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Always remember to floss every day.

I am utterly and deeply appalled by the lack of ANY reviews whatsoever for this game, considering the moderate hype I've seen for it (and considering it's a game that should be grabbing your attention) but at the same time this gives me first dibs on reviews for this game so yay for me.

Despite the title, the game in no way has to do with the field of dentistry but rather... well a lot of things, really. Primarily, it makes no bones (does that count as a pun?) about its views towards capitalist culture and worker exploitation. You star as one of many downtrodden female worker drones whose head has been replaced with a giant turnkey (not to be confused with turkey, the feathered creature we like to put on the butchering block during that most splendid of November days, though I wouldn't put it past the creator to do that as well). In the process you've lost all your thoughts, memories and feelings associated with that head and even the ability to speak. The story begins when you are punished for poor workmanship by the cruel owner of the factory, producing useless goods, the "Queen Mother" who is a giant ball of static with lips and eyes and is constantly crying (hardly sympathetic cries, mind you - later on she amusingly remarks "I've cried enough tears to bottle up and sell off" - I don't know the exact line, something like that), that punishment being essentially solitary confinement and awaiting the whip. It is only when you are rescued by a sentient, disembodied and quite talkative talkative set of teeth, acting sort of as this game's gun Genie from Middens. You will find in fact there are whole spaces and little towns where other teeth like him reside. There is some background provided as to how they came to be, but I can't recall in the game's overload of head-melting lore, but in this world they are considered equivalent to rats, millions of them just running through the walls. After your escape it eventually becomes a quest to find your long-lost head. Oh, and a bunch of other stuff too, including the Queen Mother recruiting the ruthless Magistrate to find and take you down, and something about the Rift, the world you inhabit, tearing apart at its seams caused somehow by your escape.

The one thing that probably should be addressed, and I'm plenty sure it has been elsewhere, is, how does it compare to Middens (which in fact is this game's followup despite being made first; the connections will begin to make much more sense at the end)? After being transfixed by Middens I of course had to play this game. I knew coming in that this one was more linear and "story"-driven and that is pretty much correct. To recap, Middens was almost purely about exploration, whatever story you had was told in the form of background and lore occasionally by your gun companion whenever you entered certain areas. There also was no clearly laid out goal to speak of, until you find that winning battles earned you "Nothings," or karma points. As in, negative karma. Whether it's an enemy that initiates the combat themselves or if you're the aggressor, gunning down anyone pleading for their life, you could do it (every single NPC, in fact, can be killed, literally, everyone), and it would get you a "Nothing." Get enough and then you will gain an ability to end the game (no spoiling how). I'm also told you can win the game a complete pacifist which I imagine is a great deal harder.

There is little of the sort here. Combat is all guaranteed guilt-free, and there generally is a clear path you must follow, with a story progression of sorts. Combat is pretty basic, in fact more normalized than even Middens, which while playing out basically the same way (the typical jRPG set-up - attack, defend, use items, use magic, take turns whacking at each other, win, gain experience, level up sometimes - and also shares their idiosyncrasies in the form of battles being conducted against visible NPCs that disappear forever when they're gone, and where the enemy almost never looks like in the combat screen what they look like on the map - how they look is one of this game's highlights, showing some truly bizarre, indescribable designs, a collage of things that should not be and showing off John Clowder's art design at its best), Middens had, of course, its "karma" system and the added moral weight of fighting "enemies" who plead for their lives, but also its companion system was different. Middens had you summon allies with magic into battle who fought alongside you. With every battle you had to re-summon them and use up more magic. The benefit of this is that if one of them "dies" in battle you can re-summon them and they'll come back with all their health and MP restored. Here, in Gingiva, you recruit a few partners who you'll be fighting with a good deal through the game. One is a walking TV set named Himmler(?)(the connection between a Nazi commander and television, or, rather, the consumption of television is lost on me, but then so is almost all the symbolism in this game) who never speaks, and then there's a junction point where you may travel one of two ways, by boat or train. Whatever your third party member will be will depend on which path you take (I went by boat and met the charming vicar parasite Vermillis Maximus - also, I've not played this a second time so I cannot comment exactly how different, if it even is different, the other path and other partner is). There is also a sort-of fourth party member you can recruit, a flea, who you'll find hopping about all sorts of places. You can level him up fairly quickly and has some useful attacks, including one that can induce poison on the enemy - plus, four's always better than three, right? Unfortunately he'll leave your party at random times, so don't expect to rely on him for too long (every now and then you'll run into him and can bring him back for more temporary back-up). Battles are heavily eased by the fact that you can repeatedly press the "Z" key, which causes you to turn your head around, to regain health and MP bit by bit by bit. It's a bit of a tedious process, especially as your levels become higher later on, and feels like pointless busywork. It's essentially just manual auto-healing. There are only a couple brief sections in the game I can think of where this ability becomes unavailable, and the only point of tension I can see it bringing is when you have the flea in your party and want to heal up ASAP before he leaves and so you can fight the next battle with him. And this isn't mentioning the random objects that'll heal you immediately when you interact with them (they don't restore MP though).

It's at the point where you receive your third party member when the game comes closest to Middens-style exploration. There is a LOT to explore and, just like Middens, it's easy to get lost or to try and find again that one path you kept in mind but OH I'll come back later to you but first let me check this place out (and on and on and on)! Yeah, you get disoriented a bit. MORE than a bit, shall we say. To progress there is a certain boss character you must find but once you interact with him it'll be too late, and you probably won't know it til you actually do interact with him. No going back to see what you've missed if you haven't saved for a while. In fact, as a general rule I'd save as often as you can (unlike Middens, where saving required interacting with a certain character or machine, here you can save wherever you want), because you might be beaten up badly after a battle then thoughtlessly talk to an NPC only for them to want to... marry you. Yes, this is a prominent aspect of the middle section of the game. You can answer yes or no. No will send you right into battle before you had your chance to heal (or if you were thinking beforehand, not), answering yes will have disturbingly hilarious results. More surrealist commentary on modern society, the miseries of today's domesticity. It actually reminded me of a bit from Takeshi no Chousenjou. Anyone familiar with both of these games might also see the connection, maybe not. Anyway...

So here you are, amidst all this exploration, involving talking to NPCs speaking in riddles, non sequiturs, just general strange anecdotal humor or philosophical/political bites (one of the more erudite NPCs, an armless magenta dinosaur, presents a convincing argument as to why automobiles are among the worst plagues to have been fostered upon this earth by human minds), collecting items (here in the form of pieces of paper blowing every which way - even though there was no danger of it, it always induced a blind panic in me to grab them IMMEDIATELY before they blew away to be gone forever, though they clearly don't, they're just kind of a pain in the ass to grab, especially when surrounded by enemies), trying to find as many of the untrodden areas as possible (I managed to see a fair amount but I'm pretty sure I left a lot of uncovered ground behind), taking in the sights and sounds, with plenty in the way of bizarre and beautiful landscapes, but also bizarre and frankly terrifying landscapes, and others that are just a pain in the ass to navigate, with a lovely soundtrack to go with it. Now what remains is to find is to progress. After a while of running into the same rooms or fighting battles using mostly the same strategies (for me it's almost always either a regular bite attack or the kiss attack that lowers attack power, Sad Clown, whatever the hell Vermillis does, who's pretty much useless until he learns the Sweven attack, which holy crap can pack a wallop into some enemies, and your flea's poison attack if he's there) you'll be trying to find the exit, and at the same time, try not to miss anything in the process (running in circles is pretty easy, in a game as disorienting as this - landscapes without any connecting logic to associate them with tend to be pretty hard, y'know). Once you DO find the boss fight (I won't give away too much - it's in a completely white room with hostile NPCs that on the map vaguely resemble deer) and fight him, at the point of no return, you're also somewhat disappointed you couldn't go back and find what you missed. Whereas in Middens where explore, explore, explore is EVERYTHING and you're clearly and explicitly given the choice to opt out whenever you want to, here the pseudo-Middens middle-half, while still being one of the more enjoyable areas in the game, is also a VERY tight fit into the game and throws the pacing just a tad bit off. Also making exploration a bit more tedious is the inability to run or strafe as you run, like you could in Middens. A minor complaint, perhaps, but the smoother and quicker I can maneuver around exploration-based games the better it feels.

So after the middle section we return to pure linearity again, and the point where the story gets back on track. I won't spoil what happens but things do take a 180 (or, at least, a 145... I dunno, but the set-up you became accustomed to gets thrown out the window, mostly, anyway). It's also the point where The Magistrate becomes prominent. You even see him in close-up. He vaguely resembles Max Headroom with an oversized top hat covering his face. A great villain I might add. It's also around this point where the in-universe connections between Middens and this game become even stronger. How so? Play it for yourself and see. All I can say is that you should play Middens first to really appreciate it. It had me grinning by the end. It also advertises itself as having multiple endings, exactly how many I'm not sure. I've only done one full playthrough, so I don't know how these other endings would be attained, but I'd speculate they'd have to do with 1) whether you take the train or the boat, and 2) which, er, side you pick at a certain point at the very end of the game. Though again, I'm not sure, and there's no walkthroughs on this game I can find anywhere to point the necessary conditions out.

Of course, I've described this game in fairly mundane terms, when it's a game that is more than that. What is it trying to do, what does it mean, the imagery, the dialogue? The anti-consumerist/capitalist message is made very loud and clear, almost blaringly so. Even ignoring the symbols used to represent this the dialogue spells it out for you. I don't mind the message myself, but as artistic representation it is too much tell overwhelming the show, when it ought to be vice versa. But as I said it's not the only thing touched upon here. To be honest, I couldn't tell you everything this game tries to cover. There is a point in the Magistrate's dialogue where sexual identity is brought up, and talks about it in the most brutal of ways (hint: it's something to do with your head). One of the enemies in the game, actually one of the "suitors" proposing marriage to you, is named "Patriarchy" and his dialogue before engaging battle is "I've to Mainsplain something to you" (again I don't remember these dialogues verbatim). One generic enemy, usually coming in pairs, is called "Panel of Experts." Representing D.C. politics? Politics in general? Maybe the game version of that Laurie Anderson song "Only an Expert." And there is one on television, told in an oddly frightening manner. "When you turn off the TV and look in its reflection, that's me, that's who I really look like." This is a game that hits at every angle, and with its natural surreal twist. It should be noted that surrealism is not merely something that is oddball or abstract, it is a representation of reality juxtaposed with the absurd or dreamlike. Film-makers such as Luis Bunuel often used surreal elements for sociopolitical ends. And then there's someone like Alejandro Jodorowsky who, while many argue he just took too much LSD, seemed to want to attain a higher plane of transcendence, or, perhaps to mock the concept entirely (The Holy Mountain's razing satire of the global elite and its ending might suggest the latter). Clowder, with his distinctive and otherworldly collage art, might sit somewhere between the two. There is a sense of wonder of things, influenced, which he has admitted, by religious texts, references of which you'll find here and also in the previous game. Sometimes I get the sense that at times he creates for the love of creating. The monster hybrids, the environments, despite the lack of cohesion between worlds, there is a lot to admire simply in the game's craftsmanship. The dialogue is opaque but never meaningless (not entirely anyway), whatever is being talked about. While I myself prefer dreamlands, dreamscapes, however you want to call them, to be more cohesive and less rooted in surrealist, symbolic collage (if for no other reason than for navigation purposes), a fine job was done here, even if I think Middens is the slightly better game.

If there's other nagging things about this game I can think of, there are two I'll squeeze in here. First, a good number of the items you pick up. One is a baseball glove, a bunch are these purple orb things (only one of which was usable, which gave all my party members aggro and dart immediately for one battle), none of which could be used anywhere that I could find whatsoever. Do any of these have to do with the other character I could have chosen I wonder? Especially odd seeing how these are "special" items that are handed down to you from these large, magnificent godly characters. from a dragon to a Clifford-sized dog. And then there's the "drollery." I... don't understand what this is for. Some kind of meta-humor commenting on its own sheer pointlessness? OK so basically you collect these things, like Pokemon only useless (maybe a parody of that, I dunno), and upon opening them you'll see a creature of some kind in a tube, then it'll ask if you want to "return" or not. Saying "no" just means you stare at the thing a few seconds longer before it asks the same question again. Just say "yes" to get back to the main menu. Now, it DOES serve a use to be fair. Opening these will obtain you equippable items, all of which have "Thing" somewhere in its name, which can be good stats-boosters. The usual armor pieces in RPGs where you try and think if you want an all-out magic boost or a steady balance between that and defense, that sort of material. There are quite a few of these, and sorting through them all can be a real chore especially since you get many repeats (and there being no shops in the game you can't just dump them off either) but ultimately it's rewarding once you do find something that'll give you a nice upgrade. But... the drollery remains. And, in fact, one of your abilities in the menu is to monitor the drollery incubator. This... does nothing but allow you to look at the most recent creature you've opened and asking the "return" question again. Really outside of giving you armor I don't understand this aspect of the game whatsoever, as it's not clearly explained and there's no actual interaction to be had with it. Kind of like the Z-key healing it's just a more convoluted way to give you armor upgrades. It does bring up some pretty music when you open one of these though so that's... nice I guess.

My number two issue, nitpicky probably but noticeable enough to be egregious in places... a number of spelling errors and the occasional grammatical flub will inch its ugly way into matters. A spelling error in a disposable bit of dialogue you'll never see again is one thing, but here we have things like an enemy named "Non Sequitor" and one of the spell attacks of Vermillis is "Deathwarrent." I mean, come on now... agh! (and that's a surprisingly useful spell too, for the few times I've tried it - it's worked probably half the time! By the way what it does is kill the enemy instantly. Obviously a risky bet to take, but probably one you won't need to use very often since the battles in the game aren't too difficult for the most part) And there was one sentence I recall from the Magistrate where there was a completely garbled set of letters in the middle (unable to screencap anything right now) making the sentence almost nonsensical. Yeah, that could use some fixing up. Not a game-breaker but pretty distracting nonetheless.

I've rambled long enough here to fill three reviews for this game here. Maybe. I haven't actually done a character count. But it's a game where there's a lot to talk about, especially seeing how there are no other reviews of the game here and I haven't reviewed Middens yet (I plan to do that - it'll probably cover a lot of what I've already mentioned about Middens here). It's a game that strikes your eyes and stimulates your thoughts - there is some obscurantism going on here perhaps, not necessarily just with the overarching story and setting but also with certain items and mechanics that remain inert to the very end. And if you're one among the younger generation who's never played a 16-bit jRPG before you will probably grow impatient with all the simple turn-based battles (there is less of an emphasis on that, though it is present, in Middens, and for the most part combat is optional, so try that instead if Final Fantasy was never your fancy). But regardless it is a game with a lot to say and a lot of ways to say them, some of the ways existentially frightening in a way, others very funny, other times, well, uhhhhh, in ways that'll at least make you say "well THAT was something!" even if you don't have any idea what that "something" was. What I mean to say is, this is a genuine artistic endeavor we have here, and while it may have flaws or, at least, things I don't care for (or quite understand) it is surprisingly almost free of warts considering the sheer ambition of the project and that it all a result of the vision of one man. Tentacled mountain lion locomotive hats off to you, sir.