DEMETRIUS'S PROFILE

You know a feeling of finding a cool, brilliantly made video just to learn it's a viral marketing in the end? Well, that's my feelings about Villnoire.

The game is really wonderfully done. I love the mapping. The custom features (selectable skills, alchemy, party management) are nicely done. The puzzles make for a nice diversion without being boring. The custom message frames are beautiful.

The characters are believable and the plot makes us look at them from a different angle every time. I *love* how the plot made me suspect Zack (when the princes mentioned having an informant), then stop suspecting Zack, then find out the suspicions weren't unfounded. This is wonderful.

The ends felt... well, maybe "propaganda" is too strong a word, but it definitely feels like it's trying to instill some ideas about afterlife and about when the life starts (notably, the idea that a daughter is living before birth is a highly political one). The ideas that I personally find quite scary and divorced from reality.

This prevents me from enjoying the ending. Here's how I interpret the ending: Lukas didn't completely overcome from his psychical problems and they prevented them from healing. He didn't meet his wife or daughter. He let his imagination prevent him from returning to the world.

I understand it wasn't meant that way. I understand it was planned as a happy-ish ending when his hallucinations are to be treated as reality... It's just I don't buy into that. Everyone uses their own experience to interpret the media, and mine tells me Lucas chose illusions over the real world.

This is why for me, the story ends up really sad. We were told Lucas healed, but he didn't. This becomes a frame for interpreting the ending: Zack might look like he's healed, but... Inchor might look like they are ready to accept Druids, but... Brice might look like he would make a good king, but...

So, this game becomes absolutely pessimistic without showing any way out. Whatever we've done, it's useless. We can't change the world. It might look like we can, but in the end it's just an illusion. And this is not an idea I'm looking for when I'm playing games.

I guess it's just not a game for me. I wish I've found this out earlier (not just in the very end) and didn't become so invested in the story.

(Another nitpick of mine is the fact that the game promotes stealing. That chest counter makes it fun to take other people's stuff. I mean, I'm totally OK with stealing from Vorian's Manor, be gay do crime. But stealing from people in Branca Base? That's cruel.)