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.
