The "Real World Ending"

(Spoilers!)






So............. I think that I actually just completed Kagiha's "route", because of that one wrong choice I made earlier. I'm pretty sure that each character doesn't have a full on route, but just a separate ending. There'll be more on that later.

I completed the "Real World Ending", and it was really dramatic and a good conclusion to the story. It's actually quite romantic, and even though you don't properly get with anybody in it, Beniyuri's technically in love with Kagiha at this point.

It turns out that everybody's in a coma, not just Monshiro. And Kagiha's stuck in the bottom of a lake somewhere. He must've been still conscious for most of this, because if he was really dead he wouldn't be stuck in the mansion. So he's just been floating underwater for ten years, still not properly dead yet. I don't understand how everybody else is in a coma, because it showed a flashback to Kagiha Natsu's funeral where they're all there, and I'm pretty sure they all went comatose during the accident, so how are they able to visit the funeral if they're in a hospital?? I dunno. I probably missed something.

So they all kill Hikage, who I was actually starting to like until we found out who he really was. Then they all go back to the real world, except Natsu, who's dead for real now. However, the game says that his body did float back up to the surface. I expect that it would've been very rotten and very disgusting looking if it came back ten years later. Plus, it would also still be a child's body whereas everybody else has grown up. How does a body even survive ten years in a lake? It would've gotten eaten like a week after it turned up. But the place is supposed to be haunted, so maybe that had something to do with it?

After I completed the first proper ending, I wasn't really sure how to get onto anybody else's route, so I consulted a guide! I tried to get Kagiha's route, but I went out to a public place and none of the guides would actually work because of the filtering systems so I had to use my own brain. I ended up on Yamato's route, probably because I never read all of the Kagiha related side episodes.

I was excited to start a proper route, until it abruptly ended. It turns out that each character has their own ending, not a route. A few things happened that were related to Yamato, then it just ended on a pretty CG. They literally just hug each other, then it ends. And it's not a bad ending either, because I got a trophy for completing a character ending. Because of that, I realised that my ending with Kagiha wasn't a bad ending, it was his actual route. Or at least a substitute for a route. I now understand why people say this game is different to your typical otome title.  People also say that there isn't that much romance, but there are so many cute character interactions that make up for it, at least for me, because in my head even just platonic stuff is great to self-insert yourself into! I expected routes for each character though, unless there is and I just did something wrong! I'll do more research into it later.

If each character does have a really short ending though, it means that it won't take me very long to finish the game. Oh well. But I hope I don't finish it before my birthday because I have nothing else to play after this except Welcome Park (which is just a tech demo really), until I eventually get the C:R fan-disc.

It's been a really good ride so far with my Vita. I'm excited to try out even more games on it, and maybe even non-otome titles if I really want!

See you all later!

What on Earth Just Happened??

(UPDATE FROM A FEW MONTHS AFTER THIS WAS WRITTEN: I was going back to read all of my posts and for some reason at the end of this one the text looks all funny. I dunno what went wrong but Blogger won't let me fix it, so it's just gonna have to stay there. Sorry!!!)









SPOILERS DOWN BELOW FOR PSYCHEDELICA OF THE BLACK BUTTERFLY!
















OK, so I just came across the biggest plot twist so far! Hikage is actually the villain of this game. That came out of nowhere! It turns out that he's not actually the childhood friend we thought he was, and that cute little Monshiro (who had better be a love interest because he's awesome) is actually the person we thought Hikage was. I absolutely did not see that coming! Isn't he supposed to be a love interest? Does that mean we get to date a bad guy? Awesome!

Cutest scene so far in the game is when Monshiro sleeps with Beniyuri, but not romantically or anything. But I had no idea that he was actually going to be whatever-his-name is, Yamato's comatose brother!

But Hikage's actually more awesome now that's he's officially a Twist Villain™. His voice has changed to be a lot more dramatic and attractive, too. So I suppose he's just some guy who runs the manor, and not anybody from Beniyuri's past? Or maybe Beniyuri and the rest of the gang did something to piss him off and now he has a massive chip on his shoulder, and that's why he's trying to kill them all? I suppose I'll just have to keep reading to find out!


This story is getting very dramatic now. Before it was quite calm, because most of the time everybody was hanging out in the mansion and doing normal stuff. I like my plots dramatic. I don't know how far I have to go now until the story ends and I'm able to date everybody. I really want to date Hikage now, even though I was planning to do Yamato first because he was interesting!
I am really enjoying this game! I don't know if it'll be my favourite otome though, because they're all so good! Now I'm gonna go back to playing! Goodbye!!

:)

With most otome games, I just sit back and read and not have to put any effort into anything at all, except making the right choices. But with this game, I actually have to do stuff. I got to this bit in the story where I have to read six side episode things to pass, except each episode costs points and I don't have enough. So I have to grind with the mini games to earn enough points. I'm actually enjoying this because it means that I actually have to work to get more of the plot, and it's giving me a challenge and a reason to keep playing. It kind of reminds me of how much grinding I did with Mystic Messenger and all those free to play otome games to get further in the story.

The character you're playing the mini game with says stuff whilst you are playing. I didn't notice this the first time because I was doing it in public without the sound, but when I went home and played it again, there were so many sound effects and stuff. I chose to play it with Yamato this time, and it kept repeating the same voice clips over and over again and it was quite funny!

Once I actually get to the romance bit, I dunno who I'm gonna choose first because they're all pretty good. Normally in an otome game there's the one guy I don't like, but I like them all here. Karasuba's pretty cute so I might choose him first. I don't normally like love interests like him but he's actually really cool. He kind of feels like a cross between Yoosung and Heisuke to me, one of those young boy characters who's always nice to the main character.

My Japanese studying must've paid off because sometimes I can understand a few of the verbs the characters are using! They seem to use the verb "話し" a lot. The English translations are never exact though. Once one of the boys said something really simple in English but in Japanese he said something way longer instead. Maybe it was some regional joke that nobody in the west would get.

This game is sooooo good though. I used my real first and last name again so it's funny seeing the flashbacks with Beniyuri's family and seeing her little sister have a Japanese first name with this really western sounding surname. It would be even funnier if I gave her a stupid inappropriate name like "Sweaty Balls" but I don't really want to do that in a game I'm actually enjoying.

Even if a game's MC is really fleshed out, in my head I make up a back story for her that's basically my life story, just to increase the self-insert immersion a little bit more. If the game is set in Japan I'll usually pretend she's a foreigner on holiday or something just to make it seem like me a little bit more. The PS Vita otome game MCs seem to have a lot more backstory than the mobile MCs. Mystic Messenger's main character can literally be whoever you want and she doesn't even have a backstory, whereas the MC in games like Hakuoki has a full personality and stuff, the only thing you control is her name and some of her decisions.

I dunno how long it'll take me to finish this game. I'm probably going to try and read every short episode and complete the flowchart so it might take me a while. The flowchart is a good idea, I wish more games would have it so I could see how many story branches there are. The short episodes are a cool idea too. They're all just cute side stories to help you get to know everybody a bit better and to take a break from all of the serious plot stuff.

The next game I'll probably be playing is Code: Realize: Future Blessings. I'm gonna try and look into getting a cheap 8GB memory card so I can get Amnesia and London Detective Mysteria from the PlayStation Store too. I know I could just hack the Vita and get a SD card adapter but then I can't use PSN or anything and I don't wanna brick my console. I did hack my Wii though, but I didn't really do much after that except remove the region locking.

I hope you're all having a great weekend. Mine's going pretty well. I'm going to leave now!  Goodbye!

:)

 SPOILERS DOWN BELOW! :)














So, I literally just reached Lupin's dramatic love confession scene, and it was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo romantic. This might actually be one of my favourite routes, to be honest. It was so cute because Lupin started talking about the one he loved, and Cardia was so oblivious, she thought he was in love with someone else when he actually loved her. :)

If you read my post about Sainty-G's route, then you would've seen that I was wondering whether Idea were after Cardia in every single route or if it was only a thing in Saint-Germain's alternate timeline/route. But the stuff with Idea is also happening in this route, so that's pretty cool. And Saint-Germain, even though he isn't romantically involved with Cardia here, he still protected her from them instead of trying to kill her like he did in his own route. Like, why didn't he try to kill her this time? Well, I think that maybe he just wasn't tasked to kill her in this timeline. I'm going to call each route a "timeline", because I kind of think of them as all parallel dimensions where in each one Cardia ends up with someone else.

Even though in Victor's route Queen Victoria was a villain, this time she's meant to be a good guy, and I don't think she's in charge of plotting any terrorist plots this time.

We also got the obligatory game title drop in this route. I don't think I could've predicted when I went into this game that Code: Realize was the name of a terrorist plot. I thought it was just some gibberish that didn't make sense.

I think I've already talked about this, but this game actually reminds me a lot of Hakuoki, but that's probably because I saw somebody mention it online. In both games, the title drop is in the main guy's route, the MC is some kind of monster/demon thing looking for her father who ends up running into a bunch of handsome men, and there's an evil twin brother. It's not really surprising that they're kind of the same, because they were both developed and localised by the same companies. But the games are still different though, I'm not trying to say that Code: Realize is a knock off or anything.

I don't think I could pick a favourite out of the two games though. They're both very different. It's harder to choose a favourite love interest from Hakuoki because they're all so awesome, but even though I like everybody from Code: Realize, Van Helsing will probably always be the best one in my opinion.

After I've done Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly and the C:R fan-discs, I might purchase a few Japanese otome games. I've been browsing Amazon.co.jp to see what's out there for the Vita, and there are so many choices!

Apparently games like PsychicEmotion6 and Hakuoki SSL are some of the easiest to start off with, so I might buy those. There's also those Uta no Prince-Sama games that I've heard great things about. I will definitely be playing Hakuoki SSL before I die though, and Diabolik Lovers. Those have been on my list for a long time, and are my main motivations to study Japanese.

Even though people say that Diabolik Lovers is really weird, I really like the art and I like most yandere characters so I should enjoy it. If I play it in public, at least nobody can look over my shoulder and see the weird shit that goes on in those games, because it'll all be in Japanese so they can't read it! Hopefully I'll be able to understand it if I get it. I'm on Lesson 4 on the first Genki book so my Japanese is very basic.

Hakuoki SSL just sounds cute, and nobody dies, so that's great! Plus, Kazama has an actual route here instead of just a single ending where he kisses you and that's it. I could always just buy the PS Vita two part Hakuoki re-make in English as well, because Kazama has extra scenes there too. But I don't wanna play the same game again, and I don't know if there is enough extra content to justify getting it. There are new routes though, so maybe I should get it after I've gone through the rest of the English Vita otome library.

No matter what I play, I'll be sure to write it down here. If I play a Japanese one I'll try to recap the plots more for those people who can't play it because of language barriers. I also should get around to playing V's route and Ray's good ending, but I really need a break from Mystic Messenger. Having to take time out of the middle of your day to get a certain chat room gets tiring eventually.

I certainly am excited for the future of my otome gaming career!







:)

I've Almost Finished!

 (More spoilers for Code: Realize down below)


I literally just completed Victor's route and it was great, as expected. It was strange though that Cardia was slowing falling in love with this bloke who she suspected to be her father for some of the game...

This route probably had the most romance in it compared to all of the others. Now I've just got to play the after story (Which will probably have another fan service CG in it!) then I'm onto Lupin's route!

It'll be sad when I finally finish it all. At least I have the two fan-discs waiting for me, although I don't think the second disc is out in English yet. Really they should be called "fan-cartridges", because the PS Vita doesn't use UMDs, it uses those tiny little cartridges, like my old DSi XL does.

I'll see you all later once I've finished the after story!

...

This blog should just be called "Misty's Otome Blog" now, because all I write about are those games!

So, I finished Impey's route. I knew I should've changed the MC's name to something other than my real name during this route, because everytime he said "I love you, (insert my real name here).", it made me gag and feel kind of awkward. It's weird because I've never felt that before when "dating" my least favourite love interest.

I'm sure Impey is the perfect boyfriend for someone out there, but he's just not my type. I don't find him attractive at all. At least the story and the art was nice. In the after story there was another one of those shirtless fan-service CGs to add to the collection. 

I'm getting a lot of PlayStation trophies from this game. With my Xbox I'm really bad at everything so I never get any achievements, but with these visual novels they're so easy so the achievements keep coming through. Now I can use this time to advertise my PSN account because I have no friends. Please add me, my name is strangepigeon333! (My Xbox Live ID is itsdehhhhhh).

This morning I skipped through the common route like a VHS tape, and now I'm on Victor's route. Luckily he's a person I am actually attracted to. It's starting to look like he's got a depressing back story, like everybody else in this game. I've noticed that near the end of every route, there's always a really long part where the chosen love interest explains their back story to the player. I'm not complaining, it's just something I've noticed.

Hopefully this route will turn out to be as good as all the others!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, I'm going to change the subject.

I have quite a lot of posts on this blog now. At first I was writing them for people to read them, but now it feels like I'm not doing it for online fame, just for myself to look back at this at a later date and either cringe or feel nostalgic. That's probably a good thing, because they say that it's bad to be desperate for fame. This place is kind of like a diary.

... And that's all I have to write for today. Typing this has made me realise that I've forgotten to watch the new trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home that came out yesterday! Oh well.

That Was Quick...

 Spoilers below, I suppose.



It took me only two days to finish Sainty G's route. I must've really been enjoying it. The whole plot was so different from the last route, with that whole plot with Idea wanting Cardia dead and all that.

If Saint-Germain brought Cardia and all the others together in the mansion just for this special murder mission, why doesn't he try to kill her in any of the other routes? It may have made things a bit more interesting. Or maybe all of the other routes are alternate timelines where Idea doesn't exist at all.

Now I'm onto Impey's route. I wonder what depressing backstory he has up his sleeve? This route is turning out to be quite light-hearted. I don't think it's going to have as much sadness and plot twists as the other ones. Impey turned out to be a vampire, but I accidentally already found that out online! :(


Anyway, that's all I have to write today. I should be done with Impey's route in the next few days, so I'll give my thoughts on it then. Goodbye!

Another Code: Realize Post

SPOILERS BELOW.















Saint-Germain is a very strange man. I normally like yandere characters but this guy is just weird. There's probably an explanation behind why he wants to murder Cardia, but I haven't got to that bit yet. I have no idea why Cardia still likes this man after all he's done to her. From the start of this route I could tell that something strange was going on. I have no idea how the romantic relationship is going to pan out after all this. If I was one of the other love interests, I would not let Cardia go anywhere near Saint-Germain at all.

Even though I'm actually enjoying this route, I still miss Van Helsing and how interesting his path was. It feels weird seeing him in the game as a side character now. I suppose I'll just have to get used to it, because I still have three more routes to get through until I can play the fandisc.

There's also an anime of the game I could watch but I'm not gonna bother because it's just the same story as the game except I can't self-insert myself into it. Plus I'm not very good at watching TV series all the way through. I'm not really much of a binge watcher because I get bored easily, unless the show is really, really good.

On the PlayStation store there are so many great looking games that are digital only. I want a lot of them so I was planning to get an 8GB memory card (I found a cheap one on Amazon) but I don't think that's going to be enough. There are bigger memory cards but they are all really expensive. Maybe I should just get physical games for now.

Well, that's all I have to write for today. Goodbye.

Code: Realize is a Very Good Game

Well, I finally got a PS Vita. I don't have a memory card or anything yet but luckily I made sure that I purchased the slim model so that I have 1GB of space, which should be fine for a while.

I have two games for it, Code: Realize and Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly. Before I start PotBB I'm going to get through C:R first so that I don't have to have two games competing for my attention at the same time.

Last night I finished my first route in Code: Realize. I'm having so much fun with it. The plot kind of reminds me of Hakuoki a bit, but I don't really care.

The first time I picked it up was in public so I had to have the sound turned off. Whilst I was reading it I made up individual voices for each of the characters in my head, so when I got home and turned the sound back on it sounded slightly strange hearing everybody speak in different voices, so I had to turn the voice acting off. I'm very sorry to the voice actors, I really should've turned them back on because it sounds like they must've put a lot of effort into the game. The BGM was probably quite good too, but I didn't get to hear much of that either.



Spoilers for the game below!

If you read my Hakuoki post from a few months ago, you'll know that I was crap at making the right choices so I had to use the walkthrough as a crutch to get me through the entire game. I'm quite proud of myself because when playing this game, I managed to get the route I wanted without looking at any guides.

I was originally planning to start off with Victor's route, until Van Helsing came into the picture and I chose him instead. In his route there were so many massive plot twists and a lot of sad scenes that probably would've been a lot more dramatic if I had turned the sound on!

But somewhere along the line I made one incorrect choice, which led me to have a very strange ending. At the end, Van Helsing kills himself. He's supposed to wake up, but because of one wrong choice, he never came back and it was quite depressing. The game didn't even tell me it was a bad ending, like it did when I did the wrong thing earlier on in the game and ended up getting murdered by Jack the Ripper.

This was where I had to use a walkthrough to figure out where I went wrong. Luckily I had a save from earlier on in the day so I could go back and correct my mistakes. I was quite happy at the end when Van Helsing woke up and everything was great again for Cardia. There wasn't a kiss scene though, which is disappointing because I heard that all of the other love interests get one.

After I completed the route, there was an after story for me to read. It was rather cute, and I thought it was going to contain a sex scene, but it turned out that was just a tease. That was rather unfortunate, but at least I got a shirtless CG to add to the collection! The only sex scenes I've found in these games is a bit in 707's after ending (At least I think) where it sort of implies that they're about to do some sexy stuff, and Harada's route in Hakuoki where it describes the beginnings of it then just fades to black.

Cardia was an alright main character, I suppose. I renamed her to what I'm called in real life, because I like to self-insert. Self-inserting can be frustrating though, because sometimes the MC in a game does really annoying things that other people might be OK with, but I just don't like them. Sometimes Cardia was quite stupid, but it's like that in every otome game I've played so far, even Mystic Messenger where you have quite a lot of control over what the MC does.

Now I've started Saint-Germain's route (with a tiny bit of help from a walkthrough), because he's pretty and also because I heard he's a bit of a yandere. I'm at the very beginning of the route and he's acting a bit strange. I do think he's attractive, but I'm not sure if he's good love interest material for Cardia yet. He really just seems like a friend or a guardian, not someone she's gonna date. I'll have to wait and see what happens.

Next I'm going to do Impey's route just to get him out of the way. He's officially my least favourite love interest because he's not really my type. I found him slightly annoying sometimes, but he is still a great character.

After I've completed this game and Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, I'm probably going to buy the fandisc, because a shop near me has had the special edition version in stock for a good price and it's been there since March and I really, really, really, want to get it in case some other person gets it even though that is very unlikely because the PS Vita isn't very popular. Sorry about that very long sentence.

I'm surprised that a lot of gaming shops near me actually sell Vita games. I've seen games like Period Cube, Norn9, Hakuoki and Bad Apple Wars for sale, and some of them even have been purchased. I wonder if there's an otome fan near me who keeps buying them all? That would be great, as long as they don't buy that special edition copy of Code: Realize Future Blessings that I really want. It's the only one there, if it sold I would have to buy it on Amazon, and for some reason it is way more expensive there.

After I finish Saint-Germain's route, I'll provide you another update about my thoughts on C:R. So far I'm really enjoying it. I think I can understand it better than Hakuoki because it's not based around history and because it's actually set in my own country. I expected them to use a lot of British slang in the game but because it was translated by Americans they use words like "mommy" most of the time which can be annoying but it doesn't really matter in the end.

I wrote a lot today, didn't I? Now I'm starving for lunch. I'm going to get something to eat, so goodbye.

More Otome Game Ramblings...

Cheritz, the creators of Mystic Messenger, are going to be releasing a new game soon, and it sounds really cool. So far it's only in BETA on the Google Play Store, but it should eventually come out of BETA and go onto the iOS App Store.

I didn't really know what it was going to be at first, so I did a bit of research on it. It's called the Ssum, and it's a calling/texting game like Mystic Messenger, but still a bit different. Apparently it learns your schedule so that you don't have to miss chats anymore whilst you're at work or school! And it sounds like you have only one relationship that never ends, so you don't switch routes or get any bad endings or anything.

The artwork is pretty, but it's a lot different looking to the art in the other Cheritz games. From the screenshots I've seen, the UI looks very similar to Mystic Messenger's, with the same fonts and everything.

I'm guessing that the game is going to be free to play, but it doesn't concern me that much because Mystic Messenger is one of the most generous F2P games I have ever played. It's probably not going to have any advertisements or anything like that.

I could play the BETA on my spare Android phone if I wanted to, but I'm just going to wait until it comes to iOS. Who knows, it might even turn out to be better than Mystic Messenger!

Speaking of Mystic Messenger, I'm having a break from it now. But on Saturday, I'm going to try Ray's route for the third time. The Max Speed feature would really help me here, but I'm too cheap to spend any money on the game! Another Story doesn't even give you Max Speed on the first day, unlike the other routes.

I was bored yesterday so I downloaded this F2P otome game called "Several Shades of Sadism". The UI and the fact that the love interests were all brothers kind of reminded me of Diabolik Lovers. It's an alright game, and it runs exactly the same way as Midnight Cinderella and Ikemen Sengoku, meaning it can also be a little bit laggy.

The interfaces of these F2P otome games feel like old fashioned HTML pages that use graphics as buttons. They even load like webpages too. Sometimes when I've been playing IkeSen on a slow connection, one part of the character's face will load before the other, so I just see a floating face for a few seconds!

Several Shades of Sadism (The name sounds like movie name you'd hear in a TV show that's trying not to get a copyright strike for using the name Fifty Shades of Grey!) has your average otome plot where the heroine ends up in a situation where she has to choose what attractive guy to start working for. At least the game still entertains me. It'll probably end up being deleted once I come across a "love challenge" that gets too difficult.

It reminds me of the first otome game I played, about two years ago. It was called "Shall We Date? Blood and Roses". The game was another boring F2P mobile app that I only downloaded because I saw it advertised on Facebook. I think I had it on my phone for almost a week, before I deleted it because I thought that the "love challenge" system would eventually become impossible to beat. The only thing I really liked about it was the art.

I then became curious of this strange genre of Japanese female dating games, so I searched for them on the App Store. They all intrigued me, but I was a bit put off by the F2P features that they all seemed to have.

Then I think I downloaded one of those F2P historical otomes, but I can't remember for the life of me what it was called. All I know is that I played through the prologue and it was about some girl who had a brother or something and that I chose the route of some guy with a red outfit and long, black hair. One of the character names from IkeSen sounded like it was from that game, so it may have been set in the same time period. It may have been that Samurai Love Ballad: Party game, but I don't think that game has the guy in the red outfit. That game was deleted off of my phone very quickly, too.

I forgot about the genre, probably because the only games I had seen were the crappy mobile ones. But then Mystic Messenger came along, and I became interested again. At least now I'm able to get some of the fancier paid otome games.

I was thinking of getting the one other PSP otome game that's in English, Sweet Fuse, but I'm not sure about the love interests that are available. I thought the PSP would have more games in the genre in English than just Hakuouki and Sweet Fuse, but I was wrong. Most of them are for the Vita, PC or Switch now.

Wow, I've rambled a lot in this post, haven't I? We might as well call this place Misty's Otome Blog from now on...

Here's another abrupt conclusion to this very long blog post. Goodbye!

ANOTHER BAD ENDING??

So I tried to play Ray’s route again, and I participated in all the chats and everything! But just before the Day Four branch, I got a bad ending! At first I thought that I was getting V’s route instead, because I was nice to him in one of the later chats, because a few of the other answers required me to sound very annoying.

This ending was actually quite romantic, so I’m not complaining, but how on Earth did I get it? I was in as many chats as I was the last time I played, so it’s not because of low participation levels! It might be because I got an equal amount of hearts for both V and Ray. But I was only nice to V a couple of times, and that was mainly by accident!! However, this time I did choose less of the answers that made it clear that I was in a game, and I think some of them gave out purple hearts.

I’m starting to think now that this game doesn’t want me to get a good ending at all!

(Spoilers below!)

In this ending Ray thinks that you care about the RFA more than him and starts crying (Which made me sad!) then he starts acting a bit like a yandere and says that you can be his assistant forever or something like that. It’s like the bad ending you can get in the regular story prologue where Unknown takes you away as his “assistant”.

I liked this ending, even though Ray was acting a bit creepy. It’s a shame that I couldn’t pass the fourth day, though. I didn’t expect that at all!!

Hopefully next time round, I’ll be successful. I wanna get enough hourglasses to unlock the Christmas DLC before the holidays are over, so I’d better start gaining those hearts quickly!

Unintentional Bad Ending?

Well, that was disappointing...

 Today my Another Story journey ended when I was on Day 10. For some reason I got a bad ending unintentionally.

(Spoilers below!)

I didn't choose any incorrect answers or nothing. Everything was going smoothly, until I got to a game branch. I didn't even save at that point, because I gave up on saving my games months ago.

Some Mint Eye follower came up to me and gave me some drugs or something, and the next thing I knew I was stuck in some dungeon. (Why am I referring to the MC in first person??) Then Saeran/Ray/Unknown or whatever you want to call him appeared. He was like "I'm gonna get you out of here, just take these sleeping pills!" and I was thinking "Wait a second! How do I know Rika hasn't manipulated you into tricking me?? And if I'm leaving, what's gonna happen to you??????" but there were no options to protest against him.

Then Saeran was like "I'm gonna miss you!" and the screen went blank. Then I saw the background for Rika's old apartment! At this point, I thought I was still heading for the normal ending. (I messed up a lot of the emails so I knew I was never going to get the good ending.)

I tapped my screen, and this was what came up.

"The messenger game will restart." What does that mean? And then I got the Bad Ending screen.

Is this ending like a fourth wall break or something? Because my messenger technically restarted straight after that.

According to the Internet, to get this ending you need to have participated in less than 30% of the chats that occurred since the last game branch. But that's weird, because I've taken part in most of the chats so far, except the late night ones! After doing some more digging, I found out that other people who have been playing the game often like me have also gotten this ending. It must be a bug. A very annoying bug.

I was really enjoying this route so far too!

It's such a shame that I have to replay it all from the beginning.... :(

I'M FINALLY PLAYING IT!

I was going to wait until Friday to play Another Story, but I couldn't wait!!!!

The game is so good so far, I'll get into spoilers later on, since this is just a quick post! And there are new ringtones and notification tones for each of the characters!!! They all sound so awesome!!!

I sound really excited here, don't I?

Anyway, stay tuned to see my initial impressions on Another Story!!!

Okita's Route

Well, today's Halloween. I wanted to go trick or treating (I've only ever been once) but I can't find anybody to go with me. Oh well. I don't need to eat sweets anyway. The weather's also really wet and miserable, like it always is on Halloween.

...And this post is about Hakuouki again.

I completed Okita's route earlier, and even though he isn't my favourite love interest, his route is my favourite so far. It felt like there were more interactions between him and the main character, whereas in the other routes I've played sometimes there was more historical war stuff instead.

Now I'm aiming to get Heisuke, and yes, I'm still using the walkthrough. Once I've done every single route I may try to play without it and see what route I land on. I might even try to get some bad endings.

Guess what? I'm only about five hourglasses away from unlocking Another Story! Either today or tomorrow, I should end up having enough. I always start new Mystic Messenger routes on a Friday, because I stay up longer so I have a better chance of getting all more of the chat rooms.

Apparently, Another Story is quite emotionally draining and it can make you cry, but my mood normally isn't affected by the media I consume. If I didn't cry during Infinity War, then Mystic Messenger shouldn't make me sad at all.

I already know what a lot of the CGs from Another Story look like, and I listened to one of the calls on YouTube. This was ages ago. I spoiled myself because I didn't expect myself to ever be able to afford it.

I'm going to play V's route too, only because you have to buy it with Ray's and it would be a waste if I didn't check it out. Before Ray's route existed, I never had any plans on playing it because I didn't care about V enough to want to save up. Hopefully, it won't break my heart playing his route when Ray's right there too. It's hard enough trying not to flirt with Seven when I'm trying to get Jumin's route.

Did I tell you that the other day I got Jumin's bad ending where he keeps you in a cage? I think I probably did. I'd already seen it on YouTube, but I wanted it anyway, for collection purposes.

I'm super excited to play Another Story! The other day when I read the Halloween event chats with Ray in them, I actually squealed in delight like some kind of crazy fangirl. I'm kind of ashamed that I am so attached to fictional people that I'll get over excited about them.

Hopefully you'll all have a nice Halloween. I got a nice costume to go out in, but I fear I am doomed to give out sweets again this year. At least there'll always be some leftovers for me to salvage. There are lots of trick or treaters on my street, but I've lived in places where you would only get one or two knocking on your door.

I have to go now, so goodbye!

Have a Happy Halloween!

Disappointment

(Spoilers up ahead!)

Well, I finished Saito's route yesterday. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Today I decided to play Chikage's route, because he's interested me from the start and he wants to marry you from the start so I expected there to be more romance early on.

I spent about twenty minutes skipping through the text in the common route, making the right choices so that I wouldn't end up dating somebody else instead. It took me two times because I didn't use a walkthrough, and somehow I ended up getting Hijikata's route even though I hardly paid any attention to him.

Eventually I got to the end of the common route, and Chikage decided to kiss me  the main character. It was very exciting, and I expected the MC to go off with him and get married or something sweet like that. But it just ended.

The credits started rolling, and I said out loud (even though I was in the school library) "Is that it?".
I had heard that his route would be short, but I didn't expect it to be that short. All that happened was the same things that happened on the normal ending that I got on my first playthrough, then he just kissed you once, admitted that he had fallen for you, and that was it.

This game is very good and and I really love it, but I still can't help but be disappointed. You couldn't even call that a route. It's just really an ending, but neither a good ending or a bad ending.

After doing some research, I found out that the two part PS Vita/PC remake gives him more romantic scenes. Now I have another reason to get a Vita. I was planning not to buy the remake if I ever got a Vita, because it's really the same story and it's a lot more expensive, but I really want a better route for my dear Chikage so I might end up purchasing it after I've burned through every other otome on the platform. You get more love interests and romance scenes, so it sounds like it may be worth it. It's just a shame that it's split into two. The first game, Kyoto Winds, has only the common route on it, which I am just skipping through now as I am replaying it to get different routes.

I just want the spin-off game, Hakuouki SSL to be translated into English! That game looks like it would have a lot of sweet romantic scenes in it. I could just buy the Japanese version but I am terrible at Japanese. I would probably spend an hour attempting to read it with Google Translate then give up and never touch it again.

Now I'm starting to play Okita's route. I'm playing the routes in order of interest. I would have played Chikage first if I could unlock him straight away, but I think if I did it may have given me a slightly worse impression of the game. Next I'm going to do Heisuke's route. He looks cool, but I've never been romantically interested in him. Harada is last because I have no interest in him. When I first saw him I thought he was just a side character. I was surprised when I found out that he was a love interest.

I'm starting to notice a pattern on this blog. I'll gain an interest in something, write four or five posts about it, then move on to writing about something else for another few posts. It must be really boring for someone who has an interest in my blog to see me ramble on about dating simulators.

Sorry, if you're reading this and you don't like what I post about.


I still haven't learnt how to write proper conclusions for blog posts, so I'm just gonna end it here.

GOODBYE!

I Played Another Otome Game...

So, last Thursday, Hakuoki (the PSP version) came to me through the post. I played it, and it was really good.

The first time I did it, I decided to only choose the choices that I would actually make in real life. Except those choices I made were really bad choices, and I ended up getting the "normal" ending where (Spoilers if anybody cares!) you end up spending some time with Chikage and everybody in the Shingensumi ends up dying off-screen. That depressing ending made me feel a bit empty and depressed.

If I had made the exact same choices that I did if I had already played two routes, I would have gotten to romance Chikage, who is turning out to be one of my favourite characters, even though he's a bit of a douchebag.

To ensure that I didn't end up getting any more bad endings, I decided to use a spoiler-free walkthrough. A few times I was going to make my own choices, but I quickly checked the Internet and found out that the options I were about to choose were the wrong ones. Using a walkthrough is a bit like cheating, but I really don't want to make any mistakes and end up making everybody die again.

I managed to complete Hijikata's route first, even though the Internet told me that he is best to leave for last. The story was really good, even though it was filled with a lot of Japanese history that I didn't understand. Before purchasing the game I heard that it would have a lot more plot than romance which concerned me, but I found myself not minding at all. It just makes it more meaningful when the romance scenes do eventually show up.

It took the main character forever to actually develop a relationship with Hijikata, but I guess it's more realistic than Mystic Messenger, where the romance only takes a bit more than a week to get going!

The soundtrack and the art work was amazing. I was really surprised when I found out that the entire game was pretty much fully voiced. It's a shame that I couldn't listen to the dialogue all the time, because most of the time I was playing it in public.

Now I'm currently completing Saito's route. I'm about more than halfway through, and it's really enjoyable. I can see why a lot of people like him the best out of the main cast. Saito seems like the kind of guy I would date in real life.

After I've done this route, I might throw the walkthrough away and actually use my own skills to play the game. I don't know if I'm going to try to aim for any bad endings, unless there are some where you don't have to act like a bitch to any of the love interests.

I've been so invested in Hakuoki that I don't really play any of my mobile otome games that much anymore. I'm still grinding on Mystic Messenger to unlock Another Story and I always log into Ikemen Sengoku to get coins, but I deleted Midnight Cinderella because I wasn't really interested in it anymore, and it ran terribly on my really fast iPhone. Also, I wasn't really getting that interested in the love interest I chose. Rayvis was a bit too boring for me.

I'm thinking of getting a blue and white PS Vita before they stop making them so I can enjoy more otome games! Most of the good games can be purchased on the PC, but I don't think I would ever complete them if they were on my laptop. Handheld gaming is more accessible for me because I can play anywhere I want.

A gaming shop nearby sells a lot of otome games for the Vita, including a special edition of Code: Realise that I want to grab before anybody else does!

Anyway, that's all I have to say for today.

I hope that everybody reading this has a great weekend, and a good Halloween!

.........

I feel like buying a video game that's all in Japanese so I can play it whilst learning vocabulary. It's going to be incredibly difficult but I might as well throw myself in the deep end and start off hard because otherwise it's impossible to give me the motivation to study the language using only the Internet.

24,000 Views!

I haven't exactly had time to set up my YouTube channel yet like I said in the last post. Hopefully it won't be another project I give up on.

My website has received over 24,000 views! I feel so proud of myself. According to the stats for my site on Neocities, the site is getting views pretty much everyday! I thought that maybe one or two people would visit my site a week, but I was wrong. It's a shame that this blog isn't getting the same attention though, because it's updated more often and it contains more of my personal thoughts.

I know I'm about to go completely off topic here, but the other day I walked into this shop and I found that they still had one Memory Stick Duo left from years ago. It wasn't at a discount or anything, but I still bought it because I had been looking for one for ages and I wasn't sure if I could trust the cheap Chinese ones you see on Amazon. Now I have 8GB to save my games.

So far I only have one game, and that game is Parappa the Rapper. Yesterday I ordered Hakuoki, because I was getting sick of playing free to play otome games. That should be coming next week. I've heard good things about it, so hopefully it's going to be good. There is a PS Vita version I saw in a shop yesterday but it's really expensive, and I don't have a Vita yet.

Speaking of free to play otome games, I've almost garnered enough hourglasses to unlock Another Story! Soon I'll finally be able to date Ray. He is my favourite out of all the possible love interests in Mystic Messenger, and I'm so excited to finally be able to be nice to him. In all of the other routes he's a villain and you're only allowed to act hostile to him which makes me sad.

Anyway, I'm typing this at school and it's almost lunchtime so I'd better finish this up. I'm only writing this in class because I've finished everything, so I'm not slacking off. I just don't want some other kid to look over my shoulder (I'm in a computer suite) and see that I'm writing embarrassing stuff about otome games.

Goodbye!!

...

A couple of years ago, I attempted to learn Chinese. I purchased textbooks and everything. My reading comprehension became rather good for a beginner, but then I forgot about learning and gave up. I think it was because I didn't have the motivation, and because I didn't have a teacher. If I am forced to teach myself it allows me to freely procrastinate, but when I have a proper teacher, I never procrastinate and I will always have someone encouraging me to learn.

Recently I decided to make an effort at learning Japanese, because I already knew a bit of it before. I managed to learn Hiragana in about a day, and I think I should start doing some Katakana soon. Even though I don't have a fancy textbook or teacher, I am still managing to make a bit of progress by using online resources. But I'm scared that this is just a short phase, and that in one week I will have forgotten about this again...

A Post Made Out of Boredom.

I'm really bored right now, so I might as well write a post on my blog. Today I played a lot of Cities: Skylines, and I managed to make a city without unlimited funds that's actually successful! There's even a football stadium in it, except the local team lost their first game.

I play the Xbox One version of the game, but if my PC had a better graphics card, I would totally get the Windows version, since you can get mods and stuff. The console version has mods but all they are is extra buildings.

I like naming all of my important buildings and metro stations. Each one of my metro lines has it's own name, like the London Underground does. I wish the game let you see inside the metro stations, that would be really awesome.

For some reason, I have had a craving for 2000s rap music. I don't know why, because normally I listen to dance music. It's probably because when I was younger, there was a lot of rap music on the radio. Last year I also listened to a couple of metal bands, too. I can listen to at least some songs from most genres of music, except country. Country is awful.

I was thinking of including a music page on my website for songs I like, probably because somebody else on my Neocities feed did the exact same thing. I don't want to look like I am copying them. Back when I was in primary school there was this girl who shamelessly copied all of my work and it was really annoying.

This is the end of the post. Sorry, I still have no idea how to conclude things!

BYE!