Annual Summary 2022

Didn’t I just do 1 of these things?  Jesus time starts going fast when you get old.  Just 1 of the many things that gets away from you, like your memory, or your ability not to say the exact same goddamn things about aging that your parents did.

2022!  I was inclined to believe this would be a great year for The RPGenius.  Not because I expected the world’s situation to improve, of course, because who the hell would at this point, but because 22 is a palindrome, and I like those.  Also, I was determined to get some hard playing done this year.  After a mere 13 games played in 2021, I was ready to get back in the saddle and properly return to the RPG scene with a vengeance!

Then my 3DS crapped out which meant no more playing during the off-hours at work, understaffing for the second half of the year guaranteed there wouldn’t have been a chance to do that anyway and also killed my time and energy for doing anything but recuperating on my days off, Tales of Vesperia took forever to finish, and Shin Megami Tensei 5 took forever to finish (still haven’t fully, in fact) AND temporarily killed my enthusiasm for gaming in the process.  So as a result, as you can see, I’ve played 1 LESS RPG than last year!  Seriously, count’em!



Ara Fell
Boyfriend Dungeon
Disco Elysium
Dragon Lapis
Dragon Sinker
Faxanadu
Golf Story
Little Hearts
Machine Knight
Pyre
Saturday Morning RPG
Tales of Vesperia
Ys 2



Yeah.  That’s pathetic.  If I don’t turn this shit around and hit 20 titles next year, I might just hang up my mantle as The RPGenius and start finding something productive to do with my time instead!

...Yeah, it didn’t sound likely to me as I typed it, either.

HOWEVER.  With all of this said, it was still 1 of the best years for me as The RPGenius of all time.  Because I played Disco Elysium.  I could’ve played no other game but that, and I’d have called 2022 a success.  Every other game I played this year could have been like if the pompous confusion of Xenogears had been mixed with the anti-character development of Chrono Cross, the carelessness of Pokemon Generation 8’s narrative, and the sheer stupidity of Wild Arms 4, with Suikoden 4’s Sailing, a silent protagonist as dull as Shin Megami Tensei 5’s, and a villain like Fire Emblem 16’s Edelgard all mixed in, and I’d STILL feel pretty good about the year.  Because Disco Elysium is incredible.

Anyway, there’s been plenty of other stuff I’ve been doing this year besides the stuff I claim to be most fixated on.  I guess I have to accept the fact that when you’re damn tired all the time, it’s a lot easier to just let something play and watch it than to engage with it yourself.  Ah, well.  Let’s see what I got up to when I wasn’t up to much.


Anime: After enjoying Studio Trigger’s Kill La Kill well enough last year, I decided to give another of their most well-known works a try, and watched Little Witch Academia.  It’s, uh...well, it’s alright.  Not as alright as Kill La Kill, but more alright than something that is...not alright.  I gotta be honest, I just never got caught up in it.  But it was cute and nice enough, and with the exception of continuing Harry Potter’s trope that no fantasy-ish magical boarding school can employ anyone on its staff possessing anything even remotely close to competence, there was nothing I disliked about it.

I liked Pui Pui Molcar a lot more, though.  It’s funny, cute as hell, and an easy crowd-pleaser.  And speaking of crowd-pleasers, this year I went on 1 of my periodic pilgrimages through the glory that is Ghost Stories’s English dub, and dragged my sister along for the journey.

Finally, I found out that the Revolutionary Girl Utena guy made another anime called Yuri Kuma Arashi, and so I decided to see what I’d think of that one.  It is...good.  Very good.  I think.  I mean...it’s intelligent, it’s extremely artful, it’s quite surreal, it’s enthralled with the female condition and what it is to be a young woman and a gay one at that, it’s got a lot of insight to share about shame and internalized gender prejudice and the pain of exclusion and all kinds of other stuff.  It’s good!  I like it!  But...I don’t know if it’s great.  I don’t know if I love it.  But that’s actually really encouraging, because the first time I watched Utena, I freaking hated it and didn’t get any of it at all.  It was only on my second and third watchings that I came to realize what a truly brilliant work it was.  So I’m already starting way ahead with Yuri Kuma Arashi--by this time next year, after I’ve rewatched it with my sister, I might very well think it’s the best damn anime of all time!

I also might still not just get it as much as I should.  Who knows.

Books: I actually am pleased to report that I’ve still managed to mostly stay astride the Proper Book Reading Horse’s back, so the last couple years weren’t just a fluke.  I read a few short story collections this year, because short stories are a woefully underrated form of writing that’s actually 1 of the USA’s greatest claims to literary fame.  Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall and Other Stories had a good handful of tales that really show off his unparalleled prowess as a science fiction writer (even if it had a couple of duds, too; “Sally” was shockingly enough just outright a bad story), and while they weren’t all as great as I remember, it’s easy to see how William Gibson became the father of cyberpunk with works like you can find in his collection Burning Chrome.  I did also read another collection of short stories by Asimov, Asimov’s Mysteries, and that one I have to admit didn’t do much for me--it’s mostly fine, an achievement in the fact that science fiction mystery is a very difficult genre to grapple with, but definitely not up to his general standards.  With the exception of “Obituary” and “The Billiard Ball,” that is, those ones are solid, especially the latter.

I read a couple of young adult books, too.  Greenglass House, by Kate Milford, was an all-around good take on a mystery adventure with some neat characters, twists, and world-building.  I’ll almost surely be visiting its sequel someday.  It was quite neat to read Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Shining Company--I’m fairly sure I’ve never encountered a historical fiction dramatizing such a niche (although greatly interesting and worthy of being retold) moment of history aimed specifically at an audience of young people.  It’s a fine story, one that I enjoyed but which didn’t have a great hold on me, but I definitely like exploring new literary territory that way.  Last of the young adult works was Catherynne Valente’s The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in 2, which was enjoyable, but doesn’t really live up to its predecessors.  Still, I liked it well enough that I’m planning to keep on going with the series.

Agatha Christie makes her typical strong showing in Towards 0, although I do think it’s not 1 of her best because there are certain aspects of the killer’s psychology that really are just too intangible for the audience to have been capable of deducing.  Good nonetheless, though!  At my mother’s recommendation, I read O Pioneers, by Willa Cather, which was pretty decent, although there are certain mindsets regarding love, marriage, and women’s capabilities that are frustrating to read, both from a modern perspective and, I can’t help but feel, probably even from a contemporary one too, to some degree.  Still, it’s well-written, a nice tribute to the land and growers of the midwest, and I get why people consider works like these great, even if they aren’t my kind of story.  Lastly, I read John Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down, and it’s definitely, easily my favorite book of his now.  Sorry, The Pearl.

Non-RPG Video Games: I played Kingdom’s Item Shop this year, because I thought from appearances that it would count as an RPG, but it doesn’t quite meet even my lax standards for the genre.  It’s no great loss for RPGs, trust me.  Also, and way, way more significantly, I played Metroid Dread, and that is pretty goddamn awesome.  I know this is gonna be a hot-ass take, but I think it might just be the best Metroid game, period.  I know that makes me a traitor to my generation and the SNES, but the damn game is nearly as perfect a machine of gameplay as Super Metroid, with a far more present narrative, and a small but actually involved cast.  This is how you walk the line between Samus as an icon, and Samus having an actual character.  Damn great game, well worth the wait since Fusion for a new installment in the Metroid series.

TV and the Like: I watched some good shit this year.  For starters, Altered Carbon’s first season?  Crazily awesome and interesting.  Loved almost every damn moment of it.  Excellent gritty creative science fiction!  Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts was a solidly good cartoon, fun from start to finish, and I think that Amazon’s second season of The Tick was a worthy successor to its awesome initial run--what a shame they’ve canceled it.  Seems like The Tick just never gets the recognition and longevity that he deserves.  Cuphead’s first season was very fun, and it’s really cool to see a show made in the style of old-timey cartoons--and they do a darned good job with the mimicry, too!  The pace and gags and movements make it clear that the team behind the show did their homework and cared about representing the source material well.

That's certainly something you can’t say about Netflix’s The Witcher.  While there were some good moments and portrayals of the books in Season 1, overall it was pretty meh, and Season 2 just stopped even pretending that it gave a shit about the lore and characters of the series and just started doing whatever the hell it felt like.  And as it turned out, most of the time what it felt like doing was telling a bad story badly.  Not surprising, as what I’ve read indicates that Henry Cavill was just about the only thing keeping the show on course from the start, and the morons writing and directing it eventually just started ignoring him.  Too bad, but as Halo and especially Star Trek prove, we’re currently in an age in which scorning and knowing fuck-all about your source material is inexplicably a point of pride in the people being paid to work with it.

While we’re on the subject of shows that weren’t as good as they could be, I gotta say, Queen’s Gambit is okay, but that’s about it, and I think it would have been really nice if I could have had some chess in my show about a chess player.  Additionally, while I still enjoyed The Flash’s fifth and sixth seasons as a guilty pleasure, Season 7 often got to the point where it was just too poorly executed for even my simplistic “see red man run fast” joy to balance out.

Also, hotter take even than my Metroid one a moment ago?  I didn’t really enjoy watching Arcane.  I mean, I know it’s great, and I get why it is, but it’s tiring to watch.  After a point--a point that doesn’t take long to get to--it’s just a long sequence of downer moments that keep getting a little more intense each time.  There’s only so long I can really maintain an interest in watching something, even something that’s clearly genuinely good, when the situations of its world and characters only ever steadily get worse and worse.  Give me a few ups to contrast those downs, would ya?

Let’s see, what else did I watch...The Ghost and Molly McGee has good energy, is very fun and clever, and I relate strongly with and dearly adore Libby.  Great News is very funny, another classic Tina Fey comedy.  It trades some of its uniqueness and charm after the first season for a heavier laugh quota in Season 2 (I suspect this is when Fey takes a more involved role in it?), but I’m unsure of whether that’s a net negative or positive.  I mean, I missed its more individual personality as a show from Season 1 as I watched the second, but on the other hand, it’s hard to argue that a comedy becoming funnier isn’t a good thing, right?  Lastly, I rewatched Steven Universe Future, and was reminded of just what an excellent and worthy add-on it is to the greatest cartoon of all time.

Other Crap: I worked full time and then some, I wrote a bunch of rants, I spent quality time with my family and my pet, and I even got very slightly kind of actually social to a limited degree.  The latter does work out to be a decent time sink, though, because part of it is hanging out with my coworker and friend Angel Adonis a few times a month and curating a tour through United States and RPG culture that he, as a strapping young lad in his early 20s born in a different country, was not exposed to previously.  So far I’ve foisted Tales of Berseria, Robocop 1, Terminator 1, and Terminator 2 on him, with an on-going look at Mystery Science Theater 3000.  Right now we’re finishing up Chrono Trigger.  Also, if you call interacting with a friend as he does a game-playing livestream as being social, then I spent a good bit of time watching Icy Brian play through some of Final Fantasy Tactics and 9 this year, too.*


Okay, that self-indulgent nonsense about stuff that isn’t RPGs is finally done with.  Let’s get to the real meat of our yearly rant: the self-indulgent nonsense that IS about RPGs!



RPG Moments of Interest in 2022

1. The soundtrack for the Pokemon Generation 4 remake that released this year was amazingly disappointing--I genuinely did not think that the original GameBoy music was going to remain the better version of the themes I liked from the game, but not a single change to my Music Lists had to be made.  Mt. Coronet at least got kinda close, but it still didn’t quite surpass the original.  I know that “effort” and “Pokemon” are 2 things that Nintendo prefers to keep segregated from 1 another, but come on, they couldn’t manage to improve a single tune of a soundtrack that’s still got the fuzz of GameBoy audio quality clinging to it?

2. I played my 404th RPG this year!  Almost halfway to my goal of playing 888 RPGs before I finally kick it.  But given that I wasted a few years on being alive before the genre had really been established, I think I’m making decent progress.

3. This year, a sidequest in a Kemco RPG had me helping a soldier with his PTSD after he survived an attack on his castle.  How cool is that?  I mean, I’m not sure it balances out last year, when Unlucky Mage had me delivering mail-order-brides to an NPC and oh also the brides turned out to be sheep, but...

4. Actually, since we’re on the subject, Disco Elysium wasn’t the only truly momentous RPG I experienced.  Because, you see, this year, 2022 AD, I played a...

...I’m sorry, I seem to be having trouble typing this.  I played a gOUCH what the hell my fingers just cramped up, Jesus that hurts!

Okay, okay, cramps gone, let’s try this again.  I played a g
g
gggg
dammit why can’t I
I played a g
Try harder, dammit, try harder, you can do this
This year I played a gggggGGGGGGGGAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGS:SDSDFALKESLESLDKDSF

...

I PLAYED A G--

5. I can’t help but feel that it is an odd decision that 1 of the choices for literally the first dialogue option in the entire game for Boyfriend Dungeon is to ask your cousin Jesse whether he’s hitting on you.  I don’t know what Kitfox Games’s huge goddamn rush was to reassure us that this isn’t Fire Emblem; it wasn’t on my mind until THEY mentioned it.  Then the guy acts all appalled that you’d make such an accusation.  Excuse me, Boyfriend Dungeon, don’t you go getting all high-and-mighty and disgusted with ME about this, YOU’RE the one that brought it up to start with!

They pull a similar move a couple minutes later when he tells you that dungeons are the latest dating craze in the area, then hurries to clarify that he’s not talking about sex dungeons, then muses that there are parallels, and finally ends with, “...never mind.  Don’t think about that.”  I WASN’T thinking about it until YOU brought it up, jackass!

6. Of course it just figures that the 1 guy in Ara Fell who actually objects to the RPG hero breaking into his home and attempting to rob him as he watches you turns out to be a villain.  Gotta enforce those RPG standards, I guess.

7. I played 2 different Sports RPGs this year (Golf Quest and Pyre).  Wasn’t intentional, just kind of happened.  Funny how things work out that waaaaayyyyyIPLAYEDAGOODKEMCOGAME!!!  I PLAYED A KEMCO RPG THAT WAS GOOD.  Jesus that was hard to get out!

Yeah, against all odds, contrary to every expectation that their entire catalog would instill in an audience, Kemco actually made an RPG that is good.  Not just halfway decent if you kinda squint a little like Infinite Dunamis.  An actually, honestly, objectively pretty good game.  By Kemco.  Not amazing, not great, not even really good--but still safely, securely, earnestly good, nonetheless.  The dialogue is written well enough, the characters have both personality and decent depth, the story isn’t just a paint-by-numbers RPG adventure and has a couple twists...Kemco’s Machine Knight is an actually legitimate title.  Who could have even imagined such a thing possible?

...What was I talking about here, again?  Oh, right, sports RPGs.  Golf and made-up Prison Soul Basketball.  They happened.

8. In the recent Neverwinter Nights 1 DLC, Tyrants of the Moonsea, villain Maganus says that he has “no fear of death, only what comes after.”  Uhhh...what the hell would the difference be?  I mean I get that in his case he’s stupidly promised his soul to a demon lord for eternity, but, like, fundamentally, anyone who fears death is effectively afraid of what comes after it.


Quote of the Year
“Your hand on my hilt is as good a handshake as any, after all.”
  --Isaac, Boyfriend Dungeon


Best Prequel/Sequel of 2022
Winner: Ys 2
Ys 2 successfully continues and concludes the adventure that Ys 1 began, satisfactorily advancing the plot, expanding the story, and adding to the cast.  It does what it needs to do as a sequel and as a conclusion to a previously incomplete tale, and that’s really all there is to it.

Runner-Up: NA


Biggest Disappointment of 2022
Loser: Tales of Vesperia
I don’t even know why I expected anything more from Tales of Vesperia.  I’ve been on the Tales of merry-go-round more than once before, I should know the damn score by this point--the series has a roughly 1 in 3 chance of producing anything actually worth playing.  It’s the lingering influence of that damned Tales of Berseria, that’s what it is.  ToB is so great that it overrides 20 years’ worth of experience and makes me think every game in the series is gonna be something comparably great.  So even though it shouldn’t have surprised me at all that Tales of Vesperia ended up being the typical low-quality time-waster that Tales of is so damn fond of, it managed to anyway.

Almost as Bad: Boyfriend Dungeon; Faxanadu; Saturday Morning RPG
Although I do think Boyfriend Dungeon is a good RPG, it doesn’t live up to itself in a few fairly key areas, which I’ve discussed previously.  As for Faxanadu, well, I know it’s an 8-bit era RPG, but it’s a title that’s been mentioned many times by many people as something that stood out, and a few readers have even recommended it to me before, so I did kinda expect that it’d be, I dunno...okay?  But there’s nothing to it; there’s barely any kind of story, even by the era’s standards, and what’s there is generic and shallow, again, even by the era’s standards.  There’s a more present narrative in freaking Fester’s Quest.  Wasn’t expecting much, but I got quite a bit less than even that.

Saturday Morning RPG ends on a cliffhanger.  Now, its stopping point does still feel about right as a transition point from 1 game to another, with the discovery of the Financier’s true intentions and his end, the realization that Commander Hood actually IS the real deal villain, Samantha’s revelation, Billy’s vow of vengeance, etc.  It’s not like Squid Story just stopping out of nowhere.  Still, it’s disappointing that we don’t have closure, because it’s not like this game couldn’t have stood to keep going (it’s not really long or anything).  If there were a sequel in the works to end the tale, it’d be fine.  Unfortunately, and part of the disappointment, there is not, as I understand it, anything currently planned to conclude it.  It doesn’t sting as hard as Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch or Celestian Tales, but the likelihood that Saturday Morning RPG will never have its story completed with a sequel is still disappointing.


Best Finale of 2022
Winner: Disco Elysium
It’s Disco Elysium.  The finale of this game, in which the mystery is finally solved, the apricot-scented one is finally confronted (in a way) and, if not overcome, then at least now honestly faced, a miracle is both witnessed and realized, and Harry’s place on the force is determined, is as excellent as the rest of the game has been from the moment it started.  Perhaps even more so--the game has gone all-out in its final moments to truly reach into the player’s heart and make them understand, on a level of empathy and shared suffering, the truth of what Harry has been and now is, and the scene in which he and Kim witness the miracle is...well, it’s breathtaking.  1 of the greatest moments in all of RPGs, easily, prose that holds you, captivates you, makes you understand the joy, beauty, and grand tragedy of we the finite.  The solution to the game’s murder mystery is both a creative shock and thematically inescapable, the summary of Harry’s work and the contributions made by his companion on the matter are satisfying...Disco Elysium has a terrific finale; its only flaw is that the game has to end at all.

Runners-Up: Machine Knight; Pyre; Ys 2
There’s not much I have to say about the finales to Machine Knight or Ys 2, really, besides the fact that they satisfactorily bring their tales to a close with the expected grandiose panache of an RPG.  As for Pyre’s conclusion...the culmination of The Plan, a chance for both vindication and redemption of a previous champion, a last opportunity for the unjustly imprisoned to find freedom, and a moment upon which the future of a nation--not just what it is, but what its heart is, a question of how it shall be born informing everything it shall grow to become--and a summary of the future lives of those who fought on the fields of both ritual and philosophy, Pyre’s conclusion is everything it needs and should be.  As with every other part of this excellent game, the finale is thoughtful, artful, and heavy with significance.


Worst RPG of 2022
Loser: Dragon La...no, you know what?  Screw it.  Faxanadu!
I’m not gonna make excuses for the game just because it came out on the NES.  Excuses are for games who earn it, Faxanadu!  There were 8-bit RPGs that knew how to tell a story, even a simple one, back in the day.  Faxanadu came out in 1987.  You know what else came out that exact same damn year?  Phantasy Star 1, Ys 1, and The Magic of Scheherazade.  Not only could an RPG of that day and age competently tell a damn story with a consistent narrative presence if it had a mind to, it could do so with some notable twists and elements of creativity along the way.  Faxanadu just sends us on a generic fantasy quest against what amounts to aliens (the NES era’s favorite go-to villain) through a couple barebones lines of text from a king, throws a few NPCs in with dialogue so blunt and sparse that they make the original Legend of Zelda NPCs look verbose, and calls it a day on the writing so it can focus all its attentions on the gameplay.  Gameplay which somehow sucks worse than you’d expect from both an RPG and a game on the NES.**  Go ahead, connect your rose-tinted nostalgia gas mask up to your tank of copium if you want, but as far as I’m concerned, Faxanadu is crap.

Almost as Bad: Dragon Lapis; Dragon Sinker; Tales of Vesperia
Machine Knight was a wonderful, shocking breath of fresh air, but with Dragon Sinker and its sequel, Kemco was back to its usual tired, unimaginative phoned-in pile of blah.  The same things are wrong with Dragon Lapis and Sinker as are wrong with every...er, almost every other Kemco game (gonna be hard to get used to accounting for that exception).  Each is a boring, dime-a-dozen fantasy story driven by shallow characters, most of whom are exhausted cliches, whose only goal is to kill time until the next game on the Kemco assembly line comes along.

Tales of Vesperia set out to be a thoughtful, insightful look into the darker side of justice, establishing oneself in an imperfect world, and walking the fine line between vigilantism and heroism with one’s balance only maintained through the support of one’s loved ones.  What it actually is, however, is a long, winding, generic fantasy trek with a subpar cast who relentlessly try to glorify the faux-depth of its 9th Grade Introduction to Philosophy musings.  I mean, yeah, Yuri is very complex and deep, if you’re a moody adolescent that wants to feel intellectual but isn’t ambitious enough to try Kingdom Hearts, and wicked cool if you’re incapable of questioning what animes designed to impress 11-year-olds tell you, but for my part, it’s hard to think of a vigilante who isn’t substantially his superior in every conceivable way.  And if we put aside the game’s incompetent pretension, tons of it makes little to no sense, characters frequently act irrationally just for the sake of greasing the plot’s wheels, its villains are garbage, and its precious edgy little protagonist’s character development is perpetually stuck Telling rather than Showing.  ToV’s not without some minor redeeming qualities (unlike Faxanadu), but it’s a solid, straightforward bad game.


Most Creative of 2022
Winner: Disco Elysium
It’s...It’s just Disco Elysium.  I don’t know what else to say.  The world is unique yet recognizable, the characters singular yet extraordinarily familiar and relatable, the plot and its twists form an exceptional, graceful web of intricacies of which you can somehow easily trace every path...it’s a 70s cop murder mystery RPG in a world as defined in its body by evanescence as ours is in its heart.  Every detail of Disco Elysium is a lovingly crafted set piece of its world and lore--as much creative energy is employed in molding its setting and factions and character histories, as there is in establishing and bringing to life the history of details like its most popular pinball machines, its candies’ most ubiquitous flavor profiles, and regional lingo.  There is a level of raw creative power mixed with a ferocious worth ethic to weave it seamlessly into every facet of Disco Elysium that puts the game on creative par with Planescape: Torment, and even PT might pale in that comparison, because PT already had much of the groundwork of its creativity set by Dungeons and Dragons lore.  Disco Elysium is creatively amazing.

Runners-Up: Ara Fell; Golf Story; Pyre
A golf RPG?  Okay, Steven Universe already came up with the concept, granted, but it still takes an inventive and spry mind to make it as fun and cute as Golf Story winds up being, and they manage with amusing and interesting situations and antics to keep the concept fresh long after it should have gotten stale. Ara Fell, meanwhile, creates a setting, plot, and cast which are all pleasantly in-tune with the general RPG modus operandi, yet all contain interesting and signature traits and details which set the game apart.  It’s 1 of those games that reminds you that the standard bread-and-butter RPG doesn’t HAVE to look like Dragon Lapis/Sinker or (almost) any other Kemco game; you can have floating continents and quests to stop ancient evils and classic hero bands but nonetheless instill enough personality in and different takes on them to be fresh and interesting.

As for Pyre...well, it came pretty close to winning here, and you could compellingly argue that it deserves the victory.  The premise of Pyre’s rituals, readings, rewards, and revolutions is entrancing and unique, its cast are a memorable and singular bunch of rogues, its presentation and aesthetic are all its own...it’s both unmistakably a Supergiant Games title and also somehow entirely unlike anything you’ve seen.  

Oh yeah, did I mention that this tale about prison reform, corrupt and tyrannical systems of law related to prison, and the tragedy of limited opportunity, is also basically a basketball game?  Yeah, using a sports RPG in this manner is by itself probably creative enough to be noteworthy.


Best Romance of 2022
Winner: Lena x Morell (Disco Elysium)
This year we have a very unusual winner--not only a romance between NPCs rather than party members, but a depiction of an existing, well-established love story in the form of a marriage that’s lasted many years.  And it’s really great--the comfortable, adoring fondness that Lena and Morell have for one another is so present that you can almost see it take tangible shape when Harry speaks to them in each other’s presence.  Their recollections of how they met and fell in love are sweet, the level of support they have for one another is touching, the loyalty and care is just...they’re a heartwarming glimpse of love that’s been through the long haul and is still going strong.  And it’s not even like it’s a static romance being portrayed, either, because there is a doubt in Lena’s heart that threatens what they have, so there’s a dynamic element to the romance even now.  It’s a great, real, and touching example of love, refreshing in its form and state in a genre that, let’s face it, is almost always only interested in portraying the early getting-together parts of a romantic love’s lifespan.

Runners-Up: Adrian x Lita (Ara Fell); Leah x Protagonist (Boyfriend Dungeon); Reader x Sandra (Pyre)
Actually, most of the Boyfriend Dungeon romances are at least fairly decent, and personal taste is probably going to play the biggest part in determining which the “best” is.  For me, though, it’s Leah; just feels like the best example of having formed a connection to the protagonist that has a relevant part in her overall character arc.  Adrian and Lita have a typical but nice little RPG love subplot that makes effective use of their friendly chemistry as its basis (and I notably like that Lita is mature enough that she pumps the brakes a bit as it starts to take off, with the desire not to rush into a relationship that might be strongly influenced by their life-and-death circumstances--you certainly don’t see that bit of emotional common sense in RPG love stories very often).  As for Pyre...I mean, how can you not find Sandra’s reluctantly growing affections for the Reader adorable, touching, and by its end, kind of epic?  I don’t usually have a lot of love for tsundere types--Severa/Selena from Fire Emblem is the only one I can immediately think of that I like, and even she’s still a relatively recent development--but I nonetheless delight in this grumpy blind tutorial ghost who’s wryly distraught at how much she likes her Reader, and to be able to join them together in the game’s ending is a shippy joy.


Best Voice Acting of 2022
Winner: Disco Elysium
When the text of your game is so extensive and dense that it’s comparable in scope to Planescape: Torment, it’s pretty darned important to get a narrator that can handle not just the sheer size of the task before him, but manage to bring those volumes and volumes of sentiments to life well enough, interestingly enough, that the 100,000th word is just as absorbing as the first.  Lenval Brown is unexpectedly equal to this task, considering this was his first role.  Although it took me a little time to really settle into the narrator’s voice in Disco Elysium and fully appreciate it, once I did, it became apparent just how great a job he does in enhancing the game’s spectacular prose with a tone that is somehow compellingly fluid and intriguing with its accent and emphasis, yet necessarily understated, interesting the player while never reaching past its role as a narrator, not an impassioned actor.  Brown does a laudable job of hitting the tone of one who is educating, dictating, reciting, remembering, and describing that which is both distant and personal to him.  Dunno how to describe it, but it really works.

And the rest of the cast holds up their end, too.  Some shine brighter than the rest (Titus and Klaasje are standouts, and Cuno’s actor delivers so perfect a performance that I want to reach into the screen and strangle the obnoxious little shit) and there are some moments where I feel that familiar old feeling of voice actors delivering lines in a vacuum rather than as a cohesive part of a dialogue sequence, but there’s few poor performances to be found in the entire game.  A game which is, I’ll remind you, entirely driven forward by its narration and dialogue.  Literally!  Time only progresses, events only occur, when speaking to or about people and stuff in Disco Elysium.  So the cast nailing their performances this consistently in a game like that is a huge achievement.

Runners-Up: Boyfriend Dungeon; Pyre; Tales of Vesperia
Logan Cunningham’s performance as The Voice in Pyre isn’t as iconic or powerful as it was as Bastion’s Narrator or Transistor’s Subject 0, but it’s still darned good, and the rest of the voice work is done well for Pyre’s very diverse and colorful band of rogues and misfits.  Honestly, if the game were straight-out voice acted for all of its characters instead of just The Voice and some bits of otherworldly language, there’s every chance Pyre would’ve taken the crown from Disco Elysium.

Boyfriend Dungeon’s voice acting was fine, got the job done, no complaints (besides that a little more of it would have been nice).  As for Tales of Vesperia...yeah, I obviously enjoy ragging on this game, but the voice work for it was largely competent.  I mean, I don’t think Estelle’s vocals ever quite fit her right, but nothing’s outright bad, and there are even a few performances that are really good--Judy’s voice actress, Alison Lees-Taylor, did a wonderful job of bringing to life the unique character’s intangible oddity and rare, airy self-assurance and femininity, for example.


Funniest of 2022
Winner: Golf Story
Understated, tongue-in-cheek humor defines Golf Story, and it’s clever and amusing enough that even I, a man who thinks that golf is boring even by sports standards, was compelled to keep going through to its end, and disappointed when that end came.  There’s not a lot of laugh-out-loud moments in this silly tale (although the rap battle between golf generations was pretty great), but it’s still darned funny.  Probably even better for players who know the first thing about the sport, too.

Runners-Up: Ara Fell; Saturday Morning RPG
Ara Fell is ultimately a serious RPG, but its protagonist does like to crack wise and make dry, witty observations frequently, and with her at the helm, there’s plenty of RPG meta-humor to go around, which you know I’m very fond of.  Non-80s kids will get much less out of Saturday Morning RPG’s largely referential humor, and I think it’s fair to say that it requires a lot more love of the 1980s than I myself possess to get the most enjoyment out of it, but it’s still unequivocally fun.  Call me a sucker for obvious jokes, but I genuinely laughed aloud at the Decoder Ring item.


Best Villain of 2022
Winner: Eric (Boyfriend Dungeon)
...This seems like a really, really weird decision, and yet I keep arriving at it.  I really do think that Eric is the best villain of the games I played this year, better than even those fielded by Pyre and Disco Elysium.  It’s INSANE, but...yeah, I think it’s true.  I mean...he kinda checks a lot of the right boxes.  He’s an arrogant, antagonistic prick (but intended to be; unlike so many intolerable dickweeds in the RPG villain ranks, you’re not supposed to view him sympathetically) who butts into other people’s affairs and relationships when he’s not wanted, engaging with him proves to just be a frustrating experience as he close-mindedly and egotistically shuts down everything others like and want, he’s haughty, he’s distinctly prejudiced, he’s a creepy and possessive person towards anyone he’s interested in from the word go...Eric is a solid depiction of a lot of the behaviors of a toxic human being.  And maybe that doesn’t sound like it should be able to trump murderers and disgraced, destructive anarchists and dogmatic tyrants and ancient vampire lords committing genocide in a selfish pursuit of immortality, but in a game all about making meaningful emotional connections that better both yourself and the person you’re with, and a game about accepting and finding things to love in oneself and others, Eric’s exactly the villain he should be.  And frankly...for a lot of us, a sniveling, toxic asswipe is a villain that will hit a lot closer to home than the more grandiose RPG baddies.

Eric also has at least a little depth and development as a character, too.  There’s a reason for his villainy, one that’s rooted in insecurities and intolerances of himself.  It makes him a decent mirror-to-the-hero kind of villain (or it would, if the game did a better job of characterizing the protagonist the way it wants to), and a thematically perfect antagonist in the kind of story that Boyfriend Dungeon wishes to tell.  So yeah, I’m calling it.  Eric’s the best villain this year.  Suck it, Disco Elysium and Pyre!

Runners-Up: The Killer (Disco Elysium); Oralech (Pyre); The Voice (Pyre)
For real, though, Pyre and Disco Elysium did do a great job in this category.  Oralech is a great fallen hero, The Voice is perfect as the oppressive, haughty embodiment of The System who can sneer down at the condemned seemingly without their being able to strike out against him, Disco Elysium’s Killer as an unexpected avatar of the city’s tormented past lashing out at its present...they’re all quite good.  It’s just that none of them are quite as complete a villainous package as Eric, I guess.  But definitely solid villains nonetheless!


Best Character of 2022
Winner: Disco Elysium’s Cast
Look, it’s not gonna be fair to the rest of the RPGs I played this year if we count Disco Elysium’s stable of strikingly singular, nuanced personalities and entities as anything but a lump sum.  Hell, I don’t even know how I’d manage to select 4 final contenders as the best characters from the game; there’s a hell of a lot of truly astounding NPCs in this game who in about 5 minutes of interaction manage to shame the entire arc of character development for most RPG main characters and party members.  So we’re just gonna say that Disco Elysium, as a whole, is the best character of 2022, and leave it at that.

Runners-Up: Gilman (Pyre); Lita (Ara Fell); Pamitha (Pyre)
Pyre’s Sandra was so close.  God it kills me not to put her up here.  But objectively, I have to accept that the upbeat Sir Gilman’s story of seeking honor, having to turn against its trappings to find its truth, and the complexity of Pamitha’s story as the willing, loving, and silently hurting villain of her sister’s unfortunate tale, are greater still.  As for Lita, she’s a spunky, well-characterized young woman with some solid emotional growth, who lightly intrigues me for how well she walks the line between natural heroism and a terrified, morose regret at having to be witness and party and prey to the terrible events around her.  The fact that she can refuse to forgive the ancient wise guide type character who put her into this role is interestingly off-script for an RPG but very real, and the fact that Lita can still weep for and honor her nonetheless is compelling to me.  Good stuff.


Best RPG of 2022
Look by now you know it’s Disco Elysium
Best RPG I’ve played this year.  Best RPG I’ve played this decade.  I can’t be entirely sure that it’s not the Best RPG I’ve played, period.  Like...I think that Grandia 2 and Planescape: Torment are better than it, but the edge of PT’s victory is so razor-thin that I’m not sure I’m not just deluding myself with the comfort of familiarity.  Whichever way you slice it, though, Disco Elysium is amazing.

Runners-Up: Ara Fell; Boyfriend Dungeon; Pyre
Pyre was fucking robbed.  By all rights, 2022 should have continued 2017’s winning streak with Pyre sitting at the top of this year’s list.***  It’s only pure, bad luck for it that this is the year I finally got around to seeing what all the fuss was about with Disco Elysium, because the soulful, intriguing, creative, aesthetically powerful, rich, rewarding, and inspiring Pyre is the best Supergiant Games title I’ve played to date--a shock in itself, because I did not expect things would get better than Transistor.  Pyre is a game with weight, a creation which is inescapably, obviously a work of art, and I love it to pieces.

While I’m annoyed that I didn’t play more RPGs this year which might instead have taken this spot, I’m pleased that Boyfriend Dungeon made it on here, because even though I’ve tried to temper my critiques of the game with insistences that it’s still a good title, it’s hard for a couple sentences of reassurance to stand against a couple dozen paragraphs of complaints.  But it IS a good RPG, it does what it wants to adequately well and what it wants to do is good, and it deserves recognition as a decent endeavor.  As for Ara Fell, it’s a solid, really good RPG.  Engaging story, fun and well-written characters.  I don’t know what else to say about it (which made writing the usual recommendation rant I do for most Indie titles rather tricky).  Some games are just good RPGs, not for any specific virtue and not in any specific way beyond just being a pleasing example of the genre.


List Changes
Greatest RPGs: Disco Elysium and Pyre have been added; Shadow Hearts 2 and Mother 3 have been removed.  Sorry Shadow Hearts 2, you great, gloomy game about a guy’s grief, and sorry Mother 3, you...great, gloomy game about a guy’s grief.  Huh.


Music Additions

Them’s Fightin’ Chords
Symphony of Eternity Final Boss Battle (Final Boss Battle)

Hither, Thither, and Song
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Collapsed Expressway (Miscellaneous Setting)
Machine Knight Shaft’s Airship (Final Dungeon)
Tales of Vesperia Aspio (Specific Town)
Tales of Vesperia Yormgen (Specific Town)
Ys 2 Cavern of Rasteenie (Cave)
Ys 2 Ice Ridge of Noltia (Cold)

Chime Really Feeling it!
Disco Elysium The Phasmid (Spiritual)

See You Bass Cowboy
Disco Elysium Debriefing (Conclusion)
Disco Elysium Mercenary Tribunal (Miscellaneous)
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Roche’s Defeat (Cutscene)
The Outer Worlds Ending (Ending)

All That and a Bag of Chiptunes
Chrono Trigger Rising Beast Remix (General Remixes)



2022, over and done with.  I’m REALLY hoping that next year will be one in which I make a proper, solid return to the RPG scene in not just quality but quantity, but I suppose we’ll see how it goes.  At the very least, it ought to have some great highlights--my intention is to get Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Hades, and another Large Battleship Studios title in there, and maybe I’ll give 2017 another crack at topping the list by finally getting around to Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5.  Unfortunately, 2023’s gonna have some low points, too, and as I’m almost finished with Shin Megami Tensei Not Persona Just Plain 5, 1 of its down moments is also gonna be its opener.  Ah, well, that’s life.

Naturally, I want to end this year’s summary with some appreciative words.  As ever, my sister deserves a tremendous amount of gratitude and recognition for being the first and last line of defense when it comes to these rants’ quality--if you think they’re bad now, you should see these things before she patiently listens to them and helps me fix’em up all proper nice.  The same can be said of my ever-faithful buddy and reader Ecclesiastes, who takes up my sister’s beta-reader mantle whenever she’s not able (or permitted, for spoiler reasons) to give a rant a pass-by.  They let me bounce ideas off of them, they patiently endure my occasional bouts of mini-rants as I get interested and start blathering on about an RPG topic that happened to come up in conversation, and frankly they should be sainted for indulging my deranged preoccupation with wording RPG Valentines perfectly.  My friend Angel Adonis likewise deserves some heartfelt thanks, as he, too, has acted multiple times this year as back-up editor for rants that spoil too much to pass by my sister.  Muchas gracias, mi amigo.

Some major thanks as well to my patrons, Ecclesiastes and Toasterdog.  That you’re willing to put your money where my big mouth is encourages me to no end, and your gracious generosity is a monthly pick-me-up beyond my ability to convey.  Seriously, thank you.

And of course, thank you to each and every 1 of you who read these rants of mine.  Nigh the sum total of human knowledge and culture is easily and readily available to you in this modern age of marvels at any and all times, and the fact that you choose to set the myriad wonders that humanity can produce aside thrice a month to instead take in the ravings of this deranged nit-picker is remarkable to me.  Your readership is ever appreciated, your comments greatly valued.****  Happy holidays to you, and best wishes for us all come 2023!
















* Surprise surprise, this is why we saw some ToB and FFT rants pop up out of the blue this past year, and you’ll be seeing some for Chrono Trigger next year for the same reason.  Apparently I’ve been doing the rant blog thing the hard way for the past 16 years by being largely a solo act; the way to really get my Nitpicky RPG Nerd writing juices flowing is just to watch someone else play a game and be reminded of all the stupid shit in it that annoys me and all the equally stupid shit in it that I like.


** Don’t you give me that fucking look.  You go ahead and remember the gems of the NES as much as you like, but it was not all Metroid and Mario and Mega Man.  For every game with tight, well-packaged gameplay like Contra or Little Nemo, there were another 2 titles with clunky, barely functional controls and mechanics.  Hell, even some of the “good” ones kinda sucked--no one will ever convince me that the Castlevania series was all that well put together until at least the SNES.


*** Reader Adam E noted last year that a 2017 RPG has won this category every time since the year in question.  Torment: Tides of Numenera was the best RPG I played in 2017, Nier: Automata the best in 2018, Tales of Berseria in 2019, Rakuen 2020, and 2021 went to Horizon 0 Dawn--and all of them were games that came out in 2017.  Pyre, too, originates from this same year.  I don’t know what the hell was going on 5 years ago but it was a hell of a time for RPGs!


**** ...Within reason.  I ain’t prostrating myself in gratitude to the spam bots who pop up here and there.

Ara Fell

Holy crap, it’s been over a year since I last played and recommended a quality Indie RPG.  Well that certainly won’t stand!  Admittedly, some of that has to do with the Indie RPGs I’ve played in 2022 being so famously excellent (Disco Elysium) or having been made by a studio that’s famously excellent (Pyre) that they really just don’t need the “publicity” of a rant.  But still.

So, usually when I write these Indie RPG recommendation rants, I try to call special attention to the great qualities that set the game apart and make it unique.  Stuff like the themes of class divide and revenge in Children of Zodiarcs, the poignance of Rakuen, the ambiance and love for Africa in Beautiful Desolation, the use of Norse mythology and portrayal of a prolonged end-of-the-world scenario in The Banner Saga, the simple fun factor of Cosmic Star Heroine, and so on.  This stuff is rarely the only admirable trait of the game, of course, but qualities like these are easy signatures to identify and laud, the characteristics that both set them apart from their peers and make them more interesting and attractive to prospective players.

There is, however, a type of RPG that I typically think of as a “Final Fantasy 4” kind of game.  Essentially, it’s an RPG that is simply, straightforwardly good from essentially all angles, and one that just about everyone can agree they liked.  It somehow stands out and is memorable, in spite of the fact that it’s kind of hard to point to any particular facet of its whole as being especially impressive.  It’s a genre crowd-pleaser, an RPG that tells an RPG story and does a good job of it, with fantasy and emotion and purpose and character development and twists and victory and defeat and villainy and heroism, the whole standard RPG experience.  The kind of game that represents the backbone of a positive experience with the genre as a whole.  And it’s this solid all-arounder category of RPG that Ara Fell falls into.

Ara Fell is the story of a free-spirited, snarky young woman named Lita discovering a magical relic, resulting in her getting caught up in a great quest to save the land of Ara Fell, a giant island which floats in the sky.  Over the course of this adventure, she’ll recruit allies, face grand monsters, be guided by visions of a magical elf lady, explore every corner of her world, grow as a person, discover the secrets of the ancient race that inhabited the lands before humanity, and contend with the evil machinations of villains.  It’s an RPG, and it does RPG things, and that’s...sort of it.

And that’s certainly no bad thing.  RPGs in the last 10 years have seemed to be increasingly interested in being unique entities with designs and shticks that make them works unto themselves, less and less confined within the classic identity of the genre.  Even the Tales of series, reigning king of the “business as usual” RPG ever since SquareEnix lost its fucking mind 2 decades ago, broke out of its colorfully generic and usually mediocre shell in 2017 to deliver the artful, powerful Tales of Berseria.  That’s a title which gives RPG tradition the middle finger by making its arguably biggest message the idea that there’s value and importance in the negative emotions of humanity!  The story and ideas of RPGs have been increasingly breaking out of the shell of genre-defining characteristics as time goes on.*  This does NOT displease me, mind you--the more Tales of Berserias and Undertales and Disco Elysiums and West of Loathings and Pathfinder: Kingmakers and Quantum Entanglements and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Qs and Nier: Automatas and Supergiant Games and so on, the better!  But I also don’t want to completely lose the classic Final Fantasy 4/Lufia 2/Secret of Mana/Breath of Fire 1 type of RPG, either.*

So it’s really great, to me, when an RPG like Ara Fell comes along.  One that’s got a well-developed, likable, and distinctive cast who engage well with the events and world before them.  One that has a solid, enjoyable story with the right number of twists and turns and ups and downs.  One with fresh and relatable writing and dialogue, and a well-utilized sense of humor (Lita’s fond of poking fun at RPG conventions now and then, and you all know how I like that).  One possessing competent pacing, a good narrative voice, a great soundtrack, adequately evil villains, and a classic JRPG setting and approach.  It’s just the kind of game that satisfies my need for quality RPG comfort food before my next foray into more exotic samples of the genre’s cuisine.

And that’s my recommendation for Ara Fell, basically.  Do you want to play a good RPG, and enjoy the genre for its own sake as you do?  Then Ara Fell’s a reliable option.  Lita’s story is fun, engaging, even moving at times, and if you need a reminder of the ways a basic specimen of its family can stand out and please, then it’s sure to perk you up.













* Well, okay, the traditional genre-defining RPG is in no danger of disappearing so long as Kemco and Dragon Quest continue to churn out games.  But Torag forbid those ever become one’s only options for the basic bread-and-butter RPG.  Best to put the whole genre out of its misery at that point.  Hell, I’ll go Old Yeller on it myself if I have to.

Tales of Vesperia's Lead-Up to Cumore's Death

Is it just me, or do characters in Tales of Vesperia often act just, like, 2 steps away from what’s logical?  They’re not being noticeably nonsensical the way characters are in High Guardian Spice or Xenosaga 3, they’re not saying things that are noticeably non-human the way characters do in the Star Wars prequels or Xenosaga 3 again, but at the same time, events throughout a lot of ToV seem to be propelled by ignoring what makes sense in the current situation.  Take the death of Cumore.  It’s a fairly important keystone in the game’s plot, particularly regarding Yuri’s character and the party’s cohesion and interrelationships, but...why does it happen to begin with?  How exactly did it make sense for the events that lead to Yuri murdering Cumore to unfold as they did?

So, when everything is boiled down to the basics, Cumore dies because Yuri is convinced that if he does not end Cumore’s life now, the aristocratic sleazeball will get off scot-free for his crimes and simply repeat them as soon as he gets the chance.  And that’s a perfectly reasonable assumption, because Cumore has so far shown himself to be both unrepentant of his previous transgressions and a jerk, and there’s more than enough evidence for the fact that he does not see anyone who is not part of the noble class as a true human being.  But, the reason that Yuri believes that this is a now-or-never situation to end Cumore’s threat against the common man is that, upon discovering a few hours prior that Cumore has been abusing the citizens of Mantaic and endangering their lives, the rest of his companions did nothing.  And that’s what doesn’t make sense about this scenario.

It’s wildly out of character for several members of Yuri’s party to find out that there are people suffering and dying as a result of Cumore’s ambitions, and to conclude that the only thing they can do is to wait for Flynn to come and do something about it.  Okay, sure, I’ll grant you that the recent example of Ragou, another evil asshole in the upper echelons of society who used his connections to get off with a slap on the wrist for his crimes, certainly did dishearten the group as a whole.  It was discouraging to all of them, especially Estelle and Karol, that Ragou seemingly got away with his crimes, and there was nothing they could do about it.  And this seems to be the reasoning that the game gives us for why, upon discovering the terrible things Cumore is doing to the people of the town, all our heroes decide that the only thing they can do about it is to wait for Flynn and his knights to arrive and sort the matter out.

Unfortunately, that’s just not consistent with the party’s personality, nor with its history.  Let’s start with the latter first.  While the most recent clash they had with Ragou most certainly puts a sour taste in their mouths, they’ve all been present for multiple incidents in the past in which their decision to oppose bad guys to put an end to the suffering of innocents, without relying on Flynn’s help, had real, demonstrable, conclusively positive results.  Why should their failure to permanently put Ragou in prison outweigh their previous, wider-reaching success at defeating Barbos, for example?  And even if Cumore escaped from their last encounter at Heliord, their having opposed him as swiftly as possible nonetheless decisively cut short his ability to abuse that city’s citizens and reinforced Flynn’s ability to ensure that Cumore’s operation there was fully and totally shut down.  

For that matter, even with the Ragou situation, there would have been at least a pause in his villainy thanks to their efforts (if he had lived, that is; they still don’t know, by this point, that Yuri went and vigilante’d Ragou off a bridge).  Not exactly a victory, but not the total defeat they’re acting like it was, either.  I know you’re far more fond of lifting material from Final Fantasy 9, Tales of Vesperia, but go ahead and ask the people of Spira in FF10 whether or not the temporary reprieve from Sin ravaging their world bought by the Summoner’s journey was worthwhile to them.  A solution to a problem is obviously the best thing, but any idiot knows that if that solution isn’t available, a temporary reprieve is still desirable.  A guy who accidentally shot his arm with a nail gun obviously wants the nail removed more than anything else, but he sure as hell ain’t gonna turn down some Tylenol in the meantime.

So yeah, in terms of general rationality, Yuri’s group deciding to just sit on their hands until Flynn comes in to resolve things is weird and dumb.  But it’s also noticeably bad writing for the fact that it runs strongly contrary to several of their demonstrated character traits and personalities.

For starters, Estelle.  Are you seriously trying to tell me that Estelle sees that innocent people are suffering at the hands of Cumore, and she allows herself to be talked into doing nothing about it?  ESTELLE?  1 of the few actual, concrete, beat-the-audience-over-the-head-with-it traits of Estelle’s personality is that she is patently unable to stand the sight, the sound, the very knowledge of another’s suffering!  The moment someone so much as gets a splinter within 5 miles of Estelle, she’s there and hitting’em with a healing spell so potent that the mere splashback from it might cause the splinter to pop out and regrow into a whole new tree of its own.  Estelle is a healer with an aggro range.

So am I really supposed to buy this scenario where Estelle sees that Cumore’s actions are harming the innocent people of Mantaic, and she can be convinced into just sitting it out and letting it go on until Flynn gets there?  Hell, that she would even hesitate long enough for others to make their argument for that to begin with?  Estelle?  Miss Can’t Turn A Blind Eye To A Scraped Knee?  Keep in mind that the VERY NEXT major story event of Tales of Vesperia hinges upon Estelle being so gung-ho about helping others that she literally kills Belius with kindness, casting a healing spell on the wounded Belius so automatically and so quickly that the latter doesn’t have a chance to warn her that the magic will cause Belius to go berserk.  This Cumore tomfoolery goes against everything we’ve seen and everything we will see of Estelle’s character, undercuts the very signature trait of Estelle that the next story beat is built upon!

It’s also very out of character for Karol.  Karol’s still caught up in the fervor of having created his own, brand new guild with Yuri and Judy, and while he’s still sorting out what Brave Vesperia is meant to do and what it stands for, the 1 and only thing that they’ve all established beyond any argument or doubt about the guild is that it will not tolerate injustices to stand.  And yet Karol sees the harm being done to innocents in Mantaic by Cumore, and decides to just sit on his bed in the inn, feel a bit bad for the townsfolk, and wait for someone else to come do something about it?  This kid who is utterly engulfed in his pride and excitement to have a guild of his own is going to go against the 1 and only mission statement of that guild because, what, Cumore might get off the hook like Ragou seemed to?  Because Cumore might later elude punishment, we simply don’t give a shit about whether innocents suffer an injustice for longer than they have to?

It’s a crock of shit with Judy and Rita, too.  Judy’s a part of Brave Vesperia, so she’s supposed to be just as dedicated to seeing justice done as Karol is.  But even if you discount that (which is fair, because Judy’s hard to read, and still engaging in her subterfuges, so it’s dubious to make a concrete assessment of her commitment to the guild), it’s still out of character for her to sit back and advocate doing nothing about Cumore.  Her whole thing for the game’s first half is that she’s fully willing to work outside the law and (secretly) defy what her friends want if it’s for the greater good.  If the well-being of the people of Mantaic matters to her at all, then there’s no one in the entire cast who should give less of a crap about what connections and protections Cumore has which might later save him from punishment.  Rita, meanwhile, does not possess the do-gooder’s instinct like most of the others, but she also is the type to act entirely upon her own in-the-moment instincts, brashly disregarding whoever and whatever may be opposed to her at that time.  So the fact that she herself doesn’t like what Cumore’s doing should have her out there throwing fireballs around in a tantrum, not sitting on an inn bed rationalizing why they should all just move on.*  Hell, it doesn’t even feel true to Patty’s character; she makes it clear she doesn’t like the situation here, either, and she’s really not much less impulsive than Rita or Estelle.**

Why the hell are they all so damned convinced that Cumore’s going to elude justice the way Ragou did, anyway?  Granted, Cumore is an extremely rich noble with a high position in the military, but Ragou was a member of the council that rules the Empire who’d had decades of opportunity to collect favors and form illicit connections to his fellow council members that would protect him.  There’s a world of difference between how well Ragou could use his resources to evade justice and how well Cumore could, with both Flynn and Princess Estelle herself against him.

And actually, on that note, this whole situation is kind of illogical even from the perspective of Cumore himself.  Why the hell does Estelle’s position have so little importance to him?  Putting aside the fact that Estelle being the second most important, high-ranking human being in the entire Empire doesn’t seem to really matter to anybody for some indiscernible reason...theoretically, Cumore should cease his villainous shenanigans the moment she tells him to in Heliord.

I mean, think about this.  Cumore may be a military officer and have aspirations of climbing the ranks to the top, but I think it’s safe to assess him as defined far more by his high social status than his military career, yes?  Narratively, the military rank is mostly there just to give him the ability to impose upon others his desires and personal convictions based on his being at a higher social stratum than most other people.  So why wouldn’t he very seriously consider obeying Estelle’s order that he cease exploiting the people of Heliord?  Everything that Cumore truly believes about the way the world works should lead him to view Estelle, as an inheritor of an even higher position than himself, as a superior being even to him, or at the very least, one who he must, by laws of hierarchy, respect.  For him to intentionally oppose and even try to harm her would be to invite the possibility that those lower than himself likewise have the right to do so against him.  And even if you want to disregard his being self-aware and intelligent enough to consider matters like that, the simple fact is that it only makes sense for Cumore to consider Estelle a higher power than Alexei, who is only Cumore’s military superior.  For one who defines himself by the currency of social standing and money, NOT effort or achievements, there should be far, far more tangible benefits from currying the favor of a princess than a general.  Frankly, everything in Cumore’s shallow character and history indicates that when Estelle says jump, his only response should be to ask whom milady wants ground-pounded.

All of this adds up to a situation wherein Estelle’s disapproval of the situation in Heliord should have been enough to have Cumore sycophantically shut down his operation there, and as a result, give Estelle and company confidence that he would do so again when confronted in Mantaic (and they would be correct in this assumption).  Cumore’s stubborn opposition to the princess’s wishes makes him just 1 more example of out-of-character behavior that had to be forced in order to make his death possible.

I can't believe Tales of Symphonia actually handled this scenario better years before, in the scene in Palmacosta where the heroes intervene to save that lady from hanging.***  How do you narratively start at Symphonia and then go down?

It’s not like I’m against Cumore getting his just rewards.  Not to mention that the immediately resulting interactions between Yuri and Flynn that come from this event are some of the few scenes in the game that I think are genuinely good and well-written.  And I certainly understand why this event has to occur for the sake of the overall story and the direction that ToV is ineptly trying to take Yuri’s character in.  But there had to be a better way to accomplish all this than to have half a dozen characters act contrary to their established personalities and/or convictions, for reasoning that’s clearly and even ridiculously flawed.













* The reasoning that she shouldn’t even be giving at the moment happens to also be pretty dumb, too.  Rita convinces Estelle (which shouldn’t even be possible, I’d like to again note) that they should just move to their next destination and worry more about what they themselves want to do than get mixed up in the affairs of others.  But Mantaic is a tiny town and Cumore’s only got so many soldiers stationed here--it would take the party, I dunno, an hour at most to put an end to Cumore’s villainy and take him into custody, then be on their way.  If they’re worried about him escaping after they’ve left, they can just bring the douchebag with them: their next destination is the last place they saw Flynn and there’s only 1 route he could be taking to get here, so they can just hand him over to Flynn when their paths inevitably cross.


** Seems mildly sexist that the 3 most impulsive characters in the party are all women, now that I think about it.


*** Thanks to Ecclesiastes for reminding me of this scenario, as it's been, thankfully, quite some time since I played ToS.  Honestly, Ecc's steel trap mind for RPG details and scenes probably makes him more worthy of my monicker than I am.

Shin Megami Tensei 5's Downloadable Content

Oh goody.  DLC for Shin Megami Tensei 5.  So let’s see, that’s...an add-on, an add-on for a JRPG, an add-on which was made by Atlus, and an add-on that’s part of the SMT series.  Yeah, I’m sure this is gonna be great.



A Goddess in Training: It’s not worth the price.  In fact, here, Imma save you some time and tell you right upfront: NONE of these things are worth the cost.  None of them are even close.  Columbus was closer to finding India than SMT5’s DLCs get to being worth what they cost.  Fallout 76 is closer to being a Fallout title than these things are to being a worthwhile purchase.  Kanye West is closer to being a human being who deserves to be listened to than these add-ons are to providing an adequate return for your investment.

So anyway, A Goddess in Training basically has you pay $5 to do the following:
- Walk up to Artemis, Greek goddess of the hunt
- Tell her you killed the Hydra
- Go kill a Quetzacoatl to judge whether it’s strong enough to provide training to her
- Since Quetzacoal wasn’t up to snuff, you get to be Artemis’s sparring partner instead
- Recruit Artemis once you’re done kicking the crap out of her as the next part of her training

That’s it.  That’s all.  For $5 you get to engage in 2 fights and get a single new, slightly-more-helpful-than-average medium-low level Pokemon demon, attached to a “story” about how some chick wants to train and will now do so.  I’m not even sure it qualifies as a story; there was greater conflict and purpose to the process of brushing my teeth this morning than A Goddess in Training.  The throwaway "deliver x number of items to me" sidequests in SMT5 are more involved and significant, for fuck’s sake.  It has taken me longer to write this review than it took me to play this DLC from start to finish.  It may have taken you longer to read it.


The Rage of a Queen: This is somehow even shorter than the last one.  You get the quest, you go where Cleopatra is--this, the previous, and the next DLC all take place in the first area’s map, by the way, so the process of actually getting to the quest marker is more or less instantaneous; don’t go thinking there’s any kind of new territory to pass through or anything--she decides you must be there to kill her, you fight her, and you either let her kill herself or stop her from doing so, either way allowing you to add her to your ranks.  That’s it.

It’s $3 for nothing.  Generic level-up dialogue lines express more individuality and character for the demons speaking them than this DLC provides for Cleopatra.  The Rage of a Queen is phoning it in by the standards of Shin Megami Tensei 5, a game that is already half-assing it as an RPG.


The Doctor’s Last Wish: Oh wow look how unexpected, another DLC in which you get a quest, beat a demon up, and call it a day.  Another DLC that, not counting the commute from quest-giver to quest-target and back, can wrap itself up in less than 10 minutes.  For $3.

As expected by this point, what minuscule content you get from this add-on isn’t all that great.  Basically, you track down a scientist who makes proto-fiends like Aogami, and it turns out that he’s stayed alive and youthful for a while because he made a deal with Mephisto.  This deal stipulates that Doc Dumbass gets to keep kicking until he creates a proto-fiend with a human heart and soul.  Mephisto then makes the claim that the contract is fulfilled, pointing to the protagonist as evidence.

Which I don’t think really makes any sense, by the way.  First of all, the fact that Aogami happened to fall face-first into his compatible human knowledge counterpart is an act that Professor Putz had little to nothing to do with.  It’s not like he specifically designed Aogami with the theory or hypothesis that Aogami would be capable of it; it in fact sounds rather like this guy didn’t really know about the whole Susano-o thing at all.  So can this really, contractually qualify as Scientist Stupidface achieving that which he set out to do?  Og the Caveman can’t claim to have invented fire just because the lit match I drop happens to fall into his stick pile.

Secondly, how does anyone look at the protagonist of Shin Megami Tensei 5 and see anything that remotely resembles a being with a human heart and soul?  SMT5’s hero is more of an automaton than any actual robot I can immediately recall having seen in an RPG.  He makes Fire Emblem 16’s Byleth look positively emotive!  Doctor Dipshit should’ve seen the protagonist and felt like he’d moved further from his goal.

Anyway, Mephisto demands the guy’s soul, main character steps in to stop it, fight ensues, the dude dies anyway because it was Mephisto keeping him alive, and you’re done.  How fucking thrilling.


Return of the True Demon: Oh good, Atlus is now shamelessly leveraging your nostalgia as a cheap, crass selling point.  Congratulations, Atlus, so great to see you’ve finally joined the Dignity’s Rock-Bottom Club.  Leon’s Charizard will take your coat, Todd Howard will show you to your table, and if you need anything, SquareEnix is tending bar.

So basically, Return of the True Demon lets you take on the classic Fiends of Shin Megami Tensei (like you did in Shin Megami Tensei 3), and once you’re done with that, you’re given the opportunity to fight...SMT3's protagonist, THE DEMI-FIEND!!!  OOOOOH WOW HOLY SHIT THE DEMI-FIEND WOOOO YEAH BABY HOW EXCITING, ET CETERA!  As if that’s some big fucking deal.  Serph already curb-stomped Demi-fiend in SMT Digital Devil Saga 1, and considering their substantially greater accomplishments and feats of power, it’s hard to imagine that SMT2’s Aleph and SMT4-2’s Nanashi couldn’t also whup his ass pretty tidily.  But fanboys are known neither for their capacity for rational thought nor for the accuracy of their memory, so the Demi-fiend is still the SMT main character that draws the most attention, and Atlus is looking to cash that shit in.

Now credit where it’s due: you get to interact with each of the Fiends as you encounter them, and they do share a bit of mildly interesting lore stuff regarding the SMT main series’s timeline and cycles.  A lot of the other stuff they say is just pandering hype for the Demi-Fiend and for SMT5’s protagonist, but hey, how else would we know just what a super special boy the Nahobino is if SMT5 didn’t squander its extremely limited narrative presence on constantly telling us so?  Regardless, it’s at least SOMETHING slightly interesting, and even a tiny morsel is delicious to the starving man, so what one might take for granted in a well-told RPG stands out in Shin Megami Tensei 5.   Also, even if it’s obviously fanservice, it is fun to see that the Demi-Fiend is still hanging out with his Pixie, and it’s cool that she even gets lines as the Tatl to his Link.  So yeah, I guess that in spite of how shameless this DLC is in its premise, Return of the True Demon is probably the best of these add-ons.

But it’s also 10 bucks for 10 fights and about 5 - 10 minutes of dialogue.  The fact that this is the best cost-to-content ratio of SMT5’s add-ons doesn’t make this a smart buy--it just highlights what a fucking scam Atlus is running here.  So yeah, while I’d like to match the original Uber-Pixie against my latest home-brewed version of the tiny titan, my pride as a man, and more importantly as a Megaten player, will manage to survive not purchasing this DLC.  Maybe if you see this thing go down to, I dunno, $1, it might be worth your time, but otherwise, give Return of the True Demon the same hard pass as all the others.



Well gee, what a surprise, the company with a history of bad and overpriced add-ons has made some bad, overpriced DLCs for their bad, overpriced game.  Would it kill Atlus and Nintendo and all the rest to prove me wrong every now and then?

Tales of Vesperia Stray Thoughts

Okay, guys, so...you know how, in my last few Annual Summary rants, I’ve had a little section for notable (by my estimation, anyway) little thoughts and reactions I’ve had while playing RPGs that year?  I just realized that I have like over half a dozen of those things all specifically for weird and/or dumb moments in Tales of Vesperia.  And that’s simply way too much stuff for that part of the already gigantic Annual Summary rant...but it IS probably enough that I could cobble together a little mishmash rant out of these pieces and leavings.  Think of it like a rant meatloaf: a bit of the stuff you actually want to eat, mashed together with some tasteless filler sentences, to the point that it’s close enough to the real thing that you may not notice until your next meal just how lesser the meatloaf really was.

I’m sure it helps that even my regular rants probably wouldn’t manage to get USDA approved anyway.

So, without further ado, some of my stray thoughts about Tales of Vesperia!



- I’m not saying that the rest of Tales of Vesperia prior to this point has been lacking in moments that are slightly nonsensical or outright dumb, but I nonetheless have to scratch my head at the fact that, when the Imperial fleet is sailing to attack the giant battle fortress Heracles, all the knights aboard the ship are in full plate armor.  Like...you guys know that ship-to-ship naval engagements don’t involve much face-to-face combat, right?  There ain’t much reason to be in full combat regalia unless you manage to board your foe.  And if your ship gets sunk before that happens (which is implied to have happened to quite a few of the Empire’s vessels in this encounter), well...you’re not PCs; you can’t magically swim in armor that weighs 100 pounds.


- Since we’re on the subject of the Heracles...I’m sorry, Tales of Vesperia, did you just say that this giant, mobile battle fortress was built in secrecy by “a handful” of skilled engineers?  A handful?  Really?  A 6- to 10-story moving armed metal battle fortress the size of a few city blocks...constructed from scratch by a handful of skilled engineers.  In a world without substantially established industrial manufacturing or power tools.

Really.


- The Heracles incident seems to be 1 of the least rational parts of this game.  So lemme get this straight, Alexei.  Your plan is to use your giant, canon-studded mobile superweapon as a decoy--great use of your resources by the way, but hey, I guess it must not have been too much trouble to cobble together if it took no more than a handful of engineers--as you make it attack the city of Zapphias.  Meanwhile, as this attack is occurring, you pursue your true goal, a matter which requires you to be...in the city of Zapphias.  The one that you’ve sent your titanic battle fortress, which possesses a canon that can annihilate with a single shot a significant portion of the city, to attack.  The city that YOU are currently IN is the one that you are, at this moment, directing your fantasy world weapon of mass destruction to do everything in its power to eradicate with heavy artillery.  Truly a spectacular display of strategy and cunning, Commander Fuckwit.


- Look, I know that donating to a good cause isn’t about what you yourself are getting out of it.  Absolutely do not want to give even the slightest impression that I believe otherwise.  Charity is about helping another, not satisfying yourself or gaining anything material back from the giving.  100%, no arguments, end of the debate.

But even still, if I’m gonna hand over 500 grand to an orphanage, I feel like I ought at least to have the right to actually go inside the damn building.


- Why is it that when Yuri visits his room partway through the story, a kid he knows, Ted, comes in and talks about Yuri and Flynn’s long history and relationship as though the kid has seen it in its entirety?  This kid’s talking about how when Yuri and Flynn were younger they had to share everything because they were poor, including their practice sword, and so on and so forth, and it’s like...Yuri and Flynn start this game at the age of 21 years old each.  Ted looks to be, like, 9.  What, was he just very perceptive from inside the womb?


- Even good ol’ Since We’re Not Related It’ll Be Okay Syndrome is stretched near its limit when minor sidequest NPC Karen outright calls the man she aims to marry “Big Brother.”  To his face.  Come on, RPGs.


- I can’t believe I’m actually implying that Tales of Symphonia did something competently, but...why is it that back in that game, we had an entire small plot arc to explain to us why Presea, who was trapped in the body of a preteen, had enough super strength to swing around a giant ax roughly equivalent to her entire body mass, and yet 5 years of narrative evolution later, Tales of Vesperia feels not even the slightest urge to rationalize why Karol can do the exact same thing?  He’s no less in the Disney Channel’s focus age demographic than Presea appeared to be.


- What benefit was there in making Estelle a princess?  No, really, tell me.  Her position never causes any bad guy to hesitate at all when she orders people to stop their various villainies.  Flynn and other military officials already have reason to follow Yuri’s group around since he’s a wanted criminal.  The other heir to the Empire is the one who winds up taking charge of the nation and fulfilling the friend-in-high-places role whenever the plot actually needs that.  It’s not even a slight hiccup in how Estelle’s friends see her when they find out.

Just about the only things that come of her being royalty are A, a lore connection with the founders of the Empire being the same magical plot people that she winds up being, and B, her character arc of having to decide for herself what she wants to be in life.  But Point A is so easily altered it barely counts; she could just as easily be a descendent of a long-lost illegitimate child of some royal or something (which could have opened up decent avenues of character development for her to boot), or even just not have it definitively explained to start with.  No one cares about hereditary Magical Plot Importance the way writers think they do.  And as for Point B, it actually hurt my sensibilities to refer to Estelle’s brief flirtation with the question of career autonomy as a “character arc” because it’s so half-heartedly touched upon that it may as well not even be there.  Hell, ToV would’ve gotten more mileage out of a scenario where Estelle HADN’T been anyone socially important, and has to grapple with the prospect of what she wants to do with her life going forward now that she’s discovered that she was the living plot mcguffin around which the world would revolve for a moment.

But nah, much easier to just tick off the “Have a princess” box on your RPG trope list and never think about it again.


- What was even the point of Zagi?  It’s like if you mixed the contentious, obsessive antagonism of Pokemon Generation 2’s Rival with Final Fantasy 9’s Black Waltz 3’s schtick of only existing for the purpose of killing, and added Fire Emblem 16’s Death Knight’s inability to EVER SHUT THE FUCK UP about that fact.  Only, you then forgot that all 3 of those characters actually served some kind, ANY kind, of narrative purpose.  You could write him out of Tales of Vesperia entirely and change not a single solitary thing.  The only difference would be that there’d be 4 or 5 moments in the game that the player would find a little less tedious.


- You know, I appreciate the fact that there’s a conversation skit in Tales of Vesperia in which the party questions how it can be that there are still rank-and-file soldiers who have sided with Alexei and continue to aid him even though he’s shown his true colors as a tyrant and traitor.  The fact that major villains in RPGs always seem to have legions of disposable minions, ones who are self-aware and intelligent beings who have to have made a conscious choice to ally themselves with a douchebag, is not questioned nearly often enough.

Unfortunately, Namco-Bandai chose THIS moment to raise that inquiry, with 1 of their villains for whom this blind minion obedience is the least explicable.  The party comes to a conclusion of it being something of a result of Alexei’s cult of personality and a belief within the rank-and-file troops that he’s best qualified for leadership, but the game has shown us essentially nothing to explain why any of his subordinates, direct or distant, would feel that way about Alexei.  There have been no scenes prior to this of Alexei’s having taken any interest in or done anything especially respectful/considerate towards his lower underlings, there’s been no situation shown in which he displayed any leadership skills above what you could expect from an assistant manager at a Denny’s, he’s not in possession of any memorable personality, and the game sure as hell hasn’t felt any obligation to have Alexei prove the validity of, or even adequately explain, his attempt to control the world.  As with numerous other factors and nuances of characterization and motivation, Tales of Vesperia’s just telling us to take this explanation on faith, rather than go by the actual, observable evidence in the game, which would imply that the contrary should be true.


- Why do RPG bishounen always have such a hard time adequately living up to the extremely simple, straightforward wishes/spirit of their dead friends/family members?  Duke wants to fulfill the wish and will of his departed friend Elucifer.*  Elucifer's dying wish?  To protect the world and for there to be peace for all living things.  Duke's solution?  Suck the life out of every human being on the planet.  I know RPG villains are absolutely terrible at even the most fundamental levels of basic logical reasoning, but Jesus Christ, dude, come on.

















* Whose idea on the Namco-Bandai staff was it to give this guy this name?

Chrono Cross's Use of a Silent Protagonist

The incompetence of Chrono Cross at every level of its writing and conception is well-documented, particularly by myself.  And yet, even though its greatest flaws are easily listed and discussed, and have been many a time by many a person, the minor mistakes it makes through the course of its story are not given all that much attention, even though they cumulatively drag the game’s quality down just as much as its infamous blunders.  In fact, even after over 20 years of hating this game, 1 of the regular-sized but nonetheless substantial mistakes of Chrono Cross only just now occurred to me: the decision to make Serge a silent protagonist.

Now I’ve criticized the concept of the RPG silent protagonist many times before, and to be sure, inflicting Serge with a permanent Mute status ailment did the storytelling of Chrono Cross no more favors than it did with Vahn in Legend of Legaia, or any given protagonist in the Etrian Odyssey series--or Chrono Trigger’s Crono himself, for that matter.  But the problems created by forcing a strict non-personality onto Serge actually go beyond that which afflict most games as a result of their mute heroes.  The thing is, you see, is that Chrono Cross is way too personal a story to Serge to be able to work without his verbal and emotional participation.

Consider the relationship between the main plot and the main character in, say, Wild Arms 1, a fairly standard example of an RPG with a silent protagonist.  Protagonist Rudy Roughknight comes from humble yet not fully understood beginnings, and, through a series of escalating circumstances, finds himself becoming gradually but inextricably involved in a sprawling quest to save the world from a great villainous threat.  There are reasons revealed to us along the way for why Rudy is especially suited for defending the world from those that threaten it, reasons involving his true origins which tie him in certain ways to the story as a whole...but though he is adequately personally involved, his participation in Wild Arms 1 is still largely a case of his having happened to get caught up in a series of major events, and his choosing to step up and do his part for the greater good.  This is the most typical case of RPG stories, particularly involving a silent protagonist--the main character has some ties to the unfolding events of the story, because being a random bystander from start to finish isn’t as compelling, but by and large, the machinations of the game’s villains and the story events set in motion do not revolve around the protagonist’s existence.

Plenty of other games, however, tell far more personal stories which are completely and totally derived from the protagonist’s existence, actions, and beliefs.  Absolutely no part of Planescape: Torment would have occurred sans The Nameless One, for example; it’s a game entirely about him, his legacy, and his personal journey to accept mortality.  Tales of Berseria, meanwhile, possesses a plot whose every fiber of emotional character and themes are iconized by protagonist Velvet Crowe, and its sequence of events are entirely her personal quest for vengeance.  Sometimes it’s more of a half-and-half situation--Dragon Age 2, for example, is a story of the social conflict and turmoil of the city of Kirkwall over a few years, as a representative sample of the simmering cultural conflicts of the land of Thedas as a whole.  But just as much as it is that overarching plot, it’s also the story of how the hero Hawke confronted and overcame these conflicts and more to become the city’s champion, and what it cost her/him to do so.  Final Fantasy 7’s another example of this mix, wherein a lot of shit goes down in its plot that amounts to larger forces at work that protagonist Cloud heroically reacts to, but also a ton of the game’s story is inextricably tied to who Cloud is and his personal psychological issues, and only moves forward through his action and presence in events specifically designed for him and him alone.

And unfortunately, this more personal story is the approach that Chrono Cross’s plot takes.  I mean, think about it.  The vast majority of the game’s events revolve around Serge in some significant capacity, as does at least half of the lore events that occur as preamble to the game’s story.  Serge isn’t just some random hero-to-be kid who finds himself transported into another reality early into Chrono Cross--once he’s in Another World, he’s almost immediately attacked by the minions of antagonist Lynx, who is specifically targeting Serge and will continue to do so for the first third of the game.  And why is that?  Because Serge’s DNA is the key to opening a door in Chronopolis, which is a fluke chance that resulted from a sequence of events in Serge’s childhood that made him a living plot mcguffin.  These events also had the result of separating Serge from his father for the rest of his childhood, and (supposedly) giving him a phobia of cats--both facts being relevant in that his father’s body is used by overarching villain FATE to create Lynx, who is only someone’s Inkbunny OC because FATE wants to take advantage of Serge’s fear of felines.

Eventually Serge finds the Frozen Flame, it swaps bodies between him and Lynx, and he winds up, eventually, back in his own home dimension (Home World) whilst in the body of a villain.  For the next 60% of the game, his task is to save his companion Kid and stop the real Lynx in his old body (since Kid is too dumb to know the difference), which, upon success, eventually leads into a bunch of poorly conceived, poorly explained, utterly pointless, and at times self-contradicting nonsense regarding multi-timeline-spanning Skynets being tricked by dinosaurs whose reality got aborted and also Schala and Baltahasar and Lavos are superfluously tacked on in the clumsiest possible way.

But aside from all the jumbled idiocy that is the core of Chrono Cross, that’s a largely personal plot to Serge.  As a house key given human form, he’s the essential crux of nearly every major plot movement for 90% of the game.  As a result of this, the kid is lost in an alternate universe that is just similar but different enough that it must surely be maddeningly frustrating, is hunted by an enemy he had no idea existed, loses his body AND is trapped within the body of an evildoer (one which ain’t exactly easy to disguise, either), loses his friends in the process, is finally able to return to his Home World but now in the body of a monster which makes him more alien here than he was in Another World, and when Miguel finally has an opportunity to dump some exposition on him by the truckload, Serge finds out that his father’s disappearance was due to his dad being transformed into Lynx, the villain that had been out to get him all along, meaning that Serge is currently hanging out in his own dad’s body.

Not only that, but the majority of the most important figures in the game have a very strong connection to him.  Lynx is, of course, a strong contender for poster child of Unnecessary Paternal Ties Syndrome, but even if Chrono Cross doesn’t seem to really actually care all that much that the villain is technically the same matter that was the protagonist’s dad, Lynx is still fixated on Serge as the necessary component of his plan.  Kid turns out to have some nebulous and weird tie to him across time and space.  Plot-vomiter Miguel was his dad’s buddy and also has been hanging out in the middle of nowhere and notime for like 15 years specifically so he could spill his lore guts to Serge and almost forget that he had his own kid.  Harle is the only significant person who isn’t stapled onto Serge by destiny, but (for some truly inexplicable reason) she becomes emotionally attached to him as she guides him to Chronopolis.

So yeah, Chrono Cross is a story where nearly every important thing that happens is centered around Serge, and he’s exposed to and undergoes events and situations which have strong personal, emotional relevance to and impact upon him, AND the most important people pushing events forward are all extremely connected to him.  And he isn’t saying a thing about any of it.

Fear from being hunted by an unknown villain?  Confusion and wonder at being in an alternate world?  Existential grappling with interacting with a world in which he died?  Homesick yearning to return to the world he knows and the people he cares about?  Deepening friendship and/or love for his ally Kid?  Personal torment at being trapped within a body not his own, one so radically different and also reviled by most who know it?  Anguish at losing his new friends as they see him only for what’s on the surface, including Kid herself?  Frustration and loss at returning home only to, thanks to his new body, be a greater stranger here than in the other world?  Forming an emotionally meaningful connection with his new ally Harle?  Amazement at discovering that there’s life on other planets, and that it’s goddamn cute as the dickens?  Learning the truth of his father’s disappearance and the reasons for all that has happened to him?  Sorrow at the fate of Miguel?  Squicky weird unsettled feeling at realizing that it’s his own dad’s scratching post and yarn balls he’s been swingin’ around for over half the game now?  Elation at finally retrieving his own form?

Not a word about any of it.  Square created 1 of the most personally-relevant-to-the-protagonist stories in its entire history, and then made that protagonist UNABLE TO ENGAGE WITH IT.

It’s bad enough when Silent Protagonist Link communicates nothing more complicated than a grunt of exertion in any given The Legend of Zelda title, but at least with those, he’s only involved inasmuch as he’s stuck in a vaguely recurring destiny, and the ways in which the plot involves his personal life (such as following his uncle in A Link to the Past, or his lifelong friend Zelda’s being taken in Skyward Sword) are usually surface-level, straightforward “Gotta Go Do Hero Stuff Now” ways.  And it’s bad enough when Silent Protagonist Ryu 2 has nothing more than a few sweat drop sprites to display as a reaction to any part of his personal obligations which move the plot forward for 35% of Breath of Fire 2, but at least the game’s story eventually dissolves into a standard “I’m Just Hero-ing For The Hell Of It Now” situation afterward.  But this?

Imagine if Velvet wasn’t able to voice the rage and pain behind her quest for vengeance, or help Laphicet form his identity as a being through hundreds of conversations.  Imagine if The Nameless One had no lines of complex, brilliant dialogue through which to refine his journey for identity and mortality.  Imagine if Cloud had no more tools through which to communicate his confusion, turmoil, and realizations of his own weaknesses than a few stiff pantomimes.  Imagine if Hawke never showed a reaction to her/his family’s and city’s ever tumultuous fortunes, if Fei could do no more than nod dumbly at the fact that he’s the centerpiece of 6 different absurdly complex world-stakes plots all going on simultaneously in Xenogears, if a story so reliant upon the strong and affectionate bonds between the protagonist and her siblings as Fire Emblem 14’s was restricted by being unable to actually show the interactions between Corrin and said family.

It doesn’t even make sense by Silent Protagonists’ own poor logic, for Nalinivati’s sake.  While a few notably excellent exceptions exist, the whole point of burdening an RPG with a silent protagonist is, traditionally, out of some misguided, functionally pointless, and usually outright wrong idea that it makes the protagonist more relatable to the player.  In spite of the evidence of literal thousands of years of human storytelling,* RPG writers cling to this absurd notion that a blank slate is easier to relate to for a human audience than a protagonist who displays, y’know, actual humanity.  But as we’ve established, Serge’s existence and role in the events of Chrono Cross is anything but a blank slate.  This ain’t some monotonous Dragon Quest hero stumbling through a tofu-only sandwich on processed white bread in narrative form, where conjuring a personality and backstory out of one’s own imagination for him is a desperate act of self-defense by the audience’s mind as it fights to stay conscious.  Serge’s circumstances and history are aggressively unique, stupidly over-complicated, and rely heavily on irrationality.  It doesn’t matter if he’s as speechless as a game industry executive asked to specifically detail how NFTs are going to improve the player’s experience; Serge is not the kind of main character that invites this imaginary scenario of the player relating to the Silent Protagonist.

While far from the game’s worst qualities, the decision to make Serge a gagged spectator to his own story is insane.**  Yeah, it’s possible to pull off a Silent Protagonist who doesn’t lower the quality of an RPG based around their personal story--Severed accomplishes this, as does Transistor, and if my old theory about Frisk is true, you could make an argument that Undertale sort of manages it, too.  But it takes a distinct level of narrative skill and knowledge of exactly what you’re doing to pull something like that off.  Chrono Cross, on the other hand, can’t even handle normal, foundational writing conventions adequately--it sure as hell didn’t need to handicap itself further.

















* Yes I stole this from a Robot Chicken Halo sketch, no I’m not ashamed.


** Insane, but not unexpected.  This IS the game whose writers outsourced 90% of their job to an accent version of Babelfish in terms of the cast.

A fact which, by the way, only worsens the situation with Serge.  Under normal circumstances, the rest of the cast may be able to pick up a bit of a silent protagonist’s slack by interpreting him to the player.  For example, in Wild Arms 1, when Rudy’s true nature is revealed, there’s a moment in which Cecilia admonishes Jack for being too harsh with Rudy, pointing out how scared Rudy looks as evidence that the kid himself didn’t know.  With sprites that were somehow less sophisticated than those of the previous console generation, there was certainly no way we as the audience could have discerned that fact otherwise, but that’s the benefit of an involved and functional surrounding cast--they fill in some of the blanks that the stupid decision to go with a Silent Protagonist create.  Hell, almost the entirety of Transistor’s storytelling is based around this kind of thing.  Transistor aside, it’s not usually a great narrative device, of course--it feels a bit like that stupid thing that shows and cartoons and movies do where someone on the phone just repeats everything they’re being told so the audience can get the necessary information, even though no human in history has ever had a conversation like that.  But it’s better than nothing.

But unfortunately, even that crutch is unavailable to Serge, because the party of Chrono Cross is impersonally distant, have effectively no interactions with the plot as it goes on around them since their reactionary dialogue has to be substance-less enough for the accent system’s purposes, and each member gets essentially 2 very tiny scenes of character development to themselves, most of which don’t have any relevance to the main story.  As a result, we rarely see anyone around Serge engage with him to the point that we could glean any insight whatsoever into his feelings or mental state.