Fire Emblem 15's Imbalanced Storytelling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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













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


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

Omori's and Whisper of a Rose's Similarities

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



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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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















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

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

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

Let’s count’em off, shall we?


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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

Omori's Sweetheart

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
























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


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


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


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


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

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

Shin Megami Tensei 5's Cover Art

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

OOPS!  All Asshats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fire Emblem 15 Stray Thoughts

You know, I actually am finding that I really like these mini-rant collections quite a lot.  Most of my thoughts and criticisms about an RPG don’t necessarily amount to a full essay’s worth, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to say my piece about a game nonetheless.  This is turning out to be a really handy way to get this junk off my mind without having to pad it out.  And it’s handy for a game like Fire Emblem 15, a game which is fine, but not remarkable enough that most of my impressions about it have been particularly strong, but also juuuuuust dumb enough at times that I do want to poke fun at it a bit.



- Toward the end of the game’s prologue, Celica asks Mycen if he thinks she’ll ever meet Alm again, to which he responds, “I do.  So long as destiny wills it.”

Uhhh...so if I’m working with an adequate understanding of the definition of the word “destiny,” then what you’re saying, Mycen, is, “Yeah, I think it’ll happen, as long as it’s something that’s gonna happen.”  Yeah, uh, just as a heads-up: literally anything and everything that happens does so because destiny wills it.  That’s how destiny works.


- Nintendo made an interesting attempt in this game to add a more traditional battle encounter system with the incorporation of some (very mild) third-person POV dungeon-crawling.  It...doesn’t really work, honestly.  Generally speaking, Tactical RPG combat systems just make encounters take too long to get through for mundane run-into-enemy fights to feel like anything more than a chore.  Random encounters when you weren’t specifically hoping to grind some levels was easily the most annoying part of Final Fantasy Tactics for me, and FFT, at least, allowed for some proper leveling to come from them, whereas the capacity for unit growth in Fire Emblem games is pretty strictly controlled and thus these little battles generally don’t offer much reward for the time you put into them.  Additionally the actual process of navigating these dungeons is so rudimentary, and the dungeons themselves designed so half-heartedly, that the whole experience is bland and tasteless, even by RPG standards.

Still, it is kind of interesting that it happened at all.  Fire Emblem isn’t given to mixing up its formulaic gameplay elements with anything more than some benign window-dressing here and there, at least from what I’ve seen of it, so this approach did catch my eye.


- Hey, it turned out Mycen was right, the thing happened because it was fated to happen so it did!  What he didn’t realize, however, was that destiny also willed Celica and Alm’s reunion to be written by a goddamn pod-person whose only training at being human was reading tweets between feuding Youtubers.

Seriously, Alm and Celica’s reunion quarrel feels like 2 tabletop players were intentionally competing to see who could fail the most persuasion checks in a row.  I’ve seen incompetent writers artificially heap on the melodramatic short-tempered misunderstandings, but jeez.  We go from Celica tackle-hugging Alm so joyfully that she nearly sends them both tumbling over the balcony to their deaths, to stacking enough spontaneous accusations and truly absurd overreactions within a less than 3 minute conversation that Celica’s storms out in a huff at what a stubborn jerk Alm is, with him basically muttering “Nuh-uh, YOU ARE!” to her back.  If you programmed an AI to write scripts for 1 Life to Live and fed it nothing but dialogue written by George Lucas, this is the scene you’d get.


- Since we’re on the subject, the beginning part of that reunion isn’t handled much better.  Celica ecstatically exclaims that she’s finally found Alm after all this time, and it’s like...what do you mean, found him, and what do you mean, after all this time?  You’re only even on this continent for your own unrelated quest, Celica, you weren’t looking for Alm.  And if you had been, it wouldn’t have been all that hard; up until 2 weeks ago, the kid had been sitting in the same village you left him at for the past 7 years straight!  No “finding” was involved in this matter.


- Clair: “You think you can walk up to a woman and ply her with a few compliments?”
Me: “Clair honey are you aware of which franchise you’re in?”

Seriously, though, it’s a trite, cheap business that even after Clair properly and justifiably rejects Gray’s shallow wish to get into her pants, FE15’s ending tosses her to him like a piece of meat anyway.  Even if the writers want to completely disregard it, I completely agree with Clair’s proudly stated belief that the person she falls for should actually know her as a person before loving her.

In fact, I think I may agree with her sentiments a little more than SHE does, because her immediate, obvious, and skin-deep infatuation with Alm at the moment they met is exactly the behavior that she’s criticizing Gray for...


- They really oversold the whole conflict between Alm and Celica, to a degree so exaggerated that it ought to legally qualify as false advertising.  I mean, the title cinematic opens with Alm and Celica reading a book about how Mila and Duma fought each other, and, in just so natural a fashion, tell each other, “Oh well let’s promise to NEVER fight each other like that, how silly would that be, amirite?” which has never, ever been said by any children who weren’t 100% guaranteed to someday try to kill each other.  And then the game opens with a spoiler of the scene near the end of the game where Alm’s stabbed Celica with the Falchion.  The game’s selling you HARD on the tragedy of war pitting 2 people in love against each other fatally.

And it’s all just leading to this wet fart of a narrative payoff.  Yeah, Alm and Celica have a battle to the death--because Celica is under a villain’s mind control.  Yeah, Alm’s forced to kill Celica during the battle--a death she is immediately resurrected from; I’m talking from corpse to opening her eyes and striking up a conversation in 1.5 minutes.  Nintendo, you tremendous nincompoops, there is not the slightest element of epic tragedy nor irony in Celica and Alm taking up arms against each other if 1 doing it out of mind control instead of choice!  And there is likewise not a shred of weight or pathos to the idea of this fight leading to Alm unwillingly killing Celica if she’s gonna pop back right as rain in less time than it takes Hulu to run a commercial break!  Alm and Celica never willingly clash, Celica recovers from death at a rate of literally, mathematically more than 10,000 times the rate at which I recover from the mere inconvenience of a poison ivy rash, their armies are not marching in conflict with one another, and the one and only time they don’t get along, EVER, is, as mentioned above, so absurdly unnatural that I have to assume that it was actually penned by a bowl of yogurt.  The grand, dramatic tragedy of fate and circumstance turning cherished loves against one another that was implied and as good as promised is nowhere in Fire Emblem 15.


- So Alm and Celica were, at least for a little while, raised by the same grandfather figure.  And when they were reading that story about Mila and Duma’s conflict, their promise not to fight as did Mila and Duma draws a clear symbolic parallel between the pairs.  Similarly, in a few other ways late in the game and in the ending, this idea that Alm and Celica symbolically represent Mila and Duma is reinforced.  Alm and Celica, the main couple who get married in the end.  And Mila and Duma, the dragons, who are brother and sister.

Oh Fire Emblem, you are just incorrigible.  Even when you don’t actually have incest, I can tell you’re thinking about it, you rascal.


- I know that, by this point in the story, Berkut is certifiable for a stay in the looney bin or a stint as the CEO of Gearbox Entertainment, but I nonetheless cannot help but wonder about the logistics of his proposal to hold his and Rinea’s wedding atop Alm’s funeral.  How do you see this happening, exactly, Berky?  You gonna get down in the grave and balance on Alm’s casket, exchanging vows as the pallbearers start shoveling clumps of dirt down onto your tux?  Is there gonna be 1 preacher guy saying “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” while another preacher guy sits on the first one’s shoulders and starts up with, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today,” each of them passing a Bible back and forth between them and hastily flipping between relevant passages?

Or maybe you see yourself climbing up on top of Alm’s funeral pyre--finally got to be king of that hill, buddy, congrats!--and exchange rings with Rinea as the mourners hose you and the pile down with kerosene and toss a match?  I mean you’ve already made Rinea into some eternally-burning witch, so I guess roasting yourself is in the spirit of the whole “what’s yours is mine” marital thing.


- I guess reasoning out how one conducts one’s wedding atop a funeral is a moot point when the intended deceased soundly whups your ass, though.  But at least Alm’s final victory over Berkut gives us this equally stupid gem to mull over, as Alm despairs over having been forced to kill his last blood relative: “Don’t you get it?  I’ve spent enough of my life alone!”

Oh, yeah, buddy, for sure.  Yeah, you were really spending your life alone, alright, what with the grandfather who raised you, and the 4 steadfast friends who were always there for you and even marched off to fucking WAR solely for the sake of supporting you.  Yeah, no, you’re right, I guess none of them fucking count because they don’t happen by dumb chance to share your genetics.  How fucking tragic, Alm, that you only had people who loved you and stood by you in your life, when you could have had Berkut instead.


- Duma’s final words are to advise Alm and Celica to let his and Mila’s “grave mistakes be warnings of where not to tread” as Alm and Celica lead the world into the future.  Um, weren't your "mistakes" just the fact that after enough time had passed, each of you lost your minds?  So...your advice boils down to "don't go violently insane."  Uh, yeah, thank heavens you mentioned it, Duma, doubtless that was at the top of their to-do list.


- Arguably the biggest point of Alm’s character development in the first half of the game is the fact that he’s proving that all men are equal and that social status does not dictate ability, as a peasant who achieves martial and leadership prowess that surpasses the nobles he’s surrounded by.  The game seems very intent on setting him up to be an icon of the idea that greatness is within anyone’s reach, and assuming importance based on circumstances of birth is foolish.

And then the writers go and reveal that he’s actually the son of the Rigellian emperor.  They throw 70% of the development they’ve given Alm over the course of the game, along with every single argument he’s ever made on the matter of merit through ability rather than birth, out the window.  They just rip up their own script, drop it in the toilet, take a big steamy dump on it, and slam their fist down on the flush lever like it owes them money.  There is now absolutely nothing whatsoever to say that all the villains’ sentiments in the game’s first half about nobles being the only individuals qualified to lead were in any way wrong.  Great fucking work, Nintendo, you really brought your goddamn A Game to this installment.


- So Faye is a woman who’s in love with Alm, but she never even stands a ghost of a chance of being with him because when filling out his Generic RPG Hero Application, he checked the “Path of Least Resistance” box under the Love Interest section.  And so this is the ending Faye gets:

“Unable to get Alm out of her mind, Faye returned to her old life in Ram Village. Eventually, she met and married a suitor who claimed he did not mind her pining for the king, though her habit of vanishing without notice for days at a time continued to worry her new family.”

Wow, awesome.  So Faye never gets over her love of Alm, lives a life so joyless that she frequently has to call in sick to her own marriage, and as a bonus, the innocent sod who married her gets to live the rest of his life knowing that he’s what his wife settled for--and it’s a transaction she regrets.

Faye wasn’t even in the original Fire Emblem 2, you know.  She was made exclusively for this remake.  Nintendo made the conscious, specific choice to invent Faye just so she could be miserable forever.


- You know, on that note...a lot of people criticize the direction that Fire Emblem has gone with its character interrelationships, making the games a veritable fleet of possible ships where each cast member has multiple potential romantic mates for the player to choose among.  And to be sure, it’s crassly indulgent pandering, it’s usually skewed unrealistically heavily and often even unfairly in favor of heterosexual pairings, it in large part caused the catastrophically idiotic Deeprealms Babysitters Club of FE14, and it frequently becomes a very troubling Eugenics 101 course for its audience.  Critiques of turning the series into the equivalent of a preteen giggling and mashing her dolls and action figures into each other in pairs according to whatever mad whimsy enters her head are quite fair.

But I’d like to point something out here: giving the player no agency over the romantic destinies of the cast of Fire Emblem 15 sure hasn’t done Clair, Faye, or Rinea any favors.  Especially Rinea, Jesus Christ.  I mean, not for nothing, but a more pandering Fire Emblem title would have meant that the player potentially could have saved Clair from a guy, one whom she’s outright and fervently said she has no romantic interest in, managing to brute-force his way into an off-screen marriage to her.  There might, after all, have been some options for Clair with someone whose romantic history with her could be summed up by more than just “Durr priddee gurrl hurr” and “Durr priddee gurrl yell at me and say she no like me? Even better!”  And excessive fanservice might at least have meant that Faye would get some love interest options written by an intern or a janitor or a guy who accidentally wandered into the wrong room or something, just anyone in the building who wasn’t a writer whose ex-girlfriend by suspicious coincidence also happened to be named Faye.

Rinea, not being an actual party member, would of course still be completely screwed and stuck in 1 of the Worst Romances in RPG history.  Look, it’s not a perfect solution.  But still, multiple romance options, even if motivated solely for juvenile and pandering reasons, at least means less chance of a decent character having her romantic fate railroaded without recourse by a writer whose subconscious resentment toward women seems to underscore a lot of the game.


- Let me see if I’ve got this right, Nintendo.  So in addition to everything else that makes Edelgard just truly, sincerely awful...you’re telling me that she’s not even a character in her own right, but rather a more gullible knock-off of Emperor Rudolf, from the Fire Emblem that directly preceded hers?

Shin Megami Tensei 5's Neutral Figurehead

Maybe I should be more fucking careful what I wish for.

You may remember that after playing Shin Megami Tensei 4-1 and SMT Devil Survivor 2, back when each was still at least a relatively recent release, I wrote a rant in which I expressed dissatisfaction and concern with the fact that Shin Megami Tensei seemed to be headed in a direction of mistaking Neutrality for Indecision.  Isabeau and Daichi, the representatives of the Neutral faction in each title, were both irresolute hand-sitters completely paralyzed by an inability to make a decision or formulate a plan of action to further their cause.  In a series which takes pains to make its Neutral story path a distinct option unto itself rather than a middle-ground, this kind of figurehead for the faction is even less appropriate or satisfactory for Shin Megami Tensei than it would be for any other given game with plot routes based on diametrically opposed philosophies.

Well, the good news is that Shin Megami Tensei 5 has put that fear to rest!  Guess I got what I wanted.  Its Neutral Hero is by no means a sufferer of indecision!  This guy knows exactly what he wants to accomplish, and doesn’t hesitate for a moment to pursue that goal.  No wishy-washy whining like with Isabeau, no helpless navel-gazing like with Daichi.  THIS Neutral figurehead knows from the start what he’s about.  Because this time around, Shin Megami Tensei has chosen its Neutral representative to be...

Yakumo.

Yakumo is the one that Shin Megami Tensei 5 puts in humanity’s corner.

Yakumo.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

Okay, Atlus.  Let’s just...let’s just review something here.  The Neutral path in Shin Megami Tensei?  It’s the one whose motivations are necessarily founded on the concept of doing what is best for humanity as a whole.  It’s the side that recognizes that human free will should not be trampled by the forces of an overbearing God, and also recognizes that a human’s life has value even if he/she isn’t powerful and ambitious enough to compete against demons.  That’s why Neutral is generally all about finding a way to successfully spurn the forces of both Heaven and Hell, so that humanity is able to both govern itself with its own laws, and also possess the freedom to pursue its joys and desires without paranormal competition.  You can argue the potential virtues of Law and Chaos to the interests of humanity in the long term as much as you like, and that’s fine and good and interesting--but at the end of the day, Neutral is the only Shin Megami Tensei faction that by definition has to prioritize the welfare of human beings first and foremost.

So do you see, Atlus, why making fucking YAKUMO of all goddamn people your Neutral Hero is a really boneheaded move?  Tell me you get this.  Please.  Please tell me, Atlus, that you can, at least in retrospect, understand why it was stupid to make the hero of humanity a guy who has said, and I quote, “Listen, without the will to fight, the will to live is meaningless.  If someone can’t fend for themselves, they’re better off dead anyway.”  

Sure, that’s the guy I want leading Team Humanity.  Yup, yup.  I want a guy who thinks the life of a therapist or a retail worker or a plumber or a farmer or an artist is worthless because this average untrained, peaceful human being doesn’t want to be forced into a battle for his life against a 7-foot-tall bipedal leopard dual-wielding broadswords.  Yeah, I think that the best person to put in humanity’s corner is the man who thinks that cerebral palsy is no excuse not to be out on the battlefield, personally exchanging blows with a chimera the size of a tour bus.  Stop lazing about, Nana, you think that just because you’re a 94-year-old retired social worker, you’ve earned the privilege not to be locked in brutal combat with Chernobog, Slavic god of evil and death?  No special treatment, you doddering layabout, trade that walker in for a battleaxe and be useful!

As incredibly boring and stupid as Isabeau was, as much of a disgrace as she was to the Neutral faction that she supposedly represented, at least I believed the game’s claim that she actually cared about her fellow human beings and wanted what was best for them.  All of them, not just the ones who would be personally useful to her cause.  Isabeau, at least, is not a person who I could see brow-beating an orphanage about the fact that its residents weren’t all out on the front lines of a war, being horrifically incinerated by a towering fire giant.  Atlus, you made the narrative guardian angel of humanity a man whose philosophy resents infants because they aren’t coming out of the womb clutching an AK-47 and demanding to know where that son-of-a-bitch Lucifer is.  What the actual fuck.

Hey, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t we have an entire long, meandering chapter in this game that was founded on what a terrible thing it was that a girl had been bullied so much that she’d been easy prey to the temptation of the demon Lahmu?  I seem to remember that when this weak girl, Sahori, had been harassed to the point that she finally did something to fight back, it ended in violent tragedy for absolutely every single person who got involved--Sahori, her friend Tao, the bullies, probably several students who just happened to be in the building at the time, and Lahmu himself all died at the end of this venture, and even the protagonist only survived because the chick he was standing near just happened to be the goddess of Tokyo.  I’m sorry, was the overall agreed-upon takeaway of that entire situation somehow not the fact that it was terrible and tragic that Sahori was bullied?  Were we not intended to feel sorrow for the weak and innocent girl who was cruelly driven into a corner where she finally lashed out, to the destruction of everyone?  And yet, after taking a clear stance of sympathy with the downtrodden and passive, Shin Megami Tensei 5 then offers us a hero of humanity who would have done no more than sneer at Sahori for not being strong enough to fight off her bullies by herself.

Oh, and it only gets worse if what his page on the Megaten Wikipedia says is true.  See, it’s like this.  This callous, shitty perspective on the value of human life that makes Yakumo a considerably worse person than a substantial number of the demons and angels he scorns?  It’s only relevant because his Neutral faction plan is to destroy God’s throne, so no one can ever control the laws of existence again.  This means that no one can abuse the power of the position and impose their will upon all of existence, but it also means that no greater Law- or Chaos-allied power is gonna be able to come riding in to save humanity from the existence of living in a postapocalyptic world inhabited by innumerable powerful and frequently hostile demons who usually view humans as no more than resources or collateral.  So of course, in this scenario of Yakumo’s success, humanity will no longer be subjugated by the will and whimsy of an all-powerful higher being, but it will also have to scrape and claw for survival in a violent, inhospitable world.  A fact that doesn’t bother Yakumo morally, though, because as we’ve established, he’s the kind of guy who’d look at the corpse of a 6-year-old who got caught in a crossfire, and sneer that it’s the kid’s own fault for not being strong enough to fight back.  What an asshole.

BUT, this incredibly stupid and obscenely immoral philosophy might not even be genuine.  Now, full disclaimer: I do not recall seeing the following information in the game itself, and given that I moronically played that pile of crap enough times to have seen all of its endings, I doubt it’s something I missed.  I am assuming that the Wikipedia page is drawing on other canon sources like developer notes, or manga tie-ins, or the like.  It’s not something I can verify myself, at any rate.  We’re going to proceed with the belief that the page is accurate, until given indication otherwise.

So like I was saying, Yakumo’s shitty ideology may not even be honest.  Because, according to the Wikipedia page for Yakumo, he and Nuwa’s original plan was not to destroy God’s throne, but to use it themselves, and decree a world for humanity alone, with no gods or demons in it whatsoever (as seen in the “true” ending of the game).  In this scenario, humanity as a whole would be protected from these external paranormal threats to its freedom and welfare.  There wouldn’t be a long, bloody war for humanity’s survival and freedom; the weak and the peaceful would be safe and content inasmuch as humanity itself would allow them.  But Yakumo later changed his plan to the throne-breaking one with the every-man-for-himself rationale, because he and Nuwa fell in love, and since she’s a creation goddess from Chinese lore, wishing for a world without any demons and gods and whatnot would mean a world without her, too.

Yes, that’s right.  Yakumo didn’t decide to plunge humanity into a brutal, prolonged battle for survival against horrible odds because of an earnest belief in fending for oneself; that was only a convenient stupid doctrine he adopted after the fact.  He didn’t pursue a path which would result in the loss of countless innocent lives, and ultimately cost our species its capacity for gentleness and civility as only the strongest and most vicious emerge from the constant battles, because he actually believed it was the best course of action for humanity.  No.  It was decided to condemn countless people to violent ends and countless others to a harsh life of constant toil and struggle because Yakumo didn’t want to stop getting his peepee waxed.

Now again, I need to point out that this information on Yakumo having changed his life goals based on whether or not a snake woman was gonna be around to suck him off is based on what I read on the Wikipedia, not on what I have witnessed myself in the game.  It’s possible that this isn’t canon, but rather some wiki-user’s educated and highly believable theory.  On the other hand, the users of the Megami Tensei Wiki also have a purview of many more official sources than I do, and it’s not exactly unbelievable that this pretentious absolute turd of a human being would sell out his entire species for a handy.  I see no reason to doubt this is part of Yakumo’s canon.

But it’s still worth remembering that even if that Wikipedia page is full of crap, even if Yakumo didn’t decide that human lives would have to end in pain and terror so that he could get laid, he’s still a man to whom human lives have no inherent value.  Sociopathic simp or not, Yakumo is still an apathetic, pompous dick who proudly boasts a belief that a human being’s worth begins and ends with his or her willingness and ability to leap into lethal combat with monsters and demons.  And rather than making him 1 of the less sympathetic spokespeople of a Chaos route, or the face of some shitty Meritocracy faction like SMT Devil Survivor 2’s, or a natural selection Reason like Chiaki in SMT3...Atlus had this loser be the representative of the Neutral faction.  The faction that’s supposed to first and foremost be about doing right by humanity, ALL of humanity.  Brilliant work, Atlus, you’ve actually made me miss fucking Isabeau.  Just truly amazing stuff, you absolute fucking wads.

Final Fantasy 6's Separate Group Control Feature

Final Fantasy 6 introduced an interesting gameplay feature in the form of occasional sequences during the game’s course in which the player would separate the cast into multiple parties, and control these parties semi-simultaneously to accomplish a task through cooperation.  In some instances, there would be an invading group of enemies on a map, and the player would direct multiple teams of the heroes to intercept the attackers, while other uses of the mechanic involved multiple teams exploring a larger dungeon whose puzzles required cooperation as each team opened up new paths for the other(s).  It was a neat idea, and surprisingly well-executed considering its newness.

But the way the game implemented this feature is really weird, too.  Cuz, like...we can all agree it’s a fairly memorable aspect of Final Fantasy 6, right?  The last dungeon is a cooperative venture between 3 parties, and the battle for Narshe is 1 of the most signature elements of the game as a whole.  This multi-group control feature is definitely 1 of the things you strongly remember as a part of the experience of playing it.  And yet, this distinctive feature of Final Fantasy 6 occurs a mere 4 times in the game’s entire course!  That’s the initial Narshe fight with Locke and his team of deus ex machina moogles defending the sanctity of Terra’s naptime, then the climactic Narshe battle between the reunited heroes and Kefka’s invasion force, then later the cooperative exploration of the Phoenix’s cave, and finally the triple-team tower takedown at the end of the game.  The developers went to all the trouble of inventing, coding, and nearly flawlessly implementing this feature, just to only ever actually use it 4 times.  That’s like once every 10 hours, give or take.

And it’s even more a weird waste than it initially appears from those numbers.  Because that initial Narshe battle is basically just a tutorial for the system, not a sincere iteration of it.  It occurs extremely early in the game, and with the moogles doing all the heavy lifting, it’s hard to screw up so badly you lose.  And story-wise, the scenario would have been accomplished just as well by having Locke, Mog, and a couple backup moogles face down a couple pursuing enemies as a single fighting unit the way the rest of the game is handled.  So this really is just a tutorial session for the multi-group control dynamic.  A tutorial...for the single, solitary instance to follow in the game where you’ll be participating in a multi-group battle.

Which is another oddity of integration of this feature: the climactic multi-team combat aspect of it is only ever used half of the time it comes into play, even though it was this particular focus which the tutorial specifically trains the player for.  And it’s over and done with so early in the game!  The battle for Narshe is, what...30% of the way into Final Fantasy 6?  A third of the way through the game, you get your first real test of cooperative fighting as a group of teams against an enemy force, and it’s also the very last time.  Everything involving this feature past that point is just cooperative dungeon exploration.

And that’s pretty peculiar, too.  Because first of all, the first time it happens is a good, what, 80% of the way through the game?  Potentially more; getting Locke back on the team could very well be the final sidequest the player engages in before heading to Kefka’s tower for the finale.  So that’s a weird time to be dropping the fact that there’s a whole other application of this multi-group control feature which by this point the player has possibly forgotten about altogether.  And while the game would certainly be incomplete without having Locke around to finish the journey, it IS technically completely optional to even go through this cave to begin with, so there’s also every possibility that the joint venture through the final dungeon will actually be the first time the player deals with this avenue of the feature.  Not that the player needs a trial run or anything, the feature’s very simple to figure out, but still, it seems odd.

I mean, it’s not like there couldn’t have been more instances in FF6’s story where this feature was implemented.  The Magitek lab is a large enough dungeon that a little tweaking could’ve made it a good initial foray into the joint dungeon exploration.*  And the Floating Continent’s size, layout, and position in the story (coming into play just as the full team reunites and gains new members, at the most pivotal moment in the plot) is begging for a test-drive of the 3-group dungeon exploration that’s featured at the game’s end.

Meanwhile, a multi-group battle scene in which the team defends a town from an attacking band of monsters would have been a great opportunity to use the mechanic to further underscore the harsh realities of the new world in the game’s latter half.  It could be really cool: Celes arrives in town, the monsters attack, and the player has to direct 2 teams of fighters, populated by only Celes, Sabin (if he’s been recruited), and some woefully underpowered NPCs, to fight off half a dozen or so monster units.  It’d further hammer home the desperation of existence in this world, show how outclassed the survivors are against the beasts running amok, and even give an opportunity for Celes to develop her character; it could’ve reaffirmed her hope and her devotion to the cause of good by showing her that there’s still real, tangible good she could accomplish in this world, and people who needed her to do just that.  Phunbaba’s second attack on Kohlingen would’ve been another good opportunity for this feature; have the jerk bring some buddies, have the player use a couple teams to engage the attacking demons, make a proper epic battle out of it.  He still could’ve blown away the majority of the combatants after the rest of his allies had been beaten, given Terra her chance to shine, but the whole scenario would’ve been kicked up a notch.

The way that FF6 handles its multi-group scenarios just seems odd to me.  There’s so few of them for such a notable feature, and the way they’re paced is truly puzzling.  There were definitely other opportunities over the course of the game for additional instances of multi-group battles and dungeon exploration which would have made sense and been fairly easy to incorporate.  It’s certainly not a negative for the game, of course, but it seems like there was a lot more opportunity for the feature to be a positive than was realized.  In spite of its placement in some key scenarios, this feature winds up only being a fun and interesting novelty in Final Fantasy 6, when it could have been an iconic signature like, say, the army battles of Suikoden, or the ship combat of Skies of Arcadia.













* It would’ve made more sense from a plot perspective, too.  I mean, if you’re gonna invade the Empire’s own home turf, you’d think you’d want your full team on that.  Yeah, protecting the Esper in Narshe is important and all, but with Figaro as a buffer to the southwest and with the Empire’s initial attack force having been demolished with a long and complicated process to build up a new one in South Figaro, if it can manage to at all, Narshe is pretty well protected.  Hell, it’s basically now the heart of Returner territory.  Keeping 2 of the Returners’ best agents behind to protect the Esper at this time doesn’t make sense; it’s like benching 2 of your all-stars during a championship game so they can protect the gatorade cooler.

Also would’ve been more sensible from a gameplay standpoint.  Taking 2 (or more) party members out of the player’s hands for the entire sequence of raiding the Magitek factory is a bad decision to begin with, particularly when they’ve likely already been absent for a while given how inconvenient it is at that point in the game to backtrack and change party members.  And it even would’ve numerically added up basically perfectly - 2 groups with a maximum of 4 characters means a total of 8 spots that can be filled by 6 regular characters to choose from (Celes, Sabin, Edgar, Cyan, Gau, and Locke) and a seventh part timer in Shadow (if you’ve hired him), with the last slot being open for upcoming addition of Setzer.

Shin Megami Tensei 5's Nahobino Fusion Scene

As awful as the ending of Shin Megami Tensei 5 is, it’s worth noting that the preceding events of its finale are disappointing garbage, too.  Case in point?  The Nahobino fusion scene.

So, in the Empyrean, the final dungeon (if a linear path with no real detours containing a total of 5 fights altogether can be called such), you reach a point, towards its end, at which you catch up with your faction’s allies (Atsuta and Koshimizu if you’re Chaos, Dazai and Abdiel if you’re Law, Yakumo and Nuwa if you’re Neutral), and your faction’s enemies.  When you get there, you find that your comrades have managed to get their asses kicked by your foes.  And I mean that your buddies got thoroughly wrecked; they’re down on their knees, barely keeping it together, while their foes don’t look to have suffered a scratch.

So I’m justifiably annoyed from the start as I roll up on this debacle, cuz like...really?  You assholes couldn’t have at least softened them up a little for me?  I’m already clearly gonna have to clean up your mess here anyway, but you couldn’t have at least landed a goddamn punch beforehand for my benefit?  There isn’t even a speck of dirt on our mutual foes, guys, these fuckers look immaculate and I know that that’s not from any association with the Virgin Mary. I know because she’s in my party and I checked with her.  She says she had nothing to do with it, y’all just weak as shit.

How the hell did my allies lose this fast, for that matter?  I entered the portal to this place, like, 30 seconds after everyone else.  These fuckers must have been speedrunning defeat!  Forget being brought down by their foes--there shouldn’t have been enough time for them to kill themselves, for Nocticula’s sake!

But at any rate, the horses you’ve backed are getting turned into glue when you find them in the Empyrean.  So you show up, and you find that you’re just in time to watch the victors of this off-screen skirmish decide that now’s the time to finally fuse together and become the Nahobino they were meant to be.  And watch you most certainly do, because Zon Kuthon forbid the protagonist of Shin Megami Tensei 5 ever, ever not indulge in Voyeuristic Paralysis Syndrome whenever he’s given the opportunity.  Make even the slightest attempt to stop his enemies from merging together to form a real, actual fucking god?  Nah, not when there’s more important stuff for the protagonist to do, like standing motionlessly and staring emotionlessly.  More on THIS little bad habit in a forthcoming rant, believe you me.

So yeah, with nothing stopping them, your faction enemies do their little fusion thing, and...fuckin’ hell, just thinking about this is giving me an aneurysm because it’s so goddamn stupid.  They fuse together, and your allies are killed by the Dragon Ball Z power-up winds that result from it.  I mean for fuck’s sake, guys.  It’s not enough for you assholes to make record time at getting the shit beaten out of you off-screen, you have to make the cherry on top dying to a breeze?  Jesus Christ, your faction allies in this game make Shin Megami Tensei 3’s ISAMU look less pathetic by comparison.  At least when HE decided to up and die even when his faction was the winning team, he did so from the wounds he received from his off-screen battle.  He wasn’t murdered by lethal hype.

Hey, here’s a question: where the hell was YOUR wave of destructive power-up wind, huh?  I’m talking about way back at the beginning of the game, when the protagonist first joined with Aogami to become the Nahobino.  Didn’t see any radiating burst of power then!  And it would’ve been handy, because the circumstances for that joining was that our hero had run afoul of a handful of minor tutorial monsters and Aogami was trying to protect him from them.  Why do a couple of secondary characters becoming a Nahobino release such a shockwave of raw power that it kills off experienced demons and demon hunters, but when the blasted protagonist does it, it doesn’t even lightly nudge a single level 3 experience-fodder enemy?

The whole thing really devalues and cheapens the characters you’ve allied with, too.  Let’s say that you’ve chosen the Chaos route, for example.  Doing so means that the very first and only time you see Koshimizu in any kind of combat situation, it’s specifically to watch him get trashed.  Isn’t this the same joker who’s been talking up how much better it’ll be if Tokyo is protected by a posse of local gods like him?  Not instilling a lot of confidence in that future with your career win-loss record of 0-1 there, Champ.

And it’s even worse if you’ve sided with Law.  Because the last time you saw Dazai and Abdiel, Dazai was showing off the fact that his baseball cap was apparently weighted training clothing and taking it off quadrupled his power level.  More importantly, Abdiel achieved the climax of her character arc and went through a cool, intimidating transformation, becoming a fallen angel as she embraced the need to defy God in order to achieve His goals.  So we go from the culmination of Abdiel’s story, the impressive and perhaps even chilling fall she undergoes to become a terrifying dark avatar of blasphemy, to...colorful wind disintegrating her after an enemy effortlessly beat her off-screen.  

Yeah, I sure do love it when a character goes through a whole personal arc to achieve a higher state of being for absolutely no goddamn reason whatsoever.  “My gods, the power!  The POWER!  I’ve never felt anything like it!  By my estimate, I am now strong enough...to bruise my enemy’s knuckles a little as he beats my ass into the pavement!”

Objectively, I also recognize that this sequence is bullshit if you picked the Neutral path.  I have to admit, however, I find it more difficult to be affronted by this scenario, because getting to see that sneering, arrogant fuckwit Yakumo get his self-important ass handed to him like the sad weak little shit he wants to pretend he isn’t...well, it's better for my mental state than professional therapy.

Even just the fact that any of this is happening at all at this point in the game is dumb and makes no sense.  Why the fuck were these 4 idiots all battling normally before you show up, anyway?  Everyone’s in the Empyrean with the intention of taking God’s throne because each pair can become a Nahobino, and only a Nahobino can actually use said throne to dictate the nature of the world.  So why the ACTUAL FUCK did NONE of them choose to power up BEFORE this moment!?  If you find yourself battling against enemies who are of comparable strength to you, and everything is on the line, wouldn’t your first move be to transform into your ultra-powerful god form to gain the advantage?  Actually, rewind.  If you find yourself in a race to get to God’s throne and use it before your competitors, wouldn’t your first move be to transform into the Nahobino form that can actually make use of said throne, so that you don’t have to waste time doing so once you’ve actually made it there?

No, actually, rewind even further--why not just transform into one’s god form before even entering the damn Empyrean realm to begin with?  What benefit was there in not just doing it from the get-go?  If we go by the example of the protagonist, there’s no time limit on the Nahobino fusion, , no stated plot restriction preventing them from doing so.  It’s not even like it’s an irreversible process; we’ve seen Aogami and the protagonist separate multiple times at will.  Atlus, if someone gains the ability to become an honest-to-themself god, with no downsides whatsoever, there’s no one alive who isn’t gonna DO that immediately!  Especially if they have something very important to accomplish which such a transformation could help facilitate!

It gets even more idiotic when you realize that the losing pair in this scene are also just as capable of transforming into a Nahobino.  It’s dumb enough that the victors wait until AFTER their success is guaranteed to unleash their secret weapon, but your faction allies basically have just chosen to die, because they’ve refused to play their trump card even as they get absolutely demolished.  It’s like people who refuse to use up their best healing items during a game’s final battle, only somehow even more moronic.

Jesus Christ this game is garbage.  On the rare occasions it actually deigns to DO something with its story, this is the kind of stilted, irrational, careless schlock that results.  And I’m still not even done with taking Shin Megami Tensei 5 to task for its failures yet!  There is more, significantly more, to come!  You wouldn’t think you could write more sentences about how bad a game is than there are in the game’s own script, but I’m pretty sure I’m gonna get there, if I haven’t already!

Shin Megami Tensei 5's Ending Sucks

You may have intuited from certain subtle clues I’ve dropped here and there over the course of this year that I’m not a huge fan of Shin Megami Tensei 5.  But just in case I was being too coy about the myriad ways in which the latest installment of the mainline SMT series is disappointing, let’s talk about the ending.

First of all, it’s dull and empty.  You beat the final boss, the Nahobino briefly exchanges nods (because dialogue would have required someone at Atlus actually doing their job that day) with the dead Hero and patron of the path he chose in a white void, he finds himself in this empty space-y expanse with planets and frozen celestial beings and a really, really ostentatious New Years ball in the center, and he starts walking nonchalantly through the extra-dimensional emptiness as the narrator tells, not shows, what the results will be of the protagonist taking or breaking God’s throne for a whole whopping 2 minutes (and the narrator isn’t exactly rushing through his lines, either), and then it goes to the credits, which play over a scene of the Nahobino continuing to just walk in a straight line with someone’s very pretty Deviantart landscape in the background.  Finally, once the credits are done, the stroll concludes with the Nahobino walking up to God’s super special disco ball and the screen fading to white.

And that’s it.  That’s all!  That’s the ending.*  That’s your reward for forcing yourself to play Shin Megami Tensei 5 for 40+ hours: a lack of dialogue from the characters who matter, a minimal narration-dump, and trudging through an atmospheric but thoroughly empty void.  Well, it may be garbage, but I suppose you gotta give SMT5 credit for being consistent to the bitter end.

I suppose there’s an argument to be made that the endings of most of the previous mainline SMTs are also a bit, shall we say, sparse.  I certainly can’t deny that point, any more than I can deny the fact that character development in the same games has likewise been on the low and understated side.  But as with the depth of the cast, prior SMT games have maintained an approach throughout their course that makes it clear to the audience that their endings’ stoic minimalist-leanings have been a matter of storytelling design, something chosen and planned for, rather than just a consequence of not having spent enough time and effort on the game.  In previous games, the span and scope of the plot (whether good or subpar) has possessed enough substance and artistry that a somewhat austere and spare conclusion feels acceptable (and aesthetically appropriate), while with Shin Megami Tensei 5, the scanty approach to its finish just feels like more of the same inadequacy that’s plagued the game’s entire narrative to this point.  Even if the result is superficially similar, there’s a big and discernible difference between a landscape artist who paints a desert out of a wish to capture the sensation of sprawling starkness it invokes within him, and a landscape artist who paints a desert because it has fewer features and he’s lazy.

So yeah, Shin Megami Tensei 5’s ending is empty and half-assed.  And yeah, it’s hardly surprising; watching SMT5’s story unfold is like reading a book printed with only a single sentence on each page, with an epilogue scribbled on a sticky note taped to its back cover.  But--and this is also, sadly, not surprising for SMT5--what little material IS there in the ending also manages to disappoint in its own right.  Because every ending of this game seems kinda determined to leave you dissatisfied, or at the very least tell you that you’re a stupid jerk.

Seriously, there’s really just no pleasing ending to this game.  So let's say you choose Chaos.  What happens?  Why, what happens is that a mere 3 sentences into his monologue, the narrator makes it a point to let you know that the new world you’ve chosen of multiple gods and an ever-changing society has been difficult for some people to adapt to and find happiness within.  That’s the first reaction he speaks of; the fact that there are plenty of people who thrive in the new world of Chaos is only something he mentions AFTER he shows you your 1-star reviews.  And then a mere 2 sentences later, this pessimistic prick’s back on the complain train as he informs you that, shocker of shockers, a bunch of competing divine narcissists (and 1 actual Narcissus) is naturally a recipe for, and I quote, “immeasurable conflict.”  The ending narration then talks about how sad the Nahobino is to witness his reality completely plagued with war, but that he holds firm to his belief because of some sloppy, shaky philosophy about how people should be able to choose for themselves rather than have things chosen for them.

First of all, this is a fucking stupid statement and correlation all on its own.  The Choose For Yourself ship has already sailed for the people of Chaos’s world because the fact that the world is this way was a choice the Nahobino made without consulting every other person in existence, or any of them, for that matter.  All they’re getting in exchange for never-ending violence is the ability to choose which powerful being to obey because they’re powerless themselves.  And also, even if this idea that people are self-determined in this world was legitimate, you’re saying that the trade-off for having any choice in your actions and the direction of your life is constant war.  Free will may be inseparable from the potential for, and eventuality of, conflict, but there’s no rational way you can argue that the reasonable price of it is or should be a never-ending turf war between insanely powerful deities that makes the entire human species a reluctant participant and casualty.

Secondly, and more importantly, what kind of shitty way is that to end your game?  There’s only 7 fucking sentences of narration in this ending to reward the dozens of hours you put into this garbage, and of them, 3 are devoted to admonishing you for your choice.  And sure, Chaos IS a dumb choice to make in Shin Megami Tensei 5 and anyone who couldn’t see bickering godly gang wars being its result is probably as facile an unquestioning a moron as Atsuta himself, but that’s still excessively negative to a degree that feels mean-spirited.  The writers seem to actively want you to feel bad about having played their game.

And lastly, let’s not forget that the whole reason that Atsuta becomes the game’s Chaos Hero is because he’s told by Koshimizu (and because he unquestioningly, blindly believes this statement) that Chaos’s world of multiple gods will be the best way to protect Tokyo and its people.  And by siding with him, you’ve wound up bringing about a world where the people are caught in constant, inconceivably devastating warfare from which they can never be safe.  I’m getting flashbacks to Wild Arms 4’s ending with Jude, Mr. Codependent Everyone Let’s Be Friends Forever And Work Together And Never Ever Let Each Other Out Of Our Sight becoming a goddamn forest ranger hermit who lives completely separated from his friends and the entire human species.  Just as it was with Jude, for Atsuta, this conclusion is the opposite, the exact polar fucking opposite you understand, of the single solitary overplayed trait of his 1-dimensional character.

You might think that maybe this poor showing of Chaos, the latest in a whole game’s worth of instances of this route’s lesser quality, might just be a case of SMT’s preference for the Neutral path being taken a little too far.  But the fact is that both Neutral endings, though not quite as poorly reasoned and inconsistent to their figurehead’s stated purpose, are equally unsatisfying.

The ending in which you destroy the throne involves what’s-his-name, the monk guy who decided out of nowhere right at the last second that he was gonna be some important lofty observer entity, outright talking about what a foolish decision you’ve made, so right off the bat you have a tidy little bit of narrative disapproval for your actions even before the other endings get their chastisement.  Then when you get to the regular ending narration, the game makes sure you know that plenty of people will perish in the efforts to resist and stand free of the influence and control of demon-kind.

Granted, Neutral Hero Yakumo, who is basically what happens when you decide to base your entire personality around your Resting Bitch Face, has made it clear that any human being who can’t personally stand up to malevolent godlike beings and beat them in hand-to-hand combat doesn’t, in his opinion, deserve to live.  So this ending gloating about how many people will be casualties in the world you’ve created isn’t as thematically opposed to its representative as Chaos was.  And at least this time around the game doesn’t tell you that even the protagonist himself is disappointed with the results of his choice.  But it still is an example of SMT5 going out of its way to use its extremely limited ending summary to make damn sure you know that the ending you got was really bad for a hell of a lot of people.  The very people, in fact, that you presumably chose this path with the intention of doing right by--the deities and demons certainly don’t benefit from breaking the throne, and the Nahobino doesn’t gain God’s power with it gone, thus presumably you could only be choosing this path because you genuinely believe that it will be in the best interests of humanity as a whole.**  So thanks for making sure to hammer home the fact that the players who have made this decision for the good of the people have, in fact, fucked those very people over, SMT5.

It’s not even like it’s a sure thing that those sacrifices are even toward a greater good.  The narrator ends his stunted little spiel by expressing certainty that humanity will, in the future, come out on top against the demons and gods that would control them, but he doesn’t actually state it as fact.  Even the underwhelming, disappointing ending for the Black Eagles route in Fire Emblem 16 at least made it pretty unambiguous that the long, bloody war with Those Who Slither in the Dark, a costly and prolonged conflict that would have been quickly and relatively painlessly settled had the player possessed the brains and/or human decency not to back Edelgard,*** would end in an eventual victory.  In SMT5’s first Neutral ending, the best we get is a “surely” that humanity will eventually be able to stand on its own and win its right to freedom from the machinations of higher (and lower) mythological beings.

But okay, sure, that’s the lesser Neutral ending.  If any conclusion in the game is gonna be crappy, it’d be that one.  Surely**** the True Neutral ending is reasonably satisfying, right?

Well I’m talking about it right here and now in this rant about how the game’s endings suck, so I guess you can probably tell from context alone that it isn’t.  Hell, we’re talking about a component of Shin Megami Tensei 5--that should be all the information you really need right there.

So yeah, the “best” ending of SMT5 is also unsatisfying.  Now, this time around the game is at least kind enough not to gleefully make all the myriad people who are going to be miserable and dead because of your decision the most memorable takeaway.  And there’s even more content besides, with a more enthusiastically positive reaction from Tao and I Refuse To Bother Learning Monk Guy’s Name Because Holy Shit What A Forgettable Character, and a more involved talk and confrontation with Lucifer.  No, rather than the game forcing unnecessary admonishment into the ending text, the dissatisfaction of the True Neutral ending comes from qualities inherent to its nature, thanks to the incompetence of the game’s writers.  The disappointment of the True Neutral boils down to 2 points.

First of all: it’s an emotional betrayal to everything that the game has shown us.  See, in the True Neutral ending, the Nahobino takes God’s throne and uses his power over creation to decree that there will be no more gods or demons, that Earth is for humanity alone, because SMT’s Neutral faction always has such a boner for telling all mythological entities to get the hell off humanity’s lawn, as though we aren’t the ones who created and invited them to start with.  And in most Shin Megami Tensei titles, that’s fine, justifiable, and emotionally consistent, as gods and demons and the like are the source of most of humanity’s problems in the game.  But while that’s still true in SMT5, what’s also true is that pretty much every noticeably positive character relationship that the Nahobino has over the course of SMT5’s events is with a demon character.

I mean, think about it.  The most (inexplicably) loyal and supportive character in the game to the protagonist is his partner Aogami, who can’t seem to speak 3 consecutive sentences if at least 1 of them isn’t affirming that he’s gonna protect the protagonist at all costs and make all his dreams come true and wuv him and cuddle him and give him head-pats.  Then the runners-up behind Aogami are his companion Amanozako, who helps the Nahobino off and on for most of the game and who is weirdly sort of a half-assed love interest for him or something, and his friend Tao, who may start as a human but is resurrected as a goddess who outright pledges to help him become God because he almost made a mild effort to help someone one time (more on that in a later rant).  All 3 of the only people in this game who demonstrably have a positive character connection to the main hero are demons.

Additionally, most of the outright moral and decent people you meet in the game are likewise inhuman.  Khonsu, for example, is devoted to saving the life of the sickly Miyazu to a self-sacrificial degree.  In fact, Khonsu shows way, way more active concern and affection for Miyazu, not to mention expends way more effort in trying to help her, than her own brother Atsuta does!  And lest we forget, Atsuta is the clown who’s supposed to be entirely defined by his wish to protect her!  Meanwhile, the fairies under Oberon and Titania’s leadership graciously take in the lost, wounded, and helpless kidnapped human students in Chapter 2, treating their injuries and providing a safe haven to them for the entire rest of the game’s course, completely without complaint or expectation of reimbursement.  Hell, they didn’t even need to be asked to do it--Fionn mac Cumhaill just started bringing hurt human beings to the fairies to care for, and they set right to it.  And speaking of, Fionn, a mythological entity himself, just up and takes it upon himself to go around saving the students from their captors, again for no discernible reason beyond the desire to help the helpless.  And then there’s various minor sidequest demons like Idun and Demeter and Hua Po who are friendly and generally decent individuals.  Hell, the Neutral faction itself is much more likable for its demonic patron Nuwa than it is for that human jackass Yakumo.

I’m not saying that all or even most of the demons in this game are good people, but there’s pretty much no denying that all of the likable and nearly all of the morally decent members of this game’s cast are gods and demons, and definitely all of the Nahobino’s own positive friendships are with these supernatural entities.  So the True Neutral ending really sucks and betrays whatever emotional weight the game has managed to create, and makes the Nahobino look like a complete tool, because you’re basically turning on every individual who’s extended meaningful friendship to you and disintegrating them.  What was the point of protecting Amanozako, helping her with her search to find her soulmate, if a mere couple hours after she finally achieves what she needs to lead a happy and secure life, you force an abrupt conclusion to that life?  Why make a big deal about Tao being reborn if she’s just going to re-die the next day?

As with Atsuta’s criticism of Law, the writers of SMT5 clearly just paid absolutely no attention whatsoever to what they themselves had been doing.  They’ve made a story wherein the “best” ending involves killing every single character in the game who isn’t a jackass!

But even if you don’t give a shit about any of that and just hate them dadgummed durned demons for the hell of it, the True Neutral ending’s still unsatisfying.  Because it, in all its special Trueness, gets a special post-credits scene of the new (but basically just the same as the old) world you’ve created, and the narrator, as well as the golden-eyed putz sitting on a bench, strongly imply that this humanity-for-humanity-only world is not gonna last because the Mandala universal will thing cannot be denied or escaped.  So yeah, after all that rigamarole, after sacrificing everyone who demonstrably gave a shit about you in the game, it turns out it was probably all for nothing.

Honestly, compared to the rest of these, the fact that the Law ending only insults your intelligence probably makes it the least disappointing of all of them.  Sure, the narrator’s clearly relishing the opportunity to hammer home the idea that people who follow Law can’t think for themselves (a stupid claim that has been soundly proven wrong by the game’s own cast), but at least humanity is safe and generally happy, the Nahobino himself is pleased with the result, and it’s stated flat-out that the future is prosperous.  Frankly, I’ll take a clumsy attempt at an insult over any combination of being told that countless people suffer and die in war, being told that even the protagonist himself hates what he’s done, the assassination of the only people we’ve seen capable of being nice, and being told that my actions didn’t accomplish the 1 thing they were meant to.

Honestly, between this and the fact that the Law faction is the only one with anything approaching actual character development, I’d be tempted to think that SMT5 is actually intentionally favoring Law...if not for the fact that Dazai spends 85% of the game wearing a baseball cap that says “SUCKER” on it.

Make no mistake, though: even if the Law ending is the least unsatisfactory, the game’s still sneering at you for picking it.  The facts of the matter are, that all of the endings are careless, empty after-thoughts in a story that’s as barren and abandoned as the wastelands it takes place within, and that 3 of the 4 endings leave a player feeling unsatisfied, with the other one still goes out of its way to make you feel like you made the wrong choice.  SMT5’s endings are the perfect crappy way to cap off a crappy game.














* Well, there’s an extra scene for the “true” Neutral ending tacked onto the end.  But it is nothing beneficial, as we’ll see in a moment.


** Or you might just be simping for Nuwa, I guess.


*** Well, not Dimitri either, since the bad guys actually effectively win in his route.  But he, tiresome and dumb edgelord though he is for most of his route’s narrative, is at least not a gullible, amoral dingus like Edelgard.


**** See, SMT5?  See how effortless it is for “Surely” to be linked to an ironic opposite?