ARGH'S PROFILE

I thought the "so I have this friend..." cliche in good ending was a bit silly and melodramatic... and the post-credits thing in the normal ending seems to imply that conversation happens anyway? Regardless, it was nice. I personally didn't find Juno's situation very relatable -- I don't have an envious bone in my body -- but the use of strength and gameplay mechanics to reflect her psyche was neat. I'm not sure how well you integrated the "intrusive thoughts" theme, though -- Juno seemed pretty in control of herself throughout the whole thing, with the conflict only really revealing itself at the very end. Were the monsters supposed to be the intrusive thoughts?

I liked the puzzle aspect to the battles even though they seemed to hit a plateau in difficulty past a certain point. I have to question the use of random events, though -- a single missed attack can completely change the outcome of the battle, And making retreat random is pretty mean when you usually only have one chance and the good ending is contingent on not dying too much. The revival mechanic felt a bit fumbled -- I like games that play with the idea of failure states and the player's ability to repeat things, but the fact you can still save and reload if you screw up sort of undermined that, especially in the final sequence where losing gets you a standard game over. (Despite the dramatic proclamation of "now if you fall there's no one to catch you" it's effectively no different than it was before, isn't it?) The point might have been stronger if failing battles never had any long-term consequence and saving Juno required some other kind of perseverance.

I'm generally pretty nonplussed by extremely metatextual narratives like this. DUST reminded me a bit of The Stanley Parable, and I've already given my thoughts on that elsewhere. My bottom line is that I don't think pointing out the strings is a meaningful statement in and of itself; an actual argument must be made. Throughout the entirety of the Author's grand reveal I kept saying "...So are you going somewhere with this?" and the answer kept being no. You laid out a lot of evidence that basically amounted to pointing out the obvious, but didn't actually use it for anything.

The narrative itself also felt incredibly muddled. So the Author is a metaphor for authors and media creators, but he's also a character in the actual story...? I kept looking for ways to interpret his backstory and motives as a metaphor for artists or the artistic community but I couldn't come up with much. I guess if you take an extremely metaphorical interpretation, yes, artists kind of are infecting us with their thoughts and beliefs through spreading their works to us, but I don't see how that's a bad thing. I like spending my time immersing myself in authors' worlds. I enjoy it, and I choose to do it because I enjoy it. I don't feel manipulated by it.

(He also points out how ridiculous it would be for the player to be able to defeat him in a climactic boss battle, then proceeds to... do exactly that? Why point out that a trope makes no sense and then play it straight? I expected the boss battle to be some ludicrous unwinnable thing to show what a farce the concept was, but he wasn't much harder than the other endbosses.)

I also have to say that the gameplay actively dragged down the rest of the work. Springing the "you're enjoying this aren't you" trap requires the player to actually enjoy the gameplay, and the RMVX DBS is kind of objectively not fun. The random encounters were infuriating, and the fact that even turn order was random meant strategy was impossible and you could only win through the luck of the draw. In the end I was motivated by nothing more than idle curiosity, not because I actually felt satisfied at overcoming the game's challenges like the Author kept taunting me about. Maybe that was supposed to be the point, that we're so wretched we're willing to trudge through gameplay we hate just to satisfy our curiosity? But then why include the broken story-mode class? If you're going to make a profound statement about gamers' relationship to games, the gameplay and story can't be working at cross purposes, or the whole thing is going to crumble.

So in the end the whole thing just left me confused and disappointed, though with an appreciation for the pretty atmosphere.