Not a “review” because the post ended up being incoherent ramblings as I think back to every route in Musicus. I considered cutting out large chunks of this to make a proper review that is actually meant for people to read but fuck it, I am leaving my diary here.
It seems like I’ve been playing my porn games for longer than I thought. I’ve been keeping the blog kind of alive at 1 or 2 posts a month, but honestly there isn’t much to say. This blog is turning old, I’m turning old(er), I have to accept ~adult responsibilities~ in order to keep playing games without people shitting on me (figuratively) in real life, etc. I’m also running out of things to say about most things I play, because there’s only so much to write before your reviews start blending into each other and your sentences and writing structure become so template that you can, well, make an actual template out of them. Besides, I can barely count the number of times where I finished or dropped something and thought, does this really warrant a ~2k word review? The answer is usually no. Not that I’m going to permanently stop, though. Probably.
Oh, and I got a PS4. The console looks nice and sleek, unlike the PS3. I’ve also come to the realization that AAA budget games with fancy graphics like The Last of Us are massive, and Sony’s download speeds are abysmal. That’s nothing new, but it doesn’t become this obvious until you try to download a 43 gb game. Thankfully weeb games like Omega Quintet are still small. Bless low-budget models and lousy environment textures. I’m not even being sarcastic because at this point I don’t even care as long as I derive some sort of entertainment from a game, low budget playable magical girl idol anime be damned. The girls are cute and all is right with the world. The days where I got riled up over the smallest things in games or got filled with rage at the industry seem so distant. Everything just feels like a pain in the ass. E3 was pretty good, though.
Here’s to another year of my infinitely expanding backlog and shrinking time available to devote to my hobbies. It doesn’t help that the less time I have to play games, the more I want to buy games. I’ve also been reading some light novels, because porn game writers are starting to move towards the industry that isn’t dying.
P.S. I may sound like a grumpy old man now, but I blame 100% of it on school. This is what happens when all you want to do is be a NEET and play games but you ended up studying engineering.
I look around my university lecture hall and everyone and their mothers are scribbling away with a stylus on some sort of tablet while I fumble around with my 5 3-ring binders that don’t fit on the pathetic excuses for desks and an eraser that keeps slipping off and sometimes bouncing away at the professor in parabolic motion. So I decided to join the masses and buy a tablet.
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.
I managed to spend a lot less money this year, which means more money for importing games. I severely cut back on the impulse purchases, and that’s not due to an increased self-control level either. I think my main interests have been getting more and more niche each year, and I’ve been doing more importing/online shopping so I own almost all the existing English 7th-gen games I really want. Nevertheless, I did buy some goods:
Sora no Kiseki FC & SC Special Collection Book
I thought my house’s internet problems are over, but apparently not. So yeah, if I’m hard to contact, it’s because I have no internet.
I’ll be at McDonalds on the weekends so if I have reviews to update, it’ll be on the weekend.
I recently formatted my hardrive and got my Internet back. It should stay up, unless something shitty happens, so I’ll be back to my regular activities and update in places where I’m supposed to update, soon.
I’ll reinstall my PC eroge later, so for now I’m with the consoles and handhelds.
As I step into 2013, I realized that I did nothing productive this year, just like every year before. Well, that’s fine, isn’t it? I played quite a bit of games. Thinking back, it was a good year, and I played some great games that I will remember. Come to think of it now, I failed to make progress in my backlog plans. It’s not like I’ve been pursuing new releases left and right either, though. I’ve been doing whatever suits my mood, and I think that works fine. I think I need to re-work my backlog resolutions for this year, although whatever plans I have will probably be thwarted as 2013 will give us Ni no Kuni, Neptunia Victory, Sen no Kiseki, Disgaea D2 (possibly), SMT: Soul Hackers, Etrian Odyssey 4, and probably some more to-be-announced games.
To keep things doable, Backlog Plan v2013 will consist of one game a month, minus January which is for finishing games I’m currently playing. I probably won’t be able to keep it up since it doesn’t include new releases, but I’ve got a summer to work with too. 11 games in backlog, no order.
Admittedly, I’ve got the most PSP games. Man do I love the PSP. I’m most likely bringing my PS3 to university, so I’m trying to finish off games for consoles other than that.
Here’s a report of stuff I’ve been playing recently:
Star Ocean: The Last Hope – I’ve actually been trying to play this game for the bast few months or so, but I didn’t touch my PS3 much the past semester, so progress has been slow. It doesn’t particularly draw me in, but it’s not as bad as what people like to tell me. The battle system is quite fun.
Tales of Hearts – A very fun 2D Tales of game, with a battle system similar to Graces in that it doesn’t use TP. I love it. I enjoy the characters very much too, and the plot is not bad as well. It has its cheesy parts (plenty, actually), but the characters get their arcs and development so it’s all good. Skits are entertaining as heck, and I like the whole party.
Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru – a rather famous eroge that recently got released in English by MangaGamer. It’a well-known for having a trap protagonist in a Catholic school. I haven’t been too impressed with it so far in the common route, but I’ll give at least a few routes a go.
Full Metal Daemon Muramasa – and here’s an eroge that has been impressing me so far. It’s my first Nitro+ vn, and it’s really great so far. It’s also very long, as I still haven’t finished the first route despite having played for 30 hours, but I’m fine with lengthy stories. The problem is that the language is difficult compared to most vn I’ve read in Japanese, as everyone talks in some roundabout way like they’re in old Japan (justified given the setting).
I’ll eventually get to playing Katawa Shoujo this year. On my to-play list for eroge/visual novels is Konosora, Memories Off 6 (because I actually own it in Chinese), Irosekai, Steins;Gate, and maybe Saihate no Ima. I’ll potentially add Witch’s Garden to that list, since it uses that Live2D animation.
Preparing for university sucks, and I can’t wait for March when most of this shit is going to be over. Damn portfolio preparations. I could also do with a little less pride and bear with shittier school marks considering my first choice is a college with a average grade requirement of 65%, but parents want me to go into some program that will actually get me a job (like engineering!) and if I don’t apply for university, they are probably going to flip their shit and make what little left of my childhood into complete hell. I mean that figuratively, not Disagea’s Netherworld. Either way, I have all my painful courses this semester (full of projects and evaluations where I actually have to do things other than calculate on a piece of paper), and how I miss the time when I could just play games.
School is terrible, university/college will probably be much worse, and employment…well, I’ve gotta stop assuming that I’ll actually land myself a job once I get out of post-secondary education. Not with my non-existent people skills and motivation. Welp, since I’ve been angsting like hell over school and stuff, I haven’t been finishing many things.
Let’s see, games I recently played:
Today, I am here to make a (not) special little post about why you should never buy legit games from China, and you should instead pirate the hell away if you ever find yourself interested in a Chinese game. In fact, the only time when you should buy a game from China is when you are interested more in the limited edition goodies than the game, because those are actually worth your money. (Note: I am generally in support of buying my games if possible, so I’m clearly making an exception here.)
カレーまみれ勇者の冒険 Curry Chronicles 