I have finished the demo and watched the full credits
I'm gonna sperg now
The game starts very weird, with one of the new female characters, falling into a void and going in a weird dream. You control her around and she says she has amnesia but she also mentions a "bad brother" that pushed her down, one living a house written Egglston (Alex) and she calls Rory "good brother" when she sees him but then he disappears.
The girl needs a "name" to progress then you move around until someone gives her the name Carrie (rory's sister), but later on she trades the name an invite to "the party" where you get it from who looks like the original proto alex. That's also a weird thing, the game really pushes Proto Alex everywhere, with the caped "krow" clearly looking like him too. We somehow end up in the name up thing
(Fun fact, william is the name of character in a
yiik sidenovel. I wonder if this means anything...)
(these moving vfx are real nice actually)
After naming ourselseves and ONLY ourselves, we start the intro that you can find on youtube. The notable thing about the intro related to the demo i'll mention is that the girl is clearly named Allison in it.
And she's with a younger michael.
After michale takes a picture of Allison, she turns into a red iron maiden that is what takes our party members when we die. This makes me take the very obvious guess that, yes,
Allison is Michael's dead(?) girlfriend. This is very much implied at the end of the demo which i'll spoil anyway since it's so early.
This makes me think Michael will be a big focus on the new content and how he apparently made a deal with the fucking devil to create ONISM in the hopes of finding his girlfriend that "disappeared" (i'll guess she fell and died somewhere). Michal also talks in a much more serious and brooding way here.
Either way her being called Carrie at the epilogue makes me think she's some sorte of alternate version of Rory's sister somehow (i know this makes no sense but it's yiik).
(what does that gun mean???)
The other new content is hard to explain because it's mostly the Krow and proto Alex splastered everywhere with no context in what feels like a very shitty forced attempt of foreshadowing. One thing i noticed tho is that there is LOT of focus on this exact room in particular, as it appears in the epilogue, intro and now in the dungeon.
Alex is shown waking up at this room and taking the bus, but also proto slept here and Panda is found here so i assume this is actually Alex room back in college. This makes me theorize that Alex's college days will be expanded, or the reveal proto-alex was his room mate or something.
Another new character shown is Jocasta who talks in sexy innuendos and tutorials you about cards. She says you need to give your blood to play and alex, seemingly fully hipnotized, does it, which probably matches with the whole BLEED hyperfocus in combat but i dont get the symbolism yet.
This scene is decent but it feels like an accident because Alex doesnt say SHIT here and i know it's only because his VA wasnt called to re-record any new lines AFAIK. When you meet the wilheim boss Alex gets hipnotized again and doesnt mention the Krow that appeared out of nowhere holding a baby
(this makes just as much sense in context)
Also, i'll say that Alex monologues are just as bad but feel more convincing now. Like, he will look at Sami and THEN look away when monologuing which gives a better idea of how he's not fucking listening at all.
I know everyone bashes this dialogue but i think it's underrated in how it subtly showcases how self centered Alex is on practice. Note how Alex finds out the Cat is a girl and proceeds to call it HE again because he already forgot.
Another is how Alex will project on Sami, like saying she's projecting on the cat after he did a full monologue thinking about petting the cat.
Ironically, MY issue is that Alex never acts this subtle of an unreliable narrator again.
And now the elephant in the room...
>THE COMBAT
GOOD: It's not as vomit inducing as it looks on practice. This is a normal timeline based rpg except everyone has 3 card slots and you MP regenerates overtime and as you attack or block. These cards you equip have 1 passive effect (stat boost + passive) and can be consumed in battle for active effects, but they also have their own HP and they function as "meat shields" that absorb damage. If you get hit with no cards you start to bleed and die very fast, but enemies also work like this.
There is potential here. Alex LP toss for example changed to a spell that hits all enemy cards so its better in certain scenarios. Do i consume this card early on for a debuff or keep it to preserve hp or do i wait until it's almost broken to use it? There is a convincing attempt at risk reward. It's also fast with no loading screen, overall an improvement.
BAD: This potential isnt developed at all in the demo where Alex and Sami get 1 literal meat shield card (cow and heart). Losing your big stats and passive shit when card broken feels bad and bleeding is a death sentence that forces you to either finish off the enemy NOW or use bandages. I died two times to the boss because i attempted healing through bleeding and it's simply not worth it, you die too fast. You're supposed to use Panda to tank the boss before it bleeds you and watch it slowly bleed to death but that's not fun.
Thankfully they give you the option to retry with bonus items but one of them, the gauze bandage, is broken because it stops bleeding AND gives you 3 band-aid cards with 1 hp each. There is no overkill damage so the boss has to break each band-aid one by one effectively giving you 3 turns of immortality. There seems to be piercing attacks that deal hp damage directly but the boss has none so it was trivia.
I understand it would be frustrating if you healed bleed only to get smacked into bleed again but there has to be a better idea here lol. They should've added a tutorial explaining Panda can be used in battle cause the boss is unwinable without panda or gauzes.
TL;DR: Combat is fast so that's good. The story will probably across even more pretentions and convoluted than before tho.
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