Interesting to see this positioned as the best of the series yet, especially given some of the particular notes given in favor of that assessment. I would guess I'm probably roughly 2/3 of the way through or so, and this feels like a step back from the Forsaken Maiden to me, if mostly because it's attempting something different and the balance needed some large-scale changes to facilitate that. I don't really agree at all that this is darker than Maiden, but it's clearly much smaller in scale and more streamlined, maybe even moreso than Isle Dragon. I enjoyed the sprawl, it felt really ambitious given the toolset, but this feels kind of quaint by comparison. My heart remains open to being won over, but as of now I think this is the weakest thus far, and is definitely the one I'd be least likely to recommend to someone looking to jump in. It does, certainly though, remain lovely and evocative.
EDIT: Having beaten it now, I was probably closer to 2/5 or maybe 1/2 through, and eventually a lot of the strange ways the game operates nestled within me favorably. One of the things the game is most obviously and ostensibly simplistically trading in, the speciesism baked into the premise and plot, is used to really interesting ends as you get deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. It ends the game feeling like a lot is left unsaid and unanswered, but in a way I respect; it feels like an incomplete slice of fuller lives lived, an admission that it asks some big questions that it couldn't fully answer. This series continues to feel like one of the most exciting things going on in games right now, to me. I hope they're not done with them quite yet.
I found parts of this game fairly lacking, but for the curious, I think it’s worth recommending a good bit more than this reviewer seems to. Your player character is a real sack of garbage, but I think that’s part of the fun personally, seeing the outrageous ends to which he’ll go in pursuit of something fairly inexplicable. Likewise, the original artstyle is mostly not why this version exists, but it’s still really lovely most of the time and easy to switch to. The real touchy spot is that the endings all land kinda flat, especially the true route which I don’t really think feels satisfying in the way it expects it to feel for you.
Comments 2
Re: Review: Voice Of Cards: The Beasts Of Burden - The Ace Of The Deck In Yoko Taro's Card RPG Series
Interesting to see this positioned as the best of the series yet, especially given some of the particular notes given in favor of that assessment. I would guess I'm probably roughly 2/3 of the way through or so, and this feels like a step back from the Forsaken Maiden to me, if mostly because it's attempting something different and the balance needed some large-scale changes to facilitate that. I don't really agree at all that this is darker than Maiden, but it's clearly much smaller in scale and more streamlined, maybe even moreso than Isle Dragon. I enjoyed the sprawl, it felt really ambitious given the toolset, but this feels kind of quaint by comparison. My heart remains open to being won over, but as of now I think this is the weakest thus far, and is definitely the one I'd be least likely to recommend to someone looking to jump in. It does, certainly though, remain lovely and evocative.
EDIT: Having beaten it now, I was probably closer to 2/5 or maybe 1/2 through, and eventually a lot of the strange ways the game operates nestled within me favorably. One of the things the game is most obviously and ostensibly simplistically trading in, the speciesism baked into the premise and plot, is used to really interesting ends as you get deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. It ends the game feeling like a lot is left unsaid and unanswered, but in a way I respect; it feels like an incomplete slice of fuller lives lived, an admission that it asks some big questions that it couldn't fully answer. This series continues to feel like one of the most exciting things going on in games right now, to me. I hope they're not done with them quite yet.
Re: Review: Root Letter: Last Answer - A Clumsy, Laughable Stab At A Visual Novel
I found parts of this game fairly lacking, but for the curious, I think it’s worth recommending a good bit more than this reviewer seems to. Your player character is a real sack of garbage, but I think that’s part of the fun personally, seeing the outrageous ends to which he’ll go in pursuit of something fairly inexplicable. Likewise, the original artstyle is mostly not why this version exists, but it’s still really lovely most of the time and easy to switch to. The real touchy spot is that the endings all land kinda flat, especially the true route which I don’t really think feels satisfying in the way it expects it to feel for you.