Hi mina-san today I have a new post about the Sonicomi Game, after I already showed you the insides of the limited edition box, this time I will talk about the Game itself. I already finished one of the 16 Endings, so I can give you a few infos, pictures and whatever about the gameplay and the setting, even though I couldn’t understand everything so far.

Preperations

Sonicomi is a japanese game and these guys from there won’t make it too easy for Gaijin like us. Before installing the game you have to set the locale setting of your OS to japan first.

Under Windows 7 it should work like this

So now one last step in advance, install the SdActi authentification tool and type in the code written on the SdActi manual. Now the Game can be installed and should start without problems.

Yeah I have triple core XD

Menue

The menu has a nice design and allows a smooth navigation, at first there are three main options, after you cleared one ending two new options will be unlocked, Free Mode and Clear List.

In Free Mode you can take pictures of Sonikowithout time limit or blinking Hud signs, you can dress her the way you want and can use every set you’ve unlocked in the Game.

There is side menu which lets you choose between different posing options, they differ from set to set and you can also trigger certain reactions of Soniko. In this mode the pictures you take are stored on your pc in 560×420 pixels. Clear List is just an overview about the endings you’ve cleared, there are 16 possible endings you also get an overview about the cleared client requests.

Setting

if you give the right answers Soniko goes doki doki

The player takes the role of Cameraman-san, like Producer-san in Idolmaster ^^. The player first gets in contact with Soniko on a concert during a failed stage dive of her.We talk a bit with her and say goodbye. The next day we see Soniko again as our model for the shooting. After that her manager is impressed by our job and Cameraman-san end up as Soniko’s official photograph.

The character of Soniko which most of you might know as Nitro+ mascot or just as illustration is very well fleshed out in the Game; she is cute, kind, a bit shy, sometimes insecure, but she’s also a very happy person. Soniko isn’t portrayed as a dumb sex bomb, she seems to have a real personality. Her voice is given to her by Ayano Yamamoto, a quite unique and cute voice

There are also other characters like Soniko’s devilish manager, her hot idol rival, Angie Gravite, the clients and so on. There’s also a guest appearance of Danny Choo’s Mirai.

Unlike in most visual novels, the Soniko character is rendered in 3D, while other characters remain 2D. Thx to 3D Soniko can show emotions in a more detailed way, she has lots of different face expression, expressive gestics and a certain body language. The backgrounds are 2 and 3D.

The Game centers around gaining Soniko’s trust and maybe her love as well as supporting her in becoming a fully fledged gravure idol. On several ocassions you can talk with Soniko by choosing one sentences on the screen, you have to click one of the sentences within the time limit.
There are also rare occassion where you can touch Soniko, you can click the spot where you want to touch, I don’t think she would like it, if you suddenly touch her boobs, not that I’ve tried it ^^.

The routes in Sonicomi are decided by the answers, actions and decisions you choose,the style of the outfits you give to Soniko are very important as well as the succes in the photomissions.

Photomissions

The action part of Sonicomi are the photomissions, where you do shootings with Soniko for several clients, the missions are divided into selecting the location, choosing a matching outfit for the clients request and doing the shooting. There are many different clothes and accessoires you can choose from in many colors and designs and more stuff can be unlocked during the game.

this menue shows your overall style that you achieved from your choice of outfits in the photomissions, the style decides about the routes you take

example 01- photomission

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QdEfoMermU

example 02 – dressing up

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ7XdMjR5fQ

Soniko shows different reactions to your choice of outfits and helps you with choosing the right outfit, when she jumps in the air and raises her hands you did a good choice and can go straight to the shooting. The controls are similar to an egoshooter, you can move with the WASD keys and aim with the mouse, with the space key you can crouch and with X and C you can rotate the camera and a few more keys, in the mission you’ll probably be too busy too use all these keys.
The ENTER key is helpful when too many targets appear at the same time. It will clear all the targets at once, however you can use this key as long as camera symbols (D) remain in the bar.

You have to hit all the circles within the time limit, for getting better scores you should wait until the circles turn pink. When the stamina rows (A) turn pink you have to hit the right mouse button, a menue appears, where you can scroll with the mousewheel, motivating Soniko can be done by selecting the speech bubble, everytime you do this the motivation meter (B) goes up.

When it is full Soniko goes into action mode and strikes more dynamic poses which give you more chances to improve your score. You can even give her a short break to recharge her energy meter (C), which is neccesary during most shootings, without energy the shooting will be over. With another option you can let Soniko change her pose, from standing to sitting and lying down.

When the shooting is over you can see how you performed and how accurate your chosen oufit was, you can score SS, S, A, B, C, and D. D is pretty bad and will always give you a Bad Ending, it can be quite frustrating when you fail like this and it makes Soniko sad

Graphics & Sound

The visual appearance in this Game is a mix of 2D and 3D, during normal story Soniko is always 3D, the other characters are just 2D. In the photomissions everything is 3D. Soniko has some kind of cell shading and her motions are very refined, so she proably was rendered via motion capturing. The physix engine is responsible for the flow of her hair and the breast movement.

Sonicomi also makes use of effects like HDR, depth of field, soft focus and 8x anti aliasing. The effects are adjustable in different steps, surprisingly my machine can handle it at high quality.
The Game has a nice look, but there are a few flaws, the objects in the photomissions would look better with more detailed textures and also a few more polygons would have been nice, since some things appear quite chunky in the sets of the photomissions. Sometimes there are also a few clipping errors where Soniko’s body and her clothes intersect in a strange way.

The Soundtrack is cool, especially the theme song and the BGM, as I already said Soniko has a cute voice, but it’s a shame that the other characters have no voice.

Summary

Sonicomi is a nice Game and Nitro+ did a good job in giving their mascot a cute and likeable personality, in fact she is totally enchanting ^^. The story(at least what I understand from it) is nice and with 16 possible endings this Game offers a lot of playtime, even though I always ended with the same end so far, it’s quite tricky. The action part called photomission is fun and a curse at the same time, dressing Soniko in different fashion styles is fun even if you are restricted by the wishes of the clients and by Soniko’s reactions, quite a picky little girl ^^.

New clothes can be unlocked during the Game, there are a lot of different clothes and accesoires. The curse side is that the controls are not very precise during the photoshoot, maybe my mouse or I are at fault but sometimes it’s frustrating if you merely missed a target circle and the combo is corrupted, in my opinion the mouse aiming is a bit laggy. Another point of critic are the few save points in the Game, you can’t save before important decisions and you can’t save a certain outfit you’ve put on Soniko, the Game just allows you to save before a photomission and shortly after a photomission in most other visual novels you can save wherever you want.

I guess I couldn’t understand everything about the Game, because I can’t read a single japanese sign and AGTH won’t work so far, but that should be my impressions about Sonicomi from what I’ve understand, thx to years of watching anime I can at least understand some words Soniko says. Anyway the Game can be a lot of fun because of the interaction with the cute 3d Soniko.

If you have any questions about the Gameplay or the Game itself, feel free to ask me ^^

A trial version can be found here, for the 2.0 Version you also have to change your locale.

Sonicomi was made by Nitro+, the Sonicomi limited edition was available for 6,460 Yen and is already sold out as well as the normal version, thx to EMS shipping I received my copy last week.

Front and Back

The Game comes in a nice looking carton inside are the DVD with the Game, a five track Drama CD with the adventures of Soniko and her band Galaxy One, the manual for the Game, the manual for the copy protection system, many slips of paper, a guitar pleg, a card for the Nitro+ cardgame Card Masters/Dominion a picture frame like thing with a picture of Soniko inside which says “Our Memories – You and Soniko” XD Im a big Soniko fan, but Im not that obsessed with her character.

Booklet

There’s also a small book inside which has some Informations about Soniko and with illustrations from the game and illustrations from several artists. This is probably the nicest extra of this limited edition. I activated my badasss scanner to show you a few examples of the pages.

I scanned a few more of the Game Box contents, the manual cover, the front illustration picture which was attached to the box and the sheet with mixed illustrations of the cute Soniko.

Manual

medium size picture

Mixed Illustrations

It was the first time that I’ve ordered a japanese Game, well I somehow expected a bit more stuff to be included in this limited edition, maybe a poster, some stickers or something like that.
On the other hand, the Drama CD is very entertaining and funny, the box is nice and the game is working after some serious cursing of mine “Fuuu!” and it is quite entertaining to play the game.
I will write about my impressions of the Sonicomi gameplay in a different post, so stay tuned.

Magazine photography isn’t really my kind of sport, but theres always a first time for everything.

Some of the available outfits for Soniko in the game

The high gloss magazine contains informations about Soniko, the Sonicomi game, about all the merchandise and whatnot, on 47 colored pages everything is written in japanese. I would have liked to read the interview with Soniko’s voice actress Ayano Yamamoto, but since Im totally unable to read kanji, Im doomed just to look at colored pages ;p

Oh there are also a few polished artworks from inside the Game engine.

Merchandise, Merchandise, Merchandise

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Included in this magazine is a DVD-Rom with the Sonicomi Game Trial version, its nearly the same thing I’ve talked in my Sonicomi trial version impressions post, but Soniko has a different outfit in this trial version. Also a nice folded poster in B2 format was included.

This poster was my personal highlight in this magazine. I liked it so much that I’ve bought a non reflective glass frame to hang it on the wall. I love the illustration from Tsuji Santa with the attractive and cute looking Soniko, the contrast between her pink hair, the slightly tanned skin and the green couch looks damn nice. From close view the bend marks or folds are not so nice, but it can’t be helped. Maybe the folds will vanish a bit after it stayed in the frame some time.

The next Soniko related post will probably be about the limited edition of the Sonicomi Game which will be released on September 30th apparently it was delayed to November 25th.
Im curious which goodies will be inside. Maybe I’ll buy this upcoming artbook here as well XD

I’ve ordered the limited edition of the Super Sonico Game “Sonicomi” which is produced by Nitro+, the player takes the role of a professional photographer who supports Soniko with her starting gravure idol career and getting closer to her, the game will be out on September 30th.

A few days ago a free trial version of the game was released and I didn’t hesitate to download it.

On the start screen the animated Soniko is humming the official title song “Superorbital” of her game and gives us a warm welcome afterwards. In this trial version you have the choice between taking a peek in the story mode or just play the photoshoot mission. Aside from the normal visual novel options, like screen size or voice volume, there are also a few options for the 3D, like auto setup, frame rate, anti aliasing, soft focus, effect quality, HDR and Depth of field.

Story Mode

In the story our alter ego is a professional photograph. We have a job today and are taking pictures at a concert of a certain band, in the audience we see Soniko for the first time, later that night we get closer to her as she bumped into us after a failed stagedive and falls unconscious.
Of course we help her and start a conversation with Soniko who became a bit flustered after waking up. After thanking us for the help she leaves to enjoy the rest of the concert.

Soniko left quite an impressions on our alter ego, she even appeared in his dream, but then the alarm clock disturbs his sweet dream. And so we head off to work, outside of the office we notice Soniko. No time for a chat, we’re already late at work. It turns out that the model for today is Soniko, who is going to start her gravure idol career. Soniko tries to act cheerful and energetic, but she seems to be very nervous about her first real photoshoot, so we have to motivate her.

Now Soniko is emotionally ready and the first photoshoot mission starts, but at first you have to prepare her outfit, the location and the topic of the shooting are predetermined by the customer.

After the shooting there is a final conversation with Soniko and the boss and here the trial ends.

Photoshoot mission

As mentioned before there is a single photoshoot mission next to the story mode.

This part is really fun you have a few clothes to make an outfit for Soniko, in the final version there will be a wider range of clothes, but the selection in the trial shows the possibilities in the game very well. You can choose between a shirt, t shirts, short trousers, skirt, stockings, socks, bare legs with shoes or without shoes and so on. Theres also an option for accessoires like a hat, glasses and a bag. You can combine the clothes the way you want and see how Soniko looks in them, she strikes different poses on the right side of the screen.

Afterwards you can check if your chosen outfit matches with the wishes of the customer.
When you are ready hit the button at the bottom and the photoshooting starts.

The mouse movement gets more limited during the photoshoot, to change your position you have to use the WASD buttons of your keyboard. There is a time limit and the angles you have to hit are shown via blue circles, for this you’ll get ratings from bad to perfect. After the shooting Soniko is exhausted from all her posing hahaha,via right mouse button you can access a few motivational options like talking to her or giving her some water to expand your time limit.

This trial version of Sonicomi was very entertaining and Im somehow happy that I’ve ordered the limited edition of the full Game, I hope there will be a few nice goodies included in this edition.
The 3D Soniko is very cute with her voice and the body language, nice motion capturing here.
During the photoshoot missions the game makes good use of the advanced 3D effects like HDR and Depth of field, the Soniko model looks really pretty that way, no she isn’t fat *punch* XD

Even though most of the text is written in japanese and I can’t read a single letter, I could understand a few words Soniko were saying, I hope AGTH will work with the final game

From my impression I think that the photoshootings will be more or less tame, maybe if you come closer to Soniko you can expect some more explicit scenes when you meet her privately.

If you would like to try the Sonicomi trial version, just follow this link, click on the “ダウンロード” behind one of the links and it should start downloading the 495mb. Make sure that you have installed the latest grapic driver for your video card and have the latest version Direct X installed.