An often serialized historical theme/story in Japan – Era of Samurai: Code of Love Review

Have only read the prologue so far, and as a long time Voltage fan, I enjoyed that, tho the guys appeal less than usual to me, artwork wise. (I have, however, bought the first story to play through at my leisure.) The uninformed complaints about this story being a copy or rip-off or unoriginal confused me, especially after comparing the opening of one mentioned Otome, Destined for Love, to this one. The story/game they are insisting is the original and was stolen from? It's not any more original than Code of Love, and the historically based story and characters can hardly be called stolen. (Their ignorance and unreasonably lowered scores is part of why I am giving 5 stars myself.) The compared games don't even closely begin the same at all, one is in portrait mode, while Code of Love is in landscape. Code starts off with the heroine in a clinic doctoring patients, while Destined begins with the heroine waking up in an unfamiliar room that is being invaded by attackers. Similar events do play out, because both fictional stories are based around actual historical events, but the events do not play out exactly the same. Similar =/= same. Even the artwork isn't even remotely the same except for sharing a 1860s setting in Kyoto, Japan and similar Otome art style. I think the real confusion some reviewers are having is that they fail to realize that the Shinsengumi are an oft repeated theme in Japanese entertainment and has been for well over a hundred years now. The Shinsengumi are serialized like the Cowboys and Indians in the United States, the Shinsengumi's tragic theme was and has been repeated again and again in various genres of entertainment, to this very day. As for the complaint that names are the same for most of the characters in the similar games, that is because these are actual historical characters who have been largely fictionalized for entertainment purposes. These heroes actually lived and died, many tragically. They were real people, and some of them were actually less than heroic in reality. However, this is a fictionalized romantic Otome game, it's not a true representation of history, but a fictionalized and sanitized version made for our enjoyment. So please, reviewers, before you go falsely and erroneously accusing Voltage of stealing a story or characters or being unoriginal, learn about the culture and true history first. Spoiler: please don't read further if you hate or want to avoid spoilers. The best Western comparison to the Shinsengumi I can think of would be the Texan heroes who fell with the Alamo. Both are themes and a loss which has been replayed often in their country of origin's movies and other media. Fact is, the Shinsengumi lost their war. Many Shinsengumi were killed or executed during or at the end of that war. Therefore, to unrealistically expect any tales involving the Shinsengumi to have happy endings, is to be ignorant of their true place in history. (Although a part of me hopes they managed to squeeze one or two happy endings in this game, since this is fiction and I want the characters I fall in love with to keep living and loving the heroine.)
Review by YukariOro on Era of Samurai: Code of Love.