Getchu

Erogamescape

Join Lester in his magical adventure of repeating pointless tasks and having uninspired conversation with boring heroines!

But I’d wrap my enchilada around the Tortilla sisters any day.

I’d like to start off by saying I’ve got a bit of a reputation for treating this game like some sort of anti-christ.  And to tell the truth, it’s mostly just a gimmick.  It’s really not that bad.  If you were anticipating some heated mud-slinging, sorry to disappoint you.  That’s why I don’t really have much drive or much content to write about it.  It’s not overly bad but it’s not good, it’s utterly average, not deserving of an article. But I might as well…

At first I just kind of got this game by chance.  Came across it, looked kind of interesting, yeah yeah.  Later I found out that Saitou Kenji worked on the scenario.  Saitou Kenji is the former feng writer, and I’m a pretty big feng fan, so my expectations went up a little.  Although seeing that there were 3 different writers for this game, I didn’t expect much.  I figured he probably wasn’t given much of a role anyway. Still, the game managed to be a fairly big disappointment for me.

The game follows Lester who is an item creator in a city called Eltalia(Or however you romanize) which is known for being a city of central commerce in the fantasy world it takes place in. And there’s magical energy called Ell(however you romanize it) that kind of makes up practically anything and everything they do. I guess you could call it electricity except MAGICAL. and uh… he’s part of a guild called Oasis. Yeah that’s the rough idea but who really cares it’s boring.

Anyway, he creates various magical items that run on Ell, the energy source for practically every damn thing in the game. And he likes building a beam shooting function into his items much to Carina’s dismay because the writer thought that would be funny or something but of course it isn’t. Well, it might have been funny if the main character was enthusiastic about it or had any sort of personality or drive whatsoever. Unfortunately that is not the case. Lester is about as interesting as a cardboard box and most of the other characters don’t fare much better.

He’s part of a guild run by his childhood friend of sorts, Carina. The guild takes on missions kind of like some sort FFTA clan or any generic MMORPG kind of thing and here’s where the game crashes and burns but more on that later. For now, it’s time for roll call.

This is Minette. You can probably call her the main heroine. The game starts when like a meteor or comet or shooting star whatever comes down to Earth I don’t remember and when you run to find out where it went, you find her sleeping and then she wakes up. You soon find out that she’s some sort of automaton that was awakened by the large amount of ell from the fallen star. The first person she sees when she wakes up is Lester and she decides to call him papa.  Now, let’s get one thing out of the way

LISTEN. TO. THAT. VOICE. Oh, maybe you can tolerate it for a while but this game is long. Play this shit for 30 hours and your brain will start melting and your eardrums will literally try to hop out of your ears. I mean, what were they thinking? It’s like they tried to make her as shrill and annoying as possible. The actress(Kadowaki Mai) wasn’t bad in her other roles(Ilya from Fate Stay/Night for example) Are there people who like this kind of thing because, damn, I am not one of them. This is horrible.
As a character, she’s… boring. In fact I can’t even think of any ways to describe her as a character because she left no impression on me other than being annoying. I think that’s her only trait. Most of the characters in the game only have one trait and Minette’s is ‘annoying.’ Ok next.

Here we go.  The one heroine in the game that I would go as far as to call good or likable.  Her name is Carina and she’s absolutely moe.  I used the pouty expression for her on the top pic because I thought it was cuter than her normal one.  Anyway, she’s so single-mindedly in love with Lester that it’s just adorable.  She wears it on her sleeve but not in a pushy annoying way but in an adorable way.  She won’t hesitate to show her jealousy if the situation calls for it but she’ll only pout.  She won’t hit you like some brash tsundere or anything.

There’s a naughtier version of this CG but I did not use it

She’s also technically from ojou-sama upbringing so her speech patterns follow suit, ending her sentences in desuno or masuno, which for some reason I found moe.  Although sometimes she tries to hide this and speak casually, she finds herself slipping back into it.  She owns a magical paddle looking thing that Lester made for her that actually becomes sentient on her route.  Her little paddle looking thing is also like a top 5 character, clearly things associated with Carina are made of win.  But this orgy of awesomeness must come to an end.

Agnes, self-proclaimed best puppeteer in the world.  She likes sweets and is overall very friendly and kind of catty.  But the best part is that she’s voiced by Kaori Mizuhashi.  Hell yeah.  She has a cat doll voiced by Satomi Koroogi.  That’s cool too.  Honestly she’s probably the least flavorful character in the game though.  While everyone else kind of stands out in someway(even if it is for making your ears explode) Agnes never really does that.  Not a bad character but not much to say.

Probably the 2nd best heroine.  She’s the cool swordsman who seems to be the most mysterious but she has her cute little flaws such as no sense of direction and of course when a cool beauty like her gets embarrassed it’s kind of cute.  She also loves swords.  All of her analogies involve swords, and you may have noticed her sword earrings.  Still quite a ways behind Carina but she’s not bad.  SPOILER SHE’S ACTUALLY JUST THE SPIRIT OF A LEGENDARY SWORD IN HUMAN FORM.  Haha I spoiled it for you, but who gives a shit.  Having a sword for a heroine is actually a good thing though.  More swords need to be heroines.  I’m sure Shirou would just love her.

This covers all the heroines, now it’s time for some side characters.

Nina, she serves Carina as the sort of caretaker for the Oasis guild.  Cleans, cooks, handles the mission handouts and requests, and is voiced by someone I always found to have a rather cute voice.  I guess she doesn’t have much of a personality except for being the perfect waifu and rather good-natured.  She loves Lester but since Carina does too, she kills her feelings.  There’s a side story where Lester accepts her feelings but then she uses medicine to wipe his memory of the encounter.  How sad

Here are the stars of the game, the Tortilla sisters, Salsa and Ritos. They’re part of a rival guild that always show up to either get in Oasis’s way or sometimes help them. They’re accompanied by their golem.
Anyway, in a game with dull and pointless conversation, they shine through with something that can actually be considered amusing.  The younger sister Ritos delivers deadpan yet edgy remarks while the older sister Salsa reacts to them in over exaggerated fashion, it’s so simple but it works.  Maybe it’s because the rest of the game’s dialogue is so boring and insipid and drags on that it just seems a lot better than it really is, but it’s still a welcome addition.  They also have a crush on the main character, like everyone else in the game does for no reason, lolol

There are also side character that don’t show up nearly as often as these, but they’re not worthy enough of a picture.  Except maybe Nick because he’s gar but I’m too lazy to post a picture anyway.  They include a ancient dragon who’s always floating over the ground and a generic looking villain voiced by the guy who does Sasuke from Naruto.  Yeah I know you know him.  Oh, and I guess…

I guess the one Yuko Gotou plays is worth mentioning.  Even  though she never really does anything but try to kick your ass and eat fish.  And those dead looking eyes are sexy.  But she’s just an automaton oops is that a spoiler.

Anyway, here’s the story of the game.  Lester makes items and shit and works in a guild.  He meets most of the heroines near the start of the game and they all join in the same guild.  Then they do a bunch of pointless retarded boring quests that are mostly unrelated to anything and don’t even do a good job of forming character bonds and development.  It’s like playing FFTA without the gameplay.  That’s exactly what it’s like, actually.  Fuck, I hated FFTA WITH the gameplay, holy crap this is awful.

Speaking of gameplay, the game goes into this battle mode kind of thing…

Where it pretends it has some sort of battle system where you can make choices, but it actually doesn’t.  The game could have probably benefited from some RPG elements to keep it from being completely stale.  Instead it just kind of does this pointless crap that, you only loosely have any control over.  Like, you choose between 2 choices, one is right, one is wrong.  Whee!

So the game continues on for like, I don’t know, 30 hours of you doing nothing but these shitty boring quests with uninteresting dialogue and minimal character development.  And by the end you have a few scenes with your specific heroine, which they now love Lester and they are a couple but the game does a horrible job of showing that process so you just end up not giving a shit about them as a couple.  It doesn’t help that Lester is a cardboard box with no personality that all the heroines just kind of like for no reason.  Except for Carina, she has a good reason and that is why she’s the only good heroine in the game.  You just play through the game hoping for the Tortilla sisters to show up and trigger some dialogue that doesn’t make you want to pull your hair out in boredom.

Bottom line, they need to cut down on the tedious dialogue.  Maybe if the game didn’t drag out for so long it wouldn’t start to wear on you like it does.  But as the game goes on and on and on and on it really becomes a chore to finish and just, ugh.  I’ve had enough.

I’d score it a 5/10.  Used to be a 4 but that was a bit harsh.  For all its flaws I guess it’s still worthy of a 5/10.  The people who score it 7 or higher though are just plain off of their rocker.

Sure, everyone’s drooling over Baldr Sky, but what about its older brother?  By the way, that’s a great opening.

Note: In the off-chance this game is ever translated, this post was made to be mostly spoiler-free.

With some focus on Baldr Sky recently what with a near loss in Ixrec’s translation poll(oops did I open some wounds there) and the looming possiblity of a TakaJun translation(Yes I said possiblity, don’t get your hopes up now), it’s a good as time as any to take a look at Baldr Force, the Baldr father.

I’d just like to start by saying that before I played this game I wasn’t really expecting much.  Honestly, I don’t really care for mechs or giant robots, and I didn’t really care for Ghost in the Shell or other things in the vein of the  cyber punkish genre.  Since Baldr is like a meshing of the two, yeah, I wasn’t giddy about it.  In fact, I tackled both the Muv Luv series and the Baldr series together to get the “great mecha duo” out of the way.  And to tell the truth, I was expecting to enjoy Muv Luv more with Baldr being a disappointment.  I rather enjoyed age’s KimiNozo and honestly, one of Giga’s more well-reputed games(Kono Aozora ni Yakusoko wo) I found to be a bit of a let down(still good though).  What happened though was the complete opposite.

The game is about a hacker named Tooru, part of the hacking group he founded with his friend Yuuya called Steppenwolf.  In the Baldr universe, there’s an area of virtual space that you can move around in like you would in the world world, but of course you’re in the net so you’re not using your physical body, but dying in the net could result in brain flatlines which would mean death in the real world. I’m sure you can imagine the concept.  Being a hacker would mean actually entering the areas of the net personally(well, digitally personally er… whatever) and “viruses” are physically manifested and can be fought off with the use of Simulacrum, which is what they call the mechs that you pilot in virtual space.

Anyway, Steppenwolf gets into a sticky situation at the beginning of the game and the game starts from there.

The cast of characters include…

Mr. Hero himself, Tooru.  Nothing much to say, he doesn’t really stand out except for that he’s apparently really talented especially considering he looks like he only has one eye to see out of there.  Just don’t put a sex toy in his hands though, he turns into a demon.

Minori the dumb glasses girl.  I guess she’s kind and likes to help people.  Whatever.  Either way, her route is boring and so is she.  I’m sure everyone agrees.

Tsukina the childhood friend who suffers from the typical wanting to take care of you illness.  By the time the game starts though they’re pretty much out of that phase though.  She’s like a sister to Tooru and she’s voiced by Serizono Miya which is a-ok in my book.  Honestly she’s my favorite character in the game, though not particularly due to her as a character but just that I felt she had the best and most emotional route of all the main heroines minus the finale which really boosts her up on the scale.  Anyway, she’ll do anything to keep with Tooru and not hold him back, even if the consequences turn out not to be so…

Ah Ayane.  Voiced by Aoyama Yukari one of the biggest eroge seiyuu stars there is.  Seems cool and emotionless at first but you quickly realize that she’s driven by something.  At first you can only do her and Minori’s route and Ayane gets points for having her route blow you away after playing Minori’s trash.  She has one of the more emotional endings in the game.

Ryang(I think they mean Liang but the official spelling is Ryang, go figure) the walking Chinese stereotype.  But she’s voiced by Yuuko Gotou so that’s an automatic plus on points.  She doesn’t show up much until you trigger her path.  She’s a part of the antihips and is the life of the group.  Really respects Ku Wong the antihips leader.  And uh… the end.

OMG WHO IS THIS I’M NOT TELLING.  Although she appears on the title screen so everyone with a brain knew who it was after minimal thinking.  Although I guess technically it’s supposed to be a secret so oh well.  Notable qualities include wearing awesome panties and being the 1st/2nd most awesome character in the game.

The mysterious Wired Ghost you see throughout the ga-wait wtf is that a school uniform?  Why the hell does Getchu have her shown in a school uniform?  I have no idea.  What is the deal with this mysterious girl?  Well I can’t say anything here with being a spoiler so on we go.

The rape master, the cunt puncher, the mad dog.  Genha.  He’s such an evil bastard that by the end of the game you end up hating him so much you start liking him.  Weird.  But I’m sure he has his reasons, right?  Sure.

I don’t have pictures of others because I’m lazy.  But there’s Ku Wong the leader of the antihips and Yagizawa the army guy and uh… Reika the president bitch.  Yeah whatever they’re cool(besides Reika she’s more hatred inducing than Genha) but I can’t say much about them here.

Baldr Force is a game that uses a method of story building, in that you start with limited perspective and knowledge.  Completing the routes open to you allows you to open other routes that allow you to experience the story from a different perspective(such as joining the terrorist group or the same elite squad Tsukina does).  Each new perspective builds up upon your outlook of the game until you know the entire truth and it ends with a proper finale.  It’s well constructed and it keeps you interested.

Of course, the actual writing and twists are not what you would call mind fuck, if that’s what you like to see.  In fact, Baldr seems to like letting you know ahead of time what story twists it’ll throw at you by forecasting them nice and clear.  Normally I’d say a predictable story is a flaw but here I never felt that way, I enjoyed it the way it was.  I think it benefits from that sort of thing, as weird as it sounds.  Kind of hard to explain.  It may be predictable but it still builds up to a good epic.

One thing I liked about Baldr was its unexpected use of emotion.  I was expecting a more technical action mecha kind of experience and was pleasantly surprised to find myself emotionally involved with the story more so than a lot of other games that aim solely at that kind of reaction.  Plus, the actual plot, intrigue, and gameplay keep the experience fresh so there’s really never a moment n the game where you’re bored.  I always wanted to continue forward, I never felt that it dragged.  Pacing is certainly something that could rank among the game’s strongest points.

I also liked how it offered a few ends for each path.  Most of the non-good ends  had more impact and were more emotional than the proper good ends, although some of the good ends are nice.

Anyway, I guess I’ve gone as much as I can without getting into spoilers.  Baldr Force was a pleasant surprise to me, and actually ended up in what I’d consider to be my top 10 eroge.  It may seem archaic and a bit old to people, but I say give it a try.  I think you’ll enjoy it at least a little.

Now the burning question.  Baldr Sky Vs. Baldr Force.  What do I think?  Well, at the time of this post I am only in chapter 5 of Chinatsu’s route in Dive 1(the last route of the game) .  The gameplay in Baldr Sky is advanced, the art is wonderful, and Rain is awesome.  However, as a standalone game, I get the feeling Force is going to win it out for me.  Not a fair comparison since Dive 1 is essentially half of the story, and when Dive 2 hits the 2 of them combined will probably outdo Force.  But for now, I don’t see how Chinatsu’s route is going to change my mind.  Force wins it for me.

Overall I give it a 9/10.

BTW, nice panties

Not a very exciting first entry but I just completed the game like an hour ago so I figured I may as well go ahead and make a short little write up. The game isn’t exactly major enough to waste much time on though.

It’s Nounai Kanojo’s second game and also the 2nd game I’ve played from them. For those not in the know, Nounai Kanojo generally makes for the most part, sex-centered games where the heroines are pretty much centered around specific stereotypes. Yeah, sounds very generic up to this point, but what Nounai Kanojo likes to do is make their heroines very aggressive. If you like to take the initiative then you’ll probably want to stay away. But for the light masochist who likes their women in charge, their games are all worth a glance purely in the sense that good masochist-centered games are pretty hard to come by.

As the name implies it centers around childhood friends. Tomoki makes a promise to marry Kotono in their childhood, she moves away. Then she moves back later and is all tomboy-like and not the cute little princess Tomoki remembered. But her return starts a chain reaction among all the childhood friends that leads to a bunch of sex, blah blah. Yeah yeah, we all know how it goes.

The game heroines are Kotono the hyperactive flat tomboy who’s actually rather innocent. The kuudere glasses wearing Maya, the slut Misaki. Sorry that’s all I can describe her as. The bitch Naoko. Sorry about that too.

But I’ll save you time by pointing out that everyone mentioned about doesn’t matter. No. Forget them. This game is all about…

And

Tsugumi and Asahi. Tsugumi is a yandere-type(We’ll call yandere who exhibit yandere traits but don’t actually kill/stab anyone yandere-type) and Asahi is a trap. Of course yandere-types are almost always automatic win right, and can’t go wrong with traps. Tsugumi’s only goal in life is to take care of Tomoki and even has some bad ends that result from not straightening out her attitude.  She  does the usual yandere stuff, you know, slipping drugs into your food, strapping you to the bed while you’re unconscious, fucking up Naoko’s route by pointing out her bitchiness(this is a good thing) and of course giving you a handjob in the middle of class.

Asahi is just a trap. That is all. A cute trap. I do not believe I have to go further.

As the only 2 characters worth a damn, they also got a fandisk dedicated to them that I suppose I may as well check out after this.

Anyway I rambled enough about an average game. I guess I’d give it a 5/10 or something. I preferred their first work since it actually had some interesting character backstories while they were at it. This was just a lot more of a lol sex thing. And, well, I’ve played hotter.