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It's very strange, because I want to be interested in this guy but it feels like they're giving us nothing to latch onto. Maybe they assume you'll be pursuing him more out of meta-interest from knowing he's involved in the plot?
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Mar 4, 2021 16:57
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 22:11 |
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In my experience the spoiler-heavy super important characters are often really popular but also often route-locked so that you can't do them first. Gives you motivation to keep playing, though also makes people frustrated that they have to slog through routes they don't care about before getting to the meat. There's a forum poll on gamefaqs about favorite guys and it puts Shidou as most popular. gegi fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Mar 5, 2021 |
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Mar 5, 2021 19:18
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He's physically attractive and shows some elements of a type that could be appealing, but... still absolutely no sparks IMO. My otome instincts say that either there should have been some better buildup between them before the route proper begins, OR there should have been a dramatic switch in his presentation after his route starts. If up until the reveal he's been this quiet, polite, old-fashioned, only-slightly-creepy guy very into ancient Japanese tradition, partly as a deliberate act to look harmless, and then when she stays behind to look for him she finds a man who's set down the crystal ball and is now more sullen and trying to keep his distance from her (because he's realising how much he's screwed up, and that helping to have people killed is no different from what his father did), that would give her more motivation to push into his background and try to determine what the real him is like, and that increased conflict and angst between them would boost the romance. I don't know, obviously I can't analyse the whole plot since the story's not over yet, but it does feel very lacking in connection from Saki's side. He keeps acting like there's been a big romance that truly hasn't happened.
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Mar 13, 2021 22:11
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So far this game doesn't seem to be any good at the mystery and thriller aspects. The passage of time never makes any sense, the deadly games aren't actually fun to play, the tone/seriousness is wildly inconsistent, the explanations for what was going on at the end are horribly unsatisfying. So if I wanted to focus more on that story it would probably require a writer who didn't totally suck at it. At least with the first two guys it did better with the romance aspect than it did with the mystery. I keep harping on how badly this route is doing with it because it's really noticeable by comparison. But, I mean, I can invent dozens of solutions that would seem to make a better game than what we've seen so far, but until I know what the authors were actually trying to achieve overall I can't argue effectively. I have no idea where the hogstein plot is going. Simply in terms of mixing a death game and a dating sim, seven days is plenty of time if you use the pressure intelligently to force bonding and intensify relationships. Deadly drama should push people together faster. It's undercut by the specific mechanics here where you can choose anyone to hang out with, or blindly choose food to eat, which is a very low-pressure thing more suited to a slow casual relationship. If you've got the options to mix with multiple people and get to know them, you should actually be able to explore those options. It's bad design if you can only pick the same character at every juncture in order to avoid a bad end. One thing I might do if I were the designer for something like this is force the route choice almost immediately by breaking down the characters into teams of two or three who have to stay together throughout. Send everyone on separate quests during the day, with only brief amounts of catching up on what everyone else is doing on the night-time scenes. Being tied together all the time and risking death together both makes it more natural that a bond would develop between Saki and her partner, but also makes less of a need to force that bond to be romantic right away. You don't have to have suddenly been overwhelmed with romantic feelings enough to "choose" them over the others if the choice was already made. Romance can develop slowly until the end, or never quite develop if you keep making choices that don't raise affection, leading to the route's bad end.
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Mar 14, 2021 17:31
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yeah I LP on a different forum and generally get the best results when I know the game well so I can direct the experience for the readers. Blind is fun so we can all theorise together, but is sometimes a trainwreck when the game doesn't go where I'm expecting and I end up just ranting about how my idea would have been better. (This doesn't stop me from doing blind LPs, though, it's just that the odds of it going wrong are a lot higher) If you do in the future want a VN full of deadly puzzles, half of which are INSANELY difficult and make no sense, Abyss of the Sacrifice is out on Steam. Then you could have a different flavor of angry frustrated ranting! (Though I am hopeful for this one continuing at least long enough for us to feel like we've gotten some story resolution.)
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Mar 15, 2021 16:37
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The more messed-up pieces of his route we see, the more I want to play with them to try and make them work. Like, people being upset at him for being a "traitor" in earlier routes didn't make much sense because he hadn't done anything but help the party, there was no clear sign of him being a traitor to be mad about. This route, he's not only been clearer about actually being a traitor, but he's managed to betray Saki again even after making her think he was opening up to her. Which is potential fodder for an angsty villain route. It's just... not working, because the emotional elements are in the wrong places to build the connection. I'm imagining this for a possible different story progression: First playthrough, Urabe's route is locked, he can't be pursued. He 'betrays' the group and disappears. Saki protests that he didn't actually hurt anyone and we don't even know if he really was a traitor or if Hogstein just made that up, but nobody listens to her. Bad things happen to him during the rest of the route (like that whole being crucified mess). The seed is now set in the player's mind: Poor Urabe! If only we could have saved him! Next playthrough, more of his interaction events are available, with a little meta-nudge that for some reason Saki feels bad for him, but with him being very distant from her and NOT weirdly staring at her or anything. If his route is taken, after he disappears she insists on staying behind to look for him because she believes in him. She finally finds him and he looks unhappy to see her. He does NOT do any creepy touching stuff or have her sleep on his lap. She's all "I knew you weren't really a traitor!" and he Laughs Bitterly and tells her his backstory and explains that he really was a traitor, and why, and that he was all up for murder in the abstract but once he saw people's lives at risk he felt bad about it and that's why he betrayed Hogstein to get the others out of the hospital. Saki tries to convince him that he's not really a bad person, she still believes in him, but they have to Stop Hogstein. So they go off to do that - again, without any creepy weird you-shine-a-light-on-me stuff, no sign of romantic interest on his part at all. Saki should develop her crush entirely one-sidedly at this point. Then we can have events like this last update where they're hanging out together until she realises he's stalling her, and then he makes the surprise reveal that he "fell for her" after she believed him despite all the evidence and he decided he had to save her at all costs. ,And that's why he betrayed her by going back to Hogstein and promising to help him kill the others as long as Saki lives. (This makes the betrayal much more of a gut punch, because not only is he betraying her a second time, but he's openly making it her "fault" that he's going to attack the others. Congratulations, sympathetic player, you made things worse!) Saki's shocked and upset, he smiles that she should have known he was a traitor all along, and leaves. This of course makes him explicitly not a good person, but in the kind of obsessive way that's often popular with otome players. Depending on the exact flavor of psycho wanted, it could either be that he cares about no one in the world other than Saki (some girls are into that) or that he just figured the party was doomed and couldn't possibly win, so turning 'traitor' again to save Saki was better than all of them dying. In either case it leaves room for her to bust out of her imprisonment, find him, deliver several heaping WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? slaps to snap him out of it, and then finally get him to properly work together to defeat Hogstein. On the other hand this may all be more generic than whatever they're doing.  I told you, I get too into making up alternate versions of stories.
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Mar 18, 2021 00:53
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He's constantly juggling it back and forth so it only looks like it's floating because the image captures it in mid-motion. Imagine his calm serene smiling face and his hands jittering like caffeine shakes to keep the ball flying.
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Mar 19, 2021 15:47
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At least now the game seems to be aware that there's something wrong with this guy!
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Mar 21, 2021 00:20
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It would be hilarious if the game went meta and suddenly there was an option for the player to scream WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU at Saki for apparently thinking this is fine.
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Mar 21, 2021 13:52
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I don't want to say that the game is really disappointing because I don't want to undermine what enthusiasm OP has left but... yeah. And I would always use wrack for that. I guess somehow my language instinct thinks 'wrack' sounds more... twisty? Like I'm wringing my brain like a sponge to squeeze ideas out, or wrestling with it to achieve victory?
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Apr 12, 2021 15:48
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That challenge was much more interesting than many of the ones we've read even if the characters did still make some silly choices.
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May 20, 2021 17:08
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maybe there is no reveal, maybe every route ends just like that, buy the sequel to find out who hogstein really was!
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Jun 28, 2021 21:47
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Yeah, them hanging out is sweet as long as I can hang onto my insistent internal belief that this is a friendship route, and that it's all about Shirabe becoming more comfortable with a paternal role so that he can bond better with his own daughter. Just let me pull the wool over my eyes and ignore reality. I mean, he's constantly calling her 'little lady' and pointing out how young she is...
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Jul 1, 2021 19:03
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By the standards of this game, that's not a bad transition towards getting them more friendly with each other and offering up at least the vague possibility of her having romantic thoughts. It works better than some of the routes we've read.
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Jul 17, 2021 18:58
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... yeah that's weird. I can see what the writers are trying to do here but unlike the first half update, where extenuating circumstances are forcing the closeness and re-evaluation of each other, here it's just a super-strange choice for them to all get into bed together voluntarily. And Mai being the instigator makes it just further demonstration of both bad parenting (he doesn't know how to set boundaries other than by snapping at her) AND of her being desperate and kinda messed-up. To work correctly, IMO, this should either have been a situation where they were all trapped somewhere by Hogstein and had to curl together to sleep, and then Mai could chirp it was like being a family, or maybe if on the boat some disaster rendered Saki's room unusable and they awkwardly negotiated around trying to find a solution involving someone on the floor and Mai insisting it's fine, they can all share the bed, and them eventually going along with it.
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Jul 21, 2021 14:22
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final true secret hottie route unlocked? By our powers combined! A man who will be as manly as Mitarashi, as popular as Towa, as nerdy and socially awkward as Meoshi, as inexplicably obsessed with the roundness of Saki's head as Shidou, as easily-forgiven-for-murder-plans as Urabe, and as marriage-minded as Shirabe! The perfect date!
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Aug 8, 2021 19:42
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Really plot-heavy games are likely to force you to complete all routes before you can unlock the true, but I'm not sure this counts as really plot-heavy. There haven't been that many interlocking reveals in the earlier routes and there has been a lot of repetition. A lot of otome players are only interested in a few of the 'cutest' guys in the roster, so it might be set up to allow "play one or two of your favorites, then jump ahead to the ending if you want to wrap it all up" as a valid playstyle. It sounds like they've balanced it here so that you have to complete at least one or two routes and get a basic idea of the story before you can start to meet this character, and then actually getting his route is a little tricky, so you're not likely to get it right away unless you were specifically gunning for it. That way a player isn't likely to accidentally trip over the true ending quickly and spoil the rest of the game, but they aren't forced to drag the whole thing out if they don't want to. Mildly surprised it doesn't require Urabe's route though.
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Aug 14, 2021 18:28
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With the lap pillow CG I feel like her expression is a mix of "Welp"/fear/thinking she might be sick on his face.
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Aug 20, 2021 17:12
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... at least they acknowledged that his reasoning for involving the other guys was kinda nuts?
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Aug 27, 2021 14:13
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 22:11 |
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It set up tantalising hints of a dark, intense premise (and dark stuff is very popular in otome afaik) but then dialed it way back to kiddie levels of threat and logic, turning it into a heap of meh. Like, the piglets NEVER made any sense. Should probably not have attempted a death game spin in the first place.
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Aug 30, 2021 19:36
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