waterscroll

Inspired by a conversation with Scytale...

I think SLBP and IkeSen are intentionally coy about MC's age to allow us to self-insert better. In IkeSen I feel like the MC really could be any age from early 20s to early 50s. She's about to start her dream job, so she could be right out of school or at the peak of her long career. As a fashion designer she could be stunning at any age. I didn't see a lot of 'youthful innocence' tropes with her. So she could be young, or not. Since the warlords don't have canon ages, you could imagine them as younger or older depending on the age you give to MC.

With SLBP, we get a few more clues.
( mild spoilers for Mitsunari, Hideyoshi, Nobunaga and Shingen routes )

Do you have headcanons for MC's age? If so, are they the same across routes or different for different routes?

Three chapters in and so far this is pretty amazing. ( spoilers )

IkeSen Kenshin was enjoyable but I don't have a ton to say about it. Like most IkeSen route it was highly fanservice-y, serving enjoyable tropes while doing its best to respect MC's agency and consent. Here the trope was yandere and imprisonment. I didn't overthink it too much, but it did some clever things to run those tropes in a consent-y way. ( mild spoilers )

Now I'm replaying Mitsunari's route. So far I'm not finding the replay worth it, the scenes from his POV haven't added much. But I'm only on chapter 5 and we'll see.

Meanwhile, SLBP Kenshin is very much not like IkeSen Kenshin. He's gentle and very sweet, and though he also has traumas he mostly deals with them by being a hoarder and obsessively finding the beauty in everything. It reminds me of Mitsuhide's route in how slow and subtle it is, but I'm not liking it as much, possibly because Mitsuhide was more religious and Kenshin is more about aesthetics. In some ways it's even slower, I just finished chapter 8 and it's ony sort of begun to occur to MC that she might have feelings for Kenshin. It's mostly slice-of-life getting to know Kenshin and his retainers/extended family. Some of them are lovely characters, although none have routes yet. It looks like Kaegie will get one soon, but I would really like to see a route for Kanetsugu, Kenshin's no-nonsense practically-minded retainer who is an extremely devoted single dad and goes around with his daughter's name in big characters on his helmet.

I'm thinking I'll finish up this route around when Nobunaga's act 3 comes out, since it looks like it will be out March 8. Can't wait!

Meanwhile one PSA about the current event story - you don't get free energy hearts (and closet space) for reading. (ETA: This was fixed, you get the things now.) So I did my normal strategy of burning 50-60 energy hearts in the double points and coins fever at the beginning, because that way I end up with more in the end, and whoops, wrong strategy. As far as the stories themselves - I thought the Shingen one was ridiculous and he was acting like a caricature of himself, but I like the Saizo one, I thought it was an unusual take on him.

This was some of the best writing I've seen in the game, but it's hard to summarize because not a lot happens.

( spoilers, death and sadness )

Next up: Kenshin, since that seems to be the obvious one to do next.

Some kind person put this route on youtube so I get to see both endings without having to replay from the beginning. I'll get to the other one in a few days.

( spoilers to the end, plus for Nobunaga act 2 )

My final talley for Last Lover Standing:
Total votes 99,700. Of which 25000 went to Mitsuhide because he's my favorite, 25000 went to Hideyoshi because damn he earned them in this event, and the rest went to various people for items. I started the event with 630 energy hearts and now I have 450 but I know I spent more than 200 because of all the free energy hearts I kept getting. Probably more like 300 or 400. I think I'm not going to spend down hearts like that again for a while (maybe next year's celebration?) but to do once a year it was fun.

(My secret to accumulating all these hearts btw - read stories over and over during the story events. You get 10 energy hearts every time you read a story, and with a six-story event I usually read every story twice so that's 120 energy hearts. That puts me behind on skill points so I use some of the energy hearts for skill points during the triple-point fever in the battle events, but I still end up collecting 50-70 energy hearts a month.)

But ok, back to Hideyoshi. I've been rambling about him and this lovely ES on both scytale's and alias_sqbr's posts, so time to do it here. ( spoilers for Appetite ES and also Hideyoshi's main route and Mitsunari's main route )

ETA: Speaking of routes that I can't wait to read, Nobunaga's act 3 is coming out soon!! So excited.

Kenshin and Shingen have a lot in common. Both practice random acts of kindness, both are bad at consent, and both (it seems) fall for the MC thinking she's a man.

( and there are definite gender games going on with both guys. )

This was my first time reading through a SLBP epilogue without using chapter tickets and I don't like it, the cliffhangers towards the end were really a bit much. It was ok because I already knew everything that was going to happen from Scytale's summary, but I think I'll need to buy some discounted chapter tickets next time there's a good sale and keep them for late in a route.

Anyway, I thought it was very powerfully written and I liked it a lot. I'm not going to write a full summary because Scytale did (1, 2), but a few thoughts:

( Why am I liking Nobunaga this much I don't know, since he never really stops being a jerk. )

Next up: Shingen. I'm bracing myself, this is gonna be a ride.

IkeSen is treating me very well this month. Sasuke's route continues to be excellent, more about that later. And in addition I paid too much money for a few short stories about the evil warrior monk Kennyo, who unfortunately doesn't have a route yet (but probably will in about a year). I think they were worth the too-much-money though, because I've been watching them over and over again.

( Thank you so much, IkeSen, for giving me another horrifying but idealistic guy to love. Also you know I always go for the religious ones, especially if they are terrible. )

In which history gets completely thrown out so we don't have to suffer. I'll take it.

( spoilers and surprisingly alive people )

( and now with part 2 )

I am still not sure what to play next. I'm thinking of replaying Mitsuhide's Act 1 to give myself a break, but maybe I need to step away from the whole tangled Nobunaga/Mitsuhide business for a bit and come back to it later. The other two I'm most interested in right now are Shingen and Ieyasu but they are both really difficult reads and I do need a break. Well, I have until tomorrow to decide.

ETA: I think I'll just do Nobunaga Act 2 again. I hated him all the way until the happy ending so I might appreciate the route better now. Also I'm curious to see the other ending.