Ocean Lunch Antique – Same old, but I can’t stop playing

Ocean Lunch Antique is another simulation game from inutoneko, a Japanese indie game I’ve been sort-of following for years. Their games used to be Japanese only, but now you can find their more recent games on Steam with poor but readable translations. Worth a try if you like simple but hopelessly addictive games.

Having said that, I haven’t played most of inutoneko’s games available on Steam because I’m working through the Ishwald games in release order and haven’t gotten that far yet. The only one I’ve played and reviewed is Let’s Eat: Seaside Cafe, a.k.a. Kaiyou Resutoran Uminekotei. I had a blast with that one a few years ago and recommend it as a good starting point for the series. It’s also a prequel of sorts for Ocean Lunch Antique since protagonist Fill (also the protagonist of Haretari Kumottari N) is hired as a weekend cook for the Uminekotei restaurant.

During the week (really one long ‘day’) Fill can hang around doing whatever he wants and then on the weekend he puts whatever he cooked that week on sale for diners to enjoy. In theory, anyway. I read on a FAQ that the easiest way to succeed is to spend the first year doing nothing but researching recipes and shmoozing with adventurers. The more recipes you know, the more Life Points you get and the more stuff you can do. And the more adventurers like you, the more quickly they will join you and help you get high-quality ingredients. Strangely enough, you won’t get fired for not doing a lick of work, probably because the restaurant owner is hopelessly infatuated with Fill.

The main menu, where all the magic happens

But let’s say we want to be honest, upstanding folks. Then the task is simple. Cook stuff, put it on the menu and let people buy it. To cook stuff, you put the required ingredients together, apply a little WP and presto. The nice thing is that the ingredients needed are very flexible. If the recipe calls for dairy products, you can use any kind of milk or cheese. If it’s seafood, you can add shrimp or seaweed or fish, it’s all fine. It just affects the final quality and a few other things.

Where do you get all the ingredients? Why, from the market of course. Specifically it seems to be a professionals chefs-only market where you don’t buy food with cash but rather exchange for them with quality points. A screenshot or two will help explain.

That’s all the ingredients you can buy. The numbers outside the brackets indicate how many points you have. 1 point = 1 product. I have 18635 points for wheat, so I can buy 18,635 wheat products. The number in the brackets show the quality of the products I can trade for. The higher that number, the better the quality of stuff I can get. Let’s take a closer look:

Here I have 12824 points worth of milk products at a quality of 6.45, so I can trade for everything from Level 1 Low-quality Milk to Level 6 Specially Selected High-Class Milk. Initially, as I said, you can use any kind of milk in most recipes, but the more advanced your recipes get, the more particular they get about ingredients.

There are also a few items like chocolate, oil and curry powder you can’t get through the market, but there are a few other ways to get stuff:

•Buy them from local shopkeepers
•Buy them from other characters like Tico and Shiva at a markup
•Have adventurers randomly find them in treasure chests. Usually they bring back ingredient points only, but once in a while you get lucky.
•Forage them yourself
•Grow them in your backyard garden
•Beat monsters for them. There’s no combat in this game btw
•Make them in the restaurant’s all-purpose processor which brews, refines, presses and does all kinds of miraculous things. You can press flowers into oil, turn honey into better honey, rice into alcohol, milk into cheese. Almost every ingredient can be processed, though a large number of them will either turn into inferior products or just plain garbage. Which you can add to your dishes as an ingredient. Sshh, not a word to the health inspectors!

So what’s the goal of all this cooking and foraging? First it was for Fill to save £1,000,000 in cash. As you can see from the screenshot, I’ve achieved that handily. Even with Eve taking a cut of sale for “management fees,” almost everything you cook is popular and profitable. Eve claims it’s because she’s already done all the work to make Uminekotei successful, and I can’t really argue since I did all that work back then.

This overwhelming popularity is actually a bit of a bad thing, because it means I can ignore many of the game’s restaurant management features and do whatever you want and still come out ahead. For example, in theory you’re supposed to pay attention to restaurant furnishings and interior decorations. Those things give Uminekotei a certain style which affects which customers come and how well dishes sell. But I didn’t bother for half the game and still made money.

Sold out at 12pm

There are other things you can do like sell dishes as a set combo, e.g. a burger and fries and drinks. This should make you more money by moving more product faster, but in practice every dish is sold out by 2pm every day, so the extra boost is unncessary. Same goes for special plans like All-you-can-Drink or All-you-can-eat Desserts, special summer and winter attractions, etc. If I get plan/event tickets for free I’ll use them, but I’m successful enough without them.

So anyway, I’ve achieved my first goal and Fill is now filthy rich just from cooking a few dishes on the weekends. The next goal, which will be my last regardless of what else the game throws at me, is to make 350 out of the 500 recipes in the game. I saw a screenshot from a gamer who had achieved all 500, but some people are just crazy so we won’t go there. The trickle of recipes is already slowing down this far into the game so I have to work harder to buy recipe tickets with WP or win them through cooking contests. You get a balance sheet at the end of every season showing how much you’ve earned and learned.

This is an old screenshot. Right now I’m up to301/500. Just a little more and I’ll be done.

Thoughts on Ocean Lunch Antique

I like it. A lot. It’s simple, low pressure and hard to mess up permanently. With that ridiculous amount of ingredient points, I never have to worry about running out of resources. (Except water. I’m always running out of water) You can even set cooking to automatic so you don’t have to. My long held desire to see pictures of the stuff I’m making has finally been realized, which motivates me to keep making new recipes. And 500 recipes to discover and make is huge, there’s no way I’ll be complaining about not making enough stuff when I’m done.

The Ishwald games are as much about characters as they are about simulation. Every game features some minor character progression or development, but it really is minor between games so not much has changed between Ocean Lunch Antique and Moonlight Basket, the previous game. Shio is slowly realizing she likes Fill as more than a friend, Eve is slowly getting the point that Fill doesn’t like her, Sophia is starting to realize the Helsinki does like her.

The character art has also improved dramatically since the early days.

Ite/Otto and Eve still seem to dislike each other intensely despite being childhood friends. And it’s not the usually tsundere girl/clueless guy dynamic in anime and manga. These two really don’t want anything to do with each other so I have no idea how they supposedly got married in recent games. There’s also a movement underfoot to make Tico a little more pleasant and personable even to Ruvel, but I’m not falling for it. Oh, and Shiva has given up gambling. Heck, everyone in the game has given it up so they no longer drop by your house unexpectedly to challenge you to mini-games. I miss that, a bit. Just a bit.

Apart from the little story progress and the few tweaks to the production system, Ocean Lunch Antique doesn’t offer much new stuff compared to previous games. If you loved the earlier stuff (like I did) then you’ll love this one too (like I do). But since it’s more of the same, I got over it much quicker than I did some of the others, which is another good thing. Just a few more sessions to rack up that recipe count and I’ll be free!

Free to do what? I’m done with Demon Gaze (more on that next time). According to my schedule I should be giving DQVII another chance and then tackling Lord of Arcana seriously. But what I really want is to play an SRPG so Luminous Arc or Sakura Taisen 4, here I come!

La Corda d’Oro 2ff – Tsukimori true end & Fudou Shouma GET!

Phew. I’ve been playing too much La Corda d’Oro 2ff. I wanted to get both Tsukimori’s true end and Fudou’s ending on one playthrough, but it was harder than I’d thought. First I managed to trigger Tsukimori’s Love Chain 3 but lost Fudou because I didn’t befriend the other guys in time. I reloaded and got all the guys successfully but lost Tsukimori’s LC3 because his affection rose too high (?). Luckily I hadn’t deleted earlier save. Thus I did Fudou’s route together with Tsukimori’s regular love route, then reloaded and got Tsukimori’s true ending. PHEW!

Tsukimori Len true ending

I misrepresented his regular ending a bit last time. It wasn’t quite as cold as I’d remembered it. Yes he did violinist-zone me, but it was said in a very warm and affectionate tone. Like we were almost friends. Yes, almost friends after twenty dates and a love meter of 1000. Talk about working for your happy ending.

So work I did. I got through all his chain events from applying to study abroad to getting accepted and planning to go but feeling torn because he would miss Kahoko. A lot of reading and some nice CGs later, I made it to his true ending under the tree. Finally he said it right out, “I love you.” <3 <3 But then he went on…
“But I love music more.”
… …. …Eh?
“If I had to choose between you and music, I would choose music every time.”
WAIT WAIT WAIT. What? This is the romantic ending?!

To be fair, he does ask if you’re cool with that. The game gives you the choice to say yes or no, with different responses for each answer. Either way you get a truly gorgeous CG and more sweet words about how you two will always be bound together by music and will meet again as long as you play the violin etc etc, plus some random German phrases because he’s going to Vienna Durch Leiden Freude Arbeit und Brot macht frei, the end.

When it was all over, I wasn’t mad at all. In fact I thought it was great. It fits Tsukimori’s established character to a T. He’s the kind of guy who would put music before everything. He’s also blunt and tactless enough to say so at a romantic moment. Heck, that’s his definition of romantic. So it really is his “true” ending in the sense that it’s most representative of Tsukimori and everything he stands for. The lovely CGs don’t hurt either. But I’m definitely taking Kahoko’s “You go do your thing, just don’t expect me to stick around” answer as canon.

Fudou Shouma end

A new character carried over from the Kin’iro no Corda smartphone game. Fudou is a 3rd year in the regular high school department who doesn’t think much of classical music. Instead he started a rock band and wants to start a popular music club before he graduates. It also turns out he was your childhood friend and you guys played together all the time as kids but forgot. Every time I see this kind of twist, I think “FF8 did nothing wrong!”

Getting Fudou’s route requires serious planning and dedication early on because all of the main guys’ must be willing to form an ensemble with you before the end of the 2nd concert. Not only must they be willing but you must actually create ensembles featuring everyone – I made that mistake once and had to reload. That means you have to work overtime to meet all their rivalry requirements or stalk them with presents and music until they like you. It also means it’s easiest to get Fudou on the route where your initial ensemble includes Tsukimori, since he’s the toughest nut to crack.

Once you do all that, Fudou’s route is hard to mess up. As long as you go along with him wherever he goes and don’t forget to watch him perform at the school festival (boooo, no custom CG, boooo) you’re all set. You can also meet him in town after practicing alone for some impromptu dates. In one of the events he even comes to your room, the first guy to do so. The Power of the Japanese Childhood Friend is so sugoi.

After many scenes where Fudou treats you as just a childhood friend and misunderstands his friends’ attempts to set us up, he finally realizes Kahoko is a girl… (how did he get this far without knowing the birds and the bees)… and that he has feelings for her… I guess. The lack of proper dates on this route makes it a bit sudden. They just hang out a few times by chance and boom, true love. Ah, youth.

Fudou is a nice enough guy, probably the friendliest character in the game after Hihara-sempai. I don’t mind his looks either, and his ending CG was nice. But his route was kind of shallow and Koei didn’t do as much with the classical vs. popular music angle as I would have liked. Especially since you have to go to so much trouble to form a rival band. Still there’s only so much you can expect from an add-on character with very little interaction with the main cast so I guess it was good enough.

What next?

Heh, you think I’m done? I still have to get Kaji Aoi’s true ending and Fuyumi’s friendship ending. And since Kaji and Yunoki are a set, maybe I’ll work on Yunoki’s ending at the same time. No tears will be shed if I lose him, though. THEN I’ll be done with La Corda d’Oro 2ff… for a while. After all that I think I’ll finally be ready to move on to La Corda d’Oro 3.

As for Demon Gaze, I killed the last boss a while ago. Now I’m half-heartedly exploring the bonus dungeon. Part of me wants to kill more mobs and collect more treasure, a bigger part of me wants to move on. I’ll see how far I can get by the weekend and do a wrap-up early next week. Good game, though. And that’s all for today!

La Corda d’Oro 2ff – Tsuchiura true end, Kanazawa, Kira & Etou GET!

Kin’iro no Corda 2ff is the updated remake of Kin’iro no Corda 2 (La Corda d’Oro 2) for the PS2. The original was remade for the PSP as Kin’iro no Corda 2f which was then updated with more CGs and characters as Kin’iro no Corda 2ff. I played the original extensively earlier this year, and I’m sure readers were glad to see the back of it when I finally put it away. Too bad guys, it’s baaaaack! And in a newer, shinier skin. But it’s still the same game so I’m having a good time all over again.

Changes I noticed and liked

★New CGs for old events! New CGs for new events! Many, many more date spots and date events, including a monthly exhibition. I appreciated the weekend events the most because I got tired of going to the same places.

★Three new guys to get, and they’re not too hard either. Etou is a brat, but Fudou seems nice and it’s good to finally get Kira after his high-and-mighty attitude in the original.

★I like the new ending theme. Very “boy band,” which is the effect they were going after.

★The new graphics are crisper, brighter and more polished than the old ones, but not by much. What really stood out were the clearer backgrounds and the increased detail during events like the school festival and Christmas. And I very much prefer the detailed art and relatively muted colors to the garish, simplistic, generic anime brightness of Kin’iro no Corda 3 and 4. Not that I won’t play them, though…

Kin’iro no Corda 2ff Goals

Getting the “love chain” endings, i.e. the true endings that eluded me last time. Which means I have to watch the love points like a hawk. 300-400 will trigger Love Chain 3, but anything over 400 will close that route off for good. And taking part in contests raises those points, so you have to make sure the guy in question likes you but not too much going into the concert. Which means you’ll have to avoid some events, not walk home with him, turn down date invitations, etc. if necessary. I’m sorry Tsukimori-kun, it’s not that I don’t like you. Things are just moving too fast!

I actually lost Kaji by failing to police his points. Yeah, just like the first time I played the original. And I was too lazy to redo a whole month of work so I let him go and got his regular lovey-dovey route. I also lazily answered Ousaki’s emails and got his route again. Same as the old route but with several more emails. At least he doesn’t pressure you or guilt-trip you about not answering his messages.

I also got Kira’s route without really trying. His is virtually automatic because he shows up on set dates and you just have to answer correctly to trigger the next event. The game clearly tells you if you mess up completely on a route so there’s nothing to worry about. Note, however, that you can’t get both Kira and Kanazawa on the same playthrough for story reasons.

Now for the endings I got in order of getting, excluding Kaji and Ousaki because I’ve covered them before.

Etou Kiriya

Little punk… Putting on airs and talking like a big shot, but he’s actually two years younger than Kahoko. That’s Hino-senpai to you, young whippersnapper! I wasn’t too excited about having yet another violin player in the series anyway. If they have to double up on an instrument, of course it must be the piano ♥.

Anyway, Etou’s story is that he’s a genius violinist who lacks stimulation because no one in Japan is a match for him. Really, Etou-kun? I’m pretty sure Ousaki-senpai could smoke you in a contest, how about giving him a try? Long story short, Kahoko’s unskilled but impassioned performances move his heart somehow or the other and he realizes… something. I forget what he realized. I think he realized what he was missing but I was too busy fuming at his disrespectful airs to pay attention. In the end he says he’ll be applying to Seiso Academy next year and looks forward to being with Kahoko. I look forward to putting you in your place, punk.

Kira Akihiko

As I mentioned, his route is almost automatic. When you talk to him in the church, he admits that your music touched and changed him, but doesn’t talk about love. Fair enough. It’s not a romantic route at all. But then after the credits, you get a scene where he’s lying on a couch holding your hand. Whoa! How did we get there? On one hand, kyaaa! On the other hand, ewww!

I… really don’t know how to feel about a romance with Kira, to be honest. I liked him more as a cold, professional adversary rather than a love interest. He actually had a very valid point about separating the school into two separate institutions for greater specialization and higher profits. It’s just that the story revolves around magic and music instead of common sense and money so I was forced to stop him.

In any case, once Kahoko softened him up with the power of music, my work here is done. What is there left to talk about? What hand-holding is there left to do? Kira, I didn’t know you were that kind of guy, I’m very shocked. Though I shouldn’t be, since one of the earliest things he does is take you to a bar for drinks…

Christmas Party ending

If you ignore absolutely everyone asking you out and choose a guy who doesn’t like you at the end, you’ll get a CG with everyone at the Christmas Party. I’d never seen it before because it had never occurred to me to aim for a Forever Alone end before. It’s always something that just happens to me when I’ve got loftier ambitions. But it takes all of 5 seconds to check it out and it’s a very nice CG so I’m glad I saw it.

Tsuchiura True End

Yay! At last! Getting it was a pain. I kept a separate save every time I successfully saw a Love Chain event. I also had about 10 other saves at various points for easy backtracking. I’d always wondered why otome games had so many save slots, now I know. For all my carefulness I still had to reload and redo a previous concert period just to get that LC3 triggered, but after that it wasn’t too bad.

Tsuchiura’s true ending is very similar to the normal end, but with added details. If you’ve been through all his events, you know about his ambition to become a conductor one day so he talks a lot about that in his ending. He also gives you the music box you found at the church bazaar as a present. Most importantly he finally remembers – or claims to remember – you watching him play Für Elise ten or so years ago. A likely story, Tsuchiura. You guys will say anything to get a girl, won’t you?

And after all that, he still doesn’t say he loves Hino. He’s grateful to her, he’s happy she’s around, he supports her, but love? All right, fair enough. If he doesn’t love her, he doesn’t love her. Just don’t get jealous if you see her together with Tsukimori in the manga, okay?

Kanazawa End

I totally ignored him in the first La Corda d’Oro. He was too lazy and scruffy and kinda gross-looking. This is where the better, less fuzzy graphics on the VITA come in handy. Now he doesn’t look quite so bad. His re-recorded voice also sounds a little less lazy. Plus I was a little bit intrigued by what Kira mentioned about his throat. He’s a heavy smoker, of course there’s something wrong with his throat. Or is there something else I should know?

Well that “something else” turned out to be Kanazawa’s history as an opera singer in Europe. Eeeeeeh??? THIS GUY?! Wow. You really can’t tell by looking. He developed polyps in his throat and refused to have surgery, which would have ruined his voice anyway. Which was already ruined. Either way he was sunk, and his lethargic attitude reflects it. However, seeing Hino work so hard encourages him to reconsider medical treatment. In his post-ending scene, he’s at the airport on his way somewhere but he promises to come back for her someday.

Aww. It was actually kinda sweet. And a lot more wholesome than some endings I could mention, hmm Kira?

Other stuff to mention

I’m not done yet! I’m already working on Tsukimori’s route. I was trying to get everyone to join my ensemble by the second concert so I could get Fudou Shouma’s ending as well, but I didn’t start wooing Hihara-senpai early enough. Also Tsukimori’s affection is already 326 in October, way too high to be safe. So I’ve got to rewind a bit and plan my concert properly. Once I’m done with Tsukimori and Fudou, I’m hoping to tackle Kaji again and maybe get Fuyuumi’s friendship ending to see what that’s about. I won’t be getting Hihara (already done), Yunoki (too mean) or Shimizu (too slow) this time.

For those of you thinking, “Hey, weren’t you playing Demon Gaze?” The answer is I’ve been playing both interchangeably. When I get tired of reading, I switch to Demon Gaze. When I’m bored with killing palette swaps, I switch to Kin’iro no Corda 2ff. The PSVITA system makes it really easy. Not like the days where you had to get up and switch CDs or cartridges. Viva modern consoles.

That’s enough out of me for one day. See you later!

 

Demon Gaze – Beat all 10 demons, let’s finish this!

Let’s finish it just as soon as I find a way around that Ether Mirage boss in the Spring Palace. Healing almost 6000HP every 3 turns is just too unfair. This time I’m just going to turn the difficulty down to the lowest. Then I’m going to save-scum for the True Snipe artifact like the FAQs tell me to. Then I’m going to kill that stupid thing and finish this game, hurray!

Failing your first try against a boss is pretty normal in dungeon crawlers anyway. If anything it’s a testament to the relative ease of Demon Gaze that I’ve come this far with only two major roadblocks (Ether Mirage and Venus). And both were due to poor preparation. I don’t know what I was thinking going into a battle without my faithful old Chronos and a truckload of Demon Vases.

Once I finish off Ether Mirage, all that’s left is the final boss and the bonus Black Cage dungeon. Or so the game tells me. I haven’t even set foot in the Black Cage, so that’s something to look forward to depending on how I feel once the boss is down. Since I’m so close to the end I won’t bother writing too much today. Let’s finish this!

Update: Killed Ether Mirage, and I didn’t even have to lower the difficulty. The True Snipe artifact dropped easily in the Summer Palace, which helped a lot. I knew she was going to heal up at the start of the 4th turn, so I spent those four turns setting up my HIT buffs and concentrating with my attackers. Once she healed, I sent Mars into a Rage and let Ether Mirage have it with Jupiter Bane and Cyclone. She barely lasted two turns after that.

I then went on to fight the last boss. The boss himself is easy but those summoned monsters… And I kept having to take my Gazer out of the attacking queue so he can use Whistle, which slowed down my DPS a lot. I need the artifact that lets someone else mimic that skill, then I need to get my healer focused on using Whistle and Force Guard instead of Holy Shield. But right now my back hurts from too much playing so I’m taking a break for the rest of the weekend.

Demon Gaze – 6 demons down, 4 to go

Demon Gaze plays like a cross between Entaku no Seito and Stranger of Sword City but with cuter designs and brighter, happier colors. Same classes, same skills, same races with the same advantages and drawbacks. I like it, it feels very warm and familiar somehow. Though it does mean I wasted my time writing an Entaku no Seito walkthrough all those years ago. I should have just referred users to Demon Gaze, it’s almost the same thing.

I think a reader once mentioned that DG is set thousands of years after Students of the Round? Or was it Stranger of Sword City? They all share the same lore of dragons being in charge of keeping the balance of the world etc etc so most likely they’re all set in the same universe. Eh. Whatever. I hate lore. Not hate-hate, I guess. More like I don’t really care as long as it makes sense and doesn’t get in the way of having fun.

Dungeon crawlers don’t need stories so we’ll just skip the story of Demon Gaze. Or maybe not, since there isn’t much: You are the chosen one and you’ve gotta collect all 10 demons to save the world. I’ve beaten 6 right now, just got Game Over’d by the 7th (stupid Venus and her stupid adds) so I’m here to get my thoughts together, take a bit of a break before returning for revenge.

The game has four difficulty settings – Cold, Cool, Warm and Hot. Before tackling Venus’s dungeon I was playing on the default setting of Cool, but I found it too easy so I went up to Warm. Soooo should I lower the difficulty to Cold so I can pass Venus or take my lumps like a seasoned gamer? Decisions, decisions. I think I’ll stick it out for one or two more attempts first. My Gazer/Paladin/Fighter/Wizard/Healer party with an average level of 21 should be good enough. I just have to prevent her from dispelling my buffs and kidnapping my Paladin and we’re golden. If all else fails, there’s always the high-risk Enrage Mars in Turn 1 strategy…

Things I like about Demon Gaze so far

  • Bright happy colors.
  • I wanted huge dungeons with lots of loot and that’s exactly what I’m getting.
  • Very easy to dive into after playing Experience Inc.’s other games.
  • Adjustable difficulty means I can’t complain “It’s too easy!”
  • It’s interesting what they’re doing with the demons and the skills you get from setting them.
  • The dungeons are straightforward so you rarely have to check a FAQ or a map. Rarely, but not never.
  • Not too much talking, not too many cutscenes. Huge breath of fresh air after Atelier Meruru.

Petty, petty peeves

  • Dungeon crawlers don’t need fanservice. And no game needs this much fanservice.
  • Having to select a demon before every battle gets annoying.
  • Using items and certain skills is a pain because it gets in the way of mashing X and Auto every turn.
  • Rent gimmick is unnecessary and just makes me dislike Fran. Just give me my keys, you money-grubbing slave driver.
  • Actually the whole inn gimmick is unnecessary.
  • Not enough missions on the Bulletin Board. I like sidequests.
  • I’m okay with generics, but I miss actual party members just a little bit.
  • Experience Inc. could have done more to distinguish Demon Gaze from the other entries. I would have settled for just new music and sound effects – I’m tired of hearing those harpies squawk.

So far the good parts vastly outweigh the bad, which is why I’ve blazed through Demon Gaze so quickly. I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent on it, so I’m gonna hazard a guess: twenty hours. No, thirty. 25 hours of exploration and battle, 5 hours of getting lost and kicking random walls. Very little grinding because of the lower difficulty and aforementioned getting lost. I’m going to guesstimate again and say I’m halfway through, simply because I usually finish these games around level 40-45ish. See you when I’m done.