I just beat Nier, what I think about it is a bit of a mixed bag (I did say apart from the music that it was horseshit on twitter, and I’m at the point where maybe I’m a little harsh but I left the game not wanting any more of it). Nier has a few qualities and some moments, I mean the characters were great and some of the writing was honestly entertaining, otherwise I had a hard time enjoying the game overall.

All I’m thinking right now is that I can finally listen to the Squadcast mission that I’ve been keeping on hold for so long.

@wrdsmth I just started playing Nier just yesterday, planning to finish it this week to listen to the episode.

I see you had a SquadCast about Nier, a game I’ve been meaning to play since it came out but never managed to get a copy of it. I’ll have to get my hands on it soon.

SquadCast Mission: Nier

Listen now!

Direct link

The Squad take on Cavia’s peculiar, tragic, bleak and darkly humorous action RPG Nier, coming face to face with intersex characters, talking books and questions regarding the morality of video game violence along the way.

Featuring Pete Davison, Mark Whiting, Calin Grajko and Alex Fisher.

Further reading: Grimoire Nier fan translation

@pepperized That’s a very respectable list there, CoD aside. (Kidding. Mostly. :D) I have a bunch of the same titles on my Pile of Shame also. Still haven’t finished Amnesia. I did get about halfway through at one point but never got around to actually beating it. Maybe I’ll save it for Halloween.

Finished second playthrough of Nier tonight. I won’t spoil anything here ’cause I know @bluesforbuddha is planning on jumping aboard that ship again shortly, but suffice to say it’s an exceedingly clever way to get you to play through again and it be the same but different. I also respect a game that lets me do an entire New Game+ run in a single sitting. (How?! It took me nearly 40 hours to do my first playthrough!)

Let’s get some nominations going for this potential future free-to-play Squadcast. Throw out a few titles you’d be interested in us investigating and whatever proves to be popular will be what we check out.

For my money, I’d like to delve into Tribes: Ascend, Rusty Hearts and Spiral Knights. I’ve played the latter two a bit along with a couple of matches on the former.

Pete, I think “beast it” sounded pretty cool for what it’s worth.

Nier is officially, officially finished. It’s so finished that I wouldn’t be able to return to it even if I wanted to, because the game deleted my saves. (I read online that I could have backed them up if I wanted to, but, in keeping with the spirit of the game, I allowed them to be deleted.)

Thus, it’s time for the final spiel on Nier, and it’s not going to be anywhere near as long as my last one (I hope). There are Nier spoilers after this point.

While Ending B expanded on the narrative in really drastic ways, Endings C and D are really there to tie up a loose end, Kaine. Throughout endings A and B, you know what’s up with the rest of your party, but endings A and B both end with you and Kaine just still there, kicking it with Yonah. Nier “saves” his daughter, and Kaine leaves to do whatever it is Kaine does.

The third (and fourth) playthroughs are identical to the second one, with the one exception of an additional scene after the final boss battle. Kaine walks to the middle of the room, and it’s revealed that the Shade inside of her is about to take over, through no fault of its own. The only reason Kaine wasn’t being possessed more than she was is that the Shade inside of her is pretty fucked up and gets pleasure from her violence and anger. During the final battle, Kaine has a change of heart and no longer feels anger. This forces the Shade to the surface so to speak, and the real last battle is with Kaine’s shade. (I hope you like bullet hell stuff, because this is basically Touhou in 3D without any of the precise controls offered by curtain fire shooters.) Anyway, after a stupid, frustrating battle that I ended in a second once I was able to attack, Nier is told there are two ways to save Kaine and force the Shade out of her body. (The Shade also had a change of heart during the final battle, but he couldn’t stop from taking over Kaine’s shell… It’s, uh, complicated… [read: convoluted]). The first way is to kill Kaine, which is what she requests and the way in which you obtain Ending C.

Ending C is exactly what you expect. You stab her through the heart with your spear. She dies. You hear her voice a few last times thanking you for freeing her, and you go home with Yonah. It’s sad and fucked up that Nier is the only person in the party who survives (especially since he’s the least sympathetic by far), but we weren’t expecting a happy ending from this game, were we?

Ending D is a little different. The choice you make in order to receive Ending D is to sacrifice Nier in order to save Kaine. And, it’s not as simple as Nier dying and Kaine living. Nier has to sacrifice not only himself, but all memories that he ever existed. (And now, of course, it’s clear why the game erases your save data.) He will save Kaine, but his daughter won’t have any memory of him, and neither will anyone else. It’s the one selfless and redeeming act that he can commit throughout the entire game. Now, I know that due to practical considerations, and the fact that gamers are a bunch of babies, they had to warn you like 5 times that it would really erase your save data, but I kind of wish choosing that ending would just delete it without warning. It would provide a really nice sense of symmetry between the gameplay and the narrative. Instead, we got “are you sure you want to do this? Really? REALLY??? SERIOUSLY, YOU CAN COME BACK LATER AND CHOOSE THIS ANOTHER TIME. AIN’T NO THING IF YOU DO THAT” So, after confirming five times that you want to do it, you watch all of your progress slowly evaporate. All of the sidequests disappear from the screen. All of the items you had disappear. All of the spells disappear. All of the hours you put in vanish in service of Nier’s sacrifice. It’s easily one of the neater things I’ve ever seen a game do. Afterwards, Yonah has no idea who Nier was and assumes it’s Kaine who killed the Shadowlord. Kaine takes Yonah and raises her in the absence of Nier.

Feenwager Challenge Field Report: Nier: Part Deux

I did my second playthrough of Nier today, and I can safely say that playing through it once means that you haven’t seen a damn thing. I’m not even sure how Endings C and D will expand on the second playthrough, but playing through the game a second time elucidates a lot of the head scratching moments in the first playthrough. I am about to spoil the hell out of the game, so if you intend to play it, or you haven’t done a second playthrough, you may want to stop reading.

Above all else, the narrative in Nier is told as an iterative process, which was probably a bad design choice in a game that you can spend dozens of hours screwing around doing sidequests and farming materials to upgrade weapons that are already stupidly overpowered.

(A brief side note before I get back to my discussion of the narrative:.) by the time you’re playing through the game a second time, your character is ridiculously strong. I was Level 32 or so when I started up NG+, and I could already kill most of the bosses with two or three hits from a weapon that I bought in a shop and upgraded exactly once. I have no idea why anyone would upgrade the weapons aside from Achievement whoring, but, oddly enough, I find the idea slightly compelling just to see how much more quickly I could end fights. I probably will not do this, however, because I already spent a ridiculous amount of time completing all of the sidequests. And, if you thought growing a pink moonflower was time consuming, obtuse, and silly, just wait until you try to grow the lunar tear. Though, I did find a trick that made the process quicker, if anyone else wants the achievement or access to a flower you can sell for a ridiculous amount of money.

There are two main additions to the story in NG+. The first is that you can understand all of the dialogue the Shades have. If you ever wondered why there were long scenes of Shades speaking Shade language while you just sat around, it’s because they were actually saying important, heartbreaking stuff. In addition to having their dialogue show up in cutscenes, you can also occasionally hear them speaking while you’re slaughtering them. It’s about as uncomfortable as it sounds, and the game becomes even bleaker with this addition.

Another addition that makes the game bleaker is the expansion of the story to an omniscient perspective. The first playthrough is basically the main characters story as told without any sort of external understanding. All you know is that this guy has this daughter who is dying of the black scrawl, and that he needs to kill a bunch of these Shades in order to save her. In the last 10 or so minutes of the game you discover that the shades aren’t quite monsters, but from your limited perspective, it doesn’t have a whole lot of gravity. Subsequent playthroughs completely flip this on its head.

All of the five bosses you kill to get the keys necessary to go to the Shadowlord’s castle are living, breathing people with hopes, dreams and desires. They shouldn’t be your enemies, because you should be able to just sit down and agree to not slaughter the fuck out of each other. Sadly, you can’t do this, so, as the player, you’re forced in to these super uncomfortable situations.

Here are a couple of for instances: the first extra scene you get takes place when you return to the Lost Shrine at the beginning of Part Two. This is where you fight Gretel, a big rhino looking monster who also has the first key. On the first playthrough, you don’t know dick about him. No problem. Use some magic, use your spear, kill him, get the key. On the second playthrough, as you travel through The Lost Shrine, you see Gretel awake in the room you will fight him, and he’s scared. He doesn’t know where he is, and he doesn’t understand why there are little Shades hovering around him. He becomes upset, until he realizes the Shades are simply curious and want to see what his deal is. Eventually, he becomes friends with them and agrees to save them from the noises you hear in the background (which are, incidentally, the noises your party makes slaughtering Shades.) Nier still has no understanding of all of this exposition taking place behind the scenes, but scenes that seemed relatively mindless on a first playthrough are imbued with a lot more gravity and heartbreak. (Seriously, did we expect anything less from this game?)

Remember the robot you fight in The Junkyard? The big combat robot that at one point rains shrapnel down from the sky and for some inexplicable reason has a Shade with it? Yeah, you just killed a child… Before you even reach The Junk Heap for the second time, you see a scene in which two shades are in a room in the junk heap. A larger Shade explains to her child that it needs to run far, far away, because someone is coming who will kill both of them. The mother locks him in a room, walks out, and you hear her being killed by Nier. The child becomes upset, scared, and sad, until it meets up with the robot that is the boss of the junk heap. You see multiple scenes in which the child and the robot are enjoying themselves and learning from each other. The child is just happy to have a companion, and the robot is excited to gain new knowledge of the world. Before you come and kill both of them, they discuss the possibility of leaving The Junkyard and exploring the world, because they both would like to explore and see the world for themselves. The child calls the robot “Beepy,” and your party kills both of them in pursuit of access to The Shadowlord’s Castle.

How about the wolf in Facade that wrecks the prince’s wedding day? Wasn’t he kind of an asshole, at least? Actually, no. One of the additional scenes you see in this storyline is the wolf shade kicking it with all of the regular wolves. You know that barren wasteland of a desert you have to traverse to get to Facade? All of that used to be a lush forest, and it used to be the wolves’ home. You’re encroaching on their land, and the people have pursued the wolves and slaughtered them. The wolf shade believes that, if he could just get people to hear him out, the wolves and people could have a symbiotic existence. It is not until the wolf returns to his den, to discover dozens of wolves with spears through their throats, that he decides to mount an offensive to get people to stop fucking with the wolves. After attacking the prince and being fought off in Facade, he realizes that death is imminent, and he gives one last speech to the wolves about their impending doom. When the king kills the wolf at the end of the battle, there is no glory. It’s all waste.

Additionally, I kind of wondered why the game was as gory as it was the first time I played through it. Shades will literally explode with blood when you deal the final blow, and it seemed like an unusual flourish. It makes sense now. Unlike Mortal Kombat where I am titillated by exploding someone’s skull or ripping someone’s spine out, the blood in Nier serves as a counterpoint to that type of feeling. You can’t feel good about what you’re doing once you know who the Shades are, and every time one of them leaves a bloodstained corpse, you’re reminded of how terrible you are.

Is this emotionally manipulative as hell? Probably. Does it work? I think so. As people who are relatively comfortable with the vernacular of games, killing everything that moves is a relatively rote experience for us. We kill stuff. We level up. We save the fucking day. That’s what we do. We’re big damn heroes. Only this time, our ignorance of the world around us shows us to be monstrous as fuck by following through with the actions that we don’t even question in other games. This is Squad material for sure, even if only a few of us are crazy enough to actually play it.

Since this was a long post, and I know I tend to read from the bottom up, I’m going to put the following disclaimer here as well: This post contains Nier spoilers. If you are avoiding those, don’t read this.

Field Report

I made some serious progress this week in both Nier and Uncharted. I got ending A on Nier, and I’m a few chapters from the end in Uncharted.

The more I play Nier, the more I realize that I will likely have much, much more to say after I complete all of the endings. My initial impressions after getting the first ending are almost too scattered and schizophrenic to be terribly useful. In some ways I feel like it’s a love letter to gamers, and, in another sense, I feel like the game is trolling me on a very, very deep level.

I see it as a love letter to gamers, because the vocabulary of the game necessarily resonates with seasoned gamers. Although it masquerades as an action RPG, it’s way more than that. It’s a farming simulation, a text-based adventure game, a bullet-hell shooter, and an endlessly tedious list of fetch quests and item farming. While I managed to complete 100% of the sidequests, I seriously couldn’t tell you why. I don’t much care for Achivements/Trophies, so that’s not the reason. I definitely didn’t have fun doing the vast majority of them, but I felt compelled to. I realy, really wanted to see 100% when I opened that tab in the menu. Perhaps I’m easily amused by walking from town to town and discovering the melancholy misadventures of various NPCs, but the sidequests had me hooked.

The story itself is something I likely won’t comment on until I’ve completed all of the possible endings, but I will say that it’s deeper than it seems to be, even though it’s covered in a sheen of JRPG histrionics and melancholia. I plan to tear through the rest of the endings the next time I am alone and have the chance to sit down and do my thing.

I also played a hell of a lot of Uncharted. Despite the occasionally frustrating shooter segment, it mostly lives up to its hype. I realize that this is very much not a game that’s “for me,” but I’m enjoying it for the most part. A lot of the shooting is tedious, and the story is about as silly as I expected it to be, but the game oozes charm, and it’s very well paced. I’m fairly certain that I’m close to the end, as I’ve just gotten to the (SPOILER WARNING) part where there are monsters of some sort, and I’m killing them with Nazi machine guns. For what it’s worth, the story was making perfect sense up until monsters showed up, so even though a couple of cutscenes foreshadowed “something scary in the jungle,” I wasn’t prepared for Nathan Drake meets The Descent (the horror movie, not the old dos game that gave me vertigo.)

I’m really bad at shooters, so a lot of the combat setpieces have taken me 7 or 8 tries to complete, but I like the scale of everything in the game. It’s exciting to scale a large building and realize that it’s just a small part of a much bigger environment. (This is also what I loved about Ico, for what it’s worth.) Perhaps it’s just the way I’m playing through the game, but I wish there was about 1/2 the amount of shooting and twice the amount of exploring/climbing, as I feel like the combat segments are something I endure and attempt to finish as quickly as possible before returning to the adventuring and puzzle solving. Anyway, I will definitely post my impressions once I finish, but I don’t expect it to take too much longer to finish.

I have also decided that Little Big Planet isn’t worth the effort to play through to completion, and that it’s silly to have Wipeout HD on my backlog list, so I’m removing both of those. (Or, I would, if it were possible to edit that post.)

@wrdsmth I have a feeling that @beige will be along shortly to talk your ear off about Nier. I would like to finish it before posting my thoughts in full, but it’s definitely interesting. It’s a weird amalgamation of a lot of different genres. Even though it’s primarily an action RPG, it has bullet hell elements as well as text based adventure segments. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I probably won’t again. I stopped playing it a while back and need to go back to it.

The story is straight up crazy town frolics tinged with almost histrionic levels of bleakness. I love it.

@cgrajko Interesting bit on FFX, to be honest I haven’t played the game in years, and being a young teen when I first played it, I don’t think I was in the state of mind to fully take in half of what you’re talking about, but I understand completely and it gives me new food for thought about a game I once loved dearly. I’m sorry I don’t have anything constructive to add to that.

How is Nier? I was always tentative about it, but I love it’s soundtrack.

I’d also really recommend going for The Longest Journey very soon. It’s easily my favorite game of all time. I’ve yet to find another story in a game that drew me in so thoroughly and really challenged me to think. The follow up to it Dreamfall wasn’t as strong, but it was a fun continuation.

@shingro Actually, upon reflection, Pathologic still takes the taco, and we are in agreement on this. Here’s why:

Nier’s depressingness, omnipresent though it is, feels somewhat forced and definitely rather heavy-handed compared to the way things are handled in Pathologic. In Nier, what tends to happen is that the game will tease you with the faint prospect of a moment of triumph, and then not only jerk it away from you but also hit you over the head a few times with a heavy object just to make sure you’re getting it. The effect is sometimes unintentionally comical, in a sort of black way.

In Pathologic, on the other hand, there is never a sense of triumph. There is never even a tease at one, not really: the world has a strange, alien feel that can leave you perplexed as to what “triumph” might even constitute in this universe, to begin with. This is a world that has never known happiness, it seems; how could there be a happy ending here?

The weight of the doom that threatens Pathologic’s city lies much, much more heavily on the player. There is no levity. There are no jokes. There is no melodrama. (At least, not in the sense that Nier has it; whether the secret of Pathologic-land means that it is all melodrama is a debatable point.) There is only the long, slow death of the city all around you.

Or, more briefly: Nier has the feeling of having been written by some folks who read some Russian literature. Pathologic is written like Russian literature. Nier will kick the player in the head; Pathologic will eat away slowly at the player’s will. Therefore, it wins, if one can be said to “win” such a contest.

Incidentally, both Mark and I also enjoy our kawaii along with our grimdark. (We have, after all, also been recently playing Recettear.) All things in moderation, including moderation.

Argh. Read about Beige’s Nier experience makes me want to go back for the third and fourth ending…but man, even getting the third ending is SUCH a grind.

@beige My god, it deletes all your saves? That is so hardcore I can’t help but applaud, in the age of companies screaming about games getting traded in to have the sheer balls to intentionally delete the efforts of 4 playthroughs just to make a philosophical point? I can’t help but applaud.

Also: Tell Nier to leave it’s pants up at my convention, kawaii saccharine wai wai injections have their place too. Just because it’s a different experience doesn’t mean they have to be in opposition. Movies get Die Hard and Disney, JRPGs are allowed to have multiple dimensions too.

I am interested in what you’re saying though, since both you and your wife went through Pathologic, something already famed for it’s brutal crushing nature and atmosphere, thinking of that can you still say Nier trumps it in player-savaging?

If it does how does that square with it being a major company release? During the Pathologic podcast it was kinda pointed out that “hey, Ice Pick Lodge is kinda small, no big time company would ever have the guts to do this, but we kinda wish they would” Is this the fulfillment of that wish? You don’t get much bigger then Squeenix.

@RocGaude Ah, wonderful. The rest of the world gets to experience Australian game prices. Sad that now it sets a watermark for PSP2 games.

@beige Wow, if even YOU are finding Nier to be a mess, then it has no reasonable chance of being palatable for someone with a flickering nonsense meter. And that’s coming from the only person in the known universe who thought M.A.X.2 was a great game.

@beige I had researched a bit before I started and I set combat to Easy.

That was probably the only reason I got as far as I did. Anyone who says this game ‘gets good’ can only be a victim of the Stockholm syndrome, as far as I’m concerned.

Ok…Nier was found wanting, and Undead Nightmare has been competed.

Next up: Resonance Of Fate.

Damned if I’m not going to enjoy a JRPG again.

Gamespot nominated Nier for best music of 2010, any validity to that?

@feenwager I guess it’s ironic then that we’ll be playing an MMO that is built on fetch quests and ‘go back and talk to the person you were just talking to’ nonsense. Edit: Also, when will you be on later?

@beige C’mon, you know you want to add a 10 day free trial to your Battle.net account and screw around with us, especially since you’ve heard about WoW nonstop for 6 years, but never tried it. I think everyone should experience a WoW instance at least once.

Nier’s story and world were vaguely interesting to me. Weiss in particular struck me as a cool character, and I liked the conversations between him and the main character.

The gameplay is what I found boring. The tedious fetch quests and ‘go back and talk to the person you were just talking to’ nonsense pushed me away.

Also, it’s really, really ugly.

@feenwager I suppose there was a fair chance of Nier falling into the Parsons ‘get this nonsense outta here’ bucket. Wondering what @beige will end up thinking of it, @angryjedi as well.

A tiny little impression of The Precursors? Beautiful colour, a hint of Ukraine jank, incredible tongue-in-cheek sci-fi RPG-FPS with variety built upon very flexible engine. Looking forward to balancing my muddy strides through the STALKER zone with missions in bright Slavic science-fiction environments.

EDIT: Oh, Jim Rossignol of RPS did a Wot I Think piece on The Precursors:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/04/wot-i-think-precursors/

@redswirl uninteresting is exactly the right word.

@feenwager So I’m okay if I chose not to play Nier? People keep telling me it’s one of those niche-but-good games but it just doesn’t look that interesting to me.

Ok, guys. I think I’ve figured out what the deal with Nier is.

It isn’t very good.

Moving on.

Thoughts after 90 minutes of Nier:

It’s weird.

Japanese development is still stuck in 2000.

I like the God Of WaRPG vibe though, so I’m sticking around.

@bowlisimo Moreover, what made the Bowley Top 10 for the year just past? Very intrigued to read that.

For me:

RUSE

A terrific and unique semi-operational level RTS that anyone can enjoy. No stuffy build orders or micromanagement. For novices and veterans alike, a streamlined interface on any system and one of the year’s hidden gems. A classy affair.

Apache: Air Assault

It’s not really my style to stroke my ego via hardcore gaming, and whilst Apache isn’t Blackshark-level intense, you won’t find a more engaging and satisfying technical game on console. Learning the physics and flight limitations of the Apache is a joy and the entire package is a grab-bag of rotary-winged masturbation material for those with a predilection for chopper action.

Frozen Synapse

@angryjedi and I have battled and it has been glorious, but I suspect we’d both echo encouragement for Squaddies to jump into the beta. Fun and leisurely, yet savage and strategic. Asynchronous multiplayer at it’s finest. Brain food for the action generation.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

Can’t add much more to what’s already been said. Terrific fun, the autolog adds an asynchronous element to keep the competition stiff for the time-poor, a return to the finer days of Burnout and NFS with nice open tracks.

Sonic & SEGA Allstars Racing

Probably the biggest hidden gem in the racing genre for 2010. Phenomenal physics, great tracks and does Mario Kart better than Mario Kart – even on par with Crash Team Racing from the PSone days. Could have used a lot more in the DLC department, but a fine game regardless.

Nail’d

A dark horse that roared over the line in the closing moments of last year. Techland’s prior Xpand Rally racing chops are hinted at, but Nail’d is very much its own beast. Unforgiving, kinda janky, but much more my cup of tea than Motorstorm. And the air…jumps so high, the moment you hit the dirt the NTSB are on the scene. Hated by many, but a heart of gold.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

The only mainstream FPS I’ve ever held my own in with regards to online. Purists might laugh, but the more tactical pace and multi-vehicular mayhem certainly did more for me than anything out of the Call of Duty franchise.

Blacklight: Tango Down

The only semi-Indie FPS I’ve ever held my own in with regards to online. The cyber-anarchistic aesthetic was tasteful, the weapon customisation terrific and maps wonderful. Fifteen dollars is indeed a sweet, sweet price for such a nice load of content. I still don’t understand the denigration when the development team were essentially hand-picked from Monolith’s FEAR guys.

Lost Planet 2

A contentious, contentious game. Untold shipping containers of hate were dumped upon it for being a proto-action-RPG MMO for consoles, and while it did some silly things, it still beats the pants off most of the games released in 2010 for design and variety. It definitely takes my pick for best mechanical designs of 2010 – and I’m super picky about that stuff. One of the best co-op games out.

Super Crate Box

While everyone goes crazy over Meatboy, it’s free arcade-centric cousin is my pick for old-school action. Just collect the crates, use the weapons, survive until the quota is met. Simple, effective and unbelievely terrific. Excellent soundtrack, too.

@feenwager I’m very excited to hear what you make of Nier, too – given your views on JRPGs!

My completion of Black Ops pretty much closes the book on the big releases for 2010 (I have Castlevania left, but that’s sort of a leftover) so now it’s time to check out a few games I passed over while I wait for the 2011 release schedule to start up.

First up: Nier

Hey, you guys were talking about Nier earlier? The 360 version just went to $15 on Amazon.

@angryjedi We’ll have to queue up a playthrough sometime in the new year for Nier. It’d be nice as a squad mission. I might be too deep in Two Worlds 2 come Q1 for a bit, though. And hell, then Deus Ex 3. Still, one must make room for hermaphrodites. Lord knows, physiologically, they’ve done so themselves.

And indeed, Sly and the gang are steaming hot piles of the finest faecal construct in the 3D platformer genre. Not even Shiggy bests them, which might rile the fanboys. As stated on Twitter, I propose Sly 2 to be the pinnacle of its kind; every level terrific and intricate, every character brimming with creativity and style, the controls tight as hell and the visuals a treat.

And sorry about the headache.

@beige Now here’s one…you’ve looked into the Cavia RPG underdog of the year, Nier? The word on the street I’ve tuned into says it’s the most creative, well-written and genre-mashing JRPG of the year. Has excellent dialogue for the most part, a blend of all sorts of game styles, very inventive characterisation and doesn’t really have any close relatives in the field. From being primarily an action-RPG to bullet-hell shooter to overhead dungeon hacker and a nod to survival horror – all within a mind-bending story that stretches over 1400 years and involves demonic hermaphrodites, strange sister-daughter switches, text-adventures, a gentrified and snarky grimoire, fishing and gardening, boar-traversal, sombre moods, awesome music and possibly the closest one will get to the other auteur production of the year, known as Deadly Premonition.

Also, it’s not anywhere in the soppy bullshizer realm with all the cliche anime garbage most JRPGs end up dressed with.

That’s what I’ve gleaned thus far, and am looking at nabbing it in the new year at some point. Just thought it sounded like a @beige / @angryjedi experience.