This was my second playthrough of the game after going through the original way back when it was released. The first time around, I was really surprised, and I wondered how my impressions would be the second time around once the element of surprise was removed. I still ended up really enjoying this game.
What I really picked up on this playthrough is how much this game was a satire of the "Sad Dad" genre of games. The game has a lot of fun playing with tropes that, at the time, weren't tropes at all. Characters unload a litany of trauma and tragedy to an almost silly degree. Flashbacks from failed bulldozer drivers and inept assassins accompany fights. Most enemies have hilarious final dialog at their final deathblow. Six years later, critics would be whipping themselves in penitence of executing goons in Last of Us 2 while I had been mourning the death of The Shocklord at my hands for years.
I found that the humor of this game still worked well even on a second playthrough. The humor ranges from silly to downright vile. It doesn't waste an opportunity to put a joke or a gag in a character or area. The jokes are also usually pretty short, so even if one doesn't work for you it's over in a moment and it's on to the next joke. When it comes to humor in games I tend to like this approach the most.
Even though humor is so prevalent this game is most known for how grim and dark its story can be come. The trigger warning list on this game would be a mile a long as it deals with issues of addiction and abuse (physical, verbal, and sexual). It can come as a bit of a shock when the game decides to get serious because it goes so deep into it, but what I appreciate about the humor is that I feel these serious topics are never the butt of any joke.
Are these really serious topics handled with grace and tact? As someone with some personal experience with addiction its a hard thing to translate into a game, and I often wonder if we should really even attempt to. I do like how this game handles it though. The abuse elements feel a little cliche, but maybe that's the result of a decade of every other game being about trauma so that the topic itself is worn thin and reduced to schlock.
The game also has a unique look and sound to it. The character sprites I love. They're a mixture of Earthbound but have this almost doodle quality to them. Placing the game on a 2D plane makes it stand out from the zillions of other RPG Maker games out there. The soundtrack is frenetic and jumps wildly between genres. It is at times goofy, groovy, and harsh.
The gameplay also has some interesting mechanics. Party members can differ in how they play. Some characters play by inputting combo commands a la Xenogears. And just like Xenogears this gets old after about 10 minutes, but thankfully there's only a few areas in the game where there are random encounters. There's a lot of interesting emergent gameplay elements at play too. The second time around in this game I was definitely playing it just for the world and the story. The RPG portion was underwhelming.
This is a really special game and even though I have some slight gripes I can't help but love this disturbing and also delightful game.
What I really picked up on this playthrough is how much this game was a satire of the "Sad Dad" genre of games. The game has a lot of fun playing with tropes that, at the time, weren't tropes at all. Characters unload a litany of trauma and tragedy to an almost silly degree. Flashbacks from failed bulldozer drivers and inept assassins accompany fights. Most enemies have hilarious final dialog at their final deathblow. Six years later, critics would be whipping themselves in penitence of executing goons in Last of Us 2 while I had been mourning the death of The Shocklord at my hands for years.
I found that the humor of this game still worked well even on a second playthrough. The humor ranges from silly to downright vile. It doesn't waste an opportunity to put a joke or a gag in a character or area. The jokes are also usually pretty short, so even if one doesn't work for you it's over in a moment and it's on to the next joke. When it comes to humor in games I tend to like this approach the most.
Even though humor is so prevalent this game is most known for how grim and dark its story can be come. The trigger warning list on this game would be a mile a long as it deals with issues of addiction and abuse (physical, verbal, and sexual). It can come as a bit of a shock when the game decides to get serious because it goes so deep into it, but what I appreciate about the humor is that I feel these serious topics are never the butt of any joke.
Are these really serious topics handled with grace and tact? As someone with some personal experience with addiction its a hard thing to translate into a game, and I often wonder if we should really even attempt to. I do like how this game handles it though. The abuse elements feel a little cliche, but maybe that's the result of a decade of every other game being about trauma so that the topic itself is worn thin and reduced to schlock.
The game also has a unique look and sound to it. The character sprites I love. They're a mixture of Earthbound but have this almost doodle quality to them. Placing the game on a 2D plane makes it stand out from the zillions of other RPG Maker games out there. The soundtrack is frenetic and jumps wildly between genres. It is at times goofy, groovy, and harsh.
The gameplay also has some interesting mechanics. Party members can differ in how they play. Some characters play by inputting combo commands a la Xenogears. And just like Xenogears this gets old after about 10 minutes, but thankfully there's only a few areas in the game where there are random encounters. There's a lot of interesting emergent gameplay elements at play too. The second time around in this game I was definitely playing it just for the world and the story. The RPG portion was underwhelming.
This is a really special game and even though I have some slight gripes I can't help but love this disturbing and also delightful game.