La Corda d’Oro 4 – Solo ending and Sunaga Takumi GET

Before starting, I read reviews of La Corda d’oro 4 that said it was really hard. I was like “pshaw, they always say that.” How hard can an otome game be? The answer is pretty darn hard, especially if you play it on Hard mode. I mean, it says Hard but usually Hard is like medium, y’know? Nah, not this time, fam. It’s Hard all right. And fun. And hard.

Story: 8 years ago, some Seiso Academy students held a Silvester concert on New Year’s eve (apparently Silvester is German for “New Year’s Eve”?). So protagonist Kanade and her buddies decide, anything they can do, we can do it better. So they form a group and hold a couple of concerts to drum up interest before finally holding their own Silvester concert on December 31st. Little does anyone suspect that the concert is just an excuse for Kanade to gather all her bishies in one place so she can hit on them with ease, mwaha, mwaha, mwahahahahaaa *cough cough*

Gameplay and why it’s harder than before: First off, they added some extra button presses to the concert portion, so instead of just tapping, there are parts where you have to hold and release and others where you have to mash a button like crazy but stop just in time so you don’t ruin your combo. It’s easy enough on Normal mode, but Hard mode can get ridiculous somehow. You basically have to abandon an entire row just to get some hits in sometimes.

My eyes got used to it in some songs after a while, but others are plain insane. Like, how??? And everything whizzes by like zoooooooom! It’s almost a blur. But it’s fun. And hard.

The second change they made is that instead of one affection bar that goes up to 1000, each guy has two that goes up to 500 each. One is a “love from him” bar, the other is a “love to him” bar. You have to fill at least one of these to get his ending. But the choices you make might not always fill the right bar you are looking for. And affection doping items will fill up one or the other, not both. Etc etc, for various reasons it’s much more difficult to max out even one guy’s affections, much less a whole harem of them. Just the way I like it, but definitely harder than La Corda d’Oro 3.

Third reason why it’s harder: apart from the very first concert, the concert schedule is entirely up you. You can hold as many or as few concerts as you want, or even zero for the rest of the game. This matters because now you can’t interact with your classmates or love interests during the week. You have to focus on lessons with your teachers instead. You can only ask guys to practice with you or work on polishing up your ensemble on weekends.

I like these chibi renditions more than I thought I would.

Which means much more limited free time, where you have to balance getting ready for the concert with getting your love life in order. Will you hold fewer concerts so you can spend more time with your sweetheart, getting less BP and less popularity and making it harder to hold a grand Silvester concert? Or will you hold more so you can buy more scores and doping items and hold better concerts? How few is too few? How many is too many? The only way to find out is through trial and error.

Random tips

And so my first two runs were spent just getting used to the new system, figuring out how little I could get away with. Seems like it’s okay to repeat the same songs in different concerts. I.e. if there’s a penalty for repeated songs or playing easier tunes, it’s not very severe.

Secondly, because of the limited time and the tight schedule, you do need to pick your love interest(s) early and start working them over ASAP. Practice together every day you can, use ribbons and cologne like you own the factory. Basically go all out to raise his affection and start getting events as soon as you can. Don’t be like me and get to December 28th only to find out that Yagisawa wants me to hold a concert just for his mommy dearest. -_-

Also, unless you’re aiming specifically for Togane, Housei or Myoga, you can save time by not holding an event in Kobe and not holding the church concert with the finalists of the high school contest. Especially the latter, since it adds almost nothing to your concert accomplishments unless you super want Myoga.

Last tip: If you hold a concert between the 24th and the 31st, you should be able to get up to SS rank, which will let you hire a bigger hall like the Pacifico Yokohama, thus beating out the legendary Silvester concert from 8 years ago. Unfortunately I discovered this too late to take advantage of it, but I’ll give it a try on my next playthrough and see if I get a special event or CG for my efforts.

Solo ending and Sunaga-sensei ending

All that fumbling around gave me the “forever alone” ending the first time round. You get a nice concert, you all throw a big party afterwards, Nia shows up to mock you for being a loverless loser, credits roll, later on you get a CG with all the Seiso Academy guys going to school together, the end. Not too bad except for the Nia part.

Second time round, I got paired up with my teacher Sunaga-sensei by default. La Corda d’Oro 4 makes it so you can take lessons with teachers every weekday. Every time you have a lesson with Sunaga, his affection stat goes up. If you don’t shut that nonsense down ASAP, he starts to like you more and more (but they play it off like you like him) and all sorts of stupid events start happening like you guys are cleaning the blackboard together and your fingers touch and it’s like “KYAAAA our fingers touched!” What is this, grade school? Very stupid route.

Creepy creepy creepy creepy :-(((

Turns out Sunaga-sensei is just pretending to be cool but he’s actually a bit shy and awkward (?) in real life, which is why no woman his age will give him the time of day and he has to get his jollies by hitting on naive high school girls who can’t get away easily because they’re forced into close proximity with him. …Okay they didn’t say the latter part, but you put two and two together and that’s what you get. I like his looks, but the guy and his route are both pathetic.

What’s next

I tried twice to get Yagisawa’s ending, but even after holding a hastily-planned concert for his mother, I still didn’t get the required event. =___= This requires some googling. I also want to get Ritsu’s ending and Togane’s ending. Kyoya is a bit too whiny and Amamiya is a bit too callous this time round, so I’m ignoring them. That’s three more playthroughs and then I’m done.

But first, I need a break from the bishies so I’m going to start Demon Gaze 2 in the next couple of days. See ya!

Atelier Sophie – I quit. I’ve had enough

I’ve already said my piece on Atelier Sophie last time, i.e. it’s unenjoyable trash. Nevertheless, being the closet masochist that I am, I decided to soldier on for another 20 hours or so in case the game suddenly got more fun. There were moments when it seemed like it could possibly get interesting, but it never made that grand breakthrough.

Eventually I was able to turn Plachta human, and my characters had long since hit the level cap and my alchemy level was at level 47. I figured I had seen enough so I headed to the “Gates of Wisdom” at Enlightened Mountain like the game had been nagging me to for a while. I thought the last boss would be there, and then I would beat them and finish the game. Turns out, I’m not just a masochist, I am also extremely naive. As if Gust would free me from this torment that easily.

So the last boss showed up (spoiler: it’s the true form of Meklet and Atomina, those totally not suspicious twins) and I was fixing to go beat him up but NOOOO, Plachta’s convenient amnesia conveniently acts up so she can’t remember where the last boss is holing up. “Maybe if you raise your alchemy level, I’ll remember.” Oh Plachta, Plachta. I would Love to raise my alchemy level. Love with a capital L. It’s the stupid developer of the game that won’t let me do so.

I have about 20 unlocked recipes on the list that I can’t make until I fiddle with alchemy traits and make Item X with Trait A, carry it over to Substance Y, fuse that into Liquid Z before making the final item, etc etc. Or there’s one that says “Go talk to someone who might know.” EHHH? What kind of hint is that? “Talk to someone who talks to the dead.” HUH? Maybe Pamela? Grandma’s grave? Who? How the hell am I supposed to know?!

TL;DR I can’t be bothered to Google the answers. It’s ridiculous to have a game about alchemy and lock every recipe behind a cryptic hint or tedious puzzle. I’ve played along with this stupidity long enough. Counting spin-offs and side games, there must be over 30 games in the Atelier series, so it’s not that strange for there to be one or two duds among them. I didn’t like Atelier Sophie, and I hear Atelier Firis is worse, but I won’t let that turn me against the series just yet. That said, I think I should take a break from Atelier games for the rest of the year. Playing them in such quick succession can’t be helping.

What I’m playing now: There’s a “half AP for side stories” promotion currently running in Granblue Fantasy so I’m farming up Premium tickets for my next spark. Actually I already have enough crystals for a spark, but there’s no harm stockpilling tickets while I try to figure out what to spark.

For actual games, I just started Kiniro no Corda/ La Corda d’Oro 4. They’ve made a number of changes to the gameplay that IMO aren’t necessary, and the number of events is uncomfortably high, but once I clear the first playthrough I’ll be able to fast-forward through a lot of stuff so things will get more enjoyable. Now, which bishie to conquer first…

Atelier Sophie – Garbage.

I’ve been playing a lot of Atelier games this year whereas I used to space them out more in the past. That’s because in the past I found them quite satisfying and enjoyable, so one game could tide me over for a long time. Since Atelier Ayesha, however, I haven’t been enjoying myself. That’s why I’ve been playing these games back to back, but it’s not working.

Ayesha was meh. Escha & Logy was relatively okay. Shallie was a waste of time. But Sophie? Sophie is just garbage. A step back in every way conceivable. I apologize to all the people who warned me the series was in decline for not believing them. How could I believe it was possible to muck up a series as simple as this one? You get a girl, you give her a studio, she throws different things in the pot, presto! I didn’t believe Gust would actually make a game like Sophie where they ration out the alchemy recipes like a stingy CEO with yearly bonuses, making you waste time jumping through horrible hoops to unlock each one.

By hoops, I mean things like having to synthesize items with particular traits, or having to get a particular item from the field, or get hit by a special attack from a certain enemy. One especially annoying one was having to get the friendliness of all artisans up… except there’s a certain artisan you can only unlock through an event, but the game doesn’t tell you that the event is the only way to progress, so I spent ages talking to the artisans in town to no avail. Massive waste of time. Worst… Atelier… ever…

I would be okay if they combined this system with the conventional “buy books to unlock recipes” gimmick. You can have some key, story-essential items that need special requirements to unlock, and then your everyday pedestrian items like Bombs and Neutralizers can be obtained normally. That way I still get to make a lot of stuff, and Gust still gets to “innovate” and impress the fans with their new features. As it is, Atelier Sophie is terribly boring because of the small number of recipes that you have to suffer to get.

Combat is boring too. I started out on Hardcore mode, but even the commonest enemies had too much HP so the battles were taking forever. Downgraded to Normal and then to Easy for the first time ever, and I still think the battles take too long. That’s not the big problem, though. The big problem is the enemies respawn constantly. I know I’m spoiled from the Dusk saga where you could clear out a screen and forage in peace, but even if they had to respawn, couldn’t they wait a little longer? You finish an enemy off and literally 5 seconds later it pops up again right behind you, ready to battle. The drops are meh, the EXP is pitiful and I can’t enjoy myself in the field because of the mobs hunting me down. It’s the pits.

Characters and interactions… the jury’s still out. I like the lower frequency of character events. But on the other hand everyone has turned into a Harvest Moon character. They have like, one thing to say for the longest time. Their stories don’t update, their inventories don’t update, they rarely leave their assigned spots, etc etc. Atelier Sophie is one of the more recent games, so why is it so backwards in this regard?

TL;DR I play Atelier games for the alchemy, and in Atelier Sophie the alchemy is locked behind busywork so it sucks. And normally I would add “so I’m dropping it,” but even an inferior Atelier is still Atelier. A starving camel is still bigger than a horse. Besides, it’s the first in a trilogy so there’s still time for Gust to fix the mistakes in Firis and Lydie & Suelle. Heh, I sound so desperate right now. Anyway, I’ll play a little longer and let you know how it goes. See ya!

Atelier Shallie Plus – Lousy to the end (spoilers)

I apologize for the long delay between posts. It’s because Atelier Shallie Plus was so boring I couldn’t bring myself to play it, but at the same time I was too busy to start something new. Finally I just sat in front of the TV and forced myself to finish it, marveling that the day had finally come when I would have to force myself to finish an Atelier game. The people who said the Dusk trilogy was the beginning of the end for the series weren’t wrong at all.

But this isn’t an Atelier Shallie bashing post. I’m too relieved to be done to have time for that. First let me start by spoiling the cause of the Dusk: turns out a water purification machine undernearth Stellard was malfunctioning. We turned it off and restarted it, so in a couple of centuries everything should be back to normal.

It’s not a bad resolution by any means. It’s just a bit anti-climatic. It’s like when you spend hours trying to fix an error on a computer or device and you finally call tech support and they tell you to to restart the machine and presto, it works. On one hand you’re happy it’s fine, but on the other hand… aghh, why didn’t I think of that earlier before I wasted so much time?

Yes, that’s right. That’s my problem. The whole Dusk saga was a waste of time. Especially this Atelier Shallie Plus game. There was no reason for the game to even exist, or for the Shallies to be present, or for them to be alchemists. In the end the same Ayesha and Keithgriff from Atelier Ayesha showed up and presented all the solutions. “Hey we’ve been researching everything and we found the answer right here and you didn’t have anything to do with it but we’ll let you tag along to kill the boss anyway,” the end. If anyone else contributed, it would be Wilbell, who was also present in Ayesha, so really, the other games weren’t necessary.

After all, we didn’t learn much in Escha & Logy except how someone else tried to solve the Dusk and failed. And we didn’t really learn anything in Atelier Shallie until said Ayesha and Keithgriff showed up. Gust could have just added 10 hours to Ayesha and resolved the whole plot in one game. Then they could tackle a different issue in the other games, or maybe make the next two games a prequel and a sequel, etc. No need to take a leaf from Falcom’s book and stretch a very simple story across three games.

Focusing on Shallie, I must say the “no time limit” system didn’t play out the way I had expected. I was expecting something like Atelier Judie where you’re given your objective in the first 10 minutes and then set free to fulfill it at your own pace. Having objectives every chapter that forcefully progress the story… isn’t that just like an ordinary JRPG? And they lock locations and recipes and everything interesting behind the chapters, so at some point in each chapter you run out of stuff to do and have to move on. That means it’s even more restrictive than most JRPGs, where you just keep exploring and traveling and getting stronger without any cumbersome chapter objectives.

What’s worse is, none of those objectives are goals of your own making. There’s always someone telling the Shallies what to do, when and how. I don’t play the Atelier games looking for any “Girl Power⭐!” kind of scenario, but this time their powerlessness really stood out.

Looking back, Shallotte and Shallistera were just lackeys. It’s the men like Raoul, Solle, Perriend and Keithgriff who make all the major decisions from start to finish. Keith is the one who finds the truth behind the Dusk, Raoul belittles us and orders us around like dogs, Solle sits on his behind and barks orders from Central, and at the end of the game Perriend deigns to lend a little water aid to Lugion Village, oh thank you sahib, thank you! It’s all a little humiliating, to be honest.

Well anyway, I’m not too bothered about it. I’ve already moved on and started Atelier Sophie, which isn’t too bad but a bit worrying because each alchemy recipe is locked behind a trigger. What I really want is to spend a lot of time just making stuff. Ayesha and Escha & Logy were pretty good in that respect, Shallie just failed, as it did with everything else. And right until the end I never figured out how the Chain system was supposed to work…? Oh well, no biggie.

I wanted to end with a few positive points about Atelier Shallie Plus, but nothing is coming to mind. Umm, bright happy colors? I especially liked the flashy combat effects and how much damage you could do in Burst Mode. And we finally solved the mystery of the Dusk (? if the main device is in Stellard then what about the patches of green all over the world? Why the uneven spread of the Dusk?) so I can sleep well at night. And um… that’s it! It was a lousy game and I’m glad to be done. Next please!

Dungeon Shoujo – Finished. Not that exciting

Dungeon Shoujo / Dungeon Girl,  is yet another game from Japanese indie developer inutoneko. It was released before both Soul Smith of the Kingdom and Witch Ring Meister, but I skipped it earlier because mentally I couldn’t reconcile the dungeon exploration setting with the puzzle gameplay. If it’s a dungeon crawler then I want to crawl dungeons, dammit! …is what I thought. But when I played Witch Ring Meister, it turned out the puzzle gameplay wasn’t so bad and not as complicated as I’d first thought, so I went back and gave Dungeon Shoujo a try.

Verdict: As I expected, if it’s a dungeon crawler then I want to crawl dungeons. I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would because the controls are super simple and the enemies are pretty easy, but still… It wasn’t anything special.

Story: Monika is a member of a task force charged with exploring a new dungeon down to the 200th floor. So you explore to the 200th floor and get a “Congratulations” from your boss, credits roll, the end. But you can keep playing and try to make it down to the 1000th floor. I can’t imagine why, though.

The main screen:

You go exploring and find/craft items, then you equip up to 6 of them to give you stat boosts plus helpful effects in battle. “Weight” affects how much you can carry because better items weigh more. There’s also item cost, which is how much item power it takes to use an item. Item power refills every day in the dungeon, so in theory you can eat the same riceball hundreds of times without losing it.

Actually it’s this whole “item” thing that killed my enthusiasm. The game is supposed to have 300 items to craft and I love me some crafting. Match made in heaven, right? Umm, nah. There’s a small issue, which is the severe lack of materials to craft with. In the early stages, you’ll be forced to run and re-run lower level dungeons just to get enough materials to craft one or two new items.

Later on you’ll have to re-run for money as well as materials because crafting costs get astronomical. I won’t deny that crafting is useful. Equipping items gives you stats, a few items have useful effects, crafting items lets you reduce weight and costs, and clever crafting lets you make items with great stats and few drawbacks.

In theory the game has 300 items, so you should be able to have a great time collecting items and fusing effects, etc etc. But I already mentioned the pointless grind. What’s even worse is that fully 80% of the obtainable items are either completely useless or just duplicate other item’s effects with different stats. And the interface for comparing item effects… well there’s no such interface, really. You just have to try swapping things in and out to see what works. Useless.

So the crafting and equipment aspect are a wash. What about dungeon crawling itself?

It’s a puzzle game. Click enough of the blue “search” panels and the stairs will appear so you can go deeper. The pink “Life” buttons refill your life. The yellow “work” panels give you money. And the red/white “Attack” buttons are for fending off enemies that show up, like that mud monster thing on the left. The more blocks you break at once, the stronger the effect. Doubly so if you break a horizontal row. So for the grid you see above, I could eliminate the “Work” panel in the middle to get a long chain of Attack panels to deal massive damage to the enemy. Or I could use one of my attack items if I have enough item power. It’s not a complicated game at all.

The only slightly hard part is replacing items regularly and leveiling up often enough to stay alive because the bosses and enemies get tougher as you go deeper. If you don’t wipe them out quickly enough, they’ll quickly fill up the whole screen. Creating an item that changes single-hit attacks into all-hits can be a game changer. Or items that create more “Search” panels so you can change floors and run away.

So there’s a little bit of strategy involved in knowing when to move and when to retreat and how to make the best use of items. But it’s not really that interesting compared to a “proper” dungeon crawler RPG IMO. This is just something cute and light to pass the time with, nothing you can really sink your teeth into.

The usual Ishwald gang is around to help, as usual.

Pour Friend Points into their grids to get temporary and permanent boosts in the dungeons and unlock new classes like Explorer, Warrior, Samurai. The number and types of puzzle panels change depending on your class. A more combat-oriented class will get more Attack panels, a more commerce-driven one will get more Work panels, etc. Useful for re-running earlier levels and stuff.

As usual Tico is the hardest character to lock and gives the best boosts. +10% to all stats is simply ridiculous. I’m still skipping most story events because the status quo changes too slowly in these Ishwald games, but I did read one or two skits. In which nothing of import happened, as expected. Inutoneko is still mounting a fierce campaign to soften Tico’s image, but it’s too late. Dungeon Girl may be a disappointment, but I won’t stop playing these games until Ruvel-kun gets his revenge!

Final thoughts on Dungeon Shoujo

screenshot from shio to ayakashi no mori

Screenshot from their latest game

Waste of a good premise, really. The puzzle dungeon wasn’t too bad and was useful for passing the time, if nothing else. But the joy of exploration was zero because you don’t actually explore anything, you just click buttons. Crafting was a time-consuming pain. Most of the promised 300 items were useless. Treasure chests are locked and you have to do quests to get enough keys to open them to get more useless items.

In short it was a whole lot of work for a middling amount of pleasure. I won’t say “Don’t play it” but don’t get your hopes up either. If it’s the puzzles you like, stick to Witch Ring Meister. And you want to explore and fight monsters and collect stuff, the new Shio to Ayakashi no Mori looks more promising. Dungeon Shoujo is something you should get on sale when you’ve played all the other inutoneko games.

What’s next

Almost done with Atelier Shallie Plus. I just have zero motivation to finish it because it’s the least exciting Atelier game I’ve ever played. There’s zero reason for me to play it. The combat isn’t fun, the story is going out with a whimper, the trickle of alchemy recipes is so low it’s barely there, etc etc. The only reason I want to finish it quickly is so I can start Atelier Sophie. I’m busy this weekend, but I’ll try to muster the energy to power through to the end on Sunday.