Lurker > KamikazePotato

Silent Hill 2 is not fun to play and it's one of the best games ever

Just say it's 'engaging' instead and it should make more sense to people

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

CoolCly posted...

i read Chrysalis based on your post about it

I thought the first couple chapters weren't too good but it got much better later on when the writer was comfortable with the setting and characters and didn't just feel he was naming random things that might be important like factories and raw materials or whatever. Good recommendation.

Glad you enjoyed it! I thought the quality was pretty consistent throughout the story (my favorite chapter was actually the first one), but I can see why you would have preferred the later content.

cyko posted...

I enjoyed the first half up to the major plot twist, but I found the hero's children to be somewhat annoying and the whole concept that 10 year old children could save the world was a JRPG cliche that I couldn't get over. Maybe I am just becoming a grumpy old man, but it just irritated me for the whole second half of the game.

The fact that your main character isn't the JRPG Cliche Hero, but rather his son is, is one of my favorite little bits of writing in the game so I can't agree with that.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/48071/~/super-smash-bros.-ultimate-update-ver.6.0.0---fighter-and-item-adjustments

Patch notes

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

45 minutes of Sakurai fanboying about SNK. Pretty fun to watch.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

It has to be Seel. So unmemorable that barely anyone is remembering it even in a topic where it really should be.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

One last bump for the day.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

And up.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Side note - while the entrants within each Tier aren't ordered by quality, one story is eventually going to be crowned the overall #1.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Aaaand that's all of Tier 3!

TIER 3
Nier
Chrysalis
Transmetropolitan
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Pluto
Ender's Game / Speaker of the Dead
Dragon Quest V
American Psycho
Locke and Key
Deadly Premonition
Catch-22
The Truman Show
Silent Hill 2

TIER 4
Harry Potter
Bastard
Black Lagoon
Re:Zero
Undertale
Paranoia Agent
Tales of Berseria

Here's what's left:

3 Video Games
3 Books / Book Series
2 Manga Series
1 Web Serial
1 Movie
1 TV Series
1 Visual Novel
1 Fanfiction
1 Light Novel
1 Comic Series

Tier 2 starts tomorrow or the day after.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

SIlent Hill 2
Video Game

"In my restless dreams, I see that town... Silent Hill. You promised you'd take me there again some day... but you never did. Well, I'm alone there now, in our special place... waiting for you."

The pinnacle of survival horror. Silent Hill 2 is a game where everything works together in mostly-perfect harmony to create an unreal, nightmarish experience that honestly gets even worse after the credits have rolled and you think back on everything that happened. It's not the nightmare that scares you on the physical level, but rather one that creeps into your subconscious and lingers there for far longer than you want it to. The fact that the story is so well-made doesn't help, because then you want to go back and look up stuff about it and then you're just reminded about everything all over again thanks Silent Hill 2.

Silent Hill 2 isn't without flaws, but it's kind of hilarious how often those flaws end up adding to the experience. The voice acting is, for lack of a better word, disjointed - but the strange performances just add to the atmosphere and remind you that the cast is full of unfortunate, lost, broken people. The fetch-quest-and-solve-a-puzzle gameplay can get tedious, but it also forces to take in eeeeevery detail of where you are and spend much more time there than you would be comfortable with. Even the signature fog was an accident; they couldn't render the city in full detail on PS1/PS2 hardware, so they hid a lot of the loading with fog and ended up with the most memorable part of the environment. It's almost like...it was all meant to happen this way...but that can't be, Silent Hill isn't sentient, it's just a normal empty city...right?

I'm being very light on the actual characters and story because there's no way I'm spoiling this one, but suffice to say that it's all very well-written and the way the game concludes is one of the biggest emotional punches in gaming. There's a reason this game has endured in the public consciousness for so long despite being in a genre that is often overlooked.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

The Truman Show
Movie

"In case I don't see ya: good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight."

It's absolutely wild that this movie was made in 1998, back before our culture had gotten as ridiculously voyeuristic as we are now. The Truman Show has one of the best plot hooks I've ever seen: a man's entire life has been fabricated around him and broadcast as a TV show since the moment of his birth. He's kept in a manufactured bubble and lied to about the world around him to keep him stationary, content, and unimaginative. So what happens when the mask starts to slip?

The performances in this movie are some of the best I've seen. Pretty sure the only reason Jim Carrey didn't win an oscar is because he's Jim Carrey and people are too used to him playing shlock comedy, but it really is the perfect role for him. Truman doesn't take the slow realization that his life is a lie well, and his transformation from everyman media darling into a manic prisoner is both fascinating and entertaining. He keeps the movie relatively lighthearted while also not undercutting the seriousness of the situation. That's to say nothing of everyone else's performances - I especially like his 'wife', whose stepford-smiling-sleaziness makes my skin crawl.

Truman Show has all the hallmarks of a damn good story. It's entertaining, the setting is interesting and well-realized (and barely feels like sci-fi in 2019), the characters are compelling, and it has a real message to tell: just how far will one person go to discover the truth and be free, even at the cost of their own personal safety and security? It's the kind of movie that you watch, and then immediately want to rewatch.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

It's on Switch now too, I believe. That might be better.

Honestly though, every version of DP is buggy. You just kinda roll with it because it's usually more funny than harmful.

GANON1025 posted...

I know some people write off Deadly Premonition for being a "so bad it's good" game, but I really enjoyed it story included! I thought the ending in particular was very well done.

I showed DP to friends via playing it in front of them. Watching them gardually change from 'not taking it seriously' to 'super invested' was fun.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Custom made it here:

https://www.vistaprint.com/

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Catch-22
Book

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle."

I'm not sure how exactly to categorize Catch-22. At its core it's a satire on the irrationality of war, but what kind of one? It can be very funny and very depressing, oftentimes in the same scene. Tonal whiplash and circular logic is used so often that over the course of reading the book you become numbed to absurdity. Awful events occur and you just go...should I laugh at this? Cry? Shrug? Catch-22 uses its prose and story framing to great effect, imposing the same deteriorated mental state on its reader that the war does on its central character Yossarian. When something truly irrational happens, and you know it's wrong, but no one else acknowledges or cares, what's a man supposed to do?

It's also an extremely clever story. The specific Catch-22 rule by itself would be enough to base an entire story off of, but the book also has stuff like the bizarre career advancement of Major Major Major Major and the extremely tense and dramatic milk run, just to name a few things. I won't be able to do Catch-22 justice with this writeup - doing so would only spoil the oddities that are so fun to discover, while simultaneously not being able to capture the particular way they're portrayed in-writing.

I guess that's the Catch-22 of writing a list like this. The easiest to make someone want to experience a story is to tell them why it's good. The more you tell them why it's good, the more interested they will become in reading/watching/whatevering the story to experience it like you did. But the more you tell them of the story beforehand, the less likely they are to be impressed by it. The best way to get someone to enjoy a story is not to tell them anything about the story. But by not telling them anything about the story, they'll never know they should experience it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go plot against my commander over trying to get me killed via incompetence.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

ZenOfThunder posted...

Oh man a surprise appearance by DP

I have like three copies of that game and people who are unitiated think its bizarre I've spent so much on "a bad game"

I also have three copies of this game. The 360 version that I never played, the Director's Cut that I did, and the Steam version that I bought simply to throw money at SWERY. Also have this:

https://i.imgur.com/QV5aJmj.jpg

I regret nothing.


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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

I almost played Zestiria because of how good Berseria was. Thankfully re-reading some impressions from people who made that poor choice for me set me straight.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Deadly Premonition
Video Game

"Did you see that, Zach? Clear as a crisp spring morning. FK...in the coffee!"

Few things are a better example of 'greater than the sum of its parts' than Deadly Premonition. If this were a full review, I would talk about how amazing the game is despite its obligatory combat being ass, but this is a topic about stories, so that's what we'll focus on.

And what an experience that story is. Deadly Premonition is essentially Twin Peaks in game form, except maybe even weirder. There's a main story in there about a string of mysterious murders and possible supernatural interference, but that's not what you first think of when remembering Deadly Premonition. You think of something like main character Francis York Morgan losing his mind over a strawberry-and-cereal sandwich. Deadly Premonition's presentation, from the strange camera angles in cutscenes to the way each character feels like they're half a step to the right of normalcy, is what it makes it so engrossing. Even when there should be an objectively dull moment in the game, there never is, because it's all so weirdly entertaining.

The game actually does have a lot of strong characters, well-directed scenes, ect., blah blah, all those things that are generally prerequisites for making stories great. But I'll be talking about things like that in every other writeup. With Deadly Premonition I want to mention how there's one point in the game where York tells his imaginary friend Zach that his choice of breakfast beverage may have solve the case for them. Moments like that are what give Deadly Premonition its unique atmosphere, and why it became an enduring game currently getting a sequel despite bombing upon release.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Mac Arrowny posted...

Personally I wouldn't necessarily squish together franchises. Like, I might have AA3 on a list but not the other AA games.

It depends on the franchise or series in question. If - purely hypothetically - I were to include a long-running fantasy series on this list, I'm not going to include each individual book as a separate entity.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Wait there's an American Psycho 2?

*googles*

Oh. That's why I've never heard about it.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

I haven't played Trails, but I've heard good things about how it tells its story.

Locke and Key
Comic Series

No, you can't understand because you're reading the last chapter of something without having read the first chapters. Young people always think they are coming into a story at the beginning when they are usually coming in at the end.

Locke and Key is an excellent fusion of the coming-of-age type of story and Stephen King style horror. The story chronicles the events that occur to a dysfunctional family living in small-town America who are just trying to make sense of life. The Locke family and all the characters surrounding them are extremely well-written; all of them feel like real people with realistic problems, whose issues are not driven by bad writing (outside of the fact that they don't move out of a town called Lovecraft, seriously what did they think was going to happen?) but by their own inherent character flaws and the circumstances of their environment. Much of Locke and Key would have worked even with the supernatural elements taken out of it. The existence of magic Keys of a highly questionable origin is technically what the main plot is about, but it serves more as a background setting for the characters than the reason you read the story.

That's not to say that the supernatural elements are mishandled - in fact they're integrated into the setting so well that they feel like a natural extension of the human drama occurring in the story. The eponymous Keys of Locke and Key can grant their users powerful and/or trippy abilities, but the cast's attempts to use the supernatural to solve their issues only ever makes things worse. It's a testament to the strength of the character writing that despite how obviously bad an idea it is to - for example - open up your head with a magic key and remove your negative emotions so you don't have to deal with grief, I can never think of the characters as making decisions that are outright stupid, just misguided. Even as the scope of the story expands, and you see previous generations making the same mistake over and over again, I didn't feel exasperation. Only sympathy. The characters of Locke and Key are adrift, and by the end of it I was dearly rooting for all of them.

And man, let me tell you, it did not pull any punches once it came time to wrap everything up.

P.S. Apparently there's been several attempts to get this made into a full-fledged TV show, with Netflix recently picking it up. Third time's the charm...?

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Hmm...

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Just have him keep the staff though. Imagine forward smash critting with it. BONK

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

I forgot Billy Bat existed. I was waiting for it to finish and never got back to it, and no one ever mentions it in discussions of the author's body of work.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Hero getting into Smash Ultimate but the DQV Hero not being chosen as one of the alts was such a bittersweet feeling.

xp1337 posted...

Nier v Nier: Automata would be a tough one for me. They have different strengths and they each take those strengths to incredible levels. The Nier party is such a great group though, individually, and as a group/with each other. Nier was my entry to the "Yoko Taro-verse" and I am so glad I played it way back whenever.

I haven't read the Ender series in forever. At least 10 years I have to think, maybe closer to 15 years. I do know that whenever I first read them (so earlier than even that) I didn't appreciate Speaker of the Dead very much but then when I re-read them some years later I too found myself pretty much unable to pick between them as the best one. Nostalgia would probably incline me to Ender's Game but it's definitely a close call.

I impulse-bought Nier because I enjoyed TheDarkId's Drakengard LPs and figured that it would be fun to experience the weirdness myself for once. Had low expectations going in, which were wildly surpassed.

Speaker For the Dead definitely gets better as you get older, and it's probably a more insightful book than Ender's Game is, but the ending of Ender's Game really floored me when I read it. Apparently everyone else saw the ending coming except me!

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Raka_Putra posted...

Yes!

I agree wholeheartedly. It's just kind of a shame that Pluto is rather underappreciated compared to his other works since I think it might just be my personal favorite.

It's crazy how well it explored the themes of AI and sentience. And its powerful moments made me cry.

Also it's fun comparing the original designs and Urasawa's take on them.

I really hope the anime adaptation turns out well. There shouldn't be any inherent problems with the story transitioning mediums, so it's all up to how well they can pull it off.

DoomTheGyarados posted...

KP with the best taste.

You caused this! I emulated DQV back in the day because you wouldn't stop hyping it! As someone who has spent half their time on B8 hyping things up for other people to try, I applaud your efforts.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

In '87, Huey released this; Fore!, their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is "Hip To Be Square". A song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity and the importance of trends. It's also a personal statement about the band itself.

HEY, PAUL!

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

That's all for today! Will finish up Tier 3 tomorrow.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

American Psycho
Movie

"There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable. I simply am not there."

There's two levels to enjoy American Psycho on. The first is the 'intellectual' level, where the movie makes some scathing messages regarding materialism, narcissism, and yuppie subculture, and does so without holding back whatsoever. Then there's the surface level, where American Psycho is a movie about a batshit crazy serial killer who manages to be entertaining (and even a little sympathetic at times) despite being completely morally reprehensible. Where else are you to watch someone commit premeditated murder while dancing to Hip To Be Square?

American Psycho is so memorable because it succeeds on both these levels. Sometimes you're watching the main character chuck a chainsaw down a staircase, other times you're analyzing his fractured mental state and trying to figure out what's real and what isn't. Sometimes there's a helicopter chase or was there?, other times you're left trying to figure out what kind of society could not only create a man like Patrick Bateman, but also allow him to thrive. Then you get scenes where both levels work in perfect harmony, like the somehow-tense scene about comparing business cards. And THEN there's the eerily disquieting ending...yeah, American Psycho is an experience. It helps that the movie is intensely quotable and has one of the most underrated scripts in cinema.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Dragon Quest V
Video Game

"..."

Dragon Quest V's writing is so far above the rest of the series that it gives you whiplash when playing it after any of the others. The story isn't complicated, but it's extremely personal, chronicling the life of your main character from birth to adulthood. You grow older, both physically and mentally, as the years pass and some shit happens. DQV has a few scenes in particular that are jaw-dropping in both the execution of the scene itself and the fallout over what occurs. Every time you think you've got a handle on where the story is going to go, the game proves that it has one or two more swerves up its sleeve. I ended up caring much more for the fate of DQV's silent protagonist than I did the vast majority of characters with an actual character, and that says a lot about the strength of the writing and the scenarios your hero goes through.

I could go into the details of why the game is so effective, but spoiler would be unavoidable, so I won't. At the end of the day, it's simple: I played DQV for the first time over a decade ago, a second time more recently, and the years didn't dull the experience. It provokes a strong emotional response from me anytime I think about it, and sometimes that's all a story needs to do.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

FFDragon posted...

I like Speaker for the Dead slightly better. Both books deal with unintended consequences, but I like having the connection to the Pequeninos and Ender dealing with his actions is top tier. Plus the Hive Queen is boss.

I really really like the Pequeninos as a sci-fi alien species. Really interesting to read about their interactions with a bunch of dumb humans.

NFUN posted...

but they did top it with 3-5

I don't like 3-5 nearly as much as most. It just didn't click with me, for whatever reason.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

To elaborate on 2-4 for a sec - I recently experienced it again and found that knowing everything ahead of time does not dilute the rollercoaster of emotions it turns into. I love a lot of cases in the series but that was the apex in so many ways and I don't think it's possible for them to top it, at least based on my personal preferences.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

LeonhartFour posted...

Oh right Ace Attorney should be on here in some form I would guess

time to root for that next

I considered Ace Attorney heavily, but didn't include it for several reasons:

1. It's nature is more episodic than something with a strong central narrative. There's a lot of cases that are basically 'filler' or only advance the main characters in small ways.
2. If I was to pick a part of the series to focus on when deciding 'best story', I would restrict the series to AA1-3. 5 and 6 are good but don't have strong central narratives and feel like filler games, and AA4 is...lol
3. Even if I'm just restricting it to the first three games, I think most of Justice For All's writing is kind of garbage too.

Overall the series is too inconsistent. Now that I think about it though, if I was to really narrow it down, Case 2-4 by itself probably gets into Tier 3. And maybe the series as a whole is an honorable mention. Consider that a last-minute wildcard entrant if you want to.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

I miss the AIM days. Simpler times.

Ender's Game & Speaker of the Dead
Book Series

There's more books in this series but the first two are the ones I care about. Xenocide was okay but not amazing and I didn't feel inspired to read after it - I'd already gotten all the story I needed.

Ender's Game is one the greatest extended prologues ever written. The entire point of the story is to set up Ender's characterization for the rest of the series, but it's also probably the best book out of them all! It's very simple but very effective - a kid genius is taken from his family to be groomed into a military commander, all in preparation for the upcoming invasion against an alien race. The sci-fi battle school (which when I think about it, is just a more serious version of the magic high school trope you see a lot these days) is used well to explore themes of self-discovery and the effects that turning into a child soldier can cause. The book builds up continuously and ends in a crescendo that I don't want to spoil, even though at this point it's the sci-fi version of It Was His Sled. The finale of Ender's Game is one that's stuck with me for many years.

Speaker for the Dead fast-forwards a few decades in the main character's life (and a few thousand years for everyone else, isn't space travel-induced time dilation a bitch?). By then he's changed from a kid into an adult dealing with his past trauma by planet-hopping around the universe and giving eulogies. Speaker for the Dead is a more introspective book than Ender's Game is - where Ender's Game was always about the end goal and took place in a single battle school setting laser-focused towards reaching that end goal, Speaker for the Dead focuses on Ender picking up the pieces afterwards and expands the setting to an entire alien planet. It has a lot to say about regret, coping mechanisms, and above all the importance of communication to prevent tragedy, and honestly some of what it portrays is kind of beautiful.

If Speaker for the Dead has a flaw, it's that I think most of the side characters aren't as interesting as Ender himself. I would rank Ender's Game above Speaker for the Dead by a hair, but I'm not really concerned with which one is better. You can't separate one from the other. Speaker for the Dead or Ender's Game would be excellent singular stories in their own right, but it's how they work together as companion pieces that push them to greater heights.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Phoenix

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Up

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Oh, wait, yes I can.

Pluto
Manga Series

Technically this should be under the Fanfiction category. Naoki Urasawa, almost certainly the greatest manga author of all time, decided to adapt his favorite Astro Boy story into something entirely different and unique, and because he's a genius of course it turned out amazing. Pluto combines sci-fi with a hard-boiled detective story, starring a robot investigating the deaths of some of the most famous robots in the world. I'm a sucker for stories about sentient AI discovering themselves, and what it means to be truly alive, so this story was right up my alley. Pluto explores the weight of a life, and what it means for others when that life is taken. Every character is written with depth and feels like a real person (or robot) despite the limited screentime each of them get. SImply put, Pluto is really, really well-done and I love pretty much every moment in the manga. And I knew absolutely nothing about Astro Boy going in!

It's hard to describe what makes an Urasawa story so good, because his greatest strengths lie in how everything is executed. Pluto's sense of pacing and the way each scene is framed, even for the simplest moments, is perfect. It can sound pretentious to describe a piece of fiction as 'intelligent', but that's exactly what Urasawa's works are. They never talk down to you or force the story on you, giving you enough material to come to your own conclusions while simultaneously tugging at your heartstrings. By the end of Pluto, you're left tired but satisfied, confident that the story ended exactly when and where it should. I cannot recommend it enough to people who...well, like good stories.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Snake5555555555 posted...

So cool to see Transmetropolitan on here!

Glad someone else on B8 has read it!

Cybat posted...

Great writeups! Looking forward to the rest.

Thanks! Comments like this really mean a lot.

Raka_Putra posted...

If 20th Century Boys got into your HM, I hope Pluto and Monster make it to the Top 35.

I can neither confirm nor deny.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Book 2 ending is nuts, yeah. Probably the peak of the series.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

And that's all for today!

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Avatar: The Last Airbender
Cartoon Series

"Water. Earth. Fire. Air. My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old days, how the four nations once lived in harmony. How everything changed once the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar mastered all four elements. Only he could stop the ruthless firebenders. But when the world needed him most, he disappeared. Nobody had seen him for a hundred years, until my brother and I found him, an airbender named Aang. The problem is, this Avatar is still a kid, and even though his airbending skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone. The Fire Nation will do anything to capture Aang before he masters all four elements, so I must keep him safe until he's ready to fulfill his destiny. My brother thinks I'm crazy, but I believe Aang can save the world."

Avatar is a prime example of why execution in a story is so important. The story, when boiled down to its base components, is pretty simplistic. Kid's gotta go an extended training montage and save the world with magic - sorry, bending. It's in the way Avatar tells the story where it excels. Literally every character in the story is good, some of them very good, with strong character arcs and emotional depth. I'm quite partial to Zuko's development over the series, which goes in directions I did not at all expect. Even the more simplistic characters never cease to be entertaining and/or likable. The main cast could have been a bunch of stereotypical archetypes but their chemistry with each other and the little details they add to each characters makes the viewer invested in them almost effortlessly.

Where Avatar truly shines, however, is the world. Few fantasy stories can claim to have a worldbuilding as interesting and consistent as Avatar's. From the major elements like the history of each of the four factions, to the little things like how every animal is some weird crossbreed between species, everything just...works. I especially like the way that different types of bending look like actual martial arts styles that have been uniquely developed by their separate cultures. I always felt like I was learning something new about Avatar's world, and it made episodes with little main plot development still interesting to watch.

And above all else, it's fun. Big events happen, not all of them good, but the show never loses its positivity that makes it so easy to love. Just writing this out makes me want to go watch it again.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Transmetropolitan
Comic Series

https://i.imgur.com/mL36FVd.jpg

Transmetropolitan is probably the most audacious story that's still good. I've spent the last fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to describe it. It's main character, named Spider Jerusalem because why not, is an insanely bitter and violent asshole who somehow still manages to be sympathetic and enjoyable. The world is a future-dystopia that should be depressing (and sometimes is) but not as much as it should be, simply because of how absurd the story gets sometimes. Society is shit and the people in it are morons, but the main character is so upfront about his misanthropy and disdain for the populace that it loops around to being comical. That there's some real messages about the importance of truth and the degradation of society to be found in it almost seems accidental.

There's other characters, and they're good too, but Spider Jerusalem is easily the star of the show. I could post dozens of comic excerpts of the guy being ridiculous and it wouldn't even scratch the surface. His hidden depths and the nuances of his character come into play in the second half of the series, where the major story arc of Determined Journalist vs. Insanely Evil President starts up. For a series that grounds itself in absurdity, the conflict gets surprisingly tense and emotional at times. Now that I think about it, 'surprising' is a good way to sum up the story. It always aims to mess with your expectations, and does so while managing to maintain a cohesive narrative that doesn't feel sloppy, and that's a feat that very few stories manage to pull off.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

banananor posted...

Again, the raw concept of the story is really good, it's just better on paper than in execution. And I guess this topic is about stories, not pacing or camera work or attention to details or anything that technical, so it shouldn't ding the overall ranking, which I guess I've talked myself back into being ok with

Stuff like pacing and attention to detail is something that is taken into account when making a list like this...as long as it affects (positively or negatively) my enjoyment of the story as a whole. This list is subjective, not objective, and the impact a story leaves on me is more important than anything else. DDLC has issues, but I considered its strengths to be enough for me to really enjoy the story regardless.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

I am shocked that another person on B8 has read Chrysalis.

Mac Arrowny posted...

The final third was what made Berseria not my favorite Tales game (though I still liked it a lot). Arthur's villainous plan felt really dumb. Took all the nuance out of the plot.

I mostly agree with this. I still really liked some of the scenes in the last 1/3 but some of the developments were...eeeeh.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Chrysalis
Web Serial

"Ah.

English.

We had tried to talk to them. To negotiate our surrender. We had sent messages in every language, in every conceivable way. Entire committees devoted to the task.

But they had known English all along."

I love a good revenge story, and Chrysalis is one of the craziest I've ever seen. The hook is simple but effective - a sentient AI awakens to a ruined earth, where all of humanity has been eradicated by aliens. The AI is unsure of how it's alive, or even how it came to exist, but it knows one thing for sure: fuck that. After scouring the earth and finding absolutely no survivors, and spending just as much time giving the entire human population proper burials, it decides that the next-best use of its time would be to strip mine the earth, develop advanced spaceflight, and fuck up the motherfuckers that fucked the human race.

Chrysalis juggles a lot of different tones extremely effectively. It can be absurd, introspective, depressing, and hopeful, all depending on the chapter and scene. It delves deep into its themes regarding revenge, posing tough questions and then showing what happens when a being a wrath capable of exponential growth finds the answers to those questions...wanting. Chrysalis' placement on this list is held back by an ending I wasn't 100% happy with, but that first readthrough is so full of escalation and emotion that I love the story anyway.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

LeonhartFour posted...

Ahem, I think you mean Grimoire Weiss.

But yeah, I totally agree with you on just the emotional gutpunches the game throws at you, especially once you start the NG+ runs. It's one of the reasons I still prefer it over Automata.

I overall prefer Automata's story (SPOILERS) but it's for different reasons. Automata's is more introspective while Nier goes straight for the heart. Both are amazing in different ways.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Tier 3

Nier
Video Game

"Nothing will stop me. I will fight for Yonah until the end.

...Until the very end."

Emotional responses is one of the things I most highly prize in a story. I can look past a lot of bullshit (within reason) if a game, book, ect. makes me feel. Nier definitely has some BS to look past. Mediocre-but-underrated gameplay aside, the plot falls apart if you stare at certain parts of it too closely, and some of the major beats can feel forced if you're not all-in on the concept behind the setting.

It also made me FEEL, like, a lot. For all the flaws in its setting, Nier still does an excellent job at creating the most casual post-apocalyptic world I've ever seen. Everyone kind of understands that they're screwed, but they're willing to keep on living for however long that is, and it's Papa Nier's drive to give his ill daughter the best-possible life she can despite their shitty situation that makes his tale so compelling. The game doesn't pull punches on what it means to dangle a glimmer of hope in front of someone with nothing to lose, and the end result is something I'm not telling you, if you haven't played the game why are you clicking on this? Go play it!

The rest of the main cast is so well-written that their emotional stories matter as much as Papa Nier's do. Kaine, Weiss, and Emil are all fantastic characters who you really grow to care for because of REASONS REDACTED. Nier's various endings got me so worked up that I was one of the pushy people telling everyone to play it back when it was obscure, something I definitely don't do anymore.

Also, the music. The music is so good that it makes the story better. Anything feels like a gutpunch when certain themes start playing.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

And that's all of Tier 4!

TIER 4
Harry Potter
Bastard
Black Lagoon
Re:Zero
Undertale
Paranoia Agent
Tales of Berseria

Looks like all the Anime series and the one Manhwa got wiped out. Tier 3 starting up whenever my hand stops hurting for some reason.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Tales of Berseria
Video Game

"I really thought I could have my old life back, and I could forget everything else. I tried to act like I was doing it for him, but it was all for myself.

...But I can't forget. I shouldn't forget."

Tales of Berseria is an experience that is hurt by its mid-budget JRPG trappings. The art style doesn't lend itself well to serious scenes, the voice acting for some side characters can be so wacky it takes you out of things (looking at you, Bienfu), and it can be difficult to get immersed in the world when every environment looks like ass. Plus, Tales isn't a series known for its stellar writing in the first place.

It still baffles me how fantastic this game's story turned out. The plot hook is simple - revenge stories were invented millenia ago - but it takes that hook and runs with it. It's not often that you get to play as a group of people this dedicated to their own goals, no matter what happens to everyone else, and it results in a lot of entertainingly morally-dubious scenes. Berseria has a lot of parts where you feel like the bad guy, and just as many where you ARE the bad guy, giving it a unique tone not seen in most other stories. I've never been a fan of games where you play as the villain, but Berseria dips into toe into EVIL just enough to make you feel bad for what you're doing while still retaining the conviction to see everything through until the end. Just like it works for the main characters!

Every member of the party has their own uniquely satisfying story and is written extremely well, to the point where it's maaaybe the best main cast of characters in any JRPG I've seen. And even among tough competition, Velvet Crowe stands out as an extremely memorable character. While her lines can veer a bit into edgelord territory, especially near the beginning of the game, she overall gets a ton of good moments and character development and is the defining reason behind why the game works so well. She carries the game's emotional weight on her shoulders.

It's that emotional weight that makes Berseria as memorable for me as it is. The game likes to lull you into a false sense of security with good-but-low-key writing before blasting you with a segment packed full with emotion, and it got me every time. A few of the scenes are very, very memorable for me and will be for a long time. Unfortunately, the ending has some questionable parts, and the last 1/4 isn't as good as what leads up to it, which prevents me from ranking the game higher, but the highs far outweigh the lows.

P.S. Velvet for Smash. Make it happen

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

Miles Edgeworth


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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.