To GREE or not to GREE

....

woah woah wait what WHAT THE EVERY LOVING FUCK WHAT

That's how he acts in the Gree version? He threatens sexual harassment/assault over her for a goddamn piece of cake? What the fuck, no, now I can see why people prefer Yu over him in the Gree version. Christ, that is just... I don't even know, just what the fuck man.

The Glenn I know isn't perfect, sure, and he does get jealous quite a bit, but when he gets jealous, he doesn't take his frustrations out on Protag-chan and instead simply just sulks off or huffs out of the room to avoid making a scene or whatever. And the Glenn I know who's asked "How is pinning a woman against a wall against her will telling her you love her?!" to

would definitely not assault someone over a goddamn piece of fucking cake. Seriously, Gree, wtf.

... So fuck the Be My Princess version of GREE, gotcha, I'll just. Stick to the Bodyguards one if I ever get the app, in the end.

Well, fuck Glenn's Valentine special event. Most of the content I've gotten from the Gree version has been really damn good.

I think Protag-chan may be the reason I like Bodyguards more than Princess. Despite the fact that Princess Protag-chan is supposedly a career woman and Bodyguard Protag-chan is a student, the latter is so much more in tune with her feelings and (as much as I hate the word) proactive. She admits that she fancies people and acts on it. And at least in the bits of the games I've played so far, there are a lot fewer misunderstandings based on people not communicating, which is one of my pet peeve plot clichés.

I'm also planning to leave the Glenn Valentine event for last, which means I probably won't get to it, as I'm still finishing up my 3rd path on there (Joshua). If I finish that up in time, I'll go for Roberto or Keith next. More tempted by Roberto due to liking him better so far, but Keith has a snazzy jacket. I wonder if they purposely put the nice completion items with the princes I don't like.

For those playing the GREE version of Ninja Love, is it worth it if I bought the main game but no side paths (only as I haven't played the bits I bought yet)? Is it a different story like the Voltage games, or is it the same as the one you buy?

Also, is anyone playing Kawaii Pet Megu? It's another GREE game, this time a virtual pet game, and unfortunately only the iOS version's been translated into English, but somehow I've become addicted to its cuteness.

Voltage released a third game for GREE - Celebrity Darling. Protag-chan wants to become an idol and meets famous entertainers along the way. The art is kind bugging me (yaoi hands everywhere), but the guys I've seen so far seem nice.

As far as I can tell, Ninja Love doesn't make any changes in the storylines between the GREE version and the paid version. The only difference I've noticed is the availability of the Hanzo route and the side stories.

Well, I know what I'm doing on my lunch break.

(Just progressed in Glenn's Valentine's event and he apologized without qualification, even said that he had no excuses for his horrible behavior. He is not forgiven, but at least he didn't blame Protag for his shittiness)

Thanks. I might wait until I've played everything in the version I bought (which could be a while, as not surprisingly, I have a large game backlog). The side stories might be worth it, but I've heard the timed scheme on it is more annoying than the Voltage ones, which are just the level of annoying that I can handle.

Celebrity Darling's only out for Android now. Hope it comes out for iOS soon, though I am tempted to "borrow" my husband's Nexus 7 to play it now.

Edit: Apparently they need SIM cards to be able to play them, so no Celebrity Darling for me yet.

"Content rating: low maturity"

I am not sure how to take this.

I find GREE's setup for Ninja Love generally less annoying than my brief experience with My Sweet Bodyguard, since it involves much less fiddling around with things that I have no interest in like gacha and paper-doll dressing up the protagonist and decorating a room. It's true that, especially the further you get into a route, the intervals between having to spend energy to proceed get really short - you have up to 5 energy, refreshing a point every 5 hours, and every consecutive day you log in you get a token award. Progressing through chapters costs energy and periodically there's a "barrier" that you have to unlock with passports, which can be bought with tokens. So there ends up being a lot of waiting to recover energy or build up tokens in order to buy passports, but no additional hoops to jump through. There's a Lucky Cat Slot but it's purely optional and you get a token for it just by logging into the game seven days in a row.

If you like the room-decorating and avatar dress-up stuff, granted, Ninja Love may be kind of tedious by comparison. For me, I just want to play the route, so the extra fiddly stuff just irritates me.

The Valentine's Day event confuses me.
Doing Roberto's route took me several days, because I had to get +3000 LovePoints for every mission, but today I went through Keith's route in one single sitting.

The Valentine's event is busting my chops with the love factors requirements.

Same here. The Valentine's event is so slow going, compared to the last events. And I have lots more time to play, as I'm between roles, so no work to interfere.

I don't know if the games have been out a full year or not, but I wonder if the same events will repeat each year so people can see routes and get the CGs they may have missed the first time around. I don't care about "beat X number to get the special item set", I just want to have a chance to see what I couldn't get to.

Really, Celebrity Darling? The other games give me best friends and co-workers to be my support characters, but you give me a younger brother who makes the deplorable :3 face, a gay make-up artist, a manager, and a CEO?

Ninja Love for Gree keeps making me sit through ads for the side-stories they sell for real money. And Ninja Love is way smuttier than the other Gree dating games. So I have to sit there and stare at stuff like this.

The three guys available in Celeb Darling so far:

Got through 4 princes on the Valentines event. Obviously I won't get through a 5th in a little over a day, so back to saving up for the dress for the next mission in the main game.

And supposedly Celeb Darling is coming out on the 22nd for iOS, so not too long to wait.

Just finished Edward's event. Only Glenn left now. I wonder if I manage to finish his event, would be the first time I'd ever get all guys done in time.

I decided to go after Haru in Celebrity Darling. All kuuderes, all the time.

So I'm in the 2nd chapter of Keith's Birthday Event and I forgot which one he was again til one of the celebrities showed up. And then I realized. This is the guy with the sexy Jan as his butler and who is pretty much in my bottom three rankings. But like, man. As a whole group, all the Princes are awesome friends. They pretty much ride up to escort the Protagonist away from the dangers of a confrontation. I'd watch a show where they just hang out and be awesome and stuff. This good thought is very soothing and distracting from the whole, "I'm making a sexy style dress for Keith's birthday because he likes that kind of thing and aaahhh self confidence issues" :(

Hey I'm brand spankin' new here but I had to chime in because I'm curious what Keith's little sister is like in the GREE version because in the non-GREE she says she wishes he had been "more forceful" with the protag so that she would stay with them which I took to mean "I WISH MY BROTHER HAD SEXUALLY ASSAULTED YOU SO YOU WOULD BE TOO ASHAMED TO LEAVE US."

...I am entirely sure that is not what she meant.

I am delighted that the medal gacha in My Sweet Bodyguard allowed me to get a Flavor Flav clock. I will never unequip it.

Just finished Keith event. And, no, Keith, being a possessive controlling jealous guy is not romantic.

I only downloaded My Sweet Bodyguard a couple of days ago and failed to finish Sora's hot spring event which in hindsight I probably shouldn't have started considering how even now I'm not even close to finishing Sora's main storyline but it's too late to finish his event and now I am sad. Celebrity Darling came out, though, so I guess that's okay~.

CelebDarling (Android) is so buggy.
Yesterday, it ate all my Love Passes by showing me the same fucking chapter five times in a row. Today my strength didn't decrease, so I could go to an audition at least 15 times.

Celebrity Darling finally came out for iOS a few days ago, and I have to say, the story might so far not be as interesting, but lots of the user interface quirks I hated seem to be handled better in this one. So hopefully they will update their earlier GREE games to follow them. (Greeting, for starters, is way faster and more efficient.)

I also just spent £5 on coins to increase my storage for Bodyguard. Can't lose that grilling cat it took me loads of gacha points to get! I've never bought anything in a freemium game before, so that says something. And I know I'll buy more storage and/or closet space later, next time I run out in any of the games.

Huh.

Thanks to the Lucky 24 and kickbacks from friends picking me to help guard, I've already gotten all the rewards from the "Hot Springs Another Story" event on My Sweet Bodyguard. All without spending a dime, just from regular guarding as my energy refilled.

Now to sit back and start hoarding free omelets.

Celeb Darling is killing me softly with it's ridiculous 18k requirement! Just barely made it to 10k...

I'm partial to The Fugees' cover of that song myself actually~! And uh. Hmm. Haven't managed to get beyond the prologue for Celebrity. Missed out on Hot Springs and White Day though my phone's a bit dead. It's pretty harsh when you have to get back after missing a few. D:

Voltage seem really greedy this time with Celeb Darling. It's so hard to progress, and it's too hard early on. I'm not particularly emotionally invested in CD's story, and if I hadn't played the other two games, I wouldn't be continuing. I think several of my mates have already dropped out already, which isn't a good sign.

Shame as they improved so many things, including greeting which is no longer a complete chore. But the event-style gacha (get items outright, nothing to sell, higher points to spin, etc.) makes it so hard to earn salary compared to the other two games.

I think this will backfire for them - people won't start spending money faster, they'll just drop out. I know I didn't spend any money in the other two games until I'd been playing for a few months and got emotionally attached. I never spend money on fremium games, so they obviously did something right for me, but I'm loathe to put money into CD as so far the story isn't as good, and I'm worried the progress will always be this slow.

Ugh, I know.
I restarted Sho's route in CelebDarling when I hit the 28k clothing mission, because I had like 8k and he was still at C (I really screwed up the choices the first time around). I'm now at the same point again and "only" managed to get 25k.
But I'm really liking Sho so far, so I'll at least finish his route before dropping the game.

I'm 1.5k from the 18k requirement. They're lucky that I have a need to finish things I start or else I would have given up already. They better fix DC before I finish Haru's route or I'm not going to play the other routes..

I've heard everyone in CD is stuck around C, so I don't know if that's a bug or if everyone's making bad choices. I also read on Tumblr that choosing "Her POV" gives you additional choices that raise your compatibility - I've chosen his so far, and I bet most other people are. I'm also noticing on Tumblr how ridiculously high the prices get the further you go, plus how much the later gacha spins cost. So far no one is happy with that and I could see this backfiring for Voltage as before their games were at least playable if you didn't pay.

I'm going ahead and playing through the end of at least one route, unless I really get bored with it. And at the very least I can laugh at the lack of any logical plot. It's not like the other two GREE games are realistic, but it probably hurts more that I know a bit about the music industry, whereas you can't really fault how realistic fictional princes of a fictional country are or know what it's like to suddenly find out you're the prime minister's daughter.

For the compatibility glitch in CD and (and this goes for anybody who's also playing Roberto's route in BMP or other routes that are buggy), you should directly contact Voltage about it. Scroll all the way down on the Top Page to the Help/FAQ section, click on it, click on the About Us (How To Contact Us show and click on that) to just send them a short message in order for them to fix it. They usually end up responding in a day or two, and it can save you from replaying the route in order to get the Secret Happy End (like I did :T).

Sho's affection went up to B after chapter 12 or 13 this time, so idk if it's a glitch? Maybe the game is just very anal about the right answers.

I'm so glad I saved every sandwich and whatnot in CelebDarling. I already got over 10k from the Lucky 24h thanks to that. I also like that you don't use 30 energy, but the normal 25.
Maybe the next clothing mission won't take several weeks to pass this time.