VN Talk: Billionaire Lovers

In which I talk (write) about visual novels from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: Windows (also on Mac and Linux)
Release: 2022

I admit I cringed a little at Billionaire Lovers' title, which suggests you will be romancing a string of fabulously wealthy men whose most defining trait is their money. But the game is oddly not very romantic at all, even though it initially looks like it will be.

The nameable main character (whose pronouns can be "he" or "she" depending on the player's choosing) receives $100 million dollars at the start of the game from their largely absentee uncle and is allowed to live at his estate, though he is not there himself because he's always traveling. Their uncle calls it an early taste of their inheritance as his sole heir. For a broke college graduate without a job, it's a nice deal.

Their uncle does leave them with a warning though, to stay inside their swanky community because people might be out for their wealth, and though the MC is good about that, that doesn't mean they aren't in danger.

The game offers a warning at the start that it may contain sensitive content, and that's fair because if there's any game I'd compare Billionaire Lovers to, it's Doki Doki Literature Club and not any romance game. It's not as straight up intense as DDLC, but it starts out the same way in that you think you're in a romance game only to reveal a different kind of story.

Spoilers after the break. Seriously! I really like this game and think more people should check it out, but play it first. It's only $3 and 2-4 hours long depending on whether you chase all the endings.

So, are you good for spoilers?

Then let's go!

I knew getting to know the guys was fairly linear after reading some of the first English language reviews (the game was originally released in Chinese and has an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam), so I wasn't expecting a traditional Japanese-style romance game. One reviewer called it "semi-linear" and notably, people kept saying there wasn't much romance, but they stayed for the story.

So let's get the elephant out of the room. Though this game is called Billionaire Lovers you at most make romantic baby steps towards any kind of relationship, and it's only from the MC's POV because everyone else has an agenda. So forget the "lovers" part of the title. And only one of them might be a billionaire. We never see his bank account. The rest, being a card shark professor, an influencer/streamer, and a detective playing male escort, are most likely not. The latter two even admit at one point that they only live in the toney neighborhood because someone else put them up there.

But you don't know this at the start. Aside from the content warning and a weird Privacy Policy that shows up on the MC's phone at the start of the game, it initially plays itself straight. You get to meet all the supposed love interests and the MC is generally a trusting, borderline gullible person, who probably shouldn't play gacha games since they get easily addicted.

My first playthrough took me what looked like it would be Elias's route, which I didn't mind, since if this had been a traditional otome I would have chosen him first. This first playthrough really plays like a romance game, with beautiful CGs of moments that would generally go into a romance game's CG gallery. (Notably, this game does not have one. Your first clue.)

The MC has what ought to be a romantic dinner with Elias, the wealthy CEO. You learn his family history about being ruined by a financial scam, and though there are a couple odd things about the date, the MC goes home safely. They begin thinking about a future date when they get an alert from their phone saying their bank account is nearly empty. Someone has been siphoning away their $100 million gift in $5 million increments, supposedly through their own phone, leaving them with less than $100 to their name. Nothing can fix it. The money has been laundered out of the receiving account and the bank can't help.

Then the route just ends, with the resulting Steam achievement telling you that it would be a good idea to start again.

This reminded me of the Coffin ending in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors where you couldn't progress because you hadn't uncovered information from another route. What happened to the MC's money? Who is out to get them? I was so ready for another playthrough.

When I returned to the title screen, Elias's portrait was blanked out. His story was done.

The first time you play the game, you aren't allowed to decline the weird Privacy Policy that appears on the MC's phone. They justify accepting it on the basis that they're broke so there's not much value in their information anyway. But on subsequent playthroughs, you're allowed to click Decline.

But the app doesn't want you to.

It's at first annoying and then outright creepy as the app gets more and more aggressive in trying to get the MC to accept. The word Accept gets bigger, Decline gets smaller, the screen freaks out, and of course the creepy music starts playing.

But at last the MC manages to decline, and the game proceeds as normal until after they get to their uncle's neighborhood. This time the three other "love interests" get more to do, though Steven is still clearly in the backseat. While Elias came off as a little strange, there was nothing outright wrong with him in his playthrough. Not so with Justin and Kyle.

Justin, the streamer and influencer next door, says he wants to become friends. He says he's getting tired of his online persona and the lies he has to tell his fans to sell his commercial personality versus his real one, but it turns out that he's an abusive gaslighter looking for his next victim, who better than the naive rich person who just moved in next door?

Yes, he's the reason for the content warning. Aside from relentlessly twistin the MC's words to make himself the victim, he's implied to be physically beating them when the screen shakes. Forgiving him is a pretty dark path, could ultimately end up with the MC taking the rap and serving jail time for a very bad plan of his (while Justin, of course, plays the victim and passes the MC off as the abuser). He even blames the MC for letting him lie to them.

Oddly, not forgiving him goes over well, with him completely cutting the MC out of his life. From a storytelling point this is fine, having less than four "love interests" would have looked slim and by the time we see him for who he is, we know all we need to know about him, but it does make him feel a little underutilized given that he ultimately contributes nothing to the main story.

Kyle, the math professor, is woven in better. He's the focus of the rest of the route, both before and after the incident with Justin, and he's largely important because of the gacha app, which the MC becomes increasingly addicted to after getting their first SSR prize (the rare reward).

The gacha app is a weird part of the game where the MC initially gets prizes that they can give to someone they might love, and at first it goes well, because of the introductory newbie bonus, but it later got to the point that for sanity's sake I wished all the gacha drawing had been shortened to a few lines of narration. In a way it was effective. I seriously felt bad knowing the MC was dropping $100 every batch of ten pulls when I was the one clicking the button. Sure they have $100 million, but spending thousands of dollars chasing a gacha prize is painful to my plebeian brain.

And in this playthrough they get really addicted. No SSR prizes drop after their introductory one, so they meet up with Kyle and ask if he knows how to math their way into getting another SSR to drop like he can math his way in a card game against other people. No, gacha games don't can't be "won" like that, but the MC focuses in on the fact that you can always get lucky.

After yet more rounds of gacha (so painful!), something funny starts happening. The app starts auto-playing itself, buying tickets, opening prize boxes, but it's always junk and not the expensive stuff, and the MC can't close the app or turn off their phone. It was a really great surprise the second I realized I wasn't the one opening all these gacha boxes anymore, and for this moment alone I can see why the game had to make the player manually open all of them until this point.

The reason all this is relevant is that the playthrough ends with Kyle being revealed as the programmer. In fact, he was the one who introduced the MC to the app in the first place on their flight over. So why was the MC being introduced to this app that was clearly intended to siphon off their money?

At this point we know the stories of three of the guys, and the title screen has blanked all of them except for Steven in advance of the third and final route. You can see why this isn't much of a romance game. There have been no romantic endings so far, with scenes and music being the most you get, though the "love" theme sometimes plays at inappropriate times to show that the MC really does want a relationship with someone and perhaps is just too gullible to know better.

Steven initially looks to be the first genuinely helpful character. Invaders break into the MC's home, Steven tries to get them out, and then once the invaders leave, he offers his services (though he does want to be paid), pointing out that as a male escort he's pretty accustomed to looking for bugging devices.

The reason Steven feels like a breath of fresh air is because he and the MC have something in common (the 008 TV show, which is obviously a parody of James Bond) and there is a quick "us vs them" dynamic. Someone is out to get the MC (which we know is legit from prior routes) and he's there to help.

But the MC can't quite stay put, even knowing the danger, and goes to Elias's house to return his wallet, which is where things all fall apart, or come together from the player's perspective. The MC is quickly captured, which reveals Elias as the mastermind behind the neighborhood events and he wants the MC to contact their Uncle Charles to discuss a ransom. (Suddenly his weird quirks like always wearing gloves—to not leave fingerprints—makes sense!)

However, it's been previously established that the MC has trouble reaching him because he's always changing his phone number, so that doesn't work. But even if they can't get a hold of Charles, the MC still has $100 million in their account, which looks like enough money for Elias to put his plan into action. He needs to acquire a particular building in a bankruptcy auction, and it can't be tied to him, so the MC will buy it for him.

This segment of the game is really good stuff. Steven calls the MC's phone and given the persistent ringing, they're allowed to answer. It's great how the MC can pass a coded message based on their shared love of 008 to make the conversation seem "normal" to Elias while not only giving Steven the information he needs to put together a rescue plan, but to find the evidence Elias unintentionally left behind in the building he's now trying to buy.

When the time for the auction arrives, it's great that the player gets to make the decision on whether and how to stall for time even as Elias is getting more and more impatient, making the eventual payoff that much more satisfying. And even when apprehended, Elias is not terribly bitter about it. Despite his own family being ruined by a scammer (his backstory was not lie), he doesn't feel any remorse because he took it as a lesson for how the world worked, and he leaves the still trust-desiring MC with a message that everyone wants something from another person, so they should not think that Steven did this for nothing.

So the MC asks Steven about it in the epilogue, and he answers honestly. He's (obviously) not really a male escort. He's a private detective, who has been chasing down the leader of a Ponzi scheme that has been ruining people for the past decade (like Elias's family). What he wants from the MC is information, because he believes that a resident of the neighborhood is involved and he's hoping they have a clue. In particular, he thinks the ringleader may have created a distraction to cover their escape.

Yes, it's possible for someone to want something from you, but that doesn't mean they're out to rob you of all you're worth!

Aside from that, ding-ding! The MC realizes that they, and their sudden inheritance of $100 million dollars, was the ringleader's distraction! It was a really nice twist to explain the ridiculous premise of the story and why Uncle Charles is always out of contact and changing phone numbers. He's not just a weird uncle. He's on the run!

So the game ends with the MC working part-time with Steven, having returned the $100 million to the police (since it was all stolen). They don't have much money between them, though they did get a $50k reward check for ratting on the MC's uncle (who is captured in another country), but they seem to be doing all right. It's nice that the MC's ability to trust and love people is what lands them the best ending, even though they do think about dumping Steven later if they ever make enough money. That's why this isn't a romance game!