nitronikolai
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Castlevania
1986
When I was younger and I hadn’t played many older games and I wasn’t really paying attention to the ones that I HAD I would often find myself thinking that while some games were obviously worth recognizing for being the first in iconic series and having cool music and being the foundations upon which great things would be built, there wasn’t ACTUALLY that much separating something like a Mario or a Zelda from the kinds of games that we had in my house growing up that were utterly forgotten by history like Kung Fu Heroes and Swords and Serpents, or actively maligned like Home Alone 2 or Battletoads. OBVIOUSLY this was an ignorant way to think about these games, a dismissive attitude informed by an unwillingness to branch out of my comfort zone, one that I talk about often on here. Making an active effort to shed this attitude is a general good because it not only helps me better appreciate the more run of the mill or forgotten games of the era as worthy of attention and examination but it does also help me identify DA CLASSICS and goddamn is Castlevania ever one of those.
Obviously there’s a lot here that does this, from the nonstop bangers (a game with ten pieces of music where every single one of them is a stone cold classic broooooooo) that are perfectly matched to the tone of each stage, to the variety between those stages despite the relatively limited bag of tricks the devs were working with, to the deliberate control scheme, to the distinctly minimal number of fuck off dickhead unfair set pieces. Even the premise is pitch perfect, goofy enough to be remarkable, for every moment where you turn a proverbial corner into a new boss pulled from the classic movie monster canon to be worth a hearty chuckle without shedding the instantly classic schlock horror vibe it’s cultivating.
I think the thing that’s really cool to me though, especially for a game from 1986, is how well Castlevania establishes, uh Castlevania. Like, the castle itself. For a game with literally no text in it, Castlevania (the game) does an incredible job at rooting you in its senses of character, of narrative, of place. The theme park tour of Dracula’s castle takes you through grounds and gardens, over towers and parapets, down into dungeons and caves, and it all feels like a natural progression. You get that little map screen in between stages that shows your progress through the castle and you can really feel it. Castlevania does the smart thing of mixing you up between moving left-to-right and moving right-to-left too, which doesn’t sound like much but it does make it feel a lot more like you’re working your way through a real building complex and less like only a series of levels. This kind of attention to detail is what elevates those good games to Great ones. It makes Castlevania a real pleasure to experience, it makes it immersive. It’s so cool to find that degree of world in a linear sidescrolling action platformer on the NES. Games are so cool! It’s this kind of shit that keeps me excited for the medium.
FUCK the hallway before the grim reaper though, all my homies hate the hallway before the grim reaper.
NEXT TIME: SIMON'S QUEST
Obviously there’s a lot here that does this, from the nonstop bangers (a game with ten pieces of music where every single one of them is a stone cold classic broooooooo) that are perfectly matched to the tone of each stage, to the variety between those stages despite the relatively limited bag of tricks the devs were working with, to the deliberate control scheme, to the distinctly minimal number of fuck off dickhead unfair set pieces. Even the premise is pitch perfect, goofy enough to be remarkable, for every moment where you turn a proverbial corner into a new boss pulled from the classic movie monster canon to be worth a hearty chuckle without shedding the instantly classic schlock horror vibe it’s cultivating.
I think the thing that’s really cool to me though, especially for a game from 1986, is how well Castlevania establishes, uh Castlevania. Like, the castle itself. For a game with literally no text in it, Castlevania (the game) does an incredible job at rooting you in its senses of character, of narrative, of place. The theme park tour of Dracula’s castle takes you through grounds and gardens, over towers and parapets, down into dungeons and caves, and it all feels like a natural progression. You get that little map screen in between stages that shows your progress through the castle and you can really feel it. Castlevania does the smart thing of mixing you up between moving left-to-right and moving right-to-left too, which doesn’t sound like much but it does make it feel a lot more like you’re working your way through a real building complex and less like only a series of levels. This kind of attention to detail is what elevates those good games to Great ones. It makes Castlevania a real pleasure to experience, it makes it immersive. It’s so cool to find that degree of world in a linear sidescrolling action platformer on the NES. Games are so cool! It’s this kind of shit that keeps me excited for the medium.
FUCK the hallway before the grim reaper though, all my homies hate the hallway before the grim reaper.
NEXT TIME: SIMON'S QUEST
Now, I wasn't originally planning on giving this one a shot because I thought it was gonna be more generic wii mario, but I immediately picked it up when I saw that hilarious xbox brain poisoned tweet that went like:
THEY WANT YOU TO BELIEVE THIS
mario jumping around getting coins yahoo
IS BETTER THAN THIS
guy just walking in starfield doing fucking nothing
DONT WATCH THE GAME AWARDS!
THEY WANT YOU TO BELIEVE THIS
mario jumping around getting coins yahoo
IS BETTER THAN THIS
guy just walking in starfield doing fucking nothing
DONT WATCH THE GAME AWARDS!
The Legend of Zelda
1986
Remarkably, the good majority of Zelda holds up in the current day. It's interesting to hear people call this a "guide game" in a negative lens because... that's always how it was marketed and sold to us. The manual that comes with the game not only expands quite a deal on the story and context of this first entry, but includes gorgeous artwork and maps - complete with walkthroughs for the first few dungeons - to get a new player started. This was indeed always meant to be an adventure, one the player would get their nose lost in manuals, handwritten notes and drawings, and of course not the least of which murmurings and tips passed between friends in the schoolyard and the fabled Nintendo hotline.
That said, the original Zelda experience isn't without flaw, for all of its adventure purist expression. I think Miyamoto and the team learned pretty quickly that an indicator for which bushes to burn, which boulders and walls to bomb, and stronger guidance for the sake of general gameplay flow were all in order by the time Link to the Past would roll around. The combat so desperately wants Link to have an arced swing of his sword, evidenced by how much combat relies on inter-tile maneuvering, but it's not quite there yet. Still a massive step in the right direction from the competitions' push-combat approach... much as I do like early Ys. What's here is still very solid, and a great deal of fun. I just replayed this with my best friend in an impromptu single session and it didn't drag at all. For as minimal and bare-bones as Zelda feels now, that adds to the unique charm and status it takes within its series and adventure games as a whole.
That said, the original Zelda experience isn't without flaw, for all of its adventure purist expression. I think Miyamoto and the team learned pretty quickly that an indicator for which bushes to burn, which boulders and walls to bomb, and stronger guidance for the sake of general gameplay flow were all in order by the time Link to the Past would roll around. The combat so desperately wants Link to have an arced swing of his sword, evidenced by how much combat relies on inter-tile maneuvering, but it's not quite there yet. Still a massive step in the right direction from the competitions' push-combat approach... much as I do like early Ys. What's here is still very solid, and a great deal of fun. I just replayed this with my best friend in an impromptu single session and it didn't drag at all. For as minimal and bare-bones as Zelda feels now, that adds to the unique charm and status it takes within its series and adventure games as a whole.
In this game, people who disagree with blue haired girls are sentenced to hard labor at the Black Tower... just like real life 😔
‘In those dreams, I loved one woman... No matter the day, no matter the era…’
My adolescence was marked by the exploration of video games and RPGs already had the strongest attraction over me. There was an evocative quality to them that made them convenient getaways, places of reverie and poetic fables. Final Fantasy VI (1994) was certainly the first big shock of that time: in this universe torn between magic and technology, the adventures of this peculiar company resonated with me and I still consider Celes to be one of the characters dearest to my heart. Many other games have punctuated these adventures in those fictional lands, but Xenogears (1998) holds a rather distinctive place.
Final Fantasy VII (1997) didn't have any of the much-vaunted charm on me, certainly because it wasn't the story I needed, probably because the characters didn't speak to me that much. Xenogears, on the other hand, proved to be a rough gem, which I didn't know I liked that much. Perhaps it was because I had shared the experience with my then girlfriend. She and I shared this infinite love for literature and a melancholic soul. For various reasons, Xenogears was a game that moved us: from the story told to the clever use of the PS1's limitations with an art direction that embraced the very geometric aspect of the graphic assets, a poetic breath ran through the title. The silence of the final seconds in the ending cutscene was a testament to the contemplative force that fed Xenogears. Yet, as important and grandiose as this game was, I always found it difficult to place it among my favourite games. Was it because it reminded me of an era that is painful for me today? Was it because the memory of my tender love crushed my heart whenever I thought of Elly?
While playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3, all these memories gradually rose to the surface of my consciousness, bursting into nostalgic recollections. For Tetsuya Takahashi, Xenogears is the one project that never came to fruition, for editorial reasons. Although the Perfect Works book gives a glimpse of what this titanic project could have been, the idealised Xenogears lives only in our minds, and those who played the game nourish this unrealized title with their speculation and love. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 looks like a way for Takahashi to move on and rewrite a Xenogears, while also taking on the legacy of Xenosaga and the Xenoblade Chronicles. Since the release of the first Xenoblade Chronicles (2010), Monolith Soft has confirmed its prestigious position within the JRPG genre. This success has put the studio back in the spotlight, and it is involved in the development of major Nintendo titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011) and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), to name but a few, while continuing to work on the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise. Xenoblade Chronicles X (2015) served as a counterpoint to the original opus, borrowing its structure, but moving towards a very sci-fi story, under the writing of Kazuho Hyodo (Gundam SEED). The second numerical opus reveals the definite influence of japanimation on the development team - surely, because of its youth compared to the industry average. While Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (2017) was very well received, the sexualisation of the female characters did not go unnoticed and offended a part of the community.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 thus appears to be a title that synthesises all of Monolith Soft's work. By presumably concluding the Xenoblade Chronicles series, it asserts that it learnt lessons from its predecessors. At the same time, it operates a return to the origins, since the title made no secret of being a retelling of Xenogears. Even the name of the protagonist, Noah, echoes the original name of the first game: Project Noah. For veterans of Xenogears and Xenosaga, the references are undeniable, right from the first few minutes. From similar exposition scenes to passages reused almost word for word, it is obvious that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a game of mourning: that of a project that never came to fruition, that of an era that is now over, that of a producer who must look to the future. It is therefore necessarily also a game that propels Monolith Soft towards new horizons and towards a breeze of renewal.
‘A tiny ripple has just been born in the world that surrounds them.’
The sequences that I find the strongest in JRPGs are those that manage to recontextualise the gameplay into a unique narrative proposition. Those who played Final Fantasy VI will of course remember the passage where Celes is on the solitary island, which opens the second section of the game. The Xeno franchise has always sought to impress through exploration. Cinematography has been a strength of the studio, and the most recent titles place a particular emphasis on the gigantic world, which overwhelms the characters, particles moving with the flow of time. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes these approaches and adds a large tinge of nostalgia and intertextuality, constantly referencing elements from previous titles, using players' memories to invoke particular emotions. The discovery of the Dannagh Desert or the Erythia Sea is bound to strike a chord with players who have done the first two Xenoblade Chronicles. In addition to the sense of vastness, both horizontal and vertical, these regions are also filled with a wistful quality. The edges of the map help to circumscribe this magic, making this universe a moment cut off from time: chasms that soar into a sea of clouds or waterfalls that flow to who-knows-where do not allow for a grasp of the horizon. What the player sees is infinity.
To make exploration more fluid, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 opts for a more direct narrative breakdown. The side quests and the main story rarely mix, so that it is possible to finish the game fairly quickly, ignoring the former. The strength of the game comes from the positioning of these side quests. They form, for each colony, a slow evolution towards the future: despite uninteresting objectives, they contextualise individuals within communities that seek to survive and find meaning in existence. Moreover, each quest directs the player to new locations, contributing to the organic nature of the exploration. Some may regret this approach, which makes exploring relatively linear, if you attach it to the resolution of side quests. As a corollary, finishing the exploration before the side quests empties them of some of their purpose. Nevertheless, it is an ideal way to get the player to interact with the world and to become familiar with hundreds of minor characters, whose lives make up and depict humanity in all its forms. This is probably why the side quests in Chapters 6 and 7 are the most compelling, as they have a solid narrative base to tell their story. Although still too short, these little vignettes of human life in Aionios work when put together.
While the game design is geared towards accessibility for the general public, with Monolith Soft understanding that several dozen hours is an investment that is increasingly difficult to make for the completion of an RPG, it is apparent that the ideal experience requires total completion – prior to passing the point of no return. This is perhaps one of the pitfalls of Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Apart from the assiduous player who fully completes the side quests before tackling the final hours of the main story – which I did – the title fails to combine the contemplation of the world with its thematic discourse. Haunted by the question of existentialism and the future, like the other Xeno games, it takes a very similar setting to Xenogears with two nations at war and the couple of Noah and Mio, largely echoing Fei and Elly. The same questions are asked, especially from the beginning of Chapter 6. The issue with Xenoblade Chronicles 3 could be the density of its cast, preventing us from dwelling too long on the trials and tribulations of each character. The protagonists' side quests are completed in barely an hour, resulting in personality changes that are sometimes a little abrupt. Sena's quest is a perfect example of this problem, as it has very little to do with Sena, but seeks to conclude a narrative thread explored in the previous two chapters. The heroes' quests are also too short, although they suffer less from this: some even manage to be very effective, within the narrative structure of their colony. Colony Mu is certainly the most successful in this respect.
The protagonists also engage with each other much more and always offer feedback, even in very minor quests, which helps the game to be more digestible. Admittedly, the relative silence of Noah and Mio, due to their propensity for introspection, can clash with the pace of their development, especially when compared to the very strong personalities of Lanz, Eunie or Taion. A real arborescence of relationships is created by a very rich voice acting. The English version I chose continues the tone of the previous games, with definite English, Scottish, Irish or Welsh accents; the writing adapts to it and one could almost believe that the game was first written in English, so much the mannerisms and idioms are naturally used. They also help to enliven the world by bringing an extra touch of humanity, with characters being rougher in their diction and speech. The English version of Eunie is completely different from her Japanese counterpart, much more focused and less expressive. It's a personal choice, but I think that playing in English – even if one can lose some cultural nuance – contributes to the singularity of the adventure that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 offers.
‘Your fate was sealed when you rose against us!’
The combat system is also smoother and clearer than its predecessors. Xenoblades Chronicles 3 introduces the concept of Fusions Arts, which allow battles to always have a steady tempo. The title combines the systems of two Xenoblade Chronicles – Agnian attacks are charged with auto-attacks, while Keves' ones are on a fixed timer - to provide a welcome variation in gameplay. Each battle benefits from the player's attention to the positioning of the various characters, as well as the combination of different abilities, to maximise damage via the effects created by combos. The result is almost cinematic sequences, sometimes lasting for dozens of seconds, in which the player finds themselves switching between characters very quickly to unleash a series of coordinated attacks. In particular, it is very easy to mix up attacks thanks to the cancel animation of the Fusions Arts. The Interlink is also a mechanic that keeps the fight very aggressive. It can be used in two ways: either the player uses it when they are level 3 to maximise the damage output, or they can use it defensively to protect a character whose life has dropped severely, as the Interlink provides invincibility.
The show really culminates in the Chain Attacks, which are much more understandable than their counterparts in previous Xenoblade Chronicles. The concept is simplified to opening each round with a damage dealer, then using a healer before closing with a tank: a simple formula that encourages the use of Chain Attacks. The influence of Persona 5 (2016) seems obvious, but Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes a much more grandiose route with its catchy musical theme and cinematography that supports the power of the blows dealt to the enemy. One might regret that these attacks are so powerful that they become a convenient expedient for finishing any fight quickly: boss fights often come down to surviving until their life drops below two-thirds, before unleashing a powerful Chain Attack – unless the player is already crushing the opposition with their level difference.
In essence, the combat system allows for a real sense of empowerment during battle, without being difficult to pick up. While it is possible for veterans to build a very custom team by changing the classes of each character, the game gives clear advice for those who are not adept at the genre: simply keep a balanced formation (two damage dealers, two healers, two tanks and the hero as a joker) to create an effective team and cover one's back. In the same way, if it is possible to spend long moments choosing skills, arts and other accessories, the title leaves the possibility of using a standardised build, with regard to the acquired skills and equipment, by pressing the Y button in the character menu. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 pursues Monolith Soft's broad-based philosophy, reversing the mistakes that previous combat systems have made; at the same time, the title still offers difficult challenges for the most seasoned players. Excluding the Challenges, the ultimate peak of difficulty is found in the hunt for Aionios' biggest monsters. Four of them must first be killed before the game's most powerful enemy – whose base level is 120 – can be faced.
The variety of side quests, which sometimes require a specific hero in the team, contributes to the diversity of the combat system, as the composition of the party often changes. In the same way, since skills and arts are shared between classes, it is strongly advised to switch from one to another often, in order to unlock all the abilities. Meanwhile, raising a hero class to level 10 unlocks its Ascension Quest, a convenient reason to constantly try new compositions. Thus, it is quite unlikely that the player already has a fixed team in the first part of the game: personally, it was not until chapter 6 that I did not change classes anymore, having already gained enough experience to unlock all the Ascension Quests.
‘It's okay not to feel whole. A part... is better than zero.’
In 2016, my girlfiend passed away. It was a few months after we had played Xenogears together. The golden age of JRPGs established character development as a central part of its plot: if one must save the world, one must also save oneself. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a game that balances between the quest for the future and the chains of regret. In 2016, I was still a teenager whose life was difficult and whose ordeal of grief was a silent acid burn. Even today, something is missing. There is still a hole in my chest that won't close: you can throw words, thoughts, emotions into it, but it is a black hole that refuses to fill. The pain of mourning is one of the most existential, because it is at the intersection of life and death. It is felt only by beings who are essentially separated: some are still living, others have left the world. Nothing can bridge this fundamental divide. The living are not meant to live with the dead.
My thoughts on this subject are not settled. My mourning is not over. On the scale of my life, six long years represent an interminable pilgrimage in search for an answer. Nevertheless, I have managed to find some truths that content me, if not fully satisfy me. When I think of my self of a few years ago, I see a creature that has been so painfully wounded by fate. It's hard to understand, at that age, why life can be so unforgiving. The resentment I harboured at that time was directed at myself. Doubts and guilt threw me into the throes of loneliness and despair. 'What if...' asks the cracked soul, in the hope that events that have already happened would have turned out differently. When drifting on this sea of darkness, any wooden plank is a salutary reef, at least to hold on a little longer. I regret that my self could not experience Xenoblade Chronicles 3, as my still developing mind could have found answers in the game's narrative.
If the title continues in the anime turn of the 2010s, with a generally juvenile writing style, it does so with a real sincerity. The questions asked are those of teenagers or young adults: they echo those I have experienced myself. As such, some sequences are particularly touching and give a glimpse of a terribly sensitive humanity, if not subtly expressed. The climax of Chapter 5 presents the emotions of the protagonists, taken on the spur of the moment. It is a torrent of emotions that pours out in a few minutes, after the silences and the unspoken words that punctuated the previous chapters. Of course, not everything works. Some scenes are too brief and superficial. Where Taion's quest works because of its pace and the poetic composition of its setting, Eunie's quest seems too hasty and too cheap to be convincing.
This gives the impression of a somewhat convenient sentimentalism, which is not exclusive to Xenoblade Chronicles 3, as it seems almost part of the DNA of modern JRPGs. This turn is noticeable in the 2000s, but has recently resulted in the placement of maudlin scenes in key sections of a game. Final Fantasy XV (2016) has several moments of great emotional intensity, but they seem almost disconnected from the rest of the experience. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 doesn't fail at the same pitfall, because the characters constantly interact with each other, even if some have to wait until the last few chapters for their development to finally begin - this is especially true of Sena. But because the characters are these teenagers, caught in a world they didn't choose, the doubts, the tears and the joys feel genuine. It is hard not to be touched by their experiences.
‘The future, it really is a foreign country...’
These experiences seem natural, because they echo those of post-Fukushima Japanese society. Through a web of parallels, Aionios evokes, to varying degrees and with greater or lesser accuracy, the difficulties of Japanese youth in the face of capitalism and the feeling of abandonment experienced over the past several decades. At the beginning of the 1990s, Japan experienced a major economic slump, caused both by the bursting of the real estate bubble and the weakening of banks' investment in businesses [1]. With the failure of Keynesian policies, Japan found itself trapped by its overspecialisation and its tendency to invest only in its domestic market. This psychological closure of Japanese companies to foreigners, despite government trends towards deregulation and the effects of globalisation, has deeply affected Japanese society to this day. From being an economic model for the world, Japan has become synonymous with structural problems, a discourse echoed by the Japanese themselves. This declinist impression is also fuelled by the country's demographic collapse and the failure of educational reforms in Japan. These reforms have increased inequality and divided the country in terms of access to employment: as a result, the number of applicants to universities has fallen, and with it the quality of the education system [2]. For young people, the consequences are manifold. The difficulty in accessing employment has created a distrust of the education system and of globalisation. Because traditional solidarities have also been eroded, young adults are waiting longer to enter into a relationship and a significant proportion of them are struggling to integrate into society, which official discourse wrongly groups under the term hikikomori.
Recent studies have pointed out that Japanese youth generally consider themselves happy, but without any hope for the future [3]. This essential contradiction is echoed in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, where armies of teenagers and young adults seem to find contentment in the relentless fighting, but without ever really thinking about the future. They survive in a universe imposed on them by various authorities. If the Castles illustrate the weight of government (in)action in their lives, the Consuls appear as a representation of the corporatist spirit in Abe's Japan, where everything is a question of productivity and efficiency, to the detriment of the employees' very well-being. Soldiers in the various colonies must continue their task - attacking other ones - at the risk of being destroyed by the system to which they contribute. Unable to develop their individuality, they do not find solidarity beyond the battle lines. Throughout the game, the terms 'culture' and 'family' are foreign to the characters. It is through the exploration of their repressed emotions that they are able to describe these concepts, associating them with a positive valence. As such, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is part of a precise ideological discourse, which challenges the Japanese policies of the last decades and tries to suggest ways forward for the Japanese youth.
Aionios is a world that is riddled with the notion of risk. In addition to the constant fighting, the threat of the Annihilation with the Black Fog clouds is an echo of the doubts that have plagued Japanese society since the Fukushima accident. This was caused by a combination of natural hazards and the myth of the total safety for Japanese nuclear power plants: for a country already accustomed to earthquakes and tsunamis, the Fukushima disaster has aggravated fears and discredited the political class. In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the theme is never discussed in depth, but it serves as a framework for the universe, whose existence is always endangered by nature or human action. It is not surprising that the Annihilator works on the model of the Annihilations.
Building on these elements, the title also seems drawn to the fantasy of a traditional Japan. The image of cherry blossoms - Saffronia, in the game - recurs repeatedly to evoke a peaceful existence. As mentioned above, the representation of the nuclear family is widely emphasised. The birth of infants is a new vision for the soldiers of Keves and Agnus, to the point where the game makes conception sacred, through several quests and cutscenes. These elements must be understood in the context of Japan's demographic decline. The failure of Japan's recent birth policies can be explained by the Abenomics, which have done little to address gender inequalities in the workplace [4]. The difficulty for women to support themselves pushes back the idea of having children. This idea is present in the game, where some female characters seem concerned about procreation, which is largely ignored by their male counterparts. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 thus struggles to construct a discourse on family that corresponds to the aspirations of youth: it advocates a traditional, heterosexual nuclear family and never manages to break out of this framework. If Noah and Mio's relationship seems to be attached to a critique of patriarchy, it is only vilified in its most extreme forms. The title never features homosexual relationships and perpetuates a conservative ideology, under the guise of defending the future. Xenoblade Chronicles 3, because it is a game about forced change, is shrouded in the ghosts of Japanese conservatism and traditionalism.
‘It's now so clear to me that you're still far away – a step away.’
Just as Xenogears was a foundational experience in my relationship with my girlfriend, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a game that allows me to let go of the teenager regrets I still feel. Despite the revamps brought to life by projects like Octopath Traveler (2018), the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Collection (2021) or the Live A Live remake (2022), the golden age of the JRPG is a thing of the past. These games fail to fully capture the atmosphere of the 1990s and early 2000s, as the socio-cultural context has changed. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is not a mindless throwback, but a synthesis of the themes carried by Xenogears and Xenosaga, the game design philosophy at the heart of Xenoblade Chronicles and current Japanese society. There are many things that don't work completely in the game, in its narrative or the way it presents its universe, and it is sometimes regrettable that the title doesn't go through with its intentions. But for me, it has a nostalgic aura to it, without giving in to archaism. It's a game of mourning, situated in the gap between the past and the future. The 'now' that Moebius so ardently defends is destined to come to an end, like our present time.
There are so many things I would have loved to do with you. So many discussions I would have wished to have with you, but you are no longer here. Or rather, you reside in me and it is through my future actions that I can pay tribute to your existence. One day we will meet again, that is a promise. But it's now so clear to me that you're still far away – a step away. For now, this is where we belong. Good night, my Claire, my beloved.
_________
[1] Kobayashi Keiichiro, 'The two 'lost decades' and macroeconomics', in Barak Kushner (ed.), Examining Japan's Lost Decades, Routledge, London, 2015.
[2] Kariya Takehiko, 'The two lost decades in education', in Barak Kushner (ed.), op. cit.
[3] Carola Hommerich, 'Anxious, stressed, and yet satisfied? The puzzle of subjective well-being among young adults in Japan', in Barbara Holthus, Wolfram Manzanreiter (ed.), Life Course, Happiness and Well-being in Japan, Routledge, London, 2017.
[4] Mark Crawford, 'Abe's Womenonics Policy, 2013-2020: Tokenism, Gradualism, or Failed Strategy?', in The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 19-4-4, 2021.
My adolescence was marked by the exploration of video games and RPGs already had the strongest attraction over me. There was an evocative quality to them that made them convenient getaways, places of reverie and poetic fables. Final Fantasy VI (1994) was certainly the first big shock of that time: in this universe torn between magic and technology, the adventures of this peculiar company resonated with me and I still consider Celes to be one of the characters dearest to my heart. Many other games have punctuated these adventures in those fictional lands, but Xenogears (1998) holds a rather distinctive place.
Final Fantasy VII (1997) didn't have any of the much-vaunted charm on me, certainly because it wasn't the story I needed, probably because the characters didn't speak to me that much. Xenogears, on the other hand, proved to be a rough gem, which I didn't know I liked that much. Perhaps it was because I had shared the experience with my then girlfriend. She and I shared this infinite love for literature and a melancholic soul. For various reasons, Xenogears was a game that moved us: from the story told to the clever use of the PS1's limitations with an art direction that embraced the very geometric aspect of the graphic assets, a poetic breath ran through the title. The silence of the final seconds in the ending cutscene was a testament to the contemplative force that fed Xenogears. Yet, as important and grandiose as this game was, I always found it difficult to place it among my favourite games. Was it because it reminded me of an era that is painful for me today? Was it because the memory of my tender love crushed my heart whenever I thought of Elly?
While playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3, all these memories gradually rose to the surface of my consciousness, bursting into nostalgic recollections. For Tetsuya Takahashi, Xenogears is the one project that never came to fruition, for editorial reasons. Although the Perfect Works book gives a glimpse of what this titanic project could have been, the idealised Xenogears lives only in our minds, and those who played the game nourish this unrealized title with their speculation and love. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 looks like a way for Takahashi to move on and rewrite a Xenogears, while also taking on the legacy of Xenosaga and the Xenoblade Chronicles. Since the release of the first Xenoblade Chronicles (2010), Monolith Soft has confirmed its prestigious position within the JRPG genre. This success has put the studio back in the spotlight, and it is involved in the development of major Nintendo titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011) and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), to name but a few, while continuing to work on the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise. Xenoblade Chronicles X (2015) served as a counterpoint to the original opus, borrowing its structure, but moving towards a very sci-fi story, under the writing of Kazuho Hyodo (Gundam SEED). The second numerical opus reveals the definite influence of japanimation on the development team - surely, because of its youth compared to the industry average. While Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (2017) was very well received, the sexualisation of the female characters did not go unnoticed and offended a part of the community.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 thus appears to be a title that synthesises all of Monolith Soft's work. By presumably concluding the Xenoblade Chronicles series, it asserts that it learnt lessons from its predecessors. At the same time, it operates a return to the origins, since the title made no secret of being a retelling of Xenogears. Even the name of the protagonist, Noah, echoes the original name of the first game: Project Noah. For veterans of Xenogears and Xenosaga, the references are undeniable, right from the first few minutes. From similar exposition scenes to passages reused almost word for word, it is obvious that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a game of mourning: that of a project that never came to fruition, that of an era that is now over, that of a producer who must look to the future. It is therefore necessarily also a game that propels Monolith Soft towards new horizons and towards a breeze of renewal.
‘A tiny ripple has just been born in the world that surrounds them.’
The sequences that I find the strongest in JRPGs are those that manage to recontextualise the gameplay into a unique narrative proposition. Those who played Final Fantasy VI will of course remember the passage where Celes is on the solitary island, which opens the second section of the game. The Xeno franchise has always sought to impress through exploration. Cinematography has been a strength of the studio, and the most recent titles place a particular emphasis on the gigantic world, which overwhelms the characters, particles moving with the flow of time. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes these approaches and adds a large tinge of nostalgia and intertextuality, constantly referencing elements from previous titles, using players' memories to invoke particular emotions. The discovery of the Dannagh Desert or the Erythia Sea is bound to strike a chord with players who have done the first two Xenoblade Chronicles. In addition to the sense of vastness, both horizontal and vertical, these regions are also filled with a wistful quality. The edges of the map help to circumscribe this magic, making this universe a moment cut off from time: chasms that soar into a sea of clouds or waterfalls that flow to who-knows-where do not allow for a grasp of the horizon. What the player sees is infinity.
To make exploration more fluid, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 opts for a more direct narrative breakdown. The side quests and the main story rarely mix, so that it is possible to finish the game fairly quickly, ignoring the former. The strength of the game comes from the positioning of these side quests. They form, for each colony, a slow evolution towards the future: despite uninteresting objectives, they contextualise individuals within communities that seek to survive and find meaning in existence. Moreover, each quest directs the player to new locations, contributing to the organic nature of the exploration. Some may regret this approach, which makes exploring relatively linear, if you attach it to the resolution of side quests. As a corollary, finishing the exploration before the side quests empties them of some of their purpose. Nevertheless, it is an ideal way to get the player to interact with the world and to become familiar with hundreds of minor characters, whose lives make up and depict humanity in all its forms. This is probably why the side quests in Chapters 6 and 7 are the most compelling, as they have a solid narrative base to tell their story. Although still too short, these little vignettes of human life in Aionios work when put together.
While the game design is geared towards accessibility for the general public, with Monolith Soft understanding that several dozen hours is an investment that is increasingly difficult to make for the completion of an RPG, it is apparent that the ideal experience requires total completion – prior to passing the point of no return. This is perhaps one of the pitfalls of Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Apart from the assiduous player who fully completes the side quests before tackling the final hours of the main story – which I did – the title fails to combine the contemplation of the world with its thematic discourse. Haunted by the question of existentialism and the future, like the other Xeno games, it takes a very similar setting to Xenogears with two nations at war and the couple of Noah and Mio, largely echoing Fei and Elly. The same questions are asked, especially from the beginning of Chapter 6. The issue with Xenoblade Chronicles 3 could be the density of its cast, preventing us from dwelling too long on the trials and tribulations of each character. The protagonists' side quests are completed in barely an hour, resulting in personality changes that are sometimes a little abrupt. Sena's quest is a perfect example of this problem, as it has very little to do with Sena, but seeks to conclude a narrative thread explored in the previous two chapters. The heroes' quests are also too short, although they suffer less from this: some even manage to be very effective, within the narrative structure of their colony. Colony Mu is certainly the most successful in this respect.
The protagonists also engage with each other much more and always offer feedback, even in very minor quests, which helps the game to be more digestible. Admittedly, the relative silence of Noah and Mio, due to their propensity for introspection, can clash with the pace of their development, especially when compared to the very strong personalities of Lanz, Eunie or Taion. A real arborescence of relationships is created by a very rich voice acting. The English version I chose continues the tone of the previous games, with definite English, Scottish, Irish or Welsh accents; the writing adapts to it and one could almost believe that the game was first written in English, so much the mannerisms and idioms are naturally used. They also help to enliven the world by bringing an extra touch of humanity, with characters being rougher in their diction and speech. The English version of Eunie is completely different from her Japanese counterpart, much more focused and less expressive. It's a personal choice, but I think that playing in English – even if one can lose some cultural nuance – contributes to the singularity of the adventure that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 offers.
‘Your fate was sealed when you rose against us!’
The combat system is also smoother and clearer than its predecessors. Xenoblades Chronicles 3 introduces the concept of Fusions Arts, which allow battles to always have a steady tempo. The title combines the systems of two Xenoblade Chronicles – Agnian attacks are charged with auto-attacks, while Keves' ones are on a fixed timer - to provide a welcome variation in gameplay. Each battle benefits from the player's attention to the positioning of the various characters, as well as the combination of different abilities, to maximise damage via the effects created by combos. The result is almost cinematic sequences, sometimes lasting for dozens of seconds, in which the player finds themselves switching between characters very quickly to unleash a series of coordinated attacks. In particular, it is very easy to mix up attacks thanks to the cancel animation of the Fusions Arts. The Interlink is also a mechanic that keeps the fight very aggressive. It can be used in two ways: either the player uses it when they are level 3 to maximise the damage output, or they can use it defensively to protect a character whose life has dropped severely, as the Interlink provides invincibility.
The show really culminates in the Chain Attacks, which are much more understandable than their counterparts in previous Xenoblade Chronicles. The concept is simplified to opening each round with a damage dealer, then using a healer before closing with a tank: a simple formula that encourages the use of Chain Attacks. The influence of Persona 5 (2016) seems obvious, but Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes a much more grandiose route with its catchy musical theme and cinematography that supports the power of the blows dealt to the enemy. One might regret that these attacks are so powerful that they become a convenient expedient for finishing any fight quickly: boss fights often come down to surviving until their life drops below two-thirds, before unleashing a powerful Chain Attack – unless the player is already crushing the opposition with their level difference.
In essence, the combat system allows for a real sense of empowerment during battle, without being difficult to pick up. While it is possible for veterans to build a very custom team by changing the classes of each character, the game gives clear advice for those who are not adept at the genre: simply keep a balanced formation (two damage dealers, two healers, two tanks and the hero as a joker) to create an effective team and cover one's back. In the same way, if it is possible to spend long moments choosing skills, arts and other accessories, the title leaves the possibility of using a standardised build, with regard to the acquired skills and equipment, by pressing the Y button in the character menu. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 pursues Monolith Soft's broad-based philosophy, reversing the mistakes that previous combat systems have made; at the same time, the title still offers difficult challenges for the most seasoned players. Excluding the Challenges, the ultimate peak of difficulty is found in the hunt for Aionios' biggest monsters. Four of them must first be killed before the game's most powerful enemy – whose base level is 120 – can be faced.
The variety of side quests, which sometimes require a specific hero in the team, contributes to the diversity of the combat system, as the composition of the party often changes. In the same way, since skills and arts are shared between classes, it is strongly advised to switch from one to another often, in order to unlock all the abilities. Meanwhile, raising a hero class to level 10 unlocks its Ascension Quest, a convenient reason to constantly try new compositions. Thus, it is quite unlikely that the player already has a fixed team in the first part of the game: personally, it was not until chapter 6 that I did not change classes anymore, having already gained enough experience to unlock all the Ascension Quests.
‘It's okay not to feel whole. A part... is better than zero.’
In 2016, my girlfiend passed away. It was a few months after we had played Xenogears together. The golden age of JRPGs established character development as a central part of its plot: if one must save the world, one must also save oneself. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a game that balances between the quest for the future and the chains of regret. In 2016, I was still a teenager whose life was difficult and whose ordeal of grief was a silent acid burn. Even today, something is missing. There is still a hole in my chest that won't close: you can throw words, thoughts, emotions into it, but it is a black hole that refuses to fill. The pain of mourning is one of the most existential, because it is at the intersection of life and death. It is felt only by beings who are essentially separated: some are still living, others have left the world. Nothing can bridge this fundamental divide. The living are not meant to live with the dead.
My thoughts on this subject are not settled. My mourning is not over. On the scale of my life, six long years represent an interminable pilgrimage in search for an answer. Nevertheless, I have managed to find some truths that content me, if not fully satisfy me. When I think of my self of a few years ago, I see a creature that has been so painfully wounded by fate. It's hard to understand, at that age, why life can be so unforgiving. The resentment I harboured at that time was directed at myself. Doubts and guilt threw me into the throes of loneliness and despair. 'What if...' asks the cracked soul, in the hope that events that have already happened would have turned out differently. When drifting on this sea of darkness, any wooden plank is a salutary reef, at least to hold on a little longer. I regret that my self could not experience Xenoblade Chronicles 3, as my still developing mind could have found answers in the game's narrative.
If the title continues in the anime turn of the 2010s, with a generally juvenile writing style, it does so with a real sincerity. The questions asked are those of teenagers or young adults: they echo those I have experienced myself. As such, some sequences are particularly touching and give a glimpse of a terribly sensitive humanity, if not subtly expressed. The climax of Chapter 5 presents the emotions of the protagonists, taken on the spur of the moment. It is a torrent of emotions that pours out in a few minutes, after the silences and the unspoken words that punctuated the previous chapters. Of course, not everything works. Some scenes are too brief and superficial. Where Taion's quest works because of its pace and the poetic composition of its setting, Eunie's quest seems too hasty and too cheap to be convincing.
This gives the impression of a somewhat convenient sentimentalism, which is not exclusive to Xenoblade Chronicles 3, as it seems almost part of the DNA of modern JRPGs. This turn is noticeable in the 2000s, but has recently resulted in the placement of maudlin scenes in key sections of a game. Final Fantasy XV (2016) has several moments of great emotional intensity, but they seem almost disconnected from the rest of the experience. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 doesn't fail at the same pitfall, because the characters constantly interact with each other, even if some have to wait until the last few chapters for their development to finally begin - this is especially true of Sena. But because the characters are these teenagers, caught in a world they didn't choose, the doubts, the tears and the joys feel genuine. It is hard not to be touched by their experiences.
‘The future, it really is a foreign country...’
These experiences seem natural, because they echo those of post-Fukushima Japanese society. Through a web of parallels, Aionios evokes, to varying degrees and with greater or lesser accuracy, the difficulties of Japanese youth in the face of capitalism and the feeling of abandonment experienced over the past several decades. At the beginning of the 1990s, Japan experienced a major economic slump, caused both by the bursting of the real estate bubble and the weakening of banks' investment in businesses [1]. With the failure of Keynesian policies, Japan found itself trapped by its overspecialisation and its tendency to invest only in its domestic market. This psychological closure of Japanese companies to foreigners, despite government trends towards deregulation and the effects of globalisation, has deeply affected Japanese society to this day. From being an economic model for the world, Japan has become synonymous with structural problems, a discourse echoed by the Japanese themselves. This declinist impression is also fuelled by the country's demographic collapse and the failure of educational reforms in Japan. These reforms have increased inequality and divided the country in terms of access to employment: as a result, the number of applicants to universities has fallen, and with it the quality of the education system [2]. For young people, the consequences are manifold. The difficulty in accessing employment has created a distrust of the education system and of globalisation. Because traditional solidarities have also been eroded, young adults are waiting longer to enter into a relationship and a significant proportion of them are struggling to integrate into society, which official discourse wrongly groups under the term hikikomori.
Recent studies have pointed out that Japanese youth generally consider themselves happy, but without any hope for the future [3]. This essential contradiction is echoed in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, where armies of teenagers and young adults seem to find contentment in the relentless fighting, but without ever really thinking about the future. They survive in a universe imposed on them by various authorities. If the Castles illustrate the weight of government (in)action in their lives, the Consuls appear as a representation of the corporatist spirit in Abe's Japan, where everything is a question of productivity and efficiency, to the detriment of the employees' very well-being. Soldiers in the various colonies must continue their task - attacking other ones - at the risk of being destroyed by the system to which they contribute. Unable to develop their individuality, they do not find solidarity beyond the battle lines. Throughout the game, the terms 'culture' and 'family' are foreign to the characters. It is through the exploration of their repressed emotions that they are able to describe these concepts, associating them with a positive valence. As such, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is part of a precise ideological discourse, which challenges the Japanese policies of the last decades and tries to suggest ways forward for the Japanese youth.
Aionios is a world that is riddled with the notion of risk. In addition to the constant fighting, the threat of the Annihilation with the Black Fog clouds is an echo of the doubts that have plagued Japanese society since the Fukushima accident. This was caused by a combination of natural hazards and the myth of the total safety for Japanese nuclear power plants: for a country already accustomed to earthquakes and tsunamis, the Fukushima disaster has aggravated fears and discredited the political class. In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the theme is never discussed in depth, but it serves as a framework for the universe, whose existence is always endangered by nature or human action. It is not surprising that the Annihilator works on the model of the Annihilations.
Building on these elements, the title also seems drawn to the fantasy of a traditional Japan. The image of cherry blossoms - Saffronia, in the game - recurs repeatedly to evoke a peaceful existence. As mentioned above, the representation of the nuclear family is widely emphasised. The birth of infants is a new vision for the soldiers of Keves and Agnus, to the point where the game makes conception sacred, through several quests and cutscenes. These elements must be understood in the context of Japan's demographic decline. The failure of Japan's recent birth policies can be explained by the Abenomics, which have done little to address gender inequalities in the workplace [4]. The difficulty for women to support themselves pushes back the idea of having children. This idea is present in the game, where some female characters seem concerned about procreation, which is largely ignored by their male counterparts. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 thus struggles to construct a discourse on family that corresponds to the aspirations of youth: it advocates a traditional, heterosexual nuclear family and never manages to break out of this framework. If Noah and Mio's relationship seems to be attached to a critique of patriarchy, it is only vilified in its most extreme forms. The title never features homosexual relationships and perpetuates a conservative ideology, under the guise of defending the future. Xenoblade Chronicles 3, because it is a game about forced change, is shrouded in the ghosts of Japanese conservatism and traditionalism.
‘It's now so clear to me that you're still far away – a step away.’
Just as Xenogears was a foundational experience in my relationship with my girlfriend, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a game that allows me to let go of the teenager regrets I still feel. Despite the revamps brought to life by projects like Octopath Traveler (2018), the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Collection (2021) or the Live A Live remake (2022), the golden age of the JRPG is a thing of the past. These games fail to fully capture the atmosphere of the 1990s and early 2000s, as the socio-cultural context has changed. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is not a mindless throwback, but a synthesis of the themes carried by Xenogears and Xenosaga, the game design philosophy at the heart of Xenoblade Chronicles and current Japanese society. There are many things that don't work completely in the game, in its narrative or the way it presents its universe, and it is sometimes regrettable that the title doesn't go through with its intentions. But for me, it has a nostalgic aura to it, without giving in to archaism. It's a game of mourning, situated in the gap between the past and the future. The 'now' that Moebius so ardently defends is destined to come to an end, like our present time.
There are so many things I would have loved to do with you. So many discussions I would have wished to have with you, but you are no longer here. Or rather, you reside in me and it is through my future actions that I can pay tribute to your existence. One day we will meet again, that is a promise. But it's now so clear to me that you're still far away – a step away. For now, this is where we belong. Good night, my Claire, my beloved.
_________
[1] Kobayashi Keiichiro, 'The two 'lost decades' and macroeconomics', in Barak Kushner (ed.), Examining Japan's Lost Decades, Routledge, London, 2015.
[2] Kariya Takehiko, 'The two lost decades in education', in Barak Kushner (ed.), op. cit.
[3] Carola Hommerich, 'Anxious, stressed, and yet satisfied? The puzzle of subjective well-being among young adults in Japan', in Barbara Holthus, Wolfram Manzanreiter (ed.), Life Course, Happiness and Well-being in Japan, Routledge, London, 2017.
[4] Mark Crawford, 'Abe's Womenonics Policy, 2013-2020: Tokenism, Gradualism, or Failed Strategy?', in The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 19-4-4, 2021.
'Three years had passed. Five years had passed, and still the trees remained with their roots spread out on the bottom of the water. It looked almost as if they were still alive now. Ohina thought to herself; in those days my legs were still strong. My eyes could still see far.'
– Michiko Ishimure, Tenko, 1997 (tr. Bruce Allen).
The post-war years in Japan were accompanied by an ideological shift in the ideas of work and family, with the development of the sarariiman myth. The ideal household, promoted by the Japanese government, was one in which the wife took care of the housework and the children's education, while the husband provided for the family's economic needs. This dream was made possible by the employment conditions of the 1960s and 1970s, when the average worker could expect to spend their entire career with the same company. Representations of the Japanese sarariiman have largely evolved over time, making him both an archetype of ideal masculinity through his loyalty to his employer and his sacrifice for his family (kigyō senshi, corporate warrior). At the same time, other representations emphasise his submissiveness, in line with the westernisation of Japanese culture [1].
And every morning the door closes
The collapse of the economic bubble in the 1990s shattered this ideal, weakening the labour market and the salaried middle class [2]. The destruction of this family harmony, based on a patriarchal concept of sacrifice, led to the dysfunction of Japanese households and the gradual disappearance of fathers from the family unit. The generation born after the 1970s had no memory of the economic miracle of previous decades and found themselves thrust into a world where inequalities were apparent from school and career prospects were mediocre at best. Authority figures were viewed with suspicion and contempt, including the government, teachers and parents. They are said to have failed in their role as guardians: teachers are portrayed as incompetent or murderers, politicians as indifferent to misery and colluding to steal public money, while fathers resign and mothers weep at their powerlessness [3].
The destruction of traditional masculinity, which is still struggling to build a new mythology, has been followed by a reassessment of the place of women, who are regarded as the driving force for Japan's economic recovery and the bulwark against demographic decline. Unsurprisingly, Shinzo Abe's economic programme has focused heavily on the role of women, both as workers and as mothers. Yet Abenomics have failed to transform the labour market environment: government coalitions have been largely conservative, and measures for women have been anemic at best [4]. What remains is a vain discourse to encourage reproduction – despite the economic conditions hardly being met for raising a child – which is reflected in cultural production.
Undoing ikumen in post-Abe Japan
The overrepresentation of motherhood, however, should not obscure the transformations of fatherhood in the 2000s and 2010s. Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed is a striking example as it deals directly with this issue, whereas the original game looked at the question of reproduction and family in a broader way [5]. The heroes of the first two games return, each embodying a different vision of masculinity. Shulk retains his candour while appearing more calm and disciplined. He represents a self-controlled masculinity driven by both elegance and intellect, in the style of the erudite warriors of pre-modern Asia. Rex is much rougher, constantly struggling to find a way to express his feelings and frustrations, despite his good intentions. In some ways, his development is reminiscent of that of Ryōta Nonomiya in Hirokazu Kore-eda's Soshite chichi ni naru (2013), an architect who is unable to provide emotional comfort to his family. Confronted with the way Shulk interacts with Nikol, Rex finds a new harmony with Glimmer, full of empathy and love.
Perhaps the most important aspect of these relationships is that their nature remains implicit. Many of the reminiscent and contemplative passages in Future Redeemed rely on knowledge of the franchise, but the theme of fatherhood runs throughout the DLC. Ultimately, the heroes' distance from their children is a response to the debates surrounding ikumen, a term used to describe fathers who are involved in raising their children in order to make them appear 'cool'. The ideological programme of Abe's Japan relied heavily on this imaginary to encourage fathers to participate in the household, but the figure of the ikumen has been widely criticised for giving men a nice label, even though they contribute to the dysfunction of both the domestic economy and their working environment [6].
The figure of the ikumen can be understood as a way for fathers to make themselves useful somewhere and gain recognition from their peers, a way to find a place to belong (ibasho) after being ejected from both the family unit and the corporate space. Future Redeemed responds to this sociological question in the same way as several local associations have done, through the figure of the ikimen, men who decide to foster communities of solidarity in the same way that they would look after their children [7]. Shulk and Rex, thanks to their experience, become the tutelary figures of the Liberators and Colony 9, but they are more interested in being mentors than leaders. Like the base game, Future Redeemed focuses on building bonds between the various members of the community until their resilience is no longer in doubt. As the various characters point out to Matthew, the virtue of a leader is to bring people together when necessary, not to control their lives. Through the various side-quests, the inhabitants of Colony 9 also gain texture and individuality, autonomy and confidence – more so than in the base game, thanks to a sparser cast.
Maybe tomorrow
There is an optimistic melancholy to Future Redeemed, between the series' various iconic locations reduced to lonely ruins and the forward-looking language of the characters. Like Tetsuya Takahashi's other games, the DLC shines by magnifying the ties that bind individuals, variations on the theme of friendship, love and togetherness – lessons that must be carried beyond the game. A single existence is but a drop in the ocean of human history. Civilisations, buildings, masterpieces, passions, dreams and memories can vanish in an instant, but there remains an explicit duty to cherish the past, not in blind adoration, but in preparation for the future. Future Redeemed constantly refuses to elevate Shulk and Rex onto a pedestal: they are already fading figures, as their injuries attest. Even A, for all her unwavering calm and penetrating gaze, chooses to remain outside the life that Colony 9 and the Liberators have decided to cherish; not because she is without compassion for the survivors, but because she knows – and this is her legacy – that the future belongs to them alone.
As Xeno veterans know, every story has an ending, and not all sequels need to be told. Looking back at Lost Jerusalem and thinking about building a better world is poignant, but this is the everyday story. Fighting for a fairer and more humane world. It may take generations, but the important thing is to keep dreaming and struggling for it, because there is nothing more tragic than an existence without hope, even when darkness seems to engulf everything. Of course, there is something idealistic and simplistic about this statement, but Future Redeemed, like the base game Xenogears (1998) or Xenosaga (2002-2006), leaves room for misery and sadness. Inequality is part of every society, and Takahashi has no illusions about the ghosts that will always roam the Rhadamanthus of the future. This is how Future Redeemed concludes the epic of the Xenoblade Chronicles, just as Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra (2006) invited one to close their eyes for a while, until the light of hope reappears, maybe tomorrow. In a way, Future Redeemed is just an open door. Its more meticulous progression with Affinity Points, its more fluid exploration thanks to numerous ergonomic additions, and its gameplay designed around accessories rather than classes all point to rich ideas for Monolith Soft's next projects.
I may still be around to see what paths they take.
Maybe I won't.
I will sleep a while, until the dawn wakes me up again...
I still believe... come what may...
__________
[1] Annette Schad-Seifert, 'Samurai and Sarariiman: The Discourse on Masculinity in Modern Japan', in Arne Holzhausen (ed.), Can Japan Globalize? Studies on Japan's Changing Political Economy and the Process of Globalization, Springer, Berlin, 2001, pp. 206-208.
[2] Some contextual details are provided in my reviews of Kaze no NOTAM (1997) and Power Shovel (1999).
[3] This is a rather simplified picture of the cultural representations of the 1990s and 2000s, but they occupy an important part of successful audiovisual production in Japan. On the topic, see Shuk-ting Kinnia Yau, 'Bad Father and Good Mother: The Changing Image of Masculinity in Post-Bubble-Economy Japan', in David G. Hebert (ed.), International Perspectives on Translation, Education and Innovation in Japanese and Korean Societies, Springer, New York, 2018, pp. 243-253.
[4] Mark Crawford, 'Abe’s Womenomics Policy, 2013-2020: Tokenism, Gradualism, or Failed Strategy?', in The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 19, no. 4-4, 2021.
[5] On the topic, see my review of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2022).
[6] In particular, wives and employers are very suspicious of the ikumen modoki, the father who prides himself on being involved in running the household and bringing up the children, but in reality makes no effort at all. He builds a positive image of himself on his wife's efforts and uses the household as an excuse to shirk his professional responsibilities. The yarisugi ikumen, the man who is overly proactive in his domestic involvement, is equally feared by women, both because he often disrupts household routines and wastes time, unnecessarily burdening his spouse with additional work. On the topic, see Nicholas Michael Feinig, Rearing the Family, Moving Society: Rethinking Gender, Kinship, and Work through Japan’s Fathering Movement, PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 2020, pp. 99-134.
[7] This figure is also subject to specific criticisms, notably the contamination of spaces intended for women by a corporatist and hierarchical masculinity, and the fact that these groups are more places for fathers to socialise than spaces for improving local community life; nevertheless, they are a new ibasho for men, outside the workplace. On the topic, see Nicholas Michael Feinig, op. cit., pp. 230-276.
– Michiko Ishimure, Tenko, 1997 (tr. Bruce Allen).
The post-war years in Japan were accompanied by an ideological shift in the ideas of work and family, with the development of the sarariiman myth. The ideal household, promoted by the Japanese government, was one in which the wife took care of the housework and the children's education, while the husband provided for the family's economic needs. This dream was made possible by the employment conditions of the 1960s and 1970s, when the average worker could expect to spend their entire career with the same company. Representations of the Japanese sarariiman have largely evolved over time, making him both an archetype of ideal masculinity through his loyalty to his employer and his sacrifice for his family (kigyō senshi, corporate warrior). At the same time, other representations emphasise his submissiveness, in line with the westernisation of Japanese culture [1].
And every morning the door closes
The collapse of the economic bubble in the 1990s shattered this ideal, weakening the labour market and the salaried middle class [2]. The destruction of this family harmony, based on a patriarchal concept of sacrifice, led to the dysfunction of Japanese households and the gradual disappearance of fathers from the family unit. The generation born after the 1970s had no memory of the economic miracle of previous decades and found themselves thrust into a world where inequalities were apparent from school and career prospects were mediocre at best. Authority figures were viewed with suspicion and contempt, including the government, teachers and parents. They are said to have failed in their role as guardians: teachers are portrayed as incompetent or murderers, politicians as indifferent to misery and colluding to steal public money, while fathers resign and mothers weep at their powerlessness [3].
The destruction of traditional masculinity, which is still struggling to build a new mythology, has been followed by a reassessment of the place of women, who are regarded as the driving force for Japan's economic recovery and the bulwark against demographic decline. Unsurprisingly, Shinzo Abe's economic programme has focused heavily on the role of women, both as workers and as mothers. Yet Abenomics have failed to transform the labour market environment: government coalitions have been largely conservative, and measures for women have been anemic at best [4]. What remains is a vain discourse to encourage reproduction – despite the economic conditions hardly being met for raising a child – which is reflected in cultural production.
Undoing ikumen in post-Abe Japan
The overrepresentation of motherhood, however, should not obscure the transformations of fatherhood in the 2000s and 2010s. Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed is a striking example as it deals directly with this issue, whereas the original game looked at the question of reproduction and family in a broader way [5]. The heroes of the first two games return, each embodying a different vision of masculinity. Shulk retains his candour while appearing more calm and disciplined. He represents a self-controlled masculinity driven by both elegance and intellect, in the style of the erudite warriors of pre-modern Asia. Rex is much rougher, constantly struggling to find a way to express his feelings and frustrations, despite his good intentions. In some ways, his development is reminiscent of that of Ryōta Nonomiya in Hirokazu Kore-eda's Soshite chichi ni naru (2013), an architect who is unable to provide emotional comfort to his family. Confronted with the way Shulk interacts with Nikol, Rex finds a new harmony with Glimmer, full of empathy and love.
Perhaps the most important aspect of these relationships is that their nature remains implicit. Many of the reminiscent and contemplative passages in Future Redeemed rely on knowledge of the franchise, but the theme of fatherhood runs throughout the DLC. Ultimately, the heroes' distance from their children is a response to the debates surrounding ikumen, a term used to describe fathers who are involved in raising their children in order to make them appear 'cool'. The ideological programme of Abe's Japan relied heavily on this imaginary to encourage fathers to participate in the household, but the figure of the ikumen has been widely criticised for giving men a nice label, even though they contribute to the dysfunction of both the domestic economy and their working environment [6].
The figure of the ikumen can be understood as a way for fathers to make themselves useful somewhere and gain recognition from their peers, a way to find a place to belong (ibasho) after being ejected from both the family unit and the corporate space. Future Redeemed responds to this sociological question in the same way as several local associations have done, through the figure of the ikimen, men who decide to foster communities of solidarity in the same way that they would look after their children [7]. Shulk and Rex, thanks to their experience, become the tutelary figures of the Liberators and Colony 9, but they are more interested in being mentors than leaders. Like the base game, Future Redeemed focuses on building bonds between the various members of the community until their resilience is no longer in doubt. As the various characters point out to Matthew, the virtue of a leader is to bring people together when necessary, not to control their lives. Through the various side-quests, the inhabitants of Colony 9 also gain texture and individuality, autonomy and confidence – more so than in the base game, thanks to a sparser cast.
Maybe tomorrow
There is an optimistic melancholy to Future Redeemed, between the series' various iconic locations reduced to lonely ruins and the forward-looking language of the characters. Like Tetsuya Takahashi's other games, the DLC shines by magnifying the ties that bind individuals, variations on the theme of friendship, love and togetherness – lessons that must be carried beyond the game. A single existence is but a drop in the ocean of human history. Civilisations, buildings, masterpieces, passions, dreams and memories can vanish in an instant, but there remains an explicit duty to cherish the past, not in blind adoration, but in preparation for the future. Future Redeemed constantly refuses to elevate Shulk and Rex onto a pedestal: they are already fading figures, as their injuries attest. Even A, for all her unwavering calm and penetrating gaze, chooses to remain outside the life that Colony 9 and the Liberators have decided to cherish; not because she is without compassion for the survivors, but because she knows – and this is her legacy – that the future belongs to them alone.
As Xeno veterans know, every story has an ending, and not all sequels need to be told. Looking back at Lost Jerusalem and thinking about building a better world is poignant, but this is the everyday story. Fighting for a fairer and more humane world. It may take generations, but the important thing is to keep dreaming and struggling for it, because there is nothing more tragic than an existence without hope, even when darkness seems to engulf everything. Of course, there is something idealistic and simplistic about this statement, but Future Redeemed, like the base game Xenogears (1998) or Xenosaga (2002-2006), leaves room for misery and sadness. Inequality is part of every society, and Takahashi has no illusions about the ghosts that will always roam the Rhadamanthus of the future. This is how Future Redeemed concludes the epic of the Xenoblade Chronicles, just as Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra (2006) invited one to close their eyes for a while, until the light of hope reappears, maybe tomorrow. In a way, Future Redeemed is just an open door. Its more meticulous progression with Affinity Points, its more fluid exploration thanks to numerous ergonomic additions, and its gameplay designed around accessories rather than classes all point to rich ideas for Monolith Soft's next projects.
I may still be around to see what paths they take.
Maybe I won't.
I will sleep a while, until the dawn wakes me up again...
I still believe... come what may...
__________
[1] Annette Schad-Seifert, 'Samurai and Sarariiman: The Discourse on Masculinity in Modern Japan', in Arne Holzhausen (ed.), Can Japan Globalize? Studies on Japan's Changing Political Economy and the Process of Globalization, Springer, Berlin, 2001, pp. 206-208.
[2] Some contextual details are provided in my reviews of Kaze no NOTAM (1997) and Power Shovel (1999).
[3] This is a rather simplified picture of the cultural representations of the 1990s and 2000s, but they occupy an important part of successful audiovisual production in Japan. On the topic, see Shuk-ting Kinnia Yau, 'Bad Father and Good Mother: The Changing Image of Masculinity in Post-Bubble-Economy Japan', in David G. Hebert (ed.), International Perspectives on Translation, Education and Innovation in Japanese and Korean Societies, Springer, New York, 2018, pp. 243-253.
[4] Mark Crawford, 'Abe’s Womenomics Policy, 2013-2020: Tokenism, Gradualism, or Failed Strategy?', in The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 19, no. 4-4, 2021.
[5] On the topic, see my review of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2022).
[6] In particular, wives and employers are very suspicious of the ikumen modoki, the father who prides himself on being involved in running the household and bringing up the children, but in reality makes no effort at all. He builds a positive image of himself on his wife's efforts and uses the household as an excuse to shirk his professional responsibilities. The yarisugi ikumen, the man who is overly proactive in his domestic involvement, is equally feared by women, both because he often disrupts household routines and wastes time, unnecessarily burdening his spouse with additional work. On the topic, see Nicholas Michael Feinig, Rearing the Family, Moving Society: Rethinking Gender, Kinship, and Work through Japan’s Fathering Movement, PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 2020, pp. 99-134.
[7] This figure is also subject to specific criticisms, notably the contamination of spaces intended for women by a corporatist and hierarchical masculinity, and the fact that these groups are more places for fathers to socialise than spaces for improving local community life; nevertheless, they are a new ibasho for men, outside the workplace. On the topic, see Nicholas Michael Feinig, op. cit., pp. 230-276.
Security system TAKES CONTROL OF SQUIDWARD'S HOUSE and begins ATTACKING THE CITY, leaving the mayor to give Squidward community service for the damage he caused, EVEN THOUGH Spongebob and Patrick were in his house the WHOLE FUCKING TIME, and were responsible for EVERYTHING! GAAH! FUCK THIS EPISODE! This episode is when the Squidward torture porn started to become a regular staple in Spongebob's episodes and this one is one of the meanest, cruelest, and just plain unfair of them all. All Squidward wanted to do is enjoy one day to himself, but that can NEVER HAPPEN when he lives next to Spongebob and Patrick, can it?
God Hand
2006
I used to dream about doing the wood plank swing animation on my boss at my retail job
Cave Story
2004
A gigantic, influential game created by the passion of one man, I'm glad to say that Cave Story entirely lives up to it's legacy. From the charming characters in a somber world, to the floaty-yet-precise run n' gun gameplay to Pixel's iconic artstyle, to the secrets, to the narrative, to the Balrog; I was completely enthralled in this game from start to finish.
Possibly the only reason humanity as a species was put on this bitch of an earth
Lavender Town syndrome is very real and the biggest example of when Pokémon games had SOUL
You can’t convince me the newer games are good if children didn’t DIE for them
You can’t convince me the newer games are good if children didn’t DIE for them
Sea of Stars
2023
This review contains spoilers
I am not immune to propaganda. Show me a trailer for an indie JRPG featuring scripted encounters on the field maps, dual techs, and guest tracks by Yasunori Mitsuda, and I'll go "oh, a Chrono Trigger inspired indie JRPG, I sure hope they actually learned the right lessons from the classics" and drop $30 to see if they did.
They didn't.
(Full spoilers for both Sea of Stars and Chrono Trigger.)
I criticized Chained Echoes for being overly derivative of various golden age JRPGs, but to its credit: it feels purposeful in its imitation. It re-uses elements from older games wholecloth, smothering its individual identity under a quilt of influences, but I can appreciate the craftsmanship and intent behind it. It's clearly made from a place of love.
I don't get that vibe from Sea of Stars at all. I complained about some tediously self-aware dialogue in the early hours, and while it only dips down quite that low once or twice more, it colored the entire game with a feeling of self-aggrandizement. In fairness to what I wrote then (and based on a lengthy speech in the hidden Dev Room) it sounds like the devs truly did want to make a JRPG and pay homage to their childhoods. But to me, harsh as it may be, Sea of Stars feels like the devs thought making a JRPG was easy: just copy the greats (specifically, Chrono Trigger), and it'll work out. Based on sales and reviews, it is working out for them, but I'm the freak out here with highly specific ideas about why Chrono Trigger was good and Sea of Stars doesn't seem to agree with my assessment. This inherent friction lasted across the game's entire 30-35 hours.
You play as Zale and Valere, paired Chosen Ones whose innate Sun/Moon powers allow them to do battle against Dwellers, ancient beasts left behind when the villainous Fleshmancer set his sights on this plane of reality. He has since moved on to another world, but Dwellers left unchecked evolve into World Eaters, planar monstrosities that do exactly what it sounds like they do. The Solstice Warriors must hold a never-ending vigil in case previous generations missed a Dweller, battling them when their powers peak during an eclipse.
Joining them is Garl the Warrior Cook, the pair's childhood friend and the only character with anything resembling charisma; Seraï, a masked assassin of mysterious origin; Resh'an, a former companion of The Fleshmancer; and B'st, an amorphous pink cloud with almost no relevance to the plot a-la Chu-Chu from Xenogears.
Battles happen on the field map, like Chrono Trigger, and their main feature is essentially the Break system from Octopath Traveler. When a monster is charging up a special move, they gain "locks" that can only be broken by hitting them with specific types of damage; break them all, and they lose their turn. It's frequently impossible to break all the locks - you simply do not have the action economy to put out that many hits - and so you're usually playing triage regarding which special move you're willing to take to the face.
The battle system also takes a page from Super Mario RPG and includes timed hits and blocks for every attack. Tutorial messages insist to not worry about these and just think of them as bonus damage, but most of your attacks (especially multi-target spells) won't function properly unless you're nailing the timing. You'll often still do some damage, but the number of hits is the most important thing when you're dealing with Locks. There is an accessibility option (purchasable with in-game currency) to make timed hits always land in exchange for lower damage, but that only works for basic attacks.
Only a handful of skills have a message explaining when to push the button, and for the rest? Tough luck, figure it out. It's inconsistent at best and opaque at worst. And I mean literally opaque: because of how the field maps and graphics are constructed, character sprites (especially Seraï) often end up entirely offscreen or covered by other sprites when you're meant to time a press. This wasn't a problem in SMRPG or Mario & Luigi because those had bespoke battle screens with fairly consistent framing for timed hits; the concept isn't very compatible with CT style battles without a way to maintain that consistency.
I legitimately enjoyed the battle system for about the first 30% or so of the game, at which point the startling lack of variety in the battle options began to chafe. Every character has a basic attack, a mere three skills, and a Final Fantasy summon-like Ultimate attack that requires a bar to charge up. There's around a dozen "Combo" moves (read: Dual Techs) across the entire party, but the meter to use them charges so slowly they might as well only exist during boss battles. Your maximum MP caps at around 30 (at the max level, which requires a lot of grinding), skills cost anywhere between 4 and 11, and your potion inventory is limited to 10 items, meaning you're going to almost always rely on basic attacks - which recover 3 MP on a hit - for most battles. Landing a basic attack lets you imbue another basic attack with a character's inherent elemental attribute, which is the only way to break most locks once you're in the mid-game.
Play SMRPG sometime (perhaps the upcoming remake, even) and you'll figure out quick that Timed Hits are cool because if you do them properly it makes battles faster. You aren't trying to get 100 Super Jumps in every single battle because that would be exhausting and slow. Sure, in Chrono Trigger I'm solving 80% of encounters with the same multi-target spells, but that also means they're over in less than a minute. In Sea of Stars, if I mess up an early button press with Moonerang or Venom Flurry, it might not even hit every enemy, which probably means I won't break the locks I need to, which means they'll do their long spell animation. A trash mob battle will probably take two full minutes of me carefully trying to land my timed hits and manage my MP. That shit adds up.
I wouldn't quite go so far as to say Sea of Stars disrespects your time, but a lot of shit adds up. The backgrounds and sprite work are universally great - really beautiful stuff, great animations - but there are tightropes/beams scattered everywhere around the game world, seemingly placed only so you're forced to slow down and look at the backgrounds. From a purely quality of life standpoint, I don't know why you have to hold the button for so long when cooking something, especially if it's a higher-tier restorative. The overworld walk speed is agonizing. The narrative flails in several bizarre directions, only cohering in the broadest possible sense of "we need to beat the bad guy".
Comparatively, Chrono Trigger never stops moving. Your objectives in CT are clearly signposted and make logical sense, even when they string together into longer sequences. To save the world from the Bad Future, we need to defeat the big monster, and we learn the monster was summoned by an evil wizard. To defeat the evil wizard, we need the magic sword, but the sword is broken. To re-forge the sword, we need an ancient material, so off to prehistory we go!
It may sound tedious when written out this way, but the crucial element is that this only takes something like 4 or 5 hours. You're never stuck in any individual location longer than 45-60 minutes, and that's if you stop to grind (which you don't need to). Working at a leisurely pace, you can 100% Chrono Trigger in somewhere between 15 and 20 hours. My most recent playthrough - in which I deliberately walked slowly, grinded out levels, and talked to every NPC for the sake of recording footage - clocked in at about 17.
Sea of Stars doesn't stop introducing new plot elements until the middle of the end credits and makes little effort to tie them together in a cohesive way, instead relying on the inherent fantasy of the setting to smooth over any bumps. For example, take The Sleeper, a massive dragon that once ravaged the world before being sent into an eternal slumber. It explicitly isn't a Dweller, being little more than a curiosity on the overworld map. It bears no relevance to the plot other than as a mid-game side objective to earn the privilege to progress the actual story.
Zale and Valere, despite having speaking roles, do not possess an iota of personality between them; they are generically heroic and valiant and stop at every stage along their quest to help the weak and downtrodden as JRPG Protagonists are wont to do. The idea that Garl should not join them on their dangerous journey - as he is a mere normie - is raised once or twice, but ultimately disregarded due to Garl's endless luck and pluck. He barrels through any possible pathos or character development by simply being the Fun Fat Guy at all times, whether or not the next step follows logically.
No less than three times do the characters visit some kind of Oracle or Seer who reads the future and literally tells them what is going to happen later in the story, sometimes cryptically and sometimes giving explicit instructions. At one point a character awakens from a near-death experience having suddenly gained the knowledge of how to restart the stalled plot, launching into a multi-stage quest that has no logical ties to the party's objective. It's just progression, things happening because something has to happen between points A and B.
Another example: a late game dungeon introduces a race of bird wizards complete with ominous side-flashes to their nefarious scheming atop their evil thrones. They are relevant for only that dungeon, which is broadly just an obstacle in the way of the party's actual objective. I don't understand the intent. Is it supposed to be funny that this guy looks like Necromancer Daffy Duck? If so, why is the story genuinely trying to convince me of the sorrow of their plight and how it relates to the lore (in a way that also isn't relevant to the current events of the plot since it's shit that happened like 10,000 years ago)? How am I meant to react to this? Why is it here, in the final stretch of the story? I was asking these kinds of questions the entire game.
Presumably, the plot is like this because it's trying to imitate JRPGs of the time, which had a reputation for sending you on strings of seemingly random errands to defeat monsters or fetch items. You know what game doesn't do that? Chrono Trigger! The game Sea of Stars is obviously trying to position itself as a successor to!
Is it fair that I criticize the Solstice Warriors for being flat characters when Crono literally does not speak and his party consists of a bunch of genre caricatures? Yes, because CT doesn't try to be more than that. There's no need for wink-wink "did you know you're playing a JRPG? eh, ehhh?? aren't they so wacky with plots that barely make sense bro???" writing in Chrono Trigger because it knows that you know that it knows that you know you're playing a damn JRPG. It's got Akira Toriyama art like Dragon Quest! It says Squaresoft on the cover, those dudes made Final Fantasy!
You're on a roller coaster through time and space! You're here because you want to see knights and robots and cavemen do exactly what knights and robots and cavemen do. Of course Ayla the weirdly sexy cavewoman will say "what is raw-boot? me no understand" after Robo the robot shoots dino-men with his laser beams. It's comedic melodrama, it's operatic in a way that leverages genre familiarity.
Sea of Stars isn't willing to fully commit to this approach, undercutting its own pathos with half-measures and naked imitation. I'd be so much more willing to accept the sudden-yet-inevitable betrayal at the end of the first act if the game didn't then whip around and say "haha, we sure did the thing, huh?" Yeah, I saw. We both clearly know that you're not being clever about it, so why is it in the game?
The answer is usually "because it was in Chrono Trigger", without any examination of what made it work. Like, okay, everybody knows Chrono Trigger is "a good game", but do you know why it's a good game? I could see someone playing it and just thinking, "I don't get it, this is an incredibly generic JRPG," but what you have to understand is that CT is an immaculately constructed generic JRPG. Simply using the same ingredients isn't going to create the same result.
Take the most famous twist of CT: at a critical moment, silent player avatar Crono sacrifices his life to get the rest of the cast to safety, removing him from the party lineup. In the context of 1995, this is a shocking, borderline 4th-wall-breaking twist. Permanent party member death wasn't unheard of - take FFIV or FFV - but the main character? Crono was the mandatory first slot of the party, a jack-of-all-trades mechanical role akin to a DQ Hero. Even though he doesn't have a personality, Crono's consistent presence and the story's inherent melodrama lend a tangible feeling of loss.
Using the power of time travel, the player can undertake a sizeable sidequest to bring Crono back to life, replacing him at the instant of his death with a lifeless doll. He rejoins the party, no longer a mandatory member of the lineup. At this point in the game, you arguably don't even want to bring him along on quests, because he still doesn't have dialogue. Crucially, the entire quest is optional; the first time I played CT, I accidentally did the entire final dungeon (also optional!) first, assuming it was a necessary step.
Sea of Stars tries to do this with Garl. He takes a fatal blow for Zale and Valere then dictates the plot for the next two hours of the game while living on literal Borrowed Time. You journey to an ancient island floating in the sky (sick Chrono Trigger reference bro!) and split the party to pursue multiple objectives in multiple dungeons, culminating in a whole sequence complete with bespoke comic panels of the party mourning their best friend for months offscreen.
This didn't work because I, the player, had no attachment to the character. Garl is the least mechanically useful party member, dealing the same damage type as Valere but without any elemental type to break locks; his heal skill is more expensive than Zale's and his repositioning skill is unnecessary once you have all-target attacks. I dropped him for Seraï at first opportunity and literally never put him back in the main lineup.
Nor do I buy into Zale and Valere's feelings. Protecting Garl is supposed to be one of their main motivations - it's a major scene in the prologue, and leads to an entire dungeon detour in the first act - but they haven't put forth any genuine effort to prevent him from hurling himself into danger's way throughout the game. As noted, he just repeatedly barrels his way through the plot by demanding it continue, even after he's fucking dead.
The true ending of Sea of Stars requires beating the game once, then completing numerous optional objectives which lead to... can you guess? Going back in time, replacing Garl at the instant of his fatal wound with a body double (which means B'st was pretending to be Garl - someone he's never met - during that entire segment, a completely absurd notion), and pulling him back into the present. You do another lengthy sidequest to get an invitation to a fancy restaurant, and then you can fight the true final boss, again, because Garl simply demands it when you get there.
If this CT retread had to be in the game, it would have obviously been better served by Garl being the main player character; go all the way with the imitation. Any vague gesturing the narrative makes towards not having to be The Chosen One to still fight for justice would carry more weight if you weren't playing as the Solstice Warriors, instead scrambling to keep up with them as the worst party member. As things stand, it's just a big ol' reference to a better game, a transparent play for Real Stakes that rings hollow.
An even more egregious example is The Big Thing at the start of Act 3, once the cast finally sets sail upon the eponymous Sea of Stars. Leaving their world of fantasy and magic, they enter a post-apocalyptic sci-fi world, complete with a brief graphics shift into 3D and a full UI overhaul. It's intended to be a shocking twist, a mind-blowing reveal... but it doesn't work, because A) it's a blatant crib of CT, and B) it's all in service to a punchline.
In Chrono Trigger, once the game has fully established the time travel concept by sending you to 600 AD and back (about three hours of gameplay), the party is forced to flee into an unknown time gate. It spits them out to 2300 AD, a wrecked hell world in the depths of a nuclear winter. Here, the party discovers an archive computer recording that sets up their goal for the entire rest of the game: prevent the apocalypse by stopping Lavos, a titanic creature buried deep within the earth.
It's important that this happens at the beginning of the game. You're expecting some form of going to the future to see goofy robots - it's a natural extension of time travel as a plot device - but 2300 AD is a genuine shock in the moment. It serves as a constant reminder of the stakes: this is the bad future, and you're trying to stop it from ever happening. After gallivanting through medieval times, the contrast really works.
In Sea of Stars, you probably aren't expecting to suddenly fight a robot when you're chasing The Fleshmancer across worlds. It's a potentially cool swerve, but what's actually gained by having the final act be in sci-fi land other than some kind of "dang, didn't see that coming" factor? He isn't even actually in control of the robots or anything, he just hides his castle here because... well, it's unclear why, because even once you restore the sun and moon and fight him in the True Ending, he only seems momentarily inconvenienced.
But it sure is a CT reference! And it's also a joke, because your mysterious sometimes-assassin-sometimes-swashbuckler companion Seraï reveals that this is her home world, pulling off her mask to reveal her metallic endoskeleton. You see, she used to be human, but had her soul chewed up and put into this mechanical body. She is a literal Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot.
You know! Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot! Like TVTropes, lol? Wacky JRPG party members!
How do you expect to maintain any investment after that? There's like four more dungeons in sci-fi world - including aforementioned Necromancer Daffy - and I just couldn't give a shit about any of it. The post-apoc stuff doesn't add any stakes, because we already know the Fleshmancer has ruined countless worlds and we're just chasing him to this one in particular because Seraï asked us to (and I guess they want revenge for Garl). I wasn't having fun, I was just annoyed.
I'm baffled. Sea of Stars clearly knows how to outwardly present itself as a quality JRPG. At a glance, the game looks like everything I could want: beautiful artwork, smooth gameplay, fun characters. Something that gets why I fell in love with the genre in the first place, and why I hold up Chrono Trigger as its crown jewel.
But it just isn't that, at least not to me, and that's... I dunno, existentially troubling? Based on the reviews I've seen, I'm clearly in the minority for feeling this way. I do believe the dev team and all of these players also love JRPGs. But if they do, it must be in a way fundamentally different from the way I do, because otherwise I simply don't understand the creative choices in Sea of Stars. I want more than this.
Maybe one day, hopefully sooner than later, we'll get the Disco Elysium of JRPGs, but today sure isn't that day.
They didn't.
(Full spoilers for both Sea of Stars and Chrono Trigger.)
I criticized Chained Echoes for being overly derivative of various golden age JRPGs, but to its credit: it feels purposeful in its imitation. It re-uses elements from older games wholecloth, smothering its individual identity under a quilt of influences, but I can appreciate the craftsmanship and intent behind it. It's clearly made from a place of love.
I don't get that vibe from Sea of Stars at all. I complained about some tediously self-aware dialogue in the early hours, and while it only dips down quite that low once or twice more, it colored the entire game with a feeling of self-aggrandizement. In fairness to what I wrote then (and based on a lengthy speech in the hidden Dev Room) it sounds like the devs truly did want to make a JRPG and pay homage to their childhoods. But to me, harsh as it may be, Sea of Stars feels like the devs thought making a JRPG was easy: just copy the greats (specifically, Chrono Trigger), and it'll work out. Based on sales and reviews, it is working out for them, but I'm the freak out here with highly specific ideas about why Chrono Trigger was good and Sea of Stars doesn't seem to agree with my assessment. This inherent friction lasted across the game's entire 30-35 hours.
You play as Zale and Valere, paired Chosen Ones whose innate Sun/Moon powers allow them to do battle against Dwellers, ancient beasts left behind when the villainous Fleshmancer set his sights on this plane of reality. He has since moved on to another world, but Dwellers left unchecked evolve into World Eaters, planar monstrosities that do exactly what it sounds like they do. The Solstice Warriors must hold a never-ending vigil in case previous generations missed a Dweller, battling them when their powers peak during an eclipse.
Joining them is Garl the Warrior Cook, the pair's childhood friend and the only character with anything resembling charisma; Seraï, a masked assassin of mysterious origin; Resh'an, a former companion of The Fleshmancer; and B'st, an amorphous pink cloud with almost no relevance to the plot a-la Chu-Chu from Xenogears.
Battles happen on the field map, like Chrono Trigger, and their main feature is essentially the Break system from Octopath Traveler. When a monster is charging up a special move, they gain "locks" that can only be broken by hitting them with specific types of damage; break them all, and they lose their turn. It's frequently impossible to break all the locks - you simply do not have the action economy to put out that many hits - and so you're usually playing triage regarding which special move you're willing to take to the face.
The battle system also takes a page from Super Mario RPG and includes timed hits and blocks for every attack. Tutorial messages insist to not worry about these and just think of them as bonus damage, but most of your attacks (especially multi-target spells) won't function properly unless you're nailing the timing. You'll often still do some damage, but the number of hits is the most important thing when you're dealing with Locks. There is an accessibility option (purchasable with in-game currency) to make timed hits always land in exchange for lower damage, but that only works for basic attacks.
Only a handful of skills have a message explaining when to push the button, and for the rest? Tough luck, figure it out. It's inconsistent at best and opaque at worst. And I mean literally opaque: because of how the field maps and graphics are constructed, character sprites (especially Seraï) often end up entirely offscreen or covered by other sprites when you're meant to time a press. This wasn't a problem in SMRPG or Mario & Luigi because those had bespoke battle screens with fairly consistent framing for timed hits; the concept isn't very compatible with CT style battles without a way to maintain that consistency.
I legitimately enjoyed the battle system for about the first 30% or so of the game, at which point the startling lack of variety in the battle options began to chafe. Every character has a basic attack, a mere three skills, and a Final Fantasy summon-like Ultimate attack that requires a bar to charge up. There's around a dozen "Combo" moves (read: Dual Techs) across the entire party, but the meter to use them charges so slowly they might as well only exist during boss battles. Your maximum MP caps at around 30 (at the max level, which requires a lot of grinding), skills cost anywhere between 4 and 11, and your potion inventory is limited to 10 items, meaning you're going to almost always rely on basic attacks - which recover 3 MP on a hit - for most battles. Landing a basic attack lets you imbue another basic attack with a character's inherent elemental attribute, which is the only way to break most locks once you're in the mid-game.
Play SMRPG sometime (perhaps the upcoming remake, even) and you'll figure out quick that Timed Hits are cool because if you do them properly it makes battles faster. You aren't trying to get 100 Super Jumps in every single battle because that would be exhausting and slow. Sure, in Chrono Trigger I'm solving 80% of encounters with the same multi-target spells, but that also means they're over in less than a minute. In Sea of Stars, if I mess up an early button press with Moonerang or Venom Flurry, it might not even hit every enemy, which probably means I won't break the locks I need to, which means they'll do their long spell animation. A trash mob battle will probably take two full minutes of me carefully trying to land my timed hits and manage my MP. That shit adds up.
I wouldn't quite go so far as to say Sea of Stars disrespects your time, but a lot of shit adds up. The backgrounds and sprite work are universally great - really beautiful stuff, great animations - but there are tightropes/beams scattered everywhere around the game world, seemingly placed only so you're forced to slow down and look at the backgrounds. From a purely quality of life standpoint, I don't know why you have to hold the button for so long when cooking something, especially if it's a higher-tier restorative. The overworld walk speed is agonizing. The narrative flails in several bizarre directions, only cohering in the broadest possible sense of "we need to beat the bad guy".
Comparatively, Chrono Trigger never stops moving. Your objectives in CT are clearly signposted and make logical sense, even when they string together into longer sequences. To save the world from the Bad Future, we need to defeat the big monster, and we learn the monster was summoned by an evil wizard. To defeat the evil wizard, we need the magic sword, but the sword is broken. To re-forge the sword, we need an ancient material, so off to prehistory we go!
It may sound tedious when written out this way, but the crucial element is that this only takes something like 4 or 5 hours. You're never stuck in any individual location longer than 45-60 minutes, and that's if you stop to grind (which you don't need to). Working at a leisurely pace, you can 100% Chrono Trigger in somewhere between 15 and 20 hours. My most recent playthrough - in which I deliberately walked slowly, grinded out levels, and talked to every NPC for the sake of recording footage - clocked in at about 17.
Sea of Stars doesn't stop introducing new plot elements until the middle of the end credits and makes little effort to tie them together in a cohesive way, instead relying on the inherent fantasy of the setting to smooth over any bumps. For example, take The Sleeper, a massive dragon that once ravaged the world before being sent into an eternal slumber. It explicitly isn't a Dweller, being little more than a curiosity on the overworld map. It bears no relevance to the plot other than as a mid-game side objective to earn the privilege to progress the actual story.
Zale and Valere, despite having speaking roles, do not possess an iota of personality between them; they are generically heroic and valiant and stop at every stage along their quest to help the weak and downtrodden as JRPG Protagonists are wont to do. The idea that Garl should not join them on their dangerous journey - as he is a mere normie - is raised once or twice, but ultimately disregarded due to Garl's endless luck and pluck. He barrels through any possible pathos or character development by simply being the Fun Fat Guy at all times, whether or not the next step follows logically.
No less than three times do the characters visit some kind of Oracle or Seer who reads the future and literally tells them what is going to happen later in the story, sometimes cryptically and sometimes giving explicit instructions. At one point a character awakens from a near-death experience having suddenly gained the knowledge of how to restart the stalled plot, launching into a multi-stage quest that has no logical ties to the party's objective. It's just progression, things happening because something has to happen between points A and B.
Another example: a late game dungeon introduces a race of bird wizards complete with ominous side-flashes to their nefarious scheming atop their evil thrones. They are relevant for only that dungeon, which is broadly just an obstacle in the way of the party's actual objective. I don't understand the intent. Is it supposed to be funny that this guy looks like Necromancer Daffy Duck? If so, why is the story genuinely trying to convince me of the sorrow of their plight and how it relates to the lore (in a way that also isn't relevant to the current events of the plot since it's shit that happened like 10,000 years ago)? How am I meant to react to this? Why is it here, in the final stretch of the story? I was asking these kinds of questions the entire game.
Presumably, the plot is like this because it's trying to imitate JRPGs of the time, which had a reputation for sending you on strings of seemingly random errands to defeat monsters or fetch items. You know what game doesn't do that? Chrono Trigger! The game Sea of Stars is obviously trying to position itself as a successor to!
Is it fair that I criticize the Solstice Warriors for being flat characters when Crono literally does not speak and his party consists of a bunch of genre caricatures? Yes, because CT doesn't try to be more than that. There's no need for wink-wink "did you know you're playing a JRPG? eh, ehhh?? aren't they so wacky with plots that barely make sense bro???" writing in Chrono Trigger because it knows that you know that it knows that you know you're playing a damn JRPG. It's got Akira Toriyama art like Dragon Quest! It says Squaresoft on the cover, those dudes made Final Fantasy!
You're on a roller coaster through time and space! You're here because you want to see knights and robots and cavemen do exactly what knights and robots and cavemen do. Of course Ayla the weirdly sexy cavewoman will say "what is raw-boot? me no understand" after Robo the robot shoots dino-men with his laser beams. It's comedic melodrama, it's operatic in a way that leverages genre familiarity.
Sea of Stars isn't willing to fully commit to this approach, undercutting its own pathos with half-measures and naked imitation. I'd be so much more willing to accept the sudden-yet-inevitable betrayal at the end of the first act if the game didn't then whip around and say "haha, we sure did the thing, huh?" Yeah, I saw. We both clearly know that you're not being clever about it, so why is it in the game?
The answer is usually "because it was in Chrono Trigger", without any examination of what made it work. Like, okay, everybody knows Chrono Trigger is "a good game", but do you know why it's a good game? I could see someone playing it and just thinking, "I don't get it, this is an incredibly generic JRPG," but what you have to understand is that CT is an immaculately constructed generic JRPG. Simply using the same ingredients isn't going to create the same result.
Take the most famous twist of CT: at a critical moment, silent player avatar Crono sacrifices his life to get the rest of the cast to safety, removing him from the party lineup. In the context of 1995, this is a shocking, borderline 4th-wall-breaking twist. Permanent party member death wasn't unheard of - take FFIV or FFV - but the main character? Crono was the mandatory first slot of the party, a jack-of-all-trades mechanical role akin to a DQ Hero. Even though he doesn't have a personality, Crono's consistent presence and the story's inherent melodrama lend a tangible feeling of loss.
Using the power of time travel, the player can undertake a sizeable sidequest to bring Crono back to life, replacing him at the instant of his death with a lifeless doll. He rejoins the party, no longer a mandatory member of the lineup. At this point in the game, you arguably don't even want to bring him along on quests, because he still doesn't have dialogue. Crucially, the entire quest is optional; the first time I played CT, I accidentally did the entire final dungeon (also optional!) first, assuming it was a necessary step.
Sea of Stars tries to do this with Garl. He takes a fatal blow for Zale and Valere then dictates the plot for the next two hours of the game while living on literal Borrowed Time. You journey to an ancient island floating in the sky (sick Chrono Trigger reference bro!) and split the party to pursue multiple objectives in multiple dungeons, culminating in a whole sequence complete with bespoke comic panels of the party mourning their best friend for months offscreen.
This didn't work because I, the player, had no attachment to the character. Garl is the least mechanically useful party member, dealing the same damage type as Valere but without any elemental type to break locks; his heal skill is more expensive than Zale's and his repositioning skill is unnecessary once you have all-target attacks. I dropped him for Seraï at first opportunity and literally never put him back in the main lineup.
Nor do I buy into Zale and Valere's feelings. Protecting Garl is supposed to be one of their main motivations - it's a major scene in the prologue, and leads to an entire dungeon detour in the first act - but they haven't put forth any genuine effort to prevent him from hurling himself into danger's way throughout the game. As noted, he just repeatedly barrels his way through the plot by demanding it continue, even after he's fucking dead.
The true ending of Sea of Stars requires beating the game once, then completing numerous optional objectives which lead to... can you guess? Going back in time, replacing Garl at the instant of his fatal wound with a body double (which means B'st was pretending to be Garl - someone he's never met - during that entire segment, a completely absurd notion), and pulling him back into the present. You do another lengthy sidequest to get an invitation to a fancy restaurant, and then you can fight the true final boss, again, because Garl simply demands it when you get there.
If this CT retread had to be in the game, it would have obviously been better served by Garl being the main player character; go all the way with the imitation. Any vague gesturing the narrative makes towards not having to be The Chosen One to still fight for justice would carry more weight if you weren't playing as the Solstice Warriors, instead scrambling to keep up with them as the worst party member. As things stand, it's just a big ol' reference to a better game, a transparent play for Real Stakes that rings hollow.
An even more egregious example is The Big Thing at the start of Act 3, once the cast finally sets sail upon the eponymous Sea of Stars. Leaving their world of fantasy and magic, they enter a post-apocalyptic sci-fi world, complete with a brief graphics shift into 3D and a full UI overhaul. It's intended to be a shocking twist, a mind-blowing reveal... but it doesn't work, because A) it's a blatant crib of CT, and B) it's all in service to a punchline.
In Chrono Trigger, once the game has fully established the time travel concept by sending you to 600 AD and back (about three hours of gameplay), the party is forced to flee into an unknown time gate. It spits them out to 2300 AD, a wrecked hell world in the depths of a nuclear winter. Here, the party discovers an archive computer recording that sets up their goal for the entire rest of the game: prevent the apocalypse by stopping Lavos, a titanic creature buried deep within the earth.
It's important that this happens at the beginning of the game. You're expecting some form of going to the future to see goofy robots - it's a natural extension of time travel as a plot device - but 2300 AD is a genuine shock in the moment. It serves as a constant reminder of the stakes: this is the bad future, and you're trying to stop it from ever happening. After gallivanting through medieval times, the contrast really works.
In Sea of Stars, you probably aren't expecting to suddenly fight a robot when you're chasing The Fleshmancer across worlds. It's a potentially cool swerve, but what's actually gained by having the final act be in sci-fi land other than some kind of "dang, didn't see that coming" factor? He isn't even actually in control of the robots or anything, he just hides his castle here because... well, it's unclear why, because even once you restore the sun and moon and fight him in the True Ending, he only seems momentarily inconvenienced.
But it sure is a CT reference! And it's also a joke, because your mysterious sometimes-assassin-sometimes-swashbuckler companion Seraï reveals that this is her home world, pulling off her mask to reveal her metallic endoskeleton. You see, she used to be human, but had her soul chewed up and put into this mechanical body. She is a literal Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot.
You know! Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot! Like TVTropes, lol? Wacky JRPG party members!
How do you expect to maintain any investment after that? There's like four more dungeons in sci-fi world - including aforementioned Necromancer Daffy - and I just couldn't give a shit about any of it. The post-apoc stuff doesn't add any stakes, because we already know the Fleshmancer has ruined countless worlds and we're just chasing him to this one in particular because Seraï asked us to (and I guess they want revenge for Garl). I wasn't having fun, I was just annoyed.
I'm baffled. Sea of Stars clearly knows how to outwardly present itself as a quality JRPG. At a glance, the game looks like everything I could want: beautiful artwork, smooth gameplay, fun characters. Something that gets why I fell in love with the genre in the first place, and why I hold up Chrono Trigger as its crown jewel.
But it just isn't that, at least not to me, and that's... I dunno, existentially troubling? Based on the reviews I've seen, I'm clearly in the minority for feeling this way. I do believe the dev team and all of these players also love JRPGs. But if they do, it must be in a way fundamentally different from the way I do, because otherwise I simply don't understand the creative choices in Sea of Stars. I want more than this.
Maybe one day, hopefully sooner than later, we'll get the Disco Elysium of JRPGs, but today sure isn't that day.
Awesome game, I actually played in an EVO tournament for it in 2005 and got fourth place
Final Fantasy XVI
2023
I considered strongly putting together a long-form critique of this game, but the most damning statement I could possibly make about Final Fantasy XVI is that I truly don't think it's worth it. The ways in which I think this game is bad are not unique or interesting: it is bad in the same way the vast majority of these prestige Sony single-player exclusives are. Its failures are common, predictable, and depressingly endemic. It is bad because it hates women, it is bad because it treats it's subject matter with an aggressive lack of care or interest, it is bad because it's imagination is as narrow and constrained as it's level design. But more than anything else, it is bad because it only wants to be Good.
Oxymoronic a statement as it might appear, this is core to the game's failings to me. People who make games generally want to make good games, of course, but paired with that there is an intent, an interest, an idea that seeks to be communicated, that the eloquence with which it professes its aesthetic, thematic, or mechanical goals will produce the quality it seeks. Final Fantasy XVI may have such goals, but they are supplicant to its desire to be liked, and so, rather than plant a flag of its own, it stitches together one from fabric pillaged from the most immediate eikons of popularity and quality - A Song of Ice and Fire, God of War, Demon Slayer, Devil May Cry - desperately begging to be liked by cloaking itself in what many people already do, needing to be loved in the way those things are, without any of the work or vision of its influences, and without any charisma of its own. Much like the patch and DLC content for Final Fantasy XV, it's a reactionary and cloying work that contorts itself into a shape it thinks people will love, rather than finding a unique self to be.
From the aggressively self-serious tone that embraces wholeheartedly the aesthetics of Prestige Fantasy Television with all its fucks and shits and incest and Grim Darkness to let you know that This Isn't Your Daddy's Final Fantasy, without actually being anywhere near as genuinely Dark, sad, or depressing as something like XV, from combat that borrows the surface-level signifiers of Devil May Cry combat - stingers, devil bringers, enemy step - but without any actual opposition or reaction of that series' diverse and reactive enemy set and thoughtful level design, or the way there's a episode of television-worth of lectures from a character explaining troop movements and map markers that genuinely do not matter in any way in order to make you feel like you're experiencing a well thought-out and materially concerned political Serious Fantasy, Final Fantasy XVI is pure wafer-thin illusion; all the surface from it's myriad influences but none of the depth or nuance, a greatest hits album from a band with no voice to call their own, an algorithmically generated playlist of hits that tunelessly resound with nothing. It looks like Devil May Cry, but it isn't - Devil May Cry would ask more of you than dodging one attack at a time while you perform a particularly flashy MMO rotation. It looks like A Song of Ice and Fire, but it isn't - without Martin's careful historical eye and materialist concerns, the illusion that this comes even within striking distance of that flawed work shatters when you think about the setting for more than a moment.
In fairness, Final Fantasy XVI does bring more than just the surface level into its world: it also brings with it the nastiest and ugliest parts of those works into this one, replicated wholeheartedly as Aesthetic, bereft of whatever semblance of texture and critique may have once been there. Benedikta Harman might be the most disgustingly treated woman in a recent work of fiction, the seemingly uniform AAA Game misogyny of evil mothers and heroic, redeemable fathers is alive and well, 16's version of this now agonizingly tired cliche going farther even than games I've railed against for it in the past, which all culminates in a moment where three men tell the female lead to stay home while they go and fight (despite one of those men being a proven liability to himself and others when doing the same thing he is about to go and do again, while she is not), she immediately acquiesces, and dutifully remains in the proverbial kitchen. Something that thinks so little of women is self-evidently incapable of meaningfully tackling any real-world issue, something Final Fantasy XVI goes on to decisively prove, with its story of systemic evils defeated not with systemic criticism, but with Great, Powerful Men, a particularly tiresome kind of rugged bootstrap individualism that seeks to reduce real-world evils to shonen enemies for the Special Man with Special Powers to defeat on his lonesome. It's an attempt to discuss oppression and racism that would embarrass even the other shonen media it is clearly closer in spirit to than the dark fantasy political epic it wears the skin of. In a world where the power fantasy of the shonen superhero is sacrosanct over all other concerns, it leads to a conclusion as absurd and fundamentally unimaginative as shonen jump's weakest scripts: the only thing that can stop a Bad Guy with an Eikon is a Good Guy with an Eikon.
In borrowing the aesthetics of the dark fantasy - and Matsuno games - it seeks to emulate, but without the nuance, FF16 becomes a game where the perspective of the enslaved is almost completely absent (Clive's period as a slave might as well not have occurred for all it impacts his character), and the power of nobility is Good when it is wielded by Good Hands like Lord Rosfield, a slave owner who, despite owning the clearly abused character who serves as our introduction to the bearers, is eulogized completely uncritically by the script, until a final side quest has a character claim that he was planning to free the slaves all along...alongside a letter where Lord Rosfield discusses his desire to "put down the savages". I've never seen attempted slave owner apologia that didn't reveal its virulent underlying racism, and this is no exception. In fact, any time the game attempts to put on a facade of being about something other than The Shonen Hero battling other Kamen Riders for dominance, it crumbles nigh-immediately; when Final Fantasy 16 makes its overtures towards the Power of Friendship, it rings utterly false and hollow: Clive's friends are not his power. His power is his power.
The only part of the game that truly spoke to me was the widely-derided side-quests, which offer a peek into a more compelling story: the story of a man doing the work to build and maintain a community, contributing to both the material and emotional needs of a commune that attempts to exist outside the violence of society. As tedious as these sidequests are - and as agonizing as their pacing so often is - it's the only part of this game where it felt like I was engaging with an idea. But ultimately, even this is annihilated by the game's bootstrap nonsense - that being that the hideaway is funded and maintained by the wealthy and influential across the world, the direct beneficiaries and embodiments of the status quo funding what their involvement reveals to be an utterly illusionary attempt to escape it, rendering what could be an effective exploration of what building a new idea of a community practically looks like into something that could be good neighbors with Galt's Gulch.
In a series that is routinely deeply rewarding for me to consider, FF16 stands as perhaps its most shallow, underwritten, and vacuous entry in decades. All games are ultimately illusions, of course: we're all just moving data around spreadsheets, at the end of the day. But - as is the modern AAA mode de jour - 16 is the result of the careful subtraction of texture from the experience of a game, the removal of any potential frictions and frustrations, but further even than that, it is the removal of personality, of difference, it is the attempt to make make the smoothest, most likable affect possible to the widest number of people possible. And, just like with its AAA brethren, it has almost nothing to offer me. It is the affect of Devil May Cry without its texture, the affect of Game of Thrones without even its nuance, and the affect of Final Fantasy without its soul.
Final Fantasy XVI is ultimately a success. It sought out to be Good, in the way a PS5 game like this is Good, and succeeded. And in so doing, it closed off any possibility that it would ever reach me.
It doesn’t really surprise me that each positive sentiment I have seen on Final Fantasy XVI is followed by an exclamation of derision over the series’ recent past. Whether the point of betrayal and failure was in XV, or with XIII, or even as far back as VIII, the rhetorical move is well and truly that Final Fantasy has been Bad, and with XVI, it is good again. Unfortunately, as someone who thought Final Fantasy has Been Good, consistently, throughout essentially the entire span of it's existence, I find myself on the other side of this one.
Final Fantasy XV convinced me that I could still love video games when I thought, for a moment, that I might not. That it was still possible to make games on this scale that were idiosyncratic, personal, and deeply human, even in the awful place the video game industry is in.
Final Fantasy XVI convinced me that it isn't.
Oxymoronic a statement as it might appear, this is core to the game's failings to me. People who make games generally want to make good games, of course, but paired with that there is an intent, an interest, an idea that seeks to be communicated, that the eloquence with which it professes its aesthetic, thematic, or mechanical goals will produce the quality it seeks. Final Fantasy XVI may have such goals, but they are supplicant to its desire to be liked, and so, rather than plant a flag of its own, it stitches together one from fabric pillaged from the most immediate eikons of popularity and quality - A Song of Ice and Fire, God of War, Demon Slayer, Devil May Cry - desperately begging to be liked by cloaking itself in what many people already do, needing to be loved in the way those things are, without any of the work or vision of its influences, and without any charisma of its own. Much like the patch and DLC content for Final Fantasy XV, it's a reactionary and cloying work that contorts itself into a shape it thinks people will love, rather than finding a unique self to be.
From the aggressively self-serious tone that embraces wholeheartedly the aesthetics of Prestige Fantasy Television with all its fucks and shits and incest and Grim Darkness to let you know that This Isn't Your Daddy's Final Fantasy, without actually being anywhere near as genuinely Dark, sad, or depressing as something like XV, from combat that borrows the surface-level signifiers of Devil May Cry combat - stingers, devil bringers, enemy step - but without any actual opposition or reaction of that series' diverse and reactive enemy set and thoughtful level design, or the way there's a episode of television-worth of lectures from a character explaining troop movements and map markers that genuinely do not matter in any way in order to make you feel like you're experiencing a well thought-out and materially concerned political Serious Fantasy, Final Fantasy XVI is pure wafer-thin illusion; all the surface from it's myriad influences but none of the depth or nuance, a greatest hits album from a band with no voice to call their own, an algorithmically generated playlist of hits that tunelessly resound with nothing. It looks like Devil May Cry, but it isn't - Devil May Cry would ask more of you than dodging one attack at a time while you perform a particularly flashy MMO rotation. It looks like A Song of Ice and Fire, but it isn't - without Martin's careful historical eye and materialist concerns, the illusion that this comes even within striking distance of that flawed work shatters when you think about the setting for more than a moment.
In fairness, Final Fantasy XVI does bring more than just the surface level into its world: it also brings with it the nastiest and ugliest parts of those works into this one, replicated wholeheartedly as Aesthetic, bereft of whatever semblance of texture and critique may have once been there. Benedikta Harman might be the most disgustingly treated woman in a recent work of fiction, the seemingly uniform AAA Game misogyny of evil mothers and heroic, redeemable fathers is alive and well, 16's version of this now agonizingly tired cliche going farther even than games I've railed against for it in the past, which all culminates in a moment where three men tell the female lead to stay home while they go and fight (despite one of those men being a proven liability to himself and others when doing the same thing he is about to go and do again, while she is not), she immediately acquiesces, and dutifully remains in the proverbial kitchen. Something that thinks so little of women is self-evidently incapable of meaningfully tackling any real-world issue, something Final Fantasy XVI goes on to decisively prove, with its story of systemic evils defeated not with systemic criticism, but with Great, Powerful Men, a particularly tiresome kind of rugged bootstrap individualism that seeks to reduce real-world evils to shonen enemies for the Special Man with Special Powers to defeat on his lonesome. It's an attempt to discuss oppression and racism that would embarrass even the other shonen media it is clearly closer in spirit to than the dark fantasy political epic it wears the skin of. In a world where the power fantasy of the shonen superhero is sacrosanct over all other concerns, it leads to a conclusion as absurd and fundamentally unimaginative as shonen jump's weakest scripts: the only thing that can stop a Bad Guy with an Eikon is a Good Guy with an Eikon.
In borrowing the aesthetics of the dark fantasy - and Matsuno games - it seeks to emulate, but without the nuance, FF16 becomes a game where the perspective of the enslaved is almost completely absent (Clive's period as a slave might as well not have occurred for all it impacts his character), and the power of nobility is Good when it is wielded by Good Hands like Lord Rosfield, a slave owner who, despite owning the clearly abused character who serves as our introduction to the bearers, is eulogized completely uncritically by the script, until a final side quest has a character claim that he was planning to free the slaves all along...alongside a letter where Lord Rosfield discusses his desire to "put down the savages". I've never seen attempted slave owner apologia that didn't reveal its virulent underlying racism, and this is no exception. In fact, any time the game attempts to put on a facade of being about something other than The Shonen Hero battling other Kamen Riders for dominance, it crumbles nigh-immediately; when Final Fantasy 16 makes its overtures towards the Power of Friendship, it rings utterly false and hollow: Clive's friends are not his power. His power is his power.
The only part of the game that truly spoke to me was the widely-derided side-quests, which offer a peek into a more compelling story: the story of a man doing the work to build and maintain a community, contributing to both the material and emotional needs of a commune that attempts to exist outside the violence of society. As tedious as these sidequests are - and as agonizing as their pacing so often is - it's the only part of this game where it felt like I was engaging with an idea. But ultimately, even this is annihilated by the game's bootstrap nonsense - that being that the hideaway is funded and maintained by the wealthy and influential across the world, the direct beneficiaries and embodiments of the status quo funding what their involvement reveals to be an utterly illusionary attempt to escape it, rendering what could be an effective exploration of what building a new idea of a community practically looks like into something that could be good neighbors with Galt's Gulch.
In a series that is routinely deeply rewarding for me to consider, FF16 stands as perhaps its most shallow, underwritten, and vacuous entry in decades. All games are ultimately illusions, of course: we're all just moving data around spreadsheets, at the end of the day. But - as is the modern AAA mode de jour - 16 is the result of the careful subtraction of texture from the experience of a game, the removal of any potential frictions and frustrations, but further even than that, it is the removal of personality, of difference, it is the attempt to make make the smoothest, most likable affect possible to the widest number of people possible. And, just like with its AAA brethren, it has almost nothing to offer me. It is the affect of Devil May Cry without its texture, the affect of Game of Thrones without even its nuance, and the affect of Final Fantasy without its soul.
Final Fantasy XVI is ultimately a success. It sought out to be Good, in the way a PS5 game like this is Good, and succeeded. And in so doing, it closed off any possibility that it would ever reach me.
It doesn’t really surprise me that each positive sentiment I have seen on Final Fantasy XVI is followed by an exclamation of derision over the series’ recent past. Whether the point of betrayal and failure was in XV, or with XIII, or even as far back as VIII, the rhetorical move is well and truly that Final Fantasy has been Bad, and with XVI, it is good again. Unfortunately, as someone who thought Final Fantasy has Been Good, consistently, throughout essentially the entire span of it's existence, I find myself on the other side of this one.
Final Fantasy XV convinced me that I could still love video games when I thought, for a moment, that I might not. That it was still possible to make games on this scale that were idiosyncratic, personal, and deeply human, even in the awful place the video game industry is in.
Final Fantasy XVI convinced me that it isn't.
Kingdom Hearts II
2005
look buddy i dont know what kinda crack they put in this game but you put mickey mouse in a goth coat and i go absolutely buck wild