Granblue Fantasy – Level 175 at last!

I say “at last” like there’s something special about it. And maybe a year ago there might have been, but right now Granblue Fantasy has been so powercreeped that 175 is like, barely able to hold your own. You can’t argue with me because look, even the likes of me is level 175. That means anyone can do it.

Still, just because anyone can doesn’t mean everyone has. I’m sure there are people who started after me who are in their 200s now, just like there are people who began before me who are lower or who dropped the game ages ago. Heaven knows I had my own struggles with whether to drop it or not, but in the end I decided Granblue Fantasy was too much fun to drop. I just had to pace myself better and now at last, woo hoo, level 175!

Nothing really happens at 175 though. There’s a rank uncap quest where you fight a couple of nostalgic mooks like Mithra Malice and Freesia and stuff. Cygames really doesn’t want anyone to get stuck at such an inconvenient location, so they don’t make things too hard for you. Unless you slimed your way to 175 or took some similarly unrealistic shortcuts, you’ll be just fine.

…or so I say, but I actually died once to Leviathan Malice. ^^;; Bring Dispel or wait out his buffs, is all I have to say about that. Also not having a totally crappy Earth team would help.

Achievements at level 175

Well well, so here we are at level 175. It’s been a little over six months since I wrote my last update post at level 170. My play style for the past two years has been to go easy at regular times and go crazy during Half AP events. For some reason, 2019 has had fewer such times, which is probably why it’s taken me 6 months to grow by 5 levels. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t get anything done at all in that time.

-ULB’d both Bahamat and Lucifer. I had most of the materials already. I just had to leech a few Tiamat Malices in the wild and everything else fell in place.

-Got my first Arcarum Evoker. Alanaan, who is supposed to be good in fire, but I haven’t really tested him yet. I just got him as a natural extension of powering up The Sun, who is so useful I’m surprised Cygames hasn’t nerfed him yet. I especially love cross-summoning him into a Shiva <3

Shifty-looking old rotter

-Got my first Dark Opus weapon, the Sword of Renunciation. I’ve mentioned before that keeping up with the Granblue Fantasy meta can be stressful and confusing, but support for an Opus weapon in magna Light was near-unanimous so I went for it. It’s just a matter of leeching a few Dark Rapture and Metatron raids anyway, no biggie.

-Unlocked the Conqueror of Eternals skin. To unlock it, you have to get all 10 Eternals and then battle a big tortoise that Siete sics on you. It killed me once because it’s water element and my Earth team is made of kaka and doodoo. I returned later and fought water with water: Varuna team with Katalina + a Chaos Ruler wielding a Murgleis for a damage cut + a water carbuncle for additional cuts while boosting my attacks. It never stood a chance. The skin itself looks kind of cool on Djeeta, but Gran just looks like he’s trying too hard. Still I earned it, so I’ve been using it a lot lately.

-Forged the Murakumo class champion weapon and unlocked the Kengo class in a single afternoon. By itself this would be unremarkable news, especially since I don’t have Vajra or Summer Grea to take advantage of Bonito memes.

I only mention it because I remember when I first reached HL and was thinking about class champion weapons. Remember? Kina Farm remembers. I thought getting a Murakumo would be sooo much work. Now years later I just happened to have all the materials lying around or ready to exchange for in a few minutes. Powercreep is real, folks. That, and the kind tendency of Cygames to simplify anything that’s too stressful and/or unpopular.

-One-turn KO’d Tiamat, Colossus, Yggdrasil and Luminiera Omega. As with the above, I only mention this because I remember how much struggling and strategizing I had to do to beat them in the early stages of the game. It’s really nostalgic. Note that Leviathan and Celeste aren’t included. The former because my Earth team is junk and poopoo and the latter because Celeste has way too much HP.

Achievements left to do

-I still haven’t faced Bahamut HL. Nowadays even BahaHLs on the raid list tend to clear with ease, so maybe I’ll pub it and see what happens. Not until this magnafest is over though. I also have yet to host or fight Ultimate Bahamut HL (what for?) and Lucilius HL (for Dark Opus uncaps).

-Slowly working my way to 40-boxing Nio at a rate of 3-4 boxes per GW. We’ll discuss this again maybe a year from now. Why Nio, though? I really don’t know. I might switch to Eahta instead because my Earth party really needs help.

-Gotta finish uncapping my Seraphic weapons. I’ve done fire, water and earth so far, hoping to get wind done this Rise of the Beasts. Light and Dark will have to wait for the next round. I really need light quartz for the Light harp. Luckily I have a couple of untouched SSRs in the Side Stories for just such an occasion. Sure would be nice to pull a Vortex Dragon right about now…

-Have to unlock the rest of the Extra II classes like Doctor and Soldier. Mainly for the really cool skins, especially Soldier. Reminds me of my childhood watching Rambo.

-Have to SSR the rest of the Arcarum summons. Not a priority really, because I’m pretty happy with my summon lineup. But the ones offering extra HP in particular should come in handy down the line. It’s not like I have anything better to do with my Arca tickets now I have Alanaan anyway.

It took a while to get the Grimnir anima, but what is that between me and trumpet kitty?

-Continue leisurely replacing my M1 weapons with M2. I’m buying them with Prestige Pendants at the rate of one a month so… yeah. Occasionally I get a lucky drop from a raid, but it’s not something to rely on.

-Level all my characters up to the cap. It’s something I was enthusiastic about when I first started Granblue Fantasy, but eventually I had too many characters and too few resources so I couldn’t keep up. Now I have the resources to spare and some actual trophy rewards for doing so, I’m back in business.

State of my grids at level 175

You knew it was coming. They haven’t changed too much from March, but I have swapped a few things in/out, so take a look!

Earth!

I got that Alexiel axe from the free Anniversary weapon ticket. I also FLB’d that Uriel fist a few hours ago. Now I’m saving up to buy more Alexiel axes with Prestige Pendants. Though at this rate my next one will probably come from the next Anniversary ticket…

Here are my Earth summons as well. I use largely the same summons for most grids so take this as a representative sample.

The art in this game keeps getting better and better. The characters even have noses these days.

Can’t even OTKO a simple Leviathan Omega. Why even live?

Fire!

Look Ma, no Colo staves! All the Ancient Ecke Sachs came from the Pendant shop except one, which came from Arcarum. People who say Twin Elements can drop them are just messing with you. (j/k but srsly) I still need a few more to complete the set, and I will probably replace that Bahamut Dagger with something at some point, I just don’t know what.

I have an Agni I’m idly considering build a grid for, but only super-idly because this Fire grid isn’t bad at all. Would Agni be strong enough to justify the effort? I’m not convinced yet, which is why Ixaba remains unsparked.

Wind!

Took out one Tiamat gun and slotted in a Grimnir harp. I should be working on a second one, but Alexiel axes take priority. Do I feel any stronger? I used to, until I got wiped out by Siegfried Proud in the last event. Welp, back to the drawing board! …Not. It’s good enough for most content, which means it’s good enough for me.

Water!

I was planning to spark that third Murgleis, but I got lucky on a 10-pull so, ta-daa! Still running mainly Berserker, with the occasional Chaos Ruler where necessary. I’ve been doing some cautious experiments with Chrysaor for more damage and Sage for extra sustain, but I’m most used to Berserker so it’s hard to adapt to a new playing style. Plus TBH nowadays I just leech or Auto everything I get away with.

Just posted this to express my extreme displeasure at FLB’ing Varuna and not getting any new uncap art. BOO, Cygames, BOOO! That Justice is there for the extra HP, not her relatively useless call. I might ULB her for a few more stats, but I haven’t heard anything good about her Evoker Maria Theresa so I won’t be getting her.

Heart! Uh, I mean, Light!

Why is this “light” sword more fiery than anything in my Fire grid?

Now with 30% more HP!

Much stronger than last time. It’s easy to tell with this one because I struggled a lot with Proud+ Huanglong and Qilin the first time they came out. This time it was much easier to wipe Qilin out and focus on Huanglong, who also went down much faster than previous times. I’m satisfied with Light for now, so it will go on the backburner for development while I focus on other parties.

Dark!

I took the Ancient Cortana out because it was cutting into my HP. I also need to get a better mainhand than that Qilin sword. Eventually I will incorporate some M2 elements, but not for a long time because this grid gets the job done, more or less.

Final comments

I’m just killing time in Granblue Fantasy waiting for the next big content to drop. For the rest of the year my focus will be on unlocking the remaining classes I don’t have while uncapping my Arcarum summons on the side. If the 2020 Zodiac character is excellent, I might do a spark in the New Year, otherwise this is as far as updates go for the next six months or so. See ya!

La Corda d’Oro 4 tips + final review

I’ve played La Corda d’Oro 4 nine good times, and I’m not ruling out any further playthroughs. According to gamer logic, this qualifies me to give some tips for anyone considering playing it. Now that otome games are picking up popularity in the West and Koei has shown interest in bringing Ruby Party games over, you never know, maybe it will get a release someday. So here are some tips for not bombing completely when you play this game.

1. Start on Easy and work your way up to Normal if rhythm games are not your thing. Use the Easy playthrough to identify the really easy pieces like the Hallelujah Chorus, Smoke Gets in your Eyes, Someday my Prince will Come, Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral, etc. I was too lazy to use Practice Mode much, but you can get good starting boosts that way.

2. Pick a guy and stick to him. I hear there’s a “Consolation” ending where you get dumped by one guy and comforted by the other guy, so you can date two at a time if you’re aiming for that. But no more than two. Pick and stick.

3. I stated earlier that the penalty for playing easy songs and repeated songs isn’t that severe. It isn’t at first, but the audience gets less and less forgiving the further the game goes along. Don’t play any songs under difficulty 10 in December. Don’t repeat a song more than once or twice, especially if it doesn’t fulfill an audience request. For concerts with two songs, one repeated. one new is good. For three songs, one repeated, two new is best. Do that and you should get at least A in every concert, which is enough to raise your rank.

Note that the game takes the difficulty of a piece into account, so you can botch half of a tough piece on Hard and still SSS rank the concert. So when in doubt, pick the newest, toughest songs you have in your repertoire.

4. Best way to fill the Yokohama Arena, or just rank up fast: hold a ton of concerts at the church (saves BP too!). One every weekend is fine. You can repeat a song once or twice while working on the next piece, then dive into that one, repeat it, etc. If you manage your time carefully, you’ll reach SSS rank by early to mid=December.

That gives you access to the Yokohama Arena. Filling it is another matter, but easily done as well. From the start of the game, you should be buying the photo book item that you can give to Nia in exchange for promoting your concert.

Book the hall by the 25th. Give her a photo book every day and do your normal activities. By the 29th and 30th you should be playing mastered songs and selling 1000+ tickets every day. Filling 17,000 seats will be easy, even on Hard Mode.

Just in case you don’t believe me, but why wouldn’t you?

5. Having said all that, filling the Yokohama Arena is just for a trophy and bragging rights. It’s time consuming, and holding so many concerts gets boring. For all routes, Minato Mirai Hall should be sufficient for a successful ending. So don’t stress out. The Pacifico is good enough if you want a bit of a challenge.

If you aim for the Minato Mirai Hall, you don’t have to hold concerts that often. Once every two weeks works, and you can take your time and select pieces, walk around town and listen to requests and spending more time dating.

On that note, if you have to hold a special event for a concert and it doesn’t specify a rank to achieve, then it’s enough just to hold the concert, even if it sucks. E.g. to recruit Togane and Housei, it’s fine to get a rank C, as long as you are rank B when the concert takes place and you hold it in Kobe.

6. Hold concerts on Saturdays for best event progression. A lot of events trigger on the weekends, so having an extra weekend day after the concert is the fastest way to get started on the next event, especially after getting a boost in affection from a concert.

In the same vein, don’t rush to book the next concert after the last one. Wait and see if the next event has some special requirements. Or book the concert, but have a save standing by ready to redo as necessary.

7. Try to trigger weekend events just before the last practice session of the day. Avoid the guy until then. A couple of characters like Nanami have events that make them vanish for the rest of the day, and you won’t be able to use them in ensembles in the meantime. Super annoying.

8. Keep several saves!!!! This should be higher. Unless you’re playing with a FAQ, you WILL be blindsided by some of the requirements on the routes. E.g. you have to hold special concerts on Yagisawa’s, Kyoya’s and Togane’s routes, probably more. You may end up having to backtrack and change your concert schedule, cancel planned concerts at the last minute, or else forfeit that route altogether. To prevent all that, make a separate save every two weeks, or after every major milestone. The bottom row of saves is a useful place to store those.

9. Save scumming is not just recommended: it’s allowed. The store’s item selection is random, and some of the items are useless – especially the ones that raise interpretations. So if you need a particular score or a particular item, save and reload a few times until it appears. Tuners are especially useful. You can pick up a few trumpets as well. Don’t buy scores you don’t need, but do buy them if you have extra cash to keep them from clogging the store. Reloading also helps if a guy is supposed to appear in a certain spot but just won’t cooperate.

10. Linden Hall is not useless. You should do your first ensemble practice session with a digital tuner there. Your second as well, if you have the time to spare. Your initial sessions will drive most of the crowd away anyway, so there’s no point doing it in town. For most songs this will only be a +4 or +6 bonus to mastery, but every little helps, especially on Hard Mode.

11. Pick a type of affection and stick to it. If you’re going for “love to him” (pink), go that way exclusively. Buy ribbons every chance you get, practice together every time and use the item, etc etc.

I say this because for at least Amamiya’s route, possibly more, if you don’t trigger some events early on Amamiya’s route he’ll be blocked forever. The same probably applies to other characters, so pick an affection type and raise it as high as you can as quickly as you can’t. Don’t hold back like in La Corda d’Oro 2.

12. For PSTV users: For the BP swiping minigame, instead of chasing the hearts and BP all over the screen, keep the cursor in the middle or slightly higher and swipe across, left to right, right to left. You’ll be able to get most  of the BP and hearts that way, though you might miss a few here and there.

What I liked about La Corda d’Oro 4
♪It’s hard! I enjoyed the challenge and I enjoyed getting better at the songs the more I played the game.

♪I enjoyed most of the routes I did for the characters I liked. The only great disappointment was Amamiya.

♪They made it a little harder to get endings compared to LC3. I had to work harder for my happy endings, so I appreciated them more. But at the same time, they didn’t get as difficult and fussy as LC2.

♪They changed the townscape so you can find clusters to farm for BP more easily. I miss the old aesthetic a little bit, but this is way less frustrating and saves a ton of time.

♪I like the idea behind the series of concerts, showing how much work goes into pulling off a successful concert. Hiring the hall, doing promotions, planning the set list, etc. If anything it should have involved more work, like all the things that were mentioned in the initial concert (parking spaces, changing rooms, etc.).

♪The music selection was much better than in LC3. They have a good mix of popular classical and opera songs as well as more modern compositions like Joplin and Gershwin. Plus instead of quartets all the time, they add in the piano and bass instruments in most songs. I’d like even more instruments next time, though. Especially drums.

♪I like the character events where you build friendship between unlikely combos like Ritsu and Nanami and… presumably Arata and Myoga must exist? It would be fun to see all the events.

♪The characters comment on little things like the decor you chose, the size of the crowd, the quality of your performance, etc. It’s nice to see they noticed and cared.

♪It was nice to see Tsukimori and Tsuchiura again! More cameos next time!

What I disliked about La Corda d’Oro 4
✂Each route takes a long time. It can get a bit tiring, especially for back-to-back playthroughs.

✂Although there are two types of affection, routes play out almost the same way anyway. There are only a few places where a different event occurs because of affection-type, making it a pointless addition.

✂It’s a bit unbelievable how all the members of the Weekend Ensemble are happy to drop everything every weekend to join Kanade’s troupe, just because she’s sooo talented and sooo wonderful. The game doesn’t do much to prove that talent and wonderfulness so it makes the guys seem a bit pathetic.

✂Speaking of these pathetic guys, how fragile are their egos? You can lose their routes forever for the slightest infraction. So I didn’t watch you play the piano once. ONCE. And it’s over just like that?

✂While at least one of boys did grow impressively in his routes (Ritsu), most were just treading the same ground they did in La Corda d’Oro 3, just more annoyingly so. Myoga, Amamiya and Togane were the worst culprits in that respect.

Then there’s Nanami, who actually regressed. Sure, he got over his confidence issues, but now he’s so confident he thinks the only way to interpret a piece is the way he wants to do it. He doesn’t put it that way, but the way he cries and wails and carries on, he’s clearly feeling very hard done by, just because he has to play a song in a way he doesn’t like. Honestly he was better off in the Amane Academy concert group, where Myoga would quickly shut down that kind of nonsense. Either speak up plainly or shut up and play.

Final thoughts on La Corda d’Oro 4

It was great, really. I haven’t played a bad Kiniro no Corda game yet, though I have heard unfortunate things about Kiniro no Corda Octave. I was especially happy about the harder gameplay and the vastly improved selection of music. There’s a lot of repetition on the routes, but each one has enough new stuff to keep it fresh.

If I had to note a downside, it would be that I just don’t like the characters that much. They’re all just okay for me. Much, much better than the outright psychopaths you get in many otome games, but still not appealing capture targets for my personal tastes. TBH 90% of the reason I played so many times is the rhythm game and the challenge of filling concert halls. If rhythm games aren’t your thing and/or you don’t super-like any of the guys, this will be a tough play for you.

But since I did like the gameplay and the music, it was great for me. But would I play it again? Ehhh, I already did it 9 times, and I’m ready to move on to a new cast and new gameplay styles now.

Currently playing

Somehow or the other, I picked up Dragon Quest 7 again. Just finished Vogograd and moved on to Buccanham. What an unhappy game. I’m also playing Sanrio Characters Picross, which is Picross, so I love it. I also put my PSTV away and hooked up the PS2 again, AND found my DS charger again. But my next post will be about Granblue Fantasy because I recently hit level 175 so I might as well post an update.

La Corda d’Oro 4 – Kyoya, Myoga, Amamiya, Togane and Nanami GET!

Time to finally put La Corda d’Oro 4 away, but only after playing the heck out of it on Hard mode. I had such a good time I’m thinking of diving into one of Neoromance’s other games next, maybe one of the Harukanaru Toki no Naka de games. Those are always good for a playthrough… or a ragethrough, as the case may be. But I won’t because the year is almost over so I have to play more stuff from my New Year’s Resolutions list. Next week looks like a quiet one, so I’ll start something tomorrow, God willing.

Before that, though, a roundup of all the routes I did this week!

Kisaragi Kyoya

At one point you’ll have to hold a concert that doesn’t include Togane or Myoga, just to show that the Weekend Ensemble can succeed on its own without their star power. No, you can’t cheat by never recruiting them in the first place. But you can cheat by recruiting them but never putting them in an ensemble, hehehe. Too bad I didn’t think of it earlier :'(

The main story is that Kyoya has yet another crisis of confidence and decides to leave the music department and enroll in the regular high school. Eventually we music him out of it, but I thought he had a good point. How many music students go on to become professional violinists? Isn’t it a deadend street for someone like Kyoya, who isn’t lauded as a musical genius like Ritsu or Togane or Myoga are? Who has to work twice as hard to achieve barely comparable results and doesn’t seem to have much fun doing so? Wouldn’t he be happier living a normal life and still being involved in music on a more casual level?

I think he would, personally. Or that at least he needed to give serious consideration to that question. Why is he doing this? Is this really his dream or is he just following his big brother and childhood crush? Unfortunately for the player, La Corda d’Oro‘s “music über alles” concept won’t allow any dissent from the party line, so in the end his points are never addressed. We just keep playing concerts and he keeps getting better and so he decides to embark on a musical path and see how far he can go.

I’m sort of rooting for him, but I thought the game could have addressed the issue of music as a professional career for the not-particularly-talented a little more seriously. Especially since the game itself – and real life, to be honest – portrays anything less than success at the soloist level as a disappointment. Doubly especially because Kyoya’s own brother had to drop performing because of an injury. What’s Kyoya’s fallback if a musical career doesn’t pan out? “It will all work out because of love” is a cop-out IMO.

I never saw this CG. I wonder how you get it.

His post-confession CG is the two of them backstage before a performance IIRC, with Kyoya saying he wants to see how far he can go with her at his side. So what, he’ll drop music if she dumps him? Heh. Alrighty then.

Right, I sohuld mention this: Kyoya, Myoga and Nanami’s routes have gikushaku (Awkward) mode, where things get a bit weird between the two of you and you have to talk things out. In Kyoya’s case, Kanade is too shy to ask him whether he decided to stick with music or switch to the regular curriculum. So she keeps running away when she sees him. Then she has a dream where he kisses her (……..) and that makes things even weirder. Eventually they… don’t talk it over, but he says he’s been thinking of her too, and then he kisses her on the forehead and everything’s happy again. Most useless mode ever.

Myoga Reiji

If you raise his affection early enough, you’ll be able to give him a birthday present. A pair of mugs featuring the golden string from our backstories. On most routes he’ll refuse to even see you, but this time he’ll accept one mug and you can keep the other. On one hand it was a really nice set of mugs. On the other hand, Kanade is kind of pushy, isn’t she? First the forced date with Kyoya, now a forced pair present.

Most of the route is Myoga snarking at Kanade. I can’t remember anything besides that. For their Christmas date, she barges into his apartment and demands to spend the evening with him. He challenges her to a chess game: if she can win, he’ll agree. She loses 6 times in a row but he agrees anyway because we all know the dumb tsundere chuunibyou is madly in love with her.

In his gikushaku mode event, we have a little tiff over Myoga ignoring a request from an alumnus of a school Amane Academy is absorbing. Frankly the whole thing was none of Kanade’s business, but she gets mad at him and he gets mad at her and it’s all super childish. Felt really forced by the writers, tbh. There’s plenty of other plausible scenarios for them to have a falling out over.

In any case, they make up once they play a piece together and the music they make together is soooo amazing that Myoga feels like he’s going to heaven. Once he wakes up from his reverie huffing and panting, he decides to make up with her and then they’re buddies again forever. But he’s still going to insult and put her down randomly, because that is his ninja way.

Highlight (?) of the route: she gets kidnapped AGAIN! I rolled my eyes at that one. Firstly because magical fairies aside, La Corda d’Oro is a very down-to-earth series so such skullduggery feels out of place. And secondly because they did the same thing last time and it was dumb enough. This time it’s even more pathetic.

Myoga’s driver and one of his assistants kidnap Kanade and use her to lure Myoga out, then take both of them down to the pier. They want the key to Amane Academy so they can give it back to the evil Russian not-pedophile that started the school. Myoga knocks them out and calls his bitchy assistant to come pick us up. End of incident, never referred to again. So, so pointless.

Can’t remember much of his confession scene, but his ending CG has him creepily kissing her hand and tell her that all his hatred for her has now turned into love. Oookayyy. I dunno, if I were Kanade I don’t think I’d stick around to find out what will happen if the love-hate switch ever gets flipped back…

Amamiya Sei

I almost lost him by not progressing his route fast enough. Watch out for early December! Try to get the event where he leaves for Vienna before the end of November, because his events might close off without the game even warning you! :-[ Luckily I’d been saving in a lot of different slots, so I was able to reload from earlier and somehow avoid the closing off, not sure how. Anyway, watch out.

Amamiya’s route was a boring disappointment, since we’re still doing the same “pretend to be in love” shtick from La Corda d’Oro 3. That means we’re already saying sweet things to each other and acting lovey-dovey, so it doesn’t feel special when he claims he’s really in love now. I can’t tell the difference, honestly. He still talks and acts in the same fake, affected manner, he just blushes once in a while. You never feel like you’ve gotten to the real Sei Amamiya. Assuming such an Amamiya even exists. I feel like I wasted my time doing his route.

His Christmas date was a little unusual, at least. He takes Kanade shopping for a swimsuit, then takes her to the swimming pool for a makeout session. In the end he’ll be going to Vienna to study abroad once he graduates, and she hopes to join him there the following year. Sounds like a plan. Have fun, guys!

Togane Chiaki

It was okay. Not sure what I was expecting.

In one event, he takes Kanade along to play music for a bunch of pre-schoolers. He makes a valid point[citation needed] that busking and performing for children are good ways to learn to attract an audience, because those audiences are merciless and won’t stick around just to be polite. Too bad the rest of his route wasn’t similarly sensible and pragmatic.

The reason I say his route wasn’t what I expected is because he comes across as wise and worldly when he cameos in Yagisawa and Ritsu’s route, but in his own route he’s just a pompous blowhard. He talks and boasts about himself all the time and puts you down a lot. Until suddenly he thinks you’re super-amazing and even says so in a magazine interview. The transition from “you suck and you don’t deserve me” to “you’re the most wonderful woman ever” literally comes out of nowhere. It’s the same as in his LC3 route – one minute you’re boring, next minute he can’t live without you. Weird and unconvincing.

Let’s see, any highlights… He took Kanade to a tea ceremony party in Kobe. Mainly interesting because you get to see the inside of his very fancy mansion as well as the tea ceremony garden and room. I really like the backgrounds in Neoromance games. Unfortunately, to get this event you will have to randomly hold a concert in Kobe. Which isn’t a problem except… I had already planned and sold tickets to another concert! You should just hold all your concerts in Kobe and spare yourself the pain of cancelling a concert at the last minute like I did.

What else… Oh yeah, this one was annoying. Togane and Housei challenged the Weekend Ensemble to a Battle of the Bands event. But I triggered this event on December 26th! Less than a week to the Silvester concert! When I had already sold over 3000 tickets for the Pacifico Arena! :-<<<<. UGH. This is why you keep multiple saves, guys. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

So I reloaded, scheduled the concert, set up pieces that didn’t involve Togane and Housei, just to prove that the Weekend Ensemble is good enough to stand on its own without their help. Never mind all the routes when I didn’t bother recruiting those two into my ensemble. Never mind that on Myoga’s route I sold out the Yokohama Arena without their help.

In the end I got Togane’s confession after the Silvester concert, but he had already made his intentions clear by trying to kiss Kanade after the Battle of the Bands concert. Because nothing says ‘love and consideration’ like springing a challenge on your partner 5 days before New Year’s Eve, woo hoo!

My favorite part of the route was an event where a fan gives you a love letter to hand to him. And he thinks it’s from you so he starts blushing. But it’s not, so he gets mad. Heh, hehehe, serves you right, you pompous, self-important, overly-inflated sack of ….. . Not every girl in the world is gonna fall at your feet. I even tried to turn down his confession at the end, just to drive the message home, but the game wouldn’t let me. Instead, if you hesitate at his confession, he says “Give me a chance, you won’t regret it,” and then you’re stuck with him anyway.

Ending CG, you guys are out for an evening at the opera. You’re there to watch Carmen, and Togane says he can understand how Don José feels, all possesive and stuff. Yah, yah, whatevs dude. I’m gonna dump you for Yagisawa anyway, so enjoy it while you can.

Nanami Sousuke

After doing all the routes above, I still hadn’t had enough of the gameplay in Kiniro no Corda 4. After doing so many routes in quick succession, I had mastered a lot of the pieces in the rhythm game, so I wanted to show off a little before quitting the game. I ran through the list of untouched routes and Nanami is the guy I hated least, so Nanami it was.

As usual, Nanami has issues galore. With a dose of puppy-like excitability and a tendency to get carried away with fantasies. The drama on his route is that he loves playing in the Weekend Ensemble, but doesn’t agree with some of Kanade’s ideas and interpretations. However instead of saying so, he decides to act all weird and angsty all the time because he’s afraid she’ll dislike him for daring to express an opinion.

Eventually we manage to worm his true thoughts out of him, with plenty of crying and carrying on attached. Then he goes into a funk (gikushaku mode) and asks Hido, the previous cellist Myoga kicked out of the contest team, to cover for him. Hido goes to bat for Nanami (unbelievably enough) and says blah blah, Nanami is actually a performer at heart not an accompanist blah blah etc etc so this is all so hard for him. Blah. We’ve got other performers in the Ensemble, they’re just sensible and mature enough to speak up when they have problems. This kid is too young to be out alone after dark, let alone dating anyone.

After that, I got an event Nanami turns his phone off and doesn’t go home, so we have to run all over town searching for him late at night. Then Kanade and Nanami make up and decide to share their thoughts with each other. Kanade made the sensible point that if he really wants to be closer to her, that won’t happen as long as he’s hiding his true self and feelings. And so they made up and a good time was had by all.

His route was even whinier and more annoying than I’d expected, so I skipped quickly through his confession scene, sorry. In the post-ending CG, he’s blowing on her hands because they’re cold. Skipped through that as well. That’s it. No more shotas for me.

Final thoughts

Not yet. I’ve playing this game 9 good times, so I want to share some tips for not botching routes completely in my next post. Then I’ll do a final roundup of things I liked and things I think could be improved upon in La Corda d’Oro 5, which I am totally looking forward to even though it hasn’t been announced yet. See you next post!

Pyramid Solitaire Saga review – Annoying gimmicks get in the way of fun

Instead of jumping into another RPG after Demon Gaze II, I’ve been playing Pyramid Solitaire Saga for the past couple of days. It’s another prettyfied puzzle game from King, makers of Candy Crush Saga, Farm Heroes Saga and many similar time-wasters.

And these games all share one thing in common: they all start out really interesting at first, lots of fun progress and freebies. Then they introduce all kinds of annoying gimmicks and stack them up, one on top of the other, so the game gets harder and less fun as it goes along, all to encourage you to spend more money and time on them.

Well, they’ve got my time at least. But not my money, never my money. Pyramid Solitaire Saga is based on… Pyramid Solitaire. Which I had never heard of until just now when I googled it. I know regular Solitaire, and Freecell (man I wasted so much time on that) and Spider Solitaire but not Pyramid. Still it’s the same concept, more or less. A>2>3>4>>>>K>A etc etc. There are one or more gold cards at the bottom of the stacks in every puzzle and your job is to whisk all the blocking cards away until you get to it.

Of course they don’t make it that easy for you. Alas. In every stage you have to navigate one or more of the following challenges:

Blue card: You have to get at least one blue card before you get all the gold cards, or you fail the stage.

Streak: You have to get a number of cards in an row, usually some reasonable number but sometimes something crazy like 40 cards in a row. I can see this getting very annoying the further along I go.

Bandaged cards: Cards covered in bandages so you have to tap them twice to unlock, wasting your moves every time.

Chained cards: You have to get a streak of four in a row to unchain these cards and then tap them to remove them. If you fail to complete this process, all the chains grow back at once and you have to start all over again. My least favorite gimmick.

Cards with leaves: Similar to the chains, but the leaves grow back in stages so there’s still a bit of room for error.

One-up cards: Their value goes up by one every turn, e.g. a Q turns into a K, etc. Supposed to make for strategic gameply but can be safely ignored so far.

The early stages before they added all these complications were the most fun. One of my sisters likes these puzzle games, but she only likes the easy parts. So she’s perfectly fine just starting from level 1 in every session, playing till she runs out of lives, then going back to level 1 again the next time. It just boggles my mind. I’m not super into challenges or anything, but I can’t imagine playing that way and never making any progress. But when I consider all the dealbreaking gimmicks King likes to add like the bombs in Candy Crush and the frogs and spiders in Farm Heroes, I kinda see where she’s coming from. Sometimes you just want some simple and mindless fun, y’know?

At least Pyramid Solitaire Saga is more generous than Diamond Diaries Saga, which I am about to delete. It gives a regular super-powered mode with lots of Jokers, and you can earn 30 mins of free lives and a host of other useful items just by progressing the stages. So if anything gets too annoying you can just hack your way out with the items and gamble on the next stages being more reasonable.

Music? Sorry, I play on mute so I wouldn’t know. Same with sound effects. I suppose I could turn them on for a minute and see… Yeah, blah. Forgettable. There’s no attempt at a story, yay. Puzzle games don’t need stories. I like the relatively muted colors. Nowhere near as bright and garish as the other puzzle games. It feels less kiddy and more relaxed that way. Apart from that I’ve got nothing to say about the superficial stuff.

What I like
-Bright happy colors, but not too bright. I really like the way it looks on my tablet.
-Simple, addictive gameplay.
-Generous game with lots of freebies.
-It requires some thinking ahead but isn’t too complicated.

What sucks
-They suckered me in with simple gameplay and now they’re complicating things.
-Annoying gimmicks that will only get worse as it goes along.
-Creepy crawlies in the form of scarabs scrambling all over the screen. I’m not scared of insects but they’re annoying.

TL;DR: Pyramid Solitaire Saga is a fun puzzle game but I can see the stormclouds on the horizon. I’ll delete it if it ever gets too bothersome to play.

Next up: I was at a standstill until this morning, when I finally decided to play Ys Seven. Why? Because. As for the Ys Celceta I mentioned I’d started some months ago, it’s dropped. Something about the open fields just rubbed me the wrong way, not being able to save stressed me out and I couldn’t make sense of the battle system.

Wait, come to think of it, instead of Ys I should play Final Fantasy XIII instead. I said I would, and I don’t want that game to follow me into the new year. Okay FFXIII it is. No wait, Ys Felghana is supposed to be short. Maybe that one…

….Or maybe I won’t play any of those and will start something else. Eh. Let’s play some more Pyramid Solitaire Saga while I try to figure it out.

Finished Demon Gaze II – Story was dumb, but I had fun (spoilers)

I cleared Demon Gaze II in 27 hours and 30 minutes, making a nice short and reasonably satsifying game. Any longer than that and I would have gotten bored, any shorter and I would feel robbed. The same complaints I had with the first game apply, namely:

  •  Loooong cutscenes every time something happens in the story. This time I got a kick out of choosing the most trollish answers possible, and some of the responses were genuinely funny, so it wasn’t so bad.
  • Very little dungeon variety. There are three or four main dungeons you visit over and over again. Demon A’s territory is near the start, B’s territory is a little deeper in, C’s place is beyond that. And the sad thing is, they don’t even bother to vary the decor or recolor the walls or anything, it’s the exact same scenery all the way through. Very boring.

That’s the downsides. On the plus side, they fixed a lot of things I didn’t like. For example the rent gimmick is gone, I have party members instead of generics, there’s much less fanservice, you don’t have to select individual demons any more, etc. I can tell they really listened to fan complaints about Demon Gaze and applied it to this one, just that they were too lazy to design proper dungeons to make Demon Gaze II truly superior.

Now I’m really confused by the people who said it was worse than the first. Recycling the same dungeons and having a weaksauce story is the main thing I can fault them for, and those are flaws the first game shared. TBH the first one felt a bit tedious while Demon Gaze II was much more comical and light-hearted so I enjoyed it more.

Story

An incomptent bunch of revolutionaries attempts to take down an incompetent ruler through the power of radio, many laughs ensue. The uselessness of the Revolutionist Party kept me playing even when I was irritated by their antics, because I thought, “The bad guys can’t be that stupid, can they? They’re going to swoop in and catch them any moment now, right?” But no, they’re really that dumb.

You can insult them as much as you like and they’ll still adore you

Or, more accurately, and to give partial spoilers, big baddie Magnastar didn’t care that much and bigger baddie Erik is enabling them for his own purposes, so the revolutionaries were never in any serious danger. It’s probably because I played Entaku no Seito and Stranger of Sword City first, so I’m used to darker moods and stories from Experience Inc. That’s why I was expecting a Sol Trigger kind of situation where… umm… things didn’t go so well, but Demon Gaze II isn’t that kind of game. Which is good, I guess. Now I think of it, I don’t play a lot of light, comedy games, so it’s a nice change.

Gameplay

Big bad Magnastar has the population of the city of Asteria under mind control. He does this through giant crystals guarded by demons, so what you do is, you beat the demons, smash the crystals and then… you don’t free the citizens from Magnastar’s mind control. Nope, you overwrite it with brainwashing of your own, in the form of a magical song. It’s briefly pointed out that what we’re doing is almost the same as what Magnastar is doing, but our boss says “Yeah, but we’re the good guys!” and that’s the end of that. Make of it what you will.

they see me crawlin they hatinActually, if you want some spoilers, post-game it’s explained that the boss Muse and her sister Prim are daughters of the Demon Lord. The Demon Lord who seems to be Ol=Ohma from Entaku no Seito, who is definitely not good people so it shouldn’t be a surprise. The real surprise is that Ol=Ohma was a woman all along…??? And Wyvie is that annoying wyvern sub-boss I had to fight before him… her? My mind can’t accept it.

Combat and stuff

The usual Experience Inc. gimmicks apply. The only change is you have is demons as party members. Some of them have the normal classes you’re used to, others have a mishmash of skills that belong to various classes. My party for most of the game was Signa, Peg, Capricon, Leo and Cygnus. I switched out Leo for Draco near the end because her damage is just unreal. You get a lot of other party members as well, and they level up pretty quickly, but I’m lazy and didn’t feel like experimenting so I stuck with the ones I got early on.

Where did this thing come from, anyway?

It didn’t matter anyway., I played the whole game on the second-lowest difficulty, “Warm” so there was no need to optimize my party or stats. Everyone was super accurate even without casting Hit or Slow, damage was puny so no need for Avoid or much healing, and so on. For the final boss, I used the strategy where you leave some of the front enemies alive and cast Veil or use a mirror item, blocking his (or her?!) physical attacks. Then I just killed him. On Warm difficulty you get a free retry even if you fail, so there’s no need to hold back.

I went back and forth in my mind a lot, trying to decide whether to stick to Warm or move up to Hot. Warm is definitely too easy so Hot would be just right for anyone with dungeon crawler experience. But at the same time, I don’t want to deal with any stress right now, especially not from a game this jokey and comical. So eventually I made peace with the simplicity and just enjoyed it.

Extracurriculars

There are almost no sidequests, and only a few optional demons to get. What you can do on the side is power up your demons through a touching mini-game and then go on date events with them. The touching mini-game is like hot-or-cold, where you touch various spots to see how the demon reacts, hopefully closing in on the Perfect spot to hit her for the most points. 9 out of 10 times this will be an erogenous zone like the lips, bust or crotch, so yeah, if fondling demon loli waifus is your thing, you’ve come to the right game.

Doki Doki Majo Shinpan! started this touchscreen loli molestation gameplay gimmick trend, didn’t it? I knew that game was evil. But someone else would have done it in the end. With great power (touchscreen technology) comes great madness (game developer imaginations) after all. Actually, I don’t really care. Just that Demon Gaze II‘s version is a boring and crappy mini-game, so they should have designed something more interesting and worth my time.

Conclusion

Demon Gaze II will most likely disappoint hardcore dungeon crawler fans. The dungeons are just too boring and samey, with few dangers or gimmicks. But if you’re looking for something quick, easy and cheerful with a happy ending, it’s a great way to pass the time. If I gave out number ratings, it would be like 6.5/10. Gameplay is meh, story is silly, but somehow the whole thing comes together in a charming package that left me feeling pretty good when I was done. Recommended as long as you don’t expect too much.