esoteric_nebula
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93 Reviews liked by esoteric_nebula
I'm enjoying this (it's just SMTV again and I liked that game) but it's pretty monkey's paw that I finally have a cross-platform version of SMTV that looks and runs nice but... has all the usual superfluous Atlus rerelease stuff? The first boss on Hard was an actual wall you had to strategise around in the original, in this you've already gotten so much extra shit that it goes down with no issues
Haunts just randomly giving you 3 stat points every 15 seconds... Buncha new side quests, omagatokis, demons. Reusable Aogami essences. Guest characters. No more level scaling. It doesn't really feel like the game was rebalanced around this, the first boss is still level 15 and uses the same skills. This isn't even getting into strange "quality of life" changes (why do abscesses not block the minimap anymore?)
In love with the new music, and there are some features I'm digging (the little magatsuhi ziplines that interconnect parts of the map, auto-skill autobattle, etc). It's just that this is very much Persona 5 Royal or Strange Journey Redux. If you want a version of Persona 5 that doesn't play itself, the original is stuck on PS3/PS4. Likewise, I'm increasingly feeling like the version of SMTV I really enjoyed cutting my teeth on is stuck on Switch.
It's still fun! I was just kinda hoping this wouldn't have the usual Atlus rerelease problem of messing up game balance, less is more and so on. Ah well
Haunts just randomly giving you 3 stat points every 15 seconds... Buncha new side quests, omagatokis, demons. Reusable Aogami essences. Guest characters. No more level scaling. It doesn't really feel like the game was rebalanced around this, the first boss is still level 15 and uses the same skills. This isn't even getting into strange "quality of life" changes (why do abscesses not block the minimap anymore?)
In love with the new music, and there are some features I'm digging (the little magatsuhi ziplines that interconnect parts of the map, auto-skill autobattle, etc). It's just that this is very much Persona 5 Royal or Strange Journey Redux. If you want a version of Persona 5 that doesn't play itself, the original is stuck on PS3/PS4. Likewise, I'm increasingly feeling like the version of SMTV I really enjoyed cutting my teeth on is stuck on Switch.
It's still fun! I was just kinda hoping this wouldn't have the usual Atlus rerelease problem of messing up game balance, less is more and so on. Ah well
Life is Strange
2015
Huh, maybe all those times I said, “I really wish I was a girl like Max and Chloe,” during my first playthrough of this game when I was 12 weren’t random or meaningless after all.
Animal Well
2024
Heartbreaking: Unfunny Youtuber has crucial involvement in a game you've enjoyed
Animal Well
2024
Animal Well is a modern classic that will be remembered as one of the best of the genre.
A game that is surprisingly deep, and very satisfying to explore. Each room is exquisitely crafted, full of detail and secrets. Every bit of knowledge gained tends to lead to new discoveries - the amount of Eureka! moments are fantastic!
I played many Metroidvanias, and this game has maybe the most original set of player tools I've seen in the genre. Moreover, each tool has multiple functions, and there's plenty of synergy between them and really feels like you can play however you want.
Having completed the game on official 100%, I still have a bunch of content to be discovered, and I can’t wait to see what secrets the community will uncover next.
10/10
A game that is surprisingly deep, and very satisfying to explore. Each room is exquisitely crafted, full of detail and secrets. Every bit of knowledge gained tends to lead to new discoveries - the amount of Eureka! moments are fantastic!
I played many Metroidvanias, and this game has maybe the most original set of player tools I've seen in the genre. Moreover, each tool has multiple functions, and there's plenty of synergy between them and really feels like you can play however you want.
Having completed the game on official 100%, I still have a bunch of content to be discovered, and I can’t wait to see what secrets the community will uncover next.
10/10
Sea of Stars
2023
Right out the gate: my boy Garl packs snacks and cracks backs. Respect on his name.
Here's the thing: we've all made Sea of Stars. We were younger, we loved something, we wanted to make something like it. The something we made was more derivative than not, less complete, less polished. But it was a labor of love, and there's a simple joy in stories that want to tell other stories.
Sea of Stars doesn't even attempt to hide its influences. It's a love letter to Chrono Trigger, filtered through modern game design that skews away from the ever increasing systems fetishism that currently haunts the JRPG space. It promises not to waste your time, to be streamlined, to not bloat stats or bog you down with endless random battles and to make those basic battles rise above the usual strategy of hitting the red thing with the blue spell and then following a formula to clear out the rest.
And for the most part? It succeeds. The game is brisk, breezy. Traversal areas, once cleared, have fewer encounters and plentiful shortcuts. Gear is fairly linear, almost always findable, buyable otherwise. Stats are kept well under control, the skills few but meaningful with none being strictly better. The world map is constrained, destinations easy to find. Traversal itself is fun, three-dimensional. Not revolutionary, but the verticality and the way it's used to hide secrets is a constant delight.
But this streamlined design isn't always for the best. The space provided by exploration and scale gives the narrative time to breathe, makes the world feel more alive. The swift pace makes active gameplay a nearly relentless onslaught. The story simply doesn't have the time it needs to rest, to give moments their due time.
Nonetheless: it has its moments, but those moments are fewer than they should be and tend to highlight the problem more than resolve it. But when things do slow down - the lovingly crafted town of Brisk, the emotional crux at the midpoint, Zale and Valere sitting on a bed and talking about their childhood - they tend to hit just right.
Speaking of the core duo: let's talk about those characters. They're a mixed bag, for sure. Pure high adventure, one being a tribute to the inspiring game, the main two being a bit too one note. One character, however, is the obvious emotional core, the true protagonist, and believe me when I say that they are pitch perfect. To talk about them is to spoil them, and getting to know them throughout the game was a highlight, so I'll leave it there. Beyond that: one character is essentially an internet meme. They go on to have a twist that makes them even more of one, and yet said twist is one of the best reveals in the game. Meanwhile, the tribute character became a quick personal favorite.
So what tips the scales? Art direction, for one. The music is stellar, the art direction irreproachable. Areas are lush, vibrant, engaging. Details are tucked into every corner, new environments are a delight. Virtually every song has multiple versions, and all are an absolute treat to listen to. The rapidfire progress is easier to take when it keeps serving up inventive enemies, varied biomes and new art.
And the combat. Remember that promise of basic combat that engages? Here the game truly shines. You have two gauges that feed into each other, timed hits that help but are far from necessary and a mana system that is split into short and long-term, with both encouraging you to balance your use of regular attacks and skills. There's no hoarding of resources between battles, no stockpiling items, and yet this is accomplished without the use of the usual full reset between fights (consider Chained Echoes or Final Fantasy XIII). The lock system forces tricky choices, rewarding careful players who think ahead, all while feeding back into those gauges.
So. A game with flaws. Too referential, too meta, too streamlined and far too reliant on its true ending, but with obvious love and the ability to hit the important notes just right. In the end your expectations will temper the experience. If you expect it to be your childhood classic or the second coming of JRPGs? You're going to walk away less than satisfied. But if you just want a bit of high adventure with lovely art direction, gorgeous music and consistently engaging gameplay? Then you're likely sitting on my side of the fence.
Here's the thing: we've all made Sea of Stars. We were younger, we loved something, we wanted to make something like it. The something we made was more derivative than not, less complete, less polished. But it was a labor of love, and there's a simple joy in stories that want to tell other stories.
Sea of Stars doesn't even attempt to hide its influences. It's a love letter to Chrono Trigger, filtered through modern game design that skews away from the ever increasing systems fetishism that currently haunts the JRPG space. It promises not to waste your time, to be streamlined, to not bloat stats or bog you down with endless random battles and to make those basic battles rise above the usual strategy of hitting the red thing with the blue spell and then following a formula to clear out the rest.
And for the most part? It succeeds. The game is brisk, breezy. Traversal areas, once cleared, have fewer encounters and plentiful shortcuts. Gear is fairly linear, almost always findable, buyable otherwise. Stats are kept well under control, the skills few but meaningful with none being strictly better. The world map is constrained, destinations easy to find. Traversal itself is fun, three-dimensional. Not revolutionary, but the verticality and the way it's used to hide secrets is a constant delight.
But this streamlined design isn't always for the best. The space provided by exploration and scale gives the narrative time to breathe, makes the world feel more alive. The swift pace makes active gameplay a nearly relentless onslaught. The story simply doesn't have the time it needs to rest, to give moments their due time.
Nonetheless: it has its moments, but those moments are fewer than they should be and tend to highlight the problem more than resolve it. But when things do slow down - the lovingly crafted town of Brisk, the emotional crux at the midpoint, Zale and Valere sitting on a bed and talking about their childhood - they tend to hit just right.
Speaking of the core duo: let's talk about those characters. They're a mixed bag, for sure. Pure high adventure, one being a tribute to the inspiring game, the main two being a bit too one note. One character, however, is the obvious emotional core, the true protagonist, and believe me when I say that they are pitch perfect. To talk about them is to spoil them, and getting to know them throughout the game was a highlight, so I'll leave it there. Beyond that: one character is essentially an internet meme. They go on to have a twist that makes them even more of one, and yet said twist is one of the best reveals in the game. Meanwhile, the tribute character became a quick personal favorite.
So what tips the scales? Art direction, for one. The music is stellar, the art direction irreproachable. Areas are lush, vibrant, engaging. Details are tucked into every corner, new environments are a delight. Virtually every song has multiple versions, and all are an absolute treat to listen to. The rapidfire progress is easier to take when it keeps serving up inventive enemies, varied biomes and new art.
And the combat. Remember that promise of basic combat that engages? Here the game truly shines. You have two gauges that feed into each other, timed hits that help but are far from necessary and a mana system that is split into short and long-term, with both encouraging you to balance your use of regular attacks and skills. There's no hoarding of resources between battles, no stockpiling items, and yet this is accomplished without the use of the usual full reset between fights (consider Chained Echoes or Final Fantasy XIII). The lock system forces tricky choices, rewarding careful players who think ahead, all while feeding back into those gauges.
So. A game with flaws. Too referential, too meta, too streamlined and far too reliant on its true ending, but with obvious love and the ability to hit the important notes just right. In the end your expectations will temper the experience. If you expect it to be your childhood classic or the second coming of JRPGs? You're going to walk away less than satisfied. But if you just want a bit of high adventure with lovely art direction, gorgeous music and consistently engaging gameplay? Then you're likely sitting on my side of the fence.
Lords of the Fallen
2023
Another Souls knock-off, only this time it's by a developer whose familiarity never went beyond "Top 10 Dark Souls Fails" videos.
Every combat encounter feels like it was designed around the most ha ha tee hee funny troll moments from those games. The second area, found just past Not Firelink, is a vertically oriented nightmare of cobbled together planks and rickety platforms, a veritable Blight Town filled with dudes hiding behind crates and corners waiting for you to pass by so that they can rush you and kick you off into an abyss. This was funny in Dark Souls because it happened once deep into the game by a big dumb skeleton, but it becomes annoying when it's happening ten times before you're able to make it to the third boss.
Mop things up there and you're off to... Another Blight Town! Only this time it does the Blight Town thing of having enemies constantly throw shit at you while you're stuck dealing with mobs. Where do you think you go after two whole Blight Towns? If you guessed "a poison swamp" then congratulations, you just won my copy of Lords of the Fallen because I don't want it anymore!
I'm not sure what possessed developer Hexworks, a studio which unsurprisingly has no credits before this, to frontload all of the Souls series' worst level tropes. I was already on the cusp of dropping the game after slogging my way to the first corrupted beacon, but what really sealed it was going from the swamp to a gorge that was still riddled with choke points, gank mobs, dudes throwing crap, enemies hiding behind objects, and now mimics. Hey you know what would be funny? Placing a mimic just down the street from another mimic so the player dies twice in a row the exact same way. What do you mean only .2% of players have gotten all the trophies, how can that be??
The big gimmick here that sets Lords of the Fallen apart from Souls and its many imitators - of which I've yet to play a single good one - is its light world/dark world mechanic. You'll often need to assume "umbral" form to reveal hidden pathways and solves puzzles, so often in fact that I'd say 80% of the early game is spent not interacting with the "real world" at all. While in your umbral state, shitty little level 1 zombies constantly spawn in and rush you, which impedes your ability to explore and makes every encounter with a deliberately placed enemy or trap agonizing because you're simultaneously having to deal with that while mowing through trash mobs like weeds.
You're also on a timer, and if you spend too long in umbral form, a very high-level enemy with be summoned to kill you immediately. Basically, you need to surface for air before the timer runs out by rushing towards totems that return you to the real world, which as far as I can tell is the only tangible benefit the real world has, because 9 times out of 10 I'd turn right around and realize some fuckin bog or a pit was behind me and I'd need to go back into umbral form anyway.
Hell, even the little touches are all wrong. Vigor (see: souls) don't automatically flow into the player character. Instead, they drop like EXP or health pick-ups in Kingdom Hearts, but they also do so on a slight delay with a small draw radius, meaning it's not at all uncommon to move on only to find that you've left a bunch of vigor sitting there. The lock-on never seems to target the enemy I want it to, and I can't figure out how it's prioritizing its lock at all, because it seems to not be based on camera position or distance. Even something as minor as a prompt to hit X to speak with an NPC feels bad because it straight up lies to you, instead requiring you to double tap X. Worth noting that this is the only thing in the entire game that requires you to double tap anything. I'm not opening up a program, I just want to upgrade my ax with the blacksmith who also happens to be a slaver but look, I don't have time to unpack that right now because I got to talk to you about how bonfires work. Aaaaaaah!
There are doors all over the place and they're all locked, which in a better game might inspire some curiosity on the part of the player. But because levels are long as shit and typically only have one dedicated "bonfire," on top of all the aforementioned problems with annoying enemies and needing to be in umbral form, I never want to go back and figure out what's in there. You can spawn smaller "checkpoints" using a consumable on beds of umbral flowers, but doing so will remove all previous checkpoints in an area, which makes navigating backwards a pain in the ass.
I think before you set out to create anything you ought to concern yourself with what you want the work to accomplish, and I guess I just don't understand what the point is of making something that is intentionally designed to be tedious, inconvenient, and cheap other than to be mean-spirited at the audience's expense. Perhaps this is why even the subreddit, ostensibly a place where fans would congregate, is rife with posts going "yeah I don't think I'm gonna finish this!" The few positive opinions I've heard are only just, saying the game is "fine" or that it "looks pretty." I disagree on that last point, I think it looks like and plays like sludge.
It's as if every time Hexworks was presented with a design choice to make, they carefully weighed their options and intentionally went with the most obviously detrimental and wrong one, like the video game version of those AMA threads where someone posts "tried Meth, but I won't do it again," only to post a few days later "couldn't stop thinking about meth, so I did some more." Playing this started turning me into the fuckin' Video Game Nerd, but the loudest and most full-throated "what were they thinking?" should be saved for myself. I was warned. I was told repeatedly that Lords of the Fallen was very bad, but I didn't listen. When you're so deep into collecting games that you're buying multiple copies of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), what's $20 for Lords of the Fallen, really? A badge that says I'm bad with my money, apparently.
Congratulations to Lies of P for no longer being the worst Dark Souls rip-off of 2023.
Addendum:
"VERSION 1.5 - 'Master of Fate': This update represents the culmination of 30+ post-launch updates resulting in significantly improved performance, stability & optimization, alongside rigorous difficulty balancing, and also includes our 'Advanced Game Modifier System', allowing ALL players to fully customize and adjust difficulty of future play-throughs. The Master of Fate Update concludes now concludes the Free Content Roadmap for Lords of the Fallen, adding the following content and quality-of-life enhancements, vastly improving the experience for all players: - Significant performance, optimization and stability improvements - Rigorous difficulty balancing including mob density reduction & nerfed ranged attacks "
WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WAS WORSE
Every combat encounter feels like it was designed around the most ha ha tee hee funny troll moments from those games. The second area, found just past Not Firelink, is a vertically oriented nightmare of cobbled together planks and rickety platforms, a veritable Blight Town filled with dudes hiding behind crates and corners waiting for you to pass by so that they can rush you and kick you off into an abyss. This was funny in Dark Souls because it happened once deep into the game by a big dumb skeleton, but it becomes annoying when it's happening ten times before you're able to make it to the third boss.
Mop things up there and you're off to... Another Blight Town! Only this time it does the Blight Town thing of having enemies constantly throw shit at you while you're stuck dealing with mobs. Where do you think you go after two whole Blight Towns? If you guessed "a poison swamp" then congratulations, you just won my copy of Lords of the Fallen because I don't want it anymore!
I'm not sure what possessed developer Hexworks, a studio which unsurprisingly has no credits before this, to frontload all of the Souls series' worst level tropes. I was already on the cusp of dropping the game after slogging my way to the first corrupted beacon, but what really sealed it was going from the swamp to a gorge that was still riddled with choke points, gank mobs, dudes throwing crap, enemies hiding behind objects, and now mimics. Hey you know what would be funny? Placing a mimic just down the street from another mimic so the player dies twice in a row the exact same way. What do you mean only .2% of players have gotten all the trophies, how can that be??
The big gimmick here that sets Lords of the Fallen apart from Souls and its many imitators - of which I've yet to play a single good one - is its light world/dark world mechanic. You'll often need to assume "umbral" form to reveal hidden pathways and solves puzzles, so often in fact that I'd say 80% of the early game is spent not interacting with the "real world" at all. While in your umbral state, shitty little level 1 zombies constantly spawn in and rush you, which impedes your ability to explore and makes every encounter with a deliberately placed enemy or trap agonizing because you're simultaneously having to deal with that while mowing through trash mobs like weeds.
You're also on a timer, and if you spend too long in umbral form, a very high-level enemy with be summoned to kill you immediately. Basically, you need to surface for air before the timer runs out by rushing towards totems that return you to the real world, which as far as I can tell is the only tangible benefit the real world has, because 9 times out of 10 I'd turn right around and realize some fuckin bog or a pit was behind me and I'd need to go back into umbral form anyway.
Hell, even the little touches are all wrong. Vigor (see: souls) don't automatically flow into the player character. Instead, they drop like EXP or health pick-ups in Kingdom Hearts, but they also do so on a slight delay with a small draw radius, meaning it's not at all uncommon to move on only to find that you've left a bunch of vigor sitting there. The lock-on never seems to target the enemy I want it to, and I can't figure out how it's prioritizing its lock at all, because it seems to not be based on camera position or distance. Even something as minor as a prompt to hit X to speak with an NPC feels bad because it straight up lies to you, instead requiring you to double tap X. Worth noting that this is the only thing in the entire game that requires you to double tap anything. I'm not opening up a program, I just want to upgrade my ax with the blacksmith who also happens to be a slaver but look, I don't have time to unpack that right now because I got to talk to you about how bonfires work. Aaaaaaah!
There are doors all over the place and they're all locked, which in a better game might inspire some curiosity on the part of the player. But because levels are long as shit and typically only have one dedicated "bonfire," on top of all the aforementioned problems with annoying enemies and needing to be in umbral form, I never want to go back and figure out what's in there. You can spawn smaller "checkpoints" using a consumable on beds of umbral flowers, but doing so will remove all previous checkpoints in an area, which makes navigating backwards a pain in the ass.
I think before you set out to create anything you ought to concern yourself with what you want the work to accomplish, and I guess I just don't understand what the point is of making something that is intentionally designed to be tedious, inconvenient, and cheap other than to be mean-spirited at the audience's expense. Perhaps this is why even the subreddit, ostensibly a place where fans would congregate, is rife with posts going "yeah I don't think I'm gonna finish this!" The few positive opinions I've heard are only just, saying the game is "fine" or that it "looks pretty." I disagree on that last point, I think it looks like and plays like sludge.
It's as if every time Hexworks was presented with a design choice to make, they carefully weighed their options and intentionally went with the most obviously detrimental and wrong one, like the video game version of those AMA threads where someone posts "tried Meth, but I won't do it again," only to post a few days later "couldn't stop thinking about meth, so I did some more." Playing this started turning me into the fuckin' Video Game Nerd, but the loudest and most full-throated "what were they thinking?" should be saved for myself. I was warned. I was told repeatedly that Lords of the Fallen was very bad, but I didn't listen. When you're so deep into collecting games that you're buying multiple copies of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), what's $20 for Lords of the Fallen, really? A badge that says I'm bad with my money, apparently.
Congratulations to Lies of P for no longer being the worst Dark Souls rip-off of 2023.
Addendum:
"VERSION 1.5 - 'Master of Fate': This update represents the culmination of 30+ post-launch updates resulting in significantly improved performance, stability & optimization, alongside rigorous difficulty balancing, and also includes our 'Advanced Game Modifier System', allowing ALL players to fully customize and adjust difficulty of future play-throughs. The Master of Fate Update concludes now concludes the Free Content Roadmap for Lords of the Fallen, adding the following content and quality-of-life enhancements, vastly improving the experience for all players: - Significant performance, optimization and stability improvements - Rigorous difficulty balancing including mob density reduction & nerfed ranged attacks "
WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WAS WORSE
Deadly Creatures
2009
Enemies stopped appearing towards the end of Chapter 7, so it locked me out of finishing the game unfortunately. I don’t care enough to try buying a new disc, but I liked Deadly Creatures and thought the premise was unique and fairly fun for the Wii. Very gritty and violent, which was surprising for a Wii-exclusive. The amount you need to move the controller + nunchuck to make good hard-hitting moves got me more tired than legit sport games on the Wii, but I also have noodle arms lol. I liked playing the scorpion over the spider, but I thought switching between the two was a fun way to keep things interesting, even if the story didn’t make much sense (maybe it would have if I could see chapters 8-10!)
Deadly Creatures is definitely a game to check out if you’re interested in weird Wii-exclusives, just hopefully your disc doesn’t break like mine!!
3/5
Deadly Creatures is definitely a game to check out if you’re interested in weird Wii-exclusives, just hopefully your disc doesn’t break like mine!!
3/5
Pentiment
2022
Pentiment has an official reading list, partly composed of some of the books that the team used for reference when building the game's art, plot, and characters. They're an interesting collection of books, and since my love of Pentiment overflowed after finishing it originally, I poured that excess enthusiasm into reading them. Now that I have read them all and replayed Pentiment with the knowledge in hand, I thought it would be interesting to dive into the inspirations and how they helped me to have a more complete understanding of the historical and cultural background of the game. Hopefully it won't be too dry, but also bear in mind that this is a very loose analysis. I'm not going to go back and find passages to cite unless they're super important to the point I'm making. I'm enough of a nerd to read five books for a backlog review, not for an academic article.
First things, the books: I read the following from the reading list, which you can find here: (https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/11/10/recommended-reading-of-medieval-history-from-josh-sawyer/)
1 The Name of the Rose: Umberto Eco
2 Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen Richard Wunderli
3 The Cheese and the Worms, Carlo Ginzburg
4: The Return of Martin Guerre, Natalie Zemon Davis
5: The Faithful Executioner, Joel F. Harrington
6 Dürer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist—Susan Foister and Peter Van Den Brink
The Name of the Rose is perhaps the most important book on the list in terms of understanding the inspiration behind Pentiment. I admit I watched the film before reading the novel, but they are rather different beasts. Besides certain common elements between Pentiment and Name of the Rose, like the fictitious Abbey, certain elements straining the credibility of the historical setting (tassing having all strata of social classes present, the 15th century scriptorium vs. a random ass mountain abbey having a gigantic labyrinthine library), and main characters borrowing from real historical figures who are name-dropped in the story (William of Ockham in Name of the Rose and Albrecht Durer in Pentiment), the main connection is that they both use the classic detective murder mystery setup as a framework to explore both theology, historical moments, conflict, etc.
This is the part where the movie most differs from the book; it makes sense given that you can't really fit all that into 90 minutes. It chooses to keep the juicy murder mystery and some background political intrigue but dispenses with the broader narrative of the book, which is about apostolic poverty and the Avginon papacy. Essentially the gravity of the murders add a sense of urgency in solving them because the Abbey is defending its political independence as neutral ground for a meeting of the pope(or anti-pope really)'s men and several monastic orders and representatives of the holy roman emperor to debate the merits of how the church should function, if it should reject all property and live as paupers, which has both a religious significance but also a political one in the conflict between the Avignon Papacy (essentially for a while the pope left Rome and went to France and this had a pretty massive impact upon european politics of the time with a politically ascendant France) and the HRE and the various religious orders like the Benedictines and Franciscans. This is mirrored in Pentiment, which also uses the murders of Baron Rothvogel and later Otto as a framework to highlight both the purpose of historical memory, the nature of justice and peace in early modern Europe, the importance of religion in their communities and how alien that can feel to modern audiences in rich countries, life, death, our ideas of the past and how they influence us in the present, and a whole bunch of related themes.
Similarly, in Act 1, the murder is also presented as politically inconvenient for the abbot, who seeks a speedy resolution to the issue much like the abbot in The Name of the Rose does, but for the different reason that his Kiersau Abbey is an oddity in the church, maintaining practices such as a double monastery, which have long been frowned at by the catholic authorities but have simply remained unnoticed due to its insignificance. A long, embarassing murder investigation could bring the hammer down on them, which leads to the Abbotts callously attempting to throw Andreas' mentor, Piero, for the murder so that the monastery may continue without issue. There is also the matter of the scriptorium and adjacent library with a secret entrance by the ossuary in Name of the Rose and Crypt in Pentiment (though in truth, I think Brother Volkbert confirms that the crypt just holds bones, so it's probably also appropriate to call it an ossuary) being direct references.
In both stories, the skill of the detectives is a bit suspect. In the case of William of Baskerville, whilst he is definitely closer to the Platonic ideal of your Sherlock Holmes figure, being less of an unbelievable omniscient who has information, the reader doesn't like many of the examples of bad detective fiction (cough cough, BBC Sherlock). His assumptions and thought processes are reasonable (for the most part), but he sure takes his time in solving the case. In fact, he arguably fails pretty much everything he sets out to do. Seven people lie dead, the library got burned down, and the matter of apostolic poverty they had come to debate eventually led to it being branded as heretical, though the Avginon papacy did disappear in due time as the seat of the Holy See returned to Rome. Of course, he does have a sort of moral victory over the reactionary Jorge who set the murders in motion to hide the existence of a lost tome, which would, in his view, help to elevate comedy and laughter, which he views as subversive and leading to heresy and the corruption of the divine truth. It is fitting given the frequent debates in the book that the climax would involve essentially a philosophical discussion. This parallels somewhat Pentiment's ending, wherein Father Thomas brings down the Mithraeum below the church to erase the proof of St. Satia and St. Moritz being essentially just Diana and Mars, pagan figures worshipped before the Bavarian Christians settled on tassing. Andreas is also not the greatest sleuth, though, in large part, being an interactive medium, the character of Andreas' skills depends upon players' actions. Nevertheless, the constant of Andreas having to make difficult choices using incomplete information is a constant; it's impossible for him to ever fully uncover the truth of the matter with the limited time and resources he has to investigate the murders, and much like many things, including historical events, it's not really possible to actually 100% discover the "true" killer. There are likelier candidates, of course, and a good argument can be made for the most reasonable culprit, like in Act 1, where it is rather doubtful that Ottilia did it; I think Lucky is almost certainly the murderer; and it's interesting just how much a second playthrough can change a lot of what I thought. In Act 2, it's rather less clear, with Hanna and Guy both having threads pointing to them.
Either way, there is also the matter that Andreas and Pentiment as a whole are also concerned with the perception of truth rather than the whole matter of it, similar to the Name of the Rose: case in point: when Andreas returns to Tassing a few years later in Act 1, the Innkeeper will refer to a warped version of the events of the original murder, suggesting that either way the truth of the events has already passed into unreliable folklore. There is an angle to consider when choosing a culprit in both acts when considering the consequences for the community. Its still refreshing to me in an industry that still has seemingly not moved on from boring black and white low honor vs. high honor binary choice bullshit that Pentiment presents you with the infinitely more interesting to my mind issue of Ottilia Kemperyn. An old, misanthropic, heretical widow whose husband's death was caused by the murdered Baron Rothvogel's savage beating has essentially given up on life. Her house is just about to be taken away from her by the church because she has no heirs and cannot own property herself. If one were to invent utilitarianism in the 15th century, one could argue that letting the obviously innocent Ottilia take the heat for the murder of the Baron is the optimal choice; indeed, standing up for her by challenging the church's claim to her house does cause her to retain the house onto Act 2, but the church is predictably angry at your actions, and you've done little more than buy a woman a few more miserable years of her life. Of course, in doing so, you will be utterly perverting justice and sentencing a woman to the executioner, whose only crime was being born a peasant woman in the 15th century, with all the trials it entails. These tough choices are not limited just to Andreas, with Act 3 the townsfolk are still reconciling their choices in dealing with Otto's murder in 1525 and subsequent burning of the abbey (which mirrors the ending of The Name of The Rose with the Abbey and Library burning down also) and whilst they all have different perspectives on the issue, its interesting that some regret the foolishness that brought the hammer down on them and resulted in bloodshed whilst also recognizing that that very sacrifice led to their current positions, there is some optimism in the ending, with some arguing that the Abbot's ecclesiastical authority being replaced with the lord's secular one has been beneficial, with slightly less strict oversight and Lenhardt being murdered at least had temporary material improvements for the peasants who wouldn't be completely gouged by the new miller. As with everything, one can only move forward; the wheel of time stops for no man, and making peace with our mistakes and seeing a broader perspective is supremely important to life.
Peasant Fires doesn't cover the more famous 1525 German Peasant rebellion, but rather the lesser known Niklashausen rebellion of 1478, wherein a drummer whipped up a mass of pilgrims to rebel against the ruling authorities, claiming that he had received a divine vision of the virgin Mary, who called on him and the faithful to overthrow the corrupt church and kill the priests, that god had ordained for all land to be held in common and the feudal lords of the time had corrupted his will. The book explores the role of festivals in medieval Europe, with some serving as outlets for repressed anger at the authorities, like carnival being a time of playfully "reversing" the established relations of nobility, royalty, and peasantry. It highlights how, for most peasants, the calendar would be seen through the lens of the various public festivals throughout the year, from Christmas to Carnival to Lent to Easter, etc. Despite the much harsher working conditions, there were many more public holidays for the Europeans of the 15th century than there are for the Brits of today. Its influence is most apparent in Pentiment's Act 2, with Otto claiming a holy vision has revealed that the Lord is with the townsfolk of Tassing against the increased taxes and restrictions of the Abbot, mirroring the drummer. Otto's murder occurs during St. John's Eve, a very popular summer festival, with anger boiling over with the Abbot threatening excommunication to anyone he finds in the forest getting up to mischief. In both examples, the peasants are drawn to revolt against ecclesiastical authorities due to the increasing restrictions on their rights and material conditions. In Tassing, there is a noticeable decline in living standards, with the poor Gertners being particularly destitute due to increased taxes.
In the 1478 rebellion, the drummer started rallying people to the cause by preaching near the pilgrimage site of Niklashausen. In Pentiment, the Abbot further angers the peasants by closing the Shrine of St. Moritz, which is also a pilgrimage site and source of some religious comfort to the Catholic denizens of Tassing who often prayed to Saints for deliverance. The book goes into some depth regarding pilgrimages in the early modern period. While the sale of indulgences is much better known given its importance to the reformation, it is often overlooked that pilgrimages served a similar purpose. The idea of purgatory was such that pilgrims could reduce the suffering of themselves and/or deceased relatives by visiting a site of pilgrimage and receiving a partial indulgence for time in purgatory. It was another way in which the peasants would be essentially emotionally blackmailed into either donating or traveling to a holy site, which of course also had the effect of increasing the prestige and economic power of a church that hosted one of these relics, like the hand of a saint, a piece of the true cross, or what have you.
The main issue with the book is that the sources are very spotty, and so the author basically speculates on a large chunk of them. He at least admits that this is the case and makes clear what is his own imagination and what’s supported by the evidence, but still, it's a rather short book to begin with. Its illuminating at the very least regarding just how fucked medieval peasants were economically, the role of festivals and pilgrimages, and the power of mystics in inciting rebellion.
The Faithful Executioner is a work of microhistory focused on the life of the executioner of Nuremberg during a particularly busy time for such a professional. It has the advantage of drawing upon an unusual source: a detailed journal written by the said executioner during his time working for the city. It was rare for a man like him to be able to read, much less to leave such thorough notes about his work. It's a very interesting tale, which I recommend picking up. It's both a greater history lesson about the role of the executioner and the specific conditions in 16th-century HRE, which led to a significant increase in their work, and the personal story of a man’s quest to advance his and his family’s station from the unfortunate place it was put in. It also does a lot to make us understand the perspective and social attitudes that influenced this institution, which is, to our modern eyes, quite cruel and ghastly, without just making an apology for the indefensible. Its relation to Pentiment is obvious; it is a work that is deeply concerned with justice, crime, and punishment, and the appearance of justice and truth is often times more important than the actual thing itself. In chapter 1, whichever culprit gets selected will get executed violently and publicly, either by the executioner’s sword in the case of the male suspects of lucky or ferenc or being choked to death in the case of the female suspects. Interestingly, in the faithful executioner, we are told that execution by sword at the time was usually reserved for the nobility (even often times being the result of a bribe to the judges to forgo the more slow and painful executions down to the more “dignified” decapitation). I imagine, though, that the choice of the sword was more of a creative decision, being the quickest way to show the culprit being killed. In the case of Prior Ferenc’s execution, it was slightly botched, requiring three slashes to finish him off. In the case of the faithful executioner, part of the titular executioner’s great reputation, which allowed him to eventually appeal his status (executioners were part of the official underclass, unable to perform “honorable” professions, and were oftentimes banned from joining a guild and other legal discrimination), came from the fact that he very rarely botched an execution; indeed, the executioner himself could be in danger when performing a beheading, and it was common for crowds to turn on the executioner if it took more than 3 strokes to fall the criminal. Its not surprising to me that states eventually realized how counterproductive public execution was, with modern ones being performed in some prison room away from the public. The fact is, and Pentiment explores this as well, that it's all well and good to believe that someone deserves to die or that they had their brutal end coming to them; certainly, there are many rapists, murderers, etc., and even if one opposes the death penalty on principle, we would not be sad to hear that they were killed. And yet, I dare to say that if you were to witness such a person being violently killed, well, most well-adjusted people would respond with horror and even sympathy for such a situation.
Certainly, I don’t weep at the thought that some of the hanged nazis at Nuremberg were actually left choking for quite a few minutes before expiring, but even with them, were I to be in the room, I would look away from such a horrible sight. Humans are empathic for the most part, and it's hard to see such things without feeling bad.
It's a sobering moment watching the execution of Ferenc, who might be suspected of performing occult rituals and murdering a man in cold blood, but it's another to see him praying for mercy before being brutally cut down. The victory is hollow; there is a reason why Sherlock Holmes stories end with the suspect in custody and not Sherlock Holmes gloating in front of the gallows with the criminal’s corpse hanging forlornly from the scaffold. Okay, okay, that's enough unpleasantness. Let's move on from this grizzly subject.
The Cheese and the Worms is another work of microhistory, this time on the subject of Mennochio, an eccentric miller in 15th-century France who used his rare literacy and access to a variety of books passed around by his neighbors (who were unusually literate for the time also) to develop his own eclectic brand of religious thought, which eventually got him into trouble with the Inquisition, who were mostly baffled by what seemed to be a unique brand of heresy invented by essentially one random peasant guy, far from the norm of wandering preachers, secret societies, and the like. Its influence is most apparent in the figure of Vaclav, a Romani knife sharpener who will share his equally weird beliefs if you’ll indulge him, which, funnily enough, if you do, he gets burned at the stake for heresy, as evidenced by the town-wide family tree next to the mural in the game's ending. In the case of Vaclav, they’re a weird syncretism of gnosticism, Christian mysticism, and just his own blend of strange esoteric religious theories. The role of increased literacy and the printing press allowing more people to read “dangerous ideas” is brought up often during Acts 1 and 2, with Father Thomas and others being wary of the effects it could have in riling up the peasantry and the danger of certain ideas spreading. The elephant in the room is, of course, the protestant reformation and the 1525 peasant rebellion, which were greatly aided by the increased availability of the written word, further increasing the demand for a translation of the Bible written in German and other vernacular languages as opposed to Latin, which was mainly spoken by the priesthood. Its no surprise that this eventually led to an explosion of different Protestant denominations, as anyone who could read the Bible for themselves could develop a novel interpretation of the scripture.
In the case of Menochio, while from a modern perspective it seems very repressive and authoritarian to be jailed and later executed for having unorthodox beliefs like the universe being created from a primordial cheese eaten by worms who became God and his angels and created the world, it's hard to be sympathetic when the dude just could not shut the hell up about his beliefs. Like, idk about you, Im an agnostic or atheist or whatever, but if I could possibly be executed for it, I would not go around telling people about how god is fake and cringe. Its also funny reading the accounts of the inquisitors, who for the most part, whilst obviously terrible and repressive, would let most cases like a single heretical peasant off with essentially a slap in the wrist, say you’re sorry, do a penance, your priest vouches for you being a good man and for the most part be allowed to rejoin society, but bro just couldn't do it. The number of executions the inquisition actually did was a lot less than we would think; it was usually reserved for wandering preachers, big religious leaders who were trying to get a schism going, etc.
The Return of Martin Guerre is interesting because its “plot” is basically 1-to-1, almost adapted into Pentiment’s character of Martin Bauer. The book was written by Natalie Zemon Davis, a historian and advisor to the French film of the same name based upon the real-life historical figure of Martin Guerre. After her experiences with the production, she decided to write a more “official” account of the story without the necessities of a 3-act structure and cinematic storytelling. Martin Guerre was a peasant in what is now modern-day Basque Country (part of Spain and France) who one day disappeared from his town and, unbeknownst to them, went off to Spain to join the army and eventually got wounded in battle during the Italian wars of the mid-16th century. Meanwhile, a man claiming to be Martin Guerre who bore an uncanny resemblance to the man arrived in Martin’s home town and, after some initial skepticism, was able to slide into his old life through his appearance and seemingly access to knowledge that only the real Martin Guerre could know. It also highlights that under the law of the time, Martin’s wife would not be allowed to remarry, and the way in which women were treated, her standing in society, and her ability to fend for herself were adversely affected by having an abandoned husband. Even worse, the real Martin could have died off in battle, but even this would not necessarily be enough to be able to remarry unless she could somehow prove her husband had been killed. It's not surprising then that she may have been, let’s say, willful to “be fooled” by the impostor, knowing that this was a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to solve her situation. Even more so after “Martin” received his deceased father’s inheritance and greatly increased the wealth of his household.
In Pentiment, Martin Bauer similarly runs off during Act 1 after stealing from the murdered baron and “returns” before Act 2 to take over the household after the death of his father. If pressed, you can uncover the fact that this man is actually Jobst Farber, a highwayman who ran off with Martin and eventually, when he died, used his resemblance to the man to take over his life. Similarly, in Pentiment, Martin’s wife Brigita seems consciously or unconsciously aware of the deception but begs Andreas not to rat him out of town, as he’s been a much better husband than Martin ever was, and in a purely utilitarian sense, his identity theft is seemingly the best outcome for everyone. If one remembers Act 1’s Ottilia Kemperyn, households without children or men to inherit property are very much unprotected, and it's easy to see why Brigita prefers to turn a blind eye to this Farber character’s lies. In the real-life case of Martin Guerre, the prosecution was initiated by Martin’s father-in-law who suspected foul play, but “Martin”’s wife was supportive of her impostor husband. Indeed, what ended up resulting in his execution was actually the return of the real Martin Guerre to the town, who, amusingly enough, seemed less able to answer the questions of the judge in regards to information that the real Martin Guerre would know than the fake one! Thankfully for the wife, sometimes misogyny works out in women’s favor, and she was essentially unpunished (and the real Martin Guerre was reprimanded for abandoning his wife and family) for what could have been considered adultery and false witness with essentially the old “ah well, she’s a woman, it makes sense her feeble mind would be fooled by a talented huckster like this” argument. Not as much of a happy ending for the impostor who got executed but was surprising apologetic, much like Martin Bauer is if you accuse him of murdering Otto Zimmerman during Act 2 of Pentiment.
The final book, I’ll admit, is one that I basically skimmed because it was really fucking boring, and I already read a biography of Albrecht Durer a while back, so a lot of it was just stuff I already knew. It was worth owning, if nothing else, A3 copies of Durer’s famous works. Albrecht Durer informs the character of Andreas quite a bit (though he is also a bit William of Baskerville and Andrei Rublev); indeed, his Act 1 design is heavily inspired by a famous Durer self-portrait. They are both painters from Nuremberg; they both (in Act 2) seem to really dread returning to their wives, which they hate back in Nuremberg; and during the lunch with Brother Sebhat, when a kid is having the concept of different ethnic groups and skin colors existing, Andreas chimes in that in the Netherlands he saw art from the New World that was greater than anything Europeans had ever done, echoing Durer’s admiration for New World art in particular made of metal; him being the son of a goldsmith, it makes sense he’d feel particularly fond of such things.
The use of Durer’s famous Melancholia 1 painting is a key aspect of Andreas’ character journey. In Act 1, his inner psyche is depicted as a court composed of King Prester John (a mythical figure in European folklore often thought of as the Ethiopian emperor), Beatrice from the Divine Comedy, St. Grobian, and Socrates. Whenever Andreas is debating a difficult decision, they can be called upon to give their two cents in a sort of id, ego, and super ego-type arrangement. In Act 2, however, it is only Beatrice who gives advice, her moderation and temperance having devolved into self-doubt and fear. At a key point, Andreas finds his court trashed and all absent safe for Beatrice, sitting in the pose of the famous aforementioned melancholia print: “Now I am all that remains, the melancholy of life’s autumn,” a manifestation of essentially a mid-life crisis for Andreas after becoming a successful artist but feeling hollow inside. Its fitting as well given the beliefs about mental health, a common conception of artists and creatives at the time as “melancholics," and a conception of depression and mental illness as markers for creative genius that sadly persists to this day.
4500 words later, and I'm both embarrassed by how long this has been and frustrated by how much more I could have gone into details on each of the entries, but I think that's enough for now. If anything, I hope this encourages anyone who’s played pentiment to check out one of the books and maybe draw their own connections I might have missed or forgot to include. Whenever I think about what differentiates a 5-star game from a 4.5- or 4-star game, I think this is it. A 5-star game will get me to read six books totaling probably like 1000+ pages. I’m currently reading through The Brothers Karamazov as part of The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa’s readable books list (so far I’ve read Winesburg, Ohio, Confessions of a Mask, and Rumble Fish), and maybe I’ll write a similar piece at some point for each (though bear in mind I started reading the first book in this collection a year ago, so y'know).
First things, the books: I read the following from the reading list, which you can find here: (https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/11/10/recommended-reading-of-medieval-history-from-josh-sawyer/)
1 The Name of the Rose: Umberto Eco
2 Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen Richard Wunderli
3 The Cheese and the Worms, Carlo Ginzburg
4: The Return of Martin Guerre, Natalie Zemon Davis
5: The Faithful Executioner, Joel F. Harrington
6 Dürer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist—Susan Foister and Peter Van Den Brink
The Name of the Rose is perhaps the most important book on the list in terms of understanding the inspiration behind Pentiment. I admit I watched the film before reading the novel, but they are rather different beasts. Besides certain common elements between Pentiment and Name of the Rose, like the fictitious Abbey, certain elements straining the credibility of the historical setting (tassing having all strata of social classes present, the 15th century scriptorium vs. a random ass mountain abbey having a gigantic labyrinthine library), and main characters borrowing from real historical figures who are name-dropped in the story (William of Ockham in Name of the Rose and Albrecht Durer in Pentiment), the main connection is that they both use the classic detective murder mystery setup as a framework to explore both theology, historical moments, conflict, etc.
This is the part where the movie most differs from the book; it makes sense given that you can't really fit all that into 90 minutes. It chooses to keep the juicy murder mystery and some background political intrigue but dispenses with the broader narrative of the book, which is about apostolic poverty and the Avginon papacy. Essentially the gravity of the murders add a sense of urgency in solving them because the Abbey is defending its political independence as neutral ground for a meeting of the pope(or anti-pope really)'s men and several monastic orders and representatives of the holy roman emperor to debate the merits of how the church should function, if it should reject all property and live as paupers, which has both a religious significance but also a political one in the conflict between the Avignon Papacy (essentially for a while the pope left Rome and went to France and this had a pretty massive impact upon european politics of the time with a politically ascendant France) and the HRE and the various religious orders like the Benedictines and Franciscans. This is mirrored in Pentiment, which also uses the murders of Baron Rothvogel and later Otto as a framework to highlight both the purpose of historical memory, the nature of justice and peace in early modern Europe, the importance of religion in their communities and how alien that can feel to modern audiences in rich countries, life, death, our ideas of the past and how they influence us in the present, and a whole bunch of related themes.
Similarly, in Act 1, the murder is also presented as politically inconvenient for the abbot, who seeks a speedy resolution to the issue much like the abbot in The Name of the Rose does, but for the different reason that his Kiersau Abbey is an oddity in the church, maintaining practices such as a double monastery, which have long been frowned at by the catholic authorities but have simply remained unnoticed due to its insignificance. A long, embarassing murder investigation could bring the hammer down on them, which leads to the Abbotts callously attempting to throw Andreas' mentor, Piero, for the murder so that the monastery may continue without issue. There is also the matter of the scriptorium and adjacent library with a secret entrance by the ossuary in Name of the Rose and Crypt in Pentiment (though in truth, I think Brother Volkbert confirms that the crypt just holds bones, so it's probably also appropriate to call it an ossuary) being direct references.
In both stories, the skill of the detectives is a bit suspect. In the case of William of Baskerville, whilst he is definitely closer to the Platonic ideal of your Sherlock Holmes figure, being less of an unbelievable omniscient who has information, the reader doesn't like many of the examples of bad detective fiction (cough cough, BBC Sherlock). His assumptions and thought processes are reasonable (for the most part), but he sure takes his time in solving the case. In fact, he arguably fails pretty much everything he sets out to do. Seven people lie dead, the library got burned down, and the matter of apostolic poverty they had come to debate eventually led to it being branded as heretical, though the Avginon papacy did disappear in due time as the seat of the Holy See returned to Rome. Of course, he does have a sort of moral victory over the reactionary Jorge who set the murders in motion to hide the existence of a lost tome, which would, in his view, help to elevate comedy and laughter, which he views as subversive and leading to heresy and the corruption of the divine truth. It is fitting given the frequent debates in the book that the climax would involve essentially a philosophical discussion. This parallels somewhat Pentiment's ending, wherein Father Thomas brings down the Mithraeum below the church to erase the proof of St. Satia and St. Moritz being essentially just Diana and Mars, pagan figures worshipped before the Bavarian Christians settled on tassing. Andreas is also not the greatest sleuth, though, in large part, being an interactive medium, the character of Andreas' skills depends upon players' actions. Nevertheless, the constant of Andreas having to make difficult choices using incomplete information is a constant; it's impossible for him to ever fully uncover the truth of the matter with the limited time and resources he has to investigate the murders, and much like many things, including historical events, it's not really possible to actually 100% discover the "true" killer. There are likelier candidates, of course, and a good argument can be made for the most reasonable culprit, like in Act 1, where it is rather doubtful that Ottilia did it; I think Lucky is almost certainly the murderer; and it's interesting just how much a second playthrough can change a lot of what I thought. In Act 2, it's rather less clear, with Hanna and Guy both having threads pointing to them.
Either way, there is also the matter that Andreas and Pentiment as a whole are also concerned with the perception of truth rather than the whole matter of it, similar to the Name of the Rose: case in point: when Andreas returns to Tassing a few years later in Act 1, the Innkeeper will refer to a warped version of the events of the original murder, suggesting that either way the truth of the events has already passed into unreliable folklore. There is an angle to consider when choosing a culprit in both acts when considering the consequences for the community. Its still refreshing to me in an industry that still has seemingly not moved on from boring black and white low honor vs. high honor binary choice bullshit that Pentiment presents you with the infinitely more interesting to my mind issue of Ottilia Kemperyn. An old, misanthropic, heretical widow whose husband's death was caused by the murdered Baron Rothvogel's savage beating has essentially given up on life. Her house is just about to be taken away from her by the church because she has no heirs and cannot own property herself. If one were to invent utilitarianism in the 15th century, one could argue that letting the obviously innocent Ottilia take the heat for the murder of the Baron is the optimal choice; indeed, standing up for her by challenging the church's claim to her house does cause her to retain the house onto Act 2, but the church is predictably angry at your actions, and you've done little more than buy a woman a few more miserable years of her life. Of course, in doing so, you will be utterly perverting justice and sentencing a woman to the executioner, whose only crime was being born a peasant woman in the 15th century, with all the trials it entails. These tough choices are not limited just to Andreas, with Act 3 the townsfolk are still reconciling their choices in dealing with Otto's murder in 1525 and subsequent burning of the abbey (which mirrors the ending of The Name of The Rose with the Abbey and Library burning down also) and whilst they all have different perspectives on the issue, its interesting that some regret the foolishness that brought the hammer down on them and resulted in bloodshed whilst also recognizing that that very sacrifice led to their current positions, there is some optimism in the ending, with some arguing that the Abbot's ecclesiastical authority being replaced with the lord's secular one has been beneficial, with slightly less strict oversight and Lenhardt being murdered at least had temporary material improvements for the peasants who wouldn't be completely gouged by the new miller. As with everything, one can only move forward; the wheel of time stops for no man, and making peace with our mistakes and seeing a broader perspective is supremely important to life.
Peasant Fires doesn't cover the more famous 1525 German Peasant rebellion, but rather the lesser known Niklashausen rebellion of 1478, wherein a drummer whipped up a mass of pilgrims to rebel against the ruling authorities, claiming that he had received a divine vision of the virgin Mary, who called on him and the faithful to overthrow the corrupt church and kill the priests, that god had ordained for all land to be held in common and the feudal lords of the time had corrupted his will. The book explores the role of festivals in medieval Europe, with some serving as outlets for repressed anger at the authorities, like carnival being a time of playfully "reversing" the established relations of nobility, royalty, and peasantry. It highlights how, for most peasants, the calendar would be seen through the lens of the various public festivals throughout the year, from Christmas to Carnival to Lent to Easter, etc. Despite the much harsher working conditions, there were many more public holidays for the Europeans of the 15th century than there are for the Brits of today. Its influence is most apparent in Pentiment's Act 2, with Otto claiming a holy vision has revealed that the Lord is with the townsfolk of Tassing against the increased taxes and restrictions of the Abbot, mirroring the drummer. Otto's murder occurs during St. John's Eve, a very popular summer festival, with anger boiling over with the Abbot threatening excommunication to anyone he finds in the forest getting up to mischief. In both examples, the peasants are drawn to revolt against ecclesiastical authorities due to the increasing restrictions on their rights and material conditions. In Tassing, there is a noticeable decline in living standards, with the poor Gertners being particularly destitute due to increased taxes.
In the 1478 rebellion, the drummer started rallying people to the cause by preaching near the pilgrimage site of Niklashausen. In Pentiment, the Abbot further angers the peasants by closing the Shrine of St. Moritz, which is also a pilgrimage site and source of some religious comfort to the Catholic denizens of Tassing who often prayed to Saints for deliverance. The book goes into some depth regarding pilgrimages in the early modern period. While the sale of indulgences is much better known given its importance to the reformation, it is often overlooked that pilgrimages served a similar purpose. The idea of purgatory was such that pilgrims could reduce the suffering of themselves and/or deceased relatives by visiting a site of pilgrimage and receiving a partial indulgence for time in purgatory. It was another way in which the peasants would be essentially emotionally blackmailed into either donating or traveling to a holy site, which of course also had the effect of increasing the prestige and economic power of a church that hosted one of these relics, like the hand of a saint, a piece of the true cross, or what have you.
The main issue with the book is that the sources are very spotty, and so the author basically speculates on a large chunk of them. He at least admits that this is the case and makes clear what is his own imagination and what’s supported by the evidence, but still, it's a rather short book to begin with. Its illuminating at the very least regarding just how fucked medieval peasants were economically, the role of festivals and pilgrimages, and the power of mystics in inciting rebellion.
The Faithful Executioner is a work of microhistory focused on the life of the executioner of Nuremberg during a particularly busy time for such a professional. It has the advantage of drawing upon an unusual source: a detailed journal written by the said executioner during his time working for the city. It was rare for a man like him to be able to read, much less to leave such thorough notes about his work. It's a very interesting tale, which I recommend picking up. It's both a greater history lesson about the role of the executioner and the specific conditions in 16th-century HRE, which led to a significant increase in their work, and the personal story of a man’s quest to advance his and his family’s station from the unfortunate place it was put in. It also does a lot to make us understand the perspective and social attitudes that influenced this institution, which is, to our modern eyes, quite cruel and ghastly, without just making an apology for the indefensible. Its relation to Pentiment is obvious; it is a work that is deeply concerned with justice, crime, and punishment, and the appearance of justice and truth is often times more important than the actual thing itself. In chapter 1, whichever culprit gets selected will get executed violently and publicly, either by the executioner’s sword in the case of the male suspects of lucky or ferenc or being choked to death in the case of the female suspects. Interestingly, in the faithful executioner, we are told that execution by sword at the time was usually reserved for the nobility (even often times being the result of a bribe to the judges to forgo the more slow and painful executions down to the more “dignified” decapitation). I imagine, though, that the choice of the sword was more of a creative decision, being the quickest way to show the culprit being killed. In the case of Prior Ferenc’s execution, it was slightly botched, requiring three slashes to finish him off. In the case of the faithful executioner, part of the titular executioner’s great reputation, which allowed him to eventually appeal his status (executioners were part of the official underclass, unable to perform “honorable” professions, and were oftentimes banned from joining a guild and other legal discrimination), came from the fact that he very rarely botched an execution; indeed, the executioner himself could be in danger when performing a beheading, and it was common for crowds to turn on the executioner if it took more than 3 strokes to fall the criminal. Its not surprising to me that states eventually realized how counterproductive public execution was, with modern ones being performed in some prison room away from the public. The fact is, and Pentiment explores this as well, that it's all well and good to believe that someone deserves to die or that they had their brutal end coming to them; certainly, there are many rapists, murderers, etc., and even if one opposes the death penalty on principle, we would not be sad to hear that they were killed. And yet, I dare to say that if you were to witness such a person being violently killed, well, most well-adjusted people would respond with horror and even sympathy for such a situation.
Certainly, I don’t weep at the thought that some of the hanged nazis at Nuremberg were actually left choking for quite a few minutes before expiring, but even with them, were I to be in the room, I would look away from such a horrible sight. Humans are empathic for the most part, and it's hard to see such things without feeling bad.
It's a sobering moment watching the execution of Ferenc, who might be suspected of performing occult rituals and murdering a man in cold blood, but it's another to see him praying for mercy before being brutally cut down. The victory is hollow; there is a reason why Sherlock Holmes stories end with the suspect in custody and not Sherlock Holmes gloating in front of the gallows with the criminal’s corpse hanging forlornly from the scaffold. Okay, okay, that's enough unpleasantness. Let's move on from this grizzly subject.
The Cheese and the Worms is another work of microhistory, this time on the subject of Mennochio, an eccentric miller in 15th-century France who used his rare literacy and access to a variety of books passed around by his neighbors (who were unusually literate for the time also) to develop his own eclectic brand of religious thought, which eventually got him into trouble with the Inquisition, who were mostly baffled by what seemed to be a unique brand of heresy invented by essentially one random peasant guy, far from the norm of wandering preachers, secret societies, and the like. Its influence is most apparent in the figure of Vaclav, a Romani knife sharpener who will share his equally weird beliefs if you’ll indulge him, which, funnily enough, if you do, he gets burned at the stake for heresy, as evidenced by the town-wide family tree next to the mural in the game's ending. In the case of Vaclav, they’re a weird syncretism of gnosticism, Christian mysticism, and just his own blend of strange esoteric religious theories. The role of increased literacy and the printing press allowing more people to read “dangerous ideas” is brought up often during Acts 1 and 2, with Father Thomas and others being wary of the effects it could have in riling up the peasantry and the danger of certain ideas spreading. The elephant in the room is, of course, the protestant reformation and the 1525 peasant rebellion, which were greatly aided by the increased availability of the written word, further increasing the demand for a translation of the Bible written in German and other vernacular languages as opposed to Latin, which was mainly spoken by the priesthood. Its no surprise that this eventually led to an explosion of different Protestant denominations, as anyone who could read the Bible for themselves could develop a novel interpretation of the scripture.
In the case of Menochio, while from a modern perspective it seems very repressive and authoritarian to be jailed and later executed for having unorthodox beliefs like the universe being created from a primordial cheese eaten by worms who became God and his angels and created the world, it's hard to be sympathetic when the dude just could not shut the hell up about his beliefs. Like, idk about you, Im an agnostic or atheist or whatever, but if I could possibly be executed for it, I would not go around telling people about how god is fake and cringe. Its also funny reading the accounts of the inquisitors, who for the most part, whilst obviously terrible and repressive, would let most cases like a single heretical peasant off with essentially a slap in the wrist, say you’re sorry, do a penance, your priest vouches for you being a good man and for the most part be allowed to rejoin society, but bro just couldn't do it. The number of executions the inquisition actually did was a lot less than we would think; it was usually reserved for wandering preachers, big religious leaders who were trying to get a schism going, etc.
The Return of Martin Guerre is interesting because its “plot” is basically 1-to-1, almost adapted into Pentiment’s character of Martin Bauer. The book was written by Natalie Zemon Davis, a historian and advisor to the French film of the same name based upon the real-life historical figure of Martin Guerre. After her experiences with the production, she decided to write a more “official” account of the story without the necessities of a 3-act structure and cinematic storytelling. Martin Guerre was a peasant in what is now modern-day Basque Country (part of Spain and France) who one day disappeared from his town and, unbeknownst to them, went off to Spain to join the army and eventually got wounded in battle during the Italian wars of the mid-16th century. Meanwhile, a man claiming to be Martin Guerre who bore an uncanny resemblance to the man arrived in Martin’s home town and, after some initial skepticism, was able to slide into his old life through his appearance and seemingly access to knowledge that only the real Martin Guerre could know. It also highlights that under the law of the time, Martin’s wife would not be allowed to remarry, and the way in which women were treated, her standing in society, and her ability to fend for herself were adversely affected by having an abandoned husband. Even worse, the real Martin could have died off in battle, but even this would not necessarily be enough to be able to remarry unless she could somehow prove her husband had been killed. It's not surprising then that she may have been, let’s say, willful to “be fooled” by the impostor, knowing that this was a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to solve her situation. Even more so after “Martin” received his deceased father’s inheritance and greatly increased the wealth of his household.
In Pentiment, Martin Bauer similarly runs off during Act 1 after stealing from the murdered baron and “returns” before Act 2 to take over the household after the death of his father. If pressed, you can uncover the fact that this man is actually Jobst Farber, a highwayman who ran off with Martin and eventually, when he died, used his resemblance to the man to take over his life. Similarly, in Pentiment, Martin’s wife Brigita seems consciously or unconsciously aware of the deception but begs Andreas not to rat him out of town, as he’s been a much better husband than Martin ever was, and in a purely utilitarian sense, his identity theft is seemingly the best outcome for everyone. If one remembers Act 1’s Ottilia Kemperyn, households without children or men to inherit property are very much unprotected, and it's easy to see why Brigita prefers to turn a blind eye to this Farber character’s lies. In the real-life case of Martin Guerre, the prosecution was initiated by Martin’s father-in-law who suspected foul play, but “Martin”’s wife was supportive of her impostor husband. Indeed, what ended up resulting in his execution was actually the return of the real Martin Guerre to the town, who, amusingly enough, seemed less able to answer the questions of the judge in regards to information that the real Martin Guerre would know than the fake one! Thankfully for the wife, sometimes misogyny works out in women’s favor, and she was essentially unpunished (and the real Martin Guerre was reprimanded for abandoning his wife and family) for what could have been considered adultery and false witness with essentially the old “ah well, she’s a woman, it makes sense her feeble mind would be fooled by a talented huckster like this” argument. Not as much of a happy ending for the impostor who got executed but was surprising apologetic, much like Martin Bauer is if you accuse him of murdering Otto Zimmerman during Act 2 of Pentiment.
The final book, I’ll admit, is one that I basically skimmed because it was really fucking boring, and I already read a biography of Albrecht Durer a while back, so a lot of it was just stuff I already knew. It was worth owning, if nothing else, A3 copies of Durer’s famous works. Albrecht Durer informs the character of Andreas quite a bit (though he is also a bit William of Baskerville and Andrei Rublev); indeed, his Act 1 design is heavily inspired by a famous Durer self-portrait. They are both painters from Nuremberg; they both (in Act 2) seem to really dread returning to their wives, which they hate back in Nuremberg; and during the lunch with Brother Sebhat, when a kid is having the concept of different ethnic groups and skin colors existing, Andreas chimes in that in the Netherlands he saw art from the New World that was greater than anything Europeans had ever done, echoing Durer’s admiration for New World art in particular made of metal; him being the son of a goldsmith, it makes sense he’d feel particularly fond of such things.
The use of Durer’s famous Melancholia 1 painting is a key aspect of Andreas’ character journey. In Act 1, his inner psyche is depicted as a court composed of King Prester John (a mythical figure in European folklore often thought of as the Ethiopian emperor), Beatrice from the Divine Comedy, St. Grobian, and Socrates. Whenever Andreas is debating a difficult decision, they can be called upon to give their two cents in a sort of id, ego, and super ego-type arrangement. In Act 2, however, it is only Beatrice who gives advice, her moderation and temperance having devolved into self-doubt and fear. At a key point, Andreas finds his court trashed and all absent safe for Beatrice, sitting in the pose of the famous aforementioned melancholia print: “Now I am all that remains, the melancholy of life’s autumn,” a manifestation of essentially a mid-life crisis for Andreas after becoming a successful artist but feeling hollow inside. Its fitting as well given the beliefs about mental health, a common conception of artists and creatives at the time as “melancholics," and a conception of depression and mental illness as markers for creative genius that sadly persists to this day.
4500 words later, and I'm both embarrassed by how long this has been and frustrated by how much more I could have gone into details on each of the entries, but I think that's enough for now. If anything, I hope this encourages anyone who’s played pentiment to check out one of the books and maybe draw their own connections I might have missed or forgot to include. Whenever I think about what differentiates a 5-star game from a 4.5- or 4-star game, I think this is it. A 5-star game will get me to read six books totaling probably like 1000+ pages. I’m currently reading through The Brothers Karamazov as part of The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa’s readable books list (so far I’ve read Winesburg, Ohio, Confessions of a Mask, and Rumble Fish), and maybe I’ll write a similar piece at some point for each (though bear in mind I started reading the first book in this collection a year ago, so y'know).
Animal Well
2024
One of the rooms in this game has the shape of a heart and is full of capybaras, and if that doesn’t prove to you that this is the clear GOTY of the year of the decade of forever so far then I don’t know what will.
Despite being a highly anticipated game for me, probably one of this year’s releases that excited me the most this year… I had no fucking clue what Animal Well really was. By that I don’t mean that ‘’I didn’t know what to expect’’, there have been a ton of games I didn’t have expectations of what they would be prior to playing them, but at least I had a small idea what they were about, their mechanics, and overall ideas. But with Animal Well, I had no clue about how it could even play like.
It was supposed to be a Metroidvania? Is it Puzzle-Platformer? Or perhaps an immersive-atmospheric experience? Maybe a highly experimental take on open spaces and secret finding? I didn’t really know before I hit ‘’start game’’ to be honest, and yet, even before that point there was something that called me, that fascinated me. This world of blues and greens seen through the lenses of an old CRTV is an aesthetic I didn’t know I missed this much, or maybe is that it’s done so effectively here; the surround sound and flickering lights that accompany such abandoned yet beautiful looking structures and the nature that melds perfectly with it… I don’t know, it reminisces of feelings and memories I don’t think I can properly put into words, but still filled me with a desire to explore this rabbit hole.
Well, I finally played it, and I have finally found the answer to all of those questions that once plagued me:…
…Yes.
Animal Wells is an experience that feels like it takes inspiration from a million different places and ideas, and yet it molds them together to create something unlike any other game I can think of; is the idea that surrounds the ‘’Metroidvania’’ genre distilled in its purest form, yet it’s far from being simple.
The well is a place of few words; none of the areas have a proper name, there are no NPCs to chat with, and it’s not like the small slime-like creature we play as has a mouth to begin with. The only text present is one found in menus, small one-word prompts, and the name of the items, and that’s more than enough… because the rest speaks for itself. Each area and the animals that live in them chant a different song, each room a part of a puzzle of their own; I didn’t know for them to have a name for places to stand out vividly in my mind, like the Lake of the Cranes, or the Giant Bat’s Cave, or even smaller locations like the Peacock’s Palace or the Disc’s Shrine. The world of Animal Well may be quiet, but everything speaks volumes, like visting an abandoned virtual zoo: every encounter with a new-found critter, whether friendly or aggressive, every new interaction like distracting dogs using the disc, or every major tense moment like running away from the Ghost… Cat? Dog? I actually don’t know which of the two is supposed to be, nor do I need to know that the entire sequence and puzzle is an amazing highlight and super satisfying to overcome completely on your own… No wait, that’s also the rest of the game!
Managing to create a world that feels so well thought-out and designed so every puzzle feels intuitive, while at the same time offering such fun to use and multi-purpose items that can break open the game completely and taking ALL THAT into account is honestly worth getting up and applauding. The Bubble Wand is the clear star of the show for me; being able to create temporary platforms is already a game changer, especially when pairing it with fans and wind currents, but then you realize you can ‘bubble hop’, as I like to call it, by pressing the action and jump button both at the same time and completely bypassing many parts and sections that otherwise would have required other actions, and best thing is that even if it seems that it breaks the game at times, the dev clearly accounted for it since some rooms have passages too thin for you to maneuver or create bubbles or even animals like hummingbirds that immediately pop them once you make one. I normally wouldn’t like when a game makes a tool completely useless for the sake of a puzzle, but in here it makes total sense and balances out the moments were you make out your own path with pre-designed puzzles this amazing, and it’s not like that’s the only tool that lets you get creative anyway.
The moment you get any item, about two seconds is all you need to realize the possibilities it can offer, yet, as in the rest of the caverns, nothing is ever spelled out; you yourself and your own imagination and problem-solving are the ones that need to overcome the challenges this wildlife imposes; I’ve never felt so rewarded in such a long time than when using the Yo-Yo effectively, learning the code to fast travel to the main hub with the animal faces —which remind me of a certain game, I think it starter with ‘’Super’’ and ended with ‘’2’’… can’t put a finger on it tho—, or skipping completely the Ostrich escape sequence and its puzzles, near the bowels of the map, by using the Spring, Yo-Yo and myself. It honestly comes really close to feeling like the levels in Mosa Lina, now that I think about: you have incredibly useful tools that serve a clear purpose, but ones you can also use whichever way you like to, only with the difference that Animal Well is an already built, profoundly engaging and interesting world, and using all this arsenal while interacting with the animal and the curse that seems to affect the well is amazing, and little things like fall or water damage aren’t taken into account to incentivize and reward experimentation even more than it would have otherwise.
If I had to point out a flaw, and one that may honestly be a ‘’only me’’ thing, is the inconsistency with how it handles some switches and shortcuts. While I get and really enjoy some gauntlets of puzzles, he fact some of them reset, like the ‘’On and Off’’ switches, reset every time you teleport or get out of a room, just makes things a tad more annoying, in contrast to how the yellow door switches stay activated even if you don’t press them all or die, which makes other rooms kind of a joke and strips them from the tension found in the boss encounters, for example. I understand that this won’t be that big of a deal for many people, but when the rest of the game is so impeccably designed and each room amounts to so much, these little annoyances are noticeable.
A game that otherwise… I still don’t think I can say I've come close to experiencing all of it. In a way, it’s kinda interesting to have played this so close after beating Fez for the first time, because while both of those games have a similar sense of wonder and are brimming with secrets, that game created its mysteries through the tools you can find within a same room and code-finding through a fragmented world , while Animal Well is an ecosystem on its own, with the complete freedom that entails. Even after finding out what dwelled at the bottom of the well, it's insane how much there’s for me to find, not only the Eggs, but I’m convinced there are things that I haven’t even seen yet, and I know for sure that there are far more items than it seemed at first.
At this point, it shouldn’t be a secret that one of the things I love the most in games, or in any form of art for that matter, is when they give so much food for thought, letting the imagination run wild and feel so massive and grand even if their locations are small; Animal Well is only a 30 MB game, and it’s the perfect representation of all this, the wild desire to explore, to have fun, and to fear the unknown, even when it's scary as all hell.
I’m obsessed with Animal Well, and its ambience, roars, and silence speak to me in a way few games do, and I’m happy to see that’s a sentiment already being shared by so many people.
Despite being a highly anticipated game for me, probably one of this year’s releases that excited me the most this year… I had no fucking clue what Animal Well really was. By that I don’t mean that ‘’I didn’t know what to expect’’, there have been a ton of games I didn’t have expectations of what they would be prior to playing them, but at least I had a small idea what they were about, their mechanics, and overall ideas. But with Animal Well, I had no clue about how it could even play like.
It was supposed to be a Metroidvania? Is it Puzzle-Platformer? Or perhaps an immersive-atmospheric experience? Maybe a highly experimental take on open spaces and secret finding? I didn’t really know before I hit ‘’start game’’ to be honest, and yet, even before that point there was something that called me, that fascinated me. This world of blues and greens seen through the lenses of an old CRTV is an aesthetic I didn’t know I missed this much, or maybe is that it’s done so effectively here; the surround sound and flickering lights that accompany such abandoned yet beautiful looking structures and the nature that melds perfectly with it… I don’t know, it reminisces of feelings and memories I don’t think I can properly put into words, but still filled me with a desire to explore this rabbit hole.
Well, I finally played it, and I have finally found the answer to all of those questions that once plagued me:…
…Yes.
Animal Wells is an experience that feels like it takes inspiration from a million different places and ideas, and yet it molds them together to create something unlike any other game I can think of; is the idea that surrounds the ‘’Metroidvania’’ genre distilled in its purest form, yet it’s far from being simple.
The well is a place of few words; none of the areas have a proper name, there are no NPCs to chat with, and it’s not like the small slime-like creature we play as has a mouth to begin with. The only text present is one found in menus, small one-word prompts, and the name of the items, and that’s more than enough… because the rest speaks for itself. Each area and the animals that live in them chant a different song, each room a part of a puzzle of their own; I didn’t know for them to have a name for places to stand out vividly in my mind, like the Lake of the Cranes, or the Giant Bat’s Cave, or even smaller locations like the Peacock’s Palace or the Disc’s Shrine. The world of Animal Well may be quiet, but everything speaks volumes, like visting an abandoned virtual zoo: every encounter with a new-found critter, whether friendly or aggressive, every new interaction like distracting dogs using the disc, or every major tense moment like running away from the Ghost… Cat? Dog? I actually don’t know which of the two is supposed to be, nor do I need to know that the entire sequence and puzzle is an amazing highlight and super satisfying to overcome completely on your own… No wait, that’s also the rest of the game!
Managing to create a world that feels so well thought-out and designed so every puzzle feels intuitive, while at the same time offering such fun to use and multi-purpose items that can break open the game completely and taking ALL THAT into account is honestly worth getting up and applauding. The Bubble Wand is the clear star of the show for me; being able to create temporary platforms is already a game changer, especially when pairing it with fans and wind currents, but then you realize you can ‘bubble hop’, as I like to call it, by pressing the action and jump button both at the same time and completely bypassing many parts and sections that otherwise would have required other actions, and best thing is that even if it seems that it breaks the game at times, the dev clearly accounted for it since some rooms have passages too thin for you to maneuver or create bubbles or even animals like hummingbirds that immediately pop them once you make one. I normally wouldn’t like when a game makes a tool completely useless for the sake of a puzzle, but in here it makes total sense and balances out the moments were you make out your own path with pre-designed puzzles this amazing, and it’s not like that’s the only tool that lets you get creative anyway.
The moment you get any item, about two seconds is all you need to realize the possibilities it can offer, yet, as in the rest of the caverns, nothing is ever spelled out; you yourself and your own imagination and problem-solving are the ones that need to overcome the challenges this wildlife imposes; I’ve never felt so rewarded in such a long time than when using the Yo-Yo effectively, learning the code to fast travel to the main hub with the animal faces —which remind me of a certain game, I think it starter with ‘’Super’’ and ended with ‘’2’’… can’t put a finger on it tho—, or skipping completely the Ostrich escape sequence and its puzzles, near the bowels of the map, by using the Spring, Yo-Yo and myself. It honestly comes really close to feeling like the levels in Mosa Lina, now that I think about: you have incredibly useful tools that serve a clear purpose, but ones you can also use whichever way you like to, only with the difference that Animal Well is an already built, profoundly engaging and interesting world, and using all this arsenal while interacting with the animal and the curse that seems to affect the well is amazing, and little things like fall or water damage aren’t taken into account to incentivize and reward experimentation even more than it would have otherwise.
If I had to point out a flaw, and one that may honestly be a ‘’only me’’ thing, is the inconsistency with how it handles some switches and shortcuts. While I get and really enjoy some gauntlets of puzzles, he fact some of them reset, like the ‘’On and Off’’ switches, reset every time you teleport or get out of a room, just makes things a tad more annoying, in contrast to how the yellow door switches stay activated even if you don’t press them all or die, which makes other rooms kind of a joke and strips them from the tension found in the boss encounters, for example. I understand that this won’t be that big of a deal for many people, but when the rest of the game is so impeccably designed and each room amounts to so much, these little annoyances are noticeable.
A game that otherwise… I still don’t think I can say I've come close to experiencing all of it. In a way, it’s kinda interesting to have played this so close after beating Fez for the first time, because while both of those games have a similar sense of wonder and are brimming with secrets, that game created its mysteries through the tools you can find within a same room and code-finding through a fragmented world , while Animal Well is an ecosystem on its own, with the complete freedom that entails. Even after finding out what dwelled at the bottom of the well, it's insane how much there’s for me to find, not only the Eggs, but I’m convinced there are things that I haven’t even seen yet, and I know for sure that there are far more items than it seemed at first.
At this point, it shouldn’t be a secret that one of the things I love the most in games, or in any form of art for that matter, is when they give so much food for thought, letting the imagination run wild and feel so massive and grand even if their locations are small; Animal Well is only a 30 MB game, and it’s the perfect representation of all this, the wild desire to explore, to have fun, and to fear the unknown, even when it's scary as all hell.
I’m obsessed with Animal Well, and its ambience, roars, and silence speak to me in a way few games do, and I’m happy to see that’s a sentiment already being shared by so many people.
Persona 3 Reload
2024
素晴らしいグラフィック、素晴らしい音楽、戦闘への素晴らしい追加、すべてがオリジナルのゲームの本質を失わずに改善されています。リメイクの手本です。
Enjoyment - 5/10
Difficulty - 3/10
Horizon Zero Dawn is a painfully average video game.
The visual splendour of Horizon Zero Dawn's landscapes and vistas really carries the experience. Also, traversing on your robot horse and encountering imposing machines is cool. However, all of the game's positive aspects are undercut by its conflicting mechanics and genuinely awful story.
Combat is borderline atrocious. Not once did I have a good time with battling human or machine enemies. Dodging, slow-motion aiming, melee, stealth, it all seemed to run counter to the core of the game. Repetitive mission structures and forgettable side quests also paint the game badly. If I am being completely honest, if the game had a NO COMBAT PASSIVISM lean in its framework I think it would've been a much better game with a stronger identity it could build off.
The ecological, industrial, and tribal theming of Horizon Zero Dawn was very promising. Discovering titbits of the world's history that better informs you about this video game space gave me goose bumps. Stumbling across ruined buildings that were once bustling places now turned to moss infused steel henges as a result of nature's reclamation is truly immersive. However, the world building and the overarching stories are not happily married to each other which leaves a confusing energy for its players to divorce. By the end of the adventure, it left me massively disappointed as it only told a children's first human vs. earth conflict story.
Characterization is dreadful. Predictable character arcs. Pandering story beats. Annoying and unlikeable main character. Contradictory character actions within the plot. Bad ending. Very, very poorly directed.
"If the game was five hours long, maybe it would be good" -Girlfriend.
Don't really know how to end this. Horizon Zero Dawn is an annoying ginger girl who clumsily fights robot dinosaur in attempt to do something??
🏆
Difficulty - 3/10
Horizon Zero Dawn is a painfully average video game.
The visual splendour of Horizon Zero Dawn's landscapes and vistas really carries the experience. Also, traversing on your robot horse and encountering imposing machines is cool. However, all of the game's positive aspects are undercut by its conflicting mechanics and genuinely awful story.
Combat is borderline atrocious. Not once did I have a good time with battling human or machine enemies. Dodging, slow-motion aiming, melee, stealth, it all seemed to run counter to the core of the game. Repetitive mission structures and forgettable side quests also paint the game badly. If I am being completely honest, if the game had a NO COMBAT PASSIVISM lean in its framework I think it would've been a much better game with a stronger identity it could build off.
The ecological, industrial, and tribal theming of Horizon Zero Dawn was very promising. Discovering titbits of the world's history that better informs you about this video game space gave me goose bumps. Stumbling across ruined buildings that were once bustling places now turned to moss infused steel henges as a result of nature's reclamation is truly immersive. However, the world building and the overarching stories are not happily married to each other which leaves a confusing energy for its players to divorce. By the end of the adventure, it left me massively disappointed as it only told a children's first human vs. earth conflict story.
Characterization is dreadful. Predictable character arcs. Pandering story beats. Annoying and unlikeable main character. Contradictory character actions within the plot. Bad ending. Very, very poorly directed.
"If the game was five hours long, maybe it would be good" -Girlfriend.
Don't really know how to end this. Horizon Zero Dawn is an annoying ginger girl who clumsily fights robot dinosaur in attempt to do something??
🏆
Control
2019
Enjoyment - 5/10
Difficulty - 3/10
Hot take incoming. This game is painfully average. Moments of greatness, but lets itself down with certain creative decisions. Experimental storytelling is admirable, but the methods shown here are disengaging. The internal monologues during conversations DO NOT provide interesting emotions or insights and actively ruins the rhythm of what is being said, losing its effectiveness. The gameplay loop loses its charm in the first four hours. This game for me is the definition of 'on the fence'.
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Difficulty - 3/10
Hot take incoming. This game is painfully average. Moments of greatness, but lets itself down with certain creative decisions. Experimental storytelling is admirable, but the methods shown here are disengaging. The internal monologues during conversations DO NOT provide interesting emotions or insights and actively ruins the rhythm of what is being said, losing its effectiveness. The gameplay loop loses its charm in the first four hours. This game for me is the definition of 'on the fence'.
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Death Stranding
2019
Enjoyment - 10/10
Difficulty - 5/10
Death Stranding is the PlayStation 4. Death Stranding is a fine dining restaurant serving you a delicious fast food burger, but it turned out it wasn't a burger. You begin to question what you just ate, and you cannot place the taste. The only thing you do know is that it was familiar and the best thing you ever ate. Death Stranding touches souls, and cleanses them. Death Stranding is a video game.
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Difficulty - 5/10
Death Stranding is the PlayStation 4. Death Stranding is a fine dining restaurant serving you a delicious fast food burger, but it turned out it wasn't a burger. You begin to question what you just ate, and you cannot place the taste. The only thing you do know is that it was familiar and the best thing you ever ate. Death Stranding touches souls, and cleanses them. Death Stranding is a video game.
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Rocket Racing
2023
"go to hell" is basic. "i hope the developers of some of your favourite games get bought by epic and have to make subpar versions of other games so fortnite can try to compete with roblox" is smart. it's possible. it's terrifying.
Her Story
2015
Unique and interesting way to dissect a short murder mystery. I can agree with other reviewers that the plot is not the most distinctive, and the acting can be a little awkward at times, but the gameplay aspect is really neat, and pretty immersive. That is what got me most invested. I recommend trying this visual novel out when it goes on sale for around $1 on Steam, as in full it is only around 1-2 hours long. Get that with a Costco hot dog meal, and you got yourself an entertaining $5 evening for the night (b ᵔ▽ᵔ)b
3/5
3/5