the ssum is worse than you think

now that it's been a year since the ssum came out, is it better? is Harry Choi our savior? the answer may surprise you!

(spoiler: it's not good)

【TIMESTAMPS】
0:00 - I have a bone to pick
2:14 - good parts & improvements
5:31 - dislikes & nitpicks
11:35 - talking about every single planet
36:45 - Teo was done dirty
42:27 - HARRY CHOI
55:06 - fixing Teo's route
1:01:04 - it should've been better

【SOCIALS】

【SOURCES】
➤ The Ssum: @tator-chan ;)
➤ Collar x Malice: Otome Vita

【OTOME】
➤ The Ssum
➤ Mystic Messenger
➤ Collar x Malice
➤ Dandelion - Wishes brought to you -
➤ Nameless ~The one thing you must recall~
➤ Olympia Soirée

【ANIME】
➤ A Silent Voice
➤ Code Geass
➤ Itazura na Kiss
➤ Kaguya-sama: Love is War
➤ My Hero Academia
➤ Pokémon
➤ Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu
➤ Space Brothers
➤ Uta no Prince-sama
➤ You're Under Arrest!

【OTHER MEDIA】
➤ Hot Fuzz
➤ Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
➤ Jersey Shore
➤ Malcolm in the Middle
➤ SpongeBob SquarePants

【MUSIC】
➤ Amnesia Memories: "Everyday", "Leisure", "Tranquility"
➤ Animal Crossing: New Horizons: "1000 a.m. (~Sunny Weather~)"
➤ Cupid Parasite - "It's like a Romantic Movie"
➤ Collar x Malice - "Lunch Time", "Playing Marbles"
➤ DANGANRONPA: "Beautiful Dead"
➤ Free! Iwatobi Swim Club: "Beautiful Sea", "Old days", "Painful Incident", "Revelry of student", "To depths of blue"
➤ Mystic Messenger: "Lonely but Passionate Way", "Mystic Chat ver. 2", "Narcissistic Jazz", "Urban Night Cityscape"
➤ Nintendo Wii: "Mii Channel Theme"
➤ Olympia Soirée: "Sei No Kure", "Tsuyairo No Kaori"
➤ Persona 3 FES: "Joy"
➤ Persona 4 Golden: "New Days"
➤ Piofiore: Fated Memories: "Coastal Sway", "Where You Reside"
➤ The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: "Fyers Cannon"
➤ The Ssum: Forbidden Lab OP

【SCRIPT】
- - - - -
I know my taste is garbage, but so is yours (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
#thessum #otome #mysticmessenger

[noheckoff]

Also, paying $130 for this experience is insane, thank you for taking one for the team, so we don't have to spend as much

[finalfroggitapproaches]

The best parts of MM were things like 707 pranking Yoosung to drink tons of chocolate milk and Zen insulting Jumin’s cat. The characters interacted with each other, not just with the player. It felt like it really was a chatROOM, not just a chatGPT conversation. Those characters bickered and joked and had mundane conversations between themselves at 3AM about video games and allergies. They were quirky, interesting, and made the characters feel alive. I didn’t play MM for the (admittedly kind of goofy) story, I played it for the characters. I skipped The Ssum because it feels so.. Lonely. Like, Theo seems nice enough, but it’s a far cry from walking in on Yoosung preparing to die because 707 tricked him while Jaehee calls them both stupid.

[mickeycurrence]

I think the reason the cgs look so...bad, is because theyre traces over real life photos. You can tell by how the bodies are so inconsistent in style/porportion to the heads of the characters that they traced a real picture of a dude, drew the love interest's head in the normal style, and then just...put it together without actually scaling or stylizing the body to match the head.

[KhayJayArt]

You were paying 20 bucks a month for this dating sim and you didn't even get any anime dude nude pics? Ma'am you were ROBBED

[rel_bis]

I guess the problem is that rather than telling a story, this game is just trying to be a virtual boyfriend simulator. The appeal of MysMe was the plot and quirky characters and their dynamics with each other. 11 days was just enough to tell the story from beginning to end, but 200 days with Generic Boyfriend where nothing story-relevant happens is just boring

Sure there's an audience out there for these kind of simulators, but it's different from otomes

[matchamochi]

For a game that is focused around talking to a singular character for hundreds of days. You’d think they’d make them more interesting.

[yali]

I remember someone on otome subreddit digging out Cheritz’s personnel history from some Korean sources (as in who was let go and who was hired/who they were hiring atm) and it appeared that the crew was completely overhauled sometime in between the beta and the Ssum’s initial release. As in only the higher-ups remained while none of the writers and artists who used to work on mysme and earlier games were there anymore. Which, if true, would explain how this game is such a mess and not at all correlates with all of the previous work Cheritz has done because it’s literally no longer the same Cheritz beyond the name and the leftover reputation. Which feels somewhat tragic of an end to such a promising gaming company. There’s no way people behind mysme (who were donating a part of their income to various charities during the lifetime of the game) would come up with that predatory monetization system of the Ssum.

This video was highly entertaining and informative, great job! If I ever need to explain to someone why I dropped the game even before reaching Teo’s confession, I’m certainly sending them this video for reference lol

[vanillaseahorse]

Whenever the beta test for Ssum came out people were speculating that Teo was going to be a surprise yandere because some of the chats sounded sounded a little dark under the surface. Not to mention that by entering your schedule into the game, he would know pretty much everything about you. I know yanderes are controversial but that would have been such a cool idea instead of just making him a generic soft boy.

[rebeccascholtes]

The 10-day mystic messenger storylines were a whole package story arc that made you feel like you spend weeks developing a relationship with the love-interest. There was drama, character development, storylines and action to move towards a satisfying ending. You're telling me that 200 days barely scratches the surface of that? If you can't write a satisfying story in 100/200 days, something is horribly wrong with your writers.

I do think that a longer otome game could be very interesting and refreshing and I'm all for slow-burn. But 200 days is way too long to begin with, in my opinion. It asks a lot of the attention span of its users and even if the storyline is fantastic, real life can easily get in the way of logging in. Besides, what kind of story do you want to tell in 200 days that you can't tell in 30 days? Are you going somewhere, or is it useless pandering and small talk for 50-70% of the time? What are you doing so that your target audience stays motivated?

With what you told about the story itself, it doesn't have one cohesive story line that leads anywhere. Even if the art isn't great, that should have been the bare minimum and I'm shocked they ask so much money for an otome game that basically functions as an A.I. chat.

[jlshootingstar]

I think the problem i have with the art style is that the faces are so washed out and don't have enough shading/emphasis on any features besides the eyes and mouth... it's kind of giving... Jeff the Killer 😬

[RowleyFan]

If we had known the Ssum was gonna be like this, Cheritz should've just done a spinoff/copy of MysMes, to be honest, with a totally new story and characters. The Ssum is just so bad it's not even mediocre.

[adlinreese]

I wish they made a Mystic Messenger 2 using this system or one similar like mesh the two games cause I'm sure people would KILL to have 200 days worth of the MM characters

[boo]

I think its pretty apparent within many characters in the manhua/anime artstyle world have been complained about the paleness/lack of melanin in their skin tones, but my god do the ssum characters need to face the sun.

[corvidaeae]

The problem with the semi-realistic art style is that it makes the unrealistic parts stand out too much. You can maybe get away with blindingly unnaturally pale skin and not having a nose with a more anime or cartoon style, but next to real-looking eyes and lips it becomes horrifying. But seriously, the lack of nose I'm pretty certain single-handedly ruins the art style. There's just these voids or maybe vague smudges on so many of those faces.

[raydotpng]

the art in this game is sooo uncanny, it's like they barely tried to cover up the fact that they're just tracing over real life people and pasting their head on the body... like teo already looks uncanny as it is with how pale he is but then the proportions and perspective of his head are just 💀

[flaminmango]

This game could so totally be a horror/sci fi game with how creepy and fragmented the storyline is.

Coupled with the uncanny images, the plot could be a rogue AI generating images to convince MC to do things for it and eventually take over their life in the end

[edodgeson]

Can I also say that I was so disappointed that both love interests were ‘celebrities’. It would be so much more interesting if at least one of them was a doctor, or a fireman, or an athlete, or an electrician, or anyone else but a film director or a wannabe film director…

[cutielamerr]

I was so excited when The Ssum was announced because I loved Mystic Messenger and enjoyed Nameless. However, once they announced that ridiculous monthly pricing, I lost all interest. While I’m glad I didn’t waste any money on this game. It’s still disappointing to hear that the Ssum just isn’t good overall. (Those Teo CGs are nightmare fuel.) I was kind of hoping it would have been really good and then I would have swallowed my pride and paid to play. But my wallet is saved.

Oh Cheritz, how the mighty have fallen.

Thanks for making an in-depth update and sticking to the 200 days of content. I imagine it must have been mind numbing after a while. At least Harry looked good!

[nancywinner]

When I started playing Teo's route I accidentally MISSED day 14 completely (didn't know it was important) and came back to find Teo had ASSUMED I accepted his confession and reciprocated. Returning to see the only text options not even have a transition with me 'involved' and just jumping straight into the relationship just irked me so much---I stopped playing Teo's route.

It makes me wonder if the same thing could've happened in mystic messenger...

[jaysandravens]

on the one hand, I sort of understand why they didn't want any major storyline deviations in a 200-day long game, since if you got a bad ending on day like, 150, you might feel resentful about having to replay such a long game because you made a mistake in your responses somewhere. But I feel like 1) Otome game fans have enough time on their hands that this isn't that big of a concern and 2) A simple auto-save feature could fix this, adding save states to the game before game-changing decisions are made.