straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2017-11-05 04:21 pm
straightforwardly) wrote2017-11-05 04:21 pm
Entry tags:
- anime/manga: flying witch,
- interests: anime,
- interests: podcasts,
- interests: video games,
- interests: video games: visual novels,
- podcasts: dragon friends,
- video games: oden cart (series),
- video games: shall we date? (series),
- video games: shall we date? the niflheim,
- video games: shall we date? we the girls
171 | a grab-bag of topics
► This update is basically all the various little things that I wanted to talk about during the end half or so of October/first few days of November, but didn’t get around to because of ToT / real life stuff / because the entries I did make took too much time to write and I didn’t want to make them longer. So it’s more of a hodgepodge than usual.
► I did finish the second Oden Cart game. I think it was a bit over a week ago? There are a few brief things that I wanted comment on.
First, this happened:
Sweet Old Man: *hits max loyalty*
Me: HE'S THE DEMON HE'S DEFINITELY THE DEMON
Seriously, though, that expression was creepy. Also: I was right, and he was definitely the demon.
I did find the ending to the Samurai in White and the One-Eyed Man’s storylines pretty satisfying. I do kind of wish that there could have been a confrontation with the Sweet Old Man? But the game’s structure isn’t really built to handle something like that, and I was pretty okay with how his story ended too (i.e., with him dead & unable to hurt more people), so I’m not really complaining about it.
I...do have some pretty mixed feelings about the end of the game. First: I unreservedly hate that the Oden Cart Owner forgot about what happened while in Edo. Second: while I’m glad that his changing the past (by helping the Bearded Doctor go back to practicing medicine / searching for a cure for that unnamed disease their wives both died from) led to a less Tragically Dead Wife (...capitalization is mine, by the way: I just realized that that might be confusing, seeing how the game does names), it does really bother me that it came at the expense of everything that happened in this game and a hefty chunk of the last one being...effectively erased?
► Me, while watching flying witch: “I want to be a witch T_T”
Which isn’t exactly a new feeling, tbh, but it was particularly intense while watching that anime.
(Very soothing series to watch, though.)
► Apparently, Solmare (the company behind the Shall We Date? games), now has an online store with merchandise? ...Nothing for Niflheim, though. That’s not too surprising, seeing as there hasn’t been any events or anything for it since the one that ran February-March 2016, but I still had to check.
► Speaking of Solmare, I’ve started playing one of their newer games—the first time that I’ve picked a new one up in quite a while, actually. I think the last one was Blood & Roses? The one I’ve started playing is Shall We Date? We the Girls, and it was actually a misunderstanding which led to me picking it up. Quick background: Solmare likes to advertise their new games (or when they add a new route to a game) in their notifications for the old ones. Generally, I ignore them. A few days ago, though, one of those notifications caught my eye—because it was advertising a new Rapunzel route for We The Girls.
There was a brief, shining moment of excitement when I looked it up on the store, saw that Rapunzel, Snow White, etc. were actually female characters, and thought that Solmare had actually made an f/f game. But nope, they didn’t—it’s just that in this one, you play as a different character for each route, and the main characters all have defined names and personalities.
It also has a modern setting, which kind of disappointed me when I started playing and realized that. (That is, they’re all originally from a fairy-tale world, but the plot of the game has them end up in the modern world.) And...I was actually considering quitting the game after I played through my initial batch of tickets, because while I liked Yasmin fine (I started with the Aladdin route), the romance and setting seemed both utterly uninteresting, and the expressions / art-style sometimes looked...really weird.
But then I played one part further when my sixth ticket came in, and saw that apparently the main characters (or at least, the three original main characters) actually know each other and meet up to talk to one another, and my interest was piqued again, because I do really find the main characters interesting. (And also because of femslash potential.)
But...ugh. The main plot/romance really are utterly disinteresting, and even the interactions between the women aren’t always great. (There was this scene on a beach when Sirena—the Little Mermaid character—was super worried about getting “fat” [while, of course, looking utterly perfect] after a comment that Blanche made, and just, everything about that conversation was horrible.) And how Sirena reacted to the Ludwig thing...ugh.
There were some things I loved, too, like Blanche’s moment of bitterness about how she had to marry the first person who kissed her in her fairytale, and Sirena’s (surprisingly bitter, considering her personality) comment about how a certain someone didn’t recognize the person who saved his life. But—tbh, Blanche was the character that I was the most interested in from the beginning, but I decided not to play her route first because I'm worried that it’s going to be about her realizing “the error of her ways” re: sleeping with all those men, and ugggghhh I just don’t want her to end up with her prince. Go end up with Sirena instead, please. ._.
Finally: this is completely unrelated to the above stuff, but at one point the music shifted during a tense scene, and that song? Was basically a slightly remixed version of what I always thought of as the “battle music” in Shall We Date? The Niflheim. I’ve never noticed them reusing soundtracks before (though, tbf, I never paid as close attention to the music in the other games as I did in Niflheim). It surprised me.
► The other day, my brother sent me a Kotaku article about how mini-maps might be going away in games, and all I have to say is, noooooooooooooooooo. I already have a hard enough time finding my way around in open world games with the help of mini-maps! I don’t even want to think of how I’ll flail around without one.
► I decided to (slowly) start catching up with Dragon Friends, and episode 3.05 was pretty fun! Two highlights:
► I did finish the second Oden Cart game. I think it was a bit over a week ago? There are a few brief things that I wanted comment on.
First, this happened:
Sweet Old Man: *hits max loyalty*
Me: HE'S THE DEMON HE'S DEFINITELY THE DEMON
Seriously, though, that expression was creepy. Also: I was right, and he was definitely the demon.
I did find the ending to the Samurai in White and the One-Eyed Man’s storylines pretty satisfying. I do kind of wish that there could have been a confrontation with the Sweet Old Man? But the game’s structure isn’t really built to handle something like that, and I was pretty okay with how his story ended too (i.e., with him dead & unable to hurt more people), so I’m not really complaining about it.
I...do have some pretty mixed feelings about the end of the game. First: I unreservedly hate that the Oden Cart Owner forgot about what happened while in Edo. Second: while I’m glad that his changing the past (by helping the Bearded Doctor go back to practicing medicine / searching for a cure for that unnamed disease their wives both died from) led to a less Tragically Dead Wife (...capitalization is mine, by the way: I just realized that that might be confusing, seeing how the game does names), it does really bother me that it came at the expense of everything that happened in this game and a hefty chunk of the last one being...effectively erased?
► Me, while watching flying witch: “I want to be a witch T_T”
Which isn’t exactly a new feeling, tbh, but it was particularly intense while watching that anime.
(Very soothing series to watch, though.)
► Apparently, Solmare (the company behind the Shall We Date? games), now has an online store with merchandise? ...Nothing for Niflheim, though. That’s not too surprising, seeing as there hasn’t been any events or anything for it since the one that ran February-March 2016, but I still had to check.
► Speaking of Solmare, I’ve started playing one of their newer games—the first time that I’ve picked a new one up in quite a while, actually. I think the last one was Blood & Roses? The one I’ve started playing is Shall We Date? We the Girls, and it was actually a misunderstanding which led to me picking it up. Quick background: Solmare likes to advertise their new games (or when they add a new route to a game) in their notifications for the old ones. Generally, I ignore them. A few days ago, though, one of those notifications caught my eye—because it was advertising a new Rapunzel route for We The Girls.
There was a brief, shining moment of excitement when I looked it up on the store, saw that Rapunzel, Snow White, etc. were actually female characters, and thought that Solmare had actually made an f/f game. But nope, they didn’t—it’s just that in this one, you play as a different character for each route, and the main characters all have defined names and personalities.
It also has a modern setting, which kind of disappointed me when I started playing and realized that. (That is, they’re all originally from a fairy-tale world, but the plot of the game has them end up in the modern world.) And...I was actually considering quitting the game after I played through my initial batch of tickets, because while I liked Yasmin fine (I started with the Aladdin route), the romance and setting seemed both utterly uninteresting, and the expressions / art-style sometimes looked...really weird.
But then I played one part further when my sixth ticket came in, and saw that apparently the main characters (or at least, the three original main characters) actually know each other and meet up to talk to one another, and my interest was piqued again, because I do really find the main characters interesting. (And also because of femslash potential.)
But...ugh. The main plot/romance really are utterly disinteresting, and even the interactions between the women aren’t always great. (There was this scene on a beach when Sirena—the Little Mermaid character—was super worried about getting “fat” [while, of course, looking utterly perfect] after a comment that Blanche made, and just, everything about that conversation was horrible.) And how Sirena reacted to the Ludwig thing...ugh.
There were some things I loved, too, like Blanche’s moment of bitterness about how she had to marry the first person who kissed her in her fairytale, and Sirena’s (surprisingly bitter, considering her personality) comment about how a certain someone didn’t recognize the person who saved his life. But—tbh, Blanche was the character that I was the most interested in from the beginning, but I decided not to play her route first because I'm worried that it’s going to be about her realizing “the error of her ways” re: sleeping with all those men, and ugggghhh I just don’t want her to end up with her prince. Go end up with Sirena instead, please. ._.
Finally: this is completely unrelated to the above stuff, but at one point the music shifted during a tense scene, and that song? Was basically a slightly remixed version of what I always thought of as the “battle music” in Shall We Date? The Niflheim. I’ve never noticed them reusing soundtracks before (though, tbf, I never paid as close attention to the music in the other games as I did in Niflheim). It surprised me.
► The other day, my brother sent me a Kotaku article about how mini-maps might be going away in games, and all I have to say is, noooooooooooooooooo. I already have a hard enough time finding my way around in open world games with the help of mini-maps! I don’t even want to think of how I’ll flail around without one.
► I decided to (slowly) start catching up with Dragon Friends, and episode 3.05 was pretty fun! Two highlights:
- This line: "You should have thought of that before you tried to ride a fruit platter down 5th Avenue!"
- Freezo somehow managing to manipulate the stock market in a way that charmed the police to not go after him for mass murder. I can’t believe that worked, but I am so, so glad that it did.