Talk:XBlaze – Code: Embryo/Story Guide/@comment-30711988-20161214132417

I think I know how this works now. This TOi system is nothing new, it's the "point" system, but executed differently.

I don't play much VNs, so I can name only one game that has a similar system: Ever17. In Ever17, the player has to select an option from the list given to them, and there are a lot of choices in the game. For each selected option, the player gets a point toward a certain ending, and the ending they get is determined by the amount of points the player has when it's time to switch the route or show an ending.

In Code: Embryo, each article read by a girl adds a point toward her ending. And the amount needed for a good ending is really strict, so skipping at least one will lock the player out of the ending for the girl who read it. So, for Hinata's ending, the player has to get all of the points. For Es, Kuon and Mei's endings, the player has to get points for Es, Kuon, and Mei's endings. And the bad ends occur when the player fails to get a required amount of points, and the Kuon/Mei bad end occurs because the player gathered an equal amount of points towards Kuon and Mei's endings (Japanese guide shows that each one has three articles required for her ending in their route).

Why am I so sure about that? That's because I went for Hinata/Es route first, but then decided to try and get a bad ending for skipping articles, so I saved my game and skipped the articles that appeared in part 5-9. And that led me to Kuon/Mei route instead of the bad ending, since there were three articles I skipped, one of them was also read by Hinata and Es. Since I read all articles read by Kuon and Mei, I gathered enough point to go for their route instead of a bad end.

It should help to understand this guide better.