Ni no Kuni: Shiroki Seihai no Joou（二ノ国 白き聖灰の女王）

The whole idea behind Ni no Kuni was like a dream come true when it came out like 10 years ago. An RPG by Level-5 and Studio Ghibli with music from Joe Hisashi? Finally, the technology had advanced to where you can play a game that looks and sounds just like a Ghibli movie!!

In 2011, this was some god damn amazing shit

Yes, of course, I'm skipping the first DS game with the not so high definition graphics far from cinematic quality. At the time, I was just starting my journey as a Jhipster gamer. In fact, one of my first import buys for my collection (aka bad financial spending habits) was for the Japanese Magic Master that came with the limited edition of the DS game. Fortunately, you can still pick this up for a reasonable price unlike the false scarcity shit they pulled with the non-Jhipster Wizard Edition.

Way better than getting a stupid plushie imo

It's hard to believe that almost a decade has gone by since this game was released. Gaming has sure come a long ways since then. There's like WAY more frames per second and look at all dem pixels and shit. Oh and don't forget all that lazer ray tracing shiznits!! You can stare for hours at the reflection in the water as you go from one mission to the next, exactly like very other mind numbingly bland and unoriginal AAA game. Hell yeah!!!

Yet another grumpy old man rant but all I see these days is racist censorship, pay to play online, shit gacha games that last maybe a year at best, and everybody trying to move suckers into some sort of subscription service. And now PS5 is going X for confirm and O for cancel with no option to switch?? Jesus fucking Christ (not the brown one)!

So glad 'Merica is pushing superior moral values onto depraved Japanese gamers

The fact is, Ni no Kuni looks exactly as good as it needs to be for a Ghibli style video game. I mean honestly, it probably would have even worked on a PS2, like Rogue Galaxy (also Level-5). The game looks gorgeous and I really enjoyed the intro and the whole premise for your adventure. I especially loved watching you eat your mom's delicious looking eggs and bacon in fine Ghibli style.

There's nothing that says Ghibli like some eggs and bacon

Unfortunately, perhaps my hype for this game was a little too high as the gameplay definitely has that Level-5 feel to it. Though I've only played a few of Level-5 games so far, there's just something about them that seems super mainstream. While I don't dislike Level-5 games, the gameplay never seems very original and feels super safe. It's almost like marketing research comes up with what's supposed to be fun and you end up with a game that's well... supposed to be fun. You know what I mean? All I'm saying is, I was all into the game until they introduced Imagens and oh hey look, it's a fucking Pokemon clone. Bleh.

I just used the pink punch guy for like 95% of the time

I never played a Pokemon game for more than a couple hours and I don't know if I ever will but I'm not into this collect 'em all shit. I got the All-in-one edition so I used the special DLC or whatever that was included for the bulk of the game. Sure, you can recruit enemies, level up the little buggers, and feed them shit to evolve but yeah, not my thing.

I did spend a good 40 hours to beat the game and then some for trophies and I'm still probably far from getting the platinum. Out of all that time, I feel like most of it was spent doing those side quests primarily getting those heart pieces from here to there. Oh, and playing fetch for that fucker who kept losing his damn notebook everywhere.

Now, it may sound like I didn't like the game but overall, I have to say it's a solid title. While the battle system wasn't my favorite, it was good enough to keep my interest even though I probably spent most of the time just punching the shit out of everybody with the pink guy.

I really, really wanted to love this game. I mean, just look at it!

Score: 3.5 git off my lawn with your Cross Worlds mobile MMO crap!! out of 5 (38 hours to beat)

I was really on the fence on whether to score this as an above-average or a great game. While the graphics, cutscenes, and music were undoubtedly great, I went with a 3.5 above-average. I liked the story but I feel like it didn't quite have the impact of a good Ghibli film. Certainly, the characters development could have been better. I mean, geesh, the 3 characters from Koudelka had better chemistry than Oliver, Jairo, and Maru. As for the gameplay, it was I dunno... polished I suppose. Your party's AI isn't great but good enough. You gotta level up your Pokemon err Imagens and switch them out during battles etc. Plus, you got all them fetch side quests, alchemy, etc., etc. It's a good game but just not quite a great game for me. But I'm sure we can all agree, Joe Hisashi is da bomb yo!

I mean it's a bit heavy for gaming BGM but still.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Chaos;Head Love Chu Chu!（CHAOS;HEAD らぶChu☆Chu!）

I was curious about these harem spinoffs that appear to be almost obligatory at this point for the Science Adventure series, especially for a game as dark as Chaos;Head Noah. Even though this game follows the events of the first game, it was easily able to sidestep the issue of what happened in Shibuya with the whole delusion "science" (emphasis on the quotes) thing. Unfortunately, in the real world, being delusional doesn't affect reality (unless of course, you're a Trump supporter).

All this science is what I love about this series

Takumi has matured a bit after the events of the first game so he's ever slightly less annoying (but still pretty damn annoying). As you would expect from a harem fan-service love comedy, the story is far more light-hearted compared to the first game. To be honest, the gore in the Cero Z version of Noah was a little too much even for me. Fortunately, you don't have to worry about dead babies, etc. this time around. Also, this was before the Soyney Cali era so you could still get away with Cero C for a sliver of fabric without holy rays of damnation.

There is a button to hide the text but... are you really that desperate?

This game does get the obligatory +0.5 Jhipster smugness bonus point. I'm not sure why but they didn't even localize the original game much less this fan-service sequel. I suppose non-Jhipsters could try to do whatever non-Jhipsters do if you're that desperate to see a tiny bit of panti. I mean, I won't judge (you sicko).

But if I hide the text, how would you know what's being said here? 

As for the story, I suppose it was a decent follow up adventure to the events of the first game. This time, it's a standard galge ADV where you just have to choose the Mousou triggers that corresponds to each girl's route. In that sense, the story does get a bit boring as it follows the same main narrative just with a different girl. I got so tired of reading the same but slightly altered events and explanations from Erin. Oh yeah, speaking of Erin, she's the sole new character stuck in your computer. I liked Erin's concept and VA and had a few chuckles especially when you scroll up. However, I felt her lack of involvement in the events of the story was a missed opportunity.

2014 when you could still joke about being a lolicon

Speaking of dubious behaviors around fictional underage characters voiced by adults (I feel like I have to point this out), yes, there is an imouto route. There is no incest of course though for reasons I won't go into due to spoilers, the game does bring up some valid points as to why they might not be related. Genetically though, it's a pretty weak argument.

Remember kids, Cero C is ok if you're 15 or older!

As you can imagine for a consumer title, the whole thing is just a big tease. The fact that the routes all follow the same major plot does make the game feel a bit lazy and requires quite a bit of text skipping. Two routes were especially disappointing because they were practically identical. If you played the first game, you could probably guess why since it's Yua.

Yeah, they don't do jack. Not even censored non-sex.

Score: 3.5 What's wrong with imouto naked apron? She just wants to feel comfortable while cooking! out of 5 (24 hours to beat)

Overall, I would say the game is fine. It has some funny moments and it was entertaining enough. The quality of the game is pretty high like the rest of the series so it does get a slightly above-average score. Now, I just need to delete all these screenshots from my sister's computer since she's all complaining about hentai porn or something.

This was NOT the reaction I got when my sister found these pics

If this got localized, do you think they'll go with "mouth rape" for the translation?

I know you are but what am I?

The tips are very helpful, never knew what NTR meant. No, really!

No, don't talk about the law! It's called plausible deniability!

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Binary Domain（バイナリー ドメイン）

This may come as a surprise to regular readers of this blog (all 2 of you) but I'm actually a pretty big fan of FPS and 3rd person shooters (TPS?) or at least I was while devs still cared about the single player campaign and not whatever battle royale garbage they're trying to hawk these days (damn kids). Yes, I played Wolfenstein and later the free shareware part of Doom probably on somebody else's computer. I played the Quake games, Unreal, Half-Life (including the original), blah blah blah so I have probably well over 10 if not 20 years of shooting enemies dead. And yet somehow I have no urge to own guns in real life and would be perfectly happy not having to worry about what other idiots might do with them but let's not get into that cause it's fucking depressing, not even joking.

It's not fucking Doom (1993), it's Doom. I hate it when they steal the original name.

Anyways, for reasons I can't begin to fathom, most of these types of games are American so I didn't talk about it here as a Jhipster but here we have a 3rd person shooter by the Ryo ga Gotoku studio. I played it in English because Japanese dub for English speaking characters is meh (don't confuse Jhipsters with weebs). It takes place in Japan and logically, the Japanese characters speak in Japanese amongst themselves so the "English" dub is definitely way to go.

She's Chinese but Asians all look the same, right? #racist

I play all my shooters on PC because I'm old school and will always play with keyboard+mouse unless it's a console exclusive. This one is a pretty standard over the shoulder Gears of War cover system type of game but the damn robots suck up a lot of damage at least on Hard difficulty. It's actually harder in the beginning until you upgrade your weapon.  Near the end, you'll be popping robot heads like Trump's doctor pops pills.

Damage being like 0.01%. Prepare to pump hundreds of bullets to take this puppy down.

The distinctive feature of this game is the whole voice command thing which I turned off cause I'm not going to be saying "Yeah" into a mic like an idiot. In fact, I had to Google the fact that you HAVE to turn off the voice command in order to use the keyboard to pick your reply. Picking the right answers and also playing well will raise affection levels with your team members while friendly fire will do the opposite, which is annoying because they're constantly running into your line of sight. Parts of the story will change depending on how well you get along with the characters which makes this game feel definitely Japanese.

You can't have a Japanese game without a geisha, right?

Of course, I didn't give a fuck about the guys or Rachael (pretty much also a guy in my book) and spent most of the game with Faye and Cain. Having only one hottie definitely does NOT feel Japanese so I was stuck with Cain as the third wheel. I don't think getting chummy with Cain does anything for the story but I don't care about Steam achievements so I'm happy with the ending I got and have little urge to play through it again.

As for the story, the whole robot vs human thing has been done so many times, it's almost impossible to have an original story. The only thing I would say is that the game tried to be a little bit original and didn't do anything too cliché like Blade Runner or something. The main character was a bit fishy being called the Survivor and all but I won't give anything away. Overall, like the rest of the game, it was fun enough.

You only kill robots so I guess that doesn't make you a murderer #BeAllYouCanBe

Score: 3 but wait, what if we were all robots in the Matrix in somebody's dream? Whoaaaa, deep. out of 5 (14 hours to beat)

I always have a shooter on the side as an outlet after hours of hardcore RPGing or hours and hours of ADV reading. I still play on hard mode because hardcore gamer here of course. This game does unlock yet another level of difficulty after you beat it. It was fun and all but I got my fill and won't be going for a replay. It was an average enjoyable experience and not much more than that. At the very least, it was WAY better than my previous shooter outlet: TimeShift (sigh, the shit I play).


Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F 2nd（初音ミク -Project DIVA- F 2nd）

Right after I finished Diva f (lower case "f" for Vita version), I was on some kind of Miku high and played the sequel pretty much non-stop for 2 weeks straight though I guess I did pop it in probably the day I bought it like 3 years ago (#hoarder).

This is what my actual weeb room looks like. Yes, I'm also blonde American wearing yukata everyday.

The first song that popped up was freakin' Melt (again?!) along with 105 pieces of DLC on PSN which pretty much puts the final nail in the coffin of the DLC-free gaming golden age. So things weren't looking too good from the get-go and my fears were confirmed as the song list features lots of repeats from the PSP games.

Firmly in the DLC fuck-me-in-the-ass era

Fortunately, it's not nearly as bad as the wholesale recycling they did on Diva 2nd and Diva 2nd Extend and none of the songs from Diva f are reused. So if you're one of those new kids who never played on the PSP, all the songs will appear new to you. Marketing would probably even call it a remake of the classics with enhanced graphics and gameplay. After all, they brought back all the popular songs such as World is Mine (for the 3rd time but who's counting?) and even made completely new videos for some of them.

Of course, for me, as a veteren of the series, it's a bit of a disappointment especially since there's been a new Miku song released every day except one for the first 10 years of her existence so there should have been plenty of new songs to choose from. At least they brought back my favorite from Diva Extend Musunde Hiraite and even added more eyes cause MORE IS BETTER.

Not as scary now after playing this song for 20 times+

It's still a good set as they picked out only the good songs from the PSP era and added a few new songs I really liked. At the very least, there is now almost no reason to buy Dreamy Theater for any of the PSP games given how overpriced they are and with the weird requirement of having to prove you own the PSP version, the first one actually requiring you to plug in your PSP!

PSP "classics" now in full HD glory!

The other nice tradition they continued is automatically unlocking all the modules you already purchased (using diva points) from the previous game. Despite the large list of DLC, the game comes with a number of great looking modules ("for free") combined with all the modules from Diva f. My personal favorite was "Bless You" followed closely by "Heart Hunter" and "Honey Whip" cause garter belts #hentai #loser.


Some of my favorite songs in this game were Hello, Worker and Knife. I was especially impressed that they changed the little picture on the character's resume in Hello, Worker depending on which character you pick. This kind of attention to minor detail is what gets me hard... err I mean "inspired".

Of course, you can use the matching Luka module with suit+tie but this is how I dress at work #MericanBlond

Another awesome new song was Kagerou Days because if you get the Chance Time at the beginning of the song, you get a TOTALLY NEW video. That was pretty cool and I wish they do that with more songs going forward. Overall, I was quite satisfied with the volume of content given that I paid $25 for a used copy #cheapogamer.

The weird cone shape is actually fancy gelato, I saw it in Sunshine City. Miku is so hipster!

As for the gameplay, I'm by no means a professional musician but I play a pretty mean sax and terrible at the piano. I can pretty much only play Moonlight Sonata (the first movement only of course, or as music snobs will tell you Op.27 No.2 Mov.1, cause Mov.3 is a clusterfuck). Anyway, I'm just trying to say I dabble in the musical arts and I know I'm repeating myself when I say that Project DIVA is not exactly the best series of rhythm games. And yet for some reason, I can't stop playing them and DIVA F 2nd is probably the most "rhythm-y" game in the series so far.

I didn't try playing the same keys as the PV but they look legit to me.

I usually turn off the sound effects because they are not part of the music (DJMax shoutout!) but this time, they introduced different sounds for each mechanic and I really liked that satisfactory long note pop, like the one they had for Project Mirai on the 3DS.

Try dem graphics on the 3DS. You suck Nintendy! #consolewhore

Besides the skins (DLC cash in) and challenge items, the only major gameplay change is they took the star "scratch" mechanic to the next level, introducing "W" double scratch and these really annoying connected stars that are hard to time unless you remember how it matches the music. I mentioned that the whole touch mechanic in the previous game didn't really bother me as it was an easy way to rack up points. Well, this time, I had weird issues where my swipe didn't take and I actually ended up using two fingers just in case. Meh.

Freakin' stars, you're blocking my view!!

Now that we talked about the main game, it's time to dive into the goddamn trophies. I fully understand that riajuu who only play games as a recreational activity to have fun (whoa, crazy concept!) probably don't give two shits about trophies. If you're one of these sickening people probably with friends IRL or god forbid, in a relationship, the story ends here.

Ofc there's a riajuu app. There's an app for everything now

But if you're a "REAL" gamer or alternatively, a cheap bastard who wants to make sure she's getting full value from the enormous amounts of money she wastes on an unhealthy game hoarding habit (hypothetically speaking of course), then it's time for me to talk about the Diva Room and the FUCKING clock.

Fuck you Sega, respect my time!

The Diva room was a fun distraction in Diva f from the main point of fucking playing the rhythm game. At no point did I ever think, "oh I hope they REALLY beef up the Diva Room features instead of oh I dunno, adding more new songs?" and yet here we are. You can't just rub heads until they're satisfied anymore, you have to stop just before this new heart meter breaks. You can't just shower your Divas with presents, you have to wait in game time (so just coming back later does nothing). Oh, was unlocking random calligraphy and sketch events annoying? Let's add a whole bunch more random item events and change it so you can't repeatedly give the same present to make it EXTRA time consuming, yay!

There's a 50% chance of getting this event. Ya having fun yet?!

The final fucking straw was the goddamn clock, which requires accepting 78, SEVENTY FUCKIN EIGHT requests. Say hello to hours of head rubbing, presents, waiting (in game time), and fucking patty cake after patty cake as you grind your way to your fucking precious trophy, ya loser.

If you're worried about memorizing patty cake, let me assure you, you'll fucking memorize it

If you noticed that this blog post seems to have a lot more screenshots than usual, well, it's because I was fucking waiting for the next head rub or present, jumping from room to room to room, again and again.

Score: 3.5 Couldn't find any panchira this time but I hope a SJW investigates to see if there's any camel-toe textures like PUBG out of 5 (51 hours for platinum)

In the end, if you don't care about trophies and especially if you skipped all the PSP games, this is probably the best Diva game in the series so far. It's so fun to play around with the modules and accessories and while the scratch swipe was a bit annoying, I got used to it. You can also configure scratch to use analog to match the PS3 but I found it was not sensitive enough for me.

Glad I don't work with her, sexual harassment waiting to happen

I will be sad when I run out of Project Diva games to play so I'll probably take a break for a while. Maybe I'll play some of the other Vocaloid games that came out around this period.


I got a lot of these fucking screenshots while rubbing head so here ya go.

This might explain the Cero C rating but then why was it B on the PSP? #Localization

I'll troubleshoot your computer problems ANY time

Can't think of a clever caption here cause all the blood for my brain went uh somewhere "else"

Yeah, so this game is pretty much a Dark Souls ripoff but with music

If they ever make the swimsuits DLC, I'm gonna fucking boycott #entitled

Thankfully, the cat ears are NOT DLC

This is when Miku becomes a god in our alternate timeline

How I feel when I get a PERFECT

This rainbow skin requires clearing a song with each character 50 times which was annoying cause fuck Kaito.

You can see many pantsu in edit mode *wink wink*

No, I didn't buy these skins. It was free at one time. Sorry if you missed out!

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA f（初音ミク -Project DIVA- f）

While Project Mirai on the 3DS was cute and all, let's go back to the REAL Miku games on Playstation; not that I want to get into the whole asinine console war nerd fuckery. I'm a vendor agnostic gamer connoisseur goddammit, not some Sony fanboi. Just because Sony is superior is every department and two faced Nintendy somehow gets a free pass when they whore themselves for money with DLC and Gacha microtrans "oh kids, it's not gambling!" family friendly facade... wait, what was I talking about again?

Let's rewind back to August 2012 to get a picture of how awesome Diva f was for its time. The Vita was just released probably at some ridiculous price 9 months earlier and Diva f came out along with a special limited model which I wanted but didn't get because no way was I gonna spend that much money. Yes, I still had a trace of constraint back in those days.

In retrospect, it's probably better that I didn't buy this.

This poor cheapo bought the budget re-release which thankfully doesn't have that god awful puke yellow "Best" label. It only took me over 4 years to finally finish this sucker so that might give you a vague idea of my backlog. (#hoarder) But anyway, if you were willing to shell out the cash, Diva f had mind blowing graphics compared to the previous PSP games. It really makes me wonder what ParaPhray was thinking when they released Megpoid the Music♯ almost a whole YEAR later.

Oh, how cute GUMI, you got a game too? Tee hee!

As a rhythm game, the Diva games are fun enough. In this iteration, they took advantage of the touchscreen to add a scratch mechanic ie swiping on either the front or back. It's no Beatmania of course, but I liked the new mechanic as the scratch timing is far more permissive than the regular buttons so it usually turns out to be an easy way to rack up points. It's a bit more clunky on the PS3 using the analog sticks so I definitely recommend the Vita version as it was originally intended. I also liked how they used the stars to good effect on some of the songs particularly at the end of Black Rock Shooter.


Not my favorite song but still fun to play (but maybe not EXTREME...)

And that leads right into the best part of this game: the video production values (thanks intro LIT 101!). I mentioned that Diva extend has some of the coolest looking videos in the series and it's obvious that Sega or whomever had honed their skills through the 3 PSP games and once again delivers great music videos with next gen Vita graphics (oh sorry, I mean previous gen old shitty specs, god bless the Switch!). The extra effect they added when you hit the big star was a really nice touch as it adds something unique to familiar Vocaloid songs.


Golly, what will they come up with next?!

Of course, not everything is all rainbows and Miku kittens. The song list is pretty good and has a fair amount of volume but I wouldn't say it's exploding with content exactly. At least they stopped recycling songs from previous games like they did in Diva 2nd and Extend. The PS3 version has a few more songs that you unfortunately have to buy as DLC for the Vita. As you can see, the good ol' days are coming to an end as DLC is starting to get more pervasive. No more free Haku module for you! You cheap ass freeloader who only wants to buy just the game by itself!

Only 309 yen for 3 modules? WHAT A DEAL!

Speaking of the times, I don't know if the graphics just got too good or what but gone are the days of wonton panchira starting from this game. They did a pretty good job of making sure you couldn't see up there in both the edit and photo mode. Despite the fact that the PSP games were a lot more lax about this kind of thing, this game got a higher Cero rating of C tagged with that "Sexual Content" icon. I guess those panty pixels just got too detailed or maybe it's the enhanced boob physics? Who knows? Who cares? Jesus, you gamers are so fucking creepy! #Losers

I'm not a creepy gamer who would watch a PV for disgusting panchira. In fact, I have no idea how this image got here.

As for the other features, I guess they're a fun enough distraction if you're a trophy whore. The AR features are just a gimmick as usual. My budget game did not come with the AR cards so I had to print them from the website but actually I just got the trophy from the equally gimmicky Live Mode on the PS3. Also, a lot of head rubbing went down in the Diva Rooms (I guess that's what they call it nowadays). I probably would have ignored most of that stuff if not for the trophies.

Way to promote violence Sony. Why don't you take some lessons from Nintendo?

I sleep in my underwear too! Umm... you wanna do a sleepover?

Score: 3.5 thank god we progressed as a society to treat women with the respect they deserve #ConfirmKavanaughNow #NotReally out of 5. (37 hours for platinum)

Overall, Diva f is a great looking game when moving to the next gen still meant a huge noticeable difference in graphics. While not the best rhythm game out there, there's a lot to enjoy, especially the Vita version, which looks way better than some of the video captures on Youtube.

Some bonus screenshots for the post-Trump apocalyptic Miku bible, our new Lord and Savior.

Jesus, where are these mysogynistic images coming from?! #ILikeBeer

The image gallery trophy was a pain as it's totally random.

This song came included as DLC so stop buying used, ya fucking cheapskate!

Yeah yeah, it's not 60fps though so totally garbage

I've seen enough. Time to go grab some curly cheese fries.

+1 yet another reason why Japan is the best place on Earth #weaboo

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely