Natsuiro High School - My Gameplay Thoughts

Now that my copy has actually arrived and I had a chance to play the game myself for a few days, I thought I should give it an updated assessment compared to the critique I offered earlier based on game streams.

The one part that I could not properly assess was the actual control aspect of the game play.  The game play itself was neither better or worse than what I had observed previously.  Character control is fairly standard with the left stick used to directly move the character while the right stick is used to rotate the game world.  The buttons on the left side are used to make the character crouch, lay down, roll left/right, and stand up again.   "X" is used to jump and "▢" is used to slide.

During conversational dialogues, the standard "X" and "O" are used while "△" is used to toggle between manual and auto dialogues (some of these are several minutes long exchanges which means you'd need to manually click through many of these).  Some dialogues offer up the "▢" which allows skipping the rest of the conversation.

R1 is used to bring up your smart phone (for e-mail as well as controlling the music that is being played).  The main audio for that background music (BGM) can be adjusted in the "options" menu (as is the volume level for special effects and each main girls speaking volume).  I usually turn down the BGM audio to where it is just barely audible.  R2 brings up your camera (where R1 becomes your shutter, L1/L2 used to control zoom).  L1 becomes an option when another NPC is involved in a quest (it disengages that NPC when a quest involves them following you).  L2 is used during bike riding (more on that later).

The touchpad becomes available when there are other onscreen UI info as a means to reduce that clutter (such as when previewing outfits in avatar mode which is immediately available for Megu; the rest of the heroines need to be unlocked via favorable game endings).  The games "free mode" photography only becomes available when the game is completed.

With this basic synopsis out of the way, some of the more aggravating issues with the controls present themselves when it comes to sliding and bike riding.  Sliding for example offers faster movement than just running but requires constant mashing of the "▢" button that has to also be timed to slide continuously (if your timing is off, the slide will stop even when you are hitting square basically resulting in needless extraneous input).  Sure, you develop that timing rhythm after awhile but all of this still amounts to excessive button mashing that does little to provide any real visceral feel to the sliding action.

Bike riding is even worse in this regard though.  Bike riding itself offers the fastest means of getting around.  When near a bike, the "O" is used to get either on or off it.  When you are on the bike, L2 is used to back up.  The terrible part of the implementation though is in the forward movement.  That is accomplished by the R2 button which needs to be continuously pressed and released to pedal the bike (the left stick is used for your directional control).  And like sliding, those presses/releases need to be timed to move at a constant or faster speed (faster presses).  Once you move too slowly, the bike stops with a squeak (that can grate on you after awhile) and prompts you with the "O" button to get off (pressing/releasing R2 again will get you moving again).

This may seem like a minor quip but it's this timed presses (button mashing) that adds unnecessary tedium to the action (the island is filled with narrow and winding corridors which if you hit the sides, can slow your movement down unless you've fully mastered navigating those areas with the bike.  I suppose it could've been worse where they made you press the left and right buttons to simulate pedaling.  How would I have handled this?  Well, once you are on the bike,  instead of controlling the actual cycling, I would've made the R2 button a brake and the left stick forward movement also controlling the speed but with a caveat.  The more you press forward to move faster, the higher the possibility that you can lose control and actually crash (where you would lose 5 minutes of in-game clock time).  Thus you would need to continuously adjust your forward input and/or press R2 to apply some braking.  And all of this would take into account terrain as well as curves.

Speaking of the in-game clock time, I find the lack of a clock on your smart phone really lame.  As noted in my other post, many quests and events in the game are time based (some events will only trigger at specific times and some quests need to be completed within a certain time limit as based on the in-game clock).  On regular weekdays, the day starts off at 15:00 and ends at 19:30 (3PM-8:30PM) while on weekends/other days off, you have the option to start off at the train station an hour earlier.  The date indicator at the top left of the screen does not give any in-game time except for the position of the sun (or moon if doing an event that happens to be in the evening) on the lower semi-circle.

With that said, the game does provide certain places that do have a wall clock (several rooms in the school, that burger place in town, the train station roof, etc) which leads me to believe this was designed on purpose as a form of time sink to force you to move around (else you could just AFK your character and periodically check your smart phone).  Thus the reason players are constantly running around like a chicken without a head.  Note that time still passes when AFKing and during conversational dialogs.  With the latter, I am not sure if this is an intentional design in the game or a bug since as noted earlier, some of these dialogs aren't short (and in those cases, using auto may not be beneficial since you can quickly skip through such dialogs by spamming/holding the "O" button).

The easiest time accelerators are using the urinal (10 minutes forward for every pee) or heading to the nurses office on the first floor (which is in the wing on the side facing the lighthouse) and standing near the first bed (when the "O" button will pop up).  There will be 3 resting options based on your answer to the dialog buttons (30 minutes, 1.5 hours, and 5 minutes from left to right).  There is a wall clock in here as well.  Opening room doors (when starting a new day) doesn't shave much time off the clock (I didn't really check but it seems around 1 or 2 minutes per door opening at most).

One of the more productive time wasters is fishing since you can sell whatever fish that you do catch, to a town merchant that runs a shop in the city (you can also buy items here that can be given as presents which can increase your affection level with any one of the eight main heroines). The bigger fish naturally sells for more and is one of the key ways to increase your base currency (all characters start off with ￥20,000) besides those occasional random orbs that you can pickup from the ground.  You can not only catch fish, but other items like CD's, bra's, panties (these other items don't seem to be sellable but can be given away as presents).  Fishing is also timing based (when the "!" mark appears/controller vibrates and when you press the "O" button).   I am not sure exactly how much time passes with each line cast since the nearest clock is the burger place in town (I didn't bother doing a game save which would also show the in-game time).

Yes, some quests have a time limit deadline on them once initiated.  Like one that I came across needed to be done in 30 minutes.  That is not 30 minutes real time but 30 minutes on the in-game clock.  So if you perform any actions in the game that shaves off time like peeing 3 times for example, you will have literally pissed your quest objective away.  This of course is not unique to this game as many JRPG's have these kinds of systems in place especially with calendar based games.

And that is where the lack of proper conveyance that I noted in my other posting, becomes an issue.  The map does not provide any sort of ping or objective markers so you are left to run around as quickly as possible from place to place.  Many quests themselves are of this type (go to destination A, then B).  This aspect of the design does not lend itself well to exploration because you need to beat the time deadline; not that it really matters much since as mentioned, the game world is devoid of many NPC's to begin with; the vast majority of them seem to exist primarily in the school and city center and some of them likely only spawn/become actively engage-able after certain calendar dates.  Furthermore, most of the island is a un-navigable forest.

There is a pasture with cows where once activated, you can earn money by milking a cow.  Getting there is out of the way though (and thus takes more in-game time than needed); you have to take that road that runs around the east-southeast part of the island, then go up a narrow/winding path, and then back again (since the main action is usually at the school/city) whereas the nearest area you can fish (the marina) is near the school and city.

My point is that the game lacks real overall content for what is billed as an open world adventure, and uses plenty of time sinks (in the form of long and often times, uninteresting dialog/banter or the above mentioned running around) to disguise this aspect.  Being a long time ARPG player on the personal computer (dating back to the original turn based Wizardry in the early days), the repetitive nature of the genre is something I'm used to.  What makes the difference though is how that repetition is handled.

In those kinds of dungeon crawler game where its this balance of character progression (in terms of how your experience level affects your characters abilities via the points that are put into key attributes and skills) as well as items that are found that enhances your offensive and defensive capabilities, the repetition of the content is offset by directly impacting your characters overall potential (you may find a better item for example, gain more experience and leveling up your abilities, obtaining more currency that has various sinks associated with them to potentially increase your characters abilities, etc).

Basically, it's this constant tension of effort and reward and the dopamine effect when something good happens.  Repetition of content without this leads to a very boring and eventually frustrating game play experience.  Games like Wizardry I-III and the first two Diablo games did a fairly decent job in this area (whereas Diablo 3 got this part totally wrong from the start, and has been constantly bandaid patched since release to try and "fix" what is a flawed underlying core design; something I've noted ad nauseum many times in this blog).

Natsuiro High School's repetitive nature wouldn't be so bad if the open world adventure aspect of the game wasn't this underwhelming and lacking in the fun department (the game play becomes mostly robotic to trigger events/quests and to quickly do them for the purposes of unlocking all the trophies; the adventure and exploration part is mostly non-existent).    Again, I didn't really expect much since this isn't Tamsoft's forte (and as noted in my other post, their first stab at it).  The disappointment level when it comes to expectations is nowhere near as bad as it is with Blizzard's Diablo 3 though (which is the worst for me when it comes to being a game that under delivered at launch in terms of living up to the Diablo name, and continues to under deliver 3 years later; and no less from a AAA studio where the expectations are even higher).

As for this game, not even the novelty factors can really justify its release price either (7,480円 on PS4 and on 6,980円 PS3).  I rarely import Japanese games new since used ones (in as good condition as newly released ones) often can be found from Japanese stores/sellers/resellers a few weeks after launch.  So this one is my fault for not waiting a bit (having seen enough game play, I wouldn't have even bothered to pick this up at all unless it hit the sub ￥1,000 bargain basement bin).

The main menu does have a "shop" button but there currently isn't any DLC in the PlayStation Store.  D3 Publisher normally releases DLC in bunches and I'm surprised there wasn't an initial group at launch besides the pre-order micro-bikini bonus.  Given the "avatar" and free mode parts of the game, I'm presuming any DLC content will be in the form of outfits and alternate hair styles.

Sorry, but this game in its current state isn't worth spending any more additional money on as far as I'm concerned.  For a 2015 release, it's far from a quality one when you just look at the basic graphical and pathing issues in the game (I didn't even cover programming related glitches since at this time, I didn't bother to try to see if they were reproducible).  Nor does it even try to take advantage of the horsepower of the PS4 (the graphics in this aren't even going to be taxing for a PS3).

I'll be even more blunt; it's like Tamsoft didn't even put in any effort in the underlying design.   Yes, I do realize that D3 Publisher is not a big publisher with a huge budget to throw to the actual developer (Tamsoft) but seriously, the kind of bugs in the game are basic QA stuff that should've been caught from basic testing (because you would expect some general level of personal pride in the quality of the code that is shipped for your clients).

The default background music when on the high school grounds, is a perfect example of this lack of attention to detail.  The music itself is an upbeat piece.  But it is at times ironic in its upbeat tone since there are times during a dialog where the mood doesn't match that music (like when the overly tsundere Tamaki goes off on an anger filled rant at the protagonist or when Megu is telling a somber story).  I don't care if the game doesn't try to take itself seriously.  BGM should at least offer some context or at least convey a subdued neutral tone if in a setting which has the possibility of offering a wide array of moods/emotions in those dialogs.  It's like how the Benny Hill theme song can make anything seem "funny" even if the actual content isn't.

D3 Publisher has one major franchise that they have yet to bring to the PS4 as far as a proper game is concerned, and that is its Dream C Club franchise (Tamsoft is also the developer).  There is the free but DLC heavy Host Girls on Stage for the PS4 but that is only the karaoke singing part.  Everything else in that is reused content including the DLC.  After seeing Natsuiro High School, I really doubt they will put much effort into taking advantage of the hardware (PS4 and Xbox One) for that franchise.  I will even go out on a limb and say they will use the same decision tree based dialog system that is used in the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game.  And since they have yet to announce anything, that new game will probably be a 2016 release (and likely have no better graphics or game play compared to the one released in 2009).

If I were to grade Natsuiro High School, overall it would be a C- at best.  And that is being somewhat generous.

June 14, 2014 Update: revised observation