#WHY AN I SO EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN YTTD

[caffeiiine]

finished and more wahhhhhh!!!!

this is why i can't have favorites T^T. they all die on me T^T. why can't i have nice things T^T?

i guess i'm going to wait for the final part of the third chapter. i don't know how long that'll be, which is fine :D.

GSHSG 🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂

[sangonomiyashrine]

Hi, I wanted to ask for a matchup from Owari no Seraph, YTTD and BSD.

I'm an ISTP 5w6 538 sp/so ILI, I'm definitely an introvert. My social skills are not very good, I must focus on one person to talk more. I never care too much about problems both my own and others, I'm not the best counsellor either. I love to get away from reality and dream about things. Other people describe me as someone funny and terribly quiet, they also says that they're afraid of me sometimes (I honestly have no idea why). I get bored with something easily and need to do something else after a while (or just chilling my ass lol), although most of the time I spend thinking about everything anyway. I gain the trust of others very quickly. I'm rarely interested in what is going on around me and focus on my shit. I'm very easily irritated by my stupidity. I have also noticed that I have some traits of narcissistic personality (although I prefer not to diagnose myself without a specialist). Fortunately or not, it's easy for me to manipulate the feelings of others without even realizing I'm doing it (it takes me a while to figure it out). I'm also rather one of lazy people.

you remind me of..

Keiji Shinogi - he's very chill, but not very good socially. he's not good at leading a big group of people, and prefers to just focus on one person (seen in how he immediately goes for sara and makes her leader). he's pretty quiet and not really invested in reality unless he needs to be, and people can be a bit afraid of him because of his demeanor, though he seems pretty harmless and gains sara's trust rather easily. he ignores a lot of his own problems and isn't the best supporter of others either, even if he puts effort into understanding them. due to his laziness and focus on his own stuff he can be a bit stupid at times, which seems to upset him. he's also an ISTP and fe polr in socionics.

Shinoa Hiiragi - she seems to be rather quiet and introverted but her teasing and funny personality comes out when she's around fewer people. she's characterized as a person who is pretty out of touch with reality and especially her own feelings, due to what's going on inside her. this makes her extremely carefree and not very emotionally intelligent. she can come off as a bit scary or weird sometimes, but is pretty reliable in general.

Ranpo Edogawa - he can be pretty loud at times, but when you look at the truth, he's not very good in a social situation. he prefers to distance himself from people mentally until he feels he can understand them. he has a very funny and carefree personality, being very confident (even to the point of narcissism) in himself. he's not the most in tune with reality and doesn't make a big deal out of external issues. he also has issues with self reflection until later in the series. he gets bored very easily and often needs something more interesting to do.

[getdownsaturdaynight]

So! I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts about YTTD for several days now. It’s a game some friends & mutuals of mine really enjoy, so I feel kinda mean getting this negative about it, but... man. I hate this game’s writing. 

Some spoilers (but no ending/death spoilers) below.

Chapter 1 is an imperfect but incredibly ambitious game. The ZE-style puzzles, especially the mirror room and the roulette game, are well-constructed. I had to do some complete guesswork in the first Main Game, but it’s nothing worse than the hail mary passes I’d have to do in Danganronpa or Ace Attorney. I could nitpick several elements of the story, but the overall narrative works, and most of the twists (especially the ones involving Kai) are tight and set up well. 

Then, we get to Chapter 2.

I had high hopes, because the introduction scene with Kai is absolutely adorable, but then... new characters, new mechanics, and new arbitrary forms of torture just get thrown at the cast and the player. While the minigames (especially the dancing one) are mostly fun, and have some wonderful failure animations, they simply can’t make up for the story.

I’ll start with the best element first, and that’s Reko. The arc about Reko’s former band is probably the side story that gets the most cohesive resolution out of anyone’s in the cast (even if it’s not a happy one). I have my biases - aggressive rocker chick with a heart of gold is my jam, look at how much I worship Phi! - but Reko really gets her moments in 2-1, and that flashback at the beginning of 2-2 is legit the most emotional I’ve been while playing. Alice, too, is a real star of this chapter, going from being one of my least faves in Chapter 1 to a fave by the end.

Other than some incredibly cute Gin moments, and some welcome development with Nao in 2-1 and Keiji in 2-2...  that’s where the positives end.

Pacing is an issue that plagues this whole chapter. Chapter 1 had this hurried element to it, where even though you weren’t on a physical timer, it really felt like the cast’s stress and despair were building at an exponential rate. In Chapter 2... spreading out the plot over several days (most likely to accommodate the minigames and negotiation phases) removes so much of the immediate danger. Nankidai could have done something with that waiting period, maybe a little more existential horror, but all we really get are some bloody hallucinations, and the impact quickly wears off after the first one. Especially when you know you can “fix” them with a machine.

I thought Mary was one of the weakest elements in Chapter 1, but I’d gladly take her back over the floor masters in Chapter 2, all of whom feel like they came straight out of Villain Stereotypes 101, no matter how cool their designs are. And it’s one thing for them to alternately support and abuse the players, but when they start turning on each other... it’s like, okay?? Thanks for reinforcing the arbitrary nature of this game? It still doesn’t make things good? If anything, it just cheapens the deaths of the actual players even more.

And I know some people really like “Sou”’s story, but it’s like... it ain’t for me. There’s too many nonsensical moments. When he gets his “amnesia”, why does everyone trust Kanna to take care of him? Once Sara finds out he’s lying, there’s this cool moment where you think he’s going to emotionally blackmail her and only her, which could have some nice tension - and yet less than five minutes later, Keiji and Q-Taro have called him out and he’s gone back to being the most obvious asshole he can be. And then he gets a few sympathetic moments, some more blackmail, and the world’s shortest redemption arc, and none of it works. I went through the Main Game in 2-2 just wanting it to end (and I can’t really get much more into the rest of 2-2 without spoiling everything).

But I think the best way to talk about this game is via its two youngest characters, Kanna and Gin. Let’s start with Kanna: she’s pretty much a cosmic chew toy, totally fucked up since the very beginning of the game. For someone so vital to the plot, she doesn’t get much development outside of her relationships with her sister, or Sou, or Sara - there’s very little on who she is as a person, or what makes her unique. That makes it fairly hard to invest in her, even as she’s delivering what are supposed to be very powerful, emotional lines. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one thinking this, since she gets among the least fandom content out of any of the cast. Maybe she’ll get more development in a hypothetical Chapter 3, but... who knows?

Then there’s Gin. I think we can all agree Gin is wonderful. His speech pattern, woof, it’s incredible, meow. I certainly went out of my way to make sure big sis Sara was looking after him in every available negotiation segment. But he’s got the opposite problem to Kanna - I don’t want to see anything bad happen to this kid. Nankidai knows this, which is why he continues to specifically put Gin in death traps for him to be rescued before he suffers any physical damage, and it’s like... stooooppppp. Stop!! If you keep going back to the well with this almost-torturing Gin, it’s gonna lose its impact, because he’ll soon be not much more than a continually kicked puppy. He deserves better. He deserves a lot better. 

Everyone in the cast deserves better.

Nankidai should be commended for pushing RPG Maker to its absolute limits as an engine, and YTTD is one of the most impressive solo-creator games I’ve ever played. But impressive doesn’t equal good. And several beautiful coats of paint can’t save an atrocious plot.

-

P.S. Unrelated to the above rant, but as I was writing and editing this over the course of a few days, I saw that one of the main ships in the fandom is Sara & Keiji and WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK