Boyfriend Dungeon's Downloadable Content

Holy shit, is this...is this real?  The RPGenius is making a rant about a game’s DLC while it’s...still actually kind of new?  Insanity.  The world is a madcap maelstrom of chaos and confusion.  These are surely the end times!

Well, it took me the better part of 2 decades, but I've actually managed to come out with an add-on analysis that's both timely, and about a game for which there isn't already a huge amount of media coverage.  Why, the only thing that could keep this rant from being legitimately useful to a prospective customer would be if this DLC were completely free anyway!

...

Goddammit!



Secret Weapons: This add-on’s stated purpose is to add 3 new weapon-people to the game to date (sort of, more on that in a moment), as well as a third dungeon, thereby fulfilling the final responsibilities of Boyfriend Dungeon’s promised rewards on Kickstarter.  And it does, indeed, do this: Jonah the Axe, Leah the Hammer, and Holmes the Whip are all new characters added with this update, as well as the Verona College dungeon.

And Secret Weapons does what it sets out to do just fine.  There is, indeed, a third dungeon to go through, and it...certainly does exist.  Honestly, Verona College is a repetitive, by-the-numbers dungeon that’s more or less indistinguishable from BD’s existing dungeons beyond its college-themed coat of paint.  But on the other hand, really, how much of that isn’t true of most dungeon crawlers’ dungeons, in the end?  Different backgrounds and a few tiny puzzle gimmicks are basically the only thing that separates any given Etrian Odyssey dungeon from the next, for example.  Still, it’s hard not to feel like this one’s an especially noticeable copy-paste of the game’s existing combat arenas.  But hey, it’s there and you can go through it waving an axe around or punching people with a cat or whatever, so promise fulfilled, I guess.

Jonah, Leah, and Holmes are, naturally, the stronger parts of this DLC’s new content.  I like the basis of Jonah’s story, which is his having issues with the fact that he’s a weapon and the inherent implication of violence being a part of his destiny thereof, despite being an extremely peaceful person.  Unfortunately, that story seems to unravel as it proceeds into more vague self-doubts and philosophical musings, enough so that by its end, it feels like Jonah hasn’t really found a conclusion to his story, just to a story.  And why is the dog Mariposa a part of this, anyway?  She comes in out of nowhere, and to me it appears that she’s just a crutch to get Jonah rebounding back to some positivity without the writer(s) having to rely on the narrative tools that were already at hand.  The damn dog comes off as having a greater, more demonstrable influence on Jonah’s story than the actual protagonist does.  Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I guess, but I think generally a sequence of conversations meant to show a romance/friendship should have most of the emotional heavy lifting done by the individuals actually engaged in and advancing that relationship.  Still, ultimately Jonah’s a sweetheart and likable enough, so I wouldn’t call him a negative addition to the cast, just neutral.

Leah’s got a less interesting basis than Jonah, just a fairly basic story about career doubts and trying to figure out where what she likes to do, what she finds rewarding to do, and what she morally should do all stand in terms of her career and hobbies, but it’s executed a lot better.  Leah’s character arc doesn’t stray into vague, tangential emotional territory the way Jonah’s does; her story stays on target, and each step of its journey feels like it’s building off the last and progressing to the conclusion.  A conclusion that feels right, and like it arrived generally at the time when it should have, for that matter.  I also buy Leah’s romance with the protagonist a little more, because while she does ultimately come to her own conclusions about what she wants to do with her career and passions, it does feel like the protagonist’s support and input was a significant part of the process of her getting there.  It’s not an amazing romance or anything, but it’s decent enough, and probably my second favorite in Boyfriend Dungeon, behind Valeria’s.*

Holmes is both the best and the most disappointing character added to the game.  Not because you don’t actually get to use them as a weapon (she’s just a dateable boss, basically)--their existence is already a bonus since it was only Jonah and Leah promised by the Kickstarter campaign, so it’s unreasonable to complain about such things.  But she’s disappointing in the fact that you don’t actually get to have a romance with them--while the game gives you the dialogue options to have the protagonist fall in love with her, Holmes themself flat-out rejects amorous intent, only wanting a friendship with the protagonist (albeit one which allows for occasional sex).  I’ll grant you that not every character in the main Boyfriend Dungeon roster was romanceable, either, but Pocket is a goddamn cat, so I feel the situation is different.

Still, while it seems like a dating game’s subjects ought to be romantically dateable in a game all about just that, it’s certainly not a big deal, and really, Holmes’s story probably wouldn’t even translate all that well to a romance anyway.  She does, however, have a pretty good character arc that feels genuine and actually interested me a decent bit--I think I might argue, in fact, that Holmes is the best-written character in the game.  I care a hell of a lot more about a well-constructed character narrative that interests and/or speaks to me than I do about whether or not they’re gonna profess undying love to my OC, so I’m definitely pleased by Holmes’s addition to the cast.

And of course, as a whole, the 3 new characters align well with the overall themes and intent of Boyfriend Dungeon.  All of them are based upon explorations of one’s identity, either within the world (Leah and Holmes) or within oneself (Jonah and Holmes).  None of them feel tacked-on the way characters added to a story after its initial publishing often do (Patty from Tales of Vesperia, Maneha from Pillars of Eternity 1, the whole Ashen Wolf bunch in Fire Emblem 16, etc), not even Holmes, in spite of your not being able to wield them in combat.

Beyond the major intent, though, Secret Weapons also adds a few little bonuses for the player.  1 of them is meeting the fiancee of Jesse, the protagonist’s cousin, and experiencing her and Jesse’s wedding.  It’s fine enough, nothing amazing, but a nice little bit of character development/conclusion for Jesse, who otherwise kinda just got stuck in Tutorial Character limbo.  Of more interest to me, Secret Weapons adds several little conversation meet-ups between the cast in groups of 2 and 3, which pop up on the world map here and there, wherein the protagonist can happen across some of his/her friends/lovers hanging out together and doing their own thing.  They’re nice little slice-of-life glimpses into the characters which round out their personalities and social identities, and generally entertaining.  I like the fact that this expands the cast beyond just being emotional and social attachments to the protagonist (as unfortunately tends to happen to characters in dating games, and sometimes even regular RPGs with wide romance options), and this feature provides a nice little bit of character development all around.  Plus, it’s even functionally positive--these also serve as little reminders of who the game’s characters are and what they’re like, which is useful for a DLC that has come out months after much of the game’s audience last played Boyfriend Dungeon.  Good bonus content, this.

So usually, my intent with an add-on rant is to determine whether the new content is worth what it costs to experience.  But Secret Weapons is actually completely free!  Good on Kitfox Games for that; they consistently behave with ethical integrity and a priority for their art over their profit, and I applaud them for it.  So, since the only way Secret Weapons wouldn’t be worth it would be if it were outright terrible, which I think I’ve made clear it isn’t, let’s wrap this rant up with a different determination.  You may recall that a few months ago, I expressed certain regrets about a general theme of shortcomings that Boyfriend Dungeon suffers from.  So rather than talking about whether Secret Weapons is worth the nonexistent price, let’s instead explore a different question: Does this DLC address and correct the problems I complained of last time about Boyfriend Dungeon?

Well, it does add another dungeon, which helps with the fact that it’s a game called Boyfriend Dungeon that only had 2 dungeons in it.  But even last time, I mentioned that a mere 3 dungeons still seems inadequate for a game that proclaims itself a dungeon-crawler, so that’s still falling somewhat short.  Additionally, said new dungeon unfortunately isn’t any better at developing the protagonist’s character than the previous ones.  And on that note, the protagonist has remained largely unexplored as a whole in this DLC, so that’s a problem that’s continued.

The next shortcoming I noted in the previous rant was that the fact that these characters’ being part person, part weapon seems remarkably unimportant to their personalities and arcs, and I am pleased that Secret Weapons addresses this with Jonah.  His existence as a weapon-person is actually a relevant, explored topic in and founding element of his story, as a guy whose physical nature as an ax is completely at odds with his emotional nature as a man of gentleness.  So that IS good!  But also not enough; we’re still talking about 1 in 10 characters for whom the game’s catch-your-attention premise of being both a person and a weapon actually matters.

Let’s see, what else?  The average romance and story quality as a whole is a bit better with the DLC characters than for the game proper.  They’re not great and certain aspects are subpar, but it’s still a higher positive ratio than before.  And the last point I made last time was that the protagonist’s presence and involvement seemed largely superfluous to most characters’ journeys, coming off like he/she is more just there for the ride than a real participant.  That much is mostly still true of Jonah’s, Holmes’s, and Leah’s stories.

So, then, the final verdict?  Secret Weapons does, indeed, take a few steps further in some of the arenas that Boyfriend Dungeon fell short on.  It provides an additional dungeon, it brings the duality of weapon-humans into question with 1 of the characters it adds, and the quality of the new cast members’ content is better on average than before.  Unfortunately, these few steps are not enough that I feel at all like my established critique of Boyfriend Dungeon doesn’t presently hold up.  Even with Secret Weapons, Boyfriend Dungeon’s major components are all still enjoyable, but noticeably lacking; the game still simply does not go far enough.

But taken on its own merits, as it certainly should be, Secret Weapons is a solid add-on.  If you enjoyed Boyfriend Dungeon--and I’d like to stress again that I did enjoy it and that it is a good RPG, despite the complaints I have raised about it--you’ll almost certainly like Secret Weapons.  It’s definitely worth your time to return to Verona Beach and hit the dating scene again, and as it’ll cost you nothing, there’s no reason not to.  Good work, Kitfox Games!



Alright, another DLC situation that’s really, substantially positive!  And to think, it’s only been a year since I last encountered an add-on that was unequivocally decent.  Why, they’re going to spoil me rotten at this rate.
















* I do have some concern that maybe my own preferences are coloring my opinions on this point, though.  When it was just Valeria I wasn’t worried, but now that my 2 favorite romances in this game are both the women, in a game whose very title makes it clear that it’s men who are the relationship priority, I fear I may not be being as objective as I want and try to be on this.