etria_girl
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Fallout
1997
There's a version of this game that exists between its admirers, one with too solid a body of discourse built up around it to be called imaginary. This Fallout is the centerpiece of a secular religion of CRPG design, attended by Deus Ex and Planescape Torment, though perhaps finally consigned to the status of Old Testament anticipation by Disco Elysium. Hbomberguy is this faith's high priest.
I'm fond of the Fallout of conversation, in which the skills are consistently useful, there are multiple, organic solutions to problems and the writing is thoughtful and nuanced. The kind of guy whose praise perpetuates belief in this game is often the least racist kind of PC gamer. I'm also fond, however, of the playable piece of software released in 1997 bearing the same name, and feel its merits should be articulated as well.
The structure of Fallout's world is less reminiscent of anything else called an RPG than it is of the evidence-gathering phase of a Phoenix Wright case. There's a manageable number of locations presented through a menu, and in each of them one pokes and prods around, with novel bits of optional content with little long-term bearing but which serve as their own reward, until something moves the world state forward. Fallout's chief innovation wasn't so much opening up the CRPG as subjecting it to the same rigorous structure as the adventure game. While there are filler enemies and random encounters, each of the game's major combats provides the player with the tools necessary to manage the next: Vault 15's SMG, for example, allows the player to deal with the Khans, whose armor makes the upcoming chain of large group firefights survivable.
That progression is driven by new gear and information rather than leveling keeps any of the game's areas from feeling extraneous. Nothing in Fallout ever overstays its welcome, which is enormously beneficial: ideas and characters which would be insufferable in a game a few hours longer are instead presented straightforwardly and immediately moved on from. It's this brevity, and the recognition that a thinly-sketched character is almost always preferable to an overwrought one, that Fallout inherits from tabletop, rather than anything like freedom of choice. It's perhaps the best example of pacing in a western CRPG.
Aside from a few points at which the player's given multiple, equidistant leads to follow up on at once, the progression is incredibly taut and, because its only gating mechanisms are information and ability, feels more essential and less arbitrary than equivalents in the genre. Most of the choices of approach are back-loaded into the last two areas of the game, where the character skills which have been largely useless for the previous two-thirds of the game now function as keys. That these areas can be so easily circumvented by simply wearing a disguise undercuts their significance, but ultimately a high Speech or Science or Big Guns is treated like an item in an adventure game. This is made possible by and supports Fallout's limited scale and general restraint: it's a game where a skill or a tool used two or three times is worth going out of one's way for.
It's probably the first Western RPG to have really good art direction, and I'd suggest resisting the urge to play the game at a modern resolution in order to really appreciate the spritework. The voice work is shockingly solid, and with the exception of some of the better New Vegas characters I don't think the series has ever quite matched the talking heads in this game for memorability. It is so sad to watch the cinematics in this first entry present what would become the series aesthetic as succinctly and stylishly as they do, and to know this would be milked dry in later years as these games got more and more saturated with 50s-dystopian broad satire.
I'm fond of the Fallout of conversation, in which the skills are consistently useful, there are multiple, organic solutions to problems and the writing is thoughtful and nuanced. The kind of guy whose praise perpetuates belief in this game is often the least racist kind of PC gamer. I'm also fond, however, of the playable piece of software released in 1997 bearing the same name, and feel its merits should be articulated as well.
The structure of Fallout's world is less reminiscent of anything else called an RPG than it is of the evidence-gathering phase of a Phoenix Wright case. There's a manageable number of locations presented through a menu, and in each of them one pokes and prods around, with novel bits of optional content with little long-term bearing but which serve as their own reward, until something moves the world state forward. Fallout's chief innovation wasn't so much opening up the CRPG as subjecting it to the same rigorous structure as the adventure game. While there are filler enemies and random encounters, each of the game's major combats provides the player with the tools necessary to manage the next: Vault 15's SMG, for example, allows the player to deal with the Khans, whose armor makes the upcoming chain of large group firefights survivable.
That progression is driven by new gear and information rather than leveling keeps any of the game's areas from feeling extraneous. Nothing in Fallout ever overstays its welcome, which is enormously beneficial: ideas and characters which would be insufferable in a game a few hours longer are instead presented straightforwardly and immediately moved on from. It's this brevity, and the recognition that a thinly-sketched character is almost always preferable to an overwrought one, that Fallout inherits from tabletop, rather than anything like freedom of choice. It's perhaps the best example of pacing in a western CRPG.
Aside from a few points at which the player's given multiple, equidistant leads to follow up on at once, the progression is incredibly taut and, because its only gating mechanisms are information and ability, feels more essential and less arbitrary than equivalents in the genre. Most of the choices of approach are back-loaded into the last two areas of the game, where the character skills which have been largely useless for the previous two-thirds of the game now function as keys. That these areas can be so easily circumvented by simply wearing a disguise undercuts their significance, but ultimately a high Speech or Science or Big Guns is treated like an item in an adventure game. This is made possible by and supports Fallout's limited scale and general restraint: it's a game where a skill or a tool used two or three times is worth going out of one's way for.
It's probably the first Western RPG to have really good art direction, and I'd suggest resisting the urge to play the game at a modern resolution in order to really appreciate the spritework. The voice work is shockingly solid, and with the exception of some of the better New Vegas characters I don't think the series has ever quite matched the talking heads in this game for memorability. It is so sad to watch the cinematics in this first entry present what would become the series aesthetic as succinctly and stylishly as they do, and to know this would be milked dry in later years as these games got more and more saturated with 50s-dystopian broad satire.
Played this on stream with a low-end laptop for several hours and now whenever I hear one of the 00s pop songs from its soundtrack playing on the radio at a drug store I gradually put it together that this is the standard speed version of the song I'd heard playing at x.67 speed during this experience. I was briefly thrilled to learn that this is first and foremost a yuri dating sim where you court other volleyball players before realizing that there are no interactions between the characters beyond the basic gift-giving minigame.
Time and Eternity
2012
absolutely baffling game, somehow every single design decision comes together to be simultaneously the most unhinged and most boring thing you could experience. an audiovisual nightmare to experience. what if xenoblade chronicles 2 was actually the game people imagine it to be.
truly an unforgettable game, you do have to experience it for yourself even if you never play it.
truly an unforgettable game, you do have to experience it for yourself even if you never play it.
This review contains spoilers
This was pretty good! not as good as cs1 and cs2 for me but better than cs3 and cs4. I really loved C's route and so many of the daydreams but Lloyd and Rean's routes really did not do it for me.
I really loved the reverie corridor as a sandbox to mess around with builds with how large the cast is and how stupid some of these quartz get I got Alisa to 5700 ATS by the end of it.
I think Schera should have been playable idc that she's pregnant, Schera and Olivier's baby is gonna be so fucking cute though I just know it.
I really loved the reverie corridor as a sandbox to mess around with builds with how large the cast is and how stupid some of these quartz get I got Alisa to 5700 ATS by the end of it.
I think Schera should have been playable idc that she's pregnant, Schera and Olivier's baby is gonna be so fucking cute though I just know it.
This review contains spoilers
They made Michel a 27 year old software developer who slept in before his date and wasn't able to clean his room before hand. They made him even more just like me fr how does that happen.
thoughts on each story below
Main Story:
This one is slow in parts but I think it's all worth it in the end, it was nice to see what Morgana's time at the brothel was like. I still don't fully understand Jacopo's fall into madness and I don't think I ever will he's fuckin crazy (they really lean into the his romantic feelings for baby Morgana too compared to the first game which doesn't do him any favors)... he's fun though.
Assento Dele:
This one was a little too on the nose for me, I love Michel obviously but I don't think I needed to see these events and didn't really gain much from it. I actually did love Morgana's role in this story and the reveal at the end a lot though.
Happily Ever After:
YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA LETS FUCKING GO
Fragments:
This was such a nice bit of closure and a really good way to end Morgana and Jacopo's story.
thoughts on each story below
Main Story:
This one is slow in parts but I think it's all worth it in the end, it was nice to see what Morgana's time at the brothel was like. I still don't fully understand Jacopo's fall into madness and I don't think I ever will he's fuckin crazy (they really lean into the his romantic feelings for baby Morgana too compared to the first game which doesn't do him any favors)... he's fun though.
Assento Dele:
This one was a little too on the nose for me, I love Michel obviously but I don't think I needed to see these events and didn't really gain much from it. I actually did love Morgana's role in this story and the reveal at the end a lot though.
Happily Ever After:
YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA LETS FUCKING GO
Fragments:
This was such a nice bit of closure and a really good way to end Morgana and Jacopo's story.
It's my first Sakura Wars and maybe a weird jumping on point for these games. I loved the sprite work and quickly locked in on Sumire she's so fun. Only takes a couple of hours for one run and there was a decent amount of event variety for how short the game is. The story never actually goes anywhere there's no melodrama and you never really get to see any character really go through anything, but its more than enough for a gameboy color game since the events are still cute and there are a lot of really well drawn pixel art CG's.
Heart of the Killer
2023
Led to a conversation with a friend about the Rainforest Cafe, with which I was totally unfamiliar, almost as alienating as the game itself. The hotel in this one's a very well-realized little nightmare: variations on a recurring setting are used to really good effect in it. No zine joke in this series will top the one about pronunciation, but the Kickstarter dig got me. This is the entry in which it came together for me what the series is doing with this broad satire of patterns in modern consumption, using it to achieve that sophomoric brush with politics that exploitation cinema really needed to function. Loved the hometown section.
Final Fantasy XIII
2009
I would bet it all to smoke weed with Fang and Vanille in their dimly-lit bedroom full of empty takeout bags: I have never seen a burnout codependent lesbian couple depicted this plausibly. XIII is probably the first Final Fantasy to make intra-party dynamics a narrative priority, and the most successful in this. Good dub casting supports this, and it's the series title from which I came away most fond of the characters. Pretty much the gold standard of seventh generation console visuals, and the best version of the ATB system.
the fact they walked back phoenix’s entire character development from aa4 to make him the main character instead of trying a little harder to get audiences to like apollo is probably the biggest writing crime this series committed . the game sucks ass also.
NieR Re[in]carnation
2021
![NieR Re[in]carnation](https://images.igdb.com/igdb/image/upload/t_cover_big/co7bm4.jpg)
This review contains spoilers
first of all it's not a video game. removing the gacha elements only makes this more clear. the only mechanic is Number Big? if number big, you win. if number not big, pay up. in its final pre-cancellation form they let you skip that and in so doing only reveal there was never anything there in the first place, it was alwasy only a series of whale checks in front of that sweet sweet yoko taro lore you crave. the craven cynicism of it all is existentially destructive for the work, as taro's already tiring eccentricities of hiding crucial details in the least accessible of places now become vectors to leverage for the direct exploitation of his audience into a gambling black hole. better hit the pulls so you can upgrade enough bullshit to see the dark memory that reveals the connection to drakengard 3 that makes everything click into place!! don't want to be left behind!!
but that is known. the game is a gacha and more than that it is a bad one even by the exploitative standards of a blighted genre that shouldn't exist, and that's why it's shutting down. nier reincarnation will forever live on as a series of youtube videos where fans can experience the story fairly close to how it was originally intended, and that's more than you can say for japanese exclusive yorha stageplay number squintillion. so how is that?
bad!! very bad!!! the game takes one of the weakest elements of the nier games, the sidequest and weapon stories all having the exact same tragedy monotonously drilled into your skull over and over and make it the entire game. no weiss and kaine bantering to prop all that up with a jrpg party of the greatest oomfs ever pressed to a PS3 disc, no experimental presentation of combat and level design, just storybook tragedies presented at such arch remove you don't even learn the character's names until you check the menu.
it is ludicrous. it is hilarious. there's one where a kid joins the army to get revenge on the enemy commander who killed his parents, only to as he kills him discover with zero forshdaowing that the commander is his real father and his parents kidnapped him as a child. there's one where a perfect angel little girl's father is beaten to death by his own friends so she runs home crying to her mother, who is in the middle of cheating on him, and is like sweet that owns and leaves lmao. they do the who do you think gave you this heart copypasta!!! and you'd think with such ridiculous material that it would be played with a coens-esque A Serious Man type wry touch, but it isn't at all, it's thuddingly earnest throughout as every tragic story plays out to overwrought voice acting and a haunting sad piano.
it is impossible to take seriously, and by the time the twelfth playable character has experienced a tragic loss and succumbed to the anime nihlism of I'll Kill Them All, another more fundemental question arises: what does all this lore actually give you, as a function of storytelling? the yokoverse is an intricate and near impossible thing, spanning multiple decades and every kind of storytelling medium imaginable, and reincarnation references damn near every single page of it, grasping onto the whole thing and framing it as a sprawling multiverse of human conflict across infinite pasts and infinite futures, with decades of mysteries to unravel and connections to make and characters to ponder and: why? for the exact same No Matter How Bad It Gets, You Can't Give Up On Hope ending that every anime RPG has? that automata already did? the plot is vast and intricate but the themes are narrow and puddle deep.
the more nier blows itself out to greater and greater scales the smaller it feels. in earthbound you fight the same ultimate nihlism of a the universe and then you walk back home again. and you say goodbye to your friends. and you call your dad. and it makes me cry like a fucking baby every time. the original nier, for all its faults, had that specificity. that sense of a journey with characters you loved that overcame the generic nature of its larger plot. here, you heal all the tragedies and fix all the timelines and everyone continues to live inside the infinite quantum simulations that will never end as you strive to find a way past the cyclical apocalypses past and future that repeat for all eternity, and i feel absolutely nothing. a world of endless content and no humanity. how tragic. how so very like nier.
but that is known. the game is a gacha and more than that it is a bad one even by the exploitative standards of a blighted genre that shouldn't exist, and that's why it's shutting down. nier reincarnation will forever live on as a series of youtube videos where fans can experience the story fairly close to how it was originally intended, and that's more than you can say for japanese exclusive yorha stageplay number squintillion. so how is that?
bad!! very bad!!! the game takes one of the weakest elements of the nier games, the sidequest and weapon stories all having the exact same tragedy monotonously drilled into your skull over and over and make it the entire game. no weiss and kaine bantering to prop all that up with a jrpg party of the greatest oomfs ever pressed to a PS3 disc, no experimental presentation of combat and level design, just storybook tragedies presented at such arch remove you don't even learn the character's names until you check the menu.
it is ludicrous. it is hilarious. there's one where a kid joins the army to get revenge on the enemy commander who killed his parents, only to as he kills him discover with zero forshdaowing that the commander is his real father and his parents kidnapped him as a child. there's one where a perfect angel little girl's father is beaten to death by his own friends so she runs home crying to her mother, who is in the middle of cheating on him, and is like sweet that owns and leaves lmao. they do the who do you think gave you this heart copypasta!!! and you'd think with such ridiculous material that it would be played with a coens-esque A Serious Man type wry touch, but it isn't at all, it's thuddingly earnest throughout as every tragic story plays out to overwrought voice acting and a haunting sad piano.
it is impossible to take seriously, and by the time the twelfth playable character has experienced a tragic loss and succumbed to the anime nihlism of I'll Kill Them All, another more fundemental question arises: what does all this lore actually give you, as a function of storytelling? the yokoverse is an intricate and near impossible thing, spanning multiple decades and every kind of storytelling medium imaginable, and reincarnation references damn near every single page of it, grasping onto the whole thing and framing it as a sprawling multiverse of human conflict across infinite pasts and infinite futures, with decades of mysteries to unravel and connections to make and characters to ponder and: why? for the exact same No Matter How Bad It Gets, You Can't Give Up On Hope ending that every anime RPG has? that automata already did? the plot is vast and intricate but the themes are narrow and puddle deep.
the more nier blows itself out to greater and greater scales the smaller it feels. in earthbound you fight the same ultimate nihlism of a the universe and then you walk back home again. and you say goodbye to your friends. and you call your dad. and it makes me cry like a fucking baby every time. the original nier, for all its faults, had that specificity. that sense of a journey with characters you loved that overcame the generic nature of its larger plot. here, you heal all the tragedies and fix all the timelines and everyone continues to live inside the infinite quantum simulations that will never end as you strive to find a way past the cyclical apocalypses past and future that repeat for all eternity, and i feel absolutely nothing. a world of endless content and no humanity. how tragic. how so very like nier.
