Archive for the ‘Neoromance’ Category

Harutoki Izayoiki

So as I mentioned, playing Ukihashi made me want to try Izayoiki again, and I finally finished Shirogane’s route! Woot!!! Now I have to figure out how to get Tomomori…not tonight though. I need to sleep sometime.

Game figures & Vitamin Y release date

I’ve heard a little about the otakudom of figures before, but never really paid attention – but now I’m searching for more info, because apparently someone will be sellling figures of hachiyou from Harutoki 3! I don’t know if I’d get one, my condo is too small, but I really want to see what they’re like…I’ll report my findings soon!

Also, Vitamin Y has a release date of October 30 – this is the minigame compilation.

Otome Game History 101 – Angelique

Hmm, there doesn’t seem to be much news right now, in the dog days of summer – I don’t know if it’s hot where you are, but it is HOT and HUMID here. For my real job (yeah, strangely enough I don’t support myself on blog postings ) it’s quarter-end soon, and since I’m in finance that means crazy days and tense nights, but everywhere else seems to be in vacation mode, including otome games!

So unfortunately, I don’t know of any news about games, new seiyuu announcements, or even a port *sniff*. So I decided to take a look way way back, to the first otome game ever…Angelique.

Angelique was the foundation of the now extremely popular Neo Romance label from Koei that includes Harukanaru Toki no Naka de and Kiniro no Corda. The first game was simply called ‘Angelique’, and was released on September 23, 1994 for the Super Famicom (Super Nintendo for us English speakers). It was a mix of strategy, simulation, and romance – not unheard of in the Japanese market, but definitely revolutionary – just because it was targeted to GIRLS. Girls don’t play videogames! But apparently, if the product is right, they do.

The plot involved a young woman, Angelique Limoges, who is a nominee for the Queen (of the Cosmos). She is pitted against Rosaria, another beautiful, accomplished young woman, and has to beat her by successfully creating and nurturing her own continent.

Of course, what we’re so familiar with now but what was totally new back then was that as well as the regular game, there was a chance to romance the guys . Angelique, while raising her continent, had the chance to romance one of the guardians, the men who symbolized a natural element in the universe. They were: Light (Julius), Dark (Clavis), Wood(Marcel), Metal (Zephyr), Earth (Ruva), Water(Lumiere), Fire(Oscar), Wind(Randy), and Dreams (Olivier). However, back then there were no voices – this is back in the Dark Ages, remember

The first version with voices came the next year, on December 22, 1995, when NEC Electronics released Angelique Special for the PC-FX system (though it says PC, it was actually a console). A few months later, the game was re-released as ‘Angelique Voice Fantasy’ for both the Super Famicom and as ‘Special’ for the PC, both with voices added. In 1996, Angelique 2 Special for the PC-FX and eventually the Sega Saturn and Playstation was released. A new Queen was introduced here, Angelique Collete, in a very similar game.

Not too much new happened for the series for several years – there was a game called Angelique Duet released in 1998 for the Sega Saturn and Playstation, but it was mostly the same except that you could choose to be either Angelique or Rosario, and there were some friendship events.

In 2000 a completely new game, Angelique Trois (3) was released, for the Playstation 2. In it, Angelique Collete and all the Guardians (and teachers, um, pretty much everyone) were transported to a mysterious universe, Arcadia, to formulate. In addition to the guardians, the player could also have a romance with her teachers or a ‘mystery’ character (Arios), and there were different events depending on the season.

In 2002 Angelique was released for Gameboy Advance with the same content as the Super Famicom game, but with voices. In 2003, another new title was released, Angelique Etoile, where the player is a totally new character who has to start developing a new universe with the help of the guardians and 3 new characters. Then, in 2004, Angelique Duet was released for the Nintendo DS but had no voices (two steps forward, one step back!)

Along with the games, there were anime – the earliest one was Angelique ~Shiroi Tsubasa no Memoire~ from 2000. There was also a fairly successful manga that started in 1996, running in ‘Fantasy DX’ from Kadokawa for 10 volumes until 2003.

My own experience with Angelique started pretty late, when I bought the Angelique Trois. Not in 2000 when it was first released, no, I think I bought it at least 5 years later. It was totally different from what I expected – all I recognized was the whole harem of guys from seeing shitajiki and kinda reading the first two volmes of the manga, so the whole continent-building aspect was new to me. Now I think of it as a primitive SimCity love sim. It’s a lot of fun, even though there are SO MANY GUYS. In Trois alone you have the nine Guardians, 3 teachers, and 3 ‘helpers’. Then in Etoile, which I got later, you have all those plus three new Guardians. OVERLOAD. Hehe.

I think the creators agree with me, because after Etoile they created a completely new game where only the mythology was left. In Neo Angelique, the main character interacts with four main guys, with three or four others. The continent-building was also scrapped in favour of a sort of RPG-type gameplay.

Have you played Angelique? What are your impressions of it?

References:
Several images and info found at: http://www.famicom.biz/

Harutoki 4 Fanart Links

Since I’m on a Harutoki 4 high, I’ve been surfing the net looking at doujinshi and fanart and found some very pretty stuff. The links will take you to the top pages of the circles, then you usually click a banner to get in. Arrrgh, just when I should be getting to sleep…

「Holy Pledge」: http://holypledge.com/ – Click the banner, then click ‘Works”, and then the pic of the pink cross for Haruka 4/otome game pics

「psy」: http://page.freett.com/aotukinanase/ – First click on the banner. then in the left column click ネオロマ under Gallery

「Sassei」: http://sassei.fool.jp/ – Click the banner at the top, then “Illust”, then in the menu on the left pick 遙か４

「Shunya (not sure on the name)」: http://kaeto418.hp.infoseek.co.jp/corda2.html – has manga too. just scroll down and choose “Pict”

Harutoki 4 – Final Impression (minimal or no spoilers)

Well, I just finished Harutoki 4 – all characters and sub-characters, and saw all the ending events.  Here’s my list of favourite endings from most to least:

1. Kazahaya – the most developed, and I love guardian romances
2. Ashvin – partly for the ending and partly because I love his character design
3. Oshihito – made me cry dammit
4. Tooya – there was a lot of potential, but he didn’t say much
5. Sazaki – I think Sazaki has the most straightforward romance
6. Nagi – some cool stuff, but I kept wondering – how did he get involved in the first place?
7. Hiiragi – also cool stuff, I wish we found out more of his background
8. Futsuhiko – he was cluelessly cute

6-8 is kind of random. I felt like there was so much more that could have been explored, but I really like how going through all the stories, including the sub-characters’, you pick up bits and pieces of the whole picture.  Going through them all in as short a time as possible is probably not the best way to do it – but once you start, it’s hard to stop Oh ,and for anyone who hasn’t played yet, there are no more anime scenes, maybe they decided it was either anime or 3D. Still mostly beautiful CGs though, although a couple of the final ones have Chihiro looking like an emotionless doll, which is kinda creepy. The guys all look good and that’s what really matters, right??

I will probably post more with spoilers later, but right now I just have to bask in the glow of completion ^_- And then I can finally concentrate on other things, like other games and adding stuff to the blog!

Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 4 – Part 2 (no spoilers!)

Eheheheh…so I just finished one character (Nagi) and wanted to come and squee – uh, I mean, write a deeper review…ahem, yeah.  So, like some have said, I’m kind of surprised and disappointed at the lack of voice – it only seems to happen at the MOST important parts of the story, and for each character – not even when you get each scale drop, but like, maybe 3 out of 7 events.  Kinda sucky!

But still.  I can’t help but LOVE this game already.  Now I’ve gotten used to the 3D, I’d judge it to be (graphics-wise) in between Final Fantasy 9 and 10 – sorry if you don’t know FF, but I’m a big RPG gamer too, and Harutoki is pretty much an otome RPG, wouldn’t you say?  The proportions are all good, but the movements are not that natural. It’s kind of funny when your party is all standing there and Nagi keeps swaying back and forth, and when Futsuhiko tightens his headband after a battle but actually he’s just pulling air. Even so, the battle stage is pretty cool and I like how everyone has their own little movements – it’s too bad you can’t switch out characters on the fly like you could in 3, but honestly I haven’t lost a battle yet. That might have something to do with my being used to FF and enjoying leveling the characters too I didn’t buy the Neo Angelique full voice because I already had the original, but I might…probably, would buy a full voice version of this game.  Sometimes it’s so long between voiced parts that I forget how characters sound, especially because the characters are so different this time around (like Oshihito, I’m just now getting used to Yuzuru’s voice for him!)

But the story is GOOD. I can tell there’s a lot that I’ll have to play through the rest of the routes to find out, and that’s part of the fun. Since I did Nagi’s route first, who’s kind of the cold type, I didn’t really like some of the choices I had to make Chihiro say, but now I’m playing through Tooya’s and kind of Ashvin’s route, and damn! This girl is cool. And the costumes are so gorgeous.  Oh, and it’s pretty easy to figure out what to do even without a guide – the in-game hints are very good, which is awesome – no need to spoil things for yourself by looking at stuff online.

OK, that’s it for now, kind of short but I want to get back and keep playing! Thank god it’s a holiday weekend here, yay!  And thank you for the welcomes to WordPress, if you have any recs for good plugins or widgets please let me know, I’m a total newb at this!

Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 4

Even though I ordered my Harutoki 4 copy a million years ago, I didn’t order any express shipping for it. Since it came out on the 19th, I expected it to be here by this weekend, but I didn’t get the shipping notice till Monday, so I was kind of worried.  And then I got home on Friday and there was no package notice on my mailbox; waah. BUT! When I opened the mail, lo and behold, there was a little bubble package stuffed in my tiny mailbox! And there was much rejoicing and singing…the concierge seemed a little weirded out, but I’m sure he’ll get over it.

I’ve now played it for about 7 hours (getting ready to do another marathon), and here are some thoughts so far:

Music: Still awesome. Neoromance definitely has the edge on good background music in otome games right now.

Voices: Interesting – I already knew that the hachiyou had very different styles this time around, and the two hachiyou who the main character knows from childhood were switched as well. It’s very interesting to hear Miki Shin’ichirou be the smooth-tongued flatterer type, and Inoue Kazuhiko be the dependable protector type. I haven’t even met two of the hachiyou yet, but I can’t wait!

3D: Hmm, well it’s only(?!) been 11 years since Final Fantasy went 3D, so we’re catching up in technology.  And Koei has learned from the last decade so the execution is way better than FFVII – the people are regularly-sized, and their outfits are pretty detailed in the field screen. The battles screen is pretty neat as well.

Battles/Monsters: Since there are no onryou yet, the fights are against ‘aramitama’, or gods (shinto-type gods, not major gods like in Greek mythology) that have become violent. There are some familiar characters here, like youko, and some unfamiliar ones, or at least, ones that look a lot yuckier in 3d than drawn – especially that pink lump that resembles a brain on steroids.

Overall: It’s great so far, I’m enjoying it. I hope the fighting doesn’t get too tedious, although since I’m used to Final Fantasy grinding, I’m pretty sure it won’t bother me. And thankfully, Koei has kept the chapter-style navigation, where you can go back and redo a chapter without redoing the whole game after it, which is possibly the best innovation in otome games EVER.

See you when I next come up for air!