Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side 3rd Story – Taira GET!

Ta-daa! Secret character No.1, Taira Kenta! Taira is a rather shy, awkward boy in your class whose confession you can only get by following a very specific series of events. Miss one and it’s good-bye to love.

Fortunately enough the steps are easy enough to follow and several of them are automatic so you know you’re on the right track. I got my info from GameFAQs, but GF threads are known to disappear, so I’ll just reproduce the steps here so you can get him if you want. Remember, you can’t get him on your first playthrough, only subsequent ones.

1st Year

April 4th (04/04) – First Day of School
Before you meet Mr Oosako, the teacher, you need to touch him in class once. He’s the one with the “x” on his back on the far right hand side of the touch screen. See picture on the right.  After you meet Mr Oosako, you need to touch him again. He’ll then introduce himself…and get teased by his friends (if you miss this, start over. You’re screwed).

June 13th (06/13), Sports Day
During the folk dance, after you’re done dancing with all 3 or so of the main characters, he is the guy in the background dancing with the other girl. Touch him.

December 7th (12/07), Exams
Automatic Event.

December 12th (12/12)
Automatic Event, follow up from Dec 7th.

February 13th (02/13), Valentine’s Day
As you’re leaving school, you will hear Taira being teased by his friends about Valentine’s Day. He’s the guy in front of the shoe box near the center of the touchscreen. Touch him.

2nd Year

April 5th (04/05), First Day of School
Automatic event.

June 12th (06/12), Sports Day
Just like in the first year, you need to touch him after you’re done dancing with all the main characters.
September 13th, School Trip to Hokkaido
The bus scene, on the very first day. You need to touch the guy in front of the bus near the center of the touch screen.

October 1st
December 1st
January 8th
On the first two dates above, he will ask you to walk home with him after school. Say yes. On the third date, you can choose to ask him to walk home with you. You have to choose to, otherwise you’ll miss him.

February
Automatic event. You may need Rose Queen parameters (130 or more in everything) to trigger this, not sure.

3rd Year

April 4th (04/04), First Day of School
Automatic event.

June 11th (06/11), Sports Day
Touch him after you’re done dancing with the main characters.

October 30th (10/30), Preparation for Culture Festival
You need to have Rose Queen parameters going INTO this period to trigger Taira’s Culture festival event. Prepare with him for the play. Choose the Culture Festival event every single day, then enjoy the cute CG! Btw, you have to get chosen as Rose Queen to get his ending, so stay on top of your stats and make sure no guys detest you.

December 1st
After Mr Oosako’s little speech, you will see the same background as you did first year Valentine’s Day (in front of shoe boxes, leaving school). He’s the same guy in front of the shoe box. Touch him and there is a conversation event.

If you complete all of the above, you should get Taira’s save icon, and you should be in the clear.

The jury’s still out on whether getting any of the main guys to Tokimeki mode will override Taira’s ending, but just to be on the safe side, try to avoid going on too many dates with the other guys. It might be a bit hard because once your stats start to rise, the other guys start to like you even without you doing anything. To worsen matters, I was aiming for Rose Queen so I decided to be nice to everyone – buying them birthday presents, walking them home after school, etc.

After a while Ruka suddenly decided he was in love with me and started asking me out on dates. Geez, Ruka, haven’t you had enough? If it was Konno or Kou asking me out I’d have been in real trouble, but Ruka was easy enough to turn down. Oh, but I finally figured out why his grades are so skewed. It turns out he read all the textbooks from cover to cover because he was bored in class. That makes exams easy for him. Math, he’s just good at math, but reading the textbook doesn’t help him in Japanese, which is why he always gets terrible grades in that. Well, that’s better than Hazuki randomly falling asleep, I guess.

I spent all of yesterday working on the Taira ending instead of playing more Radiant Historia. I don’t know about that game…wait, mustn’t make another of my snap judgments. Anyway, since I wasn’t dating and rarely went shopping on the Taira route, I had many more days to work on my stats, so they were ridiculously high by the end. Over 200 for everything! Naturally I decided to go to a 1st-class university at the end, only to find out that Taira only got into a 2nd-class uni. Oh no, poor Taira. With him in another school and me and Konno together in one place…tut tut, it’s all over for you, dear boy. >:-D

I also took the chance and started the route for another secret character, the novelist Aizawa Shougo. But this time I’m really going to play Radiant Historia, so the report on cranky old Aizawa will have to wait till later. See ya!

Tokimeki Memorial Girls’ Side 3 – Ruka GET!

Finally! I’ve gone through all the standard guys in the game and gotten their ending! I’m feeling very satisfied now, I’m not sure why.

Well well, Sakurai Ruka huh? I believe I’ve referred to him as a slimebag and a borderline criminal in the past, but I take those words back now. He’s not such a bad guy at all. The Sakurai brothers just act tough to begin with but when you get to know them they’re really very sweet.

Ruka’s route was far less boring than, say Arashi’s or Shitara’s, but the boy himself didn’t move me. As befitting the main character, though, all his CGs were great. I only wish I’d gotten more of them, but what’s why these kinds of games have so much replay value. You get some fun events on his route too, like the school trip where you and Ruka and Kou sneak out to eat crabs and get caught by Himurocchi, and so on.

Ruka himself…well, he’s a decent kid. He starts out friendly to begin with, but it’s a friendly flirtatiousness designed to prevent anyone from coming too close. Once you get under his skin and he falls in love with you, he’s much more honest and forthcoming and I like that Ruka much better. I’ll put him third behind Kou and Konno because while I like him, in general those sensitive “boo hoo, I’m afraid to love because I’ve already lost so much boo hoo” guys always piss me off. Give me Konno or Kou any day.

And you know, the game did give me Kou! For no reason at all! I don’t know what I did but by third year Kou was in love with me and asking me out on dates and stuff! Okay, okay, maybe I did give him handmade chocolate that one time, and I did give him birthday presents twice, but that was it! Honest!

He’s a bad brother, seriously. How dare you fall in love with your little brother’s girlfriend! And how dare she accept your dates and go out with— *gulp* So! Anyway! Thanks to that, I got a three-way relationship by accident! You’ve heard of those, right? If you raise Ruka-Kou/Konno-Shitara/Arashi-Junpei’s affection to similar levels, you start being able to hang out with them together! Go on dates together, walk home together, and there are plenty of joint CGs you can’t get unless you do the triangle relationship. Because I was doing a three-way at the time, I got a joint CG for the school play, which was Romeo and Juliet with a twist and sooooo funny! I’m grinning just remembering it :D.

Eventually I felt a little guilty, so I turned Kou down a few times and before I knew it the three-way option was gone. After that I just had to work on my stats for the next few months and then get the Ruka ending! Yay! I’d like to go back and do another three-way sometime, but there’s still a couple of character endings to get, starting with Oosako’s…I really don’t want to do him. Starting with Taira then, but not just yet.

Up next, Radiant Historia is out! It sounds like a cross between Chrono Trigger/Cross (travel to the past to change the present) with hints of Stella Deus (world being swallowed up) and people say it looks like Radiata Stories, which I’ve never played.

I’m a sucker for lovely dreamy cover art like that, so I’ve been waiting a long time for this to come out! Plus I watched the trailers and the battle system looks like it’s turn-based (I hate Action RPGs), but not a bland “just mash X” kind of system, so it’ll keep me on my toes. Not to mention the promise of multiple endings means there’ll be lots of replay value,I hope! Time to play!

Tokimeki Memorial Girls’ Side 3 – Niina GET!

Get, but do not want. What do I do with him now, throw him away? Anyone want a free Junpei? Anyone?

His route was really bland. His CGs were bland. His activities were bland. His Christmas CG…wait, I don’t even remember what CG you get for his Christmas, is there even one? Plus since he’s a junior you don’t get to go on the school trip together. The school play with him was hilarious though, I actually laughed out loud at that bit.

All in all he’s a nice enough guy, but he seems really shallow to me. And the sad thing is, you can tell he’s ‘acting’ shallow to try and seem ‘cool’, but that the real Junpei is probably a very interesting and sensitive guy. For example when you ask him about his hobbies, he says “fishing” then he takes it back and he’s like…I forget what he said, but what’s wrong with liking “fishing”? Why can’t he be true to himself? My hope for his route was to steadily peel away the layers and see the “real” Junpei beneath but no dice. He maintains the facade till the end. He has a lot of growing up to do before I’ll ever consider him a serious romantic prospect.

Of course, part of the reason is that I just didn’t like his looks. Especially his weird sleepy-eyed face, those cheap-looking ear studs and that spiky hairdo. His voice grated on me after a while too. It got so bad after a while that whenever I’d run into him at school I’d be like *grooaaan* not you again… “Wanna walk home with me?” “Ugh, oh very well…I guess.” Whereas whenever I ran into Kou (which was often, I dunno why he seems to like me), I’d be like *yaaay, Kou!* “Wanna wa–” “Yes yes yes yes!”

The only plus to Junpei’s route – apart from the school play I mentioned earlier – is his straightforward confession. Most of the other guys come out and tell this loooooong story for like 5 minutes before they finally get to the “I love you” part, but Junpei comes right out and says it. Then he goes into the long story part, but at least he got to the point right away. Massive props for that.

This game really does have a lot of replay value. I’m on my 6th replay now, going through Ruka’s route. What I really want to be doing is dating Kou again (forgive me, Konno-sempai!!) but fair’s fair, I’ll give each of the characters a shot and then we’ll see.

I’ve still got the Oosako-sensei save I made long ago before I decided I didn’t really want to do his route yet. So Ruka -> Oosako -> Taira (secret character).

Messed up my page

I’m so depressed >_< I completely deleted my page through an ill-advised series of plugin updates that I won’t go into now. Anyway, now I’ve lost every single thing I’ve written in the past year, including all the comments and images.

Luckily Google cache has most of the pages saved, so I’m going to copy and paste those few articles it salvaged wholesale. However the order is going to be completely messed up.

The latest post I made, about getting Junpei in TMGS3, is here.

I’m still working on seeing if I can reinstall the backup I made yesterday on cPanel, but since I know, like, zero about that sort of thing I’m not holding out too much hope.

Let this be a lesson to all of us. Don’t mess with what you don’t know.

Finished SaGa 2

Yippee, I finally finished this game! I hate leaving games unfinished, so even though I’ve started several other games in the meantime, it was nagging at the back of my mind that I still hadn’t finished SaGa 2: Goddess of Destiny.

The ending? You, your mom and your dad jump out of the window to go have another adventure. Apparently it’s the same ending from the GBC edition. I was hoping for something a little more exciting after all the effort I went through, but whatever. I’m just glad it’s over, honestly. Will it ever get released in English? Hmm, on one hand it IS from Square-Enix. On the other hand, it’s not very user-friendly and the story is decidedly bland and out-of-date. The updated graphics are very blocky and the battle and levelling system will leave a lot of new users scratching their heads. I’m not even sure I’d recommend it to anyone I know. I enjoyed it but I won’t be playing this again. So…yeah.