Theory Time!

(Spoulers down below.)




OK, so now I'm on chapter three of Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, and I can't help but think that maybe Beniyuri was friends with all of the love interests before? My prediction seems even more correct now, because I just selected a choice which made Beniyuri get sent a picture of Yamato and Hikage as children, and I think they're brothers or something. And just before I wrote this post everybody got told by Usagi that they're in a realm between life and death, so maybe everybody was together and then something happened so they all died at the same time and now they're all here in this mansion?

Also, I may have made a bad choice because I think Yamato's gonna die now. I may be coming up to my first bad ending!

I'm going to go back to playing it now. I just had this random thought and absolutely had to blog about it! See you all later!

:)

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!

Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly: Initial Thoughts

As soon as I booted up Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, I was blown away by the epic theme song and beautiful visuals. Yes, you read correctly. I've finally started this game. I have no idea why I was a bit scared it was gonna be boring, because it's great!

Not much has happened yet, I just woke up in this mansion and met a bunch of bishounen and then we looked around a bit and some stuff happened. There was also a mini game where you have to shoot butterflies. I played it with the touchscreen instead of the analogue sticks, and I got a C rating, but it's my first time so I'm going to be bad at it.

Now I think I just cleared chapter two, and now the game's telling me that I can unlock an extra episode if I have enough points. I dunno if it means mini game points or not, because I turned my Vita off for a break after that. But all I know is that I'm not gonna get any romance this time round, until I get the first ending.

I like all of the possible love interests, but I don't have any instant favourites. They're all as nice as each other and their voices are pleasant to listen to. This time I didn't turn the voice acting off, except for Beniyuri, because I've gotta self-insert, right?

I'm so glad I picked this game over Bad Apple Wars.

The game case actually came with some collectible character cards, as seen below. They're quite pretty. I want to stick them on my wall, but I'm scared the Blu-Tack will ruin them so I may put them in a frame.

It's kind of hard to see them properly, but I'm sure somebody's uploaded a better picture somewhere.

Anyway, this game is really, really good so far.

...And that's the end of this post.

P.S. I put a glitter butterfly GIF on the blog's sidebar so that it would fit the theme of the game I'm playing. The theme actually already matched the game's colour scheme pretty well.

Now, On to the Next Game.

So, I finished Lupin's route but we kept dying at the end no matter how many different choices I made. Then I had to look up a walkthrough and it said that I have to reload it at chapter thirteen using the "Path of Genesis" or whatever it's called feature and set the affection to maximum, and that seemed to fix it. Then I got the after story and it was very cute. This was the only route where Cardia ended up marrying her love interest at the end, but I think everybody gets to have a go at wedding her in the next game.

My game keeps glitching out and making some of the CGs I've earned in the after stories not appear in the album, which means that I can't get a trophy for "collecting all of the skin photos", but oh well. I have no PSN friends so nobody's gonna see what achievements I've earned.

In a few days, after I've read this book I just got, I'll be starting Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly. I read online that no matter what you have to do the normal common route ending first, then start dating the boys afterwards. It sounds a lot more complicated than your average otome game and I'm scared that there's not gonna be much romance... But in those games like Hakuoki where it's mostly plot I've never gotten bored or disappointed, so this game should still be good like the rest of them.

But before I do anything, I have to read that book. The book in question is "My Mum Tracy Beaker". It's probably a bit too young for me but I loved the Tracy Beaker series as a child and I wanna read about her all grown up.

I'll be back once I've started the next game. Goodbye!

What An Interesting Game!

Spoilers down below!











Tomorrow I will have finished Lupin's route. I'm on the last chapter now. It's so full of interesting plot twists and stuff. I'm actually glad they force the player to leave this route until last, because it feels like a grand finale to a TV show where everything comes together and all of the plot points are solved. Many of the characters and personal problems that were in some of the other routes also appear here, except you, I mean Cardia, doesn't get to play a part in them because she's too busy being captured by Finis.

The other bachelors didn't really do much in this route until the end, except Impey, he doesn't really do anything. Van Helsing gets some screen time with Lupin and kind of acts like a friend towards him, and Saint-Germain gets to do some stuff with Idea.

I was starting to like Finis until Cardia decides to save him and instead of thanking her he's just like "I h8 u bitch go away" and just lets go of her hand. I thought he was going to be forgiven, but nope, he just dies.

The quite attractive side character who is only available to date in the fan-disc, Herlock Sholmes, is actually called Sherlock Holmes. He decided to change his identity by switching round a couple of letters in his name and called it a day. And then the guy who's the villain in Van Helsing's route, Aliester, is actually Moriarty. I did not expect that twist to appear. I only actually know who Moriarty is because I watched BBC's Sherlock adaptation. I don't really know yet what that had to do with the plot of Lupin's route, it probably could've been more useful in Van Helsing's, but I'm not an otome game writer so I can't really tell them where to put stuff.

And it turns out Cardia and Finis are actually copies of Isaac Beckford's dead children. As soon as Cardi (I'm just gonna call her that now for the rest of the post, sorry) had this weird memory of waking up and being with her family and having breakfast and all that, I immediately knew that she was gonna be a copy. I watched Into the Spider-Verse recently and the villain in that wants to (SPOILER ALERT IF YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT!)                 bring back his dead family. That was still fresh in my mind so it's probably why I could smell it coming.

In the fan-disk, I think Finis has a route. Hopefully it's not romantic. It better not be an incest route. I think Otomate are better than that though. It might just be a "What If?" situation where Cardi decides to join her brother to initiate Code: Realize, or maybe instead the terrorist plot doesn't happen and she just gives him the power of sisterly love and he stops being evil and gets welcomed into Sainty-G's mansion like Delly was.

It's gonna be so sad to leave this game! I hope Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly is good. Online it said that the game has a massive plot flowchart so I really don't want it to be really complex with fifty-billion different endings. It also has a mini game too. Please don't affect the plot, mini game! Please, because I'm really bad at those and I'm only really used to reading visual novels on my Vita because I don't have anything else.

There are Code: Realize character albums which I kind of want because they come with free charms and I'd like to hang one on my Vita. On the CD is also one of those audio drama tracks but they're probably all speaking Japanese really fast so I will never be able to understand it. They're most likely really expensive so I'll never end up buying one. I'm sure someone has uploaded them to YouTube somewhere.

Even though I haven't finished Code: Realize yet, I'm gonna rate it about a nine out of then. It's an excellent game, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes the genre. It was worth getting my Vita to play it.


Before I leave, I just wanna mention something that I find strange. I know I don't play Ikemen Sengoku anymore, but I still kind of look at the artwork and stuff because it's pretty. There are a ton of fans for it, and they all seem to like that Mitsuhide guy, who hasn't got a route yet. I really do not understand why he has so many fans! Maybe it's because I only played one and a bit of a route from that game, but he just seemed like a creep to me! I probably just have different taste, that's all. It just surprises me how many fans he has. But people always like the weird ones, it's like that with every piece of media. I've had some awful crushes in my time, so I'm not really one to talk.

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







:)

Lupin's Route

(There's going to be spoilers down below, like normal.)







My third post today!!!!!




So, Victor's after story was hilarious. It takes a lot sometimes to make me laugh out loud, even if something is meant to be funny, but this story managed to do it fine. Cardia's just trying to pull poor Victor's clothes off to get a bug, not knowing that what she's doing isn't really appropriate... It was very cute. It isn't really an "after story" though, because it's set during the common route. Saint-Germain's is too.

I'm excited to collect Lupin's extra story, but I've gotta complete his route first. I have a feeling it's going to be longer and more dramatic than the others. Today I started it, and I just got to the bit where Cardia went back to her mansion and then the nasty villagers tried to chase her. This is the only route where her escape from Sainty-G's mansion has actually been successful! Every other time, one of the boys ends up stopping her.

Just a quick little side note: When I talk about the MC in a game to myself, I usually just refer to her as myself, because I am a huge self-inserter. But when I'm on this blog I just use her regular name so I don't look like a weirdo.

Anyway, I'm excited for this route. Lupin isn't my favourite guy, but I did really enjoy him in Saint-Germains route. I think I already mentioned this, but he was really nice to Cardia there. He is supposed to be the main man of the story, so he has to be a pretty great character. Cardia's poison might be cured for real here, because I think that's what I found somewhere online. (I tried to avoid spoilers, but that just came up whilst I was browsing one day!)

From the start of the game, I think Van Helsing's been my favourite out of them all.. Normally I don't like the men with glasses that much, but I find him really hot for some reason.  His route was probably my favourite too, but that might just be because it was my first route. I don't think I'd be able to rank the routes though, because they're all still quite good. Speaking of rankings, I've just had an idea! One day I should make a post ranking all of my favourite otome love interests! It'd look weird for somebody clicking onto this site for the first time, but who cares!

So, all I have left before the end of the game is Lupin. I should be finishing it maybe on Monday or Tuesday, because I don't expect I'll be playing my Vita much over the weekend.

I've been looking at non-visual novel games for my Vita, but I'm not sure which ones look interesting. Persona 4 looks cool but I dunno if I'd find a JRPG with lots of combat any fun, no matter how much people praise this game. There's also a Nintendogs knock-off that I kind of want, because it looks cute and I really loved Nintendogs as a child, even though I always reset the game when I forgot to feed the puppies. It would be cool to have Stardew Valley on the Vita (I forget to play it on the Xbox a lot), but it's digital only! I wanted Persona 3 Portable because you could play as a girl, but I'm only going to get that cheap digitally too. I'll see about these other games, but for now my main focus is just otome, but I want to eventually take advantage of the Vita's rear touchpad and analogue sticks.



Wow, this was a very long post! I'm writing this really late at night, but I don't really feel tired because I drunk a can of Pepsi. (This isn't product placement, don't worry!)



See you all later!!


(I dunno why I put the tag "Stardew Valley" on this post, because I only mention it once...)

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.

Christmas DLC

I just managed to get the Mystic Messenger Xmas DLC with a 30% discount. Tomorrow, I'm going to start playing it.

I'm excited!

What Should I Call This Post???

 (Spoilers below for about two different games.)


Another Story is amazing so far! I managed to get onto Ray's route without any issues. The romance comes so quickly compared to the other routes, but I'm not really complaining, because I downloaded this game so I could see some of that. However, now I'm at the bit where Rika "cleanses" him and turns him into an abusive douchebag. I'd watched some of the scenes from this part and I kind of enjoyed them, but now that I'm actually playing it, I realise that if I was treated that way in real life, I would feel really uncomfortable.

The game is giving me choices where I can either act a bit wimpy towards Saeran or try and stand up for myself. I chose the options that I would do in real life, but they are mostly the pushover options, so I won't be surprised if I get a bad ending.

In the Casual Story and Deep Story I didn't really think much of V, but now that I'm seeing him often in the RFA chat rooms, I want to play his route a bit more now. Before Ray's route existed, I had no desire to get Another Story at all. I wasn't interested in V enough to want to save up for it.

The chats are so much longer now, which is good because you have more content, but bad when you're busy and you want to get through the chat quickly. The new soundtrack is great, but I don't get to hear it often because most of the time I'm playing the game in a public place.

I almost finished Seven's secret ending, too. The voice acting was so intense during the emotional scenes, when the characters were angry or depressed, it even made me feel a bit sad and uncomfortable, like in real life, where I feel weird when somebody nearby is really upset or annoyed. But I played most of the later parts without sound, but I might go back to them just to hear some of that acting.

And I've almost done every good ending on Hakuouki now. I'm almost at the end of Harada's route. He's a nice guy and all that, but I was never really interested in dating him. I don't really find him that attractive either. His route is the most normal of the bunch, because he doesn't have any problems or anything and only a few minor characters die. He doesn't even drink the Water of Life, so you don't have to decide whether to feed him blood or not. I think if you don't give them blood or medicine they get corrupted which leads to a bad ending, but since you can't do that on Harada's route, the bad endings must work a bit differently.

Kazama isn't even present that much either during Harada's route, you get Shiranui instead. I don't really mind because I like Shiranui. I actually thought that he was a girl at first. He's quirky and somewhat interesting. I thought that he might have been one of the new characters you can date in Kyoto Winds/Edo Blossoms, but I was a bit disappointed when I found that was not the case. Maybe there wasn't any romantic interest in him amongst fans so the developers decided not to add him.

I dunno what I'm gonna do once I've completed this route. I could replay and and try to get bad endings. Every time I've started the common route again, I've been skipping through all of the bits I had already read. Is that technically cheating? Do normal people do that, or do they just reread every thing? To  be honest, I don't know why I'm concerned if that's cheating when I cheat everyday by using a walkthrough to check whether I'm selecting the right choices.

Next time I play I could just make my own choices and see what route I get, but I fear I might end up with the normal ending again. Maybe I should also stop writing posts about the same two games, too...

I just want a PS Vita so badly so I can play more of these games. My PC could easily handle visual novels but if I get them on Steam, I won't play them as often since they are not on a handheld. But I could always save up to buy one of those handheld Windows computers, like that one for gaming, I can't remember its name, but I think it begins with GPD?

It's Christmas soon, so who knows what kinds of games I will get. I was thinking of getting Forza Horizon 4, but I think I'll wait until the price goes down before picking it up. I got my Xbox One last year but I find that I am hardly using it! I'll go through phases where I don't game for a couple of months, then I'll be playing all the time for a few weeks, then I'll go back to not playing anything.

I have so many games I have started and not finished, especially on my Xbox 360. Ever since I upgraded I've been neglecting it a bit. One game I got really cheap on Amazon for the 360 is Kameo, it's really good but I only managed to play it about three times over a span of about six months. Some of these games get too difficult for me sometimes, so I lose my motivation to keep playing.

This post is really long. Someone even looked over my shoulder (I'm typing this at school, unfortunately) and commented on how much text there was.

Maybe I should stop writing now. Goodbye. Have a nice day! 

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.

.........

I'm currently replaying 707's route. It's amazing how much about the plot I have forgotten. This route is still my favourite. I forgot that I had to replay the prologue to get more hourglasses when I did Zen's route, so I made sure to go through it this time, using the max speed because I couldn't be bothered to read it all.

I wish 707's "maid" Vanderwood had his own route, because he's really attractive. But he really has nothing to do with the RFA so I have no idea how Cheritz would be able to shoehorn him into the main story.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. I should now use this opportunity to advertise my lonely Discord server.

https://discord.gg/2TZNqBy

I don't like Discord but it feels good owning a server.



Goodbye.

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!

The Sims

I recently started playing the first Sims game from 2000. The only other game in the series that I had played was the Sims Freeplay which would've been an excellent game if it wasn't a big cashgrab.

The Sims may not be very advanced for 2018, but it is still incredibly entertaining. I thought I would get bored with it very quickly, but I can play it nonstop for hours!!

This is just a quick little update. I am going to use this space to advertise my Twitter account, @strangepigeon6.


Goodbye!