Continuation of my previous post….
I finally had time to finish playing through the game. I did manage to get 75% of the quests completed as well as 74% of the NPC’s in the game photographed (yes, you need to take a snapshot of each in order to fill out the character gallery). Trophy wise, I have around 40% of them which is far more than I expected to get even following the Japanese guide.
Not too surprisingly, I didn’t get any specific heroines ending. What is surprising is that the trophy awarded for what is the standard ending (さよなら報道部), has been acquired by just 10% of those playing (so many who bought the game haven’t even played through to the end).
There are several important points after completing the first playthrough. Once that happens, you have access to all your items and currency when starting a new game. During the first playthrough, if you restart over (new game), none of this carries over. Thus it is recommended to do an initial playthrough and to acquire as much items and currency so that time does not need to be wasted again to earn money. Note that this carry over does not happen by simply continuing a game and reloading an earlier date. You need to actually start a new game to get this carry over (again, only after an initial playthough) to start from the July 7th date.
Finishing the game also reveals the “Free Mode” menu on the main screen. This mode allows you to bring most of the character models (this also includes the animals) into the game where you can free pose them (X/Y/Z axis, motion, and expression). Up to 30 characters can be used. Time also passes in this mode (can be accelerated pressing L3) to allow afternoon and evening scenery.
Unlike avatar mode (which is unlocked for each heroine that you get an alternating ending with except for Megu who is already available), there is no way to change outfits and there is no quick access to other parts of the island (free mode starts off at the school gate) so you have to run your character over to those places if you want to pose them elsewhere (you can’t slide since the square button brings up the character selection box, and there are no bikes in this mode).
Since almost every single emotion, expression, and motion is accessible, it’s not surprising the amount of creativity some folks have come up with. I just played with it for a short while and found that while it is an interesting novelty, it’s also held back by the inability to change the outfits.
Which leads me to the interesting observation that while there is the “Shop” button on the main menu, that it seems like they aren’t bothering with any DLC for the game. This is highly unusual for D3P since that has always been a huge cash cow for them. Part of it might be practical though since there are 300+ NPC’s (some of the artwork assets would need to be specifically modified for some characters due to differing body types).
As far as the game itself, I pretty much covered the bulk of it before. What I wanted to do was play the game all the way through to give it an actual grade. Content wise, the game has a lot of it (it just starts off very slow); there’s more I haven’t yet encountered since those will only become available when you pursue each heroines specific route to their individual endings. For that, I have to give the game an A-/B+.
What hasn’t changed is my opinion on the actual open world game play when it comes to the lack of conveyance with many events and objectives. Playing through the game without the use of any sort of guide is an exercise in futility given that the majority of it is calendar/time based. If you removed that aspect, then the puzzle solving nature would be far more tolerable. For that part, I have to give it a C-.
Overall, I give the game a C+ which is an actual improvement over my initial impressions which wasn’t very favorable at all (I gave it an overgenerous C- which in actuality was more like a D or F). With the use of the Japanese guides, I actually did enjoy playing it. And I’m interested in experiencing the other content from playing through to the alternate endings (which is a huge change from initially where I thought my game play would end after one playthrough).
I’m not sure if it would be worth the effort for this game to be localized though. For games that have a fighting angle to it (like Onechanbara, Senran Kagura, and AKIBA’S TRIP), it’s a lot simpler to do. AKIBA’S TRIP has some story line to it but it is nowhere near as extensive as the decision tree branching that exists in this game (so there is far more dialog that would need to be dealt with).
I mean, outside of the main characters, even a lot of the Japanese voice dialog is non-existent as you get further into the game. And as I mentioned before, just having it localized does not help with the lack of conveyance when dealing with completing many quests and events. And that is the bulk of the game. The quirky angle of the game that was hyped is really just a tiny novelty (as noted in a previous post, I haven’t really engaged in that part since I know it would get old quick). I guess we’ll see if XSEED decides to actually tackle this one.
