Wednesday

Playing New LovePlus+ on the 3DS LL is difficult in public. I used to like to play on the bus going to and from work, but now I have to limit myself to less "embarrassing" parts of the game, such as the Youth Page and mini-games, because the new console is so much more visible to everybody else. I started off playing through the Seishun No 1 Page on my way to work, during which I again helped Rinko choose the name "In The Rye" for the band she is starting with the Library girls.

We went to check out musical instruments together.

One I was sitting down to have breakfast, I started off the actual game. I was surprised when Rinko met me in the gym during the first session, and we talked for quite a long time. She looks cute in her sports uniform.

And then I continued with my strategy of short dates to level-up the various school locations.

By the end of lunch, I was surprised that I got to Level 4 after only a week of gameplay. I met Rinko at Dixies in the afternoon.

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...

Saturday

Yay, I just found out via EMS tracking that my Deluxe Rinko Set of New LovePlus+ arrived in Australia today! This means that it should be here in my hot little hands on Monday. It's been a long wait, given the fact that I pre-ordered my set early in December last year. Hopefully, the wait will be worth it. My wife has finally also decided to order the Nene Deluxe Set, which should arrive sometime next week too. (No more sharing one console will be a good thing.)

I met Rinko at the Library during our half-day of school today.

And then again for a short date at Dixies this afternoon.

Happy Six-Month Anniversary!

Today marked another significant milestone in my LovePlus history - my six month anniversary (in the current game) with Rinko. Because I know this will probably be my last anniversary with Rinko in New LovePlus (before I switch over to NLP+ hopefully in early April), I wanted to make it a memorable day. And it was.

No breakfast this morning, but Rin-chan was waiting with her umbrella to walk me to school.

Despite acting tough sometimes, she is really a very kind girl. As soon as we arrived at school, I called Rinko to meet me so I could give her my anniversary gift.

I gave her a new pair of shoes, which she was delighted with...

...and she gave me, for the sixth month running, the matching boy-girl sweatbands. Not that I don't appreciate a gift - ANY gift - but I really hope this self-repeating bug is fixed in NLP+. It didn't happen in my first game, but it's happened a lot in this one. As your relationship with a girl progresses, you want something more than sweatbands. Anyway, we kissed briefly and stopped for a chat before going back to class.

Rinko had lunch ready for us...

I don't know if it was to make up for giving me a recycled anniversary gift, but Rinko met me in the Library this afternoon and produced a second gift.

It's the gift you don't actually get to open - so you just have to use your imagination. So let's imagine that it wasn't sweatbands. We finished up the day by walking home from school together.