A little news

Je n’ai rien a dire! My weekend has been filled with non-otome stuff – I was hoping to get Desert Kingdom or Meikyuu Grimm on Friday but no such luck.

Anyways, new game announcements from Otomate!
Clock Zero – November PS2 (I love the genre description for this one – “Living in a broken world with you”)
Wand of Fortune II – December PS2
Hakuouki Reimeiroku – PS2 September (this seems to be a prequel to Hakuouki featuring Ryuunosuke?)

Nise no Chigiri

A couple days late, gomen nasai ><;;!

Probably the first otome game to be set in the warring states (Sengoku Jidai) period of Japanese history, Nise no Chigiri, set to release July 22 for the PSP, is the story of Mana, a modern high school student who somehow travels through time and encounters Uesugi Masatora, one of the generals. He decides to protect her, while his rival Takeda Shingen targets her. With Mana knowing the outcome of this war, will she change the future?

Uesugi Masatora CV: Endou Daichi: The most powerful leader in the Kanto region (around Tokyo), he’s so good at battle and strategy that his nickname is the Dragon of . The Takeda family is his enemy.

Kojima Yatarou CV: Terasoma Masaki: Masatora’s follower and the leader of the Kachigumi. Since Masatora was little the tall (almost 2m) samurai protected him, and he foresaw that Masatora would lead the . He protects the heroine along with his little sister, Ayahime. He’s very strong but kind.

Tougi Kanehisa CV: Ootsuka Akio
The former leader of the Nokizaru, he now acts as an advisor to Akatsuki.

Takeda Shingen CV: Ichijou Kazuya
The leader of the Takeda clan and a strong army, he’s called the Tiger of Kai. Though many people are unsure if Yamamoto Kansuke is totally loyal, Shingen trusts him a lot.

Yamamoto Kansuke CV: Sakurai Takahiro
Kansuke works for Shingen, but is very mysterious, and his motives are unclear. He takes an interest in Mana after hearing she’s from the future.

Masatora assigns a group of his men, the Nokizarushuu, to guard Mana.

Akatsuki CV: Kondou Takashi
The sub-leader of the Nokizaru and likely to be the next leader, Akatsuki is very straightforward, open, and loyal to Masatora.

Suien CV: Tsuda Kenjirou
Calm and always watchful, Suien seems friendly to Mana.

Rurimaru CV: Hagino Mizuki
He’s younger than Mana, and has a cheerful personality. …He grows to be fond of Mana and treats her like a beloved older sister.

Shuuya CV: Maeno Tomoaki
It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking because he doesn’t say much, but Shuuya is very hardworking and dutiful.

Masato CV: Maeda Takashi
A little older than the other members of Nokizarushuu, Masato is like an older brother to them. However, with Mana he’s not that friendly for some reason, though once in a while he’ll give her advice.

Recent game mini-reviews

I thought I had a fairly long entry saved about voices, but..it seems to be lost in the computing ether, so who cares! Here are some thoughts on the new games I’ve tried recently:

Detective Campus Steelwood: Hm, the mystery parts are ok and kind of fun (saying this as a non-mystery novel reader), but the romance…barely there. I’ve only done one route so others may be different, but the one I did had a pretty good story of getting closer to someone, not so much about getting close enough to love someone.

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?).

Character page up!

Happy Friday!

As miruki recommended, I pretty much just stopped trying to use fancy Dreamweaver stuff – I still edit them in it, but I mostly go back and forth editing the source code and seeing how it looks ^_^ Basic but effective!

I’m going to do a ‘real’ post on other otome games today as well, but wanted to announce the page opening right away!

PS: Any other blog owners finding spam harder and harder to sift through? The typical linkspam-full comments are easy (though tedious) to purge, but the ones that pretend to have actually read the blog are getting more and more realistic – it can be tough to figure out which ones are real and which are fake. Usually if they just compliment my blog without mentioning the post topic, I treat it like spam. I only wish my posts were as good as these spam comments say, lol! Sometime maybe I’ll post a few of the stranger or more funny ones just for kicks.

I have the characters ready!

But Dreamweaver is annoying me so much I’m contemplating just re-doing the site in Flash, or writing the code myself. SOO clunky. I’ll post as soon as I get it working the way I want it!

Of course I have non-LOVE.101 related posts ready too, I might post one in the interim…

But till then, some videos!

Who doesn’t love HnK? I just got #3 for the PSP, here’s the OP, which as usual is an amazing song, Unmei no Hito (Soulmate) by Fujita Maiko

And I also just ordered ~Motto!~ Gakuensai no Ouji-sama, which is the DS adaptation of the Prince of Tennis otome game, with the guys from Shitenhouji added! I somehow found this awesome fan video of PoT featuring Rikkai, which I believe parodies some other anime song.

And this one I’m just in awe of (3:20 to 4:10 is my favourite segment)!

News!

B’s Log has news of several new games this month:

• Pandora: A new PS2 game from Otomate, with character designs by Kuroba K., who did the art for Souten no Kanata!! (I loved the art for that, though I still haven’t gotten to play it)
• SYK PSP version announced
• Omochabako no Kuni no Alice – an Alice fandisk (PC) announced from QuinRose
• Kuro to Kin no Hirakanai Kagi. – a new R18 game from little cheese. The credits list different names, but the character art really reminds me of Starry Sky
• Tsubasa no Oka no Hime – another new R18 game, from new publisher Snapdragon, set in Victorian England
• Not an otome game, but the popular webcomic/anime Hetalia is being made into a PSP game – produced by Otomate!
• Oh, and there’s a spread with Ruru and Julius…and a mysterious white-haired guy in a mirror! All it says is “Wand of…Truth?”
• It didn’t get an article, but in the release listing there’s a new (at least I never noticed it before) Takuyo game listed as ‘Shinigami to Shoujo’. Who knows if it will come to anything, there’s a game on there that’s been on for years (yeah literally over a year…)

Other news:

• Tokimemo GS 3 will come out on June 24! Wow that seems fast!
• Hakuouki PS3 is coming in June too, not July! Yayy!
• A bunch of cast announcements, which I think I’ll do separately in mini posts

And in personal gaming stuff, I finally got Love Root Zero! Uh, the production isn’t great, it’s taking me a while to get into it partly due to that. Though the seiyuu are good…oh, and the heroine has a voice! Also Last Escort Katze, I’ve gotten through a couple routes there so far.
Love.101 updates – erm, not too much. Planning to open the characters page this weekend though!

Xechs’ Game System

So, more about the Scarred Rider Xechs‘ game system!

Girl’s Style lays the game path out using the first chapter as an example. In all there are 13 chapters, and they’re presented like an anime, with a little song and ‘preview’ of the next chapter at the end.

In the beginning there’s an adventure part, where you enjoy the noncombat life on the LAG base, develop relationships with the Xechs guys, and perhaps even see them play live as Odd I’s. Depending on what you choose, you raise either their ‘love’ gauge or their ‘death’ gauge (focusing on battle). After the adventure part is done Commander mode starts, and the guys ‘resonate’ with their Substance. Their Resonance personalities become more like their Substances the higher the death gauge is (their voices also change!), but apparently depending too much on the death gauge can lead to negative consequences…

Looking closer at the Commander mode, it starts when a red alert comes up during the adventure mode. A Vox (some type of vehicle?) brings all of you from wherever you are on campus to where the alert is.

Once there, you get a briefing on the situation, and choose which Rider to use in battle. The Rider resonates with his Substance, and the mission begins.

After the battle you see what the result is, and depending on your choices, the story will branch off.

The website has lots of videos, mostly just snippets of character dialogue, but they just put up a game intro video that’s pretty good at showing how it works.

Deep breath…ok here it is! LOVE.101!

Well, here we are, one week late (sorry miruki!) but I have finally put up my game’s website!

LOVE.101 will be a little otome game set in university. As the heroine, you’re trying to survive the first semester as best you can and see if you can meet someone special at the same time!
Several updates are still to come, and hopefully I can get that ugly link border away from the buttons (I should have just coded it in Flash), but it’s up!

More info on the characters, game system, and of course, release details, to come in the days to come!

Mag news

I caved and ordered VitZ Revo, and got it a couple days ago. I’ve done Tendou’s normal route, and am in the middle of his dream route. Aa, Vitamin wa tanoshii na~!

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.

Moujuutsukai to Oujisama

The newest PS2 game announced from Otomate for a June 24 release, Moujuutsukai to Ouji-sama (The Beastmaster and the Prince) sounds like my dream game when I was a kid. Princes who turn into animals in a fantasy setting, what’s not to like?

The heroine, Tiana, wants to be a beastmaster like her mother, using a special flute made by her father, but hasn’t found any good animals to train. One day she’s at the market and finds four animals, a lion, a wolf, a duck (it looks like a goose though), and a rabbit, for sale. She trades a valuable brooch for them and takes them home. When she starts feeding them, they act strange, and then they start to talk to her! They explain that they’re actually princes from a neighbouring kingdom and were travelling by ship when an explosion occurred. When they woke up, they had been transformed. Tiana decides to help them get back to their true forms, but doesn’t realize that this their enchantment is only the beginning of trouble that will overtake the whole continent…

The princes are:

Mateus (lion) CV: Midorikawa Hikaru – The oldest brother, he’s very popular with women, but doesn’t chase them – they come to him (probably being a prince helps)

Afreto (wolf) CV: Toriumi Kousuke – the second oldest, all he cares about is getting stronger. He’s a better swordsman than even Mateus.

Rushia (duck) CV: Shimono Hiro – he talks a lot and is kind of lazy. He’s the same age as Tiana.

Eric (rabbit) CV: Kaji Yuuki – The youngest, he’s very cute and often acts childish.

Other characters:
Kraus CV: Yasumoto Hiroki – Tiana has known him since she was a child, but they’re not really friends. Kraus has made Tiana cry often with his harsh words.

Silvio CV: Terajima Takuma – He works at the village medicine shop and is very cheerful and honest with his feelings.

I’m loving the art for this game(I’m a sucker for cute animals and bright colours), and I’m definitely getting it.