25.01.12 / Japanese, Nintendo DS, RPG, Strategy RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (6)
Tags: Hero's Saga Laevatein Tactics, wiZman's world
They were blocking my path to gaming pleasure. For the past few days I’ve been in a state of not wanting to play these games and at the same time not wanting to start anything else until they were done. Obviously something had to give.
Hero’s Saga: Made it to the last boss and fought him once. He’s a cheating bastard, but I outwaited him and he came down to fight me around turn 10. I beat him fair and square, and what did he do? He came back to life with his skills returned and his Valhalla Gauge refilled. Cheater! Cheater! I’d already lost a number of troops to his cheating ways, so I decided to grind a little, strategize a little better, and take him on again. That’s what I thought four days ago, and I haven’t been able to muster up the interest since. The last boss was kind enough to blab the rest of the story before recovering, and I don’t really care what happens to everyone at the end, so… *toss*
WiZman’s World: I don’t really want to drop this. I like it a lot. Sadly it’s time to admit to myself that I don’t have the energy to finish it. I’m about halfway through the last dungeon, and it’s one of those warp dungeons. The map is all but useless and it pains me to realize that I’m putting in all this trouble to go face the final boss just to get killed. Because I just know I’m going to be killed the first time no matter how much preparation I do. Get killed, waste several more hours re-preparing, possibly get killed again, finally kill the boss… I’m tired. I want to finish it, but not at the expense of that much time and effort.
I could put them merely on “hiatus” but then they’d still be there as a mental stumbling block, begging me to come back. No, we can’t just be friends. A clean break is best for us all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with Persona 2.
13.01.12 / Japanese, Konami, Nintendo DS, Romance game, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (20)
Tags: anime, Boku ga Romeo de Romeo ga Boku de, Hayate no Gotoku
Yes, even monkeys fall from trees. And even normally careful gamers forget to keep backup saves and accidentally overwrite precious New Game+ data with an actual new game save.
In most games this wouldn’t be a problem because each route would be (mostly) separate. But in Hayate no Gotoku, the only way to unlock Maria as a romantic partner is to clear all the other girls. No cleared save data = No Maria. No Maria = No point in continuing. And I just had Isumi to go before getting her, what a pity.
On to the next game!
10.01.12 / Japanese, Konami, Nintendo DS, Simulation game, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: anime, Gokujou!! Mecha Mote Iinchou: Mecha Mote Days, review
Konami is the company responsible for some of my favorite games on the DS: Tokimemo GS 1-3, Lost in Blue 1-3 (moaaarr), and more. Even monkeys fall from trees, as the Japanese saying goes. And even good companies make bad games every once in a while. It’s when it’s every time that it becomes a problem (*cough* Nippon Ichi *cough*).
That being the case, I see no need to go on at length about Gokujou! Mecha Iinchou, the dress up game based on the popular shoujo manga/anime of the same name. It’s aimed at pre- and early teen girls, and I’m old enough to have kids that fit that description, so I’m not even the target demographic in the first place.
Plus the general rule of anime-based games is that they’re not for people who aren’t fans of the original. I couldn’t be arsed to check out the show, and even if I had I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it. It’s only natural that I couldn’t follow along, then.
The game: Your character is the class rep, and at the end of the year there’s a beauty contest of sorts for class reps. Your job is to shape her up over the course of the year so she can win that competition. I’ve been playing this on and off since around August, waiting for the big payoff, but when I think of all the other games I could be playing instead, it’s hard to justify spending time on this silliness. *toss*
It could have been good, if the game had given you a certain amount of freedom to shape your character as you saw fit. Since what we got in the end is a kiddy, pedestrian affair where you spend 90% of your time playing mini-games and listening to heavy-handed beauty lectures from your so-called rival while trying to fulfill easy monthly objectives, it’s barely even worth writing about.
A typical month goes like this: you have a trip to the beach planned. You go to school in the mornings (nothing much happens there). You do a few mini-games to earn cash, buy some beach-appropriate clothes, everyone gushes over how lovely you look, the end. Repeat with a different challenge the next month. If the graphics were any good, maaaaybe dressing up the main character would have been fun, but since everything is jagged,small and garishly colored, and the outfit designs are uniformly hideous… *toss*.
The description of the anime also says something about a “bad boy trio” your character has to deal with, but either they don’t exist in the game or they were all given lobotomies, because everyone fawns slavishly over you no matter what you do or wear. Your rival wants to, nay, insists on helping you achieve your goals every month, so you don’t even have the joy of sticking it to the usual snooty rival.
Summary: Good premise poorly executed. Story only fans care about. Dull gameplay. No autonomy. Servile characters. Awful graphics.
Conclusion: Bad game. Avoid like cancer. If you want to play a dress-up game on the DS, try something like the Oshare Princess games instead.
08.01.12 / Japanese, Konami, Nintendo DS, Romance game, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: anime, Boku ga Romeo de Romeo ga Boku de, Hayate no Gotoku, review
It’s been a while since my DS saw any action. And I’m a little disgusted with my PSP after that Blade Dancer experience, so for a change of mood I decided to play something lighter and funnier.
Hayate no Gotoku – Romeo ga Boku de, Boku ga Romeo is the first of three handheld games based on a shonen manga about a debt-ridden butler named Ayasaki Hayate. If you haven’t read it, I’m in two minds as to whether to recommend it or not. On one hand it’s a very funny, charming series with a great cast of characters, but on the other hand the story hasn’t gone anywhere in ages and even I have stopped reading it, so… Eh. The game is for fans only, so if you don’t know the series you can skip the rest of this post.
Since this game came out in 2007 before anything really earth-shattering happened in the manga (Greece arc, A-tan), it still has that silly, gag-filled atmosphere that drew me in in the first place. As such Romeo ga Boku is the kind of story that would work well as a filler episode in the anime. Hakuo Academy is going to stage a play, and one way or another Hayate is going to be cast as one of the leads together with one of his many, many love interests. You have your choice of Nagi, Hinagiku, Ayumu, Sakuya, Isumi, Maria and a “secret character” (I’ll let you find out who that is).
The game is a visual novel 95% of the time, with the occasional save break that allows you to play mini-games to earn Pathos points. Pathos points can be used to unlock special outfits for the girls and also to unlock alternative answer choices during the main game. Apart from that you pick your girl, watch the scenes play out, pick an answer when given the option, hope you get a bad ending because those are hilarious and generally just make your way to the end of the game. Along the way you will also unlock voice clips and CGs that unfortunately I can’t show you because unlike the PSP, the DS does not have a screenshot plugin (I stole these ones from the internet).
Now then, although I normally dislike visual novels, the fact that the game features characters I already know and like, and the fact that each route is short and frequently funny has lead to me pouring more effort into this than I normally do with this kind of game. Right now I’ve gotten Nagi, Hinagiku and Ayumu’s endings. I just started Sakuya’s route and I’m kinda regretting it because I don’t like. But after her I’ll get Isumi, then finally Maria.
Hinagiku: Her play is “Snow White” and nothing much happens on her route until the end, where you have to battle your way up an RPG-style tower to rescue a puppy. She spends the whole play agonizing over what will happen during the kissing scene at the end, but then she panics so much that she sits up before Hayate can kiss her and the play ends there. Bummer. Hinagiku is as twitchy as ever, so her route has quite a few bad endings. That’s all part of the fun, of course.
Ayumu: She’s boring, so her route is boring too. At least she only has one Bad End. Her play is “Romeo and Juliet.” The “climax” of her story occurs when her father spots her practicing in the park at night with Hayate and sets his zombie coworkers on them. You might be wondering how Ayumu got to star in a Hakuo Academy play when she doesn’t even attend that school… well, don’t sweat the small stuff.
Yes, elephantiasis is a horrible disease.
Nagi: The most romantic of the three routes so far, because a magical statue actively tries to bring them together. Nagi’s play is “Cinderella.” Or more like Cinderella mixed with Dance Dance Revolution mixed with Fist of the North Star. Come on, it’s Nagi. The crisis on her route involves Nagi being kidnapped and held for ransom by the same guys that tried to hijack Sakuya’s ship way back when.
It’s been a while since I saw Nagi’s old mansion and bedroom, so this route was a nice trip down memory lane. Speaking of Nagi and her mansion, the realization Hayate would be a dick to end up with anyone else but the girl who loved him enough to throw away her zillion-dollar fortune is part of the reason why I stopped reading the manga. Foregone conclusions are no fun at all.
So that’s how far I’ve gotten. Graphically and musically this game isn’t much to write home about, but it’s cute and it’s funny and it helps pass the time, so that’s good enough for me. I am getting a leeetle bit tired though, especially of the “Tiger’s Den” scenes where Hayate has to try desperately to please these overly-sensitive girls. I might take a little break before continuing with the rest of the characters.
27.12.11 / Idea Factory, Japanese, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: review, wand of fortune portable
Nothing like a little romance for Christmas…
A little romance. Most of your relationships in this game are more like friendships, and the game ends when the real romance is about to begin. I liked all the guys on offer, but my first playthrough took so long and was so tedious that I have lost all the will to play any more of this game.
Story: Lulu, the protagonist, enrolls in Mils Clea Magic Academy to fulfill her dream of becoming a magician like her grandmother. In their world, everyone belongs to one of six elements, but preliminary tests show Lulu doesn’t have an element at all. Not to worry though, hanging out with someone long enough naturally dyes you in their colors. Now Lulu has six months to find an element while raising her INT, DEX and MP stats, or her magic will be sealed forever.
Characters: Six bishies, three teachers, one room mate, four classmates. A small cast for a game set in an academy, and the lack of people to interact with hurts the game in the long run. The bishies are Julius (wind), Noel (earth), Bilal (water), Lagi (Fire), Alvaro (Light) and Est (Dark). Studying with them raises your affiliation with that element, while talking to and going out of dates with them raises their affection for you. Lulu herself is like the reincarnation of Pollyanna with an added sweets fetish. She is relentlessly positive and never gets down for more than a little while. I thought I’d find her annoying, but she’s so unwavering in her positivity that she’s hard to dislike.
Y U mad tho
For this playthrough I decided to go after Lagi. Unlike the others, Lagi can’t use magic. He’s at the Academy as a research subject, because he turns into a baby dragon every time a girl bumps into him. This is because he’s half-dragon, and the time is fast approaching when he’ll have to pick whether to be a dragon or a human for life.
When he first meets Lulu he’s cranky and prickly, just the sort of guy that’s fun to tease. Slowly but surely she wears him down, but he’s still more tsun than dere towards her until the final confession. In the end it turns out his affliction was all in his mind, ‘cos he didn’t want to pick. In order to save Lulu from a salamander he turns into a dragon, but instead of leaving the academy, he decides to hang around a little longer and confesses to Lulu at the end. Aww.
Lagi’s route was fun enough. He was involved in some very comical events. And his baby dragon form is cute. However if I hadn’t picked him, I’d have gone for Est, the short sarcastic shota. He’s obviously suffering from some kind of existential angst, and Lulu’s just the girl to help him get over himself. I’ll be Ike to your Soren any day, Est baby!
I wants your body, Mr. Elbart. I don't care if you're still using it!
Truth be told, though, the guy I really wanted to get with was my clumsy awkward teacher Mr. Elbart. But you can’t go for the forbidden relationship right off the bat, it’s just not done. I mean, what will people say about my Lulu? I was going to save him for my next playthrough, but I haven’t got it in me any more. Lulu gets to stay unsullied… for now.
Gameplay: Take lessons to raise your stats. Study with guys to raise your affiliation. Talk with them to make them like you. Solve mysteries and help people on the weekend. Go out on dates with the guy you like. Go shopping when you get the chance. That’s…about it, really.
The good stuff first:
1) It’s a dating sim/visual novel hybrid. There’s more to it than just non-stop reading. Not much more, but it’s the thought that counts.
2) You can check affection levels and your parameters at any time
3) You can skip dialogue and events forcefully, unless you are required to make a choice. Unfortunately you have to make choices every single day, so skipping goes in fits and starts.
4) Affection, affiliation and magic stats are all very easy to raise. Just by playing normally, you can make a guy fall fully in love with you within 3 or 4 months.
5) The art is very nice and the few CGs you get are cool. Dunno why they ration out the CGs over the course of the game and then suddenly dump 5 on you in the last hours, but a CG is a CG so I’ll take ‘em.
6) The voice acting is okay. Est sounded suitably shota, Alvaro was appropriately smarmy, Julius could be nerdy and serious in turns, etc. Nobody really stood out, but nothing was bad either.
7) There’s an interesting card mini-game you can play. The guys have fixed patterns of play, so it’s easy enough to beat them. But it’s a nice diversion from the usual.
Lulu is hungry for Lagi's 'special' meat
The bad stuff.
1) This game is TEDIOUS. AS. HELL. Every single day you’re forced to watch Lulu wake up, talk to someone in the lobby, pick a class/guy to talk to, help someone, talk to someone on the way home, pick someone to talk to again, go to bed and fall asleep. 6 months x 28 days = 168 times! Every couple of weeks something interesting happens and shakes up the routine, but otherwise you have to watch the exact same scenes over and over again.
2) Not enough exploration or adventure. It’s set in a Magic Academy, but anyone expecting Mana Khemia-style adventures will be sorely disappointed. You rarely leave school even on weekends, so all your activities take place in the same few locations. You rarely interact with the townspeople and most other students are black silhouettes. It’s a very boring academy, and thus a very boring game.
3) The game is too long. I know I’ve put at least 15 hours into this game, possibly more, and I don’t think I’ve gotten enough out of it.
4) The final arc had waaaaaaay too much talking. I was okay until that point, because the scenes kept switching and things moved along quite quickly. But the last arc was just dull. Characters taking forever to figure out stuff I already knew. Having the same arguments. Saying the same things in different words.
5) Without a guide you might end up with the wrong stats for the guy you want to woo. A fortuneteller in town told me I need to raise MP for Lagi, but she didn’t tell me how much. I finished the game with 53 MP, 26 INT and 26 DEX and got the ending all right, but what if I had needed 60 or 65 MP instead? I’d have been screwed.
Conclusion: I liked the characters, I liked the art, I liked the setting, I liked the story. But I intensely disliked the gameplay. So much so that it overwhelmed all the positive parts of the game and left me exhausted and more than a little irritated by the end. I enjoyed my one playthrough of Wand of Fortune, but there’s no character I like enough to want to play the game again. Lagi end is canon! There are no other endings! On to the next game!
11.12.11 / Japanese, Konami, Romance game, Sony PSP, Tokimeki Memorial, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (12)
Tags: fumiko yanagi, tokimeki memorial 4
Is this what they mean by “Too little, too late?” I finally got Fumiko Yanagi and I’m very happy about it, but after goodness knows how many playthroughs, the game is stale beyond belief.
Yanagi herself is very sweet and friendly from the start, no defrosting ice queens here. The downside of that is that even when she falls in love with you, there’s not much difference in her attitude and behavior, so you don’t feel like you’ve progressed much. But I’ll take that over the Tsugumi Godou type any day.
There’s no “story” on this route, unlike how, say, Maki wants to be a nurse or Yuu wants to gather up the courage to confess. You just go out on dates, pig out on sweets afterwards and walk her home. Rinse, repeat. I didn’t get most of her CGs, and the two I did get involved her falling down on you. Ooh, clever. But her low-drama, feel-good atmosphere is precisely what’s so good about Yanagi. Her ability to cheer up the MC dramatically when he’s down makes her an automatic keeper.
In the end she blunders and confesses to the MC in front of the whole school by means of the P.A. system, which I thought was cute. Like Rizumi she didn’t confess under the legendary tree,, so there’s no in-game guarantee that their relationship will last forever. A naive ditzy girl like Fumiko will have lots of wolves after her, so I sent my MC to the best university possible juuust in case. As long as he gets a great job and can afford to keep her stocked up on parfaits and cookies, I think they should be okay.
MOVING ON! But before that! This has been bugging me for a while, but is it really necessary to wait three years to confess in these games? I mean, how dumb are high school students these days if they have to go out on date after date after date and hold hands and spend whole days together and STILL not figure out that this is more than an ordinary friendship? This is high school, teenage hormone central! Where a careless “Hi” in the hallway can power a whole month’s worth of “Do you think he likes me” conferences! And there you go, blithely picking up the phone and inviting girls to spend time with you one-on-one. And not just once, but for three years and you both STILL can’t figure out you love each other until you spell it out? Tut, tut. Kids these days.
Okay, now moving on for real. I tried to go back to Dragoneer’s Aria, but I couldn’t bring myself to continue. Right now I’m juggling between Blade Dancer and Tactics Ogre: Let us cling together. Neither one is doing miracles for me at the moment, but TO has the advantage of being an SRPG (*bliss*) so I might drop BD and focus solely on TO in the coming days.
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.
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!
