rubenmg
2023
A conglomeration of impossible nostalgias: Nintendo DS tactile device, messenger chats, barely functional webcams, two colored pixelated games and UI, fan art forums, 2000s trends posters… Videoverse basically takes whatever is convenient from each place while giving a kind of immortal internet nostalgia, where seeing the face of someone from another country in a laggy exchange is a kind of magical event, both in its unimaginable existence just a few decades ago and in its low fidelity technological mystique. This blurry yet distinct mass also carries a meaning of both the degree of precision at recalling our memories and how videogames work better with few charismatic gestures, scarce and giant pixels changing the face expression to tell absolutely everything.
In this virtual reality, completely opening yourself is both the only possible and most risky place to do so. Everything is volatile, logging off is erasing your existence and the servers shutting down is the end of the world on top of your desk. As messy as it may be, Videoverse is undeniably a home. The more times you log in, the more those nicknames become your neighbors. For a teenager still figuring out the world, it is as easy to assimilate as reality.
In this place where it is technically impossible to tell apart true from false, love is still the biggest unexplainable truth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcKsxHURj24
In this virtual reality, completely opening yourself is both the only possible and most risky place to do so. Everything is volatile, logging off is erasing your existence and the servers shutting down is the end of the world on top of your desk. As messy as it may be, Videoverse is undeniably a home. The more times you log in, the more those nicknames become your neighbors. For a teenager still figuring out the world, it is as easy to assimilate as reality.
In this place where it is technically impossible to tell apart true from false, love is still the biggest unexplainable truth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcKsxHURj24
2023
For the first half, Humanity is an alright puzzle game. It falls into many irregular puzzle conventions of my personal dislike, focusing on introducing a large number of mechanics instead of being smart with the available tools, yet it still reaches some very high points of wit, even with the ideas that made me raise my eyebrow at first glance.
At the half of the game, the main surprise is the genre shift. The principal difference between the stealth, strategy, action, platformer or whatever else new facets of this second half is that, contrary to the first one, the quality ranges from bad to very bad. The principles established to make a good puzzle game do not cover enough range to go further from a surface recognition of the other genres. Even the genre shift idea itself seems less smart than the game thinks when noticing that the radical change comes from a single power up introduction. The first step to turn a Mario game into a shooter is giving him a gun.
This shift could be taken at least from its symbolic significance (hard thing to do considering the detachment that the narrative provokes by seeming more concerned with pretending to care about the big questions rather than caring about really anything), if it wasn't because of the occasional puzzle comebacks and, honestly, no idea how rejecting the puzzle nature or branching from it should be a positive read on humanity’s capacity instead of a signal of its incapacity.
To the puzzle that was the lack of ideas halfway through the journey, the proposed solution was to break all rules, forgetting why they existed, mistaking becoming a fragile shifting shadow of greater ones with an alternative way to find its own identity. The solution was to stop right there.
At the half of the game, the main surprise is the genre shift. The principal difference between the stealth, strategy, action, platformer or whatever else new facets of this second half is that, contrary to the first one, the quality ranges from bad to very bad. The principles established to make a good puzzle game do not cover enough range to go further from a surface recognition of the other genres. Even the genre shift idea itself seems less smart than the game thinks when noticing that the radical change comes from a single power up introduction. The first step to turn a Mario game into a shooter is giving him a gun.
This shift could be taken at least from its symbolic significance (hard thing to do considering the detachment that the narrative provokes by seeming more concerned with pretending to care about the big questions rather than caring about really anything), if it wasn't because of the occasional puzzle comebacks and, honestly, no idea how rejecting the puzzle nature or branching from it should be a positive read on humanity’s capacity instead of a signal of its incapacity.
To the puzzle that was the lack of ideas halfway through the journey, the proposed solution was to break all rules, forgetting why they existed, mistaking becoming a fragile shifting shadow of greater ones with an alternative way to find its own identity. The solution was to stop right there.
2007
Initially, the game has no bad ideas at all. The Tartarus as the main (and almost only) dungeon being randomized gives it a sense of unknown in every journey, with even some team management elements in order to explore each floor in different ways. Speaking of teammates, the decision to not be able to control them directly gives the combat a fresh strategic view. Equally refreshing, the life simulation manages to convey its adolescent fantasy by mixing both mundane and supernatural worlds. Even the social links having direct effect and thus forcing you to relate with as many people as possible and to keep them happy whenever you encounter them is a right decision. True, it can lead to some condescending behavior towards everyone because of convenience, but it can also be understood as a way to understand each person.
And at the premises is where Persona 3 ends. The dungeon is soon revealed as poorly followed in thought. The floor generation is incredibly samey, and there is never a sense of getting lost (or a need to spread the companions around) because of using such a limited pool of assets in incredibly small sized floors. It fails both as a hassle to progress and as an adventuring device. The shadow enemies, being exactly the same during the whole game and the only enemy to encounter, are easy to observe and evade from the very beginning. The enemies happen to be so predictable that not only escalating to the next Tartarus checkpoint while avoiding combat or giving a back strike to start with an advantage is mindless, there is no trouble in doing both even with emulator turbo enabled.
Thankfully, you can progress through Tartarus at your own pace, but even if you defeat the bosses and reach the story blocked checkpoint, the game incentivizes you to go back and grind. It will be your only source of experience, money and personas to begin with. The worst part is noticing that the randomness of the dungeon that was supposed to make it intimidating ends up acting as a pseudogacha where to celebrate the encountering of rare chests and drops. And yes, your characters fatigue after a number of fights, but instead of making this as a threat, it is another incentive to keep grinding the dungeon while everyone is capable of combat (and the most interesting implications of this, getting blocked because of mismanagement, is erased for your convenience at the end of the game).
The JRPG dungeon grinding systems are the best part of the game.
The life simulation suffers from a similar need to press the turbo button because of its babyfied copy of Tokimeki Memorial being shallow, elongated, devoid of friction and with no interesting real choices to make (similarly, Tokimeki also had an implicit comment on time being wasted on improving oneself while life went away, it helped to get the point across that three years of high school went away in 5 hours at most in opposition to less than one year ending after 60+ hours). I could forgive this and other details like the weird push for romantic connotations with every female character, the friendship hilariously disappearing whenever the social link is completed (when the bond is unbreakable, according to the game own words) or the aforementioned convenient condescending approach to dialogue options if the stories would be any good. They start with an attempt of being lighthearted, and noticing how boring they are halfway through, they usually throw some half-baked drama that makes Inazuma Eleven secret characters' backstories look like Shakespearian tragedies.
Even though it is appreciated that the game main plot is rather calm to just enjoy the day to day (something that, as already said, fails to do so), the narrative obstacles in the smaller stories are just a teaser of the ineptitude of the whole game. The main group, despite living in the same residence and going to the same school, seems afraid to spend time together that is not relevant to the main plot. It is so clearly disinterested in making a group dynamic that up until the very end of the game it will be usual to approach one of your team members at night for a casual talk and hear a tutorial prompt instead. I have to admit that the overall insipidness of everyone helps to look at the dog the same as any other team member, at least.
The more “serious” story beats may be the worst part. Just to exemplify, the first arc of the story that wants to carry some weight deals with a group of girls bullying one of their classmates. As obvious as it is at this point, Persona 3 does not care in any human way about neither life in general nor in teenage life in particular, so the bully is forgiven and corrected after her life is saved by the bullied and the story is concluded, they are now inseparable friends even. This very same ineptitude could be discussed with every dramatic driven story beat, save perhaps for the admittedly okayish ending (talking about The Journey here, I prefer to ignore the whole existence of The Answer in every sense).
As much as Persona 3 ends up wanting to talk about the importance and impact of death and its worries or where our world is going to (in quite a conservative mindset where marriage and divorce rates are relevantly present in the news for instance), its attempt cannot be taken seriously at such a glaring misunderstanding of life itself.
And at the premises is where Persona 3 ends. The dungeon is soon revealed as poorly followed in thought. The floor generation is incredibly samey, and there is never a sense of getting lost (or a need to spread the companions around) because of using such a limited pool of assets in incredibly small sized floors. It fails both as a hassle to progress and as an adventuring device. The shadow enemies, being exactly the same during the whole game and the only enemy to encounter, are easy to observe and evade from the very beginning. The enemies happen to be so predictable that not only escalating to the next Tartarus checkpoint while avoiding combat or giving a back strike to start with an advantage is mindless, there is no trouble in doing both even with emulator turbo enabled.
Thankfully, you can progress through Tartarus at your own pace, but even if you defeat the bosses and reach the story blocked checkpoint, the game incentivizes you to go back and grind. It will be your only source of experience, money and personas to begin with. The worst part is noticing that the randomness of the dungeon that was supposed to make it intimidating ends up acting as a pseudogacha where to celebrate the encountering of rare chests and drops. And yes, your characters fatigue after a number of fights, but instead of making this as a threat, it is another incentive to keep grinding the dungeon while everyone is capable of combat (and the most interesting implications of this, getting blocked because of mismanagement, is erased for your convenience at the end of the game).
The JRPG dungeon grinding systems are the best part of the game.
The life simulation suffers from a similar need to press the turbo button because of its babyfied copy of Tokimeki Memorial being shallow, elongated, devoid of friction and with no interesting real choices to make (similarly, Tokimeki also had an implicit comment on time being wasted on improving oneself while life went away, it helped to get the point across that three years of high school went away in 5 hours at most in opposition to less than one year ending after 60+ hours). I could forgive this and other details like the weird push for romantic connotations with every female character, the friendship hilariously disappearing whenever the social link is completed (when the bond is unbreakable, according to the game own words) or the aforementioned convenient condescending approach to dialogue options if the stories would be any good. They start with an attempt of being lighthearted, and noticing how boring they are halfway through, they usually throw some half-baked drama that makes Inazuma Eleven secret characters' backstories look like Shakespearian tragedies.
Even though it is appreciated that the game main plot is rather calm to just enjoy the day to day (something that, as already said, fails to do so), the narrative obstacles in the smaller stories are just a teaser of the ineptitude of the whole game. The main group, despite living in the same residence and going to the same school, seems afraid to spend time together that is not relevant to the main plot. It is so clearly disinterested in making a group dynamic that up until the very end of the game it will be usual to approach one of your team members at night for a casual talk and hear a tutorial prompt instead. I have to admit that the overall insipidness of everyone helps to look at the dog the same as any other team member, at least.
The more “serious” story beats may be the worst part. Just to exemplify, the first arc of the story that wants to carry some weight deals with a group of girls bullying one of their classmates. As obvious as it is at this point, Persona 3 does not care in any human way about neither life in general nor in teenage life in particular, so the bully is forgiven and corrected after her life is saved by the bullied and the story is concluded, they are now inseparable friends even. This very same ineptitude could be discussed with every dramatic driven story beat, save perhaps for the admittedly okayish ending (talking about The Journey here, I prefer to ignore the whole existence of The Answer in every sense).
As much as Persona 3 ends up wanting to talk about the importance and impact of death and its worries or where our world is going to (in quite a conservative mindset where marriage and divorce rates are relevantly present in the news for instance), its attempt cannot be taken seriously at such a glaring misunderstanding of life itself.
2012
What makes a good shoot em up? It is easy to focus on unique quirks and tricks from each title and start justifying from there. It is not without reason, at least in Cave case, since these ideas are usually well thought out to be praised on their own. But those don’t make a good shooting game. Not fundamentally.
Mushihimesama strips away from everything. Three lives, three bombs, five levels. Unexplainable numbers that keep appearing in the genre again and again. Does the number three come so far back from the very first arcades? Why five levels instead of the eight, like the number of bits, of Mario? Arcane conditions we will never understand that, regardless, seem indispensable to perform the ritual with success.
Numbers are essential in games, they are the unavoidable abstraction that keeps coming back again and again, a whole world, its looks, its movements, can be explained in numbers. Bullet hells is one of the genres where numbers matter the most. These numbers, the important ones, cannot be seen. The old school math, the one where to measure distance you don’t bring up a formula but make a throw and see how right you were. But in reverse. You see hundreds, thousands of dots on the screen and draw the mathematical graph in your mind to pray for your safe position. Because only a god can move your body safely in between hell. It is the reverse of ball sports, there are too many objectives to keep an eye on and your goal is to keep away from them. It is one versus the world at dodgeball.
Perhaps this is why Mushihimesama uses insects, instead of the most common military/mecha premises. Somehow primitive, seen every day in everyone's life since humanity exists. Somehow inexplicably alien. Undeniably instinctual. The bugs coordinate in their hivemind to act as one hell machine, and your study of their behavior begins moving your body without thinking, without looking at yourself anymore, just knowing that you are doing it right. With that same instinct, I know Mushihimesama is a great shooting game, and the reasons are still unclear.
What is found between the bullets is not death, but life.
Mushihimesama strips away from everything. Three lives, three bombs, five levels. Unexplainable numbers that keep appearing in the genre again and again. Does the number three come so far back from the very first arcades? Why five levels instead of the eight, like the number of bits, of Mario? Arcane conditions we will never understand that, regardless, seem indispensable to perform the ritual with success.
Numbers are essential in games, they are the unavoidable abstraction that keeps coming back again and again, a whole world, its looks, its movements, can be explained in numbers. Bullet hells is one of the genres where numbers matter the most. These numbers, the important ones, cannot be seen. The old school math, the one where to measure distance you don’t bring up a formula but make a throw and see how right you were. But in reverse. You see hundreds, thousands of dots on the screen and draw the mathematical graph in your mind to pray for your safe position. Because only a god can move your body safely in between hell. It is the reverse of ball sports, there are too many objectives to keep an eye on and your goal is to keep away from them. It is one versus the world at dodgeball.
Perhaps this is why Mushihimesama uses insects, instead of the most common military/mecha premises. Somehow primitive, seen every day in everyone's life since humanity exists. Somehow inexplicably alien. Undeniably instinctual. The bugs coordinate in their hivemind to act as one hell machine, and your study of their behavior begins moving your body without thinking, without looking at yourself anymore, just knowing that you are doing it right. With that same instinct, I know Mushihimesama is a great shooting game, and the reasons are still unclear.
What is found between the bullets is not death, but life.
2023
It may look like a cheap move to compare Only Up to Getting Over It, in which I commit the error of asking for a game to be something that it isn't. I think it’s interesting to compare where it comes from (as the influence is clear, and even explicit) just as it would be fair to compare Getting Over It to Sexy Hiking.
What Bennet Foddy saw in its inspiration was that the seed towards new ways of conception could be found in places that embraced the unconventional, that didn't care, or even preferred, to be "janky", as it allowed for the freedom to create its own discourse without having to answer to any expectations. His mountain of "digital junk" in the form of collected free assets wasn't (just) an ironic commentary on how everything online is just waste nowadays (I know there are some connotations about it, but they are more bridges towards other more interesting ideas). What was valuable in its collage of a map was to see through all that worthless collection and carefully select and position everything in a way that found a new meaning. To appreciate the shape of a lamp through the brutality of the hammer by moving it as carefully as an artist's brush.
Only Up seems to accentuate the collage of jank. Now it's a longer, fully 3D map, the companion voice is automated and even the movement itself is, or looks like, a preset moveset from any modern 3D engine. In this movement that clings into collisions the same no matter the shape, the objects matter no more, a lamp is just another box of a different size. The length of the game is less defined by the particular focus on the detail and more on repeating mechanical and repetitive motions, continuing to believe in a tendency where quantity beats quality, or at least carefulness. Where Getting Over It found meaning in its assets by making them an integral part of its revolutionary new take on platformers, Only Up only gets it in an even weaker comment of modern waste and a shield of irony.
If you think that the movement is uninspired, the response is that it's a purposeful ironic comment. If the lack of ideas to make an interesting platformer keeps appearing again and again, it isn’t a signal that there was no purpose to make a good game, but another ironic comment.
Getting Over It found value in everything through the delicate strokes of the hammer that moved through its mountain. Only Up believes that nothing of value can be done, we are at a point of no return and movement cannot be conceived as something interesting, it's just a standard to be mocked about. The worst part is that the wave of infinite clones is already feeding its empty argument.
What Bennet Foddy saw in its inspiration was that the seed towards new ways of conception could be found in places that embraced the unconventional, that didn't care, or even preferred, to be "janky", as it allowed for the freedom to create its own discourse without having to answer to any expectations. His mountain of "digital junk" in the form of collected free assets wasn't (just) an ironic commentary on how everything online is just waste nowadays (I know there are some connotations about it, but they are more bridges towards other more interesting ideas). What was valuable in its collage of a map was to see through all that worthless collection and carefully select and position everything in a way that found a new meaning. To appreciate the shape of a lamp through the brutality of the hammer by moving it as carefully as an artist's brush.
Only Up seems to accentuate the collage of jank. Now it's a longer, fully 3D map, the companion voice is automated and even the movement itself is, or looks like, a preset moveset from any modern 3D engine. In this movement that clings into collisions the same no matter the shape, the objects matter no more, a lamp is just another box of a different size. The length of the game is less defined by the particular focus on the detail and more on repeating mechanical and repetitive motions, continuing to believe in a tendency where quantity beats quality, or at least carefulness. Where Getting Over It found meaning in its assets by making them an integral part of its revolutionary new take on platformers, Only Up only gets it in an even weaker comment of modern waste and a shield of irony.
If you think that the movement is uninspired, the response is that it's a purposeful ironic comment. If the lack of ideas to make an interesting platformer keeps appearing again and again, it isn’t a signal that there was no purpose to make a good game, but another ironic comment.
Getting Over It found value in everything through the delicate strokes of the hammer that moved through its mountain. Only Up believes that nothing of value can be done, we are at a point of no return and movement cannot be conceived as something interesting, it's just a standard to be mocked about. The worst part is that the wave of infinite clones is already feeding its empty argument.
2009
The very definition of pathetic. It is a constant vicious cycle exercise of self-hatred screaming "I'm sorry for what I am" while regurgitating on the otaku culture that it is so ashamed to belong to. Obviously, neither aspect is remotely well done (though I must admit that the beginning may deceive to think that the game has anything to do, which ends up being revealed to be the worst smelling kamikaze dumpster of fire) and there are some outlines of what the game wants to really do without shame (not to confuse with competently realized, the sci-fi leaning segments hint on what I hope the developers set out to do in further games that ends up being anecdotal in here, the most common storytelling segments regarding more conventional tones like suspense and horror can only be complemented with mediocre when most inspired). This is a game so disgraced that despite its obvious yearn to show the most degenerate and repulsive imagery as part of its critique/fascination self-conscious ironic contradiction it may be one of the few games published by Nitroplus, one of the biggest names on the VN industry that hasn’t yet heard of the word “delicacy”, and come out without even one hentai scene resorting to ridiculous and even more disgusting placeholders instead.
At times, I feel sorrow towards the people who made this, just as they want you to feel some shame for their otaku beyond salvation misogynist walking dirtbag of a protagonist. At the end, both unapologetically embrace the mess of their own heads with so little thought that I just stop caring.
At times, I feel sorrow towards the people who made this, just as they want you to feel some shame for their otaku beyond salvation misogynist walking dirtbag of a protagonist. At the end, both unapologetically embrace the mess of their own heads with so little thought that I just stop caring.
Even though more lenient in the individual relationship management, the Girl’s Side of Tokimeki Memorial still carries the stressful view on high school romance centered life that the original one had. Some new ideas are introduced, such as being able to choose your clothes for every date and having to manage money to buy such clothes, and every single one of them still contributes to making this period of life a stressful strategic one.
And to sympathize with the motives is not that hard. Tokimeki always saw those teenage years as a period where every decision you took mattered towards how others perceived you, and to feel like you are about to make the wrong move all the time. For this reason, dates are not really interesting for what they are (if you go to a concert, the performance itself is skipped, if you go bowling, the game itself is skipped) because what matters is the actions you decide to take and the response of your romantic interest.
The consequence of this is immediate, romance is turned into a strategy game not that far from keeping your relationships healthy in Crusader Kings. Love is war, they say. And while it doesn’t necessarily mean to be a worthless approach, it doesn’t quite succeed.
The strategic elements end up being quite simple because of two reasons. First, it’s based on repeating a routine and keeping an eye out for obvious dangerous scenarios (bombs), it ends up lacking depth and because of the hard coded "victory" conditions you either know exactly how to succeed in a particular relationship or you don’t have a clue. Secondly, and most decisively, all the boys (...or men…) are boring at best and a hazard to avoid at worst. Perhaps the strategic options would carry more weight if you truly cared who you would end up falling in love with, but because of the game philosophy deciding to prioritize the cold strategy over the warm heartfelt moments the stakes are never there.
There is one notable exception regarding the disinterest towards any relationship. Turns out that in this game you can have up to four female friends that, precisely because you get to know them through random events that just occur and not through dates where you need to ponder what your optimal actions are, end up being genuine charismatic relationships. You see some friends hanging around having a good time and wish to be with them, you go on a school trip and the first one to get your back will be that girl from your club you read fashion magazines with during the week. The game seems to recognize the quality that it rejects by giving you a friendship ending option where you end up with the people that you truly cared about during all of these three years. Of course, with romance out of the question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK8WOxVpsNc
And to sympathize with the motives is not that hard. Tokimeki always saw those teenage years as a period where every decision you took mattered towards how others perceived you, and to feel like you are about to make the wrong move all the time. For this reason, dates are not really interesting for what they are (if you go to a concert, the performance itself is skipped, if you go bowling, the game itself is skipped) because what matters is the actions you decide to take and the response of your romantic interest.
The consequence of this is immediate, romance is turned into a strategy game not that far from keeping your relationships healthy in Crusader Kings. Love is war, they say. And while it doesn’t necessarily mean to be a worthless approach, it doesn’t quite succeed.
The strategic elements end up being quite simple because of two reasons. First, it’s based on repeating a routine and keeping an eye out for obvious dangerous scenarios (bombs), it ends up lacking depth and because of the hard coded "victory" conditions you either know exactly how to succeed in a particular relationship or you don’t have a clue. Secondly, and most decisively, all the boys (...or men…) are boring at best and a hazard to avoid at worst. Perhaps the strategic options would carry more weight if you truly cared who you would end up falling in love with, but because of the game philosophy deciding to prioritize the cold strategy over the warm heartfelt moments the stakes are never there.
There is one notable exception regarding the disinterest towards any relationship. Turns out that in this game you can have up to four female friends that, precisely because you get to know them through random events that just occur and not through dates where you need to ponder what your optimal actions are, end up being genuine charismatic relationships. You see some friends hanging around having a good time and wish to be with them, you go on a school trip and the first one to get your back will be that girl from your club you read fashion magazines with during the week. The game seems to recognize the quality that it rejects by giving you a friendship ending option where you end up with the people that you truly cared about during all of these three years. Of course, with romance out of the question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK8WOxVpsNc
Disco Elysium is undeniably one of the most concentrated, and achieved, works to focus on individual introspection on the most granular level. It’s clear about it from the get go, it begins with a typical RPG character builder, then an inner dialogue, with the background of a pitch black screen, then the first steps in the game in a cramped hotel room, where the inner voices will be your first companions, and finally the first long dialogue tree being established with, of course, a mirror. There is an important detail revealed in this first contact, the main character doesn’t remember anything, not even his own name. If there is not a memory, not a past, only one thing remains, the current self. The absence and rediscovery of identity flow in a perpetual conversation from our protagonist to the whole of Martinaise and back.
Though its RPG abstractions may seem childish at first (and they are, as in imaginative), the game creates a system to represent the particular human being through their various voices/traits. It zooms into what seemed to be already atomic and divides again. It may look like a total misunderstanding of something that is impossible to classify, let alone gamify, though, the brilliance is in being unashamed of its decision, of using the system as a means to construct the being, and not as a goal.
The presence of a layer of humor helps to ease its mechanical premise, and it won’t take long to be delighted with the flavor that each voice has. This same humor helps to introduce its devastated world. Disco Elysium’s premise is an easy subject to throw in the misery well, yet the total opposite occurs. The at first chaotic mind of our detective turns out to be the perfect lenses through which to discover an hypersensorial world where each corner and conversation is a suggestive sign of life, past or present, still palpable regardless. As our job is that of a detective, our instinct will be of adventuring, exploring and, of course, talking. The conversations are soon revealed as labyrinths where each character traces a glimpse of their own world. A world so present and so alive in so many people that their existence and their connection end up weaving the tapestry that is the true human life of seemingly dead Martinaise.
The game is insistent on searching for life in the home of death. A commercial mall where no store survives becomes the place for a woman to give birth to roleplaying dice, even if the roleplayers and game makers are gone too. An abandoned church becomes the home of the night raves of the youth that wants to connect with the ethereal in their own terms. The human vitalism is evident, the melancholy of Disco Elysium is noticing that the unstoppable external interests to exploit Martinaise inevitably permeate every one of these lives.
After life -- death;
After death -- life again.
Though its RPG abstractions may seem childish at first (and they are, as in imaginative), the game creates a system to represent the particular human being through their various voices/traits. It zooms into what seemed to be already atomic and divides again. It may look like a total misunderstanding of something that is impossible to classify, let alone gamify, though, the brilliance is in being unashamed of its decision, of using the system as a means to construct the being, and not as a goal.
The presence of a layer of humor helps to ease its mechanical premise, and it won’t take long to be delighted with the flavor that each voice has. This same humor helps to introduce its devastated world. Disco Elysium’s premise is an easy subject to throw in the misery well, yet the total opposite occurs. The at first chaotic mind of our detective turns out to be the perfect lenses through which to discover an hypersensorial world where each corner and conversation is a suggestive sign of life, past or present, still palpable regardless. As our job is that of a detective, our instinct will be of adventuring, exploring and, of course, talking. The conversations are soon revealed as labyrinths where each character traces a glimpse of their own world. A world so present and so alive in so many people that their existence and their connection end up weaving the tapestry that is the true human life of seemingly dead Martinaise.
The game is insistent on searching for life in the home of death. A commercial mall where no store survives becomes the place for a woman to give birth to roleplaying dice, even if the roleplayers and game makers are gone too. An abandoned church becomes the home of the night raves of the youth that wants to connect with the ethereal in their own terms. The human vitalism is evident, the melancholy of Disco Elysium is noticing that the unstoppable external interests to exploit Martinaise inevitably permeate every one of these lives.
After life -- death;
After death -- life again.
All the flaws surrounding the core game (minigames, narrative, decisions on difficulty, decisions on how to obtain essential movement abilities, and more) have been discussed or are already obvious enough to reiterate on them. The saving grace of KH2, and more in Final Mix, has always been its combat, yet even with some good ideas, it is so feeble that just a bit of observation would tear it apart.
The game has three different types of fights, typical of any melee action (3D) game: mob fights, boss fights and hybrids. The most interesting ones are usually the hybrids, since they are the ones where strategies cannot be so easily reused from battle to battle.
Mob fights start up being quite good, with a basic but effective enemy management exercise that is utterly destroyed by magnet and, especially, the Chicken Little summon. Anyone who has not played the game on Critical Level 1 may be surprised to read that Chicken Little is useful at all, just one of the multiple examples of the game in any other condition being so brainless that about 90% of the fights can be beaten on autopilot.
Boss fights follow your typical melee combat 3D dynamics from every action game since at least twenty years ago. You evade or block the enemy attack and, if done right, you are given a free combo, then repeat until over. Here, as usual with these types of games, both the defensive and offensive options are lacking. What matters the most is that you choose the correct answer from a very limited number of options in enough time, and then the job is done. The way to increase the difficulty is to reduce the timing window when you can respond to the enemy, which results in an empty real time Simon Says, but one that can be so addicting that recently made Sekiro to be wrongly considered one of the greatest action games ever.
The few particularities of the combat system are what demonstrate that the pillars where everything stands are not rigid enough. The most interesting part is the dynamic between magic and drive, two limited resources that can be regained while fighting and that are connected. When you lose all your magic points, you regain it with a cooldown, and in that cooldown time you gain more drive gauge when attacking. And also, drive forms restore your health and magic, so the dynamic is clearly there. However, both magic and drive are uninteresting to use.
Magic will be relegated to very rare conditional usage (aside from: magnet for enemy mobs, reflex for bosses, guess what two magics disappeared in KH3) with cure being the most blatant proof that the system is built into solutions that build on problems creating their own trouble in the way. Acknowledging that nobody used any magic in KH1 aside from cure and maybe aero (it didn’t make practical sense to do anything else), cure now uses all your MP left. In theory, this incentives using more aggressive magic usage, since you still will have cure available. In practice, it results in players running around the arena when permitted until the cure emergency button is available again.
Using cure in level 1, or in more aggressive styles of play, doesn’t make sense, so here is the second real use of MP: limits. Limits consume all your MP in exchange for releasing a chain of attacks (which changes depending on the partner used with, but there is no reason to not abuse Donald Limits when available and the differences are usually of minimal impact) and, more importantly, turn you invulnerable during their execution, probably as a poor excuse of an advantage in order to force you to use them, knowing that the initial idea was not very good.
Drive forms face a similar problem to limits, they are used because they give back an important resource, but none of them are really useful or interesting in combat by themselves, causing you to revert the form as soon as you can (maybe getting in one combo at most). This is due to drive forms taking away your defensive options in most cases (blocking and dodging). The only exception is probably Limit Form, since it is still capable of both, but the only non-conditional useful form being a new addition to Final Mix seems like another patch in something already being recognized as faulty.
Either played more casually, blindly defeating most of the hazards without even thinking about the dangers without appreciating your tools, or in a more hardcore style, turning into an empty elongated reflex test when the go to exploitable strategy cannot be applied, KH2 is a clear failure at an action game, although, I must admit, a convincingly hidden one at first sight.
The game has three different types of fights, typical of any melee action (3D) game: mob fights, boss fights and hybrids. The most interesting ones are usually the hybrids, since they are the ones where strategies cannot be so easily reused from battle to battle.
Mob fights start up being quite good, with a basic but effective enemy management exercise that is utterly destroyed by magnet and, especially, the Chicken Little summon. Anyone who has not played the game on Critical Level 1 may be surprised to read that Chicken Little is useful at all, just one of the multiple examples of the game in any other condition being so brainless that about 90% of the fights can be beaten on autopilot.
Boss fights follow your typical melee combat 3D dynamics from every action game since at least twenty years ago. You evade or block the enemy attack and, if done right, you are given a free combo, then repeat until over. Here, as usual with these types of games, both the defensive and offensive options are lacking. What matters the most is that you choose the correct answer from a very limited number of options in enough time, and then the job is done. The way to increase the difficulty is to reduce the timing window when you can respond to the enemy, which results in an empty real time Simon Says, but one that can be so addicting that recently made Sekiro to be wrongly considered one of the greatest action games ever.
The few particularities of the combat system are what demonstrate that the pillars where everything stands are not rigid enough. The most interesting part is the dynamic between magic and drive, two limited resources that can be regained while fighting and that are connected. When you lose all your magic points, you regain it with a cooldown, and in that cooldown time you gain more drive gauge when attacking. And also, drive forms restore your health and magic, so the dynamic is clearly there. However, both magic and drive are uninteresting to use.
Magic will be relegated to very rare conditional usage (aside from: magnet for enemy mobs, reflex for bosses, guess what two magics disappeared in KH3) with cure being the most blatant proof that the system is built into solutions that build on problems creating their own trouble in the way. Acknowledging that nobody used any magic in KH1 aside from cure and maybe aero (it didn’t make practical sense to do anything else), cure now uses all your MP left. In theory, this incentives using more aggressive magic usage, since you still will have cure available. In practice, it results in players running around the arena when permitted until the cure emergency button is available again.
Using cure in level 1, or in more aggressive styles of play, doesn’t make sense, so here is the second real use of MP: limits. Limits consume all your MP in exchange for releasing a chain of attacks (which changes depending on the partner used with, but there is no reason to not abuse Donald Limits when available and the differences are usually of minimal impact) and, more importantly, turn you invulnerable during their execution, probably as a poor excuse of an advantage in order to force you to use them, knowing that the initial idea was not very good.
Drive forms face a similar problem to limits, they are used because they give back an important resource, but none of them are really useful or interesting in combat by themselves, causing you to revert the form as soon as you can (maybe getting in one combo at most). This is due to drive forms taking away your defensive options in most cases (blocking and dodging). The only exception is probably Limit Form, since it is still capable of both, but the only non-conditional useful form being a new addition to Final Mix seems like another patch in something already being recognized as faulty.
Either played more casually, blindly defeating most of the hazards without even thinking about the dangers without appreciating your tools, or in a more hardcore style, turning into an empty elongated reflex test when the go to exploitable strategy cannot be applied, KH2 is a clear failure at an action game, although, I must admit, a convincingly hidden one at first sight.
2019
One of the best decisions that Elsinore takes early on is to stray away from Hamlet (or Shakespeare in general) style and stay just with the setting; it knows that it would be quite a challenge to try and stand the comparison. What is left, however, is not that convincing.
The game makes a compromise to put its own system above the individual scenes. In consequence, most of the scenes will be planned out as short and less intrusive as possible, and most of the dialogue options will have a relatively light output, since not everything will be useful and, even when it is, there are usually alternative ways or the fact of repetition to not put a heavyweight behind any of these dialogues. As a result, even if the ideas carry interesting concepts behind them, there always seems to be a lack of thorough exploration, this is more visible at the most dramatic moments that fail (or directly avoid) to be emotional because of the game system compromise. The dead matter not because of death but because of their info.
Having said that, the compromise doesn't have to be bad, after all, the system can be just as powerful as the individual scene direction if, as anything, it is well handled. It also seems to weaken here too. Taken as a “detective” adventure, it will be underwhelming to realize that following any thread is quite an easy task to perform most of the time. Partially, this is due to the game giving you extra help to assure you don't get lost (keeping record of mostly everything important, telling you in the map whenever an event is going on and where) and partially this is due to the game not wanting to tell the story in a more conventional way (I suspect that this is influenced in knowing its lack of powerful enough writing).
Elsinore seems to be in a middle point between straight out telling everything conventionally with little of your input and building a bigger complex malleable plot threads world, failing to fully reach any of the interesting aspects of both. I think my most interesting discovery as a detective was noticing the multiple When They Cry references that I could not find mentioned online.
The game makes a compromise to put its own system above the individual scenes. In consequence, most of the scenes will be planned out as short and less intrusive as possible, and most of the dialogue options will have a relatively light output, since not everything will be useful and, even when it is, there are usually alternative ways or the fact of repetition to not put a heavyweight behind any of these dialogues. As a result, even if the ideas carry interesting concepts behind them, there always seems to be a lack of thorough exploration, this is more visible at the most dramatic moments that fail (or directly avoid) to be emotional because of the game system compromise. The dead matter not because of death but because of their info.
Having said that, the compromise doesn't have to be bad, after all, the system can be just as powerful as the individual scene direction if, as anything, it is well handled. It also seems to weaken here too. Taken as a “detective” adventure, it will be underwhelming to realize that following any thread is quite an easy task to perform most of the time. Partially, this is due to the game giving you extra help to assure you don't get lost (keeping record of mostly everything important, telling you in the map whenever an event is going on and where) and partially this is due to the game not wanting to tell the story in a more conventional way (I suspect that this is influenced in knowing its lack of powerful enough writing).
Elsinore seems to be in a middle point between straight out telling everything conventionally with little of your input and building a bigger complex malleable plot threads world, failing to fully reach any of the interesting aspects of both. I think my most interesting discovery as a detective was noticing the multiple When They Cry references that I could not find mentioned online.
1986
There is some undeniable wit in its very own premise of being able to create and destroy (part of) the map at will as a puzzle solver tool, however, the strength of the premise never finds a worthy match in the design of any level.
Sure, there are enough smart elements to carry the game, but as the levels are formed into puzzle boxes they are underwhelming, with solutions usually taking about 3 or 4 not that clever steps to clear and few rearrangements of expectations within the given rules, more often than not, it feels like it has nothing to twist even. The worries of not being competent in following the premise intelligence are confirmed by the addition of the action elements.
If the puzzle game is well thought out at its premise, the same cannot be said about the action. At best, it will give a few surprises through exploration or luck, but it will often feel as a detriment in the way to make the game look more interesting. Sure, it's important to add a timer to twist a bit more what a possible solution can be, but, apart from that, action usually will mean just a mere transit (regardless of its difficulty to execute) between solving a level and discovering a new one. It seems even more clear looking at how the levels are thought out in a very tight tile distribution, and realizing that the time limit is just a real time, and less intellectually interesting, number of movements limit.
To envision Solomon's Key as a pure puzzle game is not only possible but a revelation that there might have been a better similar game and that the level design always falls behind what the premise suggests. Thinking about Solomon's Key as an action game, it’s just too stiff to stand on its own, even the jump, the only action with some uncertain momentum, is an easy tile distance calculation. And I’m afraid most of the time will be spent dealing with the latter type of game.
Sure, there are enough smart elements to carry the game, but as the levels are formed into puzzle boxes they are underwhelming, with solutions usually taking about 3 or 4 not that clever steps to clear and few rearrangements of expectations within the given rules, more often than not, it feels like it has nothing to twist even. The worries of not being competent in following the premise intelligence are confirmed by the addition of the action elements.
If the puzzle game is well thought out at its premise, the same cannot be said about the action. At best, it will give a few surprises through exploration or luck, but it will often feel as a detriment in the way to make the game look more interesting. Sure, it's important to add a timer to twist a bit more what a possible solution can be, but, apart from that, action usually will mean just a mere transit (regardless of its difficulty to execute) between solving a level and discovering a new one. It seems even more clear looking at how the levels are thought out in a very tight tile distribution, and realizing that the time limit is just a real time, and less intellectually interesting, number of movements limit.
To envision Solomon's Key as a pure puzzle game is not only possible but a revelation that there might have been a better similar game and that the level design always falls behind what the premise suggests. Thinking about Solomon's Key as an action game, it’s just too stiff to stand on its own, even the jump, the only action with some uncertain momentum, is an easy tile distance calculation. And I’m afraid most of the time will be spent dealing with the latter type of game.
The game starts with a battle inside a train. In the aftermath, the beaten thugs stay on the floor until the train stops. Once off, another fight begins. After that, you proceed to the next screen and another fight begins. This one has no end, just a fade to black and a title drop. No catharsis on any punch or on any victory. After that, another message. A year has gone by. The same gang feud is still going on and getting worse.
After this skip, the first thing you see is Ringo's professor telling him that the last days of high school are coming up, and it’s time to decide where to head on with your life. In here, the already decontextualized beat’em up setting gains a new dimension when noticing that the violence is not just non-cathartic, but a background. Some gangs fight each other, some others want to fight you, you can run away from any of them and if you get beat up there is no fail state, just another action in the world and waking at home after some rest.
This may be a disheartening view of the world just because, but when examining your own actions, it becomes evident that there is no other way, or not easily so. You have no financial support and will starve for most of the time, at the very least on the first days. Your only income source is to pick money from beaten thugs, by your own hand or not, and it’s easy to assume that most of the teenagers around are in a very similar place.
The means for covering basic necessities is just a small part, since Ringo’s life is explored in all its aspects, since he wakes until he goes to sleep. Here it is interesting to see his approach to hobbies or interests like literature, studies, or even exercise, be it through fights or through training with some masters. In any case, the result of taking interest in those topics will be some numbers going up. Simple abstraction or not, intentional or not, despite whether Ringo is interested in what he is doing or not, what remains is a cold number, an objective. This could be compared with how modern Persona games free time actions help you build stats making every decision a strategic decision, at least partially, but here the answer is more vague, or directly non-existent, there is no benefit to what to do or not to do because there are no good or bad outcomes. The usual short length on most events, just a few lines of dialogue, help to convey both the fugacity and sudden impact of the small moments and their relative insignificance on the bigger picture when searching for a change.
The game takes influence from Yakuza and Shenmue, and while it’s easy to see where it comes from, there is a major difference. There is no immediate catharsis on the infinite time for side activities like in Yakuza and no real objective to struggle for like in Shenmue. If anything, it looks more like what San Andreas would be if there were no missions, just going around the neighborhood as the days go by. But the days will eventually end. To me, the most similar game to Ringo Ishikawa is Boku no Natsuyasumi.
Of course, with a very different tone, there is a similar sense in getting up every day and going around from one screen to another looking for things to do in the city. Also, at least in my case, a certain routine started to appear, making each day like a small poetry exercise. I liked to go to some places at some time, to repeat some activities, to create my own daily plan in both games. In both, the intention is to get the better of every day. In Boku no Natsuyasumi, the conclusion was that even the days when nothing happened were as good as any other. In Ringo Ishikawa, even when something happens, the sense is that of still being lost, and then marching another day trying to find something.
Here is a lot to praise about how the map and the scenarios are constructed. Even though the tall infinite buildings can be seen in the background of many screens, the feeling when running around is that the place is too small and that there is a kind of life that cannot be escaped whatever you do.
If Kunio-kun and the eighties manga school gangster aesthetic suggest some sense of freedom through the sheer strength of youth, Ringo Ishikawa uses the template to illustrate the opposite, the end of the fantasy and the realization of how hard it is for a teenager to escape from where they are, or if it is even possible.
I went to school every day because I knew my friends were there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTeK48Z2HuA
After this skip, the first thing you see is Ringo's professor telling him that the last days of high school are coming up, and it’s time to decide where to head on with your life. In here, the already decontextualized beat’em up setting gains a new dimension when noticing that the violence is not just non-cathartic, but a background. Some gangs fight each other, some others want to fight you, you can run away from any of them and if you get beat up there is no fail state, just another action in the world and waking at home after some rest.
This may be a disheartening view of the world just because, but when examining your own actions, it becomes evident that there is no other way, or not easily so. You have no financial support and will starve for most of the time, at the very least on the first days. Your only income source is to pick money from beaten thugs, by your own hand or not, and it’s easy to assume that most of the teenagers around are in a very similar place.
The means for covering basic necessities is just a small part, since Ringo’s life is explored in all its aspects, since he wakes until he goes to sleep. Here it is interesting to see his approach to hobbies or interests like literature, studies, or even exercise, be it through fights or through training with some masters. In any case, the result of taking interest in those topics will be some numbers going up. Simple abstraction or not, intentional or not, despite whether Ringo is interested in what he is doing or not, what remains is a cold number, an objective. This could be compared with how modern Persona games free time actions help you build stats making every decision a strategic decision, at least partially, but here the answer is more vague, or directly non-existent, there is no benefit to what to do or not to do because there are no good or bad outcomes. The usual short length on most events, just a few lines of dialogue, help to convey both the fugacity and sudden impact of the small moments and their relative insignificance on the bigger picture when searching for a change.
The game takes influence from Yakuza and Shenmue, and while it’s easy to see where it comes from, there is a major difference. There is no immediate catharsis on the infinite time for side activities like in Yakuza and no real objective to struggle for like in Shenmue. If anything, it looks more like what San Andreas would be if there were no missions, just going around the neighborhood as the days go by. But the days will eventually end. To me, the most similar game to Ringo Ishikawa is Boku no Natsuyasumi.
Of course, with a very different tone, there is a similar sense in getting up every day and going around from one screen to another looking for things to do in the city. Also, at least in my case, a certain routine started to appear, making each day like a small poetry exercise. I liked to go to some places at some time, to repeat some activities, to create my own daily plan in both games. In both, the intention is to get the better of every day. In Boku no Natsuyasumi, the conclusion was that even the days when nothing happened were as good as any other. In Ringo Ishikawa, even when something happens, the sense is that of still being lost, and then marching another day trying to find something.
Here is a lot to praise about how the map and the scenarios are constructed. Even though the tall infinite buildings can be seen in the background of many screens, the feeling when running around is that the place is too small and that there is a kind of life that cannot be escaped whatever you do.
If Kunio-kun and the eighties manga school gangster aesthetic suggest some sense of freedom through the sheer strength of youth, Ringo Ishikawa uses the template to illustrate the opposite, the end of the fantasy and the realization of how hard it is for a teenager to escape from where they are, or if it is even possible.
I went to school every day because I knew my friends were there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTeK48Z2HuA
2013
Maybe it's just my personal associations with the pixelated view of a world full of nature and my memories of the indie scene at the time, but the first impression of Proteus is reminiscent of Minecraft. Where the world importance comes from its elements and not their particular arrangement, capable of being procedurally generated, making each particular world unique and common at the same time. The major difference, all your world changing actions are taken away. What is left is one of the most important aspects in any game, and in life, to observe. Navigating through a hypersensitive world, since observation and perception are the sole focus, everything seems to carry some life.
Observing how the world changes and how perception changes the world. Getting atop a mountain when the rain comes to see the sky again, to know what time it is, look down again to see that the land has turned into the sea, descend into it and watch how the sky is now the sea. To find comfort upon finding that this world has a moon when the night comes too. Try to find a pattern in the stars, look at the land and see that the lights are mirrored below. Discover that, same as everywhere, magic appears at night.
One of the most important moments is to stand still and observe what's out of reach. How the clouds move, how the sun goes down and how the moon rises on the opposite side. Everything is the life of nature, except for the human tombstones. Because it's about opposites too. To appear on the sea facing the land where to spend the rest of your time. To do anything but escape the cycle of day and night and then seasons and then life.
If Proteus is about life, and life is about observing, the game, of course, can only end in one way. An eye getting closed.
Observing how the world changes and how perception changes the world. Getting atop a mountain when the rain comes to see the sky again, to know what time it is, look down again to see that the land has turned into the sea, descend into it and watch how the sky is now the sea. To find comfort upon finding that this world has a moon when the night comes too. Try to find a pattern in the stars, look at the land and see that the lights are mirrored below. Discover that, same as everywhere, magic appears at night.
One of the most important moments is to stand still and observe what's out of reach. How the clouds move, how the sun goes down and how the moon rises on the opposite side. Everything is the life of nature, except for the human tombstones. Because it's about opposites too. To appear on the sea facing the land where to spend the rest of your time. To do anything but escape the cycle of day and night and then seasons and then life.
If Proteus is about life, and life is about observing, the game, of course, can only end in one way. An eye getting closed.
2011
To me, dating sims since Tokimeki are about a way to see high school life through the relationships formed in that period (romantic ones, yes, but isn't love important, even more so in those teen years?). It's interesting to see how Amagami reflects about that period in contrast to Tokimeki philosophy.
Though it would be easy to point out that Tokimeki is a strategy based game while Amagami gets rid of any numbers to focus on character events, it says very little to compare this premise. Comparing the results of the approach, however, reveals opposite views on the same topic.
Tokimeki view is interested in taking the whole 3 years of high school period and making most of the routine days as a build up transition toward the "greatest hits", special events where to make sure to leave a mark through exaggeration. This exaggeration with some fantasy touches can even be seen in the girls' designs, where you could even differentiate them by their hair color, which clashes with Amagami’s more down to earth black haired ones (brown at most). Amagami prefers to select a small period of the high school life, the last 6 weeks before exams and graduation take away any socialization possibility, and to put every single day under a magnifying glass. Every day is divided between the four class breaks in which the decision is not what aspect to improve or what club to join, but in what event to witness, or in similar terms, who to spend time with.
These events have two particularities. First, contrasting with the big hits of Tokimeki that usually happen outside of school or in special school events, the vast majority of Amagami scenes are presented within a normal routine context within the school. Not a great number of big events will happen in just six weeks, and even the most exceptional cases are treated with relative calmness. While in Tokimeki the school is then just a transitory tool to get somewhere else, via clubs or meeting other people casually, the school in Amagami is thought out as a net (or a grid in the literal game terms) to form and develop relationships. Amagami thinks that the school is where the magic really happened, not around it. That the memories slowly forged day by day. This is evidenced by the planning stage background, the room that was the headquarters of Tokimeki is just the place to recall the day in Amagami, a school background will be present when making the event decisions.
Secondly, by focusing on spending time during breaks and visually (and mechanically) representing those moments through a grid, a series of consequences can be seen. The grid ends up becoming a sort of mental map of memories, or better said, memories of opportunities. It’s easy to navigate the map by the end of the game and see who you decided to spend more time with. It's not only what you actually did, but the lost opportunities implicit in other dating sims here are made explicit. If some people had a lot of events completed, some others had just a few. If a new event being unlocked is important because it means new opportunities, closed events, be it by time limit or by exclusive choices, are just as, if not more, impactful. The mental map is not only defined by what was lived but by what was left behind because not even the most optimized run will see a 5% of the possibilities realized, and I'm giving a generous estimation. It paints a canvas where the memory is not a selection of highlights but a collage of seen and unseen events, the school as a more conceptual formational place through meetings rather than a concrete moments generator.
Likewise, those lost opportunities impact on the direct or indirect treatment of the main character and the girls. The girls who you spend the most time with will begin to rely on you whenever they are in conflict, while the ones you barely talked to can only be interacted through scenes where you hear some loose conversation about them or remember and wonder what they might be up to now, too late to form a bond. Again, there is a contrast between the confidence of who you kept close and the melancholy of seeing people you didn't even get to know well gaining distance.
At the end of Tokimeki one felt that everything happened too quickly, thanks to weeks passing in seconds and minor events lasting just a few lines of dialogue, questioning oneself if that unrepeatable formative time was really well spent. The transience of a life focused on getting a girlfriend will make you reflect if most of the time isn’t getting lost. Amagami reaches a similar conclusion, but by explicitly marking the lost roads and realizing that it was impossible to have it all. In this way, the desire to go back and repeat a fantasy until it gets fulfilled is substituted by a reality where, even if turning back, the same overbearing feeling would still persist. And that’s when the decisions taken casually gain a new weight. Seeing it like this, it's no mystery why 2009’s Amagami is set in the 90s.
Though it would be easy to point out that Tokimeki is a strategy based game while Amagami gets rid of any numbers to focus on character events, it says very little to compare this premise. Comparing the results of the approach, however, reveals opposite views on the same topic.
Tokimeki view is interested in taking the whole 3 years of high school period and making most of the routine days as a build up transition toward the "greatest hits", special events where to make sure to leave a mark through exaggeration. This exaggeration with some fantasy touches can even be seen in the girls' designs, where you could even differentiate them by their hair color, which clashes with Amagami’s more down to earth black haired ones (brown at most). Amagami prefers to select a small period of the high school life, the last 6 weeks before exams and graduation take away any socialization possibility, and to put every single day under a magnifying glass. Every day is divided between the four class breaks in which the decision is not what aspect to improve or what club to join, but in what event to witness, or in similar terms, who to spend time with.
These events have two particularities. First, contrasting with the big hits of Tokimeki that usually happen outside of school or in special school events, the vast majority of Amagami scenes are presented within a normal routine context within the school. Not a great number of big events will happen in just six weeks, and even the most exceptional cases are treated with relative calmness. While in Tokimeki the school is then just a transitory tool to get somewhere else, via clubs or meeting other people casually, the school in Amagami is thought out as a net (or a grid in the literal game terms) to form and develop relationships. Amagami thinks that the school is where the magic really happened, not around it. That the memories slowly forged day by day. This is evidenced by the planning stage background, the room that was the headquarters of Tokimeki is just the place to recall the day in Amagami, a school background will be present when making the event decisions.
Secondly, by focusing on spending time during breaks and visually (and mechanically) representing those moments through a grid, a series of consequences can be seen. The grid ends up becoming a sort of mental map of memories, or better said, memories of opportunities. It’s easy to navigate the map by the end of the game and see who you decided to spend more time with. It's not only what you actually did, but the lost opportunities implicit in other dating sims here are made explicit. If some people had a lot of events completed, some others had just a few. If a new event being unlocked is important because it means new opportunities, closed events, be it by time limit or by exclusive choices, are just as, if not more, impactful. The mental map is not only defined by what was lived but by what was left behind because not even the most optimized run will see a 5% of the possibilities realized, and I'm giving a generous estimation. It paints a canvas where the memory is not a selection of highlights but a collage of seen and unseen events, the school as a more conceptual formational place through meetings rather than a concrete moments generator.
Likewise, those lost opportunities impact on the direct or indirect treatment of the main character and the girls. The girls who you spend the most time with will begin to rely on you whenever they are in conflict, while the ones you barely talked to can only be interacted through scenes where you hear some loose conversation about them or remember and wonder what they might be up to now, too late to form a bond. Again, there is a contrast between the confidence of who you kept close and the melancholy of seeing people you didn't even get to know well gaining distance.
At the end of Tokimeki one felt that everything happened too quickly, thanks to weeks passing in seconds and minor events lasting just a few lines of dialogue, questioning oneself if that unrepeatable formative time was really well spent. The transience of a life focused on getting a girlfriend will make you reflect if most of the time isn’t getting lost. Amagami reaches a similar conclusion, but by explicitly marking the lost roads and realizing that it was impossible to have it all. In this way, the desire to go back and repeat a fantasy until it gets fulfilled is substituted by a reality where, even if turning back, the same overbearing feeling would still persist. And that’s when the decisions taken casually gain a new weight. Seeing it like this, it's no mystery why 2009’s Amagami is set in the 90s.
2021
Sable is the teenage discovery of finding one’s identity through an open journey towards the yet unknown world. The conclusion of this ritual will be to choose a mask to forge your identity in.
Most of the masks (all of them?) are related to a profession, and are obtained talking by with people somehow related to, mostly exercising, such occupation. However, Sable fails to capture every single spirit of any vocation. It’s obvious that it would abstract an aspect of each job to make a simple model of it, but it forgot to try to capture the soul for anyone to get an honest investment on what the occupation really is about. A merchant is reduced to having enough money to earn the mask, a cartographer also relies on money without even needing to tell north from south, a machinist mask is not earned through understanding and trying a hand with machinery but through doing favors to lazy people (which is most of the population of Sable). The climber isn’t that much focused on climbing (since it’s mechanically too shallow to be of interest on its own) but on completing mediocre platforming sections. The concept of what even a guardian is would be hard to understand only with what is seen in Sable, the only “active” one I encountered trusted all the weight of justice to a complete stranger and even let the just arrived finger to point who should be imprisoned, without a proper defense or a clear case constructed, a very far image of my idea of a guardian. This shallow understanding of building an identity by putting on a mask of an occupation that you barely truly understand, but earned through enough credentials, could be understood as a critique. It isn't. Sable still trusts in its ritual.
I avoided mentioning this before, but why even define yourself as a vocation? One thing is that your job or your hobby is going to take a part of your life, be it by necessity or by decision, but at what moment the ritual to define your identity is to cover your face, your unique truth, with a clonic mask? Why take a journey on your own through the desert if the final say was going to be a pick from the predefined menu? Is this the most spiritual idea of identity in a world where old habits are supposed to be buried under the sand?
Sable thinks that understanding a place in a way that it can shape your identity is to be a tourist who must do a few errands for the people who don't want to move their ass. That discovery is solving a few early test puzzle levels from the most mediocre Zelda. It's not concerned about the people who live there, in how they think, in how they face troubles in any way that isn't crying to the first stranger that comes through the door. The desert represents what the game thinks is valuable of any of those places and their people, absolute nothingness.
I decided to not wear a mask and to not complete a ritual that cannot define me. Can a mask shaped identity even be found and be true? Can identity be found or is it an ever looking process? My final decision was to get out of there, out of the desert, out of Sable, to search for the identity through the hard way, through the only way, rejecting every mask.
Most of the masks (all of them?) are related to a profession, and are obtained talking by with people somehow related to, mostly exercising, such occupation. However, Sable fails to capture every single spirit of any vocation. It’s obvious that it would abstract an aspect of each job to make a simple model of it, but it forgot to try to capture the soul for anyone to get an honest investment on what the occupation really is about. A merchant is reduced to having enough money to earn the mask, a cartographer also relies on money without even needing to tell north from south, a machinist mask is not earned through understanding and trying a hand with machinery but through doing favors to lazy people (which is most of the population of Sable). The climber isn’t that much focused on climbing (since it’s mechanically too shallow to be of interest on its own) but on completing mediocre platforming sections. The concept of what even a guardian is would be hard to understand only with what is seen in Sable, the only “active” one I encountered trusted all the weight of justice to a complete stranger and even let the just arrived finger to point who should be imprisoned, without a proper defense or a clear case constructed, a very far image of my idea of a guardian. This shallow understanding of building an identity by putting on a mask of an occupation that you barely truly understand, but earned through enough credentials, could be understood as a critique. It isn't. Sable still trusts in its ritual.
I avoided mentioning this before, but why even define yourself as a vocation? One thing is that your job or your hobby is going to take a part of your life, be it by necessity or by decision, but at what moment the ritual to define your identity is to cover your face, your unique truth, with a clonic mask? Why take a journey on your own through the desert if the final say was going to be a pick from the predefined menu? Is this the most spiritual idea of identity in a world where old habits are supposed to be buried under the sand?
Sable thinks that understanding a place in a way that it can shape your identity is to be a tourist who must do a few errands for the people who don't want to move their ass. That discovery is solving a few early test puzzle levels from the most mediocre Zelda. It's not concerned about the people who live there, in how they think, in how they face troubles in any way that isn't crying to the first stranger that comes through the door. The desert represents what the game thinks is valuable of any of those places and their people, absolute nothingness.
I decided to not wear a mask and to not complete a ritual that cannot define me. Can a mask shaped identity even be found and be true? Can identity be found or is it an ever looking process? My final decision was to get out of there, out of the desert, out of Sable, to search for the identity through the hard way, through the only way, rejecting every mask.