March 29th
Today's challenge is: Game you played as a joke but enjoyed unironically.
This theme was suggested by
sanzath.
As was hinted yesterday, today's another Japan exclusive, and a game I'm about a thousand hours in and that I'm trying to make a decent strategy guide for. It should be the Magnum Opus of my “guide” career, because I don't think I could ever top this project. And all this for a game I bought because I thought of it as a joke...
To be fair, I wasn't the only one who thought of it as such, and I learned of the game the same way everyone else did. I randomly asked a friend of mine to introduce me to a game I had never heard of that I'd absolutely need in my collection, and he introduced me to this insanity: there's a sandbox picture mode in the game that our lovely nerds in the land of the rising sun have taken in a very cursed and you-are-going-to-hell direction. Also, the game is notorious for having the longest title in gaming history, which, when translated, reads as follows:
Summertime High School: A Young Man's Notes—How a New Exchange Student Like Myself Ran Into His Childhood Friend on the School Tour, Then for Some Reason Became Super-Popular with the Girls for His Daily Scoops on the School Photography Club Even Though He Only Takes Panty Shots, and What He Thinks as He Goes on Dates During His Summer of Island School Life.
Doesn't exactly roll right off your tongue now, right? But what is it? Well, it's pretty unique, so I can't really compare it with any one game, however I can try to explain how it works. It's an open world game in which you play as a student attending summer classes on an island. The world advances linearly (like it does in Majora's Mask, except over the course of almost 3 months instead of 3 days) at a slightly faster rate, but there are way to make it skip ahead to avoid having to waste time idling or something. You can take a leak to skip ahead about 15 minutes, take a nap in the nurse's office, work a day shift at a summer job, stuff like that. An interesting aspect of this is that there's “almost” no real way to tell the time other than finding a clock on a wall somewhere and looking at it. I say “almost” because you can make a save, then look at your savefile, and it will say what time it is.
This game isn't really about studying however, but interacting with the students, citizens and island workers, so it's a bit more like Animal Crossing if I have to compare it with anything. It's fairly big too, and there's a decent amount of stuff to do in there. It can also get pretty crazy, like meeting a god at a shrine or whatnot. The main set of quests would be those having to do with the photography club, which the main character is a part of. Those usually involve interviewing various people on the island in order for the club to write a blog article about it. Despite what is hinted in the game's title, taking pictures of panties, while being something you can do, is super counter productive. It permanently messes up your diary entry for that character by displaying a photo of whatever underwear they were wearing during that day instead of their portrait, which, if you care about trophies, makes it really hard to complete the whole album of every single person that visits this island over the course of those 3 months, plus, if you are noticed, it damages your reputation, and might lead someone to call the cops on you.
There is no huge, long term consequence for being arrested other than having your reputation lowered a lot, but it's better to avoid it anyway. You can raise your reputation by completing sidequests, giving gifts, selecting the best options in dialogs, returning lost money, and being an overall good person. You can lower it by raising havoc, bumping into people, running them over with a bike, crawling on the floor, looking at women's underwear, kicking people and so on. You could say the whole thing is a mix of Majora's Mask, Animal Crossing and Grand Theft Auto. With a huge anime slice-of-life skin. And even though the game is made by the same people who are behind Senran Kagura (the character models even look like they're from the same franchise), it is actually quite wholesome overall.
It's a shame I cannot understand a word of what is going on, because honestly I at least feel like I'm playing something really interesting. I've gotten a grasp on how to get every ending (there are over 300 characters on the island, and about 15 of them have their own ending with the main character, some of which are exclusive to NG+) even though it was an absolute nightmare to figure out. I like that there is so much to do in your free time as well, and even though the game's mechanics are a little clunky, it feels like you're playing something that the devs put some serious efforts into. I really hope to finish my guide for it, which might make the other trophy hunters consider importing the game, which in turn is the slightest chance I've got to help the game getting a western localization (it's incredibly unlikely to happen, but I'm doing what I can).
On an aesthetical note, while the game itself doesn't quite look like the sharpest thing ever made, it is still bright and colorful, which is not unlike the modern Falcom games. The main theme can get a little repetitive, but it never ended up bothering me a huge lot.
The game is available on PS3 and PS4. While there's no region locking on these systems, do know that this game is extremely import unfriendly, mostly due to how much Japanese you need to know in order to truly play it. Lastly, major shoutouts for the dedicated Japanese wiki of the game, which at least lets me know where something is happening on any given day. If I didn't have that, I'd be looking at a 10 000 hours project instead.
