The Adventure of Hourai High School (1996)

Beat. The 3 clubs that I joined first were gaming, sci fi and computers. Sounds about right for me though I would actually prefer archery and swords, which I could not join until level 10. After those I did football for the hp boost, magic for stat boosts and surgery. I ended up mastering most clubs. The beginning was reasonably challenging though I never actually had to use consumables. By about chapter 3 or 4 the game became easy to the point of triviality. Only used an item to cure sick once or twice for the entire game, otherwise no consumables needed. Only used healing skills a handful of times and never needed it for for the mid and late game, including the final boss. Random battles were always auto battle and not even bother watching. Bosses were triple thrusts, lower defense and regular attacks. The majority of skills were never used. The only slight challenge was the final boss used an instant death move that killed the protagonist and Haru, but I won the next turn.

I ended at level 60 and used the default party of Daichi, Hinako and Haru for the entire game. I did recruit most other characters but never saw a point to use them even though some seem objectively superior. I did give them some clubs but never needed them. The game was so easy that I took off everyone's gear to deliberately get them killed because I was stuck beyond a point of no return with a game breaking translation glitch. It took over half an hour to wipe the party. 4 times the translation broke the game at the end of chapters and I had to use the actual in game saves to switch to the Japanese version to get past the glitch. I also had a couple of glitches from the talisman spell and revival item. By the mid game I was bored due to lack of challenge but was enjoying the story. I did not feel incentivized to optimize the team, find secrets (only found 1 wonder) or have the best gear. The limited inventory started to annoy me near the end as I was finding so much high end gear specific to certain characters and often getting rare drops from enemies. I kept having to throw stuff away. I also found all of the party members outside the main 3 to be unlikable in certain ways to me. I tried to romance Julia but that was a no. Looks like you only get a specific girl after the ending, but she has a serious problem. See spoiler at the end.

Overall decent and quite interesting game. The story and characters were great but the gameplay left a lot to be desired. The main problem is lack of challenge, which I think was due to the xp boost from the computer club. Not just high stats but the free healing from frequent level ups, all made more egregious due to the obnoxious encounter rate. I think the game would have been better with a fixed number of battles.

Akiko is the most attractive girl in the game (other than Julia if she counts), and the game strongly implies that she likes the hero and they would date post game if you want. The problem with her though is that she is a guy who was recently turned into a woman by magic. Which makes me think; what would my limit be with someone like that. Never thought of that before. Would I have sex or even go all the way to full blown relationship with a woman that is biologically a woman but used to be male, but that I never knew as a male. If I knew her as a male before I think it would be too weird, and what if the magic wears off? But then what if she is super gorgeous, legit thinks and feels like a woman and has wisdom and interest benefits from experiencing both genders? Perfect woman or too weird?