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| Title | Illusion of Itehari |
| Developer | LicoBiTs |
| Publisher | Aksys Games |
| Release Date | September 18th, 2025 |
| Genre | Otome, Visual Novel |
| Platform | Nintendo Switch |
| Age Rating | Teen |
| Official Website | |
Recently, I found myself back in the mood for some otome. Lately, I’ve been reviewing games that have a lot of running around and I felt like it was time for some more relaxing options. I haven’t really been following Illusion of Itehari, but having decided I wanted to play something relaxing next, I ended up looking into what new otome were coming out soon and was reminded of it. What I also found out, was that the same people behind Piofiore, are the ones who created Illusion of Itehari, or Utakata no Uchronia as it was titled in Japan. Same artist, same director and even the same scenario writer. A few years ago now, Piofiore was the start of me truly getting into otome. I had played a little bit of otome in the past, even reviewed one for oprainfall on PC, not very well though. But, Piofiore: Fated Memories was the first I actually purchased for Switch and is the title I now seem to compare them all too. Thus, I decided on a whim I wanted to play Illusion of Itehari, and thanks to Aksys, I was was fortunate enough to get my hands on it.
Illusion of Itehari takes place in a town floating on an island in the sky called Itehari. Itehari has existed for hundreds of years as this perfect utopia, where its citizens live carefree lives, free of violence and suffering. The main character of this one, Hinagiku, is a noblewoman who has recently turned 18 and become the head of her family. Every noble family has a head and her family, specifically, the Eastern Fifth, is also one of the top families who each take care of a section of town and are responsible for a population of commoners. Hinagiku lost her parents in a fire when she was a child and now that she’s come of age, it’s become her responsibility to run things for her family. Not all is as it seems in Itehari, however. While Hinagiku always thought Itehari was this perfect utopia, she’s been quite sheltered. She comes to learn that things are a lot more complicated than they seem.
There are five main routes in Illusion of Itehari and then one final route where everything is fully revealed and some loose ends are tied up. Being that this is an otome, of course each of those five routes contains a love interest you can go after. The common route starts with a prologue and then contains a first and second chapter. Chapter 2 is where the game will split. In the beginning, the story only splits into one of two routes. You can either start with Awayuki: Hinagiku’s attendant who takes care of her every whim within reason, or Tobari: the head of the Entertainment District. I ultimately ended up starting with Awayuki, then did Tobari’s route second, Yori third, Tsuyukusa fourth and finally Yashiro was last. Yori is a member of the Kurozuru. The Kurozuru are somewhat of a police or military force that’s in charge of keeping the peace in town. Tsuyukusa is an old friend of Hinagiku’s who runs a shop where he takes on random tasks for Itehari’s citizens and fiddles with machinery, sometimes fixing stuff around town. And lastly is Yashiro, a man who lost all his memories and ends up saving Hinagiku in the very beginning when she’s attacked.
Honestly, this is one of those otome where I didn’t have a definite favorite among the different love interests. I think Tobari is my favorite for how he looks. And then it’s somewhat of a tie between him and Awayuki, for who I liked the most personality and story wise. My actual favorite guy in the game, unfortunately, isn’t a love interest. He’s this character who after the first route, seems to pop-up for only a tiny bit each time, and then he becomes more important in the final route. I don’t know what it was about him, but I was definitely into him the most and wish Hinagiku got the chance to seduce him. I loved getting to know him more at the end, and it didn’t feel like he and Hinagiku got enough time together. Actually, there is one other side character, one of the Kurozuru, who I also wish would’ve been a love interest, but wasn’t. Though, I wouldn’t say he was my favorite between the two. I’ll keep the names of these two men to myself, one somewhat for spoiler reasons and the other just to keep you all guessing between the three different Kurozuru guys who aren’t love interests.
Now that I’ve discussed the plot and characters, let’s talk about the overall features of this otome. Illusion of Itehari plays like, well like what fans expect nowadays from a Switch otome. No, it’s not an Otomate title, which most of the otome we see localized nowadays are, but it pretty much plays the same. Although, it does have some of its own pros and cons. First of all, a huge feature I appreciated was the story log. Normally, whenever you fully close out of the game, turn your Switch off and then turn it back on later and load up your otome again, the log will be fully wiped. What I love about Illusion of Itehari, is that the log is never actually wiped. Whenever I would turn off the game and then load it up again later, the full log for whatever route I was on, was still there. This helped a lot for refreshing my memory on what was happening whenever I stayed up late making progress and started to fall asleep in the middle of whatever was happening. Another unique feature in Itehari, is that the 2D character portraits are actually animated. Each character, when their portrait is on the screen, will continually be moving, such as their hair might be moving, and you can also see their shoulders go up and down as they breathe. I think this definitely gives some life to the game. However, other areas where the game was lacking, make me wonder if maybe too much of the budget went to that.
A lot of Illusion of Itehari is various chunks of narrative on a mostly black background. Not only that, but even the end credits are on a black screen. You don’t see the various CG scenes from the route you just completed, as the credits scroll by. Plus, almost all the flashback scenes, which show various background history relevant to the route you’re on, don’t have any art or scenery either. They’re also simply narrative text on a mostly black screen. All of these things left Itehari feeling like it was lacking in a lot of ways. Now obviously, I can’t say for sure why it was lacking in these areas, but I do wish the game had… more.
Speaking of the overall content and substance of Illusion of Itehari, I should also briefly go over the amount of endings and extra content this otome has. That’s also another way it felt a bit lacking. Now, seeing as the same exact people who worked on Piofiore made Illusion of Itehari, I think it’s fair to compare the two. Piofiore: Fated Memories had a ton of content. Each route had a good, best and bad ending. Both the best and the worst endings would unlock extra story bits. It felt like the game had a ton of content, overall. Itehari on the other hand, each route only has one best ending and one bad ending. There are also the usual no credits, abrupt bad ends sprinkled about, as well. There are no extra story bits, though, that take place after the main bad endings. Each character has a small extra story thing that I don’t believe required unlocking and then a short story which you do have to unlock by getting their best ending. Both seem to take place after the best ending. Once again, though, these are mostly chunks of narrative on a mostly black screen. Though each short story does unlock another CG to enjoy.
Despite the lacking extras, each route in this one is actually quite long. I think a lot of the routes took me somewhere near 10 hours. In total, this whole otome took me 55 hours to get through every route and view the extra content. A couple routes were easy to get to the good ending, a couple not so much. But it’s quite simple to go back to the chapter select, or your save files if you save often enough in separate slots, and fast-forward through the stuff you already read for the purpose of undoing your bad choices. Story wise, Illusion of Itehari isn’t the most romance filled otome ever. A lot of the story is Hinagiku learning more about the place she lives and uncovering various secrets of what’s actually going on behind the scenes. Each route, you will still clearly see her falling for the current love interest and you’ll unlock various CG art scenes between the two like any other otome. Nonetheless, it’s somewhat light on romance. I wouldn’t say it’s not the main focus, but it’s kind of like an extra thing happening on the side of lesser importance.
Overall, I really enjoyed Illusion of Itehari. While this otome was lacking in a lot of ways, the story still had me hooked pretty quickly and I couldn’t seem to put it down. One last thing I should mention, is that this is nowhere near Aksys Games’ worst release in regards to grammar mistakes. Forgive me for comparing the two again, but I will say it wasn’t nearly as bad as the two Piofiore games in that regard. In looking into Itehari a bit after deciding I wanted to do this review, I saw that a fandisc had already been announced for Japan. I’m not sure if it’s out there yet or not, but I really hope Aksys will localize it next year. I’m now actually waiting for sequels and/or fandiscs for a few different otome. I really hope despite the Switch 2 now being out, that we’ll continue to see more otome localized for the original Switch, especially the fandiscs and sequels to previous releases us otome fans in the West have already come to love.
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