#just feels like there's less to do outside the main story since there's less minigames i like and less substories

[yo9urt]

finished y4kuza kiw@mi 2 last night!!!!! VERY LONG (and spoilers) thoughts below

to make this easier on myself: my 0 post, my kiw@mi 1 post

FINAL STATS

42h11m (not counting maj!ma saga which was like 1-2 hours cause i didnt do any of the side stuff except 1 karaoke session and 1 street boss)

202/303 completion items completed; 70/76 substories, and full completion on cabaret club + clan creator

stats the game gave me that are less interesting to me but i will write them anyway for posterity: 1362 enemies down; $74,160,130 earned (technically yen not usd lol); 29/56 battle skills, 18/33 heat actions, 25/34 life skills, final k!ryu stats 300 health 332 defense 346 attack 312 heat gauge

general impressions:

now that i've played 3 games i can start and maintain a ranking as i go! right now i would say: 0 > k2 > k1. i liked k1 but it was short on side content (at least, side content that i like, because i dont care about mahjong shogi gambling baseball darts etc. im kind of particular i guess lol) and it also had a very dark atmosphere to it...i blame it on the fact that so many people died in that game, by the end it really felt like almost everyone i'd grown to like/love had disappeared and it felt very lonely. h4ruka and maj!ma everywhere were like, the only things keeping me going lol, not to say it was a bad game it was just a lot and i'm a sensitive guy. similarly, 0 had more side content that i liked (I MISS THE DISCO MINIGAME SOOOO BAD!!), plus more side content in general (lots of really good substories), and i also think the writing on the main story was much tighter and better on 0 than on either of these games (not to say these games have bad stories but i did get confused more often with the kiw@mis and i think 0 was just stronger in general on that front). but i liked all 3 :)

i LOOOOOOOVE the dragon engine. it felt really weird at first but after i got used to it i started to really like it...it's nice to go straight into buildings with no load, and of course i enjoyed the, um, combat physics...made me laugh a lot especially the more egregious cases on youtube :P the graphics in particular were a treat, everyone looked extremely beautiful and the city itself was beautiful too, especially at night with the way the lights glow...really amazing...too bad i won't see any of that again until y6 lol

specific impressions:

story was kind of confusing as previously noted. HOWEVER, i really enjoyed how it started with that one cutscene, and then we got to watch that cutscene over and over again at intervals throughout the story, and each time we saw it it had new scenes and info added to it, that was a nice technique. also liked seeing little baby 12 year old (?) k!ryu, got emotional about that

it was cool to see ryuji!!!!!!!! it was kind of funny at first because during his substory cameo in 0 i was like "hmm, he seems important, bet i'll see him again..." and then in this game i was like "omg it's that oversized middle schooler who pantsed people all the time!" i think his hair situation is really weird but as a character i actually liked him a lot. definitely a villain and an aggressive one at that but not really cartoonish at all, hard to trust but fun to watch and try to decipher. the scene at the end with him and sayama where she was like "you're my only family..!!!" and he was like "you look like (our) mom...first time i saw you i thought of her..." URRRGHHH that was really beautiful to me...didn't cry but got very huffy

it was also cool to see daigo!!!!! i had a similar feeling where i was like "oh my god that little kid who used to wear suspenders...all grown up!!" it was like how i imagine babysitters feel when they meet the kids they used to babysit when those kids are adults. honestly he was kinda cute and i liked how he sorta grew up over the course of the game...i know hes becoming 6th chairman so im excited to see more of him!!

honestly i'm not going to comment on sayama or her relationship with kiryu because i'm still not sure what my feelings are on all that let alone am i able to explain those feelings...

kiryu himself is actually growing on me for sure...not just because he was very beautiful on the dragon engine but also i definitely do see more complexity and maturity in his character...it's hard to explain but i find myself liking him more with each game lol

majima is majima...i love him as much as i did before or maybe even more because he was REALLY funny in this game, i like how he kind of has a dual role as a serious side character who sometimes does important things but is also extremely silly and makes me laugh all the time he's so :) especially the bomb defusal scene omg i wsa belly laughing so loud during that whole thing

the majima saga was .... URRRPPP!!!!!!!!!!!! honestly i'm surprised i didn't cry...at first i was just having fun and rejoicing in being able to run around with him again especially on the new engine (i actually turned my graphics settings up JUST for this part of the game so i could see him and his adventures better) but then he had to go to soten and got all sad about it and so i got all sad, and then the scene with makoto...UUUGGGGHHHHHH i got so emotional i don't even want to talk about it!!!!!!!! but it was a nice little side story and i liked getting to know what he was up to in between k1 and k2 for sure...and i liked getting closure on him and makoto and the 2 of them getting closure on each other too. urk if i keep thinking about it i'm gonna get emo again let's move on

side content in this game was PHENOMENAL. not just majisaga but also clan creator & cabaret club knocked my socks off. clan creator was a lot of fun, overwhelming at first but i picked it up quickly and ended up enjoying building my team and tackling the different missions, and i especially loved the intermission chats with the real estate land shark guys, i was laughing way too hard during those :) and of course i'm just always happy to hang out with majima...

cabaret club was everything i wanted and more. i had been lightly spoiled for it on youtube but i didn't know exactly which game it would be in so i JUMPED FOR JOY when i saw it was this game - in my 0 post i talked about how CC was like my favorite side thing in the entire game and a huge part of what i liked about it, so obviously i was mega excited to see yuki again (she's so cute in this game!!), and i actually really like how they handled the story and flow here. in 0 you can do the middle 3 divisions in any order you want which ends up leading to cutscenes where girls are mysteriously missing when you'd expect them to be there (since the game can't guarantee or verify on its own whether or not they're there), but in this game it's very specifically "do this, then this, then this, then this" so the girls DO get to be in the cutscenes and it feels like a pretty natural progression. i loved getting to hear As You Like again, loved getting to know all the different girls (my favorites are shoko and koyuki), and i didn't even care that the story was almost a direct rehash of 0's - if anything i think it's better that way, cabaret club doesn't need its own grand plot it just needs a decent plot to stand on and a lot of really fun scenes to watch and shit to do.

i CACKLED when etsuko showed up, and when she said "20 years ago i was saved by a handsome one-eyed gentleman just like you're doing now!" and kiryu thought "one-eyed...could she mean? no, definitely not..." and then i cackled again when her bio in the game said that she "defies aging"

and of course, my favorite of all was when majima appeared and exposed the bad guys and yuki went "MAJIMA??!!?" and he was like "heyy you look different lol" and she was like "YOU LOOK RIDICULOUS AND TROUBLED" and then they got to have a bit of closure as well which was very cute, and kiryu was like "what the hell???" and they were like "majima used to do this" and kiryu was like "that lord of the night stuff you were telling me about...WAS REAL?!??!" omg i could not handle that entire cutscene

loved majima becoming the host and wearing buono's stupid outfit, loved him doing commentary during gameplay, LOVED the "get yuki a gift" substory where he and kiryu decided to get a giant gold statue of kiryu and their dialogue label changed to say "Two Fools" when they thought of it, i loved the humor of the entire cabaret thing in this game it was just wonderful. speaking of, i also LOVED that there was a repeat yuki-boyfriend-stakeout substory, laughed my way through the entirety of that one too :)

the only other minigame type of thing i really engaged with deeply was karaoke and that was actually pretty good in this game! i only did the tonight song once for completion's sake because the nishiki background thing makes me really sad and i don't play video games to feel sad...but i liked singing with majima (!!!!! i wish we could do that in every game!!!!! even though that cg also made me sad lol), and with haruka (<3), and with all the hostess girls (like a butterfly made me laugh so hard AND i somehow got a 99.8 on it on my first try i promise im not bullshitting right now), and i also liked pride from despair (had to play it several times because i refused to do tonight). i got good scores on that one too but i don't know if i can ever get 100 on it because every time the cg starts and majima appears i get too excited and start fucking up my inputs :/

i didn't do full substory completion this time because 2 of them involved minigames i didn't feel like playing (baseball and golf) and the other 4 were amon fights which 1. require you to do the other substories first & 2. are just not that interesting to me...im not really a combat guy you know im just not that into it so im like, whatever

anyway, overall, really good game, liked it a lot :) lots of emotion, lots of humor, and of course, really nice graphics and QOL improvements...i've heard y3 is a bit jank so i suppose i'll have to prepare for that but that's no big deal. liking the series a lot as a whole :)

[terramythos]

Anyway here's my breakdown of the ffxiv jobs, my opinions on playing each, and the tier rank of how good their story was

TANKS

WARRIOR - warrior is so fucking funny why did they make it able to solo heal itself and the entire party in 90% of the content in the game. Raw Intuition/Bloodwhetting is so broken in dungeons its hilarious. And then they have like 3 additional healing skills on top of that. And they kept buffing it throughout Endwalker. So it is currently the easiest to play, does the most damage (i think...?), and has the best healing of any of the Tank jobs. 2nd fave probably.

Story Tier: C, it's ok, Curious Gorge is a good name. i have like nothing to say about it it's a generic AF story

PALADIN - I used to hate PLD but I think the partial rework they got halfway through Endwalker helped it a lot. It's much less clunky now. Probably still my least favorite Tank though Hallowed Ground is fun and it's pretty close to Gunbreaker for me.

Story Tier: F, this is the worst class storyline in the entire game. It's so stupid. The writing is so bad the writers acknowledge it makes no sense at all and I'm like. Yeah, thanks, I am experiencing this shit. Perhaps write a story that makes sense next time instead of pointing that out.

DARK KNIGHT - Unfortunately this is my favorite Tank 🫡 which is rough since it has the worst survivability out of any of them. But I love how you use MP and the silly number of OGCDs. The Blackest Night is such a fun ability and it's a crime that it's not a baseline skill you get from the start. Why do they have so many DRs that only cover magic damage. I must ask.

Story Tier: S, there's a reason it's the most popular and well regarded class storyline. It's really good, also the only questline I know of that uses the quest log text as part of the narrative. Outside maybe a few of the very late Endwalker quests. And, well... same writer lmao

GUNBREAKER: I think GNB looks cool as fuck and I like that it has 2 DPS rotations. The Gnashing Fang combo is so fun. Superbolide memes are always fun. My main issue with it is a skill issue because I am just constantly misaligning its burst windows.

Story Tier: C. It has some interesting lore but I found it pretty forgettable as a story.

HEALERS

WHITE MAGE: I hated White Mage for a while but something clicked and now I totally get it. I find it fun in dungeons cause you get to Holy spam and stun lock everything. As uh. The healer. That's fun. Once you get Afflatus heals (and then Afflatus Misery) it clicks. It's fun maximizing damage and playing chicken with the tank's HP.

Story Tier: B, you get a lot of lore around the Padjal, and I think the Stormblood story where you find a padjal living in hiding with her mother is pretty good! Also it's not technically the job storyline but there's a WHM side quest to get a unicorn mount? i guess it's technically a CNJ quest but same diff. no one else gets that shit. so that's cool

SCHOLAR: probably my least favorite of the healers... it just feels super clunky. You can tell a bunch of different design philosophies went into it over the years and none of them mesh very well. They've made it so the Fairy Gauge controls literally one spell. Why have the gauge at all? It's also a huge missed opportunity that there's no tie in or interaction with the fae in Shadowbringers. I love the idea of a battle tactician healer but I think it needs a rework.

Story Tier: B+, I liked the characters and its the main way to get backstory and lore on what happened with Nym.

ASTROLOGIAN: While I think AST has a similar issue to SCH (lots of different design philosophies over the years) I find it way more fun to play. I like the card mechanic and how it interacts with the rest of the party. AST is basically the only job that has its own like. Minigame? As part of its rotation. And I know a lot of people don't like the RNG for it but personally I find it fun. I know AST is getting a redesign in Dawntrail so hope it's good.

Story Tier: C? I think? I'll be honest I don't remember it super well but I didn't find anything objectionable about it. And I like the tarot aesthetic and lore and how it's healing based on manipulating luck.

SAGE: I think SGE is tons of fun, I'm not sure if I like it or WHM more. I love all the skills SGE has for preventing damage and the gimmick where your DPS heals someone in the party. Visually the hi-tech laser shooting healer is a lot of fun. IT HAS A GAP CLOSER. The only thing i wish was it wasn't so MP negative and that it did more damage. It's a little sad its DPS output is so low compared to the other healers (even AST when you factor in how it buffs the party). Since SGE is supposed to be a healer that heals through damage it's silly its damage kinda sucks.

Story Tier: A, I loved this storyline. Both the Endwalker job stories are very self contained and interesting. While the twist is pretty obvious it's still an interesting exploration of uh. Scientific ethics. Yeah

PHYSICAL MELEE DPS

MONK: I've probably played MNK the least of the phys melee but I like the whole adaptable combo thing. Not much else to say since I have played it so little. Might bring it back out and try again. It DID have the funniest guide in the Balance discord for a while.

Story Tier: D. I think? I remember thinking it was dumb, lmao. Sorry.

DRAGOON: MAN I wished I liked DRG more. It looks so fucking cool and I like how it interacts with the dragon lore. But I find it very punishing to play. To do good damage you have to align so many different cooldowns... and snapshot your DOT correctly... and screwing one thing up just fucks your DPS output forever. Like AST I believe this is being reworked in Dawntrail so I hope it feels better to play.

Story Tier: C+. I think it starts strong since you get to meet Estinien pre-Heavensward and it melds nicely with that story. But I found it pretty directionless post-HW which is a shame.

NINJA: I remember finding this one fun. I like that there are different combos you do that have varied finishers depending on the situation. I am just... bad at remembering which combo to use to get which finisher, lol. So I haven't played it as much. NIN gets a lot of flavor other jobs don't get with their unique run and jump animations. And you get a Bunny of Shame on your head if you fuck up a combo, which is incredible.

Story Tier: A. The Rogue story is probably the most memorable of the basic class quests. Ninja just has great characters and a fun story. What is with that one guy. Karasu? If you know you know. I also like how the Rogue characters show up later in the Ninja story. That's fun.

SAMURAI: I had a similar experience to WHM here because I initially hated it then really came around once it clicked. SAM seems very complex, it has a ton of buttons and different combos. But it is actually quite intuitive once you figure out the general pattern. And it does INSANE damage. I think it's the highest DPS output in the game? I love building the combos and then doing a huge finisher for a bajillion damage. The guaranteed crits and constant OGCD weaves make me feel unstoppable. I think this is tied with RPR for me.

Story Tier: B+. I found the exiled samurai character and his journey toward redemption very compelling. I won't spoil beyond that. However it does fall apart a little in the second half. Still fun but not as good.

REAPER: I love RPR, the teleportation is a lot of fun, and I love finally unleashing the demon form and going ham on the enemy. The weapons are the coolest looking in the game. Every scythe design hits. I probably played this the most in Endwalker. My main critique is the Death's Design mechanic. I hate having to keep a stupid debuff on the target to do damage. It's like a dot but without the optimized snapshotting. If they want to keep this idea i think it would feel better to change it into something like SGE's Kardia where you apply it to one enemy to do increased damage to it without having to worry about reapplying it. not sure how they would balance this for aoe but that's not my job. But even with that caveat I still really enjoy the job.

Story Tier: A+. While it doesn't reach the highs of DRK's story it comes close. I love the badass old lady main character. Her hunting a voidsent that possessed her grandfather would be cool enough but making her a Garlean exile in hiding who grudgingly agrees to train you just adds an extra cool factor. I really enjoyed this story. As a bonus theres a lot of incidental dialogue in the post-6.0 Endwalker story if you completed the RPR story because it ties in a lot.

PHYSICAL RANGED DPS

BARD: It's a bit clunky, its got some outdated design elements, it has one of the lowest damage outputs in the game... and i LOVE IT. this was technically the first job I ever played? totally different character like 8 years ago. and i was so so bad. I think i am actually pretty good at current BRD. the animations look cool. i like that it's a class you really need to work for and optimize to eke out that last bit of damage. and boosting everyone else's damage by existing is kinda neat.

Story Tier: B. I'll be real I barely remember this but I do remember it was gay as fuck so immediately gets an extra tier for that.

MACHINIST: MCH is really funny right now because like. It's phys ranged, right. The design behind phys ranged is you have 100% uptime cause you can freely move around and not have to worry about cast timers or melee range or anything. So the trade off is that they do less damage than other classes. Endwalker MCH did not get the memo and does insane damage anyway. My controversial opinion is that it has similar burst DPS to RPR. No i will not elaborate. I'm also bad at doing good damage on MCH which is impressive since it is easy.

Story Tier: B+. Some Ishgard noble's gay son wants to build machines instead of killing dragons the good old fashioned way and has to prove himself to get taken seriously. A tale as old as time. See I haven't done this quest in like years but I still remember it. He is a memorable character. It's just not like. knockout wowza compared to the A tier stories.

DANCER: Dancer is the second easiest DPS job in the game behind SMN. So if i am sleepy it's the one I like playing. You play simon says. you do a lot of damage when you play simon says then do almost no fucking damage otherwise. I think it's the lowest direct damage in the game? for a dps i mean. You have high stakes sexual tension with a DPS of your choice via Dance Partner. I wish other DNC players knew how Dance Partner works. YOU CAN DANCE PARTNER ANOTHER DANCER. THE BUFF STACKS. BUT YOU CANNOT DANCE PARTNER THE SAME PLAYER AS ANOTHER DANCER. THOSE BUFFS DO NOT STACK. ok i'm good. anyway

Story Tier: C. there's some shit about negative emotions and purging them? in theory i think this has some interesting implications with Endwalker lore considering Dynamis and its role in the story. Very similar mechanically to what's going on with the DNC story. but i really don't think the writers made the connection so it's like pure speculation and not the actual story. It's meh. fine i guess. i did like all the flashy dancing sequences.

MAGICAL RANGED DPS

BLACK MAGE: I am so so so so so so so bad at BLM. i pull up the guide. i read the guide. it all makes perfect sense. i go into a dungeon or trial or something. somehow i always get like Zeromus or some shit. and i drop Enochian or something and everything goes to shit and i'm yelling and i'm not even like slide casting or teleporting or anything i just run around crying. then i remember i have like 10 more buttons i haven't been pressing and oh god the dot fell off. people play this? for fun? i admire it. apparently they do a ton of damage if you can play it. could not be me.

Story Tier: B? There's some voidsent and Thirteenth lore. all the black mage characters are Lalafell because it's funny i guess. OH YEAH it has like the one named male Keeper of the Moon Miqo'te NPC in the entire game and he's fun. look at this twink:

sorry i don't have anything to say about BLM i am bad at it

SUMMONER: easiest DPS job in the entire game. they redesigned it for Endwalker so it is practically a new job. i have no idea how it played before. but it is super streamlined. maybe too streamlined? it's another one to play if you want to turn your brain off. i like that at 90 you summon The Actual Primals instead of little representations of them. and i like the way your burst phase switches between Bahamut and Phoenix. it all looks very cool. they should add Leviathan as a summon in Dawntrail.

Story Tier: C.. i don't remember a single thing about this questline except you interact with Y'shtola's half sister. i think you go to Cartenau at some point. idk

RED MAGE: RDM is one of those jobs that looks really complicated when you start then you actually play it and it is just super super easy. that being said i think it's really fun. I like balancing the white and black magic gauges. Dualcast is a great gimmick and it feels cool to lob two big spells in a row at something. Dualcast Verraising a chain of dead players is so fucking funny. it's a shame that the existence of Verraise means RDM does shit damage to compensate for its utility. It and DNC just sit at the bottom with BRD barely scratching ahead of them. i think? i don't remember LOL

Story Tier: A, I really like the story and characters. I like that you have a middle-age world weary catboy (catman) as your mentor. and i like that he canonically trained Alisaie too and you chat a little about that. it's a fun story!

BLUE MAGE: what the fuck is a blue mage

Story Tier: ???

[aaronieros]

i remembered that i never posted this here so here is my yakuza games tierlist (only of ones i've experienced so no dead souls kenzan etc) and here is my reasoning for each under the cut: (warning: this shit is long as hell)

1a. yakuza 6. first of all, the only game in which i like kiryu instead of being ambivalent at best towards him outside of funny substory moments. the absolute best thing they could have done with him, especially with the dragon imagery/reputation always associated with him, was give him something to protect, fiercely. he's old and tired and stressed out and he's all out of patience. one of the first things he does is tell a cps guy to go fuck himself and kidnap a baby. and it's the first game where he actually feels Threatening rather than being in stoic pacifist mode all the time. i do think he was genuinely ready to kill joon-gi for example, and he did punch his entire son-in-law through a glass door.

joon-gi is in 6 which automatically gives it a tremendous amount of points because i love him as he is and then i retroactively love him more due to the fuckery in 7, but the hirose family and the general plot are good enough that, upon rewatching a playthrough, i wasn't gnawing my arm off the whole time waiting for him to show up, because the game is already phenomenal without him. i fully acknowledge that some games (mainly kiwami and 3) i only think highly of because of one specific character, but 6 would still be good even if you replaced joon-gi my absolute beloved who i am obsessed with, with literally anyone else. also the ending was cheapened by kiryu being brought back into the fray of course but that doesn't change the fact that even Thinking about the steps scene brings tears to my eyes. love that shit. also fujiwara's voice acting as yuta is so fucking good. especially when yuta is going through some shit and his voice sounds completely hoarse and broken, and the subtlety with which it's delivered in some scenes as if he's trying to hide how affected he is (in serena while nagumo is asleep comes to mind). all in all just super super good. i love yakuza 6.

1b. lost judgment. my first actual rgg experience i fully sat through after playing yakuza 0 for a few hours but not enjoying the gameplay nearly enough to bother continuing. lost judgment is what ignited my passion for the series and essentially served as my actual entry point since i'd given up on 0 for the time being, and for several years no less. lots of beloved characters but i also really appreciate the actual storyline, more than any mainline yakuza game in fact. the scene on the roof with sawa might be my favorite in the whole game. the side stories are also very good, especially the boxing club one in my opinion (it's also neat that the school side cases are entire storylines in lj). i also really enjoyed the motorcycle gang one, and the minigame for the dance club was the main reason i even bought the game for myself after having watched a full playthrough.

a lot of people claim that judgment was better than lj, especially in terms of writing, but in my opinion, the only places lj falls flat in terms of writing are kuwana's character (there is so much about him that should be interesting but he is just a piece of cardboard to me) and the way yagami wields sawa's name after a certain point in the story. it really becomes a "drink every time yagami says sawa-sensei" type deal, which is comedic at best and annoying at worst. but every other thing in the story is not only good, but there's something else very specific to my experience that i'd like to talk about.

lost judgment made me rethink the way i view storytelling. i talked about this on twitter a long time ago and made these graphs to represent the way the characters are presented in the narrative of most stories versus the way lost judgment feels, with the black line being the protagonist's path and the colored lines being the rest of the characters in the story.

if you can't tell what i'm talking about, don't worry too much about it. it's difficult for me to put into words and i doubt people would readily agree with my perspective (or even that it's a better way to handle storytelling) even if i did explain it perfectly. it's just something that i really appreciate, that this one game allowed me to walk away with something so major, especially as a writer myself.

2a. yakuza 0. i have been talking too much already from my goated with the sauce category so i will try to keep these next ones more concise. 0 obviously deserves respect for being the technical starting point (unfortunately resulting in retcons and inconsistencies because it wasn't actually the first game) but it's also a fantastic game on its own. mainly majima's side. you will see a running theme where i just can't really care much about what happens to kiryu except in 6 unfortunately. but the cast in 0 is huge and all the characters have things to love and hate about them and it's so easy to get attached to them, seemingly moreso than other yakuza games (or people just play 0 to get in and then don't play any games after that, so it seems like the characters are more popular. it's also easier to give them attention Because of 0 being the starting point, because you can still get new fans who aren't deep into the series to relate if you're drawing/writing/talking about stuff from 0).

all in all 0 is very good and definitely deserves the popular opinion of it being the best yakuza game, especially with the work it did to revive the series and give it life in the west in particular. it demands respect on principle in the same way the first game in any series does, even if that game (not 0) happens to suck or be hard to play, just because it established the series and allowed better, more fun games to be made later. y0 is nice because it doesn't have the caveats of "well you have to respect it BUT" it's just a good game.

2b. yakuza 7. where to even begin. first of all, ichiban is infinitely more fun of a protagonist than kiryu. i happen to be extremely critical of all protagonists in every piece of media because they tend bore me extremely easily which sucks because they're the main character so they get the most screentime and we're stuck with them forever. ichiban never has that problem where it feels like a drag to be with him at all times. i happen to hate the brawling gameplay of the mainline yakuza games (and i only use crane style in lost judgment because it's the most fun) so it being a turn based rpg is extremely good. i bought it both because i knew i would enjoy that gameplay (especially with breaker ichiban in the funeral suit, that's such a good flavor that i wish was the canon default for him rather than hero/freelancer but i understand why it's not), but also because i am completely obsessed with joon-gi and wanted to witness every line and detail of him for myself without having to hunt for all of it online (especially since i only like the jp dub).

joon-gi's whole thing is my favorite part of 7, but only by a small margin. the plot of y7 in general was something i was extremely absorbed in and intrigued by, and my favorite scene in the game was the first coin locker scene. i, like many people, feel like the ending was extremely cheapened by what happened, seemingly for no reason, and especially with it being presented as a total non sequitur, but i do love that it gave ichiban the ability to perfectly parallel my favorite scene, all the way from what must have been an hour into the game, if even.

i happen to love all the party members including eri, who i wish had an actual role rather than being an optional party member. most characters in this game, i liked or appreciated in some way (for example, i do appreciate aoki but. "like" is a stretch.) so it didn't feel like a pain in the ass to max everyone's drink links. one complaint about the drink links i have though is that zhao's made it clear that he was only a party member as an afterthought, because for some reason his direction was different from all the rest, which i can reasonably assume was because it was directed quite a while after all the rest.

2c. judgment. i said i would try to shut the fuck up and then didn't so let's try it here. love the characters, love the story, i just didn't enjoy it *quite* as much as lj. i like kuroiwa but i do think people who say he's better than soma in any way are insane and high on copium.

2d. ishin. my beloved. as the tier name says, this one is only as high up as it is because i love historical dramas, but holy shit. first of all, obviously i am very happy to see izo (nishiki) and hijikata (mine), especially considering ishin gives us the opportunity to see mine when he's not in the middle of a combination homosexual and existential crisis because there's nobody in particular he feels insane about and capitalism hasn't ruined his life. but characters aside, the ending to ishin resonated with me something fierce and i regularly quote ryoma's little monologue about the future to myself and it makes me very emotional. the future's secure in the hands of so many others we've never known, whose faces we've never seen, whose voices we've never heard.

3a. kiwami. i think the tier name says it all. i am here for nishiki's corruption arc and how incredibly interested i am in chewing on him. i also recently watched a playthrough of the original yakuza 1 on ps2 and. i have to say, the retcons to turn nishiki into an actual character were a godsend. because based on nishiki in kiwami, you can't tell how or why shindo and kanda ended up as the next patriarchs considering nishiki's entire downward spiral started when he killed a rapist, only for some lame ass sex pests to succeed him. but in yakuza 1, it kind of makes sense given the line that implies nishiki thinks beating kiryu in a fight will make yumi "his". it gives the impression that he's so much more shallow and that he only killed dojima not to protect someone he cared about but because he was encroaching on something (someone) he felt entitled to. kiwami's retcons here are gentle and make it feel much more like he loved yumi but wasn't a freak about it, and that he killed dojima to protect her for her, not for himself. in conclusion, nishiki hard carries the game.

3b. yakuza 3. i do hold so much love for mine, but luckily he is not the only good thing about the game. the orphanage is introduced, you have the ryudo family and especially rikiya, but mine remains the best part of the game to me. only thing he did wrong was the ableism but to be fair he was having a complete and utter gay moment and freaked the fuck out because daigo didn't wake up within 5 seconds.

4. yakuza 4. what can i say. akiyama was great, love his character and his story, and especially love the cutscene direction. i thought going back and utilizing the money explosion in y1 was very clever, and was impressed that they built an entire fleshed-out character around that. will confess that i literally have no idea why he has the slut reputation that the fandom slapped on him, but i also barely know anything about dead souls as of right now, so maybe he shows hole in that or something.

the parts of the game that were not akiyama. well. kiryu and tanimura were fine. saejima was not. initially it was fine, but the prison escape thing is highly cheapened by the fact that this man is fucking addicted to prison so you have to do it AGAIN in the very next game. not only that, and not only the extremely uncomfortable scene with haruka, but saejima suffers from the same problems ryuji and sayama do (i will get to them.), where the game overhypes the fuck out of them just for them to not really do much of anything. the rubber bullets thing is stupid but it doesn't change the fact that saejima *thought* he killed those people, i'm not saying he's actually a pussy for not having committed Real Murder (it's just that god forbid a playable yakuza character actually does a killing). it's just that he doesn't really have anything interesting to say or anything cool to do except that scene in purgatory where he humiliated the whole audience down there for not valuing human lives beyond ending them for entertainment. i was fine with him for a while before that due to not knowing any better yet, but it's now retroactively the only scene where i don't kind of hate him.

5. yakuza 5. guys? it's not good. saejima is addicted to prison and still not a well-executed character in the slightest, with baba being the only bright spot in his section (but still a bit overplayed). but shinada is y5's biggest problem. it's not just that i don't give a fuck about baseball, it's that you have to be EXTREMELY passionate about baseball to let the absolutely ridiculous and dragged out and, rather quickly, extremely predictable story slide. i spent months trying to get through yakuza 5 and hated the experience so much that i thought i just wasn't into yakuza anymore. then ishin came out and i loved that and i decided to just skip the rest of 5 and go straight to 6, only to discover 5 was the problem and i do still love yakuza so incredibly much. luckily, the start of 6 recaps the ending of 5, so finishing it wasn't even necessary. and thank god for that.

6. literally anything else you can think of.

7. kiwami 2. i am nowhere near enough of a misogynist nor a brainless homosexual to like anything about kiwami 2. the only people i see who like ryuji are the ones who are attracted to him which is beyond me. people who like sayama i can only conclude have zero standards for the way female characters are handled. let me dive into this the same way i've bitched on twitter about it 109280437127421897432 times.

first, i will just quickly mention again that ryuji and sayama have the same problem as saejima. the game itself hypes them up so much that they almost have no choice but to fall flat. but sayama falls so much fucking harder than ryuji. and so does yayoi. yayoi's thing is quick, so i will cover that first.

you are telling me. that this strong, scary, takes-no-shit woman. gets manhandled *without even being restrained* and needs kiryu to come save her. and then when openly sexually assaulted just gives shindo one pansy ass slap across the face. almost like it's a gag in a rather sexist comedy sketch. realistically, according to her character, she should have pulled out a dagger and killed that man the moment he tried to kiss her. unfortunately, she is a woman in yakuza kiwami 2.

but at least yayoi just has one scene where she is dragged relentlessly through the mud. sayama is stuck being a woman in yakuza kiwami 2 for the entire game. pretty much the first thing she does is get shot in the shoulder. the shoulder. and while any male character in these games would either shrug it off or die dramatically from a single non fatal injury depending on what point in the game you're at, sayama, for some reason, faints and develops a fever. which means she needs kiryu to carry her all through kamurocho. and then a bit after that, she calls him while he's out to tell him to buy her underwear. and then when he brings it to her, she reveals that she just got out of the shower and drops her towel in front of him. if you can't understand why it's infuriating that the only major female character besides the Small Child is treated this way, i genuinely don't know what to tell you. she then spends the rest of the game asking endless questions and acting flabbergasted by everything (me too, girl). only good thing she ever did was shoot that one guy. and then of course the ending is a make out scene. only for kiryu to never think about her again after her cameo in the beginning of 3 (referred to yumi, inexplicably, as the only woman he has ever loved in 6 (he loved her?????))

in conclusion. from what i can tell, people like kiwami 2 for the following reasons:

they like the gameplay

they want to fuck ryuji

they think sayama's girlbossing makes her a good female character

mix and match any of the above. this game's only redeeming quality is that emo phase daigo is funny (if completely pathetic)

if you actually read all this, thanks for hearing me out and i am deeply sorry you wasted your time on some guy on the internet's opinions.

[noddytheornithopod]

Holy shit my thoughts on Mind over Mutant got surprisingly complicated so uh here’s a massive discussion under the cut, lol.

Out of all the main post Naughty Dog games... this might be my favourite after all? It’s far from perfect, but I think I had the most satisfying experience overall.

To start, visually everything looks pretty good. Granted I’m using the PS2 version which has a few visual bugs because it was designed for Wii and X360 graphics more, but generally I like how it holds up? Shame 360 emulators aren’t a thing as of now, and I’m not buying some old console just for one game, lol. Speaking of PS2, there’s no Coco option because apparently her moves were too complex for the system, RIP.

To start... yes, fuck the backtracking. It’s perfectly reasonably why this pisses people off. For me, it’s mainly the transition between Wumpa Island and the Ratcicle Kingdom since you have to go through AND back twice, with little variation. Other paths at least have you only needing to retread once for the story or there’s a new extra path in it that unlocks. At least some of the enemies change up I guess? But honestly, I think what bugs me more is that it’s not exactly consistent in its implementation. Because for a while, yeah you’re going back and forth retreading old ground, but then you get the key for the Junkyard on Wumpa Island and you’re just teleported to the Junkyard gate. Same thing happens when you get the Uka Uka bones. And of course, there’s the teleporters to find said bones, which is kind of striking a middle ground. Basically... it’s kinda inconsistent. Tedious when it is, but when you suddenly start to get used to it, you’re given massive leaps lol.

There’s stuff from Titans that was changed that I don’t really understand why? For example, the block with Crash no longer has a dodge, and dodging is now purely responding to mutant attacks. I like the addition to help even out things between Crash and mutants, but why no dodge normally? There’s no board sliding anymore, nothing calls for it obviously so it may have been pointless but it is kinda funny. Also Crash’s glide is replaced with the spin drill, which of course has its uses, but I miss having that glide too (you could have both, maybe the drill is by holding square or even pressing triangle, IDK).

On the topic of Crash, I kinda feel like Crash’s gameplay is oddly sidelined? I think it’s because of the mutant storing. Even if there’s less combat, much of the platforming now uses the mutants, and because there’s only some sections where you have to be Crash, it means you end up being Crash rather sparingly unless you really want to stick to him. Like, mutant storing is a good idea and works with the kind of game, but compare to Titans where even if it was more combat focused, the fact you had to use Crash in more parts meant you end up playing as him more than this game, and thus it feels like he has more of a presence with his own move set.

The combat felt off at first, but I ended up realising it’s because I became used to the Titans system... to start, it’s less intense and slower paced. You’re rarely gonna be swarmed so you actually have a chance against enemies. There’s also the mutant mojo upgrades, which means your mutant actually grows stronger with each upgrade, making combat different each time.

I like how they use mojo... for the most part. I like that the mutants can now be upgraded, and Crash of course grows stronger. My one reservation is that the upgrades don’t feel that diverse? In Crash’s case it’s probably because he keeps most of his moves from Titans, but still, only strength and spin upgrades isn’t the most exciting. Same with the mutants, getting stronger and the occasional special attack boost is cool, but it’s not the most exciting. I guess I need to view it like a Ratchet and Clank situation, because that’s what this is more like... including the multiplier. Including a multiplier with your combo level to make mojo worth more helps a lot with upgrading.

Because mutant gameplay is now more diverse instead of just a few classes that do their job, it also comes across as more inconsistent? I like that there’s improvements like them being able to jump now and more attack variations eg from when you block or jump and hit attack, but I also find some of it a bit awkward. Like, many of these attack variations are cool, but the tutorials give fuck all clues to them, so it’s hard to figure everything out.

For example... seriously, it took me ages to figure out how to use the TK in combat. TK is a pretty fun mutant, but until you figure out how to shoot and combine attacks with their telekinesis, you’re gonna be stuck to slow heavy attacks and awkwardly throwing enemies around.

I also find the Rhinoroller awkward. Because of the new moveset compared to Titans, it’s on one hand less slow, but on the other, it can get pretty annoying to control.

Ratcicle feels kind of overdeveloped. They can freeze stuff AND surf on shallow water. I mean, it’s great, but it kinda makes the other mutants look less exciting, lol. But yeah, one of the best mutants in this game because they definitely thought of much.

There’s a few mutants that are fun to play as like Spike, Sludge, and Battler, but unless you go outside the main story, they don’t really feel like they have much of a presence. The introduction pacing feels off, basically.

Snipe and Stench are back as ranged mutants. Snipe suddenly gets an upgrade and is pretty fun to play. Stench I’m not so crazy about, like now their special attack isn’t ranged anymore so that kinda messes up the gameplay with them, and while the fire rate is improved from Titans, every now and then they do a reload animation which I assume was meant to add detail, but all it does is slow the gameplay down and make the rhythm of firing off.

Magmadon is around, and while they aren’t underused, I do think it’s a bit of a missed opportunity with this game’s increased platforming focus that it doesn’t have any fire/lava abilities. There’s only one place that’s too hot for other characters and thus making them necessary too. Like, imagine if you could use it to melt through ice or even metal, eg a door that must be melted down to progress. Sludge’s shrinking ability is only used like two or three times (and I think only one is mandatory), so I think there’s missed opportunities there too. The shapeshifting and extendable arms stuff could’ve made for some cool mechanics. Adding more platforming abilities for mutants might overcomplicate the game of course, but... still. Especially with Sludge, give them some more use, even for secrets and such. Speaking of secrets... Spike needing to use the special attack on that one spiky part on the way to Mt Grimly is pretty random, huh?

Scorporilla and Yuktopus serve their role as the massive powerhouses (and Scorporilla even gets a beefed up melee combo), though I must admit it’s odd Yuktopus is now demoted to a regular enemy/sub-boss class (seeing two in the minigames was surreal when I was young lol). And I mean, random changes in design and stuff is something I find odd in general. I mean, the returning mutants mostly have improved designs, but for others I’m not as sure on, eg Rhinoroller looking less rhino-y, and Sludge suddenly being a boar instead of an frog or chameleon or whatever it was in Titans. Guess some is NV mutations but whatever, lol.

On the topic of enemy design, one thing I miss from Titans is the colour and outfit variations. Maybe they had less time to do it and at least the single models they get look good, but still, it’s a shame. We do get the hero mutants, but the PS2 version fucks up their looks for some reason, lol (and for some reason their mojo upgrades separately from the standard of their species, which is weird, especially since it’s not counted in the game’s completion).

Grimlys are cool, probably my favourite mutant in the game. Kinda funny how they don’t have a block and instead a lock on function, but it makes sense given they’re meant to be used faster than other close range mutants. But yeah, time slowing is so cool it’s even back in Crash 4 with one of the new Quantum Masks. Really helps you rake up that combo count to get all that mojo too.

The minions are... interesting. They mostly do their job, but then suddenly you have Doom Monkeys and Znu that have these massive stun attacks that can get annoying if there’s a lot of them. Slap-Es can block but as long as you’re not Crash they’re as quick as any others. The Doom Monkeys are less annoying in speech too, thankfully.

I get a few audio bugs. Most annoying of which is being unable to hear enemy conversations. But sometimes I just got sound effects cut out for no reason. On the inverse... some of the mutants are very noisy and need to shut up. Aku Aku also sometimes adds commentary when unnecessary, making him feel a bit handholdy. Yes, I’m going to the damn roller village, be patient, dude.

Probably the thing to impress me most revisiting the game is actually the continuity and worldbuilding. I mean, to start, you have all the mutants becoming free and forming their own societies, only for the NVs to turn them into evil warriors again. Said societies are pretty interesting as well.

Wumpa Island is mostly the same (sans all the stranded Ratinicians gone wild lol), but then you have the Ratcicle Kingdom. A Kingdom formed mostly out of ice, and also near Cortex’s evil public school. Nothing like this was in Titans, so was there always a cold part of Wumpa Island, or did the concentration of Ratcicles allow them to make enough ice to form a cold climate and society despite this being tropical nearby? All the designers and stuff are cool, and some of the characters are quite peculiar (I love that one masochist Ratcicle lol).

Then there’s the Ice Prison and Evil School. IDK how the Ice Prison was made, but it seems like it’s Cortex’s doing since the Brat Girls run it AND Evil School (while also being students?). As one of those lore junkies that headcanons Wumpa Island is the second island from the original Crash games, this fits oddly well, because in Twinsanity Cortex suddenly has a massive floating Iceberg lab. Maybe Cortex also made the school and prison nearby, and the Ratcicles took their Wumpa Island residence and connected Cortex’s base. Yeah, I’m getting crazy with my speculation, but the game letting you fuel this is fun. Also cool how the Brat Girls leave Nina after she loses in Titans and end up as Cortex’s grunts, ironically.

The Wasteland seems new, and I assume it’s the evolution of the Lumberyard from Titans. We also have rhinoroller elders even if it’s only two years of existing lol.

The Junkyard is apparently born out of the remains of N Gin’s weapons factory (I heard somewhere the Weapons factory was apparently on N Sanity Island but IDK if that was ever confirmed, it makes more sense it was on Wumpa Island TBH but if it was imagine all that junk moved there lol, TBH Cortex Island could work for the weapons factory too, it would make things less cluttered and it’s possible there’s still unpolluted beaches but whatever). It’s a pretty cool setting, and the Doom Monkeys being in the remains of their old location but under new leadership (and somehow with rockets removed from their heads... maybe they were merely aesthetic? lol) is nice continuity. Judging from the concept art it also seems to be around that volcanic area in Titans, which makes sense given that had more machinery.

Mt Grimly is completely new. Surprisingly it’s not an evolution of the Uka tree (though there is one creepy tree place with the hero Grimly on Wumpa Island), and as a result it’s much harder to work into my 2nd island headcanon (I mean, at least that island always had a giant tree lol). Cool location, but unfortunately we don’t really learn much about its normal state compared to the other worlds, unless it’s permanently inhabited by evil dudes, lol. Also I still wonder what the heck the Znu and Grimlys are. Are the Znu supposed to be the same thing as Grimlies? Are the Grimlys NV transoformed Znu??? Who knows.

Even the changing enemies in revisiting locations relates to the story. For example, the sludges in the Junkyard will say how Slap-Es and Stenches have appeared from “the sky”. Besides random occasional appearances from different mutants in various locations, you also have the Znu and Doom Monkeys moving out of their home levels to the previous ones after you make it through said levels the first time. I’m very perplexed by the sudden increase of Battlers when you revisit evil school and the ice prison paths though... either they’re also favourites of Cortex, or the Brat Girls disappointed Cortex after he saw Crash break into school and Nina helped him and he... used NVs on them to make new Battlers. Other stuff like Snipes in the Wasteland because of the Snipe hero are clear enough, but this one is... interesting.

There are some inconsistencies that bug me though. For one, it feels like nobody acknowledges Cortex’s blog video. Aku Aku acts surprised that N Brio is back and working with Cortex, and later wonders how Brio gets dark mojo even though Cortex explicitly says he’s using Uka for that. IDK, I guess Aku Aku doesn’t like watching internet videos and expected Crash and Coco to do everything, lol (I mean, he doesn’t really acknowledge it after watching anyway). Also a bit confused on how evil school works... it’s implied the Brat Girls are the main students, especially when one NPC says it’s all girls, but the intro video includes all genders and shows non-Brat Girls so... something’s up (maybe the NPC misheard or the ad was lying and only had girls because EVIL). Also apparently there’s another evil school somewhere besides Madame Amberly’s (is it also public? how is it public, is there a government funding these evil schools? did Cortex declare some regime?).

The humour and cutscenes are mostly pretty fun and there’s many funny moments. There are a few jokes that are... questionable at best (Uka I know you’re evil, but you don’t need to be ableist), and some of it probably seems outdated, but I actually appreciate most of it. The 2D cutscenes in different styles simulating changing channels like you have an NV is cool and has some pretty fun jokes with them, though it does suck you don’t see some character models well if at all as a result. The whole satire of consumerism and the latest tech fads was a nice addition (between this and the different mutant powers and stuff, it’s almost a classic Ratchet and Clank type game), not to mention wild stuff like evil recycling (and I mean, green movements ARE co-opted soooo) and many edgy but still mostly jokes I doubt would pass today.

Bosses are fine. Cortex was fun, but Coco was too easy (plus she’s freed from NV control a bit too soon, they could’ve saved her for the Ice Prison or even Evil School or something to raise the stakes, I mean if you’re not gonna fully commit to playable Coco then you may as well go the N Tranced route). Crunch wasn’t as hard as I remember, in fact he was kinda underwhelming. If anything the Scorporilla and Yuktopus acting as sorta sub-bosses in-story were better fights than saving the bandicoots (also one of the sludges says Crunch is Crash’s brother... confirmed?). Also small nitpick but why doesn’t Coco have her evil model in the enemy profiles, even as she has her boss lines?

Music is legit one of my favourite soundtracks in the series, Marc Baril doesn’t get enough credit. He manages to have such a range and it all works so well even as it has a distinct and fitting style.

Voodoo doll collecting is more involved which is cool, and there’s also golden wumpa now serving as health upgrades because we don’t have lives anymore. Yeah, Titans and MoM did gold wumpa first, not CTR:NF and Crash 4. At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if it showed up even earlier. Minigames are optional too which means less stress for 100% completion, though there’s also the arena minigames (oh hey, more Ratchet and Clank similarities), and they unlock enemy skins... unfortunately unlike Titans which had skins for every enemy, there’s only a few skins here (one for each world’s games), which is disappointing.

Anyway... yeah. Mind over Mutant isn’t as polished as Titans and is a bit messy and inconsistent in some places (most likely because this game has less time than Titans), and some of the backtracking is tedious, but in general I had a pretty good time with it, and was actually pleasantly surprised by some things.

[vios-rockland-corner]

Rumors of Rockland: Article 1

You’re new in town and about to start up work soon.  Still settling in, you’re looking around Rockland to find a good hang out place.  Someplace where you could just observe what goes on around you.  A place to get your bearings.

Rockland’s funny though.  You can’t help but feel this weird sense of foreboding sometimes.  Not to mention, there’s quite a few colorful characters about.  But that just makes it more intriguing, right?

[Full spoilers below for RoR: Article 1]

The Rumors of Rockland minigames are a continuous installment of visual novels by @runawayoutlaw and @rottenbonethief (@sugarhazard may have his own characters and art appear from time to time).  The MC in these games is the same character every time, making this an ongoing discovery from one set of eyes.  A nice little way to peak into the oddity of Rockland and its inhabitants from a much safer perspective than other games will allow. 

This installment series will also be part of the future 5 year in-game time skip.  Not only will the MC get to meet the characters when they’re younger, but this means they become a more fixed resident themselves and get to see what happens to many of these characters later on in life.

Story

Already with the release of the first article, the MC is finding Rockland to be anything but bland.  First we have a very brief run-in with two bartenders.  One who literally ducks out for a break before the MC can get a word in, and one who appears much friendlier (for the most part) but is also occupied soon-after.  Then we get startled by a loud commotion of a very unhinged man oozing violent thoughts as well as being on the verge of tears as his friends attempt to calm him down.  Then we get caught staring and meet the world’s friendliest drug dealer and his very horrified friend who just wishes.he.would.stop.  Have to say, the situation oddly does get the MC much more relaxed after the previous man’s outbursts.  With all this excitement, the MC just barely notices one bartender come back wiping blood off his cheek.  But after everything else that’s happened, the sight just seems to get pushed to the back of the MC’s mind.  Nor does the MC seem so perturbed with the sinister tone in the bartender’s voice.  It doesn’t dissuade you from making a return to the establishment. 

Quite a roller coaster there.

Rockland’s a small place, small enough apparently where all the locals know each other.  Several of these characters bring this up and it’s even hinted that…may not be to your advantage.  If you’re not from around there, they’ll spot you in a crowd.  As friendly as these people seem, we the audience unfortunately know better than the MC does in this situation.  We know there’s disturbing and sinister characters lurking about. 

A new face means potentially two things for locals:

1) You’re either far from home or you’ve yet to ingrain yourself in the community. 

2) You may very well BE alone, without any connections in town. 

In a normal sane town, that just means the newbie has to learn to acquaint themselves with people and the townsfolk have to come to accept the new face as a resident.  Just the normal challenges of joining a new community.  Here in Rockland though, there are folks who likely share a friendly smile because their excitement over a new face comes from a very dark place.  After all, what kind of people make better victims than those so far from help?

 I’m sure not everyone that steps foot in Rockland has the unfortunate fate of going missing.  It IS a tourist town, and that’d bring a bad reputation if no one made it out alive.  But every now and then the darker folks won’t be able to contain themselves, and just decide to pluck some poor individual from the crowd.  Such events probably don’t catch the outside’s eye enough (or soon enough) to cause mass alarm.  But it happens just enough to make Rockland a very special kind of horror.

So if you can’t hide among the locals, what’s a new person to do?  One, be incredibly lucky I’m sure.  Two, get to know the right people.  I like to think there’s a “judging” or “probationary” phase for anyone new who enters Rockland.  How long this goes for, who knows.  If integration is successful, I’m sure the chances of survival shoot up much higher for the newcomer.  It might also be possible that killers may not want to target locals because not only will those faces be missed IMMEDIATELY, but who knows what other families or groups you’ll upset if you target the wrong person. 

Characters

So how about the very first characters the MC meets here?

Not much we learn about Foal.  The finger up seemed like a specific signal to Whesker though.

You’ve got the bartender Whesker.  Seems like a friendly and jovial guy for the little bit of time you get to spend with him.  But he also is one of the first to warn you about telling people you’re new and don’t know anyone here.  There are hints of something dark within this man.  It’s difficult to say though what he thinks of the MC.  Is he subtly giving them a warning here about how dangerous Rockland is?....Or does he already view them as a victim?

Then, you’ve got the violent man Avery.  It’s plain to see this is a man you do NOT want to get in the crossfire of.  He’s very unstable and his stress gives him the urge to grind anything to dust as a way to deal with his emotions.  For anyone who’s played the Misfits: First Blood demo…you know these threats are not empty.  He very much has the capacity to kill someone, no matter how little their offense is.  Luckily, he’s accompanied by his friend Callum who seems to not only know Avery well enough that he’s spared getting a punch in the face, but looks like he’s had to handle a situation or two like this before.  Avery is terrifying, but also tragic.  We don’t know what he’s done here, but from the demo we can take some pretty good guesses.  What’s interesting is that he KNOWS that stuff isn’t okay though and doesn’t actually even want someone to say it is.  He’s self-aware.  But he seems to have no control over his emotions.  There’s also a hint that alcohol was a factor here. 

It seems that Avery also has someone who he doesn’t want to disappoint, but the things he does would break their heart.  The man we see depicted in the bar I think is someone who is their own worst enemy.  He might have difficulty controlling his emotions and/or actions (ex. excessive drinking), but he knows what he shouldn’t do and wants to be better.  It’s a curious thing…can he get better?  Even some of the people who know him have their doubts.  We know Avery’s coming full blast in the “Welcome to Rockland” game, but it’s possible we may ONLY see his worst in that.  With more RoR installments, perhaps we’ll get to see if Avery ever gets better…or worse.

One problem that Avery may have is that he lives in Rockland of all places.  It’s possible that he gets away with a LOT more than a normal criminal does because things like that are considered the norm in Rockland, or because they get swept under the rug.  It’s not incredibly clear, but it’s possible that Whesker had been called out back specifically to clean up Avery’s “mess.”  This is a problem because it means Avery lives in a place where there are little consequences to his actions.  If you go so long without punishment, it’s hard to find a reason to reign yourself back in.  Even his friends like Callum worry that they may be enabling his behavior.  It’s difficult when you know the good sides of a person because you feel less inclined then to berate them when they mess up.  But sometimes you have to call someone out on their behavior, even if it hurts their feelings.  With Avery, I don’t know if yelling at him would be a good idea though, considering how dangerous he can become.  Tough situation.  If you can’t tell, I have mixed feelings about the fellow since I know his violent nature, but something about seeing him helpless here was a little sad.

Finally, you’ve got the drug deal Tyler.  Literally, probably the nicest drug dealer you could ever meet.  Certainly an eccentric fellow, he’s oddly far less frightening than someone like Avery.  His friend Dylan may be horrified by Tyler lacking any means to be discreet, but they seem like good friends none-the-less.  Interestingly enough, Tyler and Dylan are probably the most welcoming and safest appearing characters that you meet this time around.  Are they truly safe?  Who knows.  That might be a fun future game to play: Which Rockland character is safe?

Future characters mentioned but not physically in this installment include cops like Roy.  It’s very possible we may get to see, if not Roy, at least one cop or detective at the bar in the future.  I’m looking forward to that kind of interaction, because what do the cops of Rockland think of new folks?  Do they view them as potential victims they need to keep an eye on more for safety?  Do they act a little gruff to make Rockland seem less welcoming (so the newbie will leave)?  Or are they corrupt and completely aware of what goes on in Rockland (but let things be)…so they don’t make any attempt to drive away or give any kind of warning to the player?  Maybe they just flat out don’t like newcomers because it’s a tight nit town and they already have enough on their plate.  Rockland also seems to be a place that attracts sinister characters honestly.  Not just potential victims.  So the cops may be skeptical about what kind of character has just rolled into town. 

This is only the tip of the iceburg.  There’s so much more to discover, and I feel like these installments will be a great way to see sides of characters we don’t normally get to see in the main games.  I for one enjoy a setting where the MC gets a chance to observe some of these characters in a more public setting.  Oh I’m sure the more intimate settings with certain characters in the others games will be to die for.  But you know, maybe save those games for your more expendable OC’s.

[journaloftomfooleryandjapery]

All the TOP 10 OF THE DECADE posts made me want to make one of my own, so here’s my 10 fave games this decade:

Yakuza 0  Shovel Knight  Nier Automata  Metal Gear Rising  Gunvolt Chronicles Luminous Avenger IX Final Fantasy XV   Scott pilgrim vs the world the game Undertale Persona 5  Doom

Danganronpa 2, New Vegas, Touhou Luna Nights, Katana Zero and Mario Odyssey all only barely missed out, and it was a tough decision not to include them. I loved the shit out of those games but thinking it through I decided they were just slightly less loved by me than the above.

Below the cut are some extended thoughts (of varying length) on the games included:

Just CTRL F if you wanna find a specific one

Yakuza 0

Every Yakuza game is delightful and this is definitely the best one, in my opinion. The Yakuza games appeal to me for a lot of reasons: the combat, the story, the variety of activities, the look of it all and the music. I feel like its a very unique game experience with its blend of weird in-depth side activities, serious crime drama, manly man masculine combat friendship melodrama, metal gear-esque convoluted conspiracies and a surprisingly compassionate view of the world it takes place in. 

The combat is what drew me in initially because it just feels good, the feedback of stomping on a dudes face in yakuza is delivered perfectly, and the attacks are brutal, hard and flashy. Its a very solid and satisfying combat system and in 0 its the best it has ever been. The ability to switch between 3 different and equally fun fighting styles on the fly really lets you mix things up and adapt your approach, every style feels fun and useful. If i had to pick a favorite it would be slugger, but its a tough choice, and they are all very viable and FUN.

Yakuza 0 also gets big points for having the best story in the series. The protagonists feel much more interesting in this era, the fights feel more earned in this game than others, the relationships are incredibly touching (I’m almost mad majima didnt stay with makoto) and the substories (and some parts of the main story) are the funniest they’ve ever been. Stuff like the quasi-stealth mission where you have to make sure women don’t see you buying a porn magazine for a child, and the extended scene of kiryu trying to guess the right business manners for a meeting had me laughing so much i was i was almost in physical pain.

The extensive business and host club substories get you tons of extra game content and are good enough to almost be there own game. The other games in the series have extended side activites of varying quality, but i think 0 had a rare case of all of these being, basically, perfect. The team obviously agrees since host club management came back repeatedly, but never as good as it was here.

Being set in the 80s elevates almost everything in the game because of the outfits, money flying out of every enemy you attack, the classic sega games you can play at the arcade (Outrun is so much fun and I’d have never have given it a proper go otherwise) and the disco minigame everyones made a meme out of (that music is so catchy).

As a final note this game has the best boss fights and music in the series, which is a very high standard to surpass when you look at the rest of the series. The dual final boss fights, the recurring boss for kiryu and almost every majima fight are highlights of the entire series for me. 

0 is going to end up being one of the few games I’ll never sell my copy of because i want it available for me to play forever, its a complete delight.

Shovel Knight

This game has been analysed to hell and back, so i wont have much original to say i suppose. Admittedly i did enjoy the first campaign but it didnt completely win me over, plague knights campaign and beyond was what really made this an all time greats for me. It’s one of very few games that gets the NES+SNES platforming appeal 100% right and essentially surpasses most games of the day, with almost perfect pacing, challenge and level design. IT helps that the whole world and story and look is charming as all hell. It’s an easy game to love and the more you play it the more that feels justified. Being PACKED with great content is also a plus. If you liked the first campaign you can just keep going through a set of campaigns about as good that only really rehash some level assets. I would say its one of the best 2D platformers ever for me, if not quite my true number 1.

ALSO JAKE KAUFMAN KNOCKS IT OUT THE PARK WITH THIS SOUNDTRACK

Since i have little else to add to the shovel knight discussion, here’s my ranking/thoughts on each campaign

Plague of shadows. BEST storyline, great levels with a really cool gameplay gimmick, the characters are all cute and the ending really makes me feel for him. both sorry for him at first and then a very real AAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW for LOVE

King of cards. king knight is just fun as hell to play as, he doesnt have that many tools but his movement is just crazy fun and i love the flair in all his animations. also has that rad final boss. joustus is ok i guess.

Shovel of hope. uuuuuuh what can i even say about this. its good, and the melancholy dream bits add a lot to the mood of the story. we’ve already analysed this campaign within an inch of its life i dont think i can say anything new. wish we could fight the battletoads on pc.

Specter of torment. still fun and i appreciate the tone change, but i didnt care as much for the characters and the mega man-esque level select doesnt suit shovel knight imo. specter knight has a lot of fun movement options though. mainly i just love GRINDING and the diagonal slash. i dont give a fuck about reize

Nier Automata

I feel a tiny bit ashamed i have so little to say about this considering it is one of the most emotional experiences i have ever had with a story. If i lsten to the final version of weight of the world i still cry just from remembering this game and how it made me feel. i think its one of the greatest narratives of the century but i can barely get across the appeal to anyone who hasnt already played it. its a story about hope, despair and the nature of the human race that never feels like its preachy or pretensious or taking on more than it can handle. it made me feel all kinds of emotions deeply and intensely, it genuinely made me burst into tears about 10 times, maybe more. even putting aside the ggrand narrative, theres so many cool character moments and bits of world building and visual eements and tragic little side stories that you would need a whole book to talk about them all while doing any real justice to them. i loved it so much that im paying £70 to see an orchestra do the soundtrack live. I want to hug and kiss 2b and 9s better. i just love it deeply and i find it hard to explain why it makes me feel that way, but its a dark beautiful and hopeful story where every moment feels earned. the despair of the story giving way to genuine hope with the rest of the world helping you fight for it is such an intensely emotional moment that you could never replicate outside of this kind of story and medium. how the fuck do i explain that to anyone that doesnt already get it. I’m glad this game exists

Metal Gear Rising 

Well, complete tone shift here. Platinum made a lot of great action games in the last decade that all dig into that same itch for DODGE SLOW MOTION BANG BANG BANG alongside great soundtracks, visuals and awesome set piece moments. Just intense, flashy, awesome combat. Picking a favorite of the decade was the hard part, because a platinum game had to be one of my faves of the decade. The closest was transformers, but mgr has a couple of things about it that put it above the rest of the platinum catalog for me.

The story actually works very well at still being metal gear while in the platinum formula, its about the cycle of violence and FINDING YOUR OWN PURPOSE and it works weirdly well. The strangest part is that it feels like a legitimate sequel to metal gear 4 tonally while still being the crazy action game it is

Raiden is just super fun to play as, while I’ll always miss the DODGE SLOWMO in a platinum game parry and zandatsu give a great flow to fights and there’s real exhilaration to parrying a hard chain of attacks and tearing out a bunch of enemies spines at once every time

raiden is also just  a fun protag, it truly allows me to embrace that kind of stereotypical edgy cool anime swordsman he embodies

BEST PLATINUM SOUNDTRACK DO NOT @ ME

Bosses just rule

one of the best final bosses ever, in my opinion? maybe that’s controversial, but armstrong gets an insane amount of characterization and pure PRESENCE out of such a small amount of screen time and the fact he feels like such a perfect rival to raiden so quickly is kind of nuts to me. within about half an hour you are ready for the ultimate final showdown with everything at stake, and then the gameplay 100% delivers on that with a fight that is challenging as hell and just feels climatic and intimidating. its a little thing, but having this dude just smack you around with his hands and almost no fighting skill after a game filled with crazy flippy cyborg ninjas makes him feel TOUGH and the way you finish him off? it just rocks, plain and simple. I don’t think i need to justify slices a massive dudes chest open and ripping out his giant still beating robot heart as the music climaxes and our cool edgy protag literally says WE’RE DONE HERE. truly, it has to be this way.

Gunvolt Chronicles Luminous Avenger IX 

For fast twitchy 2d platformers this barely beat out Katana Zero and Touhou Luna Nights, but i think its just a little better. The skill ceiling on this game is high as hell and once you really get to grips with it, its an experience you cant find anywhere else. its just satisfying as hell to be able to get through the point where you can ZOOM  through these levels by making use of copen’s dash and lock-on and weapons well enough. once you get good enough to get through a hole level without touching the ground, you just cant go back. I liked this enough to get an S rank on almost every level. this game just rules, man.

story, art and music are all great as well. but they pale in importance next to zippy jetpack zoom zoom fun time.

also great for having a cool twist that i genuinely did not see coming at all

Final Fantasy XV   

For context, my experience of FFXV was not the base game so i cannot personally address the concerns of the version at launch, which i hear from others was a total mess! The game has been updated and changed so much that it is probably almost unrecognizable aside from the absolute base aspects of it. The version i am talking about is, as far as we know, the “final” version released right before Episode Ardyn. There was of course an update after this, but it only added DLC compatibility and a few items, so it means very little in the grand scheme. I also played all of the dlc and watched all the periphery material to get the full, messy disjointed experience. it is also worth noting that the only other FF game i have played is the classic title Mario Hoops 3 on 3 Basketball. I feel it important to tell you this before getting into things so that you can have a full idea of the perspective i come at the game from.

This was chosen over Mario Odyssey and someone will probably kill me for that. I just think its a great emotional story that does a fantastic job of making you care for all the characters, and the world feels massive and full of cool stuff to see. It’s my favorite open world game and i love The Boys.  its not the kind of thing i usually play but i think it genuinely had a great story and its a very fun game to just explore and spend time in. ffxv truly understands the emotional bond between The Lads and it is fun to kill big monsters with your party

(they kinda ruin the last cutscene in english, in japanese he says I LOVE YOU GUYS and it makes me cry but in english he goes U GUYS ARE THE BEST which just isnt the same. a small nitpick though. a lot of this game made me cry regardless, its just great at creating an emotional bond)

I admire the insane level of ambition in the visuals and scope, and i bought every dlc for it because it was just that good. the ifrit boss fight and all the giant monsters are just amazingly epic in scale. the “found a cool rock” post is what i truly admire about this game summed up. 

all the ancillary material for the game is great and worth getting into, with the exception of the Comrades multiplayer expansion. Everything else adds depth to the story and the world without being entirely necessary for you to get through the story. the anime and the dlc all really feel worth getting into without being something you have to see to get The Full Experience

the giant monsters are cool

Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game

Being from 2010 this game only just makes it in, but it was my favorite beat em up this decade and a source of great nostalgia for me. It had a pretty big impact on music and art tastes in regards to games, and in retrospect this games existence was very much a dream team scenario. Paul Robertson is a great sprite artist who does a lot of good work, Anamanaguchi have gone on to become one of my favorite bands (another winter is still one of their best tracks imo) and at the time this came out i was obsessed with scott pilgrim. That plus the beat em up gameplay makes this kind of a perfect blending of a lot of my specific tastes. Playing this brings me back to the time in my school life that i played it very distinctly, a more comfortable time in my life for sure, and i think the game still stands up excellently. I hope that someday it will get a rerelease so others can enjoy it. I give this another play through every year or so, but i wish id gotten the dlc while it was still available

Doom

ITS VIOLENT ITS FAST ITS FUN ITS METAL

i like this game because of the intense adrenaline rush and violent catharsis it gives me, essentially a constant dopamine rush

fun game good

Undertale

I’m glad i got to this before the massive wave of spoilers and popularity came about. It’s a great story with some fun gameplay, and i think SANS UNDERTALE was one of the best boss fights this decade. Its a shame that for so many new players this experience is going to be ruined by spoilers

Persona 5 

Danganronpa 2 and fallout new vegas were close contenders for this last spot. I actually made a post about my thoughts on this game before https://journaloftomfooleryandjapery.tumblr.com/post/184341270554/nue-is-great-love-his-goofy-design-when-life-will but essentially 

Essentially, its got a great cast of characters, a cool slick look, great monster designs, a fun gameplay loop of collecting monsters and grinding stats while waiting for the next big event, and a surprisingly good story

No idea if royal is any good, but its on a pretty small list of games that i might actually take the time to replay

[kaibutsushidousha]

Artbook Data - Design Team Interview

All left now for my artbook translation series are the three big interviews. The finale is approaching. I’ll do design, then development, then writing. Expect them to take even longer than usual, since they are all huge.

Notes:

I have no idea why Komatsuzaki is not being interviewed

Nakao is the main character designer and illustrator for Zanki Zero. Basically their Komatsuzaki.

Interviewees:

Tatsuya Marutani: One of the old school members, being part of the team since DR1′s development. He was DR1′s director, and from DR2 onwards, he has been managing the budget, schedule, etc. as the production manager. 

Satoshi “parori” Kawabara: Like Marutani, a member since DR1. He worked in all games of the series as a scenery designer and in V3 he is the leader of the scenery design team. He also personally made the 3D models for all the buildings.

Ayumi Sugita: Designer for some UI elements, like the title screen and the school badge. The woman behind the perjury mechanic, all new Class Trial minigames and all the replaceable e-Handbook backgrounds.

Ayako Nakao: Worked as an UI designer since DR1′s development. In V3, she handled the Class Trial interfaces, mainly the Nonstop Debates. She’s the one who incorporated the Psychocool vibe to the UI.

How to decipher a complicated design theme? The designers’ battle starts!

Interviewer: We are starting the interview with the design team. Why don’t you start by telling us which parts each of you do?

Tatsuya Marutani: I was DR1′s and I participated in DR2 and DRAE as a production manager. My role in V3 stayed the same. I’m in charge of budgeting and supervising designs, cutscenes, CGs and et cetera.

I: Not to mention being the leader of the design team.

TM: I don’t do anything this hard. I let every branch of the team have its own leader.

I: I see. Next Kouno-san, please.

Satoshi Kawabara: I have been the leader of the scenery design team since DR1. We don’t have a team specialized in building 3D models, so aside from the scenery models, we’re also in charge of making all other 3D models. But someone else is making the characters.

I: So, you make the 3D models for the places and buildings, got it. Next up, Sugita-san, please.

Ayumi Sugita: I joined in DR2 late stages of production and was in charge of making the interfaces for DRAE and DRV3. I created the designs for the title menu, the the e-Handbook menu and few of the Class Trial interfaces.

I: Last but not least, what do you do, Nakao-san?

Ayako Nakao: I did interfaces for DR1 and 2 and this time I was in charge of the Nonstop Debates.

I: Now that we know what everyone do, I want to start this by asking about what a concept all sides of design share in common. The design theme for V3 was “Psychocool”, Kawabara-san can you give us a few words about it?

SK: Not really. Each team branch interpreted “Psychocool” their own way and used their own concept as the basis for their designs. Then we discussed it with the others and reached a final consensus. Psychocool is a word our group made up, so it’s only natural that everyone understands it as something different. So I think I can’t speak for everyone because every team branch would give you different answer.

I: Don’t the design teams communicate with each other to maintain a visual consistency? 

SK: We communicate, of course, but we never reached a concrete image of Psychocool.

I: Yeah, that’s vague.

SK: DR1′s Psychopop theme gave me its fair share of questions, then 2′s Psychotropical made even less sense. Then comes V3 with its Psychocool and I could just think “what the heck am I supposed to do with this?” (laughs). 

AN: In 1 and 2 I just went with my own interpretation and it all turned out ok in the end. I thought the characters and the scenery would show the “psycho” side and for my interfaces I just had to worry about showing the “pop” or “tropical” sides. Back in 2 I even tried to add an ukelele to the interface to increase the tropicality.

I: So you each find your own interpretation and insert it into the design. I’ve heard that the development this time was very chaotic for the design team because the theme was suddenly changed from Psychoamerican to Psychocool.

SK: There were some more beside Psychoamerican. Psychostylish if I recall right?

AN: It went from Psychoamerican to Psychostylish to Psychocool. 

SK: Whatever it were, design directions can’t be decided without a concept keyword, so there work proceeded by each team branch throwing in their design under the most recent theme. 

TM: The work with the scenery always starts with Kawabara messaging me saying “I got the new theme. I have no idea what it means.”. We get some orders from the script writer, like “I want this to feel more cyberpunk than steampunk”, “more green, more nature”, so we take what we get and expand on it. Then, after we get to read the finished script, we adapt what needs to be adapted to it and that’s pretty much it. We don’t let the Psychocool theme restrict us too much on the earlier stages.

I: And how does the interface design proceeds?

AN: The DR1 and 2 interfaces used warm colors like gold and orange. But, since the theme this time was “cool”, I chose colder colors. I think we got an overall more “cool”, more subdued vibe.

The Saishuu Academy grounds’ multiple design concepts.

I: Now I have a few questions about the scenery design. The stage this time is a school inside a dome. How was the scenery design planned around this idea?

SK: Since the plot was planned, it was already decided it would be a space sorrounded by a prison-like wall. But another keyword I received was “spaceship”, so I decided to add some more cyberpunk and futuristic elements by making it into a dome, and then, since the school’s name contained the word “captive”, I covered the dome with a birdcage.

I: Sugawara-san said in his own interview that the birdcage was his idea.

SK: By the way, the birdcage idea was also used for the shrine that leads to the trial grounds. To be honest, after we made the wall into a birdcage, I checked it to see how it looked from the garden. It was so giant that we couldn’t tell it was a birdcage. And so, I made the trial shrine into a smaller birdcage to make everyone notice the bigger birdcage. As a result, entering the trial can be bizarrely described as entering a little birdcage inside a birdcage.

I: Didn’t expect the shrine to have this much of a secret to it. Did you first design the exterior of the buildings and then the interiors?

SK: That’s how it usually goes, but this time we still hadn’t planned how big the school would be, so we didn’t know what we would need to have outside. The sports ground we made early on was never used in the story, so we removed it from the layout, but on the other hand, the more we developed the script, the more new places we needed in the school building. 

TM: The twist of Ki-bo destroying the school in chapter 6 was a last minute decision, so that caught us off guard.

SK: Oh, it did. Good we hadn’t started making a 7th floor back at the time (laughs)

I: Nice you didn’t have to throw an entire floor away (laughs) You said you had to add a lot to the school, so how big it was originally?

SK: At first it only had 3 floors. For the building scenery, I wanted to make it similar to Kibougamine or just a regular traditional public school, while still trying to give the fans a different feel to it.

I: And then you kept adding new floors nonstop. 

SK: Yes. The script for a new chapter said “4th floor” then the next said “5th”. In the end, I had to scale it up to 6 floors. The script gave me some tips saying the 4th floor was “Japanese”, “creepy and scary”, “mythological horror”, so I took my notes and adjusted its image accordingly. Following this notes and adding my own psycho elements, I made the 4th floor and Shinguuji’s lab. 

I: The 4th floor was really the most impressive made. DR:AE had that graveyard stage with a similar taste, but this floor was even scarier.

SK: Having fun with what you’re creating is a tradition in the DanganRonpa scenery team. The 4th floor was about mythological horror, so I could add a direct reference to Village of Eight Gravestones. When something had to add something there, we all tested to make it as scary as we could. I even put some broken Kṣitigarbha statues from pictures I found on the internet. The picture was really good, so I used it as the base for the whole theme.

I: The broken statues did have this impact. With Kodaka-san’s precise theming and your efforts, you managed to make every floor after the 4th one also have a unique tone to them. 

SK: The theme for the 5th floor was much more clear because Kodaka wrote a game’s title on the instructions. (laughs). And also “angels and demons”, if i recall right. Holding my suspictions that the plot would bring up something about duality, I assumed that the 5th floor would be explored when the story was approaching its climax and designed it to have a bigger atmosphere of climatic grandeur. 

I: I see, and finally the 6th floor?

SK: It was decided that the 6th floor, containing Momota’s lab, would be open at the same time as the cyberpunk area outside. Therefore, they got a near-future and spaceish vibe.  By the way, Momota’s lab was initially supposed to be on the 3rd floor. It was going to be a rocket punched through the school’s wall, and inside it would look like a control room. But then the script mentioned a room that you had to climb all the way from the bottom of the school to the top, so I thought I should make the interior of the rocket into a giant staircase, and Momota’s lab came to be as it is today.

I: Now that we’re on the subject, I would like to about the students’ labs. The labs are unique for each student, but what did you have in mind when designing them? The talents?

SK: Believe it or not, for the labs we received barely any instructions. We were left to design them however we wanted. We took from many points from the students’ characterization and designs to solidify the ideas we wanted and sent our own designs. One example I remember is that I received the request of “I want Yumeno’s lab to have a feeling of both real magic and magic tricks” and I had to make all the hard work of finding this balance. The first version I did looked like an illusionist’s warehouse, so I got it had “not enough real magic”. The labs were all like this, taking numerous attempts to get perfect as they are now.

I: Was the process for this similar to the student rooms in DR1 and 2?

SK: The students’ rooms all had the same size, so all had to do is add some accessories inside to differentiate them. This time I had no restrictions about the room’s size, so I didn’t make the mistake of treating them like the standardized bedrooms. For example, for Momota’s lab I thought “make it space-like. A planetarium maybe”, then you go to Gonta’s lab and it’s a bothanical park (laughs). I was trying to think outside of the box as much as I could.

I: How did you think for characters whose concept was difficult to expand. For example, the Super High School Level Survivor Rantarou Amami sounds like a challenge to me...

SK: It was said in the story that Amami’s room was “death game-like”. I had to keep asking myself “what is ‘death game-like’?”. 

TM: Because this game is a death game.

I: It sure is (laughs)

SK: So I based the design on LIAR GAME (a manga about deceiving other in a psychological battle. Has a TV drama and a movie adaptation) and added a more bloody vibe and horror elements, making Amami’s room.

I: Also, I heard from Kodaka-san that Saihara’s lab had 52 books containing all the murder tricks used on the previous DanganRonpas. 

SK: The furniture and items have their places decided by the boss. For every room, I draw my draft only after reading the story’s script, understanding the characteristics of the room and doing all the research I need to design its scenery. I give this draft for the planners to check, and they give me the ok, I can send it to Kodaka. I think the books idea came along somewhere along this back and forth. 

I: I see. Another question about the student bedrooms. Aside from the protagonists (Akamatsu and Saihara), we also see Ouma’s bedroom. It’s filled with random items from the previous cases all over. How did you get that from Ouma’s character quirks?

SK: In the other games’ story, the bedrooms were provided by Monokuma to reflect each student’s talent and character quirks. But here we have the student labs for that, so we didn’t think much about personalizing the bedrooms. For Ouma’s bedroom, I just consulted with the planner in charge of it to make it fulfills all of the conditions it needed to. 

The Saishuu Academy’s gigantic map is fully loaded with its designer’s imagination!

I: One of the new elements of the maps is that they are filled with many breakable objects with Monocoins inside. As the scenery designer, you get choose which objects are breakeable, right?

SK: When I first designed the maps, no objects were breakable. But now that the scenery is more realistic, the charm of the 2.5D effect got weaker, so we decided to include this feature as a way to highlight it. From this point on, I began considering what is slapable in all future drafts, but I have no idea when it was decided that they would have Monocoins.

I: The DanganRonpa series seems to have a lot of those “things that just happened and no one knows how” (laughs). What it difficult to make all this scenery, as you put it, more realistic?

SK: Not more difficult, just more time consuming. Like, before I could just make an object pop out of the background and that was ok because “it’s 2.5D”, but this time I needed a more natural presentation. For example, to make a room before, I had to build its 3D and make it 2.5D. This time, I had to add natural-looking lighting to the 3D room I built and then drop the 2.5D objects there in a way that emphasized this lighting. Lots of new steps were added to the process.

I: So instead of getting harder, you just had a bigger workload because that’s naturally necessary for realism. 

SK: You got it. The hardware changing from the PSP to the PS4/Vita also added to the workload, as those have a better graphics. That’s what lead to the lighting work I just mentioned.

I: I’m looking at the earlies drafts for the scenery design and the tone here feels a lot lighter than in the final version. Was the Saishuu Academy going to be completely different from how it is?

SK: When I drew these earliest draft, we is still hadn’t decided on the direction we were going for. All I had was an instruction: “I want it to look like a portrait in a 3D map”, so I made these designs only to look portrait-ish. Besides, since I didn’t get any proper orders for the school, I just drew two patterns of options for everything.

I: What were the concepts for them?

SK: At first I didn’t what direction to take to make it different from Kibougamine Academy. For the first 3 floors, I took Kibougamine’s basic concept of a prestigious public school with a tangible history and took it even further, resulting in a pompous, almost church-like building. ((upper image in the link above))

I: Gorgeous and luxurious. And the other one?

SK: The other one was more modern university. Universities nowadays have some classrooms with no walls or windows, and that felt very liberating, so I how I thought it would be fun to draw a place like this. ((lower image in the link)) So I drew this draft but it turned we couldn’t make a school this open because with make the murder tricks more difficult to create. I made this concept hoping it wouldn’t be approved. I’m glad my idea was ditched (laughs). 

I: (laughs) Speaking of ditched scenery ideas, any others you want to talk about?

SK: The biggest thing is that in the first draft the wall surrounding the school was going to have an opening with a giant waterfall coming out of it, and a pond below it. We were planning for the waterfall to make a pretty rainbow but one day it was suddenly not there anymore.

I: And how exactly was this waterfall supposed to be used in the story?

SK: Remember that little path going behing the school? It was originally going to be much more unnecessarily long, going through the middle of a mazey forest seperated from the school. However, the forest part would be boring if it was just all green all the time, so someone had the idea to add the waterfall. Ultimately we decided to shorten down that path, so the waterfall was ditched. And then the provisory gym was ditched. 

I: Why was the gym ditched?

SK: The murder trick for chapter 2 needed it. It was merged with the pool area and demanded design changes to accomodate it. That said, I was probably going to have to change it anyways because the old version was based on the not yet made New National Stadium (laughs).

I: (laughs) Scenery designs does have its fair share of parodies and references. Like that statue of that ninja...

SK: The lines in the script also pushed the reference, so I think the scenery team decided to hit it as close to the original as copyright allowed. Being an object provided by Monokuma, we had the liberty to go a little crazy with it, so we went all in with the ninja statue and the stone tablet in front of the pool. 

I: And so, you weren’t forbbiden for neither the statue nor the tablet. 

SK: No, I was forbidden for the ninja statue. As I mentioned on the dev blog, it was originally much more identical to the real deal. Naturally, this would cause copyright issues, so I was forbidden by someone even higher up than Producer Terazawa. By the way, we included quite a few references not only in the maps but in the cutscenes too. I hope you readers replay the story to find all of them.

Making it comfortable and pleasant to play: The feelings incorporated into V3′s interface

I: Alright, now I want to ask about the interface designs. What do you need to discuss before you start working on the UIs?

AN: The game flow (daily life -> investigation -> class trial) never changes, but that doesn’t mean all games should have the same interface. The first step in design is deciding on the base color to fit the theme. Also, for 2 we could make flater designs because the PSP’s resolution was lower, but on the PS4/Vita’s higher resolution, the images would feel empty will if we designed then like we did before. That’s were have our fun thinking about what new effects we should use in the new UI, like for example grunge (the spotted design effect).

SK: The UI never gets done in the first try, does it?

AS: Never. Especially for the non-Trial part. I can’t even count how many we changed it (pained laughter).

AN: It took the longest for us to figure out how to fit 3 characters on the same dialogue. 

AS: The first thing we discussed is how to include this set-up that allows for 3 characters on the same screen. And we finally got the first screen ready to be our template, we built our UI around it until the higher-ups said “No, this feels wrong” and threw it away. Another big problem was V3′s much higher ammount of dialogue UIs. In DR2 it only changed for day and night, but in V3, aside from the timeframe changes, we also have different UIs for the daily life and investigation. 

I: You’re quite the perfectionists about this. So, when you don’t have a clear answer for the interface, what basic principles do you follow?

AN: The only possible principle: trial and error. For example, we once add TV show elements to the Class Trial debate interface. It was idea made considering the endgame twist, but it was forbidden for being “too much”. Our first map interface also had the same TV theme to it, so that was also scrapped along with all other TV-related ideas we had. After that, we started thinking only of “cool” as our design theme. 

I: I see you had a lot of working problems, but overall did you how your new options expanded your creative liberty?

AN: Oh, tell me. As I said before the resolution now is a lot higher. If we tried adding grunge back on the PSP days, every screen would get blurry and ugly. Now everything looks pretty on the screen. Me and Sugita were pretty hyped that we could use the grunge effect now (laughs).

SK: You two did great. Like with all the ideas you added to the Trial debates.

AS: But the first months gave us gestaltzerfall. “What’s an interface”, we asked (laughs).

I: Thinking of DanganRonpa design is harder than for other games?

TM: All titles care about their design. It’s just that DanganRonpa can afford spending a longer time thinking about its designs. There as lot of adding new aspects and taking them back, but other titles are just as hard.

I: And has that ever lead to argue with Kodaka-san about...

TM: All the time.

SK: I think everyone in the team really trusts each other. 

TM: Yeah, because whenever someone in the team has a cool idea they really want to use, we all do everything we can to add it. That’s how we made DanganRonpa 1 and we got a lot of praise from the players for it.

SK: That’s the part that matters. In DR1 we really went beyond what’s reasonable, but since the players loved it, I can’t think we did anything wrong. That’s why I always trying doing the most unreasonable things they ask me.

I: Can you recall any of those unreasonable requests?

SK: V3 was full of those. Changing the colors of the staircase was quite work, for one. After the entire game was pretty much done and ready for release, I got the sudden request saying “I want to add more colors like the were in 1 and 2. Give a crazy color to the staircases”.

AS: Oh, that’s right. When I first played the game, I thought “The staircases were not this color”.

TM: Because of this, we had to redraw a bit of the scenery, some story CGs and Climax Inferences.

I: Even under this conditions, you never say no?

SK: If we can do we want to do it.

TM: But naturally, it’s not easy having to rearrange the schedule and budget.

The Class Trial gimmicks achieved a huge power-up

I: Next up, I want to ask about the Class Trial designs. I was really impressed by the huge power up V3 got when it came to how the words were displayed and moved.

AN: That was the first idea we had to make this game’s presentation’s richer than the previous entries. The planner in charge complained a bit when I said he must come up different movements for every sentence, but I got him to do his best (laughs).

I: The fonts got a lot more varied, too.

AN: At first we did it with only one font, just like in the first two games. After we started decorating the text with flowers and magic circles around the characters, we had the idea to change the fonts as well. So we prepared 3 different fonts, but that was still not enough. After begging our programmer hard enough, we ultimately added 20 new fonts to the game.

I: Lots of new elements were added to the Class Trial, like the Panic Debates, Perjury and the Debate Scrum. How hard it was to introduce those?

AN: We had a lot to take away from the Panic Debate. We built the set up and when we excitedly went to test, it was really hard to display different characters in 3 separate cameras and have words come out of them. We removed a lot from it not to overload the game and had to release this oversimplified version. It was difficult compromise.

I: I see. How about the Perjury mechanic?

AS: I did the Perjury design. I took really long before it got how it is now. I was asked to do something that looked different from everything we had in a Class Trial before, so I had no idea what to do. I desperately searched for hints in the script and the illustrations, until I found my epiphany in that one Ouma sprite where is face turns pitch black. When people lie, something in them change. Ouma is the embodiment of lie in V3, so it figures that his change, this color inversion, is what gave shape to the lie mode.

AN: Oh yeah, I remember the perjury prototype screen was titled “OumaColors” (laughs).

AS: I used’s Ouma’s purple (laughs). And the eyes with “lie” written on it to reflect the character’s hesitant mind was Kouno-san’s idea. It was there to give a feeling of “Everyone is watching you lie!”.

I: Perjury is filled behind-the-scene secrets!

AN: The Debate Scrum doesn’t have any interesting origin story like the Perjury has, but we had some trouble trying to differentiate from the standard Nonstop Debate. We added the part at the end were you have to push the rockets after everyone matched the discussion topics. I don’t know why we settled with rockets, we were just suggested to do something that moves and the rockets were the first idea that came up.

I: One last thing about the Class Trial. In chapter 6, we have a couple unique designs and interfaces. Did you just have this idea when reading the script? Has the story helped you defining these designs?

SK: Everything was decided on the spot when building chapter 6.

AN: Yes. We brought pretty much everyone to discuss this part. Now that you mentioned, I absolutely can’t remember why we made the final Ki-bo Argument Armament in 3D. He was so hard to make. I made all the system to add him in 2D like every other AA character, but then I got told “Drop that for now, Ki-bo might have a different visual from everyone else”. I never expected Ki-bo to be the only one in 3D.

The minigame design were also all pitched with full force!

I: All teams told me in their respective interviews that they faced difficulties with chapter 6. Anyways, our next topic is the minigames and the in-game games. Please tell us why the room with the Monomono Machine looks so African?

SK: The reason is incredibly simple. The initial plan was to make the Monomono Machine more cyberpunk-looking, to match the game’s previous cyberpunk design. But we reconsidered because putting cyberpunk objects in a cyberpunk area is not interesting. So make the pieces in our composition more mismatched, we went with the African imagery. 

AS: A shocking clash of opposites.

TM: But why Africa specifically?

SK: I can’t remember why I chose Africa, but I do remember why I didn’t want the school store to look like a school store. Back in DR1 I made just a normal school store with unexpected products on the shelves, like paper lanterns and Western armor, but I found it funny. This time, I decided to reverse my joke, making a room that looks nothing like a school store and filling the shelves with the most commonplace products. And that how it came to Africa. 

AS: Oh, so that was the reason for Africa. I remember when I was trying to come up with a design for the Monomono Machine. I asked how the store room looked like and you just said “Africa” with no further elaboration. Despite the millions of questions in my head, I still designed all the wallpapers for the Monomono Machine keeping the African motif (laughs). 

SK: Sorry for designing the school store without consulting. I didn’t even think about the Monomono Machine...

AS: You don’t need to apologize, it was fun to design!

I: So, about the minigames, was that whole setup where you can play all the Class Trial minigames (redesign) at the Casino planned from the start?

AN: Yes. Some of the Trial minigames were hard, so we made the Casino as place where you could practice them in a fun way. The redesign were made to create a more fun atmosphere, since keeping the same designs would make the player feel like they are still playing the Class Trial.

I: I see. And then you added the Casino-originals: the Monomono Slots and the Salmon Fishing.

AN: We just wanted to make one new game for the Casino. The jackpot animation for the Monomono Slots was entirely handdrawn, so I’m glad it got okayed. Also, please notice that the frame for the Salmon Fish is decorated with roe. 

I: That’s right! There’s roe in the frames.

AN: In the beta version we had an animation for the eggs hatching when you beat the game. But we couldn’t include it in the final version, so I thought people wouldn’t notice the eggs, hence why I’m raising this appeal for them. 

I: More fans to the roe. Also, still talking about the Casino, I heard from the planning team that the e-Handbook wallpapers available as prizes there were quite popular with the fans.

AS: Making that many was worth the effort. At first we were only going to have 20 of them, considering “16 students + α”, but I was requested to make more of them because the Casino didn’t have enough prizes, so by the end of it, there were 40 Handbook wallpapers in total.

I: Double the original plan. Was it hard to make this many new patterns?

AS: It was fun (laughs). The wallpapers are prizes you have to buy from the Casino, so I wanted let everyone be happy with the one they picked. I started by making a pink one because Akamatsu was a girl and a blue one because Saihara was a boy, then I started making new ones with colors tied to the character quirks of the rest of the cast, considering both their design colors and some keywords. Then I made the Dangan Salmon Team and the Love Hotel ones borrowing elements from those designs. Same with the DR1, 2 and AE ones. Then the more original ones with my own original material. I get filled with emotion when reading tweets of people enjoying their wallpaper of their favorite character.

I: That’s the good part of being a creator. Anything you else want to say about the Casino room?

SK: A casino and a love hotel are not installations you should have at a school, so they off in the academy’s grounds. So, I made them not visible in the area where you can see the school building.

I: It was a trick to preserve the beauty of the school grounds, huh. Now, tell me which extra lenghts did you have to go to make the Death Road of Despair and the program world from chapter 4.

AN: The interface made the assets for the DRoD. Since I was told we would have a 2D sidescroller, I prepared the controllable chibi characters. Since this is a bonus mode, it was possible to just use the 8bit sprites we already had, but I decided it was better to make the sprites I did since those are actually facing the right side.

AS: We also had to make running and jumping sprites for 16 characters. It was very time-consuming.��

TM: Making all of this for 16 is impressive. It’s a strange amount of effort for a minigame that ends so fast (laughs). 

I: And how long did the chibi charas in the virtual world take to make?

TM: Those didn’t take as much effort because they were a lot less varied, both in movement patterns and in number of characters. However, the program world is practically a whole different game, so it took a lot of time to balance the size of the world and the movement speed. 

SK: The sceneries in the program world were partially made in 3D. We needed to use special test cameras to check everything regarding the characters’ movement speeds and scenery gimmicks. Only after all of that is done that I can start drawing.

I: Oh, remembered the program world had unique text boxes. 

AS: We changed the entire interface, to emphazise that that was a different world. Aside from the text box, we changed the BGM name visualizer and change the movement format from omnidirectional to vertical and horizontal only. Also, you know how the characters change expressions during conversations? We drew all of those expressions ourselves. I added the sweatdrops and effects because I wanted the characters to stay expressive even inside the program.

TM: It was costly but the development was so fun I think it was worth the price. As you would expect, there was heavy discussion about the Death Road of Despair, since we would need to make way too many new assets for such minor parts of the story and I’m not sure I agree (laughs). But this, the setting of the entirety of chapter 4, is much more clearly worth its price.

What are the interface and menu easter eggs layed by the design team!?

I:Time for the final question: anything to say about secrets or easter eggs you all put into the game, like the salmon roe Sugita mentioned earlier?

SK: Half of the images of real people in chapter 6 are people from our firm. We even included some people who appear in public often, like Terazawa-san and Sasaki. Have fun looking for them. 

AN: I’m pretty sure we also included one person wearing a Monokuma head in there.

I: But there are foreigners in those pictures too, no?

SK: The plot says the whole world is watching, so it would be weird if we only had pictures of Asian people. So we use stock pictures for half of them. All the foreigner and elders there were stock pictures. We also included a few family members of the staff in charge of editing said stock pics. 

I: I see. Anything else?

AS: Remember how characters appear in the background of the gallery menus? There are some rules to which characters appear. For example, the Saihara without the hat won’t appear before you beat chapter 1. Also, one character in particular doesn’t appear before you complete the story. I would love if you checked who it is for yourself. Then there’s the easter egg on the title menu.

I: What did you hide there?

AS: There’s a lot of objects on top of the building on the title menu. Every time you beat a chapter, a new object related to the chapter in question gets added. I think a lot of people don’t go back to the title menu that often, so when they realized, the place is already packed with stuff. 

TM: I didn’t go back to title menu before I finished the game.

I: That’s what I call hidden content. Now, one message to the fans, please.

TM: I think this was better than DR1 and DR2, both in plot, volume and pacing. And I can proudly brag that this is the entry that best shows what DanganRonpa is about. I believe you’ll discover many new by playing the game from the start after reading this book, so I would love if you replayed it.

SK: In my many years in the gaming industry, I very often thought about how I live wanting to make something that moves someone’s heart. This game said every word it had to say, so I strongly a decent amount of hearts were moved by it. I hope V3 is a game that leaves lasting marks on the players’ hearts, be them from positive emotions or from negative.

AS: Probably very few people pay attention to a game’s interface. But I am interested in interfaces from a professional standpoint, so once I played DR1 I realized that this was the kind of interface I wanted to make and I started dreaming of working on the DanganRonpa series. The dream came true in DR2 and in V3 I was left in charge of many of the interfaces. I’m extremely glad it happened, but I gotta say I faced a fair amounts of challenges. It was a great experience. I thought the hardest I could to make this interfaces, so please pay attention while you search the easter eggs in the game.

AN: I can say with confidence that V3 is the culmination of everything our dear series represents. It was the first time we could develop a game of the series on the PS4 and we could make more detailed interfaces because of it. Explore every nook and cranny of it.

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 2.10

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 my favourite segment of trial 2, Kaito Was Good! He was having absolutely none of Kokichi’s bullshit and believed in Maki despite everyone telling him he was an idiot for doing so, said belief saved everyone by giving Maki the courage to tell the truth with less fear of being suspected, then Shuichi and Kaito teamed up to convince everyone of Maki’s trustworthiness even though they had to lie to do it. As a result, everyone finally agreed on the fact that Ryoma was alive during nighttime.

Gonta:  “So… everyone is culprit again?”

Suspect, not culprit, Gonta. You’re almost getting the hang of these terms.

Kokichi:  “But we can’t disobey school rules, right? The body was probably moved in the morning.”

This… sounds genuine. I think Kokichi actually believes this, which means that he hasn’t remotely got the case solved himself, even though he knew before most people that the murder wasn’t before nighttime.

Kirumi:  “But should we trust Maki’s testimony in the first place?”

This is Kirumi’s statement during the Debate Scrum. Everyone else is making logical arguments about the apparent impossibility of moving the body during nighttime, but Kirumi is still hung up on how inconvenient Maki’s testimony is for her and trying to get people to doubt it.

(Holy crap what do you mean I lost two and a half hearts of health from messing up the button mashing part because I briefly blanked on the PlayStation button layout. I know my Action difficulty is set to Mean, but geez.)

Gonta:  “Gentlemen not chuck dead bodies!”

An important fact about gentlemen. Gentlemen also don’t create dead bodies in the first place, which should make the not-chucking-them part kind of moot, but, you know.

Kokichi:  “Got it, musclehead!? Even if we injected tons of steroids into you, it’d be impossible!”

Gonta:  “Sorry. You’re right.”

Tsumugi:  “You didn’t need to apologize, Gonta…”

Kokichi is still being a gigantic uncalled-for dick to the most vulnerable people. And apparently Kaito has given up on telling Gonta not to apologise for things that aren’t his fault, because he keeps doing it anyway?

Kaito:  “How the culprit moved the body from the window… Ha! You guys don’t even know that!? What a bunch of dimwits!”

Kirumi:  “Do you have the answer, then?”

Kaito:  “But of course. Tell ‘em, Shuichi! Blow ‘em all away with the truth!”

Oh, Kaito. He has absolute faith that Shuichi with his amazing detective skills has already figured it out and is just lacking in the confidence to explain it, and is trying to give Shuichi that confidence to do so by talking like this.

Shuichi:  “Ah… I, uh… actually don’t know that yet…”

Kaito:  “Wh-What!?”

…But maybe his expectations for Shuichi are a little too high right now. Oops.

(It’s not too unreasonable for Kaito to assume this, because last trial Shuichi had already figured out basically everything about how Kaede did it, and the only problem was him finding the courage to reveal that truth.)

Kaito:  “Wh-What are we gonna do, Shuichi!? We gotta figure this out or we’re done for! Hey, you gotta do something, Shuichi!”

Shuichi:  “I-I know… I have to do something, but…” (I don’t know what to do, I haven’t figured that out yet… … Dammit… am I really not good enough…? Am I…? Am I no good as a detective? I-I can’t do this, I can’t—)

Kaito, I know you’re trying to help but right now you’re just putting too much pressure on Shuichi! Ease off there.

It’s neat that there’s this one little moment to show that despite how amazing Kaito is at encouraging and supporting people, he’s still not perfect at it and can mess up sometimes. This is coming about because Kaito genuinely believed Shuichi had already figured it out and is caught off-guard and freaks out a little upon realising that he hasn’t. Otherwise Kaito would still believe that Shuichi can figure it out if he just thinks it through carefully, and he’d be able to encourage him to do that instead.

Also I feel like Kaito is using “we” in a way that implies he means just the two of them, like they’re a team who’re going to solve this and save everyone together.

Maki is the one to snap Shuichi out of it by suggesting that we focus on where the murder took place! That’s almost certainly something she wouldn’t have done if Kaito and Shuichi’s belief in her hadn’t encouraged her to be a little more co-operative.

Kokichi:  “Why didn’t anyone realize this yet? Ha, that’s strange.”

Kiyo:  “Perhaps the culprit steered the conversation away from that topic.”

The culprit has definitely done a lot of deliberate steering of the conversation, as I’ve been pointing out… but not really about this. Changing the topic of conversation to where Ryoma was killed isn’t precisely bad for Kirumi anyway, since anyone could have killed him in his lab.

Shuichi:  “…Thank you, Maki. That was a helpful insight.”

Maki:  “I can’t believe you didn’t notice that. I guess that’s why you’re still an apprentice.”

It’s actually quite refreshing to have someone being more realistic about Shuichi’s detective skills rather than automatically putting him on a pedestal just because he has the title of Ultimate. Shuichi should have realised this, really, since he investigated Ryoma’s lab and seemed to more or less deduce it was the crime scene at the time, but then apparently forgot about it in the trial until now.

Kiyo:  “It’s possible they knocked him out before handcuffing him… Kehehe… Though there’s no way we can be sure, now that he’s naught but bones.”

Actually that’s exactly how we can be sure he was knocked out, since we can see the big obvious fracture on his skull. Why does nobody ever mention this. Now would be the time to bring it up.

Kokichi:  “I doubt he was ambushed. I’m pretty sure the culprit got Ryoma by… … Oh whoops, don’t pay attention to little ol’ me. I’m just talking to myself.”

Having seen everyone’s motive videos, Kokichi is probably imagining, correctly, that Ryoma had given up on living after seeing his and let himself get killed. It’s also possible, since Kokichi’s seen Kirumi’s motive video too, that he’s figured out that Kirumi told him about her motive and essentially asked him to sacrifice himself. He could just tell everyone right now that he thinks Kirumi did it, but of course that wouldn’t be any ~fun~, would it?

Oh boy, it’s time to drive a taxi. This whole minigame is so, so stupid for a number of reasons. Why on earth is Shuichi’s mental process being represented by driving a taxi and picking up hookers? That could not be more out of character for him. Plus it’s just unnecessarily long and disconnected from what’s actually going on in the trial. And, even if we just distill it down to the actual meaningful point of it which is the questions you get asked, almost all of those questions are asking you something blatantly obvious which has already been established, rather than challenging you to figure out something new, making it even more ridiculous and unnecessary that the game makes such a big deal about it. Generally the only actually new question is the last one, in which case, why not just use the usual multiple choice question mechanic?

“If you hit those, you will take Focus Energy damage.”

Um, tutorial, don’t you mean Influence? You can’t take damage to your focus meter.

At least I bought and equipped the skill that gives you twice as many letters per letter cube, just to make this minigame go faster because I find it so unnecessarily long.

Gonta:  “First, culprit hang rope outside of one window. Then culprit move to other side… and tie cable to other window. Then, after tying to each window, culprit tie rope and cable together. That how culprit make one rope that reach both windows.”

Look at Gonta being genuinely smart in some ways! I hadn’t even figured this part out on my first time through; I knew the rope had to have been tied between the two windows but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how the culprit managed to do that.

Gonta:  “I-It’s nothing. Gonta use ropes a lot when looking for bugs.”

Gonta may not have many book smarts because he grew up in a forest, but there’s other kinds of intelligence that he still has plenty of.

Kaito:  “Alright, Shuichi… The stage is finally set.”

Shuichi:  “…What?”

Kaito:  “Listen up! Do a good job here, and I’ll be able to put an end to this trial! It all starts with you! You be the opening act, and I’ll be the main event!”

Kaito is so encouraging and good! Yet again, he’s doing his thing of making it seem like this is mostly about him, to take the pressure off Shuichi – especially after he messed up earlier by putting too much pressure on him.

Kaito:  “And then together, we’re gonna save everyone!”

Kaito is so desperate to play a part in saving everyone and so glad that he’s able to do so by being in this partnership with Shuichi.

Shuichi:  “Together?”

And Shuichi is glad that he’s not going through this alone and has someone on his side!

Kaito:  “You got this! After all, you are my sidekick!”

Of course! Kaito is super awesome, so naturally his sidekicks would be super awesome too! He only picks sidekicks that he knows can get the job done!

Kaito:  “I believe in you! So I’m gonna leave the rest to you!”

Shuichi:  “…Yeah.”

Despite having said that he’d be the main event, Kaito now says he’s leaving everything to Shuichi – because of course he knows full well that he’s not really the main event and was only saying that to make Shuichi feel less pressure.

And I love that the game has an entire illustration just for this moment of Kaito encouraging Shuichi. Kaito’s encouragement of Shuichi and their friendship is such an important part of the story and it deserves this amount of emphasis. This is also presumably why Kaito’s podium is right next to Shuichi’s in the trialgrounds, so that this image could exist. Usually in Danganronpa, characters with some kind of close emotional connection never happen to be physically close to each other in the trialgrounds, but thanks to this image existing, Kaito and Shuichi are an exception to that and it makes me happy.

Shuichi:  (This is the main event.)

…Even though Kaito just said that he was the main event. Shuichi can tell that Kaito didn’t really mean that and knew that the main event is actually him.

ROPEWAY

So I gather that basically everyone who played the localisation had never heard this word before. In the original, the word is also the English word “ropeway”, but in Japanese that word can also mean something like a cable car or a gondola and I guess is a more commonly-known word for that type of thing? Not sure what else the localisation could have translated it to that would have been any better than this, unfortunately.

Mind Mine is also a pretty silly minigame for figuring out things that are usually already fairly obvious, but at least it doesn’t take forever and the game part of it is pretty fun. I got super addicted to the casino’s version of it, at least.

Shuichi:  “Remember the inner tube we found in the pool, with the rope on one side?”

I don’t know why you’re asking everyone to “remember” this when you and Kaito were the only people who found it, Shuichi.

Monosuke accidentally confirms that someone came to them to ask about the extent to which they were allowed to “enter” the gym through the window.

Kokichi:  “Maaan, the trial was just getting fun. Why you gotta ruin it with that slip-up?”

Really, Kokichi? I thought you were having the most fun when you were trying to get Kaito and Maki to tear each other apart. Also, he really didn’t ruin it; he just confirmed Shuichi’s deduction which everyone was going to assume was correct anyway. It’s not like he mentioned who the culprit was.

Kokichi:  “If Maki had never met up with Ryoma at nighttime, it might’ve been the end for us.”

Yes, it’s almost like Maki’s testimony is trustworthy and she was helpful and Kaito saved everyone by giving her the confidence to tell the truth, because someone was too busy being an asshole to tell us that he also met Ryoma at nighttime.

Kokichi:  “Well, I still don’t know if Maki is telling the truth or not…”

Maki:  “…Shut up.”

Thank you, Maki. He deserved to be told that. Everyone else has long since accepted that Maki was telling the truth, but Kokichi still feels the need to be a dick about it and try to get everyone to doubt her.

Kaito:  “What are you, stupid? Don’t respect the culprit!”

We all respected Kaede, though, didn’t we, Kaito?

Kokichi:  “Now, we just need to figure out who the culprit is!”

You could tell us that, Kokichi, since you seem to have possibly figured it out a while ago. No? Of course not.

Kaito:  “Hmph. Looks like it’s time for me to start the main event… but my sidekick here’s on a roll right now, so I’ll let him take this one.”

Shuichi:  “Hm? Ah, okay.”

Maki:  “You’re just pushing everything onto Shuichi because you don’t know yourself.”

Oh, Kaito. Still encouraging Shuichi while making it seem like it’s mostly about himself to take the pressure off. Nobody here, least of all Kaito himself, is under any delusions that Kaito knows who the culprit is and can actually pull off this “main event”. Everyone’s thinking what Maki is, but of course she’s the one to point it out because she has no qualms about making jabs at his ridiculousness.

Shuichi:  “…”

Kaito:  “Hey, Shuichi. Are you hesitating again?”

Shuichi:  (What?)

Kaito:  “C’mon, man. There’s no need for that. Like I said, you’re my sidekick. I take responsibility for any mistakes my sidekick makes. So use those skills of yours I believe in… to shove the truth down everybody’s throats!

Shuichi:  “You… believe in my detective skills?”

Kaito:  “That’s right! I’m gonna leave it all to you, Shuichi!”

And of course Kaito would notice Shuichi hesitating and realise he’s still afraid to reveal the truth, as well as to potentially screw up and accuse the wrong person, so he takes the pressure off further by claiming responsibility for Shuichi’s mistakes. All Shuichi has to do is use his awesome detective skills without worrying about a thing, because all the worrisome parts are being taken care of for him by Kaito, or at least that’s how Kaito wants him to feel. He’s so good.

Kirumi:  “If that is the case, then I will have to deny it. I will not let you make the wrong choice.”

Shuichi:  “…The wrong choice?”

In some ways, even though she is the killer, you could argue that voting for Kirumi is “the wrong choice” in that it will prevent her from saving the millions of people out there. That’s how Kirumi is thinking of it.

Kirumi:  “I will refute your accusations will all my might… for everyone’s sake.”

Yeah, everyone’s sake, all right.

Shuichi argues that only Kirumi could have done the preparations in the gym before nighttime, but, I mean, technically so could Kaito and Maki (and Miu, because her alibi is so shaky). The thing that makes Kirumi the most suspicious right now is the part where she was clearly trying to get herself an alibi from Kokichi so that she was only alone for five minutes.

Kirumi: “This is my selfless devotion!”

Appropriate that this should be Kirumi’s line when butting in for her Rebuttal Showdown.

Kirumi:  “While I do understand where you are coming from, I assure you this is just… a part of your petty imagination! An empty theory created from nihilism!”

I enjoy how Kirumi’s speech gets more flowery and elaborate when she’s under pressure, like she irrationally thinks that if she uses unnecessarily big words and concepts then people will be more likely to listen to her. What on earth would Shuichi thinking you did it have to do with nihilism, Kirumi?

It’s a little strange that the argument in this section is asking you to prove that the rope really was tied between the windows by mentioning the marks on the window frames. We stopped talking about the ropeway a while ago and really should have brought up that evidence back then to support the theory. I guess it sort of fits with how Kirumi was still busy trying to get everyone to doubt Maki during the Debate Scrum – rather than address the current argument, it seems she prefers to try and collapse the entire foundation of the argument by discrediting the established premise, even though it has already long since been established and everyone else believes it.

Tenko:  “Please answer us, Kirumi! Shuichi is doing this for your sake—”

Kirumi:  “If it is for my sake… then it would be much easier to forfeit… But I cannot allow that! Because I must do this for everyone!”

Kirumi is so desperate and determined! This is where I start to really enjoy her character.

(Shuichi isn’t really doing this for Kirumi’s sake, though. If she really is the killer, he’s doing it for everyone except Kirumi’s sake.)

Kirumi:  “I have… a duty and a responsibility… I must serve everyone and protect them… So I refuse to surrender! They won’t forgive me if I do!”

The “they” here makes it rather explicitly obvious that she’s talking about an “everyone” who isn’t here, but that’s a localisation blunder. In the original, because Japanese doesn’t use subjects as often, what she said was more along the lines of “It’s unforgivable”, with no reference to who wouldn’t forgive her.

Shuichi:  (Is she doing this for all our sakes…? Am… Am I wrong? Is Kirumi innocent…? No, I… I’m wrong again—)

Which would make it more believable that Shuichi assumes Kirumi is trying to protect everyone here and lets his anxiety and self-doubt get the better of him.

Kaito:  “Hey, Kirumi… Who exactly is this ‘everyone’ you’re talking about?”

Shuichi:  (…Kaito?)

Kaito:  “I’ve… just got a weird feeling about this. When you said ‘everyone,’ it felt like you weren’t talking about us… It felt like… you were talking about someone who isn’t here.”

And it also means this is meant to be another example of Kaito being very perceptive and having a correct hunch about someone’s behaviour without any specific evidence to back it up. It’s a shame the localisation messed that up and just makes this look like Kaito is pointing out the obvious, because that’s not what this moment should be.

Kokichi:  “Hey… Do you think Kirumi saw her own motive video?”

I don’t know, Kokichi, do you? You could just fucking tell us at this point since she’s already the prime suspect now and it wouldn’t make things any less ~fun~ for you.

Kirumi’s only way out of this is to lie and pretend that the “everyone” she was talking about really is everyone here.

Kirumi:  “I do not care what becomes of me, but I will not allow any of you to die. Because I made a promise to Kaede. She wished for all of us to escape together.”

Shuichi:  “…”

Kirumi:  “I want to fulfil my duties as the Ultimate Maid. I wish to serve everyone. So, please believe me! You have to!”

She’s doing this to try and gain everyone’s sympathy, to make them not want to suspect her… but it can’t be too hard for her to put on this act, because she really doesn’t want to have to sacrifice them and break her promise to Kaede and escape on her own without them! If she could protect both “everyones” at once, she would.

Kirumi:  “It is still possible for Maki and Kaito to have gone to the gym. They do not have alibis.”

This is still a valid point.

Kirumi:  “They could have pretended to help Himiko, but secretly prepared the murder.”

This… is a less valid point, since the point of them not having alibis is that they would have snuck in after 9pm when nobody would see them and wouldn’t have needed to pretend to help Himiko.

Kirumi’s words work on some of the others, and several people express doubt that she really did it.

Shuichi:  “I… made a promise. As the Ultimate Detective, I made a promise to seek the truth. I made a promise to Kaede! So I’m not turning back now!” (They’re scared… They’re scared that they have to accuse one of their friends of murder. So it’s up to me… I have to do it. I’ll use my detective work to prove it!)

Shuichi’s issues are being relevant again! It’s not just him – everyone is afraid of facing a painful truth that one of their friends committed murder. In that way, Shuichi is now much better at doing so than everyone else, because he’s had practice. He was in the most pain in the previous trial upon accusing Kaede, but he managed to do it anyway. Compared to that, accusing Kirumi here isn’t so bad for him, so he’s able to do it when nobody else is willing to. He also promised Kaede more strongly than anyone else that he’d find the truth and protect everyone, so he has the most incentive to be brave right now.

Kirumi:  “Shuichi, won’t you please tell me why you are so desperate to pin me as the culprit? Don’t you want to protect everyone!?”

Shuichi:  “I’m doing this *because* I want to protect everyone!”

Kaito:  “Shuichi…”

Look at Shuichi being a hero! And even more importantly, look at Kaito noticing Shuichi being a hero, apparently quite without his help, and being taken aback by it. It’s never explained why Kaito mutters Shuichi’s name like this, but the timing of it suggests that this is what’s going on in his head, as it would fit perfectly as an early hint of Kaito’s later jealousy towards Shuichi. It almost doesn’t need to be here at all because it’s so tiny and so apparently pointless, so the fact that it is here nonetheless means it’s a very deliberate and very relevant part of Kaito’s character arc and makes it possibly my favourite single line of dialogue in this trial. Have I mentioned that I adore subtle character writing and the way it’s used to write Kaito. He is such a damn good character in so many ways.

Another relevant point is that Kaito is mostly quiet after this moment and doesn’t encourage Shuichi again for the rest of the trial, as if he doesn’t think Shuichi needs it any more.

Kirumi:  “All you care about is your own reasoning! You don’t even listen to others! I can’t bet everyone’s lives on a deduction made by a self-righteous brat!”

I like how Kirumi’s furious argument as she tries to discredit Shuichi focuses on making him sound selfish, because that’s obviously something she would consider to be the worst possible trait a person could have.

Kirumi:  “You can’t save anyone!!!”

She’s also trying to cling to the idea that she is the only person here capable of saving others, which is kind of necessary for her motive. If she was able to accept that the people outside didn’t need her specifically to save them from the unknown threat and maybe the other people in the government could deal with it without her, then suddenly her sacrificing her friends to escape from here becomes meaningless, and self-righteous of her.

Her design for the Argument Armament, aside from the broom she’s holding, isn’t that maid-like – she actually looks more like a knight. Appropriate, since she’s fighting to defend her people.

Kirumi:  “In this class trial… everyone’s life is at stake! Because of your self-righteous truth… Everyone might die!”

These words are actually true; she’s talking about “everyone” outside again. She’s saying Shuichi shouldn’t be seeking the truth because it’ll only save the twelve people trapped here and selfishly result in everyone outside getting killed.

Kirumi:  “I only wish to protect everyone… Why must you interfere!?”

More words that are technically true!

Kirumi’s level of clothing damage at the end of her Argument Armament is very over the top and not okay, by the way. I mean, the clothing damage in these is kind of silly in general, but this one is especially nope-why-would-you-even.

Shuichi:  “But our culprit was smart. They weren’t burned because they weren’t bare-handed.”

…I mean, that’s not really because she was smart so much as because she just happens to wear gloves all the time anyway. In a way, it would have been smarter for her to take her gloves off and deliberately give herself ropeburn to avoid the risk of the gloves breaking and leaving evidence – after all, she is more than willing to injure herself for the sake of her people, as we see in her execution. But I guess the ropeburn itself, while possible to hide under her gloves, would still have given her away once Shuichi figured out the culprit had to have it and demanded she take her gloves off to show us her hands.

Kokichi:  “From what I remember, the only one who wears black gloves is Kirumi, right?”

No, she’s not. Miu also wears black fingerless gloves. Miu could technically still be the culprit, because her alibi is shaky enough that she very much could have snuck into the gym for five minutes before nighttime to set things up. I mean, she clearly isn’t, based on the fact that she’d be terrible at hiding it if she really did do it and based on the way Kirumi has been acting, but.

Shuichi:  “The extra uniforms in our rooms are made of the same material we’re wearing now. We can test my theory by comparing the fabric scrap with your glove.”

Which we really should do, to confirm that it’s a piece of one of Kirumi’s gloves and not one of Miu’s. (Assuming their gloves are made of different material in the first place.)

Kirumi:  “U-Uhhh…!”

Angie:  “Huh? What’s the matter? Why are you sweating so much?”

Because she’s desperate to save everyone and she’s not going to be able to do so!

Shuichi:  (In the end… I’m just like them. I’m scared of revealing the truth. Because it means that someone has to be sacrificed. But Kaede was scared, too… She didn’t let that stop her. She thought things through to the end.)

Look at Shuichi being inspired by Kaede even though he knows she was scared the whole time! Knowing that just makes Kaede more inspiring to him, because if she could fight through her fear then he can too!

This is something Kaito really, really should be taking notes about. But he can’t, because Shuichi doesn’t say this out loud.

This shot of Ambiguous Culprit Kirumi grinning evilly after Ryoma is devoured is definitely not what happened. Kirumi had to have been quietly horrified at what she’d done.

{Later addendum edit: I completely missed this before, but look closely at this panel. Isn’t that Kirumi comforting Tsumugi as she freaks out from seeing Ryoma being eaten, even though Kirumi was the one who made this happen in the first place? That’s so lovely of her; of course she would. None of that evilly grinning nonsense, thank you.

(Little does she know Tsumugi is completely faking it and is the one responsible for her becoming a murderer for no reason and her upcoming horrible execution.)}

She also would not have grinned evilly after setting up the gym. Still, this is Shuichi’s imagination, and he doesn’t understand her motive yet other than suspecting it’s maybe something about protecting someone outside, so I can sort of see why he would picture this.

Yet again we have our Ambigious Culprit Figure wearing a distinctive piece of clothing, this time Kirumi’s gloves, since they’re important to how the case played out. She’s shown holding her gloves in her teeth as she drowns Ryoma, which is a neat detail since she would have wanted to not get them wet.

I’m not sure Ryoma’s hands would have been in the water like the panel here shows, though, since the scrapes were on the outside of the sink.

Kiyo:  “Why use your own gloves, though? The warehouse should have had plenty—”

Kokichi:  “There weren’t any. Obviously, she would have used them if they were available.”

I mean technically we don’t know that, since we haven’t actually checked that the scrap is from Kirumi’s glove. And if there are gloves in the warehouse and the scrap matches them, then that means it could still have been Kaito or Maki, but.

Kokichi:  “Geez, Monokuma provided everything but the gloves. That’s pretty sadistic. But thanks to him, at least the game became way more interesting…”

I dunno, if he’d provided gloves, it wouldn’t have been less interesting so much as we’d have been stuck with no way to prove who the killer was out of Kaito, Maki and Kirumi (and technically Miu). No way except looking at the way the suspects are acting and assuming it’s Kirumi based on how stressed she is. And wasn’t that supposed to be Kokichi’s idea of “fun” in the first place?

Monokuma:  “The heart-racing excitement as the blackened and the spotless finally face off!”

Yeah, damn right it’s “finally”, because last trial the blackened and the spotless weren’t facing off at all.

Kirumi voted for Shuichi. Just goes to show much she refuses to give up even though it’s utterly hopeless for her now.

---

[Next post]

[beyondmistland]

“May your heart be your guiding key” (Full thoughts on Kingdom Hearts III below!)

Graphics:

Ø  The game is bloody gorgeous, which helps mitigate the long and frequent cutscenes

Ø  The lip-syncing rarely fails

Music:

Ø  The new remixes are awesome and the brand-new tracks don't disappoint either

Ø  What does though is the actual audio mixing:

More often than not I struggled to hear the music over the sound effects during gameplay and the voiceovers during cutscenes

Ranking the Worlds:

Ø  #1: Corona: The world is huge, with varied terrain and a kick-ass final boss

Ø  #2 Olympus: The sheer scale and scope of the world took my breath away, plus we (finally!) get to fight all four titans

Ø  #3 The Caribbean: Assassin's Creed IV meets Kingdom Hearts, what's not to like

Ø  #4 Monstropolis: While not as eye-catching as some of the other worlds the way it intersects with the broader KH lore is really neat and the final cutscene was a delight in that it averts the Disney characters being useless when dealing with the original KH villains, on top of which its straightforward design is a nice change of pace, my only complaint is that there are only four types of Unversed

Ø  #5 San Fransokyo: The story is surprisingly short, which means you don't really get the chance to explore the environment, which sucks because the verticality and day/night cycle are awesome, plus there are a number of memorable boss fights

Ø  #6 Twilight Town: If it had been fully recreated based off the KH2 version the world would be much higher on my list but despite how small it is I love the liveliness, not to mention how peaceful it is in comparison to the other worlds, the same can be said for Hundred Acre Wood

Ø  #7 Keyblade Graveyard + Final World + Scala Ad Caelum: Though jaw-dropping in terms of visuals and audio they're not fully realized worlds, the same can be said for Dark World

Ø  #8 Toy Box: I loved the final boss as well as how the story tied into the larger plot of the game and I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy exploring Andy's room while "You have a friend in me" played in the background

Why then is Toy Box so far down on my list, world design

Even with endgame stats (LV40-45) the Gigas are tough to take down and as a result they come off as gimmicky in the worst sense of the word, beyond that the fact that the majority of the world is set in Galaxy Toys made me feel constrained and claustrophobic, which could have been partially alleviated if we'd been allowed to make our way through the parking lot outside, finally, the story kind of got repetitive with the backtracking whenever the characters were about to leave because "someone went missing yet again"

Ø  #9 Arrendelle: Though it has one of the best final bosses in the game along with Corona there is so much wrong with this world that I wonder if it's less Square Enix's fault and more Disney placing an insane amount of red tape on their favorite cash-cow:

1) Elsa does not become a party member even after you beat the world

2) You do not get to explore the city or the ice palace despite the latter being fully rendered on the map

3) Larxene, a lightning-based character, randomly traps you in an ice labyrinth when that would have made a lot more sense both logically and thematically if it had been Elsa

4) Speaking of Larxene, she does practically nothing the whole time you're there unlike Marluxia and Luxord, who are at least semi-active

5) You climb a mountain and get knocked off of it so many times that even Sora gets fed up

6) The bloody minigame where you have to find Olaf's body parts

7) Forcing us to watch the entire "Let it go" sequence and then having "Do you want to build a snowman" play over Anna's voice as she's explaining herself to Sora

8) So much of the story is excised that you have little clue as to what's going on to the point Hans appears for all of five minutes, doesn't say any lines, and isn't even named when it would have been cool, not to mention, just plain better, if he had started off as a guest member of your party

9) As a result of #8 Sora, Donald, and Goofy's presence feels like even more of an afterthought than usual in the sense that them not being there wouldn't have changed anything at all apart from Hans' Heartless then having no one to defeat it which can be seen by the fact that when they leave no one tells them goodbye unlike in every other world

10) The visual design was bland and tiresome after a while

11) The world's gimmick was uninspired to say the least

12) Fighting alongside a giant snowman (AKA Marshmallow) was awesome and in terms of pure gameplay the labyrinth was actually quite fun

Story Pros:

Ø  Master Xehanort's new voice actor is good but after hearing Leonard Nimoy's voice for the past couple of games the change is a bit jarring

Ø  The way previous games are referenced and tied together is a nice way of bringing new players into the fold while also setting up the finale's resolutions

Ø  The game has a better sense of humor than previous installments

Ø  Sora is more like his KH2 self than the bland caricature we saw in 3D and quite a few characters display some degree of genre-savviness

Ø  Master Yen Sid gets out of his chair to lend a hand for once

Ø  Donald Duck is the most powerful mage in Square Enix canon (and I am not making that up)

Gameplay Pros:

Ø  Being able to switch between different save points in the same world is a welcome addition

Ø  The secondary ability of all shotlocks to airstep is ingenious

Ø  You can have more than two party members finally!

Ø  The secret ending isn't too hard to unlock

Ø  You can upgrade your Keyblades, which means older ones aren't automatically relegated to redundancy

Ø  Donald and Goofy are useful again after being nerfed into uselessness in KH2

Ø  Towns and cities are actually populated by fully-voiced NPCs!

Ø  Cutscenes in Theater Mode are unlocked after completing each world rather than after beating the game

Ø  I never tried the Classic Kingdom minigames but the cooking one with Remy was a nice break from the normal gameplay (I suck at the egg-cracking one though)

Ø  The camera doesn't get in the way like it infamously did in KH1

Ø  I like the new main menu design (Feel free to disagree though)

Ø  The Gummi Ship is entirely optional outside of a few mandatory boss battles

Ø  Moogle Tickets are a nice way of giving players a second chance during difficult encounters (I do wish they didn’t activate so quickly though) 

Gameplay Cons:

Ø  The game never once tells you that you can switch between Situation Commands using L2

Ø  The game never once tells you that you keep all your lower-tier magic (Fire, Fira for example) and that your shortcuts don't automatically update to include the higher-tier version of whatever magic you have equipped

Ø  There's no real incentive to switch between Keyblades (That being said, my favorites are Wheel of Fate, Nano Arms, and Happy Gear/Ever After)

Ø  Attractions lose their charm quickly and completely ruin the flow of combat

Ø  Summons aren't too big of a deal since I only ever ended up using them once and even then it was by accident

Ø  Donald still heals you at the wrong time more often than not

Ø  Even on Proud Mode the game is way too easy for the most part (Apparently Critical Mode addresses this but I can't confirm that)

Ø  There is a lack of sidequests and post-game content that contributes to the feeling Square & Disney gave us half a game (For example, there is only one secret boss, said secret boss has a generic design, no ties to the story, and can be defeated at LV40 on your first attempt)

Ø  Hollow Bastion, Mysterious Tower, and Destiny Islands are not playable

Ø  The parkour from 3D has been nerfed too much in terms of distance to actually be useful

Story Cons:

Ø  Nomura fridged Kairi and he worfed almost everyone the first time you arrive at the Keyblade Graveyard!

Ø  The wrapping up of plot points and character arcs from prior entries was a little too nice and neat for me

Ø  The out-of-nowhere introduction of Subject X

Ø  Pete and Maleficent do literally nothing the whole damn game

Ø  The pacing is awful:

Almost all of the game's resolution is held back until after you've beaten the last Disney world

Ø  There are two important cutscenes in the Final World that you can accidentally miss because for some reason they are optional

Ø  We don't get to see what happened to Lingering Will, which also means we don't get any more insight into the third aspect of being (AKA the soul)

Ø  There are no Final Fantasy characters in the game, not even Sephiroth!

Ø  What happened to Demyx?

Ø  Master Eraqus has absolutely nothing to do with Terra’s restoration

Changes I’d make:

Ø  Require us to go through the Disney worlds a second time like in KH2

Ø  Have Aqua and Ven be saved halfway through the game instead of at the end, they could then spend the second half of the game resting or join you on one of the Disney worlds to refresh themselves

Ø  Have Lea and Kairi join you on one of the Disney worlds to get practical experience

Ø  Make the Keyblade Graveyard sequence be a series of one/two/three-on one battles so that members of Organization XIII can use their full arsenal of attacks from previous games

Ø  Let us play the second battle between Lingering Will and Terra-Xehanort

Ø  Speaking of Terra-Xehanort, we should have fought him alongside the Guardian Heartless

Ø  Have us explore Scala Ad Caelum while hunting down the individual replicas before then making us fight all of them in a boss battle

DLC

Ø  The presence of it says a lot about the game and not in a good way

Final Score

Ø  7/10-8/10

[minijenn]

Kingdom Hearts 3: Final Thoughts

Ok well not really final thoughts cause I’m sure I’ll be internally screaming over this game for the rest of time, but I figured I’d leave my thoughts about the game in a more... coherent manner than what my screaming during the liveblogging conveyed. And so, here we go with me basically talking about everything I liked, loved, and maybe wasn’t so ok with (cause the game wasn’t perfect lol) and yeah there will be spoilers aplenty so I’ll tuck it away under the cut cause I have a feelin this is gonna get long. So... here we go:

First I’ll start off wit the easy stuff, the presentation. By GOD is this game fucking beautiful to look out. All of the graphics are so crisp and clean and everything just BURSTS with color. Never before have the Disney worlds felt so alive in a KH game and now they’re JAMMED back with detail. I first noticed this while wandering around Galaxy Toys in the Toy Box and I gasped at just how many little minute details there were to be found, from price tags for toys, to sticky notes on bulletin boards, and so on. Every single place you visit in this game looks like its actually been lived in as opposed to just being another set piece. They were all so much fun to explore and I’ll go into detail about each Disney world at least later on. As for everything else, so much effort was put into just about EVERYTHING! From the ways environments are lit (Corona especially had some nice lighting effects, as did San Fransokyo), from enemy designs, to characters expressions oh god the expressions. KH games in the past tended to rely on stock expressions in some scenes because hey, its easy when ya don’t need to put your whole foot forward, I get it. But here? There are no stock facial expressions, everyone, everyone emotes in such vivid and realistic ways so that you can just see how characters are feeling/what they’re thinking just through their body language and expressions alone (Sora especially aslkdjasld I’ll go on about my son in a bit tho). In terms of other visual stuff, I LOVED how flashy this game could get in terms of attacks (Attraction Flow especially oh my god), some say it might have gone over the top, but to me, it just made me so excited to use everything I had in my arsenal just to see how things looked!

Next the music oh GOD the MUSIC. From the moment this game’s version of Dearly Beloved started playing I knew I was in for a DAMN pleasant listening experience. But what I loved even more was how this game went above and beyond with is score. Yeah ya have your basic level and battle background themes (my personal favs among those include Arendelle’s and Corona’s themes), but then most cutscenes are scored with individual little musical cues, almost like scenes right out of a movie instead of just the same theme playing on repeat in the background! That honestly added such a neat little touch to the game that I instantly noticed and loved IMMEDIATELY (this game also improved Sora’s theme SO much and used it a lot and I fucking LOVED that) and other returning songs were great too (Mysterious Tower’s theme is spectacular now, and even though they didn’t really change Hundred Acre Woods’ theme, they added more orchestration to it to make it sound even prettier!) And of course, don’t even get me started on Face My Fears and Don’t Think Twice, both of those are such AMAZING songs, probably my fav Utada songs out of the entire series (Don’t Think Twice especially lol) 

Next up, gameplay. So I kinda suck at KH games but honestly? I didn’t really have THAT hard of a time with this one. I played it in normal mode (cause I aint about to punish myself with proud mode alskdjalksdja) and I only started dying towards the end of the game and even then I didn’t die that much. But don’t get me wrong, the game isn’t stupidly easy either. The enemies will fuck you up if you’re not careful. I always made sure to reserve my magic to use cure like... fucking constantly because better safe than sorry! As for attacks, I favored using formchanges a lot because I always felt way more powerful with them (I beat the game using the BH6 keyblade imo that’s a good one) and Attraction Flow was also really useful and fun to use! Summons I... didn’t really use that much lol (same old story as other KH games) and team attacks I did use pretty much whenever they were offered to me (the ones with Disney companions were always a lot of fun!). Outside of battle, exploring in this game is SO much fun! Even aside from all the stuff to look at, there’s a lot to find! From ingredients (oh god the game wouldn’t fucking let me forget about ingredients), to hidden Mickeys (laskdjalskdjsad fuckin hell could never find any when the game outright told me there was one in front of me I’m stupid as hell), to the usual chests and whatnot, searching around was always a fun time (unless it was for fucking crabs, but we’ll get to that). Plus can I just say that I adore how smooth it is to control Sora in this game? Like seriously the boy actually runs at a decent pace for a change, his jump doesn’t feel like he’s wearing goddamn cement shoes, and the fucking tricks he can pull off with the whole running up walls and shit? fantastically fun to do. Special gameplay elements in the game were also usually always welcome, but I’ll get to those for each individual world when I go through em. 

But before I do that, I’ll briefly speak on all the extra stuff this game offers for you to do because by god is it packed with content. I didn’t really explore a ton of what it had to offer cause I wanted to beat the main story as quickly as I could, but what I did explore of it was a lot of fun! Cooking with Remy is adorable and even though I didn’t really use any of the dishes I cooked up I still had fun finding ingredients and doiing the little minigames for each dish. Hundred Acre Woods minigames were all kinda samey but tbh it was a fun game nonetheless. I only played one of the Classic Kingdom games but tbh next time I visit the game, I really do wanna try more of them, they’re super cute. The camera function was a delight askdjskd such a cute touch to add, taking selfies with Disney characters is my new favorite thing oh my god and... ugh guess I’ll talk about the Gummi ship here too... I never liked it in 1 or 2 but god they really fucked it up here imo. I know some might disagree with me on this, but by god this game could not get me to care about customizing my own ship. I pretty much kept with the basic ship the whole game, avoided every single enemy I could and mostly just bit the bullet so I could get to new worlds as quickly as possible. And most of the time I didn’t really mind it, UNTIL THE LAST GUMMI MISSION. The way the camera controls and the vertical and horizontal controls fuck each other up is so fucking stupid and trying to navigate that damn ship through tight and tiny corridors only for the camera to have a piss fit every time I so much as skiff by a wall made me so fucking mad why did they do this the rest of the game the missions are in wide open space plains so why force me into a bunch of tight corridors at the very last minute laskdjsldsd oh my god it was terrible 

ANYWAY moving on to much more fun stuff to talk about, how about them Disney worlds, huh? Might as well talk about my thoughts on each one of them, since they all offered such unique experiences that came together SO damn nicely: 

Olympus was, in my opinion, an excellent way to kick off the game. You get plenty of room to explore and see exactly what’s new in terms of gameplay and the game gives you chances to learn those moves and practice them in a nice, controlled environment. The world itself is lush and lovely and quite varied, with Thebes as an entire city environment to explore, the mountain to climb up and avoid Titans on (excellent first real bosses in the game btw I was so hype throughout that entire fight) and the beautiful environment of Olympus itself to slide and glide through). I was also pleasantly surprised in just how much the world set up for the rest of the game, kicking off Sora’s whole arc of having to get stronger throughout the game (more on that later), showing what Pete and Maleficent are up to (again more on that later), showing us that the Organization is still kickin and a threat, and basically getting us hype for everything else that’s to come! I’ll give Olympus an 8/10 I’d say if I had to score it lol

Next up in terms of full worlds to explore is the Toy Box and DAMN this world was impressive. They really did a GREAT job making you feel like a toy exploring a much larger world around you. Most of this level did take place at Galaxy Toys but I really don’t see that as a restriction since the place is MASSIVE and so much fun to navigate and pick out all those little details I mentioned above. Controlling the robots in this level as a BLAST in every way possible, and I do love all the little nods and references they make back to Toy Story itself in this world. Buzz and Woody were great to have along for the ride and I really appreciated how they were actually involved in the plot points of the world (like seriously, Woody fuckin telling Young Xehanort off will forever be one of my favorite KH moments oh my god). Imo this one was for sure one of my favorites, 9/10

After that, we have Corona and I was really excited about this world and I do think they did a great job with it. The environments are lush and absolutely beautiful (as is, again, the level’s music), and there are so many fun little moments in this level (having a splash fight with Rapunzel was PURE as was the entire dancing minigame imo adorable and so much fun). Its just... idk, for some reason i feel like I wasn’t as... engaged in this world as I was with some of the others? Its more or less just the story of Tangled imo, but Sora, Donald, and Goofy are just sorta... there. Hell, there are points where the trio just up and disappears from the Tangled plot and don’t even come into play until much later on which is sorta... why? I get that ya have a lot to convey in a short amount of time, but damn if Tangled wasn’t the perfect world for a KH game and it just felt like the story of it was... not as great as it should have been? Idk maybe I just wanted more bonding between the trio and the Tangled characters, and what we got was fine but I still wanted... more . So yeah, this one gets a 6/10 from me. 

Next up I went to Monstropolis and this one was also a pretty great time. Exploring the factory is a lot of fun and though it is kind of standard in terms of gameplay, everything else here is really great. The humor in this level is especially sublime and I love how the trinity trio plays off Mike, Sully, and Boo imo its pure as can be. And once again we have the Disney characters taking active engagement in the plot of the world (seriously Sully just yeeting Vanitas through several doors like he’s the lil piece of goth trash that he is is right up there with that scene of Woody and YX) So yeah not a ton to say about it, but I liked it a lot. 7/10. 

After Monstropolis, I went to Arendelle and by god this world was way more than I was expecting it to be. Seriously I LOVED how the plot of Frozen worked so naturally into this level, this was honestly much better than how Corona did it if you ask me. We actually got to see moments of connection between Sora and characters like Elsa and Anna and so on and it was great. Plus oh my god that Let It Go sequence was INCREDIBLE the animation on that was simply STUNNING! As for gameplay, I gotta say it was another fun one. The ice labyrinth was sorta meh, but exploring the mountain was a great time (and led to a lot of fun snark between the Trinity Trio imo) and the snowy environments here were just beautiful. Sledding down the mountain was a blast, and having Marshmallow to help out as a brief companion was unexpected but adorable. So yeah this was another one of my absolute favs. 9/10. 

After Arendelle though... things... fuckin tanked. The Caribbean was the goddamn worst part of this game for me, and not just because I haven’t seen the movies and therefore can’t really get a ton of enjoyment out of the characters and the story. Even beside that this world was just damn tedious. I thought the whole ship thing was gonna be fun at first, but then it just turned into an absolute shitshow, with enemy ships unfairly disappearing and reappearing and then completely blasting your ass (btw the ship is fuckin slow as hell so its hard to navigate (and yes I get that its a big pirate ship, but I don’t fucking care this was supposed to be fun so why isn’t it fun???) And don’t even get me started on that whole collecting white crabs bullshit imo that was just about pretty fucking pointless tbh so yeah suffice to say I didn’t have a fun time with this one. It had nice music tho I’ll give it that. And the swimming controls weren’t that bad so yeah. That’s about all the nice things I can say bout it. 3/10.

But GOD did the game ever make up for it when I got to San Fransokyo. I already really love Big Hero 6, so getting to explore the world of it was just GREAT.  The fight on the bridge was a great introduction and exploring the city was AMAZING. Everything felt so HUGE and there was SO much to see (so many buildings to run up!!!). Plus the boss battle against Evil Baymax or whatever was the SHIT in this level, seriously it was so much fun. And hey, it had a really solid original story to it too! I love how the game went out of its way to give each member of Big Hero 6 so much of their original personality from the movie, and it allowed them all a chance to interact with Sora, Donald, and Goofy to really make it seem like unique and engaging bonds were being formed. This world honestly had me so invested and I loved it so much, I’d say its probably my favorite of the entire game. 10/10.

And yeah so those are all the Disney worlds. Gonna not really talk about the last two worlds cause they’re more story heavy than gameplay heavy and speaking of which... guess its about that time. 

First of all, I gotta say that one of my favorite things about this game was its dialogue. Most of the VAs did a pretty damn solid job but the main characters especially so had a lot of emotion put into them. This game has so many fun little chatty moments, and the writing here is probably the most natural its ever been in a KH game. There’s so many fun little moments of sassy banter (between Sora, Donald, and Goofy in particular, seriously I could listen to those three yap at each other all goddamn day its excellent). SO much personality leaks through every character in just about every word they say and I really appreciate it and the effort put into it all! 

Now with that out of the way, the story oh god the story. So I should probably say that, for a preexisting KH fan like myself, this is the KH game that was actually the easiest to understand what’s going on in? Crazy, I know, but this game actually explains most of the off the wall things that happen in it in a way that anyone could readily understand, and personally I really think that benefits it. I think the plot only really derailed itself for me like... once (the whole explanation behind Repliku jfc what a mess). But there were still a few things that the game didn’t explain that I’ll again, talk about later. As for the story itself... 

One of the things i REALLY Loved about it was the character arc Sora had in this game. Riding off of DDD, the game really does set him up as the defeated underdog at the start of it and he feels bad about that and as a result you feel bad and wanna help this sad lil twink bb son get stronger!!! He just wants to help people but he can’t because he doesn’t have the power of waking but the great thing is he forces himself past that handicap and helps them anyway just by being himself and that’s beautiful. I already loved my precious sunshine son already, but this game made me absolutely adore him like seriously, he’s skyrocketed to one of my favorite characters in any fictional medium as a result of this game. He’s such a silly dork who is clearly having fun in all these Disney worlds as he’s off makin new friends, but its clear there’s a certain... anxiety lingering behind all of that. The kid as a lot of pressure on his shoulders and eventually it breaks him and that fucking scene broke me. But in the end, he still fuckin rises above it and kicks ass and then he fuckin disappears but that’s another point to bring up later on cause oh my god but basically the gist is, Sora is my absolute precious son boyo and I would gladly die for him oh my god

Donald and Goofy are also a TON of fun to watch in this game. I may crack jokes about Donald bitching at Sora a lot but you can tell he does it out of a true place of caring. Tbh there were a few Trinity Trio moments in this game that honest to god choked me up a bit, especially near the end. Mickey is sorta downplayed in this game, which is sorta whatever, but I did appreciate Riku in this game a lot (the brief spots where i got a chance to play as him were great). Kairi was... under fucking utilized again and I can’t deny that’s disappointing, and honestly same goes for Axel, though he DID have his moments, especially towards the end. And imo It was a delight to get all the other returning KH kids. Reuniting Aqua, Terra, and Ventus was beautiful, as was the reunion between Roxas, Xion, and Axel. Kinda wish we had gotten more Namine, but I’m glad she got her happy ending all the same. I also appreciate the Twilight Trio in this game, that one scene were they annoy the shit out of Ansem was the best. As for the baddies, same old same old though the game did sorta make them more interesting here and there. Xehanort’s “redemption” is sorta whatever to me, I kinda didn’t really care about what happened to him as much as I did my kids all coming together and being happy together and for the most part that’s what i got so I can’t say I didn’t walk away (mostly) happy as a result. I really fuckin do think the game could have done more with a handful of its bad guys, like they could have maybe implied more about the whole Xigbar=Luxu thing, and imo god did poor Vanitas get the short end of the stick I was expecting so much more on that front and I was sorely disappointed. But for the most part, I liked how this really was a huge KH reunion of heroes and villains alike. In that sense, it felt like one big tribute to the series’ entire history and for that, I love it. 

So I guess that means the only thing I can talk about now is the ending. Oh god that ending. Fuckin thing kept me up all night long last night and had me stressed as fuck this morning while I was at work but honestly? I think I’m over it now. Yeah it is certainly a cliffhanger (especially now that we have that secret movie which raises so many more questions but at the very least it does establish that Sora isn’t dead so I can appreciate that). And hey, it implies that more Kingdom Hearts games are to come, so I can’t really be mad about that since I’m pretty much absolute KH trash at this point. But yeah, that ending got me shook and tbh I think that’s what it was supposed to to, be incredibly bittersweet and all and imo it completely succeeded in that regard. 

Anyway before I go, just a few more points of disappointment I suppose that I haven’t touched on. Pete and Maleficent might as well not have even fucking been in the game for as few times as they appeared imo and the game also sorta just dropped the whole thing with Demyx and Vexen in a similar manner, as well as the whole thing about Larxene, Marluxia, Luxord, and Demyx “unlocking their inner keyblade heritage” or whatever imo game fuckin had too much KHX baiting if you ask me (that one scene where you use a bunch of KHX keyblades to murder a fuckton of heartless was really cool tho). Tbh I feel like the game had several moments of intrigue that it kinda more or less dropped the ball on, like for instance three examples in particular include that bit in Corona where Marluxia straight up knocks Sora the hell out and yeah that’s all he does, imo why even fucking bother with that when the kid just wakes up like nothing’s happened to seconds later? (to get the Trinity Trio out of the plot of Tangled, that’s what jfc), similar thing in Arendelle during the scene where Elsa freezes Anna’s heart, Sora for some reason gasps in pain and clenches his own heart at that exact same moment and the game never fucking bothers to explain why and that’s frustrating. Same thing goes for why Sora disappeared from the cover of Pooh’s book (lol guess that was fuckin foreshadowing the ending) the game offers a non explaination for it that is just... really not that conclusive so why even bother making a big deal out of it in the first place if you’re just gonna drop it? Plus there were a lot of other... smaller moments that I thought the game was gonna do so much more with but didn’t; the moment when Ven and Roxas see each other for the first time and realize they look basically the same but at no point do we actually see them exchange dialogue; Terra and Riku actually having a fucking conversation imo; same thing with any real interaction between Xion and Kairi; or how about the game not actually fucking explaining how the organization brought Xion back at all like wasn’t she a part of Sora how the hell did you do that game you have to EXPLAIN 

Sigh... but anyway, even despite those frustrations, i still absolutely adored my time with KH3. Yeah like I said it wasn’t perfect, but by god was it worth the wait. The game was pure, sheer, fun and its story got me so damn emotional that I actually CRIED at several points of it even though KH has never made me legit cry before. And really? If this stupid as hell game can make this brittle old heart do that, then you know its a good one. 

TLDR: Kingdom Hearts 3 is hella good, it made me cry like a little bitch, kinda fuckin dropped the ball on some points but whatever, and kept me up all goddamn night in existential dread over my precious son’s ambiguous fate. Imo fuckin 10/10 right there I love it and can’t wait to pick it up and play it again

[spoadicdeviance]

Simple and Clean: The Kingdom Hearts Conundrum

Well it looks like the hype of the release of Kingdom Hearts 3 has calmed down significantly, mostly due to the fact that the game is considered by many to be lackluster. As for myself, I have finished my first playthrough of the game, on proud mode, and done most of the side quests, and while I did like my experience overall, I can’t really refute the criticisms the game has gotten and have to agree that Kingdom Hearts 3 is a disappointment.

I suppose I can’t be too surprised with how the third game in the franchise turned out considering the direction the series has been on since the second game which is actually the third game released but due the number placed at the title the game is still the second game, and I’ll just stop right now before I go on a tangent over the names of each game.

Kingdom Hearts, to me, is a series that captivated me right at the very beginning. I love Kingdom Hearts 1. It’s probably in my Top 20 favorite games of all time. The game managed to encapsulate the whimsy and charm of Disney, while delivering an epic, yet simplistic tale of adventure, light vs darkness, and friendship. The game was fun to play, and the story kept me engaged to the post credits scene. To this day, the game is still one that I would gladly replay and enjoy in its entirety.

Can’t say the same for the other games.

I know, I’m in the minority here on this, but in my opinion, the Kingdom Hearts series peaked with the original game from 2002 while all subsequent games have struggled under lackluster levels, a combat system that favors style over substance, and a convoluted plot with dull, heavy-handed dialog. Heck, a lot of what made Kingdom Hearts 3 such a disappointment to many players can be found in Kingdom Hearts 2 and (to a lesser extent) Birth by Sleep, the two games fans say are the pinnacle of the series.

Now I’m not simply here to say that I like this game over that game end it there. I’m going to explain why I think the Kingdom Hearts 1 (or KH1) is my favorite game in the series while putting into words my disappointment with the later games in the franchise, particularly KH2 and Birth by Sleep. This is going to be a long one so just get yourself comfortable and wait until you finish reading my post before you comment. Let’s go over why Kingdom Hearts 1 is the best in the franchise.

First things first, let’s discuss the levels in these games. The worlds of KH1 are a lot of fun to explore. While not exactly Thief II: The Metal Age complex, they were expansive and navigating them was more than just going from point A to point B. Some of the worlds were almost maze like in their design. There were light puzzle elements to most of the worlds. There was even platforming that, while clunky, added some variety to each level. These different elements made the moment to moment gameplay more than just brawling and therefore playing KH1 never got stale.

It’s quite a different story for the other games. The worlds in the latter games are straight forward in their design. The worlds were usually a singular pathway with the occasional branching off into a mini path, (Enchanted Domain, KH2’s Halloween Town), or central hub area that branches into three-four linear pathways (Beast’s Castle). Just look at the maps of Agrabah from KH1 and KH2 to see the downgrade firsthand.

Not only did the levels lack complex designs, they also had little to no puzzles in them and instead of tweaking the platforming to make it less clunky, the worlds minimize or flat out remove platforming all together. This resulted in worlds where you mostly just walk and fight.

Now these games are not simply all combat. There is something added that is intended to break the monotony, and it’s one of the most out of place aspects of the game; the forced minigames.

To be fair, having minigames isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, even if its put into the main campaign/quest. Games like Jak and Daxter and Donkey Kong 64 have plenty of minigames, however most of them are optional to beat the game. Finishing DK64 requires 50% of golden bananas and minigames give roughly 25% of golden bananas. Final Fantasy IX and Skyward Sword have the player do a minigame, but it lasts for 2-5 minutes out of a 35+ hour campaign and serve more to entice players to do a side quest. Even KH1, the only moments that feel like the game forces you to do a minigame like activity were the race against Rikku at Destiny Islands, the 1 minute of vine surfing at the start of Deep Jungle, and the 2-minute magic carpet escape at the end of Agrabah.

The other Kingdom Hearts games are not as stingy with minigames. As each world progresses, minigame after minigame is dumped on the player. KH2 is one of the worst offenders of this. It doesn’t help that these minigames, unlike the ones from DK64 and Final Fantasy IX, don’t provide a real break from the endless stream of battles. The majority of minigames are just regular fights with an arbitrary stipulation added to it; fight the enemies before the timer runs out, fight the enemies until the timer runs out, fight the enemies while collecting some orbs, fight the enemies while filling the bar onscreen, fight the enemies while depleting the bar onscreen, fight the enemies while escorting a slow ass character. It’s all just more fighting, and it even spills over to some of the bosses as well.

Even the minigames that aren’t centered around fighting, like the rhythm games in Atlantica, are too shallow to provide any sense of fulfillment while playing them. Subsequent Kingdom Hearts games aren’t exempt from this. From Birth by Sleep’s Disney Town world being dedicated to minigames, to the shallow imitation of Nintendogs in Dream Drop Distance, these games also have the same minigame issue that KH2 has.

I have talked about how the games became more combat oriented, however I haven’t really discussed combat itself. This is probably the part where I’ll get the most flack.

Combat in KH1 is a lot of fun and the highlight of the game alongside its story. While basic at first, the fighting gets more complex with the addition of special moves, extra combos, spells, and summons adding variety to the system. Plus, different enemies and bosses a certain attacks and weaknesses. Mashing the x button repeatedly will not get you far, you will have to think and be strategic during battle.

The later games, however, do not have strategy in their combat. Sure, you have different options with drive forms, shot locks, trinity limits, and other sorts of abilities, but at the end of the day, combat from KH2 onward is mostly whaling on the attack button over and over again. The amount of enemies that require certain strategies to defeat them diminish, dodging becomes practically unnecessary, and combat becomes simplified as a whole

Drive forms and trinity limits require little to no strategy when using them. Just activate them and mash buttons while your character zips their way through the battlefield while all sorts of flashy effects fill the screen and enemies go down without a fight. How fortunate that certain abilities could only be unlocked when the player fights with each drive form for a certain amount of time. Forced grinding, what a treat.

The worst offender of this is the context sensitive “reaction commends” that can clear waves of enemies and knock out a huge portion of the bosses’ health. Sometimes it’s the only way to defeat certain bosses. All the player must do during these reaction commands is simple press the triangle button over and over. It’s like a quicktime event only virtually impossible to fail at. There’s a reason why the phrase “press triangle to win” exists.

Magic also got a downgrade as the series progressed. In KH1, magic was not always at your disposal. When your MP got depleted, the player (or companions) would have to use an elixir/ether or land enough melee strikes on enemies to replenish your magic. Despite that, spells and summons were incredibly useful in battle, as well as for environmental puzzles, and the proper use of magic could mean the difference between success and failure.

In the later Kingdom Hearts games, the inverse seemed to be true for magic. Not only were puzzles that require spells became almost nonexistent, removing more variety in level design, but spells and summons became less effective in battle. In KH1, the player could focus on spellcasting, while doing the occasional melee attacks, and get through the game with relative ease. In later games, due to how magic became nerfed, using magic primarily was more of a self-imposed hinderance rather than an alternative style of play. This results in the player using magic almost exclusively for healing. Lucky for those players, MP automatically regenerates after depletion at a relatively quick rate, making ethers useless, which gives the player an unlimited amount of heals.

After KH2’s release, with the emphasis on style over substance, combat in Kingdom Hearts games became more about how to make the player look cool while fighting rather than making the player feel good after the fight.

The reason why it felt good to complete a battle in KH1; the game was actually difficult. Enemies and bosses didn’t just let you pummel them with combos and stylized forms. You had to react to the enemies and the arena you fought in. Even to this day, fights against Clayton, Ursula, Maleficent (human and dragon), possessed Rikku, many more bosses still put me on edge as I fight them.

There was no challenge to the fights in games like KH2 and Birth by Sleep. Since the player has multiples ways to dispose of an enemy, virtually endless amount of heals, and less adversaries that require any strategy outside of “hit me a bunch of times until I no longer exist”, they face little to no challenge while playing latter day Kingdom Hearts games. Bosses that make creative use of the environment you fight are less frequent too. The only way a boss can begin to test the player is when a minigame-like stipulation is added to the fight. Stipulations such as kill all the water clones in this time limit, put the coins in the chest before you can do damage, whatever the heck the Luxord fight was supposed to be, and so on and so forth.

Even then, I still didn’t get that much of a challenge. After three playthroughs of KH2, two of which were on Proud/Critical mode, the combined total of times I died does not even come close to a quarter of the amount of times I died in my first playthrough of KH1. I never even died during KH2’s Sephiroth fight, and I still struggle to defeat him in KH1’s proud mode. The other games provide even less challenge outside of a few endgame/postgame bosses.

And before you reply, the re-releases did not remedy this issue. In fact, the re-release of KH2 gave the player new abilities that allowed the player to cheese his/her way through some boss fights.

Now I have talked about the level design, the moment to moment gameplay, and the difficulty. I supposed that leaves us with the plot of these games.

Do I even have to explain why KH1 has the superior story?

KH1 had a simple yet effective hero’s journey story about a child who wanted to explore the various worlds with his friends but got more than he bargained for when his home is engulfed in darkness and he’s separated from his friends. He goes to various worlds, forms friendships with numerous people, and learns about his newfound abilities as well as the forces that try to stop him on his quest to find his friends. It’s not the most complex of narratives and that’s all for the better. The amount of exposition is kept to a relative minimum, characters can breathe and are not just there to explain the situation, dialogue was never forced or awkward, each world had their own mini-story that’s both entertaining and connects to the overarching plot, and the story is self-contained, no outside material required to understand what’s going on.

You know the pattern by now, but I still need to elaborate. For some reason, Square-Enix thought that they could pull off this grand epic saga spread over multiple games, well they couldn’t. KH2’s plot is a total mess. It’s a constant bombardment of new ideas, exposition dumps, vague allusions to events from games that weren’t even released yet. It was bad enough that the player had to have played a GBA spinoff in order to understand a lot of the plot, but the narrative was so muddled with inconsistencies and unexplained concepts that two more spinoffs had to be made in order for KH2’s plot to make some sort of sense, even then the plot is still convoluted and heavy-handed.

I’ve seen spiderwebs that have less interwoven parts than the plot of Kingdom Hearts, and far fewer holes as well.

And no, this does not make the story “complex and deep”. While I expect a game called Kingdom Hearts 2 would require me to play the first game in order to get a clear understanding of the plot, that doesn’t excuse having to play multiple spinoffs just to get a iota of a clue of what the heck is going on. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, one of the most celebrated series of books ever, contained an epic tale of war across multiple kingdoms and fleshed out worlds with history and culture. Even then, the reader didn’t have to refer to The Hobbit or The Silmarillion in order to follow the plot of the novels. That’s mainly due to the fact that J.R.R. Tolkien, unlike Tetsuya Nomura, can actually write an overarching story.

There’s also the fact that a lot of the plot in these games feels like filler. In KH2, the first visits to most of the worlds don’t connect to the main plot about the nobodies and Organization XIII. It’s not until the second visit to Radient Gardens where the plot starts to get rolling. In Birth by Sleep, almost all of Aqua’s campaign feel inconsequential until the very end. You could cut her story and have her just be a side character in Ventus and Terra’s campaigns and not much would be lost, plot wise.

The reason why I find a lot of the plot to be filler is due to the stories of most of these worlds are retellings of the Disney movies they’re based on while having little connection to the game’s main plot. In KH1, the stories of the worlds were mostly original tales that were intertwined with the game’s main plot. Whether it was dealing with Maleficent’s group of villains, the search for King Mickey, Rikku, and Kairi along with the rivalry between Sora and Rikku, learning more about the keyblade and its various abilities, visiting each world moved the main plot forward while having fun mini-narratives of their own. Even worlds like Wonderland, Deep Jungle, and Neverland focused more on one scene/act from the movie and expanding on it rather than rushing through the cliff notes of the source material.

It seems like for the other games, Nomura just copied and pasted the scripts of the movies the worlds a based on, added interjections from Sora, and called it an original story. It sticks out like a sore thumb and makes visits to these worlds feel more like distractions than anything else.

This longwinded plot also extends to the dialogue. The dialogue in KH1 was natural, aside from a few moments of emphasizing the difference between light and darkness. Characters acted normally, they had actual personalities and chemistry with each other. That was because KH1’s plot was not domineering to the point where the characters were relegated to just be vessels meant to explain the narrative. In games like KH2, conversations don’t feel like a group of people talking amongst themselves but rather like a lecture that the player needs to pay attention to. It makes a large chunk of scenes drag on for what feels like an eternity.

The fact that characters feel more like lore dispensers than actual people leads me to my next point, I don’t care about these new characters. Almost every character introduced from Chain of Memories onward has left little to no impact on me.

Organization XIII are a bunch of cliché Shonen Jump villains, either cackling at how evil they are or brooding over something quasi-poetic until the main character comes in and inevitably defeats them.

Roxas got a 2-hour prologue in KH2 in order for the player to get to know him and I was more relieved than upset whenever he “sacrificed” himself in order for Sora to wake up. Even 358/2 Days couldn‘t get me to care for this guy.

Xion exists solely to die at the end of 358/2 days and then be resurrected in Dream Drop Distance, that’s it.

Hayner, Pence, and Olette are like the annoying group of kids you’re forced to hang out with during college orientation, then they think you want to spend more time with them afterwards.

Ventus, Terra, and Aqua might’ve been interesting characters if we had more than 10 minutes dedicated to their friendship and personalities. Birth by Sleep is so focused on explaining the origins of Xehanort, the ways of the keyblade master, and linking its plot to the overarching plot of the series, that I never find myself connecting to any of the characters. The three separate campaigns don’t do the plot any favors. In fact, it makes the story seem disjointed. To be honest, when the characters were either killed, possessed, or banished to the Realm of Darkness, I did not care in the slightest.

It doesn’t help that Tetsuya Nomura can only seem to write 4 or 5 kinds of original characters, resulting in everyone being a Xehanort/Ansem clone or a copycat of the Sora, Kairi, Rikku dynamic. Seriously, the amount of Sora clones in this franchise is absurd. 

The worse thing about these new characters is that Square seems convinced that the general audience needs more of them and forces them into the plot at the expense of characters we already have investment in.

The most egregious example of this happens at the end KH2 when during the final fight against Xemnas, rather than allowing the player to use Donald and Goofy, the game forces you to use only Rikku in the fight.

I don’t care that it’s meant to serve as Rikku’s redemption. He seemed to have redeemed himself with his self-sacrifice at the end of the first game. I don’t care about that stupid reaction command in the middle of the battle looks cool. It’s just another example of the game preferring style over substance. I don’t care that I get to fight with Rikku. I want Donald and Goofy.

I know we play as Sora and therefore focus on building his stats/abilities, but we put almost as much time into Donald and Goofy while we played the game. The player had to find the best equipment, do the side quests in order to obtain their ultimate weapon, mastered their trinity limits, managed their A.I. to suit the player’s needs in battle. Then the game rewards your dedication to these characters by saying “Screw you! Here’s a premade character with a default weapon you can’t change, and you only have the final level to learn how he is like in combat. You’re gonna love it.”

I’m sorry, but for an RPG to do that is inexcusable. Imagine in an Elder Scrolls game, before the final part of the main quest, your character is killed, and you must play as a premade Dark Elf Mage for the rest of the game. How about in Persona 5 before the last boss, instead of the Phantom Thieves, Joker gets a party consisting of some random side characters you barely interacted with in the game. Would anyone defend that design choice then?

The fact that I’m forced to only use Rikku in the fight, alongside how easy it is, makes the final battle against Xemnas in KH2 one of the worst final bosses in gaming, in my opinion.

I’ve been ranting about KH2, Birth by Sleep, 358/2 Days, Chain of Memories, but I haven’t talked specifically about Kingdom Hearts 3. KH3 is a weird case because it fixed some issues that I had with the later Kingdom Hearts games while doubling down on the issues it didn’t fix and adding new issues altogether.

KH3’s level design is improved somewhat. There’s still generally not much to do in the worlds aside from walk, fight, and do a minigame, however the actual levels are more open and intricate compared to KH2 and Birth by Sleep. The presentation is the best in the series, not just the graphical upgrade but also cinematography of the cutscenes and animations are more expressive than in past games. Plus, I got to give the game credit for making me like Axel/Lea, who before was just another forgettable side character.

However, combat is even more style over substance with additions like the Attractions Summons. The minigames are still as intrusive as they are lacking in quality. The retelling of the Disney plots is so bad here that there are literally shot for shot recreations of scenes from the movies with Sora, Donald, and Goofy added in the background. The Frozen and Tangled worlds suffer the most from this. Plus, the Pirates of the Caribbean world is based on the third movie despite the fact that no Kingdom Hearts game covered the second Pirates movie. Good luck understanding that plot without seeing the films. Dialogue is just as mind-numbingly dull. Also, you know how the plots of the latter Kingdom Hearts game can be described as having 30-50% filler, well KH3’s plot is almost 80% filler.

All this is combined with new problems such as combat feeling floatier compared to KH2 and Birth by Sleep, the emphasis on Disney over everything else, and the fact that this supposed “conclusion” to the trilogy didn’t fulfill on all the promises of past games, forgot to fill some of the plot holes, and felt like advertisement for games yet to come, makes it hard for me to say KH3 is a total improvement over the other Kingdom Hearts sequels and spinoffs. In many ways, it’s a downgrade.

You know, it feels like Kingdom Hearts is the Guns and Roses of the video game industry. Their first effort is groundbreaking and makes a huge impact on the scene. Subsequent follow-ups do their best to expand upon the initial outing only to end up with well regarded yet still confused end products. Then a new project is in the works and gets constantly delayed during which a revolving door of crew members tries to salvage the development, all the while a talented yet egomaniacal leader is micromanaging every aspect. Then when the long-awaited product is released, reviewers give mild praise while the general public is disappointed and finds the end result to be a mish mash of disparaging ideas while feeling almost unfinished.

Yes, Kingdom Hearts 3 is Square’s Chinese Democracy.

If I were asked to do a tier list ranking of each game in the series, at this moment, it would look like this.

This maybe a bit of a surprise to you since I spent the entire time ranting about KH2’s flaws, so let me explain. After playing KH3, I’ve come to notice more of the positive aspects of the second Kingdom Hearts. While I do think that they serve more to make the game easy and hate the excessive grinding that comes with them, the drive forms do give the player a sense of experimentation with some of these fights. In fact, compared to KH3, 2 has more builds for the player, as well as more balanced. KH2 is still easy as heck, and in my opinion inferior to KH1 in almost every way. However, I now appreciate more of the second game’s strong points.

Also, the music is excellent. I think that goes without saying. Yoko Shimomura is a goddess of music.

So as if this entire post hasn’t made it clear already, I love Kingdom Hearts 1. Unlike the other games in the franchise, it knew where to be straightforward and where to have complexity. It had a robust, dynamic combat system, the plot was self-contained and had more personality than exposition, and the gameplay was varied without being diluted. To this day, I find it hard to understand why most Kingdom Hearts fans prefer games like KH2 and Birth by Sleep over the original Kingdom Hearts.

Who knows? Maybe they like the combat to have some flash and felt the fighting in KH1 is too rigid. Maybe they found the puzzles, exploration, and platforming of KH1 to be more akin to fat that had to be trimmed in service to the aspect of the games that they actually like. Maybe they enjoy the plot because it has such a detailed lore and expands the narrative beyond three guys saving the universe from darkness. Maybe they find the new characters charming and enjoy the parallels between them and other characters like Sora and Rikku.

If that’s how they feel, then that’s more than fine. We’re all allowed to have out take on things and no one should tell someone else that they shouldn’t have their opinion.

That being said, in my opinion, while I do enjoy most of the games in the Kingdom Hearts franchise, the only game that I find exceptional is Kingdom Hearts 1.

[strawblemon]

All the Disney fan service that bothered me in KH3

(long post)

Olympus:

[Edit: apparently, Phil's Japanese voice actor passed away, so he was left mute as a sign of respect] Was the Danny DeVito impersonator unavailable? Did they not want people to keep joking about getting on the Hydra's back? What I'm saying is why was Phil mute? It feels very weird not to hear him talk.

Once you're done with Olympus, people start appearing in Thebes, and broken buildings are shown to be partially repaired. This is a really good thing, but why was Olympus the only world to drastically change after its story ends? I kept expecting all worlds to do the same but none of them did.

Toy Box:

Listen, I really like this world, but I would have liked it more if it took place entirely inside Andy's house. Galaxy Toys is cool but it's not a location from the movies at all, despite the fact that there is a toy store in the movies that could have easily been used.

I understand that a lot of Toy Story characters are actual licensed toys and including them all would have been impossible, but this excuse that half of the toys were sent to an alternate reality is very dumb. And that also makes the Toy Box a boys-only world, as neither Jessie nor Bo Peep were chosen to appear in this reality.

Yozora looks exactly like Riku, so why does Rex think Sora looks like him? He's a huge nerd, he can make the difference between the two.

The Verum Rex section is a cool idea, but the gameplay of it looks nothing like the trailer at the beginning of the world (which I guess might be a reference to the fact that Square Enix made it and they sometimes do that, but still). What was the point of hyping it up like that when it's just a mech section?

There’s a Dissidia NT aisle in Galaxy Toys, and for some reason, the reference doesn’t go beyond that? No Final Fantasy toy boss? Lame.

Kingdom of Corona:

I don't remember the movie enough to decide whether it's a legitimate plot hole or just badly explained but, Flynn's satchel seems to be able to teleport from the tower to Rapunzel's hands, and from Flynn's hands back to the tower...

Like... Rapunzel hides it in the tower, Mother Gothel finds it, Rapunzel (without going back to the tower) gives it to Flynn, Flynn runs away with it, back in the tower Rapunzel wears the crown that was in the satchel she gave to Flynn?? Was it a different satchel? It didn’t seem like it was a different one.

This isn’t the worst world to have this problem, but the environments aren’t very varied, which makes it really easy to get lost, something that wasn’t really a problem in Kingdom Hearts 2 and most of the games that followed.

Monstropolis:

I’m confused on the timeline for this one. It’s soon enough after the movie that Mike is still worried about monsters being afraid of humans, and the Monsters, Inc. factory entrance still says “We scare because we care”, but Boo’s door is already back in one piece?

Most of the world takes place in a part of the factory we had never seen before, and frankly, I didn’t think it existed. Apparently Monsters, Inc. is not just a power plant but an actual factory that makes things beyond inter-dimensional doors and scream batteries? It’s an... interesting idea but it doesn’t feel like the movies and the parts of the factory that don’t include doors feel uninspired and don’t really give me any nostalgic feelings.

As a kid, I was a big fan of the CDA agents’ design, and i was really happy to see them in KH3, but they’re the Child Detection Agency, which means taking care of unidentified life forms isn’t their job. They also don’t seem to care about Boo at all, despite the fact that they’re the reason her door was destroyed...

Arendelle: 

Apparently I wasn’t the only one to think this was the worst world by far, so I feel validated.

Contrary to the restored Thebes in Olympus, Arendelle stays completely frozen even after Elsa unfreezes it.

You don’t go to the kingdom itself, which is a huge disappointment after Corona’s beautiful little castle town.

Hans is voiceless and doesn’t matter until the very end and never appears before revealing his true intent. What was the point of even keeping him in?

F*ck the Labyrinth of Ice, it’s not in the movie and it adds nothing interesting to the story or the world as a whole.

Surprisingly, the Labyrinth isn’t the only place where you can get lost. The mountain is even less interesting than Corona’s forest and all parts of it look the same. It’s also really easy to fall from a cliff and having to climb all the way up again.

The original Let It Go video on YouTube has more than 600 million views. Nobody needed to see it done again in a slightly worse CGI cutscene. This could have been a musical mini game, or the music could have been remixed and used during a boss fight. Whatever they could have done, remaking a scene from the movie as a cutscene is the worst thing licensed games can do, and that’s what they did.

Why is Sora impressed by Elsa’s power when he first discovers them? Building an ice castle is actually impressive, but Sora can just shoot ice with his key-shaped magic sword, he shouldn't be this surprised. 

Speaking of non-impressive things, Sora met living scarecrow, puppets, furniture, gargoyles and toys, but apparently a living snowman is absolutely unbelievable!! Sora being amazed by things he’s never seen is always adorable, but a walking snowman shouldn’t be enough to make Donald and Goofy doubt his sanity.

The Caribbean:

Jack Sparrow really creeps me out in the CGI cutscenes, I don’t know why but he does.

This is just a weird movie to make a game adaptation, and it feels strangely incomplete. The story is a lot more complicated than other Disney movies which means that removing some parts for adaptation reasons will make the rest harder to understand. Characters like Cutler Beckett and Tia Dalma end up feeling kind of superfluous since they have very limited screen presence. Sora and the gang are also absent from a lot of the important plot scenes, so when they rejoin there’s no real connection with the rest of the cast.

Why does this world end with the Leviathan disappearing? It doesn’t actually disappear since you can still use it when you come back. There’s no point to that scene at all.

San Fransokyo:

I didn’t check online, but it felt like the shortest and smallest of the main worlds. I really didn’t expect it to end this fast. I understand what they were going for with the single open area, but it’s too small to really be memorable, especially compared to size of The Caribbean. I wanted to like this world, but it feels so rushed, and the fact that it was both the last main world to be fully revealed and the last Disney world you go to really reinforces this idea.

Giving Hiro the original Baymax back kind of devalues the ending of Big Hero 6. It feels like Nomura didn’t want to deal with the idea that a character can be gone for good and just decided to bring back a dead character from the movie. I would not have been surprised if they somehow managed to bring Tadashi back to life too. Having 2 Baymax also makes them both less special.

100 Acre Wood:

This one somehow feels even more rushed than San Fransokyo, it adds nothing to the plot, There’s only one minigame with slight variations, the story isn’t separated into pages like previous games,  it ends in less than an hour and basically only serves as a place to farm ingredients. What happened with this world?

Another complaint that doesn’t go anywhere:

Maleficent and Pete did nothing in this game, outside of setting up a sequel, and yet they still appeared in trailers like they were going to be important?? Why???

Anyway I liked the game, but this is just like half of the things that bothered me about it so...

I have... conflicted feelings about it overall.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

So after playing both FFVI and VII extensively, I’ve got some opinions on both games.

I think FFVII has the better cast. While not all the characters are useful in combat (looking at you Cait Sith), all of them are interesting and developed aside from maybe Vincent, and even he gets a little.

In FFVI, while there is a bigger cast and all the characters are good, there are also more that are overly specialized (Gogo), require extensive special training to even be good (Gau, Strago), or are just outright worthless after a short time (Cyan). As FFVI doesn’t really have a main character, especially after the halfway point, it leads to just about everyone in the game getting a few basic traits and a bit of character and then that’s it; it’s just enough to make you care, but otherwise they’re pretty shallow. Even characters I like such as Relm and Gau are pretty basic, but the traits they do have appeal to me.

In contrast, despite FFVII definitively featuring Cloud as the main character, the fact the cast is smaller and more focused means that their character development is continuous and woven better into the story. I didn’t cry when General Leo or Cid died; I did cry when Aerith died. That kind of sums up how well the games approach character development.

As for stories, well, I think both really excel in the story department. Both of them just have fantastic, epic stories with amazing set pieces, such as Cloud’s flashback to the destruction of Nibelheim, Aerith’s death, and Red XIII discovering the truth about his father in FFVII and the legendary opera sequence, the events on the floating continent, and a lot of the character moments in the World of Ruin in FFVI. I can’t really say one is better than the other since both have very gripping stories. I will say FFVI has a much cheesier script with a lot more awkward dialogue.

Gameplay-wise, both are solid but have glaring flaws. Let’s look at FFVI first: on the one hand, the game is ridiculously easy, with a bug making insta-death attacks one shot even bosses. On the other hand, YOU CAN SUPLEX A TRAIN. Summons in this game are cool but their main use is less as in-battle attacks but more as equips that teach spells by beating enemies and gaining magic points as well as giving stat bonuses upon the equipped character leveling up. It’s a decent system and it’s easy to grind if you know where to find Cactuars and Intangirs. But again, this game is really easy unless you have restraint; there are just way too many ways to break combat. Also, as mentioned before, a few characters need to go to weirdly specific places or fight certain enemies to get new moves, otherwise they end up being dead weight. If you do take the time to train characters like Mog and Gau, though, they will bust the game wide open.

Then there are extremely gimmicky characters like Sabin and Cyan; Sabin requires quick fighting game-esque button inputs that if you screw up cause him to waste a turn. Cyan is just tendered utterly useless by his gimmick as he has to charge his best attacks up, while not allowing your other characters to move while he does it. Despite this, all of these factors mean your parties can have crazy versatility and variety, which gets even crazier if you find Gogo, who can mimic any of your parties moves (though this is limited by their weak stats).

FFVII on the other hand is a bit more challenging, with no easy way to cheese combat like in VI. There are, however, an abundance of stupid minigames. All of them suck. The materia system is pretty good, with materia leveling as you battle. Limit Breaks work in a similar manner, leveling up with kills and use. Summons are all uniformly cool, but some of them have ridiculously long casting animations, with some of them going on for over a minute while they fire orbital lasers or call in their entire posse to attack. It’s a bit ridiculous, but awesomely so. Unlike FFVI, all the characters are basically gimmick-free outside of weapons and limit breaks, with the only determining factor on who to use boiling down to stats. Sadly Cait Sith and Vincent fall behind due to weak stats and crappy limits, respectively. This unfortunately means you’ll probably stick to using the same three or four characters exclusively for the most part.

If there’s one element both games excel at, it’s the weird, cryptic JRPG subquests for awesome stuff that you may need a guide to decipher. They also both have entertaining battle arenas, but weirdly FFVII’s is easier even with the random crippling effects.

As for graphics and audio, I think FFVI is the clear champ in that department. The sprites and artwork aged far better than the polygons of VII, and the characters manage to be amazingly expressive even with the limitations. The soundtrack too is amazing, and far more memorable than the tunes of VII; I will say though, while “Dancing Mad” is definitely the more impressive song from a composition standpoint, I still feel like “One-Winged Angel” is a more enjoyable and awesome song overall.

Speaking of... the villains. Both games have a sort of bait-and-switch, with President Shinra of VII and Emperor Gestahl of VI set up as the big bass before the REAL villain shows up and kills them. Neither character is particularly interesting so it’s no loss. The quirky reoccurring antagonists are the Turks in VII and Ultros in VI; Ultros is easily the better one, since he is a big purple octopus who just shows up out of nowhere to wreak havoc before running off. He is also absurdly easy to beat every time. The Turks are cool and all, but it’s just really hard to beat out such an iconic weirdo as Ultros.

As for the main villains, well, I’d say they’re fairly equal in terms of quality. Sephiroth and Kefka both have great character development, motivations, and boss fights, both are incredibly iconic, and both deliver some of the most brutal gut punches in gaming with their actions. Whoever you prefer, both deserve their status as iconic JRPG villains.

In the end, both games are fantastic JRPG experiences with their own unique strengths and weaknesses, and both offer exciting experiences for anyone who wants to play them. They are each fantastic games in their own right and definitely worth playing.

Neither one is as good as Chrono Trigger though.

[ryanmeft]

Wish List: Final Fantasy VII Remake

Rumors flying around suggest the first part of the FFVII Remake could see release in 2019 or 2020. This means it will be nearly 25 years on before we see it, and much to the chagrin of the truly obsessive sects of the original game’s fanbase, it is going to be a very different experience than the original was. Most people, however, seem to have embraced this necessity, and are ready for a fresh look at the world of FFVII.

As such, I decided to explore the things I think would be of most benefit to upgrade, alter or just plain change in the remake. This is strictly a list of good things I want, and that which you should want to since I am obviously always right. I didn’t include any “Don’t do this”s, because you can go to any forum if you want a long list of demands of what not to do.

WARNING: This post includes minor SPOILERS for Final Fantasy VII.

A More Thorough Open World

FFXV made strides toward taking the series off the linear path it has always been on, which was wise, seeing as FFXIII was roundly criticized even by supporters for being basically a straight-ahead path through the entire story. However, Square’s lack of experience with the genre was evident. Players were heavily limited as to where they could go at any one point, side quests were rarely engaging (though still a step up from XIII), and traversal was much more of a chore than it needed to be.

With clear dystopian inspirations ranging from Metropolis to Blade Runner mixed with more traditional fantasy settings, FFVII has always had one of the more intriguing worlds in a series where world-building was never a core tenet. The times being what they are, a remake will have to be less linear, and if Square is going to do it they should do it up right. The nature of the story means that you can’t just drop us in and let us go wherever we want immediately, but Square can work within the boundaries of the story to make the world feel more alive by modern standards. For instance, although being confined to Midgar for the first several hours is essential to the atmosphere the game sets, it would be great if we could opt to explore the entire city, rather than just the designated sectors. Once you’re out in the world, it would be a simple matter to make all the towns and “dungeons” accessible from the get-go, while simply holding the story beats over for when you’ve progressed that far.

Camaraderie

Some things in FFXV worked and some did not, but by far the best and most well-implemented idea the game had was the way your main party interacts with each other. FFVII has one of the most iconic casts in video games, but due to technical limitations, they never interacted outside of scripted scenes or FMVs. The remake should have everyone in your current party visible at all times, traversing the world with you, talking to each other, pointing out interesting or dangerous things in the environment, etc. Each character having something non-battle-related they were good at, like cooking or fishing, was one of the more popular aspects of XV and should be repeated in VII…and not just because I want to see Cloud burn the toast. Unlike XV, however, you should be able to take direct control of any party member at any time, because fans have waited a long time for this, and will want to step into everyone’s shoes directly. Make it feel like everyone is fully present, all the time, and not simply waiting for the plot to get around to them.

Change the Skill System

That’s right; I’m going there. The Materia system was a step forward for the genre at the time it released, but it is now in need of a serious overhaul, especially if the game goes the modern action-RPG direction it appears to be heading. Making each player unique in battle, rather than a mostly-interchangeable vessel for skills loaned from an item, is going to be essential, since most of us will want the different fighting styles of the characters to be highlighted in actual gameplay. The easiest way for this to happen is to move the limit break system to a tiered special skill set, similar to what the characters in FFXV used. Cloud’s Braver, for instance, is no longer visually impressive, and should probably be a standard skill he can activate and then recharge.

As for the Materia itself, some of the skills it imparted just won’t be useful in an action battle system, while some such as Toad won’t be feasible to recreate in a 3D engine. Streamline the existing spell and skill list, while adding a few nifty new ones for good measure. Tie the performance of different kinds of magic to a character’s aptitude and make them able to get better at it with use, which still lets anyone equip anything while encouraging unique styles for each character. And for Ramuh’s sake, make the summons cool again. Hell, make them like FFXII, temporarily able to replace your entire active party except for the summoner. That would be boss and stuff.

Make the Side Content Matter

Prior to FFXII, side content in the series was robust and complex, and while it could sometimes be more trouble than it was worth (I don’t know about you, but I don’t care if I catch all those butterflies), it was at least unique from what you spent the rest of the game doing. Stuff like Triple Triad and Chocobo Hot and Cold were both fun, and offered substantial rewards for sticking to them. Then it got replaced by “Go here, kill this monster, come back, get some gold and an item you don’t need.” It has been more or less that ever since. If we’re going back to FFVII, let’s go back as well to a time when heading off the beaten path not only led to discovering entirely optional parts of the world, but the pay off for that exploration felt worth it.

Make the Sub-Villains more Complex

Any hint of messing with FFVII’s pristine pinnacle of storytelling gets met with backlash from certain fans, but here’s the thing: as good as it is, it isn’t actually perfect. Notably, most every secondary villain, primarily the heads of the ShinRa corporation, are about as developed as a man in a black hat tying a woman to the train tracks. They’re cartoons, and all the depth in the secondary villain category comes from the Turks. If the game is going to work in the modern day and maintain the gritty, morally ambiguous world it originally affected, folks like Rufus, Scarlet and Heidegger are going to need to be more than cackling baddies. In fact, it couldn’t hurt to re-write most of their characters from the feet up.

Have the Story Make Sense

Again, FFVII’s story had more flaws than fans want to admit. Chief among these was an atrocious translation that will almost certainly not be an issue once the script is overhauled to work in a modern game, but it’s also true that without outside assistance, it was very, very hard to follow parts of the convoluted story, especially as it related to Cloud and Sephiroth. It seems clear from both the direction the game is taking and the reaction that it is built to appeal to those who never played the original, and making sure they aren’t scratching their heads trying to figure out what the hell old Sephie is talking about would go a long way towards that.

Make Vincent and Yuffie Essential

This one is pretty straight forward. Vincent, especially, actually has a huge role in the overall lore of FFVII, and having him be optional didn’t make a lot of sense to begin with. Plus, does anyone really want to do that stupid safe-cracking minigame again? If you do, I question the state of your sanity.

[haremlead]

V3 endgame thoughts:

Well, that sure was one wild ride.

I went into V3 partially spoiled. I learned about the protag switch early on without even looking for spoilers (saw screenshots of Kaede’s execution on my dash like a week after the game came out in Japan...). I knew some of the killers and victims too. But, somehow, I managed to avoid any and all endgame spoilers. I knew that the ending was controversial, and that Chapter 6 got really “meta”, but that was it. So... yeah. Everything more or less came as a surprise.

Shirogane as the mastermind was Surprise #1. I had considered it before -- I found it suspicious that her guilt never came into question during any trial, even when it felt like it should have, and that she’d had so little to do... but the latter is par for the course in DR. Hagakure, Fukawa and Souda survived even though they had zero significant relationships among the main cast and mostly served as comic relief. So I figured she’d probably be the same, another “useless” survivor... until the reveal of the passageway connecting the hidden room to the girls’ bathroom, at which point I wondered if we’d be re-examining the first case. And sure enough... (Someone on Team Danganronpa is utterly terrified of girls with fashion-related talents, huh.)

Then, of course, came Surprise #2 -- The Big Twist that pissed off the fandom and made Japanese players leave one-star reviews on Amazon. It took me until that multiple choice answer where you have to choose “It’s Fictional” when asked about Hope’s Peak to even begin to realize what was going on.

Once I did understand what was going on, I ...actually liked the twist perfectly fine? And in particular, the story’s final message.

The last VN I played was about a guy who has multiple personalities. He perceives both of his alternate personalities as separate people from himself and is able to interact with them. It ends with the guy talking about how even though those two people weren’t real to everyone else, they were still real to him. Even if they didn’t exist in other people’s reality, they existed in his. I found it funny that V3 ended with Saihara giving a very similar speech. “If it has the power to change the world, then it must contain some kind of truth” expresses pretty much the same thing.

That message clicked with me, so I wasn’t mad about the reveal or the ending. Even if the V3 characters don’t remember their old lives, they have their bonds with each other, and those bonds are a part of their reality now.

I really liked the way the twist was presented, too. Tsumugi switching between characters was cool -- it really fucked with my emotions when my favorites showed up, which I’m sure was the intention. It was cool to see which lines were delivered by which characters -- stuff like Komaeda telling everyone they’re just boring normal students, and Hinata chiming in, “Just like me.” And Nanami’s “If you just do it, it’ll be okay” line from DR2 being twisted to mean something sinister. Stuff like that was really cool. The way you had to just give up on the game altogether and stop even attempting to win the trial minigames was another thing I thought was neat, as was the second protagonist switch (hadn’t been spoiled on that one, unlike the first). All in all, I liked that V3 went even more outside the box than DR2 did, even though DR2 already went a long way towards twisting/subverting DR1.

I do have some complaints about the chapter though, or at least, I can see where other people would have them.

-- I didn’t really get what happened during the final cutscene. Specifically, I didn’t get how Ki-Bo protected the survivors, or why he had to die. Why’d charging at the glass wall kill him? I was expecting him to join the others during the epilogue, but he never did. Poor robofriend :(

-- I didn’t really like how Saihara suggests during the epilogue that Tsumugi fabricated the videos showing that they all wanted to participate in the killing game. I thought it was a fun twist that their original personalities were so different... why go back on it? Why does it even matter if they originally wanted to participate? That’s not the kind of people they are now, and it doesn’t make the killing game any less wrong even if teenagers were willingly volunteering for it. I don’t see the need to go back and say, “Actually, these kids were probably pure cinnamon rolls all along.”

-- Some of the comments made during the trial did sound pretty insulting towards the fanbase.I didn’t have much of a problem with that myself, but I can see where other people would. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” and all that. I did think the whole “All fans looove seeing the characters despair and die!” thing was kind of... off, since most fanart/doujins/fanfic in both Japanese and western fandom take place during bonus mode/other happy and murder-free AUs. Most people want their favorite characters to be happy and not suffer, imo. But even if it was true that fans are mostly in it for the suffering, finding fictional struggles entertaining doesn’t make you an asshole.

At worst, V3 could be said to send the message that playing video games is a slippery slope, and that people who enjoy seeing fictional characters murder each other will also enjoy seeing real people get murdered if it escalates to that -- which would be stupid. But, I don’t think that’s what the game is actually getting at.

Also the game really, truly makes it impossible for there to be any sequels. But with the franchise at the height of its popularity, is there... really going to be nothing more? I feel like there will be, and it’ll take away from the ending of V3 when a new game inevitably comes along. Prequel material wouldn’t take away from the ending as much as sequel material though, I guess. Would definitely be interested in learning what Amami and Tsumugi’s previous killing game(s) looked like.

Anyway, looking forward to playing bonus mode this weekend. That board game where characters from all three games interact looks really fun...

[randomuser678]

This may be my own kinda ask but I really want to hear your opinion cause you seem to have a really great one about alot of stuff! Which danganronpa game do you feel was the best story, gameplay, characters and twist wise?? I hope you don't mind me going though and finding your other ask posts and ask8ng dome more asks. but thank you very much if you do This!

Oooohhh, thank you so much for asking!

Well, firstly, Im no entirely cought up with ndrv3, even tho I already have a pretty general idea here, and honestly, I don’t feel too motivated to continue, but that’s definitely gonna change at some point

I’m gonna say I’m biased towards the first game, at least when it comes to best story, twist and characters, because it was what started most trends in other dangan games, the story on dr1 served as a base to the following games and it introduced to everyone the dangan world and most of it’s rules, so when the other games showed this world it just felt weaker, just felt like they were rehearsing the same story that Ive heard b4, there was the same basic plot with ultimates trapped on a place and forced to murder eachother, the only differences being what their talents and main location were, so it feels like the shocking plot of teenagers and murders just got less shocking over time, they kept using this plot and it stopped being original.

But that wasn’t a bad thing, they kept following the same storyline, of course they’d have the same base story, so maybe it would have been better if they kept changing canons for each game? I doubt that would work, but hey, that would mix things up for sure.

But the worst part abt the trends that the first game started, is that I just can’t help but feel like so many story points were done much better at DR1, for example: Junko, the big bad gal, the queen of despair, the main villain of the franchise.

She has appeared in all of the games, and just everywhere really, as cosplay, as AI, whatever, she was there since the first game, and always as the villain, or some sort of force related to the villain, which is good, I love her, but since the first game, y'know how that turned into less of a plot twist and more of a boring pattern.

On the first game her villainy was the biggest plot twist, the girl that had died on the first chapter and never mentioned ever since, was actually alive and the one behind the murders, that just surprised me so much, who would even go on that direction. I absolutely loved it, and the whole basis of the plot twist was that the gyaru was actually the villain, and even tho I didn’t get that right of the bat I now find this pretty smart, and just goes to show how dr likes to subvert these anime tropes.

But then she was the mastermind on the second game.

I mean I loved having her round again, but “The villain this time is the villain from the last time“ isn’t that much of a surprise anymore, and seeing how Junko just turned into basically an all seeing always present god, I wonder why they kept pulling that off years after the first game, that is the most noticeable trend from the first game, and repeating the same plot twist just doesn’t seems like a good writing strategy.

But I can kind of see how that could work, you keep pulling the same plot twist again and again but adding more stuff each time, so the new one feels different from last ones, like “You were classmates” and then “You were classmates, and also you were evil“ or “It was Junko all along“ and then “It was Junko all along except it she is a fictional character“ and I guess that’s kind of creative, if that’s what they were going for here, but that doesn’t explain why they kept repeating so many story points and the character patterns.

The parallels between the first game and the second are pretty easy to make, first chapter there’s always a plan where the wrong person dies, second chapter is something or someone from the character’s past “coming back” to haunt the murderer, third chapter there are two ppl who are killed, and only one death was really planned from the beginning and the murderer is the least sympathetic of them all, on the fourth chapter the gentle giant dies and they always has good intentions and the chapter has a sacrifice being made and there is a blah blah blah abt what a life is worth and all of that, the fifth chapter is leading to the end, so many plot twists are made here, that one character that seemed like they were too badass and too present in the story dies (I mean Mukuro wasn’t present, but the story was hyping her as this mysterious force leading up to the final revelation) and then the two last games have final chapter revealing the mastermind and additional plot twists, the first game didnt have a sixth chapter cuz they had less of a plot to discover, the other games just kept adding to the basic line that I talked abt here.

So the discussion here is basically which game did all of this better.

The first game introduced this pattern, so it has some sort of advantage, the second one just felt like a copout for me, and the third one was pretty linear with this too but the last chapter was just, wow.

The final game had the biggest final plot twist, as in, it was a giant middle finger to the audience, which is not really a bad thing, but it still shocked me, the first chapter had already a plot twist that made some fans abandon the game, so you can only imagine what the last one did with some fans, I never expected the franchise to be this meta, and I honestly don’t know how to feel about it just yet.

Of course, nobody likes discovering that the characters you got so invested weren’tactually who you thought they were, I mean, yeah, they are fictional characters so of course you knew that they were fake ppl anyways, but knowing that the fictional characters that you love are fictional on their own fictional world, that’s fictionalception! And just hard to follow tbh.

So on one hand it was a shocking twist that took a really different turn from the last games, but in other hand, it made the story feel weaker somehow, knowing that this fabricated morals were fabricated on it’s own world, if that makes sense, I don’t know how to describe it.

I also wanna mention that on ndrv3 almost all of the murderers were sympathetic, the only exceptions being the mastermind and the third chapter, but that’s how it always is. On the first game it was all very gray, the murderers had their own reasons and you could feel bad for them if you wanted, but the game didn’t seem to side with either the victim or the culprit, you could understand how the Sayaka planned to murder Leon, but you also could see how Leon took advantage of the situation (And tbh they both were pretty stupid), you could understand how Mondo just lost control and did something horrible, but you can also see how that happened and how Chihiro was stronger than him (And that chapter was amazing tbh), but on the second game it felt more guilt-trippy for me, doesn’t help the fact that everyone just forgot abt the ppl who were killed, bcuz they had connections with the murderers, and I didn’t like the twist on the second trial at all, I felt like most of the characters got no development on the main plot line at all, the only really big exception being Kuzu and Hinata I think.

I preferred when they left it more gray, when the story allowed us to understand the murderer’s motive without feeling like they were forcing you to love them. That’s what it was like for me on the second and third games, but mostly on the second one.

It also doesn’t help that they almost always forget about the ppl who died as the story goes on, either that or they only remembered of their respective love interest.

And oh God, love interests, I don’t care about any romance on this franchise, the biggest offenders were So/n/dam/ and all of the hets in ndrv3, but I’m not gonna go in details here, that would be just  too unpleasant.

So like, ndrv3 had many cutscenes, which meant more character interactions, and seeing how a character interacts with other ppl is always a great thing, it builds better both characters, makes them feel more real, makes things less boring, and it’s just great, and dr1 didn’t have much of that, or at least not any remarkable ones like the other games, which sucks bcuz I wanted more of those characters, but they were still starting the franchise so of course it was gonna be like that.

And can I say how in sdr2 it felt like the coolest girls felt like were all forced to have a boy on their story lines? Sonia doesn’t do anything big on the story even tho she is pretty smart and curious, she only really did something when she was crying over Gundham, Peko is limited to her young master, which makes sense on the story (She was raised to only care abt him) but still feels like a waste of a character, almost everything Akane does on the story is related to Nekomaru somehow, or ends up with Nekomaru and as a result she gets no development, and hardly ever interacts with anyone outside of that dude. Peko and Akane never interact and that’s honestçy the worst of all of this, they are the two fighter girls with totally different styles! They should have hanged out more.

The guys were always on the spotlight and that makes me kinda sad, such wasted potential, and while that’s kind of a problem on this whole franchise, it was easier to see on sdr2 tbh.

The girls on ndrv3 and dr1 were great tho.

And also I rate male characters on dr based on how date-able they are, so it’d be like

Best boys- SDR2 (Would date them all)

Second best boys-DR1 (I dont like Togami that much but most of them are ok)

Worst boys-NDRV3 (I only like Hoshi and Gonta)

And gameplay wise ndrv3 wins, just, so many minigames and bonus content, it’s the newer game so obviously they’d have great gameplay.

So to cut it short, cuz I just went everywhere here

Best story: Ndrv3, dr1 is a close second, but since ndrv3 had two other games to live up to, they had a more solid basis when it comes to what to expect and how strong plot twists feel, even tho I still lean towards dr1 that started this mess.

Best gameplay: Ndrv3, the newer one with tons of bonus content and weird class trials

Best characters: Dr1, I loved the characters and was never able to get over them, even tho they didn’t have tons of character interactions like the other games. On a side note Ndrv3 has the best girls and Sdr2 has the best boys, but as a whole, I like Dr1 gang the best.

Best plot twist:Ndrv3 just loved having a bunch of those, but I still liked the whole Junko thing on the first game.

                                    Some other stuff too

Dr3 was an alright anime, I didnt like the end or how the character were treated and just forgotten abt forever, and I want them back, but still, I just loved seeing them animated and full of life.

Despair girls followed my fav from the first game, Toko, and an awesome protag, too bad the game felt like pandering to pedophiles so much, I know that isn’t anything new to this franchise at this point, and anime generally is like this, but it was just disgusting, they tried to tackle on the subject of child abuse while having fan service scenes with minors, that made everything worse, and was a waste of a cool concept and characters. At least the kids survived in the end.

I haven’t read dr0

So that’s it, thank you so much for sending an ask, I hope you have a great new year and stuff!