Monthly Check In Post

[alias_sqbr]

What's everyone been playing? Any recs? Made some fanworks? Post here! Lurkers and first-time posters are always welcome :)

Also, a reminder to post to the introduction post if you like.

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

I'm not sure I played any otome games this month! I've been trying to go through my to-play list on Steam, and I already played most of the otome ones haha. Nightshade is on there but I'm finding it hard to get back into, not because of any problem with the game itself, but because I played it a bunch to distract myself when my old cat was sick so now it has sad associations (and it's already a pretty sad game!)

But! I'm thinking of taking a break from my Steam to-play list and poking at my itchio to-play list, which has a lot of otome on it.

I did download Christmas Otome, which looks cute, but haven't been in the mood to play it.

It's not an otome game at all but I have been playing a lot of Hades, which does have some cute if slow romance parts. It's been making me miss the simplicity of visual novels, where you don't have to do 40 minutes of combat to get a single brief conversation with your love interest.

[scytale]

:( I'm sorry about the old kitty, and I know the feeling about finding media hard to get into or feel fannish about because of RL associations.

FWIW, I don't think you're actually missing much in Nightshade. Kuroyuki's route is very YMMV (and I think the Good End didn't really hit the landing), and Gekkamaru's route is just...melodramatically, relentlessly sad with only a little bit of catharsis at the end.

It's been making me miss the simplicity of visual novels, where you don't have to do 40 minutes of combat to get a single brief conversation with your love interest.

I love the game a lot, including the combat, but I was so bad it. It took forever for me to get to see Thanatos. (And he was still so inconsistent afterwards! But I guess being bad at the game meant I had to retry a lot.)

Good luck escaping! And yes, visual novels are so nice for when you just want a dose of story with some interactivity/game engagement.

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks, that makes me feel better about letting Nightshade go. I had fun with the routes I finished and that's enough!

And haha yeah I...gave up and started using cheats. But today I finished it for the first time WITHOUT cheats!!! Having finished it so many times with cheats that my weapons are super upgraded etc, and I have a good sense of how all the battles go. But it still counts! And Thanatos is still being coy BUT I WILL WIN HIM OVER. WITH MURDER AND DRINKS.

[scytale]

Yes! And you played Goemon and Hanzo's routes, which are the ones where I think the game really does something memorable with Enju or the love interest.

Congrats on finishing it without cheats! :D What weapon/boons did you use?

It totally still counts! You would pretty much do the progression without the cheats anyway! I ended up maxing out pretty much everything in the mirror before I beat the game, and most of my victories have still been the kinds that the bards will not sing about. ;)

My first victory was Zagreus hiding in corners with the Shield of Zeus, while the blitz shield slowly, slowly chipped away at his HP. It took so long.

My subsequent victories involved...some of that, but after a while I realized how amazing the Demeter duo boons are! Most of my runs have still been 'cheesing dad with Artemis + Demeter super lasers')

MURDER AND DRINKS. :D Competitive murder, even! I don't think I ever got to a feelings confession. At least one that wasn't being done via the power of intense pining.

[alias_sqbr]

I use a different weapon every time to get the extra 20% darkness and gems but my faves are the sword and bow, and I like all the zappy stuff from Zeus.

EDIT: Oh wait, what I used when I DIDN'T cheat! I used the sword, with...I forget the name but the final aspect, Arthur/Excalibur, since it doesn't require any aiming haha. I didn't have any specific strategy with boons since I wasn't expecting to get very far, just things that suit how I play (lots of random flailing and specials, very few dashes or casts) Oh and the skull earring from Meg since I was expecting to spend a lot of time at low HP, that was the only thing that got me to the end of the fight with Hades.

[scytale]

Haha, I am also interested in what you used in general! I actually usually didn't go for the darkness and gems, except when I was specifically grinding for those.

It's funny how strategies differ; my friend did that too, but I always settled on a weapon and went for the titan's blood or ascension. I also just looked up my escape record, and an embarrassing amount of them were using "Demeter cast cheese strategy" and rigging my boons... :P I also wish I dashed less! I'm very much the "ahhhhh something is coming, I'm going to dash -- right into the lava!" type of player. :P

I love Arthur/Excalibur so much. <3 It's one of my favorite weapons.

[alias_sqbr]

Haha yeah, my sense of direction is too wack for the dash. I have trouble enough aiming the bow/gun in the right direction.

[scytale]

Haha yeah, my sense of direction is too wack for the dash.

Personally, I always mean to dash into Alecto's spinny death blades. So I can't say I relate. :p

For the bow, I like Chiron's for just this reason! If you hit a thing once, then it targets. :D

[icecheetah]

As long as you're having fun. And sorry about your cat. :(

[alias_sqbr]

Thank you! It was over a year ago, now, and the new cats we bought are very different, but a comfort in their own unique ways :)

[icecheetah]

Awww! Good on them.

[scytale]

I started Ieyasu + Mitsunari's common route and immediately went "oh, Ieyasu is stressful :(" and "Mitsunari! :D".

...and then I've been distracted since; I think I'm not in the mood for visual novel reading right now. On otome adjacent games, I've also been stalled out on Sweet Pool for a while now, for pretty much the same reason + horror.

But I have been having a lot of fannish feelings. I listened to a playlist I made after playing Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly and started having feelings about that game, though! I love Beniyuri and the things that game does with guilt and identity and repression a lot (I find most of the romances less well done, but, well). And I looked at the Piofiore 1926 CGs and am very impatient for the game to come out in English.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly's romances weren't that amazing but it did some great things as a story.

[icecheetah]

I've been playing Storytaco/Lucydream's Bloodkiss, but I didn't bank enough gems through ad watching to get all the premium options so it will be a while before I actually finish it. I had hoped that, after spending the gems willy-nilly in my 'normal end' run I'd have enough for Dayn's route (because he appeals to me the least) but no. I do have enough affection for his end but I kinda want to see all the premium options too... .

Also for Nanowrimo I have been copying down Dandelion's korean text so I can practice translating korean with it! Which does mean I'm probably going to spend more time on this game than I have on Skyrim. I've already sunk a lot of time into it. Learning some interesting things. Like, 'yugi' means 'abandonned' in korean and I can't help but imagine Yugi from Yu-Gi-Oh when I come across it. I'm almost done copying the common route, willl start translating it soon.

Edit: Also, Jiyeon is the only one so far to use nuna and, for Jisoo exclusively, he uses hyeong (older brother), or sometimes Jisoo hyeong. Idk if there's implications there. Jiyeon sometimes calls MC "Juinnuna" which is like, boss/owner/master nuna. Jisoo calls MC "babjuin" (food boss/owner/master) and Jiwoo calls her babojuin. Which can be translated quite literally as "idiot owner" but I like the idea of translating it to "foolmaster".

Edit 2: And after I wrote that I reached a part where I realised Jisoo's nickname for Heejung was a pun... because she pretty much spelled it out in her head and was very unimpressed.

[scytale]

This sounds so exciting! Good luck with the translation! :D

The naming stuff seems really interesting, as well.

[icecheetah]

Thank you!

[alias_sqbr]

This is really interesting, thank you! I think there's definitely implications, I vaguely remember there being a moment where Jiyeon implied he and Jisoo did Something Unambiguously Gay, though what exactly it was is left unsaid, and Jisoo tells him to shut up.

You inspired me to see how many hours I've spent playing Nameless, which I've replayed A Lot to write fic, and it's...227 /o. But that was over a couple of years.

[icecheetah]

I remember that. It was like ... Jisoo said something homophobic and Jiyeon was like 8< "You don't like men? After all the things you did to me while we were drunk?" It'll be interesting to see how that went in korean...

Oooh! Where do you post your fanfic? A friend got me Nameless recently and I'm looking forwards to it.

[alias_sqbr]

I'd be curious to hear what he said in Korean myself!

I post my fic at https://archiveofourown.org/users/sqbr/works The Nameless fic is in eternal hiatus, turns out an OT6 was a bit overambitious haha. But it does still provide a partial fixit for some things left up in the air by the game's ending. Anyway, definitely don't check it out before you've played the game, even the summary is full of spoilers!

[icecheetah]

Wow, you've done work for a LOT of fandoms!

I have just followed you, I won't look until I've played!


Edit: OH! ANOTHER INTERESTING THING
The Wizard says different things in the prolouge for different playthroughs. The Memories extras seem to take in the most recent version of the scene you saw, and when I was copying it down for translation I noticed the wizard sounded tired and was saying something like "How many times do we have to play this game?". I looked for korean LPs and he said different things at that point in them.

Cheritz LITERALLY hid one of the plot twists in a part that people will generally skip past. And in the prolouge, as I accidentally discovered, it doesn't matter whether or not you have seen something before, it will skip it if you turn on skipping. (In other scenes with different variations it will stop if you reach line you hadn't seen before). That seems very on purpose.

[alias_sqbr]

That IS interesting, thanks for passing it on!