I’ve previously reviewed Wand of Fortune and it’s fandisk so this is more a commentary/review about the game system/port of the Vita edition. No spoilers here just general thoughts on the port.

What’s New (+ Tips)

• A face portrait on the bottom left added for Lulu (was in the 2nd game but not the first.) Lulu also is now voiced by Horie Yui in the repeated scenes such as better cards, schedule picking etc. To be honest, after a while it got kind of annoying constantly hearing the same “Ashita mo ganbarou!” or “Yatta! Watashi no kachi!” about 10+ times per route（；＾ω＾）….
• They call her name if left default, but all the lines with her name are completely re-recorded and sound really different than the original. They couldn’t hire new seiyuus for other NPCs though or rehire the old ones cause they didn’t call out Lulu’s name when it came up lol.
• You can no longer play better cards every night to try to get all 30 in one route. You can only play them on Fridays because you only do 1 thing M-F now. Other thing is there’s a bonus better card now – a new liar card that has a new illustration by Kagero. Est, Lagi and Julius were my favorites. Once you get the better cards in the game, you need to then play the guys 5 more times. Also this time they’ve reduced to “2 wins” per better card instead of 5 like in the original so you have to play basically 15 better cards per character. It appears that if you do some cards and finish a route, but don’t complete all of them in 1 run – you will start the next route and have to do the cards you already did over again because while they “appear” to be there, they’re not “active” so only do better cards of 1 guy per route (doesn’t have to be the same guy as your route – IE I did Julius cards in Ami’s and Alvaro’s cards in Julius’ routes.)
• Animations for the study sessions with senseis are super fast now even if you’re on auto mode.
• You can now pick 1 week’s worth of schedule so I referenced Choro’s guide BUT I used Momokan’s to see how much % of each property I needed by a certain week. (Some characters need less than 50% for friendship end some need less than 60% and if you go over you’re headed for bad end.) There’s only like 1 night now and weekends where you freely move around which means no more getting all better cards in 1 route like before…BUT you can now just easily get them within the guys’ routes themselves. The annoyance though is the evening scenes are random now, rather than you picking who to interact with. Your routine basically becomes study with sensei M-F with 1 day for a mission or a “yasumi” so that your weekend is free for a date event OR the mission you picked during the week. Once you complete the romance route and finish the missions, when you go back to do the friendship route, you can ignore missions and just use the weekends to buy more items at Solomon’s store for your trophy. (***Whether or not you need them for the trophy I don’t know but I got them all anyway.***)
• Solomon’s item shop is basically useless now? They kept adding items to it to make the game easier but now they just nerfed the whole game and basically it no longer serves a purpose. Seems like you just buy the items for collection purposes/to get a trophy probably? You can give the items as a present in the beginning if You want to raise affection super fast but I’ve done several routes without ever giving a present and it barely mattered. Still RNG on the item buying which is annoying af since you can’t get the magical hand until the end to let you guarantee to get the items.(By the time I got it I think I had every item from the shop anyway sigh.)
• Memories are no longer a random thing you find in an open area. They appear to fill in if you meet certain ‘requirements’ Source. Once you finish a route it will appear like the last 2 jewels are missing but 1 you get from completing both ends (which you won’t see until the jewelry box opens) and the other you get for completing the fandisk portions.
• When going on dates you almost ALWAYS have to go the mystery portrait (不思議の絵） to get the guys to come and ask you. The guide says you will pick “of course” as your choice but that only ever came up maybe 3 times for me in the whole game. Otherwise they ask -> lulu ALWAYS agrees -> date happens. If you’ve seen this dialogue you may not even realize she agreed or disagreed cause you’ll skip right through it. So my tip is ALWAYS quick save before going to the picture and if Saturday comes up and it says “No mission” that means you have no mission AND NO DATE. EMERGENCY QUICKLOAD! Sometimes it would take 2-3 quick loads to successfully schedule a date. Annoying.
• Friend ends have new cgs and trophies so you gotta do them  but bad ends don’t appear to – but if you’re on track to a bad end, stop by solomon shop, get items you don’t have and they will be saved in your collection. Make the most of your failures!
• You don’t need to pick every choice in the missions but certain missions require you to pick a certain choice in order to get an “item” that will be added to your item collection – whether or not this is needed for the trophy I don’t know. I got them all just in case.
• In the FD part, best way for anata to issho “negative” response is to just spam the same choice over and over cause the guy will get annoyed and you will rack up -9 points fast.
• And the biggest tip I have is, SAVE every 4-5 weeks for each guy. You have a ton of save slots, you can afford to do it. If you mess up, too much property, not enough property etc – easy to load and redo only a couple weeks instead of redoing the WHOLE route.

Thoughts on Everything

Was it worth it? Probably not. If it’s not your first time playing the game, I think getting the artbook would have been a better choice. I’m also the kind of person who doesn’t really replay otome games and enjoys them the 2nd time. Once I know what happens, my brain just…doesn’t focus? Also when I play a game without having to pay attention/take notes for this blog my mind kinda…wanders off lol. The new CGs were gorgeous. You could really see how the artist leveled up but I think the artbook would have sufficed honestly. While they “cut down” on the system, it’s still unplayable without using a guide (I basically used 2 and referenced a 3rd one which is sad.)

The shortening of the schedule and picking “weekly” rather daily cut out a lot of time. Also not having to rng spam search for memories helped a lot as well. That said though, ultimately I got to the end with a “whatever” feeling about any of the “plot”. Lulu is still a great heroine, her interactions with Alvaro and Elbert were definitely my favorite. I also disliked Est a lot less now that I’m experienced with all of his tsuntsun 😂.  The better cards were still annoying RNG. They shortened how many you needed but I struggled with certain characters like  Alvaro and Elbert. My strategy was to see if they had a pattern, and then basically whatever card they used, my next card would be the one that their “previous card” would have beaten since you know they were unlikely to use that. (Sometimes this backfired if they used light/dark but worked MOST of the time.) You need to get all the better cards, including Ami and Elbert to complete the gallery. Also make sure you are playing as “Lulu” against them or it will NOT count.

Overall it was a valuable lesson that I will not only not buy the 2nd game’s Vita port, but I will probably stop buying Vita ports of games I’ve previously completed. It just doesn’t interest me, not even when they add beautiful artwork. I think I will just stick to buying artbooks instead or scourge the net for a CG pack 😂. If this is your first time with WOF, then definitely get the Vita ports because they DID make it easier than the PSP/PS2 counterparts and you get the bonus of larger and new CGs. If the Lulu name calling volume bothers you I think if you just change her name they will just not call it at all. It did bother me a bit but I dunno hearing Suzuken go ~Luluchan~ was delicious. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)❤