Feels weird to have such a sour aftertaste after loving most of Penacony, but man, 2.2 is the first time since Belobog I've felt like the game just makes no effort to set itself apart from its inspirations in certain regards.
There's only so much they can do with the game's structure and the allotted screentime characters can have, but with how much Robin and Sunday feel like they were just meant to fit moulds necessary for the story, I'd rather they just keep it at that and give its genuinely unique characters more time to shine, because I truly could not care less for the time spent on them here.
Whether intentional or not is hard to say when there's countless examples of settings like Penacony, but especially considering the dynamic of Sunday and Robin, it reminds me a loooooot of Caligula Effect 2.
The problem here is that, Caligula Effect 2 is one of my favorite stories ever that spends approximately 25 hours on being an absolutely fantastic commentary about the pressure of society's expectations (especially through the pedestal idols are unwillingly placed on) and every character uses its premise so incredibly beautifully and uniquely to truly make that emotional core of it hit.
Now ofcourse, Star Rail couldn't and shouldn't have that amount of depth with its structure as I mentioned before - but it's a bit hard to set it apart when it's so similar and yet utterly shallow in comparison. Any character development Robin gets is essentially a switch getting flipped off-screen that makes her go "hm, maybe the Family isn't so pristine actually!" and that's about it - but you can't really expect much more when they've hardly given her an hour of screentime. Her popularity makes it clear I'm definitely in the minority in needing more substance to really appreciate a character though, and that's fine. I'm glad there's still plenty of people who can appreciate her for what she has to offer.
Sunday is.. okay. He's nothing you probably haven't seen before but he's exactly what the story needed so it works. I'm not too well-versed on HI3 but I appreciate how he's intended to parallel Kevin as a nod to Acheron, so there's that atleast.
So yeah, I'm essentially at the crossroads where I wish these characters were more than they are but also can't really see a way for that to be possible, which is a weird feeling. They couldn't ever match up to my expectations and if they did get more screentime without setting themselves apart from their current roles in any unique way it'd probably just lower my appreciation of this arc further so I guess I'm just fated to feel unsatisfied about them, unfortunately.
It's just hard to say I truly love Penacony even though I had a blast with 2.0 and 2.1 when its core at the climax makes me feel.. nothing. Pretty much everything they got in this patch was exactly as I expected it would be and I groaned through whatever screentime they got as a result.
Luckily, it's not all bad though! There's plenty of characters that use the dream world setting really well. Gallagher and.. Misha, of all characters (surprisingly!) were the highlight of the patch for me by tugging at the heartstrings unexpectedly and I love that Firefly of all characters challenges Sunday's nihilistic, haughty perspective of humanity needing Penacony to live the most considering she's just about the prime example of it. But no, despite her circumstances, she's going to use whatever limited time she has to truly live and continues to cement herself as the absolute best Penacony has to offer, and I can't wait for her to continue to carry the absolute fuck out of it when the epilogue drops.
It just sucks to have to look towards the smaller parts of this patch for me to be able to appreciate it, and I can only hope having her in the spotlight makes me feel less conflicted about it all by the time it wraps up.
There's only so much they can do with the game's structure and the allotted screentime characters can have, but with how much Robin and Sunday feel like they were just meant to fit moulds necessary for the story, I'd rather they just keep it at that and give its genuinely unique characters more time to shine, because I truly could not care less for the time spent on them here.
Whether intentional or not is hard to say when there's countless examples of settings like Penacony, but especially considering the dynamic of Sunday and Robin, it reminds me a loooooot of Caligula Effect 2.
The problem here is that, Caligula Effect 2 is one of my favorite stories ever that spends approximately 25 hours on being an absolutely fantastic commentary about the pressure of society's expectations (especially through the pedestal idols are unwillingly placed on) and every character uses its premise so incredibly beautifully and uniquely to truly make that emotional core of it hit.
Now ofcourse, Star Rail couldn't and shouldn't have that amount of depth with its structure as I mentioned before - but it's a bit hard to set it apart when it's so similar and yet utterly shallow in comparison. Any character development Robin gets is essentially a switch getting flipped off-screen that makes her go "hm, maybe the Family isn't so pristine actually!" and that's about it - but you can't really expect much more when they've hardly given her an hour of screentime. Her popularity makes it clear I'm definitely in the minority in needing more substance to really appreciate a character though, and that's fine. I'm glad there's still plenty of people who can appreciate her for what she has to offer.
Sunday is.. okay. He's nothing you probably haven't seen before but he's exactly what the story needed so it works. I'm not too well-versed on HI3 but I appreciate how he's intended to parallel Kevin as a nod to Acheron, so there's that atleast.
So yeah, I'm essentially at the crossroads where I wish these characters were more than they are but also can't really see a way for that to be possible, which is a weird feeling. They couldn't ever match up to my expectations and if they did get more screentime without setting themselves apart from their current roles in any unique way it'd probably just lower my appreciation of this arc further so I guess I'm just fated to feel unsatisfied about them, unfortunately.
It's just hard to say I truly love Penacony even though I had a blast with 2.0 and 2.1 when its core at the climax makes me feel.. nothing. Pretty much everything they got in this patch was exactly as I expected it would be and I groaned through whatever screentime they got as a result.
Luckily, it's not all bad though! There's plenty of characters that use the dream world setting really well. Gallagher and.. Misha, of all characters (surprisingly!) were the highlight of the patch for me by tugging at the heartstrings unexpectedly and I love that Firefly of all characters challenges Sunday's nihilistic, haughty perspective of humanity needing Penacony to live the most considering she's just about the prime example of it. But no, despite her circumstances, she's going to use whatever limited time she has to truly live and continues to cement herself as the absolute best Penacony has to offer, and I can't wait for her to continue to carry the absolute fuck out of it when the epilogue drops.
It just sucks to have to look towards the smaller parts of this patch for me to be able to appreciate it, and I can only hope having her in the spotlight makes me feel less conflicted about it all by the time it wraps up.
2 Comments
@garie Glad to hear I'm not alone in feeling this way as well! I'll do my best to not delve into 2.2 details in that case but yeah I think that's just due to how they've planned the story out, unfortunately. There's only so much they could do when Robin's spent the last two patches "dead" and I was hoping there'd be something here at least but.. yeah, I got nothing. I feel like this would've been the perfect place for some interesting tension between the two but instead it feels more like she exists solely to flesh his ideology out by contrasting it and nothing more which is honestly mind-boggling when everything about this patch felt like it was finally her time to shine. Super disappointing lack of agency which is such a shame because they've proven plenty of times they can do a lot better than this.
garie
14 days ago