Posts Tagged ‘PSP’

Princess Arthur review

I’ve finished all of Princess Arthur! Not the bad ends though, I might do those when I have extra time sometime, but I don’t like doing them too close to the true ends.

Anyways, I really liked it. It takes a while to get going, and I enjoyed the playthroughs better when I could skip all the common stuff, but that’s pretty standard. I played Gawain’s route first (Taniyama Kishou, who could resist?), but if I played it again, I think I’d go something like: Mordred, Galahad, Tristan,  Lancelot, Gawain, and Merlin.

The game starts with Aru, who’s the daughter of a retired knight, practicing swordsmanship with someone – her father teaches people how to swordfight. Something is mentioned about her brother Kei, who’s a Knight of the Round Table, who hasn’t been around much lately. Aru feels bad because he’s been acting weird ever since he fought with her once and lost. At the castle there’s an event going on to decide the next king, since the last one, Uther, died a month (or so) ago. Aru goes up to the castle to watch.

Of course she gets lost, and ends up 1) being hit on by some weird dude in a purple robe open to his bellybutton (Merlin) and directed to the right place by a handsome knight (Lancelot.) When she finally reaches the courtyard, she sees Kei trying to pull the holy sword out of a big stone and failing in front of a big crowd. However, he won’t give up, and Aru gets upset and tries to convince him to stop. Somehow Aru’s hands end up on his, and he’s able to pull the sword out. Kei holds the sword up triumphantly and announces that he’s the king, but someone (Merlin IIRC) asks him to do it again. Once again he can’t do it until Aru helps him. Then Aru pulls the sword out all by herself, and amid the crowd’s astonishment, Merlin announces that the new king has been found, and it’s Aru. Kei leaves in a huff, and Aru’s father saw what happened as well, and though Aru tries to deny it, he accepts her fate and leaves her to Merlin’s care.

It takes Aru a while to accept that she is the next king, and that she has to work hard to be accepted by her subjects and by other countries. There’s also at least one person trying to intimidate and/or assassinate her, as she finds a poisonous snake in her bed one evening. Some people, such as Uther’s sister Morgos, are openly scornful of her, and soon there’s war brewing as other kingdoms don’t accept her as king. ONe of the most important points of the intro is when Aru has to decide whether she’s going to war with the knights – if you say you’ll wait for them, you get a bad end. If you go, you win the battle but Aru kills someone, her best friend’s fiance dies, and Aru has to learn how to deal with the emotional weight of war.

Once she’s recovered from that, there’s a ball held to celebrate. Depending on which character you have the highest affection with, around here (choosing who will escort you to the ball) will decide on the route you go into and change the rest of the plot. 

Mordred (CV: Hosoya Yoshimasa):  His story has little to do with the overarching plot of being accepted as king, but clears up a couple of incidents. I love his voice actor (any Tenipuri Shitenhouji fans out there?), and he’s not in many games. Hopefully this will change soon!  His story was pretty bittersweet and I think his character is one of the most realistic and complex – he’s flawed and knows it, but can’t get past the problems his upbringing left him with until the very end. I also think his art, the CGs and tachie, are the most consistent, and his design is one of the most attractive.

Galahad(CV: Okamoto Nobuhiko): I thought in the intro that I wouldn’t like him much,but he was SUCH a classic tsundere and you don’t see them often anymore (now they’re all Do-S jerks), that I really enjoyed his route. He has a lot of really cute moments. And his story is pretty touching as well, he’s not used to feeling much so he’s awful at expressing how he feels. When he can’t hold it in anymore, it’s pretty intense and awesome. He’s also the youngest of the knights (younger than Aru even) so he’s a bit immature and that’s written well, including a bit of a complex about being young (and short).

Tristan’s (CV: Koyasu Takehito) route annoyed me, as Aru had to be not only naive and trusting, but also throw away her developing friendships with the other knights before Tristan even showed any romantic interest in her. To get his happy end Aru has to lie to all the knights, flat out deny their help, and pretty much become an outcast of her court by the end. And though I enjoyed all the scenes with Percival and Merlin to make up for Tristan being absent for 75% of the story, it didn’t really make for a good romance. They actually had to add vignettes into each chapter to go through his backstory etc. because it’s not explained in the story until the very end. I also really didn’t like Aru in this route. Tristan calls her actions stupid and she often agrees with him, but she just cant seem to help herself. And to top everything off, at one point Aru wears a disguise that’s even worse than the ‘ball gown’ worn before. This time its for a good reason, but the cg of it looks…like its from a galge. Did they really have to show it from a crotch up angle?  And that’s obviously the point at which Tristan becomes interested in Aru as a woman, which makes me think of him as an old lech. But I had to get through it to get to Merlin’s route, so I used auto a lot and surfed the net.

Lancelot( CV: Ono Yuuki): Probably the most typical ‘shoujo’ route. I put him near the middle because while I really liked him, and there wasn’t as much Guinevere drama as I was afraid of, his route is not that sweet.  He’s always polite and pretty much the ‘parfit gentil knight’, in addition to being the strongest of all the KotRT. Most of the emotional angst comes from Aru not knowing if he actually cares for her or whether he’s just doing his duty. Normally I would be annoyed by this, but he has a really really good reason to hide any romantic feelings. It was possibly the most dramatic at the very end, in a Sailor Moon kind of way. I don’t want to put spoilers in so you can judge for yourself if you agree, but I thought his was the best story in terms of integrating the character’s plot with Aru’s plot.

And I would put Gawain (CV: Taniyama Kishou (for some reason I mixed up his name with Tachibana Shinnosuke, why am I doing that??) last before Merlin, because his route is just really sweet – he’s already past the tsun stage by the time the intro’s over. But because he’s a not a ladykiller type (I affectionately call him a meathead), he’s awkwardly endearing most of the time as he unsubtly tries to spend time with Aru and impress her. The romance gets resolved before the climax, so there’s not as much tension, but after Tristan who has almost no romance, I think it works. Now if I could just figure out what thing he wears on his head is…

Gawain smirking (he’s a big softie really)

And last is Merlin (CV: Okiayu Ryoutarou) – you have to get an ending with each character before his route opens up. This is where you see the resolution of all the storylines (though it kind of contradicts a couple other plotlines, but oh well). Merlin is a total lech, flirting  with Aru and making suggestive remarks, until she starts to take him seriously.

“Hmm, do you doubt me? I’ll have to take my time flirting with you later…when we’re alone somewhere.”

Then he backs off and starts treating her like a child (since he’s actually much older than he looks, I don’t think this is much of a spoiler).

“I’m sure all the young knights of the round table fell for you all over again.”

This route is fun in that it’s a reversal of the usual pattern, with Arthur pursuing Merlin and him trying to brush her off lightly, and then trying to find other ways of discouraging her like treating her as a child and trying to scare her off. He goes back and forth between acting like he doesn’t care and showing that he does, but it’s obvious enough that I enjoyed it rather than was frustrated with it. Also, the Lady of the Lake, Nimue, plays a big role in this route and is pretty awesome. She sees right away that Aru loves Merlin and advises Aru, and she explains Merlin’s inconsistency as it happens as well. The climax leaves a little to be desired, as you don’t really get Merlin to admit how he feels until it’s all over, and in my biased opinion his confession could use some more passion, but looking at the route as a whole there are quite a few romantic moments.

So I really liked Princess Arthur, and I’m glad I got the limited edition. I’d say the story and characters were really good, but the climax of the plot wasn’t as dramatic as it could be in most cases. There was a lot going on (in addition to each of the knights’ problems), like Aru’s brother Kei’s subplot, Morgos and Medorauto, rebellions, a shadowy mercenary force, and a couple other things. The character routes weren’t always  integrated well with the larger ‘being accepted as king’ plot, though they did try – nothing felt tacked on at the end, there was foreshadowing all the time, it just seemed weird that several of the same enemy characters would have completely different schemes, alliances and sometimes motives depending on which character route you were on. On the other hand, if they didn’t change things up, the same plotline would have to be recycled every time, just dropping a different hero into a blank slot.

Other stuff – I wasn’t sure about the art at first, as it’s not as ‘pretty’ as a lot of otome games, but in some ways I liked it even better – the characters look like real people, and the guys definitely look like they could be real knights (i.e. they have muscles! they wear armour!). Though there were some odd costume designs, I liked most of them barring Aru’s ‘trying too hard to look sexy’ ball’gown’.  Of course the voices were great

The music is really good, especially the opening theme – it really amps up the suspense and feeling of epicness during the ‘king’ scenes.

I feel like there’s a lot that could be done with the other characters that were only in subplots or only had minor roles – Kei, Aru’s friend Elaine, Medorauto, Bowls (Bolls?), and Percival. I’d love to see bigger storylines of theirs in a fandisk. I really hope Princess Arthur does get a fandisk, as I’m not sure how well it did for sales.

 

Solomon’s Ring – An early lock for Worst Otoge of 2013?

As you can guess by the title, I’m not impressed by Solomon’s Ring. When it first showed up in the magazines, I was surprised because the release date was only about 3 months away. I thought for sure that it would get delayed. Now, delays are annoying when you’re looking forward to games (ahem, Ozmafia!) but I don’t mind them so much, because if they don’t push things off, they might end up with products like this. To be frank, Solmomon’s Ring has a really shallow story and characters, poor art design, and only functional gameplay.

The heroine, Lily, works in a library that she inherited from her grandfather (her parents died when she was young). I thought this was interesting (although I also thought it was historical but apparently it’s not), but it has no bearing on the plot so it doesn’t matter much. We open on the scene of her grandfather dying. On his deathbed, literally with his last words, he gives a ring to her and tells her she’s the descendant of the magician king Solomon, and that she has to protect the world from demons using the ring. Then he dies (I guess he knew exactly how much energy he needed to tell her and then waited until the last possible second because of some unknown reason).

Lily puts away the ring for a year, then one day feels like wearing it for some reason (she doesn’t mention the Solomon stuff, I guess she thought her grandfather was senile or something). She goes to work at the library, and three new visitors are hanging around – all young handsome men. They all approach her and start talking to her, calling her ‘Solomon’s daughter’. She mostly ignores them.

That night she has a dream (this is where you choose what route to go into) of being attacked by monsters, and saved by one of the men. The next day this actually happens, and she finds out that all three men are actually demons, and they want her power/the ring’s power, for various reasons. The one she picks stays with her and they encounter some monsters, and as they beat them down (the ring can seal them and absorb their power once they’re beaten), they grow closer. Then near the end they eventually have to face the king of demons, Lucifer, who wants to take the powered-up ring as well as the heroine’s powered-up soul.

Many otome games can be summarized in roughly similar terms. The issue is that it feels like the whole script for the game isn’t much longer than this blog post. Almost all the plot and relationship development happens offscreen (like, they talk about battles after showing you a couple blows, and they mention that the hero and heroine had long in-depth conversations without actually showing them). There are almost no scenes where you learn more about the characters, they’re incredibly cardboard. Sometimes I complain about scenes that are too wordy or long (*cough*QuinroseorHakuouki*cough*), but this is ridiculous. It’s like someone had an outline for an otome game, and instead of getting someone to then write a script from that outline, they added a couple lines of dialogue for each planned scene, and then put a few summarizing paragraphs in between.

Also, the art is barely acceptable. I’m pretty forgiving on art, I like to see different styles and try not to let pretty art distract me from gameplay. But in this game, though the tachi-e(the regular dialogue scene pictures) are ok, the CGs are actually worse than the tachi-e. And though some of the tachi-e are good, some are weird. Like. there’s one pose that Asmodeus (a waste of Konishi Katsuyuki’s voice IMO) does, where he spreads his arms out really wide, almost at shoulder-height. They use this pose for way too much and it doesn’t work, the only time it works is when he’s actually blocking something. It’s distracting. Plus, there are very few CGs, I’d estimate around 5 per route. To be fair, if it was fanart I’d think it was pretty good. But for professional work it doesn’t pass muster.

This CG is not good. And it’s used multiple times.

The music is decent I suppose, I didn’t notice it much to be honest.

Most things I can forgive, but the multiple writing problems – the extreme bare bones scenes, the lack of character development, the very paint-by-numbers feel of the plot – made me notice the other problems like the art more, and really, even though the game is cheap, it’s still not really worth it. By the end of it I cared about none of the characters, I actually was more interested in Lily’s friend Alisha’s romance than I was in the main plot – and this is a romance that is mentioned in about three lines total.

It really really feels like a mobile game that was meant to be released in chapters. And even though I also dissed Koisentai(which actually was originally a mobile game), and this game is full voice whereas one of Koisentai’s major issues was that it wasn’t, I would still rather play Koisentai anytime, and I think it’s more worth your money than this.

As I said, it’s too bad because the voice actors are good, and the premise is interesting at least.

I am going to play the other two routes (may as well, it’s one of the shortest games I’ve played), but unless Asmodeus’ route was a total anomaly, I feel safe in emphatically NOT recommending Solomon’s Ring. I’m not buying the other games, even though there are three more coming out, Wind, Water, and Earth. It actually makes me doubt how good Double Score is going to be, because they’re both from the production company Asgard. But at least that game seems to have better art…

Cheap Harutoki games!

I’m not sure why, but Koei is releasing ‘best edition’ (read: cheap) versions of two of the most popular Harutoki games this month for the PSP.

The first is Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 3 with Izayoiki Aizo Ban (best edition), one of the most enduringly popular otome games as rated by fans. I’m thinking of getting this, as I only have it on PS2, and as Izayoiki was a fandisk that you had to swap in and out with the original game to play, is a right pain, especially since my Japanese PS2 went kaput. In this version Izayoiki is one the same PSP cartridge as the original game, so NO swapping is needed! Yay! Plus, at only Y2800 this is pretty cheap. It’s an RPG (nothing too hardcore), so you get quite a few hours of playtime. And Shirogane was before his time as the sexy psycho who ends up being more popular than the main characters (I love him too, I can’t help it).

The other is the sequel/2nd fandisk for Harutoki 3, Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 3Unmei no Labyrinth Aizo Ban (best edition). It’s also new to the PSP and Y2800. It’s set after the ‘normal’, happy but not romantic, ending of #3, and is in the heroine’s world. The plot is totally unrelated to history in this one.

So if you’ve never played a Harutoki, and/or you’re interested in otome RPGs, I’d recommend getting the first game.

They’re also releasing Harutoki, the original game Hachiyousho (OK the original was on PS1, but Hachiyousho is the PS2 adaptation) for the PSP, but for some reason it’s more expensive. I don’t think it’s really worth it. Plus i just like #3 much better.

Glass Heart Princess Review

I finally finished a game, yay! I was looking forward to Glass Heart Princess a lot for some reason, I think part of it is that it’s one of the few totally new titles in my recent history. And when I realized that there was gameplay other than visual novel style, I was determined to pick it up as soon as possible.

I was able to find a guide for it at love voice, the only one I saw. I really needed it too, especially for Shinnosuke (the butler).

The premise is that you’re an accomplished, lovely, rich student in your last year at an exclusive high school. Everyone loves you, your father dotes on you, you have an otaku maid who’s sarcastic and awesome, and a devoted butler who is willing to go to ANY lengths to protect you.

One summer’s day you’re being served tea in your vast gardens, as you do, when you have a sudden heart palpitation and pass out. You wake up in the hospital and are told that you have a rare disease called Glass Heart Syndrome. If you can’t strengthen your heart against tokimeki, you won’t live out the year.

Luckily, you’ve never been in love, so you have a (relatively) easy way of toughening up your heart – fall in love, go on dates, and train to up your ‘heartbeat limit’ all the while.

The first thing you have to do is pick your partner. The first draft pick is the school bad boy, Karasuma Yuikito (CV: Suzuki Tatsuhisa), who’s secretly a famous cat burglar. The second is the well-liked teacher, Asahina Tenma (CV: Hatano Wataru), who’s secretly a vampire mafia boss (yup). Your ‘last’ chance, if you miss these two, is Hoshino Kanata (CV: Miyata Kouki), an android from outer space visiting earth to gather data on it. And finally, if you miss all three, you have a chance at the true end, your devoted butler with a gun fetish and mercenary history, Masaki Shinnosuke (CV: KENN). There’s also a hidden character, a much younger ‘betrothed’ – I got his happy end but there didn’t seem to be much to it.

Once you ‘choose’ someone by having Cupid shoot his arrow at you during one of these encounters, you ask them out in various ways and can then choose a date every week. Leading up to the date is your training time, where you can train physically to up your max heartbeats, train in love to increase your love-intelligence (by studying shoujo manga and romance), and rest. At first you have only one activity for each of these categories and the training goes slowly, but you learn more training methods as you go. The only route I didn’t follow a guide for was Hoshino, where I just did one of each activity a week, and that seemed to work fine.

Once you get to the new year, if you’re still alive you then go into the route of the person you have a high enough score with (each date has a score e.g. Excellent is the best, then Sweet, Good, and Not Bad). There aren’t many choices here, but it’s the longest continuous story part.

I enjoyed it, but honestly the routes felt pretty short except for Shinnosuke’s, who I totally think is the true end. His is also the ‘hardest’ to get, since if you date him from the beginning, you don’t get some of his events.

I think the dates, though they’re fun, were very short, especially the beginning ones. There are also random events during the week where you walk home with your guy and discuss things with him, but it was very random – sometimes it only happened once a route. You can choose to visit your tea party friends during the week to get conversation topics, but it feels like a waste if you don’t get to use them (but at least it doesn’t take up a training slot).

Overall Shinnosuke was my favourite. Though they were all fun, his route was the longest and the relationship felt the most real – they even had a lot of backstory between him and the heroine. Even in his route though, it felt a little rushed. I would have enjoyed a longer in-between stage, where he isn’t sure of his feelings, or even after he realizes, before the external drama comes up and moves the conflict outside of the relationship.

I did really enjoy the lightheartedness of the story, and one thing that’s great is the small touches that (really) mostly add to Shinnosuke as a character – he’s had all this special training, and when you get to a certain level sometimes ‘guest’ trainers come on – and they’re all characters from past Otomate games. You don’t see them but they’re fun references. They also show up in the end of his route with their voices, and that’s great – I was wondering why Sugita Tomokazu was playing a bit part as the doctor, lol, I guess they had them fill in some small roles as well.

Also, in each route, you have a special New Year’s dream. In Japan it’s said that the first dream you have in the New Year is lucky or unlucky depending on what it is. Well, in this game, you dream of your guy, but in the setting of an Otomate game – though they don’t say the titles it’s very obvious which ones they are. And then you wake up and see that you were playing a game before you fell asleep

Overall I think this game is fun, but I don’t know if I’d recommend it 100%. There are other games I’d rate higher, but this is quite fun, and the art is great as well.

Tokimemo GS3 – Skinship/Approach Mode/Date Communication

That’s a few words meaning similar things.

Fans of Tokimemo 1 and 2 DS will probably recognize skinship as the extra minigame added to use the DS touchpad and stylus.
Since the PSP doesn’t have those, they adjusted it. Now when you’re on a date and the guy is talking, you’ll see something like this:

The little flower in the top right corner means you can ‘approach’ him, by pushing the analog stick up (the heart shows how tokimeki he is). Once you do that, you’ll see the following:

As you can see, from the left there’s a square, triangle, and a white circle button. Also, you see a heart in the top left corner, and it will be ‘beating’. What you want to do is choose an action and have it go off at the moment that big heart is at its largest (this helps get a ‘critical’). This will then increase the number at the top right, which is pretty much a tokimeki meter.

Now it took me an amazingly long time to realize that in order to be able to use the square and triangle button in addition to the circle, you have to keep pushing the analog stick up and you’ll slowly move closer. And you can choose to either push a button once, or hold it down, changing the action (circle changes from nikkori to mitsumeru (from smile to look at), triangle from fureru to te wo tsunagu (from touch to hold hands), and square from itazura to ijiwaru (from tease to ‘mean’). When you first start on dates, guys often won’t let you get any closer than the circle range, and the square range takes a while to get to.

If you do this enough, eventually (it will take several dates) you’ll go into Date Communication Mode. These arelittle ‘vignette’ extra stories where you have to pick the right approaches to keep the scene going. It looks like the pic below, with screen bars and no text window.

Not too much happens (at least that I’ve experienced), but you get extra dialogue and it shows that your relationship is progressing. Date Comm can also happen at certain spots/times when you see a square button onscreen, like at cherry blossom viewing.

Tokimemo GS 3 – Preferences

Each guy has their preferred clothing style, date spots, parameters, clubs, and/or part-time jobs where you can work with them. If you wear their preferred clothing on a date, they’ll mention it and you’ll get extra tokimeki points (unless there’s an event like being hit on, or it’s too warm or cold for the season). Though apparently if you wear a particular style enough and they like you, their tastes will change! Pretty neat.

Ruka and Kouichi
These two brothers are the first two fellow students you meet, and they’re also friends from your childhood. Ruka is a playful daredevil, and Kouichi is a scary-looking tough guy who’s a quintessential big brother. Raka works at a flower shop, while Kouichi works at a gas station.

Ruka Preferences:
Clothes: Natural, Ultra Natural and Girly (Cute and Natural)
Places: game centre, amusement park, aquarium
Gifts: Hotcakes, Dolphin stuff, Gacchi Red Ranger mask, santa boot of candy
Valentine’s: Use the dolphin topper
Colour: Aqua

Kouichi Preferences:
Clothes: Vivid, Ultra Vivid, and Wild (Vivid and Sexy)
Places: amusement park, bowling, the farm, the motorcycle show at the museum
Gifts: a dartboard, antique radio, motorcycle B-movie poster, tiger object
Valentine’s: Use the candy cane or whiskey bonbon
Colour: Orange

Fujiyama Arashi
Arashi is a classmate that you meet once your fitness is over 60. He recruits you to be the manager of the judo club (of which he’s the only member), and he’s extremely tennen – he says exactly what he thinks, hides nothing, and is a little dense. If you want him you should really join judo. He works as a lifeguard.
Preferences:
Clothes: Activ,e Ultra Active, and Sporty (Active and Vivid)
Places: Physical activity (swimming, skating, skiing, etc), the balcony of the old castle
Gifts: Carved wooden (bearcat? raccoon?), Protein, a lily, an old scroll 書軸, alpaca stuffed animal
Valentine’s: Use the cookie #1
Colour: Blue

Niina Junpei
Junpei is a year younger than you, so he doesn’t enter Habataki High School until the second year. However because his hobby is picking up girls, you can meet him earlier when you’re out shopping if your fashion is high enough. He wants to be a playboy and admires Hazuki Kei. He works at a convenience store, and you can make him join the judo club if you’re in it.
Preferences:
Clothes: Sexy, Ultra Sexy, and Koakuma (Sexy and Cute) (also Wild)
Places: pretty much anywhere other than dark or high places (no planetarium!)
Gifts: a poster of Kei, lava light, sparkly strap, Ko-Nami elephant toy
Valentine’s: Use the sexy girl topping
Colour: Pink

Konnou Tamao:
The student president who’s always serious, nice and polite, and has a bit of an inferiority complex. He’s a year older so he graduates after your second year, but you can still go on dates. He’s in the student council but has no part-time job.
Preferences:
Clothes: Cute, Ultra Cute, and Older Sister (Cute and Chic)
Places: skiing, amusement park, farm
Gifts: Steam engine (ブリキの蒸気機関車), mini globe, a head mark (no idea what this actually is), alarm clock, scale model of Habataki Castle
Valentine’s: Use the cupid topping
Colour: Green

Shitara Seiji
A rich kid student one year older than you who’s a bit famous for his piano skills. He’s pretty rude and doesn’t have much common sense, but he’s got amazing hair and I find him kind of hilarious. Of course, he doesn’t have a job.
Preferences:
Clothes: Chic, Ultra Chic, and Mode (Chic and Vivid)
Places: Planetarium, aquarium, nowhere he has to exercise unless he already likes you
Gifts: Magic lamp teapot, tiki doll, old sheet music, sand picture, toy termin (qu’est-ce que c’est? I dunno)
Valentine’s: The music note, duh.
Colour: Purple

In addition to the regular six guys, there are three (or four) hidden characters which require specific events/stats/actions for them to appear, and are pretty hard to get endings with.

Tomorrow or Sunday, magazine news!!

Tokimemo Premium Girls Side 3 – Basics

The basic goal of Tokimemo GS is to have the guy you like confess to you at your high school graduation.
Each guy will require different stats to get his ‘best’ ending, and other endings.

Roughly, in Tokimemo GS3, the most strict requirements are:
Ruka: Studying 150 Athletics 150 Consideration 150
Kouichi: Art 150 Consideration 150 Charm 70
Arashi: Athletics 200 Consideration 150
Niina: Fashion 200 Studying 150
Konno : Studying 200 Consideration 150
Shitara: Art 200 Charm 150

There are several things that can reduce these stats requirements. Going on lots of dates (more than 40) will reduce them by 20. The guy being at ‘tokimeki’ level of affection will reduce it by another 20.

The basic screen of Tokimemo Girls Side 3, and all the Tokimemo GS games, is the following:

In the background you see your room (you can choose the style and it will affect your starting stats). On the left you see your current stats, they are:

Stress	Money
Studying	Art
Athletics	Consideration
Fashion	Charm

On the right, in blue and green, are the actions you can do that day/week, which will raise some stats and lower others. On a Sunday or holiday there will be two more buttons for calling someone and going shopping (or going on a date if you’ve set one up).

From the left, the blue buttons are:

Rest	Study	Art	Club
Exercise	Fashion	Charm	Miyo
			Karen

You can guess what these do. You can only join one club, and it will raise different stats depending on which one you pick.
Hanging out with Miyo will raise consideration and (I think) studying), and hanging out with Karen will raise consideration and fashion.

The orange buttons don’t take time away when you choose them. They are:

Outfit	Internet	Settings
Calendar	Messages	Save/Load

One of the most important things to do all the time is check your horoscope on the internet. The other important things to do all the time is save.

When you choose the computer and go to the horoscope page, this is what you’ll see:

The left is just a table of contents for your report, and the right shows what you’ll have the most and least luck in doing for the next four weeks. From the top, they are: Studying (this includes Art), Fun (covers Fashion and I think Miyo and Karen), Health (Exercise and Sports clubs), and Love (Charm and maybe asking guys on dates). At the bottom it also lists your lucky item for the season (in this case, a sun visor).

Using the horoscope will make raising stats much easier. When your desired stats are hard to get, that’s probably a good time to rest and reduce your stress.
Also, don’t be afraid to reload and try a week over – I’ve had weeks where I failed three days, then reloaded and got it perfect on the next try.

This is the basic setup of the game, but there is SO much more to it. Next time I’ll cover each guy’s preferences and talk about fashion styles, clubs, and part-time jobs.

Tokimemo Girls Side Premium 3rd Story

One of the reasons I haven’t been blogging much lately is that I’ve been sucked back into Tokimemo GS3 for the PSP, and though it’s really fun it takes a looonnng time! I don’t know if anyone’s interested, but I might do some short posts on tips I’ve learned, since there are so many seemingly random parts that aren’t, and so many things to keep in mind. Even though there are great wiki guides for the games, they’re in Japanese and I think they might be hard to navigate for the average English-speaking player? If not just let me know.

I think I might first do an intro post on the PSP version and what’s different from the DS games, and maybe show the guys and their basic info. I’ve posted a bit on that before so I might link back to that as well.

24ji Cinderella!

So, 24ji no Cinderella, yeah? (pretend that’s in a cockney accent) Or its official title, 24ji no Kane to Cinderella ~Halloween Wedding~. Even though I worked overtime a bunch this week, I went through all the characters! Only the best endings though (and one ‘good’ ending). Each character has a pivotal point where you can choose to stop investigating the central mystery of the game, and if you do, you don’t end up as lovers, though the one good ending I did, there was still a possibility.

As I said in the preview, Rosaria is Odette’s older stepsister (from 12ji no Cinderella), who in this game, is shown to be much more unsure and worried about Odette than she appears in 12ji. It all fits with her actions from the previous game, but Quinrose is really good at showing a new perspective and it really changes how Rosaria (and Odette, when you don’t see her inner thoughts) comes across. You also get a new viewpoint on Sirius, who I like just as much, but he seems much more mysterious and magician-like herel. Overall, I was really impressed by how they went through the same time period as 12ji but without retconning anything (of course, they were planning this game already, but they did a good job anyhow), and without boring us, even though we’ve seen all the major events already.

I liked all the routes, although I felt that Rosaria’s fiance’s, Linus, route was the weakest. It felt like it needed more story to explain how they fell in love with each other. At the start I wasn’t sure if I would like Linus at all, and I did like him in the end, but I think it could have been much better with a little more showing of both of them developing romantic feelings.

My favourite character…is hard to pick. I was biased towards Oswell because, well, Tsuda Kenjirou, but I also really liked both Feather and Damian’s routes (the monsters). Rosaria’s childhood friend Luis was also really good, but it’s bittersweet to play Linus’s route after him because you know he likes Rosaria (although really, you think he could have pushed a little harder over the years and years they’ve been friends, because she really has no idea).

Rosaria herself is pretty awesome, though I liked her less in Linus’s route – at times she felt unworthy of his high rank, and I felt like she seemed more helpless.
Looking back, the routes all seemed fairly short once you play through once because there is quite a bit of overlap, but while I was playing it only bothered me during Linus’s route.

One more note, though I love Quinrose enough to get their deluxe editions, I gotta say that I prefer Otomate’s pre-order and limited edition drama CDs. The Quinrose ones are fun but I don’t think they add much to the characters, and since the relationships are totally unrelated to those in-game you don’t get any fun rivalries (I like jealousy events in games, what can I say).

Overall, I enjoyed this a lot and definitely recommend it for anyone who enjoys Quinrose games.

Oh, and if Quinrose doesn’t make one more game with Elise, the oldest stepsister, as the heroine, and having Halloween as one of the heroes, I will be very disappointed.

24ji no Cinderella Preview

So, my 24ji no Cinderella shipped early this morning, and now I wish I had paid for express shipping. Oh well, in the meantime I thought I’d go over the characters and setup (which will make me want it more, but I’ll just have to be patient).

The heroine is the older stepsister, Rosalia Scarlet, of the heroine from 12ji no Cinderella, Odette Scarlet. Odette was cynical and cool, while Rosalia is warm and impulsive, but they’re both Quinrose heroines, so they’re smart and independent. Rosalia is really protective of Odette and shows her affection a lot (in fact Girl’s Style has a gag comic where the heroes are worried she’ll never love them as much as she loves Odette), as well as the rest of their family, Rosalia’s mother Fatima, and her older sister (yeah I can’t remember her name).

For those who haven’t played 12ji, Odette’s father, a fairly high nobleman, and Fatima, a low-level noblewoman, get married and the family lives fairly happily for a couple months until the father dies in a carriage accident. Then it’s discovered that he had lots of debts, and the four women have to sell the house and move to a creaky apartment downtown, working to live. The city they live in is a strange mix of 19th-century Europe and fairytales, where the king shares power with Hallowe’en, a ‘monster’. Monsters are kind of supernatural animals that live as humanoids (but I think they can all turn into their animal forms as well). The humans of the town don’t really trust the monsters so they don’t deal with each other much, but the Scarlet family don’t care – in fact their only neighbour in the apartment building, Feather, is a pigeon monster, and they’re all very good friends.

Rosalia finds some strange papers one day, one with the emblem of the royal family, and the other the emblem of the Scarlet family. The game is partly trying to find out the meaning behind this.

Along with other characters she meets along the way, here are the main heroes:

Louis Reed (CV: Suzumura Kenichi)  – Rosalia’s childhood friend who’s training to be a knight. He has a strong sense of justice and has a crush on Rosalia.

Feather (CV: Shimono Hiro) – The lovely neighbour who can not only talk to and get help from the city pigeons (a great spy network), but can change gender! She/he is pretty great, and always fashionable, and has a weakness for beans.

Linus Randor (CV: Yusa Kouji) – Rosalia’s fiance, he’s kind of oblivious and it’s hard to tell what he’s thinking.

Oswell Savaray (CV: Tsuda Kenjirou) – The prince’s tutor who wants to learn through experience instead of books. He travels when and where he likes, and doesn’t like getting involved with people.

Damian (CV: Morita Masakazu) – A mouse monster who works in the city doing various odd jobs. He’s a bit of a pushover, but is very versatile. He meets Rosalia when she saves him from a rat-catcher. Oh, and he loves cheese.

And two more characters who I’m not sure if they have routes or not:

Sirius Bradley (CV: Takahashi Hiroki) – A kindly but weird magician who knew Odette’s parents. He had a route in 12ji, I kind of thought it was the true route but I guess not…?

Spencer Hendrick (CV: Nakata Jouji – he was in Escaflowne as Farnel!!! He’s also Serizawa in Hakuouki and will be in Double Score) – A retainer of the prince.

I have no idea what the plot about the emblems will be like, but I’m really looking forward to playing a Quinrose game again, especially because when I played 12ji I really liked Rosalia. I guess I can finish Grimm the Bounty Hunter while I wait…