BU$TAFELLOWS 💰 Unlock All Routes (Visual Novel Book Club)

How to Unlock All A Sides (except リンボ)

(See the threads for Chapter 1-4 for リンボ’s)

This is being read as part of the Visual Novel Book Club. Another VN, 9-nine-ここのつここのかここのいろ, is being read at the same time, feel free to join both clubs!

bustafellowsCover
BU$TAFELLOWS :moneybag: Home Thread

Info on Choices

To unlock each route’s A side, different choices have to be in chapters 1-4. Just start a new game and pick the choices from a route below and when you reach the end of chapter 4, a new route’s A side should have unlocked.

You can skip all text you’ve read previously. Standard settings will show text you’ve already read in a different color.

The choices will be under double spoiler. So you can unblur one choice at the time (minimizing spoilers). OBS! Some choices have a time limit.

Guides if you want to check choices yourself (link to English guide for those reading on PC)

These are the general links to the guides. You’ll need to navigate to the current route yourself.
Japanese guide #1 ← This is the one used for choices
Japanese guide #2
English guide - this is a review (that links to all the guides), so don’t read past the walkthrough links unless you are okay with spoilers. It does note when minor spoilers start and then major spoilers. Reader beware!

One last note, unlocking a specific route don’t seem to be very strict. Meaning if you compare multiple guides you’ll see different choices recommended for the same route. And lastly, following all these might not exhaust all possible options so maybe not all memorabilia from the chapters will be unlocked.

シュウ’s Route

シュウ’s route is a little special. It has two different memorabilia connected to his good end in his A side.

As far as I know, there should be no problem with setting up both at the same time, except for keeping track of the saves and the fact that you might notice a trend in what is different for the choices. Since they are both a part of the good ending, both of them will use the same choices in A side.

If you only want to set up one/go in completely blind, I think I’d recommend setting up option X (do realize though that different guides picked different options as the “correct” first path). And this is because as far as I understand you won’t need to play through all of A side for both and therefore I’d pick to do the one I think is better first.

If you don’t care about the spoiler, or think the spoiler is fairly minor (I don’t know how much if anything changes beyond what memorabilia you get): Option X is telling/encouraging シュウ to quit smoking, Option Y is not encouraging him to stop smoking.

I’ve noted on both options where you save to start the other option. So if you use that save for the next option, then ignore the choices up until that save point (it is the same place for both options).

Option X
Chapter 1

この街の人間について

シューホーンだった

シガーバー

※セーブする1 (for Y)

健康には良くないよ

ちょっとムカつく人だと思った

お金よりも特ダネが欲しい

Chapter 2

煙草止めればいいのに

そうだよ

みんな仲が良いんだね

YES
NO
NO
NO
YES
NO
NO
NO
YES
NO

※時間切れ

勝負する

人差し指でコインの外側を擦る

Chapter 3

私も会いたいな

やめておく

Chapter 4

No choices for this chapter. But the cat’s name from the previous chapter, who approaches テウタ about a letter, and which swimsuit she wears (late in the chapter), lets you know if you are on the right path.


Option Y
Chapter 1

この街の人間について

シューホーンだった

シガーバー

※セーブする1 (for X)

嗜好品なんてそんなもの

ちょっとムカつく人だと思った

お金よりも特ダネが欲しい

Chapter 2

あっちに喫煙所あるよ

そうだよ

みんな仲が良いんだね

YES
NO
NO
NO
YES
NO
NO
NO
YES
NO

※時間切れ

勝負する

人差し指でコインの外側を擦る

Chapter 3

私も会いたいな

吸ってみたい

Chapter 4

No choices for this chapter. But the cat’s name from the previous chapter, who approaches テウタ about a letter, and which swimsuit she wears (late in the chapter), lets you know if you are on the right path.

モズ’s Route

Chapter 1

この街の犯罪について

シューホーンだった

※時間切れ

かっこいい人だと思った

お金よりも特ダネが欲しい

Chapter 2

煙草止めればいいのに

そうだよ

みんな仲が良いんだね

YES
NO
NO
YES
NO
NO
YES
YES
NO
NO

※時間切れ

勝負する

人差し指でコインの外側を擦る

Chapter 3

私も会いたいな

やめておく

Chapter 4

No choices for this chapter. But the cat’s name from the previous chapter, who approaches テウタ about a letter, and which swimsuit she wears (late in the chapter), lets you know if you are on the right path.

ヘルベチカ’s Route

Chapter 1

この街のエンタメについて

シューホーンだった

※時間切れ

かっこいい人だと思った

正直言ってお金は欲しい

Chapter 2

煙草止めればいいのに

そうだよ

みんな仲が良いんだね

YES
YES
NO
NO
NO
NO
NO
YES
NO
NO

※時間切れ

勝負する

人差し指でコインの外側を擦る

Chapter 3

早く見つかるといいね

やめておく

Chapter 4

No choices for this chapter. But the cat’s name from the previous chapter, who approaches テウタ about a letter, and which swimsuit she wears (late in the chapter), lets you know if you are on the right path.

スケアクロウ’s Route

Chapter 1

この街の人間について

シューホーンだった

※時間切れ

かっこいい人だと思った

お金よりも特ダネが欲しい

Chapter 2

煙草止めればいいのに

そうだよ

優しいんだね

NO
NO
YES
NO
NO
YES
YES
NO
NO
YES

※時間切れ

勝負する

人差し指でコインの外側を擦る

Chapter 3

私も会いたいな

やめておく

Chapter 4

No choices for this chapter. But the cat’s name from the previous chapter, who approaches テウタ about a letter, and which swimsuit she wears (late in the chapter), lets you know if you are on the right path.

Discussion Rules

If you want to discuss something related to a new route that shows up in the main chapters, make sure to blur/detail tag them and tell people what they cover (シュウ’s route, chapter 2 after choice number X, for example). Just an extra warning since this thread is here to set up multiple routes.

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter/part and any content in future chapters/parts.
  • When asking for help, do your best to provide context. Pasted text, screenshots, descriptions, etc. Unlike book clubs we can’t flip to relevant pages, so we may need a little help identifying exactly what is being discussed.
  • Feel totally at ease to ask questions or give your thoughts, any time! Clubs live and die by participation, and asking whatever question you have, no matter how silly it may seem, helps others who are reading it and even the answerer themselves.
  • Have fun, and do your best to interpret anything said with as much good faith as possible :slightly_smiling_face:
3 Likes

Just for fun, I decided to go through the choices without a guide. I picked in a few different ways. I’d often pick one that wasn’t picked during Limbo path, and sometimes the same because I wanted to stay true to me. And sometimes I just picked whichever one seemed fun.

For example, I completely failed the “memory” game around Limbo’s keys and wallet. I also managed to make Limbo pay for the two coffees Teuta got at the cafe.

And somehow through my choices, I managed to get Scarecrow (I don’t think the ones I mentioned above behind spoiler mattered for that).

Just for fun, I had recorded my choices to see how much they matched with that route from the guide. Result? Well, my choices barely reflected at all with the guide. If you count all the choices in Limbo’s path, it comes to 24. And of those 24, I made 10 choices the same as for Scarecrow’s path.

My conclusions from that: Some choices weight a lot heavier than others in deciding route, and maybe some choices don’t matter at all. It was a fun experiment.

I’ll definitely want to end up trying all choices, since each seems to come with a bit of text.

I think it took me about 1,5 hours going through all four chapters again with new choices and text. And that was while noting down choices and being a bit distracted at a couple of points. I think I could have easily done it under an hour if I’d been more focused.

4 Likes

Continuing with my adventure of unlocking all routes. My conclusions from unlocking my second route still stands.

Anyway, this time I decided to mostly follow the guide for Helvetica.

Chapter 3 and 4: Helvetica route specific spoilers

The cat naming scene…

「テウタ、おいで。そうだ、僕がお風呂に入れてあげましょうか?ねえ、テウタ?」
If I was Teuta I would be furious, and he is a super creep, but I couldn’t help but laugh. Because the option is to either be super pissed at him all the time, or pretend it is absurd comedy and laugh.

Except, teasing Teuta after opening the letter and then pretending it was bad news? That kinda stuff pisses me off. I guess I can laugh off stupid sexual jokes, but not stuff like that. Tells something about my own hang ups, no? xD

「君のその恥ずかしそうな顔が僕は好きですよ」… … …
Oh no, not that kinda thing…

Using shame for comedic effect is the very reason about 95+% of all romcoms will never be anything I want to see, despite liking romcoms in general. So yeah… not my kinda thing, but as long as it doesn’t go into that kinda territory. (Aka stupid mistakes that makes someone embarrassed that we are supposed to find funny.)

Crap, his route might just be a terribly uncomfortable thing, huh? I’ve been seeing him as a creep but tolerating it for now, but he just makes it worse the more alone time we have with him…

Well, maybe the only way I’d get through his route is by reading it with a club. xD Fellow people to complain with.

And then on to Mozu. My only comment there is that I didn’t think the swimsuit was all it was hyped up to be. Lol on me.

And lastly Shuu, who is my favorite. What will his version of the main story be like? :see_no_evil:

Oh that man makes me laugh. xD But he has poor taste in swimsuits, although better than Mozu. :stuck_out_tongue:


Since I’ve now tried the guide for every route, I can attest that they all do indeed unlock the right routes. :slightly_smiling_face:

I can say there were two areas for each route that had me a bit confused each time, but I decided not to worry about it, one is in chapter 2 after answering the questionnaire, where they will discuss a little what kind of person Teuta is because of her answers. A bit hard to understand. And the other is in chapter 2, when Luka, Valerie, Carmen and Teuta is at a cafe, discussing what kind of man Teuta wants? I think that is what they are doing, and I had a hard time understanding sometimes what kind of man they were talking about.

The nice thing with going through all this at once, was that after a run through or two, it was easy to orient into what situation each choice was. I think if I did it with weeks in between, then I’d have to think harder each time to remember what each part was all about. ^^

2 Likes

Not sure I agree, because even if you didn’t match either route, I guess they didn’t plan on an “Teuta has no (boy)friend” part, so maybe there just had to be a default person if nothing matches?

2 Likes
Default reply

Why would they make Scarecrow the default though? Limbo would seem more likely, since he’s the one most prominent on the cover. Especially since Limbo’s route is the black one and I never saw an answer that looked blacker than the default, unlike all the others that would flash with a specific color if it was specifically for that route.

More particularly, I also tried on some other changes with each route unlock, like picking different options for the memory quiz with Limbo and Shuu at the cafe, and also different options for the motel portion. I also tried the different options for the follow on question after the quiz (who to blame). So those didn’t seem to weight heavily enough to make any difference. But maybe those are outliers.

Since I did this almost 3 weeks ago now, I can’t remember where else I played around with options, but there were a few places. I had tried every option for every choice by the time I unlocked all five routes (and the extra Shuu one). And not once did those deviations result in a different route unlock.

1 Like

I feel the opposite, Limbo is the one they expect you to want, so you have to work hard to get it. Like not messing up in chapter 1 when you try to prove that it was you going back in time to save his life.. Enough mistakes, and nope, denied!
Also Scarecrow in the first 4 chapters in all the story lines is the most obvious character showing a crush on Teuta, so makes sense that he’s default with that narrative.

2 Likes
How I made my assumptions on choices and how they effect route

I guess. :woman_shrugging: To me, Scarecrow doesn’t make much sense as default, but I think he is more little brother energy/後輩 crush energy and I don’t fancy it that much. But I guess he could be default, and why it didn’t matter that I deviated highly from his path.

But the thing is that I failed the memory game for basically all routes, so shouldn’t that have pushed me onto the default path every time since clearly none of them had a reason to trust me?

I’m not versed in VN/otome game design decisions (because my VN experience in total is: 50% of Loopers and not even one full route of Bustafellows), so my assumptions built from my other game experience might be entirely worthless.

But overall, I base my assumptions that some choices don’t matter or matter very little for route selection on the fact that the guide had the same choice for every route for a couple of choices (so clearly they didn’t point to any path). Not that I checked that all the different guides made those choices the same. And also on the fact that different guides picked different options for some choices to unlock the same route. (For example, I glanced through both Helvetica’s route and Scarecrow’s route to compare between the guides and there were different options picked for several choices within each route.)

And from my own experimentation, it was clearly fine to have variance in certain places since I always unlocked the route I aimed for (when I aimed for one) even with the changes I made.

Maybe, some specific choices (different for each route) is important per route, so as long as those are answered correctly for a specific route, that route would be picked (more or less). With the possible exception that a default route would be picked if no other route got enough weight, although I’m not sure there is one.

Anyway, I was just speculating from unlocking each route and not following the guide strictly for any of them and still ending up with the right route. And from the one route I got when I just played around and it turned out I didn’t follow that route’s guide barely at all to get there.

2 Likes