Dekitate High School – Just because you did something ‘first’ doesn’t mean you did it well

220px-Dekitate-high-school-sfcWhen Dekitate High School came out on the SNES in 1995, it marketed itself as “the first high school simulation game on the SNES.” According to j-wiki, this wasn’t true because a game called Houkago in Beppin Jogakuin (After School in the Beautiful Girl’s Academy)  had come out a few months before. It was also a meaningless achievement, because the vastly superior Tokimeki Memorial was already making waves on the PC at the time and was ported to the SNES shortly afterwards.

Once you realize all that, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Dekitate High School is a half-assed joke of a game. The premise is that you’re the heir to a rich family. As part of your training, your grandfather establishes a school and asks you to manage it for three years while disguised as a regular teacher. That’s right, you’re a teacher, not a student. This puts any dating between you and your students firmly in unethical territory, which is why, to its credit, DHS never lets you date anyone.

So despite the misleading cover, this is not a dating sim but a school development sim, and a poor one at that. The way you develop your school is by raising your student’s educational stats to match or exceed the national average.

The only way to do this is to build classroom after classroom after classroom higgledy-piggledy on your compound. Ignore aesthetics, pay no mind to accessibility, just build facilities on every square inch of ground and your students will automatically perform better. In theory.

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Finished Arc Rise Fantasia. It was pretty good! (ending spoilers)

larc-serge-alf-rastan-nikoIt only took about 65 hours, more if you include all the times I got wiped out and had to redo a boss fight. I had a good run, all things considered. Arc Rise Fantasia is the sort of game that makes me want to go back and start afresh with all the knowledge I’ve gained on how to manipulate the battle system in my favor. If I had to play again, I would definitely:

– Reset and reconfigure my magic orbs way earlier. Once you have even one level 3-4 magic orb, it’s time to think about upgrading and ditching lvls 1 and 2 magic. How much easier the Verct Skywalk boss battles would have been if I’d known this.
– Take whatever weapon does the job best into battle and not worry too much about letting WP go to waste.
– Fight to the death for Rufunga on the beach. I had no idea that battle was winnable. “Darn it!” as L’arc would say.
– Fight Eesa before Allul. Eesa was a cakewalk in comparison, which greatly lessened the euphoria I felt after the final battle.
– Abuse the Above and Beyond spell (double-cast of Life Force) to hell and back. Battles get so much better when you’re not stuck in an endless loop of defending and healing.
– Steal more from bosses. I bet they had all kinds of good stuff, but I was too obsessed with staying alive to try.
– Actually use those status-preventing, mag-def boosting accessories much earlier. Focusing on stat-raising accessories for so long was a big mistake.
– Learn about Excel Trinities earlier. Because I’m a psychic and can figure out things the game absolutely does not tell you about unless you pore through the glossary.

And so on and so forth. The game does lend itself to at least one more replay. I would do it if only they’d let me skip all the walking and talking and just warp me from boss battle to boss battle.

Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Shining Blade – Easily the worst RPG I’ve played this year

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Sol Trigger made me rage and The Last Story had a really weak story (moar liek “The Last Story Left After All The Good Ones Had Been Taken” amirite?), but both games at least had good gameplay going for them. Shining Blade is just crap. Poop. Excrement in game form. It’s the most eloquent way I can put it. I can’t remember the last time I played a game so bright and polished on the outside and so dry and devoid of substance on the inside. Now certainly a game doesn’t need “substance” to be good. It just needs to be fun, and Shining Blade doesn’t even clear that low, low hurdle.

In the interest of fairness, here comes the obligatory “good parts” section. I played for almost 30 hours and I finished it so there must be some in there. So what does Shining Blade have?

1. Good voice acting. It should be “great” given all the famous VAs they used but first, I’ve heard better performances from them and second, it doesn’t matter how nice your voice is if you’ve got nothing worthy to say.

2. Good character designs. A little heavy on the heaving bosoms and breast implants, but apparently this is Tony Taka’s entire raison d’être. His men are covered from top to toe while his women wear negligee in snowstorms because that’s what his audience demands.

3. Nostalgia factor for fans of the older games. Except Shining Hearts fans, who will just be depressed. Each chapter drags out characters from older games like Shining Wind and Shining Tears and Shining [crass comments deleted. My apologies]. Wait, I’m supposed to be talking about the good parts.

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Stuck in a rut

Can’t go back, don’t want to move forward. It’s my own fault I’m stuck, so don’t feel sorry for me.

Arc Rise Fantasia – I don’t wanna finish it. You can’t make me! Nooo! I’ve finished Verct Skywalk (darned Dynos battle), the game has dropped its final twist, now I just have to finish the last dungeon. Before that, I want to catch Mashgar and Allul, but I can’t get Mashgar! He keeps running away every time I get close. Oh sure, I’ve been lucky to run into him twice (and he mashed me both times) but it’s so frustrating when I try my best to approach from behind and he still bolts. I could save him for the post-game, but by then he’s bound to be too easy. Even Kudoan was kind of a cakewalk. Okay, final decision: Five last attempts at cornering Mashgar. If it works, good. If it doesn’t, it wasn’t meant to be. The end. And I promise not to post about Arc Rise Fantasia again until it’s finished.

Shining Blade – It’s like Zill O’ll Infinite all over again. I’m spending so much time on sidequests and free battles that the game is taking forever to complete. And if you’re even a level or two over the storyline bosses, they’re way too easy. End result: the game is dragging on and I’m not having any fun. At least Zill O’ll had an interesting story to keep me playing. That, and they made me pay dearly for doing quests halfway round the world when I was supposed to be fighting a war. Step out at the wrong time and you’ll return to find the city annihilated. I doubt Shining Blade has the guts to pull something like that, though. In fact I dare Sega to do it. Go on, make my day.

I should quit while I’m ahead, but I won’t. Instead I’ll keep whining about it because that’s what I have a blog for. Nyaah nyaah! But seriously, all joking aside, I need to cut out the quests and focus on finishing this thing. My time is precious and I can think of ten other games I’d rather be playing right now on the PSP alone.

I’m going to finish one of these games this week by hook or by crook.

Shining Blade – Confusing for Shining Hearts fans (spoilers)

shining blade frontIt’s a bit of a stretch to call myself a Shining Hearts fan after all the things I said about it, but I didn’t exactly hate the game either. The bread-baking gimmick was great, so much so that I was inspired to bake my own. The result was more b-r-i-c-k than b-r-e-a-d, but the process was fun and the texture was…original. :-p

I also liked the battle system a lot. There were plenty of good ideas in there, enough to populate three or four JRPGs. It’s just that the enemies were too weak to force you to take advantage of the system. Shining Blade suffers from a similar problem, although the combat here is 100% different. It’s got this turn-based action (or is it action turn-based?) strategy combat thing going on. Sounds like a contradiction in terms but Sega does their best to make the system work. Short of giving it anyone worth to work against, that is. But that’s a discussion for a different day. Besides, it’s early days yet. I took some screenshots and have been playing for almost 15 hours, so I can explain if anyone’s interested.

Today, though, I want to try and puzzle out the story behind Shining Blade as it relates to Shining Hearts. It seems clear enough that Blade is a prequel that will eventually explain how Rick came to wash up on the island with amnesia in Shining Hearts. This is why neither Rick nor Neris ever regain their memories in that game, because that would spoil the plot of the prequel. The only thing that suggests that Hearts might have come first is the size of Shin, the little elf girl, and with the differences in character model, she could very well be the same age in both games.

The things that are confusing me – and that may become clear as I continue – are the following:

Do please go on, this is most interesting →