It's unapologetically dark. Playing it as a depressed angsty teen after spending time with pokemon and final fantasy, the world and people portrayed by the game made me feel understood, while at the same time giving me hope that things aren't quite as bad as i presume. The soundtrack was varied and recognizably characteristic, the art beautiful, the mix between platforming sidescroller and rpg round based combat fun and engaging. The massive cast, each having their own story of dramatic demise pulled at my heartstrings and made me care for all the characters, even if i had to train them and send them away to reside as recruits in valhalla. It is a visual, gameplay, narrative, musical masterpiece and few games can hold a candle to it. Understandably, something so niche and well polished was not well received by the frothing masses and the series remained on the sidelines, even after they cut away all the dark and leaned into simplicity action with VP2 , and even more so when they sheared away everything about the title in the recent VP3, leaving only a generic hack n slasher. Catering to the simplistic sensibilities of the average mind is why we can't have good things.