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!
Lately, I’ve been continuing to make bits of progress in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but I’ve also gone back to playing otome as well. I haven’t made a ton of progress in FE3H just yet, but I did get a couple chapters further in. In our last Week in Gaming article a couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I had just gotten to the chapter where I’d be heading with Jeralt to Remire. Now, I’ve done Remire and gotten through the end of the very sad chapter that happens afterwards. I’m now the chapter after that one, just talking to all the characters at Garreg Mach Monastery and picking up the new quests and whatnot. I think I’m getting really close to the time skip. I’m excited to see how the story changes and to finally get to the new alternate route content I missed the first time. However, I’m not doing the route this time that I thought I was.
I don’t know why I thought leaving the church with the Black Eagles was the standard route and that siding with the church instead, was the more difficult option which has certain requirements to accomplish first. I’ve avoided spoilers for years, but I did see hints of certain things here and there and yeah, I was under the impression all this time that siding with the church wasn’t the default. But seeing as that is the standard direction this route ends up and I’m already so far into it, I suppose I’ll have my answers about some of the secrets surrounding Garreg Mach Monastery, sooner than I thought. I’ll probably stick with this, do the DLC side story afterwards, then Golden Deer and finally I’ll end things on that last more hidden route which isn’t the default.
Recently I decided to pick back up 9 R.I.P. as well, an otome game I reviewed two years ago now. 9 R.I.P. is an otome with quite a lot of routes, there are 8 regular love interests and then there’s a final route that doesn’t unlock until after you’ve seen certain stuff and gotten through some of the other characters’ routes. Because of this, I never 100% finished the game back when I reviewed it. I’d say I finished about 80% and still had two guys left whose routes I didn’t play through, as well as that final 9th route and a couple of missed endings. Seeing as the sequel is coming to Switch in the West next month, I figured I better go back and finish up that final 20% before next month. I still had to fully do Hibiki’s and Minami’s routes and of course the 9th and final route, plus those missed endings for other characters. I really enjoyed revisiting 9 R.I.P., this otome has a really cool atmosphere and rather than being meh on all the love interests and only having my one fave, I honestly liked at least five of the guys in this game. Koyo was my ultimate favorite, but I also really liked Kureha, Sena, Seiya and Koharu as well. Knowing that I really loved so many of the LIs in this one, makes me really excited for the sequel.
9 R.I.P. wasn’t the only otome I played this past week. I also for the very first time ever, have started playing Hakuoki. Specifically, I recently got the EastAsiaSoft localized Switch release out of the eShop while it was on sale, which is a collection that includes both Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds and Hakuoki: Edo Blossoms. I know EastAsiaSoft is localizing a fandisc for the game, which has never been localized before, and releasing it early next year. So just like now was a good time to revisit 9 R.I.P., I also feel like it’s time for me to experience this famous, older otome for the very first time. I didn’t know much about Hakuoki previously, just that it’s an older historical otome a lot of otome fans really loved. Initially, I tried to play the game blindly, but I found out Hakuoki is a bit different than the more modern otome, that are also developed by Idea Factory. Their more modern Switch otome titles, all tend to start with a common route that’s completely isolated on its own and the different choices you make will ultimately lock you into one love interest route after you finish the common route.
Hakuoki on the other hand, the choices you make throughout the initial story will simply show you different scenes with certain characters and you have to spend time with and get one single love interest to like you enough, before the Shinsengumi leave Kyoto. You only lock onto a specific route around Chapter 5, the very end of Kyoto Winds. I found out playing this blind for the first time, that if you spend too much time with different characters and don’t get one single character’s love stat high enough in time, Chizuru, the main girl, will end up traveling back home to Edo completely alone. Pretty much all of Kyoto Winds is trying to get closer to and ending up with just one guy, and then the relationship continues into Edo Blossoms. Thus, I did have to look up a guide and play a bit less blindly to make sure I got locked on a love interest route and didn’t yet again end up on the single route. – Jenae
It’s been a while, but I’m back with another adventure as myself and my sister play through old games we missed out on growing up. This time it’s Phantasy Star II! We previously played Phantasy Star I on the Switch, but this time it’s back to classic hardware on the Sega Genesis.
The game takes place 1000 years or so after the events of Phantasy Star I, and I gotta say, I miss Alis. Rolf (we renamed him Tenn because Rolf is stupid) dreams about her almost every night, but he doesn’t understand what the dreams mean. I wish I dreamt of Alis every night. The Algo system has changed drastically since her time, with the once desert planet of Mota (or Motavia, the games use both) now a thriving green space thanks to the machinations of something called Mother Brain, which controls all aspects of life in the system. Surely nothing bad can happen with this set up. Tenn and his companion Nei are tasked with finding out exactly what has gone wrong with this set up, as there are bio-monsters suddenly roaming around and attacking everyone, as well as brigands and other ne’er-do-wells causing chaos in the surrounding cities. Nei herself is a human/bio-monster hybrid shunned by most of society, so solving the issue can also help change the populace’s view of Nei.
Unlike Alis, who was a go-getter and on a revenge quest, Tenn is a push over who lets everyone else dictate his actions. He’s friendly and welcoming when random people show up at his door to join his party, but he lacks much of a personality. There’s an interesting story here as well with the collapse of society, how everyone just lets the AI Mother Brain make decisions for them, as well as bioengineering, but so far the game only allots of few lines of dialogue to any of it and seems more interested in making you walk (very very) slowly from maze to maze to fight palette-swapped monsters. We’re still really early in the game though, so I’m hoping it picks up, but right now I find myself thinking back to Phantasy Star I and how much I preferred not only the overworld design, but the first-person mazes that required graphing paper to keep track of.
Like Phantasy Star I, II definitely shows its age in a lot of ways, particularly where grinding is concerned. Game really really wants you to beat up monsters, which would be a lot more interesting if the battle system itself weren’t so clunky and boring. It took us embarrassingly long to realize we could pick the enemy we wanted to fight rather than have our team attack at will, which is the default. There are a lot of nested menus and not a lot of clarity on what does what. That being said, the music and sprite work is quite good, and I find a lot of the monster designs inspired. Some of them look sick as hell. I’m excited to see what else is in store for us, even if right now I’m not super wowed. – Leah
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
