This game is an erratic fever-dream, a bizarre nightmare - or in plain language: just hella weird.
Nowadays I prefer my "deconstructions of tropes" to be a little more nuanced and less edgy, but back when I was 14/15 and bought this on a school trip in England, this was wild and I liked it even more a couple of years later, when I was in a - just as edgy - misanthropic phase.
I still like it's dark atmosphere, even though it can get really overly gloomy and self-important at times and the combat is... Not the best, to say the least. Aerial stuff with the dragon actually holds up rather well.
In a lot of regards it's kinda "avantgarde": Multiple endings with diverging timelines/ chapter select for getting these endings/ kinda non-linear story telling/ plot-relevant dialog during gameplay; all pretty interesting to see still today. Yoko Taro's stuff
would get more refined over the years, but it's neat to experience where he started as a director and story teller.
(One a side note, why are we calling him Yoko Taro in English, when Yoko is his last name? We don't do that we other Japanese directors. Kojima Hideo? Nomura Tetsuya? Did someone get his name mixed up, cuz Yoko is also a (female) first name?)
Nowadays I prefer my "deconstructions of tropes" to be a little more nuanced and less edgy, but back when I was 14/15 and bought this on a school trip in England, this was wild and I liked it even more a couple of years later, when I was in a - just as edgy - misanthropic phase.
I still like it's dark atmosphere, even though it can get really overly gloomy and self-important at times and the combat is... Not the best, to say the least. Aerial stuff with the dragon actually holds up rather well.
In a lot of regards it's kinda "avantgarde": Multiple endings with diverging timelines/ chapter select for getting these endings/ kinda non-linear story telling/ plot-relevant dialog during gameplay; all pretty interesting to see still today. Yoko Taro's stuff
would get more refined over the years, but it's neat to experience where he started as a director and story teller.
(One a side note, why are we calling him Yoko Taro in English, when Yoko is his last name? We don't do that we other Japanese directors. Kojima Hideo? Nomura Tetsuya? Did someone get his name mixed up, cuz Yoko is also a (female) first name?)