I finished one play through in Angelique trois. Yey.

Queen Gash Bell of the New Universe saves the universe...or world...or random floating land mass...and manages to make Pretty Pretty Princess King Timka her boy bitch. All's well that ends well.



Blah blah, Angelique backstory which I half ass because I'm not actually that learned on the subject either. Skip this if you just want to get to the actual game talk.

Is there actually anyone that doesn't know what Angelique is? Well just in case, Angelique is a girlie love sim series developed by Ruby Party and published by Koei.

Yeah, most normal people probably associate Koei with action and strategy video games based on ancient Chinese stories, but Angelique is for girls, is very very girlie, and also very very simmy...something which ayuni would probably hate with the intensity of a million suns. Dramatic.

The official genre is "Neoromance", which is a Koei-specific for girls romance simulation genre and includes (after Angelique):

Haruka naru Toki no Naka de, a.k.a "Haruka" by Japanese fans, and "HaruToki" by English speaking fangirls.
Kin'iro no Corda, which, since whenever I see the kanji I want to read it as "Konjiki no Corda" because Konjiki no Gash Bell >>>> all, I call it by its other official title, "La corda d'oro".

Anyway.
The history behind Angelique...I'm not 100% sure on it, so just go here for info on all the games in the series.

Angelique Etoile (not mentioned on above page) is only available for Windows, and you play as a whole different heroine this time (although her name is still Angelique...probably). They'll probably make a PS2 (possibly PS3??? =_=) port of Etoile sometime in the future....I hope.

Oh, and a couple of the older games were ported to GBA.

I started playing Angelique with Ange Duet, and I haven't gotten the chance to play any of the other games or see any of the OAVs, so I hadn't met Arios (who seems to be incredibly popular with fangirls for some reason....) and the Instructors, plus the other random three (not counting through fan sites/Ange mp3 scrounges) until I played Trois just a few days ago.





Ange seiyuu babblety for those that don't know.

Angeliques
Angelique Limoges - Shiratori Yuri
Angelique Collet - Asada Youko

Rivals/Advisors/bitches
Rosalia de Catargena - Mitsuishi Kotono
Rachel - Nagasawa Miki

Guardians
Julious - Hayami Shou
Clavis - Shiozawa Kaneto (till 2000), Tanaka Hideyuki (2000 and on)*
Randy - Canna Nobutoshi
Lumiale - Tobita Nobuo
Oscar - Horiuchi Ken'yuu
Marcel - Yuuki Hiro
Zephel - Iwata Mitsuo
Olivie - Koyasu Takehito
Luva - Seki Toshihiko

Instructors
Victor - Tachiki Fumihiko
Sei-Lan - Iwanaga Tetsuya
Timka - Kisaichi Atsushi

Other random people
Ernst - Morikawa Toshiyuki
Mel - Touma Yumi
Charlie - Madono Mitsuaki
Arios - Narita Ken
Sara - Orikasa Ai
Dia - Tanaka Atsuko
Elda - Miyamoto Mitsuru
Pastha - Yao Kazuki

New characters in Etoile I don't know
Leonard/Leonardo? - Koyama Rikiya
Francis - Sugita Tomokazu
...Yui? - Namikawa Daisuke

Some people were only in drama CDs, etc.

* Shiozawa Kaneto died in 2000 due to some sort of head injury, I think it was.





Onto the actual game talk: Angelique trois; first play through

So uh, Trois is more or less connected through Angelique Special 2, Angelique Tenkuu no Requiem, and finally Angelique OAV "Shiroi Tsubasa no Memoire". Having not played either of the two games nor seen the OAV, I just kind of said "AHAHAHAHAHA" and started playing anyway.

As soon as the game starts, you get an animated sequence that's basically the introduction for the cast of characters. The animation is quite nice. I only watched it the first time through though. I can never understand the people that watch through the opening every single time they start up a game.

The DVD-ROM actually has a digest of the OAV on it anyway, so you can see the highlights of the OAV and wonder why Rachel's hair changes from blonde to neon green.

Uh...I didn't really get much out of the digest:
+ Ange Collet is already Queen of the New Universe and is a canon Sue.
+ Arios has Rachel syndrome and his hair keeps changing color too. When it's white, he's good. When it's black, he's bad. Kinda like the cowboy hats in westerns. He's also a blob during some parts of the OAV.
+ Marcel is annoyingly pacifist and decides to run away with Angelique and Arios to go join the circus
+ The Guardians are pretty much not helpful.
+ I don't understand the whole backstory on Arios, what he was trying to do, and why he was a hair color changing blob.

Being now up to speed with the whole background story (uh...yeah....), it was time to start playing. Huzzah!

And the game quickly thwarted my plans to name Angelique "Bubba" by not allowing roman letter input for the name. Well fuk. You're given 7 spaces to put in a name in katakana or hiragana, so after an annoyed pause, I put in "Gash Bell". The game prompted me to put in a nickname that people close to Ange call her. So I input "Gash".

Gash Bell is now the queen of the New Universe (Angelique Limoges being the queen of the uh....other universe. Ya, I didn't really get that.)

Normal stuff; input zodiac sign and blood type. I put in my own.
Then I was asked a number of questions; each of which had 2 or 3 options to choose from. I'm not entirely sure what those were supposed to do, but I imagine that depending on how you answered all the questions, your affinity with the various male targets will either increase or decrease.

....o shi, I've already forgotten exactly how the game starts. Well, that's my short term memory for you. And no, I didn't take down notes while I was playing. Haha.

So, I think it started out like this:

Angelique Collet Gash Bell Collet is standing in her room at night, where she lives in the New Universe (why is it a new universe, anyway?), and she recalls all of what's happened so far. Things that have happened, what she and Rachel have gone through, the Queen (Angelique Limoges; although they're both queens, Collet seems to be of lower rank than Limoges, the nine Guardians, AND the instructors. WTH kind of queen is that?).

She talks with her spiritual beast, Alphoncia/Alphonsia actually I might be completely getting the name wrong because I don't really remember. Alphoncia is Gash's other half/alter ego, that kind of thing.

BTW, Gash's room is quite nice.

Suddenly, this weird mist fills her room and Gash disappears. Rachel spazzes out.

Back in the other universe, Limoges and Rosalia are weirded out because there's notice that someone is coming through the passageway that connects the New Universe with their own; and normally whenever someone goes through that, the queens or their advisors communicate with each other first before opening the passageway.

Limoges sends out her hos some Guardians to investigate, and they come across an out of breath Rachel in the middle of some forest. They take her back to Limoges, where Rachel explains the weird mist and the sudden disappearance of Gash.
Rachel and some of the Guardians (don't remember which) return to Gash's room to investigate, while Limoges also sends Randy/Zephel/Marcel to contact Ernst and see what he can find out about all this.

Back in Gash's room, guess what. The mist returns and swallows up Rachel and the Guardians. Heehee, gee, we all didn't see that one coming.

They find themselves somewhere else, and there's Gash in front of a large silver tree. Limoges/Rosalia show up too, because the uh....mist got to their universe too or something like that (stabs memory).

And then there's an animated cut scene (the animations are very random...there actually weren't that many animated scenes throughout the game, mostly just the polygons, and occasionally CG stills), and the other six that I've never encountered in a game before (Ernst/Sei-Lan/Victor/Timka/Mel/Charlie) pop up from somewhere too. I forget how they managed to get themselves to this unknown dimension, but when someone asked why the hell they (the 5 minus Ernst) were there too, one of them (don't remember who, la la) answered that (Ernst plus the 3 youngest guardians) figured that a major crisis like the disappearance of the new queen would warrent contacting everyone who had some connection with her.

Anyway, so everyone's gathered now in front of the silver tree, when Gash Bell Collet hears a voice coming from the tree. The Voice begs her to set That Which is Sealed free, and that Gash is the only one that can do it.

Gash is the only one that can hear the voice, but she manages to get Limoges to believe her, and so they all figure that they need to decide what to do next.

Limoges uses her kickass Universe Queen Powahs and creates a huge ass place for everyone to live on there. Ernst and Rachel go about in the uh...Ouritsu Kenkyuu'in (exactly how would this be translated? I guess it's something like Royal Research Facility, to figure out where this is and what they have to do.


A few days later, Rachel and crew have figured it out! Like, no, really!!! OMG.
They are on some floating continent (Limoges has named it Arcadia) in a uh...sorry, I never read SciFi so I lack the proper geek terms, but basically like a wrinkle in the space-time continuum.

Rachel talks about the Mystery Voice, and they have a theory on how they can free whatever it is that's been sealed: they need to nurture and cultivate the land so that it supports life (the whole raising sim part of the Ange games! Yay!).

Now that the huge long prologue is finished, Gash can FINALLY start with the building.

Except there's a problem! This wrinkle that they're currently in is quite unstable, and apparently it'll cave in on itself in 30 days. How they manage to find out all this information is beyond me. So Gash is depressed, but Limoges says not to worry, she'll use her Really Kewl Queenie Powers again to build a sort of barrier around the entirety of Arcadia, thus prolonging its life there. According to research done by the Research Facility, with Limoges added powers, they can extend their time there to 115 days.

It doesn't seem like a lot, but Rachel assures Gash that that's a lot longer than she thinks (and actually it was. There was actually a deadline in Angelique Duet too, but it was like 999 days or something....=_=)

So so, now Gash can begin with nurturing the land, in hopes of releasing whatever it is that's sealed (even though they don't know if it's good or if it's bad.)

The first week starts! You can go alone, or you can get Rachel to show you around. I chose to go with Rachel, even if she has neon green hair and dresses like a futuristic prostitute.

The whole nurturing thing is a lot like it was in Duet, although a bit more advanced. In Duet, each day you could choose to go to one of the Guardian's offices and ask them to send their power (either a little, or a lot) down to the land you were raising, and after you sent enough down, a house would sprout up.

In Trois, you can actually do 3 things each day; one activity in the morning, and two in the afternoon, so you don't waste one day just with one person like in Duet.

Anyway, in Trois, you can't just have the Guardians send their power to the land.

Oh yeah! Like with Duet, you get to name your land. You only get 4 spaces for a name....anyway, since I was Gash, I decided to name my land "Kiyomaro" (in hiragana).

Anyway, before you can send power over to Kiyomaro, you have to store some of the Guardians' power within yourself.

You have (in the menus) 9 bars that show how much of each of the 9 powers you currently have stored within yourself. If Gash doesn't have enough of one power, say, "Light", then she can't ask Julious to send light over to Kiyomaro, until she's filled the bar with enough power.

Also, there are three levels of houses that you can build with the power. Lv. 1 takes the least amount of power, and lv 3 requires you to go to the Guardian of choice and store power more than a few times (or just continue sending level 1 amount of power to the same spot until it becomes level 3).

The bars are all short to begin with, and that's where Victor, Sei-Lan, and Timka come into play; if you visit their offices, they can increase the bars (and thus, how much power you can store at once) little by little. Victor is the instructor of spirit (mind/soul) and increases the bars for light, fire, and metal. Sei-Lan is instructor of feelings, and increases darkness, water, and dreams. Timka is instructor of dignity and increases the bars for wind, green, and earth.

Every time you build a house on Kiyomaro, the good fortune rate for Kiyomaro will increase. The higher the level, the higher the good fortune. Depending on which houses you build next to each other, the amount of good fortune goes up or down a little bit (like if you put a light house next to a dark house, it won't be as high as if you'd put the light house next to a fire house (Julious (light) doesn't get along with Clavis (darkness), but gets along with Oscar (fire)).

You can raise your land 5 days a week. On Saturday, you need to go report to Limoges and Rosalia, who'll tell you the next Good Fortune Level you need to strive for (it's easy to always stay higher than the level they give you). Sunday is the weekend, so you should go out on a date with whichever guy is your target.

In getting the guy you want, you have to raise all the perimeters to the max. (I think that's all there is to it.) It's not that hard. There are three perimeters: fondness (好意) - liking you as a girl, basically;　respect (敬意) - respecting you as a queen, and then just general affinity (determined by blood type, zodiac sign, and probably those questions you answered to begin with...I always have the highest affinity with Randy and Olivie, even though I don't really have a lot in common with either character.) To raise fondness, just go out on dates and answer their questions right, give them presents, etc. To raise respect, visit them and do uh, queen like things (basically raising your land). Affinity is raised another way...will go onto that next.

Okay, so the remaining people do other things too.

Charlie - you can buy stuff from him (for free!). Either already made presents that you can give to guys, or you can buy raw goods and make presents yourself to give to them.

Ernst - takes care of the Research Facility, and through him, you can move houses you've placed on Kiyomaro...er, your land around so that they're next to a building that'll raise the Good Fortune rating.

Mel - Fortune Teller. Does Sara's job from Duet...he performs the.....

...yes, the "Love Love Flash". Oh god, that's embarrassing just to say. I think it's even more embarrassing to watch now; full figured polygons shooting hearts at one another instead of SD sprites like in Duet....anyway, the Love Love Flash increases your (Gash's) affinity with whichever guy you pick.

Rosalia - acts as mediator, and can increase the fondness between guys so that they don't hate each other as much (although I don't think there's much of an effect. I did it a few times with Julious and Clavis, but they always seemed to hate each other the most.)



Anyway, going on to other things, there are more date spots in this one than Duet! Duet only had 2 date spots....=_= And getting with a guy depended purely on chance (even if you had fulfilled all the requirements, when you go to confess your feelings at the waterfall place, whether they said yes or no was completely random =_= I know because I've hit reset more than once in fury at getting turned down, only for them to say they love me back the after resetting...)

Trois has a total of 6 date spots, although you only have two to begin with. As you continue to nurture the land, more random floating pieces of the continent that were once part of the larger piece of land with come back and reattach themselves to the mainland. (Four places in total; each has a date spot.)



....uh, that turned out to be a lot longer than I'd initially imagined, so I'll continue with the talk tomorrow.