What games are you playing 2: The revenge

seitora

Well-Known Member
Saku Saku: Love Blooms with the Cherry Blossoms

I did the Ann route. This one was also about 10 hours.

Ann is the president of the student council that the protagonist is eventually browbeaten into joining, and it's through the student council that he gains daily exposure to each of the girls that he can date. Ann is a fun, flirtatious girl. She's even a very strong tease...in the common route and the other three routes. She remains so in her own route, but it's made clear fairly shortly that Ann becomes a blushing wreck if her bluff gets called. Probably once in every three or four of her flirt attempts, the protagonist, Yuma, will actually

In-game, there is no specific route order recommendation. Looking online as I was playing through, I did see a reader one to do Mio - Yuri - Konami - Ann. After having played through the four routes, this actually makes sense. Mio's is generally the weakest, but it's also the least complicated, and helps to further develop characterisation a little bit in each person. Yuri's route doesn't really open up the greater setting much, but has generally stronger writing and more interesting character interaction. Konami's route has very good writing, and it'd be hard to follow that up with the more vanilla routes.

Ann's route opens up the story a lot more, and also has some very strong writing to it.

There are some supernatural elements that are known very early even in the common route, and get a little bit of play in the other three routes. Ann's route completely blows open the more normal parts of the setting. Ann is a daughter of a human and a soul reaper (or shinigami), so she herself is half-human, half-soul reaper. How this ends up playing out is she is literally two different personalities with two different forms inhabiting a single body, with the other girl being Elle. Though it's really properly more a split personality, it's believably written as being two entirely separate identities and egos. They share much of the same memories and development, but only Elle has the soul reaper powers. Soul reapers in this setting are also psychopomps, who take on some of the memories of those they reap, and Ann, despite being the human half, still gets these memories.

How the two separate girls react to the memories they acquire drives a lot of the story, as well as their separation and reconciliation, and both coming to love the protagonist. For example, Elle becomes a little moody since she is the one literally reaping souls. Ann, meanwhile, goes to the protagonist's school and becomes the student council president, since one of the souls Elle reaped was a former student council president at the school, with strong attachments to her alma mater. Since Ann and Elle are still two separate identities, there's also a little bit of a debate over whether it's two girls competing for the same guy or not. But really, the love (tri)angle gets downplayed for the whole joining of the two egos as they learn to truly be comfortable with each other.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Saku Saku: Love Blooms with the Cherry Blossoms

I did the final route, the Tina route. This one lasted about 8 hours. In turn, this final route does a deep dive into the background lore in the game that was only really previously explored in Ann's route.

The routes definitely do all their own thing for the order of who has their confession first, and how protracted it is for the other person to realise his or her feelings. Some have the girl confess first. Some have the male protagonist confess first. Some have both characters declare their crush just about at the same time. Some have one person declare love first, then the other person takes days to settle out his or her feelings. So hey, diversity in writing. This episode actually mirrors Konami's route too, in that Tina (like Yuma in Konami's route), takes some time to settle her feelings out after the opposite person confesses. There's also a bit of squick like the Konami route. Instead of it being squick because incest, it's more because Tina is really simple-minded. She's not dumb, but she just has very little awareness of societal conventions.

The ending has a bs deus ex machina that...quite literally, it didn't need, because the event leading to the DEM needing to occur was also contrived. Honestly, I feel the writing of Konami's route and Ann's route are the strongest, simply because there's no need for contrived drama to drive the plot forward.

Oh. But they do take a character who's been a complete joke character in the common route and first four routes of the game, and bring it all around full circle in an amazing way.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
A Clockwork Ley-Line: The Borderline of Dusk

I don't even know how this game fell on my list. Yet another VN of course. All characters are voiced, except for the male protagonist himself.

The setting is a magic academy, with the caveat that even at the academy proper, magic itself is still secret, with only a handful of students in the know. The protagonist stumbles into the secret, then gets drafted into the secret student society that responds to magic incidences. However, the narrative is...a little lacking. The protagonist and a friend of his find out about magic, and then it just about stops at that. There's a tiny bit of infodump, then they're sent on their merry way to help out with magical artifacts.

Further worldbuilding does happen in the rest of the game, but it's still fairly slow. Each chapter involves a magic artifact breaking loose and causing havoc. The story for the artifact-of-the-week plays out a little bit as part slice-of-life, part mystery, and part comedy. Nominally, there's five chapters. However, it's possible to exit off early in chapter 3 or chapter 4 depending on your ending, as there's three different girls to end up with. I assume but don't know for sure yet if there's a fourth neutral ending.

So I accidentally got the Tsubaki route without trying for it. Tsubaki is a part of the Disciplinary Committee (essentially the student hall monitor, but on steroids). While she's typically boisterous, things happen, and the protagonist struggles to break her out of the mild depression Tsubaki falls into on her route. This one was actually a slog to read through, if only because it felt like the same plot points happened like three times in a row: "Hey, Tsubaki is sighing and listless and staring into space, please go talk to her and help cheer her up." The protagonist does so and helps Tsubaki through some of her issues, then a few days later "Hey, Tsubaki is sighing and listless and staring into space, please go talk to her and help cheer her up." Rinse and repeat a third time. Tsubaki also has a hard time reconciling her image of being a Disciplinary Committee member with her more feminine, girly likes and habits that she hides from others to preserve that image. Weirdly enough, on a meta-level, I feel the same. Early in the story, she feels like the cool, suave, collected upperclassman figure. By the end of the game, Tsubaki basically just becomes a cute girl.

Oh yeah. The male protagonist actually has some level of deductive reasoning. Amazing how that's refreshing compared to the norm.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
A Clockwork Ley-Line: The Borderline of Dusk

I played and finished the Neko route. This would have been the first route I could have gotten, but I missed it and got the Tsubaki route earlier instead. Neko is a pretty fun, comedic character. She is quite possibly the horniest, thirstiest girl I've seen in a VN, and considering the target audience (self-deprecating humour! Self-deprecating humour!), that's saying something. Of course, she gets her touching sentimental moments too. However, Neko is also quite frankly an idiot, which helps to extend the comedy. What really helps is her voice acting, which seems to have that semi-unique Japanese comedy cadence of speaking much faster when flustered.

However, the route then abruptly ends at one point without really addressing one major plot point in the route, which is...anti-climatic.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
A Clockwork Ley-Line: The Borderline of Dusk

Finished the game. Well, that's another game that I won't bother playing the sequel for. The plot is cohesive, but it just meanders on and on and on a lot. The mystery-of-the-week format works a lot, and there's good comedy in here, but good lord, the last third of the game just drags out.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
How to Raise a Wolfgirl

This game was a fairly light-hearted VN with a little bit of romance near the end. There's some moderate substance to it near the end, but the story is overall fairly self-contained, and doesn't overstay its welcome.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster

After a...9-month hiatus I believe, finally getting back into the game. I was partways through the Tower of Kagutsuchi when I left, with the entirety of the Labyrinth of Amala cleared as well. Anyways, I finished off the remaining bosses in the Tower excepting the final boss itself. Then I spent some time grinding for macca to be able to finish my demon compendium, going from about 85% to 100% all at once. I did purchase the DLC as I've mentioned before, which gives me quick Macca and EXP boost items. So it was a lot quicker process than it could have been, where I might otherwise have just waited until a NG+ instead to finish the compendium. With that, I went back down to the 5th Kalpa to get the items behind the doors requiring Beelzebub Fly and Metatron, as well as picking up the Girimehkala with Pierce. I summoned some Mitamas to fuse with some of my demons to get my stats up, and I cleared the True Demon Ending. Along the way, I also got Demi-Fiend up to 40 in all stats.

Anyways, I guess I'll do the remaining five endings. Reading up, it looks like I can play through up to the second Yoyogi Park encounter (where I fight Sakahagi), and then split up my save files from there. So long as I'm careful with my dialogue choices. I'll play through on Easy, with the exception of doing the final boss fight on Hard once.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster

After some pushing through, I cleared the game again, this time doing Freedom Ending. I also switched to Hard Mode for the final boss, which wasn't terribly tough with some planning (I had Sukukaja, Tarakaja, Majakaja, and Debilitate split between my party, and stacked all 4 of them 4x before my first attack). I didn't really notice on my first playthrough that the final boss' second phase stays at Full Phase all the time. My Uber Pixie had Bright Might, so I was able to stack Critical hits easily. Somebody who bothered to get the 5th Press Turn, and/or has multiple demons with Bright Might should easily blow through this battle. I didn't even have to use any healing items between Mediarahan and Prayer.

I did leave saves at Yoyogi Park, and the second decision flag for each of the Reasons, so I'll try to piecemeal get each remaining ending to Platinum. It's going to be a chore to replay the exact same goddamn dungeons over again, so I probably won't steamroll it all in a day or anything.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
World's End Club

So this game got sold and marketed a little bit as a collaboration between the creative directors of the Danganronpa series and the Zero Escape series. That's what piqued my interest.

Of course, early marketing also was selling the underwater theme park, which turns out to have only made up the first two hours of the game. The underwater area is absolutely amazing, but I was still expecting a little bit more meat to it. Given the ring-design of the area with one bypass area, I was kind of expecting to be able to influence the course of events by moving back sometimes instead of moving forward, or taking the bypass more often, and that wasn't the case. Saying that, I might also have missed something, since there was one door that I wasn't able to open.

So far, I've gotten through the Kagoshima and Oita areas as well. I feel like the narrative took a strong dip here, though it still has the inklings of a mystery story built around a casual platformer with puzzle elements.

Also, lol at the beginning of the game.
Some big bad just casually disintegrates the entire party before a flashback or eternal recurrence or something

Anyways, during the course of the first few hours, it's suggested one of the kids is a Mastermind behind what's going on, ala most of Uchikoshi's and Kodasha's games. I don't have any strong suspicions yet, but I find it suspicious how the winning conditions in the Game of Fate were set-up, where a single character getting knocked out could cause another character or even two other characters to also get knocked out. It was functionally designed so only a couple of the characters really had a good chance of winning.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
World's End Club

So playing some more. I got the game's bad ending. I assume I am supposed to get it to start, given that I'm quite literally railroaded into it at the last option path before the bad ending. Well, it frees me up to do the alternate paths now presented earlier in the game, so I'll do that and get whatever the game has for a proper ending.

The overall meat of the game is in the beautiful side-scrolling sections, which are essentially all 2.5D. The first area of the game has the underwater theme park setting featured in most of the game's marketing. Most of the rest are urban or semi-urban Japanese cities with a gorgeous usually 'traditional' architecture aesthetic, and then some rural or cavern areas. On the note of side-scrolling, however, I really wish the controls were a little tighter. The jump button just doesn't feel very responsive, and gosh, the kids just feel so dang slow moving them around.

There's a lot of talking in the game. There's whole long story segments that can run thirty minutes of talking easily, and then nighttime camp sequences where you can talk to your party members. I'm alright with that, though when comparing the platform sections to the talking, the talking takes the majority of the game's length. Where I really have to draw the line is fifteen-second segues every couple of minutes in the platforming sequences. Just shut up and let me play already!


As far as Vanilla being dead (or not), I did notice it was strange that Vanilla had the winning condition of eating a marshmallow, considering there didn't appear to be any in the underwater theme park. But it makes sense then, because she wanted to give herself a winning condition where she couldn't fulfill it, so she couldn't accidentally clear it herself. Though I wonder if Reycho didn't tell her what her condition was because he thought she would use it to win, or because he didn't want to traumatise a 'ghost' over her manner of death. Also, I had found it strange that Aniki was completely glossing over her in the Game of Fate as well at the end. She seemed strangely aware of what his true condition was. I'd have to look back, but I think the combination of wristbands was set-up so nobody who couldn't see Vanilla would find it strange that there was a wristband they couldn't account for.

This also explains why Vanilla was being left out of the voting conversations.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
World's End Club

I finished the game. Probably around 15 hours, if I subtract the time where I kept the game paused to do whatever.

Anyways, I don't recommend. The game feels half-baked, trying to mix a traditional Uchikoshi / Kodaka 'mind-blowing plot' with a puzzle platformer, and both parts come off weak. The platforming elements get a little bit better towards the end, especially with this really interesting reverse boss rush (instead of fighting a bunch of bosses off all at once, you fight the same boss, but rotate through the kids in sequential order to use their special skills, in a neat rock-paper-scissors sequence), but overall still fairly frustrating.

One little flaw...the game splits off at several sequences, so in a single runthrough, you'll find out some information but not all of it. In my first runthrough, at one point, the characters can talk about something that they shouldn't actually know about in that route chart. That is a major no-no for cohesive narrative.

The sequence at the very beginning doesn't get quite well explained. It's an alternative history where the characters show up to the Tokyo lab without having Awakened any of their abilities. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be breaking the fourth wall again to show the player (the 'Otherworlder') that they need their abilities to clear the game, or if it's MAIK's simulation of how events would go without accounting for the childrens' emotions giving them their powers. Well, one or the other, anyways.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

I played the original Wii release way back in 2010 or 2011 or whenever, but only got a couple of hours in. It was that era where for whatever reason, I picked up a lot of games and just didn't finish them, or even make any substantial progress. Regardless, I am pretty certain I didn't even make it to the first cave dungeon. Since I have a Switch now, I'm definitely playing the DE release over the Wii or 3DS release. It made some quality-of-life changes that I didn't bother reading up on too much, but QoL changes are always nice to have over not. I know fast travel was in the original Wii version, but not sure if time skip was. I definitely need both of them to actually keep the game length from blowing up on me.

Currently, my playtime stands at about 7 hours in, at the start of chapter 4, which is where I exit out of the caves onto the Bionis' Knee. Of course, I went back to Colony 9 to pick up some more quests and finish them off before continuing the game :p I ended up playing on a TV instead of playing portable, as I really needed the extra screen size given the large expanse of Colony 9's environment.

I'm definitely getting overwhelmed just by the sheer number of systems that the game keeps throwing at me, especially for more and more in-battle mechanics. Hopefully this doesn't come to bite me in the rear end 20 hours down the line when the difficulty amps up and I have no clue about this one obscure niche technique that got thrown at me 15 hours prior that makes everything easier :X

Also, lol, this game has balls. Killing the main heroine 4 hours in. Even if the Monado can predict the future, I don't think it'll be able to retroactively change the past.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster

I completed all endings, and got the Platinum trophy.

Lord of Creation trophy for all endings did me dirty, though...I was thinking I merely needed to get all endings. However, you actually need to have ALL endings cleared on a save file. Note that this doesn't mean you need all six endings on one save file (which would be ludicrous since it'd require six full playthroughs), but at least one save file for each ending to be cleared. I had to redo the Shijima route, which took me probably 40 minutes. But hard oof.

I'm not sure if it's coincidental, or deliberate and ironic, that Chiaki's section of the Tower of Kagutsuchi, is the one most full of bs mazes and teleport traps, given her whole thing about the survival of the stronk. By the last couple of runs, I was breezing through the Tower, having had to du it 7 times.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

Playing the PS4 version. I'm well aware the Switch version just recently released, but the PS4 version was cheaper at the time lol. About 6 hours in.

I honestly struggle to recall if I have ever played a game that had a narrative this chronologically out of order. It goes well beyond simple in media res. I've pieced together the broad gists of the storyline (aliens from outer space, and humanity abusing the shit out of time travel to get a second chance on a battle that ended in utter defeat), but not so much the specifics. I guess the non-linearity helps with the script. Each of the 13 characters has a lengthy 'daily life' segment with multiple branches after the prologue to scope out bits and pieces of story, and they run into many of the other 13 characters in these events. Said non-linearity helps avoid plot holes from popping up. Thus far, I've cleared 8 character prologues, and finished up the middle segment of Juro's and Shu's storylines.

For the battle parts, huh. I have been able to follow how to play the battles, but to some extent, it feels like a hot mess with all the moving bits going on. I guess it's best defined as an RTS, but the battle pauses while cycling through my Sentinels trying to figure out which action to take. It just doesn't quite intuitively click for me altogether, even if I'm making sure to match up Sentinels and Armaments properly against the Deimos, or setting my Sentinels in position to get a first strike against Deimos by tracking meteors when they fall. I've been playing in Normal difficulty, and halfway through the second set of battles (the first being the tutorial). It's been really easy so far, to the point I completely forget about the Meta-Gauge a lot of battles. I may be tempted to crank up the difficulty later as a result.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

18 hours in. Since there's a handy percentages calculator, I'm just a little over half complete for both the story section and the battles section. Honestly, the game hasn't gotten much more complicated than before in terms of mechanics. The fighting half of the game has introduced a forced cooldown so I can't reuse the same pilots in every battle. Crucially, there's also a levelling up element with the giant mecha, to increase the stats of the Sentinels. The pilots also get special skills as well after gaining enough experience points from battles. I wager I probably will have to try hard mode for a while to give myself a challenge.

The story rolls along. I'm prevented from blowing through each character's story segment. The plot goes to agonising lengths to use memory loss and time travel elements to dribble out the little bits of the overarching mystery going on.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

I finished the game, at just shy of 38 hours.

The battle segments did get tougher as I progressed through the game. I never died in Normal mode, but towards the end, I had to repeat 4 or 5 battles to get my S-class. Mostly just throwing more and more enemy hordes all at once, or beefing up the stats of some super-kaiju.

I didn't toy around enough with everyone to find who were real big gamebreakers in what scenarios, but I had lots of success with Ryoko, Yuki, and Nenji. Really, all the 2nd Gen pilots can be broken, but Ryoko wins by being able to put down 2 Sentry Guns at once instead of 1. I didn't figure out who of the 3rd gen pilots was the most 'broken', but I mostly used Natsuno over Tomo and Miura. I don't think I used the other 1st gen pilots much besides Nenji near the end.

So the game has an upgrade system to the Sentinels (mecha). The armaments, which are the equippable devices, are upgradeable, usually resulting in range and power enhancements, and some other effects for the non-attack type armaments. The Sentinels' stats are also upgradeable...but this is mostly useless. It comes down to that it takes a lot of Meta-Chips (currency) to upgrade any two of their stats 1-2% at a time. At a rough estimate, I might have collected 2 million Meta-Chips during the course of the game's battle missions, and 5000 is enough to bolster one of five categories that 1-2% (there are five categories and...seven stats I think, and each category upgrades two stats). But then there are 13 Sentinels, and to upgrade a stat subsequent time takes more Meta-Chips, so the math falls apart pretty quick. If I was to play this game an obsessive amount, it might be worthwhile to eke out some higher scores or whatever...but like I said earlier, it just doesn't quite 'click' for me to play it much extra, even with the 10 post-story bonus missions. Like, I understand how to play the battles. It just never quite had that eureka moment for me where all the mechanics just fully meshed for me.

However, the game does force Sentinel pilots to take a break every 2 battles (13 pilots, and you can only bring in 6 to a battle at a time). Upgrading one of the specific stats twice allows a pilot to fight 3 battles before being forced to take a break.

The story finally mostly clears up by the end of the game, though there's definitely some bits I have to read from the mystery files to fully clear things up.
Some of Juro's future dreams are actually the most confusing, because the player is lead to believe they're Juro Izumi's for a while. And they actually are, except they're not this Juro Izumi. Between Juro and Iori, a lot of their dreams come before finding out Chihiro and 426 Juro have already been two iterations of the story, so it's not until I get to see the event viewer archives again that I'm able to properly recontextualise those. Also, lol. Poor Tamao is the odd pilot out, both in her past-loop iteratation getting offed early, and her present loop iteration getting killed without ever getting to the final battle. At least Okino had huge roles in the story and still made it to the final battle, albeit as a hanger-on.

Also, there is a bonus scene in the event viewer after playing the game. From the in-verse perspective, it's really disturbing to understand there are potentially millions, billions, or trillions of probes landing on terraforming planet candidates, only for the same set of 15 kids to be stuck in a hopeless cycle of war against the Deimos. In the main story, the archives say this simulation has had 400 loops, but assuming there were no prior full resets, it took 398 loops before 426-Juro and Chihiro got lucky enough to find a bypass, and then Tetsuya and Tamao the following loop. Similarly, since the loop only lasts 16 years, Professor Chihiro never would get to take over her clone, because she never has a body that makes it to 18/20. Ms. Chihiro's cloning efforts and Gouto's interference in this loop is another special one-off.

Still, I'm really surprised at just how audacious the story is. 13 different perspectives and tying them all together is quite impressive. The storywriters force some linearity on the structure by blocking me off from continuing certain character stories until I watch certain scenes in another person's route (and in one case, 7/8ths of an entire character route is locked until finishing almost the entirely of everyone else's routes!), but it's still ambitious and yet seamless. At the same time, I think they deliberately threw together as many elements as they could specifically to make it more confusing, ha.

Oh yeah, I do recommend this game easily, at least for the story part. The battle part takes a little bit to get used to, but it becomes fun with its own little charm after a point.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
AI: The Somnium Files

Holy smokes am I still catching up on games from 3 or 4 years ago?! Yes, yes I am. I still have well over 1000 games in my backlog.

At 7 hours, I have just finished the third Somnium (excluding the tutorial). I assume the characters may be different between routes, so the characters I have tackled so far are Mizuki, Iris, and Ota. And yes, I did see the route system. Given this is an Uchikoshi game, I'm not one bit surprised to see multiple routes.

The Somnium puzzles are rather entertaining. I feel like they are majorly trial-and-error more than anything else, though. I pick out bits and pieces of what to do next at points, but at other spots, it seems to be a complete guess. After I finish the game, I will have to see if there is a compilation of all the 'wrong answers' moments on YouTube, because Aiba is best troll/vitriolic flirt/naive dumb-dumb. A non-Somnium Aiba moment, paraphrased: "If I had a physical body, I'd let you use my lap as a pillow right now" :)

The setting is kind of weird. It feels like a blended mix of Japan and the U.S. It's obviously set in Japan, but then they say weird things that almost suggest they are in the U.S., such as making multiple references to the U.S. one-dollar bill, or quoting something from the U.S. Constitution. So it feels like the localisation did a reverse Phoenix Wright, hah.

As for the story segments, it's entertaining so far. There's just the right blend of more down-to-earth and off-the-wall characters to keep it decent, in another sense like Phoenix Wright, along with good English voice acting. Date's personality helps too, as it helps him play off so many characters. Especially Aiba and Mizuki. Really, the exploration segments almost feel like the Zero Escape games if they had more budget.

I am playing the Switch version, and it feels like the PS4 was the original version upon which the game was built, and it got a hack-job of a port to the Switch with little optimisation. It's not really bad, but there is some noticeable lag after choosing some text options before other characters respond. It isn't even that graphically intense of a game!

Also, while it isn't right in-your-face, the game drops way too many hints that Date is the original Cyclops Killer not to pick up on it.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
AI: The Somnium Files

I finished the game at 28 hours. I played through with English voice acting. Really good and well-done. There might've been a few weak characters, but I was overall impressed.

The quick-time event sequences are just the right amount of corny, zany, and improbably wacky hijinks.

Some of the Somnium puzzles were surprisingly a chore later on. I didn't have to restart too much (mostly I just would look at everything up to a first or second mental lock for Aiba flavour text, then restart the entire Somnium and use my single lock resets). But certain late Somnium require me to specifically plot out a route so I don't run out of time, grabbing 1-second TIMIEs so the 999-second events don't make me run out of the time.

I was technically right about Date being the original Cyclops Killer...more specifically, Date's body was the original killer. Plus Psyncing being responsible for personality twists, somebody who had Psynced having received psycopathic tendencies, and Pewter being a traitor. Just in different directions than I was expecting, though that's only due to bats*** crazy plot twists in all different directions.

One thing I was predicting would happen and didn't really was to do with Aiba. I was expecting that the whole Psyncing and Somnium were designed to complement Aiba's 'evolution' so to speak, making her more and more human through the course of the game by exposing her to the core of individual humans' id. Instead, the game didn't really do very much with the whole artificial intelligence outside of the Iris route. Heck, it feels more like it's there to complete a long pun with 'ai' for love, and a phonetic homonym of 'eye'.

The routes system in the game...given this is an Uchikoshi game, it's not a surprise. Also not a surprise is that a character gets information acquired in one route, and can use it in another route. But while Date vaguely hints at it from time to time and has brief flashes of insight, it's kind of anti-climactic. I guess to some extent that's the point? The whole bait-and-switch with Manaka's body, making Date think he somehow retroactively changed the world, basically is playing on the expectations coming in from the Zero Escape games, where the player expects it to be a big plot point, and it isn't. And Ever17 maybe, but I haven't played that game (yet).

Also, damn. It's amazing just how contrived a plot like this becomes where nearly everyone is basically acquainted with nearly everyone else in some manner prior to the events of the game.

...other random thoughts. There is a trend in lewd art of characters bending to look inside a dryer and getting stuck. For how many hilarious moments Aiba gets into in the puzzle segments, I can totally see her getting stuck in a dryer when Date tells her to inspect it! There were a lot of hilarious moments, like her getting a bucket stuck on her head.

A comment I made earlier was that I was playing the Switch version, and conversations seemed to lag sometimes after I would pick a text option. It got worse towards the end of the game. I tend to actually exit out of the game application entirely when taking breaks, so it wouldn't even be a matter of junk data piling up causing extra lag.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Our World is Ended

Oh look more VN trash.

Well, this game is actually somewhat higher production value. Like, for instant, it got a physical release, not just a digital-only release. Still not high enough to get English voice acting, but heck. Even STEINS;Gate didn't get voice acting, and I still hold that up as a gold standard for VNs that have limited interaction.

The art style is reasonably well done and vivid. It's got a moderately well done variety of backgrounds, key for any VN worth its chops to look good. The character design is...mostly alright. For some weird reason, the character costumes and hair all have this whole 'cosmic stars and gas clouds' visual effect on them. STEINS;Gate's characters all had weird squiggly marks in their eyes, so I guess this game's thing is glittery clothing.

Story is moderately alright. The protagonist is mostly forgettable, but they rest of the cast is at least eccentric enough to keep things amusing. The plot, for the most part, moves waaaaay too slow. I'm in at about 12 hours, just in to the 'game' event of their second VR dive, and whatever the overall story impetus is still hasn't occurred, though it's looking to come very soon. Oh yeah. The setting is in Tokyo's Asakusa neighborhood. It's always a little nifty to see a lot of the Tokyo-centric games take place in different wards and districts, as long as they actually showcase whatever distinct historical things or architectural landscapes that the area has. Like how a lot of games that feature Shibuya will have the Shibuya scramble, the Hachiko statue, and Shibuya 109 (or a parody of it). Literally the only other time I can recall Asakusa in a game is from SMT3, where it wasn't really that important at all. So in this game at least, they show both the Senso-ji buddhist temple, as well as the Kaminarimon gate that is the entrance to the temple, along with some of the more mundane commercial areas.

There's also a lot of sloppy proofreading. Words missing, words spelled incorrectly. It seems to be one character who consistently gets a lot of the repeated values like 'haad' or 'muuch' or 'soo'. Since the VA is Japanese-only, I can't tell if it's actually a lack of proofreading or an actual verbal tic that she occasionally drags out words, but probably just a lack of proofreading and a coincidence.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Our World is Ended

Finished the main game at...I can't quite tell, because the in-game timer always keeps running. If I pause onto the home menu, it keeps running. If I save the game, pause, then load later, the timer doesn't reset either. So I'm guesstimating around 35 hours. After that, I completed all 7 character endings, which requires starting the game and skipping through to choose choices to get higher relationship values with each of them. A second playthrough is also required for the 'true end', which essentially consists of a chapter and a half added on to the end of the first playthrough.

The most obnoxious Trophy to get was the one to pick every single option in the game. There's actually a lot of them. They mostly just lead to filler fluff text that deviates from any other option by about five to ten lines, but regardless, every single one of them has to be picked. So that was a chore, adding up to a few more hours while playing through for the character endings. Another thing was a chore was that the skip read text function just sometimes didn't work during the replay. I had to go to toggle on the skip unread text option to get past these sequences.

Also, oddly enough, the game will sometimes just not acknowledge that you got a CG in its CG gallery. If you're skipping unread text, maybe this would happen, but I missed a CG that would I would have been forced to see on my first playthrough. Very fortunately, the CGs in the gallery are in chronological order, so I was able to narrow down the part of the game I was missing it from and just fast-forward instead of skipping scenes outright to grab it. The only CG that might be tricky to find is 41, which is exclusive to the Natsumi character ending somewhere in chapter 13 or 14.

As I said before, the protagonist is really forgettable. He's basically generic, with a modicum of development sprinkled throughout the game to give him even the most passable of personality.

The humour leans way too much on a lot of repeatable gags. I could probably distill each character down to a few traits, as the script makes sure to hammer in their quirks by bringing up variation after variation of the same jokes until it got tiresome a quarter of the way in. One girl is tsundere, flat-chested, has A-cup angst, likes little boys, and has terrible singing. One guy is a massive pervert, but a really good programmer. The main character keeps ending up on the receiving side of unfortunate misunderstandings, because the plot demands the same type of rote comedy over and over. Heck, he literally gets called a light novel protagonist on multiple occasions. Also, the characters tend to get obnoxious, where they like to be idiots and screw around literally every time they get into a dangerous situation. There is character development. But out of 7 main characters, it's really skewed towards one character getting lots of development, two more characters getting some development, and the remaining three non-protagonist characters getting a very mediocre amount.

I very rarely single out music in a game, but I have to mention it here. There's just kind of a blah variety of the tracks. It's really boring after a while, and it feels like there just aren't that many...which isn't good when I have to listen to it for 40 hours.

Also as mentioned, the majority of the plot takes place in Asakusa, one of Tokyo's neighborhoods. A Buddhist temple and a famous gate are shown. There are also two shopping streets, Nakamise Street and Denboin Street, mentioned and shown that lead up to the temple. I still wish it did some more with this.

Anyways. Definitely don't recommend.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
AI: The Somnium Files nirvanA Initiative

Playing this after recently beating the first game. This may actually be the closest to its release date that I've played a game in years. Cookie Clicker for Steam doesn't count. Maybe SMT3 HD Remaster? But of course, that's only counting the re-release, so I guess like Cookie Clicker it shouldn't count too.

My first route that I got was the Shoma/Komezi ending. I don't know if I was somehow spoilered at some point for the game, because somehow I just knew the killer's real name would be Dahlia. Or maybe I just had Phoenix Wright on the brain and was expecting a homage to that, weirdly. Technically, it was my second ending, though, since I got one of the joke endings (Ryuki eloping with the Lemniscate receptionist to head off to Atami).

Playing on the Switch version, like I did with the first game. The lag that cropped up a lot in the first game Switch version hasn't shown up here (but I think in the first game, it didn't really pop up for me much until the latter half, either). The graphics don't appear to have been updated at all, but they seem more 'optimised'. The character models appear to be a little more defined. For example. Back in the first game, Aiba's skirt seemed to be almost pasted on her, so when she appeared as a hologram where her skin and the skirt are close in colours, it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. Here, it's a little bit better.

Tama and Date would get along so, so well.

As for the angle this game's taking, I'm still not sure. The first game still had some supernatural stuff (Mizuki's super strength being the biggest thing off the top of my head, Date getting tiny memories from other routes as a much smaller thing), even if it deliberately swept it under the carpet and kept the events on mundane science and pseudoscience.

Tokiko is hinted to have given birth more than 20 years ago. There's a few characters this can fit. Ryuki and his twin brother, and Lien are the two main possibilities. I guess there's also the potential for a character who hasn't yet appeared. Ryuki may be the result of one of the many gambits going on in the background, given that he is triggered by all the weird videos.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown

This is the second Ace Combat game I've ever played...but the first one was Assault Horizons Legacy for the 3DS, which was a remake of AC2 rather than a port of the Assault Horizons title, making that pretty confusing. So I actually don't have a great idea of how much it might have taken liberties with gameplay compared to the regular series, outside of having a special maneuvers system. It's been a long time since I played AHL, but I'm fairly sure I S-classed it on the highest difficulties, and all Extra missions.

Thus far, I have completed up through Mission 08, doing my first run on Normal.

Saying that, oh my gosh. What is this, haha? There's definitely a rapid difficulty curve right around missions 05-08. 06, Long Day, definitely stopped my progress cold for a while. I didn't need to restart and make any adjustments on 07 or 08, but damn did I either die or lose a couple of times after checkpoints for the next two. I enjoy the game as a whole, and the levels feel interesting. They aren't quite 'obnoxious', but it does also start to seem 'gimmicky' when they keep coming one after another like this with no breather levels in between (ground annihilation level and then drones appear for extra enemies, dogfight in an area with tight ravines and literal thunder disrupting your HUD endlessly, ground annihilation level followed by sniping targets in a sandstorm with infrequent radar and more drones).

At least for Mission 06, I had to go back and grind lots on the early levels to upgrade planes and parts. I'm sure a subsequent runthrough would be much easier once I have far stronger parts and airplane. Still, for once I feel like I should have gone with the Easy mode to start, instead of Normal.

The wingmates are really useless. The events after the end of level 04 be like, Osean Air Force: We know it was Trigger who shot down former President Harling because all the other pilots couldn't hit a goddamn barn door with a missile, let alone a moving aerial target

I don't have a VR set, so not playing it in VR. I may fiddle around with the multiplayer later, depending on how dead the MP scene is.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown

I finished the game, all 20 missions.

As far as the missions go, they are for the most part enjoyable. But given I love the dogfight missions, I feel like subbing out of one of the more tedious middle missions with a dogfight mission would have made for a better pacing. Well, that, and the missions that seemingly never end with adding more and more and more on so there's three or four parts to them. Mission...14, I think it is, with the ravine, felt like one of those. I liked the ravine part, given that I did some of it in AHL, but it felt a third longer than I was expecting, and then the ground assault kept going on and on with enemy back-ups. Still, it was a fun experience overall. It feels like there would be a sharp playing curve, where a second campaign playthrough is essentially a NG+ with much better airplanes and parts.

I can't see myself getting the Platinum for this game, though. I think I could do it. But it would be too many hours of grinding mission restarts like a chore to be fun, so I won't bother. Plus I would have to play through the full campaign at least three more times (four more times is more like it, to do a separate machine gun run and no damage run, both on Easy), and even that might not be enough to get the 76,500 km traveled trophy. I'll play some more and attempt things like killing all Aces and at least S Ranking every mission on Normal. I may even get all airplanes and parts. But that will be about it, I think.

Oh yeah, DLC and multiplayer. I'll grab the DLC missions and do them, and probably try a few Multiplayer as well. Though honestly, now I want to play a Star Fox game again.

Princess Cossette is in the wrong franchise. Pulling off foolhardy moves that save the day means she should be a Gundam heroine, not an Ace Combat character.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
AI: The Somnium Files nirvanA Initiative

I made some progress and got quite a lot deeper into the game. I finished off all of Ryuki's chapters (for now?), doing the second ending on his side, then going into Mizuki's chapters. I am juuuust at the start of chapter 4, having finished the Masked Woman's Somnium, and being forced into one route for lack of not knowing a password.

The Somnium are at least getting spiced up fairly nicely, with some interesting twists. The Kusemon one was fun, if only because I got to try out a lot of different characters and try out a lot of different interactions and attacks. Some more psychedelic effects too, like with the last one in chapter 3 with the split that I've mentioned above. The one at the start of Mizuki's route is a pain, as it has inverted controls at one section (I found it easier to just turn my controller upside down for this segment).

On another note, the QTE sequences...for some reason, I struggle with the shooting parts to them. It seems like it's an absolute hair-trigger, because I'll get killed off pressing the button even when the button prompt is on-screen. I also feel like I have to guide the gun scope cursor into the part of the target box that's already ticked down in order to not set off a game over. Am I just crazy, or is that how it's actually supposed to work? I don't recall this ever being mentioned in the tutorial for the first QTE.

Mizuki and Aiba make a pretty cool pair, being even more vitriolic best buds than Date and Aiba were. I am mentally immature enough to find them riffing each other for for being small-chested hilarious.

For how the game focuses on Ryuki having mental issues, I'm...a little surprised that there's never any communication between Tama and Aiba at this time. Something like Tama sending a message saying, "Oh yeah, Ryuki's still mentally melted down, don't say anything that could upset him." Also, a 6 year mental leave is one helluva leave.

Uchikoshi's games tend to not make guessing the plot twists and directions all that easily, if only because it's usually filled with so much pseudoscience that I can't actually expect what new stuff will come in and how it'll play out. Simulation theory isn't precisely pseudoscience, but it leaves the field open to play around with lots.

There's a lot of unidentified characters to keep track of...there's Tokiko's 20+-year-old child, So's supposed other other child with his mistress, Kizuna's first big sister, the kid who went missing from the orphanage aged six, Ryuki's dead brother who hasn't been brought up since but given he was even mentioned might not be dead, heck, even Boss' daughter since the game makes the point to mention her on multiple occasions. Of course, a fictional story being what it is, it'll have conservation of detail, so those five things above might be distilled into just three or even two separate characters. Also, don't think that I missed that Shoma somehow just...hasn't aged, at all. I only got to visit briefly to give him chocolate and have a quick conversation, after the game takes care to omit him from visibly showing up in the six years later segment until now. So I guess there's supposed to be something suspicious there, too.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
AI: The Somnium Files nirvanA Initiative

I finished the game. I don't actually know how long it took me to complete it, because I guess this is one of those Switch games that decides to count all the time I have my Switch in sleep mode towards the playtime. For the most part, the Somnium segments are more nicely-paced than the first game. Better design on average, with a couple of outright relaxing Somnium to break up the pacing from the far darker and more foreboding Somnium. Iris and Lien's Somnium are the ones off-hand that were easygoing. I felt a couple of the Somnium were duds, but you can't win them all. Also, not too much of a fan of the five hidden Eyeballs per Somnium. I didn't bother to find all of them, but when I did go looking, some of them were very extremely difficult to spot.

Also, I am really thrilled with the 999 cameo, of playing the first escape room from 999 again, this time with Aiba in there. Honest to goodness, I would play a Zero Escape game with sassy, wisecracking Aiba as the lead.

I made a comment in my last post about struggling with the shooting parts of the QTE sequences. I had to repeat the last big QTE too many times because of this, especially since even with fast-forward, there's 10 or 15 seconds of animation to sit through again. I'm decently sure that I don't even press any buttons, and I still have to restart the sequence. Then other times I press the ZR button (for Switch), the button prompt is still on the screen, and I have to restart. It feels like there is a delayed response, or something?

About the big plot twist...I liken it to Zero Time Dilemma's, where the plot twist isn't anything that happens in-game. It's a meta-narrative plot twist, where the game is set up to actively deceive the player instead.

I was kind of cluing in to the twist up to it being revealed. I wasn't putting much thought in to it, but I had noticed several oddities that I was assuming was going to be from a twist, without knowing what the twist actually would be. I spotted Shoma casually referring to talking with his father 'last year', as well as how nobody seemed to make any fuss about Chihara's body and Tokiko's body and Komeji's body supposedly appearing in halves six years apart. I didn't notice Mizuki's leg scar. One other little thing I had picked up was...actually the running gag about Mizuki and the chozuya, carrying over from the first game. On what I think may be Bibi's first visit to Ikume Shrine, she talks about washing the hands with the chozuya, but upon a later visit with Mizuki, she's back to talking about washing the belly button.

Something lewd...it's hinted Tama ties Ryuki up in bondage, with tortoiseshell bondage being singled out a couple of times. I was more wondering as to the how, if she's able to do a dream-sync with him like how Aiba does at the start of the first game with Date, or if she uses her physical AI-bot body to do it very slowly. Well, it still reads like a very wholesome relationship, regardless.

If a third game ever gets developed and released, clearly Iris has to be the big bad of that game. If So Sejima's kids are the main villains of the first two games, then the trend should continue for a third game.
 
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