Pastel Chime: Learning to Love: Gameplay

General gameplay
Pastel Chime's gameplay is that of a relatively simple dungeon crawler with randomized maps. Chests, traps and stairs are randomly placed, though stairs will have priority in hallways and chests in tiles away from walls. Events aren't very common in this game's dungeon, but some random small flavour events occur (and will probably repeat) as you go through the dungeon. The dungeon background, tileset and monsters change, but only the latter is really relevant.

As you go around you'll run into enemies either by random encounter or fixed encounters guarding a pathway. If you are fast enough, running is an option for the first, but you need to fight hallway guards as that encounter will remain (though you'll get other enemies).

Battles give you a front and back row which only affect if enemies can attack you depending on their range. You can switch between those without spending turns. The enemies get 3 rows which works the same, but they will only be moved a row if the row in front of them dies out. Attacks are done by regular weapon attacks, skill attacks or magic. Skills or magic can buff or debuff enemies. Items are also an option.

Treasure can be found on the map and from monster drops and it can be any item that can be found in the shop. Finding and selling one to the shop unlocks it for buying and this carries over in every new playthrough.

It sounds like most RPGs, but the most important element is time. This prevents you from grinding out enemies (with diminishing rewards as well) as you need to progress down deep enough to not fail your exams.

You get the option of taking one of the girls with you if they want and/or taking a Lancer. Lancers are magical humanoid tools that function as mercenaries based on class archetypes.

Character & class
You only build one and whilst you can build it whichever way you like, the initial class you pick will affect stat growth. You'll want base your growth around these base stats so as to not waste lesson days and credits on it. These base class stats are:
 * Spirit/心 which affects the same named stat, magic attack/defence and casting.
 * Skill/技 which mostly affects agility, accuracy and evasion and has minor effect on casting
 * Body/体 which mostly affects strength, attack and defence and has minor effect on magical power and defence

The 4 classes are Warrior/戦士, Scout/スカウト, Magician/魔法, Diviner/神術士 and you can only have 12 points max between them.

Strength/筋力, Agility/敏捷, Chanting/詠唱, Spirit/精神 are stats that affect your characters abilities themselves.

Attack/攻撃, Accuracy/命中, Defence/防御, Evasion/回避 are more closely tied to how well they can use the equipment they wear which ties into the ease of use stat on equipment. Light elemental/明要素 (Red/赤色, Silver/銀色) and Dark elemental/暗要素 (Blue/青色, Darkness/闇色) are the magic equivalents of that. The higher the relevant stat, the better it works up to its limit.

All these stats can be trained, but you require school credits to pay for classes/class training/skills. You get those by beating monsters in the dungeon. You can however buy an item to get skills for money instead. A Mock combat/模擬戦 option allows you to save credits and you get some XP too.

Time
Time is limited in the dungeon as you only get from 2 to 6 PM to delve down.

Time is spent in the following amounts:
 * 1 minute for each step.
 * 3 minutes for running from a battle
 * Note that this apparently gets added to the already spent battle time
 * 2 minutes for a 1-2 turn battle then +1 minute for every extra turn
 * 3 minutes for each attempt to unlock or break (also takes HP) a door
 * 0 minutes if you use a universal key
 * 1 minute if you leave as you take a step back.

You can spend 15 minutes to recover in the infirmary if you go back yourself, however party members recover as soon as you exit. Getting wiped out loses you a lot of time too and there are traps that can waste your time.

Monsters
Rewards seem to be diminishing, so these aren't noted. Their HP is given in ranges if I had the notes for it as their HP can differ.

Resists/weaknesses have a scale from weakest to strongest its: 死ぬー->やめてー->やだなー->普通だよ->わりと平気->平気だよ->きかないよ. They affect physical and elemental attacks, but non-elemental magic ignores it all. Their weaknesses will be noted using this as a scale from 1-7, except if its 4 as that's neutral. So below 4 is weak and above 4 is resist.

Floors 31-40
Demon and Setsuna only appear on floor 40 in a certain route

Floor 41
The various fights with Kaina and Setsuna depend on the route.