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A GAME REVIEW TOLD BY A COWARD, TYPED AND UNPOSTED ON A BLOG WITH 50 FOLLOWERS, HALF OF WHOM ARE BOTS
also it has spoilers so uh, play the game first if you want to. I’m too close to it to tell if it’s good or not but I think it is, maybe.
TRIUNE RATINGS
GAMEPLAY: Unintuitive systems result in a surprisingly deep and engaging battle system, eventually. [feels a little curt? Although anything I here will be small next to ER. 2/3 petals.]
PRESENTATION: [Never really sure what to put here… aesthetics are already in ER. 1/1 petal I guess?]
EMOTIONAL RESONANCE: Ok I’m just going to get this out there: trendy queer aesthetics make me feel like crap. That says things about me I don’t want to think about, but it’s true. Part of me is really happy that like, this game kind of sets up this perfect queer YEAH GIRL (AND NON-STANDARD-RELATIONSHIP-TO-GENDER-PERSON) POWER! thing and then sucker punches the player in Act III with “your whole twee saturated color obnoxious pansexual-as-specifically-trans-inclusive ‘gender doesn’t affect me at all, oh and what are *your* pronouns’ shtick fucking hurts!”
Like, I know it’s not fair to think like this, especially because the party that took down the Machine Devil really was three queer people and an angel with an ambiguous sexuality, but when I saw the movie I felt like a minority being catered to in the grossest most superficial way. Like those Wonder movies that are always so weird about representation, you know? Or like they could be: GIRL POWER in the lead, her partner with gender stuff as The Romantic Interest, the token shy and feminine unrealistically hot trans girl in the back seat of the car, and the angel. I mean, Sam really is that hot, but she’s also a real-life princess – how am I supposed to feel “represented” by somebody with a body like that? I guess I shouldn’t be bitter: it seemed kind of irresponsible to me to get some temporary radio DJ (?) to do the tie-in game but she did good with the trans stuff, and with all the other stuff too probably.
Anyways. Act I is all setup, and even if Grace and Valentin weren’t people I could have anything in common with it was fun seeing them banter with Sam. Act II is important as setup for Act III, and it makes Valentin feel like more of a real person with a history outside of The Car (I hear they’re going to display it right next to The Truck??? How cool is that!) Act III? killed me. Aside from the stuff about Angela’s boobs. The stuff about sexuality being value neutral was… important for me to hear in a game like this, in a different way than it was for Sam. The stuff with Deadname, whose ridiculous moustache is just enough to tell you that he isn’t worth taking seriously. The stuff about gender being real and horrible and inescapable and something you have to face but that never made me brave. The stuff about the ways that queers are so different from people like me, free to be loud and strong enough to not falter in the face of evil, and how just being near that radiance hurts people who aren’t.
And then Act IV is all about… the idea that if you kill off the person you aren’t, you can just be one of them? About hurting people who would hurt you? The idea that you don’t have to say fuck the past, that people like you who were strong enough to fight for love have always been there? The idea that just as Grace was chosen by the Sword all along, Sam was always a princess? The idea that you have to stand up and fight for what you believe in? What I believe in?
Here's what I believe in, then.
It’s like, obviously I’m not a Machine Devil cultist. I’m not a ---. But most people don’t really understand magic. Trinkets get more effective the more psychic resonance they have, but humans, especially weak humans, work the same way: the investiture of thousands of tiny perceptions and narratives changes us. I can’t fight anymore. When you get read as a woman, like I usually do, your concerns get minimized and overlooked – but when you get read as a predator? That can turn you into one. My childhood neighbor two doors down, who I used to play Discz with but never went on to college? They only found out he was a cultist when Grace sealed the Devil and his machine heart broke down. My party raid leader – that’s in Last Daydream 14, not in real life or anything; I’m a fucking Protect Me, not a hero – the only reason I even played that game? He probably tried to kill them in Lesser Anastasia, and probably got killed for it. And the person he’d become had to be stopped, but [but what? What can I even say here? Figure this out or delete the sentence before you post it. Idiot. He's not coming back].
Why is this so hard to say? Is it because those people are so far away, and still so bright that I tear up just looking at them? Or is it because I just can’t comprehend the idea of acceptance?
I’m not a Machine Devil cultist but I feel like I’m closer to being one of them than I am to being someone like Grace and Valentin and kinda Sam are. Sam is really really hot and she just can’t see it—and I understand that thesis and that lots of women really are like that but I’m not one of them. I want to be beautiful in the same way I want a million gas points; my body is the meat that mediates my existence in the world and that’s fine as long as nobody dangles the thing I once wanted so badly in my face. Heroes’ bodies are whole, and even when they aren’t, their scars look hot. Mine just mean I have to wear long sleeves.
Don’t mistake me for one of you! That outstretched hand is the cruelest thing you could show me, and if you’re going to pity me, you’d better fucking mean it.
This is a quietly angry game by somebody who won’t falter in the face of evil, and by somebody who clearly knows these feelings, and I was shocked to find just how uncomfortable that passion made me. Am I really such a victim that I can’t even look at righteous anger? Machine Devil Cultists never get mad, exactly, because getting mad would mean admitting they care. Why does that feel safer to me than - --- ----- with the ----- -- ----?
I mean I know why. I guess that says more about me than it does about the game, huh.
Am I that broken? Am I that hateful?
Uh, also, I really liked the Road Stories, even if I couldn’t unlock them all before I finished the game.
7/7 petals, somehow.