天下制覇

After writing all this, I better damn well commit to it.

So, I’m trying to figure out what to do with this season now that Symphogear’s pushed itself to a Saturday, leaving 5/7 days with a fat load of nothing. Writing reviews like I did for Force takes the better part of the afternoon, and I heavily prefer more off-the-cuff blogging without sitting alone with my thoughts for long periods of time. Since this seems to be a heavily recurring problem lately, I think it’s time to finally seriously try one of the things I’ve been kicking around in my head for a long time; doing sort of a pseudo-let’s play/summary and general thoughts on some random game, chapter or two at a time since most are split like that, as I go in the old ooold style of how I used to summarize/make random things up about the shows I was watching.

The question is what game though. I’m straight up ruling out anything I’ve played through completely already, as well as anything excessively long. I am aware that does kind of narrow it games I mostly don’t really want to play or I would have already, but oh well! Can’t make an omelet without breaking my sanity after all. So here’s a run down of the list of games I’m considering, grouped in a way that sort of made sense to me as I went to compare and start whittling the field down. Kind of like the inverse of my not-so-short short list of non-projects that I posted quite a while back. It also doubles as the upper tier list of things I keep of things I may one day do a “first impressions” of post (or have already done one), which I’ll link to.

Giga Games

I poked at the trial for Material Brave a couple times, didn’t like it much, and initial reception was godawful. Imagine if when playing Duel Savior, no matter what character you chose, you were forced into the Mia A ending, and then just got a half-assed epilogue with the character whose route you were actually trying to get on. Granted, the Mia in this case was apparently well-liked instead of a huge bitch, but at the same time, she wasn’t actually a main heroine. I can see why that would lead to annoyance and frustration. The engine was a step down from DS’s, and the characters/writing was as insipid an LN as you can get, right down to magic academy for magic teens and needing to trade body fluids with heroines because… magic. Ignition is the later expansion that supposedly fixed a ton of the problems with the gameplay and kicked out the old crappy writer to bring in DS’s to write a few actual routes for the heroines (including the one they forced you into an ending with already), but the core was still pretty busted. It would be one of the few things here with some presentation actually worth recording though, both in gameplay and otherwise.

Runner up: Baldr Bullet Revellion
Revellion is the misromanized visual remake of Baldr Force’s predecessor, and I believe is more traditionally mecha instead of cyber, being about fighting eco-terrorists in the Amazon. By all accounts, it has aged very poorly, even with the hilarious attempt at remaking the art. It’s a crime that they replaced Rebecca’s big poofy ponytail with the Baldr Sky Chinatsu bitch-twirl, but almost every shot of the protagonist looks like someone taped a baseball to the top of a refrigerator.

Debonosu Games

I’ve already done a first impressions post of Hanakoi. It wasn’t great, but did provide a number of moments that were amusing enough to write about, and again, would likely have some stuff worth recording since it’s a more action oriented game than most of what Japan spits out on PC. I already said pretty much all I want to there. Debonosu games can be kind of a pain to deal with because they get unhappy if your entire OS isn’t in Japanese, so I’m leaning against it.

Runner up: Senjin Otome/Alruna
Another thing I’ve done a first impressions post on. Pretty much the same things go. It’s EVEN more action oriented, but also not as terrifyingly bizarre as Hanakoi was. Alruna is also an outside shot. The combat apparently opens up a ton after the trial content and you get six people parties, which would definitely help feel a bit more puzzley, but… it was kind of dull already.

Escu;de Games

I did a brief Re;Lord writeup already. It’s apparently part of an episodic series (trilogy maybe?). It wasn’t bad though. Characters were amusing. Gameplay was kind of insultingly basic and easy though. Maybe that improves, maybe not. Don’t know. What it is though, is mercifully short, and that’s part of the reason why I haven’t felt much need to return to it as well. It would probably lend itself well to this kind of thing, especially broken up into digestible stages already.

Runner up: Prister/Quantum Girlfriend
Quantum Girlfriend I’ve tinkered with already. The first couple hours were… not good, but once the game finally kicks in, it was getting quite a bit better. Prister is one of the better received titles on the list. It’s basically your standard monster trainer… thing at monster trainer academy, but with porn. And everyone only gets one monster. And the ‘gameplay’ is painfully crippled. It is segmented into multiple stories though, which is appealing for many reasons, and escu;de’s writing is typically not bad when it gets its head out of its ass.

Unicorns Ejaculating

Princess Witches is probably the most acclaimed of the lot here, and like Prism Ark (since it’s built on the same engine/by the same people), it likes to play with its production a lot more than most VNs do, although nowhere near Giga’s level. It eventually turns a bit deeper than its initial what’s-it suggests, which is supposedly when it gets quite good. My big problem with it is that the gameplay is pretty much ballsacks and I have never wanted to suffer through it to get to what is supposedly the good part. The characters didn’t bother me much though, and the protagonist is at least one of the more go-getters of the VN lot.

Runner up: Twinkle Crusaders
The spiritual sequel to the above, with ‘greatly improved’ gameplay. That means that it looks even more like a unicorn ejaculating all over the screen while Japanese girls scream and flash their panties though. Otherwise, it’s much more light-hearted (ie: utterly vapid), and ridiculously longer.

Other (S)RPGs

Corona’s yet another thing I did a short introductory post for, and while I didn’t actually get to the gameplay in that one, I had played it before when the trial was initially released. It is the sequel in a few ways to Yumina, so there’s probably some interest there. The gameplay would have some stuff worth recording, but is such a painful slog of an SRPG and from everything I’ve heard, is only going to get worse. As for writing, it almost certainly has a slight edge over Material Brave, but is just as generic an LN, simply built a bit more on the self-aware Fourteen Sick set of cliches, which it loves to call attention to.

Runner up: TenKoi/Blade Briders
Eternal’s attempt at making a straight up dungeon crawling RPG without putting any effort into animating things. I poked at it briefly, wasn’t very impressed, didn’t hear much good about it, shelved it away to forget about it forever. One of those “school gets dumped into fantasy-land” stories, that apparently ends with people transforming into robots and punching the concept of space-time. Blade Briders is a game that just never really interested me at all and nothing I’ve seen of the gameplay or heard of the story/characters has changed that. It’s on my radar, but Daibanchou’s really been the only Alicesoft game that’s really clicked well with me. Probably the strong core cast and writing. Seriously. I can’t begin to say how much I despise the 1st person narration that plagues VNs.

Other Strategy Games

Another thing I poked at the trial for briefly and thought it was pretty okay, but never had the urge to go and play the rest of the game. It’s almost a carbon copy of Duel Savior (OR ZERO NO TSUKAIMA, OKAY!?)’s setup, except with trading virginity for help leading armies to do… whatever it was they were trying to do. Maybe it’s time to revisit it, but it didn’t exactly get rave reviews, and it did seem like it was going to have problems scaling up. Also, from what I’ve seen, there seems to be little there but the gameplay and a whole, whole lot of losses of virginity.

Runner up: Demonion (1/2)/Gate Sheep
Demonion 2 I did a brief writeup on already. Demonion 1 supposedly has the better story/characters, 2 the gameplay. Both were fairly unchallenging and uninteresting though. I mentioned Sheepgate briefly a while back, but didn’t get any further than just playing around with the trial a little bit. Word was that it was incredibly easy, and incredibly short. It seemed overly complicated and while I appreciated a bit more control in the pseudo-tower defense gameplay over Suzukuri Dragon, its spiritual predecessor, it needed to be sped up greatly because it was already a bit tedious.

Well, that was exhausting to all put down on not-paper. At the moment, I’m leaning towards Material Brave (probably most fun to actually play, best for recording segments, in-game costumes so I can dress them all up like the clowns they are), Princess Witches (writing/characters/story), or a toss-up of the escu;de pile. Hell, maybe I’ll even do two, although I think I’d rather just talk about a couple other games I’ve played a little more substantially, for weal or woe instead.

Chime in if something strikes your fancy. Or if you’re shy, here’s as half-assed a poll as I’m willing to make and then probably ignore. Or if you have some suggestion for a game I’ve overlooked and a good argument for that, hit me up with that. It is a little late in the season to start this, so unless it’s one of the really short ones, will likely stretch into the next season, but pretty much every season lately has seemed to have dead space, so I’m sure it’ll work out.

Or if this seems like a horrible idea and you have a better one, say that instead. I need something to do that doesn’t take half an afternoon just to write up. Maybe somethings.