天下制覇

Gooey.

SHChara finally got around to releasing a proper ad movie/OP for their game out this week. I actually quite like the song. I do hope it's better than my initial impressions were. I like armies and building dungeons to murder heroes. I haven't forgotten about Izumo 4 either. I've just been focusing on burning through BB2.

Impressions:

Another kind of short edition here, but the game crashed after playing for about 90 minutes so… that seemed like a good a spot to quit as any. Also, whereas PW's recent bits have been a bit overstuffed as it spews out foreshadowing and exposition that's hard to gloss over, this is still firmly in the "pad every goddamned scene out as much as possible" mode for the halfway point past its first main arc and will gleefully spend 50 lines arguing about the proper way to eat lunch, or the eighty seventh hundred thousandth edition of "Let's all work together and be super friends and do our best!" Also, that first sidequest took probably around half an hour. Granted, it was a little more fun than usual since the enemies have 2-3 actual attacks now, although laser-panthers shooting from off-screen is dumb and frustrating, but I'm pretty sure it's just because I was massively underleveled.

But on other news, BB2's script passed the halfway point… well, halfway not counting the copy/pasted scenes in the gallery. Hasn't been edited, has a ridiculous amount of secondary text that needs spit and polish, and the translation so far is almost entirely the entire set of 'home' events from the start to the end of the game, but eh, it feels nice to not be all quagmired up on a translation front. This is exactly why I like shorter games. Well, that and SHChara's cavalier attitude towards what constitutes pornography. There's nothing sexier than random exposition after all. You know it's getting weird when a 30 line internal narration is interrupted by the one surrogate-you is railing telling you to pay attention.

We kick the new chapter off giving a speech to the school about GOTTA DO BEST as student president. Apparently the 4 sentence speech, which we read off cue cards, was nerve wracking. The harem enables us. Mashiro pats our head. At lunch, we're popular with the girls again, but not because of Engage this time, which makes it totally different somehow. An imbecilic conversation about condiments ensues and goes on for FAAAAAAAR too long. The hanger-on sidepieces interrupt us with their own condiment opinions.

Suzu says they'll help out with all the stuff the student council must be doing, but we're apparently doing jack squat. It quickly turns back to more food crap and I die a little more inside. Suzu eventually hits/yells at us. After class, Erika reminds us we have an appointment with Noah Industries. Apparently they're the people with the lab and the foremost experts on enigmatite. That finally answers the question of who the hell they are.

First, however, it's sidequest time. There's 3 battle quests, so I'm going to get them out of the way before dealing with the harem's nonsense. Also, a new area's opened up, but we're not a high enough reputation to go there yet (42/45). We find Ena 'hiding' in the city part for another heart and level up our branch of the Engage Board. We do get another random sidequest as a followup to that ring thing earlier, which I've apparently forgotten. They want a bouquet now. Some douche found a new vein of ore and wants us to kill the NPs there. We take Erika in since her Libidometer is at about half full. This turns out to be a terrible idea. We're level 29, everything here is around 39 and brand new palette swaps. I get into trouble with a horde of pigs and teleport panthers, but come through and gain a level almost every other battle.

 Eventually, there are mini-versions of the phoenix boss too. Needless to say, Erika's Libido maxes out WAAAAAAAY before the end. The game tries to screw me out of a chest, but I bend space time and get it anyway. It was a goddamned berry. Holy sweet Jesus, that mine crap took a long time. It also gives me 3 Reputation level ups and good god, look at that body count. Serves you right for… living in a mine far away from people, stupid mutant animals.

Back to the 'plot', we meet up with Erika for our appointment. We get brushed off. Erika's annoyed because it's how people always treat her as a rich girl. Finally, we meet out person, and it's Shiori, the braless wonder who frenched us the other day. She's the head of the lab. She brings up the kissing, as well as hugs/rubs her chest on us, and annoys Erika. She takes it as a sign that she's not adult enough, because it could never be our fault for being a spineless doormat of course. Shiori shows us into her lab. She tells us about some of her research, the enigamatite factor. Basically, it's voodoo magic and nobody takes it seriously but her, so of course, you know right away that she's right. We have a boring meeting that it skips over. She says goodbye to us, and apparently lives in the lab. She gives us her number. Erika gets jealous again and drags us away.

Back at the dorm, Erika is confident that she'll win us in the end because we're so alike. Uh, okay? Ena and Blondie interrupt our 'moment'. We talk about our dumb meeting, which basically boils down to "stuff's being taken care of, so nothing is going to be changing." Blondie and Red argue about who's the higher ranking vice president.

Day 2/12 sidequesting. Both Erika and Hikaru are tomato-faced and wanting the dick. We deal with Hikaru first. She drags us to an empty classroom. We offer to help with the Engage side effects, but she says she's fine and wants to do something for us instead. Out come the funbags, in goes the dick, hold goes the Ctrl button, yada yada yogurt shower. Also, her nipple placement seems… wrong. Afterward, she's pissed off that we ejaculated all over her face instead of warning her so she could swallow it. Great. Day 3 begins with a brief meeting with Sketchy Principal who tells us out apropos of nothing that he's not an Unleashed, but a researcher. Okay? Whatever. He 'teases' us about kissing him and using Engage on him. We run away in a properly homophobic panic. Erika's not horny, so for our next sidequest mission, Suzu asks us to help on a patrol/search. Both Mashiro and Tsubomi need their horny-meters filled. I take Tsubomi for no real reason.

There's a new species of snake here, but they're lower level than me so they die swiftly. We finish it without finding anything, which is totally shocking because this is marked as part 1. Day 4, Erika's got the craving for the vienna sausage, so we indulge her. She breathlessly drags us to an empty classroom, says she'll take care of it herself, but wants our advice, so she plays with herself while we jack off. Yada yada skip skip. She gets mad about ejaculating on her. Seems to be a recurring theme. She yells at us to be more careful next time. We ask what next time means because we're an idiot, so she runs off in a huff. Day 5, I hang out with Mashiro and give her some curry I picked up in the mine to bring her to Like Lv 5. Mashiro tells us she's taking some medicine because her power makes it hard on her body, but it's okay because she takes it less now than she used to. Apparently we can ease her pain the same way as dealing with Engage. She says she'll be waiting for us, whenever we want to. We're a putz and have some kind of panic attack. And then the game softlocked trying to load the next day.