Firstly, I'd like to congratulate and thank the dev team for this patch. It's a pretty impressive technical achievement, the art direction is amazing and vividly brings the setting and cast alive in ways that surpass the last updates, the characters were on point, and while there are glitches that hindered my progress, the overall overhaul of the game is quite impressive.
So it will pain me to say that the writing of the paragon route had lost me personally at points. It feels like this patch was a bunch of random stuff that happens and not in a good way, and there's some lacking connective tissue in the writing. And while Rejuvenation has always done the mystery box and throwing massive amounts of information at you at once, this is the update where I felt it was too much. Rejuv gets too meta for it's own good at the end at least in my opinion.
And gameplay wise, it's also a mixed bag. The bullshit continues and I get less and less fond of the field effects. But it's still an overall less unpleasant experience than the Saki boss fight which was bullshit of the highest caliber.
I'd like to start with the high points of this update for me. Crescent, Ren, and Amber stole the show for me. I really enjoyed the bonding event with Crescent and how she bounces off the crew, we need more of her energy. Her meeting with Ren was a great closure to that plot point. Amber has had some great development and her interactions with Aelita, Venam and us were a joy to see. I really liked the talk she had with Venam in particular about how they were all just kids trapped in this insane situation and are just a few moments from snapping but have each other.
I also liked the bits with Melia in Zeight.
Now here's where I have to be harsh. As much as I like Erin in general and she has her moments in this update, she was just not on game here IMO. One particular moment for me was when after yelling at Alice for going on a maniacal rant about world domination and killing people in her way because it triggered her memories of Vitus, Erin then jokes about robbing banks and threatening to blow up a government building. Which is just hypocritical and the she even notes the latter might be going too far considering what happened but it's kind of laughed off as her being drunk, not cool Erin. People actually died there, it's not in good taste to joke about that especially after you get all indignant about Alice.
And this kind of writing continues with her interactions with Texen. She wants to bring him along because his dialogue might be entertaining or something like that, and then Texen just spouts off alt right dialogue and then Erin gets pissed at him, what the hell was she expecting?
But speaking of Alice, I'd say her section of the update is an excellent microcosm of some of the highs and lows of this update. It's an interesting scenario where she goes berserk and the Theolia siblings have to band together and save her but it's goes too fast and and isn't allowed to breathe as a plot point. There's a particular jarring point where Melia goes from being in Zeight because of sleeping to suddenly fighting Alice and her army of Regice. It felt like there was a scene missing and this isn't the only time it feels this way in this update.
And it's once again repeating the same beat with Alice. She gets influenced by dad, gets reality warping powers, and then has to be talked down. Yeah she lampshades it but it's still frustrating. And there's a missed opportunity to spice things up, maybe Anju could have shown up to help out so we actually get an explanation for what happened to her, and actually progress her character but that's just me. I think the scenario is interesting but it's still a repeat of what Alice does.
And Erin in the flashback apparently was sour as a kid and actively stomped on Alice's love for fairytales out of misguided kindness. Yeah that's pretty awful and while she apologizes, I feel making her like that even before being bullied messes up with her character consistency. But I guess amnesia kind of explains that?
I get that this patch is supposed to be the bonding social link support update. Where we get closer to the cast, so the business of the greater plot like the attack on Team Xen HQ can be built up but with a cast this huge, there's just too much going on and not enough time to really focus on all of them. Crescent's bit felt like the most complete and properly spaced out IMO.
And I didn't really like Erin's bonding event personally. There was this bizarre reveal of the kimono girls being servants and the tower being a magical construct or something, and then the writing gives a lot importance to Souta with his connection to Erin and the Eldest, but the problem for me was that he was just a bit character who wasn't particularly interesting or memorable, and he wasn't relevant in SUCH A LONG TIME, so all this attempt at giving him gravitas and how he actually loved Erin fell flat to me. Oh yeah and the Eldest was here too. I guess the art of Erin reading the letter was neat.
There's a lot more I could go on but this essay is getting too long, so I'll just cover three more things,
1: The massive overhaul means that some changed plot points will be confusing to long time players like me who started in V10, such as WHY THE FUCK IS TALON HERE AND WHY ARE PEOPLE ACTING LIKE WE KNOW HIM? Or when Venam mentions Tesla using a Charizard at some point inspired her to steal it which made me go huh?
2: Us just fighting the girl versions of Dialga and Palkia. Why are they randomly so important NOW when we have bigger problems and WHERE THE HELL DID MELIA GET RED CHAINS TO CAPTURE THEM? Seriously this isn't explained. How did they escape Palkia's last ditch suicide space crash? I guess Melia from the bad future overlapped with the Melia we know and that caused a paradox SOMEHOW that got Palkia's and Dialga's attention but that just raises further questions. Next scene Melia and us are fine with no explanation.
3: There's an evil A.I. that is treating the cast as characters in a game, and is manipulating the events of the setting. And the password to unlock this information is Pokemon Rejuvenation. Yeah this is the reveal that just lost me, it's just WAAAY too meta for me that it feels like narrative suicide. All the characters have no free will except the Interceptor and it kind of retroactively taints the interactions I had with the cast if they were all pre-programmed in-universe. And apparently Nymieria and Vitus are programs that gained a body and sentience after the world reset? That is just such a bizarre twist. I get that it's a mystery box thing to keep us hooked but this is too much.
Anyway, there's a LOT I didn't cover, I didn't expect this essay to bloat as much as it did. What did the rest of you think about this update?
I'd like to end this by once again thanking the dev team for their work on this game. Yeah I had problems but there were still a lot of good moments that kept me hooked. I'll give this update a 7/10.
Yeah I assumed Madame X's armor was an imitation of the interceptor armor.
