...now where did I leave off from? Oh yeah.
12) Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition
I'm gonna divide this into two sections, the base game and the new story content.
XBCX Base Game Thoughts:
[edp voice] I mean it's alright
I have so many thoughts about this and they're all pretty scattered, so I think I'll just have them in grouped bulletpoints.
Gameplay and Missions And World And All That:
- Gameplay is fine. I am really not big on actually playing video games, so whether combat was good or not I cannot say because it meant nothing to me. I do think things get massively better when you get your Skell and you can fly around as you please, but the grinding for higher levels starts to become quite a drag. Sometimes even if you try to cheese it with level 99 NPCs in your party, some level 70 guy can breathe on one of them wrong and knock them out instantly. I think my final level was around 65 or so? After a certain point I couldn't be bothered to do higher level missions because I started to get more frustrated with them.
- The amount of missions you can do being bountiful and full of story is nice. Anything is better than XBC1's missions, haha. Same goes for character specific missions/chapters. My favorite characters ended up being Hope, Irina, Murderess, Ga Jiarg, L, and Elma. Hope's missions and her character itself are probably the standout for me, Murderess close second.
- Open world was fun to explore up until a certain point (when I was really starting to want a Skell). I probably messed myself up a bit because I explored a lot instead of just grinding through the story to get a Skell and THEN explore now that I could fly... Though I will say my least favorite area to explore was the lava area. Too much lava. What a complaint, right? But it's so annoying to navigate some quests because of the liquid that you cannot escape if you fuck up and touch it even a little bit.
More talking about characters and story:
- As said above, Hope, Irina, Murderess, Ga Jiarg, L, and Elma were all my favs.
- The story of XBCX is written in a very odd way. Were any of you on Wattpad as children? The writing of XBCX is strikingly similar to how a Naruto fanfiction would have been written back in the day— it updates once a week and the characters do a singular task, some characters are suddenly introduced and then never used again, until suddenly the teen writing the fic decides in the last 25% of the story that there’s going to be a much larger plot to wrap all it up. I really can only equate it to that, you have to feel the vibe.
- This being said, the reveal of what the clock is counting down to, what death means in this world, it filled me with a sense of dread that I absolutely loved. You would think that being in a Mim body would mean death wouldn't matter, and yet it makes death have so much weight, because if enough people die and we don't have enough manpower, you're not gettin' to the lifehold!
- FUCK ALL Y'ALL FOR HATING TATSU. That's right, this is a TATSU DEFENDER ZONE.
Okay here;s the Tatsu rant i guess:
Before playing this game, all I knew was Tatsu was an annoying little shit and everyone hated him in the fandom. I blindly agreed with these opinions because I trust my friends who had played XBCX when I had not. Playing it now, I can definitively say that 90% of everyone's anger was put in the wrong direction.
Now, I do agree Tatsu is not the best. He is better than Tora XBC2 but that's not a high bar to clear. He's kind of annoying, he takes credit for stuff without really doing anything. These are annoying traits to have. Riki is flirting and Tatsu is sexual harassment image, if that makes sense. However, I would say where people dislike him is focused in the constant joke that he's food. So let me ask the audience, since Tatsu is never making this joke himself:
WHY THE FUCK AREN'T Y'ALL HATING ON LIN MORE.
Here's how Tatsu should have clapped back
Sorry, I'm about to start a hit piece against a literal child, but I would say Lin is one of a few characters emblematic of XBCX's biggest problem— for a game about race relations and classism, it is surprisingly uninterested in delving deep into these topics and is okay with their main characters even ignoring these issues entirely when they partake in racism/classism?
The humans on Earth all fought with each other to get into space. It is clearly stated that some people were prioritized over others, whether that be based on status, race, etc. You would think that the characters who acknowledge this fact would try not to repeat this cycle of discrimination. Especially when you arrive on a foreign planet where YOU, the humans, are effectively the "aliens" now. So much of the game is “We need to learn how to live in Mira and coexist with other races”.
Yet when we first meet Tatsu, and for the majority of the game, all Lin does is make comments about how she's going to eat him, how he's stupid, how they shouldn't take anything he says seriously. A lot of these feelings extend to other Nopon NPCs— who we are told have been on Mira much longer than the humans, and so logically they must know much more than us— not just by Lin, but other humans in NLA. But Lin is the biggest proponent in this. Tatsu can literally say anything and Lin will be like "bro shut the hell up before I cook you LMAO".
Excuse me if this is a bit extreme, but observing how the humans in NLA treat all other alien species makes me earnestly believe they should have all been wiped out. It is so weird to have a plot where it's predicated on this idea of "Why do the Ganglion hate humans so much and want to kill us?!" and these same humans constantly discriminate against the alien in the cast with the most lines not named Elma. Even just aside from Tatsu, so many human NPCs will be weirded out by aliens you meet throughout the world and not really like them.
On some level, you might want to call this genius writing. The folly of man, to feel like the victim while victimizing others. There even are some sidequests with writing that involves you saying "Dude. Stop being racist" to some NPCs. I agree that all of this is a good start. However, it's still incredibly weak when this is only addressed briefly in side content while everyone else in the main cast keeps being racist to Tatsu.
I don't get how all the hate for Tatsu for the food jokes falls on him and not Lin. Hammer betraying everyone in Xenogears was some of the stupidest shit I ever seen, but I was honestly praying for Tatsu to snap and sell everyone out to the Ganglion for how they treat Nopon like bumbling babies who can't do anything. It would have been so deserved.
This brings me to my next point...
Elma Blackfishing Is XBCX's Race Writing Issues Personified:
I'm going to spoil XBCX really quick, so close your eyes and scroll past this section really fast if you don't wanna see all that.
At the end of the game, it's revealed that Elma is an alien who came to Earth to warn everyone about the Ganglion threat. This was implied throughout the game in not subtle ways, so this was no huge twist. But what I would consider a twist is Elma's actual "alien" form that she reveals to you at the end of the game.
And uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Now I have seen the excuse online that Elma is specifically supposed to reference TEL-OS and KOS-MOS from Xenosaga respectively with these palettes. I'm not sure if this has been said before by someone at Monolith Soft in an art book or something, but I could not find a source for this claim. So for the sake of this post, I'm going to say this is a fan headcanon. (Keep in mind, dark skin and white hair is a common anime trope outside of the Xeno- series.)
I really don't like that actual Elma is white skinned and put on dark skin while masquerading as a human. There are three big angles to approach this from, all of which I don't like:
- Was this done to make Elma seem more like an outsider, to hint at her alien origins? Out of all of the key characters and party members in XBCX, Elma is one of three characters with dark skin, the other being Yelv and Alexa (though I think Yelv is just tanned and Alexa is actually black). Of the key government characters who lead NLA, all of them are light skinned. I would say Elma is not part of the government but definitely has an important role in informing those part of it, further cementing this "outsider" feeling.
- If this was the goal, I don't really know if I like the idea that Monolith Soft sees having darker skin as being equivalent to an "outsider".
- Was this done to make some kind of commentary regarding skin color or race? Is Elma having darker skin supposed to subvert the typical expectation for a main character in a JRPG? Is it trying to say something deeper?
- If this was the goal, they really dropped the ball, because I feel like Elma is the most racism-neutral of the entire group. While she does seem to encourage connecting with other aliens, she still lets Lin's comments on Tatsu fly and make some herself.
They don't have Elma fighting hard against racism in the story at all, or speaking directly about how her skintone affects how she's treated in human society. She has a more flyover "we should get along" type of vibe to her.
To go along with this, when she came to Earth in her alien form, she doesn't talk about receiving any kind of pushback. All that's said is she was able to convince the government the Ganglion were a threat and that she wanted to help out. For all we know, Elma has never experienced racism in her entire life.
- Was this done because they thought it would look cool? Did they give Elma dark skin because they just thought the typical white hair dark skin anime trope looked cool? If the TEL-OS and KOS-MOS parallels are indeed real, this can also fall under this umbrella— that it would be a cool reference to a previously established character(s).
- If this was the goal, and to be honest, I think this is the most likely reason, I really feel like it sums up XBCX's problems with racism so succinctly.
(I HOPE I shouldn't have to explain that I don't think racism is good, so I will say clearly here that racism is bad. Everything I say below is unfortunately me discussing how current American society is acting re:race relations. I do not agree with these opinions and I wish they were not the case.)
In America today, where this game effectively takes place, people WILL judge you by your skin color. Your skin tone, your accent, your culture, whether you like it or not, people will judge you based on it.
There are so many fantastic things that come with everyone in this country being different, and I don't want to undermine that, but you could also say that everyone's prejudices will make some of this "baggage" as well.
So, to have this alien girl take on dark skin, simply because it looks cool, while clearly ignoring what it means to have dark skin in America and how that can affect someone's entire life, is probably what I think most clearly sums up why XBCX is not smart enough to handle its own proposed topic of race relations, and why this feels so shallow.
I'm not trying to say no one at Monolith Soft can understand racism, but that Elma putting on dark skin for any of the above reasons is proof they do not understand American racism, which is pretty crucial because that's where this takes place and is pretty different from Japanese racism (though that leans more in the direction of xenophobia). These things shape our society, whether we like it or not.
IDK maybe I'm the friend who's too woke but it just rubs me the wrong way. You can't have a game with race relations as a topic and also have this in it without seeming stupid.
Tatsu should have blasted everyone in this damn game. #DarkWoke I don't care that the Ganglion were hunting humans down we suck.
Uhhh what else did I have to say about the base game after all that? Hmmm...
Ga Jiarg can get it. Love u Jamieson Price.
Base Game: 3/5
XBCX New Story Content Thoughts:
Did not care for it at all actually!
Let me start by saying I thought the cliffhanger for the base game was freaking awesome. Like wow, what a way to end it, and also if I had played this game way back then, I think I probably would have gone insane in an extremely negative way. But oooh, it's so tantalizing to see in 2025. And because I'm playing the Definitive Edition, I get to have the cliffhanger resolved RIGHT NOW! YIPPIE!
And, I guess they do kind of answer the cliffhanger question, but in a really roundabout way, and it's 5000% not even remotely the focus of the new chapter. They do a Bayonetta 3 bullshit thing where we learn our world is connected to a multiverse, and also everything about "let's learn to live together in peace on Mira!" that we were hammering into our heads in the base game for 60-90 hours before this is quickly discarded because now Mira is about to DIE!
Truly, trying to connect this to the other Xeno- games in any way larger than "we left Earth and Klaus did his bullshit and the Zohar was there" was the biggest mistake. I really, really did not need to see Live2D Alois watching Xenoblade Chronicles 2 The Movie - All Cutscenes Chapter 1-10 on YouTube. I cannot explain why this felt so hollow to me, but boy oh boy did it feel very hollow to me.
And now. A very quick rant
The Alois Rant:
.png)
I cannot stand this man. I think it is so, so, so strange to pull the "guys, remember this one guy we all really liked and wanna suck off but yet we never spoke about him in the base game?" card in your game's followup chapter 10 years later.
Alois is never mentioned until the new chapter, and they will do absolutely anything to get you to care about him within the short 5-8 hour timeframe of the extra story. This includes:
- As mentioned before, all of the characters will say how much they loved this guy and how important he was back on Earth
- He has an annoying quirk where he asks "How's it shakin' bacon" or something [I LITERALLY DO NOT CARE ENOUGH TO LOOK UP THE EXACT LINE FOR THIS POST], and they try to make it this a super quirky funny thing that everyone likes saying back to him
- You can feel very clearly, from the moment he starts saying it, that this is only being said over and over for the sole purpose of being used at the big dramatic moment at the end of the game.
- This consequentially made me roll my eyes really hard at the end of the game.
- He wants to suck you off (this type of "let the cool chad humble himself and show he knows his place by bowing down to the gigachad player stand-in" is typically found in Fire Emblem games with Avatars as a shortcut to get you to feel better about yourself and like the Unit)
I just cannot stand him. I don't think this game needed any new characters thrown into the mix, but the fact that it's this guy grinds my gears so badly.
I also think him suddenly coming in as this huge savior of Earth lowkey undermines Elma's importance in some matters. I also really, really, REALLY dislike that his petname for Elma is "princess". I know, the girl who said she wanted Anthony to come back in Prime 4 saying this is ironic, but holy shit.
I need every single man on this post to listen to me very carefully right now. When you call women this in stressful situations and you're not bloodbonded to them (that is, a relative, a boyfriend, or literally RIDE OR DIE best friend), it ONLY comes across as pedantic and belittling. It is not sweet. And in the case of this game when he's calling Elma this as she's worried about Mira dying or herself literally dying, it feels REALLY annoying. If I were her I'd beat his ass. Elma is not Alois's ride or die best friend because he was not invented until this chapter was written.
My last fragmentary thought about this extra bit of story... does anyone else feel like they didn't solve the problem at all? Why would the Not-Gnosis not just follow them into the Xenosaga world? Also original Mira just got totally fucked and died, that kinda sucks.
Game after this extra chapter: 2/5
holy shit i can't believe i played all of xenosaga for this shit im so mad
13) Clinical Trial
A short RPGMaker game about a person undergoing… a clinical trial. Yeah it’s right there on the tin, IDK what else to tell you. There’s not much I can tell you without spoiling it— it’s free and only 2ish hours long, so I recommend trying it out yourself. You can find the download for it (and its warnings) here.
I’ve said this before on this blog, but I have always loved games that make me feel sad, unnerved, uncomfortable, etc. I like feeling bad for some unknown reason, and I would love to be psychoanalyzed and learn why this is. I have to imagine it has to do with feeling like I am not alone in feeling like abysmal dogshit every day of my life, but no time for that goku...
Though I can’t relate to most of the problems the characters in Clinical Trial have, I still got that deeply sad and uncomfortable feeling that scratched my itch. I will say got spoiled on the “twist(?)” of the game before playing, though that’s why I picked it up at all and the main thing anyone knows about this game— I fucking love male yanderes!!!!!!!!!! yippieeeeee!!!!
4/5
14) A Mortician's Tale
This is a pretty short (30 minutes to an hour) game about working at a funeral home. I got this in the BLM itchio bundle, and randomly decided to go into that bundle deeper one afternoon. I ended up only playing this that day, but it was a nice little experience. A lot of talk of death, particularly funeral ettitque and things I hadn't really thought about before in regards to what people do with your body after death.
I would have liked to see this concept drawn out into a game that's longer, but for what it is, I liked it. Go try it sometime.
3/5
15) Virtual Villagers series
16) Bustafellows
Bustafellows is a true middle-of-the-road Otome game. It will not wow you, but it won't upset you either. Middle-of-the-road.
You play as a journalist residing in the fictional American-coded city of New Seeg, with the power to travel back in time in a very limited fashion.
The main plot is ~5 chapters predicated on a really, really weak excuse for the main character to hang around with the dateable men (think “I was sold to One Direction” level, I can't even describe it without sounding exasperated), and then split off into pretty short character routes.
Once you finish all the character routes, you get a very short chapter that clumsily ties up the main plot, and another short chapter that has ties up the last two or three loose ends but has the same vibe as those commercials like, “This looks like a normal school doesn’t it? You weren’t paying attention. A kid in the background was planning a school shooting!” in the way they wanted to try and build to something bigger but kind of jumped to that point out of nowhere.
BTW, they explain literally everything except for why the main character can travel back in time which is very funny to me.
The themes of this game are interesting enough, a lot of talk about drug abuse and immigration which, to be real, I have never seen in an Otome game before. Good on them for trying something new? LOL.
But yet, I feel like they never really say enough poignant about the latter. I almost feel like maybe this should not have been a romance game for how serious this topic is, or the main story should have intertwined with the character routes more instead of being completely forgotten. They should have let me date the women in this game.
Bustafellows does have a bootleg Trader Joe’s called Trader Jones’s and that’s really good though.
3/5
17) H9: Origin
This game uses AI generated artwork for at least one image in the credits that's extremely obvious, as well as possibly using AI for its backgrounds and a cg (some have nonsensical details/hallmarks of AI usage).
A very interesting idea revolving around a bishojo game that never released, and a team in the modern day that wants to bring it back to find the original developer behind it. This idea is ultimately hurt
by the poor gameplay and its microscopic runtime. Without saying spoilers,
you have to find "bugs" in each stage to unlock backstory (like you're
debugging the game). However, this can end up not being a linear process
as it's not clear how to find each bug, and you can unlock backstory,
the main meat and potatoes of the game, entirely out of order if you
mess up and don't lock anything in a stage.
In my case I unlocked
each story part (imagine them like chapters) in this order: 1 2 4 5 3.
So playing that "3" segment felt entirely unneeded because I already
knew where things were headed. But you play every backstory section to
unlock TIPS in each section that will give you a code to find the real
ending. so i HAD to read it in my case because I needed to scrutinize
every line to make sure i wasn't missing a TIP (you can't obtain them
from the backlog, and there is no back button, if you want to restart a
section you need to close the game and reopen.)
The idea of
exploring a fucked up work environment and game dev through a scrapped
game like this is really interesting. But because of this
non-linear-ness and the game being incredibly short (less than 2 hours),
I feel like there's a lot of missed potential, I would have liked to
see more. Seventh Lair comes to mind for another game dev narrative
experience vn, but that's much more indie and sole creator focused
rather than industry/company related.
This game also has a
complementary ARG strung together through a Twitter account and a
handful of blogs. Unfortunately, there's no English or Chinese
equivalent to go along with it, all of it is Japanese only. I don't
think this ARG brings anything new to the table or shines an interesting
light on things that are shown in the game, kind of ran in circles with
it and then reaching the end felt like... "What was the point
here...?"
ANYWAYS TLDR, it's a premise with a lot of potential
but I think the way it told its story could have been better. I want to
see this concept done again because there's so much more to say.
FUCK AI also. I can’t sympathize with anyone using AI no matter how small
your team is. Stock photos and something like a Higurashi background
filter exist. The fact this isn’t disclosed openly either on the store
page for the game is very annoying. Game is supposed to be about how
people make games but can’t even make 20% of their artwork.
2/5
18) Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
Yeah, you can click here to see the full breakdown. Contains FULL GAME SPOILERS.
2.5/5
19) Shuten Order
Shuten Order is the latest visual novel-like game by Takumi Nakazawa and other people too I guess. The marketing of Shuten Order heavily advertised Kodaka’s name on the tin because he’s more famous, but make no mistake, this is a Nakazawa game through and through. It’s got all of his staples— terrorism, the ending is So Fucking Long, “we live in a society” moments, all the classics. I would say Shuten Order is close to Root Double and Rebellions 2nd Game Secret Stage in terms of vibes and reused tropes.
Sorry my opening paragraph might have been a bunch of word salad. TLDR; It’s by a guy whose visual novels I like. Big shocker.
Prior to its announcement this year, Nakazawa (of Infinity series, I/O, and other vns fame) created a new Weibo account and was hyping the fuck out of a new game he had yet to reveal. For those who don’t know, Nakazawa’s following is probably its most passionate in China of all places (VS his colleague Uchikoshi, whose fame ranks West > China > Japan).
I don’t know why he said he thought Chinese audiences would click with it so hard, but I definitely think it worked, because most of the discussion I see about this game after finishing it is in Chinese.
The suspects behind your murder are the city’s five ministers in the government who all had a connection to you in your past. You have amnesia, so you don’t remember any details about your life nor the night of your death to name the culprit right off the bat. There are six routes to Shuten Order, the first five being tied to investigating each suspect, and the last being the ending route you get once the first five are investigated.
Each route has a different genre or gimmick:
- Minister of Justice: Ace Attorney/Danganronpa style gameplay
- Minister of Health: Dungeon crawler + death game gameplay
- Minister of Science: 428 Shibuya Scramble-like gameplay
- Minister of Education: Dating sim gameplay
- Minister of Security: I don’t even know. Survival gameplay? You run around trying to not get murked in various mazes.
I’m lowkey explaining this in-depth to try and get you to play it, ‘cuz… I thought Shuten Order was really good, and I would like for you to play it too!!!
As I said before, this is a Nakazawa visual novel through and through, and it’s nice to see him in a big role again. Before this I think his last game he was part of was AINI (credited with the Komeji route, coincidentally the best route?). Oh he might be part of Hundredline too, I haven’t checked but that would make sense because I think he’s employed at Tookyo Games now since AINI.
But yeah, I thought this was a really fun science fiction murder mystery experience. Great artwork, great gimmicks, I loved the whole story. I can’t go into it much more without potential spoilers, and I went into this completely blind, as should you. A lot of my big praises for this game revolve around the various twists and turns toward its end.
Also Shuten Order gets kinda woke. Aside from there being some characters whose gender expressions are nebulous (there’s one who is described as “still figuring things out” and I thought it was very sweet), there is full on, no gaybaiting, no bullshit, “I am a woman in love with a woman” lesbianism in this game which freaking rules. Can’t say which character it is who does it the hardest, but it happens and I love it. Big breath of fresh air after AINS being too scared to even let the girls kiss or say I Love You but let’s not get into that now…
The only cons I can think of are:
- The ending is incredibly long and they don’t let you save during it for some reason. I was playing on Steam Deck so I was able to break this down over three days by putting it in sleep mode, but if I was on PC I’d be so fucked. Nakazawa endings are famously, to me, extremely long and drawn out because they really want to hammer in information to you. If Remember11 got the proper ending it lacked it would be this, which is probably worse haha.
- During the Ace Attorney style gameplay segments at the end, you have a lot of evidence pieces that you’ve gathered. I often felt that multiple pieces of evidence could have worked for the questions that were being asked.
- At one point the localization was apparently really bad. By the time I played (and by the time you will play, dear reader), basically all of the errors were corrected, with the exception of like, a handful of them. Not enough to derail my experience at least, though I have played some Otome games that would make most people tap out with how atrocious the localizations are, so maybe I have a high resistance.
5/5
20) Kaleidoscope of Phantasm Prison
That’s right. In the final hour of this post, I’m hitting you with the INDEPTH look at a random visual novel you probably never heard of before!
I really need to talk about this, so please just indulge me. I will be spoiling the hell out of it also.
Kaleidoscope of Phantom Prison, JP name Gensou Rogoku no Kaleidoscope and henceforth referred to by its shorthand name Gerokasu, is a visual novel with a scenario written by Ryukishi07. Visual novel fans will know him as the When They Cry Guy, and everyone else will know him as the Silent Hill F Guy That Everyone Says Wrote When They Cry Also Guy. While everyone played Silent Hill F this year which I heard was good, I played Gerokasu, which was some fucking bullshit.
Let me start by saying that Umineko When They Cry and Ciconia When They Cry both have storylines involving transgender characters. Though I’m not trans, in my opinion they’re both handled pretty well. Both games go a lot into gender expression, body dysphoria, and how being trans affects the characters’ outlook on life and their place in society. Ciconia handles this subject in the modern day (okay it’s in the future but still) while Umineko keeps this more isolated to a specific group of people. Sorry, I’m trying to keep this vague, but TLDR; it’s good. A lot of trans people like it. Good job Ryukishi!
Why am I mentioning this? Well, the plot of Gerokasu is the following:
A boy with potential gender dysphoria dies, and asks God himself to reincarnate him as a girl. The boy loved being around his friends (who were girls) and hated being a boy, resenting the male gender and often saying he wanted to be born as a girl.
When he asks this, God laughs at him and says the gender of your soul is always going to be one thing (in the boy’s case, male), and that even if someone physically changes their body they will always be the gender they were assigned by God.
After seeing his friends die 12 different ways, this makes the boy realize— Wait! Girls can have negative emotions and can feel complex thoughts about things! I had an idealized view of women this whole time, and that is the sole reason why I wanted to be a woman. God says “Ahhhh, you’ve passed my trial! You understand that girls have emotions now. Do you still want to be reborn as a girl?” And the young boy says “Nah, I’m good! I understand now that men and women are forever different from each other. I fucking love gender essentialism and I don’t know what a nonbinary person is because this game only acknowledges two genders existing! Thanks, God!!”
…The young boy is also a cat for part of the game which I have not mentioned. The very last line of the game is one of the girls admiring that the young boy cat seemed to have gotten an erection watching them bathe at an onsen.
Okay, anyways, yeah. That’s the summary of the plot as a whole! It’s… a lot to take in!
So I’m just gonna get this out of the way before talking about the entire rest of Gerokasu, because the gender stuff isn’t even the only dumb thing about it— I have literally zero idea what Ryukishi’s actual thoughts on transgender people are, but I do think this game is a really bad look for him. If Gerokasu’s fantranslation was easier to play (holy fuck finding a .xci or .nsp of this game sucked ass) and more widespread, I think this would have Ryukishi getting flamed on the timeline every day of the week for the rest of his life. Like hands down, this is never getting an official English translation because it WILL ruin his career overseas. He is SOOOOO lucky that more people have not played this.
A lot of the rhetoric said in Gerokasu is so straight up transphobic, misogynistic, and grossly gender essentialist that it was like… If Krauss said this shit in Umineko you would immediately think, “This is being said so we can establish Krauss as a backwards thinking idiot”. Like, it is so against everything Ryukishi had written prior that I can’t wrap my head around it.
Now, Ryukishi did not direct Gerokasu, and this isn’t a When They Cry type situation where he’s The One Guy doing basically everything. So you could probably make the argument that “this is contracted work and it’s not what Ryukishi believes”, but I lowkey think that’s just as bad. I could never take on contracted work where I’m writing a story about how being racist is awesome because that goes against my core beliefs. You would think Ryukishi would feel the same about a topic he’s written in-depth about before.
Flipping your beliefs like that just for coin?? The pay could not have been that good.
I also don’t buy the “He didn’t know it would be offensive” and “This sounds like something a self-hating person would say to justify not transitioning themselves (Ryukishi Egg Theory)” excuses.
For the former… He has internet, and during Umineko but ESPECIALLY Ciconia, he must have looked a lot of things up regarding the topic. I’m not gonna baby him at this point and neither should you.
For the latter… I’m not trans, but I don’t think it’s helpful to see such a gross storyline and say “clearly he must be repressing”, it gives me big “homophobic republicans are secretly gay” vibes. Like, okay. What does it matter that he’s trans if he’s saying shit like this that continues to perpetuate the beliefs that hurt trans people in society? And also he’s a grownass man and I don’t really think we should be headcanoning people like that.
And for what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s the secret third option “You’re supposed to disagree with what’s being said” because that is absolutely not how it’s presented here.
Anyways, all of this to say— this was the game that made me think, I don’t think Ryukishi cares about transgender people in a deep way, I think he just sees them as cool plot points he can use for a mystery. And that really sucks.
Okay now that that part’s out of the way I actually need to talk about some other points in this game that suck so hard:
The Saw Trap The Girls Are In
Gerokasu is not a long game. You can beat it in about 5 hours or less, one sitting if you’re bored. I will say it does fly by, but it was sold for 4000 yen at launch if I recall correctly, which is pretty fucking bonkers bananas for a game this short and not good.
So you’re probably seeing that 5 hour mark I just mentioned and thinking “Uh, wow, what’s the pacing like if they go through a Saw Trap 12 times in 5 hours?”. The answer is SUPER SONIC SPEED PACING. I’m going to bring you through Gerokasu’s opening hour really fast.
The girls (Karin, Fuka, Mina, and Doremi) wake up in a Saw Trap room with collars on their necks, all attached to chains. The chains feed to chairs at either end of the room. A cage lowers and a young boy is in it (it’s their friend with gender dysphoria but they don’t know it’s him). The young boy gives them cards. A voice on a loudspeaker then very very very quickly explains the game attached to the cards;
- One girl gets the Condemned card— this girl is going to die by default
- One girl gets the Joker/Pierrot card— this girl can be sentenced to die instead of the Condemned
- Two girls get the Judge cards— the Judges decide who dies, whether it be the Condemned, or if they want to swap to the Joker to have them die instead. One Judge makes the call to lock in who’s going to die, the other Judge has to pull the lever that will torture them
Now did everything I say above sound a little overwhelming and fast paced? This is because that is how it feels to start out Gerokasu; it just throws you right in. I don’t really like this because I barely understood the card game’s mechanics, and the Saw Trap scenario is given five ingame minutes for the girls to figure out what they’re going to do— in any other death game, they’d probably make it pretty clear what each game’s rules are so you understand the stakes, but not Gerokasu. Everyone just screams and yells at each other, and then 10-15 minutes of reading later the Saw Trap ends and at least one girl is dead.
You repeat this 11 more times until you’ve exhausted all possibilities for the card game with everyone in different roles. (With 4 different cards and 4 girls, 4 x 4 = 12, maximum number of turns to get all different scenarios) By turn three I more or less got the rules of the card game, as well as a feel for the general gimmick of Gerokasu as a whole.
So, these girls are all friends, right? What’s the source of tension for them in these Saw Traps aside from their deaths?
Well, they are all best friends… and also all fucking hate each other a LOT! I’m going to break down the dynamics…
- Karin - Likes Fuka, Hates Mina. She hates Mina because Mina let Karin get beat up once in grade school, and Mina is kind of annoying in general.
- Mina - Likes Karin, Hates Doremi. She hates Doremi because Doremi invited her over to her house one time in grade school, but Doremi wasn’t home, so Mina went out for nothing. Yeah this is the entire reason she hates Doremi
- Doremi - Likes Mina(? I actually don’t remember tbh im just assuming lol), Hates Fuka. She hates Fuka because Fuka uses her like a “vomit bag”; meaning, Fuka will always complain about things to Doremi and basically “vomit” out her feelings. One day Fuka called Doremi over the phone in grade school suicidebaiting and Doremi rushed over to make sure she was okay, and Fuka was fine, and Doremi got in trouble for leaving the house and missing taking in an important FedEx package. That is really the explanation yeah
- Fuka - Likes Doremi, Hates Karin. She hates Karin because she thought the young boy had a crush on Karin, and… honestly this whole thing is stupid so I won’t recount it but it’s a hate as flimsy as Mina hating Doremi lol
So, if you put together a scenario where Karin is a Judge and Mina is the Condemned, Karin will say “Haha, I actually fucking hate you Mina, I’m so glad you’re gonna die, you fucking suck! LMAO! Die you stupid bitch!” One minute ago they were all friendly, but the second one of them has any power over the other, they’re like “LOL I’ve hated you this whole time!!!!! I’ve talked shit about you to other girls too!!! The game won’t show it but apparently all of us talk shit about each other!! I am carrying a grudge from grade school over you forever!!”
This is kind of a fun idea on paper TBH but in execution it’s missing something. Why? Well, you’ve probably noticed that each girls’ excuse for hating a girl is 1) really flimsy, and 2) involve a key event taking place in grade school, when all of these girls are in high school by the time of the game.
This leads me to my next section;
Ryukishi, Don’t Be Writing This Shit About Women I Can’t Defend You Like This
I’m not saying that you can’t write a game about girls and their feelings when you’re a man. However, to cover your bases, you should probably ask a girl or two for feedback after writing your scenario. If you don’t, you risk pulling a Gerokasu, or for a better example more readers might know, a VA11 HALL-A— that is, a game where you can tell very clearly that the cast of almost all women were written by a man.
For VA11 HALL-A, it’s kind of okay because they don’t try to make themselves a shining beacon of understanding women. For Gerokasu, this game is ALL about trying to explain why women act the way they do. It calls them a Kaleidoscope of emotions and thoughts because they are always changing and thinking different things. It is so weird, dude.
Basically, Gerokasu tries to have this balancing act of “these girls are all best friends” and “these girls are deeply resent each other for an event in their childhood” by saying shit like “Women are super complex and difficult to understand, so they will swallow grudges and then still be friends with each other, it’s so scary of them to act like this. Meanwhile, men are simple creatures who do not think deeply about anything. This could be leftover from olden days where cavemen had to provide for women blahbhlablablblah”.
Take Mina’s resentment of Doremi. The ENTIRE thing there is “WTF Doremi I went to your house in grade school and you weren’t there… you broke your promise to hang out with me… I FUCKING HATE YOU!!!” Like, HUHHHHHHH?????? THAT'S IT?
Honestly it’s more psychopath behavior on your part to be so angry about this incident from grade school that you hold it in your heart forever, still act extremely close to Doremi for the rest of grade school and high school, but then when you get put in a Saw Trap and have the opportunity to kill Doremi you do it… over THIS?! One crummy day and you’re sending me to The Needle Pit?!
I went to an all girls’ high school for four years, which was basically my own military tour with how rough that could get. Big shoutouts to my history teacher who one time caught a chair a girl threw out of the air during a fight. And in general, I am a woman, so I feel like I have some higher jurisdiction than him on this matter. I can’t find a way to explain this any better than "just trust me bro", but Ryukishi does not know how women actually think and act in order to make this story, but ESPECIALLY high school girls.
Acting like women are these impossible to understand creatures instead of regular human beings might just be because you aren’t talking to enough women in your life and are just assuming shit, Ryukishi!!
This section on how women think is in Gerokasu to convince the young boy not to want to be reborn as a girl. The young boy idolized girls without realizing that they could feel negative or deep emotions, and God sending his girl friends to the Saw Trap Room and having them lash out and scream and kill each other is supposed to “wake” the boy up from this perspective.
You might think, “Wow that seems really fucked up for God to do that to a bunch of innocent girls”. 1) It is, but it’s for a male’s benefit, so the game does not try to think about this very hard as he uses their suffering for a character arc, and 2) You find out this isn’t taking place in reality but like, a pocket dimension where the young boy is between life and death as a cat (I don’t want to explain this cat subplot any further this is already long enough).
…writing that thing in parentheses up there, I forgot where I was going with this section because I realized how long this was getting…
Oh Yeah The Ending In More Detail I Guess
So the young boy in the cage eventually pulls a Smiling Friends STOP FIGHTINGGGGGG after seeing the 12 Days of Saw Traps. He tells all the girls that their fighting was stupid and their grudges are dumb and misunderstandings. The girls go “Fuck… He’s so right and we’re so fucking Stupid… Because Girls are hard to understand and petty and Boys are simple…”
They all make up. But as I said before this is a pocket dimension made by God, so none of this death game happened in reality. After the credits, the girls are all having fun and are sitting around and suddenly bring up the topic of all their grudges so they can hash them out and solve them in the real world. They all make up in reality this time so it matters. Yay.
This makes very little sense to me to be honest with you. The thing that seemed to be the catalyst for them making up at all is the young boy laying all their stories out (you’re not gonna believe this shit, all of their grudges took place ON THE SAME DAY, that’s why Mina didn’t see Doremi at her house cuz Doremi went to Fuka’s because Fuka was suicidebaiting) and chiding them for their stupidity— the young boy’s presence especially pulls the weight because he’s their friend from grade school, they realize, and they all kind of idolized him. It’s a lot okay. There are a lot of jokes in this game about how it’s good to be a male with a lot of female friends in a harem-like way. Fuck my life
But when they make up in real life, they seem to kind of know that it was all a bunch of misunderstandings without having the young boy there to lay out the timeline of events for them or to mediate the discussion. And I find it so hard to believe that without the young boy there they would have resolved their issues.
Remember they were holding these grudges since GRADE SCHOOL and regularly talked shit about each other (though we never see this), and the first opportunity to kill each other in a Saw Trap has them going mad with power. How can they make up THIS easily? Like, it kinda makes it seem like these grudges weren’t so big after all, but if so then what was the point of the Saw Trap stuff?
Anyways this game sucked ass SO BAD lol haha.
Some random fragmentary thoughts to close this out:
- The name Gerokasu is the shorthand name it officially goes by. “Gero” translates to vomit and “Kasu” can be a few different things but in this game’s case, I imagine they wanted it to translate to waste/scum. This ties into how the girls act with each other in the death game room, if I recall correctly the game even says they “vomit” their negative feelings at one another (or at the very least, Doremi says “vomit bag” re: her trauma with Fuka 9900000 times). I just thought it was interesting that even the shorthand name sucks ass.
- I know I just described the entirety of Gerokasu so you lowkey have no reason to play it, but this was basically me venting to you about it. To fully get your own opinion I recommend you play it yourself. It is so short you could get it done in one sitting like I did.
- I still haven’t played Silent Hill F because I’m bad at playing scary games even though I love scary movies. I was watching friends play it but we didn’t get far. Also it’s $70.
"This year Lone played a lot of games but didn’t feel like making a category list for what she thought was best. Just handed me the GOTY winner. Whatever"
(Opens envelope)
(Sighs)
It’s Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar Obviously
The best Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons to ever grace this doggone earth. It’s so damn good.
All of my praises for it were located in part one of this post, so go reread that for more details. But seriously, if you need a new farming sim game, go give this one a try. Definitely won’t regret it, and makes me really excited for the eventual Sunshine Islands/Islands of Happiness remake.
You should buy this game... NOW!
In Closing
Wow, another great year for gaming. Good job, guys.
I decided to copy my good oomf Screwy and pledge to play ten games in 2026 proposed by friends and followers. A lot of the suggestions I got from replies, some I got from Discord DMs/calls. It ended up shaking out to the following:
I tried prioritizing game suggestions I could emulate easily or were already on my backlog, because I need to be saving my money after Metroid Prime 4 LOL.
On top of these, I solemnly swear to finish the Famicom Detective Club Trilogy and Hundredline before the end of 2026. You have my word.
To wrap it up, here’s my final ranking of all the games I played this year…
See you in 2026, gamers!!
Comments
Post a Comment