Edamoto Naomi no Shiawase Kitchen review

Happy times with Naomi Edamoto’s Happy Kitchen! I’ve been playing this since around the time I got Itsumo no Shokuzai, but I’ve been stretching it out because I didn’t want it to end! This falls under Category 2 of children’s games: children’s games even adults can enjoy.

Edamoto Naomi no Shiawase Kitchen is a kid’s game about a little girl named Tsugumi who promises to make a home-cooked meal for her dad. The only problem is, she doesn’t know how to cook! So, since it’s a kid’s game, instead of asking her mom to teach her like an ordinary person would, Tsugumi wishes on a star and the Fairy Queen on the Moon (uh-huh) sends down an angel to help her. This angel possesses and animates Tsugumi’s stuffed bunny Usako, and their adventures begin.

Oh, and also famous Japanese chef Naomi Edamoto (never heard of her) suddenly shows up to teach Tsugumi how to cook in fourteen lessons. Magic is a wonderful thing.

I got it because it was a cooking game, but I rapidly found myself more interested in the cute little adventures of Tsugumi and her animated dolls than in the actual cooking. Tsugumi’s so cute. I think they got her characterization just right, making her interesting and lively but not annoying. On one hand she’s sweet, helpful and hardworking, but on the other hand she can also be rash and hyper with just the tiniest hint of a mean streak (Tsugumi+Emily=win). The fact that she wasn’t Little Miss Perfect made me want to cheer her on all the more. Her cast of dolls was interesting as well, in a childish sort of way. I could have interacted with them more by choosing to stay home instead of taking walks in the park every day. Stuff for a second playthrough? I’ll think about it. Seriously.

The cooking itself is a series of chopping and stirring mini-games using the stylus. Chop up the onions, stir fry them in oil, add water, stir the soup, wash and boil rice, all using the stylus. The actions are repetitive, but the meals usually look and sound delicious. I made spaghetti neapolitan (a scrumptious-looking Japanese concoction of spaghetti stir-fried with ketchup, bacon and vegetables), minestrone and rolled cabbage for the final day, which earned me top marks as usual. If you just follow Edamoto’s instructions and then add lots of decorations to your meal at the end you shouldn’t fail.

Shiawase Kitchen is more of a cooking simulation than a proper cooking game, so for one thing none of the recipes come with quantities listed. Edamoto also skips a lot of steps, e.g. “Let’s make gyoza, I already made the dough”. Most likely the intention is for children to cook together with an adult, so they don’t see the need to be too specific. A pity really, some of those dishes looked great.

I never thought when I picked this up that I’d be that sad when the final day rolled around. :’-< Still, when all’s said and done, it’s very much a children’s game. And it’s in Japanese. And I haven’t played Cooking Mama, but it’s most likely more of the same. I loved it, but I can only recommend it to one group of Western gamers: beginners in Japanese. Since it was developed for Japanese children, it uses mainly kana with only a little kanji, which comes with furigana. Now the problem with kana-only text is that it’s usually hard for beginners to tell where one word ends and the other begins. Never fear, the writers were kind enough to leave spaces between words and phrases. It’s not exact, but it’s more than enough to be able to make sense of just about everything.

Plus they’re kind enough to highlight important nouns in red. Knife will be ほうちょう and will frequently have an arrow pointing to it, etc. If you didn’t know that pot was ‘nabe’ and rice cooker was ‘suihanki’ before you played it, you will by the time you’re done. If you’re learning Japanese and starting to wonder “When will I ever be good enough to play games in Japanese?!” you should give it a shot.

Come to think of it, I never did play games in Japanese when I was learning. That’s because I didn’t learn Japanese to play games with. I just liked the look of the characters and thought it sounded intriguing, so I learned a little here, a little there, took a few classes eventually and went on my merry way. I used Japanese mainly to read books and manga and watch the occasional anime and played all my games in English. Then one day after finishing Atelier Iris 1, 2 and 3, I found I really, really wanted more Atelier stuff. Gee, too bad they’re only in Japaneeee— waitaminnit! And the rest is history.

Enough about that. I’m slowly working my way back into Saigo no Monogatari no Yakusoku, I’m almost done with Rizumi‘s route in TM4, I’ve started TWEWY for real and I finally got some carrot seeds in Shepherd’s Crossing, so I’ll talk about one of those next time.

Tokimeki Memorial 4 – Satsuki GET!

I thought she would be harder than that, but she fell as easily as the rest. Joining the student council wasn’t that hard either, plus I joined it in my second year on Maki’s route, anyway so it didn’t feel particularly fresh and exciting. My stats were all close to or over 90 by the time the election rolled around, I didn’t take any part-time jobs or pick up the naughty magazine and I joined the music club, which raised my moral stat as well. Piece of cake.

I thought managing without a job would be hard, but 20-28 rich a month is doable if you don’t go overboard with the expensive dates. I mostly stuck to affordable dates like the library and planetarium, and occasionally treated her to beach and mountain dates. I was even able to spend money on birthday presents for all the other girls and get Satsuki at least her medium present every year without too much trouble. Of course taking part in the “Special Christmas Party” every year (100 rich+10exp, -10 moral) helped a whole lot with that.

No great discoveries on the skills front, though I did unlock several interesting-looking ones. The one that would have helped me most with Satsuki since it stops girls’ negative skills from activating (心の開錠術) I got too late to be effective. Satsuki’s negative skill is a killer: it removes one of your skills at random and you can’t put it back on till the next term. Oh hey, it’s Satsuki-sempai, fancy meeting you heAAAARGH!

Fending off the other girls was no big deal either. For the most part events and birthdays occurred often enough that I could keep most of them at bay. Maki automatically went all the way up to tokimeki mode without me ever taking her out on a single date (told you she was easy). So to deal with that, I called her up for a few dates and stood her up repeatedly, which somehow brought her affection down without provoking her to bomb me (again, told you she was easy).

Yanagi’s affection also went pretty high, which was actually a good thing because she would randomly show up and improve my mood. Thanks girl. As for the rest of the girls, I dealt with the matter by raising Satsuki-sempai to tokimeki+hand-holding level, then putting on a skill that drastically slowed down the rate at which girls like and bomb you (清廉潔白). And a good time was had by all.

I’d like to say it was worth it, but… Well, I guess it was. Satsuki is the cutest girl of the bunch IMO (Tsugumi is a close second), and while she’s not particularly interesting, she’s all right. I didn’t date her too often, just once or twice a month, so she didn’t get stale as quickly as Maki or Itsuki did. And her CGs were pretty nice, as the picture above demonstrates. As a character she’s a little too ‘perfect’ and her sole flaw, a bad sense of direction, is completely unbelievable. It comes out of nowhere, plays out in one CG and then is never referred to again.

Graduation day she shows up, blah blah blah didn’t have the courage to confess last year blah blah blah confessing now, oh you love me too, yay. From her monologue and from another event, it sounds like she’s related to Shiori Fujisaki from TM1 and that the MC and Fujisaki are still together and still happily in love. That’s sweet…especially since I never did get Fujisaki myself. And everybody lived happily after, the end.

Next up, I’m going to start Tokimeki Memorial 4 all over again because I hear I get a cheap stamina refilling item on my third playthrough. That’s the save file I’ll use to get Rui, Rizumi and Tsugumi before putting the game away for good.

Tokimeki Memorial 4 – Maki GET!

She’s all right, I guess. I did her route because she guilted me into it by being so nice to me last time, but I’m not that into her. Maki is the poor man’s Satsuki-sempai – average, but not quite good enough at anything. The girls in Tokimeki Memorial 4 seem quick to fall in love, but Maki was especially easy, particularly in the face of my almighty stats. Her CGs were easy to get too. I got almost all of them naturally.

The developers often try to include at least one stereotypical “nice girl” in this kind of game, and this time it’s Maki: cheerful, sweet, fishes for compliments by putting herself down frequently, can’t afford to go to a proper hair salon, can only afford a few outfits, etc etc. One day she’s like “I wanna be a nurse!” then later she’s like, “No I suck I can’t be a nurse,” then you encourage her and she goes “Okay I’m gonna be a nurse” and that’s the full extent of her character development. Not that Itsuki Maeda had any development either, but Maki’s supposed to be the “main” girl. I had expectations!

The only exciting thing that happened on Maki’s route had nothing to do with the girl herself. I’d been fiddling with skills for a while, not taking them too seriously. I put on the all-night cramming skill (一夜漬け) that lets you raise your humanities-science-art skills like crazy the night before a test. I also put on a skill that randomly gives you a massive increase in the stat you’re working on (女神の加護). It rarely activates so I barely gave it a thought.

Then, one fateful night, BAM! they activated together! Science and art went up by 60 (!!) each, but that was child’s play compared to humanities: 288 to 520 in one night! That’s two to three years of grinding in ONE SINGLE NIGHT! It took me like a minute to believe what my eyes were telling me. H-how w-what b-b-but– it must be a bug! I saved, turned the game off, put it back on and it was still there. Suddenly Tsugumi and Satsuki were falling all over themselves to please me and the rest of the game was easy-mode. I’ve been trying to reproduce the lucky incident ever since, with no success. Maybe it really was a fluke.

Back to Maki, there’s nothing wrong with her, but there’s nothing right about her either. All that friendly supportiveness gets boring really quickly, which is why I can’t wait to date some of the more prickly types like Tsugumi.  My stamina for this game has dropped even further, so I’ve decided to drop Kai, science girl and Yanagi. My final list is Satsuki-sempai (currently working on), Rui (she’s a funny, funny girl. Her Valentine’s Day event is priceless!), Tsugumi (‘cos I like her) and Rizumi (just because).

Should take me another week or two, then I’ll be ready to move on. I’m thinking of either finishing up Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari (urghhh) or starting something new entirely. Speaking of which, I tried to start TWEWY the other day, but four frames later some anorexic kid with a bad dye job told me to get the hell outta his face, so I did. …This is not going to end well.

Jeanne d’Arc limitations (spoilers)

You knew it was coming. Better games have been raked over the coals, so Jeanne D’Arc isn’t getting off so easy. Sure I enjoyed it and all, but it’s got a lot of flaws that will need to be fixed if Level-5 ever plans to dip into the tactical RPG well again. Some of the things other people complain about like turn limits and long cutscenes didn’t bother me, but plenty of other things did.

1. Jeanne is annoying. Seriously. Yell, whine, mope, yell, whine, mope, yell, whine, mope, doesn’t she get tired? Even that fetching piece of black “armor” that shows off her oh-so-nice shoulders as she angsts yet again didn’t help.

2. Characters die or leave your party at inopportune times. That’s okay with me. No, really. I’m not mad or anything that I had to raise Jean several levels after Gilles up and took off or anything. But I am mad that Roger left my party for like 15 chapters, came back and then I was forced to put him in my party and keep him alive right before the final boss battle. That was not funny.

3. The story was stupid. I’ve said it before, but one more time won’t hurt: the story was stupid. Either you’re making a history-based tactical RPG or you’re doing a demons-ate-my-baby thing. Pick one. Btw, did I miss something or did characters like Charles VI and Richemont just vanish from the story after a certain point? I was really looking forward to Charles’ reaction after I wasted his precious mommy too. Tch.

4. Battles get too repetitive. Repetitive battles in a tactical RPG? Say it ain’t so! Yeah, it’s kind of a staple of the genre, but Jeanne d’Arc takes it too far. When you’re using the same party, the same skills and fighting the same bosses on top of it (four, five times in a row), it’s hard to stay excited. Exactly how are we beating these guys anyway, if they can turn around and show up again the very next stage with nary a scratch?

4. Limited party was limited. 15 playable characters (that I got) and you could use between 5 and 7 at a time. 5 for most of the game. A lot of my characters went completely unused as a result (Rufus, Bertrand, Rose, Bartolemeo, etc). Lack of class or job changes also meant that Marcel at level 5 is the same Marcel at level 50, only with better gear. Ho-hum.

5. Limited skillset is limited. There are lots of skills, but most of them are useless given the limited number of slots, so I was using the same practical ones over and over again. This goes especially for the stronger magic spells, which I almost never used because my Richard also doubled as my healer. I could heal my entire party twice for the price of a single Thor’s Hammer. I don’t have a problem with MP starting at 0 though, since I’m used to it from FFTA2.

6. Navigation could be a bit iffy. Especially in oddly-shaped stages like Alrond Wood, the cursor can go flying all over the place when you’re just trying to select an enemy close by you.

7. The game was sluggish. First there was all the loading, even when doing simple things like opening the menu. Then some enemies would take several seconds thinking about their next moves. And then in the last third of the game a skill called HP Recovery appeared which meant both enemies and allies would waste time at the beginning of every turn just healing themselves. The cumulative effect of these things was to make the game feel like a massive slogfest by the end.

8. It’s rather easy. I never once got caught by the turn limit, and I only failed two missions once each. Just by doing each Free Combat mission exactly once, my party rapidly became overpowered, overequipped and overleveled, and anything after chapter 25-ish was a complete cakewalk. TBH, I forgot to transform in more than a few battles, and I still won easily.

9. Replay value is zero. I replay SRPGs I really, really like (Fire Emblem games, Luminous Arc 3), especially if I failed to get something in the first playthrough. In this case I’m clearly missing a few stones in some of the bracelets, but I don’t care. Neither the story nor the characters endeared themselves to me, and the battle system is nothing that hasn’t been seen before. Post-game content shmost-game content, I’m done.

10. Seriously, WTF was Talbot’s problem? What’s his stake in this? If he’s mad because the war is a family feud, what’s that got to do with us? What’s behind his sudden change of heart at the end? Why isn’t he dead? And why did I have to fight him five times in a row? WHAT AM I FIGHTING YOU FOOOOOAAAAAARRRRRGGGHH!

And a bunch of other niggling complaints that are too petty to mention here. My final, final assessment is that Jeanne d’Arc is a good, but not a great game. 35 hours of entertainment is nothing to scoff at, though, so I can freely recommend it to fans of the SPRG genre.

Jeanne d’Arc – Finished (spoilers)

The game has been out for 4 years at this point so I see no need to hold back on the spoilers, but consider yourself forewarned if you haven’t played it yet.

I finished Jeanne d’Arc a few hours ago at 35:05:37. That time includes a lot of hours spent fighting Free Battles to level up my party. I thought I was going overboard at first, but it paid off when I showed up to the final-final battle with Gilvaroth and he was level 60, which was where most of my party was as well. He wasn’t so tough, only 3000 HP. Some annoying minions on the side would heal him from time to time, but never enough to undo the damage I had done. IIRC I beat him in about 10 turns.

The ending has Jeanne and Roger going back to Domrémy to find out that somehow Jeanne’s father and most of the other villagers managed to survive the destruction of the village in chapter 2. Jeanne gets a happy ending back at home with her dad and Roger while Liane, well, we know what happened to Liane. I don’t know whether I should admit this or not, but I kind of enjoyed the torching scene.

– Jeanne?
– But my name is Liane–
– IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOUR NAME IS!

Silly Liane, you can’t enjoy the fame and glory and then try to beg out when things get hot (heh heh). Tant pis!

While we’re on the subject, I’m a little disappointed the armlets turned out to be completely benign in the end. I was hoping for a plot twist where they would turn out to be evil or at least dangerous, and that would explain why Jeanne and Liane started out as normal, well-adjusted peasant girls then went batshit insane as soon as they put them on.

The other armlet wielders didn’t seem to be similarly mentally affected. So I thought, oho, the game is sexist! The others are all male, and thus blessed with greater mental fortitude than that possessed by hysterical females. Or maybe it’s classism. The others are originally of noble birth (Roger got his armlet too late in the game to be affected), Jeanne and Liane are peasants. Of course their feeble lowborn intellects are too weak to adequately control the power of the armlets, etc, etc. But in the end it turned out Jeanne and Liane are just shrill nutcases who got what was coming to them. Oh well.

Apart from Gilles, Jeanne and Liane, the rest of the characters don’t even get a courtesy blurb to say what happened to them after the game ended. Gilles’s later ‘activities’ are explained away as being due to having Gilvaroth sealed within him after the final battle. Ho hum. See why I don’t like games based on actual historical figures. They tend to oversimplify things to ludicrous levels.

And then once the story diverted from history into a hackneyed “Historical figure X was actually demon-possessed” plot, things really slowed down for me. But I pressed on and I’m glad I did because  apart from the weak story Jeanne d’Arc was above average all around. I won’t be able to play Summon Night 3 for a while because my SRPG itch has been well and truly scratched by all the battling I did in this game. Of course it would have been even better if half the story battles didn’t consist of fighting the exact same bad guys in four or five times in a row (Talbot [wtf was his problem anyway? he never said], the therion trio, Roger), but I just glad it’s over so I won’t dwell on it.

Moving on, I’m “finishing up” my playthrough of Shepherd’s Crossing. Unlike the sequel, you can’t retire when you’ve had enough so you just keep going until you get tired and then give up. There’s no way I’m going to fill out all of Brammy’s Diary, but I have one or two more things I want to grow/rear before I call it a day, so that should take me another in-game year and then I’ll be done.