/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Finished Furuiro Meikyuu Rondo. Seems my save got corrupted, but luckily only after I got the main ending.

After Saki's initial introduction about paying attention to minute details, the tea making tutorial and initially complex looking flowchart I was expecting the game's routes work like one big tangled spider web where you're constantly seeking new keywords from alternate branches, stumbling into dead ends in order to unlock new ones, but it ended up being really linear and easy. There's only like one notable point at the beginning where you need a keyword from one branch in order to advance in another branch (and it's stupid flimsy shit; the game doesn't allow you to advance if you don't have the proper keyword for waking up a character that is already about to wake up on their own and it's just a normal SoL scene rather than high stakes situation requiring quick action, there's no associated bad end or anything, the lines simply stop there and the game tells you to go to another branch), but after getting that done the game is practically one straight road with side bad ends. The stupidly convoluted looking flowchart is just for the looks.

I didn't really like the fate point system either, as getting a character's points low through arbitrary word choices (even getting words right causes fate point loss in some cases without any reason) would just instantly throw you a generic instant game over (rather than an actual bad end) and revert you to a checkpoint with the character's fate points restored higher then they were before, meaning you can just brute force through everything and the fate point system ends up being a nuisance more than anything.

I took tons of screenshots and made note of probable branches, but they ended up being pretty useless as the keywords are usually just the game asking if you're paying attention to the main plot (very often the same needed keyword is introduced just few scenes or even lines before the prompt) more than anything else. Most of the keywords never get used either, and there's some cases the writer didn't really think things through on how many keywords could apply in some situation; f.ex. at the beginning you get word 行く and it's used once to participate in an event, but in all such later, similar cases you just usually repeat another recently introduced word instead and word 行く just results in the game penalizing you. In the last parts you have to remind characters about the clock memo, but the game only accepts word 懐中時計 and not メモ, despite the latter being the main issue at hand.

Actual story wise the game felt pretty lackluster at first, though it instantly went from meh to enjoyable tier with protagonist turning into a ruthless bastard in his look for Saki, and I kind of wish the game would've stayed more fucked up in that way and explored his change better. I was grinning like a retard during those parts. As for the main twists, I think there's other games that have done player as story element meta stuff much better and I kind of wanted more than really conveniently working magic explanation out of the actual time travel elements.

Music was pretty damn forgettable and the game could've used more tracks in general. Few particular CGs looked like shit. Another thing that felt cheap was the protagonist using same VA as the fag loving joke side character, probably because of budget reasons or something. H-scenes for side heroines felt completely unnecessary as well. Overall a really faulty ride with some high points that made it pretty enjoyable at times. Saki was a relatively cute 毒舌 heroine at least.