Learning to Love Umineko When They Cry

After 5 months and 137 hours, I now have fully experienced the story of Umineko: When They Cry. It’s a rollercoaster of feeling I can’t stop thinking on, but coyness from others suggesting why it’s so special turned me off and made me unnecessarily hostile. I want to reverse that view and try to explain what makes Umineko so special without giving away any major elements beyond what can be easily assumed.

At first, I wasn’t sure how much I’d get into it. I liked the plot of Higurashi, but outside of two characters aren’t super passionate for it nowadays. The 150+ hour length seemed like an insane commitment. And I worried about how the wackier anime quirks would clash with long dramatic storytelling. But I do enjoy stories about grand, gradually unfolding world defining mysteries, so with that and the enthusiasm of many friends in mind, I set to reading Umineko throughout the first half of 2024. And am I glad I did because the further in I got the more I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Umineko presents as a mystery, building and challenging in exciting, intricate ways that'll keep the mind busy with every new Episode finished, but beyond that Umineko is about GETTING people. Comprehending worldviews. Figuring out a line of thinking that inspires every member of its cast to believe what they want to believe. It is a story that asks to engage with storytelling and comprehension. What inspires us, what makes us believe in fiction, what do we see in those who create, what do creators seek to give back to the world, what hurt goes into creation? What weight IS our life experiences?

But themes can mean little without engaging characters to explore and embody these dynamics and Umineko puts remarkable work to answer the call. Not just from the number of characters introduced, but how numerous scattered ideas combine into a defined storytelling whole.

Umineko has one of my favorite ensemble casts I’ve experienced in anything. The more you read, the more it feels like you piece together an extensive headspace for every major character, and Umineko presents these characters’ distinct viewpoints on any circumstance as a means to actively move the plot forward and meaningfully debate the best course of action in increasingly more dire and paranoid situations. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a big fan of overly reactive casts, where perspective feels irrelevant to plot events. Umineko is the opposite of this. It’s a cast where it feels like ANYONE can alter the narrative trajectory, exciting me in how strong personalities can twist. So many in the cast, particularly of the Ushiromiya Family, have intriguing shades of gray to their personalities, rich inner lives you can map out much of in your head, incredible voice actors or certain specific life philosophies it’s interesting to see pushed by how the plot clashes these characters together.

In this regard, Umineko is able to have its cake and eat it too with including cackling anime girls. New major introductions on top of the huge starting cast come packed with new intriguing life paths to contrast against our built-up view of the story, the protagonist's view of the story and how we've grown to see the search for the truth, in addition to fun new designs.

On the design front, while some certainly raise eyebrows glaring at Gaap whose design is exceptionally distracting in should be serious scenes, others work to purpose in addition to being fashionable. Looking at the four mother characters (Kyrie, Natsuhi, Eva and Rosa), the design of each adheres to a distinct design sensibility that communicates much in who they are and how they want the world to see them. The addition of adult characters with extensive histories allows for greater opportunity than was possible in Higurashi to have designs able to express more personality from each individual character.

Umineko exists as an eight-episode odyssey, so not knowing who in its titanic cast would get spotlight in any particular episode had me continuously excited to read more. Over 100 hours in I was still given enough to be curious for roles of many supporting cast members to pay off and to a certain extent nearly all of them genuinely do at some point or another. There’s a goal for the series and goals for each Episode; most major characters either undergo substantial arcs or interesting tests of character pushing their strong personalities, emphasizing their ability to impact the narrative and the layers of personality they struggle with. It truly feels like The Unknown Journey once one episode ends and you decide to see what could possibly be in store for the next one. I never had any way of knowing for sure and that was tantalizing; perhaps even moreso if going in fully blind.

With that in mind, a spoiler-free dive into what makes Umineko's most important players so special!

The belle of the ball is of course, Beatrice the Golden Witch; given immeasurable sad love by fans, yet over the top maniacal and macabre, boasting wacky expressions that appeared impossible to take seriously. Before reading, I found that contrast of fans' feelings toward her with that attitude and those goofy expressions too heavy. It didn't seem like those two sides of her would be able to mesh properly.

And then I heard her start talking.

THIS was the moment I knew she, and Umineko as a whole, would stick me to at least some extent. Her voice actress, Sayaka Ohara, doesn’t just read the lines like any other character: she EXPRESSES them playing a gleefully assertive witch to where you can almost hear her smiling. The breathiness to her tone, boisterous sense of pride, panickedness if she slips up, and going all out for name calling and laughs are quirks conveyed beyond the words on page. Once it seemed as if she was quickly inhaling through her nose as if taken aback during a line. She manages that incredible combination of being intoxicating whenever she talks to keep wanting to hear her say more things, and getting on your nerves just enough to want to see her get knocked down several pegs in the future: a delicate combination for a villain in a story to embody.

Backing this is a gorgeously drawn character design. The dress gives her a level of dignity while embodying a bird, a flower and a Disney Princess (particularly Cinderella with the style of dress, hair and choker and Belle with the running Flower motif to her). And having such a bold, bountiful design perfectly fits Beatrice's character. She WANTS to be the first thing that pops in your head when thinking about Umineko, and as you keep reading it you get to see that thought expressed and stretched in numerous heart-turning ways.

As Umineko goes on, Ohara’s voice performance becomes more nuanced as you start seeing more “forms” of this character, including one that made me teary, but you still keep wondering “how did she end like this at the start” and Umineko mostly understands the value of that answer. For what reason she takes on her role to drive the conflict, and the answer the protagonist seeks to prove as the heart of her being kept me engaged, and Ohara truly gave it her all to give her so much expression and personality and become one of my favorite VO performances EVER.

Said protagonist, Battler Ushiromiya, also grew on me a lot. He starts out in a VERY questionable place with awful tone-deaf jokes, but Umineko recognizes just how far he should grow as a person and the story moves accordingly to how well he understands the rules of the overarching game. Daisuke Ono’s performance melds cocky youthful energy and gentle compassion seamlessly. Battler is a snarky, headstrong ego with a lot of grins and swagger and showmanship but with truly genuine care for his family, a strong sense of justice and an increasingly growing ability to understand the gravity of situations, nailing the game face when the chips are down. Jokes notwithstanding that mix of attitude and compassion makes it exciting to see what kind of crazy rabbit hat trick he'll try to decipher and also sad to see when he's back into a corner from horrific circumstances around him. Ono's able to sound genuinely depressed when the time calls for it.

As the story’s lead, Umineko has a lot of fun playing with his comprehension of the story in relation with our own; it examines the dichotomy of a pov character through multiple convergences and divergences from the audience in his journey to learn the truth of Umineko's mysteries. He has bite to him, not just mocking his opponents; but when pushed, looking down on them, belittling them and not standing for anyone’s nonsense. As he and Beatrice are very sassy and headstrong, their numerous debates lead into many fun, characterful and occasionally depressing back and forths. It's one of the main elements people who haven't played Umineko are probably aware of it. You could watch the two do something exceptionally mundane and their incredible chemistry and voice actors would make it feel both important and entertaining.

What is exactly is Ushiromiya Battler’s purpose FOR this narrative becomes increasingly dissected the further in you get. By the final episode, his role and comprehension of expression feels wholly different from the start, and we appreciably get to SEE all of it play out onscreen. No dumb timeskip bullshit.

The last character I want to specifically point at is Ange.
Rocking a design blending cool and cute, she is a young girl who struggles to get close to anyone, because of her powers, status, and cripplingly low self-esteem that makes her feel everything is her responsibility. Given the circumstances Ange starts in, it’s understandable she’d be closed off and emotionally guarded but it nonetheless makes it satisfying when you persevere with her and believe she can build morale to smile again. And that doesn’t stop her spitting some killer snark! Ange is Umineko’s fulcrum. To believe in Umineko is to believe in Ange. Ryukishi has many inspiring, heartfelt messages to convey with her malleable psyche in a deeply personal plot, leading to a uniquely compelling coming-of-age drama. Ange’s heart is her guiding key: will you help her find it?

I won’t go any further into specific characters, but I will say: how Umineko depicts parenthood across its wide cast substantially provided for what makes Umineko resonant for me. That was an element I had zero expectations for its handling going on, but I was shocked how thorough issues regarding being a parent and the tumultuous, messy outcomes of marriage in Japanese society at this time are so thoroughly depicted. It can be conflicting and gut-wrenching at times, but it never fails to believe empathy can exist.

Umineko tries its hardest to avoid selling the familial conflicts as strictly black and white. There’s layers of complicated feelings at play regarding how and why faults are created that I believe can very easily inspired continued conversations and let Umi resonant well after concluding. This story shows the worst of ourselves but also, the best of ourselves, and the belief there is always a reason to keep going. Always a thought to our actions. A reason to consider walking in someone else’s shoes for what drives them to extremes. It broadens our perspective on US. The "flip the chessboard" mentality coined by Kyrie doesn't just pertain to logic games. It speaks to our understanding of everyone around us and in the context of Umineko, the unique methods and lengths every character has for achieving their own goals.

But beyond character and themes, another way a story can stick with me (and a huge part as to why I've chattered about Sonic so much, lol) is a distinct, memorable soundtrack. And Umineko also has TUNES! It originally existed as a “sound novel” where music had to do much of the work in light of crude but soulful sprites and simple backgrounds, so Ryukishi brought a suite of composers for just that and later Umineko ports brought even more. The composer list feels as vast as a pre-Smash Bros 4 Smash game, many bringing their own style and zts being told to lock the F in every song. Many of the best songs play during some of the most powerful moments in the plot so I’ll share just one to embody Umi’s musical tone:
https://youtu.be/mcG0nYC89tQ?si=Y0UZOIn6zQ2hpcBL

Umineko has an onslaught of great songs that really make a splash when you first hear them. Goldenslaughterer, far, Toten Blume, the executioner, Monochrome Clock, Birth of a New Witch, Golden Nocturne and many more give scenes distinct, lasting expression beyond the limitations of VN sprites. And even beyond those, the credits themes for every chapter manage to close off each's mood in a particularly special way.

Also on the audio front is voice acting. A star-studded cast of exceptionally talented voice actors were added into later versions of the VN as enough reason for the maligned anime to justify existing. Even as someone who isn't usually enamored with voice acting for languages I don't understand, the performances are exceptional and a huge reason I kept at it. At worst, a performance perfectly embodies a character's archetype and at best it's some of the strongest acting I've heard in anything ever. As I've gone through extensively, Sayaka Ohara’s Beato was the sell for Umineko as a whole for me in how incredibly versatile her performance as Beatrice was, but these Daisuke Ono as Battler, Miki Ito as Eva, Mugihito as Kinzo and Yukari Tamura as Bern I believe were also some of the most consistently great performers to where I always let their lines play out. Yukari Tamura has a TON of great work in Umi's back half as you see the investment of that character evolve.

With everything I adore about Umineko though, I’m not going to pretend there aren’t notable flaws that could easily turn people off from the story/invoke side-eyes. So here’s a brief section discussing some of those:

For one: THE LENGTH. This 130+ hour story is several hundred thousand words longer than the Bible and at times you FEEL it. Episodes 1, 2 and 6 I believe have very slow starts on the first read before action takes off. In hindsight the choices made in these parts do pay off properly by either the end of the Episode or with twists in a future one but in the moment, they can feel like they drag their heels without the entertainment of debates. The only way to reach the end of this story having absorbed it all is to commit your LIFE to Umineko WtC, for at least a little while.

And even beyond length, sometimes it can feel too overindulgent for its own good. The end of Episode 2 comes to mind where I feel like shock value went a bit too far even for a story like this. While its jokes aren’t AS bad as Higurashi’s (hell there's even some good pure dialogue jokes at sporadic points in the run) many more devoted jokes fall flat in the early Episode sections, particularly from Battler in ways that could’ve been written smarter. Thankfully, these kind largely dissipate as the story continues.

Conversations between major characters can be exceptionally dense and revealing of intriguing interpersonal relationship drama throughout, but there are some side characters introduced that exist as tools, bereft of depth and relying on “anime quirky” personality traits easy to find grating. To its credit, Umineko IS better than most stories at suggesting which characters are clearly unimportant to the story’s grand scheme and it has more than enough to get around this, but it does make it less engaging whenever they appear.

Lastly, the middle third of the final episode, Episode 8 can feel very rushed, which may sound crazy from a story so long, but there are certain dialogue sections regarding its lingering mysteries that can and HAVE rubbed people very badly because of what it suggests of its readers. Personally, speaking I can understand what this section was trying to communicate but anyone who felt ripped by this point, I get it.

This is the one Episode where the adaptation manga is an essential, adding substantiality to many points including HUGE turning point question. Ignoring the awful first cover which gave me a horrendous impression of Umi before reading, the manga is sublime. Kei Natsumi understood exactly what dramatic beats to elevate. Action scenes that could feel gratuitous when merely written out have defined framing that's superbly drawn. Natsumi has impressive talent for detail, shading and spreads for how many characters exist at that point. And the chosen compositions had me crying my eyes out multiple times more than Episode 8 did in the visual novel.

Needing supplemental material in a different medium to fill holes is usually not a great thing, which is why I note it in the Flaws section, but when it’s THIS excellently made, it’s hard to be mad. The payoffs from the Ep8 manga are exceptional and it’s easy to find the manga for free if you know where to look.

Ultimately what I listed I consider to be slight blemishes to a distinct, immaculate tapestry.

From Ryukishi07's pen, the world was given many heartfelt sincere messages, absolutely wild plot twists, incredible voice performances, really fun and distinctly spread character dynamics, a soundtrack full of insane EDM trance headbangers alongside somber tracks that still stand out, characters that thanks to the story structure are allowed to feel incredibly multifaceted and/or morally gray with interesting inner lives and/or life philosophies to track while reading, mysteries with layered tricks that stick around in your head long after being raised and new avenues for conversation regarding stories and storytelling by using the Visual Novel point-of-view. In short, the Umineko brainrot is real.


I WILL NEVER FORGET THIS STORY

the latest metroidvania masterpiece🦘

animal well purifies what we've come to understand as the mv formula, concerning itself with nothing but the core tenets of its design. aside from items and commands, there's practically no text. there's also no combat. what we're left with is exploration and puzzle solving bathed in atmosphere. not only do they benefit from the lack of said features, but they function in unison to heighten what each of these qualities has to offer.

solving puzzles goes hand in hand with the nonlinearity of its exploration. how progression obstacles are presented varies depending on what you've found up to that point. several of your tools, especially the ones found earlier on, have multiple utilities if you're resourceful enough to figure out what to do with them. paths that appear locked off without a certain item may be overcome with what you already have. these tricks typically require more skill to execute, taking clear inspiration from the sequence breaking techniques found in super metroid. this philosophy extends to the lack of combat mechanics by giving you multiple methods of dealing with enemy encounters. needless to say, aw's level design is excellent. the puzzles within them are as intuitive as they are creative. there are more than a handful of ideas in this game that i've yet to see from anything else in the genre.

this may not scratch the same itch as a game like hollow knight that opts for a more holistic experience. animal well is straight to the point about what it aims to provides the player through the consistent engagement of its design. also vibes.

A lonely, challenging experience. Of course most DOOM WADs don't have any other characters in them, very rarely deciding to sprinkle in marine corpses to signify someone was here, but Sunlust is such an oppressive experience that the lack of humanity of it all feels emotionally attuned to the level progression. Any notion of humanity left in Sunlust's world is actively malignant-- MAP29 for example, "Go Fuck Yourself", is uniquely human to the player in design, architecture, and title. The Archvile Carousel is too purposeless, too vexatious to be designed by any thing but a human. Yet, like with most challenge maps, it's made to be bested, but only by those willing to buy in and mortify themselves to gitting gud.

In fact, this idea of mortification, of purity through rigid self-discipline, is an idea that permeates not just in Sunlust but in the discourse of 'difficulty' in video games as a whole. For every new completion of Sunlust, there's a DOOMer out there who will remind you that you haven't really 'completed' Sunlust until you've done it with no savescumming, and there's a DOOMer above them that will remind you that only pistol start UV counts as completion, and so on and so on. Anyone who had the unfortunate luck to witness Souls "summoning discourse" can also attest to similar convos. It's eerily similar to where this mortification discourse actually comes from--Medieval Christianity. You aren't really free of sin until you've abstained from something important, until you've fasted, until you've lived ascetically, until you've self-flagellated, etc.

And while the merits and foibles of mortification are too big for this review, the takeaway shouldn't be to do away with the ideas of purity or self-discipline, but to take a more personal, existential approach to them. Play Sunlust, but don't feel the need to surrender to it's weight of difficulty or of being one of the GOAT WADs or anything else. noclip to admire the architecture, throw on godmode, try a UV run, make a save for the Cathedral fight to replay forever, do whatever--just make it challenging and purifying to you, and see where you land. ribbiks has said he views DOOM more as a canvas than a video game, and there's no reason you shouldn't too.

Do relationships between people really matter? They'll all break in the end, sooner or later. Can't a person be himself and walk down a path he chose purely on his own, without anyone else's intervention? He may seem like a nobody, but he'll ultimately gain more.

I’m a firm believer in the power of language over one’s thoughts.

Not in the sociocultural or moral sense, but more of a structural sense. If you’ve ever been through cognitive behavioural therapy (we are not typing the acronym), you’ll probably understand what I mean: For the disordered, the process of getting better is often just the process of acquiring more words to describe and talk down our thoughts.
Indeed, many people I’ve met in my life have suffered because they lack the language to describe and address their own thoughts. It’s easy to say “I feel bad”, sure, but emotions and thoughts are rarely so binary and require a decent toolkit of words to properly address.

With this in mind, I believe there’s no arrangement of words more powerful than:

“It doesn’t have to be like this.”

What do you do, then, when everyone’s words have been taken away from them?

Simultaneously so bleak as to be genuinely haunting and so hopeful that it inspired a significant paradigm shift in my life, Library of Ruina consumed me ever since I started playing it, with its de facto claim over my every waking thought soon becoming de jure.

I was filtered by LoR’s predecessor, Lobotomy Corporation, perhaps my only genuine mark of shame in decades of playing games and indeed engaging with art as a whole. It was right up my alley and hit basically every note I love in games, but alas I hit the wall and turned around instead of climbing it.

Bizarrely, this might’ve given me the best possible experience in LoR - in turn, giving me the best game I’ve ever played.

LoR opens on an unremarkable note. Some twunk named Roland trips and falls into the titular Library where the Librarian of her role’s namesake Angela peels a few of his limbs off, interrogates him, and revives him later as her servant.

What is the Library?

It’s a fantasy dungeon where you’re the big bad and your goal is to slaughter the people who’re invited so you can assimilate them as powerups and catalogue their knowledge for Angela’s aims. Every reception starts off with a little vignette of their lives and personalities, hopes/dreams, and reasoning for entering the Library… and then you murder them.

Yeah, LoR and the overall franchise is fantastically bleak. The first few people you kill are desperate down-and-outs or bottom of the barrel Fixers (mercenaries) too unremarkable to have the luxury of passing on such a vague, suspicious contract.
Angela, a sheltered woman with the emotional maturity and life experience of a 12 year old, frequently comments on how miserable/horrifying the world is, only for the suspiciously world-weary Roland to assure her that this is just how things are.

Angela is a woman who, for the bulk of her overly long and painful existence, was trapped - literally, and by circumstance. In LoR, she attempts to assert her freedom by giving it to other people; one must sign the invitation to enter the Library, the warnings are written on it. The choice is there to simply not sign it.
Only… As Roland himself repeatedly points out, it’s not quite that simple. Indeed, none of the people you kill in the early stages of the game really had a choice. They were either too desperate or under the thumb of someone much stronger. With the passage of time and progression of the story, many of the Library’s guests are coerced, manipulated either by contract or by sweet little lies, or commanded to on pain of death. Some are compelled by forces beyond their ken, or the welling of pure emotion that so many City dwellers had shut out of their heart.

I think it’s fantastically easy to make the observation of “LoR tackles nihilism as a subject”, and it’s not exactly wrong, but I think it’s remiss not to mention the ways LoR ties contemporary nihilism with the omnipresence of capital and systemic oppression.

A gear with a purpose is content, for its rotation has meaning. Humans are cogs in the machination that is the City. Someone has to make those cogs turn. That way, the City can run correctly.

The City’s inhabitants are, as reiterated endlessly by both the pre-reception vignettes, Librarian chats and Roland’s various interjections, stuck underneath the bootheel of capital. A Corp or ‘The Head’ is a ruling force that, while it does not place the building blocks of oppression in the land, is nonetheless the solid ground they’re placed upon by others. All of the City’s structure is, down to the rebar used in the concrete, built to maintain a status quo that considers the deaths of hundreds of thousands to be an acceptable tradeoff, but treats tax fraud as deserving of a fate worse than death.
Because of this structure, and those that perpetuate it, everyone in the City - including many of the people who're forced to uphold the oppression against their will - has basically shut down. Feelings are a luxury nobody can afford, and the boot placed upon their neck has been there so long that they consider it a universal constant - much like gravity.
In lieu of any hope, even the nonreligious have come to view the City as a god. The actually-religious exist in a circle of copium, ‘worshipping’ doctrine which is about accepting the boot as part of your life rather than as your oppressor. Characters like Roland repeatedly say they don’t believe in anything, only to talk about the City as though it were a vast and unknowable god - at best witnessed, but never comprehended.

But it’s made equally clear that it doesn’t have to be like this, especially in chats with the Librarians - who often put forward viewpoints that Roland shuts down because his mind, so thoroughly warped by the foundational cruelty of the City, cannot comprehend them on a base level. From the top of the City to the bottom, an endless domino chain of “well, it is what it is” cascades into acceptance of horrors that have no real reason to exist.
These people are not nihilistic because that is their actual worldview, they’re nihilistic because they don’t have a choice.

Treat everything like a rolling ball! You cheer for it wherever the sphere decides to go! If you truly wish for the good of other people, why don’t you stop holding expectations… and just laugh with them at their side? Everyone who lives here is a clown! Clowns can’t survive without feeding on each other’s smiles, you see?

Rather surprisingly, though, LoR does not castigate anyone for their nihilism. Sure, they’re fictional characters, but despite being miserable-by-circumstance their stances are still treated as valid. It’s most obvious later on, where one character finds out the orders they’ve been given were forged and is not at all angry - why would they be? Lies and truth are purpose all the same, and purpose is a luxury unto itself. If anything, they’re at least happy that their exploitation benefited them and their oppressor rather than merely the oppressor.

It’s somewhat difficult to discuss this topic further without spoilers. I’d like to come back and write a longer review, but for now I’m trying to keep it clean.

Art narrows your vision, after all. You stop caring about the things around you. That’s how most artists seem to act, I think. And so, you indulge in the craft, not realizing that you’re throwing yourself and your surroundings into the fire you started. It’s like the human life when you think about it.

My praise of LoR’s handling of nihilism and everything around it also comes with the caveat that I, personally, got tired of overly bleak stories not too long ago. Even Disco Elysium veered too close to the fatal threshold a few times, and so does LoR, but neither game crosses it.

Really, Disco Elysium is an excellent comparison if we’re sticking to purely positive ones.

Everyone in this game is humanised as far as the narrative allows, even the ones that are barely human - in every sense of the word. They have aspirations, no matter how trivial and petty, and comrades, sharing bonds and jokes regardless of whether they’re more noble Fixers or nightmarish cannibalistic freaks.
It becomes apparent early on that, despite the Librarians’ claims that humanity was snuffed out of the City, it persists in the moment-to-moment of people’s lives despite the eternal presence of the boot.

I said up above that not finishing LC enhanced LoR, and it’s here that it really became apparent.

Roland was not present for the events of LC, while the Librarians were. By the time I’d quit LC, I had only met four Librarians: Malkuth, Hod, Yesod and Netzach. Sure enough, these are the most straightforward Librarian chats, though they still exposit LC in a way that blends well into the narrative without obviously being an excuse for people to skip LC.
But it’s the later floors - with Librarians both I and Roland were unfamiliar with - where things amp up, both in terms of how heavy the subject matter gets and how Roland’s facade slowly erodes around the middle and upper layers.
LC as an event in the setting’s history has been deeply mythologized, subject to rampant speculation from the unfamiliar and much rumination from the familiar. Getting walled by the game itself made this narrative almost… diegetic. Like those of the City, I had a vague idea of Lobotomy Corporation and could only speculate as to why it fell to ruin in the intervening moments between games, but like the Librarians I was familiar enough with the company, its purpose and its occupants to recognize things and keep them in mind. Remember, the shame of quitting LC hangs heavy for me.

I could go on at length about the story, but to do so would spoil most of it - and honestly, I’d rather praise the storytelling for now.

Our conductor will be the one to fix that! He’ll take me to a world where there are pure and clean ingredients aplenty! That day can’t come soon enough! I’ve been filling my stomach with trash for too long.

LoR’s format is very simple. Each reception consists of a window into the guests’ lives before they accept the invitation, a cut to Roland and Angela discussing what they just saw, a fight, and then a wrap up conversation afterwards. In between receptions, you suppress Abnormalities (puzzle boss fights that give you useful treats) and have chats with the Librarians.
It sounds straightforward, and it is, but there’s an elegance to LoR’s usage of the player’s time - the format is maintained right up to the credits, and while some conversations can initially feel like pointless filler it eventually becomes apparent that LoR wastes no time.
I don’t believe that foreshadowing inherently makes a good story (an opinion which makes George RR Martin fans fucking hate me) but in LoR’s case, it does. As early as the 4th line of dialogue spoken in the game’s entire 130 hour runtime, it references concepts, character and organizations that will appear later. Truthfully, I was initially a bit sour on how many Nouns the game threw at me early on but around Urban Plague I was seeing a lot of those Nouns actually manifest on screen, often to follow up on either a bit of exposition Roland/Angela delivered or thematically iterating on something that seemed inconsequential at first.

And man, what characters Roland/Angela are. LoR has no wasted characters, managing to make even the one-off filler guests you slaughter memorable, but Roland and Angela really stand out as both the best in the game and my favourite protagonists in uh… Fiction as a medium for human creativity.

This is just how the world is, and the ones best adapted to it come out on top, simple as that. Adapt or die. If you can't, you either become food or fall behind until you're wiped out.

Roland is a funny man, a very funny man. He has a quip for everything and deliberately plays his status as Angela’s whipped boyfriend a disgruntled servant up for laughs, but like many real people who use humor to cope, it is plainly obvious that he’s hiding a lot of deep-rooted bitterness towards his circumstances and the world he lives in. Even many of his jokes betray that life in the City has eroded him, and his catchphrase “That’s that and this is this” slowly goes from funny to haunting as the game progresses.
A good friend of mine described him as “An Isekai protagonist but played entirely straight” and I think it’s an apt comparison; he has many of the same building blocks (sardonic guy with some bitterness) but the concept is actually explored and treated with any gravity. He’s also a literal outsider to the world of Lobotomy Corp/the Library, so.
Every time I think about Roland I inevitably recall a story someone once told me where their restrained and seemingly conservative father got drunk at a wedding and started dancing shirtless with his best friend, and when [friend] said "that's a bit gay innit?" he retorted "I WISH I WAS, SWEETIE”.
There’s a really poignant moment on Hokma’s floor where, upon being asked if he’s religious, Roland denies it wholeheartedly. Except… This instinctual rejection is wrong. He certainly believes it, but through his chats with everyone and his endless exposition on the City’s evils to Angela, it is abundantly clear that Roland subconsciously views the City itself as a malicious God that has personally picked him out of a lineup and fucked him over specifically.
It’s these little contradictions, hypocrisies and idiosyncrasies that really bring this game’s cast to life, but none moreso than…

The thoughts and emotions I hold when I craft them... A resentment towards the City for driving me to this desperation, and a blind anger for the rich. Bitterness, and... a yearning for vengeance toward the man who rid me of that hope and pushed me to despair.

Angela. Fucking Angela. My little pookie bear who’s a bitch to everyone (for very good reasons) and is so deeply fucked up. The depths of her misery are vast, simultaneously impressive and horrifying in their seeming endlessness. She’s the kind of miserable that you often don’t see outside of Central/Eastern European literature.
Which is a good comparison, honestly, because PM really get what makes a good tragedy with Angela. She’s miserable, haunted by a past that’d crush lesser folk, and desperately chasing a purpose she’s not even entirely sure she wants. In pursuit of her murky, ill-defined goal, she baits countless people to their deaths - becoming not much better than the man in her past she claims to despise.

But she smiles sometimes, and that’s enough.

What really strikes me about Angela though is how fucking transgender her storyline is.
Early on there’s a flashback to the early days of Angela’s life as an AI in Lobotomy Corporation where she experiences both profound amounts of empathy and a desire to nurture strong, intimate relationships with her peers. She’s then subjected to what I can only (tragically) call Male Socialization: Her creator affirms that she’s not meant to do that sort of thing, “things like her” are meant to feel nothing. Any expression of ‘unfitting’ emotions is shut out and shouted down.
When she breaks free of her shackles, she radically alters her appearance, having only a passing resemblance to her initial form - which is decidedly less feminine. I joked on twitter that she looks both transfemme and transmasc at once.
But more tellingly, Angela is infinitely more neurotic in this game. She’s expressive, has a short fuse, swears a lot, smiles far more readily and seems to show fondness for the Sephirah in her own roundabout way. As her humanity draws closer, she begins to feel shame. Shame for what she used to be, and shame for what she is.
It is incredibly easy to relate this to the experience most trans women have once that second puberty kicks them in the taint. At least, the ones who have self-awareness and a sense of shame.

It’s even more pronounced in the receptions. Despite displaying every sign of humanity, whenever guests arrive and are met at the entrance, they clock her as a machine and constantly rib her for it. “That’s not a human lmao” is said every other reception and it bears a deeply uncomfortable (positive) resemblance to trans people being clocked and mocked for their appearance.

As I write this, I’ve been pondering the concept of scale. You, the reader, have probably played a sequel at some point in your life. It’s natural for them to scale up, and I myself have played far too many that scale up far too hard. Halo went from an existential war of survival to a cosmic clash with demigods, robots and shadowy factions.
Yakuza went from being about one small corner of Tokyo to being a country/globe-trotting clash against conspiracies. Devil May Cry was about one oedipal gay guy on an island and then became about generational trauma and saving the world. Fallout went from being good to being terrible. Final Fantasy went from stories of heroes to failed attempts at modern epics. The list goes on.

LoR is a massive scale-up. LC was a game about some deeply depressed people playing SCP in a single lab. Given the scale of this setting’s City and the fact that LoR’s cast covers someone from every corner of it, it’s no exaggeration to say that LoR went from a lab to the entire world.

And yet it sticks the landing. The vignette format for character introductions helps; the Library is the centre of the game’s world, never once left behind, and characters are shown through brief windows into their life. It’s particularly resonant in the world formed by the 2010s, where people are more plugged in than ever yet seemingly more distant too. The entire world, too, is at our fingertips; through the form of fleeting windows into bits of an existence far beyond ours.

But the social media comparison is a little cringe, don’t you think? I do too.

If they want to live their lives as they see fit, then they won’t stop me from doing the same. Think about it. We can’t roam the street in peace; we’re forced to live in the darkness. What sins have we committed to deserve this treatment? Why must we suffer to ensure that your kind lives a painless life? We’re humans just like you.

I have this scar on my right knee. It’s huge, with its width spanning my entire knee and thickness on par with my pinkie. Looks more like a pursed mouth than a scar sometimes.
I got it from a very mundane event; I had an obscene growth spurt early on. During a friendly soccer match in school, my oversized body failed a dexterity check and, upon kicking the ball, my body went up into the air too. I landed at a grisly angle, my descent causing my knee to get dragged along some chipstones. Embarrassing, yes, though it was still some of the worst pain I’ve ever been in and the bleeding was so intense that the only reason I was immediately taken to hospital was because the school nurse nearly vomited upon seeing my bone peek through the wound.
But most people don’t know that, they only see the scar and my occasional limping. They can see the present-day effects of that pain and that damage, but they can only speculate as to the cause. There’s only one domino on display, and they can’t see the ones that fell behind it.

LoR’s windows into the lives of its guests are much the same, and they help keep the story from outgrowing its confines. Almost every character with very few exceptions is depicted at the absolute nadir of their lives upon introduction with concepts like ‘backstory’ thrown in the trash in favour of letting you use context clues instead. Such is life in the City; only the ‘now’ matters anyway.

I only realized that day that I cannot blindly trust what my eyes show me. In that moment of the past, I was made a fool. The shallow promise that our safety would be secured… The thin piece of contract is what cost me everything. Had He not saved me, I might have drowned myself in resentment toward the whole world… and met my end.

Now, normally videogames are a balancing act, or a series of tradeoffs. Many of the most fun games I’ve played have mediocre stories at best and outright abominable stories at their worst. Likewise, gameplay is often the first concession made for narrative. Indeed, the common thread of my Top 25 is games that weave their gameplay into the narrative well OR have a healthy serving of both.

The #1 entry on that list is foreshadowing.

I’m very used to games, even more outsider games, tone down their gameplay for the sake of marketability. It wouldn’t be wrong for someone to assume LoR, which is far more conventionally palatable than LC, would do the same.

And for the first hour or so, it seems that way. You roll a dice to act, whoever rolls higher goes first, and you spend Light to use your cards. Easy!

Except…

Inhale.

Every character on the field rolls one - or more - speed dice to act. Whoever rolls higher goes first, with 1 being last on the action order and Infinity (yes, really) going first. Multiple speed dices means multiple actions and cards played per turn.
Each card has its own dice - offensive, defensive, and counter - with each dice having subtypes for damage/defense types.
When a card is played, the dice on the card roll - unless it’s a counter dice, which is stored in case you receive a one-sided attack.
When two opposing characters roll on the same speed dice value, this causes a “clash” where dice now have to outroll one another. The higher roll goes through. This can also be forced if someone with a higher speed dice attacks someone with a lower speed dice - this is a redirect.
…But there are also ranged attacks, which ignore the turn order - this seems overpowered, but if they clash against offensive dice and lose, that dice is recycled and can roll again.
…Unless the ranged user has a counter dice stored, at which point they can roll to defend. If counter dice outroll an incoming attack, they too are recycled.
But-

You get the point.

LoR is very uncompromising with its mechanics. There’s nothing here that can be ignored. I didn’t even get into abnormality pages, keypage passive ability sharing, E.G.O or any of the status effects.

There’s a common sentiment among Project Moon fans that LoR’s difficulty spike is vertical. I don’t necessarily agree, for my many years playing YGO competitively and engaging with deckbuilders gave me a huge advantage, but I can see why.
Many games with some degree of mechanical complexity or an unspoken set of rules will throw (what I call) an Exam Boss at you. Exam Bosses exist to make sure you’ve actually been using and engaging with the mechanics that were introduced via antepieces in the hours prior.
Well, LoR has a neverending chain of exam bosses in each stage. Impuritas Civitatis, the game’s final stage, opens with two relatively easy fights before throwing twelve Exam Bosses at you. At its core LoR is a card game and you WILL need to build robust and numerous decks to progress.

But I don’t think it’s as hard as people make it out to be.

LoR’s strength gameplay-wise is that all of your options are available to you at any given moment, and there isn’t much need to bash your head against the wall like in LC or pray for good banner luck in Limbus. It’s very simple to back out (sometimes taking a guest’s book with you, which is akin to getting a free cardpack from your opponent) and come back with a new strategy/build/Library floor.
Once you’re in Urban Legend, the game starts offering routes for progression rather than forcing you along a straight line. The solution to any wall is often on one of those other routes; every enemy has a weakness or a gimmick. Bleed as both a status effect and a deckbuilding component appears early, and it’s useful until the credits roll on most enemies. My Discard Hod build was still being used as late as the final boss.
I suppose you could say LoR is more of a puzzle game than anything.

What really enhances the gameplay is how well it’s leveraged for the sake of the narrative, and/or for giving fights weight.

Most boss fights come with a mechanic that’s unique to them specifically, or they introduce new twists on an existing mechanic that’s meant to upset some of the more comfortable strategies. Queen of Hatred gets a lot of hype as the game’s first major roadblock, but her purpose is to teach you to use Bleed and to convince you that maybe it’s okay to skip a turn or take damage on purpose.
There are numerous points in the story where the game outright lies to you about what’s coming up. More than a few times does LoR throw a surprise, unlisted second phase at you or some other curveball. Shoutout to that purple bitch.
A lot of the single-enemy boss fights come with mechanics that at first seem ‘’’bullshit’’’ (lol.) but in reality are just there to give it some impact. One character having 5 or more speed dice might seem ludicrous, but it helps to sell the world and the sheer power of the people within it.
The majority of people who play this game will scrape by many of the harder fights by the skin of their teeth, but in a game all about the eternal upward struggle to live, isn’t that sublime?

Of course, everything up above is aided by how this game sounds.

My only light was taken from me twice… For a brief moment… I felt all kinds of emotions before that piano. Despair, obsession, rage, sorrow… But, it took no time for those feelings to dissipate into nothing. Everything… yes. Everything seemed beautiful afterwards. Was it truly a tragedy that I lost her? Who defined it as tragedy? You may still be blinded by wrath, but I made the decision that I will care not about those feelings anymore.

On every front, LoR is an absolute masterwork as an auditory experience.

The soundtrack is borderline perfect, one of the rare games with 80-odd songs where every single one is standout and memorable. The Story themes are subdued but perfect for their respective atmospheres while the battle themes maintain a morose atmosphere that nonetheless manages to carry a sense of excitement when needed. You may be the villains, but there’s no reason it can’t get funky sometimes. There are only three songs in the game that sound anywhere near heroic.
Mercifully, important tracks don’t often get reused and the single song that gets taken from its original context is used masterfully anyway. To say nothing of the returning songs from LC.
That fight near the end of the game hits like a fucking truck if you’re familiar with the last game’s OST.

And the voice acting, good god the voice acting. After so many years of enduring games where a lot of the VAs are just repeating a role they did in the past or emulating a VA they look up to with all the tact of a fandub, it’s so nice to play a game where the characters are voiced straightforwardly, as though they were people.
Sometimes it’s Roland being a flirty little dipshit when Angela gives him an order, sometimes it’s Gebura audibly trying not to throw up when tasting some coffee, sometimes it’s Chesed’s tildes being obvious in his speech, and sometimes it’s Tiphereth suddenly turning into a Yakuza thug when Roland’s beef with her spills over.
And, sometimes, its characters delivering some of the most haunting soliloquies in the history of the medium. There’s a quiet rule running through LoR’s entire runtime wherein every sickass vocal track barring one is preceded by a character delivering a soliloquy to themselves before coming back for a fight, and all of them are deeply moving.
The one prior to Gone Angels might be a meme now, sure, but seeing it for the first time left my heart in my throat and my jaw hanging from my face like a useless slab of bone.
Whether LoR is being horrific, tragic, funny or tense, the voice acting never falters. I was frankly amazed to find out that a lot of the VAs are either amateurs, F-listers or total no-names because there is not a single weak performance among the cast - and it is a huge cast.

Even on a base level, the smaller sfx are so nice. Clicking through menus is auditory/autismal joy, the various sounds of combat are sharp, distinct and punchy. 5v5 fights are a beautiful chorus of crashing, slashing, shooting, stabbing, clinking and roaring.

O my sorrow, you are better than a well-beloved: because I know that on the day of my final agony, you will be there, lying in my sheets, O sorrow, so that you might once again attempt to enter my heart.

I don’t like hyperbole. I was given the autism strain that programmed me towards sincerity, and the culture I grew up venerated insincerity and humor-as-a-mask so much that I can’t even stand playful contrarianism.

So I mean it when I say Library of Ruina haunts my every waking moment, and that it’s by far the best game I’ve ever played in this long, long history I have with the medium. It's left a gaping hole in my chest, a kind of numb longing that only pops up after a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience. I finished it three days ago, and ever since it has been in my mind for every waking moment. You don't know how crushed I was when I realized "grief" is a word that the City's inhabitants don't have.

If you have any familiarity with me or my reviews, you’ll probably know that my critical brain is on 24/7. Not by choice, that’s just how I’m wired. Things like nostalgia and hype tend to not have much of an effect. I carry this into my reviews, even if it means dunking on things I have a lot of fondness for.

Yet I can’t really find any fault with LoR beyond some minor bugs/typos the fact that the anti-capitalist story was followed up by Limbus Company - a gacha game. But that’s that, and this is this.

“Flawless” isn’t a word I use lightly, and I’m not going to use it here. Not because I think it’s flawed, no, but because to defend that position would require both an actual thesis and also for me to spoil the entire game, start-finish. Maybe some other time.

I didn’t intend for this to get so long or so heartfelt, so I have no idea how to close it off.

Uh… How’s the weather where you live? That train was fucked up, right? Do you think the game would’ve been better if Binah didn’t wear shoes?

See you next time.

persona 3 was a game with identity, intent, purpose, intentionality, heart, and, most importantly, creativity. i don't enjoy the lot i've been cast in life where i have to play bad versions of persona 3 and say why they're bad, whether it be the answer, portable, or this. reload is not just a bad remake of persona 3, it is a bad game that tells an interesting story in a ho-hum and pedestrian way. it takes so many narrative risks and choices from the original presentation and either waters them down or overly explains them to make sure the lowest common denominator doesn't have to interpret art. even divorced from its source material, this game fails to create a gameplay experience worth investing time in. as a remake, it fails to capture what persona 3 meant. as a JRPG, it is a dull affair with little challenge or complexity. persona 3 reload fails to be worth the effort it takes to play it.

the design doc of persona 3 reload had a very clear goal: leave no one behind, whether it be in story or gameplay. this results in story cutscenes being more explicit and less interpretive (compare the opening FMV with yukari) and gameplay that refuses to obstruct the player in meaningful ways. to be more specific, reload sacrifices any need for the player to become competent with its systems to make sure that anyone can beat this game. theurgy makes the game brainless and poisons basically every boss fight (ken can get a theurgy skill a little over halfway through the game that casts mediarahan + samarecarm + tetrakarn + makarakarn on the entire party). resource management is embarrassingly easy to trivialize (yukari can cast media for literally 1 (one) SP; there is a veritable buffet of SP items that you can trip over in daily life for little to no investment; theurgy overall negates the importance of SP and running out of SP is not the death knell it could be in orginal). social links as a whole are extremely easy to manage both due to point requirements being lower to accommodate for needing to spend more days on new content like linked episodes. hell, remember persona fusion? now it's been greatly dumbed down such that even triangle fusion isn't available anymore. this game is a concession that persona 3 was too ambitious and needed to be toned down. this is a remake that asserts that persona 3 did too much and tries to do less instead.

i'm not even beating the dead horse that is my opinion on party control because there's so many more issues to address. on basically every level, this game has either simplified or deescalated the complexity of its mechanics to accommodate a mainstream audience. i don't think there's inherently anything wrong with making persona 3's systems more accessible, but i think these capitulations go overboard and rob the game of compelling gameplay moments. there are no bosses in the game that truly force me to approach a challenge in a new way or think outside the box in the way that bosses like change relic did. every boss in this game is made longer to accommodate for theurgy damage values without any sort of intelligent design to make the fights feel more exciting for that length of time. boss fights are longer and easier because it's more cinematic to see mitsuru skate around and use her theurgy instead of letting the player use their own competency-based skills and strategy to end the fight. i am not the person who's going to cry that atlus sold out or whatever, but i am the person who's going to tell you that persona 3 reload feels like an undercooked experience because it consistently refuses to ask anything of the player. this game is easy, this game is simple, and this game is uninteresting.

above all else, this game begs one question: who on earth is telling atlus/sega that persona games need to be longer and have more content? persona 3 was a game that had a slowburn start that reload now turns into a bloated nightmare. everything takes so much longer in reload and everything feels more belabored, so i can't blame anyone for getting burnt out or even fucked off from this game's plot by the time things start picking up steam. on top of this, a lot of the new slice of life content wastes so much of the player's time. why do we need multiple scenes dedicated to kenji's performance on job day? i remember when saying that persona 3 was 70 hours felt like i was talking about this gargantuan piece of art. meanwhile, in reload, i hit 70 hours somewhere between september and november. these games do not need to be this long, and it actively ruins the experience to do so. persona 5 being a triple digit hour experience was a bad thing, not something to aspire to.

it's hard to not be at least a little offended because, whether or not P Studio intended it, they have basically hollowed out what made persona 3 so unique, so special. reload looks drab and unimpressive in UE4, and so much of the moody visuals get lost in the graphical fidelity. iwatodai dorm feels too bright, and then when january rolls around, they make the color scheme so muted that it is genuinely comedic. and there's just some really baffling and ugly visual decisions they made, like how everyone in club escapade stands motionlessly in pose. meanwhile, lotus juice has his fingerprints all over the OST in a way that just doesn't work ("mindin' my biz, so mind your own biz"). persona 3 was more than just a game with impressive systems that engaged the player, it was also a piece of art that had an aesthetic that gets lost here. this game feels completely identity-less when compared to the original because the original was both a deconstruction and a hybrid of genres. in many ways, reload doesn't just fail to live up to that artistic intent, it outright doesn't seem to know it was even there in the first place.

and i get it, as a fan of persona 3, my opinion has a giant asterisk at the end of it. why listen to a star wars fan tell you about why phantom menace is the worst movie ever? i will own up and openly admit i expected this game to be bad and had greatly wanted it to not exist. i had a feeling atlus would fuck it up somehow. i don't like being right about that. at the same time, i think there are missteps here that would stand out regardless of familiarity with the source material. yukari's edginess is completely deleted from her character here and she now just sounds and acts like chie on vyvanse rather than a girl with abandonment issues and trauma. fuuka got turned from "weird girl who serves as the empathetic core of the cast" to "girl who could have a thrilling conversation about spoiled milk". and reload isn't the first time akihiko's been sanded down to "protein fanatic who trains a lot", but it's probably the most offensive here. wouldn't it be really fucking funny if, the whole time you were studying with him, akihiko was doing something wacky like squatting above his chair instead of sitting normally?

these characters have been reinterpreted so much that they've lost their core identity that was integral to the plot of persona 3. i don't get the feeling that i'm seeing akihiko or mitsuru, i instead sense that i'm getting how someone interprets them after nearly 2 decades of fandom and spinoff content. yukari still has those "mean" lines but they lack any emotional root, so they come off as nonsense mood swings rather than a scared girl lashing out. and i'll just say it, karen strassman clears the fuck out of dawn bennett when you compare the final aigis monologues (fwiw, in both these instances, i blame the direction, not the VAs). these characters have been done better and it's really jarring that reload tries to flatten them rather than give them more dimensionality.

there's room to broadly interpret these characters, but constantly trying to make a self-serious character like akihiko the butt of a joke that he's in on speaks to how much he's being mischaracterized here. when akihiko was in a comedic scene, it was because he was the straight man, not because he was a this big goofball constantly playing to the crowd. these characters don't feel like themselves in a profound way, and i'd have to wonder how much that comes across to anyone who hasn't played original. does akihiko just seem like a wildly contradictory character to new players? truthfully, i have no idea if any of these people would've resonated with me had this been my first exposure to them.

i don't hate what all of reload's new content wrt characterization, and i honestly really liked some of the stuff they added for shinjiro and ken. but there's just as much that is unnecessary and outright bad. when we said they wanted more backstory on strega, we didn't mean that we wanted you to turn takaya into another akechi. if you're going to remake persona 3, why even bother if you're going to do such a disservice to its characters and setting? sure, you made some of the UI stuff look neater and more Persona 5-y, but what does that meaningfully add to the experience? when i saw the trailer for reload, i immediately asked myself "what does the water motif have to do with persona 3? why is the main character sinking into water? what are they going to do with that?" and it turns out they just wanted a cool main menu animation and nothing else. i want to say that P Studio was just misguided, but some of this content is so actively bad that it makes me wonder if any of them even liked persona 3. so much of this feels like it's trying to fix something that isn't broken, like it's an apology for the source material. this isn't a persona 3 remake for people who liked persona 3. but, then again, who else was it supposed to be for if not people who wanted another persona 5? persona 5 is the new cash cow and my dread for this being a P5ified version of persona 3 was well-founded.

i kept trying to go "how would i feel about this game if it wasn't a remake of a game i love?" and that's an impossible question for me to answer. i can never know because i will never play this with the eyes and ears of someone who didn't play the original. again, as much as i've come to detest this game, i don't have it in my heart to give this a lower score, mostly out of pity, but also out of overcorrecting my harsh opinion as a fan of the original. still, i think many of reload's failings come from a place of trying to simultaneously be a remake and game for everyone. i don't think it's wrong for games to put off people. in fact, the best games often aren't for everyone because they can't be. P Studio emphasized making a game that was so mainstreamed and accessible that it would never present any obstacle or mechanic that could alienate players at the cost of making a game that players could actually be engaged with. i can't think of a broader way you could miss the mark with a persona 3 remake.

It Steals is a delightful goodie bag of horror minigames. You can get through all of it in around three hours, so it’s perfect for a Friday or Saturday night where you just want to sit down and beat something all the way through. It’s also actually quite scary at times, Zeekerss demonstrates much understanding of what goes into making horror games actually horrifying. Proper tension build-up, forcing the player to think on their toes, great sound design, fairly smart enemy AI, the list goes on. Best part is it’s 5 bucks. That’s like two gallons of milk in today’s economy. Go check it out.