While we here at Operation Rainfall love covering the latest in gaming news and sharing our reviews of titles new and classic, we also just enjoy playing games in our downtime. So with that, sit back, relax, and check out what the oprainfall gaming crew have been up to this week!
After playing through and reviewing Sympathy Kiss recently, I found myself starting to slip back into a slump and wasn’t sure what I would even enjoy next. It’s part of the reason I play otome so sparingly. Like I mentioned in my review, I tend to get extremely absorbed into otome and have a hard time stepping away. But also, once I’m done with a good one, I typically just don’t know what to do afterwards, or what actually sounds fun. And thus, rather than stew in that slump forever, I decided to play even more otome. Probably not the wisest decision, but I ended up in the mood for more and I had one on hand that I needed to finish, Piofiore: Fated Memories. When I first played and eventually put down Fated Memories, I had done all but two routes, Gilbert’s and the happy ending no specific guy route. Plus there were a handful of extras I hadn’t checked out.
Gilbert was my favorite of all the choices at the start just based on his design. However, he is also a forced last choice and I was anxious to finally play his route. It turns out, after going through his path and seeing more of him, he is definitely my favorite Piofiore guy. Recently, I also picked up a copy of Piofiore: Episodio 1926 as well. I wasn’t planning on buying it just yet, but it seemed like physical copies were starting to disappear, so I went ahead and bought it before it was too late. After finishing the last two routes and some extras in Fated Memories, I finally started Episodio. Episodio 1926 lets you choose any guy’s route to start and they play as direct sequels to Fated Memories‘ best endings. So far I’ve played Gilbert’s, Orlok’s and Nicola’s route. Gilbert and Orlok I’ve already blindly run into the bad endings first and went back with a guide to get the good endings. Nicola’s, I only just finished last night and haven’t gone back through for the good ending yet. Gilbert’s new route made me love him even more than I already did. In Fated Memories his path was pretty short and tame, so I enjoyed that you got to hang out with him a lot more as a couple with the main girl in Episodio. His sequel route is everything I wanted, he’s simply the best guy in the whole game in my opinion.
The only thing about Piofiore I haven’t enjoyed, is the sheer amount of grammar issues, typos and just overall unfixed mistakes which are all over the place. I’m happy so much otome is localized these days and that the Switch has no shortage of it to enjoy. But, I really wish more time was spent on each one and they were put out without such a ridiculous barrage of typos and incorrect, never fixed grammar. I thought Fated Memories was bad enough as is, but at least that game isn’t version 1.0.0 like the sequel, so something was fixed. Not to mention, every sentence was complete. Thus far in Episodio 1926, I’ve run into quite a few lines where it just cuts off. No sentence ender with punctuation, only a cliffhanger of a line. And sometimes the main character’s speech box will cut off where she’s talking to someone and then continue into a thought bubble next. Or, she’s talking to someone and then thinking to herself partially in the speaking text box, only for it to cut off and continue in the thinking more narrative style box. Plus, I ran into one line (pictured above) where parts of the sentence were repeated multiple times so it says a whole lot of nothing, which left me quite confused. Not only that, but like I mentioned before, Episodio is still version 1.0.0 and didn’t have a single patch. Which means, no one went back to fix even a fraction of the issues after launch. It’d be nice if these otome games had significantly better quality control and editing, or that anyone even tried to fix them after launch and didn’t forever leave them so horrendously bad. – Jenae
With Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth right around the corner, it was finally time to tackle a game that has been in my backlog for over a decade: Crisis Core. Thankfully I didn’t have to drag out a PSP for this one, as the remaster is readily available, so my sister and I spent a little over a week blowing through the story of Zack Fair and his merry band of visual kei wannabes. Actually I’m sorry, I’m being a little harsh and a bit unfair. But to say this entry into the VII franchise left me underwhelmed and disappointed would be an understatement.
First, though, the good. Visually, the game is quite gorgeous, with some particularly stunning locales and set pieces, great lighting and cutscene choreography, and the models all look expressive and lively, especially Zack. The music is great, but that should go without saying. I didn’t mind the combat overall, or the way the Digital Mind Wave (DMW) reels played into the actual story. If anything, that was a master stroke of genius. The RNG elements to literally everything else, including leveling, I could have done without, though. Zack himself was likeable and fun, and his puppy dog attitude and fish out of water responses to the more outrageous stuff happening around him made him relatable when everything else started going off the rails. His budding relationship with Aerith was cute, and the little we got between him and the Turks was a nice bit of characterization for a group of antagonists I really had no previous investment in. Cadet Cloud was refreshingly stupid, and I liked Tifa’s attempts to ask about the “blond SOLIDER” without giving away who she was asking about. All very adorable and well done. The final setpiece of the game was legitimately amazing and such a brilliant blend of narrative and gameplay that it actually pulled at my heart strings. It’s hard to overstate how well that sequence was done.
Unfortunately, the rest of the narrative up to that point fell incredibly flat for me. I hated everything to do with Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth. I don’t fault the game for wanting to introduce new elements to the world, or even a self-contained villain, but I could not get behind this plot at all. We didn’t spend enough time with Angeal to care about him before he left, nor did we see nearly enough of the three of them together to believe they had any real connection. I think the idea of a failed experiment before Sephiroth could have been really interesting, but I disliked the way this game handled that, and it felt far too derivative. In the end, rather than being a foil for Sephiroth, Genesis undermined what little I actually liked about his story. And all this was happening while the game actively did not do the one thing I wanted from it – give me Zack and Cloud bonding. I am not a big FFVII fan. I do not stan this game. I’m not particularly fond of the OG. But “we’re friends, right?” has lived rent free in my head for over two decades, and all I wanted from Crisis Core was to give me a reason to believe that line. And I never got it. We spent so much time with Angeal and Genesis and Sephiroth but not enough building the emotional core of Zack and Cloud, and when I finally put the game down I just felt like I’d wasted my time. Glad I played it so I have the context, and again, that final setpiece was worth going through everything else for, but the emotional and narrative throughline that I wanted never came to fruition, and that’s a shame.
Looking forward to Rebirth, though. – Leah
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
