Rune Factory Frontier – Progress Report 1

runefactoryfrontWhen I started writing this post on March 6th, I’d reached level 35-ish, around 36 hours sunk in, roaming Lava Ruins B4, where I seemed to be stuck. I wasn’t having too much fun and was even thinking of quitting. Then I decided to play a little more before continuing to blog and here I am 6 days later. Level 65, 66 hours, Snow Ruins B3, top of Whale Island. Where did the time go?!

In the process I worked through most of my frustrations with the game, especially the farming system, so I can’t complain about the stuff I was going to complain about any more. Runeys, for example. As a matter of fact, I delayed playing Rune Factory Frontier for so long because I’d heard about how hard they were to manage and how much they detracted from the playing experience. Luckily the earlier guinea pigs/test players had already found the “Grass Factory” solution to runeys, so I got almost all areas to prosperity in no time at all and now I largely ignore runeys.

If I’d written earlier I would have whined about how much time watering and harvesting consume day and after day, but not only is it Winter in my game right now but I also have a tamed monster to deal with just about all the mundane tasks and I have the second-best farming tools, so there’s no problem there.

I would also have gone on and on about how all the girls either suck or are recycled from RF1, but now I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m not getting married in this game, and I’m cool with that. Because seriously, the girls just aren’t appealing. Take Mist, for example. Well, somebody please take her ‘cos I sure as hell won’t. She’s been throwing herself at me since the first game and I don’t know how to make it any clearer to her that I’m not interested. Where I am in the story right now she’s gotten herself kidnapped. I am seriously and sorely tempted to leave her there forever and just not finish the game.

Melody and Rosetta and Lara, I like them all but not enough to marry them back in Rune Factory 1. Nothing has changed now. Bianca and Tabatha I married on my two playthroughs of the first game (hallo mai waifus). Anette looks too kiddy. Cinnamon looks stoned out of her mind. I have yet to have an interesting conversation with Eunice. Plus she looks pregnant. Nothing wrong with that, but if there’s no place in her oven for Raguna’s bun then there’s no point, amirite? Iris Blanche and Noire would have been my ladies of choice, but they’re way too far away to be worth the daily trek. In short there’s something wrong with all the girls in this game so screw them all. Well, somebody screw them anyway.

rune_factory_frontier_1Apart from the initially slow (oh, so slow) farming system, the slightly irritating Runey system and the lackluster selection of girls, I’m having a really good time with Rune Factory Frontier. I’d forgotten how much fun these games could be, since it’s been… what, 3 years already since I finished Rune Factory 3?! It’s been too long. I love the Rune Factory games. Run, fight, plant, mine, dodge. Hack, slash, hack, slash, farm ingredients, grind up forging and craft levels, upgrade weapons, upgrade armor, hack, slash, hack! So much fun! I’ve been hard pressed tearing myself away from the Wii these past couple of days.

In fact I’d still be in front of the TV right now if disaster hadn’t struck in the form of the “Item Duplication” glitch. Now I must defend myself a little bit here: I almost never do that sort of thing. No, honest. The last time I wittingly took advantage of an in-game glitch was with the JP scroll glitch in the original Final Fantasy Tactics, over 10 years ago. This time, though, I got tired of constantly mixing up batches of Energy Drink X to take with me, especially with my lab skill already at 99 and white grasses being so rare and all. I decided to listen to the evil promptings and turn my 68 EDXs into 136 in one short battle.

Only because I’m so naive and unused to cheating (*cough* no, really) I forgot the last vital step in the process and POOF! all my EDXs were lost forever. And I didn’t notice, so I warped back home and saved, went to the Snow Ruins and then started looking around for my stuff. What, huh, NOOOOOOO!!!! URgghh… they’re not irreplaceable, but when I think of the work and time involved, urgghh…

Gonna take a break for a while and consider my options. Crime doesn’t pay, kids.

Ore no Shikabane wo Koete yuke – le bon et le mal

oreshika farewellWho this game is for
– People who really like dungeon crawlers. Like, really, really like them.
– People with at least 20 hours to devote to the game, usually more.
– People who are tired of always “saving the world”.
– People who are tired of playing as the usual plucky kid with his prickly love interest.
– People who have a lot of patience for long-term party growth and grinding.
– People who don’t mind a bit of initial difficulty in return for curb-stomping galore towards the end.
– People who can let go and don’t mind changing parties frequently (this is always really hard for me).
– Anyone who thinks they’d enjoy playing as multiple generations of the same family.

That’s a pretty specific set of people, but if you can tick off even two or three of the items on that list, Ore no Shikabane might just be for you.

Having said all that, and despite my hearty recommendation, this game is far from perfect. They left a modern-day sequel hook at the end, and if they ever make a sequel (ha!) there are a couple of things I’d want them to look at.

What’s wrong with Ore no Shikabane wo Koete yuke
1. A total of 10 short dungeons (5 for much of the game) is way too few for a game that can drag on so long. There are also way too many of the same enemy/palette swaps to fight. Either make the dungeons longer and more involving or shorten the game or design more enemies. Preferably all three.
oreshika city2. The pacing is a bit slow. There was a long stretch in the middle where I felt I was just running in place, raising characters only watch them die, then raising more, repeat. I’m not sure what could be done to relieve this. Maybe shorten the game in general, or add more story landmarks (i.e. bosses) so you feel you’re making progress at every stage..
3. Walking is slow as heck, dashing reduces your HP quickly and is not very fast either. Later on you get items and learn skills that make things much better but until then moving around is a real pain.
4. One wrong hit to your leader and it’s bye-bye for that trip. It would help a lot if they put at least one save in the dungeons, at least on the easiest setting.
5. The roulette should be manual, not automatic. As it is getting rare items and scrolls is hard and frustrating. Sometimes there’s a stat requirement before you can land on a particular item, but the game never tells you what it is.
6. Random perma-deaths for KO’ed characters is too painful. I once lost a promising swordsman at 4 months! Another time I almost lost an archer at 7 months, but her mother offered to stand in for her. Only her mother was even better, so I just restarted and lost all the progress I’d made in the dungeon that month.
7. You can only carry 30 items, and the slots fill up in a hurry. There should’ve been some way to either send things home or increase your capacity.
8. Not really a flaw, but after spending all that money upgrading the town it would have been more fun to let me explore it, visit landmarks, talk to NPCs and generally take a look around as it changes through the years.
oreshika michael jackson9. Fighting the bonus boss will make you feel bad. Not bad as in “sorry for the boss” but bad because the bonus boss is as patronizing as hell and clearly lets you win to make you feel better. You can even choose to re-fight the boss over and over again until you’re “satisfied”, but you’ll never really win. I don’t recommend it if you want to walk away from the game feeling good.
10. Some of the stuff that happens in the story is kinda nasty. The anime scenes are hard to watch in general.
11. Characters don’t talk unless they’re dying, so you don’t really get to know them. Bad for people who enjoy character interaction, of which there is virtually none in this game.
12. The stats are kind of confusing, even with lengthy explanations in-game. I’m still not 100% sure I really “get” them, because sometimes it seems the stats don’t correspond to the damage your character dishes out/takes and stuff like that.
13. Breeding takes a whole month, plus another month before the sprog shows up, plus another 2 months before you can actually use them in battle. It calls for careful planning, but it’s also kind of annoying.
14. No sidequests. Hardly a dealbreaker, but I enjoy sidequests and it would liven up those dull, dull slogs through the same old dungeons. A few optional ‘kill 10 frogs’ quests would be cool, since I’m going to be mowing them down anyway.

Apart from Nos. 1, 2 and 6, most of these aren’t as bad as I made it sound. It’s a very good game, all things considered.

Enough about the past, on to the future. I’ve been making good progress with Lunar and Rune Factory Frontier, so I’ll provide an update on one of those next.

Ore no Shikabane wo Koete yuke – tips for speedy success

oreshika_frontOre no Shikabane wo Koete yuke is a unique game in a number of ways, but it has one thing in common with other dungeon crawlers: it gets tedious! Even as a big fan of the game there were moments near the end when I seriously considered giving up. I was playing and playing and fighting and fighting and yet I wasn’t getting any stronger or any nearer to finishing the game. I’m glad I kept at it, but I’d love to spare others the same frustrations if I can.

Hence this post, where I share my personal tips for finishing this game in a fast(er) and (more) efficient way. It won’t solve all of OreShika‘s problems, but it will remove some of the common frustrations that might keep you from enjoying yourself. Depending on your style of play you might want to ignore everything and try stuff for yourself (I personally try to avoid FAQs in my first playthrough) but my advice is here if you want it.

Tip 1: If you’re not enjoying yourself after the first 3 or 4 generations, quit. There are some games that get dramatically better as you go along, but this isn’t one them. This tip alone should save you 50 hours or so.

Tip 2: You can change the difficulty level at any time. If things are taking too long or the dungeons are too hard and you just don’t want to spend all that time on one game, don’t punish yourself. You don’t get anything special for finishing on the hardest setting.

Tip 3: All classes are fine for dungeon battles, but for boss fights it’s hard to beat martial artists and archers. Both of them have super-powerful special moves (ougis) that will absolutely devastate any and every enemy up to and including the bonus boss. Archers are useful early on because they learn their first ougi really early. Martial artists are ideal for the middle-to-endgame because they have a skill you can use first to raise both ATK and DEF to ridiculous levels. My rundown of the other classes:

Swordsmen: Excellent attack, can pass down a sword that gets more powerful with every passing generation. Nothing wrong with them. For the final and bonus boss battles, I used 3 martial artists and 1 swordswoman (although her job was to just heal). If you plan to use swordsmen till the end, get the blacksmith to make you a family sword as soon as possible.
Naginatas: Super highly-recommended for dungeon battles, but lack offensive power for bosses towards the end of the game. You won’t go wrong having one in your party.
Demolishers: Devastating ATK but tend to miss like crazy. This is really bad in a game where everyone else hits 90% of the time.
Spearmen: Good early on. Not bad in general, but outclassed by every other class in every respect.
Dancers: Can’t get till late-game. Very good evasion but weak ATK, weak DEF. Supposed to be really good for magic attacks and defense, but other classes aren’t bad either. On the other hand, enemies in the final dungeon drop a LOT of dancer equips, so maybe they’re supposed to be good?
Gunners: Can’t get till late-game. Gunners can hit everyone on the field when armed with the right weapons, so they’re good for fast grinding in dungeons. Meh for everything else, though.

Partly censored for spoilers

Partly censored for spoilers

Tip 4: Use parent-child combos with the ougis. Use combo-magic where you can. Heal repeatedly, never go “Oh they should be okay till the next turn.” All this should go without saying, but it’s really important if you want to finish bosses quickly with a minimum of pain.

Tip 5: Debuffs and status effects do work on bosses. They work on all enemies without exception. It’s all a matter of percentages, so you might have only 1% chance of poisoning a boss, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. For that matter the right buffs will save your life, especially against magic users. Buffs and debuffs do stack.

Tip 6: a) Breed with the best gods you can afford, and b) Breed with the best characters you have. I started out doing it wrong, trying to give every character and every god a fair shake. It can be done, and it’s fun in it’s own way, but breeding takes time and precious worship points. If you want to finish the game in a sensible amount of time, throw equality out of the window.

Tip 7: The best stats for early survival are water and earth. Heart-water helps in learning healing skills, heart-earth helps with defense skills, body-water gives you more HP and body-earth gives you better defense. That said, save stat-boosting items for late in the game and try to get your stats through breeding as much as you can.

Tip 8: A character’s gained EXP has no effect on his/her offspring’s genes. Lamarck who? When I started out I thought I had to have a kid, level the kid up as high as possible and then breed them in order to have better kids, but it makes no difference at all. As a result it makes way more sense to have kids as early as possible so you can take full advantage of parent-child combos.

Tip 9: Keep your family small. In video games as in real life, a large family is nothing but trouble. Extra kids take time and WP to breed, time to train, time to level up and money to equip. On top of that, characters that don’t get enough playing time will get mad and may very well run away. I think a family of 6-8 characters maximum is best. On normal mode you’ll need 30,000 ryou and 5 family members to get the first house extension, so get that ASAP then stop expanding till much later.

Oreshika goodsTip 10: Exploring the dungeons will be slow and tiring to start with. This is a “tip” because you’ll be wondering if it’s supposed to be this annoying and the answer is, sadly, YES. But it will get better, I promise (but see Tip 1). You’ll get items/skills that let you run much faster and others that let you see the map layout so you can get more done in a single trip. You’ll also get items/skills that make enemies either stand still or run from you so you can hit them in the back for a free turn.

Tip 11: When reconstructing the town, focus on the stores and the community. Restoring stores will give you better weapons/equips/items to buy, so it’s a no-brainer. Restoring the community is not half as important, but it will give you access to the medicine store, the blacksmith and, more importantly, the goods trading point which will help you make more money.

Tip 12: You cannot make the roulette land where you want. The spinning is all for show, and doubly frustrating for that. When the game wants you to have a certain class manual/god, i.e. when you have fulfilled all the obscure requirements needed to get it, the roulette will stop there automatically. On the other hand red flames do help with weapons, items and scrolls, but there is no way to make red flames appear.

Tip 13: Feel free to sell the rainbow jewels (七光の御玉) and vermillion necklaces you get (朱の首輪). Maybe keep a few of the latter to help you learn skills (sub-tip: equipped accessories help you learn/use skills by boosting base stats). Don’t hold on to any unnecessary weapons, items and accessories either. Sell them and use the money for better equips. Speaking of which, wait for store sales to do your bulk shopping and equipping.

Tip 14: The best grinding spot (IMHO) early game is the Emperor’s tournament. It’s a great place to get EXP all the way to the end. Mid-game I recommend the ice dungeon after you beat the mermaid. Look for the frogs in the screenshot on the left. They’re rare and tend to run so kill them ASAP.

Once the final dungeon opens up, look for the frogs in the shot on the right. You’ll find 2-5 of them in every battle in the fourth (I think) screen before the final boss. It’s easier to reach the final boss warning screen and backtrack a bit. Go down the stairs to a square space, go down again to a passage, go down to another square place, go down to yet another passage which should be the right spot.

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As an aside you can finish the game without grinding for WP/EXP. I’m just assuming you want to do so quickly.

Tip 15: A very personal one, but this is how strong I was when I beat most of the mid-game “hair” bosses (left) and when I beat the last boss (right). The first character on the left was sick that day, which is why her stats are so low. I was a little overpowered TBH, but if you’re in the general vicinity you should be okay.

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There you have it. 15 things I wish I’d known before starting the game. I’m almost tempted to start afresh and see if this saves me any time but… Nah, too many other things on my list. I’ll put OreShika away after one last post tomorrow.

Ore no Shikabane wo Koete yuke – screenshots

Ore no Shikabane o Koete yuke” is often translated as “Over my dead body,” which is what it means, but not in the usual sense of “Hell no!” More like “Cross over a river of the dead bodies of your ancestors until you finally manage to kill the boss,” which isn’t nearly as catchy. Not that it matters; they could have called this game Poopstained Bloody Avengers and it would still be just as awesome.

It’s on the PSX and it’s on the PSP. If you get the chance you should definitely play it. Don’t ask any questions, just do it. Is it– YES! Should I– YES! What about– YES! YES! YES! YES, just play the darned thing already!

Good, now that we’ve gotten all that ‘review’ stuff out of the way, it’s time to post some screenshots I took along the way. But first the backstory, which is simple enough. A demon named Shuten Douji killed a man and his wife and placed a curse on their son which dooms him to live out his entire lifespan in 2 years or less. He can’t have kids with normal humans either, but the gods intervene so he can breed with them instead. The rest of the game is about fighting, leveling up, getting money/treasure and passing on your genes to the next generation so they can continue the vendetta until they finally kill the boss.

First the people doing the fighting: the Shitanomori clan (named by me). With their lifespans so short you’ll be going through a LOT of characters, but the photo gallery lets you memorialize them like so:

PCT2018The guy with the mark on top of his head is the original main character, Akane, along with 4 of his kids and one grandkid. In honor of his passing all subsequent family heads adopt the name ‘Akane.’ I went through 76 Akanes before finishing, which is entirely too many. I’ll tell you how to avoid this fate in a later post but for now let’s look at character stats.

PCT2007From top to bottom you have the character name, gender, age (at 1 year 7 months he could drop perma-dead at any moment), hobby (just for fun), HP, MP and Health (used for special attacks, if it drops to zero your character has a good chance of perma-dying). In the purple box is his attack, defence, total EXP gained, agility and loyalty to the family. The lower the loyalty, the more likely a character is to run away for good. Press the left/right button to see weapons equipped and more detailed levels.

The colored lines on the right represent other stats. Fire = red, Water = blue, Air = green, Earth = yellow. The first set of four, Heart, show the character’s temperament. More water = more loyal, more red = less loyal, more attack-oriented, that sort of thing. The second set, Skill, shows magic def/atk. More fire = better fire magic atk and def, etc. The last set, body, stands for physical stats. Fire = phys attack, Water = HP, Air = agility, Earth = phys def. All three sets affect the kind of magic your character can learn.

Since all your characters, no matter how wonderful, will die permanently between the ages of 1 year 7 months and 2 years, you have to keep the bloodline going by breeding constantly with gods/goddesses. To do this you need “Worship points”, which are earned along with EXP. When you have enough, you go to the breeding screen and check out the resumes of the gods available, like so:

PCT2003They all come with a resume of dominant and recessive “genes” i.e. stats that may or may not manifest in your offspring. You might be wondering if there’s a, uhh, ‘physical’ element to breeding or not. Fortunately/unfortunately the game is deliberately ambiguous on the matter so you’ll have to use your imagination. Either way you end up with a child (or twins) like so:

PCT2028Don’t quote me on this, but I’m almost certain the stats on the left are the “father’s side” genes and the ones on the right are the “mother’s side” genes. You won’t know which set the kid gets until they show up a month later. The set they don’t have may or may not be passed on on to their kids, making this whole breeding thing kind of a crapshoot. I think a character’s dominant stats also affect their hair, eye and skin color but again don’t quote me on that. Once the kid shows up a month later you give them a name and pick a class for them.

PCT2005Clockwise from the highlighted job it’s Naginata fighter, Demolisher, Dancer, Martial Artist (best class), Lancer, Gunner, Swordsman and Archer (second-best class). The purple box in the upper left shows what class his parent is. This is important if the parent knows a special move: they can only pass it on to one kid who is in the same class. This can only be done in the first two months by having that parent train them. 2 months later, they’re ready to fight.

Pick a party, any party, equip them and send them out. The world map looks like this, only with 3-5 dungeons when you first start out. Uhh oops, I seem to have lost that screenshot. Have a random obituary instead:

PCT2010There are also 2 seasonal dungeons that can only be visited in June-July and November-December respectively. Pick a dungeon – they’re all around the same level to start with – and explore.

PCT2019Dungeon maps aren’t displayed by default; you have to use items or skills to show everything. The round thing in the upper left shows the current month and the blue flames show how much time you have left before the end of the month. You can keep exploring into the next month and on and on, but it’ll play havoc with the health and stats of very young and very old members. The bottom left has shortcuts for skills, items, status and equipment. The blue arrows on the map show entrances/exits and the red dots stand for enemies. Approach them to get into battle.

PCT2008The roulette shows what you’ll get if you win the battle. Three of the same item = double EXP. Three stars = triple EXP. Yellow items = stuff you haven’t gotten yet. AFAIK the roulette is fully automatic and stops when/wherever it wants. BTW the yellow item in this case is a Gunner’s manual, which I will need before I can use the Gunner class.

Battle itself is the usual turn-based stuff. The characters will suggest moves they want to use, based on the situation and their temperaments. Rejecting too many suggestions will hurt their loyalty but since anyone who gets KO’ed in battle stands a very good chance of perma-death after battle, you have to do whatever it takes to survive. The nice thing about the battles in OreShika is that you only have to defeat the enemy leader to win and get all the items. The leader might even run off with the spoils if you’re not careful, so if you get into a sticky situation you can just focus on taking out the leader.

In emergencies or if you just want to do extra damage, you can have characters joint-cast the same magic to do up to 8 times normal damage:

PCT2031I should have waited a few seconds to take a shot of the resulting payoff, which wiped the boss out in one hit. It’s worth trying to pull an attack like that off if you’re confident you can keep everyone alive long enough to do so. An even better option is to have a parent and child pull off a joint attack using one of their family specials. That’s how I beat almost every boss worth beating, because the damage dealt is truly staggering. The game tells us a grandparent-parent-child attack is even better than that, but for logistical reasons I never pulled one off.

That’s most of the game in a nutshell. Raise your kids, visit dungeons, earn money and weapons and skill scrolls to pass on to the next generation, earn Worship Points so you can breed with better and better gods and keep going till you can beat the final boss. Various sub-bosses will drop fragments of story if/when you beat them, but 1) It’s not required and 2) This really isn’t a story-oriented game. It’s all about revenge!

Let’s round this up with the home menu:

PCT2014The lady is Itsuka, our perky immortal family retainer. From left to right, top to bottom the options are:

Family: Check your family’s status, pick a party, equip them, train the young ones, etc.
Items: Store, sort, use, dispose of items.
Buy/Sell: Exactly what it says on the tin.
SAVE: Exactly what it says on the tin.
Sortie: Go dungeon-crawling/take part in a tournament.
Reconstruction: Rebuild the city after it was destroyed by demons. Donating money to the city improves store inventories, reduces the WP you need to breed and adds a variety of services and facilities.
Chronology: Family tree, family facts, family history. Also where you can store family photos.
Settings: Exactly what it says on the tin. You can make the game as hard or as easy as you like here.
Breed: (lit: mix with a god) Exactly what it says on the tin.
Facilities: Medicine shop, photographer’s shop, goods trading point and some other things I can’t remember.
Explanations: Giant walls of text about anything and everything in the game.
Rest: Let a month pass by so everyone can recover their health. Don’t use if you can avoid. In fact, just don’t use.

Armed with this info and a minimum amount of Japanese knowledge, you too can play Ore no Shikabane wo Koete yuke. It’s not a perfect game by any means (I’ll cover the flaws in another post), but it’s a lot of fun for anyone who likes dungeon-crawlers even just a tiiiiny little bit. It took me 60-80 hours on the Normal setting to finish this, but with a more efficient playing style you can do it half the time or less. I hope it comes to the west or gets a fan-patch someday so more people can try it.

Date ni Gametsui wake ja ne! Dungeon Maker Girl’s Type review

date ni gametsui wake ja ne“Date ni Gametsui wake ja ne” roughly translated means “I’m not greedy for nothing!” The Japan-only “girls'” version of Master of the Monster Lair/Dungeon Maker. If you are thinking of trying this game there are three things you need to know.

1. It has the exact same gameplay, monsters, items and quests as MoML but different characters and motivations.

2. There is absolutely nothing “girly” about it.

3. There’s a game-breaking bug that makes it impossible to finish the blacksmith’s route. It also makes it impossible to progress past level 18 of the bonus dungeon, thus preventing you from ever truly “finishing” the game. I wish I’d known that before investing at least 20 hours of my life into this game.

Story & Characters

The town of Reinbald is said to bring happiness to all those who stumble across it. Hugo, a wandering dungeon maker, drops in one day and is roped into the service of the mayor. Monsters are threatening the peace of the town so Hugo’s job is to trap, plunder and kill them by creating elaborate traps in the form of dungeons.

Despite what the title says, Hugo is not greedy at all. He’s a professional, he’s confident in his skills and he charges what his services are worth. The two cardinal rules of self-employment and freelancing are 1) Never do favors for friends/family and 2) Never work for free. Hugo sticks to the rules and even when he softens slightly from his initial abrasive attitude he still charges a fair price for the job done.

On top of that, unlike the lead characters of other GAE games (Adventures to Go, My World My Way, probably others), Hugo has the decency to wonder if he’s doing the right thing by killing all those sentient monsters. He even gives bosses a chance to GTFO kindly move out of the way before attacking them when they refuse. My respect for Hugo went a long way towards helping me finish this game, which could be dry and repetitive at the best of times.

As for the other townspeople, refer to the wallpaper below.Dungeon Maker Girls' TypeThose two absurdly cute dogs at the bottom are Hugo’s travel companions instead of Kate and the blob as in MoML. I named them Gash and Gabby. Gash gains stats by devouring monster parts and Gabby is your regular mage girl who will lay absolute waste to bosses, especially once she gets the Drain spell.

From left to right, there’s the mayor’s sniveling butler who just wants to be useful to her. Sorry, it’s been like a month since I last played this so I’ve forgotten their names. The lady with the blue hair is the bloodthirsty mayor who wants all monsters dead, no quarter given. I hate her. The next two guys are the same guy – Glen the blacksmith in his young and old forms. He switches between them when he gets stressed. The little red-haired girl and her brother Linus next to her run the furniture shop. The blond guy with glasses runs the magic shop and has a creepy obsession with the cat girl next to him. Then there’s Hugo, our hero. The last guy is also the white mouse at the bottom, the perky vegetable seller.

The character designs are nice, aren’t they? Unfortunately that’s all these characters have going for them. You’re supposed to pursue their routes and get their endings by doing quests for them, but they’re all either duller than dishwater or sicker than a truck full of AIDS.

Take the creepily servile butler, for example. Maybe I’m supposed to sympathize with his unnatural devotion to his abusive boss, maybe I’m supposed to cheer for him, I dunno. All I know is that his cringing, whining scenes filled me with the urge to call an Abuse Hotline. Same with blondie and his sick fixation on the obviously underage loli cat girl who does not welcome his attentions or reciprocate his affections. I didn’t know whether to call PETA or To Catch A Predator! The blacksmith is the only one who seems sort of normal, but sadly his is the only route you can’t finish due the aforementioned game-breaking bug.

Why did I finish this game, then? I told you, I liked Hugo. I liked my pets too. And while I will never be a fan of the gameplay, it did grow on me somewhat after the first few levels.

Date-ni-Game-Tsui-Wake-Jane-Dungeon-Maker-Girls-Type-2Gameplay

If you don’t speak Japanese, you can use an MotML FAQ to play this game with no problems at all. It’s the exact same game. If you haven’t played it, it’s simple. You go into a cave made of solid rock. You use Dungeon Points (DP) to dig holes in the rock. You hollow out rooms and fill them with furniture and accessories that attract monsters. For example, fountains attract otters, farms attract monster carrots and pubs attract goblins. It all makes perfect sense.

So you fill the cave with things monsters like and then punish them for liking them by killing them, stealing their money and eating their flesh for delicious stat boosts. When you run out of DP to dig and monsters to massacre you retire for the day and return the next day to repeat the process. Get enough monsters of the right type on one floor and a boss appears. Kill the boss to open the way to the next floor where the process starts all over again.

See the problem? You have to perform the same two or three actions every single day for the 100-200 game “days” it will take you to finish. Then you add the following problems:

  • A tiny number of DP especially in the beginning, limiting how much you can get done
  • Not that much money, especially in the beginning, limiting how quickly your dungeon can grow
  • Palette swaps up the wazoo, making grinding boring. It’s worse because I’ve played other GAE games and they all use the same monsters
  • You have to arrange rooms just so to guarantee a monster drop from the monster you want
  • Even then the monster will drop something, but it might not be the item you want. Ask me how many zombies I had to fight to get just one Performer’s Ring. Go on, ask.

That isn’t even half of it. Long story short, the gameplay can be very dull and very frustrating, which is why I gave up on MotML so quickly the first time I played it. I was determined to tough things out this time round though, and somehow I managed to get into a kind of groove. The same kind of groove you get into in, say, puzzle games, or Harvest Moons, where you’re just doing the same thing over and over again and yet it’s kind of fun. I think the key to enjoying this game is to give it at least 2 or three levels to grow on you and to play it in small, manageable doses.

"'Boy's love?' Me? With you?! You'd have to kill me first!"

“‘Boy’s love?’ With you?! You’d have to kill me first!”

“Girl’s Type”?!

When you think of the “girl’s” version of any game, you might expect features designed to appeal to what video game designers (90% of whom are male) think female gamers want. A female main character. Pastel colors. Cute critters. Dumbed-down gameplay. Romance. Angst. Bishies. More romance, more angst, more bishies.

Yeah, well. Not this “girl’s” game. Apart from the cute dogs and the admittedly good-looking bishies, there is absolutely nothing in this game that justifies the label. The only romance is the borderline-illegal one between man and cat. The colors are normal. The gameplay is the same as for the original. There’s no angst, no romance and barely any sentiment at all even when you finish a pair’s route. Of course people with XX chromosomes like a good game just as much as those with XY chromosones do, and excessive pandering to either gender is just plain silly but then… why bother with the “Girl’s Type” label at all? Another boneheaded idea from the guys at Idea Factory. I do so love them (completely serious).

Final thoughts

For anyone who wants to play Date ni Gametsui wake ja ne… ehh, don’t bother. Really. I mean, what do you want to play it for?

If it’s the character designs, download pictures and just look at them.

If it’s the gameplay, it’s exactly the same as for MotML so you’re better off getting that instead. If you’ve already played that and want to check out the differences in story, you’ll need to be able to read Japanese. Not that much, but at least a year or two of study because there’s no furigana. Even if you do clear that hurdle, a bug will prevent Laboratories from appearing in the shops at level 18, which will stop you from finishing the game properly.

And if you’re playing it for the “girlishness” there’s nothing girlish about this at all. I’ll be honest that I liked Hugo for all his rudeness and ended up quite enjoying myself, but not enough to push this game strongly. Give it a miss unless you’re really bored.