ughhh showa yuri I only played for a bit so far but cartagra reminds me of togainu in a way, probably due to the fact they both released around the same time, the atmosphere and music is top notch I'm really into it and if I didn't have other things to do I'd be playing nonstop probably. Toji has my full support on picking up Kazuma. I'm invested.
I'm beating myself over not knowing sooner they had limited switch edition up for preorder on amiam i for less than 12k??? If it's still magically available after release I'll probably get it since it's a steal for limited switch release. If I end up liking the game a lot and it's still on playasia then maybe I could get it for my birthday because it's not that expensive there either.
I'm pleasantly surprised at how seriously and maturely they treat themes of prostitution despite also being used in a gratifying way and as a way for there to put more h-scenes in. I was not expecting the game to end so upruptly with Shugo getting with Hatsune
I really liked the strong start and it's a shame it didn't really deliver for me. Characters are all entertaining and likable, atmosphere is amazing and the set up of the whole mystery was very intriguing and engaging from the first scene. I can see how easily it could've ended up being much better if not for how rushed it felt. With there being multiple long dialogues with exposition instead of letting us see the actual action.
What I really appreciate about characters is how they work on their own. They don't exist only to work with Shugo and you can see they have their own lives and struggles that don't revolve around the MC. He even got kicked out of Yukishiro because he messed with their business so not everyth ng works in his favor clearly.
Toji is a legend. She carries Shugo's ass and saves him whenever he's really in need. I really like her relationship with Toji which (despite there being an h scene) was very unromantic and not sexual at all. They're clearly just friends and it's really fun seeing their banter with each other. I'm praying for Toji to find a girl she can protect and cafe for since Kazusa ends up with Shugo. Doomed yuri.......
Few years ago when I downloaded snow I opened up the menu and I haven't been able to get it out of my head ever since. It's magical. My favorite menu experience of all time most likely. The sound when Studio Mobius logo appears, the snowy landscape appearing right after slowly revealing the menu. I'm dead
After two years of waiting for winter and some free time aligning I finally started snow. I do try to match vns I read to the season more or less I'm flexible with that and I might prefer to read something during spring or fall but I wouldn't mind reading them someother time if I really feel like it but if it's a vn explicitly set in winter where there's snow I refuse to play it eny other time so I have winters scheduled for the next few years.
The setting of snow already speaks to me a lot. I'm a sucker for rural japanese areas especially in winter. In a lot of ways snow shares a lot of similarities with kanon. Humor and character writing seems very similar with Sumino really feeling like a Key heroine. I have finished two routes so far and I can say that it's better than kanon in a lot of ways for sure and I'll likely end up liking it way more. I did like kanon despite how long it took me to beat, some moments were a slog to go through and what I like about kanon the most is the atmosphere (and Sayuri and Mai).
Outside of a few tracks BGM is decent. Fits well with the setting and whatever's happening, how I imagine every 2000s vn bgm set in winter sound like. By far my favorite soundtracks are the first two that play (flying dragon and titular snow)
It took me a bit to realize I got on Asahi's route which surprised me since I thought I was choosing the most options to get into Sumino's route and I was not very pleased with that at first but her route ended up being much better and I think it was a great start for me. Asahi's route really reminded me of Makoto's route in Kanon and it pretty much is but better in every way. Makoto is the only heroine in kanon that I really disliked and Asahi is also a brat but not nearly as irritating. With her it was funnier to me how Kanata didn't have dinner again because she still got something wrong. I did like Makoto's route overall more than her as a character but Asahi's was just everything Makoto's route but better.
About half an hour before the end of her route I caught myself thinking "are nakige really supposed to make you cry?" I have never cried on a nakige before, the only vns I cried or where either utsuge or some edgy shit that just happened to speak to me (togainu etc etc) but overall I'd consider myself someone who cries easily. I don't cry on whatever bullshit spoats sappy stuff. I feel like I have cried on more things than people around me but now when I think about it out of everything I have seen throuout my life there isn't that many, alas it's not hard to make me cry so nakige should make me cry. I might've shed a tear or two on HBR's angels beats event but I cried on togainu more than any nakige which is really dissapointing to me because when I discovered nakige I was hoping to cry like a baby on them. Alas, right after I thought that to myself I started tearing up. So nakige can make me cry, all the other ones I have read were just really shit at it (not to say they were bad, just didn't have much of an emotional impact on me). supisupi
I was looking forward to Sumino's route since I liked her more in the common route and I still like her more but here route wasn't nearly as good. It was decent at best. Nothing really happened and the drama that did happen made no sense. I wouldn't be surprised if I were just stupid but turns out it's not supposed to make much sense without playing locked routes which seems very badly planned. Because why would you buther route of the poster girl of the game pretty much like this. I find it hard to believe no one would realize how little sense it made so why was this decision made? Still didn't lost my excitement and I'm looking forward to getting the whole picture. Also where the fuck is Tsugumi
I feel betrayed, I waited two years to play snow when it's winter and white outside just for one of the routes to suddenly take place sometime warm and very green. That aside I really like whenever vns talk about cultural and more religious things, take place at shrines, talk about japanese folklor etc. so even if this isn't what I was looking for I'm really enjoying this bit and I'm curious how it's going to unfold and connect with all the heroines because I assume it will.
I gotta say snow is shaping up to be my favorite nakige. I've been really enjoying the characters and their banter with each other. I'm especially looking forward to Meiko's route. I do like her in the present much more than in the Legend route. Visual novels rarely make me laugh I feel like but snow can really be hillarius sometimes. I'm turning into an old man laughing at 2003 humor man (me in the pic below). I just started Shigure's route and it's been fun. I'll try to focus more on snow in the coming days because I've been sitting on it for way too long.
It's good to play something pure from time to time. Just two people in love raising child they found at a shrine, her cat and a green rabbit.
stupid
Mysterious girl route was much different and at times felt more like a fandisc or something but it being about Shamon was pretty unexpected. I really like how each heroine gets really thought out stories and connects to the bigger picture. On a technical level it's a very well-thought out story and the best nakige I've played so far. In the end I ended up liking every heroine, Meiko-sama being on top obviously. She was my favorite even before her route, I need more humorous characters like this in vns. As for routes the only one I thought was meh was Sumino's due to how little sense it made without playing the rest of the game first so unfortunetly it's a lost cause by design.
I hope Meiko and Kanata live happily ever after and Meiko can age alongside him. What an amazing game.
Mysterious girl could've been higher if her route was longer and we'd see more of her and not when she's possesed. Hopefully she lives well now reincarnated as Sumino and Kanata's child.
First of, horses have been in my life since I was a kid (not so much nowdays since I don't leave the house really) so it was a matter of time before I start playing Umamusume. I made my account sometime in Semptember because my boyfriend wanted to play it and said I should too. He got upset I got Saintly Jade Cleric Grass Wonder he wanted and we both stopped playing but I got back to it before christmas god bless the banner I got back during because I don't think I'll ever change Rudolf that I set on my profile since I got her. I didn't mean to get so into since I got back around the middle of December I don't think there has been a single day where I missed logging in daily.
Special regards to my daughters Rice and Maya. They deserve the world and need to be protected at all cost. Sucks I can't finish a good career with them for shit. My highest with Maya is still C+ and I only got B+ with Rice on my thirst try. Maybe especially because of how I struggled with it it made me tear up reading the scene after she just won Arima Kinnen.
As of me writing this it's January 18th and current event Hungry for a miracle is ending in two days, I have already gotten to 1.000.000 points yesterday and I told myself I'm going to chill for now and just do one career daily for daily reward but I ended up already finishing three today. It's especially easy to get sucked in since I did a career with every Uma I have at least once so I can skip pretty much every event and it doesn't take that long.
It's fun to play this game even despite the fact how shit of a trainer I am. I have completed 60 careers and not a single A and I have only started getting B+ now once I started doing Unity Cup instead of URA. I'll probably end up sticking with Seiun sky a lot since she was the first one I got a B+ with. I did another run with her today hoping I can get an A with her (failed) but holy a great playthrough in my book. It's really fun to run her careers despite how I don't have a good luck with other long runners.
I don't think I'm going to play as intensly the entire time since I'd like to play more VNs (I've been spending most my day in Uma and ended up too tired to read anything after that sigh) but I'll try to do at least one career a day and 100% events. I might not have the Maya support I wanted but at least I got title for my effort..... surprisingly easy to get, I was sure I won't but I got it in a week or so.
This is what I'm at right now, I'll probably post my final score once the event ends in some unrelated post and unless I'll have a lot of things to gush about Uma I'm going to be posting my worth remembering careers and what not in visual novel posts. 👍
Will be pulling for Fine motion after I get over not getting (yet, hope hasn't been lost) Maya support card but getting Narita not once but twice. I hate this game and Narita please save my daughter from hell. I did 104 pulls and with each one I'm dying a little. At least I got Dober, Rudolf and Curren support I wanted from previous banners. Hopefuly my llsif turned bandori luck turns into uma luck. There always seems to be one gacha I have insane luck in. Always just one. Back when llsif still existed (we'll never forget you, rest in piece, the best rythm game ever and my 238 URs). Since I get a chance, my account as of the last day of llsif's service. My bandori account isn't nearly as impressive because I haven't played there nearly as long as I have in llsif but even then I would get every 5* I wanted miraculously and even the ones I didn't care than much for from free daily banners.
Back to horse girls. I have read every event, main and uma story I could in game and they're pretty short and fun. A shame you can't read event stories you missed on global yet. It says a lot about the writing even if it's a gacha game when I end up liking a lot pretty much every character I finish career with, the only one I still don't really like out of the ones I have is Air Groove (I still liked her Uma story a lot and got invested in it) and out of all the other umas there are only a few I'm less than fond of.
WE FUCKING WON I'M NOT A SHIT TRAINER, NOT AN A BUT A+
I have no expectations after my boyfriend has been shitting on slow damage since he started it in february (still hasn't finished it after 10 months he dislikes it that much). Before that I feared it might become my favorite N+C game and it would make me look basic. So far I have no major complains. I really like the world building and how it's shown and we learn more about it slowly. I'm sweating over the gameplay elements, my boyfriend said how impossible it is to do without a guide and I should not play blind and I of course said to that that I really dislike playing with guides first time around and I will not need one. Now my pride won't allow me to take that back no matter how many times I'll have to go back and redo exploration. Guess that's going to be fun........
Forward to over a month later, It's January 19th, I have finished slow damage in late December and I'm only writing this one. We had a few technical issues, I was pretty set on finishing it before christmas and I was playing Fujieda's route on 22nd and when I was getting to the good part my game kept crashing in the same scene, I ended up reinstalling the whole thing and when I did turns out my saves got deleted and I was so done with it. I had to come back to it after I came back from Christmas to finally finish the last route. It was something.
I think that the fact I had to take a break might've worked in slow damage's favor since I had some time to sit with my thoughts and feelings especially for the first route. Up untill I finished Madarame's route I thought yeah slow damage isn't bad but it's definitely not my favorite n+c game, it's whatever 6/10 at worst maybe I could give it a 7 if the last route delivers. Then ARKTA hit me, I will forever and ever be a n+c bitch holy fuck. HOLY FUCK.
Madarame's route was the worst one but it did something in my brain. My boyfriend says a lot how n+c needs to go back and slow damage is the only game they did wrong and how shit it is and different but to me it feels exactly like n+c feels like, despite how drastically diffiferent it seems, how modernized it is it still managed to make me remember why I like n+c so much. Togainu is one of my two favorite n+c titles despite it's countless flaws. I outright dislike two out of five routes in it and I still think very highly of it and it doesn't bother it. Shiki's route is insufferably boring despite being I believe the shortest one. Madarame's route really reminded me of Shiki's, it's pretty much that, MC gets locked in a building, forced to be there, do shit etc. Fundamentally the same except Madarame's route is actually good. Not in a way I enjoyed it (At least it didn't bore my like Shiki's and I read it in one sitting) or liked it but it made sense. It wasn't forced and edgy for the sake of being edgy, it isn't here because they wanted Towa to get raped more and for fujos to simp over Madarame like they do for Shiki. Madarame's route shows a different outcome of how Towa's life can go in. It's realistic and fits with Towa's character, he doesn't develop a stockholm syndrome, he gets back to his old life and feels like he belongs here, that that's how it's supposed to be. It's not romantizied or eroticized, it's there to serve a purpose and does it how it set out to do. Then you load a save file to do the madness ending and you die. HOLY FUCK ARKTADamaging you in slow damage is what STILL was for me in Togainu. Recently I have a few realizations how music is much more important to me in games than I thought. I would always say it could be silent or the most shit music I've heard but if the story is amazing it could still be my favorite game and that's still true but I have a feeling a lot of alright or just good things leveled up in my head because of how amazing the music was. I still can't get it out of my head and listen to it a lot and I had really no expectations for music in slow damage since Kanako Itou isn't there and I really dislike the opening, I hope jazz dies one day. A turning point in my view of slow damage I feel like.
Before I get into the last and the best route, the meat of slow damage. After all the things my boyfriend said about the gameplay and how I should play with a guide and I'm really going to struggle to beat it on my own I was pretty sure I will regret my decision to not use a guide. I really enjoyed the gameplay. It did scare me at first since I thought you had to guess which option to choose to be able to later finish the euphoria episode successfully but pretty soon I realized the game gives you pretty obvious most of the time hints that tell you which option to choose and once I figured that out it went really well I didn't need to reload and make a different choice at all and really enjoyed the gameplay. Especially during euphoria episodes. A shame the first one was the only one that felt so emotional and excited me but I still enjoyed the rest and figuring out how to do both endings for each.
Fujieda's route was something completly different focusing on towa more than anyone else and finally dwelving more into his trauma and childhood. When they get to euphoria is when I actually got chills, Very fitting actually my game crashed on that red sequence with Mei and at first I thought it was intentional (sucks it just delayed me finishing the game by an entire week). My jaw literally dropped when later in the route Towa gets abducted by Eiji I was certainly not expecting that. When they talk about it later his role in the whole thing makes much more sense but still a very interesting moment. Don't get me started on the one, only bad ending in a n+c game that I actually like and find satysfing. I wouldn't say I like it more than the good ending since it wasn't as expanded upon but during the gameplay segment with Towa and Sakaki I was praying to god that there would be an ending where Towa becomes Maya but I thought nah I doubt it and MY GOD. I don't like doing bad ends first usually because they could mess the pacing up but I purposely chose what I think could lead to that bad ending I was hoping for because my god it's so fitting and just drives me crazy. I can't explain how I felt but It's definitely one of my favorite moments in slow damage. Not to mention the ending song. It's the second best track (which other than the op is the only song I heard before playing) and I had to literally stand up and walk around my room not to explode.
Also the entire game I thought it just glitches sometimes weirdly, turns out it does that everytime someone says the word "okay". I love little meaningful details like this. N+C never change.
My only issue with Fujieda's route is Fujieda himself, I know it's a blge and whatever they need to fuck but I think this route would've been so much better if they didn't make it romantic. I'm not opposed to Towa getting with Fujieda down the line eventually but despite how Towa might've connected with Fujieda I just wish it ended more with them being just friends and being there to support each other and get better in life. The rape scene was very unnecssary and out of nowhere but I guess it wouldn't be n+c without it or something. I did also have a bit of an issue with them finding Maya's diary and what was written in there showing how she did actually love Towa but couldn't show it and was sick in the head was kinda meh, I would've preffered her being a heartless monster with no redeeming qualities (she's still not forgiven and redeemed for what she has done) but I get the choice to write her like this and I don't mind it after finishing the game and thinking about it a little.
It is not even close to being my favorite n+c game but I can see why so many think of it as such and like it a lot. I have too been deceived into becoming a slow damage fan. Nitro+chiral will forever be in my head deeply. Save me n+c, I need any sign of what they're working on next (other than shit gacha, I hope mobile games die off in my lifetime), any sort of reveal I might actually go crazy if I don't have anything new to play from them once I'm done with clean dishes. I do already plan on playing throught Yukihito's route in togainu since true blood got released on steam last year (got it on release date) and I wouldn't be surprised if I replay sweet pool sometime sooner than later. My personal request for n+c please bring back Kanako Itou. I need more songs that kill me inside a little especially when they're paired with toxic yaoi.
On a side note. For the longest time I was sure that Shiro from clean dishes is Towa just because somewhere sometime before the english release of slow damage I saw that Towa gets blonde hair and I made this whole narrative in my head that he goes blond probably when he gets untraumatized and all good, sto ps being a whore, gets his life on the right track and I thought clean dishes just continued from there. Pretty ironic.
Because this post is already very overdue I won't wait any longer untill I finish clean dishes, if I do have anything interesting (or anything at all) to say I'll just shove it into another post most likely. It's fun so far, I'm intrigued and looking forward where the story goes, despite it lenght it feels rather slow because of how much divided each part of the game is. Life is awesome, live laugh love guys
Last Saturday I went to an anime convention. It's the first time since 2018 that I walked around one alone. It's a christmas themed one and the vibe was there. The fact it was held in a school (unrenovated for decades) made it feel more like old conventions. It was pretty fun.
Out of all the attractions I went to one panel, op/ed quiz and I tried DDR for the first time. It was a really small con (ticket limit being 500) so there wasn't that much to do the entire day. The panel was pretty bad, I've been to a fare share of panels and I can't remember ever being to a one this uninteresting. I felt like people in charge of it didn't really know what they were talking about and only did a little bit of research to have anything to write in the presentation. A lot of repeating the same things over and over and I doubt most people there learned anything new it was mostly obvious things you would know if you watched at least 1 anime that had a christmas episode or if you think about it for more than 5 minutes. I didn't feel any passion for the subject and like they just came up with whatever idea because they wanted to make a panel and not because they wanted to talk about something. Not to mention it was a discussion panel and no one spoke for the entire duration of it (which was supposed to be 2 hours but they finished in half an hour) and only briefly talked about some things once it ended most likely out of pity and so it could classify as a "discussion panel".
Food was expensive but good, I rarely have a chance to eat japanese so I'd take it. Miso was great. I went outside for a while before eating so it was a perfect warm up meal. A lot of tofu and seaweed in it, very much worth it. I also got two onigiris one with shrimp and one with salmon, the salmon was well packed and had great flavor, the shrimp in the other one was small but good. Rice was a bit dry and was falling apart easily but paired with the soup it was overall a good meal. The drink I got was amazing, perfectly sweet and flavorful, It's always a gamble with those imported drinks because they're five times the price of something you'd get from a supermarket and you never know if the flavor's going to be good. One time I got a canned drink that was sickly sweet and flavorless besides that, this time I made a great choice.
Going to bring my Sakuya fumo next time I go to an event.
Op/ed quiz was fun, although I didn't guess a lot because it was almost only shows from the last 5 years, I took part in a similar quiz organized by the same guy (based love live enjoyer) which had more older openings. I need to get my game up with new openings so I can show my opening appreciation more, never skip. DDR was surprisingly exhausting, I can still feel it in my legs a little. I watched others play a little and I was surprised almost everyone played only one song but now I get it. I played bad apple and believe by nami tamaki and if I tried one more I'd colapse, definitely going to play DDR during cons whenever I get the chance though.
A very cool idea of collecting stamps for participating in different activities. If I wasn't so socially retarded I would've tried more, at least I got one for DDR. A very important to me aspect of cons is what can you buy there, in this terrible day and age I wouldn't be surprised if there was nothing interesting to me as 90% of things being sold is genshin bs or some other not even anime mainstream shit like kpop demon hunters or whatever. Low and behold I spent a lot this time.
Unlucky gacha pulls, Steins;Gate figure, stickers and yaoi. Yaoi and the chikorita sticker is for my boyfriend. Buying a whole ass figure was not on my list but I couldn't pass an opportunity to show off being a S;G fan when there's so many tourists, the girl I bought it from even commented how old she feels and that no one knows S;G anymore.
