Digimon Survive is a visual novel/tactical RPG with horror elements. Despite being largely unimpressed with Digimon’s catalogue, I decided that sounded interesting enough to give it a shot.
Let me tell you, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a game whose mechanics were so at odds with its narrative. This thing is a train wreck.
Some cozy works about appreciating the natural world.
Inside: Outer Wilds, Summer Days With Coo, Tonari no Youkai-san
I said I was done after the ridiculous padding of the calling card mechanic, and I meant it. I trudged through all of Persona 4 and I’m not making that mistake again. I’m told the story does not get better after this, so I don’t think I’m missing much.
I am genuinely astounded this game got published. I have never seen a script so incoherent and confusing since HEARTBEAT, and that was an indie project by fascist nutjobs, not a AAA release from one of the most popular series in modern gaming. There is no consistency to anything and the pacing is nonsensical when it’s not completely backwards.
I genuinely thought the resolution might happen immediately this time, but no, once again we have to wait until the deadline to advance the plot regardless of when we complete the objective. What is pacing?
During downtime we’re introduced to a new teacher. I know I said I didn’t want quirky, but he looks about as generic as possible.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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: 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.
