24.03.12 / Action RPG, Koei, Otome game, Sega, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 4, phantasy star portable
This is going to take much longer than I thought, because I’ve been super-busy this week and will be even busier next week. Back when I was in college I used to look down on people who complained about being “busy.” I had SO much time on my hands back then, even after climbing five mountains on my way to school, 7 days a week, uphill both ways in 100 feet of snow, you young people have it easy, blah blah blah. If you’re still in school, enjoy it while it lasts!
Who? In fact, who are you guys?
Phantasy Star Portable: I’ve almost forgotten what the story was, I’m so busy doing the free missions. We’re still chasing the same terrorist we’ve been dealing with since chapter 1. This is shaping up to be the first RPG I’ve ever played where the initial bad guy turned out to be the ultimate baddie after all.
The mindless slashing is just the balm I need after a hard day at work, too. I’m just worried that I’ll spend so much time on this that I’ll burn out and be unable to play an ARPGs for the rest of the year. I should get back to the story missions.
Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 4: Haven’t progressed much from where I left off. Our heroine and her bishie troops are going around defeating the four “gods”. I beat Suzaku and just beat Byakko, so I know what the next couple of hours are going to look like.
I still haven’t found a guy in the game that moves me, and then there’s the little problem of Chihiro being too front-and-center. You’re supposed to be able to put yourself in the heroine’s shoes a little bit in romantic games. This game is more like an ordinary RPG: you either like the protagonist or you don’t (I don’t). Plus she hasn’t shown any romantic interest in anyone yet (or vice-versa, come to think of it) so I’m just going to play it like a normal game and let the chips fall where they may.
I’m going to play an hour or two of PSP now, and then we old people need our sleep.
21.03.12 / Japanese, Koei, Otome game, Romance game, RPG, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (2)
Tags: Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 4, neoromance
This is shaping up to be another one of “those” games. Those games I spend hours playing and then can’t write anything about because they didn’t make an impression on me at all. After 7h 40ms very few things have happened and even fewer of them have been important. I’m probably asking for too much, looking for tension and excitement in an otome game. I kind of had hopes for this one, but oh well.
Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 4 is about a girl named Chihiro who finds out one day that’s she’s the princess of a country in another world. She warps back with her guardians, finds out the place has been conquered by another state and starts a journey to take it back. In typical Neoromance fashion, nearly everyone in the series is a bishie. Even the bad guys are easy on the eyes. The game seems to share an artist with the Angelique series, so it’s got some gorgeous background and character art.
The game itself is billed as an otome game with RPG elements. You have a lot of party members (all bishies), skills, random turn-based battles, boss battles, an overworld, elements, etc. Fighting raises your characters’ affection values for you, and making certain choices in battle, e.g. killing off your enemy early and helping a guy with his, raise them even more. For an otome game it’s very well thought-out, and the battles are a joy… when they let you fight. Which is almost never.
95% of the game is a standard visual novel, they just throw an easy fight or two my way every 30 minutes or so to keep me from falling asleep while they prattle on and on and on. I wasn’t surprised to hear they made an anime out of the first game in the series. If it’s anything like this one, it’s very anime-like, especially when it comes to character interactions and the story development.
Aww, look at his widdle ears~
It’s even anime-like in how chicken**** the bad guys are. RPG baddies usually don’t hold back on the terror and tyranny. Burning down villages, stabbing corporate employees in a tower, killing people’s girlfriends, that’s how they usually roll. Here, because there’s a gettable guy on the bad side they had to neuter all the evil. The worst they’ve done so far is bully a few old people and throw a few dissenters in jail. What kind of weaksauce tyranny is that? It makes my job as liberator all the harder, because everyone’s actually pretty well off. The fields are green, the weather is sunny, the villagers are fat and well-fed… I should just pack up and go back to Japan.
Enough whining though, I knew what I was getting into when I picked this up. The more important thing is… which guy will I pick? I’ve got about 8 love interests so far, and I don’t like any of them. There’s a furry shota named Ayuki. I like his spunk (no, not like that), but the game won’t let me have him. Second and third best: Tooya and Futsuhiko. Tooya was actually leading the pack until he took off his mask. He should have kept it on a little longer to build up the suspense.
Futsuhiko I don’t have a picture of right now, but his Kofun hairstyle makes him look like he has cat ears, and that’s cute. You know, maybe I just want to play a game about catboys, that’s what the problem is. I wonder if there’s one out there. Something tells me I’ll regret asking that question.
On, on we go. I really wish they’d let me fight though. I could grind on the random battles, but it’s just not the same if they don’t throw any challenging story battles my way. *sigh* Well, that’s what I have Phantasy Star Portable for. I’ll be alternating between the two until I’m with either/both. When I need more story, I’ll come back to this one. Win/win. I hope.
24.02.12 / Idea Factory, Japanese, Otome game, Romance game, Sony PSP, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (4)
Tags: mirai e no prologue, wand of fortune
The Wand of Fortune fandisc, useful only to those who have played the original and liked it. I’m sort of, kind of in that category, so I downloaded it and gave it a brief spin.
Can’t say I enjoyed it though. It’s too strict in terms of the choices you’re allowed to make. You’re locked into or out of certain routes depending on the first three choices you make at the beginning. You can do everything right after that and still end up getting the teachers’ ending.
The fandisc is divided into three sections: an original scenario called “Edgar’s Mysterious Loupe” featuring a new character, a long boring story about Cynthia (the blonde-haired Julius freak) and a section where you see what happened between Lulu and her chosen guy after the end of the first game. That’s the only part worth playing IMO. Edgar’s loupe deals with Lulu’s crisis of confidence after getting the “All” element in the first game, and a mopey depressed Lulu isn’t Lulu at all.
Still, I played “Edgar’s Mysterious Loupe” a couple of times. Got Edgar’s, Est’s, Lagi’s and Noel’s endings naturally, then used a FAQ to get Elbart (now known as “Elbert”, what gives) and the “True” Ending. In the process I discovered that I don’t really like Lagi as much as I thought I did, that Noel and Est are awesome and that Mr. E is still my number one. Elbie4Lyfe.
Getting those endings unlocked the post-original scenarios for Est, Lagi, Noel and Elbe/art, allowing me to see how they’re getting on with Lulu. Err, sort of. Apart from Elbert’s route, I fast-forwarded through the others because they were dragging on.
Elbert and Lulu: they aren’t getting on too well because Elbert is embarrassed to admit their relationship in public. As well he should be, the pedophile. If you’re going to date a student, you should at least take a leaf from Himurocchi’s book and choose a day-school so you can date them outside school on weekends. At least they were both clever enough to pick a school where the principals are okay with it.
In the end Lulu gets tired of him pushing her away and plants a kiss on him, the end. Heh heh, I love it when they get all embarrassed like that. Unfortunately I don’t see much of a future for E&L as long as Elbert continues to be so ball-less. Sorry darling, but it’s the truth.
When we get married, I'm burning this outfit first
Lagi and Lulu: they’re having issues because he can’t hug her and is nice to every other girl but her. Lagi’s a twat for making my Lulu sad, and I’ve had it up to here with his cranky, childish attitude. They did share a nice kiss towards the end, but I have no idea how they got there because I was forwarding my way through.
Noel and Lulu: more awkwardness, more unhappy Lulu. She wants him to be more affectionate and he’s too nervous to do so. Unlike Elbert he doesn’t even have his position as an excuse. I like Noel, he’s a funny guy, but this is unacceptable.
Est and Lulu: have a surprisingly sweet relationship, but I don’t remember much else of what happened in there. Something about him hiding secrets from her, blah blah, I want to share your pain, blah blah, and your colds and fevers too, blah blah blah. Fast forward for the win.
The older I grow, the shorter my attention span gets, so this outcome was perhaps inevitable. Moreover, while I liked the previous game, I’m still a little burned out from how long and tedious it was, so my opinion doesn’t count for much. Fans of Wand of Fortune won’t go wrong with this fandisc though. It’s nice to find out exactly what happened once they started dating, because a confession doesn’t automatically mean everything’s hunky-dory. The disc also has several new CGs as well as “dream sequences” with all the characters, and each route in each section is fairly short, especially compared to the original. It’s worth at least one playthrough.
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.