Jesus

Ran Ibuki is a young girl with severe mental health issues, including schizophrenia and hallucinations. Her current medication works well to aid her focus, but it also leaves her with a lot of memory problems.

Even worse, Ran Ibuki has fallen into some kind of cosmic nightmare. She’s been on the road for a while and each turn she’s made has involved horrific supernatural entities, shifts in her own ability to talk as she pleases, and endless baffling mysteries. Her journey has taken her through numerous different upsetting and gruesome supernatural events, such as the Golem of Delivery, time traveling notebooks, the Eclipse Silkworm, and Mr. Blood Sculptor.

With her memory issues, Ran can’t even recall how this journey began. She can’t remember her family, her hobbies, or any approximation of a normal life she could have possessed. Here is what Ran knows for certain: her girlfriend is missing and she needs to find her.

Ran wakes up in a seemingly abandoned school, with similarly abandoned school children. The students are functionally immortal, through caveats. Every now and then, they draw lots to pick a murderer and a victim. Someone is killed and the students must deduce the truth. Only once the killer and the method are identified can the dead be revived.

It’s a lot.

Much of Chrono Jotter’s negative reviews are influenced by a poor previous translation. The recent update has greatly improved the translation, although I haven’t touched enough of the previous version to attest to that. But the immediately (and intentionally) obtuse plot and presentation certainly couldn’t have helped the localization teams build a coherent narrative for readers. Ran makes frequent reference to adventures we aren’t privy to, to the point I had to commit a lot of research into unpacking whether or not this was part of a franchise. But it's not, that’s simply the way this story unpacks itself. If this vn is part of an established franchise and my research failed me, it's certainly not spinning its wheels with this entry.

The actual gameplay requires a bit more strategy than one might think. The game opens with a quiz that impacts Ran’s stats. Investigation, Alacrity (athletics), and Charisma. These influence what kind of choices we can select. The way stat checks play out, it’s better to commit to two stats over the others. These stat checks don’t change much of the plot, but it helps get more information or see bonus scenes with characters.

But the real meat of the story to me isn’t in the supernatural or the murder trials, it's the day by day uncomfortable conversations. The cast has completely accepted their little murder routine and tend to find Ran’s horror with the situation completely baffling. It's just part of their daily chores. Ran gets treated by the cast as less of a hero and less like a threat to the social order and more like a depressing bummer. It's just a lil murder. Don’t whine so much. We’re just chilling.

Within this uncanny framework, Ran proceeds to really easily fumble some bitches.

Light prologue spoilers in this paragraph. Rot13 used here. Ena vf shyyl qribgrq gb Naa naq pna’g tenfc nal shgher gung qbrfa’g eribyir nebhaq ure orybirq. Fb jura Naa nccrnef irel rneyl ba, vg’f n dhvpx thg chapu gung Naa fhssref sebz nzarfvn. Fur unf ab zrzbel bs ure eryngvbafuvc jvgu Ena naq vf vzzrqvngryl haareirq ol Ena’f svkngvba. Juvyr fur znxrf fbzr gbxra rssbegf, gur furre vagrafvgl bs Ena’f srryvatf naq ure bja vanovyvgl gb erghea gurz vafgnagyl irel dhvpxyl ohvyqf fbzr bs gur zbfg hapbzsbegnoyr, njxjneq pbairefngvbaf V’ir rire jvgarffrq. Ena’f ragver zragny urnygu unf erfgrq ba erhavgvat jvgu ure ybat ybfg ybir, naq gung ybir tbrf nybat jvgu vg bhg bs n frafr bs boyvtngvba, rira vs fur pna’g dhvgr znxr gur qvfgnapr.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that Ran is depressive, judgemental, and generally takes on the appearance of a wet cat, the school classmates very quickly fall bad for this sopping mess. Maybe it's her passion for solving these crimes, maybe it's the way she shakes up the monotony, but they get it bad. Ran finds this reaction puzzling and disturbing, dismissing the idea of any other relationship as completely ludicrous.

The whole dynamic is messy to untangle, but in such juicy ways. The fact that murder solving is normalized means it's all the interpersonal drama that gets heightened to the extremes. It’s a journey that isn’t interested in holding the hands of the readers, but a journey that’s incredibly rewarding for people willing to approach it on its level.

Edit: I also just want to praise what a positive depiction of schizophrenia this is? Ran is a flawed, messy person, but the story also so sympathetic and understanding to the realities of her illness. I keep expecting some kind of twist about hallucinations or some such, but Ran's perspective is actually extremely trustworthy. Her paranoia and depressive episodes aren't things she can just anime power overcome and there's such care in showing what mistakes are personal flaws vs. things she's going to suffer from the rest of her life.

Its... weird for me, given my own history with an ex. I still worry about her sometimes. I knew when she wasn't in control of her own actions and I knew when she just wanted to drive everyone away so she could be alone. But I also knew when she was hurting me or ignoring my feelings on purpose, outside of her illness. It takes a long time before you can understand the difference. You can tell how personal and important this topic was to the writers and how making this distinction comes from personal experience. I really respect and admire it. Ran's a protag of all time. I'm excited for more.

Fascinating little piece of history. You can see a path here from Star Wars to Mass Effect in terms of rpg design. I fond the combat extremely bad and there's plenty of pacing issues. The lore gets dumped on you in such chunks, its hard to find the emotional resonance its looking for in those heightened moments.

The Good/Bad choices seen in KOTOR or Mass Effects really suffer here. Open Palm vs. Closed Fist starts with some interesting nuance. Open Palm believes in helping others no matter what. Closed Fist believes in self-strength and tough love. Closed Fist ideology might ignore someone in danger if they felt the victim merely needs to get stronger. But if they felt the odds were clearly unfair, with the oppressed having no path forward on their own, then they might feel obligated to help. Its an interesting distinction, but ultimately the choices fall back into that Good Bad binary.

But the ambition here carries this a long way. Numerous people worked on this with a different idea of what kind of story they were telling and you can feel how those concepts meshed or clashed with each other. There character writing needs some polish and there's definitely a feeling of 00s yikes about a few asian character designs. But the overall vibes are nicely tuned, its easy to forgive the clunk.

I might get immersive sim pilled from this.

Oh, so suddenly we're all against women's wrongs? They truly hate to see a girlboss winning and they love to see a girlfailure losing. We should probably do something about the Catholics though. I'm sure the debate about this has been very civil. Love to sit down with big hot cup of coffee to sip loudly while reading any history book on this.

With this and Misericorde, I might be really into nun based horrors, but with very specific presentation. Its too easy to miss the mark, and this really threads the needle. Things that haven't thread the needle for me:
- Sister Holiday Mysteries. Love the idea of a mean punk mystery solving nun, but the noir detective staple of "stumbling into problems and accusing the wrong person" feels like such shit when your character seems to care so little that she's ruining the lives of kids and coworkers.
- Lucifer Within Us: cyberpunk religious story just kind of sucks with its just completely uncritical about the church at all.
- coworker's personal published novel. Self-insert fights sin with a sword. Extremely embarrassing.

Nun dramas that have worked for me:
- this
- Misericorde
- Sound of Music

One day I'll figure out the pattern here, but tonight isn't that night.

"A person will experiences two deaths. The first is when a soul leaves their body. And the second is when the memories of that person fade from everyone's hearts."
- Sayoko Robbins

"Because you remember her, my mom lives on. And thanks to that, I got to see her."
- Ashley Robbins

Been thinking a lot about remakes. What is the value of a remake? What is lost in returning to an older work to "fix" things? All these meta-commentaries and adaptations are interesting in theory, but why is it so hard to simply release the old games?

Another Code is a messy example in that so much of its foundation is built on hardware that no longer exists. Cing used every aspect of the DS and the Wii to build its narratives and these clever methods of interaction are a crucial beating heart. Losing a majority of that puzzle interaction in the Recollection's format does... hurt. But there's still so much love here that its a compromise I understand.

The game undeniably provides two key features: ease and access. The game is easier to navigate, dialogue easier to skip through, backtracking and surplus content is snipped off for a more pleasant experience. Running around the mansion in Two Memories is really fun! The sensation of interacting with a tiny video game map to unravel, rather than an exhausting open world, feels like something that's been lost in a lot of modern game design. It felt amazing to return to it and even more amazing that its so easy to acquire this game. People can play and experience these games in one complete package. It'd certainly wish people to at least seek out emulators, but I'm choosing to be happy for the people experiencing this narrative for the first time.

But I think what really won me over on this game was the director's cut feel of it. Head Writer Rika Suzuki and Director Taisuke Kanasaki returned for Recollection and you can feel that sense of time permeate their approach to this game, especially in the Journey Into Lost Memories section. One character in the Wii game was a character I often found frustrating and boring to engage with. Recollection completely changes the final climax of the story and alters his journey into something full of tragedy, misunderstanding, and existentialism. It ties up loose ends and closes the book on a series that never continued. It says goodbye, but with peace and joy rather than misery.

In 2022, Rika Suzuki became an honorary member of the Game Preservation Society. Her interview after Cing's closure can be found here. Cing's closure was the first time I understood as a child that a company closing meant something could be lost that wouldn't be filled. That something would change. And from there, an understanding that when an uncaring company fires its workers, its throwing away the talents and efforts of so many dedicated people. That lesson influences how I think about... a lot of things into the present.

Games are built through the hard-work and care of many different individuals we will never know. Their names passing us by on a credits screen symbolizes days and weeks and months of work. I can feel the love pouring from the screen. I can feel the passion for creativity and joy. If you don't feel it for this game, and I would never demand that you have to, feel that passion in your own favorite games. Find a favorite moment or scene or piece of art and look up who was in charge of art design or script or lighting or any piece of visual scenery that you adored. Someone made that. Remember them, if just for a little while. And if you don't want to do that for games, do that for your fridge, your coat, your wallet. Someone made that. We're all connected by work we'll never see. Remember them.

Another Code helped teach me that a decade ago and its still reminding me that now.

A labor of love, for better and for worse.

Really wanted to enjoy this. I have a lot of fondness for any indie product, particularly one as ambitious as this. The gameplay is incredibly elaborate, with WarioWare style minigames personalized for hundreds of enemy types. Charming character design. Extreme detail put into all sorts of chance dialogue and encounters. Beautiful pixel art, fun music. A visual spectacle.

But the story... leaves me cold. Protagonist arrives in a new city, gets a miserable job, and follows the pathway flags of the plot. The character goals, the wider stakes, the motivations of the characters... it just kind of blends together into following directions. I have always adored stories where one hapless protagonist is dragged into an increasingly stressful and absurd series of circumstances against their will. But the silent nature of the protagonist means they don't get to really react to the world around them. Undertale works a lot because of how much the cast kind of projects onto Frisk. Characters in Knuckle Sandwich kinda go "damn, that was crazy. Don't really know your deal btw, let's get drinks when you're free." That in itself would be compelling, but the characters never get that chance to get drinks and let personalities shine. Events occur, in an order, without much heart in them. The dev team clearly cared about what they were making- all the effort and craft demonstrates that love for this genre and game! But its hard to feel the foundational beating heart in the story to propel the narrative. Characters follow the plot checkpoints when their personalities should be driving the plot forward on its own.

It sucks because I really do enjoy the gameplay but when I've committed nine hours, am only half way through, and I still don't care about the characters, I'm just sort of... done. I couldn't invest myself in someone's silly little world and its hard to tell if they failed me or I failed them.

About six months ago, I moved across the country, away from my hometown and into my current apartment with my partner. I've got a big family and I'm not the best at keeping in contact with people, so I decided to gamify it into a project. I build a "movie monthly" email chain, where we would roll the dice on a movie every month and watch something together. Most of them aren't actually watching it, but this is the best way I can think of to keep track of 28 family members.

So this month, the dice rolled Pride and Prejudice, a movie I've never seen and a book I was only familiar with in the abstract. Being a Succession fan, I decided the easiest thing to do would be to watch the 2005 version and call it a day.

Bear with me on this. Things kinda spiraled out of control.

2005’s Pride and Prejudice, starring Kiera Knightly and Matthew McFayden.

It’s pretty alright. Elizabeth is an attractive young bookworm, Mr. Darcy is a grim, sarcastic twerp. Nonetheless, from my broad understanding of the novel’s structure, it was hard not to feel a sort of… inevitability. Kiera Knightley is in her prime of her career and the movie knows it. Kiera’s Elizabeth feels invincible in an odd way. Above the struggles of her time. Her sarcastic quips feel mean in a way that I soon realized was actually supposed to be grand victories. Elizabeth is a bookworm in a culture with very specific expectations for women and with very little opportunity. It's a suffocating environment, but one that doesn’t seem to stifle Liz in the slightest. She’s Kiera Knightley, movie star, and she’ll always get her win in the end.

While researching the movie, I came across a fascinating analysis from Jen Camden of the Jane Austen Society of North America. "[T]he Focus Features adaptation also limits Elizabeth’s desire: she has no interest other than Darcy, no need to balance emotions with pragmatism (as Austen’s Elizabeth must when endeavoring to forget Wickham and realizing that Colonel Fitzwilliam must forget her). Instead, the Focus Features Elizabeth must confront the possibility that she is not Darcy’s only object of desire.” 1

Overall, it was hard not to feel that I wasn’t getting the “right” Pride and Prejudice experience.

So I kept going.

The 1995 BBC miniseries seems to be one of the most popular adaptations of the novel, and it's hard not to see why. While the 2005 version uses realistic imagery with romantic sensibilities, the BBC version often pairs romantic imagery with realistic sensibilities.

Where the miniseries excels for me is the focus on Elizabeth's development. She’s more obviously prone to biases, misunderstandings, and judgemental thoughts. Supporting characters are still as flawed as they were in the 1995 production, but you also get an impression for how Elizabeth’s stubborn nature can create problems all on her own. At the same time, she’s still an admirable, strong-willed protagonist. She’s sharp, intelligent, and always ready with the right kind of comment to turn the tide against her. She’s still growing and changing, but she’s incredibly endearing and entertaining to watch in her day-to-day life.

But there’s a specific tone in 1995’s version that finally made me seek out and read the original text. Something that every single parody never established, something that wasn’t present in the 2005 version, and something that really shook my entire perspective on the text as soon as I realized it. And soon afterwards, I had to finally read the book itself to confirm my suspicions.

Pride and Prejudice is really, really funny. On purpose.

Reading the original text itself makes this extremely clear almost instantly. Every parody of Pride and Prejudice I’ve ever seen includes some skewering of the opening text: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” No version I’ve ever seen ever mentioned the extremely funny following line: “This truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.”

Nearly every page contains some kind of social skewering of the established regency society. Lady Catherine’s arrogance is introduced with her claims that she’s such a musical expert, she would be the greatest musician in the world… if she had ever learned to play anything. Or Mr. Collins’ inability to realize a woman is turning down his proposal until she physically leaves the room. Or Mrs. Bennett’s constant self-contradictions with lines like “For my part, I am determined never to speak of it again to anybody. I told my sister Philips so the other day.” Mr. Darcy, presented to me through osmosis as an imperious, organized figure, getting so intimidated by Elizabeth’s presence that he apologizes for showing up in his own house. Characters are ridiculous, pompous, and trapped in their own egos or sense of status. And that’s intentional on Jane Austen’s part! Every imitator or supposed “deconstruction” of Austen’s work completely fails to get across that the original context has always been self-aware.

So, now that I had a better grasp of the original text, how far did deviations go?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies isn't very good. There is a core idea that almost works. High society’s obsession with appearance and prestige becomes particularly ridiculous when placed next to the existing zombie plague. The noble class inflicts greater abuses on the servants in order to maintain their increasingly unstable power. The absurdity is played completely straight, which I think speaks to a great comedic instinct on the filmmakers’ part.

But despite building a comedy action set-piece, this version doesn’t actually… do much with its premise. Several reviews claim there’s exciting subversions by having main characters get killed off early on and changing the narrative direction of the story. But that’s just not true. They dumped some action into the original dialogue and kind of called it a day. There’s more interesting experimentation to be done and I just don’t think this experiments with the formula as much as it could.

Fire Island places the Pride and Prejudice framework into, well, vacation destination Fire Island New York, as five gay friends try to enjoy what will likely be their final vacation at the destination. Noah, cynical bookworm, quickly clashes with Will, cynical lawyer. Regency era social conventions are transformed into modern identity issues: Will believes in looking professional as a gay man to fit into daily work life, Noah believes in defying norms and living however he likes. Mr. Wickham’s lying, manipulative ways are transformed into publicly posting about Stop Asian Hate, but privately having no interest in any politics and caring only about his own benefit.

I do think this is an incredible passion project, a purposeful sincere effort at telling a new story in an interesting way. There are things about the gay experience that hit me deep as a trans woman. Even so... its a cis gay man comedy with a lot of SNL guys. That writing kinda itches my brain a little. But there's more value in recognizing and appreciating where our experiences merge than casting insult to where they diverge. I would also cheer when I see Marisa Tomei. I'm not immune.

What Fire Island speaks to is just how universally translatable the text of Pride and Prejudice. Both have their pride. Both have their prejudices. Overcoming that and opening themselves up to romance is the central theme. And it just works. Pride, Prejudice, same ideas. Just a different context.

Finally, I decided to try one more variation in the Pride and Prejudice world. One more unique property that was required by its very nature to take different routes to tell its story.

Goddamn Video Games.

Matches and Matrimony gamifies the Bennett story into a a dating game, with the usual mechanics to be expected. Several personal traits, each things that will be impacted by different skill checks across the game. Willpower, Wit, Talent, Kindness, Propriety, and Sensibility. While the constraints around women is one of the core themes of the text, the gameplay can't help but shift a dynamic but putting the heat on the player to actively train Elizabeth (or my personal name choice: Jennifer's Body Starring Megan Fox) for a match. In many ways, the player is more like Mrs. Bennett than Elizabeth, forcing Liz to pick the “right” choices to impress the “right” suitor.

Right away, the balance of suitors and skill points is dramatically skewed. It is, in fact, impossible to progress into the game's half-way point without 64 in Willpower. Denying the three different proposals from Mr. Collins requires Willpower and you're locked in to the first ending unless you train Elizabeth's individuality.

Different variations shoot off from there. Training kindness catches Mr. Bingley's eye, leading to Elizabeth stealing Mr. Bingley from her sister. Elizabeth can accept Mr. Darcy’s first marriage proposal, allowing Darcy’s unchecked pride to accelerate. This ties into one of the other interesting mechanics of the game: the player will always be alerted to how a choice impacts society’s opinion of Elizabeth. Mr. Bingley’s affection, Mr. Collins’ exhausting interest, this is all an open book. The exception is Darcy himself. The game trusts that you know how the story pays out and expects that you can fill out each step to the letter. Elizabeth has never been privy to Darcy’s mind, so the player shouldn’t know how much he trusts Elizabeth either.

Perhaps most interesting is that the game also allows Elizabeth to marry two love interests from completely different Jane Austen books: Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility or Captain Frederick Wentworth of Persuasion. I’m not as familiar with either of these books yet, but these side-options almost instantly muddle the writing. Elizabeth is dropped into these romances and immediately starts behaving like a different character, bemoaning a broken relationship with Wentworth that’s been completely unmentioned prior to now. You get the sense this game was built to educate children on Jane Austen’s texts, rather than reinterpret the texts too differently. Much of the dialogue is pulled right from the novels and it's reluctant to try anything that would paint the world in a new light. Which I think is a shame.

There's nine endings in all: Mrs. Collins, Mrs. Wickham, Mrs. Bingley, Miss Bennett (1) (lose Bingley's favor on his route), Mrs. Darcy (1), Mrs. Brandon, Mrs. Wentworth, Miss Bennett (2) (reject Wickham on his route), and Mrs. Darcy (2) (the original book's plot). I think its funny and appropriate that following the original story is actually the toughest ending to acquire. But I also think there's missed opportunities to expand the world more. Colonel Fitzwilliam or Mr. Denny, two different army men, are important side characters for the story's progression, but the game doesn't offer new insight. I suppose its just ultimately more profitable to focus development efforts on recognizable characters like Brandon and Wentworth, but if the dev team recentered on existing characters, I think there's a lot of new interesting things it could add to the conversation.

Its not a particularly advanced video game and its not even really trying to be. The balance is a bit all over the place and the original writing could use some significant polish. There's significant glitches in Ren'Py whenever the game transitions between scenes. But I still can't help but find it a fascinating little project. It sits on Big Fish Games website, with rave reviews from Austen fans like "LoveJane" from Norway or LadyOfTheIvy from Virginia, hidden between Viking Heroes 5 Collector's Edition and The Three Musketeers: Milady's Vengeance. Am I gonna be a dick to LoveJane from Norway? Of course not. I respect LoveJane from Norway. She's living a pure, honest life.

Matches and Matrimony, at its core, is a cute little edutainment game. Any discussion of quality or exciting gameplay has to get shelved for the central question: can it educate Pride and Prejudice newbies and/or delight hardcore fans.

I say yes, to both.

Now I just have to figure out how to describe this to 1) a bunch of 70 year olds and 2) find a working torrent of Death Comes to Pemberley, a Masterpiece Mystery.

The year is 1996. A member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea has been murdered. You are the new Editor of Dawn Times, a newspaper company that has lost signficant credibility and profit over the last few years. Your job is clear. Sell interesting articles, appeal to the public, appeal to the board, and maybe try and sell the truth along the way.

This is the Editor.

The structure of the game is fairly straight-forward. Each of the 11 chapters features a newspaper article presented by a member of staff. As the Editor, your job is to prepare the headline and the photos. Most people only remember the headline, so your words often dramatically shape public opinion. Furthermore, there's the photo to consider. Readers get confused easily and the profits rely on consistency. Take, for example, Chapter 2's arrested suspect. Your reporter has snagged a photo of the interrogation room, where the suspect in a sexual assault case was questioned. In front of the suspect, are pages and pages of confession. The police officially only released one page. The suspect's back is visble and covered in bruises. The suspect was notably uninjured before he was arrested.

In this article, and in all articles, the game very quickly asks you to make a moral decision in your framing. There's no neutral ground here. Choosing to report the facts as given not only benefits the powers that be, it also often leaves the reader unsatisfied. Thus, when editing your photo, you must consider framing. I chose to focus on how the suspect was brutalized by police and framed the article to show both the bruises and the pages of confessions. But the readers either hadn't read or didn't care that the police only released one of the alleged confessions. They saw in the photo that the confession was lengthy, and thus it's more likely that he was guilty. Including both the bruises and the stack of confession papers confused the audience and left profits stagnant.

The only way to fully succeed in retaining audience attention was to edit out the stack of confessions to focus only on the bruises. If I wanted to support the official story that the police presented, I obviously would have to edit out the bruises and only show the stack of confessions. I assumed providing as much information as possible was the responsible action, but the game's presentation suggests that I just have to hope my employee is providing those details for me.

Other chapters follow similar, politically charged patterns. Report on a mass strike, choose whether to show the salary chart that demonstrates the blatant wage gap between CEOs and workers, or the skewed corporate version that pretends the CEOs are paid less than workers. Or perhaps report on a murder suspect seen hundreds of miles away from a murder scene during the supposed death. Do you focus on the suspect's obvious alibi? Or do you point the camera at the fact he was meeting with the victim's wife, implying a motive for the suspect to hire an assassin or some such?

The game's moral intent is clear and I generally vibed with it. I'm not gonna say no to getting to expose corporate fraud.

Even so, it's hard not to feel like the game makes it... easy to be good. I kept anticipating a consequence for consistently siding with the little guy. The plot indicates that the company is losing a lot of donors over the course of my tenure. Yet, the paper also features record profits. I easily climb the ranks until I ultimately conclude my first playthrough as The Most Trusted Editor In The Country. The villains are defeated, the innocent saved, and the CEO smiles brightly as she declares that Journalism Is Saved. The Golden Ending. If I knew it was that easy to expose corruption, I would’ve gone for a degree in journalism.

A friend once teased me for supposedly getting angry that an ending was too happy. But that's not really what bothers me. I like happy endings. Love them, even. But I like for them to be earned. If everything goes squeaky-clean for the protagonists, it's hard to feel that the journey was ever at risk. Being good should be easy, but it's often not. It's not profitable to be a good person. I think it's important to be a good person because it's the right thing to do, not because you'll be rewarded for it.

The multiple endings do a lot to alleviate this feeling. You can choose to go full capitalist, promoting a financial conspiracy and making striking workers look like spoiled children. You feel like a scumbag, but you’re a rich scumbag by the end. The game is so disgusted with the prospect, there’s plenty of ways to bounce out of the boot-licking route. It's there where you get the sense of actual pushback from capitalist interests. Once you’ve gotten “donations” from interest groups, they’re all too happy to unsubscribe the second your articles deviate from the message they prefer.

Ending C is perhaps the messiest, as it warns against being too obvious about despising some rich fucks. The hammer comes down quickly, as your enemies surround you and force you into poverty with a flick of a pen. When you’re fighting against some scumbags, you gotta deliver the story carefully and thoughtfully. The public isn’t keen to believe in conspiracy and revealing all your cards overwhelms them. They won’t accept it. Slowly measuring out articles to turn the crowd to your favor is smarter, safer, and helps the conspiracy assume you know very little.

It’s a fascinating, purposeful little game. The translation is sometimes murky and the pacing can get a little strange, but I truly just vibed with it the entire game. A delight.

Neat!

I started P2 in September and instantly started riding high on the sheer Vibes. While Persona 1 struggled with its character relationships and nuances, Persona 2 absolutely excels. The opening minutes quickly establish your protagonist Tatsuya, the troubled punk at odds with the systems around him and how to function in daily life. Seven Sisters High is an odd school, as students fawn over their incredible principal as some sort of deity. His words are law, and people who exist outside the established authority are outsiders at best and threats at worst. Instantly, the game’s theme is established. The Accepted Truth is the Forever Truth among the population, no matter how ludicrous or unfair it may be. The power of rumors aids authority, as people avoid the unknown in favor of their safe, existing systems.

The other cast fill out the usual archetypes, but with compelling grounds. Lisa/Ginko is the overly attached crush, but that relationship is inherently built on a complicated framework. Lisa wants attention, but she doesn’t want it attached to her status as a foreigner. She’s yearning for something profound and sincere, but her teenage brain can only interpret it through base pleasures and drives. Tatsuya is nice and seemingly daring, so he’s a vessel for those wants. Reaching a real understanding of her needs requires her to evolve her understanding of the world and herself. She learns about herself when she learns about others. It's an excellent dynamic.

Eikichi/Michel often falls into the typical Dumb Bro role. Ryuji, Yosuke, Junpei, all taking their cues from him. Unlike the more traditionally attractive characters, the game isn’t all that interested in examining Eikichi’s abusive home. One character facing a specter of their complicated parental relationship is a serious, heart-wrenching affair. Eikichi encountering his stern, violent father is a joke. A laugh track at Eikichi’s expense, no big deal. It's an odd distinction and it's one that sticks out against the story’s heavy hitting scenes.

The other characters engage in their own personal soaps, with my returning beloved Yukino having evolved into a photography career after her school punk days. It's a great evolution of the character, and one that feels a little underserved. The first game never really engaged with Yukino’s punk life as anything more than a backstory, and it's a shame that the game doesn’t engage with how Yukino’s anti-authority streak likely influenced her current career choice. Maya, the protag of Eternal Punishment, is cool and considerate, while struggling with her own fragmented memories and resentments of traumas long past.


In October, I caught covid. Almost instantly, my motivation cratered as I struggled to progress much farther.

Stepping away from the game made it difficult to retain a lot of the facts and I ultimately just had to repeat what I did with Persona 1 and finally just watch the ending on youtube.

Which is a particular shame when this game absolutely whips when I’m playing it.

The biggest hurdle is the grind. The dungeons aren’t as purposeful as later entries, extending out game time with increasingly obtuse and unnecessary delays in plot advancement. The persona mechanic was certainly more freeing when any character can take on nearly any persona. But the game begins to expect certain survival tricks. If you aren’t picking from a very specific stock of persona with certain immunities, you’re essentially fucked at the end game. Grinding is your second best bet, followed by making the exact right choices at the exact right points in the game. Allowing yourself to miss a single missable upgrade can make any attempt at the final dungeons into a miserable slog with no clear route to success.

I guess the main thing I've learned is that writing only gets you so far with video games. If the mechanics are frustrating, people are only going to forgive so much in favorite of excellent storytelling. But if the mechanics are smooth and rewarding, people will forgive many more storytelling flaws. I'm not above admitting that about myself. I can accept the dark reflection, the shadow self. This is what Persona is all about.

Pretty neat that you can kill Hitler though.

cw: drugging, murder, general trashy rpgmaker horror

In between different realities and universes, sits The Maze. Managed by a mysterious Creator, the Maze holds a beautiful estate with a wealth of magic and opportunity. The Creator assigns the Overseer to watch over four nominees, all from different worlds. Pick one nominee to be King, to gain all that power. All they have to do is understand their fellow nominees, and then they'll be worthy.

The loop of the game is pretty straight-forward. Pick one of the four nominees, watch what they do, problems ensue. Time resets, try the next one. Its a little tedious, but the process works. In terms of gameplay, you're largely walking from location to location and observing scenes or avoiding death traps.

The four nominees fixate heavily on one personal flaw, all related to a deck of cards. Heart is fixated on love and loyalty. This makes him a steadfast ally in most routes, but a dangerous person to give power if he determines loyalty to one means another must be lost. Clover is fixated on happiness, regardless of where it comes from. The most efficient use of acquiring happiness in her mind is aggressively drugging the people around her. Becoming King of the Maze is primarily a method of gaining more Happiness Tools to her. She's a little jokerfied. Speaking of, Spade likes death. His superpower is insta-kill by touch. People suffering too long? They should die to be at peace. People in love? Love always ends, so they should die to avoid suffering. People eating some popcorn? Better die, so they don't have to live with running out of food. He's got a one-track mind.

But my stand-out favorite was Dia, queen bitch of queen bitch kingdom. Dia believes in power and greed. Take what you want so no one can take it from you. No matter which routes you take, Dia holds onto some importance. In Heart's route, their growing affection for each other directly correlates to Heart's defensive murder paranoia. In Spade's route, she keeps up a good fight against the man's rampage before she gets got. In Clover's route, the Overseer/player character is put out of commission by Clover's drug frenzy. The game swerves into Dia taking center stage. During her frequent temper tantrums, she's displayed her ability to turn anything into gold. As Clover starts throwing syringes left and right, Dia becomes the best equipped to instantly block Clover's Joker Medicine from breaking skin. She's the one that makes sure no one gets permanently Jokerfied and she's the one who's making the moves to save the day.

She also delivers incredible asshole lines, such as:

Dia: "I'm tired of your bullshit. Give me answers, now!"
Overseer, chained up and mute:
Dia: "I can't hear you, you're chained up."

I went into Dia's route expecting her to spiral into her own neurosis, presumably turning everyone into gold or some such. Instead... she makes real progress. She help in the kitchen, she finds lost items, and she does it all while being the Meanest Mean Girl ever. Even if her motives are purely to gain more power, she at least attempts to make a real effort that no one else manages.

Then Spade gets bored, starts killing people, and the Overseer declares this one was a wash too and Dia can't be king either.

Twerp.

I'm giving away the whole plot here, but the fact is that I'm probably one of five people on the planet who got this far. The game is... buggy. When each loop resets, the Overseer takes the nominees to a dinner table, where the player gets to select the next King. Except, the game bugs out and the screen goes black. The player has to fumble around in the dark to find where the nominees were sitting at the table, and then select them as the next king. Its not as difficult as it sounds, but to anyone with a lack of patience, that's kind of a major dealbreaker. Most players probably shut the game off forever, convinced there was no way to progress at all. I only discovered the truth through random clicking on the black screen, startled by the sudden "Select Dia for King?" prompt. Choosing yes brings the world back into focus and the game back on track. This happened every single loop.

What truly caught me off guard was the end result of finishing all the loops. After 20-30 minute episodes of murder rampages, I was expecting the final route to be a short affair rewarding your commitment.

Instead, the entire second (?) half of the game opens up.

The scope expands beyond the mansion I've spent 90 minutes in, as the squad outlines how the loops went and where to progress. Just talking to each other isn't working. The Overseer needs to personally travel to their worlds to understand their personal lives.

We jump from the 10 or so screens of the Maze to entire new settings with new aesthetics. Dia's money obsessed, debt riddled world where profit and proper IDs rule everything. Clover's quiet, miserable world where happiness is a commodity very few people can afford. And Spade's empty wasteland, utterly lacking in any future by the simple presence of Spade's existence.

And... well, hard to say what comes after that. After Spade placed me into a surprise boss battle, the game glitched. Spade's just gone. His timer to kill me vanished. I don't know where that kid is. My last non-current fight save was back in one of the loops. That's a good two hours of unskippable progress I'd need to get back.

This game is truly fascinating. There's so many odd, fun ideas thrown at the wall, many of them not properly considered. The core loop of learning about what each character will do for power, followed by learning what they do with their lives at home, is an arc that both succeeds and fails in the same breath. The character work is a bit edgy and silly, but in such a way that I can't help but find it endearing. And wrapping this package up is a tight little bow of game-breaking bugs.

I would love to return to this fascinating little passion project. This murky, broken little treasure that Blue Hour put their heart and soul into, even if reality and experience couldn't match their ambitions. No updates in years since the game's 2021 release. No YouTube video recapping the entire game, only one that covers the Clover route. I hope they still like the game they worked on. I doubt it. The profits don't look good and the passion seems to have wilted away. And there's only so much to defend when the game has this many problems.

Still. Maybe I like the mess.

Edit: I couldn't stop thinking about it, a final reload attempt fixed the issue and I hit credits five minutes later. Complaining works.

There's so many other bugs I didn't even think to mention. Dia's walking model wouldn't work in one room, leaving her gliding across the floor in her "sitting" pose. There's text in other languages that comes out as "JJJJJJJJJJJJJJ." And the final act's focus on the Overseer, a character I truly did not care about at any point compared to the other endearing weirdos, soured me at times. The Overseer's sudden ability to talk in the second act significantly hurts the writing, as he suddenly becomes the character who has to vocalize The Problem Solving. So much of the game's strength was characters futilely bashing heads as they fundamentally ignored the interior lives of the people around them. Suddenly, around Problem Solver Overseer, communication gets a lot easier and characters can recognize their own flaws in ways they couldn't before.

But I think what really hurts the game's finale is that Overseer is somehow blocked off from the game's central thesis. We are asked to understand these messy, flawed murderers. The game encourages us to see beyond their worst behavior and accept the nominees in spite of their flaws. But the Overseer is... dull. There's nothing messy to interrogate. His past is a mystery, the identity of the Creator is unclear. Its a story asking for empathy and understanding, and then it never provides the context for the main character's arc of facing the future. Its a baffling choice and one that is so easily avoided. As with much of the game's wider problems!

But even now, I can't help but think of all the effort Blue Hour put into the art. There's elaborate animations, dozens of cgs and intercutting images. They clearly excel at art, both pixel and hand-drawn and animated. Its in the programming and writing that the work clearly fumbles.

And the funny thing is... I was still charmed the whole way through. Every glitch, every purposeless speech, every odd little murder twist and its strange tragic backstory... I couldn't help but smile the whole time.

Silly, silly game.

I got covid twice in 2023 and the second bout was far worse than the first. Its possible, then, that my attempt to play Yakuza 6 in a week was a number of things. Ill-advised. Dangerously exhausting. Experience hampering. Unhealthy. Something like that. I tried to alternate days between this and Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn, but I truly hit a feeling of hatred to Yakuza I never reached before. I had started Y6 because I needed a vacation game. I needed the mindless repetition that I've found so soothing in previous entries. Instead, I hit one of my lowest existential lows I've ever hit. Taking five days away from it before I entered endgame was the correct move for me. I found joy again in the baseball minigame and I wrapped up the final boss with general positive outlook.

But with all that in mind, with all my understanding of how my illness and angst definitely impacted my mood and perception, I still kinda think this game isn't very good.

Hiroshima is a fun setting. Placing Yakuza in a small town is the sort of direction I'd want to see more from. Intimate little stories about locals and their daily troubles is a different vibe from the constant hustle and bustle of Kamurocho and I think its a good place for the emotions of this franchise to go. Yet, the substories don't really lean into that intimacy. The wider story about the power of the Shipbuilding Company and its impact on the local economy, that's good meat! But shockingly, when I think of Yakuza stories about tight-knit communities, the Yakuza 3 substories easily outpaces Yakuza 6's just sort of banal local oddities. There's some fun gems, but its hard to feel like that they add to defining Hiroshima. Kamurocho is a place where anything can happen. Transplanting the high concept substories into Hiroshima without putting in some work into defining the daily life of the setting sort of takes me out of the process.

The minigames of Y6 can't help but feel weaker in other aspects. The hostess dates have shrunk in complexity and scope. In previous entries, hostess dates followed a steady path. You gain hearts, you build trust, and you gain short conversations about the personal life of the hostess. There's an arc to unravel. In Y6, every conversation is randomized in all your interactions, regardless of your heart rankings with the women. As a result, there's no real sense of progression or growing trust. You can learn about hobbies or favorite foods, but you can't learn about past traumas or insecurities. One of the hostesses is a professional wrestler, a storyline that only amounts to "I must keep fighting for my fans." I dislike criticizing something for what it isn't, but previous hostess minigames would often involve subplots with rivals or evil boyfriends or family troubles, slowly padded out over different dates. The hostess minigames were always a completionist obligation for me more than anything, but striping down the story advancement only made the process more tedious rather than less. What am I advancing towards if there's nothing interesting to talk about until the end?

This feeling of absence permeates through Yakuza 6's main story. For what's supposed to be an attempt to wrap up Kiryu's story, the game is shockingly disinterested in revisiting much of the franchise's history. This isn't always a dealbreaker. Yakuza is a soap opera, the rules change depending on what's narratively convenient. Sure, Kiryu could meet with the Florist of Sai to uncover the entire plot of the game. But that wouldn't allow for the game's wider story to unfold. Thus, Yakuza 6 kind of just pretends the Florist of Sai doesn't exist.

There's other areas where the game abandons different parts of the franchise history. The cast of Yakuza 3 get very little focus, with the Ryudo family nonexistent and the Morning Glory orphans quickly vanishing as the plot kicks off. There's a baseball minigame that doesn't even think of referencing the baseball protag Shinada of Yakuza 5. Entire sections of Kamurocho are suddenly blocked off in ways they never were before.

But most frustrating to me is the general arc of Haruka. Its hard not to feel like the franchise didn't know what to do with Haruka after Yakuza 2. In a lot of ways, the devs often struggle to fit a whole woman in their minds. Women are Lovers, Mothers, or Daughters. Haruka of Yakuza 1 and 2 was a sharp, savvy young girl who enjoyed sneaking into gambling dens and playing dangerous odds. Yakuza 3 and 4 demonstrate a dramatic shift as Haruka becomes more of a caretaker around the Morning Glory Orphanage. Yakuza 5 toys with the idea that Haruka still possesses that savvy edge, but its not behavior she's allowed to display frequently. She expresses it in soft, passive kindness towards everyone around her. She doesn't get to fight with the big boys. She sits off to the side. This isn't to say Haruka's character only has value when she's as violent as the men. But its hard not to feel like she's been cordoned off from the main action and shoved into a box.

Yakuza 6 doesn't change the trajectory. Haruka gets coma'd, shunted aside as Kiryu raises her surprise son. The game skips over anything dangerous like seeing Haruka pursue a romantic relationship. We're given scenes that indicate when Haruka would have gotten pregnant, but its still hard to imagine her as a woman taking ownership of her own desires and relationship aspirations. Even now, the game leaves me uncomfortable saying the flat out fact: Haruka is a grown woman who had sex. That's textual and inoffensive. Yet Haruka is still so defined as the Wise Daughter, its impossible to square that circle in my head that Haruka has any kind of sexual desire or longing for companionship. By the time she's woken up from her coma, she's fully ready to exist as The Mother, the third kind of woman that can exist. The game can't handle Haruka leaving the role of Daughter and into something more complete, but it also firmly believes she must eventually become a Mother. So that second stage, that second kind of woman that exists in the Yakuza universe, is shoved into a coma box where no one can see her. If you don't show the step between Daughter and Mother, you don't have to think about it. And Haruka can remain as innocent and pure as the game needs her to be.

Endgame spoiler: Its so fucking weird that Kiryu's last letter is to Daigo.

I love everything Kiryu says in that scene. I love that he acknowledges that he dealt Daigo a bad hand. I love that he recognizes how his inability to think ahead has damaged the world around him. I love that he admits he's neglected his loved ones in the pursuit of some pointless isolating honor. I love that he calls Daigo his son.

But he says all this while Haruka is in the same room, while he still refuses to call her his daughter too. His last letter isn't to Haruka or even the other kids he's raising. He repeats that Haruto is not his grandson. In both Yakuza 3 and 6, he explains that he takes care of Haruka, but repeatedly denies any claim that she's his kid. What's the distinction? Why claim otherwise? Is it to keep Kiryu from truly being defined as a single dad instead of a cool action guy? But why have him insist upon this in the same moment as him gently rocking a baby to sleep? Given Kiryu's monologue about fatherhood to Daigo, one has to assume there's self-awareness here. Kiryu's core flaw is his inability to choose one life. He can't fully leave the yakuza, he can't fully commit to being a parent. Its clearly something he enjoys doing! But he's so caught up in his own mistakes, he never allows himself to exist in the present.

The joy of Yakuza, to me, is in how its disparate elements clash together. Comedy and drama in a chaotic mix, bringing out the best in each other and advancing the narrative in such a specific, confusing tone. But sometimes, its soap opera sensibilities leave me cold. Despite all the ways it puts its whole heart into something, there's so many examples of where you can feel the hesitation. Where you can feel the points that they held back. And when comparing the sheer gusto of the franchise's ambition to these moments of anxiety and regression, it just makes those flaws all the more obvious.

CW: emotional abuse, mental illness, suicidal tendencies, transphobia

In my youth, I had a pretty eclectic friend group. Bisexual theater friend who put too much of herself into relationships. A trans boy who loved to spout Sherlock "I'm a high-functioning sociopath" logic gotchas. A gamergate pilled "I'm the resident asshole and that's fun instead of exhausting" dude. An energetic party hound who's since come out as a trans man and anarchist. Straight girl who bumped her car into a lightpost every week and ambushed me with a singing invitation to prom the day before I left town on a trip, never talked to me again after I turned her down. Myself, awkward kid who was still figuring out Gender and couldn't quite figure out why I was so jealous that several of my friends got to be girls.

Also, my at-the-time girlfriend, K. Variety of mental health issues, some of which I share, but the major centerpiece being her schizophrenia. You learn a lot about the reality of things with a personal example, rather than a series of stereotypes. You learn about exact symptoms, exact dangers, exact methods of treatment. You learn about how people are people. You learn how to look people in the eyes after someone's done something awful and you can see, you can just see how they want to be good but they just can't get there. You can see in their eyes that they know they're making the wrong decisions, but they just can't figure out how to make the right ones.

You also learn when someone's decisions have nothing to do with their illness.

The lead up to dating K was a little fraught. Her and the Sherlock Guy had a messy break-up, resulting in her later belief that all trans men were The Same Guy Out To Hurt Her Specifically. Things worsened, friends split apart over petty arguments. She told me that talking to me was the only time her schizophrenia seemed to die down. I internalized this as evidence that I had to be the Thing Keeping K Happy. I spent the next year doing everything possible to focus on K's mental well-being. She told me that one day she was going to vanish from everyone's life rather than let people see her conditions worsen, which put an... uncomfortable sense of dread throughout any long week without contact.

When she dumped me, I was... relieved. I was off the hook. I didn't have to be responsible anymore. I accepted it with grace. So much grace that K felt perfectly willing to talk to me about all the other people she had been talking to on dating apps during our relationship.

I stayed friends with K for several years, much to the concern of my newer friends. She'd lash out whenever people weren't there to support her, but could never be bothered to help out other friends. I was once threatened by her stepdad when helping her move out.

Her transphobia got worse so I certainly wasn't comfortable coming out. Her life got better, she needed me less. She got more conservative, used personal stories of me being a poor partner to show how she was always right and I was wrong. Other stuff I don't even remember but close friends can point to easily as a time of major stress in my life. Haven't talked to her since 2020. Hope she's doing well. Glad that we don't talk anymore.

But even years later, I keep all notification sounds on every device turned off. Notifications and ringing and buzzers inherently carried a sense of Danger. A sense that its entirely possible someone needs my help, right then and there. And if I don't answer quick enough, I've destroyed someone's happiness. That's a feeling I'm not gonna be able to shed. Sometimes, I can't be as present in the lives of my loved ones as I want to be. Part of the space I use to help others is... burned out, even years later. I hope it can be charged to full again. I want it to be charged to full again.

I guess what I'm really trying to build to here, is...

I might have the most interesting history with Edna and Harvey of all time.

When you're looking for Good Depictions of Mental Illness for a loved one, you've got pretty slim pickings. And Edna and Harvey is a pretty fucking slim picking. Goofy, poor researched depictions of "hearing voices" or "hallucinations", all played for laughs rather than sincere empathy. Cynical and unpleasant views of normal people. Downright offensive depictions of disability. Edna and Harvey has got it all.

But when the six of us dipshit teens sat down to play it together, it was bizarrely electric. Watching Lilli skip her way from murder to murder, forever trapped in a seemingly naive and innocent worldview, all narrated with dry, sarcastic wit. Daedalic Entertainment is, by all accounts, a morally and creatively bankrupt company (the racist jokes in Deponia, the misogyny of Deponia, the characters of Deponia, the game Deponia, Gollum). Yet Harvey's New Eyes manages to weave genuine entertainment through its mean-spirited worldview that none of their other games could ever quite match. We laughed. We guffawed. We played together from 6 pm to 3 am, exploring the entire game together. Lilli Defeats Schizophrenia, freeing herself from both the conformity of society and the internal issues of her own mind. Its not a particularly useful thesis to any actual crisis of mental illness, but it works for teenagers.

Its weird, when you and someone have gone separate ways. Its for the best. Its the whole purpose of growing up. Leaving behind the things that hurt you. But you can't escape the memories. All the bits of information you've collected that only have value to yourself. All the birthdays and favorite toys and fandoms that are permanently associated with a fixture of the past. There's nothing you can do to forgot those moments is just let time pass. The things you don't value slip away and what you're left with is what carries you into the future.

For better or for worse, I'll always have the memory of Harvey's New Eyes.