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Polsy posted:m-w.com alleges it's "chiefly British" but I'm also chiefly British so that would add up. But yeah I'm similarly not sure I've ever seen it outside of a book. That makes it even weirder that I've never seen it since my focus is on British lit. FalloutFan56 posted:Mitarashi has gotten a lot of screentime in this route. Wonder if he plays as big a part in the other routes because so far he seems like the developers' favorite. Not likely, I'd say. I think Mitarashi just got a lot of focus this time because of his connection to Towa (both the unknown "mother" connection and the "big brother" role). As for developer's favorite, that part is possible. Ryuji has been getting a very positive representation in this game in all routes so far. He also isn't being reprimanded or demonized like some of the others (Subaru for his brief bit of sexism, Ayumu for deadbeat dad/possible child abuse, Kimimaro for his betrayal). The worst that I think has been said about him by the characters/narrative is that he's reckless. But even then, his recklessness is depicted as being ultimately beneficial and a good thing (his recklessness doesn't gently caress the group over). FalloutFan56 posted:Also on the subject of English my biggest pet peeve is people asking if I can "borrow them something" instead of "lending them something." That would bother me quite a bit, although I deal with a lot of weird stuff in my own region that bugs me as well.
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Dec 19, 2020 18:24
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Update XXI: Never Stop Never Stopping All right, let’s get this finished. We’ve still got another route to go after this one before we can even start getting some answers for… well, everything.  Hmmmm… Wait, how the hell did we get here?  Towa was right by my side when I blearily opened my eyes. I nodded. How are you doing? My legs don’t feel like they’ll fall off anymore. How about you? Ready to go! Good thing we spotted this place. He glanced around. We’d found one of the park’s storage rooms open, and locked it from the inside so we could catch up on our sleep. I wasn’t 100% yet, but I felt loads better than before. Oh, you guys up? Hey. So… how bad is it? There’re piglets everywhere. It’s a manhunt. We won’t be able to just stroll out of here. They’d bag us in a second. This sucks. Then we’ll loop around and go for the castle. Let’s do it! Right! We cautiously stepped outside and headed off in an eastern direction. If you’re confused about the timeline, I believe our trio of heroes has slept for at least 8 hours. They escaped with Ryuji from Band Animal Family just before the others were set to play that game, then caught some sleep. That means our heroes are now in the final night. We’ll just assume that everyone else beat Band Animal Family with no issues, because Ryuji/Towa/Saki make no further mention of it. We stopped for a breather outside Samurai Fantasy, after successfully avoiding the search parties… as far as we could tell. Phew… That was rough. What now? Castle Hogstein’s probably got, like, fifty piglets guarding it.Also, can we take a moment to recognize that there may possibly be more than 100 piglets here? However many there are, that’s how many people disappeared off the streets of Japan recently. You’d think that would have made the news/been worthy of mention from Saki, Subaru, or Ayumu.  Shoot… What should we do now…? …All right. He nodded decisively. I’ll distract them so you two have a clear shot. What?! While they’re after me, sneak in and free the hostages. No! No way! That’s too dangerous! Right! There’s too many! You’ll get hurt!Getting hurt is sort of Ryuji’s thing. We begged and pleaded with him, but Mitarashi just smiled. Hey, it’s me. I’ll be fine. But… He looked both of us in the eye. He did have a point. …I hate that you’re right. I promise we won’t give up until we rescue everyone! Good. Now take this. He pulled the gun from his pocket. What are… gently caress him, pass that over to Saki. I don’t trust Towa with a gun given how excited he was during Moonlight OX. He placed the gun gently into Towa’s hand. Ugh… Whatever. As long as someone has it. The two bumped fists. All right, I’m off to raise some hell. Give me a few minutes. Got it. Good luck, okay? Yeah, you too. He headed off in a sprint toward the castle. …! As soon as the piglets spotted him, they gave chase. Do you think he’ll be okay…? Come on, this is Ryusei we’re talking about. We gotta trust him. …Right. We stayed hidden for a while longer, to let him get some distance. He’s gotta be pretty far now. Let’s go. Yes!*We fade out and then back in to a shot of Castle Hogstein. The camera pans all the way down the tower, then fades out, then fades back in… for some reason.*  It was completely empty. Mitarashi had somehow gotten all of them to chase him. (We’re running out of time…) The sky was still dark, but every minute that ticked by was one less we had to get to the hostages. Illuminated by lights, the imposing castle appeared to have transformed into the lair of an evil demon. (Gosh, this place looks totally different at night…) We were going to break into this castle. I couldn’t stop a shiver up my spine.Probably a result of the nerve damage from that shot you took in the back. I’d get that checked out as soon as you escape. …It’ll be okay. Holding my hand tightly, he gave it an extra squeeze. This should be an obvious one. When you’re with me, I feel like I can take on anything. I squeezed back. His hand, warm and strong, gave me strength and courage.”Also, the fact that we had a gun really helped.”  *Affection up* The two of us… We’re going to rescue all of them. …Yes, we are! We looked at each other, and nodded. Hey, look…! A group of piglets suddenly appeared from inside. (Did they spot us…?!) Instead of turning in our direction, they ran off away from us. Mitarashi must be driving them crazy. With them gone… Maybe the castle’s empty…?It would be incredibly stupid if that were the case, which means that it probably is. One of the most frustrating aspects of this game so far is how Hogstein waffles between hyper-competence and braindead stupidity.  Let’s go! We quickly ran up to the side of the castle, and rapidly scanned the walls near the door. Urabe told us there was a button hidden in the design, and that it would open the door from the outside. Oh, I think I found it! It has to be it! He pointed to a small nub in among the cracks. He pressed down on it. The large door swung open. Holding our breath, we snuck in as silently as we could. Look… I could see the covered cage in the back. (The hostage’s should still be in there.) Hogstein’s not here… I slowly stepped across the room, expecting something to jump out of the shadows at any moment. I lifted the sheet covering the cage, and all the hostages turned to look at us in surprise. Awesome… Everyone’s all right! Hi…! You mean famous—Nah, just kidding. I’m not going to do that bit every time.  Saki…! I’m so glad you’re okay! Of course I am! I was more worried about you…!”Did you finally get laid? I went to a lot of— uhh, I mean, who’s that guy with you?”  We gripped each other’s arms through the bars, grinning in relief. He didn’t look hurt, but he was definitely worn out. Towa was examining the lock on the cage. Okay, we’re gonna get you out of here now! But how? The lock! This is how. He pulled out the gun and aimed. Get back everyone! The hostages jumped back immediately. I quickly stepped away too.*There’s a flash on the screen* With a loud noise, the lock shattered.Fun fact: This doesn’t actually work in real life. I had other things on my mind back during Ryuji’s route when Saki did this same thing, which is why I didn’t bring it up then. MythBusters tested this old chestnut during their Mega Movie Myths episode. Handguns basically do jack poo poo to padlocks or deadbolts other than create dangerous shrapnel and ricochets that are more likely to gently caress up the shooter than the lock itself. You need high-powered/specialized rounds to pull off a “shoot the lock” moment. Even then, you’re better off destroying everything around the lock instead of trying to shoot the lock itself.  It’s way too late for that, Towa. That noise might bring the piglets. Get out of here as fast as you can. Everyone filed out silently. All of their faces were drawn tight with tension. They weren’t off the hook yet. (Please stay safe…!) The last person to exit the cage was my uncle. Ah…! I practically flew to him and we hugged each other tightly. …I’m so happy you’re all right…! I was really worried about you…! I realized I was crying. (I was finally able to save him…!) Thank you, both of you. Let’s get out of this place together. Almost as one, Towa and I shook our heads. What? Why not? I can’t go yet, I’m sorry. Our friends are still here, fighting. We’re not going to leave them behind.Why not? That’s what we did in Ryuji’s route. We totally bailed on them that time. But…! Don’t worry. We’ve made it this far okay. I trust everyone; we can handle it. I looked him straight in the eyes, willing him to understand. … He stood there, his shoulders straight and his eyes focused. He sounded so determined. A few moments passed as my uncle studied him.(“This twink? Really? …Well, whatever. As long as I get grandnieces and grandnephews. Beggars can’t be choosers.”) For anyone who may be lost or reading this on the archive in the future and doesn’t know what I’m getting at: The thread is currently getting on board with the theory that Keiji Inafune masterminded this whole thing in order to get Saki a boyfriend, since she’s shown herself to be hopeless on her own. So that’s how it is…? I understand. If you believe this is what you must do, then I’m behind you 100%. …Best of luck. Thank you! Thanks, sir! Please… Be safe… He crushed me in a hug again, and held on as long as he could before he pulled away. All right then, I guess I’m off. Be careful! Silence overtook the room again. It’s strange that he isn’t here. Hmm… If he was, I would’ve made him stop this stupid game…Yeah, I’m sure he would have been shaking in his piggy boots. Get real, Towa. We all know you don’t have the balls to actually shoot anyone. Hogstein wouldn’t take you seriously even if you had the barrel inside his mouth with your finger on the trigger. We climbed the stairs and approached the throne. (Geez, where is he…?) Hm? What’s up? I think there’s something back here… There was a small alcove hidden behind the curtain. The far side had a metal door. Is that… an elevator? I bet Hogstein’s through there. Let’s go. We ducked behind the curtain, and stood in front of the elevator. I guess it only stops here… or at the roof. The door opened as soon as the button was pushed. We nodded to each other for courage, and stepped inside. Holy crap! A new background! The elevator door slid open to reveal a small room. Still no Hogstein. Ugh… The room was completely empty. I sighed. Well, I feel stupid… He plopped down on the floor, dejected. I sank down next to him. Gosh, suddenly I feel all wobbly. …I wonder if Mitarashi’s all right.We’re all worried about Mitarashi, Saki. But unfortunately, we’re stuck in Towa’s route now and we all need to come to terms with that, including you. Let’s chill here and rest for a bit. then [sic] go find him. We settled back to back, supporting each other. I felt his warmth soak into me, and his heartbeat was steady. He stretched out his arm, and gently took my hand. I threaded my fingers with his. (Being here with him… I feel so relaxed…) He’d stepped up to and faced down everything the park, and Hogstein, had thrown at him.I think that’s giving him a bit too much credit. You’re making him sound like way more of a badass than he actually was. He’d really come into his own over the past few days.But of course we’re going to cement that revisionist bullshit because we’re on his route. The choice here is between “You’ve done well” and “You’re amazing.” You’ve been pretty amazing. Y-You think so? You came up with good plans, and rescued the hostages… I’m glad you’re here.Okay, now you’re just making poo poo up. Towa’s only plan that I can recall was saying “Let’s go straight to the castle to get the hostages”, which is less of a plan and more of a goal. Ryuji has been putting in more work on the planning front and this isn’t even his route. The only reason you were even able to get to the hostages and free them is because Ryuji gave you both the means to do so. I could tell even without looking that he was smiling.*Affection up. You know the deal* That makes me really happy. It’s all true. Thank you… for everything. I felt him shift as he turned toward me. Keep it in your pants, Justin Weeber. …S-Sure. My heart thundered in my chest, but I didn’t hesitate to turn to face him, my eyes drifting closed. …Ah! Before my eyes shut, I spotted something over Towa’s shoulder. My surprise must have shown on my face, as he became alarmed. What is it?! Th-There… Huh? …Whoa! Oh, hey Hogstein… Sorry, I meant “Hogstein]”, because of course. How does that even happen? Hogstein was watching us from the shadows, his head hovering near the floor by a table. Argh, have you been hiding there, like, this whole time?! He quickly stood up and pushed me behind him. … He didn’t respond. …Hm? Why isn’t he moving…? We hesitantly walked up to him. Eek! This is… just a costume head! What?! Then, Hogstein’s not in it right now? Maybe? Why the heck’d he leave this…? The elevator hummed into life, and began returning to the ground floor. Someone’s coming up! We gotta hide, now!Oh poo poo, if the costume is here then does that mean we’re about to see who Hogstein is? We scurried behind a pillar, and pressed ourselves as far back into the shadows as we could. The elevator door pinged, and Hogstein and a piglet stepped out. (Hogstein? What…?! How…? His outfit’s right here…!)Damnit, of course we won’t get to find that out in this route. I guess it shouldn’t be much of a surprise. We already knew that he has a spare costume, since he faked out Ryuji with it during that route. My eyes widened, my head snapping to Towa to see him staring back. We both nearly gasped; we immediately covered the other’s mouth. Stunned, we huddled together. The Count approached, a gun in his hand. He conked the piglet on the head with his fist. (Wait…) His voice sounded different. Younger.Oh, right… I haven’t really talked about any of the music or audio for this game outside of mentioning some voice actors. Whenever Hogstein talks, he has a very robotic filter over his voice. He doesn’t have that filter during this moment and is talking like a normal person. Hogstein is voiced by Shingo Tano. I don’t remember if I mentioned that during the early part of the LP, but I did screencap the cast list during the credits in Ryuji’s ending. For those of you now worried about spoilers based on the cast list, don’t be. Mr. Tano only voices Hogstein, so we can’t discern Hogstein’s identity based on voice actors. … (Too… ?!) Clearly exasperated, he bonked the piglet on the head again. Eh, whatever. Go and catch that escort guy for now. I’ll activate the alarm so the others go after the hostages. He pressed down on the skull that hung around his neck. So, hop to it. May as well take this gun, too. His voice reverted back to the one we recognized. (That skull must be a voice changer!) The piglet scrambled into the costume we’d found behind the table earlier. Our minds awhirl with questions, we watched as the piglet that now looked like Hogstein entered the elevator.Come on, game… Really? I knew we weren’t going to be getting any answers in Towa’s route, but I didn’t think you’d pile on more questions. Now… Finally alone, he briskly walked up to the desk, and reached for a red button on a console there. (That must be the alarm!) If he pushed that, the piglets would go after the hostages, and they’d never escape. Towa must have realized the same thing, because he abruptly jumped out from behind the pillar. Don’t move, Hogstein! That’s the button for the alarms, right? Push it and I’ll shoot.I’m barely stifling a laugh right now. Hogstein slowly raised his hands in the air. I’m impressed… I wasn’t expecting to see you two here… You’re definitely not going to get away with all this, you know.HA! Oh my god, that’s a good one. Sorry, Towa. We’ve been told that your route is essentially meaningless in terms of plot advancement, so Hogstein most certainly will get away scot-free.  Same here, Hogstein. Just shut up. You’re gonna stop the game for today. Even though he was clearly not in control of the situation, Hogstein shook his head. Sorry, no can do. Today’s game continues as scheduled. You sure you should be here, wasting time? The other me is out hunting down Ryusei Mitarashi. When he finds him… Bang! Pointing his hand like a gun, he pretended to fire, then blew imaginary smoke off the end. W-We have to go help him! Yeah! But first I’m gonna…Go ahead, Towa. Prove me wrong.  He pointed the gun. A gunshot echoed off the walls. A bullet struck the console.That’s what I thought. Sparks flew as the panel shorted out. None of the buttons would work now. Damnit! What the hell did you do?! Let’s go! We gotta hurry! Right! I’m just saying. You didn’t have to murder him in cold blood (although I think that would have been worth consideration), but you could have at least shot him in the legs or the arm or something.  The plaza was empty. And since the alarm panel was broken, no sirens would go off anytime soon. I wonder if the hostages got out okay… I bet they’d be brought here if they were found. Since no one’s here, I’m guessing we’re all good. Then… we just need to worry about Mitarashi. But we have no idea where he is… The park was so huge, and we didn’t have our phones. It was like finding a needle in a haystack. Oh, I got it! What? Watch this. He pointed the gun up over his head… and fired. What are you doing?! Come on. We have to hide. He grabbed my hand and pulled me behind a corner of the castle. Within seconds, an overwhelming number of piglets came running out of the forest and into the plaza. I don’t understand… They were all in the trees over there, so he should be in that direction too.I really hate having to give credit to Towa… so I won’t! This idea sounds clever on paper, but all it really does is draw the attention of the piglets toward Saki and Towa. That does take a bit of heat off Ryuji, but it also directly endangers Towa and Saki. Beyond that, of course most of the piglets ran out from the forest. The forest is the best place to hide! It offers tons of hiding places (both on the ground and in the trees themselves), provides cover from aerial surveillance, slows down pursuers due to the difficulty of navigation and time it takes to perform a detailed search, and there wouldn’t be any park security cameras around for Hogstein to track Ryuji with. He also wasted a bullet. That might not seem like such a big deal because the game always refers to it as a “handgun”, so you’re probably imagining a semi-auto with 8-13 rounds. Except this is Japan we’re talking about. The gun is originally Subaru’s, who is a cop, and Japanese police are only armed with small revolvers that carry 5 shots (either a New Nambu or a Sakura M360). Assuming both Subaru and Ryuji never fired a shot, that means Towa now only has 2 shots left. Oh yeah, and our heroes know that the other Hogstein is armed with a gun of his own. Let’s hope we won’t need that third bullet, I guess! You’re right! That was a great idea! Thanks. You ready to go? Yeah! We skirted around the plaza, keeping to the shadows, and hurried into the forest. The gunshot must’ve drawn nearly all of them because we didn’t come across any as we went deeper. Suddenly the trees thinned as we reached a clearing. In the middle was a small storage shed. Hold on… That’s totally Hogstein over there! We hid behind some trees and watched as he approached the door to the shed, which was surrounded by piglets. Ryusei Mitarashi, it’s obvious you’re in there. Be a good boy and come out now. Are you making GBS threads me? No way in hell I’m coming out. I’ll end up full of holes.And of course Ryuji picks the one place in the forest to hide that stands out like a sore thumb, is one of the first places that would be searched, and provides no avenues of escape in the event he gets cornered.  It’s him! He will? Why? I doubt a flimsy storage shed door is going to hold off that many piglets. Oh? You may want to reconsider. The longer you refuse, the more likely I am to kill our dear Towa Wakasa and Saki Inafune. Oink! That bastard…! He was using us as his bargaining chip, and lied straight to his face. Don’t believe him…!I think this line was supposed to be Saki talking in her head and not shouting it out loud. Unless she was whisper screaming or something. A couple moments later, the door to the shed opened and Mitarashi stepped out. All right, you got me. Let ‘em go. Oink! But first I think I’m going to shoot both your legs. As insurance.This Hogstein knows what’s up. Where has this guy been during all these games? (What…? That’s horrible! Not only did he trick Mitarashi into thinking he’d captured us, and use our lives to get him to give up…) I chose “Restrain Myself” during this recording because I was fairly sure that jumping out and surprising somebody who had a gun pointed at someone else would probably be a recipe for disaster. My logic with this game is worthless, however, because— (I want to give him a piece of my mind, but lives are in danger…!) T-Towa?!Towa just jumps out and does it anyway. In case you’re curious, “Get Mad” just results in the same thing happening, except those last three lines are skipped. Saki does her “What the hell is wrong with you?!” explosion thing, Hogstein stammers that he’s sorry, then we jump straight to this next line and everything proceeds the same. No “Game Over” scenario this time. We jumped out from behind the tree. Hogstein spun around to find himself at gunpoint. Your pants must totally be on fire right now. We’re obviously fine. The hostages are even free already. Arrrgh…! Our appearance seemed to be a surprise, as he groaned in frustration. Behind him, Mitarashi grinned. Guys, your timing is perfect! He crouched as he spoke, but now he launched himself forward. Wuuuoooaahh! Hogstein hastily shot at him, but it went wild, only grazing his coat. With a terrifying yell, Mitarashi drove his fist into the pig’s head.Yay! Ryuji finally avoided being physically injured!   The blow threw him to the ground so hard, he actually bounced. He didn’t so much as twitch after that. Hmph. Too easy. Dismissing any future threat from that direction, he jogged up to us.Normally that kind of willful stupidity would result in someone being dramatically shot in the back in the next few minutes, buuut we’re running out of script so that’s not going to happen this time. Ryusei! It’s dangerous to just hang around here, so let’s go! Right! We took off running, leaving the panicking piglets behind to fend for themselves. Somehow we reached Band Animal Family without getting caught by piglets in the area. We’re not stopping here! Where are we going? There’s no way we can keep running until the game’s over… And there’s nowhere to hide! He had a point. I like how the characters are just outright admitting that there’s no way to beat these games in a reasonable timeframe. No matter what, the expectation is that the heroes will only just barely scrape by under the time limit. But Mitarashi just grinned, never breaking his stride. Nope, there’s one place where he can’t get to us. Huh? Where? You ready for this…? The hotel! What?! Wait…! Isn’t that against the rules…? Yup. But no one stopped me. Like it was brushed under the rug. I don’t think he’s watching the ship. You know… We never did hear from Hogstein while we were there! Oh, and as long as it’s away from the shore, no one else can get on!I would call that a very obvious oversight on Hogstein’s part, but I guess his thinking was that there wasn’t any need to monitor them on the ship because they wouldn’t be playing any games and the hostages meant they wouldn’t try to escape or try anything sneaky. I mean, it’s still stupid of him to leave a massive blind spot like that, but I can at least understand where the thinking came from. Right. But if we miss that boat, we’re screwed five ways from Sunday. Hurry it up, guys! We looked at each other, and pushed our tired bodies to go faster.
Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Dec 24, 2020 |
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Dec 24, 2020 20:05
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 We… just made it… Th-That was close…And so they made it just in time because exposition. We reached the dock right as the ship was pulling away, and by some stroke of luck were able to get on board. We were all gasping for breath. The park was huge, and we’d been running full tilt. Oh my god! The writers remembered Mai! M-Mai! She grinned down at us sprawled out all over the floor where we’d collapsed, completely exhausted. Welcome back! Did you just run a lot? Y-Yeah… We, um, played tag on our way back. We’re pretty tired… You want me to bring some water? That’d be great, thanks. It was hard to believe we were running for our lives a few minutes ago. It was like night and day. …Ah! I was more than willing to just lay on the floor, until I spotted a piglet out of the corner of my eye. …I don’t like that look he’s giving us. I froze. …? It didn’t seem to know what was going on. Just… curious. It does look like they’ll hurt us…Uhhh…  Okay, so yeah… Based on what Ryuji just said, I assume that Saki’s line was supposed to be “It doesn’t look like they’ll hurt us…” O-Okay. He handed it over. Mitarashi lazily swung his arm up and pointed it at the nearest piglet. …?! Hey, call all the piglets over here. …! …! Don’t make me wait! ! His glare was so fierce, the piglet jumped to obey instantly, summoning the rest of them. Uh… What are you doing? Just wait. This all of you? …! A sea of heads nodded. Mitarashi flashed a grin. …! …! Don’t worry, you’re not gonna die. Would you rather get shot?! Go, now! …! Faced with the possibility of a bullet, their decision was already made. They all tumbled into the river. Um… Are they playing in the water now? You got it kiddo. Look how much fun they’re having. The two of them leaned over the edge and watched them flounder, completely unconcerned. I don’t… Wow… that was totally crazy. Worked though, didn’t it? This ship’s now the safest place in the park.Assuming that Hogstein didn’t rig the ship with explosive as well. In which case it’s the most dangerous place in the park because you just got rid of any moral roadblocks to Hogstein simply killing you all. That’s true, but… Eh, it’s all good. You guys did great rescuing everyone, me included. You must be beat. Go ahead and rest for a while. But what about you? Mai was hanging on his every word, he eyes wide. You can drive this big thing? Of course. You wanna come along? …Yeah! That’d be awesome! All right. You and me, kiddo. Cruising in style. Just call me “captain.”Ryuji once again proving why he is the best character so far. Yes sir, Captain sir! I’ll see you two on the flip side. Sleep tight. …Sweet dreams! Hand in hand, the two of them walked off to the pilothouse. That guy… He’s practically a kid himself. He so… ooooo… iiisss… ahh… Ha ha, you’re yawning… aaaahhh… You are too. We should go take a rest, huh? Yeah. I’ll walk you to your room. Huh? Oh, I’m okay by myself. Ha, I suppose I am… Thanks. He was so sweet for being worried about me. We slowly trudged together to my room. Towa and I stepped inside my room; my feet bee-lined to the bed and I collapsed on the covers. Whew… I’m totally pooped. I was already falling asleep. I could barely keep my eyes open. (No, wait… I need to thank him first…) Huh…? Wh-Whoa! I can’t… My room’s too far… Huh? What?! Hey, could I maybe sleep here with you? Hm? U-Uh… B-But! His face was just inches from mine. (Wow… His lashes are so long… Ah, no! Focus!) Uh… I… …Should I go? (Well, I hadn’t said that…) No… It’s okay… I felt my face heat up. He and I both knew I didn’t mind him being there. His soft smile was impossibly tender. He took my hand and gently threaded our fingers together. I held his hand tight. We lay there for a while, in a warm, comfortable closeness. All my stress melted away, replaced with an overwhelming urge to sleep. On the edge of drifting off, I heard Towa whisper. I… I’ll tell them after this is over… (What… What do you… mean…?)*And then we fade to black*  I fell into a deep and untroubled sleep…*And then we fade back in to…*  After I’d woken up from my nap in the hotel, I learned the others had managed to beat the final game. All of us were released, including Mai. We couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about it for a while. But Shidou arranged it so we wouldn’t have to deal with the media by not releasing any personal information. Pretty sure this part is the same as in Ryuji’s route. As for the seven teammates who fought for their lives together… We’ve all gone our separate ways. I heard Meoshi started a part-time job. Urabe regretted his involvement in Hogstein’s plot, and turned himself in. Unlike in Ryuji’s ending, Saki doesn’t really go into much detail regarding what everyone else is doing in this ending. Mitarashi went back to working at Ulysses, and recently started delving into video games. How he was still interested in them after everything that’d happened was beyond me, but he seemed happy. Shirabe was still hunting down the truth. None of the mysteries surrounding Count Hogstein had been solved. He completely disappeared after the game ended.We also now have an additional mystery that needs answering, so thanks for that “Towa Route.” According to Shidou’s official report, the piglets turned out to be regular, innocent people. The whole incident was a blank to them. They had no memory of it. I like this part, because it leaves the door open for us eventually getting a better piglet explanation than “mass hypnotism.” I was sure either Shirabe or Shidou would find the truth someday.I still can’t believe we need to claw through at least one more route before we start getting any answers… As for me…As for you? What about Mai? Does she really not warrant even a passing mention in any of these endings? Seriously, what the hell happens with her family situation? Does Ayumu just go right back to being a deadbeat dad?   Uhhhhh… His arms slid around me as he came up from behind, and he glanced at the video playing on my phone.OH! That’s what you were referring to. Carry on, then. Only a few… Okay, a lot. It still amazes me. I snuggled into his hug. Ha ha. It was totally crazy back then. He leaned in to press us cheek to cheek. I could feel him smiling. Ah hey, that tickles. I laughed. The video I was watching was from when Towa, member of the super popular Junior Jr. Boys, announced to the public that he had a girlfriend.And his idol career was immediately over, right? [Video Towa]: There’s a special someone I want to be with. The cameras flashing in his face took in his serious expression, proof of his resolve. He’d held a press conference right after being released from the park. The topic: He was now dating a normal girl. He meant me, of course. The fans and press went bonkers, and his announcement ended up everywhere. This video alone was viewed thousands of times.Oh wow… thousands you say. Man, you can really feel the popularity of Junior Jr. Boys through those viewer numbers. The media outlets tried to find this “mystery girl” for a while. That’s total bullshit, but this is a dating-sim game, so I guess it’s to be expected that everything works out completely okay. In reality, Towa would almost certainly have been thrown out of the group for a press conference like that. It also would create a lot of additional strain with his bandmates. Between the two of us, things have been great. No one knew who I was, so I had to be careful every time I was in public with him. It was harder than I expected. But Towa understood. He came up with ways for us to get a moment together, and was always there when I needed him. What happened in the park seemed to have strengthened him, and made him a better man. It was obvious to everyone; his popularity skyrocketed afterward. (Anyway…) I never in a million years thought I’d ever be dating someone famous. Every day had new surprises and troubles… Sometimes I felt uneasy. Um, Towa…? Are you really sure about me? I’d lost count how many times I asked him this, but I couldn’t help it. Hm? This again? I could tell he was gently teasing me. Well… He shifted, put his mouth next to my ear, and whispered only to me. That’s all there is to it. I trust my heart. Y-Yeah… He caught my chin, turned me toward him, and softly kissed me. (I would happily stay like this forever…) I was sure now. Towa loved me. And it was the best feeling in the world. And there we go, that’s our second route completed. Thank Christ for that. For those of you that thought that ending was really sweet and don’t want me to completely destroy that for you, then I suggest you stop reading this update now. We’re about to have a quick look at Towa’s bad end.  In the bad ending, the scene in Saki’s room changes a bit. Towa doesn’t stay with her in this ending, he just peaces out and leaves Saki to rest. Saki stops him and is about to say something, but she bails on it and tells him that it was nothing. She then wonders to herself why she had a feeling of not wanting him to leave. Towa checks with her one more time to ask if she’s really feeling okay, and Saki tells him not to mind. Towa assumes that Saki is worried about everyone else failing the game and tells her that everything will be fine and to trust in them to win.  After that, Saki goes to sleep and the ending proceeds as it did before. Saki is in her room a month later, she talks about what everyone is up to, and she wonders about the truth of what happened. She’s watching a Junior Jr. Boys concert video on her bed and thinking back on the time when Towa had told her he loved her. So what happened after the game had been won that caused Towa to bail on that?  Yeah, he just jumps in a limo and ditches Saki entirely for no reason. He completely ghosts her, as Saki talks about not receiving any texts, calls, or emails from him at all. She mentions that eventually she built up the nerve to call him herself, which leads to—   Yeah, Towa dumps her in basically the hardest way possible short of publicly humiliating her. Saki even says that his apology about not contacting her was so offhand that it felt like he didn’t have a single shred of guilt about leaving her hanging. Towa hangs up on Saki and she talks about how her last bit of hope fizzled out, along with her crush on him. She thinks back on how she at least got to be the girlfriend of someone famous for a little while, but assumes that it must have just been some kind of dream. Funny stuff, right? Unlike with Ryuji, there’s no talk about Saki and Towa being from different worlds that are too far apart. In Ryuji’s bad end, he seems to have this understanding that his life as a male escort is too far removed from Saki’s relatively normal life. It was more a case of their love not being strong enough to conquer the divide between them. In Towa’s bad end, he just throws Saki into the ditch the second that he’s free and doesn’t seem the tiniest bit remorseful about it. I’m sure other people will have different interpretations (that are probably more sympathetic) of his actions, but to me it reeks of “Hey, I got my groove back! I don’t need this chick anymore. I’m famous!” Oh well. No matter where you fall on Towa’s Bad End, I think we can all agree that ghosting a girl you confessed to (and proceeded to pressure a reciprocal confession out of) is a lovely move. Now, on to Meoshi’s route! So that we can get one step closer to finding out the answers to questions that we actually want the answers to!
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Dec 24, 2020 20:07
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Yeah, that seems very weird. Sure, as you said yourself "idols shouldn't date" and they reference that in Towa's final line so it's not exactly out of left field that he wouldn't stick with her, but...just silently leaving and never speaking to her again is a bit much.
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Dec 26, 2020 13:08
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That's some seriously weird writing for the bad end. As if someone really wanted Towa to look like an absolute rear end in a top hat and succeeded greatly. It wouldn't exactly be hard to have the bad end still make him look good, have him either not want to involve Saki in the risky life of a famous idol (even moreso considering what's expected of an idol and the potential for Saki to get hurt by fans that had their dreams crushed) or even have to choose between his career and love and end up choosing the former, with the obvious pain that comes from it. Instead he just ghosts her and when pressed about it he gives no fucks. I really hope later bad ends aren't like this one.
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Dec 26, 2020 15:36
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It's definitely a strange way to do it. I mean, it is the "Bad End", so of course it isn't going to be a feel good experience, but this one just feels empty on top of that. I guess? It's hard to pin down why it feels so much worse than Ryuji's. I think part of the problem is that the writers backed themselves into a corner by having Towa be the one to push the love angle. Towa is the one that brings up the idea of love and he even pushes Saki into it by trying to force her to give him an answer when she's clearly not sure of her feelings. How do you walk things back from that point? It's like trying to get back to the edge of a cliff after you already jumped. Blaze Dragon posted:It wouldn't exactly be hard to have the bad end still make him look good, have him either not want to involve Saki in the risky life of a famous idol (even moreso considering what's expected of an idol and the potential for Saki to get hurt by fans that had their dreams crushed) or even have to choose between his career and love and end up choosing the former, with the obvious pain that comes from it. This could have worked as well and I would suspect that people who really like Towa would probably fall back on this reasoning. The problem is that even if this was his reasoning, that Saki's life would become an absolute nightmare by being with him, then Towa is still a gigantic rear end in a top hat for not communicating that to Saki in any way. He just leaves her high and dry, wondering if she had just imagined someone actually loving her or if she did something wrong or if Towa had just used her. No matter what, that's going to be devastating for Saki's self-esteem and cause future relationship/trust issues for her. It's an incredibly jerkish move from Towa. Blaze Dragon posted:I really hope later bad ends aren't like this one. I think the other bad endings should be fairly predictable based on the characters. -Meoshi - Probably fails to break out of his NEET habits and slips back into isolation, making it nearly impossible for Saki to pursue any kind of relationship. -Urabe - I would imagine that his bad ending will result from some aspect of his backstory/traitor status. There are plenty of good reasons for a potential bad end with Urabe, the easiest of which is having him go to prison, like he does in every ending we've seen so far. -Shidou - Not quite sure on this one. If you wanted to go the obvious route, then possibly a "married to his job" situation where he tells Saki that his work as a cop is too important or dangerous to involve her in. -Ayumu - The most obvious one would be him being unable to put the memory of his dead wife to rest by failing to uncover the truth he's chasing. That would be an understandable reason for him bailing on a relationship (as well as the fact that he's like 14 years older than Saki and has a child). Polsy posted:Yeah, that seems very weird. Sure, as you said yourself "idols shouldn't date" and they reference that in Towa's final line so it's not exactly out of left field that he wouldn't stick with her, but...just silently leaving and never speaking to her again is a bit much. This is something that really bothers me with his bad ending. They address the fact that many Japanese Idols are forbidden from dating, because it's obviously an incredibly dangerous thing in terms of career. Sure, there's a small chance that the idol's fans will accept it and support it, but that's like saying there's a chance that falling from a 6-storey building won't kill you. In Towa's good ending, that stuff isn't an issue for some reason. The game highlights that aspect of idol culture, but also has to deliberately ignore it in order for the good ending to work. Hell, in some ways the good ending spits in the face of reality by trying to convince us that Towa's career benefits from his announcement. Even in the cases of male idols that have had their relationships exposed and survived with their career intact, I can't think of a single instance of that happening. I think there was a member of AKB48 that got a popularity boost after her boyfriend came to light, but she still got kicked out of the main group and into the B-Team for it. She sure as hell didn't get a pat on the back from her band mates and become a superstar. Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Dec 26, 2020 |
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Dec 26, 2020 17:13
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Astrofig posted:...I'm really hoping that turns out to be like Animal Crossing mixed with Rockband.
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Dec 26, 2020 22:18
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Blaze Dragon posted:This seems like it should be a Saki bombs portrait, not Towa's.
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Dec 28, 2020 02:42
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CannonFodder posted:I thought those were Brook from One Piece. It kinda looks like that, doesn't it? I don't recall where I got that icon from. I think it's the bomb logo on Saki's hoodie, which is why it's a bit stretched out instead of round. Also, I forgot to mention it during the updates for some reason, but that concert moment in Towa's route doesn't play an actual song. When Hogstein supposedly starts playing a Junior Jr. Boys song, the game is just playing some generic background music. I need to do a small update regarding the music at some point, because Sweet Fuse does have a decently sized soundtrack (which you can listen to in-game I should add). Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Dec 28, 2020 |
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Dec 28, 2020 15:26
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Update XXII: It’s like one of my Japanese animes All right, just one more route to get through before we start getting some answers. More importantly (to me anyway) is that we’re now done with my least favourite character. Feels good. Sorry, Towa fans. I don’t like him and never will.  Wait a minute… why did the fast-forwarding stop? This is the common route.  …Who the hell is this? Thanks! gently caress you, game. I will get through this man’s dialogue using only screenshots, so help me god. I am not putting in the time to make a character portrait for a guy who I’m sure will only show up this one time. Conception and Conception II burned me too many times on that crap. He he! I know! I couldn’t sleep either!Anyway, from that point on the opening proceeds completely the same as every other time we’ve done this. So, yeah. This threw me for a loop at first. To those of you going “Wait, is this the secret route character that you accidentally spoiled during the wrap-up of Ryuji’s route?”, the answer is no. We’ll find out what that character’s whole deal is eventually.  I had to look this up after my recording because I was sure I had seen that character sprite somewhere before. It turns out it was on the official Japanese website for the game, although I should have recognized him right away just based on the name. Dasoku is the artist who does the opening and ending themes for Sweet Fuse, “Jet Coaster Rendezvous” and “With you…” (“君と…” – “Kimi to…” in the Japanese version). I couldn’t find a lot of information about him other than what you see in the profile above. He used to be part of a vocal group called RootFive or ROOT FIVE or √5 or… some combination of those things. Anyway, Root Five was a bunch of guys in the Utattemita (歌ってみた) community on Nico Nico Douga. Utattemita means “Tried to sing” and refers to users on NND (and I guess YouTube now as well) who upload cover versions of songs from games/anime/idols/vocaloids. Dasoku left the group in 2015 to go it on his own and in 2018 he stopped using the name “Dasoku” and started going by his real name instead.  As for his appearance in the game itself, it’s apparently just a minor cameo. It only happens on your third playthrough, for… some reason. Weird. Oh well, at least I took the time to research and find that out before I wasted a bunch of time making a character portrait for him only to later learn that he never gets any further dialogue. I decided I wanted to go with Meoshi. Whatever, let’s just get back on track. Sorry for that derail, I wasn’t expecting a random cameo from anyone other than Keiji. You can see that there’s another person on the official website with a profile card as well, but his doesn’t have an anime representation of himself, so I doubt we’ll get an appearance from him. Anyway, Meoshi. The first deviation from the common route is after Samurai Fantasy VII. Ryuji runs off to patch the hole in his arm, Shirabe goes exploring, Meoshi goes to the arcade, and everyone else goes to the restaurant. This time, we’ll be going with Meoshi. (Mitarashi really sounded like he didn’t want me around, so I should go somewhere I want to go.) Huh? You’re going to the arcade too? Yeah. Is it okay if I tag along? Yeah, I guess so. We headed off toward the arcade, but…*There’s a slow fade to black wipe here, but the scene doesn’t change* Aw man… It’s closed. Yeah… With the arcade dark, there wasn’t much we could do there, so we turned around and began making our way back toward the restaurant. Um… Huh? Did you say something? Uh… Why did you want to come with me? Great work on the choice boxes, guys. The top option (I believe) is supposed to read “I thought hanging out with you might be fun/interesting/educational.” The correct choice is the bottom one, however, and it should read “I thought I might learn something about you.” I just thought I might find out something about you, I guess. Something about me…? I’m just an unemployed shut-in, whose only skills revolve around games.Hey, give it like 6 years or so and that will be a huge market. Hell, you don’t even have to be sociable anymore. Apparently V-tubers became a big thing around 2017? Now you can just Hatsune Miku that poo poo and hide your real self behind a virtual anime waifu. Oh… um… He went silent after that. I… wasn’t quite sure what he’d been trying to say.*Affection up… I guess?* I frowned and kept walking, but I felt something tug at my sleeve. I turned around to see Meoshi grabbing it. Uh, I just want to say… Say what…? Well, thanks, I guess. For… back there. “Back there”? In the hallway. For believing in me.This is in reference to the hallway full of arrow shooters in Samurai Fantasy VII. In Meoshi’s route, Saki tells the others to let Meoshi try when he talks about being able to get through without being shot. Oh, right. …I don’t get that a lot. It was nice. And with that, he fell silent again. (He’s a little strange, huh…) We didn’t say anything else until we reached the restaurant and met up with the others.Honestly, I think the game is doing a good job so far of capturing the essence of the otaku/NEET/shut-in type of person. For the most part: Meoshi only speaks when spoken to, gets straight to the point so that conversations end as quickly as possible, gets nervous or embarrassed when complimented or made the center of attention, and has absolutely no idea how to interact with a girl in a casual/normal way.  Break Time #1, here we go. Meoshi? Ah! He jumped when I called out, and looked startled when he turned around. I couldn’t get to sleep. What about you? I couldn’t sleep either… That was when I noticed he was holding a can from a vending machine. Oh, they’ve got a vending machine here? Awesome, maybe I’ll go get something. Um… well… Here. Huh? He held out a can. Oh, no, you bought that one. I can go get my own. W-Well, uh, I’ve… actually got another one. You bought two…? …Huh? N-Never mind. See you… Wait! I mean, we’ve got two, and we both can’t sleep, so why don’t we drink them together? Uh… Pretty sure that’s not the issue, Saki. For any of you that aren’t familiar with the Otome genre, know that “dense dating-sim protagonist” is not limited only to guys. Granted, it’s not quite as prevalent in Otome games as it is in male-targeted dating-sims. Still, Saki has on at least one occasion come dangerously close to Sakura Spirit levels of obliviousness. The Steam Train episodes of that game are hilarious by the way, assuming you don’t have anything against that group of YouTubers. Anyway, what was going on? Something about Meoshi being unable to process the concept of “a girl is talking to me”? I was starting to wonder how long he’d stay like that when he finally spoke. Uh, yeah. I mean, we do have two… Exactly! …I don’t like how it looks like they are both staring directly at me. I plopped down onto the sofa in the lobby. After a second of hesitation Meoshi sat down too, and awkwardly pried open his can. Are you okay with that one…? Yeah, I love milk tea. Huh… So what about you— wait… Is that… read bean soup?! Yeah. I like it. Why… is that weird? Well, no, I guess it’s not weird… It kind of fits you, actually. I… see… Our conversation didn’t seem to be going anywhere, so we just drank in silence. Yeah, you’re right. Oh! Wh-What is it? Huh? ‘Night.*Affection up* With that, he turned and left, and I stood there dumbfounded, trying to understand what had just happened. (Um… what was that…?) After a few moments I shrugged, and headed back to my room.Good stuff. Time to skip ahead to the next unique segment, which is… Alice Kart. Unlike last time, we’ll actually be going through this event because we haven’t seen Saki partner up with anyone other than Shidou so far.  To get Meoshi, we have to select “Scissors” during the RPS game. Oh! I guess that’s you and me, then. Let’s hope it goes okay. I’m sure we’ll do fine! (As long as I don’t get in the way, at least…) That left Shidou with Shirabe, and Wakasa with Mitarashi.*After a fade to black wipe* I climbed into my kart. (Looks like there are two sets of controls… One for the wheel, and one for the gas. I guess I’ve got the gas. Wait… Urabe won’t be able to drive by himself!)*Then we skip past a bunch of repeat dialogue where Urabe assures us that he’ll be fine on his own* I looked over to see Meoshi grasping the wheel with white-knuckled hands, his face unreadable. Good luck. Y-You too. He hadn’t even turned to look at me. (He’s kind of making me worried, but he was amazing in the hallway yesterday… We should be fine.) I repeated that to myself, and started examining the dashboard. When I placed my foot on the gas pedal Meoshi suddenly spoke up again. Uh… yeah… I knew how a gas pedal worked. I just wasn’t sure how we were going to work in tandem if we didn’t talk… (I don’t think I’m going to get much more out of him, though.) I sighed. All I could do was try my best, and pay close attention. The roar of an engine startled my back to reality. Apparently Meoshi had started the kart. A piglet holding a flag appeared next to the starting line, and the signal light came on. It turned from red to green, and the race was on. Guh…! (Well, I should probably gun it here, and then ease off when we hit the curve…) If we tried to take the curve too fast, then we’d be in trouble. Well done. Huh? Oh, thanks. It looked like my plan had worked out. We managed to move up two cars from last place. Our communication wasn’t great, but we seemed to be doing all right despite that. We’re in fifth place… Meoshi jerked the wheel to the side in the middle of a straightaway, taking us close to the edge of the track. I was about to ask why when I heard a noise. Huh? What do you mean? Look at the buttons. Oh! I looked down at the dashboard. The light next to one of the buttons was lit. You see the question marks on the track? If we run over them we get a random item. Oh… So the lit “Missile” button means… That we have a missile. We can use that or the boost to move up. We can only have one of each item, though. If we want another missile, we have to fire one. I see. I wasn’t quite sure I understood what was going on, but it was clear that pressing that button fired a missile. There’s a piglet kart right in front of us. Why don’t you shoot a missile at it? Hell yes we’re going to do this. We’re not stuck with Mr. “It’s Too Risky” this time. You bet your rear end I’m going to blast those potentially hypnotized people. (It seems dangerous, but I guess I just have to trust him.) Okay! I hit the button. Whoa! Wait, these things fire physical projectiles? I thought it was just a virtual thing, like laser tag or something. Not that this fact would have changed my mind in regards to firing it of course. I’m just surprised that Keiji Inafune was rigging his go-karts with projectile weaponry. That’s a lawsuit just waiting to happen. It flew along the ground and slammed into the other kart. Nice! Good work!*Affection up* Thanks! A huge grin had suddenly spread across his face. (I didn’t even know he could smile like that…) The missile attack slowed the piglet kart down enough that we passed it, and moved up. We’re in fourth. Awesome! Our good fortune seemed to have improved Meoshi’s mood, which in turn improved his driving. Even though we still weren’t exactly working in unison, we managed to keep our spot. By then, we’d moved into the second lap. Meoshi drove over another one of the question marks, and the “Caltrops” button lit up. The caltrop button lit up and… wait, another one? The boost is on too. Maybe you missed it. I hit another question mark just now. (When did he do that?!)Probably while you were busy thinking about unrelated things, like the fact that Meoshi was capable of smiling. Let’s save those for the last lap. We’ll use this one to close in. Got it! I nodded and went back to focusing on the gas. We finished the second lap in the same position. Then, finally, we were on the last lap. Right! I hit both buttons at once, and mumbled a short “Sorry” under my breath. The kart behind us hit the caltrops, and careened off toward the edge of the track as it suddenly slowed. At the same time, the boost activated, and shot our kart forward toward the lead group. In front is Shidou and Shirabe, with a piglet kart behind them. Third is Mitarashi and Wakasa. I’d barely finished talking when there was a loud boom, and Shidou’s kart suddenly slowed down. The piglets fired a missile. Rrrgh! I wanted to see if Shidou and Shirabe were okay, but I was too busy focusing on working the pedal. We flew past their kart, bringing us to third place. That’s it… Huh? Did you say something? We were coming up on the straightaway in front of the finish line, when suddenly Mitarashi’s kart sped up. They passed the piglets! They’re moving into first place! As I spoke, the piglet kart spun out and veered off of the track. Uh oh. Oil. What?! Aaah! Rrrgh! We were going too fast to avoid the oil. Our kart went into a spin, careening toward the fence.It’s a straightaway. Just keep the wheel straight and keep the gas steady. You don’t veer wildly out of control unless you start cranking the wheel or slamming the brakes. Guh! Step off the gas! His voice shook me out of my confusion, and I pulled my foot up as fast as I could. Slowly, we began to slow down. Aaah! Meoshi was doing his best to bring the kart under control, but it wasn’t working. I squeezed my eyes shut—*And we fade to black*  …! I opened my eyes a crack. The kart had come to a stop just feet from the fence. Ha… ha ha ha… I let out a weak bark of laughter. If we’d run into the fence, we wouldn’t have walked away with minor injuries, if we’d walked away at all.The more we learn about the attractions in this theme park, the more I suspect that Keiji may have been intending to get people killed. Obviously Hogstein has fiddled with everything to make it more lethal, but there’s a limit to that. There had to have been a baseline for him to work from. Like, there’s no way Hogstein and the piglets had time to install the Temple of Doom arrow traps back in Samurai Fantasy VII. Anime Keiji Inafune had that attraction built with the intent to fire something at people. What the hell, Keiji? Are you okay? I’m fine. What about you? I think I’m good. I sighed in relief. Are you all right?! Shidou was already running over to us.[Announcer]: Victory! Mitarashi and Wakasa had won first place. Oh… that’s good… (I just wish they would have thought a little more before they dumped that oil…)And that brings us to the end of this new segment. Skipping ahead once more…  This is the Break Time event that happens after Alice Kart and after Saki had become thoroughly suspicious of Shirabe and Mitarashi because she caught them acting weird. Meoshi? No, not really. What are you doing up so late? Can’t sleep. Huh? I’m kind of nocturnal. Usually I sleep a lot during the day, but I can’t exactly do that here. It kinda sucks.I remember the days when I would sleep until noon and then be up until 2 or 3am. I’m still a night owl nowadays, but attempting to sleep any later than 10am just leaves me with a dull headache for the rest of the day. Oh… Guess you couldn’t catch any shut-eye last night either, huh? I got a little in the morning. You need more than that! Yeah, I know. I’m trying. I know I need to be rested for tomorrow, but… Hmm… Well, have you tried counting sheep?Does that actually work for anyone? Genuinely curious. Yeah. No luck. Pfft… Huh? Pfffha ha ha ha ha ha ha! (He’s never laughed before…) Ha ha ha… I don’t think that’ll solve anything. You’re pretty funny, though. He started laughing again, and I felt rather pleased with myself. All right, chill out man. Saki’s innocent earnestness is amusing, but it’s not that funny. Happy to help! See you later, then. ‘Night.*Affection up* He yawned, and headed back to his room with a wave. (Well, I’m not sure what exactly I did, but it seems like it worked.) I smiled.And that’s all. Yeah, it was kind of short, wasn’t it?
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Jan 4, 2021 18:42
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 Moving on to the penultimate Meoshi moment in the common route, we’re buddying up with him and Subaru for Bloodstained Hospital. After this, in all future routes, we’ll be skipping over this segment (unless there is a CG or private moment to be seen, as was the case in Towa’s route). We’ll have seen Saki paired up with every duo of dudes and there isn’t much variation in what happens based on affection gauges, so there’s no need to cover it in detail. (Well, Shidou is reliable, and Meoshi seems to know a lot about games.) Can I go with you guys? Of course. And that was that.*Then the group gets their little heart monitor bracelets and flashlights*  Yeah… Let’s go. Make sure you don’t get separated. With only the flashlight to see by, we headed deeper into the hospital. The whole place smelled dank and moldy, and it was cold enough to make me shiver. Our footsteps sounded loud in the empty hallway, and when a voice suddenly echoed over the intercom I nearly stumbled.[Announcer]: Listen… this labyrinth of the dead devours the souls of the living. Listen for the footsteps of the creeping death…! …”Devours the souls of the living”…? “Listen for the footsteps of the creeping death”…? What does all that mean? The flashlight showed us the decayed, peeling walls of the hallway, and pieces of… something… scattered across the floor. I’m not sure what that was about, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything here. We should keep moving. Yeah… We began to move forward again— Gah! I felt something crunch underneath my foot. The alarm on my terror gauge began to go off. His voice was soft as he laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder. R-Right… I took slow, deep breaths, and after a few seconds the alarm slowed, and finally stopped. I’m sorry. I’m okay now. As long as you’re still in the game, we’re fine. Exactly. If you’re better now, we should keep moving. Right! The announcement hadn’t been metaphorical when it described the hospital as a labyrinth: The hallways turned and twisted everywhere, like a maze.*After a fade to black wipe* It feels like we could get lost in here really easily. You’re right. We should mark our path. This way we can find our way back out, and we’ll know if we cross our own path later. Like Hansel and Gretel. Yes, in a manner of speaking, although their trail of bread crumbs was eaten by birds. Hopefully nothing in here eats ink. I tried to keep joking as we moved forward, hoping that as long as I didn’t think about how scary everything was, I wouldn’t set off my terror gauge again. Shidou and Meoshi seemed to share my sentiments, and for a while we managed almost non-stop banter.Note: Banter audio was corrupted. Oh well. Too bad you missed it. It was some witty repartee. We left marks behind us as we moved, and eventually arrived at a staircase leading to the second floor. It looks like there’s a directory here. Let’s have a look… He brought the flashlight up to illuminate it. ”Nemesis Containment, T-Virus Storage, Corpse Disposal, Break Room (Fridge must be emptied every Friday!)” Looks like we’ve got a long way to go. We should hurry. We continued talking as we climbed the stairs, and at the top we found another pitch-black hallway. The maze is going to make meeting our deadline tough, but… do you think there are going to be traps and stuff too? I’d be surprised if there weren’t any. Shidou shook his head, but before I could respond Meoshi spoke up. I heard something… What?! Listen. Guh…! Wh-What is it…? From somewhere in the maze I could hear a slow, awkward shuffling noise. Whatever it was, it was coming closer. I’ll go check it out. He shoved the flashlight into my hands as he spoke, then moved up to the intersection and peeked around the corner. Hey! Turn off the light! I scrambled to turn it off and Shidou made his way back toward us. Wh-What was it? A monster… Eee…! At Shidou’s direction, we hid ourselves behind a nearby pillar as the noise came steadily closer and closer. (Calm down… breathe…) I chanted those words to myself over and over, willing my heart to slow down and not trip my terror gauge. After a few tense minutes…[???]: … Gah…! Everyone say your goodbyes to Zombie-Chan. This could very well be its final appearance in this LP. The creature’s skin was peeling off, and its body was warped and twisted by scars and lesions. Moaning, labored breathing accompanied its shuffling footsteps. In one hand it carried a submachine gun that looked sort of like an Uzi. I swallowed.You know, I didn’t really think about it when we first saw Zombie-Chan… how the gently caress did Hogstein get his hands on a submachine gun? In Japan? Did he Metal Gear Solid his way into a JSDF base or something? Also, kind of feels like giving that kind of gun to a random patrol enemy for a single game is a bit of a waste. You’d think that Hogstein would prefer to be rocking the Uzi instead of a 5-shot revolver. (The noise we heard was its footsteps…) I clapped my hand over my mouth, but as I did the alarm on my bracelet suddenly began to ring. Aah…! Before I could even react, Meoshi put his hand over the bracelet, muffling the noise. Relax. R-Right… I shut my eyes tight, and let out a shallow, wavering breath. His voice in my ear was a calm whisper. We kept our bodies as still as stones.*Fade to black wipe*  …Looks like it’s gone. At last, the alarm from my bracelet went silent. Oh gosh… Thanks, Meoshi. Sorry… Don’t worry about it. I don’t think anyone would blame you for being scared of that thing. But… what was it?That’s a great question. I really hope we get the answer someday! I want to know if Keiji Inafune was creating literal zombies for the sake of an amusement park attraction. A zombie. …What? Now that I thought about it, Meoshi had mentioned before that the attraction was based on a game that involved trying to avoid being caught by zombies. I’m not sure what the model was, but that looked like a submachine gun he was carrying. Even an amateur could fill you full of lead with one of those. He looked a little nervous. Well, we still need to make it through here without setting off our terror gauges; now we’ve just got to watch out for zombies too… Yes. We’ll need to be extra careful. So we headed deeper in, taking care to listen for more zombies. The further we went, though, the more the hallways crisscrossed, meaning zombies could come from any direction. (Shidou and Meoshi seem fine… Are they even scared at all?) I forced myself to take long, deep breaths in an attempt to calm my racing heartbeat, but…[Mysterious voice that we now know is Mai]: Aiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee! Gah! I felt like someone had thrown my chest in a vice. Mmmmnnph! I forced my mouth shut, muffling a scream, and crouched down against the wall. Or at least I tried to crouch… Oh. S-Sorry… Huh…? Meoshi had wrapped his arms around me. For a moment I was stunned into silence. (He’s… he’s really close!) Oh, um, uh… this, um… er… It looked like he hadn’t really realized what he was doing either. R-Right! Thank you… I didn’t do it on purpose— I-I mean, I didn’t mean— no, no, I’m just saying I… um… (I can feel my heart beating pretty fast, but I don’t think it’s from fear this time…)Now is really not the time for this. Everyone stuff their various bits and bobs back into their pants and let’s focus on Zombie-Chan. The words had barely crossed my mind when the alarm began to ring. (O-Oh no!) I quickly looked down at my wrist, but the sound wasn’t coming from my bracelet… Huh? Guh…!…Did… Did he just blow a load in his pants? Even Saki is like “What the hell is that face he’s making?” It was Meoshi’s gauge that was going off. He turned away, and his face looked strained. (Wait… is he…?) U-Um, you… C-Could you, um, step back a bit…? R-Right… Nervously, I walked back a step, away from him. (That was pretty scary, but I guess it’s nice that he was worried about me. Although… Why did his alarm go off? Was he…? No, what am I thinking!)Our hero, ladies and gentlemen. Accidentally backs her butt up against a guy who proceeds to sweat-ily blush while going “Guh…! Hnnngh!” and her response is “Aww, it was nice of him to be worried about me. Or maybe he got turned on by me touching him…? Nah, that’s just my wild imagination!” I shook my head to clear it, and took several quick, deep breaths. What was that scream…? It sounded like a girl… Do you think there’s another girl in here? It’s possible. If they’re a civilian, we need to get them to safety as soon as possible. They could get killed in here. If worst comes to worst and we fail, the explosion would definitely kill them. Okay. I think it came from… over there… We headed off in the direction of the scream, making sure to keep our eyes open for zombies. Aiiiieeeeeee! There it is again! We’re getting close. I spotted a dim light coming from around a corner to the left, the same direction the voice had come from. Do you think she’s being chased by a zombie? Seems likely. Let’s move! We rounded the corner and saw a zombie heading down the corridor, away from us. There! Further down the hallway was a shadow of someone else running away from the zombie. I think you’re looking for us! That was a major group decision you just made for us, Subaru. They aren’t that fast. We should be able to loop around and go after whoever it was chasing! He yelled at the zombie again and waved his flashlight. Then we all turned and ran. The moment we’d rounded the corner we heard the crackle of gunfire behind us. drat… He’s not going to pull any punches, is he? As we drew closer to the next corner, I heard Meoshi’s footsteps start to falter. Urgh… Come on, we have to keep going! I can’t…! The alarm on his bracelet began to ring, and fast. The correct choice is to get that adrenaline pumping harder. If you give up here, it’s game over! He gave me a wry grin. Seriously, Kouta looks so evil in this sprite. He’s the only one that gets an “evil” sprite (to my knowledge), but I feel like it’s definitely a red herring. There’s no way he’s secretly evil. *Affection up* Yeah! C’mon, let’s go! Right! He nodded, then turned and tossed something out across the intersection we’d just come through. What was that?! A game. I beat it a long time ago. I would’ve liked to hang on to it, but it’s sure not worth my life.Why exactly did you bring a random game with you? Unless you’re referring to a handheld thing. With a nod to me, he turned and ran off. A diversion! I heard the sound of gunfire move off in the direction he’d thrown the disc. It looked like the diversion had worked.Wait, it was just a disc? Why do you have that with you?! I’ve never been like “Well, I’m about to head out the local amusement park, better make sure to grab my PS2 copy of Red Ninja. Just in case.” We rounded another corner and were back in the hallway where we’d first seen the zombie. In front of us was a door illuminated by several emergency lights. That has to be the exit! They must have gone through there! Let’s go! We leapt through the door.That ends that scene. The only other thing of note here is that the “escape” scene is different from what we’ve seen so far in that it doesn’t feature Ryuji.  Having Meoshi with the highest affection meter will have him grab Saki when she stumbles during the escape sequence.  Instead of Ryuji running back to drag Saki and Meoshi out of the fire like the badass that he is (as in Towa’s route), Meoshi opts to use his own body to try and shield Saki from the blast.  Anyway, after that we get our final Break Time event before we get started on Meoshi’s route proper. I opened the door to find… Kind of uninspired for a CG if you ask me. Hey… Meoshi? Is something wrong? I just thought you looked like you were feeling kind of sad. Oh… You were worried? N-No, not, I mean… um… You’re just an important part of our team.Literally all you had to say in this situation was “Yes.” If you’re not feeling good, that’s gonna be… um… bad. Oh. Well, thank you. Um… Yes? I could provide an example of a game in which that isn’t the case… but that would probably be a massive spoiler. Not that I think anyone would give a poo poo about me spoiling the game I’m thinking of. Still, better safe than sorry. There’s always someone out there going “Great job on the spoilers, idiot! I was going to get around to playing that game… eventually… Yes, I know it’s been ten years since release!” I guess if you look at it that way we’re in kind of a bad position now… Yeah. Without Urabe… Right. It’s sad that he’s gone, but without part of our team… we’re really in trouble. Hm… (Is… he trying to cheer me up?) I guess what I’m trying to say is that you’re a way more important party member than I am, so… Oh come on. You’re plenty important. …Thanks. Thank you, too. I smiled, and he quickly looked away. U-Uh, anyway, you, uh, should probably be getting to bed. And I should be… Doing that too… Right! Thanks a bunch, Meoshi. Make sure you get lots of sleep so you’re ready for tomorrow. Will do. I think he wanted us to succeed, you know? With that, he turned and left.And we’re done! Next time we’ll be fully into Meoshi’s route. God only knows what that will involve. Whatever it is, we know that it won’t be very revelatory… so look forward to that, I guess?
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Jan 4, 2021 18:44
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I feel like I would like Meoshi more if it weren't for his design. His evil looking face makes me think of the girl in "The Grudge" and the outfit makes me think of a straightjacket crossed with a purple Snuggie.
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Jan 4, 2021 19:38
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FalloutFan56 posted:I feel like I would like Meoshi more if it weren't for his design. His evil looking face makes me think of the girl in "The Grudge" and the outfit makes me think of a straightjacket crossed with a purple Snuggie. The outfit is the worst part to me. It's weird for a person who avoids social interactions to wear something that would be guaranteed to draw the most attention possible in public.
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Jan 4, 2021 19:52
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FalloutFan56 posted:I feel like I would like Meoshi more if it weren't for his design. His evil looking face makes me think of the girl in "The Grudge" and the outfit makes me think of a straightjacket crossed with a purple Snuggie. quote:
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Jan 4, 2021 21:33
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I'm sure Meoshi's outfit is a metaphor for how he's bound up in himself. Probably. Had a quick look around and Dasoku was also responsible for the theme songs for a few other otome games and a couple of lesser-known anime. This was all pre-2015, though, not sure he's done any contracted work since striking out on his own. His youtube channel seems reasonably popular so I guess he's doing alright for himself, either way.
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Jan 4, 2021 22:50
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cardinale posted:Pretty ironic that the hottest guy in this dating VN is a 10-second cameo of a real life person To be fair, I can see him earning a lot of instant attraction purely based on the fact that he has a real life counterpart voicing him who looks pretty much identical to the anime version. Don't get me wrong, pretty much every VA in this game is a good looking guy, but Satoshi Hino doesn't have that "chiseled/manly" look that Ryuji does, just as an example (Granted, that's coming from a straight guy, so I could be way off on that). Other than that, he might be the hottest simply because of his very brief appearance. The most tantalizing things are always the ones that are just out of reach. I'm sure if we swapped him out with one of the other characters we'd be ragging on him for his edgelord cross necklace or something. Polsy posted:I'm sure Meoshi's outfit is a metaphor for how he's bound up in himself. Probably. Oh, I'm sure it is. There are we less blatant ways of getting that metaphor across without sticking him in a literal straitjacket though. Again, a simple dark hoodie would have achieved the same effect. Doesn't stand out, allows him to hide and cover himself from the eyes of others, and gives him something to do with his hands. I guess they figured that would be too close to Towa's getup though, since I'm pretty sure he's wearing some sort of hoodie. Dasoku's other works are stuff I've never really heard of. The only things I could find were on a Utattemita fan wiki and that mostly just lists his cover songs. In terms of other games, the only two I saw listed were "School of Ragnarok" (some kind of Dissidia-esque arcade brawler/MOBA that Square released in 2015 and then killed two years later), and a Boy's Love title called "Nessa no Rakuen." I didn't see any other Otome works listed, but it's a fan wiki so I wouldn't be surprised if the info is incomplete or incorrect. The wiki also claims that he stopped using the name "Dasoku" around the time his YouTube channel cracked 100k subs, except that he does indeed still use "Dasoku." It also said he retired from the Utattemita community a few years ago, but is also still heavily involved in it and still releasing covers. Soo... 
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Jan 6, 2021 19:40
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Psycho Knight posted:To be fair, I can see him earning a lot of instant attraction purely based on the fact that he has a real life counterpart voicing him who looks pretty much identical to the anime version. Don't get me wrong, pretty much every VA in this game is a good looking guy, but Satoshi Hino doesn't have that "chiseled/manly" look that Ryuji does, just as an example (Granted, that's coming from a straight guy, so I could be way off on that). Not the most familiar with otome games here, but I guess it's probably because everyone outside of Ryuji has very unobtrusive clothing, colours and features. The simplistic artstyle doesn't help since it doesn't provide much differentiation in facial features either, and everyone has these beady eyes that are basically "irrelevant character" labels in otome games. In any other kind of games this is perfectly fine, but it's a really weird combination for an otome game, which usually favor doe eyes/wide squinty eyes/glossy hair/youthful face/eye-catching palette/elaborate clothing and accessories. At least, when you compare it to like anything else shown on Otomate's website Sweet Fuse sticks out like a sore thumb. Like a pack of saltine cracker in a cakery. At least, appearance wise.
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Jan 6, 2021 23:03
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Psycho Knight posted:The wiki also claims that he stopped using the name "Dasoku" around the time his YouTube channel cracked 100k subs, except that he does indeed still use "Dasoku." It also said he retired from the Utattemita community a few years ago, but is also still heavily involved in it and still releasing covers. Soo... Yeah, not sure about that, maybe he said that at one point and it's just outdated. Though, that utaite wiki page does actually cover all the commercial stuff I found on his nico dictionary page except for iPhone otome* game Soujiya x Lord which he was actually a minor character in (this guy) as well as a singer. * actually Japanese wikipedia describes it as a 'josei game' but I assume that just means it aims slightly older
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Jan 7, 2021 00:03
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Polsy posted:Yeah, not sure about that, maybe he said that at one point and it's just outdated. Though, that utaite wiki page does actually cover all the commercial stuff I found on his nico dictionary page except for iPhone otome* game Soujiya x Lord which he was actually a minor character in (this guy) as well as a singer. No idea about the Soujiya x Lord thing since it doesn't seem to be listed anywhere anymore. If the JP wiki lists it as "josei" though then it was probably a "mature" game. Otome (which can still include porn/mature games) usually has a more "fairy-tale" like vibe to it. Everything is idealized and dreamy and fantastical. It's marketed towards girls/young women who daydream about what romance is like. Look no further than this very game, where we just saw a male Japanese idol's career skyrocket after publicly announcing that he had a girlfriend, despite the fact that a perceived attainability is one of the core aspects of an idol's image (every fan thinks that they are the ones who will capture an idol's heart). Hell, Towa's entire character is designed to appeal directly to that aspect of idol fandom. But I'm starting to digress. Josei stuff tends to be marketed towards adult women. The story tends to be a bit heavier or denser than otome stuff and romances are more grounded in reality. They also tend to have more sex stuff, but it's not as though otome games shy away from that entirely. It's kind of a strange juxtaposition when you put it alongside dating-sims aimed at male audiences, since I don't think there's quite the same divide in that market. For sure there are "serious" dating-sim games aimed at males, but right now there's not much coming to mind where romances are portrayed more realistically. Male targeted stuff, no matter how much gore or sex or "mature" elements are in play, still seems to rely on "the girl falls in love with the MC because... he listened to them a bunch?"Anyway, that would be a whole other conversation. I also don't know enough about the mature male targeted dating-sims to say for sure that there isn't a similar divide (I'm a jaded depressed wreck already, I'd rather goofy anime bullshit as opposed to "mature" anime bullshit). As far as I can tell, all the mature stuff in terms of dating-sims for guys is exactly the same as E10 or T-Rated stuff, it just has sex/death scenes in it. CremePudding posted:At least, when you compare it to like anything else shown on Otomate's website Sweet Fuse sticks out like a sore thumb. Like a pack of saltine cracker in a cakery. At least, appearance wise. Sweet Fuse is definitely an odd one out when it comes to Otomate's catalog. I think (and this might just be me) that it has to do with the more comic book like stylings of the art. All the characters in this game have a very thick border around them (the characters' hair is the most visible example of this). They also have a more simplistic art style (which you mentioned). Compare Sweet Fuse with Code: Realize, which is one of Otomate's bigger otome franchises (and also gets CERO C and B ratings):   Obviously both of these games were handled by different teams (Comcept was involved in Sweet Fuse, but had nothing to do with Code: Realize, which was entirely Otomate), but there's still a very stark contrast in style. If you go through Otomate's library, most of its other games hew pretty close to Code: Realize. The only stuff they've done that comes close to Sweet Fuse is a "Ouran High School Host Club" game from the PS2 days. Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jan 8, 2021 |
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Jan 8, 2021 17:30
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Sorry that it’s been a while since the last update. It was a rough first week for my semester. Here’s a supersized update to make up for it. I was going to split this into two updates, but a major turn happens partway through and I didn’t want to keep people waiting for it. Update XXIII: Wait, those are real?!  With all the minor stuff out of the way, we move on to Meoshi’s actual route. It… well, let’s just say that it starts off very similar to the others and then goes just a little bit off the rails. …Mm… (A call from… Shidou?) Yes… hello? …Hm, sounds like you just woke up. Were you still asleep? It’s already ten. I looked over at the clock. He was right. On the other side of the bed was Mai, still quietly snoring away. We’d both overslept. Well, once you’re done with breakfast come meet us in Mitarashi’s room. We need to plan out our next move. Oh… After what had happened yesterday, we probably had a lot to talk about. Okay, I’ll be there in a bit. Good. Make it quick. (All right you lazy bum, time to get up.) But that was easier said than done. Even after a long night of sleep, my body was sluggish. We were going into a fourth day at the park. I wasn’t surprised I felt tired. (And yesterday… well yesterday a lot of stuff happened.) We had our first real failure, Urabe disappeared, and the hospital exploded. (Meoshi protected me from the explosion…) Mitarashi hadn’t been so lucky when he saved Wakasa, though. He’d gotten hit pretty hard…So Meoshi managed to save Saki from the worst of the explosion, but she is still feeling the impact a little bit. Also, Mitarashi is still out of commission in this route because he had to drag Towa’s rear end to safety. (Oh, right, we’re meeting in his room.) I wanted to finish my breakfast quickly, so I could get over to Mitarashi’s room and see how he was doing. Almost on cue, there was a knock at the door. Yeah, I’m coming. Huh? Meoshi? Sorry, were you still asleep? No, no, it’s fine. Good morning! Um… yeah, good morning. What is it? Did you forget something last night? No, um… He looked down sheepishly at the tray in his hand.  …What’s going on? Gah! Sorry Mai. Did we wake you up? No, I woke myself up. She rubbed her eyes and yawned. Oh, I see. Uh, sorry Meoshi, what were you saying? Sorry, never mind. It’s nothing. Huh?*And then Meoshi just phased out of existence* (He just… left.)I was going to give Meoshi points for nutting up and going to Saki’s room with breakfast, but then he chickened out the moment he saw that Mai was also there. You were so close, man. It almost looked like he was running away, but… why? I felt Mai tugging on my sleeve and turned back around. I’m hungryyyyy. Okay. I’m gonna go wash my face. Will you be all right on your own? Yeah! (I was afraid she’d be scared or something after yesterday, but she seems fine. What was Meoshi up to…?) There’s no water! Huh? Oh, right, you can’t reach the faucet. I’ll be right there!*A brief fade-to-black* After Mai and I finished our breakfast, we headed off to Mitarashi’s room. Sorry… Everyone else was already there. Shirabe was the first to look up. No, not at all! She’s a really sweet girl. Plus, I mean, I’m an only child, so it was kind of nice to feel like I had a little sister, you know?I can’t quite recall if we’ve gotten this confirmation before. I feel like Saki mentioned the “nice to have a little sister” thing, but I don’t remember if she specifically stated that she was an only child. Either way, I guess we can safely discount her as being the subject of those flashbacks. I suppose that Hogstein is the only possible one it could be now, not that that wasn’t entirely obvious based purely off of narrative tropes.  Good, good. Glad to hear it. He let out a sigh of relief. (Huh?) It wasn’t until then that I realized Meoshi wasn’t there. (He can’t be sleeping in, he came to my room.)*Knock knock* Hey, it’s open. Just come on in. Oh, you’re all here already. Sorry I’m late. Don’t worry about it. Now that we’re all here, there’re a couple things I’d like to go over… (…Hm?) I glanced over at Meoshi standing quietly in the corner of the room, but something about him seemed off. (His face… Is that… a grain of rice?) Is there something on my face? He looked back at me, puzzled.I can’t imagine having rice stuck to your cheek or mouth and just not feeling it. There’s always this little sensation that something is touching you. How do you ignore that? Uh… yeah… There’s some rice… right there… Oh… He blinked, and started feeling around his face until he finally found it. Guh! O-Oh man, sorry… You, uh, don’t really need to apologize… His face turned bright red as he wiped furiously at his mouth. drat you, Saki… drat you and your adorable naïveté. Maybe he was embarrassed about being a messy eater? …Did I get it? Yeah, perfect. Did you eat your breakfast too fast? Uh, not really, I was just a little shaken up I guess. What? Why?I should remind everyone that our protagonist is once again completely tuning out of a vital strategy meeting. …Never mind. He wiped his mouth one last time for good measure. Hey. You two paying attention? Huh? Oh, s-sorry! Um… what are we talking about? Shidou sighed and shook his head, but before he could start scolding us Shirabe spoke up. Oh, right. How’s your injury? Huh? Oh, the pain’s pretty much gone now. Those piglets are pretty good nurses for a bunch of weirdos in spandex. That’s good to hear. You still can’t really move around much though, right? You’ve been sitting the whole time we’ve been here… Well… it’s not like I’m totally out of commission, but yeah, running around like we did yesterday is probably out of the question. Then you should probably sit this one out. We can’t afford to bring along someone who won’t be able to keep up. Is it just me, or is Ryuji giving up more and more easily as these routes go on? He’s gone from shouting and complaining about being sidelined (including running around the boat and threatening the piglets to let him off), to complaining and then sneaking out, to just outright going “Yeah, you’re right. I better stay here.” I was a little surprised that he’d agreed so easily. A guy like Mitarashi wasn’t usually the type to just roll over on command. He doesn’t look like he’s in pain, but I guess his wound could still be pretty bad. All right, then today it’ll be the five of us, sans Mitarashi. A wise choice. As good as the piglets are, they’re [sic] aren’t doctors. If he gets worse, we’re in real trouble. (Huh?) I moved a tiny bit closer to try and hear them. Is it bad? Nah, not really. …At least, that’s what I’d like to say, but I think I might have really got myself good this time. It doesn’t hurt all the time, but when it does, hoo boy. You really should rest, then. Stomach injuries can be fatal.I’m also pretty sure that dying of a stomach wound is one of the worst ways to go. Ha ha, oh man, that reminds me of that game you were talking about yesterday. They’re pretty realistic these days, huh? I remember you saying you could get a game over if you didn’t deal with a stomach wound…Metal Gear Solid 3, maybe? I’m not familiar with a lot of games that have body part-specific wound mechanics. ARMA is probably really in-depth on that too I guess, but I’d imagine these Japanese characters are talking about Japanese games. …It’s pretty scary. Ha! Well, nothing to worry about here. I’m as tough as an ox. …Whoa, wait a minute. What’s going on here? You’re coming over to talk to me when yesterday I had to twist your arm to get you to put two words together. … I want you to tell me about the attractions. If you’re not going to be there, someone else needs to know about them.We’ve been getting hints lately that Ryuji is some kind of expert or enthusiast on theme park attractions, but I don’t think he’s ever demonstrated it. There was a brief moment where he got excited about them and then realized it was embarrassing, but I don’t think he’s ever provided the group with any kind of useful information. I know about the games they’re based on, but you clearly know more about the attractions themselves. I want to learn as much as I can.Also, this is a brand new theme park, so Ryuji wouldn’t have any knowledge about the attractions here even if he was an enthusiast. (Interesting…) Well drat, you really think stuff through, huh? Must be why you don’t talk much. I think I like you. …Are you going to tell me or not? (When did they get to be friends? They sure weren’t like this yesterday.)I think Ryuji just realizes that being best buddies with everyone ensures that he gets consistent screen time. (And Meoshi’s trying to make up for the loss of Mitarashi on our team… Maybe he’s more mature than I gave him credit for.) …Well, there’s no point debating it here. We’ll have to try and negotiate with Hogstein. It seemed like the other discussion had concluded. Right. It’s almost time for us to dock. Mitarashi, if you’re going to be sticking around would you mind keeping an eye on Mai? Yeah, no problem. …Are you going somewhere, Daddy? Yeah, but I’ll be back tonight, so you have lots of fun with Mitarashi here and be a good girl, all right? …I can’t go too? No, you have to wait here. Okay? …Okay. Don’t worry Mai, I’ll take good care of you while your dad’s gone. Hey, how’d you like a piggy-back ride? Um, are you really sure you should be carrying her around with that wound…? Oh! Right, right. Okay, how about house, then? You wanna play house? Yeah!Ryuji continuing to show how he is (somehow) best dad. That’s a good girl! Dang, she was about to cry and he’s already got her laughing. This guy knows his stuff. … Hey man, don’t give me that look! I’m not gonna work my magic on her! What kind of a creep do you think I am?! I think he’s just upset that you totally showed him up with his own kid. M-Meoshi!”You’re not supposed to say what we’re all thinking!” What? He’s right. Just look at him. …You kids need to learn to respect your elders a little more. Mai, make sure you— All right, that’s enough chit-chat you guys. Everybody who’s not Mitarashi or Mai, move it. … Something wrong? Sure is rough being old, huh?Don’t get too smug, Towa. Everyone is going to be dunking on you in a little bit. Wakasa grinned and patted Shirabe on the shoulder as the older man tried desperately to salvage at least a little of his daughter’s image of him.That ship sailed yesterday, when he was inches away from physically beating her upside the head in a moment of anger. (Nobody seems to be too torn up over yesterday. That’s good. We’re gonna have to be optimistic if we want to get through this! Right then! Time for me to shake off this tiredness and get to work!) …Thank you for that contribution, Kouta. Great way to end a scene. *After a little fade to black*  (…I knew he’d say that.) As soon as we reached the plaza, Hogstein was waiting for us. He knew about Mitarashi’s injury, of course, and about what had happened to Urabe.Does he know about Mitarashi’s injury? I thought we established in the last route that Hogstein isn’t monitoring the ship? I guess the piglets could have filled him in over the course of the night.  Shidou stepped forward to address the statue. I wasn’t sure how Hogstein would respond, but it seemed like Shidou probably had the best chance of convincing him. I took a short step back, to get out of the way.*The screen wobbles back and forth for a second* Guh…! Then suddenly, I felt as if the ground had dropped out from under me. The whole world swayed, and for a moment or two my eyes refused to focus.That day of rest really is make or break, isn’t it? Saki was totally fine in Ryuji’s route, but it seems like in every other route she’s going to be collapsing from vertigo or something as soon as she tries to move. (Did I move too fast or something…?) I felt like I was going to collapse if I didn’t do something, so I squatted down and began taking deep breaths. (…Okay… I think I’m starting to calm down…) Are you okay?I know there’s a narrative reason for it, but it still weirds me out how Saki basically drops to the ground and nobody except the person whose route we’re on seems to care. Subaru, Ayumu, and Towa are apparently so entranced with whatever Hogstein is saying that Saki could drop dead on the spot and they wouldn’t notice. I looked up to see Meoshi looking down at me. Yes, yes, sorry. I’m fine. I’ll get up— No, if you’re feeling sick, maybe you shouldn’t. I’m not sick, just… a little dizzy. I think I’m tired. …If you’re sure. Be careful. Of course. Thanks. What?! …? Meoshi and I looked at one another, confused. What’s going on? No, he didn’t have a problem with that… You’re going to kill a hostage each time we lose one of your games? Are you insane?! …There you go. He shrugged as Shidou grabbed the statue. He’s already gone. There’s no point in yelling at him. Damnit… I-It’ll be okay! That sounds like a bad thing, but… well, you’ll see soon that it won’t actually matter. Letting our morale drop before we even started the game was bad. I had to try and keep our spirits up. Unfortunately, I didn’t do a very good job, and everyone just went quiet. … Yeah, that’s true. We just need to beat the game. Our goals haven’t changed. Meoshi’s agreement seemed to be the final push the others needed. Shirabe sighed and grinned. This is the main takeaway here. Granted, we did manage to survive the Hospital when we shouldn’t have, so I guess the threat isn’t entirely without teeth. I sure don’t wanna get blown up! Neither do I, but the point is that right now the only thing we should be thinking about is beating this game. Shidou looked at me and sighed. …Where do you get all that optimism? I wish I knew… Is that a compliment…? It’s supposed to be. You got me to calm down. That was true, I had to admit. All right, time to get moving. We’ve got a game to beat. We’re back to Moonlight OX. Before long we arrived at out destination: Shooting Colony. So, what’s the deal with this one…? Oh, yeah, Mitarashi’s not here this time. Don’t worry. I asked him about it. Mitarashi? Right. I talked to him before we left the hotel. Ah, good thinking. That information could be the difference between victory and defeat. Shirabe nodded in agreement. The attraction we’ll be going through here is called “Moonlight OX.” What’s it about? It’s a pretty standard 3D shooter, but the thing that makes it stand out is the protagonists are sort of… cow people. They’re what? That’s just weird… Is that something girls are into these days? B-Beats me……What in god’s name leads you to link “3D space shooter game with cow people” and “Is this really trending among girls”? I looked up the JP playthrough and found out that in the Japanese version Towa says “牛って... 人気あるの、それ？ 女の子的にはどう？” It’s something like “Cow… Is it popular? How about with girls?” It seems to be a very subtle shift in the way it’s said that’s causing this weird statement from English Towa. Japanese Towa seems to be asking if it’s a game that girls like. English Towa sounds more like he’s going “Wait, really? Girls these days play weird games like that?”  Towa also has a different facial expression when saying the line in the Japanese version that's more "confused" and less "what the hell?" Although this might just be a result of the video playthrough I have being of Subaru’s route instead of Meoshi’s (sometimes there are very very minor differences in dialog/character expressions depending on route). The whole conversation had thrown me for a loop. I had no idea how people could look like cows. Well, regardless of the bovine element, I’m glad we knew this going in. Right. Forewarned is forearmed. Remember, it’s not just us today— the lives of the hostages are riding on us now too. Whoa… It’s like we’re really in space. All those craters… They look so realistic.They probably are real craters. Honestly, given how Keiji built the rest of this park, he probably had the JSDF do bombing runs over the area to get it to look like this. Or he created a gravity well and pulled actual meteors out of space. Either is possible at this point. Ahh! There’s someone here! Besides us? That’s impossible.Oh, right. Hey, Towa fans? Get ready, because now that we are no longer in his route, he is about to become the butt of jokes again. Not just through me, either. For this next segment at least, the game seems to enjoy making him look bad. But, but, look…! It’s some kind of space man! I think that’s just a part of the set, you know? To help give it some atmosphere. Welcome to Moonlight OX! Hogstein’s voice filled the air. You and your partner can escape this destroyed colony with your overflowing LOVE POWER! And that was it. But no sooner had he finished than a single piglet shuffled out. …! …! …Huh? What is he trying to say…? The piglet flapped his arms, then held up two fingers, and drew a circle around them with his other hand. I think he means that the ships only seat two people. That’s how it was in the original game, anyway. That means we need to figure out our groups. Unfortunately, it looks like one of us is going to have to fly solo. I’d say our loner should probably be Shidou or Meoshi. I don’t mind going by myself, but I’m honestly not sure I can handle it. Wait, wait, what about me? Urgh… I agree. I don’t think it’s safe to let a kid fly by themselves. (Does he mean me too…? I guess an eighteen-year-old would still be a kid to him, huh?)Question: Do you guys feel the same way? I’m 30, so at this point in my life I consider anyone 20-years or younger to be a “kid.” But Shidou is what, 22? I think at 22 I considered 15 and under to be a “kid.” I definitely wasn’t looking at 18-year olds and going “I’m way more responsible than them.” Granted, Subaru is a handsome and fashionable police officer. Meanwhile, at 22 I was working a lovely retail job and immediately regretting the two years I spent in trade school getting a diploma that hasn’t done jack poo poo for me since. So he has a bit of a right to act older and wiser than he is. What were we talking about again? (I’m not feeling so good today, though, so I think I’d feel better with a partner anyway.) … (…Huh? Did I imagine that, or did Meoshi just glance over at me?) Before I knew what was happening, he’d grabbed my arm and pulled me over. That’s okay with you, right? How ‘bout you take a ride with me?Whoa, pump those breaks Towa. You had your turn. He’d lowered his voice to a whisper as he pulled me in. I felt my heart skip a beat. How many girls would have killed to get this close to a pop star?Judging by how they just rolled over and accepted Towa having a girlfriend in his good ending? Probably none. If this were real life? I’m sure at least one of his fans would gleefully stab Saki in the throat if it meant getting Towa to hold them and whisper into their ear. A-Ah… C’mon, it’ll be fun. …No. Before I could respond, Meoshi stepped in. She said she’d go with me.Now we’re talking. This is the kind of stuff I expected from the Otome genre when I first played one of these games. Fight! Fight for Saki’s favour!  What? Really?We get a choice here between “Sorry, Wakasa” and “Um…” You know what we’re going with. I hadn’t made any promise, of course, but I figured Meoshi had a reason for saying that. What it was I didn’t know, but I decided to play along. Sorry, Wakasa. I already promised Meoshi I’d go with him.*Affection up* See? Hmph. Well, your loss. Hope you two have fun. Oh, so she’s going with Meoshi after all? Seems like it. I guess they promised.Oh my god he is so loving butthurt. I love it.  So I’m going with Wakasa, then? Correct. I have firearms training, so I should be all right on my own. Man, I knew it was gonna turn out like this. I wanted to go with the girl. Well you get the old man, so quit your whining. These are the smartest groups and you know it. Yeah, yeah, okay already. I’m not sure I’m gonna be that good at this either, you know. Better than Shirabe, but…We haven’t seen how good Ayumu is yet, but based on your route, well… let’s just say that you’ve set a low bar.  Think you can beat me, huh? Looking forward to it, Junior. It’s “Junior Jr.,” jeez. Not that hard to remember… While they bickered, Meoshi leaned over to whisper in my ear. Sorry about that. I hope it was okay…?Do not apologize for doing that. However brief it may have been, we got to see somebody in this drat game fighting over Saki. Considering she gets largely ignored for a good portion of the common route, I’ll take what I can get. Honestly, when I decided to LP this game, I was expecting way more interpersonal drama. All we’ve gotten in that department so far is that time when Subaru and Ryuji started punching each other. Oh, yeah, of course. I was just a little surprised, that’s all. But why go to all that effort? You looked like you weren’t feeling very good earlier. The rides can be kind of tough if you’re feeling sick, so thought I could make it easier on you by helping out. I’ve played the game this ride is based on, and I’m pretty good at shooters. (Oh… that must be why he was looking at me earlier.) It made me happy to know that he was worried about me. I wasn’t sure what from, but there seemed to be a little bit of uncertainty in his voice. In any event, Meoshi was the only person who’d noticed I was feeling off, and he was pretty good with videogames. With his help, I might be able to make it through all right even if I wasn’t firing on all cylinders. Yeah, I’m not feeling so great. If you’d be willing to help me, that’d be awesome. And… thanks for noticing. …No problem. His expression seemed to relax just a little bit. …! …! Is he telling us to get on? I think so. Even if he isn’t, we probably should, though.*The screen shakes up and down a bit* Rgh…! The same weird feelings of dizziness and disorientation from the plaza washed over me again, and I teetered on the edge of balance. I managed to grab the door of the ship and hold myself upright, but… (I think my head hurts. What’s going on…?)Don’t worry about it. It’s just a concussion. …Maybe a TBI. Are you okay? Do you need a hand? Oh, thanks… If you start to feel really bad, let me know, and I’ll try and get you out as fast as I can, okay? Will do! Thanks! Apparently we wouldn’t all be going to the exit along the same path.[Announcer]: Structural damage to colony at 56%. Crew members should proceed immediately to the emergency exit. …That has to mean we beat the game if we make it to the exit. Yeah, I think so. These things have seatbelts? Man, that would have really helped Saki during Towa’s route when she was thrown off the ship and into a wall. R-Right. The ship moved along a set rail, but we could rotate it to face in any direction we wanted. Meoshi took the stick in his left hand and the gun in his right. He seemed totally at home, presumably because he’d played games with similar controls before. (That can’t be comfortable, though… This ship was designed for two people to pilot.) I can help out if you want. I’m not in pain or anything, so I could probably steer… He just shook his head. I’ll do it. You should rest. His response was short, but it wasn’t mean. Life-threatening situations have a way of making you grow up real fast. You sort of can’t be anti-social when your life is riding on being able to cooperate and trust other people. He was nice and he cared about other people, but he was so quiet and awkward that it didn’t always come across. I felt like I could trust him. (If he’s going to insist, I guess I might as well rest.) I was starting to think that I was still exhausted despite sleeping so long just because every day was so stressful. (I need to pull myself together.) I wanted to help, but if I couldn’t that, then at least I didn’t want to be a problem.*The background CG changes here, technically. It just flips from the left door being open to the right door being open, though* …Here they come. Huh? We hadn’t been moving long when he spoke up. Aliens. The enemy. Hey, it’s these guys again! This won’t be our last time seeing them. I know for sure that Subaru’s route at least still has us doing Moonlight OX. I knew it was just part of the attraction, but it looked real. I swallowed. Wh-What do we do?! It’s okay. If this is like the game, then I know their weak point. He aimed at the alien with practiced ease and pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed into the jewel on the creature’s forehead.*The jewel turns from Blue to Red* Whoa! If I’m right, that jewel’s about to turn red.I didn’t jump the gun, by the way. The jewel has already turned red by the time Meoshi starts saying this line. It’s changing! Sure enough, the jewel turned red and the alien fell down into the floor, accompanied by the sound of an explosion. Awesome! Looks like it’s just like the game. You got him! Yeah, but I’m sure that’s not the only one. We can’t let our guard down. Hey… Can anyone hear me? Wait… is that Shidou? Have you encountered the enemy yet? Yeah, we just took out one of those alien things. Have they shown up on your path too? I’m fighting them right now, but they just keep coming! Bullets don’t seem to work. How did you beat yours?! Aim for the jewel on the forehead. That’s their only weak point. Jewel on the forehead, got it! …Ha! Looks like you were right. All set here too. Thanks for the tip, kid. That is incredibly important information to just forget about, Kouta.  These guys aren’t enough?! C’mon… When they started shooting at us I thought I was gonna die! (Wait, so the aliens actually attack? Meoshi killed them so fast they didn’t get to… But now that everybody knows how to fight them, we should be out of here in no time!)*The screen flashes blue a few times. The background CG keeps flipping between Left and Right door versions every few text boxes, just so you know* (Whoa, he’s fighting off the aliens while he’s talking! We might be able to get through this game without any trouble at all.)*There’s a slow fade to black*  Hm… Which way should we go? There’s a map here. Let’s have a look. Um… Well, I think we can get to the exit faster if we go to the right. This guy knows what’s up. Whatever way the game wants you to go, always try going the opposite way first. So which way should we go? … I’d say right. I want to get to the exit as fast as possible.Knowing what we do from Ryuji’s route, this seems like a deadly mistake. Meoshi seems to be much more efficient than Ryuji though, so they’ve probably used up far less gun energy than Saki and Ryuji did during that route. I suspected he was doing that because of me.*Another CG shift* Are you sure? Yeah. We’ll be fine. I can deal with them. Sorry I can’t help… …You are. You’re giving me a reason to hurry and beat this game. I… am? I didn’t remember giving him anything… I was about to ask what he meant when suddenly Meoshi pushed the stick hard to the side. Gah! Outside three aliens had suddenly appeared— to the left, right, and rear. (Three at once?) He squeezed off a shot, hitting the right alien in the jewel. Behind us! There were two aliens behind us now. Meoshi kept the stick hard to the right, and we kept turning until we were facing backwards along the track. As soon as they were in our sights, a shot from another alien slammed into the side of our ship.*There’s a green flash, followed by a red flash, followed by screen shake* I grabbed onto the seat as we shook. Urgh…!*At this point that screen fades to black* Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Jan 16, 2021 |
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Jan 16, 2021 19:39
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My head was feeling wobbly enough as it was— I didn’t need a shaking ship too. *There’s a flash of blue, although the screen is still black* That’s the second one! Now the last— Huh…? He stopped short as he noticed me beginning to fall out of my seat.*Flash of green* Guh…! No!*The screen shakes* Urgh![Announcer]: Your shield has been depleted. Game over. Damnit! (Game over…?) I’d only barely heard the announcement. (No… this is my fault…) And we’re back from darkness land. I could hear Meoshi, but his voice sounded… far away, somehow. …You’re burning up! I felt his hand against my forehead, but it was ice cold. I’m sorry… this is my fault… No, no it’s not. I just wasn’t good enough. That’s not true…Okay, guys. Everyone feels bad and thinks it’s their fault. Let’s not spend another 5 minutes on this, please. … Hey! Come in! What’s going on over there?! …We’re out. There was a second of silence on the other end of the radio. No, no way, Meoshi’s too good for that. Did something happen? Don’t worry about it. We’ll handle the rest. You two just stay where you are. …I can’t do that. What? What do you mean you can’t? (What…?) Sorry, but we’re going to leave. What? Hold on, don’t do anything rash— Meoshi turned the radio off before Shidou could finish. Why are we leaving…? Correction: Guaranteed to be six hours. You can’t stay here that long with a fever like this. I need to get you out of here. He hopped out of the ship and onto the rail that had carried us there. I swallowed. Don’t worry, all those games have given me a little bit of upper-body strength.No, no they have not. Unless you’ve been playing “Free-weights Hero”, then you haven’t been building upper-body strength. Stamina? I could see that being the case… except we already know that you don’t have good stamina after watching you collapse from your little ninja run during Samurai Fantasy VII.  Case in point. I felt myself rise into the air, and when I opened my eyes Meoshi’s face was much closer than before. With a start, I realized he was carrying me. I… I’m fine… I could barely speak, and I knew I sounded like death, but that didn’t stop me. It didn’t stop Meoshi either, though, and he kept walking down the rail as if he couldn’t hear me. Even in my nearly-delirious state, I could tell that his arms were steady. Oh ho! Going somewhere, are we? Hogstein’s voice echoed down from the ceiling. We’re leaving the attraction. We’re not going to do the whole “Become a traitor” for me thing again, are we? I don’t care. Hmph. Are you sure? Even if leaving means you’re going to get punished? Bring it on. Hogstein was going to do something horrible to Meoshi and call it punishment, I knew it. I couldn’t let that happen. (Please! Go back)This line is in parentheses, but Saki’s name doesn’t show up above the text box, so I can’t tell for sure if she’s supposed to be thinking this or narrating it. But no matter how I struggled, I couldn’t manage to form the words. Before he hung up, I thought I heard Hogstein say that things were about to get interesting.Great. Looking forward to whatever that means.  …Meoshi… It’s okay. Just hang on a little longer. The light shining in through the exit grew brighter, and I shut my eyes against it. As soon as we were out of the attraction, I felt Meoshi lay me down on a bench. Once he was sure I was safe, he sunk to the ground, breathing hard.Pro-tip for the future, Meoshi: While the Princess Carry may win you points with the ladies, the Fireman’s Carry is the superior option for actually getting someone to safety. It may not be as dashing or gentlemanly as bridal style, but it’s way more efficient. I wanted to do something, but I could barely keep my head up. Damnit… Why can’t I… Are… are you okay…? Yeah, I’m fine. I just… I just need to sit down for a bit. I’m sorry… Don’t worry about it. Sorry I’m not… better at this… Phew. All right, let’s go. It sounded like his words were more for him than for me, but they seemed to work because he picked me back up and set off, his face determined. I was lying on something flat and hard, probably one of the tables. (How did I get here?) As I sat up, something fell off my forehead. (Huh? A wet towel…?) I stared at it for a moment before things finally started to come together. It looked like I’d fallen asleep at some point. Meoshi had carried me back to the restaurant and done his best to help me feel better. Next to me on the table were several slightly drier towels. He must have been getting new ones while I slept. (It’s… a little past six. I’ve been asleep for five hours.)Before you ask, the answer is no. The others aren’t already here at the restaurant. Can you imagine spending over 5 hours strapped into a spaceship ride at a theme park, spinning around and shooting at things? We never got to the end of Moonlight OX legitimately (Ryuji’s route was a specialized game involving Urabe), so maybe there’s a second component to whole thing. Even still, that’s a really long time to be in there.  There had only been five of us to begin with, and after Meoshi and I had left they would have been down to three… *Sigh* You’re awake. I looked up to see a glass of apple juice in front of me, held out by Meoshi himself. You should drink something. You’ve been sweating a lot. Th-Thanks. I took the cool glass from his hand, and drank the whole thing in one swig. The hotel won’t be here for a little while, but the others should show up when they finish the game. He made it sound like it was already a fact that they’d be coming back, and it made me feel a little more hopeful. You were sleeping really hard. I guess you were tired, huh? Oh, sorry… I must have been pretty heavy. Definitely the case. Saki is a Japanese teenaged girl. What do you think she is? Like, 5 foot 1 and maybe 100lbs? Ryuji managed to chuck her like a football during his ending. And, uh, honestly I’m kind of glad you were asleep. I’m kinda embarrassed about how long it took me to get you here… Does anything hurt? I tried to cool you off with the towels, but there weren’t very many of them.Did you try maybe, I dunno, reusing the ones you had? You really only needed two.  Another choice. Thanking is the way to go. Thank you so much. …Don’t worry about it. I couldn’t just leave you there.*Affection up* He blushed and coughed. I know I’m probably not as dependable as those other guys. But… if things get tough, I just want you to know you can count on me to do my best. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, but… thanks. He smile [sic] crookedly and looked away. (With all he knows about video games and what happened in the last game, I feel like I’ve already been counting on him a lot. Has he not noticed?)He’s likely self-depreciating. I’m the same way. The others will be back soon. You should rest.*After a little black wipe* …Oh! It was a little past seven when I saw several familiar figures appear outside the restaurant. You guys! Welcome back. How did it go? Really close! We beat it, but just barely. Things were looking pretty bad for a while, but I turned it around.So in other words you spastically fired shots in every direction and through sheer luck managed to score a hit. Got it. Wakasa grinned and I let out a small sigh of relief. (Thank goodness…) Gotta say, kind of threw us for a loop when Hogstein told us you’d ditched the game. Although, given our young lady’s position at the moment, I can certainly see why. …I’m sorry, I should have told you. No, no, it’s my fault. He was just worried about me. Yeah, obviously you didn’t have a choice, and we beat it anyway, so it’s all good. Exactly. You made the right choice in a difficult situation. You should be proud, not apologetic. …Thanks. I was glad these were the people I had at my side for the games, and Meoshi seemed to feel the same way. But we, uh, might be in a little bit of trouble. Huh? Wakasa frowned. Well, Hogstein said something kind of… ominous after we finished the game. What did he say? …! “Keep our…” Is he planning something?!Uh, yes? He’s always planning something. You are currently caught in one of his plans. We can’t say for sure, but I’d bet there’s a very good chance he is. We need to stay on our toes. No use worrying about it right now, though. We can cross that bridge when we come to it. We need to be ready to act when it does happen, though. I doubt he’s going to play fair. Man, I am starving! Sorry guys, but I’m gonna go grab something to eat. Don’t forget we need to bring something back for Mai and Mitarashi. Oh, I can do that. You should eat. Are you feeling up to it? Yeah, I got lots of rest. Then thank you for your help, little lady. I moved to get off the table, but Meoshi stopped me. Wait. You should stay here. Then at least sit in a chair. I can get the take-out. Well… if you’re sure. Thanks. No problem. He gave me an unexpected smile and turned to follow Shirabe and the others over to the counter. (I feel kinda bad letting him do everything, but he doesn’t seem to mind…) …Hey. Oh, hey. What’s up? Mitarashi and… uh… the little girl. Do you know what they like?Just tell the piglets to give us a cow. Ryuji will handle the rest. He said he’d asked the others, but they hadn’t known either. He he. I guess I’ll have to go after all, huh? S-Sorry… Then, just as I stood up—…The hell is that noise for? A blaring electronic wail filled the air. What’s that?! A siren?! It’s coming from outside! Chibi Saki is there to remind us of where the restaurant is located. She doesn’t actually move across the map this time. We rushed out of the restaurant to find the siren was coming from speakers scattered everywhere. The silence that usually enveloped the park had been completely eradicated by the incredible racket. Wh-What the hell is going on?Is Hogstein tired of this whole thing and plans on just bombing the whole park now? This is what Hogstein was talking about! It has to be! That’s probably not a good thing. [Announcer]: Can you survive long enough on this island to uncover the truth behind the zombies that rule it? Is this… an announcement for an attraction? (That can’t be, today’s game is already over!)Once again, no “Saki” name tag on this text box. I’m just going to assume this is here thoughts from now on, because of the parentheses. Oink oink oink! Please be careful. Hogstein’s voice had replaced the announcer’s. What do you mean?! Hm? Did you not hear that announcement just now? You’re on the Island of Dr. Death! A mysterious isle rife with hungry undead! W-Wait, back up, what the heck do you mean by “undead”?! With clear glee, Hogstein explained that a bunch of zombies had been released into the park. There would be more and more as time went on, until we were buried under a massive tide of them. What?! Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’ve got good news too! This is the last and only game you have to play! And that’s not all! I am lifting the prohibition on calling each other with your cell phones. The field is kind of big this time, after all. The last game, hm? So if we can solve this zombie mystery we’re done? He roared with laughter. By the way, you’ve got till 7pm on the seventh day— pleeeeeenty of time. Aren’t you happy? Happy my rear end. You just told us we’re going to have to be on high alert 24/7 until this thing is over. I guess this is your “punishment”? Now then, it’s time to let the curtain rise on our final act! I hope you enjoy endless hell! Oink oink oink! His laughter echoed across the park until the radio clicked off. For several long minutes, no one spoke. (Well, we might as well go back into the restaurant…) But as I turned around, the restaurant’s lights went out. …Damnit!Welp, we’re screwed. Shidou ran to the door, and the rest of us followed after him. …No good. It’s locked. Wh-What are we gonna do?! Those zombies are gonna show up any minute now! Calm down. We need to assess the situation. Wait, there’s something over there. Huh? I followed the line of his finger… A z-z-zombie! Wakasa said what we were all thinking. Hey! So remember what I said about saying goodbye to Zombie-chan? …Apparently I was wrong about that. (They’re just like the ones from the hospital! But that’s not possible!) Wait, what are they doing here? Shouldn’t they have gone up in smoke with the rest of the hospital? Shirabe seemed to be thinking exactly the same thing.The way everyone is reacting, it really feels like they are implying that the zombies in the hospital weren’t animatronics or piglets in costume… Did Keiji Inafune really make honest-to-god zombies for his loving theme park?! That’s not important right now! We need to move! Can you run? I’m fine! Give me your hand. Let’s go! As we began to run, the zombie opened fire, bullets cracking and pinging off the ground and walls around us.Also if these zombies are also armed, then how the hell did Hogstein manage to smuggle multiple submachine guns into Japan?! I concentrated on Meoshi’s hand, and ran as fast as I could. Eventually we were able to reach an attraction that seemed to be zombie-free. The place we found ourselves at was some sort of cute animal-themed music-based attraction. It seemed oddly surreal, given our current situation. *Pant* *Pant* Are you okay? I… I think so… You’ve been sick, and we just made you run across the park. There’s no shame in being tired. You should rest. Okay… Thanks… So what’s your excuse, Meoshi? I’ll… I’ll be fine… in a second… Meoshi was panting almost as hard as I was. He’d said he didn’t have much stamina to begin with, but had he tired himself out more worrying about me? Forget them, what the heck is going on?! Don’t yell. You’ll attract the zombies. Guh. Sorry… I would like that question answered as well. …The Island of Dr. Death. Huh? He seemed to have finally gotten his breath back. The Bloodstained Hospital. The video game, I mean. The sequel is on the Island of Dr. Death. Huh… Well, do you know anything about it? Any hint might be enough to help us solve the mystery. Sorry… I never played it. Wait, really? There are actually games you don’t play? Kind of sad, too. The first one sold over a million copies, but the sequel only sold, like, 10k. They haven’t made any more.Daaamn, that is a gigantic drop off. Who was responsible for that catastrophe? Even Devil May Cry 2 managed to break a million copies sold and that game is still the franchise’s greatest sin, even after DmC: Devil May Cry came out and split the fanbase. So you’re saying this game is based on that sequel? Well, I haven’t played it so I can’t say for sure, but given that Hogstein mentioned “The Island of Dr. Death,” I’m guessing there’s some kind of connection. He’s turned the whole park into one big game… He’s as insane as he is dangerous. …I guess I opened Pandora’s Box. Ha… Not a bad choice of metaphor there, kid. He grinned and tapped his finger against his forehead. D-Don’t you think that’s a little… extreme? Ah, don’t you remember? There’s more in the box than just the evils of the world. What…? No matter how bad the situation gets, there’s always hope. After all the evils had flown out of the box, there was still one thing left.Regret? Hope, right? Meoshi nodded. Looks like somebody’s all full of vim and vigor now. …I’ve got you guys to thank for that, I guess. First time I’ve ever felt like, well, a normal person. He gave Shirabe a nervous smile. The problem is that we don’t know what we have to do to win. We need to figure that out before we can do anything else… Honestly, they’re probably the safest people in the park right now. Unless we’re dealing with flying zombies or something. Good point. Let’s head for the dock. …I don’t see it. There was no sign of the hotel. Shidou sighed. They should have shown up by now. I had a feeling this would happen, but it looks like the boat won’t be coming. So we’re stuck here. … Shirabe’s expression had grown dark, and I realized with a start that he must be worried about Mai. It’ll be okay. Mitarashi’s with her, remember? He’ll make sure she’s safe. …Thanks. I doubt it’ll come to that. As long as they’re on the hotel and it doesn’t dock, the zombies don’t have any way to get to them. They’re safe. …Right, sorry. Pull yourself together, old man. He took in a long slow breath, then let it out. We need to go over what we know so far. After that we can figure out what to do next. You could probably fortify Samurai Fantasy VII fairly easily. Of course, then you have the problem of getting out after zombies have bunched up in front of the gate. Our only option is to beat this game, but… …We need to know how to beat it. That’s our first priority. All the other games had an announcement at the beginning that had some sort of hint in it. Shouldn’t this one have something like that too? Okay, so what did the announcement say? “Can you survive long enough on this island to uncover the truth behind the zombies that rule it?” The truth, huh… Hogstein also said that there will be more zombies as time goes on… Hm… but where? I’m actually lost on this one. Mushroom Village, maybe? Or maybe there’s a hatch around Castle Hogstein where they’re wandering out from? Maybe that’s the truth we’re supposed to uncover. All right, it looks like we’ve got our first mission: Figure out where the zombies are coming from. Let’s make that our top priority. We all nodded in agreement. Enough standing around, then. Move out! We’re, uh, sticking together, right? No way am I running around alone out there. Fine by me, but I think maybe we oughta leave the little lady somewhere. What? You’re better, but you’re still under the weather, right? I don’t think traipsing around the park’s going to do much for your health. You oughta rest. …I’m afraid he’s right. Recovering needs to be your top priority. I’ll stay with her. I don’t really know anything about this game, so I won’t be able to help you much, and… I’m worried about her. Meoshi… All right, sounds good to me. Speaking of. If Ayumu is worried about Mai, why doesn’t he just call Mitarashi? We should probably be informing him of this little development anyway. Got it. Stay safe, you guys. See you later. Be careful! Wakasa grinned, Shirabe nodded, and Shidou simply lifted his hand in a single wave. Then they disappeared into the darkness, leaving us alone. They’re gone. Yeah, you’re right. I’ll keep watch. You need to rest. (I’m glad he’s willing to look out for me, but…)One last choice for this stage. We can go with “Thanks” or “No, that’s okay.” We want “Thanks.” Thanks. No problem.*Affection up* He smiled. Fine, fine, I’ll rest. Just promise to wake me up if something happens. Sure thing. *Yawn* …Oh jeez, I think I bumped you! Sorry… We smiled at each other, and I felt like we were just a little bit closer.And that’s it for this longer than normal stage! It’s been a while since a route chapter has run this long. Of course, a lot of stuff went down in this one compared to the others. The theme park games structure is now out the window and our heroes are simply being left to scour the entire park looking for some vague “truth” regarding a zombie outbreak. An outbreak that was triggered by two people who dressed up in cigar smoking hog costumes in order to rig a theme park built by Keiji Inafune with bombs in order to carry out revenge on six unrelated bachelors for some reason… Yes, that is the current plot of this game. Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Jan 16, 2021 |
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Jan 16, 2021 19:44
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I'm gonna be sad if we never actually get to play the cute animal dancing game.
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Jan 16, 2021 21:38
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cardinale posted:I'm gonna be sad if we never actually get to play the cute animal dancing game. It has to exist in one of these routes. There's no way that the developers would have drawn up three unique CGs just for a 2 minute scene in 1 character's route. That said, we're quickly running out of opportunities to see it. I have no clue what Urabe's route is going to be like, but I highly doubt he'll just rejoin the group and everything will continue like normal. That means it has to be either Subaru or Ayumu's route.
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Jan 16, 2021 21:49
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The game might be somewhat lacking plotwise, but this CG owns
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Jan 18, 2021 13:49
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CremePudding posted:The game might be somewhat lacking plotwise, but this CG owns I think the reason why this one stands out is that, despite this game's art style and sometimes goofy premise, it doesn't have much in the way of comedic or overtly silly scenes. I think the only other goofy looking CG we've seen is when Mai shows up (and then of course this is followed immediately be a decidedly not goofy moment).  Other than this CG and the Meoshi one, the others have been either very serious or passionate or otherwise meant to make the dudes look handsome/dashing. Honestly, if you simply removed the whole Pig/Hog motif thing, I would go so far as to say that the art style this game has wouldn't work for it. It's only through Hogstein that the art style is appropriate. If Hogstein was the same character, but dressed up like Jigsaw or something, would you think this current art style or an art style like this be more appropriate? Sweet Fuse is a game that looks like it's going to be incredibly goofy, and it is in some ways. But it's also a game that is a lot more serious than the art style or opening would suggest. People can die in this game in some pretty gruesome ways (poison, crushed by a spiked ceiling, exploded, shot to death, mangled in a car wreck). There's also focus on dead parents, dead spouses, broken relationships, whatever the hell will come to light with Kimimaro that made him complicit in this whole thing. Characters get badly injured a lot too (mostly Ryuji), including the heroine herself. Just by looking at the cover of the game and reading the little blurb on the back, you'd think this game would have been a lot more lighthearted and silly. Also, keep in mind that the routes we've gone through so far are the "not plot important" routes. Subaru, Urabe, and Shirabe's routes are apparently where all the answers to our questions are stored, so it's very doubtful that those routes are going to have anything lighthearted or silly in them. Maybe we'll get to see Band Animal Family, but outside of that we'll be looking at a lot of serious and tense scenes. Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Jan 19, 2021 |
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Jan 19, 2021 15:21
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Just like to say I'm enjoying this Let's Play, Psycho Knight! I own this game and have completed all the routes, but man, I hardly remember anything. Mostly I remember being annoyed that I didn't actually have to play through all the routes to get the extras. Shirabe's was just too icky for me with the age gap.
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Jan 19, 2021 21:19
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Zaphiel posted:Just like to say I'm enjoying this Let's Play, Psycho Knight! I own this game and have completed all the routes, but man, I hardly remember anything. I'm glad to hear that. The thread doesn't get a lot of replies, so I always like it whenever someone pops in to say they are reading along. Shirabe's route is one I am looking forward to for plot reasons, but in terms of the romance angle I'm less stoked about that. The age gap itself is not an issue in my book. I'm more creeped out by how it involves an 18-year old. If Saki was like 25 and Shirabe 40, then I'd be like "Well, she's old enough to know what she wants and if an older man is it then whatever." It’s not like there is a power dynamic at work here. Shirabe isn't obscenely wealthy or in some position of power over Saki that he is exploiting. But 18? Saki doesn't even know what she's going to do with her post-High School life yet. She also doesn't seem to have much life experience, considering that she apparently can't even operate her own cell phone. Hooking up with a man 14 years her senior, who has a child that he has been neglecting, is real sketchy. I wonder if other Otome games have done this. This is the only one I've played with such a wide age gap. A guy older than 30 seems like more of a josei game thing, since that genre aims for women in the 22-45 age demographic.
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Jan 19, 2021 23:39
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Psycho Knight posted:I wonder if other Otome games have done this. This is the only one I've played with such a wide age gap. A guy older than 30 seems like more of a josei game thing, since that genre aims for women in the 22-45 age demographic. Oh yeah, it's actually a relatively common thing in otome games to have an age gap romance. There's the obvious fantasy ones where the MC could be dating someone centuries older than her, even though he/she looks to be around the same age. But it is common to have one or more relationship option be older and look older as well. Some older romance options are Reiichi Himuro from Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side, who is 30 by the time the game ends when the MC is 18, John from Backstage Pass who is 35 to the protagonist's 18, and Kaoru Rindo, who is 'middle-aged' according to the game compared to the protag in her early 20s I believe. Older romance options can be popular for a few reasons. They usually are considered more mature than other romance options due to their age, they appeal more to older players who sometimes have problems with younger characters as they age, and for games focused on an educational environment, they play into the teacher-student fantasy that some people find appealing. It's definitely popular, as Reiichi is considered to be one of the favorite LIs in Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side, and that lead to a romancable teacher in the next couple of games, though they did have different personalities.
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Jan 20, 2021 01:11
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Psycho Knight posted:I'm glad to hear that. The thread doesn't get a lot of replies, so I always like it whenever someone pops in to say they are reading along. i'm also here reading along! Meoshi's the only route i managed to play. i liked it and -never worked up the energy or spoons to play the rest, so i'm glad to see someone covering what i never got to.
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Jan 20, 2021 09:19
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SimplyUnknown1 posted:Otome Talk I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for shedding some light on that aspect of this genre. I've only played a few Otome titles. The ones I have played are because some aspect of them stands out as being super weird, like this one, or that Alice in Wonderland themed title that I mentioned way back during the first Alice Kart segment. The ones I have played have had age gaps, but they've never broken double digits (or they've been incredibly vague/unstated). I played the first Code: Realize and I think the widest age gap in that game is between the heroine and Helsing, who is only 27. Obviously I'm not counting any of that "actually 700 years old" nonsense. That's just as stupid and creepy in Otome games as it is in guy-targeted media. M.Matsuda posted:i'm also here reading along! Glad to know, thanks! Honestly, if I wasn't LP'ing this game, I would probably be in the same boat as you. I never would have done more than a single route. I likely would have done Ryuji's or Subaru's and that would have been it. Sweet Fuse is a weird VN in the sense that choosing to play the route of the character that you are most attached to can easily result in you never getting any answers to the actual plot of the game. Other visual novel/dating-sim games have done this as well of course, but usually only to the extent that playing every route helps to fill in some gaps. Normally, no matter which route you play (unless it's a clearly joke/hidden route) you will at least get answers for some of the biggest plot points. But in Sweet Fuse, if you are immediately attached to any combination of Towa, Ryuji, and Meoshi, then you simply don't find out anything about the plot. It's a strange choice for any game, because you are essentially forcing the player to have to do every route even if they don't like some of the cast members. The appeal of dating-sim games with multiple routes is that the player has some agency over the protagonist and can chase after the character they like the most while avoiding the ones they don't like. Obviously there are hardcore players that replay the game multiple times and finish every route because they love every character, but realistically the general audience is only going to be interested in 1 or 2 members of the cast. So even if you are a young girl that is really creeped out by a romance route with Shirabe, you are going to have to force yourself through his route if you have any desire to fill out the story. And I tell ya, it really sours a game experience when the game is forcing you to play it the way it wants you to play. Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Jan 20, 2021 |
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Jan 20, 2021 15:30
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This update is on the shorter side. I need to get back to dividing the stages up into two updates, since they've been just barely exceeding the character limit quite a lot lately. Update XXIV: Night of the Living Dead  Things went in kind of a weird direction last update. On the plus side, our heroes won’t have to play through any more attraction-based death games. If they can solve one final puzzle, then they will be free as birds! …On the downside, however, the entire park is now being flooded with zombies armed with submachine guns. Also the only clues our heroes have to go on are one incredibly vague announcement and all the angry video game reviews that Meoshi read through related to the game this puzzle is based on.  Oh yeah, and the group immediately split up to look for clues while Saki got some desperately needed rest. So, you know, we’re off to a great start for a horror movie scenario. Nothing bad has ever come from people splitting up in a zombie movie. (…Wow, it’s really dark.) I blinked my eyes and looked around, not completely awake yet. The sky was dark, and the air was clear, but something felt… off. (It’s so quiet… I wonder what time it is.) I dug around in my pocket for my phone. (…Nothing. No texts or calls, I guess.) Please keep the time that Saki just mentioned in mind for later. If you thought this game’s concept of time was weird before, then we’ll be seeing it get even weirder later on in this stage. It had paid off, though— I didn’t feel feverish anymore. My head felt a little fuzzy, but I figured that would be gone pretty quickly. (Now, where’s Meoshi…) He was standing next to a tree some distance away, his arms crossed, keeping an eye on the surroundings. Hey… Oh, you’re awake. How are you feeling? A lot better. My fever’s gone, and my head doesn’t hurt anymore. Good. Glad to hear it. Has anything happened? Not really. It’s been pretty quiet. Have you heard from Shidou? No. I’m worried about them, of course, but I don’t want to bother them so I haven’t called.Now might be a good time to bother them, considering that Saki is back in action. Huh… Well, I hope they’re okay. He nodded, and went back to watching. I can take watch for a while, if you want. No, I’m fine. You need to rest too. Aren’t you tired? Why don’t you sleep? Too busy playing games. A lot of times I don’t even realize it’s morning. I kind of just get absorbed and forget about time.Speaking from experience, you’ve got maybe 6 to 8 more years of being able to do that. I found that once I hit the mid-20’s, sleep tended to hit like a sack of bricks, no matter much gaming I wanted to keep doing. Whoa, that’s kinda cool. I always get sleepy as soon as the sun goes down. I don’t know why you’d think it’s cool. Spending all night staring at a screen isn’t exactly something to be proud of.Listen, Saki is very easily impressed. Not overly surprising when you remember that she seems to be terrible at literally everything. She’d probably think you tying your own shoes is impressive. I love you Saki, but for the love of god please reveal to the audience that you have some sort of talent. No, “Explosive Insight” doesn’t count. He looked down and kicked at the ground. You seem to know an awful lot about games. What stuff do you play? That look coupled with that response means “Hentai Games.” His brain was definitely screaming “THIS GIRL IS INTERESTED IN YOU! DON’T BLOW IT! DODGE THE QUESTION!” Yeah, I guess I probably wouldn’t know about anything that’s not pretty mainstream, but I’d love to hear about them.Saki doesn’t even know about the games her own uncle built a theme park around. To Saki, mainstream probably refers only to Candy Crush. There’s still a lot of night left, and I don’t wanna go back to sleep yet. Are you sure you won’t tell me about your games? …”Think, think dammit!” …There’s this RPG I’m playing right now— well, actually, I finished it just before I came to the park. The player goes out to save the world from some sort of evil emperor. Pretty standard stuff. Not quite sure I can think of a game that fits this. There are games out there that feature the children of heroes from the last game, but I don’t remember if any of those had the characters being dysfunctional in terms of teamwork. But during their journey they slowly start to trust each other, and eventually they’re these incredible friends. That’s [sic] sounds kinda like us. Although in our case our friends were picked by the evil emperor. That’s pretty unprecedented, I think. Haven’t played a game like that before. So what about the game? What happens in the end? You beat the final boss and save the world, but it’s all an illusion. What? Well, did you really beat it then? I know this has been done before, but for the life of me I cannot think of a game right now that does this. There are games that lock the golden route behind beating the game once, but you usually start from a checkpoint near the end after loading up a Clear Save. Which games require you to play through the whole thing a second time? …And don’t say anything by Yoko Taro! Yoko Taro’s stuff is the exception, not the rule. Huh… That sounds like a lot of work. It can be kind of a pain sometimes, but if you’ve got a lot of spare time it’s worth doing. I brought a game with me where you solve mysteries as a detective. I’m almost done with that one too.Professor Layton? Ace Attorney Investigations? It’s gotta be something portable. And you play rhythm games too, right? Man, you’re good at a lot of stuff. Yeah, but my favorites are probably fighting games. Have you heard of one called Round Table Colosseum Knights? Hm… the name sounds kinda familiar… Oh, right! That’s one of the attractions here at the park. The game it’s based on is a fighting game. I’ve never lost once.”Because I disconnect whenever it looks like I’m going to lose.” Really?! Wow, that’s amazing!Anyone know where I can find a girl as easily impressed by non-accomplishments as Saki? …Asking for a friend. Not really. I just played it a lot more than most people. Anyone who played that much would get good. In other words, you made your online username “Ares.” Anyway, I like just about every game I play. I’m not really picky about the genre. How many games do you play? I dunno, maybe a hundred or so a year. A hundred?!That’s actually not that many, all things considered. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that’s a poo poo ton for any normal person that has a life outside of their house. But for a shut-in with no job or schoolwork? There’s 8,760 hours in a year, even if you only take a third of that and attribute the rest to stuff like eating, sleeping, and other non-gaming stuff, that’s still 2,920 hours. Between a hundred games, that’s roughly 30 hours for each game. A large portion of games can be beaten in well under 30 hours. Depending on what kind of reader you are, you could probably easily blitz through every route in this game in 10 hours or so, for example. I’ve never counted them or anything, and I play some downloadable and mobile games too, so it’s hard to tell, really. Still, that’s a lot of games. Doesn’t that take a lot of time? It depends. Action and puzzles [sic] games usually don’t take too long, and you can beat most RPGs pretty quickly too, if you’re dedicated. …Plus, I’ve got all the free time in the world. …Huh? I told you, I don’t get out much. I haven’t for… a while now.We’re close to finding out Meoshi’s tragic backstory. What do you think it will be? Maybe Ryuji’s mom was his babysitter and the last thing she said to him was to make people smile? I’m sure it connects to Ryuji in some way shape or form. Everything else has so far. I skipped a lot in middle school, but it got worse in high school until I just decided to drop out. Now I don’t really leave my house. I spend all my time playing games. I sleep, I eat, and I play games. Sometimes I’ll even go a couple days without sleeping. That’s all I do.I know I’m talking more than usual in this update, but Meoshi is giving us quite a bit of insight into himself right now. We haven’t heard anything about his parents yet (at least, I don’t think we have), but I would assume based on his use of “house” instead of “apartment” that he’s still living with him. Real life NEETs (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) tend to get their daily living expenses floated by their parents. But it’s obviously a lot harder to have an expensive hobby like gaming when your monthly allowance has to also cover rent, food, and utilities compared to just living in your parents’ house and having them cover that stuff by default.  We want to pry into Meoshi’s backstory for this choice, even though he was clearly trying to avoid talking about it a few seconds ago. So why do you stay inside all the time? Um… He shuddered slightly, like he was cold. Then he turned away. It’s cool you want to know more about me but… um… I can’t really talk about that.*Affection up* He’d barely managed to get the words out, and I couldn’t bring myself to press him further. (…Maybe I shouldn’t have asked about that.) Sorry. He shook his head and apologized too.*Conveniently timed distracting phone call* My phone! …It’s Shirabe! Hello? Shirabe? …? Hello? All I could hear from the other end was rough, crackling static. What’s wrong?! (Is the connection bad?! I can barely hear him!)Great work, Keiji. Can’t even get decent cell reception in this stupid place. Maybe you should have taken some of that zombie research money and built a cell tower somewhere nearby. Shid… one…! What? Shidou’s… on…? He’s gone! Where did he go!? …?! Me… the Bazaar! I’ll tell… thing! …amn! …already …ere! Shirabe! Shirabe! …It went dead.And then there were four. …Technically five if you want to count Mai. What happened to Shidou? I don’t know. The connection was so bad I could only make out about half of what he said. But I think Shirabe was running from someone… or something. …Probably the zombies. I’d heard gunshots on the other end of the call. Meoshi was probably right. Did you find out anything else? He mentioned a “bazaar,” but I don’t know what that is or why he was talking about it. I think there might be an attraction called the bazaar…I’m surprised you guys don’t immediately know about it, considering that it looks like you have to pass right through that place in order to get into the park proper. The most direct route from the entrance to the plaza where you started on Day 1 runs directly through the middle of that place. …Can you walk? Huh? Yeah, I’m fine. Then we should get to a map. I want to look at the park layout. The other guys might be in trouble. Yeah, good idea. There’s one in the plaza, I think. Let’s go. We travel about 10 feet before stopping to ogle the crater where the hospital used to be. On our way to the plaza we passed by the remains of the hospital. Hogstein had blown it up when we failed the game on the third day, and there was nothing left. Instead of a building, there was just a gaping, blackened hole in the ground. Miraculously, no one had died, although Mitarashi had gotten hurt. …Well, perhaps not miraculously. If Urabe hadn’t told us about the hidden door, we all would have died. I shivered again. Are you okay? Hm? Oh, yeah, sorry… He looked at me for a moment and frowned worriedly. I remembered with a start that Meoshi had been the one to shield me from the explosion. He’d saved me so much I was having trouble keeping it all straight. …drat! This way. Huh? He grabbed my arm and pulled me into some trees before I could spot what had spooked him. Keep your head down. Don’t let them see you. He moved around in front of me. Then I heard it: The ominous, shuffling footsteps of a zombie. I still can’t believe we’re doing this as a plot point. No matter how many times I saw them, the zombies were creepy as heck. (If he spots us, he’ll open fire and we’ll be toast.) I held my breath and Meoshi stood perfectly still as we waited for the zombie to move past. … …I think we’re safe now. After looking around carefully to make sure the zombie was gone, we stepped out of the trees. I thought they might be coming from the ruins of the hospital somehow, but it doesn’t look like it. So where are they coming from…? It’s past three… That took longer than I thought. Those zombies are everywhere. We’d had to keep quiet whenever we saw one and always be on our toes, so even a short distance had taken a long time to cover. Here’s the map. Let’s see… bazaar… Bazaar… There. It looks like it connects to the main entrance. The attraction’s called “Bazaar Planet.” (That’s right, I remember a shopping mall right on the inside of the front gate.)And yet, you didn’t remember the giant planet with “BAZAAR PLANET” written on it in the middle of the walkway. Let’s go check it out. Yeah. We headed off again, keeping a sharp eye out for zombies. Honestly now, how do you miss this? Unsurprisingly, it had a sort of space theme, with images of stars and planets everywhere. It’s quiet… That doesn’t seem right. I’m glad there aren’t any zombies, but I don’t think Shirabe and the others are here either. Maybe he was talking about something else…? Right before he got cut off, Shirabe said something was “here”, right? My guess is that he probably didn’t stick around. I wish we could find something to tell us if they’re safe… Well, it doesn’t look like there are any zombies. Should we split up and search? Good idea, but let’s no get too far away from each other. We began to search, never letting the other out of our sight. All the stores seemed to be locked, so it wasn’t likely they’d run into one of them. I began searching the ground for any sort of clue. (…Wait, there’s something here…) …! Meoshi! Come over here! Did you find something? These are Shidou’s… aren’t they? …But the lenses were cracked, and the frame was bent.Nooo! Not Shidou’s sweet shades! I don’t think he just dropped them… You found them here? Yeah, right where you’re standing. … Look, over there. Huh? I followed the line of his finger… Oh no! Yeah. I think it’s blood. On the ground were several dots of dark red liquid. What happened…?*Sounds of Saki’s question being answered* …! Gunfire! It’s not stopping! I… I think it’s coming from over there! That would be… Round Table Colosseum Knights IV!You really don’t need to say the full name, you know. Let’s go! We hurried toward the gunfire. After the sustained gunfire, the silence felt like the sudden aftermath of a horrible storm. We didn’t see any zombies, but Shirabe and the others were nowhere to be see [sic] either. Just like before, we split up to search the area. *Gasp* Over here! When he ran over, I pointed to one of the pillars. Yeah. Then there was a fight here… I only see damage on this side of the pillar. Someone was probably taking cover here, and the zombies shot at them. We began to examine the ground around the pillar for more blood. …Hm. Meoshi picked something up and held it out toward me. Noo! Not Shirabe’s sweet snacks! It was dirty and smashed, like someone had stepped on it, but there was no doubt that it was Shirabe’s. I could still see a few broken snacks inside. First Shidou, and now Shirabe…? We don’t know if they escaped or were captured, but it would take a serious emergency to make that guy drop his snacks.You mean like being shot at? That leaves Wakasa, though.Oh, he’s totally dead. If Shidou had disappeared and something had happened to Shirabe, then Wakasa was probably alone. I hoped he was all right. Whatever’s happened to him, though, we’ve run out of clues. If we can’t find—! The air erupted in gunfire, and I heard the splintering crack of bullets slamming into the pillar. A zombie had found us. If I’d gotten behind the pillar even a half a second later, I’d have been turned into Swiss cheese. I swallowed hard and tried not to think about it. (Huh? The firing stopped?)Did Ryuji come to save the day again? Meoshi peered around the pillar. He’s changing his clip. He must have used up the whole thing.They can reload those things? We’ve moved beyond zombies at this point. We’re firmly in Ganados territory now. If we were going to escape, this was our only chance. Meoshi took my arm and we leapt out from behind the pillar. We ran as fast and as hard as we could, and with every step I expected to hear the gun start firing again. There didn’t seem to be any zombies nearby, and we both let out a sigh of relief. (This is…) We were standing in front of Moonlight OX. It felt oddly calm, and the whole attraction was lit up, filling the sky with bright light. … Escaping from this attraction on the fourth day had caused our current predicament. Hogstein had extended his punishment to everyone else, and now we were all running for our lives. In other words, it was my fault that my friends were in danger. Guh… Crying wasn’t going to help anything. For all I knew Shirabe, Shidou, and Wakasa were safe. Unfortunately my body had other ideas, and despite my best efforts tears began to trickle down my cheeks. I felt silly and weak, and tried to wipe them off before Meoshi could notice. We should be safe here… …?! Wh-What’s wrong? He stopped suddenly when he turned to look at me and saw that I was crying. My eyes were so full of tears that I could barely see his face. …I’m sorry… What? All of this is my fault. Your fault? What are you talking about? Yesterday I abandoned the game, and… And now everybody’s in danger! This is all my fault…Actually it’s Meoshi’s. He’s the one that made the executive decision to haul you out of there. Although you do bear some of the blame for not recognizing the fact that something was clearly wrong with you heading into the game. … I heard Meoshi’s footsteps come closer. Crying was just going to make him worry, but instead of helping me pull myself together, the thought just made me cry harder. … …Saki. I felt his hands on my shoulders. Even though I could feel him shaking, his grip was firm. I stood. Chin up. I looked up and found myself staring into his eyes. Oh, come on. Really? That’s just his character art pasted over a background CG! You guys couldn’t put in a little more work on this? Let’s go. We don’t have time to worry about what’s already happened. But… But… I started to sob again. They’re fine. You know how tough they are, right? … I nodded. Now is it time for backstory? Really…? …It was a long time ago. Something bad had happened, and I was convinced it was my fault. So I just… ran away. Really, I’m still running. I never stopped. He smiled bitterly and shrugged. So what I’m saying is that I speak from experience. What I’m trying to get at is… I’m here for you. His gaze was steady and serious. It slowly dawned on me that he’d never looked at me like that before.Choice time. We want to go with “…Thanks.” …Thanks.*Affection up* He smiled softly and nodded. (Yeah… This isn’t the time to be crying.) If I had time to mope, then I had time to beat this game. That’s what’s going to help my friends, not feeling sorry for myself. My sobbing had reduced to a sniffle and finally with a few deep breaths it was gone completely. Are you okay now? Yeah. Thanks. Um… Meoshi… Yeah? You, uh, you called me Saki… Oh… Sorry, I just… Do you not want me to? No, no, it was… nice. Hey, is it okay if I call you Kouta?”No. Call me… Ares.” ”Not going to happen.” ”Then I will settle for Kouta.” U-Um… W-Well, yeah, I guess so. Nobody really calls me that, though. Then I’m the first one! He he! I feel kinda special. I grinned. A pretty good recovery, if I do say so myself.Yeah Saki, you really rocked it on that. *Another conveniently timed distraction phone call* Then my phone rang. Oh… it’s Wakasa! Hello? His voice exploded out of the phone in a non-stop stream of words. That didn’t disguise the fact that his voice was shaking, and it sounded like he was crying. Just like with Shirabe, the signal seemed to be bad. …Shidou… abe… aren’t! Just calm down! Where are you?! …amurai Fant…-- Samurai Fantasy VII, right?! What about the others? Are they with you?! No, they…! I’m all alone, and… don’t… to do! …ease, hurry! What did he say?He heroically told us to go on without him. I’m not sure, but I think we should get over there, and fast. He sounded like he was crying. What about the others? I could barely hear him, but I think Wakasa’s alone. I don’t know where Shirabe and Shidou went. He’s probably at Samurai Fantasy VII. He said he found something, but he didn’t say what… Samurai Fantasy, right? Yeah! Hold on, Wakasa! We’re coming!We’ll leave it there for now. I need to get back to making sure these updates fit in a single post, and I’m pretty sure this whole stage is going to blow past the 50k character limit. Check in next time to find out what Towa discovered over at Samurai Fantasy VII. Also to find out whether or not Towa was eaten by zombies. Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Jan 26, 2021 |
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Jan 25, 2021 20:25
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Psycho Knight posted:I know this has been done before, but for the life of me I cannot think of a game right now that does this. There are games that lock the golden route behind beating the game once, but you usually start from a checkpoint near the end after loading up a Clear Save. Which games require you to play through the whole thing a second time? …And don’t say anything by Yoko Taro! Yoko Taro’s stuff is the exception, not the rule. Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals. You play through the entire game once, then you get a cutscene which encourages you to play New Game Plus for a better ending, which takes you all the way back to the beginning to replay it all before you get that golden ending. Thankfully, there are a couple of scene differences during this playthrough, but it's still really annoying at times. Fun game though. Though I doubt I would do it again now that I'm not 15. Also, I checked. Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals is not a Yoko Taro game.
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Jan 25, 2021 21:02
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Psycho Knight posted:
Never heard of that genre (probably meant to be fighting games)quote:
Is this meant to be Kouta? It sounds more like Saki's thoughts.
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Jan 26, 2021 00:13
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Blaze Dragon posted:Never heard of that genre You are correct on both counts. Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out. SimplyUnknown1 posted:Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals. You play through the entire game once, then you get a cutscene which encourages you to play New Game Plus for a better ending, which takes you all the way back to the beginning to replay it all before you get that golden ending. Thankfully, there are a couple of scene differences during this playthrough, but it's still really annoying at times. Fun game though. Though I doubt I would do it again now that I'm not 15. Never played the Lufia games. That does sound like a pain, though. Like you said, probably not a big deal back in the teenager years, but definitely not as doable as an adult. The only RPGs I have ever played through more than once are FFVII, Valkyria Chronicles 1, Legend of Dragoon, and Dragon Quest VIII. DQVIII was only because the 3DS port came out with a Jessica ending and it had been 11 years since I played the PS2 version. And you didn't need to look that up. You'll know when you're playing a Yoko Taro game.
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Jan 26, 2021 00:35
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I wonder how Hogstein managed to get a hold of 30+ smgs. My head canon is that Inafune originally got them to use for the rides before his lawyers told him no. I'm also guessing since we haven't seen any piglets since the zombie horde showed up that the piglets just threw on some make up to look like zombies or something.
FalloutFan56 fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Jan 27, 2021 |
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Jan 27, 2021 04:20
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FalloutFan56 posted:I wonder how Hogstein managed to get a hold of 30+ smgs. My head canon is that Inafune originally got them to use for the rides before his lawyers told him no. I'm also guessing since we haven't seen any piglets since the zombie horde showed up that the piglets just threw on some make up to look like zombies or something. The Japanese government hosed up massively somewhere along the way on this one. I don't think Japanese police/the JSDF use the Uzi, so that means Hogstein somehow smuggled in enough of them from overseas to arm a platoon of zombies (not to mention enough ammunition for them that the zombies can apparently reload them). It's really hard to believe in the "Piglets are just brainwashed people" excuse when you think about the scale and complexity of this operation. How the hell did the two people playing Hogstein manage to coordinate something this sophisticated under Keiji's or the government's nose? (Unless, of course, Keiji is in on the whole thing.) Hogstein must have been the one to equip the zombies with them, though. The explanation for Moonlight OX was that the guns were some kind of BB or Paintball things that Hogstein modified to crank the muzzle velocity up and make them potentially lethal. But the ones the zombies are carrying appear to be 100% real firearms. I doubt Inafune would have been given clearance to use them as props for a theme park even if they were unloaded and had the firing pins removed. As for the Piglets being the zombies, I still think that is the explanation for them. That said, the game has been doing everything in its power to imply that the zombies are somehow real. The characters talk about the how the Hospital zombies should have been wiped out in the blast and are surprised to see them again afterward. There's a lot of attention paid to their gross appearance. Finally, there's a moment in the next update that suggests the zombies really are mindless/only capable of basic motor functions. If the "zombies" really are Piglets in disguise, then they are doing an incredible job at maintaining kayfabe. Even if the brainwashing theory is completely true, the Piglets have still shown the ability to perform complex tasks and also the capacity for fear or compassion.
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Jan 27, 2021 14:18
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Update XXV: Lazy Sequels When we left off last update, Towa had called us over to Samurai Fantasy VII saying that he had found “it”, whatever that means. Of course, he’s no longer here now that our route protagonists have arrived, so he probably got mauled to death by zombies. Hey, I’m allowed to dream. We all know the game didn’t really kill Towa, Shirabe, or Subaru off screen, but that doesn’t mean I can’t pretend that was the case. Where’s Wakasa? Had something bad happened to him too? I shivered. (Huh?) Then I noticed something. Look, over there! It’s open! You’re right… It should be closed. Do you think maybe he went in there? As we watched, a figure appeared in the entrance. We dove into the trees. That came from inside the attraction. That means… Samurai Fantasy VII is the source of the zombies?!…How? We went through that place on the first day and I don’t recall spotting any Umbrella Corps branding anywhere. Then again, I do seem to remember some doors in the first room were all chained up for no discernable reason. I guess they could have been locked behind those. It certainly looks that way. Do you think that’s what Wakasa was talking about? I think so. He figured out where the zombie’s [sic] were coming from, and now we know too. But… what about Wakasa?[???]: Aaaaaaaaah! There he is. Just a side note: The “???” on that dialog box actually had a yellow background to make sure that you know it is definitely Towa. Why they felt the need to still put “???” despite that, nobody knows. …?! It was faint, but whoever had made that scream was inside Samurai Fantasy VII.Towa must have been taken captive, right? There’s no way he somehow managed to panic run deeper into the castle as zombies were pouring out of it, right? That was him! We headed inside as quickly and carefully as we could, and after running down the hallway we found ourselves in the Room of the Guardian. Yeah, it’s been a hot minute since we’ve been back here. Doesn’t look like those chained up doors are the source of the zombie plague though. We’d had to contend with the threat of poison gas as we struggled to figure it out… It seemed hard to believe that had only been a few days ago. Back then all seven of us were there, but now it was just me and Kouta. (…I need to stop thinking about that. We need to find Wakasa.) Fortunately, it looked like the nue hadn’t been moved since the first day, so we would be able to pass through without solving the puzzle again. (A zombie!) Quick, over here behind the panels. Back to the land of darkness for this segment. After a few moments of silence a group of zombies began to shuffle past. There were five of them in total, and we held our breath as they moved through the room and toward the exit. It looks like we were right about the zombies. They have to be coming from here. Well, beyond the Corridor is the Room of the Supreme Ruler… But that doesn’t make sense either. Neither of those places are large enough to hide a bunch of zombies. He frowned, and rubbed at his chin with one hand. Anyway, I think we should just watch them for a little bit. We know where they come from, but we still need to be careful. Agreed. So we stayed put, and watched the zombies. There was a pretty long period of time between groups, but given our situation it was better to waste a little time than to, well, get wasted.*We come back from the land of darkness at this point. Now we’re back in the Room of the Guardian* …It looks like they always come out five at a time. And the interval is always the same, or at least it was for the three groups we saw. For mindless undead, they’re pretty punctual. Yeah, almost like they’re machines or something.Whatever they are, they are way too loving advanced for a former Capcom game developer to be sticking in a theme park. Someone in the thread ascribes to the “Piglets in costume” theory, and I’ll admit that that is still the most likely explanation, but it’s getting harder to believe in that considering the way these things seem to operate. If they truly are just Piglets dressed up like zombies, then they are incredibly good at maintaining kayfabe. Speaking of machines, I had no idea my phone had a stopwatch! How did you know? Aren’t high school girls supposed to be on their phones 24/7? How did you not know? Urgh… I…. I just text and stuff…Oh, Saki… You’re so hopeless when it comes to Kouta laughed. All right, I think we’ve got what we needed. Saki woke up at 2am, but it’s definitely been an hour since then (they traveled to the Plaza, then to Bazaar Planet, then Knights, then Samurai Fantasy), likely longer. If we assume that Hogstein began releasing the zombies around the 7pm deadline for the day’s game, then we’re looking at an absolute minimum of 80 zombies roaming the park. Kouta and Saki just sat there and watched three groups leave, though. That means it’s somewhere between 4:30am and 5:30am at the moment and there’s probably over 100 zombies running around the theme park, all of which are armed with SMGs. If you wanted to take this further, then I think we have about 60 hours or so left before the final deadline (I think we’re currently in the early hours of Day 5 right now). That means that if Hogstein is somehow able to keep up this rate of zombies, then by the time 7pm rolls around on Day 7 the park could have over 700 zombies running around. Armed with guns. …Who the gently caress is Hogstein?! Yeah! Let’s go! He grinned. There had been a puzzle there too. The faces on the walls had shot arrows when you walked past them. It had been Kouta who had beat them with his amazing reflexes. This is flashback land, by the way. Just in case it wasn’t obvious. He’d triggered the sensors to fire the arrows at just the right times to dance on to the next one and fire it.Again, based on what we were told about these mechanisms at the time, this doesn’t sound all that impressive. I think the reload time on the arrows was 5 seconds? You have some serious motor function problems if you can’t swipe your hand in front of you and then walk 1 foot in the span of 5 seconds. *Back from flashback world* What’s wrong? I blinked and realized he was looking at me quizzically. Do you remember when you beat this puzzle? I was just thinking about it… Huh? Come on, you were all quick and nimble, like a ninja! It was really cool. N-No, not really… I thought I saw a little bit of a blush on his face as he quickly turned away. Huh? His voice had changed, and as I watched he crouched down to look at something on the floor. What’s wrong? …Look. Oh no! That’s…! It’s still fresh.Wait… how is it still fresh? You guys watched three groups of zombies pass by and said there was a 30 minute window between groups. Doesn’t blood dry out super fast? Like, in less than an hour? Is it just crazy damp in here? (Could this be…?) Was it Wakasa’s blood? I didn’t want to admit it, but… It felt like saying it out loud would somehow make it more likely. The trap… Good. Looks like it’s still disabled. Despite his shy appearance, Kouta was capable of surprising boldness. Let’s keep moving. We should be able to just walk through here.*The scene fades out here, but it returns to the exact same CG we were just looking at* True enough, we made it to the other end of the hallway without getting impaled, and found ourselves in front of the same metal door. Unfortunately, it was locked. Huh. I thought it’d still be open, since everything else was like we left it… The light switch isn’t working either. I don’t think the trap was disabled, I think the sensors have just been turned off.…Isn’t that the same thing? Well, that makes sense. It would be kind of stupid if the zombies got filled full of arrows when they walked down the hall, right?I don’t think they would particularly care, since they are zombies. Unless of course they are actually just people dressed up.  (…That’s true.) There was only one way to the entrance, and it was through here. They couldn’t be coming from anywhere else. Huh? A dull sound rumbled through the room, like a heavy door sliding open. Over here! Kouta pulled me into the shadow behind one of the lanterns. (What’s making that noise…?) I looked around for any sort of door, and did my best to keep my breaths calm and quiet. …Zombies. He frowned. As we watched, a section of the wall in the middle of the hallway swung up, and a zombie stepped through it. It turned and walked toward the stairs that lead to the Room of the Guardian. A hidden door! He sounded almost excited. Another door opened up, on the opposite wall from the first one, and another zombie appeared. Then another, and another, until in all five doors had opened. Each door produced a zombie, and each zombie headed up the stairs to the Room of the Guardian. Once we were sure all the zombies that were going to appear had left, we quietly stepped out from the shadows. The hallway was full of hidden doors… I didn’t notice anything when we were here on the first day.Eh, I’m willing to let this slide. There had to have been some way for people to do maintenance on the arrow shooters and stock up on ammo. Whether it was real arrows or nerf darts, you’d need some way of getting at them if something went wrong. Not surprising that there would be hidden service tunnels. Disneyland has an entire network of tunnels underneath the park that staff members slip into without people noticing. But it was hidden here all along… that’s amazing. I think we found a bonus dungeon. The doors have already closed, though. I can’t even tell where they were. It’s going to be hard to find them in this darkness. It makes it easier for us to hide, but… We sighed, and started feeling along the walls for any sign of the doors.*After a quick fade*  We know that the zombies are coming from beyond those doors, the question is… how do we get through them? (They don’t open at the same time, and the zombies make it tough to go out in the hallway, so… Wait! Unless…) Oh, hey. It’s been a while since we’ve had one of these. (All right, what do we know so far? The hidden doors open at specific intervals, and when they do zombies come out and head for the stairs. There are five hidden doors. One is in the middle, the next is opposite that, the next is the door furthest away… Then another, and the last one is right in front of us. If we wait for the zombies to come out, we won’t be able to reach the doors before they close. But if we just wait in the hall for the zombies, they’ll see us and shoot us. Hmm. How are we going to get through the doors?) Not an overly difficult choice, but I could see how someone might be lost as to which one specifically the game is looking for. The correct choice is “right in front of us.” What if we jump through the door that’s right across from us after the zombie comes out of it? Hm… That’s risky, but it looks like it’s our only option. Okay, let’s do it. I’ll time it and go first. You follow my lead, okay? Right! When we’d been in the Corridor the first time, he’d described his reflexes as S-rank. I felt like I could trust Kouta to get the timing right.*Another fade out* …It’s almost time. We got ready to move. Then, right on cue, the hidden doors began to open. (Not yet! We can’t rush it, we have to wait until the one in front of us opens…) We sat there in the shadows, muscles tense and ready to sprint. The door opposite to the last one opened then the far door, then the one opposite that. Then, finally, the door in front of us opened. …Now! (It’s already closing!) Kouta saw it too, and dove for the opening! Come on, Saki! Jump! (Come ooooooon!) (I can’t even see my hands… Oof, this is weird…) …Kouta? Are you there? My voice sounded high and squeaky when I spoke, but I’d lost my grip on him when he jumped, and obviously I couldn’t see him. It’s okay. I’m right here. I relaxed a little when I heard his voice come out of the darkness nearby. Don’t move. I’ll come find you. Only a moment later, I felt a hand slip into mine— Kouta’s hand. I was a little surprised I could tell it was his.You are? Who else’s would it be? Your own? Maybe because we’d been holding hands so much for the last few hours I’d learned to remember the shape of it.Man, I really wish the game would pull the whole “Wait, if that’s not your hand, then whose is it?”, and then have a lantern light up to reveal that it’s a zombie.  We’re so close, but we can’t even see each other’s faces… This is gonna be weird until our eyes adjust. I thought about using our phones, but if we do that the zombies might spot us, so I think we’ll just have to put up with the darkness for now. I agreed, and we began to walk.I was going to ask how you plan to see the zombies if you can’t see two feet in front of you, but then I remembered that all the zombies are carrying lanterns in addition to their guns. …Um, it’d be pretty bad if we got separated, so I’m going to hold your hand a little tighter, okay?I can’t actually tell if Kouta is blushing here, because the background is still pitch black, but I’m just going to assume he is based on his brief hesitancy. Yeah, of course. I… I think I’d feel a little safer if you did. …Really? Uh, anyway, thanks. He squeezed my hand, and I did the same. You know, you’ve changed since that first day. Oh, uh, yeah… sorry. I just don’t really see a lot of… people, in person. Especially not girls. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. Do you think you’ve figured it out yet? …I’m not sure. Even if I did, I don’t think I’d be very good at it. Please don’t use internet lingo in regular conversation. There’s a 10% chance that the person you are speaking to will recognize immediately what it means, and there’s a 90% chance that the person will stop you to clarify what it means which just wastes precious time for both of you and potentially derails the entire conversation. Not to mention that text-speak doesn’t save you any actual time when its being spoken aloud. Or at least not enough time to be worth it. I mean, if you’d asked me last week if I ever thought I’d hold hands with a girl, I’d have called you crazy. …Is it hard to breathe right now? …No, it’s not. I actually like hanging out with you, it’s just… new. Really? That makes me happy. I like hanging out with you too. … Huh? Nothing. If the hall splits up here, let’s go right.*We fade out to signal a passage of time, but the background when we come back is still entirely black* …It’s a dead end. Hmm, this is the third one. The path had split a lot. We’d had to feel our way along it because of the darkness, and it was taking quite a while.If there’s this many branching paths and dead ends, then how the hell are the zombies finding their way out of here in perfect 30 minute intervals? There had been so many twists and turns I was starting to lose track of where we were. And as if that wasn’t enough… A light! Quick, hide! …That one was pretty close. I really jumped. Yeah. Fortunately they don’t seem to be on alert. They probably don’t think anyone else is down here.They don’t think at all. They’re zombies. Or at least, they’re supposed to be. I’d say that I’m starting to firmly believe in the “Piglets dressed up in costumes” theory, but there’s something coming up that sort of works against that. It was slow going, but we managed to keep moving through the maze. I know it’s taking a long time, but I really think playing it safe is the best plan here. We won’t get a second chance.*Another fade transition that doesn’t solve the “pitch black background” situation* I wasn’t sure how much time had passed since we’d gone through the secret door, but eventually we found… something. Hm… yeah, they do. I could feel a low wall with my feet. Probably the first step. Are you okay? You didn’t fall, did you? I’m fine. It’s a good thing we were taking it slow. Otherwise one of us might have done a face-plant here. …Yeah, there’s even a railing. We don’t know how far up these go, or where, so let’s be careful, all right? So up the stairs we went, taking them one careful step at a time, until… …A wall? Welp, that was a huge waste of time then. Did we stumble into the Winchester mansion or something? Do all those steps just lead to a dead end? No… no, this isn’t a wall. It’s a door. Really…? Oh, yeah, here’s a doorknob. Maybe it’ll take us outside. It’s unlocked. Let’s go. We opened the door and found ourselves in a forest. Apart from a single cleared path, the trees were so thick I couldn’t see through them. The sky was dark. I checked my phone. It was eleven.This is why I told you to keep the time in mind back when Saki woke up. There was either a hilarious screw up with the translation of the time (either in this scene or the one where Saki says that it’s 2am), or Kouta and Saki just spent 20 hours inside Samurai Fantasy VII/the tunnels. The only way it could be 11 right now is if it’s 11pm. Or I guess maybe there’s a loving solar eclipse happening at this precise moment. We’d gone into Samurai Fantasy VII right after nightfall, so we’d been inside for a long time.This line leads me to believe that they hosed up the translation of when Saki wakes up. But even then, this timeline still doesn’t make sense. The sun had already set when Hogstein started this zombie thing. Saki mentions intending to take a nap but sleeping longer than planned. Then they ran around for a while after Saki woke up. Sunset in Japan is around 7pm at the latest (which matches up with the deadline Hogstein always gives for the games), so even if Saki went to sleep around 7:30pm and woke up like 2 hours later, then the earliest her and Kouta could have entered Samurai Fantasy is like 10:30pm. I should also point out that they proceeded to spend a minimum of 2 hours watching and waiting for groups of zombies. There is no way that it could be 11pm on the same day. And if it’s 11pm the following day, then they’ve been running around for nearly 28 hours without any food or water (they got locked out of the restaurant before they could get anything. All Saki had was a glass of apple juice). Saki would be a wreck right now if it was the following day, because she had just come out of a fever that hit shortly after noon, meaning that she would have been running on nothing but a glass of apple juice for over 35 hours. I knew we’d been moving slowly, but I hadn’t realized just how slowly…I hate this game’s concept of time. Anyone willing to bet that Saki and Kouta are going to come right down to the wire on solving this mystery? Eleven, huh… We were in there for quite a while. Where do you think we are? I can’t see any of the attractions. Neither can I, but look… You can see the castle between the trees. I hadn’t noticed it at first, but he was right. If the castle was there, then… perhaps we were behind the plaza somewhere. Huh? These trees. They’re pretty convincing fakes, but they’re fakes. Touch one. I did, and although they looked real the leaves were dry and fabric-y. Yeah… It makes sure the only place you can go is down that path.This is what I meant about something throwing water on the “zombies aren’t actually real” theory. This makes it seem like the zombies are being funneled to the underground passageway to Samurai Fantasy VII, where they get released into the park. If they were just piglets in costumes, then you’d think there wouldn’t be any need to corral them like that. The piglets would know where they have to go. Uh huh. And you can’t get in from the other side, or probably even see it. Why would someone build it like this? Hidden doors, a fake forest that funneled you onto a single path… it felt oddly isolated. This is the only other explanation for it. I guess it’s possible that the path is simply for camouflage in case one of the park goers wandered off into the forest to look around. But then… where does this path lead to other than the hidden tunnels? I think there’s something at the other end of this path that someone doesn’t want found. “Something”? Like what? He grinned.Not sure you should be stoked about that, given the circumstances. With nowhere else to go, we headed off down the path. Are you loving kidding me?! Wh… what? I didn’t know what else to say. The trees opened up into a clearing in front of us, but what filled that clearing was… impossible. That’s… that’s the Bloodstained Hospital, isn’t it? A run-down, abandoned building rose from the ground, bathed in red light from the blood splatter on its sign. There was no question: It was the Bloodstained Hospital. Thick fog drifted slowly through the air, making me shiver. Speaking of, that crater on the map is basically the same size as this forest. I know, I know, the map of the park is not going to be perfectly to scale compared to reality. But think about how big this forest would have to be in order to totally conceal a seven-storey hospital complex with chimneys or something sticking out of the rooftop. Keep in mind that Ryuji ran around in this forest to hide from the Piglets and apparently didn’t stumble across this place (or the fake walls). …The Bloodstained Hospital on the Island of Dr. Death. It’s just like the pictures I saw on the internet! He was staring up at the building with an odd sort of incredulous look on his face. Do you know anything about it? Well, remember when I said there was a sequel to Bloodstained Hospital? Yeah… you said it wasn’t as popular as the first one. Something about it being lazy…? He nodded. It starts out on the Island of Dr. Death, but eventually you end up in the same hospital.Ah, the Silent Hill 3 approach. Except Silent Hill 3 didn’t suck. What do you mean…? The main character is heading for the center of the island. He gets there, barely, and finds the hospital. Most people were hoping for some new stages, but they just used exactly the same layout and enemies. The developer gave a lot of excuses, but they were just trying to save money. Hey, it worked for FFX-2. Can’t blame them for trying. After I read a couple reviews I decided not to get it. I wasn’t a huge fan of the first one anyway, and the rumors said it was really unbalanced too. So… the hospital that got blown up was from the first game, and this one is from the sequel? He nodded. I think this attraction wasn’t originally going to be part of Hogstein’s games. He probably just had it set up as something to bring out if we really pissed him off.He had all of this arranged just in case? The hundreds of SMGs, the zombies (or zombie costumes), and a puzzle to go along with it? And he did this all under Keiji’s nose? Not to mention, why the hell did Keiji Inafune set up this secondary location? Was this meant to be one of those secret VIP rooms that are apparently hidden throughout Disneyland? …Look. I followed his finger to the entrance, and saw that a few zombies had just shambled out. Hm… Let’s see if we can get ahold of anyone else before we head in. Oh, good idea. We both tried to call the others, but… (…Still nothing.) Any luck? No. I tried Shidou and Wakasa, but the line’s just… dead. Yeah, Shirabe’s no good either. That meant we were the only ones left.Are you guys seriously not going to fill Ryuji in on what’s happening? Listen, I know he has been hogging the spotlight in routes that aren’t his, but come on. Can you imagine what’s going through his head right now? You guys have completely dropped off the radar. We also established that Hogstein apparently doesn’t monitor the cruise ship, so it’s doubtful that he told Ryuji what’s going on either. We would have to beat the game all by ourselves. If we didn’t… Well, I don’t want to think about that. … …Are you okay? I suddenly realized I was actually shaking. If you’re scared, you should say so. Trying to hide it isn’t going to help anybody. We want to admit to our scaredy-ness here. No points for trying to be a tough girl. Um… well, yeah. I might be a little scared. If we screw up, everybody else is gonna… I mean, it’ll be bad, right? And I don’t know what’ll happen in there… … I’ll protect you. Huh…? The hero and their partner go up against the final boss by themselves all the time in games. *Affection up* Whoa, whoa, slow your roll there White Knight Chronicles. Saki is the hero here, not you. You are the partner in this game. What I’m trying to say is I’m here for you. We’re gonna be okay. Kouta… …I mean, I don’t think this’ll be as easy as a video game, but I’ll give it my best shot. Thanks. I will too. Let’s go. So if this is like the game, then the hospital’s layout should be exactly the same. Basically, it’ll be just like the hospital on the third day.Do either of you actually remember anything about the interior layout of the hospital? Pretty sure that Shidou was the one marking our path during that segment. Never though [sic] I’d say this, but… that’s a relief. Okay… I’m thinking we should head through that door on the left. I think I remember a little of the floor plan. Yeah, that’s the door we went into with Shidou. …You remember that? Of course I remember. We beat it together. There’s the flashlight. Ready? He picked it up and stood in front of the door. Just like before, there were letters carved above the door in Italian. Abandon all hope… Huh? Oh, I was just remembering what that said. Right… yeah. … Because it’s not going to be that easy? It’s never that easy. I looked up at the words again, and felt a shiver of dread, almost as if they were telling us we should regret getting this far. Do… do you think the two of us can really save everybody? Yeah, I think we can. We’re hope, remember? If we work together I’m sure we can beat this thing. (That’s…) …Yeah! You’re right! Maybe we didn’t have the rest of our team there to help us, but when Kouta said we could do it, I believed him. Those ominous Italian words didn’t seem quite so scary anymore.And that’s it for Stage 5. Next time, I guess we’ll be retracing our steps through the Bloodstained Hospital. Maybe we’ll find out what happened to the others? Or maybe we’ll get a definitive answer regarding the zombies? Or maybe we’ll just dodder around for a while and not accomplish anything. With this game, anything is possible.
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Jan 29, 2021 18:59
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Psycho Knight posted:Whoa, whoa, slow your roll there White Knight Chronicles. Saki is the hero here, not you. You are the partner in this game.
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Jan 29, 2021 22:45
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I don’t think any of the times in this game make sense. You’d think they’d have to try to be so absurd so consistently.
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Jan 30, 2021 08:13
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BurningStone posted:I don’t think any of the times in this game make sense. You’d think they’d have to try to be so absurd so consistently. As frustrated as I was about them always coming right down to the last few minutes in every puzzle, even when it would be essentially impossible to do so (like Alice Kart, where both games were under strict time limits), I was still willing to suspend some disbelief because "drama". The writers did it because they want to make it seem like the deadline thing is a constant pressure on the protagonists. But this? This has gone straight to flat-out nonsense. Time means nothing anymore. cardinale posted:lmao Glad that somebody liked this one. Although, I'll admit to not consciously aiming for it.
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Jan 30, 2021 13:18
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