Neo Angelique blah blah
I have more to say and will have to continue this tomorrow.
Overall, it was a mostly pleasant way to pass the time and get to better know some characters I liked, but I wish it had aimed higher. The RPG element, in both its role in the overall game and the specific mechanics involved, was promising, but the developers were too nervous about...it distracting from the otome action? about girls trying to do stuff? - and thus removed almost all of the challenge from it. On the other hand, while I also liked the idea that your choice of partner for certain events plays into how well you'll fare there, there's no margin for error in meeting the standard for success in certain areas, particularly romance. You have to know for whom you're gunning right away and pursue them relentlessly, to the exclusion of all other goals or exploration. And isn't that rather ridiculous, to have the main objective of an otome game - to have your character begin a successful relationship with one of the cast members - be so difficult to attain?
I find myself wondering if, say, wooing Rayne would've been as tough. Compared with J.D., where you have to make a trip to Kozu for nearly every event, you just have to keep visiting Rayne's room to progress his relationship - and that's easier mechanics-wise, as room visits don't require progressing the overall plot clock quite like events triggered by traveling on the world map do. Though he's unquestionably the golden favorite in the anime, Rayne's almost the second lead here, introduced nearly at the same time as Ange and put on equal footing with her (the young, idealistic teen caught in a larger plot; much is made of the equivalence in his and Ange's ages in-game). He has the most screen time; his reaction to events and relationship to other characters is highlighted throughout the game; his events are thrown in your path and harder to avoid than encounter; and his own little character story, the conflict with Jorgo, is central to the game's plot. (Contrast this with Nyx, whose own tale should be even more integral to events yet is barely sketched out if you're not in a relationship with him.) I have to say that, in the end anaylsis, I did indeed end up resenting Rayne here - perhaps not as intensely as in the anime, as it was possible after a while to stay away from Rayne most of the time, but I indeed wasn't crazy about the giant Finger of Authorial Fiat pointing out "THIS IS WHOM YOU SHOULD COVET." I understand from following the main Ange series that it's difficult to have to parcel out equal love and attention to all the main cast members of a series, but I'm not sure that an otome game should play favorites so heavily. Oscar- or Arios-level is perhaps as far as it should go.
I did think it was a bit more successful as a story. The execution of the otome elements are still a significant handicap here, no question. I did like, however, that you're able to a degree to pick and choose what elements you want in your own tale. Don't like Rene? You can snip him completely out of the story. Well, OK, if you're after Mathias, you can't cut him completely out of the story, and doing so in any event will get you the closest ending there is to original Angelique's "go back to school with your pleb friends" denouement, only this time without even any CGs. I still felt, though, that I in some respects had a greater degree of control over story development than I do in other games: my Ange still ended up happy, and her end was an affirmation of the power of the little guy with which Abyss flirted but ultimately couldn't pull off. I was satisfied, on that account.
Talking in general was also a high point. That's not snark; there's such an impressive variety of talking - on-the-job dialogue, dating, private heart-to-hearts, group dinner-party chats... There is a metric ton of dialogue; my kanji dictionary would weep at the thought of translating it all. I also appreciate how they tried to integrate multiple game mechanics into talking, like the really clever dinner parties, where you have to gauge when a conversation is dying down so you know when to change the subject and keep it alive, or how you have to travel afield to catch wind of the latest hot topics and gossip for use in your Bingo Talks. These mechanics were, again, often hamstrung by the developers' aversion to fair challenge - there's apparently a very narrow window during which you can collect do-or-die Bingo Talk topics, and though you can monitor how broaching various topics makes your Bingo Talk partner feel on a continuum of Happy to Serious, you never really have to finesse the situation all that delicately. The effort is appreciated, though, and illustrates Koei's expertise as the founder of the genre; they know that dating games are really getting-to-know-a-person simulators.
The big stumbling block for me with the genre, though, is that you're not only expected but in a way required to complete the story multiple times. I suppose this ties in with the concept of moe that Japanese game developers are now allegedly pursuing - banking on fans who're obsessed with the material rather than a wider audience who might be satisfied with just one playthrough. While I'm more involved with Angelique than most, I have other demands on my time and would prefer a satisfying, reasonably complete play experience my first time through. Making the first playthrough just a practice run, with half the content blocked off for no reason, undermines the feeling that my choices have an impact on the story. I mean, there are several extensively different paths through the game, and it's not like the player's experiencing Neo Angelique from a multiverse perspective; even if nothing were changed from runthrough to runthrough, the player'd still have tens of hours of new material to see with replays. Instead, the approach is like DLC Quest, except you have to pay with time instead of money; I can understand the extra characters being behind the paywall, but not basic plot & romance elements.
Overall, it's a game that has a bunch of great ideas frustrated in execution. I wish Koei took advantage of the myriad rereleases to refine the gameplay and develop this promising material to its full potential. But they have no incentive to do so, do they, considering that chumps like me will just buy it anyhow.
Overall, it was a mostly pleasant way to pass the time and get to better know some characters I liked, but I wish it had aimed higher. The RPG element, in both its role in the overall game and the specific mechanics involved, was promising, but the developers were too nervous about...it distracting from the otome action? about girls trying to do stuff? - and thus removed almost all of the challenge from it. On the other hand, while I also liked the idea that your choice of partner for certain events plays into how well you'll fare there, there's no margin for error in meeting the standard for success in certain areas, particularly romance. You have to know for whom you're gunning right away and pursue them relentlessly, to the exclusion of all other goals or exploration. And isn't that rather ridiculous, to have the main objective of an otome game - to have your character begin a successful relationship with one of the cast members - be so difficult to attain?
I find myself wondering if, say, wooing Rayne would've been as tough. Compared with J.D., where you have to make a trip to Kozu for nearly every event, you just have to keep visiting Rayne's room to progress his relationship - and that's easier mechanics-wise, as room visits don't require progressing the overall plot clock quite like events triggered by traveling on the world map do. Though he's unquestionably the golden favorite in the anime, Rayne's almost the second lead here, introduced nearly at the same time as Ange and put on equal footing with her (the young, idealistic teen caught in a larger plot; much is made of the equivalence in his and Ange's ages in-game). He has the most screen time; his reaction to events and relationship to other characters is highlighted throughout the game; his events are thrown in your path and harder to avoid than encounter; and his own little character story, the conflict with Jorgo, is central to the game's plot. (Contrast this with Nyx, whose own tale should be even more integral to events yet is barely sketched out if you're not in a relationship with him.) I have to say that, in the end anaylsis, I did indeed end up resenting Rayne here - perhaps not as intensely as in the anime, as it was possible after a while to stay away from Rayne most of the time, but I indeed wasn't crazy about the giant Finger of Authorial Fiat pointing out "THIS IS WHOM YOU SHOULD COVET." I understand from following the main Ange series that it's difficult to have to parcel out equal love and attention to all the main cast members of a series, but I'm not sure that an otome game should play favorites so heavily. Oscar- or Arios-level is perhaps as far as it should go.
I did think it was a bit more successful as a story. The execution of the otome elements are still a significant handicap here, no question. I did like, however, that you're able to a degree to pick and choose what elements you want in your own tale. Don't like Rene? You can snip him completely out of the story. Well, OK, if you're after Mathias, you can't cut him completely out of the story, and doing so in any event will get you the closest ending there is to original Angelique's "go back to school with your pleb friends" denouement, only this time without even any CGs. I still felt, though, that I in some respects had a greater degree of control over story development than I do in other games: my Ange still ended up happy, and her end was an affirmation of the power of the little guy with which Abyss flirted but ultimately couldn't pull off. I was satisfied, on that account.
Talking in general was also a high point. That's not snark; there's such an impressive variety of talking - on-the-job dialogue, dating, private heart-to-hearts, group dinner-party chats... There is a metric ton of dialogue; my kanji dictionary would weep at the thought of translating it all. I also appreciate how they tried to integrate multiple game mechanics into talking, like the really clever dinner parties, where you have to gauge when a conversation is dying down so you know when to change the subject and keep it alive, or how you have to travel afield to catch wind of the latest hot topics and gossip for use in your Bingo Talks. These mechanics were, again, often hamstrung by the developers' aversion to fair challenge - there's apparently a very narrow window during which you can collect do-or-die Bingo Talk topics, and though you can monitor how broaching various topics makes your Bingo Talk partner feel on a continuum of Happy to Serious, you never really have to finesse the situation all that delicately. The effort is appreciated, though, and illustrates Koei's expertise as the founder of the genre; they know that dating games are really getting-to-know-a-person simulators.
The big stumbling block for me with the genre, though, is that you're not only expected but in a way required to complete the story multiple times. I suppose this ties in with the concept of moe that Japanese game developers are now allegedly pursuing - banking on fans who're obsessed with the material rather than a wider audience who might be satisfied with just one playthrough. While I'm more involved with Angelique than most, I have other demands on my time and would prefer a satisfying, reasonably complete play experience my first time through. Making the first playthrough just a practice run, with half the content blocked off for no reason, undermines the feeling that my choices have an impact on the story. I mean, there are several extensively different paths through the game, and it's not like the player's experiencing Neo Angelique from a multiverse perspective; even if nothing were changed from runthrough to runthrough, the player'd still have tens of hours of new material to see with replays. Instead, the approach is like DLC Quest, except you have to pay with time instead of money; I can understand the extra characters being behind the paywall, but not basic plot & romance elements.
Overall, it's a game that has a bunch of great ideas frustrated in execution. I wish Koei took advantage of the myriad rereleases to refine the gameplay and develop this promising material to its full potential. But they have no incentive to do so, do they, considering that chumps like me will just buy it anyhow.