ARGH'S PROFILE

I like the idea of grueling survivalist gameplay in theory, but I'm not sure if an RPG is the best execution of that idea, at least not in this engine. Too many things are dependent on chance (evading attacks, who gets targeted, etc.) and many encounters vary wildly in difficulty depending on how you've prepared, but it's impossible to know what monsters any one blob will turn into and what the optimal setup for them is. It's also impossible to know whether or not fighting is worth it -- some monsters drop really valuable stuff, some don't, some are guarding treasures, others aren't... Preparation in general was a big problem, I think. The game is very generous at handing out items you need (at least on casual mode), but you don't know that at first and you can't know exactly what you need, what you'll get, what you should stock up on... That applies to the armors, too, since almost everything has a dangerous weakness but you have no idea what enemies you'll be up against so you don't actually know what to use. I felt like I really had to wing it and hope for the best most of the time. That is an understandable feeling to have in a survival game, but it strikes me more as how a player should feel if they're desperate and doing things wrong rather than as a default state. (I also seemed to have missed the craft book for Isaac's knives? Eh, I had enough money by the end that I could buy them. And the item merchant says there's a relic that grants a healing spell, but I never found it? Never found any holy magic either.)

In general, I'd say the game could have stood to be a lot clearer about certain things, like that there were hidden objectives in the child arc that could carry over bonuses, or that you can't return to town until you complete the stratum, or that THE HARDEST BOSS IN THE GAME WILL APPEAR OUT OF NOWHERE AND MURDER YOU BEFORE YOU EVEN HAVE A CHANCE TO SAVE in the second stratum. I am still a little ticked off about that -- unless you correctly guess exactly where you're supposed to go immediately there (and you do have to guess because the crack isn't there beforehand), you're completely screwed and have to redo that entire section all over again. Compared to how generous the rest of the game is with save points, that felt really unnecessarily punishing.

The battle system itself was pretty good, though. I liked that even regular attacks were tiring so you were forced to make your actions count if you wanted to survive. The simplistic one weapon = one ability system would have been a hassle in a longer game, I think, but it worked here since there were so few weapons anyway and power progression wasn't a big thing. I thought the options were a bit too limited, though -- everyone can only inflict one physical damage type except for Arya, and then only midway through, and you can't use piercing damage at all outside of throwing knives in the first stratum. It felt a bit too forced -- like, each enemy had one party member that was suited to deal with it and everyone else couldn't do more than chip away. That falls away later on when elemental weaknesses matter more, but it's still something I noticed. I also thought people had way too few item slots for a system that was supposed to be so item-based. I always prioritized healing items, so everyone only got 1, maybe 2 attack items -- and if that slim selection didn't happen to be useful against the monster I just ran into, welp, guess I'll just have to stick to regular attacks today. Giving me access to the full pack at all times would have expanded my options considerably, and would have probably helped me not have a giant hoard of stuff by the end. (So many unused firebombs...)

I also felt the game had a really extreme inverse difficulty curve. Maybe the first level's difficulty was just due to my inexperience, but I remember the second stratum being brutal, and FURY was the only boss I actually had trouble with; the others were complete jokes I annihilated pretty quickly. (Ironically, I found that the advice given for FURY -- do an all-out offensive -- worked way better for the other Origins than it did for FURY.) Possibly I just learned how to powerlevel, I dunno, but by the end I was two- or three-shotting almost every enemy before they could do much, or any, damage.

However, I will agree with everyone else that this was very fitting for the child arc, even if Alex felt a wee bit too powerful for an 11-year-old.

I felt like I wasn't entirely sure what you were going for. I have to say, I was pretty surprised by the ending reveal that the whole thing was about something as simple as Arya's personal grief. The whole game, particularly the bits with Cieran, seemed like it was building up to something about forgiveness, not coping mechanisms. I never felt like Arya's grief was the major focus of her behavior. She barely ever mentions Alex or her personal involvement in his death throughout the whole thing; even in the third stratum, where I expected Alex to be the final illusion, she's totally focused on everyone else, and the responsibility she feels for them, not any kind of personal loss. Guilt is obviously still important since the final answer is "forgive yourself", but it was weird to me that it suddenly took a backseat to something that had barely been developed at all at the climax.

And I'm honestly very disappointed that it did. It's not really your fault, but Western culture is so oversaturated with hyper-individualist narratives that are all about the examination of one mind and one person's personal battle with themselves, often completely ignoring the actual, tangible effects they have on other people and how they relate to them. And I'm just really sick of that. I can't help but think a story that focused more on the idea of vengeance and whether or not Arya could forgive others would have been far more interesting than yet another angsty guilt-ridden hero narrative. I found Cieran's story extremely interesting in the way it turned our perceptions of this villain figure completely upside-down, yet the whole issue is just dropped after some vague, halfhearted waffling on the subject. It's also extremely convenient that he's already beyond saving so Arya doesn't have to make any hard decisions on the matter.

I think this led to a disconnect when I learned about the criteria for the ending, also. I can see the connection between those things and dealing with grief if I squint, but none of the explanations given would be my first assumptions. I asked Myra about the wheelchair not because I wanted Arya to dwell on the past, but because I was concerned about Myra and wanted to learn her side of the story. I wanted to learn more, which I'd honestly say is the opposite of wallowing in memories? The guilt bargain thing was very unclear to me -- I assumed it was a "but thou must" thing where I had to say yes to continue. Even if I did try to metagame, most of the bargains were about helping people and being nice, which is generally a good thing -- plus isn't that what people usually have to do to put vengeful spirits to rest in a lot of stories? For the letters, like with Myra's wheelchair, I reread them because I wanted to understand the others and piece together the mystery. Adding that to the grief counter feels like it's saying Arya owns their memories, which is the exact kind of individualistic "it's all about me" idea I was talking about. And I seemed to have completely misread the choice with Cieran -- since I assumed the big theme was forgiveness, I assumed that refusing to fight meant I was forgiving him, not that I was letting go of past trauma.

The whole blame game stuff struck me as a little weird, in all honesty. Maybe I'm just a very forgiving person but I felt everyone was way too harsh on Arya. The whole thing is objectively Alex's fault first and foremost, yet Myra blames Arya for... what, not doing more to stop him? That felt really victim-blamey to me. She does have a leg to stand on in regards to how Arya abandoned everyone, but it's not like she was a parent who had people she was responsible for, she couldn't have done much anyway.

I actually think the father is the one who's least deserving of forgiveness, which made me pretty weirded out by how he got a death-equals-redemption ending. He handles Arya's confession and breakdown in probably the worst possible way by dumping all the blame on her, which is what directly leads to her snapping, running away, and causing the whole mess in the adult arc. And unlike everyone else, he seems to express absolutely zero remorse for his abuse.

And I'm a bit confused by some of the metaphysics? So Arya can subconsciously manipulate miasma because she's the chosen one (how? who does the choosing?), and she wants to punish herself so this manifests in creating Purgatory and dragging herself into it, yet also she drags tons of unrelated dudes into it too because ??? Did the miasma become so strong it got a will of its own and started reacting to unrelated peoples' grief too? And she never bothers to actively use this power except at the end where she gets empowered by Alex's ghost or is that just her imagination or...? I don't... I don't understand. And nothing seems to come of the prophecy that she's supposed to kill Isaac, unless that's supposed to be a sequel hook.

Oh, and I have to say, the whole ~was Haven actually an illusion the whole time~ thing at the very end felt really over-the-top and unnecessary. Something that big isn't something you can just drop in at the last minute, I feel, at least not without a proper explanation that gives it purpose.

In general I think the story tried to do too many things at once. It was generally well-written and I liked the Silent Hill-like atmosphere, but it lacked focus on its themes and couldn't develop them evenly, which muddled things a lot.