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.
05.02.12 / Atlus, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (2)
Tags: innocent sin, persona 2, review
Thanks. I heard you the first 2000 times too.
I held out as long as I could, but the absurdly high encounter rate finally did me in. I’m supposed to visit a couple of temples and take back the crystal skulls, but I just got out of grueling crawls at Mt. Katatsumuri and Caracol. I don’t know how long any of these temples are or if I’ll be any closer to finally, finally finishing this game.
I’ve played a number of dungeon crawlers in the past couple of months (UnchainBlades Rexx, Criminal Girls, WiZman’s World, etc.), and Innocent Sin is easily the most unpleasant of the lot. Piss-poor variety of enemies, piss-poor variety of conversation options, no way to change personas until you finish the dungeon, no way to warp out before you’re done, same old horrible battle music from start to finish… At some point I started to contemplate throwing the PSP at the wall, and that was when I knew I needed help.
There’s a spell called Estoma that was supposed to help, but it only drives away enemies lower than your party’s level. Since I’ve been spending most of the game 9-12 levels behind the enemies, it does diddly-squat. So back on the shelf with Innocent Sin while I play something that has few to no random battles in it. If I never have to see another attacking screen again, it will be too soon.
Ah, right. Before I forget. Following on from the previous post, I did go to Alaya Shrine and from there to Mt. Iwato, where my party did finally tell me “everything.” As I’d feared, it turned out to be “some FF8-style bullshit about how they all played together as kids but then they all got *gasp* amnesia.” I don’t know why something like that is (rightfully) considered a crappy plot device when FF8 does it, but when IS does the same thing, somehow it’s “ZOMG BEST STORY EVER!!!” *spit* Well, whatever. Shit is shit. Come to think of it, it’s around that point that I started to find the game unbearable.
[As promised, I did murder something small and fluffy. Fear of prosecution prevents me from posting pictures of the actual victim, but this is a representative shot (contents may offend sensitive viewers). May its soul rest in peace.]
Just in case it wasn't clear from the game, we've prepared this whole dungeon to really hammer the point in.
The thing that made the other dungeon crawlers easier to bear was that the story was usually just a framing device for your dungeon adventures. In Innocent Sin the makers have an actual story they want to tell, they just don’t want to tell it too quickly, so they use the dungeons as a stumbling block to slow things down. “Newsflash, rumors come true! Now why don’t you go into this 3-hour dungeon and mull that over while we think up the next development?” It works about as well as you might expect.
And when I think about it, they don’t really have that much story to tell, so they just stretch each development out until you’re sick of it, then throw something else into the mix.
“Rumors come true, rumors come true!” Example 1, example 2, examples 3-500, okay okay, I get it!
“Dreams are meant to be achieved, not given. Dreams are meant to be achieved, not given.” Example 1, example 2, examples 3-infinity. No, no, you don’t have to go that far, I get it already.
“There’s an arsonist on the loose! There’s an arsonist on the loose!” Example, example 2… OKAY I GET IT!
How wonderfully convenient.
“Jun is our friend! Jun is our friend! Jun is our friend! Jun is our friend! Jun is our friend!” AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGHH, I get it I get it, really I do! Just… enough!
At least it turns out that I was wrong and the story was about all their pasts, not just Tatsuya and Maya’s. Only it’s kinda stupid how much they go on about Jun. I mean, just how good a friend was he if they all forgot about him so easily? Pure total memory wipeout on command.
“Amnesia due to trauma, and the bad guy made us forget” is Maya, Eikichi and Lisa’s flimsy-ass excuse (on the same level as “GFs made us forget” tbh), but what about Tatsuya? He didn’t take part in the “sin” of locking Maya in the shrine that burned down, he doesn’t show any sign of trauma and an early flashback shows that he does remember Jun. In fact, I’m entertaining a pet theory that says he knew everything that was going on from the start and kept quiet just to be a dick. Now there’s a sin if there ever was one.
Anyway, the game is only on hold, not dropped. I’m going to play a couple of other things, do some non-game activities and come back in a couple of weeks to finish this off. I thought of quitting entirely, but apart from Strange Journey, I’ve finished every SMT/spin-off game I’ve played so far, and even in SJ I made it to the last boss, so my gamer’s pride is kinda on the line here. I’ll finish this…someday.
02.02.12 / Atlus, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: innocent sin, persona 2
I thought I’d be done by now, but this game is longer than I’d thought. I checked the time and I’m 19 hours in, but it feels like 190.
Part of it is my fault for just not having the time, and for spending what little time I got on the theater missions.
This shit. Cut it out.
Some of it is also just Innocent Sin taking for-f’ing-ever to get to the point. And they’ve been doing that thing I hate: “Is she…no, don’t tell me…” “It must be… no, it couldn’t be… could it?” WTF JUST SPIT IT OUT ALREADY, DAMMIT! I hate cryptic hints. If IS were a book or a movie I would have skipped to the end by now.
Not that I’m not enjoying myself or anything, now that the story has finally gotten going. Just finished the Aerospace Museum (with Pegasus Strike taking 415HP per round off the boss’s life, that didn’t take long), about to head off to the Alaya Shrine, where Lisa promises to tell me “everything”. If it turns out to be some FF8-style bullshit about how they all played together as kids but then they all got *gasp* amnesia, I swear I’ll murder something small and fluffy.
In any case, I think the game wasted far too much time in the beginning with Eikichi and Ginko’s stories. As far as I can tell, the bulk of the story revolves around Tatsuya and Maya and whatever relationship they had or didn’t have in the past. The other party members are just bit players, so it’s annoying that I had to spend the first 15 or so hours on them.
SPOILERS
Turns out "dependant" is the bastardized American spelling of "dependent." What are journalism schools teaching their students these days?
Ginko’s was especially bad because she’s such an idiot. “I don’t want to be an idol, I don’t want to be an idol” but she ended up debuting anyway. And she was supposed to root out information about the Masked Circle in the process, but instead she nearly got taken in by them. I thought it would turn out that she was just pretending to be going along with the whole thing, but she acted genuinely shocked when the producer turned out to be bad. Just how stupid can one be?
Then with her friends she was all like “They’re not really my friends, they’re just using me” but then when the dumb cows get turned into shadowmen, she goes “Oh no, if only I’d believed in them!” If only you’d believed in them, then what? Newsflash, they may be your friends, but they were just using you. Plus! On top of all her other sins, she also helped the bad guys get one step closer to their evil goal by singing their “foreign song.” Girl, iz you crazy? Guess what they say about dumb blondes was true all along.
SPOILERS OVER
Anyway, so far so good. I think I finally “paid my dues” by slogging through the dross, so soon I should be rewarded with that “wonderful story” that everyone keeps going on about. To be honest I care a lot when stories turn out to be bad but otherwise *shrug*. Just don’t piss me off in the end, that’s all I ask.
28.01.12 / Atlus, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (15)
Tags: innocent sin, persona 2
Back to my roots~ Back to my roo-woo-woo-woo-woots~ It’s time to go back to… wait, where was I going again?
I totally forgot what I was supposed to do after beating the headmaster, and I didn’t want to check a FAQ. So I just spent several hours playing poker in the casino and doing a sidequest in the movie theater.
The sidequest was a little on the long drawn-out side, but the Demon Headmaster-like scenario was several shades more interesting than what’s currently going on in the game. I’m getting dizzy trying to keep up with all the rumors in the main story, plus all that whining about which school badmouthed which is childish and trivial beyond words. I’ll go back and play “part two” of the sidequest once I clear the dungeon I’m currently in.
The quest confirmed one thing for me though: Innocent Sin is the easiest jRPG ever made. Not the easiest Persona, not the easiest Atlus game. It’s the easiest RPG on Planet Earth. Ar Tonelico and Rhapsody DS are like The 7th Saga compared to this game. I’d challenge you to find an easier game, but then the universe would explode and I’d never be able to get this done.
In what other RPG can you go into a dungeon at level 6 armed only with your starting armor and personae, with 6 medicines and 1 antidote to your name, and curb-stomp enemies 3 or 4 times your level wit da greatest of ease? On the Hard setting, no less? Sure I was using the shockingly overpowered fusion spells, but in a normal RPG I wouldn’t even survive long enough to get one of those off. In IS, when an enemy manages to hit me for 10 damage I’m like “Whoa, he’s a strong one,” it’s that bad.
I’m kinda happy about this though, since it means I won’t have to grind. I just have to look into enemy repelling items so I can focus on where the story is going/not going. See you all in a couple of days.
25.01.12 / Japanese, Nintendo DS, RPG, Strategy RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (6)
Tags: Hero's Saga Laevatein Tactics, wiZman's world
They were blocking my path to gaming pleasure. For the past few days I’ve been in a state of not wanting to play these games and at the same time not wanting to start anything else until they were done. Obviously something had to give.
Hero’s Saga: Made it to the last boss and fought him once. He’s a cheating bastard, but I outwaited him and he came down to fight me around turn 10. I beat him fair and square, and what did he do? He came back to life with his skills returned and his Valhalla Gauge refilled. Cheater! Cheater! I’d already lost a number of troops to his cheating ways, so I decided to grind a little, strategize a little better, and take him on again. That’s what I thought four days ago, and I haven’t been able to muster up the interest since. The last boss was kind enough to blab the rest of the story before recovering, and I don’t really care what happens to everyone at the end, so… *toss*
WiZman’s World: I don’t really want to drop this. I like it a lot. Sadly it’s time to admit to myself that I don’t have the energy to finish it. I’m about halfway through the last dungeon, and it’s one of those warp dungeons. The map is all but useless and it pains me to realize that I’m putting in all this trouble to go face the final boss just to get killed. Because I just know I’m going to be killed the first time no matter how much preparation I do. Get killed, waste several more hours re-preparing, possibly get killed again, finally kill the boss… I’m tired. I want to finish it, but not at the expense of that much time and effort.
I could put them merely on “hiatus” but then they’d still be there as a mental stumbling block, begging me to come back. No, we can’t just be friends. A clean break is best for us all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with Persona 2.
05.01.12 / Nippon Ichi Software, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (6)
Tags: blade dancer lineage of light, review
Damn.
They got me. They really got me.
Worst… Ending… EVER.
Ending spoilers first: This game ends with you losing to the final boss. That’s it. So long, see ya, have fun wherever! The credits roll, the game is over. If you’ve ever run a marathon just to have someone kick you in the teeth and piss in your face when you reached the finish line, then you know what it’s like to finish Blade Dancer.
First Dragoneer’s Aria, now this? To steal a line from pro wrestling, if you put an S in front of Hitmaker, you’ll know exactly what I think of the company that made this game. Don’t play it. Not even for free. It’s not worth your time.
And the sad thing is, right until that final battle against the Dark Lord, I was all set to write, well, not a glowing review, but at least a few cautiously positive lines about how Blade Dancer is not as bad as people make it out to be. The game isn’t, anyway. But that ending? Who can I sue for this?
The story goes like this: There’s this Dark Lord who was sealed away 1000 years ago. Lance is the reincarnation of the only guy who could fight against that Dark Lord. Along the way, Lance picks up a girl named Tess who used to be the Dark Lord’s slave and who, for various reasons, cannot disobey his commands. So we go up against him at the end, she leaves the party, and then we layeth the smacketh down on his ass. At the end of the battle he uses his boss hax powers to leave us all with 1HP, then flounces off laughing with Tess in tow. Okay then, now we’ll just go through the final dungeon and rescue Tess and then– Huh? Wait. Why are the credits rolling? No. You can’t mean… This can’t be… NOOOOOOO!
Gwahaha. The end.
Nippon Ichi Software. Hitmaker. Would it have killed you to have added just ONE more dungeon to the game? Or heck, scrap that. Just add one more scene where Tess shakes off his mind control, then we all beat him down, then roll the credits. An extra 15 to 20 minutes, that’s all. Is that so hard? Is that really so much to ask for in exchange for 25 hours and 58 minutes of my life?
That was your one chance to make things right, because it’s not like the game is all that good anyway. Most people probably don’t even get that far, because the game is chockful of flaws from start to finish. The biggest one is having to walk everywhere because warp points are few and far between. Another one is the long loading times. A third one is the high random failure rate of crafting. Then there’s the low-quality graphics and the cartoony character designs. Plus the story is as shallow as a plate of air. And we haven’t even gotten into the highly breakable weapons or the great number of non-stackable items when space in your pack is severely limited.
None of that stuff was enough to deter me. In fact I was almost enjoying myself. I liked the characters. Gozen and Felis were likeable filler, and Lance’s irreverent attitude to his mighty destiny was a nice change from the usual. “I’m the Blade Dancer? Ya don’t say. So when’s the next fight?” I liked that the NPCs changed their lines as the game went along. I didn’t mind the breakable weapons at all, since it just meant you had to do extra preparation before setting out, and I got the chance to refashion nearly worn-out weapons as newer, stronger ones. All the makers had to do was end the game well and I would have been satisfied.
What hurts all the more is that this isn’t even sequel material. There’s nothing to make a sequel about. You can compare this to Trails in the Sky, which also ended on a cliffhanger. There they evidently took the decision to milk the game early on, so they introduced mysteries right from the start and left some plotlines unresolved at the end. To be honest I still don’t think they have enough material for a sequel, but at least it didn’t come out of nowhere. Blade Dancer has nothing left to achieve (that the player cares to do anyway).
Plus let’s not forget, necessary or not, a sequel to Trails in the Sky did come out. Sure it’s not localized yet, but if you start learning Japanese this very second, you’ll be good enough to import and play it long before it ever comes out in the West. I do hope no one’s holding their breath. Meanwhile, in the almost 6 years since Blade Dancer came out, Nippon Ichi hasn’t even released a post-game drama CD or comic to tell us how it ended. And there’s a “Comics” section on the official site, so it’s not like they didn’t have the chance. Not even a few lines on the game website saying “And this is what happened after that.”
You know what, I’m not going to waste my energy talking about this any more. It’s too early in the year to get riled up like this. Those 25 hours aren’t going to come back just because I whine about them. And Criminal Girls was admittedly excellent, so maybe NIS learned a lesson or two from this fiasco. *sigh* Yeah, all right. Moving on.
07.12.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, Nippon Ichi Software, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: criminal girls
I have no use for these, but I collected them, so I might as well dump them here. Now I can finally put this game behind me.
04.12.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, Nippon Ichi Software, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: criminal girls, review, true ending
Finished the game for real this time, at 29:43h. That includes the regular ending, true ending and extra dungeon. It was like a full-course meal with a hearty dessert at the end of it. I’m very satisfied right now. The true ending wasn’t much better than the regular one, except the girls all end up in the same school somehow, with you as their teacher. Realistic ending this is not, but I’ll let them off lightly just this once.
Final thoughts? It was an excellent game. Not perfect by any means, but with no major deal-breaking flaws. 30 hours is just right for a game with a story this shallow, and you have the chance to quit at 20 hours with the girl of your choice if you’ve had enough. Imageepoch and NIS score extra points with me by making it blatantly clear that this is not the final ending, and by making both the true ending and extra dungeon easy to access without a FAQ.
The game maintained a healthy level of challenge throughout – not too easy for veterans and not too hard for newcomers either. You’ll always be the right level if you just progress normally and run from a minimum of battles. And if you feel you need that extra boost, there are a number of grind-friendly skills like Sako’s “Yell” that summons enemies and Tomoe’s “Return” that warps you back to camp. The Escape command is fairly reliable, the Encounter rate is reasonable and Ran has a command that repels enemies for a while. The game balance is just right.
As a dungeon crawler, repetitive levels are part of the deal, but for once I didn’t have to deal with stupid puzzles. Even when you’re send to do X or fetch Y, the game helpfully tells you exactly where to get it and even marks it for you on the map with an exclamation point or a heart. While such hand-holding might piss off more experienced players, you know and I know that needless puzzles only serve to slow down gameplay, reduce enjoyment and clog up gaming forums with duplicate “I’m stuck, how do I do XXX” threads. Playing Criminal Girls is a quick, smooth, pain-free experience because all the unnecessary dross has been cut away, leaving you free to focus on the important things: your characters.
Happily enough, my worries about anything going wrong the longer the game dragged on turned out to be completely unfounded. By the end of the game not only did I still like them all, but I’d even befriended the last boss and my nasty abusive supervisor. The only thing that maybe (very maybe) should have been done differently would be to space out the introduction of the girls a little bit. I started with four and got the last three shortly afterwards, which left little room for future surprises.
For the superficial stuff (music, graphics, sfx), nothing much to say. I thought the “sexy” CGs ended up more awkward than erotic half the time, and whoever did the final CGs was clearly slacking. The OP and ED themes were bad. Scraping the bottom of the barrel of low-budget j-pop kinda bad. The in-game music was good. Each girl had her own theme, and apart from one stage, all the dungeons had good tunes. The voice-acting was top-notch. I’ve never heard of any of these actresses before, but they did a great job conveying the girls’ gradually-changing emotions very convincingly.
But like I said, it’s not a perfect game. Since Imageepoch has struck out on its own now, the chances of ever getting a Criminal Girls 2 are as slim as the chances of getting a Luminous Arc 4. Nippon Ichi might commission a new one (gimme Criminal Boys, gimme gimme), but it just won’t be the same with another developer. Still, if they ever do make another, here are a couple of things they might want to fix:
1. Dat Walking Speed. The game badly needed a Dash command. If the dungeons hadn’t been as small and straightforward as they were, things would have been really painful.
Good heavens, Yuko, what happened to your crotch?
2. Dat Lack of equipment. I suppose it’s refreshing not to have to fiddle with weapons and armor and accessories. Dragoneer’s Aria‘s confusing system is enough to put one off equipment for good, honestly. But I do like buying stuff for my party members and seeing their sprites change accordingly, so I hope they include that next time.
3. Dat Backtracking. I like optional backtracking, where you can choose to return to previous levels to explore/grind/pick up treasure. I hate forced backtracking. Done once or twice it’s okay, but I really, really prefer new dungeons instead.
4. Dem Minigames. “Punishment” takes the form of minigames, some of which are okay and some of which are arduous chores. Especially considering you have to do each one at least 8 times per girl x 7 girls = 56 times each to max it out. More games and fewer reps would have been better. Also that Tickling game just has to go.
5. Dem Cheap Status Effects. Common to all RPGs, not just Criminal Girls. In fact this game was more generous than others in that most bosses could be poisoned, debuffed and paralyzed. It was just far easier for them to do it to you than to them. Paralyze prevents your party member from acting 90% of the time, versus 30% for the enemies. Poison hurts you more than it hurts them. Etc, etc, no fair.
6. Dem Endings. All the endings are good and happy, but they don’t make much sense. If the girls were dead and just came back to life, how could they just resume their lives so easily? Even assuming the whole adventure took place in a special dimension so only a few seconds passed between death and resurrection (which we’re not told, I’m just guessing), a dead girl magically popping back to life is bound to cause some shock. And then they all went to the same school and the player somehow started teaching there? When did he pass his Teacher’s Cert anyway? Plus, if you finish the true end dungeon, that means you essentially broke the system. Isn’t that unfair to any bad girls who die in future?
7. Dem Origins. How did those girls die anyway? Healthy-looking teenagers do very occasionally drop dead suddenly, but you mean to tell me all of them died cleanly and suddenly at the same time? It wouldn’t have been that hard to make up appropriate deaths (uhhh, as appropriate as death can be anyway) for each girl, but I guess then they’d have had to take the “How can they just come back to life so easily” question more seriously. Next time they might want to avoid the “Hell” premise entirely and just make it a juvenile facility or something.
Anyway, yay, it’s over! Good game was good! Moving on, I’m doing Fumiko Yanagi’s route in Tokimeki Memorial 4 so I can put that game to rest for good. After that I want to take a shot at finishing Dragoneer’s Aria. I’ve decided to make Persona 2 my first game of 2012 (God-willing), so if I still have time after that, I might play an SRPG or something.
01.12.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, Nippon Ichi Software, RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: criminal girls
Beat the final boss and cleared the game at 22:26h. Which girl you end up with depends on a choice you make near the end of the game, so evidently all the other choices you pick throughout don’t make much of a difference. I chose Ran firstly because she’s my favorite and secondly because I suspected, quite rightly, that she would make the last fight easy-mode. Once armed with Ran’s Null-Attack skill that makes a mockery of the boss’s ultimate attack, the rest of the game was a foregone conclusion.
But wait, what’s with this mediocre, perfunctory ending? Is that all I get? Beat the boss, walk out the door, all the other girls except Ran vanish forever without a farewell? What happened to “staying friends for life?” I wasn’t happy at all, so I hunted down a FAQ and phew, there’s a second ending after all. You get the regular ending for beating the boss the first time. Then once the credits roll and you save, you get to beat the boss again, and this time you get the choice to continue the game.
That’s where I am right now, so I have no idea what’s going to happen next. I also don’t know how much longer this will take (not too long I hope), but I’m willing to sit through one or two more dungeons if it means I’ll get a proper ending for my girls in the end. This game is so much fun. After 20 hours I can only think of a few things here and there to criticize, and most of them are story-, not gameplay-related. If only NIS and imageepoch had made the gimmick a little more palatable so it could be released in the West. *sigh*
Anyway, I collected the Knight transformations of all the girls and I have no use for them, so I might as well post them here.
28.11.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, Nippon Ichi Software, RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: criminal girls
I’ve hit the 21-hour mark and hit the “Needs to end soon” point. The game is still as fun as ever, but I just went through a stage where each of the girls confronted their pasts and resolved to work through it and turn over a new leaf. My job is done here, and I’m worried that if I keep going, they’ll ruin the game somehow.
This is a good time to go over my characters. They all love me now, and they’ve all changed so much! I tend to look down on “character development” in video games, because 90% of the time they boil down to “Rawwrr, I don’t need anyone —> Wow, friends are the best!” or “I’m a bitch —> I’m not a bitch any more.” If you were expecting me to say Criminal Girls is any different, sorry to disappoint you but it’s not. It’s just that the change is really well done this time. Even though all the girls have great epiphanies in the fourth dungeon, there are signs that they are changing in the way they relate to you and to each other at every step along the way. And it’s all done so gradually and casually that before you notice it, you the player have warmed up to them just as they’ve warmed up to you(r character). Aww.
I don’t even want to punish them any more, the sweet things. I just hope things end well before anything else goes wrong. Anyway, without any further ado, my students:
Tomoe: Acts as the laidback voice of reason for most of the game. For once the Kansai dialect character is not a rash loudmouthed joke character, how refreshing! As the game goes on you’ll discover that she’s not quite as pure and innocent as she first appears to be. Well, assuming the outfit wasn’t a dead give away, that is.
Class: Samurai(ish). Excellent for random battles because of her screen-clearing All-attacks, especially once she gets Instant Death ones. She focuses purely on attacking, so she has almost no support skills. Her Field Skill that warps that party back to the nearest camp is a lifesaver. Her HP, MP and Def are all abysmal, which is probably the only thing that stops her from becoming a game-breaker. Unfortunately I can’t get as much use out of her as I would like because of those flaws.
Ran: I did a complete 180 on Ran, and she did one on me. She started out as one of the angriest, most bitter characters I had ever encountered. Nothing I said or did could make her happy and my attempts to be nice just met with greater rejection. But now that she’s chilled the hell out and I understand her better, she’s my favorite character. *virtual hug* Hang in there, luv.
Class: Paladin. High phys def, middling mag def and attack power. Easily the most useful party member, and indispensable for boss battles because of her All-Guard skill. The one time I decided to take a Boss-hits-all attack without guarding is also the one time I saw the Game Over Screen. Ran also has a skill where she draws in enemy fire and retaliates. With buffed defence, the enemy hits Ran for 1HP and she counters for 1000. The best part is her Revive-and-Heal skill which in its ultimate form allows her to raise any and all dead party members and heal their HP to full. I’m contemplating skipping healing altogether and just letting people die so I can raise them now, Ran’s just that good.
Kisaragi: A classic tsundere, in the original sense of being prickly at first and melting down slowly as the game progresses. Comes across as high-maintenance at first, but is surprisingly down-to-earth once you get to know her. She’s sweet now that she’s reformed, and it was interesting to watch her faux-bitter friendship with Shin develop from mutual dislike to genuine like and admiration.
Class: Thief(ish). One of my less-used party members, though I do bring her in from time to time to poison bosses and steal OP. She’s not very strong and her HP and defence aren’t that good either. That poison stuff comes in hella handy sometimes though and she does have one or two very powerful straight attacks.
Shin: Bossy, self-proclaimed genius. She’s hiding something, but what could it possibly be? Probably the quickest to warm up to the protagonist, since her doubts were purely about whether he was competent or not. O ye of little faith…
Class: ??? No idea. My most useful and used character after Ran. Her moves, called Operations, consist mostly of bossing the other characters about. What makes this so useful is that normally only one character can act per turn, but under Ran’s direction up to 4 of them can act. Even better, apart from Shin, the other characters’ moves won’t consume MP. So with Operation Assist, for example, you can buff everyone’s MAT, MDEF, ATK and DEF using Shin, Ran and Sako, all for only 16 MP. Did I mention she also has an extra skill that frequently tops up her MP and that she also has an All-Heal Skill? And that her Field Skill is Full Heal? What would I do without her?
Sako: Tough, simple, rebellious tomboy. Wildly overprotective of her younger twin sister Yuko, for whose sake she can accomplish even superhuman feats of strengths. Almost as prickly as Ran at first, but so cute she’s impossible to hate.
Class: Monk. Probably the character who has dished out the most damage over the course of the game. Enemies have gotten progressively stronger against physical attacks now, so she’s not as useful as she used to be, but she still participates in some good Operations with Shin and has powerful fire attacks. She can also heal, purify and cast regen on herself, so she generally holds her own.
Yuko: Sako’s sweet but extremely lazy twin sister. There’s a tendency to give girls like her a secret nasty side these days, but Yuko is sugar and spice to the core. She’s just highly dependent and more than a little bit spoiled. As someone with older siblings who want to be relied upon and want to help all the time, I found her character easiest to understand.
Class: White Mage. Outside of boss battles I almost never use her. She has healing skills, cure skills, regen and more than a few debuffs, but nowadays they’ve been diluted by a number of weak magic attacks when tend to keep popping up instead. She’s seriously fragile as well, and her MP pool isn’t as high as you might expect so she spends most of her time on the bench.
Alice: I felt horrible spanking her. She’s a little spacey, but basically harmless. And she protests in such a cute little voice. She seemed so innocent that I didn’t believe she had done anything bad, but after playing the fourth dungeon, she was probably the most likely character, after Ran, to end up in jail if she had stayed on the same path. I’m glad I was able to rehabilitate her.
Class: Black Mage. Boss-killer extraordinaire. Even more fragile than Yuko with a small fairly mana pool, which she can compensate for by absorbing MP from enemies. But man, yikes, those magic attacks should be illegal. Alice has both all-attacks for random battles and super-powerful single ones for boss battles. Once she hits that Magic Charge, you can be reasonably certain the battle will be over in the next turn… if she survives long enough to get it off, that is.
Right-ho, time for the final push. I really hope this fifth dungeon will be the last. Criminal Girls is a character game, so quite frankly all this “story” stuff is just getting in my way now. Here’s hoping for a happy ending!
