This review contains spoilers
With Penacony's main story starting to come to a close, I figured I may as well write down my thoughts since it’s an arc that fumbled almost all its potential (Aventurine, you're too good for this world) in a deeply frustrating way. But before that, let me list some of the things I liked since there are some pretty good ideas and iterations!
First, the environments and music are still absolutely top-notch and really sell me on Penacony being this hyper-capitalist escapist dream with a perfectly manufactured atmosphere. Every battle theme is a hit, and the final boss of the patch is accompanied by another great vocal song to cap off the arc. The puzzles are still solid even if the pacing can be a little off (playing 15 stages of the new Hanu mini-game in a row turned my brain to mush (yes I know I didn't have to play every stage all at once, but as soon as I see a mini-game in front of me, I am compelled to play it all)). And lastly, the set-pieces. For all its faults, the final boss does a really great job of bringing the characters of this patch together, and moments like Firefly's motif playing during her scene are the exact type of thing I love. But that's where my praises end so time to get into my issues!
These two things were detrimental problems to the Xianzhou arc and unfortunately, Penacony hasn't improved much on either: characterization and exposition. Most of the cast is given little-to-no characterization or screentime, only serving as dialogue machines to move the plot along. Sparkle, Black Swan, Acheron, Gallagher, Robin, Boothill, and especially the entire Astral crew are just so empty that it's impossible for me to care about any of them. Contrast Robin to Sunday; you discover the impetus behind his drive and desire to unite everything under Order, and how the outcomes of the decisions to grant a few people freedom have changed him. Then we have Robin, who gets pretty much nothing; nothing that backs her opposition to Sunday and nothing to build up their relationship as anything more than generic orphan siblings who care about each other. There is one scene that gives her some character while delving into her backstory, showing her suffering an injury on a war-ridden planet yet continuing to push on. This could've been an opportunity to really explore what makes Robin walk a different path, but instead, it's second-hand characterization given through Sunday mostly expositing at the player.
And that's my biggest issue with the game: that any interesting idea is immediately cast aside in favor of flavorless exposition. That HSR is so unwilling to engage with its themes and just wants to provide another (admittedly very nice looking) spectacle while most of its cast vomits exposition or dances around irrelevant HI3 references. It's incredibly frustrating because there are so many interesting ideas that don't get the time they need to be fleshed out, which makes its failure to capitalize on them so much more annoying. In the Main Story Quests (thankfully the side quests are better), we only get mere glimpses into why people want to stay there forever. We meet some people who are trying to escape their past, and some who want to build their fortune, but there's one example that stands out to me. Eventually, we meet an old man: one who’s dying of a terminal illness and whose only source of reprieve is the Dreamscape. This idea isn't anything new (and executed far, far better in Caligula Effect 2), but there's at least something interesting to explore here! While Penacony serves as a prison to many, killing all ambition and letting them live their lives away in a city of hedonism, it offers a solution to this man's physical pain in the real world and an opportunity to live his final moments peacefully. But instead of engaging with this in any meaningful capacity, the game simply mentions that maybe there's another solution out there, and then moves on without a second thought. A similar idea is explored through Firefly and her poorly defined/explored Entropy Loss Syndrome, but, again, there's so little depth to any of it., that her defiance against Sunday doesn't have the weight it should.
There's one more issue I have, and it’s one that bothers me even more than the anemic character writing or constant exposition: the dialogue choices. I'd like to imagine that this isn't a problem (or at least not as big of one) in the other languages, but HSR's English dialogue choices during pivotal story moments are so strikingly terrible and show a lack of respect for the game's own story, that I have to wonder how they even made it in. Some times it's inserting cringe modern pop-culture references into every other choice and others it's undercutting the climax of a patch by having your awful half-silent protag say "Mommy look I'm on TV" (yeah this is from 2.1, but the point stands) seconds before fighting the main antagonist of a patch, but the result is a story that can't take itself seriously even in its best moments. I understand that Caelus/Stelle are supposed to be goofballs to an extent, but at least restrain yourself when it actually matters!
Maybe I'm being too hard on Star Rail, but when I think about how FGO managed to put out something like Camelot (which for all its problems is still a chapter that holds up today) almost a decade ago, it's disappointing to see that a gacha of this scale can't even come close. Hell, even Genshin managed to stick its landing with Chasm and (for the most part) Sumeru.
Also why were there like 5 fake out deaths in Penacony
First, the environments and music are still absolutely top-notch and really sell me on Penacony being this hyper-capitalist escapist dream with a perfectly manufactured atmosphere. Every battle theme is a hit, and the final boss of the patch is accompanied by another great vocal song to cap off the arc. The puzzles are still solid even if the pacing can be a little off (playing 15 stages of the new Hanu mini-game in a row turned my brain to mush (yes I know I didn't have to play every stage all at once, but as soon as I see a mini-game in front of me, I am compelled to play it all)). And lastly, the set-pieces. For all its faults, the final boss does a really great job of bringing the characters of this patch together, and moments like Firefly's motif playing during her scene are the exact type of thing I love. But that's where my praises end so time to get into my issues!
These two things were detrimental problems to the Xianzhou arc and unfortunately, Penacony hasn't improved much on either: characterization and exposition. Most of the cast is given little-to-no characterization or screentime, only serving as dialogue machines to move the plot along. Sparkle, Black Swan, Acheron, Gallagher, Robin, Boothill, and especially the entire Astral crew are just so empty that it's impossible for me to care about any of them. Contrast Robin to Sunday; you discover the impetus behind his drive and desire to unite everything under Order, and how the outcomes of the decisions to grant a few people freedom have changed him. Then we have Robin, who gets pretty much nothing; nothing that backs her opposition to Sunday and nothing to build up their relationship as anything more than generic orphan siblings who care about each other. There is one scene that gives her some character while delving into her backstory, showing her suffering an injury on a war-ridden planet yet continuing to push on. This could've been an opportunity to really explore what makes Robin walk a different path, but instead, it's second-hand characterization given through Sunday mostly expositing at the player.
And that's my biggest issue with the game: that any interesting idea is immediately cast aside in favor of flavorless exposition. That HSR is so unwilling to engage with its themes and just wants to provide another (admittedly very nice looking) spectacle while most of its cast vomits exposition or dances around irrelevant HI3 references. It's incredibly frustrating because there are so many interesting ideas that don't get the time they need to be fleshed out, which makes its failure to capitalize on them so much more annoying. In the Main Story Quests (thankfully the side quests are better), we only get mere glimpses into why people want to stay there forever. We meet some people who are trying to escape their past, and some who want to build their fortune, but there's one example that stands out to me. Eventually, we meet an old man: one who’s dying of a terminal illness and whose only source of reprieve is the Dreamscape. This idea isn't anything new (and executed far, far better in Caligula Effect 2), but there's at least something interesting to explore here! While Penacony serves as a prison to many, killing all ambition and letting them live their lives away in a city of hedonism, it offers a solution to this man's physical pain in the real world and an opportunity to live his final moments peacefully. But instead of engaging with this in any meaningful capacity, the game simply mentions that maybe there's another solution out there, and then moves on without a second thought. A similar idea is explored through Firefly and her poorly defined/explored Entropy Loss Syndrome, but, again, there's so little depth to any of it., that her defiance against Sunday doesn't have the weight it should.
There's one more issue I have, and it’s one that bothers me even more than the anemic character writing or constant exposition: the dialogue choices. I'd like to imagine that this isn't a problem (or at least not as big of one) in the other languages, but HSR's English dialogue choices during pivotal story moments are so strikingly terrible and show a lack of respect for the game's own story, that I have to wonder how they even made it in. Some times it's inserting cringe modern pop-culture references into every other choice and others it's undercutting the climax of a patch by having your awful half-silent protag say "Mommy look I'm on TV" (yeah this is from 2.1, but the point stands) seconds before fighting the main antagonist of a patch, but the result is a story that can't take itself seriously even in its best moments. I understand that Caelus/Stelle are supposed to be goofballs to an extent, but at least restrain yourself when it actually matters!
Maybe I'm being too hard on Star Rail, but when I think about how FGO managed to put out something like Camelot (which for all its problems is still a chapter that holds up today) almost a decade ago, it's disappointing to see that a gacha of this scale can't even come close. Hell, even Genshin managed to stick its landing with Chasm and (for the most part) Sumeru.
Also why were there like 5 fake out deaths in Penacony
2 Comments
Thanks! And yeah, it was super disappointing especially after how well Aventurine was handled last patch.
garie
6 days ago
I think you’ve identified most of the core issues with this game, in that its plot and characters are often devoid of substance and its narrative is heralded by a protagonist who cannot take their environment, let alone themselves seriously. For example, I felt as though Robin lacked so much depth to the point where I honestly believed it didn’t matter whether she was alive or dead; in fact, she may have had more depth and potential in death than while she’s alive. What little substance her character had, as you said, was exposited through Sunday and therefore her status is ultimately irrelevant.
Also the pacing was just horrendous. It felt as if everything came to an almost immediate halt, as the truth of Dormancy is revealed and the slow trudge through Mikhail’s backstory begun. The weird interjections of Acheron’s backstory (though I adore her character and the implications it has for HI3) also broke up the pacing. Then you’ve got the Sunday fiasco, the fakeout ending, and then the Sunday fiasco 2 electric boogaloo. It all just felt weirdly jarring, and I genuinely couldn’t tell you if certain story beats saw any sort of resolution. It felt like a sad, confusing end to an otherwise fun and captivating arc.