The first update for the game was released the other day. The update directly addressed the operation of the bicycle, walking speed of the protagonist, added the keyword 辰神様 (I haven’t gotten there yet but it is for that NPC that pops up at Ogami-jinja once the offertory area is unlocked), fixed the photo galleries delete function, and addressed an issue with the Hikaru (the track running girl) event.
The bike riding behavior was changed with the R2 button. Now, all you need to do is hold down the button to go (no more pressing and releasing continuously to move; which I had mentioned in my other post about how ridiculous this was).
Sliding (when it comes to timing) also seem to be less sensitive than before as I did notice less extra input being missed (part of that might be related to the walk speed changes). This patch however seems to have introduced a bug with the news room on the 3rd floor though where the pulsing gold event marker is always activated even when I’m inside the room (this is even when there isn’t an event).
Some events themselves may also be bugged. Like I didn’t get Megu to spawn outside the station for the movie and cafe event even though all conditional flags (favorability and e-mail reply) were met.
The following are additional game play observations
I also didn’t realize before that the faint blueish light orbs that show up randomly on the ground were actually currency. That exact same graphic is also used for many quest objectives though when you need to find at item (like one of the first quests at the start of the game is to find a black wallet; but that wallet was just this very faint blueish light on top of the green roof that only spawned once I jumped down from the walkway onto the roof). The only reason I knew it was on the roof was I watched a video of someone who did it (and this isn’t the only quest that is like this). Yeah, you can go run around and try finding the right NPC to use the keyword with to get more clues but talk about tedium. My point is they are often times unnoticeable until you get near one (and they often times just spawn randomly once you are in an area). Again, simple conveyance issues.
Anyway, for dropped currency, they range in denomination from 10円 to 10,000円. The higher amounts are fairly rare though. For 10円 coins that you find, those are automatically kept. For everything else, you are given 3 actions to chose from. Going from left to right, the first one seems to increase your favorability rating (basically returning it to the person that dropped it), the middle choice allows you to keep the currency at the expense of lowering your reputation, and the last one is where you take it to the police koban and you get 1 or 2 reputation points restored. This last choice also acts as a quick transport to town if you find one of these far away from the koban.
While not specifically mentioned (probably one of the ones under the miscellaneous category), they also seemed to have patched the bug where you could feed the turtle bait to the cats and dogs. Feeding them increases their favorability rating to the point where you can get them to follow you around and/or perform tricks (like shaking hands, rolling over, etc). The turtle bait at the antique shop sell for 350円 while cat food sells for 1,000円 and dog food sells for 2,500円. You need to feed each animal more than 6 times to get them to do something (which is why many were using the turtle bait since it was the cheapest).
Also, just to give an idea of how far I did not get in my first few days of play, I’m only on my first weekend in the game (July 13th). The reason is I restarted at least 4 times having failed all but the toilet paper event by trying to figure out the objectives on my own. The problem is you end up running out of time (and on some days, you may have multiple events that can trigger). I don’t mind puzzles but for many objectives in this game, they are like this. I’ve thus resigned myself that I am going to have to rely on other players game play videos/guides (no, I am not going to just not play it as that would be a total waste; I’d like to at least play it to the end, get most of the quests and events, and at least unlock “free mode” since that is good for laughs). What I won’t do is try for all the alternative endings as it will be really masochistic to try and platinum this game.
I also noticed this first Sunday is devoid of any events and quests. I’m not sure if it is always like this but I ended up spending most of the game day fishing and then went to the beach where there was absolutely NO ONE (you’d expect at least a portion of the games NPC’s to be spawned here on weekends). Such days would be good to have missed events spawn so that you can complete them. General conclusion as noted in my other post is that it really isn’t worth it to run around the other parts of the island (there are only a small number of NPC’s in those locations) since most everything happens at the school or around the town.
