But where Christian and 50 Shades zigs into bland conformity, Piofiore very much zags. Like Christian, Piofiore seems far too beautiful and romantic to possibly go places. All of this you should experience for yourself, but in broad strokes, the game is most certainly part of the conversation around the yakuza cinema tradition, with a location swap as a means to paper over that direct association. All the while, as it drip-feeds the revelations and mysteries in equal measure, it slowly builds to some potentially shocking conclusions. In most game narratives “spoilers” are conventional plot points, but Piofiore genuinely relies heavily on its clandestine, labyrinthine reveals to keep you into a permanent sense of unease and suspense from almost the opening moments.

Where most games try and tag everything as “spoilers” so the critic can’t talk about it, I had no embargo conditions on this review, but I don’t want to give anything away. One day she and her friend are attacked by some mafia, rescued by some others, and the previously innocent Lili finds herself drawn into a dark world of bizarre rules, morality, honour, love and lust. You play as Lili – a beautiful young woman who grew up in a church orphanage and remains there to help the next generation. In so many ways this little description so perfectly describes the plot of Piofiore. This dialetic, which the good-natured protagonise embodies, drives the standard plot where good and evil, individual inclination and group obligations are clearly distinguishable.”

It comes to us from Otomate, a developer that has a stranglehold on the upper tiers of this genre, and it is compulsive stuff dark and affecting, but also beautiful, sensual, and impossible to put down.Īs noted by Ferico Varese in his analysis of Paul Schrader’s own analysis of yakuza films: “Yakuza films are instead organised around the confluct between social obligation (giri) and personal inclination (ninjo). Because of that, Piofiore: Fated Memories, which is a visual novel about three warring Italian mafia mobs, but setting aside is in every way a yakuza story, is surprising and even transgressive, and it’s a particularly good and vivid otome visual novel. Gangsters – be they yakuza, mafia, or otherwise, are aestheticised in Japanese culture in a way that lends itself very well to otome and a kind of violent, but ravishing romance story.

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