Time to finally put La Corda d’Oro 4 away, but only after playing the heck out of it on Hard mode. I had such a good time I’m thinking of diving into one of Neoromance’s other games next, maybe one of the Harukanaru Toki no Naka de games. Those are always good for a playthrough… or a ragethrough, as the case may be. But I won’t because the year is almost over so I have to play more stuff from my New Year’s Resolutions list. Next week looks like a quiet one, so I’ll start something tomorrow, God willing.

Before that, though, a roundup of all the routes I did this week!

Kisaragi Kyoya

At one point you’ll have to hold a concert that doesn’t include Togane or Myoga, just to show that the Weekend Ensemble can succeed on its own without their star power. No, you can’t cheat by never recruiting them in the first place. But you can cheat by recruiting them but never putting them in an ensemble, hehehe. Too bad I didn’t think of it earlier :'(

The main story is that Kyoya has yet another crisis of confidence and decides to leave the music department and enroll in the regular high school. Eventually we music him out of it, but I thought he had a good point. How many music students go on to become professional violinists? Isn’t it a deadend street for someone like Kyoya, who isn’t lauded as a musical genius like Ritsu or Togane or Myoga are? Who has to work twice as hard to achieve barely comparable results and doesn’t seem to have much fun doing so? Wouldn’t he be happier living a normal life and still being involved in music on a more casual level?

I think he would, personally. Or that at least he needed to give serious consideration to that question. Why is he doing this? Is this really his dream or is he just following his big brother and childhood crush? Unfortunately for the player, La Corda d’Oro‘s “music über alles” concept won’t allow any dissent from the party line, so in the end his points are never addressed. We just keep playing concerts and he keeps getting better and so he decides to embark on a musical path and see how far he can go.

I’m sort of rooting for him, but I thought the game could have addressed the issue of music as a professional career for the not-particularly-talented a little more seriously. Especially since the game itself – and real life, to be honest – portrays anything less than success at the soloist level as a disappointment. Doubly especially because Kyoya’s own brother had to drop performing because of an injury. What’s Kyoya’s fallback if a musical career doesn’t pan out? “It will all work out because of love” is a cop-out IMO.

His post-confession CG is the two of them backstage before a performance IIRC, with Kyoya saying he wants to see how far he can go with her at his side. So what, he’ll drop music if she dumps him? Heh. Alrighty then.

Right, I sohuld mention this: Kyoya, Myoga and Nanami’s routes have gikushaku (Awkward) mode, where things get a bit weird between the two of you and you have to talk things out. In Kyoya’s case, Kanade is too shy to ask him whether he decided to stick with music or switch to the regular curriculum. So she keeps running away when she sees him. Then she has a dream where he kisses her (……..) and that makes things even weirder. Eventually they… don’t talk it over, but he says he’s been thinking of her too, and then he kisses her on the forehead and everything’s happy again. Most useless mode ever.

Myoga Reiji

If you raise his affection early enough, you’ll be able to give him a birthday present. A pair of mugs featuring the golden string from our backstories. On most routes he’ll refuse to even see you, but this time he’ll accept one mug and you can keep the other. On one hand it was a really nice set of mugs. On the other hand, Kanade is kind of pushy, isn’t she? First the forced date with Kyoya, now a forced pair present.

Most of the route is Myoga snarking at Kanade. I can’t remember anything besides that. For their Christmas date, she barges into his apartment and demands to spend the evening with him. He challenges her to a chess game: if she can win, he’ll agree. She loses 6 times in a row but he agrees anyway because we all know the dumb tsundere chuunibyou is madly in love with her.

In his gikushaku mode event, we have a little tiff over Myoga ignoring a request from an alumnus of a school Amane Academy is absorbing. Frankly the whole thing was none of Kanade’s business, but she gets mad at him and he gets mad at her and it’s all super childish. Felt really forced by the writers, tbh. There’s plenty of other plausible scenarios for them to have a falling out over.

In any case, they make up once they play a piece together and the music they make together is soooo amazing that Myoga feels like he’s going to heaven. Once he wakes up from his reverie huffing and panting, he decides to make up with her and then they’re buddies again forever. But he’s still going to insult and put her down randomly, because that is his ninja way.

Highlight (?) of the route: she gets kidnapped AGAIN! I rolled my eyes at that one. Firstly because magical fairies aside, La Corda d’Oro is a very down-to-earth series so such skullduggery feels out of place. And secondly because they did the same thing last time and it was dumb enough. This time it’s even more pathetic.

Myoga’s driver and one of his assistants kidnap Kanade and use her to lure Myoga out, then take both of them down to the pier. They want the key to Amane Academy so they can give it back to the evil Russian not-pedophile that started the school. Myoga knocks them out and calls his bitchy assistant to come pick us up. End of incident, never referred to again. So, so pointless.

Can’t remember much of his confession scene, but his ending CG has him creepily kissing her hand and tell her that all his hatred for her has now turned into love. Oookayyy. I dunno, if I were Kanade I don’t think I’d stick around to find out what will happen if the love-hate switch ever gets flipped back…

Amamiya Sei

I almost lost him by not progressing his route fast enough. Watch out for early December! Try to get the event where he leaves for Vienna before the end of November, because his events might close off without the game even warning you! :-[ Luckily I’d been saving in a lot of different slots, so I was able to reload from earlier and somehow avoid the closing off, not sure how. Anyway, watch out.

Amamiya’s route was a boring disappointment, since we’re still doing the same “pretend to be in love” shtick from La Corda d’Oro 3. That means we’re already saying sweet things to each other and acting lovey-dovey, so it doesn’t feel special when he claims he’s really in love now. I can’t tell the difference, honestly. He still talks and acts in the same fake, affected manner, he just blushes once in a while. You never feel like you’ve gotten to the real Sei Amamiya. Assuming such an Amamiya even exists. I feel like I wasted my time doing his route.

His Christmas date was a little unusual, at least. He takes Kanade shopping for a swimsuit, then takes her to the swimming pool for a makeout session. In the end he’ll be going to Vienna to study abroad once he graduates, and she hopes to join him there the following year. Sounds like a plan. Have fun, guys!

Togane Chiaki

It was okay. Not sure what I was expecting.

In one event, he takes Kanade along to play music for a bunch of pre-schoolers. He makes a valid point[citation needed] that busking and performing for children are good ways to learn to attract an audience, because those audiences are merciless and won’t stick around just to be polite. Too bad the rest of his route wasn’t similarly sensible and pragmatic.

The reason I say his route wasn’t what I expected is because he comes across as wise and worldly when he cameos in Yagisawa and Ritsu’s route, but in his own route he’s just a pompous blowhard. He talks and boasts about himself all the time and puts you down a lot. Until suddenly he thinks you’re super-amazing and even says so in a magazine interview. The transition from “you suck and you don’t deserve me” to “you’re the most wonderful woman ever” literally comes out of nowhere. It’s the same as in his LC3 route – one minute you’re boring, next minute he can’t live without you. Weird and unconvincing.

Let’s see, any highlights… He took Kanade to a tea ceremony party in Kobe. Mainly interesting because you get to see the inside of his very fancy mansion as well as the tea ceremony garden and room. I really like the backgrounds in Neoromance games. Unfortunately, to get this event you will have to randomly hold a concert in Kobe. Which isn’t a problem except… I had already planned and sold tickets to another concert! You should just hold all your concerts in Kobe and spare yourself the pain of cancelling a concert at the last minute like I did.

What else… Oh yeah, this one was annoying. Togane and Housei challenged the Weekend Ensemble to a Battle of the Bands event. But I triggered this event on December 26th! Less than a week to the Silvester concert! When I had already sold over 3000 tickets for the Pacifico Arena! :-<<<<. UGH. This is why you keep multiple saves, guys. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

So I reloaded, scheduled the concert, set up pieces that didn’t involve Togane and Housei, just to prove that the Weekend Ensemble is good enough to stand on its own without their help. Never mind all the routes when I didn’t bother recruiting those two into my ensemble. Never mind that on Myoga’s route I sold out the Yokohama Arena without their help.

In the end I got Togane’s confession after the Silvester concert, but he had already made his intentions clear by trying to kiss Kanade after the Battle of the Bands concert. Because nothing says ‘love and consideration’ like springing a challenge on your partner 5 days before New Year’s Eve, woo hoo!

My favorite part of the route was an event where a fan gives you a love letter to hand to him. And he thinks it’s from you so he starts blushing. But it’s not, so he gets mad. Heh, hehehe, serves you right, you pompous, self-important, overly-inflated sack of ….. . Not every girl in the world is gonna fall at your feet. I even tried to turn down his confession at the end, just to drive the message home, but the game wouldn’t let me. Instead, if you hesitate at his confession, he says “Give me a chance, you won’t regret it,” and then you’re stuck with him anyway.

Ending CG, you guys are out for an evening at the opera. You’re there to watch Carmen, and Togane says he can understand how Don José feels, all possesive and stuff. Yah, yah, whatevs dude. I’m gonna dump you for Yagisawa anyway, so enjoy it while you can.

Nanami Sousuke

After doing all the routes above, I still hadn’t had enough of the gameplay in Kiniro no Corda 4. After doing so many routes in quick succession, I had mastered a lot of the pieces in the rhythm game, so I wanted to show off a little before quitting the game. I ran through the list of untouched routes and Nanami is the guy I hated least, so Nanami it was.

As usual, Nanami has issues galore. With a dose of puppy-like excitability and a tendency to get carried away with fantasies. The drama on his route is that he loves playing in the Weekend Ensemble, but doesn’t agree with some of Kanade’s ideas and interpretations. However instead of saying so, he decides to act all weird and angsty all the time because he’s afraid she’ll dislike him for daring to express an opinion.

Eventually we manage to worm his true thoughts out of him, with plenty of crying and carrying on attached. Then he goes into a funk (gikushaku mode) and asks Hido, the previous cellist Myoga kicked out of the contest team, to cover for him. Hido goes to bat for Nanami (unbelievably enough) and says blah blah, Nanami is actually a performer at heart not an accompanist blah blah etc etc so this is all so hard for him. Blah. We’ve got other performers in the Ensemble, they’re just sensible and mature enough to speak up when they have problems. This kid is too young to be out alone after dark, let alone dating anyone.

After that, I got an event Nanami turns his phone off and doesn’t go home, so we have to run all over town searching for him late at night. Then Kanade and Nanami make up and decide to share their thoughts with each other. Kanade made the sensible point that if he really wants to be closer to her, that won’t happen as long as he’s hiding his true self and feelings. And so they made up and a good time was had by all.

His route was even whinier and more annoying than I’d expected, so I skipped quickly through his confession scene, sorry. In the post-ending CG, he’s blowing on her hands because they’re cold. Skipped through that as well. That’s it. No more shotas for me.

Final thoughts

Not yet. I’ve playing this game 9 good times, so I want to share some tips for not botching routes completely in my next post. Then I’ll do a final roundup of things I liked and things I think could be improved upon in La Corda d’Oro 5, which I am totally looking forward to even though it hasn’t been announced yet. See you next post!