Review – Sangoku Rensenki

Sangoku Rensenki was originally a PC game, the first ever put out by publisher Daisy². When I first saw some pics for it, I thought it looked cute, but figured it would be one of those quiet releases that mostly get ignored, especially after it was delayed a couple of times.

To my surprise and joy, not only was it released successfully, but it steadily got really good reviews, despite still getting minimal press, and was consistently on the list for most-wanted to be adapted for consoles. It finally was adapted for the PS2, and will soon be released for the PSP as well. I wasn’t able to get a copy until I went to Japan in October, and I’m finally playing it now – I thought I needed to have a good chunk of time to get into it, and I was right.

What’s it about? Well, it’s a time travel story, normal high school girl gets transported to chaotic era with lots of attractive men. Sounds pretty familiar. The specifics are that Hana, the heroine, is working on a history assignment when an old book about the Three Kingdoms (ancient China) sucks her back in time, I think to AD207. She gets picked up by one warlord, Gentoku, but throughout the game is kidnapped by Moutoku, the current most successful warlord, stays with the last major warlord Chuubou, and also goes even further back in time for a bit and sees the origin of the current situation.

The first time through, you can’t “win” anybody, Hana has to go through the story trying to figure out why she’s there and what she wants to do. Unlike many other time-travel/AU stories, Hana isn’t a legendary priestess and her arrival wasn’t foretold; most people don’t even know that she’s from another world, just that she’s foreign. When she first arrives, a voice tells her to go meet Gentoku and tell him that she’s an apprentice of Koumei, a scholar and strategist. That’s how she gets treated as a guest. The book she read comes through with her, and when she tries to read about what’s going to happen, it’s blank. That is, until she figures out what she wants to happen, and then the book will show how that could work.

I think the game is excellent in a few ways that aren’t common – first, Hana not being expected or treated as a “savior” until she proves herself (by using the book to figure out strategies). Even then, she’s just respected as an advisor, she’s not expected to do any magic or anything. Second, I found that her reactions are very relatable – the first time she’s in the field of war and witnesses people dying, partially due to her own strategy, she’s shocked and almost can’t handle it. Afterwards, it takes her a long time to reconcile what she’s doing and come to grips with the deaths that war causes, which is totally realistic for a young teenager who’s never seen violence up close and is totally unused to war. She continues to struggle throughout the game with moral questions like whether it’s right for her to help with strategies that might cause large casualties for the other side. It’s also really nice how the warlords all have their own moral code – for example, Gentoku is very strict, and will never take existing land from a present lord or heir (this agrees with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms apparently). Hana has to try and stop the war while dealing with everyone’s competing principles, which I thought was much more realistic than many other stories where once someone is convinced, they do whatever the hero/heroine suggests.

Also, the romances so far have been really light-handed but good, and in Gentoku’s route, pretty wrenching. It’s not really angsty but the situation was just…argh, hard to describe except that sometimes I really felt like skipping to the end because I couldn’t take it, but it was totally worth it in the end. Miki Shinichirou sounded more agonized than I remember hearing him for a long time, and it was awesome.

Gentoku

There’s also a bonus that I adore during the credits of each route – it shows extra scenes around important storylines where you get to see the guy’s side of it. It’s really great, and I’m glad that it’s shown after everything. There are even CGs just for the credits!

While playing through, I kept trying to find exactly what it was that made this game so good (because it’s good, it’s very good). What makes me want to play through again and again, getting different routes, even though I skip through a bunch of the strategy when they talk about tactics and generals and old Chinese place names? I think in the end, it’s the characterization, of Hana and everyone else. Not only do you have interesting romanceable characters, but lots of minor characters get enough details that they’re sympathetic as people and not just cliches or cardboard placeholders. When I first went back in time the second time and realized it was before the main story (so none of the romanceable characters are around), I was annoyed because I thought it was just a distraction from the main story. But the people you meet there are important in some of the routes, and they’re all memorable, and honestly it was really cool how the writers established how different the atmosphere was in the area just 10-20 years before the main story because of the different political situation.

SO, to make a long story short, I hugely recommend Sangoku Rensenki! Now I’ve gotta go, I have a warlord to romance…

Starry Sky comic in English

What the bleep, this was set to publish on Friday, in fact it still says publish on Jan 6. >.<;; Sorry for the delay!

The second straight post on English releases, is this a sign of what's to come in 2012??

Anyways, I might be the last to know (I am sadly late on English news), but DMP Publishing is releasing the Starry Sky comic! Volume 1 comes out in April.

Apparently its genre is shonen (…lol).

(sorry for the shortness of the recent posts, this thrice-weekly schedule is hard! But I’m almost done routes in Angelique, Beyond the Future, and one other game to put up as reviews)

Hakuouki Update

Hakuouki‘s English release date is quickly approaching, and there are some exciting things to report! Hakuouki is pretty much the first big-name otome game to be released in English widely, and there are many good things about it: it’s freakin’ gorgeous, it is going to keep the original Japanese(THANK GOD), and look, it’s cheap!

Normal edition: $29.99! Holy cow, for someone like me used to Japanese prices this is amazing for a PSP game.

Limited Edition: Only $39.99! It includes a 72-page artbook (very nice, as the art for Hakuouki is freakin’ gorgeous), and a soundtrack CD. I don’t really remember what the music is like. I’d rather have a drama CD, but considering it would be in Japanese, I can understand why they didn’t include one.

Hakuouki is set for a Valentine’s Day release (very cute!) and I am seriously considering having a party for it, or a podcast or something.

That’s it for today, sorry it’s short!

Beyond the Future – Intro

I got Beyond the Future -Fix the Time Arrows today, which I was really excited about, partially because it’s on the PS3 and I hoped it might be an RPG. I was wrong about that (oh well), but I thought I’d tell the story of the intro so far. I’ve played about 6 hours now, and still am missing two characters from my party, so I consider the intro pretty long.

Beyond the Future is about the gods of a certain world. Adonis (not that one) created the world, and his first wife whose name I can’t remember sacrificed her body to make the continent. Then each of their six children became the patron god of each major area.

The heroine Lilith is a novice at a temple for the first wife god, the goddess of love, and her fairy friend Camyu (CV: Suzuki Yuuto) has been with her her whole life. One morning her temple is attacked by a strange magical beast. An evil angel with black wings appears and tries to kill her, but a swordsman she just met, Kirite (CV: Sakurai Takahiro) saves her. While they’re fighting, a knight named Nayuta (CV: Fujiwara Yuuki) shows up as well. They manage to drive the black-winged man away, and Lilith receives a mysterious sceptre in the process from a strange voice that only she hears. Right after, a strange atmosphere envelops Lilith and Kirite, and Camyu realizes that someone is trying to teleport them somewhere. He and Nayuta follow them, and they all end up in a field far far away.

When discussing everything that’s happened, Nayuta says that as the captain of the White Lily Knights who works for the head priestess of Ingrid, one of the six cities, he’s been sent to bring Lilith to Ingrid because the head priestess had a vision that Lilith was going to destroy the world. Kirite says that he also got an assignment from Ingrid to bring Lilith, but adds that when they asked him (he’s a mercenary), they said Lilith didn’t have to be brought in alive.

Although Lilith has no idea what they’re talking about, she agrees to go with them and clear up whatever misunderstanding this is. So the group of four head to Ingrid, stopping in another major city Danis, on the way. The sceptre gets stolen, and in chasing the thief, Lilith is helped out by a confident young man named Sou (CV: Yoshino Hiroyuki). Later they discover that he’s a fighter who’s in way too much debt for gambling, and it works out that he helps them get the sceptre back while they get him out of debt. He also decides to join them on their journey to Ingrid.

Finally they get to Ingrid and Nayuta and Lilith visit the main temple. Nayuta argues on Lilith’s behalf but the head priestess is sure that her vision and the voice she heard was from Ingrid, and that Lilith is a witch who must be killed to save the world.

Lilith is locked up, and Nayuta lets her out the night before she’s supposed to be killed by fire, but he refuses to come with her, saying he must take his punishment. When Lilith rejoins the others, they figure that he will probably be killed as an example for his disobedience, and Lilith decides that they should save him. Getting into the temple isn’t too hard, but when they get to Nayuta, he refuses to come with them, saying that he doesn’t know what to believe, and that he wants to die a knight of Ingrid. Then suddenly a voice calls to Nayuta, saying that it’s Ingrid, and that Nayuta should kill Lilith right then. Nayuta is even more conflicted, and Lilith calls the voice out, saying that if the voice really is a god, it should kill her itself and not try to make Nayuta and the head priestess to kill her without any proof of her being a witch. In arguing, the voice shows its true form, a black-winged person similar to the one who attacked Lilith’s temple. They all fight him off, and after it disappears, Nayuta vows loyalty to Lilith.

After escaping the temple, the group is trying to plan how they’re going to get out of the city when Lilith hears a faint voice. When they follow the voice, they mysteriously meet no guards and safely get out of the city, and when they finally get to the source, they find that it’s three demi-gods who are there to help them. They say they aren’t as powerful as the city-gods, but can do more direct, small interventions in the world. They tell Lilith that the evil black-winged person who attacked her temple used to be a god, but got angry at people and was erased from mankind’s memory. The world has fallen into a sickness of unbelief, antagonism and has lost some of its love. They ask Lilith to try and save mankind from this sickness, as well as the black-winged god. The demigods also tell Kirite, Nayuta, and Sou that they’re the chosen guardians of their respective city-gods for Lilith, and urge them to find the other three.

So now, we’re on the way to Midvan, and though two other major characters have shown up as shadowy figures, they haven’t encountered our party directly yet.

LOVE.101 Teaser Short Story!

Happy New Year a day early (or right on time for anyone over the date line)! The prequel for Ivan is up on the LOVE.101 site! This is the first of a series, one for each guy, and the next one will be in January for Raj. I hope it gives you an idea of what each guy is like. If you have comments, you can leave them here or feel free to email me! (lijakaca at yahoo dot com).

Gekka Review

I’ve now finished all the routes (there are four each) for three characters – Fuji-sensei, Aoi, and Wabisuke in Gekka Ryouran Romance. The four endings are decided by two stats, kindan no koi (forbidden love) and junai (innocent love). Each of these stats is further split into Hard and Normal endings, so for each character, there’s Kindan Hard, Kindan Normal, Junai Hard, and Junai Normal. The Kindan endings are totally different from Junai, and even Hard and Normal can be really different, so it’s worth doing them all. If you use the La Primavera guide, you can do up to chapter 5 for each character and then get each separate route in chapter 6, as long as you get the Blackouts – a minigame at the end of each chapter which is fairly simple. You roll the joystick as fast as possible to reveal a picture underneath, and if you succeed, each one will give you 5 extra points in both junai and kindan.

Fuji Sensei

Each character has their own major issues – and so far they’re fairly serious. Fuji (CV: Hirata Hiroaki) has a lot of baggage from an abusive relationship from his past (to not spoil things too much), Aoi (CV: Terajima Takuma) has a really good reason for not caring about the future (and no, he doesn’t have a terminal illness), and Wabisuke (CV: Hino Satoshi) has an obsessive sister complex. Wabisuke actually was a big part of one (two?) of Fuji’s endings, that’s why I got interested in him.

Aoi

This game is, as advertised, pretty dark. In each route, the other characters seem fairly normal, but when you get into their routes, they`re all pretty messed up by one thing or another. I`ve enjoyed the stories, they`re all very different, although I still don`t really get why they focus on Nazuna so much (except Wabisuke, he has history with her). They all say things like she seems really pure, and they want some of her innocence, but whenver I see things like that I wonder that they couldn`t find any other normal girls at their school – Nazuna is principled but not usually a martyr, and at least one of her classmates seems just as nice as her. But this is something that you sometimes have to just accept in an otome game, and as long as you can suspend disbelief about that, most parts of the story make internal sense, even when it`s twisted sense.
There`s also sex! Of course it`s off-screen, but it`s fairly plainly laid out (it`s usually in the kindan hard route), and I found that very believable, because let`s be honest, angsty teenagers in love usually don`t stay chaste. Lastly, something I really liked was the monologues at the end of each chapter by the guy you went on a date with – it gives an idea of what they’re thinking and some foreshdowing, without taking all the suspense away.

Wabisuke

As I described in the first thoughts post, the production values are very high in this game – the menus and dialogue boxes are very nice, and the art is beautiful. The characters are differentiated mostly by face and hair colour, they mostly have the same body type (tall and skinny), but they`re all quite attractive (still not sure about Seri though, he just LOOKS so young even though he`s not). The music is well chosen too, there are some creepy atmospheric tracks that enhance the feeling of wrongness in the stories when really bad things are revealed.

Overall, I`d recommend this for people who enjoy angst and real drama, as long as you can handle some heavy topics like abuse, mental instability, suicide attempts. etc. This is not the game you want to play when you want cheering up, but the characters are all fascinating in their own way and I do want to finish the rest of the routes. I think I’d even buy a fandisk, because there are three teachers who are fairly involved in the stories, but you don’t get to really know them well, and they’re all really good seiyuu as well, so I’m hoping that the fandisk will include scenes/routes for them (and considering one of them got 3rd place in the character popularity contest, there’s a good chance!). There is a drama CD and fanbook coming out in January as well.

So all in all, Gekka = thumbs up! And don’t forget to check the LOVE.101 site tomorrow for a short story!

New Year’s Post LOVE.101

Just an update, on December 31 (this Saturday) the LOVE.101 site will be updated with a short story. This is the first of monthly short stories to introduce the guys, so please check it out!

Holidays

No posts until Friday! Off doing holiday stuff, but I am also playing through some more Gekka and Angelique. The Friday post will probably be a Gekka review.

B’s Log December!

I have to add some pics to the other news post, but for now, B’s Log had some announcements!

Apart from the new character in Tokimemo 3 GS PSP, Hasumi Tatsuya:

• there was another character revealed for Yura’s new game Hana Aware
  
  I *think* his name is Karakurenai and he’s one of the five Lights. He’s very confident, enjoys fighting and bloodshed, and controlling.
• Starry Sky After Winter will be released Apr 27 for the PC
• Finally I think I understand what TYB (Tokyo Yamanote Boys) Sweet Jelly Beans is – it’s the compilation of all three original games, plus a route for the murderer (I hope it’s good, it would take A LOT for me to be interested in a killer…although there was Kurayami de Kimi o Matsu…) – it’s out this January
• Speaking of TYB, they’ve announced fandisks for EACH of the original games (and I used to think Jelly Beans was the fandisk, how wrong I was!) with stories about after the competition. Fresh Ginger is the FD for Honey Milk, Pure Raspberry is for Super Mint, and Black Vanilla is for Dark(?) Cherry.
• Hiiro no Kakera anime!
  
  What do you think about the designs?
• New PSP adaptation from a cell game from the same team that did Iza Shutsujin! – this game is called Abunai! Koi no Sousashitsu (Danger! Love Investigation Room), and is a detective game, totally different from Iza which was set in the Sengoku period (and which I still have barely started)



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December News! Part 1

December 21st, 2011

B’s Log will probably get here tomorrow or Friday, but I got the Girls Style and Cool-B.

Apparently 2012 is the year of police and detective games! There’s the Detective VitaminX game (in Feb), and Karin’s new game Eikoku Tantei Mysteria (with the son of Lupin III as a master cat thief!), and the new Tiny Machine Gun from Rejet, with the first CD coming in February and a game in September.

A few pages on Black Wolves Saga, which as I thought has the artist from Gekka Ryouran, and will be released in two segments – one, Last Hope, for the PSP, and the other, Bloody Nightmare, on the PC! In Last Hope you’re with Russ Bogard, a wolf boy, and in Bloody Nightmare you’re with two cat boys, Mejojo (pronounce the j’s as y’s) and Uuger (pronounced Ooje) von Garibaldi. LH is supposed to be a story of true love, whereas BN will show twisted love. Taking advantage of being on the PC, apparently there will be several ‘shocking’ scenes (it’s not R18 though, so I think they mean disturbing/violent). Now, is this actually an otome game? It actually sounds more like a visual/light novel.

New game from ASCII Mediaworks and Vridge, Koi wa Rule ni Shibararenai, for the PSP. In this game the heroine is suddenly appointed as the president of her school (not of the student council but the school!) She can change school events and rules, but the student council has a say as well and can either agree or oppose her decisions. Part of this game is trying to make the student council acknowledge you as the president. Next issue will have the cast, so I might do a post on it then.

Custom Drive is a different sort of otome game coming from D3P – you can customize your boyfriend, not only with accessories, hairstyles, and clothes, but even change their personalities! The producer says players shouldn’t worry too much about playing ‘correctly’, but just play how you want and enjoy the game. Each of the three characters introduced have their own short story up on the website that you can access through a QR code – I’ll have to see if mine works. They also have English descriptions (in SHOUTY CAPS, hehe):

Riito Touma (CV: Toyonaga Toshiyuki from Durarara!!): HE IS YOUR CHILDHOOD BOYFRIEND. Ok then!

Ruka Mayuzumi (CV: Hosoya Yoshimasa): HE SEEMS TO LOVE YOU, BUT…? Sounds ominous!

Shion Kannagi (CV: Kimura Ryouhei): YOU WILL COME TO KNOW HIS SECRET. I hope it’s good!

More info on Koisentai Love & Peace for the PSP. I still haven’t listened to my drama CD of it, so when I do that I’ll post on it.

Sangokuren Senki is coming ot the PSP! (I don’t remember hearing about this but it may be old news) New events and CGs will be added, and an ‘episode’ for Genjou as well.

A new game from Takuyo – Kami-sama to Koigokoro for the PSP, where the heroine is training to be a nun and three of the guys are priests-in-training. Another love interest is a priest!

A new character will be available in Harutoki 5′s fandisk Kazahanaki. Rindou is a totally new character, an onmyouji who helps the heroine but acts cold to her, telling her to give up on being a miko. I thought they were missing something and I just realized – Harutoki 5 had no purple-haired bishounen! Rindou is a totally necessary addition. And Sou will also have a route!

Fandisk for Amnesia coming in March -= it’s called Amnesia Clatter.

And finally, there’s a teaser for a new game from Otomate, Hakuouki and Hiirno No Kakera’s producer and miko, the artist from Beastmaster and Prince. Not much is shown, but it’s set in the Sengoku period and apparently about oni. It looks very cool, I love miko’s art.

That’s all for now, more to come on Friday with B’s Log!

Tags: black wolves saga, custom drive, d3p, koisentai, otomate, rejet, vridge
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