Introductory Notes

Background

Tenerezza was developed by AquaPlus, which is known by more people for its line of romance games such as To Heart 2 and Utawarerumono.

Regarding translating

This game has a fair number of spoken lines with no text to accompany them, so I won't be bothering to write a script for this game since it would probably take me days or weeks to get the romaji figured out and just partial translations. My ears are poor when it comes to catching the correct romaji, so it's very time-consuming and I would rather avoid it altogether. Additionally, AquaPlus used a rather funky font for all of the dialogue, which makes it difficult for me to figure out what some characters are or even how many strokes there are in a character.

Hiragana and katakana are no problem, but sometimes some kanji characters with only a few strokes can look like more or fewer due to the font used in the game. I ended up having to ask one of my parents to translate "fang" (牙) for me. The character "fang" has 5 strokes, but in the game, it looked like 3. Sort of like "moon" (月) with one less stroke.

With more regular fonts like those used in Chantelise, it's much easier for me to figure out the number of strokes and what strokes to use to find a specific kanji character. I apologize for the shortcomings of this (being that players won't really be able to understand much of what's going on story-wise).

Nicely animated, but poorly configured

I will likely only be playing Tenerezza long enough to get enough of the information down to get through the game. I have a great concern regarding the controls. For a game that was developed by an established company, the controls are very stiff and using the mouse or a gamepad makes no difference. I strongly recommend not using the mouse for this game, except maybe for picking selections. The mouse interface is very, very difficult to use, making keyboard and gamepad the more sensible options.

I have an issue with the default keys personally. Even though AquaPlus used the first letters of each command for the most part, it still feels very difficult for me to remember. Plus, they're located pretty far from one another, which doesn't help either. With the closest default keys for the 3 attacks being Ctrl, Space and F, I feel I would need to keep my pointer finger on F, my thumb on Space and my pinky on Ctrl for the most comfort. Now, you may argue that these keys are probably the ones you'll be using most, but then you realize to change magic, it's the left and right Alt keys. In the end, for keyboard play, I wound up having to reconfigure all of the keys save for the directions (Z for action, X for sword/cancel, C for fairy, W for menu, A for magic cycle down and S for magic cycle up). I'm sure some people will recognize this setup as being based off EasyGamStation's default key configuration for Chantelise.

As if ergonomics wasn't bad enough, the response to commands is, sad to say, quite disastrous in 1.0.0.0. I find myself pressing the button at least twice, if not three times, sometimes for Tene to respond. Often it's when I want Tene to cast magic. I'm sure some people will say "You said it's only sometimes", but it's often enough to be a noticable issue. For AquaPlus to ignore this issue completely in both their PC and Xbox version is rather disappointing. The 1.0.0.1 patch appears to have fixed this particular issue.

Is it MY turn yet?

There are also some other issues that make me not want to play Tenerezza any more than once through including the ridiculously high threat level of the status effect Hold, and the almost-completely-fixed camera, amongst other issues. Hold, as I've explained further below, is the most dangerous status effect to be inflicted with in the entire game. Hold makes you unable to do anything. The only key that will respond while you're "holded" is the key to end the game. Additionally, the status effect lasts a surprisingly long time. The final boss can inflict Hold on you over and over simply by using the same attack over and over on you (and he will, given the chance). In my opinion, this is a great display of poor programming, as once you get inflicted with it, it doesn't matter how much HP you have, you're as close to being guaranteed to die as you can get. In most games, attacks are more random, giving players a slightly better chance to survive to at least heal themselves a little before being struck with the same status effect again.

Although I have not witnessed it first hand, I read that in a review of the Xbox version, a player kept pressing the menu button and when it finally came up, they were just about to get hit. They used HP recovery items and in the menu, it showed that the HP was recovered. However, upon exiting the menu, the game engine didn't register the HP recovered (though the items disappeared from the player's inventory) and the player's HP was reverted back to its previous state, causing the hit to lead to instant death.

If I close my eyes, maybe they won't see me

Regarding the fixed camera, in Tenerezza, the camera will move "slightly" into the direction that you're running towards. However, the camera will never completely turn away from north. When moving southward, you're able to see a fair amount in front of you, giving you a fairly okay warning of enemies that have spotted you. While moving westward or eastward, however, the situation is completely different. Your vision is so impaired that by the time you see certain enemies on your screen, it's already too late to attempt an attack. You'll just wind up getting hurt.

My legs, they do nothing

Although some may argue that it's what makes Tenerezza challenging, the fact that you're rooted in placed during the duration of casting a spell causes a lot of frustration of its own. In the beginning, this issue is great. If you're fighting an enemy that's fairly quick at turning, it hinders your chances of survival greatly, especially if you get surrounded. The Time Fragment accessory helps somewhat, cutting the casting period down by half and thus allowing you to begin moving around the point that the magic appears on the screen. However, at times, the faults in the controls can still cause some troubles and root you in place for some time.

"I told you to shoot ACROSS her nose, not UP it!"

The lack of a targetting system makes using certain magic troublesome. Although it's fairly easy to target with most spells, the enemy-seeking feature of Wind Cutter was very poorly implemented. Rather than locking onto the closest enemy to you, like it should, it often targets the furthest enemy from you within a certain range. Because of this, if the blade curves off towards that particular enemy, it's very possible to miss an enemy standing right in front of you and allow them to close the distance and hit you. I often find myself running away a lot or switching to another spell because of this.

Impressions

If you can stand the stiff controls, poor camera and reconfiguring the controls though, you might be able to enjoy Tenerezza. For people like me, which can't quite stand the faults that can be found in the game's system, I feel that Chantelise, Recettear and/or Gurumin (by Falcom) are much better alternatives.