Name: Inagawa de Ikou! (60.00% in 3 votes)
Type: FUN
Platform: WINDOWS
Company: Leaf
Release date: 2000
Reviewed by: Lamuness
Inagawa de Ikou! is Leaf's third installment to their Amusement CD series ie kind of like Pia Carrot or WithYou Toybox with minigames, goodies etc. In addition to a collection of goodies, Leaf also included a win95 port of their RPG game Filsnown which was originally in the PC98 platform. This will come as a separate review.
The menu interface is pretty nice and innovative, but you need to do some digging first. It's a multi-scroll comipa doujinshi market with all the comipa characters doing their own stuff. By moving your mouse to certain "items" u can have access to the various components of the product.
Magical Antique Demo
Leaf's next game release is going to be Magical Antique which will be on sale April 28, 2000, and a non-playable demo is included in this CD. Basically it's about a little girl with magical powers running an antique shop. Animations are really cute, and it reminds me of a similar non-H game called Little Witch Palfy.
Asahi DJ Player
This is basically a music CD player featuring Asahi from comipa. What makes it really interesting, and better than the lame CD player in WithYou Toybox is that the CD playback is executed in form of a radio station with Asahi as the DJ just like in the game. For each track a comipa character will come in and Asahi will interview the character and the interview ends with the playback of the CD track, just like what happens in a radio station. Pretty innovative, but might be annoying if you just want to skip the dialogue. In addition, try to play a data track on a CD and see what Asahi has to say...hehe
Comipa Otaku Quiz
Yet another quiz game, but layed out pretty well actually. You play the quiz in form of a table game where you roll a dice and u go a certain # of steps. Each step will have a comipa girl and she will ask you questions. Impression level of the girls will go up as you go along and you can have endings with the girls. The quiz part itself, on the other hand, is rather insane. You start off the game with 5 lives, and you have to answer a certain # of questions in order to pass the "step" you took, and if you lose all your lives anytime it will be game over. Of course, you have to answer the question within a time limit, and the quicker you answer the question correctly, a red bar will fill up. When this red bar is 100% filled, you get one extra life. Now, the problem with this quiz game is the difficulty of the questions themselves. At first I was expecting questions from doujinshi making and comipa game itself, which I have a decent knowledge of. However, it also ask questions about other Leaf games which can be lethal if you didn't play other Leaf games. Some questions are reasonable (like "through which body part does Multi in To Heart recharge her energy?") but what drove me nuts is that they ask ridiculous questions like "How many floppy disks is the PC98 Leaf game "blah"?" Like...how is anybody supposed to know how many floppy disk a certain game has?! Even if you have the game, by the time you dig through your storage and find the game and count the # of floppy disks, your time limit is over.
In conclusion, this quiz game is the most difficult quiz game I have ever played. I couldn't go beyond the second "step." I am giving up on this, and I suggest you not play this quiz game unless either you are a 500% Leaf fan and played through every single Leaf game thoroughly, or get yourself a walkthrough or set of quiz answers before you even start the game.
Memories of White
Based on White Album, this is a digital book with a bunch of text reading like a novel. To avoid spoiling, I won't talk about what it is about, but I think overall it's alright, nothing special though.
Night Writer
This is a keyboard typing-ADV game. You play the role of a kid doing a part-time in a CD shop, and suddenly in your room a girl call Colin popped up and this is how the story starts.
You will engage in battles, but battles are done by typing japanese romanji in your keyboard in time before the opponent attacks. However, most of us have a awfully fast typing speed already, so this game gets boring if you typing speed is fast enough to make you "invincible."
Comipa Mini-Scenario
This is pretty much the heart of this product - a omake story of comipa. If you have played the game, you will know that Yuu Inagawa is the only character that does not live in the town everybody is in. Inagawa is from Kansai and she only comes to comipa market once every month. In this omake, all the characters in comipa are invited to stay in Yuu's place in Kansai after their Winter Comipa Market. This omake is meant to be extraordinary humorous, and it is. In this omake you can see characters do things you never expect them to do normally (especially Aya). In addition, many of you might know that Kansai is famous of their hot water springs...you can imagine the rest yourself. As you go deeper into the scenario things start to get wackier. Although this omake story is hella funny, it suffers from a major problem: NO VOICE ACTING. There are voice acting from comipa characters at other parts of the CD, but they are absolutely mute in this most important part of the amusement CD.
Others
There are galleries of wallpapers, but very very unfortunately they are of very very low variety. There are also desktop themes included in this product. I am not into desktop themes and icons myself (and I usually ignore my wallpaper), so whether or not these desktop themes are good is up to your personal preference. However, if you don't have Microsoft Plus! installed, either start crying or manually set up every sound and file yourself, which is very tedious.
Overall, I must say Inagawa de Ikou! is on the disappointing side. Frankly there isn't a lot of stuff to do, and some stuff can be ignored if you have gone through them once (like the Magical Antique Demo). The Comipa Omake Story is prolly what most people are interested in, and prolly the biggest reason why people buy the game. However, the abscence of voice acting makes it rather disappointing. The next attraction in line is prolly the Comipa quiz. However, it's just way too difficult and sometimes challenge the players with rather unfair and ridiculous questions. Other components are not too attractive (although I do like the Asahi DJ player but it's just a CD player explicitly), which decreases the "fun factor" of this amusement CD. However, at least the Filsnown bonus makes the overall product not as bad because Filsnown is actually a not-bad RPG for a PC98 platform. If you ask me to compare this "goodies" CD with Pia Carrot Toybox or WithYou Toybox, the latter 2 is by far better and more fun.
PROS: Hella funny Comipa Omake story, rather creative and funny CD player, a preview of Leaf's next game.
CONS: Many components are not too interesting. Very few wallpapers. No voice acting in the most important part of the game which is the Comipa Omake story. Quiz game is too impossible for non-hardcore Leaf fans.
RECOMMEND TO: Hardcore Leaf fans who have an almanac of Leaf games installed into their brains.
|
|
[ Demo Music ]
N/A
[ Screen Shots ]
[ Voting ]
|
