Before starting, I read reviews of La Corda d’oro 4 that said it was really hard. I was like “pshaw, they always say that.” How hard can an otome game be? The answer is pretty darn hard, especially if you play it on Hard mode. I mean, it says Hard but usually Hard is like medium, y’know? Nah, not this time, fam. It’s Hard all right. And fun. And hard.

Story: 8 years ago, some Seiso Academy students held a Silvester concert on New Year’s eve (apparently Silvester is German for “New Year’s Eve”?). So protagonist Kanade and her buddies decide, anything they can do, we can do it better. So they form a group and hold a couple of concerts to drum up interest before finally holding their own Silvester concert on December 31st. Little does anyone suspect that the concert is just an excuse for Kanade to gather all her bishies in one place so she can hit on them with ease, mwaha, mwaha, mwahahahahaaa *cough cough*

Gameplay and why it’s harder than before: First off, they added some extra button presses to the concert portion, so instead of just tapping, there are parts where you have to hold and release and others where you have to mash a button like crazy but stop just in time so you don’t ruin your combo. It’s easy enough on Normal mode, but Hard mode can get ridiculous somehow. You basically have to abandon an entire row just to get some hits in sometimes.

My eyes got used to it in some songs after a while, but others are plain insane. Like, how??? And everything whizzes by like zoooooooom! It’s almost a blur. But it’s fun. And hard.

The second change they made is that instead of one affection bar that goes up to 1000, each guy has two that goes up to 500 each. One is a “love from him” bar, the other is a “love to him” bar. You have to fill at least one of these to get his ending. But the choices you make might not always fill the right bar you are looking for. And affection doping items will fill up one or the other, not both. Etc etc, for various reasons it’s much more difficult to max out even one guy’s affections, much less a whole harem of them. Just the way I like it, but definitely harder than La Corda d’Oro 3.

Third reason why it’s harder: apart from the very first concert, the concert schedule is entirely up you. You can hold as many or as few concerts as you want, or even zero for the rest of the game. This matters because now you can’t interact with your classmates or love interests during the week. You have to focus on lessons with your teachers instead. You can only ask guys to practice with you or work on polishing up your ensemble on weekends.

Which means much more limited free time, where you have to balance getting ready for the concert with getting your love life in order. Will you hold fewer concerts so you can spend more time with your sweetheart, getting less BP and less popularity and making it harder to hold a grand Silvester concert? Or will you hold more so you can buy more scores and doping items and hold better concerts? How few is too few? How many is too many? The only way to find out is through trial and error.

Random tips

And so my first two runs were spent just getting used to the new system, figuring out how little I could get away with. Seems like it’s okay to repeat the same songs in different concerts. I.e. if there’s a penalty for repeated songs or playing easier tunes, it’s not very severe.

Secondly, because of the limited time and the tight schedule, you do need to pick your love interest(s) early and start working them over ASAP. Practice together every day you can, use ribbons and cologne like you own the factory. Basically go all out to raise his affection and start getting events as soon as you can. Don’t be like me and get to December 28th only to find out that Yagisawa wants me to hold a concert just for his mommy dearest. -_-

Also, unless you’re aiming specifically for Togane, Housei or Myoga, you can save time by not holding an event in Kobe and not holding the church concert with the finalists of the high school contest. Especially the latter, since it adds almost nothing to your concert accomplishments unless you super want Myoga.

Last tip: If you hold a concert between the 24th and the 31st, you should be able to get up to SS rank, which will let you hire a bigger hall like the Pacifico Yokohama, thus beating out the legendary Silvester concert from 8 years ago. Unfortunately I discovered this too late to take advantage of it, but I’ll give it a try on my next playthrough and see if I get a special event or CG for my efforts.

Solo ending and Sunaga-sensei ending

All that fumbling around gave me the “forever alone” ending the first time round. You get a nice concert, you all throw a big party afterwards, Nia shows up to mock you for being a loverless loser, credits roll, later on you get a CG with all the Seiso Academy guys going to school together, the end. Not too bad except for the Nia part.

Second time round, I got paired up with my teacher Sunaga-sensei by default. La Corda d’Oro 4 makes it so you can take lessons with teachers every weekday. Every time you have a lesson with Sunaga, his affection stat goes up. If you don’t shut that nonsense down ASAP, he starts to like you more and more (but they play it off like you like him) and all sorts of stupid events start happening like you guys are cleaning the blackboard together and your fingers touch and it’s like “KYAAAA our fingers touched!” What is this, grade school? Very stupid route.

Turns out Sunaga-sensei is just pretending to be cool but he’s actually a bit shy and awkward (?) in real life, which is why no woman his age will give him the time of day and he has to get his jollies by hitting on naive high school girls who can’t get away easily because they’re forced into close proximity with him. …Okay they didn’t say the latter part, but you put two and two together and that’s what you get. I like his looks, but the guy and his route are both pathetic.

What’s next

I tried twice to get Yagisawa’s ending, but even after holding a hastily-planned concert for his mother, I still didn’t get the required event. =___= This requires some googling. I also want to get Ritsu’s ending and Togane’s ending. Kyoya is a bit too whiny and Amamiya is a bit too callous this time round, so I’m ignoring them. That’s three more playthroughs and then I’m done.

But first, I need a break from the bishies so I’m going to start Demon Gaze 2 in the next couple of days. See ya!