16.10.11 / Japanese, Otome game, Romance game, Sony PSP, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (2)
Tags: starry sky in spring
I mentioned I was going to try more otome visual novels, but finding one that’s actually playable might be harder than I thought. I only made it about an hour in Starry Sky ~in Spring~ before I had admit that this just wasn’t going to work.
First off, there are only three guys to get in this game, and they’re all not my type. Clever Honey Bee decided to split one game into four seasons and dole the guys out sparingly. Lookswise, I don’t like them, personality-wise you’ve got the brash childhood friend (Kanata), the reasonable childhood friend (Suzuya) and the forgotten childhood friend (Tomoe). I hate those three cliches. The current skinny, gangly character design fad doesn’t do anything for me either. How about guys whose parents loved them enough to feed them?
Secondly, and the reason why I’m not even going to try the other games in the series, is that I find the setting ridiculously boring. A specialized school for astronomy? Seriously? My romantic options are all a bunch of pencil-pushing stargazers? They’d better be rich, that’s all I’ve gotta say about that.
Lastly, the story is non-existent. A visual novel lives and dies by its story. Even if the characters are good (and this time they aren’t), it doesn’t mean a thing if they’re not going anywhere. Here the “story” is that you and your friends enrolled in an astronomy school and then a transfer student came in and he says he knows you. The rest of the game appears to be Tomoe and Kanata bitching at each other like a pair of beauty queens while Suzuya tries to keep the peace.
I said “appears”, because strictly speaking I did finish this game. I put it on “Skip” and let it run on and on until the credits rolled, only stopping to pick one option or another. I couldn’t see the context so I was really just picking at random, but I at least tried to get everything Suzuya-related. Eventually the game ended and I have no idea how the story went, I just know I…probably? didn’t end up with Suzuya. I didn’t get any hugs or any kisses, no Suzuya CGs, no Suzuya ending sequence, nothing. The only final CG I got was the one on the right, where apparently Tomoe goes back to France and sends us a letter. Good riddance. But then once I finished and restarted, the new main screen had only Suzuya on it. So…huh?
How did this ever get so popular, I wonder? Needless to say I’m pirating all these visual novels, so I don’t need to “tough it out” if something isn’t working. I don’t want to support the companies that make this sort of game. Heck I’d be happy if they went bankrupt. I’ll try something else next time, hopefully with a better story, and maybe that’ll work out.
03.10.11 / Japanese, Koei, Otome game, Romance game, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: neo angelique special, neoromance
I finished it now, but I still hate it. It’s boring as hell.
I don’t even know what to write here. Let’s start with a list of synonyms for “boring”.
drudging
dull
flat
ho hum
humdrum
insipid
interminable
irksome
lifeless
monotonous
mundane
plebeian |
prosaic
routine
spiritless
stale
tedious
tiresome
tiring
unexciting
uninteresting
unvaried
wearisome |
Using some high-powered arcane magic, Koei managed to take this list and convert it into a video game, which they proceeded to name Neo Angelique Special and sell for $80 a pop.
Still don’t get it? Need me to draw you a picture? Here you go:
*sigh* Okay, okay. I played it. I’ll talk about it. Sheesh…
First of all, Koei has this series of otome games called Angelique. I’ve only played the first two games, but the basic premise is that you’re given a continent/universe to develop, and you have to do this while competing with a rival and simultaneously trying to raise the affections of a number of hot bishie Guardians. Believe me, it’s better than it sounds, but even the best formula gets stale after a while.
After number of permutations, spin-offs and remakes, Koei decided to reboot the series. I’d like to say it’s the thought that counts, but in this case the thought should have lived and died as a thought, because the reality is cold and cruel. In fact, I’m going to go out on a very sturdy limb and claim this: Koei was making a new otome game, realized it sucked donkey balls and slapped the Angelique label on it so donkey-ball-suckers would buy it.
My proof? The game has NOTHING in common with the other Angelique games. There’s a story element where Ange has special powers and is supposed to become the Queen of the World, but that could be any game at all. The world-building element is missing. The guardians are reduced to glorified escorts. There’s no rival. There’s a primitive battle system that’s an insult to any serious gamer. The game is easy beyond imagination.
The Angelique games have goals to meet and regular reviews. They have daily, weekly and monthly structures, but how exactly to achieve things is entirely up to you. Neo Angelique has no proper structure. Story progression happens when you stumble across the next flag without meaning to. Sometimes you go to the salon and nothing happens. Next time you to go the salon, bam, the story moves on. Your life consists of fulfilling monotonous quests in the hope that you will somehow trip across the next story element. Does that sound like a recipe for fun or does that sound like donkey balls? If you say both, you need help.
This review is all kinds of messed up. Oh my, that’s just like the game. Let’s try and get some order in here. First, the story. There are these bad creatures called Thanatos that make people very unhappy. Luckily a girl named Ange (that’s you) and four bishies have the power to purify these baddies, so they hang out in a fancy mansion drinking tea and having dinner parties (for real) and helping people out once in a while. Eventually you find out there’s this Erebus guy that’s causing all the trouble, so you get in a flying ship and go beat him up. Then you can either become Queen of the World or go back to having tea parties. Decisions, decisions.
Up next, gameplay. Talk to your guardians until they like you. Not much different from the standard Angelique games, except now you have to “unlock” conversation topics by visiting certain places or taking certain missions. Get enough of the right topics and you win the conversation bingo (no seriously, the topics are laid out like a bingo card) and your relationship progresses to the next level. Presumably if you do this enough you’ll get the guy at the end. Pssh, as if I’d want any guy that could be won in a bingo game. Occasionally you’ll have dinner parties and chat the guys up too all together. Not as much fun as it sounds, trust me.
Urge to keep writing, fading fast… Not like there’s anything left to note. You chat with guys non-stop, you wander around the planet in the hopes of triggering the next event, eventually you trigger it, story continues. There’s also a very rustic, primitive battle system, the kind they put in games for people who’ve never played RPGs before (see Arabians Lost for another example) It’s a bit like Chrono Cross with all the color attacks, and just like Chrono Cross it’s almost impossible to lose a battle unless you try really hard. That’s the last boss there. He makes Yu Yevon look tough.
Anyway, Neo Angelique was a massive waste of time. The bishies weren’t that cute, the story wasn’t very interesting, story progression was lul randum, the battle system was a joke, the music was okay, the background art was GORGEOUS, gotta give credit where credit is due, and while it wasn’t short, it didn’t take that long to finish. No way in hell am I ever playing this again, nor can I recommend it to anyone. Find an artbook (seriously, the background art is really nice) and call it a day.
27.09.11 / Idea Factory, Japanese, Nintendo DS, Otome game, Romance game, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: will o' wisp
I finished my first ever visual novel!
Will O’ Wisp is about a girl named Hanna who finds a life-sized doll in her basement after her dollmaker grandfather dies. She winds him up and he introduces himself as Will, an elemental doll, which basically means he’s alive and belongs to her. As the game goes on, Hanna will discover more about the other elemental dolls, her own special powers, and the role she is destined to fulfill. You know, the usual twaddle. It’s cliched, but short enough to stay interesting.
Will O’ Wisp DS also comes with a sequel of sorts packaged in there, called “The Miracle of Easter”, but I was sick of the game by the time I finished the main story, so I passed on that. Plus it retcons the ending of the original game. In the ending I got, Gyl turned human, Hanna lost her powers and they lived happily ever after together. In “The Miracle of Easter”, all the dolls were rendered lifeless at the end. Work done = 0.
I’m pretty chuffed that I actually managed to finish Will O’ Wisp. I’ve tried many visual novels, but I’ve never actually made it all the way to the end of one before. To be honest I don’t even recognize visual novels as “games”, but on the other hand they’re often substandard as far as reading material goes, so it’s no-win situation any way I look at it. Will O’ Wisp was a little better, since the story was okay-ish, and things moved at a cracking pace – at first. By Chapter 3, though, every scene started dragging on, Hanna’s internal monologue grew longer and longer, and the characters went over the same things ad nauseam: “Alvin is crazy, Alvin is crazy, Alvin is crazy, do you want to be released, do you want to be released, do you want to be released” again and again and again. To tell the truth, I used the Skip option to fast-forward from middle of Chapter 3 all the way to the final showdown with Ignis, then read from there. But a finish is a finish, and I did watch the ending credits, so I count that as “completed.”
If I had to hazard a few guesses as to why I was able to finish Will O’ Wisp in particular, it would be:
1. The art is nice. I’m a sucker for nice character designs. The CGs were fine to look at as well, though I wouldn’t have minded more. There were relatively few backgrounds, but the story moved fast enough that you were always shuffling between them, so it wasn’t so bad.
2. The scenes moved fast. This is the biggest reason why I can’t play VNs. Each trivial scene drags on interminably. Up till chapter 3 Will o’ Wisp kept things flowing: make a point and move on. Make a point and move on. Then it fell apart, but that’s what the “Skip” option was for.
3. The story’s pretty interesting, for a Rozen Maiden rip-off. Dolls and owners and they were all made by the same person and they’ve been alive for hundreds of years and they’re dressed Victorian-style and they fight, etc. But stories about dolls coming to life are much older than Rozen Maiden, so I’ll give them a pass. And they’ve got nice bishies, that’s gotta count for something.
4. The story develops quickly. Something’s happening at almost every stage, and it all leads to a logical conclusion. Not much time is wasted on petty arguments or comic scenes. Until chapter 3 and onwards, of course.
5. It’s not that long. There’s no timer in the game, but I don’t think it would take more than 4 or 5 hours to finish a route, even without skipping all the dialogue. I don’t have a lot of patience for reading endlessly, so that’s about my limit anyway.
6. Feedback is almost instanteneous. Accidentally selecting the wrong option and dooming yourself to a bad end/locking yourself out of a certain route is another thing I hate about visual novels. “What do you want on your bread?” A: Butter B: Jam C: Nothing. YOU PICKED BUTTER? Welcome to BAD END. Yaahh…Will o’ Wisp has none of that. If you select the right thing, you get a blue glow. Wrong thing, no blue glow. And you can check the affection level of your chosen doll any time you want, so you know you’re on the right track. There’s no way to fail. Heck, even if you don’t speak Japanese you can play this pretty easily.
7. Gyl is hot, in a girly kind of way. I did his route, and he wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes. I liked it best when he stopped wearing drag at the end.
8. Ignis is voiced by Takehito Koyasu. Actually I keep mixing up Koyasu and Kenyuu Horiuchi, so I didn’t know which one of them it was until I read the credits at the end. It wasn’t a very passionate performance either, Mr. Koyasu was clearly phoning it in this time. But I knew it was a voice I liked, so that counted for something. Come to think of it, the only voice actors I can recognize without fail are Norio Wakamoto and Shuichi Ikeda (mitometakunai mono da na). They should do more games.
So you see, so it’s not that hard to make a visual novel even I will like. Just keep the story moving fast, make the bishies hot and tell me when I’m going wrong so I don’t need a FAQ to find my way around. If you do that, I’ll even ignore stuff like 60% of the cast being obnoxious and the main character being a weak-willed lily and the story getting bogged down in the middle and the music grating on the ears. I’m a generous soul, after all.
Now that I’m rapidly running out of actual games to play on my PSP and DS, I might be forced to try more of these in the future, so I hope I can find more stuff that meets these simple requirements.
16.07.11 / Action RPG, Nintendo DS, Otome game, PS2, RPG, Simulation game, Sony PSP, Strategy RPG, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: allison & lillia, astonishia story, Berwick Saga: Tear Ring Saga, breath toiki wa akaneiro, destiny links, harvest moon, hiiro no kakera, hoshigami remix, houkago shounen, inugami, Legend of Heroes, mimana iyar chronicle, remindelight, the world ends with you
I play a lot of games from start to finish. I play even more from start to whenever-I-get-tired-of-it. However every once in a while (…actually pretty darn often) there’s a game that I try to play only to give up very quickly for one reason or another. I usually don’t even mention them here firstly because I have nothing to say, and secondly because I have better games to write about, but I’ll list a few recent victims of this practice here.
Remindelight (DS) – Long intro, cliched story about rescuing sister from forces of evil, meh graphics, massively squashed-up text that’s incredibly difficult to read, terrible battle system that consists of slashing randomly at the screen, etc. I don’t think I got even an hour into this one.
Houkago Shounen (DS) – One of the games you have to be Japanese to appreciate, I guess. It follows the life of a little boy in 80s Japan as he goes to school, comes home, plays with his friends and tries to avoid moving away with his family at the end of summer. It was heartwarming but, frankly, extremely dull, and none of the mini-games he plays seemed like any fun. Instead of me playing a game about him, he needs to play the game about my childhood.
Astonishia Story (PSP) – I played about an hour last week, and it reminded me of Tactical Guild in terms of sheer terribleness. Even the samey-looking bad guys, walk-up-and-attack battle system, forced humor and paper-thin characters are similar. I could grow to love this game, I know I could. But I’ve already played one so-bad-its-good game this year, so AS will have to wait till at least 2012 to get its turn. If ever.
Inugami DS, Allison & Lillia DS – Not games, just books put on the DS by publishers out to make a few extra bucks. I thought reading light novels on the DS might be more fun than reading scanned copies on the screen (Buy? what is this “Buy” you speak of?), but this probably only applies to books that are worth reading in the first place, i.e. NOT Inugami.
Destiny Links (DS) – Shame, it’s a really promising game. Destiny Links had lots of elements I love in an RPG (quests, item crafting, world exploration, multiple character scenarios to play through), but I just couldn’t get past the pure action RPG battle system. I can handle ARPGs with level ups because then I can just grind till I’m strong enough, but systems that require me to actually show some skill and dexterity are a no-go. I managed to finish the first island, then threw my hands up after that. The tiny characters and the mostly-hiragana text didn’t help either.
Mimana Iyar Chronicle (PSP) – Plays like Tales of the Tempest, feels like a Grandia II rip-off. If I had a dollar for every grumpy mercenary with a chip on his shoulder… I made it to the first boss, who promptly wiped me out. Now I either have to grind or actually get the hang of the battle system, neither of which appeals to me right now. Dumped until further notice.
The World Ends With You (DS) – I’m giving it my best shot, I really am, but… It’s not doing anything for me. I’m just getting more and more stressed by the moment. Not only is the “story” not going anywhere I care to follow but also the battle system is all over the place. Which part of this is supposed to be fun? If it’s the 7-day Lockdown in Tokyo thing, I already did that in Devil Survivor, thank you. And can I get another couple of dollars in here for the “Everybody just leave me alone” protagonist? I haven’t thrown in the towel yet, but…
Hoshigami Remix (DS) – From the makers of my beloved Stella Deus, but this one is a wash. The battle screens make me claustrophic and the battle pace is downright catatonic. The characters on the screen are tiny (I complain about tiny characters because I have bad eyes, true story), the character designs are fuzzy and awful, the story is boring, the music is unremarkable, etc. Basically everything that can be wrong with a game is wrong with Hoshigami Remix. But I like SRPGs enough that I’ll probably play it on and off for a while to come. I especially like the Tower of Trial being unlocked right at the beginning. Maybe I’ll even finish it, eventually.
Harvest Moon Boy & Girl + Hero of Leaf Valley (PSP) – I shouldn’t have to repeat how much I love Harvest Moon games, but both original versions on the PS2 were a bit of a failure for me (I liked Innocent Life though, for some strange reason). I don’t know what I expected from the PSP remakes, but what I got was a whole lot of nothing. Hero of Leaf Valley seems to have a bit of potential – I did play quite a bit of Save the Homeland – but Boy & Girl is definitely out.
Breath – Toiki wa Akaneiro (DS) – I probably haven’t mentioned this before, but I don’t really like visual novels. Every couple of months I give one a shot just to see what’s going on, but it never works out. Breath would have been bad enough on its own, but the existence of several stupidly irritating games that force you to blow into the DS mic repeatedly was the last straw.
Hiiro no Kakera (DS) – Like I said, I don’t like visual novels. I gave this a shot because it’s one of the few otome ‘games’ for the DS, but I sorely regretted it. None of the male character designs appealed to me. The main character was whiny, ungrateful, stubborn, bitchy and mean. My dream was to lead her to a painful, ugly death, but I quit long before I got the chance. The story seemed to have potential, but every single scene, no matter how petty, dragged on for ages and ages so I gave up. This is a feature of all visual novels, btw, which is part of the reason why I don’t like them.
Berwick Saga: Tear Ring Saga series (PS2) – Gave up right in the middle of the first mission. I love SRPGs, but the hexagonal model was too confusing and the battles were hard. It would probably have turned out well if I’d pushed through to the end, but it came at a time when I was up to my nose in other SRPGs, so it just couldn’t compare. I looked around to see if it had gotten stellar reviews or anything, but “meh” seemed to be the general response so I dumped it.
Legend of Heroes I & II (PSP) – Nothing wrong with them, they’re just boring. I should have played them 15 years ago along with BoFII and Lufia I, then they’d have fit right in. I tried both LoH I & II in turn, but I think I’m going to have to save them for when I’ve run out of other PSP RPGs to play. Gotta say, I love Falcom’s character designs though.
Now back to the stuff that is working out. I really need to get off my butt and just finish Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari and three or four other games I’m almost done with but never got round to posting about.
25.04.11 / Japanese, Nintendo DS, Otome game, Romance game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (2)
Tags: arabians lost, review, the engagement on desert
Just finished my first and only playthrough of Arabians Lost (no Osama jokes, please) for the Nintendo DS. I went for the heroine’s childhood friend Tyrone Bale because he seemed like a nice guy. Plus he was the only one that didn’t make her go, “Gawd I hate this guy!” at the start, so I figured that was a good sign.
The main character Aileen is a real piece of work. She’s whiny, stubborn, mean, sarcastic and bitchy (inb4 “Just like a real girl”). Her only saving grace is that she keeps most of those thoughts to herself, which is the only thing that keeps her in second-place to Tamaki from Hiiro no Kakera as No. 1 Otome Game Bitch. Plus it helps that most of the people she bitches about are nasty guys anyway.
This is probably the most unlikable cast of charcters I’ve ever played with in a video game, and I’ve played quite a few. Thieves, swindlers, murderers, compulsive gamblers, loan sharks… about the only thing they didn’t have is a serial rapist, and I’m still not sure about that Lille… So when Aileen complains in the beginning about having to pick a husband from this bunch, I see where she’s coming from. Which is why it’s so weird that she ends up with one of them in the end. Then again she’s not exactly Princess Charming either.
So! Back to Tyrone Bale, her childhood friend. Unlike the other characters, he’s just a dumb, violent gang leader. Practically a saint, really. And he’s nice to you from the get go. I don’t know whether to call my playthrough “doing his route”, though. “Routes” in other dating sims/visual novels involve a series of events or dates with a guy, picking certain options and doing certain things in order to get them to like you. In Arabians Lost, there’s nothing to choose. Raising a guy’s affection is just about asking him to accompany you to places repeatedly. If his affection is over 100 by the end, you’re set to get a romantic ending with him. That’s it. No choices to make, no dates to go on, no compulsory events to see, nothing. To make the process faster, there are two items you can use to raise a guy’s affection even more. IIRC I raised Stuart’s affection from 0 to 52 in one day just by using them repeatedly.
Back to Tyrone again – he was really boring, so I keep going off-topic – his backstory is that he was a childhood friend of Aileen’s along with Stuart but they got estranged after Stuart’s mother committed suicide. All well and good, but thanks to that we get this really uncomfortable situation (for the player) where all Aileen and Tyrone ever do is talk about their childhood and how they used to play together and stuff. It makes me feel like an outsider butting in when they know each other so well already. Like going to a stranger’s family reunion where everyone knows each other and they’re all talking about “Hey, remember the time we did this? And that time when you did that? That was like, sooo funny!” After a few minutes, you really want to go home.
As if that’s not enough, almost all of Tyrone’s events revolve around talking about either Stuart or Tyrone’s older sister. Stuart this, Stuart that, my older sister this, my older sister that. What about you, Tyrone? Who are you? Don’t you have a mind of your own? To be fair to him, it’s usually Aileen who brings Stuart into the conversation. She seems to be obsessed with him in some kind of way – in fact it’s flat-out stated several times in the game that he was her first love - so she’s always finding ways of worming him into the conversation even when he clearly doesn’t belong. That’s why I gave her that day with Stuart so she’d be satisfied. Hope you’re happy Aileen, you two-timing <bleep>. She ended up with Tyrone, but it won’t be long before she’s cheating on him with Stuart, I just know it.
Tyrone wasn’t the only disappointment in Arabians Lost though: the game itself is just too easy! Most of the attraction of Arabians Lost for me was that it had actual gameplay elements and wasn’t just 10 hours of reading. Not just gameplay elements: RPG battles and dungeon exploration! Who can turn that down? Unfortunately the game was probably made for an audience that presumably doesn’t play many RPGs so the battles were ridiculously easy! Enemies were few! Palette swaps were many! Helpful guy was helpful <– they’re not supposed to help you in battle unless they like you, but I found they helped me right from the start anyway, the sweethearts. I never died even once. Leveling up was fun, but your level caps off at 5 (five)! Which I managed within 12 days without even breaking a sweat. There’s a dungeon you can only enter at level 5, but what’s the point when your level is maxed? To make money? Well, uhh, about that…
That 10,000,000G you’re supposed to make in 25 days? I made it in 5 days by abusing roulette in the casino. You can play there several times a day (twice at each time of the day, I believe) and make up to 16,000,000G each time playing roulette. In fact, I made the maximum figure of 99,999,900G in 10 days and had nothing to do after that. That was a total mistake on my part. Normally if a game can be easily broken I’m all for breaking it, but this time I definitely shot myself in the the foot. There’ll be no next time, but if I ever play a similar game, I’ll try to make the money honestly. I mean, I can always cheat on the last day, right?
So there I was, max level, max money, 230 affection from Tyrone, only halfway through the game? Too, too boring. There was absolutely nothing to do. There are precious few places you can visit in the game: four dungeons, five places in the castle. In the city there are two guilds, one casino and one pub, that’s it. Dungeons are usually small and straightforward and the dungeon bosses are as easy as pie. Clearly the gameplay was deliberately dumbed down so players could focus on character interactions instead. I got an amusing scene with Stuart and Tyrone after I raised Stuart’s affection, for example.
Luckily there’s an option in your room that lets you skip straight to the last day whenever you want, but I didn’t want to do that because I was afraid I’d miss something. That something turned out to be the festival on Day 20 where Aileen confesses to Tyrone (no, not vice-versa) and they share their first kiss. Even then Stuart manages to find his way into the conversation.
In short, I don’t really like Arabians Lost. It’s not a complete dud but it hasn’t got anything to offer me. Aileen already has her preferred guys and she already has relationships with all of them, so the player is more going along for the ride than anything else. I couldn’t even stop her from confessing to Tyrone, she just blabbed it all out without permission. The art is also bad and all the guys are average-to-ugly. Short necks, oddly long limbs, weird faces that change from angle to angle. The backgrounds are nice, but there are only so many times you can look at them before getting tired. Ugly art also means ugly-to-meh CGs, and the accompanying events are LOOOOONG. Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk for like 15 minutes for each event. And there are over 250 CGs to get?! What?! DO. NOT. WANT.
So that’s the end of Arabians Lost for me. I was going to get Stuart next to complete the story and find out why his mom really did kill herself, but now that I think of it, I don’t really care. There’s no way I’ll be able to force myself to read all that text. Lille seems nice, but boring, Shark is okay but also kind of boring. As for Roberto, well, having a gambling addict for a king seems to be a one-way trip to bankruptcy, so I don’t even know what he’s doing in this game. I also have absolutely no interest in that sick murderer Curtis. I don’t care what your reasons are, just GTFO of my kingdom. This isn’t the game for me and it’s time to move on.
09.02.11 / Nintendo DS, Otome game, Romance game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: elite beat agents, music game, ouendan, princess debut, review, rhythm game
I’m a fan of otome games, in theory. If it exists and I can get my hands on it, I’ll try it sooner or later. If it’s in English, all the better. And if it has actual gameplay and doesn’t involve 20 hours of non-stop reading then woo-hoo, you just made my day!
But just because I’ll try most of these games once doesn’t mean I’ll like them. Some games are just not for me and sadly Princess Debut was one of them.
The story was simple enough. Sabrina, an ordinary teenage girl, switches places with a Sabrina from another world who happens to be a princess. Princess Sabrina hates dancing, but she has a ball coming up in 30 days. Somehow she manages to convince Sabrina to go to her world and learn to dance, pick a partner and take part in the ball on her behalf.
And of course it’s an otome game so there are six handsome (your mileage may vary on that) princes that you can try to woo in those 30 days. Maybe if I’d actually liked any of those guys my experience of the game would have been different. As it was I either found them annoying and/or creepy, like Vince and Cesar, or just bland and boring, i.e. the rest of them. For some reason they all look very similar as well, so there isn’t much to choose between them.
So, an otome game with a meh story and meh guys. Is the gameplay any good, then? Unfortunately not. You wake up and spend the day wandering around a few locations looking for guys to hang out with. If you find one you talk to him, hope he asks you out on a date, then hope you say the right thing to make him like you a little more. These events are all very short and very dull. For example you run into Klaus and he asks you to go shopping with him. You go shopping. You talk a bit. The end. That sort of thing. The aim of the exercise is to get one of the guys to agree to be your dance partner, then keep his love for you at 100% till the end of the game, at which point he will confess his love for you if you manage to win the ball.
Btw, once you pick a partner you can’t change him for the rest of the game so be careful. I picked Vince early and lived to regret it. He is childish, immature, selfish, inconsiderate and even downright mean from time to time. There’s nothing princely about that guy, let me tell you! Come to think of it I really should have turned him down when he gave me the diamond ring at the end. Tch, what a missed opportunity to get some revenge.
Training for the ball itself will probably take about 50% of gaming time. This is probably where I had the biggest disappointment, though. Going through dance routines is just a matter of sliding the stylus across the touchscreen while following prompts in the top screen. The trailer should give you an idea what to expect: Princess Debut Trailer. Maybe in some alternate reality, this sort of thing is considered challenging, but I’ve played this kind of game before, and I liked it better when it was called Ouendan. In fact I’ve finished all the songs in Ouendan 1, 2 and Elite Beat Agents on all difficulties and S-ranked almost all of them, so believe me when I say this stuff was child’s play to me. Slide, slide, slide. Slide some more, twirl, slide. Zzzzzzz… I wasn’t impressed by the tinny rearrangements of classical tunes they did either. Poor remix, poor sound quality, poor gameplay = poor music game.
And it’s not as if you’re dancing each tune just once and then moving on, as you do in Ouendan. Nope, at the beginning of this game you’ve only got one tune, and you have to practice it over and over again until you level up a bit and then you get another. Then another, then another. At the end of my playthrough I had 10 tunes to show for my hard work. Just ten. For all my hard work. All of which I had to play over and over again to raise my level. Raising your level, after all, raises stamina, which just means you can dance some more. Oh yay (sarcasm). It also raises your Technique and Artistry, which I presume makes you more attractive to the princes. But since they all suck, who cares whether you’re attractive to them or not?
The third thing you get from levelling up, and from winning certain dance contests, is new outfits. There are at least 20 such items to collect and you can’t get them all in one playthrough so in theory there’s some replay value in there. In practice not only are the dresses poorly drawn and animated but they’re also downright ugly and bizarre. In any case, when you’re busy dancing, you’re staring at the bottom screen so you can’t even see yourself in said ugly dress. Big whoop.
My intention wasn’t to bash this game, though. I mean, at least it got released in the Western market, which is more than I can say for most other otome games. Just by looking at the presentation I can tell it’s targeted at the pre-teen and early teen girl market, so I’m not exactly shocked that it didn’t work out for me. Most importantly, if you just want to play a game where you hang out with vaguely good-looking guys, dance to some well-known tunes and put on some rather drab clothing, you could do a lot worse than Princess Debut. It’s not for me, but it might be for you.
Btw, if for some reason you do like this game, Natsume has another one out called Cheer We Go. Check it out.
22.01.11 / Japanese, Konami, Nintendo DS, Otome game, Romance game, Tokimeki Memorial, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (2)
Tags: amanohashi, girl's side 3rd story, himuro, oosako, tokimeki memorial, wakaouji
Oosako returned to the wild! I so don’t want him. I put off doing his route as long as I could, and then once I started I rushed through it as quickly as possible just to see the ending. Unlike everyone else’s ending, his doesn’t take place in the church. It takes place on the beach, and instead of him confessing, you confess to him. Then he’s like “Eh, all right, fine.” And you jump on him and that’s it. I wasn’t expecting much so I can’t call it a letdown but still, meh.
What if despite all this you want to get Oosako? He’s pretty easy if you’ve played the games a few times and know how to go about becoming Rose Queen and winning the Sports Festivals:
1. Fail three subjects in your first exam. It’s easy, just don’t raise any stats when you start the game.
2. You’ll have remedials with Oosako.
3. After that raise your stats till you’re first in class to get another scene.
4. Along the way, let your stress get high and you’ll get an event where he lends you a book.
5. Take part in and win an event in all 3 Sports Festivals.
6. Never miss a day of preparation for the Culture Festivals. You should get an event with Oosako every year.
7. During the trip to Hokkaido, turn your friend down when she asks you to take part in the pillow fight. You should get an event with Oosako by the elevator.
8. Last, but not least, be sure to become Rose Queen in your third year.
If you do all that you should get Oosako pretty easily. Make absolutely sure you don’t date any other guy in the process, because every other guy’s ending takes precedence over Oosako’s.
Till the end Oosako’s kiddy looks (fans might call them “boyish good looks”), screechy voice and cheesy lines of encouragement never grew on me, but I’ll give him credit where credit is due: at least he’s decent enough not to date his student while she was his student. As much as I love Himuro, I know in real life he should have been fired and possibly banned from teaching for going out with the MC of TMGS1. And as for Amanohashi, if my 16 year old daughter ever told me her principal had invited her to the pool for the express purpose of checking out her body, I’d be heading over there with a shotgun so fast it would make their heads spin! Heh, maybe that’s why Himuro, Wakaouji and Amano-pervert all went for that student, because she doesn’t have any parents to protest! So kudos to Oosako for having some standards, at least.
On that high note, I say goodbye to TMGS3. Well, not goodbye for ever, I still have it, and I’ll go back eventually and play the 3P mode. For now though, I’m through with it and I need a long, long, long break before I can even think of playing it again.
05.01.11 / Japanese, Konami, Nintendo DS, Otome game, Romance game, Tokimeki Memorial, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (4)
Tags: girl's side 3rd story, kouichi, Taiyo Kasuga, tokimeki memorial
Secret character Taiyo Kasuga. The only character that makes me feel like more of a pedophile than Oosako-sensei. Even though you meet him halfway through your second year, you only start to have anything to do with him in your third year, which makes the first two years of that route very boring. Fast moving, though, since you can just join the baseball club and use that command ad nauseam until the end of the game. As with all the other secret character routes, you don’t get to go on proper dates or trips with Taiyo so his route is very dull.
Taiyo doesn’t care about your stats, he doesn’t care about bombs, he doesn’t care about Rose Queen or anything. As long as you join the club by 2nd Year 9/25 and use the club command repeatedly, you shouldn’t fail his route. The correct answer to give in each case is blatantly obvious, and much of the time either option works just fine.
His route takes precedence over the other secret character routes, so what you can do is take a save from one of those towards September of 2nd Year and use that as your Taiyo route then proceed with whatever else you were doing. Be careful not to date any of the regular guys though. Kouichi came after me on this route and I was hard pressed fending him off, but I made sure I didn’t give him the least bit of encouragement and that worked out fine.
As a character Taiyo is a complete crybaby with a huge crush on you, his sempai. He grows up a little over the course of the game but he’s still a big baby by the end of the game. Dating a guy like that would be a huge drag in real life, and I get the sense from the ending that the main character is just playing with him as a boytoy until someone better comes along (Konno-sempai!!!). Well, whatever. That’s how you learn about life, Taiyo-kun!
Now then, I’ve done all the secret characters in TMGS3 except Oosako-chan (ugh…that predator…do not want…), and I’m right before the last boss in Radiant Historia so hopefully my next update will be about one of these two games. Oh, right, I’m also right before the final boss in Suikoden III, I’d forgotten about that. Lots of games to play in this new year but so little time to do it in. I’ll give it my best shot!
15.12.10 / Japanese, Konami, Nintendo DS, Otome game, Romance game, Tokimeki Memorial, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: girl's side 3rd story, konno, kouichi, tokimeki memorial
Kouichi’s on my desktop!
See?
Heh heh heh.
I’ve got a Konno-sempai wallpaper as well. I switch them in and out every week. I can’t take any credit for making them, though. I downloaded them from this particular page on Zerochan. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see them. The other guys have wallpapers as well, but who cares about them? :-p
In other news, I’m close to finishing Radiant Historia and I just got through a second playthrough of Shepherd’s Crossing 2. Details to follow, eventually.
07.12.10 / Japanese, Konami, Nintendo DS, Otome game, Romance game, Tokimeki Memorial, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: aizawa shougo, girl's side 3rd story, konno, kouichi, novelist, tokimeki memorial
At long last! I couldn’t even enjoy his route any more, because I had to do it twice. Also I don’t really like his scruffy look. When he got the Nobelno Prize and showed up clean-shaven with his hair slicked back I was like “Ooh, I could get into that!” But when it’s time for the confession he shows up with his usual slovenly look again, meh. There should have been a “Go back and shave first, then we’ll talk” option. To make things worse, his ending says he’s jsut as cranky as ever even as you’re dating. Come to think of it, does he say he loves you? He doesn’t, does he? He says “I need you”, which is not the same as “I love you.” Just ask Meat Loaf. Gimme Konno-sempai or Kouichi any day of the week.
Anyway, the part you wanted to read, how to actually get Ol’ Crankypants to confess to you. He’s actually much easier than Taira or Oosako, because much of his route is made up of automatic events. If you manage to get the first few triggers to occur and don’t mess up the others, you should be safe. Be very, very careful not to date any other guys on his route, though, otherwise you’ll end up like this.
Now for the actual instructions. These are taken from this Japanese page: Secret Character (Aizawa Shougo) so I don’t take any credit for it, but I have tested it and it does work.
2nd Year
October – December
Check the homepage in October and it will tell you about a book release. Go out to town repeatedly until it triggers an event where you go to the bookstore. Apparently you have to visit at least one of the shops in the shopping district (商店街) to get it to trigger, I’m not sure about that. If you miss this event, say good bye to Aizawa.
When you get the option, choose to buy a book.
December-January
You’ll get an event where you lend the book to Miyo-chan.
February – March
Check the homepage for info about another book release. Go out again until you get the bookstore event to trigger (just like in October). You’ll run into Aizawa again and he’ll ask you to pretend to be his niece.
Automatic event
You’ll run into Aizawa again, and he’ll ask you to pretend to be his niece again.
Choose “Yes”.
The Following Sunday
Make sure you choose to go shopping the next Sunday. If you have club practice, you can go to practice and do it the following Sunday, but I don’t know if that’ll work if you have a date.
After you choose to go out, you have to choose, in order:
“Go see him”
“Call out to him”
“Don’t be so selfish!!” or “….” (both are fine)
3rd Year
April – June
Do not accept any invitations to walk home with a friend and do not invite anyone to walk home until this event triggers. You’ll run into Aizawa and get an event that takes place in a bar (it involves Himuro, whee!)
The Aizawa Command
After the bar event, you should find an “Aizawa” command next to the Shopping/Date command. Choose that command on weekends to go visit Aizawa. If you don’t choose it for 8 weeks in a row, it will disappear. That means you’ve lost him.
5th time you choose it: CG event
6th time you choose it: Event, command disappears
September
If you can’t read Japanese, you might get worried if you don’t see any Aizwa events for several months, but don’t worry. In September, Miyo-chan will send you an e-mail about “Bitter Chocolate Cake”. Choose to go out, and choose to go to the park. You’ll reminisce about Aizawa.
October
You’ll get an e-mail about an “Autumn Book Fair”. Go shopping, then go to the bookstore. Choose “Get a ticket to the book signing”.
19th November
Book signing takes place. Apparently you can choose either “I still want to see him’ or “I’ll just go home” and still get his ending. However if you choose the latter you won’t get his second CG, so choose to see him to be on the safe side.
28th January
Automatic if you choose the first option in the previous event (not sure, think so)
Miyo-chan finally returns your book (it’s been a whole year!!!). You’ll go to the bookstore and get a CG about Aizawa receiving the Nobelno Book Prize. He cleans up good, doesn’t he? I won’t post it here, see it for yourself.
After this his save icon should show up, and then you’re safe as long as you don’t let any other guys get in the way.
And that’s it! That wasn’t so hard, was it? The hard thing is getting his early events to trigger. When you go out once and twice and nothing happens, it’s easy to get discouraged. Don’t give up, keep going out and you should trigger it eventually. It’s all about patience. Happy Aizawa hunting!
