#the nexomon designs are so much fun! and cool! and i just really like nexomon

[wet-toast-slime]

do not get me started on talking about nexomon because i will not shut up, i have so many thoughts about this series

[crystalelemental]

With the Abyssal portions defeated, time for the final thoughts on Nexomon Extinction.

The Abyssals are exactly what I wanted out of the Tyrants.

My biggest complaint story-wise for this game was that the Tyrants themselves really didn't matter much. There's a thousand-year war among the Tyrants going on, that pushed humanity so far that one Guild leader created a cult to revive Omnicron, and their successor created artificial dragons to hunt Tyrants, an artificial Tyrant to command them, and then another, bigger one when that plan failed. But despite how significant this war was...all of the Tyrants we meet are pretty inconsequential, and most are associated with a human who does most of the talking and planning to begin with. I understand that this game is the human errors side of thing after the last game's presentation of the threat of Nexomon, but it's still kinda rough to go through all these story segments with the Tyrants not producing anything substantial. You get to postgame where you can hunt them down, and they're all a pain in the ass to find, with nothing drawing me to them.

The Abyssals, though? This is what I wanted. A thousand years ago, the first Abyssal arrived. And their first act? Killing Hilda. Another is stated to have made an attempt on Eliza's life. These are a much more pressing, salient threat. Sure, Tyrants destroyed cities, but we've never seen them do anything. The Abyssals have personal connection.

Despite their power, the Abyssals are odd in that they never aimed to become Sovereign of Monsters, and they seem immune to Solus' influence as the current Queen. What's presented is a pretty interesting mystery that builds up more questions than it feels like it wants to answer. What's the deal with these weird engravings? Why are Abyssals so weird? Apparently each is born with a clear goal from its creator, but this creator is unknown to them, and their specific goals are incredibly simplistic, with no known overarching goal. They're super unusual.

By gameplay, the Precursor Island is really fun. It might be an odd comparison, but it reminds me of the bonus dungeon of Ib a bit. There's a central location, and your goal is running around everywhere to collect the things you need to progress, solving puzzles that sometime intertwine a bit. It's a really fun system, finding each of the Abyssals and solving their puzzles. The only annoying ones were the flying one (Inominox) and the electric one (Volcel). The rest was really fun. Even the weird maze puzzle was fairly clever, though the final solution was a little...obvious but still hard to figure out the hint.

I think what really sells me on the Abyssals...well, two things. The smaller one is design. The Abyssals are just really cool concepts. Venefelis shows up and is immediately incredible, being super imposing but kinda goofy, and stated outright that he shouldn't be strong enough to pull off the nonsense he has. Kroma is my absolute favorite, and she's set up as super imposing given her drive is killing Eliza, only for Venefelis to rant about how incompetent Kroma is for being the only one of them to fail in her mission. Then there's Screaming Fire Velociraptor, who is hilarious in concept. And Inominox, who is such a coward that it won't face anyone with more than one Nexomon, and that one Nexomon needs to be weak to Flying. Or the soup for Volcel. There's Caelesa, who ran across the world, and was attacked by the Guild for little reason other than paranoia, since she hurt no one in her efforts. There's Pluvian, whose entire goal was to show up, scream, and then get killed by the Guild for no clear reason. There's Rotrimus, who you try to order around, and initially agrees, but is intercepted by the force of their creator bending its will back to refusing your call. It's a really interesting and dynamic group, that apparently has no clear association. Many of them insist they worked alone. They had a creator, but they themselves don't even think of themselves as a unified group. Only Venefelis seems to confirm that they have association.

The other is that this group is delightfully aligned to the themes of the game. Nexomon Extinction has two general themes I can identify. The first is a bit more obvious and repeatedly stated: second chances. The children of Omnicron refer to their support as their redemption, the entire plot is Deena attempting to grant a second chance at saving the world, your resolution of the central conflict is trading the destruction of your direct enemy into granting them a second chance at life. There's an ongoing importance to the idea of getting a second shot at things...but a second shot isn't necessarily going to mean doing better. The former hero comments that your actions amount to the same thing she did, and despite the failures of the dragons, Amelie's second chance is doubling down on a decision that worked out poorly. This leads into the second theme, and the one I like a lot better: the limits of personal agency.

The former hero is a good lens for this one. Repeatedly throughout this game, their actions are referred to as if it was a huge mistake. They themselves talk about it as a mistake. Deena outright calls it stupid decision made by her moronic friends. Even Ulzar, who is more sympathetic to the situation, talks about it as if it were a mistake, if an understandable one. Absolutely everyone treats their actions as something that led to the present problem, and thus was the wrong decision.

But...we were there. Omnicron was going to completely destroy the world. You can argue that the destruction of his soul in the netherworld wasn't necessary, and that was the mistake. But it's well known that he'll come back time and again; it'd be pushing the problem out to the next generation. And Omnicron could follow through. When you fail to destroy him in the Netherworld, Omnicron devastates an area so badly that entire maps are wiped out of reality. This was done in hours. Omnicron tells you outright he could've annihilated the planet in a day, but he stopped solely to challenge his rival, the strongest human, as a matter of pride. This wasn't an idle threat. It was an active, immediate devastation looming on the horizon.

Faced with that, what choice did you really have? Yes, there was a technically a choice. But who could choose the alternative? When humanity is faced with its destruction through the war of the Tyrants, yes, you had a choice to make those dragons or not. But faced with the destruction of multiple cities and further looming threat, what choice did you have? When those failed, you had the choice to stop. But then the destruction of the Tyrants continue unabated. Who would choose to stop? Vados embodies this. He's a creation of Amelie, born to hunt Tyrants to protect humanity. The thing about Vados is that he has agency and beliefs of his own. When told to destroy Petram in spite of the Laterians interfering, he refuses to harm humans. But we know that will happen anyway. We're told repeatedly that the Tyrants will continue to rise, until Vados has destroyed so much that the world is inhospitable to humans as well. He has his own agency, his own desire to protect humanity and protect the world. But he'll betray that through his own actions, regardless of what he wants. He was made to hunt Tyrants, and so he shall, til the end of days. The only way to avert this is to refuse to fight every Tyrant, to refuse to wage this absolute crusade. And that's the only choice he cannot make. He doesn't get a choice.

The Abyssals continue this theme. Like Vados, the Abyssals are created for a singular purpose. They are born with a goal, and that is all they have. They have their own personalities, but few of them seem interested in the specifics of what's going on. Kroma doesn't seem particularly interested in killing Eliza, she just has to. Pluvian doesn't seem to function as a willing sacrifice, but she does it anyway because that's her goal. Regardless of what they want, they will carry out their goal.

Unlike Vados, though, they have no overarching philosophy. Nothing that specifically guides their actions beyond the immediate. Caelesa runs around the world, but she doesn't seem to understand why. So when their goal is accomplished, despite getting a second chance at life...none of them know what to do with it. So they just sit around, completely docile, until you strike them down again. What other choice did they have? They never knew what they were aiming to do in the first place.

Except for Venefelis. The first Abyssal. At first, he had no idea what his point was. He had a goal, carried it out, and got sealed within the woods forever. Not ideal, but mission accomplished. Then 300 years later, another entity like him appears, carrying out a similarly short-sighted goal. Then 200 years later, another. And another 100 years after that. They appear faster and faster, until we get two within ten years. And as the only one to really survive, even if just as a spirit...you recognize the pattern. After all, Venefelis understands Caelesa's goal better than she understands it herself. She thinks it was just running, but Venefelis identifies it as a scouting mission. You know there's a grander design here; a purpose. But you can't figure out what. Because no one will tell you. You creator, the one guiding your motions, won't speak to you.

What else can you do but try to divine their intent? With nothing else to go off of, you watch their actions, and notice only one thing stands out. Kroma failed, and following that, no other Abyssals were created. Maybe your creator quit. Maybe it's because of Kroma. You don't know that, but what else could it be? You don't understand your purpose, but you desperately want to understand it; to know why you're still here. What choice do you have but to force a second chance on her? To enforce your creator's will, regardless of what she'd want? What choice does she have but to obey?

The twisted thing is, there really is nothing else for them. Rotramus shows this definitively. When you attempt to issue a command, he thinks about it, and passively decides sure, I'll help. It's not the resounding success of an authority check commanding its allegiance. It's someone making a choice, as if it has nothing better to do and no reason to argue. But its creator's will forces it to refuse. Even with its goal accomplished, and no reason to refuse, they interfere, denying your freedom. Quite literally, you have no other choice.

Everything that happens in this arc is driven by Venefelis' desires. His agency, his desire to understand his creator, drives everything forward. No one else even understands why they're here. They didn't have much choice either way. He brought them back, gave them a second chance they had no use for. But what else could he have done? To see what he wanted done, all he could do was solve Kroma's failure by pushing her into another attempt. And it wouldn't have even worked. It was entirely for nothing. But what can you do but try? You technically have a choice. You finished your goal, you could just let it all rest. But faced with the dread of an eternity devoid of purpose, who would choose any different?

Despite how many open-ended threads there are, and how many mysteries we're left with, this does feel like a self-contained story. We don't know what the point is. We don't know what it means. But neither did they. And the result of that ignorance, that impossibility, is they existed unable to live for themselves, and no second chance could get them to defy that fate. Which really resonates with me. I loved this side story a lot, and these open questions have really gotten me interested in the sequel game. I've heard they officially announced its existence but not a release date or any details. I can be patient. But I'm really invested in this one. They really hit a sweet spot here.

[alxprit]

Personal GOTYs

2021 for me felt a lot better than 2020 did. Though I didn't spend too much time playing things that were absolutely brand new, I did engage with many things that I had always wanted to get to, but never did. And that gave this year an overall pleasant feeling as I conquered challenges old and new and broadened my horizons further beyond the scope of Nintendo. Let's talk about a few of the games that stuck with me. 10) MONSTER SANCTUARY An indie game that combines metroidvania dungeon exploration and progression with monster collecting and turn-based battle systems sounds like a recipe for success. Even better when your monster designs are by and large cool, cute, and everything in between. But what really marred my experience with this game was the high difficulty. The game scales to you as you go through it, as you can explore various areas in any order you desire, so grinding wasn’t much of an option. You also hit a level cap by the end of the story, so when I found myself struggling with a battle near the endgame, I realized that my team and strategy simply weren’t good enough which meant I would either need to redo and re-grind an entire team back to the level cap from scratch or just give up. I chose the latter, unfortunately, and though they have since added an easier difficulty and further nerfed the challenge of those battles in particular, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth knowing that some devs are still unable to understand why Pokemon is so approachably simple to clear and only tends to get hard after the credits. Still, the journey through it was by and large enjoyable, and I don't regret the time I spent on it overall. 9) NEXOMON Between the prior game, Pokémon, and my frustrating foray into Digimon World: Dusk, I played a lot of monster collectors this year. Uh, anyway, Nexomon is something I heard about from a personal friend of mine. They had played and enjoyed the sequel, Nexomon: Extinction, and recommended to me to play the first game as the story logically follows from it. Nexomon started life as a mobile game, so when it came to Steam it had a bit of its blood sloshed around in wonky ways. Items that were normally in-app purchases were found in random places as hidden treasures, for example, and characters often made metatextual references to the fact that I was playing on a phone, when I wasn’t. However, the world design was quite pretty, the characters were amusing, and the actual creature designs for the Nexomon are impressively solid - more than the game frankly deserved, I think. Battle itself is a stripped down version of Pokemon. Speed isn’t a thing, you always go first and the enemy always goes second. A defeated enemy will be able to switch in and attack you immediately. Every single status ailment is immensely debilitating and remarkably easy to abuse. Also, every Nexomon only has a single type, limiting potential fun combos, along with many mechanics being obscure and difficult to figure out. Now that I’m saying all this to myself I’m surprised that I still left this game feeling positive about it. It only makes me more excited for the sequel, which I’ve heard fixed basically all of these issues and made things a lot more interesting. 8) HYPER LIGHT DRIFTER Hyper Light Drifter is a game I enjoyed purely on the back of its gameplay. Combat was very tricky, but I never felt cheated by the game, and checkpoints weren’t too crippling. I've even been complimented in my persistence and skill in figuring out the combat system as quickly as I seemed to. My only main issue was difficulty in locating some of the important collectables you need to progress. But, this game has a bit of a hard to understand story! It’s told entirely through actions and pictures, which is not my favorite thing in the world. I didn’t really Get It my whole time through and needed to rely on outside material in order to have a semblance of an idea on what was actually happening. There was also a myriad of optional content and hidden items I never found, and I wasn’t really encouraged to go back and seek them out without any kind of guidance. This isn't to say that these are things that can't be good or that aren't good, but it doesn't personally jive with me. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t as overall solid as some other indies I explored. 7) HYRULE WARRIORS: AGE OF CALAMITY I never played the original Hyrule Warriors much. I would play it at a friend’s house here or there, take in some of the coverage as it got its DLC updates and eventual release on Switch. And that’s also why this game is in my list - I borrowed it, not bought it. And for the price of free, this was a splendid experience. Though the story’s “alternate timeline” approach is seen by some as cowardly or unfitting of Breath of the Wild’s atmosphere, I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to see things from Zelda’s perspective, get more fleshed out characters beyond the champions and fall in love with an adorable time-traveling egg baby. It was a deceptively simple game all things considered and bad framerates never marred my experience personally. Something fun to waste time with. 6) THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: SKYWARD SWORD HD Skyward Sword was one of two Zelda games I had never played before (the other being Spirit Tracks) and I had heard tons of opinions about it. All ranging from, fantastic story, great dungeon design, creative items, to the other end of repetitive bosses, lack of freedom, annoying fetchquests, and boring traversal. So where do I land? I generally liked the game, and its flaws didn’t overwhelm its good points to me. I got a bit annoyed with Scrapper, and the dungeons blended together a bit for me, and that second Imprisoned fight really blows… but I would die for my best friend Beetle whom scout, acquire item, and kill small foe. Also one of the most satisfying acquirals of the Bow in the series with it coming so late and allowing you to pretty much trivialize basic combat as a result. The story was good as advertised, Groose entirely lived up to the hype. I am glad I played this game with the new button controls though. 5) BASTION A classic indie game, the first of Supergiant’s ilk, that I had always said I would play but never did, until this year where I finally followed through as part of the aforementioned indie focus. And you know what? It lived up to the hype! Some of the things I liked about it were the great soundtrack, the challenging but not overwhelming combat, the variety in weapon choice, and the story’s framing and presentation were far from Hyper Light Drifter's muddled style. Sure, it helps that I have a sweet talking narrator to get me through everything... but still. This is a game that’ll stick with me and I’ll always remember. 4) PSYCHONAUTS Yes, not the sequel, but the first game! Psychonauts was always one of those games I would lightly hear about every so often. Someone would be like, oh man this old game was great! And I never knew why or how it had come to be that way. I was graciously able to win a Steam copy of this game from a giveaway and decided with the sequel looming that this was the best time to finally give it a try. This game blew me away! There’s an insane amount of love and detail put into the voice acting and the character interactions, the overall world and mental worlds are designed with the utmost care and sincerity, and it was all wrapped up in humorous and wacky hijinks that kept me guessing as to what nonsense would be happening next. My only main criticisms are the lack of ease with which you could find all the collectables and some annoying puzzle aspects in levels like the Milkman Conspiracy or Gloria’s Theater, along with a bit of motion sickness potential in the way some levels move and shift. Psychonauts 2 looks immensely fantastic and a perfect evolution of the first game’s personality, so I’m really glad that their legacy was able to continue. 3) DELTARUNE (CH 1 & 2) My secret shame is that I never myself played Deltarune when it first released three years ago. I watched one person play through it on a livestream and from there I felt like I had seen it all. When Chapter 2 was announced, I thought that maybe this time I would finally play it myself, but I was feeling pressured at the time and didn’t want to commit to it yet. But the amount of spoilers I had seen almost immediately basically forced my hand and made me play the game very quickly after its console release. And for once that kind of pressure didn't make me regret my decision. Deltarune is an interesting game because it’s still currently incomplete but it feels very evolved and beyond its time. Like Psychonauts it has a solid amount of comedy weaved in with its setting, but it also tells some very important stories for its characters. The battle system is also much more fleshed out in Chapter 2, feeling like the numbers and equipment I acquire are mattering in a way that they never did in Undertale. Plus being able to see your “spare progress” is just smart. The endless theorizing, discussion, and obsession with this game is one of the few “popular” things that really has its hooks in me, and I don’t feel ashamed to admit it - it’s a good game! 2) MONSTER HUNTER RISE There’s not a lot to say about Monster Hunter that hasn’t been said already. So for my part, I favorably compare this game to its predecessor, Monster Hunter World & Iceborne, in several aspects. The silkbind skills flesh out a lot of weapons, feeling more like core parts of their movesets in many ways that the Hunter Arts from Generations did not. The Wirebug adds accessibility in recovering from fumbles and new ways to traverse the terrain that never existed before, but there’s also an element of skill in using it right, and not just launching yourself straight into the monster’s next attack. And I don’t know about you, but I like that monsters are just always on the map 100% of the time and you don’t need to bother throwing a paintball at them or gathering their footprints. I’m looking forward to this game reaching new peaks with its expansion, but as it stands now I’m not dissatisfied with Monster Hunter Rise. Also, one of the best final bosses in the series, and this is a series that had a final boss that was a bug. Just saying, if it managed to impress me despite that, it surely did something right. 1) FINAL FANTASY XIV ONLINE From the moment this game was new and fresh off the cusp of its A Realm Reborn stuff, I knew that I would like it. However, I was not a very privileged person in that I didn’t own any Sony consoles, nor did I have a PC capable of running the game. So the game mostly left my mindspace beyond a few mentions of it here and there as my life progressed. This year, I finally decided that after all the quest culling, the addition of flying to ARR, and the new expansion hot on everyone’s minds, that I would finally give it a try. And you know what? Big fuckin’ surprise, I love it. I loved it in ARR. I loved it more in Heavensward. I loved it a lot in Stormblood. I loved it more than that in Shadowbringers. I caught up fully, and despite the pressure to make it just barely right on time for its release, I loved this game more than I thought possible in Endwalker. And the best part is as I go through the tedious tasks I love in games like these, I can feel myself improving not just in my number go up, but in my own personal skill in hitting my buttons, dodging mechanics, understanding the flow of battle, so on and so forth. It feels like something I have been missing from my life that I’ve finally found. It’s so great to be able to share this experience with friends who support me and want to see me succeed in this game as much as they did when they were newer. It’s a game that makes me feel loved, both in-game and in real life. And there’s nothing more valuable than that. GAMES THAT DIDN'T MAKE THE TOP TEN: Digimon World: Dusk, for being just awful in almost every way. Fire Emblem Awakening, for being totally Seinfelded into not making much of a personal impact for me. Baba is You, for spooking me with its metaverse manipulation. Pokémon Shining Pearl, for losing the polish that one would expect after foisting it off to a third party. Technically I'm still playing gachas and MapleStory but those feel less like games and more like an extension of my daily life so they don't count. I hope you all like my long post!

[doubleddenden]

I think I'm in the final stretch of Nexomon Extinction. What a wild ride it's been. I'm definitely going to check out Nexomon 1 on steam when I finish Extinction.

For anyone waving it off because it's a Pokemon clone, don't. Seriously, we're all cool with Halo, Doom, Call of Duty, Battlefield, and thousands of more shooters literally being copy paste mechanics. Platformers are inherently similar as well. Collectathons especially.

Instead of calling it a clone, I'd say it's a parody, or more of a newer genre quietly cropping up in the last few years: pokemonlike. Pokemon was already a sub branch of JRPG, and pokemonlikes follow the same method of over 100 monsters to catch with set evolution paths, some form of type system, and turn based mechanics. Theres tweaks to make it different enough, just like Pokemon has tweaks to make it different from Dragon Quest.

Here's what makes Nexomon Extinction worth it for me:

The battle system is familiar but has slight tweaks. A stamina bar instead of PP, moves are hardly one shot kills, the typing system is much simpler with each monster having one type with its strengths and weaknesses, a smarter AI that swaps out on you, and overall a bigger focus on strategy than just Spam Super Effective to win (its here too mind you, but you'll run out of Stamina before you'll sweep a team)

The world is very free and open. Literally before I got the bronze tamer badge at the beginning, I had explored a big chunk of the world already. There's some places hidden behind story, but those are very few and far between. Literally a character was like "HEY DON'T GO IN THERE ITS DANGEROUS" and CoCo was like "what if we did anyway?" And I did. And it was cool as hell.

The game scales its levels with you. It's meant to be challenging, it's not a snooze fest like Pokemon XY or SwSh, but at the same time this means 2 things: 1, go anywhere at your own pace and its usually going to be the perfect level for your team, no matter how far you stray from the story. 2, as you progress, the entire world does, so you can find monsters and tamers that match your levels no matter where you go. It's so fun constantly having a challenge.

Lots of character options. Not really customization, but there's lots of designs to choose from to be your main. I stuck with the original because I like spiky hair and capes.

The catching mechanics are SIMILAR to pokemon but improved on, imo. You have your standard beat em up til they get in the red, and you can toss a Nexotrap, BUT unlike Pokemon, Nexomon's capture system gives you a percentage probability of success. You can increase success by giving certain statuses, having certain items in your inventory, having the correct Nexotrap to match its type, and feeding the monster its favorite foods. It's kind of a relief because I'm not sitting there hurling balls and hoping it clicks. I'm able to accurately gauge its success AND THEN throw the trap. The only downside is the quicktime buttons.

The art. Holy shit, especially in battle. The overworld sprites take a bit to get used to, but in game sprites look SO GOOD and move SO FLUIDLY, and attack animations are gorgeous. There's also the nice touch of having character portraits that look pretty decent. Every location looks so good, too, and so vibrant.

Music is pretty great. Right now I have the trainer battle stuck in my head. Every city and route has it's own music that is very atmospheric to listen to and adds to the experience.

It's a self aware parody that knows its parodying pokemon and jrpgs in general, and the jokes LAND man. CoCo the cat is like "yeah sure send the kids into the forest, that's SUCH a good idea" or "its almost as if the game devs ran out of budget."

I don't know if it's just me, but like 90% of the 381 monsters are just great, man. I can hardly think of any that isn't cute or cool looking in some way or another. There's some that's definitely inspired by pokemon, but honestly I don't mind. I'm not here to defend GF, I'm here for a good time since GF thinks it's okay to give us Eiscue and Inteleon and say it's good. Nope, nuhuh, there's 9 starters here and all of them are better than the gen 8 starters.

Side quests. Lots of them. Gives something fun to do. I'm also going to include neato fun dungeons that have hidden vaults in them. You don't have to do em, but I reccomend em anyway.

The story is interesting without hand holding or rail roading. It trusts the player to do what they want and come back eventually. CoCo even makes it a point to remind us with "hey, she said go north, but we could also check out the east if we want :)" quite regularly. Even then the story catches you right from the beginning with interesting characters that don't immediately start kissing your ass. In fact, you have to earn their respect in most cases, which I very much enjoy. There's lots of tense moments that go over the top in a way that I'm not used to for this type of game. Now this story is technically a sequel, but honestly I've found no problems getting through it without having played Nexomon 1, and honestly I think its neat piecing together the story.

The price. Really weird I know, but I've gotten about 24 hours out of it so far with a bunch more to come. It cost $20 on steam and $30 on switch and ps4, and yet I feel like ive gotten so much more bang for my buck. I hope the devs got paid fairly because holy shit, they deserve some credit.

The devs actively listen to feedback and fix it. They have free updates planned as well. They own their mistakes and even make fun of it. It's so refreshing. Pokemon would rather rush a game out with a problem to sell a solution later, or ignore negative feedback.

I'm literally having far more fun in a pokemonlike than I've had in 2 pokemon switch games, and honestly maybe even the 3ds? Still debating. Its almost as if i got a sneak peak at Pokemon if assholes didn't bash gen 5, because this game feels and plays how a proper pokemon game should have evolved. The sprites are so much more dynamic than the lifeless dolls with 2d texture faces, the characters actually have LIVES that are more than just POKEMON ARE NEAT POKEMON ARE GREAT I LOVE POKEMON I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH THE POWER OF POKEMON. In fact some people scream at you for breaking into their homes. There's politics at play in some cases. There's a ghost town with ghost ghosts dealing with being ghosts. Pokemon forgot somewhere along the Switch what it's like to make a game that isn't just to please stock holders and rushed to meet deadlines. Extinction has the spirit of Pokemon and more Jrpgs that lost their love and creativity of the series AND the fun behind it all. It really proves to me the only real good thing about SwSh was the battle system and DLC, because Nexomon Extinction proves that the battle system is literally the only crutch gen 8 had to stand on, and basically anyone can do it now.

God. I know it's a parody, but jesus it's such a good game. Nexomon, I hope to see more games in the future. I know it'll never be wildly successful, but by god I fell in love with monster catcher games again.

9/10 please try it and support the devs. If you liked the ds games I guarantee you'll like this game.

[salty-dracon]

SaltyDracon’s review of World’s End Club. (Spoilers inside)

TL:DR- This game has a fantastic cast and wonderful character moments, as well as the crazy story twists that Uchikoshi is known for. There’s a reason for just about everything in this game, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating at points.

I’ll be honest, AI: The Somnium Files would have been a 8/10 game for me, but the poor writing given to one of the game’s main characters (Iris) knocked it down to a 6/10. As a writer myself I’m pretty sensitive to obvious favoritism given by the writers to a particular character, and Iris was definitely on the receiving end of that favoritism. So I was pretty afraid that any WEC character would have the same treatment.

Nope! All of the characters in World’s End Club are fantastic, and all of them are treated fairly by the narrative. Even some of the more “irritating” characters, like Kansai and Chuko, still ended up being lovable, and the entire cast meshed well enough that none of the characters felt strictly out of place. This included Yuki, who by the end of the game was basically a member of the Go-Getters Club herself.

That being said, there are certain moments that really felt out of place or surprisingly cruel in context. For example, the part where everyone was ragging on Pochi for “doing nothing” the whole trip, after he fixed the freaking train.

One of the biggest twists thrown at you towards the middle of the game is that Pochi has the ability to communicate with you, the player, and that you are “communicating” with each of the characters. This fourth wall break is one I felt was handled relatively well. There are plenty of games where the fourth wall break exists just to make the player feel bad (Undertale) and others where it’s used as a joke or a shoutout (Nexomon Extinction) and yet others where the fourth wall is represented by something else entirely (the entire Zero Escape series, AI: The Somnium Files). I’ve seen too many of the first kind (mostly horror games) to really enjoy fourth wall breaks, so I was happy that this one was tackled with a more positive note. 

Most of the other twists were handled well, like Vanilla’s status as a ghost, Reycho being a robot controlled by Pochi, Pochi being a robot made by MAIK, MAIK’s plans and end goals, and Vanilla’s status as not actually a ghost. Some towards the end felt a little ham-fisted though, like Yuki being a part of MAIK, Reycho being self-aware, and Pochi being a failed “clone” of MAIK. Some I felt were not, like basically everything with Niyan. I would have liked to see Jennu and Kansai bond more over that whole thing.

Some plot points were marred by some ridiculous deus ex machina. What even was the POINT of having Yuki’s amygdaclear cooking KO the cast, and then the cast using Lifeguard to get better again? A product placement? That’s all I can think of, because it was so dumb. So were the three override keys as the final place you get to use all of the characters’ powers- it felt like a ham-fisted “finale” plot point.

I’m trying to find words for how bad the platforming was, but I can’t find any. Nonsensical hitboxes, badly telegraphed attacks, and confusing physics, not to mention that the character you controlled had literally only 1 hp, all contributed to one of the worst platforming experiences I’ve ever had. Box pushing and box pulling are pretty basic as far as platforming goes (and every character could do that). None of the levels felt like puzzles either, they felt like straight progression. The only exception is the Osuta Temple puzzles, which I actually really enjoyed, and I wish there were more like it.

I think what irks me about this specifically is that the platforming could have been so GOOD and so much FUN, but it felt like the platforming segments from Sonic Boom instead. In Sonic Boom, each character had a different power, but those powers couldn’t be used in conjunction with each other. WEC had a platforming section like that only once (the factory in Nagoya, where Reycho and Tattsun worked together to trap the tall robot) which was pretty awesome, but it’s by no means the whole game. I would have loved it if there were more levels requiring each character to use their powers in conjunction, such as Reycho throwing objects to Kansai, or Pai and Nyoro using their powers to get through an area filled with enemies together.

Or hell, just fix the hitboxes. Or give us more HP! Why does the yeti get 3 HP and I get killed instantly by a 3 foot long roly-poly? Well, I guess there’s an implied in-game explanation for that, even if we don’t get it till the second playthrough.

Both the Japanese and English dub cast were fantastic. The translation, however, was inconsistent. (Why did this game shadow-drop on iOS early again? I feel like it messed up so much.)

Shoutout to the final boss’s design, because holy shit that was cool! Cubes with random animal parts? CUBES WITH RANDOM ANIMAL PARTS?! SO COOL!

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So, who would I recommend this game to? Just about anyone who’s looking for a fun, casual game with good characters. While the game’s platforming is atrocious, it’s not impossible, and with a bit of thinking and good timing you should be able to get through most of the levels in less than 5 tries. The game is very forgiving with death, which helps. The game is clearly aimed towards 16+, but it’s generally a very lighthearted and happy one, so if you don’t mind a few crazy twists it’s worth picking up.

Who wouldn’t I recommend this game to? Anyone expecting a Danganronpa or Zero Escape experience. This game is NOT a Danganronpa-like or Zero Escape-like, it’s something entirely new and entirely different. It’s more a lighthearted power-of-friendship story with a few WTF moments.

In short, World’s End Club is a game that didn’t make me feel anything more than gamer rage at bad platforming, surprise at a few crazy twists, and love for the fantastic cast and the conversations they had with each other. But hey, if that’s what you’re looking for in a game, it’s worth picking up.