La Corda d’oro – Yunoki true ending and Hihara date ending GET!

02_kazuki_hiharaI’ve been playing a lot of La Corda d’oro lately, but not much else. Oh yeah, and I also finished Ouendan for like the 20th time. Ouendan 3DS when?

Yunoki’s true ending was quite easy. Just stalk him nonstop and earn lots of bravo points and it all works out somehow. I only had 863 rivalry from him going into the final selection, but I guess winning both that and the final prize were enough to tip him over the 1000 mark. There’s nothing special about his true end vs. a date end except the true ending is animated (sorta) and has more scenes. Yunoki turns out to be an annoying, bullying jerk, and I don’t recall any indication that he was really in love with Bolo Yu – or with anyone but himself – so I don’t why I bothered getting his best ending.

Hihara I liked a little more. He was a decent guy, and at least he blushes when he starts to like you more. Unfortunately despite my best stalking efforts, and despite getting both his love and rivalry points to 1000 I still failed to get his true ending. Maybe it’s because I never gave him presents? But I’m pretty sure presents are 100% optional, so what gives? Ugh, too tired to think about it. Date ending is fine, we’ll go with that.

Now, at long last, I think I’m finally ready to play something new, I just can’t decide what. I’ll probably pick up where I left off in Wild Arms 5. Or maybe not. *yaaawn* so sleepy. I’ll sleep on it and decide tomorrow.

Elvandia Story solo run – Dark route (spoilers)

img_0I did say I wanted to play something crappy, didn’t I? I also felt like playing an SRPG. And not just that, but I wanted something tried and proven to be horrible but not too horrible (which ruled out Hoshigami). My choices were either Tactical Guild or Elvandia Story and since I’ve already finished all three TG routes, ES it was.

As I mentioned in my last post on Elvandia Story, there are three routes in the game: Light, Dark and True. True is the “mankind needs no gods” ending where you purge the continent of the menace of gods once and for all. That’s the ending I unwittingly got last time. I don’t even remember what happened after I beat the gods, but it wasn’t a bad ending IIRC. Which is all right, but a bad game would be best crowned with a bad ending, don’t you think? That’s why I chose to play the Dark route this time. This was accessed easily enough by having the right character (Valmon) stand in the right place (behind everyone else) in the right chapter (chapter 6). Good luck knowing that without a FAQ, btw. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

La Corda d’oro – Tsuchiura GET!

ryotaro tsuchiura2I got Tsuchiura’s date ending, at least. A date ending is a slightly inferior but much easier to get ending that only requires about 600 Love Points. The ultimate end would be the ‘perfect’ ending, but the requirements are a pain. Not only do you need 1000 Love Points and 1000 Rival Points but you also need to view several randomly occurring events for each potential suitor or you can kiss the ending good bye.

That’s why although I would have loved to get Tsuchiura’s perfect ending, I’m not going to go back and give it another try. Maybe later in the future, but not any time soon. Stat raising + event hunting just became too much trouble after a while. For example, raising your sadness stat is supposed to help with getting Tsuchiura, but it seems you have to raise it a LOT before it makes a blip on his Rival radar. That’s weeks of spamming the same interpretations over and over again on top of all the regular practice I have to do. Furthermore, despite all my efforts at speaking constantly with Ryo, I only managed to trigger 3 CGs by the end. The Japanese FAQs suggest that some events are time dependent, e.g. before selection X or Y. Other events are stat dependent, i.e. you have to have X love points and Y rival points. And the only way to know all this? FAQ your way through or buy the strategy guide. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Wild Arms 5 – Shelved for not being bad enough

Wild_Arms_5_USI should have been playing WA4 by now, but my PS2 had another one of its fits and decided not to play it, so Wild Arms 5 it is. I’ve played an hour of it and finished the prologue. It’s a good game, so far. It doesn’t have as many immediately off-putting puzzles as Wild Arms 2 did, and the Hex battle system took me all of 5 seconds to get the hang of. The whole Hex thing seems like an unnecessary addition that I will almost certainly tire of before the game is up, but right now it’s not bothering me too much. Character-wise Vyse, Aika and Fina Dean, Rebecca and Avril are okay enough. Generic plucky hero, his generic prickly childhood friend/not-girlfriend, generic mysterious girl with amnesia. Some games make the formula work. It’s all about what they do with them and with the story from here on out.

Why am I shelving it, then? To put it simply, I’m not in the mood for a ‘decent’ RPG. It’s all about timing, and right now I feel like playing something either very, very good or very, very bad. I don’t know about the former, but I have some ideas from Idea Factory for the latter (dear, sweet Idea Factory) that will prime my mental pump and prepare the way for me to play more normal fare like Wild Arms 5.

Since it’s very early days yet I probably shouldn’t say anything, but I’m going to note two early problems with WA5 regardless. Problem 1: The opening theme pissed me off. I don’t know about 3 and 4, but Wild Arms 1 and 2 had fantastic opening themes, so good they literally made me break out in goosebumps. Fast forward to 5 and… what? Generic J-Pop? Nana Mizuki? Who what where? Oh, I know who Nana Mizuki is and she’s not fit to lick the boots of a Wild Arms opening theme, okay? Urgghhh… You know, I was wondering why they waited so long to play the opening theme and run the credits, but now I’m glad they held it back for an hour. If they’d played it immediately I would have thrown the controller and pissed on the PS2 in protest. The BGM and battle themes are great as usual though, so that helps.

Problem two: the voice acting. Once I resume I’m also going to have to mute the voice-acting henceforth. I can’t stand Dean’s and Rebecca’s voices. Dean is too ‘cheerful little boy’ and Rebecca is too ‘shrieking harridan’ for my tastes. If you’re wondering why I’m going to mute the VAs here even though I endured 40+ hours of unquestionably worse acting in Arc Rise Fantasia, again it boils down to the “not quite horrible enough” thing. ARF has to be heard to be believed. WA5 should be seen, not heard.

That aside, it seems like a game I’m going to like. I’ll come back to it in… June-ish? July-ish? Quite soon, once I’m desperate to play something good again.

La Corda d’oro – Forever alone! (spoilers)

kiniro no corda coverMy valiant pursuit of otome games with actual gameplay continues! Not that I won’t ‘play’ otome visual novels, and not that there aren’t some very good ones out there, but when I pick up a handheld or a controller, I want to play something, not read for 10 hours. And so it is that I find myself trying almost any otome game that promises even a hint of gameplay, which brings me at last to La Corda d’oro, a.k.a Kiniro no Corda.

The story

The Main Character – I wanted to name her Bolo Yeung but it was too long so her name is Bolo Yu – is a regular student in an academy split into a regular and a musical department. Bolo is roped into taking part in a music competition because she can see a fairy. The fairy gives her a magical violin and a musical score and sets her loose on the musical world. And if she can win the hearts of her fellow bishies in the process, all the better!

It’s not bad as far as otome premises go. I mean some games don’t even bother, they just plop you down and let you chase guys for three years. The only issue I had was one of guilt. I felt kinda bad pretending to be competing when I was actually using a magical violin. The other contestants are so passionate, so hardworking and here is Bolo just blatantly cheating her way through the contest and daring anyone to call her out on it. Do please go on, this is most interesting →