"i wasn't expecting political commentary in my JSR-" bro when was the last time you played JSR

tbf counting what jsr delivers thematically as "commentary" is an extremely low bar

i don't think a game needs to be explicitly story driven for its themes, environmental design and setting to have political weight

yeah as someone who has barely played jsr it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it's literally stick-it-to-the-man: the game

I 100% agree with you @JaxMagnetic and @Chandler, my point is more that I don't think JSR really elevates its commentary past "corporations are evil" and "the police are evil." there's elements of "the police are over-militarized," which is conveyed through the enemy design and variety in the first chapter, and "corporations seek to eliminate oppositional expression," which is played with initially with the "21st century project" before taking a heavy backseat to goji rokkaku's individual mania and the blase "money can't make you happy" ending. it's not to say the commentary doesn't exist, but with the game reiterating very simple and well-worn concepts without expanding on them, I'd argue that the political trappings exist to legitimize and enhance the aesthetic framework of the product rather than the other way around (a aesthetic framework crafted to comment on societal structures). that's sort of a chicken-or-the-egg question, so it's honestly up to interpretation on which is true. I think the commentary exists regardless, but when I say "low bar" I mean that it isn't novel, nuanced, or likely to do anything other than reinforce previously held beliefs.

sorry for hijacking your comments @Simsinnati... I can't find a story summary for solar ash so I can't really determine what the game is even trying to comment on...

all i know about solar ash is bits and pieces i've picked up from a podcast i listen to. p sure it's plot isn't even 'good' so i don't blame OP for their take, i just think the comparison was bizarre.

@pangburn you're right in the sense that its anti-establishment themes don't do much more than act as window-dressing. but it's there, and there's a shocking number of people online (esp in boomerish dreamcast/6th gen fandoms) who think JSR has no message, let alone some knuckleheads who think the game is pro-cop and you're the bad guy

@Jax that's a fair assessment; I've been exposed to those scenes relatively little since I'm generally cloistered in leftist online spaces

Well I wasn't expecting so much discourse on what was just kind of a quick, throw away review, lol.
I has been a long while since I've actually played JSR, so what immediately sticks out about it to me in my memory is the gameplay and art/musical style. But I suppose it is fairly political as a game, as pointed out.
To clarify more of why I didn't enjoy the story for Solar Ash, the main plot is a fairly simple scifi story, which was fine. But then in all of the side characters and story logs, almost all of it is heavy handed political commentary, some of it about the climate crisis, some of it very "down with the 1%". And it's not necessarily the message that I have a problem with, I think it's more the way it's told, and the heavy handedness of it. On top of that, I think I was just disappointed to see it from the people who made Hyperlight Drifter. One of my favorite aspects of Hyperlight was how the story was told entirely without words, a lot of it is environmental. It was very stylistic and a large part of what makes that game memorable to me. Solar Ash has a lot of similarly strong environmental story telling, but then they go out of their way to spell out what's happening through dialogue and hidden text logs, a lot of which I didn't feel were very well written, and it just pulled me out of the world every time it happened.
Again, mostly enjoyed this game, and you can completely ignore the story and have a good time with it. I was mostly just disappointed with the small changes the studio made in narrative style from their previous game, and that the changes weren't done well in my opinion.