天下制覇

But with less man on man rape.

I had been hoping Debonosu would release a trial for their upcoming… thing… after updating it with such items as Mr. Jenny, but alas, they did not. There was also the brief thought this morning of covering the 13th and extra episode of Chuu-2, but then I remembered that I detested every single character by the end of it, and without any of the neat action scenes, there was nothing there for me but a nap. Which came down to covering a game again. I thought about doing a real post for either Alicetale or Megiddo, two games I have played a little bit of and posted nary a thing, but everybody despises Megiddo, so I’m not sure how much more bile I could heap on it, and I still have haunting memories of how utterly insipid Alicetale’s writing is. You know those horrible generic “I wake up and grope a girl” scenes? Alicetale’s trial had one that I swear to Thor lasted goddamned near three straight minutes. Think for a moment about just how long that really is.

So here’s something I had only played for about 10 minues prior to this week, and only maybe an hour or two now. HanaKoi, or to use its full name when you’re cross with it, Blooming Maidens and the Grimoire of Love ~ Let’s Make a Guild In a Village Without One!, is the most recent in Debonosu’s née Studio e.go’s action set of games, and as the title to this post may have clued you in, is a rather shameless Recettear knockoff. It’s technically a sequel to their other dragon raising game, which I have played more, although the engine’s not even close to the same. That stole from the Tales series instead.

Anyway, our story begins with Lime and Sheena Seena, bisexual incestuous dragon half-sisters and the daughters of the protagonist of the previous game (apparently he picked up a black haired dragon girl in a fandisk/expansion/pseudo-sequel), on their way to a remote village to make a guild, because helping people is good and crap. Along the way, they save a kid named Ein from monsters. Lo and behold, Ein actually just had a curse cast on him, de-aging him and is in reality a super awesome synthesizer, which is code for alchemist since it just means he can put things into a magical pot and other random things pop out. Together, they fight crime. Or perform random tasks at the behest of a magic book which makes the village grow. Also, the village sits under a massive phallic magical tree, penetrating upward through the velvety clouds above, like a towering turgid verdant penis.

I’m going to stop right there for a moment because I can already hear the cries of the masses. “Aroduc, you swarthy reprobate,” they say, “You think every female in Japanese media is bisexual and all siblings not-so-secretly want to do each other, especially the guys.” Well let’s review an event from the very start of the game. The first night they’re in the village, the two of them take a bath together, which has Sheena pin Lime against the wall, tell her that good girls keep their mouths shut, and then finger her to a screaming orgasm. So if anything, I’m underselling it.

  

Actually, when you think about it, despite the fluffy exterior, this thing is only a few steps from being a creepy psychological thriller set in the backwoods. Lime plays the mentally handicapped moron being manipulated by the obsessive, overprotective, sexually abusive family member who takes orders from an inanimate object, and Ein is… uh… Well, I’m pretty sure that like most heroines, they will melt into screaming ecstasy screams the moment they have a penis inside them, so that’s probably where it breaks down. I didn’t get that far, so I can’t say for absolute certain, but I’m relatively confident in my assessment of how this will proceed.

On characters then, Lime is pretty much straight up awful. Yeah, I get that they’re trying to make her cutesy, young, and innocent, but this is so far past that to the point where it’s astounding she can walk and breathe at the same time. To give a concrete example, when they first run into Ein, she thought “boku” was his name. For those of you who stumbled in here while Googling “recettear bisexual incestuous dragon molesting,” that’s like hearing someone ask “What happened to me?” and assuming that their name is Me. She’s just so infuriatingly stupid that death would probably be a mercy. Ein and Sheena aren’t much more than what they say on the tins. Boring but compared to Lime, like ambrosia being fed to you by Aphrodite herself. They did have a couple moments where they sort of bonded over just being competent at their jobs, which was nice enough for them both to be acting like respectable and likeable humans. At least before Ein busted into the bath after hearing Lime’s bloodcurdling scream from being molested and got punched again for being a ‘pervert.’ Granted, I didn’t exactly get far, but I doubt there’s any grand character arc for any of them either.

   

So on to the gameplay. You accept quests from the magic book. Basically either deliver X things, or go to a map and kill things. Often you need to go to a map to kill things to collect things to make things to deliver things. That unlocks more events/quests/items/stores/things. Wash, rinse, repeat. You can faff about in your guild with furniture and stuff too. I made a pot for a quest which I think started making corn somehow. I wasn’t really paying close attention. The meat is the monster fighting/material gathering. Go to map, kill everything that moves… often required before you can go on… harvest the things that don’t move. You know the drill.

Unfortunately though, the engine is rather poor. I’ve looked at some later gameplay too, and it doesn’t seem to ever go much beyond “hit things with three button combo, sometimes use special attack(s), rarely use area ‘dragon’ magic super move,” a formula I was already sick of after just two dungeons, and that was with also using 100% of the playabe characters in the game, so it doesn’t even have Recettear’s modest sized playable cast. I also hope you’re ready to hear the same 4-5 grunts over and over and over and over again. Good god. And it absolutely doesn’t help that the controls are sticky as hell. You’ll notice often as I play that I attack in the wrong direction. Believe me, I was trying to point the right way, but the game has its own ideas and it was almost abusive about it. “You wanted to turn around? I’m not here to do what you want, bitch. You’re going to keep facing the wrong way until you take your hands off the controls for a moment and apologize.” And then it would angrily cross its arms and spawn a dozen more kobolds simply to be contentious.

     

So that’s really about as far as I’ve got. Didn’t even make it to the Naga ripoff character. I’ve had more pleasant experiences, shall we say? And from all I’ve heard, the grind for materials becomes even more oppressive late in the game while the gameplay itself evolves as much as you’d expect coprolite to, so… yeah, there’s that. I kind of doubt I’m going to be continuing on with this any time in the near or far future. Then again, thinking about the psychological horror aspects of it adds an almost fascinating new element to it that I hadn’t considered before I began writing here. It’s a few steps down from the Tales of Dragon Girl Raising prequel in any case, so go with that if anything, and I still don’t even think that’s a particularly great game past the combat and gimmick.

Hopefully next week, the early-week-filler-post will be the season preview. I really need to get started on that.