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final scattered thoughts on NEO TWEWY
i finished the game a couple nights ago! overall, i had a great hecking time. here's a bunch of random thoughts that didn't fit into my previous twewy post:
* the final boss was very pretty but also very unnecessary lmao
* god i loved the entire restaurant system. i love that the stupid hipster healthy cafe will serve you AIR IN A CAN. (i also love that air in the can, somehow, inexplicably, contains calories :P) i love knowing that sho minamimoto will never own a home because the man is weak for avocado toast. i love knowing the entire party hates bbq'd alligator, even though it's objectively one of the best meals in the game (stats-wise), so suck it up, Wicked Twisters, you damn kids would never survive in florida
* i also love that there is a character who communicates exclusively via text message, even when you talk to him in person, because he just finds texting more comfortable okay, lol
* week two felt like the game's peak, gameplay-wise. during week one, the game's still introducing new mechanics and is generally a bit too easy; week three, on the other hand, doesn't have any idea how to ramp up the difficulty of battles except by making them really long, which just isn't interesting. but week two! damn! what a fun damn time! i'm amazed at how well the original controls translated to this format; while i think the original edges it out a bit (the touchscreen and bouncing-between-two-screens were just so great), it was still v solid
* it's kind of fun, game-designer-y-wise, to think about why week 3's combat fell flat for me. see, week 3 felt similar to Final Fantasy 13's stagger system, in the sense that, often you were racing to launch your 300% ultimate attack before you ran out of HP, just like in FF13 you'd race to stagger the enemy before they launched a big move... but in FF13 the effect's generally thrilling, whereas in TWEWY it just felt tedious. i think the difference here is that TWEWY's combat drives most its satisfaction from (1) carefully timing / spacing out your psychs so you never have "dead air", and (2) tactically targeting and dodging the most important threats at any given moment. in FF13, the satisfaction comes from keeping your eyes carefully on all the battle data, and switching the knobs at exactly the right moment to keep your team rolling until you land the stagger... And since all of FF13's battle-pacing was focused around that moment, it worked; whereas TWEWY's standard battle-pacing is more about positioning and chaining, so it feels a bit lame to turn all those efforts and tactics into "and then we launched a big meteor to kill the guy" :P
* another minor battle system gripe: i would've liked a bit more variety in Noise types! i got kinda tired of fighting bears and wolves by the end
* but, back to the good shit: i found it immensely enjoyable how many challenges *weren't* combat-related! the "have some conversations with shoka" bit was the most memorable (i loved! the many ways it's possible to fuck up that conversation! how fraught everything felt!), but also, y'know, helping a dude find his wallet so he'll get on his way, nagging the repair guy to do his damn job, getting some stylish clothing, very urbane approaches to urbane problems :P
* i really liked having Beat around! it's nice to see a familiar face, but with a couple years of extra maturity, and some "hard-earned braincells" as a friend put it, lol. he did a great job of adding a nice big-brother vibe without overshadowing the new cast
* i was... less of a fan of having Neku around. he just seemed kinda flat and boring and last minute-y? he did a lot of King-Mickey-in-Kingdom-Hearts-style monologuing?
* actually you could make a very ill-advised drinking game on the theme of "drink every time the game reminds you of Kingdom Hearts," turns out everything Nomura touches is exactly the same lmao
* the thing at the end where three people combined their individual ~magic powers~ to save Shibuya? and they sort of make sense together mechanically but not quite? i, uh. i wrote a novella with an ending like that, one time. i wrote it while muttering to myself the whole time, "this is dumb as shit, i hate this ending, it's cheesy and it sucks but i can't come up with anything better..." but, hey, apparently it's good enough for vidyagames." hey nomura if you want another writer on staff hmu
* the new "three minutes clapping" mix was a gross offense to my ears the first time i heard it, but it's grown on me, and in general i've spent the past two weeks blasting the soundtrack out of my car literally every time i go anywhere
also, fanfiction ideas, free to a good home:
(1) "Kanon lives" AU where Fret's lil' puppy crush is now... kinda uncomfortable, 'cause the dude's still in high school and Kanon looks like she probably has an actual job, but also he's the only one she's really got to talk to about All That Trauma They Just Experienced so she doesn't want to entirely blow him off either, and maybe Rindo's so busy hanging out with Shoka that Fret's feeling neglected... you could go for the angle of "god it sucks when you're friends with someone in one context but then that context collapses and you realize there's no there there, no matter how hard you try to fight for it," oooor extravagantly uncomfortable dubcon makeout with lots of surrounding angst, idk i have no idea but there's some potential there
(2) Rindo gets a little too good at that "repeating the same conversation over and over until he gets what he wants" thing; i think he's kind of an interesting protag in that he's not particularly agenic or noble-minded, and thus could almost-accidentally slip into Bad Manipulative Shit in a big way if the circumstances were dire enough...
(3) crossover fic where Mr. Simon Blackquill meets Mr. Sho Minamimoto and hilarity ensues
* the final boss was very pretty but also very unnecessary lmao
* god i loved the entire restaurant system. i love that the stupid hipster healthy cafe will serve you AIR IN A CAN. (i also love that air in the can, somehow, inexplicably, contains calories :P) i love knowing that sho minamimoto will never own a home because the man is weak for avocado toast. i love knowing the entire party hates bbq'd alligator, even though it's objectively one of the best meals in the game (stats-wise), so suck it up, Wicked Twisters, you damn kids would never survive in florida
* i also love that there is a character who communicates exclusively via text message, even when you talk to him in person, because he just finds texting more comfortable okay, lol
* week two felt like the game's peak, gameplay-wise. during week one, the game's still introducing new mechanics and is generally a bit too easy; week three, on the other hand, doesn't have any idea how to ramp up the difficulty of battles except by making them really long, which just isn't interesting. but week two! damn! what a fun damn time! i'm amazed at how well the original controls translated to this format; while i think the original edges it out a bit (the touchscreen and bouncing-between-two-screens were just so great), it was still v solid
* it's kind of fun, game-designer-y-wise, to think about why week 3's combat fell flat for me. see, week 3 felt similar to Final Fantasy 13's stagger system, in the sense that, often you were racing to launch your 300% ultimate attack before you ran out of HP, just like in FF13 you'd race to stagger the enemy before they launched a big move... but in FF13 the effect's generally thrilling, whereas in TWEWY it just felt tedious. i think the difference here is that TWEWY's combat drives most its satisfaction from (1) carefully timing / spacing out your psychs so you never have "dead air", and (2) tactically targeting and dodging the most important threats at any given moment. in FF13, the satisfaction comes from keeping your eyes carefully on all the battle data, and switching the knobs at exactly the right moment to keep your team rolling until you land the stagger... And since all of FF13's battle-pacing was focused around that moment, it worked; whereas TWEWY's standard battle-pacing is more about positioning and chaining, so it feels a bit lame to turn all those efforts and tactics into "and then we launched a big meteor to kill the guy" :P
* another minor battle system gripe: i would've liked a bit more variety in Noise types! i got kinda tired of fighting bears and wolves by the end
* but, back to the good shit: i found it immensely enjoyable how many challenges *weren't* combat-related! the "have some conversations with shoka" bit was the most memorable (i loved! the many ways it's possible to fuck up that conversation! how fraught everything felt!), but also, y'know, helping a dude find his wallet so he'll get on his way, nagging the repair guy to do his damn job, getting some stylish clothing, very urbane approaches to urbane problems :P
* i really liked having Beat around! it's nice to see a familiar face, but with a couple years of extra maturity, and some "hard-earned braincells" as a friend put it, lol. he did a great job of adding a nice big-brother vibe without overshadowing the new cast
* i was... less of a fan of having Neku around. he just seemed kinda flat and boring and last minute-y? he did a lot of King-Mickey-in-Kingdom-Hearts-style monologuing?
* actually you could make a very ill-advised drinking game on the theme of "drink every time the game reminds you of Kingdom Hearts," turns out everything Nomura touches is exactly the same lmao
* the thing at the end where three people combined their individual ~magic powers~ to save Shibuya? and they sort of make sense together mechanically but not quite? i, uh. i wrote a novella with an ending like that, one time. i wrote it while muttering to myself the whole time, "this is dumb as shit, i hate this ending, it's cheesy and it sucks but i can't come up with anything better..." but, hey, apparently it's good enough for vidyagames." hey nomura if you want another writer on staff hmu
* the new "three minutes clapping" mix was a gross offense to my ears the first time i heard it, but it's grown on me, and in general i've spent the past two weeks blasting the soundtrack out of my car literally every time i go anywhere
also, fanfiction ideas, free to a good home:
(1) "Kanon lives" AU where Fret's lil' puppy crush is now... kinda uncomfortable, 'cause the dude's still in high school and Kanon looks like she probably has an actual job, but also he's the only one she's really got to talk to about All That Trauma They Just Experienced so she doesn't want to entirely blow him off either, and maybe Rindo's so busy hanging out with Shoka that Fret's feeling neglected... you could go for the angle of "god it sucks when you're friends with someone in one context but then that context collapses and you realize there's no there there, no matter how hard you try to fight for it," oooor extravagantly uncomfortable dubcon makeout with lots of surrounding angst, idk i have no idea but there's some potential there
(2) Rindo gets a little too good at that "repeating the same conversation over and over until he gets what he wants" thing; i think he's kind of an interesting protag in that he's not particularly agenic or noble-minded, and thus could almost-accidentally slip into Bad Manipulative Shit in a big way if the circumstances were dire enough...
(3) crossover fic where Mr. Simon Blackquill meets Mr. Sho Minamimoto and hilarity ensues