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Polsy posted:I get that you have to stay with the target of your affections but it is kind of weird that everyone else is basically off 'playing the game' without you. I assume the rest of the game does actually exist, on other people's routes. I'm pretty sure we will get to play the actual games in the other routes. At first I thought the story was a bit more adaptable (such as who the "traitor" is), but it seems like everyone has their own routes that are locked in. Basically, I highly doubt that Subaru's route will involve some contrived reason for him not being able to join the group in the games (and I doubt they would stick Saki on the ship if we aren't doing the Ryusei route). We'll also see in the next update that art assets for at least one other "game" do exist, so I heavily assume that there's at least one route here that takes us to all of them. The only other route that might go completely off the rails of our established routine is Kimimaro's. How does his route even work at this point of the game? As it stands (when we include the next update), Saki will have been separated from him for 2 full stages at minimum. I assume he will still pull the traitor and heroic sacrifice thing in his route, so where will that leave Saki?
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Oct 23, 2020 14:26
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 20:36 |
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Man, it's weird not getting updates out every two days. What happened to me? Anyway, this update is too big for one post, so I'll put it in two parts and then see if I can rejigger everything later on for archival purposes. Update XIV: First-name Basis When we finished the last update, Ryusei and Saki were concocting a scheme to get the boat back to the docks so they could proceed to search for Kimimaro. Why? Who knows! Apparently Kimimaro was sainted at some point in the past few days and that warrants everyone endangering the lives of themselves and the hostages by poking around the park to look for him.  I’m not saying I hate the guy. I just don’t understand why we’re all so desperate to save someone who outright admitted to betraying us.  Help! Please, we’ve got a big problem! …?! It seemed worried, and moved toward me. (I feel a little bad tricking them since they seem genuinely concerned, but… We have to go look for Urabe!)WHY? I concentrated on doing my best to sound authentically troubled. …! The piglet looked surprised. I think she might have gotten lost! Do you think you could help me look for her? …! He nodded. (Perfect! Just one more push…!) Do you think you could get the other piglets on the ship to help us? …?! …! This time, however, he shook his head. (So he won’t call all of them to go look. Not a problem, I planned for this…) …? The piglet looked up at me, concerned. (Oh man, I hope this works!) So your backup plan was just to haphazardly mention that Ryusei also ran away? I’m worried he might jump in himself to look for her. I mean, you’ve seen what he’s like… But he’s still hurt really bad. If he’s not careful, he might die! ! I had the piglet’s full attention. Please! You must help us save Mitarashi’s life! …! He nodded hurriedly and rushed out of the lobby. (I hope that did it…)It would be amazing if they just came back with the screenshot from a security camera that shows Mitarashi and Mai crouched behind a vending machine or something. In a few moments he was back, with several more piglets. Is this all of you? There’s no dialogue, but I just wanted to show these two and their synchronized finger point poses. I like to imagine that there are 10 more of these guys in the actual shot all doing the same thing. He nodded. Then let’s start with the terrace! It’s got a good view, so maybe we’ll spot something there! ! With no noise apart from the shuffling of their footsteps, the piglets moved off quickly in the direction of the terrace. As soon as they’d disappeared, Mitarashi popped out from behind one of the pillars. Thank goodness! I let out a sigh of relief. You’re quite an actress, you know that? R-Really?! Guess it’s true what they say about every woman being an actress.I admit, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that saying before. If I have, then I sure as hell don’t remember the origin of it. I felt myself blush a little. We just covered this, Ryusei. It’s because Hogstein gets his sick thrills from watching you guys struggle through the death games. There’s no fun to be had if one of you just falls overboard and drowns or chokes on a dinner roll. He wants to kill us, but he wants to do it with the games. Yeah, he does seem to have a real good time watching us squirm, huh? Exactly. So if a couple of the participants just died in the hotel… It’s rob him of some quality entertainment. Mitarashi grimaced, then cracked his neck and turned to leave. All right, time to wrap this thing up. Ready? Yep. See you in a bit. He nodded and took off, while I headed after the piglets to the terrace. All right, stage one complete. This should give us some time. A simple but effective plan, I suppose. Granted, I’d imagine they could fairly easily break down one of the doors if they felt like it. Unless Keiji sourced the doors for this cruise ship hotel from the same place as those bulletproof tea trays. Now, what else— whoa! I’d just got back to the lobby when the whole ship suddenly shook, nearly knocking me over. I ran over to the window and looked out. We’d reached the dock. (Perfect! Looks like Mitarashi did his part!)Wait, already? Exactly how long did it take for Saki to lock a few doors? Mitarashi managed to leave the lobby, head to the bridge, figure out how to operate a cruise liner, and then sail it back to the docks (without destroying it, I mean). After parting ways in the lobby he’d made his way to the helm and steered the ship toward the shore. (All right, time to leave before the piglets get in!) Phew. That was close. Yeah. Man… feels like it’s been a while since I actually stood on solid ground.That’s an understatement. For the people who followed this thread live, it’s been over 4 months since we’ve had an update outside of the cruise ship. He stretched and cracked his neck. Mitarashi and I had been the only people to get off. I’d asked Mai to unlock all the doors on the terrace after we left. Do you think Mai’s going to be all right? You have absolutely no way of knowing that for sure. What’s to stop Hogstein from having her grabbed as punishment for this little escapade? Once again: These two are endangering a lot of lives for the sake of one dude. Yeah, okay. I still felt a little bad about leaving her behind, but Mitarashi was right— she’d be fine. So, what’s our plan? I wanted to check out the castle where they found his beads first. Maybe there’s a clue there or something. Okay. After that, let’s hit the restaurant! What? Why? Do you think there’s going to be something there? He laughed and started walking. (Ha ha ha. I guess breakfast wasn’t enough for him?) Stop 1 is the pile of ash that was once the Bloodstained Hospital. This is… Yeah… We’d found ourselves in front of Bloodstained Hospital… or at least what was left of it. It looked like a giant hand had just come down from the sky and scooped it up. There was nothing of the building left— just a blackened crater. It’s not really… anything, anymore. Just ruins. I don’t think I realized until now just how big of an explosion it was…I still cannot believe that everyone survive that. …Everyone except maybe that guy that was dressed up as a zombie (or that was a real zombie). In a way it was a miracle no one had been killed by such a huge explosion.Correction: In several ways it was a miracle. (If Urabe hadn’t helped us at the last minute… If Mitarashi hadn’t showed up to save me…) We’d been so close to death… My body started to shake. Huh?! He grabbed my shoulders and pulled me close. I’ll figure this thing out. You’re gonna be fine. He put a hand on my head and ruffled my hair. I could feel the warmth of his body… everywhere… and suddenly my own cheeks felt very warm.All right, you two. Leave some space for Jesus. U-Um…! Hm? What’s up— whoa!*The screen shakes a bit* It was too much, and I shoved him away before I knew what I was doing. D-Don’t just… do… stuff like that! Typically that would be a good thing to do, yes. The asking permission part, I mean. Th-That’s not the point! Ha ha. Well, at least now you sound more like the girl I know. As soon as I heard his laugh, the pretend anger I’d summoned to hide my embarrassment sort of melted. (I know he was doing that to cheer me up, but it’s just… he seems like he’s so familiar with… doing stuff like that… It kinda bugs me, honestly.)I mean, he’s an escort. He wouldn’t last a week as one if he wasn’t familiar with doing that kind of stuff. Or maybe he would… I dunno. Ladies have weird tastes, just like dudes. I’m sure there’s a market for guys that stumble awkwardly through conversations. Granted, said guys probably have that personality down to an art form. Just try not to be so depressed, okay? Urabe sort of gave us these lives, right? So let’s not waste ‘em worrying. I nodded. You’re right. We’ve got to save Urabe. I want to thank him. I’m with you there. We looked around the ruins of the hospital a bit, but there was nothing to find. After a few minutes we left and headed for Castle Hogstein. Finally, some backgrounds that aren’t “Cruise ship interior.” It’s been too long. Shirabe found Urabe’s beads here, right? That’s what he said. Mitarashi walked right up to the main gate and tried to push or pull it open. Yep, that would be what Ayumu said. Locked up tighter than the Theodosian Walls or something to that effect?  Hey! You hear me, you drat pig?! Open this drat door! He pounded his fist on the iron door. Calm down! It’s not going to open, so let’s see if we can find another way in. …Sorry. Lost my cool there. Anyway, you’re right. Maybe there’s a side door they forgot to close.*After a brief fade-to-black wipe* We split up and searched around the walls of the castle, but came up empty-handed. Nothing. Me too. I wish we could call the others, but they’re in the middle of a game… Oh yeah. That’d get them in trouble, huh? Yeah… Ah well. I’m starving anyway. Let’s go eat. The castle had turned out to be a dead end, so we headed back toward the restaurant. Y-You’re going to eat all that?! drat right I am! I need to get my strength back! I got plenty of sleep yesterday, now I just need nutrition! (Huh… I’d just assumed he was hungry, I didn’t realize there might be more to it.)There’s really not. He’s just hungry. All right, let’s dig in! Without waiting for me to agree, he began to eat. Unnf! Oh God, this is so good! There’s nothing like stuffing your face with your favorite food, right? You’re just eating meat. You should have some veggies too. Never! Aw c’mon, cut me some slack. I’m eating meat ‘cause meat makes you better! Duh. (He’s really shoveling it in… How on Earth does he manage not to get it all over…? I gotta say though, thinking that eating meat is gonna heal him seems like something out of a video game.)Don’t you dare discount the healing properties of wall chicken. We’ve still got more attractions to visit, there’s a chance one of them is Castlevania-land and we’ll need random healing meat. Before I could start giggling about it, however, he suddenly shoved a plate in front of me. I feel absolutely no shame in admitting that I laughed at this.  Okay. Thanks. I took a bit of chicken, and it actually did feel like power was flowing back into my body. (He he. Maybe Mitarashi really can recover just by eating meat.) It seemed like a kind of silly idea, but maybe if you believed in it as much as he did, part of it actually started to be true.It’s called a placebo effect. Aaaaaah. Why do you think it is that soda tastes so good with greasy food?…Or I guess it could be the sugar-high. I guess we’ll find out when the crash happens. I realized that I couldn’t help smiling at how quickly he’d put all that food away. He narrowed his eyes. O-Oh, nothing! This, um, this food is… good! I guess watching someone really enjoy their food just makes me happy… It’s hard to explain. Oh, that’s it, huh…? He had a leg of chicken in each hand, and glanced at them for a split second before shoving both into his mouth. We were? What…? Yeah, about my life after my parents died. Remember?I genuinely don’t remember, but didn’t we conclude that little chat? Your parents died, you lived with your grandmother, and then you went on to be an escort. I mean, I guess it’s not really much of a story. If you don’t want to hear it, that’s cool. No, I do! drat, you’re pretty excited. S-Sorry, I guess I got a little carried away… All right, well, if you really wanna hear it I can tell you the rest while I eat. He picked up another massive hunk of meat and leaned back in his chair. My grandma did everything she could to help me, but it ended up kinda backfiring on both of us. No kid likes somebody breathing down his back, even if they’re just trying to help, and I’ve always been real big on handling things my own way, too…That’s why you need to take the “Supportive” gamble. Be super supportive of whatever stupid poo poo your teenaged kid is getting in to. Chances are they’re doing it to spite you, so you being on board with it will really throw them for a loop. Note: Psycho Knight is not a licensed family therapist. Actual results of this tactic may vary wildly. Anyway, the point is I was an immature little poo poo. He gave me a grin, but it seemed a little bitter and his eyes were sad. So since I was getting sick of my grandma’s obsessive mothering, I went home less and less, and started just walking around the streets at night. All through junior high and high school I was a pretty bad egg. …But all those kids were just looking for something they felt like they could belong to, so I couldn’t tell ‘em to get lost. And once I take something on, I don’t like leaving it half-done, so I couldn’t leave either. He scratched at his head awkwardly. (He’s always cared about other people, even when he was leading a gang. I’m not surprised all those other kids were willing to follow him.) After a while I started thinking maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to just stay with those guys and see where life took me, but… Well, obviously I didn’t.More than likely life would have took you to A) Joining a Yakuza family, B) Getting killed/beaten for operating on a Yakuza family’s turf, or C) Getting arrested by Anti-Gang patrols. Sort of depends on where this little gang of yours was located, but one way or another you likely wouldn’t be in for a good time. Probably a good thing you bailed early. The “They’re just dumb kids” excuse only gets you out of the frying pan for so long. What happened?  Oh no! I remember the last thing she said to me… I’d put her through a hell of a lot while I was growing up, but she’d never say a word about it. Soon as she died, I realized what I’d been missing. I wished I’d been home more; talked to her more… I wished I’d wised up and just gone back to school. But hindsight’s 20/20, right? You never regret stuff you can actually fix… Mitarashi… I thought I could see the beginnings of tears at the corners of his eyes. Ah drat, sorry for getting all weepy on you. Anyway, the point is I didn’t have a family anymore, so I decided to become an escort. See? Not that exciting. He laughed. No! It was! I mean, well, maybe not entertaining I guess, but I’m still happy I got to hear it. Heh. Well, I’m happy I told you then. (I bet all he wants to do is make people smile… Maybe that’s why he started doing what he does in the first place… So he could make women smile.) That seemed about right. Don’t tell everybody though, okay? He held his finger up in front of his lips. Especially Subaru. He’d never let me forget about it. He let out another laugh and grinned. Honestly? I don’t know. But remember how you said the same thing my mother used to say? “Nothing like seeing a kid smile”? Yeah. I guess hearing that made me feel like I could… I dunno, tell you stuff. I’d forgotten for a moment just what Mitarashi was, but that had brought it back into sharp focus. Um… do you tell your customers too? Hell no. I think you’re probably the first person I’ve told about… well, any of this. Oh… I was glad he’d felt like he could tell me about himself, but I couldn’t help but feel sad about the fact that it was his job to be nice to women… What’s wrong? You look upset. I looked up to see that Mitarashi had leaned in to examine my face. Oh, nothing! I’m fine. I blushed, and he grinned. There’s something that Saki doesn’t know what to do with, but it ain’t your story. It’s okay. I understand. Great! So let’s get back to work! You want to go look for Urabe? I was thinking I’d go grab a drink first. That was a lot of talking, and I’m pretty thirsty. And I might as well grab a snack while I’m back there… You’re still hungry? He laughed, and jogged off toward the back of the restaurant. Hey! Remember this place? This is the game where Ryusei took a gunshot! Good times. We were here just a few days ago, but it already feels kinda nostalgic, you know? Well, it was quite an adventure… Oh, look! There’s a piglet near the entrance! Great! Let’s go see if he can tell us anything.I wonder why the piglets are hanging around old attractions? We walked over and the piglet looked up as we approached, confused. Hey. You know where Urabe went? ? It shrugged. Uh, he has long hair, and looks very serene. He has this crystal ball with him, and he looks kind of like, um, a wizard?He’s not a loving lost child, Saki. The piglets presumably know who the drat contestants of this highly coordinated and convoluted vengeance death game are. He’s shrugging because he sure as hell doesn’t know where Urabe is. His job seems to be watching over Alice Kart… for some strange reason. Besides, he wouldn’t tell you guys even if he did know. That’s something only Hogstein is going to be allowed to discuss. Have you seen anybody like that lately? …? …? The piglet just shook its head. drat. He doesn’t know anything. Exactly. Hm. You got a point there. Well, if we can’t trust the piglets, we’ll just have to figure it out on our own. Disappointed, we turned to leave the attraction. Who’s ready for consequences?! I know I am. What?! That voice! Where are you, you bastard! Nearby we spotted one of the Hogstein statues. Oink! So, you lied to me about being sick, and now you’re off traipsing around through my park? Unacceptable! Gimme a break! Where the hell have you got Urabe?! We found his beads in front of your drat castle, so we know you’ve got him! Ah, yes, well, Kimimaro Urabe did indeed visit me yesterday. He was— get this!— trying to get me to stop the game and release all of you. (Really…? Then he was on our side!)Or he had regrets about betraying everybody and was trying to call this whole thing off. I guess you could say in that case that he was also on your side, but it’s not quite as heroic as how you’re trying to portray him currently. Then you do have him! Where?!  So I changed my plans! Go find him! Oink oink oink! What?! I am sooooooooooooo excited to get two games at once today! Before we could protest, he’d hung up.This is why you two idiots should have either stayed on the drat boat or gone with the others to the next game! Urabe was going to just be stuck with all the other hostages, but because of your little plan we’re stuck playing a second game with his life individually on the line. I mean, I’m down for more death games. We’ve been stuck on the ship for way too long. But that doesn’t erase the stupidity on display. Damnit! Another game?! And with Urabe’s life on the line… We don’t have time to sit around moping, then! Let’s get moving! …! …! Huh? What is it? Just as we turned to leave, the piglet tried to stop us. What?! We’re busy! Can’t it wait!? (No, if he’s trying to stop us, it must be something important…) …! The piglet nodded vigorously. See? Yeah, I guess you’ve got a point. Running around is just gonna waste time. Let’s see what he’s got. Mitarashi folded his arms and frowned, but at least he’d stopped trying to leave. …! …! The piglet was trying hard to communicate… something, but I couldn’t figure out what his gestures meant. Huh? What’s that? It’s… big? No… Welp, here goes the next 3 hours of our remaining time limit. ?! The piglet shook his head. World…? Country…? I think he’s trying to tell us about something big? What’s the biggest thing here? Oh! Maybe he means the whole park! ! This time the piglet nodded. Oh, okay, good. The whole park. Got it. Then why didn’t he just say— oh. Yeah. Right. Okay, what about the park? …! …! Hmm… I know he’s trying to tell us something about a location here in the park, but…Just point! For the love of god, just point! … The piglet mimed a miserable sigh, as if it felt bad for not being clearer. You know what, screw this! Let’s just go. We’re gonna have better luck by ourselves. Ugh… You know the deal. We have to be patient if we want to earn affection points. Don’t be so impatient! I’m pretty sure whatever he’s trying to tell us is really important! I didn’t like being harsh, but Mitarashi wasn’t thinking clearly.Then that’s something you both have in common. You’re right… I’m sorry. I just hater sitting still. I understand how you feel, but Urabe’s life is in our hands right now. We can’t afford to run off half-cocked. Anyway, thanks.*Ryusei Affection +1* (It’s going to take forever to figure out what this piglet is trying to tell us, though… I wish we had something, anything…) Damnit! What is all this supposed to mean?! If we don’t hurry up, the attraction Urabe’s in is gonna get blown up! Wait… Did you say “attraction”? Yeah. Don’t you remember what Hogstein said? “I’ll blow up the attraction and Kimimaro Urabe!” That’s it! That was the hint! (I’d been so shaken up when he said Urabe might die, I totally overlooked the most important part!) Huh? What do you mean? …! Oooooh!Finally! That means we can cut down the search locations quite a bit! ! The piglet nodded encouragingly.You can piss off. All you had to do was loving point. Or you could have motioned your hands around Alice Kart. There were so many ways you could have told us what you were driving at. So if we can just figure out which attraction it is… …! …! He jumped up and down. This is the same gesture as before… Are you telling us which attraction? Jump…? Jumping over? Oh! Do you mean an attraction we’ve already finished? ! Looks like you got it! How the hell did you figure that out? I couldn’t have done it without you! Now we’ve finally got something real to go on. ! Heh. Thanks for the help, bro. Okay, let’s run through the attractions we’ve finished. Well, we visited Bloodstained Hospital, and we’re at Alice Kart right now. That just leaves… Samurai Fantasy VII! We both said it at the same time. Let’s get moving! We waved good-bue to the piglet and took off at a run. Our destination was the attraction we’d visited on the very first day— Samurai Fantasy VII. What’s going on? I thought this was the place! Yeah, I thought so too…Can you figure it out before these two do? I bet you can. There’s a piglet over there. Maybe he knows something. But when we asked about Urabe, the piglet just shrugged. So… we were wrong? Did we misinterpret what the piglet was saying…? (Or had that been just a trick, to lure us into Hogstein’s trap?) Well, we don’t have any more clues, and we don’t have the time to look everywhere. If the piglet was telling the truth, then there aren’t any other attractions we’ve finished. (Other attractions…) Something felt… wrong. (Hold on a minute… I think…) This might be a little insulting, but bear with me on it. (Hogstein said he was really excited to have two games today. Everybody else is off playing a game, but Shidou said that yesterday they almost didn’t make it, so I’m kinda worried… We’ve got our own things to worry about, though— we need to save Urabe! He’s trapped in one of the attractions we’ve already finished. We’ve been to Alice Kart, and there’s… not much of [sic] left of Bloodstained Hospital, but we visited it anyway. So I thought Samurai Fantasy VII had to be the answer… so why is it wrong?! We haven’t finished any other attractions! What am I missing?) I mean, come on, did this really have to be an insight moment? That’s it! It doesn’t have to be you and me that beat the attraction— it just has to have been beaten! Maybe Urabe’s at that Moonlight OX thing they did yesterday!Oh well, I can’t be too upset. At least we get to see the space attraction in this route, rather than having to wait until we loop around on another guy’s route.  Of course! Man, that is sneaky… You did good! Glad you’re on my side. He grinned and patted my head. (It’s nice to be appreciated and all, but… I feel like he’s still treating me like a kid.) Hm? What’s wrong? Why are you giving me that look? I’m fine, it’s just… I feel like you always treat me like a kid. He blinked. He took his hand off my head. (He didn’t have to stop that part— wait, what am I thinking?!) A-Anyway, we should get going! Yeah, you’re right. To Moonlight OX to save Urabe!
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Oct 29, 2020 23:03
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 Sweeeet. Here we are! By the time we reached the Moonlight OX attraction, the sun had already gone down.Okay, just so everyone is crystal clear. Saki and Ryusei had their meeting and planning session earlier this morning, shortly after the others had left for their game. It apparently took about 5 or 10 minutes to dock the ship once the plan was enacted. Ryusei and Saki then went to Bloodstained Hospital ruins (which they would have had to pass anyway, since it’s right next to the dock). Then they had lunch, went to the castle, then Alice Kart and Samurai Fantasy and finally here. All of that has apparently taken them roughly 8+ hours. 8 hours! They had lunch and walked to 3 attractions! …This game’s sense of time is baffling. We didn’t know the way there, and we’d gotten lost even after going back to the plaza to check the map.IT’S RIGHT NEXT TO SAMURAI FANTASY VII! YOU CAN SEE THE loving ENTRANCE FROM SAMURAI FANTASY VII’S ENTRANCE!  LOOK AT IT! It’s so pretty…! Even if it was just a theme park attraction, the towering spaceship standing front of the night sky was breathtaking. (Wow… I’d kind of forgotten that this place was made for people to have fun… If we weren’t fighting for our lives, we’d be having a great time here…) As we moved closer, my phone began to ring. (Who could… oh, Shidou?! I thought we couldn’t contact anyone during a game… Ah, what am I doing?! I need to answer it!) Hello? His voice was so loud and furious I almost dropped my phone in surprise. Are you completely— …Yes, all right. Sorry. I lost my temper. I could hear someone else’s voice behind Shidou, possibly telling him to calm down.I really wish this game had better art assets floating around out there. I would have loved to do a “What the heck are you thinking?!” thing for Shidou.  We finished our game and left, but when we got out Hogstein told us the two of you were in the middle of a different game. He said you’d snuck back into the park to look for Urabe. Is this true? Yeah. I’m sorry… Where are you right now? We’re at Moonlight OX. We think Urabe might be inside. Oh. Moonlight OX, hmm… His voice sounded dark. Is… is something wrong? We had a tough time with that one. If you head inside, keep your guard up. It’s not going to be easy. Let me give you a quick overview… Wait! What? U-Um, I though [sic] we weren’t allowed to contact each other during the games… Oh, awesome. I wonder what was involved in that little arrangement. Can’t wait for that to rear its ugly head at an inopportune time. We can’t come help, but we can give you some information. Without waiting for my assent, he launched into an explanation of Moonlight OX. We would be fighting aliens, and they could be defeated by shooting the jewels on their foreheads. Of course, our ship would have a jewel too, and if that was hit it’d be game over. You need to pay special attention to the forks. Those decisions are going to determine whether you succeed or fail. Okay, forks, got it. That’s all I can really tell you. I hope it helps… I’m sure it will. We’ll handle it from here! Good to hear. Don’t push yourselves too hard. We’re all rooting for you back here. Shidou hung up, and I shut my phone and slipped it back in my pocket. (You know, I don’t think Mitarashi said anything that whole conversation…)  …W… …”W”? Woooooooooooooow! That is so awesome! …What. His face was slack with awe and delight. (Wow, he’s really into it, isn’t he? I had a feeling he liked theme parks already, but jeez he’s not kidding around.) Aaaah! Oh man, if we weren’t stuck in this stupid game I could spend all day here!You will spend eternity here if you don’t hurry the gently caress up and get Urabe before this place explodes. Right? Right?! Isn’t this awesome?! His face was so open and innocent and just genuinely happy that I couldn’t help smiling. Ha ha… sure. Well, I was just thinking that you obviously love parks like this, and how cute that is. I laughed again, and he blushed bright red. Ha ha ha ha ha… Hey! Stop that! Don’t laugh! A-And don’t call me “cute”! What guy wants to be called “cute”?!I dunno, I think it would be pretty nice to hear personally. Granted, I wouldn’t buy into the compliment in the slightest because of deep-seated self-hatred, but it would still be nice to hear. He he… I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to tease you or anything. It was a compliment. But he just blushed again and I let out another burst of laughter. He was trying his best to sound serious, but even Mitarashi couldn’t make an admission of love for theme parks sound threatening. It’s just really embarrassing to be an adult and admit that you like this kiddy stuff… I’m only telling you this ‘cause I trust you, all right?! Don’t you dare tell anyone! Of course! Cross my heart! (I’m not gonna lie, I’m happy he told me about his parents and this. I feel kinda… special.) I would have liked to make him squirm a little longer, but we had things to do. That was Shidou on the phone. He told me a little about this attraction we’re about to go into. Wait, he called you? I thought we weren’t allowed to do that. I guess he made some kind of deal with Hogstein. A deal involves an exchange. I wouldn’t go calling it a lucky break until we figure out what the others had to give up in return for that call. As quickly as I could I went back over everything Shidou had said.*After a fade-to-black*  Fancy. If was so dark I could barely see the piglet waiting at the entrance. …! With a few gestures, it guided us to a small spaceship. Ha! Check it out! This is the real deal right here. (We’re going to have to beat this with just the two of us… Shidou said they had a pretty tough time. I wonder what’s out there?!) I shivered a little when I remembered that our lives, and Urabe’s, were riding on one mysterious game.I mean, that’s been literally every game up until now. What’s wrong? You scared? Hmm… My bet is on being honest. He’d probably just laugh if Saki tried to put up a front. …Yeah, I guess I’m a little scared. During the day the attraction might have looked fun and inviting, but in the dark… …It’s okay. I felt his arms wrap around my body and hold me tight. Oh! Sploosh… I mean, I assume anyway. My body began to relax as I listened to his calm voice in my ear. I promise I’ll never let you cry.Don’t say poo poo like that. That’s a death flag! *Also there’s a +1 to affection* Mitarashi… There in his arms I felt safe. (We’ve only got the two of us, but as long as I’m with him, I think we’ll be okay…) …Unfortunately, we can’t really stay like this forever. With that, he let me go. I had no doubt my entire face was red enough to be a traffic light, but maybe in the dim light he wouldn’t see. Or so I hoped. All right, let’s move. We climbed into the spaceship.Hell yeah, let’s do this! Space shooter, goo—  drat, it’s pitch black. Oh no… did we run out of time?! No, we should still have some time left! What the hell’s going on?! In response, a familiar voice crackled over the PA. What’s gonna happen to Urabe?! If you lock us out now then the time limit is gonna run out! Oh, don’t worry about that. We’ll start tomorrow afternoon, at the same time as the other game!Aw, gently caress… We’re going to be set up into a Sophie’s Choice situation, aren’t we? And I’ll extend the time limit to 7pm tomorrow! Oink! I’m so generous! Then the speaker went quiet. So he wants to run both games at the same time… Damnit! I’m getting real tired of him using our lives for entertainment. He let out a frustrated sigh. Well, I guess we’re gonna have to spend the night here. Guess this seat is better than nothing. He pulled off his coat and draped it around my shoulders. Oh! Th-Thank you! The coat still carried his warmth and a little of his smell. Maybe the darkness was just making my other senses more sensitive, but it felt like he was very close. (Oh jeez, my heart’s really starting to go at it…) U-Um, aren’t you cold…? Nah, I’m good. …All right, no, I’m not. It’s pretty chilly out here.Wimps, both of you. What’s the average overnight temp in Northern Japan (main island)? Like 10 degrees in the summer months? Pffft. Th-Then… I tried to give his coat back, but instead he slipped under it as well. Aww yeah. Looks like this is our only option. He pulled me close so we were both covered. I could almost hear his heat beating. Oh… We need to keep warm, right? This oughta do it. Our faces were so close. If I moved, they might touch. I could see myself reflected in his eyes. My breath caught in my throat, and he turned his head a little to the side.Kiiiiisssss.  There was something almost boyish about his embarrassment… We could die at any time. Why was I thinking about him like that? It hardly seemed like the right time. I thought back to when I’d read the word “friend” in my uncle’s text and felt that there was something off about it. (I get it now…) Mitarashi was more than a friend. He had been for a long time. But we were in the middle of a game. I didn’t have time to love, and I didn’t want to give him another thing to worry about. I had to do something, though, or I was going to go crazy. Maybe… U-Um, Ryusei, I— What? Ryusei’s my… stage name, I guess. My real name is Ryuji. Ryuji… I listened to each syllable as I said it, savoring the feeling. Well, I told you my life story. Might as well tell you my name too. Y-You didn’t have to do that… I-If you— I mean yeah! Sure thing! Heh. That’s better. All right, we’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow, so I think we’d better get some sleep. ‘Night, Saki. It was so warm and safe next to him that I could already feel myself beginning to fall asleep. Good night… Ryuji…Awww, that sure was sweet.  Now it’s time for something horrible! [Mother?]: Oh my, it’s really late. [Father?]: Yeah, it took us longer than I thought. Looks like traffic’s cleared up, though. [Mother?]: I know… It’s a little odd, don’t you think? I wonder if something happened.  [Mother?]: Look out! [Father?]: Ah! What the—! [Child 1?]: Nnn… what’s going on? [Father?]: Get down! It’s going to be okay!  …Okay, so poo poo just hit the fan in flashback land. That must mean we’re just about finished with Mitarashi’s route. Unless there’s another night where flashback land goes over the mystery child coming to and finding their entire family mangled in a car wreck. I guess we’ll see.  Also, here’s where we stand with Ryusei… er… Ryuji, I guess. I assume that max affection is when the arrow reaches the heart, so we’ve still got one last push to make. Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Oct 29, 2020 |
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Oct 29, 2020 23:05
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When everybody gets arrested at the end the piglets should be found not guilty on account of Going Along With The Heroes’ Stupid Plans and Outstanding Customer Service.
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Oct 30, 2020 05:49
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Oh good, we've hit first name status. With his real first name! That's it, we've hit the most important part of any dating sim. We're fine now, nothing can go wrong.
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Oct 30, 2020 12:55
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BurningStone posted:When everybody gets arrested at the end the piglets should be found not guilty on account of Going Along With The Heroes’ Stupid Plans and Outstanding Customer Service. I withhold any praise for them until we find out who they are and what their relationship is to the terrorist bomber pig man. If they are being threatened or coerced, then I can appreciate them a bit more than if they were willing co-conspirators. Blaze Dragon posted:Oh good, we've hit first name status. With his real first name! That's it, we've hit the most important part of any dating sim. We're fine now, nothing can go wrong. I'm telling you, there's a Sophie's Choice coming. Hogstein pumped the brakes on this at the last minute to make sure that Ryusei and Saki were kept separated from the others. Why? Because the rest of the team agreed to something stupid in exchange for that phone call. They took whatever bad deal they were offered because they figured they could get valuable information to Saki and Ryusei which would help them win, and then they could talk about what Hogstein might do with the team's end of the deal once everyone was safely back on the ship. Except now Saki/Ryusei have no idea what might be coming because they are cut off from the others. We're going to get surprised with some trap where something in Moonlight OX that could save Urabe will trigger a fail state in whatever final game the others will be playing and vice versa. Whatever happens, just remember that Ryusei and Saki are at fault. If they had been patient, Urabe would have just been lumped in with the other hostages, who we're trying to save anyway. The only question now is: What does affection influence? If we end up without max affection for Ryusei, then is he going to bite it at the last second? Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Oct 30, 2020 |
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Oct 30, 2020 13:16
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I don’t think Urabe was going to end up with the other hostages. Not if Hogstein is being sensible (ok, maybe I shouldn’t be too sure). But he wouldn’t do that to his own agent and if Urabe isn’t a traitor then Hogstein selected him to see him die in a death trap game, not sit in a cage.
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Oct 30, 2020 19:40
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BurningStone posted:I don’t think Urabe was going to end up with the other hostages. Not if Hogstein is being sensible (ok, maybe I shouldn’t be too sure). But he wouldn’t do that to his own agent and if Urabe isn’t a traitor then Hogstein selected him to see him die in a death trap game, not sit in a cage. I mean, you are right. Hogstein might have just done this regardless since that's kind of his thing. But there's no arguing that Saki/Ryusei running off on their own made the situation worse. Hogstein has some kind of deal with the others now and the groups are split in two. They'll also be playing two games at the same time now, instead of just 1 game. Urabe's life would be in danger either way, the same as everyone else's. But Saki/Ryusei have definitely put everyone else at a greater risk through this plan of theirs. Like, yeah, maybe in the other routes the whole group stays together and Urabe is still revealed to be hanging over a pit of lava in Mortal Kombat land or something, but if the group fails the game then he's dead anyway.
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Oct 31, 2020 13:37
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Hogstein is actually the most interesting character because his behavior is so odd. I hope it ends up being justified instead of handwaved away as what the game needed to tell its story. Might he be the secret romance? There’s always a secret romance.
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Oct 31, 2020 22:50
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Ah drat, I figured the piglet was trying to tell them Urabe was in the Alice Kart thing. Like 'turn around, you idiots! He's literally right there!' Also I'm loving Ryuji's healing strategy of 'MEAT. ALL THE FUCKIN MEAT'.
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Nov 1, 2020 19:42
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Hey everyone. I just finished recording the remainder of the Mitarashi playthrough. It's actually a lot shorter than I thought it would be. I think we're looking at maybe two medium length updates (which I hope to have finished within the next few days). In preparation for that, there's something I need input on from people following this LP. Here's the deal: -Without spoiling anything, Mitarashi's route does not answer all of the mysteries we currently have. In fact, I looked up a "recommended" route order for the game, and Mitarashi's is one of the routes that answers the fewest story mysteries. -Apparently, Kouta's and Towa's routes are also fairly light on the overarching story (like Mitarashi's, those routes focus more on the characters themselves). -From what the diary (and our playthrough) shows, Chapters 4-7 are the Route chapters. Chapters 1-3 don't really diverge much (although there are some CGs to get by sticking to one particular guy). Here's where I want your opinion: Which of these approaches would you prefer? 1. Follow the recommended route order of Kouta->Towa->Kimimaro->Shidou->Ayumu and do full updates for their respective Stages 4-7. I'll show off the CGs and minor details that crop up from choices in Stages 1-3 for each character, but there's no reason to do full updates for those because there's no divergence until Stage 4. 2. Keep going with character votes. The people following the LP will vote on which route we should tackle next. Everything update-wise will be done the same as in Choice 1. 3. We've already "completed" Sweet Fuse, so just do story summaries and show the CGs for the other routes. No full updates, I'll just cover important details and story developments from the other routes. For anyone considering Option 3, where we make a beeline through the remainder of this game in order to get some plot answers, I'll warn you that apparently the different character routes do diverge quite a bit from each other. This should be at least somewhat obvious from our current playthrough, as Kimimaro has disappeared and the others have been going through games without Saki being around. Any input would be welcome. You can also wait until the final two updates go live to decide on whether or not the ending of Mitarashi's route is sufficient. There's not much point for me to 100% this game if nobody is going to be interested in reading it.
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Nov 5, 2020 18:06
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3 feels boring and unfulfilling and you should only go for it if you burn out with this game. I feel 1 may be the best choice here.
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Nov 5, 2020 18:13
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Blaze Dragon posted:3 feels boring and unfulfilling and you should only go for it if you burn out with this game. To be completely truthful, I have been a bit burned out. But I think that has way more to do with the fact that the forums broke into open revolt against Lowtax and I had to take nearly four months off from doing LPs. Between the hiatus and my exchange plans being ruined because of COVID, I think I'm mostly just suffering from rust. That's probably obvious to the people that have followed my other LPs and are used to seeing me post updates every two or three days instead of every week or two. For anyone else wondering if I've lost interest in this LP, I haven't. I didn't complete this game when I originally picked it up, so my interest is being retained by the fact that I also want to know what the hell is going on with this plot. I agree that Option 3 is a pretty hollow way to wrap things up, but I feel like I should offer the option anyway.
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Nov 5, 2020 18:25
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I'd be okay with either 1 or 2. 1 is probably easiest, and I've never cared that much about audience participation stuff in your average LP, but I know some people love it and it'd be kinda funny to keep stumbling around learning things based on the whims of the audience.
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Nov 5, 2020 19:06
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1 or 2 sounds best for revealing the mystery. That being said do what works best for you, been following your LPs on and off for a while and I'm very appreciative of the effort and time invested. No reason to burn yourself out or twist yourself into knots that unless the update meets xyz standard, the thread will revolt. If you feel like having votes great, if it's simpler to make decisions to save time and keep the plot moving, that's also great.
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Nov 5, 2020 19:37
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I vote 1. Let's get Kouta and Towa out of the way and then do the less-annoying characters' routes.
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Nov 5, 2020 19:39
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Ouch, but I agree with 1
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Nov 5, 2020 20:52
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1 sounds like the path of least resistance and will make things easier in general.
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Nov 5, 2020 23:10
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Yeah, 1 sounds effective.
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Nov 6, 2020 03:57
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Option 3 does feel weak unless you just want to wrap this ASAP. If you’re going to show all routes then I don’t see voting on the order doing very much. Might as well follow the recommendations.
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Nov 6, 2020 04:07
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Option 1 or 2 is fine. Also they are going through a lot of crap for a guy who they've talked to 5 or 6 times and betrayed them. Then again, Japanese media really loves the whole "doing anything to save a friend" thing.
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Nov 6, 2020 08:10
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Another two post update. It's just barely too much for one. Update XV: Sweet Payoff  We’re in the endgame now. A short endgame, it turns out. Stage 6 will not be with us for very long and Stage 7 is sort of in the same boat.  Anyway, we were abruptly left off with Hogstein’s voice was a rude awakening in more ways than one, as was the realization that we’d slept until noon.I want to call bullshit on that, but we all know now how this game handles the passage of time. Does it really surprise anyone that Saki and Ryusei slept for 12+ hours in a children’s theme park ride? Mitarashi lifted himself up from our makeshift bed and stretched. Oh right, Ryusei’s name won’t be getting changed in the text boxes, in case you were wondering. Too much effort. As for the LP, be prepared for me to randomly switch between Ryusei and Ryuji as the mood strikes me. I’ve been doing it with everyone else’s personal and family names after all. Yeah, my shoulders hurt too. It wasn’t surprising, really— the spaceship was hardly comfortable. (Besides, it wasn’t the most… restful sleep. Hard to stay cool when you’re sleeping next to somebody like Mita— I mean Ryuji.) We sure slept in, though. Guess we must’ve been pretty tired. W-Well, we did spend all day running around the park. And you ate about twenty pounds of meat. Meat always puts me right to sleep… Hey, that meat was to help me feel better! And if you’re gonna make a crack about my eating habits, lead with that! Stop being so shy! We went over this. R-Right. I mean, yeah! Darn right I will! I like when Saki tries to act hard. She still can’t bring herself to actually curse. (This might take a little getting used to… Anyway, I should concentrate! The others are playing their game right now too. We need to do our best!) Hey, would you look at that. The power’s back on. As the announcement played, the ship slowly began to move. Ah, so the ship’s on some kind of tracks. It’ll move automatically. He nodded to himself and began to look around the ship. So this must be how you steer it. We can turn the ship 360 degrees, looks like… Ryuji gave the stick a few experimental pushes, and the ship turned left, and then right. I think it’s that jewel on the front of the ship. Shidou said those jewels are the weak point on the enemies and on us. Then we’re set! Let’s kick some rear end! Ryuji took the gun, and I took the stick.Let’s do this! *After a fade-to-black wipe transition* The ship moved through the colony as we got ready to fight. Also, despite what this looks like, this appears to be a new CG. I thought the last one had just been lazily flipped (Honestly, I wouldn’t blame the developers for doing it), but this CG has us a bit closer to the tracks and the green arrow sign up there is better lit. Weird thing to put an extra bit of effort into. (Wait… what’s this?) In addition to our location and the exit, there were several other points on the map marked “E.”…Entertainment maybe? Enjoyment? It’s a space/alien amusement park game, so possibly exterminate? Hey, snap out of it! They’re here!Right, probably not the time to be spitballing about that.  That is a water buffalo, madam. Yah!*The screen flashes blue for a second, then the blue jewel on the With a roar Ryuji fired, and one of his shots hit the jewel on the alien’s forehead. The jewel turned bright red, and the alien sunk down into the floor. Yes! One down!*Then there’s a flash of green and a flash of red followed by the screen shaking for a split second* Whoa! Suddenly the ship shook. We were under attack! Damnit! They’re coming from behind! I leaned on the stick and spun the ship around. Thought you could sneak up on us, huh? Well not it’s out— what?! Oh my gosh! Oh come on, a cross? That’s so passé. Urabe! Hey! Urabe! Can you hear me?!*Urabe just gives us an “…” and nothing else* His hands and feet were tied, and his head hung limply between his shoulders. He’s unconscious.*And then the ship gets attacked again* Whoa! Is he attacking us?! Another shot fired from the cross barely missed the bow of our ship. I can accept that. It’s us or him after all. As the next shot flew past us, I thought I saw a flash of blue behind the cross. (Wait… is there something… That looks like a jewel… Of course! There’s an alien hiding behind the cross!) Shoot the blue light behind the cross! Blue light… got it! Ryuji lined up his shot, squinted, and pulled the trigger. Almost as if it could see its death coming, the alien fired off a last desperate volley… What?! Saki! Watch out! Ryuji dropped the gun and threw his arm out desperately in front of my face. Gah! Ryuji! drat, that doesn’t sound like it was a fun time. Did his arm just get broken? I’ll need to update my chart. .png) There we are. It’s getting difficult to keep up with all of them. In fact, now that I look at it, I’m probably missing one or two. Oh, right. We need to make a choice. Once again, we have to go against natural instinct and instead chew Ryuji out for being a hero rather than be openly concerned for his well being. Don’t be so reckless! Hey, c’mon, is protecting a lady I’ve got a thing for really being reckless?*Affection point increase for Ryuji* I could see sweat beading on his forehead, but he still gave me a grin. After Ryuji shot the alien, the cross Urabe had been tied to had sunk into the floor.How elaborate is this amusement park ride? Every section of the track in here is able to pull back and remove obstacles from the route? Damnit! If they keep using him as a shield, we’re gonna have a hard time hitting those bastards!I’d imagine that’s the point. Oink! So, wadda ya think? Pretty fun, huh? He sounded ecstatic, like a kid showing off a new toy. This is pretty low, even for you! What the hell’s going on here?! Connected? How so? Hogstein explained that whenever the others made a mistake in their game, the cross with Urabe on it would show up in ours. They don’t know this, of course, but if you guys happen to shoot the cross, I’ll have to tell ‘em. And once they find out it’s their fault, well… Oink oink oink!Right, they’ll immediately start freaking out about every move they make and wind up screwing everything even more.  You son of a bitch! That meant their mistakes would affect us, and if we accidentally shot Urabe, then they’d definitely freak out when they learned what was going on. There was no doubt Hogstein had engineered the whole thing just to get to us.And I wonder whose fault that was?  So the alien enemies aren’t using real bullets, but whatever rubber or non-lethal shots they are using are now traveling at way above the recommended setting. Good stuff. Then he hung up. (We can’t afford to make any mistakes!) Hey, calm down. You’re getting too tense. He laid his hand on my head. The pig only told us that because he wants to rile us up. He’s worried we might beat this thing. By now it’s pretty easy to tell what he’s thinking.The fact that you think you are outsmarting him or have him all figured out is absolutely precious. Hogstein might have stumbled here or there, but it still looks to me like he’s fully in control of this situation. The one really good moment that you got over on him was drawn up by Subaru (the concealed earpiece during the Alice Kart game). I nodded and took a deep breath.*After another transition wipe*  Hey, this is different. Of course, that’s probably not a good thing since it means we have to make decisions. A fork… Which way should we go? Hold on, let me check the map. One path led to the exit, and the other led to one of the “E” points. (Shidou said these choices are really important. We don’t want to make a rash decision here…) I mean that literally, by the way. It’s up to us to choose our path forward in this game. This first choice should be obvious, though. Heading straight for the exit is way too easy. There’s no way that would work. I want to know what the “E” is… I’m as curious as the next guy, but don’t you think we should be making a beeline for the exit? I thought about that, but what if it’s a trap? A trap, huh. Yeah, I guess you got a point. Okay, let’s go check out that E. I nodded and turned out ship toward that branch of the fork.*After another transition*  drat! Where’d they all come from?! Just calm down! We can focus on them one at a time! But each time we took down one, another would appear to take its place. This is nuts! Are you sure we’re going the right way?! Up ahead in between us and where the E was, I could see a lot of aliens. There’s another fork coming up. I was going to say “There is? Where?”, but the background CG actually does switch over to a forked path after that line from Saki.  Okay, so this time the choice is a little less clear. We can break off and try to make it to a different “E” point, or we can try and break through the aliens to reach the “E” that we were originally aiming for. You could easily make an argument for either choice. In this case, the correct choice is actually the “obvious” one. We need to break off and head for the other “E”. What happens if you try and keep pushing ahead? You can probably guess, but I haven’t shown off a Game Over scenario since Samurai Fantasy, so let’s find out what this one involves.  The ship’s gun runs out of energy from trying to fight all of the aliens, which leads to Saki and Ryuji getting surrounded and gunned down. It’s pretty bad. Saki actually has a text box where she talks about her whole body exploding in pain and the world around her going dark as a volley of shots rain down on the pair.  Good thing we didn’t do that though, huh? Agreed. I’m not super into fighting more of these guys right now. I pushed the stick toward our new destination.*After another transition*  I… guess that’s it? I don’t see anything else around, so I hope so… Our ship moved forward, through the E. As it did, the gun made a strange electronic noise. What was that? Oh, great! The gun’s energy tank is full again! Of course! The “E” was for “Energy”!I’m ashamed I didn’t think of that. And now we’ve got enough to make a play for the exit.So yeah, if you decided to go straight for the exit earlier, then Ryuji and Saki wouldn’t have had the energy needed to break through to it. I don’t think this results in a game over, but as to how it impacts the following events, I’m not sure.  Look! Yeah, I see him. Lemme handle this. He carefully took aim, then squeezed the trigger. Whoa! You got him with one shot! Heh. Looks like I’m getting the hang of this. Let’s get to that exit!I should point out that every time Urabe shows up, I am reminded of how extremely goofy it must look for Urabe to go floating through floors and tunnels strapped to a cross, like some kind of T-posing ghost, while Ryuji and Saki engage him in a laser battle.  This is it! It was already open. On the other side was what looked like the vast blackness of space. All right. If we can get through here, we’re in the clear. Then, out of nowhere, a massive alien appeared. That’s going to be a problem. Look! Urabe! He had been tied to the stomach of the massive alien with thick, metal chains. First a cross, now an alien? Guy just can’t catch a break… (The boss alien has four jewels, and each one is near one of the chains holding Urabe…) drat. Well, he’s not giving us much of a choice. He aimed at the top right jewel and fired. Aaah! His arm hung limp, moving as the alien did. It looked like he was still unconscious. The jewels are connected to his chains! So if we keep hitting them, he’ll just fall off that thing?! The alien was pretty high up. If Urabe fell, there was a good chance it would kill him. What should we do? Then suddenly, the boss alien stopped. …Here he comes! Ah, the good old “easily telegraphed ram” maneuver. A staple of every single large boss monster in existence. Which wall do we trick him into hitting? As he passed overhead he fired, his shots slamming into our ship. Ah! The whole ship shook. He’s not screwing around, is he? Guess we can’t just sit on our hands for this one, then. Okay, well, let’s shoot at the left foot so he won’t just go flying off. No problem! (All right, his left arm and right leg are still on there, so he’s not going to fall.) We’ve still got two chains. What’s next? We have to figure out a way to beat the boss and save Urabe… As I was talking, it stopped, turned, then charged. Just like before, it flew over our ship, raining down attacks from above. He’s going to hit it! Saki, turn! Right! I slammed the stick to the side. One of the boss’s bullets shot past, barely missing our jewel. If I hadn’t turned the ship when I did, we would have been toast. Th-That was close… If it hits our jewel, we’re done. (How can we save Urabe and defeat the boss…? If we could just catch Urabe before he hit the floor… Wait… catch…? I think I might be on to something…) This one isn’t going to be much of a brain burner either. (All right, let’s run over the facts. Whenever the boss stops, we have to watch out, because that means it’s about to charge. When it flies over us, it fires a whole bunch of bullets. That means the best time to attack it is probably right before it charges us, when it stops. There’s just two jewels left, but if we shoot them out Urabe will fall. If all of the chains are shot off, and Urabe is released, we have to keep him from hitting the ground. How can we keep him from falling to his death…?)We already know how. You just said it out loud, Saki.  Seriously, these Insight things feel like they are getting less and less effort put into them as the route goes on. Flies over… of course! What is it? We need to shoot the jewels out right as the boss flies over us! That way we can catch Urabe when he falls! (It should work! …In theory. I gotta admit, I don’t like our odds here, but we don’t have a choice.) Man, you sure aren’t gonna make it easy for me, are you? He grinned. Guess that means I’ll just have to step up my game! I’m gonna need you to back me up. Ready? Ryuji hefted the gun and took aim. All right… here goes. The bullet hit the jewel next to Urabe’s right leg. With a clang, the chain detached, and he was left hanging by only his left arm. Aah! Now for the hard part. Point the ship toward the boss! Right! I nodded, and concentrated on adjusting our heading to the alien’s movements. Before long, it stopped moving. This is it! I think he’s about to charge! Ryuji shoved the gun into my hands. Somebody’s gonna have to catch Urabe when he falls. That’s me. That means you gotta shoot. He wrapped my fingers around the gun’s grip and gave me a calm smile. Right! I’ll do it! Almost like it had been waiting for me, the boss began to charge. You can do it. I know you can! (Right! I can do this!) The boss lifted his own gun and aimed it at us. (Oh jeez, I hope this works!) I grabbed the gun with both hands and pulled the trigger.*There’s a flash and a brief shot of the Boss with all the jewels turned red* I got it! The last jewel turned red and the chain holding Urabe’s left arm released. For a moment, he seemed to hang in midair… Urabeeeeeeeee! Ryuji jumped— …He got him!Yay. Urabe dropped into Ryuji’s outstretched arms, knocking him down in the ship’s seat. Urgh…! Are you all right?! Yeah. I’m fine. Just a scratch. And now Urabe’s safe. Thank goodness. Anyway, that was a drat good shot. Not exactly ideal conditions, but you got it on the first try. You’re quite a woman.*This just in noise* [Announcer]: Colony completed. With nothing else to stand in our way, we flew out the exit, buoyed by our success. Cool. It was only made for two people, so Urabe’s unconscious body made it a bit crowded, but we managed. Wow…! I let out a sigh. Even though I knew we were just moving down a track, it really seemed like we were flying through space. The stars seemed to brighten and dim along with the ship as we moved. Whoa… This is amazing! (He he… His excitement is kinda infectious!) I feel like I could just… reach out and grab one of them! Another opportunity for an affection point here. Gotta go with the top option. I know! It’s so cool! I really feel like I’m flying in space… Yeah! Isn’t it fun? I mean, that’s the point of a theme park, right? To have fun?Ostensibly. The point of a theme park for the people running it is to make a boatload of cash. Totally! This stuff is fun no matter how old you are! …Man, you really throw me for a loop sometimes.*Affection up* Huh? So what if it’s a little embarrassing? I’m just stoked I get to enjoy this place with somebody else.*Another fade-to-black wipe here, although the background CG hasn’t changed* So, we beat the boss and saved Urabe. Does that mean we’re done? I hope so. drat! Well, so much for it being easy!*On your six!* Whoa! Wh-What was that? Are they behind— they’re on the sides too! Two more had appeared behind us, as well as one on either side. We were completely surrounded. This is it! What should we do?! Push the stick to the side, hard! As far as it goes! Okay! I leaned into the stick with all of my weight. Suck on this! Death blossom!   Bullets filled the air around us, some of them slamming into the aliens and stopping them in their tracks. Then one by one they started to fall, the hail of bullets smashing into their jewels. W-Wow, that was amazing! (Even when we’re up against the wall, he never loses his cool.) Five of the aliens sunk down into the floor, but before Ryuji could shoot the final one, the gun clicked— empty!…Well, that looked impressive. poo poo. Guess I could’ve timed that better… Did we…? Yeah, we’re out of bullets! The final alien hefted his gun and moved toward us. There’s no way he’ll miss at that range! I threw myself over Urabe. (We only just saved him! There’s no way I’m letting them kill him now if I can help it!) Ryuji looked at me and grinned, then squeezed one of my shoulders. Don’t worry, I got this! He leapt up to the top of our ship. Hope I don’t break it. This one’s my favorite… Oh my god… he’s about to Indiana Jones this poo poo. Is this really the best time to be taking your clothes off?! Whoa, hey, it’s not like that! I’m just gonna use my belt buckle here… He carefully took aim at the alien. And nail that bastard’s jewel! He snapped out his belt like a whip, and the hard metal buckled [sic]smacked into the alien’s jewel. Yay! The last alien sunk down into the floor with an explosive noise. drat… Guess we’re luck he came close, huh? U-Uh… R-Ryuji…! With his belt off, his pants had begun to… slip. Oh, my bad. (I only got a quick glimpse, but it looked like he was wearing… something cute. Something unexpected…) N-No! Nothing! O-Oh, look! The exit! As red as my face was, Ryuji’s was even redder, and I got the feeling we were both happy for something to distract us from… that. So we slid through the exit, with Urabe safe and Moonlight OX finally finished. Of course it has. Of course we’ve been in there for 6+ hours. Urabe was still unconscious, so we’d had to carry him out of the attraction.Pro-tip: If someone has been unconscious for over 5 hours and they aren’t receiving some kind of anaesthetic, then you should be extremely worried. That’s not called “knocked out” at this point, that’s called a coma. Amazing! You actually managed to save Kimimaro Urabe! Hogstein! His voice echoed across the darkened park. Bastard! Why don’t you get off your fat rear end and come face me like a man! … I’d expected a comeback, but Hogstein appeared to be thinking about something. What? Think of it as a reward for beating the game with just two participants! You’ve won an all-expenses-paid trip to beautiful Castle Hogstein!…You guys know this is a trap, right? Please tell me you realize that. (This seems awfully suspicious, but it’s the best chance we have right now to save my uncle and the other hostages…) Let’s take him up on his offer. This is our chance to save the hostages. His breath tickled my ear as he whispered. But what if it’s a trap?It 100% is. There is no doubt at all about that. He even paused to think about exactly how he should trap you.  (As long as Ryuji and I are together, we can beat any trap!) Then let’s go. Those hostages are waiting for us. He grinned. Hey! Hogstein! We’re on our way, pal! Hope you’re ready for a party! He he he. I can’t wait to see you! With a click, he hung up. That was interesting, but we need to figure out what we’re gonna do with Urabe. It was pretty apparent that Urabe had been knocked out with some sort of chemical, so there was no way to know when he might wake up. Let’s head over to the plaza. If the others are done with their game, maybe they’re waiting for us. Good idea. Ladies first. We headed off towards the plaza, Urabe draped over Ryuji’s shoulders. Oh, cool. I don’t believe we’ve ever seen this place at night. Big fan of the lighting.  There you are. You kept us waiting quite a while. That’s mean, Ryuji. He’s not even conscious and you’re smack talking him. Even though they joked and needled each other, I could tell Ryuji and Shidou were both happy to see the other was all right. You’re all okay!  Easy for you to say now. You looked like you were about to cry right up until we beat it. Wh-Whatever, I was just p-practicing! I need to be able to cry on command, it totally triggers a girl’s maternal instincts! Ha ha ha ha. Well, I’m glad you guys are okay.Eh. I’m like 50/50, personally.  I couldn’t have done it without Ryuji! I glanced over at him, and he looked away, blushing.Hey, Saki? Maybe be a little more careful of what you say.  Huh? Who’s Ryuji?Never mind, it’s too late. Oh… (Oh jeez, maybe I shouldn’t have said that! I should have called him “Ryusei” or something… Oh man…)Actually, in this case you should have called him Mitarashi. Even calling him “Ryusei” would tip off that there’s something going on between you two. For those who don’t know, you generally don’t refer to others in Japan with their first name, unless you’re close to them. You stick with family names until you’ve built up enough of a personal relationship with that person (such as lover or good friend). There’s an exception with children, which is why everyone still calls Mai by her first name. Sweet Fuse has been pretty solid with this in its translation. I, however, have been randomly using first and last names for these characters because I’m a filthy foreigner who is insensitive to other cultures. I’m also lazy. Suddenly everyone seemed to be looking at us. (W-We didn’t really do anything… Why are they all looking at me like that?)Because if this were a native English script, you would have basically just called him “babe” or “sweetie” in front of everyone. Of course they’re going to give you the side eye.  Ayumu gets it. He nodded in some approximation of sage understanding, but Wakasa still looked confused. Ryu… Ryu… Ryusei…? Oh, so is Ryuji your real name, Mitarashi? He tried to look threatening, but the redness on his cheeks made it more adorable than ominous.I wish I had this segment in Japanese. I’d like to know if Saki used a different (or no) honorific as she said that, or if she just said Ryuji-san. I doubt she would have used -chan though, that would have been too much.  No, I don’t, just… So you two, huh? Hm… Did you, uh, you know…That is a very personal line of questioning, Towa. Also, no. They did not. Much to everyone’s frustration. Wh-What are you suggesting?! He shoved his hands into his pockets and pouted. (Is he… jealous?)It pleases me greatly that he clearly is. Call me whatever the hell you want, damnit! I’ve had enough of this. Just look after Urabe, all right?! We handed him over to Shidou and Shirabe. Still unconscious, huh?You call it unconscious, I call it legally dead.  Thank goodness… All right, listen up. We’re heading— To the castle, right? We know. Huh? How do you know that? The pig was kind enough to let us know. That’s why we waited here for you. I would have loved a chance to go see Hogstein with you… He looked honestly disappointed. He leaned over and whispered something in Shidou’s ear, then glanced back at me. (What are they talking about…?)I can hazard a guess. Shidou nodded, then put his hand on Ryuji’s shoulder. Try not to die. Ryuji grinned. ‘Course not. When I say I’m coming back, I’m coming back. I can’t leave a lady to cry over me. His words made my heart pound, but something felt off. (What does he mean by “coming back”…?) Huh? What? You’re going back to the hotel with us. What?! …Sorry, but I can’t take you into something that’s pretty much guaranteed to be a trap. His eyes were so kind… and almost sad. (So that’s what he was whispering to Shidou.) I pursed my lips. (I mean, yeah, I know I might get in his way, and I understand what he’s thinking, but…)  This is one of the times where Saki needs to show some restraint. This is an affection point choice. (…He’s just worried about me. I can’t always get what I want, I know that.) I did my best to keep myself in check. (He’s probably right. I should just stay. After all, Shidou must agree with him, or he wouldn’t be helping… … …But it’s not fair! I want to go face Hogstein with Ryuji! There’s… there’s gotta be something I can do to help…) Huh? I’d gotten so worked up I hadn’t even realized I was crying. I just felt so angry and helpless. Hey… I couldn’t stop, though— the tears just kept coming. Shidou’s grip on my arm began to loosen, and I took that chance to break free and run to Ryuji.*There’s a bit of screen shake as Saki runs into Ryuji* (I…) I threw myself against his chest and wrapped my arms tight around him. I didn’t know what else to say. Saki… I… I… But before I could get the words out, and say how I felt about him, Ryuji’s voice cut me off. And the wounded gazelle gambit pays off again! … …And a lady I really care about, no less. You… what?  IT FINALLY HAPPENED!  All right, I’m bored now. That’s it for this LP. It was all so sudden. (Ryuji…) I’d told him I wanted to face Hogstein together, and then he’d embraced me. And… kissed me. I’m sorry I made you cry. I was scared that something might happen to you, but now I think I was just letting my heart get the better of my head. We’ll go together. Even if it’s a trap, I’ll keep you safe. Okay! Then leave! You’re killing the mood! Ah! Shidou’s remark brought me back to reality. Whooooa! Oh man, that was like watching a live soap opera! Oh, the passion of youth…”Reminds me of when I was their age… seven years ago. Truly a different time.” …I’ve never seen anything like that before. Well, outside of a game…Keep wearing the straitjacket everywhere and games will be the only place you ever see it. Hey! We’re not putting on a show, you creeps! Sorry bro, but I changed my mind. She’s coming with me. My hand clasped in Ryuji’s, we looked up at the castle that towered above us in the night sky. Scared…? No way! …Well, okay, a little, but I know that I’m fine as long as you’re with me. drat right. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you, no matter what it takes. He gave me a smile and squeezed my hand, and I felt all my anxiety melt away. Together, we headed into the castle, to Hogstein.
Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Nov 7, 2020 |
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Nov 6, 2020 23:55
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 He was sitting in the throne at the end of the hall, just like he had been on the first day. At the foot of the stairs was a huge cage covered with a large blue sheet of cloth. (My uncle’s in there!) That’s what I call entertainment! Is… is he congratulating us…?Warning sign #1. So what if he is? Impressing the Devil’s not something to be proud of.I dunno. I think that’s pretty impressive, personally. I mean, it’s the Devil. He’s not some schmuck jobber like Moloch. We made our way carefully down the hall, toward the stairs. Well, you’ve rescued Kimimaro Urabe, which is what you ditched my games to do. What did you want to talk to me about? …Hey. He’d leaned in close to whisper in my ear. What?! You mean… just like that? Yeah. When I do it, I want you to go save the hostages. I felt Ryuji press something against my back. I reached a hand around to feel it, and realized it was a gun. (Is… is this real?!) Subaru gave it to me earlier. It’s got some kick to it, so make sure you hold it with both hands. It felt… heavy. (I… I can use this to rescue the hostages.)”By shooting them!”  I nodded. Heh. He gave me one last reassuring tap on the shoulder, and stepped forward. As he talked, he moved up the stairs. Hogstein watched him, clearly curious. Before long, Ryuji reached the top of the stairs. Why are you… Hm? So goddamn annoying!? His fist slammed into Hogstein’s face. (Now’s my chance!) The moment Ryuji struck, I ran toward the cage. I pulled aside the cloth, and inside were my uncle and the rest of the hostages.Oh, hey. They’re actually in there. I figured the cage would just be empty.  It’s Keiji Inafune! Yup! I’ll have you out of here in a jiffy! *Sigh* You’re so reckless… But thank you. That was the first time I’d heard my uncle’s voice in a long time. I wanted to tell him everything, but there wasn’t time. I looked for the lock. …There is it! Everybody stand back! My hands shook a little as I raised the gun, but I took a deep breath and steadied them. The clap of gunfire filled the hall, and the shattered lock fell to the ground. The door creaked open. Wh-What the hell? His voice echoed across the room. (Ryuji?! No, I need to get the hostages out first!) All right everybody, get out! Run! You too, Uncle Keiji! ”Would it help if I set up a Kickstarter? I think it would probably be a good idea to set up a Kickstarter. I’ll get the ball rolling on that.” Thanks, but I’ll be fine. I’ve got Ryuji with me. Ryuji…? Ah, is he the young man you told me about the other day? Yeah, he’s… well, I know I can trust him. …I see. I’m glad to hear you’ve met someone special. He smiled warmly. After all, I know this park better than anyone.Oh, right. FYI, the Bloodstained Hospital is now a crater and the Ferris wheel got blown up. Although, I guess you already know about the second one since you were there at the time. Thanks! I waved good-bye to my uncle, then ran off toward Ryuji. Look… Huh? On the floor next to Ryuji was Hogstein’s head… Welp, we’ve been duped. And by “we” I mean “Ryuji and Saki”. What the heck? Does that mean there never was a real Hogstein? No, no that can’t be right… Hey! Are you okay?! Uncle Keiji?! I turned and saw my uncle standing in the middle of the stairs leading out, with the hostages around him. What’s that…? Oink oink. It’s tempered glass. You can’t break it, even with a gun. drat! You saw right through us! Where the hell are you hiding, Hogstein?! (But if he knew what we were going to do, why did he let us free the hostages…?) Oink oink oink. You look confused! Are you wondering why I let my hostages go? What do you mean? Let me tell you! You see, the reason I let those hostages go… (Oh man, I’ve got a bad feeling about this…) What?!*The screen shakes a bit* Ah! A cage shot down from the ceiling, slamming into the floor around us. We were trapped. Damnit… We got careless… (Huh…? I feel… sleep…)*And then the screen went black as Saki passed out*  Oh, you’re up. Looks like they dosed us with some kind of knockout gas. We were still in a cage, but we’d apparently been moved to a warehouse. Our hands and legs had been tied up tight— I could barely move. He frowned. Sorry. I said I’d protect you. Don’t blame yourself. I’m just glad we were able to free the hostages. With my uncle to guide them, I was sure they’d get out of the park safely. Yeah, you’re right. No point worrying. I’d like to get out of here, but… These ropes are really tight… I don’t think we can get them off. He strained against the ropes with all his strength, but they didn’t break. If this was a movie, we’d have a hidden knife or a lighter or something, but… I don’t have anything, so unless you’re holding out on me, we’re in trouble. Knew I should have brought a lighter from work… We tried everything we could think of to get through the ropes, but nothing worked. Yeah, that’s true. The next day would be the seventh and final day. If Hogstein had wanted us as hostages, I was sure he had some plan to use our predicament against the others. Just like the way he’d used Urabe as a shield for the aliens… Tomorrow morning’s going to be the final showdown. Yeah. We have to find a way out of here before the game starts. It’s like you’re reading my mind. No reason for us to make it easy for him. I nodded. All right. Bed time it is, then. Good night, Saki. I snuggled up close to Ryuji and let my eyes slide closed. Oh, good! I was correct about the next event! This will be a fun one. [Child?]: Daddy…? M-Mommy…? Wake up! Wake uuuup! [???]: …  [???]: (…But now it’s time for the final act. Just watch….) Ominous. So we can see that it appears to be a brother and sister. Not entirely sure which one survived whatever happened. Maybe these flashbacks are of Saki’s family? Of course, if it was Saki then “Just watch…” is kind of a weird line to think to yourself. That’s the end of Stage 6, by the way. Check in next time as we find out what the hell is going on here… …or maybe not. Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Nov 7, 2020 |
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Nov 6, 2020 23:56
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Oh man, we got to the kiss. We have what truly matters, the rest is just the epilogue.
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Nov 7, 2020 00:42
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Blaze Dragon posted:Oh man, we got to the kiss. We have what truly matters, the rest is just the epilogue. I know that my curiosity is sated. Who cares about all that death game/pig man stuff. We got all we needed, which is to say that we've assured Saki gets laid when this is all done. Seems like everyone is leaning on Options 1 and 2, although a bit more towards 1. I kind of figured that's how it would go, but I wanted to make sure. Given Mitarashi's route, we'll probably be looking at 6 updates per each character. Plus maybe a mini update to go over the Break Time events during Stages 1-3 for each person. So possibly 7 (assuming that everyone's route is roughly the same length) each, for a total of 36-42 more updates. It's gonna take a while for this LP to wrap up, in other words. Honestly, that doesn't bother me too much. Not like I have anywhere to go given the lockdowns. I've also got a bet going with myself that my rescheduled student exchange is going to be cancelled again since Canada won't lift it's stupidly toothless "Global Travel Advisory" that stops students and business travelers from going anywhere but lets regular tourists leave as they please with only a small finger wag. No, I'm not bitter. Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Nov 7, 2020 |
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Nov 7, 2020 15:41
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...you know, for a second there I half thought the twist would be that Hogstein had been her uncle all along. I'm not sure if that would have been insultingly dumb or brilliant.
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Nov 7, 2020 16:01
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Astrofig posted:...you know, for a second there I half thought the twist would be that Hogstein had been her uncle all along. I'm not sure if that would have been insultingly dumb or brilliant. If that somehow happens, I will end this LP in the middle of the reveal. No joke. That would be quite possibly the dumbest plot twist I've ever experienced in a VN. We'd be talking about Keiji Inafune arranging a terrorist takeover of his own amusement park that he hasn't even officially opened yet, destroying any chance at all of making back his investments on it (because of the stigma such an event would create), endangering the life of his own niece, and completely destroying his entire life; all for the sake of a highly convoluted revenge scheme on some random assortment of dudes for some as-of-yet unknown reason. It'd also involve real life Keiji Inafune making himself the murderous antagonist of one of his company's own games. What I'm saying is: That twist is a definite possibility.
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Nov 7, 2020 17:39
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Kind of curious to see how the story wraps up. Also, did the space ride originally involve rubber bullets because even at low power that seems like a major safety issue to have something firing at guests. I also like that you picked the best that Gundam has to offer.
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Nov 7, 2020 22:56
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FalloutFan56 posted:Kind of curious to see how the story wraps up. Also, did the space ride originally involve rubber bullets because even at low power that seems like a major safety issue to have something firing at guests. I also like that you picked the best that Gundam has to offer. It isn't made clear, although maybe it's clarified in other routes where Saki takes part in Moonlight OX normally. I'd have to assume they are rubber judging by the cracking noise that Ryuji's arm made as it snapped backward. On the other hand, he still has use of his arm despite that, so I suppose it's possible that the rounds are pellets or something. The real danger with this ride is that Keiji apparently used live rounds of any kind. That is a lawsuit just waiting to happen. You would think he would have built that attraction with a Laser Tag system in mind.
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Nov 7, 2020 23:23
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Psycho Knight posted:I wish I had this segment in Japanese. I’d like to know if Saki used a different (or no) honorific as she said that, or if she just said Ryuji-san. I doubt she would have used -chan though, that would have been too much. I'd lean towards no honorific judging by the way everyone is going 'oh, I see' rather than 'I guess you guys are closer now, that's nice'. Also I just found the official manga is on Japanese Kindle but the table of contents in the preview informs me that there's four chapters, chapters 2 and 3 are titled Samurai Fantasy VII part 1/part 2 and the chapter 4 title appears to be something that hasn't happened yet, so I assume it got abruptly cut short (there's no volume 2) Also also the park is called 'Kanedou Blossomland' rather than 'The Gameatorium' which makes calling the mascot Kane De Boo make more sense (not to mention it sounds more like a theme park and less like a city arcade) 
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Nov 9, 2020 14:32
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Polsy posted:I'd lean towards no honorific judging by the way everyone is going 'oh, I see' rather than 'I guess you guys are closer now, that's nice'. Interesting. I didn't know it got (a half started) manga. Part of me thinks it got canned because it would have been difficult to figure out a direction to take it in. All of the character routes seem to diverge quite a bit from each other and involve Saki being split off from from non-route characters (we barely saw the others once Ryusei's route started). There's also the fact that every route has different pieces of the puzzle. From what I understand, everything only comes together once you've been through everybody's route. It would have worked great as a "Choose your own adventure manga" though. Granted, that would have been way more work and investment than Otomate would have wanted to put in. As for the theme park, that's called "Kanedou Blossomland" in the Japanese version of the game, as well.  Not sure if that's what you were already saying, or if you just referring to what the manga called it. Either way, I have no idea why they localized it as "The Gameatorium", other than the idea that the theme park is based around games. There's nothing wrong with "Kanedou Blossomland". The game already refers to the mascot as Kane De Boo. Plus, Blossomland is in Katakana, so that's just straight up English loanwords. Just shorten it to "Blossomland" if you really didn't want that Japanese in there. On the other hand, it's also weird that they don't call it "Gameland" or something in the Japanese version. The theme park is still a video game based one in that version. Blossomland seems a little weird for a park with that kind of theme. In terms of the honorific, you are probably correct. I was mostly just curious if it was more subtle in the Japanese version or if Saki was extremely blatant about it, because that makes Towa's slowness in catching on even funnier. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any (Japanese) route playthroughs. All I can find are a handful of promotional videos that look like they ruin basically every ending CG. The English version doesn't have a Language option, so I can't check it from there, either. The voices are in Japanese, but Saki is the one that says the line and she seems to only have voice acting for particular moments (like the "What are you thinking?" anger moments). Outside of that, Saki's dialogue is normally silent (even though everyone else seems to have full voice acting). Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Nov 9, 2020 |
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Nov 9, 2020 16:23
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Psycho Knight posted:Part of me thinks it got canned because it would have been difficult to figure out a direction to take it in. All of the character routes seem to diverge quite a bit from each other and involve Saki being split off from from non-route characters (we barely saw the others once Ryusei's route started). There's also the fact that every route has different pieces of the puzzle. From what I understand, everything only comes together once you've been through everybody's route. That makes sense. I'm sure they were fine with Samurai Fantasy because nothing you do really changes the sequence of events, just where you pick up the odd affection point but maybe they never figured out a satisfactory way to continue it. Psycho Knight posted:As for the theme park, that's called "Kanedou Blossomland" in the Japanese version of the game, as well. Right, I wasn't sure if that was the case but it seemed likely. But yeah it doesn't really seem worth the additional effort to change it so it's a curious choice. Psycho Knight posted:Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any (Japanese) route playthroughs. All I can find are a handful of promotional videos that look like they ruin basically every ending CG. The English version doesn't have a Language option, so I can't check it from there, either. The voices are in Japanese, but Saki is the one that says the line and she seems to only have voice acting for particular moments (like the "What are you thinking?" anger moments). Outside of that, Saki's dialogue is normally silent (even though everyone else seems to have full voice acting). Yeah, I had a poke around for videos early on in the thread with basically no success and I just had a look earlier on the off-chance someone was either transcribing it or SSLPing it but it seems not, or at least not anywhere google can reach it, so I guess that'll have to remain a mystery.
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Nov 9, 2020 20:02
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Spent all day reading this to catch up. I enjoyed Conception Plus and am enjoying this, thanks PK! edit: and for the vote I'm going with 1 as long as you aren't getting burned out.
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Nov 10, 2020 03:04
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Update XVI: Blue Balled This is it, the final update of Sweet Fuse (well, for Mitarashi’s route at least). Last time our intrepid protagonists tongue-hosed each other in front of everyone and then went to pound ham together. Romantic.   For real, though, they managed to rescue the hostages and then were immediately made hostages themselves when Hogstein incredibly obviously faked them out. So now they’re trapped in a warehouse somewhere and— Wait a second… How is Ryuji able to move? I felt someone shaking me, and opened my eyes to see Ryuji’s face above me. …Hm? Ryuji…? (Wait, we were tied up…? How is he…?) You okay? As he spoke, he set about taking off my ropes. Y-Yeah, I’m fine, but… weren’t you tied up too? He grinned, and pointed at the floor behind me.Stop putting commas in front of “and”! That’s not how commas work! …With the exception of Oxford commas. But that isn’t this!  A hostage is a very important prop for Hogstein’s little play, right? Oh! So you tricked them again? Yup. Haven’t gotten any smarter since we duped ‘em on the boat, I guess. He’d gotten the attention of the piglet watching the warehouse, and pretended his injury had gotten worse and he was about to die. Once he’d convinced the piglet to loosen his ropes, it was all over. Eh, 4/10. We’re not talking about you laying down on a splattered ketchup packet here. Or taking a potassium cyanide capsule and then counteracting it with a different pill. Yeah. I’m just surprised I didn’t wake up… I actually felt a little embarrassed that I’d been off in dreamland while he was fighting a piglet. Y-You were watching me?! Ha ha ha ha ha! Yeah, why not? I’d watch you sleep all day if I could. O-Oh jeez… (I don’t care if he likes it, that’s really embarrassing!) Anyway, we should get moving. If more of these guys show up it’s gonna be trouble. *Whimper* He frowned and started to pull me along. (Aw man… Maybe he’s right. Why am I so worked up over this…? I need to pull it together! We’re not done with this game yet.) Ryuji. What now? Promise me we’ll get out of here alive. Heh. Of course we will! He squeezed my hand. Jury is still out on Kimimaro. Right! We nodded to one another, and strode out of the warehouse. Huh, so that’s what that place is. The warehouse was surrounded by a thick, green forest, but above it we could see the back of Castle Hogstein. Huh. I didn’t realize it when we were in there, but this is the place from that first night… Back when you patched me up the first time… Hard to believe that was only six days ago…I think this line belongs to Saki, but I’m not completely sure. The text box doesn’t have a name over it, it is right after and right before a Ryuji line, and it’s not voiced. The only lines that normally don’t have a tag above them is Saki’s narrator lines, but those don’t use quotation marks like this line does. Beats me. I don’t think I’ve run into this before.  Judging by the sun it was almost noon, and we didn’t have long before Hogstein figured out that we’d escaped. Do you think we can hook up with everybody else before the game starts? Maybe, but doing it without Hogstein noticing? That’s gonna be tough… We were still mulling it over when my phone rang. It’s Shidou! I nodded and flipped the phone open. Oink! What?! It wasn’t Shidou’s voice at all, but I definitely recognized it.Yes… It’s Hogstein. H-Hogstein?! H-Hey, what the hell’s going on?! Why does he have Subaru’s phone?! Oink oink. Wondering how I got this phone, huh? Oh, that’s an exciting story… Well? That’s…! (Of course… That must have been the deal Shidou was talking about…)Honestly? That’s nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. Shidou and the others definitely got the better end of that deal, by a wide margin. We’ll see an even bigger example of why that’s the case in a little bit. You’re not going to get to meet up with your friends! Bad hostages get punished, and you’ve been very bad hostages! ! Then he was gone. How did he get Subary’s phone?! Huh… drat. Well, he knows we’ve flown the coop now. Things were looking bad. Hogstein almost certainly already had people out looking for us. Maybe we should leave the woods and head for the plaza? Good idea. We need to get as far away from the warehouse as possible. We hid in the shadow of the trees, just in case, and made our way carefully toward the plaza. Hey, hold up a minute. I stopped, and Ryuji looked around cautiously for a moment before continuing. And herein lies the problem with Hogstein’s end of that deal with Subaru. Oh, that’s a good point. Why don’t you try calling somebody else? If we know what they’re doing, that’ll give us a better idea of what to do. (Hm… Who should I call?) I decided Shirabe would be the best bet. Shirabe speaking. Oh, thank goodness it’s you! I looked over at Ryuji, nodded, and turned on the speaker. We were getting pretty worried about you. How are things over there? I told him everything— how Hogstein had captured us, and how we’d escaped and were making our way to the plaza. What?! Why?! There are piglets everywhere, and they’re on high alert. I’m pretty sure they’re looking for you. Oh no… As far as what you should do now… Hold on a second. I could hear Shirabe discussing something in the background, and before long Shidou’s voice came over the speaker. This is Shidou. Listen carefully. If we beat this last game, then all seven of us should be free to go. Got it! I snapped the phone shut.Okay, so I know that some of you may be screaming one important question right now: Why the gently caress is anyone bothering with the seventh game when there are no longer any hostages? They address that… kind of… maybe… Okay, so they don’t really give us a good reason for why. But Saki and Ryuji will eventually come to that realization, I promise. In case you forgot, no, there’s no explosive collars or anything of that nature involved. The only threat that Hogstein had to keep them in the park was the lives of the hostages. The piglets haven’t been described as being armed or anything either. I guess Mai is technically still on board the cruise ship, but we could just go over there and grab her. So basically, we’re playing tag with Hogstein? Heh. Sounds fun!Oh yeah! Not sure if you caught it, but Subaru just said “all seven of us should be free to go.” Kimimaro is back, which means that there are now eight of us. I’m pretty sure Mai is not heard from again for the rest of this route for some reason. It seems like even the writers forgot that she was still in the park.  Anyway, Saki and Ryuji decide to hide out in the woods for a bit, despite the fact that this would probably be the first place for the piglets to check since it’s right outside the warehouse. drat, this isn’t looking so good… We’d made it to the edge of the forest next to Alice Kart, near the road that led back to the plaza. Just as Shirabe had said, there were piglets everywhere. (Well, Hogstein did say we weren’t going to get to meet up with our friends. I guess he wasn’t kidding…) I nodded, and we turned and moved off. I didn’t even know Hogstein had that many piglets! We’re gonna have to be careful.So we now know for sure that there’s way more than five or six of those dudes. Considering how many seemed to be on the ship, plus the ones that are apparently still manning the attractions, plus the ones canvassing the park, there’s probably more than 50 of the little bastards. Where the hell did Hogstein recruit all of these guys? Yeah… Oh, hey, speak of the devil! …! Why wouldn’t they? Like I said, the forest right outside of where Saki and Ryuji were being held is the most obvious place to look. As soon as the piglet spotted us, it dropped into a fighting stance.Oh, poo poo. It’s on now. So he’s got them running security and out looking for us? He stepped forward, in between me and the piglet. I can deal with this one. Ryuji dropped into a fighting stance of his own. I backed off to give them space. …Let’s dance! And the battle began. Rraaaaaaaagh! …! Ryuji lashed out with his right fist, clearly aiming for the piglet’s face. ! The piglet threw up both arms to ward off the blow, and hopped back a few steps. (This is his chance! If he pushes his advantage—!)Hahaha, nope. …Hnngh! But Ryuji didn’t push the attack, and instead kept his distance. (…What?) ! Its balance recovered, the piglet leapt back in and threw out a kick, which Ryuji smacked away with his right hand. Hmph. Not bad. (He’s bluffing…) drat… As the fight dragged on, his movements started to get slower, and he didn’t use his left hand at all. Yah! The piglet stepped back and held up its arms to guard against Ryuji’s strike at its chest. The punch had just been a feint, to open up the piglet’s head. Ryuji took his opening, and delivered a brutal headbutt. …! The piglet wobbled for a minute, then collapsed to the ground. It didn’t move. Heh. That’s… ri… right… Ryuji?! He dropped to his knees, and pressed a hand against his side. As I ran up to him, I saw red seeping through his shirt.So, yeah. Ryuji’s body has been pushed far enough. Only so long he could keep shrugging off injuries and illness before his body was just like “Nah, I’m done. We’re tapping out.” You’re bleeding! (The one he got when the hospital blew up…? Oh no!)Also, yeah. That wasn’t just me making things up in that chart from last update. Ryuji did actually suffer some injuries from that explosion. Sorry! I pulled his coat off. Just as I’d suspected, it wasn’t just the one wound that had opened up— they were all oozing blood. (His left arm… That’s got to be where the bullet hit him during the spaceship game…) Right, the only thing. Except you’re also young, fit, hot, confident, and secretly a sweetheart. You know, basically everything a woman could want in a man. Ryuji was trying to act tough, but it was clear he was in bad shape, and he’d gotten that way by taking hits meant for me. I’m sorry… This is all my fault… I tried desperately to keep from crying. …This is nothing. Just a flesh wound. I’ll be fine in a minute. (But…)Choice time! We can have Saki say “…Thank you” or “Stop doing this!” You should know by now which one is correct when it comes to Ryuji. You have to stop doing this! I felt tears start to trickle down my cheeks. H-Hey, Saki… You need to tell me when you’re hurt! I want to help you too. The tears were coming faster now. …But he reached out and gently wiped them away. I thought if I could keep you from finding out then maybe you wouldn’t worry, but… Heh. Guess that didn’t work out so well.To be fair, you only failed to do that because your body started spraying blood everywhere. Up until that point you were doing pretty good at not making Saki worry. Girl tends to forget just how bad your injuries are until you literally collapse from them.  Ehhhh… that remains to be seen. We’ll see if that holds up in the other routes. Ryuji… You’re right, I’m pretty worn out, but I think I’ve got enough left in me to escape. Okay. You ready to put this thing to bed?*Affection up +1*  In case you’re wondering, here’s where we’re at now with Ryuji. I think once the heart turns pink and the arrow starts to touch the heart, then we’ve been locked into the good ending. There’s a bit of leeway for missed affection points, but it seems to be a very slim margin of error. If I had to guess, you may only be able to miss 2 or 3 affection points out of the 15 or 16 available in a route. He stood up and shrugged his coat back onto his shoulders. Where to next? How about we head for the restaurant? A woman after my own heart, but I’m not feeling hungry right now.That’s also a very poor choice for places to go considering it’s a highly visible location. Me either, but if Hogstein hasn’t gotten to the piglets there yet, maybe we can patch you up.…What? Excuse me? How the gently caress would Hogstein not have “gotten to” the piglets stationed in the restaurant? Every piglet in the park that isn’t occupied with the current game is out there hunting for you!  Now see, I say that, but just watch. It will totally be the case that those piglets just happen to be out of the loop. Huh. Well, I guess it’s worth a shot. …! …? He handed us a towel, and seemed to be indicating that he was worried about us.gently caress you, game narrative. You honestly expect us to believe that Hogstein is coordinating a hostile takeover of an entire amusement park and yet hasn’t been able to contact entire sections of his staff within the past few hours? The park has broadcast systems for god’s sake! Good. This place is still safe. If they’re not all out looking for us, then we should rest up here while we can. I nodded and asked the piglet to bring us a first aid kit. ! He returned in no time, with a first aid kit and some warm tea. Thanks. …Aaaaah, this hits the spot. Me too. It’s so relaxing… I finished my tea and went to work on Ryuji. Adrenaline is a hell of a thing. Right. I think that about does it. Tell me if they’re too tight. Nope, feels good. You’re actually pretty good at this, you know?Saki is our white mage. He he. Really? We figured we were probably safe at the restaurant a little longer, so we decided to run over our situation. The last game has started, right? Probably. Kinda blows we missed it, but we’ve still got our own stuff to do, right? Yeah… We’d saved Urabe and released the hostages. There was only one thing for us to do… We’ve just gotta hold on until they beat the game! Uh-huh. Too bad we can’t punch the real Hogstein… About time. Not that I want our heroes to get caught or anything, I just hate how incompetent the piglets/Hogstein are being right now. I gestured to Ryuji, and we quickly hid. Are they looking for us? I think so. They gestured to the piglet from the restaurant a bit, looked around, and then left. They’re gone… What did they say to you?Good question… …! …! He pointed at himself, then mimed moving a chess piece. What’s he saying? Hmm… Maybe he means that a bunch of the piglet security guys are going to be here in a little bit? ! He nodded vigorously. Whoa, that’s amazing! You figured that out just from his weird little dance? It’s hard to explain. It’s more like I kind of… felt like that’s what he was saying? The question here is, is this piglet genuinely trying to help our heroes, or is he helping to steer them towards a particular destination? Chess is generally an ominous way of symbolizing a point. Also, neither of you finds it suspicious that those security piglets dropped in, barely looked around, and then left while saying “We’ll be back in a little bit with some other guys”? It sure sounds like they are nudging you towards something. He seemed genuinely impressed. Ha ha ha ha. Oh come on, it’s not that big of a deal. (I can’t exactly tell him I just took a wild guess…) A-Anyway, if we stay here they’re going to get us. We need to leave. Okay. We’ll be leaving now. Thanks! ! The piglet waved good-bye to us as we headed out through the restaurant’s back door. …The hell is this place? Instead of going through the plaza, we snuck through an alley to the side. Whoa, I didn’t know about this one… We’d found ourselves in front of an attraction populated by statues of animals playing instruments. It looked like it was some kind of music game.Beats me. Animal Crossing land, maybe? Can’t say I recall any big name music video games involving animals. Unless you count PaRappa the Rapper, I suppose. If it wasn’t for Hogstein, this placed [sic] would have been so much fun… Ssh! Quiet! …? A piglet that had been standing in front of the attraction’s entrance had started walking in our direction. …? …? We scrambled around behind a tree, and held our collective breath. (Please oh please don’t catch us…) ? That was close. We snuck past, as quietly as we could. Oh, so that’s what that place was. Wonder if we’ll get to see it in a different route? Once we were out of sight of the music attraction, my phone began to ring. It’s Shidou— no wait, that means it’s Hogstein. Yeah, good point. I opened my phone and turned on the speaker. Oink. You’re better than I thought. You were supposed to have gotten yourselves caught by now, you know. What do you want? Me? Oh, nothing really. I just wanted to tell you it’s pointless to run. You son of a— Pretty soon there’ll be more of my piglets out there looking for you! And remember, you can’t leave! Because…Yes? …Those are the rules!…So? Then he hung up. Not much of a conversationalist, huh? (Something he just said seemed… off. I just can’t put my finger on it…) So we can’t leave because those are the rules? We already knew that. (Because those are the rules…? Wait… What was the penalty for breaking the rules… Wait… that means…) Oh, for… Come on, Saki. You clearly have it figured out already. (Okay, let’s go over what’s happened so far. Yesterday we rescued the hostages, but got captured in their place. We managed to escape, but Hogstein called us on Shidou’s phone. He called to remind us that his rules prevent us from escaping from the park. Right…? The rules are pretty clear: To leave the park is forbidden, and if we try, the hostages die. That’s why we’ve [sic] haven’t been able to break the rules during any of these stupid games. But… I know I’m missing something. I can feel it!)The answer is “rescued”, because loving duh.  What do you mean? We couldn’t just try and leave the park before because if we did Hogstein would kill the hostages, remember? But now that we rescued them, the only hostages he had were us, and if we ran away… Oh! He doesn’t have any hostages, so he doesn’t have any leverage! We can do whatever we want!I told you they would figure it out eventually. Of course, the problem with that realization is that it comes too late. If he felt like it, Hogstein could just say “If Saki and Ryuji leave the park, then the others automatically fail their game and get blown up.” If they had figured this out while they were on the phone with Shidou, then yes, there would have been nothing stopping them from just running away (other than the piglets, I guess). Right! drat, you’re smart. I’m glad you’re here. Before I realized what was happening, he’d wrapped his arms around me in a bear hug. H-Hey! Ryuji! (He doesn’t mess around, does he?!) I guess that’s kind of what makes him… him, though. All right! This changes things! If we can just walk out, that’s gonna be way faster than trying to play hide-and-seek. Yeah. Now we just need to figure out how to get to the entrance! Hands held tight, we headed off toward freedom. We’d passed the hospital and were on our way to the entrance when— …! Another one?! drat things are like roaches! Get outta my way! He kicked out at the piglet, knocking it to the ground. *Pant* *Pant* drat… they just keep coming… He was breathing heavily now, and stopped to wipe sweat from his forehead. We’d run into a few piglets on our way, and Ryuji had managed to fight them off, but… Do you need to rest a little…? No, I’m fine. We need to keep going. Even if he said he was fine, I could see he wasn’t. (Where was Hogstein keeping all of these piglets…?) They’d started combing the forest and alleyways, leaving us with very few places to hide. Well, at least it seems like they can only communicate with those weird gestures. Yeah. Guess we lucked out there, huh? He was right. If the piglets had been able to coordinate with a radio or something, catching us would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. (I think his wounds are starting to open again…) Every so often I could catch a glimpse of the bandage I’d given him beneath his coat, and it was already soaked with red. We’re almost there. Just have to hang in a little longer. I wormed myself under his shoulder and tried to lift him up. His clothes were soaked with sweat. H-Hey, c’mon, I said I was fine… Saki! Language! …Heh. Yeah, you’re right. Thanks. Slowly and cautiously, we continued toward the front gate. Ooo. Cool. At last we reached the Bazaar Planet attraction, which was connected to the entrance to the park. I… I don’t see any piglets. Maybe they didn’t think we’d be crazy enough to try and leave the park. Shops lined each side of the promenade and at the end we could see the gate. There wasn’t a single piglet in sight. (If we can get through here, this nightmare will finally be over!) I adjusted Ryuji on my shoulders, and began to walk. Kinda hard to believe it’s only been seven days, huh? Ha ha ha! Can’t blame you. You certainly weren’t the first. I don’t think that anymore, though. I know you’re not scary at all. You’re actually really nice. And I know that even though you look like a real tough guy, you love theme parks a whole lot. He coughed awkwardly and grinned at me. (I think it’s kinda cute, but I guess I can see why he’d be a little embarrassed.) I’ve learned you’re not the type of lady who just wants some white knight to run around fighting all her battles for her. Oh, right. I also learned you look real cute when you sleep… H-Hey! You’re not supposed to talk about that! Ha ha ha! Well, tough luck. I’m not forgetting that vision of beauty as long as I live. Now it was my turn to blush. He laughed and seemed very pleased with himself. (It’s funny to him, but what if I do something embarrassing when I sleep, like drool?!)Drooling wouldn’t be too bad. Could be worse. Better than sleep farting or something.  We’re all a pretty interesting bunch, huh? Those other guys are real characters… Yeah… (I wonder if I won’t get to see Ryuji anymore once the game is over… But I do want to see him again… I really do…) A life or death game hardly seems like the kind of place where you’d meet someone special, but… I had. Someone very special.Not that hard to imagine. Dangerous or life-threatening situations make you emotionally drained and cause you to seek comfort in others, which forms a dependance that you misconstrue as true love. There’s the exit. This is it. I hadn’t noticed how close we were. The gate was only 30 feet away. What?! As Hogstein’s voice echoed through the air, piglets poured out from behind the shops. poo poo! This is bad… this is real bad… Before I knew it, we were surrounded by more piglets than I’d seen in the whole week we’d spent at the park. So, yeah. Remember how I said that Hogstein could have easily nullified Saki and Ryuji’s escape just by threatening the rest of the group, but didn’t bother to? Well, what do you know, it was part of a trap. My my, leaving so soon? Please, I couldn’t possibly let you go without a little souvenir! Oink oink! Is that a gun?!Also, he may have obtained that gun that Ryuji got from Subaru. Oops. There was no mistaking the cold metal object in Hogstein’s hand. (No… Does this mean he was just playing us the whole time…?) Figure out? Please. You’re so silly! I lured you here! But when did you… The phone call! Damnit! The piglets began to close in. We were done for. But Ryuji just patted my head. Don’t look so worried. There’s nothing like seeing you smile. What? Suddenly the world spun as Ryuji tucked me under his arm like a football and took off toward the gate. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! H-Hey?! …?! Get outta my way! …! But with every hit, he slowed down a little bit more. If his wounds hadn’t been torn back open already, they certainly were now, and he had likely given himself some new ones too. Ryuji! Hogstein stood between us and the gate, gun in hand. Oink! It’s all over! He lifted the gun to aim it straight at Ryuji’s head. (He’s going to kill him!)There’s only one thing to do! I felt something begin to boil up inside me. (Why is he always doing this?! I thought we made a promise to work together!  Let’s get pissed!  I let out a roar like no yell I’d ever yelled before. Ryuji and the piglets in front of us stopped in their tracks, stunned. And… Hogstein jumped, and in what seemed like an instinctive reaction he cowered and threw his hands up to protect himself. For the moment, he was frozen. Y-You’re gonna whip that out now? Never mind that! This is your opening! Use it! ! Right! He scrambled desperately to re-aim his gun, but it was too late. Ryuji shot forward— He roared with fury as he smacked into the frozen pig. Hublugadablah! Yes! With me still clutched under his arm, Ryuji leapt out through the gate. He landed on his feet, wavered for a moment, then collapsed. We… did it! What’s… next…? And then he passed out. I clambered to my feet, grabbed ahold of his arms, and started to pull. (He’s put himself in danger a bunch of times for me. I’m not gonna let Hogstein kill him. I’ll keep him safe if it’s the last thing I do. Just a little further… I just need to get him away from the park…!) One step at a time, I hauled him away from the park, and Hogstein.
Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Nov 14, 2020 |
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Nov 14, 2020 20:09
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*After a fade to black* I opened the curtains and let the warm morning light stream into my room. (I can’t believe it’s only been a week… I’m still sore all over…) After Ryuji and I escaped, the rest of our teammates beat the game they were playing and left the park too. The press was all over the whole thing for a while. Fortunately, Shidou had pulled a few strings and managed to keep them out of our hair for the most part. Too loving bad! He oversaw a new theme park that was taken over by terrorists wearing pig costumes during it’s grand opening. They didn’t even seem to be armed! They just rigged a bunch of bombs. If Keiji had hired decent security then this whole thing would have ended with Hogstein and the piglets being shot dead as soon as they tried to rush the stage. As for the rest of our team… Wakasa had gone back to work as a pop star. From what I heard he was pretty grumpy that none of us had known who he was.That’s fine. He’s got maybe 4 years left to his teen idol career, after which nobody will know who is he. But apparently he was channeling that into his career, and he was determined to become so popular that everyone would recognize him.HA!  The rumor was that he was saving up money for job hunting, and that he was shooting to get a job in the game industry.Eh, I can’t knock that. At least he’s getting out there and trying to become a productive member of society instead of staying a NEET. Urabe… Urabe had turned himself in. He’d regretted working with Hogstein, and wanted to try and make amends for what he’d done. I’d told him that I wanted to get a reading from him when he got out, and he’d given me a warm smile and said it would be his first priority.When he gets out? For what will likely be terrorism related charges? In Japan? …Sure, Saki. Sure.  He hadn’t even been arrested. When the police showed up, the pig had disappeared. What was Hogstein after? If anyone could find out, I had a feeling it was Shirabe. Shidou had gone back to his job as a detective, and I’d heard from him that the piglets had turned out to just be ordinary people. Are you making GBS threads me? Mass hypnotism? Really? That’s how you’re going to cop out of that plot point? Honestly, we’d been left with more questions than answers.You and everyone else in this thread. (Maybe someday I’ll get some answers, but right now I’ve got other things on my mind.) And speaking of those things… My door burst open. Ryuji! I hadn’t seen him in a while, and this surprise visit made my heart swell in my chest. As soon as my uncle had gotten out of the park, he’d called the police, who had immediately moved in to surround it.Whoa whoa whoa, hold on. The police hadn’t already surrounded the park? They had to be called? There were a ton of other park guests in attendance that escaped! Did they all just go home without telling anyone about the terrorist bombers running around the new theme park? It hadn’t taken me long to reach them, and they’d saved us. I was curious about what had happened to Hogstein, but I figured I could leave that to Shidou and Shirabe. I’d survived, and so had the man I loved. That was enough for now. What are you doing here? I was gonna come back you up. The speed of his recovery had been astounding. Even with all of his wounds, he’d only need to stay in the hospital for about a week. Did they actually let you go, or did you just leave? You need to learn to sit— Before I could finish he threw his arms around me and squeezed. You’re trying to change the subject. Buttering me up isn’t gonna work. He just laughed. You know, I’ve had a lot of time to think over the past week. …Oh yeah? I… I think I’m gonna quit the escort business. What?! That wasn’t what I’d expected at all. (I mean, I’m glad to hear he’s not going to be flirting with other women all day, but…) A-Are you sure? I thought you were doing that so you could make women smile…? (Since he’d lost the chance to see his mother smile…)Uh… wasn’t that his grandmother? His mother was the one that talked about the smiling thing, but it was his grandmother that he grew distant from and missed her passing away. Ha. Man, you can see right through me, huh? He gave me a crooked grin. Oh yeah…? My heart started to beat faster. I let myself fall into his arms, and pressed my head against his chest to hear his own heart. I only want to make one lady smile Saki, and she’s you. He smiled. Ryuji… We leaned forward and our lips met. We kissed, and everything else stopped mattering.  What? …Yeah, that’s it. No, there’s no post-credits stinger or anything. That’s the end of Sweet Fuse: At Your Side.  Who the hell is Hogstein? What about Mai and Ayumu’s relationship? What about Mai in general?  Who was the person in those flashbacks? What is the connection that all of these guys have to Hogstein that would make him want to get revenge on them? What made Kimimaro want to help Hogstein out with said revenge? Who was the seventh participant intended to be (remember that Saki wasn’t originally part of Hogstein’s plan)?  All of those questions and more…  Will remain unanswered!  Yeah, so I mentioned this in the live thread when I was recording the ending. Turns out that there is an “optimal” route order to play this game in. Kouta, Towa, and Ryuji’s routes focus mainly on the characters themselves and don’t offer a whole lot in the way of answers to the plot. From what I could find online, the correct order is apparently Kouta/Towa/Ryuji -> Urabe -> Shidou -> Shirabe. While Mitarashi’s route may have been sweet and lovey-dovey, it didn’t offer much in the way of payoff (outside of the romantic kind, anyway). So I asked the thread how we should proceed from here. Here’s the general consensus:  The prologue and Stages 1-3 barely diverge. Stage 4-7 are the route stages and those do diverge quite a bit according to a spoiler-free review I checked (that had that route order in it I mentioned). What we’ll do is that I will follow the suggested route order for the remaining characters. I’ll go over the Break Time events and unique CGs that show up in Stages 1-3 in a little mini update. After that, we’ll do normal updates for Stages 4-7. This should make things go a little quicker than us repeating the first few stages for the sake of only a handful of lines of unique dialogue that don’t change anything. Anyway, that’s for the future. Before we finish off Mitarashi’s route, I’ll do a quick run down of the “Bad End”. Like I thought, it is possible to get a Good and Bad ending for each route. We just saw the Good end, but in Mitarashi’s bad end he gets shot in the foot by Hogstein when he attempts to bum rush him near the gate. Ryuji manages to throw Saki past the gate as he falls and Saki regretfully gets up and runs away (at Ryuji’s urging). The rest of the ending plays out roughly the same, but when Saki is in her room later on, she notes that while Ryuji did manage to survive, she arrived at his hospital room to find it packed with other women (his customers). Saki turns to leave and Ryuji tells her this on the way out:  Saki wonders to herself what went wrong, since she never cared that they were from “different worlds”. She then notes that today was the day he was supposed to be discharged from the hospital, but she decides that it would be better for her to just go back to sleep. And that’s it. There’s no accompanying CG. I’ll go over each Bad End as we finish the different routes. One of the cool things that Sweet Fuse does (which I only discovered at the end), is that you can go back and see the Bad/Good endings without having to replay the entire game. If you go to Diary on the title screen and select the final stage of a character’s route, you get this:   You can actually set the affection points before starting the Stage. I think that’s a cool feature, personally. A lot of other VN’s tend to get around this by giving you a “Skip to Choice” option, but Skip to Choice still requires you to know which choices you need to make to get different endings. This is just “Here’s the affection points you have, spread them out as you see fit.” That’s all from me, for now anyway. Thanks to everyone who followed along with this LP who may be considering ditching the thread now that we’ve technically beaten the game. For those of you who plan to stick around, we’ll be moving on to either Kouta or Towa’s route next.
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Nov 14, 2020 20:09
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Thanks for playing this game. I wanted to see this game because I liked the idea of a more temperamental female protagonist but it doesn't really hold itself together well towards the end.
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Nov 14, 2020 21:56
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CannonFodder posted:Spent all day reading this to catch up. I enjoyed Conception Plus and am enjoying this, thanks PK! Thanks! I'm glad my earlier efforts in LP'ing have resulted in more people following this one. The stuff I've done so far have(with the exception of maybe WoFF) been niche games, so it's hard to build an audience. Taberquol posted:Thanks for playing this game. I wanted to see this game because I liked the idea of a more temperamental female protagonist but it doesn't really hold itself together well towards the end. No problem. I won't be giving my full thoughts on the game until we've been through the other routes, but I will say that I'm feeling a bit mixed on the idea that each route is vastly different. Saki has has a strong and somewhat aggressive stance in the general route, such as with Subaru being all "Girls shouldn't do this" and such. However, it seems like Mitarashi's route had her become a lot more passive and meek. I want to know if that holds true for every route, or if it's just Mitarashi's. I'm also not super thrilled that we need to play every route in order to get some basic answers about the plot. I guess it provides incentive to do each route, but if you only like one or two of the men then you either need to force yourself through the guys you don't like in order to get answers to the mystery, or simply not learn anything.
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Nov 14, 2020 22:12
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Hell yeah one route down. It answered nothing except one thing and it wasn't a great explanation but it was a cute sorry for the characters. Can't wait for routes that explain a bit more.
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Nov 14, 2020 22:28
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So there weren't any police around and Saki had to drag Mitarashi out of the park. What was stopping Hogstein from having his piglets just grab them or threatening the other guys still in the park or just shooting them in the back? They walked out of the park and he just went "Oh, welp guess that's it I'm out of here." Seems odd, but besides that I am actually interested to find out what's going on with the plot in the other routes.
FalloutFan56 fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Nov 16, 2020 |
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Nov 14, 2020 22:29
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FalloutFan56 posted:So there weren't any police around and Saki had to drag Mitarashi out of the park. What was stopping Hogstein from having his piglets just grab them or threatening the other guys still in the park or just shooting them in the back? They walked out of the park and he just went "Oh, welp guess that's it I'm out of here." Seems odd, but besides that I am actually interested to find out what's going on with the plot in the other routes. That part would probably require some mental gymnastics to make work. So let's try it: -Hogstein not shooting them in the back is probably because he was stunned and lost the gun as a result of Ryuji shoulder tackling him. We don't know for sure how big Hogstein really is, but if it's just a teenager or some scrawny person inside that suit, then getting bulldozed by a guy that can carry Saki under one arm (an arm that had been injured earlier) would likely leave Hogstein sprawled out on the pavement for a while. You typically don't hop back on your feet after getting run over by freight-train. As for the gun, I highly doubt that Hogstein managed to keep his grip on that after hitting the pavement. I could conceivably see Ryuji and Saki making it out of the gate before Hogstein could recover enough to fire at them. -As for why the piglets didn't do anything, I can only assume that it has to do with that bullshit about them being hypnotized or whatever. With Hogstein down, maybe they weren't sure how to act. Ryuji also apparently plowed through some of them in order to get to Hogstein, so it might be possible that they were physically unable to stop the pair. -And as for why nobody chased them after they got outside the park gates, that's another matter entirely. Maybe we'll find out something in another route. The only possibility I could think up is that there's something in the park that's maintaining the mass hypnotism of the piglets, so if the piglets tried to chase Saki and Ryuji outside the park then the hypnotism might have worn off. Also, I just want to reiterate how loving stupid the hypnotism plot point is. Blaze Dragon posted:Hell yeah one route down. It answered nothing except one thing and it wasn't a great explanation but it was a cute sorry for the characters. I was going to say "What thing did it answer?", but then I got started on the whole piglets thing in the part above and remembered that stupid nonsense. I guess Mitarashi's route did technically answer the question of who the piglets were and why they were working with Hogstein. Anyway, you will likely continue to wait for more answers. I'll probably do Towa's route before Kouta's, just so that we can get Towa out of the way sooner, but neither of them will provide much in the way of answers. It appears we'll need to wait until Urabe's route before we find out anything new. Urabe's route is one that I'm looking forward to the most, because there's clearly something big going on with him. I also want to know what the hell his route will even be, considering he disappeared in Stage 3 and wasn't seen again until the very end of Stage 5 (and even then, wasn't actually conscious until the Epilogue). Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Nov 16, 2020 |
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Nov 16, 2020 16:41
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