The Conveni DS – Sexist? Or realistic? Either way it’s boring

the conveni ds coverThe Conveni DS is a convenience store simulator developed by Hamster and published by Nippon Ichi Software. Like most Nippon Ichi Software games it is a disappointment through and through, though I did derive some fleeting enjoyment right at the beginning before I realized just how bad it was.

The problem is that, as the game’s subtitle (“Management Training for Adults”) claims, the game is supposed to simulate the day to day running of a convenience store. However instead of making you play the manager of such a store, you’re rather set up as the owner of a company that manages a bunch of Lawson franchises. What that means is that you set up the franchise, pick the merchandise, hire a manager and some workers and then basically sit back and watch the money roll in. The Conveni is the most boring game I’ve played all year because there’s simply nothing to do once you’ve set things up right. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Fuurai no Shiren DS 2 – I’m not really into postgame content

shiren ds 2-3I finished the Hole of Tonfan dungeon! It was a pretty fun dungeon, now that I look back on it. Your first few runs will always be devoted to getting Nfuu to eat the best meats you can find – first finding out what those best meats are and then obtaining some and feeding it to him. Piggo meat is great, the healing bunny meat helps a lot and my life has been saved a few times by the meat that cuts enemy ATK or HP in half.

After that it’s all up to your luck. The run I finally finished was one where I was lucky not to encounter a monster house. Those are hellish because Nfuu always insists on staying and fighting no matter what, and he usually gets himself killed. I was also lucky enough to pick up lots of mamel meat on level 1, which I used liberally on the enemies lower down. And I was lucky again when killing those transformed mamels gave me back the meat half the time, letting me reuse them at all. After that it was all a matter of arriving on floor 15 and I was done. Yay! It took me a while to believe I’d actually cleared that dungeon. ^_^ Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Last Bullet DS review – Likeable characters, laughable plot (spoilers)

Last bulletLast Bullet is a visual novel/sniping game developed and published by Furyu Corporation. I know them better as dungeon-crawler developers, but I recently learned that they occasionally dabble in otome games as well, so I decided to give Last Bullet a shot. And you know, it was actually pretty good. I’m not a fan of visual novels in general, but this was a fast-moving dialogue-based game where even the bad guys were likeable, plus the monotony was broken up by frequent sniping missions and the whole game is only 5 hours or so long, so I had a pretty good time in general.

Since Last Bullet is 90% story and I plan to spend some time in this review pointing out just how ridiculous said story is, I’m going to have to do a lot of spoiling in this post. If you were planning to play the game (and it’s not bad at all so you might as well) you might want to look away now. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Elvandia Story – Light route completed!

elvan04What better way to welcome my PS2 back to the land of the living than with a game that rightly belongs in the land of the dead? Finishing the light route on Elvandia Story means I have now cleared all three routes in the game and achieved 100% completion, more or less. And it only took a total of about 35 hours to do it too. If the game was worth finishing I would be quite proud of myself right now.

But I’ve already written a lot about how terrible Elvandia Story is, so I’m not going to retread old ground here. As usual Ashley was overpowered from start to finish, so I mostly solo’ed the game with him except for the few missions with mandatory party members. It didn’t take very long with Ashley gunning for the boss like a cruise missile, and to the game’s credit most of the maps are quite small so it only takes a few turns to  win. I would never have made it through 3 runs of this game if it wasn’t for that. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 3 – A harem full of ex-boyfriends

harukanaru toki no naka de 3_frontHarukanaru Toki no Naka de 4 was such a mess story-wise that I feared the worst when I picked 3 up, but it’s actually pretty good. Good enough that I actually contemplated going for 100% completion, which would be the first time I’ve ever fully completed an otome game. And I would have done it too if I hadn’t posted about it last time. Somehow writing about things I’m going to do makes me feel like I’ve done them already, so that’s the end of that.

Story: Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 3 has a story that’s easy enough to follow once you’ve spent a few minutes reading a summary of The Tale of the Heike on Wikipedia. I’m not a fan of games based on real-life historical characters, but I make an exception every once in a while. It helps that I liked all the characters too, even the ‘bad’ guys. The main character (I named her Akane Tendo) gets sent back in time to an alternate dimension where it is currently 1180-ish. There’s a war going on between the Genji, the good guys, and the Taira, who are the bad guys and are using zombies to try and take over Japan.

Akane and her childhood friend Yuzuru end up on the side of the Genji, where she discovers she’s actually the priestess of the white dragon. Masaomi, their other childhood friend and Yuzuru’s brother, ends up with the Taira. And then there’s all kinds of back and forth action that mainly consists of Masaomi trying to use his knowledge of history to bring victory to the Taira while Akane uses her hax priestess powers and a magical scale that can wind back time to thwart the Taira’s ambitions and bring victory to the Genji while chasing bishies at the same time because it’s that kind of game. Do please go on, this is most interesting →