**Reminder: this review is not spoiler free.**
So far, I’ve only had the chance to play Leon’s main story route because it was free on Love365, and let me tell you, I can’t wait to buy the Star-Crossed Myth games on the Switch next time they’re on sale. I actually enjoyed his route and what I’ve seen of the game through it.
Leon, the God of Leo, is everything the stereotypical sun-sign Leo would be- for better and worse. He’s charismatic yet haughty, a leader with a borderline tyrannical side, powerful but unable to control it, and incredibly sexy. His touch alone can give immense pleasure, and the sin for which he is punished is defiling a goddess.
Spoiler alert: the twist is that his rejection of a goddess drove her crazy and defiled her sanity, causing her to fall from the Heavens.
I seriously loved that twist, because it’s clear that the vague but not-so-vague ambiguity of the phrasing of his crime is meant to be misleading. He’s presented as a sexually nonchalant playboy God at first. In fact, the protagonist catches him and Teorus having a foursome- or at least some intense foreplay- with two human women at the beginning of the second chapter. Leon’s reasoning for participating was simply to see if he just needed to give a human woman pleasure to remove his mark.
Of course, it wasn’t that simple.
During this encounter, the MC manages to get herself into a mildly compromising arrangement with Leon where she is determined to show him the value of love, and ends up as his handmaid. Through their connection, she gets a glimpse at what the work of the Department of Wishes is like, and- as all MCs do in otomes- follows her moral compass and begins meddling, protesting against Leon’s apathy with her thoughts and feelings on love.
One day, Leon has to actually go to Earth in order to grant wishes because their wish reflection pool wasn’t clear enough to be functional. The person he chooses to grant the wish of is none other than MC’s friend/coworker. What transpires is that the coworker is having a fight with her boyfriend and Leon grants her wish of “wishing he (the boyfriend) would go away.” MC questions him and intervenes because she knows that people don’t always say (or even think) what they mean, and insists that her friend didn’t actually want her boyfriend to leave. She asks Leon to use his powers to get her friend’s boyfriend to show up at a park while she calls her friend and asks her to meet her there. The god and his handmaid watch from afar in the park as the two lovers reconnect and MC gets a victory when the two make up.
However, Leon later gets a “victory” when the boyfriend turns out to be a complete douchebag and nearly sexually assaults MC’s friend.
What I love about this plot point is that Voltage didn’t hold back from showing that people are absolute trash sometimes, and that both Leon and the MC had valid points. It was true that MC’s friend and her boyfriend didn’t want to break up in the first incident, but it was also true that humanity can rear its disgusting, ugly head sometimes too. However, MC’s friend remains strong and doesn’t swear off love even though she just had an awful experience, and I think that is part of what touches Leon.
I don’t think there’s a clear point in his route where we can say “this is when Leon falls in love,” but it does seem to happen somewhat naturally and is delightful. The initial small moments of affection aren’t over-saturated in sweetness and are enjoyable as the romance develops. Both endings were satisfying after a dramatic climax and I definitely wanted to continue to read later releases for Leon.
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