Since we’re a few weeks in now, I kinda want to get a sense of how people are finding the pacing.
How have you been finding the pace so far?
Too slow, include optional stuff
Too slow, ignore optional stuff
Okay as is, include optional stuff
Okay as is, ignore optional stuff
Too fast, include optional stuff
Too fast, ignore optional stuff
0voters
Including optional stuff refers to all the NPC interactions, collectable books, and side quests. Ignoring those means just continuing with the main plot. Though if you think some optional stuff should be taken into account but not all of it, feel free to use your words to explain how/why.
At the fastest pace I’d guesstimate we have four weeks worth of words in the Prologue. At the slowest pace I’d up that to approximately three months, give or take a couple weeks.
I voted “include optional stuff” but I have in mind mostly side-quests which I presume can add quite a bit of content on their own and often need to be played in sequence.
Books and even NPC interactions should be given a lesser importance IMO since skipping most of them isn’t penalizing in any way, and you can always read books later if you care. Frankly personally in normal playthroughs I rarely bother speaking to everybody and reading everything, I only try to do it here for extra practice.
I voted to include optional content and for the pace being okay as is or fast. I’m a little behind but that’s not the clubs fault. I just missed doing some of it the second weekend. I think the current pace is good, but it may take a while to play the game. We’re not going too slow though. If I fell far enough behind I’d consider dropping the club but that would need to be several weeks worth of play at the current pace. I think as is should be fine.
I’m a bit concerned about books, those are definitely all optional and not critical to pick up but they’re harder than the average dialog to read. That’ll get easier over time. They’re just a little 難しい for now.
Fundamentally I’m not that bothered due to having played the game before, and I’m just dipping into it briefly each week to progress with the club’s pace.
My only concern is whether it will take over a year (or significantly more!?) at the current pace. Bearing in mind that games generally take significantly more time than books due to having more stuff in them (and for example, IBC picks can end up taking almost half a year on their own). Maybe this isn’t fundamentally an issue, but maybe it will end up being a bit of an issue with regards to remembering some plot points from earlier in the game, for example.
I agree with the sentiment around books and NPC interactions. As long as one obtains a book it can be read whenever, and I see NPC interactions as a nice bonus for when one wants to play a bit more but wants to keep with the club’s pace instead of pushing on ahead.
I think it makes sense to take side quests into account when deciding on the length of each week’s section.
That’s certainly the main concern with this whole project but at the same time going much faster is the best way to just lose everybody within a month.
I’m hoping that as the story ramps up it will make every chunk more enjoyable on its own (tutorials are a bit boring). I actually found this week’s sequence more enjoyable than the previous ones because we had some actual gameplay instead of only exposition and tutorials.
I wouldn’t mind going faster, but am also happy to keep the current pace for now. It’ll likely take a long time to finish as others have said, but I’ll continue to participate as long as there are threads
+1 on other side content opinions. Side quests are in a bit of a different category than books and NPCs, since quests offer an opportunity to build your loadout which could make the game a little easier— and I already almost died once on the path to the tower!! (I’m bad but I’m learning…)
I’d be happy to increase the pace at least a little because I do hope to play this whole series eventually if I enjoy it, and with the current pace I finish pretty quickly within one session.
Voted for either option in regards to optional content because I probably wouldn’t factor talking to people again or reading books in, but I might side quests. It’s a little hard to say without having seen this game’s side quests just yet to get a feel for how they work, how substantial they are and whatnot.
I didn’t know about the differences! I’ve been playing the Vita version for the voice acting, but I agree with you that the old style portraits have a lot of charm and I’m especially jealous of those vibrant colors. That said, the voice acting is quite nice too.
Cool, I’ve got a better idea of how I’m going to split up the rest of the prologue now. I’ll make a (spoilered?) note of what side quests there are at the start of each week and stop reminding people to talk to people. Assume there’s always new NPC dialogue if you want to though.
In terms of forgetting plot points, perhaps we want to keep track of those together or something? Since plot points continue across games, the slow pace will be tricky on that side of things.
Personally I am a little behind (on my own club! the audacity! ) due to technical difficulties that should be fixed up next week.
I removed a lot of the superfluous information in the vocab sheet, so it should be actually usable now. If you are several weeks behind like I am, that is
I find vocab sheets helpful in general, and I feel like writing down words I look up into the sheet will also be helpful especially if I look them up a lot, so I’m gonna keep at it.
I just stopped be so stupidly thorough because I don’t need to write each version of 父さん Estelle uses in these, and if anyone does need to look them up then they’re probably not quite ready to join this club, and it doesn’t matter how many times する is used because counting each one individually is more effort than getting the frequency data is worth.
The changes are good, considering the reading difficulty for this game! There’s loads of variety in vocabulary, virtually no furigana, and there’s no easy lookup like you might get with e-books. It’s not for absolute beginners.
I admit I completely forgot about the vocab sheet until this point, and will do better about helping out from now on-- starting Monday, as I’m away for the weekend. It could be useful for anyone wanting to catch up to us. Also, I know all too well the struggle of trying to keep up a sheet all by yourself, and that’s without running the club in question!
) due to technical difficulties that should be fixed up next week.
