lemonous
Bio
I love video games (surprising I know). I'll try anything, but my favorites are platformers and story-heavy games. I have a soft spot for visual novels and RPG Maker stuff in particular. My ratings don't follow a specific guide or anything, I just rate it in accordance with how much I enjoyed it.
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It was certainly a treat to go through this game again. Now despite my rating, no this game isn't actually perfect. I just love it that much on a personal level. I love the characters, the story, the visuals, the new animated opening, the absolutely spectacular soundtrack and so on so forth. It's a beautiful package.
Gameplay and pacing-wise is where I see people having some problems with this game. Of course some puzzles aren't perfect...the sound puzzle was updated to include visual cues to make it much easier but it's still not very great. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure the mirror maze was made easier but I've forgotten how exactly it worked in the original so it may just be my memory playing tricks on me.
The pacing is a little all over the place. with some chapters being full of puzzles and slow development (Fleta and Harpae's, then the later ones like Lisette's and Enjels are mostly just walking through linear corridors while being given their exposition. It's unfortunate that there was nothing added to fluff these portions up a bit more.
Even those sections are great though. Lisette's atmosphere comes together very well, with the heavy use of symbolism within the area. The circus portion is one of my favorites, even if it is pretty short. Just being able to explore heavily themed areas in this RPG Maker format, it's something I will never get tired of. An immense amount of content, including the collectible pumpkin charms, optional wax records and various endings, and of course a very large story that certainly is one of my favorite parts of this game.
I got through around 3 campaigns before learning that there are just better ways to play this exact same story. I feel like I'd be here for a while if I tried to do every character's story in this one and I wasn't really having fun with it so I guess I'll stop here. I don't think I was bothered by the gameplay itself, but I did notice how quickly the AI would just die. You can barely get to any of the objectives on even normal difficulty without your entire army falling apart. So far Samurai Warriors 2 has ironically felt much more balanced and I'm assuming the newer titles are as well. Was also surprised to see that an xtreme legends for this one did not even release in the west, which I imagine has something to do with it being a major step backwards.
This is a bit of a mixed bag for me but if I'm really honest here the thing that impacted me the most was Parun (the developer) and their personal story. Since it hasn't really been said here I'm not necessarily comfortable discussing it in a review but feel free to look it up if you are curious.
The foundation is great. It's the Corpse Party/Misao vibes with a story focused on mental health and tackles the effects of domestic abuse, adultery and the main theme of loneliness. These are all concepts that have the potential to be executed well even in an RPG Maker format.
The dialogue was where things got a bit strange for me. There's moments where a lot of out of place humor or plot points break any genuine feelings I had towards Yuuichi and Shunsuke. Yes, it's a tragedy. I've seen quite a lot of tragedies in these games but this one was just not one of the better executed ones. Details like the father's roleplay fetish and the interjections of the dog, while fairly amusing, ended up rubbing me the wrong way in a game with such a serious message.
The other problem is that the gameplay here is extremely annoying to deal with. It is a combination of the trial and error puzzles AND the turn-based combat. The puzzles aren't bad, until they are. There are points where the solutions are so specific that you wouldn't know without a guide.
The example that is still sticking with me a dark hallway where you lose your friend Ryou. You can obtain a flashlight beforehand, but you cannot activate it, implying you need to use it later. In actuality, you're supposed to wait till you hear a sound while moving through the darkness, check your menu until Ryou's icon disappears, turn around and keep walking back until you encounter Ryou, then access a cutscene in which Shunsuke will turn the flashlight on. Stuff like this exists in other RPG Maker horror games, yes, but this one felt like it had significantly more moments like that.
Turn-based combat is also basically just a puzzle. This makes it also another very specific trial-and-error type situation, in which most turns require to do extremely specific moves or patterns, else you will die. I did not find this to be very fun.
If I disregard the strange dialogue and the slightly shallow way the story portrays itself, there were certainly things to love. The mental health focus is still something I must respect and will cherish the impact it made on this genre. Parun spoke out about something that absolutely deserved to be talked about and he did it in a very unique way. I thank him for this and he will be missed.
The ending is certainly memorable and I can't help but feel that there is a very real connection between the true end and the fog surrounding mental health in our world. Some will ignore it, others will never even know it is there. That is definitely true horror.
I think I also realized I need to start looking for some really happy games to play in the meantime because goddamn have I been on a major depressing game spree.