Long Long Spell:

The latest Heaven Burns Red event was another tearjerker, as expected of something written by Jun Maeda.  This time we got the long-awaited backstory of Akari and her tennis team senpai.  It made me like Akari and Mikoto more than before, but still not enough to consider them wonderful characters.

The plot content was of course the highlight of the new material, but there were some other important additions.  First off, a new song was released for this event, 'Long Long Spell.'  It's very good.  I immediately downloaded it, listened to it 100 times, added it to my Music Hall of Fame, and promoted it to 3-star.  I made room by kicking out a Valkyrie Profile song and demoting Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies to 1-star.  Who needs Tchaikovsky when you have Jun Maeda?

Next off, the new score challenge offered the nordstrom crystal I needed to introject Vivifying Light.  Now I can repair shields in intense fights, increasing my durability dramatically.  I also got dungeon passes which let me improve my ice ring collection to on par with my other rings.  The flashback passes allowed me to level Hisame to max.  It also netted me 3 protean shards which will help out towards a level 3 limit break for Isuzu or Ichiko someday in the future.

I got a satisfying high score of 423,000+ this time around, 100k better than last time.

The most exciting aspect though were the new memorias on offer.  Misato in a Santa suit and Mari and Ichiko in wedding dresses.  I spent $70 dollars on their new paid quartz offering and got 7 SS Memorias, but sadly not the pretty new ones I wanted.  The SS Memorias I got do have some limited value, though.  There was base Yuina, getting her to limit break 1.  If base Yuina is fully upgraded to level 4, it improves the stats of her other memorias by 10%, so in the long term base Yuina SS Memorias really pay off.  There was base Miya, which is a new light-element SS Memoria for me, an element I'm generally short in.  There was fox Miya, which got her fox form to limit break level 1.  There was base Karen, Tenne and Sumomo which were essentially worthless.  Best of all, I got maid Hisame, which gets her to limit break level 1.

The max level of a character remains consistent across all Memoria, so maid Hisame is as high-level as pajamas Hisame.  Now that maid Hisame has a limit break, she also gets the inspiring spark ability, which regenerates 3sp per turn instead of the regular 2sp.  This makes maid Hisame a seriously viable fighter in high-end content, so long as she's facing off against a dark-vulnerable opponent.  There are times I'd prefer her over pajamas Hisame.  Plus maid Hisame is beautiful so it's great that I can actually use her now.

Probably all together not worth $70 but oh well, sometimes I'm lucky and sometimes I'm not.  As a consolation prize, Heaven is gifting everyone who logs in for the next 10 days a free SS Memoria, so maybe I can get Santa or Wedding Dress then.  That will be my last chance.

Meanwhile, the next heroine I courted in Noble Works was Shizuru.  She's a twintailed loli with black hair and red eyes, a rare combination I only remember in Nico outside of here.  She's a perfect oujo-sama, well trained and behaved, but she actually aspires to live more normally and enjoy simple things like fast food.  She also decides to date a commoner (the pauper doppelganger), preferring him over the prince.  I like how direct and sincere she is, as well as hardworking and responsible.  Plus twintailed lolis are beautiful.  Anyway, she was good enough to qualify for my wonderful hall of fame, so I kicked Mei from Dal Segno out to make room.  Mei doesn't even have a route, she's a minor side character, so she never really belonged.  (Of course, maybe she did have a route in the Dal Segno fandisk, but I'll never know because it was never translated.  *sigh*.)