Loved this. Was just rapt the whole time and on my knees at the scope of the game.

I think a lot of us engage with art, with games, to Feel. Games sort of primarily make the player feel power, agency, a sort of strength they can't really get or experience in real life, but Sir Brante... doesn't exactly let you feel that. It does and most definitely can. In fact, a lot of friends I recommended the game to that went through it shared with me their triumphs at pivotal moments in their version of the titular character's life. My playthrough, however, was one marked by sorrow and loss.

The game is full of failures, of ways your character's adult life can fall apart, of ways childhood innocence peels away, of compromises that must be made and injustices easy to ignore. Sir Brante made me suffer. In my eight hour playthrough, it gave me a turbulent life growing up in a rich, fascinating fantasy world in NotFrance on the verge of revolution, made me experience hope and wonder in my virtual adolescence before crushing me with a brutal life of corrupt adulthood, leaving me having lost everything as a result of my choices.

The ending I was led to and the emotional devastation, all on me, left me in awe. Of course, I went back and played again, did other routes, did everything right, had a triumphant life, and that was all great, but...nothing can replace first playthrough, that first route, that experience of getting to the end utterly defeated, but having lived a full life.