Tales of Vesperia's Yuri's Vigilantism

You know...for all that Tales of Vesperia likes to spotlight it, for all it’s supposed to be a fundamental part of his character development and his adolescent edge appeal...Yuri being a vigilante doesn’t really seem to amount to all that much.  Really, his relationships, his personality, and his overall character arc wouldn’t change much without it--the whole premise of this protagonist is largely superfluous.

I mean, look at how things go when it’s finally discovered that he’s been killing bad guys on the sly.  Estelle finds out earlier than the rest of the party, but not early enough that it serves any purpose at all for her to--the extra day or 2 head-start she has on this plot twist doesn’t noticeably alter her dynamic with Yuri, nor does it have any tangible effect on her own character development.  And once Yuri’s dollar-store-Punisher shenanigans are discovered by the rest of the party...what comes of it, really?  There’s little reaction from any of them that amounts to more than someone making a Surprised Pikachu reaction post before moving on with their day.  Hell, discovering shortly thereafter that Judith is actually the one who’s been going around busting up ancient machine relics actually gets more of a reaction from the party than the knowledge that Yuri has been murderously taking the law into his own hands!*

Would’ve been a great opportunity to develop Karol, by the way.  A terrific chance to play into Karol’s role as guild leader, his issues of self-esteem, his uncertainty about what his guild is supposed to be...all of that could have been explored excellently here!  Having it revealed that his most valued and trusted guild member is a vigilante could have caused Karol to question whether or not he could allow Yuri to stay in his guild after this, and what the “justice” that his guild stands for really is (and whether there should be limits upon it; man, do I miss the fascinating perspective on Justice that Planescape: Torment’s Vhailor gave us on the concept).  It also would have been a great way to tie into Karol’s issues with self-esteem as he questions whether he’s qualified to lead a guild when his judgment of character may be deeply flawed, since he looks up to Yuri and many of his foundational ideas about the guild come from Yuri.  I mean, frankly, the revelation that the trusted protagonist has been murdering evil-doers in cold blood as a vigilante is the easiest, softest pitch that ToV’s writers could have given themselves for developing any of the rest of the party’s characters, but the fact that they managed to completely strike out on this matter with even Karol is an almost remarkable waste of potential.

I’ll at least grant you that Yuri being a vigilante does heavily figure into his relationship with Flynn, where it serves the purpose of creating the divide between them that makes them mirrors of one another.  And I’ll happily admit that Yuri and Flynn’s friendship, rivalry, and 1-subconsciously-roaming-hand-away-from-romance is actually pretty decently crafted, probably the best case of mutual character development and thematic chemistry that the game has.**  Honestly, a couple of Flynn and Yuri’s conversations are some of the rare moments of Tales of Vesperia that I genuinely liked.  But that’s a single cast member--and 1 who wasn’t even actually a party member in the original game!--among over half a dozen for whom Yuri being a vigilante has any effect whatsoever upon him.  Of them all, Flynn is the only one who ever seems to demand elaboration from Yuri about his actions and perspective, or challenge their legitimacy to any real degree!

Also, frankly, even Yuri himself doesn’t seem to get much mileage as a character out of being a vigilante!  I mean, really, where’s the storytelling payoff, here?  Do we ever get any real, tangible indication from Yuri of inner conflict, philosophical musing, emotional turmoil, slight remorse, anything?  Ohhhh, right, he sits and silently broods every now and then, wow, yeah, I guess I forgot that I never got past being fucking 12 years old so just sitting in a corner looking like someone’s Naruto OC is still really deep to me.  Yeah, sorry, but just brooding and never actually expressing himself doesn’t fucking cut it as character development.  Is he wracked with guilt over his homicidal actions?  Stewing in resentment at the imperfect justice of the world?  Trying to remember the lyrics to a song he used to like?  Wrestling with an urge to take his campaign of violent retribution even further?  Seething in hatred for that damned clothier who said non-buttoning shirts were gonna be the next big thing?  Just thinking really hard about crepes?  Yuri could be contemplating literally anything, we have no way of telling what!

You can’t just have a character silently mope and assume that it magically makes him some deep and interesting individual.  You have to prop it up with something.  Have your character show some emotion silently, a bowed head or looking with horror at his shaking hands or something.  Time the brooding so that it follows actions in a way that emphasize that the guy is reflecting on what’s happened in some meaningful fashion.  Something, for God’s sake!  

There’s never any significant outpouring of personal unrest from the guy.  No one around him demands anything emotionally of Yuri.  No troubled dreams to give us an insight into what’s really going on behind the carefully constructed wall of indifference, as there would later be with Tales of Berseria’s Velvet.  There’s certainly very little actual exploration into the intellectual side of the matter, the right and wrong of the matter of Yuri’s vigilante killings--it’s shocking to think that Tales of Vesperia came after Tales of the Abyss; they had a perfect blueprint of how to deal with issues like this with the personal story arc of Luke’s reticence to kill his opponents.

Yuri just gives his audience nothing.  He just withholds the entirety of his own character development from the rest of the world, and we’re never allowed any other means to see what’s going on in his damn head.

Hell, even on the really quite shockingly rare occasions that his companions actually insist on a discussion with him regarding the fact that he’s an unrepentant murderer, we’re still left in the dark about how he arrives at his conclusions and decisions on how he’ll act going forward.  An example: After the Don’s death, once they find Judith, Yuri talks about how the Don’s death taught him that when there’s a part that’s infected, you cut it off, doesn’t matter if it’s friend or family.

Uhh...how is that a conclusion he’s drawn from the Don’s death?  I guess maybe he’s referring to the fact that the near war between the guilds started from a mistake made by the Don’s grandson Harry, whose punishment for Belius’s death*** the Don takes unto himself?  But that was said to be an earnest mistake the kid made--dumb, but earnest; he was tricked by Yaeger.  It’s hardly applicable to Yuri going Chinese-knockoff-Robert-McCall on real, actual, intentionally malicious villains.  Also, if Yuri’s takeaway from the incident was that the Don should have eliminated his own grandson before the kid’s incompetence could cause a problem, that’s, uh, a bit concerning.

Or does this conclusion of Yuri’s come from the fact that the Don went to get rid of Yaeger before going to his death?  Makes more sense, but not to the degree that it’s actually sensible.  In this scenario, either Yuri’s deciding to follow the Don’s example in his vigilantism, which then doesn’t really connect to the Don’s death 1 way or another, or Yuri’s saying that the Don should’ve killed Yaeger long before the asshole had a chance to do something evil like this.  Which, uh, really sounds like Yuri’s advocating for a tyrannical dictatorship where the guy at the top has full dispensation to just execute any sap he deems a potential problem.  Well I’m sure Edelgard and Hubert are just thrilled that you approve, Yuri, but that’s generally not an attitude towards government that we like to see in heroes, bud.

Does Tales of Vesperia have a way to rebut this point?  Did I perhaps misunderstand Yuri’s statement entirely?  That’s fully possible!  But because no one in the game has the slightest interest in challenging the murderous vigilante in discussion at all, because nothing ever prods Yuri into doing anything more than scratching the very surface whenever he’s sharing any part of himself, we just have no way of knowing.  We never see how Yuri came to this conclusion, or any other.  If the game DOES have any better interpretations than my own, any more flattering way of looking at Yuri’s stupid adolescent-edgy point of view on the world, it sure as hell doesn’t feel like sharing them with us.

And even this tiny inadequate surface-scraping doesn’t really seem genuine.  It’s not like we ever see that he was particularly moved in any way by the Don’s death.  The most we got was a skit conversation where his companions said that it had affected him.  Certainly nothing about how Yuri acts nor anything he says to himself or Repede when alone, no dreams nor daydreams, no alteration of speaking manner nor tone, no penetrating emotions verbally nor facially expressed, give even the slightest indication that it’s weighing on him.  By that point in the game, I had long since become bored with ToV’s facile writing and uninteresting plot, and I think even I gave more of a damn about the Don’s death than Yuri ever demonstrates.

It’s just always inept, fumbling Tell, Don’t Show with Tales of Vesperia when it comes to its protagonist.  I am so sick of Yuri’s companions talking amongst themselves about how much Yuri suffers internally over the murders he commits.  Where are they getting this idea that Yuri even has a second thought about his actions, let alone feels genuine regret?  NOTHING HE SAYS OR DOES INDICATES THIS.  Stop projecting actual human feelings onto this easy-going psychopath, already!

Even the overall character arc and story beats could have been maintained without this whole vigilante thing.  The arm of the law is already reaching for Yuri long before he commits his first murder, because the necessary circumstances of the plot still involve his being arrested, escaping from jail, and “kidnapping” Estelle (at her request, but try telling THE MAN that, amirite).  He takes stands against injustices without having been duly deputized to do so, and he opposes those who are technically working within the scope of the law when they do something morally wrong.  Yuri is already and unavoidably a guy working outside the law to do the right thing, the Chaotic Good that mirrors Flynn’s Lawful Good.  So the juxtaposition upon which their (90% yaoi) relationship is based would still be entirely intact without the vigilantism, AND Tales of Vesperia’s overall (morally shaky) theme of taking justice into your own hands would have still existed in adequate capacity.

And the final fates of those that Yuri kills could have been very easily altered to still work within the game’s needs.  The first guy actually getting away with it would have been way better as a test of their conviction to doing the right thing when the villain may still walk away Scot free, AND still sealed in the message that working within the law has its limitations.  The Cumore situation requiring vigilante justice didn’t even make sense to begin with, so him being defeated, detained, and arrested when Flynn gets there would have been a way more sensible way of going about that--and it still could have easily reinforced the idea of the law’s limitation, since Cumore still only would have been stopped in time thanks to the unlawful heroics of Yuri’s team.  And since you immediately after get the scene of Judy’s revelation and flight, you still have a climactic moment where the party is confronted with the idea that 1 of them has been doing “wrong” things to accomplish a greater good all along, and give them all the opportunity to come to terms with that to develop their moral perspective accordingly.  I mean, the game largely squanders that opportunity, but it’d still be there, regardless.  You don’t even lose the ability for the rest of the party to be upset with Yuri, since he knew about Judy’s side hustle already, and so the (again, largely wasted) opportunity to have Yuri justify taking justice into one’s own hands is still there, just in the form of his defending his having condoned Judy’s doing so rather than his defending his own killing.

The game is already inextricably about doing good in spite of the law.  The events of the story are already independently in place and will occur almost exactly the same way, with very little adjustment.  Yuri’s vigilantism (inasmuch as it is separate from the actions of the party as a whole) does not actually impact the way the story of Tales of Vesperia happens.

So what’s the point, then?  If it doesn’t have any lasting impact on how the cast at large sees and interacts with him, and it doesn’t actually do much of anything for his character, and the story doesn’t require it to accomplish what it needs and wants to, then what purpose does Yuri being a murderous vigilante actually serve?  It’s not necessarily something I don’t want in the game, but if it doesn’t actually do anything, then all it is is just some self-indulging grandstanding by writers whose minds are still stuck in middle school and who have no idea of how to take advantage of the very opportunities that they’ve arranged for themselves.



















* This is terribly incompetent timing on the part of the writers, incidentally.  As the environmentalist version of a vigilante herself, her presence could potentially have allowed for a lot of characterization and exploration of Yuri’s vigilantism through the fact that she, unlike the rest of the party, has the capacity to identify with what he’s doing.  And that, in turn, could have led to more nuanced and fulfilling conversations with the others on the matter.  But that’s all just thrown out the window, because the plot demands that Judith run off on her own immediately after Yuri’s actions have been exposed, and by the time she returns, the moment for exploiting this potential has long since passed.

I mean, sure, Tales of Vesperia completely drops the ball on appropriately using the characters that DO stay in the party to any meaningful purpose as regards Yuri’s vigilantism, so there’s no reason whatsoever to assume that it would have done anything useful with Judy’s potential on this matter...but it’s still stupid to pace your plot out in a way that denies you opportunities for character development, even when you’d just squander those chances anyway.


** Although I’d argue that part of that is largely because Tales of Vesperia keeps dropping the ball when it comes to exploring Karol’s depth of character and potential, giving the kid a half-effort every time the writers work with him.


*** Also muddying the issue is the fact that Belius’s death is really mostly the fault of Estelle’s inability to hesitate for a single goddamn second before hurling healing spells at anyone who’s so much as nicked themselves while shaving.  That battle wasn’t really going particularly badly before Estelle went and drove Belius berserk.  Belius’s death is more the fault of the bad, dumb luck of a bad, dumb princess than anything Yaeger could have planned; really, she was just 1 accidentally stubbed toe in Estelle’s presence away from it, anyway.

Pokemon Generation 9's Add-Ons

I genuinely have no idea what I feel right now.  Normally I’m pessimistic going into a game’s downloadable content, particularly for a Nintendo venture, but my last foray into a Nintendo RPG’s DLC suite was actually pretty positive.  So maybe I should be optimistic!  On the other hand, the add-ons for the last Pokemon game were predictably bad, and that was both more recent and for the same series, so likely there’s more call for pessimism.  Then again, bad though they were, Generation 8 was such irredeemable, lazy trash as a whole that its merely regular-bad DLCs were nonetheless its best quality!

Meh, I guess the answer is to stop waffling and just get started already.  Here we go!



The Teal Mask: This little adventure sees the protagonist go on an extended field trip to a new area in the countryside, and partake in a quest to exonerate a Pokemon that’s been wrongly vilified by the nearby village for ages.  It’s a mixed bag, but pleasant overall.  On the upside, the primary new characters involved are decent (Carmine is, in fact, strangely very likable to me), and the overall plot has a pleasant feeling of authenticity to its theme of local legends, traditions, and festivals; it seems like the kind of story that could have been an arc in Okami.  I also find it interesting that an element of the backstory to this DLC’s town is that a friendly and well-meaning stranger and his Pokemon were chased out of town for the fact that they looked different, while a trio of thieving, violent charlatans who looked more “normal” were embraced by the community and even eventually venerated as heroes--this year I’ve played Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 and watched I’m in Love with the Villainess, and I’m starting to get the distinct impression that the creatives of Japan are rapidly losing their patience and abandoning light touches and analogies in favor of direct, outright criticisms of the problems of their society.

Most of all, I approve of making a story that involves its lead Pokemon as a major participant, an actual character, rather than just a non-entity that amounts to no more than a prize.  This trend of valuing the occasional Pokemon as an actor in the drama that Generation 7 began with Nebbie, Generation 8 very lightly continued in its DLCs with Kubfu and Calyrex, and Generation 9 incorporated with Koraidon and Miraidon, is probably at its best here with Ogerpon.  She actually does have a bit of a personality, and a character arc, and I approve of each tiny little step Nintendo takes (even if unintentional) towards an eventuality where Pokemon games actually value and are about Pokemon, as entities.  As an individual that you actually assist, who’s shown to have her own feelings and opinions, and, hugely, one who gets to actually choose to become the protagonist’s partner out of her own goddamn free will, Ogerpon’s a great possible step forward for the franchise in terms of its narrative potential.  Doubtless it won’t come to anything for a long while, if ever--I’m done with my previous naive optimism about that--but it’s still good to see.  Oh, and the fight against Ogerpon to prove that you’re worthy of her is actually pretty cool, even epic.

But there are downsides to The Teal Mask, too.  While plenty of older Pokemon are added to Generation 9 through this DLC, there are very few outright new Pokemon to be found, and most of them are pretty dumb.  I can’t believe that the fucking apple pie Pokemon is no longer the dumbest version of its evolutionary family, and a matcha tea Pokemon?  Really?  Actually fucking really?  Nintendo really looked at their keyring Pokemon and said to itself, “I know I can never recapture the magic of Garbodor, but I think I can still do worse than this”?  And, related, the villains of this piece are pretty lame, too, which lessens the story of Ogerpon’s vindication a bit.

I also will say that the way this add-on’s story concludes is, on a certain level, dissatisfying.  To me, it feels wrong that Ogerpon chooses to go gallivanting off with Juliana/Florian.  Sure, she/he has helped Ogerpon defeat the Loyal 3 and clear her name, and been a friend to the Pokemon after presumably centuries of loneliness.  But Kieran also assisted and was only not involved from the start because his sister made the dumbass decision not to tell him about what was going on, and whereas Juliana/Florian just blew into town earlier this week, Kieran has spent his whole life feeling instinctive sympathy for the maligned Ogerpon, and trying to find and befriend her.  It feels like Juliana/Florian just inserted her/himself into someone else’s heartwarming Pokemon story, and yoinked the happy ending to it for her/his own.  I understand that this ending is needed to set up Kieran’s going all Vegeta on us* in the next DLC, and I even actually respect some of the intent behind that, but it still feels like an unfair and out-of-place turn of events.

Still, as a whole, I actually like this add-on well enough.  I’m not going to judge whether or not it’s worth buying just yet, though, because all of Pokemon Generation 9’s add-ons are sold together rather than separately, so we’ll hold off on figuring that out until the end.  Still, there’s reason for at least a little optimism!


The Indigo Disk: This DLC package is a continuation of the story of The Teal Mask, in which the protagonist gets involved in an exchange program with another academy, notably the one that Carmine and Kieran attend.  And I have to say, I’m impressed with the amount of content to be found.  There’s a lot to The Indigo Disk!

You start off with a storyline where you find out that since losing his match to Juliana/Florian and watching Ogerpon choose her/him over Kieran, the kid’s adopted a try-hard anime tough-guy attitude, and made his school’s Pokemon training club a no-fun zone.  It’s the protagonist’s job to battle her/his way up the ranks to challenge and defeat Kieran in order to knock some sense into him and restore his club to being about the fun kind of competition, which...well, it’s not exactly an interesting premise, but on the other hand, “beat some trainers, beat the champion, be the best” is the boring default of Pokemon narratives anyway, so just the fact that The Indigo Disk bothered to create a reason for becoming the academy Champion beyond “Because it’s there!” or “Because it’ll shut Nemona up!” is at least a step in the right direction.

Besides, I happen to very much like the idea of Kieran, a regular guy, being pushed over the edge because he can recognize the gross, cosmic unfairness of Protagonist Privilege.  It’s not just Ogerpon--Juliana/Florian gets the best Pokemon, she/he gets to travel as she/he pleases, everyone seems to like her off the bat or becomes her friend through, let’s face it, very little real effort...meanwhile, Kieran’s stuck as an introverted kid limited by reality in what he can achieve, forced to give up on a Pokemon he had a legitimate emotional claim to for no apparent reason beyond the fact that it’s a 1-of-a-kind and thus HAS to belong to the player.  I like it when games force us to look at our player privilege and confront that our demands of wish-fulfillment from games might in fact be an unhealthy, destructive kind of mindset and behavior.  It’s not Undertale or Doki Doki Literature Club or Nier: Automata, but this story of Kieran’s frustration still clearly touches upon this notion of looking at ourselves as players and asking critical questions.

Unfortunately, the resolution to this is basically just Kieran seeing the danger his fixation caused, and giving up on beating Juliana and asserting himself over the Player Character.  Turning away from obsession is a good thing, of course, but at the same time, it feels like Nintendo was approaching a thoughtful discourse but chickened out before anything could be meaningfully explored--not an unknown phenomenon when it comes to Pokemon.  A more brave and passionate creator would have done interesting things with this scenario, but Nintendo clings to Pokemon’s status quo the way Bethesda clings to its Creation engine--unreasonably and to the expense of its own creations.

Still, both parts of The Indigo Disk’s story are okay enough, and there’s a LOT that comes with them.  The first part necessitates traveling through a large, multi-biome conservatory as big as any given zone of the main game, to challenge a new stable of Elite 4 in both minigames and actual battle, which is a sizable endeavor.  The new Elite 4 also have a little personality to them,** too, which frankly I thought was really lacking in the Gym Leaders of Generation 9’s main game.  Combine that with the second part of the DLC being an exploration of a sizable cave below Area 0, and you have an add-on with a pretty wide scope overall.

The new Pokemon are mostly pretty cool (and Terapogos is adorable).  A new sidequest is added where you help Team Star with some tutoring...it’s a pretty decent little side thing that helps better expand and cement their personalities and team dynamic, which is a positive gesture since they really didn’t get as much characterization in the main quest as they probably should have.  And there’s a ton of new cosmetics and emotes, if you actually care about that.  Sadly, most of the ones you can get at auction are stupid, but at least you can be Cyclops now.

Finally, there’s also, when you’ve finished the main story, a secret post-story scene you can find at the Crystal Lake from The Teal Mask involving the game’s professor.  It somehow feels very meaningful and significant, even though Sada is, really, merely a long-gone villainous legacy.  The fact that a scene with her can make such a poignant and positive impression is interesting, really.  Regardless, it’s a nice experience.

So yeah, there’s a LOT of content in The Indigo Disk.  I’m genuinely, pleasantly surprised by how much there is to do in it; this add-on is really more like an expansion than a typical downloadable content.  And it even has some deft touches of flavor and creative care here and there along the way--I really like the fact that if you bring Ogerpon out when battling Carmine, she’ll recognize it and comment on it, and that if you use Ogerpon during the battle with Kieran, he’ll likewise see her and react with strong hurt and anger.  Pokemon REALLY needs to incorporate little personal touches like this in its major battles more often; it added such great, raw drama to the battle!

With a lot of content, a reasonably okay story for Kieran (even if it did disappoint by not living up to what it could have been), a few cool new Pokemon, and some laudable care put into its method, I think it’s safe to conclude that The Indigo Disk is actually a pretty good DLC, too.  I think I liked The Teal Mask a little more simply because I think Ogerpon’s story is a bit better, but things are still looking optimistic.


Mochi Mayhem: This is so fucking dumb.  Like...holy shit, this is so.  Fucking.  DUMB.

Okay, so this DLC is a mini-adventure that takes place as an epilogue to The Teal Mask and The Indigo Disk.  In this add-on, Juliana/Florian’s friends from the main story of Generation 9 (Nemona, Arven, and Penny) come along with Juliana/Florian to meet up with her/his friends from the DLC story (Carmine and Kieran) and hang out.  And that’s actually a pretty good concept for a little finale episode to Generation 9!  Because the protagonist’s connections to both friend groups formed the backbone for each of Generation 9’s major stories--Juliana’s story has been that of forming friendships and both helping and being helped by those friends.  It feels very right to bring the 2 groups together and to have that be the ending note of this game.

But then once that’s going on, this thing happens where people are eating purple mochi that turn them into a Pokemon’s mind-controlled zombies who do...who...who do the...the funky chicken dance as they shout “Mochi Mochi” and try to battle you.  As the rest of Juliana/Florian’s friends are controlled, it’s up to her/him and Kieran to defeat the Pokemon causing it.

This is a fetish thing, isn’t it?  That’s the only explanation I can really think of.  Someone on the Generation 9 team has a weird kink for mind-controlled girls doing weird little dances, and the rest of the writers finally let them have a turn at the script to shut them up.  There’s just no way something this fucking dumb and bizarrely out there came about from anything other than some deeply buried tag on Archive of Our Own.  I’d stake half of my entire readership on it.***

That said, even if it’s dumb as hell, I suppose it’s harmlessly silly-dumb, and thus, I guess, not really bad, per say.  But it does kind of suck that something this weak is the last impression of the game you’re left with.  Also a little annoying that, as the first one affected, there’s basically no Carmine in this DLC; she already had to take a decidedly backseat role in The Indigo Disk to Kieran’s story, so it would have been much better to have switched her and Kieran’s role in this so that she’s the one helping Juliana/Florian through to the end and Kieran’s Patient 0, balance things out a bit.  But eh, whatever.  This thing’s barely worth the time it takes to play it.


Purchase or Purse-Pass?  So here’s the thing.  Is The Teal Mask pretty good?  Yeah.  Is The Indigo Disk also pretty good?  Yes.  Is Mochi Mayhem at least not a net negative?  Ehhhhh, I guess.  But are they good overall and going to provide you with 35 hours of gameplay?

No.

And that’s the problem.  All in all, the combined content of Pokemon Generation 9’s add-ons is probably gonna give you between 20 and 25 hours of gameplay.  Which is a TON!  This absolutely should be viewed as an expansion and no less.  But the combined cost is a staggering $35.  Over half the cost of the actual game!  And I’m just not ready to abandon the metric of $1 = 1 hour of content for DLCs.  That day is coming, but it’s not here, and even when it gets here, it’ll still probably have a hard time justifying this particular purchase.

Still, this expansion package IS good as a whole, and I genuinely like a lot of it, so I can at least say that when it’s on sale or its price has dropped to $25 or lower, then it’ll be worth the price.



Well, even if I can’t recommend it as of this moment, the quality of Pokemon Generation 9’s add-ons is generally positive, and that by itself is a pretty unusual occurrence when it comes to DLC, so all said, I’m pretty pleased with this state of affairs.  I’ve no doubt that the good mood that Fire Emblem 15’s DLC put me in won’t last for much longer, but it’s certainly nice that it’s managed to prolong for more than a single game.  Who knows, maybe we’ll even be able to start a streak of good add-on experiences!











* I don’t get it when Pokemon trainers start talking about becoming stronger.  With the exception of Bea, who is actually fucking hardcore...they’re not.  Their strength has absolutely nothing to do with Pokemon battling; it’s the damn Pokemon who do everything and whose strength is tested.  The most personal strength you contribute to any given Pokemon match is simply having the physical capacity to lightly toss a ball onto the ground a few feet away, asshole, so take your scrawny little kid physique over to the corner, shut the fuck up, and stop trying to take credit for the ones actually putting in the work.


** Crispin’s kind of an idiot, though.  These are 2 actual quotes by the man:

“I love battles and I love cooking ‘cause they’re both so easy to understand!  In battles, you either win or lose!  With cooking, your dish is either spicy or not spicy!”  
“I’ve got no clue how to manage the temperature of anything besides what I’m cooking.”

Crispin, your entire existence is defined by 2 things: being a Fire Type trainer, and having a frying pan.  And you have basically just told us that you should never, ever be allowed near either.


*** You hear that, Ecclesiastes?  We’re slicing you right down the middle if I turn out to be wrong.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5's Social Links' Rank 11

Under normal circumstances, Social Links in the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona franchise are a series of 10 scenes long.  Among the many features and quirks of the post-game adventure added for the rerelease of Persona 5, however, is the opportunity to have a new, eleventh rank with the game’s party members, provided that the player has fully maxed out the Social Link prior to the end of the game’s main adventure.  Social Links tend to be my favorite parts of a Persona, and I’m quite fond of most of SMTP5’s main cast, so this was certainly 1 of the parts of the post-game adventure which I most anticipated.  But unfortunately, they’re by and large disappointing, and are the most tacked-on feeling part of the rerelease’s new content.

Here’s the first main problem: these eleventh rank scenes are almost* completely uniform across the cast.  Every party member during the game underwent his or her own individually-tailored side story of personal growth for each one’s Social Link, and these vignettes within the larger tale served well as a way of further characterizing the game’s cast beyond just their role in the events of the main plot.  The Social Link for Haru, in which she works to find her place and future in her company and learns how to believe in her goal of sharing the bounties of the world with others, is completely different from the Social Link for, say, Futaba, whose story is focused on her overcoming her social anxiety, and through doing so making peace with her mother’s passing.  From Yusuke sorting himself out through his art to Ryuji finding a way to positively conclude and move forward from his history with the track team to the jumbled, directionless mess that is Ann’s Social Link, each major character’s subplot is distinctly true to them, and would very obviously fit none of the others.

And yet with the necessary exceptions of Yoshizawa and that asshat Akechi, the eleventh Social Link scene for the rest of Ren’s friends is in all significant ways the same across the board!  Each time, the companion invites Ren to her/his room, saying that she/he needs to talk seriously with him.  Once there, the important, heartfelt discussion is basically a sincere, fervent apology that the party member allowed her/himself to be caught in Maruki’s illusion, and a solemn oath to never leave Ren hanging like that again.  At this point, the friend awakens to her/his third and final Persona form, you either giggle or roll your eyes at how immensely dumb/silly/underwhelming said Persona looks, and they part ways.  

It’s really disappointing, honestly.  While each companion may reference previous moments of her/his Social Link and the way Ren was there for her/him, this final, extra scene clearly has no real connection to the events that preceded it.  This scene doesn’t feel like a new iteration of this person’s story, it feels like a fucking form letter, and that’s precisely how the writers use it!

And in addition to how impersonal and lazy this sence-repeated apology is, it’s also honestly really freaking dumb.  All of Ren’s friends are like, “I am so, SO sorry I wasn't there for you my bra!  That was my B, totes won’t happen again.  Seriously, I am more personally ashamed of myself than I have ever been before at the way that I BETRAYED you like that, dawg!”  Like, somehow, feeling guilty over this supposed offense they’ve committed against Ren is a more powerful and life-changing event than the entirety of their shared 10-part Social Link story that preceded this moment.  The clouds having parted for Makoto and revealed what she wants to do with her life, how she will honor her father’s memory and integrity and do right by herself and those she cares about, was apparently a less important part of her life in Rank 10 than her pledging to have Ren’s back next time in Rank 11.  Yusuke coming to understand the complexity of the human heart and discovering his purpose as an artist was somehow less of a milestone within his psyche than his decision to say “I got you my G.”  If you’re gonna have a scene that unleashes a new, greater cognitive will within a character as their heart and mind reach a new level of clarity, it had goddamn better be based on more than a copy-pasted apology!

A copy-pasted apology over nothing, I might add.  Let us not forget the foundation for this massive self-recrimination: when a guy came and asked these kids whether they thought their lives could be better, they said yes.  With the guilt they’re carrying around and the gravity of their apologies, you’d think the Phantom Thieves had all taken part in an Ides-of-March stabbing spree against Ren or something.  Guys, for 3 of you, the transgression you’re agonizing over was Maruki passing you a note that read “Would you like your parents to be alive again?” with a spot underneath for you to check Yes or No.  Like, Jesus, Ann, you’re apologizing and asking forgiveness because when asked, you agreed that yes, it would be pretty cool if the person you love most in the world hadn’t been in such suffering that she’d tried to end her life!  I think the fact that Yusuke’s wish that his father figure hadn’t turned out to be a plagiarizing manipulating dirtbag leading to art-boy briefly detaching from Ren’s combat party for a week or 2 deserves, at most, a “Whoopsy, sorry I got tricked. No worries, I’m up to speed now.”

It’s not even like it was a conscious decision they made!  Maruki just dropped everyone into this happier reality sans preamble or explanation, and at least some level of hypnotic influence was involved in the matter!  Futaba’s over here consumed with shame for supposedly betraying Ren just because when she woke up to a world where her mother hadn’t been killed before her eyes, with an actual layer of mind control telling her that this was normal reality, she didn’t immediately recoil in disgust and holler, “NO WAY JOSE, I PREFER MY MOM DEAD THANK YOU VERY MUCH!”  Like, you can, with some time and thought, reason your way to understanding that Maruki’s seemingly perfect reality of escapism isn’t the right answer to one’s problems no matter how well-meaning, but without some introspection on the matter to figure out what’s wrong with it, accepting the gift of having the worst moments of your life erased is a pretty natural knee-jerk reaction, certainly nothing to beat yourself up over!

What instigated this angst, anyway?  It’s not like Ren’s been particularly hurt or inconvenienced by it.  They still came riding to his rescue when he needed them most.  It’s not like he’s been taking his friends to task over this matter; all of Ren’s dialogue options when reminding his allies that this reality isn’t right were pretty neutral, as is typical of the guy, or even slightly apologetic for having to drag them away from a happier existence.  Ren hasn’t been acting upset about his friends being initially misled by Maruki.  And frankly, if the guy HAD been getting salty about Ryuji getting to return to his dreams of success and acceptance as a track star, or Haru being able to see what life would have been like if her father had actually loved her, then he would’ve been overreacting and being a shitty friend.  Even if it’s for their own good, it’s Ren’s friends who are giving up something major in their lives to come back and fight at his side again, so I don’t know why they’re all apologizing like HE’S the injured party here!

There was a better way to do this.  I mean, okay, several better ways, the best of which being not to have a 1-size-fits-all scene slapped onto 7 highly different people and instead just have each character’s Rank 11 actually BE a continuation of their Social Link, a new and significant conclusion that actually warrants an awakening to their final and ultimate Persona.  But if Atlus was going to insist on running the final Social Link installments through a mimeograph, there was still a way to make it a less downright silly, illogical matter.  Instead of having Ren’s friends prostrating themselves in anguished repentance before him over nothing, how about instead, the eleventh Social Rank scene is Ren apologizing to them for the fact that he’s made them choose between a painless reality, and his own ideals of facing the world as it is and overcoming adversity rather than fleeing from it.

Think about how much better and more sensible this is.  THEY are the ones who have given something up, even if, again, it IS for the best in the long run, in order to support Ren.  Ren is the one who spurred them to face this question of which reality is right.  And it was for Ren’s sake that they first bucked Maruki’s influence.  Rather than them feeling like they’ve wronged him, Ren is the one who more naturally should feel the need to apologize to them, even if he is, indeed, in the right of the matter.  And from there, you can have Ren’s friend reassure Ren that he doesn’t need to apologize, because the friend now understands why they have to stand against Maruki and that giving up that painless reality was for the better.  Finally, the friend reaffirms that they’re with Ren all the way, acknowledging that the friendship he and they share is so great that nothing can keep them from being there for each other for long.  With this new understanding of just how deep their bonds of friendship (and/or romance) go, the friend’s third and greatest Persona awakens, and they and Ren part ways, more sure than ever of their commitment to and support for one another.  It’s no literary masterwork, to be sure, but it’s still an easy scenario that I just concocted off the top of my head that would work far better logically and emotionally than the nonsense we got!

Honestly, I have very few significant complaints about Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5, be it the game’s main story or the added postgame adventure.  It’s an excellent title in nearly every capacity.  But if I had to name Persona 5’s most glaring fault, it would be...well, okay, it would be the fact that it tries to pretend that Akechi is anything more than a shallow, irredeemable asswipe.  But the second fault would be...well, alright, that would probably be the fact that it didn’t know when to quit in its main story and the whole Holy Grail thing was a way, way less appropriate, compelling, and satisfying main villain than Shido would have been.  But look, the eleventh Social Link situation is at least still way up there when it comes to SMTP5’s few real shortcomings.  It’s a weak and disinterested approach to each main character’s last spotlight moment in the game as it reduces them all to a single format, it’s emotionally inconsistent as it cheapens previous emotional breakthroughs by attaching their greatest awakenings to such a mediocre and routine interaction, and the context makes the content of these scenes irrational, even silly.  The eleventh Social Link ranks in SMT Persona 5 were handled poorly, plain and simple.












* Yoshizawa and Akechi do, at least, get eleventh rank scenes that are somewhat more tailored to their actual Social Link stories.  Although Yoshizawa's’s is only so-so, and Akechi’s is on-brand for Akechi, as in it’s mostly just him being a douchebag as Ren pretends that there’s some hidden significance to it.