straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2025-11-02 04:18 pm
straightforwardly) wrote2025-11-02 04:18 pm
323 | completing cinderella evermore!
I’ve now completed both Fritz and Waltz’s route, and so, have fully finished Cinderella Phenomenon Evermore! My thoughts on the two final routes:
Fritz
There were so many messy complicated things going on in this one, which feels appropriate considering that it’s spinning off from the route that was very much the darkest timeline in the original game! I did have some mixed feelings while playing through this route, but ultimately I think it did work for me.
The biggest issue I struggled with was Fritz’s characterization. He didn’t quite feel the same like he did in the original game, and frequently there were moments where his characterization felt particularly off or where he was acting (from my perspective) strangely, in a way that made me feel almost uncomfortable. But then, each time I felt that discomfort, it would later be followed up by a scene or conversation where it’s made clear what Fritz had been thinking and why he’d been acting that way, in a way that rang true to me. It didn’t make for the most comfortable gaming experience, but I see what the writer was going for.
So much of this route, I think, is about bridging the gap between Fritz and Varg, as well as dealing with Fritz’s sense of identity (specifically: his lack thereof) and his lack of self-worth. I remember, when playing the original game, complaining about how much of Fritz’s route is taken up by Varg instead of allowing Lucette to interact more with Fritz directly. Now, playing through this route, I found myself coming to think that I actually didn’t truly understand Fritz as a character until now. Yes, the original game said that Varg was born of Fritz’s darker thoughts and impulses, but it wasn’t until playing this game, and seeing Fritz shed some of that ever-smiling, selfless, devoted guard mask to allow more of his inner thoughts to shine through—to show the parts of him that are more like Varg—that I really began to understand and internalize that.
Also, he has so many self-worth issues, omg. I really liked the exploration of that—how he doesn’t know who he is if he’s not serving the role of a devoted knight (which explains more of his melancholy in Rumpel’s Evermore route imo), and the exploration of his backstory and his relationship with his parents. Alcaster actually got some human complexity here! He was often a one-note villain in the original game, but now we actually get some motivations for him here (even if it comes in the form of a fridged wife) that makes both his harshness in the original game AND the fact that Fritz had to get his idealism from somewhere make sense. I really liked the reveal that Fritz and Alcaster hadn’t always had a bad relationship—that it was something that festered over time as Alcaster grew more bitter about the kingdom.
This route also felt quite claustrophobic at times, in a way which again felt fitting considering the events of the original game. It’s so heavily focused on Lucette and Fritz alone; the other cast members appear, but there’s a strong sense that they play less of a role in her life. Which makes sense, because she had much less time to get to know them here! For large portions of this route, we only really see Lucette dealing with Fritz, with brief appearances by her father or NPCs. It’s interesting, too, that it turns out that this is also Fritz’s preference—that he’s not actually interested in sharing her time with others, even if he will always give way to her preferences if she wishes otherwise. For him, the ideal world is one shared by the two of them alone.
There’s also almost a sense of desperation to their romance here. They sincerely love each other, and they do make each other happy, but both of them are struggling with so much—Fritz with his emotional issues, Lucette with the consequences of what happened in the original game (more on that in a second)—that it sometimes feels like their relationship is built around them desperately clinging to each other, their buoy in a dark ocean storm. I’m pretty sure this is also the darkest route in the literal sense—we get a lot of nighttime scenes, or scenes where it’s raining, with the GI elements turning blue to match. It all works to give off this sense of moodiness and claustrophobic vibes.
This is also the route where Lucette has the least amount of public approval. The broader public doesn’t hate her like they did before, but there’s this sense of unease and awkwardness in her interactions with them that doesn’t exist in the other routes. So much of the non-relationship plot of this route is about Lucette dealing with the fallout of magic disappearing from the world, as well as her own mistakes and passivity. I don’t think it’s an accident that the “best ending” choice during the kidnapping incident at the end of this route involves her taking action instead of remaining passive.
Relatedly, in this route, some of the choices felt like they could really lead to a bad ending instead of merely a “good” or “best” ending. I’m thinking of the Varg question and the aforementioned choice Lucette makes when she witnesses a kidnapping at the end in particular. When going for the good ending + 100% seen text achievement, I actually felt bad about clicking some of those “wrong” choices!
Which is a pity in its own right, because I actually liked the good ending better than the best ending. I’m just not wild about how often the Best Endings in this game center around a proposal or some other Standard Romantic Milestone, mostly because I myself just… don’t actually find those things very romantic. To be clear, I don’t think the proposal was badly done!I’ll even admit to some vicious vindication about Lucette saying she prefers that kind of intimate proposal to something more public, YES I AM CALLING ROD OUT AGAIN FOR NEVER TRULY UNDERSTANDING HER. But the good ending, with the two of them huddling under an umbrella as they read together in a drizzling forest… it was very sweet <3
Also, I was intrigued by the confirmation that it’s not just that, pre-canon, Fritz saw through Lucette’s mask to the vulnerable person underneath, but that he saw that AND also genuinely liked the Ice Princess thing.
In short, I had some mixed feelings while playing, but ultimately I feel like this route did a pretty good job of telling the story it wanted to tell.
Waltz
I had such a great time with this one. First and foremost, I need to talk about the parallels between this route and Fritz’s! Because, just like with Karma and Rumpel, Waltz and Fritz’s routes very much parallel one another in a way that mirrors the way those routes paralleled each other in the original game, and I found myself with lots of thoughts to chew on in that regard.
Back when I first played the original game, I said this (and more) about the way the two routes serve as foils for one another: In Waltz’s route, Lucette gains independence, freedom, and the ability to take care of herself, while the atmosphere is Fritz’s route is much more insular and suffocating, and Lucette herself more powerless and helpless. Unsurprisingly, the parallels in Evermore continue along similar lines, exploring both the natural consequences of how each route played out, as well as the differences in Lucette’s relationships and circumstances.
One aspect that almost immediately stood out to me were themes of isolation versus connection. I wrote above about how intensely claustrophobic Fritz’s route feels at times. He’s the person Lucette interacts with the most, often without anyone else present—and in fact, he prefers that, wishing to keep her time to himself and liking it best when they’re alone. In contrast, Waltz misses the others from the Märchen, mentioning early on how he wishes they could all be together again, and near the end organizes a reunion in what is one of my favorite scenes in this whole game.
(Brief tangent—I don’t mean for this to be criticism of Fritz, or “this is why Waltz” is better, just a statement of what happens on screen. Though I do wonder if the root of this comes from the differences in their personalities, and specifically Fritz’s struggles with self-worth. Both of them have doubts about whether they truly “deserve” to be with Lucette, but those doubts are expressed differently in each character, with Fritz coming across as much more insecure in his relationship than Waltz is. He’s always wondering what he even has to offer to Lucette, while Waltz’s struggles are more about his own guilt about what he did as Hildyr’s apprentice, and I can see an argument for the former leading to Fritz being more uncomfortable about sharing his time—about being compared to others.)
To continue with the isolation/connection themes—in Fritz’s route, Lucette feel awkward and uneasy with the townspeople, and while she’s on friendly terms with the rest of the named cast, there’s no sense of a deeper bond; meanwhile, in Waltz’s route, she’s comfortable running around in town, is clearly a known and beloved figure to the people there, and even more clearly has deep and rich relationships with all of the named characters.
There’s a scene that highlights this last point rather well. In both routes, Lucette runs into Rumpel and Annice doing errands together in town, but the interactions between them are markedly different. In Fritz’s route, they’re glad to see one another and have a friendly conversation, but it’s all very much in the spirit of friendly acquaintances. It was nice to see one another, since they hadn’t in a long while, but then they all easily move on to attending to their own business with no regrets. In contrast, in Waltz’s route Rumpel immediately greets Lucette with a melodramatic comment about how long it’s been, and while the basic beats of the conversation are the same, the tenor is completely different—the difference between encountering a friendly acquaintance you’re glad to have seen, and a good friend that you’ve missed, want to spend more time with, and regret having to part from so soon.
There’s also the role of the Märchen, which clearly functions as a symbol of community and connection between the main cast—in both routes, it’s been closed, but in Fritz’s route it has been closed down completely and abandoned, as both Delora and Parfait are dead, while in Waltz’s route it has only been closed to the general public, and still serves as a meeting place for the characters—transforming from a public space to a private one just for the named cast.
Both routes also deal with similar plotlines about the integrations of witches into society and the continuing tensions (and occasional acts of violence) related to that, with Lucette being much more hampered in what she can do during Fritz’s route, being neither queen nor Tenebraum Bearer, while being able to enact real and believable change in both her role as queen and bearer during Waltz’s route, highlighted by the changes she makes to the composition of her council.
Another parallel that stood out strongly to me between the two routes were with Waltz and Fritz themselves, and particularly with the flawed ways in which they deal with the past. Fritz lingers in the past, ruminating over all that’s happened, while Waltz runs from it, trying to avoid thinking about or dealing with the things he doesn’t want to remember. Neither is a healthy approach, and both of their arcs in this game are very much about coming to terms with their pasts: Waltz by allowing himself to acknowledge and process it, and Fritz by learning to move forward. In many ways, they end up in a similar place by the end of the game, achieving a healthy balance between past and future, but the journeys they take to reach that point are in reverse.
Finally, both routes flesh out the side villains from the original game—Alcaster in Fritz’s route, which I already talked about above, and Mythos in Waltz’s route. Waltz’s relationship with Mythos gets explored more deeply in this route than it did in the original game, in a way that got me genuinely invested in their dynamic. He reminiscences about Mythos frequently, expressing intense regret about the way things played out in a way that gave me feelings, and talking about the different ways in which Hildyr played them against one another and tried to twist them. But while Waltz had Lucette as a sanctuary—Mythos had no one but Hildyr. I already rather liked Mythos as a character, but this added lore gives him more depth and makes it very understandable as to why he’s so wildly devoted to Hildyr.
I think the only thing I didn’t like about this route was the scene where Waltz asks how many children Lucette would like to have, but that’s my own personal hang-ups about characters having children talking, lol. Of all the LIs, Waltz is 10/10 the one who would absolutely want to have children, and Lucette is going to need an heir, so it does make sense, and their conversation about it wasn’t terrible. I just hated it because I always hate those kinds of scenes.
Beyond that… there was some good Karma & Waltz friendship moments (as well as a sweet Karma & Lucette moment featuring him understanding her <3), which always makes me happy <3 Including a delightful moment where they both got to be enthusiastic about chameleons. Also, we got Klaude fondly reminiscing about Miss Karma!! <3 (And then his brother chiming in with, ‘well, I don’t miss those days, seeing as we were all under the impression that you were dead the whole time’, lol.)
Fritz also feels like he’s gotten to a good place emotionally in this route, which is lovely to see. Honestly, in some ways he almost feels better-adjusted than he does in his own route—though maybe that’s just because Lucette is close enough to him there to be allowed to see his insecurities. Nonetheless, when I compare it to his clear melancholy in Rumpel’s route (not to mention him being flat-out dead in Karma’s route or his being almost certainly subsumed by Varg in Rod’s route, RIP and RIP)—the difference is like heaven and earth, and I’m glad that there’s at least one other ending where he can be happy.
While playing, I also had some thoughts about how (like Fritz) Waltz is arguably pretty much always in love with Lucette, regardless of whichever route it is, but in a way that reminds of Philippe from Shall We Date? The Niflheim. They’re pretty different characters otherwise, but there’s a similar sense of selfless devotion on display. In every route, Lucette’s happiness is a priority for Waltz, and he’s always there for her (also thinking about how the only time we see Waltz’s distressed silhouette outside of his route is when she’s struggling with the political situation in Fritz’s route), but—like Philippe—he never shows a hint of his own feelings unless she’s indicated that she feels something for him first, choosing instead to be endlessly supportive of whatever and whoever it is which brings her happiness.
also god i miss shall we date? the niflheim so much ;_;
I played Waltz’s best ending first, then went back to finish the game with his good ending. I think that was a good choice. Both endings were enjoyable, but Lucette’s reflections at the very end of the good ending—it felt like an appropriate way to wrap up this game as a whole. Thank you all for accompanying me on this journey.
It feels so good to have finally played this game, and so satisfying to have finished it. It’s been lingering over me for so long—wanting to play, but always being almost afraid to—I’m glad that I finally did it.
Fritz
There were so many messy complicated things going on in this one, which feels appropriate considering that it’s spinning off from the route that was very much the darkest timeline in the original game! I did have some mixed feelings while playing through this route, but ultimately I think it did work for me.
The biggest issue I struggled with was Fritz’s characterization. He didn’t quite feel the same like he did in the original game, and frequently there were moments where his characterization felt particularly off or where he was acting (from my perspective) strangely, in a way that made me feel almost uncomfortable. But then, each time I felt that discomfort, it would later be followed up by a scene or conversation where it’s made clear what Fritz had been thinking and why he’d been acting that way, in a way that rang true to me. It didn’t make for the most comfortable gaming experience, but I see what the writer was going for.
So much of this route, I think, is about bridging the gap between Fritz and Varg, as well as dealing with Fritz’s sense of identity (specifically: his lack thereof) and his lack of self-worth. I remember, when playing the original game, complaining about how much of Fritz’s route is taken up by Varg instead of allowing Lucette to interact more with Fritz directly. Now, playing through this route, I found myself coming to think that I actually didn’t truly understand Fritz as a character until now. Yes, the original game said that Varg was born of Fritz’s darker thoughts and impulses, but it wasn’t until playing this game, and seeing Fritz shed some of that ever-smiling, selfless, devoted guard mask to allow more of his inner thoughts to shine through—to show the parts of him that are more like Varg—that I really began to understand and internalize that.
Also, he has so many self-worth issues, omg. I really liked the exploration of that—how he doesn’t know who he is if he’s not serving the role of a devoted knight (which explains more of his melancholy in Rumpel’s Evermore route imo), and the exploration of his backstory and his relationship with his parents. Alcaster actually got some human complexity here! He was often a one-note villain in the original game, but now we actually get some motivations for him here (even if it comes in the form of a fridged wife) that makes both his harshness in the original game AND the fact that Fritz had to get his idealism from somewhere make sense. I really liked the reveal that Fritz and Alcaster hadn’t always had a bad relationship—that it was something that festered over time as Alcaster grew more bitter about the kingdom.
This route also felt quite claustrophobic at times, in a way which again felt fitting considering the events of the original game. It’s so heavily focused on Lucette and Fritz alone; the other cast members appear, but there’s a strong sense that they play less of a role in her life. Which makes sense, because she had much less time to get to know them here! For large portions of this route, we only really see Lucette dealing with Fritz, with brief appearances by her father or NPCs. It’s interesting, too, that it turns out that this is also Fritz’s preference—that he’s not actually interested in sharing her time with others, even if he will always give way to her preferences if she wishes otherwise. For him, the ideal world is one shared by the two of them alone.
There’s also almost a sense of desperation to their romance here. They sincerely love each other, and they do make each other happy, but both of them are struggling with so much—Fritz with his emotional issues, Lucette with the consequences of what happened in the original game (more on that in a second)—that it sometimes feels like their relationship is built around them desperately clinging to each other, their buoy in a dark ocean storm. I’m pretty sure this is also the darkest route in the literal sense—we get a lot of nighttime scenes, or scenes where it’s raining, with the GI elements turning blue to match. It all works to give off this sense of moodiness and claustrophobic vibes.
This is also the route where Lucette has the least amount of public approval. The broader public doesn’t hate her like they did before, but there’s this sense of unease and awkwardness in her interactions with them that doesn’t exist in the other routes. So much of the non-relationship plot of this route is about Lucette dealing with the fallout of magic disappearing from the world, as well as her own mistakes and passivity. I don’t think it’s an accident that the “best ending” choice during the kidnapping incident at the end of this route involves her taking action instead of remaining passive.
Relatedly, in this route, some of the choices felt like they could really lead to a bad ending instead of merely a “good” or “best” ending. I’m thinking of the Varg question and the aforementioned choice Lucette makes when she witnesses a kidnapping at the end in particular. When going for the good ending + 100% seen text achievement, I actually felt bad about clicking some of those “wrong” choices!
Which is a pity in its own right, because I actually liked the good ending better than the best ending. I’m just not wild about how often the Best Endings in this game center around a proposal or some other Standard Romantic Milestone, mostly because I myself just… don’t actually find those things very romantic. To be clear, I don’t think the proposal was badly done!
Also, I was intrigued by the confirmation that it’s not just that, pre-canon, Fritz saw through Lucette’s mask to the vulnerable person underneath, but that he saw that AND also genuinely liked the Ice Princess thing.
In short, I had some mixed feelings while playing, but ultimately I feel like this route did a pretty good job of telling the story it wanted to tell.
Waltz
I had such a great time with this one. First and foremost, I need to talk about the parallels between this route and Fritz’s! Because, just like with Karma and Rumpel, Waltz and Fritz’s routes very much parallel one another in a way that mirrors the way those routes paralleled each other in the original game, and I found myself with lots of thoughts to chew on in that regard.
Back when I first played the original game, I said this (and more) about the way the two routes serve as foils for one another: In Waltz’s route, Lucette gains independence, freedom, and the ability to take care of herself, while the atmosphere is Fritz’s route is much more insular and suffocating, and Lucette herself more powerless and helpless. Unsurprisingly, the parallels in Evermore continue along similar lines, exploring both the natural consequences of how each route played out, as well as the differences in Lucette’s relationships and circumstances.
One aspect that almost immediately stood out to me were themes of isolation versus connection. I wrote above about how intensely claustrophobic Fritz’s route feels at times. He’s the person Lucette interacts with the most, often without anyone else present—and in fact, he prefers that, wishing to keep her time to himself and liking it best when they’re alone. In contrast, Waltz misses the others from the Märchen, mentioning early on how he wishes they could all be together again, and near the end organizes a reunion in what is one of my favorite scenes in this whole game.
(Brief tangent—I don’t mean for this to be criticism of Fritz, or “this is why Waltz” is better, just a statement of what happens on screen. Though I do wonder if the root of this comes from the differences in their personalities, and specifically Fritz’s struggles with self-worth. Both of them have doubts about whether they truly “deserve” to be with Lucette, but those doubts are expressed differently in each character, with Fritz coming across as much more insecure in his relationship than Waltz is. He’s always wondering what he even has to offer to Lucette, while Waltz’s struggles are more about his own guilt about what he did as Hildyr’s apprentice, and I can see an argument for the former leading to Fritz being more uncomfortable about sharing his time—about being compared to others.)
To continue with the isolation/connection themes—in Fritz’s route, Lucette feel awkward and uneasy with the townspeople, and while she’s on friendly terms with the rest of the named cast, there’s no sense of a deeper bond; meanwhile, in Waltz’s route, she’s comfortable running around in town, is clearly a known and beloved figure to the people there, and even more clearly has deep and rich relationships with all of the named characters.
There’s a scene that highlights this last point rather well. In both routes, Lucette runs into Rumpel and Annice doing errands together in town, but the interactions between them are markedly different. In Fritz’s route, they’re glad to see one another and have a friendly conversation, but it’s all very much in the spirit of friendly acquaintances. It was nice to see one another, since they hadn’t in a long while, but then they all easily move on to attending to their own business with no regrets. In contrast, in Waltz’s route Rumpel immediately greets Lucette with a melodramatic comment about how long it’s been, and while the basic beats of the conversation are the same, the tenor is completely different—the difference between encountering a friendly acquaintance you’re glad to have seen, and a good friend that you’ve missed, want to spend more time with, and regret having to part from so soon.
There’s also the role of the Märchen, which clearly functions as a symbol of community and connection between the main cast—in both routes, it’s been closed, but in Fritz’s route it has been closed down completely and abandoned, as both Delora and Parfait are dead, while in Waltz’s route it has only been closed to the general public, and still serves as a meeting place for the characters—transforming from a public space to a private one just for the named cast.
Both routes also deal with similar plotlines about the integrations of witches into society and the continuing tensions (and occasional acts of violence) related to that, with Lucette being much more hampered in what she can do during Fritz’s route, being neither queen nor Tenebraum Bearer, while being able to enact real and believable change in both her role as queen and bearer during Waltz’s route, highlighted by the changes she makes to the composition of her council.
Another parallel that stood out strongly to me between the two routes were with Waltz and Fritz themselves, and particularly with the flawed ways in which they deal with the past. Fritz lingers in the past, ruminating over all that’s happened, while Waltz runs from it, trying to avoid thinking about or dealing with the things he doesn’t want to remember. Neither is a healthy approach, and both of their arcs in this game are very much about coming to terms with their pasts: Waltz by allowing himself to acknowledge and process it, and Fritz by learning to move forward. In many ways, they end up in a similar place by the end of the game, achieving a healthy balance between past and future, but the journeys they take to reach that point are in reverse.
Finally, both routes flesh out the side villains from the original game—Alcaster in Fritz’s route, which I already talked about above, and Mythos in Waltz’s route. Waltz’s relationship with Mythos gets explored more deeply in this route than it did in the original game, in a way that got me genuinely invested in their dynamic. He reminiscences about Mythos frequently, expressing intense regret about the way things played out in a way that gave me feelings, and talking about the different ways in which Hildyr played them against one another and tried to twist them. But while Waltz had Lucette as a sanctuary—Mythos had no one but Hildyr. I already rather liked Mythos as a character, but this added lore gives him more depth and makes it very understandable as to why he’s so wildly devoted to Hildyr.
I think the only thing I didn’t like about this route was the scene where Waltz asks how many children Lucette would like to have, but that’s my own personal hang-ups about characters having children talking, lol. Of all the LIs, Waltz is 10/10 the one who would absolutely want to have children, and Lucette is going to need an heir, so it does make sense, and their conversation about it wasn’t terrible. I just hated it because I always hate those kinds of scenes.
Beyond that… there was some good Karma & Waltz friendship moments (as well as a sweet Karma & Lucette moment featuring him understanding her <3), which always makes me happy <3 Including a delightful moment where they both got to be enthusiastic about chameleons. Also, we got Klaude fondly reminiscing about Miss Karma!! <3 (And then his brother chiming in with, ‘well, I don’t miss those days, seeing as we were all under the impression that you were dead the whole time’, lol.)
Fritz also feels like he’s gotten to a good place emotionally in this route, which is lovely to see. Honestly, in some ways he almost feels better-adjusted than he does in his own route—though maybe that’s just because Lucette is close enough to him there to be allowed to see his insecurities. Nonetheless, when I compare it to his clear melancholy in Rumpel’s route (not to mention him being flat-out dead in Karma’s route or his being almost certainly subsumed by Varg in Rod’s route, RIP and RIP)—the difference is like heaven and earth, and I’m glad that there’s at least one other ending where he can be happy.
While playing, I also had some thoughts about how (like Fritz) Waltz is arguably pretty much always in love with Lucette, regardless of whichever route it is, but in a way that reminds of Philippe from Shall We Date? The Niflheim. They’re pretty different characters otherwise, but there’s a similar sense of selfless devotion on display. In every route, Lucette’s happiness is a priority for Waltz, and he’s always there for her (also thinking about how the only time we see Waltz’s distressed silhouette outside of his route is when she’s struggling with the political situation in Fritz’s route), but—like Philippe—he never shows a hint of his own feelings unless she’s indicated that she feels something for him first, choosing instead to be endlessly supportive of whatever and whoever it is which brings her happiness.
I played Waltz’s best ending first, then went back to finish the game with his good ending. I think that was a good choice. Both endings were enjoyable, but Lucette’s reflections at the very end of the good ending—it felt like an appropriate way to wrap up this game as a whole. Thank you all for accompanying me on this journey.
It feels so good to have finally played this game, and so satisfying to have finished it. It’s been lingering over me for so long—wanting to play, but always being almost afraid to—I’m glad that I finally did it.