Fatal Hearts Part 2 (Part 1 here)

Okay, so. Let’s go with the werewolves this time and see what
happens.

At the start of chapter 3, when Lucy makes a distressed call to
Christina asking her to come over, I refuse this time. This ends up
causing Christina to get grabbed by Randy, one of the werewolf guys.
“I’m not gonna hurt you, but I can’t let you move.” Yeah, real
encouraging, dude. These are supposed to be the good guys? Why would
anyone in their right mind go with these creeps? The vampire guys may
be creepy, but at least they don’t act like they’re seconds away from
snapping and killing me. I’m given the choice to kick him, but
that’ll probably just lead to the vampire route again, so I pass up
on the chance.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says. Yeah sure, crazy guy.
Also, apparently he’s stalking Christina to “keep her safe” in
case she’s attacked or something. Obviously, genre savviness (and
knowledge of the vampire route) tells me he’s justified in doing so,
but I can’t see that going down well with any rational person.
Christina sensibly threatens to call the police. In response, he gets
angry and decides to drag her back to the wolf pack, making sure to
slap a “be right back!” note on the door so that her mother
doesn’t pursue. None of this is endearing me to them.

Oh, also, Christina can see through their dog/wolf forms apparently
(which are just illusions, it looks like?). I wonder if this will be
explained or if she just has special sue powers. (Back after
finishing the game: The latter.)

The
wolf guys seem awfully quick to jump to conclusions, claiming that
Christina must be the murderer just because she knows one survivor’s
name. So I guess they’re all just aggressive and emotional? So this
is going to be yet another stupid logic bad/emotions good thing,
because it’s not like there’s not enough of that insulting, horrible
trope already. ARGH

…This is the point where I would start spewing excessive amounts of
profanity if I was as foulmouthed as Farla.

Anyway, they’ve also apparently rescued one of Christina’s friends,
Elizabeth, who was about to be killed by the cult (and indeed, she
actually does die in the vampire route). The wolf guy who accused
Christina, Tim, eventually realizes his mistake, but doesn’t
apologize. Christina does, though, for thinking they weren’t really
trying to stop the murders. Tim then goes on to say that he doesn’t
consider the murderer a person, because it was a vampire and vampires
aren’t people. Interesting; vampire guy said something similar about
the werewolves. I guess the moral is going to be that prejudice is
bad? I’m down with that. (Back after finishing the game: Nope. Silly
me, thinking this story would have any degree of moral nuance.)

Hmm,
yeah, it does look like we might be going with an authority/freedom
duality here. When the werewolves take Christina home, some of their
magic seems to rub off on her, and she gets superhuman strength/speed
for the duration as well, during which she goes on a bit about how
free she feels. Now, I suppose the question is whether the game will
try to go with one side being objectively right, or if we’re going to
go for a Shin
Megami Tensei-style
“both sides are crazy” angle.

Looks like we’re also getting a nature vs. society thing. The
werewolf gang says that vampires are acts against nature because they
never age, and that’s why nature has empowered them to destroy them.
This kind irrational nature-worship always bugs me. Nature is not
your friend. Disease, suffering, predation, and abandoning the weak
to die are all natural. Society is inherently unnatural, and that’s a
good thing.

Hm. This path is apparently deteriorating Christina’s relationship
with her mother. She mentions that she has to lie to her mother in
order to stay out late enough to track the vampire cult with the
werewolves, and the werewolves just tell her to suck it up and deal.
To Christina’s credit, she does not jump on the chance to abandon her
family and is in fact rather concerned about how her mother might
worry about her constantly leaving the house. Still seems like it’s
contributing to the authority vs. freedom thing, though.

Next, the werewolves track Lucy’s parents to the vampire mansion, get
into a battle with them and…oh hey, this minigame is like an RPG
battle! That’s pretty cool, actually. Attacks can miss, though.
That’s annoying.

Afterward, the werewolves notice that the fires for the vampire
ritual have gone out of control and the mansion is now on fire. The
werewolves tell Christina to just go home and regroup the next day,
but Christina earns a good person point for worrying about Lucy and
wanting to rescue her. The werewolves talk her out of it, saying that
it would cause trouble they can’t afford. Sadly, there is no “screw
you I’m rescuing her” option.

The next day, Christina calls Lucy, who is in a panic because her
parents are trying to keep her locked up. They arrange to meet at the
mall and buy her supplies so she can run away. Lucy gets good person
points by being concerned for Christina’s safety, but Christina says
she has to stay to deal with the cult. Then Lucy leaves, presumably
for the rest of the story.

Back at the house, Christina and Elizabeth see on the TV that the
police have discovered that the mansion burned down, and also think
the gang is responsible for everything. Elizabeth wonders if the
werewolves are really doing the right thing, and also recommends that
they just go to the police, the first time that has been suggested in
this entire story. And…woah, wait, I can actually acknowledge that
I’m out of my depth and can call on responsible adults who are more
capably of handling the situation? Yes!

As I expected, this leads to a sudden and unsatisfying ending. One of
the cultists is arrested, but because the mansion’s destroyed, the
police can’t find evidence of anything else, and Lucy and her family
“never return”. Hm.

Choosing to handle the situation themselves results in Christina
running out of the house to meet with the werewolves, after a little
spiel about how her mother can’t possibly understand the stress she’s
under and how dare she try to stop her. Uh. Seems like her
character’s suddenly flipped into the fiery, rebellious teenager role
for this route. That’s unfortunate.

The werewolves case the mansion, reiterate that the police are
useless, Tim flips out about his father being dead apparently, and
they agree to assault the mansion the next day. You can talk to
either Randy or Tim about what Tim flipped out about. I talk to
Randy, since he seems more stable – he gives me an Aesop about how
money can’t fix everything, because his sister is sick with a disease
that his family can’t cure even though they have a lot of money, and
Tim is bitter about how Randy’s family has money and he doesn’t.
Okay.

The
next day, the werewolves seem awfully excited about the prospect of
violence, even after Tim says that if anything goes wrong they’re
dead. At the mansion, Christina runs into the vampire guy from
before, who does the whole spiel about her being the reincarnation of
his lost love etc. Fortunately, instead of Christina passively going
along with it this time, you can choose to stake him through the
heart. I do so. It leads to a pretty good ending; only one of the
werewolves die, all the cultists are arrested, and Lucy is adopted by
Christina’s mom. Yay!

If you instead decide that his prettiness has turned your brains to
mush with the power of love, you can choose to fall in love with him
instead, which results in Tim killing both Christina and the vampire
at once. This results in Lucy being arrested as well. Welp, I guess
you get what you deserve in that ending.

And…huh, I can’t seem to get any more endings here? Yet the game
says there are still 9 more. Huh. The walkthrough tells me that the
rest mostly seem to be either bad ends where Christina dies or
relationship ends where she runs off with one of the love interests.
There’s also apparently two plot threads I haven’t seen yet, one that
involves the third member of the vampire cult (who is apparently
another love interest), and another that involves Randy’s sister.
Maybe I’ll look at them sometime, but for now, I think I’ve seen
enough.

This path develops the character of another of Christina’s friends,
Elizabeth, in place of Lucy. She’s a late bloomer, so she’s
physically frail and underdeveloped, and somewhat nerdy. She and
Christina used to be good friends, but they haven’t seen each other
in a while, probably because Christina has been hanging out with Lucy
instead. As a result, she’s a bit jealous of their friendship and
occasionally accuses Christina of not wanting to hang out with her
anymore because she’s so unpopular. I take the option assuring her
that she’s fine the way she is and all that emotional stuff. (This
option also includes saying “romance sucks and puberty is
overrated”, which I like. Hopefully that will actually be reflected
in Christina’s character this time around and not have her running
off with a love interest in this ending.) She does seem to be pretty
nasty towards Lucy, though – she is a bit too eager for her to flee
the town and “disappear”.

Overall, I think she’s a nice contrast with the fiery, rebellious
Lucy. It’s just a pity you can’t interact with both in the same
playthrough; Elizabeth dies before you get a chance to meet her in
the vampire route, and in this route Lucy gets one short scene before
being put on a bus. (That’s interesting, actually; aligning with the
“cold logic” faction has the more emotional friend as a
supporting character, while aligning with the chaotic, emotional
faction has the more cerebral one.)

I’m
liking Christina herself. I hesitate to say that she’s a good
protagonist,
necessarily, since a good visual novel protagonist is a blank slate,
but she seems to be a pretty decent person and has (mostly) realistic
reactions to the weird things going on around her. Most of her
decisions that I feel are blatantly unrealistic and annoying are
results of making insane choices in the dialogue trees.

So, gameplay for this path:

The
first puzzle involves covering yourself with leaves to hide from the
police. The controls are rather unintuitive – instead of
drag-and-drop, as I expected, it’s left click to select, and right
click
to deselect, something which I have not seen in any other similar
puzzle game ever, because it’s annoying. Anyway, apparently the
leaves act as a literal jigsaw puzzle and you have to put them all
together. However, the pieces are really weirdly shaped and I have no
idea how I’m supposed to put them together at all. Just to make
things even more annoying, it makes use of my eternal enemy, the time
limit.

There is a certain point where I’m tempted to just use the puzzle
skip cheat codes.

The next puzzle involves…measuring flour to bake cupcakes. Filler,
much?

There is one puzzle that’s nice and intuitive, though – you just
have to navigate through a maze, no time limit or anything. It’s a
big relief after all the other ridiculous puzzles. It’s even relevant
to the plot!

All in all, the puzzles seem a bit easier and nicer this time around.

…So.

Overall,
I think the story feels…“fanfic-y” I guess? It’s good at
character interactions, which is why I liked the early bits, but it
starts to fall apart once it attempts to be more plotty. And it looks
like the werewolves are being treated like the objectively good side;
they’re never acknowledged to be a bit more morally gray than they
like to believe. This makes me very disappointed. I swear, just
once
I’d like to see a story where the authority/society faction is
presented as the good, reasonable one without any skeletons in the
closet while the anarchy/chaos faction is presented as the evil,
crazy one.

Again,
I also don’t feel like I have a whole lot of agency. The way the plot
threads resolve themselves make sense after
you end them, not while
you are playing them. Trying to investigate what’s up with Lucy’s
family gets you involuntarily roped into the whole thing and locked
into the “evil” route, and on the werewolf route, Christina is
very passive. She’s really just treated as a tool by the gang because
she has special Mary Sue powers that let her see magic, and she can’t
fight or really help them at all because she’s not a werewolf
herself. I really get the feeling that she’s just a leaf in a river
and her actions don’t amount to much, because so many things are
simply outside of her control.

I’m
also not sure what’s up with Elizabeth vs. Lucy. I’d like to believe
that the writers are neutral on the whole matter of Elizabeth lashing
out at Lucy for Christina drifting away from her, and leave it up to
the player to decide if it’s just a result of the way people treat
her in general, but I worry that that’s not the case. Lucy in general
seems to come out on top in terms of morality; she actually seems
very concerned for both Christina and
Elizabeth’s safety, and expresses reluctance and fear about the whole
evil cult thing.

So. Hm. Somewhat disappointing, but not terrible, I suppose.