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Current music:	Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 2nd Kiss - Stay

La corda d'oro rough guide and random rants~
Uni has started today! I will be busy again from now on... Hopefully I will not be as busy as last year *prays*! I watched the rest of Ouran and Honey & Clover II and the first episode of La corda d'oro just before uni started~ I am a little sad that both Ouran and Hachikuro have ended. I love these two series so much! The ending for Hachikuro is so sad, yet it is very appropriate. And I can't believe that Hagu chose Shuu-chan in the end... Aren't those two suppose to be relatives?! Shuu-chan has always been the daddy of Hagu... Why did you change so suddenly? Anyway I am hoping that Ouran will have a second season *fingers cross*: I need more Tamaki/King baka-ness~ That reminds me! The seiyuu for Tamaki will be Light in Death Note! I just cannot picture Tamaki's voice going with Light's evil and suspicious face... *gets stabbed by Light's fans* I will be looking forward to his performance...

Horray for the release of La corda d'oro anime! The animation is so good and sparkly~ I am so touched! Please please keep that standard for the rest of the season! The animation for the opening song is sooo cool and I was fangirling for ages over it... Hihara and Tsukimori in particular *stares afar*... I am kinda hoping that the anime won't follow the manga. The manga is a little dull and slow in progress, thus please bring some actions on in the anime!

I have a quick browse of the Princess Princess D series and I was quite disappointed with it. I kept telling myself that they are not bishies enough and that they have weird postures! I am not sure whether I should follow the rest of it... I should really spend more time on ren'ai games than watching it right? I have too many things to go through! I need to play Hana ki sou on PS2 like now... I am in love with the art *_*. For the past week I have managed to get Sirius, Ark and Lute's endings on Fantastic Fortune 2. I am more in love with the threesome relationship after I have obtained Ark and Lute's endings *hearts*! Maybe more on that later ;^^.

As requested and in celebration of the release of the anime, here is a very brief explanation on the gaming system of La corda d'oro XD. I will be going through:

- how to get the music pieces from the fairies.
- how to get to know the pieces.
- the details about practicing the pieces.
- other factors that are necessary in order to practice or perform some pieces.
- how to raise the guy's affection for the protagonist.
- the requirements for getting the normal and rival endings.


La corda d'oro - a rough gaming guide

To get the music pieces, you enter an area (such as the forest or the front gate), head to the main menu, select the first option (the button with the violin) and then the first option again (the button with the music note). Choose a piece that you want to practice and the style of the piece. You can use an equipment to help raise your status more quickly. The boxes on the top inform you of your level and how good you are at the piece that you have chosen (100 is the maximum for practicing). Press enter and you would have practiced your piece! A special music is played after that and a count-down is started. During that time, you would have to run around the place crazily to collect music fairies! The music fairies carry new music pieces in which you can practice. After each competition, there are always new music pieces to collect so make sure that you get most of them! Always always train yourself to know the new music pieces instead of the old ones for the competition ahead! If you don't it's virtually impossible to get first, second or third place!

After you have collected the fairies, the new music pieces should be added to your collection~

Ideally it would be good to choose a piece and focus on that one only, since you are only playing one piece in the competition. In order to perform the music piece, you would have to 'know' the piece, or have a feel for the melody that you are going to play. In order to do that, firstly you would have to practice the piece until it has reached 20 for all of its styles. Once you have reached that, a dialog would appear to tell you that you can search for the fairies (again!). This time the fairies-searching method is different from the previous one! You walk around the campus looking out for places where the music would suddenly change. The change should be a gradual one and as you get closer to the fairy, the music would get louder. There is a fairy for each piece and for each style. Unlike the fairies before, there is no time limit for this! When you have obtained them, go to the main menu again, choose the first option (the button with the violin) and select the four option (the button with the bell). A list should appear showing you the pieces that you can get to know. Select any of them to begin the knowing process~

The knowing process is weird! I still don't understand the point of it... ;;^^. Anyway, the fairy would take you to a stage of a theatre and one of the characters would be in role and talk about the piece. As he or she talks about it, the feelings that you should emphasis in your performance are listed on the right- hand side of the screen as boxes. All you do in there is to choose an answer. A few more boxes would appear after you have chosen. My advise here is to choose the right option so that there are as many that are highlighted as possible. Not all pieces and options have highlighted boxes though. It is difficult to get them but try your best! They provide you a better chance of winning the competition! Now that's done, you can perform your pieces by going back to the main menu, then the first option and select the second option! The protagonist would be surrounded by a circle. It's preferable to have as many people as possible in the circle! That way there would be more people clapping at the end of your performance hence more BP ^.~!

Similar to practicing, you should get the performance level as high as possible. However the maximum status you can get by performing madly is 100 only! This can be extended to around 150ish if you manage to trigger some special events with a character and the protagonist dreams about it at night! These special events are really hard to get since each music piece and their styles relate to different characters. For example, if the music piece that you are aiming is a joyful and hippy one, Hihara would be the person most likely who triggers a special event. To obtain these special events, the protagonist would have to be quite familiar with a particular character. It would be perfect if you manage to trigger a special event for a music piece because if the performance level is more than 120ish, it's almost certain that you would get first place in the competition! Regarding the special events, I guess or I refer to peche every time since they vary a lot. The special events can be ignored if you are not aiming for the rivalry ending!

Some music pieces require the purchase of a book or a special item from the shops in order to practice or perform them. The books and the special items are on the shelf randomly!!! Hence it would be good to have an idea on the targeted piece and if it requires an item, check the shops everyday until you got it. To know whether you need an item for a piece, check up the information for the music pieces and see if your particular music piece has a book (a rectangle with a star in the middle) next to its progress bar. If it does and you don't have it, it would be grayish in colour, otherwise it would be golden. The name of the book can be read off by pointing the arrow onto it.

To raise a guy's affection for the protagonist, you would have to perform and perform and perform in front of him (aka include him in the circle when you perform) and occasionally speak to him. Sometimes events are triggered only if you speak to him so make sure that you speak to him often. To raise a guy's rivalry for the protagonist, make sure that you get first, second or third place in the competitions. Also you can raise the rivalry by playing certain pieces to him or having particular high statuses (level 4 for elegance or sadness... etc Or high BP if you are aiming for Yunoki). Be careful about this: Do not get his rivalry level lower than his affection! The cg events depend on that! Once his affection is near his rivalry level, stop performing in front of him. You can raise a bit of his affection level by selecting certain clothes for the competitions but it does not have a large effect.

Different to Haruka games, you would have to keep your loyalty in La corda d'oro ;^^. Aim for one guy only! It is extremely difficult to use the save/load method and get multiple endings in a few goes. Each guy has two endings: the normal ending and the rivalry ending. Basically the normal ending is just a simple love ending. His affection for you is high and you two go out after the music festival is over. The cg for this ending is always sets on the street. As for the rivalry ending, you would have to keep his affection and rivalry high to get it. The cg for this ending is always the character playing his instrument. Again I am not really sure... for the PSP and the PS2 versions, there should be short movies accompanying the rivalry endings but not the normal endings right?

There is a prince in every game and for this one, the prince is Tsukimori (aka the blue hair bishie XD)~ His rivalry ending is difficult to get! Nevertheless once you get the hang of the gaming system of La corda d'oro, it is a very fun game to mess around with! The replay value is very high too as you can never get all the cgs for a character in one go (which is a little annoying sometimes). I hope this rough guide helps everyone out there!