This review is for the IGMC 2014 version.

Null regrets is a short extremely linear RPG outlining the story of an unnamed protagonist and his friend, who appears to work either as a technician or doctor, though the term used in game is practitioner for a company that removes memories. This is apparently a voluntary procedure initiated by the patient to remove memories or regrets that they have in their lives. As our story begins our two party members are walking through what soon becomes obvious is the earlier memory of the protagonist.


A dark and stormy night

The premise of this game is actually quiet disturbing, the problem with the concept of memory removal is that you're never going to know what memories have been removed and if you did indeed volunteer for it to happen. This game shies away from the darker aspects of this scenario and instead chooses to focus on the more theoretical beneficial uses for a procedure such as this, where dwelling on a memory or being caught in a memory loop from which escape is not possible can be remedied.

So our protagonist and his friend make their way through a darkened neighbourhood and after a somewhat ominous exchange over the possibility of seeing things other than what is proscribed by the current memory they come across the target. In this case a coyote that did once, and does again, jump the party in an aggressive manner.

The killing of this animal is the memory that our protagonist wishes to remove and the method by which this removal is achieved is by overcoming the memory, or in game terms fighting it. That does seem a little counter-intuitive , if the point of the exercise is to remove the memory of killing the beast then killing it to do so sounds nonsensical. Though this scenario does give you a logical reason to access the in-game tutorial, designed to appear as a user manual for the patient undergoing the NullMem™ procedure.


Now this is clever, though it does beg the question of the other tiers.

Whilst problematic as a narrative choice this brings up the battle system, which though still turned based is an instant response system, a character chooses an action and that action is carried out before the next person chooses theirs, once all the party acts the enemy takes their turn. Each character has a limited pool of skills and there is no default attack option, every action uses up either Will Power (WP) which naturally regenerates each turn or in the case of the protagonist Diligence (DIL) which is increased by actions either by or against the character and adds additional abilities. His friend has Construct (CON) which also increases per turn and allows him to create two additional party members per battle to join and aid in either offensive, defensive or healing abilities dependant on their construct type. As the game progresses the number of construct types that can be brought into battle increases, though he can still only have two operating at a time.


That is one mean coyote.

An additional piece of information supplied by the battle system is the names of the characters, in this case, Suit and Glasses. One has to assume those are nicknames.

So once the beast is defeated the game moves on to the second of the three memories that Suit wishes to forget, a tale of love and regret in high school, which just like the first memory seems a little light for such a radical procedure. After all the coyote attacked Suit first, he was just defending himself against possible harm, and high school romances not lasting is pretty much par for the course. Still perhaps the big guns are being saved for the final act.

And indeed they are, once the lovelorn and semi-horror part of the performance is complete the surroundings take on a much darker and heavier feel and the real reasons why Suit wanted the procedure in the first place comes to light. His responses, though flawed, are entirely human and for the first time I could understand though not empathise with his decisions. Oddly as the game progresses Suit becomes a more sympathetic and layered character, while Glasses becomes less so, but as there were two possible endings and I only experienced one, I may not have seen all that he had to offer.


Bedside manner, much?

In the end I'm not sure how much I personally enjoyed the game, from a technical standpoint there was little wrong with it, graphics, game play, music etc were all handled adequately if not particularly artistically. In addition the battle system was interesting with some innovative twists, but the basic premise that regrets are something that should be banished along with the memories that induce them seems simplistic. The choices we make in life determine the person we become, remove the choice and the memory of its consequence and you change the person. Santayana got it right; those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Suit's final issue is indeed a dark one, but by removing the memory that was the catalyst that brought it to light he can never truly deal with his actions and find a way to curb or channel those darker tendencies.

Still my personal qualms about the slightly Pollyanna take on a what is essentially brain washing and the wholesale reliance on others to provide solutions for your actions does not mean the game isn't interesting or executed sufficiently, after all it did make me ponder for a while on this subject.