What next?
Feb. 25th, 2025 01:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marchionessofmustacheSo, I'm on a Girl's Side kick, and I'm halfway through my 'Brains' playthroughs. I'm going to do Hikami-kun's accidental kiss ending next in 2nd, and then finally a replay of Sakuya-chan's ending in 1st after all these years.
But what would be fun to do next?
Characters tend to be stuck in tropes in the series. There's usually six 'main' guys: a 'prince' (the leading man), four guys tied to four main stats (academics, art, athletics, and style), and then a kohai who appears and forces his way into your life in the 2nd year. 3rd plays with the tropes a little, instead having TWO princes and a triangle-relationship system, then to keep the "main six" thing going, they combined the style guy into also being the kohai.
On top of that, there also seems to always be a few additional characters outside of the main six that stick to a few tropes: the teacher (yes, your homeroom teacher can also be your lover!), the adult (a grown-ass man who for some reason is hanging around high school kids and wants to date them?), and the outsider (a kid from another school whom you have to meet in usually some rigid and arbitrary way). Then there can be other characters, too, depending on the game, but they tend to be more unique.
So should I explore a different trope/archetype after the brains (which are the guys associated with the academics stat) like try all the artsy guys or maybe seduce all the adults? Or should I dive deeper into the brains by getting their other endings and stuff. Right now, I'm doing two things with my playthroughs: 1. getting their normal endings (2nd and 4th have two variations of these, so I'm just doing one) and 2. seeing all of their 'date' special scenes using some notes from mono-iki.
But there's not just one ending to see. While the MAJORITY of the content will be the same between playthroughs, the additional endings will open up a bit more about them. We'll mostly be seeing the same scenes and going on the same dates, but we'll get a little extra, as well as possibly more intimate endings.
Let's look at all the endings available in 1st for our Brain, Sakuya-chan:
1. Normal Confession - He loves you.
2. Best Friend Reversal - You date another guy and tell Sakuya you just want to be friends after they run into each other. Then you grow his affection back up, keep dating the other guy, then dump the other guy at the altar (I'm not kidding) and get a confession from your bestie instead.
3. Best Friend Confession - Same as before, but you make Sakuya SUPER love you and then meet at a different place than normal (ghosting 'other guy' so you don't even get the chance to dump him)
4. Best Friend Consolation - Become friends like 2 and 3, but this time fall out of love with the other guy, but never get Sakuya to love you enough to confess. Then you just become actual besties at the end.
As you can see, there are definitely going to be aspects to the characters we miss by only doing ending number 1. So if I FULLY want to explore the brains, I'll have to do at least some of the other endings. Like we can't see what they act like in bestie mode without doing all the hoopla, and because the 2 and 3 endings are much harder to get, we'll probably get more intimate/passionate confessions those ways, too.
And then 2nd has a bit of a different track for Hikamitchi:
1. Normal Confession - He loves you
2. Fated Confession - He loves you AND you had an accidental kiss at the beginning of the game
3. Reversal Confession - He loves you but so does another guy and you turn him down to be with Hikamitchi
4. Best Friend Reversal - Same complicated shenanigans as 1st's Bestie thing
5. Best Friend Consolation - Same as 1st.
Pretty much the same as 1st with the addition of the accidental kiss thing. When 1st originally came out on PS2, there was only one ending per guy. Then 2nd came out on PS2 and there were endings 1-3 for each guy -- making the accidental kiss add some replayability to the game, as well as adding in the whole reversal thing. It wasn't until the DS versions of each that the whole best friend system was added to the mix, so that's why 2nd's endings seem kind of... redundant.
Then 3rd was the first to be made originally for DS, with its own slew of endings utilizing the new triangle system for Konno-senpai tangled up with Shitara-kun:
1. Normal Confession - guess
2. Winner's Confession - Enter a triangle with Shitara-kun, then cause the guys to go PVP, and have Hikamitchi come out the victor.
3. Triangle Friendship - Start hanging as a throuple but never fall in love. Become three besties.
4. Triangle Confession - Triangle love ending.
5. Best Friend Reversal - See the previous two games' descriptions of this.
6. Best Friend Consolation - Same.
So we get the whole best friend thing again, which will add another bit of development to the character as we get to see how they act as a friend, but we also get this whole triangle thing where we get to see them act in a duo with another guy around all the time. And then with PVP we get to see them compete for our love. Aw! (BTW PVP stands for Pride VS Pride, it's just the two guys battling for your love lol)
Then finally 4th adds its own strange things to the mix for our beloved Iku-kun:
1. True Confession - Like a normal confession, but you see a series of events that leads to a more 'personalized' confession that references past events instead of a more generic one that assumes you potentially haven't seen much of anything.
2. Normal Confession - Just reach the end of the game with him liking you most!
3. Reversal Confession - Get him to love you, then get another guy to love you, making him jealous, but then get him to SUPER love you. A little more complicated than that systematically, but that's the goal.
4. Friend Group Confession - Unlike the triangle system, we now have friend circles where you get to be friends with three different guys at once, getting close with all of them, but having one special one close to your heart (Iku-kun!)
5. Friend Group Consolation - Like 4, but no one ends up being close enough to you to confess love, and you end up with a close-knit group of buddies for your ending.
So, you can see this will show some other sides of the characters as well. Also gone is the 'best friends' system, and now reversals revolve around the Marie Garden feature. I'm not going to go into details on how it works, but it's like a more refined and simplified version of the affection systems from the previous games that allows for friend groups and jealousies without the back-breaking best friends system.
...
So yeah, typing all this out, I realized something. While it would be fun to dive into the brains more deeply by getting all these other endings and seeing what they're like, we'd also be getting close to other guys at the same time, and not necessarily being able to explore them as deeply, with our first introductions to them being the out-of-the-way friendship things and stuff like that. So maybe it's best to go for other tropes next until we've gotten all the normal endings for all the guys, then start diving deeper into each trope by exploring their friendships and things like that.
Thankfully, some endings overlap -- so you don't have to do all of those listed above for each guy. Well, a lot of them you do, but for example in 4th, Iku-kun's friend group consolation ending occurs when you are close friends with Iku-kun, Ryo-chan, and Nanatsumori-kun, but none of them love you or are jealous or whatever, you're just all best buds. So if you get that ending, that means Iku-kun, Ryo-chan, and Nanatsumori-kun all get that ending checked off their list, as it's a combined ending between the three of them.
Similarly, in 3rd, I got Ruka-kun and Kou-kun's triangle friendship, which of course was shared between the two characters, and ended up popping in both of their endings lists.
But yeah, after writing all this out, I definitely think I want to explore more of the tropes before doing the ending runs that require you get close to more than one guy.
So what do we try next after the brains? It's getting a little late and IDK if I want to start up a new game in 2nd tonight, so let's just explore the different characters in their archetypes!
The main goal of each game, and usually the hardest or one of the hardest guys to get to confess, we have the Prince characters.
1st gives us Kei Hazuki, a guy who really can't be bothered to socialize and likes to just sleep all the time. Seems to prefer the company of cats to people. He is a model, star student, and great athlete. Yeah, he's good at literally everything and born with good looks. And rich.
2nd gives us Kei Hazuki 2. I mean, Teru Saeki. Instead of a model, he's a barista, but again rich and good at everything, with an asshole personality to back it up. He has a little more story than Hazuki-kun, at least, with this stuff about inheriting family business or whatever.
3rd is the game with two princes -- brothers Ruka Sakurai and Kouichi Sakurai. Unlike the previous princes, though, these guys break the trope set before them. They're both delinquents who are always in trouble with teachers and getting in fights and stuff. Ruka-kun is more aloof and adventurous, while Kou-kun is stern and stand-offish. He has a kind of "I hate people" vibe to him.
4th continues breaking from tradition by giving us a guy who's already interested in us as our intended love interest. Ryo-chan is your childhood friend who made a wish when you were kids to marry you. And it seems like he still holds that wish close to him.
....
OK I actually was going to sit and do all the tropes but it's getting too late for that and I don't really care enough anymore to write out every last little character XD But basically we have the princes, the brains, the brawns, the artsy guys, the trendy guys, and the kohais. And then teachers and adults, too, usually count as main characters with all the different endings for them. The other characters like other-school-guy and whatever usually just have a little bit of interaction and one ending or something like that.
To go for next... seems like it might be better to save the princes for last, right?
After finishing the brains... maybe go on to the brawns? Since that's a pretty different type of character, and it will help from getting too stale.
Well, the artsies are quite unique on their own. IDK about 3rd's, but the other three are quite in touch with their feminine side...? And can be quite outlandish.
Kohais can be interesting as they don't have any major quality they have in common -- their only shared trait is being one year younger.
Trendies... well, they're kinda my least favorite, but I think that's only because Kijyou-kun from the first game was my least favorite. But Harry (from 2nd) is pretty cool from the bit I learned about him. Niina-kun (who is ALSO the kohai in 3rd, as they had to make room for 2 princes) seems a little boring/annoying, and then 4th's trendy is pretty cool.
I guess it doesn't really matter which I go to next; I'll probably enjoy them all XD We'll just see.
I was going to go to bed at 2AM but now I wanna play so I think I'll stay up til 3 and start a game in 2nd now.
But what would be fun to do next?
Characters tend to be stuck in tropes in the series. There's usually six 'main' guys: a 'prince' (the leading man), four guys tied to four main stats (academics, art, athletics, and style), and then a kohai who appears and forces his way into your life in the 2nd year. 3rd plays with the tropes a little, instead having TWO princes and a triangle-relationship system, then to keep the "main six" thing going, they combined the style guy into also being the kohai.
On top of that, there also seems to always be a few additional characters outside of the main six that stick to a few tropes: the teacher (yes, your homeroom teacher can also be your lover!), the adult (a grown-ass man who for some reason is hanging around high school kids and wants to date them?), and the outsider (a kid from another school whom you have to meet in usually some rigid and arbitrary way). Then there can be other characters, too, depending on the game, but they tend to be more unique.
So should I explore a different trope/archetype after the brains (which are the guys associated with the academics stat) like try all the artsy guys or maybe seduce all the adults? Or should I dive deeper into the brains by getting their other endings and stuff. Right now, I'm doing two things with my playthroughs: 1. getting their normal endings (2nd and 4th have two variations of these, so I'm just doing one) and 2. seeing all of their 'date' special scenes using some notes from mono-iki.
But there's not just one ending to see. While the MAJORITY of the content will be the same between playthroughs, the additional endings will open up a bit more about them. We'll mostly be seeing the same scenes and going on the same dates, but we'll get a little extra, as well as possibly more intimate endings.
Let's look at all the endings available in 1st for our Brain, Sakuya-chan:
1. Normal Confession - He loves you.
2. Best Friend Reversal - You date another guy and tell Sakuya you just want to be friends after they run into each other. Then you grow his affection back up, keep dating the other guy, then dump the other guy at the altar (I'm not kidding) and get a confession from your bestie instead.
3. Best Friend Confession - Same as before, but you make Sakuya SUPER love you and then meet at a different place than normal (ghosting 'other guy' so you don't even get the chance to dump him)
4. Best Friend Consolation - Become friends like 2 and 3, but this time fall out of love with the other guy, but never get Sakuya to love you enough to confess. Then you just become actual besties at the end.
As you can see, there are definitely going to be aspects to the characters we miss by only doing ending number 1. So if I FULLY want to explore the brains, I'll have to do at least some of the other endings. Like we can't see what they act like in bestie mode without doing all the hoopla, and because the 2 and 3 endings are much harder to get, we'll probably get more intimate/passionate confessions those ways, too.
And then 2nd has a bit of a different track for Hikamitchi:
1. Normal Confession - He loves you
2. Fated Confession - He loves you AND you had an accidental kiss at the beginning of the game
3. Reversal Confession - He loves you but so does another guy and you turn him down to be with Hikamitchi
4. Best Friend Reversal - Same complicated shenanigans as 1st's Bestie thing
5. Best Friend Consolation - Same as 1st.
Pretty much the same as 1st with the addition of the accidental kiss thing. When 1st originally came out on PS2, there was only one ending per guy. Then 2nd came out on PS2 and there were endings 1-3 for each guy -- making the accidental kiss add some replayability to the game, as well as adding in the whole reversal thing. It wasn't until the DS versions of each that the whole best friend system was added to the mix, so that's why 2nd's endings seem kind of... redundant.
Then 3rd was the first to be made originally for DS, with its own slew of endings utilizing the new triangle system for Konno-senpai tangled up with Shitara-kun:
1. Normal Confession - guess
2. Winner's Confession - Enter a triangle with Shitara-kun, then cause the guys to go PVP, and have Hikamitchi come out the victor.
3. Triangle Friendship - Start hanging as a throuple but never fall in love. Become three besties.
4. Triangle Confession - Triangle love ending.
5. Best Friend Reversal - See the previous two games' descriptions of this.
6. Best Friend Consolation - Same.
So we get the whole best friend thing again, which will add another bit of development to the character as we get to see how they act as a friend, but we also get this whole triangle thing where we get to see them act in a duo with another guy around all the time. And then with PVP we get to see them compete for our love. Aw! (BTW PVP stands for Pride VS Pride, it's just the two guys battling for your love lol)
Then finally 4th adds its own strange things to the mix for our beloved Iku-kun:
1. True Confession - Like a normal confession, but you see a series of events that leads to a more 'personalized' confession that references past events instead of a more generic one that assumes you potentially haven't seen much of anything.
2. Normal Confession - Just reach the end of the game with him liking you most!
3. Reversal Confession - Get him to love you, then get another guy to love you, making him jealous, but then get him to SUPER love you. A little more complicated than that systematically, but that's the goal.
4. Friend Group Confession - Unlike the triangle system, we now have friend circles where you get to be friends with three different guys at once, getting close with all of them, but having one special one close to your heart (Iku-kun!)
5. Friend Group Consolation - Like 4, but no one ends up being close enough to you to confess love, and you end up with a close-knit group of buddies for your ending.
So, you can see this will show some other sides of the characters as well. Also gone is the 'best friends' system, and now reversals revolve around the Marie Garden feature. I'm not going to go into details on how it works, but it's like a more refined and simplified version of the affection systems from the previous games that allows for friend groups and jealousies without the back-breaking best friends system.
...
So yeah, typing all this out, I realized something. While it would be fun to dive into the brains more deeply by getting all these other endings and seeing what they're like, we'd also be getting close to other guys at the same time, and not necessarily being able to explore them as deeply, with our first introductions to them being the out-of-the-way friendship things and stuff like that. So maybe it's best to go for other tropes next until we've gotten all the normal endings for all the guys, then start diving deeper into each trope by exploring their friendships and things like that.
Thankfully, some endings overlap -- so you don't have to do all of those listed above for each guy. Well, a lot of them you do, but for example in 4th, Iku-kun's friend group consolation ending occurs when you are close friends with Iku-kun, Ryo-chan, and Nanatsumori-kun, but none of them love you or are jealous or whatever, you're just all best buds. So if you get that ending, that means Iku-kun, Ryo-chan, and Nanatsumori-kun all get that ending checked off their list, as it's a combined ending between the three of them.
Similarly, in 3rd, I got Ruka-kun and Kou-kun's triangle friendship, which of course was shared between the two characters, and ended up popping in both of their endings lists.
But yeah, after writing all this out, I definitely think I want to explore more of the tropes before doing the ending runs that require you get close to more than one guy.
So what do we try next after the brains? It's getting a little late and IDK if I want to start up a new game in 2nd tonight, so let's just explore the different characters in their archetypes!
THE PRINCE
The main goal of each game, and usually the hardest or one of the hardest guys to get to confess, we have the Prince characters.
1st gives us Kei Hazuki, a guy who really can't be bothered to socialize and likes to just sleep all the time. Seems to prefer the company of cats to people. He is a model, star student, and great athlete. Yeah, he's good at literally everything and born with good looks. And rich.
2nd gives us Kei Hazuki 2. I mean, Teru Saeki. Instead of a model, he's a barista, but again rich and good at everything, with an asshole personality to back it up. He has a little more story than Hazuki-kun, at least, with this stuff about inheriting family business or whatever.
3rd is the game with two princes -- brothers Ruka Sakurai and Kouichi Sakurai. Unlike the previous princes, though, these guys break the trope set before them. They're both delinquents who are always in trouble with teachers and getting in fights and stuff. Ruka-kun is more aloof and adventurous, while Kou-kun is stern and stand-offish. He has a kind of "I hate people" vibe to him.
4th continues breaking from tradition by giving us a guy who's already interested in us as our intended love interest. Ryo-chan is your childhood friend who made a wish when you were kids to marry you. And it seems like he still holds that wish close to him.
....
OK I actually was going to sit and do all the tropes but it's getting too late for that and I don't really care enough anymore to write out every last little character XD But basically we have the princes, the brains, the brawns, the artsy guys, the trendy guys, and the kohais. And then teachers and adults, too, usually count as main characters with all the different endings for them. The other characters like other-school-guy and whatever usually just have a little bit of interaction and one ending or something like that.
To go for next... seems like it might be better to save the princes for last, right?
After finishing the brains... maybe go on to the brawns? Since that's a pretty different type of character, and it will help from getting too stale.
Well, the artsies are quite unique on their own. IDK about 3rd's, but the other three are quite in touch with their feminine side...? And can be quite outlandish.
Kohais can be interesting as they don't have any major quality they have in common -- their only shared trait is being one year younger.
Trendies... well, they're kinda my least favorite, but I think that's only because Kijyou-kun from the first game was my least favorite. But Harry (from 2nd) is pretty cool from the bit I learned about him. Niina-kun (who is ALSO the kohai in 3rd, as they had to make room for 2 princes) seems a little boring/annoying, and then 4th's trendy is pretty cool.
I guess it doesn't really matter which I go to next; I'll probably enjoy them all XD We'll just see.
I was going to go to bed at 2AM but now I wanna play so I think I'll stay up til 3 and start a game in 2nd now.
