What a blast from the past this week was. I think I’ve tried playing this in Japanese once before around five years ago, since I did remember some vistas around the village – can’t say the same for the next city we are heading to.
Practicing my screenshot routine via Steam Deck → Steam App → iPad → macOS.
This game feels a bit like Super Mario 64 with some wild camera driving action in places, but mostly locking us to fixed perspectives. I think it’s mostly down to how the game is mixing 3D terrain with 2D sprites, but this scene for instance kind of hints at what would be possible all the time with free look… alas, the tech was not quite there yet.
I was taken aback by how much effort the devs put into ラハン. It feels very… alive, in a sense many games just don’t even try to be these days. The NPCs all seem to have some purpose to their existence. The world itself is internally consistent with door placement etc., matching the inner and outer environments. I guess we take this for granted now, but it was absolutely not the case during this day and age…
I was delighted that not every item you can collect is glowing. This style rewards interaction and going slow, although the rewards are not earth-shattering. Thank you @Voi for highlighting missables – I must have missed both of these on my first run, since I absolutely did not win five times in a row during my original playthrough.
I jumped into the well, just like I did all those years ago, just to see if you could…
One thing very sorely missing from my expected list of features: minimap. It’s far too easy to get disoriented when you rotate the camera a few times.
Spoilers for this week
The game starts with the big questions right away, between the expected roles of women and men in this society.
Not the talk you expect from a tutorial village NPC right off the bat! Questioning the patriarchy right from the start is invigorating in a game from 1998. Picked the wrong choice by accident here… considered restarting the game. The 変 here refers to these doubts she has about the roles, not the pastoral patriarchy itself as I first thought!
The same topic raised a second time, but this time from someone who would want to settle and set down some roots.
I love how many conversations end with that はあ〜, adds just that bit of air between the 4-5 textboxes each NPC seems to respond with. Also, you can move during conversations! Such a small thing but somehow feels rare?
I guess I’m not advanced enough in Japanese innuendo to decipher just quite heavily she is laying down on poor young フェイ here? Moreover, what exactly does 今度 imply in the following sentence?? Tempted to look up the English translation on this one…
Visiting the bride sets quite the scene:
OOF. フェイ doing his best Squall impression here… フェイ arrived in the village three years ago, and one of the villagers mentions that he had been mostly spending his time with アルル and ティモシー and teases him about his feelings toward アルル. Well, it certainly seems there is something in the air on her side as well.
Love that this game features people speaking over each other. It’s the most natural thing in the universe, but it NEVER happens in games (Expedition 33: Clair Obscur recently also had this).
Small details in the spritework, アルル’s closed eyes and フェイ turning his head away in silence… this game manages to convey a lot with little.
The urge to forge ahead… I will resist it this time. Playing this in lock step with y’all.
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