Annual Summary 2023

Another year, another bunch of RPGs under my belt.  Although calling them a “bunch” might be overselling it a bit, because after last year’s showing of 13 completed RPGs, which I called, at the time, “pathetic”, with full-on italics, I’ve somehow managed to drop the number even further to an outright disgraceful 10.  Look at this embarrassing display:



Fire Emblem 15
Gamedec
Hades 1
Hololive CouncilRyS RPG
Omori
Octopath Traveler 1
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
Septerra Core
Shin Megami Tensei 5
Steven Universe: Save the Light



Ouch.  Can I even call myself The RPGenius at this point?  That’s fewer than 1 RPG a month.

In fairness, there’s at least some cause for this.  First of all, whereas last year my job was severely understaffed for half the year, this year it was severely understaffed for 5/6ths of the year, which just cuts into my ability to do pretty much anything enjoyable, both from the extra time involved in being at work, and the fact that I’m so drained afterwards that I can’t bring myself to even play a damned game half the time.  Also, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is freakin’ huge; time-wise it should count as like 2 and a half RPGs, really.  Also, I’ve spent a lot of the last few months playing SMT Persona 5, which is also very long, and I just haven’t quite gotten to the end of it yet, so while it’s not counted here, it’s taken up a lot of my RPG focus.  Finally, I did also play a full-sized RPG called A Dragon’s ReQuest that I haven’t included in this year’s list because it’s not officially released yet--it’s essentially complete, but its creator hasn’t actually put it up on a major platform for regular audience consumption, so that’ll be another RPG that’s gonna be on next year’s list rather than this one.  So you could view those paltry 10 RPGs as, like, 14 or 15, really.

Which is still too damn few anyway.  Oh, well.  At least it was a high-quality bunch of RPGs I played this year that were a lot of fun; very few flops in the mix to be found.  Hell, it’s probably better that A Dragon’s ReQuest and Persona 5 will be heading up next year’s list, because with them AND Pathfinder, Omori, Hades, and Octopath, it’d almost be too much high-quality stuff from which to choose winners for this year’s categories.

But before that, let’s indulge my need to show off all the other stuff I’ve done this year like an attention-starved 6-year-old demanding constant, unbroken focus and applause from a parent as he performs some menial act.  Or alternately, like your average Tiktok creator.  Here’s what I’ve been up to this year besides RPGs:


Anime: I recently watched the Megumin spin-off to Konosuba, which was pretty fun and amusing.  As expected, I suppose, given that Konosuba is already a funny anime, and this is basically just more Konosuba but with only the best 2 characters.  I also saw the second season of Pui Pui Molcar, which is a return to the absurdly, endearingly cute and silly form of the first season, if perhaps not quite as fun.  Lastly, I rewatched Steins;Gate as I showed it to my sister, because Steins;Gate is awesome.

Books: Less free time at work means less time to sneak in a few pages on the sly, sadly, so my readership lessened this year, too.  Still, the important thing is, I read (and quite enjoyed) Into the Black, by Brian Work.  Even if you haven’t read so much as a recipe or game developer apology all the rest of the year, so long as you’ve read Into the Black, you can call it a successful literary year.

Although, I mean, I DID actually read some other stuff, too.  While Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 was a big pile of Meh, William Pene du Bois’s Squirrel Hotel was a cute and enjoyable little story (even if I was dissatisfied with its conclusion).  Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens was pretty good, too.  I guess.  Mostly.  It’s honestly not really my kind of story, but that’s more just personal taste.  Lastly, I read the Gold collection of Isaac Asimov’s writings, and really enjoyed it as a true finale to the works of the greatest science fiction writer yet to put ink to paper.

...But for real, Into the Black is cool and you should read it.  That the author is an old friend of mine is only somewhat relevant to this recommendation, I swear!

Non-RPG Video Games: I played A Street Cat’s Tale this year because I’d been misled into believing it was an RPG, but I don’t regret the gaff--it’s cute, and sweet, and incredibly depressing, which of course is right up my alley (cat).  Also, at a friend’s recommendation, I experienced the visual novel Slay the Princess, and it is a marvelously thoughtful, compelling work of interactive art that I can’t recommend enough.  Unless you are averse to Psychological Horror, and also some goddamn disturbing violent imagery.  But, uh, if you find Psychological Horror repellent, then you’re probably not gonna be thrilled with my favorite RPG of this year, either...

Streaming and the Like: I watched quite a lot of stuff this year, actually.  I found Amphibia to be alright, although, much like its distant cousin predecessor Gravity Falls, quite overrated (also, Amphibia’s ending flopped hard).  In fact, of the modern Disney cartoon semi-same-universe trifecta, only The Owl House really lived up to its hype.  Speaking of which, I also watched TOH’s final season, and in spite of being noticeably and tragically rushed due to the fucktards making decisions at Disney, Season 3 was great.  Really, that they managed to close out the series as well as they did in such an unreasonably brief period of episodes is a testament to the talent of the show’s creators.

Other cartoons I watched this year included Hilda’s first 2 seasons and movie, which are a nice, creative, endearing, and wholesome experience that I’m looking forward to continuing when Season 3 releases, and Cuphead, which is a marvelously fun and authentic homage to the old-timey classic cartoons of a century ago that significantly stands out as more than just an adaptation riding on the coattails of the game’s success, as I wrongly assumed it would be.  Speaking of old-timey cartoons, I also watched the full run of the 2013 Mickey Mouse shorts, and by God are they hilarious!  The series is a perfect translation of the best qualities of the classic Disney shorts of yesteryear to a modern perspective, with great visual and written gags, incredible energy, perfect pacing, an art style that is almost uncomfortably perfect for depicting the bizarre and occasionally amusingly gross ideas, catchy songs, and even a dedication to displaying and enjoying different cultures across the world, much as the original shorts did.  2013 Mickey Mouse is honestly a triumph and sits shoulder-to-shoulder with its classic Disney short and Looney Tune peers.

It’s still not as fantastic as Netflix’s Carmen Sandiego adaptation, of course, which I watched for a fourth time this year as I showed it to my sister.  But really, what can compete with the modern Carmen Sandiego?

Oh, yes, I also watched some live action shows, too.  This year finally marked the end of The Flash, and let’s be honest: it’s an end that was overdue, because at this point, I’d have to be at least a prolific arsonist for The Flash not to be the guiltiest pleasure in my life.  Still, it was a fun ride, and I had fun watching it.

But as you all know from the fact that I chose to play Project X-Zone 2 in spite of having inflicted the first game on myself, I never learn my goddamn lesson, ever.  So immediately after The Flash ended, I replaced it with DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, of which I’ve already finished the first season, and damn it all, I’m enjoying that one, too.  It’s like the dumber version of both Doctor Who and DC Comics, and considering that both DC Comics and Doctor Who are already the dumb versions of themselves, I’m gonna be guilting up my watching pleasure for seasons to come.

Less guilty a pleasure?  Galavant.  Hilarious and fun through and through.  It’s like The Princess Bride, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and the songwriters for Animaniacs all got mushed together into 1 amazing show.  Seriously, I hate musicals, but Galavant had me grinning like an idiot from start to finish.

Lastly, I watched The G Word, which is as great and interesting as I’ve come to expect from television made by my second favorite member of Olde English, and the entirety of the show Superstore, which was really funny and a good time overall.  I’ll grant you, some of my enjoyment of Superstore may have some basis in working retail myself, but I’m pretty sure it’s still objectively a fun show.

Except for Mateo.  Mateo is the fucking worst.

Other Crap: As mentioned, I work a full time job.  I also have gotten a little more social in recent years?  Not much, but sometimes I go to people’s places for dinner now, and I’ve continued catching my friend Angel Adonis up on various bits and pieces of culture from before his time and/or outside his country of origin, like The Twilight Zone, A Quiet Place, Electric Dreams, The Animatrix, and other stuff.  Also took him through Chrono Trigger, and now we’re doing Grandia 2, because Go Best or Go Home.

Oh, and I’ve been doing a lot of cooking in the last few years?  Like, learning how to do it decently and trying different recipes out.  That’s fairly time-consuming.  But I’m not bad at it, sometimes!


Alright, enough of that crap.  Let’s get to the stuff you’re here for, if you’re here at all, which according my viewership metrics you mostly aren’t.  It’s RPG time!



RPG Moments of Interest in 2023

1. Y’know, Omori, of all the potential things for a surreal psychological drama about repression, loss, and guilt with significant horror elements and themes of suicide to reference, Kenan and Kel was probably one of the ones I’d have least expected.

2. Every RPG protagonist has more than their share of lucky vehicular near-misses and Curative Falls, but Septerra Core’s Maya finds and walks away from crash landings like she’s trying to beat some world record held by Launchpad McQuack.

3. So a major component of Amphibia’s finale is the introduction of a completely spontaneous, unnecessary cosmic entity, voiced by a child, who is an absolute worthless shithead and whose gross incompetence at his job is responsible for untold death and destruction.  This self-satisfied stupid lazy fuck then decides to shove an untold and utterly bizarre, ill-matched responsibility onto the protagonist in a scene which in no way meshes with the feel, style, or world of the entire rest of the series, and frankly cheapens the lore substantially.  And I’m watching this travesty, and all I can think is,

“Well, I guess now I know what the writers behind Mass Effect 3’s ending have been up to.”

4. Question for the Disco Elysium and Omori fans out there.  Which is the greater sin: refusing to high-five Kim, or Kel?

5. Dude the true final boss of Octopath Traveler 1 is fucking bullshit.  I know an unreasonably powerful final boss is the cherry on your SaGa sundae, but Jesus Christ.

6. Alright, so, I gotta go steal a giant bug monster’s egg, drill a hole in it, and stuff it full of knock-out drops.  Next, I need to walk a few counties over, find some giant leeches hanging out in a swamp, and throw a piece of meat at them.  That way, they’ll be distracted so that I can grab these three leeches the size and thickness of a child’s arm with my bare hands, and bring them a little ways over to the pond inhabited by a monster that appears to have a sun-roof built into its skull.  I toss the drugged egg at the monster, let it eat, and when it conks out, I drop my collective dozen pounds of leeches directly onto the monster’s exposed brain and hope they’ve got a taste for French cuisine.  Once the maggots have devoured so much of the monster’s brain that their item description literally changes to “Bloated”, I gather them up, and the monster awakens, 4 pounds of gray matter lighter and suddenly eager to follow Elon Musk on Twitter.  Now that I have a bundle of bugs bloated on brain blood, I can bring them to the local tattoo parlor, because I want the lady there to squeeze that guck out of the leeches, so she can inject this partially-digested swamp monster cranial blood goo directly into my body.  These sicknasty tats, you see, will allow me to get close to the local pirate warlord, because his idea of economic exchange has less to do with currency than it does slave girls, but his fetish is historical figures, specifically a tattooed angel from like a thousand years ago.

Is it just me, or are the things that happen in RPGs a bit odd, sometimes?

7. So it would seem that, if the legal resolution of the matter is accurate, the allegations made against Chris Avellone a couple years ago had all the authenticity of an official statement from Bethesda.  That is to say, it seems that the accusations of his being a sexual predator were a lie.

Which is good!  I mean, it’s really extremely shitty that Mr. Avellone had to go through it, costing him respect, credibility, and work, not to mention money with legal fees; it’s absolutely rotten that this was done to him.  But I suppose that if the choice is between Chris Avellone going through a lousy situation while being innocent, and Chris Avellone actually honestly being the creep he was accused to be, I’d much rather the former scenario.

At the same time, though, my feelings are complicated.  I feel guilty that I didn’t have better loyalty to a creator who I so respected.  Consequently, I almost feel like I’m not really worthy of speaking positively about the guy’s works any more, as though it’s pretending that the back I’m clapping isn’t also the one I sank a knife into.  Which in turn makes me feel absurdly pretentious; as if Chris Avellone has any idea of who I am or what my stance was on the issue!  Besides which, what am I torturing myself over?  I said 1 negative thing about him based on the only information known at the time, on a blog so obscure that most of my own family don’t pay it the slightest mind.  But when it’s a man’s reputation that’s at stake, doesn’t that mean that the belief and perspective of all others, whether prominent or unknown, is at the very heart of the matter?  My reaction was part of the collective whole; I don’t get to just dismiss having a share in having done him wrong.  Yet I don’t want to let that negative feeling change my instincts too much, because being willing to listen to and believe the claims of a victim without immediately and aggressively demanding receipts is also important--it’s an unfortunate reality that 1 of the biggest obstacles for victims, particularly abused/mistreated women, is that they are, even now, so frequently dismissed out of hand or even vilified for coming forward because the one who preyed on them can leverage far more resources and/or reputation.  Evidence is quite obviously vitally important, but the instinct to take a supposed victim’s claims seriously, especially when they’re against someone you personally view positively, is also very important.

So basically I’m extremely frustrated by the whole thing (and feeling annoyed with myself that I have the gall to feel this frustration because obviously this isn’t about me, RPGenius, you pretentious twat) and I think it would just be so super great if people could maybe stop undermining the process of real victims seeking justice by throwing around false accusations.

8. Speaking of complete and total lies, Pete Hines retired this year!  I guess that after all these years of hard work fabricating untruths on Bethesda’s behalf, Mr. Hines wants to kick back, relax, and spend some quality time lying to the people he loves.  I’m surprised Bethesda let him go, really; dishonesty is about the only part of the business that Bethesda remains competitive in these days, so losing their top liar is gonna be quite a blow to them.  Then again, knowing Ol’ Petey, Bethesda may not have known until he was out the door--guy probably told Todd Howard that he was just going out for cigarettes.

9. The sound effects used for doors opening and closing in Septerra Core are the exact same ones that AOL Instant Messenger used in the early 2000s for people coming online and going offline, and this fact is incredibly distracting to me.


Quote of the Year
Runners-Up
"Mrgrgr!"
  --Tressa, Octopath Traveler 1

"Thank you for the dung, my friend!"
  --Kindly Farmer NPC, Octopath Traveler 1

Winner
"Damn it, she’s right!  I’m a shitty excuse for a cultist!"
  --Random Henchman NPC, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous



Best Prequel/Sequel of 2023
Winner: Hololive CouncilRyS RPG
Okay.  So it’s an indulgent, silly fan creation full of in-jokes and references to a specific group of VTubers and their rabidly dedicated fanbase.  Be that as it may, the Hololive CouncilRyS RPG was clearly made with a lot of love for its subject matter and dedicated understanding of the idols’ lore, personalities, and followers.  It’s using the pre-existing material in a thoroughly knowledgeable manner, building a fun new story from that material which satisfies and entertains those who have enjoyed that which preceded it.  And really, isn’t that just what a great sequel’s supposed to do?  Extremely niche it may be, but Hololive CouncilRyS RPG has the heart and care in its making that I so wish more sequels and prequels could display.

Runners-Up: Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous; Steven Universe: Save the Light
PWotR is really more its own adventure than anything, but it does have some light but pleasing ties to Pathfinder: Kingmaker that arise now and then.  It is, of course, also a game based around a major tabletop Pathfinder campaign’s material and premise, and in that regard, the game strikes a pleasing and elegant balance between the existing content, and the ideas and interpretations that Owlcat Games has for it.  It’s definitely a great adaptation and extension of the tabletop campaign, and really, it’s only the fact that an adaptation is slightly less like a “sequel” than whatever you’d call Hololive CouncilRyS RPG that keeps PWotR from top spot here.

Steven Universe: Save the Light is an adequate sequel to the first SU RPG.  Expands a bit on the nemesis from the first game, introduces new elements, utilizes the characters and events of the show itself well.  There’s nothing about it as a continuation that strongly stands out, but at the same time, it does a good job as such.


Biggest Disappointment of 2023
Loser: Shin Megami Tensei 5
I understand that not every SMT is a marvelous gem.  Sometimes an If or a Devil Survivor 2 happens.  Hell, I wasn’t even especially impressed with SMT4-1, and that’s one of the mainline titles of the series!  But all the same, Shin Megami Tensei’s long history has been one dominated by solid, thoughtful titles, interspersed with some of the best RPGs I’ve had the pleasure to experience...so the utter, amateur, slipshod disinterest with which Atlus conducted SMT5’s story and cast was outright shocking to me.  This is a title whose only priorities were gameplay and visuals, and that doesn’t cut it for an RPG, and it especially doesn’t cut it for a Shin Megami Tensei.  Conception 2 is unquestionably the far worse title objectively, but I daresay that Shin Megami Tensei 5 is nonetheless the darkest stain on Atlus’s record to me for the shame it brings to a respectable name.

Almost as Bad: Fire Emblem 15; Septerra Core; Steven Universe: Save the Light
Look, there’s nothing wrong with Steven Universe’s second RPG.  There’s just nothing that especially stands out.  I mean, SU is 1 of the most thoughtful, emotionally charged, well-constructed, poignant cartoons ever created, and it didn’t take a very long grace period for it to start getting real.  I guess I just thought that after the pretty basic and serviceable Steven Universe: Attack the Light had laid out the groundwork, the next game in the trilogy would have the space to start getting into the heavy stuff that the show was known and celebrated for, so another reasonably straightforward adventure that only very slightly touches on ideas of self-autonomy and unhealthy relationships is just less than I’d hoped for.  Well, with any luck, the third title will go harder.

While I do like Fire Emblem okay as a whole, I never do find myself holding high expectations for it.  All the same, people generally harbor positive sentiments for FE15, and it made a decent splash in the FE fanbase when it came out a few years ago, so I did kind of expect it to be...I dunno...good?  At least a little?  Better than Just Barely Okay By The Slimmest Margin, at least.  Also, it’s a bit disappointing in that it promotes itself as some joined story of dual protagonists, but really, all it turns out to be is the story of a single protagonist which also simply happens to point the camera at his supporting love interest a lot of the time.

Lastly, Septerra Core was the second game I ever bought on GOG, and its premise and style interested me.  Turns out, though, that it’s less a classic of its day, and more just a sample of why gaming moved on from that day to begin with.


Best Finale of 2023
Winner: Omori (but only the Good Ending)
It’s hope, it’s acceptance, it’s the courageous first step to finally living again and mending the terrible hurt that tore so many lives apart.  There’s no guarantee that all will be well...but at its worst it will still be better than what it’s been.  What a game and what a way to end it.

Runners-Up: Gamedec; Hades 1; Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
Gamedec starts to get really compelling in the last leg of its journey, and the existential, philosophical weight of its final moments is easily what I respect most about the game.  Hades 1’s ending (the final one, with the big get-together) is satisfying and feels like the perfect way to complete the game’s tale of the confusing nature of family.  And as for PWotR, as with the first game, the creators know exactly how to craft a hyped-up, epic finale to a long, grand campaign, and while it’s easily the most tricky and precise ending in RPG history to achieve, the true, secret Ascension ending to the game is extremely cool and rewarding, as well as a perfect realization of the game’s theme of overcoming your boundaries and becoming more than the sum of your parts.  To be frank, while I understand objectively why Omori has to be the winner for the beautiful artistry of its conclusion, I definitely best enjoyed and felt the most personal satisfaction from the conclusion to the tale of the Commander, her comrades, and Areelu Vorlesh.


Worst RPG of 2023
Loser: Shin Megami Tensei 5
Oh gee what do you know the game for which I’ve spent the whole year loudly expressing my passionate disdain turns out to be the worst game I played, what a fucking twist.  Moving on.

Almost as Bad: Fire Emblem 15; Septerra Core
Honestly, the category title of “almost as bad” really isn’t accurate, because neither FE15 nor SC are even in the same league of lazy awfulness as SMT5.  Septerra Core is barely even bad, really.  Clunky as hell and a perfect representation of the Awkward Age of PC RPGs, sure, but if they’d just done a better job pacing out the characters’ interactions and the events that occur therein, and developed half their cast a little better, and made Maya seem more competent, and stopped relying on crash landings as the only means of moving the plot forward...actually, I’m reading all this as I write it, and yeah, maybe I’m right and Septerra Core really isn’t so hot.  Still nowhere near as poor a product as SMT5, though, of course.

As for Fire Emblem 15, it’s got some glaring fundamental flaws with the way it approaches telling its story, and all things considered, even fixing those major problems would still only leave you with a kinda forgettable plot overall, driven by a cast that doesn’t have a lot to them, for the purpose of a cliched and underdeveloped moral about unity and self-reliance.  Also--and I’m not joking here, this is an earnest speculation--I suspect some person(s) on the writing staff of FE15 has/have some serious and unhealthy issues with women.  It’s just not a good RPG.  While still being leaps and bounds better than SMT5, of course.

Okay look I promise that SMT5 will stop being the red flag being waved in my eyes come 2024.  Just bear with me as I finish working it out of my system here.


Most Creative of 2023
Winner: Omori
The subject matter, the purpose, the method and pace, the nature of the big revelations as they come...there’s few titles that can boast any strong resemblance to Omori; while it has peers in games like Undertale, Grimm’s Hollow, Mother 3, and, weirdly, Whisper of a Rose, Omori primarily stands out as a unique work.  And hell, even the simple matter of the dreamworld’s events and details represent an interesting example of thoughtful innovation--to pin such significant story beats to the idea that Sunny is a very creative individual, the game’s developers have to themselves be equal to the creativity they want to impress on the audience.

Runners-Up: Gamedec; Hades 1; Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
Admittedly, a lot of the creative qualities of PWotR were already set in place for the developers by the original campaign materials, but the ways in which they worked with the existing characters, the interesting qualities and stories of the ones they created, and the thematic purpose they weaved into this Pathfinder story are all more than enough to earn it recognition.  Hades is a wonderfully inventive use of Ancient Greece’s pantheon and canon of heroes and villains to tell a story about family that possesses as much fundamental relevance to the nature and condition of humanity as those classic myths do.  Supergiant Games’s scope of knowledge of these myths and legends is matched only by their innovative ways of adapting them to this tale of mending a feuding and dysfunctional family.  As for Gamedec, it’s an RPG that uses the nature and mechanics of video games as an example of layered reality to propose and explore existential questions.  And while that’s been done before in varying ways and to varying degrees with games like Undertale, Slay the Princess, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga, Doki Doki Literature Club, Star Ocean 3, and especially Nier: Automata, there’s still plenty of room in the field for new and interesting takes on the idea and directions to bring it, and Gamedec does a good job in serving us the eternal existential plight of the self-aware--and the solutions we’ve found to it--in a fresh and interesting form.


Best Romance of 2023
Winner: Arueshalae x Commander (Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous)
Arueshalae’s journey to change her nature for the better, and to finally determine what she dreams of, is a wonderful and natural companion to the sweet, authentic deepening of her feelings for the protagonist into tender love.  It’s a genuinely lovely romance that makes you feel warm and content to witness that’s so right for who Arueshalae is and wants to be that her character arc actually feels incomplete without it; Arueshale and the Commander are simply meant to be together.

Runners-Up: Anevia x Irabeth (Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous); Commander x Daeran (Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous); Thanatos x Zagreus (Hades 1)
Thanatos and Zagreus are such moody precious loverboys and they absolutely fit one another like gloves.  I mean, I like the dynamic that Zagreus and Megaera have, too, and I really like the fact that Hades proudly embraces the potential for Zagreus, Thanatos, and Megaera to form a polyamorous relationship--you remember how pleased I was by Pathfinder: Kingmaker’s taking such a romantic situation seriously.  And they definitely do work as a thruple!  But all the same, I definitely feel that the connection between Thanatos and Zagreus stands out significantly more strongly.  Again, I like what Megaera and Zagreus have got, but it’s not equal to Than and Zag’s romance to me, and the latter is great whether or not you choose to also involve Megaera.  The boys’ve got the best love in Hades.

Now, if Dusa were legitimately interested, it’d be a whole other story.

PWotR is no slouch when it comes to romances, and even if Arueshalae stands head and shoulders over her competition, there’s no denying that the story of selfish party animal Daeran falling in love with the Commander and letting down some of his walls is a sweet and touching tale.  The game even does a really nice job with the love story of side characters, too.  The trust, devotion, understanding, and deep and abiding affection between Irabeth and Anevia as a couple is far more convincing and emotive than most RPGs’ plot-centric love stories; they’re definitely a case of wholesome relationship goals if ever an RPG had one.


Best Voice Acting of 2023
Winner: Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
All the vocal work in Wrath of the Righteous is good or better, and a lot of these characters are portrayed with a skill and flare that’s exemplary.  Hell, even actors for relatively small roles often provide shockingly great performances in this game--Minagho, for example, is a villainess that seems like a big deal at first but quickly becomes small potatoes as she’s outpaced by both the protagonist and the scope of the story, and yet she delivers her lines in what I have to assume is the greatest performance of Lindsay Sheppard’s career.  From Daeran to Regill to Arueshalae to Areelu to Nocticula to Nenio and so many more, the talents in PWotR bring their characters to life with impeccable flair.

Runners-Up: Hades 1; Octopath Traveler 1; Steven Universe: Save the Light
Whether it’s Cyrus’s scholarly affectations, the dramatically distant pain in Primrose’s tone, or H’aanit’s taciturn calm, OT1 is not too terribly far behind Pathfinder in its wealth of appealing performances that quickly become a signature element of their characters.  Likewise, Hades showcases Supergiant Games’s commitment to the high quality voice acting that’s become 1 of the company’s many defining features.  Lastly, SUStL...well, the amount of spoken lines are limited, but they’re done well by the actors that so strongly defined the personalities of these characters, and enjoyable to hear.  I mean, honestly, objectivity be damned, I’m a sucker for Peridot’s vocal antics; she’d score the game a place here even if all the rest weren’t up to par.


Funniest of 2023
Winner: Hololive CouncilRyS RPG
I mean, okay, a lot of the humor is of the inside-joke variety, but if you’re playing this game, it’s a pretty good bet that you’re part of the VTuber fanbase and more than familiar with the friendly, clever, tongue-in-cheek comical leanings of CouncilRyS and their audiences.

Runners-Up: NA
I really did want to get to Shadows of Loathing this year.  Ah, well, expect to see it absolutely dominate this category come 2024!


Best Villain of 2023
Winner: Sweetheart (Omori)
Sweetheart’s a great nemesis on multiple levels, and the true sinister nature of her role is very interesting.  But even if her true purpose as an obstacle is on a meta-level, she is also, in and of herself, a rather interesting and well-conceived villain, as I recently observed.  Detestable on her surface, layered and complex beneath, and thematically fascinating at her core, Sweetheart’s the best of the worst this year, for sure.

Runners-Up: Areelu Vorlesh (Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous); Simeon (Octopath Traveler 1); Staunton Vayne (Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous)
He may be over-the-top and a bit simplistic, but damn it all, you have to respect the dramatic wickedness of Simeon; the guy’s basically what you’d get if the Joker was an overachieving theater kid.  PWotR offers a whole bunch of appealing and interesting villains, but its primary antagonist Areelu is 1 of the best, a complicated, tragic, unrepentant yet somehow not irredeemable figure whose grandiose villainous actions are interestingly caught somewhere between sincere and selfless love for her child, and existential self-serving ambition.  She’s very much akin to a far craftier, less pathetic version of the Changing God from Torment: Tides of Numenera.*  Lastly, although his significance to the story is short (at least, in the relative sense; even a single chapter of PWotR takes a while to get through), Staunton makes for a solid tragic figure, guilty and accountable for his mistakes and choices, yet sympathetic for the circumstances in which he makes them.  Reminds me in some ways of MacBeth, too--weak and easy to tempt, yet once he’s committed to his selfish path, his determination to see that journey to its end far surpasses that of even she who manipulated him onto it.  Good stuff!


Best Character of 2023
Winner: Aivu (Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous)
I love this candy-obsessed adorable little dragon with all my heart and you can’t make me give this award to anyone else.  YOU CAN’T MAKE M--

Actual Winner: Dusa (Hades 1)
Nice try, assholes, but objectivity can go suck it this year!  You won’t let me pick the cutest sweetest most fun dragon buddy of all time as the best?  Then I’m going with an equally precious cinnamon roll instead!  Dusa is the most charming, lovable little maid girl you’ll ever meet and this could not possibly be more accurate.  So there, I’m not backing dow--

Real, Actual Winner: Sunny (Omori)
...Oh fine whatever.  Have it your way.  Sunny is a masterfully crafted character whose psychological depths fabricate 1 of the most intelligent and emotional RPGs in history.  I basically can’t say a word more without the risk of spoiling stuff, but yeah, Sunny is a character written at the absolute highest level.

He’s still not a mischievous dragon with an out-of-control sweet tooth, though, so booooo, boring!  AIVU FOREVER!

Runners-Up: Arueshalae (Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous; Daeran (Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous); Primrose (Octopath Traveler 1)
While I have a great fondness for both Cyrus and H’aanit, and certainly they, Albert, Therion, and especially Olberic are all good characters, there’s really no question which of Octopath Traveler 1’s protagonists is the best written and most interesting.  Primrose’s tale of revenge and managing to avoid losing herself to her hatred is the defining story of OT1 to me.  As mentioned earlier, Arueshalae is a great character whose journey from evil to good is lovely to watch and aid, and she has interesting perspectives to share on the process that aren’t just your average bad-guy-being-redeemed material.  And while Arueshalae is definitely the best-written character in the game, Daeran’s not too far behind her, with his chaotic wit and candor that covers up but doesn’t exactly try to hide the depths of his mind and heart.  Hell, most of the PWotR cast are notably great, really, but if I have to narrow them down, the ones that shine most are Daeran and Arueshalae.

Still, none of them are a cute, easily-flustered floating gorgon head with a feather duster with boundless affection and enthusiasm, though, so bah, humbug, who cares about the lot of’em!  DUSA FOREVER!


Best RPG of 2023
Winner: Omori
Omori is an immensely moving, psychologically fascinating, lovingly-forged RPG that everyone should play.  And that is all I want to say about the damn thing because I don’t want even the barest of chances at spoiling anything, and hoo boy, is it easy to spoil.  All that really needs to be said, though, is that it’s truly awesome.

Runners-Up: Hades 1; Octopath Traveler 1; Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
Hades is 1 of the best RPGs I’ve encountered to tackle the nature of family and the complexity therein, and the decision to do so through the lens of Greek mythology--and it does magnificently--is just inspired.  I mean, Pyre is still way better, and I might even argue that Transistor edges ahead, but Hades is definitely well worthy and then some of its honorable pedigree as a Supergiant Games creation.  Octopath Traveler 1, meanwhile, is a classy, artful game that takes a lighter but no less worthy stab at the SaGa formula (sort of like how Persona is a lighter but no less excellent iteration of Shin Megami Tensei).  I definitely understand why it made a stir in the RPG community--particularly considering what a rare accident it is when SquareEnix actually does something right.

As for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, it’s an awesome translation of an epic tabletop campaign that manages to refine the already excellent methods of its predecessor into something even better, with a cool and pervasive theme, a strong cast that’s well-developed through character arcs and then perfectly fine-tuned through hundreds of little comments and interactions, and an entertaining plot that flows well and takes on new dimensions with its every passing chapter.  Omori is Omori and it’s meaningful, high-level art, but on a personal level, I absolutely loved playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous the most of all the games I experienced this year.


List Changes
Greatest Deaths: I’ve updated this one with [REDACTED] from Omori, because I can’t possibly avoid doing so, but I’m planning to do a minor overhaul of this list in the coming year, anyway, because there’s definitely a need to rethink its order and expand its number.  I mean, I never put anyone from Rakuen on there because I’d intended to do this a few years ago and forgot!  Definitely needs to be rectified soon.
Greatest Examples of Battle Systems: Hades 1 has been added as Greatest Action RPG; Kingdom Hearts 2 has been removed.  Sorry, you combat containing creatively choreographed cutscene commands.
Greatest RPGs: Omori has been added; Grandia 1 has been removed.  Sorry, you excellent experience about explorer’s enthusiasm.
Worst Endings: Fire Emblem 15 and Shin Megami Tensei 5 have been added; Fallout 3 and Final Fantasy 7 have been removed.  Congrats, you games whose endings were previously puzzlingly, poor, and adversely, anticlimactically ambiguous, respectively.
Worst Romances: Berkut x Rinea (Fire Emblem 15) have been added; Arnaud x Racquel (Wild Arms 4) have been removed.  Congrats, you duo who didn’t deliver the dame from death despite the dipshit dude’s determined declarations to do so.


Music Additions

Them’s Fightin’ Chords
Ara Fell Final Boss Battle
Hololive CouncilRyS RPG Cursed BaeRyS Battle
Hololive CouncilRyS RPG Cursed Mumei Battle
Hololive CouncilRyS RPG Cursed Fauna Battle
Omori Pluto Battle
Omori Pyrefly Forest Battle
Omori Space Ex-Boyfriend Battle
Shin Megami Tensei 5 Fionn Battle
Steven Universe: Save the Light Final Boss Battle

Hither, Thither, and Song
Ara Fell Cave
Ara Fell Hidden Ruins
Hololive CouncilRyS RPG Time and Space
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Enigma

Chime Really Feeling It!
Ara Fell Determination
Ara Fell Sad
Fire Emblem 15 Mila
Hololive CouncilRyS RPG Mystic

See You Bass Cowboy
Omori Mari
Shin Megami Tensei 5 Tao

All That and a Bag of Chiptunes
Hololive CouncilRyS RPG Battle Against Cursed Fauna Remix
Omori By Your Side Orchestral Remix



And that’s it for 2023.  Hoping for a more productive RPG year come 2024, but by this point, I’m resigned to the likelihood that it won’t happen.  We’ll see, though.  At least there was a lot of great quality with what I played this year, and given that I’m almost finished with SMT Persona 5, I’ll be starting next year off considerably better than I did this past one (as it began with SMT Just Normal 5).

As ever, I’d like to close us out with a heartfelt round of gratitude both to my sister, and to my friend Ecclesiastes, each of whom are vital for these rants’ existence as they patiently allow me to bounce ideas off them, proofread my rants (particularly my sister, who listens to every single one and helps make sure it’s to the highest standards possible of my low quality), and provide helpful suggestions.  They’re the only human beings on Earth whose time I waste more than my own, and I deeply thank them each for indulging me.

Additionally, thank you to my Patrons Ecclesiastes and Toasterdog.  As ever, your generosity is abundantly encouraging and it’s a pleasant shock that anyone likes my idiotic ravings enough to trade a portion of their hard-earned livelihood for them.

And of course, as ever, a thank you to all my readers.  I like to joke that no one reads my blog, and to be sure, I hold no delusions about the small scope of my audience, but I also know that I do have readers, even dedicated ones, and all joking aside, I am enormously thankful for you.  Whether 1 person or 1 billion, it’s a remarkable thing to know that there are those who hear and even care about my thoughts and opinions.  Thank you all, and happy holidays!













* Which may make it seem very odd that the Changing God is still on my Greatest Villains list while Areelu is not.  Well, while she’s definitely a great villain, her essentially being a personally better, smarter, and truer version may make Areelu more awesome, but it does make her a little less of a villainous figure than him, because a lot of what is so intriguing and evil about the Changing God isn’t his grand acts, but rather the petty and pitiful failings within him, his carelessness of what his legacy has done to the world and his having lost the nobility of his original goal to his Ra’s al Ghul fear of mortality.  Even as she pursues a way to cheat the boundaries of existence and ascend beyond death, Areelu doggedly remains dedicated to trying to resurrect her daughter, and in the end, when push comes to shove, her devotion to that cause is still her greatest priority.  And that makes Areelu a terrific character and a very cool villain!  Yet it nonetheless makes the scope and nature of her villainy a little less than that of the Changing God’s delusional hypocrisy, at least to me.

Shin Megami Tensei 5 Stray Thoughts

Even after picking apart this game off and on throughout 2023, somehow, I still have opinions to share on Shin Megami Tensei 5, and spoiler alert, they’re still not complimentary ones.  But I’ve made enough meals of my hate-boner for SMT5--more than enough, I’m sure you’ll agree.  At this point, it’s time for some hate-boner after-dinner mints.



- You gotta love how Atsuta’s dying words to the protagonist (on the Chaos route, where he’s your ally) are just that the responsibility of protecting Tokyo is yours now.  Nothing to the tune of, oh, I dunno, “Please protect my sister Miyazu.”  No “Tell Miyazu I love her,” or “Pass on my apologies for leaving my sister.”  Not even a “Remind Miyazu that the trash goes out on Wednesdays, a-and make sure she...hurrgh, cough cough...separates any fluorescent light bulbs from the rest of it, they count as hazardous waste and the town--oh shit my kidneys, oh fuck it hurts--the town won’t accept them, those have to be, HACKAKC COUGH HURRRKKKK, turned in separately during specific community recycling events that she’ll...oh fuck is that my blood how did I have so much blood everything’s going dark...that she’ll need to call ahead to secure an...appoint...ment...forrrrr......”

Nothing about Miyazu at all.  Just...this all-encompassing and undefined drive to protect Tokyo that is Atsuta’s 1 and only character trait is supposed to have originated from a desire to protect his sister, and yet 90% of the time it’s like the writers didn’t even remember the 2 were related to begin with.


- So, on the matter of Tao...what was the point in taking her goddess form away and resetting any levels, stat raises, etc., every time the game is restarted?  I mean, okay, she’s a story-central character whose resurrection as the goddess of Tokyo only happens in the last quarter of the game, but...Amanozako is a similarly important and unique story figure who you travel with, and the game never has any problem with you hauling the Amanozako you’ve developed in previous games along for the next run, even though the new one’s also hovering around as your guide.  And even with the insistence on having only 1 Tao at a time, it still wouldn’t have been that hard for the game to just store her party member data and give you the option to resume that Tao when she joins you on later runs of this game that expects at least 4 playthroughs.  But resetting her completely every time means that after the first playthrough, Tao falls completely behind all other demons in your stable, and you won’t even want to try to develop her as a fighter, because all your work will be undone the moment you choose to continue the game for the next run.  It’s a baffling decision on the part of the developers; they’ve basically guaranteed that the ONLY one of literal dozens of potential party members that you’ll never, ever want to seriously use is the one who’s the most plot-important, a potential love interest if you squint real hard, portrayed as very powerful, and literally the goddess that the franchise is named for!


- Look, I know this may not be rational, but I hate the fact that I’m supposed to believe that the ultimate, final, true god that takes the celestial throne and dictates what the philosophy of existence shall be, is someone who gets from 1 place to another by Naruto-running.


- Unexpected though it may be, I do want to take a moment and get in a rare word of praise for the game.  The scene during Chapter 2 in the classroom, where Sahori is confronting her bullies, is one that I genuinely think is well-done, at least for the brief period when it’s just Sahori and them, before Lahmu shows up.  The quiet, disgusted disbelief of Sahori as they beg for mercy from her is both well-written and well-acted here:

“Are you serious?  You’re really trying that with me, after it never worked when I said it to you?  While you were punching me, kicking me, destroying my stuff?  NOW you understand, “please don’t hurt me?””

That is a fucking great set of lines, and the quietly growing fury in her voice is surely the best moment of acting in the game.


- Look, I know this may not be rational, but I hate the fact that I’m supposed to believe that the ultimate, final, true god that takes the celestial throne and dictates what the philosophy of existence shall be, is someone who walks around in his civilian identity with what amounts to a sloppy version of the Moe Howard bowl-cut.


- Oh goody.  A sidequest wherein you look for creatures scattered throughout the landscape of the game.  200 of them.  Usually hidden, frequently annoying to reach.  My favorite.

I’m a pretty simple guy and I don’t ask for too many unreasonable things in my life, but I really, really hope that when the person(s) responsible for Gold Skulltulas die, I’m there to witness it.  And possibly instigate it.


- Is it just me, or are the set designs of this game really generic?  I’ve already talked about how little of Tokyo you see and how at odds that is with it being the citymon roll that everyone and their grandmother wants to protect at all costs, and that’s an out-of-character problem for the SMT series, which usually seems to delight in the streets, underground walkways, and general urban decor of Japan.  But just in a general sense, very little of this game’s scenery feels like it comes from a Shin Megami Tensei title.  The boring postapocalyptic expanses of the first 3 major chapters all feel generic, like they could have served in just about any given game of appropriate setting.  The demon castle and Empyrean only barely feel more authentic, still seeming like they’d have served equally well in just about any other RPG, and and the Temple of Eternity is so indistinct that it wouldn’t surprise me to be told that Atlus sourced its design out to Kemco.  The only major area in the game that really feels like it has any SMT flavor is Chapter 4’s Taito setting, and even then, something about it feels more like someone imitating the character of the franchise than a legitimate representation of it.


- I complained previously about how negative the endings of Shin Megami Tensei 5 are across the board and how they make the player feel dissatisfied because of it.  But y’know, I just recently played another RPG called Gamedec, and it’s remarkable how much of a difference presentation and thematic expectation can make in whether an idea works or doesn’t.  Because Gamedec, too, is an RPG that concludes with several ending choices, all of which are flawed, all of which are less about a happy, fulfilling ending than they are about coming to terms with the philosophical difficulties (and even horrors) of existence, and whatever choice you make will result in a higher being chiding you for it...and yet I respect Gamedec’s ending.  Gamedec actually does some set-up to frame the imperfection of the options and situation it presents, and is essentially grasping with the heavier issues of existence, mortality, and self-awareness that our species has always struggled and likely always will struggle with--questions which ultimately have no perfect resolutions, at least none that we’ve yet reasoned out.  If there perhaps isn’t satisfaction to be found in any of Gamedec’s endings, there is at least peace to be made with them, and the game did the legwork through its course to establish the mood and expectations within the player for the way it concludes.  

SMT5, on the other hand, won’t tell its own story, doesn’t want to actually tackle the complex issues it presents, pins itself to a hand-waving magic plot device that sets an expectation for a more satisfying conclusion than it can deliver, and can’t even be bothered, in 3 out of its 4 endings, to take the less-than-5 minutes Gamedec does to SHOW the player the limitations of his/her decision, instead only having the narrator TELL you why what you’ve decided is wrong and stupid and everyone hates you.  Oh, and on that note, Gamedec also has the courtesy not to let the nay-saying narrator have the last word--the protagonist of Gamedec is given the opportunity to respond to the sneering criticism levied at her/his final choice, and that retort is usually decisive, biting, and the stronger argument.  Being able to tell off the jerk who undercuts your decision goes a long way to making Gamedec’s ending far more palatable and worthwhile than Shin Megami Tensei 5’s, and highlighting what makes the latter's so shitty.



Christ this game sucks so much.  You know this is the tenth rant I’ve made about it?  Considering that I take June off, that’s almost 1 rant for every damn month of the year.  That’s basically a third of a year that I spent hating this turd.  10 is the number of rants I made which featured Xenosaga 3, easily 1 of the biggest out-of-control trashfires I’ve come across in my decades of RPG experience.  But even that meandering shitshow possessed far more laudable qualities than this lazy farce!

Seriously, just...shame on Atlus for Shin Megami Tensei 5.  Shame on it.  Real, actual shame.  Everyone involved in the decision-making process for this game, and the writers, should sincerely feel bad about what a flopping pile of nothing they created here.

Fire Emblem 15's Imbalanced Storytelling

Why was Fire Emblem 15 split in half between Alm and Celica?  They are clearly not equals from the narrative’s standpoint.  FE15 treats Alm as the protagonist it was designed to have, but Celica feels more like a secondary cast member who was promoted to a narrative position she wasn’t qualified for.  In terms of being the heroes of the story, Alm and Celica are grossly imbalanced.

First of all, look at the level of relevance Alm and Celica’s respective journeys have to the plot as a whole.  Once the prologue is over and done with, and the game has started properly, Alm is caught up in and spearheading the major, action-driven part of the plot in which a resistance-turned-invasion army turns back an enemy army, then marches straight into the heart of enemy territory.  The momentum of the plot carries Alm along from answering the call to serve as defender of his nation, to recapturing the capitol, to striking out into the hostile northern empire with the intent of ending the war once and for all, which takes him directly to the game’s finale.  While there are plenty of steps along the way that are minor ventures of liberating and/or capturing territory, it’s all clearly, logically part of a plot in motion that connects to and accomplishes the narrative of Alm’s attempt to achieve peace through force.

And then look at Celica.  Where Alm is marching from 1 story goalpost to the next from Day 1, Celica spends a truly indefensible amount of time dicking around with pirates that are functionally irrelevant.  Seriously, it’s basically all she does in her whole half of the game’s first dual-act chapter.  Fire Emblem 15 clearly just doesn’t need Celica to really be doing anything for the majority of the first third of its tale.  Whereas the story of how Alm rose to military prominence, established himself a capable leader, defied the social system by (supposedly) being a peasant whose virtues outclass those of a noble, and took back his country’s freedom from the invaders is one which easily fills the span of the first chapter, all FE15 actually NEEDS from Celica is to display her kind nature and connect it to a determination to better the lives of all people, for her to be established as a competent crusader herself,* and for her to arrive at the capitol at roughly the same time as Alm so they can meet.

The problem is that that list doesn’t need a full chapter to accomplish.  A mere 2 detours against marauding pirates are ALL that you need to cement Celica’s nature inasmuch as has relevance to her position in the plot, and her fighting prowess (as well as establish the setting lore that conditions are bad all over the country by this point, which is a valuable secondary priority).  The pirates themselves don’t have any relevance to the game’s story, not the way squads of soldiers from Rigel do--the latter are a necessary gear in the machine of a story of Alm’s military conquests, but there’s no overarching part of the plot that the pirates actually relate to.  They’re just there to be tools of Celica’s character development, and once that’s done with, they’re no more than filler.  As such, Celica spends the majority of her first act wasting time.

Now, once the first chapter is done, both Alm and Celica each have a more competitive pace of moving toward their respective journeys’ goals, at least.  Although it does still feel like Alm is more steadily progressing forward in a sequence of story events, while Celica has spurts of starts and stops with it.  Still, her futzing around with pirates just for the hell of it is finally over.  But even once the pacing problem is fixed, Alm and Celica are still drastically mismatched as protagonists.

Once they’ve had their extremely forced parting of ways, Alm’s plan is to continue to fight for the safety of his homeland and end the war through force, while Celica's plan is to save everyone by getting the goddess to step in. Now obviously, trying to end things without extra bloodshed is the preferable option!  But in practice...Celica's plan turns out to be total bupkis, because Mila's not only unavailable via kidnap, but starting to go malevolently nuts anyway.  So even if she'd been around for Celica to petition, Mila wouldn't have been able to actually do anything useful.

So, Alm's approach succeeds, and continues to succeed fully as he marches straight into the enemy capitol and defeats the emperor...while Celica's approach achieves nothing beyond putting her in a necessary position for mucking about with self-sacrifice.**  And let me tell you, getting a magical plot girl into position for a weepy self-sacrifice is not exactly a difficult thing to accomplish in an RPG.  Fucking Kemco can do it without much effort.

And Celica’s penchant for being wrong is only further underscored with her decision to accept Jedah’s terms and be his sacrificial soul.  I mean, it’s an absurdly stupid, shortsighted decision to begin with, and it only gets worse as the game pads the closing to Celica’s story out by making it more and more clear how untrustworthy Jedah is by having him throw up obstacles to his own plan as he attempts to kill Celica’s allies in front of her.  While Alm is closing in on the emperor’s throne and forcefully uniting the 2 countries, Celica is hemming and hawing about selling her soul to an insane dark god, and moronically swallowing every lie an obvious villain is feeding her like she’s a prototype for Edelgard.

I mean, just, like, contrast the final climax of Alm and Celica’s respective journeys.  Alm defeats the emperor in battle, discovers the truth of his own origins, takes the Rigellian throne through both victory and birthright, and puts an end to the war between his nations.  Celica...willingly offers her soul to an insane god at the urging of a cult leader, mistakenly believing that it will get the dark god to calm his fucking tits for 2 seconds.  Alm is successful in his aim and achieves a demonstrable, significant positive result, while Celica’s entire journey has all been leading up to her voluntarily falling into the clutches of the game’s villain.  That’s what half of the game has been about!  Futzing around with pirates, doing a Twitter drama with Alm, fruitlessly trying to petition and then rescue Mila, following Jedah and trying to get him to concentrate on something other than random murder for long enough to make his sales pitch...ALL of it, to the end goal of having this “protagonist” get duped by the main bad guy.

I’m really supposed to buy that Celica is an equal partner in this game’s story?  Her major role in the course of Fire Emblem 15’s events is to be the idiot who donates her body to science a dark god, an action designed specifically for the purpose of allowing Alm to get the magic hero sword, do the magic hero things, and stab some basic fucking sense into her.  How exactly does FE15 expect me to look at Celica as a protagonist, when the entirety of her role as such is to be a mirror and vehicle for someone else’s heroics?

She doesn’t even work as a protagonist on a meta level.  Fire Emblem 15’s story is, in largest part, a message about the importance of we human beings relying upon ourselves to resolve our conflicts and govern our affairs, and that we can’t trust higher powers like gods to lead our species.  Alm’s story of a (supposed) peasant leading a resistance to forcibly unite warring nations, a human settling human matters without divine interference, is in perfect thematic alignment with this moral.  Celica’s entire story, on the other hand, is nothing but a series of follies that serve to underscore the idea that trusting in the gods rather than humanity is hopeless.  She is the goddamn Goofus to Alm’s Gallant.

Now, sure, it’s quite possible to have a very effective protagonist and successful story when the work’s message is made through a protagonist’s repeated failures rather than success--but that’s only gonna work when there’s 1 protagonist to work with.  When you’ve got 2 main characters, and 1 of them is always right as he proves the overall theme by successfully implementing its ideals, and 1 of them is always wrong as she proves the overall theme by acting against its ideals and consistently failing, then obviously the guy who actually embodies the story’s message is going to seem far more genuinely the protagonist of the game!

Hell, Celica’s side of the story isn’t even fun to play.  I mean, sure, it’s an RPG, so it’s not fun anyway, but there’s no denying that having to deal with poison terrain and mob spawns over and over in Celica’s story makes it far more of a slog than Alm’s.

Fire Emblem 15 presents itself as a joint story of multiple protagonists each journeying to save the world in their own way, but Treasure of the Rudras this ain’t.  Alm and Celica’s individual worth as protagonists is just completely lopsided.  The fact of the matter is that FE15 is just a regular RPG story of a hero and a supporting magical plot girl that he’s ultimately responsible for babysitting.













* And honestly, even this is kind of just unnecessary.  Since her goal is to find a non-violent means to end the war, first by appealing to a mother goddess and then by agreeing to a really, really stupid deal, Celica’s being a capable fighter and military leader isn’t actually important the way it is for Alm to be.


** Which, by the way, annoys me greatly from an ethical standpoint.  While I accept that there are times when a peaceful solution to international conflict is simply not possible, Fire Emblem 15 seems eager to make the case that attempting a diplomatic solution is invariably so ineffectual that it’s pointless to even try.  This is a game where crushing your enemies and annexing their territory is how peace is achieved, while attempting to involve greater powers as mediators and treating with your enemies only worsens the situation.  Yeah, very healthy perspective to have, Nintendo, thanks a bunch for the great insight.

Omori's and Whisper of a Rose's Similarities

Yeah, so, major spoilers for both Omori and Whisper of a Rose.  Like...don’t read this if you’re not fully familiar with whichever game(s) you have any intention to play in the future.



So, like...has anyone else noticed that Omori is uncannily similar to Whisper of a Rose?

The answer to that question seems to be no.  Which is surprising, considering that Omori has gotten an Undertale-esque level of attention, adulation, and intellectual interest since its debut 2 years ago (an earned response, I should note).  You wouldn’t think some random ass internet yutz like me would be able to notice something interesting that no one else has recognized about such a widely beloved and scrutinized title, so long after its release.  But it’s also not surprising at the same time, because Whisper of a Rose is a pretty damned obscure indie RPG whose lasting impact on its player base could be considered tepid at best, when it’s not simply outright forgotten (and frankly, that’s not exactly an unearned response, either).  For me, however, all RPGs entrap themselves within my mind in cages of relevance, so, as long as my memory still functions in any capacity, even obscure and frankly unremarkable titles stay fresh enough in my consciousness that they’re on hand and ready for purposes of comparison.

And that’s why I’m in, as far as I’ve discovered in my searches online, the unique position of realizing that Omori is not the first RPG I’ve played which does all of the following:


- Showcases an adventure that takes place within a colorful and varied dream world.
- Intimately connects the characters and purpose of said dream world with the protagonist’s past emotional trauma.
- Incorporates significant counterparts of a number of the signature elements, items, and individuals of real-world childhood into the dream realm.
- Creates a plot-essential dichotomy between this dream world and the real world.
- Thematically features phobias as enemies or obstacles to be overcome.
- Involves a final battle against an unemotional entity of the dream world who aims to manifest himself in the real world.
- Tells a story about the necessity of confronting the source(s) of one’s trauma and pain.
- Contains an ending in which the protagonist has jumped off a skyscraper, and the credits roll as we watch them falling to their death.


I mean how does that last one happen twice?  Granted it’s at least not the 1 and only ending for Omori, but still.

So now, having established this bizarre level of similarity between Whisper of a Rose and Omori, I have reached the part of the rant where I usually would reveal that I had some sort of point for bringing this up.  Except...I’m kinda at a loss as to what to do with this information.

I mean, I’m not drawing these comparisons because I think Omori plagiarized Whisper of a Rose.  I genuinely think these parallels are coincidence--nothing about Omori’s actual approach to these similarities feels like that of Whisper of a Rose, I haven’t seen any indication that Omocat has ever mentioned the game as an influence or even ever played it before, and as I noted above, WoaR is so exceptionally obscure even by indie title standards that it doesn’t seem like anyone before me has noticed the resemblance.  Omori’s definitely a work quite proud to have been influenced by others that came before it,* but I would honestly be surprised to discover that Whisper of a Rose was 1 of them.

I guess I could go into a whole big, extensive rant about why it is that Omori succeeds so effectively while Whisper of a Rose never seems to bring it home on any of its points, but...I don’t wanna?  I mean, most of what that rant’s gonna come down to is just Omori having better writing, more varied and layered storytelling methods (which is really just “better writing” again), a more genuine and varied set of personalities and means for speaking in those personalities’ voices (which again really just falls under the “better writing” category), and a stronger purpose in communicating with its audience (“better writing” yet again).  If you ARE familiar with both games, nothing I’d say would be news to you; I’d only be noting the obvious.  And if you’re only familiar with 1 of them, odds are that such a rant would only be shitting on some game you don’t know anyway, so who cares?

Besides, while I don’t shy away from criticizing it, and while I don’t like it, I still do respect Whisper of a Rose for trying to do something meaningful and cerebral.  It doesn’t deserve to be dragged out into the spotlight to have its every failing re-examined just so I can hype up another game that’s already received its critical due anyway.  Hell, WoaR probably didn’t fully deserve it the last time I got my licks in on it.

So yeah, I guess that means that we’re kinda at the end of today’s rant.  I just thought it was interesting that I’ve played 2 unrelated Indie RPGs that shared so many significant and signature elements and directives, and wanted to say so.  Make of it what you will!  Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll be back to form with another 6+ page analytical treatise on something tiny that doesn’t matter in the slightest all too soon.















* Is it just me, or are all the best Mother-styled games not actually part of the Mother series?

Shin Megami Tensei 5's Protagonist's Inaction Against Lahmu

Goddamn is there ever a lot of Voyeuristic Paralysis Syndrome going on in Shin Megami Tensei 5’s second chapter.  I mean, standing around gawking uselessly while bad things go on around them that so easily could be prevented is an epidemic among RPG heroes all over, to be sure, but I haven’t seen levels of slack-jawed motionlessness this bad since Xenosaga 3!

Let’s count’em off, shall we?


Lahmu’s Initial Attack: Alright, so right off the bat with this namby-pamby demon dipshit who looks like something that’s been left in the back of the fridge for a few periods of “too long” stacked on top of each other, we get him arriving and stirring some shit.  Then, once his bad intentions have been made clear, Lahmu turns to gaze at the rest of the city, monologues (with no particular haste) about feeling the source of his true power out there, and then moseys off to pursue this power.  And what does our hero, the Nahobino, do while Lahmu waxes villainous about what he’s gonna be getting up to, and makes his exit?  Why, our boy stands and watches the whole time, of course!  Yeah, by all means, buddy, don’t prevent a new enemy from leaving after hearing him outright state he’s out to acquire greater power.  I’m sure that’s not gonna come back to bite us all in the ass.  I know it’s not exactly the easiest thing to take Lahmu seriously when he looks like a drain clog badly cosplaying as calamari, but come on.

Maybe our hero’s hoping for those little things in the credits that give special thanks to YOU, the viewer, and figures he’s gotta earn the title if he wants to feel special from it.  Anyway, that’s 1.


School Lobby: So upon arriving, the Nahobino discovers that Lahmu has grabbed Sahori, claiming that she’s his fated other half and the one that gives him his greatest strength and whatever other drivel he’s read on his favorite simp channels on Discord.  The Nahobino is given the choice of whether he wants his priority to be to save Sahori, or kill Lahmu...but apparently he must have thought the question was just a thought exercise, because whatever his answer may be, his next action is to just stand there and watch events unfold before him.  The lazy dumbass doesn’t even make a move when Lahmu actually drops Sahori!  She’s RIGHT THERE, like 10 feet in front of him, 2 steps and a slightly stooped back away from being fully and completely rescued...and the Nahobino does NOTHING but watch as she slowly, clumsily climbs back into what I really hope is Lahmu’s mouth.  Lahmu is then once more allowed to just wander off unimpeded, and Aogami actually has the shamelessness to remark that Lahmu needs to be put down quickly.

Maybe the protagonist has a deal with Atlus in which he gets to pocket whatever part of the game’s animation budget doesn’t get used.  At any rate, that’s 2.


Classroom: Upon arriving at the classroom at the end of the school mini-dungeon, the Nahobino witnesses a scene in which Sahori threatens her bullies, and delivers a short speech to them which makes it clear that she’s not going to grant them the mercy that they’re begging for.  And boy does he witness it.  He witnesses the hell out of this scene.  Keep your Schrodingerian cats far away if you value their ambiguity, because our hero is going on an observational rampage over here!

Now granted, the Nahobino actually does make an attempt to do something about this situation a minute later...but that’s only AFTER Lahmu has shown up and can thus adequately take steps to stop him.  For the full time that Sahori was talking, making it clear that she intended to kill the hostages before her, our protagonist had a clear, unimpeded shot at getting to and restraining her without any interference whatsoever.  There was every opportunity through Sahori’s entire speech to remove her and thus completely resolve this situation and save the lives of all involved.  The protagonist specifically waited to act until Lahmu was back on the scene and able to foil his efforts.

Maybe our guy just believes in fair play to an absolute fault.  Whatever the case, that’s 3.


Final Confrontation: After a prolonged, exceptionally boring slog through Chapter 2’s map involving constantly moving goalposts, hide-and-seek distractions, and fetch-quest delays, the protagonist finally comes upon Lahmu, whose attention is fixed entirely upon Sahori.  Aogami observes that, with Lahmu distracted, they may be able to take him off-guard, once again adding insult to injury as we all know goddamn well by this point that this chucklehead isn’t gonna do anything of the sort.  Once again, the main character is given a choice to either concentrate on saving Sahori, or on killing Lahmu, and once again, neither choice does anything to prevent him from standing there and doing absolutely nothing, as Sahori gets eaten by Lahmu, and Lahmu gets a huge power-up from it.

Maybe the Nahobino’s just got a vore fetish.  Regardless, that’s 4.

...Except, no, hold on.  This shouldn’t just count as only 1 point on our scale.  Because this dumbass isn’t JUST passively watching an anguished teenager get murdered before his eyes.  No, when Tao tries to intervene, our great hero actually reaches out and holds her back.  Yes, the Nahobino is so aggressively committed to inaction that he deliberately prevents others from being proactive and heroic.  Surely that’s worth a bonus half point there, yes?


So that’s 4.5.  An entire 4 separate instances of conflict with the same villain, all during the span of a single chapter, in which the hero of this game conspicuously just stands around and lets bad things happen in front of him, and an extra half point for the fact that he even forces his inertness upon others who might otherwise have made some kind of effort to save lives.  Even considering the puzzling inclination that RPG characters naturally have for listlessly watching the world go to shit around them, that’s the kind of poor writing that really stands out.

And remember: this idle, mindless watcher is the same guy that a resurrected Tao later decides to support for godhood, endorsing him on the grounds that he was "the only one who tried to help Sahori."  What an absolute goddamn joke.  Fuck you, Atlus, don’t piss on my franchise and tell me it’s raining.

Omori's Sweetheart

Omori’s 1 of those games where reading practically anything about it will likely result in huge spoilers.  Honestly, I’m kinda relieved that it’s done well enough that I don’t feel it really needs a rant recommending it, because I don’t even know how the hell someone CAN speak positively about its virtues without giving way too much away.  I mean, I guess “If Mother 3, Undertale, and Large Battleship Studios were a Venn diagram, Omori would be the spot where they all intersect” does the job, but it’s kinda hard to stretch that out into a whole damn rant, at least not without some elaborate details that would give plot twists away.  But anyways, if you’re not already, like, 75%-through-the-game-familiar with Omori, then it’s best you pass today’s rant up.



Omori is a pretty damned awesome RPG, if you’re a fan of surrealism, the psychology of imagination and trauma and guilt, childhood innocence and its loss, the joy and need for friendship...or just games that are designed to rip your heart out of your ass.*  And I certainly am, so I love it.  It’s artistic, emotionally gripping--even overpowering--and highly intelligent.

In that last regard, there’s a lot going on below the surface in its events and cast, particularly those of the Headspace half of the game, that’s fascinating to figure out and understand in terms of how it relates to the core conflict in Sunny’s heart and the truth of the worst day of his and everyone else’s life.  Omocat does a terrific job of creating the parallels between the features of Headspace and that which inspired them in real life, and allowing you to recognize them as such--at times the revelation feels almost like a physical sensation; I almost felt like I’d been struck when I recognized the familiarity of the tree-house.  More intriguing than that, though, is penetrating the meaning of the more important entities and happenings of Omori’s dream adventures.  And as expected of the one who functions as the closest thing the game has to a villain, Sweetheart is no different.  Behind her obnoxious hostility, below the wake of her selfishness which draws the heroes into the majority of their adventures in the Headspace’s main plotline, lies the intriguing truth: that the entity of Sweetheart was created specifically to be a misleading antagonist whose shenanigans would keep Sunny’s mind distracted, preventing him from pursuing the truths represented by Basil.

So yeah, that’s cool.  Understanding the deeper role and purpose of Sweetheart’s existence is very interesting, an elegant piece of Omori’s elaborate layered puzzle of the psyche.  Whenever an analytical discussion about Sweetheart occurs, it’s invariably about this facet, her relevance on the higher level.  As well should be the case; that’s the most important and interesting layer to examine in Omori.

But you know what?  I think something that’s overlooked is that Sweetheart is, taken only in her own right, a pretty thoughtfully-crafted character.  I mean, by all means, what’s most significant and interesting about her is the fact that she’s a mental tool in Omori’s arsenal to keep Sunny too distracted for self-realization.  No debate there.  But it’s nonetheless worth acknowledging that Sweetheart’s character was crafted with some interesting depth and symbolism in and of herself, independent of her higher-level purpose.  If Omori was a game that only consisted of its Headspace adventures, full-stop, no higher purpose and no real world components, Sweetheart would still be a pretty well-written villain.

Obviously meant to take on a similar role to Porky from the Mother series that Omori takes pride in styling itself after,** Sweetheart is an obnoxious narcissist whose complete disregard of the needs or worth of everyone around her is the cause, directly and indirectly, of most of the major problems that the Headspace’s adventures revolve around.  But while a quick dismissal of “he’s just a rotten, spoiled kid” suffices to explain away Porky’s incentive to be 1 of the most universally loathsome little bastards in fiction, Omocat put some thought and care into the background and motivation for Sweetheart.  Everything Sweetheart does, every lousy, self-serving impulse she has, every Elon Musk moment of groundless self-congratulating mirror-worship, comes back to her donut hole.

No, that’s not a euphemism of some kind, and if you thought it was, then HA!  I GOT YOU!  You’re reading this rant without having played Omori, even though I specifically told you not to!  You stop that immediately and go to your room, young man/woman/etc to think about what you did!  For everyone who SHOULD be here, however, you know that Sweetheart literally has a round and empty space in her abdomen which speaks to her donut heritage in spite of her otherwise human appearance, and that I’m not just speaking in some crude sexual slang.***

And that donut hole isn’t just a way to make Sweetheart fit in with the rest of the residents of this dream world, who are a whole circus of cutesy living animals and foods and toys and whatnot.  I mean, okay, it IS, but that’s not what’s important about it.  What’s important is that it represents the fact that Sweetheart is incomplete.  She’s missing something, something important, from the core of her being.  Like any donut, Sweetheart’s existence is defined by absence, the absence of its center, the very most foundational part of anything and anyone.  

Now, what Sweetheart is missing is not just the mundane physical matter (or whatever passes for physical matter in a dream world) absent in her donut hole.  That’s merely a symbol that alerts us to the fact of her incompleteness.  No, that which is missing from Sweetheart is her capacity to care, to love, to form and enjoy meaningful emotional connections with others.  And how do we know this?  Well, I mean, it’s not exactly hard to deduce.  She can’t sincerely return Captain Spaceboy’s affections as a girlfriend or a wife, she gives no indication of caring a lick about her fans and adorers and in fact will harshly punish them for even the slightest infraction without any consideration of their suffering, she lets children take the fall for her misdeeds rather than be inconvenienced by consequences, and she can’t find it in herself to accept any of the duplicates of herself that she had specially commissioned specifically as her perfect suitors.  

And besides the fact that it’s just generally not hard to deduce that this chick is a bit of a psychopath, Perfectheart makes this quite clear.  If you look at her battle portrait, Perfectheart--created to be the superior, perfect version of Sweetheart, remember, which we can assume means that she is “complete” in any way that Sweetheart is not--is displaying that which she possesses and Sweetheart does not.  She’s using her fingers to cutely form a heart, cleverly and proudly making prominent that which defines her as the greater, perfect version of herself.****  Sweetheart lacks a heart, lacks what the heart represents, the capacity to love and care and connect and empathize.

And I mean she lacks that capacity entirely.  She doesn’t just lack the heart needed to be able to care for others--Sweetheart is equally incapable of loving even herself.  And on at least some level, she knows it.  Somewhere buried in her psyche, Sweetheart is fully aware that there is something fundamentally missing from who she is, and recognizes that it’s the ability to feel love.

Why do you think it is that Sweetheart makes the entirety of her existence revolve around the search for love?  She’s trying to fill that gaping donut hole in her being with what she instinctively knows is missing.  She charms Captain Spaceboy into being her boyfriend and, later, husband, hoping that the love of a handsome and desirable significant other will complete her, but each time she callously calls it off, unable to make it work because the poor guy just means nothing to her.  She lives as an idol worshiped by incalculable fans and en entire culture of sprout moles, hoping that the love of a giant collective social hole will fix her, but the adoration that she receives and demands from her followers softens her not a bit, and if anything, she seems more annoyed and frustrated by her legions of adorers’ efforts to please her.  She combines both her efforts to fill her void with romantic and with wide social love through a dating game show in an effort to find a proper suitor, but the result is likewise a combination of her other failures, an inability to care about the prospective suitor-contestants and an irritation with them for their facile veneration.

But that search for love is also clearly as much internal as external.  When Sweetheart despairs of finding the love that will complete her in others, she then tries to find it in herself, attempting at first to marry herself, and then commissioning mad scientists to artificially create a copy of herself to be her perfect suitor.  Again, failures all around, because Sweetheart is as unable to feel love for herself as she is to feel it for anyone else.

And don’t let the narcissism fool you.  It’s only yet another symptom of her emptiness.  It’s because Sweetheart knows she is incomplete, on some level knows what she’s missing, that she so loudly, obnoxiously preens and chortles and proclaims her own perfection.  Narcissists like Sweetheart often don’t shout their greatness to the heavens because it’s something they actually believe.  They do it because they know something’s missing from them, something essential, and they’re desperate to cover that up.  The repugnant volume is because they’re trying so damn hard to convince themselves of the worth they’re espousing.  You don’t shout your worth out into a crowd, into the void, and at your own mirror, when you actually believe in it.

No wonder the existence of Perfectheart is so repellent to Sweetheart--not only is she incapable of loving herself to begin with, but the potential of being seen side-by-side with a superior, whole version of herself, and having what she is lacking thus exposed and highlighted for all to see, would surely be terrifying for her.

So yeah, altogether, Sweetheart is a pretty well-written character in her own right.*****  Granted, as I said before, this is all ultimately not what’s actually important about the character--Sweetheart’s true, significant contribution to Omori is that she’s a mental defense mechanism, employed as a distraction to try to keep Sunny’s subconscious from remembering the truth of Mari’s death.  Still, while that matter is well-established and communicated amongst players of Omori, the fact that Sweetheart is still a thoughtfully crafted villain even on the surface level of Headspace is, I think, also worth some attention and appreciation.  Sweetheart would have functioned perfectly fine as a one-dimensional obnoxious tool like her inspiration Porky, but Omocat went the extra mile in creating a psychological and symbolic cause for her villainy.
























* I don’t care if it comes from a goddamn Adam Sandler film.  It’s a great line.  Bite me.


** Maybe a little too much, for that matter.  Look, Omori, it’s really cool and great and rad that you beat Mother at its own game, and soundly for that matter, but did you really HAVE to emulate Mother's pace of battle flow and input and text?  Just like with Earthbound and Mother 3, everything goes just a teeny tiny frustrating bit slower than feels right.


*** Although let’s not kid ourselves: that pin-up you can find in the game of Sweetheart in a bikini which prominently shows said tummy hole?  It has absolutely awakened something in someone.


**** And man, it sure seems like Perfectheart doesn’t mind rubbing Sweetheart’s face in it.  I mean, not only is she just outright showing off what makes her better, she’s doing so by making a heart with her fingers--or, if you look at it another way, a heart-shaped hole with them.


***** So much so, in fact, that it’s actually a bit immersion-breaking.  I mean, she IS, like all other aspects of Headspace, a creation of Sunny’s imagination, memories, impressions, and knowledge.  So...it’s a bit puzzling that she could be such a good, symbolic, and insightful example of a person whose narcissism is a facade to hide their personal and emotional incompleteness from the world.  Sunny is understanding human psychology at a suspiciously high level for a teen whose mental development has largely been stalled since the age of 12 and who hasn’t been in a school setting since that time, and while Sweetheart’s existence is taken from real-world points of inspiration (a fictional character and a vexing candy vendor), it’s unlikely that these can account for the depth of Sweetheart’s psychology in Sunny’s headspace.

Then again, that’s easier to shrug off than the fact that Roboheart’s existence means that Sunny must apparently know Base64 encoding language so inhumanly thoroughly that he can mentally translate English sentences into it on the fly.  Ah, well, a little suspension of disbelief never hurt anyone.

Shin Megami Tensei 5's Cover Art

You know, the cover art for Shin Megami Tensei 5 is baffling.  Here, look at this thing:

OOPS!  All Asshats

I mean, first of all, it just looks kinda messy in general.  It’s as if some kid dropped a bunch of his stickers all in a pile, and just left them there, facing whatever directions they happened to land in.  I’m fairly sure that if I were to open up 1 of the boxes in which I keep my action figures I played with as a kid, the assorted jumble of superheroes and monsters and mutants that would greet me would be indistinguishable from this mess.  Heaven help you if you actually want to try to sort out whose limbs are where here; my sister and I spent a good 10 minutes on a Where’s Waldo hunt to nail down the positioning of Nuwa’s (the chick at the top) legs, and figure out that what appears to be a single leg shaped like an S on Khonsu (the green guy) is actually 2 separate legs positioned perfectly to be confusing.  If there is any possible way that transposing 1 character image on top of another will obscure the latter in a disorderly and misleading way, this cover finds it.

At a guess, I’d say that the artist was shooting for a quadrant setup, wherein the space behind the protagonist is split into 4 parts and each spot is occupied by a character symbolic to a game faction or 1 of the game’s 4 endings or something.  But with everyone asymmetrically facing different directions and stretching themselves out in an unruly clutter, whatever symbolic intent there may have been is totally ruined.  How the hell do you fuck up a straightforward, neat, orderly quadrant setup?  It’s not like this is a foreign idea to Atlus; they did the behind-protagonist-faction-split thing for SMT4-1’s cover art just fine.  But for some reason, this time around they’ve just made the whole thing look like the outcome of a failed game of Twister.

And let’s not mince words here: the art itself is pretty damned bad.  Like, it all looks okay at a glance, albeit a senseless jumble, but give this cover a bit of scrutiny, and you realize that this thing’s a damned disaster of bad proportions.  The Nahobino’s twisting himself around the way female bodies do in stereotypically bad 80s comic books, and there is nothing about the angling of his right leg and ankle that looks right to me.  And what the hell is going on with Khonsu’s legs?  The man’s left calf, which is closer to the viewer, is somehow smaller than the calf of the leg that is further from the viewer.  And Jesus Christ, look at Nuwa’s arm!  The woman’s got a branch like Sten from Breath of Fire 2, a monkey-man whose utility was having arms so long they were basically grappling hooks!  And you don’t even see the end of the thing in this picture; for all we know, that absurd little wrist the width of a ballpoint pen might extend another 4 feet before finally ending in her hand.  These characters look like they were drawn by a damned AI--and not one of the ones who draw my porn, either, those things understand proportions and perspective way better.

Still, cover art whose sin is merely bad quality isn’t something I’d usually rant on.  I mean, since I’ve already brought Sten to mind, it’s worth remembering that not once in the last 15 years have I said a single thing about the fact that Breath of Fire 1 and 2’s SNES box art in the USA looks like someone at Squaresoft/Capcom was going through a Rob Liefeld phase.  As amateurish and unappealing as Shin Megami Tensei 5’s cover art may be, surely it’s not significantly more deserving of scorn than Gobi, Ox, and Rand’s soulless Youngblood eyes, nor Bow’s pose and grin ripped straight out of a try-hard 90s drug PSA.  But SMT5’s cover art is more than just merely a tangled, poorly-designed mess.  What’s really perplexing about it is the content of that mess.

So, Nuwa and Abdiel (the angel), sure, you expect them to be in there.  They’re the major patrons of 2 of the game’s 3 factions, after all, and some of the most important characters in the game.  Hell, Abdiel’s 1 of exactly 2 individuals in the entirety of Shin Megami Tensei 5 that I could really qualify as actually having a story arc.  And it makes sense for Amanozako (the fairy) to be right there with the protagonist, since she’s the closest thing to a proper, real party member that the game can offer.

But what the heck are Khonsu and Hayataro (the canine) doing there?  Khonsu is the central figure of a goddamn sidequest in the game.  Sure, you have to have finished that sidequest in order to access the final, “true” Neutral ending, but that doesn’t actually tie him to the ending or story in any meaningful way.  If we’re going to count just any old entity whose event flag has to have been activated for you to reach the ending as someone important, we might as well throw the shopkeeper, some tutorial enemies, and Faceless NPC 14 in there with Khonsu, too; can’t beat the game without interacting in some way with all of them!

And Hayataro?  For real?  Hayataro is so inconsequential that I have to look up his name every single time I need to refer to him.  And I can say that with complete confidence in its accuracy, because this rant is to date the first time I’ve ever had to do so, and I highly doubt there’ll be a second instance.  He’s THAT insignificant.  I may have literally forgotten that Noel in Star Ocean 2 wasn’t just a random NPC, multiple times, as I played it, but at the very least I can still remember his damned name!  Atlus could not have selected a less material character to represent this game, short of just slapping a random-encounter enemy on there!  And frankly, even that’s debatable, because you’ll have spent more time in the presence of every random encounter enemy in this game than you will have in Hayataro’s.

And the space Khonsu and Hayataro occupy...with Abdiel on the lower right and Nuwa on the upper right, it seems obvious that Hayatero’s and Khonsu’s being in the opposite quadrants is meant to imply that they’re representing factions just as Abdiel and Nuwa do.  So that just makes this all the more puzzling.  Why in the world would Chaos be signified by Hayatero, the mere combat partner to Atsuta, and not by Koshimizu, the actual damn patron of the faction?  Koshimizu’s the obvious counterpart to Abdiel and Nuwa in the game.  Hayataro’s like the henchman of a henchman.

And what is Khonsu doing there at all?  I mean, yes, okay, Neutral has 2 separate endings it can get and, as mentioned, 1 of them requires you to have finished a series of sidequests in which Khonsu figures heavily, but even if we were to pretend that he’s got any actual thematic significance to the faction of Neutrality, he still is certainly not so important in his sidequest capacity that you could rationally consider him a patron of the faction like Nuwa, Abdiel, and Koshimizu are.  And why should we even pretend that far? The fact is still that Khonsu has no actual thematic or philosophical ties to Neutral, especially not the version of Neutral that this game’s ending champions--why is the guy who proves that demons can be benevolent to humans being touted as the symbol of an ending which bans all demons from existence?

I’m not even going to bother questioning why the fuck 1 of Lahmu’s tentacle mouths happens to just be sitting disembodied in the background.  There’s just not gonna be a good answer to that.

Lastly, in addition to talking about who’s on this cover when they shouldn’t be, let’s also talk about who’s not on this cover when they absolutely should be.  Namely: Tao.  Where’s Tao?  Shouldn’t she be here, too?  Tao is maybe the most important figure in her own right within this miserable excuse for a story, the nearest approximation you can get to the traditional SMT Heroine like Hiroko and Isabeau.  As I said earlier, I can only assume that Amanozako’s on the cover because she’s the closest thing to a consistent companion that SMT5 has to offer, so why wouldn’t Tao, the other substantial companion-ish ally in the game, also be here?  She’d be a good counterpart to Amanozako, in that regard, providing another case of the 2-sides-opposed thing that the quadrant setup allows for.  Not like there’d be much problem with adding her there, either; Tao would basically just be covering up Abdiel’s ballerina-posing leg ineptly overlapping with Hayatero’s limb, and Lahmu’s completely inexplicable tentacle-maw.  No great loss on any of those counts.  Then again, given the level of skill with symmetry that’s been evident thus far with this art, no doubt Tao’s presence there would translate into having her stretched into an unholy pretzel like some glitching asset in a Bethesda title.

As far as Shin Megami Tensei 5’s sins go, having a bad piece of cover art is about as light and harmless as they come.  This is absolutely 1 of those rants--those many, many rants--about a subject that I myself fully admit doesn’t really matter.  Still, egregious incompetence when it comes to the little things is so often the first warning sign that the same poor quality permeates a product to its core, and that’s certainly the case here.  With Shin Megami Tensei 5, you really can judge a book by its cover.