Reminder of Illustrations I need to do replays for…
Episode 24 for the first 3 (Kentin, Armin, Lysander)
Episode 11 for the 4th one (Lysander)
Episode 8 for the 5th one (Lysander)
Episode 21 for the 6th one (Armin) – still debating on
Episode 18 for the 7th one (Armin)
Hey, look, it’s time for another Tumblr exclusive post! :P I made a few brief tweets on Twitter about it a few days ago, but I kind of wanted to talk more about it and I can’t deal with 140 character limits then. But yes, today I will be talking a bit about My Candy Love–a game by @chinomiko! (Her artwork is really nice–I’d recommend taking a look!)
My Candy Love is actually pretty cute, but I wish it didn’t have an energy & money system. And the random cupcake. Or well, I wish those last two things were handled better.
I would probably buy this as a silly game to play–the characters are interesting and the customization is pretty good. If there was a price I could pay to remove the energy bar from my account/have a infinite amount of AP, I would jump on that in a heartbeat. The episodic thing works somewhat well (Being able to do single replays so you can get other CGs), but it becomes a bit of an issue with one off or rarely recurring characters–for example, Jade from Episode 3. You can get a really nice flower from him if you get to go on his date, but to do so you need to have his rate higher than the other guys. You have 4 dialogue chances with him. Even if you pick the jerky option for every other character in this episode, you will not get them low enough in this episode alone for Jade to be picked. You would have to start over from the beginning trying to sabotage everything for that and it’s super frustrating.
Like if there was ever a point I wanted to have multiple saves and loads (and there is a reason most Love Simulator games have them), it would be for things like that. I’m currently near the end of Episode 12. And sadly will not have more AC until tomorrow (and only 10 so I’ll get like 5 moves at most) and considering the randomness at points (You may have to go in and out of a room many times to finally get a character to show up. And the Fairy is incredibly frustrating, but we will get to her), I just really hate the energy system and it does feel way too low. It does seem episodes take a while to come out so it may not seem so bad when you’re waiting for the next one and have all this time to gather up energy, but right now it’s a waiting game for anyone new to try and catch up.
I’ve already missed several events which kind of stinks, but since there are rings that let you do past ones, I’m hoping all events will eventually get those. They cost 100AC to get which is a bit pricey, but considering you are doing a past event (Though, you have to buy them again to redo them which I find kind of awful :() and no AC is used up while playing (which is such a beautiful thing), it’s pretty nice.
Now, to talk about the few things I brought up earlier–Money, Cupcakes, and the Fairy.
Money wouldn’t be so bad if there wasn’t so many things you were forced to get to progress the story (Such as a $300 cellphone). And then forced to buy a specific date outfit (Which can end up being several hundred dollars) at the end. I wish you could choose which you liked best regardless and still get the CG. I get that there can only be so many CGs and I am 10000000% fine with that–I mean, we have wigs and stuff now, but there is still only CGs for those hairstyles, right? But it’d be nice if I could pick the one or two things I like from all the choices and still get the nice CG. I mean, bringing up Backstage Pass for a moment, every CG has you in a preset outfit. It doesn’t matter what your character is wearing–they will always be in that outfit. And I’m perfectly okay with it! I bought the clothes because I liked them, not because I was forced to a some CG (also, I don’t the added issue of if you don’t wear this outfit your date fails which is super depressing).
I feel like if trading/gifting was in the game, this wouldn’t be as much of an issue? Not 100% fine, but like a friend of mine went for Kentin because she found him endearing. Meanwhile, I went for Nathaniel. I LOVED Ken’s date outfit in episode 1. She LOVED Nathaniel’s. She likes blue, I like white and pink, we could have traded after and been good. But nope, there is no option to do that. In the end, I had to do a single replay to get Kentin’s outfit too.
An alternative would even just be having all the outfits in the store after. Normally there are various color variations anyway–just not the date one, so I don’t feel it’d be super hard to add.
Which brings me to the Agatha–you get an item from your Aunt, who also happens to be your Fairy Godmother, if you can find her during the episode. She is always at a certain place (which varies per episode), but that doesn’t mean you will find her. You can spend over 100AP going back and forth hoping she’ll show up. And sometimes, she may even have more than one possible item to give you (which requires a replay to get). That said, I still have been unable to get her item from Episode 5 and the Beach–I mostly try to only go for items I really like (So thus far, Episode 1′s necklace, Episode 2′s bracelet (though, it still hasn’t appeared in my inventory so I hope that gets fixed soon), Episode 5′s coat*, Episode 6′s Halo, all 3 of Episode 7′s Slippers, and Episode 9′s Tube**). There’s nothing else I’ll really want from her until Episodes 21 and 24–maybe 28 too.
*I tried so hard, but could not get it from her and in the end, the episode finished before I could :(
** I constantly kept going back to the North Beach, but as you can complete the episode no matter where you are on the Beach, I ended up finishing it no matter what I did before finding Agatha.
As for cupcakes, they have a random chance to show up randomly based on how many people are online. I still have yet to find one. They can also hold so many items and it just makes me wish there was another way to get them (and for trading because out of all the items show in the cupcake, there’s a very small percentage I care for). There are nearly 1,000 items currently available from cupcakes. Of them, I want less than 20%. (I’ll include a full list at the bottom of this post) I think all the variety have is great, but without a way to help others and with how rare Cupcakes are, it’s almost disheartening to finally get one and then get one of the large amount of items you don’t care for and to be stuck with it.
This also goes into the Christmas 2011 Event–you can buy it for 100AP and need to buy it again everytime to do it. There are 40 items total. There are 7 items I like. You can only win up to 5 items (The first time I did it, I got three as I only caught 16/20 presents :/) per play. You would have to spend 800AP minimum to get everything. 4,000 Max if you only manage to get one item per play. It wouldn’t be so bad if once you bought it, you can try it again once per day. Or if you even got to pick the items. (I won’t even go into how fast the game is–I had a horrible time with it :( ) Then maybe you could get everything within a few purchases.
Regardless, I still do find the game fun even if I wish some of the mechanics are better. I’m really looking forward to catching up and it’s hard to wait to try and see what happens next.
At the moment, I’m hoping I can get Lysander and Armin up enough so I can have the choice of their date outfits later on as I really love Armin’s for Episode 29 and Lysander’s for 26 and 24. (I also really like Kentin’s for 24, but I wish it wasn’t green–hopefully more colors show up for it and Armin’s in the shop…) Also all 3 outfits for 21 are nice…
There’s some really nice hidden things as well–though, I’m sad there is apparently no longer a way to keep Violette’s Pink Plush :( (Which means I replayed it like 4 times for nothing T__T)
I’ve made a few suggestions in the suggestion forum on the site including my most recent one for more layers. I’ve been trying to find more information on wigs that have come out as I’d love a curly version of the long hair (Essentially like if the starter curls and the starter long hair merged together) and a version of it in a ponytail (or just a nice wavy/curly hairstyle) in the same color hair I’ve been using, but I can’t find anything beyond the current cupcake items.
But yes, if you are playing, my profile is here if you want to add me (I will forever regret not spending more time on my username) or you can sign up by clicking here.
As mentioned above, below is a full list of the current Cupcake items I like:
Quoting from my website’s Tumblr :) Here is the read more:
