User:CharmedDaredevil



Oh, well. I'm a guy in my young adult years (20-25). I love sports (rugby), playing games, running, working out (unconventionally), reading, writing, languages, nature, yoga, hot guys, the occult, and a bunch of other stuff. I like Choices.

The only thing I dislike about it are the oh-so-limitied hairstyle and outfit options, not to mention overall appearance customisation; and the fact there are only few stories that support both sexes and sexual orientations.

My favorite stories
What I like the most of High School Story was being in sports team for all three books and how I was sort of the glue that kept everything together. I got to try sports that are not popular in my country and actually had fun! Experiencing school sports and school spirit was great because there are no school sports and much less school spirit where I come from. I got nice social life, a nice family life and romance (Michael). I went to Homecoming, Winter Formal, pep rallies, the prom-posal and I'm about to go to Prom... all things that don't exist in my country.
 * High School Story - it's giving me the perfect high-school experience I never had
 * Hero, Vol. 1 - what better way to move on from high-school with a nice superhero adventure with young adults?
 * 1) America's Most Eligible: Season 10 - I will comment about this as soon as the season is over.

What I liked the least of High School Story was the limited hairstyle and clothes option that characterise most of Choices. Why do I need to get a streak of green in my hair if I want to a blonde, pompadour? It's just nonsense. Also, all the polo shirt choices seem picked and drawn specifically to be ugly. The overall clothes choices aren't that great, if we exclude some such as Funny Man (initial outfit in Book 1), All that Glitters (Homecoming), the Homecoming parade uniform and Evening Jade (Maria's birthday). The best Prom outfit, Blackout, could just replace that ugly grey bow-tie with another colour.

When it comes to Hero, I resent having literally no choice over the superpowers I get and the fact the MC is basically re-engineered Superman. I don't understand if Kenji/Talos is supposed to Asian or what but he's fun to be around. I liked the story and the MC's appearance, despite the very little choice you have there. It's arguably the best character appearance in all of the five stories I've played/I'm playing, even if I usually go for redheads in games. Rarely ever blondes or other hair colours. At any rate, I'm lustful for more of this story. A new volume, new chapters.

The Elementalists
I'm noting here fascinating elements I find throughout the book.

Chapter 1
Let's start from setup choices. For my male MC both the blonde and the red-head haistyles options looked good. And so others, even if I personally I would only pick brown if I was playing myself and never black because I don't like dark hair colours. White is not a thing. Good luck it was a premium choices. An unfortunate note is that the people at Choices still fail to aknowledge that - appearance-wise - a race is not only defined by skin colour but also by bone structure and other feautres, as legit studies show. Why am I saying this? Because all faces you could choose have only changes in regard to skin colour and, sometimes, eye colour. This is the same in all stories they wrote.

A good new feature is the possibility of choosing your sexual orientation as part of your setup choices. If this fixes lines, kudos; however, I think the option to flirt with people of the sex you're not attracted to should still feature as an option. One might be doing it sarcastically or it could just be that the MC is so nice he comes off as flirtatious without meaning to. The final verdict on this new feature remains positive as I see it as a step in the right direction.

Outifit choices were subpar as usual. The room of our MC is 108, a clear hint to Pagan/Dharmic spirituality, as it's a sacred number there. 108 is, among things, the number of beads on a mala (the tool used in Dharmic religion to keep count while chanting mantras, later stolen by Christians and called a rosary) and it's also half 216 a solar number, one of the holiest numbers in Pagan/Dharmic spirituality. It comes directly from 666, the solar number par excellence and symbol of spiritual perfection (later being stolen and corrupted in meaning by Abrahamic relgions). 6x6x6 = 216.
 * Bad Plaid-itude has two good aspects (the shirt and the undershirt) and two bad aspects (the obnoxious trousers and the overnumbered necklaces).
 * Denim Digs would look good... if it wasn't completely inappropriate. A jacket that is torn in many places should be a no-go everywhere, especially in campus where everyone should keep a certain degree of decorum. A hoodie is only suited for attending sports activities and events, or cozing up at home. Trousers look good.
 * Sweater Weather seems the only option to go. It's campus appropriate, despite being rather dull in colouring.
 * Batter Up. Again inappropriate. Baseball tee, the name should already tell you what it's good for: sports activities and events, but also other casual activities. Certainly not on campus. Then there's jeans but that's more subjective than else.

The elements right now, in order of confirmation, seem to be air, earth, fire, metal, water, light. As some people know, metal as an element only appears in Chinese spirituality. So the book may be considered a mix of traditional global elements with Chinese elements. Whether wood is part of this fantasy universe or not, we don't know yet. Light is sunlight in the first chapter, which is one form of the Prima Materia/Quintessence, called by the Greeks aither (ether). The very good feature seems that, despite being "attuned" to an element, we'll be capable of using any element we want. That's very nice since being limited to an element doesn't make any sense for the occult-minded. My hope is that we either get to choose our attunement or that we get an actual test, as long as it's neither too short (less than 8 questions) nor too long (more than 24 questions). ''Length definitions here are of course related to what's possible in a Choices games. Otherwise, short would imply more questions, as would be long.''

Finally, I noticed a sad reference to classical RPG mechanics, the fact that you need time for casting "spells" and time to "recharge" after casting. However, I don't want to jump the gun here. We don't know yet if for magick you're limited to use your own energy, instead of also controlling energy all around you, and they might still lose the nonsense about casting and recharging. Spell is an inappropriate term here, as it has nothing to do with simply controlling the elements, but rather with ritualistic magick.

Grade: 7.5/10

Chapter 2
More explanations on the mechanics have been given. I took the test and Fire resulted as second attunement, which was quite proper. However, some options in the test were quite ambiguous, which would make it difficult to reverse engineer their Attunement Placement test. They seem to have garnered a fair understanding of the elements on the personality side, yet lacking in other things such as environmental dispositions (seasons, climates, and so on). I took a test on my second device and I resulted a Fire-att again, after a tie with Air, meaning the test isn't completely broken, yet the number of questions is too little to constitute a deeper inquire in any elemental dominance.

The Pitch Black outfit looks really good for a change. I was not so impressed with the female outfit, which looks like it was made for a nun, which is ridiculous in a magickal setting. There was no sign of Beckett in this Chapter, which is a turn down.

Score: 6.5/10

Chapter 3
Introducing tiers is a welcome innovation, since it pretty original and unique to this game. The current tiers being: Now, a brief description of the elements as they intended is provide in dialogue lines with Mr Kontos. Someone else is already gathering that and, despite the nature of my criticism, I see no reason to provide a duplicate. I will only provide commentary. The Moon element hasn't been discussed yet and there is no indication anyone could be Moon-Attuned or using Moon magick, aside from the hypothesis that the Mirror Reflection could. Aside from the tiering system being original, that's where the praise ends. A better tiering system, in respect to number 8, would rather be: Since we're going higher, we should pick things that the lower elements have in common. All elements have their polarity. They're either all monopolar, depending on the branch of science you're studying, or they all have different polarities. In the monopolar branch, Fire and Air are electric, Water and Earth are magnetic; in the heteropolar branch, Fire is electric, Water is magnetic, Air is bipolar (electromagnetic), Earth is tetrapolar (electromagnetic, magneto-electric, double magnetic, double electric).
 * First-tier (lowest): Fire, Air, Water, Earth.
 * Second-tier (mid): Wood, Metal.
 * Third-tier (highest): Sun and Moon.
 * Fire: I have no quarrels with this description, even though it's quite lacking. The most important thing that's missing is any reference to Fire being correlated to will and thus willpower, the optimistic nature and leadership ability. These all come naturally from planets like Sun, Mars and Jupiter, all fire planets. It's quite odd for the desert thing with the djinns to be a preference for Fire-atts. In Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine, fire-dominant people actually hate environmental heat. I guess they didn't do their homework well.
 * Water: Will comment when all data are available for me to read their version.
 * Air: No comments. It's a bit lacking but it's a good summary.
 * Earth: I will comment when I've gathered all the data from dialogues.
 * Wood: This is actually the element most related to the source/Prima Materia, ether. That's because it related to all elements. For a tree to grow, it must be nourished by water, minerals from the earth, air and light (which is fire). It's Akasha. Putting it in second-tier is ridiculous. I will comment specifically when I read the whole description. For now, I only see a mix of Water and Earth.
 * Metal: this in Chinese cosmology is partially related to the air element. I don't dwell much on the Chinese sciences as they seem to be more suited to the Asian physiology and meta-physiology, rather than being universal like the Western, the Northern and other Eastern sciences, which all spawn from the primordial Vedic system anyway. Primordial, not modern. Now, for the commentary of the paragraph... From the description given in the game, sounds like they made it to be a combination of Earth and Fire.
 * Sun: Here I can still complain about willpower but at least they nailed the optimism and made a veiled reference to leadership ability. I don't see any descriptor that would hint at the love for the spotlight, always being in the centre of attention, which is very Sun-like.
 * First tier: Fire, Water, Air, Earth
 * Second tier: Electricity, Magnetism
 * Third Tier: Light and Shadow

Honestly, I would have made a 10-element system this way, as 10 is the number of perfection and refinement: Regardless of the tier, I find that the highest element should of course be the source of all elements, life and magick. Call it Ether, Akasha, Prima Materia, Source, the All, no other nonsense can be placed there as ninth element, using the current system. And let's place it in the middle of the octagram at this point, the Star of Isis. Finally, I'm so glad that we got to see Beckett again. His face when I admitted it was my fault at the end of the chapter for priceless for a few seconds. He surely didn't expect me not to blame him. Here's still hoping that we'll get him as a LI, otherwise there's no one interesting. Romantic relationships need both substance (personality) and expression (appearance). I won't have my MC date Griffin just because he's a nice personality. Friendships go with substance only, as far as I am concerned.
 * First tier: Fire, Water, Air, Earth
 * Second tier: Electricity, Magnetism, Gravity
 * Third tier: Light, Sound
 * Fourth tier: Akasha/Ether

Score: 7.5/10