, there are some cosplay scenes.
Above all, the overarching theme is sadism and masochism. It certainly caters well to anyone with those interests, with it getting more intense as the story proceeds and a good variety of scenes. Just be warned that it essentially escalates to ‘corruption’ territory.
The choices work nicely here too. While bad events often can’t be avoided, there are up to five choice points that do influence the sex scenes to a point. These also trigger one of three very different endings, which you can read about in our guide.
I recommend playing this with the adult patch or buying the full version. Huge parts of the story are missing from the Steam version, so while some context is given, it doesn’t make much sense. It skips the endings too. As always with Shiravune, even with the patch, mosaics remain in place.
Graphics, Sounds, and More
In some ways, Queen Of The Otaku: There Can Only Be One is somewhat low-end. The resolution is only 800×600, which is surprising for a title released in 2020 initially. The user interface has huge choice blocks, and the options are all only accessible via the top menu of the window itself. Options themselves are quite basic too, without modern features such as ‘skip to next choice’ or individual volume per character.
There are a good amount of adult scenes for the visual novel’s short length, but each one only has one CG with several minor variations. Sprites are few too, though it does have a few outfits, including a nude one. One CG, in particular, made me wonder if the protagonist was using his dick or a swollen bent finger underneath the mosaic.
The music is fairly limited, though I did like the tension-filled title music. Characters are voiced well enough, with only the two heroines having a voice.
One minor but frequent issue was line breaks. Often letters were cut off mid-word from one line and continued on the next line (PR has since informed us that this will be fixed by release).
Verdict
Queen Of The Otaku: There Can Only Be One puts forward an interesting idea, takes it to a dark place, and caters well to certain fetishes. It’s a rather limited title, but it does quite a lot for a fairly low price. If you enjoy the themes here and aren’t looking for much of a story, it’s not top-tier, but certainly not a bad title to pick up.
WAIT FOR SALE ON QUEEN OF THE OTAKU: THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE
If you are looking for another nukige visual novel, you may enjoy Chinkamo Twins – My Twin Sisters Are Totally Into Me.
Many thanks go to the publisher Shiravune for a PC review code for this title.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
