Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Has No Audience

It’s hard to imagine a more perfect disaster in terms of audience appeal than Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.  This game utterly fails every audience demographic that it’s meant to attract, with such multifaceted surety that it almost seems like it must have been by design.  Much like the gameplay of Lunar: Dragon Song, it does not seem credible that such myriad and unexpected manners of failure could accidentally coalesce in such a perfect manner; surely there are elements of sabotage at work here.

Okay, so first of all, let’s talk about what TMS#FE is supposed to be.  What it was presented and marketed as.  Promised to be.  Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is, in theory, a crossover between Nintendo’s second flagship RPG series, Fire Emblem, and Atlus’s genre superstar, Shin Megami Tensei.

And before we go any further, I think it’s important that we stop, take a moment, contemplate and reflect upon ourselves and this crossover concept, and consider deeply a very important question:

Um, what?

Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei?  Together?  I mean...I’m not against the idea, I guess, but I also don’t really see the common ground here?  They’re 2 RPG franchises that just have...very, very different approaches.  FE’s a tactical RPG whose titles have stories that are fundamentally character-based, always involve large-scale medieval-themed international (or occasionally intranational, like FE16) conflicts, and employ main villains that are usually some combination of dark fantasy cult, dark dragon, dark god, or gullible amoral moron.  There’s great emphasis on camaraderie, a lot of romance, plenty of epic heroism, and also for some reason incest is just a thing you cannot escape from.  Meanwhile, SMT is (most often) a turn-based RPG whose titles have stories that are narrative/theme-driven and usually austere, base themselves around and employ the lore and pantheons of practically every known religion and collection of superstitions of our species, and generally examine, analyze, and explore major religions and systems of belief, from Christianity to Hinduism to Luck to the Tarot, and what they mean about and for us as a species.  There’s great emphasis on the warring needs of order and freedom in human society and the human heart, a lot of fun intermingling of different faiths’ figures and concepts, great pride for Japan and Tokyo in particular, and also for some reason the protagonists are all silent because nothing is perfect.

What about these series makes it seem like they’d have enough common ground to make for a good crossover?  Their approach, their content, the way they style their narrative, their ranges in terms of art and intellectual value...FE and SMT seem as distinct and unlikely candidates to join together as Inspector Gadget and the musical Cats.  Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei?  That’s like trying to mash together, I dunno, Lord of the Rings with Paradise Lost, or Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain books with the Bhagavad Gita.  What would a functional version of such a combination even look like?

...The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe, I guess.  But Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is certainly no Chronicles of Narnia.

So yeah, right off the bat, the crossover element of this game doesn’t make much sense.  But hey, okay, yeah, so what, right?  So Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei have all the natural crossover chemistry of Uncle Grandpa and Steven Universe.  Big deal!  That doesn’t mean something involving them both can’t work.  I mean, it’s certainly no more ludicrous an idea than mixing together Final Fantasy and Disney, and look how that turned out!

...Oh God, look how that turned out.

Well...Kingdom Hearts is financially successful, at least?

Alright, bad example.  The point is, if you put in some effort, respect and celebrate each franchise, and use them to their best potential, surely this crossover could please devotees of both FE and SMT, and even allow each franchise to court new fans.

Unfortunately, “respect and celebrate each franchise, and use them to their best potential” was not a bullet point on the TMS#FE action plan.

First of all, Shin Megami Tensei?  I don’t know what it was doing when production began on Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, but it clearly did not make it into the office that day.  There is basically nothing in this game that relates to the SMT series.  There’s no conflict between Law and Chaos.  God, Lucifer, angels, demons, fairies, fiends, representatives of the pantheons Norse and Greek and Mesopotamian and Celtic and Egyptian and more, celebrated mythical heroes of fallen civilizations, quasi-religious figures of Japanese history and folklore, Barong, Alice, Amanozako, Krishna, Cerberus, Xi Wangmu, Medusa, Shiva, NONE of them are here.  There’s no overarching theme or examination of any religion or other faith.  About the only thing about TMS#FE you could say has even a faint whiff of Megaten about it is the battle system being a modified version of the press turn formula of SMT--and even if SMT’s take on turn-based combat IS basically the best I’ve seen, no fan in her or his right mind would ever diminish the franchise so disrespectfully as to say that the essence and significance of Shin Megami Tensei is adequately contained within its gameplay alone.  Oh, and I guess you can make the argument that the game’s dungeon aesthetic, its approach to sidequests, and its use of “summoned” assisting combat entities are reminiscent of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona...but that’s the very separated style of a subseries of SMT, not SMT as a whole, and it’s still obviously not a satisfactory, significant involvement of the franchise in this game for any Megaten fan.  You sure as heck didn’t see a great outpouring of positivity from SMT devotees the last time Atlus ripped itself off in this fashion with Conception 2, after all.

So in this touted crossover between Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem, there is effectively NOTHING of satisfactory presence of the former.  Did the Fire Emblem fans at least get something they’d want out of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE?

Well, there ARE some elements of Fire Emblem actually present and involved...but if anything, that might just mean that FE supporters have more reason to be disappointed.  See, the predominant influence of Fire Emblem on Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is that, through convoluted but narratively convenient means, each party member is paired off with an incorporeal entity who acts as their Persona-esque partner (called a Mirage) in and out of combat, and these empowering entities happen to be a handful of characters from the Fire Emblem series--the protagonist’s partner is Chrom, Kiria’s is Tharja, Mamori is paired up with Draug, etc.  Aside from that, the only other Fire Emblem characters to show up in any significant capacity are Tiki, who’s an ally that upgrades the team’s abilities, and the game’s main villains, Gharnef and Medeus.  A few other FE characters trickle in momentarily here and there, but only as vehicles for brief sidequests, or quickly-dispatched boss encounters (often both).  Trust me when I say that the sidequest and midboss fodder have so little virtue unto themselves that they may as well just be cardboard cutout stand-ins with speech balloons taped onto them, for all the character authenticity or care they’re given.

So let’s see...Chrom, Caeda, Cain, Tharja, Virion, Draug, Navarre, Tiki, Gharnef, Medeus, and some very minor dabbling of a few others as sidequest and combat props.  So, 10 characters with change.  I guess that could be worse--sure as hell beats the pathetic showing Final Fantasy made in Kingdom Hearts 1, at least--but I still feel like one could expect a bit more Fire Emblem presence in a Fire Emblem crossover, you know?  It ain't exactly like the franchise is lacking for options in this department; you practically have 10 FE characters in your party coming out of the prologue of some of these games.

Also, it bears considering that ALL of these FE characters come from the same couple of titles, Fire Emblem 1 (or 11, its remake) and 13.  I get that 1/11 was the origins of the series and that 13 both takes place on that same world and was a huge success that finally, definitively broke into the mainstream American RPG market, but it still feels like a surprising waste of potential to have a franchise over a dozen titles strong, yet limit yourself strictly to only 2(-ish) of them.

Far more than quantity, though, it’s the quality of Fire Emblem’s presence that makes Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE such an embarrassing failure to its premise.  For starters, as the Persona-knockoffs whose main purpose in the game is assisting the main characters, Chrom and company are unavoidably restricted to secondary roles--and even that seems like a generous way of putting it.  By and large, the Fire Emblem characters in this game are reactive personalities whose dialogue and moments of character development just exist as responses to what’s happening around them or what the main character they’re paired with is doing or saying.  Rarely do they take initiative as their own beings, and on the occasions that they do start a conversation or sidequest, it’s usually specifically focused on discussing or advancing their partner as a character.  Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE very clearly views the iconic heroes it’s plucked from their renowned and storied franchise as nothing more than tools to benefit its own original cast.

And as if diminishing the Fire Emblem heroes to mere support roles wasn’t enough, they’ve all got amnesia for almost the entire game!  Yeah, not only are the FE cast forced to take a noticeable backseat in their own crossover, they don’t even remember who they are or anything about their own adventures until the very last stage of the game!  What, you thought there might be the occasional reference to the events and lore of Fire Emblem games in this Fire Emblem crossover?  Well fuck you, Atlus has other plans.  Chrom doesn’t remember Lucina, Caeda doesn’t recall Marth, Tharja doesn’t know who Robin is--wasn’t, like, obsessing over Robin something like 90% of Tharja’s entire personality and reason for existing?  Robbed of their past, the FE cast in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE are just an assortment of vague personality stereotypes that merely suggest the characters that fans know and love.

Hell, they don’t even LOOK like themselves!  For whatever reason, all the FE characters besides Tiki and the villains have been redesigned to be almost unrecognizable.  Chrom looks like Fire Emblem just entered the public domain and someone’s trying to slap together a cheap horror-movie knockoff interpretation of him for a quick buck, and the rest, with their headwear covering their eyes and half or more of their faces, and their overbearing outfit redesigns, look like extras from some faux-psychological thriller anime.  You wouldn’t even realize who half of them were if the game didn’t explicitly name them!

So to recap thus far: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is touted as a crossover between Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei, only it’s got effectively jack shit to do with SMT, so it offers nothing to entice Megaten fans to be its audience.  And over on the other side, TMS#FE needlessly limits its use of Fire Emblem to 1 particular corner of the franchise, makes most of the FE characters unrecognizable shadows of their former selves who can’t even remember or reference their own pasts and exploits, and reduces their roles to secondary foils to its own precious baby OCs, so it offers close to nothing to FE fans to be its audience--I’d argue that its disinterest for its Fire Emblem toys is enough to drive that fanbase away, in fact.

Alright, fine.  So Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE has no audience with the groups it specifically courted.  That’s obviously a major flaw, but it’s not a death knell for the game.  After all, it could at least appeal to its audience simply as an entity in its own right, surely?  It doesn’t have to be a good crossover to be a good game as a whole; Kingdom Hearts 2 is a very good RPG even though it perpetually views both its Disney and Final Fantasy elements as mere obligatory stepping-stones to do what it actually wants to.  Is TMS#FE at least a good RPG on its own?

Ha ha ha
What
No?  Like, Jesus Christ, no
Look, Me, I know you were just asking that question as a way of transitioning to the next part of this rant but come on dude that was just too stupid a question to ask even rhetorically; you’re embarrassing yourself man

Yeah, no, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is not a good RPG by itself.  Aside from the entertainment industry angle--which we’ll get to in a moment--there’s not a lot to its overall plot that’s particularly interesting or different, and what messages it has basically just amount to the boilerplate “always do your best to do your best” bit and a vague encouragement to its player to never lose the excitement of consuming fresh new media products.  It ain’t a riveting foundation, and with a limp and uninvolved narrative voice for its characters’ interactions and plot twists that you either see coming or more often just don’t care about, it isn’t even making the most of that crappy premise.  Its villains range from the laughably exaggerated to the typical overwrought anime dingus who’s managed to come to the most absurd nuclear-option answer to an ultimately minor problem in the world; it’s hard to believe that fucking Gharnef, a bad guy underwhelming even by dime-a-dozen NES save-the-princess villain standards, is the most nuanced antagonist in the cast.

And the main characters might somehow be worse, a collection of empty caricatures and cliches who’d be as at home in a Kemco assembly-line “release it and then forget it ever happened” game as they are here.  Their personal arcs are uninspired and feel genuinely unimportant as their generic personalities rigidly reject internalizing any epiphany reached--not to mention that there are times when the lessons of these arcs are questionable, or just outright unhealthy (more on that in a later rant).  This is the cast that Atlus decided to award the entirety of their attention and effort, at the Fire Emblem crew’s expense?  I’m not exactly the world’s biggest Fire Emblem fan and I haven’t even played FE13, but Chrom alone weighs more as a character than the entirety of TMS#FE’s stable of OCs!

And also, Barry is there.  Jesus fucking Christ, Atlus.

So if you’re looking for a good RPG, something well-written or interesting or poignant or meaningful or creative, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE still isn’t your game.  Frankly, the fact that this game doesn’t (currently) make it onto my Worst RPGs List distresses me.  How can we live with ourselves as a species, knowing that Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is not the very worst thing we are capable of creating?  That it isn’t even in the top 20?

But hey, don’t worry if you don’t hold your entertainment to the same very picky and specific standards I do--even if you just want to play an RPG, any RPG, you’re still not TMS#FE’s audience.  Because this game seems to resent being an RPG just as much as it resents being saddled with the Fire Emblem characters.  Oh yeah, sure, there’s a plot with some hoopla about saving the world from these otherworldly forces that drain the passion out of the public using magical powers and it all leads up to stopping the evil schemes of an evil magic guy and his evil god he’s summoning, standard RPG stuff, but at no point does that feel like the story that has the writers’ interest.  The classic world-saving schtick is obviously just there to keep the narrative wheels greased and turning, to give the player something to do with him/herself between scenes of the game’s REAL focus: stories of a group of young people entering, advancing through, and branching out within the Japanese entertainment industry.

It’s not a natural fusion, and the juxtaposition between these sides is very lopsided.  It’s clear that the creators wanted to write a game about up-and-coming pop icons, musicians, and actors, and they either couldn’t figure out how or just didn’t especially care to really mesh that with the save-the-world adventure element.

And the thing is, there still could have been at least some merit, some potential audience, that this game could have properly captured, even then.  Because even if it’s certainly out of the ordinary, a story about the behind-the-scenes of Japanese idol culture and what its superstars do to rise up in the ranks and propagate themselves through the multimedia...well, it could be neat!  As the west becomes exposed to more and more of the creative works and culture of Japan (and some of its neighbors; K-Dramas are spreading like wildfire and just recently KPop Demon Hunters was a whole phenomenon) beyond just its anime, getting glimpses into how the industry works becomes more and more relevantly interesting to we overseas fans.  It’s not my first pick for the subject of an RPG, but then, “a kid and his mom wander around a hospital” wouldn’t have been high on my list of desired RPG premises, either, and I loved Rakuen, so hey, what do I know?

And yet, even for the rare, most likely purely theoretical audience who wants an RPG specifically about the journey of a rising star in Japanese media, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE still manages to disappoint.

Because, frankly?  The entirety of this game’s fixation on idols is entirely surface-level.  Skimming the surface level, even.  Each chapter’s and sidequest’s glance at the entertainment industry, from music to stage shows to modeling to movies to TV shows and on and on, comes off as someone’s guesses at the experience of being an idol, based on a conflict-of-the-day episode of Sailor Moon they kind of remember seeing as a kid.  The management’s supportive and almost always in the talents’ corner, the idols never burn out (and on the rare occasion they overextend themselves, it’s only out of love for the work), there’s no stalkers or otherwise overtly creepy and possessive fans,* no one in the industry uses their position or experience to do creepy things to naive or less popular stars...if it’s a problem that can’t be solved by believing in yourself just a little harder, then it doesn’t fucking exist in the idol industry, according to Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.

This is the idealistically shallow, smile-and-nod perspective held by someone who’s only ever sat in the audience, and never given a second thought to the performances put in front of them.  I’d call it a pedestrian understanding of the idol industry, but frankly, it’s not even that--I’m a pedestrian who just likes watching some VTubers, and even just from doing that, I at least know the horrific war on human decency that Nijisanji’s been waging against its talents for years, for example, and they’re certainly not the first entertainment corporation in Japan to do so.  Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE’s portrayal of the life of an idol has all the nuance and insight that you’d expect from an excited 6-year-old.

So there you have it: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE simply has no audience it can appeal to.  It promises a crossover between Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem, 2 franchises which don’t have any particular common ground to meet upon.  It’s got functionally nothing in it for SMT fans, and it utilizes its very limited FE elements in such a dismissive, inept manner that it’s got functionally less than nothing for FE fans.  It doesn’t hold up on its own merits as an RPG, and it’s much more interested in being a niche story about rising to stardom in Japanese media culture anyway, so just an average RPG audience isn’t gonna get much out of it.  And even in terms of looking at the idol industry, the only subject the game actually seems to care about, it’s too infantile to satisfy any sincerely interested audience.  There’s no shortage of Shin Megami Tensei, nor Fire Emblem, titles to be found, a great many RPGs of noteworthy quality exist to be enjoyed, it’s hardly impossible to find a decent crossover game like SMT Persona Q or Super Smash Brothers, and hell, the existence of Hololive CouncilRyS RPG and Chrono Gear: Warden of Time means that there’s even alternatives, and significantly better ones at that, for anyone who’s really hankering for an idol-themed video game.  TMS#FE simply has no reason for anyone to play it.










* Well, there’s Barry, I suppose.  But his crap is played up for comedy, or at most, gently admonished as the overenthusiasm of someone who means well.  He’s clearly still meant to be seen as one of the “good guys.”

Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA Stray Thoughts

Yeah, I’m doing a stray thoughts rant for 1 of the most obscure RPGs on the planet.  Because, you see, I’ve got it all figured out.  All I’ve gotta do to never have anyone tell me I’m wrong ever again is to rant on games that none of my readers have ever played themselves!  What’re the haters gonna do, go out and play the game themselves just to prove me wrong?  Well, I’ve already highly recommended this one, so you can’t do that, either!  Big-brain strats, you see.

Anyway yeah this is a pretty indulgent one, but I had a lot of thoughts when I played Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA, and it was a pretty sizable game that I’d like to get some rant mileage out of, so you’re just gonna have to live with my indulgence.  Come back next time or play it yourself and then be let down at how my rant was definitely not worth the wait, either way’s good with me.

Oh, also, significant spoilers ahead!



- I appreciate the fact that there’s a lot more of an open and direct narrative approach to this game.  It’s no great secret that in the past, the level of complexity in the plot, lore, and characters themselves was high enough in LBS titles that I’ve frequently not been confident that I really got everything, which is something that gets in my head and drives me to distraction.  I really want to just fully understand the things that I enjoy, on every level they can be.  This time around, though...there’s plenty of stuff going on in the backstage of AAAVXA’s story and lots you still have to infer and puzzle out on your own--Saint Bomber builds and relays his lore and plots in a fashion mildly akin to a well-paced mystery novel--but there’s a lot more about the backstories and the plot’s facts and direction that requires less constant interpretation, I think.  I felt more certain that I was understanding everything I was meant to be, basically, and whether that was an intentional adjustment or just a natural development of his style, I appreciate it and think it’s beneficial.


- Related to this shift to more direct storytelling: AAAVXA actually gives us a definitive pronunciation of Hinoki Jr.’s name.  I doubt this was done specifically in response to my grousing about it in a previous rant, but Saint Bomber’s willing and direct committal to such a detail that he previously wouldn’t relinquish, minor though it may be, gratified me as much as it would if it had been specifically done for me.


- This game’s use of a Magical Girls premise of love-draining monsters as an analogy for that which trauma takes from us is very apt and even a bit ingenious, and it’s executed quite well.  Like, I’m not going to say it’s on a Madoka level of brilliance for using a classic premise of the Magical Girls genre as a symbol for darker and heavier concepts, but Angelic Acceptor Alouette is certainly swimming in the same pool.

...It’s a bit troubling that Magical Girls have so aptly found themselves to be vehicles of heavier, painful stories in recent times, with representatives like AAAVXA, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and Mamika from Re:Creators.  I mean for crying out loud, the most positive and feel-good magical girl media I've personally encountered in the last several years has been Gushing Over Magical Girls!


- It’s not all really thought-provoking and intelligent content in AAAVXA, of course, but honestly, sometimes the outright idiotic stuff is just as enjoyable.  The side episode about a bra going bad is pleasingly stupid, and reminds me of both Steven Universe attacking Frybo by commanding his clothing and underwear, and an episode of The IT Crowd.  Which, who knows, could have been intentional--it’s a long-shot, but on the other hand, I wasn’t expecting multiple references to the Pitch Meetings internet video series, so anything’s possible.


- While there's a lot to like about Miriam, somehow the thing I most weirdly adore is that her hobby is renting and watching 80s/90s movies, then finding and watching the pornographic lesbian parody versions of those movies, and writing essays comparing the differences between them and the changes in their meaning.  It feels like the kind of absurdly pretentious and self-gratifying nerdy obsessive stuff I do with these rants.


- There have been a lot--a LOT--of extremely singular, unexpected, unique characters and individuals and scenarios I’ve seen in RPGs that I was not expecting to, from a 1930s Japanese paranormal detective cockblocking a cyborg Rasputin, to every character on this list, to the developers of Wild Arms 5 expecting their audience to take the use of a giant monowheel as a mode of transportation seriously.  And right up there in the Most Genuinely Unexpected Things To See In An RPG category has got to be Clarissa from Clarissa Explains It All as a major antagonist.  Like, okay, it’s a legally distinct version of her, and the character’s more of an amalgamation of several troubled and/or washed-up child stars that the 1990s/2000s entertainment industry ground up and spat out than any one individual...but she’s still primarily using Clarissa Explains It All as the 90s show that forms the basis of this character.  That is a deep cut, there.


- And while we’re on the subject of said Legally Distinct Clarissa...1 single solitary conversation from a sidequest about a secondary character’s history as a child TV star, and already Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA has crafted a more compelling, realistic, and insightful look at an entertainment industry than the entirety of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, the game that threw away every other part of its premise to go all in on portraying exactly that.  It's crazy how the slightest bit of talent and effort can make all the difference, huh?


- I like the fact that the conclusion of the vacation episode includes a moment of Mille essentially doing the same kind of "trust fall" that the (sort of) villains had been experimenting with earlier, showing it working in real time.  It’s a neat touch.


- Ha!  Aunt Raye said “...Well, don’t that just beat all?”  I see what you did there, Saint Bomber.


- Mille is a great character, and a decent part of that is the fact that she’s a rare demonstration that it's actually possible to have a well-written character who goes through a lot of her development off-screen. We can, for example, see tiny (often initially misleading) private glimpses and sentences of her personal growth throughout the game (and a few of her old diary entries in the Akashic Record), but we’re only able to contextualize the truth of these snippets retroactively as she and Simone talk after the fight in Episode 10.*  We’re only able to observe the tiniest moments of consternation and thought as Mille mulls over her feelings and herself through the majority of the game, and yet it’s handled well enough and leads the audience effectively enough that she still is ultimately a solid dynamic entity in the game’s cast.


- Much like what I've said in the past about never knowing when the random minor NPC or hench-villain in the background will turn out to be the person on whom the universe hinges, there's also never a moment so silly or innocuous in a Large Battleship Studios game that it isn't going to suddenly transform into a moment of shocking, overpowering significance and/or emotional gravity.  An absurd puzzle involving a succubus conga-line can suddenly reveal the most disturbing and tragic backstory in the game withinin the space of 1 textbox to the next, and an adventure about an isekai'd holiday icon can reveal that its jokes and absurdity are merely the cushion surrounding heavy pieces of lore and context to a previous adventure.  You’d think that the tonal shift would be jarring, but somehow it’s only ever intriguing.


- This game doesn't lack for sad and even morose moments and scenes, but the alternate moment in which Mille gives up on magic because she's been shut out of it for the last time is heartbreaking--shockingly so, considering how much worse things we've seen, but it’s an undeniable moment of wrenching disappointment.


- Funnily enough, for all the glazing I’ve done for it and its creator, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA is the Large Battleship Studios game with the most parts I disagree with or dislike.  There’s the incest thing, of course, my feelings on which I plan to really dissect in a forthcoming rant.  I think that considerably more cordiality is paid to Alice as a whole than should be--I do not like how glossed over her history of abusing animals is as the narrative moves along with what it needs from her.  While her role and characterization in this game are fine enough, I still can’t say I was pleased to see that Claudine survived the events of Quantum Entanglement; Saint Bomber makes more allowances for this particular creation of his than I feel are deserved.  Anastasia’s a boring pill on her own and is a surprisingly unconvincing love interest; her romance with Simone is the first time I can recall that a significant part of an LBS game’s love story has had less believable chemistry and development than the basic average RPG romance subplot.  It frustrates me a bit that so much of Mille’s role in the game’s later stages requires her to either hold herself at arm’s length or be adversarial, after so many chapters in which she was delayed from engaging in romance with Simone--I understand that with Mille’s easy and instant chemistry with Simone, a good bit of time had to be given to Miriam so she could play catch-up because otherwise she just wouldn’t be able to stand on equal romantic ground, but in the end, it feels like circumstances unfairly kept Mille and Simone from sharing the same depth of love (or at the very least, the same quality of romantic development) that Simone was allowed to form with Miriam.

I think that’s my full laundry-list of stuff I significantly didn’t appreciate about/objected to within AAAVXA, or at least all the things I can really remember offhand.  Which really isn’t that bad anyway, but it’s kind of funny that this game has the most components I’ve objected to in an LBS title when I also think it could be argued to be the best of them.


- You know, it was at around the time of the Alice scenario in AAAVXA that I got to thinking about something: there’s a lot of great, layered complexity to Large Battleship Studios games, this one in particular.  It’s very complicated, with many irons in the fire and pieces to its puzzle...but unlike games and series where the complications just stack up over and over into an incomprehensible mess (such as the Kingdom Hearts series, Xenogears, the Xenosaga series, and Chrono Cross, to name a few examples), it's all carefully coordinated to a definite vision and purpose, and it never gets bigger than its own cast, nor bigger than its audience wants to deal with.

At a guess, I'd say the difference is that Saint Bomber may have spent a long time after Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle constructing where he wanted his universe to go, and why, and while things are inevitably added on during the creative process, he's making sure that the structure is cohesive before any product is released.  The details and answers of LBS games are present and important (even if sometimes overlooked) all along and wherever they need to be, and learning their importance as time goes on puts already existing data into context, rather than flipping everything all over again.  By contrast, needlessly overcomplicated bullhonkey RPGs like Kingdom Hearts or Xenogears feel like the creators are flying by the seats of their pants, trying with each new step to make things bigger than they already are, layer more profoundness where it isn't, and outdo themselves at all turns.

KH and its ilk are a house that some child keeps hastily pasting new additions and oddities onto according to his newest whim, without caring too much about what it means for what was already there, only enough to keep the new stuff from outright collapsing the walls it's stapled to (and even that minimal care is not always given).**  Saint Bomber, on the other hand, thinks of new ways to add to and punch up the structure he's made, but he does it by looking at the blueprint and adjusting it to account for and incorporate the additions.  Each new layer and detail of his story-house isn't just pasted onto it, it's incorporated into its design. He can even do it retroactively, as evidenced by AAA:VXA's frequent returns to Quantum Entanglement and A Dragon’s ReQuest, which is impressive.















* The version of Chapter 10 where you attacked Petanque rather than Delta, that is.


** To quote Saint Bomber himself on this matter of how KH's overarching lore and story carry themselves (because yes, I totally am so desperate for attention and genuinely pathetic that I actually share these rants about his works with him), "Everything about Kingdom Hearts is exemplified in the construction of a Gummi Ship."

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1's Downloadable Content

We’re going over the add-ons for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 today!  I’m curious to see what this game’s downloadable content scene has to offer.  On the one hand, I am, with full justification, highly skeptical of add-ons and always prepared for the worst when it comes to them.  On the other hand, KCD1, although a rather massive and ambitious open-world undertaking, is ultimately an Indie RPG, and a crowdfunded one (that I myself contributed to), at that, and as a general rule, Indies are far more reliable than main industry developers are.  And yet still again, the last DLC I reviewed was for an Indie RPG, as well, and though it didn’t lack for quality, I was not impressed by the ethics of that add-on.  So I guess we’re once again just totally up in the air as far as what to expect, here.



From the Ashes: In this DLC, Sir Divish tasks Henry with the revival of the town of Pribyslavitz, which basically involves Henry finding workers and residents for the town, dropping a buttload of cash into the construction and reconstruction of vital buildings and services for a medieval village, and waiting while the assistant, Marius, checks to make sure there are adequate resources, and then re-checks that Henry hasn’t snuck his cash back out of the funds chest in the time it took him to jog over to the building site because Warhorse Studios knows all your sneaky tricks, gamers.

Anyway, this isn’t worth the $6 it costs.  While there’s nothing wrong with it as a whole, it’s an extremely barebones story--you rescue a dude, you drop some cash, you gallop to a few towns to recruit some other dudes, bam, you’re basically done.  Who you recruit adds a little flavor to the task, as some of the people being brought in were notable NPCs in the main game’s events like Kunesh and Henry’s shitty Slavitz buddies, but little really comes of that fact; it’s mostly just a minor blip of interest, and then you’re just back to building up a town.  As base/headquarters/town-building sidequests go, From the Ashes ain’t exactly Pathfinder: Kingmaker.  It’s barely an evolution past the task of finding residents for and expanding Township in Breath of Fire 2; hell, considering the diverse functions of Township’s residents and its connection to the ending of the game, I’d say an argument could be made that KCD1’s town-building simulator is actually still less than the one Capcom threw into the 16-bit game they published almost a quarter of a century prior to Kingdom Come Deliverance 1’s release.

That’s not to say that From the Ashes is bad, mind you.  It does give you something to do with all the groschen you’ve been hoarding in the later stages of the game.  Additionally, 1 of KCD1’s major goals is to depict, examine, teach, and to some degree celebrate the times and reality of the medieval ages, and From the Ashes is accomplishing that by showing the player what went into the creation and maintenance of a village of the time, elaborating on what we’ve gleaned from the locales we’ve visited and made use of during the main game.  So that’s good.

Also, the highlight of From the Ashes, the judgment sequences, are certainly enjoyable.  As he’s been made bailiff of Pribyslavitz, Henry has to preside as judge over some conflicts between the new residents he’s imported, and I almost always like this sort of little side-story content in games like Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Pillars of Eternity 1, and so on  The best ones make good use of that light, understatedly tongue-in-cheek style that frequently lends a signature personality to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1.

But there’s a pretty limited number of these matters to judge; even the RPG generally credited with inventing this sidequest concept of being a dispute-handling ruler in your stronghold, Baldur’s Gate 2, feels like it explored this idea more thoroughly than From the Ashes does.  Beyond that, as I said, the plot of this DLC is barebones, and I doubt you’re gonna get a full 6 hours out of it, so I don’t think it’s worth $6.  If it goes on sale for $1, or better yet gets grandfathered in as a free part of the game someday, then sure, From the Ashes is fine enough, but that’s about as far as I’d recommend it.

...Hey wait a minute, Sir Divish says Henry’s pay will be the revenue generated by the village for the first 5 years...but then the announcement he has proclaimed in Rattay to get people to come rebuild and live in the village says that the citizens won’t have to pay taxes for the first 5 years of living there.  Now I’m not an economist by any means, but if I understand how a town generates revenue right, I think that sly son of a bitch just pulled one over on Henry!  Guy must’ve found out what Stephanie’s been up to...


The Amorous Adventures of Bold Sir Hans Capon: Hanging out with and getting caught up in the antics of Hans Capon was a highlight of that appealing comedy that I mentioned as giving Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 a lot of its personality, and Warhorse Studios wisely decided to dedicate the majority of their second DLC to a reprise of Henry being the agreeable sidekick to his new best friend and future love interest’s irresponsible misadventures.  There’s not much to say here, honestly--if you liked Hans Capon and Henry’s buddy dynamic as Capon goes about his life as an arrogant but well-meaning fop, you’re in for more as Warhorse Studios put their best writing efforts towards showing how inherently silly the classic medieval romantic fad of secret wooing was, complete with an acne potion, bumbling misquotation of poetry, and both beguiling and bewildering a butcher with brainless banter (and belting out some bars) as your buddy boinks a babe.  The climax of this DLC feels distinctly like a comic interlude in a Shakespeare play (by design, I should think, given some of the poetic lines), and I quite enjoyed it.

Bonus points for the light humor of Henry affecting what he thinks is a nobleman’s air during his infiltration of the bandit camp, and for the more genuine moments of gravity with Anselm’s audible pain at the death of his friend.  I’ll admit that it’s a bit annoying that this DLC costs another $6 for what’s almost surely going to be roughly 2 - 3 hours of content, but that content at least is genuinely engaging story matter, so it at least feels more worth the cost than From the Ashes did.  Still, I’m a stickler for getting appropriate value for what you pay, so I guess I’d still recommend waiting until The Amorous Adventures of Bold Sir Hans Capon is on sale before acquiring it.  But yeah, simply on terms of quality, I give it a thumbs-up.


Band of Bastards: In this DLC, Henry is tasked with assisting and chaperoning a band of mercenaries that Sir Radzig has hired to quell a problematic group of bandits in the area that’s being led by a man with a grudge against him.

It’s...pretty fine.  The story’s simple but serviceable, and the sellswords have a good bit of personality to them.  The adventure gives a bit more backstory to Radzig, which is nice, and Kuno, the leader of the mercenaries, has some decently interesting views to share.  There’s a good handful of decent moments to this add-on.  I particularly enjoyed the scene in which the band is drinking with Henry and ask him to tell him some stories about himself, to which you can have Henry relate several of the adventures you’ve had him go upon, like doing Father Godwin’s Mass for him, or (of course) Henry’s misadventures with Hans Capon.  Great little instance of camaraderie, and I enjoy moments that acknowledge the exploits of the adventure as worth sharing, particularly when the retelling allows you to see them from the retrospective of the involved characters themselves.

At the same time, though, the ending to this adventure feels really abrupt; I thought Henry would be doing more with this team for longer, given the strength of their characterization.  Similarly, it doesn’t feel like there was adequate exploration of the antagonist, Hagen Zoul.  And the major moment of conflict resolution, the test of Kuno’s loyalty and Henry’s ability to maintain it, has weight that makes it feel like it’s meant to be the culmination of character buildup that I don’t think was really provided.  It’s a story with a beginning and an end, yet it doesn’t feel complete.  It’s not bad, it just ends before it had the chance to feel like it had gone places.  Which makes the fact that its scant 3-ish hours of content is all the more glaringly inadequate for its $6 price tag.  It’s unobjectionable overall, worthy enough of spending the time and perhaps half the asking price on, but Band of Bastards, like the rest of the game’s add-ons thus far, is fodder for a sale, not the asking price.


A Woman’s Lot: The final DLC for Kingdom Come Deliverance 1 has 3 notable components to it.  The first is the addition of a skill you can invest in to get a dog companion, which will help you fight enemies, find stuff, and so on.  Which is a purely positive addition, in my opinion: what first-person RPG isn’t made better by the addition of Dogmeat?

The second major part of the DLC is focused on Theresa.  There’s more romance content with her now, and it’s pretty decent stuff; she and Henry have a pleasing rapport, and more time spent on showing that fact is only beneficial.  I mean, it doesn’t do much for me, personally, because once I found out that Hans is romanceable in KCD2, I pumped the brakes on Theresa hard.  Sorry, babe, you and Henry make a cute couple, but Hans is my boy, and if I’ve got the chance to add “toy” to the end of that title, you better believe I’m gonna take it.  But, y’know, Theresa’s romance in KCD1 is still quite nice, and what this DLC adds to it is solid.

More than that, though, Theresa’s side of this DLC also involves her telling Henry the story of how the Skalitz invasion went down from her perspective, a full-on sidequest which involves playing as Theresa in the days leading up to and after the tragedy.  It’s pretty good--it develops Theresa’s character, which is something she kind of needed as most of what we see of her is specifically in relation to Henry, and it better displays the character and goings-on of Skalitz and its residents, which retroactively adds to the weight of the tragedy of the town’s destruction.  Seeing the couple days leading up to the Skalitz blitz from Theresa’s perspective also displays a little more of the daily life and culture of medieval times, which is 1 of KCD’s larger goals.  Being able to see it from a woman’s perspective only further expands the scope of that understanding, too.  Going through the attack and its aftermath with Theresa further develops her character, has its share of emotional and affecting moments, and fills in some of the gaps about the incident for us.  Overall, it’s an engaging and useful side story.

The last major component of A Women’s Lot focuses on Johanka, and it’s this part that I like best about the add-on.  As she strives to care for the sick and wounded, including the man she loves, Johanka is visited in her dreams by a vision of the Virgin Mary, and takes it on herself to become Mary’s chosen advocate in the town, giving speeches and sermons urging all who will listen to turn away from sin and become better Christians.  After he assists Johanka in improving the character and faith of her community, Henry finds himself having to advocate for her as the Church begins to investigate her for heresy, because of course the medieval Church ain’t gonna go letting some random peasant spread the word of God, what you think Jesus was just a blue-collar dude who went around giving people advice from the heart on how to live better?  Anyway, it’s a good and compelling story that displays belief and the Church’s influence in medieval culture, serves as a pretty decent little fable on faith and Christianity on its own, develops Johanka and resolves her personal story in KCD1’s narrative, delves into the way the Church operated at this time in its history, and has an ending that’s realistically as satisfying as it could be given the situation and the time period.  My favorite part of this questline is the walk of penance that Johanka convinces Henry to undertake; it entails a really good bit of self-reflection that benefits Henry’s character overall, and gives some sobering retrospection to some of the things he’s had to do over the game’s course that were otherwise glossed over by their necessity.

Overall, it’s quite a good DLC.  It tells some good stories, expands the characters of those it features, ties up some loose ends, adds a Dogmeat wannabe, develops Henry himself a bit, and makes the romance subplot of the game better.  It costs $8, but in spite of the significant size of both Johanka and Theresa’s sidequests, you probably won’t get much more than 4 hours out of it...still, what time you spend with A Woman’s Lot is solidly good, so it might just be worth the high price.  At the very least, just about any sale would make it a good deal.



And that’s it for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1’s downloadable content!  Some good, some subpar, little that’s really  worth the asked for price, but overall, a content suite that’s above average for add-on packages, I’d say.  And they at least are less ethically questionable than the last add-on I ranted about.

General RPGs' AMVs 22

Hey, no complaining—you guys got a break from these AMV rants last year. Now that we're back in the swing of things on this blog, sort of, it's back to business! Check out these great RPG AMVs!


CLAIR OBSCUR: EXPEDITION 33

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33: Gustave: For Those Who Come After, Right?, by Zirael
The music used is a deeper and slowed version of The Arrival of the Birds, from the soundtrack of The Theory of Everything.  This is a solid, well-organized AMV tribute to Verso's character and journey, adeptly incorporating dialogue from the game that presents his personality, turmoil, and motivation.  It only lightly connects to the song, but it's an elegant work all the same.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33: Tomorrow Comes, by Karinscr
The music used is The Call, by 2WEI, Edda Hayes, and Louis Leibfried.  A good all-around AMV here, which pairs the quieter, heavier, and more aggressive parts of its music skillfully to the dialogue, hefty atmosphere, and action of COE33, respectively, to create a stirring representation of the epic nature of the game.  

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33: Verso: I'm Tired, by Zirael
The music used is the orchestral version of What Could Have Been, by Samuel Kim. As with the last, Zirael has constructed a thoughtful and dramatic tribute AMV, this time devoted to the torment, dilemma, and conclusion of Verso.  It's quite a solid creation that captures the melancholy of Verso, the game, and the existence both portray.  Good stuff.


DISCO ELYSIUM

Disco Elysium: Dancing Queen, by easternCriminal
The music used is Dancing Queen, by ABBA.  This fan animatic video uses a peppy, positive piece of pop music that doesn’t get much play in the AMV world, and which you’d think would be too upbeat in its cadence and tone to really work with Disco Elysium.  But while the heart and soul of Disco Elysium that impacts us most tends to be the heavier elements of its characters and story, there’s a lot about the game and its protagonist that’s fun, quirky, and outright feel-good, and this AMV uses this uniquely enduring bit of disco to remind us of that fact.  Harry Du Bois is a tortured man trying to find himself, pick himself up from the disaster he’s made of his life, and empathetic detective of the human condition who chokes on the pain of the world around him...but he’s also a silly, curious goofball whose playful tendencies both inspire and infuriate his partner Kim, and this music video skillfully marries the appealing cinnamon-bun portrayal of Harry in the storyboard sketches of the game’s progression with the ephemeral but pure joy that ABBA sings of.  And yet, the painful and violent parts of the game also are well-portrayed here, too, rather than shunned, and they somehow work just as well, leaving us in the end with a thoughtful, fun, adept tribute to an excellent game.

Disco Elysium: Liquid Nights, by Miracle of Sound
The music used is Liquid Nights, by Miracle of Sound.  Miracle of Sound is at it again with another great piece that captures the heart of the game that inspired it, combining lyrics and tune to portray the delight, delirium, and despair of Harry Du Bois in a manner that’s as melancholic and groovy as the man himself.  As ever with a Miracle of Sound creation, the music is the star of the show, and all the visual component really has to do is to try to keep up with it, but there’s certainly no denying that it does so with flying colors here, employing the iconic moody simplicity of DE’s visuals and its unforgettable moments and characters, to coordinate with the tribute that the music pays to the game.  Darned good stuff!


FINAL FANTASY

Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Just Dance, by Temporal Guardian
The music used is Just Dance, by Lady Gaga.  This is a silly, stupid video using an obnoxious song based around the dumbest part of the game.

Why is it so great


KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1: Monster, by All-So Productions:
The music used is Monster, by Imagine Dragons. This is 1 of those AMVs that I just don't really have much to say about—it's a simple, straightforward, classic-styled music video that does a good job at pairing music to visuals, and it feels right for the game, action, and style. It's just a good, no-frills, bread-and-butter AMV that's fun to watch.


OMORI

Omori: Hated by Life Itself, by Sweggyq
The music used is, as far as I can tell, Sou's cover of 命に嫌われている。/カンザキイオリ. Being that I don't speak (what I believe to be) Japanese, I can't really say for sure if I've got the title or credit on that right, but hopefully that's accurate. Given that the nuance of tying lyrics and visuals together is a significant part of an AMV, to say nothing of the potential of using the subject matter to interpret and explore the lyrics in new ways which require expertise, I don't usually watch AMVs that use songs written in languages I don't know, but obviously an exception can be made for special cases—and I think this warrants such an exception.

This AMV is a fan-animated summary of Omori, depicting with loving care the game's major events from its start to (true) finish, and it's a great telling worthy of such an excellent game. The animation is a collaboration of many different artists, with each one contributing a few seconds to the whole, creating a dynamic effect where the art style changes frequently. This isn't the first time I've seen a video of this nature, but this case is really notable in that the change of style is never jarring, always fluid; most collaboration videos like this jump so drastically from 1 approach to art that it winds up being distracting and even slightly disorienting, but here, there's enough cohesion and care in the flow of one style into the next, as well as the general motion of the video's events, that it comes together into a single smooth project, even as it showcases many different talents—while also remaining pleasingly true to the style and imagery of the source material, too. It's also really solid animation as a whole, fluid and natural. Lastly, while I can't judge the musical component as well as I'd like to due to the language barrier (although I do appreciate the inclusion of the translated lyrics!), the flow of the visuals and their story coordinates excellently to the tone and direction of the music—it's pretty much perfect to a beat, and I can't imagine how much skill and effort had to go into coordinating the art of dozens of collaborators so exactly to the timing set by the music, while also ensuring that the story is laid out and told correctly within the allotted time.

This is 1 of the most sincere and amazing fan works for Omori, or really any other RPG, out there, and it's daunting just to really consider what had to have gone into creating it. Honestly, if the song were in a language I could understand and really sink my teeth into, it'd probably get a rant all of its own, but even if it just misses that, it definitely earns the distinction of the best AMV we see today.

General RPG Valentines 8

Major thanks, as always, to good sir Ecclesiastes for being my sounding board for so many of the following stupid things, and even more to my sister, who is forced to suffer the indignity of being a sounding board AND actually creating the animated ones, as I am far too talentless to make them myself.  YOU 2 are the best Valentines, no question!



Yeah, I know I said we were doing rants every other 8 this year.  But come on, there's just no way I'm gonna miss out on inflicting another bunch of stupid RPG Valentines on you all; these things are basically my favorite part of this blog!  And this year's RPG Valentine is a damned special one, because not only is it the 8th normal iteration of them (and 8 is the best number), it's also, when you count the special editions, the 10th one I've done altogether.  Yeah, I've actually been making these absurd and idiotic things for a goddamn decade now!  Where does the time go?

Well, not toward anything productive, that's for damned sure.

At any rate, certainly such a milestone deserves some recognition!  So in celebration of my 10th year of doing these silly things, I'm tacking on an extra 10 RPG Valentines today, just for you!  After all, what better day and way could there possibly be to show my love for you?

Don't answer that.

Ah, Reyn, ya lovable memeable scamp, what would we do without you each Valentine's Day?  Well, I reckon we're gonna find out a year hence, cuz I think that after a solid decade of being my annual RPG Valentine poster-child, it's time to let Reyn Time end and allow the old boy to Reyntire.

Yes, yes, I know, it's terribly distressing news, and your Valentine's is no doubt ruined as a result.  But look on the bright side: a soured Valentine's Day experience is exactly the right preamble for some RPG Anti-Valentines!  And in keeping with our 10th year celebration, today we'll be doubling our bitter pill dosage to 10 Anti-Valentines!  AND saying goodbye to that other yearly mascot, as well...

























Reyn, I'm gonna miss.  You, Kevin, can choke on a dick and die.

General RPG Theory: Developer Large Battleship Studios's Games as a Collective Meta-Story

Major spoilers for Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle and Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA in this rant, and I’ll also be speaking with the assumption of knowledge of Quantum Entanglement and A Dragon’s ReQuest, so, y’know, be warned.  You should probably play the games before reading this.  On the other hand, reading this rant might pique your interest in them, and they're tragically deprived of attention and recognition, so hell, if it means the possibility of more people checking Large Battleship Studios's works out, maybe the price of a few spoilers isn't too high.  I'll leave the choice to you, I suppose.

Also, thank you to Saint Bomber for letting me question him about the following observations and theories I've made, and for permission to share this rant that may (or may not; I'm no stranger to my ideas being totally off) be somewhat personal.



Back when I was in high school, my English teacher had my class read J.D. Salinger’s 9 Stories, a collection whose last story (Teddy) incorporates concepts from Hinduism like enlightenment and reincarnation, which, having only just read Hesse’s Siddhartha the previous year, I latched onto with fascination.  We were, of course, eventually tested on our 9 Stories unit, and I remember that I was in the middle of the essay component when a stroke of insight hit me--it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps all of the 9 Stories were also tied to the same Hinduist concepts that Teddy more overtly displayed, and that the collection as a whole actually represented a single soul’s journey across lives to reach the enlightenment that would allow it to escape the cycle of reincarnation, with each life being more self-actualized and closer to true understanding until it finally achieved enlightenment with Teddy.

How valid an interpretation of the collection this may be, I couldn’t say--although my teacher really liked it, and I’ve heard that Teddy was chosen as the end of the collection specifically to balance out the brutal and hopeless A Perfect Day for Bananafish that begins the collection, so there may be something to it.  But what mattered to me was that it was a genuinely marvelous moment in which a new level of understanding and capacity for me clicked into place, and I suddenly comprehended an entirely new level of meaning that stories could hold.  A story could be more than the sum of its parts, could exist on a level beyond a self-contained universe of plot and purpose--it could also be a part of a greater whole of its fellows, a cog in a grander machine.  A tale formed only when stringing smaller stories together by their greatest themes and concepts; a universe that could only come into clarity by the joint light of smaller universes in sequence.

Yes: I had had my eyes opened to the fact that individual narrative entities can transcendently amalgamate, and achieve a Yo Dawg of storytelling.

What’s the point of all this jawing and patting myself on the back for getting a good grade on an essay over 20 years ago, you ask?  Well, to entertain myself, for starters, but more importantly, to establish the concept that sometimes a creators’ works, taken together, can tell their own collaborative story above their confines rather than within them.  And also to establish that I really, really like the idea and am always eager to find examples of a meta-level story of this sort.  And we’ve done all this preamble to establish this, because I think I may have recognized something of this sort in the works to date of Large Battleship Studios.

I’ve yapped about LBS and its titles several times now, but as a quick refresher, Large Battleship Studios is an extremely obscure RPG developer headed up mostly by 1 fellow, who goes by Saint Bomber.  Its games are generally very indulgent, but highly intelligent and emotionally complex RPGs, and while each is very much its own entity, they all share some significant commonalities.  You can depend on an LBS title to be packed with amusing banter and referential humor, and a huge focus on romance, nearly always between women--they’re made for huge yuri fans by a huge yuri fan.  Their lore is intricate and unfolds with the elegance of a well-written mystery, the casts are ferociously well- and constantly-developed, and each narrative masterfully knows when to use comedy to lower your guard for an emotionally killing blow, then use comedy again to help you recover from what it just did to you.

But 1 of the most noteworthy and standout shared traits of the LBS canon is a very significant, recurring theme and examination of trauma.  Lingering trauma from the past, trauma created by the events in-game, PTSD, emotional wounds that still weep, the trauma of loss, of rejection, of suffering, of imprisonment, of despair, of terror; coping mechanisms, those who have found ways to live with the scars in their hearts, those who can’t...the enduring pain that shapes us, and whether we carry it or it carries us, is an ever-present and huge part of Large Battleship Studios titles, perhaps to a greater degree than any other RPG can equal.  These are the stories of a creator who has gone through hurt and carried it with him, and channeled it into art and creation, while observing the similar anguishes of others and incorporating them into his stories, as well.

And that’s interesting, and valuable to analyze and comprehend, with each story that Saint Bomber creates.  As I’ve mentioned each time, I have an enormous fascination with and respect for every RPG that Large Battleship Studios releases, and this relentless exploration of trauma within its casts and stories is a major part of that.  But as I was playing the newest LBS release, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA, and experiencing the ways that trauma is portrayed through its protagonist Simone and her fellow cast members, the ways in which lasting damage is made evident, explored, and handled in AAAVXA made me look back at how the previous LBS titles approached this major theme, and I realized something:

Saint Bomber’s games don’t just individually tell stories about trauma.  Each one’s approach and use of it also, when all taken together in sequence, represent a progressing path to recovery from it.  The games are not just by themselves about the battle to overcome trauma, they are collectively showing that journey, too.

It starts with Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle.  This RPG represents the first step to healing one’s heart and mind, and that is the realization that one is affected by trauma to begin with, that it has a hold over one.  Duchess Catherine comports herself for much of the game quite lightly, and without seeming to think overmuch on the darker things within her and her past, and while after a point it's an unavoidable conclusion that she's carrying a lot of pain and brokenness, it's something she can't seem to touch yet without it overwhelming her.  To let herself really square up to it reduces her to the helpless child she was while going through her torment.  The game involves a discovery (if only for the player) of this hurt, but it's too raw to directly confront or put names to--it can only be salved, with what joys of love her life can be filled with. Catherine is, in the real world, still trapped and unable to escape from that which is hurting and breaking her.

But the game also contains the earliest hope for someone who is harmed and trapped: that there's at least the possibility that life will be able to be good and fulfilling someday. There is the hope that this situation is something that can one day be in the past, rather than the present (as evidenced by the fact that the entire fulfilling and joyous potential life that the game displays is actually a prophecy Catherine has dreamt for herself).  Before any action to bring resolution can be taken, the first step to healing is to know that there is something to heal from, and to believe that recovery is possible.  With its light but insistently assessing touch at Catherine’s still-tender psyche, and the game’s nature as a promise to herself of what can someday be, Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle represents this first step aptly.

The journey continues with Quantum Entanglement.  A survival-horror in which protagonist Marine and her girlfriend Gabby rely on one another not only to survive, but to hold themselves together and keep going in the face of extreme fear, stress, and horror over the death they’re constantly confronted with along the way, QE is a confrontation of trauma by (re)living it in real time.  As such, it represents an advancement from Catherine’s situation of only being able to very slightly touch the wound in her psyche before recoiling in pain--the terror and revulsion are here, unavoidably acknowledged and struggled with, and thus in QE trauma is defined, which allows one the courage and fortitude to fight it.

Additionally, methods for responding to and handling emotional injury now make their first real appearance in LBS titles.  Marine and Gabby, and ODSA, are a warring dichotomy between facing the trauma for what it is, and defense mechanisms that bury or otherwise avoid it in some way--memory wipes, branching timelines more like the end of a frayed rope than an expanding tree, different and sometimes mentally concurrent selves, these are good analogies for things like repression and compartmentalization. Up to this point in Marine and Gabby's life, the procedures (akin to avoidance strategies) of ODSA have been working, but now the traumatic situation will be avoided no longer, and they have to confront it, accept what it’s doing to them, and fight through it.

As terrible and overwhelming as the disaster that Marine and Gabby must survive is, nothing can be handled and defeated before it is known, and both the mental tools which begin the process of dealing with trauma, and the unavoidable necessity of undergoing that process, make themselves known.  The deep-rooted pain that was recognized in Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle is now defined in Quantum Entanglement, and the process to reach the dreamt-of point beyond it has now begun.

The game that follows is A Dragon’s ReQuest.  Although they're painful and she doesn't often, protagonist Hinoki seems far more able to acknowledge the agonizing incidents in her past in more frank and whole detail than Catherine was, and not just understand that they do affect her in the present, but also consciously recognize at least some of how they do so. She represents having progressed, through Quantum Entanglement's frank facing of the darkness and fear, to the point that one can carry the weight of one's damage--even as it still harms!--and still accomplish great things in spite of its hold. Her trauma still colors her ability to see and process the world and other people, like how she almost spontaneously grasped at the straw of Payola perhaps secretly being her mother.  It’s an impulse thought of want and pain that comes to her seemingly out of nowhere in the conversation which shows that her traumas are still influencing her, but ultimately, Hinoki can function in her life, and even function well enough to do great things (in this case, undertake a world-saving RPG quest).  Great a heroine though Marine really is, what she accomplished in Quantum Entanglement was all in reaction to, and triumphing against, the traumatic incident thrust upon her.  And being able to fight back against one’s trauma, and see landmarks of victory in their quest to overcome it, is important.  Hinoki’s achievements and triumphs, on the other hand, are outwards; she works toward and achieves goals unrelated to the burdens of her own pains.  She is living a functional life that, if still colored by her trauma, is not defined or halted by it.

As such, A Dragon’s ReQuest represents a stage in the ongoing voyage of recovery at which one has progressed enough to be able to look at, and contemplate, one’s trauma without having it overtake one, and while it still weighs upon the sufferer in inescapable ways which may, unwanted, make themselves known, it no longer defines all that one is and does.  It’s an important milestone in the journey of healing that ADRQ displays, to be at a point where one knows that one can live a functional life and accomplish goals that exist independent of the scars within one.

Finally, we arrive at Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA.  Although there are moments when they overcome her, Simone not only knows about many of her points of trauma and their triggers, she can openly address them and relay them to others, and speak of trauma as a subject with some knowledge and candor. Simone has accepted that she carries lasting pain, and that that's not going to change, but she's also taking steps to not just live with it, but to move forward with her life in ways that don't need to specifically account for it.  Her living a late adolescence now, for example, is a way of building psychological foundations that she didn't have a chance to do back during that actual period.

If A Dragon’s ReQuest showed us a point in the journey of recovery in which one functions and succeeds in spite of their trauma, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA strides forward still to display a moment at which one is beginning to function and succeed simply on one’s own terms, without the trauma always having its hand upon one’s life.  In ADRQ, Hinoki managed to function and achieve while she carried the weight of her damage on her back, but in AAAVXA, Simone is at a point in which her harm and hurt are forced to walk on their own--still there, sometimes even getting in her way, but the rest of the time forced to merely stand beside or even behind her as she lives her life.  It’s a point in which the effort, time, and work that have gone into the healing process are demonstrable--even if there are still some parts of it that are blackouts for her, Simone knows her trauma in the qualified way that comes with things like research, therapy, social support structures, etc.  The tools and methods she’s using to deal with her pain are not just basic coping mechanisms, they’re ones specifically suited to her.

The journey to healing is not over by the time we reach Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA--it may, in fact, never truly be finished--but this game does show us a healthier, more positive place on that journey in which real progress has been made and one has been armed with tools and knowledge that allow one to meaningfully handle one’s trauma.  The creation of a true and free Alouette in the game is a symbol of a renewal of the self and a real step forward in which the past is finally just that: an element that happened, that will never not be a relevant part of one, but doesn't have to be something that derails the present and future.

It may even, in fact, be that the game is meant at times to look at the person who comes out of a bad experience and rebuilds herself as potentially greater than she could otherwise have been.  Saint Bomber posed a question to me after reading my initial rant on AAAVXA of whether the game was, as I said, a celebration of anime and an exploration of trauma, or whether it might instead be a celebration of trauma and an exploration of anime?  Which of course could just be him yanking my easily distracted chain, but as I'm loathe to disregard any bone he tosses my way about his intentions or thoughts in making these games, I've reflected and come up with multiple instances in AAAVXA in which Simone is better suited to be a heroine and a healer because of her traumatic past than she possibly could have been otherwise.  So while I don't know whether the game as a whole truly represents a celebration of trauma per say, there's definitely a case to be made that AAAVXA is, in addition to a reassuring triumph that there can be a time when the past is truly the past, a dipping of toes into the idea that there can be genuine good that comes of it, and celebrating that fact.

And that’s it, for the moment.  There’s more to come from Large Battleship Studios, but for now, this is the general impression I’ve gotten of a gradual journey of recovery that Saint Bomber’s titles could describe when taken as a collective whole.  I’ll be interested to see what the next title’s overall nature will contribute to this meta-story!