灰鷹のサイケデリカ – thoughts

(Spoilers…? Not explicitly but don’t read if you’re currently playing the game)

Having played (and enjoyed) Kokuchou no Psychedelica, Haitaka was on my radar but not a priority since my plate is loaded (I finished like 1 game from September when I bought 4, this game not included). I ended up playing this sooner than expected since I read some Amazon reviews complaining about linear plot, lack of romance/糖度, and even a post talking about the game having loads of landmine elements in the context of the console otome game market. I mean normally those things are supposed to deter one away, but story-heavy and linear are actually very appealing elements to me when it comes to a novel game so my interest was piqued.

Ｅｘｔｒａ Ｒｅｖｉｅｗｓ

Mostly ADVs and Compile Heart RPGs.

Table of Contents

Kuon no Kizuna
Fureraba
Amagami
Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters
Robin Lloyd
Hatoful Boyfriend
Reine des Fleurs
Kokuchou no Psychedelica
Complie Heart games
Not games

熱血異能部活譚 Trigger Kiss – thoughts

…Which shall now be referred simply as Trigger Kiss due to how cumbersome the full title is to type out in any language. This is an otome game for the PS Vita that tries it’s hardest to be a cross between a sports and a battle shounen manga at the same time. The year is 2085, and a portion of the human population have developed superpowers. Team battles between superpower users are an established high school sport, with most high schools having a super power club that trains to fight against other schools in tournaments. The protagonist, Futaba, is the daughter of a famous superpower user, but decided to have nothing to do with powers after an incident five years ago. Nevertheless, word travels fast and upon her transfer to Akizuki High School, she gets tricked into joining their superpower club. The reason? Their first regional matchup is tomorrow and they don’t have enough members to form a team.

Code:Realize ~Sousei no Himegimi~

It’s not often that you get an otome game with a gripping story and setting that has some thought put into it, so I was pleasantly surprised when Code:Realize turned out to be good the whole way through. Especially considering that it’s from Idea Factory, whose otome games failed to grab me before. It’s like they actually put effort into it, and managed to avoid a lot of developments common to the genre that I never liked.

Games I didn’t write about last year

I’ve been slowly dying off due to university, evident by the decreased frequency of updates by the second half of the year. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t play any games. In fact, I probably played more, but was too lazy to write about them.

Warning: Huge wall of text.

Princess Arthur – Thoughts

Before anyone asks about what happened to my mother taking over the blog: she found a new job so unfortunately, you’re stuck with me. Also the リア充 life worked out so well I’ve left my room only for exams and McDonald’s for the past month. This otome VN is up for grabs on JP PS+, so I went ahead and played it.

Princess Arthur sets off with an ambitious setting, combining the legend of King Arthur and staple western fantasy elements to create an otome game with the premise “What if King Arthur was a girl?”

Amnesia V Edition

I think I’m slowly warming up to otome games…

The heroine lost her memories due to a spirit named Orion landing in her head, and conveniently for the narrative, also wiped out whatever previous personality she has! Together with Orion (who only she can see), she must interact with those around her to regain her memories, while also being careful to not get found out about her condition lest she get sent to the hospital and left there to rot without remembering anything.

New Year’s Resolution

Other than the obvious things like don’t die, don’t fail out of university, get a job, etc., I will probably try to clear off some of my PSP backlog so I can move forward. I realized I’ve amassed loads of PSP games bought on a whim/sale/bought when I was in the mood for a game but by the time it arrived via super slow SAL shipping I was in the mood for other things. The last one happened more often than I’d like to admit.

Anyway, one PSP game down a month is my goal.

Sweet Fuse: At Your Side – Otome game that I’ve been meaning to play but never got around to. I’ve been meaning to play more otome games in general, but I am terrible at picking good ones.

11eyes CrossOver – chuuni galge. I particularly remember 11eyes from the days where I watched and admired a lot of eroge openings, but couldn’t play any so I just looked at pictures and made up stories.

Mashiroiro Symphony – apparently a rather 王道 moege that seems pretty well-received. I’ve always liked the art as far as moege go.

Twinkle Crusaders – Got the battle system recommended to me.

Dunamis15 – The naming scheme sounds like one of those VNs 5pb makes to cash in on the Ever17 sci-fi hype, but apparently the plot is actually decent in this one.

Akiba’s Trip Plus – Stripping people in Akiba, needed a game with real-time battles to balance the list.

Shining Hearts – looks like a pretty standard RPG with character designs by Tony Taka, will play when bored

7th Dragon 2020 – Dungeon-crawler with classes, always welcome in my book.

Corpse Party – Bought from PSN on sale

Half-Minute Hero – I’ve always found the concept of this to be pretty neat, and it seems to suit handhelds perfectly

Star Ocean: Second Evolution – Played SOI, always meant to play SOII since it’s everyone’s favorite. PS1 RPGs tend to have pretty good atmospheres if nothing else.

Sakura Wars I & II – It was 500 yen during Sega’s JPSN sale! And this is a compilation of two games! Plus Sakura Wars is supposedly a classic, which means there’s a high chance of it being decent to good.

Despite being calling myself an RPG fan, I still haven’t played most of the Final Fantasies, so I was planning on doing an FF marathon (not including I, which I beat, and III, which I played and didn’t really like), but I guess I’ll be saving that for later when my backlog is less massive.

I might not be able to play all of these or end up switching some around, but everything is for my ultimate goal of cutting down on my backlog.

Review: NORN9 -Norn + Nonette-

I don’t usually play otome games, but when I do, I end up picking lackluster ones. I’d like to believe this was a case of expecting way too much from some concept art and premise, but it’s been a while since I’ve tasted such bitter disappointment. The word sci-fi generally instills in readers (okay, maybe just me) a certain expectation in the plot where the grandiosity of the plot is directly proportional to the number of major characters. Add in psychic powers, and I ended up imagining some chuuni fights. Either way, Norn9 seemed like it would have a detailed setting, good plot, great character dynamics and possibly a burning grand finale.

Lesson learnt? Unless something is from a beloved writer or a reliable company that consistently produces stuff I like, read reviews before laying down the cash. Especially when it comes to a genre I’m not experienced with. Oh who am I kidding, I realized that long ago and will never learn my lessons.

Hakuoki Walkthrough – Index

Since I posted each route separately, I might as well make an index post that links to the walkthrough of each route. I just followed the walkthrough on otome.girly.jp and translated the choices to the localized version.

There are a total of 6 routes. You can play them in any order, but I’d suggest Hijikata’s route for last because it is the longest and sticks with the Shinsengumi ’til the end. It’s pretty much the “true” route.

Hajime Saito route
Souji Okita route
Sanosuke Harada route
Heisuke Toudou route
Chikage Kazama + Normal route
Toshizo Hijikata route