It's a common behavioral trait among us gamers to loathe intrusive advertisements within the games we play. We tend to think that the developers are total sellouts and that they taint the gameplay with ubiquitously annoying marketing gimmicks from their money-hungry sponsors, coming in the form of either a poorly conceptualized corporate avatar or direct injection of the product in question as a key item.
However loathsome it comes off as, the fact remains that it is oftentimes a necessary evil. Also, you have to admit that some gimmicks actually work and enhances the experience instead of taking away from it. For instance, if you take a battle-oriented galge like Twinkle Crusaders and crowd their existing female populace with the femme fatales of Dengeki Bunko and other greats from Ascii Media Works, what do you get? Twinkle Crusaders Starlit Brave!!, a mish-mash of moe madness packed in a bonus UMD from the limited edition pack of Twinkle Crusaders GoGo!!
No matter how annoying she was, VP Misa wasn't tsundere enough. We need someone like Taiga Aisaka to even things out.
The story in Starlit Brave starts around late December, where the main plot in Kuru☆Kuru would be close to concluding. (that being said, it would be unwise to play this game unless you've gone through the original first) Shin Sakuraba gets a rude awakening one morning when the notorious Palmtop Tiger threatens to kill him for breaking and entering (without realizing that she's not even in her apartment, much less her own dimension) and poor Shin is forced to fight her one-on-one. Despite his Demon King powers, the Palmtop Tiger proves to be a tough match. They later call a truce, and would eventually find that there were other girls displaced all over Ryusei City by the power of Le Cleir. Shin has to find his fellow Student Council members to help him round up the lost girls and get them back to their respective dimensions before Christmas!!!
Gluttons unite! Sally-chan and Yui Inaba don't know each other too well, but love for donuts brought them close.
While a main plot point exists in Starlit Brave!! (which includes a very epic Taiga vs. Shana standoff sub-scenario), it's mainly focused on the battling aspect than anything else. The city map still gives you location choices, but the order of girls you take on are irrelevant, as long as you win all the fights that come your way. The guest characters have their own special abilities, like Feena Fam Earthlight's EX Prohibit, which stops the opponent's SP gauge from increasing; and Yui Inaba's EX Umai Stick, which restores HP at triple the amount of Lolotte's EX Healing.
Cute may be justice, but Ana Coppola wasn't given enough justice in this game, and that bothers me.
Like in Kuru☆Kuru, finishing Starlit Brave will allow you to retry certain battles in Brave Mode (along with a few bonus group fights), but there is also an arcade-style VS Mode available from the get-go, where you can select characters (including previously unplayable enemies) to practice usage and timing of their EX Skills. The guest characters have to be unlocked first though.
A 9999 HP enemy with EX Judgment? No sweat! Feena's EX Prohibition will make things easier for the team.
For the people who fell in love with Kuru☆Kuru's battle system and have been following the games/anime of the featured guest characters, Starlit Brave!! is a very nice bonus, adding more hours of insane static bash-em-up goodness. Sadly, despite being marked as CERO D, none of the guests will bare their pantsu. You'll just have to make do with the original SC cast, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in my opinion.
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