Alright, I'll be ending my journey here with this one
I played this game last year and revisited it this week after finding out by chance that it got updated. This was one of the best games i played since I entered the world of H games 2 years ago (sister travel from the same author was the first H game I played and it was an experience of its own kind)
I wanted to post for once on this website to express my thanks and as a parting memory
First of all I want to thank
Shadesishere and all the contributors for their amazing dedication and effort into making this translation and making it accessible to english speaking folks. I'm also thankful for
This great tutorial by Shadesishere,
This Excelent guide for the start choices by RodRyo and
This Excellent breakdown of New game+ by BlueFireNick, Those were incredibly helpful. I'd also like to express my appreciation in a larger sense to F95ZONE and the admins, devs, authors, translators, contributors and the community who helped build, shape and maintaint this haven
I've invested a good 30 hours on this over the last 4 days (of which a good portion is a substantial use of save scumming, I will talk about that in a bit). Ended the game (on normal difficulty) at day 155 (not a NG+ run) with :
started with "reckless carefree" from the personality choice at the start, which i believe to be one of the strongest starts possible, giving you as a starting bonus to your base stats :
- AP + 10 (this one is huge in early game making you start with 70 AP instead of 60)
- DEF + 15
- WIS + 10
- SKL pt + 32 (having at least 30 makes it possible to instantly learn [Explorer] right from the start and maximize income from community service / subjugation)
- [Agriculture] Learned
- [Auto-Recovery] Unlocked & [Healing] Learned
- [DEF UP] Unlocked
This goes without saying, but I was on loop on that starting menu for a goddamn time trying to land a decent start
After that, the game stats at the end were as follows :
- sister trust and interest at 1000+ (although i think it becomes irrelevant over 500 or even less )
- sister mood in "love" throughout the game from day 2-3 till the end
- all panties collected, even the guild members' (didn't know why the last 4 slots were grayed when i got the "all panties" achievement, so I went scouting the author's patch notes on ci-en and learned they're from onsen content and belong to the guild members)
- all stats at ~470, didn't bother pushing for the 500 limit since i had already finished the content currently available
- ~450 unused skill points
- close to all skills unlocked and learned (missing ATK UP and Blitzkrieg), at one point I gave up on save scumming and decided to run it down whatever the outcome
- max AP (ofc)
- guild rep maxed (been stuck at "regional guild" for 100+ days)
- all 3 companions with favor maxed (kana still bugged at 5/6 stars i guess), and got each one's max favorability event (+ yukari's one aswell)
- state at "great" since day 2-3 and then after unlocking the "eating out option" constantly at "amazing", got a huge boost in stats from that
- everything from town bought (all the 1 time purchases and 10 of each consumable because why not)
- 30k unspent cash (nothing more to spend on aside from dinners)
- spent the first 70 days (well weekdays) only doing subjugations (an unspeakable amount of savescumming was involved)
with all that mentioned (I hope I didn't miss any relevant gameplay aspect), I was going for an optimal (or close to perfect) game but RNG managed to prevent that with no fail even tho I destroyed the F12 button on my keyboard, which brings me to what I think (among other limitations and cons) is the biggest disadvantage and killer con of the game, the RNG. It is to such a degree that i found myself reloading the game 10s of times per hour almost as if it was a gameplay feature you're expected to use, which imo is simply bullshit, for lack of a better word. It shouldn't have to be such a pain in the ass for someone looking to play the game in a thought out way. the events could use a format less wild and more controlled by the player such as giving a list of choices for the player of what to do after spending the day at the guild, instead of throwing a random event from a pool of 50+ events (just gave that number as an example, might be more). For example if you want to get kana to learn her EX skill you will have to train with her 3-4 times before you can develop her technique, but getting to train with kana after your day at the guild is something so hard to do that you have to pray to RNJesus to throw the dices and get the correct pick of event to throw at you
Aside from the rant above, I found the game to be quite enjoyable, with a unique monochrome art style and pleasant gameplay, the sister is lovely and interaction is satisfying, the guild members are amusing and the plot is interesting and has room to expand in the future. The game also taught me that patience is a virtue in a sense that you might feel the progress done in 1 day to be mediocre at best (+2 trust or the like) but then you realize that being consistent gets rewarding after weeks and months and you notice the difference (your stats increase tenfold and some a hundredfold or more). As a sidenote, in my headcannon I consider that sister is not a blood relative but more like the case of Mikasa with Eren, and the "sister" and "brother" calling is a way of showing affection and closeness. Since there is no backstory in the game (neither in the others) suggesting undeniable kinship I could use that as my headcannon and same goes for the other games from the author. I'm not into incest even as fiction and I have my headcannons to work with on that, and (to me) I find that to work even better.
I also wanted to make a small list of tips from what I learned playing the game :
- When you start the game, you need to focus on your mission and forget about touching your sister, the time for that will come and you will start your relationship with her in a natural way with consent and love without involving any peep/sleep creep stuff. I had her fall in my arms (metaphorically) by herself by day 26 and that was my first night time gameplay (I had the tutorial cards pop up on that night) and never came close to getting her angry or awkward. Her trust was at 300+ and interest at 100+ (worked on those mainly by talking / bathing with her and tickling / reading books)
- You should always leave enough AP remaining so that you can replenish to full the next day (for example if you cap at 60 you should try to sleep with 30 AP remaining (assuming you haven't purchased a duvet) or 10 AP remaining if you have a duvet). This is important because the guild activity you chose in the day consumes AP and in order to trigger an after guild event you need to have enough AP remaining for that (for example to learn a skill from akatsuki you need to compete with him and that requires a good amount of AP for you to get through)
- Your first concern should be money, you need money asap to buy some key things :
- Duvet : available when you grow your reputation a little (my guess is until the title next to reputation changes once), this item is important since it increases AP recovery by 20 (from 30 to 50), this means you'll be able to make more actions in the evening and still recover to good amount by morning
- Skill books and adventure books : there is a weekend when the bookstore has a discount and that's an opportunity to save 1000s of money if you grab everything you need on that occasion
- Tea(early game) and Coffee(later in game): tea replenishes 10 AP which can mean one more action per day, and coffee extends the time you have for actions in case you have more AP to work with
- training gear (dumbbells and training shoes): the only good thing about these is that it will make you grow your AP in the weekend at double speed (+2 per run session instead of +1) making it possible for you to get +6 per weekend day if you only run the whole day, this way you'll get to 120 AP very fast and you'll have enough AP to do anything you want
- For the first week or 2 your best guild activity is community service, and to be precise the extermination event version of it, after when subjugation gets introduced it becomes the best activity you can do, you'll have no choice but to savescum your way here if you want the best.
- Your best friend is the adventure book, use one whenever you can and restock when you can
- When training camp events arrives, focus solely on wisdom and skill points because that will be the time you need skill points the most
- On normal difficulty, you should never have to train at home or in the weekend(aside from running for AP). I found myself maxed at 400 in all stats (before onsen unlock) by day 100 (could do it even earlier if I kept savescumming to do only sybjugations but i stopped savescumming around day 60 because my brain was burned from that). You are better off doing something else with your free time (reading adventure books, interacting with your sister, running or going out on the weekend )
- when you get to the "think of countermeasures" part of the game, you have to eat sister's dinner to get the inspiration for the guild food menu plan
- you should always keep your sister's mood at "love", cheering her will get her mood up until "good", getting it to "love" requires snacks or presents, or some RNG events
- you should keep your state at "amazing" at all times, although I haven't figured a way to do it consistently before unlocking the "eat outside option" which improves your state and keeps it for the next day. your state determines how much stats you get in a guild activity and "amazing" gives the best amount
I know it turned out to be a text wall, but I hope it will be of some use with the tips
Along with this, I'd like to mention titles from what I've played here that i consider my all-time favorites, my interests are mostly Wholesome - Vanilla - Good Story - Bittersweet - Happy ending stories. I'd be happy if it was of use to some and made them discover these amazing games:
- Sister Travel
- Imouto Life Monochrome
- Imouto! Life ~Fantasy~
- Sister Explorer (although it's still a demo on DLSite from inusuku, I went ahead and learned how to use translator++ and made a quick essentials translation to play through it, even though it's really limited in content I really enjoyed the gameplay system and overall feel of the game reminding me of sister travel a little)
- Teaching Feeling
- One room: runaway girl
- Do you have AKIRA Points
- Katawa Shoujo
- Making Lovers
- Gran Ende II
- Fall In Labyrinth
- Black Souls
- Black Souls II
- Cursed Blacksmith
- Baldr sky
This will also be my first -and probably last- post on this website since I've got the closure and resolve I needed to go through and overcome the frozen time I froze myself, and the depression which was originally what made me wander here. I drifted to this land when I was in my lowest, shattered and broken. It was a long journey and I'm finally breaking through the vicious cycle of depression, stress, failure, self sabotage and low self esteem. I can now face myself and start from zero, I've decided to go back there and brave life
Last but not least, thank you F95ZONE (the wholesome side) and the community (the vanilla faction) not only for the great stories (and at times some glorious comments : D) but also for the great times I've been here
CHRONO the ZERO, concluding my journey and signing off
