#I should have specified that I mean for your first playthrough since I know many of us will be doing multiple lol

[butwhatifidothis]

I did it! Finally fucking did it! I 100% the support log for 3H….Holy shit, that took longer than I was expecting, lol. 

(Long rant, so heads up.)

I came in thinking “Oh they finally time-locked the supports, so I don’t have to have the damn cursor mocking me every time I open the menu like in Awakening and Fates, hurr hurr”. No no no no no. At least for Awakening and Fates, it was on my dumb ass for pressing the S-support and saving when I knew I shouldn’t. First off, if they wanted us to regain supports for Byleth in NG+, why the heck are supports for characters like Edelgard, Rhea, Dorothea and Lindhart locked? I don’t mean time-locked like the post-TS supports in a regular playthrough, I mean deadass “you can’t buy this, period” locked. “Oh it’s because you haven’t advanced that far in the story yet”. I can buy post-TS supports for the other characters, what makes El and Rhea exceptions?! The only thing that would be lost is that I don’t have to replay their entire route to get their S-support twice. It’s not like there’s enough differences between Bylad and Bylass to warrant the supports being locked, none of the characters specify a specific gender in their dialogue, and as far as different models go, changing models during a cutscene is coded into the game, so that should be no issue.  

After going through the monastery option enough times, the hubworld is in this weird limbo state where it feels like it was made specifically for Byleth’s benefit (faculty training, recruiting party members, etc,) but the rest of the party seems to benefit from it instead (Instructions, Motivation points, etc). The Explore vs Battle options just don’t mix well, which feels like poor design choice. You can focus on auxiliary battles to raise your party’s level, but at the cost of potentially missing out on more party members. You can instead focus on the monastery to recruit party members, but at the cost of Byleth falling behind due to splitting activity points between recruiting and faculty training, and being in the monastery means less time grinding for levels. This isn’t as much of a problem in NG+, but if a game needs NG+ to lessen a design problem, then that’s more of a sign to me that the idea itself needed more ironing out. 

 As far as using the monastery to raise support points goes, the hubworld definitely needs a revamp. The only (good) options available are Meal Time and Choir Practice, with the latter being limited to once per week and the former making me think that the monastery must eat their own weapons to survive due to how fucking scarce food ingredients are. Getting meat and fish isn’t too big of an issue so long as you have enough money, but produce might as well be an urban legend. There were too many times where I had 60+ fish/meat, but produce was at fucking 1. I get that they wanted to be “realistic” in having seeds grow once per week, but if it’s at the cost of a gameplay element being nigh unplayable, then some more thought needs to be put into it. Sothis is a goddess of life and time, maybe her powers allow Byleth to make plants grow faster. Just something to make this section actually playable. 

The final thing I wanted to talk about when it comes to the monastery is that, for some baffling reason, it is entirely possible to lock yourself out of key events like S-supports or being able to choose CF, simply by skipping to the end of the month. I’m not sure why this is a thing. It’s not like the game was designed with speedruns in mind (I mean, it is possible to beat a route in an hour, but fuck me if I ever succeeded in that), and nothing happens like a prompt popping up that you have to explore the monastery during that month or even limiting your options to just Explore (which the game has done before). This is especially weird for the quest in getting Jeralt’s ring (how to access S-supports), since Byleth is supposed to be sad in this month, so not being able to do seminars or Byleth being undeployable during auxiliary battles would make sense. 

The option to choose CF is even worse though, because at least for Jeralt’s ring it’s a Red Quest that doesn’t allow you to finish exploring unless you complete it. For Edelgard, however? A dime-a-dozen quest prompt you can entirely look over and skip. No prompt by the game, no indication to talk to Edelgard, nothing. FFS, Rhea’s tea time quest was given more thought. At least her quest marker is a unique color. 

(End of rant…sort of) 

…So anyways, that was my experience with the game, lmao. Now you or someone else may be thinking, “nonnie, if you had this many problems completing the game, why did you bother?”, and the answer to that good question is…I’m not completely sure, lol. I know there’s more than one reason why, so bear with me here. I know part of it is due to sunk-cost fallacy (“I’m already this far into the game, I might as well fully complete it”), but I think a bigger reason is because I knew ahead of time that the routes were so similar to each other that there was little point in having a route split to begin with (except for CF, but who gives a fuck about that?). Despite all of my bitching, I do really like 3H even if I admit that it’s my least favorite FE game that I’ve played so far. I guess a part of me just wanted to like the game more despite my issues with it. 

Now that I think about it, maybe the main reason was for fear of future mainline games. People are fear to like whatever part of a game that they wish, but I do think that 3H introduced some fundamental storytelling flaws that I’d rather not see repeated in the future, with me focusing on 3 in particular: 1) The Monastery, 2) Route Splits and 3) Byleth. 

Aside from what I already talked about in regards to the monastery, if we are going to get another hubworld in the new FE title, have it to where it doesn’t conflict with how the rest of the story is presented. Is it better to simply tell us that the Western Church is xenophobic in an easily skippable side quest early on, or is it better to show us? Enemy Western Church NPCs going after foreign party members like Dedue or Petra more aggressively and calling them “animals” or the like, the map having Duscari NPCs locking themselves indoors for fear that the Western Church will persecute them, things of that nature. Is it better to tell us that there has been civil unrest in the Empire and the citizens revolting against Edelgard, or is it better to show us? Enemy Adrestian Civilian NPCs, assassins specifically going after Edelgard in a map, maybe one where a large farmland has been stripped bare. Things like that. 

I’d rather do away with the Persona-calendar/Monastery hubworld, but if they are here to stay then they need enough content in it to keep the player engaged for 20-odd chapters, because there isn’t enough content in Garreg Mach to even hold up 12 chapters. Speaking of more content, if there’s going to be another route split in the next title, then there needs to be enough differences in the routes that actually warrants having a route split. Fates already did this well in having the route split be early in the game, along with the plot and story maps of each route being different, you could even skip to the route split moment on subsequent playthroughs, so 3H’s approach in having to play the same 12 chapters 3-4 times just felt like a massive downgrade. Playing multiple routes should feel rewarding rather than tedious, is what I’m trying to say. 

Finally, and most importantly, I know that no one at IS is reading this but on the off chance that someone is - please, for the love of God, do not make another blank-slate/self insert main character like Byleth. Or at the very least, don’t have them be the focal point of the story, it’s a big reason why AM just works better than the other routes. For a game like FE, “self-insert” and “protagonist” goes as well as oil and water. Now, out of those three flaws listed, the Byleth one is what I’m hard set on. The monastery and route split flaws, my opinion might be flexible within reason, but the Byleth one…not so much, lol. If we really do get another self-insert doll for a main character, that alone is going to make the next game a hard sell for me, because seeing all the praise Byleth got (and has been getting) makes me fear that IS is going to take the wrong lesson from this and think they don’t have to put effort in making their protagonist anything resembling an actual person and their audience will still lap it up. It would be one thing if I just hated the character, but I don’t. I’m disappointed, which is even worse.

…With that said, it’s still better than whatever the heck Cap’n’Crunch is doing. Okay, rant over. For real this time.

—

I agree with a lot said here! But I do have a few disagreements, though they’re mostly my opinion than anything else lol

And this first one is probably like, extremely unpopular given how much shit I’ve seen flung at this aspect of 3H, but like… I actually really like the Monastery? Like yes, absolutely, it should have done more to not shelter the player from how bad the war is and it should change more with the world instead of being in this mostly limbo state where apparently seasons don’t real. I definitely also have those complaints, but to me, the Monastery was fine for the most part. A lot of the issues you brought up, like supports and Faculty Training and supplies for eating, weren’t a problem for me almost at all. My only real gripe is with how hard it is for Byleth to get training in Flying, Mounted and especially Heavy Armor without NG+ unlocking weapons ranks, since they don’t have access to Weekly Chores. I do believe I still managed to recruit everyone while only unlocking C in Faith on my Maddening playthrough of GD, but it certainly wasn’t easy. But I feel a lot of the problem people have with it are on subsequent playthroughs where they’re trying to do things like 100% any aspect of 3H, which yeah is gonna exacerbate the issues tenfold. Cuz like, while those three weapons ranks I mentioned are hard for Byleth to raise, on Normal mode you have unlimited auxiliary battles to help with all the other ones. 

Like, I wanted to get Claude’s Dex to the max amount right? Just cuz I felt like it. And in doing that I found out just how tedious it is to get levels once a unit gets to a certain point, just cuz while Normal Mode gives you the Retreat option that lets you keep exp so you can drop a unit down on a yellow spot and get a decent boost in exp… you can do that like, twice or thrice on a story chapter. Once if it’s auxiliary (and not the freebie one). And that’s if you even have internet. And using the greenhouse to get Ailiell Pomegranates was a pain because they weren’t really guaranteed even if I used nothing but the right seed - doing that is more consistent, but not always, and I usually only got one anyway. It was annoying! But I was also doing a specific thing that’s gonna heighten the flaws in the system that I never would have noticed - didn’t even notice - unless I did that. The flaws are still there, don’t get me wrong! The Monastery definitely still needs improvement, battles still need to be a little more streamlined for future playthrough, but the flaws can seem a bit bigger than they are once you do certain things outside of a casual playthrough, know what I mean?

But, for example, when replaying 3H on hard mode and looking to recruit everyone after my no recruitment run, I didn’t come across any dilemma over “recruitment or Byleth being good, pick one.” That was the run my Byleth was usable, in fact - my first blind run that was no recruitment (save for Shamir) had my Byleth be pretty much completely useless while literally everyone else was fine. Also never came across problems with supplies for cooking (or at least not any big enough to comment on). So like, while these (and the above stuff) can certainly be problems for players trying to do everything everything in 3H, at least from my experience I just haven’t come across them. The monastery itself definitely needed a better story implementation, but yeah. I could’ve just been lucky tho lmao

I don’t mind how they implemented trying to get on CF at all tho lol. If you’ve been playing the game like it suggests you do - supporting characters and exploring the monastery  there’s no reason for players to have missed getting on CF. If players wanted to ignore one of the biggest aspects of the game I don’t really feel that bad for them when they miss out on very achievable things. Plus, CF’s requirements are nothing in terms of FE’s madness when it comes to getting on a route. It may be more specific than any other route, but like I said, playing the game as the game tells you to would naturally land you in it (the only thing that might be a bit unfair is that I think if you talk with Edelgard at all that month you have to decide right then and there, and then the whole month is lost. Kinda ass). 

Binding Blade, for example, requires you to do specific things that few first time players would think to do in multiple, random chapters in order for you to get the best ending. With absolutely no warning as to when these chapters happen and what to do in them. And some of these requirements are not fun lmao, I’d prefer how they did it with CF than with how they’ve handled ~secret~ stuff before personally

Pretty much agree with everything else though! While 3H is actually one of my more favored games in the series, I’ll be the first to admit that its storytelling is in dire need of improvement. Having the story and lore of the game just be spat out in lore dumps and this or that NPC just isn’t that good. Or if they are going to do that, at the very least give some visuals to go along with it! Imagine how much impactful Rhea’s story would have been if it was in a visual format, like CGs and/or a cutscene. It still would be an info dump, but at least we can see for ourselves how horrific the Red Canyon was for her! And I do not want another avatar in whatever next mainline game we get, personality or not. We’ve evolved past the need for self-inserts that all the characters Just Like lmao

But thanks for sharing your thoughts!! And sorry that it took so long for me to get to answering ;w; 

[bnha-scenarios]

Okay, so, first thing first. The second half of September and the whole October has been a wild ride.

Apparently this game blew up on TikTok (and probably some other platform or something?), and now I could see that there are tons of you who downloaded the game. That's just... so... unreal, at least to me. I didn't think this project would get so much attention. Even now, I’m still waiting to wake up from this dream 🙃

Anyway, if you’re new here: welcome! Sit back and relax, ‘cause this is gonna be a long ride!

I want to take this opportunity to say that due to the amount of comments, especially on itch.io page and my Tumblr, I won’t be always replying personally one by one to everyone anymore. I'll still try my best to answer questions and all, but I think by now everyone's common questions should already be answered in the FAQ page. So, moving forward, questions I have already answered inside that page will be ignored.

Still, I want you to know that I do read and treasure every single one of your comments. Thank you so much for your encouraging words, support, and suggestions! I'm sorry I can’t reply to those writing in languages other than English and Indonesian. While I can throw simple comments into Google Translate, every now and then the translator butchers long sentences and gives me garbled translation which I can't understand 😥

  ☕️ Special Thanks ☕️ 

I'd like to also take this chance to say, many, many thanks for the coffee, you all amazing, generous people:

M.L. | Dominique | Genki | Sara | 1 Anon

Even in this hard time, you’re all so kind. Again, I can’t really do much, but as my way of thanking you, your names will be put under Special Thanks in the game ♡ 

Alright, now, to the real essence of this post: progress update.

My work had been pretty demanding nearing the end of this month, and it made me get really sick of doing coding in general. Still, there is some progress on the game, and that’s good enough for me!

More details below ↓

Character Sheet: You / Player / Main Character

Before I get to anything else, let’s talk about ‘you’ first, shall we?

Although the main character's name is changeable, if you don’t wish to pick a name for them, ‘Suzuki Kaede’ is set as the default name.

Why Suzuki? I figured I would just take from one of the most common Japanese surnames.

Why Kaede? I chose it because I wanted a common Japanese unisex name, because the main character themselves is supposed to be gender neutral. So, the name came up as one of the results in Google, it has a somewhat nice and neutral meaning (maple), and I find that it sounds pretty nice, I decided to use it.

To reiterate, throughout the game, I try my best to not mention any physical characteristics and avoid elements which leans heavily to a specific gender in the story. All the characters in the game will also call you with your last name, and only neutral suffix (-san) is used at first. But you could get an event where you would be able to pick how the love interest will call the player, starting from that point in the story (on top of neutral options, there will be choices with gender-specific suffixes which you could pick if you want to). Other than that, all characters will always refer to the MC as ‘they/them’.

Now, moving on to the thing which people has asked about -- the player's Quirk. Here's a text version in case you couldn't see it in the image above for some reason:

What happens when a woman with Enhanced Learning quirk and a man with Camera Vision procreates? A child with exemplary learning ability and a pair of exceptionally observant eyes, apparently! The hereditary Vision you got from your father enables you to focus or scan an object or landscapes. With all the cues and information from your eyes, it seems that you're able to analyze and 'see' particular details of your object of interest in the form of numerical data. Due to the mainly passive nature of your quirk, you have to rely on the traditional weapons for offense, which might not be useful at all depending on your opponent's quirk. It's a plain and nonoffensive ability which isn’t so suited for a hero according to most people, but whatever - you’ll show those noobs the power of a gamer!

In other words, the information in 'Stats',  ' Weapon Proficiency', 'Special Moves', and even the 'Affection' meter, are actually part of the MC's Quirk. This also means, the more you hone your Quirk, the more it could affect your gameplay. I'll talk about that on the Gameplay section below.

There is one thing that’s kind of related to the MC's Quirk and I wanted to clarify. Bakugou did call you this in the demo, and yep, you might have guessed it: “crosshair eyes”. Reticle, crosshair, whatever you want to call it -- it’s that symbol you usually see in the center of your screen whenever you play FPS games. This is the only physical feature of the player's character that I specified (and yes, canonically, Hatsume has a pair of similar looking eyes in the original work). In relation to this, the icon for ‘activating’ your Quirk matches the same symbol.

Gameplay

Introducing: Stats, Special Moves, and Video Games!

Stats

There are 5 basic Stats for all of the characters in the game (brownie points if you recognize where they're taken from!): Speed, Technique, Power, Intelligence, Cooperativeness.

Your own Stats start off low, but you will be able to increase it by doing various activities, such as studying, playing games, winning on Heroics lessons, going to certain places, etc. Different activities raises different Stat, and you're free to choose which particular Stat you want to develop.

What are Stats being used for?

Certain Stat will increase a certain character’s affection, though it won’t be as much as if you hang out with that character.

There are certain places which you can only unlock when a specific Stat reaches a certain point. I’ll talk about hang out places and characters’ schedules in another post.

Weekly one-on-one training matches in Heroics lessons will test a specific Stat or Special Moves each time. Depending on who you chose to become your opponent, that specific Stat will determine the outcome of that match. On one hand, winning these matches can increase your Stat, but on the other hand, there are also special events you could possibly unlock when you lose. Again, I’ll probably talk more in detail about this in another post, since I still don't have the coding part down, so things might change.

Special Moves

Every hero has a Special Move in this universe, and so does the player’s character! While they might not be as flashy as All Might’s iconic United States of Smash, some of your Special Moves will have a direct effect on the gameplay. For example, a certain Special Move could unlock more answer choices for certain scenarios. Another Special Move could be activated to give you hints on how many affection points will be added to a character for the available choices.

You have a total of 5 unlockable Special Moves, and it will be up to you to use this feature: do you spend your time trying to unlock all of it in hope to make your gameplay easier, or ignore them completely in favor of balancing your Stats while pursuing the affection of your chosen love interest? It’s your choice!

(More brownie points for you if you got the reference in that picture lol)

Another use for Special Moves would be in the Heroics lessons, seeing as it might test how your Special Move fares against the opponent you picked.

Video Games

I would say that this particular element plays quite a big role in this game, since the MC learns and develops themselves by playing games. While you do have a set of games which you’ve owned, you’re able to purchase new games from the Video Game store. I would recommend doing this, as there are some neat ones which will help you greatly in your playthrough. But if you're not interested to explore them, that's fine too!

Each video game has a different effect, and it’s up to you to discover them! Or, perhaps, you could unlock a Special Move that allows you to know what effect each of the game has? 😉

What are Video Games being used for?

Most games will only increase specific Stat(s), but there are also others that can unlock Special Moves.

There is one game which helps you to unlock Stats or Special Moves of your classmates, which you can use in the Heroics lesson to pick a suitable opponent based on your current Stats.

In addition to all that, there are 2P games which require more than one person to play, and you could play them with your romance target when they’re available. On top of building your Cooperativeness, choosing the right answers during the gaming session will increase that character's affection.

Others

The basic functions behind some activities like studying, buying video games, and playing video games are done. I will probably move on to code the functions handling the Heroics lesson’s battles and the behind-the-scenes of when the player chooses to go to certain places.

I've also finished the two main custom screens, which is the Quirk and Games page. If I have time and the motivation, I'm guessing I'll be adding the two other additional screens I had thought of doing. We'll see.

Assets

This part is my nightmare, because I’m a perfectionist who’s far too picky when gathering resources…

But no assets = no game, so I did find several assets which I did like. This includes backgrounds, audios, background musics, and some sprites I was planning to use for developing the phone call function. I’m not going to list down all the things I found here, because I don’t think any of you would be interested in a long-ass list, but here’s an amazing background picture which I stumbled upon searching the dark abyss that is the internet:

Full credits to the artist: https://arsenixc.artstation.com/

Writing

I would have to say there isn't too much progress on this side yet, but I did decide on some story elements I want to insert into the game and scripted in a few scenes for the first day. I also managed to code in the dialogs for some common activities / places, like the video game store and a small part of school lunch time.

Honestly, I should probably create a sheet to identify how many scenes I would have to write? So all of us know the progress for this part of the development? ..... Let's see how it goes when my OCD flares up...

Disclaimers

All assets included in the devlogs are not mine, and credits to the asset owners / websites will be included in the game! My Hero Academia / Boku no Hero Academia ⓒ Horikoshi Kouhei

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 5.15

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time in trial 5 (trial 5!!!), they discussed Kaito’s brilliant heroic plan to uhhh threaten Kokichi with a crossbow or something, Monokuma jumped in before they concluded Kokichi did it because he still isn’t even sure who’s dead, Kaito got to be himself again for a bit – or at least his idea of Kokichi’s idea of him – in what might partly have been a belief that Shuichi can prove he really is alive already, Shuichi finally accepted that he’s always known Kaito has to be dead, and even the narrative agreed that Kaito was definitely dead, because look, they had a whole Debate Scrum about it! – one which really should have gone all metaphysical and involved Shuichi arguing with himself rather than everyone else.

Having firmly established that Kaito is definitely dead, then, everyone decides to get back to talking about what happened with the crossbow.

Exisal Kokichi:  “O-kay! Let’s discuss that then!”

Himiko:  “Why are you acting like you’re in charge of things?”

Because that’s always the kind of thing Kaito does in trials! It’s not about him being in charge, just about him trying to bring everyone onto the same page and make sure they know where the discussion is going next. Kaito is ad-libbing again now that we’re back to talking about the crossbow, so his natural trial style is slipping through a little bit even here. This is the best way Kaito knew how to be helpful in trials (trial 4 aside, where he was trying far too hard to help in ways he wasn’t good at) – whereas the way Kokichi always acted in trials was never about communication and co-operation and was just presenting whatever arguments he had in mind, whether they were actually helpful or just an unnecessary tangent rooted in his trust issues.

Conveniently, this still does come across like something Kokichi might do anyway, just because of him having the audacity to act this way when he already knows exactly what happened and presumably doesn’t want them to figure it out.

Exisal Kokichi:  “So, if we assume that Kaito and I shot each other with the crossbow… then the most efficient way to solve this is to set up a timeline of events!”

You know who previously suggested setting up a timeline of events when they weren’t sure how to proceed, in more than one trial? Shuichi! Kaito has learned from him! He’s trying to pretend to be someone who is better at trials and deductions than he really is, so he’s doing that by thinking about what Shuichi would do!

Himiko:  “Hey! I said, why are you—”

Exisal Kokichi:  “Alrighty then! Let the debate begiiiin!”

Cutting someone off and ignoring them is of course not Kaito’s usual trial behaviour when trying to lead the discussion like this, buuut he’s got to be believably dickish enough somehow.

Actually, this whole thing of leading the debate is not entirely something Kokichi never did, because he did act this way in trial 4, in which he was pretending to be helpful while blatantly concealing the absolutely everything he knew about how the case went down. That’s basically what’s going on here, too. And back then, Kaito got annoyed at Kokichi for leading the conversation and ignoring his protests… so Kaito is probably partly drawing off that here. (Specifically, there is an exchange just after trial 4’s intermission which is extremely similar to this one, except that Kokichi was better at cutting someone off with more actual logic and discussion, whereas here Kaito is clearly just thinking “I should be cutting her off now, ummm, WORDS”.)

Tsumugi:  “The crossbow was in Kaito’s possession first…”

“Yes! I, Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars, had it!”

What an absolute dork. Kaito had just been switching characters a minute ago, so apparently he decided that’s a perfectly good excuse to keep doing that because that’s totally something Kokichi would do to be a dick to them. If Kaito were being genuinely himself and confirming that this is what happened, he wouldn’t waste their time being so over-the-top. But because he’s pretending to be Kokichi, Kokichi would totally take the piss out of how ridiculous Kaito often is… which gives Kaito an excuse to actually be that ridiculous!

Keebo:  “Then Kokichi disarmed Kaito, took the crossbow…”

“Yeah! That’s exactly it!”

Keebo:  “…and returned fire.”

“I really messed that up…”

The second white noise line here is definitely Kaito as himself again, but it’s less clear whether the first one is also in Kaito’s voice, or if he switched to Kokichi for that line and essentially simulated a conversation between them. Either way, I love how Kaito is messing around here and clearly trying to have some vague semblance of fun with this (or at least, trying to take the edge off how much he hates being Kokichi; “fun” might be a strong word here), even if he is also being a dick by “pretending” to be the person everyone just fully accepted is dead. None of this is scripted right now.

Exisal Kokichi:  “I didn’t take the crossbow from Kaito… I secretly brought a different one!”

…Actually, this proves that that previous white noise line was Kaito’s voice after all. “Kokichi”’s story here is not that he disarmed Kaito, which is what the white noise was agreeing with. Which then also makes it pretty amusing that Kaito is having the two “characters” he’s playing disagree with each other.

Maki:  “But only one crossbow was taken. The other two are still in my research lab.”

“Crap! She testified!”

And here’s Exisal Kokichi being all “oh crap, caught out in my lie!”. Which… is also not a thing the real Kokichi ever did. If he ever admitted to being caught out, it was always a playful “ya got me!” that never made it sound like he had a problem with being caught.

Exisal Kokichi:  “By the way, crossbow shots hurt a looot. My wound is still aching something fierce.”

“Shall I put you out of your misery, then?”

Aside from the amusing implication that you can try and disprove the fact that being shot hurts, and some fun white noise from Maki…

…“Wound”? Singular? But, “Kokichi”, I thought you were shot twice?

Now this is a line which is genuinely meant to explicitly hint that it’s really Kaito in there. But one thing that’s also quite fun about it is that it’s something the localisers added in without having even especially meant to. See, in Japanese, nouns aren’t any different in the plural, so the line here would have been perfectly ambiguous as to how many wounds he was talking about. It’s possible to specify the singular, but then you’d have to go out of your way to phrase it as “my one wound”, which is obviously not a mistake Kaito would make. But when the localisers translated this line, they couldn’t leave it ambiguous and were faced with a choice of whether to have him say “wound” or “wounds”… and they decided to make it so that Kaito slipped up for a moment there.

(Not that Kaito’s arrow wound is even remotely the only part of him which is causing him a lot of pain right now.)

Shuichi:  (…What? What was that just now?)

Shuichi is actually referring to the fact that Himiko just claimed there was only one arrow, which happened a little earlier in the debate. But since the wound line was the very last line of the debate and this is his summary-thoughts line before the debate repeats, it amusingly sounds like Shuichi is reacting to that and that he realised it was off.

It would be really delightful if there could be an alternative solution to this debate using that. Move the joke weak spot to the “my wound is still aching” part, and have Kokichi’s clothes be one of the possible bullets (which it sadly isn’t here), and then it turns out that’s not actually a joke weak spot and you can make Shuichi notice that contradiction, not about the wound aching, but about the fact that it’s just one wound. It’d give him a moment of fleeting hope despite his despair last time, because Kaito was the one with only one wound so surely that must mean Kaito’s really in there after all! Kaito would have to frantically improvise and be all “Haha, I’m sure you’d like that, too bad for you I just misspoke, or maybe I said it wrong on purpose to get your hopes up then dash them again, sorry not sorry for messing with you!” (which he’d hate every word of) to desperately try and get him to drop it. Then Shuichi would ultimately have to admit to himself that it was just wishful thinking and there’s no conceivable reason Kaito would be in there and lying to him and he shouldn’t still be running away from the truth. It would be really fun!

Which, of course, was never really an option because this slip-up doesn’t and cannot exist in Japanese. That and the actual alternative solutions to debates that exist in this game were all written to require lying, even though that’s kind of arbitrary as I’ve just shown that there can absolutely be interesting alternate routes that use the truth. (I haven’t been covering any of those back routes during the trials because there’s no reason to assume any of them are canon, and most of them are pretty silly anyway. Some of them have some interesting bits, though; there’s one in this trial which is kind of similar to what I just talked about. I’m already planning to do some bonus material on here once I’ve finished the main story, so I’ll be covering the back routes in that.)

So instead we have to proceed by addressing the much less interesting contradiction about the singular arrow instead of the singular wound.

Himiko:  “Kaito even told me to only bring him one. He said he wanted to avoid fighting.”

I guess by that Kaito meant he was intending to simply threaten Kokichi with the arrow and preferably not actually shoot him at all. That sure worked out well. And after that point, since he only had the one arrow, he couldn’t even threaten him any more. I suppose injuring Kokichi would also help give Kaito a slight edge if it did come to a fight, since Kaito was otherwise far weaker than him at that point thanks to his illness.

Even if he wasn’t planning on using more than one arrow (or even ideally any arrows), there was still no reason not to ask for multiple arrows to make the threat more convincing, or to allow him to continue to threaten after shooting once. So I think that Kaito might have asked for only one partly as a measure to keep himself under control. He absolutely did not want to kill Kokichi, but he knows he has a tendency to lose control and lash out when he gets riled up, and so he wanted to limit the damage he could potentially do without really meaning to in that situation. And it seems that might well be what happened, given that Kaito shot Kokichi anyway despite knowing he’d lose the ability to threaten him once he did so, so that probably did happen out of anger.

And now for the most awkwardly mood-whiplashy Psyche Taxi of the game. Shuichi has only just accepted that his best friend is dead – now to pretend to drive a goddamn taxi through his mind in order to figure out the clearly very difficult concept that someone else brought the other two arrows and it wasn’t Kokichi because he can’t assemble a crossbow. Totally necessary and totally fitting Shuichi’s current emotional state. We’re not even specifying that the third party who brought them was Maki yet, even though she’s the only candidate who makes any remote amount of sense, because nope we can’t possibly have the taxi segments make any kind of significant progress despite taking so long.

Maki:  “That’s just a guess, though. There’s no way a third party exists.”

It’s really not a guess, Maki. There is no other reason for there to be more arrows there. You are looking very suspicious by questioning something so basic.

It should already obviously be her, at least to Shuichi, because he and she are the only others who can assemble a crossbow and he knows it wasn’t him. He doesn’t mention or think about this yet, though, probably because he doesn’t want to think that it was her. Despite what Maki accused him of earlier, Shuichi still very much does not enjoy suspecting his friends!

Exisal Kokichi:  “So the third party didn’t hand the arrows through the window… Instead, they went to the hangar and shot the crossbow themselves?”

Kaito is still doing his summarising thing! If he weren’t in the Exisal and didn’t already know how everything went down, this is exactly the kind of thing he would be saying to try and follow along with Shuichi’s logic and make sure he and everyone else was understanding it properly.

Shuichi figures out that the third party got into the hangar unimpeded using an Exisal.

Exisal Kokichi:  “By the way, I just wanna confirm something with Monokuma. Would the alarm still go off if there was a person inside the Exisal?”

The notion of confirming this with Monokuma to make things clearer seems surprisingly thought-out by Kaito’s standards, which makes me think that this might be one of the bits he spent some time thinking about and adding into the script last night. He’d know they’d eventually get onto talking about how Maki entered the hangar, so this’d be something he could prepare for.

Tsumugi:  “But… can just anyone pilot an Exisal?”

Keebo:  “…Well, Kokichi?”

Exisal Kokichi:  “It’s surprisingly easy. If you use both hands, both feet and both nipples, you can do it.”

It’s been a while since we’ve seen some words that were actually chosen by Kokichi. Even though we’re deep in ad-lib territory, this particular part could easily have been in the script as a response to being asked how he was piloting this Exisal, which didn’t necessarily have to happen in this context. This is not remotely Kaito’s flavour of ridiculousness and therefore not something he’d have come up with on his own.

Kokichi was probably having a good giggle to himself when he wrote this line. I bet he wrote it less because this is actually what he’d say in this situation and more because he knew Kaito would be obligated to follow the script and wanted to force him to say the word “nipples”, nee-heehee, how dastardly of him. Kaito went along with it anyway because he doesn’t want to risk deviating from the script unless he has a very good reason to, and this is not one.

Maki:  “There’s no way you can get through security if you pilot an Exisal. It’s… not possible…”

Maki, your insistence about this is making you look incredibly suspicious, especially since Monokuma just lengthily explained that it is possible.

Shuichi:  (Maki… what are you talking about? What are you thinking? What do you know? Why are you trying to hide it? Why…? Why won’t you tell me?)

Shuichi hates the realisation he’s beginning to have that his friend is hiding something important from him in a situation like this! And even then, he’s still not coming to the conclusion that this likely means Maki is the culprit, because he still hates doing that until he has incontrovertible proof.

Tsumugi:  “Is operating the Exisal… really that difficult?”

“Nope! You just gotta use your nipples!”

Credit to Kaito, he is going all in on this nonsense. Reiterating this point when asked again probably wasn’t specifically in the script, but it seems like the kind of dumb thing Kokichi would do, so why not. Certain parts of Kokichi’s expected behaviour, Kaito will not play along with even if it would help make the lie more convincing. But this? Sure, whatever, he’ll talk about nipples all day.

Exisal Kokichi:  “Nee-heehee… Shuichi is getting warmer. How about you say the answer right now? Who did it? Who is this third party?”

Kaito is doing what he usually does, encouraging Shuichi to voice his deductions! He knows Shuichi has almost certainly already figured this out and the problem is just that he’s hesitating to say it out loud because he doesn’t like accusing people, especially if it’s his friend. So Kaito’s giving him the nudge he needs to do that!

…And it’s probably also because Kaito really wants to get onto the part where Maki confesses as soon as possible so that he can understand what the hell is going on in her head and hopefully she can start feeling less that way.

Shuichi explains how it has to be Maki because she was the only one without an Electrohammer this morning… and then adds as an afterthought that she could also assemble the crossbow. That second point proved it was her several minutes ago, Shuichi, come on.

Maki:  “Why… are you doing this?”

Shuichi:  (…What?)

Maki:  “Why… are you getting in my way?”

Maki’s showing a lot more emotion in her voice here than she has for most of this trial. She is still just desperately clinging to the notion that she has to kill Kokichi no matter what sacrifices it takes, otherwise she’ll have killed Kaito for nothing and she can’t bear that thought. It’s also irrational of her to be acting like Shuichi would even know that he’s “getting in her way”, since he obviously doesn’t know what she’s trying to do.

Shuichi:  “Getting in your way? Maki, what are you—”

Maki:  “Yes, I’m the third party.”

So as soon as Shuichi quite reasonably questions that, instead of explaining what she means, Maki just cuts him off and changes the subject back to the actual logic.

Maki:  “But I didn’t kill anyone! I’m not the culprit!”

Note the way she doesn’t phrase this as “I didn’t kill Kaito”, even though she’s been adamant this whole time that Kaito is definitely the victim.  She does not want to frame her crime that way even as she’s denying it.

Rebuttal Showdown typography time again! This is pretty similar to Maki’s first one, with the words in simple, straight arrangements – but this time they’re moving even faster than before, and their movement changes direction partway through, making them a lot harder to cut. It’s not as deliberately all over the place as Kirumi’s was, because Maki’s giving a straightforward argument and not trying to misdirect Shuichi with her words, but she is trying to prevent him from reaching the truth unlike last time, and she’s a lot more desperate emotionally.

Maki:  “Think about the locations of the wounds. They were on his arm and back.”

Kaito wasn’t shot in the back, though. She is still not framing this as being specifically about killing Kaito – which on the one hand makes some sense because she was trying to kill Kokichi and doesn’t want them to know about that either, but on the other hand she just doesn’t want to think of this as her killing Kaito.

Her argument for this Rebuttal Showdown is that neither of them could have been killed with a crossbow alone based on those wounds. Which sure is something we should have brought up sooner while discussing the crossbow and acting like someone could have apparently murdered Kaito through the window by shooting him in the arm. Maki kept quiet about that earlier to draw less attention to herself (since if the possibility of poison came up, she’d be the one who’d seem most likely to have thought of that) and is only mentioning it now because it’s her last line of defence.

It’s also very notable that she’s not remotely trying to defend herself on the basis that she would never *want* to kill Kaito. That would work better than anything as an argument to make herself seem innocent, since nobody has yet brought up the possibility that he could have been killed by accident. While arguments involving people’s character aren’t usually the best to use in class trials, it should at least give Shuichi pause, since he would also firmly believe that she’d never do that.

But of course that’s irrelevant. She’s just someone who kills people, so naturally Shuichi should think it’s perfectly possible that she could have killed Kaito too. Her feelings on what she wanted to happen don’t and shouldn’t matter one bit. (Especially because thinking about what she did want hurts too much.)

Tsumugi:  “Th-There’s no way she is! Cuz… why would she kill Kaito!?”

Maki:  “…”

Maki’s face looks just a little bit more troubled once this notion is finally brought up by someone else, though.

(Three guesses why Tsumugi has decided to pretend to be invested in this, ugh.)

An extremely important thing to pay attention to here is that Exisal Kokichi is being completely quiet during this whole discussion. The real Kokichi most certainly would not be. He never missed an opportunity to rub in the idea that Maki is a heartless killer, and he would especially jump at the chance to do so when it’s Kaito she supposedly killed, proving that Kaito really was an idiot all along for trusting her and trying to help her because she was only ever going to repay that by stabbing him in the back, and Kokichi is totally right to say that nobody is trustworthy ever!

None of that would have been able to be scripted, of course. But Kaito definitely knows that something along those lines is the kind of thing Kokichi would say. It would benefit the plan for him to say something like that, both in terms of making him sound more believably like Kokichi, and in terms of emphasising any theory in which the culprit is someone other than Kaito.

But no. Never on his goddamn life is Kaito ever going to do that to Maki. She’s already suffering far too much; he will not make it any worse than he has to, not even if it would help the plan. It’s not worth it. Overt cruelty for the sake of making the plan just slightly more likely to succeed is never worth it.

Kaito is being just barely enough of a dick to make people think “yep, I guess that’s Kokichi”, and not a single bit more. He’s had to cause a lot of pain for this plan to stand a chance of saving everyone, but he refuses to cause any more than is absolutely necessary. This is what turning yourself into a villain because you truly, selflessly care about saving everyone looks like, and it looks nothing like the real Kokichi. This is probably the single biggest hint that Exisal Kokichi is really Kaito.

It’s just a good thing this hint is easy for everyone to miss because it involves a lack of saying something Kokichi would, rather than saying something Kokichi wouldn’t. That’s probably why Kaito kept quiet here, rather than trying to say anything about Maki’s crime that might sound too strangely favourable towards her.

(But also, conveniently, there are very few things that Kokichi very obviously wouldn’t say. He was so insincere all the time that even if he said something that sounded kinda off, everyone would just assume he doesn’t mean it. None of them are going to think in detail like I’ve been doing about the precise ways in which Kokichi was insincere when they’ve got a trial to focus on.)

Shuichi:  “Maki is trying to kill Kokichi in this class trial. She wants to kill the mastermind, a Remnant of Despair!”

Exisal Kokichi:  “…”

The narrative’s panning-to-Kaito-saying-nothing game is still on point. He even shifted poses there, making it seem like he was caught by surprise. I… don’t think Kaito did realise until this moment what Maki is trying to do. He knew all along that she believed she’d killed him, but why would she hide that when it’d get all her other friends killed? Kaito is only just now realising that Maki’s pain caused her to be willing to get everyone else killed in order to kill Kokichi after all. (Yet he still can’t quite grasp why killing Kokichi is so necessary to her. Sure, she still thinks he’s the mastermind, but killing the mastermind is pointless if everyone else dies too! What’s all this Remnant of Despair stuff even about?)

This silence would seem on the surface like Kokichi being evasive about the idea… but I think the real Kokichi would probably be likely to react to this in some cruel, flippant way. Kaito, however, is too busy being horrified at this realisation to try and think of something Kokichi-ish to say here.

Shuichi:  (The sacrifice that Maki is talking about must be…)

I’ve seen quite a few people get this question wrong at first and assume that the sacrifice was Kaito’s life, but no. Even though she was determined to kill Kokichi thanks to the Flashback Light, there is no way Maki would have been willing to sacrifice Kaito – or anyone else, at first – just to achieve that. It’s only because Kaito ended up being killed against her will that she became despairing and desperate enough to sacrifice everyone else as well so that she could achieve what she set out to do in the first place and make his death not be in vain.

Which is a very serious case of the sunk cost fallacy, but Maki is not being remotely rational about this, even if she’s compartmentalising enough to make it sound like she is.

Exisal Kokichi:  “But that mischievous plan was ruined alllll thanks to Shuichi here. Too bad, Maki! I already predicted this would happen.”

Of course he predicted this! Because Shuichi is amazing and always figures out the truth!

This line has nothing to do with what Kokichi predicted, because he didn’t have time to put any of this in the script. But Kaito has spent this whole time wondering why the hell Maki wasn’t confessing to her belief that she killed him, only knowing that it must have something to do with the pain she’s in and being completely powerless to help her with it from his position in the Exisal. The only way to help her with how she’s feeling would be to bring what she thinks she did out into the open, to get her to confront it and start talking about it, and the only person who could do that is Shuichi. Kaito may have been unable to help her himself, but he dealt with that awful feeling of helplessness by holding onto his belief in Shuichi. He knew Shuichi would be able to save Maki in his place.

(And remember how I pointed out a few posts back that Maki and Kokichi’s podiums happen to be directly opposite each other? This would also mean that, even if the Exisal’s camera has a narrow field of vision, Kaito would nonetheless have had a very clear view of Maki’s face this entire time.)

I also like that he calls her plan to get everyone killed “mischievous”. He’s still using the least biting ways to talk negatively about her, even when it’s about this. Because of course Kaito would understand that she’s doing this out of despair and already knows it’s wrong and hates herself for it, and that calling her out and being harsh on her about it isn’t going to help at all.

Keebo:  “You knew all along that Maki was the culprit. That’s why you’ve been so calm.”

A plausible idea, but of course the real reason he’s been so calm is that everybody is still convinced he’s the victim, and so long as they’re only discussing the possibilities of Maki or Kokichi being the culprit, then Monokuma will be fooled and the plan will succeed. But even later on when Monokuma becomes aware that Kaito might be alive, it’s still not going to make Kaito panic that much. His worst-case-scenario isn’t himself dying, or the plan failing, but rather everyone else dying – but that’s never going to come to pass. If things look bad, he can always just reveal himself and confess, ruining the plan but keeping everyone safe. No matter what happens, Kaito already knows that he’s the only one who’s going to die at the end of this trial… and he can live with that.

(This is also the exact situation Kaede was in during her trial.)

Shuichi:  “We have a choice to make. We don’t have to follow where the evidence leads.”

Tsumugi:  “Huh? What do you mean?”

Exisal Kokichi:  “Does this mean… you’re gonna vote for someone else, even if it’s not the truth?”

What Shuichi is essentially saying here is that they could theoretically all choose to sacrifice themselves in order to get Kokichi killed, like Maki wants. Kaito would probably be very horrified at this possibility if it wasn’t also a perfectly satisfactory outcome to the plan that won’t get them killed at all.

Shuichi:  “Kaito told me that only I would be able to grasp what lies beyond the truth. That means finding the truth is not enough. We need to grasp the hope just beyond it.”

That is not remotely what Kaito meant when he said that. Shuichi is assuming that Kaito was talking about their meaningless buzzwordy concept of “hope”, but of course he wasn’t; he never saw that Flashback Light and never even used the word “hope” at all. If the truth really is that Kaito is dead and Maki killed him, there’s no hope in that. And getting themselves killed just to kill Kokichi, even given that they still believe he’s the mastermind, certainly isn’t hope either.

I see what Shuichi is getting at in that just because Maki is (supposedly) the culprit, they don’t necessarily have to follow that truth in terms of the vote they make just because it’s the truth… but that still isn’t even slightly what Kaito was talking about back then. Kaito probably really wishes he could correct Shuichi on this; he has to be worriedly bewildered as to why Shuichi seems to think Kaito was telling him to kill himself and his friends for no good reason.

Shuichi:  “So, Maki… please tell us the truth! The truth that only you know!”

That is a rather overdramatic way of putting it, considering that the person in the Exisal clearly also knows this truth.

Maki:  “… So Kaito… said that to you. Then… does that mean you guys made up before he died?”

Maki Roll! This whole time she thought she’d killed Kaito before he even made up with Shuichi like she’d so badly wanted them to! Hearing that they got to do that after all has to make this just a tiny, tiny bit more bearable, perhaps enough that that’s why she can go on to talk about it here.

This moment was also a real gut-punch to first-time-me who was at this point convinced Kaito was the victim, because for the first time in this trial he wasn’t just an object we have to make deductions around, but a person and their friend who’s now gone and guh. This really hammered home that he was dead in a way that simply becoming factually convinced of it from the Debate Scrum didn’t.

Maki:  “…Okay, I’ll talk about it. Especially since it’s my responsibility for involving everyone.”

No matter how much Maki had brokenly convinced herself that sacrificing her friends was a worthy cost for killing Kokichi, she never truly wanted to get them killed, and she probably felt especially awful about the fact that she was planning to have that happen without them even knowing. It’s better if sacrificing themselves to kill Kokichi gets to be their choice as well, and after Shuichi saying that they might be willing to make that choice, she’s able to accept this option.

(Sacrificing themselves to kill Kokichi is still not a remotely sensible idea, but they’re all brainwashed with the completely inappropriately-worded notion that ~hope must defeat despair!~, so, you know.)

Maki:  “Shuichi… you’re so persistent. Were you always like that?”

Shuichi:  “Ah, you think so? Maybe Kaito’s charisma is starting to rub off on me…”

Of course he wasn’t always like that! Of course it’s because of Kaito! It doesn’t even need to be because of specific words or specific advice Kaito has said to him – just Kaito being there and being Kaito and being his friend is enough to give Shuichi some of his strength and confidence.

And the person in this room who has the most trouble believing this idea at this point is most likely Kaito himself. It has to mean so much to him to hear this. Shuichi absolutely means this, Kaito. You are the reason he’s become this strong. You’ve always been a hero to him.

Maybe it’d be a little easier for Kaito to really accept that Shuichi means this in this situation, where Shuichi doesn’t even know Kaito is listening and so can’t possibly be saying anything just for the sake of humouring him and making him feel better. Kaito, please take this to heart as much as you deserve to.

(I say this, but, uh, based on some things he says at the end of the trial… I’m not at all sure he does.)

Maki:  “That guy… could be pretty stubborn.”

Maki’s smiling as she says this! She’s finally not just desperately suppressing how much she cared about Kaito and is able to let herself fondly remember one of the things she liked the most about him!

This has to help Kaito a lot too. Not just the fact that Maki cares about him, but the idea that this is how he’s going to be remembered when he really is gone. He’s not just going to have lived for nothing. He’s going to leave a huge impact on the people who were most important to him, and that’s the best thing he could ever hope for.

(You might like to know that I am doing myself an emotion thinking about this. Heartless Journey is not helping.)

After a little more inconsequential dialogue in which everyone else asks Maki to tell them her story and Monokuma awkwardly starts narrating for some reason…

Exisal Kokichi:  “… Well… I guess this turn of events isn’t exactly boring either.”

Uhhhh this is totally still Kokichi in here, you guys!

Kaito apparently got so caught up in being deeply touched and taken aback by the things his sidekicks were saying about him that he completely forgot for a moment that he was supposed to be being Kokichi and that Kokichi would probably have something to say in this situation. It took him a while to remember that, but here he is awkwardly throwing out a sentence that is totally believably something Kokichi might say because it’s about things not being boring, right?

It’s pretty telling that this is exactly the same kind of this-is-definitely-Kokichi behaviour (invoking the concept of boringness) that Kaito pulled out the previous time he’d been distracted by having emotions about the things Maki and Shuichi were saying and wasn’t sure how to respond to it as Kokichi. At least this time was a lot less painful for Kaito than last time, and his words this time aren’t trying to change anything but are just an awkward reminder that Kokichi is totally still here. This… doesn’t actually make much sense as something Kokichi would describe as not-boring, either, because he was never really a fan of just pure unadulterated friendship and people proving that believing in others is actually worthwhile, was he.

(Did you know this game is about FRIENDSHIP.)

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[Next post]

[crusherthedoctor]

Sonic Villains: Sweet or Shite? - Part 7: METAL SONIC

It's been a while, but it's time for another Crusher review and analysis.

There are some villains I like. And there are some villains I don't like. But why do I feel about them the way I do? That's where this comes in.

This is a series of mine in which I go into slightly more detail about my thoughts on the villains in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and why I think they either work well, or fall flat (or somewhere in-between). I'll be giving my stance on their designs, their personalities, and what they had to show for themselves in the game(s) they featured in. Keep in mind that these are just my own personal thoughts. Whether you agree or disagree, feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions! I don't bite. :>

Anyhow, for today's installment, we'll be putting the Stardust Speedway saxophones aside for a moment to discuss Dr. Eggman's notorious robotic copycat, who desperately wants to show us what he's made of: Metal Sonic.

NOTE: While I will be taking several of Metal Sonic's non-game portrayals into account, this will NOT include his Sonic the Comic incarnation, as I feel that Fleetway's Metal - or Metallix, as he's called - is so vastly different in so many ways that I feel there's no point, whereas his other portrayals in non-game media are considerably more consistent for the most part.

The Gist: Being a criminal mastermind slash world conquerer in the making has its shortcomings, and for Dr. Eggman/Dr. Robotnik/The Bad Guy, that shortcoming came in the form of a plush-sized hedgehog who frequently wrecked his machines, foiled his plans, and - worst of all - talked back at him. This literal thorn on his side made the good doctor a very unhappy camper, but one day, his brilliant brain brought a brilliant breakthrough: Why not pit Sonic against himself?

During his then-new scheme to use the Time Stones of the Little Planet to conquer the world through time, Eggman worked tirelessly on his new idea to ensure it was just right. It couldn't be too slow. It couldn't be too bulky. It couldn't be too un-Sonic-like, for he vowed to assert his technological dominance by making a better Sonic than the real one. He wanted this to be his greatest creation yet, and he wasn't going to half-ass that objective.

The result was Metal Sonic, a marvel of industrial automation who established himself as fast as Sonic, as deadly as Sonic, and... not talkative, unlike Sonic. No wonder Eggman declared him the superior of the two.

Eggman loves his creation so much that he’s willing to let him die if this goes wrong. That’s how you know he’s his favourite.

Sure enough, Eggman's efforts were not entirely in vain, as the blue droid was more than a match for Sonic in the speed department, as well as the "What's the best way to make it clear to Amy Rose that I'm not interested?" department via snatching up Sonic's pink hedgehog acquaintance, leaving her as the doctor's captive. Unfortunately however, despite giving Sonic the race of his life, Metal was not yet as quick in his reflexes as the genuine article was, meaning his initial reign of terror came to an abrupt end when he flew head-first into a wall, George of the Jungle-style. Eggman was devastated, except he wasn't, because he knew he could just rebuild and upgrade him. Which he did. Constantly.

He also rebuilt these guys for some reason.

Since his debut in Sonic CD, Metal has went on to appear in a sizable number of games throughout the years, and he's made some personal appearances in a few other continuities as well. Most of these appearances simply have him show up, attack Sonic and other heroes for a bit, then get his ass handed to him. Some of those ass-kickings even came with a tasty amount of hue hues. But every now and then, they'll have him do something more, the most famous example being Sonic Heroes, in which he took over Eggman's army by force and went on his own little crusade to gain everyone's data and become Metal GodJesus, all the while proving himself the real Sonic the Hedgehog... by doing a lot of things the real Sonic the Hedgehog would never do. (This general concept would reappear in the IDW comics, though he did not betray Eggman that time around.)

Overall though, Metal is generally considered to be a welcome face whenever he makes an appearance... when he’s not dreaded for being the biggest roadblock in Fighters.

“Well that’s the end of the playthrough, make sure to like, comment, subscribe.”

The Design: What is there to say about Metal Sonic’s design? It’s cool, it’s ominous, it’s sleek, it’s stylish, and it holds a palpable aura of dangerous badassitude while still fitting perfectly with the design philosophy of this franchise. Truly, Metal’s design alone makes him one of the all-time greats of the Eggman repertoire, and it's easy to see why the scientist is particularly proud of this one.

He’s the robot your robot could crash into a wall like.

He’s had a few transformations over the years though. In Knuckles Chaotix, he turned into a ginormous monstrosity commonly referred to by fans as Metal Sonic Kai, who terrified many juniors back in the day due to making the inexcusable error of not being blue. The bad ending might have also affected them.

E for Everyone.

Luckily, Classic Metal got the right idea two decades later, and kept his blue colour scheme when the Phantom Ruby brought the form back in Sonic Mania Plus. As for Modern Metal, he had a brief life (or lives, if you count IDW) as Neo Metal Sonic, who - despite being made with the intention to be a darker, cooler, more serious iteration of the character - went the complete opposite direction by looking less like a frightening metal monarch, and more like a shonen anime’s midnight seizure.

Look at this fucking thing.

Elf shoes. Ripped skirt. Starfish haircut. Vaguely phallic strap in the appropriate area. Regular Metal may have a semi-cutesy look even in his more dangerous iterations, but at least he doesn't come off as a compensating son who doesn't quite know how to come out to his judgemental father, which is more than I can say for whatever the hell this is supposed to be. Is this really meant to be a more intimidating design? A more badass design...?

Then, as if this wasn’t ridiculous enough for Metal already, they had him transform even further into MechaGodzilla Metal Overlord, a goliath made from the remains of the Egg Fleet, with a side order of spikes and artist’s regret.

"Sonic, I was created for the sole purpose of destroying you... but I can never seem to defeat you... That is why I purchased Freddie Mercury's wardrobe with my own hands!"

Said form also returned in the IDW comic, rechristened Master Overlord, who traded the clawed wings and the flamethrower in exchange for symmetrical hands and a more simplistic body structure, at the expense of looking even more like a children’s toy.

Needless to say, Metal's had some... interesting transformations over the years. But his original look will always remain iconic, and rightly so.

The Personality: Metal Sonic's personality is harder to specify compared to other characters in the series, because his kill-first ask-later demeanour in tandem with his usual muteness means we see him most of the time as little more than a Sonic-shaped extension of Eggman's will. That said however, there have been deeper glimpses here and there into what makes his mechanical mind tick.

The most obvious thing to note is that Metal holds the very un-Sonic trait of not having time for nonsense. Sure, he might not be above taunting his organic counterpart in a likeminded way occasionally, but that aside, he's generally a pretty serious and humorless individual, a stark contrast to his creator and master that nonetheless works in the latter's favor, as the realisation that the goofy manchild Eggman of all people made this thing helps shoot down the myth that the rotund madman is all talk.

"He's behind you!" "Shut it wee man, this is a serious play."

Then there's his insanity, by means of identity crisis. It's not known if this was something that was there from the beginning, or if it's somethng that developed and worsened with each defeat, but at some point in his life, Metal convinced himself that despite literally being made with the intention of exterminating the actual Sonic, he himself was in fact the actual Sonic, and that the actual actual Sonic that already existed prior to his inception was in fact the actual Not-Sonic (or a faker, as would be used to describe a certain other lookalike). This belief has caused him to do a bunch of crazy stuff of dubious logic, and don't try to question him on his reasoning, lest you want him to cut you open like a Terry's Chocolate Orange.

His relationship with Eggman is something of an enigma. While his teenage phase betrayal in Heroes is probably the most mainstream evidence of how he feels about his master, it's easy to forget that this was the exception, not the rule. In nearly every other appearance before and since then, Metal has shown nothing but stone cold loyalty towards the doctor and his cause. Even in IDW, when he regained his Neo form and basically did everything he could to remind everyone that Heroes was a thing that existed, he did it that time around for the purpose of finding his master, and helping to restore his empire. A far cry from Neo's first attempt, when he was ranting and raving about how he should have the empire.

Thus, I can only conclude that while his Sonic-esque AI may cause him to get a little reckless, he remains genuinely devoted to his creator outside of his brief cocaine rush in Heroes... and Free Riders, but I don't think anyone knew what was going on in that one. I don't think he knew what was going on in that one.

But perhaps most surprisingly of all - according to the OVA at least - despite all his black-hearted ways, he is still capable of good, as evidenced when he saved the President and the legendary Old Man Owl from dying a fiery death. Whether it's an inherent part of his own nature, or whether it's a side-effect of his Sonic programming, isn't fully clear... but either way, he might want to make sure Eggman doesn't find out about it.

The Execution: Metal Sonic's execution is a complicated case, because there's a dissonance between when he's merely an obstacle for the good guys, and when they've tried to make him more than that.

When he's merely Eggman's instrument of evildoing, he does the job nicely. Sometimes his appearances can be underwhelming depending on the game (read: Sonic 4), but he usually provides a memorable scuffle when it's time for him to put up his dukes. Even if half of those are actually races.

When he aims for bigger, on the other hand? Well...

I've already joked about Neo Metal Sonic's design, but don't be fooled, for his ridiculous fashion sense is merely one part of my beef with the overall concept of Neo. Simply put, everything about Neo Metal Sonic goes against everything that makes this particular character work.

Ranting, monologuing, and running his mouth off does not work for Metal Sonic.

Gathering everyone's data with the intention of becoming Metal Everyone does not work for Metal Sonic.

Transforming into a goddamn dragon does not work for Metal Sonic. (I can let Metal Sonic Kai slide since despite being bigger and more monstrous, you can still recognise it as Metal Sonic specifically. Colour scheme aside, Metal Overlord/Master Overlord might as well be a random monster entirely.)

These ideas aren't necessarily bad on their own. They could work for another villain, or another Eggman minion. But for Metal Sonic specifically? It just doesn't work at all, and while some may be willing to handwave it as the result of Metal's insanity, I firmly believe it's more than possible to establish and delve into his inner madness in ways that DON'T contradict almost everything about him. A character being insane is not an excuse for turning them into a completely different character altogether, nor is it an excuse for just plain handling them in a shitty manner. By all means, I'm all for giving Metal a bigger role, and I'm all for expanding his character and his dynamic... just not like this.

Metal doesn't need to do all that in order to be effective and leave an impression. His portrayal in the OVA confirms that. OVA Metal was everything that Metal was known for at the time: straightforward, loyal, and silent, bar one line towards the end. And he still managed to be a very intriguing antagonist who served as a believably major threat, and who gave Sonic the fight of his life, and thus earned the hedgehog's disgruntled ire and his begrudging respect. That is the Metal that writers should aspire to. That is the essence of what makes that character.

So, despite everything, I still highly enjoy Metal Sonic when he's Metal Sonic, and not Something Vaguely Shaped Like Metal Sonic. He's stumbled a bit over the years, but when he's done right, he's always an eventful burst of fun, and ultimately, my fondness for those portrayals overrides my disgust towards elf shoes. And I'd love to see them expand on his dynamic with Eggman, which a certain well-liked series of shorts has thankfully given us a small taste of. Here's hoping the future will follow up on it...

“Now, if you may be so generous, hand over the Emerald slowly, or else I'm afraid your little friend will face the consequen-ooooowwwww my FUCKING wrist.”

Crusher Gives Metal Sonic a: Thumbs Up! (and Neo Metal Sonic a: Thumbs Down!)

[longgonegays]

LGG’s Long Gone Days Chapter 1 (pre-update) Review

A year in the making!

PREFACE

In April 2018, I played through Long Gone Days for the second time. I had more of a critical eye after my first run through, and I wanted to write down my impressions. However, I got incredibly busy and wasn’t able to publish my initial reactions. As of now, I have played through the story a third time, alternating endings all the way, and even though the game is getting a MAJOR update probably soon, I figured I might as well post my thoughts and suggestions here!

SPOILERS BELOW

THE GOOD STUFF

Let me start off by saying that the art is phenomenal. I’ve loved it ever since the first demo was released in 2016, and it’s honestly one of the best looking RPGs I’ve played in a long, long time. The characters are interesting and have lots of room for growth, the music is atmospheric and cool, the devs are responsive, the story is unique, and the community is new and exciting! There’s so many good things. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve shared this game with. One of my friends even backed the indiegogo along with me!

As with any up-and-coming Early Access title, there’s bound to be mistakes or mechanics that could be optimized better. I’ve found many things that have the potential to make a greater impact on the player if done a little differently. However, I am no video game developer, so if any of my suggestions on the technical side are impossible, just know it’s not my intention to make the team do 500 more hours of work. :P

LET’S GET INTO IT!

There are different categories of issue. They will be sorted chronologically and marked as CONSISTENCY, GAMEPLAY, LANGUAGE, STORY, or TYPO.

TYPO: A pretty crucial one! The directions tell you to press X to shoot the drones in the tutorial, but when pressed, X does nothing. Z is the correct key.

CONSISTENCY: There should be a period after the word "half". All other notes at this point end in complete sentences, so it feels strange to not end the same way.

CONSISTENCY: The lowercase b in "Power bar" should be "Power Bar" since it appears that way in the Consumables menu, and it is properly capitalized when another one is picked up later on.

STORY: It's a little strange that the Shooting Range Clerk can fix a broken elevator card. I would've never related the quest to him; I actually didn't solve it the first time because I didn't think talking to the clerk was worth it. Unless there's a briefly explained in-story reason for him knowing how to fix them, another NPC beside him or even a sign with something akin to "Repair" in the description would give the quest direction more of a hint. (Just as an aside, it would be neat to return to the Kitchen Clerk and discuss what you saw thanks to the fixed card!)

TYPO: The description should read "has run out of batteries" and not "has ran". It would read "ran" if it were simple past tense (The watch ran out of batteries), but not when it's the past participle (anything with has/have). 

LANGUAGE: You could say "The following series of exercises only take five minutes at the time...", meaning it would only take 5 minutes to do them on the field, but it may flow better with the way the phrase is most commonly used, "...only take five minutes at a time", or just shortening it to "...only take five minutes."

TYPO: Instead of "Why are we hiding for?" it should either be "What are we hiding for?" or "Why are we hiding?"

TYPO: The real hut code is 07734, but afterwards, it states in both the Quest List and the Notes that it is 007734, which is incorrect.

CONSISTENCY: The Quests for Kaliningrad are available in the menu a little early. You have access to them before you get to the stone bridge on the right and fight The Core soldiers for the first time. The player hasn’t even met Ivan at this point.

TYPO: This is the beginning of the quest. "Found" should be "Find" since we haven't actually found her sister yet.

TYPO: “Forget” should be "I almost forgot", since "I told you I'd bring cake" is past tense.

GAMEPLAY: The "find the items" prompt only appears AFTER you collect the first item for Gleb's mother. Before that, it's just "convince the mother to go to Gleb's house". It would make more sense for the description to switch immediately to "Find the items" after she tells you which items she needs. (Sidenote: If someone accidentally clicks through the dialogue too fast, they'll have no idea what they're looking for. It may help to list Flower Pot, Painting, and Toy to show what items are needed.)

CONSISTENCY: Any time you talk to a group of two people, it's the same dialogue. It sets up the expectation that I'd just get the same words over and over no matter which person I talked to or in which order. HOWEVER, in Pay It Forward, the dialogue differs depending on which woman you talk to in the Residential District. You MUST talk to the lady on the left. I couldn't figure out how to solve this quest the first time because I didn't know who to look for (I thought I had seen all NPC dialogue since I already talked to the lady on the right). This is a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things, but I felt like I had to mention it.

STORY: Pay It Forward ends with you giving Anton the Conduct Pass. Yuliya (Downhearted Lady's Sister)'s dialogue doesn't change after progress reaches 100%, and she'll keep telling you to talk to the Residential District woman. A change in dialogue could help emphasize the fact that the quest is COMPLETE and no further action is needed on the player's part, just like the Business-Savvy Woman's dialogue changes after completion of the same quest.

TYPO: Just past participle again! "An uprising has began" should be "An uprising has begun".

TYPO: In the battle before you meet up with Ivan and Adair, an 's' should be added to make "Aggressive Soldier". I posted this one on the Bug Report forums a while ago, so I’m guessing it’ll probably be fixed in the next update.

GAMEPLAY: Maybe give a warning that Adair's going to heal you after the battle? I used a ton of my food for the first playthrough because I anticipated more fighting. Perhaps include some dialogue of Adair saying something like "I'll heal you properly after we fight the soldiers inside of the house." It would save some people from using too many of their resources too early and wasting them.

TYPO: "Why are you standing here for?" should be "Why are you standing here?" or the correct phrase, "What are you standing here for?"

GENERAL SUGGESTIONS

GAMEPLAY: You mentioned planning to implement the option to switch control keys, which is great. I think the second most popular suggestion is to Toggle Shift (and add Right Shift) instead of having to hold it down every time you want to run. Both will save a lot of fingers!

STORY: Instead of “[Enemy] has fainted” you can put "[Enemy] is down". It is ambiguous yet straightforward if you really want to avoid the word "dead". The fact that the Gun Drones “faint” as well seems questionable. Using “down” or “has been downed” would eliminate the strange phrasing and make a little more sense.

GAMEPLAY: More information in the Kaliningrad Quest descriptions! In Pay It Forward, it would be good to specify within the description that the sister has red pants. In Searching for the Cure, noting the location of the pharmacy would help, even if it just mentions heading North. In Animal Rescue, tell the player to head East to find the Animal Advocate; add a sign for the Residential District! In The Lost Girl, include Lynn's hints about a sandy / dirt-filled location. The very first time I ran around starting these quests, it was incredibly confusing trying to navigate the map effectively and remember which direction things were. Especially when the descriptions are so vague; you have to remember a lot of tiny details only referenced in the Quest Start dialogue, and there's no guarantee the player will recall all of them if they're solving a bunch of quests at a time. Small hints can go a long way.

GAMEPLAY: All quests appear to be able to be completed as soon as you enter the area. However, it would make things INFINITELY easier if they were sorted in "Not Started", "In Progress", and "Completed" tabs. It's a bit of a hassle to scroll through and find which quests you're working on, especially since they aren't sorted chronologically or alphabetically. Additionally, "Locked" quests could be greyed out ones that cannot be completed anymore or ones that cannot be started at that point in the story. Some organization would be nice!

GAMEPLAY / STORY: After playing the game, my friend had this to say: "One thing I would like to see more game-mechanics-wise is the option of using stealthier methods of taking down enemies. For example, when you can sneak around the gun drone in Kaliningrad nighttime, have it so you can utilize your high vantage point (the rooftop) to snipe down enemies and avoid direct conflict."

I absolutely agree that Sniper Mode should be used more. It only makes sense. Why charge into battle with a long-range weapon? Even if Rourke has other methods of fighting, wouldn't he want to prevent close-quarters situations in the first place? That guy even has his back turned! Ambush opportunities are not used effectively.

LANGUAGE: A LOT of the dialogue could use more contractions. For example, at the beginning, Lynn saying "They are here!" would take longer rather than "They're here!", and she'd probably want to get the information across to Rourke faster. This isn't a necessary fix, as everything is readable without contractions, and some characters may just have a tendency to speak like that, but it would make the dialogue seem more realistic and flow more naturally for most of the cases.

CONCLUSION. . .

Long Gone Days is a wonderful game. I would recommend that everyone at least play the first 30 minutes, because it is definitely something else. I still get very emotional at certain points, like that scene with the Civilian Fighter where they first speak in Russian but then try to sound things out in English, finally telling Rourke "We are counting on you. Good luck." It gets me EVERY TIME. It's such a good and powerful moment, couldn't stop half smiling half tearing up when I read it the first time. The text speed and how it was presented was really effective.

I loved the Boss fight as well! The fact that the morale boosting events were saved for the very end of that chapter made it much more impactful than the consistent battle-to-battle challenges in the demo. During my first playthrough, I had to stop myself from letting the Lieutenant use his Attack because of how freakin' COOL the art and animation looked! Everyone’s cut-ins are great!

Unsolicited Advice-Giving Soldier is also hilarious, and I think sprinkling that kind of humor in is very important in a game like this. :P

Overall, I love this game. I really want it to grow. It’s a lot of fun to talk and theorize about, and Chapters 2 and 3 should have no shortage of conversation material. With a bit of polish, Chapter 1 could be an even more effective introduction to the dangers the Kaliningrad Squad will have to endure in the future!

Thank you for reading! I’m looking forward to the full release!

[krixwell-liveblogs]

Blind reactions to Deltarune chapter 1

Alright, so last night, I played through Deltarune chapter 1.

For those not in the know, this is a free teaser for the sequel to Undertale, which takes around 3-5 hours to complete. It’s meant for those who have “finished Undertale”, so if you haven’t either finished Undertale or, like me, watched enough playthroughs of the game that you’ve practically finished it by proxy, you should probably skip the rest of this post. Same goes if you haven’t played Deltarune yourself. Go do that.

Liveblogging Worm isn’t my first time sharing my reactions to things as I went along. It kinda comes naturally for me to do that. So a few minutes into Deltarune (in the classroom scene), I decided to share some thoughts I’d had up until that point. But the problem was, I couldn’t go into the #deltarune_spoilers channel on Loreweaver’s server to talk about it, or I’d get spoiled myself. So, I opened a NotePad document and began typing my thoughts there for later sharing. And then I continued doing that until I finished the game.

And hey, I have a liveblog, why not use it for this too? So, below the readmore, if you’re interested, here are my thoughts on Deltarune.

Warning: It’s long. Also, spoilers for Deltarune (duh), Undertale, Kingdom Hearts II and vaguely Homestuck, Wander Over Yonder and Over the Garden Wall.

It's kind of hilarious how the game goes "nah, you don't get to decide who you are", and then gives the character a name that works as a shortened version of my legal name.

Kris looks like an older Frisk, but doesn't share the name. Are they separate? But why would Toriel be raising them then?

The narration is far less filled with FUN than the narration in Undertale, giving Kris a depressing feel. The shaded eyes and the mirror narration "It's only you." (in contrast to Undertale's) "It's you!" reinforce this. I wonder if it has to do with Chara's presence in Undertale and the narrator!Chara theory.

Kris has a brother...?

Asriel's around? Well, then. Alternate universe alarm bells are ringing.

We could be following Chara, but the world seems to have monsters and humans living together, Toriel isn't a queen, and many characters in and after the driving cutscene shouldn't have been born yet when Chara was around.

Alphys as a school teacher is fun. I immediately went to her when she asked me to pick a partner, just to see what she'd say - I love that she's watching anime in class.

Decided to go for Monster Kid first, in case I couldn't check out everyone before making my choice. But apparently he's partnered already, so I guess there is no choice. I'm guessing the snake is the one who hasn't got a partner yet.

...Snowy, you're incorrigible.

Wait, so Temmie is partnered with an egg. That leaves an even number of other candidates. So I guess we're not going to find anyone to partner with. I suppose that fits the tone we're going for with the narration.

Blue bird guy is a jerk.

His name is Berdly? ...sure.

I like the reindeer.

Jockington. These names! And apparently the cat is named Catti. Not to be confused with Catty, whom I'm pretty sure I saw in the driving cutscene. Or did I only see her parents? I definitely saw Bratty, at least, so Catty shouldn't be in school. And the personalities don't match.

That's an origin story, alright. I suppose that means we've already got an implied ouroboros in this game, since Jockington was a hula hoop rather than a jumping rope.

Noelle is a good name for the reindeer. I'm not surprised to see Berdly objecting to the trio idea.

...hello there, important character. Susie?

So I suppose we're teaming up with the intimidating goth.

Poor Alphys is terrified of Susie. Susie honestly seems kind of chill at first glance, but there's gotta be a reason why she intimidates Alphys especially much.

Okay, who's eating chalk? I noticed the green chalk was missing from Kris' house, and now the school's chalk is gone for the third time. Did someone let a Homestuck character or two loose in this world?

So we're babysitting Susie on the chalk quest.

The classmates don't seem confident in Kris' survival. Apparently Susie has a reputation for beating people up.

"You SUZ, you LOSE!" Okay, Snowy, I'll give you that one. :p

What did Susie just do? Eat something? She doesn't seem to want me to have seen it.

Yeah, Susie doesn't seem so bad. So, secret, you say?

...bad timing to add that, huh. Also, quiet people piss you off? Hypocrite.

OH! That was the chalk! I was kidding when I said someone was eating it, but of course, this is Toby Fox. Which this electric guitar music is also reminding me of.

Whoops. Looks like she's gone full "well, why not make this worse so the punishment is worth it" mode.

"I would rather not lose my face, thank you very much."

All bark and no face-bite?

"If you hadn't gotten it by now, your choices don't matter." That's definitely meant in a meta sense. It's starting to become a theme. I suppose Deltarune isn't particularly branching, unless this changing is going to be a point.

Is "blurry yellow object" any way to talk about your teacher, Kris?

I like Susie's reactions to you trying to go the wrong way.

I don't think this is supposed to happen when you open a closet.

This is not a closet anymore, Susie.

"kind of big" YA THINK

Yeah, the closet's definitely broken, in some fashion. So where is this taking us? Narnia? The world of Undertale?

Aaand the door's closed.

And here goes the floor. Time to let gravity do its thing?

Can't have an Undertale game without falling into another world, eh? So, where's Susie? And is it just me or did Kris just get a new wardrobe? Yeah, that's definitely some kind of armor.

Oh hey, save point. I wonder if we're getting filled with anything. Dread, maybe. Everything's blue, even the save point...

"At times you see it flickering. The light only you can see. By second nature, you reach out and..." So Kris, whether they're Frisk or not, is familiar with the save points, and knows that others can't see them. Interesting.

Hang on, did I just overwrite a Kris save with a Krixwell save? I *knew* it wouldn't completely discard those answers from the start. (That's why I answered the same things when I restarted to get my headphones working.)

Hmm. Eyeballs on stalks that start swinging when you walk past them? I like the sounds they make.

Something just moved off-screen in the top right. Also, there's something flowing out of holes here. Oil?

Huh. An eye symbol. Reminds me of Madoka Magica.

Another one, in case you missed the first one... Am I supposed to go down this water(?)fall?

Yep. No return. Not that there's anything to return to.

Sleeping gray oozes...

Is this what's left of the underground after the pacifist ending? Except that doesn't explain the relation between Frisk, Asriel and Kris. I suppose it's possible that Frisk is the brother and took on the name Asriel as a tribute, but that honestly just seems rude. Besides, Toby would catch all sorts of flak if he were to gender Frisk now.

Pfft, those eyes and the oil hole look like a silly face. So, this *looks like* the first real choice of the story. Not that "real choice" necessarily means much - it's not like Undertale actually branched much. Most proper choices in Undertale were fake, still leading to the same outcome.

Hmm. If only one of these leads onward to the rest of the story, it's probably the silly face route. So I should probably go downwards if I want to not miss anything.

Yep. Dead end, with something shining in the oil hole.

...a Glowshard. Alright, let's see what its info says.

Woah, new menu! Earlier, in the house, I discovered that the menu was the same as in Undertale, but now that I'm in the closet, there's a new interface. Interesting.

The Glowshard's use is unknown. Alright.

Cell phone's not working and makes beautiful sounds to show that.

Apparently along with the armor, Kris wound up with a "wood blade". I wonder if that's actually the pencil they had earlier. I say this while sitting here with a shortsword-sized pencil next to me.

"Body contains a human SOUL." That's ominous. The fact that the game is specifying that makes it sound like it might change.

While Kris is wearing something that looks like armor, it doesn't show up on the equip screen as such.

They seem to have lost their 2 money.

Silly face path time!

Should I be concerned about that eyeball-stalk having a red outline? I probably should.

Interesting. Going into "combat" against the hostile stalks gave more things outlines, and the SOUL became visible. I wonder if getting hit would send me into a mini dodging game like when Undyne chases you in Undertale.

I should probably note that while I've watched many playthroughs of Undertale, I've never actually played it, apart from a browser version of the Sans fight. So if this contains bullet hells scaled after the end of Undertale at the very start, I'm kind of screwed.

"A power shines within you, breaking through the darkness." Determination? Hope? No, hope is HP. I suppose it could just be the ability to save, which is a side effect of determination. Even if Kris hasn't exactly seemed like the determined type so far.

Oh, right, restored HP. Maybe that was hope after all.

"Eye Puzzle". Alright, let's puzzle this out.

Without having read the sign, just looking at the iconography, I'm guessing the dots mean which eyes are affected by each light, and you have to close all of them to proceed.

"In this land, only eyes blinded by darkness can see the way..." Yeah, definitely sounds like I need to close them.

Rightmost eye and middle eye. Easy as p-eye. YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN MAKE BAD PUNS SNOWY

I just saw the black thing again, at the right edge, moving real fast. Looked almost like an Enderman from Minecraft at a glance.

There it is again. I'm about to catch up with it, aren't I. Did it come down the other waterfall?

Oh cod, did I just kill one of the sleeping oozes?

Oh! It's Susie! Hi.

How did Kris get you into this? You're the one who ate the chalk so we had to get more, you're the one who pushed on into the closet.

Susie's outfit looks like she fell out of Kingdom Hearts. Maybe that's what's going on. Maybe Kris is Frisk's nobody, who's been living in a fake world.

Ooh, someone waving, you say?

Apparently they've got hostility in spades.

This looks like a ghost town. Like, literally, a town for ghosts, with the curved houses and all.

Well, at least it's a ghost town in the figurative sense. That castle is intriguing. Not to mention the geyser.

"Why the hell is there a castle inside a supply closet?" Ahaha

"Welcome, heroes...!" is off-center and it's bugging me.

A masked stranger introducing himself as the Prince of this Kingdom. In yellow. I don't trust this at all. Flowey, is that you?

The Kingdom of Darkness. Alright. Is this connected to the Underground in any way?

The stranger knows our names and called us heroes. He's been expecting us.

Heroes of Light? I don't know, I don't think I'd peg either of them as having that aspect.

Foretold by time and space... look, the Homestuck jokes write themselves and I think Toby Fox knows that.

Hopes and dreams, light and dark, balance of the world being threatened... fairly basic plot beats in and of themselves. Fair enough. Three heroes, including the Prince, supposed to restore the balance... The thing is, I still don't trust the Prince to be telling the truth, or at least, the full truth, and I think a lot of the plot is left in the inaccuracies. I'm watching you, Prince.

"Delta warriors" sounds like something you'll try to make a thing but not really succeed at making a thing.

"Please, won't you accept this destiny?" "Uhh... Nah." Ahaha, I love it.

The Prince seems genuinely distraught at Susie's refusal.

Pfffft, bye Prince! Oh my cod, is that you, Sans?

Okay, no, this isn't Sans. And he sounds like he's an antagonist, talking about the heroes "running away". He mentions his dad, whom I'm guessing is the supposed main antagonist for now.

"I'm... the bad guy." I'm not hearing an elaborate and catchy song to explain that, so your point is invalid.

"We both know you'll go EAST!" Yeah, because there's no other exit that we didn't come from.

Lancer, huh. As if the Son of the Month thing didn't make it clear that you're not the main antagonist. So, hey, depending on the exact role of his dad, would Lancer perhaps also count as "a Prince from the Dark" for the prophecy?

Alright, new fighting UI. This ought to be interesting. It looks kind of early-Final-Fantasy-esque?

(Act -> Check) Ohh, Lancer was the spade guy. Pfft, he's just got a burning bike, not a motorcycle.

So Susie's also found herself with a new weapon.

He claims his bike's running out of fuel, but the check established it doesn't actually run on fuel...

So what's the real reason he's forfeiting-- oh, dinnertime. Fair enough. Enjoy!

Ralsei. I think I've seen fanart of you. I like how you have a heart on your shirt - a human heart - to contrast with Lancer's spade. I don't trust it, but I like it.

So why don't you have any subjects, Ralsei? Why have you had to wait alone your whole life?

"Ralsei, the lonely prince, is now your ally." Hey... Ralsei is an anagram of Asriel...

"The power of fluffy boys shines through you." Ahahaha

Ooh, training dummy. White outline, which I suppose indicates you can fight it but it's not hostile like the ones with red outlines.

This big door looks familiar.

Ralsei explicitly asks me to do a pacifist run. Interesting.

These red trees look weird.

I like how it gave me a little thing telling me the name of the track that was starting to play. The Field of Hopes and Dreams, huh? It's pretty sweet, too. Meanwhile, Lancer left a message about upcoming enemies. Should be fun.

"If you're reading this, I guess you're dead." I think you got that backwards, dude.

Hi there, Lancer. I thought it was dinnertime?

Hah, the group term for the diamond-based Rudinns is "necklace". Nice.

So if you do the thing that lets you spare an enemy, you can also have your partner spare the enemy on the same turn. Good to know.

RIP Topchef's cake.

Maze of Death? Sounds pleasant.

I see Susie's not doing a pacifist run. Hey, what if she's the true main antagonist by the end of all this?

Pfft, poor Lancer has no sense of direction, apparently.

Hehe, the White Ribbon enhances Kris's cuteness. I wonder if that has mechanical consequences.

Apparently only Kris can seal the dark fountain, and Susie is stuck with us.

Oh my cod the fanfare gag is hilarious

Whoops. Susie killed the C.Round because I took the time to *Check it. Does that mean I'm no longer on a pacifist route?

Violet tormentor. Good title.

"The power of mean girls shines within you." Oh my cod, Kris, you can't just ask people why they're violet!

*haggles the tutorial seller down to 1 dark dollar, buys, and then just turns around* Nah.

This shop guy looks like someone mixed together the Beldam, Mad-Eye Moody, an old cat and the goggles from Splinter Cell.

Seam, pronounced "Shawm"? Not a bad name for someone who looks to be part doll.

Lightners, Darkners... Apparently the Lightners were godlike. Are the Lightners the monsters, and the Darkners their "shadows"? Ralsei being the shadow of Asriel?

The Darkners were "locked away and left behind". Sounds familiar.

King seeking revenge...

Historically, there were four kings, in the "Card Castle". No points for guessing how the kings were themed, or who Lancer's dad is. Or who Ralsei's dad was, for that matter.

So does that make Lancer the Jack of Spades?

A strange knight, description in red, appeared and locked three of the kings away. Again, no points for guessing which one wasn't locked away. So does this knight work for the King of Spades, or vice versa? Are there Aces in all of this?

Oh, alright, so the King of Spades put the Knight and his son, Lancer, into power. That suggests the King works for the Knight rather than vice versa. Possibly not willingly.

"Haven't seen this much chaos since... Ha ha ha... Well, you don't need to know about THAT." Since what? Since just before the Lightners left for the surface? Since some plant absorbed nearly every Lightner's soul for a while?

Bought the Amber Card and a couple more Dark Candies.

Alright, let's go see what bullshit the desperate tutorial salesman has for us.

Ah, yes, because this group of suspicious individuals don't look ready to ambush us.

ROUXLS KAARD. The surname is obviously a reference to cards, but everything else about this name screams "anagram". DARK SOUL ARX? AR DARXOULS? SOUR KLAXARD?

I love how there are tutorial guys for Ralsei and Susie, and the way they barely know what they're talking about. Is the last one for Kris? ...yep.

Oh, nice, Kris Master and Ralsei point out the thing I found out earlier about sparing on the same turn.

So there are two paths that both seem to keep going. One with a puzzle, and one with an encounter. I saw the puzzle and went back to the encounter... Hm. Let's try the puzzle too.

Ahh, it's something you're not meant to be able to do unless you've been to a later section of the game. So either you'll be able to go back here later, or you're supposed to use meta knowledge from a previous playthrough. Then again, I kind of suspect what the order is anyway. If I'm right, I won't go on through, because I'm not supposed to see this yet, but I want to try it out.

Alright, looks like it's not the standard order of the suits. Fair enough, that'd be too easy. Even if the input is a puzzle in itself.

I have to do the encounter again?

Well, I made a few mistakes this time, so Susie killed one of the Rudinns.

"When you step into the light, you'll return to where you were before." I don't think it's talking about home. Avoid the glowing tiles, got it.

Hm. Easier said than done. Right, I should probably run.

Can I switch to the lane that's fading before the light fades in on the lane I'm on? ...yes! Puzzle solved.

Apparently the effect of the light only applies to Kris.

Is that a bucket, Lancer? Ew.

Oh great, it's literally to put bodily fluids in. Toby knows exactly what he's doing here.

Oh cod, he's asking for an official name. Ralsei, don't you dare say Delta Warriors.

"Blue person"... how did I not notice that Kris is still blue?

Alright, so I get descriptions of the papers. Definitely not going for the neat paper, which is obviously Ralsei. So my choices are to let Susie name the team, or to let Lancer name it. Great.

Let's see what Susie's got.

Ahaha, he's not allowed to say it. Classy, Susie.

THE $!$! SQUAD

Cool, I'm down with that. Better than Delta Warriors. Well, not really, but still.

Tier-TWO swear words. What's tier one? Darn, heck, etc?

Collective dad? Does he think we're siblings?

No, Ralsei, we can not consider a different name.

(Lancer to Ralsei) "Yeah! How about I be in the Squad and YOU be the bad guy?" That's an interesting idea you've got there, Lancer.

I kinda trust Ralsei a bit more at this point, because he seems a lot like the non-evil iteration of Asriel, but I'm still not entirely sure. That could easily be a front.

"The power of The $!?  Squad shines within you." Ahahaha

So the Great Board is inhabited by chess people. I suppose maybe the Knight is from there? Or maybe that's just what Toby wants me to think. Now where have I heard a story about chess pieces and cards and a takeover from within before...

So what's this extremely dangerous thing? A card shredder?

Oh, a C.Round. Maybe we can keep Susie from killing this one.

Ah, fuck, it got promoted. Nice legs.

Hah, K.Round. As in King Round. Not sure what the C stood for.

That was a fun little fight. And now it seems it's time to explain to Susie that violence isn't always the best option.

Ahh, great. Switching sides because she's bad at heroing. Honestly, though, it really does suit her better.

Alright, now I'm in a forest, and there's a door with colorful flames. Interesting.

The door is for fast travel. Got it.

"We managed to fix this thingamajig up for you." Oh yeah, that's right, I found an empty doorframe earlier.

Oh jeez, they've practiced an alternating dia-monologue.

"Dark Jack Lancer"? Guess I was right about his card, then.

Ahaha, the Dark $!?  Squad! And it's Lancer who says it, too. Susie, you're a bad influence.

So there's a Rudinn asking me to help with a gift for a friend named Clover (I think I have an idea which suit she's aligned to). Sports, cute boys and trees? Well, I've got one of those things.

Salsa stump. Well, at least they're getting along.

I got a scarf that's apparently sharp enough to use as a weapon. Nice.

Oh hey, a puzzle based on the same input method as the post-game puzzle from before. I know how this works, so this shouldn't be too hard, what with the password being stated.

...yeah, that only requires clubs and a heart, that's super easy.

I like Bloxer.

Alright, so there's a dead end down here with two seemingly unreachable buttons in sight. Looks like a path-building puzzle.

There's a symbol puzzle meant to teach you how to mix the lower and higher suits. I managed to find the answer in two tries, before talking to any of the hint... beings.

...who were apparently one three-headed being. I may have just triggered a fight by not talking to them when I came back into the room after checking whether the answer was the same to the symbol puzzle I just passed in the room with Bloxer.

Oh! This is Clover. Hey, Clover, would you like a gift? I've got a cute boy here.

Let's talk about boys.

"Herselves". Cute.

Alright, bake sale time. We've got diamonds, hearts, and spades (run by The Dark $!?  Squad), but no clubs. Why not?

The Choco Diamond and the Hearts Donut each heal ??hp. The Choco Diamond sounds like it'll work better if given to certain characters. Maybe it heals more if the target is diamonds-aligned. Same going for the Hearts Donut on hearts-aligned characters. I should buy another Hearts Donut and test that on Kris and Ralsei.

Sure, I'll donate to the noble cause of kicking my ass too.

Did they just... do that so they could buy a Hearts Donut?

So to the west we have another fast travel door, and to the north there's... a martial arts dojo?

Oh, the smith! I just saw in the inventory that the Broken Cake is a key item that needs to be fixed by a master blacksmith. Guess it's time to do that.

Ahahaha the squeaky hammer sounds! And the cake was "fixed beyond recognition". I love this.

A topcake... can I wear it like a top hat? Is it armor?

Ah, no, but it is a 160 hp full party heal, single use. Good to keep in store, just like the butterscotch-cinnamon pie.

"(This cardboard stand is actually just a fake cardboard stand of a cardboard stand.)" Pfft. Glad we got that cleared up.

Hello, hungry hungry caterpillar.

Nice disguise, Lancer.

Oh, please tell me I get a choice of "the most evil thing I can imagine" here.

Oh fuck, this is even better.

Look, I know the duck face is "garbage", but I can't just NOT pick that one.

Tank body sounds good.

I'm torn between the sneaker shoes and the attractive wheels... I think I'll go with the sneakers. Wheels just make too much sense for the tank body.

Lancer: "Are you sure you're not evil?" Ralsei: "Er, no, I suppose we just have a knack for it." ...

Damn. The bird thing killed me and now I have to make my beautiful thrashing machine all over again.

"The darker it gets, the more you can see." That's familiar. Like the eye puzzle early on. What does it mean, thematically? That you have to see the darkness to truly understand the world?

I was right about the Hearts Donut. It heals Kris by 20 hp, but Ralsei by 50.

Alright, so a Rudinn just confirmed that Susie is considered a Lightner. Does that extend to Kris too?

The save point here names the room as "Before Maze". Way to spoil it, dude.

These villains are so ridiculously ineffectual. But how long is the Papyrus section of this game going to last? I didn't buy for a second that Lancer was even close to being the main antagonist, and now we've long since established the bigger threats (the King and the Knight).

Well, the maze was something. Ooh, machine time!

Aw, I didn't get to fight it. Fair enough.

Susie says our design sucked, so does that mean they've come up with another one?

Ralsei points out that Susie needs him and Kris to return home, but I don't think she WANTS to go home anymore.

Alright, defeat means friendship, huh? Bring it on.

Hah, trying to convince them not to fight is working on Lancer.

Ahahaha, Lancer blocked the pacification with his bike and the bike got tired.

Lancer, join OUR team! That way you can be a team with Susie even though she's joining back up with us! And then when Ralsei turns out to be evil, you can take his place as Prince from the Dark.

Pfft, poor Ralsei being tasked with making the track jackets.

Oh cod, no thanks, put those eyes back where they came from, Lancer, or so help me.

Lancer's Stool Forme is very useful.

Susie is SO into Lancer at this point.

I kinda like and kinda hate how Lancer just floats outside the path instead of following the rest of the party Earthbound-style.

It does seem like Kris is counted as a Lightner. I'm not sure how to feel about the whole "Darkners can't feel fulfilled unless they're helping Lightners" thing, though.

So this is very much the calm before the storm, where our protagonists are happy and content with being friends. What's going to shake this up?

Oh hey, it's Card Castle. Neat.

Lancer doesn't want us fighting people inside the castle. Is it for our sake, or for the sake of the people in there?

See ya, Lancer.

Well then. We've been captured.

So where's Susie?

Ate some moss and “mossed out” my HP. Nice. :P

Took me some time to realize that I had to continue talking to Ralsei to proceed.

Pfft. Classy, Susie.

I like the thing about thinking about what Susie's doing now to segue into a section where we semi-control her.

...alright, where we're tricked into thinking we can control her.

Especially the purple one, eh? Is that because she's especially dangerous, or because you care especially about her?

"It's fine, actually." Is it, Susie? "You don't have to say anything." This is becoming a trend for you. Making your conclusions and telling people not to bother saying things.

Lancer, you may want to explain yourself quickly, regardless of Susie's demands that you shut up. Your face is in danger.

He's attacking, but he's doing the Toriel thing where the attacks fan out. I wonder if there's a path in this game where you cause Lancer to accidentally kill Susie rather than let Susie kill Lancer. If things are going to get to that point.

These spades are better at dodging the heart than Toriel's flames were.

He's visibly trembling more with each attack.

Good, Susie. Good. Now put down the axe and listen to Lancer.

What, a lengthy elevator scene with no proper elevator music?

Susie is the best character in this thing, so far.

Card Castle, first floor. Time to pay attention to the order of the suits' rooms, I think.

"You are unbanned from free ham sandwich day" ahahaha

IT WORKED.

Alright, so diamonds first.

Club Sandwich, can be divided into three to heal the entire team. Cute.

So there's a disembodied voice that has trapped us in a room. "Thoust FOOLS!"

Oh hey, it's Rouxls Kaard, "thou're greatest adversary". Clearly also an adversary of grammar.

Shit, that puzzle looks really fucking hard, man.

So does the Royal Flush (bathroom) count as the spades room for the sake of the post-game puzzle?

Well, the third floor is clearly the Hearts floor, since there are Hathy here.

I just told Susie to flirt and it's beautiful.

Oh cod, it's so awkward that there's no need to even spare.

Well, that was definitely the Hearts room. Diamond, maybe Spades, then Hearts.

Clubs door, and now another room like the one we met Rouxls in. Time for another "puzzle"?

Hah! It's not even a different super easy puzzle, it's just a longer version of the earlier one!

I like the Clubs room.

Alright, there's the Spades room, so the Royal Flush doesn't count. Diamonds, Hearts, Clubs, Spades.

Oh my cod, Rouxls is a shopkeeper.

"decidedesteth"

Oh for the love of cod. He's got a K.Round too. :P

Ralsei thinks the crown looks different... is it a Q.Round?

Ahh. Rouxls is controlling it using the crown. Or so he claims.

Hah, tossing Ralsei at it. I like this plan.

Throne room. Time to meet the king?

What happened here? Lancer said he was going ahead to talk to the king. Did they end up fighting?

Hi, Lancer.

Wait, Lancer's dad was the Knight, not the King. Right? Or are the Knight and the King the same thing at this point, since the fourth king put the Knight in charge? Right, that's how it worked. So we're now seeing the talk Lancer was going to do.

Pfft. I like how the Knight/King is like "Oh, Lancer..."

What was that about "They care not for you", Mr. "I'll drop my son off the edge to let him splatter"?

I did not get a choice in whether to kneel or not. The characters made that choice on their own.

OOH, NICE BACKSTAB!

Ah, see, this is a guy I can believe when he claims to be the bad guy. Even if I'm still not fully sold on the idea that he's necessarily the final boss.

"Lightbringer"? "Your very existence goes against our own"? Interesting...

By the Knight's will... so this ISN'T the Knight?

Is Ralsei the Knight?

"You, that left us in the shadows, stripped of meaning..." Yeah, I think I was onto something earlier.

Ralsei probably isn't the Knight. His interactions with the King wouldn't make much sense that way.

The King seems to be indicating that he's worshipping the Knight instead of the Lightners.

The Knight made the second fountain? Maybe even the first?

The shadows of the fountains are creating a new world... for the Darkners...

I'm taking it that this is a survival fight, like Sans. I just need to let this guy exposit for a while.

Ahh, so it's not so much that it's making a literal new world as that it's darkening the existing world. An apocalypse which he believes to be in favor of the Darkners.

"Enough talk"? Was I wrong?

The King seems to be getting less confident.

And he ended the battle.

His... cape just flew away?

So he's asking for a peaceful solution now. Alright, sure.

I don't like the sound effects here. They sound too much like someone's about to get killed. Maybe the cape flew off to tell the Knight about the King's failure/betrayal?

Honestly, the King just seems to be dying without anyone actually hurting him.

Nice, yes, good work healing him, Ralsei. Let's just hope he wasn't faking it just to get that heal.

...yep.

"You can't even say?" Nice echo of what Susie said at the start.

"Let me tell you a secret." We're echoing the whole scene, huh? But somehow, I don't think "All bark and no face-bite" applies to the King.

Susie FTW.

"But THEY might." Who's "they"? Kris? And maybe Ralsei? Or are we bringing in other characters?

*crazy glue voice* get him

"Now I'M the dad!!!" Uh, Lancer, I don't think that's how it works.

And now we're getting Ralsei contemplating whether kindness is always the solution after all, since his healing the king almost fucked everything. Nice. Character growth all around.

Wait, Ralsei, why are you staying behind? I thought you claimed we needed you too to stop the fountain?

Nice try, Susie. I know you want to talk to Lancer.

See? Lancer sees right through you.

Hiya, Asriel! What's up?

Not gonna explain that, huh?

So, uh, did Kris's soul just leave their body to fuse with the fountain?

Aaand we're in the supply closet. Alright.

Wait, no, this is an unused classroom.

...menu's back to the Undertale style.

Let's try calling home.

Alright, so some time has passed. It's after school. Don't think going to tell Alphys you couldn't find the chalk is going to work, Susie.

Toriel is sweet. Though it's a little sad that the word "friend" makes her give Kris a free pass, because it implies she's surprised that they've gained one.

Playing cards and chess... Legos... Fuck, this is lending some serious credence to the dream idea, much in the same way a lot of things in Over The Garden Wall reflect what's seen in episode 9. But like there, I'd say this was probably a certain degree of real.

The room we ended up in is to the right of the supply closet.

Sure, go back there tomorrow... if you can.

The supply closet is locked now.

Hey, I found Asriel's/Frisk's/the brother's locker. And Kris's.

Ooh, Toriel's classroom!

The clock has been updated to 10 PM in Toriel's classroom, but in Alphys', it still says 2 PM.

I can visit the Librarby, neat.

So is the game over now, or will we be seeing the return to the Dark Kingdom?

Hah, found Toby. I'm aware that this is only supposed to be a teaser, so I guess it'll deliver on the promise that you'll be able to go into the computer lab in the full game.

Books written by Undertale characters, nice.

UNDYNE

Wait, Asgore's kid? Kris is Asgore's kid?? Or, wait, wasn't it Undyne who couldn't tell Asgore and Toriel apart? No, that was Papyrus. So this raises the whole alternate universe question again. Who the fuck is Kris?

Undyne claims not to know who Alphys is.

...who's the mayor?

I found a door to a bunker or something that makes spooky sounds. This feels like plot.

Gerson's dead, among a couple others who may or may not be characters we know.

At least Gerson being dead rules out this happening before Undertale, in the same timeline.

Burgerpants!

So Azzy's in college.

"Things happened" in Kris's family before Asriel left. Asgore and Toriel separating?

SANS

Sans is new in town, and has never met Kris. Kris, say hello to your future stepfather.

And he wants Kris to hang out with Papyrus. I'm all for this.

(I'm also all for finding a save point so I can go to bed.)

Asgore x Alphys???

So Alphys watches a Simpsons knockoff and has an imaginary cat named MewMew. The alternate universe theory intensifies.

Apparently Asgore runs a flower shop.

Aww, that hug was adorable.

Containers containing flowers instead of souls...

Time for bed.

Umm. Kris. You, uh. Kinda need that soul.

So, uh, the Chara option is still available...

Well then! That was Deltarune chapter 1. I'm gonna write a wrap-up tomorrow, because it's way too late now and I need to go to bed in real life. Good night!

...Alright, hello again! It's been about 17.5 hours since I finished Deltarune chapter 1, and in that time, I've been thinking a bit. I think I've come up with a decent theory about what's going on with the world of the Lightners in relation to Undertale:

I don't think this is post-pacifist. I think this is post-genocide.

"Oh, but many of the characters you kill on the genocide route are alive, and monsters seem to live on the surface!"

Here's the thing: At the end of the genocide route, you meet Chara, who talks about wanting to "erase this pointless world and move on to the next". The choice they give you is fake, both options end in you, the player, being killed, ending the game. What I'm suggesting is that Chara did just that: Erased the world and moved on to the next. That "next" world is the world of Deltarune.

Chara isn't entirely physical, so they need a vessel, like Frisk was in Undertale. That's why they're taking control of Kris, and throwing out Kris's soul (hey, look who managed to guess that their soul would leave their body, even if I didn't guess how). I'm not sure whether Chara was already partially possessing Kris at the beginning and just decided it was time to get rid of that annoying soul right at the end. The soul being the culmination of one's being and the center of emotion... Identity and emotion seemed to be fairly low in Kris from the start - maybe Chara had to weaken the soul before they could toss it out and take proper control?

There's also the player to deal with, though. Chara knows we're here - you can tell from the way they glance at the fourth wall after taking control - so I wonder if they'll let us continue controlling their vessel, Kris. Then again, in Undertale, Chara seemed to consider that a good thing, but what if the player continues to steer Kris towards pacifism?

Meanwhile, the world of the Darkners is still largely a mystery. They seem to be a remnant of the Underground's essence in some way, but who knows if monsters ever lived underground in this world?

A lot about the Dark Kingdom adventure in chapter 1 mirrors Undertale. In fact it very much feels like discount Undertale. (Which I suppose is fair considering this game does in fact cost 100% less than Undertale.) I wonder if any of it was Chara's work, whether Kris knew it or not?

This chapter of the game is deceptively simple, but there really is a lot to think about here.

All in all... The game wasn't quite as good as Undertale, though it had its share of funny and/or heartfelt moments, and it did good stuff with the characters of Susie and Lancer. I like the introduction of a party system due to its effect on character dynamics, and the battle graphics were a huge step up.

I suppose I shouldn't expect Deltarune chapter 1 to hold up to the whole of Undertale. The full version has a hell of a lot to live up to, but I'm optimistic about it. I think it can at least get close. And with Chara getting visibly involved, I have a feeling things are only going to get more interesting from here.

In conclusion: Fuck Berdly.

[mhioislife]

Tsukikage or tsukihina?

Hi! Since you didn’t specify an AU, I’ll go with Chef/Critic AU and Youtuber AU! If you forgot to mention an AU and you wanted something different, feel free to send the ask again! :) Some of the headcanons are under the read more.

Send me an AU and a pairing and I’ll come up with a few headcanons! (no omageverse pls, and if you send more than one AU/pairing specify if you want me to combine them or do them separately, please)

TsukkiKage

- so Tsukki is food critic, very respected and kinda feared because his opinion means A LOT and he’s pretty hard to please. Besides he rarely smiles (or - rarely smiles an honest smile) and looks really mean and this, mixed with his brutal honesty, gives him an image of rather cold and almost heartless man

- Kageyama at the other hand is a chef - well known, with kinda messy past (he was very demanding, got angry quickly and one day all the cooks left him in the middle of the evening when a critic was supposed to come), but undeniably excelent in what he’s doing

- one day the restaurant Kags currently works at expects a critic visitation

- the staff is kinda stressed and thrilled

- the critic is infamous Tsukishima Kei

- the staff is very stressed and scared

- Kags isn’t really stressed tho, because he knows he’s good and Tsukishima or not - the critic will be pleased

- the evening of Tsukki’s visitation is very tense for the staff. the dish and then the dessert are made with so so much care…

- then Tsukki requests to see the cook who made the dishes

- all the staff is still very stressed and even Kags is a little tense now

- “Kageyama Tobio. Congratulations for not making anything dissapointing.”

- Tsukki is kinda surprised himself because he swears, almost anyone can’t make an edible dish in this goddamn prefecture and they’re calling themselves chefs???? This Kageyama guy on the contrary cooks really good. And bakes even better, this strawberry cake-

- Tsukki is even ready to compliment Kags, but Kags - now relieved - looks really smug, so Tsukki doesn’t say anything

- he often comes to the restaurant privately tho, because something deep inside him really wants to????

- it’s because of the strawberry cake, he tells himself

- (it’s not. well, not only)

- Kags tbh feels similar??? he feels… lighter??? when Tsukki comes to restaurant??????

- it’s the fact so demanding and known critic likes his dishes so much, he tells himself

- (again - it’s not. well, not only)

- they see each other quite often then, sometimes even talk a little, mostly about food tho, but they include some private info too. accidentaly, but still

- over time they discover they know A LOT of facts about each other

- at one point they decide to “hang out”. to “test some restaurants”. and then Kags invited Tsukki to his flat, because “he’s trying new recipe for the strawberry cake”

- when the evening ends and they both come home they realize that it was a date. more - the date they really enjoyed and clearly - the other enjoyed it too

- the next time they see each other they talk about the date and decide they’ll give it a try

- some people who know they’re dating say that the fact that the restaurant has so good opinions is caused by the fact, that one of the most important critics in Japan and the restaurant’s chef are dating but it’s not true. well, at least not in a way one can think

- Tsukki is still really honest and Kags is really competitive, so every time Tsukki says even one thing could be done better - Kags tries new ways to make sure the thing is perfect

- neither of them looks like he uses a pet names, but they do when in private. it’s hard to say if the names are food related because of their line of work or because it’s just their style. either way no one ever heard one of them calling the other “cupcake” or “pumpkin” and it will stay that way. so they hope.

TsukkiHina

- Tsukki’s channel is dedicated to movie, TV series and book reviews. he’s so salty and witty he has a lot of subscribers.

- Hinata at the other hand is a gamer (mainly because of his friend Kenma). his reactions and all the “gwaaah!” and “nyoooom!” when he plays granted him quite some subscribers too. he usually plays an adventure games or some horror games because people love his horror games playthroughs and his goal is to make his subscribers happy

- they know about each other because they’re both pretty popular, but they don’t know each other

- not until Tsukki’s fans asked him to review a mystery game. they said they know he doesn’t play, but it has very intriguing plot and maybe he can do a collab with crowthatcanfly????

- Tsukki says no at first, because as the fans noticed - he doesn’t really play any games. so he’s not an expert.

- (besides what kinda name is “crowthatcanfly”???? every crow can fly????? until it’s injured but it’s not “injuredcrowthatcanfly”. what an idiocy)

- but the fans ask him to do this under his every video and Hinata officialy says he wouldn’t mind even if it’s not really his game genre (because the fans ask him for this collab too) so????

- Tsukki finally agrees when his best friend, Yamaguchi, says it can be a nice change of pace. besides he should meet some new people and make some new friends. and he doesn’t want to hear any you-and-Yachi-are-enough’s

- “shut up Yamaguchi”, “sorry, Tsukki, but that’s the truth”

- Tsukki contacts Hinata and they talk about the details

- he knows it will be a nightmare. he watched some Hinata’s videos before he contacted him, and the guy’s so loud and hyperactive… and uses too much exclamation marks and kaomojis. ugh

- they meet up and make the video. they both play the game, Hinata comments on the plot and the mechanics and the graphic and Tsukki discovers the guy isn’t complete idiot??? he’s actually pretty smart if he wants to be?????? tho he still has to help him, because the game is pretty hard and Tsukki has seen and read a lot of detective shows and books, so he kinda knows what to expect.

- the first part of the video has twice as many views as any video of either of them, because it has Tsukki’s snarky remarks and Hinata’s cuteness in it at once??? and they have such a nice and funny dynamics

- (“what? ugh no. just- no.”, said Tsukki. “Tsukishima is kinda rude but he’s a cool guy, so working with him wasn’t bad!!!!!!”, said Hinata)

- they finish playing the game but it’s not over for them.

- the fans want more. Hinata wants more, because he loves making new friends. Yamaguchi wants more, because he knows Tsukki likes Hinata even if he pretends to not to.

- “ugh” - Tsukishima Kei at many points in his life.

- they make more collabs

- Tsukki discovers he actually likes Hinata’s companion

- maybe even more than he should

- because Hinata is kinda annoying because he’s loud, but he’s also really cheerful and positive in a non-annoying way and has his charm okay?

- they become friends pretty quickly even tho Tsukki won’t admit it out loud. maybe only to Yamaguchi

- (“Tsukki, I’m so proud of you, you actually have a friend besides me and Yachi, I’m so happy-” “shut up Yamaguchi” “sorry, Tsukki”. he’s not sorry)

- (yeah, it was a bad idea, he’ll go to Yachi next time)

- they talk a lot and over time Tsukki realizes he???? likes Hinata??????? more than a friend???????????

- (“waIT A MO MEN T NO WHA T WAI T-”)

- (“omg, Tsukishima-kun, that’s amazing!!!! i’m so happy for you!!!!!!! i’ll help you plan the perfect date!!!! and look at this suit!!!! it will be perfect when you’ll want to propose-”)

- (yep, also bad idea)

- he decides to ignore his crush. it will go away eventually, right?

- it doesn’t. and it’s even worse now because Tsukki is hyper aware of every little thing Hinata does. like the cute way he scrunches up his nose when there’s a really hard part in a game- shut up, Kei.

- one day Hinata looks very nervous and Tsukki is kinda confused. why is Hinata nervous? there’s no way he knows about Tsukki’s crush and feels awkward and doesn’t know how to reject him, there’s no way he could see right through Tsukishima’s normal, annoyed face he keeps up even when he’s freaking inside over (almost) every little thing Hinata does. just. no way

- well, apparently yes way

- except Hinata doesn’t reject him?????? he says he feels the same???????? and that Yamaguchi-kun told him-

- (dammit Yamaguchi, you traitor)

- -and Yachi-san explained that-

- (Yachi, you too? ffs)

- they get together that evening

- (“Yamaguchi, how could you-” “you know how so shut up Tsukki” “sorry Yama- wait”)

- (“Yachi, why?” “how could i not when you two love each other??? you look so adorable together!!!!! and you both like mountains, so i know where to send you for your honeymoon-”)

- (why is he even friends with them?)

- Tsukki indeed had the suit Yachi found and they indeed went to the mountains on their honeymoon, btw

Thanks for the ask! :)

[indiehangover]

Cinderella is an incredibly well-known story: a poor girl gets stuck living with her awful stepmother and stepsisters who treat her like a maid until one day she wows the prince at a masquerade ball and they live happily ever after. But what if Cinderella just wanted to escape, or she wanted to take back the home that was left to her stepmother and make it her own? What if the stepmother had her reasons for being awful, and the stepsisters did as well?

Cinders is a visual novel that allows players to explore these possibilities and more. Choose your own fate and chase your dreams, but be careful you don’t turn out just as rotten as your stepmother… or worse!

Title: Cinders Developer: MoaCube / Crunching Koalas Publisher: Crunching Koalas Platform: Nintendo Switch Game Version: Final Review Copy: Provided by publisher Interface: Handheld Switch console Available on Switch and Steam

Cinders is a witty young woman living with an overbearing stepmother and her two daughters, as if she was reenacting a certain well-known fairy tale. But unlike its protagonist, Cinders is not afraid of taking fate into her own hands. Even if it means breaking the rules…

The game takes a look at four women and what made them who they are. It’s a story about freedom, dreams, sisterhood, and finding your own Happily Ever After that may not exactly agree with the stale morals of classic fairytales.

With multiple endings, 120 decision points, and over 300 choices, Cinders gives you total control over the main character’s personality and how her story unfolds.

I love story-driven games, but I’d never played a visual novel until Cinders (not counting Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception, but I never want to think about that game again). I loved the idea of taking a very basic, simple fairytale and expanding upon it, and I figured it would be a great starting point into the world of visual novels. Heck, my “day job” is as a book reviewer, so combining gaming and books sounded like a dream come true.

Cinders ended up being pretty much exactly what I expected, but slightly better in almost every way. The game begins a week before the prince’s ball, but Cinders doesn’t know anything about that yet. Instead, her life is pretty much exactly as you’d expect it: she cooks, she cleans, and she gets berated, insulted, and mocked. Heck, even her name is a mockery of her existence. In fact, the explanation of the title was one of my favorite things about the game: she was nicknamed Cinders by her father because of the color of her hair, but her new family decided that it would be funny if she lived amongst the cinders in their home.

Despite her crappy existence, you’re given choices of how to interact with your family and what to do right from the start. You can treat your stepsisters just as badly as they treat you and rebel against your stepmother’s wishes, or you can suck it up and be the better person. There are additional, unique characters added to the story as well, such as a childhood friend who has become a merchant, a “witch” with a mysterious link to your family, and the prince’s right-hand man with an unshakable sense of duty. These characters have some real depth to them, and you’ll only get to see a little of that depth with each playthrough, depending on your choices.

The gameplay of Cinders is incredibly straightforward: you read dialogue, you get presented with choices, and you make said choices. That’s basically it! There’s no movement (aside from selecting from a map at specified moments), there are no puzzles (aside from figuring out how to get the endings you want), and there are no minigames to play. You don’t have to worry about stats or inventory or anything aside from choices, and you’re given an unlimited amount of time to make each choice. That isn’t to say the game is simple by any means; according to the developers, there are 155,000 words in the game, 135 scenes, and 120 choices to make. The game contains 50 profile variables to track how you relate to different characters and what kind of ending you’ll get. None of this is voiced, mind you, but I’d say that’s fair given how many lines of dialogue there are. I play the vast majority of my games muted anyway, and I read far faster than people speak, so I really didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything.

The first playthrough took a bit over 3 hours, but there was still loads to do. In fact, I spent about as much time with subsequent playthroughs as I did with the first, despite my heavy use of skip mode that allows players to get through a run in less than half an hour. Skip mode is a brilliant feature, and it’s one I almost missed entirely. Pressing the skip mode button sets things in fast forward, automatically continuing on until you exit skip mode, you’re given a choice to make, or you’re presented with dialogue you haven’t seen yet. This is amazing since there are four completely different endings to unlock, and when you include all of the potential possibilities of each ending, there are over 300! For example, if you end up with the fairytale ending (as queen), you can be one of four types of queens, you can have one of four love interests (you heard right, being married to the prince doesn’t mean he’s necessarily the one you love, or that he loves you!), and you can have one of four advisers (including none at all). These are all decided by the choices you make, and every time you play through the game you unlock those individual attributes in the Endings section. As you unlock more, you can mix and match them, although you’ll only see the last several screens of the ending if you make up an ending this way. The game shows you what percentage of the variants are found, and completionists will be incredibly busy unlocking them all. With all of my experimenting and messing around, I’ve only found about 60% of all of the variants, and it would’ve taken me far longer to figure out the fourth type of ending without help from the developer’s wiki. Without spoiling anything, I really wish there was a fifth major type of ending though. There’s a specific element in the game that seemed like it should have far bigger repercussions, but instead, it has minimal effect on the story. This would be a big deal if the other endings weren’t so terrific; the slightest changes in endings could lead to learning more about the world of Cinders. I was frequently blown away that the 5th, 7th, 10th, etc. times I played through the game I was still finding out more about various characters and seeing people in a new light.

I loved the themes Cinders explores. For one, the concept of choice itself is shown not only for Cinders (as you can see in the image above) but for everyone else in her life. The whole premise of Cinderella is that the titular heroine is trapped, unable to live her own life until magic intervenes. Even then, how does the story end? She marries a prince she knows almost nothing about, all to escape her former life. But in Cinders, you’re able to choose from all sorts of possibilities, and merely the fact that Cinders is making choices for herself is miraculous to her. But that’s the thing about starting to make choices for yourself: when you feel trapped for so long, every choice seems better than your current life, no matter where it leads. Who hasn’t blown a bunch of money after getting their first job, or eaten way more than they should the first time they have spending money at a fast food place? For Cinders, there are plenty of bad choices too. Then there are the other characters, who have gotten exactly where they are in life due to the choices they’ve made, or the lack thereof. Numerous characters are doing what their parents did, and feel just as trapped or indebted to their families as Cinders does, although they find themselves happier about it because of their attitudes. Even Cinders’ stepmother has made choices for reasons that make more and more sense as you discover her secrets, although she could still be less of a jerk.

The game does a terrific job with other topics and themes as well. The writers make light of the idea of Cinders settling down with the prince without really knowing anything about him, among other things. I appreciated the way that nearly every character is likable, even the ones that shouldn’t be. One of Cinders’ stepsisters, for example, is as sarcastic and bitter as I’d be in her position. The romanceable characters are likable, cool dudes, and I personally think Cinders would be happy with any of them (depending on how you play it). The “fairytale ending” of becoming queen is even deeper than just fairytale love, and if you play things wrong (or right, depending on your point of view) you can take control of the entire kingdom with an iron fist.

Cinders is terrific for fans of visual novels or “mature fairytales”, and folks who love twists on stories they already know well will especially get a kick out of it. However, this doesn’t limit who can enjoy the game – while the developers call this “a mature take on Cinderella,” it has a teen rating for a reason. While some adult things can happen, there are no sordid details and things never get any kind of gory or overly naughty. But if you’re the type of person who skips through dialogue, you’re definitely in the wrong place.

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Cinders from #indiedev @TomGrochowiak and @CrunchingKoalas is an #indiegame visual novel where you help Cinderella make her own fate, for good or bad, with the prince or not. Check out our review! Cinderella is an incredibly well-known story: a poor girl gets stuck living with her awful stepmother and stepsisters who treat her like a maid until one day she wows the prince at a masquerade ball and they live happily ever after.