天下制覇

  

Doesn’t this place have a lost and found box?

Random Thoughts:

I admit to having some attachment to Duel Savior, this game’s obvious spiritual predecessor, and it’s clear that they were going for more of a traditional RPG approach to it, with a bunch more numbers, stats, sphere grids, explorable areas, equippable items, sidequests, so on and so forth. In theory, that could have turned out really well as kind of a mix between a Tales game and DS’s more fighting game-like engine. In execution though, not so much. The biggest problem is that there was an obvious desire to simplify combat, so instead of having a similar array of moves to Smash Brothers, it’s much closer to a one button fighter, especially with how tacked on some of the power moves are. There’s still some neat combo stuff you can do with it, but it pales in comparison to what DS’s setup was capable of. Once you’ve got your one basic combo, that’s really all you need. You’re done. Victory. It does let you play as any character as soon as they join though, which does help offset some of the repetition, but DS addressed that with a large variety of enemies and increasing swarms instead of putting the onus on the player to create their own new/changing experience. I also really miss the chaotic giant battles of DS with 3 people on your side against dozens of enemies. That’s likely a result of the change in the damage system and how you’ll lose half your life if you’re whapped at a vulnerable moment, but you end up fighting the same one on one (or two) battle against enemies with very little variety for a long time.

I would’ve really liked to have seen them implement evolving and/or customizable movesets for the characters like was done in DS’s fandisks. You’d think that’d be perfect for the bland as hell “use power” attack too since most are generic as all hell and stay that way forever. They could’ve done so much with that, even just tweaking the properties, that would’ve helped it feel like you were progressing in a way other than seeing slightly larger numbers. Instead, they spent their time designing new costumes. You do get a couple new things as you progress through the game, like super attacks, and to its credit, the toys are all the more special when they’re not handed out right away, but it’s just far too little to keep things new and challenging as you carve your way through another 40 dogs. Ignition does make a number of major changes to all of this though: larger scale battles, speeding things up, more tightly controlling mechanics, etc etc. Sure would’ve been nice if they were backported into the main game!

Our Story So Far:

Sidequest time #1 starts, and we get our first Quest from a girl in class to find her stuffed animal. Talking to Ena and sidekick also give us… 1/3 hearts and 1/4 music notes, for… something. They tell us to find them during each sidequest time. Fun. On our way to the only area we can go to, some other random NPC asks us to find her hankie. Some random bald guy in town had the stuffed animal, so we dutifully deliver “McKinley” back to its owner. Coincidentally, the girl next to her had the hankie. Apparently protagonist means “collector of random crap.” Some other girl asks us for yellow enigmatite, theoretically something we actually need to fight for. On day 3 of sidequesting, a girl asks us to kill a spider for her. We discover that we can charge attacks somewhere around now and embarrass ourselves trying to mess around with them during that fight.

After four days of that, we learn about electronic bulletin boards, and see Haremette ver.Quiet, Mashiro, and immediately assume she has no idea what bulletin boards are or how they work. Sidekick distracts us and she disappears. He infodumps some more about his mutant healing ability until we’re interrupted by Haremette ver.Hyper, Tsubomi, who’s trying to sell drills and bombs in the middle of class. Her inventions have a reputation for blowing up. She tries to push x-ray glasses on us.

 

Nobody’s buying it, so she jams a giant drill onto Sidekick’s arm. It blows up. She’s not very apologetic, but gives us a coupon for one free item. She’s also figured out that we have Engage because we were paired up with “Gravity Girl,” her words. On her info, we go to check things out, and immediately, the NP alarm goes off and we’re forced into a mandatory Battle Quest. We go out murdering a few more dogs and fish until we find Blondie, who’s been worn down and being attacked by a wolf and spider.

 

We heroically save the day, give her a peptalk about teamwork and working together, but then an ALARMIER alarm goes off, so she grabs us and uses her powers to launch us both into the stratosphere. Her plan is to beat the big NP, which will scatter the rest, but her power level is running low. We offer to use our ability and she says she’ll give us her chastity. Christ, Japan. It’s a kiss, not a Westboro Rusty Trombone. We kiss her and declare that we’ll be her strength, because this wasn’t corny enough already.

We kill a few more spiders, dogs, and fish before finding a boar. It dies after a few sledgehammers to the face, but then we’re surrounded.

After agreeing to totally be besties and super teammates with benefits if we survive this, we’re saved by Harmette Ver.Nadeshiko, Hikaru, and Haremette Ver.German, Erika. Quest complete, and we see the entire array of animals we’ve murdered in the last five minutes. It’s amazing this island has any wildlife left at all.

 

We go back to our room and go to sleep, but Blondie’s wandering the halls with a fever. A fever for our dick. This is the side effect of Engage, it makes them super horny for us. We feel the fire inside too, but not of the boner variety, just of the traditional zeal of heroism and justice, I guess. Blondie immediately starts stripping to get down to business, and I have no idea at all why she’s upside down, but Ena barges in to cockblock us again. Blondie screams and runs off. Ena gets bitchy. Chapter numero uno complete.