|
I admit I was able to handle Sayori's suicide pretty well, mainly because I was mentally bracing myself for it the second I saw that poem. I'd been expecting something to go wrong given the content warning, and...well... Also, credit to Roar for bringing this hidden gem to my attention, because it got me to play through it blind and...well. I'm definitely...well "glad" isn't a good word in this situation but I do appreciate that I got to experience that blind for sure.
|
#
¿
Oct 21, 2017 04:45
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 23:31 |
|
|
Arcade Rabbit posted:Personally, I actually feel the warnings helped a bit. You see this cute, uobeat, generic looking VN cover, and think it's nothing. But then you see warnings plastered everywhere. Website, steam page, start screen. Everywhere. Yeah it makes the subversion of expectations really clear, but I feel like thats a necessary sacrifice considering how close to the hilt they play it at first. Like you're waiting for the shoe to drop, waiting for the crazy to start, and then it does and its done incredibly well. But without that warning, most people would have written it off. You'd still have the whole "no spoilers shut up just play it" from other people, but that's not as effective to me as the game itself flatout saying "Be careful!" I for one would say that's a large factor of what draws you in, and to an extent provides an excellent source of tension up to Sayoricide. You know from the get-go that something has to go wrong, but the game keeps playing itself straight for quite a while. This game has an excellent understanding of what tension is. Tension is when you know that something bad is going to happen, you just don't know what.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2017 20:51
|
|
|
SSNeoman posted:This. I got what the dude was trying to say and I hate this trope tbh. When you force the player to make terrible choices to progress, you lose the moral high ground to criticize them for making those choices. It's the reason I give Spec Ops the stink eye. I'm glad the game exists and I like what it tries to do, but gently caress sake's, when you don't give player agency your criticism of their actions sounds preachy as gently caress. It's interesting that you bring up the lack of agency here, because I feel like a key part of the horror taking place so far is the deliberate lack of it the player has. That moment when you are literally incapable of intervening in the argument between Yuri and Natsuki and Natsuki's glitched-out denial of said argument or the moment when the game glitches from a conversation with Yuri straight into the poem-writing thing make it very clear that you're really no longer in control of what's happening by any stretch. Instead of calling you a jerk for not doing anything, the game becomes much more...psychologically claustrophobic after that, for lack of a better phrase. You're able to see what's happening, but it's very clear that you're not really in control anymore and that feeling that your control is being taken away from you is incredibly unnerving. And that makes the horror hit surprisingly hard, even if the broad strokes of it have been done before to some extent.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2017 22:28
|
|
|
Snorb posted:Well, poo poo. Looks like we've went from cutesy VN straight into some When the Higurashi Cry territory. Yeah, I didn't want to make the comparison too soon lest I inadvertently spoil things but yes, the back half of the second part is very Higurashi.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 26, 2017 04:54
|
|
|
Glazius posted:Are the other characters gone from the data folder, like Sayori was? They are and she did, yes. someone awful. posted:yeah, exactly! One of the faults of experiencing this game through the LP is that you don't get hit with that sudden confusion. I was like, "what the gently caress? Is this the end of the game? that's horrible/hilarious/stupid/amazing, if it is." There's really no sign, other than the fact that the lighting changes and time passes, that there's any scenes beyond a dead girl glitching text ad nauseam. It's intensely weird. Yuri does noticeably decay (*shudder*), you can tell by her eyes going grayer and grayer as the days pass.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 29, 2017 03:59
|
|
|
I'm not going to lie I kind of adore this whole thing, mainly because it brings a lot of things into perspective. The disconnect between the surreal narrative and the realistic psychological issues in it: Monika is perfectly willing to point out that disconnect with Sayori and how the issues brought up are still important. The increased insanity: Was in fact Monika's fault. Given that it was amplifying negative traits it implies that at least some of these issues were still present. What I like though is what you can tell about her if you read through the lines a bit and take a few of her things in Act 2 into context: she's good at hiding it but given her outbursts I get the vibe that she was legitimately terrified at the concept of you leaving, and that informed her actions a lot more than she lets on at this stage. She's much more calm about it now, but only because she's "won." She says that she doesn't empathize with her friends and thinks her world is fake but her comments on her vegetarianism and her story about the wine say otherwise. Basically (from my perspective at least) the girl is a master of post-facto rationalization. She's able to come up with seemingly logical explanations for her actions, but in the end she's more tied to her "fake" world than she says. Though weirdly enough even with that I still find her to be sympathetic, mainly because I (like other posters have said) get the vibe that she's far more broken than she actively lets on. She's a drat good actor, but her conversation topics say otherwise quite a bit. Of course that makes perfect sense if you think about it. She doesn't want to burden her love with her problems. Everything was for you, and of course there's no going back at this point...
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2017 01:46
|
|
|
BaDandy posted:Having said that, I don't think you can frame Monika as psychopathic. Partly because I just think it's more interesting that the real "Yandere" all along doesn't seem to have any mental issues coded into her personality and this is more of a fall from grace story for her, but more than that, I agree with Dr. Snark. Monika's trying to justify herself and her actions by dehumanizing her friends. Some people are just assholes. Monika might be a special case with really trying circumstances, but that's about it. It really would. I've been holding off on this but I know of another VN (the name escapes me sadly) that had a similar twist where one of the characters was yandere for the player and hijacked the game as well, but there she was the usual "stab everyone in a five block radius that glanced in your general direction" type of yandere. It was a surprising thing, but it really didn't have much substance to it after the twist (that I'm aware of). Monika does, and then some. Sure she's clearly not fully sane by any stretch but you wouldn't expect this level of eloquence and legitimate supportive advice from her. It's probably why I like this part of the game the most; the longer it goes on, the more and more difficult it becomes to hate her.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2017 03:21
|
|
|
EagerSleeper posted:Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Ko? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXcwYgoGR0E Yup, that's the one. Can't remember where I saw it first but the idea stuck with me. It actually helped me figure out Monika's game far before the reveal.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2017 03:27
|
|
|
Really Pants posted:I think you get "Get out of my head" either way. You do. Edit: Wow I am behind on that. But uh more specifically it's still equally bad news once you read about that because you think things are going to be okay if you don't friendzone her but...well...
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2017 20:35
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 23:31 |
|
|
Starship Arcadia posted:I actually did Sayori's route first, and when the option came up my gut told me not to pick "I love you", because that seemed like a bad idea for her depression. I even had to reload when I ended up picking it anyway because that's how these games go, and felt absolutely horrible when she killed herself. Truth be told I'm positive that was a stealth "but thou must" moment. The protagonist would leave her alone in the "normal" game and everything would have been somehow fine despite obvious evidence. But since Monika set SayoriDepression(100), well... In essence it was the base game script forcing the MC to be an idiot and leave her alone. Normally that would just be bad writing. Here it's actually kind of brilliant in a twisted way. It's honestly interesting to think about what the "normal" game without this meta-ness would have been like. You get the sense that it was supposed to exist given Monika's dialogue in Act 3 but you never get to see it.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2017 23:21
|
|