Shameless plug: My Invite Code is e80e2163
On June 23rd, Voltage Inc. released the app My Forged Wedding: PARTY, the social game version of the original My Forged Wedding game. As with any of Voltage Inc.’s social games, the story is a free, alternate version of the original, allowing you to make friends that will help you in your story progress and dress up your own avatar and avatar room. To answer what others have asked: Yes, this is the “GREE” version of the game.
But unlike the first three social games that we were given on the GREE platform, Voltage Inc. has decided to go a different route with how we play the new PARTY series.
And it is my social gaming nightmare.
I’ve already expressed my feelings of hesitation when it came to the idea of starting another social game, especially when said social game had anything to do with My Forged Wedding, an otome game that I hold very near and dear to my heart. I loved the stories, the characters, the character relationships and developments, and just about everything about the game (even though I’ve only played the original six characters). Already having my hands full with Be My Princess for GREE whenever the events roll out, I was very anxious and nervous about the idea that, if I started playing My Forged Wedding: PARTY, I would have to juggle two different games in a limited amount of time when event periods come. Be My Princess for GREE events already take up a large portion of my time to fullcomp to the point that I was always surprised to find that I was able to fullcomp them at all when I was in school, even if I had a few hours before the event officially ended. How would I be able to handle two?
And I continued to hesitate, up until the day of its release. There hasn’t been any hint at a new event in Be My Princess for GREE, and since it was My Forged Wedding, being so special to me, I decided to give it a trial run (after staring at the naming screen for half an hour) before I decided whether or not I was going to seriously play it.
A staring contest I could not win
So I downloaded it and started it up, and I already didn’t like what I saw.
Wait, what?
That’s right. No longer are we able to simply create an account like on the GREE platform and have all our data and progress safely saved on said account and accessible on any Android or iOS device, we’re stuck with a Transfer Data “account”. Considering that everything will be lost simply by uninstalling the app or from some sort of data failure that is beyond our control, I believed there was legitimate reason for me to stop right then and there. Why would I ever want to take a risk like that? But ok, fine, I’ll give it the benefit of a doubt. We use Transfer ID’s all the time in the app version of the games! This can’t be bad, right?!
NOPE.
Ok, so it’s understandable that if you lose your account information, then you’re screwed. That goes for everything that ever needs an account. It’s also understandable that if you change OS, you lose your Coin purchases. But you know what doesn’t sit right with me? That after every single data transfer we do, we have to change the password. I’m all for keeping your information safe and all, but does it really require that we be forced to change the password every single time?
Fine, whatever. I’ll let that slide. This is only a trial run, who cares if I lose my stuff? It’s stressful just thinking about it, considering how old my phone is and the time that I’ll need to switch devices is drawing near, but I’ll let it slide.
This has to be the worst of it, right?
Wrong.
Oh so very wrong.
Initial Avatar Customization
At the very beginning of each social game, we are given the chance to customize the look of our avatars from the hair to the mouth shape. I normally really enjoy this part of the beginning, as I get to set how I like for my heroines to look. This is typically having long brown or dark hair, and what do I see but
. . . .
Ok, so this is more of a preference thing for me, but really? Blonde is the only long-haired option? I get that the original intention of the hairstyle selection only had three options, but couldn’t there have been at least a little more work put into it to allow us to select what color we wanted for which hair type? I mean, I would really have loved to have this again:
…over some blonde chick as my heroine. Nothing against blonde color or anything of the sort, but unless my heroine canonically has a light hair color, I don’t like having a blonde avatar associated with her.
And what upsets me even more is that I shouldn’t be upset over something like this. What good does it do? And it’s not like it’s directly affecting my gaming experience, so why does it bother me so much?
I had to settle with the medium length, light brown hairstyle, which wasn’t bad, but it just wasn’t my taste.
“But Shabby,” I hear a part of myself say, “it’s My Forged Wedding! What if stuff happens? You don’t want to miss stuff happening!”
So I decided to put this aside (I can’t do anything about it) and continued on until I came across more of…
The Ridiculous Limits (Compared to GREE, at least)
Of all the limits cautioning us about our gameplay that are generally always a given, some of them were rather ridiculous, and I wasn’t sure if there was some sort of typo of sorts!
Among them were:
- Once you finish a given route, you cannot read it again. (???)
- Main Story Gachas are only free to play the first time. After that, you must spend 500 Gacha Pts. for each spin and there are no free daily spins. (?!)
- Sweet and Normal routes are the same, but CG’s are only obtainable in the Sweet routes. (Ok, that’s normal.)
- In How to Play, you are told that neither will affect the ending you get in the end. (Nice!)
- But Help/FAQ says that they do. (Wait, what?)
- To play the Sweet routes, you must spend 200 Coin (~$2USD) to buy the avatar items that will allow you to play it. (?!?!)
- The Japanese version lets you buy the same item with Mari, the in-game currency. Let that sink in.
- Coin will be lost if you transfer data whether or not you are transferring to a device with the same OS, so either use it all up before you transfer or lose all Coin you’ve left unused.
- Coins have a expiry period of 180 days. If coins remain unused for this period, they will be deleted.
~$2 for a story and CG when Japanese users can get it for free?! Are you kidding me?! Not only that, but I did pay the $2 (because I’m an idiot) and to my utter disappointment, my promised Sweet Story with Yamato didn’t even have him show up until the end of the fourth episode! There are five episodes in that story!
I’m not even going to bother with the 50 Stamina for one battle thing, because I wasn’t so much bothered with that than I was with…
The Endless Chain of Maintenance
I get it. The game is new, the system usage is new, everything is new and there are bound to be multiple maintenance times. I get it. What I didn’t get was how unscheduled and random they were. Almost literally every time I would log on even just to do a Cooking Battle, I would be blocked with a maintenance notice. Or, at other points during my playing, I would get the notice right in the middle of playing an episode (which, if you weren’t already aware, this makes you have to replay the whole episode again. I don’t have a problem with trying to skip through the episode, but there’s a bug that makes it stop working if you try to skip too fast. Are you kidding me?)
I was fine with the first time. We were notified on the Top page that there would be maintenance, so that was fine. The second time was out of nowhere and we weren’t notified about it, but, again, I get it. Maybe there was something that needed fixing ASAP, so I let it slide.
The next few times didn’t make me feel so forgiving, considering that not only were we not warned beforehand about sudden maintenances or even that there would be scattered maintenances, but the maintenance notice didn’t even tell us when they believed they’d be done.
Never-ending maintenance!
Not only that, but there were times where I would begin to panic because when I’d log on, I’d be met with the very first screen everyone is met with when they first begin to play the game…
“Are you a boy or a girl?”
successfully scaring the heck out of multiple players who encountered the exact same thing and believed that all their progress and purchases were gone. Because, you know,
Never Forget
I’m normally very forgiving of Voltage Inc. when it comes to most things, but when it comes to social games in general, I have very little tolerance. There is a reason I quit all types of social gaming, and while Be My Princess for GREE was rather enjoyable for me if only for the stories (or maybe it was just tolerable and my bias is talking) despite my big dislike of social games, this just reminded me why I quit in the first place. It helped a lot that all my stuff was connected to a GREE account in case something ever happened to my device, so the lack of an actual account in PARTY is probably what stresses me out the most about this game.
And that’s a real shame because the story had me hooked from the very beginning!
So, what am I going to do now?
I’m going to keep playing if only for the stories. I fear the chaos and stress I’ll get in the coming events, and there will be events, but it’s My Forged Wedding, and I can’t say no to My Forged Wedding. How exactly I’m going to be able to handle the events is beyond me, especially after seeing that we have to pay real-life currency to get the CG. I pray that we don’t have to do so in the events, but I have very little hope about that.
At the moment, though, I haven’t touched it in like two days because I’m still rather upset about the how the whole system works and practically stopped when I completed the Beginner’s Lesson and saw that Yamato hadn’t appeared for more than half the Sweet Story. I will, however, save my money and skip the Sweet Stories. For that, I’ll just play the Japanese version. As for getting the endings, I’ll just have to hope that I have enough Chemistry by the end of the route for me to get the best ending, otherwise I don’t know what I’m going to do (because, apparently, we can’t re-read it?). And don’t even get me started on Closet space and the Cafe gacha. There are waaaaaay too many chances to lose all my stuff. I literally spent an hour trying to decide whether or not giving up $2 would be worth whatever I was getting out of it (hint: it wasn’t).
I’m going to have to try my best to spend as little as possible on this game, which I know will be a bit difficult considering I did spend a few bucks on space items back when I first started Be My Princess for GREE. The only difference is that if something happens to my device or My Forged Wedding: PARTY has some sort of failure, then I’d be screwed out of whatever leftover Coins I didn’t use and lose all my past progress and purchases because we weren’t even given the choice to have an actual account.
Screw that! I’d rather have this game and any other future PARTY game on GREE platform! At least there wouldn’t be so many risks!
I get it, okay? Voltage Inc. probably took this step because of the fact that GREE is no longer supported in a number of countries now and therefore restricting players in those countries from playing these games, but the gaming experience shouldn’t have to suffer for it. And neither does it make me any less upset that they’ve decided to take this type of turn.
Though if Voltage Inc.’s reason for all of this is partly due to what their current profits are in the English market, then I don’t know what else to do but worry about their current state, and remind people not to pirate or watch Youtube videos of these games.
Seriously, don’t do it. You’ll be doing nothing but hurting the very company you’re seeking entertainment from.
I mean, come on, how bad is it that they have to start charging as much as $2 for each Sweet Story on an otherwise free game just to get a CG you can’t even save? That totals out to $6 per route! That’s even more expensive than the routes in the app version, and with less CG’s! I can only hope that the story more than makes up for that gap! It doesn’t help that the story in Be My Princess for GREE fell flat in comparison to the original story in the app version (in my opinion, at least).
I have no idea what’s even going on anymore, but all I can find myself doing lately is worry.
This was supposed to be a rant about My Forged Wedding: PARTY and got derailed into something completely different, so I’ll stop now!
