Progress report: Second week of July ‘19 (a.k.a. Renovating the House and Regaining Peace of Mind)

The second week of July is now behind us. I have to say this one was hard to get through. After over a decade of not changing my room at all (besides repainting the walls), this year I’m finally changing it up and suiting it more to my lifestyle, I suppose I should say. Neither my mom nor I are good at this renovating stuff though (even if we’re not the ones to do anything besides packing up our stuff), so we spent a few days in a row quarreling over pointless stuff… I’ve been so stressed out about this change, I’m not even that stressed out at school if I know I have an important test soon… I think that really shows how important it is for me.

Anyway! Here’s what I did this past week:

• Kokurase - Episode 1
  

  9.9 hours playtime

  22 of 22 achievements

• Little Kite
  

  3.1 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Pixel Puzzles: UndeadZ
  

  9.0 hours playtime

  34 of 34 achievements

Kokurase - I would have never thought I’d be so happy to call this one done. Kokurase is a small (literally, the size of the window is just…) RPGMaker game about a group of high school students who call themselves “Kokurase” (my guess is that the name stems from the Japanese verb “kokuru” - “to confess one’s love”) and take it upon themselves to not only grant fellow students love advice, but to manipulate simple events (and people) so that they get the client (person who asked for help) closer and closer to the target (person the client has got feelings for). There are two core mechanics the player has to utilize: the ability to switch between members of the group, who all have different tasks to execute in different moments of the game, and the ability to use spoken or heard key phrases to communicate with different characters. Now, I know that the game is by default called “Kokurase - Episode 1”, but that becomes void after you actually purchase the next two episodes, which are available as DLC. The official statement is that completing the game should take about 4-5 hours; I have to admit it took me so much longer because I kept stalling thanks to the smallest things - for example, in one of the episodes the game introduces you to a mechanic that is only available for one character, and since it tells you the way to use it in that moment, you’re able to do that without a problem. But about half an hour later, it only hints at that same mechanic ever-so-slightly, which made me believe I got stuck, because I didn’t get the hint and was adamantly trying to use one of the key phrases (which, obviously, didn’t work). Oh, and before you think you can’t access the second and third episode after you buy and download them - always launch the game from Steam, it’ll let you choose just fine. As far as the plot goes… I liked the first episode, everything started out funny and bubbly, the client was cute, the target a douche, but they got what they deserved later on… but then the second and third episode were so much more fast-paced I struggled to wrap my head around everything. A bunch of new characters were introduced suddenly and easily a third of the story talked about how much of a gap there is between students with worse grades and better grades, because guess what, they separate them from each other. As much as I grew to like all the members of Kokurase and some supporting characters, I couldn’t be bothered to get into running around from place to place and plotting so much just to have the story turn out the way I knew it would because the official game picture spoiled it all before I even knew who the characters were. Last but not least, I was disappointed by the lack of continuation of the cliffhanger from the third episode, because that actually seemed interesting. I know for a fact there is at least one more episode available, but only in Japanese (with Degica saying nothing other than they don’t plan to release it in English, so that’s a no-no in my book). If you know Japanese and like the whole series though, you might also enjoy the manga, which is… also… only available in Japanese. Granted, it’s not something popular, but it’d still be cool to read. The art style is very unique - colorful and detailed, except for the character bios, which are just simple sketches of the characters and might not seem that pleasant to the eye. Oh, and before I forget! Every character you can play as has their own theme song! How dope is that? Even when a certain character resolves to change themselves, their theme song changes with them! Okay, I guess I wanted to leave this on a good note, so let’s do that.

Little Kite - Just like it was initially described, Little Kite is an expanded version of The Kite - the game is now in color, with a more distinct art style, more back story has been added, the existing segments have been slightly expanded and one, maybe two new segments have been added, warranting a much longer playtime. The general gist of the story is the same - a woman in her 30s (I assume) is a subject of domestic violence, trying her best to stick it out for her son, because it’s commonly seen as worse for a woman to be a single mother than to be in a relationship, even if it is abusive. Little Kite shows us the day she decides she’s had enough and aims to escape with her son. From the technical side of things - the writing is uneven (e.g. examining a sink returns a simple “This is an usual sink”, while examining a window makes the main character suddenly become a poet), most riddles are of passable difficulty and I discovered a bug towards the end of the game - you’re meant to force a certain character to leave a place, but when I went back to said place after they were supposed to leave, they were still there. Thankfully that didn’t break the game. The ending changed only slightly as well, but even though I fully know what the main theme of the game is, I still don’t feel rewarded enough. Maybe because I was really hurrying to finish this one when I was really tired and my laptop kept lagging, especially towards the end. Oh, and I used a walkthrough again. But only towards the end. Since there is no real walkthrough on Steam for this game, if I got stuck earlier on in the game, I figured out what I needed from multiple discussions scattered on the forum instead.

Pixel Puzzles: UndeadZ - Last puzzle game so far - done. Don’t even talk to me about Pixel Puzzles Ultimate. This one is all about zombies - running from them, killing from them, becoming them. You know how that goes. Speaking of killing them… this installment’s non-puzzle addition has to be just the worst thing ever. Every time upon launching the game, you’re presented with a minigame about killing zombies. Sure, it looks passable enough to be enjoyable for a minute… but then the achievements force you to play for at least an hour (to get the survival time achievements) and then for an additional 30-40 minutes to rack up 5000 kills. I kid you not. I strongly advise anyone who hasn’t done this yet to use grenades only, as they take out zombies in one hit (as opposed to the gun, which is three hits) and can kill two at once if close together. The aiming is very specific too, you have to observe the throwing animation closely, because if you move the reticle halfway through the throw, the player character will throw in the direction you moved the reticle towards, as opposed to where you were initially aiming it. This was an absolute pain in my rectal canal. Does that… even… exist… oh-kay, moving on. As I mentioned before, at the Japan installment, the first series of Pixel Puzzles doesn’t feature puzzle rotation, which in turn made the whole game pretty much half the time it would take to complete a Pixel Puzzles 2 installment. Whew… at least I’m done with those for now. Unless I win a new one on SG, I’m not playing any more of these.

I can’t wait to see what progress I’ll make this week! There’s a slight possibility for me to get back to Yakuza 0, so if I do, that’ll eat up all my time instead and I’d rather do quantity over quality, seeing how big my backlog still is… anyway, see you next week! :D