A shorter update this time.

Of course, we’re going with Rin. If it helps, I might do a few other run-throughs next time to showcase the other characters, assuming I don’t forget about this in the near future and lose all interest.

Generally when I get a new idea for a project, I run it into the ground until I get bored of it (which happens quite quickly), and then I leave it on hiatus indefinitely. Until I suddenly get another burst of inspiration, and then start up all my old projects again.

Anyway. Previously on Nursery Rhyme, Shizuma got conned into a date with Yukina, or at least what amounts to a date. This doesn’t actually have much to do with the plot, since it’s not like the player can choose to get out of it.

But I have this blog entry to do.

When last we left off, our protagonist Shizuma had been accused of a Humourously Embarrassing Peeping Incident, involving what is obviously the tsundere option Tita Flawless Brandt. A d2 flip made my choice for me: Shizuma tells all.

So it goes.

The last time I tried playing Nursery Rhyme, I didn’t get very far. Time passed, and the blog stats kept telling me that people seem to like that post. Gods know why; maybe everyone’s actually looking for real nursery rhymes, which have often struck me as being a bit creepy if one knows their historical roots.

(This is why I’m not heading my entry with “nursery rhyme”, since someone looking for something for their kiddies might not react kindly to eroge.)

One of the frequent comments about Nursery Rhyme is that it’s actually a pretty good game, or at least a good Visual Novel (disclaimer added to head off debates about the definition of “game”), and it is Such A Pity that nobody’s made an English patch for it yet. Since the main reason I didn’t finish the game was entirely because of the lack of an English patch, I can understand this, much like how I cannot understand most of the text in the game.

Therefore, a thought occurs: being that I have no other ideas for a blog post that haven’t already been overdone, why not post about a playthrough of the game?

Normally I’d keep a post like this at the back of my mind, hopefully to be forgotten, because it’s a very bad idea to start yet another thing I probably won’t be able to finish. However, Real Life has landed me in the middle of what might be described as Excreta Occurs, and I really need something to cheer me up. Therefore, you get this. I may or may not continue on with this, depending on my whims.

In the far future, when I am no longer under the thrall of soul-sapping situations, or at least head up instead of head down, I might alter this intro to be less irritable. Until then, so it goes.

Incidentally, don’t ask me where I got the game, since I don’t even remember it myself. I suspect that this is one of those “friend of a friend”, or “guy who knows a guy” things, and I’m horrible with keeping track of those.

One of my (many) failings is that I tend to obsess over things. When I get something new, I immerse myself as deeply into it as I am capable of. Now, this may not last, especially if the work in question is Not To My Tastes, but since I generally pre-filter my entertainment through intense scrutiny of reviews and what few fellows who share my opinions I can muster, I often find that by the time I think to myself “this is pretty fun, but I probably should take a break around now“, the authorities may well have already declared me legally dead.

Right now, the obsession of the moment dictates that I cannot look at a withered, leafless tree without getting the urge to paint a circle around it.

Having spent most of this week playing through my newly-acquired Kingdom Hearts II, as well as going through the rather older Final Fantasy 8, I have to say that playing one tends to make me want to play the other one.

KH2 is fun in its own right, but a bit uncertain when it comes to setting the mood. This is a game which contains a world where absolutely nothing terrible happens, and the worst which can occur is a bit of a scare and some minor mischief which is laughed off easily (Hundred Acre Woods); a world (or rather, several worlds) which is the usual Disney-esque movies For Kids, where there is a Designated Villain (who dresses all in Evil Colours and is all sneaky and malicious and stuff) and the plucky heroes have to stop them from completing their all-so-evil plan (Agrabah, Atlantica, Olympus Coliseum, Land of Dragons, Pride Lands); and a world where the default state of happiness is being sarcastic and snarky and backstabby, which is still a damned sight better than all these rotting skeletons and ancient curses and bloody works (Port Royal). Throw in the ghoulish humour of Halloween Town and the surreal existentialism of Twilight Town, and we have a fair case of mood whiplash. This may be illustrated with the differences between the Heartless, which look all cutely scary in a cheap-bedsheet-over-the-head kind of way, and the Nobodies, who move in a disturbingly rubbery manner that is genuinely creepy Nightmare Fuel.

And all this is presided over by an anthropomorphic duck, a similarly anthropomorphic dog-thing, and a boy who just hit puberty with a highly unusual weapon. And none of the other people in all the worlds think that this is odd. I would have expected Captain Jack Sparrow to make a comment, at the least.

I feel that I’m probably not the designated target age group for this game. I found myself wishing the Disney sequences, where we sing musicals Under The Sea or prevent an invasion of Disney China, were over as quickly as possible, so we could get to the deeper parts of the game, which dealt in downright mind-boggling concepts of whether someone exists if they’re only in one’s memories which one then forgot but then remembered again but only vaguely, and whether hearts and the shells left behind when they leave are interchangeable or shareable or something. It’s akin to a mental and philosophical shell game: the truth’s under one of these cups. Round and round they go.

This invariably means that I found myself impatiently rushing through a great deal of the game, only to have to go back and grind through them when it turns out that the Deep Parts are gated by bosses I need to level to defeat. I will not even mention Jiminy’s Journal, which I’m seriously considering ignoring and just starting over on Proud Mode. At least in KH1 I could get the Secret Ending through level-grinding patience, rather than actual, yanno, game-playing skill.

At least the various cameos of Final Fantasy characters are appreciated. Setzer’s appearance was just blatantly Out Of Character, but Auron was pretty well done, and Tifa was kind of fun to watch in action, in an Akane Tendo kind of way. The trio of Yuna, Rikku, and Paine made me remember how odd it seemed that the saviour of all of Spira and a self-sacrificing well-respected summoner would end up as a giddy pop star, but that’s a rant for a different game, and at least they’re very cute in this one.

A great deal of the tension and mystery of the game is maintained through the simple expedient of having everyone who might know something either disappear mysteriously for no adequately-explained reason, or get interrupted by a convenient (or inconvenient, depending on your point of view) attack of Heartless or Nobodies. I get the feeling that it is a staple in stories for those In The Know to selfishly guard their secrets, since Knowledge Is Power and all that, but I have to wonder what the story would look like if everyone revealed all they knew right at the beginning. It may be a rather shorter story, or it may not.

Leon, mind you, is a great deal more tolerable than his template Squall, who acts like such a self-absorbed jerk that I have to wonder why anyone wants to stay around him. I mean, the player sees what he thinks about and can thus follow his chain of logic, but for everyone else, his random outbursts are astonishingly non-sequitur. At least the game has the requisite Square Trio of cute female characters, and I find myself torn between Selphie’s cheerfulness and Quistis’s Reliable Older Woman appeal.

… why yes, that is a major reason why I play these games. This should not be surprising in any way.

Warning: spoilers. Considering I’m mostly talking about games which have been out for about a decade or so, I doubt I need to spoiler-cut these. (Don’t worry, I won’t spoil anything past FF8.)

They say that the first Final Fantasy game you play will be your favourite.

“They”, in this case, meaning that inevitable comment when a discussion about the FF series turns into whichever is one’s favourite. Invariably someone proves it wrong, just as generalizations are easily disputed with a single exception. However, I am not that exception, because even though the first FF game I played significantly (and completed) was the Super Nintendo US version of Final Fantasy 4 (then marketed as Final Fantasy 2 in the US), before that, my actual first FF experience was Final Fantasy 6, then marketed in the US as Final Fantasy 3. And even though I did not get past the very beginning of the Narshe Mines on my first play-through (being that I was distracted by Super Mario World, and kind of set it aside until I couldn’t find the game), when I went back to play it and play it consistently, it rocketed up my list and ended up as number one.

Since then, I’ve played every other (numbered) FF game from the Playstation era, plus Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2, and Final Fantasy 5 on emulator, and I’m currently working slowly through Final Fantasy 3 (the actual one) on my DS Lite, on and I still place FF6 as my top spot for FF games. I’m not sure if this is due entirely to nostalgia or if I can actually ennumerate the reasons for my love if only I had the necessary vocabulary.

If you’re wondering, the ranking for the others go something like: 8 (putting aside the horrible battle system, the presentation of the story, if not the story itself, was worth quite a lot), X (all-around good, and I don’t mind being railroaded), 7 (hey, Sephiroth is badass, and I loved Aerith), 4 (this may change when I check out the “better” translation job, but the story felt fairly bland, and with the exception of Cecil and Rydia, I didn’t care about the characters that much), 9 (I didn’t even finish it, mostly due to the presence of odd graphical artifacts when playing on my PS2 that made gameplay painful), 5 (the story didn’t really grab me, and I hated having to grind to level jobs), and not counting 3 (which I’m still playing), X-2 (which was a series of minigames pasted together with the remnants of a plot).

(I’m not counting Final Fantasy XI. In fact, considering I loathed it, it’s probably a good idea not to count it.)

But again, FF6 feels leaps and bounds ahead of everything else. I’m not sure why, or rather I’m not sure how to explain why. I could say that it’s nostalgia: when I played through FF6, it was technically my first FF played, and my second really played and completed, and I had not seen anything like it before. It could be the story: I don’t think I can really justify this to any objective degree, and this is both a case of personal inability to come up with suitable words, as well as the fact that it’s really entirely subjective. It could be the characters: almost every (playable) character has a sidequest or backstory that makes up a large part of who they are, with the exception of Umaro and Gogo (and possibly Strago), who are, perhaps not coincidentally, my least favourite characters in the game. (Well, Gogo is great mechanics-wise, but story-wise… eh.)

And then there’s Kefka. I’m a bit worried about the re-translations from Ted Woosley’s rather LEGENDARY script, mostly because we have all the classic memorable lines that probably aren’t very faithful to the original (”‘Wait,’ he says… do I look like a waiter?”). We first see Kefka as being a bit psychotic (and yes, I realize how silly that sounds), and it’s not until the middle of the game (at the end of the World of Balance) that we realize just how insane he is, and the end of the game when his final motivations are revealed. It’s no big surprise, but when you remember that this is the guy who complained about sand on his boots and then set fire to an allied castle, and then later poisoned an entire city, you realize that not only were the signs there all along, the scope of his madness remained a surprise thanks to prior expectations: “Surely he wouldn’t be so crazy as to do that, right? … right?”

Also, “Dancing Mad” is the Best Final Battle Music Ever. It’s not as (Internet) radio-friendly as “One-Winged Angel”, but the first and last movements of that piece are just awesome. (If you can, grab the Black Mages version. The rock guitar at about 8:40 or so brings so many memories of desperately healing against Fallen One.) Kefka’s leitmotif is all over that piece.

Sephiroth is more photogenic, and I certainly do not begrudge him his appearance in the Kingdom Hearts series, if only because it works better for him as an opponent rather than the Giger-esque final battle form of Kefka, but dammit, Kefka makes the cliche of being insanely evil work. I suppose it helps that we see him from the very beginning of the game with his personality not really changing that much, compared to the “wait, where’d they come from?” of FF4’s Zeromus, FF5’s Exdeath, and FF8’s Ultimecia. (Also, the “wait, that’s the real villain!” point comes at the end of the World of Balance, which is either close to the end of the game, or in the middle, depending on how much time you want to spend in the World of Ruin collecting your party members.)

And at the very end, during the ending sequence, when they show a montage of the characters escaping from the collapsing Floating Continent along with items which represent them on a sepia tone while their leitmotifs play, I am reminded once again: these are the characters whose stories are told in the game. They are the ones who have been through just about everything the plot has thrown at them, and they have come out of it with a better understanding of themselves and each other. From Terra’s acceptance of her Esper half, to the brotherly love between Edgar and Sabin, to Setzer coming to terms with Daryl’s disappearance, to Locke finally finding closure with Rachel and a new beginning with Celes, to Shadow’s acceptance of his betrayal of Baram… these are the characters whom I, as a player, can actually feel proud for knowing.

The famous opera scene is not the highlight of the game; it’s an example, among so many others.

I don’t actually have any posts in reserve for today, so I’ll do the extremely lazy thing and schedule a wallpaper, 1024×768 version. This is Makina Tomoe from the erogame Nursery Rhyme; she’s the happy, genki type, who’s probably going to be the Real Ending or some such. (Well, unless the game throws something out of left field at me.) Source is unknown, but probably 4chan, judging by the filename; I didn’t even know I had a Nursery Rhyme wallpaper until today, when I was browsing through mine wallpaper folder. Apparently I grabbed it some time ago, and only grokked the source recently.

In all honesty, I’ve not actually finished the game, or even progressed much since the last time I played it, largely because I find myself with less faith in my understanding-from-context Japanese skills picked up from over twelve years of watching anime every time I see that torrent of complicated words. I should probably put some time into deciphering the text, but I yet hold out hope that some kind soul out there will release an unofficial English translation patch or some such. That, or a walkthrough.

I don’t really have the spare time in front of my computer to construct an actual post, mostly because this weekend is taken up entirely by (tabletop) gaming. Exchanging one geeky activity for another is probably not that bad of a thing when the end result is more socializing with other (probable) human beings. Still, I’ll probably be looking to pick up another anime that is easy to understand sans subtitles for my blogging, in addition to Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. Current prime candidate is sola, mostly because it seems to have enough things that I can actually talk about at any length, and which I actually like watching.

Of course, I might also be pulling out yet another Card Captor Sakura episode summary. I should probably spread those out; too many “Yukito says he’s just visiting Touya to Study, wink-wink nudge-nudge hur-hur-hur” jokes in rapid succession would probably get a little old.

Once again, in lieu of an actual post, I come with a short ramble on a doujin game introduced to me by Rankendrake, titled Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha Danmaku STG. I’ll probably be doing that Spring Season Anime post when the Spring Season actually starts, since I know Absolutely Nothing about most of the upcoming anime. (Well, except for StrikerS, which is slightly relevant to this post anyway.)

The game, as the name suggests, is a danmaku top-down shooter based (loosely) on Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A’s, with projectiles covering pretty much all of the screen at times. The game has a wide variety of difficulty levels ranging from Very Easy to Nightmare; I used Very Easy for these screenshots because I have no idea what the Pause key was, and it was the only way I could grab screenshots and not, yanno, die. Yes, I suck at games like these.

For an anime blog, I don’t really review a lot of anime.

So once again I’ve obtained another eroge, this time Nursery Rhyme by Lump of Sugar. I first heard about this game from the now-infamous Code Geass parody, and felt that the opening theme was the sort of indicator of exactly the sort of moe sugary-sweet romantic comedy story I have a weakness for. You know, bright colours, happy school days, predictable and yet amusing situations, one nice guy being dragged around by lots of cute girls, the like. I suppose what I’m really looking for is a cute love story without the angst, but still interesting enough to watch.

The primary problem I have with playing this game is that it’s not translated. My Japanese is obtained entirely from watching anime and what horrible grades in Chinese I managed to get, which helps slightly in kanji recognition, but hardly matters when the characters start ranting in a torrent of complicated kanji. Therefore, I’ve really only been clicking through the text boxes and listening to the characters speak, in an effort to glean some understanding of the situations based on context.

I haven’t finished (or am even near finishing) the game yet, and so I can’t really give a proper full review. (Not that I can do that anyway.) Still, thus far I haven’t gotten to even one outright H scene (just the way I like it), and there were a few bits which made me chuckle, if only because it’s the sort of humour I’m partial to.