Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 1's Marche's Wish Theories

I seem to have been getting quite a few ideas lately from (what passes for) my social interactions.  I did that Fallout rant based on a Youtube comment, that thing on Shadow was born of a running gag during 1 of Icy Brian’s streams (and there's actually more to come on that front), and now I’m recycling a conversation I had with the eternally esteemed Ecclesiastes.  Clearly this means that I’m out of my own ideas for rants, should actually try interacting with other human beings more often, or both.  Either way, thanks for yet again dropping a great rant possibility into my lap, sir!



So, Ecclesiastes came to me the other day with a question that had been nagging him for a bit.  Requesting that I recall good old Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 1, he reminded me that the story of the game is essentially that the Gran Grimoire, a powerful magical book, transforms the real town of St. Ivalice into a fantasy world, as a way of fulfilling Mewt’s desire to be reunited with his recently deceased mother and have his family be complete and happy once more.  In the process, the Gran Grimoire also grants those who were close to Mewt that afternoon their own desires--Mewt’s dad Cid regains his confidence and sense of purpose as he becomes a Judgemaster, and, of course, benefits from his wife now being alive again,* Mewt’s friend Ritz (who was bullied for her white hair) now has naturally pigmented hair, and Mewt’s new friend Doned (a sickly boy who cannot walk) is made healthy and given full autonomous mobility.  While the Gran Grimoire has rearranged reality most notably for Mewt, everyone who had been near him the day he found the book and chanted the words he found within it has been given a gift, and we can reasonably work under the assumption that this gift is the thing which each person desired most.

Except for our protagonist, Marche.  While Marche gets to take part in the fun of adventures in Ivalice as much as any of his peers, there is no obvious boon tailored to his needs that has been given to him, as has been to the others.  And this seemed peculiar to Ecclesiastes--to quote him, “What does Marche get?  Are those other changes partly what Marche wished for, if indirectly?  Did he not have an easy desire for an outsider to guess at?”

I gave the matter some thought, and soon had a working theory.  I then almost immediately discarded this perfectly functional theory for a crazier second one that came to me which I liked way more, because I am capricious.  But let’s start with the initial theory anyway

So, first theory is simple: Marche does have a wish granted by the Gran Grimoire, but because the desires in his life are much less keenly felt and extreme than those of the others, it’s a subtle enough boon that neither Marche nor we the audience really pick up on it.  

Basically, looking at Marche at the beginning of the game, I can only really figure 3 possible major avenues of desire from what we know about him altogether.  They are:

1. Wishing that his brother Doned’s situation was better.  This is a noble, selfless wish, which at least partly seems true to Marche’s character, and also has no competition from a stronger, selfish wish, so it’s reasonable to think that this is probably the strongest wish Marche possesses, at least given what information we have on his life.

2. Longing for the comfort, security, and belonging of home.  This selfish desire is the second most powerful desire we can reasonably attribute to Marche, and the one most relevant to us.  I’ll explain it below.

3. Wishing that the life situations of his new friends Ritz and Mewt were better.  This selfless want is ranked lowest, because he only just met Ritz and Mewt, but it’s reasonable to assume that it’s there and a relevant part of Marche’s heart, particularly if the Gran Grimoire decides to grant their wishes at the time of Mewt showing it to his friends (since, at that moment, Ritz and Mewt’s difficulties are fresh in Marche’s mind).

So, looking at those wishes, we can see that 1 and 3 are both granted by the Gran Grimoire anyway, and are seen and presumed to be the results of Ritz and Mewt’s own hearts more than Marche’s.  So let’s look at the only wish we can really infer Marche would have which is not already taken care of: 2.

Marche has just moved to a new town, and while it doesn’t seem to be a terribly traumatizing experience, it clearly does weigh on him, as it would for any kid.  The concept of “home” is an exceptionally important one to us as a species, a vital component of a healthy mental landscape, and all the more pronounced for a child, to whom the world is still very large and foreboding in many ways.  It’s safe to say that the only relevant selfish desire Marche would have is to be “home.”  BUT, that doesn’t HAVE to be an exact location, necessarily--think of the concept of “home” that we all need as a box on a form, upon which we stamp an image of a specific place and the people associated with it.  For all intents and purposes, that IS “home” because it’s on our form, but technically, it’s just the representation we’ve given to the concept, the stamp we’ve put there.  What’s important is what the box itself requires--security, comfort, belonging, etc.  The image stamped there can be swapped for another; most of us have more than 1 “home” in our lives.

What I’m getting at is that the Gran Grimoire doesn’t have to just recreate Marche’s old house, school, and friend group to satisfy the desires Marche has as a kid who’s moved to a new place.  It just has to make him feel comfortable, happy, and like he belongs, to a reasonable degree.  Furthermore, given that Marche seems to be very big on the “face the reality of your problems instead of hiding from them” thing, a direct recreation of his old neighborhood probably wouldn’t have worked, anyway.  So how did the granting of this wish manifest itself?  Well, first of all, the catch-all clause of safety in most of Ivalice applies as much to Marche as anyone else, so the security thing is covered automatically.

More to the point, though...I think Montblanc is the Gran Grimoire’s manifestation of Marche’s desire.  Montblanc runs into Marche almost immediately in Ivalice, quickly and easily forms a friendship with him, and acts as the kid’s guide to this fantasy world, without asking anything in return.  Additionally, he invites Marche into his clan, and stands by his side no matter what.  Montblanc is a pillar of loyalty and friendly stability to Marche (even when Marche decides to stand against the very foundations of the world and unravel it completely) and a trustworthy guide to the new and unfamiliar, and his appearance and immediate friendliness to Marche are so convenient that it would be absolutely no stretch of the imagination to interpret them as divine providence.  And for a child wishing for the sensation of “home” he has recently lost, what could be better than a new friend, a guide to anything and everything unfamiliar, and a welcoming clan to make a new home with?

So that’s my first theory: A, that the only significant wish that Marche, as a new kid in town, could have for himself involves recapturing the comfort of being at home somewhere, B, that recreating his old home isn’t necessary so long as a new one could be made to adequately take its place (and, again, that Marche’s own personality would make such a recreation doomed to failure), and, thus, C, that Montblanc is the representation of that wish being granted, in being someone who provides friendship, guidance, and a place to belong to for Marche.  We and Marche himself simply don’t realize this from the outset because it’s a substantially less attention-getting method of granting a wish than dyed hair, an homage to Dr. Strangelove ditching the chair, or Death having to go backsies on reaping someone.**

Pretty decent, right?  Seems reasonable enough, fits the character, explains everything tidily.  Good theory, if I say so myself.  We all satisfied with it?  Great!

Now throw that shit out the window, because it’s boring and this next shit is where it’s at!

What if it’s not that Marche is the only one who doesn’t get a wish granted?  Instead...what if he’s the only one who does?

Okay, well, actually, that’s a fun tagline, but it’s misleading.  More accurately, my theory is that the book is granting all of their wishes, but Marche’s is the only one that is actually important, and supercedes all the others.

Alright, so, here’s the problem with my first theory: while it is absolutely reasonable to infer that the only great wish that Marche could have to be granted that isn’t already covered by the others’ wishes is related to his being a new kid, it is, nonetheless, something we mostly have to infer for ourselves.  It’s an assumption based on people as a general rule, rather than specifically on Marche himself.  While he displays enough mild hesitation and seeking behavior for it to be logical to believe he has issues with being the new kid, you could also easily and just as logically believe that he’s handling the situation pretty well.

But there are a couple of personal qualities that we do KNOW that Marche possesses, from observation of him throughout the course of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 1.  The first is that he cares for the well-being of others, being a decent person.  And the second is his most defining trait: an uncompromising belief in facing reality when it is unpleasant.  This isn’t a contradiction of his empathy, but rather a function of it, because he recognizes that what happiness you can receive from escapism is not real, cannot and should not last, and is less whole than the happiness and life worth you achieve by facing your griefs, accepting them, and moving forward.

So given that these are 2 of the strongest and most demonstrable personal qualities that we can see in Marche as a person, I ask: what if, when looking at the Gran Grimoire, surrounded by Mewt, Ritz, and Doned, children who all are bearing such burdens of pain that Marche has recently witnessed (and in Doned’s case, has long known of), the greatest desire in Marche’s heart, at that moment, was that the people around him could be happier?

No specific wish.  No contract of “I, the undersigned, do knowingly beseech any and all deities or entities, objects, or other beings of divinity within range of observation to extend their godly, magical, or occult abilities and experience to the effect of perma-dyin’ yon shorty’s hair pink, yo.”  Just an undefined but strongly-felt keening that the people before him could be relieved of their suffering over the inescapable misfortunes of their lives.

What does the Gran Grimoire do if that’s Marche’s wish?  Oh, certainly, it’s already planning to whip up a Palet Special*** for Mewt, give Doned his walking papers in a good way, and do the ol’ palette-swap for Ritz, but none of that is going to grant Marche’s desire.  Because Marche’s desire wouldn’t be for a false, escapist happiness for the others, it would be for the more real, lasting, and healthy relief to their suffering that results from accepting and coming to terms with problems, and moving forward.  Again, not something that he could put into words, but whatever ability the Gran Grimoire has to read Marche’s heart would surely find desires for his friends’ happiness clearly distinguishable from the versions of happiness that his friends were themselves thinking of.

So what’s the Gran Grimoire do?  It creates Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 1.  Not just Ivalice and its fun and games--I mean, it creates the events, the story, the adventure as a whole.  The book sets the stage, and acts on that stage as antagonist in the form of Remedi/Li Grim, for Marche to go on the journey that forces his friends to face reality and come to terms with life.  The story of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 1 is, in fact, the unfolding story of Marche’s wish for Mewt, Ritz, and Doned to make peace with their lives and be happier.

There’s no conflict between Marche’s desire and the wishes of the others.  Mewt still gets his mom and functional family, Ritz gets her hair, the Scarecrow gets his brains, and Doned gets his health.  They just don’t necessarily get to keep them.  And in the process of losing those gifts, they gain an acceptance and potential for happiness that functions as a better replacement.

There’s also no conflict in the fact that this situation forces Marche to go out and accomplish his wish himself (as opposed to the rest of them being given by the Gran Grimoire outright).  Because, really, an immediate, magical fix that changes the others’ minds and hearts to be happier, if such a thing is even within the Gran Grimoire’s power, most likely wouldn’t be a way that Marche would approve of or accept.  Going out and facing the hard realities of the situation in order to get to a better place is definitely an on-brand style of wish fulfillment for him.

Heck, if we look at the game’s story as a stage set by the Gran Grimoire with the intention of helping the kids get to a better place with Marche’s help, certain other details start to slide into place, too.  Montblanc’s friendliness and initial guidance could be the Gran Grimoire’s gently putting Marche into place for the events to come--had he not been a part of Clan Nutsy and just been left to his own devices, Marche very well might not have met up with his friends at all (or at least not for a long time), and he wouldn’t have had the manpower of a clan backing him up on his quest to revert the world to what it should be.

There’s also the detail of Ritz’s situation.  While there are decent personality-related reasons for Ritz to have an all-Viera clan and be besties with Shara, it’s hard to completely ignore the fact that her closeness to Shara is a major part of what helps Ritz come to terms with having white hair in the real world.  1 of my favorite scenes in FFTA1 is of Ritz and Shara’s conversation toward the end of the game in which Shara tells her that the Viera (who Ritz clearly has grown to greatly respect from having worked with them) consider white hair in humans to be a blessing, and leads Ritz to realize that she considers the Viera’s white hair to be beautiful, which helps Ritz finally accept that white hair doesn’t have to be a curse, and in fact could be seen as something wonderful about her, since it’s something that connects her to a people she respects and loves.

It certainly is a fortuitous circumstance that Ritz just happened to be adopted into a clan consisting entirely of members of a white-haired race, who can show her through example just how strong, beautiful, and admirable such a woman can be.  Lucky enough, in fact, that it really isn’t hard to see the hand of the Gran Grimoire in this, putting Ritz in the position of being surrounded by exactly the kind of people she’ll need to be able to come to terms with the trait that’s caused her such misery until now.  While not a direct argument for it, I think it’s reasonable to say that Ritz’s situation and the process of her finding acceptance and happiness in her lot is, altogether, a decent piece of supporting evidence for the idea that the Gran Grimoire has created FFTA1’s stage with the intention of granting Marche’s wish for his friends to find a lasting and real happiness with their lives.

Now, Ecclesiastes did conjure up a point of dissension with this theory.  As he says, “in the introductory battle, Mewt has a single point of magic power, so it's apparent that he's the one who set things in motion. It doesn't mean Marche couldn't have shaped the magic after it woke up, but that goes further into "you can't disprove it" territory than I'm comfortable with.”  Now, myself, I view a lot of the stuff within combat scenarios as highly negligible as far its influence upon or representation of a game’s story elements, so this doesn’t really bother me at all to completely and totally disregard.  I also don’t really see it as an obstacle anyway, because even in a scenario where Marche’s desires are just along for the Gran Grimoire’s ride that Mewt summoned, that really doesn’t mean that it’s not Marche’s wish that has the most significance and effect--the other kids’ desires, Mewt’s included, can be accomplished as a precursor to Marche’s.  The only scenario where this magic point really disproves my theory is one in which Mewt’s wish is the only one granted by the book, and it’s HIM being kind to Ritz, Doned, and Marche that gives them hair pigment, health, and (maybe) Montblanc.  Which is a scenario I’d say has a lot more weight from the viewpoint that it’s Mewt’s book and incantation than anything to do with a single combat stat, anyway.

But anyway, that’s pretty much it, 2 theories to explain why Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 1’s Marche doesn’t have a noticeable gift granted by the Gran Grimoire when all the other kids did.  Take’em as you like; I’m personally quite fond of the second.















* This could just be a happy result of Mewt’s wish, though, and nothing drawn specifically from Cid’s heart.  He wasn’t 1 of those gathered around the book during that early scene, and Mewt’s desires would almost certainly be not only for his mother to still be alive, but for his family as a whole to be emotionally healthy and stable.  The fact that Cid does not initially remember, in the new Ivalice, his life in the real world, even though all the kids do, lends credence to the possibility that he’s just happily along for the ride of Mewt’s desires...although, Cid has, in the real world, taken up drink since his wife’s passing, from what I remember.  That kind of drinking problem is almost always connected to a desire to forget about one’s pain and troubles, so his memory loss in Fantasy Ivalice could still be a result of his own wishes being granted by the Gran Grimoire, an amnesia he would have actually desired.  It’s impossible to say whether the Gran Grimoire’s actions with Cid are a case of it fulfilling his own desires, or whether they’re simply an extension of Mewt’s wishes which just happen to be a pretty perfect representation of what Cid would have wanted anyway.

Totally irrelevant to the rant, or anything else, of course, and the result is the same regardless, but hey, wasting time talking about unimportant nonsense has never been something I’ve been afraid of.


** Another possible reason that this wish’s granting is so much more muted than the others could also just be the fact that it’s probably the least strongly-desired wish of the group.  Aside from the fact that the fact that wanting your mother not to be dead is generally going to be a stronger wish overall, Marche has had at least some of his fears at being a new kid assuaged by the point that the book could be scanning the kids’ hearts.  After all, a significant part of the fears involved in moving to a new place are social ones, anxiety over whether you’ll be able to make new friends and fit in.  Well, at that moment, Marche has made new friends, 2 of them.  Certainly he has just cause to still have social anxiety still (as his new friends are not going to help him fit in completely, and we’ve had a decent demonstration so far that bullies are going to be a problem in his future), but a decently significant part of Marche’s natural desire for belonging has been satisfied with Ritz and Mewt’s new friendship.  Thus, the potential strength of the wish within him that the Gran Grimoire would grant is likely less pronounced than it could be, and as a natural result, its fulfillment is subtler than that of the other kids’.


*** Figure out that reference, oh ye who claim to be RPG fans.

The Outer Worlds's Downloadable Content

On the 1 hand, my expectations for add-on content are understandably low.  On the other hand, the last game whose DLCs I experienced was Pokemon Generation 8, and it’s kind of hard to imagine that even a single member of Obsidian’s team could possibly have cared less about any part of The Outer Worlds than Game Freak cared about their own product.  Hell, I think most of the pedestrians who have happened to walk past the building housing Obsidian’s offices have probably put in more work on The Outer Worlds than any writer in Game Freak’s employ put into Pokemon Generation 8.  So there’s a good chance these things’ll at least be a step up from last time.



Peril on Gorgon: I found this DLC a bit puzzling to me, when I looked back on it.

See, it’s a good, solid DLC, overall.  It’s got a lot of little details that I noticed, enjoyed, and appreciated while going through it.  It starts off in a pretty interesting way.  There’s a fun temporary companion that can give SAM some specific dialogue interactions (which are just way too lacking in The Outer Worlds overall).  I like the moment that the game gives you a persuasion dialogue option to use Parvati’s romance with Junlei to get through an obstacle.  It’s cool that there are several additions to the stuff on the ship that you can find and collect.

And the add-on also has positives that are much more important than the above little details, too.  It’s a sizable venture, with a map the equal in size and exploration of any of the main game’s major areas.  The story is long and involved enough that you could probably get away with calling this an outright expansion.  Companions will all comment on the situations you find yourselves in, the same as they would for the main game’s quests, and as an additional nice touch, you can check in with them at various stages of the adventure to have them weigh in on the relevant developments of the story.  And the story as a whole is a decent one, exploring regrets of past sins, the tumultuous relationship of an emotionally estranged, yet not fully disconnected, mother and daughter, and, as always, the casual cruelty and inherently self-destructive mindset of corporations and the rich.  There are even aspects of the story that are outright elegant, really--I really enjoy the fact that the DLC’s (supposed) antagonist’s failure to stop the Stranger can be seen to boil down to a lack of ability to competently orchestrate their actions and hire adequate subordinates, subtly connecting to the idea, later on, that the antagonist needs the “lesser” mind that they have always dismissed as not brilliant enough, to organize and handle logistics for them.  That probably sounds vague and uninteresting because I’m trying to avoid spoilers here, but it IS cool, really!

But what puzzles me a bit is that while I can objectively say it’s a good DLC, I have to admit that I’m personally only kinda lukewarm on it.  I don’t dislike it or anything, but...I guess that I just don’t connect with it very strongly because a substantial part of this DLC’s emotional essence is rooted in the relationship between Minnie and her mother, and it just doesn’t really speak to me or draw me in.  Maybe Lillie and Lusamine in Pokemon Generation 7 spoiled me, I dunno, but I just don’t feel a lot of what I think I’m supposed to in this story of familial love, regret, resentment, and the divide between mother and daughter.

Additionally, I’m not sure I really get much from the purpose of the DLC.  The basis of Peril on Gorgon is eventually revealed to revolve around the existence of the marauders in The Outer Worlds, with the add-on revealing what creates them, and eventually culminating in the question of what the solution is to them and/or their creation.  And that’s nice, but at the same time, it sort of feels like a question being answered that we as an audience weren’t really asking...I don’t think anyone really questions the existence of raiders in Fallout, because the setting itself is enough of an explanation for them, and we likewise didn’t question marauders in The Outer Worlds, because while the physical nature of the setting may not be anywhere as terrible as the post-apocalypse, Halcyon’s pervasive crushing corporatism is explanation enough for why a number of people might mentally snap and begin to live as violent, feral psychos.  Raiders are raiders in Fallout for a number of reasons, sometimes by choice, sometimes by unfortunate circumstance, sometimes by madness, and the world of Fallout being such that it creates this kind of mindless evil is sensible and consistent with the series’s themes and environment.  That the marauders of The Outer Worlds are to be explained away by a single, overarching reason for their existence, just a single outside factor that eliminates questions of responsibility and limits the scope of their stories drastically...it feels like a rather clumsy and shortsighted narrative decision.

Not helping anything is the fact that the cause behind the marauders, and what it narratively makes them as a whole, strikes me as a case of The Outer Worlds finally going beyond mere homage to Firefly/Serenity, and becoming straightforward plagiarism.

So, my verdict is a muddled one here.  Peril on Gorgon is good--but it’s not as good as it should be, wants to be, and thinks that it is.  Peril on Gorgon might really work for you--but I, personally, couldn’t make enough of a connection to really get into it.  At $15, it’s a pricey DLC, but at the same time, you’re probably going to get around 15 hours out of it, and there’s really nothing about it that’s an outright problem or shortcoming.  I guess I tentatively recommend it at full price, and if you can get it on sale, then my recommendation stands on much firmer ground.


Murder on Eridanos: Oddly enough, I feel like Peril on Gorgon had greater ambitions and tried much harder to be a meaningful story...but I personally enjoyed Murder on Eridanos more.  The premise of this one is a fun change of pace, as the Stranger signs on to investigate a murder and figure out whodunnit, against the backdrop of a fancy hotel on a resort planet with a corporate-controlled fruit plantation and a spaceport run by basically the mob.  It’s a decent little story of investigating leads, finding oneself being drawn into a larger plot than was previously expected with a shadowy figure lurking just behind the entire time, culminating in a big plot twist and a final showdown.  It’s basically The Outer Worlds taking a lighthearted stab at Film Noir, except without the Noir at all because everything’s about colorful cereal berries.  Even got a Femme Fatale and everything.  Who, BTW, I won’t be naming, because spoilers, and whatnot.

What’s weird, though, is that Murder on Eridanos is as enjoyable as it is.  Oh, sure, there are plenty of moments and details that are unequivocally good and great--Felix as Bad Cop with Bertie is an absolute treasure, and once again I’m very pleased that the companions’ presence is as strong in this adventure as it was in Peril on Gorgon and in the main game, for example.  But there’s a lot about this add-on that falls flat, too.

For starters, it never really feels all that much like an actual murder mystery kind of adventure...the investigations and interrogations of suspects are pretty underwhelming stuff that’s obviously just fodder for providing more sidequests than actually building a murder mystery narrative.  There’s no intrigue, no one seems like a legitimate suspect but the perpetrator himself (and even then, it’s more for it being the most likely “twist” than anything related to deduction), there’s no strong central detective entity to tally up and ponder over the evidence and alibis and such...hell, not that this is all that important in and of itself, but even the aesthetic of the DLC gets in its own way, with its vaguely garishly colorful setting being quite good for the sci-fi adventure parts of the story, but not the promised detective premise.  If Obsidian was sincerely trying to create a murder mystery DLC here, then they were clearly completely and totally out of their element...and if they didn’t actually consider the murder mystery aspect of the DLC to be all that important to it, just a starting point, then unfortunately, they devoted way too much of the adventure’s time to the quests that are theoretically related to sleuthing.

Next, it is, frankly, really disappointing that when the Femme Fatale I mentioned enters into play on your side, all she does is stay in the hotel room while you do all the remaining legwork.  I mean, for real, what is with that?  For the first 70% of the DLC, she’s pursuing her own investigation, out there running down her leads and doing the work, with you always a step behind...and then when you finally do catch up with her, and join forces, she just retires to the suite and lets you do all the rest.  She isn’t even doing a commenting-from-afar thing like, say, Sylens in Horizon 0 Dawn, or the navigator in a Shin Megami Tensei: Persona title.  Considering her behavior before you caught up to her and the way she’s personally invested in the murder mystery, for the Femme Fatale not to be out in the field with you is a case of insanely poor writing.  Like, Anders-in-Dragon-Age-2-contrasted-to-Anders-in-Dragon-Age-1 levels of antithetical character behavior.  

She isn’t even there for the climax, for Norgorber’s sake!*  The entirety of Femme Fatale’s character is based around her emotional connection to the deceased, and yet she just passively sits out the showdown with [SPOILER]’s killer in a hotel room a mile away!  What the actual fuck?

Lastly, the conclusion of this add-on is rushed as all hell.  Once the main quest is finished and you’re on your way out, there’s little interaction to be had with Femme Fatale and Sederick (who are (potentially) the 2 remaining major figures of the DLC’s plot).  There’s no dialogue changes for almost any other important characters to reflect that the situation has been resolved (which, for Bertie and Spencer Woolrich, is especially neglectful if Femme Fatale made it out of this DLC alive).  The spaceport area of the map remains infected, even if you followed the story path of fixing that issue.  I can only assume that the developers were working on a harsh deadline, and man does it show.

With all that said, I reiterate that Murder on Eridanos is generally pretty fun.  It doesn’t have ambitions of significance the way Peril on Gorgon did, so I do respect the first DLC more, but at the same time, Murder on Eridanos manages to rise well enough above its flaws to be an enjoyable romp that will deliver a fairly satisfactory hit of more Outer Worlds fun for fans.  Now, it is flawed enough, and to less enough purpose, that I definitely don't recommend it at its $15 asking price, the way that I kind of did for Peril on Gorgon.  But if you can get it on sale for half off, maybe even at $10, then Murder on Eridanos is probably worth it.



And that’s all, at least for now--I’ve heard some people theorize that there might be more add-ons in The Outer Worlds’s future, but all reliable accounts I can find indicate that this is wishful thinking.  So, then, how did this game do?

Eh.  Okay, I guess.

Which still is something of a win, when it comes to add-ons, particularly considering that my last experience with a DLC was Nintendo extending the unworthy life of Pokemon Generation 8 further.  Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos each represent some of the lower moments of The Outer Worlds, and one might have hoped for far better from Obsidian just on principle, but there’s no denying that these content packs are better than average DLCs, at least.  No doubt I’ll reflect quite fondly on them when I play whatever terrible add-on I next encounter.








* And don’t go trying to tell me that there are any gameplay considerations that would rationally prevent her being involved.  It might’ve been too tall an order to coder Femme Fatale in as an actual party member, but as PAM in Peril on Gorgon demonstrates, it’s possible to have a non-party ally hanging around in any given interior location.  Easily could’ve done that here for at least the last dungeon of the DLC.

General RPG Lists: Greatest Romances

Time really does fly the older you get.  It seems like it wasn’t all that long ago that I was re-publishing this list because I’d hit the 200 mark of RPGs, and that seemed like it should warrant 10 places rather than 5.  But apparently that was 7 holy fuck that’s right 7 years ago, and I’ve doubled the RPGs I’ve played by this point.  And while the genre still is sadly not exactly bursting at the seams with deserving romances, because a good love story is the only thing that RPGs fumble with as often as writing a halfway decent villain, we’ve at least certainly hit the point that this rant should be lauding a few more of’em.  So we’re starting 2022 off right, with the Top 15 greatest RPG romances to date!

Ahem:



Y'know, when I went about deciding which couples would make it to this list, I found something out that greatly surprised me: there really weren't many strong contenders. For a genre that throws at least one major love story, or at least a romantic interest, into the strong majority of its games, there's not many RPG romances that are worthy of note. Most of them are either pointless and silly/inexplicable, or just rather generic and/or under-developed. I mean, where in the world does La Pucelle Tactics's Eclair and Homard's side romance come from? Do the romantic hints between Breath of Fire 3's Ryu and Nina serve any plot- or character-related purpose at all? Are we really meant to care about Tales of Phantasia's Cless and Mint's attraction when it's so bland and unconvincing? And how is it that, going back to La Pucelle Tactics, Prier and Croix so perfectly manage to combine all the problems above and have a love story that is pointless, silly, inexplicable, generic, AND under-developed all at once?

Still, there are definitely some good ones out there, too, and that includes several that didn't quite make it to this list. It just surprised me that the number was comparatively small to how many were available to choose from. Here, though, are the ones that I think are sweet and emotional enough to soften the heart of even the grumpiest of haters.

Spoilers, naturally, as love stories in RPGs are usually pretty heavily tied into the general plots.

UPDATE 12/12/24: Argon, Aurellia, Fluorine, Garnet, and Hinoki (A Dragon's ReQuest) have been added; Beast and Belle (Kingdom Hearts Series) have been bumped off.



15. Arueshelae and the 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.


14. Duchess Catherine and the Nereid (Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle)

While the majority of this couple’s interactions are simply the cute but largely insubstantial adorations of an amorous mermaid who can’t talk and just seems inexplicably smitten with Catherine, the final stage of this romance takes a sudden, very unexpected turn for the heavy and emotional, and establishes an abiding, unbreakable love across the distance of time and impossibility.  Within a short time, we see that Catherine and the Nereid, to even their own surprise, share the kind of bond powerful enough to inspire a person to die in place of the one she loves.  Powerful enough to inspire a person to devote the rest of her life and all her efforts to the benefit of the one she loves, even when she herself will never even be able to see the fruits of this labor.  Powerful enough to mean that a person simply can’t bring herself to live without the presence of the one she adores.  And powerful enough that the true depth of their devotion to one another is something that exists beyond what time and mortality can tear apart; it’s at their most distant that we see the greatest depth and authenticity of how much Catherine and the Nereid love one other.*


13. Dorothea and Manuela (Fire Emblem 16)

Since they already topped a similar list, I see no reason not to simply quote myself on the matter of Dorothea and Manuela:

From start to finish, the Support conversations between Dorothea and Manuela flawlessly extol to the viewer the perfect chemistry between them, as peers, friends, and so much more.  In the 2 of them we see a combination of women who inspire and better each other just by being themselves, without resorting to viewing one another as greater than each truly is--as much as they are about having such profound and overwhelming respect and affection that they’re each a role model for the other, Dorothea and Manuela’s interactions are also about acknowledging one another’s shortcomings and loving her no less for them.  Their sequence of conversations tells a heartwarming story of Dorothea chasing after the woman she loves and has always been inspired by, the one she wanted to stand alongside, and a moving and touching story of Manuela finding someone, finally finding someone, who loves her (and always has) for what’s good and great and important about Manuela, regardless of the small shortcomings that come with that.

It’s a wonderful, warm joining of 2 people made for each other, each seeking the exact kind of love that the other can give, and who hold onto one another as a source of personal inspiration to better themselves.  And the A Support is just beautiful, 1 of my favorite scenes of tender love in all of RPGs.  Whoever wrote Dorothea and Manuela’s relationship, I hope you got a damn raise, because you raised the bar and gave me happy butterflies in my tummy.


12. Argon, Aurellia, Fluorine, Garnet, and Hinoki (A Dragon's ReQuest)

Polyamorous relationships present all kinds of interesting opportunities, but, as might be expected with so complex and frankly uncontrollable a state and emotion as love, they're damned tricky to successfully make work, both in the realms of writing and real life.  But you CAN find the ways to genuinely make a romantic relationship between more than 2 people work, and in storytelling, it can make for a refreshingly different and no less compelling story of love.  I'm really pleased that most of the exceptionally few which I've encountered in RPGs have actually been very earnestly, passionately written by creators who clearly believed in their legitimacy.

Now as far as this particular 5-way love story (honestly closer to 6, really, as Chelisera's affections for the girls are treated as quite legitimate), Imma just quote a little someone I like to call "myself" here, as I like how I summed it up in my 2024 Annual Summary:

The love story of Hinoki and her companions is a long, engaged, and determined one that elegantly links the women in her life to her in genuinely touching scenes and dialogues that emotionally develop these superlative characters and their bonds with one another, while displaying each’s individual and nuanced social psyche.  The love stories that entwine in this polyamorous tapestry highlight and are born from shared histories, deeply rooted wants and insecurities, tender gestures of caring and understanding, personal traumas, moments of great internal courage and adventurousness, and undeniable chemistry.

Making it even better is the fact that this isn’t just a harem-esque polyamory centered around a single figure that all the others love (not that I don’t adore much of Duchess Catherine’s love life in Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle, mind)--it starts that way, with Hinoki as all the other women’s central figure of affection, but A Dragon’s ReQuest carefully, expertly brings Hinoki’s paramours together with their own moments and connections of love as time goes on, with each new couple in this love polyhedron discovering ardor for one another in their own, unique terms.  And no lack of effort or conviction is given to these “side” romances, either--Fluorine and Garnet’s feelings for each other are treated with the same respect and importance to them as people and as a couple with which each’s romance with Hinoki is treated, for example.  Honestly, one of most poignant scenes in the game (and one of my many favorites) is devoted to one of these "side" couples, the scene in which Fluorine and Aurellia allow physicality to finally find a way to connect and foray into new emotional territory together.  It’s lovely.  The whole game-spanning multifaceted love story of the main characters of the game is lovely.


11. Octavia,  Protagonist, and Regongar (Pathfinder: Kingmaker)

Right from the start, I thought it was really cool that the writers for Pathfinder: Kingmaker not only included options to pursue a polyamorous relationship in the game, without treating such pursuits with any disdain, or acting like they were a less legitimate emotional bond than the others in the game.  They didn’t treat the polyamorous romance like a punchline, they didn’t introduce it solely to argue that it’s dysfunctional or wrong or unnatural, they didn’t imply that it’s inherently something perverted.  Owlcat Games just wrote an actual love story for Octavia, Regongar, and the Queen/King of Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

And it’s really good!  While the other love stories of PK are no slouches (Nyrissa and the Queen/King came pretty close to making this list, too, in fact), this one is a fearsomely interesting and natural connection.  It establishes a pre-existing relationship between Octavia and Regongar that carries forward because of how genuine their feelings are, but is inherently flawed and out of balance.  But when the Queen/King is introduced as a third member of this relationship, we watch as she/he grows from a casual fling to someone that both Octavia and Regongar begin to sincerely love for her/his own sake...and in that growth, we also witness the Queen/King become the piece that’s been missing from Octavia and Regongar’s puzzle.  The game’s protagonist is the right kind of person to help Reg and Octavia each individually with their emotional conflicts and issues, guiding them to be better, happier versions of themselves--the right kind of person to be loved by each, for their own sake, you see.  And she/he’s also the right kind of person to help Octavia and Regongar to work out the issues in their relationship that keep them from being able to fully accept and give the love they feel for one another--the right kind of person to be an equal part of their relationship, someone who balances it and brings it to a greater level than before.

It’s a narrative balancing act of essentially writing 3 love stories: 1 with Regongar, 1 with Octavia, and a final 1 with Octavia and Regongar, all of which coordinate into a single emotional whole.  And it’s just great.


10. Maxim and Selan (Lufia 2)

Two people being together. It is, apparently, one of the most terrifying possibilities imaginable to a game writer, a scenario that frightens even the most hardened and stalwart creators of entertainment of all kinds: portraying a happy, reasonably stable couple. I mean, think about it--how often do you ever see what happens AFTER the main characters in an RPG (or practically anything else, for that matter) have hooked up? Yeah, not too often. The whole game’s spent building up to it one way or another, and then they only actually get together near or at the very end (if even then!), leaving no time for the audience to actually see the relationship they’ve been waiting for. Even in a game where you can complete a romance earlier than that, like, say, a Shin Megami Tensei: Persona title, or 1 of several different western RPGs, the love story’s subplot usually pretty much wraps up after the characters get together.  You may get a few pieces of dialogue or even a very small scene as the game goes on that acknowledges that the characters are romantically involved, but the actual story of it is more or less done.

And that’s nice, and all, but, y’know, there’s more to relationships than just the build-up. There’s also the, y'know, relationship.

That’s what Maxim and Selan show us, and I think that they do it very well. While the actual act of them getting together is a bit generic, and a little rushed in some ways, the latter 2/3rds of Lufia 2 portrays them as husband and wife, reinforcing their devotion to each other and their son as the game goes on, showing their affection in a way that generally denotes the kind of confidence and trust they have in one another and one another’s feelings.

And in another refreshing take on this idea, once they’re together, all the forces of the universe that the writers can summon up don’t immediately start conspiring to tear them apart. Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but when folks get together before the story of a movie or show or comic or whatever concludes, it’s almost inevitable that some contrived, overblown drama is going to force them apart again, because as I said, writers are terrified of having a couple be a couple.

But again, Maxim and Selan buck this trend. They stand firm in their love for one another, and the writers don’t dump a load of stupid, unrealistic emotional bullshit on them to change that. But they’re also not static--the relationship has its hurdle to overcome, making it still enjoyably dynamic. It’s just that the hurdle is a TEST of their love, not an obstacle meant to by the writers to weaken it. Maxim and Selan are touching, realistic, and very competently refreshing.


9. Bastila and Revan (Knights of the Old Republic 1)

It's surprising how well this works, honestly, because Bastila often kind of annoys me (as does any typical blind follower of flawed Jedi philosophy). However, she and Revan (male, Light Side Revan, I mean--regardless of how players want to play the game and interpret things, that's what's cannon) have a romance that develops itself at a relaxed, but steady pace, where you can actually see and understand the growing attraction instead of just having it thrust at you for a few seconds here and there, as is often the case in RPGs.

What really sells it, though, is later on, when the love they've built is tested and endures--as Revan talks a corrupted Bastila back to her senses, and she slowly returns, you really get convinced of how strongly they feel about one another. Not because TEH POWAH OF LOVE ALONE CONQUERS ALL, mind, but rather because it's love that lets Revan know Bastila so well to be able to convince her back. He doesn't just say some stupid crap like most RPGs would that amounts to "Hey baby I know you're all into this ultimate power destroying the universe thing, and that's cool and everything, but you and I had a crush on each other once and THAT'S MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT." Revan talks to her and reminds her of what she used to want, who she used to be, and shows her the strength of the things she held important before--and also, as PART of that instead of its entirety, says that he wants her to come back to him because he loves her. It's like he loves her, instead of loving being in love with her, I guess, which is what I usually see with these games. And when the scene is over, and Bastila's soul has been saved and she admits that she feels the same for Revan, feelings that have had to persevere against the code of both the Sith AND the Jedi, you genuinely feel, wow, they really, truly do love each other.


8. Carmina and Duchess Catherine (Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle)

If this romance had started off better (to put it bluntly, Carmina is horny and forces herself upon Catherine in a shared dream, with Catherine's willingness being questionable at best, even if it's all glossed over later and made out to be something Catherine enjoyed to some degree), it would have been higher up on this list, because it is frankly just absolutely beautiful once it's properly gotten started. The love story of Catherine and Carmina’s got it all. They share their histories and personalities with one another, they share a touching chemistry, they’re each willing to give absolutely everything up for the other (Catherine’s willing to make herself the enemy of the most powerful adventuring group in the world for Carmina and to use every resource she has to protect her, and/or go with her to the lands of the Dark Elves (the Drow, essentially, which any Dungeons and Dragons player knows is not a pleasant prospect for a human), Carmina’s willing to restrain her natural inclinations of evil for Catherine’s sake and give up on returning to her home in order to be with Catherine, etc), there’s a very touching aspect of Catherine’s taking a leap of faith in trusting her love to Carmina, and generally I’d just have to say that everything about Carmina’s and Catherine’s romance is emotional, moving, authentic, and natural.


7. Ai and Yu (Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4)

You know, given how bland, rushed, and utterly unconvincing the rest of Yu’s romantic interests in SMTP4 are, it’s rather amazing how well they did with Ai. It’s also surprising that it can work so well when one of the individuals concerned is mostly a Silent Protagonist (characters who don’t actually engage in dialogue with other people don’t tend to be terrific at interpersonal relations). But Ai and Yu's romance is a sweet one that's nonetheless worldly and realistic, which I like, and she's the one romantic option in the whole game for whom the love aspect of her Social Link actually seems to make a difference to its course and her overall relationship with Yu.

What I mean by that is, unlike the rest of the love interests in SMTP4, whose Social Links stay the exact same until the very end when the option to romantically engage with the person is shoehorned into the second-to-last scene, the course of her Social Link events changes depending on Yu's approach to the idea of romancing Ai. For a true romance with her, Yu must care enough about her as a person, and understand who she really is enough, not to hastily dive into a relationship before she’s ready. When Ai first proposes the idea of entering into a romantic relationship, Yu actually turns her down, not because he’s not interested (assuming here that we’re talking about a player who wants him to successfully romance her, I mean), but because she’s not ready for it, still too caught up with the superficial to know who she really is and what she really wants. He’d rather wait until she knows him well enough and understands herself well enough to KNOW that he’s who she wants to be with.

It thus becomes so much sweeter, so much more right, when, after Yu has helped her to rediscover who she is and understand the importance of being true to oneself, she finally asks him again, not as a girl still obsessed with appearances but rather someone more in touch with herself, if he wants to be with her, and he can say yes. You don’t get many instances in RPGs (possibly ANY, I’d have to think about it for a while) where a romance isn’t just approached directly all the way. If there’s any hesitation between RPG characters on whether they love each other, it usually comes in the form of trite denial of their own feelings, not a case where one person cares enough about and understands well enough the other to know they’re not emotionally ready for such a thing.

And Ai really sells it at the end of the game, too.  On Yu’s last day before leaving town, the other romantic options in the game basically tell him, “It’s been fun, Homeslice, maybe we can do this “being in love” thing again some day long from now when it happens to be convenient.”  Ai, by contrast, makes it clear that she’s never gonna give Yu up, never gonna let Yu down,*** just because he’s going away for a while, telling him that she’s very ready to pursue a long-distance relationship with him.

Overall, the romance between Ai and Yu shows surprising depth and realism for an RPG love story, and it really seems set to last.


6. Shepard and Tali (Mass Effect 2 and 3)

I hate to do another cop-out here, but honestly, I feel like I got most of this right the first time I mentioned it in an Annual Summary rant, so I’m just gonna say what I did there. Tali is adorable, sweet, and caring, and the chemistry between her and a Paragon Shepard is excellent. I like the fact that they've known each other for a fair amount of time before hooking up in Mass Effect 2 (she’s a non-romanceable crew member in ME1), too, giving the impression that this isn't some whimsical attraction that will fade, but rather a strong connection formed from a great understanding of each other.

What I really love about this romance, besides just how strong a chemistry and realism their connection has--few characters seem to so perfectly mesh with and bounce off of Shepard's personality as Tali does--is that there's a strong element of sacrifice involved with it...basically, a member of Tali's species is put at mortal risk when he/she removes his/her environmental suit due to their extremely weak and finicky immune system, meaning that such activities as sex (in the traditional sense, at least) are dangerous. Shepard knows all about Tali's species thanks to Tali's time in his crew in ME1, so for him to pursue a relationship with her, he's knowingly choosing a partner that he can't regularly make love to in any normal sense, so, as he more or less says himself, he’s choosing to be with her because he feels that on an emotional, intellectual, and/or spiritual level, she's worth giving that up for. And of course, Tali takes a huge risk by deciding to make her and Shepard's first time natural, with her removing her suit--she does what she can to lessen the danger, but she's still endangering her life to show how much she loves Shepard.

Stupid? Well, yes...but romantically stupid.


5. Bhaalspawn and Viconia (Baldur’s Gate 2)

This assumes a protagonist who is good and honorable. You can court Viconia while being an evil guy, and she’ll actually be far more enthusiastic about the idea, but it’s not very interesting or satisfying to do so.

While Baldur’s Gate 2 goes to good lengths to create an in-depth and touching romance for all 4 of the love interests of its protagonist, the Bhaalspawn, Viconia’s love story is the one that’s truly touching and compelling, one that really gives her great character development in the process. It’s basically a tale of love’s redeeming power, with Viconia’s growing respect and affection for the main character creating an internal struggle within her as her harsh and evil philosophies wage war with the ever-growing emotional connection she has with the Bhaalspawn. She at first shrinks back in fear and revulsion from her growing feelings, trying to force them and the protagonist away from her with her typical venom and finding that she can't destroy her emotions so easily. It's good stuff, and when the romance picks up again during the Throne of Bhaal expansion campaign, it only gets better. With acceptance of her love for the protagonist comes the opportunity for Viconia to better explore her own conflicting inner nature, all culminating in the protagonist helping Viconia to change herself for the better, to change her philosophy of life from Evil to Neutral. It’s a massive personal achievement for her and, if my limited knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons is correct, a significant achievement by the rules of the universe itself. All in all, it’s a very touching and quite impressive love story, both penetratingly romantic and inspiring in its portrayal of love’s ability to improve those it touches.


4. Aigis and Makoto/Kotone (Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, Q1, and Q2)

Another strange couple to make it onto the list, for a couple reasons. The first is that in SMTP3, there are several girls for the main character, Makoto, to get together with, and likewise several boys for the other potential main character, Kotone, to date, and neither Makoto's nor Kotone's relationship with Aigis is technically acknowledged as one of these romances. The second is that Makoto and Kotone are a silent protagonist--at least, in their own game; they DO speak and reveal personality traits in the SMTPQ spinoffs.  And silent protagonists are not exactly known for their stirring speeches on undying love...or any other subject. And the third, of course, is that Aigis is a battle robot, which, despite what Xenosaga players may fervently wish, is just not an ideal mate for a living being.

But this relationship really is very touching, far more so than the other, "real" romances of the game (although I did like Mitsuru's, I'll admit). Aigis, who is a fantastic character as a whole, seeks to make sense of her existence and come to understand and embrace her limited humanity, and Makoto or Kotone helps her in her search for herself. She's already absolutely devoted to him or her, and from that devotion and the time she spends finding herself with his/her aid, you can see her love for him/her grow in proportion to her self-discovery. In a sense, her identity as a human being instead of just a machine is directly linked to her immense love for Makoto or Kotone, and as she comes to be more and more an individual who can feel, so too does she become more and more an individual who can love. Of all the final romantic Social Link scenes that you see in the game, in which the love interest involved invites Makoto or Kotone to their room, gives him or her a gift, speaks of how much he/she's changed their life for the better, makes their love for Makoto/Kotone known as best they can, and then spends a long while alone with him/her (this last part is where you're left free to interpret, although let's be real, it's pretty definitely meant to imply love-making), it's Aigis’s which is the most spiritually touching.  She does the same as the other girls or guys, and reaffirms her love for Makoto or Kotone (which she confesses earlier, and earliest of all the other romantic interests), and then has him/her take out her main memory chip doohickey, the tiny piece of her circuitry that makes her who she is. In this way, by leaving his or her fingerprints on this piece of her, Aigis is asking the one she loves to forever leave a mark of him- or herself on her very soul.

I admit that the protagonist's side of things in this romance isn't especially noteworthy (although done well, considering the no-talking limitations and the fact that Makoto and Kotone seem like pretty mellow folks to begin with (at least in SMTP3; Q2 reveals that Kotone's actually pretty chipper)).  But Aigis is so convincing in her affections for Makoto and Kotone, and her character development, which I mentioned is closely tied to this love, is so great, that it makes this whole thing one of the most beautiful love stories I've seen in the genre.


3. Tidus and Yuna (Final Fantasy 10)

Tidus and Yuna  really have something special in their game. The way each shows his or her affections for the other is beautiful, and also a believable, real aspect of love that other RPGs rarely get at all into. I don’t mean the little glances and words and bland FMV water-smooch scene; that obvious stuff is what you'd expect. No, what really sells this love to the player is how Tidus and Yuna are so intimately touched by the other, so deeply moved by love, that they take on aspects of the one they love, becoming, as truly heartfelt lovers often do, akin to a single entity, entering into a union of emotion and spirit. Yuna's incredible devotion to the people of her world, so great that she was fully willing to become a sacrifice to give them a few years' peace and, more importantly, continued hope, never diminishes, but by Tidus's influence, she also comes to question the world as he does, to defy tradition that is wrong or makes no sense, which leads to her deciding to stand against her world's people in order to save them. At the same time, Tidus, while never losing his characteristic disregard for dogma and tradition when they oppose what's reasonable and right, becomes able to understand the kind of devotion Yuna has, the strength it takes to willingly die so that others can live better lives, and becomes, himself, a sacrifice to save her and the world she loves. While staying true to themselves, they become alike to each other, complimenting one another in love. It's really pretty damn cool, and very touching.


2. Gabby and Marine (Quantum Entanglement)****

...I swear Large Battleship Studios isn’t paying me to do this.  Saint Bomber really is just this good.

Gabby and Marine’s story is a marvelous example of a romance that has both a compelling love-at-first-sight fated-to-be dimension to it, and the care, effort, and skill invested into their interactions that really sells you on its authenticity.  The subtle but undeniable way that Marine and Gabby’s feelings deepen for one another--or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that those feelings settle comfortably into where they’re meant to be--over the course of QE is touching and genuinely enjoyable to witness, and everything about how they interact with one another, supporting each other, connecting and re-connecting, realizing the perfect ways their personalities fit into the grooves of the other’s...it’s easily 1 of the most organic and genuine love stories I’ve seen, and the strength each woman derives from the devotion and support of her partner in turn uplifts the player, reminding him or her of just how powerful and wondrous love can be, as it reaches across lives to entangle 2 souls meant to be as one.

Hell, you know you’ve done something truly right with your love story when I write an entire rant just to heap praise upon it.  Check that one out if you want a more comprehensive look at why Gabby and Marine are an insanely wonderful specimen of romance.


1. Dagger and Zidane (Final Fantasy 9)

I have a habit of topping these rant lists with an example that's not so much original in its founding idea as it is a fantastic execution of a supposedly tired cliche (Grandia 2 being the best RPG, Ryudo being the best hero, and so on). And that's the case here. Dagger and Zidane's romance is not something you haven't heard of--it's a story of a lovable rogue winning the affections of an upper-class, proper woman (almost always a princess). It's usually good for a nice, lighter love story with some laughs (who doesn't love Han Solo and Leia's bickering in the original Star Wars trilogy, I ask?), but it's not usually something really stirring and deep.

Well, Dagger and Zidane make it that way. They start out about the way you might expect--Zidane's feelings for Dagger don't really extend much past the "Oooh, pretty" stage, while Dagger usually has enough sense not to take him seriously. But where most stories would just have them trade witty dialogue to simulate attraction, or possibly not even do that much, Dagger and Zidane's relationship grows throughout the entire game. As he comforts her when she's hurt and lost, stands by her, protects her, and helps her in whatever ways he can, and shows himself over and over to be a pure, noble man who helps people and innately understands what's right with almost childlike simplicity, Dagger comes to appreciate Zidane for his excellent quality as a human being, taking him more seriously as he proves that he is serious in his affections for her, and falling in love with him slowly, carefully, but completely.

And Dagger also wins Zidane's love just as well. What starts off as a mild attraction that probably doesn't exceed anything he feels for any random pretty lady crossing his path becomes a devoted, full-blown love for Dagger as he spends time with her, listens to her, comes to know her and understand her more and more. His interest in other women dwindles as he becomes fascinated with better knowing the one in front of him, and his appeals for her affection become less playful flirting and more genuine wooing as time goes on. Theirs is a love of labor, a romance realistically developed slowly and in detail, an attraction that draws them almost reluctantly into a deep, intimate connection of souls. These two are truly self-made soul mates, and well deserve to be at the top of this list.


Honorable Mention 1: Alice and Yuri (Shadow Hearts 1 and 2 (Mostly 2))

I like to put in these Honorable/Dishonorable Mention picks just to find a different perspective on the list's subject. It's fun. And so, we have Alice and Yuri. Specifically, from Shadow Hearts 2.

Now, SH1's portrayal of Alice and Yuri's love is nice enough. I can believe it and it'll make you feel as warm and fuzzy as any other reasonably decent RPG romance. But it's Shadow Hearts 2 that really portrays just how incredibly in love with Alice Yuri was. The funny thing is, though, that Alice isn't in SH2--she's dead. Yuri's love is seen in his mourning for her. We see his utter inability to find a place in his world without her, and realize that she, as the love of his life, gave his existence meaning. Although he can appreciate and fight for morality and friends, in the end, he feels empty, protecting a world because his beloved Alice loved it, yet has now left it behind. He can't even conceive of loving another person no matter how earnestly they may feel for him, he can't find a reason to keep doing what he does, and he would much sooner die than live without the memories of her. There are scenes in SH2 regarding Yuri's love for Alice, and how much she loved him, that are some of the most touching, heart-wrenching moments in the entire RPG genre.

Shadow Hearts 2 shows through Alice and Yuri an incredibly moving story of romantic love, after its end, and it deserves a mention here.


Honorable Mention 2: The Hero of Halferville and Persi (Shadowrun The Caldecott Caper Mod)

The Caldecott Caper is an unofficial fan work, so I can’t really give it an official place on the list.  But to deny this romance the due recognition of its excellence entirely would be an absolute sin, so at the very least, we can offer the mod’s creator, Cirion, an Honorable Mention.

The romance between the protagonist of The Caldecott Caper (later referred to as The Hero of Halferville) and the character Persi is poignant, sweet, and lovely.  It’s a genuine portrayal of a fast-forming but true bond between soulmates, and even if the rest of The Caldecott Caper weren’t awesome, this romance would be reason enough to play the mod.  And credit where it’s due--Cirion’s ability to write a love story is great pretty much every time he exercises it, not just with Persi (there’s some tough competition from Arelia’s romance in the following mod adventure, Calfree in Chains).  The love stories to be found in the Calfree Trilogy are amazing, beautiful connections of affection and passion that make your heart flutter in romantic sympathy, and make no mistake, Persi and the Protagonist aren’t just here in the Honorable Mentions out of pity--they’d probably have placed fifth on the list above, right between the Bhaalspawn and Viconia, and Aigis and Minato.  And Arelia and the Calfree in Chains protagonist would’ve probably placed only a few spots below them, for that matter.  I sure as hell hope that Cirion is a writer for the game industry or has plans in place to enter the field, because he’s damn good at what he does.



Always a fun time, to revisit this list.  1 of my favorite narrative subpots is a quality love story, and even if the RPG industry’s lagging a little behind on producing good ones, when it gets it right, it gets it right.  At any rate, I’ll see y’all again in another 7 years when I update this rant once more!















* The concept of love so indelibly inscribed into the souls of those engaged within it that it reaches across and cuts straight through intangible infinities like time, space, reincarnations, and non-existence is a recurring theme with romances written by Saint Bomber, it seems; the couples further up on this list that he’s created have loves that similarly defy the impossible and reach across iterations of infinity.  We love to view the concept of love as something that exists as a universal, cosmic power unto itself, that can exist beyond the ravages of any obstacle, and Saint Bomber knows how to work that angle beautifully over and over again.


** Look, it's a fine romance and I have nothing particular against how it's done, but going from confused and awkward acquaintances to terrific friend-crushes in the space of a single musical number just doesn't give this relationship the development time it needs.


*** :D

...Also, it has taken me more than 10 years to realize that another reason why this pairing is totally the true romance of SMTP4 is because the characters’ names are phonetically “You” and “I”.  I mean, that’s either gotta be intentional, or it’s the kind of cosmic coincidence that implies a higher will guiding the course of fate, and either way, Imma take it as proof that these 2 are meant to be.


**** Linked because finding this title is more complex than a single basic Ecosia search.

Annual Summary 2021

Phew.

It’s been a hell of a few past years.  While no cake walk for most of us, I actually think 2021 has been a worse year for me than 2020.  This has generally come from working in a corner of the retail industry that’s experienced a massive increase in business thanks to last year’s shutdown, while being just as short-staffed as everyone else is at the moment.  It’s been an absolutely exhausting year for those of us back in the basic workforce, even by the normal standards of being in the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, and it’s only been in the past couple weeks that my job has begun to even approach normalcy through this entire year.  Yeah--the Christmas season is 2021’s Easy Mode for me.

As a result, of course, I haven’t played nearly as many RPGs as I wanted to this year.  Frustrating, especially considering that quite a few of the games I did get to were very long ones.  Sometimes it was worth it, at least, like with Horizon 0 Dawn, but it sure as hell wasn’t always--The Legend of Legacy might have the lowest Rewarding Experience/Time Spent ratio in the history of RPGs, video games, or even just pastimes as a whole.  I actually intentionally took on a couple of games that I knew were extremely short solely to try to make up for how much time I spent on stuff like the Laxius Force trilogy, which worked out pretty well, as they turned out to be some of the better games I played this year.  At the very least, though, I still maintained a decent spread of RPG experiences, getting a couple oldies, a couple new titles, some mainstream, some indie, major series titles and 1-offs alike.  Sci-Fi, Sci-Fi Survival Horror, Standard Fantasy, Semi-Sorta-Sci-Fi-Fantasy Survival Horror, Humor, Post-Apocalyptic Robotic Dinosaurs, and Pokemon But Somehow Worse Than Usual, I covered a lot of aesthetics and genres, too.  If I can’t play as many RPGs as I’d like to, at least I can keep a decently varied diet of the ones I do get to, I figure.

Anyway, here’s what I played this year.  You may notice that for a couple of them I’ve given links to the RPG--I’ve decided that in cases where finding a game is more complicated than the first result of a web search, I’ll provide the link to where I found it, in case any of y’all are interested.



Celestian Tales 2
Etrian Odyssey Nexus
Horizon 0 Dawn
Journey to Kreisia
Laxius Force 1
Laxius Force 2
Laxius Force 3
The Legend of Legacy
The Outer Worlds
Pokemon Generation 8
Quantum Entanglement
Symphony of Eternity
System Shock 2
Too Fast RPG



And as you can see, somehow, through it all, I was still stupid enough to keep playing Kemco titles.  What I wouldn’t GIVE for Nintendo to put a few more RPGs into their 3DS shop...dead console or not, the 3DS fits into my pocket and the Switch doesn’t, so the former’s what I can bring with me to work to play on those rare occasions when I actually do have a moment to myself.

In spite of my monicker, though, RPGs aren’t the only pastime I have.  And as is my wont at this time each year, I shall now tell you about all the other stuff I’ve gotten up to, because every now and then I like to test my readers’ patience and commitment.


Anime: This year I (finally) watched Kill La Kill, which I feel like was absolutely everywhere some years back, and it’s...alright.  Decent, in its weird way.  I don’t think I ever did get a handle on what exactly it was or wanted to be, but I liked the act of watching it well enough, and Mako’s a laugh riot--it’d be worth the full watch just for her, really.  I also watched Steins; Gate at the recommendation of a friend, which turned out to be pretty neat, interesting, and thoughtful.  It’s neat to see an anime take a more scientific and exploratory interest into the modern theories of reality and time travel than the usual sensationalist approach--Steins; Gate felt at times like the minds behind it were on the same wavelength as classic sci-fi short story authors like Asimov and his peers,* while still being more than capable of excitement, action, and tear-jerking emotion  Lastly (sadly didn’t see as many animes as I had wanted to, either), I caught Non Non Biyori’s new, third, final season, and it was as solid and lovely as those seasons that preceded it.  I’m sorry to have to say goodbye to this quiet, fun, silly, compelling love letter to rural Japan and childhood, but it was really nice while it lasted.

Books: Actually, this was a good year for me in the literature department. I finally feel like I’ve gotten back on the Proper Book Reading horse, and am satisfied with how many I read this year.  Granted, they weren’t all good ones--I started the year with The Cat Who Sang for the Birds, by Lilian Jackson Braun, and was reminded once again of why I only trust Agatha Christie for mysteries, because while TCWSftB is generally inoffensive as a story, it’s also boring, lacks substance, and is less a mystery than it is an excuse for Braun to just aimlessly write about small-town life in Michigan and a possible worship of house cats.  Which is great if that’s your thing, but I think generally when people read a mystery novel they want the mystery to compose maybe more than 5% of its total content.  But then I proved my own policy of only trusting Christie for mysteries wrong by reading The 13 Problems, and finding out that even she can have an off-day as an author, because the book’s basically just a Mary Sue for Miss Marple.  Miss Marple’s a bore in her best moments, but The 13 Problems is almost insufferably tedious with her, possessing the same sort of unreasoning, 12-year-old-fangirl-esque infatuation with one’s own creation that makes shonen anime such routinely tiresome garbage.

Speaking of 13s, I also read Diane Setterfield’s The 13th Tale, which is pretty decent, at a friend’s recommendation.  The gothic style is just not for me, but I can at least recognize that it’s a good specimen of such.  I also read Catherynne M. Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by recommendation, this time from my sister, and it was really good!  So good that I then later in the year read the next book in the series, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, which, while maybe not quite as compelling and fresh as its predecessor, was also quite enjoyable.  Good stuff if you like classic fairy-tale stuff and old-school children’s stories’ narrative approach.  I’m sure I’ll be looking into the next story in the series soon

Wow, this is getting way too long for such an unimportant rant section.  Let’s speed it up.  Gave Agatha Christie another chance with Murder in Retrospect, and she restored my faith with a story so excellent that it surpasses even her usual quality.  Then she surpassed even that with The Hollow, which might be my third favorite work of hers I’ve encountered thus far.  I read Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer and was thoroughly unimpressed; felt like a paint-by-numbers mimicry of Shakespeare.  I also ran through High Rhulain, by Brian Jacques (shut up, I loved the Redwall series as a kid), which seemed surprisingly subpar, and Into the Land of Unicorns, by Bruce Coville (shut up, I loved unicorns as a kid, and also right now), which was pretty cool, and a series I’m planning to continue.  Had a really weird hankering for Star Trek: The Next Generation content, so I ended up reading some of the books they wrote for the show, those being Here There be Dragons by John Peel (Okay and basically nothing more or less) and Sins of Commission by Susan Wright (decent for its character portrayals, but overall kind of bland and weird in that the plot that you think is going to be the important one just turns out to be a tiny crumb on the side that basically gets resolved off-screen).  Finally, I reread Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, which is as excellent, brilliant, enlightened, and personally revolutionary to me now as it was 20 years ago.

Non-RPG Video Games: Not much this year that wasn’t RPGs.  I kept up with Super Smash Brothers’s new characters, in spite of every instinct I had to drop the game entirely when they put Sephiroth, SEPHIROTH of all fucking wastes of space, in a slot that could have gone to literally any other video game character ever conceived.  I also experienced the new Doki Doki Literature Club content, which I found really touching and strong...while also a huge bummer, because it really sells just how much the player’s presence as a romance visual novel protagonist ruined a genuinely good, healthy, meaningful thing for the rest of them.  Monika wasn’t a monster before we entered the picture.  Lastly, I played System Shock 1, although that was more because I thought it was an RPG, which, even to my own lax standards, it really just kind of isn’t.  It’s alright, not really my kind of game, but I can respect it for what an influence it clearly had on the medium.

TV and the Like: I did it.  I finally did it this year.  I grit my teeth, pulled up my Big Boy Pants, and bit the bullet: I watched the final season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.  It was fun, and magical, and I appreciate how hard the show’s creators were obviously working to touch all the bases they could to bring resolution to the show while also referencing its long and wonderful history, and incorporating as many of its signature elements as they could 1 last time.  I started watching MLPFiM as far back as when its fourth episode had aired, and I loved it from the start.  It’s altered me in a positive way, and it was a profound feeling to finally close the book on this show’s part in my life.

I also watched the third and fourth seasons of The Flash this year, and I’m still enjoying it, although I do see where a lot of its detractors are coming from when they say the show starts falling apart after Season 2.  I checked out the second season of Love, Death, and Robots and was disappointed; the episode with the ice planet and the augmented kids was the only one that’s particularly good.  Additionally, I continued watching DC Superhero Girls, and I eagerly await the next wave of episodes, because it’s just ridiculously fun and clever!

I did do some watching that wasn’t just continuing something I’d already started previously, too.  A coworker introduced me to Community, and I really enjoyed it--very funny and often even pretty wise, in spite of Dan Harmon’s signature need to occasionally use it as no more than a vehicle for gratifying his raging egomania.  And lastly, I watched Netflix’s new Carmen Sandiego reboot, and it is...legitimately, sincerely, wholly awesome.  Seriously, this show is easily in my Top 10 greatest cartoons of all time.  It’s got a strong and fun overall story, compelling characters, an appealing fixation on geography, history, and culture around the world, great writing, engaging humor, stunningly gorgeous visuals, emotional nuance and interesting themes, and maybe most importantly, the people in charge of the show clearly have a dear and comprehensive love for the Carmen Sandiego franchise.  They made a spectacular creation that stands as its own work, while also paying frequent and far-reaching homage to all Carmen Sandiego works that came before them.  If you use this rant as a recommendation for just 1 piece of media to experience, make it...ugh, well, okay, make it Quantum Entanglement, but if you take a second recommendation from me this year, it’s absolutely got to be Carmen Sandiego.  This show is such an amazing gem that I actually forgive Netflix for the Cowboy Bebop live action remake, just because they also made Carmen Sandiego.

Other Crap: I still write rants, I still spend quality time with my family and my pet, and I still work.  Oh dear God do I still work.  So yeah, that stuff took up a fair amount of my time, too.  Not much to report in that regard; just plugging along as usual.  Oh yeah, actually, I guess 1 new thing is that this year I’ve started to experiment with a book of French recipes once a week or 2, and that does actually take up a bit of time now.  Results can be pretty decent, though.


Alright, enough of all that non-RPG crap.  Let’s get to the main event: the crap that IS RPG-related!



RPG Moments of Interest in 2021:

1. I watched Ecclesiastes’s Let’s Play of Final Fantasy 7 Remake this year.  I don’t count it as an RPG I’ve played just yet, in the sense that right now I’m assuming I’ll count all the installments of it as a single whole entity and thus I haven’t really “finished” it yet, but I am caught up with it at the present time.

2. Speaking of: there’s a point in Final Fantasy 7’s Remake in which Cloud goes to check out what all the noise is about in the apartment next to his, and has a sudden vision of the next-door resident being Sephiroth, only it’s just Cloud seeing things.  As a result, Ecclesiastes and I concocted this scenario where it actually IS Sephiroth, who’s legit renting the room next to Cloud’s, and Seph’s like, just sitting on a shitty couch, beer in hand, stained white wife-beater loosely pulled over his standard villain outfit, watching TV, while Cloud’s next door furiously pounding on the wall and hollering at him to turn that shit down, and Sephiroth just raises the remote and determinedly turns up the volume on a public-access local fishing tournament, leading to Cloud marching over to beat the shit out of him.  I know that it loses a lot in the summation and that it’s dumb as hell, but the whole concept was so hilarious to me that I almost hurt myself laughing over it.

3. There is a sidequest in Journey to Kreisia in which you assist a man by finding half a dozen mail-order brides who were lost in the shipping process.  And the brides are sheep.

Kemco, when I criticized you in the past for having games that possess no memorable or unique quality, this was not the solution I had in mind.

4. The Laxius Force trilogy has so many different boosts, debuffs, and status ailments in it that my previous disbelief over Witch Hunt’s having 28 now seems charmingly naive.  Aldorlea Games has got a serious thing for status conditions, y’all.

5. Finding out that SaintBomber (creator of Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle) is back and as great as ever was a very wonderful thing.  Seriously, this practically made my damn year.

6. Symphony of Eternity’s protagonist is named Kreist.  I’m not sure how you’re supposed to pronounce that, but I think Kemco might be trying to cash in on the religious crowd?

7. You know, I have seen over 1000 different RPG towns, possibly closer to 2000.  So the fact that I was sincerely impressed, almost awed, by Meridian in Horizon 0 Dawn says a lot.  I may have been unexpectedly less entranced by H0D’s overall setting of robot dinosaurs than most, but damn if they didn’t make up for that with how striking the city of Meridian is.

8. In the Murder on Eridanos DLC of The Outer Worlds, I like the fact that enough attention was placed to detail that the Grand Colonial’s rooms all have a little candy on the pillows.  But what I LOVE is the fact that the robot’s room has an energy canister pristinely laid upon the pillow instead.

9. It’s weird to me that there’s a Wilderness Exploitation Preserve in The Outer Worlds, because Borderlands 2 already has an area named almost exactly that (the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve), and both are, I think, intended as a mild jab at corporate mentality and destruction of all it touches.  Is this an homage?  It seems awfully small and obscure a thing to pick to reference Borderlands 2, though.  Did Obsidian just not know about the one in Borderlands 2?  Seems like an amazing coincidence if so.

10. I know that criticizing Kemco is like shooting fish in a barrel when the fish are suicidal and already holding guns to their heads, but it still leaves me dumbfounded that at the end of Dragon Sinker the main antagonist reveals that the heroes’ victory is meaningless because he’s produced offspring that will grow up to terrorize them all just as he has, and the heroes’ response is to...call it a day, congratulate themselves, disband, and go on home to live their own lives for a while, providing Junior ample time to grow up and start causing problems.  Hey, why do today what you can doom the world’s population by putting off until tomorrow, right?

11. This isn’t actually RPG-related, but holy hell, did Netflix produce the live-action Cowboy Bebop because it saw Crunchyroll’s High Guardian Spice as a challenge to see which incompetent, fumbling corporation could more grotesquely disrespect anime?  I mean, considering that this is the same medium that proudly includes Yugioh GX, Love Hina, that one show about the fully adult woman who becomes a maid so she can gain access to the home of an 8-year-old she wants to bang, and Naruto, you wouldn’t think it would even be possible to insult anime’s dignity.  But damn it if Netflix and Crunchyroll aren’t going to fiercely compete their hardest to do so anyway.

12. Speaking of anime, big applause to Kill La Kill for having the courage to answer the question that Chrono Trigger was too cowardly and shortsighted to ask: What if Lavos was a ball of yarn?

13. Can we please just fucking stop naming RPGs “The Legend of”?  Please.  I’ve played a game called The Legend of Legacy, now.  I’ve had enough.  We need to move on.


Quote of the Year
Runners-Up
“Anyone thinking like me?”
“About the holes?”
“It’s like something needs to be inserted in there.”
  --Random and Sarah, Laxius Force 3

"I don’t really have time to be playin’ around with some stimulator.
But, just to be polite, I guess I’ll take it for a spin.”
  --Yuffie, Final Fantasy 7 Remake

"Wow!  Who knew being the Savior would make me so popular...?”
  --Yusis, Journey to Kreisia

Winner
"You may have saved a dog...but would you do the same for humanity?”
  --Unknown, Etrian Odyssey Nexus


Best Prequel/Sequel of 2021
Winner: Celestian Tales 2
As a continuation of the first title, Celestian Tales 2 is exactly what it should be.  It continues each of the Companions’ character arcs very well, not just picking up exactly where CT1 left off, but rather starting at a point where the characters have reached in the past 10 years that have separated the titles.  And for each of them, that point is a natural one which you can easily understand how they got to, and a good beginning state for the continued development that they’ll go through in CT2.  The story and lore are much the same; it’s gratifying and organic to return to the world of Celestian Tales and to see how it has continued on in that decade between games and be able to see and hear how the protagonists’ influence has been a part of that advancement.  Some franchises might clumsily overfill a text file with a surplus of details of every single little detail that happened between games, forcing players to swim through a murky sludge of over-explanation that leaves them more lost than they started (looking at you, Xenosaga 3)...Celestian Tales 2 gets the job done with environmental storytelling, an effective catching-up intro sequence, and some relatively natural dialogue reminiscing and NPC statements here and there.  And the game also effectively capitalizes on the open plot threads left by the first installment, and lets the plot seeds it planted bloom, continuing the Suikoden-esque story of the series through a good, solid game.  Celestian Tales 2 is exactly what the sequel to Celestian Tales 1 should be.

Runners-Up: Etrian Odyssey Nexus; Laxius Force 2; System Shock 2
I can’t say that LF2 is a good RPG, but it does represent a step up from its predecessor in terms of basic story and cast quality, and it expands on the story that the first game began and deepens the stakes of the conflict, so, strictly in terms of being a sequel, it’s good.  Similarly, System Shock 2 builds off of its predecessor’s approach and style, and enhances them.  EON wants to be a celebration of the Etrian Odyssey series which incorporates story elements and characters from all its predecessors, and it does so adequately, while still being its own story.  They’re all solid continuations of their franchises.


Biggest Disappointment of 2021
Loser: Celestian Tales 3
Celestian Tales 3 is a game that does not exist, and what’s so damn disappointing is that it probably never will.  From what I’ve read and gleaned, apparently some dickwad publisher bought the IP after the first game, only barely allowed the second title to be made, and has absolutely no interest whatsoever in finishing the story of the Companions out in the trilogy that CT had been intended to be.  Damn shame; I really was invested in this tale.

Almost as Bad: The Legend of Legacy; Pokemon Generation 8
I went into The Legend of Legacy with no expectations whatsoever, and somehow every nonexistent one of them was let down immensely.  Even no expectations still comes with the belief that you won’t be trapped in a game for weeks and weeks solely because you have to stat-grind nonstop for every unrewarding step forward you take in an utterly empty plot.  As for Pokemon Generation 8, well, it’s a tremendous let-down as the following act to the excellent Pokemon Generation 7, but, as I’ve recently mentioned, even by typical Pokemon standards, it’s absurdly worthless.


Best Finale of 2021
Winner: Horizon 0 Dawn
H0D's finale is a grand clash against the dregs of the terrible past--both the past of a civilization and of a species. It's got a climactic 1-on-1, a battle alongside against an invading army, and a final confrontation with the protagonist being assisted by her closest allies.  All of that is followed by a heartfelt ending in which Aloy finally finds that for which she has always been searching, and in a truly beautiful moment, discovers that what was wanted of her was to be curious, willful, and compassionate...the 3 traits that have defined Aloy, the traits from which her responses in the most important moments are chosen.  What a way to close out a great game.

Runners-Up: The Outer Worlds; Quantum Entanglement; Too Fast RPG
The showdown with the villain in TFRPG is great, and I’m probably reading too much into what is mostly a funny little joke game, but I actually really feel like the ending had some real meaning to it as an observation of us as gamers and just members of society in general.  Even putting that aside, it’s a funny, nice happy ending that I enjoy.  Quantum Entanglement’s final dash is exciting, its consequences and decisions poignant, and its ending (the best one, at least) consistent to the rest of it: a touching display of love that transcends any single existence.  Finally, while I feel like the final mission of The Outer World feels rushed, and I saw the revelation regarding Earth coming from a mile away, it’s a solid conclusion to this tale of humanity at odds with its own social creations, and the ending is a satisfying clip-show detailing what came of the adventure and the player’s actions that gives you just the right mix of closure, and desire to see what will happen in the future.  I really don’t understand why more games don’t make use of this Fallout-style approach to endings; it’s such a perfect and effective way to close out and tie a bow on an adventure.


Worst RPG of 2021
Loser: Pokemon Generation 8
Okay, Game Freak.  I didn’t think this was a thing that needed to actually be explained to you, or literally anyone else on Earth.  I would have thought that this was the kind of thing so basic, so intrinsically understood by the simple act of existing as a human being in contact with other human beings, that the only time you would have to ever say these words aloud would be to explain this basic narrative premise to, I dunno, a race of sapient alien rocks.  Except I’ve seen Steven Universe, so I know even they would automatically get what you apparently don’t grasp.  So here you go:

If your aim is to craft a story-based piece of media, then you need to ACTUALLY WRITE THE FUCKING STORY.

It’s just so lazy.  I’m no stranger to RPGs that were made with absolutely no effort put into their stories and characters--I have played a Dragon Quest title before, thank you very much--but Game Freak really just discovered new lows to sink to with this one.  Usually the problem with a lifeless, uninteresting story is just that the plot in and of itself is boring and pointless, not that the game refuses to share it with you.  Pokemon Sword and Shield actually bar you from being a participant in the very game you’re playing until its last moments, its creators intent on not even telling a story to begin with, and that, to me, is more deserving of scorn than any standard fault of mundane writing.

Almost as Bad: Journey to Kreisia; The Laxius Force Trilogy; The Legend of Legacy
JtK is a low-energy cliche story in which nothing stands out as interesting or different; it’s just standard Kemco fare, an assembly-line RPG that asks for $10 and gives nothing in return.  TLoL is somehow even less than that; it’s like if someone wanted to make a Romancing Saga title, without any of the complicated moving parts of event timing and non-stationary actors, without an understanding of how to balance the nuances of combat and stat growth to keep it from being too tedious, and most of all, without any real story or characters to speak of.  Playing The Legend of Legacy is more tedious and unrewarding a task than struggling to file someone else’s taxes in a language you don’t speak, while Ricky Gervais stands over your shoulder and reads aloud a script of Who’s on First rewritten by Xenogears.

And finally, The Laxius Force trilogy is...not terrible, in some regards, and there are even certain simple elements to its long story that I think are done pretty decently (such as how daunting a task finding and stopping the main villain is as the heroes exhaust 1 possibility after another and keep coming up short, while having just enough successes that it doesn’t feel frustratingly fruitless).  But at the same time, LF suffers the fatal flaw of having 3 out of its 4 most important cast members be a guy who’s an entirely unlikable asswipe, a lady who’s an entirely unlikable idiot, and another lady who’s an entirely unlikable asswipe and idiot--all with character arcs which are not compelling at all, or just lacking development altogether.  And the last of the 4 vital heroes gets saddled with a romance that acts as the most defining angle of her character story, a romance which made it very easily onto my list of the worst in the genre.  I’m not saying the games are great otherwise, I think the plot and the methods for telling it are best described as amateurish, but I probably wouldn’t have seen them as actually bad if we hadn’t had to put up with Random, Sarah, and Wendala as most of the major vehicles for moving the plot forward.


Most Creative of 2021
Winner: Quantum Entanglement
QE is a strikingly unique and fresh examination into the concept of the Self, and the idea that love could be so powerful that it transcends iterations of existence.  It’s a fresh and compelling love story told in a game staged in a unique and interesting manner and setting, all culminating in an inventive climax that’s less about opposition and conflict (typical of RPGs, and most adventures, for that matter) than it is about the legacy and consequences of a different, but also transcendent love story.  The humor is quirky and refreshing, the characters unique, the premise unlike almost any I’ve encountered before...I’ve played more than 400 RPGs now, and Quantum Entanglement is a pleasant reminder that there’s still new and innovative experiences to be had with RPGs, even for a veteran to the genre such as I.

Runners-Up: Horizon 0 Dawn; System Shock 2; Too Fast RPG
The idea of “tribals hunting robot dinosaurs” isn’t so meritorious itself, but Guerilla Games’s ability to create an actually legit, compelling lore for this being the state of the world in H0D certainly is.  As is just how deeply and well they went into developing that world, creating backstory setups for the narrative states they wanted to start at, creating new yet reminiscent cultures in this world, and finding a way to make a post apocalyptic scenario fresh and engaging again.  H0D isn’t just very creative, it also puts a fearsome amount of work into the structure of its singular creation.

System Shock 2 doesn’t seem all that unique and inventive to me in the year 2021, but I can recognize that fact to be evidence of just how much it subtly changed the landscape of game development--because so much of what followed it, so many of the narrative conventions of first-person RPGs (and other FP ventures) followed in its footsteps.  Beyond that, it’s a decently creative story in its own right of a sci-fi survival horror disaster of competing cosmic monstrosities, too.  As for Too Fast RPG, sure, it’s just a (literal) quick gimmick mostly there for laughs, but hey, humor is an exercise in innovation, too (one might make a good case that comedy is 1 of the mediums most demanding creativity, in fact), and I reckon it takes an inventive mind to come up with something like TFRPG, joke game or not.


Best Romance of 2021
Winner: Gabby x Marine (Quantum Entanglement)
As if there were any doubt.

Runners-Up: Atral x Elida (Horizon 0 Dawn); Junlei x Parvati (The Outer Worlds)
They may only be NPCs tied to a sidequest, but Atral and Elida’s variation of the Romeo-Juliet/Pyramus-Thisbe/Buttercup-Bright-Mac trope is still a fairly moving story of love and loss that I felt in my big old softy heart.  As for Junlei and Parvati...well, honestly, we only really see Parvati’s side of their romance in any great detail, but darn it, what more do you need to see than Parvati’s adorable starry-eyed adoration?  Parvati is the ultimate cinnamon roll, and seeing her crush develop into an honest romantic relationship--being able to help encourage its development, in fact--is a sweet, simple joy.  I also like it for...well, its simplicity, I guess.  We’re so used to seeing romantic love develop in RPGs under epic circumstances of world-saving journeys, intrinsically tied to grand happenings and heroic acts, that it’s sort of refreshing to get involved in 1 that’s just a simple, straightforward, everyday case of developing feelings, going on a date, and deciding to be in a relationship.  The normalcy of Parvati’s feelings and how she acts on them is ironically rare, and it was nice to see.


Best Voice Acting of 2021
Winner: Horizon 0 Dawn
The question of whether H0D or The Outer Worlds has superior vocal work is really going to come down to preference more than anything, I reckon.  For me, the tiebreaker is which game has Keith David in a major role.

For real, though, H0D’s spot-on with all its acting, and I can’t think of anyone in it that didn’t turn in a solid performance.  Aloy’s actress noticeably helped cement her character, quite a few side characters like Gildun and the narrator of the Vantage Point logs were just great, and everyone, even minor NPCs having ambient conversations as you pass by, seems to be given an actor devoted to creating a personality for their role.

Runners-Up: The Outer Worlds; System Shock 2
When the majority of your story’s told through audio logs and the demanding, threatening orders of a psychotic AI, it’s important that your voice game be on point, and SS2’s got its act together.  The Outer Worlds’s acting is high quality, with some especially good performances by the actors for Parvati, Phinneas, and Felix.  Nothing more to say, really; voice acting is either a boon or an embarrassment for a game, and for these works, it’s a definite plus.


Funniest of 2021
Winner: Quantum Entanglement
As great as it is for its moving love story, its dark and unnerving concepts, its creativity, and its effective elements of horror, Quantum Entanglement is just as notable for its constant, endearing banter, wisecracks, and wordplay, much in the same way as Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle, only even more so this time around.  The frequent chuckles that Marine and Gabby’s back-and-forth produces is just what the game needs to keep you in a good frame of mind as you explore a literally and figuratively dark setting for the means of survival and escape--and the humor’s even got a purpose within the game’s own context, too, which is a rarity.**  Good, funny stuff.

Runner-Up: Too Fast RPG
TFRPG may be a humor RPG built upon 1 joke and 1 joke alone, but damn it if it doesn’t know exactly how much and how long to milk that single gag.  The same game that kept Korone in stitches from start to finish also had me chuckling through its course,*** and kudos to it for that.


Best Villain of 2021
Winner: Ted Faro (Horizon 0 Dawn)
Because when you’re a true fucktard, ruining the world once just isn’t enough.

Runners-Up: The Board (The Outer Worlds); Demon King (Too Fast RPG); The Ex (Quantum Entanglement)
Between Ted and the Board, the careless, sociopathic ultra-rich certainly have figured strongly into the problems humanity faces in the RPGs I played this year.  But hey, I’ve heard it said that the best villain is the one that can be found in real life, and what’s a truer-to-life monster whose evil we all suffer from than a corporate CEO?  Well, conceivably a violently deranged ex-lover who’s still in enough of a position of power over us to freely abuse, harm, and terrify us, but Quantum Entanglement’s got that angle covered with chilling effectiveness.  Seriously, I may personally despise Ted and the Board far more strongly, but QE’s Ex is the only villain this year--or in the past several years, for that matter--who actually frightened me.

As for Demon King, he’s got the sympathetic villain thing going for him, and this time it’s not even of the misguided sort.  Guy’s legit in the right.


Best Character of 2021
Winner: Parvati (The Outer Worlds)
...Okay, fine, not really, but I totally love her the most and really want her to win.  Screw personal depth and development (of which Parvati has plenty, mind you, just maybe not enough to legitimately win); can’t I just give her the crown for being such a warm, adorable sweetheart that must be protected and loved at all costs?

...Ugh, FINE.

Actual Winner: Marine (Quantum Entanglement)
Not that there’s anything to actually complain about in giving Marine her due.  She’s a wonderfully-written, nuanced, fun, interesting character who feels pleasantly real and yet no less a heroic figure for it (if anything, she’s all the more impressive).  Her growth is largely in relation to her love for Gabby asserting itself and growing, but that’s no flaw in a romance, and in and of herself she’s a likable, faceted character.  Saint Bomber has a gift for the creation of interesting and highly endearing characters, and Marine’s 1 of his best, to be sure.

Runners-Up: Aloy (Horizon 0 Dawn); Gabby (Quantum Entanglement); Lucienne (Celestian Tales 2)
In the first CT, it was Ylienne and Isaac whose stories and character growth were by far the most interesting to me, but as CT2 moved forward, Aria and Lucienne became the stars for me, the latter most of all.  While every major member of the cast of Celestian Tales has their own arc and time to shine, it’s Lucienne’s grappling with the guilt of being complicit with her uncle’s downfall, and her difficulty with and frustration in caring for and being shackled to the child who (completely beyond her control, of course) is the reason for Lucienne’s woes, that impresses me most.  Solid character writing there.

...And we’ll never see her arc conclude.  Or Aria’s.  Or Ylienne’s, Isaac’s, Camille’s, or Reynard’s.  Damn, it just kills me to see a promising franchise die before its time, sometimes.

Aloy’s a pretty great protagonist, and I like the way she can go through several arcs of development through her journey, yet at the same time stay very true to the beliefs and personal codes that define her.  She’s exactly the kind of person that the spiritual-and-yet-not-reverent Horizon 0 Dawn needed to have as its central figure.  As for Gabby, she’s pretty much right up there with Marine in terms of quality--if there’s any proof of just how talented a character-writer Saint Bomber is, it’s that he could create not just 1, but 2 highly appealing, interesting, deep, and dynamic individuals in the same game who are exactly alike enough to have great chemistry, and yet also exactly dissimilar enough to have great chemistry and be their own distinct people.


Best RPG of 2021
Winner: Horizon 0 Dawn
Every now and then, the hype for a popular game is, indeed, accurate, and that’s certainly the case with H0D.  An epic, purposeful story of searching to understand oneself by one’s origins, as an individual, as a culture, and as a species, with great themes of tribal culture, beliefs and spirituality, a game with a love of the natural world and with a talent for telling stories after their fact, following a compelling protagonist through a carefully, masterfully, and lovingly crafted world whose lore only gets more interesting as you delve deeper into it...Horizon 0 Dawn is an excellent RPG, from all angles.  I mean, hell, you know you’ve got a winner when you can take an idea like “hunters vs. robot dinosaurs” and work out the details well enough that said idea actually becomes an intellectual and well-reasoned conclusion with a lot of deep concepts behind it.  Horizon 0 Dawn is a damn triumph, and that’s all there is to it.

Runners-Up: Celestian Tales 2; The Outer Worlds; Quantum Entanglement
I’m gonna say it, and I don’t care what you think of me: I may objectively recognize Horizon 0 Dawn as the greatest game I’ve played this year, but the one I love the most is without any question Quantum Entanglement.  Saint Bomber knows how to play one’s heart perfectly, the game’s got an intriguing premise, it’s amazing for how well it can generate a frightening mood through no more than RPG Maker assets, I’m a sucker for a great romance, and the damn thing is so intelligent and fascinating to consider.  Quantum Entanglement has its heart, mind, and soul in perfect alignment to affect its audience on a profound level, and it’s fucking great.

The Outer Worlds is a great RPG, with several appealing characters, a good setting and premise that are interesting to explore, and a highly worthwhile purpose.  Even if it doesn’t have the power behind it to live up to the Fallout level of quality that it clearly reaches for, it’s a damned worthy attempt, and it certainly surpasses several of the other works it most significantly patterns itself after, such as Borderlands and, in some regards, Firefly/Serenity.****  Finally, Celestian Tales 2 is a strong continuation of an already solid RPG, and I’ve really enjoyed its story that manages to both be personal, and a larger tale of the events that shape a nation over the course of a decade.  I don’t think I’ve had a really decent Suikoden-esque RPG to enjoy since Suikoden 3,***** and it’s been nice to have that gap filled a bit with Celestian Tales.


List Changes
Greatest Romances: I have not yet added Gabby x Marine to this list, but only because it occurs to me that it’s probably high time I expand it.  Although rest assured, Marine and Gabby would be worthy of the list even if I didn’t; hell, I could revert it back to a mere 5 entries and they’d still be making the cut with room to spare.  But yeah, expect to see this old gal make a return come the new year which properly displays this year’s winning couple.
Greatest Vehicles: This one’s not changing, actually, but I’d like to use this moment to air my grievances about that fact.  Horizon 0 Dawn absolutely should have made it onto this list.  But nooooooo, Guerilla Games had to go and rob itself of the victory.  Here we have a game full of awesome titanic robot animals that you can take control of...and the only 3 you can actually ride are just some stupid basic bitch quadrapeds.  Yeah, because when you show me a game with giant awesome mecha-versions of sabre-toothed tigers and grizzly bears and fucking tyrannosaurus rexes with shoulder cannons, the only one I want to ride atop is a goddamn tin horse.  How novel.
We could have been riding giant mecha-gators across the fields and plains, guys.  Could’ve had a goddamn alligator android as our steed.  A titanic steel crocodilian at our beck and fucking call, and they blew it.  Shame on you, Guerilla Games.  You stole seventh place from yourself.******
I swear, if I don’t get a rideable robot snapping turtle at least in the sequel...
Most Annoying Characters: I think I may have to expand this list next year, too.  Because while the gatekeeper of that list, Lita from Atelier Iris 1, is still more irritating, there is no goddamn way I can accept having a list of the most annoying dipshits in RPGs that doesn’t have Pokemon Generation 8’s Leon on it.
...Wendala of Laxius Force, too, for that matter.
Most Needed Sequels: Celestian Tales 1 + 2 have been added; Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch has been removed.  Sorry, Mark, you many meme-mentioning main man.
Pokemon: Worst Pokemon list expanded to 7 places, with Alcremie and Appletun being added.  Wooloo has been added to the Best Pokemon list; Dialga has been removed.  Sorry, you dramatically designed dragon distinct to Diamond.



And that’s 2021 in the bag.  It’s been 1 of the tougher years I’ve had, and I daresay the world at large had a rough go of it, too.  Hopefully it’s been decent enough for the rest of you, but either way, here’s hoping that 2022 will be a bit smoother.  At the very least, I think I’ve got things lined up a bit better going forward for more time to play RPGs, so maybe the rant I post a year from today will have a few more subjects to consider.

As always, I’d like to close the year out with some heartfelt thanks.  Thanks to my sister, and to my friend Ecclesiastes, for being constant, helpful, and incredibly patient editors, sounding boards, and ideas-men, without whom this damn blog would be a complete disaster.  Another thanks to my friend Angel Adonis, for being ready and willing to act as a backup editor on the fly, and indulging an old man on the matter.

Huge, heartfelt thanks to my patrons, Dan Brandt and Ecclesiastes (yes, that’s double thanks to you, sir, don’t spend it all in 1 place).  It’s no less a source of pleased amazement now than ever that you guys actually value my blathering idiocy enough to support me this way.  Seriously.  Thank you, so much!

And lastly, as always, thanks to all of you, who read these rants.  It never stops being gratifying to know that I’m not just shouting fruitlessly into the void, here.  May our 2022 be an awesome year that brings a new and wonderful wealth of joy to us all!

Or at least just doesn’t suck quite so hard as usual.
























* Professional peers, that is.  In terms of talent and skill, of course, Asimov has no peers.


** Have you ever noticed how often comedy and jokes exist in a vacuum within games, shows, movies, etc.?  Characters never laugh or even smile when someone does or says something funny; it’s always solely for the audience to react to, or even just acknowledge.  Always struck me as weird.


*** Yeah, I’ve fallen a bit down the V-Tuber hole, what of it?  I told you, this year I finished watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.  I need something colorful, cute, and fun to take its place, alright?


**** Yeah, I said it.  Whatcha gonna do about it, Whedon-worshippers?


***** Not that I didn’t enjoy Suikoden Tierkreis, mind you, but the whole perspective of the conflict-as-a-part-of-the-character-of-the-nation-itself thing was highly different in that title.

...Also, it’s possible that I HAVE played a decent Suikoden-esque RPG between Suikoden 3 and Celestian Tales, but have managed to forget it.  I find that I’m managing to forget a lot more of the RPGs I’ve played, and the stuff within them, nowadays than I used to.  I optimistically hope this is just because of the number that I’ve played being too damn big at this point, and not a sign of mental deterioration as I age.  But I have a bad feeling about it, not gonna lie.


****** Don’t you go trying to argue the logistics with me.  Real-life crocs will give each other piggy-back rides all the damn time, and Aloy’s like a third the size of these things.  There was 0 feasible cause for us not to be able to ride into town on a pimped-out Megaman X villain.