The Hits Keep Coming

December 16th, 2014

This feels even more obligatory than DS’s non-post.

Apparently it’s out today. Not that I or anybody would know since they silently added a release date to one page, then a day before that, pushed it back another week, and never bothered announcing anything or making any promotional materials at all. I wrote this to be posted today on what has been the scheduled release date for the last month, but apparently at around 5pm yesterday, the day before it was scheduled to be released, Jast hadn’t heard anything from… somebody… and decided that it was unacceptable for people to get the physical versions later than the digital version instead of somewhat later, and will instead be releasing it on December 23rd. You know, just to make absolutely sure as few people as possible are aware of it. I’m not editing what I wrote more than this, nor putting this post off, so go ahead and add profanity liberally in every sentence to better reflect how I feel about this entire affair. Everything from here on was written long ago.

Not to celebrate Festivus’s Airing of Grievances early, but ‘going corporate’ has not been a fantastic experience. I don’t know why Jast never asked me to do any promotional materials or a demo. They asked me to make a demo for Seinarukana, nine months ago. I don’t know why they tried to advertise it using the image from an entirely different game. I don’t know why Jast never gave me the promotional/packaging/manual materials to look over so I could point out misspellings and errors. I don’t know how they could create a brand new site and forget to actually link to the game for weeks. I don’t know why they chose to advertise it by ignoring the strengths and zeroing in on panty shots and excruciatingly bad cliches. I don’t know why they spent the two weeks before its release instead plugging some awful extreme fetish game that they’re releasing in three months but cutting out all the extreme fetish stuff which is its only selling point and reason for existence. It could have been handled better would be the understatement, and seeing the effort put into selling it being little more than a couple ad banners after leaving the project to gather dust for a year has a way of draining any enthusiasm one might have for being proactive and encouraging their behavior. No comment on Seinarukana. Or as Jast likes to call it, Seinaru Kana.

There should already be a patch to fix a couple minor things. Should be, but I don’t think there is. Partially my fault. That a patch should exist, not that it may or may not be available. I accidentally packaged a wrong file (files, really) with an old version of some images, so one spell is misspelled. There’s also some thumbnails that should have been updated and weren’t, but I wasn’t handling those, so *shrug*. That’s all I know of at least. For fun, try to find all 7 things left in Japanese, because apparently translating sfx is required, but other Japanese… eh, whatever. Four are gimmes. There’s also a very odd miscolored penis to keep an eye out for if your Where’s Waldo weren’t weird enough, but apparently “drawn as intended.”

Anyway, I do like the game itself. The style’s charming, there’s constantly new art in the form of the (almost entirely) unique spell cards that you pick up as you progress in addition to the usual CGs and stuff, and it does a great job of maintaining a consistent light-hearted, melodrama-free tone throughout. I really really appreciate it not being in the first person as well. The writing is so much more succinct and flows more naturally through only dialogue than most VNs bloated, “I must repeat everything that was just said to me both to myself and then out loud,” narrative messes. Of course, they went and screwed that up by adding narration to the nonstop orgy that is the Editio Perfecta unique scenario, but it’s entirely just dialogue otherwise.

Don’t expect any kind of main plot or story because there’s not one. The main heroines do each have their own little arc and romantic ending, but it’s all loaded to the end in about a couple thousand lines each and while foreshadowed a little in earlier events, is generally pretty self-contained. The endings themselves are a very mixed bag, with a couple obviously stemming from a design decision to give someone an ending, but nobody ever getting around to writing any kind of character arc… or anything… for them. It also has a really bad habit of crafting a couple really nicely bittersweet endings and then backing out at the last second with nothing more than the excuse of “Uhhhhhh magic!”. Good job sacrificing the story for a half-assed deus ex happily ever after. Kaya’s was also very obviously meant to be the canonical one at some point. Besides having the most actually going on in it, it also has a unique credit roll. Shame they pussied out.

  

The main mechanics are a constant cycle between lessons (roll dice), learning spells, and quests. Rolling dice unlocks spells, spells unlock quests, and quests unlock events, mechanics, etc. Quest spawning starts out slow, but by mid game, the pressures of your limited available turns will definitely be forcing you to start focusing on certain things, managing your limited resources (turns mostly), in a nicely organic and subtle fashion. Even the mandatory tests at the end of each year are selected from a pool based on your current progress. It’s not a game made with any difficulty in mind, but it does reward you for actually putting in a little effort to play well. Each spell also unlocks itself for casting when the proper result is rolled during the lessons also lets you cast them while rolling dice to a number of different effects from fireworks that add to the Spirit (points basically) earned to spawning more dice to putting objects on the table that can also do various things. You can also flick the dice to get the results you want, although there’s a limit before it starts draining previously gained Spirit. Then use the Spirit to learn the spell(s) you want, use the spells to fulfill quest requirements, repeat the process until your eyes fall out. There’s unfortunately really no gameplay outside of the lessons though. A little more interaction during the quests would have gone a long way.

It’s also very firmly designed I suspect to infuriate people who go for 100% since it has a gallery cataloging literally every single scene (now that I added the ones it was missing). While that makes it easy to track what you’ve missed and still have yet to do, it’s extremely mathematically impossible to do it all in one start to finish playthrough. It’d take probably 3-4 even with NG+ bonuses and very careful save/loading. Well, it’s very easy to decompile the game files into csv spreadsheets to see the exact triggers for all events, so while the triggers for some events (mandatory for major quests/endings too) can be a little arcane, it’s not like they’re total mysteries, unlike some games I could name.

Once upon a time, I was going to do more of a writeup, even recorded some stuff for a “how to play” video, but see the above note about all enthusiasm for its commercial success being vampired away. A few paragraphs and some screenshots is all I’ve got left in me and it took me a week and a half to get that much. Christ. This part was written even before the surprise delay.

 

Things haven’t been stellar in Aroduc Translation Landâ„¢ lately otherwise. 2014 wasn’t the glory year one might have hoped for after a similarly awful 2013 spent working for The Man. I guess finishing one short game, and doing a third of a long one along with Jast crap not horrible considering full time employment, but I’m still disappointed in myself. I’ve been working on something, but it’s slow going because I’m not all that into it. It’s not a game I’ve ever played to completion because the start bored and annoyed me, and I started working on it mostly under the quintent of “It is very loosely related to something I do like,” “It’s more fun working on something I’m not already very familiar with,” “It gets better,” “It deserves to be translated,” and perhaps most importantly, “I have functional tools for it,” but progress has been plodding due largely to it being hard to stay invested/motivated. Also, I may have bought a puppy in the last two months. I have little doubt it does get better eventually, if for no other reason than it can’t possibly keep repeating itself for as much as it has through the first sixth(ish?) of the game.

Otherwise, Doddler made a very nice tool to do all this nonsense quickly and easily, so that’s approaching something closer to a state of completion, or at the very least, finally has a complete set of functional tools. I still really don’t want to do the remaining image editing because it’s a massive pain in the ass, and like TWilight INSanity, it’s really just a short project I did to get to the thing I actually wanted to do. Let me tell you, translating the adventures of a little demon girl out to save her rapist father from a bunch of brainwashing überbitch angels flying around in the fantasy equivalent of GA’s Black Moon sounds fantastic right now. There’s also an Australian cigar-smoking skeleton centaur, as if that wasn’t enough.

               

Like TWINS, it surprised me a little bit by being actually fairly fun to translate (not to mention blissfully short). Unlike TWINS, the interface and just game design in general is the wonderful combination of extensive, dated, and often catastrophically stupid. I may just sit on it until the sequel’s done since it streamlines the ever living hell out of everything (too far, honestly), has an actual plot somewhere in there among the Australian centaur skeletons, actual dungeon crawling instead of aimless grinding, and the interface doesn’t look like mid-nineties deep fried butt. An interface that I still don’t want to finish because it’s tedious grunt work that I am apparently the only person in the world capable of doing. Maybe someone will fix the tools so they work on the dragon Dungeon Keeper game instead of gagging and vomiting and I’ll do that instead. Or maybe the weird quasi Polyphonica with giant lesbian mollusk girls will turn out fun and I’ll drop everything to mess with that. Or someone will fix Prism Ark’s tools so I can finish that.

So many awful options. So little time. Guess I’m overdue to start on next season’s overview anyway.

Posted in Romanesque | 17 Comments »

17 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • ElevatorDreams says:

    The fact that it has little story and that the story is not very important makes me a little sad.

  • Sanjuro says:

    Jast will be Jast. I do feel sorry for you and all your technical problems though. Thank god for Doddler, he’s an angel.
    I don’t really care about there not being a huge story. I love Oyari and I only need more cat maids and dinosaur costumes for my little mind to be happy.

  • invincible says:

    I’m guessing that anti pornography laws and policies prevent much marketing for whatever Jast does.

  • Sanjuro says:

    The boxed edition has been delayed even longer. Goddamnit Jast.

    • Aroduc says:

      Don’t worry, they’re making a special effort to get it out digitally 3 days before Christmas so reviewers can post about it.

      On like… Christmas Eve or Christmas.

      The prime time people are reading game review sites for visual novels.

  • Chipp says:

    So… it’s on Greenlight now?

    • Aroduc says:

      …Apparently? I knew they were interested in putting it on Steam. I had no idea that meant “the moment you confirm that it’s technically possible to cut out the adult content we’re going to announce it.”

  • Bocam says:

    I bought a copy of the physical version to give as a gift (but I guess Jast hates Xmas) and support your efforts. Hopefully Seinarukana’s release won’t be as botched as this was.

  • Rz says:

    Sometimes I’m thinking your talent (and time) wasted on Jast.
    But, since they are paying you, I guess nothing can be done.

    Note: I will looking forward for your next project :D