Spoilers for The Silver Case and Flower, Sun & Rain within.

I'd really like to see where I stand on this game in a few months' time, because based on initial impressions, I don't know if I've ever been so frustrated by a game I still, in part, loved in my life. I absolutely trust Grasshopper and their vision in the Kill the Past era: The Silver Case, killer7 and most especially Flower, Sun & Rain stand as some of my favorite games of all time; games which I feel explore ludonarrative devices dealing with and exploiting intentional monotony and hazy obtuseness in ways really only the prime works of Suda51 could. Miraculously, I think The Silver Case pretty much immediately nails this right out of the gate, with an always-morphing aesthetic and narrative that twists meaningfully from the profound to the absurd (and likely somewhere inbetween) to result in a Y2K powerhouse which screams "love" at the heart of a cold and dying world. Flower, Sun & Rain completes this cycle by completely folding its predecessor inside out - exploring a lush paradise with a Man Behind the Curtains, only to pull away the sheets and reveal a final act about atonement with oneself and securing the ability to move on and live in spite and because of ones past. So here sits The 25th Ward, revived from the clutches of pre-smartphone mobile obscurity, brought to new life in a way that overshadowed the tremendous news of its predecessors' localization. Suda in fact claimed that it was essentially like recieving a new game instead. Admittedly, I have some skepticism about the direction his writing has gone since the turn of the decade. It seems the Western journalist flanderizaiton of Suda's works as being defined as loudly quirky and crass has begun to infect his works - while I find titles like No More Heroes fun enough, there's definitely a substance and pathos to his early works missing in his 2010s catalogue. Knowing that this is a game he's only one-third responsible for writing, and the final chapters he wrote nearly twelve years after the original five - I should've seen the signs coming.

The base concept of 25th Ward is made pretty clear from the start: three cases, three protagonists and their respective demons to face and pasts to kill. Suda's Correctness seeks to essentially boil down the previous Transmitter chapters to its basic elements - a he-said she-said rugged cop story leading an emotional climax as the truth is revealed about a new Kamui Uehara. However, where Transmitter soared in its psychological examination of Kusabi and Sumio, Correctness never quite gets there, giving us a third-person lens to view Shiroyabu through that never ultimately reaches any emotional connection - much less Kuroyanagi, who's ultimately given no depth or focus beyond her relation to the narrative blueprint. Where Silver Case's HC Unit all felt like meaningful additions to the cast with their own morals and agencies, the Correctness side casts feels at best like narrative assets and at worst filler text despots. No one has any focus here, and the sudden come-and-go of Sumio and Kusabi feel aimless and purposeless. And really, even if the events aren't literally 1:1, what's being said here that wasn't already covered with heart in the previous titles? What does 25th Ward say about self-actualization and reclamation despite ever-encroaching nonindvidualism in urban dystopia with any more, or hell, equal heart than Silver Case did? I'll touch upon the ending later, but I really do not understand why this didn't end with Case 6, which at least wraps up the narrative purpose of Shiroyabu's story on a meaningful note. Emotionless and ultimately indepdent to the game's actual heart, but purposeful within the context of Correctness itself.

Outright, Match Maker is a fucking mess. This is the mobile-phone tier writing that I should've been worried about, and despite initially really clicking with its core cast (certainly more cohesive than Correctness), my friend group and I ultimately found ourselves asking what the point of it as an addition to the game even was. You could make the argument that this is a story about a haunted man in search of himself while also trying to protect his young protege from something he doesn't understand, but again, that's The Silver Case. That's already been done, and with characters that served as more than mob-story stand-ins and quip dispensers. In order to stir things up and perhaps maintain interest, elements of both Correctness and Placebo are interjected throughout Match Maker, but to neither the benefit or even the progression of either Match Maker or those respective cases. There is no purpose to Morishima's or Kuroyanagi's parts in Match Maker. The story begins with promise but ends with a nothing-burger of a plot revolving around yet another Kamui replica in the works (which ultimately as a plot point does nothing that Shiroyabu's arc somehow doesn't do better) and a relationship between this Kamui and the protagonist which ultimately goes no deeper than quippy workplace banter. The single most frustrating story in Kill the Past.

I want to save the third of this game I loved the most for last, because I know this has come off largely negative so far but there is a good deal to be loved about this game. I think when the art direction actually serves the story, which it does more often than not, it's striking. The minimalism is played to even stronger effect here, which really benefits the sterile, lifeless 25th Ward particularly in Correctness. I don't feel this is effectively handled as well in Match Maker, but that entire scenario could be dumped with nothing of value lost. Where the game truly shines artistically is in its character art and soundtrack remixes by Akira Yamaoka: both serve to bring out the feral heartbeat and terror that lies underneath the surface of this post-urban death-land in such striking and significant ways. These elements allow those moments of true beauty, of color and light, to truly shine when the covers are pulled back and the life truly brought to the forefront.

This is as good a segue as any into Placebo, where I'm happy to say 25th Ward earns its wings and becomes a genuinely worthwhile experience. By this point in the series, Sumio's tenure as overarching protagonist has really come and gone, and Morishima, perhaps the character most emblematic of the themes of Kill the Past of all, is given his due spotlight. Here, all of the purpose and heart of 25th Ward is afforded - its lengthy and profound statements about the bustle of the online post-apocalypse, of camgirls and AI and lonely nobodies; of the essence of "humanity" and what it means to live and take a life. How we define friendship, how we define relationships - perversion, taboo, death wishes and moments of clarity. If 25th Ward exists to do anything, it's to show Tokio Morishima that life is beautiful, and that his is one worth living even in spite of all the danger. It's to give Suda's best character a little closure, and to pass the torch on. To give him some rest. And shit. Suda didn't write this one.

... And I'd like to say that final epilogue, where all of the themes are explored and the loose ends meaningfully left to be closed are closed up. And yet - "blackout". I certainly don't mind the abstract nature of choice here in concept - I find some of the potential answers humorous, some thought-provoking, but none meaningful. Nothing here actually carries any substance. And if this was Suda's attempt at a "commentary" on the illusion of choice, that wasn't a meaningful theme explored in the series prior. Kill the Past has always been a story about triumph and assertion of freedom in the face of totalitarianism and oppression. I don't need that spoonfed to me through psuedointellectual garble meant to close out a game well closed-out already. And hey, Suda, if it's just meant to be an inside joke, then give me the epilogue scene after one, or even a handful of these instead of wasting my time going through 100 of them. The monotony was meaningful in the first two games and served a genuine purpose from a game design and narrative perspective. If you're a fan of Twin Peaks: The Return like the ending suggests, maybe a rewatch to see how it's really done is in order. That David Lynch guy seems to know what he's doing.