Negima!? Chou Mahora Taisen Kattoiin☆Keiyaku Shikkou Dechai masuu（ネギま!? 超 麻帆良大戦 かっとイ~ン☆契約執行でちゃいますぅ）

Among a looooong list of Negima!? games, ネギま!? 超 麻帆良大戦 かっとイ~ン☆契約執行でちゃいますぅ I believe is the first of the two Negima!? games on the Nintendo DS and based on the reviews, I probably should have skipped this one and gone straight to ネギま!?超麻帆良大戦チュウ チェックイ~ン 全員集合!やっぱり温泉来ちゃいましたぁ. Don't worry, I won't look at you with Jhipster disdain for not remembering the exact difference between the two titles.

Oh I'm sorry, were you expecting Romaji with that?

But yeah, this game doesn't exactly exude quality as it opens with the shittiest looking title screen and a heavily compressed reading of the title a la "kattoi~~~~n!!". Ugh. Now, I'm obviously not one of those IGN "pro" contract reviewers who are randomly assigned shit and paid some sum to pump out a review of something they have absolutely no clue about as quickly as possible. So yes, I watched the anime adaptation (all 26 episodes) and read some of the manga. I even tried to watch the remake though I stopped because well, it's the same shit mostly. And yes, for the record, Yue is my fav girl followed closely by Nodoka cause you know, those shy types are the most wild in the bedroom. The main heroine is the most boring and stereotypical archetype evar so fuck that girl, whatever her name was.

My future waifu. Unfortunately, this is NOT from the game.

So yeah, even though this game is a mess, combining an ADV part, Negima trivial questions err... I mean trivia, and a shitty SRPG, I probably would have finished it nevertheless. I didn't even mind resetting constantly to find out which girls would give you new costumes in the ADV part nor the quizzes with random difficulty ranging from the easiest, "which girl is [name]" to some super niche Negima trivia. BUT what I couldn't stand are SRPGs that only reward exp to the character that defeats an enemy AND no practice stage to grind. There's no way in HELL I would diligently plan for which characters to level up by saving kills for a game of this caliber.

Not to mention, the difficulty is way too high for a game of such shitty quality. If you lose a battle, there's no way to keep your experience. Basically, a big fuck you and back you go to the shitty "kattoi~~~~n!!" title screen. Oh, we took away all the characters that you leveled up from previous fights? Ha, why don't you start over, you sorry fuck?!

No, fuck you game. You're going straight into dumpster. There goes 8 hours of my life, down the tubes. Also, my copy of the game was super shitty so who knows if the Gamestop dumpster divers would even bother with your ass.

Score: orz I just needed a kiss from Yue to keep going but alas it was not to be out of 5

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

orz - Failed to finish (not rated)

Aquarian Age: Tokyo Wars（アクエリアンエイジ ～東京ウォーズ～）

I'd like to think that I have a pretty good tolerance for being able to enjoy games despite any flaws that the ignorant masses would normally bitch and moan about. However, even I have some games that I just can't quite manage to even want to attempt to finish. Because of my personal integrity, I refuse to rate or score games I haven't fully completed *cough* unlike all pro review sites *cough* so I have a new rating for games that I'm 99.99% sure I will never finish: orz to signify that I gave up in pitiful defeat. And congratulations Aquarian Age for being the first game on this blog that "beat" me!

I'd like to know how much of the budget was just for this OP

Now, one likely reason I couldn't finish this game is admittedly totally not the game's fault. I just don't like strategy games all that much. I'm fine with strategy RPGs but when it comes to games like Nobunaga or Generation of Chaos (shudder), it's just not my cup of tea.

Even so, I'm always willing to try any game if the cover art looks interesting. (Yeah, I'm still a sucker that way.) This game has some stuff going for it such as some voice acting though the audio balance and quality is terrible. It also has other redeeming qualities such as um... a DiGi Charat cameo and umm... yeah... drawing up a blank here.

My ex-copy of the game already purged from the closet of shame™

The thing about this particular title that made me eventually toss the disc (CIB ofc) into the trash was I could swear the CPU was cheating. (Don't worry, I didn't just waste it, I tossed it into a Gamestop dumpster so I'm sure it's safely in the hands of some dumpster diver by now.)

If you try to take over another territory's square or err... I guess a hexagon, you get to pick 3 characters from your recruits for battle. The 3 possible moves are basically a rock-paper-scissor type system and this is where I felt the CPU was cheating. After winning a few battles, no matter how many times I tried saving and reloading, the game would make me lose. Of course, it could've been totally my imagination and the CPU is properly using a random number generator seeded by the pattern of air particles detected by the console... or something. But I just didn't trust it and that's why the disc will be out there somewhere never to be completed by me at least.

The fact that there's a longplay of this highlights how amazing (useless) the internet is
Score: orz I can't stand cheating... unless it's me doing it out of 5

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

orz - Failed to finish (not rated)