Games: Digimon Survive

Digimon Survive is a visual novel / tactical RPG that follows a typical Digimon storyline: a bunch of ordinary kids get swept into another world which is populated by strange creatures: Digimon (although in this game, they are referred to as Kemonogami, or beast gods). Each child gets a Digimon companion to fight with them, and they have to figure out why they are there and how to get home.

The game leans more toward the visual novel side – there is a lot of reading and clicking. I found the game enjoyable enough to keep me playing until the end of the game, which is the most important thing. But I thought the story was inflated. What I mean is that about 5 hours’ worth of actual story was drawn out over about 15 hours. For instance, there’d be segments of story (like where protagonist Takuma is exploring the area near the school and then enters the other world), which in an anime might have taken 5-10 minutes, but in the game lasted over an hour of real time.

There are lots of opportunities to have conversations with other characters and build your friendship (affinity) with them. The characters are reasonably likeable, but for the most part, have only one or two main personality traits and topics of conversation. For example, nearly every time you talk to Aoi, she talks about how she feels helpless and afraid, and you have to encourage her. Or if you talk to Kaito, he’ll go into his overprotective-big-brother mode and have an argument with his sister. Although all the characters make a few improvements as the story continues, there are too many near-identical conversations going on way too late in the story, making the conversations feel unrewarding and the character arcs limited.

The trouble is that these repetitive character moments take time – you often have to go to different locations on the map to initiate each unrewarding conversation; finally, you’ve used up all your ‘free’ turns, 20 minutes of real time have passed and you got no meaningful story out of it.

I also didn’t feel the story really ‘developed’ or had many twists and turns. There are a couple of surprising reveals, but mostly it’s just ‘survive each battle until you can eventually go back home’. The title of the game, Digimon Survive, is quite apt. Surviving is really the main focus of most of the game.

Gameplay: Tactical RPG elements

This was my first time playing a tactical RPG. I’m used to turn-based RPGs, but here, mobility is also a factor; where you choose to move your units (Digimon) and whether they are within range of which other allies/enemies, is also important. I gather that Digimon Survive is a pretty basic example of this genre, but for me as a newbie, it was a good level of difficulty and easy to make sense of.

The battling did get a bit old by the end, especially after numerous battles against the same type of enemy, and especially as I wasn’t able to evolve my characters (see below). You have limited options in terms of moves you can use and how you can customise your characters. The main thing I didn’t enjoy was trying to move my characters over long distances. You’d spend three or four rounds where you’d do nothing but try to get your characters physically closer to the enemy. And then you’d FINALLY strike a blow – and it would miss! Meaning you’d have to wait for, like, 10 characters to take their turns before you could use that character to try to hit your opponent a second time.

Later in the game, when I had a bit more choice in terms of which characters I deployed, mobility was my number one priority. I don’t care if a Digimon has great attacks if I’m going to spend the entire battle struggling to even get it in range of an enemy.

Gameplay: Affinity

When you speak to other characters in this game, you can build affinity with them by saying things they like. Your affinity affects battle, with high-affinity friends offering better support.

Whether you can get strong monsters or not is nearly wholly dependent on how much you raise your Affinity with other characters, but you don’t learn that until it’s too late. You can’t just play as you want to, but really have to make every conversation count (unless you don’t care if your final team is weak and disappointing). I didn’t really like that aspect of this game.

In my first three or four chapters, whenever I talked to characters, I wouldn’t always hit on the right conversational choice that would raise Affinity, but that was okay, because after all, you want to just have fun and choose the options you like, right? But once I realised that Affinity was affecting which of my friends’ Digimon were evolving, I started saving before every conversation option with every player. I also talked to the same characters over and over again. So for most of the game, I was optimising my Affinity choices. However, because I hadn’t optimised every encounter with the characters right from the beginning of the game, I ended up not having sufficient Affinity with even one friend to get their Digimon to Mega level.

I didn’t find this out until more than 20 hours of gameplay later, which was frustrating. You have the same Digimon partners in action for so long, you really look forward to when they can evolve and do something new. Late-game, Ultimate-level Digimon are just fodder, to be killed in one or two hits. I felt like it was fine to link gameplay elements to Affinity, but then don’t make the required Affinity so high unless you want people to save before every dialogue choice!

I believe the game is designed to really be played twice – after beating the game once, in a new game+, you can increase affinity more easily, and so you’re likely to get Mega Digimon on your second playthrough. But the game itself doesn’t really lend itself to a second playthrough, given that most of the game is spent clicking through a pre-set story. Of course, some story elements can and do change on a second playthrough, but it would still feel very repetitive to play a second time.

Gameplay: Karma

The dialogue options you choose can have one other effect: changing your ‘karma’. Certain decisions will net you points for ‘Moral’, ‘Harmony’ or ‘Wrathful’. In a very broad sense, you might say actions that are more direct and assertive could be ‘Wrathful’, those that are heroic and concerned about others, are ‘Moral’, and those that are more cautious and about not making waves, ‘Harmonious’. But there are plenty of exceptions to this.

This really only has two effects on gameplay:

1. At certain points in the story, your dominant karma category will affect the evolution of your partner Digimon. E.g. higher ‘Harmony’ points will give you a ‘Data’ type Digimon.

2. In chapter 8, the game will present you with pathways – you can take a Moral route, a Wrathful route, or a Harmony route, for the rest of the game. However, if you haven’t invested enough in a particular category of karma, you may not be given the option to play that route.

That said, if you haven’t Googled it, you will have no clue what will happen if you choose any one route over another, so you might just as well pick them at random anyway.

(Based on my experience, if you get to the decision point with balanced karma points (e.g. equal in multiple categories), the game just picks two choices for you. I did not get offered a ‘Harmony’ option, though my Harmony points were equal to my Moral points.)

Comments on the story (some spoilers ahead)

If I compare this game with some of the early Digimon anime, as well as other Switch games like Cyber Sleuth and Hacker’s Memory, this game has a darker tone to it. A lot of the focus is on how scared and uncertain the main characters are, and how they are just trying to survive one battle after another. There are actual character deaths and the overall tone is of a group of kids who are not having a great time.

When I played, I chose the ‘Moral’ option because I’d heard that was the ‘best’ and most satisfying ending. Having now read about the other two pathways, I agree it’s the best in terms of feeling like the ‘correct’ ending, the one you’re supposed to get. In this ending, you set your focus on saving Miyuki and defeating the Master, your principal opponent. Meanwhile, you minimise losses and end on an optimistic note. In this pathway, none of your teammates go crazy or die; instead, old friends are reunited, and you generally succeed in everything you attempt.

The main problem was that as a story, it felt like a very obvious straight line. Basically, you re-enter the ‘digital world’, fight lots of enemies, and eventually defeat the main antagonist. Nothing unexpected happens. They tried to have some reveals – around Gabumon and Renamon and their roles – but neither were really bombshells. If I read up on what happens in the Harmonious or Wrathful endings, they both seem to take less conventional turns, and the team suffer more along the way. I’m not sure I’d like those endings better, but they might be more interesting.

I was amused by the end of the final battle. There was a scene where every human, and every Digimon, lined up and made dramatic, ‘We’re going to win!’ type stands. Yet at that point in the battle, all of my friends’ Digimon had died (because I couldn’t evolve them to Megas). So… great stand, guys. Make your little dramatic speeches, and then go back into battle mode, where all of you disappear because you are already dead!! Luckily, Omegamon and Cherubimon (my one Free Mega) pulled off the final victory between them.

Final thoughts

I’ve probably sounded a bit negative in this review, but as I mentioned, though, the game did keep my interest enough to play until the very end. I enjoyed the gameplay and battles for the most part, and I was interested to see how the story would play out. In fact, this game has had largely positive reviews, and a lot of people I’ve heard from online have really enjoyed it and have played it through multiple times to see the different endings. Many of those who enjoy it cite the story as the main reason; they really connected to the story and characters. So if you enjoy stories set in the world of Digimon, and are happy to have a game that mostly just involves clicking through dialogue, this game is worth giving a try.

Games: Danganronpa 1, 2 and 3

I’ve just finished all three of the Danganronpa games on Switch, so here are my thoughts. I’m keeping spoilers to a minimum here, but I’ll have a section that includes clear spoilers (e.g. about who gets killed or by whom) right at the end of the post. If you ever think you might play these games, you should avoid spoilers. 🙂

Danganronpa 1 (Trigger Happy Havoc)

The good: It sets up an interesting series premise, and as the first game in the series, feels fresh – we haven’t seen the premise repeated yet, after all.

Of the three games, this had the most effective dramatic tone. It focused on how trapped the students were, how full of despair they were becoming, how they simply could not find any way out of their terrible situation. The school was gloomy and felt claustrophobic. Of course, there was still plenty of humour and zany character moments, but the setting, the motives, and the way the characters responded felt a little more somber. The characters felt a little bit more realistic (though mostly, still not very realistic, ha ha).

This game doesn’t lean too much into the cheesy ‘As friends, we can get through anything!’ and ‘I will defeat despair with hope!’ stuff that the sequels do. In fact, for most of the game, your classmates don’t really feel like close friends and most of them are suspicious or a bit antagonistic. Many of the murders are self-interested in some way, giving you a feeling that you never know what enemies may lurk around you. This adds to the grimmer atmosphere.

As far as gameplay mechanics go, none of the major trial gameplay elements were too annoying. And I liked that in this game, talking to your classmates could get you Skills. You didn’t have to faff around experimenting with gifting all kinds of random crap to random people in the hopes that somebody would eventually like something.

The bad: This game is a lot easier than its sequels. If you usually leave games on their default difficulty level, you might want to reconsider that here and at least set the Logic to ‘Mean’. Even ‘Mean’ isn’t hard, but at least the game will give you options you have to choose between, rather than just presenting the correct answer on a silver platter.

Others disagree, but I found this cast to be less likeable than in the other two games. And the characters don’t really come together as a team in the same way – which does fit with the tone of the game, where the characters are more suspicious, more despairing, more individualistic. It does feel like you bond less with them as a result. There are a couple of good characters – Sakura was my favourite –  and there are entertaining moments with most of the cast. But many of your classmates are spiteful, overbearing, obnoxious, cowardly, or rude. They create obstacles for you to work around, I suppose.

But in Danganronpa games, you kind of hope that the annoying characters will be the next ones taken out by a murderer. That didn’t really happen in this game, with many of the ones who survived all the way to the end being useless or unlikeable.

The murders are fun to unravel as always, but most of them have at least one pretty unbelievable element.

Danganronpa 2 (Goodbye Despair)

The good: This is the only one of the three games that doesn’t have a very obnoxious and loud-mouthed character that overstays its welcome. I didn’t find any of the characters too annoying. One main character is creepy for a portion of the game, yes, but he is also an intriguing character who drives the story forward in interesting ways – so he’s not just a nuisance.

Also on the subject of characters, several characters change as the story continues and have minor character arcs, which I didn’t really feel happened in Danganronpa 1.

The setting being what it was – a creatively designed series of tropical islands – there was a lot more scope for very unique and unusual location design and murder scenarios. 

This is the game of the three that I felt was most well-paced and the right level of challenge. I can’t remember any parts of the game where I felt bored or that something was going on too long. And so, this was my favourite of the three games.

The bad: A few of the characters were a bit extreme and one-note – you know the sort, they have a schtick (‘I’m a pervert’, ‘I will always cringe and apologise’, ‘I will speak only in macho, gung-ho language’) and you can always predict the sort of thing they’ll say. Most are entertaining at first, but they get old after a while.

I was a bit unimpressed with the final villain being who it was. But I liked the connections between this sequel and the first game, and the ending had a few cool reveals.

Danganronpa 3 (Killing Harmony)

The good: This might have been my favourite game for characters. I liked a lot of the characters, especially Shuichi, Kaito, Maki, Keebo, Tsumugi… I thought Kokichi was very entertaining and an interesting type of antagonist.

I like that you get a group of friends. I didn’t really feel, in the last two games, that you bonded closely with anyone (well, Makoto has one person late game). Your classmates were friends by default but you didn’t really click with any one of them over another. In this game, there are a few relationships that kind of continue through a decent portion of the game, and they are important to the story.

It had my favourite final 6 too; in previous games, both final sixes had at least two irritating characters left, but I liked all of the final 6 characters.

I didn’t think there were quite so many repetitive, one-note characters as in the second game, although after a while you wish Gonta would shut up about being a gentleman, Keebo about robot discrimination, Angie about Atua, Miu about… well, maybe Miu could not talk at all. (Or make gross facial expressions). Okay, maybe there are a few repetitive, one-note characters…

The murder cases are among the most convoluted, frequently making you think, ‘How on earth could anyone have committed this murder?!’ Though that has its ridiculous side, it also meant this game’s murders had a unique character and style that set them apart.

I liked that they made some effort to shake up the type of protagonist. In the previous two games, your character was a bit of a generic everyman – useful because he wasn’t as exceptional (read: weird or one-dimensional) as his genius classmates, so he was kind of an all-rounder, able to get along with most people and consider different ideas. In this game, we start with a girl who has her own Ultimate talent, as well as being a bit of a leader, someone who can rally and encourage others more actively. It was nice not to get Makoto 3.0.

The main character of the game also gets an arc, of sorts – a bit more than in the other two games.

Some of the new additions to the trial gameplay are decent additions. I liked the split trials where half the students face off against the other half. You’ re able to disrupt events with a well-timed lie. I think the trial gameplay in this game was the strongest. Hangman’s Gambit (where you select letters to make words) is much less tedious than in v2.

The bad: You can tell I really liked this game, but in some ways, I thought this was the least good game of the three. Why?

Firstly, polish. Despite being the third game, it felt like the least polished in terms of design. It was more awkward to manoeuvre your character around, aim your reticle, etc; every time you entered or exited a room or area, you had to wait briefly for it to load; the warping system was less consistent (why can’t I warp outside if I’m inside?!), and the free time events (FTEs) didn’t seem to work properly – that is, you’d talk to someone and no dialogue would be triggered, no friendship fragment obtained.* When Free Time hits, you might as well just go to bed.

*(I successfully activated only three FTEs during the entire game – the rest were all duds with no scenes. The first FTE I successfully got wasn’t until chapter 3. If I was doing something wrong, the game didn’t make it clear, and I was not doing anything different from previous games, when FTEs activated on almost every conversation.. But that’s a LOT of wasted efforts to talk to people!)

My game froze or crashed about a dozen times too.

Some aspects of the trial gameplay are more annoying than before. The worst is that characters’ words go across the screen at all kinds of random angles and move about. This makes it harder to shoot the answers you want, sure, but also makes it hard if you are playing the game with Japanese voice acting (where you are relying on reading but the screen is actively making it difficult for you to read).

The story and writing got me sucked in as usual, but it did have a couple of weak points. I felt the tone of each game has gradually moved from more despairing/dark to more power of friendship-y, and this game piles it on, anime-style. There was just a few too many inspirational, impassioned speeches about looking forward, believing in each other, honouring the dead, all getting out of here together, not giving up, blah blah blah.

The Monokubs are the worst addition yet. They are not funny once, even by accident, yet they are constantly appearing. The whole time they are on screen, you are basically just trying to click through their yammering as quickly as possible. They frequently get in the way of more serious or dramatic moments (like at trial verdicts). Whether you liked Monomi or not (I mostly did), at least there was only one of her. The Monokubs even make Monokuma less funny by association.

In this game, there is a significant increase in bad language and sexual jokes and insults. This is due to one character in particular, who might as well be called the Ultimate Porn Star. Some of it’s funny, some is just gross – your mileage may vary.

And the ending… I didn’t hate the premise of it (though I didn’t love it), but they sure drew it out beyond all reason. At one point, Monokuma says, ‘This trial will never end!’ and boyyy, does it feel that way.

On that note, here is a final section of spoiler-filled thoughts. 🙂

This part has spoilers about some of the murder victims and plot elements.

Other thoughts (spoilers)

I admired the creativity of the murders and how each game took things in unexpected directions.

In the first game, I had started to make assumptions about characters. ‘Well, Sayaka will obviously be around for a while and might become the protagonist’s love interest.’ But the game subverted expectations and killed her off first. It had a case with two victims, a suicide case, and a case with an incorrect verdict. You could never become blasé or assume that you knew what was coming next. You also take more than one turn as a suspect.

The first and third games both play around with the idea of an unidentified victim, though game 3 takes it a step further by having a victim that even Monokuma can’t identify.

The second game had some very quirky motives. I thought the fourth case, in the funhouse, was the most interesting. The characters were trapped and at risk of dying of starvation if somebody didn’t commit murder. In fact, most of the murders in this game were not straightforward murders where one person wanted to kill another.

The drama around Nagito’s death was also a really cool twist: the idea that there could be an unsolvable murder, set up by someone who wanted us all to die. You can’t tell me, though, that one of us was really the murderer in that situation. I mean, imagine I lie on the ground and put a loaded gun in my mouth. I put it off safety and it has a hair trigger. Now my friend, who I’ve invited to come meet me, walks toward me, not even seeing me yet, and the vibrations on the ground set off the trigger. Can you really say that my friend has murdered me? Come on. Nagito, you’ve murdered yourself.

In game 3, the first murder obviously set things in an unexpected direction. You don’t expect to lose the protagonist you are playing as. In fact, I was so sure Kaede wasn’t going to be executed that I read through all the dramatic, heartfelt speeches with a kind of ‘yada yada’ feeling – yeah, yeah, it’s all very touching, let’s skip to the bit where she doesn’t actually die. Oops. Surprise!

So each game keeps you on your toes in terms of who dies. Each game also plays with similar themes in different ways. For example, memory. In game 1, you don’t realise until late game that you’ve lost your memory. In game 2, you know early on that you’ve lost your memory but don’t know what that means and don’t find out until the very end. In game 3, you get memories back as the game progresses, but they are not what they seem.

Or, to give another example, each game plays differently with the concept of a traitor in your midst. In game 1, the traitor is someone you couldn’t have even known it was possible to suspect. In game 2, the traitor is not really a traitor – at least, they’re not against you. Game 3 handles it most straightforwardly in some ways – one of your own number is against you – but to say they are ‘against you’ is not quite 100% accurate either.

In game 1, murder motives are fairly clear-cut – someone is under pressure, looking out for their own interests and becomes willing to commit murder – while in games 2 and 3, many of the murders are not committed for self-interested reasons; they may be committed in order to save people or avert a crisis. So games 2 and 3, even more than 1, tend to heap on the melodrama, the bittersweet verdict where you have to condemn someone who is your true friend.

Anyway, so the games play with the series themes in a variety of different ways and so the series never feels stale.

Now, onto the series finale. I thought game 2 had the best ending of the three. Game 1’s ending was interesting but inconclusive; you felt you ended on a note of hope but didn’t get to really see what was going to happen. Game 2 showed you a bit more of the outcomes of the students, as well as what happened to our favourites from the first game. And game 3… well!

In the ending to game 3, it’s revealed that Danganronpa is a successful TV show with many series. The killing game we’ve just been part of is merely the latest season. We learn that the world outside the school is not a ruined husk – it’s better than ever, in fact boringly peaceful – but that depraved humanity, craving some kind of cathartic pain and suffering, can’t get enough of this TV show.

The main characters, of course, are shocked enough to learn that their suffering has been so meaningless, but then further revelations come to light. All the memories they’ve been fed are fake memories. The characters were all implanted with fake memories, personalities and identities; none of them are really Ultimates, their lives are all a sham. And worst of all, the characters all chose to participate in the killing game; they wanted to!

So that’s a lot to take in. Does the ending work? Sort of, but it was also frustrating. I thought it mingled good and bad.

Some positives, to start with: thank goodness the final villain wasn’t Junko again. When she popped up for a moment, I exclaimed, ‘You have GOT to be kidding me, not AGAIN.’ But the actual ending that unfolded was, at least, original. I liked many of the individual moments that happened in it and how they tweaked the gameplay. When Shuichi fell into despair, we switched to Keebo, who had a special role to play. Keebo was always one of my favourite characters, so it was good to see him step up. I liked the characters’ stance of ‘We refuse to participate!’ and how the gameplay encourages you to progress by not playing.

I did kind of like the idea of going against the usual “WE CHOOSE HOPE!” ending (though let’s be honest, they did choose hope, they just did it in a different way) and the final bit of the ending – the vibe of, well, everything sucks but this is who we are now; we’ll just have to find meaning in our own lives – worked fine and was on brand for this series.

Lastly, what about having the ‘audience’ be the true mastermind? It’s as if the game is accusing the player of being the real monster here. I thought that was quite a fun twist – but it went on too long and was mixed in with some less effective elements.

I felt this ending played a bit too much like “it was all a dream”. I wouldn’t at all mind the idea that it’s a TV show, or that producers have been manipulating the characters and trying to make them behave in certain ways to produce drama. And the idea that the killing game is meaningless, just entertainment, is fine.

But I think they took it too far; it would have been better if the characters had not applied for the show and had not had fictitious personalities and backstories implanted. And if they hadn’t retconned other games to make their stories also totally fictitious. Better if this was the same crapsack world as the previous games but there was some better reason why they kept broadcasting the killing games. This could have saved time. In this ending, were just too many things revealed, and the exposition (and characters’ shocked and pained reactions) just went on and on.

Also, having the characters be fictional detracts from the impact and makes the whole game and story seem cheap in retrospect. And I’m not quite sure what it says about the previous Danganronpa games – it suggests all of their backstory (like about the world practically ending) was all fictitious too, and it seems to be trying to devalue them as well.

You can always feel the writers of these games thinking: How can we pile despair on despair? The outside world is a smoking husk and you are the only human beings left alive. Not terrible enough? Okay, how about this? – You are not the people you think you are! The people you remember as your friends and family never even existed! And all the things you bonded over were not really real! Ahahaha!

Okay, well done, you found the ultimate despair to heap on your characters. And in return, you got a sizeable chunk of your audience thinking, ‘Okay, whatever. I get it. Nothing is real and I am the real monster. Basically, you’re telling me I shouldn’t have gotten invested in this story and characters. Fine.’ Is it worth it?

Games: Danganronpa

Danganronpa is a visual novel/adventure game where you try to solve mysteries – specifically, murders.

(This post doesn’t have any real spoilers – just the premise that is revealed at the beginning of each game.)

The three main games in the series follow the same basic formula. You and a group of classmates are imprisoned together (e.g. in an abandoned school) and not quite sure how you got there. You are told that you will be imprisoned forever. And it’s true that you can’t find any way out. The only way out, you learn, is to murder a classmate and not get caught. Whoever has imprisoned you here is very eager that murders begin. They’ll even introduce possible motives to make the students desperate enough to commit murder.

The ‘rules’ are simple:

• If a murder occurs, there will be a time allowed for investigations, and then a class trial where everyone votes on who they think is guilty.
• If the murderer (‘blackened’) is correctly identified, only the blackened will be executed.
• If the group votes for the wrong person, the whole group will be punished, and the blackened will go free – back into the real world.

In short, there is a real incentive for the blackened not to get caught and for the others to correctly solve the crime.

Since solving the murders involve gathering lots of evidence, some of it quite puzzling, and then putting it all together, you don’t get a murder that looks like this:

Some time during the night, we don’t know when, (character) was stabbed. There is a knife on the ground, which could have come from anywhere at any time. Nothing else stands out.

Instead, you get something that looks like this:

Some time during the night, (character) was killed, and they have numerous inexplicable injuries all over their body. There is a knife on the ground, which came from the kitchen, which someone could only have entered before 10pm, because we’re not allowed in at night, and (character) thinks the knives were all in the kitchen at 9 so we know when our culprit must have gotten the knife. Then there are mysterious scrapings of wood next to the window, and the window is impossible to reach, but the door was locked, so there’s no way the murder could have gotten out, and there was a threatening note in the murder victim’s room, and the writing was in handwriting obviously done by someone who was left-handed (or trying to look left-handed), but there is a similar note in someone else’s room in completely different hand-writing. Then there is a scrap of fabric in the corridor outside which has a bloodstain on it, but it is DIFFERENT blood from the victim’s and we know that because…

You get the idea.

Not only that, but in a surprising number of cases, some other rando has walked in, interfered with evidence in some way (either intentionally or unintentionally) to muddy the waters.

In theory, the murderers use convoluted methods to kill because they are trying so hard to avoid detection. They want it to seem impossible that they could have done it. Of course, a less convoluted method – e.g. just stab someone and leave – would be far better, as it doesn’t leave a story to unravel. That wouldn’t make for much of a game though, so luckily it doesn’t happen.

So you go into a trial, generally with the haziest idea of what could have happened, and by talking over every element of the case, you gradually piece together what unfolded and who the culprit must be. In this sense, it’s very much like the Phoenix Wright games. If you like Phoenix Wright, you’ll probably enjoy Danganronpa.

The cases are frequently bizarre, and in some cases it would take a miracle for any real person to make the logical connections that the characters are able to make, but as you play through, they don’t feel unfair. As the case takes you through, step by step, you generally are able to make the logical deductions needed to progress. At the end, it all makes sense (though may still be bizarre!).

Danganronpa also has a few of what I call ‘bullshit’ gameplay mechanics – e.g. unnecessarily tedious ways of progressing in the story – during the trials, like where you have to override someone else’s objections with a stressful ‘rhythm’ game, wait an eternity for letters to crawl across a screen so that you can select them to make words, or my favourite: make logical deductions by hitting hookers with a car in your psyche.

This is part of the core gameplay which comes after a murder happens. First, you investigate all people, places and objects associated with a crime, and then go to the trial. In the trial, you present arguments, target other people’s wrong ideas, and, as mentioned, participate in some of those bullshit mechanics. It’s like a series of mini games, but the main objective is to find and put forward the truth to make the game progress.

During the happier (well – slightly less despair-filled) times, you can also go and make friends with your classmates, learn more about them, etc. There are elements of a dating sim, where you can win people over and get rewards.

The main series has three games, each of which has similar gameplay, though there are minor differences (like in the trial minigames). I have to say that over the course of three games with so many deaths to figure out, they did a good job at not making later murders feel derivative. Nearly every murder had some interesting or unique element to it, a unique motive (in some cases – like game 3’s third case, very unique), and I never felt like ‘ehh, this person’s death is just a rehash of that case from a previous game’.)

Werewolf-style single-player games

I first heard of Danganronpa in video game message boards for the game Gnosia. People were recommending other single-player ‘werewolf-style’ games. At that time, they recommended Raging Loop and Danganronpa. I got very into all three games and highly recommend all of them, so here’s a quick comparison. 🙂

The game that made me think the most, and that I most enjoyed the core gameplay of, was Gnosia. The story and characters were decent – I enjoyed finding out more about each character – but they mostly served as bonus extras – an incentive to keep playing longer. This game is the closest to the actual Werewolf game, with different roles (e.g. certain humans who can find out others’ roles, or a quisling human who is supporting the enemy, etc). Some people find this game repetitive, but if you get hooked by the gameplay mechanic, you can get really hooked. Every gameplay ‘loop’ is randomised, and can be customised, so it’s very replayable. The other two games have limited replayability (unless you just want to watch the story again).

The game with the best story was Raging Loop. I was really impressed with its storytelling; it was super compelling throughout most of the game play. (The intro was slow and the ending had some flaws, but for many enjoyable hours, this story didn’t drop the ball.) I loved the way you could go back in time to try different paths; it was very intelligently designed storytelling. This story had minimal gameplay – you need to go into realising you will pretty much be just reading, not ‘playing a game’ – but I would still recommend it.

Danganronpa had the characters I most enjoyed and the most interesting puzzle solving. Though all three games are Japanese, Danganronpa is the most anime-ish – if you have watched much anime, you’ll see very recognisable character ‘types’. As a result, it is more wacky and sometimes sillier than the other two games, but it also is a lot funnier. Of the three games, this is the least like the actual Werewolf game. As I mentioned, the gameplay has more in common with Phoenix Wright, where you have to identify and present evidence and arguments. Sure, like the Werewolf game, you have people who are incentivised to kill each other off, and you’re left trying to decide together who the culprit is, while they pose as an innocent among you. But catching a culprit doesn’t result in a victory; it just leads eventually to another death and another culprit. Each trial is quite a different thing.

I can’t recommend one of these games over another, because I thought very highly of all three. If you enjoy Gnosia, it certainly has the highest level of replayability. Raging Loop and Danganronpa both rely a good deal on surprise and discovery, but they have set stories, and so once you’ve played them, you might need to give them a long rest before trying them again.

Games: Rune Factory 5

I’ve reviewed Rune Factory 3 and Rune Factory 4 previously on this blog; they’re among my favourite games. So when I heard there would finally be a Rune Factory 5, I was excited. I kept checking the release date and a couple of months ago, finally got the game for myself. (It’s been out for a while now. I was just slack about posting this.)

While RF5 wasn’t terrible, it’s the first Rune Factory game where I ran out of steam and wasn’t motivated to finish. I unlocked the last bachelorette of the game and realised I was too bored to keep going.

Now, this game has a lot of similarities to its predecessors. Many gameplay elements are familiar – you keep a farm, catch monsters, cook, craft gear, befriend townspeople, and go through the motions of a story designed to get you fighting, levelling up and improving your character’s stats. On paper, this game should have been every bit as fun as RF3 and 4.

However, there are three changes they’ve made for the worse: the main reasons the game couldn’t keep my interest.

Change 1: Perspective (and time)

In RF5, they’ve changed from a top-down view to a 3D one and made the world bigger to move around. It’s a shame that this has become more of a trend in games in general, but it’s particularly unfortunate for a game like this which relies on repeating simple actions over and over. It gets in the way of the goals of the game.

The cons of this change include:

• It’s harder to manoeuvre your character precisely or to see the world around you clearly. I kept walking into things, failing to get into doorways, failing to place objects in the exact place/orientation I wanted them, failing to locate monsters who were right by me (because I needed to turn the whole camera around to be behind me to even see them), failing to see what was ahead because a character walking behind me was filling the screen, etc. Even a very small thing, like entering someone’s building, can be a time waster as, if you approach it from the wrong angle, you have to walk all around the building/fence until you get to the door. This seems small, but there are a lot of examples that add up. Really, it was better when you could simply move in straight lines with a top-down view.

• The world is physically larger than in the earlier games, but with more empty space. This is a big problem in a game like this, which has you visit the same locations repeatedly. You’re encouraged to visit and chat to other villagers every day. Doing so takes a lot longer, but most of that time is spent physically moving your character from place to place – not doing anything fun. Because the town is so big, you are far less likely to just walk past villagers by chance. (In the earlier RF games, any brief wander around town will take you past half the NPCs). You have to go chase them all down one by one. Adding to the time wasting is that the game has to pause and load every time you enter or exit a building, enter/leave a dungeon, or use the warp feature.

• To compensate for the larger world, they’ve edited the in-game clock and made each day take longer in real time so that you have enough time to do everything you need to. This again kind of pads out the gameplay but not in a rewarding way. If it’s going to take me so much time to visit all the townspeople and chat to them each day, then I will just react by not talking to most of them (plus their dialogue is usually not worth the effort; see my next point). If the player limits their time-consuming activities but has a longer clock, the result is that they’re either killing time or going to bed at 2pm. There were frequent occasions where I had to complete an event in the evening but had nothing I wanted to do until that time, so I just left the Switch on for 10 minutes idling as the clock ticked on. Mostly I wanted to get to each new day more quickly so I could progress in the relationships I was trying to pursue, but I felt like it was taking me ages to get there. I think the time factor is a big reason I got bored eventually. I felt like I wasn’t achieving as much in my time overall.

Change 2: Characters and dialogue

The writing in Rune Factory 3 and 4 is quite sharp. Characters are funny. A lot of them have endearing quirks and are very distinctive. Your protagonist character is frequently responding to people either with snarkiness or alarmed bewilderment.

In this game, that’s not the case, unfortunately. Starting out, I wanted to get a feel for all the townsfolk, so I went and chatted to them all for the first few days of gameplay.

Their comments could be summed up as:

• The weather’s a bit cloudy.
• Are you working hard? Keep at it.
• Come by my shop any time!

Like, that was nearly all of them. Doesn’t make you rush to keep conversations going. The characters were not distinguishing themselves, and the protagonist least of all.

The dialogue is less snappy – it feels like there are often more lines of dialogue but ones that don’t further their characters; they just take up space. It’s tiresome that when you talk to a character, they always begin with a repetitive comment about the weather before they say something unique.

A few characters do have some original quality, like Heinz with his dreadful dad jokes, Palmo with his desire to do strange and terrible things to the world of architecture, and Ludmila… yeah. Ludmila. A few of the bachelors and bachelorettes who come later in the game are a bit more interesting than the default characters But that still leaves a lot of bland characters. Not many of the characters have a unique schtick like in previous games.

Like, compare similar character types. For example, Cecil from RF5 and Vishnal from RF4 are both focused on becoming great at the job they are apprenticing into, but aren’t all that great at it yet. But Vishnal has a bunch of quirks – his fiery eyes of Burning Passion, constant mistakes, determined ‘I’ll do it!!’s, overall awkwardness – which make him funny and endearing, while Cecil is bland.

Or compare Scarlett from this game with Forte from RF4. Both are female soldiers (of a sort) protecting their little town; both are a little over-serious but can be counted on. But Forte has various foibles – like trying to put forward a strong and stoic image while having a secret girly side, being easily flustered, having a little brother often embarrassing her. Scarlett doesn’t have any.

Being less goofy – not having distinctive quirks – could be fine if the characters were developed more deeply and had more substance, but they don’t. If the game improves in this regard, it went on way too long without improving, so I didn’t get the chance to see it.

Apart from a few scenes with Scarlett, and arguably Ryker, there are also no characters that you have to win over. Everyone is just a nice person. In RF4, you had Dylas (surly and awkward), Doug (openly antagonistic for part of the game), Leon (the condescending ass), Dolce (shy and unwilling to open up) – thus making it more satisfying when you did eventually win them over. In this game, pretty well everyone just likes you and is friendly right off.

Okay, I’ll give a few specific examples of where the dialogue and story-telling fell flat.

1. Simone is kind of depicted as this game’s wacky inventor – a doctor who likes to test out all kinds of experimental medicines on herself. But the game doesn’t lean into it enough, because she’s also depicted as a voice-of-reason, sensible-adult leader. So the ‘wackiness’ feels half-baked and unconvincing. There was one conversation where a character brought up Simone’s weird habit – as if going for humour – and then another character quickly remarked, ‘Oh, but she’s a really good and caring doctor’ – thus killing the humour dead. Instead, it would be funnier not to defend her but to build on it. Have the other characters add their own alarming anecdotes – be taken aback – decide that they might just stay home and self-medicate next time rather than ever going to the clinic again…
2. Ryker is struggling to get inspiration for his blueprint. Your brilliant solution is to, in effect, jump out and shout ‘BOO!’ to surprise him out of his doldrums. -_- (This is the best idea you can come up with, because you and all the other townspeople are morons.) You repeatedly try this with various attempts and people until – surprise! – it works perfectly and Ryker is grateful for your efforts. I mean, if this is the only idea you have, at least it could backfire properly. Like, at the very least, jump out and scare him just at the moment he has come up with a great idea, only to find that your attack has scared the idea out of his mind and he gets mad at you.
3. A mystery person requests that you meet them somewhere at midnight. Cecil wants to go along but gets told by Terry that midnight is way past his bedtime. Cecil replies: “When you’re right, you’re right. I can barely keep my eyes open after sundown, let alone stay up all night.” Why have him immediately agree and back down? No conflict. Sure, Cecil is an amiable character, but he should still have feelings. So what would be funnier than that? How about… Cecil gets huffy, protests that he can too stay up late if it’s in the name of fulfilling His Dream of Being a Great Detective – and then when you go to the rendez-vous point that night, you step over his sleeping body to talk to the mystery person?

Okay, I’m not a writer, but the point is that in all of these examples, any tiny hints of potential conflict are stamped out too quickly. (‘Simone is crazy’ – ‘Oh no, she’s not’, ‘This idea for helping Ryker is really stupid – oh wait, it worked perfectly’, ‘Cecil, you can’t help’ – ‘You’re right, I can’t.’) It’s funnier when characters try and fail, or talk back, or react negatively, or show a bit of spice. The people of Rigbarth are too agreeable and that’s why they’re not very interesting.

Change 3: The difficulty level

I found that with Rune Factory 4, the default gameplay itself offered enough challenge that it served as motivation. I’d attempt a boss too early, realise I couldn’t beat it yet, and then work on improving. This fuelled me to attempt lots of the game mechanics (farming to make money to buy new equipment, exploring to get new items to craft with, catching new monster companions to help me, etc).

In this game, your character has a lot more capacity from the beginning. On day 2 or 3 of my adventure, I went into the woods for the first time, found the first boss immediately, and easily killed it. I’d done no fighting until that moment. There was no need to level up or build my fighting skill before taking on a boss. I returned to the woods the next day and noticed that the monsters attacking me were dealing no damage to me. I was already too strong.

I also noticed that the first few days, I never ran low on RP (energy for completing daily tasks). The earlier games maybe erred too much in the other direction – at the beginning, you’d run out of RP after just a tiny bit of farming – but they also gave you gratifying, regular levelling up which meant that you saw yourself improve in no time.

What this meant was you’d kind of lose the sense of progression – that dopamine hit and quick, satisfying ‘I’m getting stronger!’ buzz of the early game gets lost. Since this game series essentially relies on exactly that – grinding, levelling up and improving in different areas is 100% the focus – it’s better not to meddle with that. If I don’t perceive any value in levelling up, why would I care when my character does?

Some of this gets better as the game goes on – there are actions that do significantly deplete your RP, for instance – but still, I never lost to any boss, whereas in Rune Factory 4, I had to re-attempt several boss battles after getting myself stronger.

At one point, I gained access to a new area; a sign at the entrance recommended I be at least L35 to attempt the area. At that point though, I was L59, and I’d reached this level by completing just the required gameplay and a few optional jaunts into dungeons to get items. It’s not great to have effortlessly become so much stronger than the game requires. Again, it means that a big source of motivation in the game is lost. If you don’t need to do anything like level up, craft fab gear, etc, then it feels pointless to put effort into it.

Okay, so those were the three changes I didn’t really like. To avoid being only negative – it’s not like this was a terrible game – I’ll finish with a) a change with pros and cons, and b) a few positives.

A change with pros and cons – the relationships

In Rune Factory 4, you could only romance members of the opposite sex, so if you chose the male protagonist, you could date the girls of the town, and if you chose the female protagonist, you could date the dudes.

It meant that you’d have to, essentially, play through the whole game twice, once as a guy and once as a girl, if you really wanted to see each character’s extra scenes, dialogue, etc when taking them on dates. A lot of people were unhappy that you couldn’t have same-sex relationships. So in Rune Factory 5, they’ve ‘solved’ that problem. Unfortunately, the way they’ve solved it is now every character in the town is bi. If you befriend any character, they’ll soon start making eyes at you. This has pros and cons.

The good thing is that those who want to have same-sex relationships in the game can. And you get the chance to see romance story events of any character, without having to play two whole separate games. Romance events are generally linked to character development, so it’s nice to be able to see the stories of whomever you want.

On the negative side, even if you don’t want to date the character (and you don’t have to), there’s no ability to have platonic relationships with any single character in the town even if you want to. You can’t easily befriend characters without triggering romance events, because it’s easy to trigger them without meaning to just by moving into a space near the relevant character. There was not one female character I wanted to date in this game (bar Ludmila, who joined the town so late that I didn’t get the chance), so the game map became a minefield of romance events to avoid.

The main issue here really is that once you trigger a romance event – and some of them are pretty thin fare – it may take you several in-game days before you’re able to complete it and free yourself up to try another villager’s – and that in a game that already feels more drawn out because of its new clock/day length. So making progress with the characters you actually like can take a while.

Good points

It goes without saying, a lot of the gripes I’ve listed are subjective; lots of players have really gotten into this game, loved the characters, had no issue with the gameplay, etc.

And to be fair, this game does have a lot of the fun gameplay features of the earlier Rune Factory games. But is there anything it does better?

Well, there are a few quality-of-life improvements that make things easier. For example, if you are in the middle of an event (or going to trigger one), the map will show you where to go to make the next event happen. There’s not a lot of ‘dead time’ when no event is in progress. You can warp to different places in the world – even if you’re inside – and that’s handy.

On the whole, though, if I was going to recommend a Rune Factory game, this one wouldn’t be it.

Games: Monochrome Order

In this fantasy RPG, you play as the Arbiter, assigned to make judgments and moral decisions on behalf of the people of your community. People will come to you with dilemmas, and after learning more about the situation, you have the divine authority to make a Judgment. Should you prosecute a probable scoundrel even though he contributes a great deal to the economic prosperity of the town? When two women dispute who is the true mother of a baby, how should you, King Solomon-like, decide who is telling the truth? And in one scenario that now hits close to home, an innocent woman has a mysterious infectious disease that doesn’t seem to be getting better. If you let her live, she may cause an incurable plague to spread to the whole community – should you sacrifice the one to save the many?

Each decision you make has consequences. If you do unpopular things – like pardon criminals – your popularity will go down, but you may get other benefits – for instance, someone you helped might join your team.

This is also a traditional (old school) turn-based RPG – you build a team, use moves and items, equip orbs, build your stats, etc. You can level up to improve your strength, as well as using money to improve your weapons, but the Judgments do play a factor in your success. Depending on what decisions you make, you could have a wide range of characters with different elements and moves with which to assemble a team – or be stuck with your base default team. If you tank the economy, items may be expensive. Depending on your investment decisions, different things may be available to you to buy. And some decisions, as mentioned, will net you certain items and advantages.

The story is not amazing but does the job; the organisation that has appointed you is pretty shifty (this is not a spoiler – one glance at the guy who is your superior is all you need to recognise him as a villain), trying to gain new sources of power and control, yada yada. They are after Leyce, an unusual and powerful young Daemon who has faced a lifetime of persecution. Early on, you have the choice to either team up with her or leave her to her own fate. She’s (understandably) melancholy and subdued at first, and your own character is something of a blank slate, so it’s fortunate that your third party member, Passe – your esquire – is able to provide a bit more animation and light-heartedness.

The character designs are, visually, not that appealing – and often, their expressions don’t match the tone of what they’re saying – but this is a minor nitpick. Generally, the story is not too time-consuming and allows you to focus more on making Judgments, and that is a good thing. It’s the Judgment system that makes this game distinctive, and a lot of the cases are quite interesting.

Now, as you make Judgments, you are trying to balance three factors: Fame (your own reputation), Peace (the safety of the town) and the Economy. Different decisions will cause these factors to go up or down, and they affect gameplay elements; for example, high Fame will allow you to use certain team members who might otherwise refuse to work with you. Not only that, but many decisions will also lead to your getting money, gifts (e.g. from townfolk you helped), new party members, or even affect where you can or can’t go.

No Judgment case is altogether straightforward. Take this simple one, for instance. The government wants to invest in the blacksmith’s so they can make armour from a new type of material. The blacksmith owners are on board, but the craftsmen there are unhappy about having to work with that material.

When you talk to the craftsman who’s the chief troublemaker, it’s clear that their objection to using the new material is pretty feeble. Okay, that’s an easy decision for me – I’ll judge in favour of the investment. But then at the last minute, the craftsman says he’ll absolutely refuse to work with that material.

Crap. We’ve just heard that the blacksmith has been staying afloat on the skill of its craftsmen; only they can make this new armour. If they revolt, will the investment be for nothing?

Many cases are more emotionally fraught than the one I just mentioned. Take the case of a woman who has just been visited by the man who killed her husband. It wasn’t a cold-blooded murder – the killer was a soldier, fighting for his life and now deeply remorseful. But after hearing the details, the widow is distraught and thinks her husband’s killer deserves to die. You may disagree, but when you speak to the soldier himself, he also asks that you end his life so that he can do penance. What do you do?

In all cases, your judgment must be black or white – maybe that’s part of the reason for the game’s title; I don’t know. For instance, you choose to pardon a criminal or execute him. You can’t suggest that he do five years of prison time or a spot of community service. Or in another case, where there are two deserving youths up for a reward, you must give the reward to one or the other, not split the money between both.

My tendency was mostly to show mercy rather than punish, except where the crime was morally indefensible and the perpetrator unrepentant. In short, I tried to make what I considered the ‘right’ decision morally. (Not easy.) The result was that by the end of the game I had superb ‘Fame’ and ‘Peace’ but had completely tanked the economy. It’s not my fault all the most important wealthy folk – the ones contributing to the economic success of the town – are involved in disgraceful side activities. -_-

Multiple endings

This game has multiple possible endings. In my first playthrough, I tried to make all the ‘correct’ choices and got the ending ‘Organisation in Ruins’. And I found that the actual story of this game was not very long. What padded the playtime was all the Judgments (and some grinding to level up and get money). I was surprised the ending came as early as it did, because I felt like the villain, his machinations, the rebel group opposing him, and other details about the world, were only lightly fleshed out.

That said, however, there are completely different routes you can take, which add to the possible play time. The game will make clear to you when Judgments are potential game changers – some may radically affect the outcome of your story. So if you play a second time and make different choices, you can get a completely different game, with different story elements, different places to visit, different final bosses. I suppose by doing that, you also gain more information and form a more complete idea of the story and world. And so it makes sense that any one story path may not be super long and dense – because the idea is that you complete more than one of them. Try, for instance, protecting Leyce at the beginning of the game versus not saving her. The outcomes couldn’t be more different.

So the game does have replay value. The downside to this is that you have to restart the game each time – and the Judgments take time and get repetitive if you do them multiple times. You can skip many of them, of course, but you need to do some if you want to improve your chances. For instance, you can’t get new good gear or items unless you fulfil several Judgments relating to investment. You can’t access most of the characters unless you participate in a Judgment relating to them. (There are, at least, a few that are relatively quick and easy to get. Others, though, might rely on your completing multiple judgments first.) As mentioned, you can’t use certain useful team members unless your Fame is high, and you boost Fame by making good Judgments, or by forking out a lot of money.

For instance, I just replayed the game to get a different ending. On the replay, I completed hardly any Judgments, picking up only one character – Durai, a quick and easy one to recruit – so I could have a full team. But the final bosses turned out to be wind elementals, and I didn’t have anyone to deal super effective damage against that. It meant that my second playthrough boss was harder than the first playthrough, even though my level was a bit higher. I’m not sure if the boss was genuinely harder – it felt like they were – but mainly, I couldn’t optimise my team. In my first playthrough, I had acquired a dozen characters to choose from (finishing the final boss with Modim and Yamato).

Anyway, so that’s Monochrome Order. I really enjoyed it and thought it was an interesting concept for a game.

Games: Raging Loop

I’ve just finished playing an excellent Switch game called Raging Loop. It’s a visual novel set in a remote Japanese village that’s experiencing a weird paranormal phenomenon. What results is basically the game Werewolf – where villagers have to find out the identities of enemies among them. As the player (or reader), you participate in trying to solve this mystery, along with many other mysteries that pop throughout the game.

The story is intelligently crafted and I’ve found myself glued to the TV for hours at a time, just wanting to watch a bit more, a bit more… then lying awake in bed at night thinking over the events of the day.

You play as Haruaki Fusaishi, a guy in his twenties who starts by getting lost while riding his bike in the middle of nowhere. He’s found by an outgoing girl named Chiemi, who takes him to her village, Yasumizu. This village has seen better days and the people are not particularly welcoming to outsiders. Haruaki can’t really make them out, nor understand why they seem to have a superstitious aversion to him. Chiemi alone seems willing to help him.

As it happens, he has arrived at the village at the worst possible time. An eerie mist descends and the people change. This village has a very nasty tradition. According to an old legend, when the mist comes, certain villagers are selected by the gods to be wolves. Those who become wolves find themselves wanting to kill the humans; they will turn on friends, neighbours and family. The only way for the humans to defeat the wolves is to vote, once a day, on one of their fellow villagers to lynch. Meanwhile, the wolves will kill one villager per night. Can the humans find the wolves amongst them, or will the wolves triumph?

This Werewolf game scenario is at the heart of the game, but it’s certainly not all there is to it. The story that results is atmospheric and creepy, with heaps of unexpected turns, some grisly deaths, and a good dose of strategy that will leave you, as the player, trying to figure out what’s going on along with Haruaki.

Our main character Haruaki is, frankly, a bit of a dick at times. Sometimes he’ll prioritise curiosity, logic, or winning above human feelings. But he’s just the kind of person you want on hand for a situation like this, because he’s willing to do just about anything to get the answers he needs. He’s cool-headed, good at speaking, and good at deciding how to handle different people. As a smart and logical guy, he’s an ideal protagonist; it would be frustrating if our main character was significantly behind the actual player when it came to figuring things out. As it was, I found that he was often ahead of me in the conclusions he’d draw or the questions he’d ask. And if I did notice something on my own, before long, Haruaki would also notice it.

How the story works (minor spoilers for early game)

If there’s any chance you might play this game, you’d be best off avoiding reading any spoilers at all. But I’ll confine my major spoilers to the last part of this post.

Fairly early in the story, you make a foolish decision that leads to your own death. The result is that you get a key – basically, an insight – that allows you to go back in time and do things differently. In effect, the key unlocks a different decision you can make, allowing you to go down a new path. At this point, you start to see how the story will work. You, the character, can loop back and make new choices.

What make this interesting is it isn’t just a video game convention (like getting a game over and going back to a save point); it’s a plot element. Your character, Haruaki, is himself aware of the fact that he has died and has looped back in time. He essentially gains two lots of knowledge – the knowledge from the time he died, and the knowledge from the time when he didn’t. And this is how the story will continue. If Haruaki makes a bad decision, he will be able to go back to where he had the chance to change the outcome – and use the knowledge he gained from his wrong move to make a better move. Over time, therefore, he builds more knowledge by following various paths. Many paths will eventually take you to a dead end – literally. But they’ll still give you useful knowledge that you need.

A nice aspect of this game is that it’s very low stress to play. There’s no sense that you can permanently mess something up; you don’t have to worry about making ‘wrong’ choices. Quite often, you are supposed to.

The format of the story

This story took a while to get going. Here’s what I wrote about this game after about 3 hours of gameplay:

I have played other games described as ‘visual novels’ – the Phoenix Wright series comes to mind – but in those games, the player was still interacting a lot, making choices about who to talk to and what to interact with, and making a lot of decisions about how to proceed. This game is very different – all you are doing is reading.

It seems to me that playing a video game as a visual novel combines the worst aspects of the media it uses. Because it’s a ‘novel’, nothing you do materially affects how things unfold. There’s almost zero actual interactivity. You barely make any choices or affect how anything proceeds. But because it’s a video game, you can’t take it in as you would a novel. Instead, the dialogue and content is doled out in very small chunks – you have to click, click, click to see each new sentence*, and progress is very slow. Also, the internal voice of the character and the written descriptions don’t seem all that well-written compared with an actual novel.

*(Yes, there’s an automatic play option, but when the scenes are already boring, or the speakers are slooow at delivering their lines (I’m looking at you, Rikako), sometimes you’d rather click to get through it sooner.)

Here’s what I wrote after 20+ hours:

Now I’ve been playing this game for over 20 hours, and my opinion is the exact opposite. A video game is the best possible format for delivering this story.

It’s very true that you don’t make many choices. It would be wrong to go into this game expecting an interactive experience. But even though there are not many meaningful choices you can make – often, only one choice is available until you loop back and can make a ‘better’ decision – giving the player that agency (or illusion of agency) makes each decision feel significant in a way it wouldn’t if you were just watching a show or reading a book that passively forced you back to various points in the tale. By having the story presented in branching charts, you can also see where different decisions are taking you in a way that wouldn’t be possible with a TV show or novel.

Meanwhile, having it as a game means that dialogue and sentences are revealed bit by bit, doled out in small chunks in a way that builds tension and also makes you feel more like a real participant, as many of the conversations feel like they’re elapsing in ‘real time’. I’m someone who reads quickly and tends to skim description, so being ‘forced’ to process each sentence line by line – and having the music, voice acting and visuals complement that for greater impact – means that I feel more like I’m accompanying the character as he engages with the world and characters.

That said, I really think they could have cut some of the fat of the introduction to this story. It takes a long time to get going. If they’d lost one hour out of the first three hours of content, it would have been all the better. Cut thirty minutes from the scenes of Haruaki getting lost, going to the convenience store, meeting Chiemi, etc, and you wouldn’t lose much of importance. Rather than enduring half an hour of reading about Haruaki repairing his bike, those scenes could have been cut down to just a couple of sentences. Even the scenes of him meeting the villagers – which were at least setting up the characters of the story – could have been trimmed. After all, at this point in the story, we don’t have a reason to care about any of them. Introducing them when there’s a prospect of a lynching or a murder would be more interesting because there’d be a compelling reason to pay attention to all of them.

Now, once you become invested properly in the story, then it’s quite different. Less exciting parts still exist, but even they become more imbued with interest. For instance, after playing for a while, there’s a segment where you’re trying to organise accommodation, and this takes nearly an hour in real time. That sounds pretty boring, but because you’re aware of the implications (of the accommodation not being set up properly) and now have an established reason to be interested in any new bits of info you can glean about the village and its people, it feels much more interesting than 30 minutes of Haruaki trying to fix his bike.

Most of the story, though, really absorbs you, and the werewolf components and ‘feasts’ are, in my opinion, the best parts of all. The characters all think in interesting ways, different relationships play a role, and characters vary in their approaches to decision-making. While characters may vote very differently, most have some kind of reasonable basis for their choices, which makes for a compelling battle.

Remaining mysteries (major spoilers for halfway through the game (end of ‘Wit’))

I’ve just played through the ‘Wit’ loop, and I wonder what the third one, ‘Darkness’, will bring. I’m going to make some predictions and also write some thoughts.

There are a lot of unresolved mysteries, so I’m glad to see that we were not going to just end with the second playthrough having a normal happy ending. (I mean, I never really believed that a game like Raging Loop could have such an idyllic, happy ending as the one they seemed to be building, especially the idea that we could have a beautiful love story as the ending to a bunch of murders.) Not to mention there were clearly half a dozen points that needed to still be returned to and resolved with various keys.

I notice that Key 20 is needed for several points. I assume key 20 will come at the end of the final playthrough, as it is clearly the last key… I am guessing it will just unlock a few bonus scenes – I can’t see that it could unlock a whole new story playthrough, as key 20 is used in several points that seem mutually exclusive. So key 20 might finish off by clarifying a few outstanding mysteries at the end?

Now, what mysteries am I interested to see resolved?

There are a lot. The ones I can think of are:

-What is behind the darkness that Chiemi experiences? She’s clearly messed up, and also that fear she carries – why, and what is this ‘God’ she envisions?

-What has Haru encountered and how does she know that Haruaki is looping?

-Who killed Mocchi and the Old Man during the first playthrough? Did they not suffer the corruption as a result?

-Who was the mysterious female voice at the end of the Wit loop?

-What happened at the end of Wit? There was no mist when we arrived in the town, so it’s not like the feast had recommenced and the wolves had gotten through everyone. It implied that Kiyonosuke, who was holding the axe, might have been the murderer. Was this part of the madness – had he gone nuts and killed everyone? If so, why? There seemed to be a mist right at the end, suggesting the Feast was not entirely over after all. Could it be related to the idea that the humans are the yomibito, and they must be purged? Or could Kiyonosuke have been the badger? 

-Speaking of which, what is the madness that seems to infect the villagers? Is there more to it than just the abnormal strain and trauma of what happens during the feast? Is it genuinely ‘correct’ that the villagers are supposed to hang someone each day, or is this a manifestation of their madness? Haruaki on several occasions felt strongly that they were doing the wrong thing by just going along with it all and following this hanging custom.

-Who is Meiko, and why did she end up in the village?

-There was at least one death I died that I didn’t understand at all. (The one where, theoretically, the spider was protecting me, but I still died in my hut.) Just what happened there?

-Is there any significance in the unfriendly convenience store clerk and why she sent Haruaki to Yasumizu? I wouldn’t have thought so, but they made a point of interacting with her at some length again in the second playthrough.

-What happened at the last feast, years ago? Who won, the villagers or the wolves?

-Why was Haruaki not killed for breaking the rules that first night when he didn’t sleep?

-Is there any more to discover about the Old Man and his seeming (possible) insanity?

-The fact that some people’s bodies made a sound when hitting the Saranaga, while others’ didn’t… is that significant?

-Why is Haruaki involved in all of this, and why/how is he looping?

-Is there a further role played by the Kamifujiyoshi family heads? They have been built up a lot but haven’t actually done much of significance. Did they anticipate the mist? To what extent are they responsible for the Feast? Did Higuchi send Haruaki down at this time on purpose somehow?

-What is the ‘clear’ condition? How does the looping end? Can a permanent peace be restored so that the feasts will never return?

Above all, there seems to be some deeper underlying mystery around the actual nature of the Feast, the role of Yasumizu, the role of Shin’nai-sama and the yomi, the Saranaga, etc.

I am a little apprehensive about whether most of the storyline will be satisfactorily tied up. I mean, this game has shown me great storytelling so far, but I’ve just played so many Japanese video games where the storytelling, after setting up interesting mysteries or premises, has resolved them in unsatisfying ways – for instance, by leaving gaping plot holes, having moments and dialogues that serve as non sequiturs to the player, by having stupid resolutions out of nowhere, or by having characters spout such vague/grandiose/philosophical explanations about what’s gone on that no meaning is conveyed whatsoever. On the other hand, this story has handled its storytelling superbly so far, so I should just trust that it won’t drop the ball.

The only time I felt like this story has ever slightly dropped the ball so far was by having so many characters taken out unnaturally in the first (Yomi) loop, down to madness, mysterious deaths, etc. It felt like the game wasn’t playing fair or according to its premise (one death per day, one per night). I guess they just wanted to get to the end of the first playthrough quickly, since we humans were never going to be allowed to win it. It also allowed us to play the second playthrough ‘better’, as we were able to anticipate and avert some potential deaths.

Anyway, it’s very much a feature of this game’s story that things don’t play out quite as you’d expect. This is mostly a good thing as it keeps you on your toes.

I don’t believe the wolves’ story that they are really the good guys – and so I believe that, to ultimately ‘win’ the game, we need a conclusion that will involve the wolves’ defeat. Nonetheless, I think it would be very interesting, and quite possible, for the third playthrough to involve Haruaki playing as a wolf. That would suit the playthrough title of ‘Darkness’ and probably give the player illumination about extra aspects of the Feast and how the whole thing works. It would also probably be more interesting than just playing through a third round as a human. It was interesting to have Haruaki as the snake, but I can’t think of another, more interesting human role for him. Just the wolf. And being the wolf would be good as it’d allow him to still make choices, which are a fun part of the game.

It’s hard to say, at this point, which woman he’ll end up with. Both storylines got you fairly invested in your female partner. I would guess that in the third storyline, he might end up getting close to both of them. Maybe at the end, you’ll make a decision that forces you to choose between them? So often in stories with a love triangle, it’s a case of First Girl Wins. And Chiemi is more spunky, more engaging, able to battle wits with Haruaki and keep him in line. She’s a thoroughly likeable character (when she’s not trying to kill you). Yet since we’ve just finished a whole playthrough with Rikako, and Haruaki seemed to get further in his relationship with her than he did with Chiemi – really intending to make a life with her, to the extent that he’d move to Yasumizu permanently – it feels like Rikako is now in the lead and like she should be with Haruaki. After all, we don’t want her to be distant and alone all her life.

I suspect that ultimately, Chiemi will ‘win’, but I now want to see a happy outcome for Rikako as well. More likely – unless we end up with the optimistic possibility of heading off the Feast altogether and having no deaths – Rikako will sacrifice herself and Chiemi will end up with Haruaki. But Haruaki will first have to find a way to save her from the darkness that she’s carrying around.

Conclusion (after playing the whole thing) – spoilers for ending

I wrote, above, how I was a little nervous because so many anime and Japanese video games that set up lots of mysteries end up fumbling the explanation of them and get nonsensical and abstract. I think Raging Loop mostly avoided this fate, and I enjoyed most of the ending of the game. There were some sections, like where they got into mythology or village history, that got a bit slow, but nonetheless, every one of the questions/mysteries I listed above got addressed in some way or other.

There were a few things they set up that were quite clever. My favourite was when Chiemi observed that Haruaki always said ‘eeto’ (umm) before telling a lie. It wasn’t something I’d noticed, but it brought a few things he’d said into question and set us wondering whether Haruaki was truly who he said he was.

I liked the big finale where Haruaki sent each of the villagers off. I felt like each character got acknowledged, and it was a happier ending than I’d expected. I had always imagined that any ending would have had to involve the deaths of numerous characters in the feast first.

Here were four things I thought could have been done just a little better.

1. I’m ambivalent about the way some aspects of the mysteries were supernatural and some weren’t. I probably needed a little more foreshadowing or groundwork to convince me regarding the big reveal relating to the Miguruma. For example, something to suggest the doors were electronic. Or a slip-up or two suggesting human, not divine, work. Or the whole thing with dogs and costumes being less… ridiculous. Haruaki likes to say that if a situation could have a mundane explanation then there probably does, but we are also clearly in a world where the paranormal does exist, so I remain unconvinced…

Also, I think there were a couple of story elements that strongly suggest the mist was supernatural. For instance, exactly what did happen to Chiemi at the end of the ‘Yomi’ loop – and what about our heroes’ failure to reach the Saranaga despite walking for hours toward it? (Incidentally, that’s the only mystery I can think of that did not seem to be resolved in any way.)

2. Chiemi was indeed the canonical ‘winner’, but I felt the story made her less and less likeable as it continued. Obviously, there were good reasons for her to be the way she was, and I enjoyed their happy ending, but for most of the game I didn’t want her to be with Haruaki at all.

3. I liked how Haruaki concluded that there were three main issues he needed to resolve, but I can’t help feeling like they got the order wrong. I think solving the mystery of the loops and stopping them should have been the big finale. That was the biggest threat to Haruaki personally, after all – that was the thing stopping him from escaping the village – and if not dealt with, could basically mean the end of the world. So I think that should have been the last ‘boss’ to overcome.

4. I said that the ending mostly avoided getting nonsensical and abstract, but there were a couple of exceptions. All the stuff about ‘God’ (and the villagers’ view of God) got a bit convoluted, and to be honest, I didn’t really understand it. Likewise, everything related to the sheep. But I suppose expecting a 100% ‘logical’ solution to the matter of looping backwards through dreams is a bit much to ask for.

Anyway, it is obvious from this very long post, but I thoroughly enjoyed this game and found the story very gripping!

Games: Gnosia strategy tips

Playing Gnosia is a learning process. You learn what works and what doesn’t. You learn how certain characters behave, what assumptions to make and how to keep yourself alive. Part of the fun of the game is figuring this stuff out yourself – so I wouldn’t read a guide like this unless you’ve completed a bunch of loops for yourself. There are no spoilers regarding story, but it does ‘spoil’ discoveries you can make for yourself.

First, a caveat: many of these strategies will work better as your stats get higher. When your stats are very low, you can do all the right things and still lose more than you win. But that doesn’t mean the strategy was wrong.

So, here is what I learned from playing the game – which I’ve just finished.

Stats

First, what stats should you focus on?

Every stat is important, so I think it’s best to keep a fairly balanced profile. Early on, you may want to give a little more priority to Charm and Stealth. After all, no point figuring out who the Gnosia is if you’re DEAD, right?

I felt that Intuition was possibly the least useful stat initially. It becomes extremely useful, but you need to invest in it for a long time first. Intuition is the only stat that doesn’t help you to persuade or to protect yourself. It helps you to catch out liars – sometimes. Until the stat gets high, it doesn’t have a great pay-off. While my Intuition was under 15, I think I caught one lie, once, in about 40 loops. Even once my Intuition was over 25, I still experienced plenty of loops where I didn’t catch any lies at all. Nonetheless, being able to catch lies will be very useful.

Bear in mind that if you have a loop with Yuriko in it (I suggest setting the number of players to 15) and you are the Bug, you can visit her at night to re-distribute your stats.

Skills

Once your stats are higher, you can use more skills (at the beginning, you’re limited to basic ones – you can accuse someone or defend them). For example, you can Exaggerate someone’s dodginess, or show Regret when someone accuses you. (You’ll also see when the other characters are increasing in stats – they’ll begin to use new skills as well.)

To be honest… It’s nice to have options. And they do help you to more effectively defend or attack. It is great being able to Retaliate or Regret (both good, useful moves), and not just cop flak! But once your stats are high enough to use these moves, you are probably competent enough that others might support you anyway.

Grovel is a particularly good example. You need a really high Stealth stat to use that. If you are at the point where one of your stats is 35, you’d rarely get put into cold sleep anyway.

Other moves, like ‘Say You’re Human’, ‘Make Small Talk’, and ‘Definite Human/Enemy’, can be handy, but you’ll find that other characters use them often enough so that even if you don’t employ them yourself, you can still benefit from them.

I found the most useful learned skill to be ‘Step Forward’ (requires only 10 Charisma). It’s useful to get everyone to announce their roles on the first round.

Speaking up

When I began the game, I assumed that I was meant to say something every time the ‘X’ button appeared. So I would always be the one to begin a round by attacking or covering someone. (In five rounds of accusations, I’d begin almost all of them.) This is an excellent way to annoy others and get yourself killed.

In fact, it’s mostly better to let others lead and see who they accuse. If you agree (or if the person is just a convenient target), pile on. If you disagree (or don’t have a strong opinion), defend. Sometimes defend people you don’t have a strong opinion on, just to build goodwill with that person. You don’t need to give an opinion on every person whose name comes up. Try to only lead off with accusations when you really think someone is guilty (or if it’s round 5 and nobody has suggested a valid name for others to roll with) and you have reason to think others may support you.

Sometimes, I’d click through all 5 rounds and only chime in with one or two comments.

This is also a good strategy when you have no idea who the Gnosia are. Sometimes others will have picked up on who is sus, so letting the other players set the tone can work for you.

Multiple Engineers (or Doctors)

If you are the Engineer (or Doctor), should you speak up?

In a game with lots of people and several baddies, then yes – odds are very high that someone will step forward to falsely claim the same role as you. (This is actually a good thing. It protects you – a bit – from Gnosia attack.)

In a game with a smaller group, you may want to keep silent, and just use the information you learn for your own benefit. If you are the only Engineer/Doctor to step forward, there’s a good chance the Gnosia will kill you off. (If you are in a loop with no Guardian Angel or other human roles, then you definitely should stay quiet.)

If a fake speaks up on day 1, you should declare yourself. Otherwise, everyone will believe the fake is definitely human – you’ll never be able to accuse them – and you may find yourself with an unwinnable game (or worse).

If you are the true Engineer, and others falsely claim that role, what should you do?

First off, to clarify: if three or four people claim to be the Engineer on the first day, one will be the real Engineer, one probably a Gnosia, and the others AC Followers and/or Bugs. You won’t see two Gnosia claiming the same fake role. (It is, however, possible that no Gnosia have claimed the fake role and all the fakes are AC Followers/Bugs.)

You probably don’t want to immediately go in hard against the fake Engineer(s). While they remain alive, you are (comparatively) safe. Smart Gnosia will not want to kill you and immediately expose their fake Engineer as a fake. Also, keeping that fake Engineer alive might give you useful information, especially if they are the only person you know to be an enemy. See who supports them – see who they exonerate or accuse. It may not help you – but at least it’s something.

You will need to get rid of the fake Engineer(s) eventually, as they are enemies. To target the fake Engineer(s), you are best off waiting a day or two. By that point, you might have built up more credit as the Engineer (e.g. if you’ve correctly identified some people, and they feel like you might therefore be truthful). Also, the fake Engineer(s) might trip up and make errors. Or some of the others might notice them lying. In that case, you’ll be more successful encouraging others to oppose them.

If there are two or three Engineer(s) – and a Bug is out there – you can use your Engineer powers to investigate the other Engineer(s). One of them could well be the Bug. In the unlikely event that there are four Engineers, investigating the other Engineers is a good strategy. If there is no Bug, I wouldn’t bother investigating the fake Engineers. You already know they are your enemies.

If multiple people claim to be an Engineer (or Doctor) on day 2 or 3…

It doesn’t necessarily mean that any of them is the true Engineer. The real Engineer could be dead.

If a fake Engineer (or Doctor) gives a report…

Their verdict may not actually be wrong. They don’t want to be suspicious. After all, if Fake Engineer Setsu accuses Crew Member Chipie of being Gnosia, then boom – Chipie is immediately an enemy and will try to attack Setsu.

If a report turns up someone as ‘human’…

That person could still be an AC Follower or a Bug. So don’t assume they are on your side.

If you are Gnosia, how should you deal with Engineers (and Doctors)?

I feel like not claiming a fake role is usually best. It helps you avoid attention. (Of course, sometimes it’s just fun to try out different strategies and see how they go. :))

If you have a Gnosia buddy who claims the Engineer role, then you don’t want to kill the real Engineer in the night. If you can get the real Engineer put into cold sleep, well and good. But killing them at night will throw doubt on your fake Engineer buddy.

If you are a Gnosia and there is a Bug around, then you should keep all Engineers alive if possible for a little while. It increases the likelihood they’ll get the Bug.

Making fake reports as an Engineer/Doctor

As a Gnosia, it is easier to make reports, because you know who the other Gnosia actually are.

It will behoove you to mostly make correct reports. If you start falsely labelling half the Crew as Gnosia, they will distrust you. But if you make a couple of correct reports and then a false one, you might better get the others on board to trust you. 

Obviously, as a Gnosia, you should never out another Gnosia – unless it is very clear to everyone else already that they are Gnosia, and you don’t want to go down with that ship, so to speak!

By the way, in rounds with a Bug, it’s slightly safer to be a fake Doctor than a fake Engineer. Why? Let’s say the real Engineer examines Shigemichi, who is the Bug, and they disappear that night as a result. Naturally, the person who investigated Shigemichi must be the real Engineer. Then you come in the next day, claiming to have ‘examined’ Sha-Ming. Busted! (This is also a good way to catch a lying Engineer, by the way. :))

Patterns of accusation and defense

This is of course something to look out for. If you know someone is dodgy, and they are always in cahoots with one other character, then that other character might also be dodgy. However, sometimes two characters are just friends, and will stick up for each other for no malicious purpose. Shigemichi, for instance, is a loyal soul and will often steadfastly defend someone he likes.

If it gets to the point where – let’s say – everyone is willing to attack Stella, and only Remnan defends her – and he defends her every time, but only him – then that’s certainly something to watch for.

It can also help, if everyone has piled on to vote for the same person, to look at anyone who has voted differently.

You don’t have to always side with your Gnosia friends in discussions. Sometimes it helps to defend someone they are attacking, or even (if you think it safe or expedient) accusing them. By doing this, if your Gnosia ally is detected, the others may not 100% associate you with them. This strategy is extra true if you’re paired with Gnosia who are bad at lying, like Comet and Shigemichi. Why? Because bad liars are likely to quickly be suspected, and so you don’t want to be associated with them.

Especially in the first round, avoid accusing characters who are high in Charm, like Kukrushka, Yuriko, SQ and Otome. (You can see characters’ stat profiles in the crew data – just scroll down – but this does not become available until you’ve completed a few loops.) Don’t just target these people out of the blue, because it’s likely to backfire on you. To take those characters out, wait until you have reason to believe other characters might support your accusation (you notice others occasionally accusing them, or there is legit reason to suspect them, or there aren’t many suspects left).

If you’re being accused

If the tide starts to turn against you, and several people are accusing you, what can you do? Well, possibly nothing. Avoid making it worse by being too vocal. But the strategy here is ‘Anyone but me’. Your best bet is to find one other person who might also possibly be unpopular. It doesn’t matter if you know for a fact that this person is an innocent human. If one or two people have spoken up against Remnan, then it’s time to loudly voice your suspicions of him!

I have found, via the Load feature, that sometimes very small changes in your strategy – accusing this person rather than that; staying silent here but speaking up there – can change the outcome. But you can’t really know this until after you’ve tried it.

(After you have completed the game once, you get access to a Load feature for subsequent games. This lets you go back to early stages in a game. Let’s say you get frozen on Night 4. You can go back to Morning 4 and try to make a different outcome happen. It’s interesting trying out this feature to see how a round can play out differently if you make one or two different decisions. And sometimes the outcome is really luck-dependent. One time, Chipie got killed by the Gnosia on Night 5. I had to persuade Shige to side with me – and he just wouldn’t, so I got iced. When I reloaded, Shige – by chance – was killed by the Gnosia on Night 5 instead. Chipie, now alive, was willing to be persuaded by me – and we got rid of the last Gnosia and won the loop.)

Playing as a human

Occasionally, you get an easy round – the Gnosia are clearly identifiable from early on. (It helps if the Gnosia are Shigemichi and Comet not very smart). If you’re not so fortunate, here are three possible paths to victory.

The first, and most ideal, is to identify just one person who is Gnosia. If you’re able to do that, see who they defend and who defends them. With any luck, you’ll notice a little clump of them always defending one another.

This works best when there are at least 3 Gnosia so that you can see patterns. Let’s say you realise SQ is Gnosia. You notice that Stella, Sha-Ming and Otome all defend her. Then you notice that when Sha-Ming is accused, Stella and SQ defend him. You have probably (though not 100% certainly) identified the three Gnosia.

If you’re not able to identify one Gnosia with certainty, two other options are:

1. Roll with the majority and see where it takes you. There are loops where this is the only thing you can do. Just notice the trends and get on board. At times, the group will notice things that you didn’t, and you can benefit from their combined insight. One example of this is if you notice multiple high-intuition characters (like Comet, Remnan, Yuriko) initiating attacks on the same character. Could be they’ve noticed a lie, especially if the target of their attack isn’t a very good liar (lower ‘Performance’ stat).

2. Take a punt and choose someone to believe. Let’s say there are two Engineers (say, Setsu and Jonas). You decide to take a chance and stake everything on believing Setsu. At least that gives you intelligence you can work with. You go after Jonas to start with. Now, you might get to the end of the loop and find you were 100% wrong – Setsu was playing you, and as a result you made every incorrect decision possible along the way – but the alternative might be that you never get the info you need in time to make the actual correct moves.

Both of these routes can go badly wrong, of course. But in this game, sometimes you’ve just got to gamble.

Playing as an AC Follower

This is the hardest role to win with. You are trying to protect the Gnosia, but you might never know who any of them are. Once you do figure out who a Gnosia is, it’s likely other characters will also suspect it, and will target them. So if you support the Gnosia, you may go down with the ship. And even Gnosia who figure out who you are may not make much effort to protect you.

You do have one thing going for you: Engineer reports will show you to be human.

For an AC Follower, every possible strategy has flaws. You could step up as a fake Engineer or Doctor… this might divert negative attention from the Gnosia… but since you have no idea who is Crew and who is Gnosia, how will you make accusations in a smart way? I still think the best way forward is to be as undodgy as possible… but just don’t vote for or encourage votes for people you think are Gnosia.

By the way, late game – once your stats are high – this role becomes much easier. If you have very high Intuition and Charisma, you can do the ‘Say You’re Human’ trick, possibly detect a liar, and then persuade others to not vote that person out. It’s well worth playing as an AC Follower for the EXP – you can get a lot. In fact, a quick and easy way to get unreasonable amounts of EXP is to have a loop with 5 people, 1 Gnosia, and you as AC Follower. If you are lucky enough to just not put the Gnosia into cold sleep for two rounds, then you’ll get rewarded.

Playing as a Bug

Try to get the Engineer put into cold sleep if you can do it without being suspicious.

Apart from that, your strategy here can legitimately be ‘Anyone but me’. Aim just to be unsuspicious and to dogpile on whoever the target du jour happens to be.

Assumptions

You can’t assume that someone wanting to collaborate – or who is listed as ‘Friend’ – is on the same side as you.

If a character in a 1:1 scene (i.e. at night) tells you another character is lying, it’s worth considering it as a potential lead. I find this info is more often right than wrong. (But it’s not guaranteed. The person confiding in you could themselves be lying. SQ particularly likes this trick. Stella and Otome have caught me out a couple of times before, too.)

In rare cases, the story will actually straight out tell you that someone is Gnosia etc (for example, Setsu will exchange info with you, or one character will actually declare themselves to be Gnosia). In many cases, I was suspicious (“why would Setsu herself say she was Gnosia? Maybe she’s an AC Follower instead?”) – but did not find the story lied to me. If someone is outright declared, by the story, to be Gnosia, then they are.

On the other hand, sometimes story elements misled me. For example, a particular story element might make me think one character was an ally or enemy. One loop began with Setsu warning me about Yuriko and how dangerous she was… so I assumed Setsu would be on my side against her. Turns out she and Yuriko were both Gnosia. If the game does not explicitly declare someone’s role, then any story element that happens to play (e.g. where two characters are getting along, or are at odds, or are being friendly to you, or are casting aspersions on each other) usually should not be interpreted as a hint. Many story elements play out regardless of characters’ actual roles that loop.

Collaborating

Generally, if someone asks you to collaborate, you should agree.

If a character is listed as your collaborator, they will usually agree with you and defend you in discussions. And it’s assumed you’ll usually agree with them and stick up for them. If your collaborator does oppose you, it’s worth noting that. Why did they suddenly defend that person you just attacked? Maybe they just trust them highly – or maybe they are a Gnosia protecting a secret ally.

Even if you are human and your collaborator is Gnosia, they will still usually support you in discussions (at least until they murder you in your sleep). It’s (usually) a good thing to have anyone who will side with you. Just make sure that if other characters start to suspect them en masse, you don’t continue to defend them to the death!

First round

If you have nothing to go on, it helps to make everyone declare themselves. Identify Engineers, Doctors, Guard Duty, etc. That will take most of the round. Then as soon as anyone accuses anyone else, pile on and agree. What does it matter? You don’t know who’s who anyway.

Good first-round boots are Raqio and Shigemichi, though Stella, Gina and Jonas are also good candidates. By which I mean that most people can usually be prevailed upon to vote for them if you throw them under the bus.

Responding to others’ skills

If someone uses the ‘Say You’re Human’ skill, and you are Gnosia, should you lie and say you’re human, or refuse to answer? I always lie. I’ve noticed that people who refuse to answer, or who stop the process, are treated as suspicious. If you refuse to answer, you’re widely suspected (everyone saw you refuse), whereas if you’re caught lying, perhaps only one or two people will notice. In a big group, you can usually recover from having one or two detractors.

If someone uses the ‘Small Talk’ skill, what should you do? I always join in the small talk, even if I have no reason to. Can’t hurt, right?

Accusing and defending

Let’s be honest; sometimes the decisions characters make in this game aren’t really clear. You might have a round of accusations where 3 people suspect Gina, 4 people suspect Comet – and then everyone votes for Shigemichi, whose name didn’t come up once.

Nonetheless, the number of people speaking up for or against another character is a useful guide as to whether you’ll be successful in opposing that person. You might wait to see that a couple of people distrust someone before piling on with your agreement. Likewise, if only one person defends another, you may not want to get involved. (Unless you know someone is or isn’t dodgy and want to support anyone who feels the same.)

If the tide turns against one character – even if they’re an ally Gnosia – you’re best off turning on them too. No point going down with the ship.

Who to kill?

If you are Gnosia, who should you kill?

You want to choose a candidate who is threatening or high on charm (thus hard to put into cold sleep). I go for characters like Yuriko, Kukrushka, Sha-Ming, SQ, Otome. Yuriko is often my first choice. Characters like Gina, Raqio, Shigemichi – well, they just have to sneeze and everyone will pile on them in a discussion – so there’s less point killing them.

Choose someone whose death will not cast suspicion on you or other Gnosia. So as mentioned, don’t kill the true Engineer if your buddy Gnosia is the one fake Engineer. Killing someone listed as your ‘detractor’ will draw suspicion, so it’s best not to.

If there are several ‘definite human’ characters (proven through Engineer reports, logic, being Guard Duty, etc), target one of them. You need to keep a pool of maybe-not-human people you can legitimately throw suspicion onto. You may be unlucky and the Guardian Angel protects them… but oh well. If there is only one proven human character, and there’s a Guardian Angel, it’s best not to attack them. The Guardian Angel is too likely to defend them.

Sometimes at night, a character will try to get you on side and tell you they noticed [one of your Gnosia buddies] is lying. That poor trusting character would also be a good candidate for assassination. 🙂

Sometimes your Gnosia ally will recommend a particular victim to you. As far as I can tell, their advice is usually reasonable… but not always. You still need to consider the implications for yourself. (I am not sure if heeding their advice will make them more friendly toward you. Actions in this game usually do have consequences, so probably.)

Challenging yourself

It’s fun to experiment with different settings.

Three challenges you can try:

1. Create a paradox that causes the world to implode (‘Revenge of Time Clam’/’Time Clam who leapt’). This occurs when something impossible happens. You need to be the real Engineer or Doctor, and to not speak up when someone else claims the role in round 1. This means everyone will accept that person as the true Engineer/Doctor and all their statements will be taken as gospel truth. However… if some logical paradox does occur – for instance, it becomes clear that this person has been lying – this will cause an unusual and amusing ending to the loop (but no EXP).
2. Try the hardest setting – 6 Gnosia, AC Follower & Bug, no ‘good’ human roles. You will need to make almost every voting decision a correct one right from the beginning. Pull it off, and you’ll get a LOT of EXP. (I have done this twice. Once, I won because Setsu killed Sha-Ming before the game even started, and he turned out to be Gnosia. Cheers!)
3. Try to spin the game out to 15 days – time basically stops and you get lots of EXP. This is hard, but will be easiest if you are Gnosia and keep attacking the Bug over and over. When I did this, I had an ally who never turned on me, while the other two characters were aligned and never turned on each other, and we basically had ‘tied’ votes several times where nobody got put into cold sleep.

This is just for the fun of the achievement and are not required for the story. These latter two will be less frustrating to attempt a) late game when your stats are good and b) if you’re on a second playthrough and have the ‘Load’ feature.

Progressing through the story

(One minor gameplay spoiler (hint) ahead.)

Your goal is to unlock content – basically, to get as much information on your crewmates as possible, though the short scenes you have with them. To do this, it’s best to try a whole bunch of different types of loops, with yourself in different roles, and with different combinations of characters. Some loops may reveal nothing, and others may give you what you need. Some character moments will also grant you new skills.

There are some story points that you need to play across several scenes (for example, you may need to keep one character alive for several nights to successfully complete the story). But don’t worry: the game will not allow you to skip any story-relevant content. If you fail, you will be given another chance in another loop. There’s nothing you can do to permanently ‘lose’ the game.

There is at least one point in the game where some players get stuck and don’t know how to proceed. One hint: Try getting creative with the ‘number of Gnosia’ setting. That will be important…

And there is an epilogue, a true ending. To get this, you must start a new game. Before long, you’ll have the opportunity to run the true ending.

What else?

There’s lots more to say… but that’s enough for now.

Don’t forget, the game itself has some info on how to play, and this gives useful info about basic strategy, how to read information within the game, etc. It’s very handy to revisit this content a few loops after beginning to refresh yourself.

(Random aside: I went through the entire game without realising it was possible to view a backlog of everyone’s most recent comments from discussion. The tutorial near the beginning of the game tells you this, but I’d forgotten, since it’s not really useful until your Logic stat is higher. I couldn’t believe I’d overlooked such a handy little tool for the entire run of my game!)

I’m currently playing the game through for the second time. I found it so addictive and fun that I couldn’t help myself. There are certain events that make more sense on a second playthrough, as well as nifty bonus features like the Load ability I mentioned (where you can replay certain days/nights of a loop and try for a better outcome). I’m finding that all the strategies I’ve mentioned in this post have come in handy, even with my low stats – though I still lose a lot as well as win! At least now, I don’t have to deliberate for as long – I can whip through loops more quickly – and I don’t get ‘tricked’ by false assumptions as often. So it is satisfying. 🙂

Have fun playing!

Games: Gnosia

A game I’m loving at the moment is ’Gnosia’, on the Nintendo Switch.

To quote the game’s description on the eStore: ‘The Gnosia lie. Pretending to be human, they’ll get in close, trick and deceive, and then eliminate one victim at a time…’

You are on a spaceship full of refugees rescued from their own planets. Unfortunately, your ship has been infected by Gnosia – malevolent creatures whose sole goal is to destroy humans. They take the form of your crew members, so your job is to identify which of your buddies is actually an enemy posing as human.

The gameplay is divided into days. Each day, you realise there are still Gnosia on board, and so you have a group discussion where people accuse and defend one another. Ideally, you gain valuable information to help you figure out who is and isn’t human, and try to convince others to get on the same page as you. At the end of this discussion, there is a group vote to put one person into cold sleep – thus disabling them. Ideally, you’re trying to put the Gnosia into cold sleep so they can’t kill people. If Gnosia survive, however, they will kill somebody each night. If the Gnosia eventually outnumber the humans, they win. If the crew disable all Gnosia, they win.

You are stuck in a time-travel loop, where each time you win – or fail – you get reset into a new loop where roles change. Someone who was your closest buddy and defender in one loop might be a sneaky Gnosia in the next. As loops continue, you get story progression, new hurdles, new moves, and events where you learn more about the characters.

This game is a single-player deduction game similar in concept to Mafia or the Werewolf game. (Mafia and Werewolf are party games where some of the players are villains in disguise. As a group, you have to figure out who the villains are and get others to vote for them in a swirl of bluff, accusation, deduction and persuasion.) I was interested to see how such a concept, based so much on social dynamics, was going to work as a single player game. I think it does work, and well.

So how does it work?

Stats

The game has RPG elements, with stats you can use to achieve success in different aspects of the game. For example, if you are high in ‘Charm’, other people will like you, so they’ll be less likely to vote you into cold sleep. If you are high in ‘Intuition’, you are good at telling if other people are lying. If you’re high in ‘Charisma’, you’re good at getting others to agree with you. And so on.

As you grow in certain skills, you also become able to use different commands. You start off mainly just being able to cast doubts or defend someone; as time goes on, you can do things like exaggerate to draw more attention to someone, encourage small talk to defuse tension, seek to collaborate with others, etc.

Just as you develop your own profile (deciding which stats to make higher), other characters all have their own unique stat profile, not to mention personality/behaviours. As you continue playing and getting to know their ‘style’ more, you can get a better handle on how different characters might act in different circumstances. For example, the reckless but intuitive Comet – if she is hurling accusations at several different people, she’s probably just saying whatever comes to her – but if she’s targeting one particular person, it might be that she’s noticed something off about them.

Characters

You have a collection of different personality types on board. I mentioned Comet. Usually bubbly, honest and direct, she’s bad at lying, so if she’s a villain, you might be able to pick up on it. But with a high intuition stat, she’s very good at picking up on liars herself. 

Raqio is intelligent but obnoxious. It’s easy to cast aspersions on Raqio because other people don’t like them much, and even as an ally they’re not someone you can fully count on to have your back. But with their excellent ‘logic’ score, they are good at analysing the information and identifying when someone must (or must not be) human. SQ is bright and ditzy and two-faced. She always wants to collaborate with you – but half the time, it’s because she’s a Gnosia trying to throw you off her trail. She’s got a great ‘performance’ stat, making her great at telling lies. Remnan is an awkward, nervous teen who isn’t good at expressing himself; he’s no fool, but he’s not much good at persuading others with his terrible ‘charisma’ stat. And Yuriko is cold, ruthless and highly competent – a bad person to have as an enemy.

There are 15 characters in all (including you, the player character), each with their own unique qualities and friends and enemies, so as you can see, there’s a lot to think about.

Roles

To make things more interesting and more challenging, there are a number of roles that can be taken. Engineers and Doctors can, each day, research one person to see if they are or aren’t Gnosia. But it’s also possible for a villain character to lie and pretend to be the Engineer or Doctor, and give their own fake report, thus muddying the waters. But even that’s not all bad – if you have two Engineers or two Doctors appear, you can keep an eye on both of them as odds are one of them is a threat. (If you have loops where there are no Engineers or Doctors, it’s extremely difficult to play, as you’ve nothing to go on; you’re mostly guessing targets and hoping you’re right.)

A Guardian Angel is able to choose one person to protect, so that if the Gnosia target that person, they won’t die. People on Guard Duty can prove themselves human so that they won’t be suspected. An AC Follower is a human who has to try to help the Gnosia win. (Unfortunately, Engineer/Doctor reports on them will legitimately show them as human, so it’s hard to identify this person as an enemy.) And a Bug basically wins if they survive to the end of a loop – and they’ll take the whole universe down with them.

Examples of decision-making

This game really makes you think, especially early on as you’re getting familiar with how it all works.

You always have difficult decisions to make. If the group has turned on one of your allies, when do you also give up defending that ally and pile on with the majority? Should you double down on your accusations of someone you just know is Gnosia, at the risk of being too dominant and annoying other people? If you’re Gnosia, should you take out that annoying person who’s always disagreeing with you – or will that be too obvious? 

If you are an Engineer or Doctor, should you declare yourself as such – or will that expose you to threat? Similarly, if you have a way to prove you are definitely human, should you do it? You’ll protect yourself from cold sleep – but it’ll make the Gnosia more likely to target you. (If you are known to be human by all, then the Gnosia can’t trick the others into putting you into cold sleep.)

The AI in this game is really rather good and the characters mostly act in intelligent ways that match their self-interest. It feels like a genuine challenge to outsmart the others, because if you make a mistake, it’s very likely you’ll pay for it.

My progress

I still have quite a bit of story to uncover. In terms of loops, I’m up to the 70s, and I’m getting a lot better at the game. When I was in the 10s and 20s, I was losing 3 out of 4 loops; now I’m winning much more than I’m losing. This is partly because of my boost in stats (you can still get experience points and level up even from loops that you lost), and partly because I’m getting a better sense on how to play well.

That said, there are times when the vote is just inexplicable to me. For example, when someone who was not mentioned in a discussion, and who didn’t seem to stand out, suddenly gets a bunch of votes and is put into cold sleep. (This can also happen to you, and it’s annoying when you can’t figure out why it’s happened!)

As I went through early loops of the game, I repeatedly failed based on wrong assumptions I made. For example, I thought anyone listed as my ‘Friend’ or ‘Collaborator’ must be human – not so! I assumed that if only one person stepped forward as an Engineer, then they must really be the Engineer – but not so. (If that person steps forward on Day 2, then the real Engineer could already be dead/in cold sleep.) I thought that if the words ‘Definite Human’ or ‘Definite Enemy’ popped up on the screen, then the person speaking was definitely human/enemy – but in fact it’s the person they’re speaking about. I learned each of these lessons through Gnosia death and/or cold sleep!

Conclusion

This is a clever game and if you like this type of thing, it’s very addictive. The story is interesting, the characters are likeable, it’s atmospheric, and most of all, it’s an enjoyable challenge. While the gameplay can be somewhat repetitive with all the time travel loops, you are still making progress – unlocking new commands, progressing in the story, etc – so it still feels like you are looping in a purposeful way.

Games: Final Fantasy IX – The characters

In my last post, I talked about this game. Now here are my thoughts on the characters. Mild spoilers in this post.

Zidane

Zidane, the main protagonist, is a good-hearted thief – casual and a bit reckless, but the kind of guy who’ll rush to help anyone in need.

He’ll do anything for his friends, and he has the knack of bringing people together, but apart from that, he has (at first) less personal stake in the adventure compared with the likes of Dagger, Freya, Vivi, etc, who have a more intense personal motivation.  (Of course, he lives in this world and therefore would not want it to be destroyed, but that could be said of every inhabitant of Gaia.)  This is probably helpful, as when things go wrong, he’s the one best able to keep a constructive mentality of ‘okay guys, what do we try next?’ rather than sinking into despair. For the most part, he’s an upbeat and friendly character – very likeable.

Later in the game, it turns out that he does in fact have a personal stake in this adventure and a backstory that is – well, rather unexpected, to say the least – but does tie him more closely to the villains and what they’re trying to do.

Zidane fights with swords and daggers. When I use Zidane, 90% of the time I’m just using his default attack – no thought required. It’s not bad to have at least one character like this as it keeps things moving quickly. Most of his special moves have proven kind of crappy, except when he’s in Trance. That said, he has lots of passive abilities to equip in the background. He’s one of my stronger characters and, being the main character, is always one of the highest-levelled characters.

Steiner

Steiner is a knight sworn to serve the queen and princess of Alexandria. One of the older (human) characters in the game, he’s self-righteous, slow to catch on, and not very flexible in his thinking. He’ll shout at anyone he deems disrespectful or unworthy. But he’s very devoted to the princess and to protecting Alexandria, and over time this makes him an ally well worth having.

Steiner was actually my favourite team member, not just for his humour, but for his strength in battle. He was my most powerful character (well, others could do more damage with certain moves, but only if they used up vast amounts of MP; Steiner could do respectable damage with just his default sword attack). When fighting alongside Vivi, he can do magical sword attacks, which are even better.

Dagger

What a stupid name Dagger is – I should have changed that default suggestion, really… Anyway.  Dagger is the pseudonym of Princess Garnet, chosen to help her avoid detection while she was undercover.  Dagger goes through a pretty rough time of it in this story.  At the beginning, she is kidnapped – sort of – and this is the least traumatic thing that happens to her.

Later, she has actual royal responsibilities that she basically ignores to go off voyaging with Zidane and co. I mean, I get that Zidane’s quest is pretty darn important – he’ll need to succeed or the whole world is at threat – but she doesn’t frame it as ‘my duty as a royal is to take out this threat so my people can live in peace’ but as ‘I want to stay with you guys a bit longer’.

Dagger is not a great asset in the first half of the game – she’s useful for healing, which is valuable, but that’s about all she brings to the table.  It’s later that she gains abilities that will also make her competent in battle – too bad they take so darn long to fire off.  She can do status effects on enemies with her white magic, but in my experience, magic that could do anything useful to disable an opponent will miss 99% of the time.

Quina

I can’t say Quina’s name aloud without saying it as ‘Quinoa’.  Quinoa is a blue mage who joins your party so s/he can travel around the world and eat new things.  That’s basically his/her entire character motivation.  (By the way, this s/he-ing is done by the characters in-game as well.  It’s not clear if Quinoa has a gender or if so, what it is.)

So Quinoa is entertaining enough but not really a major player from a story perspective. S/he is really just there to chip in comments in broken English about eating.  Still, s/he is a useful ally.  Quinoa’s main schtick is eating monsters to inherit their abilities. I found many of these abilities to be so-so (as with Dagger’s status-causing magic, any ability that sounds really cool and useful is 100% guaranteed to miss) but the novelty of it was fun.

Freya

A knight of Burmecia, Freya becomes involved in the story when her people are targeted and attacked.  As a character, she’s one of the least interesting and least developed. I can’t even think of how to describe her. She’s somewhat formal, cares about doing her duty, wishes to be with her lost love. But as one of the more dignified and less comical characters, she doesn’t stand out as much as some of the others. It’s a shame, because near the beginning of the game, she was more relevant and did get character time.

She was useful early game, and I like some of her abilities – she can cast Auto-Regen on all teammates, for instance. But I found her to be one of the weaker characters, with slightly fewer perks. It was not until I reached the end game and failed to beat the last boss, that I went off and killed dozens of random dragons. (Freya has a move that becomes stronger based on how many dragons your team has defeated.) This was tedious but effective, and Freya became my best attacker as a result. 

Eiko

Eiko is a young girl who is the last of her people – a summoner who can use eidolons (a kind of powerful monster/spirit). As Dagger shares this skill with her, Eiko is able to guide her and help her to use her powers.  

Eiko is small but forceful. I found it amusing that when I took the non-magic users off to Oeilvert, she became the party leader in their absence, with Dagger, Quina and Vivi trotting obediently after her.  

The trouble is that as Eiko and Dagger are both white mages with a specialty of a) summoning and b) using curative/protective magic, there’s rarely an incentive to keep both Eiko and Dagger on the same team. One of them is gonna get short shrift. In my case, I used Dagger more in the second half of the game, because she was a more plot-important character. It wasn’t until near the end when I realised that Eiko is actually way more useful – her support magic is better and she can use Holy, which is quicker and more powerful than any of the eidolons were.

Vivi

Vivi is mainly involved in this adventure because he is a black mage, and the bad guys in this game are using black mages as puppets, or slaves, to carry out their evil plans. He wants to find out why they’re involved, where they came from, etc. Through the game, his exact motivations change slightly, but they are always very much connected with the black mages’ fate. 

As a character, Vivi is sympathetic both because of his personality (meek, timid and earnest), and because he is misunderstood. Everyone who sees him immediately assumes he’s an evil killer, even though he’s doing his best to help people.

Vivi is the only character who can use the vast range of offensive magic that exists.  (Steiner can also borrow these abilities if Vivi is with him.)  As such, he’s a very useful member of the team. The only problem is his use of MP – the more powerful the spells he uses, the more quickly he eats through that not-easy-to-renew resource.

Amarant

Amarant is a thug-for-hire who was hired to go after Zidane’s party. After Zidane defeated him, he just sort of tagged along because he’s intrigued by Zidane’s way of thinking. 

Amarant had potential to be a more interesting character. I quite like the reluctant ally trope – the guy you wouldn’t expect to be on your side – the belligerent, proud guy who isn’t used to being treated with kindness.  His main problem was that he came out of nowhere (backstory? reason for being involved? reason for having such a massive chip on his shoulder?) and when his grouchy personality manifests itself suddenly, it often feels out of the blue (like at Ipsen Castle) – he was being a normal ally up to that point, so what suddenly flipped his switch?

Basically, if things felt a bit more established and less random with him, I’d have liked him more. As it was, he still brought something different to the team, both in personality and in battle.

As a member of your party, he’s a decent all-rounder. He has some handy support moves, like the ability to restore MP, and is a decent attacker. He’s quite versatile.

So, those are the main characters and party members you use during the game. There’s not one character I dislike – even the less plot-essential ones, like Quinoa, are good for a laugh.

Games: Final Fantasy IX

Final Fantasy IX (9) is a fantasy role playing game that came out in – yikes – 2000. I was still in high school when this came out!

The story centres around Zidane, part of a group of thieves charged with kidnapping Garnet, the princess of Alexandria. Unbeknownst to them, Garnet wants to be kidnapped and is seeking a way to escape her kingdom. She is worried the kingdom is facing danger, and she wants to seek help.

While escorting Garnet from Alexandria, two others get carried along with the group – Steiner, a self-righteous and highly strung guard, trying to protect Garnet (he can’t quite grasp that she is leaving voluntarily) and Vivi, a young black mage with surprisingly strong powers.

Soon you’ll find that the land is, indeed, under threat, and you’ll assemble a motley crew of teammates to fight against ever-more-fearful odds.

Thoughts

It’s been years since I played any Final Fantasy game. I chose Final Fantasy IX because I knew nothing about the story, but it was highly regarded and people said the characters were a strong point.  I’d have to agree.  I like all the characters in this game.

Before this, the only Final Fantasy game I played all the way through was Final Fantasy VIII. I played that one a few times and really liked it, but one striking difference I notice between this FF (and I guess, most FF games) and FFVIII is the diversity of the characters.

In FFFVIII, all the main characters are human teenage graduates of a military academy. They can all use similar magic and abilities – in many ways, they’re quite interchangeable – and they come from similar backgrounds. In Final Fantasy IX (and, I think, most FF games), characters come from a variety of different backgrounds, countries, races, etc.  Each character has a particular class that affects what abilities they can learn and what they’re good at. Vivi, as a black mage, is great at doling out offensive magic; Garnet, a white mage, has support/healing spells; Zidane, a thief, can steal but is also pretty good with physical attacks – and so on. 

I like how the game gives each character a decent, unique motivation to be involved in the story. (Well, Quina’s reason is a bit underwhelming, but so long as s/he is there supporting my team, I’m not gonna nitpick.)  If we compare Zidane, Garnet, Steiner, Freya and Vivi, in some ways main character Zidane actually has the *least* personal motivation to participate (at least in the beginning). He’s more of a rallying point character – someone who can bring others together – and once they’re together, he wants to fight to protect his friends and help people.

I also like that each character has certain things happen to them or affect them throughout; it isn’t just Zidane’s story. It’s just as much Garnet’s story, and characters like Vivi and Steiner also get a good amount of ‘screen time’ and some story development.

The only minor thing I don’t like about the characters is some of the designs, especially for the lead characters. Zidane just doesn’t look that good, and Garnet’s head is distractingly large for her body.

Gameplay

The game is quite story-driven, with lots of cutscenes and bits of dialogue along the way. You visit lots of different places in the game word – and later in the game pick up faster modes of transportation that even allow you to visit new continents and… other places.

Most of the gameplay is made up of battles – both the ‘random encounter’ type and those required to drive the story forward. Battles are turn-based, which I personally like. 

The only slight nitpick is that the timing of it is sometimes a little odd. You can be assigning commands ages before your character actually gets to enact them. You might, for example, assign Eiko to do a ‘Cura’ spell on Vivi – and then two other characters and three enemies will have their move first – so that by the time Eiko finally gets to do the Cura, Vivi is long dead. 

As I mentioned, each character is quite different in the moves they can learn, which makes it fun to keep mixing up your team. You’ll need to constantly upgrade your characters’ gear and weapons, and the things you equip can teach them different skills and attacks.

Your characters can also, occasionally, go into a ‘Trance’, where they have access to much more powerful moves. However, Trance is usually a bit of a dud, because you can’t control when it activates. It might kick in when you’re fighting a super weak monster just seconds before reaching the final boss – which means it won’t then be usable during the boss battle. Or perhaps you’ve hit the ‘Flee’ command, and then suddenly one of your characters goes into a Trance that will never be used.

Level grinding

in FF9 I had to do a lot of random monster battling just to build my money. There were so many weapon and accessory upgrades, and I was constantly short of money.  I quite enjoyed the grinding, so it wasn’t a hardship, but still…

I think for every couple of hours spent progressing in the story, I would also spend a couple of hours just getting into random pointless battles to increase my level, AP and/or cash supply.  As I went into the final dungeon, I felt quite smug. After all, I’d won all the other boss battles without too much trouble, thanks to my levelling up – and I was really prepared for this one! I’d done so much extra grinding before entering the final dungeon – my main character was now at L53, and the others about L40 – and I’d got all the best gear in the shops. I was very ready.  

Except… no. My characters were still way underpowered for the final boss. Looking up advice, people were saying that your team’s level should be at least in the high 50s…  

Anyway, basically, I don’t think you should have to grind so far beyond what the actual story play requires.  A bit extra, sure, but I had been doing miscellaneous grinding the whole way through the game. 

(The people giving end-battle advice were also suggesting all the moves that would be most useful.  Thievery. Shock. Flare. Frog Drop. I didn’t have any of them!

I realise now also that there were also lots of mini games and side quests that I never did because I never figured out they existed.  Chocobos, for instance. Where was the tip-off that I could do something with chocobos?… I went the whole game without one. You really could not know how to do this stuff if you didn’t have a guide constantly open in front of you…)

Other thoughts (minor story spoilers)

This was a really fun RPG. The story, atmosphere and game world, characters and gameplay were all enjoyable to experience.

This is one of those games where the stakes are incredibly high and extremely bad things happen all the time, to the point where, say, a genocide is just one of those things – more or less forgiven and forgotten a few hours later.

The bad guy(s) are portrayed as so ludicrously overpowered that for the heroes to conceive of opposing them seems laughable.  If you have a bad guy who can basically open up the sky and instantaneously firebomb/wipe out an entire city in seconds, what are you, some dude with a sword, gonna do?

However, as Zidane himself might tell you, if you just keep trying, things might change and you might find a way to succeed.

The story isn’t hard to follow for the most part, although it gets a bit weirder toward the end, with more elements that do not make sense and characters spouting nonsense. Happily, we have Zidane as protagonist, and Zidane responds to every unintelligible statement with “What the heck are you talking about?” which basically is the player’s voice.

I can see why this game is a favourite of so many, and I think I’ll go ahead and try another Final Fantasy game now… so I’ve just bought the (original) Final Fantasy VII. Thought I’d better get in before the re-make came out and replaced it – I prefer games without voice acting.