I started playing Innocent Life again >_> I need to finish the games I already started but I had a super strong desire to play this game lol. Ahead is screencap-filled play diary. I'm gonna keep the gross headcanons to a separate entry, so if anyone wants to read this without being too disturbed.

So, the story of this game is that you're an android created by Dr. Hope Grain, essentially created to be a... person. Like, he wants you to become human by learning how to be human. So you look like a young boy. But he can't just program you to be human, you have to ~learn~ it. By being a farmer. Makes sense, right? Well, another important reason he created you is because long ago there was a war between the two peoples who lived on the island where you live, and the Spirits punished them for this by like making the soil infertile and stuff, and plan to eventually set off the volcano and kill everyone. But if the people can prove they can respect the land by cultivating the land in the ruins, they will not kill everyone. But most people don't believe this is true, and just use technology to take care of themselves and don't take care of the land. They have everything they need through "AutoFarming" which is essentially growing things with machines and stuff, they even invented a type of water?? lol.

Anyway, the game starts out with you getting sent a map of the island and it's really cool. But my caps for a while were NG and I didn't catch that, or some of the next parts. But basically, you wake up and are introduced to the world, and Dr Hope tells you you're going to be going to the ruins and stuff. There's some cool moments with him in the dark and stuff, but yeah... I missed out a LOT of it in caps.

The game has this... really somber atmosphere. The music sounds very... sad? It's peaceful but... sad. And just the way the lighting is often and stuff, it just feels sad. But yeah. Dr Hope's friend Gayak comes by and is going to be your farming teacher. He only teaches you for one day though lol.

He like literally just DRAGS you, you're like dragging along behind him instead of following him... He's one of the few people that know Life's a robot and not a real human. And he seems to treat him accordingly... (UH LIFE IS THE NAME OF THE ROBOT YOU PLAY AS IF THAT WAS CONFUSING BTW)

I didn't get caps of the next part, but you do this farm simulation thing. You can kinda cheese it here -- you get 9 potato seeds and there are 9 spaces of land. You have to go through four steps -- tilling, sewing, watering, and harvesting. You can either perform the action on all 9 spaces of land, or talk to Gayak after doing it at least once to move on to the next step.

For the first step, just hoe all 9 squares. But when you get to sewing seeds, just plant in 1 square. Then for the watering step, water all 9 squares. Then in the harvesting step, water all 8 squares except the one you planted in, then pick the crop (you can't water it before picking it). This way you get 9 hoe experience and 17 watering experience, plus you get to keep the 8 potato seeds you didn't use.

After abusing the tutorial, Dr Hope sends life away with Mr Moonlight who is actually a really fun and great character who I love a lot and should probably be on the humpchart but whenever I think of this game I'm just like LIBERTA LIBERTA and forget about everyone else >_>

Unlike Gayak, Moonlight actually walks and lets life walk on his own lol. But uh, look at that wonderful fuzzy face XD Dali mustache and super long curly beard LOL I love it. Also for some reason he doesn't wear a shirt even in the winter, like you can see here...

Then he starts running and makes Life run too LOL And he runs with his arms crossed??? It's so weird lmfao

There's not much to it, but I love the introduction to the ruins...

The way the camera is behind you as the ruins becomes more exposed through the trees as you walk toward it, and then Moonlight's comments... they really go out of their way to make this game atmospheric, and I love it!

Along with Moonlight, you have another roommate in the ruins -- old man Franco, who I think is like a retired farmer or something (his kids and grandkids live on the AutoFarm in town). He decides to just kind of... help you on his own accord, idk.

During the first week in the ruins, various visitors come and see the place. The first day, some of the teachers bring the school kids on a field trip to see the ruins. Here's one of the teachers, Max. I really like Max. He's huge and mustache.

Despite the fact that Franco already tilled some land for me, I tilled my own and planted seeds my way XD It's easier to water in a line and there will be more of them closer to the shipping pod this way. I accidentally planted two potatoes during the tutorial so I only have 7 of the leftover seeds :P

Since you can't leave the vicinity of the ruins during your first week, it's a good time to get a bunch of EXP... you have plenty of PP to do extra work, so I till up all the land...

Max is one of the few people who are pretty friendly to Life from the start. I guess I should have mentioned this, but most people are pretty rude to him. The ones who know he's a robot are kind of condescending or coddling, and everyone else think he's stupid for trying to revitalize the ruins. A lot of them tell him to give up or go away. And then a few just downright hate him because of some kind of grudge against Dr Hope or something. (The people who don't know Life is a robot think he's a distant relative of Hope's)

Moonlight <3<3

A lot of people might be tempted to just do the minimum amount of work and then sleep to get the first week over with, since you're pretty limited in what you can do. But you can rack of EXP like I said before, as well as talk to Moonlight and Franco every day to get little bits of information. But importantly, Franco will give you a free sickle if you keep talking to him each day. You can buy one later but this will save you a LOT of money, as tools are fairly expensive.

The TV shows in this game are... wow. Well, particularly the Z-Rangers and Meloncholy Woods. Z-Rangers is really funny... there are no space aliens attacking the Earth, so the Z-Rangers department is losing funding. They had to fire Blue and Yellow Ranger lol. There's a lot more weird jokes like that, like in a later episode, some aliens do attack, but they can't all ride in their zord things because they can't afford gas so they have to carpool XD

On one day, you overhear Marco (super cute tubby mustache guy) and Charles talking about basically how stupid and worthless you are LOL. Charles is the mayor's son, and Marco heads Banks Corporation, who develops technologies for stuff like AutoFarming (he's the one that like... invented new water or whatever LOL), and he sucks up to the mayor and mayor's son a lot.

Sleepy Moonlight :) :) Actually, Moonlight sleeps a lot and sleeps VERY heavily ^_____________^

He also says a lot of weird things when he's awake. But look how cute he is~~~

Crops are coming along :)

Cooking in this game is kinda stupid. You have to watch the cooking channel once a week to learn a new type of cooking. Then you just choose to do that type of cooking whenever you want, and it will... make something. It's completely random. Like you choose 'tea' and you get some random kind of tea. The tea does nothing. you watch this little 'scene' of Life taking it over to the table and eating it. It takes a lot of time. But you have to keep eating and making food to level up your cooking (which improves your 'human level,' which you're trying to raise) and eventually you will have so many types of foods to make that it gets extremely tedious. In the beginning, you can make tea, coffee, or herbal tea. There's about 4 kinds of each. You can just sit and spam it on one day and get them all, though a couple you need to wait until you've shipped certain ingredients, or else Life will never make that one. But yeah, it's just random and pointless and IDK why they made it like this XD

The first Friday is always rainy. The game is really strict for this first week, then it starts becoming more open and random and stuff.

The first rain is a good time to go collect all the strange moss near the water east of the ruins. I didn't even know it was there for the longest time... but it's very useful! It makes spots stay watered longer so you don't have to water them as much. I forget the exact effect, but basically it reduces the work you have to do each day which is REALLY great later. Early, though, it's not all that important, so you can stock them up now when you have nothing else to do with your day.

On the day of your first Harvest, Franco comes to take you to Dr Hope's lab once you've harvested something. He drags Moonlight with him, because Moonlight needs to escort you (I don't really know why you need an escort, but I'm fine following Moonlight around <3)

But of note -- Franco literally drags Moonlight from his bed to the farm, and Moonlight is still asleep, even standing up... then Franco has to shake him and hit him and yell at him a lot before he wakes up LOL. ANYWAY, I REALLY LOVE A DEEP SLEEPER DEHEHE.

Once you report to Dr Hope, you spend the night there, and on Sunday, you get a tour of the village with Million and your friend Marcia. They just... drive the car wherever, both sides of the road, into grass, doesn't matter LOL.

I really like Jessica but I don't know her well. It's really hard to get to know people in this game because finding them is hard, and you hardly have time to get to town. It takes over 2 hours to travel from the ruins to town... and then you have to think about the trip back, too! Just getting around town can take a couple hours, too... and then you still have work to do each day. So a 6-8 hour trip into town is kinda tough. Plus I've never finished this game oops. And when I played before I just focused pretty much on finding Liberta since there's no friendship system or anything in the game.

LIBERTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He's also attending Masami's poetry class :D A few of the adults visit here when it happens... I kinda forgot this even was a thing :) The first thing he says when he meets you is that your face is tender. He's really weird.

He then gives Life his dictionary. This is a subquest that was added to the PS2 version of the game (original was for PSP) and it's... fun XD Basically, he'll add to it once a month, but he'll only add some entries if you have met certain milestones. There's no real indication what you need to do to fill the dictionary though.

The entries are SO weird and funny. I'll post some of them later maybe.

At the supermarket, you actually get a cart and fill out these like order forms which are huge SD-card-looking thingsfor some reason, and then carry the order forms in your cart, then go check out at the cashier. It's ... interesting LOL. And it doesn't keep a visible running total of your items, so you have to actually pay attention to this yourself, like real shopping I guess lol. If you don't have enough money they'll make you go put your items back LOL.

The Town Hall and Mayor's Office is so ridiculous. It's in like a TOWER. The office and mayor's family's house is at the top of the stairs. The main area is the town hall. Why are there horse statues LOL

Apparently Max is good at singing. He attends Nana's (his wife) singing classes with the children lmao.

This is Big. He's a complete asshole little brat. His father is Marco, the CEO dude, and Big thinks very highly of himself and not all that well of others. But he's just a kid, and still tries to be a kid, and you kinda become friends with him. He likes to watch TV and talk about anime and drama with you. I hate Big, but I love him, too. When characters are written to be annoying, but are properly annoying for that reason, I usually really like them in the end.

This is Jean (Cossack!). He and his daughter work for Liberta at the Liberta Winery. I'm not really sure what Jean does, but his daughter Emma runs the counter/desk of the winery. He also has a son, Lenny, who is a major douchebag. Lenny works for Million at the supermarket. I don't really care about Lenny because he has no relation to Liberta LOL.

Liberta's house is a little shack behind the winery. He's the only character who doesn't have a really modern house with TVs and computers and stuff everywhere. he just has this stereo system lol. Also the REALLY SOMBER MUSIC that also plays in Dr Hope's house plays in Liberta's house...

Liberta's basement is a wine cellar. This is separate from the one at the winery, which is way bigger, so I assume this is his personal collection. He has a single chair next to a little table in here. I guess he spends his time here drinking alone...

OK, so the basement of the winery I realized doesn't actually store any bottled wine. It's a big... grape vat thing and a bunch of barrels ... so it's a... distillery? brewery? what do they call that part LOL I have no idea, but it's... that. So I guess he keeps a lot of the wine here? Dr. Hope seems to have an impressive wine collection, too, though XD

One fun thing about this game is going into all the characters' rooms/houses to get a glimpse at how they live. It's really interesting.

Moonlight claims he works a lot better when Franco is gone. I strongly identify with that LOL.

At the end of the first week, from all the extra work I did, I have Lv2 in hoe! You get 1 EXP for each time you use the tool, so think if I had only done what was needed -- used Franco's tilled soil and then just watered those 9 seeds every day. You'd only have about 54 EXP in watering can, and that's it!

Anyway, that was my first week in Innocent Life :D

---