The one that got to me was when the MC is taking a bath, and has to tell Kohaku either to help his students with discipline, or teamwork.
Now my character is stoic, calculated, and finessed. So naturally I’m thinking that the option focusing on discipline would fit my MC’s serious nature…wrong! I lost 8% attunement.
So then I restarted, and got to the part where our MC is having an emotional breakdown in front of Masami. She asks what I said and I reply with “skeptical” instead of “scared”, again…I don’t see why skeptical would be such a bad option? I’m still admitting that I don’t think I can win the fight. But nope, lose 10% of my attunement. So I have to restart again.
I know you can gain attunement back, but I’m aware of the game coming close to its end and I don’t want to end it with anything other then 100 % attunement so I restart in case I can’t regain enough attunement in time. It’s hell.
I admit, I gave up long ago the “100% attunement” battle (especially with a stoic/impulsive ronin, I can never guess which answer depends of which trait), and happily settled for a 85-90% route. Hope it won’t bit me in the ass down the road.
I consider myself to be a perfectionist but I would never go through the struggle of keeping my attunement at 100%. Because at that point, you’re really just playing a character the game thinks you’re supposed to play.
Which kinda defeats the purpose of interactive fiction.
I understand some people are fine with being a transparent wet piece of paper, however, I’m much more comfortable making decisions I would make, rather than decisions my attunement says I should make.
Playing with my own choices has given me an attunement around 70% for books 1 & 2, and I surprisingly ended this book with an attunement of 86% (though I did feel the most disconnected from my ronin as well).
The Observation and Deduction stats though, I restarted my game so many times just so I could flesh out those skills to 100%. And I know I’m not the only one who did so too… squints at forum
I have 100 attunement for books 1 & 2 so I kind of need it for book 3 as well so it doesn’t look weird in my mind.
On a similar note
I came upon a option of my MC saying something to Kuniko first, or letting her speak first. I thought letting her speak first would be polite but apparently my attunement disagreed.
Literally just for making her speak first! What’s wrong with that!?
I think I’ll just complete the game then go back and play when I know exactly what will affect my attunement.
I’m not even sure if 100% actually helps which anything, about 70 is usually enough. Then again I havn’t been able to use the Jigoku since book 1 so maybe that has something to do with it?
I really like that scene at the aftermath of Hatch’s trial where the Protective MC has the option to tell Masami that they would have been fine leaving Toshie and Hatch behind if she agreed to leave with him.
I think my problem with attunement isn’t so much how easy it is to lose but how hard it is to get back. I’ll lose 10% for a bad choice but gain 1% for a good one? Sometimes it even says you gain it but if you look at the stats then it doesn’t go up at all.
When I play I used an IPad and play it so I can look at my stats as I play so I noticed a few times I’ll just end a chapter, go to the next one, and lose like 10% for no reason? It’s frustrating. I haven’t saved an official play through cuz I really want that 100%…
I recall there being an option in the first book for the Ronin to tell a couple of guards that they and Masa are lovers out for a midnight rendezvous, and the guards (seemingly) think nothing of it.
I think that depends on the gender of the ronin and masa but either way that doesnt make it any less ehh (different time periods had different ideas and most werent good)
And even in that same little scene you can say you two are siblings and your ronin will comment on the age gap being pretty large which, along w/ how masa is described and how our ronin reacts to them doesnt really give the impression they could be older than 14, at most.
Nah, that’s just how percentage stats are set up sometimes. Pretty sure how it works is the more attunment you have the less you gain to the point where smaller gain choices don’t give you anything and the more you loss to the point of losing 7% on small choices. But the less attunment you have the more you gain and less you loss.
Pretty sure attunment’s not really too important since if you bomb it then you’ll have access to Jigoku Itto-Ryo which you otherwise won’t. I’m guessing in the future the author will have you either rely on high attunment for the spirit animal but low attunment for the Jigoku Itto-Ryo
Ah yeah, though I felt like that was more there to establish Masa has a one sided crush on the MC–which seemed harmless enough. It’s clear the MC doesn’t see Masa that way, in that scene. And the guards don’t buy it either, once they get a closer look.
This game got some serious emotional responses from me. Seeing the achievement “FOUR OUT OF FIVE” pop up actually hurt me. Gushing aside, in relation to Toshie’s behavior after the Island seemed really unethical to me. Also, Also, having learned more about Jun and the Samurai, especially after failing to save Ige, and with Masashi out of the way, I was overwhelmed by a desire to save Jun from the Jingoku and Jun’s warped misunderstanding of the world. If you think on it, being in love with Jun (even if Jun wasn’t properly reciprocating) is what saved the Samurai which is why I think he kept clutching Jun’s katana when he was stressed, just like he clung to Jun when the world was too cruel, and considering Jun is one of two people that the samurai completely failed when they needed him most, and Jun still gave him a wedding ring, or at least Jun’s warped version of it. Aside from that the samurai’s spent three books now with “Saving someone” being the core of almost everything he’s done. Even if I didn’t know Jun’s history, all of that would still be true. Or am I the only one who read the situation like that? I guess I am something of a romantic, which might be skewing me here, but I don’t think I’m being entirely fanciful here.
I’m not sure the Ronin actually believes they ever truly loved Junko. By their own admission they seem to have admitted they used Junko pretty selfishly. They also seem to know neither them or Junko understood what Love truly meant, considering their background how could they.
As for saving Junko, as others have stated I’m not sure it’s a option. The underlying theme seems to be there is no running from your past or your crimes.
Junko as it is has killed tons of people pointlessly, becoming at best a serial killer, and lets not forget what she did to poor Momoko. I’m not sure there is a happy ending to any of this.
The same extends to the ronin’s past crimes as well. The story seems to be around redemption of sorts, but that doesn’t always equal a happy ending . So I think our Ronin’s end would also spell the end of the Jigoku Itto-Ryo. If anything it would fit the grity, brutal, horrible reality of a swordsman in Hyuga.
0-100 in 5 seconds lol but while I do agree with the Jigoku Itto-Ryo ending with Jun/ko and the ronin (I can’t see anyone else willing to learn the technique due to the bloodshed it would require and the intense emotional state it also requires as Momoko pointed out in book one just before you invade Shiroyama’s palace ) I also feel the need to point out that, yes the ronin definitely used Jun/ko as a plaything thinking it was love but I believe that the ronin was also beginning to feel what love truly felt like in book 3, especially the relationship with Toshie, Hatch and the kid. By some extension, he may had started to care for Ige, Daisuke, Borgia, Kohaku and maybe Nishi (even if they could be really nasty towards each other). There was one part sometime after Ige’s death, Hatch just knew that the ronin didn’t go insane but rather as a Sensei, he/she was mourning the loss of Ige. He also may had harmed the kid on purpose just to be sure the kid wouldn’t be putting themselves in danger for the ronin anymore but rather to have them live a long and happy life without having to worry about their “Apricot Ronin” anymore, and the ronin also thought to himself once that if the kid died defending him, he would also go to hell and take Hyuga with him. He also started to feel regret that he may had accidentally unleashed Shatao’s samurai army on the villagers he was staying with until Hatch took Shatao’s identity in order to prevent that from happening with the help of Kohaku. Unfortunately, I also don’t see the ronin having a happy ending after all of this. There’s three ways I could see it happening, one is that he succumbs to the Jigoku if the attunement is too low, he makes a sacrifice to save Hyuga or he saves Hyuga but doesn’t live for too long to see the true peace he brought due to the possible physical and mental wounds, eventually dying peacefully with his friends at his side. I probably would prefer the last option as it seems to be the most satisfying ending I can think of.
