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Posted on July 14, 2008 by LTB

And so I got a Good End and my sappy romantic scene in the Princess Nightmare game. Then I realised that the credits roll was filled with spoilers for the other routes! Aaaaaargh! *Has spoiler-phobia*

When you get on the right route, the game is a lot longer than I thought compared to the early Sad ending I got with Shinji. Like, twice as long or something like that.
Too bad I still have to get vampire endings before I can go for Shinji again… looks like the story is throwing hints that Shinji’s route will be quite climatic. I mean, I even saw Mephistopheles for a short moment.

Mephistopheles.

I hate that guy. At least he’s drawn a lot better here than he was in Animamundi 😛

Radou here I come! And yeah, I need to write about something else soon….

Princess Nightmare

Posted on July 12, 2008 by LTB

I have never been a hugely into otome games (games/visual novels for girls, usually with a girl as the protagonist). My impression of them have been that most of them consist of the main character wading through hordes of cliché bishies, just as many BxG games consist of the main character wading through hordes of moe-blobs. Or rather, it’s not that I didn’t like them, they just never really appealed to me.

But lately I have taken greater interest in them, and decided to try out a few to change my mind. Two games that caught my eye were Princess Nightmare and Heart no Kuni no Alice. Even though what I have tried of Heart no Alice looks very awesome indeed, I decided to go with Princess Nightmare first. It has the advantage of the heroine being voiced, which helps my understanding a lot, and then it’s not as insanely long as Heart no Alice is.

Anyway…. this game really surprised me in a good way. So far I have played through it once, and of course reached a bad ending, but I am enjoying this much more than I hoped I would. The characters in the game are a lot of fun once you really get into it, and the art is wonderful.

You play as “Little Dracula”, a vampire girl who wishes to go to school and try and live like an ordinary girl. Even though her brother Radou is set against it, her father (Dracula himself) gives her permission, and she starts attending a school that is very conveniently divided into day and night classes. Here she meets a human boy named Shinji, his classmates, and his good friend called Inukai (a werewolf).
Of course the vampires are hiding in Japan for a reason, and soon none other than Hellsing himself comes running after them, together with a crazy professor of sorts. I also managed to get a short glimpse of the mysterious “Prince” character before reaching the bad end.

The music in the game is great – especially the creepy tunes work well for me. The voice acting is fun to listen to as well, especially when the characters sometimes make some pretty funny personality changes. Especially a school play in the middle of the story makes me crack up – in spite of the theme being a bit cliché, that scene was just too funny.

It’s obvious that there is still much of the story in the game that I haven’t discovered yet, since I got the “sad” ending.

Unfortunately this game has a feature that seems to be in most Karin games (Yo-Jin-Bo and Animamundi has it as well) – when the game starts, you will be presented with a scene where you have to answer a row of short questions. These questions help determine your chances of getting different endings later in the game. I find it kind of annoying, since this most likely sets you up for a bad ending on your early playthroughs when you don’t know much about the characters. I will definitly end up doing the same thing I did in Yo-Jin-Bo, using a walkthrough for these first few questions, and then get through the rest on my own.
Also, every choice menu has a clock counting down, which makes it a little hard for someone with weak reading skills to make the right choices in time ^^; Thankfully none of the choices have been very complicated so far, so I have been able to read them without too much trouble.

Another thing that kind of put me off, especially at first, is a very strangely chosen standard pose for Inukai. In his standard pose, he’s giving you the finger. I mean, this fits well in some scenes, sure, but it’s strange to see him standing like that when he’s just speaking normally to someone, lol.

As some might know, Princess Nightmare is the game that was rumoured to be the next license by Hirameki before they went out of VN business. Because of this a small translation group by the name Otome Eternal has taken up the task of fan-translating this game. Unfortunately it looks like the project has stalled somewhat, but I do hope that they will succeed. This is a really good game after all.

Pretty~

Posted on July 6, 2008 by LTB

I was surprised to see that Sixten of Heart’s Content posted a little mini-review of my Angelic Orbs project on his blog.

And there is fanart! Isn’t she just adorable?

It means a lot to me to get comments like that from a person like Sixten. Right! I better get back to work so I can start updating with part 3 soon! (And get the game done… ^^; )

M**gles?

Posted on July 3, 2008 by LTB

While waiting to see if I will be able to keep playing the US Fiesta game or not, I decided to try out a new mmorpg. Most of them look pretty boring – a few interesting ones were not for EU players of course. Sigh. (The moment Concerto Gate gets a server that allows me to play, I will try it right away. Looks awesome.)

In the end I decided to try out Holic. Here’s a stream of thoughts and comments that came to mind during my first attempt at the game.

After installing, I find out that this game has a strange way of launching. The exe points me to their website, where I have to press a button that opens up the launcher. Huh. The launcher screen is very pretty though! Which is a good thing since I had to wait forever for all the updates to install and get ready.

Character creation. The graphics in this game are really cute, and there are more possibilities for costumizing your character from the beginning than in Fiesta. This is also where I noticed something different in this game – there are two races. You can make your character look like this:

Isn’t it adorable? Makes me think of the Moogles in FFXII.

I enter the game and realise that the NPC’s have voices here. I also realise that this game runs badly on my laptop with constant lagging – just enough for the game not to notice every other button I press, and for the music to skip around constantly. I try re-installing it on my other computer, and here it runs fine. Guess this game is a little more demanding than Fiesta is.

Don’t I look cool?

Looks like people ride around on giant birds in this game. I also hear that you can make use of a “human cannon” to travel between distant places.

As mentioned the graphics in this game are decent, but I think the mapping is a little lacking in some parts. I mean, this isn’t exactly the most exciting plain I’ve seen.

Could be better in other areas though. At least there aren’t illogical invisible walls all over the place like in Fiesta yet.

One of the other curious things in this game is that apparently your character can have two classes at the same time, and switch between them. I haven’t tried this yet though, so I don’t know how well it works.
And I really have to get used to the new controls again. At first it annoyed me that the camera couldn’t zoom out very far – until I noticed that this is something you can adjust in the game options. And I’m sure I will end up wasting many potions out of the habit of clicking “2” every time I kill a monster…

Guess this game is decent enough for me to try out for a little while longer, although it feels kind of odd so far. Hopefully I will be able to return to Fiesta at some point as well.

And the villain is……!

Posted on June 24, 2008 by LTB

I just finished reading the first volume of the Light Novel series Gosick. Shortly after I bought this book, it was announced that it is one of the titles that Tokyopop has cancelled because of their recent restructuring.

I had never heard of these books before I saw a review of vol. 1 on ANN. I decided to pick it up since it sounded interesting, even though the thoughts of a girl wannabe-Holmes didn’t give me very high hopes about how much I would like the story. The beginning of the book isn’t very thrilling either. Especially the descriptions of some of the characters from the police are very odd, and I found it hard to figure out what kind of mood the book was trying to create – should I take it seriously or not? I must also admit that one of the main characters, the “detective” Victorique, annoyed me a bit. She is a typical, “tsundere” genius, always complaining, always aware of everything that goes on around her. Even when people are getting killed everywhere, she will remain calm and keep insulting Kazuya. I’m sure a lot of people would disagree with me here.

But as we get deeper into the true core of the story, things change. The moment the two main characters, Victorique and Kazuya, are dragged into the mystery on board the yacht at open sea, things get very interesting. The sillyness fades away, and suddenly the situation is very serious and dangerous. Survival is now more important than simply leaning back and cracking mysteries. Even Victorique redeems herself a bit near the end when things get really rough, so I can’t completely dislike her after all.

And who is the real villain….? I was a bit disappointed by that revelation. I liked that character! Awww……. (even if I had a hunch, it was still too bad.)

In the end I must say that I like this book very much, and I’m sad to know that it’s not likely to see more of it in english. At least this first volume is a complete story in and of itself, so even though no more volumes will be printed in english, I’ll still recommend it to anyone interested. It’s a good short read.
Looking it up on the internet, I also see that this series has some really beautiful art. This isn’t very obvious from the looks of the plain and boring cover that Tokyopop has given the book, which is a real shame.

I guess this is, as they say, another good reason to learn japanese. And with that, let’s have another look at some lovely Gosick art:

Die, Slime!!

Posted on May 22, 2008 by LTB

After being asked several times by M12, I finally tried out the MMORPG Fiesta Online today. It’s been quite a while since I played RO, so the only other game of it’s type I can really compare it to is FlyFF (Fly for Fun). Here are my thoughts:

The graphics for the game are nice and cute, and the characters aren’t as short as in FlyFF. On the other hand, when creating characters, there are very few choices (1 face, 3 hairstyles, 3 hair colours). On the log-in screen I later spotted a “50% off character customization!” ad = FAIL! Looks like this game could be an even greater cash cow than FlyFF. It kind of annoys me that everyone has to look this much alike in the game – I seriously hope you’ll get a chance of changing these things at some point without having to pay for it.

The town is pretty easy to find your way around, and when the different graphic options are turned down a notch I don’t experience a lot of lag. I generally liked the world design in Flyff better though, and the controls too – having to click the mouse to change your point of view all the time is a little annoying. But maybe it’s just because I’m more used to the Flyff controls. (At least you can use the keyboard for moving around, a feature which was missing in Mabinogi in the few minutes I tried it).

Hmm looks like you can get some kind of flying-like transportation in Fiesta like you could in FlyFF (although I don’t think you can ‘fly’ as high?), so they are pretty even there.

Plusses for Fiesta:
I saw someone riding around on some tiger-like creature in town. It… was… so…. CUTE! I want one!!! <3
Also, I really like the HP and SP stone feature. It’s practical. The “house” thing is fun too – in Flyff you would just be sitting down. The outcome is the same though.

All in all Fiesta still wins, since I was getting really tired of FlyFF lately… but I guess it’s just a matter of time 😛 I don’t hate it as much as it sounds like.

I was also supposed to update AO today. I still hope I can make it in time, but this page is a pain to finish <_<

Breakthrough!

Posted on May 9, 2008 by LTB

…. I hope.

It’s about time I make another update about the AO game I guess. Lately I have been pretty stuck, so not much has happened – somehow I just couldn’t get any further with the remaining CG’s. At least all Tia’s CG’s are now finished, so I don’t have to worry about her anymore.

Today I managed to get another one of Yoko’s CG’s out of the way, though. I’m not all pleased with it, but the lineart itself was kind of bad to begin with, and there’s a limit to what colours can save…. In the end I found another technique for spiffing up CG colouring by complete coincidence, and with that I made the finished picture look a little more bearable. Now I have declared it as finished, and with that I hope to have broken through the wall that was standing in my way – next up is colouring another CG with an annoying amount of background in it, and then getting some lineart finished…….. *sigh*

I’m finding it really hard to live up to my own expectations with this. Looking back at the finished CG sets, there are a few that I would like to redo as well. At other times I just tell myself that I have to live with some crappy art here and there.

I want this game to look great, but at the same time I feel that the story is inferior, and then maybe it doesn’t even deserve for me to work so hard for the graphics.

Hmmm this is tough…. I’m still hoping to get this game released this summer though, so let’s hope I can get my act together.

#¤!@(/&!

Posted on April 24, 2008 by LTB

Arrrgh I hate CSS @_@ It’s so confusing! It was so much simpler back in the days when I just had to write some simple HTML code! (almost)

I have been wasting most of the day trying to fix some things I wanted changed on my website, after updating the comic. In the end I finally managed to set up a horizontal menu in the top like I wanted to – it looks like crap, but at least it’s there now 😛
Now I just need to figure out the other couple of things I wanted.

If I was just to use the page for my gallery, it would be fine the way it is now. But I want to make it easier for people to read my comic there.

In the end I should probably just have used Comicpress or something for that.

I wonder if it would be best to some day get a seperate domain name for Angelic Orbs? Looks like most webcomics benefit from having their own page like that.

Ah, it’s all so confusing…. I think I’ll try and watch Aria now instead.

Shades of Grey

Posted on April 20, 2008 by LTB

I have earlier brought up the question of whether I should continue shading my comic pages, or just upload them as pure lineart.

To be honest: the one thing I dislike the most about drawing AO is the shading. Putting the story together and struggling with lineart and backgrounds can get annoying and frustrating, but in the end I still enjoy it. It’s the moment the page gets scanned, and I have to sit in front of the computer to finish up the page with shading and lettering that things start to really get on my nerves.

It’s a shame really, since I like how the page turns out with shading. Especially pages like this one really has a lot to gain with proper shading. As a result of the first blog post, I decided to keep shading the pages, and instead cut down on updating. Now the comic updates only once a week instead of twice, and I still miss an update sometimes, even though all pages for part 2 are actually drawn.

But after working with that schedule for a while, and a short discussion I had on Gaia online, I have decided that maybe I should change this after all. I am seriously considering that after part 2 of Angelic Orbs ends, I will begin updating with black and white pages. I will most likely also go back and repost a batch of pages from time to time with finished shading, but this will only happen when I feel like it and have the extra time.

If I do this I will most likely be able to speed up the updating schedule to twice a week again, and that results in me being able to do what I want most right now – get on with the story! Unfortunately it will also break consistency a bit. Besides, the shading helped bring up my lousy lineart by a notch 😉

As a reward for reading through all this, here is a small preview of a page from part 3 that I have been working on:

Now back to the game…. and remember, next thursday a new character will finally be introduced in the comic! Hooray!

Sailing on a turtle

Posted on April 1, 2008 by LTB

While others are plowing through new shows like Clannad and Gundam 00, I have recently been watching some of of the old show “Urusei Yatsura” – a show that predates myself!

I was given “Beautiful Dreamer” the other day as a gift, the second Urusei Yatsura movie, and since I had read that it was a bad idea to watch it without any prior knowledge of the characters I first sat down and watched the first season of the TV anime. The show really is old, and to begin with I wasn’t really thrilled. It looked too much like Ranma½, the jokes seemed lame, and I was never very fond of the style used in anime back then. But I admit that the show grew on me with every episode. Especially after Mendou was introduced even I thought it was really funny at times – it just wouldn’t be the same without him. (As you might have guessed, he’s my favourite character so far ;))

And then I finally saw Beautiful Dreamer today. It’s a really weird movie. And I love that kind of weirdness. Things happen all the time, and it keeps surprising you as it sometimes feels as if it all ends and begins all over again. It is one of those things that remind you why you became interested in anime to begin with, how different they are compared to western animated movies and the way that they are told. At one point things got so strange and out-there that I wondered how on earth they would wrap things up without messing up. But they managed to after all.

The TV show is mostly a comedy, and there were plenty of laughing moments in the movie too. But at the same time there was always a sort of creepy atmosphere beneath it all, or at least I think so. Especially near the end there is a sequence of different scenes that Ataru has to go through – that was the first time ever I felt sorry for the guy 😉

As the theme of the story came apparent, I couldn’t help but think of Kagetsu Tohya (which I still haven’t finished *cough*) – they are actually very much alike in concept. Now I probably won’t be able to not think about Beautiful Dreamer when reading through the rest of KT.

With all the things happening in this movie, and all the little details, it can definitely be watched more than once – there are still a couple of things I am confused about, and other things I need to verify at certain points. All in all this movie wasn’t what I expected based on what little I knew about the series, and even what I knew after watching the first season. Maybe I should watch the other movies too – but I doubt they will be this good. Too bad that the danish dvd (the one I saw) isn’t of very impressive quality. Maybe I should find an import version somewhere, I heard one of them has a widescreen version….

I really recommend watching this if you haven’t already – but either watch or read through a good deal of the original material first to get to know the characters, it works better that way.

Now I just need to plow through the rest of the episodes released of the TV anime, and even the OVA. Whoa, there are a lot….