Episode 20: Off

This week, we take a look at the quirky classic RPG Maker game remade in 2025, OFF the Game.

Episode Transcript

(00:12):
Welcome back friends, to the Adventure Starts Here podcast.
This week we played off a freeware game released in 2008
by two Belgian developers. This is all of our first time
playing it, and to be very clear, we played the 2025
remaster, an important distinction that will come up

(00:32):
repeatedly. Also, just to get this out of
the way early, we had some audioissues as a result of our
recording bot going into maintenance about halfway
through the episode. I'll have a disclaimer up at
that point, but just be warned the audio quality will go down a
bit. Regardless, I hope you enjoy the
episode. All right, for this week we

(00:56):
played off. I believe Thomas chose it.
Would you like to explain your reasons for choosing it?
So it's a 2008 game. I think it was primarily
developed by one guy plus a soundtrack man back in 2008.
It was a very foundational inspiration for games like

(01:19):
Undertale and things like One Shot and a lot of these other
Tumblr slop RPG Maker games. And they recently released a
remaster of it in August of 2025.
And I figured that was the perfect time to give this thing
a shot because none of us had tried it before.
I never even heard of it until you recommended it.

(01:43):
I had neither. Yeah, I heard of it, but it's
just because of Toby Fox, and Toby Fox talks about it
basically anytime he does an interview.
Yeah, was this? Game like well known, well known
or was it like niche well known?I mean, it was like they had a
Wikipedia page well known. So I wouldn't say it was like, I

(02:06):
don't know, in the dregs of the Star Man forum somewhere.
It's just so interesting becauseI'd like I mean, this game, the
original game was made in what, 2008?
And I feel like I see maybe not direct references to this game,
but like I see a lot of similarities.
Like even in fucking Clare Obscure with some of the ending

(02:26):
stuff, I was like whoa, this is this is weird.
I, I thought of Clare Obscure aswell when I saw those two.
It's like when there was like that world map that looked like
a children's drawing and it had like those two really.
There's like a, a really fat character and really tall,
skinny one that made me think ofExhibition 33.
Interesting. Oh, right, yeah.

(02:47):
The person who made this is French, for the record.
Yeah, that is true. Actually, I wonder, I wonder if
that rubbed off. That's a good point.
It might just be like French French culture influence, or
maybe some of them actually justplayed off.
I don't know that Clare Obscure director guy's name, but he
definitely, definitely, definitely seems like the type

(03:08):
who would have played this game and got an inspiration from it.
For sure. Yeah, I'm like going off of
that, I was curious to get your guys's general vibes on like
your classical turn based games.Like at this point I feel like a
lot of them are like pretty goddamn aged.
Like it takes a game like Clare Obscure to like kind of innovate

(03:30):
in the genre, do some new things.
Obviously I have a really good narrative to like bring turn
based stuff back to the forefront.
But like, what do you guys thinkof those classic games like
Super Mario RPG, Whatever else comes to your head like Chrono
Trigger when you think of this kind of stuff.
We haven't really done a game like that for Tash I don't
think. But like, just what are your

(03:52):
like forefront opinions on them?I definitely prefer strict turn
based over even like what is called like active time battle I
I prefer just like super strict like it's just turns personally
now. That and that's why I like out
of all the old Final Fantasies like 10 is probably my favorite,
at least to play. Yeah, I think Active Time Battle

(04:15):
was like a like a negative that Square did because I think it
kind of just gave like an illusion of an interesting
system when it was just like turn based with a timer, which
kind of made it more annoying toplay if anything.
Yeah, like any game I play that has like an ATB bar, I hope and
pray that it has a like pause when it's someone's turn
feature, because when that shit keeps ticking when it's

(04:39):
somebody's turn, that shit drives me fucking crazy.
So I'm in the same camp as you where I prefer strict turn based
like Boulder Skate 3 for example.
But in terms of their agedness Iactually still love term based
games. I feel like there are definitely

(04:59):
aspects of agedness to them, butI feel like it all hinges on the
game's balance and whether or not it is too easy.
I feel like term based games that are too easy just kind of
become a really dull, boring slog.
But there are turn based games that do force you to think about

(05:21):
like your approach to battles and stuff.
And they're few and far between,but they do exist.
And I think those are the ones that have aged fairly well.
Or if they just have some like unique mechanics that make them
kind of interesting. And I do think actually that
Super Mario RPG falls into that camp.
Yeah, like I'm, I mean, I'm a huge Super Mario RPG fan.

(05:42):
Like one of my favorite games for a long long time was Paper
Mario in The Thousand Year Door,which is directly influenced by
Super Mario RPG. Like a lot of people would
consider Super Mario RPG in the same category of games as the
Paper Mario games, at least until like Super Paper Mario and
shit. But no yeah, I think Super Mario
RPG is like one of the all timers for me.

(06:04):
I reluctantly paid $60.00 for the remake on my Switch.
And you know what? It was steep, but I'm glad I did
it because reliving my like nostalgia in that way was really
nice. And the one thing I want to say
when it comes to turn based stuff is I, I don't know, I'm
kind of OK with the, what's it called ATB, the real time bar,

(06:25):
whatever bullshits, I'm OK with them.
And this is a lot of nostalgia speaking.
But like in Final Fantasy 8, I think it's a kind of fun little
like min Max to like, you know, your squaw hit his bar full and
your enemy is doing a long animation so you can hit circle
a bunch of times to try and get your limit break while they're
doing their animation. Like stuff like that.

(06:45):
I think it's kind of cool. But if you're going to have a
strictly turn based thing like Clarebs here or off or Super
Mario RPG, whatever you better or, or Final Fantasy 10, you
better have that fucking list ofturn order.
Otherwise I'm going to lose my mind.
That is a requirement for me if it's strictly turn based.
Kind of like the no turnover thing, it kind of like adds a

(07:07):
layer of tension that like you don't know if you're faster than
them or not. Yeah, I agree with that.
Actually I I can go either way Ilike.
Yeah, same. I'm pretty indifferent.
I think I like both. I I I guess I do prefer having
more info but it's not like a like a deal breaker.
I think it'd be cool if a if a certain boss took away that

(07:28):
shit. Like if it was some kind of like
Psychomantis style boss and thenthey were like OK the turnover
is gone kind of thing. Yeah, like I think that the
showing the turn order adds moredepth than it doesn't because,
you know, you like, like you cansee it in Claire Obscure, for
example, like with the CL and all of her buffs and stuff.
Like, there's a lot of ordering you can do when you have that in

(07:50):
place as a mechanic, you know? And like you're saying, you can
manipulate it too. I think it's just two different
sides of the same coin because it's like one, if that bar isn't
there can create a layer of dynamism where you you just
don't know what's going to happen.
And like if you rely on a certain turn order happening

(08:14):
before the boss gets their turn and that doesn't happen, that
that again creates some tension that can be enjoyable in some
circumstances. Whereas having the bar there, I
think creates more of like AI. Guess the immediate example that
comes to mind would be like Slaythe Spire where it turns into
more of like a computational sort of experience where like

(08:36):
that extra layer of deterministic outcomes.
Can it it, it makes just, it makes for just a very different
experience, I think. And I don't think either 1 is
really better than the other. Yeah.
It definitely depends on like the supporting systems because I
can see like a very traditional GRPG that has it's a quote UN
quote difficulty centred around like a resource management,

(08:58):
making sure that like your characters are topped off and
you have enough resources to getto the next safe point where is
something like clear obscure. A lot of those systems are
related to like all the cool shit you can do in battle.
And a lot of that does have to do with stuff like shield and
like turn order manipulation. So in that kind of kind of
system, I think you would definitely be incentivized to

(09:19):
have that turn order to list. Yeah.
I also think that the modern convention going forward is just
going to always be to have that turn list.
Like I can't think of any turn based game from like recent
times that I've played that doesn't have that.
I think part of my issue too is that like like most the turn

(09:42):
based games that I play that I have enjoyed are usually like
very nostalgia driven for me. I'm not really enjoying that
gameplay all that much and like like a lot of the tension you
guys were describing and not being able to see the turn order
is dissolved for me by how like tedious I find some of those

(10:05):
turn based systems, you know what I mean?
Yeah. And I think that just gets back
to the the balance thing where like a big part of what makes a
turn based game work for me or not work for me is the power
fantasy aspect of it. And what's really important
about that is having the right curve.

(10:28):
Because like a game like Claire Obscure, at least when I played
it before they fucking nerfed ganky Dama AKA Stendal, that
power curve was really fucked upbecause it was just like you get
to act three and then all of a sudden like fucking my L just
goes off the chart. Whereas another game like Final

(10:49):
Fantasy 8 I find interesting because it's like a DIY power
curve. Like you can, you can impose
limitations on yourself that will make that game as difficult
or as easy as you really want itto be based on however you feel
like challenging yourself. So like like turn based combat
systems are not the most engaging, fun thing in the

(11:12):
world, at least in the world of JRPGS most of the time.
But I think if they can fulfill that like right power fantasy
curve. And in the beginning I feel like
a man just going into a basementand killing rats and by the end
of it I'm a fucking God. I think is like a big part of
what makes them enjoyable for me.

(11:34):
I don't even think difficulty isnecessary necessarily a good
thing in most turn turn based RPGs because usually when
they're difficult that just means that the battles take
longer. It doesn't mean that the battles
are more engaging. I think just the only thing
that's important about making anactually good turn based RPG is
just having engaging systems inside of the combat.

(11:54):
Yeah, it's kind of like like I don't even know if you would
necessarily call Undertale turn based, but that's a part of
example where the turn based nature is just a shrub and that
makes it fun. Yeah, it's like a perfect
example of like a weird hybrid style that kind of does like the
it's difficult, but not in a waythat's like fucking annoying.
It's it's fun and engaging and it's not that tough.

(12:16):
There is one thing that'll credit difficulty with in GRP GS
and that like if there's certain, like obviously I
wouldn't want the game to be like hard the entire time, but
if there were like certain like difficulty spikes that creates
like a lot of shared stories that players can have, I think
that's pretty cool. Exactly.
I think, I think you nailed it. I think that's like the perfect

(12:36):
thing, right? Like when there's certain bosses
where it's like, fuck, this is crazy.
But if every boss you fight is like 20 minutes and then there's
a boss that's 30 minutes, it's not as memorable where it's like
easy, easy, easy. And then you run into, yeah,
pick, pick whatever, like Materia Giba from Final Fantasy
7 or something like that. All that is super true and I
just can't help but think how perfect of a turn based game
Undertale is applying all of that to it 'cause like like what

(13:00):
you're saying feels directly applied to the genocide route.
And then if I'm thinking of likethe normal route where you just
have a lot of like normal gameplay or whatever, or I guess
even the even the pacifist route, it's all very consistent.
There is not like a like 1 singular super tough boss.
They're all pretty like well balanced.
There is there's there's one which is Sands on the genocide

(13:22):
route, right? Like that's the tough boss, but
there's still like a mega flyweed.
Like there's there's definitely points even like muffet for some
people, like depending on what level of gamer you are, like
there's a lot of points in that game.
But but yeah, for sure. So I would push back on the idea
that difficulty in JRPGS is bad because they just involve like

(13:42):
longer fights or whatever, because I think that there are
like plenty of ways to actually make them more interesting that
aren't just that. Like the perfect example that
comes to mind right now would bea lot of SMT games, but I guess

(14:02):
specifically the one in my head would be Nocturne, where a lot
of the fights in that game and shit like revolve around the
assumption that you're going to be using like buffs and debuffs
and shit. And I think that that's normally
where like you can create some more like interesting ideas is
by assuming that the player is going to be playing in some sort

(14:24):
of like optimal way and punishing them at least in part,
maybe not wholly for not doing that.
And just like, again, imposing some degree of like mechanical
or systemic knowledge that the player needs to like fucking
vault over in order to actually complete the goal.

(14:49):
Yeah. I just think it's a tough thing
to to kind of design because they're like because of grinding
like you can always overcome anydifficulty in most JRPGS through
just being a higher level with like Undertale again, found a
way around that kind of cop out for difficult.
Well, and that's that's why I brought up Nocturne too 'cause

(15:09):
you can't just out grind that game, can you?
It's been a while since I've played Nocturne, but I don't
think you can just like mindlessly grind and and level
up in that game. I think it's just like not
possible. I don't know anything about SMT
games. I think you can, but regardless,
even Nocturne has like one of those like infamous bosses that
people still that people tell stories about, which is the

(15:31):
matador, where he kind of is that kind of roadblock where you
have to figure out that you needbuffs and debuffs.
So I think it may be technicallypossible to outgrind it, but I
don't think many people will go through that.
Yeah, like you probably could, but it would be a nightmare to
try and do that. And then like, I imagine my head

(15:56):
is telling me that another example of that, which this is a
purely vibes based assumption, would be like the Xenoblade
Chronicles games, Which I'm saying because they're so
fucking complicated that I feel like there's got to be something
in there. But I've never been able to
actually like, penetrate that layer of contrived complication

(16:16):
to actually fully understand howthey work.
But enough people love them thatI assume that that's probably
the case. Yeah, I don't know anything
about the specific quality of those games.
Well, another question I wanted to ask you guys, you know,
opinions on off notwithstanding,Thomas gave us this question,

(16:40):
but what's a foundational or highly influential work from
basically anything could be likemovies, music, games, whatever
that you think is just horrible.You hate it.
You're you're sad that it is foundational in your particular
medium. I can go first if you guys don't
have one. Oh, I have one.
I have one. I wouldn't say that I hate it.

(17:01):
I just don't like it very much. And that's like old, old school
rap. Like 11 times out of 10, I'd
rather like, I just wouldn't want to listen to something from
the 80s or 90s. I'd rather just listen to like
21 Savage. Man, that's a hilarious.
Specific one? Do you have like a specific one
that you? No, just the, just the entire
thing. Yeah, the fucking Jurassic Five

(17:23):
was Ben's 911. I actually, I actually tend to
agree with that though. I think I, I mean, I guess I'm
glad that it existed because I don't think like the the, I
don't know, there has to be likesome sort of artistic through
line from that to like Southern rap or whatever.

(17:44):
But yeah, it is dreadfully fucking boring to listen to.
Did you ask me what mine was? Yeah, go ahead.
It's fucking Ocarina of time. What an overrated piece of shit.
Honestly that game just takes the most boring surface layer

(18:05):
mechanics of every two D Zelda game before it and piled on
these super generic boring ass shitty dungeons, boring ass
shitty bosses, none of the itemsare interesting, none of the
puzzles are interesting. That game is just not very good.
But then they figured it out andmade Majora's Mask, which is

(18:26):
fucking awesome. It really is a strange anomaly
because like, Majora's Mask is literally one of my favorite
games ever and the game before it linked to the past had the
exact same formula as Ocarina ofTime.
And yeah, I completely agree with you.
It's so strained. Yeah, it's like it's, it's a
weirdly uninspired game for whatit is.

(18:47):
Like I feel like they had to focus so much on like the tech
side of things that the design side of things took a hit is
kind of the way I I read the situation.
That's purely again a vibes based assumption, but that's
it's just kind of how the game plays to me.
At least the music is still iconic.
Yeah, that's that's true. I I cannot take anything away

(19:10):
from the soundtrack of any of those games.
It's fucking goaded. One for me is a movie.
I'm I'm finding more and more that I just can't fucking stand
Christopher Nolan and I don't, Idon't really know if this would
be considered foundational. Maybe you guys tell me if it is

(19:30):
or not, but I can't stand Inception.
I, I try to watch that movie because everyone raves about it
on like fucking Reddit and shit and I, I just can't get through
it. I can't watch an hour of that
movie without being bored to tears every single time.
Man, you and Mary would get along great.
She fucking hates Christopher Nolan.
She you. Know Interstellar is so good.

(19:51):
She left Tennant like actively pissed.
Oh yeah, I was the exact same. I'm willing to give Christopher
Nolan a pass because of how muchI love Interstellar, but I.
I I I this is not worth debatingbut I don't necessarily know
that I would call him like superfoundational or influential, but

(20:13):
I respect the take. You got 1, Jordan.
Yeah, for me, and it's for me, it's also like Ben, where it's
like, I don't fucking hate it, but I don't understand why
people like it as much as they do.
And that's Mother three. Like I think like the game
starts really strong and then ends OK strong, and then the
whole 18 hours of the middle is just fart jokes.

(20:36):
It's just fart joke after fart joke after fart joke after fart
joke. And that's why people love it, I
think. But yeah, I think it's just like
an OK game. It's funny that you mentioned
the beginning like that because I never beat that game.
I did only play like the first three hours and I thought it was
awesome. Yeah, the.
Exact same. You guys have the public

(20:57):
opinion, that's what it is. Because the game starts off so
strong and then it does nothing with it for 18 hours.
It's just nothing. It's just Dick and fart jokes.
You open up a chest and it playsa fart noise.
You open up a chest and it's fireworks.
Like that's it. So like your game opens, your
fucking mom dies and it's fucking awesome and then fuck
all that. It doesn't matter for 20 hours.
You know what's crazy is like I remember you and I having this
discussion last time and my likegut reaction take was to be like

(21:22):
what are you talking about? That game's so good.
And then like after I thought about it for like 5 seconds I
was like, I don't remember anything that happens in that
game. Like after your mom dies and up
to you fight. Shit, I might even be thinking
of Earthbound fucking what's hisname?
Robo Porky or whatever the hell his name is that that is

(21:43):
Earthbound. So I, I, I can't even keep other
three straight. So yeah, I I respect that.
I assume you don't feel that way.
I assume you don't feel that wayabout Earthbound though.
Haven't you not beat Earthbound?No I beat earthbound.
Earthbound is better than Mother3 for sure, but I think it's

(22:06):
just 'cause the story is kind ofgood the whole way.
Mother three story just falls off like nothing happens after
your mom dies and then before Porky shows back up at like the
literal end of the game nothing happens story wise at all.
Yeah I agree. I think Earthbound is like leaps
and bounds better than Mother 3,like even prior to our
discussion. But Earthbound's also one of my

(22:27):
favorite games of all time. It's also the grandfather of
fucking Tumblr slop so. I mean, I can't, I can't argue
against it because I I did have the exact experience that Sesh
is describing where I just got bored to tears after the intro.
And I also never been like superinto Earthbound either, so yeah.
Mother Three does have a fuckingawesome soundtrack though.
That's that is one thing I will give it.

(22:49):
There's and the visuals are awesome for both the games.
Yeah, for sure. And Mother 3 has the song that I
always go back to. It's like my favorite song on
the Game Boy Advance probably. And it's just this like really
short ambient drum loop with like a saxophone in the back.
And it's just the random song that plays when you go into like

(23:10):
the Magic Sees Hut, which if youknow you know.
But God damn that song is fucking sick.
I'm going to link it in the discord.
With all of that being said, again, the game we played this
week is off and I'm wondering ifsome of these questions that

(23:31):
have been posed are indicative of our overall feelings.
So what were the what were the vibes on off this what 17 year
old game that we played a remaster that for some reason
was a remaster that I really wish that I could have refunded
after I had beaten the game? Yeah, here's Here's what I want.

(23:52):
Here's what I want everyone to remember before we say a single
word about this game. It costs $15.
We'll start there. Go ahead.
Take away how much did the. How much did the original 1 cost
it? Was freeware.
Zero, yeah. Bro that's that is absurd.
I'm mad now I'm mad I'm going totry to refund this even though I
won't be able to no, I mean I I like I I don't know, I just

(24:18):
could not stand this game like off the RIP like it.
It feels like for me it broke like every single sin that we've
talked. Maybe not every single sin.
I might be hyperbolizing there, but like it like every single
sin that we've talked about during tashes like it has the
overly verbose fucking cat that talks to you all the time that I
just wanted to stab my eyes out every time I read his dialogue.

(24:41):
It has like basically a completely incongruous,
irrelevant narrative up until the last like hour or so of the
game, in my opinion at least. Like I, I've seen better pixel
art in like a billion other games.
Like I, I would even say that maybe logic bombs had better.
No, no, no, that's going too far.

(25:03):
I, I did not like art in this game very much.
The the visual storytelling was cool in terms of like the color
stuff that Thomas was talking about in our notes, but I don't
know it this game was wholly unimpressive to me.
And as much as we were talking about the soundtrack, like I, I
can only remember one harmony from one song in my entire time
playing this that was memorable at all.

(25:26):
All I can remember are the combat themes.
I played very little with the original soundtrack.
I just played with the remastered one 'cause I just
played on the Rog Ally, I didn'tfeel like modern Gate, and I
really just don't remember anything out of combat tracks
cause whenever it was out of combat all I remember hearing
was just straight up just ambience.
I don't know if that's like thiscase with the real one, but I

(25:47):
can't. I will give the combat themes
credit though 'cause they were boppy, at least to me.
Yeah, the you know what I'd Yeah, your normal's on drugs.
The amusement park. Sorry.
It's I don't even remember that one.
I was, I was gonna agree with Ben.
Like I don't remember shit aboutthe field themes, I only
remember the battle themes and Iactually think the remaster
themes are better because Toby Fox made them and I think that

(26:08):
he's better than whoever the French guy who made the original
1 is. I think the like the Electro,
whatever it's called Electro funk like main battle theme is
like cool but like it's not as cool as what Toby Fox made I
think. Yeah, that song is like super
overrated. People lose their fucking mind
about that pepper steak song, but it is like, it's just OK.

(26:29):
Yeah, it's just, it's pretty good.
There are songs on that soundtrack I like significantly
more. Although I, I will say I'm, I'm
higher on the soundtrack than you guys are mostly because I
mean, I just have kind of a general affinity for like
ambient soundtrack shit in general.
Like even I think it's the last act of the game where it's just

(26:54):
like people nonsensically like whispering at you.
Like I, I derive, I actually derive pleasure from hearing
shit like that. But like, there are some
absolute banger tunes on the OG soundtrack, including the song
when you fight Yafet. Jafet.
I'm going to go with Yafet. That song is fucking awesome.

(27:16):
Like to the point where they basically just like cribbed the
entire like idea in the remake soundtrack because they were
like, yeah, we, we, we got to gowith what they had originally
because it's too fucking good. I.
Think that's kind of what the whole soundtrack is.
Is like listen to the song and then be like OK how can I make
this mine while still keeping the original vibe?
Yeah, I, I don't think they did a bad job with the remake

(27:40):
soundtrack. I I think in some ways it was
better in most ways I think I liked the old one more.
I will say that I did just listen to the remake soundtrack
like on YouTube but I played thegame with the OG soundtrack
which I'm sure makes a difference is.
There an option in the game to do that?

(28:01):
No, I had the mod. No, I had the mod.
That's. Dumb as hell.
It's because they couldn't get the rights from the original
guy. Yeah, there's like this whole
story with the original guy where basically I dug up some
Reddit post where he said that he didn't feel like it was
right. There were like 3 main reasons.

(28:22):
Number 1, he didn't feel like itwas right that they were
charging money for it #2 Fan gamer asked him to like
basically stay on retainer to make new songs if they wanted
to. And he was like, I'm busy, fuck
that. And #3 he said he was generally
paranoid about signing contracts.
So I think he's just a weird French guy who didn't want to be
bothered. I agree with all of those except

(28:44):
for the last one. They they those were all
understandable, except for the last one.
So yeah, they they just couldn'thash out the negotiations with
the guy to remake it. I think there was also something
in there about he he had used samples that he was worried
about the legality of, even though Fan gamer told him that

(29:04):
they would like clear them for him and blah, blah, blah.
But I don't know, he just soundslike a paranoid fellow who
didn't want to deal with the hassle, which I don't blame him.
Well, kind of following up on what we were talking about
earlier with turn based combats and such, how did you guys feel
about this game's capital G gameplay when it comes to the

(29:26):
combat with all of that in mind?Worst ever Tera.
Bad. I tolerated it, at least it
wasn't hard, so I was OK with itfor the most part, although I
did not go back to get the otherending Julie because I didn't
want to do the boss combat again.
I mean I agree with man, I don'tthink it's that offensive.

(29:47):
I think it's just super bland and boring but it doesn't really
get in the way other than just like it's like a time sink.
I felt. Yeah, Turbo A through
everything. I felt like it got in the way in
the purified zones where they kept throwing the like 2 and
three secretary fights at me. And even though like basically

(30:08):
all of the combat in this game outside of maybe one or two boss
battles, just like devolves intolike mash a mash regular attack
and get through it. But like some of those secretary
fights, like they would fucking confuse you every turn.
And I actually would like lose fights against them.
And anytime that that happened and the game actually forced me

(30:31):
to interact with the combat on like a deeper level, it made me
actively pissed. Yeah, I.
Think that like when I was playing early on, I think I was
in zone 1 and you fight a bunch of those.
I think they're called Spectre mites.
The little, the really little small deals that attack really
fast. I knew this game was short and I

(30:53):
didn't know if I was going to get through it because every
time I got into combat with one of those things, I wanted to alt
F4. Sometimes I did.
It was just so miserable like 'cause they attack so fast and
even though their animations aren't super long it's just like
assaulting your ears with this hype missing shrill that I don't
want to hear. And like I I'm not deriving any

(31:15):
fun. It's like you're saying I'm just
spamming ZII feel like this gameneeded a fucking auto battler
for me to actually have fun likemy God.
This game waits way too long to give you an AOE attack.
Yeah, waiting until you have your last quote UN quote
companion to give you the AOE attack is just a a ludicrous

(31:36):
decision. Like either do that and start
giving like the large enemy combats in the late game, or
like don't do what it did for the entire game and have those
in every single area. Like Oh my God, that was just
miserable. Yeah, I mean, I guess I do like
if I like sit back and think about it objectively.

(31:56):
I do have to like realize that the combat in this game isn't
like super offensive. It is just like what makes it so
bad is just how bland and boringit really is in a game that is
not otherwise good. So I just, I just, I can't abide

(32:17):
by just how terrible it is. Like the only good thing, the
only good thing in the game I guess does is derived from
combat, which is looking at the enemy sprites.
But yeah, that's about it. Yeah, there's something that did
really piss me off about the combat.
Is that like identify skill? I forgot what it's called, but
it's the one that like lets you see the information about the

(32:38):
enemy. Like if you use it on the boss
it's basically useless because it just always says no
weaknesses and that's it. And I still use it just so I
could see the life bar on the enemy so I can tell how long
roughly this battle is going to take.
I mean that's like the classic JRPG shit.
Like just don't use scan abilities because you never need

(32:58):
to because you can just kill them by mashing A.
That's like peak early mid 90s style design of like you don't
need to know anybody's weakness because mashing A just beats
everything. Yeah, the first time I use that
on a boss, it didn't tell me shit and then I just never used
it again. Yeah, I never used it.
I think the only time I've ever like actively used like a scan

(33:19):
ability in a game is Final Fantasy 8 because it's cool.
That's all I got. You get to rotate the model and
everything. Yeah, you get to rotate the
model. It gives you a little bit of
lore, I think. It tells you what you can junk
or draw from them. Like, yeah, it's tight.
Every other game. Whack.
There's also one thing I wanted to mention that you brought up
previously and that you said something about like purified

(33:41):
worlds. And until you mentioned that, I
didn't even know that those existed because I held W so
hard, I never even. It never even occurred to me to
even think about going back to the old area.
So yeah, I was going to do the same thing.
But what happened to me was I finished the first three acts, I
went to the last one and then itputs you in that house and it

(34:05):
seems like I, I couldn't progress.
So I went back to the thing and I was like, well, maybe I just
got to go back to the old acts and like see what happens.
And they had changed. So I assumed I had to do them.
And then I got, I got so fed up.I was so close to just DNF ING
this fucking game in the middle of no, after I finished purified

(34:27):
act two, I was like, I can't do this.
Like I just absolutely do not have the will to go through
another act of this. And I looked it up and turns out
I didn't actually have to do them at all.
So then I just fucking beeline for the ending because I didn't
realize to skip that. All I had to do was go back up
into the hallway from the first save point of the last act do.
You have to load a different save point.

(34:48):
Is that how you get by that? No, I think it's just like you,
you just have to zone in and out.
Like there's just triggers basedon like when you leave the room
and when you come back into the room.
Oh, OK. That's funny, I think.
I'm not 100% sure about that, but that's the way it seems to
work. Yeah, I only went back to that

(35:09):
shit like after I beat the game,the purified zones, and it was
like literally just put the combat on unrelenting and just
set up turbo A and never had anyissues with any of the combats
in the purified zones, even the bosses.
Yeah, it was just those fucking confused guys.
That was it. Everything else was just mache.
But those fucking things, God damn, they would confuse the
batter and that was the end of the fight.

(35:31):
Yeah, I didn't. I don't even know what the game
over screen looks like. I mean, I won't go too hard on
the gameplay just because I feellike there's nothing to actually
say about it. I like it.
I like it more in this game thanin Hello Charlotte.
And I think it's just because itgets to kind of show off a
little bit of character, like inthe fights when the bosses talk
to you and then also the battle sprites.

(35:51):
I think Hello Charlotte would have been sick of Ether Rain
drew like some crazy battle sprites.
I liked Hello Charlotte a lot more for one specific reason,
and that reason is that there issignificantly less of it.
Hello Charlotte shits on this game even though I will grant
you that the gameplay of off is better, but that's a very very

(36:16):
fucking low bar to clear. Yeah, I like this game more than
hello Charlotte personally. I personally like Hello
Charlotte more than this becauseOh no, it's it's I guess we're
talking strictly about gameplay.I do agree that off has to take
it over Hello Charlotte. But just like as an overall

(36:37):
game, I think I enjoyed Hello Charlotte a lot more just from
like the storytelling and the fact that like I actually got
attached to some of the characters in that game, even
though it took three whole games, whereas in in off.
Oh, I'm so glad that Seth, you brought up like way earlier on
that like, the first 90% of the story is just inconsequential

(36:58):
because I just remembered when Igot to the end of this fucking
game. And that cat whose name I can't
even remember the name of, like he basically explained the story
to all the Dum Dums like me. He was like, Oh my God, how
could you kill the mother and the baby?
Are you really going to let the opaque mist of the narrative
cloud your judgement so harshly?And my reaction was like, yeah,

(37:20):
I'm about to kill a pet too because like who the fuck this?
I think I was in the exact same mental state.
Yeah, like you, you have to makeme care about a character in
order to make me feel bad for having killed it.
Like you, you can't really have your cake and eat it too, in
that sense. Yeah, I I have a lot to say

(37:42):
about that in that regard. I'll probably hold off until I
give my rating 'cause I did a lot of my ranting and there
about that aspect of it. But this game is just a holistic
narrative failure and like everyevery way I can think of.
And that's why this game that doesn't have shit on Ello,

(38:05):
Charlotte, or really any of the other Tumblr slop games to be
honest. Like all of them are so much
better than this. And yes I will.
I will give this game its flowers for like being the
progenitor or whatever, but Nah.I just, I, I firmly push back

(38:26):
against the idea that 'cause I, I, I feel like there's a lot of
people that would get angry hearing us call the narrative a
total failure. Because I agree with you.
But like, The thing is, maybe in2008, that was like a cool and
unique twist, which I, I don't even know if that's true, But
like you can't just have A twistthat the player is a bad guy.

(38:48):
And that makes it like a fundamentally good narrative.
Like if I take a game like Fury,the narrative of that game is so
much better for reasons other than the, the point that it
makes at the end that I don't want to get into.
Like there's, there's so much better and unique and
interesting storytelling in thatgame outside of that core twist

(39:09):
that like the twist almost doesn't even matter because it's
telling you more about the worldthan it is about the, the
character's role in it. And yeah, like, like again, the,
the 1st 90% of this game is completely useless and pointless
and boring. And every single NPC that you
interact with outside of three has the exact same face with

(39:30):
pointless robotic ghostly dialogue that I don't know if
they ever even tried to get me to care about any of them
because that they all just have the exact same fucking sound
effect when you talk to them. None of them say anything
interesting or funny or cool. And I don't know, like, did the
did the big fat guy kind of makeme laugh when he was panting

(39:50):
because he was chasing you and it's funny because he's fat?
Yeah, I guess that made me laugha little bit.
But like, that's it. No dude, fuck that.
This game's narrative is a failure.
Any fucking anyone who wants to disagree with me there and talk
shit like go ahead I will die onthis hill.
This game Like two things first.2008 doesn't matter.

(40:15):
People have been writing storiesfor thousands of years like it's
the video game. Stories didn't come into
existence in 2008, and this one doesn't do anything particularly
cool, notable or otherwise like worthwhile relative to its
predecessors. And #2 this was a free narrative
that now cost $15.00 that they didn't do anything with.

(40:38):
And I am judging this game basedon the fact that the price
increase from 2008 to 2025 was Infinity percent.
And that's that's just ridiculous that to me absolutely
nothing like there is no amount of anything in this game that
justifies charging that amount of money here.

(41:00):
And the reason why the narrativeof this game is so dog shit is
because it is just a whole lot of all right.
I won't say the first word in myhead.
It's just pretentious as fuck. Like this.
There's there's no meat on the bones of this story.
This this game is this game is just a guy who liked to draw a

(41:23):
lot of pictures and a guy who makes some really cool tunes and
then figured out how to work RPGMaker but can't really write
worth a shit either. And that is just that is just
what this game is. There is absolutely no
interesting through line in the narrative of this game, and
anyone who is making seven hour YouTube videos of this game is
just projecting whatever dumb bullshit they want to put onto

(41:46):
this game in order to justify the fact that they like looking
at the combat sprites and listening to the soundtrack.
Period. Full stop.
For me, it's, it's just a foundational and structural
failure with how they wrote the characters in terms of like just
how much you care about them. Because the way that I cared
about them is that I thought of them as like the same thing as

(42:09):
the T flings from the Grove. And for anyone listening that
didn't catch our coverage of Baldur's Gate 3, those tieflings
are dead as fuck and I didn't feel bad about it at all.
So that's that's not a good place for your main characters
to be in my to occupy the same space in my mind.

(42:30):
It's like I could even potentially get behind a main
character that I don't care about if there's like still
something interesting going on, if that makes any sense.
Like if there was a question to be asking with regards to like,
what is the batter doing? Why is he doing this?

(42:50):
Like what's going on in the background?
You never get anything to indicate that there's any kind
of back story with this character.
He's just there and he's purifying.
And that's basically what the game is saying at the very end.
I, I, I just don't see at all what the game is trying to do in
that sense. And I don't know if there is a

(43:10):
broader point. I would probably venture a guess
that even if there is a broader point, it's just not it it it's
communicated so poorly that it shouldn't have even been a point
in the first play. Yeah, So like, here's the thing,
right, Is that I actually think,OK, before I launch into this, I
think that there is one very, very obvious allegory for the

(43:33):
whole game. And after I finished it, I was
kind of like teetering around some, like, Reddit threads and
YouTube shit. And it seems like pretty much
people seem to be more or less in agreeance.
And I'm curious if you guys did any any like degree of post hoc
analysis on what you think the allegory of this game might be
before I just kind of out and out say it?

(43:56):
I don't know what you mean if you're talking about like the
overarching narrative, no. But I did get curious about
stuff like Vaughn Gacy because I'm probably the only person
here that didn't know who that was.
So I googled it and then when I saw that he was a serial killer,
it actually made me realized that there was actually a pretty
cool and more deeper cut like reference sort of name that was

(44:20):
used as another enemy, which wasa how do you pronounce?
It's like the fucking French name.
It's like Guild, the Guild arrayor something like that.
And the reason why I thought that was like a cooler ref than
Von Gacy's because Gild array was like a symp for Joan of Arc,
who has like an infamous part ofhis history being that he killed

(44:40):
a bunch of kids so much. So it's like that was so
infamous that he was actually like probably the inspiration
for a fictional character named Bluebeard in one of those old
ass French books that also killed a bunch of kids.
And I do want to clarify also that everything I just said I
learned from fake Grand Order. So it may or may not be fully
accurate, but I think it's mostly accurate.

(45:01):
But that's like the only cool, like a reference I really
understood in the game that I guess could be not necessarily
allegorical, but just Oh no, I just thought it was interesting.
Well, first of all, it's really interesting to learn about Blue
Beard because I did not know that about Blue Beard and Mary
and I watched a movie about thatand it was like a really fucked

(45:25):
up movies, like some French movie from the 70s and having
some historical context for that's kind of interesting.
But here is what I think is going on as far as like the
allegory. And to preface this, many people
have asked Mortis Ghost what this game is about.

(45:48):
And he just says, which is code word for I died.
There was nothing. I didn't have anything in my
head. I just wrote shit, but I think
what's going on here is that thebatter is he's just a force of
nature and he that force of nature is some illness, insert

(46:08):
illness here, we'll just say cancer for the sake of it.
And he is just going through thevarious layers of Hugo's body,
his meat, his sugar, his carbs, basically, and all of that shit.
And basically at the end of the game switching him off because
he killed Hugo. And I think that that's
purification is just the batter going through and basically

(46:31):
killing Hugo as a some form of terminal illness.
I don't know. I think that's pretty cool.
It would be cool if it weren't for the fact that there is
absolutely almost zero through line to interpreting that until
the very end of the game. Outside of what the zones are
called. There's like, there's really no

(46:52):
other alluding to it until you get to the end of the game.
When did I thought they mentioned that the kids taking
pills and like act 2 or something?
That's when I was like oh but I don't remember when that is.
I feel like that's somewhere in the middle though.
You like look at one of the things on the walls.
It's like I don't want to take the pills anymore or something

(47:12):
when you're like talking to yourdad.
I don't remember but I totally believe you but.
Yeah, I know. I agree that there's not there's
not enough. There could be like a lot more
like cool shit. And they could have like made
you care about the characters, like after you beat an act and
then it just like shows you go in the room being like, oh,

(47:32):
another protector's dead or whatever they're called.
And then it's just like, OK, that didn't do anything.
Like, I don't know, there could have been cool shit there.
It's so uninspired. Yeah, that's my problem.
It's like, it's like a very like, in my opinion, boring
allegory obfuscated behind a bunch of pretentious weirdness

(47:55):
for weirdness's sake, which is just, it's, it's just not.
It's just not interesting. Yeah, like the The thing is, I
can appreciate like a, you know,like a complex allegory in the
sense of Thomas, like in the sense of what he's describing.
But like you have to build it around that.
And if you don't have your narrative built around that

(48:18):
concept or that scaffold, then it's all just going to, it's all
just going to fall apart becauseyou slowly realize that nothing
makes sense. Like like you said, Thomas, the
only thing that really like points towards that is the name
of the zones and like the four elements and the secret fifth
element or whatever. But like what?
What does the character design of Jaffet have anything to do

(48:39):
with any of that? It's like it.
That's like a very specific thing, but like that's one of
the guardians. Why?
Like what the hell does it have to do with anything?
It am I too dumb? I don't know.
I don't care. The game.
The game didn't make me. Yeah, I think you just kind of
learned about historical figuresand thought they were cool and
then name things that because it's the same with the fat guy
being Enoch. Like it has nothing to do with

(48:59):
Enoch in the Book of Enoch or anything.
It's just there because it's cool.
Yeah, and I mean, that just thatsums up the game really is a guy
just like put in a bunch of ideas that looked and sounded
cool to him and that's that's pretty much the game.
And that that should honestly, it just drives me crazy when
when people do that. Well, OK, let me back up.

(49:23):
It drives me crazy when people do that.
And then there's like a whole community of people that worship
it because there's, there's justnothing to worship here other
than the music. The music's great.
Yeah, like I appreciate it when it's like small kind of
unimportant things. Like for example, how the big
ass robots in automata are called like Marx and Hegel or

(49:47):
whatever. It's just like a small little
reference of like, oh, they're factories.
Oh, they are the means of the production.
That's kind of funny. But when it is like when you're
supposed to draw a broader narrative understanding from it,
that's when I just start to be like, you're full of yourself,
get out of here. Yeah, I'm, I'm trying to avoid
stepping on like too many specifics 'cause I don't want to

(50:10):
repeat myself at the end of thisbasically.
But like, this game invented thewhole like Tumblr slop formula,
right? That like literally every game
that some solo dev makes an RPG maker has has followed ever
since its inception. And it's like Step 1.
You start with some like lol XD random aesthetic #2 you add a

(50:35):
dose of quote UN quote unsettling horror to like
demonstrate to people like I'm fucking serious about this.
Number three, you find some way to break the 4th wall because
that's cool and hip and it makesyou seem like a self aware human
#4 you'll then like gesture vaguely at some kind of theme or

(50:56):
allegories involving morality, mortality, creator intent,
mental health, what the fuck ever, whatever strikes your
fancy and and that's it. And that's the loop that all of
these games crib from. This game invented it so sure,
but the problem is I hate that invention.
This is actually the only game like that that I've played cause

(51:18):
like I've heard of like those other games, like one shot, but
I've never played them. But from but I heard you guys
talked about those games. They're pretty good, right?
Or. They can't be good.
Really. It can be good.
This this is an example of that formula done wrong.
But Undertale is an example of the formula done like at its
peak. Yeah, Undertale is the

(51:41):
justification for this as a formula even existing in the
first place. Yeah, I agree with that because
like I, I did like a little bit of research because it's been
such a long time since I played Undertale.
But I remember near the end of the game where the skeleton
explains the true meaning of theexperience points and levelling.
And that revelation made me go like, oh shit.

(52:03):
Because my understanding of the game, of like, of everything
that happened got subverted in like a cool and clever way.
Whereas that similar moment in off where the cat explained the
story to me, it was like, I don't care.
Yeah, I think a core difference in Undertale is that game uses
diegesis in a very good way thatI don't think this game ever

(52:26):
used at all. I almost don't even think it's
fair to compare Undertale to this game.
Yeah, I feel that way too. So I think like a big problem
between like this game and an Undertale and a Hello Charlotte
is that how do I phrase this oneSEC?

(52:51):
So games like Undertale and Hello Charlotte, they provide
you some kind of emotional anchor that is rooted in
something that is not just, it'ssort of inane weirdness.
Like there's some there's some psychological anchor that

(53:12):
creates this powerful or relatable center point for all
of the surrealist shit that's going on.
So Hello Charlotte and Undertaledo a fantastic job of that.
But the problem with off is thatit just feels like a a boat that
got set adrift. I could break it down a lot

(53:34):
more, but I guess that's just the very like simple explanation
for for how I feel is that like a games like Undertow and Hell
of Charlotte do a very good job of being more character driven.
Like in those games, you've got these talkative, emotional,
well, just emotive protagonists that are really just trying to
survive in their world. And the plot is more of a

(53:56):
vehicle for their like psychological hero's journey or
whatever, whereas this game was just purely plot driven and
you've got like this stuck protagonist who is just like
dead set on their goal. And so rather than a character,
they're just kind of a tool for the plot.
But the plot sucks. I just want to bring it back to

(54:21):
what you're saying about having emotional anchors.
And to me, one of the like biggest outright faux pas of
this game made was your quote UNquote companions.
Can someone please, please, I would love an explanation for
why your companions in this gamein this kind of genre that are

(54:43):
known for having like really good, likable companions.
Like go back to fucking Kroner Trigger and you got oh God, I
can't remember his name. Frog Frogman.
Is he just called Frog I? Think it's just frog.
You got like Mallow and Geno from Super Mario RPG, every
character from Undertale, which I'm not comparing it to, but I'm
just giving examples like why did this game choose to first

(55:03):
say all of that for circles? Why I?
Think it was some kind of symbolism, but I didn't bother
to dwell on it. Yeah, me neither.
I can't even remember what theirnames are.
It's like alpha. Yeah.
Sigma is not yours. Sigma is one of the enemies that

(55:25):
you fight, I think. I think the Queen has Sigma, but
yeah. They're Greek.
They're Greek letters, yeah. Like again, if someone wants to
give me some big brain explanation for that and it's
like some huge reference to fucking Greek mythology because
it has Greek letters, like OK, go for it.
Didn't come across in the game. It was boring.
I wish I had a character that talked to me, that made me feel

(55:48):
like I had a place in the world,but it didn't.
Yeah, that was just one of the many ways this game dropped the
ball IMO because like, not even are they just these like weird
abstract circles with Greek letter names, But like the way
that you get them is so anti climactic.
It's just like you walk into a room and there it is.

(56:09):
Oh OK, I have a new party membernow.
I didn't realize I had a party member until I got into COM.
Can you miss epsilon? I feel like one of them.
It's not required to get them, Ithink.
I was actually just sitting herewondering that, and I don't know
if it like triggers something, but it does seem like you could

(56:30):
skip it, right? Cuz Epsilon's the one in that
dreadful, awful, terrible cafeteria minefield puzzle,
right? Yep.
Yeah, I guess. I don't know if you could skip
that, but it does seem like you could.
My guess is that like how this game does, if you don't trigger
getting that as a party member, there's just going to be a block
in front of one of the doors. Yeah, I agree.

(56:52):
Yeah, I don't. I don't.
Think this game is like meant tobe a good game.
It seems like he kind of just made some shit that he thought
was cool and like that's it. I don't think he I think if we
set all this to I don't rememberhis name, some whatever ghost,
then I think he would be like, yeah, that's fair.
Like I don't think he would be like, actually this is fucking
really good. You guys are wrong.

(57:13):
Yeah, but that's my thing though, right?
Like if I was examining this under the same context that I
did Hello Charlotte, which was afree game that I downloaded for
Steam off of Steam, aside from the one game that cost like $3
for like 9 hours of content or whatever.
I would be judging this game under a very different
microscope than I do for a game that was made in 2008, had 15

(57:36):
years to sit in this guy's brain, and then they got like,
presumably there were a lot of names in those fucking credits.
Like there was a production teambehind this fucking thing and
charge me $15.00 for it for basically a worse product than
what existed in 2008 like that. That is the microscope I'm going
to examine this piece of shit under.

(57:57):
Yeah. My assumption, complete
assumption of how this worked isthat fan gamer came to him and
said, hey, we really like your original game, can we do a
remake of it? And he said yes.
That's my guess. Oh IA, 100% agree with that.
Imagine he probably didn't even do anything for the new one.
He was probably just like, yeah,you guys can do that.
And they were like, hey, cool, we'll give you X percent and

(58:18):
that was it. I doubt he did anything.
Yeah, I was actually curious as to how much he was actually
involved with this remake, if atall.
Heavily, I think what I read is he basically drove the ship.
But but yeah, I mean, I don't, Idon't know what that means.
I don't know if they had like a real budget or like what the
scope was or anything, but basically everything I read said

(58:42):
he was basically in control of the project outside of his like
production supervisors or whatever it.
Would have been cooler to make asequel.
Here's a here's another thing though, that like kind of pissed
me off. And I think is maybe what drives
some of this thinking is that I feel like I got like cooked by

(59:03):
the Steam trailer because they have those like cool animations
for like Dadan and all this other shit.
And I thought I was going to getlike cutscenes and things with
like actual production value, but turns out that was just
three seconds in the trailer. That's pretty Steam trailer
looks sick. I got you.

(59:25):
Then game is really going to make an animations.
It's like all one guy and he does shit like that for like all
the Undertale anniversaries and shit.
So yeah, you guys got owned by that one talented guy They have.
Oh. God damn it even like, emulated
the style really well, yeah. It's just so weird that they
made that, they took the effort and the time to like, make that,

(59:45):
but just why not just put it in the game?
True. It would have been very cool
because that's that's even like the RPG maker style where like
when you first go, I think Hello, Charlotte did it, which
like all the time when when you go in the room, then it shows
you like a still of something and then it goes into the game
like that's they all the RPG maker games did that back then.
I mean even this game does that right?

(01:00:05):
Like they show you all of the I,I don't know how to describe
them. Some of them look like newspaper
clippings, like all the like random pictures of pigs and
farms and shit. Does that happen in game?
Yeah, many, many times. Did I have a setting off I?
Don't remember that at all. No, they're they're not just,
they're not like area transitions.
They're just the it's like the quote UN quote story being

(01:00:29):
explained to you, or at least the zone story.
Are you going to talk? About like, no, it's like
there's like there's like 1. From one actor, right?
Where they kind of explained like, like the processing of
like the raw materials. And there's like, like that neck
too. Yeah.
But like they were in area transitions.
Yeah, I. Was thinking more like when you

(01:00:50):
show up in a room then it shows it does like what hell Charlotte
did which it gives you like an animation of like here's what
this room would look like if it's not shitty pixel art that
we made. And then you go back into the
room rather than just be like this diatribe with fucking
random bullshit that the guy thought was cool in the
background. Yeah, for sure.
I want to nitpick those scenes too.
They, they made it so it's like the, the scene slides and you

(01:01:12):
can like see all the stuff you were describing and then it
stops as the dialogue comes in instead of continuing to slide.
And that really fucking botheredme.
One thing we did not talk about at all, probably for good
reason, is the puzzles. Discuss.

(01:01:33):
I mean, I wrote, I wrote down are they puzzles or are they
annoyances because they just felt like annoyances.
They felt like just the signalist, like room to room
shit but like worse. I I do want to say I feel like
some of the puzzles are the onlyarea where I was even somewhat
positive because while they wereextremely tedious to like solve
in some cases, like I'm thinkingof like the kind of like the

(01:01:56):
labyrinth maze that you have to get through.
Like that's kind of puzzle. It's not a great one.
But like that thing is only annoying because of the random
encounters. Like if it weren't for random
encounters, I'd think all the puzzles and this would be
basically fine. But I did want to shout out, I
thought, the questions you have to answer about the three
posters. I think that puzzle is actually
pretty good. I hated that one so much.

(01:02:18):
I hated it so much. It was just so annoying to
interface with. I tend to agree with Seth,
actually, where I did like some of the puzzles, the puzzles that
I didn't like was anything whereit was just asking me to write
down some numbers because I mean, that's just classic RPG
Maker, really super boring shit,compounded by the fact that my

(01:02:43):
Steam screenshot hotkey crashed the game every time.
So I didn't much like those, butI did like some of the other
ones, like the one you're talking about with the posters.
I liked the one where I had to match the pages with the card
suit, even though having to talkto the random guy to buy one to

(01:03:06):
finish it was pretty stupid. Like there were some decent
ideas in the mix insofar as likeRPG Maker puzzles are concerned.
But yeah, by and large, they're just kind of there.
Did you guys read that story of the cards?
I did not. I mean, I did, but there's so
much like broken text and shit that I couldn't really suss

(01:03:28):
anything out from it. That's why I didn't, because I
looked at two of the cards and Iwas like, there's nothing here.
I'm not even going to try. Like I assumed eventually the
game was going to be like, here's the story, like it was
going to be in a completed book at some point, and then it just
never was. So I was like, OK, whatever.
Oh, but Jordan, that's the point.
Because it's a fragmented narrative, just like cancer.

(01:03:53):
The only thing I thought was cool that's related to a puzzle
is the save point thing, like loading a different save point.
I think that that's cool, and I think it would have been extra
cool in 2008. Oh yeah, that, that that is
actually something I thought wascool.
And that would have been super cool.
Was like the end of the game when it gives you the three save
files that you have to go through.

(01:04:13):
Yeah, that, that was pretty neat.
But yeah, all the puzzle, unlessyou guys nickname one.
I thought that they were just kind of like annoying to
interface with. Oh I didn't mention the one that
was like game quittingly bad. I'll take that back.
I have mentioned it. It's that fucking cafeteria
minefield. God that thing is so fucking

(01:04:35):
irritating for no reason. So annoying.
But my favorite part about that was the path where you have to
go to the bottom left, that MPC that's there that might just.
Stay in. There and.
Just not move for like 30 seconds.
Absolutely horrendous. I like the concept of this

(01:04:56):
puzzle. I like the the one where you
push the statue onto the roller coaster.
It wasn't a. Required one?
I thought that one was. I think that's cool.
Like wait, it wasn't. Accidentally do it.
But no, it's not required. Wait, but how do you get oh,
wait, no, all it does is let youget into that room with the
treasures. So it is.
Yeah, it's it's literally meaningless.
Yeah, I'm with you, Ben. Like when I did it, I thought I

(01:05:18):
was like progress and then it didn't give me progress and I
was like, what the fuck? But I think, I think what what
Seth said is kind of what this game is where every, a lot of
the game, if not all of the gameis like you look at it and you
go, oh, that's a cool concept and that's the whole game.
And that's why it's inspirational to people.
Yeah, for sure. Like, I, I can understand if you

(01:05:40):
are, if you were, like, a teenager and you already have,
like, artistic proclivities. You like to make music, you like
to draw pictures. You have an idea in the back of
your mind that you want to make video games.
And you played this thing when you were 16.
I get it, dude. I totally fucking get it.

(01:06:00):
Like that fucking whale pops up and you are probably laughing
your ass off and thinking, holy shit, this game's the bomb.
But 17 years later as a 36 year old and this shit's just cringe.
Yeah. I think the whale thing was
funny too, because I was like, am I about to get fucking owned?
Because I thought it was going to be like a like a hidden
secret boss kind of thing. I was like, oh, he's about to

(01:06:21):
just kill me. Or I thought it was going to be
like zone under from Final Fantasy 6 where he's going to
eat me like fucking Monstro and I was going to go to a different
area. And but now he was just kind of
like a slightly harder than everything else enemy and which
was a big bummer. Yeah, the the whale was dope
like that. That is, that is one thing I do
want to heat praise on this gameis that like the combat sprites
or the enemy sprites are fuckingawesome.

(01:06:45):
I think they're super cool. Yeah, like, like all of them
are. It's like a style that they're
like no one. I haven't.
I can't think of another game that really does it in that
style. Yeah, 'cause like all of the,
what are they called? Elson, The Elson, Like when they
go fucking who's a what's a corrupto fucko?
And like there's just a bunch ofblack shit coming out of their

(01:07:05):
limbs. Yeah, those look fucking sweet.
That's very cool. I would call him cool.
Well, why don't we, because we were kind of dipping into this
earlier, Why don't we talk aboutremakes and remasters?
And I just want to start it off by saying, do you see remake and

(01:07:27):
remasters as two different things?
A remake is like potentially adding a lot of stuff to the
game. Like for example, Final Fantasy
7 remakes. Those are like practically just,
I mean they are just different games, different story, just
with a lot of similarities. Whereas a remaster is basically
just porting graphics. I'm thinking of things like like

(01:07:51):
the Oblivion remaster. They didn't call that a remake,
did they? That was a remaster.
They called it a remaster, yeah.Yeah, yeah.
That's like the definition of what a remaster should be.
And it was also on Game Pass, which is super nice.
Nintendo is a pretty big offender of making all of their
remasters $60.00 fucking price engines which I am not a fan of

(01:08:16):
but yeah. What are your guys's thoughts on
games like off that decide to charge when they fundamentally
don't add a whole lot? Yeah.
I just, I just want to say before we get into this question
that I put this in our OneNote file maybe 30 to 45 minutes
after I started the game becausethe context that I want to keep

(01:08:38):
in focus here again, 17 years later, $15 instead of free.
So with that in mind, go ahead, Jordan.
I was just going to say like, I don't really know what a remake
is because like Final Fantasy 7 Remake is like it's the same

(01:09:00):
game kind of, but they changed it, which is like a retelling.
So it was a remake, just like a retelling.
So Ben and I, Ben and I were talking about this in the
channel the other day, which is like kind of also why it was
fresh in my memory. So like for for me at least when
we talk about a full on remake like a Final Fantasy 7 style

(01:09:22):
remake. Disclaimer, I haven't actually
played the games, but I'm at least tentatively familiar with
them. I generally like my personal
preference for games like that. Like the reason I haven't played
it is because my preference is for the underlying systems of
the game to be like more or lessidentifiable, but modernized or

(01:09:46):
made like slightly more compelling in some way.
So like I hate the idea that theFinal Fantasy 7 remake isn't
just like a strictly turn based game with maybe like a little
bit of juju, a little bit of extra Genesee qua, which is why
I never bothered playing them. But what I really hate is the
idea of the story, dialogue, characters, whatever getting

(01:10:09):
touched in almost every case because like, if you're gonna
call yourself Final Fantasy 7 Remake, but like everything is
like upended and turned on its head, it's not fucking Final
Fantasy 7 anymore. It's Final Fantasy fucking
accent Core 2 or some shit. Like it's not the.
Fucking snogging. That's not really inaccurate,

(01:10:34):
but. Yeah, that, that's why I like, I
want the definition because I think Final Fantasy 7 is like
the only remake that I think is like, that's a remake.
The other one is also Square, which is Strangers of Paradise,
which is a remake in the most fucked up way of Final Fantasy
1. One, yeah, yeah, that's how I
feel about two because like 7 Remake and Strangers of
Paradise, I feel like they're the only remakes that are kind

(01:10:55):
of like that, where they like change a lot from the original,
where is I think most things, even Oblivion and like Demon
Souls, like I guess they're technically remakes because
they're quote UN quote made fromscratch, but like, yeah.
And I guess, but I wouldn't callthem remakes the same way that's
Final Fantasy 7 Remake is. Because like when I think, when
I think of remasters, I think oflike kind of, I'm going to be

(01:11:18):
honest, I think of laziness where all they do is just like
upscale the textures and shit and resolution.
Yeah, I wish they did that. That's that's what I consider a
remaster. Like that's that's what I would
call a remaster. Yeah, and a remake.
Yeah, and even though I just called it lazy, like I'll still
buy and play them. And I think this is where off
fails, where they they charge 15and it technically is a remake

(01:11:41):
because they did remake the entire thing in Unity.
But as you mentioned, Thomas earlier in this court, it's like
you remade this game in a new engine just to have it play like
it was in the old engine. That's crazy, I didn't know it
was in Unity, I thought it was just in a newer RPG.
Maker, you know how I you know how I know that?
Because every time I press my screenshot button I got the
Unity crash window. That's fucking hilarious.

(01:12:05):
That's so weird. But yeah, like I don't that's
that's why I like I want to ask the question.
I think it's like interesting oflike is it does a is a remake
like a retelling like what's because like it's what Tom said
right? Like, I didn't like Final
Fantasy 7 Remake when I first played it because they changed
all that shit. But then when you reframe it and

(01:12:27):
you're like, OK, it's not supposed to be the original
game. What they're doing is like kind
of fucking with that. And then like Ben said, and it's
like, oh, it's actually like really cool what they did.
I, I don't have a great way of explaining this to people that
don't play League of Legends, but I kind of see it as what in
League they call a, I think it'scalled a VSU versus an ASUAVSU.

(01:12:49):
the V stands for visual. It's a visual, visual and skill
update. Meaning it's going to be the
exact same champion. They're just going to like redo
all the textures. They might do some like small
like quality of life stuff in there.
Whereas in ASU they're like completely reworking the
champion from the ground up. It's effectively going to be a
new champion when it comes up. And I don't think there's that

(01:13:10):
many remakes honestly, that really fit into that category.
Like Final Fantasy 7, like we'vebeen talking are like the very
far end of what that is. And they're like there might be
some others in there like maybe you could call near Replica,
yes. That's like borderline Near is
weird. I think it's a remaster.
That's a remaster with additional content.

(01:13:31):
It's like how they would do likeFinal Fantasy 6 Advance and they
would add like a dungeon. I don't know, like I feel like
they, they updated the gameplay of that game enough I'm
comfortable calling it a. Yeah, that's true.
It's yeah. Maybe, but.
I'd say on the lighter side of Remake.
Like remakes for sure. I would consider stuff like
Ocarina of Time 3, DES, Majora'sMask 3DS, the I think there was

(01:13:52):
a Super Mario 64 three DS that they made.
Those are definitely remakes. Like you can play as like
fucking Waluigi that that's justdefinitely a remake, but a
remastered. I think that's a remastered with
additional content. I I think that once you start
adding additional content, that's when you have to start
asking whether or not it's a remake.
Like even I called Super Mario RPG earlier a remaster, I think

(01:14:14):
I called it, but you could call that a remake.
Like it, it has the optional Kulex fight at the end of the
boss rush stuff. So like in that.
But yeah, I think that that likeif you're calling it a remaster,
the goal is to not change anything except for visuals and
accessibility. I think that is the goal of a
remaster. Yeah, it's honestly kind of

(01:14:35):
funny. Like I feel like you can almost,
you can almost say we're debating the fucking ship of
Theseus here. But I, I feel like there's, it's
like with remakes anyway. I feel like it's a spectrum
where there's like a wide range of things I think I would be
comfortable calling a remake, like spanning near Replicant all

(01:14:57):
the way up to Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which is just like a
completely different game. Whereas a remaster, I think like
I think this might be controversial, it's not well
thought out, but I would call something like the DS version of
Chrono Trigger a remaster. And the reason I, the reason I

(01:15:18):
say that is primarily because there's just like a, there's a
fairly small amount of new content, but the game is
otherwise like more or less exactly the same.
And I think that that's like theimportant part of a remaster and
then a remake. I think like, again, it can be
near replicant to Final Fantasy 7.

(01:15:40):
But I think my thing is that I prefer the near replicant side
where all they do is take the shitty old game, modernize it,
make it a little more fun, slap on some extra bells and
whistles, upscale it in UE5 and then like slap it on the ass and
put it on Steam. Whereas Final Fantasy 7 remake
that shit pisses me off. Yeah, I think another one that I

(01:16:03):
realized while you were talking is like Resident Evil.
They've done an ass load of remakes.
Oh yeah, that's true. Like the peasant the PS1 to
GameCube is is like a remake. It's pretty close.
And then the Resident Evil 2 to the new Resident Evil 2 they did
is a fucking remake. Yeah, I actually bought one of

(01:16:25):
them. I think I bought the Resident
Evil 2 remake but I haven't. It was on like a super deep
steam sale and I haven't played it yet.
And then, yeah, there's the Silent Hill 2.
I don't know if that's a remakeror remaster.
I think, man, that's, that's a tough one that I think that's

(01:16:47):
closer to remake. Yeah, I agree, because it's like
a third person. It's like a Resident Evil 4
third person perspective, whereas the original was like
Resident Evil 1 right with the fixed camera angles.
Yeah. Yeah, I think I would categorize
that as a remake. To kind of draw back though,
because I looked over our notes again, Thomas, the question you
had in there was what should theexpectation out of a remake or

(01:17:10):
remaster be? And how do you apply that now
that we've kind of delineated between those two things?
Are you saying like in the context?
Of off sure, like like if some like you said you hate Final
Fantasy 7 remake, I don't know if that's for reasons of it

(01:17:32):
being a remake, but what would you what would you want from a
remake? I'm sorry, from Final Fantasy 7
you're saying? I mean.
Just like, just like in general.OK, well, well, again, like like
I was saying before, like it's awhole ship of Theseus argument
where like there's there's a whole lot of there's a whole lot
of different ways that I can look at it.

(01:17:54):
Like, but I think I, I think I already said that in general,
like my preference out of a remake would be something like
Oblivion Remastered, where you're just taking the game,
making it not look like it's a fucking early PlayStation one
game. You're taking it into 2025,

(01:18:15):
making it look pretty. You don't.
You don't touch the story, the characters, or the writing at
all, other than if you want to like fix some like shitty
translations or whatever. And you don't touch the gameplay
mechanics too much. Like I think what Near Replicant
did was great. It took a shit game modernized

(01:18:36):
it, made it fun. I think what Final Fantasy 7
Remake did was fucking terrible.It took what was already fine
and could have just stapled someextra interesting stuff on top
of that and then did what they did with all of the graphics and
UI and stuff and I guess just release it that way.
But instead that game is like, it's This is why I was saying

(01:18:58):
like to me, it's not even a remake of Final Fantasy 7.
It's its own unique entity that is totally separate from Final.
Fantasy 7 I I see what you're saying.
I think you'd prefer if it had like a subtitle like crisis core
or whatever. Like Crisis core ex or some
bullshit. Yeah, Yeah.
That's, that's what I'm saying. Yeah.
I absolutely think that the Final Fantasy 7/1, it was a

(01:19:18):
failure of marketing more than anything else because, yeah,
calling it because it should have been.
They should have come up with something like cooler than to
say remake. But obviously, like everyone
just wanted to remake. So I think they just tried to
exploit people a little bit, thinking that you were getting
the same thing, which is, yeah, the people being pissed.
I would I would, I would vociferously argue against it
being a failure of marketing. I would say it is a fucking

(01:19:39):
triumph of marketing because they grifted the shit out of
people because they spent ass tons of money on that game and
if they had just called it FinalFantasy 7 dump cubes would have
bought that shit. I think they would have, I
think, I think I, I, I like, I don't know if it would have been
better or not, because I think if they either went with what
you want, which is just do the old game, but do it.

(01:20:01):
It was modern standards. And they marketed that way.
They might have sold more. I think they kind of landed in
this weird middle area of like, they pissed those people off.
New people think that they didn't play the old one, so they
don't want to play that. So I think they kind of landed
in like this weird no man's landof like, who's this for?
Yeah, that's just that's, that'sjust modern square in general.
I think, I think who it's for before Seth goes is Ben, because

(01:20:24):
I think, I think that's. Exactly.
Yeah, So I do agree with that. Remake was for me, but then they
dropped the ball with Rebirth and yeah.
So. Because I don't even want to
talk about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's gameplay. I don't want to talk.
Yeah, I don't want to go into iteither because I think that it's
it's like open world failure. But yeah, story wise.
I don't know, I I feel like a lot of the more normie coded

(01:20:45):
people that I've talked to, evensome people that have actually
played Final Fantasy 7, really like the remake.
Yeah, no, they definitely. Do yeah, I've said this before
and I do still feel this way. I like the story of Remake
better than the original. Yeah.
It's a lot cooler. And, and I'd like, that's why I
gave the discipline that I haven't played Remake.
Like I don't want to comment on the actual quality of the game

(01:21:08):
itself because I mean, I don't know it, I haven't played it.
I'm just commenting on calling it a remake of Final Fantasy 7.
Yeah and it's so weird cuz like were they the first to use the
remake moniker? Was there any game before about
the seven remake? Resident Evil wasn't officially

(01:21:29):
called Resident Evil remake, buteverybody called it Resident
Evil Remake starting in like 2003.
Like I remember being in high school when people would say,
did you play the Resident Evil remake?
So I don't I as far as I can think of, Final Fantasy 7 is the
first one to actually put it in the title because I don't think
they typically did that. Yeah, there's probably some shit
out there that did, but yeah, that's definitely the biggest

(01:21:52):
one I would say. More than like, you know, here's
a here's a weird one that I might consider a remake.
I don't know if this is answering what you guys are
asking, but is is Team Fortress 2A remake?
Secret, but there was another team.
Fortress 2A. Remake Team Fortress Classic.

(01:22:13):
Yeah. Maybe on, maybe on, maybe on
launch, but like as time has gone on.
Aren't remakes, Aren't all sequels remakes at some point?
Well, no, because it's like continuing the story instead of
like, making it the same thing, you know?
Did Team Fortress Classic even have a story?

(01:22:36):
I mean, I don't even think TF2 had a story until they started
doing the meet the whatever classes thing.
I don't know, something to thinkabout.
So I kind of wrapped up some of our other questions in this one,
but kind of bringing all of thisback to.

(01:22:57):
Hello lovely viewers. This marks the spot in the
episode where Craig Bot decided to go into maintenance in the
middle of our episode, so I'm just giving you a heads up that
the audio quality might sound a little different from this point
on. Luckily, Thomas was local
recording so we were able to salvage something.

(01:23:20):
The main thing is that there is just a difference in the sound
normalization, so some people might be a little quieter or
louder. We apologize for that, but thank
you for listening. The question I was about to ask
before we were rudely cut off was what has age done to this
game and are its influences still valid?

(01:23:42):
And that's all kind of in reference to the previous
conversation we've been having with like, remakes and remasters
and, you know, the entire fact that this game cost $15 and it
had a remaster that didn't actually update anything.
Where you guys at on that? My question is like, I guess I

(01:24:03):
don't understand the question like what?
What is an example of a way thatsomething's influence could be
rendered invalid? It's kind of just a question on
like kind of what Jordan wrote about, like put yourself in the
shoes of being in 2008 and all these other games came out and

(01:24:24):
like how this game would compareback then compared to playing it
now with all of that being in the past.
Like if this game was released in 2025, would it still have the
same impact, assuming other games like, you know, it's the
the games that it influenced like Undertale and such didn't
exist. If this came out today, do you
guys think it would still have the same influence?

(01:24:45):
I'm going to say no, but it's not just like a, it's not just
like a hater response. Yeah, because because I'm
thinking about it in like a weird existential way where I
think about like where Toby Fox's life would have gone for
this. What, he'd just be like a
cashier at a gas station and then the people that would be
playing off in 2025 or like people that can't even fucking

(01:25:08):
spell and name countries and shit.
So like, they're not going to make, they're not going to make
a generational game. They don't have it in the deal
with. Yeah.
So go ahead, George. I was going to say to build off,
like what Ben said, I don't, I think Toby Fox is still making
Undertale If off like literally doesn't exist, I think it's just
not going to have things like a genocide route.

(01:25:29):
Like it's just going to be missing a couple things because
I think that's what this game does.
The game did never. I can't imagine off inspire
someone to make an entire game. I think OFF inspired someone to
make certain decisions within the game that they're making
that was inspired by Earthbound.I mean, I agree that I think
that, like, Toby Fox would like still try to make a game in lieu

(01:25:51):
of this game existing. It's just like, I don't think
Undertale would be Undertale. It would be some like totally
separate thing. It might be a fucking Madden
clone. And the reason I say that is I
think like if this game didn't exist, I don't think any of the
lineage that ran after it would exist primarily because of the

(01:26:14):
type of person that would have been inspired by this game.
Because I don't think if you if you if you deleted it from
existence and then just like hadreleased it this past August,
this would just be like some fucking dead game with like 3
steam reviews, right? Because I think that this game
probably captured that like middle-aged millennial, like 17

(01:26:40):
year old on Tumblr vibe that I don't know exists for any other
like generation and quite the same way.
So I think it it like it's, it'sa, it's a matter of the
demographic that it captured that I don't think existed at
any time other than like the years 2008 to like 2012 and the

(01:27:02):
people that that inspired. Yeah, I'm looking into his
specifically and apparently it'sa lot of like, character ideas
he got from this game, which I don't understand at all.
Like he got like Papyrus and Sands from this game and I don't
see, like, apparently that's from like the Dan and I.
Yeah. I was going to say it's the Dan.
Yeah. Like, I don't know, I think
that, yeah. I can hear it in some of the.

(01:27:23):
News surprising to me. I can hear, I can hear off in
some of Undertale's music for sure.
Sure. I mean that's basically the
whole under sale soundtrack was just like, what games does Toby
Fox like? And then he would take the light
motif that Undertale has and then make it in that game's
style. I feel like the thing I'm having
trouble seeing is how a character like the Dan would

(01:27:47):
inspire a character like Papyrusor Sands.
Like I like like visually, OK, they have like the fucking teeth
thing, whatever. But like in terms of like the
story you want to build around them, how and like how is that?
I just don't see it. I think it's just visually.
I don't know if it goes past that if any.
Speculation on my part would just be projection passed up,

(01:28:09):
but visually I can definitely see it.
Yeah, I think it was like early ideas too, before he kind of put
inserted his own like quirkiness.
It was probably more because Toby Fox is a lot about what are
the characters doing? Like he's like function 1st and
then he built he he puts character into them.

(01:28:31):
So that's probably like he took the function of the Dan and
that's why Papyrus showed up. Oh, OK.
I kind of see that because he's like the protector of the like
first area you go to or whatever, or whatever he calls
himself. I don't remember.
So I think, I think this game in2008, it's like a lot better.

(01:28:51):
That's like kind of why I wrote it, because like, and that's why
in where I wrote, I wrote like all the games that came out in
2008. And the only other like indie
game that's even close, it's like Braid, right?
And like Braid was just like, it's basically just like a
puzzle game that's like, it's a fucking allegory to the World
War 2 bombing. And it's like, is it though?

(01:29:12):
Is it really that? So I think I think this game
would have been like pretty prolific in a 2008 setting.
I mean it just. For the storytelling.
I mean, it's as prolific as it was, right, Because it was
released in 2008, but. Yeah, I, I think if we played
this game in 2008, we would likeit a lot more than if we play it
now. I think the price.
I do agree with winners would too.
Yeah, would you if you paid $15.00 for it in 2008?

(01:29:35):
Yeah. Probably still because 50
because games were all $60.00 back then.
Yeah. And like, like I said, I've,
I've, I've like been very deliberate in mentioning the $15
thing because, yeah, could you take me back to like 18 year old
me and like put off in front of me and chances are I'm going to

(01:29:55):
fucking love it. But again, like nearly 20 years
later in my 30s, paying $15.00 for this is like a very very,
very, very, very different like context.
Yeah, I think paying $15.00 for it back then is a lot more
reasonable than now, just because like now the options
that you have available comparedto 2008 is like it's a joke.

(01:30:17):
And this game is like got absolutely dumpstered by every
game that got inspired by it. Personally I don't, I don't
think any game inspired by this is like even half as like it's
at least as twice as good as this game is.
Yeah, I'm, I'm curious how many examples of that there are where
like the the products of inspiration are just like so

(01:30:38):
much better than the original, because there's got to be like a
lot of examples of that across history.
The first one that comes to mindit's The Rolling Stones.
Fuck The Rolling Stones I guess like if this was the first like
weird indie game I played that messed around with 4th Wally
breaky stuff and like because like I never really played much

(01:31:04):
of Earthbound or much of Mother 3, so even its influences
wouldn't have got me much or, orlike the kind of like vague
storytelling that this game has.Maybe I would like it in 2008.
But the problem for me specifically is that I think in
2008 I was too dumb to have understood any of this.
This was that would have been before I was in high school so I

(01:31:25):
would have been mega dumb but. Yeah, I mean I would have been
too for sure. Like this is I would have played
this game like 2 years after I watched Eraserhead and God knows
I didn't know what the fuck was going on in that movie.
Yeah, if I played this game whenI was 17 and then like, I played

(01:31:45):
it and I was like, what's going on?
And then, I don't know, I went to starman.net, for example, and
then they were like, oh, it's about like cancer.
Like you're basically playing ascancer.
I'd be like, this game is the greatest game I ever fucking
played. So yeah, I get it.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like again, 2008 version of me
playing this game for free, likethis game and space Funeral,

(01:32:06):
which I think came out not long after this game.
I I don't I don't know the yearsoff the top of my head, but like
like the the the holy triumvirate of like these games
from that time period would be off space funeral and you may
Nikki right. So all three of those would have

(01:32:26):
like, fucking slapped hardcore if I was a teenager, which Toby
Fox was so well, presumably. Yeah, exactly.
Know how old he was but yeah, like.
Yeah, he's, I think he's one year older than me.
I think he was born in 1990. No, he's born in 91.
So yeah, like it's as old as us.I totally understand the
influence because yeah, if I putmy if I put myself in those

(01:32:48):
shoes, then yeah, I would have loved this game.
But I'm I'm not in those shoes so.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think, I think age did
not do kindly to this game. And also the price tag I think
is also like the the big oof. I, I, I think I'm definitely
with Thomas in the sense that I would have a very different

(01:33:10):
opinion of this game if it wasn't $15.
I think that like like Jesus Hello Charlotte was easily
better value compared to this game.
Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, I would definitely be much
more positive on this game, specifically the remake or
remaster for you, whatever you want to call if it was like 699
or 599. Did the original game have the

(01:33:32):
like art slides that go on the side of your screen?
I don't think so. No, that's mostly there because
like like 616 by 9 wasn't reallya standard back then, was it?
It was probably just 4 by 3 resolution.
Yeah, if I had to guess, this game probably if you played the
original 1 you have the same accessibility issues.
Just hello Charlotte. Like you can't resize the window
and shit. That's probably why this exists.

(01:33:55):
Just to just to like put the final nail and the the the
context for this. I'm pretty sure I bought Silk
Song on release when it was on sale for $15.
So I bought fellowship. For.
I bought fellowship for $22.00 and wait let's see how many
hours I have in that. So far 134 SO.

(01:34:19):
Yeah. But yeah, yeah, I think, I think
the value comparison isn't exactly fair when we start doing
that. But I do think $15.00 for this
game is too much. And I also think this game is
too long. I think it is.
Talk about that. But like it's it's it's fluffy
for no reason. I think you have to make the
value comparison specifically for the remaster because they

(01:34:40):
they chose to release it at $15 like.
Yeah, but I don't. Like the decision they make.
I don't like Silk Song is $16.00, so if a game needs to be
equivalent to how good is it compared to Silk Song?
And that's the pricing that it should be.
I think that's. I mean, yeah, I think to do, I
think you can definitely get into like a slippery slope that

(01:35:01):
way. But I mean, that's just like a
demonstration across 2 variables, right?
Yeah. Like I wouldn't want to do that
for every game. Like I, I think it would be
stupid to get into a pissing contest of, well, this game gave
me this much for $20.00. But I feel like the like, first
of all, Silk Song is fresh in memory, and second of all, the

(01:35:23):
like vast valley between the twoof them in terms of quality and
content is yeah is absurd. And also if we did the same
thing for like Super Mario RPG, I would probably say the same
thing for it being $60.00. Yeah.
And I because I think once we get under the $20 price point,

(01:35:43):
it's almost the same price. I think when you get over 20 is
where it starts to get egregious.
Like the difference between $5 and 15 is extremely negligible.
Like if you can afford $5, you can afford 15, right.
But the difference between 15 and 60, that's completely
different ball game. I don't know, I, I don't
necessarily think about it that way.
I think I I would have had a very different opinion on this

(01:36:05):
game if it was like 499 instead of like.
I would have judged it along a different axis.
Yeah, and The thing is, like with nice genres, you can run up
the price because the people in that niche have no other choice.
But the problem with this game is that I don't think that this
kind of thing is niche anymore. Like it's pretty mainstream to
make a game like this. The amount of free RPG maker

(01:36:30):
games that come out on steam is probably second to hentai games.
Like there are so fucking many RPG Maker games.
Well, in any case, we don't haveto beat all this into the
ground. I I left some space here for any
general Tumblr slop rants that you guys wanted to make if you
wanted to do that. Otherwise we can just jump into

(01:36:50):
rating. I wrote an essay, I'll just post
it on the discord. I was going to say I wanted to
start before TOP shits out of that.
Like, I like these games so I have nothing bad to say about
them. I don't like the fan bases of
these games, but it's also because they're half my age and
I wouldn't like them no matter what, so it's not really like
I'm not supposed to. So I like them to keep in mind

(01:37:11):
that of the games that I described as Tumblr Slop, which
are what this game Hello Charlotte, Undertale and One
Shot I, I love three out of fourof those games.
I guess I wouldn't say I love Hello Charlotte, but the further
I get away from that game, the more I like it because it just
percolates in my mind constantly.
But three out of four of those games I have very positive

(01:37:33):
feelings towards. So it's it's more just a
descriptor of the mood and the fan base, I would say yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And I guess I don't have a whole
lot to say about that particularcomponent personally.
Like I feel like I've played so many like cringe community games

(01:37:54):
and like purposefully avoid themat this point that I just don't
let it affect how I feel about them.
I guess I mean you, I mean, you're saying you like the game
so I I understand, but I don't know.
I to me they're pretty easy to ignore with the certain.
Let me put it this way. I find the community engagement

(01:38:18):
quote UN quote surrounding something like Automata and
Signalis way more gross than thecommunity engagement with games
like this I think. Why?
Just in terms of of horny posting you mean?
It's like the deeper complexity a game has, the more I would

(01:38:41):
expect from a community, something like OFF or even,
Hello, Charlotte, maybe Undertale, maybe I'm not going
to expect as much from those communities because it's just
like, yeah, I mean, they just played this game when they were
12 years old, before they went to high school, and they thought
it was fucking sick ass. And they had a lot of fun with

(01:39:02):
it. Like, OK, I don't want to judge
that too hard. But like something like
Signalis, like, you're not playing that at 10 years old and
having any kind of reasonable understanding of it.
You know, you're playing this when you're like, a young adult.
And I have a slightly higher expectation for the kind of
discourse you're going to engagein, I guess.
Signal This is a weirdly unique one because it's like such a

(01:39:26):
minor point of the game, I feel,and they just latch the fuck on
to that and dismiss the rest of the game.
Near I mean, it's like that shit's in your fucking face.
So I can understand that if you like Near just because Toby's
hot. Like that's kind of the point of
the protagonist. I build different.
I like the original old man near, that's my favorite near

(01:39:48):
and that's why I haven't played Replicants because it doesn't
have the old man. I do think the old man
relationship is better than the brother relationship, but I yeah
for. Sure, because the Brother 1 is
creepy. Yeah, I think that's a whole
episode in and of itself. We could have.
Well, I guess like why, why are you casting stones there?
Seth I guess is my like curiosity.

(01:40:12):
How do you mean? So what makes the communities
like Signalis and Near like moreegregious than Tumblr slop
games? Like like specifically?
I feel like I didn't hear like specific reasons other than like
the implication that people justhorny post.

(01:40:32):
I don't know, I thought I answered it like if the if the
game has like incredibly complexthemes that it's trying to
explore, then to just focus on the ass that has been presented
in front of you is more insulting than if you were to
just like make some fan art of toriel because you're like
trying to engage in a little bitof like furry bait.

(01:40:52):
Like I don't like it when these games have a lot to say and it
seems to just get brushed off bythe people that seem to love it
the most. OK, yeah, I mean, I, I can
understand that. But I also think that like, if

(01:41:15):
we're looking at it in terms of like things that would be at the
top of a game subreddit, right? I think it's just a lot easier.
I I think that there's maybe just like a degree of bias
there, maybe because someone just scrolling through their
Reddit feed is just going to be like, oh, lesbians about Bam,

(01:41:35):
whereas someone who like makes some like 5000 word effort post
like that's that's not going to get like as absorbed in the doom
scrolling mix, right. So it's just easier to react to
the horny posting. But I do think that the the
people that would react to the horny are the same people that
would also enjoy the 5000 word post.

(01:41:57):
It's just like the things that float to the top are the things
that people can more easily likedigest quickly I guess is kind
of what I mean. I don't know, I I just, it might
be a broader problem that I havewith Reddit because that my more
extreme opinion might be that like I think that community,
these should be more heavily moderated in what they allow on

(01:42:19):
their subreddits. And if you're, if you are a
moderator of a subreddit and it's just getting fucking
flooded with the fan art and shit and you want it to be a
subreddit about like the discussion of the game instead,
then just delete the fan art post.
So all that's telling me is thatthe moderators of these
subreddits want it to be the former rather than the latter.

(01:42:41):
Yeah, and I guess like I've beenin subreddits before where they
like, relegate shit like that tolike one day a week, right?
Like post your fan art on Mondays or whatever.
Yep. Any other event I don't have,
like I don't really have like a super strong opinion on that
necessarily because like I guessbecause it's just really easy

(01:43:03):
for me to sidestep the cringe and find the stuff that I want
to seek out. And maybe that's just like going
back to being like a closeted anime fan as a teenager who like
I had absolutely no desire for anyone to ever know I was an
anime fan because of all the horny posting and weirdos.
But like, I would just find I would seek out the content that

(01:43:24):
I want and just ignore the rest.Nowadays I don't give a shit,
but back then? Yeah, Oh yeah.
I mean, I, I, I my, my opinion on this would remain true.
When I go to weed con and I see very cringe things, let's just
say yeah. Yeah, for me, it's really easy

(01:43:44):
to like, compartmentalize a games community and the people
who like it and then like the actual quality of the game
itself. Because like, a good example of
this is Five Nights at Freddy's.I think that the first four of
those games are actually like, really fucking good, but they
are completely ruined by the people who like those games.
And by people, I mean children. Yeah, for me it just it kind of

(01:44:05):
depends on it depends on a number of factors I think.
I think a like terrible cringe community can ruin a game for me
before I play it. But if I play the game and
discover the community is cringeafterwards, that won't bother
me. Although I know you went.
Through that with like silk songwhere you like starting to ate

(01:44:27):
silk song because of the people talking about.
Yeah for sure. I hated all that fucking.
What do they call it? Skong posting or some shit?
I have no idea. I'll admit, shock people, I'll
admit I became like stupid as fuck and actually like I still
browse the Silk Song subreddit and some of that shit's actually
funny now. So I mean, I got I got absorbed
into the fucking the Borg, but like I was actually problem.

(01:44:51):
I was actually gonna say that the thing that runs counter to
that was Signalis because I played like 30 minutes of
Signalis. And then I was like, yeah, I'll
just browse the top post of the subreddit just to like, just to
like see, like I'll avoid spoilers.
It's all good. And it was just all like fan art
lesbian shit. I was like, huh, OK.

(01:45:12):
And I was really surprised that the game did not have more of
that. Let's just say like based on my
experience. And like, like, that's a yeah,
like that's just kind of what I'm talking about.
Like if I'm like, if I'm fresh off of a game and I'm like, Oh
my God, this might be one of my new favorite games ever.
I, I think the same thing happened with Automata.
And I talked to Thomas at the time about it.
Like, the first thing I want to do is I just want to go to

(01:45:35):
subreddits and I want to start like pouring through discussion
of the game, like movies. It's really easy to do it with
because more often than not people aren't going to be super
weird about it, especially with new movie releases.
But a new game comes out, peoplesee anime ass, and that's all
they're going to talk about for a fucking year.
I don't blame them. I completely understand that for
for for near. I completely understand it

(01:45:55):
because again, it's so in your face and like, yeah, and
completely intentional signalist.
It's like it's beautiful in the game, but then people went nuts
with it. There's nothing like Signalis.
I don't think is warrants that at all.
Yeah, near is very horny by design.
So yeah, for sure. Yeah.
But but again, I, I, I think that most of that problem is

(01:46:15):
just with like the format of Reddit and how it works.
And basically what I described it's it's a lot easier to scroll
past two BS fucking ass in your face and be like I like that
upvote. It's not like a discussion
platform. Yeah, yeah.
It's not like a discussion platform, like at all.
Hold, wait, hold on, I have to ask this question and we don't

(01:46:39):
have to linger on this too much longer.
I'm sorry, do you guys actually upvote ass pictures when they
get posted? Fuck yeah, I don't upvote
anything I like, forget that's afeature sometimes.
Fuck yeah. That's great.
I'm not going to say all of them, it's not like I see ass I
upvote, but it it. Depends.

(01:47:00):
Systematics. But for comedy, fuck yeah.
Yeah. One thing I'll say is, based on
this discussion you guys just had, absolutely under no
circumstances go to any fake community at all.
I mean, that shit is that shit'sanime adjacent.
So yeah, I get it. Yeah.
I mean, it was a hentai so. Yeah, literally has hentai

(01:47:23):
roots, so you already know. Well anyway, we've we've spent
plenty of time shitty gone the Tumblr rights.
Why don't we jump over to ratings?
Any closing thoughts before we do that?
Top to bottom game sucked. Top to bottom game sucked.

(01:47:45):
Thomas wanted to go last on ratings, so we can start with
Jordan. But yeah, I don't, I don't want
to beat a lot of things, but like, I think the game is cool.
I think it'd be great if it didn't cost $15.
And I'm glad that the game play of the game was easy to get

(01:48:06):
through. And they even had like, the
unrelenting combat speed, which was fucking awesome.
Like, that's something that we didn't talk about, but I think
that that was super cool. Where like, literally the game
doesn't even wait for animations.
Like the enemies just go and then the ATB keeps going.
I think that that's actually badass.
Yeah. We kind of talked about a
narrative and everything, so I don't really need to go over

(01:48:26):
that again. So like, yeah, it's a fine game.
I wish I didn't have to pay for it.
It was definitely like a super influential game.
And like if you want to make a game like Earthbound, play this
game because you will definitelyget ideas to use in your game.
And it was fine. Like it's not great, but it's
fine. So for me it's a four and a.
Half. I think it's still higher.

(01:48:47):
One pointer, baby. So much higher than I thought.
Well, see, because I think you guys are all going to you all
like hello Charlotte better. And if you do, then you should
be lower than four and. 1/2 I I could just read the the I could
just read the room from the way Jordan was talking about the
game, that he was going to like it more than we did.
So, but yeah, what do you think I was?
Going to hate it. As I was playing it, I was like,

(01:49:09):
Ben fucking hates this game. Just like hypothetically, and
you don't have to put a ton of thought into it, if this game
came out this year with games like Undertale not out or like
the things that inspired, what do you think you would rate it?
If it's the exact same game, it's like a zero.
Like it's probably like a 1 1/2,but like I would imagine if

(01:49:33):
those games came out first, it would be it would look a lot
different. And I'm, I'm not asking you to
like, you know, commit to that hypothetical.
I was just curious. Yeah, it wouldn't be a zero.
It would it would be like a 2 1/2 I think.
Oh, interesting, Ben, why don't you?

(01:49:53):
Why don't you go next, Ben? It's definitely higher than lot
2 bombs, just have to say that. Yeah, I'll just, I'll just RIP
off the Band-Aid. It's a six out of 10 for me,
mostly because it's it's. I told you it's you like to
fucking. I fucking told you, fucking male
I. Love that.

(01:50:14):
I love that. Like it sounds like you're
screaming in the distance. Like you're so fucking bad that
I rated it what I rated it. He guessed 2.
And 1/2. Because I was like, if he hated
acknowledge he's going to fucking hate this game, but
acknowledge just hit the fuckingright note for.
You Yeah. The thing is, when it comes to

(01:50:36):
like, I know that everyone's going to disagree with me on
this. This is very much like the
hardest imaginable take that will be said tonight.
But I when it comes to like story and narrative, I feel like
I played the same game two weeksin a row.
But the difference between signals and OFF is that signal
that OFF asked very, very, very little of me, so I didn't resent

(01:50:57):
it as much. That's so funny.
Basically it it it, it just getsthe craftsmanship points that I
give to people like Matthew Mitosis, and that's why it's a
six out of 10. That's so funny because they did
last. You liked it more.
That's so fucking. Oh.
God, that's funny. I got to find like pretentious

(01:51:19):
games to pick now because I think.
That's what bad. Days we're going to play all
Jonathan Blow's games. All right, well, As for me, I
don't know, maybe I'll punch down a little bit.
I fucking hated this game. I enjoyed it, OK, It wasn't like
logic bombs where like there were things about it that pissed

(01:51:40):
me off and I wanted to play it just to like refine my opinion
of why those things are pissing me off.
I didn't want to play this game it it pissed me off and I
continue to not want to play it because the actual act of
playing it for me was just so mind numbingly boring.
There is nothing less fun to me than looking at another monitor
while I'm just spamming Z and hearing the fucking shrieking

(01:52:04):
sounds that the enemies are making.
That is just so egregiously horrible to me as an experience
and you know it. It got points here and there for
the music I like. I I kind of shit talked it
earlier, but I thought for the most part it was pretty good.
Thomas mentioned some of the like whispery zones that were
pretty good and I did like that.The prose was terrible,

(01:52:27):
particularly from the Last Judge.
None of the, I don't know, like,I guess visually some of the
characters were memorable, but in terms like, I can't remember
a single line that Dadon said, not a single goddamn one.
And when you have a game that for me is miserable to play and
unmemorable, and he charged me 15 bucks for it, I can't give

(01:52:51):
you very many points. I have to give us some credit,
though. I'm not going to give it a
fucking one because it did come out in 2008.
And I just want to be fair and judging the 2008 game and the
remaster game, because we're kind of doing both.
We're not really like delineating them.
So I'm just going to give this game a 2 1/2.

(01:53:12):
I think I nailed that. I got 2 OK.
All right. Yeah, I think your question, I
think the 2008 context is like very important, specifically
from like basically what we talked about, just like a from
an influence perspective, because like if this game came
out today, it would be like so, so, so, so bad.

(01:53:32):
I, I don't know, I just look at a lot of the like timeless games
that are like truly masterpieces.
Like look at Chrono Trigger. That game's never going to age.
It's like always going to be themasterpiece that it is.
It's one of my favorite games ever is Majora's Mask.
I don't even like the 3DS version as much.
I like the original. And like I, I don't know, to me
if it really is a good game, it'll stand the test of time.

(01:53:55):
Yeah, no, I agree. I just think this game would be
like even worse if it was today.Like today, it would be very,
very, very bad. Oh yeah, this, this game would
get like lost in the sea of shitand no one would ever hear about
it. It would have to have like, a
lot more to it, like to conform to the standards that indie
games are today. Yeah, I don't know.

(01:54:17):
I I still just hold this game upto the standard of 2025 because
they charged me money for it. And like, Lineage be damned, I'm
not gonna, I'm not going to ratea game based on how good the
things are that came after it. Like that doesn't make any sense
to me. So yeah, I sipped.
I sipped on some hater aid for this game.

(01:54:38):
Honestly, if anything, that justlike, you know, it's kind of
hard to look at objectively, butit kind of makes me dislike it
more because I just think like, well, these games, like you
could have been these games, youknow, completely unfair, but I
don't know. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that that's,
that's definitely not fair 'cause like we can go and like,

(01:54:58):
look at a game like Pong, right?Pong is a dog shit game.
No one ever wants to play fucking Pong.
But without Pong you don't have windjammers.
So yeah. I guess it's kind of a Pong is
sick. I I think there's also like a
difference though like Seth said, like if you have a well
designed game top to bottom it'stimeless.
This game is not that. This game is just good ideas

(01:55:19):
that gave greater designers better games.
Yeah, but I'm just pushing back on the idea that like, we should
retroactively like penalize a game because of what it's
Lineage did afterwards. Because, I mean, Undertale came
out, what, seven years after this game or something.

(01:55:39):
Like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I'm not going to hold
a game up to the standard like sins of its father, you know?
Yeah. And to be clear, I'm not saying
we should do that. I'm just saying I think it's
really difficult to not do that post.
Facto, yeah, for sure, I get that.
Well, go ahead Thomas, you're the last one, as you asked.

(01:56:03):
All right, well, let's be perfectly clear that I think my
final score for this game is actually gonna be kind of
generous based on, like, how I think I actually feel about it.
And it's mostly gonna be on the back of the 2008 soundtrack that
I had to fucking manually mod in.

(01:56:23):
And as I've said numerous times,I'm also judging this as a game
with a modern production team behind it.
Since there's like a million people in the credits, it was
released through like a legitimate publisher, and I had
to pay $15.00 for it. So I'm not going to judge this
game on the same merits I might have had for the 2008 version,

(01:56:44):
which I think was just like the the two people that made it or
whatever. I don't actually know.
But anyway, this game felt like an active failure.
It takes a game that desperatelyneeded some kind of modern
overhaul of it's just super lameass gameplay systems and instead

(01:57:05):
it did absolutely fuck all with it, all while messing with the
few things that did work, like the music.
Again, not going to hold that against them.
Like I know that there's reasonsbehind why that was out of their
control, so I guess at the end of the day it's kind of
ambiguous if I'd hold that actually against them.
But again, this is a product I paid money for, so the fact that

(01:57:29):
I still got a substandard product compared to the 17 year
old version is still just fucking crazy to me.
But realistically, the remaster isn't the real problem with this
game. The real problem is that off
itself, when it is divorced fromits 2008 era cult status, is
just a hollow, pretentious shellof a game.

(01:57:51):
This game is patient zero of Tumblr slop.
It is the blueprint for the formula that we've seen dozens
of times since. I kind of mentioned that before.
You start with some quirky lol spork aesthetic, you add that
dose of unsettling horror, you break the 4th wall with a meta
narrative about the player or some shit, and then you end the

(01:58:14):
game while leaving the player with some sort of like post hoc
requirement to go do some academic homework to justify
that experience. Like my core issue is this game
demands to be analyzed like a complex piece of art, but
there's no fucking meat on them bones.

(01:58:34):
This game is weird for weird's sake.
The frameworks built on this cold, abstract, purely symbolic
concept with absolutely no emotionally human entry point.
It's a scatterbrained mess of sprites and purifying smoke that
sidetracks itself from any central narrative in any
meaningful way, even after we dothe 5 minutes of post hoc
analysis. So the emptiness of this game is

(01:58:57):
reflected in every single part of it.
Our protagonist, the Batter, is a dry, boring void.
He is a stoic, simplistic tool for a plot that barely exists
while the combat art is really good points there for sure.
Everything outside of combat is just this sequence of boring

(01:59:18):
sterile fucking rectangles. And then once you get to the end
and everything kind of crystallizes into what the plot
actually was, it just lands witha thud because the writing is
just so poor and unengaging thatany sort of oh shit moment you
might have was just completely undermined by virtue of just

(01:59:39):
everything leading up to it being bad.
So games like Undertale, Hello Charlotte, One Shot, etcetera.
They prove that this formula canwork, but only because they
anchor their surrealism and weirdness in something that is
substantive. This game has no anchor.

(02:00:01):
It is just a shitty, hollow artifice that makes abstraction
and surrealism, and it mistakes those things for depth.
And thousands of people seem more than willing to justify the
fact that they like the pretty sprites and the cool soundtrack
by projecting some untold numberof layers to the narrative that
simply do not exist. It's an influential, important

(02:00:23):
relic, but it is a terrible, boring game and again, the only
thing of value here is the original soundtrack and the art
sprites. And the remaster couldn't even
get the soundtrack right so thismother fucker is a 2 point O out
of 10. Wow, I did my Uber shouts with
everybody. I did not think Thomas would be

(02:00:44):
lower than me. I hated this game.
This game tramples on everythingthat I love by trying too hard
and not having the skill to pullit off.
Which is very mean to say, so I apologize, but it's.
True, I can't say I disagree. I I think it's a shame when, for

(02:01:11):
example, there are so many gamesthat are inspired by Earthbound
and you go back and play Earthbound and you're like, oh
wow, this game is like still actually like pretty goddamn
good. And then you go back to a game
like this that inspired a bunch of games and it's just, it's
just slop in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, and it is again,

(02:01:37):
important to recognize that a game like Earthbound has an
entire team of like career professionals behind it.
And this game was just a couple of French dudes.
But again, I'm evaluating it along an axis of having a team
behind it for the 2025 version. And in that sense, this game

(02:01:57):
fucking fails. Yeah, I basically just treat
this game like 2008. I don't like, I don't even think
that this like remasters anything past like a technology
update. So that's why mine's like a
little bit higher than if if it were to come out today.
Well, guess what fellas, This game beat logic bombs.

(02:02:18):
Hell yeah. In the wait, in the negative or
the positive. In the lowest negative, Yeah,
someone updated the scores. What doesn't it mean?
Yeah, it was me. I just didn't know if we did
double work. I wanted to make sure we didn't.
I was actually in the middle of doing it and then I couldn't
remember your score, so I closedthe window and then I opened it
again. I was like, wait, why are these
here now? I'm.

(02:02:39):
Just kind of glad we're all pretty consistent in rating
pretentious bullshit as it should be, like we did with What
Remains Vita Finch, it's over. Thank God it's we can finally
turn this game off. Playing Stall games next week.

(02:03:00):
Well, Ben, I think you're picking the next two games, is
that right? Yeah, so the primary game that
we're playing is Fate Stay NightRemastered, but there will be an
intermezzo game of Jigoku he sets.
I'm sorry, it's called Sense Sense of the seasons in
American. It is a freeware from up by some

(02:03:23):
random dude that I don't know. I played it in the past.
It was really short and it was free.
And I thought it not to like color anyone's opinion of it,
but because it was free, I felt that it punched way above its
weight class because of that. And I liked it.
And I'm just curious what you guys will feel about a genre
that I assume that, well, I guess Jordan plays a lot of

(02:03:46):
them, but maybe everyone else itmight be might not be very
familiar with Toho's game and now you will be.
I played a lot of schmucks and like, well like specifically I
played a lot of Toho in like the2006 to 2008 realms.
Like I played a lot of perfect Cherry blossom and what does

(02:04:06):
Eosd stand for? Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.
That's yeah. Weirdly enough, the one that I
actually liked the most was fucking Shoot the Bullet, but I
will be interested to talk aboutschmucks with you guys just
because I feel like it will be an opportunity for me to shut
the fuck up and listen for once.It's been a long time since I

(02:04:28):
played a schmuck, so I think I'mgoing to be in a similar
category. Yeah, you guys got to come with
the heat. Was interested in hearing your
guys's opinion on difficulty. Yeah, I'll be curious.
I don't have a good frame of reference for anything that's
not like a 20 year old Toho gameso.
With all that out of the way, that was off and we'll see you

(02:04:52):
lovely viewers next week. God this game sucked.
You gotta get the last punch in.