mini-review: shuuen no virche (終焉のヴィルシュ)

[highimpactsex]

Elevator Pitch: If you ever want to play a game that begins with the protagonist wanting to kill herself because she sees herself as responsible for many deaths around her, this is the game for you.

quick premable

shuuen no virche is a 2022 otomate (idea factory) game that's pretty good and i wanna talk about it A LOT. it's got everything i love: edge, depressed girls, science fiction shenanigans, elaborate settings, POLITICS, despair, and so much more

so i could've written something very deep about this game on my newsletter. unfortunately, i don't think i have much energy/motivation/interest to write about this game, though i recognize i started it to write about my journey through otomege.

it's not that titles i'll cover here on my dreamwidth are bad or shallow. i don't have any interesting things to say except "bro, this shit is cool". still, i figured archiving my thoughts about the game will still be helpful for people interested in the title. expect a more laid-back approach in these what i'm gonna call "mini-reviews" of titles that i love a lot but don't have anything new or original to write essays from.

anyway, back to shuuen no virche: if i'm able to convince at least one danseimuke player to pick up this game, then i would be super happy. it's a really special and ambitious game that will fire up the scenarioge players' hearts if they get to play it, i'm sure.

tokyo necro but otomege

in this island where people die at a very young age (specifically 23 years old), you play as celes (she's nameable) who's been blamed for any wrongdoing that fell upon her neighbors. wherever she walks, it just seems like disaster is about to explode: the orphanage she was previously in combusted into flames, she walks into murder scenes etc. she herself is always on the verge of a mental breakdown and thinks of suicide a lot.

while the player gets used to her amazing narration, they'll learn more about this Arpéchéle island. at first glance, the island has two distinctive features: there's black lycoris/spider lily flowers everywhere which signal death, and then there's Relivers...

in order to circumvent this 23 year old age restriction, the kingdom has found a way to extend everyone's lives: the scientists will clone people's bodies and put their memories into a database for future moving. in other words, the kingdom's found a way to upload people's memories and download them into new bodies.

now, nobody can die if they have the money. if someone reaches 23 years old and dies, they can be revived in a Science Fiction Facility and become a reliver (they get tattooed for easy differentiation and this reduces the risk of making accidental clones).

this seems like a great solution but you gotta wonder about the ethics: sure, people die super young on this island, but that means no one can die as long as they have money, right? indeed, it's practically immortality: once you die, you can just go to the next body since your memories will remain mostly intact. there might be some bugs in the system but i'm sure it's fine.

it's not like people need love when changing bodies, right? when someone becomes a reliver, there's a good chance emotions don't move with the memories -- so new bodies merely attain their identities without the emotional substance that makes humans human.

for many people, this is a small price to pay for immortality. who needs to care about PROPERLY LIVING when everything is so disposable with this reliver technology? even better if you don't have emotions like compassion toward your loved ones. you can just be honest and say "i remember loving you but in my new body, i don't anymore. bye lol". you might even betray enough people to get the money you need to get the reliver operation.

nothing else matters except paying your way to avoid death at the age of 23. as a result, those who've earned the privilege lead an eternal life without a hint of what we usually think of humanism. tis the norm of this strange and peculiar island.

kyaa kyaa boys and plot

now imagine dating someone in this dank setting. does that excite you, especially when you play a depressed girl all the time? i know i did, it's a magical dystopian world to explore and all the guys you get to go after are just as memorable. but what's really cool about the routes is how each route reveals a bit more about the worldbuilding that you have to piece together at the very end -- like danseimuke eroge such as baldr sky.

each dude heroine serves a different purpose to the setting and thus have pretty fun characterization. you've got mathias who's this shy hikikomori really into books and depends entirely on his ikemen butler jean. then there's luka, this freelance imoutocon teacher who's got a knack at teaching kids but also clearly have the hots for celes. meanwhile, schien is the creator of the reliver technology and is aloof from everything especially emotions but also doesn't like cleaning his room. and finally, yves is the dreamiest kind of guy: wears a mask to hide a burn scar that occurred when he saved a young celes in the burning orphanage, is super kind and nice, and most importantly very adorable. they all seem disparate since they're solving different mysteries and kinda go on their own ways, but the game actually ties these strings into one grand narrative.

as a result, the game actually feels more like YU-NO where everything you've learned from these routes culminate into something like a grand narrative. the game is chock load of foreshadowing: even the simplest of lines and events become very important after the fact. it's so intricate the game would overdo the "flashbacks" to where the foreshadowing first occur because there's just so much shit in each route. the twists become wilder and wilder the more you immerse yourself into the game.

indeed, it's impressive that the game never ever becomes overwhelming. it has one egregious but necessary infodump that made me think i was back in high school biology, but that's it. everything is intuitive to understand, even if the concepts are very High and Abstract. this makes every turn and twist very satisfying to read because i was always trying to catch up with the setting and kept getting owned -- and it was never "ah, this is more boring than i thought" but always "damn, I WISH I HAD A BIG 10000IQ BRAIN LIKE THESE WRITERS". i always underestimated the game because it felt so digestible and easy to understand but it's honestly smarter than my puny brain. that takes a lot of Plotting Chops, i must say.

dank themes

i'm pretty sure this works because the game doesn't really give much time for romance, something you would expect in an otomege. i think i've read elsewhere that people complained about virche not having actual romance routes and i'm not really an otomege player to comment on that, but what little romance there is helped dispel the doomer vibes this game has. if Fullmetal Daemon Muramasa uses comedy to break the negative vibes, then the few but memorable romance elements do the same in virche.

the romance in the game mostly serves to give more power to the themes of the game. as i mentioned, the entire game revolves around this reliver technology and its consequences. but the game seriously goes deeper than i would've expected: there's shit about eugenics, the ethics of life and death, the place of love in such a society, and so on. it's the kind of game that deserves the attention of some good video essayist because it's dealing with a lot of social and cultural concepts we are now grappling today, especially during a pandemic.

how much are you willing to sacrifice yourself to achieve the goals of saving humanity for example? is it possible to return to "normalcy" if such a thing exists? is there any good reason to have this reliver technology at all?

the game seriously dives into these philosophical problems without ever hesitating. it doesn't care if i got livid, here's celes and her chosen dude panicking over the consequences of this technology. most of these relationships get pretty fucked and despairing without ever giving much salvation or relief for the player. the game can be funny and light-hearted at times, but once shit hits the ceiling, it never stops. thanks to this tight pacing, the chemistry between the protag and the dudes feels pretty earned: you do want them to be happy because they have found something good within each other.

so every time the game slaps you with some bleak true ending for the route, it kinda hurts. but at the same time, it's kinda a "happy" ending in a twisted way. i never felt cheated nor sad about the outcome. rather, the endings are something i can Accept precisely because they don't compromise the themes and worldview of the game for something Nice -- even if i feel pretty owned by them. i am seriously impressed by the way each route ends, really. it goes to show how invested i was into these characters and the settings they belong to.

if i didn't, i wouldn't have thought deeply about the ideas the game is presenting. i was connecting the game with books about disability justice and eugenics i've read a while ago and how these ideas would figure into this setting. i'm just enamored by how well-realized this game's setting really is.

lycoris recoiled

when i reached the true ending of the game, i was pretty moved by the game. it didn't reach for some cheap trick or whatever. i just felt like "finally, a fucking happy ending after all this shit". i don't really feel that with many titles these days. usually, i just go "that's a nice ending" and leave it at that. but with virche, i actually felt like these characters deserve something happy and the game somehow delivered.

it was cathartic to see people be happy at last.

and honestly, i think i'm still underselling this game. curry (who recommended this title to me) wrote a somewhat spoilery but elaborate post on the game. there's a LOT that really works. it's a polished commercial title that deserves the hype and i was always excited when i picked the game up, even though i was still recovering from post-viral symptoms.

shuuen no virche is simply an engrossing title with a cool cast trapped in this science fantasy setting. it's fine with characters going over the brink in order to accomplish their goals and doesn't really care about the readers wanting it to stop until they reach the final ending of the game. once you reach it, i think you'll agree with me that you're going to breathe one of the largest sighs of relief you'll ever have.

this is honestly one of the coolest fairytale fiction i've read in years.

so i'm looking forward to the game getting translated into english in 2023, so i can watch people stumble into the game all confused and excited. it's gonna be awesome to see what people will uncover. i cannot understate how much this game is a banger in what is seriously a strong year (2022!) and how excited i am about otomate's future.

so whenever that happens and people stumble upon this post, please let me know. we need to talk about how moe yves is. he's a cutie. i want to eat his terrible food kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa