Romance or Ruin? [Progression Fantasy]

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

The morning my mom woke up from her coma, she grabbed my hand, stared me dead in the eyes, and said,"This world is an otome game, and if you don’t make the heroine fall in love with you, you’re doomed."

I thought she’d finally lost it.

What even was a heroine? And an otome? Could I eat those?

I was eight, barely knew how to spell "romance," and suddenly, my survival depended on it.

There was only one ending in this action-packed romantic fantasy—romance or ruin.

Alternate Titles:"My Mom’s Guide to Winning the Heroine’s Heart""How to Win the Heroine’s Heart and Survive This Otome Game"

What to expect-battle academy-single romance-crack-it's a rom-com-unique isekai twist-Shounen-Action-Trapped in a Dating Sim-Crazy Mom

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2025
Author: Alfir2

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.3/ 5.0
Followers: 381
Views: 127,146

Chapters(74 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(10)

PetereckaRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I don't know what to exactly think about it yet. It's fast paced, it's crazy and the first chapter is full of questionable child raising practices. Also from the reaction to being woken up in a hospital I can only think that this is happening in some kind of version of the USA. If you all knew how many operations I underwent and how long I spent in the hospital without paying a single dime you'd probably get a heart attack. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked, I don't know yet how good the story is going to be, but the first few reviews are extremely important, so here am I. It definitely seems interesting at least.
sypherRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The academy feels like an actual hell hole meant to craft the perfect ESPer user around and does not pull any punches...the MC has a unique power and he is not too strong as to trivialise all fights...all in all will be a novel I stay updated in for sure
ipmanRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This story is so much more than just a cute romance between two characters in an academy setting. Though the dialogue is witty and sharp, the actual plot and intrigue is quite layered and much darker than I was expecting (a pleasant surprise). Give it a chance even if romance is not your thing. If it is, feast.
here lies SanityRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This is one of the most interesting stories I've read. Up there with "The Perfect Run"
The story started off with a bang(or a HONK if you want specifics) and quickly puts 8 year old mark into a sanity reducing training arc before throwing him into an academy. There is actually a narrative reason to why the characters are so... 'quirky' to put it nicely
Their powers, also known as "ESP," are very mental based. The name you give your power directs how it will develop and grow. A professor with domination based powers often acts like she owns dominion over the entire school.
The characters are all very unique and I love this. No cookie cutter characters with carboard box backstories. The main cast is all very unique in good and bad ways. Many of them are functionally psychopaths and and MC's mother is definitely insane.
she is in an accident and receives the reincarnated soul of a sociopathic office worker and all her unrelenting determination to make the villain win the heroine.
This might be slightly off-putting to reader and the only thing I have to say to that is my condolences and you should continue reading copy & paste stories with no originality.
The grammar is exceptional. There are no mistakes that I've noticed and I've been reading this religiously consuming chapter after chapter as soon as they drop.
The style the author puts down is actually amazing. The fact that another story they wrote with 3 of the most basic premises out there (cultivation, videogame character, and isekai) got 1.2k favorites in under 2 months is very telling of his skill and ability to write fiction.
SunTitanRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Bear with me because I don't do reviews and I've been up way too long. I just wanted to give the author some positive feedback and appreciation for the work they've done. Also, I accidentally deleted my review a couple times, so.
I was surprised by how much I liked this story. The characters are fun. The plot is interesting. World-building is unique - I love the power system. Combat is written in a highly engaging way, some of the best I've seen on this site. Very rarely am I able to picture a fight scene well in my head, but Alfir2 does it.
A few minor inconsistencies that made me reread to figure out what I missed are the only thing keeping this from a solid 5 stars in my book. The main one was how long did it take Mark to unlock his powers? I feel like there was a different answer in the training montage than later in the story.
This is the kind of story I almost wish I'd found when it was complete, edited, and ready to binge the entire series. But I'm glad to have found it anyway. It's fun, fast-paced, and the characters are engaging - and that's saying a lot, because I usually do not like academy stories OR romances.
9.75/10
LotaryRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
The start was good, but the story fizzled out pretty fast, regrettably. And it seems to have been abandoned, even though there still remained some potential.
The dynamic between the main characters was nice to read. What I did not enjoy that much where the tons of side characters and how the scenes mainly seemed to jump from one action scene to another on. You just kind of get tired of it after a while.
EmptyOwlRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
This was a clever story with some hilarious dark comedy and excellent characters with strong world-building elements. But as it has progressed it has fallen off in terms of quality and interesting content. The characters' actions seem odd and the building lack of details, or at least the feel of that, have ruined what was shaping up to be a fun little story. It seems like it is trying to take itself too seriously and has changed in tone as the story has progressed.
The changing POV's are interesting and insightful, but as the story has progressed more and more have been added, with very little added tot he story.
ChouritsushiRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
It's...alright? The beginning was honestly incredibly fun for me, with a zany mom and an unwilling son being forced into training montages, but it quickly becomes overly serious and fairly grimdark. I quickly lost interest by the time the author made the decision to make all ESPers to be psychologically insane. We had just been introduced to a straight out psychopath for a classmate, with the school enabling him, and so I find myself not caring. Add that to the fact that there's no actual romance at all for a couple of reasons, and the mom being straight up vile and outright psychopathic instead of zany, means that I have no ENJOYMENT at all.
It really reminds me of MobuSekai, except if that story didn't have the humor and harem hijinks that made it light-hearted - aka an otome game that would be absolutely horrific if it were realistic. MobuSekai made that world funny and endearing; this one is grimdark.
Don't get me wrong, I actually am interested in where the story is going, but that's just because I want questions answered. The fact that the mom is a straight up insane gaslighting villain except in her POV chapters where we're supposed to see her good side or something? As much as I want to root for the MC, he's been extremely stunted growing up (insane mom) means that his gaps in knowledge and common sense make it difficult.
The heroine is nice, and frankly I absolutely ship the main couple, but the 'romance' is completely non-existent. She's being gaslit into liking him (insane mom), and he has no concept of love nor has any agency in his life (insane mom), so anything that exists is false as of now. I WOULD love it if they eventually get together in a healthy manner, but considering the grimdark world I'm not sure there's any allowance by the author for that.
This is the type of story that I think maybe shows absolutely great promise...when it's completely written, but until then I would never recommend it to anyone. To much of this story seems to h
AvidReadererRoyal Road
★★ 2.0
It started off great, we got a zany psychopathic mom realizing the world was an otome game and her going to extremes in order to train her 8 year old son in order to survive the world and defy the fate the world had assigned to him. The story showing Mark's PoV dealing with it as a child for 8 years later leading into the academy was also great. It's a great concept and I thoroughly enjoyed the first 50 chapters or so, but then it slowly started to degrade due to various issues:
- The personalities of the characters changed around chapter 53? The set characterization seemed to go into the trash. For example - We had Mark's character set as a somewhat quiet asocial observer who underwent harsh rigorous training that was still learning to identify his emotions and sense of self, only to become a character that got drunk after a sip of alcohol and give smart alec replies to his professor and openly flirt with the heroine. A somewhat complete 180 with his character's personality becoming a somewhat cpy+paste as with so many other immature characters in other novels.
- World Building - the world was described as going to shit in the 1800s with dungeons and espers emerging yaddy yadda yadda. There is a big disconnect however as characters often make references to things they shouldn't know about. ex: describing robots as R2-D2, using certain anime to describe other characters (anime they should never have known about). The constant references to things in our current real world by fictional characters in a novel that should never have experienced them breaks the story's immersion.
reil-rhiilRoyal Road
★★ 1.5
There are a lot of details that seem to slip, slide, and change throughout this story.
Armchairs/storage rings that are explained three different times, with all characters acting surprised every time.
windows in classrooms that were previously blatantly described as being windowless.
Characters descriptions change between chapters, and characters behaving weirdly, their motivations and behaviors changing.
Style: inconsistent, motivations and rationale change at the drop of a hat, world building is erratic and changes suddenly, confusing to read.
Story: Interesting premise kept me around longer than it should have, I'd love to see this story polished up.
Grammar: Fine, nothing egregious.
Character: Both the strongest and weakest part of this story. So much potential, so little of which is realized. Its tragic.
Overall this story needs the author to keep better track of their characters, the world and environment, and the manner in which they all interact. How is an audience supposed to stay engaged when they keep tripping into plot holes and things that directly contradict previous content?
I'd love to see an edit, and recommend some form of character spreadsheet so that the author can keep track of who looks like what, how they behave, and how they feel about other characters, because right now it's just a mess.