/jp/ - Otaku Culture

finished 昴の騎士.
i'll try to keep the gushing to an appreciable level but man what a great time that was. there's a certain pleasure in following a specific writer through their works and seeing them get (ideally) better at their craft, and it feels like here is where it really clicked for him. the character interactions and plot beats and even gameplay elements and art were all a big step up from the previous game. you could also totally see where he caught the sci-fi bug that mahou shoujo ran with. still fairly held back by the piece of shit engine it runs on but the addition of CGs and skill cut-ins made it so you didn't have to run on 90% imagination like the last couple.

plot was solid, a good excuse to go on an adventure that balloons out into fate of the world shenanigans. classic jrpg feel, no complaints here. though i'm once again really curious where the dev is getting all this gratuitous italian.

i fucking adored the cast, even when it got to the inevitable endgame bloat. fantastic banter with everyone finding a good niche to fill out and at least a couple banter buddies. tons of callbacks and running jokes and brick jokes and all that stuff that i love. i will miss these little shits but the long-ass epilogue covered pretty much everything i wanted to. Sirius was a fairly bland shounen MC but his "fuck it, i'll make it work" attitude was endearing enough and his interactions with Tiera sold the romance well. sorry Spica-tan, you never had a chance. but the fact that the game and mos of the characters clearly considered him to be in the running as a heroine will never stop being funny to me
was also really surprised by the hidden/secret characters, not only did they give them a ton of regular interactions with the cast, the returning characters from OtoZ had a whole plot line going that tied up a major loose end from that game. granted the conditions weren't hard to clear but you'd miss out on a lot if you didn't recruit them.

obligatory gripes: difficulty kinda fell off for a while towards the end, even the last map was less brutal than usual. some of the late joining characters were kinda lame and didn't add much. i expected more relevance out of Betelgeuse since he was on the start screen and all. i'm getting sick of what i assume is default srpg studio 95 music because it's been the same shit for three games now. how the hell does everyone in what appears to be mostly a podunk pre-industrialized civilization know all this modern science/cosmology stuff.

tl;dr it's great, i had a lot of fun with it.
i guess i'm a sucker for the way this guy does characters. there's not usually a huge amount of depth or development to them but they're hard carried by how they play off each other.

i should give this shit a rest for a while but 闇鍋企画 is apparently a big fandisk melting pot (a yaminabe, even) so i feel i ought to play it while i still remember who everyone is
but if that fucking cat comes back again i swear to god