Last word on that garbage Atelier Online game

You’ve got to know when to hold em,
Know when to fold em,
Know when to walk away,
Know when to delete that useless Atelier Online game and run~🎵

My third and final post on the miserable experience known as Atelier Online: Alchemists of Braceir. I’ve mentioned before that the game likes to throw arbitrary roadblocks in your way so you don’t progress too fast. It’s somewhat understandable because the game doesn’t have a lot of content even after 18 whole months of operation. But a roadblock should still offer some sense of progress and some measure of enjoyment, right? Wrong, say Koei-Tecmo and Gust.

I got stuck after chapter 21. To progress to chapter 22, you have to defeat a certain level 45 golem. Yes, this uncute blighter right here.

His level is not the problem, because my party is over level 60. His defence is through the roof, but it’s not an issue as long as you slowly chip away at him with the wind attacks he’s weak against. The problem is that he has a massive heal spell that far out-heals any damage you can do. And he’s not afraid to use it either.

Now normally there are a few ways to deal with this kind of boss. In some games he will eventually run out of MP and stop healing, but not this one. Your other reasonable options are:

*Grind and upgrade till you can outdamage his heal. This will take FOREVER, because after level 60, leveling up slows to a crawl and it gets harder to strengthen your party members by feeding them. It’s evident that this challenge isn’t meant to be cleared that way anyway, because the golem’s level is already so low.

*Get carried by a stronger user. In a more sensible game, this would be plausible. But Atelier Online has no co-op lobby, guild system or quest recruitment board in the game, so finding help is a crapshoot. You either have to beg stronger players to be your friend and then beg them to help beat the golem, or you turn on multiplayer, hope someone strong shows up in the same vicinity, beg them to help and hope they will. What kind of game quest relies on “hoping and begging” as a strategy?

*Poison him to reduce his HP. This is what the game suggests in the golem’s flavor text. Okay, fair enough. It’s a check to make sure you’re taking advantage of item properties and ingredient quality and all that, I reasoned with myself. So I spent ages gathering enough ingredients to make Poison Unis. Wasted a ton of Fairy Powder and Fairy Gloves gathering only the best items to make the strongest Poison Unis possible.

In the end I had 27 top tier items. Used them all in the third battle against this blighted accursed golem. Do you know how many times I managed to poison him? ZERO. Zero times. 0. A big fat zero, oval like my head.

After that, I just quietly deleted the Nox emulator and said goodbye to Atelier Online. Sure it might be possible to beg, grind or farm my way to the next level, but what happens with the next nasty roadblock? And the one after that, and the one after that? Is this all I have to look forward to in this game?

I’m not sticking around to find out. In keeping with my gaming policy for 2019-2020, “it is enough to play a little bit of Atelier Online.” I’ve seen what it has to offer, and I don’t like what I saw. There are many other games in my backlog that demand attention and promise better rewards. Time to move on!

Minor update: Turns out I was overthinking things, and the battle is just a DPS check. Are you strong enough to do over 9300 damage every 5 turns or not? In practice it will have to be much more than 9300 because you will miss some turns due to the golem’s incurable charm attack. I discovered all this when I went to delete the smartphone app and decided I might as well waste all the EXP potions and Golden Spoons I had while I was at it. Then I went back to give the golem one last try and almost beat him. But eventually he healed himself almost back to full. Which made me hate the game even more. Anyway, in case anyone ever gets stuck there like me, the answer is “Git gud.”

Update 2: Managed to beat the little rotter last night (05/18). You need to be able to do a ton of damage AND you need to poison it. Git gud and git lucky. This time I set 19 Poison Unis to Auto-Item (less stressful than manual spamming) and ONE managed to proc when its HP was low, allowing me to deal the finishing blow. Hmph, I wasn’t even happy. I’m up to chapter 24 now, I think? Still dealing with more ridiculous roadblocks.

This is still the last word on Atelier Online for the forseeable future though. Unless something unusual or earth-shaking happens, I think I’ve said all that needs to be said for now. I just didn’t want to slink away in defeat at the hands of some smug, excrement-consuming ursine.

Four important tips for anyone ill-advisedly starting Atelier Online:

– Don’t do anything with the Fairy powders, gloves, fishing rods, etc. until you know what you’re doing. Later quests will require you to provide very high-quality items that you will rarely be able to get naturally. Actually “don’t use any items until you know what you’re doing” is a good maxim for any gacha game.

– Wait till you can beat the level 60 Hobgoblins before you start using Spoon, EXP potion and Item Strengthening tickets. You’ll get more bang for your buck that way. You can still do the free quests every day.

– Don’t waste Ether carelessly. You’ll start out with like 700,000 and think it will last forever, but it’s very easy to blow through it when trying to strengthen ingredients and imbue weapons with skills. Neither of which you should do until you know what you’re doing.

-Instead of trying to raise gacha characters equally, focus on getting one at a time to level 50. Once you have three of them at that level, they’ll be able to hunt for treasure (high-quality ingredients) while you’re out doing other stuff. I learned this the hard way, and now I have a bunch of characters stuck at level 20-30, picking up garbage every 10 minutes.

Escha GET!

Mimi GET!

Aight, enough. Next update will be on The Lost Child, or maybe Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth. I’m feeling very dungeon-crawly right now.

Update on Atelier Online – It’s growing on me, however…

As I said I would last time, I decided to move my Atelier Online: Alchemists of Braceir playing to an emulator to free up my smartphone for better uses. A reader suggested the Nox emulator, which I hadn’t heard of before. It didn’t take long to set up and hasn’t given me any trouble yet. The only slightly tricky thing was having to sign into to QooApp through the built-in browser before downloading the APK, but once you treat the whole emulator as a smartphone, you can do everything you do with a smartphone on it, so it’s not that weird any more.

On to the main question: Does emulating Atelier Online improve the experience in any way? Actually it does. Significantly. The main things I’ve noticed are as follows:

  • Instead of Atelier Online shutting down randomly every 10-15 minutes on the smartphone, it has only shut down once in about 5 hours of play on the emulator. So it’s much more stable.
  • There’s still a bit of lag here and there, but it’s not as bad as it gets on the phone and it doesn’t signal an impending crash. Nox claims I can avoid lag by enabling virtualization, whatever that is. The jury online is out as to whether 1) that’s a good idea and 2) it makes any difference at all. I’ll do a little more research first and see.
  • Controlling the game with the mouse is a little fiddlier than using my hand or a stylus, but it’s much more convenient once you get used to it. It leaves the whole screen clear for me to see instead of having something constantly in the way. And my hands don’t get tired holding the phone in a strange position for a long time.

I pulled Marie’s costume! The gacha rates in this game are the best I’ve seen to date.

  • Playing on a bigger screen is niiiiice~. I like it. It’s even better when I use high-resolution graphics, though that does cause a little more slowdown.
  • There’s still plenty of loading and downloading. Which is normal, because the emulator has nothing to do with my internet speed. But with an emulator I can tab out and check other things while the game is loading. This applies to battles as well. Every time I touch an easy enemy, I just change screens until the battle is over and the victory music plays.
  • Because it’s easier to play, I find myself wanting to play more. I think I played about 3 hours straight earlier today, thus living up to the “play as much as you want” gimmick they promoted the game with.

All in all, emulating Atelier Online on my desktop instead of playing it on the smartphone was a good decision. It’s a much more comfortable and more game-like experience.

Buuuuut. The gaming environment may have changed, but the game itself hasn’t. Thus most of the flaws are still present, and more besides.

Chief among the complaints is the constant use of tedious roadblocks to stop you from progressing too fast. Roadblock, okay. Tedious, no. No way. A game is supposed to be fun. Ever since I hit chapter 17 or so, unlocking new chapters has required ridiculous feats of grinding or farming. Ridiculously unfun feats.

For example, I thought I had escaped from the Hobgoblin boss grind, but no. They set “Beat the Hobgoblin 10 times” as an achievement to unlock chapter 21. “Try buying your way out of this one, suckah!” Then there’s the always horrible “earn 9000/12000 Academy Points.” Where even the most generous quests only give you 50 points. And can only be done once every 24 hours.

Totori is cute today, too!

Even worse is the “Get Rank XXXX in Alchemy” type of roadblock. It’s an alchemy game, shouldn’t that be the best part? Nooo… At least not yet. Maybe in the future when they have more recipes available. Here it’s endless grinding on the same few items. Not only that, but there are some ingredients like Uni, Flour, Tonelico and Slime Jelly that are used in the majority of recipes. You will run out of them pretty quickly, leaving you unable to make almost anything until you forage for more.

Why am I still playing? Because it’s getting more fun little by little as I unlock more dungeons. There’s been a slow trickle of new enemies, ingredients and recipes, just enough to keep me interested. My main party now averages level 60, my sub-party is approaching level 30, I’m getting closer to outfiting all my teams in 4- to 5-star equipment. Y’know, the usual things they put in place to keep gamers playing.

The system is a lot like Granblue Fantasy’s where you have a pool of equipped weapons that you need to uncap and level up and stuff

In short, Atelier Online is still an annoying game, but it’s less annoying to play physically, so I’ll be fooling around with it for a while longer.

I tried Atelier Online: Alchemists of Braceir but it’s not for me (an unfair review)

Disclaimer: this review is going to be rather unfair to Atelier Online: Alchemists of Braceir. That’s because I’m not supposed to be playing the game but I insisted on doing it anyway. Google Play told me the app wasn’t compatible with any of my devices, most likely because of a region lock, but possibly also because my smartphone specs are very basic. I had to resort to QooApp to download and install the latest version.

Since I entered the game unauthorized through the back door, I don’t have a lot of standing to complain about it. Not because pirates have no ability to judge quality but because some of my biggest problems, such as slow loading times, lags and abrupt closures might be because the game is optimized for Japanese hardware and ISP speeds and not my cheap phone and piddling broadband.

In short, in this review, I’m going to be like those kids on YouTube who insist on eating chili peppers or drinking hot sauce despite warnings, only to start screaming and bawling shortly afterwards. And of course, Mummy and Daddy always conveniently have the camera out right before Little Timmy demands to eat that pepper and this video totally isn’t staged at all… Mm hmm.

So anyway, just putting it out there that I’m not the target audience for this game so not all my complaints will be valid. Atelier Online isn’t a great game, but it’s probably not as bad as I will be making it out to be.

Kina ranked up! Her class changed from “Pathetic Whiner” to “Seasoned Complainer”!

Back on topic, why did I even want to play this game in the first place? I’d heard of Atelier Online before, but I was playing other gacha games already and didn’t have the time to spare. Ever since Ring Dream shut down, I’ve had an opening in my schedule, so I finally got round to checking it out. I was lured by the thought of being able to do lots of alchemy whenever I wanted to without waiting for the next Atelier game to be released. I only have three mainline games to go before I catch up with Koei-Tecmo’s releases (Lydie & Suelle, Lulua and Ryza) so it’s not too soon to start looking for replacements.

Here’s what gamers were promised, according to QooApp.

■ The game does not have the stamina system so that you can play as long as you like.

This is actually true and a great draw. At least on paper. Being to play a lot is only meaningful if that “a lot” is worth playing.

■ The alchemy system allows you to create and customize your equipment.

Eh. Sort of. I guess. I haven’t spent too much time on customization because the gacha rolls the game generously gave me coughed up a lot of 4-star and 5-star equipment that only need leveling to take you a long way into the game. I’m also relying on Auto-Equip to select the best weapon and armor for me, so I haven’t explored the equipment system too deeply yet.

But ignoring the equipment aspect, you do get to make a lot of new alchemy items, which I like a lot and rate very highly. The items aren’t copied and pasted from older games either. Instead there are many new items that I, at least, have never seen before, and the food all looks scrumptious. The list of things to I can actually make is quite small at present, but I’m only a few chapters into an online game so it’s early days yet. It’s fun reaching new areas and unlocking new recipes as well. If I were rating Atelier Online on the alchemy aspect, I would give it a solid 8/10 for the novelty factor alone.

I don’t see any green fruit in the ingredients but whatever you say, Koei…

■ A solid RPG experience as you would need to make choices when you proceed in the story.

This is a lie, the game is garbage, the choices are completely meaningless and if it didn’t have “Atelier” slapped on the cover and some alchemy gameplay, I wouldn’t have played as long as I have. This is the bulk of my complaint, so I’ll come back to it after dealing with the last promise.

■ Appearence of famous characters that come from the same series.

If you’re the sort of person who cares about game character cameos, then you’ll enjoy getting characters like Logix, Rorona and Ryza in your party. Buuuut. I’ve only played for 2 weeks so I shouldn’t issue a blanket statement, buuuut. Most of the cameos come from the Arland series and later. If you’re a fan of the earlier games like the Iris series or side games like Mana Khemia, welp.

Furthermore, since the cameos are all gacha characters, you will see them featured in seasonal and side events, but the main story will be carried along by a new set of characters with plant-themed names like Sorrel, Wisteria and Peppermint. Your mileage may vary on how much you care about them.

Why it’s not for me

  • Game-breaking bugs

Right after I started the game, I encountered a bug where a level 150 Anise Hyssop would appear and the game would hang after every battle.

You could send and receive messages, but that was it. The game would be stuck on the victory screen until you restarted. Imagine an RPG where you had to reload the game after every battle, does that sound like fun? The bug wasn’t fixed for several days – in fact I don’t know if it ever was fixed. In the end I googled the solution and moved on, but my first impression of the game had already marred the experience beyond repair.

Since then I haven’t hit any bugs that terrible, but I have suffered several abrupt closures of the app. Usually signalled by a strange slowdown. And usually occurring when you least want it to, like in the middle of a tough battle or after you’ve painstakingly selected a large batch of materials to transfer to your container. And no matter where you are in the field or dungeon, the game will always warp you back to the Academy after a restart, which is extremely frustrating when it isn’t your fault.

  • Frequent loading screens make game progress annoying

I’ve almost memorized all the tips now.

As I mentioned already, my internet speed isn’t that high, so this probably isn’t Atelier Online‘s fault. It’s still annoying and a thief of joy so I’ll mention it: the game connects to the server and downloads/uploads data after every action, which adds many pointless seconds to gaming time.

Every time you start a battle, end a battle, open the quest screen, close the quest screen, move to the next map, move the next floor, forage an ingredient, before and after you make an item, etc. etc. No matter what you do, you’re gonna see that “Connecting” or “Downloading” sign in the left corner all that time. And that’s when you’re lucky, otherwise you’ll get a full loading screen like the one with Professor Bergamot above.

  • Battles are boring and the story is pointless

Auto-battles are not my idea of fun, but they don’t necessarily have to be bad. The few auto-attack games I’ve played either give you a lot of control over skills, items, positioning, etc (e.g. Xenoblade Chronicles), or they make the battles so speedy and out-of-sight that they don’t get tedious (only Ore ni Hatarake comes to mind right now). Or they’re complete garbage like that useless guild game with the Saga cover art.

Atelier Online‘s battle system is close to the Xenoblade variety, in that your characters will automatically attack until you tell them to use skills or items, etc. You will need to adjust the AI a bit to get them to act without wasting moves or items – or better yet disable all those options and do things yourself. The lack of control is a bit frustrating if you’re coming from traditional Atelier games, but it’s not so bad. What bothers me more is how few items you can use and how largely useless they are. Attack items are weak and only good for building your special gauge. Buff items are equally useless except for one or two. Healing items are good, though. Invest in those rather than healer characters like Sorrel. In fact, pro-tip: don’t waste time on the free story characters at all. Gacha characters are where it’s at.

As for the story, nothing much has happened yet. The main character is an alchemist who was picked up by a mysterious stranger as a baby and sent to the Royal Academy, where s/he grew up. His/her goal is to find that stranger again someday. But since this is an endless game, either the stranger will never be found or there will be more developments after that and the story will ultimately never go anywhere until service is ready to end.

Right now it’s all super-trivial incidents with easily-forgiven “villains.” In fact I will freely confess that I skip all the quest dialogue after the first few lines, once I get the gist of what’s going on. It’s because of the quest format the game has adopted, which breaks down each quest into tedious little subquests just to stretch the game out.

For example, let’s say there’s a quest where you meet Wisteria at Ruhuna Village so you can eat fish and chips together. A sensible game would give a quest like “Give Wisteria fish and chips at Ruhuna Village.” Right? Not Atelier Online.

Quest 1 – Talk to Wisteria at the Academy -> cleared. Receive Quest 2.
Quest 2 – Meet Wisteria again at Ruhuna Villlage -> cleared. Receive Quest 3.
Quest 3 – Make fish and chips and give it to Wisteria. (Go farm the ingredients if you don’t have them already).

Only then can you move on to the next quest, which will be equally trivial and drawn out. And don’t forget that the process of opening, accepting and clearing these quests will come with copious loading and downloading screens for extra tediousness. Oh, and a lot of chatting and inconsequential banter just to fill in the time. And that’s why I skip most of the dialogue now.

  • And now I have to grind??!!!

For all its flaws and slowness, at least the main quest in Atelier Online was progressing smoothly… until I hit a patch where I was supposed to run a dungeon several times for a rare drop from a boss. Not just one rare drop, but three. From a boss with a 10-20% chance of dropping said item, according to a source I consulted. It was even worse when that post was made, because early players had to get nine (9!!) of the item to progress.

And the boss isn’t easy to reach either. He’s on level 30 of a randomly-generated dungeon, and the closest you can get through warping is level 26. So you warp in, find your way down to level 30, beat the boss who will absolutely not drop the item, warp out and start again. Repeat as many times as it takes for you to go utterly bonkers.

Hope you like this decor ‘cos you’ll be seeing it a lot.

It seems like a ploy by the developers to force people into multiplayer co-op battles (and actually multiplayer is a poorly-designed mess and a waste of time, but this review is long enough already so I won’t say any more). Either that or force you to spend “cole,” the in-game currency, to flat out buy your way to the next chapter. This is what I caved in and ended up doing in the end.

“Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent” and even a mediocre game can be thought good if it plays smoothly without stress. On the other hand, if a junk game actively interferes with your attempts to enjoy it, do I really want to stick around?

That broken staff thing in the bottom middle is what tried to destroy my sanity

Update: I thought that was bad earlier, but at least I could buy my way out of that pinch. Now I’ve hit a stretch where Atelier Online wants me to grind up 9000 Academy Points. I was at 4770 when I hit that road block. Most missions give you 5-15 Academy Points. Do the math and that is well over 250 missions at best before I can move on to the next level. And it’s not like they’re fun and easy missions either. I want out!

  • I don’t like gaming on my smartphone

The ultimate unfair comment from me. It’s not Atelier Online‘s fault it’s a smartphone-only game. Nevertheless it’s a fact that I like keeping my smartphone free of distractions besides email, YouTube and the usual messaging apps. It’s a bother when I’m playing this game and a phone call interrupts. If the call drags on, the game session expires and I have to start all over again from the academy. Play Atelier Online or ignore messages and phone calls from friends and family? Oh, the agony.

Proper games on proper gaming consoles have save points or sleep modes. The browser-based gacha games I usually play don’t stop you from doing other things with your PC while they’re running. If I decide to go ahead with Atelier Online, I’ll probably look into emulation options like Bluestacks for greater convenience.

It’s not all bad though…

The character designs is not bad. That “piss and watercolor” design style had grown on me by the time I finished the Arland series, so I kind of like it now. Though most of the time you will be staring at very meh pared-down versions in the field and academy.

I also really like the background art, when you get to see it. It reminds me of the art in a dungeon crawler like Stranger of Sword City. Or maybe the detailed backgrounds in Koei’s Ruby Party games. Either way I’m a sucker for nice art.

The music is pretty nice as well, though nothing has stuck in my head yet. The majority of scenes are voiced and the voice acting is well done as well.

And as I’ve said, I’m also a sucker for alchemy gameplay, so even though I said the game is not for me, that doesn’t mean I’m quitting right away. I don’t see a long-term future for me and Atelier Online, but I think I’ll be playing for a while yet. The lure of an “Atelier” game is just that strong. Until the supply of recipes runs out or the enemies get too strong to handle. If/when a) I drop the game entirely or b) it gets shut down, I’ll be back with my final thoughts. Until then~!

Done with Atelier Firis (a review of sorts)

Atelier Firis logoI meant to come back to Atelier Firis after I’d played some other things, but I fired it up again last night and realized I’d done everything I wanted to do. The areas I haven’t explored and the bosses I haven’t beaten all require more grinding and synthesis than I’m prepared to do, and more than anything I’m just mentally done. I had a lot of fun, and now it’s over.

Story

Barely there, just the way I like it. Atelier games are like dungeon crawlers: they don’t need stories. Especially since the “story-heavy” Dusk trilogy wasn’t that heavy on the story and left me cold in the end. Atelier Firis is nice and simple: “Here’s this objective. Once you fulfill it, you can have the fun you always dreamed of.” Then you complete the objective and then you have fun. Sweet.

Characters

Nobody was too annoying, but no one was interesting either. TBH I didn’t spend much time on their character quests because I was too busy exploring and stuff. Someone was looking for her origin, someone was going around recording stuff, someone liked dolls and kept getting lost. It felt like Gust was throwing rejected character ideas into a game where no one would notice how shallow and forgettable they were. I’ve already forgotten most of them, and nothing of any value was lost.

Gameplay

Atelier Xenoblade! All the Atelier games are set in very interesting worlds you only get to explore a fraction of, so it’s great to have a game that sets you free to see the sights. You’re still limited to a single continent, but it’s a biiiig place. They even included a variety of locales, including a floating island and an icy tundra smooshed right next to a parched waste. I hear there are underwater locales as well, though I quit before I got there.

I really enjoyed Atelier Firis as a one-off, but I wouldn’t want more games in the series to be like it. The confined nature of the series isn’t that bad (plenty of other games let you roam the world), and the focus on exploration relegated alchemy to second fiddle. And while I’m being nitpicky, I’ll also say that while the variety of outdoor locations was good, there wasn’t enough exploration in towns, with places like Riesenburg and Flussheim having almost no houses to enter and little activity at any time of the day. Even the towns in the Dusk trilogy were livelier, and that world was supposed to be dying! I’m not usually one for immersion, but dead empty cities are just depressing.

Alchemy in Atelier Firis left almost no impression on me. Except it was annoying how you had to make the same item or a similar one repeatedly to unlock traits and ingredient rotation. I never got the hang of the percentage boosts for successive elements blah blah, who knows what was going on there. That aside, being able to buy recipes with Idea Points was a good addition, and finding the ingredients to make any recipe was usually quite easy. The number of recipes wasn’t high, and the number of useful ones… hmm, not that many. It wasn’t a frustrating system, but it wasn’t fun either.

Combat is the same. Not frustrating, not fun, but actually not that bad now I think of it. Making new weapons and equipment would have been nice if you didn’t have to farm high-quality ingredients and grind recipes to unlock trait slots before getting anything good. If you enjoy that aspect of the game, or you like challenging combat in general, then you’ll get a kick out of the unique bosses and more difficult areas.

Soundtrack and Graphics

Bright happy colors! You’ll have to look a long time to find a post on this blog where I say anything constructive about game graphics besides “bright happy colors.” It’s not something I really care about. Same goes for music and voice acting, where I only notice if something is really good or really bad. I don’t remember a single tune from this game, but I can picture most of the locations. That’s it. Everything was passable.

Overall impression

I had great times in Atelier Firis exploring various nooks and crannies, taking on all kinds of quests and going at my own pace. It’s good for the freedom-focused player, and the open world format is a breath of fresh air in the series. The time limit only lasts a year before you are set free, so it’s good if you’re worried about time management as well.

However the lack of focus on alchemy makes Firis a standard I do not want other games in the series to emulate. This, added to the lack of a story, means that once the novelty of exploration wears off, there’s little prompting you to keep playing. That said, the 40+ hours I got out of Firis is equal to or higher than my play time in other Atelier games so I got some good bang for my buck. Give it a try if you enjoy combat and exploration, think twice if you’re more into story, character interaction or alchemy.

La Corda d’Oro replay + thoughts on restarting a musical instrument

I’m suffering from “choice paralysis” right now. I have so many games I’d like to play that I’m running away and not playing any of them. Instead I’m retreading old ground with La Corda d’Oro, a musical otome game I first played in 2014. You can read my initial thoughts on the gameplay and all that, no need to talk about all that again.

In the years since I played the original, I’ve also played La Corda d’oro 2, 3 and 4, so going back to the first game after all that time was a slight shock to the system. Many of the things I took for granted in the later games like blatant route clearing hints, the ability to forward text you’ve already read and being able to exit maps easily are not present here. The game also doesn’t save information you earned on previous playthroughs, so if for example you learn Hihara’s favorite interpretation on one route, you’ll have to jot it down somewhere or else.

The romantic routes are also more barebones than in the later games, which makes sense because there’s much less time for romancing in OG La Corda d’Oro. You’ll be lucky to get a single date with your guy of choice, and that’s if you’re really lucky. Of the four routes I did this time, only Tsukimori took me out anywhere, and only once at that. The amount of character development is also fairly low, which is why they haven’t changed much by the time you meet them again in the second game. Tsukimori is a cold jerk, then he’s less of a cold jerk. Tsuchiura pretends he doesn’t like music, then he realizes he does, Hihara is just Hihara all the way through, etc.

I cheated a little by checking a FAQ for their favorite presents and stuff, but I didn’t use one to try and get all their events. I find playing by the book a little too tedious, even for a game I’ve played countless times already. Let me share the info I gathered.

La Corda d’Oro characters, rivalry, presents, favorite songs (source)

Tsukimori Len
How to raise his rivalry: Skill, all expressions, total BP received must all be high.
Presents: メモスタンド (memo stand) (BP80) ハンカチ (handkerchief) (BP80) 靴磨きセット (shoe polishing set) (BP120) フォトスタンド (photo stand) (BP240)
Favorite pieces: 感傷的なワルツB, カンタービレB
Thoughts after redoing his route: I still failed to get his true ending, but I got a few more events with him melting down little by little. For example, he shares an event from his childhood when some envious older kids tried to break his fingers to stop him from playing the violin. That’s dark, man. But it shows his closeness with Kahoko at that point since he is willing to share that story with her.

When I first did his route, I was baffled because the issue of the magical violin was seemingly glossed over completely. With more detail, it’s still a matter of the game writers making Tsukimori have no problem with it any more. But they do show him realizing that she’s working hard and practising a lot. Hard enough to deserve a handicap like a magical violin, more or less.

Besides, there’s a clear sense of smugness in his behavior after he finds out about the cheat violin. Like “Heh, I’m still better~.” So maybe that’s how he makes his peace with the whole issue. In the end his conclusion is the same: the end justifies the means. As long as you make others love violin music, that’s good enough His true ending may have a different conclusion, but he’s such a prima donna I don’t want to deal with his route again.

Tsuchiura Ryotaro
How to raise his rivalry: Melancholy (愁情) expression must be high
Presents: お守り (talisman) (BP80) シェークスピアの本 (Shakespeare book) (BP80) パズルの本 (puzzle book) (BP120) 卓上カレンダー(desktop calendar) (BP240)
Favorite pieces: 感傷的なワルツA, ハンガリー舞曲集第2番C
Thoughts after redoing his route: Totally failed to get any meaningful events with him because his route was the first one I replayed and I was busy trying to get the hang of the mechanics again. To get the most events without slavishly following a FAQ, you should aim to raise affection by around 200 points between concerts. Meanwhile I barely had 400 heading into the final concert and very low rivalry, so yeah, I didn’t get much. I might re-redo his route later.

Still you do see clear hints of him rediscovering his love of music, which eventually leads him to join the music department (Corda 2) and eventually become a famous conductor (Corda 4). Ahh, I want a new game!

Shimizu Kenichi
How to raise his rivalry: High level of skill
Presents: アイピロー(eye pillow) (BP80) 金属製のしおり (metal bookmark) (BP80) パスケース (pass case) (BP120) 目覚まし時計 (alarm clock) (BP240)
Favorite pieces: G線上のアリアC, ラ･カンパネッラC

Hihara Kazuki
How to raise his rivalry: High level of vividness (彩華)
Presents: ラッパのキーホルダー (trumpet-shaped key holder) (BP80) ファータストラップ (Fata strap) (BP80) お手ごろポーチ (handy pouch) (BP120) フォトアルバム (photo album) (BP240)
Favorite pieces: ロマンス　ト長調A, 3つのロマンス第2曲C
Thoughts after redoing his route: I managed to get his true ending! It made me realise I barely saw anything of his route when I did first it, because this is all unfamiliar territory. Just like in La Corda 2, sunny Hihara has his “emo moment” when he goes into a brief funk because he feels like Kahoko is working so hard while he’s always being scatter-brained and getting in her way. He sulks about it for a couple of days then decides, eh, not gonna worry about it. Hihara gonna Hihara and all that. He even explicitly refuses your help and comfort, so what am I gonna do?

After that he fumbles around trying to confess but not really confessing. You know, the usual “What do you think about me? Wait, don’t answer!” kind of thing. In the process, I realized… I don’t like Hihara’s voice. And I don’t like his blushing face. And I’m okay with being friends, but I don’t really see him as romantic material, at least not in this game.

Yunoki Azuma
How to raise his rivalry: Total BP accumulated must be high
Presents: 花ばさみ (flower shears) (BP80) 炭苔 (moss planting charcoal) (BP80) 銀のスプーン (silver spoon) (BP120) 茶香炉 (tea ceremony incense burner) (BP240)
Favorite pieces: ロマンス ト長調C・夢のあとにC
Thoughts after redoing his route: I really don’t like Yunoki, but he’s better in this game than in La Corda 2. In my first round of playthroughs, I always raised his affection and rivalry a bit, so I always got to see the “true” Yunoki, who is a snide bully. That was all there was to him IMO, just part of the game.

That’s why in this set of playthroughs, I was astonished to find out that he maintains the facade till the end if you don’t go near him. In other words, it’s perfectly possible to play La Corda d’Oro several times and even complete all the other routes and still never see Yunoki as anything other than a kindly and friendly senpai. Just imagine the shock when you finally do his route!

I got his date ending again this time. It’s the easiest to get because raising his rivalry requires getting BP, and if you’re playing the game correctly you’ll be getting a ton of it. The route is mostly event after event of Yunoki saying something mean and then going “Haha, nobody will believe you even if you tell them” over and over again. Eventually he tells you that you brightened the final year of my high school life and I’m like “Gee your highness, I’m so honored.” Jerk.

Fuyuumi
How to raise her rivalry: High level of elegance (清麗)
Presents: ファータクッション (Fata cushion) (BP80) クラリネットのピンズ (clarinet-shaped pin) (BP80) ハーブ栽培セット (herb-growing set) (BP120) クリスタル一輪挿し (crystal single-flower vase) (BP240)

Favorite pieces: G線上のアリアA, ロマンス第1番A

Ousaki
Presents: 革製ブックカバー (leather book cover) (BP80) スケジュール帳 (schedule planner) (BP80) 手品グッズ (conjuring kit) (BP120) 折りたたみ傘 (folding umbrella) (BP240)
Favorite piece: シチリアーノB

Thoughts after redoing his route: [Placeholder for when I eventually do it. First time round I thought he was a bore, but after playing La Corda 2, he’s a nice guy with prospects, catch my drift? ;-]

Amou
Presents: 市内詳細地図 (detailed city map) (BP80) カメラのお手入れセット (camera cleaning kit) (BP80) 中国茶 (Chinese tea) (BP120) 手のひらテディベア (miniature teddy bear) (BP240)
Favorite piece: 金色のコルダA

Kanazawa
Presents: マゴノテくん (backscratcher) (BP80) 携帯用吸殻入れ (portable ashtray) (BP80) 携帯ラジオ (portable radio) (BP120) ミルクパン (milk bread) (BP240)
Favorite piece: ユーモレスクB

It sure would be nice if Koei-Tecmo would release the game officially in English sometime… More and more otome visual novels are getting localizations lately, but very few of them have the level of gameplay and quality that Koei’s Ruby Party games offer.

I earnestly advise fans to start learning Japanese so they can’t be held hostage to the whims and caprices of publishers and localizers. Learning a language has never been easier than right now, with tons of online books, resources and communities to help you on your way. And plenty of time off for most people due to a certain virus wreaking havoc across the world. Give it some serious thought.

Progress after taking up the piano once again

I want one!!!

Speaking of learning stuff, I mentioned some time ago that I had taken up the piano again after about 10 years of not touching the thing. And it was largely due to the game reminding me how much I loved playing music once upon a time. I’ve been learning a lot of pieces in the years since then. Slowly approaching the limits of how much I can achieve by myself, but there’s still more I can do to improve so it’s a fun process.

My actual level of piano now is hard to measure because I’m not working with any teachers, but I’d estimate I’m around level 5 of the ABRSM piano grading scale. I say that because the piano pieces all look like very doable for me, but I would need help with the aural test and much more practice with sight reading. That’s all theoretical, because I’m not going to take any more exams for the rest of my life, unless they will add an extra digit to my paycheck.

For any adult in my situation thinking of picking up an instrument they’ve dropped, just do it. Don’t think too hard, just start again, even if it’s just 5 minutes a day or you just play one song ad nauseam. Even if you practise for a while, and drop for a while, and come back later, just start again. Three pieces of advice based on my experience:

1. Use all the resources at your disposal

Being an adult has a ton of advantages. Don’t focus on the downsides like less free time and less flexible minds/bodies. Think about the greater independence and greater financial freedom. If you want a new Yamaha upright, you can buy one. If you want pricey lessons from a tutor, you can get them. If you change your mind, you can fire them. If you want to take up a new instrument, or two, or three, you can totally do it. So many online resources, books, groups, tools, all yours for the taking. It’s pretty sweet.

2. Forget what lies behind

You can’t change what’s in the past, so there’s no use fretting about it. “Oh, I used to be so good.” Oh, if I hadn’t stopped, I could have been X.” All those wouldas and couldas are in the past, just focus on what you can do as you are right now. Like, even if someone invents a time machine you know you’re just going to go back and buy Apple and Amazon stock, not play the piano.

Any house I buy must be big enough to accommodate one of these. Maybe that’s why I don’t have a house yet ^^;;

That said, if you’ve been away long enough for your skills to decline, don’t assume you can automatically pick up where you left off. You still have to build up the foundations again, go through the basics, practice a ton, get good teaching, and so on and so forth.

Ever replayed a video game and had a harder time on the second playthrough? In your first playthrough you probably spent a lot of time getting lost and inadvertently grinding, but this time you’re zooming from point A to B to C. Then you get splatted by a boss you steamrolled last time and you’re like “What gives?”

(And you might read that and think, hey she’s right, it’s totally like that with a musical instrument, but actually I’m just making stuff up as I go along, so don’t take me seriously :-p)

3. Grinding and levelling up is totally a thing!

Since I’ve jumped on the video game metaphor, I might as well ride that tiger all the way to the end. YES, you can totally grind and level your way through music! They call it “practice” and “improvement” but we all know grinding when we see it. Just like in games, there are more efficient and less efficent ways to practice and better and worse equipment. And when you encounter a boss (piece, technique) you can’t handle, it’s okay to shelve it and improve your skills by playing easier things. Or you can treat it as a compartment boss and break it down bar by bar. Or you can look up a FAQ or walkthrough (Youtube. Just watch Youtube videos).

In a way, it reminds me of 7th Dragon 2020. Totally random example, but hear me out (translation: I’m gonna force this metaphor until it works). The way 7th Dragon 2020 and 2020-II worked , you would usually encounter a new type of dragon whenever you entered a new dungeon. And in the beginning they would be quite challenging, but as you worked your way through the dungeon, leveiling up, upgrading your skills, buying new equipment, they would get easier and easier until eventually they became glorified mobs. Most RPGs work that way, but the neatly compartmentalized dungeons and dragon counter of 2020 stick in my mind the most.

In fact, writing about it makes me want to play a dungeon crawler. I wanted to play Yomi wo Saku Hana, but it’s not out yet and I don’t have a Switch yet. Failing that, I think I’ll play The Lost Child on the VITA. But first I need to clean up Atelier Firis and maybe write a final post. Eh, I’m so done with that game, I haven’t missed it at all. Anyway, that’s what’s on my agenda for the next couple of days. See ya.