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This review contains spoilers
Typing out some quick initial thoughts after completing my first two routes today.
Playing this game on DS has a very tactile satisfaction to it. Reading ADV text on the top-screen and NVL text on the bottom has such a nice flow making everything a lot more fun to read. I really enjoyed how the game introduced it's FMVs through the first sequence of the game. The glass of the window shattering felt really exciting and grabbed my attention very well for the game's first escape room. There's a lot of instances of the game having more motion than I'd expect out of a visual novel, I adore how the sprites for the characters are animated and that really endeared me to all of them before I got to know much about them.
The main issue I was having with my first playthrough is that every time Santa or Lotus would monologue like "OoOoOoOOO~ Trust nobodyy!!" It felt like somewhat forced-tension. I never got the feeling that any of the characters had a motive to do anything but cooperate, doubly so because of the death of the 9th Player.
That is, until I reached my first ending.
Most of my choices thus far were motivated by trying to interact with as much of the characters as possible as safely as possible. Though, it seems Junpei had ended up with a bias for Clover by the end of my run. After exiting my final room, the rest of the characters were crowding around discussing their discovery of the 9th door. Up until this point I had assumed that each route would end with a different group of characters exiting through the 9th door and receiving a partial-answer to the game's unanswered questions. My expectations seemed to be adding up, seeing as 1 + 8 + 5 + 4 = Decimal Root 9 so I assumed things would wrap up rather smoothly and I'd get to move on to a new route.
Until Clover asked about the final room left unchecked. Room #2. As I got the dialogue option, I was thinking it'd just be another escape room to quickly knock out before finishing up the first route, so I absentmindedly went ahead with Clover's plan.
Four people, excluding Junpei, walk into an elevator, only one walks out.
Although I'd already been enjoying the game, this is where it started clicking. I had made the wrong assumptions about the game, expecting to be able to treat each individual route as a complete story, this ending punished me for that false assumption. Clover, who seemed to be no more than a side-character, an unremarkable one at that, murders Junpei and everyone else because I, as a player, didn't leave no stone unturned. On my 2nd run, I've been making choices I'd only make because of my knowledge of my first run, and I'm realizing the metanarrative the game is attempting to weave wherein the player is a stand-in for the "collective unconscious/crystalization of glycerin" themes it established in my first run.
Playing this game on DS has a very tactile satisfaction to it. Reading ADV text on the top-screen and NVL text on the bottom has such a nice flow making everything a lot more fun to read. I really enjoyed how the game introduced it's FMVs through the first sequence of the game. The glass of the window shattering felt really exciting and grabbed my attention very well for the game's first escape room. There's a lot of instances of the game having more motion than I'd expect out of a visual novel, I adore how the sprites for the characters are animated and that really endeared me to all of them before I got to know much about them.
The main issue I was having with my first playthrough is that every time Santa or Lotus would monologue like "OoOoOoOOO~ Trust nobodyy!!" It felt like somewhat forced-tension. I never got the feeling that any of the characters had a motive to do anything but cooperate, doubly so because of the death of the 9th Player.
That is, until I reached my first ending.
Most of my choices thus far were motivated by trying to interact with as much of the characters as possible as safely as possible. Though, it seems Junpei had ended up with a bias for Clover by the end of my run. After exiting my final room, the rest of the characters were crowding around discussing their discovery of the 9th door. Up until this point I had assumed that each route would end with a different group of characters exiting through the 9th door and receiving a partial-answer to the game's unanswered questions. My expectations seemed to be adding up, seeing as 1 + 8 + 5 + 4 = Decimal Root 9 so I assumed things would wrap up rather smoothly and I'd get to move on to a new route.
Until Clover asked about the final room left unchecked. Room #2. As I got the dialogue option, I was thinking it'd just be another escape room to quickly knock out before finishing up the first route, so I absentmindedly went ahead with Clover's plan.
Four people, excluding Junpei, walk into an elevator, only one walks out.
Although I'd already been enjoying the game, this is where it started clicking. I had made the wrong assumptions about the game, expecting to be able to treat each individual route as a complete story, this ending punished me for that false assumption. Clover, who seemed to be no more than a side-character, an unremarkable one at that, murders Junpei and everyone else because I, as a player, didn't leave no stone unturned. On my 2nd run, I've been making choices I'd only make because of my knowledge of my first run, and I'm realizing the metanarrative the game is attempting to weave wherein the player is a stand-in for the "collective unconscious/crystalization of glycerin" themes it established in my first run.
I wanted to get into FE with a less side-content heavy game so I could enjoy playing with permadeath more, so I went for the game with Roy because I guess he seemed cool. It's really funny how a game so snappy and quick to play can feel so... Boring?? I played like five minutes and Roy was way too boring to continue playing LOL. Every line of dialogue from Roy reads to me as "Okay, sure. Let me play Fire Emblem already." It's like he's a FEH player born in the wrong time-period. I decided to make Blazing Blade my first FE instead but maybe I'll give it a second chance someday.
When I was younger, I would have automatically disregarded something with pre-rendered backgrounds and tank-controls, but my recent fascination with CRT-filters made me excited to challenge that idea. I had never heard of the game before and that excited me, I prefer to play games with no preconcieved ideas of what they "should" be.
Galerians quickly establishes itself as an uncomfortable, anxiety-inducing experience with its oppressive sound-design. While I walked around the first area to get used to the controls, I stumbled into a research document listing out drugs and their side-effects. The droning background noise went completely silent, only interrupted by an uncomfortably loud BEEP as I turned the page. Because I didn't immediately process it as a tutorial, I read and absorbed every word.
After a bit of wandering around, I was ready to progress and stepped into the next area, which immediately put Rion in the "Short"-state mentioned in the document I read before. Excited to immediately be so powerful, I cornered the scientist attacking me as he cowered. The gore in this game has such a punch to it, seeing your enemies sprawled out on the floor with Rion standing over them feels so violent and visceral, heightened by the prerendered backgrounds providing sort of a directorial feeling to every kill.
(WIP)