What’s in the box?

I woke up this morning to find this strange box on my bed…

I wonder what’s inside? I can’t read the strange letters on the cover. S… Sw…. Sweets? It must be cake! I love cake!

… ………. Okay okay, I confess (I wasn’t fooling anyone anyway). Yes, I caved in and bought a Nintendo Switch with my brothers. And we bought Xenoblade Chronicles 2 too. And Breath of the Wild, but I won’t be playing that.

Actually I won’t be playing Xenoblade either, at least not right now. I’ll give it a little test tonight but that’s about it. Things are going pretty well in Raidou Kuzunoha now that I’ve leveled up a bit and added a few points to VIT. Plus I really really feel like an action RPG right now. It’s just one of those things. Apparently Kuzunoha is quite short so I’ll be done soon anyway. And then… heh heh heh heh heh heh heh. Heh heh.

La Corda d’Oro 2 – Tsuchiura & Hihara GET!

Obviously I got the normal endings for both of these guys, since I lost the thread for their true routes pretty quickly. In Tsuchiura’s case I seem to have answered a question wrong somewhere. In Hihara’s case I either raised his affection too quickly or too slowly and missed some critical events. But the nice thing about the La Corda d’Oro series is that you always get some kind of ending for maxing out a guy’s affection. That’s good enough for me.

Tsuchiura Ryotaro

My fellow piano player! The drama on his route is that he and Hino Kahoko (the official name of the protagonist) did so well in the Spring Contest that they’re asked to transfer to the music course. Tsuchiura says no at first then talks it over with his parents and decides to go for it. And then the game cuts Hino off somehow because she can’t make her mind up fast enough? Or she says something wrong? I can’t be sure. That’s the thing about this game. Normal end = easy. True end = you’ve gotta be psychic.

Well anyway, the two of them get along well enough. They practice together, go to concerts together, he buys her a silver necklace and later a music box. In the end he… doesn’t confess. Doesn’t say he loves her either… He just expresses appreciation for her always being there at important moments in his life. Oh, and it turns out they kind of knew each other as kids but not really and anyway they both forgot. Remember kids, such twists are only terrible if FF8 does them.

I didn’t “get” too much out of dating Tsuchiura this time. He and the heroine are getting along like always, just better than ever. You learn a bit more about his family and the incredibly petty reason why he stopped playing music competitively as a child. The main earth-shattering development is his decision to focus on music in the future. It’s a pretty big deal, but it doesn’t have anything to do with Hino or with their relationship. So yeah, nothing really changes between them.

Hihara Kazuki

Hihara-sempai! I completely lost the thread with this guy, I’m so disappointed. When I did Tsuchiura’s route, I played with Hihara a bit on the side and got an event where Hihara signs up to star in a commercial. Later on the commercial airs, but Hihara doesn’t seem happy at all. He’s downright depressed, in fact, and doesn’t want to talk about the experience. What happened, Hihara-sempai?! I’ve gotta know!

I was really looking forward to finding out on his main route. Unfortunately I don’t think I raised his affection fast enough so while I triggered the event, nothing ever happened with it and the commercial was never mentioned again. I did get some scenes where he worries about his future as well as minor skits where he talks about how he met Yunoki and how he got into playing the trumpet, but that’s not what I really wanted. When I’m done giving everyone the once-over I’ll play with a FAQ and get to the bottom of this mystery.

Well at least his confession under the tree was somewhat romantic. Somewhat. I don’t really remember it TBH. Too busy wallowing in disappointment at losing the thread. I’ll get his true ending yet!

Hard Mode

Finishing La Corda d’Oro 2 once on Normal difficulty unlocks Hard Mode. It’s hard! Until you get the hang of it. Then it’s still hard! But very manageable and a tremendous amount of fun. What’s hard about it is they jacked up the price of everything in the BP store and cut your growth rate in half or less. You have to work harder to get BP that only goes half as far. And you have to do all that while also wooing a guy and keeping your ensembles from falling apart. It’s awesome.

That said, I was never in danger of failing any mission. I don’t even know if it’s possible to fail them. Oh, that reminds me: you get a Game Over if you refuse to play the first concert. Ousaki will beg you, Fuyumi will beg you, the game will beg you… and if you still say no, the game ends right there. I love it when games do that. “If you won’t play, don’t play. Who needs you?!” The Game Over screen even says “Fine.” :mrgreen: (yes I know that’s not what Fine means in this case)

Back to bragging about how hard mode was no match for me. As I said, I was never in danger of failing, but I did get an A instead of an S on two of the concerts when chasing Tsuchiura. I only discovered the trick on Hihara’s route: always think one step ahead. Start planning for the next concert before you finish the current one.

That means you raise your Skill ASAP so you can practise harder pieces.
It means you buy only the scores you need and target only the players you need for those ensembles.
Use Iron Armlets on the weekends to raise your skill, use the Auditorium to train your ensembles.

And multi-task like crazy: combine learning pieces with advertising your show and raising affection. Roam the maps constantly in search of the unconverted so you can fill their ears with music. I found the Entrance and the Auditorium best for this. Ignore the roof, the music room and the practice room.

While you’re busy doing all that, you might find you don’t have any time left to spend with your sweetheart. This is as it should be, since your parents sent you to school to study and not to chase boys. With the help of a FAQ you could probably do your concert prep and romantic prep at the same time, but I enjoy fumbling around on my own too much to give it a try. When it’s time to do all the routes properly, I’ll consider switching to Easy mode so I can focus on the story.

Before that, though, I need to get Yunoki and Tsukimori’s endings. I even started Tsukimori’s route, but he’s such a jerk. He turned me down three times when I tried to recruit him (and he didn’t get a game over, it’s not fair). He isn’t even the best violinist in the game but he sure has the biggest ego. Yunoki-sempai is just Yunoki-sempai and slightly nicer than last time. I’ll do those two later.

Up next: I can’t decide between Tokyo Xanadu eX+ and Shin Megami Tensei: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army. I’m not skillful enough to play two ARPGs at the same time either. Out comes the coin. Heads – Tokyo, tails – Raidou. *flip* Tails. Raidou it is. See you next time!

Finished OreShika – Thoughts, tips and spoilers

I finished OreShika last year, oh so long ago. Ancient history, practically. Or whatever it is we call December 31st 2017 these days. I would have written something earlier, but I wanted to get revenge on a boss named Tokasen first.

Unfortunately, due to the way OreShika works, bosses get shuffled around the dungeons regularly without notice. The dungeons themselves get reshuffled too so you’re forced tp re-explore the same dungeons with all your progress reset. So I know Tokasen is in the Heptacolor Springs somewhere, but after a half-hearted attempt to find her again, I realized it was too much work and closed the books on OreShika.

The reason why I wanted to kill her so badly was because she beat me twice. Sent me packing with my tail between my legs. Normally this would be just one of those things, but in OreShika such failures will haunt you till the day you die. They’ll even list “Fled from Tokasen” in your obituary when you finally kick the bucket. It’s just too embarrassing. I know I’m supposed to be madder at Abe no Seimei for cursing my family, but at least the game doesn’t go “Nyah nyah, Abe kicked your @$$!” for the rest of your life.

And anyway, unlike Tokasen, I did get revenge on Abe no Seimei in the end. The first time I faced him with Asura, I wasn’t quite ready. I didn’t have the right strategy, which involves stacking Masking Mist (dodge up) and Backs to the Wall (def up) and wiping him out with Special Arts ASAP. After I ran off in disgrace from my first attempt, I gave birth to some great kids and took him down with ease.

Nueko didn’t help much but I had to take her along anyway.

But just because you can beat Asura doesn’t mean you’re ready for the final boss XXXX. Here “ready” means you have one or two lancers who can spam a move that blocks all attacks every turn. Yes, it’s as broken as it sounds.

The only reason why you can’t beat the final boss the minute you learn that move is because it doesn’t work on Asura, the gatekeeper boss. It doesn’t work on shikigami/festival bosses either. Everyone else is fair game. That’s why I was looking for Tokasen to take her down with my spiffy new moves. Even she wouldn’t be able to cope with that. Maybe I should go back and get her after all. Hmm.

Well anyway, I beat the final boss in like 30 seconds and got the ending. It was pretty meh. Seimei thought his father had been sealed under the Palace, but he wasn’t. He was actually hiding in Seimei’s sidekick Onigashira all along. Or maybe he IS Onigashira, dunno.

Ongashira possessed Seimei and tried to use his body to take over the Heavens, Earth and Underworld because that’s what Nueko wanted. Except Nueko says she didn’t want that. I don’t even know what’s going on any more. You two lovebirds need to talk things over. Long story short, that’s how we got Onigashira a.k.a. XXXX as the final boss. I beat him up… and I don’t know what happened to him after that. Is he dead? Dormant? Why did he want to unify all three realms anyway?

Onigashira is the totally-not-suspicious red mask on the right.

In the ending sequence, Nueko goes down to the Underworld cradling the broken Onigashira. Abe no Seimei is taken up to heaven to become a god. Yes, instead of being punished for his stunts he’s rewarded instead. Just like the Big Bad of the last game, Kitsuto, who is now the highest-ranking god in the game.

In Abe’s case, though, it’s not really a reward. He caused all this trouble because he wanted to spend time with his mommy and daddy. Instead mommy beats daddy up, Abe is kicked up to heaven and then mommy goes for a vacation on the other side of the world, more or less. He basically achieved zero besides torturing my innocent family for decades. At least he enjoyed that part – I know that because he told me so repeatedly. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t really feel sorry for him.

Btw, the game doesn’t address most of the questions I raised in the last post on OreShika. It seems the bad guy XXXX was disowned for using Onigashira to try to stage a coup d’état in the heavens. That much is clear. But why Nueko sealed him up, why Nueko was sealed in heaven, why Kitsuto got involved, etc. are all left for the gamer to imagine answers to.

It’s possible you might patch the whole story together by beating every Onigami in the game, but who has time for that? Especially since I’m just guessing when I say “it’s possible.” You might clear the whole thing and still be none the wiser. Enough about that, let me share a few tips I picked up along the way:

Miscellaneous tips

-Lancers and their “Soldier” arts make all the onigami and the final boss easy mode. Just FYI in case you’re stuck somewhere.

-I didn’t experiment at all with betrothals and adoptions, but I hear you can pick up super-powerful kids and heirlooms through QR codes scattered online. Can the PSTV even scan QR codes? I don’t think so. Anyway it’s worth a try if you have a regular PSVITA and want to break the game.

-You can choose anything you want as a starting class except Wreckers (too finicky, need really good stats). Getting gunners, halberdiers or dancers to hurt more enemies is not a bad idea, but IMO martial artists and archers are best for mincing enemy leaders in a flash.

-Breed with really good gods, but don’t always break the bank to do so. If you have 30,000 devotion, sometimes it might be better to have two 15,000 kids than one 30,000 kid. Depends on a lot of factors like your rate of devotion accumulation, the age of your current party members, how far you are in the game, etc.

-Changing difficulties on the fly can help with grinding. Need more money and glory? Switch to Keen. Need more time to explore a dungeon? Try Fanatical.

-Consider restarting the game until you get the Heptacolor Springs as one of your starting dungeons. It’s annoying to navigate (so you only want to do it once) and it has the tag that leads to the room that lets you unlock every gate in the game.

-Occasionally a land will pop up where the General Store sells Chimes of Victory (double glory for the fight). Buy them and use them every time before a boss.

-When you get to the crab boss you’re supposed to run away from, don’t run so quickly. Kill it as many times as possible to rope in a heap of devotion and glory. You can do the same infinite loop with most of the other shikigami bosses, as long as you face them without Nueko in your party. Don’t forget to use a Chime of Victory first!

-The Winter Tournament is by far the best place to get glory and devotion. Once you have a few hit-all Secret Arts or some powerful magic spells, it’s time to give it a shot. You get 12,000 glory per round on the easiest difficulty, which is just insane.

Quick final thoughts

-The gameplay was fun, the story not so much. It was just aight. I didn’t hate Nueko but she didn’t add anything to the game.

-Loved the soundtrack. The battle theme is playing through my head even now.

-Loved the parade of monsters you get when you kill the final boss. I liked all the monster designs. The koto-playing cats are my favorite. I like to think they’re the ones playing the koto throughout the game. I should figure out how to get screenshots off the PSTV without using social media so I can show my own screenshots next time.

I love you too, Nueko.

-The god breeding roster is very thin because half the gods are playing around on earth. Even if you beat them up and send them back to heaven, they might come down again anyway before you can breed with them.

-Randomly reshuffling dungeons was a bad idea. Especially since the layouts are randomized as well. Every time a dungeon reshuffles, you have to explore it and unlock shortcuts all over again. I understand that they wanted to keep things fresh, but IMO they should have just had more/deeper dungeons and fewer iterations.

-It’s doubly annoying because you have to beat bosses up to get bits and pieces of story out of them. That was fine in the previous game where they stayed put in their respective dungeons, but now they’re scattered all over the place all the time.

Real final thoughts

I loved OreShika, but overall I didn’t enjoy exploring and fighting as much as I’d hoped. You can’t find the bosses you want to fight when you want to fight them and your dungeon exploration progress is constantly reset without warning. Breeding isn’t as much fun either with so few options available.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the game at all – I did, very much so – but I think the first Ore no Shikabane wo Koete Yuke was the more satisfying experience. Sure it wasn’t as pretty and the soundtrack wasn’t as polished. But the story was more coherent, progression was more logical and straightforward and there was a much higher degree of freedom. That made it easier to play for a longer time, versus this OreShika where you don’t feel like you’ve accomplished anything by the time you finish because there are still onigami like Tokasen running around unpunished.

I don’t suppose they’ll ever make a third game in the series, but if they do I hope they’ll splice together the best of both games to create a true masterpiece. No matter what system they release it on, I’ll be sure to play it.

What’s next

Tsuchiura’s route in La Corda d’Oro 2. I’ve got the PS2 hooked up and everything. It seems like a waste to connect the PS2 just for one short route, so I might do Hihara’s as well while I’m at it. After that I want to do some running and slashing, so… Tokyo Xanadu? Let’s aim for that.

Happy New Year 2018! And lots of resolutions!

Happy New Year, everyone! I had a bit of a mixed 2017, but it was pretty good overall. I’m still here, aren’t I? Here’s praying for even better things in 2018!

Without much further ado, let’s jump straight to my gaming resolutions for 2018. I already mentioned the guiding principle a few posts ago: “It’s enough to play just a little bit of a game.” In other words, it’s enough to just see what a game has to offer, I don’t necessarily have to finish the whole thing. It’s the game developer’s job to make me want to finish their game, not my job to force myself to do it.

The reason I bring this up is because it’s a 100% reversal from my policy in 2017, where I promised to do my best to finish more games. I gave it my best shot, I really did, but I think my game selection was bad to begin with. Though I couldn’t have known how meh Summon Night 5 or Operation Abyss would be when I started them. When it came to the stuff I liked, I blitzed through them in short order. Nayuta no Kiseki, for example. Stella Glow. And OreShika yesterday afternoon. More on that one another day.

So here’s my list of games to try – but not finish unless they deserve it – in 2018:

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Nintendo Switch) – I have to play this somehow, I just have to. Even if there’s nothing else on the Switch I want to play, I just have to make this happen.

Atelier Totori Plus (PSVITA) – The next logical step after Shin Atelier Rorona, which I enjoyed more than I’d expected to. Nothing much to say about this one.

Sakura Taisen 4 (PC) – I meant to find the time to play this last year. Quite looking forward to putting the Tokyo and Paris teams together and watching the fur fly. I’ve thought better of forcing Oogami to pair up with Kanna every time, so the race for his heart is wide open now.

Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse (3DS) – 3DS still has a couple of RPGs I haven’t played, but when it comes to stuff I want to play this is the only one that comes to mind. This, and maybe one of the Etrian Odyssey remakes. Unfortunately my 3DS is suffering from a catastrophic battery failure (I thought it was odd that my brother returned it without prompting) so it will have to wait till I get round to replacing the battery.

Demon Gaze (PSVITA) – For all my dungeon crawling needs. It looks like a cute, colorful skin on top of the usual Experience Inc. games, can’t wait to try it.

Luminous Arc Infinity (PSVITA) – Rest in peace, Imageepoch… Even though they didn’t have anything do with this one and it was done by Felistella. The same guys who ruined Summon Night… But I must play it, for the sake of closure. It’s not like there’s much to ruin about Luminous Arc anyway, though 3 was pretty good.

Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Curry God (PSVITA) – Roguelike! Cute roguelike! About food! I’ve been wanting to play it since the day it was announced. I just hope there’s an Easy mode so I can actually finish a roguelike for a change.

Ys: The Oath in Felghana or Zwei!! or Tokyo Xanadu eX+ – Nayuta no Kiseki was legit my Game of the Year for 2017. I want to try another Falcom ARPG but there are so many that I’m spoilt for choice. I’m leaning towards Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection (I like the look) or Tokyo Xanadu (I like the setting) but nothing’s really pulling me in. I might end up playing something from a completely different company– Aaah!

Phantasy Star Nova (PSVITA) – How could I forget one of the reasons why I wanted a VITA? No need to talk much about this one either, except to wonder forlornly why it was never localized. Sometimes it’s because the game sucks, but that can’t be true of my beloved Phantasy Star, can it? I’ll play it for myself and tell you.

There we have it, 9-11 games to try this year. They’re just guidelines, really. In practice I might end up playing none of these and all of some other games instead. But at least it gives me something to shoot for whenever I’m wondering what to play next.

There’s no edition of “Games that didn’t work out” for 2017. The only games that would go on such a list are Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment  and Black Rock Shooter, and I haven’t quite given up on either one just yet. Especially the latter. If the whole year passes and I haven’t touched them again, I’ll bundle them in with the 2018 edition.

Welp, that’s it from me. Enjoy your day and the rest of 2018!

OreShika update – How do you solve a problem like Nueko? (spoilers)

  1. Last time I said I’d seen enough of OreShika and wanted to try something new. I spent the rest of that day trying to think of what else I’d like to play, but my thoughts kept coming back to OreShika. The art, the music, the atmosphere, all the things I’d left undone and unsaid. I’m not ready to move on after all.

Once the “what am I going to play” question was answered, one more question remained: “How”? How to solve the little logistic problem I raised last time? How to kill Nueko off without putting the rest of my party at risk? The answer hit me out of the blue around 1am: “Why not make it look like a suicide?” >:-) Instead of depending on the benevolence of my enemies, why just make her kill herself? Nueko has several powerful skills that sap her vigor. Put her in the front row with only one backup and let her fight herself to exhaustion, problem solved. My parents must be so proud of the creativity and problem-solving skills I’ve developed from long years of gaming.

Although the plan went off without a hitch, it made me understand once again again the reason fans of the first game have a beef with Nueko. On one hand you have a game about the brevity of life and the pain of loss. Each family member is unique. Each one lives as best as they can and then dies full of regret and unfulfilled dreams, never to be seen again. It hurts, but you try to move on. …And then, on the other hand, you have this character for whom dying is just like a summer vacation. It’s like a Dragonball character wandered into our game by mistake. And she’s not particularly gracious about it either.

She doesn’t even try to fit in with the rest of the family.

Well anyway, I killed her off early, re-raised her a few months later and created a super-team of mighty warriors. The March festival went off so easily I can’t even remember what the boss was like. Some kind of crow, I think. Then the bad guy Seimei captured a princess and I went off to rescue her, also a piece of cake. I confronted Seimei in a tower and beat him, beat another boss and now I have to climb to the top of the Stairway to the Moon to meet the queen of the gods. My party is full of strapping young fighters with great equips and lots of good spells so I expect to get pretty far before needing to rest and regroup.

This seems like a good enough time to try and sort out what we know of the story so far. This will involve some spoilers, hence the warning in the title. It’s a good point to stop reading at if you plan to play OreShika (and I highly recommend that you do so).

1. Hundreds of years  before the story started, a human? demon? named Nueko married a god and had a child with him.

2. The child eventually became Abe no Seimei, who framed our family for failing to protect 7 Instruments of Festivity and had us killed. This was his way of luring Nueko out of heaven.

3. Somebody wearing an oni mask killed baby Seimei at some point. Nueko resurrected him. Now he can’t die any more.

4. Abe’s father created the Instruments as a way of circulating energy between the heavens, the earth and hell. For some reason, Abe’s father was thrown out of heaven and disowned. He was also sealed under the Imperial Palace by Nueko herself for reasons unknown. Seimei’s current goal is to get him out of there and get some answers.

I’d like to get some answers of my own, especially about these points:

  • How does my family come into this? Seimei killed us to lure Kitsuto and Nueko into reviving us, but he could he be so sure they would take the bait?
  • Why does Nueko have amnesia? What did Nueko do that was so good that she became a goddess? How did a normal human/onmyouji have the power to raise the dead? And why was she bound and gagged at the beginning of the game?
  • What did Abe’s father do that was so bad that he was banned from heaven? Even his name is redacted so no one can say it.
  • How come Abe no Seimei can’t die any more? My party was raised by Nueko too, but we still die normally.
  • Seriously, what does my family have to do with any of this? Apparently the answer will turn out to be “Nothing.” The creator Shoji Masuda wanted to make a game about his light novel character Nueko but didn’t think anyone would buy it, so he hijacked Ore no Shikabane wo Koete Yuke 2 instead. He could have done a better job integrating the two stories, IMO. But we’ll see how the story plays out before passing final judgment.

Plans for the rest of the game:

  • Push as far forward as I can with my current party. It will take me a while to get another party this good once I lose them.
  • Take on some onigami and release some gods. The Rite of Union roster in this game is pretty anemic.
  • Explore some dungeons once I can’t move forward any more. I’ve barely explored Ash of Heaven and Hellfire Way.
  • Eventually finish OreShika sometime before Armaggeddon. It’s so much fun that dropping it is not on the cards any more.

The year is almost over, so my next post will probably be my New Year’s Resolutions. Advance spoilers: 1) OreShika. 2) OreShika 3) OreShika, and on and on and on. Happy New Year in advance!