3 - But this is semantics, and we know Kill the Past and love it for its obtusities and abstract narratives and style as substance, and that’s all great and really strikes me in a deep place as always. The vibes are immaculate here, the music is fantastic, the art is mostly great - I feel bad that Matchmaker just didn’t do it for me, partially because of the art, but other people really like it so Idk maybe I’m just wrong for preferring Correctness. And I mentioned the UI already, unfortunately doing it a disservice by complaining about the substance IN the UI, but the visual style itself is so so good. I got chills getting the Catherine SFX for the first time, the “dice” you spin to select actions RULE and I’m surprised I’ve never seen that kind of thing used elsewhere. I really like the Killer7 movement commands, selecting fragmented polygons to pick a direction. I especially love the little polygon at the bottom right, that turns into stuff sometimes - which has a really great payoff when investigating the Digital Man.
1 - I’m surprised that 25W has such higher ratings than TSC and even FSR, when I don’t see it as having a stronger thesis or atmosphere than either of those games, let alone mechanical presentation or visual stylisation. It certainly feels like a culmination of all three, but only taking bits and pieces as it sees fit, instead of combining them all into one big thing. The puzzles, for example, give you a Catherine UI, but the answers are mostly numbers or keywords you have to memorize from earlier dialogue instead of a visual/narrative problem you have to solve. It’s fascinating, and does a great job continuing some of the criminal justice themes, but doesn’t seem to expand on them ENOUGH past the really cool core conceit of the post office being corrupt because they know everyone’s information, and the continuation of the “police force” being constructed out of essentially “ex-criminals” that were given work because they’re good at killing, and are hypocritically trying to stop a faction that kills people for literally just for being a “societal inconvenience.”
I'm confused because people seem to dislike the Kurumizawa plot, and call Correctness "the most confusing," but to me it feels like the most in-line with what TSC was doing. It appropriately portrays a corrupt cop becoming more corrupt and being allowed to act in morally repugnant ways as the plot thickens around the HC unit and the postal service.
2 - The options you’re presented in regular gameplay allude to “player choice” but are really just a stylised mask for a linear narrative that requires you to switch between “Look” and “Talk” and sometimes move down hallways before repeating the former commands. This is opposed to FSR’s traversal system, that’s still linear but gives you some wiggle room to explore outside of repeating corridors. I don’t dislike it, it is it’s own thing, and in fact I really love the UI, but it often feels like it’s grasping at straws to make a moment feel more interactive than it is - or should be.
There are quite a few bits where the actions you choose don’t really correlate to the things that happen in the text boxes, and are just a glorified “continue” button for the dialogue. I don’t mind this, it happens in TSC too, but it does get a little aggravating when it feels like the actions are just filler, like selecting a “wait around” button where the only dialogue you get is unrelated to anything else that’s happening, and you have to continue selecting that action until the game lets you move on and do the thing in the same room that you know you have to do next.
This happens several times across multiple characters, but take a moment with Tokio and Red for example.
You log onto your PC to check messages, get one that seems to allude to an immediate follow-up, check again, nothing, so you log out, Talk to Red, Tokio says “I should feed Red,” Talk to Red, Tokio looks for food, Talk to Red, no follow-up on the food, just an ellipses. Select Look at Cigarettes, Tokio remarks that the packaging is different but doesn’t smoke them, Talk to Red again, nothing, so you log back into the PC and get another message that continues the narrative from the last one.
This is the required sequence of inputs to continue the story, and you have to determine this by just selecting every available option until you get new text. We already know Tokio and Red, there isn’t character development happening, I’m hard-pressed to even pretend to see a point in including so many moments like this across all three stories. In other KTP games, the tedium is acknowledged in the narrative and often has a point. Read; Sumio’s time loop frustration in FSR, Tokio being aloof and unstructured and dawdling around aimlessly before being hit with a lifechanging case in Placebo, the entirety of NMH’s economical system. Here, it doesn’t do anything but establish that time is passing for the character, and us the player, except there are several moments where it just opts to say “time has passed” with a popup, and it flows so much better when we’re not fumbling around trying to figure out what to do to progress a filler moment and get back to the case.
1 - I’m surprised that 25W has such higher ratings than TSC and even FSR, when I don’t see it as having a stronger thesis or atmosphere than either of those games, let alone mechanical presentation or visual stylisation. It certainly feels like a culmination of all three, but only taking bits and pieces as it sees fit, instead of combining them all into one big thing. The puzzles, for example, give you a Catherine UI, but the answers are mostly numbers or keywords you have to memorize from earlier dialogue instead of a visual/narrative problem you have to solve. It’s fascinating, and does a great job continuing some of the criminal justice themes, but doesn’t seem to expand on them ENOUGH past the really cool core conceit of the post office being corrupt because they know everyone’s information, and the continuation of the “police force” being constructed out of essentially “ex-criminals” that were given work because they’re good at killing, and are hypocritically trying to stop a faction that kills people for literally just for being a “societal inconvenience.”
I'm confused because people seem to dislike the Kurumizawa plot, and call Correctness "the most confusing," but to me it feels like the most in-line with what TSC was doing. It appropriately portrays a corrupt cop becoming more corrupt and being allowed to act in morally repugnant ways as the plot thickens around the HC unit and the postal service.
2 - The options you’re presented in regular gameplay allude to “player choice” but are really just a stylised mask for a linear narrative that requires you to switch between “Look” and “Talk” and sometimes move down hallways before repeating the former commands. This is opposed to FSR’s traversal system, that’s still linear but gives you some wiggle room to explore outside of repeating corridors. I don’t dislike it, it is it’s own thing, and in fact I really love the UI, but it often feels like it’s grasping at straws to make a moment feel more interactive than it is - or should be.
There are quite a few bits where the actions you choose don’t really correlate to the things that happen in the text boxes, and are just a glorified “continue” button for the dialogue. I don’t mind this, it happens in TSC too, but it does get a little aggravating when it feels like the actions are just filler, like selecting a “wait around” button where the only dialogue you get is unrelated to anything else that’s happening, and you have to continue selecting that action until the game lets you move on and do the thing in the same room that you know you have to do next.
This happens several times across multiple characters, but take a moment with Tokio and Red for example.
You log onto your PC to check messages, get one that seems to allude to an immediate follow-up, check again, nothing, so you log out, Talk to Red, Tokio says “I should feed Red,” Talk to Red, Tokio looks for food, Talk to Red, no follow-up on the food, just an ellipses. Select Look at Cigarettes, Tokio remarks that the packaging is different but doesn’t smoke them, Talk to Red again, nothing, so you log back into the PC and get another message that continues the narrative from the last one.
This is the required sequence of inputs to continue the story, and you have to determine this by just selecting every available option until you get new text. We already know Tokio and Red, there isn’t character development happening, I’m hard-pressed to even pretend to see a point in including so many moments like this across all three stories. In other KTP games, the tedium is acknowledged in the narrative and often has a point. Read; Sumio’s time loop frustration in FSR, Tokio being aloof and unstructured and dawdling around aimlessly before being hit with a lifechanging case in Placebo, the entirety of NMH’s economical system. Here, it doesn’t do anything but establish that time is passing for the character, and us the player, except there are several moments where it just opts to say “time has passed” with a popup, and it flows so much better when we’re not fumbling around trying to figure out what to do to progress a filler moment and get back to the case.