Gokujou!! Mecha Mote Iinchou: Mecha Mote Days, Hajimemasu wa! review

Konami is the company responsible for some of my favorite games on the DS: Tokimemo GS 1-3, Lost in Blue 1-3 (moaaarr), and more. However even monkeys fall from trees, as the Japanese saying goes. And even good companies make bad games every once in a while. It’s when it’s every time that it becomes a problem (*cough* Nippon Ichi *cough*).

That being the case, I see no need to go on at length about Gokujou!! Mecha Mote Iinchou, a dress up game based on the popular shoujo manga/anime of the same name. It’s aimed at pre- and early teen girls, and I’m old enough to have kids that fit that description, so I’m not even the target demographic in the first place.

Plus the general rule of anime-based games is that they’re not for people who aren’t fans of the original. I couldn’t be bothered to check out the show, and even if I had I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it. It’s only natural that I couldn’t follow along, then.

The game: Your character is the class rep, and at the end of the year there’s a beauty contest of sorts for class reps. Your job is to shape her up over the course of the year so she can win that competition. I’ve been playing this on and off since around August, waiting for the big payoff, but when I think of all the other games I could be playing instead, it’s hard to justify spending time on this silliness. *toss*

It could have been good, if the game had given you a certain amount of freedom to shape your character as you saw fit. Since what we got in the end is a kiddy, pedestrian affair where you spend 90% of your time playing mini-games and listening to heavy-handed beauty lectures from your so-called rival while trying to fulfill easy monthly objectives, it’s barely even worth writing about.

A typical month goes like this: you have a trip to the beach planned. You go to school in the mornings (nothing much happens there). You do a few mini-games to earn cash, buy some beach-appropriate clothes, everyone gushes over how lovely you look, the end. Repeat with a different challenge the next month. If the graphics were any good, maaaaybe dressing up the main character would have been fun, but since everything is jagged,small and garishly colored, and the outfit designs are uniformly hideous… *toss*.

The description of the anime also says something about a “bad boy trio” your character has to deal with, but either they don’t exist in the game or they were all given lobotomies, because everyone fawns slavishly over you no matter what you do or wear. Your rival wants to, nay, insists on helping you achieve your goals every month, so you don’t even have the joy of sticking it to the usual snooty rival.

Summary: Good premise poorly executed. Story only fans care about. Dull gameplay. No autonomy. Servile characters. Awful graphics.

Conclusion: Bad game. Avoid like cancer. If you want to play a dress-up game on the DS, try something like the Oshare Princess games instead.

Hayate no Gotoku: Boku ga Romeo de, Romeo ga Boku de (1)

It’s been a while since my DS saw any action. And I’m a little disgusted with my PSP after that Blade Dancer experience, so for a change of mood I decided to play something lighter and funnier.

Hayate no Gotoku – Boku ga Romeo de, Romeo ga Boku de is the first of three handheld games based on a shonen manga about a debt-ridden butler named Ayasaki Hayate. If you haven’t read it, I’m in two minds as to whether to recommend it or not. On one hand it’s a very funny, charming series with a great cast of characters, but on the other hand the story hasn’t gone anywhere in ages and even I have stopped reading it, so… Eh. The game is for fans only, so if you don’t know the series you can skip the rest of this post.

Since this game came out in 2007 before anything really earth-shattering happened in the manga (Greece arc, A-tan), it still has that silly, gag-filled atmosphere that drew me in in the first place. As such Romeo ga Boku is the kind of story that would work well as a filler episode in the anime. Hakuo Academy is going to stage a play, and one way or another Hayate is going to be cast as one of the leads together with one of  his many, many love interests. You have your choice of Nagi, Hinagiku, Ayumu, Sakuya, Isumi, Maria and a “secret character” (I’ll let you find out who that is).

The game is a visual novel 95% of the time, with the occasional save break that allows you to play mini-games to earn Pathos points. Pathos points can be used to unlock special outfits for the girls and also to unlock alternative answer choices during the main game. Apart from that you pick your girl, watch the scenes play out, pick an answer when given the option, hope you get a bad ending because those are hilarious and generally just make your way to the end of the game. Along the way you will also unlock voice clips and CGs that unfortunately I can’t show you because unlike the PSP, the DS does not have a screenshot plugin (I stole these ones from the internet).

Now then, although I normally dislike visual novels, the fact that the game features characters I already know and like, and the fact that each route is short and frequently funny has lead to me pouring more effort into this than I normally do with this kind of game. Right now I’ve gotten Nagi, Hinagiku and Ayumu’s endings. I just started Sakuya’s route and I’m kinda regretting it because I don’t like her much. But after her I’ll get Isumi, then finally Maria.

Hinagiku: Her play is “Snow White” and nothing much happens on her route until the end, where you have to battle your way up an RPG-style tower to rescue a puppy. She spends the whole play agonizing over what will happen during the kissing scene at the end, but then she panics so much that she sits up before Hayate can kiss her and the play ends there. Bummer. Hinagiku is as twitchy as ever, so her route has quite a few bad endings. That’s all part of the fun, of course.

Ayumu: She’s boring, so her route is boring too. At least she only has one Bad End. Her play is “Romeo and Juliet.” The “climax” of her story occurs when her father spots her practicing in the park at night with Hayate and sets his zombie coworkers on them. You might be wondering how Ayumu got to star in a Hakuo Academy play when she doesn’t even attend that school… well, don’t sweat the small stuff.

Yes, elephantiasis is a horrible disease.

Nagi: The most romantic of the three routes so far, because a magical statue actively tries to bring them together. Nagi’s play is “Cinderella.” Or more like Cinderella mixed with Dance Dance Revolution mixed with Fist of the North Star. Come on, it’s Nagi. The crisis on her route involves Nagi being kidnapped and held for ransom by the same guys that tried to hijack Sakuya’s ship way back when.

It’s been a while since I saw Nagi’s old mansion and bedroom, so this route was a nice trip down memory lane. Speaking of Nagi and her mansion, the realization Hayate would be a prick to end up with anyone else but the girl who loved him enough to throw away her zillion-dollar fortune is part of the reason why I stopped reading the manga. Foregone conclusions are no fun at all.

So that’s how far I’ve gotten. Graphically and musically this game isn’t much to write home about, but it’s cute and it’s funny and it helps pass the time, so that’s good enough for me. I am getting a leeetle bit tired though, especially of the “Tiger’s Den” scenes where Hayate has to try desperately to please these overly-sensitive girls. I might take a little break before continuing with the rest of the characters.

Blade Dancer: Lineage of Shite (spoilers)

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 Blade Dancer 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 somber stuff. “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 developers 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.

Happy New Year! + Gaming Resolutions!

Happy New Year! This was the quietest New Year’s Eve I’d ever spent in my life, thousands of miles away from friends and family. I didn’t even notice when the clock struck twelve because I was too busy reading morbid articles about pythons swallowing people. Don’t ask.

Still, yay, 2012! There’s something nice and round about that number that makes it seem like it’ll be a good year, right? So happy new year to everyone!

Now, back to the important stuff. For the past couple of days I’ve been playing Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light, which like Tactics Ogre: LUCT, is not quite bad enough to quit playing over. I’ll write something about it when I either finish it or give up, whichever one comes first.

Since I don’t plan to buy a 3DS, Vita, 360 or PS3 any time soon, the games I plan to play this year are mostly games from my massive backlog dating back at least 10 years. Twelve games should be reasonable enough.

1. Persona 2: Innocent Sin (PSP) – I started it last year and didn’t get far. I’ll try and finish it once and for all in 2012. No news of an Eternal Punishment remake so far, so I might jump straight into the PSX version of that when I’m done.

2. Summon Night 3 (PS2) – First PS2 troubles then TV-unavailability problems kept me from playing this last year, but this time I’ll try to make it happen. I’d like to play SN4 too, but first things first.

3. Dragon Quest VI (NDS) – On Feb 14th it’ll have been exactly one year since I finished Dragon Quest V, making it as good a time as any to move on to the next one. I’ll probably be desperate for a good, old-school RPG by that point anyway.

4. Tales of Innocence (NDS) – I played this very briefly after finishing Tales of the Tempest. To be honest I thought it was even worse, all the flaws of ToTT but with some reincarnation bullshit thrown in on top. But I only played an hour, so I’m going to restart and give it a proper chance later this year.

5. Wild Arms 2 (PSX) – I haven’t touched my PSOne in years. I think it’s still working, but I’m not going to risk it, so I’ll just play this on an emulator. I played WA1 almost 10 years ago and liked it. Now I’ll get to see if the rest of the series is worth bothering with.

6. Suikoden 2 (PSX) – Same deal as with Wild Arms 2, except I skipped S2 and played S3 and it was really kinda bad. Still, Suikoden 2 is one of those legendary “OMG you have to play this, I can’t believe you haven’t played it yet” games. It should be playable, at the very least.

7. Atelier Elie (PSX) – Also to be emulated. It’s the only “main” Atelier game I have yet to play, apart from Lilie, which I dropped after a few hours because it was frustrating. Atelier Marie was my favorite one of the “real” Atelier games, and Elie is supposed to be a much-improved sequel, so this should be good.

8. Disgaea (PS2) – I’ve had this game for years. I’ve tried to play it several times, but I always quit before too long. Too much stuff to think about, not enough excitement. This year I’m going to give it the mother of all college tries to find out once and for all whether the game is just not for me or whether it’s really as bad as I’ve felt it to be so far.

9. 7th Dragon (NDS) – My love/hate affair with ImageEpoch continues. Luminous Arc 3 was amazing, Criminal Girls was fantastic, Sands of Destruction was so-so, Final Promise Story made me want to nuke Tokyo. What will 7th Dragon be like? I’m quite excited about this game, tbh. There’s a PSP sequel, so if I like this I’ll order that as well.

10. Ni no Kuni: Shikkoku no Madoushi (NDS) – I’ve been waiting and waiting for this to come out in the West. That’s obviously not going to happen any more so I’ll have to import it. And when it’s time to import something, I always ask myself, “Okay, do I really want this game that badly?” Thus far the answer’s been “No” but I think this is the year I’ll finally take the plunge. Maybe.

11. Shining Hearts (PSP) – It looks nice. The heart-collection system sounds…different, I guess? And I haven’t played anything Shining since Shining Force Feather in 2008, so I might as well.

12. Phantasy Star Portable (PSP) – Phantasy Star, this, Phantasy Star, that. I’ve been hearing about you for years. Bring it on, let’s see what you’ve got.

Aaand that’s it. Of course I’m being super-optimistic and just taking it for granted that I’ll have the life, health, time and resources to play all these, but if you can’t be over-optimistic on the first day of the year, when can you be? As for life resolutions, I only have three. One, go to church more often (I only went twice in 2011, for shame), Two, buy more and pirate less, and Three, spend less time playing video games! One hour less a month still counts as less, right? ;-D

Wand of Fortune Portable – Lagi GET!

Nothing like a little romance for Christmas…

A little romance. Most of your relationships in Wand of Fortune Portable are more like friendships, and the game ends when the real romance is about to begin. I liked all the guys on offer, but my first playthrough took so long and was so tedious that I have lost all the will to play any more of this game.

Story: Lulu, the protagonist, enrolls in Mils Clea Magic Academy to fulfill her dream of becoming a magician like her grandmother. In their world, everyone belongs to one of six elements, but preliminary tests show Lulu doesn’t have an element at all. Not to worry though, hanging out with someone long enough naturally dyes you in their colors. Now Lulu has six months to find an element while raising her INT, DEX and MP stats, or her magic will be sealed forever.

Characters: Six bishies, three teachers, one room mate, four classmates. A small cast for a game set in an academy, and the lack of people to interact with hurts the game in the long run. The bishies are Julius (wind), Noel (earth), Bilal (water), Lagi (Fire), Alvaro (Light) and Est (Dark). Studying with them raises your affiliation with that element, while talking to and going out on dates with them raises their affection for you. Lulu herself is like the reincarnation of Pollyanna with an added sweets fetish. She is relentlessly positive and never gets down for more than a little while. I thought I’d find her annoying, but she’s so unwavering in her positivity that she’s hard to dislike.

Y U mad tho

For this playthrough I decided to go after Lagi. Unlike the others, Lagi can’t use magic. He’s at the Academy as a research subject, because he turns into a baby dragon every time a girl bumps into him. This is because he’s half-dragon, and the time is fast approaching when he’ll have to pick whether to be a dragon or a human for life.

When he first meets Lulu he’s cranky and prickly, just the sort of guy that’s fun to tease. Slowly but surely she wears him down, but he’s still more tsun than dere towards her until the final confession. In the end it turns out his affliction was all in his mind, ‘cos he didn’t want to pick. In order to save Lulu from a salamander he turns into a dragon, but instead of leaving the academy, he decides to hang around a little longer and confesses to Lulu at the end. Aww.

Lagi’s route was fun enough. He was involved in some very comical events. And his baby dragon form is cute. However if I hadn’t picked him, I’d have gone for Est, the short sarcastic shota. He’s obviously suffering from some kind of existential angst, and Lulu’s just the girl to help him get over himself.

I wants your body, Mr. Elbart. I don’t care if you’re still using it!

Truth be told, though, the guy I really wanted to get was my clumsy, awkward teacher Mr. Elbart. But you can’t go for the forbidden relationship right off the bat, it’s just not done. I mean, what will people say about my Lulu? I was going to save him for my next playthrough, but I haven’t got it in me any more. Lulu gets to stay unsullied… for now.

Gameplay: Take lessons to raise your stats. Study with guys to raise your magic affiliation. Talk with them to make them like you. Solve mysteries and help people on the weekend. Go out on dates with the guy you like. Go shopping when you get the chance. That’s…about it, really.

The good stuff first:

1) It’s a dating sim/visual novel hybrid. There’s more to it than just non-stop reading. Not much more, but it’s the thought that counts.

2) You can check affection levels and your parameters at any time.

3) You can skip dialogue and events forcefully, unless you are required to make a choice. Unfortunately you have to make choices every single day, so skipping goes in fits and starts.

4) Affection, affiliation and magic stats are all very easy to raise. Just by playing normally, you can make a guy fall fully in love with you within 3 or 4 months.

5) The art is very nice and the few CGs you get are cool. Dunno why they ration out the CGs over the course of the game and then suddenly dump 5 on you in the last hours, but a CG is a CG so I’ll take ’em.

6) The voice acting is okay. Est sounded suitably shota, Alvaro was appropriately smarmy, Julius could be nerdy and serious in turns, etc. Nobody really stood out, but nothing was bad either.

7) There’s an interesting card mini-game you can play. The guys have fixed patterns of play, so it’s easy enough to beat them. But it’s a nice diversion from the usual.

I like a girl with an appetite

The bad stuff.

1) This game is TEDIOUS. AS. HELL. Every single day you’re forced to watch Lulu wake up, talk to someone in the lobby, pick a class/guy to talk to, help someone, talk to someone on the way home, pick someone to talk to again, go to bed and fall asleep. 6 months x 28 days = 168 times! Every couple of weeks something interesting happens and shakes up the routine, but otherwise you have to watch the exact same scenes over and over again.

2) Not enough exploration or adventure. It’s set in a Magic Academy, but anyone expecting Mana Khemia-style adventures will be sorely disappointed. You rarely leave school even on weekends, so all your activities take place in the same few locations. You rarely interact with the townspeople and most other students are black silhouettes. It’s a very boring academy, and thus a very boring game.

3) The game is too long. I know I’ve put at least 15 hours into this game, possibly more, and I don’t think I’ve gotten enough out of it.

4) The final arc had waaaaaaay too much talking. I was okay until that point, because the scenes kept switching and things moved along quite quickly. But the last arc was just dull. Characters taking forever to figure out stuff I already knew. Having the same arguments. Saying the same things in different words.

5) Without a guide you might end up with the wrong stats for the guy you want to woo. A fortuneteller in town told me I need to raise MP for Lagi, but she didn’t tell me how much. I finished the game with 53 MP, 26 INT and 26 DEX and got the ending all right, but what if I had needed 60 or 65 MP instead? I would have been screwed.

Conclusion: I liked the characters, I liked the art, I liked the setting, I liked the story. But I intensely disliked the gameplay. So much so that it overwhelmed all the positive parts of the game and left me exhausted and more than a little irritated by the end. I enjoyed my one playthrough of Wand of Fortune Portable, but there’s no character I like enough to want to play the game again. Lagi end is canon! There are no other endings! On to the next game!