Atelier Lilie Plus – Same end, different day

atelier lilie before kingAfter my last post about the bland Atelier Lilie ending I got, I reloaded a save from before Lilie paid the last amount of money to finish the academy and tried to get another ending. Unfortunately I had already paid 140,000 out of 150,000 into the building coffers. Since Dorunie earns 7,000 every year by taking part in the king’s contest, I could only get up to year 4 before the academy was completed and the game ended again.

In those extra two years I did my best to travel, fight, synthesize, take quests, save money and talk, talk, talk to people in the hopes of getting a different ending, but it was to no avail. Unlike Marie and Elie, Lilie does have romantic interests and male characters who take more than a passing interest (I almost wrote ‘brotherly interest’, but this is Japan) in our main character, so I was hoping to trigger one of those endings if possible. She got pretty close to the artist guy whose name I can’t remember, but nothing came of it in the end. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Atelier Lilie Plus – Unceremonious ending GET!

280px-Atelier_Lilie_Plus_Box_ArtAtelier Lilie ~ Alchemist of Salburg 3 ~ is a prequel to Marie, Elie and the other Salburg games. It tells the story of an alchemist named Lilie, her mentor Dorunie and her two apprentices, Hermina and Ingrid as they move from Kentniss to Salburg to try and set up an alchemy academy. Apart from Lilie, these names should be quite familiar to anyone who has played the other games.

Since we know from the sequels that the academy did get built you might think it’s a foregone conclusion that Lilie and co. succeed in their endeavor. But no, it’s entirely possible to fail to gather enough funds (150,000 cole) in 5 years and get an ending that I haven’t seen but that is almost certainly rotten. There are at least two other endings, maybe more, where the academy doesn’t get built in game-time but is probably established sometime in the future.

While I didn’t get the ‘worst’ ending, I got something very close to it when I saved up the 150,000 in two years, built the academy and got what basically amounted to a “Thanks for playing. Bye!” ending. It lasted all of one screen without any movies or CGs and then the credits began to roll. I know for sure this can’t be a good end because there was so much left undone. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Another Time Another Leaf: Kagami no Naka no Tantei review

another time another leaf_frontAnother Time, Another Leaf: Kagami no Naka no Tantei = “The detective in the mirror.” I mentioned this game a few months ago when I spoke about games I gave up on very quickly. Back then I quit after about 20 minutes, but I decided to play another hour or two and give the game a chance to develop itself.

As I said last time, the game is about a girl named Sakurane Kaede who finds a lookalike of herself inside a mirror her late mother gave her. Game spoilers: there’s a good chance the lookalike (Ageha) is a younger version of Kaede’s mother, but since I quit we will never know for sure. Ageha has the power to travel into the near past, where she can investigate events and talk to people but cannot touch anything or bring it to the future with her.

For example the first case involves a camera that the ditzy principal dropped somewhere. By finding out the last time the principal had the camera, Ageha is able to go back in time and pinpoint its location, then both girls return to the present and tell the principal where it is. In the second case, involving an album stolen from the library, they travel back to various points in time until they determine that the album was taken between 18:00 and 20:00, then they question the only two people in the library at the time and find the culprit. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Tales of Legendia – Quit because of puzzle booths

Cover_LegendiaAnd after only 3 hours too. Not that I was actually playing Tales of Legendia. It’s more like I was watching it, like one would watch an anime. A long, slow, cliched anime. I had the controller in my hand and I was pressing buttons all right, but I also had combat difficulty set to Easy and all battles set to Auto. The “game” therefore boiled down to walking around, talking to people and sitting quietly through the random battles, which were luckily not too frequent.

And I was okay with that. The “kidnapped little sister” story wasn’t exactly unique (and we actually found her pretty quickly) but the characters weren’t too bad. Maybe it’s because I haven’t watched any anime in a while, but even the telegraphed jokes were amusing. I liked the treasure island feel of the giant ship, I liked the bright happy colors, Werites Beacon was a great, lively town, the bread-making gimmick made me go awwww, Shining Hearts~~ I’ve got a craving for a ham sandwich now. And on top of all that, the battles were stress-free because I wasn’t actually playing them. I got a game over once when I first fought Moses, but I just tried again and my folks beat him easily. It was like a fun and slightly-interactive visual novel. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Frontier Gate Boost+ – Finally hit my limit

frontier-gate-character-creI’ve had enough. I’m done. Level 40, 62 hours. Finally found the legendary Frontier Gate, which is just a fancy name for “last dungeon populated with million-HP enemies.” If I did a few more runs and gathered the necessary ores to upgrade my weapons and armor and did the same for one other party member I could quite conceivably finish the game within the next day or two, but it’s too late. The spark has gone out and I don’t want it to come back.

Story & Characterization: Story is virtually non-existent as far as a main plot goes. This isn’t a bad thing at all in my book, especially when you consider that the individual party member stories are pretty poor. Immature characters, unbelievable motivations, people walking around feeling sorry for themselves all day, etc. One problem is that a major source of the drama (city slickers vs. country bumpkins) is hard to get into firstly because it doesn’t seem like such a big deal and secondly because we’ve never seen the city so we have no idea what all the fuss is about. But Frontier Gate isn’t a game you play for the story or the characters anyway. Do please go on, this is most interesting →