And with that I can say goodbye to La Corda d’Oro (at least for now), not because it has done anything wrong but because I’m ready to see what La Corda d’Oro 2 has to offer. I’m mostly interested in the new songs, because I’m a little tired of MC’s current repertoire. You can only play La Campanella and Aria on a G String so many times before you start craving something new. Now that I’ve cleared all the routes for the main guys (except scruffy gross teacher and boring OB), the way is open for more new and exciting things to come my way.

My final target was Tsukimori Len but alas, I botched my playthrough and only barely got his date ending – the fairy gave me the “Love’s Miracle” score the day before the final contest, it was that close – so I never really got to delve into his objections to the magical violin the way I said I would last time. The problem is, I got greedy because I knew this would be my last run. So every single day after school I would go round talking to all the characters, not just Len, which wasted a lot of time. It paid off nicely when I got new CGs for Yunoki, Hihara and Shimizu, but this is what you call winning the battle and almost losing the war. (As an aside, it’s super nice of Koei to have the date ending for casual gamers and the true ending as a reward for the kind of people who actually buy guide books and follow FAQs.)

Apart from spending time with him, the other chief obstacle to getting Tsukimori’s true ending is the high BP requirement to trigger many of his events. To get a lot of BP you have to play your music for as large a group of people as possible. Ideally you would like Len himself to be included in that group for the affection boost, but he tends to shun crowds. There’ll be this nice big cluster of students over here and then Len will be over there in a corner somewhere… why? Or it’ll be a nice sunny Sunday and everyone’s in the park but he’s holed up by himself in the music room or the forest… WHY??? Actually if you talk to him he’ll tell you exactly why, but it doesn’t make it any easier to fulfill his parameter requirements and raise his affection at the same time.

Also there’s the simple truth that I got bored following the FAQ and decided to just let things happen naturally. Bad idea. I got to the final selection and realized Len’s affection stat was lower than a kick to the groin. What to do, what to do? Scramble, dash to the store, buy him lots of presents, and stalk him day in day out while half-heartedly learning a score for the contest. As a result of this mad rush I only got third place in the final selection, but it was enough to barely give me the overall winner position and a very cute, hesitant confession from Mr. Moon Forest himself. *^_^*

In the course of his confession he also states his final position on the magical violin: “The ends justify the means.” Basically it doesn’t matter if you used a trick violin or not or if you achieved in 4 weeks a level of proficiency it took him 10 years to reach, as long as you were able to make the listeners happy and convey the joy of music, that sort of thing, it’s all okay. Since I missed most of his event flags, this came across as a little sudden. Early on he’s as mad as a hatter about the violin, then radio silence for a while as we both studiously avoid the subject, then end of the game he’s cool with it? Uh, okay then. He’s a bigger man than I am, that’s for sure.

Final opinions of La Corda d’Oro are the same as my initial ones: I LOVE IT!!!!!! Nothing more to add to it, except you can stick a few “really”s between “I” and “love” if you’d like. Really looking forward to the added seasonal changes and school events and stuff in the expanded sequel. Between this game, the Harukanaru Toki series and the early Angelique games, Koei is probably the champion when it comes to offering meaty, satisfying otome games that I can’t stop myself from replaying even when they suck *cough*HTND 4*cough* Contrast that with this Crimson Noble gamething I started recently which was obviously created only to torture me. *mutter*No wonder Quinrose went out of business*mutter*

Ahem! Anyway, so that was that. Now to toss a coin about what game to start next, Summon Night 5 or Rune Factory 4. Heads, SN, tails RF. *flip* Tails. Rune Factory, here I come!