天下制覇

Mainly it’s the Jews.

First things first. In case you missed it, the second Happy Bread DVD special is just as special as the first one. These somehow remain far more entertaining (not to mention more animated) than the actual series itself.

Secondly, I could use a hand from a Hebrew literate on my project. I assumed some nonsensical babble was just… well… Japan randomly stringing syllables together to get something that sounded interesting and calling it a day. In my defense, nine times out of ten, I’d be right. Yada yada yada, long story short, eventually I became convinced for various reasons that it’s meant to be Hebrew… or at least my best guess at a Japanese person’s best guess at Hebrew… passed through the obnoxious filter of Japanese vocalizations. Usually about half the words seem to make some degree of contextual sense as near as I can tell through attempts to A.) Spell the words in proper Hebrew and B.) Look them up in the frankly rather lacking online Hebrew dictionaries. It’s… uh… not a terribly accurate process though.

ANYWHO, long story short, I’m 95% convinced that it’s meant to be Hebrew, so I could use a hand from someone who actually knows the language to make sure I’m not doing horrible horrible things to it. It’s far from anything critical, or even important, and only about ten or so lines in total, but when given the option, I prefer to be right, and Japanese to Hebrew to English is not part of my skillset, nor have I been able to track down any help with this otherwise. Drop me a line if you can give me a hand.

And finally, I think that Softhouse Chara’s new game bears a quick mention since I’ve successfully kind of bypassed the last Comiket entirely. If you’re not familiar with Nesting Dragon from 2004 (subtitle: "I Want to Get Married" and a hilariously inappropriate OP), it was a game where you were a slacker rapist dragon who hated having sex and got distracted easily into internal monologues during it, who had to use a literal army of vampire maids to build a nice enough lair so that your fiancee dragon would be impressed enough to not strangle you with your own intenstines on your wedding night. Also, your name is Blood. Blood Line the dragon. And you have a fully stocked rape dungeon. Because villagers send you so many women as tribute that you have nowhere else to put them.

How might this formula have gone wrong, you ask? Mostly by terrible balance, poorly realized mechanics, and an RNG that often just decided that it had been too long since you loaded the game. This span was frequently in the range of about 15 minutes. So basically your usual Softhouse Chara game. Clever setup, interesting mechanics, and then everybody pissed off to the bar without testing, balancing, or writing anything. And before you ask, yes, there was an ending where you chose to settle down with the entire swarm of faceless vampire maids instead of any heroine.

The reason I bring it up is that SH Chara’s upcoming game is its spiritual successor. Only instead of a dragon named Blood, you’re some guy named Heat Eggknock, instead of guarding your treasure, you’re guarding a militarily critical gate (and known as "The Sheep Protecting the Gate,"), and instead of a rape dungeon, you hang out in the tavern surrounded by drunken floozies. That’s probably a step down although most of your abundantly female company (and most of the city for that matter) likes to beg you for rewards for their work too, but thankfully, the actual gameplay is a copious number of steps up. It has the same general setup of "arrange troops/traps/barriers in front of the thing you’re guarding" and then the enemies come rushing in, but you can actually interact with the battles this time around, units grow more organically than just "summon stronger things to replace what you have" and there’s buttloads more strategic options at each spot on the map than back in dragon days.

Which isn’t to say it doesn’t have the usual laughable SH Chara writing without the added unintentional hilarity of complaining about raping a nameless girl while in the middle of doing it before being distracted into a long info dump about the history of the world. The game is a little suspiciously happy and cheerful about everything though. Pluuuuus also like usual, there are a billion stats and I have only the faintest idea what about half of them do because they’re so utterly divorced from… well… everything… but hey. I’ve fought off about half a dozen attempted invasions and haven’t been RNGed to death even once, so it’s a lot more forgivable to messing around too. While still overcomplicated, the mechanics are better explained in-game than Dragon’s were too. I’m enjoying messing around with the trial at any rate (even if all the "Sorry, no CG here yet!" messages pain me, and suggest a looksie if you like these kinds of Dungeon Keeper-esque things.

And now back to your regularly scheduled midweek nothingness.