Tokimeki Memorial: Girl’s Side 2nd Season (2)

Subtitled: “He hits me, but I love him!”
This time I went for the “true” ending of sorts, i.e. solving the ‘mystery’ of who the little boy was and whether the prince ever found his mermaid princess. Yes, Saeki Teru. The default guy, and an all-around first-class ***hole.

First off, he says mean things all the time to you, then tries to cover them up with “just kidding” type remarks. I hate that. And when he doesn’t like you yet he doesn’t even bother to pretend to be nice. Secondly, he hits you. They call it a “chop” but anything that makes the main character go “ouch!” counts as hitting in my book. So he’s verbally and physically abusive. Thirdly, he’s not that good-looking. I mean, yah, he’s alright, but he’s not God’s gift to women the way the game tries to make him come across.

Fourthly, and related to the third one, since he’s not all that, it’s annoying that you have to get excellent stats all around just to get him to confess. He’s not that smart, not that athletic, not that artistic so why do I have to be goddamn near-perfect to get him? Lastly, and most importantly, he’s just not that into you. I admit I wasn’t paying 100% attention during his ending, but I never heard him say the word “I love you.” Everybody else says it except him. He wants you, he needs you, but he’s never going to love you, so why bother?

If I was rating the guys in Tokimeki Memorial Girls’ Side 2nd Season, Saeki would get a solid 1/5, only rating above playboy Tarou and Komori. What a loser. >:-(

Persona 3 Portable

Old news is so exciting! Yes, I know. It’s been all over the internet for several days. I didn’t write anything earlier for two reasons: one, I don’t own a PSP and don’t intend to buy one and two, I don’t know if I want Persona 3 Portable.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Persona 3. I was bored at first but by the end I was so in love with the game I didn’t know what to do with myself. I love it enough that I’ve been planning to play it again once I clear my current batch of games and forget things a bit. But much as I love P3, what I really want is a new game. SMT: Strange Journey is coming out but since it’s for DS it’ll probably be as shallow as Devil Survivor was. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Devil Survivor. But yeah, it was shallow.

So I’d rather save my excitement for a proper detailed announcement of the next game for a console. P5 is in development by all accounts, but apart from the fact that Shoji Meguro’s on board, nobody knows much. In the meantime we’ll watch, and wait.

And I still think Female MC should’ve had blue hair.

Tokimeki Memorial: Girl’s Side 2nd Season (1)

Subtitled: Eww, Wakaouji, or How ‘He’s just a friend’ cost me the love of a good man.
I’ve been playing Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side 2nd Season nearly non-stop on my DS for the past couple of days. I got it way back when it first came out, but I didn’ t like the guys so I kept playing TMGS1 instead.

Finally this week I decided to give it a proper chance and dove straight in. I picked Hikami Itaru because he’s supposedly the cousin of my darling Himuro-sensei from the first game (who you can see at the Aquarium in this game at certain times, but somehow Hikami never goes to say hi).

So anyway, things were going well enough with Hikami. His voice is dorkish but he’s a nice guy once you get to know him. I had my elegant wardrobe, I worked on my Academics and Social, I only took him to his favorite spots like the museum, everything was swell.

Within a year he was all over me like a rash. Every poke would yield a spurt of red hearts. Almost every date ended with a ‘make-out session’ a.k.a. daisekkin mode. It’s always the bookish type that make the biggest perverts, you notice. So! Anyway! Within 1 year he was all ready, tokimeki mode go! I decided to give some other people attention. I started going on Wakaouji’s school trips, dating him on the side and got him all the way up to tokimeki as well.

Now, I don’t like Wakaouji. His goofy schtick is just so fake, he looks lame, his voice is weak, and for a teacher he’s all too quick to fall in love with me. Pedo! The spot with the guy in black where he speaks English is the only good part, everything else was blah. What I really have against him is that he’s no match for Himuro-sensei in any department at all. To be honest I was just chatting him up for lack of anything better to do.

But then disaster struck! I got careless and started getting friendly with Onoda Chiyomi! That witch! That cow! The one’s that’s after Hikami too! That one! My carelessness led her to commence Rival Mode. To avoid that, I told her “Oh no, it’s not like that between me and Hikami!” Bam! Hikami’s affection dropped all the way from tokimeki to “friendly.” Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Drat! And this happened with barely 4 months to go, in November of the last year! I struggled and struggled to build up his affection again (making damn Onoda my rival anyway) – dates, the New Year’s shrine, Valentine’s chocolate, anything! – while studiously avoiding Wakaouji, but it was no use. >_< *sigh*

So in the end it was Wakaouji who met me in the lighthouse claiming I taught him what love was and everything. Guhh… I almost turned him down but half a loaf is better than no bread so whatever. Our future states we don’t see each other that much because I’m in university and he’s still teaching (and doubtless preying on other innocent young ladies like me), and that’s for the best.

Long post huh? It’s fueled by disgust. Next I’m giving Hikami a break and going for either Saeki or Hariya. Will report later.

Finally finished Devil Survivor

At the very last minute I decided to switch Amane for Yuzu in my party, which resulted in my having to fight about 5 free battles to level her up. That slowed me down and left me a little bored, necessitating a short break away from Devil Survivor.

Anyway, I finally finished Gin’s ending. I was not pleased. The aim of this ending is to remove all the demons from Earth permanently by becoming King of Bel and ordering them all to leave, essentially. Then the angels and the SDF lift the lockdown and everything goes back to normal.

Complaint 1: When the game ends you don’t get to see how the main characters get on with their lives. You see a quick shot of them walking down some road somewhere, nothing else. After all the whining about getting back to their families I would have wanted to see their homes/lives/families, and a longer happier ending than that. You don’t even get one of those “Yuzu lived happily after and had 10 kids” “Haru and Gin got married and had a baby girl named Aya” “Atsuro became Information Minister” blurbs you get at the end of movies. So what happens to all of them? You never find out. So disappointing.

Complaint 2: The govt. attempts to cover everything that happened by explaining it as “mass hallucinations due to gas leaks”. Somehow everybody lets them get away with it because “nobody can prove anything.” So all the people who were shot and killed? Died for nothing. All the people killed by demons? Died for nothing. Everybody suffered for nothing. I hate that. I wish I’d gone for Naoya’s ending and taken over the world, or maybe Yuzu’s ending so I can at least kill the bloody SDF.

Complaint 3: At the very end of the game you get an e-mail, a threat from the angels: “You still have the Bel powers in you. If you try anything funny we’ll kick your ass.” Hey angels? Butt the hell out of our business before I kick your asses, ya worthless pieces of crap! I wasn’t going to play this game again after this, but now I’m sorely, sorely tempted to replay and get Naoya’s ending. Not now though, later.

All in all I’d give Devil Survivor about 7/10 total. The music was repetitive, the number of demons was sadly small, the escort missions were extremely irritating and that ending? Yuck! On the other hand I liked the characters, I enjoyed the battles, the story was interesting (and annoying), I liked the opening tune and Haru’s song and fusing and auctioning demons was a lot of fun. It was a good game, well worth the purchase. I’m looking forward to Strange Journey now.

L2 Love x Loop

I’ve been so caught up actually playing games I haven’t been following game news as much as I used to. Nothing too big going on right now, but an upcoming PS2 otome game caught my eye on Famitsu just now. It’s called L2 Love x Loop. If I tend to focus on PS2 and DS games in this blog it’s because those are the two main things I play on, though I also own a PS1 and a Wii.

Anyway, Love x Loop’s premise is like this: the heroine Nanami lives with her older sister in a futuristic setting where robots are at war with mankind and humans have been reduced to living in ruins. On Nanami’s birthday her sister is kidnapped in a robot attack, and she finds a mysterious robot just lying around. Now through the powers of this special robot she resolves to go back in time and change the past so that the future won’t have to be so crappy any more.

I remember someone with a plan like that, I think his name was Trunks and it didn’t work out quite as planned. Then again it did work out for someone else named Crono so we’ll see how things turn out ;-) Anyway, this wouldn’t be a real otome game without bishies, would it? Yup, so somehow Nanami finds time out of her very busy time-traveling sister-saving world-changing schedule to romance a few cute guys. What I’m really worried about, though, is that old guy in there.

See him? Right in the top right corner with the beard. He’s creeping me out. I can’t imagine…you know…even though I did hook up with the headmaster in Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side, but that’s different! Really! *ahem* According to the official blog he’s the man who gave the robot to the main character, so maybe we’ll be spared the geriatric kissy face.

Old guy worries aside (or maybe because of them) I’m really looking forward to this game. The story sounds fresh, the bishies look fresh and different and screenshots I’m seeing look lovely.

L2: Love x Loop from Idea Factory comes out August 20th in Japan. I’ll probably get it a month or two afterwards, based on the reviews.