One of my anticipated games of the year is about to hit, and we waste no time tackling the first case. This is the version without live commentary, but if you want to hear me talk and burst out laughing at times, there is a version like that for you too. The MC from the first game returns here to investigate a school being haunted by a spirit known as the Departed. In this first case, we are going to face a spirit known as Hanako who lashes out at people who enter her domain. Luckily, she is fairly easy to appease, so she makes for a decent tutorial even if there is very little room for error. Unlike the previous games, I do not know if there is a way to botch the exorcism that leads to the demise of your partners. I am not sold on Hanako being the first ghost as similar to Taro back in NG, I have a moment where the "scare" backfires horribly and I have to break the video so I can stop laughing. While I understand that Hanako most likely hung herself using a garden hose, it does not make for good horror material. Since we are dealing with a "pianist" victim for the first case, I was wondering if there would be piano wires or something instead. The major changes from this game compared to the others has to do with navigation and the "health" resource that you use to do things. I am still on the fence about how you navigate, but the health can help you know how many turns you have left and may give you some room in the event you want to try something random during the exorcism. Anyway, I am dropping everything to cover this game as I did not realize it came out this early. Better yet, I did get this copy 2 days before street date, so hopefully I can knock out another case to help people decide whether or not they want to pick this game up for themselves. Otherwise, what better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than with a new horror game? ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOIWGZMEBNY

This is one of the simpler unlocks, but it can take a little while as you have to play four games minimum to get it. Simply have Lady Liberty deal the KO to each of the Prime core game villains. I show the Omega game to make up for Johnny Rocket's unlock, but I splice in the remaining games in the interest of conserving time. If you want to see them, I can't do anything for Argo, but the others... ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03wkfh6atNU

We return to the southern lands to make our way to the other human settlement. On the way there, we are able to find some beastkin people by a fire who happen to make up the Hunter's Guild. Sadly, we're still a little too early to get extra licenses, but we're able to give someone access to the Hunter skillset. From there, we reach the other settlement and set about looting the place. There are a few new sidequests, and if you have some money burning a hole in your pocket, you can buy the ship using Partitio's Scent of Commerce, but I have other things to buy and it is too early to safely sail. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsJAva5_voM

The chapter started with a letter from Yin to Ilya, and now we get to meet Yin face-to-mask. Upon concluding that Yin did not send the letter, the SSS has to go to the Arc en Ciel preview performance and find out what the true intent behind the original letter was. In the process, we uncover an assassination attempt... Just to be clear during the Arc en Ciel performance, there are large sections where I don't say anything as I am doing some stuff on the side. I edited out the sections where I actually had to stop for an excessively long period, so you will hear the music change at the spliced sections. When I was doing this section, I thought it was going to be much shorter than it actually is and ran over my personal time limit. Just wanted to give a heads up in the event some of the dialogue windows stay up for a little long as I cannot always hear them with other stuff going on at that moment. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fneQgGJ50g