Zettai Hero Project – Unending Game VS Uninterested Gamer

ZhpUnlosingRangerA pig in lipstick is still a pig.
And a rogue-like in lipstick is still a rogue-like.
And I play rogue-likes not to finish them but to see how many times I die before I lose interest.
So I played Zettai Hero Project for a while, lost interest and quit.
End of report.

You: “That’s it?! I demand details!!”

I’d love to indulge you, but I don’t have much more to say. It’s been almost two months since I dropped the game unceremoniously, and I haven’t looked back. IIRC I made it to chapter 5 or 6, the part in the mine with Oldlama and some ghost or something.

It’s a normal rogue-like for the most part. The “lipstick” is just NIS going overboard with all kinds of beautification attempts and unnecessary additions that just messed up the clean, simple feel I like to get from my rogue-likes. Heh, look at me talking like some kind of expert when all I’ve ever played are the Shiren the Wanderer games. But I know what I like when I play it, and Zettai Hero Project wasn’t it.

Some of the unnecessary additions I’m talking about:

  • A largely unwilling protagonist. Rogue-likes are brutal enough to play and watch even when your character wants to be there. When he doesn’t want to, and when on top of that other characters keep insulting and putting him down, well, just imagine how that makes me feel. The putdowns were more mean-spirited than funny to begin with, and they just got worse as the game progressed. This was about 90% of the reason I quit the game.
  • Too much stuff to fiddle with, all with little discernible benefit. Too many items, too many facilities, too many options. The insurance office, the church, the item synthesis thing, the medical doctor and all those colored blocks. All of that. All unnecessary stress. Just give me somewhere to stash my items and a way to get home and then leave me alone. 9% of the reason I quit.
  • Too many battles with Darkdeath Evilman. After the first 2 they should have cut out all the rest. We already know how they’re going to turn out.
  • Too much moralization. Why must there be a moral in every chapter? I’m busy trying to survive here, I really don’t need to be preached at on top of my woes.
  • Time-wasting character stories. I’m busy training to save your sorry asses. Stop dragging me into your stupid social dramas. The only ones worth keeping were those directly related to the story, like Superbaby’s mom.
  • Some amusing scenes, but even more scenes that just fell flat in their weak attempts at humor. They even lapsed into vulgarity at times (his *bleep* is as big as a …what?)
  • Unnecessary added stress with decaying armor/weapons. At least slow down the rate of decay.
  • The dungeon music was annoying and distracting. I get the whole “sentai” theme thing, but there should have been an option to turn it off entirely.
  • The slight stat boosts you got from failing were insulting. I felt patronized. Like, I know what I’m getting into when I play a rogue-like, okay? You don’t have to baby me or give me pity points for failing. How old do you think I am?

And so on and so forth. Oh it wasn’t all bad, since I played it for quite a while. I liked the art style, I liked the generally cheerful and silly mood, I’m glad they tried to be funny and I liked the general premise of the hero training for the battle against the final boss.

And it’s not like I was planning to finish in the first place. I would have stopped sooner or later anyway; the flaws just hastened the process. So when I’d had enough and wanted to quit, I quit.

The end. Seriously.

Rune Factory Frontier – Progress Report 3 (finished)

Done, done and done. I met all the Rune Factory Frontier goals I set for myself last time, so here I am for the final round up.Rune-factory-frontier_iris-blanche

1. Getting married to Iris was a bigger ordeal than I’d thought. First I had to raise both girls to 10 LP. Then they inexplicably fell sick and I couldn’t figure out how to cure them. After checking several FAQs, I learned I had to wait a week for a book to show up at the library. Now, how was I supposed to know that? In fact there were a lot of “How was I supposed to know that” moments in this game, but this was probably the worst.

Long story short, I jumped through all the necessary hoops, waited almost a month to propose and got myself a lovely young wife. Lost Iris Noire in the process, which was a bit sad. But it was for the best.

Having a wife is embarrassing! But sweet. But embarrassing! Whenever I try to leave the house, she gives me a goodbye kiss! With a closeup! AAAAAAH! I can’t play that in front of anyone! >_< But she’s really cute.

2. I crafted almost everything on the crafts lists and made almost all the recipes. Apart from the ultimate hoe I also fully upgraded all my farming tools. Good times.

3. I beat both bosses. Turns out they don’t start out in hypermode unless you’ve fought them at least once before. The Snow Ruins snake was annoying, but not that hard. The Whale Island squid was a little harder, but I was sick of running and dodging by that point. I just loaded up on healing items and foods and beat the crap out of him. I’m not going to bother getting revenge on the Chicken boss, though. I doubt he’d drop anything worth my while.

4. I grew almost all the crops. The only things I didn’t get were Red Crystal Flowers and Pompom Grass. Growing almost everything was a lot of tedious time and repetitive effort, so I want to say “Never again!” but the items and weapons I made from the results served me well, so I can’t. I just wish there was some other way to get them, like a rare monster drop or a quest reward.

Final roundup (quick notes)

– Farming. A real drag. Especially since you couldn’t muster an army of monsters to do the heavy lifting. When Tides of Destiny came out and I heard the farming element had been simplified to hell, I was livid. Now I’m much more interested and ready to forgive. I’d be sad if they took farming out completely, but I don’t mind if they take the stress and tedium out of it.

Fishing– Fishing. Very useful, but not interesting at all. My fishing level was the lowest of all my stats when I finished. Maybe more varieties of fish? More fish dishes? A more interesting mini-game? Dunno.

– Fighting. No problems there, except like fishing it was a little dull. I also prefer the other RF systems where you could equip both magic and weapons and use them interchangeably. It also took me a while to figure out when an enemy was dead so I could stop slashing, but no biggie. And some of the boss battles were a little too long.

– Controls. Generally good, but bad for farm work. Every single motion takes way too long to execute. Walking or riding everywhere on such a large map was a pain. I thought I’d get a warp item/spell by the end, but I never did. Also it was annoying have to pull up a menu every time I wanted to switch the smallest item.

– Characters. The village felt a little sparse. I thought new people would move in later, since the place was so big and empty, but they never did. Apart from the Irises I didn’t like anyone very much. I also went ages without seeing most of them because my paths never took me their way. People like Danny and Turner might as well not have been in the game. Same with Brodik – what the heck was his problem?

Apart from taking useless guys like those out, I’d like future games to make it so character’s lines and reactions towards you change as their affection (both love and friendship) grows. It’s so boring how they only speak the same 2 or 3 lines day after day after year after year. How am I supposed to believe Laguna and Iris are in love when all she ever says to him is “I love tomato juice!”?

– Mail quests. Pointless. Unrewarding. No fun. I don’t see why I have to give an item to the mailman when I can hand it over in person. Plus all I got was a “thank you” for handing over a Fairy Dust it took me 3 days of farming to get. Never again.

rff_battle– Dungeons. Dungeon layout was good, monster density was just right. I never felt overwhelmed by the number of enemies, but there was always something around the corner. The shortcut system was an excellent idea.

The only thing I disliked about dungeons was the unclear requirements needed to unlock them. After the Green Ruins I wandered around for days before I noticed the sprout on the Mountain Path. After finishing the flame dungeon, no one told me I was supposed to use the relic on the stone by the library until I FAQ’ed it. Once I got stuck in the Snow Ruins, I had no way of knowing I was supposed to either ride an animal or go to the side of the church – a place I never go and where nothing else ever happens – and wait for an event to trigger.

– Crafting, cooking, forging, alchemy. All good. The mini-game that lets you boost the level of the finished item was good too. No matter how many kinds of items they let me make, it would never have been enough so no complaints about the number. But there really should have been a mass-production option. They should show you in advance how much RP/HP it will consume and let you whether to proceed or not.

– Runeys. Time-consuming and inconvenient. They’re not quite as bad as I was led to believe, but even with a grass factory they’re annoying to manage. The reason I’m not too mad is because Marvelous has already seen the error of their ways and taken them out for good.

– Time management. Time moves too slowly. There should be an option that lets you skip up to 6 hours ahead in a day.

– Graphics, music. Haha, you know I never pay much attention to these things. No, actually the music was pretty good. The character designs were a bit lacking, and the town layout was rather poor. Too many places that take too long to get to and where nothing ever happens.

– Overall feeling about the game. Largely positive. It took a while to get going and the story wasn’t that interesting. And I didn’t like the characters much, didn’t like the farming either. But I still played 89 hours of it in record time, so eh. It was a little better than “just okay” but not by much. Quite a few things could have been improved, and I hope to see some of those changes reflected in Tides of Destiny.

– Where to next. Tides of Destiny and Arc Rise Fantasia are the only Wii RPGs I have left to try. I’ll start them in a couple of weeks, next time I’m back home. On the PS2 I’ve started Steambot Chronicles. On the PSP I’ve finished Story Mode in Phantasy Star Portable 2, but I can’t stop doing open missions. If/when I ever tear myself away, I plan to start Sol Trigger. That’s it for today.

Tokimeki Memorial 3 – Emi Tachibana GET!

tokimeki memorial 3_frontTokimeki Memorial 3 is the black sheep of the Tokimemo family, the least-praised, least-loved and least-remembered today. Fans complained about the dumbed-down system and 3D character design when the game was released, but I believe all would have been forgiven if the cast of girls had been even slightly attractive and memorable. Now I’m no Tokimemo expert beyond games 1, 4 and the Girls’ Side games. Even when I put myself into the shoes of a Tokimemo fan, though, I’m hard pressed to figure out what Konami expected me to like about this game.

I will say, though, that this isn’t a bad game. It’s easily the worst Tokimemo game, but it does have some things going for it. I actually liked the much-criticized 3D character designs. They moved just enough to be lively without being spastic like, say, the girls from Love Plus.

Another nice thing TM3 did was to seriously ramp up the number and variety of dates. Movies, plays, game shows, robot shows, water slides, body surfing, lots and lots of things to do. I never went on the same date twice unless I wanted to – there was that much variety.

I also liked having to get a girl’s telephone number directly from her instead of from your stalker friend. I’ve always found it a bit creepy how your friend just gives out girls’ phone numbers without their permission. I feel better calling her as well, because she wouldn’t give me her number if she didn’t want me to call, right? ^_^ It’s too bad they dropped that system to pacify the weak-willed herbivore otaku in TokiMemo 4.

That’s about it as far as it goes, though. The game wasn’t bad, but it sure was boring.

1. The girls. I chose Emi Tachibana not because I especially liked her but because she was the best card in a bad hand. Visually all the girls are fairly cute, but personality-wise there’s not much to choose between them. Yukiko was cute, but dull. Rika had a screechy annoying voice and looked too “loli” to take seriously. Oda Mari was unfriendly and not that pretty. Also I don’t see how being an actress’s daughter automatically makes her a “lady”. Chitose with her green hair and bad Engrish was annoying. Also she bombed me. And I avoided meeting whoever the last girl was by ignoring the flags. That left me with Emi by default. Nice girl, but not nice enough to save the game.

2. Bombs. You meet some guy/girl once and they quickly start spreading nasty rumors about you because you won’t date them. Normally I take it as part of the game, but TM3 really messed things up. For some bizarre reason asking a girl on a date, giving her a present or even outright dating her is not sufficient to diffuse a bomb. I have no idea what they intended me to do about it, but by the end of the game every single girl except Chitose and Emi were threatening to bomb me. And the only reason why Chitose wasn’t bombing me was because hers had already blown up. I was confused all the way through.

emi3. Clothing inspections. Each girl has a very specific outfit she wants you to wear on dates. Even if it makes no sense for a high school kid to wear a business suit to the beach. If you don’t please her, she’ll either look upset and disappointed or flat out walk off and leave you hanging. And she sure as hell won’t tell you what you did wrong so you can fix it.

4. A little too easy. Your raiseable stats are reduced to 4: literature, science, arts and exercise. Your stats go up really quickly, and according to the FAQs, most girls need only one date and 1 stat to be at a certain low level in order to win them. Oda Mari, for example, needs only 1 date, an arts level of 30 and lovey-dovey status. Emi needs 1 date, sports level 20 (extremely low) and lovey-dovey status. You barely need to put in any effort at all.

5. Your friends. I hesitate to even call them “friends,” because they don’t like you at all. I suspect the almost excessive bro-ness of your buddies in TM4 was a direct response to the unfriendliness of your ‘buddies’ in this game. They’re useful for nothing, they hang up on you when you call them, they almost never hang out with you and I can’t remember any conversations with them that didn’t involve one or both parties sneering at each other. Terrible.

6. School. Non-school activities like dates and festivals were really well done, but school sucked. Nothing interesting happens on sports day or at the school festival, interaction with teachers and classmates is basically zero. It made me question the point of setting the game in a high school, apart from tradition.

7. Dating Emi Tachibana. Sweet, ladylike girl. More of a well-bred lady than Oda Mari, at any rate. Does her aikido, goes on her dates, gets on with her life without needing anyone. While Emi had some club-related drama going on, she solved it all by herself without ever involving me. That was the problem, really. We’re supposed to be dating, supposed to be in love with each other, but she never opened up to me at all. I actually got the option to pry into the matters that bother her in post-date conversations, but she always kept you at arm’s length. “Oh yeah I’m totally fine, don’t worry about it.” A cold, distant relationship like that is mere acquaintance, not even friendship, much less dating.

Unfortunately nothing about the game suggests that dating other girls would be any different. I also didn’t enjoy my one, long playthrough enough to venture another one. None of the other TM/GS games have been perfect, but they’ve had some characters or some fun quirks that invited more than one run from me. I guess in the end the biggest flaw of Tokimeki Memorial 3 is that it’s just no fun at all.

In which I criticize Phantasy Star Portable 2 for being harder than Phantasy Star Portable

When I said I wanted to play Phantasy Star Portable 2, I lied. I don’t want to play PSP2, I want to go back in time to before I played Phantasy Star Portable and play that again.Phantasy_Star_Portable_2_Cover My dirty little secret is out, but I’m sure I’m not alone. I’m sure many of the fans who clamor for Chrono Trigger 2, or Skies of Arcadia 2, or whatever the nostalgia game of the month is, really just want the same experience again. Preferably with a new story and the major flaws fixed but even that is optional.

So it was with me and Phantasy Star Portable. When I finished it last year, oh how time flies, I noted a couple of things I liked and some other things I hoped they might fix if they ever made a sequel. To their credit Sega and Alfa System seem to have taken a lot of these into account in making PSP2. In the next post I’ll focus on the many things they got right. Today, however, I’m going to complain about the three main things they ruined: 1. Combat difficulty, 2. Loading times and 3. The characters.

Combat is too hard, or Why I liked Phantasy Star Portable for being so easy

As I said in that previous post, the game difficulty of PSP was just right for me, which means it might have been too easy for other gamers. And by “other gamers” I meant those crazy people. Those guys who are all into chains and whips and ball gags and the like. Not normal people like you and me. By catering to the nutsos, Sega has made an action RPG that is really, really good and yet really hard for me to enjoy at the same time.

Let’s look at what they did wrong (i.e. right) in detail.

– You have one common PP meter instead of one each per weapon. This means you can’t spam special moves with one weapon, then switch to the next and spam some more.
– There may be PP-refilling items, but after 15 hours I have yet to see one.
– Enemies hit much harder/your defence is much lower. Either way you’re constantly getting hurt.
– Accuracy has taken a nose-dive. Swinging and missing at enemies right in front of you is incredibly frustrating.
– You actually have to dodge and block this time, you can’t just tank everything.
– Status effects affect you frequently instead of once in a blue moon.
– Monomates are still common, but Dimates, Trimates, Star Atomizers and buffing items are harder to get.
– Weapon and armor drops are terrible.
– Just because you found a B rank item doesn’t mean you can equip it, even if your class can use that item. You have level and type limits.
– There’s a steep rise in open mission difficulty from C to B and onwards.
– Your party members are a lot less stupid, but they’re also a lot less generous. In PSP your partner machine would heal you if you so much as coughed. Now she won’t turn around even if you’re half-dead on the ground.

Liar! *sob*

Liar! *sob*

You still with me? I haven’t even covered everything yet.

Why is the increased difficulty such a problem? This is very personal, but it’s a problem for me because of the main reason why I liked PSP: it was simple and refreshing. PSP was a relaxant, a cleansing medicine from all the lengthy, tiring complicated games I’d been slogging through. Like the gaming equivalent of dry toast and a cold glass of water after a night of hard partying. No need to worry about PP, no need to worry about healing, no need to worry about dying. Just turn it on, run around a bit slaughtering hapless monsters and suddenly all’s right with the world again.

You can’t do that with PSP2. Thanks to all the changes, it’s hard enough that you will die if you don’t pay attention. I’m playing it, and to be honest I’m enjoying it, but I have to stay on my toes every minute. As a consequence it doesn’t have PSP‘s special properties any more. Now it’s just another good but stressful game I have to get through. I’m going to need to detox after this detoxifier.

It may sound odd that I’m criticizing the combat system for being much improved over the previous one. If you think about it, though, there’s nothing contradictory about acknowledging the quality of something while noting that for reasons A, B, C and D it doesn’t quite meet your needs. It’s the same with PSP2. It’s a very good game combat-wise, and objectively speaking they’ve made some great tweaks to the system. I’m just sad that I can’t get the same sense of peace and contentment from it as I did from PSP.

Loading, loading, loading…

The first console I ever bought with my own money was a Playstation. The second was a Playstation 2. Suffice it to say I have very low standards when it comes to loading times. That’s why while I was really impressed with how quickly and smoothly PSP loaded, I’m not particularly heartbroken over the many, many loading screens PSP2 has. I must say, however that 1) It’s very disappointing since I know for a fact they could have done better and 2) It only worsens the stressful feel of the game.

Die, Emilia, Die

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” Yet I asked Sega for likeable characters and they gave me Shizuru and Emilia instead. How ungodly can you get? First Shizuru, the main antagonist and apparent love child of Sephiroth and Kuja:

sephiroth's younger brother PCT2003a

One look at him should tell you everything that’s wrong with this waste of megabytes.

Emilia is my partner. She’s bad-tempered, irritable, bellicose, brusque, cantankerous, churlish, contentious, contrary, cross, difficult, disputatious, grouchy, ill-natured, nasty, obnoxious, offensive, out of sorts, peevish, pettish, petulant, querulous, rude, snappy, surly, ugly, unfriendly, ungracious, unlikable, unpleasant, uptight, waspish and whiny.

PCT2022 PCT2000A
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And that’s just for starters.

The game is stressful enough without her adding to it with her endless crying and complaining. In typical JRPG fashion she eventually shapes up and learns the meaning of family and friends and blah blah I’m not alone any more, etc etc. Too little too late, I’m afraid. Far be it from me to wish death on any character, but… okay that’s a lie. I want her dead, and I want her dead NOW. Hopefully if I keep choosing the wrong options, the game will take care of business for me.

Bonus complaint: My Phantasy Star Portable save is useless!

I lovingly preserved my PSP save in the hopes of getting a cool bonus once I transferred it. For my trouble I got a powerful saber – that misses all the time. I got my character, who looks NOTHING like he did before. I got a title and an item I can’t even remember.

What I didn’t get was the one thing I really wanted: continuity. Since PSP2 is set in the same universe a few years after PSP, I was hoping for recognition of any kind from other characters I’d previously interacted with. No such luck. I met Tonnio, Liina, Maya, Lou and Vivienne and they all don’t recognize me. That really hurts my feelings. It can’t be that hard to add a few extra lines to each character’s dialogue that triggers if you have an old save loaded. And it would make all the difference in the world to me.

why vivienne whyYou don’t remember me, do you? / You don’t remember me, do you?
It started with a kiss / Never thought it would come to this…

*snf* Vivienne… Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go cry myself to sleep.

Hayate no Gotoku! Ojousama Produce Daisakusen: Bokuiro ni Somare! ~Gakkouhen~

HAYATE no gotoku_frontA short, sweet palate cleanser from the sour aftertaste of Lunar. Hayate no Gotoku! Ojousama Blah Blah ~ What is it with Hata and Long Titles, Anyway?~ is a raising sim slash beauty pageant sim with a little bit of romance rounding it out. I stopped reading Hayate no Gotoku! over a year ago so I decided to play this quickly before I forgot all the characters. It’s my way of saying goodbye.

Story

You’re a new butler (not Hayate). To prove yourself you decide to train one lady to win a beauty contest. The winner gets to wish for anything they want from the legendary tree in the corner of the school campus. I played it twice and won with Maria, who wished for nothing, and Hinagiku, who almost wished for a bigger bust but got angry and threatened the tree into silence instead.

Characters

The usual pre-Greece cast, i.e. no Athena or Ruka or those two girls in the first year whose names I could never remember. Also Hayate barely shows up and Klaus, Tama and the cat only appear in images. For pageant purposes you get to pick Nagi, Maria, Hinagiku, Sakuya and Izumi and Saki to raise. When it’s time to compete, Wataru, Ayumu, Isumi and Yukiji appear as contestants.

Raising sim

Hayate the Combat Butler2From Monday to Friday you raise the girl’s stats by picking three a day for her to focus on. There are 6 types of personality: Cool, Tsundere, Moe, Elegant, Eccentric and Genki, and 12 corresponding types of stats for them to focus on. Raise Pride to boost Tsundereness, raise Wisdom to boost Coolness, raise Strength to boost Genkiness, that sort of thing.

The stats you choose to raise affect the success of her contest appeals and the kind of activities she performs better in, i.e. the more Pride you raise, the easier Pride gets to raise. Raised high enough they also change the girl’s personality. Hinagiku comes with an innate “Cool” personality, but with high Pride she’ll start acting Tsundere. That will affect the way she acts towards you, which can be both interesting and a little disconcerting to watch. For example a Moe Hinagiku will giggle and simper at you in a very un-Hinalike manner.

The game is easy enough that I won 9 out of 10 contests on my first playthrough with Maria just by trying to boost everything equally. The second time I used ‘cheat’ items, which aren’t really cheats since the game sells them from day 1, to uber-boost Hinagiku’s stats. I still won 10/10 contests easily. Basically as long as you raise something every week you’ll be fine.

Romance elements

You get a few CGs where the girl indicates some romantic interest in you. On Saturdays when you go shopping in town, you can visit the park for a date. Not much of one though, just a quick chat and a simple choice with no real consequences. You can touch her in various places on the main screen in order to increase her mood. And at the end she’ll tell you she’s really glad she met you and really likes you. Then you’ll go your separate ways, the end.

Pageant sim

Every Sunday you pick a rival and compete with them on the basis of your popularity with fans of different tastes, represented by colors. In the screenshot on the right, the yellow fans are Tsundere fans and the green ones are Genki fans. You appeal to them in the way they like and they’ll either come over to your side, go to your rival if s/he does better or fall into a pit if they can’t decide (yes, seriously).

hayate contestYou have three kinds of appeals.

1. A regular appeal of one color
2. A special appeal that can a) appeal to two colors at the same time or b) appeal to one color and block another color. E.g. you could take all the Tsunderes while stopping Isumi from taking the Genkis. Will not work if Isumi does not pursue the Genkis.
3. A special attack particular to that character that can only be used once per contest. Has appeal power and also casts debuffs like lowering rival stats and casting Silence on them.

Appeals play out in the form of “cute” performances by the boxy 3D girls, who twirl and pirouette for your viewing pleasure. It might have worked if they had used anime graphics instead of 3D but as it is they just look weird. It’s also unfortunate that all the girls use the same animations. A “Tsundere” appeal from Nagi is the same as one from Hinagiku and the same as one from Maria. That’s probably the best they could do budget-wise but it is somewhat disappointing.

The main strategy involved is in figuring out what kind of attack your rival is going to use and trying to counter it while simultaneously trying to grab as many fans as possible. It helps to know the rival’s personality, it helps to learn what attacks they have equipped (checkable on Saturdays), it helps to use Type 2 attacks early and often. If it wasn’t so easy it is to raise your stats to stratospheric levels in no time, all this might require some real thinking. As the game stands, though, it’s next to impossible to lose a contest. As long as you avoid late-game AI Maria or AI Hinagiku you’ll be fine.

Problems

sys_sat_hd_imgIt would have been 200x better if you controlled Hayate instead of some new non-canon butler. I don’t know about other HnG fans, but what I liked most about the series was watching Hayate’s cute and crazy interactions with his bevy of beauties. I don’t want to live out a ronery otaku’s fantasy by trying to hook up with the girls ‘myself’. It’s not convincing, it’s not satisfying and it robs the game of all potential humor.

The other main problem with Ojousama wo Produce Daisakusen is that it’s not very replayable. After one or two playthroughs you’ll realize it’s the same thing every time. The contests are fun, but too easy to win. Stats are too easy to raise. The girls invariably fall in love with “you” no matter how you treat them. They never wish for anything even if they win. They rarely interact with other characters even when they reasonably should, e.g. Maria and Nagi, Hinagiku and the Student Council trio. As a fan playing an anime game, that’s the sort of thing you’re looking for and that’s precisely what you’re not going to get.

I did learn one thing from this game and from Tactics Layer: beauty pageants are fun! I’d like to play the contest minigame again someday, hopefully with added complexity. Maybe Konami should consider making it a mobile game app? I was entertained for a few hours, but otherwise it’s not a game I can recommend for anyone other than really hardcore and really bored fans of the Hayate no Gotoku series.