by kato’s own admission, radical dreamers is an unfinished bastard child. developed in just three months and released on the ill-fated satellaview, its no grand revelation to say that it made an unremarkable blimp on his career and the general public. the game has yet to see a rerelease in over two decades and it’s a miracle it isn’t lost media entirely. even acknowledging less-than-legal outlets, it’s only perceived as that weird, nonessential, complementary work to its bigger brothers. i’d be posing if i didn’t make it explicitly clear that i came to dreamers for those same, enigmatic qualities - if not for the irrevocable attachment it has to a game many hold close to heart i feel as if the western world may have passed it up entirely.
but i don’t say any of this begrudgingly, it makes it fascinating even, how dreamers takes advantage of our nostalgia for trigger. radical dreamers was drafted hot off the back of trigger’s release, a period where kato was in an emotional slump. thusly, dreamers exists far removed from the juvenile enthusiasm characteristic of his past works. if trigger was a game about how opening up about our personal background and motives to loved ones can allow us to, collectively, strive towards a more brilliant future, radical dreamers is that future. a future where not everybody got to realize their desires and the indifferent thread of time has cursed them with regrets and woes regardless of their achievements. for the better part of its runtime, you’re trudging through rugged corridors after rugged corridors aided by people with baggage too heavy and complicated to plainly clarify, complimented by an ambient to downright melancholic mitsuda score. the manor is an emotionally draining hub, tasking you to backtrack through samey halls and text crawls you’ve seen three times over only to be met with characters wallowing in regret and cynicism once you finally reach your destination. made worse with some only being here to reinforce the notion that there’s no future for kid nor her gang of drifters - a pessimism that she long since deeply internalized.
yet, despite the burden this milieu is actively afflicting on kid’s already vulnerable psyche, she still finds a way to banter with the party every opportunity she gets. never getting a chance to sit down and process her emotions being surrounded in a never static environment, she attempts to make the best of the cards she was dealt and drifts on towards her ultimate objective - not knowing rather it will result in some final emotional catharticism or rather it’s even accomplishable. it’s not sincerity coming from a place of previously reached self-actualization a la trigger, it’s coming from a place of accepting the regrets of yesterday and fears of tomorrow in an earnest pursuit of that final, personal pillar. even surge never quite stops fawning over kid whilst submerged in the bleakness, and while magil never comes around to the two he still holds that fundamental will to live. the aforementioned chrono trigger links don’t ever dare to steal the spotlight from dreamers’ established mood and themes, instead opting to recontextualize what we know of these characters and their tribulations. it’s the only sequel the kato of 96 could have envisioned, a sequel that firmly stands as its own being, sometimes recounting nostalgic yet somber memories of days gone in a yearning to find solace in a future unknown and soon to arrive.
in some parts, it feels like radical dreams was meant to be abandoned, with the narrative being framed as the ramblings of a distant relative, lost and deceased. it’s a dream cast ashore, its vestiges dismantled and lifted to realize aspirations of greater prestige. but, i just can’t help but marvel at what kato perceives as some pebble, a pebble crafted with so much passion, so much emotion, so many dreams only for it to be simply forgotten.
but i don’t say any of this begrudgingly, it makes it fascinating even, how dreamers takes advantage of our nostalgia for trigger. radical dreamers was drafted hot off the back of trigger’s release, a period where kato was in an emotional slump. thusly, dreamers exists far removed from the juvenile enthusiasm characteristic of his past works. if trigger was a game about how opening up about our personal background and motives to loved ones can allow us to, collectively, strive towards a more brilliant future, radical dreamers is that future. a future where not everybody got to realize their desires and the indifferent thread of time has cursed them with regrets and woes regardless of their achievements. for the better part of its runtime, you’re trudging through rugged corridors after rugged corridors aided by people with baggage too heavy and complicated to plainly clarify, complimented by an ambient to downright melancholic mitsuda score. the manor is an emotionally draining hub, tasking you to backtrack through samey halls and text crawls you’ve seen three times over only to be met with characters wallowing in regret and cynicism once you finally reach your destination. made worse with some only being here to reinforce the notion that there’s no future for kid nor her gang of drifters - a pessimism that she long since deeply internalized.
yet, despite the burden this milieu is actively afflicting on kid’s already vulnerable psyche, she still finds a way to banter with the party every opportunity she gets. never getting a chance to sit down and process her emotions being surrounded in a never static environment, she attempts to make the best of the cards she was dealt and drifts on towards her ultimate objective - not knowing rather it will result in some final emotional catharticism or rather it’s even accomplishable. it’s not sincerity coming from a place of previously reached self-actualization a la trigger, it’s coming from a place of accepting the regrets of yesterday and fears of tomorrow in an earnest pursuit of that final, personal pillar. even surge never quite stops fawning over kid whilst submerged in the bleakness, and while magil never comes around to the two he still holds that fundamental will to live. the aforementioned chrono trigger links don’t ever dare to steal the spotlight from dreamers’ established mood and themes, instead opting to recontextualize what we know of these characters and their tribulations. it’s the only sequel the kato of 96 could have envisioned, a sequel that firmly stands as its own being, sometimes recounting nostalgic yet somber memories of days gone in a yearning to find solace in a future unknown and soon to arrive.
in some parts, it feels like radical dreams was meant to be abandoned, with the narrative being framed as the ramblings of a distant relative, lost and deceased. it’s a dream cast ashore, its vestiges dismantled and lifted to realize aspirations of greater prestige. but, i just can’t help but marvel at what kato perceives as some pebble, a pebble crafted with so much passion, so much emotion, so many dreams only for it to be simply forgotten.