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.
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.
09.09.11 / Japanese, Konami, Romance game, Sony PSP, Tokimeki Memorial, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: fumiko yanagi, nanakawa rui, tokimeki memorial 4
“It’s not me, it’s you.”
- Me to Tsugumi, after doing Rui’s route.
I couldn’t tell whether the game or the girl was to blame for my less-than-optimum experience doing Tsugumi’s route, so I decided to play one more time to make sure. And since I’m such a good friend, what better victim test subject than Nanakawa Rui, the cross-dressing twin sister of my bro and best buddy Nanakawa Tadashi?
Actually Tadashi kind of ruined things a bit by being shockingly chill about the whole thing. I even got an event one Christmas where he picks me up and drives me over to their place so I can spend the night helping Rui finish a manga in time for Comiket. He even encourages me to sleep in her room, then wakes me up the following morning and fixes me breakfast! Breakfast, I tell you! I’m dating your sister, man! Why are you so happy about it? Don’t you care about your sister?! Don’t you care about…me?
Hmph. Leaving Mr. No-Fun-At-All out of it, Rui route was fine, but a bit low on content. The girl herself was fun to hang out with, if a bit exhausting. At least I can introduce her to my friends and family without worrying that she’ll be a snooty bitch to all of them. Rui is loud and hyper, but also down-to-earth and honest about her own faults and interests.
She would be my favorite if I hadn’t raised Fumiko Yanagi’s affection all the way to Tokimeki level by accident. That’s right, I took her on a couple of dates, hung out with her during the school trip and took her to the shrine the second year all by accident. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Yanagi is so sweet! In-game, when your mood is at its lowest she’ll often show up and cheer you up considerably, but even as a player I always felt much better after hanging out with her. She’s got easy-to-be-withability, if there’s such a term. When her affection got too high, I had to stand her up on a few dates to lower it, but even then she was unfailingly sweet. Like she was just worried about me, the poor sweetheart (btw don’t try this with Satsuki-sempai. She will be PISSED and she’s scary when pissed). If I had to pick one girl for the MC to marry in ten years, it would definitely be her.
Err, oops, anyway, this isn’t a post about Yanagi. It’s about the game-loving, cosplaying Rui, whose route had its funny moments. I’ve seen the Valentine’s scene on the right twice, but I laughed out loud both times. It’s also hilarious the way the girls in your school think you and Tadashi are in a relationship because of how close you are to Rui. And Tadashi seems to enjoy the misunderstanding, which is like, hmmm…
Some of her more otaku-oriented events reeked of “trying too hard” syndrome though. Rui works at a maid cafe, sings only anime songs at karaoke, draws doujinshi, loves going to the arcade, etc etc. A few incidents and its cool, after that it’s like “Okay, okay, she’s an otaku, I get it already!” Everything in moderation, Konami.
It’s not all bad news, of course. She’s fun to hang out with, she’s happy to show off her curves to you (oh, the possibilities!), and since she starts out at high friendship with the MC, even on the worst dates she’s usually pretty upbeat.
On the whole it was a fun route that restored my faith in Tokimeki Memorial 4 as a good game. You can’t win them all, but it’s comforting to know girls like Tsugumi are an aberration rather than the norm. Now for another break, after which I’ll do Yanagi (<3) and possibly Doyama-sempai.
07.09.11 / Japanese, Konami, Romance game, Sony PSP, Tokimeki Memorial, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (1)
Tags: tokimeki memorial 4, tsugumi godou
I said I wasn’t going to start a new game, but strictly speaking Tokimeki Memorial 4 isn’t new, so it doesn’t count.
Since I had fun replaying Ranshima Monogatari, I thought I’d see if I could recapture the magic with TM4 as well. The experiment was a partial success. The game itself felt a little fresher and newer after a month away, but the girl I got? Not so good.
Tsugumi Godou is Maki’s neurotic, sarcastic best friend. I decided to go after her because she looks cute, no other reason. She’s also supposed to conform to the tsundere (i.e. bint that blows hot and cold) stereotype, but even though I dislike that kind of personality, I decided her looks made up for it.
Having dated and actually gotten her, I have to say she has a very high opinion of herself, but nothing to actually back that up. Yeah sure, she’s cute. She’s smart but not that smart, which is why it’s funny that she throws a mini hissy fit if you pass her in the exams. Miss, I was number 1 and you were number 50. We don’t really have anything to talk about.
I got a couple of her CGs. She…really doesn’t have a life outside studying, working in her dad’s cafe and crushing on Maki. That’s kinda sad. And since her life is so devoid of content, her route was devoid of content, and this post is devoid of content too. I really should have played something else…
05.07.11 / Japanese, Konami, Romance game, Sony PSP, Tokimeki Memorial, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: kyouno rizumi, review, tokimeki memorial, tokimeki memorial 4
I’m happy I got her, but doing four routes in quick succession has robbed me of any and all desire to continue this game. It’s all over for me now, so this will be my final post about Tokimeki Memorial 4 for the foreseeable future. Rui and Tsugumi, I’m sorry. Maybe in a couple of months we can talk about doing this again.
Notable things about Rizumi’s route? Nothing remarkable. I got almost none of her CGs naturally, and couldn’t be bothered to FAQ it. Not that I don’t like her or anything, I’m just tired. The girl herself is okay. I love her fashion sense, and she’s really sweet even on dates that don’t go so well. I can live without the constant references to music, but that’s her “gimmick” so I get it.
Interestingly enough, her confession takes place in the music room and not under the legendary tree. Does this mean our relationship won’t last forever? The MC already sounds a little insecure about her popularity in his ending blurb, which doesn’t bode well for the future. Shame on you, MC, I don’t remember raising you that way!
Final notes about Tokimeki Memorial 4? Skills are a good addition, but I’d like them taken out next time. Once you know what you’re doing, they make things way too easy. I mean, not like the other games were hard either (except TM1, brr), but having 400-600 in every stat by the end of most routes has never happened to me before.
It’s good that the girls change up what they say and do frequently. There are far fewer line and event repeats in one playthrough, although you will naturally see several events over and over on repeat runs. The graphics are simple, but clean. The revolving wheel menu was cool at first, but I was craving a simple straightforward menu after a few days. Battling is fun. Your friends are cool, but I wish you could interact with them even more, ‘cos they were funny. Etc, etc.
Meh, I really don’t have anything left to say about this game. It wasn’t bad, but the girls were all alike: similar faces, similar personalities, similar routes. Some of them seemed a little different, but as soon as they started liking you a bit they became just like everyone else. The stuff I found most exciting on all routes was raising my stats, battling and learning new skills. And if that’s what I want, then any average RPG will do.
Still, I had fun. And it’s motivated me to give Tokimeki Memorial 3 another shot, after a sufficient cooling-off period. I’ll report on that if it ever happens.
27.06.11 / Japanese, Konami, Romance game, Sony PSP, Tokimeki Memorial, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: tokimeki memorial, tokimeki memorial 4, yu satsuki
I thought she would be harder than that, but she fell as easily as the rest. Joining the student council wasn’t that hard either, plus I joined it in my second year on Maki’s route, anyway so it didn’t feel particularly fresh and exciting. My stats were all close to or over 90 by the time the election rolled around, I didn’t take any part-time jobs or pick up the naughty magazine and I joined the music club, which raised my moral stat as well. Piece of cake.
I thought managing without a job would be hard, but 20-28 rich a month is doable if you don’t go overboard with the expensive dates. I mostly stuck to affordable dates like the library and planetarium, and occasionally treated her to beach and mountain dates. I was even able to spend money on birthday presents for all the other girls and get Satsuki at least her medium present every year without too much trouble. Of course taking part in the “Special Christmas Party” every year (100 rich+10exp, -10 moral) helped a whole lot with that.
No great discoveries on the skills front, though I did unlock several interesting-looking ones. The one that would have helped me most with Satsuki, since it stops girls’ negative skills from activating (心の開錠術) I got too late to be effective. Satsuki’s negative skill is a killer: it removes one of your skills at random and you can’t put it back on till the next term. Oh hey, it’s Satsuki-sempai, fancy meeting you heAAAARGH!
Fending off the other girls was no big deal either. For the most part events and birthdays occurred often enough that I could keep most of them at bay. Maki automatically went all the way up to tokimeki mode without me ever taking her out on a single date (told you she was easy). So to deal with that, I called her up for a few dates and stood her up repeatedly, which somehow brought her affection down without provoking her to bomb me (again, told you she was easy).
Yanagi’s affection also went pretty high, which was actually a good thing because she would randomly show up and improve my mood. Thanks girl. As for the rest of the girls, I dealt with the matter by raising Satsuki-sempai to tokimeki+hand-holding level, then putting on a skill that drastically slowed down the rate at which girls like and bomb you (清廉潔白). And a good time was had by all.
I’d like to say it was worth it, but… Well, I guess it was. She’s the cutest girl of the bunch IMO (Tsugumi is a close second), and while she’s not particularly interesting, she’s all right. I didn’t date her too often, just once or twice a month, so she didn’t get stale as quickly as Maki or Itsuki did. And her CGs were pretty nice, as the picture above demonstrates. As a character she’s a little too ‘perfect’ and her sole flaw, a bad sense of direction, is completely unbelievable. It comes out of nowhere, plays out in one CG and then is never referred to again.
Graduation day she shows up, blah blah blah didn’t have the courage to confess last year blah blah blah confessing now, oh you love me too, yay. From her monologue and from another event, it sounds like she’s related to Shiori Fujisaki from TM1 and that the MC and Fujisaki are still together and still happily in love. That’s sweet…especially since I never did get Fujisaki myself. And everybody lived happily after, the end.
Next up, I’m going to start all over again because I hear I get a cheap stamina refilling item on my third playthrough. That’s the save file I’ll use to get Rui, Rizumi and Tsugumi before putting the game away for good.
25.06.11 / Japanese, Konami, Romance game, Sony PSP, Tokimeki Memorial, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (4)
Tags: maki hoshikawa, tokimeki memorial, tokimeki memorial 4
She’s all right, I guess. I did her route because she guilted me into it by being so nice to me last time, but I’m not that into her. Maki is the poor man’s Satsuki-sempai – average, but not quite good enough at anything. The girls in this game seem quick to fall in love, but Maki was especially easy, particularly in the face of my almighty stats. Her CGs were easy to get too. I got almost all of them naturally.
The developers often try to include at least one stereotypical “nice girl” in this kind of game, and this time it’s Maki: cheerful, sweet, fishes for compliments by putting herself down frequently, can’t afford to go to a proper hair salon, can only afford a few outfits, etc etc. One day she’s like “I wanna be a nurse!” then later she’s like, “No I suck I can’t be a nurse,” then you encourage her and she goes “Okay I’m gonna be a nurse” and that’s the full extent of her character development. Not that Itsuki Maeda had any development either, but Maki’s supposed to be the “main” girl. I had expectations!
The only exciting thing that happened on Maki’s route had nothing to do with the girl herself. I’d been fiddling with skills for a while, not taking them too seriously. I put on the all-night cramming skill (一夜漬け) that lets you raise your humanities-science-art skills like crazy the night before a test. I also put on a skill that randomly gives you a massive increase in the stat you’re working on (女神の加護). It rarely activates so I barely gave it a thought.
Then, one fateful night, BAM! they activated together! Science and art went up by 60 (!!) each, but that was child’s play compared to humanities: 288 to 520 in one night! That’s two to three years of grinding in ONE SINGLE NIGHT! It took me like a minute to believe what my eyes were telling me. H-how w-what b-b-but– it must be a bug! I saved, turned the game off, put it back on and it was still there. Suddenly Tsugumi and Satsuki were falling all over themselves to please me and the rest of the game was easy-mode. I’ve been trying to reproduce the lucky incident ever since, with no success. Maybe it really was a fluke.
Back to Maki, there’s nothing wrong with her, but there’s nothing right about her either. All that friendly supportiveness gets boring really quickly, which is why I can’t wait to date some of the more prickly types like Tsugumi. My stamina for this game has dropped even further, so I’ve decided to drop Kai, science girl and Yanagi. My final list is Satsuki-sempai (currently working on), Rui (she’s a funny, funny girl. Her Valentine’s Day event is priceless!), Tsugumi (‘cos I like her) and Rizumi (just because).
Should take me another week or two, then I’ll be ready to move on. I’m thinking of either finishing up Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari (urghhh) or starting something new entirely. Speaking of which, I tried to start TWEWY the other day, but four frames later some anorexic kid with a bad dye job told me to get the hell outta his face, so I did. …This is not going to end well.
16.06.11 / Japanese, Konami, Romance game, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (10)
Tags: onoda chiyomi, tokimeki memorial, tokimeki memorial 4
General impressions compared to other Tokimeki Memorial games I’ve played…
1. The art style in this game is fairly plain, so none of the CGs I got were anything to swoon over.
2. The date answers are much easier to figure out than in the GS games. If a girl tells you she loves singing and then asks how her singing was, of course the correct answer isn’t going to be “You suck.” Why is it even an option?
3. Your stamina sinks faster and your stats rise slower than in other games in the series. This is most likely because the developers expect you to use skills to boost or counter these effects. It was frustrating in the beginning but I was a studmuffin by the end anyway so it’s all good.
4. Losing money and stamina on dates is so unfair. It makes sense, though. Someone’s gotta pay for the tickets and it sure as heck ain’t gonna be the girl. Wait, does this mean the guys in TMGS have been treating me all along? That’s…kinda cool.
5. What kind of cell phone can only make 4 calls a month? And if the cell phone is down, what about the land line? A payphone? E-mail? Haven’t they heard of Skype? I see what they tried to do there, but it was so farfetched as to be ridiculous. On the plus side, it’s nice that making a call doesn’t take up the whole day any more.
6. I like my friends, Manabu and Tadashi. Not only do they not mack on your girls (Onoda Chiyomi, are you listening?!) but they also give you random stat boosts when you call them up to chat. Awesome. The only thing that hurts is that they gloat when they do better than you, but when you beat them they’re genuinely happy for you. Cry a little, dammit!
7. Bombs weren’t a problem in this game, despite me meeting 7 girls by the end. It helps a lot that you can call them up at any time to ask them out instead of having to wait till the weekend. The game where bombs were a real nightmare was the first Tokimeki Memorial on SNES. My hat is off to anyone who managed to get Fujisaki Shiori without setting off a million of them.
8. Skills are fun to experiment with but EXP is hard to come by. I tried not to stress out and to just play normally as much as possible and it worked out pretty well. And thank goodness you can only change them once a term or I’d have 500 in every stat by the end. There’s such a thing as too broken, you know.
Etc, etc. It was fun, but those 3 years felt really long. I’m going to raise my stats evenly for a year then save and use that save file as a base. But even then I don’t know if I have the patience to date 6 or 7 near-identical girls (Hoshikawa, Tsugumi, Yanagi, music girl, science girl, Tadashi’s sister, maybe Satsuki). Guess I’ll keep going till I get bored and then call it a day.
