My personal backlog of things I meant to post but never got around to is now so long it's long since become a matter of great personal embarrassment. Case in point: when I first finished playing The World Ends With You, I got halfway through a really extended critique/fangirling over it's various elements before I got distracted (possibly by a trip to Japan, possibly by a million and one cosplay projects, possibly by roughly the same number of writing projects, possibly even by the terror of starting a PhD or something similarly trivial).
Anyway, excuses aside, the point is I still have three WEWY fic to post (as soon as my beta reader gets back to me), and a whole
heap of photos taken in Shibuya to share (as soon as we get them all cleaned up), but in the meantime, getting this bit out of the way has to be a good start.
In brief, I loved it! The battle system, despite being confusing at first and often best handled by button mashing, is surprisingly fun after a little practice, the characters are all impressively developed and likeable – including most of the badguys, and the plot’s every bit as the involving as the best of Squeenix's work. The game gets a big tick in pretty much every box.
So it’s a real shame that the ending... kinda sucked.
The big issue I had with it – well, actually there are two, but they’re closely related and we’ll start with this one – was all about the Shocking Revelation in the final minutes of the game that Joshua, despite all character development pointing to the contrary, had in fact been the secret, shadowy power responsible for all Neku's woes all along after all. Like most plot devices that can be summed up pretty effectively as the bastard lovechild of
a couple of TVTropes pages, it's the kind of twist that could probably be pulled off well with the right spin, but I'm having an awful lot of trouble thinking of an example to demonstrate, and this... really wasn't it. The fundamental problem with discovering at the 11th hour that everything you thought you knew about character X has been no more than an elaborate cover story is that it's only a few steps short of 'and they woke up and it was all a dream!' in the A-lists of tropes that can be used to explain away
anything, with equally unsatisfying, cookie-cutter results. Pretty much any western comic title that's been running for more than five years is almost guaranteed to give you an example of exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about here.
Call me picky, but as obvious as it was we'd have to have some kind of big twist at the end given the whole plot winds like a mountain road obstacle course, I was expecting something with just a little more subtly than that.
The reason they got away with it is because Joshua is, not to put too fine a point on it, the kind of smarmy bastard who's ulterior motives probably have ulterior motives, so the revelation that he's been secretly screwing Neku over all along is... not much of a surprise, really. The reason it left me feeling as betrayed by the writers as Neku was feeling by his 'friend' is that up to that point we (thought we) were maybe one or two puzzle pieces short of having a complete explanation for Joshua's attitude that was
way more interesting, only to have it all retconned away at the last minute. It's only fair to say I'm probably biased given how attached I was to Joshua's story as we'd been told it up to that point, but I seriously was loving the gradual reveal of just what his deal was all through the second week – it all adds up in ways that make such perfect sense you wonder why you never see coming. By the end of Joshua’s week, half the rules of the Shinigami’s Game we
thought we knew from the first week have been bent into beautifully twisted little knots, and while there are still mysteries remaining (not least of all how even a kid in Joshua’s position could have been so damned smug about it all) it’s completely believable that he’s wholly and completely on Neku’s side.
Getting to the end only to discover Joshua really
was the untrustworthy bastard Neku first thought he was could only feel like something of a cop-out. Just where does that leave all the plot twists from his week that I was enjoying so much? He knows about the Game because he’s psychically able to see the dead? Nope, it’s because he’s on the staff! He's trying to become Composer? Ha, gotcha, he's Composer already! He’s found a loophole allowing him to take part while still being living? Well, not really, the Reapers aren’t exactly living
or dead, so it probably doesn’t count. So much for the flashback revealing he
wasn’t the one who shot Neku too. The implications that even Hanekoma – one of the few allies Neku ever thought he had – was working with Joshua to manipulate him all along are even more disturbing, and the thematic problems that leaves the game with are staggering. So much of the story was all about Neku learning to like people for the first time in his life that to have him betrayed by
two of the ones most responsible for teaching him other people could be worth trusting doesn’t even make any sense at all. The game simply isn’t long enough for there to be room for a
second major twist to everything we know about the motives of a major character – least of all one that replaces so many of the most interesting plot points in the game with something so very much less inspired.
So many new plot points are introduced or revised in the last sequence of the game that the ending feels like something tacked on by mistake. In reality, it’s probably more of a ploy to keep you playing, because the only way to find out what’s
really been going on behind the scenes is to go back each chapter in a kind of New Game Plus mode and collect all the ‘Noise Reports’ that go into all the whys and hows of just what Hanekoma was doing to keep stringing you along. It’s a ploy taken almost verbatim from the Ansem Reports of the Kingdom Hearts series, only without two crucial features that made them work in KHII: firstly, while the reports added a lot to the backstory and explained a lot of those niggling little things that never came up in the dialogue, you didn’t actually
need to read any of them to make sense of the story, and secondly, you picked them up as you went along. WEWY incorporates neither feature, with the result that the reports read like something that’s come from a completely different story to the one you thought you were playing. All this new information is injected into the narrative posthumously without giving Neku any opportunity to react to it, coming in barely one step up from the level of making people track down obscure interviews with the writers just to find out what the bloody hell was supposed to be going on. The credits still roll on an optimistic note, but one that feels forced and unsatisfying in a way a game with a set up as involving as WEWY never deserved.
Seriously, if you do like that sort of thing I won't hold it against you, but being forced to track down a second story to make sense of the ending to the one you thought you were playing just doesn't work for me. I'm only glad my housemates warned me the ending was a let-down before I got to it, or it would've gotten to me even worse.
Anyhow, now I've got all that out of the way, I do need to admit here that it's been well over six months since I first finished the game, and despite all reservations about that last little section, the rest of the plot is still just about awesome enough for me to lalala my way through the ending. I've made up enough personal canon to knit the parts of the story I liked together, found some really awesome fanfic based on it and done a cosplay tour of Shibuya, and basically made peace with the fact that whatever I think of the ending, the rest of the game was still awesome enough that I'd still recommend it enthusiastically to just about anyone in possession of a DS. But I still can't help feel that after all the setup through the rest of the game, there
had to be the material there to lead into a better ending than that. Some things wouldn't be so different – it's pretty obvious that Neku thinking Joshua sacrificed himself because Neku was holding him responsible for his death was just Neku having a (fairly understandable) guilt trip, and the real explanation worked more in Joshua's favour, but it didn't all have to be a lie. I was expecting something like Neku running into Joshua down in the Final Dungeon ™ shortly after he’d met Shiki down there. It’d go something like this:
 | Neku: Joshua!?
|
 | Joshua: Why so surprised to see me, Neku?
|
| Neku: But… that blast… you were killed…! That Conductor-guy said you were...
|
 | Joshua: Don’t be so silly. I’m no more dead than you are.
|
 | Beat: Guy’s got a point, man.
|
 | Neku: But how? He erased all the other players!
|
 | Joshua: That’s simple, I didn’t enter the Reaper’s Game this round. There wasn’t any need when I’d already found Shibuya river.
|
 | Good thing too, from the sound of things.
|
 | Besides, you’d already survived two weeks. You weren’t going to have any trouble making it through another without me.
|
 | Neku: (I don’t believe this guy. Is there anything that fazes him…
|
 | …!)
|
 | Neku: I’m sorry.
|
| Joshua: What for?
|
| Neku: Accusing you of killing me. I didn’t…
|
| Joshua: Oh, you were still hung up about that? Lots of players come in here with confused memories about their death, it’s no big deal. Anyway, if I’d realised what a good partner you’d make, I probably would have shot you there myself.
|
| Neku: WHAT!?
|
 | Joshua: Don’t be like that. All we had to do was win the game to bring you back to life again. It practically doesn’t even count as murder.
|
| Neku: #$%&*
|
 | (This guy… doesn’t anything…?)
|
 | Damn you Joshua, don’t you get it!? Maybe this is all just a game to you, but for the rest of us it’s life or death! You can’t treat it like nothing that happens down here matters!
|
| Joshua: Of course it matters. I’m staking my life on this too, aren’t I?
|
 | Neku: ! |
In here, we’d have a lot of talk about how it’s getting pretty bloody obvious that whoever the current Composer is, he’s not doing much of a job of making sure the Reaper’s Game is being played fairly. The Conductor’s bending rules left and right, what with erasing all the other players and filling Shibuya with Red Skull pins. But maybe there’s another side to that where bending all those rules makes him vulnerable (which Joshua’s probably been subtly finding ways to encourage him to do). We’ve also go Sho taking advantage of the power vacuum to make his own bid for the top job, and perhaps this also included offing a few extra people who could act as players (ie, Neku), or serve as a sacrifice to boost his taboo noise array. Maybe the fact Neku was a fan of Cat (ie, obviously either the current Composer or someone closely connected to him) played some significance there too. Alternately, maybe the shootout was just between Sho and Joshua (who was making an early attempt at playing some games with the less well-behaved Reapers) and Neku just got caught in the crossfire.
Lots of possibilities there, but regardless, I doubt Joshua was paying any attention to Neku until after he entered the game and made it through his first week and about to start his second. Not only does that make him unusually experienced, he’s a genius with pins, so of course Joshua had him picked as the ideal partner.
Anyway, the more important point of all that is that the Reaper’s Game is badly in need of a new Composer if it’s ever going to get back to being run fairly again, by which logic you could make a case that what Joshua’s up to has an altruistic side. Not that this negates him being a power hungry brat who thinks he can play the game better than anyone else, but he’s got to be a better candidate than Sho no matter what, so. There’s also got to be an exchange like this somewhere:
| Neku: Why did you do it? Jump in front of the bullet for me.
|
| Joshua: Well, it seemed only fair. I only wound up dead, but you would’ve been erased completely,. By the way, you still owe me for that. And you’re going to help me get the rest of the way to the Composer, aren’t you? |
So, on they go, the fights with Kitanji happen and are not so very different from before, except that this time as well as a brainwashed Shiki you’re fighting a brainwashed Joshua, and if the audience has been particularly good this year, maybe this even means we get to see him
just a little unnerved afterwards. Oh, and for the record, everyone gets to stay conscious in this version, and this gives them the chance to fill Shiki in on a bit more of what’s been happening while she’s been out of the game – namely the Red Skull Pins and what they’re doing to Shibuya. Naturally, Shiki’s less than happy to learn what’s become of the same pins she and Neku were used to promote back during their own week in the couple of weeks that passed since. Neku’s still of two minds about whether they’re about to meet Hanekoma – whether he’s been the Composer all along and even Joshua didn’t know that, but there’s nothing else for it but to go find out. Then they get to the final hall where the Composer’s meant to be waiting for them, only to find it completely empty but for a book with the Game’s skull emblem on the front sitting on a table. A little closer inspection and the book turns out to be a rule book for the Reaper’s Game.
Everyone (possibly excluding Joshua) is just getting over the apparent revelation that the ‘Composer’ is no more than a rule book when Hanekoma takes his cue to crash their little party and finally answer a few important questions. Yes, he’s the Composer – sort of. Only he’s retired. See, there’s already levels and levels of authority in the Reaper’s Game (Game Master, Conductor, etc) and Shibuya itself doesn’t
need a Composer on a day to day basis – goes without saying that it’s the kinda town that writes its own tunes. Being at the centre of all that is a hell of a power trip, but most temporary Composers don’t hold the job very long before they clue into how little they’re actually needed and step down, or at least sideways to somewhere like Hanekoma’s café. Trouble is, once in a while things start to fray around the edges (Reapers getting rebellious, for example) or something crops up that the rule book doesn’t cover, and the Composer’s needed again to straiten things out. However, once you’ve hit the auto-pilot and stepped down from the job voluntarily, it’s not so hard to get back in again. Other than in the sense where Mr H. has been carefully nudging the players (Joshua very much included) in this direction for most of the game, because that, or course, would be where our heroes come in.
(I am of two minds about whether Joshua was told about Hanekoma being the Composer or not. Clearly he’s heard most of this before, but that particular detail could quite easily have been left out, especially considering he’s shown no sign he’s been aware of it before, and the whole song-and-dance he’s been doing just to find Shibuya River and the Composer. It’s probably all part of the Rules or something. Look, c’mon, we all want to see something actually surprise the guy for once, right?)
This is all well and good and basically what you’re all here for anyway, but now there are multiple candidates for a new Composer present, and neither Joshua or Beat are keen on missing out on the position. Beat’s mostly interested in getting Rhyme back, but he’s been looking forward to the chance to put one over all those Shinigami a little too long now. Joshua makes a point of asking him whether he’s got any idea what’s actually involved in being Composer, which Beat doesn’t, and naturally Joshua can just offer to bring them all back to life after he’s become Composer, but Joshua, not to put too fine a point on it, is not the kind of guy you would willingly buy a second hand car from, and Beat doesn’t entirely trust him to keep his word.
And somewhere in all this fuss, shiny lights etc because
Shiki’s been chosen as Composer while they’re arguing. Well, or Neku – he’d work too, but poor Shiki hasn’t had anything much to do since early in the game, plus there’s been plenty to suggest she’s got a better feel for what makes Shibuya tick than anyone else present. More importantly, she doesn’t want the job, which probably makes her pretty much ideal. Lots of spluttering from Shiki, who never wanted to have any more to do with the Reaper’s Game than what it took to win it and get back to life, but she calms down a bit when Hanekoma points out that she doesn’t have to stay with the job any longer than he did. Being Composer, she’s got instant authority to return them all to life
 | Shiki: WHAT!? But… but I didn’t even want to be Composer!
|
 | Hanekoma: Most of us don’t by the end of a month or two, so you’re ahead of the crowd there.
|
 | Shiki: But I mean it! I never wanted anything to do with the Reaper’s Game! I was only ever in it so me and Neku could make it back to life.
|
| Hanekoma: Well, now you’ve been handed the authority to have everyone here brought back. That’s not a problem, right?
|
| Shiki: Oh, no, no, I didn’t mean…! But there must be more to being Composer than that.
|
 | Hanekoma: That’s the thing about being Composer, you pretty much make it all up as you go along. Our rebel Conductor’s out of business, and your friends already took care of the worst of our problem Reapers. You could always make some more rules if you like.
|
 | Shiki: More rules?
|
 | Hanekoma: Any ideas?
|
 | Shiki: I’ll say! There’s got to be a rule against those Red Skull Pins! No more messing with innocent people in the RG. And absolutely no more using the players to manipulate the trends like that. |
(There’s some surprise and confusion here as it’s discovered that the Rule Book is quite literally updating itself as Shiki speaks, though probably using slightly more concise language.)
| Hanekoma: Doesn’t sound like a bad start. Got any more?
|
 | Shiki: Sure. From now on, there’s enough slots that everyone who finishes the final mission comes back to life. The whole Game’s about trusting your partner, we can’t keep splitting people up at the end!
|
 | I guess we could use some rules to make it fairer, the Game’s really weighted against the players right now…
|
| Neku: Shiki?
|
 | Hanekoma: Sounds like she might be on a roll here. |
(This would probably be a good place for a bit more discussion about the whole origin and point of the Game, what Noise really are, how Reapers fit in, how the whole mess relates to Shibuya, and other stuff that otherwise got left for the Noise Reports)
| Hanekoma: So, any more changes?
|
 | Shiki: Um, no, I don’t think so.
|
| Hanekoma: You don’t say.
|
 | Shiki: It’s all… life and death and so many confusing factors and so much more than I want to get involved in. I don’t think it’s my part to say what’s fair with all that. Does that sound right?
|
 | Neku: I guess… (I can’t blame her. I wouldn’t want any more to do with this either. And Beat and Joshua wanted this job?)
|
| Hanekoma: One thing left before you take off – you’re going to have to appoint a new Conductor.
|
| Shiki: A new Conductor… would anyone do? |
To his horror, Shiki promptly appoints none other than Mr Hanekoma himself, which will be a nice way of getting him back for dumping them all into this and make him do an honest day's work for a change, not to mention that the Game is likely to be a whole lot less bloodthirsty with him in charge. Aaaand lets say Kariya gets to be Game Master for a while, because not only is he clearly overqualified, he can be well counted on to give players a bit of a light thrashing, then if he thinks they're worth it, call it a day while he's still in one piece and let them through. And with that all sorted, all's well that ends well, and our heroes exit stage left into the sunset.
…okay, so maybe that still needs a bit of refining, but I think my point still stands. There was plenty of potential for a better ending than what we got.
So now that I've devoted a good three thousand words to talking about what I didn't like about the game, how about a few words about what did work for me? Because the short answer is 'everything else'. =3
One thing that especially stood out for me was the script and translation. As little as I know about the Japanese version (both my Japanese-speaking housemates bought copies while in Japan for comparison, but they're largely lost on me), it's really impressive just how everything in the English translation
feels right. People in Shibuya speak English without any lame-arse attempts to convince us we're really in New York somewhere and eating donuts instead of sushi, teenagers talk like teenagers without the slang (of which there is plenty) being jarring or overdone. Not once did I hit a moment where I found myself going 'oh, that sounded kind of lame but I'm betting
this is what it was in the original Japanese...' which is actually almost a first. I am seriously impressed by the translation team for this game.
Bad as I was at the top-screen stuff controlling your partner, and despite a few minor gripes about different kinds of pin points and a few pins that never seemed to work properly, the battle system was just plain
fun. There are so many different pins that you can keep switching them out (as I did pretty much every time I mastered one) all game and not run out of options. Whereas in most RPGs you find yourself settling into one strategy pretty quickly, having that many different powers and stylus tricks to try out really made all the difference when it came to keeping random encounters from getting tedious. I also couldn't have predicted that the way armour and stat bonuses were translated over the Shibuya fashions and how many burgers you can digest in 24 hours would have worked so well to put a refreshing spin on all the basic menu-system elements we've seen a million times before. The game gives you lots of options, but if you can't be bothered with the hassle of maxing out everything, it also gives you the option of ignoring most of them without missing out on anything important.
As for the characters, the ones I
couldn't spend at least good paragraph shamelessly fangirling are probably the minority. Neku's transformation from antisocial jerk into a guy willing to risk his neck to for people he wouldn't have given the time of day a week ago is so logical and natural as it develops you never have to question it. He asks the right questions, gives good advice, and easily lasts as the only steady character through the whole game without me ever getting bored with him. If Beat's the the designated team bonehead, he's no less lovable for it, and while Rhyme's nominally the cute little girl character, it's quite refreshing that one of her defining character traits is how smart she is and a real shame we don't get to see more of her. You can see she takes care of Beat just as much as the reverse, and the whole relationship between them is incredibly sweet in the kind of way you rarely get to see explored like this. I could say plenty about Joshua too, but I think I've more than covered him already.
If there's one character I can take or leave out of the main five, it's unfortunately got to be Shiki – not that I actively disliked her, there was just nothing about her that got me to invest to the same degree as the rest of the cast. She's still got her moments though, and something about her relationship with Neku give me the idea they might actually just be about what Squeenix swung for and missed so badly when they gave us Squall and Rinoa. Y'know, anti-social jerk meets cute perky girl who's influence gradually helps reform him into a real human being, but things don't really get shippy until the point where she's put out of action for a while and he's got to save her, etc. Only with Neku and Shiki, we're spared all the goopy romantic crap because the relationship never goes much beyond subtext, Shiki is spared Rinoa's vapidness and incompetence and has a believable reason for sticking around despite how Neku initially treats her (ie, no choice in the matter), and the two make a genuine and believable connection
before the whole must-save-Shiki thing crops up. It's kinda fascinating seeing so many of the elements that did nothing for me in FFVIII used to so much better effect here.
Speaking of Shiki, did anyone else get the feeling Eri was kind of WEWY's version of Zack? Doesn't have a huge role, hardly mentioned in passing until well into the story, nowhere near playable, but halfway through you're suddenly discovering her identity's so mixed up with everything you thought you knew about Shiki that in a big way she's been around all along. And y'know, fandom can debate Neku/Joshua against Neku/Shiki as long as they like, but Eri's on screen for
one scene and I would still have to say she and Shiki are the more blatantly in love than any other couple in the game. Lukewarm as I may be about Shiki, they're really kind of adorable.
If I've got any real complaints about character handling, it was just a little sad that to see both main female characters effectively fridged (for the uninitiated, put out of action largely just to create angst for the male characters) so early on in the game. I love the boys and all, and I can talk at length about what a total girl Joshua is, and WEWY did give us two fairly important female badguys in a medium-sized team as opposed to the 1-12 ratio of KHII; but once in a while, you can't help feel that all the feminists out there who come up with concepts like 'refrigeration' in the first place might have just a little bit of a point...
For better or worse, it's a bit hard
not to compare the game to Kingdom Hearts, which is a bit of a shame when I do feel like for all their similarities, they've got very different vibes and stand well on their own merits. Still, let's be fair here: spiky-haired hero, red-haired heroine who's not around much, pale-haired pretty boy with questionable alliances, up against a shadowy group of enemies with a weird hierarchical structure, mysterious goals and funny hair, and that's all well before you get to collecting the Noise Reports. On the other hand, there are no airships, no epic quests to save the world, no elaborate fantasy kingdoms (sci-fi based or otherwise) – in fact, you don't even leave the suburb you start in, and half the time you can't even move around that very much. Far from limiting the story possibilities, the feeling of being trapped and forever running out of time are some of the game's defining features, as is Shibuya pop-culture, and as is the way combat is handled. No matter how many points of comparison I've made to other Squeenix games, the end result feels at worst like a refreshing new use of a few old elements, and at best like something innovatively different from any RPG I've ever played before.
I'm still a little tetchy about that ending, but when there's so much experimental stuff in this title and
nearly all of it works brilliantly, a fault or two isn't nearly enough to ruin the whole experience.
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-26 12:57 pm (UTC)For myself, I tend to analyse things to bits (and had two housemates who'd finished the game and had much the same reaction to the ending, including their share of pretending it didn't happen afterwards), so there was plenty of discussion into just why it didn't work as well as we'd have liked. It's actually kind of reassuring to discover we're not the only ones who came out of it with that impression - what I've seen of the rest of fandom doesn't seem to have had nearly as much trouble with it.
Fortunately, the rest of the game did well and truly make it worth the cover price. I was very skeptical initially about the idea of an RPG based on Shibuya fashions, but the result spoke for itself.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 08:05 pm (UTC)I absolutely ADORE your finding-Joshua-back scene though. I was also hoping for such a scene and it's just... hahaha.
And your whole alternate scenario with the Composer makes a lot of sense and is pretty funny, and also a lot in the spirit of TWEWY. It really could have been it and it would've been damn interesting. I'm awed :)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-03 10:49 am (UTC)Actually, that might be why finding good post-game fic made me feel a lot better about it - the fans were filling in some of the things the game didn't quite wrap up as cleanly as I wanted.
how I understand it, at least, was that the week Josh spent with Neku made him change his view and change his mind.
Er, do you mean Neku changed his mind there or Joshua changed his mind? Could be taken either way.
I absolutely ADORE your finding-Joshua-back scene though. I was also hoping for such a scene and it's just... hahaha.
*bows* Whatever you can say about Joshua-the-Composer, he's just not as much fun as Joshua-who's-(probably)-human-but-inhumanly-annoying. ^_~
And your whole alternate scenario with the Composer makes a lot of sense and is pretty funny, and also a lot in the spirit of TWEWY. It really could have been it and it would've been damn interesting. I'm awed :)
Wow, thanks! It really wasn't much more than a quick brainstorm job (+time to edit in all the mood icons), but after all that time wailing about the ending, I wanted to have at least a crack at suggesting some other way things might have gone. ^^;
late!
Date: 2009-07-15 01:40 pm (UTC)I'll have to agree the thing I like the most about the ending... is the fics. >.>"" But the whole manipulating thing didn't bother me as much because I didn't really feel like Neku was tricked. What Hanekoma taught Neku holds true ; while yes, Josh did break Neku's trust, Neku was actually right to trust him since that was what made everything work out in the end. I meant to say that it's Neku who made Josh change his mind about Shibuya (but yes, it does work both ways :D). Sooo I guess it's hem, a case of having to do the wrong thing to do the right thing ? I really want to find a pretty metaphor for this but I'm not very creative right now :(
I'm still loling at the Secret Report explaining the reason why Neku just can't stand Josh. But honestly. It wasn't even needed. That guy is a genius at being a pain. ♥
The suggesting some other way sure did a lot, since even justified-whining-I-agree-about tends to irk me when it's just that, whining ;) But this, haha, it was amazing. ♥
Re: late!
Date: 2009-07-16 05:20 am (UTC)Perhaps not, but everything he told Neku about Joshua's backstory was still a blatant, barefaced lie (and even if there was any truth to any of it, it was still a massive lie of omission). The fact that Neku might have been better off in the long run for being misled doesn't stop me feeling uneasy about that - good intentions and good results don't entirely counteract the fact he was manipulated by someone he thought he could trust.
I meant to say that it's Neku who made Josh change his mind about Shibuya (but yes, it does work both ways :D). Sooo I guess it's hem, a case of having to do the wrong thing to do the right thing ? I really want to find a pretty metaphor for this but I'm not very creative right now :(
No, I do get what you mean. And I think I agree with you mostly, and I don't even really mind if that was how we were supposed to read the conclusion. But if so, I just wish they'd bothered to develop the implications of all that a little more in the game, rather than leave us guessing about it at the end. :/ (Instead, it kind of came across as "Trust is good! You should trust people! People can be awesome and you'll be happier if you just try trusting them for a change! Evenifthey'resecretlymanipulatingyouallalongyoushouldstilltrustthemaslongasitwasforgoodreasonsanditturnedoutokay." *cough*))
I'm still loling at the Secret Report explaining the reason why Neku just can't stand Josh. But honestly. It wasn't even needed. That guy is a genius at being a pain. ♥
Hahaha, so true. XD I loved Josh, but anyone would've wanted to smack him by halfway through the week.
The suggesting some other way sure did a lot, since even justified-whining-I-agree-about tends to irk me when it's just that, whining ;)
Yeah, much agreed. I feel a lot more comfortable being able to say "I'm disappointed, because I think they had the set-up for something really good if they'd only taken it in this direction instead..." than just "wah wah it didn't end the way I wanted it too therefore it sucked". (Did about the same in my last mostly-negative game review too, now I remember it, only without the icons that time.)
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Date: 2009-07-03 05:31 pm (UTC)Then I read this, and. I'm kind of disappointed Squeenix doesn't just hire you to write their next game.
I mean, you even went through the trouble of finding icons with the characters' faces and expressions for the purpose of your fake cutscenes. XD
Shiki as Composer beats the hell out of Joshua as the Composer all along, too.
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Date: 2009-07-06 03:42 pm (UTC)Oh, I can only dream. XD
I mean, you even went through the trouble of finding icons with the characters' faces and expressions for the purpose of your fake cutscenes. XD
^^; What can I say, if I wanted to make my alternate ending believable, having the faces in and all seemed like a pretty big plus. Not to mention it was really kinda fun picking expressions to go with the lines.
Shiki as Composer beats the hell out of Joshua as the Composer all along, too.
*g* Doesn't she just? Glad you enjoyed my take on things so much. ^_^