Tuesday - First Bento!

I leave for work pretty early each morning and usually take a bus into work around 7 am. It's around a 35 minute trip, so lately I've started playing the less embarrassing parts of NLP+ on the way. Anything involving skinship and kissing is out, because the bigger screens of the new console mean that EVERYONE can see what you're doing. I usually open my game, choose activities for the day, play through the Seishun 1 Page episodes, and then one of the mini-games and perhaps LovePlus mode. It's a pleasant way to pass the time.

That's why the first photos each day have been from Rinko's Seishun 1 Page story, which seem a little out of order. Here are today's shots, which feature Rinko checking out a venue for her band to play their first "live".

As usual, I met Rinko at various locations around the school in an effort to level them up quickly. I have most school locations up to Level 2 by now.

I had a pleasant surprise at lunchtime, when Rinko met me with a box lunch (bento) she had prepared. She used to do this most days in NLP, but it's the first time in the new game.

I met up with Rinko this afternoon at the recently-opened Coffee Shop.

And later at the Convenience Store...

...and Fountain Park.

Karaoke Date

Today's date was a lot of fun. The experience of dating in the new version of the game is much smoother than NLP, and the various scenes (including skinship and kissing) flow into each other without the jerkiness, delays and lag time that were so evident in the 3DS game. Dates seem to take longer to play now, though, with the average Sunday date taking just under an hour - and considerably longer if the date extends.

When I met Rinko at the station this morning, she was wearing her hair in a new, cute style (still short, though). Her clothes were a little more casual than I like, but still okay, so I let them pass.

We went to the Ramen Shop for a snack. I ordered the Pork Ramen Set, and for some reason Rinko had the same thing (which is unusual). The set included a plate of gyoza which looked absolutely delicious.

The main part of our date was Karaoke, which is a firm favourite of Rinko's. I wonder what songs she would choose to sing??

With the option of a second date location, I took Rin to the Amusement Park, where we rode on the Jet Coaster. She loved it.

Then our date was over, and it was time to take Rinko home. I walked her back to her place and kissed her goodbye.

At 12:00 noon I visited the Flea Markets at Fountain Park, where I bought a CD and my first Premium Date ticket (for the night-time Sakura viewing).

Later today we had a short date in the rain.

A "Normal" Saturday

After all the excitement of the 2-day Atami trip, it was kinda nice to settle down again and just play a "normal" day with Rinko. I made a mistake in the morning, though - I meant to go to the Electronic Store (in Electric Town) to buy a memory card for my in-game camera...but I went to the Maid Cafe by mistake! D'oh!

With that out of the way, I met Rinko a couple of times at Fountain Park for short dates. I only have two locations open in Shin Towano for short dates at the moment - Fountain Park and Winning Burger. Poor Rinko. I promise I will work hard to unlock a few more locations over the coming week.

I had a small event with Rinko in the Library this afternoon. I'm not sure what it was all about, but I kissed her once, and then towards the end of the event an icon appeared at the top of the screen with two hands holding each other. When I clicked it, Rinko initiated another kiss (without going through the skinship process). Hm, interesting. I'm not sure whether this will be an on-going feature in the game or not.

I decided to try a couple of the password-protected special items from the 3DS game, and was surprised when they worked in NLP+. I was able to exchange items for a total of 400 Rich, which should be enough money to upgrade my camera early in the game without worrying about going broke. I also got a nice watch to give Rinko for a present. I'm so surprised that these old password-protected items still work. ^^

I've also booked a date with Rinko tomorrow (Sunday), which will be my first actual date in the new game. I'm interested to see how it goes. At least the Atami trip gave me lots of opportunities to get used to the new Skinship & Kissing process, and I'm quite good at it now. Well, when I say "good", I mean that I can get one hard almost every time. I'm taking Rinko to the Amusement Park, and then hopefully on to the Italian Restaurant (which she always loved in NLP) for lunch.

I finished up the day with a short meet-up at Winning Burger.

First Full Day With NLP+

Today was my first full day playing New LovePlus+ with Rinko as my girlfriend. The new game is so familiar, but at the same time so different, that it really is a whole new experience. I played through fairly much as usual, calling Rinko out for short dates and booking a proper date for this coming Sunday at 6:00pm.

I tried many, many times to do skinship with Rinko and usually ended up failing miserably. The new system for skinship and kissing is certainly challenging. I worked out that you need to watch the eyes (number of people watching) really carefully - whereas it hardly mattered at all in NLP. In this version, there are 3 different coloured eyes, with red being the hardest and green being the easiest. I think blue is in between.

The whole day, I only managed to get one or two kisses with Rinko. But the good thing is that you don't lose affection points for lack of kisses - which is a good thing. Maybe I focussed too much on trying to master skinship and kissing today. Hopefully tomorrow I can relax and just play normally again.

My night-time short date at Fountain Park was more successful, because the eye are green in this location. But still, very few kisses. Hopefully I'll get better sooner or later.

These last few shots are from the second instalment of the Seishun No. 1 Page, with Rinko's story about forming a band with some of the girls from the Library Committee.

It's really cool to see the CGs (and everything else) on the beautiful, bright, big screen of the 3DSLL.

Tomorrow is my first overnight field trip with Rinko, which should be very interesting to say the least. I don't know what to expect, but I hope to take lots of shots along the way and enjoy every moment.

So far, I'm totally happy with the new version of LovePlus and haven't once thought about playing on the 3DS again. NLP+ is definitely the best version of this game that I've played - even with the difficult skinship and kissing format - and that's saying a lot.

Rinko's Confession And The First Day ^^

So far, I absolutely love the gameplay in NLP+. In "friend" mode, I managed to change Rinko to the green personality type (my favourite), and then she confessed to me on Day 62. Not bad. I'm happy to say that all the date, skinship and kissing tutorials are there when you go to Real Time Mode for the first time, and they're quite intuitive to play through.

Skinship in this game is wonderful. Difficult to master, and unpredictable - but to me, that's the charm. It's very much like the old DS game - which I love.

Anyway, it was quite late by the time I got around to playing Real Time Mode, so I'd missed most of the activities for the day (which was April Fool's Day, by the way). I called Rinko out for a short date at Fountain Park, and managed to kiss her once.

A feature of the new game is the ability to go back and play through events that you missed earlier in the day by going to the calendar and selecting them. This is cool. I was able to go back and do the two April Fools' Day events. Then there was a special heart event in the 3pm timeslot. It was in the Library, and I was surprised when Rinko asked me a question I'd never seen before. I selected the first option (usually safe when faced with the unknown...but not always).

It turns out (when I checked the calendar later) that she was inviting me for an overnight trip! There's a cute icon of a travel bag on the calendar! Wow. I've booked the event for this coming Thursday, so I'm not sure what will happen. (It must be a school-related trip, because I couldn't schedule it on a weekend.)

And then we finished off the day by walking home from school together.

It feels finally (to me at any rate) that this is the PERFECT version of LovePlus. I think I said yesterday - but I'll say it again now - that once you play NLP+ you'd never go back to the earlier games in the series. Now I don't feel quite so guilty about deleting my 3DS game data and moving on. Everything seems perfect so far.

One interesting side note. I tried LovePlus mode very briefly, and found that there are no more on-screen words that you can click (helpful if you don't speak much Japanese). Like the old DS game, you have to actually SPEAK to Rinko. So I guess there's no getting around it. I'd better brush up in my basic Japanese phrases...