Beloved Rapture

So for clarity I own this game on Steam and this is my review on there. [["Snake, I wanna ask you. Do you think love can bloom, even on a battlefield?" 6 hours in and I'm just barely at the end of chapter 2. This will most likely be one of my favorite JRPGs if not my #1 favorite in recent years. This game does not shy away for the darker topics of war. Detail in the gore of death along with the anxieties and trauma of what war does to people. There are LGBT themes in this game but its not the main draw of this package. If you love JRPGs of the yesteryear and a game that is clearly made with more love and care than most AAA games (even taking feedback to improve the game in the discord) these days for a fraction of the price then this game is a highly recommend. The gay romance is just the cherry on the top. If anyone tells you that its 24/7 homosexual its not and they're being purposefully disingenuous. If anything the gay romance is a sub plot to the main story and the message of the horrors of war and fighting. ]]

The game lasts around 20 hours and the narrative is pretty consistent. I think less than a handful of people worked on the game, but the environments, characters, and monsters all appear bespoke (or in the case of the environment - don't expect blocky, straightforward paths). There are no random encounters and the ability to farm xp is limited and otherwise totally avoidable. Speaking of encounters, the battle system is pretty unique and not hard to get a hang of. Most unique of all, if you really want to power up your team, exploration of the game map is really the key - not even just side quests. Little treasures with healing items, power ups, food, and discarded coins are all over. It should be noted that this is a full game, but the devs are working currently on patching in additional things in the endgame. on Steam they have communicated that they didn't finish all they wanted to on their release date. Additionally, you may experience some slowdown and crashing. HOWEVER, you can save anywhere, at any time. Typically you won't lose that much time.

The danger in deconstructing JRPG genre tropes is that it's hard to have anything to hold onto when you mix The Quest with a lot of moral ambiguity. Xenogears will probably always be the king of keeping the player's interest in a world where the villains are monstrous but have clear motivations, the heroes are just as messed up as the world around them, and the wrongs are too big to be righted by giant robots alone. Beloved Rapture kept me interested almost entirely because of the character of Johan. I mean, maybe I missed something about why these villains are more the Main Villain those those villains, especially when the world itself is a crucible that burns away everyone's ideals and rewards corruption and complacency, except—Johan's rage keeps the story focused and grounded. Villains murdering villains, and the systemic issues that led to there being so many villains, all take a backseat to a more psychologically realist take on the Hero. Which mostly brought my mind back to Wild Arms 2, and I love Wild Arms 2. Two critiques: First, the combat is kinda clumsy. The enemy animations are too long, especially since most enemy actions cause some sort of UI lock, so you can't queue up your attacks while a crab is slowly waddling across the screen to pinch someone. It could also be more obvious which character you're controlling. And there are some crashes-to-desktop, so I ended up saving constantly. Second, the ending is a bit rushed. With very few exceptions, JRPGs never quite figured out the denouement. The pieces for a great ending are all there, they just needed to be given more time to breathe. If only every JRPG could have Omori's Memory Lane. These issues aren't enough for me to go down from five stars. It's just, if I replay it, it'll be on easy combat mode: the combat isn't hard, it's just kinda tedious. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Played this on steam mainly - game is really good and the story is amazing.