Atelier Escha & Logy Plus – Freedom feels so sweet

Jingle bells, jingle bells, Logy all the way~

7 hours and 26 minutes into Atelier Escha & Logy Plus, just completed the main assignment for Year 1 December. I’ve also been playing Chaos Rings III and Ys: Memories of Celceta, but we’ll save those for another day.

I’m too lazy to write much today, so I’ll just say this is MUCH better than Atelier Ayesha so far. It’s too early to go overboard praising it, but I like the greater amount of freedom you know you have in this game. In theory Ayesha was a very open game: just save Nio within three years. But on a first playthrough you don’t know how long that will take or how many steps are needed. What if you play around too long and don’t have enough time? So I ended up gunning straight for Nio and got her and then it was like… now what? Everything felt meaningless after that.

Escha & Logy does a better job of pacing and doling out the objectives. You know when you’re on the clock, you know when you’re free to do whatever you want. There are core objectives, then there’s stuff you can do if you feel like or ignore if you don’t. I spend one month on assignments, one month on alchemy, another month or two on exploration and combat and it all works out great. If all Atelier games were like this, maybe I’d say they were too regimented, but here the schedule fits the government bureaucrat setting just fine. It’s a different premise from the others, and I’m having fun playing as Logy to make it feel even more distinct.

There are some negatives here and there, but when I compare it to the suck of Ayesha I don’t feel like complaining. I get to make my own weapons and armor again!!!! File that under “Stuff you didn’t know you needed until they took it away.” The alchemy system… I heard people say it was simplified compared to Ayesha’s… I guess it’s true, but I’m still grappling with it so I can’t really say. IMO Ayesha’s system gave me more leeway to pour in elements and unlock properties by playing with the stockyard and picking skills carefully. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but once I did there was nothing I couldn’t do. Still, Logy and Escha are only at alchemy level 24 and haven’t gotten any complicated recipes or great ingredients yet, so I’m on the fence for now.

Is Escha & Logy only 3 years long as well? If it is, I’ll be done in no time at this rate. I’ll return with a proper review once all is said and done. Or if anything dramatic or horrible happens that I feel I have to talk about. Don’t expect to see me too soon, though. Gaming is busy work!

La Corda d’Oro 3 – Ritsu, Kyouya, Daichi, Nanami, Houzumi GET!

Or, more accurately, GET in the case of Ritsu and Kyouya, sorta GET for the others. I saw all their events, qualified for their true endings in all cases, but the only confession scenes I cared about were Ritsu and Kyouya. The others I watched 5 seconds of and skipped the rest.

Koei made it much easier to get multiple guys in one playthrough in La Corda d’Oro 3 compared to previous games. Even a full harem ending isn’t that hard if you plan carefully and follow the in-game directions. But since they’re so readily available, you don’t get as personally invested as you do when you have to reload three different saves just to try to get an elusive guy’s ending. You don’t have to plan which guy to get first or whose story you really want to see, because you can get them all without trying. I don’t know if I would have felt more passionate about the LC3 guys if I’d had to work harder for them, but I do know I’m less passionate about them because I was so busy juggling different guys simultaneously.

Kyouya  Kisaragi

I liked Kyouya’s route because some of it resonated with me. Since he’s Kanade’s childhood friend, he shows up in all kinds of unimportant scenes, so let’s narrow it down to the ones that matter. Basically Kyouya hates getting advice from others when it comes to his music because he feels like different voices drown out his personal style and expression.

However, as the story progresses he’s confronted with Myoga’s overwhelming talent (in-story only, actually he’s not that special, but work with us here). Then he realizes that the heroine Kanade has improved dramatically by working with and getting feedback from others. Should he ask for help? Stick to his guns? His pride says he’s got to be wild and tough! What to do, what to do…

So he sulks and agonizes over it for way too long and eventually decides to man up. He gets all kinds of advice from people like Daichi, Ritsu and his senpai in the orchestra club and lo and behold, he really does improve (in-story only, actually he doesn’t change much from when you don’t do his route but let’s all pretend). So his is the second route where a character really changes from start to finish, though this time Kanade-lurve is only indirectly involved.

Boo hoo, I suck… Try to cheer me up so I can tell you how much I suck.

To get his Golden ending, you have to let him use Maestro Field in the final concert. He pulls it off, the applause comes down like rain and he’s like “Wow, it was all worth it!” and I’m kind of happy for him. His confession scene is him straight up telling Kanade he loves her as a girl and not as a childhood friend, and then she says she loves him back even though no such loving has been demonstrated throughout the entire route. But he’s happy with that and so am I. It was fun, apart from Kyouya’s whiny phase.

Talk to your doctor about our patent-pending Chest Therapy (TM)

The reason I say Kyouya’s route resonated with me is because of the whole feedback on music thing. In my case it’s not because I’m too proud to get feedback, I’m just not in a position to have a teacher right now. Since picking up the piano again a few years ago I’ve been flying solo, and getting good that way is really hard.

Some of the comments Kyouya gets in the game hit a sore spot, like him bluffing his way through tough passages… stop spying on me! Or not even trying to play songs he doesn’t like. Ack! How did you know? There are so many questions when you’re on your own: Am I playing this part right? Why am I struggling so much with this song? How can I do this better? Even if it’s just a hobby, you can only get so far with self-recordings and Youtube videos. So once again La Corda d’Oro has convinced me to make lifestyle changes and seek some help, at least from those who know better than me. Thanks Koei, I (almost) mean it.

Ritsu Kisaragi

Kyouya Kisaragi’s dull and overly serious older brother. He’s kinda boring and can’t even take a joke so I wonder what persuaded me to do his route. Hmmm…

The world will never know.

Lessee, what were the key takeaways from Ritsu’s route? He injured his wrist due to a fall/deliberate push a year ago and had to adjust his playing style to compensate. Now he can’t play for very long, which means he doesn’t have a future as a professional violinist. Luckily he has a huge interest in building and repairing instruments, so he doesn’t seem to mind too much.

TBH the whole injured wrist thing sounds “off” to me. Isn’t it too soon to write him off like that? Has he been professionally evaluated by multiple specialists? His own brother didn’t even know he was hurt, so do his parents even know? Or care? If I sent my talented kid to an expensive music academy and he got injured, I wouldn’t go “Welp, find something else to do” would I? This situation had better be addressed in the Another Sky fandisc or La Corda d’Oro 4 or I’ll call shenanigans.

In any case, Ritsu knows his time is almost up. He wants to bring glory to the orchestra club and also show his gratitude towards the club advisor who encouraged him when people were being all snarky about his talent as a first-year. And that’s why he’s so fixated on winning the Ensemble contest with everyone this year.

To get his golden ending, you have to get your skill up to level 16 so you can practice the only quintet piece in the game: a string arrangement of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance.” A more anemic and insipid arrangement you will never hear. Even full string orchestras lack that bombastic sound needed to express the full “pomp” of the song, how much more three violins, a viola and a cello. But it meant to be symbolic of all the hard work we put in together to get to the finals, power of friendship and all that.

For Ritsu’s confession, I wasn’t really paying attention, but I think he said something about only being focused on music at first, but now he’s having a lot more fun and laughing a lot more because she’s around. I don’t remember any “I love yous” being exchanged, but that’s okay. The more stoic approach fits his character better anyway.

Daichi Sakaki

…Okay, so he didn’t have a hidden dark side, sue me. But he does have a not-so-secret annoying side. It comes out in full force when some guy tries to ask Kanade out and Daichi’s like “Get lost, we have to focus on the contest.” Then he starts talking about how his feelings for her go beyond just a senpai-kouhai thing… whoa, whoa, I thought you said we had to focus on the contest?

That was his major event. The rest is normal stuff like him helping you retrieve a score you left at school, or visiting you when you’re ill with a cold. He says he took the Seiso Academy entrance exam just for fun but got serious when he met Ritsu and heard him talk about winning the Japanese contest. And you learn he used to play the guitar in middle school, but now he’s good enough with the viola to make it to the national contest, sugoi~.

At one point his parents send him pineapples and he offers you a bit. If you dare say you don’t like pineapples, *SMASH* friendship ended with Kanade! That’s right, he loves her so much he’ll actively destroy her relationships with other guys, but diss his favorite fruit and you’re done. If that’s the kind of shallow guy you want, you’re welcome to him. I peace out’d during his confession and got on with my life.

Sousuke Nanami

Diffident kouhai from Amane Academy. Kanade encounters him trying to smash his cello because he thinks he’s not good enough. After she talks him out of it, he repays her by treating her to lunch at the Chinese restaurant his family owns. Mmm, delicious.

Nanami’s confidence issues continue for a while, but if you train his skill up to level 14, he’ll get chosen to replace Hido as the cello player on the Amane team. This will happen even if you don’t help him train, but then you won’t get his route.

Then he whines and waffles some more about not being good enough, because there’s a cello solo part he wants to play but Myoga won’t let him because it’s not Myoga if he’s not being an overbearing jackass. Like, why would you let the cello player pick a song with a cello solo and then NTR him with your violin?

But don’t worry Nanami, Kanade’s got this. She stalks Nanami through his depression and he eventually musters the courage to tell Myoga he wants to play the solo, right before they go on stage. He even has the boldness to promise that Amane will win the contest if he plays. Thus you get to see his Maestro Field and everyone gushes about the beautiful music he drew out of his cello…

…but of course Seiso Academy wins anyway because if we don’t we’ll get a Game Over. Koei is so cruel. I really wanted to see Myoga and Amamiya’s reactions after the promise fell through, hehe. Instead, alas, the game cut straight to the confession sequence. So I thought, maybe Nanami will bring it up? But no, it’s just blah blah blah I love you. Yeah, I know, I’m very loveable. *skip*

Houzumi (can’t remember his first name… Tatsurou?)

Someone disputed my claim that Houzumi is violent, but I personally counted 6 times when he hit Arata and two more times when Arata begged him not to hit him. The verbs used are 殴る and グーが出る, i.e. not frustrated little love taps but full-on punches. This same Houzumi idiot got his team disqualified from the previous ensemble contest for fighting, and instead of learning his lesson, the only thing he’s learned is how to pick his victims more carefully. Couple that with his grating, raspy voice and you get a character I really don’t like. I just got him because routes are so easy in this game.

I forget the bulk of his events. There was one where he bought Kanade a phone strap, then accidentally broke it, then bought her another one later. Then later on Yagisawa nominates him as the next club leader and he’s like no I can’t and everyone’s like yes you can and he thinks about it for a while and decides he’ll do it. His leadership style is “yell at and beat up anyone who disagrees” and he isn’t even that talented a player so the Shiseikan orchestra club is totally done for. But that’s totes not my problem so I don’t care. Also I skipped his confession scene so please fill in the gaps with your imagination, thanks.

Final Opinion

That’s it for almost all the routes. I’m skipping Toki Housei’s ‘cos I don’t care about him. That’s also it for La Corda d’Oro 3 and me. The Full Voice Special version has a few extras like Contest Mode and some after stories, none of which I’m really interested in.

So here are my final thoughts on the game: the guys are weird and boring, the gameplay is too easy, the music selection is pitiful, I’m sick of listening to string arrangements and I don’t ever want to play this again. The only guy I really liked was Yagisawa, the only route I found interesting was Kyouya’s. That’s bad. But on the plus side, there’s no where left to go but up. Maybe Koei learned from the mistakes of this game and La Corda d’Oro 3: Another Sky and La Corda d’Oro 4 are much-improved sequels. We’ll find out when I play them in a couple of months. In the meantime, it’s good to be done.

Next up: I feel like Gust owes me a good game after the disappointment of Atelier Ayesha. Normally I like to let some time pass between game installments, but this time I’m diving straight into Escha & Logy. Will Gust redeem themselves or am I doomed to more tears? Stay tuned to find out!

La Corda d’Oro 3 – Myoga, Haruto, Arata, Yagisawa and Togane GET!

After my first playthrough, I started a fresh file and chased down Haruto Mizushima and Leiji Myoga. Along the way I made a late game save right after the semi-finals, 10 days before the end of the game. Somehow this was enough time to get not only Myoga and Haruto but also Arata Mizushima, Yukihiro Yagisawa and Chiaki Togane as well. It might even be enough to get Housei Toki, but I don’t like his voice, looks or attitude, so I’ll leave that one up to your imagination.

I got all these endings one after another last night… why yes, I did sleep at 3am, how did you know? Since I played them in quick succession, I don’t/I can’t be bothered to remember all the details of all the routes. Blame the characters for not being interesting enough. I’ll cover what stood out for me the most in each route.

Leiji Myoga – Violent chuunibyou

Chuunibyou = delusions of grandeur often associated with being a dumb teenager who thinks they’re smarter and more special than they actually are. The term was crafted specifically for Leiji Myoga, methinks. In its absence, we can also call him “unrepentant jerkface” and that fits just as well.

Our first encouter with Jerkface is when he leaves his precious violin on a store counter and Kyouya Kisaragi picks it up and starts to play IT. Now Kyouya was definitely in the wrong. You don’t touch people’s stuff without asking. It could have been a priceless Stradivarius for all he knew. But Myoga just flies out of the back and punches him for touching his precious violin. If it’s that precious, what was it doing just lying there? And I get that you’re upset, but is violence really the answer? How about a simple, “Excuse me, could you please stop that?”

“Kukuku, you have activated my trap card.”

In a lot of otome games, when a guy starts out mean the heroine’s love slowly softens him up. Not Myoga. He never apologizes for anything and never changes a whit except to admit that he’s in love with Kanade. One of his scenes has him getting cut saving her from a hostage situation. A hostage situation she’s only in because Myoga was rude and cruel to one of his own ensemble members. Of course he never admits he could have handled the issue better, because he’s chuunibyou and thinks he knows everything.

Nope, doesn’t help. You’re still a jerk.

So the route is one long slog through Myoga being nasty to various people in various ways until we beat him at the finals. His excuse is that Kanade once beat him 7 years ago and he’s been mad ever since. I mean there’s a little more to it than that, but not much. So he’s allowed to win contests but she’s not? Anyway we beat him, he confesses to Kanade (sort of), she says… wait, does she respond? Can’t remember. In La Corda d’Oro 2 you had the chance to turn down a confession, but in La Corda d’Oro 3 it all plays out automatically. Man, I would have loved to see his face…

Haruto Mizushima – Uptight kouhai who is not so bad.

I got two endings for Haruto. You get a normal ending with a static picture for filling out all pink notes and a true animated ending for going beyond that to get golden notes.

Haruto starts out annoying because he’s super dedicated to the Orchestra club and expects everyone to be as well. So any suggestion of frivolity or light-heartedness is met with a frown and a stern lecture. Where do you get off lecturing me, kid? Show some respect to your senpai!

Eventually he discovers that Kohinata-senpai isn’t as airheaded as she first seems but actually works hard to win the competition. He quickly switches to supportive kouhai mode and even helps her relax by taking her to the amusement park when he thinks she’s getting too tense. It’s not that he changes – guys in La Corda d’oro 3 don’t change, which is both good and bad – but rather he finds that she fits the image he’s looking for so he doesn’t spare any effort to make her happy.

At the climax of the game, first he chastizes her for being too excitable when she calls him to look at some kittens. Then she gets trapped in the clubroom after an earthquake and call him, and he breaks the door down like KAPOW! to save her. Hug, hug, I knew you would come to save me, hug hug, you can depend on me any time~ hug. I don’t even know what that was all about. Basically he’ll be mad if she makes a fuss over little things, but if she really needs help he’ll be there. That’s nice.

In the regular ending, the two of them hang out and eat lunch everyday for a while and eventually he gets tired of the status quo and confesses his love for her, the end. The “true” ending takes place right after the finals. Again he confesses his feelings but with a lot more words. That’s it. IMO the normal end was cuter.

Yukihiro Yagisawa – So pure and honest <3 And a bit of a pain in the @$$

Such a good kid. So nice to his team mates and to everyone in general. He’s a feeder too, like 8 out of 10 of his events involve him giving Kanade a sweet dessert to eat. I thought his route would be drama-free, but no, the writers had to some up with something.

After Kanade blows off a club meeting to hang out with him, he gets all mad and sad like “You should take this more seriously, I’m not gonna hang out with you any more!” Like, why is it any of your business what the Seiso Academy team does? Just chill with a pretty chick and be happy, what more do you want from life?

After bugging him and raising his affection further, he eventually gets over himself. He realizes that 1) Just because she hangs out with him doesn’t mean Kanade isn’t working hard, and 2) Him blowing up like that was just an excuse to hide his growing feelings for her. No need to hide it baby, I love you too~  I really like his goofy-cute blushing image, but it doesn’t show up often enough. Definitely getting him first in Another Sky.

Don’t remember a thing about his ending though. I think we walked around in the garden after the finals and he confessed his feelings again, even though he had already said them bluntly before. How is this long-distance relationship going to work? Umm. Love will find a way.

Arata Mizushima – Nowhere near as annoying as I’d expected

I tend to dislike bubbly, excitable characters in any form of media. And in real life, come to think of it. At first I thought the writers at Ruby Party found out Hihara was popular so they just imitated him blindly without thinking. Thus I expected Arata to be a generic happy guy with no problems at all.

Which he more or less is. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t show up that often, but I didn’t find him annoying at all. Except the part where’s he’s always hugging Kanade for no reason at all. Haven’t you heard of #metoo? The story is that Arata and his family spent time in Brazil, and that’s why he has no concept of personal space, ‘cos, you know, foreigner in an otome game, never has any common sense.

The events I got for Arata… I remember a scene where he brought some watermelon and everyone split it. And in an other event we hung out at the local shrine festival. Eventually I got a scene where he promises to hang out with Kanade but has to leave. He comes back to find her rubbing her eyes because she got some dirt in it, and thinks she’s crying because she misses him sooo much. DOOD. Get over yourself.

Then he feels like an idiot when he finds out that wasn’t the case. Then he goes into a funk because summer is almost over and he won’t see her again. Then I raise his affection for a while and he confesses on the beach that he loves Kanade. He doesn’t know how the long-distance relationship will work out, but he wants to give it his best shot. I think his is the only route that gives serious consideration to how the whole “dating in different schools” thing is going to work. But he also seems like the type who will forget about her once some cute freshmen join Shiseikan next year.

His ending scene is a little different from the others. Instead of just standing and talking, he fools around so much that they both fall into the pool at the party. DOOOOD! My lovely new dress! Somehow this is supposed to be romantic. No, dude, no. And I forget everything we talked about because I’m still mad.

Chiaki Togane – I actually kind of like him

Another jerk, but not as jerkish as Leiji Myoga. His problem is he was looking forward to facing Ritsu Kisaragi in the semis and is disappointed to face Kanade instead. So he puts her down at every turn, calling her a Plain Jane and saying her playing lacks verve and pizzazz. Or lacks “a flower” as he puts it. Cue her running around all week asking people about flowers. Was it supposed to be funny? In the end she plays normally and beats him handily. So much for the floral accents, eh?

If you raise his affection like crazy before August 20th, you’ll give him the courage he needs to take on Leiji Myoga in the solo violin finals and draw with him. Not win, draw. After all his big talk, he can’t even beat a guy Kanade can whoop with both hands tied behind her back, just playing the violin with her tongue and eyelids. Attitudes in this game are so far removed from actual skill, it’s hilarious.

For the most of Chiaki’s route, you just hang out from time to time. I think we picked out masks at the shrine festival and hid from fangirls. Another time she went with him to a hot spring because there’s no way driving to an isolated location at night with two guys you barely know without telling anyone could possibly go wrong. Ah, sweet fiction.

When he won the solo competition she gave him a congratulatory kiss on the cheek. At the end of the game, he asks for another kiss, this time not as congratulations but out of love. The whole route is very WHAAAA? because one moment Togane is all “jimiko jimiko jimiko” then you raise his affection a tiny bit and he gets all blushy. But again, it’s not that he has changed. It’s just at first he didn’t see you as a worthy rival and now he does. How that transfers into falling head over heels in love with her, lol dunno. He’s another guy who will forget about her by next summer, I bet.

Summary. Summery.

If you’ve played a romance game with, say, an ice queen character, and over the course of the game she gets all lovey-dovey and deredere and you’re like “NOOOO I wanted an ice queen!” La Corda d’Oro 3 is the game for you. All the way to the end the cocky guy will still be cocky, the happy-go-lucky guy will still be happy-go-lucky. You might discover that the so-called deliquent is actually a nice guy, but that’s because he was a nice guy all along and you just didn’t know it, not because you softened him through love. The only character that suffers a lurve-related personality makeover is Sei Amamiya, the massive exception to the rule.

It’s good if you like “What you see is what you get” games, bad if you expect “character development” or whatever that thing is when you end up with a completely different guy from the one you started with. Personally I’m fine either way, as long as the game is fun.

Since I managed to multi-task so many routes this time, I only have four left to go (six if you include Toki and Houzumi, which I don’t). Two of them I actually want to get, the other two I can go either way on. Kyoya and Ritsu Kisaragi, do want. Daichi Sakaki and stammerin’ shota Nanami, ehhh. But I have a handy save after the first competition match that I can use to get anyone I want. I’ll knock ’em out this weekend, then I have some time off at the end of next week that I can use to finish Tokyo Xanadu eX+ if I’m so inclined. But actually I just want to start Atelier Escha & Logy. Ah, a gamer’s life is so complicated!

La Corda d’Oro 3 – Otome game meets sports anime

I spent all of yesterday playing La Corda d’Oro 3. Getting used to the system, getting used to the guys, trying to pick which ones are the least crazy out of the bunch. I was really into it last night, even slept at 3am. But somehow one good night’s sleep later, eh, all my good vibes have melted into the ether. Oh I still like it, and I’m still going to play it about 10 more times until we’re all thoroughly sick of it, but it’s not shaking my world or anything.

Story: New heroine Kanade Kohinata transfers into Seiso Academy about 8 years after our old crew has left. She joins the Orchestra Club, which is preparing for the 42nd National High School Ensemble Competition. Through the competition she gets to meet and romance a bunch of nutsosbishies from Seiso and from other academies.

Gameplay is largely similar to La Corda d’Oro 2. Read here for a refresher. You still have to practice a score individually and as an ensemble and then add your own interpretation/expression. There are some significant differences though, both in gameplay and in the general spirit of the game. I can’t list them all, so I’ll cover the ones that stood out.

♪The actual competition is a rhythm game. In past games you’d do your best to prepare and leave the rest to the performers, but in La Corda d’Oro 3 you have to actively complete by pressing buttons at the right time and using a special move known as a Maestro Field to fill up your gauge. Here’s a screenshot from the Another Sky fandisc to illustrate:

See the red/blue bar at the top? Whichever side is winning at the end of the show wins the contest. It was hard going at first, but it’s kind of fun in a heart-pounding kind of way once you get used to it. However because so much is riding on the rhythm game aspect, it’s hard to tell how important practice is. Like, is it enough to do the bare minimum of practice and make up for it with good button-tapping? I’m slightly curious, but not enough to risk failure to find out.

♪No more fairies anywhere to be seen, though you can still buy stuff with BP. However Maestro Field attacks are rumored to be hallucinations caused by the fairies… which is kind of scary when you think about it. What other mind tricks have the fairies been playing on the characters? Like, what if all our romantic moments are actually illusions caused by sniffing too much “pixie dust?”

♪It feels like there are more guys to date. 12 versus 6 main guys in Corda 2. But if you add in auxiliary routes like Etou’s and Kira’s, it comes to about the same number. Note, however, that only the Seiso characters and two Amane Academy guys have full-fledged routes. The rest have light teasers to get you to buy the Another Sky fandisc. Yeah, I dunno if I’ll do that… (the gamer lies through her teeth)

♪No more inviting guys on dates on the weekend. Most of the game happens during the summer holidays, which means guys can take you out any time they want. But you can’t ask, you have to wait for them to suggest something, usually story-triggered. Because of that, you spend a lot less one-on-one time just chilling with your crush and more time desperately trying to raise affection so you can trigger the next event.

♪Instead of dates, you can make lunch for the guy you like. It’s a feature that’s more fleshed out in Another Sky. Here it’s pretty useless because you only get to make lunch a few times a month, the affection boosts aren’t that high, it’s a pain trying to remember what everyone likes, if an event occurs at lunchtime your lunch goes to waste, etc.

♪Instead of hearts, you fill up “love notes” to max by progressing through a guy’s events until they all fill up and turn golden. Apparently there’s another ending for a filled-but-not-golden chart. I’ll tell you about them if I ever get one.

The in-game strategy notes are quite helpful, but they don’t tell you that you have to trigger event X by competition Y, so you can find yourself locked out of events if you’re not careful. With a FAQ you could probably get all 12 guys in one playthrough, but for FAQ-averse people like me it’s best to pick a guy or two early and stick to them.

♪The other schools play a variety of instruments, but Seiso only competes with a string quartet. Not even quintet, just the exact same players on two violins, a cello and a viola at all times. IMO it makes their music selections very boring and same-y sounding. Worse than that, 5 out of the 12 gettable guys are violin players, and if you add other string instruments, it’s a whopping 8 out of 12. BOOORIIING. BOOOOORIIIIING.

Speaking of which, the number of scores has been pared down drastically as well so you end up playing the same songs in every playthrough. From the perspective of a classical music fan, this game is a huge step down compared to the first two.

♪There are no friendly girl characters like Amou and Fuyuumi-chan. There’s a reporter girl “friend” named Nia, but first, she’s kind of a *****. She does little to help and instead shows up at bad times to needle Kanade and her love interests and make their relationships awkward. What do people call that, “rock-blocking”? Something like that. ;-p.

Secondly she’s hiding a lot of stuff about everything and everyone imaginable. You can’t consider her a friend when she won’t even tell Kanade her real name or let her visit her room. There’s another prominent female character who works for Amane and who is even more of a <bleep> than Nia. The two friendly-ish girls hardly show up and hardly interact with the rest of the cast. It’s best to think of this game as Kanade and the 12 Princes and not expect the same fuzzy, regular high-school feel the older ones had.

♪As I said in the title, the game has a lot of sports anime tropes. Like “this is the 3rd years’ last summer so we have to make it count!” and “I wanted to win to make the captain happy,” “I wanted to play more with everyone.” You even have characters going jogging together as training for the big event and crying on each others’ shoulders when they lose, being banned from competing because of a fight, etc. On top of all that, you also have the evil coach-type character, the arrogant rivals, the friendly rivals, the arrogant-turned-friendly rivals, etc etc etc. This game would feel perfectly normal if you replaced “music” with tennis or basketball.

Lalalalala~ Music and Love~
That’s enough for the gameplay side. Now let’s talk about the guys. They’re all either boring good kids or stark raving mad. Note that I actually like boring good guys in an otome game, which is why I enjoyed the first two games so much. Apart from Yunoki (and maybe Kira) everyone was nice and normal. This time I’d say 6 are boring normal, 4 are too quirky for my tastes, 2 are downright nuts.

Normal boring guys: Your childhood friends Ritsu and Kyouya, your kouhai Haru and his buddy Nanami, rival characters Yanagizawa and Arata from Shiseikan Academy. But Arata is too bubbly and childish, it’s annoying, so I won’t be doing his route.

Quirky weirdos: Your teammate Daichi, viola player, aiming for medical school. He seems normal at first glance, but he’s way too flirty and these playboy characters are always hiding a secret dark side somewhere. If you think “Wow, you’re totally judging him by his looks, maybe he’s just a nice guy,” you just wait and see when I do his route. I’m sure I’m right.

Togane and Yuki, rival violinists from Jinnan Academy. Houzumi, the delinquent trumpeter with a heart of gold. Usually I would include him with the normal guys, but he’s always beating Arata up. Violence is bad, mmkay? If you say “Well he only hits Arata, he wouldn’t hurt me,” it will be you in the domestic violence shelter ten years down the line, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Call the psych ward: Sei Amamiya, the “emotionless” guy who wants to know what love is so he can overcome a creative slump. Leiji Myoga, another violent madman who makes his debut by punching a character for touching his violin. A violin that is soooo important to him that he just left it unattended in a store where anyone off the streets could have taken it. It’s all downhill from there, but I’m almost done with his route so I’ll talk about the little nutter next time.

This guy is supposed to be in high school but he looks and acts like a teacher.

And no matter how carefully you progress or how normal they seem at first, sooner or later half of them will declare themselves to be depressed and stop hanging out with you. Then you have to beg them to practice with you and stalk them with music until they deign to look your way again. So it’s not enough to shoulder the burden of the Nationals, I have to play therapist too. Oh boy~.

Amamiya GET!
𝄞I wanna know what love is~~~~~♫
𝄞I want you to show me~~~♫

I chose Sei Amamiya for my first route 50% out of laziness and 50% because he’s a piano player and I love the piano🎹. Amamiya’s backstory is that he’s one of many musically-talented orphans gathered at Amane Academy by the totally-not-pedo Evil Russian founder Alexei something. Alexei is a verbally and emotionally abusive mentor who convinces Amamiya that his music will never be worth anything unless he can fall in love.

So Amamiya meets Kanade in a music studio, they make beautiful music together and they strike a deal: he helps her practice, she lets him practice falling in love with her. So they hang out for a while doing “couple” stuff like going on dates and taking lovey-dovey photos together. Somewhere in between them watching fireworks together and him standing her up in the rain, he realizes that he’s actually in love with her. Or so he says. But in reality he acts exactly the same way towards her all the way until the final scenes, so I’m not really convinced.

Anyway, once Sei finds love, Alexei Jerkovich comes back and tries to take him overseas to make him a music star. This somehow means cutting off all ties with Kanade…. ??? Because Mission Accomplished or something so he doesn’t need her any more, dunno.

This is Amamiya’s “depression” episode, and if you stalk and pester him long enough, he’ll run all the way from the train station to the music hall during the finals and passionately declare his love for Kanade. And in the after-party once Seiso beats Amane in the finals, he’ll mutter some more sweet nothings in her ear, roll credits, the end.

Ehhh. For a first route, it wasn’t bad. Sei is always very polite and helpful, and Kanade did skill up a lot by practicing with him. But because he’s deliberately keeping her at arm’s length all the way through, you never learn much about him. It’s up in the air whether Kanade even knows his true nature, since they rarely interact outside of events and they never talk about anything personal. But it’s an otome game. If the writers say they can’t live without each other, who am I to argue? And they all lived happily ever and Amamiya was cured by the power of love, hurray, hurray.

What’s next?
Of course I already have late-stage save files for getting Leiji Myoga, Haruto Mizushima and Yukihiro Yagisawa. I might not make it for the latter two unless I really hustle, but Myoga is practically eating out of my hand already. After these three, I’d like to do Kyoya and Ritsu Kisaragi and also Daichi Sasaki for the sake of completion. The rest of the guys I don’t really care about. I’ll be seeing a lot of them when I play Another Sky anyway, so no need to rush.

As for any other games, I’m on a break from serious gaming, at least for this week. I feel like I’ve seen enough of Tokyo Xanadu eX+. It’s too soon to start Atelier Escha & Logy. Part of me wants to continue Chaos Rings III, part of me can’t be bothered. Same with Dragon Quest 7. So I’m just gonna chill and chase hot guys for a while until something calls out to me. Ciao!

Wasted 26 hours, 17 minutes and 40 seconds on Atelier Ayesha Plus (spoilers)

My final save file reads 36:17:40 and I reckon about 10 of those hours were actually fun. The rest was dreck. Atelier Ayesha seems to divide people into those who think it’s the best thing ever and a great introduction to the Atelier series and those who think it’s disappointing and the beginning of the end for the series. I thought for sure I would be in the former camp, but having finished it, I find myself firmly in the latter. I don’t even feel like writing about it, but maybe scribbling down a few thoughts will help me get my feelings in order.

First off, the Atelier games have always had varying ratios of story : combat : character interactions : alchemy, so it’s normal to prefer some games to others depending on which way your tastes incline. In Ayesha it’s combat >= character stuff > story >>>>>>>>> alchemy, a.k.a. that thing you do in between exploring and chatting and hoping some event occurs to bring you closer to your sister.

Fair enough. Although the focus wasn’t much on alchemy this time, I did get to make a lot of new things. I made every single item on the list probably for the first time ever, and it wasn’t hard to get the ingredients either. Alchemy is so irrelevant I might as well not have bothered, but I was doing it for my own satisfaction and I was pretty durn satisfied by the end so it’s all good.

Okay, what about the story? Wait, what story? At the beginning they mention something about “Dusk” and crops not growing, though you wouldn’t know it with how comfy and happy everyone is and with all the food Ayesha picks up just by running around outside. Alchemist of Dusk, schmalchemist of dusk, you’re never getting that explanation in this game.

More importantly, you’d think the issue of who kidnapped Nio and why would be a serious matter worthy of exploration in the game, wouldn’t you? I thought for sure Gust let me rescue her so early so they could fit some more story in there, but nope, you get Nio back and that’s it.

You have to watch Keith’s ending on YouTube to find out that Nio she was taken by some seed repository left behind by a more advanced civilization that destroyed itself with alchemy… or maybe not, dunno. And the repository was accidentally awakened by…someone. And maybe you shouldn’t have killed the gatekeeper… or maybe you should have, I dunno. Either way it’s not explored or explained within the game itself so it might as well not have happened for all the attention Ayesha gives it. Lots of other things aren’t explained either, like apothecaries or the Altugle family, what exactly happened to people who weren’t rescued, or the nature of Marion’s organization, etc etc.

In the end the story boils down to “Your sister has been kidnapped by ninjas weird plants. Are you a bad enough alchemist to rescue your sister?” Once you’ve proved you are, you can end the game right there. And actually even if you’re not, apparenly Keith will rescue Nio for you anyway in the “Bad” end. I regret every millisecond I spent worrying about Nio’s fate, not knowing Mr. Know-It-All-But-Won’t-Share would have bailed me out at the end anyway. Feminine wiles, man. Respect.

So there isn’t much story to speak of, and what there is doesn’t go anywhere, and what you do doesn’t matter in the long run. You can see why I’m unhappy already. But that’s still only one element. What about combat?

Hmm… Y’know, if they hadn’t made it so you had to jump through hoops to skip animations, I wouldn’t say anything negative about the combat. I mean it’s pretty boring, but it’s not the worst I’ve ever experienced. Ayesha and her pals feel really weak most of the game, but I’m playing on Hard mode so that’s normal. It’s just that I got tired of the animations after an hour, and learning that Gust could have made them skippable all along but just wanted me to suffer… feels bad man.

Everyone in my party hit the level cap very quickly so I thought there would be a cap raise later, like in Meruru. Nope, nothing. There were a lot of optional bosses available to fight after saving Nio, but with my level capped and no story relevance and no good loot to look forward to except dupe weapon/armor drops, I skipped most of them. Every time I made a new bomb I’d test it out, but that’s about it. Ayesha doesn’t learn any battle skills, everyone else only has 4 skills, it takes forever to save up for a special move, there’s very little variety in equipment, there’s a ton of palette swaps. Etc, etc, it’s just no fun.

Unless we’re counting Mana Khemia, I haven’t found the battle system in any Atelier game very exciting, but hitting the cap so quickly in Ayesha and having so few battle/equipment options makes this the least interesting game from a fighting perspective. I hope they can at least make the process faster and more rewarding in Escha & Logy and Shallie. And I’ve learned my lesson: no more Hard mode in Atelier games!

Last but not least, let’s talk about characters, character interactions, events, that sort of thing. I don’t hate Ayesha but I heavily dislike her high-pitched voice and forced-cute mannerisms. Who even says “Kyaaah” out loud? In English? But I believed I’ve talked about this before so I’ll let it drop. It’s just a personal preference where I don’t like super-girly or super-cute stuff. Ayesha fans, think of it as one less gamer competing for your idol’s affections.

Eat your hearts out ladies/
Hands off the merchandise

Instead let’s talk about other characters… Can’t believe Juris friendzoned me after getting my hopes up with that “feelings” line… Why even tease if you’re not gonna follow through? Apart from that I liked everyone, but nothing really stood out for me, good or bad.

It would have been more interesting to have more towns and more characters. I’d always accepted it as a technical limitation in the smaller games, but in the PS3/4 era I’d like it if the scale of Atelier games got a little grander. Instead of the Salt Desert being a giant waste with only one character to meet. No named characters in Homonculus Town and only one screen. Only Kyle in Hornheim. You can’t even talk to townspeople unless they have a quest to give you. Such an empty world.

But no seriously, I’ve gotta find something to say about the characters and stuff. Umm… Gee… I like Willbell’s hat. GAAAH, what do you want me to say? I used Linca and Juris for 90% of the game, hardly touched Marion, Odelia and Keith at all. I wanted to like Willbell but her events are so childish. And Regina’s events are all “Get back in the kitchen woman” like, I dunno. Why does she have to go home just because her brothers are grown up? Translation error? Anyway, nobody was interesting but nobody was bad either. It’s very much a Your Mileage May Vary thing.

Final roundup of Atelier Ayesha Plus

It was meh. Nowhere near as meaty or exciting or atmospheric as I’d been expecting. If you’re doing to reduce alchemy’s importance then I’ll judge the game like any other JRPG, and Ayesha doesn’t hold up well in that respect. Vague hints of a story that goes nowhere, sluggish combat with tedious animations, friendly but bland characters. If this weren’t an Atelier game, I would be even more scathing in my review but hey, at least I got to fuse stuff for a while so that was good.

In summary Atelier Ayesha wasn’t a very good game and I didn’t enjoy it that much. If it’s true that it’s all downhill from here, then I am in despair. But there’s nowhere else I can go for my crafting game fix so now I’m really in despair. Story fragments, event upon event with characters I don’t care about… I want to cry now 🙁 But I’ll get over it in a couple of months and be back to play Atelier Escha & Logy. Until then, phew, I’m glad to be done!