07.12.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, Nippon Ichi Software, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: criminal girls
I have no use for these, but I collected them, so I might as well dump them here. Now I can finally put this game behind me.
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04.12.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, Nippon Ichi Software, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: criminal girls, review, true ending
Finished the game for real this time, at 29:43h. That includes the regular ending, true ending and extra dungeon. It was like a full-course meal with a hearty dessert at the end of it. I’m very satisfied right now. The true ending wasn’t much better than the regular one, except the girls all end up in the same school somehow, with you as their teacher. Realistic ending this is not, but I’ll let them off lightly just this once.
Final thoughts? It was an excellent game. Not perfect by any means, but with no major deal-breaking flaws. 30 hours is just right for a game with a story this shallow, and you have the chance to quit at 20 hours with the girl of your choice if you’ve had enough. Imageepoch and NIS score extra points with me by making it blatantly clear that this is not the final ending, and by making both the true ending and extra dungeon easy to access without a FAQ.
The game maintained a healthy level of challenge throughout – not too easy for veterans and not too hard for newcomers either. You’ll always be the right level if you just progress normally and run from a minimum of battles. And if you feel you need that extra boost, there are a number of grind-friendly skills like Sako’s “Yell” that summons enemies and Tomoe’s “Return” that warps you back to camp. The Escape command is fairly reliable, the Encounter rate is reasonable and Ran has a command that repels enemies for a while. The game balance is just right.
As a dungeon crawler, repetitive levels are part of the deal, but for once I didn’t have to deal with stupid puzzles. Even when you’re send to do X or fetch Y, the game helpfully tells you exactly where to get it and even marks it for you on the map with an exclamation point or a heart. While such hand-holding might piss off more experienced players, you know and I know that needless puzzles only serve to slow down gameplay, reduce enjoyment and clog up gaming forums with duplicate “I’m stuck, how do I do XXX” threads. Playing Criminal Girls is a quick, smooth, pain-free experience because all the unnecessary dross has been cut away, leaving you free to focus on the important things: your characters.
Happily enough, my worries about anything going wrong the longer the game dragged on turned out to be completely unfounded. By the end of the game not only did I still like them all, but I’d even befriended the last boss and my nasty abusive supervisor. The only thing that maybe (very maybe) should have been done differently would be to space out the introduction of the girls a little bit. I started with four and got the last three shortly afterwards, which left little room for future surprises.
For the superficial stuff (music, graphics, sfx), nothing much to say. I thought the “sexy” CGs ended up more awkward than erotic half the time, and whoever did the final CGs was clearly slacking. The OP and ED themes were bad. Scraping the bottom of the barrel of low-budget j-pop kinda bad. The in-game music was good. Each girl had her own theme, and apart from one stage, all the dungeons had good tunes. The voice-acting was top-notch. I’ve never heard of any of these actresses before, but they did a great job conveying the girls’ gradually-changing emotions very convincingly.
But like I said, it’s not a perfect game. Since Imageepoch has struck out on its own now, the chances of ever getting a Criminal Girls 2 are as slim as the chances of getting a Luminous Arc 4. Nippon Ichi might commission a new one (gimme Criminal Boys, gimme gimme), but it just won’t be the same with another developer. Still, if they ever do make another, here are a couple of things they might want to fix:
1. Dat Walking Speed. The game badly needed a Dash command. If the dungeons hadn’t been as small and straightforward as they were, things would have been really painful.
Good heavens, Yuko, what happened to your crotch?
2. Dat Lack of equipment. I suppose it’s refreshing not to have to fiddle with weapons and armor and accessories. Dragoneer’s Aria‘s confusing system is enough to put one off equipment for good, honestly. But I do like buying stuff for my party members and seeing their sprites change accordingly, so I hope they include that next time.
3. Dat Backtracking. I like optional backtracking, where you can choose to return to previous levels to explore/grind/pick up treasure. I hate forced backtracking. Done once or twice it’s okay, but I really, really prefer new dungeons instead.
4. Dem Minigames. “Punishment” takes the form of minigames, some of which are okay and some of which are arduous chores. Especially considering you have to do each one at least 8 times per girl x 7 girls = 56 times each to max it out. More games and fewer reps would have been better. Also that Tickling game just has to go.
5. Dem Cheap Status Effects. Common to all RPGs, not just Criminal Girls. In fact this game was more generous than others in that most bosses could be poisoned, debuffed and paralyzed. It was just far easier for them to do it to you than to them. Paralyze prevents your party member from acting 90% of the time, versus 30% for the enemies. Poison hurts you more than it hurts them. Etc, etc, no fair.
6. Dem Endings. All the endings are good and happy, but they don’t make much sense. If the girls were dead and just came back to life, how could they just resume their lives so easily? Even assuming the whole adventure took place in a special dimension so only a few seconds passed between death and resurrection (which we’re not told, I’m just guessing), a dead girl magically popping back to life is bound to cause some shock. And then they all went to the same school and the player somehow started teaching there? When did he pass his Teacher’s Cert anyway? Plus, if you finish the true end dungeon, that means you essentially broke the system. Isn’t that unfair to any bad girls who die in future?
7. Dem Origins. How did those girls die anyway? Healthy-looking teenagers do very occasionally drop dead suddenly, but you mean to tell me all of them died cleanly and suddenly at the same time? It wouldn’t have been that hard to make up appropriate deaths (uhhh, as appropriate as death can be anyway) for each girl, but I guess then they’d have had to take the “How can they just come back to life so easily” question more seriously. Next time they might want to avoid the “Hell” premise entirely and just make it a juvenile facility or something.
Anyway, yay, it’s over! Good game was good! Moving on, I’m doing Fumiko Yanagi’s route in Tokimeki Memorial 4 so I can put that game to rest for good. After that I want to take a shot at finishing Dragoneer’s Aria. I’ve decided to make Persona 2 my first game of 2012 (God-willing), so if I still have time after that, I might play an SRPG or something.
01.12.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, Nippon Ichi Software, RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: criminal girls
Beat the final boss and cleared the game at 22:26h. Which girl you end up with depends on a choice you make near the end of the game, so evidently all the other choices you pick throughout don’t make much of a difference. I chose Ran firstly because she’s my favorite and secondly because I suspected, quite rightly, that she would make the last fight easy-mode. Once armed with Ran’s Null-Attack skill that makes a mockery of the boss’s ultimate attack, the rest of the game was a foregone conclusion.
But wait, what’s with this mediocre, perfunctory ending? Is that all I get? Beat the boss, walk out the door, all the other girls except Ran vanish forever without a farewell? What happened to “staying friends for life?” I wasn’t happy at all, so I hunted down a FAQ and phew, there’s a second ending after all. You get the regular ending for beating the boss the first time. Then once the credits roll and you save, you get to beat the boss again, and this time you get the choice to continue the game.
That’s where I am right now, so I have no idea what’s going to happen next. I also don’t know how much longer this will take (not too long I hope), but I’m willing to sit through one or two more dungeons if it means I’ll get a proper ending for my girls in the end. This game is so much fun. After 20 hours I can only think of a few things here and there to criticize, and most of them are story-, not gameplay-related. If only NIS and imageepoch had made the gimmick a little more palatable so it could be released in the West. *sigh*
Anyway, I collected the Knight transformations of all the girls and I have no use for them, so I might as well post them here.
28.11.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, Nippon Ichi Software, RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: criminal girls
I’ve hit the 21-hour mark and hit the “Needs to end soon” point. The game is still as fun as ever, but I just went through a stage where each of the girls confronted their pasts and resolved to work through it and turn over a new leaf. My job is done here, and I’m worried that if I keep going, they’ll ruin the game somehow.
This is a good time to go over my characters. They all love me now, and they’ve all changed so much! I tend to look down on “character development” in video games, because 90% of the time they boil down to “Rawwrr, I don’t need anyone —> Wow, friends are the best!” or “I’m a bitch —> I’m not a bitch any more.” If you were expecting me to say Criminal Girls is any different, sorry to disappoint you but it’s not. It’s just that the change is really well done this time. Even though all the girls have great epiphanies in the fourth dungeon, there are signs that they are changing in the way they relate to you and to each other at every step along the way. And it’s all done so gradually and casually that before you notice it, you the player have warmed up to them just as they’ve warmed up to you(r character). Aww.
I don’t even want to punish them any more, the sweet things. I just hope things end well before anything else goes wrong. Anyway, without any further ado, my students:
Tomoe: Acts as the laidback voice of reason for most of the game. For once the Kansai dialect character is not a rash loudmouthed joke character, how refreshing! As the game goes on you’ll discover that she’s not quite as pure and innocent as she first appears to be. Well, assuming the outfit wasn’t a dead give away, that is.
Class: Samurai(ish). Excellent for random battles because of her screen-clearing All-attacks, especially once she gets Instant Death ones. She focuses purely on attacking, so she has almost no support skills. Her Field Skill that warps that party back to the nearest camp is a lifesaver. Her HP, MP and Def are all abysmal, which is probably the only thing that stops her from becoming a game-breaker. Unfortunately I can’t get as much use out of her as I would like because of those flaws.
Ran: I did a complete 180 on Ran, and she did one on me. She started out as one of the angriest, most bitter characters I had ever encountered. Nothing I said or did could make her happy and my attempts to be nice just met with greater rejection. But now that she’s chilled the hell out and I understand her better, she’s my favorite character. *virtual hug* Hang in there, luv.
Class: Paladin. High phys def, middling mag def and attack power. Easily the most useful party member, and indispensable for boss battles because of her All-Guard skill. The one time I decided to take a Boss-hits-all attack without guarding is also the one time I saw the Game Over Screen. Ran also has a skill where she draws in enemy fire and retaliates. With buffed defence, the enemy hits Ran for 1HP and she counters for 1000. The best part is her Revive-and-Heal skill which in its ultimate form allows her to raise any and all dead party members and heal their HP to full. I’m contemplating skipping healing altogether and just letting people die so I can raise them now, Ran’s just that good.
Kisaragi: A classic tsundere, in the original sense of being prickly at first and melting down slowly as the game progresses. Comes across as high-maintenance at first, but is surprisingly down-to-earth once you get to know her. She’s sweet now that she’s reformed, and it was interesting to watch her faux-bitter friendship with Shin develop from mutual dislike to genuine like and admiration.
Class: Thief(ish). One of my less-used party members, though I do bring her in from time to time to poison bosses and steal OP. She’s not very strong and her HP and defence aren’t that good either. That poison stuff comes in hella handy sometimes though and she does have one or two very powerful straight attacks.
Shin: Bossy, self-proclaimed genius. She’s hiding something, but what could it possibly be? Probably the quickest to warm up to the protagonist, since her doubts were purely about whether he was competent or not. O ye of little faith…
Class: ??? No idea. My most useful and used character after Ran. Her moves, called Operations, consist mostly of bossing the other characters about. What makes this so useful is that normally only one character can act per turn, but under Ran’s direction up to 4 of them can act. Even better, apart from Shin, the other characters’ moves won’t consume MP. So with Operation Assist, for example, you can buff everyone’s MAT, MDEF, ATK and DEF using Shin, Ran and Sako, all for only 16 MP. Did I mention she also has an extra skill that frequently tops up her MP and that she also has an All-Heal Skill? And that her Field Skill is Full Heal? What would I do without her?
Sako: Tough, simple, rebellious tomboy. Wildly overprotective of her younger twin sister Yuko, for whose sake she can accomplish even superhuman feats of strengths. Almost as prickly as Ran at first, but so cute she’s impossible to hate.
Class: Monk. Probably the character who has dished out the most damage over the course of the game. Enemies have gotten progressively stronger against physical attacks now, so she’s not as useful as she used to be, but she still participates in some good Operations with Shin and has powerful fire attacks. She can also heal, purify and cast regen on herself, so she generally holds her own.
Yuko: Sako’s sweet but extremely lazy twin sister. There’s a tendency to give girls like her a secret nasty side these days, but Yuko is sugar and spice to the core. She’s just highly dependent and more than a little bit spoiled. As someone with older siblings who want to be relied upon and want to help all the time, I found her character easiest to understand.
Class: White Mage. Outside of boss battles I almost never use her. She has healing skills, cure skills, regen and more than a few debuffs, but nowadays they’ve been diluted by a number of weak magic attacks when tend to keep popping up instead. She’s seriously fragile as well, and her MP pool isn’t as high as you might expect so she spends most of her time on the bench.
Alice: I felt horrible spanking her. She’s a little spacey, but basically harmless. And she protests in such a cute little voice. She seemed so innocent that I didn’t believe she had done anything bad, but after playing the fourth dungeon, she was probably the most likely character, after Ran, to end up in jail if she had stayed on the same path. I’m glad I was able to rehabilitate her.
Class: Black Mage. Boss-killer extraordinaire. Even more fragile than Yuko with a small fairly mana pool, which she can compensate for by absorbing MP from enemies. But man, yikes, those magic attacks should be illegal. Alice has both all-attacks for random battles and super-powerful single ones for boss battles. Once she hits that Magic Charge, you can be reasonably certain the battle will be over in the next turn… if she survives long enough to get it off, that is.
Right-ho, time for the final push. I really hope this fifth dungeon will be the last. Criminal Girls is a character game, so quite frankly all this “story” stuff is just getting in my way now. Here’s hoping for a happy ending!
25.11.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, Nippon Ichi Software, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: criminal girls, review
I racked my brain for a while and still couldn’t figure out why I was playing Dragoneer’s Aria, so *toss* it went back on the shelf and I started Criminal Girls instead. Criminal Girls is a dungeon crawler brought to us by the developer-publisher team of imageepoch and Nippon Ichi Software. My experience with Final Promise Story was so horrific that it rewrote history and plum wiped out my memory, but now I finally remember why Imageepoch used to be one of my favorite game developers. This game is GREAT!
The story is simple, as dungeon crawler stories tend to be. You play a nameless protagonist who shows up for his first day of work at a prison only to find out that this prison is actually in Hell. Instead of regular prisoners, your charges are “half-criminals”, bad girls who died before they could turn into full criminals. Your mission is to reform them by leading them through four separate dungeons, after which they’ll be given the chance to resurrect.
Unfortunately things start going wrong almost immediately: the girls won’t listen to a word you say, oddly strong enemies start popping up all over the place, your supervisor can’t get in touch with headquarters and to top it all off, she goes missing herself while badly injured. It’s up to you now to carry out your job while looking for clues about what’s really going on in the prison.
So your first point of order: getting those girls to do what you say. The way you go about this is what has led to Criminal Girls‘ unfortunate (but totally justified) designation as “That game where you torture girls.” Yup, you’ve gotta torture them into submission, using a variety of implements ranging from whips to cattle prods to feather dusters.
What happens is that you earn OP (oshioki points) in battle or in chests (they also function as currency). When you get back to camp, you can select the “Punish” command to play a little mini-game. As you abuse them and block your ears to their cries and screams of pain and dismay, you also get to enjoy glimpses of the girls in all kinds of compromising positions. How well you do determines how quickly the girl learns the attack/skill you’re trying to teach her as well as how much of the “sexy” CG you get to see. For the spanking minigame you have to press O at the right moment. For the cattle prod, you have to mash buttons in order, etc.
But you’re not just doing this for fun, oh no, perish the thought. You’re only doing this because it’s the only way to get the girls to learn new moves in battle. You see, in Criminal Girls, you don’t command the girls. Instead they give you suggestions each turn based on their skillsets and you select the one skill/move/ability that you think is best for that turn. One suggestion per girl = four suggestions per turn, from which you pick one. It follows that if you choose to heal, you can’t attack that turn, and so on, making each choice strategic. You also get to use items and switch out party members once per turn, and all surviving party members get equal EXP regardless of participation.
In a sense it’s the perfect dungeon crawler for me. What I hated in the ones I played most recently (UBR, Wizman’s World, Final Promise Story) is the long, drawn out dungeons and the dungeons I’ve been through so far have had 4 floors at most, all of them quite small. I also hated having to solve stupid puzzles to progress, but there’s none of that here. I also appreciate the chance to try out different party members and switch them in as I need them. Normally you’re either stuck with a set party or you have to stick with one voluntarily while the others fall behind.
The cherry on top of the cake is the reasonable game difficulty. With the right strategy and right decisions you can make your way through each dungeon with a minimum of hurt, but can never just relax and press buttons blindly either. They got the challenge level just right. Plus when you have so many characters with so many skills, most of them turn out to be useless. But here they all have their role to play and you can always find a suitable move to use every turn. Even items aren’t completely worthless yet. I’m only halfway through, of course, but at this point I think it’s a fantastic game.
So you see, Criminal Girls isn’t all about the non-stop Abu Ghraib-ing of innocent girls. That’s just a gimmick they added to get perverts to buy the game. At its core Criminal Girls is an interesting, involving and moderately challenging dungeon RPG with a very charming cast. I can understand why they had to add the titillating content, though. When you release a game this late in a console/handheld’s lifespan, there’s the sense that gamers have already “seen it all.” You need something “extra” to market the game, especially when it’s a dungeon crawler, a genre populated largely by very tedious games. That’s why UnchainBlades Rexx went all out with an all-star illustrator cast and added the monster-capturing mechanic, for example. And so some deviant at imageepoch or Nippon Ichi came up with the “punishment” idea and congratulations, they got the publicity they wanted.
Having said all that though, there’s no denying the truth. This is a game structured around the regular and forceful molestation of young teenagers. Whatever your reasons are, you’re still a dirtbag, and the game makes sure you know it by throwing in characters that don’t deserve to be maltreated. You’re not going to get away with claiming they were all bad girls. ‘Cos you know, any RPG gamer has got at least one party member they’d love to punch in the kisser. I can think of several off the top of my head: Rinoa, Garnet, Junpei when he was being an ass, that harridan from Final Promise Story… Of the 7 girls I’ve gotten so far, 4 of them fall into that category, what with their bad attitudes and rude language. But the other three are so sweet! I really don’t wanna hurt them. There should at least be a reward system for the good ones. *sigh*
Not that I’m going to stop playing just because a few pixels lay a guilt trip on me or anything. Between yesterday when I started writing this and now, I’ve gone through most of the third dungeon as well, meaning things should come to a climax soon. In for a penny, in for a pound, I’m going to see this all the way through to the end.
19.07.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: final promise story, review, Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari
I lost count of the number of hours I poured into it. About 25? Something like that. Most people seem to finish between 15-20 hours, so I really dragged things out. Instead of grinding to beat bosses I should have just used those overpowered SP attacks earlier. I was afraid of running out, though, and they came in really handy for the final boss and subsequent boss rush, so it all worked out.
I got two ending CGs. First I got the one you get where every Messiah is alive, then I went back and killed Sasha off (told you I’d get her someday) so I could get the Rushdie CG you see on your right. If I’d had the stamina I would have tried to get a third ending, where I kill Rushdie off to see which CG they give me. Probably nothing, since I won’t qualify for any of them.
The ending is the same for all ‘routes’ as far as I can tell, it’s just the final CG displayed after the credits that differs depending on who you made your final promise with and who’s still alive at the end. The ending itself was okay, but really short. No surprises throughout the whole game. Around chapter 3 they said “This is the problem we’re having, and this is what we’re going to do about it.” Two chapters later they did it, everything went off without a hitch, roll credits. No unexpected events, no chance to do the wrong thing, no multiple solutions, just linear as the 5 o’clock express.
I was going to write a detailed, spoiler-ful post with my condensed thoughts about Final Promise Story later on, but now I think of it, it doesn’t really deserve that kind of attention. Plus I would have had to do a lot of reading up about the promotion of this game, and I don’t feel like getting involved in FPS any further.
Why reading up about the promotion? Because the crux of my problem with this game revolves around whether Imageepoch accurately represented Final Promise Story as a pure dungeon crawler and not as a full-fledged RPG before it came out, or not. If it’s the former, then I have very little grounds for complaint. I’d end up whining about stuff like this:
- The characters were shallow and completely undeveloped, probably because they all know each other already and have nothing to discover over the course of 24 hours,
- character interaction was nearly non-existent. Because of the game’s anyone-can-die mechanic, no party members except Wolf and that girl can be intimately connected to the plot. This causes a disjoint because your relationship with the other Messiahs is supposed to be vital to the story, but the Messiahs themselves can’t be important lest they die so, wtf? I’ll also note that Sasha didn’t get so much as an “Alas, poor Sasha” when she kicked the bucket,
- the plot never went anywhere (wtf was that incident a year ago they keep referring to? what is Sabi Chantier’s ultimate goal? how exactly did the war start? who’s the mastermind behind the whole attack? what’s to stop them from coming back with more machines? what happens after the end, aren’t they doomed anyway?) and leaves you with more questions than it answers,
- the mood of the music was off, it felt more like casual lounge music. More “Why yes, I’ll have another glass of champagne with my caviar” than “OSHIT OSHIT we’re all going to die,” and the music stays the same throughout the whole game even as the time gets shorter and shorter. Heck the mood of the whole game was off,
- the battles were repetitive, I just found one or two patterns that worked and used them forever on the same old palette swaps in the same old dungeons. I remember hearing that enemies would adapt to your battle strategy after a while but that’s a 1000% lie,
- goddammit, why do I have to do the same bloody crappy mission over and over again? Hundreds of hours of gameplay my anus, it’s all the same damned mission worded differently! <— the strong language is because this is by far my biggest complaint about the game,
- having all your skills and attacks as well as the entire map revealed right from the start takes out all elements of surprise and excitement from the gameplay. Now I understand why randomized dungeons and treasure chests are so common in that genre,
etc etc, and these are all common features of dungeon crawlers. Not all of them and not all the time, but the weak plot, repetitive gameplay and underdeveloped characters occur pretty often. So if Imageepoch was clear about that from the start then I was expecting stuff the game was never intended to deliver, and thus I have no case whatsoever. I mean, my memory is telling me stuff about weekly character introductions and action-packed trailers worded in a way to make it seem like an ordinary jRPG, but I’m not as young as I used to be so maybe I imagined it. I freely admit I didn’t pay very close attention to the pre-game hype, to my lasting regret. In any case, I’d need to check all this out before writing anything definitive about Saigo no Yuckysucky no Monogatari, and I really don’t want have anything more to do with this game.
Long story short, Final Promise Story is a short dungeon crawler in which absolutely nothing happens. It’s got pretty graphics, decent character designs and nice, relaxing music. If you can accept that without asking for anything more, go for it and good luck. I’m out.
01.07.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: final promise story, Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari
The game’s going well, now that I’ve figured out the correct way to play it. I was trying to marathon my way through like it was an ordinary RPG, but repetitive dungeon crawlers like this one are best played in small doses. Once I started doing just one or two missions per day while playing other games, things got far more bearable.
I’m almost done now with just one in-game hour to go and everything set up for the ending. But today I just want to play with the screenshot plugin I got for the PSP. Wish the DS had one, it would make this blog so much easier to write.
I made my final promise with Rushdie, who still hasn’t betrayed me yet.
Thank you Rushdie, you’re the best! As a matter of fact I made all three promises with him, because he’s the only character I really liked. Cain has grown on me because of his incredible battle prowess, but he has almost no story presence at all, so it’s hard to get into him. As it turns out, once you make a promise with a character, they’ll let you sleep in their bed!
Look how happy he looks! It makes me wonder, what does he do while you’re sleeping? Does he stand outside? Stand by the bed and watch you sleep? (Don’t wanna clooose my eeeeyeeesss!) Or does he *gulp* crawl in with you? They’re bros so it’s okay but on the other hand it is a really small bed. I’d better not think about it too much.
Here’s the rest of my party:
Note the obscene amount of money I have now. Things were obscenely expensive at first, but now I’ve got all this cash and nothing to blow it on. Note also that Rushdie and Wolf need the same amount of EXP to level up. As a matter of fact I have convinced myself that they are actually brothers (no seriously, I really have) and a result I restart any battle in which one falls without the other. Note lastly that Cain is still a little behind them after goodness knows how many levels, and that Sasha will probably not catch up before the end of the game. Another mugshot of the usual suspects:
This is the main menu screen. I have no idea why everything is in English in a Japanese game that’s probably never going to be localized, but that’s for Imageepoch to figure out. I had 1336 civilians rescued then, right now I have about 1550-something. Apparently it’s possible to rescue over 2000 (2042, to be precise) by doing the missions in a specific sequence, but there are absolutely no rewards for doing so.
Selecting the skills, then customize option takes you to a screen where you can improve your skills by adding customize points (CP) to them.
The little numbers next to each skill show what level they’re at, and the M shows that a skill has been mastered. I’ve had Sasha focus almost exclusively on healing and support skills so far, because that’s what I got her for. It’s possible that she’s a decent fighter as well, but I’m satisfied with her current role. Pressing the Square button on this screen would allow me to redistribute her CP if I ever changed my mind. Come to think of it, the only reason I got a healer was because I couldn’t afford healing items, but now I’m a millionaire I could toss Sasha out and bring Mallarme back so I can have four attackers instead of three. But raising her up from level 18 or wherever she is now would be too much work now. Oh well.
Moving on, you can overlay a map on the screen while you’re running around in a dungeon:
This helps you figure out where you’re going and let’s you avoid dead ends (those red Xs and white crossing lines). See the little yellow dot in the top left corner? That’s where your current objective is. Combine this with the English menu and you should be able to get through the game even with minimal Japanese skills. In theory. It’s not like there’s a grand story to miss anyway.
Lastly, the major NPCs.
This girl, Ainey, is the blacksmith. The big lummox next to her is Ricardo, the item seller, and the girl behind the desk is Lissete, your navigator. As further proof of how laid-back the mood is in this game, Ainey spends most of her time just chilling in a rocking chair in front of her furnace.
This last guy is Julio. He’s just a hater. He shows up frequently to mock the Messiahs and make trouble for them. It was amusing at first, but then like most things in this game it was speedily beaten to death with the force of a thousand bludgeons. Note that she-who-shall-not-be-named has been censored from this shot.
That’s it for today. The next time I post about this game will be when it’s finally over.
07.06.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (4)
Tags: final promise story, jeanne d'arc, Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari
If you animate this and run it for 21 hours straight you'll know exactly how it feels to play this game.
This post will contain plotline spoilers. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
21 hours in, and it’s going to stay at 21 hours for a while because I’m taking a break from this game. It’s just too boring. I’ve been doing the same mission non-stop since the game started and I’m sick and tired of it. “Save the civilians.” Everything is “save the civilians.” Civilians this, civilians that. Save save save save, I’M SICK OF SAVING CIVILIANS!
I’ve played a lot of repetitive games in my time – I’m a Harvest Moon fan, after all – but Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari takes the cake. Every single mission plays out exactly the same way: run down hallways for 10 minutes, meet NPC, warp back to headquarters, repeat. I said this back when I was only 7 hours in, little knowing that I’d be typing the same thing 14 hours later.
Stupid excuse to prolong stupid game is stupid. Rescue civilians for 21 hours my ass. Instead of Final Promise Story they should call it Banal Premise Story.
For much of the game you don’t have a choice, though. If you don’t have 1000 people saved by a certain time (02:05, I believe), you get an automatic bad ending. Now that I have 1180 people saved, I thought I’d try a different kind of mission, an extermination one. As you might expect, it played out almost exactly like the rescue mission: run down hallways for 10 minutes, fight same enemies you’ve been fighting all along, warp back to headquarters, repeat. I thought they’d have special enemies to fight or special rewards, but it was regular items and regular rewards. B-o-r-i-n-g.
I don’t get why it has to be you doing all this grunt work anyway. You’re Messiah, the elite of the elite. Running menial errands should be the job of the ordinary soldiers and you should be on the frontlines. If you could keep the enemies from getting in in the first place, the whole rescue arc would go much smoother and faster. It makes no sense at all.
Plus if you’re so elite, surely you should be able to carry out missions more efficiently. Instead of going on one mission, coming back to report, going on another, etc, the missions should be consecutive. You’re already in wireless contact with mission control, so it would make more sense to take on several at once, do them all in a row and then progress the story. Either that or split the party into two so the three thumb-twiddlers have something to do when not in your party. Do I have to think of everything? I’m starting to feel sorry for myself, putting up these incompetent numbskulls.
Sasha, token loli
While we’re on the topic of feeling sorry for oneself, please note that Ceres is perma-banned from my party. In fact, characters named Ceres are banned from all parties in any game I play from now until forever. Right after my last post, about 15 hours in, she had a big “crisis of confidence” and locked herself in her room for several missions, forcing me to trot out and level up Sasha, a character I hadn’t used in over 12 hours. Sasha was only level 10 and leveling her up until she was any use at all was hard work, to say the least.
At first her levels rose rapidly, then they capped off and she’s been several levels behind the guys ever since. Right now she’s level 46 while they’re 50, and she probably won’t catch up till 65-ish, by which time the game will be long over. Even Cain still hasn’t fully caught up, and he’s been in my party almost forever. If I’d known Ceres was going to fail me, I would have started using Sasha way back then. She’s an excellent healer (and a terrible everything else).
And the nerve of that Ceres, after dumping me and running away to sob in her room she comes back later and is like “I’ll never run away again.” F— YOU BITCH. First off, I never wanted you in my party. You wouldn’t even be a Messiah if you’d had the sense to put your little family drama on hold for just 5 minutes while we warped back to headquarters. If you hadn’t distracted Joshua and stolen his weapon at a critical moment he’d still be alive and you’d be in the kitchen where you belong so don’t give me that crap! So first you forced your way into Messiah, then you walked out when I needed you, and now you want back in? FUCK. YOU. The name ‘Ceres’ will never be mentioned on this blog again.
Enough about the stupid characters. The real reason I’m putting BPS on ice that I started playing Jeanne d’Arc yesterday, and I’m having a fantastic time with it. Bright colors! Missions that differ from each other! A non-milquetoast protagonist! No random battles! Music that actually fits the mood! Flaws I’m ignoring because I’ve been starved for an SRPG! It’s been so long since I played an ordinary strategy RPG with no silly gimmicks or weird mechanics. What was the last one, Luminous Arc 3? Going to be hard going back to BPS after this.
02.06.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: final promise story, Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari
Quite a bit has changed since I last posted about this game. I was 7 hours in then, now I’m 14 hours along. My party was around level 18, now they’re between level 30 and 34. I’ve found out more about the story, why Sabi Chantier machines keep attacking people, why it’s so important to rescue townspeople and what my final solution is to all this fighting.
My party has changed as well. I decided that I needed a healer because healing items were costing me a fortune, so I switched Mallarme out for Ceres (very, very reluctantly). Ceres appears to be one of those characters who are useless until they learn their best attacks at very high levels. She only just learned her first All attack, and while it’ll probably be powerful once I’ve maxed it out, I’m not impressed at all right now.
In any case, training up low-level characters is hard in this game. It’s been several hours and several levels later, and Cain and Ceres haven’t quite caught up to Wolf and Rushdie yet. Cain is close, Ceres is about 4 levels behind. So you have to pick a party quickly and stick with it, none of this trying to keep everyone evenly-leveled stuff. Unless you really, really, really like grinding.
It’s mainly your equipment and skills that make the greatest difference to your death or survival in battle, but you can’t get skills without leveling up, so they’re linked. Skills work like this: every time you level up, you get a point to assign to a certain skill. Leveling up certain skills allows you to unlock other ones, and so it goes. It’s not a new system, but Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari is more forgiving than most similar systems, in that it allows you to easily reset and reassign your points any time you like. In exchange for a hefty amount of money, but what’s money when your characters are getting killed?
Now that by trial and error I have chanced upon attack and support skill configurations that work great for me, battles are relatively easier now. I recommended getting Astral Edge in the last post, but now I realize Defense Line (gotten by leveling up Wolf’s Sword Taunt a few times) is better for all but emergency cases, so get that instead.
For random battles, I leveled up Rushdie’s Sleep Attack (暗示：碧) and got the updated version (暗示：翠) which hits all enemies. I have it maxed right now. Words can’t express just how life-saving it is to put even one enemy in a gang to sleep. Since Rushdie almost always goes first, he can strike with it right at the beginning of the battle, and he’ll usually get at least half of the enemies, usually more. Just bring it, bad guys! He has an equivalent that paralyses enemies (暗示：緋), but even grunts tend to be resistant to paralysis so I cancelled that and redistributed the points.
That’s not the only reason why Rushdie is my favorite party member, though. Apart from his speed and his sleep attack, he also has an ice attack, Tsumi no Rakuin II (罪の烙印II) that hits every enemy on the field. The attack description said it only hits one, so I ignored the move for a long time, then I tried it on a whim and WHOA! My attack pattern now goes: first turn, put most of them to sleep, second turn, put them on ice. For weak enemies, this is a one-hit kill. Enemies that survive will almost certainly be picked off by my other party members in rapid succession.
When it comes to boss battles, though, Cain does the most damage, hands down. His fire attack (揺らめく紅刃) hits even bosses for a minimum of 300 when maxed out, and his HP and VIT are only second to Wolf’s. In fact, he still has all his SP intact because he doesn’t go down easy. At first his low MP was a liability, but it’s come up quite a bit now. I also have a lot of MP refilling items I haven’t had a chance to use, and in a pinch I can always use his SP move to refill everyone’s MP. He’s pretty awesome.
It’s rare to find RPGs where physical and magical attacks are perfectly balanced and do equal damage. Usually one will dominate throughout, or be more powerful at the beginning and get weaker as the game progresses. In this game “pure” physicals were better at first, but now magic and magic-based physicals are overwhelmingly more powerful. When you level up or when you rest your MP is automatically refilled, so you don’t have to hold back on the heavy stuff either.
Okay, I’m definitely getting cocky now. I’m almost done with the West Gate, then there’s the Main Gate to go through, which should be the final dungeon unless they pull a surprise on me. Maybe the enemies there will kick my attitude back into shape. Or maybe I’ll ride roughshod over them in my usual manner. No clue who the final boss or the mastermind behind the war is so far, but the final confrontation should be fun either way.
31.05.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: final promise story, Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari
Also known as Final Promise Story, imageepoch’s first release under their “jprg” brand. I won’t say it’s one of the reasons why
I bought a PSP, but it certainly helped. I try not to follow game development too closely, because then when it comes out you’re not surprised or impressed at all, but I liked the little I saw of this, so I started playing it a few days ago.
I haven’t gotten too far yet, just finished killing the boss in the screenshot way down below. He doesn’t have a name but BOY does he pack a punch. I grinded Wolf from level 14 to 18 and switched out Gyro for Mallarme before I could take him down without losing any SP. That screenshot down there is probably from very early in the development process, firstly because that annoying Lissete is missing, and also because Ceres hasn’t joined your party at that point. By the way, it’s blatantly obvious who’s going to join and who’s not, because they all have rooms in your headquarters from the start. Thanks for spoiling, imageepoch.
About the game itself, Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari is a dungeon crawler. A pretty, glorified dungeon crawler, but a dungeon crawler nevertheless. It’s about Yggdra, a country on the verge of ruin and the last survivors currently making their last stand in one part of the stupidly vast castle. The main character Wolf Stingray (yes, really) and his team are charged with rescuing the last 2,000 civilians and bringing them to safety. So the game consists of taking a mission – go save these guys – running down looooong corridors for ages and ages, finding the NPC(s) you need to save and fighting off the enemies attacking them. Then you go back and repeat the process again.
Every time you finish a mission, time passes. Every couple of missions Lissete (your controller/navigator/manager) will come up with a mission that progresses the story, you’ll do it, and then it’s back to grunt missions again. It’s very repetitive, but that’s a dungeon crawler for you. I’m astonished by the relative lack of urgency in this game, though. Your country is mostly destroyed and 90% of the citizens have been wiped out, but still everyone in the Grand Hall is just chilling. There are soldiers all over the place guarding empty rooms or just chatting in the hallway. I was seriously expecting a scene out of Gone with the Wind or something – injured soldiers, harried nurses, wailing relatives, etc etc, but even the people you save are just like, “Hey, y’all, wassup?” Well, maybe not so casual but not quite panicky either.
Anyway, it’s a dungeon crawler, which means the battle system is the most important thing. You take four characters into battle, and you get a first-person perspective like old-school Dragon Quest. It looks like this:
I only chose this development screenshot so I could show you the boss that kicked my ass so hard. In the finalized battle system, there’s this annoying girl perched in the top right corner who just repeats the same words over and over and over again: “The enemy had changed its target! The enemy has changed its target! The enemy has changed its target!” ad nauseam. There she is, right there:
Btw, “The enemy has changed its target” indicates that the enemy is going to attack whoever attacked it or healed last. They especially like to gang up on anyone who uses healing magic or items, which makes healers like Sasha pretty hard to use until Wolf is strong enough to draw all their attention. Ideally you want enemies to attack Wolf at all times because he has the highest HP and Defence. He even has two skills, Sword Taunt and Astral Edge, that gets the enemy to focus on him. If you play this, try to get Astral Edge as soon as possible. It consumes SP, but it’s so useful I use it regardless. I’ll stop when Wolf’s SP goes down to 20.
The overriding principle in the battles is this: You have to keep your allies from being KO’ed if at all possible. imageepoch heavily promoted Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari‘s “Death is Permanent” system, but that’s not quite the case. See the SP stat under HP and MP? When your allies get hit after they’re KO’ed, it starts to go down. When it reaches 0, they release one final, mighty attack and then they kick the bucket for good. Incidentally this refills the SP of all your other members, so I’m thinking of sacrificing Sasha whenever it becomes necessary. I hate her. I hate Ceres more, but I’m positive I’d be Game Over’ed if I knocked her off, so too bad.
I am not a fan of the female characters in this game. Lissete would be okay if she didn’t keep harassing me in battle. My kingdom for a “Shut Lissete up” option. Ceres’s high-pitched squeal grates on my ears and her “naive princess trying to be strong” gimmick was old eleven years ago in FF9. I’ve taken to muting the PSP whenever she opens her mouth. And WTF is wrong with her, switching from a sensible uniform to a horrid frilly white dress with blue ribbons? Dress your age! I just got Mallarme a while ago, and her poor dress sense and fake flirting act (if she really liked me, she’d let me sleep in her bed!) rub me the wrong way, but if she continues to kick ass in battle like she’s doing then all will be forgiven.
That’s what happened with me and Cain, anyway. Mouth off all you like, just get the job done when it counts. Presently my favorite character is Rushdie because he’s fast and accurate on the battlefield and calm, collected and supportive off it. As a result I’m really worried he’s going to betray me at some point. It’s always the nicest guys who turn traitor, after all. And doesn’t his portrait make him look like he’s constantly smirking? Very suspicious. I’ll never forgive him if he turns Judas though.
Enough gaming for one day, on to other things.