Eeeehm. Is this really going to be MY forum?
Anyway, here goes:
Disclaimer/Legal stuff:
This review is written from my point of view. Because I am no professinal reviewer, but an amateur, it is only intended as an additional information for other bishoujo-fans who are not quite sure what to expect from the product and that don’t want to rely completely on the makers product description.
However, since I am an amateur, I might make some mistakes by reporting from my point of view (for example: ignore some points that are not important to me, but might be very important to readers of my review). So, I discourage anyone to decide about buying or not buying the product, only relying on my decription.
Further, it is inportant to point out, that this text only represents my own opinion of the reviewed product and not the opinion of the people who host it on their website.
In order to avoid problems with copyrights, I am going to post this review only on one website. As long as it is available on that website, I have no right to put it on any other website.
However, if the hosting website decides to either
a) notify me, they don’t want to host it any longer
or
b) take it down and don’t tell me when they will put it up again during 1 week after they have put it down
I am free to post it on any other website under the same conditions and the former hosting website has to remove it permanently.
… end of “Disclaimer/Legal stuff”, start of the mentioned "review"
Name: Datsui-Jan 2
Made by: ELF
Genre:
This game is a mahjonng-tournament against a lot of characters from other ELF-games (for example: Dokyusei, Refrain Blue, Isaku, …).
Story:
There is not much of a story. At the beginning, the players character arrives at a train station in a town.
Every building in this town is either
a) a place, related to one other ELF game, where the characters from that game can be challenged
b) a shop, where desktop accessories are sold, that have to be paid with the money, won in the mahjonng-games.
c) informational-places (in-game-instructions, winning-statistics, galleries for already seen animations and CGs)
Gameplay:
The town i displayed as a map. By clicking on one of the locations, the players character moves on the map to this location and enters it. Depending on the kind of location, after entering, the player is either confronted with the personnel of the shop /info-place, or the opponents, that are at this place to be challenged.
The personnel could be simply asked about the informations or the items, they have in store for selling.
The opponents are always a group of sic persons: 3 male and 3 female. At first, the male opponents have to be beaten, before the female opponents are even available for bein challenged.
Any opponent, that has been beaten in his/her original environment, becomes also available at another place, the ELF-dome, where those opponents could even be mixed, regardless from which game they are from and where the stakes could be raised up to ten times the usual stakes at the original places.
Sound:
Not very spectacular, but alway nice to hear different BGMs are available for each location.
During mahjonng-ply, three different BGMs are selectable and could de even changed during the game.
Each character is voiced and the voices are used for:
a) annoucements during play (Riichi, Tsumo, Rong, …)
b) greetings, when the player enters the place
c) a short comment, of a character, that is chosen as an opponent
d) saying goodbye, when the player leaves that location
Graphics:
During Mahjonng-play, only the characters faces are displayed, that also give away their curent mood according to their score.
After a female character has lost all of their clothings (yep, only the females are going to strip), an voiced H-scene with that character follows, that has full-screen standing graphics with a quality, that is a bit higher than our current state of the art (examples: “TCI” or “Snow Drop”).
ALso the graphic-fragments, that only display one character with different expressions (or, in this case, more accurate: in different states of clothing) are used and have a similar graphics quality.
Only the quality of the in-game-graphics (the faces) is a bit lower. But this has the reason, that these faces are drawn in an style, that exagerates in the expression (for example: some faces transform into grimaces or the characters look even more like beasts, when they are about to loose), so the degree of photorealism in the other graphics is in these pictures not really required. (If you are concentrating on building your own hand, it is only distracting to pay these drawings too much attention, so too much quality in these drawings would have been wasted by being not fully recognized by the player.)
Animations:
The scenes, when a girl/woman discards an article of clothing are animated. THe quality of these animations rivals or even surpasses the quality of the standing graphics of the h-scenes.
Also, some minimal animations (eyeblinking in particular) are also added to the “standig graphics” as well as the faces, that are displayed during the Mahjonng-games.
User Interface:
All necessary function (including “save” and “load”) are available at the according places in the town. The entire interface is meant to be used by the usual mouseactions (point to object/destination and confirm selection with a click), but playing by using the keyboard only is also possible, even if this is not very convenient (cursor-keys for moving the character or the mousepointer, “enter” instead of mouseclick).
Additional functions (Quitting the game, switching the screen mode, changing settings (especially the BGM during Mahjonng) are available from the title-menu.
Extras / Omake:
This is a difficult point. In fact, the starting-menu does never contain a point “Extras” or "“Omake”. So, one possible point of view might be, there are no extras at all in this game.
However, I’d like to regard at least the accessories, that are at first glance just trophies (or rewards for continued playing beyond the point, where all opponents are beaten) as nice extras. After being bought at the shop, they could be installed onto the system and are from that moment also available out of the game (and this makes them from my point of view even more “Extra” than something, that is still only available from the application, but out of the regular gameplay hidden in an “Extras”-menu.).
There are:
9 wallpapers (each in resolutions from 640x480 up to 1600
6 screensavers
6 clocks
39 icons
1 email-client
39 voices (each voice with 5 system-messages (windows-start, windows-shutdown, email arrived,…))
3 soundtracks (8 themes in almost CD-DA quality in each soundtrack)
1 ELFamp-application with 8 different skins (similar to winamp)
Further extras (at least, in other games, they would be called that, because there, they would be available through the “Extras” or “Omake”-menu) are the galleries of graphics and animations, that are not really out of the game, but already available during the normal game. They are in the building, that also hosts the winning-statistics of all characters. Anytime, the player wants to take a break from playing mahjonng, he might enjoy the already seen pictures or animations again by visiting this building, without actually leaving the game behind (this makes it difficult to decide, if these functions are extras or not. In fact, the starting-menu only contains the options of starting a completely new game, or starting from a saved position. Even quitting the game is only from the title menu or by closing the applications window. ).
My personal opinion:
First of all: This game was also a lot of fun.
Compared to Sho-Ki, I had here a lot more different opponents (18 guys, 21 girls/women, while in Sho-Ki there were 13 girls) and all are bound to the regular japanese Mahjongg-rules (Yay! No magic attacks this time!).
The only violation to the standard-rules, I noticed, is obviously a bug: It happened, when I drew the fourth tile for a KAN from the wall and one opponent needed this tile for comleting his/her mahjonng. Although, I declared my KAN and the KAN was also displayed on my side (I had not yet drawn the replacement tile and my move was also not finished, because I had discarded no tile at all), this opponent called out “Rong” and suddenly, on this opponents side, there was a fifth tile of this kind and I had to pay for all his yakus according to the “Rong”-rule. However, I never heard about the fact, that in japanese rules, a tile drawn from the wall and added to a KAN could be called by an opponent for completing his mahjonng. I think, this applies only to discarded tiles.
On the other hand, there is no story and no real reason for our players character challenging all other characters in mahjonng.
If the missing story is acceptable, this game makes up for it with a better soundtrack and quite better graphics.
Also, the accessories are a lot fun. Sometimes, I simply start the “Isaku-hide-and-seek”-screensaver and play around with this one for about half an hour.
Collecting the graphics and animations, as well as the accessories, kept me motivated to play this game for about a month almost every evening.
I have once again to express my thanks to Bigdog, for recommending this game to me. This is a recommendation, I can simply agree to, as far as the player does not need a story in a game.
However, since I have now at least seen a bit of these characters (their different behaviour/comments during the game that also told a bit about their relations in the original ADV-games), I became also a bit interested in them. Perhaps, ELF made Datsui-Jan 2 (and its prequel, Datsui-Jan) only as fanservice for their faithful fans of the other games, giving them the effect of “Hello , long time no see”, but in my case, it works also the other way round. Maybe, one of my next japanese games, I am going to buy, is one of these ELF-adventures…
[This message has been edited by Unicorn (edited 10-21-2002).]
If you Kan and the person needs what you kaned to win they can take it but only when you kan not after. Hey Unicorn, which MJ game do you perfer, and where do you order yours from? If I can ever get himeya’s site to accept my order I will definately look into one of these 2 games.