I wanted something with absolutely no random battles in it, and I haven’t started a new raising sim in a while so… here we are.
The Idolm@ster: Dearly Stars has you playing as a wannabe idol singer who grows from a complete nobody into a famous id0l. I picked Hidaka Ai, the one in the middle, and I’ve currently got her up to a Rank D idol (over 100,000 fans).
The gameplay is simple enough. You have three stats, Vocal, Dance and Visual (looks), and you raise them through lessons that take the form of annoying touchscreen mini-games. Additionally you pick a song and an outfit depending on which one of the three stats is trending that week, then you carry out promotions that help you build up “memories.” After a few of these, you qualify to take part in an audition where you use those “memories” to hold the judges’ interest long enough to pass. Pass, rank up, next audition, pass rank up, etc.
I haven’t watched the Idolm@ster anime, and this is the first IM game I’m playing but I hear they’re all quite similar. While this isn’t quite the experience I was hoping for, I can (sort of) see what the attraction of this game would be. It’s like the anti-Princess Maker, made for people who find “regular” raising sims long, tiring and/or confusing. They just want to play with a cute girl and they already know what they want her to be. No need to mess with all those stats and jobs and lessons and multiple endings and stress and time limits and stuff like that. Just a linear story, simple mini-games and lots of anime girls to ogle. Makes sense.
It’s not really for me though. I’m going to finish it and everything, but it’s not really doing anything for me. The foregone conclusion (Ai wins “Idol Ultimate” and becomes a top star like her mother) is painful enough without adding the repetitive gameplay and the vaguely irritating story to the mix. At each stage they try to throw an obstacle in Ai’s way, but with the player at the helm and the auditions so easy to win, they just end up looking ridiculous. For example right now I have to beat an idol named Hoshii Miki in an audition. There’s no way I’m going to lose as long as I take lessons and follow the trends, but the game is acting like it’s this insurmountable obstacle that I could never overcome in a million years, blah blah blah. Pathetic.
Anyway, I’m going to finish it. Apart from being piss-easy and highly repetitive, it’s not exactly bad, and it shouldn’t take too long at the rate I’m going. After this I still won’t be ready to take on any random battles, so… hmm… I’ll probably pick up an otome game.
I’m rather clueless as for what to play right now as well, I’d like a new Layton game, or something similar.. nice and relaxing, a mysterious story and lots of puzzles to keep my brain occupied. Maybe I’ll play Time Hollow again, I’ve forgot most of the story and puzzles by now and I enjoyed it quite a bit when it came out. It’s also not too long.. I can’t really afford to spend much time on a game currently.. ;__;
And I finished the Naoya route in Devil Survivor, it was so boring and had no real conclusion at all, now I don’t feel like seeing any of the other endings. I wonder if the 3DS version with the additional day makes the endings any better… but that’s just Atlus again, releasing a game and throwing out another, more complete version of the game afterwards, pff.
Well if you really want to play something Devil Survivorish, DS2 is coming out sometime this month. I got the Gin ending in the first game, and that wasn’t very satisfying either. I bet all the endings are equally sucky, and this may or may not have been improved in the sequel. I’m in no hurry to play it.
When I don’t have time to play games, what I usually do is… play nothing at all and see how I feel. If I find myself craving or missing games, something playable will usually appear. Otherwise I take a well-deserved break.
Hey Kina, you seem to be good at japanese for the type of games you play it must be easy for you. I’d like to learn some too, i just want to play some games, and read basic stuff cuz i feel i’m missing a lot of things. thing is that i’m not interested in… how to say it? i’m only interested in reading i dont expect to speak it, and i just hate anime (with very few exceptions) so understanding it for anime is not my goal.
Is there a book or something that you could recommend for start?. i know that most games has the basic hiragana alphabet and are not heavy-kanji ordeals. i guess i should understand the language too, but my interest for now is games.
My native is Spanish, and learned english playing Final Fantasy, (stupid i know) and i suck as an english conversational person. but i do fine reading most of the stuff i like (like this blog). wish i could do the same with japanese.
Regards
I started learning Japanese just so I could read it too 😀 Mostly because I thought the kanji looked cool. It’s been years since I was a beginner, and I used mainly internet resources so I don’t know too much about books. However my sister started learning not too long ago, and she swears by the “Genki” series and the “Introduction to Modern Japanese” books so you might want to take a look at those.
It doesn’t really matter what you start with though, since you can always it them if it don’t work for you. There should be hundreds of books out there in both English and Spanish. Just make sure whatever you pick introduces kana and doesn’t stick to romaji.
tl;dr: Pick any book, pick any website and start now. As long as you don’t give up and keep learning something every day, you can’t possibly fail to get good.
Thanks for the tips!, i’ll do it for sure!
Good luck! After a year or two, you can try playing games side-by-side in English/Spanish and Japanese. E.g. have the Japanese version running on an emulator and the English version on your console and handheld and just play through both and compare the translations. It’s a quick way to learn gaming vocabulary.