She’s all right, I guess. I did her route because she guilted me into it by being so nice to me last time, but I’m not that into her. Maki is the poor man’s Satsuki-sempai – average, but not quite good enough at anything. The girls in Tokimeki Memorial 4 seem quick to fall in love, but Maki was especially easy, particularly in the face of my almighty stats. Her CGs were easy to get too. I got almost all of them naturally.
The developers often try to include at least one stereotypical “nice girl” in this kind of game, and this time it’s Maki: cheerful, sweet, fishes for compliments by putting herself down frequently, can’t afford to go to a proper hair salon, can only afford a few outfits, etc etc. One day she’s like “I wanna be a nurse!” then later she’s like, “No I suck I can’t be a nurse,” then you encourage her and she goes “Okay I’m gonna be a nurse” and that’s the full extent of her character development. Not that Itsuki Maeda had any development either, but Maki’s supposed to be the “main” girl. I had expectations!
The only exciting thing that happened on Maki’s route had nothing to do with the girl herself. I’d been fiddling with skills for a while, not taking them too seriously. I put on the all-night cramming skill (一夜漬け) that lets you raise your humanities-science-art skills like crazy the night before a test. I also put on a skill that randomly gives you a massive increase in the stat you’re working on (女神の加護). It rarely activates so I barely gave it a thought.
Then, one fateful night, BAM! they activated together! Science and art went up by 60 (!!) each, but that was child’s play compared to humanities: 288 to 520 in one night! That’s two to three years of grinding in ONE SINGLE NIGHT! It took me like a minute to believe what my eyes were telling me. H-how w-what b-b-but– it must be a bug! I saved, turned the game off, put it back on and it was still there. Suddenly Tsugumi and Satsuki were falling all over themselves to please me and the rest of the game was easy-mode. I’ve been trying to reproduce the lucky incident ever since, with no success. Maybe it really was a fluke.
Back to Maki, there’s nothing wrong with her, but there’s nothing right about her either. All that friendly supportiveness gets boring really quickly, which is why I can’t wait to date some of the more prickly types like Tsugumi. My stamina for this game has dropped even further, so I’ve decided to drop Kai, science girl and Yanagi. My final list is Satsuki-sempai (currently working on), Rui (she’s a funny, funny girl. Her Valentine’s Day event is priceless!), Tsugumi (‘cos I like her) and Rizumi (just because).
Should take me another week or two, then I’ll be ready to move on. I’m thinking of either finishing up Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari (urghhh) or starting something new entirely. Speaking of which, I tried to start TWEWY the other day, but four frames later some anorexic kid with a bad dye job told me to get the hell outta his face, so I did. …This is not going to end well.
Ahh it would be nice if I knew Japanese but I guess I can only play patched games… it’s still fun reading your blog though, you’re an entertaining writer
about the world ends with you, I tend to be very impatient, but this game was really enjoyable, it’s also not very long (I didn’t go after a perfect game though) no random encounter is always a plus for me, and the battle system is pretty fun even though I thought it was frantic at first. I also don’t remember any annoying characters =]
Start learning now. Even if it takes you 10 years (which it probably won’t), most of these games will still be untranslated by then. And you’ll get to play more of the great new games that come out in Japan every year.
TWEWY is short? Thank goodness. I’ll do my best to see it to the end.
Yes, I need to put my foot down and just do it! How did you learn Japanese if I may ask?
Yup, 3 partners with 7 missions each.
Mostly self-taught, some classes. The classes were fun and I made lots of friends, but the bulk of my progress came from learning and practising by myself.