I think the artist for this game,

Each guy has a clothes style, colour, and date spots he likes. Asking him to these spots will be more successful, and you’ll get tokimeki points for wearing the right clothes (you also get them for wearing what’s in fashion according to the computer report).

Ruka:
Colour – Aqua blue
Clothes – Natural
Places – Game centre, castle (天守閣）, aquarium (dolphin show)

Kouichi:
Colour – Orange
Clothes – Vivid
Places – Bowling, museum (vintage bike exhibit), Rinkai Park (煉瓦道)

Arashi:
Colour – Blue
Clothes – Active
Places – Skating, zoo (alpacas), castle (天守閣）, farm

Shiina:
Colour – Pink
Clothes – Sexy
Places – Game centre, zoo (dog&cat), amusement park (merry go-round)

Amano:
Colour – Green
Clothes – Cute
Places – Skiing, sea (winter walk), event hall (comedy show)

Seiji:
Colour – Purple
Clothes – Chic
Places – Mt. Habataki (fall), planetarium, aquarium

Let me know if this is useful, because I could do a whole series of little posts just on GS3 tips! ^_^

The art is by the Kanuchi and Death Connection artist, Kiriya Takashi.

All I have to say on the pic is, I love men in uniforms ^_^!

PS: I’m playing Xechs right now, and the advisor guy is voiced by Guido from Lucian Bee’s, and it’s making me want to buy the LB fandisks!! I keep expecting him to call me ‘baby’! G, daisuki~!! Ahem.

The main character, Kurou Nadeshiko, is a 6th-grade student and kind of a sheltered rich girl. She lives a normal, fairly happy life, and has a childhood friend Riichirou. But she starts having strange dreams almost every night of a desolate world, with a black sky cut across with red and blue.

One day Nadeko and Riichirou are summoned by their homeroom teacher, Kaga Akira. There are also six other students there who are generally known as troublemakers. The teacher tells them all that as troublemakers, they have to do a special assignment.

Forced to work together, the students work on the assignment slowly and with difficulty, uncovering the truth along the way.

Then, a mysterious person, who Nadeshiko has seen in her dreams, appears, and the wheels of fate begin turning…

The art is pretty…but 6th-graders? That’s like…11 year olds. And there’s at least one character that’s younger.  I probably won’t pre-order this, though I might get it later.

Anyhoo, here’s what I wrote as I first played it.

The first thing I see is a garish stained glass border of clashing and psychedelic colours….then a simple melody starts up, which reminds me of the theme in early Final Fantasy games when you visit the ‘exotic’ desert country…or am I thinking of the Tetris music…hm. OK, now the opening song starts, the visuals are much prettier, and it’s a standard J-rock, which I can get behind.
After starting a new game, I pick a name and there are some intro story screens. This is a world with gods, where they are born from people’s prayers, and exist until those prayers stop.
But now, people have stopped believing, and miracles are disappearing…
Now another screen, a sandy desert and a silhouette. “A young woman walks through the desert, her hair dirty with sand, but she simply walks silently as if on a pilgrimage.
The wind blows. Sand dances around and obscures the young woman’s vision. Th sand veils the world. But still, she walks on, looking into the distance with beautiful eyes.”

Suddenly there’s a loud boom! and we get the first line of dialogue from the woman, and the lovely illusion disappears. Aspashia complains that she’s tired of this desert. Heh. She continues with a self-introduction, describing herself as the princess of EVUU, the kingdom of gods, and claims a long list of ladylike accomplishments, before someone (a narrator?) interrupts her asking who she’s talking about. Then she explains that she’s been walking the desert for two months without food or water, but is at her limit, and slowly falls to the ground, starting to get covered up by the sand.
The narrator cuts in again, bringing the story back to when Aspashia lived in EVUU. Aspashia explains, with some snark from the narrator, that EVUU is basically the land of gods/djinn, and is made from magic. You can’t do anything there without magic, and so one day when Aspashia woke up, having lost all magical ability for some reason, she couldn’t do anything, even get out of her room. She was trapped there for a week and almost starved until her father, the king Sazan, came and found her. He tells her that she lost all her magic because her mother (who died after giving birth) was human. This is news to Aspashia, who isn’t too happy about it. He also says that she’s used up all her magic, and unless she wants to stay cooped up in one castle room the rest of her life, there’s only one way to get it back. She has to go live among humans, get close to them, and grant their wishes. And then Aspashia promptly starts falling through the air. Sazan says she’ll land in about three hours, and after remembering that she has no magic to help her, summons a lamp djinn, Unbara, to help her out.

And finally we come back to the first scene, where Aspashia gets mad at Unbara (the mystery narrator) for telling her when she first landed that the nearest settlement was only 10 days away. Unbara says he didn’t want her to give up, but says they should be close now. Over the next hill, she finally spies her destination, the castle town Kingdom.

That’s the intro (which you can skip after the first time) to Desert Kingdom, and the rest of the game is pretty much in line with it in atmosphere. Aspashia and Unbara often trade banter, and often make reference to the game mechanics, sometimes very plainly. It’s quite fun, and I love how Aspashia sometimes literally breaks out of her avatar square (you’ll see what I mean if you play).

I went through Vii’s route first, the mysterious assassin who’s voiced by Ryou from Hiiro no Kakera (ok, Nomiya Kazunori). The first thing I was happy to find was that he was not the typical brooding type – in fact, none of the characters felt unoriginal, which, after playing so many otome games, is surprising.
The game itself is pretty simple, you go around granting regular people’s wishes (by using a roulette wheel) to slowly build up power, and try to get closer to one of the main characters to grant their big wish and regain the rest of the power you need to become a full Mashin again.

A couple things I wasn’t too impressed by were how short the story felt (Vii’s at least) and the CGs. They were well drawn, I just wished they were different – more closer angles or something. For example, there’s one in Vii’s story where Aspashia hugs him while she’s standing and he’s (I think kneeling). But the point-of-view is set near the ground behind her, so you’re looking up at the back of Aspashia’s bare legs, and Vii’s face is so small it’s hard to read his expression. It was odd.

I’ve just finished Sharon’s (CV: Masakaze Masaya) route, and his CGs were better, but it still seemed a little short on story.
I think it would be improved by having just a little more development in relationships in between the character intros and setups, and getting into their plots. Hm, I could be being too picky though, I’d like to know what other people think if you’ve played it. It could also be better on other routes, especially Sera’s since he’s the first one. I’ll have to report back.

However, overall I am enjoying it a lot; there’s not much gameplay though really, it’s really to fill in the blanks between the intro and entering someone’s route. And there’s not only one “mystery” character (who is not a mystery at all, but you have to do several routes to get him), but another one where you have to finish all the others first! I’m such a sucker for these, I think I’ll be spending some time this weekend finishing this for those routes…

Hiiro no Kakera #3: Well, if you’ve played the original a lot, you kind of have to take a step back and pretend that you didn’t get an ending with anybody. It’s fine, just a little hard if you really got into one particular storyline. The story in this one is quite good, just like the original, although (of course) it uses most of the same backgrounds and designs.

~Motto Sweet~ Gakuensai no Ouji-sama: If you don’t have the original PS2 version, I’d say definitely get this. Without even knowing the characters (though now I do, having watched many…many hours of Prince of Tennis) it was fun. Not very dramatic, and not sweetly romantic (whatever the title says), this is a pretty fun game for otome game fans. Considering the number of characters, the value of the game is good pretty much any way you slice it. 43 characters, about 50 dollars…yeah, there’s no way this isn’t a good deal. You could argue that there’s not much of a storyline, but that’s not the point – the fun part is getting to know ( or know more, for devotees of the comic or anime) more about the characters, and seeing their interactions.

Last Escort ~Club Katze~: The only one that’s not portable! I’ve finished two routes so far, and I’d say if you liked the previous entries in the Last Escort series, you’ll like this one – still good character writing, and ok storylines (though the guy hiring you as an advisor seems a bit random after a while?) I like how you can only make one thing per day off, and I don’t miss the whole auction feature which was in #2. The art is definitely different, but I was quite fine with it after accepting the fact that all the guys had hips the same width as their shoulders – what can I say, I’m quite shallow and usually I prefer the inverse triangle type…

I think those are the most recent games I’ve gotten – I’ve pre-ordered Desert Kingdom and am quite excited about that; other than that, I’m most excited for Xechs and Nise no chigiri (I’m not totally sure why, maybe I’m just a sucker for historicals?).

I must say though, it looks great on the PSP – very clean and crisp. I also got Dear Girl Stories ~Hibiki~ at the same time, so I’m kind of comparing it to the DS as well. By the way, apparently DGS doesn’t really have any romance in it – d’oh! It’s just a stat-raising game with some almost-romantic-but-not-quite moments in it.

I also got some new magazines, and ooh good stuff in them! Girl’s Style came with an 8-page book about Kazukiyone and Hakuouki, as well as Hakuouki bookmarks and Starry Sky stickers! It’s probably because there’s no CD or DVD-ROM.

I didn’t even realize that Starry Sky got animated, but um yeah, it is! Haha. Girl’s Style also had info on the PSP versions, which will have several additional scenes, backgrounds, and other changes (one is that you can choose to show the heroine’s face, which is good, but sounds creepy that she didn’t have one before )

Storm Lover had some info as well, it will not only have routes leading up to a relationship, but will be about maintaining the romance or breaking up if you fail, and maybe even getting back together later! Interesting.

There’s also an article on the game system and some of the scenes in Xechs, it seems kinda complicated so I think I’ll post on that later.

Oh, and Mahoutsukai to Goshujin-sama has a release date! It’s set for July 31.

• There’s a post on Kotaku talking about a possible new law in Osaka (Japan’s second biggest city) regulating depictions of underage sex, including that in BL manga and games. Ignoring Kotaku’s simplistic explanation of why BL is popular, I pretty much agree with their opinion that it’s more of a political plower play than actual moral disapproval. I hope that it doesn’t go through, since I don’t believe in limiting freedom of speech when it involves fictional depictions of characters unless it’s hate speech.
• The Hakuouki PS3 site has a little about what’s new in the PS3 game. One of the new features is AAS (active animation system) – small movements of the characters during dialogue screens, e.g. breathing movements. I thought the breathing was pretty good, but the first pic (who is that btw?) put me off – it looked like his face was moving up and down on his head!!! Creepy. But I’m hoping it won’t look like that in the game, lol.
• The Natsuzora game is listed as a time loop adventure, renai isn’t mentioned – so it may not be a true otome game.
• Starry Sky is coming to the PSP! ~spring~ will come out June 24th

anyhoo, there are a couple new games announced this week from Otomate and D3P.

The first, Natsuzora no Monologue, is set for the PS2, seems somewhat like a light novel, in the example screens the text covers most of the space available. This makes me less interested in it, as I’m not a fan of light novels, although I guess this has voice and character pics too so it’s not like a regular light novel.

It’s based on a time loop, and set in a town near the sea. The heroine’s name is Ogawa Aoi, and she has amnesia. She joined the chemistry club at school, but it’s being cancelled.
July 29 is the day before it’s supposed to be disbanded, but on that day, she hears sound from a 30-year-old skyscraper in town called ‘Tree’ (the description says the building sings), and the time loop begins. One major decision is that you can choose to escape the time loop, or stay in it.

This setup reminds me of Sorayume’s final route, it will be interesting to see how they treat it.

D3’s new title, Ishin Renka Ryouma Gaiden seems like it might be an alternate history from its Bakumatsu Renka titles, which were great but (since they followed known history closely) could be somewhat…depressing (yes, I cried sometimes, it was sad!!). It seems the story is based on Sakamoto Ryouma. The platform and dates are still a mystery.

C’est tout for tonight! I’ve been busy with other stuff, but I have some posts in draft about the new Moujuutsukai game, and I think I should edit and re-publish what I wrote a million years ago about Mizu no Senritsu 2….