I'm currently using a Dell Inspiron 1420 laptop bought for RM 2599. It comes with 250 GB, 2 GB RAM, an Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 processor and Windows Vista Basic. Only until today have I realised that I can't type in Chinese (Mandarin) with it, though I can read normal Chinese words on display. Still, sometimes, the characters will turn out funny for me - imagine a foreigner swearing at you in a foreign language, without using the symbols '!@#$%^'....Yea, it's something like that.
So it turns out that I just bought a game DVD, which is 'Princess Maker 4'. The game is essentially about you being a father (I know, I belong to the female species, but the game still sounds fun) to a daughter which seemingly comes to you because your ex-girlfriend/wife gave her to you for some reason (I will explain why I sound like a retard/person with Alzheimer's later). When the game starts, your daughter is already 10 years old, and your butler helps you to take care of her too. It's hard being a single parent, isn't it? You get to schedule your daughter's life - either you let her work, go for training, go on vacation or rest, either at home or in town. All the decisions you make will affect her stats either by increasing or decreasing them. And believe me, it's hard to increase the positive stats without decreasing some of them.
Now the problem comes: I can read Chinese, and the game is patched in Chinese. However, only a small portion of the words are displayed in Chinese, while the other essential ones (such as dialogue, people telling you how your daughter is progressing in her studies, are displayed in boxes. Yes, they are square boxes which only the computer and a genius can read. As I can't really understand Japanese (they speak in the language), I can only guess what is happening. I ran the game on my friend's laptop with Windows XP, and the characters show up perfectly 0_o Isn't that discrimination?
Then, I tried to download the Chinese language for my Vista, and the official website stated that it is not available for Vista Basic *shakes fist at whoever made that decision* and that means I still can't understand the game.
Even though all this happened, I still played the game a couple of times and had a different ending each time. Still, it was hard for me, especially when I have to make choices. I mean, how do you choose between the top and bottom choices when both say '00000' and '00000' (imagine the 0 are boxes).
Despite all these, the game is really nice to play. From what I gather from the pictures, you were a warrior in the past, and your ex-girlfriend or wife gave the baby to you because she was going to die soon or something, or maybe it was because you belong to different worlds. Then, some of the jobs available are really funny, like working on a farm, being a maid, working in a casino, being a private tutor and lots more. Somehow, I feel that I'm using my 'daughter' to earn money =.="
Apart from jobs, you can also send your daughter to classes. From fighting, etiquette and magic to dancing, it's kinda hard to decide what skills you want spend money on to develop in your daughter. I usually go for Magic though, it helps me get into the demon world easier.
Your daughter has a stat called 'Fatigue' - when you send her to classes or do errands, her fatigue will increase slowly. If you are not careful, she will fall sick and spend the whole week in bed. In Princess Maker 4, time is precious. Really precious. Still, letting her rest is the most fun part in the game. You can either let her lounge around in town, or bring her on a vacation. The former is free and you get to meet a lot of people (which means more job opportunities and more fame, another stats) while the vacation costs 30G per day, which is really costly unless you work your daughter to the bone to let her afford this vacation =D When your daughter reaches 14 years old, she will start to meet guys: from left - the demon prince, the old school human charming prince and the dragon prince < 3
On a positive note, I just downloaded the English patch for the game, and hopefully the whole game will be displayed in English for me next time =) If it does, I will post the screenshots on my blog.
By the way, yesterday my friends and I smuggled some shandy into our hostel. The word 'smuggle' is used because alcohol is not allowed in the hostel, together with all the stuff which are 'haram' (meaning something like illegal in the Muslim context). Not only that, I went and buy a J.D. Robbs/Nora Roberts book 'Creation in Death' for RM 19.90 too. I just love her books, and the couple Roarke and Eve Dallas is just my favourite in the fictional world < 3 Imagine the woman, marry Roarke but not taking his surname o_O And they lived happily ever after......I'm just kidding. They have had some disputes, mainly about their jobs, as Eve is a lieutanent while Roarke is the owner of a multinational security company, and he specialises at hacking. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the story is set in the futuristic world, somewhere in 2060 I guess.
Wish me luck in playing Princess Maker 4 - assignments have not been given out yet and I have a lot of free time on my hands =D
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