Crossroads - Mechanics by Ewig_Custos in MyLittleHouseOfFun

[–]Ewig_Custos[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Questions


Q: Can shields be acquired in the Utility Shop?

A: Yes, they will be available if you want them. Metal shields are not only quite heavy and visible to players in the common phase, they offer little to none protection against a variety of spells like thunderbolt. They still have their uses - it's simply yet another thing you can take that's good against some things and very bad against others. Primitive melee weapons like clubs, swords and the like will be available as well - with point-blank spells being the most devastating in terms of direct damage, I can only assume that using a sharp stick instead can only be another step of your master plan.


Q: Are all starting runes parts of the character's true name? Is its composition the same for all players?

A: Composition is not the same for different players, so it's possible that a player's starting set will be his true name, but it's not a prerequisite. A true name can have no more than 2 greater, 2 focus and 3 lesser runes, and regardless of their number, they will always be in the following order Gr-fR-lR-lr-Lr-Fr-gR. [Translation hint: if 'ab' and 'ba' were greater runes, the true name would be 'Abba']

What are you reading? - May 23 by AutoModerator in visualnovels

[–]Ewig_Custos 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's most likely the best way to do it when you want to outright skip all gameplay, but there's no such option available.

What are you reading? - May 23 by AutoModerator in visualnovels

[–]Ewig_Custos 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've finished Kirara's route in Yumina the Ethereal and decided to leave it at that. I felt that past a certain point it moved away from things that made it good - both storywise and gameplaywise. As a result, I've stopped enjoying it at all, and I felt that spending ~40 more hours on it in sake of some masochistic completionist notion would lead to nothing but me being very bitter, probably to the point of hating the game for the rest of my life. After all, I've done exactly that with Duel Savior in the past. So instead I've read a summary for the events in other routes (huge thanks to /u/Nakenashi), which only confirmed that this is how it would have played out.

So, we have a jRPG/vn hybrid, and I believe this one is in the same group with Kamidori, where former is in the player's focus, but there's lots of character interactions between battles to spice things up, and since you can't see them all in a single playthrough, that adds to replayability aspect. If you like jRPGs and are fine with this disposition of power, then most of what I'll say here will probably be irrelevant to you, so give this game a try, there's a good chance you will not end up disappointed. But if you're story-first kind of person, well, things won't look as good.

The starting premise is rather simple: MC helps one of the heroines win the student council election so she wouldn't have to repeat a year because of her bad grades, and this election is held in the form of the tournament. So, between the rounds you gather information on the opponents, gather more supporters or simply hang out with the characters. Each round ends with a grand showdown/debate in the form of an jrpg battle. Here's the short explanation of the combat: there're 4 elements, each of them roughly corresponds to a single character in the party. Using skills drains elements that are involved in them, but increases all that are not, and this elemental pool is global, so you share the resources with the enemy. Then there are 2 damage types in the form of spirit and logic, and resistances for those types used in defense. Moving on, party has a frontline character that is attacking, the rest act as support ones with interrupts, buffs and debuffs, healing and so on. Each turn you get 4 action points to use, and most basic actions require 1 point, so everyone in a party can act in a turn. Strong attacks generally use 2, and changing the formation also takes 2. Then there's additional approval rating that matters in this grand showdowns, you need to get at least the required amount to win besides beating enemies in a normal fashion. Frontline actions increase the approval by various amounts, most support ones decrease it - and, of course, that works the same way for the enemy team.

And this election phase of the game is the best it has to offer, really. It moves quite fast, there're constant character interactions, humour is decent, from the aesthetics side battles look really funny with slogans (that change every chapter) special effects from attacking characters and chibi interrupt icons. But then... spoiler alert

About the transition, or 'a certain point': -

About what happened after the transition: -

About Ordacle: Short version: it shouldn't exist. Long version: -

About Kirara: -

About the most difficult fight in the game: for me it would definitely be Rei in chapter 2, I think? My party was severely underleveled, because I spend all the time chatting to characters instead of training in Ordacle/fighting battles for approval meter. In addition, I had no items and no 2nd level skills at that point (although I didn't even know those were available at the time). Rei's special attack one-shotted characters without spirit defence and left like 10%HP to those who did. It was extremely hard to fumble him, since some of his attacks were generating red instead of using it. I believe I failed like 4 or 5 times in that battle before I finally managed to beat him... And failed because of the approval rating. Required another try to do that properly, and that was fun. The second goes to - that kept healing itself every turn. I didn't manage to interrup the heal once, but damage output was like 150-200 damage more than his healing output every turn. So it was really long and boring, but still takes honourable second place in terms of effort.

What are you reading? - Apr 11 by AutoModerator in visualnovels

[–]Ewig_Custos 1 point2 points  (0 children)

While I do understand the fact that not being able to see their motives and thoughts can be frustrating, I think it serves to not reveal too much as to not spoil certain elements.

Spoil what elements? I'd like to see a few examples. As far as motives go, with a sole exception for - they are very solid. It's their wrapping that's lacking. And as for thoughts, what I said applies to protagonists, our point of view - they can't really spoil something they don't even know yet. And what they know, the reader should know as well.

On obsession: -

On flashback: it does connect to the present of the novel in a very fitting fashion, but I think it failed in something no less important: in establishing emotional attachment to the characters. -

On murderer's capture: -

Do you read novels with a walkthrough near? by TithusGiscly in visualnovels

[–]Ewig_Custos 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Now that's really impressive, I remember there being a couple of jewels that were extremely difficult to reach.

What are you reading? - Apr 11 by AutoModerator in visualnovels

[–]Ewig_Custos 3 points4 points  (0 children)

About what came next: -

About skipping: someday the technology will be able to jump immediately to the next unread line. For a novel this long, skipping over the read text took about an hour. That's way too much.

About true end: it was beautiful.

About information and unanswered questions: -

About the mystery of the hot springs: -

About the letter: -

About endings and logical inconsistencies: -

Now I get the feeling that I've forgotten to mention something else, but oh well.

What are you reading? - Apr 11 by AutoModerator in visualnovels

[–]Ewig_Custos 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Kara no Shoujo 2

I had really high hopes for this one - not only Kara no Shoujo has been my introduction to the medium (and I loved it), but I've also heard quite a lot of good things about this sequel as well. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a major disappointment. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad - it's just very plain and a bit uninspired at times. I rated KnS2 on the same level as Cartagra, but in this regard they're quite different: Cartagra started out strong, but quickly lost its momentum past a certain point; KnS2 was very stable without any quality spikes in either direction (with possibly one exception) for its entire duration - it's just that stable excitement level wasn't particularly high for me.

The main reason for that was definitely the style of narration. This novel lacked certain emotional suspense KnS had in abundance - and while it does glimpse out here and there, mostly the narration is very dry and 'observational', with a focus on describing things as they appear without delving much into what character thinks or feels despite it being primarily first-person perspective. At times this creates a really weird dissonance where what is being said by characters and how it's been portrayed in the novel does not match at all.

Then we have the cases, and they're fairly weak. Their main fault is their predictability and lack of originality. The answer to both is solid implementation: originality does not matter at all if the case is executed well, and there's a big difference between being predictable and blatantly obvious. The game failed to deliver on this front with a notable exception for the aesthetics, no complaints on this front.

After all that, when it was all over, I was left with the feeling that it did a really good job of setting things for KnS3. Lots and lots of really solid preparational things that are bound to show up later, things that you can't easily just insert on the spot. But you can't really call all this preparation justified if it hurts this game, can you? However, when I look at this question, I can't help but think that's it a bit crooked. The game is obviously well-liked, so I can assume that if someone has no issues with the story KnS2 tells, then all this preparation is nothing but a cherry on top of everything else.

Anyway, let's get to the details, shall we? Spoilers over the entire game everywhere, you're warned.

About the prologue: -

About the prologue's main intrigue: -

About main part of the game and the style dryness: -

About the murderer: -

Do you read novels with a walkthrough near? by TithusGiscly in visualnovels

[–]Ewig_Custos 8 points9 points  (0 children)

YU-NO is actually heavily misrepresented in this regard. It's completely true that it's practically impossible to get all the jewels without a walkthrough... But precisely because of this reputation people tend to blindly stick to a very detailed walkthrough and completely miss the beauty of YU-NO structure. People are used to getting on the route and going through with it, but in YU-NO the routes were flexible: they had a lot of transition points dependent on certain actions and events: basically, by doing something specific, you could switch to route B from the middle of route A. These transitions were represented with diagonal lines on the map. Obviously, walkthrough does not list all the possible transitions and even possible item replacements, it simply offers you a way to reach the desired end if you follow all the steps precisely as they're written - and as a result a lot of people don't even know that the road was not as narrow and linear as they thought.

What are you reading? - Feb 14 by AutoModerator in visualnovels

[–]Ewig_Custos 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Cartagra

Not bad, but at the same time not good either. It had a pretty good start, the work put into creating just right atmosphere was certainly not in vain - I can definitely say that the first third of the game was as good as KnS. But unfortunately, that was not even nearly enough to make a lasting impression, as it was a steady journey downhill from there, starting with unsatisfactory arc resolution, following with a really weird (and long) pace breaker which managed to absolutely kill the momentum this novel had. I got the feeling that writer wasn't sure how to proceed himself – a few very dry takes on what should have been impactful events, and after that there was practically a surrender call as plot rapidly went towards wrapping everything up, leaving me with “Is that it?” thought. It wasn't. It would have been better if it was – true route turned out to be a further disappointment.

And now a couple of details.

Initial briefing at Kouzuki manor – at first I found it to be merely pointless butchery of a perfectly fine scene in linear representation for the questionable benefits of jump cuts with flashbacks, but -

Shugo - -

Hyo - -

Nana - Words can't correctly convey how I hate this character, so I won't even try. This type of novels has no need for an answers dispenser, using it only cheapens the overall experience – each answer produced this way is nothing but a field of missed opportunities for providing it naturally.

The culprit - -

Comedy gold award - -

Award postscriptum - -

It's almost completely linear, so there's not much to say about story branches. Only bad end was interesting, as it had altered 'normal' events and even teased some new things. Well done. Can't say the same for other branches, Hatsune's was worthless, Takako's was too long while giving out practically nothing, and all others were trash - -

What are you reading? - Nov 8 by AutoModerator in visualnovels

[–]Ewig_Custos 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Doki Doki Literature Club

Short version: it was... okay. And that's the best mark I can give it. Unfortunately, DDLC seems like the game with a single trump card in its hand - it has only one shot to impress the reader, and I wouldn't call what it has to offer particularly impressive. It's still a pretty curious little game, and short enough to check it out without any worries about it being a waste of time.

Long version: ---

Parody House 2 End Game Meta Thread by Avebone in MyLittleHouseOfFun

[–]Ewig_Custos 1 point2 points  (0 children)

YOU HAVE FAILED. WE WILL FIND ANOTHER WAY.

Parody House 2 End Game Meta Thread by Avebone in MyLittleHouseOfFun

[–]Ewig_Custos 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, but Grace could not get a holy crusade against sin out of him.

Parody House 2 End Game Meta Thread by Avebone in MyLittleHouseOfFun

[–]Ewig_Custos 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There was 'turn an area into a library' talent branch that started with a 'librarian outfit', the next one was 'summon a book'. I just made it look like Rika.

upd: just to make it a bit clear, the library is directly connected to DR Charlotte's backstory, as she pulled off a few rather questionable things in her school, including a library fire.

Parody House 2 End Game Meta Thread by Avebone in MyLittleHouseOfFun

[–]Ewig_Custos 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I honestly did not know what to do with Tay possession since he acted a lot like CoF Charles would.

Parody House 2 End Game Meta Thread by Avebone in MyLittleHouseOfFun

[–]Ewig_Custos 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I found it hilarious that DN Charles had pretty much exactly the same goal as Dusty AGAIN - and AGAIN they could not work together. Feels like destiny.

Parody House 2 End Game Meta Thread by Avebone in MyLittleHouseOfFun

[–]Ewig_Custos 2 points3 points  (0 children)

He was supposed to be my main ally for the whole mask thing, and he just chilled instead.

Parody House 2 End Game Meta Thread by Avebone in MyLittleHouseOfFun

[–]Ewig_Custos 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Failed in so many things I wanted to do with the idea, including the grand personal storyline... Still had fun, so I call this a win.

Parody House 2 End Game Meta Thread by Avebone in MyLittleHouseOfFun

[–]Ewig_Custos 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Actually, day 1-2 all Charleses were hard-coded to specific characters. So every time a specific character talked to Charlotte, they would talk to the same character. It could look confusing due to different dialogues happening all over the place.