The Six Month Check-in
Sep. 2nd, 2020 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAt just about the last moment in a self-set evaluation period of a new mobile music game in the Love Live franchise, I sorted out I could collect even the most valuable daily reward in School Idol Festival All Stars without having to plug through ten two-minute rounds every day, and supposed I could keep playing it a bit longer. More unfortunately significant there than that, though, was that it wasn’t long after that until I’d holed up in protective isolation and was being set up to work from home. That did make it a bit easier to spread my game sessions throughout the day (even as “play at home” promotions got offered), and I levelled up my teams little by little and delved into the game’s story content.
It’s already been a while since things cooled down enough in my province my employer set up a return-to-the-workplace strategy, though, and with that time started pinching a bit more. The regular “story challenges” had me trying for higher scores than I could get with “skip tickets,” and that set me straight back to plodding. A “six months giveaway” had me thinking it might be time to pull the ripcord. What slowed me down there, however, was thinking I wanted to save something to remember it all by, using iPad screen recording to capture the “music video mode” showing off some of the elaborate costumes I’d collected (even if some matched sets were only almost complete) and the higher-level sets and lighting effects.
Along the way, I’d also started wondering if some of the story content didn’t seem quite as lightweight as I’d first thought it. So far as “visual novels” go putting money into Kickstarters to translate some of the biggest names in the field hadn’t turned into my finding the Windows-only games that much more compelling (or even seemingly much more interactive) than “passively viewed anime,” but the shorter instalments in this game were a bit easier to get through, especially given the visuals and music were a bit more elaborate than in the original Love Live School Idol Festival. There was even an oddly affecting moment in something I’d more or less started intending to get out of the way first. With a third group of nine “school idols” in the ever-expanding franchise some of the distinguishing quirks are getting more eccentric, and there’s one character named Rina who never shows her face, always hiding between “emoticon”-like sketches in pink marker or a sort of pixelated computer-screen mask. The game explained this was a matter of “an inexpressive face,” but as her own mini-stories continued things seemed to change there, and there wasn’t a last-minute “I’ll just stay the way I am” reversal. In the main story I’ve got to a sort of cliffhanger, and while I did notice there seem some recordings of them on YouTube I’ve weakened to the point of noticing my “skip tickets” are becoming more effective again and wondering if I’d be able to see all of the story challenge contents with them. In any case, the decision’s still in my own hands. A different mobile game the Magia Record anime was meant to promote is going to be closing down its English-translated version soon.
It’s already been a while since things cooled down enough in my province my employer set up a return-to-the-workplace strategy, though, and with that time started pinching a bit more. The regular “story challenges” had me trying for higher scores than I could get with “skip tickets,” and that set me straight back to plodding. A “six months giveaway” had me thinking it might be time to pull the ripcord. What slowed me down there, however, was thinking I wanted to save something to remember it all by, using iPad screen recording to capture the “music video mode” showing off some of the elaborate costumes I’d collected (even if some matched sets were only almost complete) and the higher-level sets and lighting effects.
Along the way, I’d also started wondering if some of the story content didn’t seem quite as lightweight as I’d first thought it. So far as “visual novels” go putting money into Kickstarters to translate some of the biggest names in the field hadn’t turned into my finding the Windows-only games that much more compelling (or even seemingly much more interactive) than “passively viewed anime,” but the shorter instalments in this game were a bit easier to get through, especially given the visuals and music were a bit more elaborate than in the original Love Live School Idol Festival. There was even an oddly affecting moment in something I’d more or less started intending to get out of the way first. With a third group of nine “school idols” in the ever-expanding franchise some of the distinguishing quirks are getting more eccentric, and there’s one character named Rina who never shows her face, always hiding between “emoticon”-like sketches in pink marker or a sort of pixelated computer-screen mask. The game explained this was a matter of “an inexpressive face,” but as her own mini-stories continued things seemed to change there, and there wasn’t a last-minute “I’ll just stay the way I am” reversal. In the main story I’ve got to a sort of cliffhanger, and while I did notice there seem some recordings of them on YouTube I’ve weakened to the point of noticing my “skip tickets” are becoming more effective again and wondering if I’d be able to see all of the story challenge contents with them. In any case, the decision’s still in my own hands. A different mobile game the Magia Record anime was meant to promote is going to be closing down its English-translated version soon.