Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius as an Experience
I've got a few posts lined up to talk about the game, but I kept finding myself stumbling on the fact that there were things I wanted to say about the game that didn't fit into any of the bubbles I was putting the posts into. Eventually I realized that, for all its flaws, it's a game I like because it's an effective experience.
The gameplay is flawed, though I like its potential. The story is boring and dumb and I don't intend to talk about it much. But the game puts an unusual amount of effort into trying to capture the idea of being a lone ship -later joined by some allies- trying to take on the vastly more numerous bad guys, and that effort is unusually competent. One of my recurring frustrations with games is that they try desperately to get the player to connect to the experience in a visceral way, and then their game design decisions are so fundamentally contrary to the intended experience that it doesn't matter that five hundred artists slaved away for man-decades over making everything as detailed as possible. There are too many horror games where you're an invincible killing machine who has nothing to fear, too many post-apocalypses where you have unlimited ability to buy whatever you need, etc.
For all the execution problems, Sunrider did a surprisingly good job of getting me immersed into the overall experience of the setting and general shape of the story. In fact, that's especially impressive given how ridiculous several of the plotpoints are and whatnot. Even one of its qualities I consider a bit of a flaw feeds into this strength: the story doesn't 'know' what it wants to be as far as genres like comedy etc, springing gruesome tragedy with rather little warning and other swerves that stories usually avoid but that real life can easily have. (... though I have no defense for or interest in trying to defend the scene where you're watching a naked girl in a shower with no explanation or justification. It's not happening in-character or anything. It's just 'fanservice') And, well, real life doesn't hold itself to a genre.
And even though the story is mostly bad and dumb, there are certain important elements of writing it actually manages to get approximately right. Plot elements are set up early on in an innocuous manner that turn out to be critically important later on to the main plot. Bits and pieces that seem to just be there for angst or comedy turn out to be actually-plot-relevant. This is an idea plenty of stories just can't make work, and in some ways it's a lot more important than whether the plot makes sense.
And while the gameplay is flawed, it's surprisingly deep and nuanced, with only a few really glaring problems.
So I'm going to be doing some posts talking about Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius.
I don't currently have Liberation Day -it's not free, for one- so note that all of the following commentary is blind to that game's changes.
Also note that though Mask of Arcadius classes itself as a visual novel, it's really far more accurate to think of it as a Taisen game but with less talking. Sure, you can set the game difficulty to 'visual novel' mode, but by default this is a tactics game first and foremost, and elements you might expect from the visual novel label and other aspects of the game aren't really present: in spite of playing a male protagonist surrounded by a diverse cast of attractive ladies, there really isn't any kind of dating sim element to the game. (Thankfully) I'm given to understand you can earn 'affection points' that matter in the sequel, but as far as I'm aware that doesn't really apply to Mask of Arcadius.
We'll be starting with the Sunrider itself as a gameplay piece and covering more general mechanics in the process.
The gameplay is flawed, though I like its potential. The story is boring and dumb and I don't intend to talk about it much. But the game puts an unusual amount of effort into trying to capture the idea of being a lone ship -later joined by some allies- trying to take on the vastly more numerous bad guys, and that effort is unusually competent. One of my recurring frustrations with games is that they try desperately to get the player to connect to the experience in a visceral way, and then their game design decisions are so fundamentally contrary to the intended experience that it doesn't matter that five hundred artists slaved away for man-decades over making everything as detailed as possible. There are too many horror games where you're an invincible killing machine who has nothing to fear, too many post-apocalypses where you have unlimited ability to buy whatever you need, etc.
For all the execution problems, Sunrider did a surprisingly good job of getting me immersed into the overall experience of the setting and general shape of the story. In fact, that's especially impressive given how ridiculous several of the plotpoints are and whatnot. Even one of its qualities I consider a bit of a flaw feeds into this strength: the story doesn't 'know' what it wants to be as far as genres like comedy etc, springing gruesome tragedy with rather little warning and other swerves that stories usually avoid but that real life can easily have. (... though I have no defense for or interest in trying to defend the scene where you're watching a naked girl in a shower with no explanation or justification. It's not happening in-character or anything. It's just 'fanservice') And, well, real life doesn't hold itself to a genre.
And even though the story is mostly bad and dumb, there are certain important elements of writing it actually manages to get approximately right. Plot elements are set up early on in an innocuous manner that turn out to be critically important later on to the main plot. Bits and pieces that seem to just be there for angst or comedy turn out to be actually-plot-relevant. This is an idea plenty of stories just can't make work, and in some ways it's a lot more important than whether the plot makes sense.
And while the gameplay is flawed, it's surprisingly deep and nuanced, with only a few really glaring problems.
So I'm going to be doing some posts talking about Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius.
I don't currently have Liberation Day -it's not free, for one- so note that all of the following commentary is blind to that game's changes.
Also note that though Mask of Arcadius classes itself as a visual novel, it's really far more accurate to think of it as a Taisen game but with less talking. Sure, you can set the game difficulty to 'visual novel' mode, but by default this is a tactics game first and foremost, and elements you might expect from the visual novel label and other aspects of the game aren't really present: in spite of playing a male protagonist surrounded by a diverse cast of attractive ladies, there really isn't any kind of dating sim element to the game. (Thankfully) I'm given to understand you can earn 'affection points' that matter in the sequel, but as far as I'm aware that doesn't really apply to Mask of Arcadius.
We'll be starting with the Sunrider itself as a gameplay piece and covering more general mechanics in the process.
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