#anyways i finished my lis 1 playthrough!!

[emerynn-art]

was feeling kinda down this morning so i drew max six times and that seemed to do the trick

[vspin]

On Act 3 and the lack of companion reactivity and dialogue.

So, I officially hit 400 hours on BG3 yesterday (no lifing it lmao) and I've been thinking about some things I wish Larian would improve or wish that they had implemented. A big thing that comes to mind is how much companion reactivity and dialogue abruptly stops in Act 3.

Act 1 really shines with companion reactivity. They always have something to say to the MC, to NPCs, or even to each other! I love the interaction after you use your ilithid powers for the first time and it's a 4 way conversation between everyone.

Then we get to Act 3 and there's such huge drop-off. Some big offenses:

Very little reaction to quests and locations. When I killed Raphael I only got comments from Astarion and Gale! Seriously?? We just survived a trip to the Hells! This happens with multiple quests

Blank faces when Durge is killed by Bhaal.

Camp is lifeless. Everyone just stands in front of their bed, There are no interactions.

In my playthrough, the Emporer admitted to my Tav he was manipulating her and didn't really care. It was bummer I couldn't talk to the other tadpole gang about it.

I remember coming across a Druid in the city. He was trying to heal a tree. So I went back and grabbed Halsin because he was complaining no one in the city cared about nature or balance. So I thought surely, he would have an interaction here! Nope, nothing!

As soon as you finish a companion's personal quest that is basically the end of your interactions with them; even if you romance them.

What I'd like to see: (Disclaimer: Just my opinions. I have no expectation of any of this being added to the game)

More camp interaction between companions. Jahiera and Minsc had a great example of this. Let there be a quick cutscene of Minsc and Halsin arm wrestling. Shadowheart, Karlach, and Astarion drinking wine. Anything. DA:I did a great job at this. It seemed like anytime I approached someone for dialogue they were in the middle of an interaction with someone else. Or events like the card game. It brought a lot of life into the party.

More random city encounters. They did a good job with Karlach; she has interactions with the steel watcher and her friend Fitz. Would have been cool to have some of those with Wyll, maybe he meets another noble or a flaming fist and has to deal with their shock of seeing him as a devil. Or with Gale in Sorcerous Sundries (he is a famous wizard after all!). Astarion mentions he needs to keep a low profile in the taverns; what if someone called him out!

More reactions to story events.

Expand on romances a bit more. We don't need it to be a dating sim but if you finish your LI's quest early on get used to just asking for small pecks and that's it. I would like to see more romance-specific dialogue for quest reactions.

And Finally:

We needed all companions at the final battle. Everyone should have been at the main keep before confronting the brain. You should have had your final conversations with them before you all potentially die in battle. DA:O style. A passionate kiss with your LI (not a tiny little peck lmao). This was a huge exclusion.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on the matter. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[wizardsix]

ok... so I have finally finished veilguard after about 90 painful hours (two playthroughs). im not gonna write an actual review about all of my detailed thoughts bc it'll actually take days, this is just to at least get my general thoughts out and see if anyone else feels the same or if ive actually lost it.

overall it is the weakest dragon age game story-wise, and I'd give it a nice lukewarm 4/10.

(i wrote this post right after I finished the game on the weekend so maybe I sound a bit harsh, I tried to edit it to be more reasonable lol but I didn't really want to delete this since I do still stand by a lot of this)

I really tried to go in with an open mind, bc I always want to experience media in full before making any kind of judgement, but about a few hours in I had this horrible feeling that once again this was another soulless, rushed game, and I still don't feel any different after finishing the game.

what stuck out to me was that there's no sense of urgency despite what the plot is, serious topics are not treated with care as the writing overall is shallow, and the gods as well as any other enemy you encounter are just cartoon villains (and apparently the lore retconning, but I'm not well-versed enough to dissect that so I won't).

I can't take this plot seriously when it feels so disjointed and forced and lazy. and I see no point in caring about anything when choices literally don't matter. no say in who you recruit, no say in the relationships with them and they have almost no awareness of rook, definitely doesn't matter if you have allies or not bc they show up anyway, and only four companions are locked into unavoidable decisions where one of them bites the dust no matter what (which is strange bc why are harding and davrin forced to die no matter if they're at hero status while bellara and neve can literally survive blight if they're at hero status), so it's impossible to try to strategize for better (or worse) outcomes with all the people you've gathered when there's only one right answer that the game pretty much tells you instead of letting you think for yourself (and side note this game does an incredible amount of hand holding). the game actively tries to trick you into thinking your choices matter with the onscreen notifications, but nothing matters bc the devs clearly had only one story in mind and for some reason lied that it had "complex choices".

also rook in general wasn't interesting as a protagonist bc they were written to be perfect. they always know what to say and are so supportive of everyone. they never struggle with anything. not even with leadership beyond "man leading a team is hard :/" but it doesn't actually show how hard it is by having actual volatile conflict between the companions* or showing how their plans sometimes fail. which, if we actually had choices that mattered, would have helped develop that struggle. also? what's with everyone being so friendly? I'm not gonna get into that but everyone is so eerily nice and it's been said a lot but yeah, the world is extremely sanitized and devoid of any real conflict aside from the gods I guess.

*(like off the top of my head cassandra fighting with varric and accusing him of not being on their side or how the inquisitor can literally punch dorian and solas if approval is low enough or fenris and anders bordering on killing each other is not the same as lucanis and davrin distrusting each other or people being uncomfortable with emmrich's necromancy. it just scratches the surface of conflict and never goes anywhere)

and let me say real quick again, there's nothing wrong if they wanted to make a more rigid story about being a hero. it's been done a million times and it can be executed well, but if you do that you need to make sure you 1) don't lie to people and 2) actually flesh out your (especially main) characters and plot to give people a reason to care. look at dragon age 2. hawke is a fixed protagonist with their own life front and center. they ultimately only have two choices (siding with mages or templars), but it works bc the game took time to build up the conflict straight from act 1 so by the time chaos happens in act 2 and 3 you understand why bc it's Been brewing the whole time. it just makes sense. the villains as well have sound reasons and feel real instead of being evil just bc. the story is more grounded, yet you have choices. you decide if hawke ends up alone or not. you decide how they approach situations with force or diplomacy. there's none of that in veilguard. a game that supposedly took 10 years to make. when dragon age 2 took almost 16 months (yes I know da2 also has problems like the fact that the templars are always proven right but this isn't the place to dissect that).

I want to be fair though and I do want to restate what I enjoyed about the game. the cc (though would it kill them to have more variety in face textures like age and body types beyond average.. also no colour wheel... especially since they claimed their cc was so good), the map progression/visuals/exploration (how certain places become more blighted overtime), the factions (though I feel there should have been more content for your faction, and helping them or not should have mattered more), the combat (did not feel like a slog, pretty fun and mindless), the companions (bellara, davrin, emmrich, harding, and lucanis had solid personalities and stories despite my complaints. neve was not memorable and I just feel sad for taash's bad writing), certain parts of the story were good, the intro and the point of no return sequences were solid, and the ending didn't feel rushed or boring compared to inquisition. and yes, I do appreciate that rook can be trans, I just think a little more subtly and care would've been nice.

another thing I did like and predicted was that varric died at the beginning of veilguard, and for a second I actually enjoyed that because i thought we were finally (a bit too late tho) getting some depth to rook and their own struggles of accepting his death and carrying this weight without him. and while I do think maybe they should've taken more time to establish the mentor/mentee relationship so we really feel rooks regret, I still think it was at least the right direction where in their grief they still see him, giving advice and narrating their journey.....but then it turned out to just be solas manipulating them the whole time, immediately destroying any emotional weight this reveal had.

whenever bioware has good ideas they shoot themselves in the foot and make it about solas. it's like nothing in the world exists without solas being involved somehow, and that is just incredibly boring and uninspired to me. not to mention solas just being an insufferable ass the whole time, which is fine, but it's not even in a compelling way like he used to be. he became so ugly by the end and the fact that the devs consider redeeming him the "good ending" and not giving him what he deserves is very telling and once again shows their own bias is king over good storytelling (solas' feelings should not come into play here, whether you/your companions live or die should determine good/bad ending since solas is trapped no matter what, only difference is who is trapped with him. idk but I personally think different endings actually means different outcomes). i will not go into the bs of the secret post credit scene, bc frankly I'm fed up with bioware's shitty writing and I won't be playing their next world ending space aliens game (unless they miraculously pull a good story out of their ass but lbr).

overall the bad outweighs the good for me. it's fun to play as a game, it's a decent fantasy game, but the story just doesn't do anything for me. sometimes I wonder if dreadwolf was a completely different game and was scrapped for veilguard last minute. maybe this was yet another inevitable industry fuck up and maybe there was a good story planned at one point. idk. all I know is bioware lied. respect and credit to the poor devs and writers who actually cared and to those who were kicked from the project, but in the end bioware promised too much and delivered too little.

[bratgoatswiss]

Apologies for length, have to save the cut for spoilers.

I FINISHED VEILGUARD!

I have. So many thoughts and emotions about it and I'm still processing but I just wanted to counter some of the vitriol I'm seeing from people who are doing the Fandom thing with what I hope are reasonable, normal thoughts. Ha. Haha. Anyway. Mostly spoiler free but there's one small thing and one BIG thing that is that I'll put under the read more.

There was a lot to like about this game. The combat was fun and I think upon a 2nd playthrough it'll be even better. Some of it could get repetitive but its not a big gripe.

The characters were very endearing and felt well fleshed out as people and I enjoyed spending time with them. Most of the side quests were related to your companions in some way and I thought that was clever. Some were more interesting than others.

The writing has been contentious and I can see why. It can get cheesy and predictable in places, but overall I thought it was very similar to DA2. I enjoyed it and thought it reflected some realistic responses to what was happening around you. If you're here for gritty edgelord shit 24/7 go play Dark Souls you weirdo.

I can only speak for the Lucanis romance cause I love an angsty man, but it was perhaps, underpadded. It was slow and sweet and I did like it very much but I could have used some...more you know? I didn't even get to see my own tits and that's tragic.

Solas. I did not romance the egg in DAI. I do not like the egg. I liked how I got to handle the egg. So much. I've seen the Lavellan romance scenes and if there's any uproar from the Sollavellans (one l or 2?) it's because they didn't let you see the 2 of them fuck nasty in high definition for an hour. It's Rooks story now. You're fine. Go write fanfiction.

The lore. Hoo boy. Honestly they really did put everything in a blender and fished out what they liked. Everything is made up and the points don't matter. I don't LOVE that they retconned so much of what was in Origins. Zevran and the Crows especially seems really odd. I THINK the idea is that it's been like 20-30ish years since all that and stuff has changed or information was wrong or inaccurate or whatever? But that seems lazy. I wish they'd addressed it more with SOMETHING. But also there's 3 games worth of lore, not to mention comics and novels and like. I get it. But consistency guys. Add more codex entries or something. This is my biggest gripe. It did not impact my enjoyment too much. I loved what was added.

Spoilers below

That ending was so ABRUPT?! At least with DAI you got a ending party and final scene with your LI but here you get some end cards and voice over? I would have accepted that if we were getting DLC but this?? This is insane! Bioware I am begging on my knees to give us at least a "well we did it!" scene. The ending was epic but the ENDING was a disappointment.

Now. The suicide mission. I spent [redacted] number of hours investing blood, sweat, and tears of friendship into these 7 assholes and there is NO way to save 1 of them?? And you have to choose between Harding and Davrin??? Just those 2?? There should be a way to save them! Don't give me the no matter what crap! I don't want CONSEQUENCES I want FRIENDSHIP. If you could do it in ME2 you should be able to do it here. Also. Can we not have it be 50/50 heroic sacrifice with a black man? Like. I know you can technically choose but like why make it an option. It just feels weird.

So yeah. Initial thoughts and feelings. Overall good with some stuff I really disliked. I will be normal about this eventually.

I'll probably regret sending this out into the world when the sollavellens find me. Oh well.

[xylathesilkwing]

played the Time-Breaker DLC! confusing and both enlightening experience- spoilers under the cut below! It is my feverish ramblings and not professional at all, enjoy

-SAM LAAAAKE I thought you were evil Mr Lake but I only had you for a moment I miss you come back

-JESSEEEE JESSEE jessse hi. hi Jesse (insane)

-no fr though Petri Alanko confirmed that the music that plays during Tim (Shawn?? Jack?? I’m gonna say Tim) and Jesse’s introduction was supposed to be a 1:1 recreation of the music that plays in Quantum Break with Jack and Beth, and I just think that’s neat (going feral)

-the insane scribbling on the whiteboard in the trailer resembles the scribbling the real (original? currently dark place) Tim’s notes:

and since I think it’s confirmed that the DLC episodes are just attempts at Alan Wake trying to escape the dark place, did he see the OG notes and go “oh yeah, I could probably write something with that”? Did he predict what Tim would write that without ever meeting him? Is the multiverse real??

-also, “red headed woman” in both images. obviously in the DLC it’s Jesse, and probably is the same in the actual game (especially with the polyhedrons) but it’d be so cool if he also remembered Beth or those other versions he had seen

-this image alone down below?? listing off names??

obviously we’ve got Jesse, plus Dylan (Faden? possibly her brother?) and someone named Savage, but we’ve also got Lisa, Elisa and Liz being nicknames for Elisabet/related to it. Just sayinnn Beth could be part of that tooo (delusional) (hasn’t finished quantum break yet)

-anyways we continue

-the ocean view hotel is so freaky cool in this world??? The clocks leading you to different rooms, the FBC being present and posting notes on doors and cannonly being there, plus the ENEMIES? I’m afraid of the shadows in Alan Wake’s playthrough but these were also pretty freaky

-JESSEEE I’m sorry I’m just genuinely so insane about her im glad she returned

-while I can’t remember the name of the place she works for, i find it pretty funny she still works for a concealed/unknown agency involved with secret forces. went from supernatural events to the multiverse girl

-the time-sea-whatever outside?? insane. cool. wicked awesome

-“and another version of me got super powers” and it’s her lifting a forklift!! Love the control references, especially the Alien Guardian Angel one.

-“as you say, characters in a video game” METAA

-okay I had to put this here but Tim/Jesse shippers.. I see you. like I’m an avid Jessily shipper but genuinely I see the appeal

LIKE? Obviously this is most likely an homage to the fan theories of Jesse and Tim being echoes of Beth and Jack, but it’s also so interesting Alan-wake wise. I could probably make a separate post for this but like- imagine you’re Jesse and you’re seeing all these versions of a man some variant of you loved die gruesome deaths, and you’re feeling these feelings that aren’t actually /yours/, it’s. I’m insane it’s so freaky and cool and sad and ARGH

And for Tim!! your other versions were trying to find this girl and when you get there you realize that the feelings you feel for her aren’t actually yours either! just some version of you and some version of her that probably didn’t work out! I’m gonna go insane!

-the arcade game sequence was INSANE and I love it so much. I wish we saw more of that universe

-the universe with all the empty time-core-thingies?? insane, freaky, perfect.

-THE VOID? THE TEXT?

-okay so I might be weird for this but instead of thinking about The Master of Many Worlds I thought about the red headed woman I’m so sorry. definitely got caught off track but the way her name is LIS like the names list?? and she’s a DANCER? <—— I’m a dancer

-it was so freaky when all the text and numbers turned into Alan Wake at his desk?? but also so meta and cool?? insane DLC

-awesome DLC! North Star is my favorite so far but tbh this one was super meta I loved it

[confinedmadness]

[Game Review] 結合男子 -  Elements with Emotions

I’ve been wanting to play this game since finding out about it during the Tokyo Game Show 2022 in September last year. I admit, I was drawn to it purely based on the art. But, after knowing more about it, I realized it was a type of game I play often enough anyways.

Elements with Emotions is a visual novel-style game where in you pair up different characters to proceed to different story routes. At the moment, the game is only available in Japanese and can only be played with Nintendo Switch.

I bought and downloaded the game on release day, and after a day I’ve finished exactly 2 endings (1 proper ending, and 1 failed ending). Overall, the game was fun to play, with a rather simplistic story but a cast of varied lovable characters, and a repetitive leveling system but very interesting ability concept.

Story

Personally, the story is okay. “Dead matter” is overtaking the world and turning it into nothingness. We join the main characters as they fight against dead matter with elemental powers. It keeps you interested enough to keep going, with a few twists here and there, especially towards the end, but really nothing special. 

I think the story is burdened by a lot of terminology. While it does help create a completely different world, it also introduces a lot of complexity that I thought it didn’t really need. Sometimes, they just made the story harder to understand instead of making it interesting.

If you have the patience to immerse yourself in the world though, you will be rewarded because the worldbuilding was great. There’s even a lot to learn from reading the glossary of terms and the information packed into the descriptions / explanations.

Characters

I do love the characters in this game. Character design is amazing, and they thoroughly make use of this in the marketing of the game. Each character has their own twitter account (yes, the character) and you can see each of their personalities shine that way. I think this is only possible because each character was well thought out.

As with any visual novel, you don’t really get to know all the characters in a single playthrough. You get to know the most about someone in a route where they are the central character. And then you get to know extra information about them in the other routes where they serve a more minor role. 

However, considering I only really played through the entire story once (because the failed ending was really too early), I do think they did a great job of introducing the characters and giving you a chance to know each one a little bit. Enough for you to be interested in them.

Every in-game day, you have a chance to talk to a character or pair of characters and learn more about them (their personality, hobbies, what they do and where they go in their free time, etc).

I am personally really excited to buy Misora’s additional content so I can play his routes. Despite playing a relatively small role in the route I did, he definitely caught my attention.

Also, the game has a wonderful voice acting cast, which is always a really big point for me.

Game Play

At its core, this game works just like every other visual novel. You read the story and every now and then, you will be presented with choices that will affect dialogue, responses, and the story as a whole.

The unique aspect of this game, however, lies in its use of the elements. Every character has the power of a specific element. No, not the classical elements like earth, wind, water, fire. I’m talking about chemical elements-- hydrogen, lithium, carbon, etc.

Every in-game day, you’re able to train chosen characters. You can choose between 3 activities: (1) “link” two characters (elements) so their connection  becomes stronger, (2) train your whole team so their shared abilities become stronger, or (3) let them rest so their “happiness” is restored and their future training becomes more effective.

The abilities are my favorite thing in the game. Abilities are named after chemical compounds. And yes, you can only use abilities if you have all required atoms to form the compound. For example, to use the ability Carbon Dioxide (CO2), you need to have 1 carbon and 2 oxygen atoms available. These atoms are generated with every attack that the corresponding character makes.

I swear I had so much fun learning about these compounds (even though you don’t need to understand them to play the game) that if this game had existed when I was still in high school, I might have gotten a better grade in chemistry.

Finally, during a fight, once your “link gauge” has been filled, you can then “link” your chosen pair so that they are strengthened and can deliver a killing blow to the enemy. (So far, all enemies died once I’m able to link, but I’m unsure if it guarantees the end of a fight.)

All in all, had a lot of fun with it and looking forward to trying out different pairings and seeing the different stories. Also, excited to form more compounds with more characters as additional stories are released in the coming weeks.

[alitgblog]

"live" blogging s7, vol 1 (some analysis, some jokes lol)

first off, I totally forgot there were other casa amor girls so opening the app to see them on the banner I was like oooo

the S7 MC isn't too bad art wise, like it's definitely better than I thought with the preview, but

I do think the skinnier size MC is super skinny and the bigger one is not that much bigger, which is a little disappointing (always appreciate more size inclusion). ideally I think there would be one more size up i think but I do understand that means they'd have to fix all the clothes 3 times.

speaking of clothes they've always been bad at the beginning of the season since like s4 and this is no exception. I wish we got more options in the beginning and then the others they tack on later

the skin tones really are only three shades with each having one warmer variation, which is kind of nice to have people get that option in tone, but I do still wish there were more shades variation in between (and darker ones in general)

for absolutely no reason I have decided that my MC is also gonna be the S5 MC from my first playthrough getting a second chance after a second failed relationship with Suresh (let's just pretend she didn't win her season lol) and she's cute in this style (but again i wish we had the right skin tone for her). I guess if fusebox is backing out of bringing back Eddie then I'm bringing my MC

Her name is Junie and she's doing a lot better now mentally and has gained a little bit of healthy weight and finally loves herself now so fusebox better not make an embarrassment out of her again.

this actually works out pretty well bc usually the casa amor girls on the show arrive at the same time unless something is special about one of them who can show up separately like MC does here (ok fine I've only seen that happen in LI USA S5 and I guess s6 of the game)

Ep 1

Bonnie being an LI feels solely like penance for me thinking Iona was hot but sad she wasn't even a friend really let alone an LI in s3 so thank you but for narrative purposes I'm making Junie straight

Uma is gorgeous

also fusebox is not beating the reused assets allegations even those poses are just too eerily familiar

"I wanna try the slow burn" *has war flashbacks to the Ozzy route I never finished*

short king raf

ok Alex picking MC when Summer was flirting so hard is actually very funny to me

I understand bc it's a gem choice i didn't pick that we didn't get the last card but very funny that they were like we're just not gonna give Summer a chance at all actually

Let's goooo confirmed Joyo is Indonesian (I'm filipino so i was hoping filipino so I could draw him singing karaoke but I am here for any southeast Asian representation at all 🥳)

however I am upset with the use of "rizz" again. maybe once or twice but if they do it again I'm rioting

Alex nerding out is so cute. also who wouldn't want a bob the builder boyfriend for home improvement projects lol

am i too old to understand what normcore is?? like I barely understand e-girl aesthetic but there's more??

Bryson and his sister Jess have the most realistic sibling relationship from the last two seasons bc I also would mess with my brother's partners. and I once again am mourning the idea of a protective brother slow burn storyline in s6 instead of whatever Amelia was doing

"I won't bore you with the details" no pls do it I wanna know and I don't wanna pay the gems

all the guys have great personalities so far and idk if it's because I'm paying attention more this time or it's just better but oh no I'm falling for all of them

the drama set up with the guys and their partners is promising writing (namely the triangle with Geri, Bryson, and Joyo but maybe just because im torn between those two anyway) I'm shocked but cautious it's episode 1 lol

ep 2

early doors?

the gem party outfit is so 2013 disney channel, I actually will be taking the free outfit

wait why is it not night time for truth or dare why did they change clothes lol

joyo, get out of here with the graphic tee and blazer combo. Maybe this is why Bryson doesn't like you, and it'd be justified (tbf him being a bad dresser has been established already though)

oh God I didn't see his pants too jfc let him borrow some clothes

I'm into the frenemy relationship with Summer, like there's always a female villain in the game and they're almost always entertaining to me at the beginning (minus maybe Kat and Ivy)

I'm warming up to the all the guys like how can you pick

I'm starting to realize I personally have a problem because I always go, at least initially, for the chefs/foodies (Jake, Bobby, Camilo, Roberto) and I like Bryson rn and I think my MC would go for Bryson based on how I played her in s5 but I'm slowly inching over to Joyo and honestly i see the vision for Bobby clone I mean Raf and it is absolutely bc they've mentioned cooking

stop talking about feet pls not again

I expect this from Summer but Uma coming over to try to steal my man?? I appreciate her boldness though and at least she's not going behind anyone's back

ep 3

as someone who doesn't have the modded app and will not pay real money for gems, I feel very happy with choosing to eavesdrop on the guys' conversation. I feel like usually a lot of the gem scenes aren't worth it but this one is fun

Joyo does skincare but can't dress and Bryson is a fashion expert but makes fun of skincare. If they joined forces they'd be unstoppable, thank God they hate each other

hey what the fuck happened to cassius

so in summary im pleasantly surprised and hyped for this season at the moment. and lastly, pls don't drop the ball on stick or twist again please please pleaseeee

[still-a-morosexual-help]

Just curious, what made you start playing OBM, and why did you continue? I started playing some time in 2020 bc I saw some art on tumblr, but then I stopped playing for a while up until a few months ago. I'm really glad I got back into it, it's been great fun :) I'm only halfway through s2 so I've got loads of content waiting for me

I've been sending a lot of asks (I'm the person who got the Barbatos UR card twice, and I've also asked about the boys' outfits), could I be 🦇 bat anon if I send more?

I'm glad you were able to get into it and have fun! And yeah you can definitely be bat anon!

Ohhhh smdknjjsmdd okay so long story short it was on a whim.

But really there were a lotta circumstances that lead to it. It was a complete domino effect of coincidences.

You know how Diavolo called MC coming to the Devildom, fate bred out of coincidence or something like that? Yeah that was it exactly.

Gonna cut it cause it'll be long and I'm gonna end up ranting

Normally I don't regularly watch youtubers. Trust me this is going somewhere.

Anyway normally I'll watch like 1 or 2 videos every once in a while but it's never a regular thing

I've never watched a playthrough of a game before either.

Until youtube randomly recommended a cody ko video (I hadn't even subscribed) of them playing season 1 of love island the game and I was bored so I figured why the fuck not (I also didn't know he had a youtube channel at the time and part of why I clicked it was "hey? Isn't that the guy from vine?")

Turns out you could romance one of the female characters in the game too and I ended up watching the whole series, except they never reached the end cause all their game data ended up getting deleted

For about 2 weeks after that I kept wandering if MC ever got together with Talia and how it happened and etc until I finally gave in and downloaded the game (also the first dating sim I've ever played)

Litg uses a lot of gems though for premium choices and cause I was only interested in finding out how S1 ends I figured I'd just quickly run through s2 without making any gem choices and collect all the gems I could after finishing chapters

Except turns out, not only is the are style of S2 better but the characters/their personalities are more 3D and the writing was better and I ended falling completely in love with it (and Bobby)

By the beginning of 2020 I'd replayed S2 at least 3 times and by April we were in lockdown and leaving the house could get you arrested and I was bored and my litg hype had died down and I was on play store just scrolling through and now that I'd played one dating sim they kept on recommending others as well including OM!

I clicked on it (did not read the description) but looked at the pictures, got the general idea and scoffed and downloaded it cause I figured it'd be dumb and I'd delete it in a week or on the off chance that it was good I'd delete it in a month or two cause that's usually how long any game (even ones I adore) manage to keep my attention (litg s2 had softened me up a lot and made me more open to dating sims, without it I highly doubt I'd have given OM! the chance considering I'd been ignoring the arcana for years despite how many times play store tried to recommend it to me)

I've never played otome games before but I knew MC was always a petite fair skinned, long haired girl. And that the LIs would trip over each other to get at MC immediately for no reason and with no built up chemistry.

Looked at my wall, saw the rubber lizard stuck to it and named MC Eliza - short for A-Lizard - cause I figured that's a generic name for the type of person an otome game MC usually is (and for the type of person who'd get stuck in a gothic house with demons)

So I downloaded the game on April 20th (completely forgot about 420), named MC, played a bit and immediately wanted to punch Mammon in the face cause like what the fuck is that guy's deal!? What a fucking asshole!? Why are we stuck with him!? He's gonna get mc killed! Ugh at least ik who my favourite character won't be!

Anyway it's been 1 and a half years and I've made sure to login every single day to get the login reward (even if I don't play the game I need to login outta some weird need to prove something to myself)

MC's only visual representation being a sheep, MC being completely gender neutral, MC using they/them pronouns, the brothers not immediately falling for them, only getting a kiss at the very end of S1, the found family trope, the mystery with Belphie & Lilith in S1, the growing urge to punch Lucifer in the face throughout S1, MAMMON, the way all the characters develop & grow on you, MC & the brothers being separated at the end of S1, MAMMON, the layout of the homescreen, how easy it was to get dv & dp, the potential for angst and deeper lore, the chats and how realistically all the characters spoke in them - they weren't stiff yknow? They said things and had interactions the way real people do while texting

^ all those things kept me hooked plus the fact that I'm grateful cause:

• my gender's always been very up in the air and I've been confused and uncomfortable with it a lot, but the first time they referred to MC as "they" I went "ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

• The Mammon Way is the first Devilgram I got & read (and I think it's everyone's first). I read it and instantly went "Oh. He has ADHD." and then went about my day. Found out a lot of people thought that too and then someone sent me a really long twitter thread that talked about Mammon & ADHD with canon evidence. I was heavily on board that HC then. Started writing Mammon × MC fics in july and it took me till around oct to realise that maybe the fact that I relate to and project on Mammon way more than I do on MC (the character literally created for us to project on to) while writing fics probably had a deeper meaning (turns out it did)

Eliza ended up being none of the things I though they'd be. They're tall, brown, short-haired and definitely not a girl and I'm as attached to them as I am to the brothers

The only thing I regret is that I made their birthday the 21st of April, the day after I downloaded the game, not realising that if I'd just kept the current date their birthday would be 420🥲

[ratcandy]

Guess who finished Wandersong, boys

spoilers under the read more as i have MANY thoughts

Okay 1 where the FUCK WAS AUDREY IN THE CREDITS SEQUENCE? did I MISS HER SOMEWHERE? That feels like. a. pretty important character to show at the end! so I’m assuming I must’ve missed her?? or?? strange unless this is foreshadowing a sequel or somethin. wandersong part 2 electric boogaloo: audrey is back and she’s depressed

oR she’s just fuckin dead after killing the last overseer but dam

Also ok I get why the fandom would dislike her but. i. legit cannot hate her by any means during the whole,,, part,, of act 6, i was just like. oh you’re a human being with emotions! yea i thought so! YEA I GOT YOU. I GOT THIS ON CAMERA

then there was the whole “i lied” to the promise thing which I called shdkgjh My thought process was like “either she’s gonna redemption arc (unlikely), betrayal (likely), or the song won’t work on the King of Hearts and she’ll have a reason to be like ‘VIOLENCE IS THE ONLY WAY!!’ or whatever”

but it was the betrayal one :// which like,, i understand i guess I just wish there was an entire ounce more of reason behind her other than “this is the way it has to be” tell me she’s tryin prove something to someone specifically maybe? At first I thought that would be Eya or Eyala but seeing as... no, then i dunno I get she was a “nobody” before she got deemed Hero but. like. what. was her thought process here? what did she want? other than being... special Which she would have been if they saved the world?? she said “it’s not enough” as her last words but like...... why not. why isn’t that enough

what are you trying to prove. and to whom

I wanna dissect her brain so bad and figure out her exact thought process here ‘caUSE I GET that she would hAVE the “this is the way it’s gotta be” mindset from Eyala, but then Eyala?? Supposedly was like “yo hold up for a sec” and that pissed Audrey off? so i don’t. i mean I guess it could make sense as she had her little epiphany. She doesn’t want to be told what to do anymore. but. like. she’s. doing exactly what she was told to do in the beginning. by killing the overseer

her motivation makes sense to me but like... barely

if we’re not careful i’m going to project onto her and give her stupid family issues or some shit. it’s literally going to be zote all over again! trying to prove themselves to their family for insert reason! got dammit

all-in-all, i really like audrey!! I think her character is epic! I’d get happy whenever she showed up, even most of my playthrough after act 3 was me whispering “please audrey don’t be here” because i knew. i knew it’d be bad news for me BUT!! Still! I just. oogh. she’s complicated and a lot is unanswered and I like that! don’t take any of what I said above here as bashing on her development or the game!! I want,, moRe of her, thatse all! more reasons, more everything. ‘cause she’s still so vague to me

ANYWAY MIRIAM!!!! CAN WE TALK ABOUT MIRIAM... CAN I TALK ABOUT THE ENTIRE SCENE IN THE CRATER AND HOW I CRIED CAN WE TALK ABOUT HER GETTING HIT BY AUDREY’S LIGHTNING AND THEN HAVING TO GO ‘CAUSE SHE’S HURT AND THEN THINKING SHE’S A FAILURE AND I JUST YELLED AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS “NOOOOOOOO” BECAUSE 1) MIRIAM BABY NO PLEASE and 2) oh ngonogn oh noooo oh no oh fuck miriam please don’t be relATEable like that

i want to hold miriam in my arms and tell her it’s going to be okay she’s loved and i love her and i want the best for her and i hope she has a wonderful future now that the world is saved

also irrelevantly am i understanding right that the Baron is the Bard’s. father

did i completely misinterpret that OR

hhrgn this game was so pretty and beautiful and the music got my gay little heart going AAAAA, and then the wholesome ass ending with the HUG and the “thank you for being my friend” made me AUUUGH NOOOO irl see when I deal with overwhelming emotion i take it out on punching things, but this time i had nothing to punch so i just beat the everloving sHIT out of my chest and now it hurts so bad

Mask boy is good I’m 90% sure i got all the dances because I just kePT LOOKING FOR HIM i wanted to hear that funky little groove he does on that note: i choose to ignore that the bard dabs. thanks

also did phil really have to smashmouth - allstar me in the credits. was that thing he had to do

ok i know i had more thoughts than this but it’s very late and i’ll need to be sleepin soon, i’ll properly respond to some things tomorrow maybe hehehee audrey is short. goodbye

[freckled-lili]

So some of you may be trying not to remember that I did a silly, cingey playthrough that I called Sou Doki Doki!, where I was playing Doki Doki Literature Club and named the MC after Sou Hiyori, then for the rest of the VN acted out as Sou. It wasn’t very good.

But anyway.

During Act 2 of the VN I had also wrote a poem and uploaded it into three parts (mostly because the poem ended up being a lot longer than I had originally intended). But I had also encrypted the poems in different codes (Base64, Binary ... I think the last was UCode or something?), because that was gimmick DDLC also did with some of their easter eggs - hide extra poems or additional content through encryption.

After some thought, I’ve finally decided to upload all three parts in normal text for anyone who was curious about what was going on with those poems. I will admit it’s not that great, but I worked really hard on the poem so I’m satisfied with how it came out.

*skateboards out*

The Man with the Glass Smile

 Part 1

Today I was invited to a game

When I arrived, there were only

Two holes

They fit perfectly for my eyes

They must have been made

For me

They said

“Look inside me”

So I peered inside

Not all things can be ignored

Inside were rivers

All rushing and struggling

To move forward

To steer their own course

Fleeing nonsensically,

A world full of tangled possibilities

But all rivers lead to

The bottomless ocean

You can’t change nature

You can’t change the threads of fate

I stumbled back

The two holes said,

“I’m sorry

Did you think that all life

Was equal in this game?

You are all nothing but

Numbers on a page

And you and I

Are the most insignificant

Of them all”

I fell to my knees

tried to scream

But

I was choking

A million beats

threatening to erupt from

my throat

Tiny frogs

trying to swim up

a waterfall

Something was dribbling

from my lips

I covered my mouth

But soon it was lea

king

from the cracks of my pale fingers

Excreting from my body

was ink and glass

It splattered over

the floor below me

A black, cracked pond that reflected

Nothing

Least of all myself

The pond grew tall

Morphed and twitched into

A figure

He had a smile made of glass

He was someone I should know

A memory shoved in the back

Or a piece of my soul I barely knew

The man with the glass smile said

“I’m sorry

You should never have been sent

To the front lines

I am not your savior

I will be the one

To walk out of this game

For you

All you have to do

Is stay inside”

I wish I could I say

I refused countless times

It’s hard to remain crystal clear

When the mind is

crac k ing

I rested my head down on his shoulders

Held him like a tired child

He carried me in his arms

Ink stained my skin

Shards pricked my flesh

There is no flawless future

So I buried myself

In the ink and shards

We held each other close

We conducted our discordant lullaby

“We/I can(‘t) keep the pieces together

We/I can(‘t) keep the pieces together

We/I can(‘t) keep the pieces together

We/I can(‘t) keep the pieces together”

I close my eyes

I will sleep

Until the poem is finished…

Part 2

…but I couldn’t sleep

There were voices

From outside

It was so cramped here

It was made for me after all

Is survival supposed to feel so

Lonely?

I saw two holes along the walls

They fit perfectly for my eyes

My isolation enticed me to peek

Not all things will be ignored

Outside there were eyes

They were upset about something

Seething, glaring, squinting

Their pupils dilating with hunger

For demise

My demise

They drew in close

They said,

“Soon

Soon

Soon it will be

Your turn to die

Soon”

Distressed, I looked down at

Myself

But I was no longer mine

I belonged to the man with the glass smile

That was the deal

With my mouth

We bared cracked grins

With my voice,

We crafted lies to conceal me

With my hands

We passed the skull to another

With their lives,

We moved forward

With his way,

My hands are crimson

It hurts

Is this really survival?

I pleaded

“It wasn’t me!

I’m sorry, it wasn’t me!”

But my mouth

Wasn’t mine anymore

The man with the glass smile

Stroked my cheek with jagged hands

Wet with inky tears

He said,

“I’m sorry

Did you think this was going to be easy?

We’re only doing this

Because you can’t

They’re only numbers on a page

All frantically adding and subtracting each other

Are you really weeping for numbers?

Don’t forget

Yours the most insignificant

Of them all”

He drew me away from the holes

We whispered out lullaby

“We/I can(‘t) keep the pieces together

We/I can(‘t) keep the pieces together

We/I can(‘t) keep the pieces together

We/I can(‘t) keep the pieces together”

Inside I tried to sleep

The poem will be over soon.

But I couldn’t think about verses

Only numbers

They’re just supposed to be numbers

Why does it hurt

When one is taken out of the equation?

It doesn’t matter

How many times it gets better

1000 x 0 = 0

All rivers lead to the bottomless ocean

The voices our louder

Swarming, twisting, writhing,

I can’t breath

Has anyone drowned in sound before?

This can’t be survival

I need to get out

So I start scratching

Fingernails rakING violently around me

A revolting

cac

O

PHO

ny

Of voices and s////cr\\\\a////tche\\\\s

Soon my nails are stuffed with pulp

Like a FATTENED cherry pie

I keep s////cr\\\\atchi////ng\\\\

I//// ke\\\\ep sc////rat\\\\ching

S ////c r A \\\\ t C H I n //// g gggggggggggg \\\\

The man with the glass smile

Peels me away from the walls

Shards pierce my skull

Ink stinging my cuts

He said

“I’m sorry

But you knew

You could never survive this game

That’s why I’m at the front lines

There are no saviors

There are no heroes

There is only surviving

You can’t really die on the inside”

We struggled

We scrEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEamed

at each other

“We/I CAN(‘t) keep the pieces together!

We/I can(‘T) keep the pieces together!

We/I CAN(‘t) keep the pieces together!

We/I can(‘T) KEEP THE PIECES TOGETHER!”

He went back outside

I kept sc////rat\\\\c////hin\\\\g inside

This is not survival

I want this poem to end

I hate how it’s coming out

I keep scr////at\\\\c////hi\\\\ng …

Part 3

…but it was all meaningless

I always knew

If there really was no chance

Then I wish I was taken out of the equation

Before I put together a glass smile

There were two holes

They fit perfectly for my eyes

I crawled towards them

And took another peek

There are some things you won’t ignore

Outside there were eyes

They were upset about something

Seething, glaring, squinting

All hungry for demise

My demise

I’m sorry

In the distance

There was a silhouette

Faint as a ghost

They fluttered towards me

Softly

A cherry blossom in the wind

Their little hands poked through the holes

I held them by their fingertips

Tried not to stain them with ink

(Or was it blood?

I can’t tell anymore

It all looks the same now)

They didn’t seem to mind

I forgot what gentleness felt like

Behind me

A cacophony of voices and scratches

In front of me

The hushing breath

Of a meadow’s breeze

They swept away

The madness of sound

I forgot what tenderness sounded like

Did you ever think

That a ghost would bring life?

I forgot what that was

I wasn’t living

I was simply not dying

I always had my head down

Trying to keep the pieces together

I was always struggling

To remain afloat in the rushing river

With one faint touch

I looked up and remembered

To bathed in the sunbeams

With one faint touch

I felt a little more grounded

And finally touched the sky

The air felt so clean and clear

I breathed again.

They asked me

“Have you ever met someone

Who became a ghost before they died?

I am a ghost for someone I lost

Just like you

Who you lost, I don’t know

You and I are simply flickering in life

Maybe I can save you

What little light I have left

I want you to have

So you may be your own light again

If I have to fade

I’m ready for that”

They let go

They fluttered away

But not to join the wind

A cherry blossom adrift

On the ocean’s surface

Ready to sink

Did you keep my head up

So I could watch you go

And never come back?

The man with the glass smile asked,

“Are you really weeping for numbers?

It’s just another subtraction

That’s how the game goes

Remember

You’re the most insignificant

Of them all

Subtracting you won’t save anyone”

Enough

My fingers flew up

Smashed the glass smile

From my face

I reached out

I already lost myself

Please!

Don’t let me lose them too!

Please!

But the two holes were too small

So I start scratching again

Dug my nails along the edges of the holes

Spread them open

I leap out

All rivers lead to the bottomless ocean

I reach out

With the last of my strength

I held up the flickering ghost

With my last breath

I blew them back into the wind

And they fluttered away once more

There are saviors here

But that savior wasn’t me

Under the surface of the ocean

I gazed up towards the reflection

Of the man who once had a glass smile

I said,

“I’m not sorry

I can’t live being made of glass

You and I

Could never keep the pieces together

Instead you just picked off

the shards from my broken body

Laid them down

For someone to bleed on

How can I walk out of this game

If you keep taking me apart

And leave me behind?

The person I lost was me

You were never really surviving

Just writing a long-winded poem

Hoping you would never have to

Finish it”

The final word

Was mine

I’m reaching the end of this poem

I never felt so happy

I sunk into the cradle of the ocean

Silence never sounded so beautiful

I smile

I sink

I live

0.0%

[superpotato824]

i just finished Life is Strange: True Colors, so here are my thoughts on it (this is gonna be VERY long)

WOW okay my head hurts from staring at a screen that long but omg that game was so beautiful! The scenery, the ambient sounds, the characters, oh my GOD it was a visual masterpiece. The flower bridge, the flower shop, dang just the whole entire town of Haven!!!! Such a pretty place and so breathtaking. And the character animation??? I was scared it would look weird or creepy but WOAH it looks amazing. Definitely loved how the game looked and felt. All the characters were well fleshed out and that made it easier to connect with them as a player.

Now, for the plot... I really did love it. At least... I think I did? I'm determined to love every LiS game so take this with a pinch of salt. The plot was very interesting and definitely refreshing for the LiS series. In the original game, the plot kinda centers around the supernatural tornado or whatever that Max saw in her vision. In the LiS2, the brothers are running cuz of an accident caused by Daniel's supernatural powers (also its been a while since I played BtS so uhhh I don't really remember it oops) ANYWAYS in True Colors!!! It's finally different! The main conflict is not caused due to the character's supernatural powers! It's different, but honestly really cool. For once, you don't have a nagging feeling about causing the end of the world or being caught by the cops whenever you use your powers! Well, sort of... I don't know if it was just me, but some times when Alex used her powers, it felt like blatant emotional manipulation. Like, she would "dive into the hearts of others", find their greatest secret, fear, whatever it is, and then turn it against them. Using her powers to make Mac tell her the truth about what happened with the call Gabe made. Idk it just didn't sit right with me sometimes. Alex's powers are so unique and honestly I love the idea behind them and how the game works with it! But... I was at least hoping for SOME mention of how this was emotional manipulation on Alex's part. I mean, even in the original game, the nightmare-Max or whatever says that Max is using her powers to know exactly what to say and manipulate people into liking her. That's why I was so excited when a nightmare-esque scene began, cuz I thought we were about to dive deeper into that. But no, the nightmare-esque scene just showed us Alex's past, which was very interesting and definitely good to get to learn! But not exactly what I was hoping for. Sure, sometimes Alex makes an offhand comment about how she is using her powers to manipulate people, but it never stops her. Idk I guess I just wanted to see more into that but maybe that's just me. ANYWAYS again.

Honestly, I kind of saw the "surprise bad guy" being the bad guy way from the start. Idk something just seemed off about him to me or maybe I'm just used to LiS making good characters their surprise bad guy lol. Still, definitely made for a super cool and complex plot! Also though, at the end of it, I only felt like the choices that changed the end of the story were 1.) Who you romanced and 2.) Literally what you tell Gabe at the end of the game. Like,,,, I haven't seen any other playthroughs yet, but I really hope the game is different depending on your choices throughout, even if the ending is kinda stagnant (if that makes sense)

Thought of this last minute so I'm just gonna add it here before my final statements!!! ALEX'S POWERS. They are honestly SO COOL. I love how she goes from seeing them as a curse, something that makes her broken, to seeing them as a way to help people and to make things right. It's really so beautiful how the storytelling with her powers went. And her powers help flesh out the characters around her! We get to see little glimpses into the past and into these random strangers around town! It really adds another level of world building and makes the town of Haven seem even more real.

I really did love the story and oh my GOD did I love how the game looked! Definitely glad I got this game and I really wanna play it again to see how/if your choices really make a difference at the end of the day! Dang this was long and I still probably have even more thoughts on this game but I'll stop now. I think I love this game. If not for the beautiful scenery and town, then definitely for the cool, fleshed out characters living there.

Anyways if anyone wants to talk about this game or ANY other LiS game (or really anything tbh) send me a message!!! I'm bored and making friends is fun!

WAIT ALSO I JUST POSTED THIS BUT I THOUGHT OF SOMETHING ELSE!!!! There are some choices to "take" people's emotions from them. We... never see the long term consequences of that? Do they get them back? How does it affect Alex? Sure we see that the character that had anger taken from them is now numb to it, but do they ever get it back??? Can Alex give it back? And what about the character that had fear taken? How did that affect them? Sure we see they turn against the company that used to scare them, but is that the only fear Alex took? And again, how does this affect Alex??? After taking their emotions, we see Alex have a small breakdown, feeling a sudden urge of these feelings way after she took them. Like when she yelled about Gabe being dead and how nothing would bring him back, or when she curled up on herself, in fear of being watched. Does it just... go away? Does she ever deal with it? Does it ever come back???? And it doesn't help that you can choose NOT to take their emotions! That makes it harder to address in the long term. AAAA NOW IM CONFUSED AGAIN

AAAAA AND AGAIN ANYWAYS ALSO JUST REALIZED THIS WAS A LIS GAME THAT DIDNT MAKE ME CRY AT THE END. LIKE THE ENDING WASNT SAD? AT ALL? LIKE THE END FITS THE STORY AND I LOVE IT BUT WOW A LIS GAME THAT DOESNT HAVE A TRAUMATIC ENDING? CRAZY

[elffees]

so i just finished little hope

hm.

i’m gonna tag this as

SPOILERS

bc i will absolutely be talking about the ending. so anyways:

i’m guessing all the games are gonna be like this? “you think it’s supernatural but then it turns out it’s actually more scientific and not real”. i’m not saying it’s a bad trope, like i’m a huge scooby doo fan myself, but idk there’s just smthg about the dark pictures anthology that makes it...... fall flat.

i know everyone has to be tired of people bringing up UD when talking about the anthology games, but i have to compare it again here since it was essentially their stepping stone.

UD does the “supernatural but not actually” thing really well in regards to the josh storyline. but it’s not really working for me when it comes MoM and now LH. i do think LH executed it way better than MoM did tho. the reasoning is much more interesting (anthony’s past and mental state) and it basically begs you to do a replay and try an approach a player would NEVER seriously attempt as their first-run strategy (to get everyone killed actually)

i think, for ME personally, it falls flat because, in UD you had josh’s fake killer clown storyline, but alongside it was the wendigo plot. there was both “not actually supernatural” and “very fucking supernatural” storylines going on at the exact same time. it reached to fans of BOTH tropes. with the the dark anthology pictures, it’s like they start out advertising and catering to that same audience and then pull the rug out from underneath them and cater to only half.

the blend of real life issues (trauma, grief, etc.) mixed with the supernatural (monsters, ghosts, etc.) is such a good blend! it’s why i love the show the h*unting of h*ll house and why i loved UD! MoM and LH tho.... god i just can’t explain it.

it’s like instead of it going “the ghosts of our pasts still haunt us” type of blend, it feels more like “oh you wanted this thing? okay, come here... come closer i have it right here... i promise.......... SIKE actually it’s a completely different thing haha you fool”.

the LH plot twist also just feels weirdly written. the concept behind it is a good one. anthony is a traumatized man full of self loathing who can’t forgive himself for his family’s tragedy. the execution is where my problem lies. there was absolutely no build up. the two storylines we were following were the college group and the puritan group. the 70s group fell into sand after the intro.

i’m not saying the plot twist shouldve been obvious, absolutely not. but a good plot twist is one that makes you go “oohhhh everything makes sense now!” and the LH plot twist didn’t really do that for me.

aahhhh idk. these are just my feelings on the ending. like i said, i do think LH executed its main point way better than MoM did, but it still fell a little flat for me just the same.

(but then again, so far i’ve only watched 1 playthrough of this game. maybe there are some other aspects like notes or scenes that make it flow better that the lets player i watched missed. i do plan on watching other playthroughs to see what’s different. these are just my initial thoughts on everything so far)

[crystalmaeson]

Official Readme by Maeson

Pokemon Crystal Maeson - Public Version 1.0 - Internal Version 15.0.3

IT IS RECOMMENDED TO READ THIS WITH NOTEPAD++, BUT YOU DO YOU.

o--------o |Sections| o--------o

[1]  Installation [2]  Introduction [3]  General List of Changes [4]  Patch Differences [5]  Pokémon Changes [6]  Type Changes [7]  Move Changes [8]  Stat Experience, Vitamins and Fruits [9]  Mechanic & Gameplay Changes [10] New Kurt Balls, new ways to obtain Apricorns [11] The New and Improved Battle Tower and Trainer House [12] Visual Changes [13] Credits

o-----------------o |[1]  Installation| o-----------------o

Patching a game is usually a very easy process, specially with IPS Patches.

There's a variety of programs that work with IPS files, but the most famous one is named Lunar IPS, also called LIPS.

This hack is to be patched on a Pokémon Crystal 1.1 ROM file.

More specifically, this rom: Pokemon - Crystal Version (UE) (V1.1) [C][!].gbc CRC-32 : 3358E30A

You open your patcher, and then point to it to the IPS patch and the original, unmodded ROM. It will apply it and inform you when it's finished, it should be quick.

Now, there's two versions of this hack, and each one has also two varieties.

CHOOSE ONLY ONE. To know which version you want, check the details at the not-surprisingly-named "Patch Differences" section.

And yes, the patch weights almost 75% of the original game.

o-----------------o |[2]  Introduction| o-----------------o

Hola, welcome to another ridiculously long readme of mine.

I go by the name Maeson and I made other hacks for a handful of other RPGs. For the most part what I usually aim for with these hacks is to create a different experience, tweaking what I can to give games that I've played time and time again a gameplay facelift to keep them fresh for me, sometimes also trying to improve aspects of a game that I think could make it more fun, varied, better paced or just more challenging after many playthroughs and knowing stuff by hand.

These hacks are made for me in first place, so they're shaped in a very personal manner and of course through my own tastes and ideas, but it should goewithout saying, I hope.

But anyway... What can I say about Pokémon?

My feelings toward the main series of Pokémon have changed a lot since its inception. Just like millions of other fans of video games, I lived the Pokémon craze back in the day, and I grew playing most of those games. I was there without fail up until the fifth Generation, then I started to get tired of the series gradually, and I sort of stop caring with time.

Thing is, I really didn't stop liking the Pokémon themselves, and I still enjoy spin-offs like the Trading Card Games or Mystery Dungeon games, and some like Pokémon Conquest and Pokken are quite cool crossovers, so there's still some appeal to me, even if it's waning with each day.

And hey, then you get things like Pokémon Snap, which it's one unique and very memorable game, one of the very, very few games about photography. it's a really chill, fun time overall.

...What it does not appeal to me all that much since a long time, though, is Game Freak and The Pokémon Company. The choices and "philosofies" they've been doing and following for several years now have been some of the most frustrating ones I've seen besides Square Enix, and their interviews equally leave some wonderfully baffling pearls of "wisdom".

They've done a remarkable job at making me wanting to distance myself more and more throughout this last decade, to the point that I lost pretty much all my appreciation for the franchise.

And it's not just with the main games, their choice of pushing aside console spin-offs for more and more mobile based Games As A Service (that usually failed and died quickly) also left us without many interesting games that could at least keep us somewhat happy.

And the less we talk about the lies, misinformation and the worrying use of younger audiences as a shield to deflect criticism from their business decisions, the better.

I... Just can't support or stand that anymore. I feel drained.

And I would have been completely away from this franchise, barring some old games, if not for one day finding that a collective of people were working on disassembly projects of older games.

I found them to be really interesting, and my mind kinda played with the idea of having a version of one of those old games with changes that I've been wanting and waiting to happen for many years. Who knows, I could even *attempt* to improve what was already there and even add more stuff to it.

Checking the available games with disassembly, I chose Pokémon Crystal, as it seemed the most complete and evolved project of all, in combination with also being one of the longer games thanks to the large post-game it originally had, plus being an earlier Generation game also gave me more room to do changes and improvements.

So little by little, with no idea of assembly, I kept hitting walls and messing around for a time, and what you downloaded is the result of spending the free time I had working in it... For quite some time. In fact it has been over 2 years of constant work, this started in 2018.

The aim of this hack is simple:

Create a new "balance", make the game more challenging, and iron out stuff I find could be improved, or I have the ability and knowledge to do while I add more value to certain aspects of the game. Make a version of Pokémon that I'd like to replay and have every monster be a fun addition to the team and a foe I just can't roll over with little to no thought, so I want to try all of them.

If you were expecting a new story, or a new region, or whatever pipe dream that most probably would end up incompleted and not stable, sorry to disappoint, but you won't find it here.

And no, I don't really care if this hack doesn't have an "epic" name. There's so many other more important things to care than that...

o----------------------------o |[3]  General List of Changes| o----------------------------o

Here you have a quick list with some of the biggest changes all around, but there are sections for most of them to talk more in detail.

· Attempt to reach a new balance. This has been said above, but what   it actually means is that elements as Types, Moves, Pokémon Stats and   such have been changed deeply to move away from the conventions of the   original games, making many species feel entirely different gameplay-wise.

  Among other things, this means no more disappointing creatures with bad   typing and many weaknesses, or low Base Stats filler. It also means parity   between the Types, with each one having the same number of Weaknesses and   Resistances. The intent is for every Fully Evolved Pokémon to feel useful   or, at the very, very least, usable in a way where you don't feel handicapping   yourself to the point you ask yourself if it is even worth doing it.

· Moves and TMS have been changed a lot in order to accomodate the Physical & Special Split,   each Type now has both Physical and Special moves of different Power tiers.

  Many old attacks have been removed and many others have been added. What moves each   evolutionary line learns also has been changed, in order to make all Pokémon have   decent movesets depending on what their archtype is.

· DVs (IVs on later generations) No longer matter on Stat Calculations. This means that   every member of the same species will have the same potential. This also means you can   have female Pokémon with good Attack, and Shiny Pokémon with good stats, what a novel concept.

  This way any monster you come across will be equal, so you can focus on having   fun, while still having to care of it by training, feeding him vitamins and fruits,   choosing the best moves for it in a given situation, making a balanced team, and   you know, the actual RPG bits instead of the RNG ones.

  If you liked the eugenics experiment experience the original games give you,   sorry but that's not here. I apologize for nothing.

· Trainers changed all around. Better AI than in the original game, more varied teams,     their Pokémon have Stat Exp, meaning that the further you go, the better trained their   Pokémon are, and better trained your own monsters should be. I also removed several   limitations imposed on NPC trainers to make them factually inferior to you. This is   made trying to make the game more challenging instead of the usual cake-walk.

  There's no ridiculous stuff like giving Hyper Beam to everything or illegal moves   for NPC trainer's Pokémon (although bear in mind, many Pokémon have changed types,   and many have changed movesets so their moves are the new "legal" moves, but   again, nothing impossible for you to have or to add fake difficulty).

  If you're asking yourself this, no, in this hack NPCs do not change Pokémon constantly,   that tends to drag the game too much. They still do it occasionally, but not at every   time Type matchups that go against them.

· Quite a few changes related to Items, from how strong some Healing Items are, to changing   Kurt Balls, changing the effect (or power of the effect) on several Held Items, new   types of berries, and others.

  Healing items are no longer useable in battle, neither for you or the NPC Trainers.   Battles must be won only with your Pokémon, their held items, and strategy.

  ...Or well, over-levelling through mind-numbing grinding.   We can't exactly get rid of that.

· Added a whole LOT of improvements here and there to make the game flow, feel and   play better.

  Things like changing how Item Storage works to have more space overall, much faster   egg hatching speeds, making every monster available in this hack, having the Pokédex   show you a bit of meaningful game information, as now it shows a species Base Stats   and also the Shiny variations, make saving a faster process, making TMs infinite   (but not abusable), improving the scrolling while moving around making the game   feel and look much better, large improvements on the Battle Tower, expanding the   Trainer House to be more interesting end-game stuff, adding Rematches, making   PokeGear rematches better, a way to change PC Boxes remotely, move tutors and   quite a few others.

There's many things more, but that's what the individual sections are for.

o-----------------------o |[4]  Patch Differences | o-----------------------o

Now, there are four patches, so let's explain this quickly.

First, we have the Original versions, and the Alternative versions, these last ones offer a tweaked experience in case you want to play this hack again with some differences.

In which ways it is different?

Well, the Starters have been swapped, so when you begin a new game, you get to choose between Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle.

MUCH bigger difference, though, is that all the Gym trainers, the Leaders, other important NPCS and the Elite Four no longer have their teams limited to following the thematic "Type" standards.

Other trainers such as the Rival also have different teams, (and like the original patch, he develops a different team depending on the starter they steal).

Without that restriction each of those trainers have way more varied teams, making the game less predicable because you can no longer coast on the Type disadvantages most of the Pokémon of a Gym Leader share.

This of course changes how you make your teams. You no longer "have" to bring "this or that Type" because later on the road there's a Gym weak to it. It's more about making a team that you feel it can withstand anything it may come.

The order of certain Ingame Trades have also been changed.

There's other smaller changes to make the bigger ones sit well, such as small text edits or change the order of the Pokédex.

But Original and Alternative are divided in two too, one that I'll call "Intended Versions" and the other two are "Items in Battle" variations.

The "Intended Versions" disables healing Items in battle and it forces Set options, meaning you don't get free switches after knocking out a foe Pokémon. You can't change the option, because it's not even there anymore.

That's how I'd like people to play my hack, but knowing how some people can be, there's an extra patch, "Items in Battle", that gives you the possibility of using Items and to change the battle option, but there's a price to pay.

If you choose to play with enabled Items/Switch in battle, a few Items will be unavailable to you, the price of several Items will increase, and the HP they restore will be lowered. Also, NPC Trainers will also use Items.

That's simply because Items can be easily abused, and that is the opposite of what I wanted in this hack. If you choose the "right" to abuse Items during battle, then I have the right to make adjustments to annoy you with your choice.

It's not like Hyper Potions will heal 1 HP or anything crazy like that, but because in my hack you can't use Items in battles, they're more powerful than the usual vanilla items so you could recover better between battles.

The items you lose access to are all new, by the way. A set of consumable Held Items that raise a stat whenever the holder is attacked or under other circustances, similar to the berries in the Third Generation, albeit they're activated differently.

Another change is limited access to a team-healing item that I made, and restores all your Pokémon to perfect shape. Intended to be used in a pinch, like being lost in a cave, or between hard fights, but you can only have in small amounts. In the Original patch, you can carry 3 of them, but only 1 on the "Items in Battle" versions.

You're free to choose how to play. Of course, you only apply one patch.

If for some reason you started a game with one version, for example, with the patch for Items in Battle, and you later on want to go to the No Items in Battle version, you can actually use that save file and not start again.

But I recommend you to save first in a Pokémon Center before doing so. Once you did that, patch a clean ROM and rename the .SAV file into whatever the new patched rom is. Now you can continue with your game. Remember to always make backups before doing anything of this sort.

I do not recommend changing between the Original and Alternate versions.

Lastly, trading and battling with vanilla Pokémon Crystal is not going to work. Not only many of the fixes made already impossible to be compatible with Vanilla Pokémon Crystal, but the gigantic load of changes I made to the game would render any attempt become a glitchy mess.

But you can trade and battle with other copies of this hack, and the four versions of the patches should be compatible with each other for both trading and battling. I'd recommend using the No Items versions because it gives you access to those extra Held Items, though.

o--------------------o |[5]  Pokémon Changes| o--------------------o

Probably the most obvious and central change, these creatures are the core of the franchise after all.

As you may imagine, there have been changes to most aspects of them. While some of those have their sections to talk about, Base Stats are probably the most important one here.

That is because for the most part there is parity in Base Stat Total for all evolutionary lines in this game.

Pokémon to me has become a rather painful series of games to look back, because there has never been that much of an interest to improve or balance out their creations to make a more varied, balanced and fun experience, and when they try to do something is more on the lines of "adding" to fix instead of improving what's there already.

And don't get me wrong, trying to get "perfect balance" is impossible with such a large amount of creatures, but at the same time, Game Freak has done very, very little in this regard, most other developers would at least try something, specially if they had the decades of game releases Game Freak has had.  

But back on track. This is why in this hack, almost every non-Starter, non-Legendary fully evolved monster has a Base Stat Total of 650, making each all of them feel have the same potential overall.

This means there will be no "early useless Pokémon", nor so called "Filler".

And yes, this means your beloved Tyranitar, Dragonite, and such have the same potential as a Raticate or a Wigglytuff. On the other hand, this also means you don't need to train a Pupitar or Dragonair to ridiculous levels to have them evolve into their final forms.

If you ask yourself "why such high Base Stat Total", well, its simple: The higher the roof, the more space you have to scale stats. The more space you have to scale stats, the better you can "personalize" stats for the different species.

Besides, the Base Stat Total stops being important when everybody is at the same "level".

Now, that's for "normal Pokémon". The first two Generations had two trios of "pseudo-legendary" monsters, those being Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, and Raikou, Entei and Suicune. These critters have 660 Base Stat Total.

Starters also have a total of 660. This is mainly because starters are usually the back bone of most player's teams (although I usually roll without them), and I saw fitting for them to be slightly stronger. But fear not, because those extra points don't really make much difference, as they're used to make them more well rounded instead of just dumping them on their highest stats.

Finally, true Legendary Pokémon keep their 700 Base Stat Total of the original games. To this day I never used legendaries beyond wanting to see their back sprites, never cared about them, so they have the least number of changes, really.

Some other changes are:

·Many Pokémon had their overall archetypes changed besides their Stats improved.  Furret is now a Fast Special Attacker, for example.

·Almost every Pokémon now has a 50% Male/Female Ratio, except for the Nidorans,  Tauros and Miltank. Pokémon like Blissey, Chansey, or the Hitmon-family  now can be both male and female. Magnemite, Voltorb and such are still genderless.

·The two Legendary Trios have genders and can in fact breed, thus they can be  seen almost as normal Pokémon.

·The Pokédex had the entries for each Pokémon modified. This is because now it shows  actually useful information instead of the continuously repeated "scientific" info  that usually is full of lies and ridiculous stuff that could make an Indian Elephant  have a headache, but hey, it may not be the Pokédex info, it may just be a bit too  close to a Magcargo and it's experiencing how one feels being next to the Sun.

 Happens to us all sometimes.

 Now, the first page of each species shows its Weaknesses and Resistances while  the second page of each one now points out the Base Stat spreads it has,  which is a much, much more useful ingame data, specially when this hacks  aims to change heavily most things related to battling and "the RPG elements".

 Oh, and by the way, if you press Select while looking at a Pokémon's Data,  you'll activate "Shiny Mode", and every Pokémon shown will be seen with their  Shiny Colors!

·Talking about Shiny Pokémon, those are far more common. While I personally don't care  too much about them, specially nowadays when they've become so... Uneventful and common,  not to mention how much they've been related with hacking and cheating, Pokémon being  shiny lost appeal to me, yet they're still a big thing for many players, so why not make  them easier to obtain?

 The means for finding a Shiny Pokémon in Generation II were rough. REALLY rough. With  the way it works now, you should find quite a few of them throughout your adventure, and  also finding female shiny Pokémon should also be a more common occurrence than before.

 You're bound to find a fair share of them. This being a modded game, it doesn't really  matter if they're not as rare or hard to find.

 NPC trainers will have Shiny monsters here and there, so you should also have the chance!

·As you already know, wild Pokémon may be holding items. In the original game,  many species had nothing with them. Now, most species have them, and the variety  is much, much bigger. Not only that, the chances for finding Pokémon with items  has increased.

 Now there's a 50% of not having an item, 40% of having a "common" item, and  10% of holding a "rare" item. Better than the 2% on the original.

 Lastly, I've made another improvement in held items. Now, whenever you battle  with a wild monster that has an Item, an little icon (similar to the one in the party menu)  will appear on the enemy's HUD. Specifically between the Pokeball icon that appears  when you fight a monster that you already have in your Pokédex, and the Gender icon.

 Again, only for WILD creatures.  If monsters have items in trainer battles is a secret to everybody!

·A big one, already mentioned in the introduction:  DVs (or IVs, if you rather call them that) NO LONGER FACTOR INTO STAT CALCULATIONS!!

 This means that now only Base Stats and Stat Exp matter in each Pokémon statistics.  Oh, and by the way, the formula to calculate stats has changed very slightly.  Remember that +5 bonus at the end of the calculations? Now it's a 6.  That means that a 100 Base stat (Not HP) of a fully trained monster is 300 and not 299.

 This also means you can now have Female Pokémon with good Attack power, and Shiny  Pokémon no longer are weak, two rather big things for me at least.

 No more you will have to waste hours of your life breeding and abandoning  dozens if not hundreds of Pokémon for good DVs (what a great lesson!).  NPC Trainers also get good Pokémon too, making things better for everybody.

·Evolution has been streamlined and homogenized. This means that Pokémon that  evolved by trades, special events, and such have simpler, more direct ways  to do so now. But also, all Pokémon evolver on similar levels.

 After all, if they are supposed on equal footing in Power, they should  also be on the same level on this matter too.

 Here's a few examples:

 Pokémon with three stages evolve at levels 20 and 32.

 Pidgey evolves to Pidgeotto at level 20, and to Pidgeot at level 32.  Chikorita evolves to Bayleef at level 20, and to Meganium at level 32.  Dratini evolves to Dragonair at level 20, and to Dragonite at level 32.

 Pokémon with two stages evolve between levels 22 and 24.

 Rattata evolves into Raticate at level 23.  Venonat evolves into Venomoth at level 24.  Rhyhorn evolves into Rhydon at level 24.  Hoothoot evolves into Noctowl at level 22.

 Of course, there are a couple of exceptions. Caterpie and Weedle  are still the fastest evolving lines, and of course Pokémon that  evolve through stones can do so anytime you want.

 Oh, and by the way, in this hack, you WANT to evolve when Pokémon want to.  You won't get much from stopping an evolution, and with Pokémon that evolve  through stones and such, you should do it before too late.

 This is because many species learn better techniques at the same level they evolve,  and it would be a waste to not learn them.

 You can find at which levels are recommended Pokémon to evolve through stones in  the specific Pokémon Stat list txt. But if you want to make it easy:

 If the Pokémon has two evolutionary stages > Use the stone at Level 22 or 23.  If the Pokémon has three evolutionary stages > use the stone at level 30 or 32 (to reach the last stage).

 That said, if you feel like not evolving for whatever reason, you've not lost everything.  The game has a Move Reminder, and you'll be able to remember freely any move from a species  learnset.

 Oh, and the Time Capsule seems to work as long as you of course follow the rules.  But a few notes:

 Any Pokémon you bring from Generation 1 may have their moves changed upon  arriving your game. The moves may turn into a very uncharacteristic one for  the Pokémon, because I repurposed many moves into new ones.

 The stats of the Pokémon will change from Gen 1 to Gen 2, and most notably,  the HP of any Pokémon that reaches Gen 2 will not be fully healed, because  of the change in stats, but there's no problem at all as far as functionality,  just heal.  

 That said, have in mind there's NO NEED to use the Time Machine.  You do so under your responsibility.

o-----------------o |[6]  Type Changes| o-----------------o

Yet another big shake to the, in my personal point of view, rather badly balanced formula.

I'm not going to discuss or waste time with this. This is how it works here:

Defensive wise, each type now is weak to two other types, while resistant to three, one of them being itself. There are NO immunities. Every type is equal as far as weaknesses and resistances, except for Normal.

Normal has no weaknesses or resistances, period.

Offensive wise, each Type is effective against two Types, and is resisted by three, one it being itself. Normal does not hit for Super Effective damage nor does it get resisted.

So, among other things, Ghost will get hurt by Normal and Fighting moves, Normal will get hit by Ghost, Dragon is no longer weak to itself, and Ice is not such an awful and pathetic defensive Type that exists to be mocked.

Oh, the Fairy Type has been added too, but how it works doesn't exactly resemble the original game, just like the other Types.

Now, because I know how certain part of the community can act (and let's not kid ourselves pretending it doesn't happen), to make myself clear and blunt:

 I don't care if you think Type X should be weak/resistant to type Y.  I don't care if you don't want to learn new Type Matchups.  I don't care what Game Freak does with types now or in the future.

I'm not Game Freak and I have made this wanting to break away from their norm, I don't have to follow any rules, not theirs, not yours.

Making a more even ground for all types, trying to make each monster good, so I could play with all of them and have fun was one of the important things for me, and to reach that goal I made as many changes as I saw fit.

You're free to stop reading and go look for another hack if this will bother you that much.

End of the "serious" moment. Good? Great, let's continue!

With this change, every Pokémon will always have more good points than bad points, not to mention that the maximum number of weaknesses a Pokémon can have is 4, and if it has 4 weaknesses, to compensate it will have 6 resistances.

Another thing I want to point out is that the number of Normal Type Pokémon has been lowered. While there are still a bunch of them, it's a way lower number, making many of these previously Normal Pokémon have completely different Type Combinations. I mean, I'm sure you won't miss all the Normal/Flying types. I hope so at least.

If you think Normal Type not having weaknesses could be "broken", far from it, specially since, as I said, in this hack having *more good points* is a given for any non-Normal Pokémon. But of course that's just talking. They can make for great members, in one of my several test-playthroughs, a Furret was one of my best Pokémon all thoughout the game.

There is an image in the RAR file with a Type Table to show you how Types work now, but beyond that, in Violet City's Pokémon Academy, there are two books that teach you the differen Types and their strong and weak points.

And then, if you're so lazy to figure it out, the weaknesses and resistances for each individual species is listed on the Stats text file.

And theeen, if you're even lazier than that, you can also check the Pokedex Entry of a given *captured* Pokémon, as it gives you useful info such as this.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that you have a number of ways to find out how types work. Use them to your advantage.

Oh, lastly, in this hack there are NO Pokémon with double weaknesses. I've never liked them to be honest, and to me just show how unappealing some types were designed to be that they make such awful combinations.

I still remember how excited people were for Aurorus until they saw its typing, and then it all turned into either jokes at its weaknesses or pure disapppointment.

No fun.

o-----------------o |[7]  Move Changes| o-----------------o

Alongside the previous two changes, the Moves have been changed A LOT too.

Instead of just "copying" what Game Freak has done in later generations, this hack had in mind to actually modify moves in ways to make them more interesting based on the limitations of the GBC games, and also another little thing:

There is a Physical/Special Split in this hack, so one of the big changes of this hack was to give each Type a number of both, Physical and Special moves to cover different Power levels so Pokémon can have good STAB moves that go along with their stats.

After all, that was probably the best thing Generation IV did for me. While it took some toys from some Pokémon (like Elemental Punches from Alakazam), it really was a big change for the better for most species.

So for example, we have Rock Slide for Rock Pokémon with high Attack, and Rock Launch for Rock Pokémon with high Special Attack. For this, many old moves were removed and reworked into new moves, mostly moves that were redundant and exactly the same as other moves (Like Whirlwind and Roar, or Wrap and Bind, they're the exact same thing).

While this gives every type and every Pokémon solid Stab moves, the limitation of 254 moves makes it so I can't add many "wild" and unique moves, but oh well, it's already much, much better than what it was originally on Generation II.

...No, really, I forgot how rough and unfair the move list was in old Generations, with some Types having almost no good moves at all, or moves that Pokémon couldn't take advantage of because their Stats and their Types didn't match. Hoo boy...  

Another big change is that most attacks now have secondary effects, and very often, the lower the Power of a move, the higher is the chance to inflict those secondary effects.

For example, Fire Breath (New move) has a 15% Chance of causing Burn and 70 Power, but Flamethrower only has 10% chance of causing burn and 95 Power. This makes moves with lower Power a bit more useful.

As you may imagine, Pokémon Movesets have been changed tremendously, not only for those critters that had their Types and Stat distributions changed, but also to accomodate all the modifications related to Moves.

Movesets in this hack are in no way attempting to copy later generations of official games, specially since Generation 2 Movesets were incredibly sad to look back.

Instead, they're focused on attempting to give what that certain species needs. So no Pokémon will be let without good STAB moves, and you also won't see Pokémon that are obviously Physical attackers getting Special moves or viceversa.

A handful of moves also got their priority changed.

Safeguard, Haze, Mist, Transformation and Bide now go before other moves. This change actually shakes up battles a bit, it was fun to see the AI read my moves from time to time and prevent Status, and hey, with Transform having priority now Ditto is more usable too!

A list of the moves, what they do, and their other data is in its own TXT file, although with ingame descriptions, it is not necessary.

As far as TMs and HMs, things also have changed.

TMs no longer get consumed when used, so they have infinite uses. The Moves they teach have also changed for the majority of TMS, with most of them teaching both Physical and Special "end-game" moves. There's also a total of 55 TMS now.

None of them can be found in shops, you must find them by exploring or obtained from an NPC.

HMs have also changed a bit, making them more useful. Cut now is a 70 Power Normal move with a High Critical Ratio, and Fly is a strong move with 110 Power that causes Recoil damage. Flash causes damage and can lower Accuracy. Strength is now is Fighting type and causes Flinch. And Whirlpool is a bit more powerful and now takes more HP at the end of turns, so its a rather cool combo alongside Toxic on bulky Pokémon.

Also, HMs can be forgotten like normal attacks, so you can swap attacks easily in case you want, and unlike in Gen. 1, because you can't drop them, you can't get stuck.

Or rather, you wouldn't get stuck, because there's another change. These moves:

Headbutt Rock Smash Cut         Surf Strength Waterfall Whirlpool

Don't need to be known by a Pokémon to be used in the overworld! You only need a Pokémon capable of learning such move, and the needed Medal in the case of the HMs.

That only leaves Flash and Fly out of that list, right?

About Flash:

I also added an item that will let you light dark caves so you don't need to have a Pokémon with Flash, but you get it quite a bit later than the HM. Just look around Mahogany after things calmed down.

It can be assigned to Select for quick use, too!

About Fly:

There's a small sidequest you can do later in the game that will net you a special object. This item will let you use a different version of Fly. Mechanically, it's the same, you can fly to places you've explored. Animation-wise is different, though.

Because all of this, you no longer need to have any HM on any Pokémon unless you want it (because most of them are actually respectable attacking moves), which gives much more freedom to parties and movesets!

o----------------------------------------o |[8] Stat Experience, Vitamins and Fruits| o----------------------------------------o

TLDR VERSION: Use Vitamins, use Fruits. They improve your Pokemon's stats, and          you need to take care of your team to withstand other trainers          which have properly trained monsters. Use them intelligently,          don't waste them with Pokémon you don't want to have in your team,      at least early on when you have limited resources.

         Vitamins are no longer as limited in effect, or as expensive.          Fruits are new, and are twice as good as Vitamins.

Pokémon games have a system in which, through adquiring certain points through different means, a creature can improve its Stats. In Generations 1 and 2, these are called Stat Experience. This is a system Game Freak has never informed the players about at all, and the games never came even close to mention it in any trully useful detail, so bare with me if this is your first time with this stuff, although I doubt you found this hack knowing nothing about it.

Stat Experience points can range from 0 (Empty) to 65535 (Maximized). Unlike later generations, In Gen. I and II, you can maximize the experience of all the stats.

Stat Experience points are divided and exclusive for each stat. HP, Attack, Defense and Speed have their own Stat Exp Table. Special Attack and Special Defense share the same Stat Exp Table. So reaching 65535 Stat Exp in each Stat will make your Pokémon perfect stat-wise. Even Pokémon at Level 100 can get Stat Experience, but to gain the effects, they need to be stored on the PC so their real Stats can get updated with the current Stat Exp. they have at that moment.

The ways you get Stat Exp are these:

By battling -Each time one of your Pokémon defeats another, the Base Stats of the enemy's species          is added to your Stat Exp in each stat. This is the slowest way, but it's also free,          and will raise your stats by just playing through the game.

     If you defeat, let's say, a Caterpie, it has these Base Stats:

HP 75, Attack 60, Defense 70, Speed 95, Special Attack 90, Special Defense 70.      As I said, Special Attack and Defense use the same Stat Exp Table. The game takes      the Base Stat related to Special Attack, so in this case, your Pokémon will be      awarded 90 Special Stat Exp Points, alongside the rest.      Training only through battles is not only pointless when you have other means,      but also incredibly tedious. While in my hack Pokémon have higher stats that make      training this way faster, battling for Stat Exp should only be relied on when      you've already fed your Pokémon Vitamin and Fruits, to get those last Stat Exp Points      needed for a Perfect Stat.

     But of course, any Stat Exp gained through battles is benefitial, just don't battle      *only* for the Stat Exp unless, as I said it's to finish Stat Exp training!      By the way, there's a special condition named Pokerús, which is a benefitial virus      that will double the amount of Stat Exp you get from battles. This is very rare      to get, and you will be noticed by a PKMN Center Nurse. The games don't tell you  what it does exactly either...

     It can be very useful, and it propagates through your Pokémon team, and disappears      after some time. If you ever get Pokerús, try to keep a Pokémon with active Pokerús      on your PC so you can pass it to other Pokémon. But as I said, it's very rare!

By Vitamins -Vitamins in the original game were pretty useless. They raised very little, and they      could only be used up to some point, which is less than half way the Stat Exp total.

     In this hack, though, they're much better, and even necessary, as the people living      in Johto and Kanto have *actually* trained their Pokémon properly and they have Stat      Exp, so they'll be stronger and more challenging, and after a certain point, all      trainers you'll find will have maximized Pokémon, like any trainer worth their salt      would be doing.

     Each Vitamin gives 10.240 Stat Exp Points per use, and they can be used until the      Stat Exp of the Stat that you want to raise reaches 51.456, at which point, the      Pokémon wont get any benefit from it (it won't be wasted, so don't worry).

     To make it easier to understand, let's put it this way:

     An untrained (either just catched, or just hatched) Pokémon will have 0 Stat Exp on      everything. If you feed it HP UPs, it will be able to eat 6:

     10.240 1 HP Up      20.480 2 HP Up      30.720 3 HP Up      40.960 4 HP Up      51.200 5 HP Up > Doesn't go pass the limit so you can eat another one.      61.440 6 HP Up > Passed the limit, so you can't feed more, but it's almost Maximized!               You can get the rest by battling.

     If you're used to Effort Values from Gen 3 onwards, let's make it even easier:

     The way it works, each modern EV means 256 Stat Exp, so if it's easier for you, just      divide Stat Exp by 256:

     Each Vitamin gives 10.240 Stat Exp, that means 40 EV.      The limit of Stat Exp is 51.456, that means 201 EV.

     So with a Pokémon without EVs, you can go from 0 to 240 EV through vitamins.

     You can obviously give Vitamins to a Pokémon you've been battling with no problem,      but an untrained Pokémon is better to use as an example.

     Their price is much lower so you can keep up with enemy trainers, although they      cost enough to make each purchase a bit of an investment early into the game.

By Fruits   - Fruits are almost exactly the same as Vitamins, but they give twice the Stat Exp.

     Each one gives 20.480 Stat Exp (Or 80 EV if you want it that way), and the limit      is 41.216 Stat Points (or 161 EV). This means that your Pokémon can eat up to      three Fruits in a stat to jump for 0 Stat Exp to 61.440 (or 0 to 240 EV) and      almost maximize it. Let's again use an example of raising HP with Fruit now:

     20.480 1 Salty Fruit      40.960 2 Salty Fruit > Doesn't go pass the limit so you can eat another one      61.440 3 Salty Fruit > Passed the limit, so you can't feed more, but it's almost Maximized!

     Thus, fruits are much better overall than Vitamins, but they're scarce, and should      be better used for Pokémon you know they have little to no training in a certain Stat.

     You can combine Vitamins and Fruit without problem, but if you do, first use your      Fruits, then the Vitamins so you don't waste Fruits unnecessarily.

Why the limit - If you're asking why the limit is 51.456, or 240 EV for Vitamins, and 41.216 or 161 EVs for Fruits, it is simple to answer: If you feed a Vitamin/Fruit to a Pokémon in a way that would go over 65535, a bug would happen and the Stat Exp of that Pokémon would roll back to 0. I think it's obvious why that would suck. So, by putting these limits you're safe from that to happen, but you also get very close to maximize a stat. It's the best balance I could achieve.

o--------------------------------o |[9]  Mechanic & Gameplay Changes| o--------------------------------o

Already said that under the hood, there are many, many other changes. Some (not all of them, not by a long shot) changes are as follows:

· The Clock Reset function now has a much easier button combination to open it.  The combination is like this:

 1: Hold    Select + Down  2: Release Down while holding Reset.  3: With Reset Held, now hold Up too.  4: Release Select. The Reset Clock menu will open.

 It requires less buttons, making it easier to do, or able to do at all  depending where you are playing. You still need to input the password,  though, removing that would let you abuse certain things very easily.

· Prices for several things have been lowered on the "Intended" Versions of this hack.  Because you no longer can abuse Items to progress, I saw no real reason to  make you pay as much as usual. You're still going to need them, because the  need for healing between battles is still a thing.

 Another reason to do this is because you will also spend much more money than  usual on Vitamins and other stuff to properly train and prepare your team.  

· Catching Pokémon grants you Experience now! The Exp. is the same as if it was  defeated, and every Pokémon that fought in said battle will get a share of it.

· The Odd Egg will always give you a Shiny Pokémon between 7 ramdonly selected  species, and both genders. Each Species get a unique move, instead of all of  them getting the same (now non-existing) move.

· Talking about Eggs, Pokémon now hatch much, much faster, so there's less  walking up and down through Goldenrod. Not only that, but Egg Moves also  changed all around. Pokémon also lay Eggs faster, and Nidorina &  Nidoqueen can now breed, alongside both "legendary" trios.

 Now each basic species has between 3 or 4 Egg Moves for the most part  they are different from vanilla, and basic Starter Pokémon have 5 Egg Moves.

· Trainer AI has been much improved. Now they know much better what they do, and they  can priorize stuff like Status Effects, they take better advantage of weaknesses and  resistances.

 They also carry Items with them, if you play with the patch that lets you  items in Battle, of course.

 Trainers also have properly trained monsters, with Stat Exp increasing throughout  the game. Feeding your team vitamins and fruits is now important to stay on toes  with them. Of course, there is more variety in species of monsters used by NPCs,  their levels are higher, and team sizes have increased a bit.

 Making each trainer a full 6 Pokémon team would drag the game, though, and probably  couldn't fit, I already was suffering the lack of space with what I added, because  when adding Stat Exp, custom Movesets, and such the space gets used way too fast.

 Also, the game was very, very unfair to the NPC trainers.  Not only were they hard-coded to fail more often, have mediocre AI, and Low-Level Pokémon,  you also got your Stats and Types boosted as you got Badges, so they became completely  inferior and disappointing... At least, if you want to have any challenge.

 That's why any bonus that Badges give you was stripped down. No Stat Boost, no Type Boost.  This will make the game far more fair and chalenging, in turn making it more enjoyable if  you look for having to think and put a bit of effort, which is, you know, the point of  this entire hack.

 Another thing changed is the money that many types of trainers reward you by beating them.  In this hack you have many more things to buy as mentioned above, from Vitamins, to  Held Items, to Decorations, and more Healing Items because of the higher difficulty,  so a better income was needed.

 On the other hand, if you lose, which is much more plausible now, you won't get your money  halved. Instead, you lose money depending on the number of badges you have, like more recent  games. It's much more fair early on, specially in this hack since it is expected of you to  buy vitamins and held items for your monsters as you go through the game, besides all the  other items.

· Stat increase percentages have been changed.

 Stat-improving moves like Accelerate or Meditate, and Stat-decreasing moves like  Growl or Scary Face can go from Level 0 (normal stat), to Level +6 or -6,  depending if it increases or decreases a stat.

Before o-----------------------------------------------------------------------------o |Level -6   -5   -4   -3   -2   -1   0     1     2      3     4     5     6   | |Perc. 25%  28%  35%  45%  50%  66%  100%  150%  200%   250%  300%  350%  400%| o-----------------------------------------------------------------------------o Now o-----------------------------------------------------------------------------o |Level -6   -5   -4   -3   -2   -1   0     1     2      3     4     5     6   | |Perc. 25%  30%  35%  45%  60%  75%  100%  130%  160%   190%  220%  250%  300%| o-----------------------------------------------------------------------------o

 This has been changed for one main reason: to make better balance between critters,  Stats are now higher. With stats being higher, stat-increasing would get too broken,  specially with +1 bonus being a whole 50% increase. So bonuses are softer now, but  so is stat-reducing -1 Level, so it's not too harsh.

· Item Storing Changes

 For starters, there's two new pockets, one for Berries and Fruits in which 13 kinds of items go in it,  the already known berries, plus the new Fruits used for powering up your monsters. Fits all of them.

 The other new pocket is for Battle items, specifically Held Items. There are several dozen of them,  and having such type of items be mixed with consumable and healing items was a bit of a mess,  even more if you have an organization obsession and want everything neatly grouped.

 Every item of this type fits in this pocket, that's over 50 different types of Items!

 Apricorns are now stored in your Ball Pocket, and there's space to have every ball plus Apricorn,  so they will never become a nuissance to you by filling your bag like before.

 Item Pocket now can store 35 different objects instead of 20, and because Berries/Fruits, Apricorns,  and Held Items do not take space in this pocket anymore you have much more freedom.

 There's one catch, though, now you can only store 30 types of items in the PC, instead of 50.  It won't be much of a problem because you don't need to store any Berry, Fruit, Apricorn, Ball,  or Held Item, so I think it's a good compromise.

 Another change is, as mentioned above, about wild Pokémon. Now, many different species will  hold items. These range from Berries and Fruits, to sell-able Items, Apricorns and a few others.

 This not only will make getting new monsters more interesting, but will also make way, way  more useful the move Thief, and also the new Peck, which also has the effect of taking the  item the foe holds.

· The Pokegear Map has seen a huge facelift. Not only is a bit prettier to look at,  it's also more informative, with standout places or landmarks pointed out in the  map. I even added different little icons to quickly see which poblated areas are  Towns or Cities, just because why not.

· A new Building in Goldenrod has been opened. This place will sell to you all  the Decoration items you previously would get through Mystery Gift or through your Mom.

 Some of the dolls also have been changed, to offer something new, because the game  now is not limited to the original Pokémon icons for the Party Menu. This is also  true for the bigger dolls.

 Talking about that, your Mom will no longer buy you Decoration items, and the items  it buys are now much more useful and simply put, better than Super Potions and such.

· A Move Reminder has been added to the game, but unlike how Move Reminders work  in vanilla games, here it will let you remember moves from a species, as many times  as you want, for free.

 This is because this hack, having higher difficulty than your usual Pokémon game, may  require you to reshuffle your Movesets or try different strategies, and I WANT you to  do so, punishing you with constant farming of Items to change Movesets so you can try  different things sounds very counter-intuitive to me.

 To make this even more useful, each fully evolved creature can remember a number  of Moves from prior evolutionary forms too.

 The types of Moves they'll retain from earlier forms are usually moves related to  Stat changes, Status Effects, and Attacks that may have special traits or effects.

 Basically, Pidgeot won't be able to remember Wing Attack, which is a simple, straightforward  Attack move, but it will remember Quick Attack and Peck, the first one having Priority,  and the second one having the new effect of stealing Items from other Pokémon.

 You can find the Move Reminder in both Johto, and Kanto.  In Johto, he lives with the other useful NPCs, Name Rater and Move Deleter in Goldenrod.  In Kanto, you can find a similar group of NPCs in Lavender Town.

· Pokegear Rematches are now much stronger, they have more Pokémon and more varied,  and often enough their Pokémon have nicknames.

 To give you an idea, many Pokegear trainers will end up with teams of Lvl 80 Pokémon!  So be very careful when fighting again these trainers, they may surprise you!

 Also, a big change in how they work: Originally, if you didn't rematch a trainer  and you kept playing, when you came back to it, it would challenge you with a very  outdated team.

 This is because they only get better if you fight them earlier each time.  This is no how it works anymore. They upgrade their teams as you advance through  the game, and you could very well meet them for the first time after battling them  originally and find out they have a full team of very strong Pokémon.

 This makes Pokegear rematches far, far more interesting and better paced.

 Talking about rematches, I added end-game rematches to the game.    Once you beat Red for the first time, a whole bunch of new battles gets unlocked:  The Pokémon League levels get bumped, with some changes on their teams.  Counting your Rival's rematch, levels range from 80 to 85.

 All Gym Leaders end up their training, and they await you to fight in Lvl 100 Rematches.  If they didn't have originally, every Leader will have a full team, and all of them have  some changes to their teams.

 The default trainer in the Trainer's House in Viridian City also goes from Lvl 70, to Lvl 100.  And there's a few extra Lvl 100 battles that I'll let you discover, although they're  not precissely hidden!

 If you ask yourself why Lvl 100, well, that's to make sure you don't win by overlevelling them.  Once you beat Red, you also unlock a way to Level Up your Pokémon much faster.  Just check the Battle Tower once you do so, although be warned, it requires some effort!

· Buena's Password had its rewards changed, now it's more useful overall.

· Ingame Pokémon trades are different, and they ask for hard-to-get monsters, but give you  very nice ones in exchange, I hope you like them.

· Bill's grandfather has seen some neat changes. His time killer of seeing Pokémon you bring  to him stays, but not quite the same as it originally was. Now he'll tell you riddles that  talk about a certain Pokémon, and if you guess them correctly by showing him the right  species, he'll gift you some very neat Held Items for your pals!  He put quite of effort in those riddles, they even rhyme!

· Fishing has been tweaked a bit.

 Now the chances for Pokémon to bit are higher (who wants to press Select several times for nothing?)  and the Pokémon available by fishing are much more varied, yes, even the Old Rod.

 Levels are also higher. Old Rod ~10, Good Rod ~20, Super Rod ~40.  

 Talking about the Old Rod, now you can get it sooner, before even getting the first Medal.  The Fishing Guru has moved to the gate that connectes Route 31 with Violet City.  This expands which Pokémon you can get early on, and more options is better.

 ...Unless you're me, then it just makes it harder to choose which monsters you want to have.

· Fruit Trees now give 2 Berries/Fruits/Apricorns each day!

· On Violet, Azalea and Goldenrod cities you can find the new Berry Scouts.  These green-cladded folks will sell you the basic Status-Healing Berries,  in order to help accomodate you a bit on the higher difficulty of this hack  compared to the usual stuff.

 The price on the "Items in battle available" patches are a bit higher.

· While there's absolutely zero intention of creating a new "story" or "region", there  are new maps here and there. For Example, there's an actual Viridian Forest again,  with trainers, Items and such, even!

 Other maps got extended a bit here and there, maybe to hide something...!  Some areas also have changes made to look or feel better to explore.  Others have been extended to feel more like a full place.

 The Gyms also had changes. It's interesting how... "small", and simple most of them where.  I expanded most, give some light puzzles to most of the ones that didn't have anything  going on (I even rescued unused map movement for one of them!) to make them slightly  more interesting.

 Of course, please don't expect Zelda-level dungeons or anything like that.  ...Although that could be a pretty cool thing as its own game!

· Because I made quite a few changes in the Types of the Pokémon,  I reformatted Bill's PC a bit. Now when browsing around your monsters,  you can see their types on the upper left side of the screen.

· I changed a few textbox frames, some to fix them up a bit,  and two of them are entirely new. I like Frame 5 myself.

· The order of the Pockets in your Bag differs when youre outside  Battle and when you're in middle of one.

 This is to make the Poké Ball pocket right next to the default  Item pocket, instead of being 3 pushes away to the right.

· Status Effects no longer are shown with 3 letter "words".  Now they have their own little Icons, which make things cleaner  both in Battle and specially on the Party menu.

· Of course, I decapitalized all the text I found.  What a tedious thing...

· Smashable Rocks now can give stone-type Items alongside  being a way to find certain Pokémon.

· Once you heal Moo Moo, one of the twins opens up a  little shop!

 She'll be able to make Berry Juice for you, and  you have two ways of doing it, for convenience.

 Talking about Held-healing Items, RageCandyBar have  been also reworked to be eaten during battle.

 They're more powerful than Gold Berries, but less  than Berry Juice.

· Many things have been fixed. For example:

 Daisy's Haircut was buggy and could in fact reduce Happiness, has been fixed.  Magikarps in Lake of Rage were in fact smaller than normal and not bigger,  and other Magikarp related bugs also existed all around. Fixed.  A bug where Defense could be lowered by attacking a Substitute with a -Def move existed, now is fixed.  A bug where Mirror Coat and Counter would damage foe after they used an item existed, now is fixed.  A bug that made supposedly fleeing Pokémon not able to flee is fixed. Now Fast Balls are more useful.  A bug that made a foe under Nightmare's effect still be hurt if it was healed with items is fixed.  A bug where the HP Bar would deplete way slower than intended existed. Yes, you're reading right.  The speed at which the HP Bar emptied, specially at higher levels, was not intentional, making  high level battles way, way slower. This has been fixed and is much better, albeit not Gen. 3 "fast".

 Other bugs and stuff has been fixed too.

There's more things I could put here, but when you spend so long doing something you start to forget each individual thing...

o-------------------------------------------------o |[10] New Kurt Balls, new ways to obtain Apricorns| o-------------------------------------------------o

Yes, every Kurt Ball has been replaced. Why?

Well, actually, for the first year and a half of "development" of this hack, Kurt Balls were pretty much as they were originally, with exception of changing one for more utility, improving their effects to make them overall better and fixing the quite-a-few glitches related to them.

But during the many tests I (and a few friends) did, all the feedback I got is that they did not use them much, if at all, because how situational they are, and because you can only get them in limited amounts.

So I decided to create a new set of Balls with very simple yet very effective effects. Each of these new Poké Balls offer a x3 Catch Multiplier if used on a certain Type of Pokémon, with each new Ball being useful for 3 different Types each.

For example, the Poké Ball made with Red Apricorns (named Red Ball to simplify things), will work best while trying to catch Fire, Fighting or Ground Pokémon! Other example would be the Pink Ball will do so with Poison, Psychic, or Fairy ones.

There's no tricks, nor complexities. If the types match, you get a stronger effect than an Ultra Ball. This makes each one way more versatile, every Apricorn as useful as the rest.

Descriptions of each new Ball points to which types are most effective.

Now, because I want people to use these Balls more often, there are a few more ways to obtain these Items. The first and most simple is getting Apricorns from Trees, from which you get two for every one each day.

Pokémon themselves also carry Apricorns, as many species hold them randomly.

But I also added a new face to Johto, a traveling monk! He's easily recognizable thanks to his sandogasa (a traditional traveling hat). Because he travels around Johto, each day you'll find him in a different spot, and each day will offer to trade 5 Apricorn of a certain color for one specific Item. The Items he ask for can be obtained from wild Pokémon, and sometimes found somewhere lying on the floor.

For Red or Green Apricorns, he asks for a Tiny Mushroom. for Blue, Yellow or Pink Apricorns, he asks for a Pearl. For White or Black Apricorns, he asks for a Stardust.

Tiny Mushrooms can be held by Pokémon such as Paras, Ledyba, Oddish, Vulpix and others. Pearls can be held by Pokémon such as Shellder, Horsea, Seadra, Octillery and Corsola. Stardust can be held by Pokémon such as Geodude, Jigglypuff, Phanpy, Staryu and Tentacool.

Of course those are just a few examples, there are more. I hope with all this, Kurt's custom Poké Balls are more useful all around.

o--------------------------------------------------------o |[11] The New and Improved Battle Tower and Trainer House| o--------------------------------------------------------o

The Battle Tower was the first time Game Freak offered anything sort of similar to a Challenge Mode inside the main games. We got Pokémon Stadium 1 and 2, which were great little things, designed to be a battle simulator, with different rules and difficulties, among other things like mini-games.

But the Battle Tower was a bit... Lacking. And HARD.

This is because, for one, the trainers you met here had a quite low variety of Pokémon, so it kinda became a bit boring (I guess Game Freak knew most Pokémon had middling stats!).

On the other hand, the monsters here sported pretty much PERFECT stats, and with strong moves along with them.

This last sentence is worth noting because in older generations, training your Pokémon to their fullest potential, A.K.A. giving them the max Stat Exp. was a total pain and a ludicriously slow process. And trying to get good DVs (old IVs) was a much, much, much worse process than that.

You couldn't make use of ANY mechanic to get Pokémon with good DVs, they were random, and unlike more recent Generations, you could not improve a Pokémon DVs by using items or such. You had no control besides soft resetting ad nauseam. If it sounds bad it's because it is.

So to have a chance not only you needed High DV monsters (pretty much impossible by normal rules), but also fully trained and with the best moves possible.  And you only got ONE SINGLE TM for many moves, and Pokémon learnsets were for the most party pretty lacking if looking at them from a competitive point of view, so you were screwed there, as you may imagine.

All in all, it was often seen as unfair and just not very fun. And if you wanted to try it anyway, add to that that the rewards were laughable. Vitamins that you could buy, and didn't help you at all because they became useless quickly, they only helped for less than half of the Stat. Exp total!

But here's the thing: I love the concept! The idea of having 3 monsters each, with the same level, where only your strategy, knowdlege and adaptibility can take you out of trouble, sounds great!

Even more, maybe if you got something worth your time as a reward it could be even more fun!

That's why a good chunk of the effort of this hack was about trying to balance types, moves, Pokémon and such. And also why the Battle Tower got so many changes!

So let's list the changes:

For starters, each of the ten Levels of the Tower got their Pokémon changed, both to update the new stats, but also to give much, much needed variety to the types of monsters you would see, as originally the game sported just a small number of different species.

Instead of 7 battles per round, now you have quicker rounds of 3. This makes for a much more brisk pace, a far less frustrating event if you lose, and easier to pick up and play.

About difficulty, it should still be a good challenge, although this time, there is some balance, as now you can properly train your monsters through vitamins and fruits, TMs hold a good selection of high-Power moves and they're infinite and of course DVs/IVs are the same for everybody.

Oh, and you can remember old moves, too!

There's also two Shops available for players, in which you can buy a selection of Held Items so you can prepare yourself to challenge the Tower, or to progress through the game, as trainers will start using Held Items more and more once you reach this point in the game.

Up to that point is the basic stuff... But the Battle Tower has also opened several shops and services, and there's even a bit of a progression system built into it, too!

Whenever you participate in the Battle Tower and come out victorious, you'll be rewarded a new type of Item: Battle Medals!

You get three for each victiorous round (so each three battles).

These objects are, basically, the coin of exchange for almost any service inside the Battle Tower. They are stored in your Item Pocket and can be used in a variety of ways.

For one, they're pricey objects, each one sells for 12.000P, thus they can cover costs for training Pokémon. Selling all 3 you win nets you 36.000P, which is pretty good if you realize you can buy enough Vitamins to fully feed a Pokémon in three different Stats (or four if you use Special Atk/Def Vitamins!).

So two good rounds of Battle Tower lets you set up the Stat Exp. of a Pokémon really, really quickly! Or you can buy other stuff with it, too. But that's just a bonus compared to their real use!

In the Main Hall of the Battle Tower, a new Receptionist hangs out close to the Battle Tower's usual lady that takes you to the battles themselves. This new NPC can reward you with a Silver or Gold Trophy in exchange for a number of Battle Medals. They're shiny decorations for your room... And hold some use.

The Battle Tower has been expanded and now there are new rooms that host several services. One of them, and one I'm rather excited to manage to put in the game is a Reward Shop that exchanges Battle Medals for Special Eggs!

Do you remember the event Pokémon from the Stadium games?

They were gifted to you after accomplishing something, and in Stadium 2, they had moves they couldn't learn normally. It was a nice little thing, and always made me feel curious about Pokémon with Moves that couldn't learn normally. You know, what new strategies could I come up with and such.

This service is located in a room behind the Main Hall. There, a Receptionist will take one of your Battle Medals and will gift you an Egg with a special Pokémon that knows a unique move!

There's a total of 50 different species you can get through these Eggs, and the one you get for each medal is selected at random. And every species has the same chances, no dishonest stuff like 0.0001% to get a certain Pokémon, like a Gatcha game.

Oh, and if you're one of those, don't waste your time resetting trying to get Shiny Pokémon from these Eggs... Believe me, it won't work.

Another service is the inclusion of Move Tutors!

There are two Tutors and each one can teach 4 Moves each. Seven of those are unique to Tutors, with an Eighth Move being Toxic, a TM you get veeery late, so I added it for earlier access, as some Pokémon (like defensive ones) do benefit from it or need it to work well.

Tutor Moves can only be learnt by Fully Evolved Pokémon, and you can do so only in exchange for one Battle Medal.

The move selection is composed of Non-Damaging moves to give more utility and so they can be applied to all Pokémon in one way or another, unlike damaging moves, and I would have liked to have more, but I hit the limit before the entire game gets corrupt, so these will have to do!

Both of these features not only offer much, much better rewards for your victories in the Battle Tower, ones that not only can be enjoyed throughout the rest of the game making it more entertaining, but also give you a chance to get a few monsters earlier and gives new possibilites to make teams to challenge the Battle Tower too.

...And that's not all you can do here now!

Besides normal Move Tutors, the Battle Tower has also hired a very special NPC: The Egg Elder... Or in other words, an Egg Move Tutor!

Basically, in exchange for 3 Battle Medals, this old man can teach a Pokémon an Egg Move that its evolution line can learn through breeding with other Pokémon!

And yes, any member. Pidgeot and Pidgeotto can learn moves that a bred Pidgey could hinerit, so no worries on that front!

This way you won't longer feel like your early-game teammates (or any Pokémon for that matter) feel gimped or "lesser" because don't have this or that move only available through breeding.

In a way it's like every species has its own specific Tutor Moves!

But let's continue.

The receptionist in the main hall (the one who gives trophies) also offers a new Key Item: The Box Changer. It does what it says, it gives you the ability to switch the Box on Bill's PC anywhere you want. Just remember that you still save your game when changing boxes this way.

Once you reach the "endgame", meaning, after defeating Red, two other Receptionists will open up new services. And are neat ones!

The first one is a Rare Candy shop! You will be able to exchange one Battle Medal for 5 Rare Candies. This will let you manage the Levels of your Pokémon faster, either to battle the new Lvl 100 Rematches, or to Level up your monsters to reach the Levels required for Battle Tower Rooms.

The other, it's quite different but way more interesting too.

You see, a new group of candies capable of changing the Level of a Pokémon to a fixed one now exist! There's Candies for Levels 10, 30, 50 and 80!

No matter what Level the monster is, it will change into the Level of the Candy!

If you give a Level 30 Candy to a Level 4 Pokémon, it will become Level 30. And If you give a Level 30 Candy to a Level 82 Pokémon, it will also become Level 30!

This is mostly for a reason: To be able to use your favourite pals in any Level of the Battle Tower!

Once a Pokémon Level goes up, it no longer can access the Battle Rooms of lower Levels, and if you wanted to use a monster of a specific species you already raised, you were forced to train another one. But no longer you will need to do that!

Now any Pokémon can battle in any Battle Room by using these new Candies in combination with Rare Candies, and you can perfectly control the level of your team for this challenge while also needing a bit of a resource (Battle Medals) to make use of it.

Not to mention, Level 80 Candies can make HUGE time savers for training Pokémon for those Level 100 Rematches, specially if we're talking about bred Pokémon, or Pokémon from Battle Tower's Special Eggs!

Now, be warned, you CAN NOT make use of all these features from the beginning!

Remember those Trophies I talked about? Yeah, they do more than look nice in your room. Each one unlocks features of the Tower!

Once you win the Silver Trophy, you unlock: Move Tutors  (Accessible the moment you get the Trophy). Rare Candy Shop  (You need to beat Red too). Level 30 Candies (Accessible the moment you get the Trophy). Level 50 Candies (You need beat the Elite Four too).

Once you win the Gold Trophy, you unlock: Egg Move Tutor   (Accessible the moment you get the Trophy). Level 80 Candy   (You need to beat Red too).

So yeah, you must prove yourself and get the Trophies to use all the Battle Tower has to offer.

But don't fret! There's not really much grinding to do. You'll see that the number of Medals needed to obtain each is pretty reasonable for what they unlock.

The game does not ask for hundreds of them for each, not even close! I know how tedious is to collect Battle Points for an Item or one-time use TM back in Generation IV.

And hey, if for some reason you still need a bit of a push, you can win Battle Medals by participating on Buena's Password.

They cost 2 points, you can get one Medal every two days. It's a much slower pace than actually fighting, but it certainly adds up if you play often.

And you also get a handful of them in Kanto, a certain NPC will gift you a bunch if you manage to do something, and some Gym Leaders will gift you one too.

Lastly, also in Kanto, there's the Trainer House.

Originally it was a cool little feature in which you could battle the Pokémon Team that a friend had when you two did a Mistery Gift.

Because I don't expect people going around doing IR connections with a Romhack, the Trainer House has been changed around.

I really don't want to say much, but here's this:

Normally, you can battle a special Trainer daily in this building. But once you've beaten the strongest trainer in all the land, levels are raised, and you can take Lvl 100 battles... With the difference that the Pokémon used in these new battles change depending on the day of the week!

And if you win, you also obtain Battle Medals!

It's a little extra end-game thing alongside the other end-game additions.

o-------------------o |[12] Visual Changes| o-------------------o

Many, many visual changes have been made throughout the game to make the world a bit more cohesive, to make Pokémon look better, or to simple improve stuff here and there.

Pretty much every Pokémon not named Unown got their colors changed, for ones that look better, closer to the original colors of a particular species, and also got their sprites touched up and cleaned up.

Because the games were originally designed to be displayed on the tiny screen of a GB, the graphic artists would try and take advantage to use the 4 colors available to a Pokémon sprite to give it more details. With the advent of the GBC, now they could use colors too, and because the screen wasn't backlighted, they needed to use stronger, more saturated and often darker colors.

The issue is that nowadays these games are pretty much always played on backlighted screens that are also much, much bigger than the original Game Boy's screen, so these graphics that originally looked fine now I don't find they've aged as well with the ways we play them today.

Now, let's be fair here. This is not a criticism for the sprites or the artists. These sprites were made to be seen under a specific hardware, and they worked with what they had, and the gigantic jump in design quality from Generation 1 to Generation 2 is to be applauded.

But at the same time, I think it's fair to say that there's nothing that says they can not be revised and/or improved. That's why I took the horridly tedious job of cleaning up every single sprite (and each of their animated frames) to make them look more clean when played on bigger screens.

I also took the liberty to tweak many of the colors used for Shiny Pokémon. This is something I've seen many people point out throughout the years, and it's true that the use of color for Shiny palettes leaves quite a bit to be desired, with many Pokémon being painted with what I saw called "Puke Green", and others having really dark and simply not appealing combinations of colors that sometimes would make the sprites look worse.

Several of those examples could be Blastoise, Raichu, Aipom or Golbat, and this last one even gets its shading screwed up. Or something like Rhydon, that looks exactly like the official art, while its normal color is much darker; with Pokémon like Phanpy, Sunkern, Xatu, Scyther and others looking very similar to their default colors.

Just have in mind I'm working with the limitations of the GBC and 4 Colors per sprite, so I do what I can do, although it's surprising what nice colors the GBC can display compared to the ones they used, but of course, I'm not doing this to be seen on real hardware, so I do not have that limitation.

You can check a couple of examples in the pictures inside the RAR file for both, sprite improvements and Shiny changes.

I also improved all the Back Sprites too, to keep consistency. And some Pokémon got entirely different sprites, such as Mr. Mime, or Wigglytuff, as there was better designs elsewhere, like Mr. Mime's Silver sprite. It's so much better in my eyes. And yes, they have animations.

Oh, and a handful of Pokémon got redesigns here and there. Don't panic, the changes where made only to humanoid Pokémon to remove incoherent stuff like Machoke and Machamps' underwear or the boxing gear of Hitmonchan.

This is because as time has passed it "snowballed" into a gigantic ball of nonsense. Now, it's not that I hate Pokémon with human-made things on them, for example we could make logical arguments on why they have them in the first place.

Very early Pokémon (back when it was Capsule Monsters) had a lot of very... morally dubious stuff in it. Trainers had whips, the monsters were sold in cages and there was a pretty clear aura of animal abuse in it all. The artwork was intriguing... And a bit worrying.  

When you find out about that stuff it can make sense that humans would put things to restrict their Pokémon like the "strength-reducing" underwear for the Machop tree. Who knows, maybe that's why Pokémon such as Primeape have what looks like shackles on their limbs too.

And back in generation 1, there was only ONE Hitmonchan, given to you by a human. We can simply think the objects it wears are given to it by that person, and it would make sense. Jynx is also another Pokémon which can only be received once, also given by a human and looks like one, maybe there's something going on too.

And all those examples would be fine but then they're turned into nonsense when you can find these Pokémon living in nature with all that stuff on them, or they magically appear when evolving. It just feels... dumb to me, it is something that I could see other developers adress in different ways, but here they just where completely forgotten.

Because this thing is tailored-made for me, I decided to change it.  

And talking about Jynx, when the beta sprite leaked from Red & Green leaks among others, it was pretty exciting to see that this Pokémon once upon a time was very different, with more of a yeti-like design, which can be traced to  japanese Kaiju tv shows, like many early Pokémon designs such as Nidoking (look up Baragon). It apparently had a name that was a very easy to see nudge at Ultraman.

You can read about it here (and also see a bit of the darker Capsule Monsters stuff I mentioned above, but you can also search for early concept art):

https://helixchamber.com/2019/02/16/what-dreams-may-come/

During the development of the hack I went so far as to create sprites to change Jynx into this Yeti-thing, but as time went on I did not feel very satisfied, it felt like a random addition that felt out of place.

I thought of going back to the original Jynx, but I ended sending the entire evolutionary line away and substituting it with another Ice Pokémon from the third Generation.  

...Anyway, moving on from that, each species has its own unique icon on the menu and the overworld too, which is a great thing to give flavour to the game, and seems like a new standard for Pokémon Crystal hacks (with good reason).

The overworld also got some big changes to improve visually, and sometimes, gameplay wise. Besides visuals, some places also changed in design a bit, for a number of different reasons.

For example some Kanto cities had their design changed to look more on par with Johto, as if you compare maps between places, and Gen. 1 and 2, you'll see they kinda look off and weird, as if it didn't have the same time and effort put into it compared to Johto (they didn't).

Places like Celadon and Fuchsia City for example look rather different, although they keep their overall structure, they just got a bit more going for them.

Also there's a few improvements on sprites. For example, I drew new sprites for when you're surfing, similar to those in Gen 3 with your character over a undefined Pokémon. And yes, they're different for both the male and female player characters.

There's also HUGE CHANGES in how information is displayed in several points, with the biggest improvement being the Pokémon's Stats Page. It took me quite some time to get it to look nicer and more organized / easier to read, and I even expanded it by adding a fourth Stat Screen to show some extra "for fun" info.

The font was also changed for a thin yet wider one, to make it less empty between letters, and also more consistent with the different characters, like numbers.

Also, HUGE, HUGE thanks to HyperDriveGuy's amazing work and effort, a way of improving the scrolling and movement on the overworld to make it much more smooth and, to be blunt, less disgustingly choppy if you're used to smooth scrolls.

This change to me is like magic, it makes the game feel so much better! To be fair, finding this improvement refueled my interest in continuing this hack, so thanks again HyperDriveGuy, your work is not just great, it also really did drive this guy forward, pun no intended... Or maybe a bit.

That said, coding this introduced some bugs, some of them harmless, and others being progress-halting or even game-breaking. But fret not, as I managed to fix them all with a bit of work, some trial and error, an a lot of luck, but it was all worth it because the result is a much more fluid experience that translates into a more fun game.

Overall, the game uses much less aggressive colors too, because 99% of the people that may play this (which that would make a total of 4 to 5 individuals, probably) will do it on a lighted screen. Also there's little touches here and there.

Another tiny change that makes a bit of a difference in the long run is battle effects. Most of them on Gen 2 used the same palette: Gray tones! Well, that's not that way anymore.

Most of the effects now have color added to them, and make battles look a bit more fun. A few effects were changed visually, even. For example, Pokémon no longer see "chickens" when confused. Now Pidgeys fly around their poor heads!

The Trainer's card also got a bit prettier, specially the Badges section. Oh, I also added a third page to your Trainer's Card, showing your progress through Kanto's Gyms. You only need to press Right while on Johto's Badge screen when you get at least one Badge from Kanto!

Asymmetrical Badges also spin correctly. Funny enough, the game has coded that function in, but it is only assigned to a medal that was symetrical (Clair's badge). Sounds silly, but once you start seeing Game Freaks coding it's... Actually par for the course, in a way.

o-----------------------o |[13] Tips and Questions| o-----------------------o

Tips: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What type of beginning you want? Each starter is going to change your early hours.

Taking in mind how things work in the Original version of this hack, Cyndaquil would make your first steps more easy than the other two, as his Fire/Rock typing would make him effective against the first two Gyms, while Chikorita's Grass/Ground typing would make it a bit harder than normal. Totodile, with its Water/Ice typing would be a medium difficulty.

But of course, the point of the game is to make more friends and balance your team! You could also ignore the starters and make your team without them. That's how I usually roll.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ You can get an Exp. Share very early on.

Once you brought the Egg to Prof. Elm, and you're ready to go away on your adventure, go back home and leave 2.000P with your mother. Once you battle once (With Youngster Joey on Route 30), she will call you, telling you she bought something for you. It can come in handy this early!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Talking about saving with your mother, she will buy many useful items, so it's in your best interest to send her money from the beginning!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ During your first few Gyms, look for people in green clothes near the towns and cities' main Sign. These people will sell to you Berries to heal Status Effects!

They will come in handy to prepare against the trainers and leaders there!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't waste your Fruits and Vitamins without having in mind what team you want! This becomes more important the further you go, because NPC trainers will have trained Pokémon either you've raised your own properly or not.

As you get more money, or get more fruits you'll be able to quickly prepare Pokémon, but early on you need to think ahead.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Talking about team, while I tried to make all Pokémon good and be on the same Level, that doesn't change the fact that having a balanced team can make things smoother.

Making a team of only slow, defensive Pokémon, or only quick but frail monsters can make things harder for you at certain points. Although, of course, you could just play with your favourites and tough it up. That's what I usually do.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Take advantage of Pokémon such as Meowth or Spearow, capable of learning stealing moves! They will help you to get ahold of many items, that you can either use or sell to make a profit.

Also, be aware of said Pokémon, as they may steal something you have!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Experiment! Because TMs are infinite, HM moves can be forgotten easily, and you have access to the Move Reminder freely, you're given the chance to try all sorts of combinations for a given species. Not to mention, the further you advance through the Battle Tower, the more options you'll have through Move Tutors and the Egg Elder to teach new moves, thus increasing the number of strategies for each species!

You'll only need to watch out for "Event" moves, such as the Odd Egg Pokémon, or the Special Eggs gifted in the Battle Tower, as each have a unique move and you cannot remind it if forgotten.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check the Game Corner on Goldenrod when you arrive!

They've expanded the number of prices you can get. For one, you can get HP restoring Berries there, with Golden Berries being really useful early on, and they're not that expensive.

Even more, new species of Pokémon have been added, and they're Pokémon hard to come by during the early parts of the adventure! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Can you get every single Pokémon in the game? How can I get Mew?

Yes, of course, what would be the point of a Pokémon Hack if you couldn't get every monster available in it by yourself?

There's a lot more variety early on, both so you can get your team-making juices boil sooner, and because different people like different monsters, and having a bigger variety helps with making more people happy.

Although for Mew, you'll have to buy my exclusive and new Park Ball Plus and send it to your game through my exclusive Park Ball Plus-To-GBC Link Cable(tm), or upload it to my exclusive service PokéMaeson Hostage Holdings, previous payment of course, and then you can connect your game magically to it through Infrared connection.

Really, it just works. Wait, are you going to play this on an emulator? Tough luck then, no Mew for you.

...Nah, it's somewhere in the game, you just have to find it, like the rest.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Are you going to do more Pokémon Hacks?

Niet. Nee. Ahneo. Tidak. Nej. Nope.

...What I mean is, don't count on that. The amount of time I put into this is so big that I could have made several other things, the testing has been killing me the most. I have   reached the point of burnout, I've been working on this almost on a daily basis for years. You can't imagine how many times this thing has been reworked and changed over time. Beyond that, my love for the franchise has pretty much being forced to disappear.

And even if I wanted to do more, I wouldn't be able to use any other disassembly project thanks to current DevkitPro versions being incompatible with 32 Bit systems; I'm not going to get a new computer only to do more of this, and going back to the older "Hacking Tools" is not a very welcoming idea, mostly because they're so much more limited and risky to use.  

So, sorry but no, I have no intention, I have no energy, I have no passion for it anymore. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

o------------o |[13] Credits| o------------o This wouldn't exist without a lot of people involved with the Pokémon Rom hacking community.  

Thanks and Credits to every single person on PRET, a community dealing with disassembly for many Pokémon games. These projects look like THE WAY going forward, how awesome they are.

Check it Here: https://github.com/pret -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks and Credits to Rangi42, and all people on places like the Skeetendo and Pokecommunity forums, and many others that shared their findings and information about ASM, going so far to make great tutorials to teach stupid people like me how to do do a whole lot of things, fix several of the bugs in the game, and many other things.

Check it here: https://github.com/pret/pokecrystal   https://hax.iimarckus.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oh, and of course, credits and thanks to Rangi42 again for Polished Map, an amazing utility for map editing, very complete and absolutely essential.

Check it here: https://github.com/Rangi42/polished-map -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks and Credits to the TPP Anniversary Crystal 251 Project to create the code for the Move Reminder, which I adapted to my hack. I couldn't even have known where to start with it, and my hack is only better thanks to it. Also for giving me an idea of how to make Caught Data be shown in the Stats Page. My approach to how the information is displayed is different, but again, without TPP I couldn't have know where to start.

Check it Here: https://github.com/TwitchPlaysPokemon/tppcrystal251pub -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks and Credits to HyperDriveGuy for its example and implementation of "60 Frames per second" project, which created a new way of programming a Run Button, but even more incredible, it made the scrolling of the game as you walk, run, and ride so, so much more smooth. It's amazing.

Check it here: https://github.com/hyperdriveguy/pokecrystal-60fps-example -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to Chamber, Soloo993, Blue Emerald, Lake, Neslug and Pikachu25 for their Pokemon Icons. While I did a number of them myself, I also used a good amount made by them, and also remade some of them from their initial work, so they deserve the credits!

You can see their work here: https://github.com/pret/pokecrystal/wiki/screenshots/minidex.gif https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/pret/pokecrystal/screenshots/minidex.png

Also, if you play my hack and find any of the icons or tweaked sprites I made good enough to use it yourself, go right ahead. Just give credit and you're good to go, don't even ask. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Credits and Special thanks to Vice04 for helping me test my hack over the years. May you never be assaulted by Level 168 Slowbros ever again.  

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music Credits:

Credits to FroggestSpirit for "Hoenn Wild Battle" and  "Hoenn Trainer Battle" themes.

You can find FroggestSpirit music in this Soundcloud link, check it out: https://soundcloud.com/froggestspirit -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Credits to Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm for "Hoenn Rival Battle", "Route 101", "Cipher Peon Battle", "X/Y Rival", "Hoenn Champion Battle" and "Shoal Cave" themes.

You can find Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm music in this Soundcloud link, check it out: https://soundcloud.com/mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Credits to TriteHexagon for his Night Theme music for cities and his tutorial on how to implement them in the game. His ASM files and his Soundcloud can be found here:

https://pastebin.com/u/TriteHexagon https://soundcloud.com/user-930339535 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope I'm not forgetting anyone, it's way too much people hacking around the world!

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Bonus 1 - Back Routes

My usual spoiler warning for the main commentary doesn’t really apply here since the back routes are content that most people would usually only see after finishing the main game. But on the extremely unlikely off-chance that someone was going for all the back routes in their first-time playthrough and for some reason wanted to read commentary on them as they went along, this commentary is still not recommended, as I do sometimes mention things from later on in some of the trials.

So, the back routes. For those who don’t know, because the game is pretty vague about them so I imagine a lot of people might not: these are alternative routes you can take in trials by using specific lies in certain debates where you’re canonically supposed to just use the truth. There’s two in almost every trial, except for only one in trial 1, and none at all in trial 6, making nine in total for me to go over here. The alternative events always re-converge with the canon stream of events pretty quickly, so they don’t affect that much, and most of them are pretty silly and pointless, as we’ll see.

I personally first saw the back routes just by finding a Youtube video with all of them in, so I never had to go through the no-doubt frustrating process of trying to figure out where they are. The one indication there is, which is ridiculously subtle unless someone tells you about it, is that the music for the debates in which you can lie is a different piece called “Discussion – PERJURY”, a title you wouldn’t know about on your own without checking the soundtrack. This piece happens to be exactly the same as the usual “Discussion – BREAK” piece, except it also has the vocal bits that go something like “break down the door o’clock” (that’s always what it sounded like to me, anyway), whereas the regular one doesn���t have that. Since those vocals were always in the debate BGM from the first two DR games, it’s quite easy to not even notice there’s anything significant about them being there in this game. And, of course, even if you are listening out for that and have pinpointed which debates you need to lie in, there’s still no hint as to what the possible lie is. I do not envy anyone who’s attempted to find these back routes entirely on their own.

Trial 1, Back Route 1

This first back route is in the second half of the trial, after Shuichi has become the protagonist, in the debate in which everyone’s trying to figure out how the shot put ball could have got all the way from the opening of the vent onto Rantaro’s head. You’re supposed to point out that it could have rolled along the books that Kaede stacked up, but also…

Kaede:  “Hey, Shuichi… Don’t lose sight of the truth.”

…Kaede says this, right at the end of the debate, and there’s a weak spot on it. If you turn the “Library Vent” bullet into a lie, it becomes “Blocked Vent”, and you can fire it at this.

Shuichi:  (Kaede… I’m sorry. I’m not strong enough for this! I can’t make you the culprit!)

It’s almost strange to see this, having recently been in chapters 5 and 6 with a strong heroic Shuichi who could bravely face any kind of painful truth. But here we are back at the beginning, and it is quite believable that the Shuichi in chapter 1 might just have lost his nerve and not been able to do this.

Shuichi:  “W-Well, actually… Maybe the shot didn’t pass through the vent…”

Kiyo:  “Did you not just tell us that the shot traveled through the vent?”

Shuichi:  “That’s true, but… I just remembered, the library’s vent was closed.”

Ryoma:  “The vent… was closed?”

Shuichi:  “… So I think… my deduction might be wrong.”

Shuichi’s voice sounds awkward and nervous as he tells his lie here, but it’s fairly plausible that that nervousness comes from his realisation that his deduction was wrong (because of his lack of confidence in his abilities), rather than from the knowledge that he’s running away from the truth.

Kaede:  “Shuichi?”

Shuichi:  “…”

Kaede:  “I see…”

Kaede immediately sees through him and realises what he’s doing, of course, and she’s not going to let him do that.

Kaede:  “Shuichi, we both investigated the vent. But you misunderstood something.”

Shuichi:  “…What?”

Kaede:  “I closed the vent grate while we were investigating, but it was open before.”

But, adorably, the way Kaede clears this up is not by informing the whole class that Shuichi just lied to protect her because he can’t face the truth. Instead, she tells her own lie that makes it seem like Shuichi was simply misinformed, so she can get things back on track without discrediting Shuichi or hurting him any more than necessary. 

Shuichi:  “No… That’s a lie!”

Kaede:  “It’s not a lie. But depending on your deduction… it could become a lie.”

Shuichi:  “…Ah!”

What Kaede says is a bit odd, since any statement is either a lie or it isn’t and it’s not going to suddenly change. But I suppose what she’s really saying is that the class’s perception of whether or not she’s lying will change depending on whether Shuichi admits that he just lied. She’s making it clear to Shuichi that she knows he just lied and he knows she just lied, without the rest of the class ever having to be aware that either of them did.

Kaede:  “Shuichi, please, answer the question. How did the shot reach Rantaro? You know the answer. You just heard it during the debate.”

And then, like all back routes do, things start to reconverge with how the trial should have gone. It’s lovely though that in this instance it comes from Kaede’s continued efforts to encourage Shuichi to face the truth and use his detective skills that she believes in.

Shuichi:  (Why am I hesitating…? Am I really going to turn back now? At a time like this? I’m sure Kaede wants to run away… But she’s still here… she trusts me to do this! I need to answer. I need to grant her wish. I need to solve this mystery!)

And Shuichi manages to find his strength again, thanks to Kaede’s encouragement and seeing how brave she’s being. After these lines, he explains exactly what he should have done after the debate and things reconverge completely.

I also enjoy that here’s another little moment of Shuichi being perfectly aware that Kaede’s scared but then using that to inspire him to be strong in the face of his own fear. Heroes that are struggling can be more inspiring than otherwise!

This is my favourite of all of the back routes! It makes a lot of in-character sense at this point that Shuichi might do this, because it’s all about his issues of wanting to run away from the truth causing him to momentarily falter even after having decided to accuse Kaede. This is the one back route that I can actually see potentially having canonically happened.

I say this about this one because, uh, most of the rest of them aren’t going to be nearly this good at all. Oh boy.

Trial 2, Back Route 1

This one’s right at the very beginning, in the first debate. They’re talking about Himiko’s magic trick, but this debate isn’t even supposed to be about figuring out the trick, it’s supposed to be about telling Kokichi he’s wrong when he pretends to believe Ryoma was eaten alive. However…

Himiko:  “The Underwater Escape was no trick! It was magic!”

…there is also an agree spot here, and if you turn “Water Tank Trick” into a lie, it becomes “Magic Water Tank”, and you can agree with Himiko that it totally was magic.

Shuichi:  “Maybe Himiko is right… The Underwater Escape might be real magic. Because from what I’ve seen, there is no trick or gimmick in that tank!”

Why, Shuichi. Why on earth do you think this is a worthwhile thing to lie about. Nothing in this entire back route gives any indication as to why Shuichi would think this is necessary.

Himiko:  “Nyeh!?”

The best part of this one, in a very silly way, has to be how utterly fucking surprised Himiko is to hear him say this. If nothing else does, this proves that she’s not actually deluded and knows full well her magic isn’t really magic.

Himiko:  “Y-Yeah, see? Shuichi agrees… There’s no trick. It’s magic…”

Yes, definitely, if the Ultimate Detective agrees then that’s even more proof that she’s a real mage!!! (she is so confused why is he doing this)

Tenko:  “Wait up, Shuichi! Why are you trying to white-knight your way into Himiko’s heart!?”

Like that’s not what you’re doing all the time, Tenko.

Shuichi:  (That… certainly was not my intention…)

Then what the fuck was, Shuichi!?

A couple of people suggest that if Himiko’s trick really was magic then doesn’t that make it more likely that she did kill Ryoma?

Himiko:  “N-No, wait… Ryoma couldn’t have been killed by the piranhas… Cuz the piranhas I used in my show were special. They only eat dead flesh.”

This reads every bit like a desperate lie she’s trying to tell to get the suspicion off her. Apparently she didn’t even bother reading the Monokuma File to find a much simpler way to prove Ryoma wasn’t killed by the piranhas.

Tenko:  “Are you just pretending to be nice to Himiko so she’ll tell us the truth!?”

Shuichi:  “Ah, no, that’s not it…” (But… Himiko’s information was useful. Ryoma was not killed by the piranhas.)

Something you already knew, Shuichi, because you read the Monokuma File and are not an idiot, so Himiko’s “information”, if it was even true, wasn’t actually useful at all. If Shuichi really did tell this lie in an attempt to get some kind of information out of Himiko, then it was the most ridiculously pointless endeavour ever. Maybe he was actually trying to surprise her into admitting it wasn’t magic and explaining the trick? I don’t know.

Things shortly reconverge back to Shuichi explaining why Ryoma wasn’t eaten alive… and funnily enough, when we get to the next debate in which we actually discuss Himiko’s trick, everybody’s going to have conveniently forgotten the fact that Shuichi previously claimed the tank had no gimmick to it at all.

Trial 2, Back Route 2

This next one’s in the second half of the trial, just after Shuichi has accused Kirumi of being the culprit and needs to explain why. You’re supposed to point out that she had the chance to set things up in the gym in the five minutes she spent in there alone. And you’d think that Shuichi would already be aware of this, since this should be why he chose to accuse her in the first place.

Kirumi:  “An alibi for nighttime? I believe most of us do not have one.”

But if you turn “Alibis for Yesterday” into a lie, it becomes, for some reason, “My Alibi For Nighttime”. Upon firing it at this statement, Shuichi is about to tell a ridiculously elaborate lie. Hold tight.

He claims that after the training he totally did with Kaito that night (remember his other, canonical lie), he went back to his dorm but couldn’t sleep and was awake for the whole night. And during the night, he heard the sound of someone leaving their dorm, and then later returning.

Shuichi:  “But… I didn’t hear the sound of someone going down the stairs. Which must mean that whoever left has a room on the 1st floor.”

…

Shuichi:  “Because preparing the ropeway required time to be spent in the gym… it’s extremely likely that the culprit helped set up the magic show. In short… Himiko, Angie, Kaito, or Kirumi.”

Maki:  “I see… So among those four, the only one with a room on the 1st floor of the dorms is…”

Shuichi:  “Yes. Only Kirumi.”

What the actual fuck. This is admittedly very clever, but it’s a huge stretch to think that Shuichi was able to come up with this on the spot. For one thing, I’m amazed he’s actually managed to memorise everyone’s dorm room placements (and apparently so has Maki) when they’ve only been there a few days. I’d certainly only pay attention to my own room and probably my immediate neighbours. Ultimate Detective super-memory, maybe, I guess. But then there’s the part where, while trying to think of a way to incriminate Kirumi, it somehow comes to Shuichi’s mind that she’s the only one of the possible suspects with a dorm room on the first floor, and therefore that he can use that in a lie? Why on earth would he think of that, of all things?

And if the actual reason to accuse Kirumi isn’t something he’s realised, then Shuichi should not even be sure she did it at this point, in which case telling a huge elaborate lie to incriminate her is incredibly risky, because what if she really didn’t do it?

Shuichi’s also missing a few potential suspects. Keebo also helped set up the magic show; Maki did not but has no alibi between 9 and 10 and could have done it then; and Miu also has a weak enough alibi that she could potentially have snuck into the gym for the five minutes necessary to set it up between 9 and 10. Keebo and Maki are on the second floor of the dorms. Miu is not. It still could technically be Miu, if we’re believing Shuichi’s lie here!

It is quite something to realise that the placement of all the characters’ rooms in the dorms were apparently decided almost entirely for the sake of this one non-canon alternative route. (I should also point out that despite more than a year of obsessing over this game, I still had to check these dorm placements that I just mentioned. It’s ridiculous that Shuichi knew these off the top of his head after only a few days.)

And I’ve no idea how a player is supposed to be able to figure out this back route through anything but wild trial-and-error. You can check what Lie Bullet is made from each Truth Bullet, although to do so you then have to fire it, which you lose health for doing (unless you have Kokichi’s skill equipped). I suppose firing “My Alibi For Nighttime” at the claim that most people don’t have an alibi for nighttime kind of makes sense, but Shuichi supposedly proving his own alibi is not necessary and not even what actually happens here. Players must be very confused when he suddenly goes off on this tangent which is nothing like what they would have been expecting from this.

Kokichi:  “Hmm, you heard a sound, huh? Well, I hear a load of BS.”

Kokichi’s not wrong to call out Shuichi’s bullshit… but honestly, this was quite a plausible lie, simply because it’s so implausible to think that Shuichi could have come up with this as a lie. If he actually heard Kirumi leave and re-enter her room, then it makes sense he’d have then been able to narrow down that it could only be her based on her room being on the first floor. But the idea that he somehow managed to figure this concept out backwards without having actually heard anything is far harder to believe.

Kokichi:  “But unfortunately for you, Kirumi… Your time’s up. We already know you’re the only one capable of setting all this up. Riiiight, Shuichi?”

Shuichi:  (…Well, that was an unexpected assist.)

And this is how we reconverge. So apparently Shuichi did already know to point out that Kirumi is the only one who had the five minutes alone in the gym to make the preparations (so much for his claim that it could have been anyone who was in the gym even though the rest of them were never alone in there). In which case, whyyyyy on earth do this ridiculously elaborate detour instead???

Plus, here’s Kokichi making it clear that he knew that just as well himself, but of course he didn’t point it out any earlier than this because lol what is being helpful, that’s boring.

Trial 3, Back Route 1

This one’s in the first half, in the debate where it’s being argued that Keebo could have snuck in under the seance room’s floor using his flashlight function to see. You’re supposed to refute Kiyo’s claim that the culprit used a light at all because any light would have been seen through the hole in the floor. But doing that is honestly a little bit confusing and unintuitive, because the rest of the debate is more about specifically Keebo's flashlight and it seems more like you should be focusing on that in particular. Because of this, I’ve actually seen one blind LPer trigger this back route by accident because they were so confused about what to do here.

Miu:  “Keebo could’ve used that function to get under the floor…”

Turning the “Keebo’s Flashlight Function” bullet into a lie gets you “Flashlight Drawbacks”. The LPer I mentioned thought this simply meant the fact that it’s really bright and would have been seen through the gaps, so they fired it here and were very confused by the notion that this was even supposed to be a lie in the first place. But oh boy, it is. Here we go.

Shuichi:  (It’s hard to believe that Keebo is the culprit in this case. It’s even harder to believe that this trial isn’t being manipulated by someone… So even if I have to lie… I need to defend Keebo!)

It’s pretty ridiculous that Shuichi hasn’t figured out the obvious way to prove Keebo’s innocence without lying. And then it’s also odd that despite having no proof, he still believes Keebo isn’t the culprit. It comes across like the kind of belief he has in Kaito, but he’s not particularly close friends with Keebo in that same way, so it’s just very out of nowhere. This is the flimsiest justification for this silly detour.

Shuichi:  “It’s so bright, even Keebo can’t see when it’s turned on!”

And so this is his lie, because apparently “it’s so bright that people would have seen it through the goddamn hole in the floor” did not occur to him first.

Miu:  “…Wait, what!? There’s no way a genius like me would make that kinda rookie mistake!”

It’s honestly pretty remarkable that Keebo’s flashlight doesn’t have that drawback, since it’s in his eyes, which are indeed what he sees out of as trial 6 confirms for us. One would expect that to just massively overload the light sensors that they’d be right next to.

Gonta:  “But… you make mistakes a lot… A whole lot…”

Oh, Gonta. You and your straightforward honesty.

(And then Miu is terrible and the less said about that the better.)

Shuichi:  (Come on, Keebo… Please, play along!)

Keebo:  “Um…”

Shuichi:  (Keebo!)

Keebo:  “Uh, um… Well, uh…”

It is pretty cute how Keebo doesn’t want to call out Shuichi’s lie but is also super uncomfortable about going along with it. Keebo is one of very few characters in this game who never lies about anything.

Keebo:  “I’m so sorry! I just don’t remember! Really, I’m sorry!” [he shines his flashlight]

…I say that, but this here has to be a lie, because he was standing with his flashlight on for the whole second half of the investigation and would definitely have remembered not being able to see for all that time. Still, he’d rather tell an inconsequential lie about not remembering than either call out Shuichi for lying to protect him or go along with Shuichi’s much bigger lie that it really does blind him.

Kaito:  “Aagh! We get it already! Just turn it off! We’re gonna go blind!”

Remember me noting during the trial itself that it’s Kaito in particular who complains about Keebo’s flashlight, suggesting he’s extra light-sensitive right now due to his illness? Still a thing here.

And a few lines later…

Keebo:  “Shuichi, I’m so sorry!” [he shines his flashlight again]

Kaito:  “Damn! That is seriously bright!”

It is still Kaito who reacts. He does this all four times Keebo shines his flashlight in this trial, if you count this back route along with the canon parts. Yep, I’m certain that’s a thing.

Maki:  “Wouldn’t the light have shined through the gaps of the floorboard if it had been that bright?”

And then Maki is the one to save us from this dumbness that we’ve ended up on. Thank you, Maki.

Trial 3, Back Route 2

This one’s just after the intermission, when they’ve figured out that the seesaw trick required cutting the crosspiece beforehand, and so Kiyo is arguing that Himiko did it because she’s the one who picked the room. You’re supposed to prove that the other rooms were trapped too, but instead…

Tsumugi:  “What if someone steered her into picking that room?”

…you can turn “The Caged Child” into “Caged Dog Village” and fire it at the agree spot in this statement. This is an odd one; “Caged Dog Village” is simply the name of the book that describes the Caged Child seance and therefore basically refers to the same information. This is not actually a lie.

Shuichi:  (If implicating Himiko was the plan, then disrupting that plan might teach us something. For that reason… I have to lie!)

Do you, Shuichi? The game is trying to insist that this totally counts as a regular back route which arbitrarily must involve lying, but he’s not about to lie here.

Shuichi:  “I believe Himiko was being set up. Himiko only picked that room because Kiyo wanted it as dark as possible.”

This a perfectly valid point which doesn’t get made in the canon trial. Before picking specifically the middle room, Himiko was also the one to suggest using one of the empty rooms in the first place – but she did so after Kiyo said it needed to be dark. Obviously Kiyo knew that those rooms were the only rooms available that fit the criteria for the seance and deliberately let her suggest it instead of himself.

None of this is a lie, and it didn’t even really need the “lie” bullet of “Caged Dog Village” for this, when The Caged Child truth bullet also mentions how it needs to be dark. Alternative routes to debates shouldn’t necessarily need to involve lying! (This is also another one which must have required some frustrating trial-and-error for players to find on their own.)

Keebo:  “The culprit gambled on the middle room being picked through coincidence? That seems highly improbable.”

Shuichi:  (Ah, that is true… The culprit wouldn’t have left that to chance.)

And now we’re back right where we started this debate, because even if it can be explained why Himiko picked one of the three empty rooms, this doesn’t prove that the culprit steered her into picking specifically the middle one (because he didn’t).

Himiko:  “… No more… I told you… it’s too much of a pain. Just do the voting or whatever.”

There’s also a little more of Himiko having given up here, since Shuichi is not doing a good enough job of defending her with this to inspire her out of this mindset.

Kokichi:  “I’m pretty sure it didn’t matter which room Himiko chose…”

Shuichi:  “What do you mean?”

Kokichi:  “It’s getting kinda boring, so I’ll explain. She didn’t choose the middle by coincidence. Each room was the same to begin with.”

It makes sense that Kokichi’s the one to get us back on track, because he’s the one who discovered the other rooms were trapped. Of course, he could have told everyone that in the first place, but nope, he’s only pointing it out here because Shuichi’s being slow on the uptake and it’s looking possible that they might actually vote for Himiko and get everyone killed if he doesn’t step in. It is quite amusing how frustrated he sounds by this. Ugh, what do you mean he’s got no choice but to be helpful for once. The least helpful person even when he is actually being helpful, as always.

Trial 4, Back Route 1

This one’s in the very first debate, in which Kokichi’s arguing that Kaito poisoned Miu.

Kokichi:  “That’s when you poisoned her, right, Kaito?”

You’re supposed to fire the “Small Bottle of Poison” at this statement to prove that Miu couldn’t have been killed with that poison. But you can also lie with that bullet to turn it into “Small Antidote Bottle” and fire it here.

Shuichi:  “And it’s much too early to decide that Kaito is the culprit.”

Kokichi:  “But whyyyyyyy? I think it’s already too late. You guys are taking so long to realise that people can kill others in a snap…”

Oh my god, Kokichi, you are the most broken record ever even in non-canon alternative scenarios.

Shuichi:  (I know Kokichi hasn’t forgotten about that. He’s just pretending. Alright, Kokichi, I’ll play your game. If you’re going to lie, I will too.)

At least for this back route, Shuichi isn’t being inexplicably stupid and failing to realise the correct way forward. He knows it, but he’s just trying to give Kokichi a taste of his own medicine.

Shuichi:  “Have you forgotten? The bottle we found at the scene was an antidote, not a poison. It’s not like Miu could have been killed by an antidote.”

This is a pretty pathetically obvious lie, but the point isn’t to have anyone believe it, it’s to (attempt to) push Kokichi into admitting the truth about the poison and that he already knows the culprit isn’t Kaito. Which can sometimes be the point behind some of Kokichi’s pathetically obvious lies. The ones that aren’t just for the hell of it, at least.

Shuichi:  “…Is this *fun* for you, messing with the trial?”

Kokichi:  “Hm? Well, I mean, this is where it gets fun for both me and the culprit.”

Of course he’s doing it just for fun, Shuichi, you barely need to ask that.

Also, please recall that Kokichi believes right now that Gonta remembers being the culprit, and yet he has the gall to imply in earshot of Gonta that he’d ever be having fun with this. What a dick.

Kokichi:  “…So, what’s this talk about an antidote? We’ll just say you misunderstood the whole thing, Shuichi. We all know you wouldn’t lie.”

Shuichi:  “O-Of course. I’m sorry, I was just misremembering.”

It’s pretty disappointing and anticlimactic that Shuichi just backs down on this. Him telling this lie in the first place was supposed to be to show Kokichi how frustrating his own obvious lies are and try to get him to reveal his hand. Kokichi would never suddenly back down with an “oops sorry I was just mistaken” (Kokichi is never wrong about anything, after all), so if Shuichi really wants to commit to this bit, he shouldn’t either!

I suppose the fact that he does just goes to show that Shuichi doesn’t have it in him to be as much of an asshole liar as Kokichi, funnily enough. Which is why I’m still not super fond of this back route, even though it’s less stupid than the ones in trials 2 and 3 – while it’s neat that Shuichi tries to use Kokichi’s tactics against him, it’s not really in his character to do that when it’s not necessary. That’s too underhanded for Shuichi.

Shuichi:  (I can’t let Kokichi continue this line of questioning. It will implicate Kaito.)

Kokichi already has implicated Kaito. Wasn’t the point of this whole lie supposed to be to get him to reveal the truth of the poison and unimplicate Kaito? But even then, it’s very unclear how Shuichi thought lying that the poison bottle was an antidote bottle would do that – Kokichi’s just going to retort “no, it was poison, duh” and never need to explain the part where it was a type of poison that couldn’t have killed Miu. This whole escapade of Shuichi’s was a pretty silly idea on many levels.

Shuichi:  “But Kokichi, you’re misremembering as well. You were the one who told us about the warnings on the label. If you remember what was on that label, you’ll see that your argument is flawed.”

Kokichi:  “What warnings? Was there something like that on the label?”

Shuichi:  (Is he still pretending not to know…?)

And ultimately, he never gets Kokichi to admit he was lying about it. He even actively claimed that Kokichi just misremembered, despite knowing that’s not the case! If revealing that Kokichi was lying was your goal, Shuichi, why would you not at least try to point that out to everyone, even if he’d inevitably deny it.

Trial 4, Back Route 2

This one’s just after the intermission, in the debate where they’re discussing what was used to slide Miu’s body off the roof, featuring what would normally be Kaito Refutation #3.

Kaito:  “There was nothing like that around, though!”

But instead of refuting Kaito with the actual truth, you can also turn “Signboard Used as a Bridge” into “Signboard Used as a Sign” and fire it here.

Shuichi:  “There was something the culprit could have used to slide the body! The signboard!”

Kaito:  “The signboard!?”

While the purpose of this lie is, again, about Kokichi, it makes me uncomfortable that this one involves Shuichi lying to Kaito. Kaito’s having enough inferiority issues at this point in this trial already without Shuichi just using him as a springboard to play some pointless game of liar chess with Kokichi.

Maki points out that the signboard was already being used as a bridge and therefore couldn’t have been a sled.

Shuichi:  (Maki is right, it couldn’t have been that exact signboard. However… He knows exactly how it was done. That’s why I need to bait him out with this lie!)

Again, Shuichi is attempting to get Kokichi to reveal that he already knows all the answers to this case by pushing him into it with his own lie. So he goes on to claim that there was actually a second signboard lying next to where he found the first one to use as a bridge. (During the Virtual World trip, the game made a point of how Shuichi went alone to fetch that signboard in the first place, which it turns out was entirely for the purpose of this back route, so that nobody else would be able to prove this is a lie.)

Himiko:  “But then why did Miu say there was only one signboard?”

Shuichi: “Uh… To mislead us; she was planning a crime, after all.”

This is rather flimsy and indicative that he’s lying. She would still need a reason related to her planned crime to want to lie about this. In fact, there being a second signboard there would have ruined Miu’s plan of throwing away the bridge, so really she should have deleted any extra potential bridges beforehand and that proves Shuichi’s lying about this.

Kokichi:  “Puhu… Puhuhuhuhu…!”

This, of all things, is Kokichi’s initial reaction. I guess since we’re in the second half of trial 4, it’s approaching the point where he’s going to be pretending he’s super evil for the purpose of convincing them all he’s the mastermind, and that’s why he’s acting like Monokuma here?

Kokichi:  “Ah-hahahaha! Oh my god! That lie was sooo cringy! Stop, my stomach hurts! Wooow! Shuichi is lying on purpose! Are you trying to spice up the class trial, too?”

And this time, Kokichi explicitly calls Shuichi out on the lie. This is the first time he’s done that for any of Shuichi’s lies, back route or canon, since this is just a little before Shuichi’s actual canon lie in this trial which Kokichi will also call him out on.

It’s a little strange that he reacts to this lie of Shuichi’s so differently than how he reacts to the upcoming one, just finding it hilariously pathetic rather than being furious about it. Perhaps that’s just because the upcoming one gets used much more directly against him, to prove that he went to the crime scene, whereas this one doesn’t “ruin his fun” and in fact makes things more entertaining for him.

Shuichi:  “Kokichi… I was the only one who went and got the signboard. Only I saw them. So why do you think I’m lying?”

Kokichi:  “Because I know. I know the culprit… and the whole trick.”

And, I guess props to Shuichi, because this time he actually succeeded in getting Kokichi to admit this. This is possibly because Kokichi is so close to the point where he’s planning to reveal the culprit anyway that he doesn’t see the harm in giving everyone a little teaser of that. (I should also point out that, were Kokichi really going for the mercy kill, it would be better for him to not admit to knowing anything at all here.)

Kaito:  “Wh-What!?”

I like how Kaito is the first one to react to that. At this point in the trial it’s pretty clear that he’s noticed Kokichi already knows a bunch of stuff he’s infuriatingly not telling anyone, so this is probably less him being surprised at that and more just being bewildered that Kokichi is suddenly admitting it.

Kokichi:  “Nee-heehee… I couuuld tell you, but I think we should save the best for last.”

He still wants to draw it out, just like he’s been doing this entire trial, to make it as ~fun~ as possible, because he is still twistedly desperately trying to have fun with his murderous assholery. And he’s trying to make it as cruel as possible too, so that they’ll all believe he’s totally evil and therefore totally the mastermind.

Kokichi:  “Even if I told you, would you guys really believe a liar like me?”

Yeah, he knows that people are going to put up resistance to the idea once he does accuse Gonta, just because it’s him saying it. But he also knows that Shuichi will face things objectively and prove it for him anyway once he gets to that point.

Kokichi:  “That doesn’t mean *all* of Shuichi’s deductions are lies, y’know.”

Oh, really, Kokichi? But I thought that if one person lies about one thing then they’re instantly a horrible backstabber and you can’t trust them about anything, and so everything they say might as well be considered a lie? Yeah, too bad for Kokichi that narrative doesn’t work here where he still needs Shuichi to be credible in order for him to prove to everyone that Gonta did it.

So admittedly, these two back routes for trial 4 are much less ridiculous and more pointed than the ones from trials 2 and 3, and while the first one awkwardly doesn’t go anywhere, this one actually does. But I’m still not hugely fond of them and don’t like to think they’d be canon, simply because it’s not like Shuichi to use underhanded tactics like this unless he really feels it’s necessary.

These lies are also more underhanded than the canon lie later in this trial, because that one straightforwardly “proves” that Kokichi went to the roof, whereas these two are all about trying to manipulate Kokichi into admitting something that Shuichi’s lie itself doesn’t actually prove (which might also be why Kokichi is so amused by this lie when that’s not at all how he reacts to the upcoming one). That’s worse than anything Shuichi does canonically. This is Shuichi stooping to Kokichi’s level even more than he does in canon, not because he has to but just because he can. He’s better than that.

Trial 5, Back Route 1

This back route is almost my favourite one. Almost. And then it isn’t.

This is the first debate after Exisal Kokichi appears and shows everyone the video, in which you’re supposed to argue that Kaito’s cause of death couldn’t have been the hydraulic press because of the safety function.

Himiko:  “Kaito got crushed to death.”

But instead of firing the safety function at this, you can turn the “Murder Video” bullet into “Survival Video” and fire it here.

Shuichi:  “I still… don’t believe it. Is that video real?”

Because Shuichi doesn’t want to accept Kaito’s death, even when it’s staring him in the face, of course!

Shuichi:  “It could have been edited to make it *look* like Kaito was killed by the press.”

Exisal Kaito:  “Damn right!”

[the Exisal leaps over into Kaito’s spot]

Exisal Kaito:  “There’s no way this Luminary of the Stars would die that easily!”

I love that this makes Kaito be himself again for a moment. Of course he’s too invincible and too luminary and too Kaito to die that easily! That’s exactly what Shuichi’s believing right now!

(And it’s exactly what Kaito hasn’t truly believed about himself in a while. But since he’s playing an overexaggerated version of himself that Kokichi might act out, and since he’s talking about how he totally wouldn’t ever die, that’s a reason to pretend like he’s the Luminary of the Stars, even though he doesn’t truly feel he deserves that title any more.)

Tsumugi:  “K-Kaito again!?”

[the Exisal leaps back to Kokichi’s spot]

Exisal Kokichi:  “Would you have liked it better if it turned out like that? Ah-haha, you wish!”

But Kaito can’t actually stick with that for more than a brief second, no matter how much he must have liked the excuse to pretend he really is invincible, because he’s here to convince Shuichi that he’s dead. I don’t think this brief switch to his own voice was actually scripted, for the same reasons I argued back in the main commentary that Kaito starting out as himself at first wasn’t scripted. Kokichi would have preferred it if they never heard both voices and therefore never even considered the possibility that the Kokichi voice could be faked.

Nonetheless, Kaito’s doing a good job of ad-libbing Kokichi’s behaviour after he switches back, because of course Kokichi would enjoy rubbing Shuichi’s denial and irrational belief in Kaito’s invincibility in his face. The delivery of the “you wish” is especially dickish, and I am forever impressed at Kaito being able to do this kind of thing.

Shuichi:  (Ah!)

Shuichi is not happy at being toyed with like this.

Exisal Kokichi:  “Like I said, that footage isn’t edited at all. It recorded the event completely as is. Kaito was crushed! His bones went crunch, and his organs went squish!”

Yikes. This part at least is very definitely scripted, and, again, it is incredible that Kaito can act this out and make himself say these words. He manages to sound genuinely gleeful about the gruesome part, even though that is actually what he did to Kokichi while he was still alive. Aaaaaa, Kaito. I bet he was very, very glad in the canon version of events that he never had to recite this bit of the script.

Himiko:  *huuurp*… “I remembered the video… And all my bittersweet memories of him…”

Himiko still seems to be reasonably upset about Kaito’s death!

Tsumugi:  “Hold those memories within you… or they’ll just escape as sour vomit.”

Meanwhile Tsumugi sure seems to give absolutely no fucks that Kaito was horribly killed, does she.

Shuichi:  “But we all know Kokichi loves to lie. And that he’s a Remnant of Despair. That leads me to believe there’s something he’s not telling us about that video. I don’t think that video showed the murder at all! All we saw was a living body!”

Questioning the validity of the video is quite a reasonable thing to do at this point, even despite all of Exisal Kokichi’s insistence that it couldn’t have been edited. But it’s still very unlikely that this’d ever actually cut the trial short, because without knowing why Kokichi would fake the video, which we don’t figure out until we learn that Monokuma doesn’t know what happened, there’s no reason to be certain that it even was faked at all. Trying to figure out how it could have been faked at that point is just trying to solve a puzzle that might not even have a solution.

Exisal Kokichi:  “Nee-heehee… I don’t blame you for not believing it. It’s hard to believe a smug idiot like Kaito got squished like a bug, right?”

Says Kaito. Still very scripted, still delightful that Kaito is forcing himself to say all these things designed to taunt and hurt Shuichi and make himself sound pathetic and worthless. He is doing whatever it takes to get Shuichi to drop this.

Exisal Kokichi:  “But your lie won’t work here, Shuichi. No, what you said isn’t even a lie! It’s just wishful thinking!”

And of course Kokichi in the script, having predicted the possibility of Shuichi desperately trying to deny Kaito’s death even after seeing the video, would still want to make it seem all about lies despite knowing full well that Shuichi reacting like this wouldn’t (shouldn’t) have anything to do with lying at all. Kaito can’t enjoy dismissing Shuichi’s wishful thinking like it’s meaningless to hope for something better, especially when he knows that Shuichi’s right to. Wishful thinking is believing that the impossible is possible!

Shuichi:  “…” (You’re wrong, Kokichi. My emotional reaction is the lie. I put on this act to get what I want from you. I know that these class trials demand that someone dies. I’m prepared for that.)

And then, this back route, which was being really delightful, just goes and shoots itself in the foot and completely invalidates itself. What the fuck do you mean Shuichi was only pretending to desperately want Kaito to be alive?

If Shuichi has accepted the fact that someone’s dead, and is also sure that he’s talking to Kokichi, that means he’s already accepted that Kaito is dead. This is straight-up contradicted by canon, in which Shuichi only properly accepts that Kaito is dead just before the Debate Scrum, which is still a while from now. Acting like he’s totally already accepted it here completely compromises Shuichi’s emotional progression for the first part of this trial, which is one of the most fun parts!

(There was even that one bit right here where Shuichi went (Ah!) in his inner monologue, which is an internal reaction that wouldn’t be part of this hypothetical lie and sure implies that his emotional reaction really was genuine, but nah, that was never a thing, right.)

And the only reason they did this, probably? Because back routes must totally always involve lies of some kind. As if you couldn’t possibly have an interesting alternate route in a debate that doesn’t require lying (even though the second back route in trial 3 actually did not contain a lie at all). I bet the writers came up with this fun idea of Shuichi trying to deny the video, and then went “wait, shit, that’s not actually a lie; we need to make it a lie somehow otherwise it can’t be a back route”. No, you don’t!!! This is, again, making Shuichi far too underhanded and manipulative for his character, especially given the desperate state of mind he is canonically supposed to be in at this point in the trial. Gah. This is so disappointing.

Honestly, I’d have been tempted to actually include this back route in my main coverage of trial 5 if it hadn’t been for this. If they’d actually made this about more of Shuichi’s desperate denial like it should have been, with bonus Kaito briefly being his totally-invincible self and then reciting some painfully cruel scripted lines that he must have hated to say, it’d have been a delightful addition and there’d have been very little reason for me not to include it!

Also, if they’d made this back route be actually about Shuichi’s denial, it would also have been amusingly similar to the hypothetical alternate route I proposed in the main commentary, in which Shuichi could have picked up on Exisal Kokichi’s comment about his singular wound to desperately try and tell himself it was Kaito in there after all. That one wouldn’t have involved lying either, and wouldn’t have needed to to still be interesting! (That part came later on, just after the Debate Scrum in which he accepted Kaito’s death, but then it’d have been a brief lapse in Shuichi’s resolve to accept the truth, kind of like trial 1’s back route.)

Shuichi:  (My intuition is telling me there’s something wrong with that video. It was shot for a reason.)

Shuichi should be perfectly allowed to have his detective’s intuition tell him this while also having his Shuichi Saihara side desperately want to deny the video just because he can’t bear the thought of losing Kaito. They shouldn’t have to randomly erase Shuichi’s emotional side here to justify this alternative route.

Shuichi:  (Is there a hint in what Kokichi has said? Some key to the mystery?)

There is not, because nearly everything Exisal Kokichi said in response to this was very clearly scripted, and Kokichi would have carefully made sure that none of it would give any hints as to what’s really going on in the video or why he shot it. All he did was reiterate that the footage wasn’t edited, and then distract from the topic with lots of taunting about Kaito’s death and Shuichi’s denial.

Maki:  “Isn’t this enough? Kokichi is the culprit. He brought the evidence and even confessed to the murder.”

But Shuichi doesn’t get more time to think about this, because Maki is very quick to insist that Kokichi did it, so that she can get him killed.

Shuichi:  “That doesn’t make sense! Not even Kokichi would do something that stupid!”

I am amused by how Shuichi’s wording implies that he thinks Kokichi is usually rather stupid, even if not this much so. That’s not quite what he really means… but Kokichi was rather stupid about this plan in multiple ways.

Tsumugi:  “Is common sense going to work here? On the Remnants of Despair, I mean.”

Tsumugi is still trying to remind everyone that this is definitely all about Remnants of Despair, even though them writing off Kokichi’s strange actions because of that would likely lead to them not finding the real truth and getting her game into trouble. (Kaito must be already getting very confused about what these Remnants of Despair are in this turn of events.)

Then Keebo is the one to get us back on track, because apparently when Shuichi mentioned earlier that the video could have just showed a living body, Keebo ran a mental search on the word “living” and got a “hit” of the press’s safety function. Which is an odd way to recall a relevant fact like that. This is Keebo being less human-seeming than usual, if he had to consciously run a search instead of just remembering it like a regular person would. Especially since he himself had such a personal beef with the safety function earlier.

Trial 5, Back Route 2

This is a little later on but still before the intermission, after Shuichi has figured out that a third party entered the hangar using an Exisal and is trying to prove how that was possible. You’re supposed to point out that someone used an Electrohammer to hijack one, but instead…

Maki:  “…so getting inside one would’ve been impossible.”

…you can turn “Hatch’s Electronic Lock” (which refers to the locks on the Exisals’ cockpits) into “Unlocked Hatch” and fire it here.

Shuichi:  “While investigating the Exisals, I noticed that they have no locks on their cockpit hatches.”

But Shuichi, if you really did notice that while investigating them, then why didn’t you try opening the red one that was there in the hangar? In fact, why doesn’t Maki just leap over there right now to open the cockpit and murder Kokichi to death like she’s been wanting to this whole time?

Shuichi:  “It should have been possible to get into the cockpit, providing they could reach it.”

Maki:  “But that’s reckless, absurd, and useless… Jump inside a moving Exisal? That’s not really possible.”

Shuichi:  “No, I think it is. You would need to be quick, agile, athletic and stealthy… I can think of at least one person who fits that description.”

Shuichi is presumably making a point of how only Maki could be capable of jumping into a moving Exisal to try and make her defend herself by saying they were locked, which would be admitting she knew about the locks and therefore incriminating herself.

Maki:  “…What? Are you implying that it’s m—”

Exisal Kokichi:  “Oooh, I see! And since he’s a robot, he could have some robo-communication function!”

Aaa, Kaito! We’re entirely in ad-lib territory here, so this is him defending Maki by changing the subject to Kokichi’s usual robophobic dickery! The real Kokichi would be much happier using this opportunity to be more of a dick to Maki, not Keebo, and rub in how much of an evil stealthy murderous assassin she is.

…Of course, Kaito knows Maki did this and wants Shuichi to figure it out. So perhaps this is because he’s not particularly thrilled at the underhanded way Shuichi is going about this, because of course he knows Shuichi’s lying about the lock on the Exisal.

Keebo:  “As I’ve said, my speed, agility, and strength are equal to that of a human, if not weaker!” […]

Tsumugi:  “The selling point of being a robot is being good in combat, but… poor Keebo…”

Insert some of my usual grumbling about Keebo never using his goddamn weapons until chapter 6 for no adequately-justified reason here.

Maki:  “Stop this pointless conversation, Shuichi. If you want to say something, say it already.”

Maki can clearly tell Shuichi is up to something and is quite understandably annoyed at him beating around the bush like this.

Shuichi:  “As the Ultimate Assassin, you would be able to jump into that Exisal, correct?”

Maki:  “…Impossible. If I could do that, I would’ve turned the Exisal into scrap on the first day.”

Shuichi:  “Maybe. Unless you were hiding your true potential, in which case…”

Heh, the image of Maki using her badass assassin powers to even assassinate the Exisals and singlehandedly save everyone at once is a fun image. And she may well have been deliberately hiding her true potential to begin with since she didn’t want anyone to know she was an assassin at first – but she’d have had no reason not to come chapter 3.

Maki:  “…Do you really suspect me that much?”

Shuichi:  “No, actually. I’m trying to find a way to prove that you *couldn’t* be the intruder.”

What Shuichi is saying sounds like something that could be true because he doesn’t want to suspect his friend… but he’s lying. He’s saying this to try and make Maki admit that she knew about the lock and prove she’s the intruder, because he does suspect her the most. This is very uncomfortably underhanded and manipulative of him

And this works – Maki goes on to explain that there’s a lock on the cockpits, meaning she couldn’t have got inside.

Shuichi:  (…You just made something very clear to me, Maki. You do know something after all, and you’re hiding it from me!)

And you’re hiding your intentions for this conversation and lying to her, so really right now you’re both being as bad as each other, Shuichi! This back route is in a similar vein to the ones in trial 4, in which Shuichi lies to try and coax information out of someone whom he knows is hiding something from him. It was one thing when that person was Kokichi and Shuichi was essentially just turning his own tactics against him. But this is Shuichi being deceptive and manipulative towards his friend, even if it is a friend who’s hiding something from him, and that makes me even more uncomfortable.

Shuichi:  “How do you know there’s an electronic lock on the Exisal’s hatch?”

Maki:  “… …Because I checked it during the investigation.”

Shuichi:  “That can’t be true. I’m the only person Monokuma told about those locks.”

Maki:  “…Just you? I see. If that’s the case… Then you lied just to confirm if I knew about the electronic lock.”

I’m glad that Maki realises he did that and calls him out on that.

Shuichi:  “…Yes, I did, and I’m sorry.”

If you’re sorry then you should have just not done it in the first place, Shuichi! It’s perfectly possible to force her to admit the truth just by proving she had to have done it by talking about her used Electrohammer – which gets her to pretty quickly concede that she’s the third party – so why would you bother using this underhanded manipulative method on your friend when you don’t have to!?

Maki:  “When Monokuma explained it to you, I just happened to overhear it. That’s all.”

Shuichi:  “You’re lying, Maki. You know about the locks because you’ve been inside one of the cockpits.”

Maki:  “So annoying… Do you want to die? You’re the one who’s lying!”

Both of you have been lying and being dicks to each other right now! But only one of you is doing it because you’re broken and manipulated into feeling like it’s necessary, and that one is not Shuichi!

I’m also quite sad that Kaito does not try and step in at any point to break this up, like he did that one time in canon for a similar argument between Shuichi and Maki. Kaito must hate seeing the two of them lashing out at each other like this, Shuichi using unnecessarily dickish tactics and Maki hiding the fact that she thinks she killed him for reasons he still doesn’t understand. Exisal Kokichi only gets that one earlier line about Keebo in this whole back route, and it’s another thing that’s disappointing to me about this one.

Shuichi:  (It looks like… she’s never going to admit it on her own. There’s something important that she’s protecting by keeping her mouth shut.)

At least Shuichi believes that if Maki is being so stubborn about this, it must be because she’s protecting something. The actual truth is a lot more painful than that.

Shuichi:  (In that case, I have to keep pushing.)

You could try doing that by using the truth and actually proving she did it instead of this manipulative bullshit, Shuichi. If she’s stubborn enough that she’s never going to admit it without proof, then just prove it already.

Himiko is the one to save us and get us back on track this time, with a brief surprising interlude in which she seems like she’s not going to say her magic could have unlocked an Exisal… but then she says her magic would have been an option alongside an Electrohammer after all.

Once it reconverges, Shuichi is suddenly talking again about a mysterious “third party”, like he wasn’t just making a huge point about how Maki in particular knew more about the Exisals than she should and is already very clearly the third party in question. These back routes don’t always reconverge very smoothly.

So, yes. It’s interesting to see some alternative possibilities, but almost all of these back routes do not deserve to be considered canon or even ambiguously canon. Either they involve Shuichi being way dumber than normal and overlooking the correct option for no particular reason, or they involve Shuichi being far more dickishly underhanded and manipulative than he should be. The only potentially worthwhile ones are the ones about Shuichi running away from the truth, which is only one and a half of them. That first one in trial five frustrates me so much – it was this close to being absolutely delightful, and then they ruined it! Aaargh.

[firstpuffin]

A look at the leading ladies in the Devil May Cry series:

I do love the Devil May Cry (DMC) series. The action is fun and over the top, the music is super engaging and the designs great. But there are absolutely some big flaws in the series and I personally feel that while the male leads are generally good to fantastic, the ladies are typically…dull.

  I was chatting with friends about the series and tried to bring this up only for them to…miss the point. Completely. And then to tease me about it. It was infuriating. Instead, I’m going to discuss it here, where I can flesh out my thoughts to my heart’s content.

  Of course as I haven’t played DMC 5 yet and I haven’t even looked at DMC: Devil May Cry (the reboot) in years I won’t be bringing them up, but I’m currently on the fourth game of my series playthrough so I can at least talk about those four.

 So let’s start by pointing out that there was a real problem with the writing of the series which they tried (and freakin’ succeeded at) to do better in the third entry, and eventually with DMC (the reboot; god that’s confusing) they tried to redo everything from scratch. DMC(.5?) was… well, it was a bad Devil May Cry game although not a bad game by itself, but the writing was worse. Really, any writing that relies on that level of sex and shock value and swearing is pretty poor. Sure, all of those have their place in writing, but it’s easy to rely too much on it, but this and DMC.5 is really a subject for another article.

  Anyway, not only did the writing improve drastically for DMC 3, but that also included the lead lady…Lady. But again, that’s for later; I wanna start with DMC 1’s Trish.

 Devil May Cry wasn’t all that close to what it would become, especially given that it was originally a part of the Resident Evil franchise that was rejected but ended becoming a standalone game. And you can tell. It’s noticeable through the sound design and the aesthetic of the game, as well as the fact that Dante is pretty much a dull Leon Kennedy.

  Basically the game starts like this: Dante is at his store, the titular Devil May Cry, when Trish who looks “exactly” (not very much) like Dante’s dead mother, drives her bike into the front door, stabs him and hucks the bike at him.

  Then she dumps exposition on us and away they go to this mysterious island, yadda yadda ya. It’s not very interesting and neither is she. She is literally the inciting incident and love interest. She betrays him, saves him, appears to die… but this isn’t character. These are all token events to add drama to the story and that at most say that she is a troubled character who overcomes life-long conditioning, but that’s about it.

 Let’s move on because there really isn’t much to say about her. Next is Lucia who… could easily be no more than a paragraph. DMC 2 was outsourced, presumably because Capcom didn’t realise how much the fans loved the first game, and it was a travesty.

Dante, who was already short on personality, had his cockiness mostly removed and zero agency, repeatedly relying on a coin flip. The story was a series of loosely connected events, connected by poor dialogue and made confusing by out of the blue statements that make no sense. The only good points were Dante’s outfit, and Lucia’s Devil Trigger. Oh, and the music was pretty good.

  Lucia herself was a very typical example of an early 2000’s love interest: watch almost any action movie from the time period and honestly, you have a prime example of Lucia, the story points and how they attempt to make things dramatic. Seriously, watch Mission Impossible 2.

-Lucia and her Devil Trigger-

Yes, yes, YEAH!! Onto my favourite lady-lead.

-Lady-

  Yes, I should calm down. I’ve just finished DMC 3 again and my adult brain got so much more out of it than my teenage brain. There is emotional depth and complexity, characters with character and- damn. It’s just so good.

  Yes, Lady dresses a bit like a stripper, but it’s also pretty practical (I frequently struggle with trousers that limit movement so I understand). More importantly, she doesn’t act as sexual as Trish and where Lucia is boring Lady just isn’t. But she isn’t a perfect person either.

  She’s determined to kill all demons but she clearly won’t stop there; she shoots Dante before she even knows that he’s a demon. Lady is angry and she lashes out, but it’s also easy to see how vulnerable she is and how hard she works.

  Lady was betrayed by her father (Arkham) who killed her mother and he is currently her primary target, but when she finds him already dead she is devastated. Then he wakes up, confesses to her that he was being used and she actually believes him. She shouldn’t have.

  Arkham was using her again, but that’s not the point. The point is that she so desperately doesn’t want to hate her father, thus falling for his lies. It’s touching and tragic, and when she finally kills him her laughter turns to crying and then laughter again. Her emotions are a mess.

  Which especially makes the fact that while she eventually gives in and lets Dante help, she doesn’t turn into his girl. She rejects his kiss assuredly but without vehemence. Lady is an emotional mess and yet doesn’t leap into our charismatic hero’s arms. More stories need this because it’s kinda boring at this point.

-this, this is straight up sexualised-

 And Kyrie. Wow. Kyrie is just… wow.

  She could literally be replaced with a photograph in a wallet. Kyrie is there as motivation for our protagonist, Nero. She gets kidnapped some way through the game but that barely matters.

-at least she dresses modestly; I can appreciate that in a video game lady-

 Devil May Cry is not a deep, complex series, apparently reaching its peak in these areas in the third entry, but the characters are usually pretty good, as long as they have a penis hanging between their legs.

[seduceme-lovestruck-thearcana]

So I have read almost all the routes in Lovestruck, Seduce me the otome, the arcana, and Choices. I was wondering if you know of any other visual novels that you would recommend

Oof I’m so sorry I didn’t see this dkanwnsbbagw. I’m gonna give you the games and the LIs I recommend most if that’s okay.

I have a few....

1. Be my Princess. I’m pretty sure you’re a designer for something and get to meet the Princes from different kingdoms or something fkwnwnw. But it’s a nice game.

If you like Tsunderes I recommend Keith Alford. I actually forgot his name for a hot second whoops. But I loved him. He was kind of rude (I haven’t played him in YEARS so I’m not sure on everything sorry) but he eventually began to break. Like every tsundere lol. But he was adorable and he’s just jskansjs. He doesn’t realize his feelings at first and comes off very harsh, but underneath all of that, he’s a soft teddy bear.

But...if you like a funny and kind guy, go for Roberto Button. He is my #2. He’s so kind and nice and likes to dodge responsibility but he changes a bit for MC and she keeps him in line (or well you do I guess?). He was my first but then I played Keith and I loved him. It’s hard to decide between them but I love them. His poor Butler (Alberto) suffers trying to make him do his responsibilities. But he of course still loves the prince lol.

Actually I also recommend Glenn and Joshua. They’re both tsunderes but fall for MC. Glenn is actually a childhood friend and I can’t remember much in his route (mainly bc I didn’t play it but saw some playthroughs) and he’s so sweet. Joshua is a BIG TUFF Tsundere. He really is sweet (but he fears cats...but he did snuggle with one one time in a special episode of something for MC) and love Rice Balls...but only when MC makes them (or was it Rice Cakes...)

I never played any other guys from there so...there’s those guys

2. My Forged Wedding. You, the MC, have to pick a guy to be their fake wife for different reasons (I believe I’m sorry I haven’t played in a long time).

I believe this was my FIRST Otome game to come by. I’m not sure. I recommend Takao Maryuama and Yamato Kougami. They’re both very nice and sweet. Or well...Takao is in the beginning.

If you like Tsunderes, Yamato’s for you. He’s a teacher and is very kind once you get to know him. One of his students like kidnaps you or something and I’m gonna leave it at that ;’). If I ever wanted to live a normal life away from Lovestruck universe, I’d go with him. He’s nice and a real teddy bear and shows you love when you pass his first season. But he is a tsundere so he’s kind of rough on the edges when you meet him, but he gets used to you and is so sWEET.

Takao is just a normal guy. He’s sweet, kind, friends with Yamato (everyone in the game is friends with everyone fjsjsj), takes care of you, he’s a lawyer, and he just...knows how to keep you comfortable. He’s very sweet but can be dirty dkansbbqgw. Just gonna leave it at that ;’).

All in all the game is amazing, especially my 2 bois. And Ren is precious too. He’s a silent type so...not exactly my type. I’m the silent type in the relationship so I need a loud guy. Sorry Ren...but he is a prince I believe (?). So, he’s a kind guy, but he’s very quite and he’s actually a scientist. So I wouldn’t recommend him bc I never really played him and idk what happens but...if you like a silent type. Go for it XD.

3. Love Letter from Thief X (I believe that’s what it’s called). You, a normal person, receives a letter from a group of thieves and they come and take you and other things happen that I’m not 100% able to recall sorry.

I recommend one boi (bC I only played one boi) and it’s Riku. I believe that was his name. He was kind of sweet. I can’t remember much but I remember that I loved him so saknqbwgw.

4. Shall We Date: Angel or Devil. You, a woman that has 7 days to live because of some accident, has to give your soul to someone once those 7 days are up. I recommend Reiner and Feyril. For once, NEITHER OF THEM ARE TSUNDERES. Or not what I believe.

Reiner is a reaper. He is there to take your soul but he is kind of a flirt. He eventually begins to fall in love with you and doesn’t want to take you soul anymore, mainly bc it would mean he’d have to use his scythe and kill you, so he doesn’t want to do that. Some scary stuff is revealed to MC about him and it’s angst, but he is very sweet and was willing to fight for you. If you play him or watch the playthroughs, you’ll know what I mean ;’).

Feyril is an angel and is very kind...like an angel. He at first didn’t feel anything and was always there for you (I haven’t played him in forever forgive me if I get anything wrong...) and well...just is so nice like an angel. In the end he falls in love with you and I remember some bad things happened at the end (sort of) and there were different endings. Like sweet ending and happy ending. Different ones for each route. Also in one ending, him and MC do something interesting on the table in the library in Heaven👀.

I also recommend Latis. He is also an angel. He was your brothers angel (bc he died when she was little I believe) and he became close to you quickly. In the end he fell in love with you and asked, “If I go to hell, will you go with me?” I believe it’s because he wanted to do something dirty with the MC (like lust related. Even tho Feyril and MC did something related to that in Heaven...) and it wasn’t allowed but ya...he’s precious. Like all of these 3 bois I’ve recommended.

ACTUALLY I ALSO RECOMMEND REINER. HE IS A REAPER AND IS SO PRECIOUS. HES DISTANT BUT YALL GET A FUCKING CAT IN ONE ENDING AND FKWNWNWB.

OKAY THATS IT. I can’t really remember any other games I’ve played. I’ve played other ones but I can’t remember much that happens in them/I never finished them and didn’t really like the game. Like love letter from thief x. It wasn’t my favorite so I can remember very little from it.

Or perhaps I was so young so-

But I hope you take my recommendations and read them! I really recommend My Forged Wedding and Be My Princess most. I loved those 2 the most. My bby Yamato and Keith being adorable tsunderes and just aAAAAAAH.

Im just realizing that there are no female in these games so I’m sorry if you wanted female. But I wouldn’t recommend females anyway bc I don’t read them so idk what happens ofkawhw. But I do know that they’re are no females in these games.