Never7 -the end of infinity-

I've heard great things about Ever 17 and been wanting to check it out for a while. Of course, as you can probably guess by now, I'm going in order by first playing Never7 -the end of infinity-. Originally called just infinity for the PS1, it seems to have been ported to every platform imaginable since it's original release in 2000. According to Wikipedia, extra scenarios were added at one point, the OST was re-arranged in one version, a new ED theme here, a new movie there... WHATEVER.

Normally, I would pick the PSP version any day but I got the PC download for free as a promotion when it went on sale online. Unfortunately, the PC version kinda sucks balls to put it mildly. While there is an option to skip text, there is no backlog, no rewind, no auto mode, and no record of which options you've chosen previously. Though bizarrely enough, there IS an option to have a separate font for the girl's dialogue text???

No Option umm... option and context menu doesn't really add much

The inadequacies of the specific version I played doesn't really matter I guess as long as you pick a better version. I'm sure the Android app (region-locked BARF) has all the features you would expect by now including fancy extras like an alarm clock.

All you have to do is get an alien registration card,
open a bank account, and buy a phone in Japan for these nice extras
(FU Google)

The worst part about this version is the inability to adjust the BGM volume down to better hear the dialgoue which is a shame because this game is fully voiced (doesn't include the protagonist). I dunno what it is but something about voice acting from before all the moe shit really appeals to me. Even though it came out in the year 2000, this game definitely reminds me of them old animes I grew up with in the 90s.

I played through Yuka's route before I finally gave up on the PC version. Going through the game over again without being able to fast forward to unread text was a deal breaker. I tried fast-forwarding to the next dialogue option and checking the back log but yeah, screw that. PSP HERE I COME!!!

Hey Yuka, don't be made at me, I'M not the one that picked your crazy swimsuit.

And thank god for the mighty PSP, because the PSP version has every ADV feature that you could want: auto mode, volume controls, it even lets you use the analog stick to see the whole image. I thought that worked much better to deal with the different aspect ratio than a static background image on either side or just chopping off the image like other PSP ports. Unfortunately, taking screenshots is a pain on the PSP so enjoy the rainbow dialogue screenshots from the PC version.

AHAHA an alcoholic! ...oh that's not very funny at all

Putting aside all this talk about ports, PC master race, blah blah blah, how was the game itself? Well, if you enjoy reading about college students enjoying exciting activities such as fishing, tennis, and barbecues, you're in luck. I obviously went to college in the wrong country if attending what they call a "zemi" (short for seminar) is basically a free island vacation complete with private cottage accommodations in the woods.

No seriously, the first 5-10 hours of the game is probably one of the most boring segments I've gone through in an adventure game. The pacing of the game is SO slow, it only drops tiny hints of something fishy going like once every few hours between long stretches of dialogue involving things like shopping for rice, making breakfast, and eating lunch. Zzzzzzzzzz

At least you get can a good fill of that ol' imouto goodness. Even though most of the characters are college age or older, Kurumi, a senior in high school decides to call you oniichan for no reason whatsoever. Even though she's supposed to be a senior in high school, the game still somehow manages to make her seem like 15 years old. #jailbait

YEEEAAAAAH, (fake) IMOUTO TAIMU!

I really liked that the branching paths were not too simplistic like Harvest Overlay and yet was not stupid random nonsense like '&'. I was able to play through all scenarios without a guide and even though I got stuck a bit in one part where hanging out with Izumi went into Kurumi's route and vice-versa, the rest was easy to figure out just with a bit of trial and error.


PS2? pffft! I play all my PS2 games on the game gear
Score: 2.5 goddamn I went to college in the wrong country! out of 5 (30 hours to beat)

Overall, the game had some interesting ideas besides the renai dating aspect. You can definitely see that this is Uchikoshi's early work. There are several theories in the game as to what's going on in the story and in true ADV style, any of those theories could be true depending on your route.

As for the renai portion, the characters were likable enough and while the illustrations were rough at times, it had its charm. The music was better than the usual ADV generic crap but not much more so. I really like the quality of the voice acting and while I was bored to death in the beginning, there were brief moments where I really wanted to find out what happened next.

I thought Never 7 was worth playing but I definitely wouldn't call this game spectacular. While there's extra "Append" scenarios at this point, I'm so sick of playing through the same 6 days over and over that I don't think I can touch it without a least few years break.

It was at least something to play while I'm sitting here waiting for my copy of Zero time dilemma (those goddamn "reviewers" with their early, free copies!!!). We'll see how Ever 17 shapes up. For you non-jhipsters, the game was at least interesting enough for someone to make a fan translation patch (if you can find it).

Some additional screenshots for um... investigative purposes.

Yup, still an alcoholic.

This girl is TOTALLY 18, right guys? *wink wink*

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

Harvest OverRay（ハーヴェストオーバーレイ）

My first galge '&' wasn't exactly one of the best games I've ever played, to put it mildly. Of course, what better way to utilize the valuable experience of trudging through one of the biggest waste of time ever by following it up immediately with another game in the exact same genre: Harvest OverRay.

Fool me once... shame on... shame on... fuck it, here we go again
In my defense, I bought it during a PSN sale and well, what can I say, I'm a sucker for "sales". On the positive side, while '&' took a painful year and 7 months to stomach, I found reading this one seemed to go much faster and was actually kinda interesting for the most part. It still took a bit longer than the 2 hours and 6 minutes that seems to be shortest amount of time it takes for losers to hold R1 for 2 hours to fast forward to a platinum trophy.

Loser hall of fame, yeah I'm talking about you paul... or ed linex?

I'm cautiously optimistic that "OverRay" with an "R" is a play on words instead of an embarrassing "lip my stockings" typo though misspelling "plot" in the end credits doesn't give me much confidence that it was intentional.

PREASE spell check

However, the correctly spelled "overlay" might be referring to the heavy use of AR (augmented reality) in the game's setting. In the not so far away future, technology has matured to the point where a contact lens device allows you to seamlessly see the "overlay" of a digital display on the real world (AR).

It's not exactly a revolutionary view of the future as say serial experiments lain, which came out during a time when we were cursing out Win98 BSODs and still using modems. After all, the big companies are already working on AR with Google Glass, MS Hololens, etc. Still, it's interesting to imagine what the world would be like if VR and AR are fully matured and seamless.

Is that a Sony Personal 3D viewer I see on the left? SO FUTURISTIC!

Whatever, who care about all that shit? It's IMOUTO TAIMUUUU!!! Remember I mentioned a game about chasing your little sister would be very different nowadays? Well, here, we finally have a game that takes all the innuendos of shows such as oreimo, oniai, and imocho and brings things to their natural conclusion. Unfortunately, given that this is the censored consumer port, you don't actually see anything and the game does throw in a cheap, "oh they're not related by blood" loophole. Even though the story does NOTHING to explain why they're not related.

Oniichan has a special dessert for you after dinner. Hehehe... what? It's ice cream!

As for the rest of the characters, Komachi was my favorite due to her voice being the least annoying and has absolutely NOTHING to do with her lolicon character design. Speaking of character design, the boob geometry was a bit umm... I dunno, maybe there's an artificial gravity bra in the year 2045? Yeah...

Tamaki, who has the most annoying voice, is the route for the true ending after you go through the other 3 girls and have censored implied consumer port sex. Lilia's route was pretty good but Sumi's was just totally unrealistic, oniichan-obsessed imouto incest stuff. Overall, I didn't really like how all four girls like you right out the gate with pretty much no effort. Yeah sure, who wouldn't like to be surrounded by 4 girls that are into you for no reason but unfortunately, it's too unrealistic for nerds like umm... not me! Ahaha, what you talking about? Girls CONSTANTLY be all up in my business.

Yet another galge OP... I guess this game was aight.
Score: 2.5 Incest? Loli? Weirdly shaped boobs? SURE, WHY NOT? out of 5

Overall, I enjoyed this game way more than '&'. Unlike '&', it didn't have a bunch of crazy, random choices that had absolutely nothing to do with the outcome and it was extremely easy to go through without a guide. All you had to do was just choose the girl you wanted in like 4 dialogue choices. The story was interesting mostly because I like the technological aspect. It has nothing to do with the fact that the main character is a 24x7 gamer as I can't imagine being so uncool.

Games, games, games （ゲーム、ゲーム、ゲーム） Not me, I'm talking about the main character, silly!

The Vita port was done poorly with a number of audio issues, including one glaring bug for every line that combined voices. It played only one track unless you replayed it in the history. The audio quality was pretty bad overall so minus 0.5 for the subpar port quality.

Yes, that is literally a TODO left in the game.

Some bonus screenshots for umm... archival purposes. You may want to skip to avoid spoilers.

Well, it IS Cero C after all. What were you expecting??

Cero C sure but English is totally not studied in Japan (at least not well apparently). Whoneedsspacesafterall?

Apparently that sweater comes with boob pockets...

There's even a free theme on PSN! Hey, don't judge my Vita library!

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY I'M NOT INTO LOLI??!!

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

TRUE REMEMBRANCE ～記憶のかけら～

TRUE REMEMBRANCE (yes, all caps once again) is a sound novel for the PC that is pretty good for being totally free. Feel free to download away to your heart's content from the author's website, no shady torrent site needed (you know who you are).

Personally, since I'm made of money, I decided to plunk down some serious change (500 yen) to get the 3DS version on the eShop for the convenience of a handheld. It features new art and some extra scenarios with chibi characters and whatnot.

The non-free 3DS art style. Yeah, I'm RICH BITCH!!

While the art is new, there is no voice acting nor any branching paths. So it's actually like reading what us old dinosaurs refer to as "books". I'm sure there's a kid's react video online somewhere if you're unfamiliar with the concept.

Anyhoos, the main character in this game is Kurome, who works in a town setup by the government to treat some new form of depression. The treatment for the disease is to seal the bad memories away, a process which is not really described in depth. Not that it really matters. This is a simple story about the two main characters and how we deal with life shit (or more often, how we don't deal with it). It's definitely going for that melancholy vibe.

I played this game several years ago and as my first visual novel, I thought it was pretty darn long. Of course, now that I've slogged through hours and hours of some monster-size games (*cough* higurashi *cough*), it does seem to be a fairly short story. It took me less than 10 hours to finish.

Given the premise of erasing your memories to deal with life's hurdles, you can probably guess at some of the themes and plot points that are presented, much like how you can expect certain things from a time traveling or robots (ugh Asimov law AGAIN?) story. There's nothing mind blowing here, just a melancholy story that is done fairly decently. I personally did not shed a tear but maybe you will.

Music was not bad, very sound novelesque?
Score: 2.5 man I totally forgot what this game was about, maybe somebody sealed my memory of it? out of 5 (9 hours to beat)

For the entry price, I thought this game had a pretty good story and presentation. It has atmosphere and might be a good entry point if you want some reading material for your Japanese studies. That or the Jhipster wannabes can go check out the fan translated English version. Ultimately however, putting aside the price, the game itself is ironically forgettable. Definitely worth checking (cause FREE!!!) but I wouldn't exactly call it a masterpiece.

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

The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion（英雄伝説 ガガーブトリロジー 朱紅い雫）

I'm gonna try to not rehash all that stuff about how Tear of Vermillion is LOH IV blah blah blah. To make a long story short, this is the second entry in the LOH Garghav trilogy. Chronologically, it takes place before White Witch but story-wise, the two games have pretty much zero connection so it really doesn't matter.

To be honest, it's been a while since I beat this game so I don't really remember the story details but I do remember it started out with a bang. My theory is it was to fix the absolutely mind-numbingly boring start of the previous game.

IMOUTO TAIMU, always a good start to a game. Oniichan is here Aimeru!!

In terms of graphics and game engine, everything looks pretty much the same as the first PSP port except they changed the weird pseudo ATB nature of the battle system into a standard turn based affair. I actually preferred the neat trick in the previous game of cancelling out of the menu and letting everybody duke it out automatically so having to select attack for every party member every turn was a bummer. At least it does a better job of showing your attack range so you don't have to waste a turn just trying to reach your enemy if you don't want to.

Attack, attack, attack, attack, standard RPG fare...

To be perfectly fair, you do want to use spells and skills that have area effects when the enemies are bunched together Chrono Trigger style. The change to a clearer turn-based system does make timing things easier compared to the rather chaotic free-for-all of the first game. Overall, there's nothing too special about the gameplay. Some of the more challenging boss battles did require some planning for special attacks since they charge over time (the POWER meter). The difficulty was a bit better balanced this time around compared to the super easy previous entry with the weird difficulty spike at the end. I actually died once or twice in this one.

Overall, I enjoyed the story much more than the previous game as well. The characters were more interesting and there was some good character development for at least some of the characters if not the main character. Sure, some of the plot elements are a bit cliche at this point but hey, this is a remake of a PC98 game from 1996. The music was pretty good too overall.

For some reason, I found this tune really catchy
The main "heroine" or as we now call it "damsel in distress in OMG TRIGGER WARNING MISOGYNIST WOMEN HATER GAME", is actually your little sister. So there's not much of a romance, but it was still cool to join in Avin's frantic quest to reunite with his cute imouto. Hey, if my sister was cute and 2D, I would have done exactly the same (my real 3D ones... um... not so much).

Score: 2.5 oh those innocent days before oreimo when everything wasn't tinged with weird imouto incest fetishes out of 5

Get a room, you guys!
Also, I hear it's legal in some States?
Might wanna check that out.

Obviously, in today's modern enlightened times, an RPG about chasing after your little sister would look very different (and to be perfectly honest, I would totally be all over that). Regardless, while nothing too special, I found the second part of the Garghav trilogy to be adequate enough to be an average fun title overall.

Given the scale of the ending in White Witch (which frankly was poorly done and came out of nowhere), I think there was a missed opportunity here to expand upon the overall story and grow the universe. Unfortunately, the tiniest bit of connection to the first game they show doesn't really add anything to the story as a trilogy. It remains to be seen if there's a larger picture here in the 3rd entry: Song of the Ocean. At this point, I think it may be too late to really tie anything together but we'll see I suppose.

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

MOTHER2 ギーグの逆襲

Oh boy, just what the internet needs. Yet ANOTHER wannabe hipster gushing about probably one of the most overrated and talked to death "hidden gem" - MOTHER2 ギーグの逆襲 aka Earthbound to the unenlightened non-Jhipsters.

Bet you guys never heard of THIS "hidden" gem

But wait, am I going to gush about what I just called an overrated game? Read on to find out! Wait, no for real, I have a unique Jhipster perspective on this! Plz Internet tell me I matter!

Ahem, ANYHOOS, as my die-hard readers probably remember, I didn't really think too highly of Mother (to put it mildly), but playing the games in order really puts things in perspective. Because Mother was such a shitty game, the initial impression playing Mother 2 is like going from PS2 to PS4. It reminded me just how much difference a new console generation used to mean. In the good ol' days, we used to be blown away by the graphical differences in a new console by using something called our "eyes" without needing special tools to measure stupid shit like framerate and resolution and bitching like little crybabies on neogaf.

I wasn't joking when I said this was gonna be a recurring theme

Playing Mother 2 was like a breath of fresh air after the stank of Mother. Not only were the graphics "next-gen", every single shitty gameplay mechanic from Mother was fixed or at least vastly improved. The most notable being no more FUCKING SPLITTING XP BETWEEN PARTY MEMBERS!!

Another HUGE improvement is no more cheap one shot kills. Or to be more accurate, your HP slowly drains after getting hit so if you're quick enough, you can heal in the next turn before the HP reaches zero adding a bit of "real-time" aspect to battles. This makes the Franklin badge, a vital item in Mother 1 pretty much useless in Mother 2. The last dungeon has a difficulty spike but even so, the strongest heal PSI ability can recover your party members without having to trudge all the way back like fucking Mother.

The map is also no longer a huge, sprawling wasteland littered with random encounters galore. The dungeons and areas between towns are small enough that you don't really need a map at all (the town maps are still a nice addition though). Even the desert, which was one of the worst offenders in Mother, can be crossed relatively quickly (though getting heatstroke constantly was still annoying).

OH MY GOD!! LOOK AT DEM GRAPHICS!!

Really, I could go on and on about every single annoying thing in Mother that was fixed in Mother 2 (except running out of space in your inventory, that shit was still annoying as hell). I can discuss fixes such as a teleport spell that is actually usable and not completely worthless, etc., etc. But that's doesn't mean Mother 2 is a great game, it just shows how crappy Mother is. In the end, the improvements make this game much easier to play and elevates it to a standard multitasker instead of a frustrating mess only bearable with the miracle of save-states.

I barely had to use any strategy besides spamming attack and healing once in a while. Sure, I used attack spells on bosses and one boss required using fly honey. The whole fly honey thing was annoying by the way because it looked like you were doing damage but really not getting anywhere without it. The closest thing to a strategy I used was the chuwa machine (neutralizer) to break a boss's shield.

HINT: The combat system is so rich, you can spam A OR L. SO MANY OPTIONS!!

As for the story, I really liked the premise and start of the game but the middle was a long, boring journey of fetch quests and recruiting party members that get almost no character development. The amount of conversation you have with your party members is next to nil. However, the boring stretch is at least rewarded with a very interesting ending.

Without getting into any details, the ending and one very disturbing meditation part of the game makes all the petty localization changes to shield kids from religion and alcohol seem so stupid and pointless. (Cero A, seriously?!! Damn, those Japanese kids are hardcore.) Due to the almost maniac non-jhipster fanbase for this game, you can learn about the changes in far more detail than I would ever bother to look into given that I don't play these games in English.

I'm sure Starbucks would have pressured to keep "alcohol" in today's enlightened age of corporate overlords

I liked the music well enough, nothing special but the music for the first part of the final boss was great as well as the ending credits song. I played the GBA version and I thought the whole vinyl sound added character but others may prefer the crispier SFC version.

I thought the "vinyl" sound was on purpose. Turns out it's just GBA hardware limitation. I prefer it nevertheless.

Score: 3 OH MY GOD THIS IS THE BEST GAME OF ALL TIME! TAKE MY MONEY!! TAKE ALL IT IT!!! out of 5

I'm not quite sure why non-jhipsters are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to play what is essentially a standard multitasker SFC RPG. Yes, it has a unique charm but puns are not that funny to me. The story has some interesting parts and I enjoyed the game overall but honestly, I think I overpaid for my GBA copy of Mother 1+2 and I definitely didn't pay one Benjamin must less several. If it wasn't for the awful Nintendo DRM, I would have been happy to just settle for the eShop digital version.

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

'&' - Sora no Mukou de Sakimasu you ni（'＆' - 空の向こうで咲きますように）

'＆', otherwise known as the worst game title ever in terms of search is the first 18+ PC game I completed in all its censored Cero C consumer port glory. I don't import adult PC games, first because they're overpriced and second, I'm scared of customs but MOST importantly because I'm an upstanding citizen with high moral values and not some ecchi hentai sukebe weaboo (bonus pompous point for you if you caught the oxymoron). And of course, I would never ever dare to even IMAGINE to soil my hands by stealing the hard work of our intrepid developers via the torrent/warez/tokyotosho scene (remember every time you pirate, a kitten cries in agony [citation needed]).

Oh thank god, the HP for 18+ version is blocked.

Now my kids can safely shop online for their AR-15s in peace.

I still don't know why the game is titled '&' (the ending mentions it but I didn't get it nor do I care) and believe me, it was really annoying finding my download in PSN store on the Vita. Yeah, I'm not stupid, I tried searching on the subtitle （空の向こう, etc.） and I got NUTHING. Anyways, on to the game itself.

Now, I'm no eroge expert, but MAN, this was one of the most boring stories I've read in a long time. Unless you're telling me the 18+ smutty version comes with a coupon to a pink salon (don't google that!), I HIGHLY doubt that there's anything in this game that's worth anybody's time.

The main problem is the entire story premise is based on a lame adventure with a bunch of kids wandering aimlessly around some random town. The main character treats this childhood memory like it was the most awesome thing that could ever happen to anyone. But I just came away with a big fat WHO THE FUCK CARES??

Some kids wandered around in town unsupervised and I'm supposed to think this was exciting somehow?

The only weird thing that happened was the kids saw two identical moons. Now, 8 years later, the two moons are back, and all the members gather in the same town to investigate. Now the characters might be in a huge reunion mood eg, "OH MY GOD!! It's been so long. How have you guys been?? Oh wow, you grew your hair? Hey, this old place is still here? No way!" blah blah blah blah blah. But knowing nothing of their childhood, you have ZERO investment in any of the characters, once again feeling like, "WHO THE FUCK CARES??"

Some kids looking at the sky, this is soooooooo exciting... 

Anyways, the "exciting" part of the story is the group makes a wish on a tree and it spits out some tools to help grant each character's wish. The story line splits around the midpoint as you get with each of the girls (and one "kinda" girl in the expanded consumer port). Presumably, this is standard mechanic for eroge except of course, all the smut is cut out.

Don't except anything much more suggestive than this from Cero C

Again, I don't really know much of anything about 18+ games due to my pure heart, but goddamn, it was boring as hell to replay the game over and over as they find out the same shit in different ways. I get that games like Virtue's Last Reward had a unique twist on the formula so going back to the orthodox approach is so goddamn boring.

It's like beating the game, then rewinding where everybody forgets what you just found out. Some different events happen and you get with another girl but you find out the SAME SHIT YOU ALREADY KNEW. To add salt to the tedium, the characters were not interesting at all. The main female character Urara especially was pretty annoying with her always carefree and cheerful disposition. Ugh, I hate happy people.

The OP and ED were good (yay Steins;Gate). The rest of the game's music... not so much.
Now, to be fair, some shit goes down in a couple routes that would definitely be CNN and WHO level stuff. But somehow, despite all the excitement, I was still bored to tears. As for the character interactions, I think I might have almost laughed like 3 times. Almost.

The writing is really top notch Translation: Shitshitshitshitshitshit, shitshitshitshitshitshit. Shit!

As my first entry into the galge genre, this was not a good start. If I were smart, I should probably start avoiding this type of game altogether- OOH LOOK, a TGL sale on PSN!! I can't WAIT to delete this game from my Vita... and install another one just like it...

Maybe next time's the charm! Fool me once... wait, wrong proverb, um, never mind

Score: 1.5 apparently my economics 101 lesson about opportunity cost was useless cause I wasted about 60 precious hours on this but wait! PLATINUM TROPHY!!! (my life is so sad) out of 5

I've chipped away at this game for well over a year in the vain hopes that something interesting would come out of it at some point. Recently, I just got so fed up with the space it was taking up on my Vita memory card (Sony U SUCK), I plowed through the last 40 hours or so over the course of a few weeks. Near the end, I actually started getting mad as the main character wasted yet more of my time indulging in yet another filler of reflecting on the past and saying stupid shit over and over about wishes and other pointless sophomoric philosophical shit.

Even the amazing technology powered by CheeseWare wasn't enough to make this a good game

Seriously, the only reason I scored it 1.5 was because I gave Mother a score of 1 and unlike Mother, the mechanics weren't broken and it was at least better than some F2P gacha shit. Oh, and it also helped me fall asleep at night. 30 minutes with this game and I was out like a light.

Bonus screenshots for you know for umm... prosperity? Cero C, by the way, means this game is acceptable for kids from age 15. Isn't Japan so awesome? (You goddamn weebs)

Cero C means extra soap 

This is only in the consumer port (was it worth it???)

This is like the GRATEST game.

Duke duke using evil tool... I don't even have anything clever to say about this.

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

Last Ranker（ラストランカー）

It's been a while since I last played Last Ranker but I still clearly remember how much fun I had with it. This is one of those games that has the classic Imageepoch signature (at least their later games). It has a very unique battle system, fairly simple but fun and addictive mechanics, mediocre story, and impressive PSP graphics.

This was the top result for an in-game screenshot Google search. Go figure.

Back when I first escaped the mainstream hypetrain for the Nintendo DS and got into the PSP like a REAL gamer, Last Ranker was one of the first games I completed because it was just so much darn fun. The basic premise is you go to a city full of fighters all ranked by strength and you start out WAY at the bottom of the heap at rank 95,000.

No, you're not going to fight 95,000 people. If you beat someone of a higher rank, you basically swap rank. I had so much fun climbing up the ranks by fighting various people around the city. I also loved how some NPCs talk to you like you're some common plebian dirt and gradually change their attitude as you climb the ranks, eventually treating you like some sort of celebrity god. Being popular with the ladies is a nice change too.

The order in which you can challenge people to raise your rank is pretty linear and I used a guide a couple times to find the right person to fight. It's not like you can grind hardcore and jump several thousands ranks in one fell swoop. However, there are optional people you may miss that you don't have to fight to progress in the game.

I loved the character models, especially the top 7 ranked fighters. Everybody looked totally badass and I couldn't wait to climb up to their level. There's also a few nice FMV cut-scenes which I'm guessing Capcom had a hand in given the monster hunter-ish style.

If this trailer doesn't make you want to play... I guess we can never be friends.

The real highlight of the game is the battle system. As usual with Imageepoch, all the various mechanics unlock gradually but when it does, it's a really fun system of semi-realtime action with special moves and a stamina meter. It's very similar to Black Rock Shooter but less action and more RPG. You can even switch between different fighting styles such as using a gun or shield but I dunno, the first style was good enough to beat the game and the other styles seemed a bit weak to me. Might be something worth considering in another play-through one day.

The graphics are great, the mechanics are fun, and the music is good. The only thing that was a tad disappointing was the ending but hey, just don't expect a Xenogears or something. There's not much in terms of environments, you have the city, some woods to fight monsters and level up, and a smattering of other areas. Still, Last Ranker is definitely one of the funnest games I've played so far on the PSP and I would recommend it any day to anybody (with taste).

Unfortunately, for non-Jhipsters, you're gonna have to wait for an English patch that will come out... who knows? Or you know, you can join the ranks of the elite Jhipster army... just saying.

Music... pretty DARN good.
Score 3.5 Imageepoch, why did you leave me? WHYYYYYYYYYY!!! out of 5 (34 hours to beat)

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

Seiken Densetsu: Rise of Mana（聖剣伝説 RISE of MANA）

So I guess this is what gaming has come down to nowadays, huh? Spin up an online, free-to-play game, only to shut it all down less than a year later. Of course, I'm a sucker for this shit because I can't stand having a game that I can't finish on my profile (Resistance 2, I'm talking about you). So here we go, it's time to marathon Seiken Densetsu, RISE OF MANA.

Here we go again with this gacha shit

The only positive thing I have to say about this game is at least you can finish it relatively painlessly. Pair up with some crazy lvl 95 dude who OBVIOUSLY is way cooler than you and lives a highly fulfilling life and the other dude will take care of everything for a while. There's even some people with Metallica (no I'm not talking about the band, oh RIGHT, they changed her name to Metallia for Merica). I guess I missed the NIS collab event but whatever, who cares.

Am I jealous I missed this? NOT AT ALL!

And here's where I think this game failed ultimately. Doing a collab event took way too much work. You have to create a 3D model and have it you know... be PLAYABLE??? Compare that to million shit arthur where you can drum up some illustrations, maybe throw a few seconds of voice acting at it, slap some card numbers on it and call it a day. Even PSO2 collab events is mostly just costumes and weapons from my understanding, plus PSO2 is a way bigger game in terms of scale.

Rise of Mana is just a shitty gacha mobile port that takes FOREVER to load and is filled with useless filler missions such as, "Hey, I dropped some shit in a cave. Can you go pick it up?" It doesn't even have voice acting for the main story which even million shit arthur had.

Congrats, you got some useless shit. Hope you didn't pay real money for it

Near chapter 17, the lvl 95 pal wasn't cutting it and I started dying. Of course, you can use gems or some shit to revive yourself (bargain deal at ONLY 100 yen). But you get free gems for beating the missions so I hit up the gacha and upgraded my weapons. I finished chapter 20 in a matter of a few days and while I'm not technically finished with all 30 chapters, my trophies told me I could put this shit down for good.


If this looks like fun to you, trust me, it isn't.
Score: 1 at least you don't have to spend months to reach level 109 for yet ANOTHER round of trophies, yeah I'm talking about you fucking million shit arthur out of 5.

The story is meh, the gameplay is meh, the music is meh, the Japanese gaming industry lately is meh. But at least I got some goddamn trophies.

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

Misshitsu no Sacrifice（密室のサクリファイス）

Hey you! Are you looking for some cheap low-budget digital boob thrills? Or perhaps you're looking for some fun and light-hearted puzzles you can knock out on a lazy Sunday? How about some cute anime girls that tease you in a traditional moe harem setting? If so, get the fuck outta here cause Misshitsu no Sacrifice has none of that weaboo shit. Now if you're here to bang your head repeatedly against a wall for hours as you try to solve some REAL puzzles for MEN, you've come to the right place.

Don't let the cover fool you, this game is fucking HARDCORE.
No, not that kind of hardcore, you goddamn perv.

Now, I'm no MIT grad but I have beaten my share of mainstream puzzle games with (almost) no cheating (yes zero escape is mainstream for the uber Jhipster). What's important is for the puzzles to be challenging but not TOO hard otherwise the frustrated player will be stuck forever... right?

NO, FUCK THAT BABY SHIT!

You don't want some Japanese developer to hand-hold you like you're some kind of fucking baby DO YOU? When you examine a piece of paper with some random gibberish, you don't want the game to give you some BABY HINTS. No, a REAL MAN'S game will say, "Oh, looks like a piece of paper with some random gibberish. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT SHIT!"

SPOILER: this is a screenshot with the answer. No, for REAL!

Believe me when I say this guys, this is THE hardest puzzle video game you will find anywhere. Go ahead and add a comment if you know of a harder game. Because my blog has such a huge readership, I'm sure the lack of comments will prove unquestionably that yes, this is THE HARDEST puzzle video game ever conceived.

Prepare to hear this OST for HOURS as you bang your head against a wall
I thought I was so clever and making good progress until I hit the latter second half of the game. That's when they pull out the REAL HARDCORE shit and I was pretty much done. I put in a good effort too, including spending hours, no really, literally HOURS trying to find the goddamn tea cozy.

The thing is, the story was actually getting kinda interesting as some of the plot points started to fall together so yes, I cheated just to get all the endings. While the plot got a little bit too out there at the end, it was at least good enough to make me want to cheat. One interesting aspect was they used this weird alphabet which looks kinda like Cyrillic?

Pretty sure that's not Russian? Sorry, but I'm only trilingual...

Given the not too shabby story (fully voiced too!), the large number of INSANE puzzles, multiple endings, and a so-so soundtrack, I have to say this game was not bad at all. Pretty good even?

Score: 3 WHAT THE FUCK IS A TEA COZY??? out of 5

If you think you're gonna play some weaboo, ecchi, harem shit, you're gonna be in for a rude awakening. However, if you're a masochist for hunting down objects hidden in the tiniest of pixels and solving number/logic puzzles that are out of this world, then you must have no friends... but as least you can enjoy this quirky, little title.

FYI: This is the EASY part
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

CLOCK TOWER ～The First Fear～

Well it's been a while, so I was in the mood to dive back into the side-scrolling, horror adv genre. I know it's a very popular genre and even though I had hundreds (nay thousands!!) of games to choose from, I went back to good ol' Human Entertainment and loaded up Clock Tower: The First Fear on the even gooder ol' PSP.

I have to say, for a game that originally came out only 6 months before Twilight Syndrome, the first Clock Tower was pretty darn bare bones. If I wasn't super gamer expert (ie can use google+wikipedia), I would have thought this was a fairly early SFC game, not something that was released after the launch of the PS1 and ported almost 2 years later.

OMG!! Only took 2 years to add this next gen PS1 graphics!

If I had bought the PS1 version day one in my fantasy Japanese childhood, I would have been pretty darn disappointed after Twilight Syndrome. They didn't add any voice acting to the PS1 version, just the typical dated Human CG intro and the ability to save your game. Yes, in the enhanced version, you can actually save your progress.

I mean, if I didn't know any better, I might have thought this game was not bad but the lack of almost any story to speak of, no voice acting, and zero character development makes this game feel way older than it really is.

This is the blonde girl. That's all you need to know about her.

I still have no idea why the girls were brought to the mansion and the game doesn't explain anything about the Barrows family. I didn't look up any further information from fear of spoiling the sequels but taken by itself, this game doesn't explain a single thing.

The other big issue I had was the gameplay. Maybe I should have read the manual, but the game freaked me out because Jennifer's stat goes to red every time she runs. I spent painful hours just watching her meander slowly through the mansion like she was taking a nice stroll in the park.

Also, she never sat down to rest until I realized much later on that you have to press triangle after she starts moving. I had assumed when she walked into another room, she would just sit down after a while so I had no idea how to restore her health. But to make this whole gameplay element even worse, I finally figured out I can beat the entire game while completely in the red. You're supposed to spam the X button when your avatar is flashing and having more health is supposed to help you survive. But I was able to beat down that little scissor guy, the crazy puppet, and every other "tense" moment totally in the red.

As for the puzzles, I just got tired of going from room to room while stuck for hours. The parrot freaked me out early on so I never did find the perfume bottle. I did manage to unlock one ending completely blind. You find a car and the car key conveniently in a box next to the car. Jennifer was like, "But the other girls..." and I was like, fuck that. DRIVE. Needless to say, it did not end well.

Similar to my blind playthrough but way less getting lost and slow walking
Eventually, I followed a guide and unlocked all endings in a matter of a few hours. If you don't get stuck, the game is actually incredibly short and requires repeating the same things but with minor differences in terms of things you may miss or which events you encounter. There's not much difference in the endings either so I can say after unlocking them all, I don't think it was really worth the hassle. There's actually a random event that you have to avoid in order to get the best ending. I don't know how you could have known to reload if you happen to be unlucky without a guide. I thought that was kinda lame.

The music had a bit of that Human charm but there was very little variety and it was ok at best.

This was my favorite track and it was just ok
Score: 2 this is like a poor man's Twilight Syndrome out of 5 (like Lehman Brothers SUPER POOR)

As Jhipster, I think this game got way more attention because the later games were localized and the lack of almost any story made it WAY easier to fan translate than Twilight Syndrome. I'm hoping the later games in the series will step it up a notch... or 10.

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

Tanteibu The Detective Club - Tantei to Yuurei to Kaitou to（たんていぶ THE DETECTIVE CLUB -探偵と幽霊と怪盗と-）

So the first game I "completed" this year was part 1 of たんていぶ THE DETECTIVE CLUB (again with the caps!). A bit of a disclaimer but this post might evolve over time as I finish the other parts. The first part took maybe 3-4 hours to complete and I doubt I'd have much more to say to warrant 4 separate posts.

All 4 parts were released roughly one month apart so I guess you can call this episodic (ripoff). The first game has only 3 cases and the overall story doesn't do much more than introduce the 3 main characters. The mysteries and investigation gameplay are all pretty much a joke and comparing it to Ace Attorney would be like comparing Comiket and Sakura-Con cosplay.

Guess which Con is near me? GUESS GODDAMMIT!!!!

Really, it's just an incredibly short generic harem adv game that is totally unremarkable. There's not even much ero despite what the LE edition cover would suggest. In fact, I would have cursed myself on buying even just the first part much less all four parts (3+4 are not that cheap either). So why did I go all out on this game? I'm a seiyu fanboy.

Spoiler: Maya never gets arrested in this game

This game is fully voiced (except male protagonist ofc) and the cast includes both Hanazawa Kana AND Chihara Minori. You're talking two of my favorite characters of all time: Tachibana Kanade and Nagato Yuki IN THE SAME GAME.

Wait for me Nagato, VR IS COMING!!!!!

Although the main story contains almost no fan service, you can unlock omake episodes which seems to be strictly for fan service, and I'm not talking about boobies. I'm talking fan service for the seiyu nerds...... and boobies.

This ALWAYS happens when you spill coffee... in Japan... or so I hear

Unfortunately, unlocking all the extra episodes is actually quite a pain in the rear. It's not just a matter of selecting every option, 3 of the episodes require you to spend time with one of the three characters throughout the entire game, necessitating several playthroughs. Fortunately, this game has a skip feature that will automatically stop on new text. So following a guide, I was able to unlock all the extras in a few hours. I probably spent more time doing that than playing through the game, it's so short.

And yes, not only is there one other person on the planet that played this game, somebody actually took the time to figure out all the patterns and wrote a detailed walkthrough (internet, I love you).

The music was not bad. It was jazz and you can't go wrong with jazz.

Totally unrelated to this game. DON'T CARE
Score: 2 cute seiyus out of 5 points.

I really cannot recommend this game to anybody. But for a fan of the voice actresses like me, I enjoyed it. I really like the art style and CGs as well. If they added Taketasu Ayana, I would rate this best game of all time.

I know, this isn't even a game review at this point

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