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scoutception · 5 years

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Final Fantasy Type-0 review: Depression central

If there’s one Final Fantasy subseries whose fate gets me feeling down, it’s the Fabula Nova Crystallis series, a novel and ambitious concept based around various games and stories of different settings and casts of characters, but sharing common themes and mythos, putting them in different contexts in each. While a fascinating idea, it ran into nothing but trouble with each of its entries, with Final Fantasy XIII and its sequels being very divisive, to say the least, Final Fantasy Versus XIII running into an infamously extended development hell, only to finally emerge as Final Fantasy XV, now almost completely separate from its original concept, and the final big entry, Final Fantasy Type-0, vanishing until 5 years after its announcement in 2006, as a PSP exclusive that only came out in Japan, a rarity for the series when it comes to its higher profile spinoffs. Thankfully, in 2015, Type-0 got a remaster on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC, finally allowing other audiences to enjoy it. Was it worth the almost 10 year wait? Well, that’s something we’re about to find out now.

Story:

Final Fantasy Type-0 takes place on the world of Orience, divided into 4 great nations blessed with Crystals: the Dominion of Rubrum, a place for the study and teaching of magic granted by the Vermilion Bird crystal, the Kingdom of Concordia, a female led monarchy able to communicate and control monsters and, more importantly, dragons, and home to the Azure Dragon crystal, the Militesi Empire, a technologically advanced state able to produce great machines of war known as Magitek Armors, or MAs, through the power of their White Tiger crystal, and the Lorican Alliance, whose citizens are much larger and powerful than any other in Orience thanks to their more direct connection to their Black Tortoise crystal. Orience is, unfortunately, not a place of peace, with each of the 4 crystal states wishing to unite Orience under them, and making plenty of attempts to in the past. The motive behind this is the legend of the Agito, a messiah said to appear during Tempus Finis, an apocalyptic event prophesied in the somewhat dubious, yet widely believed, Nameless Tome, with every crystal state seeing it as their divine duty to create Agito, to the point of Rubrum training so called Agito cadets from its brightest and most magically adept citizens.

The story opens with yet another war being started in the year 842 by Milites, whose emperor has been deposed by the brilliant and ambitious Imperial Marshall Cid Aulstyne (Final Fantasy games have a tradition of having a character named Cid somewhere, and finally, he made it as main antagonist), who immediately sets out to attack Rubrum. What would otherwise be a “normal” invasion quickly turns disastrous for Rubrum when Milites unleashed a new device called a crystal jammer, which cuts Rubrum’s legionnaires from their connection to the crystal, rendering them helpless before the Militesi invaders. Even worse, Milites also deploys a l’cie, a human chosen by their nation’s crystal to become its direct servant, in exchange for immense power and near immortality, the use of which in warfare was mutually banned by each of the 4 nations. Just when Rubrum seems doomed, the mysterious Class Zero arrives, 12 cadets who are unaffected by the crystal jammer, raised by Rubrum’s even more mysterious archsorceress, Arecia Al-Rashia, who proceed to liberate the capital, Akademia. Now, with the addition of two promising but otherwise normal cadets, Machina Kunagiri and Rem Tokimiya, Class Zero becomes a vital part in Rubrum’s efforts to reclaim their lost land and defeat Milites, once and for all.

To just come out and say it, the story’s biggest weakness is the cast, or, more specifically, its use of the cast. While the playable cast alone is certainly large, at 14 characters, and the supporting cast only grows from there, almost nobody gets proper focus. The main 12 members of Class Zero, named after playing cards, consists of Ace, Deuce, Trey, Cater, Cinque, Sice, Seven, Eight, Nine, Jack, Queen, and King, and despite being the “proper” members of Class Zero, they all only have a few character traits each. Trey is a knowledgeable type that tends to ramble, Sice is an arrogant loner, Nine is a violent muscle head, Cinque is nice, but downright weird, and so on. While after a while they all grew on me, it’s still pretty unsatisfying, especially when Ace, the face of the game, gets neglected just as badly. The supporting cast gets it even worse, as outside of Arecia and Class Zero’s commanding officer, Kurasame, most of everyone else that’s notable either has minimal at best story presence, or doesn’t show up in the story, period, being relegated to sidequests. Ultimately, the most focused on characters are the two “normal” people in Class Zero, Machina and Rem, which kinda makes sense, giving a more grounded air compared to off how putting the others can be to begin with, but even they don’t work out quite well. While Rem is fine, she doesn’t do very much interesting with the time she gets, while Machina, on the other hand, is very, very unlikeable to the point of hurting the story, whether it be his own cold attitude or broodiness to put the usual RPG protagonist stereotype to shame, he ends up way more unsympathetic than near anyone else in the story, even most of the antagonists. While the cast overall is definitely flawed, though, they’re definitely entertaining at a lot of points, whether they come from the main cast, mostly Trey or Cinque, or from some of the side characters, mainly the extremely greedy Carla and, most memorably to me, the paranoid, bombing throwing Mutsuki.

Since the story doesn’t focus on the characters very much, the main focus is instead the war itself. While it definitely has a few twists and turns, especially starting in chapter 4, overall, the battles and events of the war aren’t the most interesting subject by itself. More interesting is the elements around the war. This is by far one of, if not the darkest game in the franchise, and it doesn’t shy away from showing just how messed up Orience is. Rubrum’s main strength comes in the form of its Agito cadets, meaning, teenagers, as young as 14, at that, and the tactics the military uses means they tend to die in droves. Even when it’s technically pragmatic, between magic proficiency peaking at teen years and decreasing with age, plus not having many other means to resistance, it’s still very uncomfortable, and keep in mind, this is what the good guys, or the relative ones, get up to. Milites, meanwhile, is all too happy to deploy superweapons, such as literal nukes, and its soldiers are disturbingly fanatic, being more than happy to massacre towns, and even refer to Class Zero as demons. Class Zero themselves were raised to be soliders, and feel almost nothing in battle, and Rubrum’s leadership are paranoid and petty, to the point of the military commander actively trying to get Class Zero killed out of pure spite. Eidolons, extremely powerful monsters able to be summoned by mages, demand the lives of their summoners, and there are outright suicide squads of cadets who are only meant to summon more powerful Eidolons. Additionally, a very important plot point is that the crystals automatically erase the memories of anyone who dies from everyone’s minds, to the point Rubrum’s citizens need to wear dog tags just so it can be confirmed they even existed after they die. While they try to justify it as a blessing from the crystals that allows people to move on and not be held back by the dead, all it’s done is completely desensitize Orience to death, and having characters casually talk about being informed of their friends or family dying, and not feeling a single thing, is pretty disturbing, especially when it’s named character involved. It does a very good job of showing how constant warring and lack of reverence for the dead has corrupted this world, even when many of the characters affected still remain sympathetic.

Unfortunately, the biggest flaw of the story to me is that there simply isn’t a lot of it to be found, at least in regards to the main story. While the game is comprised of 8 chapters, that’s more than a little inaccurate, as half of those consist of a short introduction and a singular mission, rather than the 2 or 3 missions in the rest of the chapters. The story only really gets moving in chapter 4, and even then, many important points aren’t addressed until chapter 8, which is a downright bizarre and sudden change of subject and tone compared to the rest of the game, to the point a second playthrough is required because of how many holes are left otherwise, and even then, it can be a bit difficult to figure out just what is going on. The biggest achievement of the writing, on the other hand, is the lore of the setting. Orience is a fascinating world, with a detailed history of each nation, plenty of info to find on the various characters, and examinations of the various enemies of the game, all stored in a book in the hub called the Rubicus. It’s also quite interesting seeing the perspective flip compared to Final Fantasy XIII; instead of l’cie “merely” being granted the use of magic, and quickly going through their usefulness, at least by their masters’ consideration, along with the main cast being comprised of them, l’cie in Type-0 are near demigods who often live hundreds of years, and are just as fearsome to the party as to everyone else, for instance. Overall, though, while there are certainly many problems with the writing, I can’t help but say it works quite well regardless. Even with the limited time for both the story itself and the characters, it still builds a cast worth rooting for throughout the horrible situations, and an effective atmosphere that’s quite good at leaving you feeling somber. Moments like the entirety of the opening chapter, showing the utter devastation inflicted on Akademia in a mere three hours, and the various costly, large battles are very effective moments, and the ending is easily one of the saddest endings I’ve seen in a video game, for all the right reasons. Even the final chapter, odd as it is, has a lot of cool revelations and setpieces to me, at least now that I comprehend it.

Gameplay:

Type-0 is an action RPG that has you control the 14 members of Class Zero on various missions, each one possessing a different weapon. Ace uses cards, Deuce uses a flute (I swear they aren’t all this weird), Trey uses a bow, Cater uses a magic infused pistol, Cinque uses a mace, Sice uses a scythe, Seven uses a whipblade, Eight fights with his bare hands, Nine uses a lance, Jack uses a katana, Queen uses a longsword, King uses dual revolvers, Machina uses dual rapiers, and Rem uses dual daggers. Each one possesses a vastly different moveset and playstyle, such as Cinque being slow, but strong and tanky, Sice encouraging an aggressive hit and run style of play, even getting stronger for the more enemies she defeats while taking minimal hits, Trey excelling at range to a much degree than anyone else, while being near helpless up close, and Deuce being more of a supporter, having great support abilities, while her attacks are fairly weird to get used to, though effective on their own once you understand them. Despite the huge amount of characters, they’re actually fairly well balanced, all of them having important strengths and weaknesses, and while some can definitely be better than others, with Trey in particular coming to mind, possessing absurd range and the ability to charge his shots, it’s never quite game breaking. You can have up to three characters in your party, though their AI isn’t exactly great. They can certainly distract enemies well, and will make sure to heal you if your HP gets low, they don’t tend to be aggressive, and are terrible at avoiding the attacks of most enemies more complex than your average imperial trooper, and are near guaranteed to die to bosses. Speaking of which, the main wrinkle is that, while it varies, overall, your characters are not very durable, and in fact take hits about as well as wet toilet paper when faced with most enemies. This is balanced by the sheer amount of people you have. One person dies on a mission, don’t sweat it, you’ve got 13 backups. Of course, this also encourages training them all up and learning to play them as well, which is complicated by only characters in the active party gaining experience. Leveling up, in addition to granting the usual stat boosts, also grants ability points, which you can use to purchase or upgrade command or passive abilities and moves.

While just attacking enemies normally is decently effective, it can put you in unnecessary danger, and while you do have items like potions you can use to restore your health quickly, the most efficient way to fight is to use breaksights and killsights. Every enemy has at least one attack that leaves them vulnerable for a short time either before or after using said attacking. Hitting them during this period will trigger a break, or, if their health is low enough, killsight. Breaksights take a good chunk of their health away and stuns them, giving you a chance to attack them freely, while killsights just kill them outright. This one mechanic adds a lot to the gameplay, encouraging you to learn enemy patterns and attacks to see when they are vulnerable, and getting the timing down can make otherwise fearsome enemies easy to take care of. Of course, some enemies won’t take this very well, and may counterattack or even go into berserk states after recovering from breaksights, so you still have to be careful. Every character has 4 commands: regular attacks with their weapons, 2 slots that can either hold abilities or offensive magic spells, and a defensive command, whether it be the cure spell to restore health, putting up a magic wall to nullify some attacks, or just flat out blocking, which, while still causing you to suffer damage, prevents being knocked down, letting you score breaksights easier than if you were to simply dodge. Magic can be upgraded by harvesting phantoma from dead enemies, coming in various types like red for fire magic, green for defensive magic, and purple for unique spells. While powerful, magic usually takes a large chunk out of your magic points, meaning it’s better to save it for more dire situations, though harvesting phantoma restores small amounts of MP. As for equipment, aside from weapons, you have access to accessories that do things such as increasing HP by a certain percentage, giving immunity to status effects, or raising defense, though everyone can only have 2 accessories at a time. You also have three different squad commands: triad maneuver, which simply causes the party to do 3 powerful, rapid attacks, Eidolon, which summons an Eidolon you can control for a short time, in exchange for KOing the character that summoned it, and Vermilion Bird, a powerful spell that, to actually become powerful, has to be upgraded using crystal shards, which, while fairly easy to get most of the time, aren’t very numerous.

Type-0 uses a mission system, throwing you into various locations to complete objectives, though it usually equates to to reach the end of the area and kill an enemy commander. Most locations are pretty linear, though they all have a few side areas you can go to, usually for more items. You get graded based on how fast you completed the mission, how much phantoma you harvested, and how many party members got KOed during the mission, with getting the best rank on all three categories getting you an S rank, which gives a bonus item. Beating each mission on a difficulty above easy also unlocks other bonuses, whether they be additional items up for purchase or unlocking new spells or Eidolons, or just flat giving you a rare item. Completing missions also gives you money, with more the higher the difficulty and the higher your rank. Speaking of difficulties, there are 4 of them: cadet, which is just easy mode, officer, normal mode, Agito mode, which is a hard mode that makes every enemy 30 levels higher than on cadet and officer, and Finis, which is only available after completing the game once, and is, just plain absurd. All enemies have their levels increased by 50, they’re in permanent rage mode, causing them to move twice as fast and hurt twice as much, and you’re restricted to only being able to use one person per mission. It��s not much worth the effort. Aside from completing missions, your main source of items, magic, and Eidolons is from completing special orders, optional objectives that can pop up in various areas. While there’s various generic, white orders that only give items at the end of the mission for doing stuff like not getting hit for 30 seconds or not using magic for a few minutes, there are also specific, red ones with more specific objectives like taking out certain enemies, that give out better rewards. The main problem with accepting them is that, if you fail to complete them, you risk instant being killed over it, though you can avoid it you’re fast enough, as it’s delivered through portals on the ground.

In between missions, you’re allowed to explore Akademia, chatting with NPCs or party members, or engaging in “free time events” which are either conversations with random people, or cutscenes that tend to have much more interesting information. You only have a limited amount of hours until the next story mission starts, with each event taking two hours away, though time doesn’t pass just running around and talking to people without events. While a neat concept that could easily be like Persona, in practice, it doesn’t add much. While you can get some interesting information at times, and doing events also gives you items, it’s not very in depth otherwise. Even the sidequests with the more prominent side characters just consist doing their events whenever they’re available and doing a sidequest for them, eventually getting admittedly very good bonuses at the end of their little storylines. The other thing you can do with your free time is go out into the world map, where you can visit extremely small towns, get into random encounters, visit dungeons, and... not much else. While the world map isn’t tiny, there’s just not much to find. While there’s many towns, they are, again, tiny, only consisting of a single small area with a shop or two, a sidequest, and a little unofficial side quest to get a l’cie stone, which can be traded into a certain NPC to unlock lore entries in the Rubicus. There’s just not much of interest, and you’re very heavily restricted in where you’re allowed to even go on the world map, only being able to go to areas officially reclaimed by Rubrum, or that are the destination of the current story mission. Only in chapter 7 do you finally get some kind of freedom, to the point of being able to gain an airship to allow easy traversal of the world. Plus, most dungeons aren’t even meant to be explored on a first playthrough, with only about one or two being reasonable at that point, not that there’s even much to find besides l’cie stones and a chance at a rare item, emphasis on chance, since they’re always in a specific chest at the end that can only be opened once without reloading your save, and the chance of getting the most valuable item from them is rather low.

As for other activities, you can train in the arena, for downright piddly gains, or take on sidequests, most of which just contain of going out and defeating a certain amount of specific enemies, giving over items, and so forth. Most rewards aren’t great, but a few, namely from the more notable characters like the leaders of Rubrum, Kurasame, and Arecia, give very notable rewards. Sidequests don’t take time to do, but often require you to leave Akademia, meaning you need to weigh the time lost going out to do the quests against the time you could use doing events, which is difficult when you don’t know just what rewards either give out. When it comes mission time, though, you gotta venture out on the world map to your next destination. Speaking of the world map, along with the regular missions, there are also RTS style missions, where you, controlling a party member on the world map, help the dominion army reclaim forts and towns by taking out enemies and having units generated by controlled areas weaken said areas until you can invade them in a regular mission style. Instead of being graded on phantoma harvested, you’re instead graded on objectives completed, as occasionally you’ll get orders to do stuff like defend a fort for a specific amount of time or taking out a large enemy. While technically optional, you get bonuses for completing them beyond mission grade, such as access to “hero units” and direct control of certain areas. There’s a decent amount of these missions in the game, and they do make for an interest change of pace, but they aren’t much notable. You’re even allowed to skip participating in them, though obviously you miss out on rewards.

The highlights of the game are, rather sensibly, the end of chapter missions. Not only are they much longer than typical missions, they have much more unique settings, and, of course, bosses. This game has some very enjoyable, if difficult, bosses, ranging from the giant mech Brionac that is more than capable of wiping you out in a single attack, to the highly mobile mech of Qator Bashtar, Cid’s second in command, to several fights with the near invincible Gilgamesh (another recurring character in the series). My personal favorite is the boss of chapter 5, the dragon Shinryu, which is also all too happy to instantly kill you with most of its attacks, even more so than Brionac, and spend most of the fight enveloped in the darkness surrounding the arena you’re in, only being visible by the lights of its glowing red eyes. It makes for an amazing setpiece, and losing to it is almost more enjoyable than winning simply due to the failsafe implemented since the devs expected most players to lost, the details of which I simply cannot spoil. Finally, on a second playthrough, two new types of missions are available for you: expert trials, and Code Crimson missions. Expert trials are optional missions you can do during your free time, which you’ll likely have a lot of since events you see on a previous playthrough can be viewed again at no time cost on repeat playthroughs. While technically available in the first playthrough as well, they are way too difficult for the average player, i.e who isn’t insane like me. Code Crimson missions, on the other hand, are replacements for the end of chapter missions, consisting of you going off to do other stuff. While an interesting concept, in practice, they aren’t anything special, especially when they’re replacing the most interesting parts of the game, and they barely give any more story context either. The chapter 7 mission is the one exception, being very short, but an interesting concept and adding a bit more to the story. Plus, completing them all on one playthrough unlocks an interesting alternate ending, so that alone makes them worth a go.

As for the hardest challenges to be found, they’re a bit lacking. Aside from the regular optional dungeons, there’s one notable bonus dungeon and two notable superbosses. The bonus dungeon is the Tower of Agito, which can only be reached by airship, which consists of 5 floors where you need to fight 100 specific enemies, such as tonberries and behemoths, with plenty of chests to open in between, ending off on an extremely disappointing end boss that is just a Malboro that happens to be massive. While it certain sounds difficult, and pretty much everything is capable of one shotting you, once you get into a good pattern, it’s really just boring. Most of the time, they just spawn so slowly, and while after a while more of them come out at a time, it takes about an hour and a half at best to get through even if you’re otherwise efficient. As for the superbosses, there’s Nox Suzaku, only available in a second playthrough and onward, who has a chance of appearing whenever you harvest phantoma, stealing everything you try to harvest until it decides to go away. Aside from making it go away on its own, you can beat it up, which is quite a doozy. Instead of fighting you directly, it summons phantoms of various enemies to fight you, and while you could just defeat them all, this doesn’t do anything to Nox itself. Instead, you have to let the enemies defeat you, causing Nox to appear for a short time, allowing you to attack it until it retreats. Rinse and repeat, it’s not that difficult, and the rewards aren’t that great, so the main reason to beat it up is just to make it go away, because it stealing your phantoma is extremely annoying, especially when it can show up during missions, since you can’t just leave to fight it, and it’s entirely possible for it to flat make it impossible to get an S rank on that mission it decides it doesn’t want to leave. Not exactly a fun mechanic. The other superboss is, per tradition, Gilgamesh, in a stronger form than in the story. He only shows up on a third playthrough, at a few different locations on the world map, in the form of a portal. Entering said portals causes him to randomly select one of your characters to challenge. If you win, you get that character’s ultimate weapon, but if he wins, he steals your character’s current weapon. The ultimate weapons are kinda underwhelming, especially considering you may well have everything else done after a second playthrough, and it’s annoying getting specific people picked, but it’s actually a fun and fair fight, if easy to figure out.

Overall, Type-0 has some of the tightest gameplay among all the Final Fantasy spinoffs, and is the main thing that holds it together. It has a fast, hectic pace to it, interesting enemies to tackle, and a wide variety of people to try out. Really, the main criticism I have is the actual missions you have with which to try them out. The other main story missions aren’t much to look at, and same goes for the expert trials and Code Crimson missions. I’m sure this is at least partially due to originating on the PSP, and having to deal with its limitations, something that’s about become a theme in this review. Overall, though, it’s still more than satisfactory.

Graphics:

The visuals of Type-0 are a very mixed big, unfortunately leaning more towards negative. More than anything else, they make it very apparent that Type-0 was originally a PSP game. While the members of Class Zero themselves have decent looking models, if rather unemotive, everyone else, except a few important characters like Arecia, are much lower quality, especially the faces. Here’s a comparison between Ace and Carla.

The textures don’t fare much better, looking very blatantly stretched and blurry, especially on the world map, where bridges are just one long, hideous texture. Most locations outside of, again, the end of chapter missions don’t look anything special, and so many areas are just reused over and over. You go into a town, it’ll look like every other town, at least of that region. You invade a fort, it’ll look like every other fort. Repeat for almost every mission in the game. Thankfully, the big story missions look quite impressive and creative, my favorites being chapter 5′s, taking place on frozen clouds that end up near breathtaking, and especially the setting of the very final mission, which is, to avoid anything too specific, downright insane, in a good way. Another positive are the enemy designs, more specifically, the actual monsters, with enemies such as bombs and flans resembling their earlier FF designs much more than most modern entries. Unfortunately, there’s just one problem: the actual variety of enemy designs is rather lacking, with the majority of enemies being slight alterations or palette swaps. It’s a more minor point than most, but still something. The original enemy designs are quite inventive though, and overall, this is a game that excels more in general design than actual fidelity, like the spiraling Concordian capital surrounded by a sea of clouds.

Sound:

The music of Type-0 is plain great, as is usual for the series. The boss themes especially are fantastic, along with the main theme, The Beginning of the End. It also sounds quite distinctive compared to most of the rest of the series, having a greater focus on metal, fitting the more modern aesthetic. The English voice acting, on the other hand, isn’t quite great. It’s pretty obvious the dub was a rush job, considering Type-0 lacked the simultaneous localization process of the main series games, resulting in it being very lackluster overall. There are some notable voice acting names in it, like Cristina Vee as Cinque, Bryce Papenbrook as Machina, Danielle Judovits as Carla, Cassandra Lee as Mutsuki, and even Matthew Mercer as Trey, and they all do good jobs, but the rest of the cast varies, especially Class Zero itself. Ironically enough, the side characters tend to have much more solid performances, with special props going to Steve Blum as Cid, giving a very menacing perfomance, as well as other characters like Aria, Class Zero’s orderly, and Kazusa, the resident mad scientist. Corri English as Sice and Heather Hogan Watson as Queen also fair quite well. Beyond that though, the performances can be rather forced, like Nine and Cater, or just weak overall, like Rem and Deuce. This is not helped by the normal, in game cutscenes themselves, with their structure causing many long, awkward pauses nearly every sentence. It does, however, improve as the game goes on, to the point of the final cutscenes not being hurt by it near at all.

Conclusion:

Overall, this is a solid recommended by me. Even with the weakness of elements like the graphics and the short, underdeveloped story, the core gameplay just holds up that well, and there’s quite a bit to enjoy in the weaker elements even beyond that. Overall, this is one of my favorite Final Fantasy spinoffs, and the fact that it will most likely never get a sequel due to the departure of its director, Hajime Tabata, makes me very sad. With that unneeded note, this shall be the last of the Final Fantasy spinoffs I play in some time. The next time the name Final Fantasy pops up as the subject of one of my reviews, it shall be about the main series. Till next time.

-Scout

#Final Fantasy #final fantasy type 0 #game review #long post #action rpg #JRPG

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fadedtoblue · 6 years

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Overall thoughts on Jessica Jones S2

So how about that S2 huh? I finished it Sunday night but found that I really needed to take some time to sit and try to destruct all of the emotions I had over it. A good conversation with a friend the other morning helped me get a better grasp on my feelings regarding this season. Specific thoughts below the cut...

Clearly this season has been a divisive one amongst the fans...mostly that it imploded a lot of things / characters who were well loved and didn’t live up to what it was in S1 -- to a certain extent that might be true. I’ll say that I understood what they were trying to do with this season but I don’t think they were able to bring it altogether with the execution. Nothing wrong with trying to do something different but when the final product doesn’t feel like the best outcome, it’s difficult to not be disappointed. Anyway, I’ll try to break down what I liked and didn’t like.

The good stuff:

Seeing these characters in this world again. Coming off of Defenders, I was most intrigued to see Jess, Trish, and Malcolm and well, if that’s what you’re looking for you get it in SPADES. Everyone plays a crucial part in season 2.

Character driven stories to the max. If you enjoy character driven stories, then you’re in luck, as this is essentially the majority of JJS2. Any of the good stuff that happens is purely on the character level -- whether’s it’s shading in more sides of Jessica’s personality and messy internal conflicts, or showing Trish’s steady and frustrating decline, or introducing new side characters to drive home the crux of each character’s central conflict...this is where the show really made sure to take their time. Everyone has their own moment to drive the narrative forward, though some are able to do it with more purpose than others.

Exploring new relationship dynamics. This will probably also end up being in the bad category lol, but generally speaking, I liked that they tried to show our primary characters in dynamics that felt different from last season. It made me feel like the world had continued moving, and the characters were growing, which was cool. And I realize I may be in the minority but I actually ended up liking Alisa and the surprise twist that she was Jessica’s mom actually worked for me?? I wasn’t sure what they were doing with her, as I found her to be frustratingly one-note when they first introduced her -- like, okay, she’s just going around killing people involved with IGH? What’s the point? But the reveal that she was actually Jessica’s mom made it all click for me. Sure, it still skirted the line a bit between drama and flat out soap opera but I think this was one of my favorite new dynamics. It was a hot mess in a lot of the moments, and it really shouldn’t have been one of the main drivers of conflict in this season, but I’m sympathetic to the messed up mother / daughter connection and seeing Jessica fall apart and not know what the hell to do about this woman.

Malcolm. Special shout out to Malcolm who was truly the MVP of this season. He also goes through his own shit but he is probably the one who manages to come out of it in better shape than he went in. It was sad that the trust was so broken by the end between him, Jess, and Trish, but I think he needed to mature beyond the naive idealist who idolizes Jessica and find his own footing.

The bad stuff:

Too much character focus, not enough of anything else. They threw a LOT our way for all of the characters. Jess dealing with her family’s deaths. Jess dealing with her trauma at IGH. Jess dealing with her relationships with Trish and Malcolm going down the shitter. Jess going apeshit on the competition and going on probation and to anger management. Jess dealing with her mom being alive and being a scary ass murderer. And oh wait, Jess also randomly kills a guard and has a dissociative episode where she imagines Kilgrave around every corner. And this is just Jess! It’s incredible that for all of the things I listed, which I think worked in that they contributed to Jessica’s gradual breakdown over the season, it really felt as if we were treading water most of the time narratively. Because every time something bad happened, or she made a bad decision, or whatever...nothing happened. Nothing got really resolved or truly broken until the end of the season. And the thing is, I 100% track with why Jessica keeps flip flopping around. I absolutely see that she’s barely hanging on and she literally can’t deal with it all and especially WHY she can’t deal with it. But it could have been more to the point and still driven us to larger, more important story details. This feeling of nothing happening also applied to Trish, who had a story line I appreciated on paper -- showing just how hard a person can spiral downward, especially someone who used to be an addict and now isn’t just dealing with street drugs, but ridiculous power-inducing shit -- but my god, this woman has this awful fall off the wagon, pretty much blows up her life, career, relationships, also nearly dies in her quest to gain powers from the mad doctor, but still manages to bounce back enough to snipe Alisa with a handgun from 50 feet and deal with zero consequences. I’m not going to list out every storyline for every character, but while these character building moments work to a point, the lack of balance and payoff make for difficult TV watching. Also Jeri’s storyline started out intriguing when there was still a connection to IGH but once that went out the window, it just felt like it should have been on another show altogether.

Too many plot contrivances. This was a point of conversation I had with my friend and like, nothing wrong with plot contrivances to create moments for our characters to DO something but I think a better written show could have created these moments more naturally. And maybe the problem was that some of these moments felt contrived because things were getting dragged out and it was hard to ignore the moments when they happened.

Bad overall plotting of the storylines. So the weird thing is that I pretty much got why everything happened the way it did. But literally every storyline could have been condensed by 2-3 episodes. It was as if this stubborn dedicated to driving the story purely by character also meant to the writers that they needed to slowly draw out each detail and reveal. No, not really. With each delaying tactic that kept us from getting to the next point in the story, it killed any momentum that was starting to build up. I have no expectations that JJ should be an action driven show, but if you’re going to go full tilt into the psychological slow burn, there has to be a balance somewhere. If it’s not going to be some overarching villain, then it should be a better mystery. You know?

Lack of payoff with IGH. Listen, I don’t know what’s up with TPTB and if there’s something preventing these creative teams from writing compelling shadow organizations or whatever, but we’re 0/2 now and that’s so majorly disappointing. To find out that IGH was ultimately just one somewhat well-intentioned dude who got a little carried away with human experimentation...really?! That was something that majorly deflated my sails as it could have been exactly the kind of grounded connective thread that could’ve being pulled across all four shows. This is where the separate but connected universe really bites these shows in the ass because obviously, they all exist in the same time and place and share characters but because they also need to stand as individual shows and be able to pursue their own creative agenda, the choices made by one show inevitably affect the others show that could’ve used IGH.

Random stuff:

As much as Tennant’s Kilgrave (and his crazy good screen presence) was missed, I think it was ultimately the right choice to keep him limited to an episode. My husband was griping about how they could have integrated Kilgrave’s over the shoulder taunting throughout the whole season instead of saving it for the end, but I disagreed. The way they set up his reappearance made a lot of narrative sense to me -- that her accidentally killing the guard, on top of the incredible stress she’s under to take care of everyone’s shit, is what makes her temporarily dissociate and conjure up this vision of Kilgrave. The shtick would have gotten old quickly if he’d be present the whole season, and it would have severely undercut her progress from last season, at least the aspect where she was able to face her abuser and take back her life. I guess you could have done some version of PTSD and that’s why he’s in her head, but I think it would have been a distraction.

Trish is an interesting pickle for me. I am not that emotionally invested in her as a character so for me, the shift in direction doesn’t devastate me as much as it seems to have done for a lot of people I know. And honestly, I think the point of her storyline was to make her this awful and unlikeable. There was already a kernel of the competition and jealousy that existed in her relationship with Jess, but her idealism and compassion for her sister usually won out. And I think it’s also worth noting that she was already pushing Jessica’s boundaries way too hard, even before she falls off the wagon, but obviously falling back into drugs exacerbated a lot of the things that were already lurking under the surface. Also, I don’t think I was even bothered by the fact she’s the one who killed Jessica’s mom, but as I briefly alluded to earlier, it really bugs me that she didn’t reap the full consequences of her season long arc, especially since she still gets to become Hellcat at the end. That being said, karma has a way of coming back and biting you in the ass. If Jeri had to reap the karma of her craptastic behavior of S1 this season, then I fully expect Trish to face it in S3. Ideally we’ll see her attempt to be the hero she’s always wanted to be and crash and burn in spectacular fashion. There’s a reason why our heroes are the heroes and while I don’t think it means Trish will never get to be a hero, being a hero for the wrong reasons doesn’t make you a hero. And this is a tough lesson that I really want to see Trish learn.

Alright, I think I covered most of it. Apologies for any errors, I try to edit my word vomit but I’ll usually miss something :p. And if you want to chat / vent about particulars, I’m all for it! Hit up my asks or send me a message!!

#jessica jones #trish walker #marvel's jessica jones #jj s2 #meta #my thoughts #p talks about stuff #jj spoilers #jessica jones spoilers

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mittensmorgul · 7 years

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Do you know of any instances in canon history where Dean's intuition has turned out to be wrong in a major way? Because it seems like we're going to start to see some answers to the "he was brainwashed" question since Jack flapped off and Dean still doesn't trust him.

Hrrrrm. This is a really difficult question, because like the Winchester Hunting Mindset, it’s not this black and white.

Like obviously of course he has and hasn’t, but extenuating circumstances. Context matters. Shades of grey, etc. etc.

Even all during s6 he fought against what his intuition was telling him about Cas, because he so wanted to believe in Cas. I mean, that’s a huge part of why he couldn’t forgive himself, or get over what Cas had done even by 7.17. He blamed himself for not pushing harder for answers, or maybe even for taking that whole year off with Lisa and trying to play normal

But aside from emotional overriding of what he’s got that bad feeling about, I can’t think of a single instance of his intuition being flat-out wrong.

Even in smaller ways, he’s typically right about the case stuff and Sam’s the doubter, but you specifically asked for if he’s been wrong in “a major way,” so I’m going to try and focus on The Big Issues. But again, the only instance I can think of right off the top of my head where he was stubbornly and blatantly wrong about a case was in 12.04– when he was absolutely convinced it was the social services lady who was a witch. Again, waves hello at Davy Perez, for absolutely nailing Dean’s immediate personal trauma and underscoring so many of his personal issues involving Mary’s fresh abandonment, his lifetime of likely run-ins with Family Services and well-meaning social workers, his parentification of Sam, his problematic relationship with John and the responsibility to hide the truth about their lives and protect Sam at all costs… which played right into the case they were working and colored his personal reactions. But again, extenuating circumstances…

Because of his personal issues with Mary and abandonment and the fact the social worker was openly admittedly a witch. Dean also got a very different impression of the family than Sam did (literally, he only had half the information to make his judgment on). He saw the father and son, the “happy families” side of the story where everything was presented to be done by their own choice, for positive family-bonding reasons in the wake of a personal tragedy. Meanwhile, Sam was in the house getting the skeevy third-person retelling of a first-person story by the mother, making it clear to us, who saw both sides of the story, that something was Definitely Fishy in that house. Meanwhile, all Dean could see after that encounter was that Sam had a bizarrely antagonistic reaction to a conversation he could only assume was nearly identical to the one he’d had outside.

This stark division, the reminder that they’d both had an entirely different experience in their respective interviews and thus come away with entirely different theories about the case, is highlighted as soon as they leave. Rather than sharing the reasons for their vastly different impressions and trying to figure out WHY they were given two entirely different impressions of this family, they each stubbornly stick to their guns. That was the entire POINT of this episode, on a meta level. And this lack of communication and understanding of the other’s entirely different experience and viewpoint and insight, Sam’s entirely unprepared for the entire family to be “in on the secret” and Dean’s bowled over to discover the social worker was nothing like she’d appeared to be on the surface.

And as soon as he saw the other side of the story, he instantly figured it out

So that’s the one glaring exception to Dean’s instinct, and it essentially works as an “exception that proves the rule,” because of the meta nature of the reasons he was “wrong” about the social worker.

That brings me to Dean’s role in the overarching narrative of the entire series. He’s the emotional POV for the audience. We’re supposed to ride along with him and even when he’s wrong he’s right. I know this bothers some people, and for some this is a major reason that they just don’t like Dean as a character. But most of the time, he’s the barometer for how the audience is supposed to react and feel and interpret the entire narrative.

We know Dean lies professionally, and is therefore an unreliable narrator, but we’re also given to understand that we’re still supposed to be “on his side” because he’s our emotional POV.

Whether he’s 100% right about Jack puppeting Cas or not doesn’t matter to me, so much as Dean’s reading of it being presented as the correct reading. Whether Jack meant to or not or whatever… (and we have ample evidence that most of what happens with his power is not something he does consciously, but that doesn’t mean he’s not subconsciously doing this stuff anyway), Dean’s read was the presented “main” reading and the events seemed to match it.

But I would argue Dean’s less right than 100%, but not more than 50% wrong. (the 50% being powers vs Jack himself doing it, i.e. the bit he’s partly “wrong” about is his assumption of any sort of intent on Jack’s behalf) and there will be a REASON he is wrong if he is which would necessarily justify his reading.

The fact that DEAN believed in the sock-puppeting, and the fact that JACK believes that it was a possibility, is what’s led directly to Jack’s current dilemma

Now that Cas is back, and he and Dean can finally (as he said in 12.23) “work through our crap,” theoretically he’ll be able to talk with Cas about all of that and try to understand Cas’s motives between 12.19 and 12.23. Unfortunately, Cas is also not objectively placed to talk about it, since it happened TO him and his emotional attachment to Jack /now/ is again a separate thing.

I fully believe he would have formed those same bonds with Kelly and unborn Jack in BETTER circumstances. Even if he’d gone back to the bunker with Sam and Dean as he’d already consented to do before the events at the sandbox. Arguably, it would’ve been a much safer and secure place for Jack to have been born, and for Dean and Sam to have come to understand the larger circumstances at play here.

As it is, Jack or his powers just made it happen for sure. Because of Dean’s stated concern that Cas wasn’t under his own control there, it renders anything Cas would have to say about it moot, because we can’t trust his objectivity. Because of Dean’s stated pov opinion on it.

Cas’s innate goodness and kindness vs his issues with protecting people/being a guardian angel/wanting a win all would lead him to care for Jack, and to feel responsible for caring for Jack, even if Jack’s powers hadn’t become a mitigating factor. I mean that’s why Kelly “picked him” to be Jack’s guardian in the first place. She (or Jack’s power) could plainly see Cas’s “goodness” in direct contrast to Dagon’s “badness.” He was even wavering about his orders to kill Kelly and Jack a few times IN 12x19, but he got pushed over the edge hard. This was not a gentle nudge or a moment of genuine character realization.

In the span of one glowy-golden-eyed sock puppeting (and that part is NOT up for debate, Jack’s power literally took Cas’s hand and used him to destroy Dagon), he went from “Jack must die and go to heaven before he’s born” to “Jack must be born with all his power at all costs” with no logic in between. We didn’t see his process on screen, and "he’s powerful enough to make me zap a knight of hell" is not good enough reasoning.

This was arguably the first instance of Jack’s power trying to do something good (killing Dagon) while having drastically unanticipated consequences (Joshua’s death, Dean being injured, the Colt being destroyed, and Cas abandoning his stated mission to take Kelly to Heaven so that Jack could be born with all his power). His power had already resurrected Kelly and thereby saved Jack, and that had caused cosmic alarm bells to ring in Heaven, providing the homing beacon Kelvin used to locate Kelly in the first place.

If anything it should be more concerning that he has that much power before he’s ever born. That firmly demonstrated his self-defensive instinct that we’ve seen trigger his power repeatedly since he’s been born.

After his power ~does the thing~ he doesn’t even seem to understand that he’d done anything. Like waking Cas up in the empty. Or the fact that his power resurrected Kelly when she’d killed herself, and yet he has no concept that he probably could’ve resurrected the guard he’d accidentally killed in 13.06 in the same way. Jack still is in a stage where he has to WANT to do things and I think understanding the guard is dead was too final to realize he COULD bring him back.

He seems to just ~do stuff~ with his power, not realizing it, and then later once he realizes he CAN, he attempts to do it deliberately– like the whole “throw people around” thing he seems to have perfected so he can do it without killing the rest of TFW at the end of the episode. I mean, the previous time he’d pulled that trick led to the circumstances he was terrified would happen ~without him intending harm~ but being unable to stop it from happening anyway. And yet he still did the Force Throw thing.

Then again, his INTENT when he was throwing that power at Dave the Ghoul was to kill/maim/injure… but he clearly has a lower setting on it and wasn’t afraid to use it on Sam, Dean, and Cas before flapping off, immediately after stating his reasoning for leaving being his desire NOT to hurt them…

He’s so highly conflicted about his OWN relationship with his powers that HE HIMSELF thinks of them as a tool and not inherently a part of himself. Right now his powers are literally acting like the man behind the curtain, and everything Dean’s witnessed with his own eyes has confirmed his initial impression that Jack’s powers are Not Trustworthy.

Over the course of the first six episodes of the season, Dean’s gotten to know Jack //the human person// outside of his powers, and seen what he was struggling with, his self-loathing and self-doubt and fear and confusion, and knowing that Jack’s powers may have set up the circumstances that led to Cas dying but also led directly to Cas coming back… well, that proved Jack’s intent was good, but still doesn’t clear up the whole “my power does what it wants and damn the consequences” issue that brought them to this point in the first place.

It’s rather a moot point if it ever really had been true or not before 13.04, but Dean’s BELIEF that it was true influenced Jack’s belief about whether or not it was true, which led directly to Jack “calling out” for Cas in the Empty… sort of proving the mechanism by which his power acts without his conscious control, and extends a TERRIFYING amount of influence into realms were even God has no power to act. And he does it all without it even registering to him. So in that respect, yeah, Dean’s 100% right.

He’s right because that’s the function of his POV within the narrative itself. And again, I know that has the potential to piss people off, and it’s kind of a hard fact to swallow sometimes, but unless the narrative explicitly proves Dean’s intuition wrong, we’re supposed to trust Dean’s assertions. And so far I’ve seen nothing to contradict this one.

#spn 13.06 #spn 12.19 #Anonymous #jack nougat winchester #seriously though why doesn't everyone just trust dean's gut instincts it's like he's got an uncanny magical gift here...#the special agony of brainwashing #feeling a wee bit rightfully terrified of the Incredible Nougat Power #dean is the center of the universe

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reminiscingdreamer · 7 years

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Dual Destinies semi-stream-of-consciousness thoughts

So I finished Dual Destinies for some time now and I decided to write my stream-of-consciousness-esque (even though it was written after I finished the game, haha) thing. Beware of freaking out and spoilers!

I knew the jacket Apollo wore at the beginning couldn’t have been his but gawd, did it really have to hurt so much to find out it really wasn’t?

When Athena flipped that police officer right into Apollo! Whoo!

I like when Blackquill talks about the different prison inmates. I keep thinking at least some could be references to previous AA villains, but it’s been so long that I don’t remember a lot of them.

Aaaaaaaah! Apollo is so cute! Especially his abashed sprite.

I cannot express how much I love Apollo’s “I’m unamused” face. It is the stuff of stories.

There’s… a distressing amount of typos, which is bad because it’s not as though it’s a bootleg or anything. Heck, there was even a whole segment of conversation with Jinxie which didn’t register in the dialogue log. I remember there was only like 1 typo in all the previous 4 games put together. What happened?

The whole division of Themis Legal Academy kind of confuses me. They have a division for lawyers, prosecutors, and judges, but… prosecutors are lawyers. I suppose it’s to draw a distinction between prosecutors and every other lawyer (defense attorneys aren’t the only lawyers to exist, despite what impression the game tries to give, after all. There are accident lawyers, civil rights lawyers, etc.) I guess it’s because prosecutors are government so it’s different and therefore needs a line to be drawn between? I don’t know.

So you’re telling me this entire school has only two faculty members? Really?

Aristotle Means’s grin is creepy but you don’t need me to tell you that.

Speaking of Aristotle, the whole reason he was caught was because his staff was lodged into Courte’s body to make it appear like Phoenix’s arm but he was carrying that staff when everyone met him at the lecture hall before the mock trial? So… how’s that possible? Did he have a spare staff?

Also, how did Means get the body to stay upright?

I got kind of excited when Robin could’ve possibly been a trans character. She did sort of turn out to be one in a way, I guess, just not in a way I expected :/

My favorite minor characters are probably Hugh and Starbuck (Clay doesn’t count because I don’t actually know all that much about him and I probably only like him that much because of his relation to Apollo and his character design.) I felt sympathy when Hugh revealed he wasn’t a genius and his true age. And Starbuck really did have what it took to go into space despite his fears.

I liked how Phoenix got angry at Ted for attacking Apollo when they were at the Detention Center. Phoenix, your papa bear is showing, haha. I liked it because it shows how Phoenix sees not only Trucy as family, but Apollo and possibly Athena too, so he got mad when someone attacked one of them.

I really disliked the dub in the main storyline (the dub in the DLC case was okay). Every time an animated cutscene played, I’d cringe because the dub sounds like the voice actors were reading off a script. The only dub I liked was Starbuck’s.

I literally screamed when Edgeworth appeared.

I hate his dub the most though.

Grown-up Pearly aaaaaaaaah!

So… I guess we’re not going to be learning about the secret Kristoph Gavin was unconsciously holding? I was kind of hoping to know what it was :/ I hope it’ll be addressed in a future game as part of a larger overarching thing and that they haven’t forgotten it. It’s good to at least have some information on what the black lock was at least.

They kept calling the bandages around Apollo’s eye an eyepatch, but it’s a bandage. Also it didn’t have to be that that long. Someone has a flair for the dramatic = 3=

I get that Apollo shucking his jacket is a symbol of shucking away his doubt and burdens but… that jacket’s still Clay’s! You don’t have to wear it but at least bring it with you!

Best lines of the game: “But what is faith without doubt? That’s why… I need to question her guilt!” There’s just so much in there.

I CAN’T BELIEVE FULBRIGHT(?) WAS THE CULPRIT OHMYGAWD I LIKED HIM AAAAAAAAAAAA

Not gonna lie, when the spy first revealed his Starbuck mask, I was throwing my hands in the air and rolling my eyes and going, of course. But thank gawd the spy wasn’t actually Starbuck.

So the real Fulbright died a year ago and was unidentified ever since. I’m just wondering how it could’ve taken a year to get his fingerprints to identify him.

The real Fulbright’s death also makes me sad because the spy’s impersonation is 100% accurate, which means that this would’ve been what the real Fulbright would’ve been like had he not been killed; a good guy who loves justice and would do anything to help people. The AA universe just lost a good man.

It was really freaky when the spy wore the mask of Phoenix.

Despite having murdered Clay and Metis, I can’t bring myself to hate the spy. He’s just so pitiful.

The dedication Blackquill had towards Metis and Athena. I mean, I could even see that he goes easier on Athena during the Themis trial. Sure he doesn’t hold back but when compared to when he went up against Apollo, he’s less strict.

Gawddammit! It was so adorable how Athena couldn’t tell the difference between robots and humans. But when she had the same line of reasoning for why she put her mother on the operating table thinking she could fix her it quickly became an oh gawd no moment. My heart. Help.

I find myself wishing really badly that Clay hadn’t died. I mean, I knew next to nothing about him except for the few snippets Apollo shared, but his death had hurt Apollo so much and it hurt me to see him hurting that I can’t help but ache for something that can never be. Plus, he seemed like a swell guy. I’m not sure if it’s better that we never get to talk to him in the game or not. Don’t know which would hurt less.

Which makes the final animated segment where Starbuck blasts into space so much more emotional for me, cringey voice-acting and all.

As I’m incredulously selecting Orla as witness, really? We’re really doing this again? Yes. Yes we are. Just like that parrot… NO I WILL NOT LET THAT GO. I’LL PROBABLY NEVER LET THIS GO EITHER.

The whole cross-examination with Orla was funny though.

The ending made me feel sympathetic and soft. It’s great.

But then how’d the blood get on Orla? I mean, if Shipley fell to his death in the show stage pool, that’d explain how it got on the rock, but Orla was never even lowered into that pool so… how?

My favorite moment in the entire game: When Apollo, despite truly wanting to believe in Athena, refuses to look away from his doubts and the evidence and blindingly having faith, choosing instead to try to seek answers for himself and look for help in Phoenix. Apollo truly is my favorite character.

#ace attorney #dual destinies #a dreamer's sleeptalk

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