#BUT YEAH... it's interesting how many people choose shin first... fun to seee; i love how the main games have gone <3

[datastate]

oh i am very curious which yttd routes did you play first :O? (mine was alice/shin <- this was literally because i was hyperfixated on alice + i was playing it with my friend who was hyperfixated on shin.)

oho... i believe my first route was true logic! (reko + shin) -- i'd pushed the fake reko, because my view on the whole 'doll v. human' thing is. well. humans will always be preferable if they're still alive, though even after death it's a shaky trail to follow. of course, while alive they can still be manipulated & gaslit into certain things, but the AIs can be changed on a very fundamental level with the intention of deceiving someone they care for (whether they mean to or not; mishima, for example, whose values weren't necessarily changed, but just shifted to see those he would've cared for as enemies), and the idea of them being so easily reset - to me - makes it more difficult to view anything you do with them as permanent. which, while that may be something worthwhile for some (sara w ytts, hiyori w shin ai...), i find scarcity to be something very important & i just hate the idea of desecrating who someone was after death. what you see as the ai will often have a very tangible effect on how you perceive the person post-mortem as well, which isn't fair to you or them, regardless of how genuine they believe they're being.

or, well. that's the gist of my thoughts on it x']

in any case! i do wish i could've kept alice alive, but this was a 'no resets' run for me & i still wouldn't have changed my answer here... sorry reko ai.

as for shin, i chose him primarily because my sister (kid) really enjoys his character & i was very intrigued in seeing where he'd go once pushed further than this. i felt terrible killing kanna for this, & realized during her death (i. started crying also <3) that if i were in this situation that i'd never be able to work w someone who enabled kanna's self-sacrificial nature. which shin evidently echoed, rendering any logic behind the choice null, ironically because i failed to take into account the emotional attachment between them all.

& of course the influence this has on ch3-1... where sara had very obviously sacrificed dolls for her allies before, it just makes it tasty...

however! as for my current routes, i think i favor true emotion (alice + kanna) -- i really wanted to know more abt alice before he died & i was surprised it was even an option so early on. i also enjoyed seeing alice getting after gashu outright + i think he deserved to have that personal chance in getting after hiyori again... even if the realization he's become a 'real murderer' (he had still pushed hiyori w intent to kill, you know...) is held against him here.

and, in terms of character development, upon reflection: i really do think i'm more interested in seeing kanna truly overcome that desire to push herself aside for others' benefit... it'd be so much more fulfilling to me, with what i'm searching out, in a game like this where pushing forward really is the only choice you can make...!!

as for both, they don't get the focus i wish they could've in ch3-1, but i nonetheless find it a more interesting route going forward, even if i still don't agree w the choice made to keep alice alive x'] the implications for sara's character in either route are really fun to consider :D