Much of Matsuno's work as a writer situates the player as a man in desperately over his head, fighting despite impossible odds through an impenetrable spiderweb of antagonists, all to achieve a less-than-ideal outcome. His later games gave these inscrutable struggles meaning through clearer human moments: take Ramza's hard lesson about noble versus commoner morality via the death of Teta, or the surrealist nightmare assassination of Ashley Riot's wife and son. Catiua is meant to serve that role here but, at least in the Chaos route, is not well-written enough to work as the emotional counterweight that this very dense narrative needs. The entirety of her personality is that she's angry at Denam for... ignoring her? As if he doesn't have more pressing matters to attend to. It only takes one tantrum of several to realize that she's static, not a character so much as bait to move Denam through the plot with some measure of uncertainty about what he's doing. Maybe she is more compelling in the other routes, but frankly, I was so burned out on all of the filler fights and tedious side content past hour 60 or so that it'll be a long time before I World back into them to see.

It's impossible to miss what a barnstormer this must have been in 1995, but by Chapter 4 it reveals itself as deeply flawed on many fronts. Unless you're a capital-O obsessive, you'll enjoy it more if you skip over the Shrines, Palace of the Dead, etc.