I feel hurt, betrayed. What once was a new found love quickly soured in ways unimaginable at the beginning.

I may have been foolish when I began this journey, but who could blame me when it was too good to be true. A cult classic with an amazing gameplay loop that rewards patience and understanding of its systems. Each dive into the Labyrinth tested me and the Big Bois guild to push us to the limit. We had to scrounge up every little dollar we could just stay at the inn every night. Getting beyond the first floor seem like an indomitable task. New armor was a pipe dream laid out by the capitalist pigs that incentivized our journey.

Of course, then everything changed. We broke through the ceiling, got through Fenrir on the 5th floor and began to attain the recognition we deserved, along with the wealth that came with it. Soon we no longer had to escape to the surface when we explored half a floor. We could push and push and only return when we had hit the limits of our loot carrying capacity. Money became meaningless, gear came with ease. We no longer had to do quests for the townsfolk to make ends meet, the Big Bois were the foremost guild in all of Etria.

At the end of the Azure Rainforest we ran into our hardest challenge yet. Corotangrul, a guardian of the forest folk who lived below, claiming a whole floor to himself. It's understandable why the forest folk sent him to attack us, they said we were intruders who did not understand the ramifications of our actions. We thought only of the glory of the surface above and not of the lives we would affect down below. Still, Corotangul was deafeted, and we marched forward with a new stone tablet holding hidden information from us. Perhaps now was the time to learn of these people and the nature of the Labyrinth itself.

We gave the tablet to the Radha government above for them to research, and with that we carried on our mission. We explored all of floor 16 to learn more of the forest folk who lived below. While not much information was gleaned, we found that the only way forward was to use the stone tablet we retrieved before. Returning to the hall they told us they would give it to us if we accepted one final mission from them, "Annihilate the Forest Folk".

I'm not your Christopher Colombus Atlus. I'm not playing your game to live out some sick persons fantasy of genociding a group native people. You may not let me progress without it but I will not progress with it. My time here has come to an end, our relationship soiled on the eve of our wedding. One day I wish for closure, until then I stay here sickened at the thought of any member of the Big Bois guild committing mass murder.

Reviewed on Mar 08, 2022


5 Comments


2 years ago

loved this. still in awe actually that this mission was presented without commentary or criticism--coulda been a heater if they did anything with it but present it as benign&banal. they coulda geeked and tied the unexceptionality of dungeon progression to the exceptional evil of displacement and annihilation on some real Eichmann in Jersualem shit if they were real. wouldnt have been too insightful but its better than just a raw ass colombus/ainu erasure fantasy. crazy that there isn't much (any?) discussion of that element online. atlusheads stay fucking losing.
Thank you my guy. You propose a lot of interesting ideas but the thing with EO (at least the first game) is that story takes a back seat. This is never talked about online because it's a banal mission that happens before all the important plot twists occur.

The point of the game is to make your own story, but at the end of the day the game gave me a quest that went against my/my guilds wishes. It's insane to me how casual they are about genocide, but hey this is what happens when you dance with Japanese media.

2 years ago

Dropping a game because of some fictional genocide? That's one way to make your own story, I guess.

2 years ago

Get this man a drakengard

1 year ago

Mald