I'll answer here to not fully hijack that other topic.
I wanted gold to be a sequel SOOOO badly because Himiko's story at the end made me cry so much I just wanted to see her finally get a payoff for being forgotten in the mc harem despite clearly being the main girl...
now I am a little confused. It is years that I saw the very ending, somehow on replay(s) I always stopped before the very end, but I remember it to be sth. along the lines of Chihaya separating himself to wander the world alone for some reason, then time later returning to live with Himiko ?
Either my memory betrays me, or maybe we reached different endings? I vaguely remember reading about slightly different endings, that may or may not be triggered by not/ conquering Babylon and Uruk-Babel ?
I might play gold since the original is my 2nd, arguably most favorite nsfw game I've ever played despite me complaining about the harem so much.
Well, Himiko is there, and she is fun as usual, but no longer main girl. There is a new character
Date Masamune who also/mainly? works as Meta-character, keeping things moving forward. I found her to be splendidly written, it achieves so well on cutting short of introduction to game/ characters / world/ story (because players know already), and pushing the hesitant/ reluctant MC to go the next step with girls.
In mechanics, there are changes - some I liked, some not (crafting system: too convoluted, to craft everything you would need 3 or 4 replays
, and that almost every item comes with +1 this, but -2 that, unless equipped by "throwing" unit, and even some more complications). For my taste too many optional extra-battle opportunities, which disbalances battle/VN too much towards battles.
But the game still offers a lot good: funny, cute, silly. And it sticks with the character-over-everything policy from the first game (wait until you bring Tutankaman to a battle, lol). and battles are fun, too.
edit: oh, forgot, 1 hint (not spoiler) : see to it that the male gets MVP-of-battle so-and-so often (15 times?). is needed for another character to appear, I only got them soo late they then were useless.
For the meister games, yikes the first game sounds bad. I wish more games with nice gameplay would be wholesome- the names make me think of Eld which I have played (despite it not being generally wholesome)... though it's far more lighthearted
I'll check out Amayui Labyrinth Meister though, grinding isn't a HUGE issue for me... though sometimes if I'm short on time I put the game off for a while
I am fairly certain that Kamidori is "wholesome", too - I just can not guarantee it firsthand.
For all these games, big part of the fun to me is finding things out myself, so I won't say but 2 things that are not obvious and can result in needing to reload a save from much earlier.
Amayui Castle Meister:
1) (midgame) when moving towards "Angel city" (forgot the name), it will turn into battle, and you should be prepared to have LARGE capacity for captured enemies. That battle will be the only time until endgame that you have lots of angels. And to train your nature spirits, you'll need >100 angels. (revisiting that map: 6 or 7 angels only)
2) bosses, minibosses have a guaranteed drop.
The problem is when an enemy gets defeated by not your unit, but sth. else like enemy AoE attack or those "devices" that you can place in defensive battle maps, then the enemy will drop nothing (and no XP), and that includes bosses.
So when you get a first defensive battle against the dragons, make sure that the dragon boss (CRUCIAL drop) gets defeated by one of your units, and not by, say, placed earth-magic-device.
I had to replay most of that chapter for that.
(I read walkthrough after I am done with a chapter)
