Strategy Guide - Guide for Graduation

Attributes

Stamina is a measure of how much energy a girl has. Her maximum stamina is 
determined by her strength. If stamina drops too low, this can cause exhaustion 
and eventually sickness. Most activities cause stamina to drop. If a girl 
decides to visit the park on the weekend, then her stamina will return to the 
maximum. You can also raise stamina to the maximum by ordering a girl to take a 
day of rest on the weekend, or by buying her dinner.

Strength determines the maximum value of stamina. A weekend gymnastics class 
will raise strength by two points. Myna starts the game with her strength 
dangerously low and you'll need to keep nagging her until she builds it up to 
60 or so. Misa can also use a little encouragement here.

Kindness, Popularity, and Friendliness are three different names for the same 
thing; the game uses them interchangably. Friendliness increases when you don't 
put much pressure on the girls and let them do what they want. Basically, the 
ways to increase friendliness are: Teach class in a lenient style; take a 
friendly attitude when you meet the girls on the weekend; praise them in 
guidance sessions; give them gifts; and buy them dinner. If friendliness drops 
too low, there is a chance that students will become distrustful and run away.

Respect goes up when you pressure your students to excel. The ways to increase 
it are: Teach class in a strict style; take a strict attitude when you meet the 
girls on the weekend; give them severe warnings in guidance sessions; give them 
music boxes; and buy them dinner at expensive restaurants. If respect drops too 
low, there is a chance that students will become distrustful and eventually run 
away. In general, friendship and respect should be kept high, but it's 
dangerous to let them both get above 90 at the same time. (See the "Ecstasy" 
section, below...)

Elegance is a measure of refinement. Low elegance can cause rebelliousness, but 
elegance is easy to raise, and the girls will usually build it up on their own 
with no prompting. However, if a student's elegance gets too high, then she'll 
become "stuck-up". Once it gets up around 80 points, you should discourage 
further development. Elegance is raised by flower arrangment classes, and by 
going to church. (Yes, in the game you can order one of your students to stay 
away from church. I'm not sure if teachers in Japan really have this much power; 
but I do know what would happen if an American teacher tried it.)

Charm determines how much a student is liked by her classmates. This is 
important because of the "Focus Student" teaching option. Students learn more if 
they're good friends with the focus student...so, if the focus student has high 
charm, everyone else in class will learn more. Sari and Misa both start the game 
with very low charm, so you'll need to encourage them to develop it. Charm is 
increased by aerobics and cooking classes. You can get an extra charm boost if 
you arrange your schedule so that you meet the student during one of these 
classes, and take a friendly attitude with her. Another way to boost charm is 
to give a bouquet of flowers as a gift. I usually try to raise charm until it's 
up above 60. If charm rises too high, then a student may start going out on 
dates on the weekends. This can lead to two problems: It prevents her from 
doing her normal weekend activities, and it can cause her to become heartbroken.

Studiousness reflects the girls' study habits. If studiousness is low, then 
students are likely to cut class. However, if a girl's studiousness gets too 
high, then she'll get stressed-out. Studiousness is raised by weekend tutoring, 
and you can get an extra boost if you arrange your schedule so that you meet the 
student during her session, and then take a strict attitude. Giving away 
dictionaries also increases studiousness. You should try to keep this attribute 
up around 75 for Sari, Cyndi, and Rica. Misa and Myna should be less studious, 
especially in the early stages of the game when you need to steer them into 
other activities.

English, History, and Math are the test scores in those three subjects. 
Obviously, they're increased in the classroom, and during weekend tutoring 
sessions. If all of your students finish the year with combined scores in the 
high 1500's, then you're doing fairly well.

Valuation is sort of an oddity. It's mostly based around the special events 
that occur...it gets a big boost after the school play and the culture day 
festivities, and you can also pick up a few points if you do well with field 
day or exams. It drops by 20 points whenever a girl is caught in a violation. 
I'm not sure exactly what effect it has on gameplay, and there's very little 
you can do to influence it. 

Emotional Crises

At various points during the game, students can have emotional crises that 
impair their performance. Some crises happen at random, while others are the 
result of attributes getting too high or too low.

If you don't do anything for 2 or 3 weeks, then the problem will eventually 
resolve itself. You can speed up the process by setting up a weekend appointment 
with the affected student and doing "Counseling". This will instantly cure all 
problems (except exhaustion, sickness, and running away).

If the problem is attribute-related, then counseling will also adjust the 
relevant attribute by 20 points. For example, if a student is stressed, then 
counseling will subtract 20 from her studiousness.

The complete list of crises follows:

Exhaustion occurs when you let stamina fall too low. An exhausted student can 
still learn, but at a reduced rate. If a student starts the week exhausted, then 
you should use a lenient teaching style to avoid wearing her out further. If 
you have several students near exhaustion, then you might consider assigning 
free study and hope that some of them have enough sense to rest. Once the 
weekend arrives, check to see if the exhausted student has scheduled a trip to 
the park. If she has, then that will cure her exhaustion. Otherwise, you should 
order her to take a day of rest or buy her dinner.

Sickness is the result of untreated exhaustion. The student will be absent for 
a few days, but eventually return to school with her stamina back at the 
maximum. There is no way to speed recovery.

Stress occurs when studiousness rises too high. A stressed student won't learn 
anything in class.

Stuck-upness can occur if elegance rises too high. A stuck-up student won't 
learn anything in class...in fact, she'll start forgetting material she already 
knows. She'll she'll also lose friendliness, respect, and charm, and become 
less-liked by the other students. (That is, you'll see fewer "smiley faces" in 
the friendship level charts.)

Moodiness shows up more or less at random. (I think it shows up less often when 
charm is high, but I'm not positive about this.) It causes the same losses as 
stuck-upness. 

Fighting is the result of untreated moodiness. It's basically the same as 
moodiness, but with more intense symptoms.

Rebelliousness is the result of low elegance. This is a very rare condition 
because elegance has a natural tendency to rise. Sari can become rebellious if 
you neglect her for the first few weeks of the game, but the other students 
aren't at risk at all. (In fact, it's quite a challenge to get the other 
students into this state. You'll need to repeatedly praise their elegance, keep 
them away from church and flower classes, and not interfere if they decide to go 
out dancing or partying on the weekends.)

Heartbreak is associated with high charm. This is a fairly rare problem. It 
causes a drop in studiousness and in test scores. A heartbroken girl is at risk 
of running away.

Distrust is caused by low respect or friendliness. It causes drops in 
friendliness, respect, studiousness, and test scores. If the problem is ignored, 
the student may run away.

Running Away is the result of untreated heartbreak or distrust. The student 
will be absent from class. You can attempt to find her by searching on the 
weekend, but this may fail. If not found, the student will return on her own 
after a few weeks.

In Love, In Love w/Professor, and Flirting apparently exist, but I haven't seen 
them in the game yet. (I stumbled across them while I was exploring the 
different files on the disk...look at KJ_MOJI.BMP and KJ_COM.BMP in the /GRAD 
directory on your CD.) More information as it develops...

              Ecstasy is what I call the state that students can go into when 
friendliness and respect are both very high. You won't be directly informed that 
a student is ecstatic, but you'll notice some changes in the graphics and 
dialogue. For example, Misa does this cute little blush. An ecstatic student 
learns an extra point of material every day. Students don't stay continously 
ecstatic, but slip in and out every two or three days for as long as their 
attributes stay high enough. (I'm wondering if this might really be the 
"flirting" or the "in love with professor" state from the last paragraph? If it 
is, it doesn't show up on the Student Info screen like it should...) Note that 
there is a cost to letting students become ecstatic: A combination of high 
friendliness and high respect can cause the student to become too dependent on 
you. If the statistics aren't lowered by the end of the year, then this will 
count against you in your evaluation. I'm not sure of the exact cutoff, but I 
think you'll be okay as long as one of the two is below 90.

               Unhappiness is another state that doesn't show up on the student 
info screen. When a student enters this state, she'll switch over to the graphic 
associated with "moodiness" when class is in session...but she won't be reported 
as moody, and counseling sessions won't cure her. An unhappy student will learn 
two fewer points worth of material a day. I'm not sure exactly what causes 
unhappiness, but it appears to be linked to the student not learning 
anything...so Misa and Myna are at risk in the opening weeks of the game. I'm 
also not sure how to force a student to stop being unhappy; I've had them linger 
in this state for months at a time. Finally, the student's happiness at the end 
of the game may be related to how many weeks she was unhappy in class; I'm still 
investigating this. 

Gameplay

The classroom menu

The first thing you'll notice is the 10-point report card. It's really not all 
that useful, because you grade on the curve. Once the slower students have 
caught up with the rest of the class, you'll just have a mass of 7's and 8's. 
The important information is on the "Student Info" page.

Go to the student info page, and decide which subject you want to teach. 
(Probably the one with the lowest overall scores.) Also note which three 
students need the most help in that subject.

Select that as your focus subject, and then adjust the seating so that the 
three weakest students are in the front row. (Students in the back row will 
learn two points-per-day less). Stressed students should always go in the back 
row since they can't learn anything anyway. 

Next, check your students' stamina. If everyone is up above 25 or so, then 
they'll be able to handle a weak of strict teaching. Otherwise, you should 
probably teach leniently. Free study lets students choose their own activities; 
it essentially gives them five days of "weekend" activities. If the students 
actually come to class, they'll learn pretty quickly...but if their 
studiousness is low, then they'll skip class and the week will be wasted.

Teaching style also has an effect on your students' friendliness and respect. A 
lenient style increases friendliness and lowers respect, a strict style 
increases respect and lower friendliness. Free study doesn't change anything on 
its own, but you'll see gains or losses depending on what activities the 
students chose.

After selecting a subject and a teaching style, you can select a focus student. 
This should normally be the slowest student in the class. But if this student 
has very low charm, you can sometimes get better results by focussing on a more 
popular girl instead; the line at the bottom of the report card will show you 
the estimated rates of improvement.

Finally, check to see if the students in the back row will be learning 
anything. Students can become unhappy if they go more than two weeks without 
learning anything, so you might want to change the seating arrangement to 
prevent problems.

The Weekend Menu - Student Plans

At the weekend menu, you have the option of changing the weekend activities for 
one of the girls. Since you can only make one set of changes, you need to set 
priorities. For some useful charts that show how different activities affect 
attributes, go to this page.

The first thing to look for is exhaustion. If one of the students is low on 
stamina or exhausted, make sure she's not going to a party. If she's going to 
the park then her stamina will be restored, but otherwise you should order her 
to rest. (Unless you plan to buy her dinner.)

Next, are anyone's attributes too low? If studiousness is low, then assign some 
tutoring in whichever subject is weakest. Strength can be built up by assigning 
gym class, and charm can be built up by assigning aerobics. (You can also build 
up elegance by assigning flower arrangement, but I've never seen a need to do 
this; the girls are pretty good at building up elegance with no encouragement.)

On the other hand, are any attributes too high? If studiousness is up around 
90, and the student has scheduled two days of tutoring, then she's a case of 
burn-out waiting to happen. You should schedule her for gym, aerobics, or even 
a day of rest. If elegance is too high, then discourage flower arrangement and 
church.

If no one has attribute problems, then check to see if anyone is going 
cruising, dancing, partying, or out to karaoke. These activities all do 
significant damage to stamina, studiousness, and test scores, and have no 
benefits other than maybe a lousy one-point gain in charm. Cancelling these 
activities is a good idea if there's nothing more pressing that needs to be 
done.

The Weekend Menu - Professor's Plans

Once you've changed a student's schedule, you should decide whether to spend 
the weekend in the classroom, office, or suburbs. This will determine which 
end-of-weekend menu you get. In the classroom or office, you can set up a 
guidance session, a counseling session, or give a student a gift. In the 
suburbs, you can search for violations, look for runaways, or invite a student 
out for dinner.

You should also think about which students you'll meet at different 
destinations, since meeting students during the weekend is a good way to boost 
friendship and respect.

If you take a laid-back attitude when you run into students, then friendliness 
will rise and studiousness will drop. This is useful for preventing stress.

If you take a friendly attitude when you run into students, then friendliness 
will rise. In addition, if the student is at aerobics or cooking class, she'll 
gain twice as much charm as she would otherwise.

If you take a strict attitude, then respect will rise. If the student is in a 
situation where studiousness or elegance will rise, then they'll also gain twice 
as much of these attributes as they would otherwise. If they're in a situation 
where either of these would fall, then the loss will be cut in half. (So if a 
girl has high elegance to begin with, and you take a strict attitude with her 
in flower class or church, you run the risk of getting her "stuck-up". 
Similarly, a strict attitude during a tutoring session is very helpful when 
studiousness is low, but it can lead to stress if studiousness is already 
high.)

End of Weekend Menu - Classroom/Office

If you spent the weekend in the classroom or your office, then when the weekend 
is over, you can meet with one of the students.

The "Guidance" option is used to encourage girls to change their attributes. If 
you praise one of her attributes, friendliness will go up, and that attribute 
will go down. This can be used to prevent stress and stuck-upness. 

If you severely warn her about an attribute, then respect will go up and 
friendliness will go down. On the next weekend, she'll schedule two activities 
that will help build the attribute in question. Don't use this option unless 
the student has enough stamina to get through two weeks with no rest.

The third option is "casually warn". I'm not sure exactly what this does. It 
doesn't affect friendliness or respect, and it doesn't guarantee that the 
student will try to build up the attribute on the next weekend. It probably 
makes the student "more likely" to build up the attribute in the future.

The "Counseling" option is used to resolve emotional crises. It immediatly 
erases all abnormal conditions except for exhaustion. (Also, if a student is 
sick or has run away, then you obviously can't schedule a counseling session.)

The "Gift" option allows you to pay to increase attributes. All gifts increase 
friendliness. A dictionary also builds studiousness; flowers build charm; and a 
music box builds respect.

End of Weekend Menu - Suburbs

If spend the weekend in the suburbs, you'll get a different menu.

You can search for illicit activities. If you find one, then you get a menu of 
three dialogue choices. Depending on how you respond, friendliness and respect 
may go up or down by up to 5 points. My experience is that it's best to take a 
lenient sort of attitude. Lecturing them about violating school policy or 
questioning their judgement usually hurts you. Simply ignoring the violation 
seems to give you better results.

Note that the three dialogue options are actually selected at random from a 
longer list. It's possible that the "best" option won't be available to you.

I'm not entirely sure of the significance of this. If you don't search for 
violations on your own, then it seems like the violation will eventually be 
discovered by the PTA or somebody and then cause a huge scandal. If this 
happens, you'll lose 10 points of friendliness, 20 points of respect, and 20 
points of valuation. (It's also possible that a successful search will only 
stop the violation if you take a strict kind of attitude...I still need to check 
this.) I'm not sure how frequently you should search. Searches usually seem like 
a waste of time to me, since it's not too hard to fix lost friendliness and 
respect...but there's nothing you can do about lost valuation. I'm not sure 
exactly what valuation is used for, so I don't know how big a problem this is.

The next option allows you to search for runaways. Obviously, you can only do 
this if you have runaway students. If the search suceeds, then the student will 
be back in class on Monday.

The final option is to buy dinner for a student. This always raises stamina to 
the maximum, and increases friendliness. It also effects respect, charm, 
elegance, studiousness, and test scores as shown on the tables page. In 
general, cheap meals reduce them, and expensive meals raise them. Note that 
expensive meals use up a pretty good chunk of your disposable income; you 
shouldn't plan on buying more than two or three a year.

Special Events

The School Play/Culture Day

These events increase the valuation score. For the best results, you should put 
the most popular girl in class in charge of the project. This insures that the 
other students will spend a lot of time helping out.

Each girl gets a number of valuation points depending on the total amount of 
work everyone put in; this usually winds up being around 10-15 points. The girl 
in charge gets double points as a bonus.

It doesn't make any difference which project you pick; you'll get different cut 
scenes, but the results are the same.

Note that there are ten variations on each cut scene: Five variations where 
enough work was put in to make the project successful, and five where everyone 
stands around and complains about the low budget. You can hear all the sound 
clips by going to the /grad/voice directory and playing the E0*.wav, S0*.wav, 
_e0*.wav, and _s0*.wav files.

Field Day

On field day, your class competes in the traditional Japanese school game of 
"kibasen". In this game, three players carry a fourth on their shoulders, making 
a structure called a "kiba" (chariot). The goal is to break apart your 
opponent's chariot. Normally, you'd also be able to win by grabbing the rival 
charioteer's cap...but that's not an option here; at Seika, the game is always 
played for blood.

Winning this event also increases your students' valuation score, but not very 
dramatically. If your class wins the first round, they only get a five-point 
bonus; winning higher rounds gives additional two-point bonuses.

The combat skills depend on various attributes. Hit Points is current stamina. 
Attack power is Elegance, or 99-Elegance, whichever is greater. It controls how 
much damage you inflict in combat. (I guess very high elegance translates into 
finesse, while very low elegance translates into good gutter fighting skills.) 
Defense ability is Strength; if it's high, you'll take less damage when hit. The 
last attribute is EN which I guess stands for Energy, and I can't figure out 
how it's derived. If it's high, then you'll tend to hit your opponent more 
frequently. 

Once you've selected a student to enter the contest, you'll get see a sequence 
where she battles her opponent from another class. The fight looks like an 
arcade game, but as far as I can tell, it plays out automatically and there's 
nothing you can do to affect it.

It's possible to win the whole contest, but it's not easy...you'll need to beat 
Class A, which seems to consist entirely of girls who look just like Mari from 
"Project A-Ko". If you really want to win, you'll need to slack off on studying 
and devote your weekends to getting Cyndi and Rica pumped into shape. But it's 
really not worth it for such a small bonus.

When I play, I just try to win the first round. Cyndi can usually handle it 
with no problem, as long as you make her rest the day before the meet so that 
she has maximum stamina..

Midterms/Finals

Exams affect valuation and studiousness. A score of 30 or below will cause them 
both to drop; scores of 70 and up make them rise. The harder the exam, the more 
of an effect it has. Exams are given four times a year.

I like to play it safe here. I start with the 10th grade exam, then give the 
11th grade exam twice, and then finish off with the 12th grade exam.

Vacations

Vacations can turn into disasters if you don't know how to handle them.

At the "student's plans" menu, you might be tempted to bring everyone in for 
tutoring. But if you steal your students' vacation time, their friendliness will 
plummet, and so will their studiousness. If you do this too many times, then 
when vacation is over, you'll be stuck with a bunch of girls who have no 
interest in studying, and who all hate you.

Or you could bring them in for extra-curricular activies. But that's even 
worse. Their friendliness will still drop...and they'll take that stupid flower 
arrangment class over and over again, push their elegance through the roof, and 
get stuck-up.

The only thing you can do is to give them free time and hope they make 
productive use of it. The trick here is to stack the deck, and get them to 
voluntarily choose to study. To do this, try to keep everyone's studiousness up 
above 70 or so, so they'll come in a few times a week for tutoring.

You need to start preparing a few weeks before vacation starts. Identify the 
problem students and get them to boost their studiousness as much as you can. 
Even after vacation starts, you have access to the normal weekend menu, and you 
can use that to fix problems as they develop.

As an added bonus, letting the students have free time increases their 
friendliness. If you take a uniformly strict attitude on the weekends to boost 
studiousness, then respect will also go up, and you'll be enormously popular 
when classes resume.

At the "professor's plans" menu, it really doesn't matter which option you 
pick. It only controls which set of vacation pictures you get to look at. The 
grid shows which girls you ran into...so, if you spend the week in the 
classroom, then the grid will tell you who decided to come in for tutoring. 
(This isn't vital information; you can deduce it by looking at the end-of-week 
report.)

Finally, the "search" menu at the end of the week gives you one of the 
cutscenes described in the "Weekend Menu - Suburbs" section. They play out the 
same way; you pick one of the three options, and get an appropriate change to 
friendliness and respect.

The Ending Sequence

When the last day of classes arrives, the ending sequence starts. First, each 
girl gives you a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on your performance, a chart of her 
final statistics, and a snapshot of her in her future career.

Next, the principal gives you an overall evaluation. If you manage to send all 
five students to top universities, then you get the coveted "Perfect Teacher" 
ranking. This unlocks the "Bonus" options on the start menu, which gives you 
access to all the cut-scenes in the game and a few extra surprises. 

If some of your students didn't get into top universities, and no more than two 
were unhappy, then you get the "Average Teacher" award. If more than two were 
unhappy, then you're considered a "Poor Teacher".

Under certain circumstances, it's possible to wind up marrying a student...But 
this counts against you in the principal's evaluation. (After all, you were 
supposed to be teaching the students; not seducing them.) If you marry one 
student, and the other four end the year happily, then you'll squeak by with an 
"Average Teacher" rating. But if any of the other four are unhappy, then that's 
really bad; it means that you were so busy chasing students that you neglected 
your duties as a teacher. And that means...well, see for yourself:


                                 That guy on the right is the principal.

It's also possible to have the game end prematurely, with one of your students 
getting expelled. I've only had this happen once, when I was intentionally 
trying to push the student's grades down as far as I could get them. I'm not 
sure exactly what triggers expulsion. It might be the "valuation" score getting 
too low; I'd been getting lots of messages about valuation dropping due to poor 
grades. 

Careers

Here's what I've been able to figure out about careers so far:

If a girl finishes the year happy, and her combined scores for all three 
subjects are above 1550, then she'll probably wind up going to a top university 
or getting a presitigious career. Below 1550, you're more likely to see 
semi-skilled or unskilled labor. There's a certain amount of variability here. 
It's possible to get into a top university even with a score in the low 1500's, 
but this is fairly rare. I'm not sure whether this is random, or whether it 
depends on some of the other variables.

If a girl finishes the year unhappy, then it looks like the game applies a 
penalty to her combined score...it seems to me that it's around 150 points. This 
is enough to knock an average student all the way down to the "McJobber" 
category and condemn her to a series of meaningless part-time jobs. If her 
combined score was up above 1600, then she'll still get a tolerable job, but 
she won't thank you for it. 

Finally, if a girl winds up with high Friendliness and Respect (90+ for each), 
then she'll marry you. If multiple girls wind up with high scores here, then 
presumably there's some sort of horrible bloody catfight that you don't get to 
watch. You can only marry one of them.

Happiness 

A girl's happiness doesn't seem to be based on her final grades. Once you 
unlock the "Bonus" section, you can view all of the possible endings, and most 
of careers have "happy" and "unhappy" variations. For example, it's possible 
for a girl to get into a top university and still think you're a lousy teacher.

That would suggest that it's related to some combination of "Friendliness" and 
"Respect", but that doesn't work either. I've had students unhappy at graduation 
when these numbers were as high as 74/94, or happy when they were as low as 
40/37.

In fact, I've started putting together tables of all the information that pops 
up at the end of the game, and I've seen no patterns whatsoever. (I haven't been 
recording "Number of Violations" or "Evaluation", but I've done some spot 
checks and they don't seem to be having an effect, either.)

I've put a text copy of the latest table here. If anyone can see a pattern that 
I've missed, I'd like to hear it. I'd also be interested in getting tables from 
other people's games; maybe this will help. 

Anyway, you can E-mail me at "[email protected]". (After removing the 
-OMIT, of course.)

A possible solution?

I've just recently noticed that sometimes students will shift to an "unhappy" 
graphic in the classroom, with no other notification given to you. (See the 
"unhappiness" section on the hints page.) It may be that a student who spends 
too much time in this state will be unhappy at the end of the year.

It appears that students enter this state if they go for a few weeks without 
learning anything in class, and then stay in this state for months on end (I'm 
still not sure how to bring them out of it.) This seems consistent with the 
endings I've gotten; Misa and Myna are the most likely to be unhappy at the end 
of the year, and I usually neglect them in the opening weeks of the game.

I'm currently in the process of testing this theory; I'd be interested in 
hearing any insights that people might have.