And another 1000 stupids for good measure.

What a stupid game.

And what a stupid gamer I am for seeing it through to the end. I hate Imageepoch so much right now, but I hate myself even more.

*deep breath*

Okay. Let’s do this. But first I must warn you that there’ll be pleeeenty of no-holds-barred spoilers below. If I had my way no one would ever play Sol Trigger again, but I’m putting the warning out just in case.

First, what I liked. Oh, there were a few good things in there. There had to be, or I wouldn’t have made it to the end.

1. Character designs were pretty good. Imageepoch usually does well on that front. They look much better in-game than in their portraits as well, which is rare.

2. The music is good. It sounds similar to the Failure Promise Story soundtrack, except this time it actually fits the mood.

3. Dungeons have a bit of variety. You’re still running around dungeons for 28 hours, but at least the decor changes frequently.

4. Occasionally, very occasionally, they’ll let you skip a cut scene.

5. The battle system is very good. I especially liked the little sliding meter that lets you power up or power down your attacks to meet your needs. They also let you speed up battles a tiny little bit by holding R or O. And I always like games where using a skill levels it up. IMO the battles should have been even faster and there should have been a way of reducing the encounter rate. Apart from that it was great.

That said, the Hate system and unrecoverable SP in Saigo no Yakusoku no Mongatari was even better – in theory. It was so poorly executed that every battle felt exactly the same, but I was hoping they’d fix the issues and carry the system forward to this game. You just don’t get the same “I barely survived” feel after battles in Sol Trigger. Instead you win so handily with your overpowered skills it’s a mystery why you’re the underdogs.

6. Good character differentiation in battle. This is another thing Imageepoch is usually good at. Every party member has different skills, different equips and different situations where they’re useful. When you’re using Valter you know you’re using Valter. No one’s entirely useless, although some people will always be better than others.

7. The Awaken system for learning new skills was quite interesting. Weapons and armors have potential skills, but they don’t trigger until conditions in battle are just right. For example if your party gets poisoned, that crisis “sparks” the knowledge in Ema’s mind and she learns to remove status effects. It made sense in a way, and I managed to trigger everything fairly easily. I just wish the skill animations had been skippable. They were way too long.

8. The save point warping system was cheap, but lifesaving. It made it easy, too easy even, to go all out with your skills and just warp home to save. The flip side is that the developers expect you do to this, so most skills cost a fortune in Sol to use.

9. The Sol refilling tank was good. My Lars had around 400 Sol naturally, but I was able to dope him with stockpiled sol until he had 2000 before the final boss. I wish other games let you store MP for a rainy day like that.

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Okay. That’s it for the good stuff. Let it never be said that I wasn’t fair to Sol Trigger. Now, all the stupidity, which is 99% related to the *spit* story. If you’re scared of spoilers, this is your last chance to look away.

Why this game is so stupid

The second generation gimmick was all wrong, wrong, wrong. Normally I don’t have anything against “Avenge me, my son!” kind of stories. In this case, however, the son and his friends are annoying and too much time is wasted going over stuff the player already knows by heart. I’m going to have to explain the story in detail, so this is your final, final, final chance to leave.

Still here? Okay. You start off playing Farel, the head of a resistance group known as Sol Trigger. Farel and his troops are “people of the light,” who have the ability to control Sol. The evil church has been capturing their people and using them as living fuel cells to power the country. Pretty nasty stuff, even for video game villains. Sol Trigger comes up with a 5-phase plan to take down the church and free the people of the light. So far, so good.

Towards the end of the story, Farel find outs he needs to unlock his “golden soul” so he can beat the church. The only way he can do this is by fornicating with one of three girls. Oh sure, they dress it up in all kinds of fancy “special bond” kind of language, but that’s the situation. Make Farel sleep with either Ema, Sophy or Fran before the final battle. Pre-final battle sex is the best fertility drug known to man, so of course the girl gets pregnant and has a son, Lars, sometime in the intermission between generations one and two. Farel, of course, dies in the battle, which ends in failure. Not just Farel, it’s a near Total Party Kill. End of Part 1. Still with me? So far, so good. I was moderately cool with the game up to this point. Not crazy about it, but cool.

Then comes a 19 year timeskip and we open up again with a new cast. The plot, never wonderful to begin with, rapidly begins to fall apart.

Stupidity 1. If you choose Ema or Sophy as Farel’s partner, the girl you choose will die. The girl you don’t choose will die too. Ifyou don’t choose Fran, she will also die. It’s like this:

Choose Ema = Ema, Fran and Sophy die
Choose Sophy = Ema, Fran and Sophy die
Choose Fran = Ema and Sophy die.

None of them immediately, but all of them definitely. Unavoidably. It sucks to be a girl in that world. And it sucks to be the player who develops a liking for them.

Stupidity 2. Lars doesn’t know anything about himself or about his heritage. Thus the first 5 chapters out of 8 can be summed up as “Tell me about my father!” That’s all good and nice, Lars. It’s just that I, the player, KNOW YOUR FATHER REALLY REALLY WELL! A lot better than I know you, that’s for sure! So I don’t need to go over the past and find out things and meet all these people that I know REALLY REALLY WELL again. It completely kills the momentum of the game.

Stupidity 3. It’s not just about his parentage; Lars doesn’t know anything about the world he lives in. I don’t know how it’s possible for him and his friends to live 19 years in the same city that his parents grew up in and not know the most obvious of truths about Sol and the people of the light. But yet again I have to watch him learn everything from scratch. Watch him get upset and indignant about things I knew full well over 20 hours ago. Things that are no longer even relevant by the time he learns about them.WHY?

What should have been done: Skip all that bildungsroman, journey of discovery stuff for Lars. They did it for Farel and it worked out pretty well, but once was enough. Farel and co. have done the groundwork, Lars knows know he needs to do, now do it and end the game. I don’t need to spend 8-10 hours following the wacky adventures of a horny teen who just joined Sol Trigger, the group that fought so hard and died so miserably, just to make time with a girl he just met.

Now, it’s not like Part 1 was perfect. But if it had ended well, I would have been more than okay with the whole experience. And if Imageepoch had to put in a second generation, a short 3-5 hour epilogue would have been passable. Failing that, swap places. Put Lars and his goof troop first and Farel and his team second. Alternative 4: Make Farel’s part 5 hours long and then focus entirely on Lars. There are so many other, better ways they could have done it.

Stupidity 4. Back to the question of Lars’ heritage (oh, you thought we were done?), what the heck is up with his mother? It almost funny, but not quite, how he’s so interested in getting to know Farel but never once asks about the other half of the equation. And when he finds out eventually it’s more like “Oh. Okay,” than any huge display of interest on his part.

It’s not just Lars, either. No one’s surprised or curious about the mother when they hear Farel has a son. At the very least Valter and Cyril should have asked some questions. They were with Farel the whole time, they can’t have known about his night with Fran, as far as they know Ema and Sophy both died in the battle, suddenly “Farel’s kid” shows up. Wouldn’t a normal friend at least have a few questions?

Not that the mother cares either. Yeah, Fran was damaged years ago. Not enough to stop her roaming the world looking for her darling “daddy” Ishtovan, but just enough to stop her doing anything remotely maternal for her child for 19 years. Once they’re reunited, she’s in no hurry to introduce herself. Or make any real excuses for why she’s been gone. From beginning to end her mind is full of Ishtovan, Ishtovan, Ishtovan, and she couldn’t make it any plainer. Lars is like the embarrassing product of a one-night stand she wishes she could forget. Actually, not “like” – that’s exactly what he is, so I don’t even know what I’m complaining about any more.

Stupidity 5. WHY DOESN’T ANYONE AGE IN 19 YEARS?!?! Apart from Cyril. Aged 9 in Part 1 and around 18 in Part 2, 19 years later. Let that math swirl around your brain for a bit. A 10-year time skip I can understand, but 19 years? And everyone still looks exactly the same? And not just looks, but acts the same as they always did. You try to tell me Fran is Lars’ mom when she’s still walking around in panties at age 38? I can’t take this game seriously at all.

It’s the same with the city. Almost nothing has changed in 19 years. The city’s the same, the buildings, the locations. The stuff we destroyed is all back to normal like we never did anything. The characters even comment on it. What’s the point of a large time-skip if everything remains the same?

Stupidity 6. To unlock his “golden soul,” Lars has to have sex with a girl who has the body of an 18 year old and the mind of a 9 year old. In case you didn’t know, this is against the law. And before anyone else tries this, “I was saving the world” is not a valid defense.

Stupidity 7. Lars’ sidekicks Klotho and Wilma don’t belong in this game. They’re generic orphans, they don’t believe in the cause, they don’t like danger and there’s no explanation given as to why they act so much like Gustav/Sophy in battle. They’re just there to sing Lars’ praises morning, afternoon and night. Basically they were just added in a desperate attempt to convince me to give a whoop about Lars. Here’s a shocking suggestion, Imageepoch: instead of telling me how great Lars is, why don’t you just show me? Radical, huh?

And these are just the problems with the characters. It’s not the end of Sol Trigger’s overwhelming stupidity. Fortunately the rest of the explanation will have to wait till tomorrow, because I just crossed the 1900-word line.