straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2018-12-07 11:12 pm
straightforwardly) wrote2018-12-07 11:12 pm
197 | visual novel hour: returning to OZMAFIA!! and The Arcana
► I’ve gone back to playing Ozmafia!!!! The last time I played, I only did one of the endings (one of Kyrie’s, for the record), which some of you might remember me talking about over here. At the time, I’d fully intended on continuing to play the game, but then real life got busy, and one way or another I didn’t get back to it until now.
That being said— I’m kind of glad that I waited until now to get back to it? Mostly because I’m enjoying it much more now than I did back then. Some of it, I think, is because I have my expectations properly calibrated this time. I remember that back then, I was pretty frustrated by how slow-paced and slice-of-life-y the game turned out to be— the summary and opening to the game both suggested something much plottier, and the clash between my expectations and the reality left me severely disappointed. This time, though, I went in knowing what the game was like, and it turned out that it was much better than I remembered— or, at least, I’m enjoying it more.
I went back to Kyrie’s route first, since I’d only done one of his endings, and I’m 1) a completionist and 2) really, really wanted a better ending for him than the one I got last time. (That ending really is going to haunt me forever. Every time I remembered it over the last ~8 or so months, I basically started internally shrieking.) I also really, properly replayed the route, without using the “skip seen text” function, as I wanted to refresh my memory on what actually happens in the game.
I followed this guide from the start, as I didn’t want to accidentally stumble onto that horrifying ending again. And this time it worked like a charm! (This time with Caramia as the third part of the love triangle— the only thing that I hadn’t tried when I was trying to get Not That One Ending Again before. I don’t know why it worked this time, but I’m also not complaining.)
I still like Kyrie as a character— though probably not as a person, haha— but, once again, I’m not really sold on him/Fuka, though I think I liked the relationship better this time around than I did before. The “it’s not like either of us is exactly normal / we’re both weird people in different ways” thing did work for me, to some extent.
As for the second Kyrie ending… well, I’m glad that he got to keep his personality! But I admit that my initial reaction to the reveal as to why that was so was “this is the biggest bullshit”. Essentially, he tells Fuka that the pendant he gave her was a fake, and that he was only pretending to have reverted to his old self that entire time. To which I went: THEN WHAT WAS THE POINT OF ALL OF THIS AND WHY GIVE IT TO HER IN THE FIRST PLACE.
But the more he explained his reasonings / the more that I thought about it, the more I came around to it? It’s still way too convenient for my taste— I’d rather Fuka have lost it, his genuinely turning back to his old self, and then her doing something to bring him back to his usual self— but I suppose that I can buy him pretending like he lost his mind just to torment her for having lost something that he told her was so important.
I think one of the reasons why it’s harder for me to wrap my head around it, is because this places the diverging point for the two endings much earlier than I’m used to (i.e., when he decides whether or not he trusts her enough to give her the real pendant to hold onto), yet so many of the events afterwards still occur exactly the same in both timelines.
It also makes that other ending even sadder, which I hadn’t thought possible. Kyrie trusting Fuka and Fuka failing that trust is going to be sad any way you spin it, but— with the addition of this ending, it shows that his trusting Fuka was not only not the only decision he made, but was in fact the pivotal decision. And then in the version where he, for once, does actually decide to fully put his trust into another person for once— he loses everything which makes him, him. Again: I didn’t think that first ending could get any more tragic, but it just did.
(I’m not sure why he ended up giving her the pendant in the form of a ring at the end of the second ending, though. She already proved that she could lose it? His “pendant chains break, so rings are safer” rationalization also doesn’t really work for me— in my experience, rings are way easier to lose than necklaces are to break.)
Either way, anything’s better/happier than that first ending that I got, so I can’t really complain too much.
On a different note, that scene where he summons the crows to attack the Wolf Gang put stars in my eyes. Very atmospheric and cool. *_* (...Though also really brutal. The description of the corpses did put a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm, haha. Though not enough to stop me from gushing about it here. ♥)
Also, I’m definitely still shipping Caramia/Kyrie. I suspect that it might end up being my OTP for the game, unless something happens to either sour it for me or something happens to make another pairing rockets past it in my affections.
I decided not to do the transferred affections endings yet. I think I’m going to wait until I do each of the characters’ respective main routes before I do any transferred affections endings involving them. (E.g., I’d be fine with doing any of the endings where Fuka’s affections are transferred to Kyrie now, but I won’t do any where her affections are transferred to Caramia or Axel until I play their respective main routes.)
Instead, I’m doing Caramia’s route next! I’m really looking forward to this one. *_* I never thought that I would like him so much. I actually initially thought that he’d probably be my least favorite of the main three! And then he promptly barrelled me over with how fantastic he is. ♥ I adore him so much.
I also already really liked his and Fuka’s gen interactions, so hopefully the game will do a better job on selling me on their romance? We’ll see.
► I’ve been playing Nadia’s route in The Arcana on and off again (mostly off) since sometime in the beginning of this year. While the later chapters have been really good, I’m mostly just along for the ride on this one— I’ve forgotten so many of the plot points over time. But when I played through “The Tower” today, I found that I actually had a few things to comment on!
First: Up until now, I’ve been content with lowkey hating Lucio. But in this chapter, now that he’s been revived… something about him actually kind of reminds me of Eridan from Homestuck?? Which makes me actually kind of like him a bit more than I did before. On that note, that scene where everyone— Nadia, Asra, Julian, the MC’s spirit— just walks away and ignores him was both genuinely funny and felt like something that I could see happening to Eridan.
Second: I am so, so, so into the time shenanigans that happened between the MC and younger!Nadia in the world of the Arcana. I’m always here for time shenanigans and this particular instance really satisfied me on an iddy level. It also helps make some of the earlier canon retroactively more palatable for me— I vaguely recall not really being sold on why Nadia was so drawn to the MC early on, and I feel like this helps explain that, even when taking Nadia’s lost memories into account.
Now time to grind the Heart Hunter mini-game until I get enough coins to buy the next part. I really wish I hadn’t stopped playing it after I got all of the postcards all those months ago.
► I also have a few things to say about Yu-Gi-Oh and some academic articles I've been reading about ancient Egypt, but that'll have to wait until next time, I think.
That being said— I’m kind of glad that I waited until now to get back to it? Mostly because I’m enjoying it much more now than I did back then. Some of it, I think, is because I have my expectations properly calibrated this time. I remember that back then, I was pretty frustrated by how slow-paced and slice-of-life-y the game turned out to be— the summary and opening to the game both suggested something much plottier, and the clash between my expectations and the reality left me severely disappointed. This time, though, I went in knowing what the game was like, and it turned out that it was much better than I remembered— or, at least, I’m enjoying it more.
I went back to Kyrie’s route first, since I’d only done one of his endings, and I’m 1) a completionist and 2) really, really wanted a better ending for him than the one I got last time. (That ending really is going to haunt me forever. Every time I remembered it over the last ~8 or so months, I basically started internally shrieking.) I also really, properly replayed the route, without using the “skip seen text” function, as I wanted to refresh my memory on what actually happens in the game.
I followed this guide from the start, as I didn’t want to accidentally stumble onto that horrifying ending again. And this time it worked like a charm! (This time with Caramia as the third part of the love triangle— the only thing that I hadn’t tried when I was trying to get Not That One Ending Again before. I don’t know why it worked this time, but I’m also not complaining.)
I still like Kyrie as a character— though probably not as a person, haha— but, once again, I’m not really sold on him/Fuka, though I think I liked the relationship better this time around than I did before. The “it’s not like either of us is exactly normal / we’re both weird people in different ways” thing did work for me, to some extent.
As for the second Kyrie ending… well, I’m glad that he got to keep his personality! But I admit that my initial reaction to the reveal as to why that was so was “this is the biggest bullshit”. Essentially, he tells Fuka that the pendant he gave her was a fake, and that he was only pretending to have reverted to his old self that entire time. To which I went: THEN WHAT WAS THE POINT OF ALL OF THIS AND WHY GIVE IT TO HER IN THE FIRST PLACE.
But the more he explained his reasonings / the more that I thought about it, the more I came around to it? It’s still way too convenient for my taste— I’d rather Fuka have lost it, his genuinely turning back to his old self, and then her doing something to bring him back to his usual self— but I suppose that I can buy him pretending like he lost his mind just to torment her for having lost something that he told her was so important.
I think one of the reasons why it’s harder for me to wrap my head around it, is because this places the diverging point for the two endings much earlier than I’m used to (i.e., when he decides whether or not he trusts her enough to give her the real pendant to hold onto), yet so many of the events afterwards still occur exactly the same in both timelines.
It also makes that other ending even sadder, which I hadn’t thought possible. Kyrie trusting Fuka and Fuka failing that trust is going to be sad any way you spin it, but— with the addition of this ending, it shows that his trusting Fuka was not only not the only decision he made, but was in fact the pivotal decision. And then in the version where he, for once, does actually decide to fully put his trust into another person for once— he loses everything which makes him, him. Again: I didn’t think that first ending could get any more tragic, but it just did.
(I’m not sure why he ended up giving her the pendant in the form of a ring at the end of the second ending, though. She already proved that she could lose it? His “pendant chains break, so rings are safer” rationalization also doesn’t really work for me— in my experience, rings are way easier to lose than necklaces are to break.)
Either way, anything’s better/happier than that first ending that I got, so I can’t really complain too much.
On a different note, that scene where he summons the crows to attack the Wolf Gang put stars in my eyes. Very atmospheric and cool. *_* (...Though also really brutal. The description of the corpses did put a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm, haha. Though not enough to stop me from gushing about it here. ♥)
Also, I’m definitely still shipping Caramia/Kyrie. I suspect that it might end up being my OTP for the game, unless something happens to either sour it for me or something happens to make another pairing rockets past it in my affections.
I decided not to do the transferred affections endings yet. I think I’m going to wait until I do each of the characters’ respective main routes before I do any transferred affections endings involving them. (E.g., I’d be fine with doing any of the endings where Fuka’s affections are transferred to Kyrie now, but I won’t do any where her affections are transferred to Caramia or Axel until I play their respective main routes.)
Instead, I’m doing Caramia’s route next! I’m really looking forward to this one. *_* I never thought that I would like him so much. I actually initially thought that he’d probably be my least favorite of the main three! And then he promptly barrelled me over with how fantastic he is. ♥ I adore him so much.
I also already really liked his and Fuka’s gen interactions, so hopefully the game will do a better job on selling me on their romance? We’ll see.
► I’ve been playing Nadia’s route in The Arcana on and off again (mostly off) since sometime in the beginning of this year. While the later chapters have been really good, I’m mostly just along for the ride on this one— I’ve forgotten so many of the plot points over time. But when I played through “The Tower” today, I found that I actually had a few things to comment on!
First: Up until now, I’ve been content with lowkey hating Lucio. But in this chapter, now that he’s been revived… something about him actually kind of reminds me of Eridan from Homestuck?? Which makes me actually kind of like him a bit more than I did before. On that note, that scene where everyone— Nadia, Asra, Julian, the MC’s spirit— just walks away and ignores him was both genuinely funny and felt like something that I could see happening to Eridan.
Second: I am so, so, so into the time shenanigans that happened between the MC and younger!Nadia in the world of the Arcana. I’m always here for time shenanigans and this particular instance really satisfied me on an iddy level. It also helps make some of the earlier canon retroactively more palatable for me— I vaguely recall not really being sold on why Nadia was so drawn to the MC early on, and I feel like this helps explain that, even when taking Nadia’s lost memories into account.
Now time to grind the Heart Hunter mini-game until I get enough coins to buy the next part. I really wish I hadn’t stopped playing it after I got all of the postcards all those months ago.
► I also have a few things to say about Yu-Gi-Oh and some academic articles I've been reading about ancient Egypt, but that'll have to wait until next time, I think.