religious trauma here we go - the game

i enjoyed myself immensly with saint maker, they really know how to crank up the athmospheric horror. i love love loved the voice acting, you could really feel the emotions; this paired with the artwork really drove home how horrifying an event this would be to experience yourself. definitely revisited quite a lot of my own childhood memories as well ( >﹏<。)

seeing our MC grow through the (rather short) game was incredibly satisfying. i wish my girls the best for their future, amen.

never before in my life was i presented with a cast as dislikable as this, but you keep at it, you think it will improve, and then when the story finally gets to rolling they hit you with another shitty joke, and another, and OH we were being serious? nah, HERE'S YET A N O T H E R. and then the endgame is building up to be this GIANT THING, and you think, YES FINALLY, HERE IT COMES - BUT THEN THEY INFODUMP FOR 5 HOURS STRAIGHT AND THEN YOU SEE THE CREDITS ROLL BUT THEY KEEP INFODUMPING, AND THEN YOU GO READ THE EXTRA SCENES BECAUSE IT'S A VISUAL NOVEL AND YOU WANT ALL THE CONTENT BECAUSE IT WAS OKAY-ISH OVERALL AND IT'S JUST MORE INFODUMPING ON SIDECHARACTERS IN A SETTING YOU WILL /NEVER/ REVISIT AGAIN BECAUSE IT JUST DOESN'T STOP.

what initially drew me to this game was the artstyle, and the story held great promise. in the end i feel like i could have spent those 50+ hours with like 3 other games, because after it was all said and done i was just so tired. so so tired of the writing in this. it could have been great, it had its great moments, but the overall package was such a letdown, i felt myself legitimately get angry for even spending yet another minute suffering through it.

i went into this after a friend had complained about it pretty much the entire time they played thinking "oh it can't be that bad, i'll like it" but .. bruh. of all the yakuza games i have played so far, this is the weakest entry. the story is wack, but not in a good way, and the FLOW is so bad. i wish i cared about the children but the game forcing them onto me when everything else is happening was so disorienting. just let me go back to punching people.
(don't get me started on that though. by god if i get blocked one more time 🫡)