Stockholm Syndrome if it was a game. This is a game/series I feel very strongly about (not necessarily good), and have for a long time, though I’m not really sure why. It has potential, it’s got a good story going for it (from what I remember), however there’s quite a few very grossly handled fragile themes, and it’s overall just not a great game. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, though to be fair, I wouldn’t recommend any of DSPs games to anyone. However, I think the reason I feel so strong about this series still is the characters. When I first played this and read the manga (printed half, just ignore the Sea of Death arc…) I fell in love with the characters, I loved Wadanohara, Samekichi, Memoca, Fukami.

TLDR, do not play these games. Handles fragile topics awfully. RPGMaker horror is most certainly a genre

Freedom Planet is a game that I'm weirdly passionate about. There is a lot of things that undeniably suck, like the absurdly long cutscenes between the levels (I personally think the story itself is overhated, its the amount of the time you spend in these cutscenes that makes it worse), the complete lack of iframes making laser attacks remove half of your health, the obnoxious enemy spam starting from Battle Glacier and playing as Milla in general. However this game just boats such wonderful vibes with very memorable levels like Fortune Night or Jade Creek that I replay constantly. Mastery of Lilac's movement and levels just feels so stupidly good and don't get me started on the soundtrack, might be my favourite in an indie platformer period.
FP1 is definitely not a game that is gonna click with everyone as it takes getting used to, but damn it I like it.

Endroll is an amazing horror inspired RPG maker 2000 game. By all means it should be played and I believe this is my favourite RPG maker game, even more so than Omori. You play as Russell, a serial killer who has been sentenced to death and takes part in a medical trial where he's given a drug named "Happy Dream", whose purpose is to make him develop guilt and regret his crimes. The whole story takes place inside his dream, where a nameless village with very kind inhabitants is created. You will very quickly uncover the truth about the inhabitants and every day focuses on one of them.

This game doesn't beat around the bush and you could compare it to Omori's creepiest parts. Take that and make it creepier, and then make an entire game out of it. While I thought it looked fairly standard at the beginning, the game hooked me very quickly with its pacing and how on point it was. Almost the entire game has a creepy unsettling atmosphere and it only gets worse as you progress, but it is just translating the game's themes. At its roots it's still a Mother/Earthbound-like game, though, and there's also a lot of comedy.

One of the most interesting things about the narration is that half if not more of the game's content is optional. If you only do the main plot, I estimate you'd beat the game in about five hours, but the game has a lot of side stories or requests from the villagers which make it last longer. Every in-game day, you can talk to them to learn rumours or get a request, and you can revisit previous places to see if any change has happened. Oftentimes you'll stumble upon an entirely new dungeon by revisiting a previous location, or realise that every NPC has new dialogue and an event is on-going and unlock new locations too. After every main quest, you will also advance the day to night time, and the world is very different (and dangerous) at night, some events being exclusive to it. The side content is honestly amazing and it feels like you keep discovering darker secrets continuously. A lot of them will develop the characterisation of the villagers and the creepier story elements.

I think one of the game's most original aspect for me was that unlike Omori, the main character is perfectly aware of his past and it is the virtual characters of his world which are confronted and shocked by the truth. The main character simply develop his guilt by watching their reaction, trauma and protecting them. Often, the quests will actually reveal the story of these characters rather than the protagonist, whether they are stories imagined by him or things he knew, and represent those characters overcoming THEIR obstacles and not Russell. Essentially, the game has several arcs which focus on one character but you can further explore them by revisiting locations related to their story. If I had to give a main theme to this game, it would definitively be the feeling of guilt. I found it very easy to sympathise with what the protagonist would be feeling during the events of the game.

The game also has a very interesting combat gameplay. While it may seem pretty standard at first, it actually has a good focus on buff/debuff and elemental weaknesses. There are also multiple status that enemies can affect and which you have to deal with. One of the more interesting aspects of combat is that you can go to a great extent to customise characters. For example, you can buy spell books to teach a specific ability to a character and turn them into a healer or magician, and there are stat increasing seeds all to increase a specific trait. There are even two seeds which will increase either physical or magical abilities to a very great extent, but they will decrease the opposite one by a great amount too. And the most fascinating is that every character has at least two weapon types, a more magic-focused weapon and a physical-focused one, with different skills being available depending on the weapon type you are using which makes every character very versatile. Did I mention that you can almost freely customise a party of four with NINE characters? They all have fairly unique skills too, even though they can serve almost any roll. The game also doesn't lack challenge and the optional zones will offer great combat value, with the last ones being fairly difficult albeit I never needed to grind.

If it has any flaw, it would be that it seems primitive, considering it's RPG Maker 2000 and there are obvious limitations such as only being able to change maps when you're walking on a road or the hitboxes of buildings, but it didn't bother me once I realise how much depth this game had and once you get there, you have a really wonderful game and in my opinion it is just as great as Omori.

You can get the game for free and in English at: https://vgperson.com/games/endroll.htm

Freedom Planet is a mostly excellent platformer. I loved the giant, sprawling levels and how richly the game rewards exploring them. The visuals are wonderful, with great character designs and tons of fun details in the colorful art.

Freedom Planet's roots as a Sonic fan game are on display, but that's not a bad thing as it's got a very strong personality of its own. In particular, the story and characters are very strong and memorable. The story gets a bit heavier than I expected given the early tone, but it sets the stakes well.

Lastly, the soundtrack is an all-time great. I picked it up on Bandcamp and listen to it regularly, just a joyful assortment of catchy tunes and fun instrumentation. Each paired stage featuring the same theme but remixed was a great choice.

The boss fights are the weakest aspect of the game, as I found they contributed to very uneven pacing. Most were simply not very fun to fight and ground the game to a halt. If the game excluded most of them I'd have enjoyed it more. I hope this aspect is improved in the sequel.

Played through the as Lilac campaign. Worth noting, every character has some unique levels, so there's more to find on a replay.

I liked this game. It does what Little Misfortune failed to do - discuss very difficult topics in a way that is engaging, interesting, and doesn't make you feel bad.

I don't want to say much about this game except it does a phenomenal job of taking you on this journey through this unique world and exploring a very difficult topic. My only real critique would be how, "out of nowhere" the ending is.

Out of nowhere isn't really fair because they do a pretty good job of hinting at it throughout, but it takes a pretty dramatic turn at the end. Still, a good game that I'd recommend playing if you can handle the dark themes.

I don't really know what but there's something that really pissed me off about this game. I think at the core of it, it's that, I know some women who are influencers or streamers of various scales, and I think about this game and wonder "does this game do any justice for the kind of stuff they deal with online and offline, or the kind of social conditions that even pushed them towards that stuff in the first place? Does it primarily push a player to consider those things deeply?" and my answer, regardless of any interpretative gymnastics aside, pretty much comes down to: "No."

I think humans are generous and thus you CAN find something good in this game. But I don't think the game is, itself, meaning to be 'good' towards the types of people it takes up as its subject manner.

I guess one way I can frame it is, what if the premise of the game was flipped a bit and it was something like "Desperate Asian Girlfriend?" We play as a boyfriend of some unspecified age who has surprising control over an 'unstable' asian girlfriend. Through your choices you can lead her to all sorts of terrible endings! In fact the game revels in that - the endings are flashy, 'cool,' and a big selling point for the game, more than any look into why this 'asian girlfriend' is 'unstable' in the first place, historical precedents, etc. That's just what this feels like but for I guess, young Japanese women who use the internet a lot or something... like are we really playing this to somehow get a better look at mental illness and the internet? Or for something else?

---

As a "princess-raising" style game it's a bit flat-feeling - having to go through the same motions of opening the messages, twitter, etc each day make replaying stuff a bit of a slog.

Beyond that idk. I understand how people could see themselves in this character and the pressures of the internet, but there's just something to the way that feels a bit more like a exploitative look at "various kinds of mentally ill streamer women" - I think, because of the way the game really pushes you to do things like overdose her on drugs, push her stress to the max, as it places (!) icons on all sorts of options. I would wager that more endings than less have these sort of schlocky, shock-value endings.

Does the game think that women who become streamers are stupid, emotionally unstable and manipulative? Does the game think that streaming is an exploitative system that perpetuates loneliness amongst viewers and streamers while video companies profit?

It honestly doesn't particularly argue for either, but it definitely plays into the shock value to increase its sales, and it takes advantage of players' preconceived notions expectations as to what hope to see happen to the character. It barely looks into Ame as a character outside of a malleable doll tumbling towards any one of the bad endings.

It ironically plays entirely into the streamer and social media fodder that partially creates the space for people like Ame to suffer, or creepy dude producers like P-chan to take advantage of young womens' streamer labor for money or sex.

I don't really know what to say but young women struggling through life or the internet aren't lab rats to be categorized and put on display in these kinds of bizarre simplified archetypes. I understand that women could find themselves represented in this game and I'm not faulting them for liking it, but to me that just feels like a slight positive to the game rather than an argument for the game's holistic goodness.

I'm not against a more nuanced take on the struggles of streaming, but I don't think it should be done through this cliche of the 'huge big streamer' - what about the majority of streamer, people who perhaps - are equally unhappy - but with small audiences in the 100s or even 10s, working each day towards... what exactly?

I don't know. The kind of latent misogyny I feel from this just pisses me off for some reason, something that is just profiting, via spectacle, off of the whole culture of fame and whatnot that makes a lot of people I know suffer