How has it been an in-game week and we’re still in the prologue?
Morgana doesn’t have a place to stay, so Damien agrees to let him stay at Leblanc. Why does he think Sojiro would allow that?
Author Archives: St. Elmo's Fire
Persona 5: April 13th – April 15th (Ann’s Awakening)
The next day we overhear students gossiping about the volleyball team, and apparently Kamoshida’s abuse is so obvious that everyone can see how banged up the team is. That’s a lot more than Ryuji’s claim that the abuse is only “rumors”. How are these guys winning matches while covered in bruises, anyway?
Persona 5: April 12th (Ryuji’s Awakening)
Persona 5: April 11th (Joker’s Awakening)
After returning home, we’re introduced to our diegetic save function.
Sojiro: I’m obligated to report on you, which is why I’m having you record your daily activities.
So is the implication that we’re recording all our illegal and supernatural activities too? I don’t know what Niijima was complaining about, she should have plenty of evidence against us.
Persona 5: April 9th – April 10th (Prologue)
So! Persona 5. My expectations are at rock bottom after the atrocious slop that was Persona 4, but from what I can tell the general fandom opinion is that this one is at least interestingly bad. Crossing my fingers that means there will be something worth suffering through “Haha sexual harassment is funny!” this time. (I am still, of course, expecting a baseline level of funny sexual harassment; I’m keeping my expectations realistic, here.)
…Aaand the opening movie immediately flashes us with sexy catgirl butt. Off to a great start.
Christmas Steam Games (2023)
It’s that time of year when I finally get around to talking about that time of year again!
Inside: Heart Star, Loop Hero, Return of the Obra Dinn
The Knight Witch, and Climate Change Allegories
The Knight Witch is a shoot-’em-up Metroidvania, which is a pairing I haven’t seen since Hero Core in 2010. I’m usually not great at shmups, but I managed to fumble my way to the end and it was pretty enjoyable.
The most unique mechanic is a deckbuilding element, where you can equip a large number of spell abilities but only three are available at a time, chosen at random. I thought this was an okay idea that encouraged you to use spells often to cycle through your cards, but it was pretty awkward to be constantly flicking my eyes over to the corner of the screen to check my available spells while also needing to keep track of all the bullets and enemies flooding the screen. I think the biggest problem was that each of the three cards in your “hand” are assigned to a different button, preventing you from building up muscle memory since the function of each button changes constantly. You need to look at the cards to even know what your buttons do, during gameplay that requires you to make split-second decisions about which buttons to press. That’s kind of an intractable problem with the random card draws, though; I can’t think of a good solution other than limiting you to one available card at a time.
What I really want to talk about is the story, though. It’s an environmentalist climate change narrative. It does a surprisingly good job of this up until the end, where you (of course) solve climate change by punching it in the face. I think this merits some discussion.
Fire Emblem: Engage
Oh hey, looks like they made another game after Three Houses! Tough act to follow, but I wonder what they came up with?
…Never mind.
Please stop trying to make a Fire Emblem Ultimate Universe, Intelligent Systems. Try making good games instead of reminding us of better ones. If you could stop jerking off the player every five minutes, that would be great too.
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Fire Emblem (TearRing Saga)
After FE5, Shouzou Kaga, the creator of Fire Emblem, left Nintendo to found his own company. He decided to pick up right where he left off with Fire Emblem Saga, a game with literally the same setting and characters as Fire Emblem. Nintendo said excuse me WTF, and took him to court. Interestingly, while the courts forced him to remove all explicit references to Fire Emblem, they did not find him guilty of copyright infringement, establishing a precedent allowing independent creators to make spiritual successors to their former works even if the IP was now owned by their former employer.
So that is how we got TearRing Saga: Yutona Heroes Chronicle for the PlayStation in 2001. It is a terrible game that would have made a pretty good novel.
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes
Fire Emblem: Three Houses was an overambitious game with amazing ideas it was never able to realize. Fortunately, we got a miracle rarely seen in the industry: The writers were given the chance at a do-over with Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, released a few years later. Rather than a sequel or straight remake, Three Hopes presents an alternate timeline where the house leaders never met Byleth, a want of a nail that changes the course of history.
I’ll be discussing the plot in detail this time, so once again I recommend playing or watching yourself. This time it’ll only take you a mere… (checks) …23 hours.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
EDELGARD DID NOTHING WRONG
*ahem*
As I said at the beginning, this was actually my entry point into the series, as I saw tons of chatter about it on social media and wanted to see what the hype was all about. Now that I’ve played through the rest of the series, however, I’ve gained a greater appreciation for the ways in which it’s in conversation with its predecessors. But, yes, it’s still the best Fire Emblem (though Radiant Dawn has a better plot overall).
After the massively overambitious mess that was Fates, the Fire Emblem team decided to do that again, because they are categorically incapable of learning form their mistakes. Fortunately, they started by making their first good decision in a long time: They outsourced the plot to another company, Koei Tecmo (the Monster Rancher guys). Because they are competent writers who don’t have lolicon and incest fetishes, the game ended up with a really good story. In particular, it is an astoundingly insightful look at classism (though its takes on racism are… awkward at best).
Unfortunately, even with outsourcing, it’s clear the devs bit off more than they could chew; major parts of the game are blatantly unfinished, and the list of cut content is a mile long. Fortunately, the game was so successful the devs were allowed a second shot with an AU remake, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, which implements many of the cut ideas and is overall a much better story. Unfortunately, they changed the gameplay to hack-and-slash, so I only watched it instead of playing it. But I’ll discuss both, because Three Hopes sheds more light on aspects of Three Houses.
Fire Emblem Fates (Plot)
We now have to talk about Fates‘, for lack of a better term, “plot”. It is an, uh, experience. Here’s the short version:
Fire Emblem Fates (Gameplay and The Writers’ Undisguised Fetishes)
Awakening was just plain bad. This game was hilariously bad. Improvement?
Fire Emblem Fates is actually a set of three games, but it’s not a Pokemon scam; they are genuinely different games with completely different campaigns. They are all sold separately (with the third being DLC, which I think you can’t get legally anymore now that the 3DS eShop is shuttered) I presume because they still needed money even after Awakening sold like hotcakes. They all share the same engine and core mechanics, so I’ll discuss those first before we get into the Gordian knot that is the plot.
Fire Emblem: Awakening
The Tellius games were beautiful, awe-inspiring games that said real and meaningful things and restored my faith in the franchise. So of course they bombed and sent the company into a tailspin. After Shadow Dragon and New Mystery also underperformed, they faced an ultimatum: If the next game didn’t sell, the series was done.
Their solution was disgusting slop catered to the lowest of the lowest common denominator. It sold like gangbusters, proving there is no God.
Fire Emblem (Tellius Saga)
After The Sacred Stones, Fire Emblem returned to home consoles and made the jump to 3D. At this point, after the mediocrity of the previous games, my expectations were at rock bottom, and I was even more pessimistic about this 3D entry, knowing that was so often where franchises went wrong.
So I was completely unprepared for how good these games would be.