19.02.12 / Atlus, Game Boy Advance, Romance game, RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (3)
Tags: riviera the promised land
I got nostalgic for Riviera, so I’ve been playing it on and off for the past couple of months. I just finished my third and a half playthrough of this game and got Serene’s ending for the second time.
Since I’ve played it so often, I don’t have much to say about it. I first picked this up in… 2005-ish? Summer of 2005, I believe. It was my first “dating sim-ish” kind of game, the first time my atttitude towards my party members had actually affected the ending I got. I had no idea things would turn out that way, but I just went along being nice to Lina and before I knew it, I’d gotten a treasure hunter ending with her. I was hooked!
I immediately started a new game, which also makes Riviera the first game I ever did back-to-back playthroughs for. This time I went for Serene because, like, who doesn’t go for Serene? Got her, yippee, then right away I started another playthrough! I was going for Cierra this time, but then I stopped myself halfway though like, “WTF are you doing? How can you play the same game three times in a row like this? Stop touching that game. Stop it!”
You’ve gotta understand, that was the first time a game had ever had that effect on me, I thought I was going crazy or something. So, believe it or not, I forced myself to stop playing and lent the game to a friend I knew wouldn’t return it. And that was it for Riviera and me until now. Looking back, WTF was wrong with me?
Anyway, so I got a little wistful late last year and got a rom and played it. It was surprisingly hard to get through, for an unexpected reason: I remember just about everything that ever happened in the game. It’s been almost 7 years, but I still remembered most of the dungeons, most of the skits, the soundtracks, even which way to go and which way not to go. I guess I did play it 2.5 times, it’s only to be expected. The nostalgia trip was fun, though. And now I know I wasn’t crazy. It’s not the best game in the world, the story is cheesy as hell, the Practice Battle system makes things a little too easy and that 15-item limit just has to go. But even after all these years I had a blast with the characters and their interactions, the soundtrack, all the hidden items and traps… All still fun for me to explore after all this time.
I also got to reminisce about the days when I thought Sting was a great developer, based on just this game. That was before I went on to play Yggdra Union… Stupidly confusing stupidly complicated randomly hard battle system… no, we won’t talk about that game today. It’s like the same way Imageepoch publicly soiled themselves with Final Promise Story, except I forgave them once I played Criminal Girls while Sting has yet to be saved. They’ve got other things like Blaze Union and Gloria Union, but I’m not touching them. A while ago I was downloading random ISOs and came across an SRPG called Gungnir. Oh, a new SRPG, downloaded, fired it up… Sting. *florporplorpl* my gaming boner wilted on the spot.
Yes, I Mad. Although I suppose 6 years is a rather long time to hold a grudge… And maybe I just sucked at YU… No, forget it, I Still Mad. …Yeah, definitely still mad.
Well, that was a nice trip down Memory Lane, but I can’t stay in the past forever. Next up, I’ve been exploring the Wand of Fortune fandisc, Mirai e no Prologue. More about that once I’ve fooled around with it a little more.
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!
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.
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.
17.09.11 / Japanese, Romance game, Simulation game, Sony PSP, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: dream c club portable
A game for idiots by idiots, starring an idiot as the main character. You play an idiot who spends his weekdays either working or gambling and his weekends blowing wads of cash on idiotic girls who don’t even put out. Work, blow, work, blow, work, blow, game blows.
It would be one thing if the MC was a rich executive, but he works at a convenience store, making about ¥20,000 (~$260 USD) a week. Since all that money is at his disposal, I’m guessing he lives at home, sponging off mommy and daddy. And yet he’s not ashamed to go out every weekend and waste that money on overpriced drinks and inane conversations with brainless bimbos. What a disgrace to the human species.
Let’s see, $260 a week. All work and no play and all that, let’s give him $60 a week to play around with. That’s $200 a week left over. Excluding sick days and public holidays, let’s assume he works 50 weeks a year. If he saved that $200, he’d save $10,000 every year. In 10 years he’d have $100,000 in the bank. Now that’s hardly Bill Gates material, but how many 30-35 year olds do you know with $100,000 at their ready disposal? And that’s assuming he just tosses it in an account with no interest, makes no investments, buys no bonds, nothing. Not bad for a bumming mooch, yeah?
But nooo, instead he goes out every weekend to a hostess bar. A hostess bar that’s all about pretty girls ripping you off with $15 glasses of beer while chattering pointlessly away. There are 8 different girls in the game that you can have attend to you, and they’re all working in the bar for different reasons. You know, like how strippers always have some “reason” for stripping, they never go “‘Cos I’m a skanky ho”. Yeah baby, whatever you say. But I digress.
It’s not real money, so I wouldn’t be getting worked up if MC was squandering it on something fun. But Dream Club Portable isn’t even any good! As you can see from the chart on the left, the girls aren’t much to look at. Conversations with them consist of the MC macking on them with the cheesiest pickup lines ever while they struggle valiantly to conceal their utter disdain for him. I know exactly how they feel.
Apart from chatting, you’re also forced to buy drinks for yourself and your chosen hostess, and the more you can get her to drink, the greater her affection for you grows. The game even measures your capacity for alcohol. Now at 35 you’ll be broke and have a wonky liver. Wonderful.
So anyway, you work all week, then at the weekend you go to the hostess bar, chat with a girl, waste money on drinks, maybe get her to sing you a song on karaoke, then you leave. Repeat the cycle the next week. And again the next week. And again the next week. And again and again and again for one whole in-game year. It would be quite the formidable feat if DCP managed to keep the chat topics fresh and new from beginning to end, but since I quit after one month, I will never know.
Apparently you can learn more about a girl and help her work through her troubles. For example one of the floozies claims she’s training to be a pro bowler (yeah right), so you’ll probably support her till she fulfills her dream. So there’s a story mode of sorts, but the MC is a pervert and a loser, and the girls can’t be that bright if hostessing is the only way they can pay their bills, so I’m giving it a miss anyway. Next please!
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…