Doki Doki Majo Shinpan! = Trash

majo shinpan_frontI almost titled this post “Doki Doki Majo S**tpan” but I’m trying to run a clean(er) ship these days. Besides, such a perfectly descriptive name would leave me with nothing left to write about this game, one of the dullest, most joyless things I have ever experienced in my life.

Doki Doki Majo Shinpan! is a game about a boy tasked with rooting out witches and bringing them under heavenly jurisdiction by investigating and fighting them and eventually touching them in suggestive places. Despite the worthlessness of both the premise and the resulting game, the original evidently sold enough to warrant two sequels and a manga. I know it’s pointless but I’m going to ask anyway: WHY?!

The most obvious answer, and the reason I tried this, is that fans must enjoy the silliness and fanservice that comes with touching girls. Heck, they just enjoy touching girls, period. Having actually played for 2 hours and having indecently assaulted two of said girls, I must ask again, WHY?!

To put it plainly, this game simply isn’t fun. For all the controversy about touching little girls and fanservice and stuff, there is surprisingly little titillation available. What there is plenty of is talking. 95% of the game consists of moving around on a tiny little map vainly trying to progress what little story there is. Click on an icon, get a snippet of story, click on another icon, get another little bit. After several in-game days, you catch up to a witch and the other 5% of the game begins. First you defeat her in very simple touchscreen combat and then comes the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the witch-poking part.

Which is sleazy and soulless as hell, and unsexy to boot. First off, if you do it right the procedure takes all of 30 seconds to complete. Even if you stretch it out to fulfill your easily-satisfied sexual(?) desires, what happens barely counts as fanservice. Apart from short skirts and some minor cleavage, the girls are largely covered up. Thus the only fanservice you get are perfunctory moans, weakly fluttering skirts and stiffly bouncing boobs.

Really only 9 years old.

Really only 9 years old.

On top of that, the actual womanhandling process is very pedestrian. In your arsenal you have a hand for poking and stroking, an eye for staring, a mouth for blowing air and a grin for leering. That’s it. I’m not demanding cattle prods and feather dusters a la Criminal Girls, but a tiiiinny smidgen of imagination isn’t too much to ask for, is it?

Most importantly, nobody enjoys it. The girls seemed almost bored at some point. The main character makes no comments at all during the activity, perhaps treating it, sensibly enough, as a routine medical examination. And as the player I really couldn’t see the point. Story-wise, by the time you reach that point you’ve already amassed enough evidence of the girl’s witchcraft. You’ve already beaten her into submission in a magic battle. There’s no room left for denial – and if she tries you can just beat on her some more – and thus no need to “find the witch mark” on the victim. I know I’m being picky, expecting a child molestation game to actually have a sensible reason behind it,  but I can’t help it if I have normal thought processes.

Apart from the sordid gimmick and its disappointing result, the other main attraction of Doki Doki Majo Shinpan! is the characters. Or, more rightly, the character designs. SNK Playmore must have guessed – correctly as it turned out – that a fan of this sort of game wouldn’t about things like personalities and character development and other non-essentials. That’s why the girls in the game are cute and busty and as interesting as a puddle of piss. I can’t help comparing this game to Criminal Girls, which was just as vile gimmick-wise but had rock-solid gameplay and some of the best on-screen character development I had ever seen to make up for its moral failings. S**tpan has nothing to commend it but cute art and half-assed fanservice.

Is that really all it takes to please some people? I’m not trying to position myself as morally superior or somehow ‘above the influence.’ It’s just that after years of gaming one naturally develops some basic standards of quality. Cute art, yes. Everything else, fail, especially the gameplay. It might be worth trying once just to say you did (though why anyone would want to admit that is beyond me) but otherwise give this a miss. Please.

Wild Arms XF – Too much strategy for me

wild arms xf_frontI’ve put off this post for a long time because it’s slightly embarrassing for me to admit it, but… I don’t like that much strategy in my SRPGs. They should be more like (s)RPGs than Srpgs in my book. The reason this has never come up before is that I tend to avoid games that fall into the undesirable category. Like Advance Wars. I just wanna kill stuff with my friends, you know?

Which is all to say, Wild Arms XF might be a really good game, but I’ll never know because I quit after 3 or 4 maps. I was going to FAQ my way through, but all the FAQs and walkthroughs I consulted made everything seem so complicated. Change everyone to class ABC, move X here, move X back and if anyone gets spotted it’s game over, etc. etc. It might have been more bearable if WAXF started out simply and then introduced more complicated mechanics step by step, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

It’s also really frustrating for me to have to keep running and hiding all the time like that. I also hate stages/games where you fail the mission if a single ally dies. If you fail because your lord or an important NPC dies, I get that, but anything else is simple frustration.

The story wasn’t grabbing me either. Too much political intrigue, too many evil councilors and princesses and “I’ll follow you forever, Lady XYZ” servants and that sort of thing. I don’t know why such themes are so common in SRPGs, it’s very annoying.

Music was good though, especially the remix of WA2’s theme they used as the opening. I listened to a few of the other tracks as well. Solid stuff. Apart from that I can’t really comment since I quit so soon. With this I think I’m done with the Wild Arms series. I don’t think it has much to offer me.

The Last Story I ever wanted to play (spoilers)

the-last-story-wall I was told The Last Story was a 30-40 hour game, but I fast forwarded a lot of scenes because they were hella cheesy and finished in 28 hours and 40 minutes. I finished it in January so I don’t remember too many of the details now. General experiences and impressions follow.

First, the battles. After 20 hours I finally started to get the hang of the battle system. For one thing I realized that 5 KO’s before a Game Over is a lot of leeway. Just take off Gathering when the heat gets too much and pass through a Heal Circle once in a while and Zael will be just fine. Once I figured that out, I was able to spend time focusing on my allies and what they were getting up to.

By the end of the game I was actually enjoying myself, running around reviving people, killing mages, dispelling enemy circles and generally having a good time. I even got to control some of the other party members, which wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped. It’s a shame that I only got to this point when the game was almost over. The last boss was eeeaaaassyyy, possibly because I was over-leveled (avg. 67). Definitely easier than some of the battles I’d faced till then (you haven’t seen the last of me, Cave Cougars!). Maybe Mistwalker made the game so short because they were gambling that players would enjoy fighting enough to replay it? If the rest of the game wasn’t quite so dreadful they might have won that bet.

Visuals, graphics, whatever they’re called. All the browns and yellows and dark shadows made things hard to see, especially in the dungeons. For that reason (and that reason only, I swear) I left my characters virtually naked throughout the game. To make them stand out from the backgrounds and enemies, you see. Dungeons, the town and the castle were all bleh. And the weird rubber faces in CGs actually scared me the first time. They looked like chipmunks with too many teeth. 2/10 all around.

Next the soundtrack. It’s no FF8 soundtrack or even Guin Saga soundtrack but it had some memorable tunes. The regular battle music, the boss music (always got me pumped), the arena music…hmm, maybe I spent too much time fighting. I don’t comment too much on music because I’m majorly tone-deaf. At any rate Uematsu does “grand” music and “tense” music very well, and the rest of the soundtrack wasn’t too bad either.

Last, the story. I was expecting it to be bad, but it was BAD. Like, there are interesting kinds of bad, and there’s So Bad It’s Good, but this was just a not-even-trying-but-hoping-you-won’t-notice kind of bad. (spoilers follow)

The.Last.Story.I’m not bothered or even surprised that Dagran turned out to be the last boss. I only wish it had happened for a far more sensible reason than “Astor killed my daddy and I was looking for revenge this whole time.” First off, there was no hint that Dagran was out for revenge on Astor at any point in time. It seemed a lot more natural to me that Astor found out something he shouldn’t have and had to be silenced. Then Dagran made Jirall take the fall for Zael to cover things up. I thought the Count was in on the whole thing as well. Only Zael threw a spanner in the works by refusing to become a knight when he should have, leaving Dagran high and dry.

Up to that point, cool, made sense. When Dagran disappeared for a while I knew he was coming back to cause trouble, but… I just thought his reappearance would make sense, you know? Seriously, what did he want the power of the Outsider for? If he wanted his mercs to become knights, Count Arganan was long dead and Calista was on their side. Knighthoods galore were bound to follow. He’d already gotten his revenge on Astor. Plus Zael had a mountain of treasure in his room from the Gurak raid so they weren’t going to starve. Why the Outsider?

And if Dagran was just envious of Zael from the start then why drag in all that irrelevant stuff about Astor and Jirall? Or maybe Dagran wanted success but only by his hand and on his terms? Basically he was just throwing a massive hissy fit at the end? Which is not a bad motivation for a normal villain but is really weak for a serious last boss. Either way I was very disappointed by that turn of events.

The love story between Zael and Calista doesn’t even deserve a mention. But I mentioned it anyway so you wouldn’t think I’d forgotten. Congratulations Zael for porking the girl before the end. And at least she didn’t turn out to be his long-lost half-sister or anything. We probably got off lightly, considering how much worse it could have been.

As for the Outsider, a.k.a. the love child of Meteor and Lavos, well, no one has ever accused Mistwalker of originality before and now thanks to The Last Story no one ever will.

Rune Factory Frontier – Progress Report 2

rf wallpaperFinished the main game! I killed the last boss at level 70, around the 70-hour mark. It was a pitifully easy affair, so I was probably supposed to take him down about 10 levels earlier. Bye-bye baddie, welcome back Mist, roll credits, back to my farm to continue daily life.

In Rune Factory 1 and 3 (never finished 2) I quit shortly after finishing the main storyline. I could do this because you had to finish all the smaller dungeons before facing the final boss, but that’s not the case with Rune Factory Frontier. Before I say goodbye to this game I want to achieve the following things.

1. Get married. Yeah I know I said I was going to stay single last time, but that was before both Irises moved into the inn, within easy reach of Raguna’s grasping paws. My only problem right now is which one to pick. On one hand I like Noire better, but on the other hand Blanche is already at 5 hearts, so I could have her in the sack by the end of spring. Decisions, decisions…

2. Make a Black Robe and a Diamond Ring. No real reason, just a matter of pride. I’ve already got most of the material, I just need to raise my Crafting level by another 10 points or so and I’ll be fine. In order to do that I’ve got to farm some more Fair Hides and Platinums. The drop rates in Frontier are pretty good compared to, say, RF1 so it’s just a matter of having enough patience to go through with it.

3. Meet the bosses of Whale Island and Snow Ruins. I was going to say “beat the bosses” but apparently all dungeon bosses get a boost after you beat the final boss. Probably has something to do with the balance of runes being restored and sumsuch. I found this out the hard way when I ran low on white grass and decided to try battering the chicken boss one last time. It… didn’t end well (today’s Understatement was brought to you by the following sponsors…).

4. Finish growing at least one Emery Flower, Lamp Grass and Fireflower. I’ve already got several Four-Leaf clovers, Noel Grass and Cherry Grass. This is the first time I’ve bothered with super-crops in  one of these games and to be honest it’s not really worth it. But since i) I’ve already started and ii) I can afford all the Formula Bs I need to speed up growth and iii) I won’t be replaying this, I might as well finish the job.

Once I’ve done all the above, I’ll return for a final roundup of Rune Factory Frontier.

Lunar Silver Star Harmony – It’s okay, I guess

Lunar_Silver_Star_Harmony_PSPA couple of days ago I had a horrible nightmare. I dreamt I finally started my beloved Phantasy Star Portable 2 and it sucked. When I woke up drenched with sweat a few minutes later, I was still depressed. I tried to recall what made the game so bad and it hit me: it had Lunar‘s battle system.

All right, dreams do have a way of making even the mundane seem terrifying. But this is the first time a game has backed me into such a corner that I can only find release in my dreams. Why don’t I stop playing? Because I’m actually liking the game. It’s just the battles. There are too many of them and they’re terrible.

– They’re slow. Nowadays I can end most fights in one turn, but even then it takes a while to for the battle to play out. What just kills me is that shrill little “skreeee” sound your party makes and the “pwiiii” sound the enemies make as they take 5-10 seconds to charge up the same old specials. Add up several such attacks every turn for 5-12 characters/enemies on the field and you can see how painfully the battles stretch out.

– They’re repetitive. Alex uses Flash Cut, Nash uses Electroshower, Mia uses Flame Circle if there’s anyone left standing. Kyle and Jessica run around making nuisances of themselves while Nall hovers helplessly at the top. Physical attacks seem to be all but useless compared to magic and specials, so every battle is made up of the same attacks, same animations and same noises every single time.

– They don’t seem to make much difference to my strength. Level ups are frequent enough, but it’s only the specials you get that make a real difference. I even wonder if I’m wasting my time when I spend money on weapons and equipment.

– There are way too many encounters in dungeons. My preference is for visible enemies, but I don’t mind random battles. What I hate is enemies that look avoidable but that will catch you 9 out of 10 times anyway.

– They’re inescapable. Good luck getting away from all but the weakest enemies – and sometimes not even those. To add insult to injury, instead of simply running away your characters will flop around hopelessly for 10 seconds, wasting precious time and pissing me off.

The only forgivable thing about this whole misadventure is that the developer, GameArts, later went on to develop the Grandia games, which have some of the best turn-based RPG battle systems ever. I can only assume they learned a bitter lesson from how rotten Lunar was and applied it to their future games. If this is the price gamers had to pay to get Grandia… yeah, I guess it was worth it.

lunar aww nallApart from the whole battle thing I’m cool with this game. It’s a real shame that the dungeons are such a chore to slog through, because I either like or don’t especially mind everything else about Lunar Silver Star Harmony. The story is nothing original but I get originality in spades from some of the other things I play. In any case the game is so old that I’ve been spoiled several times by different sources. Check out items #126, 127, 150 and 189 on the Grand List of RPG Cliches, for example.

(Speaking of originality, does anyone who’s played Dragoneer’s Aria suspect it was “inspired” at least in part by the elemental dragons in this game? Especially their tendency to meet sudden and messy deaths right after your party shows up.)

Character-wise I like Nall, I like Nash, I like Mia. I don’t like Jessica or violent tomboys in general. I don’t like Kyle or drunken playboys in general. I’m okay with Alex. Don’t like Luna, don’t wanna rescue her, don’t like the fact that people talk about them being “raised like brother and sister” and “being in love” in the same breath. And people wonder why Japan’s birth rate is so low -_-. But I really like Nall, Nash and Mia so I have no problems toughing things out for them.

I’ve played about 13 hours right now. I’m in Lyton, trying to solve the puzzle of the Wind Shrine with little success. I must have fallen in about 50 holes and fought 500 enemies by now and I’m not getting anywhere. I hate to do this, but it’s time to bust out the FAQs. Once I clear this dungeon and meet the Blue Dragon, I’ll have met 3 out of the 4 dragons, which should put me around the 50% mark, maybe? It doesn’t seem to be that long a game so I’ll do my best to finish it.