shinryuuchan

OH MY SWEET HEAVENS FINALLY a game that combines kitty-people, the Sanguo period and otome gaming with a badass-looking heroine. And the Sakura Taisen/Tengai Makyou dude. AND the guy who made all the awesome old FF music (i.e. the one who is not Hamauzu). What the hell Otomate/Red Entertainment. Otomate if you fuck this up on your end I WILL END YOU. Red, I saw the amazing job you did with STV (six years ago...) and kinda really wanna play your recent sentai otome game, so I'm hoping some wackiness with teary historical drama will ensue.

So far the gallery has 2 pics of the heroine Guan Yu (wut) being kinda badass (and two-eyed Xiahou Dun!) and a pic of shouta-nuko Liu Bei cuddling a tiger. I don't even know what the hell. The only thing that would make this game perfect would be a good battle system, but it should work out well anyway as a VN. Probable capturables are Liu Bei, Zhang Fei (both nukos), Zhao Yun, Cao Cao, Xiahou Dun and Zhang Liao. Xiahou Yuan and Zhang Jue will also make appearances. Frankly that's as good a lineup for early Sanguo as I can ask for. I have little doubt Kongming will show up in some form, and wonder what Wu's gonna be like (if it's even featured). It is truly a pity that the only man in Wu I'd go after does not have a chance in hell of hooking up with Guan Yu.

Anyway, this is just a placeholder for now; I'll add seiyuu and attempts to translate the prologue and character blurbs later.

PS AAAAAAAAAAAA RYUUBI MOEEEEEEEE~

Let's get the stuff noone cares about out of the way: I'm fine, healthy, on less meds, actually being productive this summer and going to be a Religion major (wut), hopefully specializing in native East Asian ones like Daoism and maybe Shinto and Korean Shamanism. After I FINALLY graduate in about two-three years, I will probably become a reclusive Master of Library Science. (Don't correct me if that is not actually a real thing. I want to belieeeeeeeve!) Yay!

Okay, so I've been ruminating on just impressions I've gotten from the video games community as of late. Some warnings: these are probably pretty foolish ramblings with no supportive evidence or even coherence guaranteed, and will likely make real video game critics cringe. Please leave your comments below so we can have a nice toasty flame war where we deliberately misinterpret one another and claim the others are just so stupid, gods why can't they see there is one AND ONLY ONE correct way to interpret video gaming experiences and it is totally mine. It will be the most social contact I've had all year barring over-the-internet Tabletop stuff. >_>

( Here we begin stuff about vidya games that even fewer people care about. NOT FINISHED and may well never be because seriously, it is nothing but whining about people whining about VIDEO GAMEZ. )

So tl;dr Pokemon is fucking awesome, critics are the worst people to review games because they get to a point where they just start hating them, and maybe I should cut out all that Daoist reading because it's starting to sync up scarily well with what I seem to think.

Also one more thing that I just like to bring up every now and then for no reason: Guy/Gal who used to be at Swat and wrote an article years ago muttering about Okami's secret attempt to encourage imperial Shintoist sharia law (barely even an exaggeration, I swear)? A) Please talk to your therapist about your conspiracy theories and B) please take up comedy that thing was hiLArious. You could go on tour with that guy with the racist puppets!

Sooo. Yeah. Long time no see. Welp, I've been going to school in preparation for...going back to school more regularly. >_> Doing well so far, I think, just have to keep plodding through and also get my application for my full transfer in holy crap. Classes are fun, though my Intro to World Religions - East prof is either an asshole or a NEET because while he's very intelligent when he's teaching, he likes to make us traipse out to the suburbs beyond the reach of Metro to go to Buddhist temples on Sundays so the buses don't run because he couldn't just get the school to hire a van or something. GAH. What is it with Buddhist professors and being super-annoyingly evangelistic!? There's a reason we don't generally let diehard Christians run this shit (unless we're in the Deep South or something), and Buddhists seem to be about the same! Ahem. Anyway, having a bunch of Eastern Religion courses is proving quite engaging for the most part, 'cause it's history I like and includes a bunch of other disciplines. Also Zhuangzi is my favorite philosopher yet.

I'm still watching Star Driver, though Heaven knows why: it's almost like a mahou shoujo which missed most of the parodies and deconstructions of the genre in favor of Takuto-kun's Cliche High School Drama and Giant Robot Ass-Pull Central: Now With More Fanservice. I guess I'm watching in the hopes that Takuto eventually gets his ass kicked and maybe even dies because damn I have not wanted a protagonist to lose this much since Sailor Moon. (And at least Sailor Moon featured different team members who weren't loving pathetic; Wako and Sugata are damn near useless aside from "Oh wait, we have OTHER characters in the party too. HURR PLOT POWERZ GO.") Although this will not happen. *sigh* I miss Kuragehime and its interesting characters so much. :(

Also, speaking of which, GAMES: HaruToki 5 is out, and I've started really playing 4 in earnest. I have to say, so far 5's heroine Yuki is proving to be a weird mix of GAR and tennen. She's got this annoying "curious deer" expression when she's not sure about something (which is often), she's incredibly naive, and she feels a lot younger than Nozomi (3's main character) or Chihiro (4's). That said, she doesn't back down from anything, is actually quick-thinking when she's not being an idiot to progress the plot, and is obviously going to try and save EVERYBODY because that's just how she rolls, so at least she's not quite an ordinary otome game protagonist. (CHIZURU I'M LOOKING AT YOU.) And frankly, given that Yuki's fifteen and is flipping between two worlds, one of which is a completely devastated version of her own and the other a fantasy version of the Bakumatsu, I can cut her some slack about being clueless in the beginning unless she keeps up like this for the whole game. (Although how the hell did she miss the history classes on the end of the Edo period if she grew up in Japan!? That's like missing the entire Civil War chapter in the States.)

Chihiro, on the other hand, is made of pure win; she's already led an (unfortunately unsuccessful) raid on an invader's compound, and her troops already like her as a leader. Going from being a normal high school student to a badass princess leading an oppressed country didn't take her long at all. XD It's a real pity some of the production values in 4 suffered so much; the 3D models are kind of terrible for a 2008 game and voice-acting drops off sharply after the first few scenes, but the battle system is much more in-depth than 3's (and possibly 5's) and I love the pre-historical Japanese setting (in part because holy crap look at all dem kemonomimi clans). As for the guys, Nagi's a total bitch, but everyone else seems adorable/interesting enough to be worth capturing, and there are plenty of other non-Hachiyou characters (including old/adult women holy shit!) who are awesome as well.

So far, both games have more of an emphasis than 3 did on the priestesses being able to hear the cries of the various spiritual beings and gods running amok in this alternate world, which I really like; it gives the games a more "fantastic" save-the-world aspect that highlights the empathetic aspects of being a Miko and requires the heroines to make their own decisions (admittedly often at the cost of logic, but it works out, so hey). I'm sorry, as much as I know people are getting tired of it, I love saving the world and all the creatures in it. (There's a reason Okami is like my favorite anything ever.) I'm not here just to catch a man, I'm here to beat the crap out of spirits to free/purify them and be the heroine, dammit. In 5 I think the spirit-whisperer thing may lead to some intriguing tensions; since Yuki is the only one in the party who can hear the gods' voices, everyone else (except for Captain Exposition Amami) thinks she's crazy. I'm starting to think her tennen nature was no accident and that she might even grow out of it by the end. Hopefully Ruby Party won't disappoint.

I've also got Radiant Historia, which is excellent as well; I'll post something on it later maybe, but you should probably get it if you like time-travel, Atlus and/or JRPGs.

Dissidia Duodecim, SSM6, Okamiden, and Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky 1 are next on the list; wow but this February and March are big game months after the doldrums of winter. Dammit, developers, spread your releases out a bit more! *shakes fist*

Life's going pretty smoothly nowadays, so nothing on that front besides going to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear and possibly Anime USA.

( ONWARDS to vidya games. )

So yeah, uh, that's a ton of imports. O_O Any games actually being released in the US I should look out for? Anyone played that new Castlevania?

EDIT: Three more HaruToki 5 things I noticed: the MC looks like she has a rapier, and even though Kazuhiko Inoue and the rest of the old cast are gone (boo), TAKEMOTO Edgey EIJI is Chi no Byakko this time (yaaaaay)! In addition, the promotional video seems to imply that HaruToki 5 comes out sometime next spring!

I don't usually post links to surveys and the like, but Aksys has an interesting study posted right now, and it's about female-gamer-oriented games like Hakuouki, Heart no Kuni no Alice and Hiiro no Kakera. Even if you have no idea what the hell series those are, if you'd like to see more otome games (i.e. any) hit the US market, let Aksys know. It's a very quick survey which seems to assume some familiarity with the original games themselves, making me doubtful they'll get much of a response, but it's worth a shot.

http://www.aksysgames.com/2010/09/28/we-have-a-survey-for-you/

So there's this new otome game called Tenkaichi Sengoku Lovers coming out in early October for the DS. Like Nise no Chigiri, it's set in the Sengoku Jidai (obviously). Unlike Nise, it has mediocre art but makes historical figures the capturable characters! \o/ The main site doesn't have much up right now, but the characters revealed thus far include Takeda Shingen, Uesugi Kenshin, Date Masamune, Katakura Kojuurou (probably Kagetsuna specifically, as Katakura Kojuurou is a title), Sanada Yukimura, Hashiba Hideyoshi (a.k.a. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, first true unifier of Japan and almost always the resident pervert monkey), Naoe Kanetsugu, Akechi Mitsuhide and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Oh, and Sen no Rikyuu's around to do...something. I think it involves either cards or buying things. All are, par for the course in otome games, hot and/or adorable, regardless of their historical miens. I am thinking specifically of Ieyasu, who is quite the bishounen, and Hideyoshi as the shouta. What. (Sure makes his relationship with Nobunaga a bit more...questionable. Also, shouldn't Masamune and Yukimura be the shoutas here?)

The only bad thing about the setting seems to be that this game takes place after the assassination of Nobunaga, so he's out of the picture. :/ NO NO I WAS WRONG YAY Nobs is totally still kickin'. Dunno if he's capturable yet, though, since he seems to be the main antagonist. (Since he looks almost exactly like a certain infamous Sanguo warrior, I assume pursuing him may very well be ill-advised.) Also turns out almost everyone has their iconic armor and kabuto (which means yes, Kanetsugu's infamous "Love Helm" is featured, as is Hideyoshi's sunbeams one).

So yeah, possessive men (expected if not celebrated, as most of them were huge warrior jerkwads anyway), age issues and the artist's trouble with hands aside, I'm really looking forward to this game. At least it'll attract the sort of weird historian fujoshi who passed up Nise no Chigiri upon the revelation that the capturable guys were all OCs (not to mention the fact that it's made by Otomate, who seem to completely miss the point of their "historical" otome game settings more often than not).

Seiyuu:

Inoue Kazuhiko 井上和彦 (!) - Takeda Shingen
Hino Satoshi　日野聡 - Sanada Yukimura
Oda Yuusei 織田優成 (AKA Arima Katsuaki) - Uesugi Kenshin
Suganuma Hisayoshi 菅沼久義 (!) - Naoe Kanetsugu, the "hot-blooded yet clear-headed" (what how is that even possible) retainer of Uesugi Kenshin
Kondo Takashi 近藤隆 - Date Masamune
Iida Toshinobu 飯田利信 - Katakura Kojuurou
Maeda Takeshi 前田剛　- Tokugawa Ieyasu
Shimono Hiro 下野紘 - Hashiba Toyotomi, who is ADORABLE
Yusa Koji　遊佐浩二 - Akechi Mitsuhide
Suwabe Junichi　諏訪部順一 - Date Shigezane
Naitou Ryou 内藤玲 - Sen no Rikyuu
KENN - Maeda Keiji, who may very well be the okama of the group
Fujiwara Yuuki 藤原祐規 - Ishikawa Goemon, who is also adorable


I'd guess that Suganuma is going to be Hideyoshi (since he's kind of locked into the shouta role for anything except D3 games), but I can't be sure who Inoue is going to play given his versatility. (I still can't believe he's both Kagetoki and Nyanko-sensei...)

Holy shit, Suganuma is not the shouta for once. I would also like to note that contrary to former assumptions, he has not one but three character roles he gets pigeon-holed into: one of Those Two Guys, the shouta, or the adorable-yet-inept-and-bland apprentice to a sexy high INT warlord who is ostensibly very intelligent but provides pretty much no proof. (If it weren't for the fact that Jiang Boyue is supposed to be 19, he'd count for all three.) I think the only two games I've seen that have him playing a completely different role are the Lucian Bee's series (where I think he's the main villain) and Vitamin. (Seriously, he just can't disguise his voice. He's very much a one-note seiyuu, which I admittedly don't mind so much considering how moe he can get. You know me and my weird obsessions with boring or completely insane people. *shrugs* That said, I just about jumped out of my skin when he showed up as friggin' GUO JIA in the BB Senshi Sangokuden anime. Who not coincidentally is portrayed not as the insanely talented strategist one might expect but as Sima Yi's student despite being nine years older historically.)

Also HOLY FUCK Inoue is Takeda Shingen! *squees*

The people who made the original mobile game of Sengoku Lovers also have a whole bunch of other historical games, including Sanguo and Heian ones. The former appears to have GUO JIA as a capturable (OH HAI), so I'm really hoping these two make it to the DS/PSP at some point.

tl;dr: HERP DERP HISTORY

Title applies because I can't go to Otakon this year (despite having a job now) due to a very important occasion. Yeah, I know, no big deal, but still, I was really looking forward to it. :/ Also, I was halfway through my first playthrough of Unmei no Labyrinth with four of Kagetoki's events (including the Christmas one, which EVERY character requires for their ending) done when I found out that I can't get him first time around. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-

( On the other hand, I finally finished HaruToki 3 100%! [Spoilers!] )

Not gonna lie, HaruToki 3 has probably helped me more with Japanese than anything else except classes. It's been immensely helpful with vocab and getting me to look up the actual history and literature. Playing the game also taught me to recognize certain kanji for words I only knew in hiragana, and got me more accustomed to colloquial and ancient-ish speech patterns. So it's been...edutaining, I guess. O_o

Other otome-game-related news:
-Lost interest in Mizu no Senritsu 2 for now. Kira's pretty cool; kinda close to bitchy but mostly just hot-tempered, determined and, well, responsible. (For all that she's an orphan, she'd make an excellent mom.) Unfortunately, the first route and ending I played were disappointing. It felt kind of like nothing really happened until the end, and I'd hoped for more of the supernatural aspects rather than the school setting. (I mean, the mythic elements were definitely present for the whole route, but they felt somehow muted, and a lot of events were just...pedestrian.) The guys are a bit boring as well, in both personality and design.

To be fair, MnS2 DID have some really nice options that HaruToki 3 didn't; since the former's close to a pure visual novel, options for things like text skipping, individuals' voices and being able to jump back to an earlier part (basically anything still in the history) got really detailed. The recordkeeping also felt far more comprehensive, with percentages for every single event and a ridiculously long conversation history. Still, the fighting was a sloppy, simplistic minigame, and while I like the art okay (the CGs actually look quite attractive despite being done in an anime-ish style), the designs weren't terribly interesting visually. :/ I'm guessing that like in HaruToki 3 the story will get fleshed out and really pick up in other routes, but for now I feel more like playing Unmei no Labyrinth.

-HEART NO KUNI NO ALICE'S MANGA IS BEING LOCALIZED AND PUBLISHED! (Yes I'm super late, shut up.) I mean, has anyone in the States even heard of this series!? Quinrose's Alice games (actually most of their games) are very high on my to-play list (thank heavens for ports), since I hear the heroine is whip-smart and tough and the characters psychopathic and zany. (Oh, dragonlover58, Junjun plays the twins~. ~_^)

-Hakuouki: Shinsengumi Kitan is an entertaining anime (much better production values than the HaruToki 3 OVAs >:/), but man, Chizuru is so disappointing so far. She has done just about nothing but squeak in terror, do housework and be rescued for the whole damn show. I really hope she's not this bad in the games; I can't stand her from what I've seen in this adaptation. You're staying with the FUCKING SHINSENGUMI and there are bloody VAMPIRES and you have a fucking sword USE IT. Grow a spine, girl!

So yeah, still haven't done most of the Izayoiki routes, but I FINALLY finished Tomomori's and can thus move on to Unmei no Meikyuu for a bit. HaruToki3 is a fabulous game; while I can't really see much of Tomomori's attraction (his ending was the only part of his route I actually enjoyed), just about everyone else has their endearing qualities, and the storyline is honestly extremely enjoyable and well-done. Nozomi makes an excellent heroine; not necessarily the smartest, but not stupid, and the game encourages the player to have her stand up for herself and others, which I find really refreshing. Yeah, there're still stupid stereotypical shoujo events (why does every main character have to trip and fall so a guy can catch her!?), but they're made up for in spades.

( Final Normal Route Ranking- minor spoilers! )

Don't friend this account back on your various characters' accounts. Alternately, remove it from your characters' viewable friends lists so my normal posts don't clog up the game community. I've just added them so I can tell when stuff's happening in-game, since I lurk on my main account most of the time. Feel free to friend me under a normal username, though. ^^

Some exciting gaming news: XSEED and Falcom have made a deal and the former is publishing the Sora No Kiseki trilogy! They are apparently quite popular in Japan because Falcom did a fantastic job on the worldbuilding and character development for these games. I've wanted these to come overseas for a long time now (tried the PSP ports a long time ago, but couldn't get past all the unvoiced kanji and the tiny text), and with XSEED localizing them, we who don't know Japanese can finally play them and have a reasonably high chance of them not screwing up like other publishers! My experiences with XSEED's translations are restricted to Shadow Hearts: From the New World and Brave Story, but from what I've seen, they're just about as good as Atlus. All I do know about Sora no Kiseki from first-hand experience is that the music is mindblowingly good.

So yaaaay, finally some more good PSP JRPGs in the States!

Other stuff: just got my copy of Mizu no Senritsu 2 in the mail, and will probably be playing that for a while. It's surprisingly hard to find otome games that feature awesome badass heroines, and you can forget about ever getting a good protagonist in R18+ games (though I hear Sakurako/"Yoshitsune" isn't terrible). :/ Now to save up for those Quinrose games...

( Rantin' time [not responding to any comments on this section, just getting my own last BAWWWW outta the way so I never have to address this again]: )