La Corda d’oro – Tsuchiura GET!

ryotaro tsuchiura2I got Tsuchiura’s date ending, at least. A date ending is a slightly inferior but much easier to get ending that only requires about 600 Love Points. The ultimate end would be the ‘perfect’ ending, but the requirements are a pain. Not only do you need 1000 Love Points and 1000 Rival Points but you also need to view several randomly occurring events for each potential suitor or you can kiss the ending good bye.

That’s why although I would have loved to get Tsuchiura’s perfect ending, I’m not going to go back and give it another try. Maybe later in the future, but not any time soon. Stat raising + event hunting just became too much trouble after a while. For example, raising your sadness stat is supposed to help with getting Tsuchiura, but it seems you have to raise it a LOT before it makes a blip on his Rival radar. That’s weeks of spamming the same interpretations over and over again on top of all the regular practice I have to do. Furthermore, despite all my efforts at speaking constantly with Ryo, I only managed to trigger 3 CGs by the end. The Japanese FAQs suggest that some events are time dependent, e.g. before selection X or Y. Other events are stat dependent, i.e. you have to have X love points and Y rival points. And the only way to know all this? FAQ your way through or buy the strategy guide. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Wild Arms 5 – Shelved for not being bad enough

Wild_Arms_5_USI should have been playing WA4 by now, but my PS2 had another one of its fits and decided not to play it, so Wild Arms 5 it is. I’ve played an hour of it and finished the prologue. It’s a good game, so far. It doesn’t have as many immediately off-putting puzzles as Wild Arms 2 did, and the Hex battle system took me all of 5 seconds to get the hang of. The whole Hex thing seems like an unnecessary addition that I will almost certainly tire of before the game is up, but right now it’s not bothering me too much. Character-wise Vyse, Aika and Fina Dean, Rebecca and Avril are okay enough. Generic plucky hero, his generic prickly childhood friend/not-girlfriend, generic mysterious girl with amnesia. Some games make the formula work. It’s all about what they do with them and with the story from here on out.

Why am I shelving it, then? To put it simply, I’m not in the mood for a ‘decent’ RPG. It’s all about timing, and right now I feel like playing something either very, very good or very, very bad. I don’t know about the former, but I have some ideas from Idea Factory for the latter (dear, sweet Idea Factory) that will prime my mental pump and prepare the way for me to play more normal fare like Wild Arms 5.

Since it’s very early days yet I probably shouldn’t say anything, but I’m going to note two early problems with WA5 regardless. Problem 1: The opening theme pissed me off. I don’t know about 3 and 4, but Wild Arms 1 and 2 had fantastic opening themes, so good they literally made me break out in goosebumps. Fast forward to 5 and… what? Generic J-Pop? Nana Mizuki? Who what where? Oh, I know who Nana Mizuki is and she’s not fit to lick the boots of a Wild Arms opening theme, okay? Urgghhh… You know, I was wondering why they waited so long to play the opening theme and run the credits, but now I’m glad they held it back for an hour. If they’d played it immediately I would have thrown the controller and pissed on the PS2 in protest. The BGM and battle themes are great as usual though, so that helps.

Problem two: the voice acting. Once I resume I’m also going to have to mute the voice-acting henceforth. I can’t stand Dean’s and Rebecca’s voices. Dean is too ‘cheerful little boy’ and Rebecca is too ‘shrieking harridan’ for my tastes. If you’re wondering why I’m going to mute the VAs here even though I endured 40+ hours of unquestionably worse acting in Arc Rise Fantasia, again it boils down to the “not quite horrible enough” thing. ARF has to be heard to be believed. WA5 should be seen, not heard.

That aside, it seems like a game I’m going to like. I’ll come back to it in… June-ish? July-ish? Quite soon, once I’m desperate to play something good again.

La Corda d’oro – Forever alone! (spoilers)

kiniro no corda coverMy valiant pursuit of otome games with actual gameplay continues! Not that I won’t ‘play’ otome visual novels, and not that there aren’t some very good ones out there, but when I pick up a handheld or a controller, I want to play something, not read for 10 hours. And so it is that I find myself trying almost any otome game that promises even a hint of gameplay, which brings me at last to La Corda d’oro, a.k.a Kiniro no Corda.

The story

The Main Character – I wanted to name her Bolo Yeung but it was too long so her name is Bolo Yu – is a regular student in an academy split into a regular and a musical department. Bolo is roped into taking part in a music competition because she can see a fairy. The fairy gives her a magical violin and a musical score and sets her loose on the musical world. And if she can win the hearts of her fellow bishies in the process, all the better!

It’s not bad as far as otome premises go. I mean some games don’t even bother, they just plop you down and let you chase guys for three years. The only issue I had was one of guilt. I felt kinda bad pretending to be competing when I was actually using a magical violin. The other contestants are so passionate, so hardworking and here is Bolo just blatantly cheating her way through the contest and daring anyone to call her out on it. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Summon Night Swordcraft Story – Slightly above average (spoilers)

summonnight_frontAfter 10 hours I hope I’m almost done with Summon Night Swordcraft Story, but I have no way to tell. I’ve reached level 33 in the dungeons, reached the semi-finals in the tournament and just returned from Fort Mirana story-wise. It hasn’t been a bad ride, but I’m ready for it to end now. The story is meh, the encounter rate is crazy unless you spend all your money on Amulets, the localization is rather poor and the blacksmithing part is no fun. I like the characters, but you go for long stretches without seeing those I like best so it’s not enough to make up for the meh-ness of the rest of the game.

Let’s take all the points one by one.

Story: Cleru, our hero, is taking part in a tournament to become a Craftlord. This tournament is quickly sidelined in favor of exploring the mystery behind Cleru’s dad’s disappearance 3 years ago. For some reason Cleru knows almost nothing about his dad despite them living in the same town and the disappearance being quite recent. On the other hand the people who did know his dad are being all vague and ambiguous when they talk about him and what happened. “Could it be… But it’s not… I can’t tell you now… You’ll find out eventually…” I HATE THAT. Either tell me now or just shut up. Right now there’s some stuff about swords and an evil empire and a spirit sealed away, but I already lost interest hours ago. Just let me finish already. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Anno 1404 – Beautiful and highly addictive

Anno-1404-cover-imagesI had a blast playing Anno 1404 (a.k.a. Dawn of Discovery) this Easter. I spent so much time on it that I’m limiting myself to no more than 10 hours of gameplay a week for the rest of April. I know I’ve played well over 10 hoursof this game by now, because I got the achievement for 10 hours of gameplay a while back. I’m probably closer to 15 hours and I’ve barely gotten started.

Lovely game. Love, love, love the soundtrack. The voice acting is great too. The dialog can be seriously cheesy sometimes, but that just adds to the medieval mood. I’ve been playing Campaign Mode, and it was most fun for me when I got to grow my little town and make my little peasants and nomads happy without worrying too much about the threat of war.

I’m quitting Campaign Mode now, though, because I went and made Kardinal Lucius mad, and he’s promised to hunt me down with a fleet of ships and wreck my bottom. I can’t deal with all that war stuff. Why must we fight? I was sitting in my harbor all happy as can be and then Guy Forcas came and burned all my ships! And my trading ships too! If not for the harbor defense towers and my one Oriental warship, I would’ve been sunk. I barely made it through that stage alive and you want me to come back for more? No thank you! Do please go on, this is most interesting →