In terms of the intensity and depth of the emotional response it engendered in me, Seabed compares neatly with The House in Fata Morgana. It takes a completely different, much quieter and subtler path to get there, obviously. Fata Morgana gets there with the most hard hitting melodrama possible. Seabed gets there through countless quiet moments, all working in concert to slowly weave a spell over you without you even realizing.

As a text game dev, I deeply appreciate the presentation. The whole story is told through VA-less NVL-mode walls of text, borrowed royalty-free music, as few VN presentation tricks as humanly possible, and a combo of blurred photo and cheap blender backgrounds. The only major points of aesthetic interest are the beautiful character illustrations by hide38 (who also wrote the script).

And the story still hits like a truck. When you make your characters and their longings feel this real in the reader's heart, you don't need voice acting or a bunch of expensive one-off assets. Seabed does exactly what it needs to with the presentation to support the writing, then gets out of the way and lets the story speak for itself. I think that's really admirable, and speaks to a confidence that a lot of devs would benefit from.

If all this sounds back-handed, it shouldn't. Some of the most well-loved VNs in history are doujin games like Higurashi or Tsukihime, which used similar aesthetic shortcuts. I cherish many VNs with super-loved-on presentation. But my favorites will always be the ones that make me believe in their stories, and you get there first and foremost with strong writing.

Seabed is as affecting a story as any visual novel I've read. I don't have much to say beyond that that wouldn't spoil the shape of the story (hence why I spent three paragraphs soapboxing about VN direction). If you're up for the slowest of slow burns, and you appreciate VNs with grown-up theming that don't talk down to you, give this one a read.

Actually a pretty amazing game, and can only assume it's hard-to-describe distance from the first four is why it's rated so much lower. There are aspects here I believe to be straight-up more effective than any other Silent Hill, then there are things that are entirely absent, like the horror and combat. I think this is the first time I wished that this wasn't a video game or didn't have to be a Silent Hill, for the enhanced freedom to drink up the environment made the exploration segments feel like watching a Lynch film. Having an American team, to me, made the environment genuinely feel American. I've been to places that look exactly like these locales! I can fill in their smells and see the phantoms of where people would be. The decay and desolation felt more real to me, more effectively liminal. Other than the shitty reveal, this may also be the best-written Silent Hill (dialogue and character-wise, the semiotics were weak). I spent the whole game speculating Harry's role, thinking he abandoned his daughter and ultimately destroyed both of them. I thought for a bit that Dahlia was Cheryl at her absolute lowest, hooking up with her father without either realizing it. Shit left a lot of room for speculation, and I really wish they didn't lay all their cards out. All these broken women coming in and out of Harry's life, all of which you get to choose if you be creepy towards or respect certain boundaries, I felt was building towards a greater reveal. The ice-otherworld sequences I could've done without. By the second time, it had already become confusing and unmemorable. Luckily they don't take up that much of the game. The atmosphere really is such a boon to making the experience feel terrific. There were a few points where I just stared at the side of a building, letting Best Game Composer work his magic on me. I read every sign the PS2 gave a decent resolution to and got disappointed every time I accidentally progressed before getting to check every single corner for details. What else... Michelle and Dahlia had killer fits, and apparently they change off your behaviour? Really cool. Also a little disappointing that all the therapy mini-games just led to a pretty general ending and a meaningless astrology reading, but I don't know how much was reasonable to expect. They were engaging, which is the best I can ask for. I'd heard it did a lot more with it's psychology mechanics, and was expecting it to, than it actually felt like it did. The ways it does utilize them, however, I found very fun. By no means a masterpiece, definitely worth playing, at least to hang out in.

I had measured but fairly high hopes going into this one. I'd just played Tales of Phantasia and absolutely adored it, and this game shares a lot of the same core creative team. It's actually a great meta-story -- after chafing under Namco's direction during Tales of Phantasia's development, the creatives left Wolfteam to form their own studio, Tri-Ace. So, Star Ocean was Tri-Ace's first game after its founders escaped from under the thumb of big daddy Namco. It's a great narrative about creatives thumbing their nose at big publishers and making the games -they- want to make.

So it's a shame Star Ocean sucks ass!!! I haven't played an rpg this devoid of charm and joy since Suikoden. It's easy to focus on the nakedly incompetent parts. A popular target is how the game essentially begins with a ninety minute cutscene dropping gallons of lore and exposition about its big sci-fi multi-planetary universe, only to drop you on a single generic fantasy planet for 90% of the game. I'd also mention how the entire last three hours comes out of nowhere and feels totally weak and unearned, and how we only meet each of the two main antagonists minutes before they're killed and exit the story. But there's so little here to latch onto that I don't think fixing the glaring unforced errors would help much, honestly. At least the big mistakes are funny.

I can't speak much to how the remake compares with the original. My partner and I compared scenes from the intro cutscenes with the remake, and the original seemed a little better directed. The remake will smash cut between scenes or music tracks in ways that feel amateurish and ridiculous, and the original at least seems to avoid that. The original's aesthetics feel a little nicer to me too. But I like the fighting in the remake (apparently borrowed from Star Ocean 2) a lot more, so it's all kind of a wash.

Ultimately the foundation here is so rotted through that I don't think it can matter much which version you play. Maybe the SNES version has stronger texture, but I don't think there's any iteration of Star Ocean that compares with the straightforward competence and resonance of Tales of Phantasia. Maybe some creatives benefit from a producer looking over their shoulder after all.