Anyone know anything about Konboku Mahjong from Akabee and Escude?
Cute games aren’t my thing, but the artwork and general feel of it caught my attention. I also found most of the character designs appealing. Even Narg wants a little sugar in his diet from time to time (I blame Baldo for this).
My question: Exactly how ingrained and important is the Mahjong aspect of the title? I suck at Mahjong, and its intensity within will greatly determine if I get or pass.
While I don’t know anything about this game, it would be cool if the game teaches real, Japanese rules Mahjong (i.e. not the solitaire Mahjong “match the tiles” crap you see so much in the west). Ever since playing Snow Sakura I’ve been curious to learn how to play. Right now it seems like the only chance I’ll get to learn will be to go to Japan for awhile.
Taking a look at the “system”-page would have given you the answer: in the ADV-part, you find the opponents that you will challenge later in MahJonng. Thus, Mahjonng should be pretty important.
However, playing Mahjong isn’t that difficult, provided that you know the rules and put some heart and brain into your playing!
Indeed - when I first encountered that king of game (though it isn’t all bad as a puzzle, just the name “Mahjong” is totally off here), it was called “Shanghai” ans I still use that name for it in order to remain not ambiguous if I talk about games.
I have to give Shanghai at least that much credit: because I encountered ther those pretty stones/tiles first, I went on my own search for the real rules - and I bought my own set of tiles!
Mahjong plays a part in “Snow Sakura”? Because of its name, I was saving that game for the winter-season, but maybe I should take a close look earlier… :?:
No, not the only way! Save the money for the fare and go there for something more appropriate, like comiket for example! 
If you want to play, then you could try here (needs a free yahoo-account) and here (commercial, though free trial without entering the league is still possible). It’s just sad that you missed ther chance: in the first half of this year, Tenhou allowed free trial full playing before they turned commercial. But then - for the money that you would spend on going to Japan and staying there for a month, you could easily become a lifetime-member at Tenhou…
EDIT: Just checked: at least free play without ranking still works at Tenhou. Also, the special Lobby that Olf made there for us still exists - it just is currently deserted. Perhaps, I should teach you and Narg Mahjonng there…
As for the rules… come on! I don’t have to tell you how to look up a topic on Yahoo or Google, do I? There are plenty of pages in the web that explain the rules.
And if the explanations there aren’t sufficient, you can go here. If you enter the chatroom at the right time, you may even meet me there - and I could explain the things that you didn’t understand from reading the rules-pages.
(Yep, Mahjonng is for me what Go is for Hikaru! Though I am apparently no Akagi… )
Not as much as I was hoping though. I wanted to know if anyone knew how ingrained it is. I know that Mahjong is in the game, but I wanted to know how hardcore it is, and if there’s handicaps (it mentions love points; but not clear if they make the Mahjong mode easier, or if it’s won from Mahjong victories). I don’t wanna assume it’s babied for weaklings like me: when I say I suck at Mahjong, I suck at Mahjong. This is not an exaggeration - I find no pleasure in playing it. The demo doesn’t work on Vista 64, and I’m not getting to my XP workstation until next month… hence me asking here.
I wouldn’t have done so under any other conditions. 
I like the character designs in this title, so I’m more interested in it, than I should be.
Oh, now that is indeed a problem. Being weak at mahjong is one thing, but nit liking it (or rather being weak at it because you don’t like it at all) is entirely different.
Thanks for saying it that clearly, because being a mahjong-addict myself I entirely forgot to take that possibility into consideration.
I see - then I’ll take a look at it for you.
*starts download of demo *
However, my experience with mahjong-game sis that they are rigged from the first to the last game - in the beginning in favor of the player and gradually the scales are turned the other way. Thus I would expect the mahjong in the demo still to be beaten easily (or rather it would be difficult to loose against it) and still it wouldn’t say about the difficulty-level of mahjong in the real game at all.
Well, I suppose I could at the very least check what’s the matter with the love-points for you…
Sorry for taking my time, but I now finally played the demo.
So, now I know that by applying love-points, the player’s character can utilize a special skill that indeed can give him an edge in the game. Whether the player wants to do this or not is entirely the player’s decision.
However, the opponents have special skills of their owb too - and they tend to use them indiscriminately. For example the opponent that I had in the demo could choose to change the initial hands… :roll:
However, as I predicted it wasn’t really difficult to get the upper hand over this one even without the special skill.
Basically, every character (including the player’s character) in the game has an amout of life points. If you play mahjong against an opponent, the winner deduces the payment for his/her hand from the loser’s life point account into his/her own. First one to loose all life points loses the match.
Further, for every game in a match that the player wins, he and his opponent gain experience points. The only skill that I was able to use (and didn’t) was assigned to character level 1 - and after that first win, the experience-bar was far from full. So, it will take some more games, but I suppose there are other skills that will be gained with increasing experience.
More over, the skill that the character possesed had a cost of 4. The first opponent already liked the player’s character, thus there were 5 of 5 love points available. Losing a game would decrease the love points by one, while winning increase them by one - but all that within that upper limit of 5. So, loosing two game sin a row and thus dropping down to 3 love points would disable the skill that you could use.
Maybe, the upper limit can change depending on the story and how the relationship between the player’s character and that opponent develops. I couldn’t find out about that in the demo.
While i agree that the characters are indeed cute, I probably won’t buy this game because of the emphasis on the “special skills” here, that I feel as actually “breaking the rules” or “obvious magical cheating”. But hence you don’t really care about Mahjong itself, this should be no problem for you.
However, “seriously sucking at mahjong” still doesn’t sound like you would be able to enjoy this game very much either. Particulary when later opponents will use skills that are by far worse - and yours would in turn be neutralized almost immediately and thus would have to compensate that with playing Mahjong fair-and-square… :oops:
… and now again my special thread-derail-corner!
Are you sure that “Koihime Musou” is an erogame?
I have so far been in three battles, but the best I saw so far was a short peek at Kanu/Aisha changing clothes. Currently, I’d say that the anime easily out-eros the game… :roll:
… this space left blank intentionally!
You missed Uni’s point, Lancer. He’s playing the game, so he knows about its source. His point was about the lack of ero in it, and how there’s more in the anime.
Oh, and, mahjong. Spec probably curses me for it. ^^;;;;;;;
Thanks for downloading the game and giving your input Unicorn. I really apprechiate it.
I suppose I’ll have to pass on it then… damn… I REALLY like those girls, but if they’ll only give it up to the Mahjong Master, there’s really no point. 
I could probably just get a save file from Sagaoz or something - but it wouldn’t let me see the story itself.
Damn. I like “gimmicks” in ero… but it hurts when they aren’t the kind of gimmicks you like.
Azuma is soooooo damn hot too. 
Yea. It’s filled with TONS of ero, and an honest to god sexfest once things get rolling. However the makers wanted you to have as much interest in the tactical part of the game. The girls want to be conquered by a conqueror: so go forth and kick ass so you can get some ass!
Tactical part?
Do you mean some people really need to get their brain into gear for winning in that mini-subgame? The battles in Sakura Taisen are definitely more challenging - and that game targeted a younger audience!
By the way: it seems like I am approaching the end in Sakura Taisen 1 - and if the second game is really even better, then I defintely look forward to it. 
Why the heck did that wording remind me of my Nemesis in that game: Chozen / Diao Chan? :shock:
damn…i was considering this until Unicorn’s review. I was looking for a good h-mahjong game with some cute loli(-ish) characters… I realize finding one with a competent AI that doesn’t have to use cheats might be asking too much, but…well i don’t really like the magical idea either.
I actually enjoy playing mahjong most of the time, though I usually lose so i was hoping this game would give a semi-decent game. sigh
I’m just depressed that my favourite eroge company devoted time into making a mahjongg game :((
I know Looseboy can’t be in two places at once, but generally the scenario of a game takes a lot less time than the game itself, so he could have made something new, maybe…
it’s called trying to expand your customer base.