Welcome back. Today I continue to explain why Sol Trigger is such a stupid game. I covered the problems specific to Part 2 of the story last time, but the rest of the story was plenty bad enough to begin with. Obligatory spoiler warning, but you’re better off being spoiled and avoiding this game for life.
Stupidity 8. Sol Trigger is a sequel to Final Promise Story
Stupidity 9. Was the “golden soul” ritual really necessary? In Final Promise Story, everyone had a golden soul and the final promise was just to draw out its full power through a bond with a friend – of any sex. In a painful, sordid retcon, Sol Trigger trots out the same idea, holds it down and defecates messily on its head by turning it into a casual sex affair. The last chapter of Part 1 is even titled “Lust.” A sweet, pure promise of love and friendship, one of the few good things about FPS, reduced to a cheap h-game “Bonk this girl or die” gimmick. I wept inside all game long.
Stupidity 10. Why does the team dress and act so conspicuously? And do their boobs have to jiggle quite so much? For a hidden faction, they’re really, really flashy with their streetwalker clothes and purple arms. If people of the light like Fran and Litora can easily pass for ordinary citizens, why don’t they hide their powers so they can 1) avoid persecution in the first place and 2) attract less attention while they carry out their subversive work?
Stupidity 11. It’s a trap. It’s always a trap. And we always have to walk into it anyway. Many JRPGs have a least one such scene, but this time it happens in Every. Single. Chapter for Every. Single. Mission. Sol Trigger takes the prize for stupidest resistance faction of all time. It’s established very early on that their world does have passwords, security keys and central control systems. If the church has all that but makes little attempt to use them and just lets you enter at will, shouldn’t you smell a rat?
Stupidity 12 (I could do this all day). All of Sol Trigger’s plans are senseless and reckless. Every single one can be summed up as follows: “We’ll charge in from the front! They totally know we’re coming, and there’s only 7 of us, but it’ll all work out.” And it does. Except for the one time it doesn’t, then they get wiped out. Of course eventually you realize this is more stupidity on the part of the in-game characters than on that of the writers, i.e. there’s a reason why everything works out 99% of the time and that reason is —
Stupidity 13. You’re doing what the church wants for 99% of the game. They know who you are. They know where you live. They see you come and go. They could stop you at any moment. They just choose not to, because Litora wants a golden soul. When her attempt to get Farel’s fails, she wants Lars’, so same formula again. Heck, Sol Trigger could have hurt her plans a lot more by just sitting on their asses and doing nothing or, worse, by just up and leaving town than by putting up their feeble resistance. Of course they couldn’t have known that… Unless they’d actually, you know, stopped and thought for a moment about why the church was being so nice.
Stupidity 14. They never considered any other tactics except armed resistance. The few ordinary citizens that do find out what the church is really up to are really shocked and scandalized. The team should have at least tried to capitalize on this. Mount an information offensive. Educate the citizenry. Mount your case in a civilized manner, and then resort to arms only if that fails. Which it probably will. But then you at least have the moral higher ground instead of allowing the church to write you off as terrorists.
It’s especially strange because once the church crumbles at the end of the game, we’re informed that everyone’s happy with that development. That people are cheering and dancing in the street. But why would anyone rejoice over the government being toppled by a “terrorist” movement? And why isn’t anyone worried about what will happen next?
Stupidity 15. Noi was too easily forgiven for being a double agent. More than that, I strongly believe he was a double agent all the way till the end. Think about it: you find out later Litora knew all along about Lars (how?) and about his mother (how?) but never made any attempt to retrieve him in 19 years (why?). That means she must have had ways of keeping tabs on him and making sure he showed up right when she was ready for him – which she could only have done with Noi’s assistance. Noi being a double agent is also the most ready explanation for how Lars grows up free if his mother is either Sophy or Ema. If Sohpy/Ema was captured right after the final battle and put into a cold sleep, how did her baby end up with Noi? Why doesn’t anyone ever ask?!
Stupidity 16. The moral of the story boiled down, as it usually does, to “Mankind doesn’t need gods! We’ll make our own destiny!” Where have I heard this before? Like 200 times before? Hmmm, let me think…
It’s a shame because they had the makings of an interesting story this time. The main villain was monstrous, but she wasn’t entirely wrong, in principle. If you have a country in a serious crisis and there are citizens who can solve that problem at the cost of their lives, is it really so wrong to put them to work? Yyyeeessss, but again, nnnoooo. What’s better, 1,000 people dying or 10 million? I mean, it sucks for the 1,000 but if it’s either they alone die or everyone dies, then, yyeeeahhh, but again, noooo. And eventually the church develops clones so that “real people” don’t have to suffer. And the clones don’t even mind living in facilities. Now Farel and co. can live their lives in peace. That’s great, right? Nooooo, but then again, nnnnnggghhh…. nnn…
Long story short, Litora’s methods were undeniably wrong, but her (his?!) principles were sound. Obviously it was evil of her to capture and kill all those “people of the light.” I’m not supporting genocide, not even for a so-called “greater good.” But the principle of harnessing the abilities of a few to save the many is a valid one. It just should have been done in a more humane way.
It’s a complicated issue. Which is why it’s a shame the writers adulterated it with all that unnecessary A God Am I stuff. In my humble opinion, the ethical issues were enough to carry the game on their own. Instead of presenting the church as a shadowy entity run by only two (2) humans, they could have delved a lot deeper into the organization. Us vs. The Man is always better than Us vs. This One Chick.
So how did the church start? How is it organized? Where did it get its funding? How does it run? How do they keep the citizenry in the dark? And most importantly for our purposes, what plan does Sol Trigger have for governing the country, keeping law and order and powering the nation once they wipe out the ruling system? I’ll give you the answer, as Lars gave at the end: Someone will figure something out somehow. And of course someone does, we’re never told how, and it all ends happily ever after, the end.
——————————————–
Phew, 3400 words combined for both yesterday’s and today’s posts. I haven’t ranted like this in a while. It’s very therapeutic. I don’t know what it is about Imageepoch and me, but I can never remain indifferent to their games. Overall Sol Trigger was a very technically sound game, but that just allowed me more time to focus on the story and the characters. Oh, how bad they were.
One thing’s for certain: I am never touching one of Imageepoch’s jrpg imprint games again. They usually make good games for other companies, but their own stuff is just terrible. Lesson bitterly, bitterly learned.
I’ve always wondered, what is with Jrpgs and Mankind doesn’t need gods! We’ll make our own destiny!
Why is it such a popular jrpg theme?
I always find games that use it to be trite and heavy handed, often assuming the viewer is a moron and would never have thought to consider anything like this for even a second of their existence.
I’ve wondered the same thing for years. It would make sense if there was some cultural or social background behind, but Japan isn’t a particularly religious country by any standard. Maybe it’s the same one guy who writes all the stories.
Apparently someone is fan-translating this, not sure why, since it doesn’t seem to be great from your thoughts. Also I don’t know whether they’re translating Final Promise Story either so double the continuity issues?
On a secondary topic, as far as why “mankind needs no gods” statements are so popular in RPGs… I haven’t found the answer yet. I blame Mazinger Z, maybe.
But I found the answer for why “FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC” is so common, which is apparently that true friendship is so rare in Japan that it’s a very common fantasy amongst the JP people to want actual friends and not people that you’re just nice to because of social demands… which is kind of sad, really.
And brothers/sisters banging like the Bright family is because Japanese mythology.
Sol Trigger is quite fun to play. It’s just the story that’s horrendous. Typical Imageepoch fare.
Do the Japanese really have no friends? I thought friendship was a universal concept. If the theory said “The kind of people who become video game scenario writers tend not to have any friends” I’d buy that, but the whole country? I’m gonna need a citation on this one.
As for the brother-incest incest thing… yeah, I’m not gonna touch that.
Video game scenario writers probably have more friends than the average JP citizen I think, if you take the average citizen to be some kind of corporate wage slave.
To elaborate – of course the Japanese people have friends… BUT, the key word here is “true” friends. Ironically, the whole JP culture on ritualized social niceties and formality with all their honorifics and customary drinking with your boss and all that leads to this scenario where you don’t know whether the people you hang out with are your actual friends, or if they’ll just ditch you as soon as you come out of the closet or suffer a crippling financial loss or personal injury or something.
I think there’s a whole bunch of other cultures in the world without this sort of social culture where people who don’t like you will just stay away from you rather than participate in ritualized socializing.
That’s why there’s all the “we’re true friends and we will stick together to the death to fight evil giant aliens from other space!” speeches because you don’t get much closer than “will fight to the death for you”, I guess.
Well, I suppose they could portray the concept better with a lot more “show, not tell”
Hmm. It’s a plausible-sounding theory, I’ll give you that much. But you do get the “We can succeed if we all work together” message in western media as well, American children’s shows in particular, though it usually goes under the moniker of ‘teamwork’ or sometimes ‘loners are losers’. What about those?
Hmm, not sure how I should interpret this comment…
At its core, every society/civilization is going to attempt to spread a message of “We can succeed if we all work together”, because that’s kind of how society works and succeed – everyone living in a tiny bubble by themselves tends to end very quickly.
Even America, with its focus on individuality, still has to do that. Of course, in America’s case, it’s pretty funny when the two messages collide. The end result tends to be “You’re special! But not too special that you stand out in a way that other people will dislike! Be yourself! Except if other people don’t like it. Be unique!… in a socially acceptable manner.”
Though I can’t say Japan does any better, because it’s such a “social hierarchy” conscious society that they tend to push the “obey society/teamwork/group mentality” message really hard , excepting intentionally “counter-culture” games like Shin Megami Tensei.
Sometimes it gets really scary when you see Japanese media where things like a character being bullied apparently means that they were in the “wrong” because “obviously” if they weren’t doing something different, they wouldn’t be bullied. “Teamwork” and “loners are losers” messages are actually more prevalent in JP works if you ask me.
Are you familiar with Korean pop media at all? I ask because I don’t really follow K-stuff, but I’ve heard that they have a hierarchical and politeness-focused culture very similar to Japan’s. If their games and media tend to stress the same values and attitudes then you might be on to something there.
Not familiar with K-stuff at all, sorry.
Slightly familiar with Chinese stuff, but mostly Three Kingdoms era stories (and similar), where I can’t quite say they have the same moral values of people of today’s age, I suppose.
Dead lmaoooo, why you so talented in this, your review didn’t discourage me tho, but dang how fun to read your way of review!
I also agree, their game system is good! but dang that story just -3-
are they lack of story teller or something?
They probably didn’t, and that’s why the company didn’t survive. It’s too bad because as you said the system was great, and it looks really stylish too.
I know this is sound stupid, but may I know the line up party after the accident? I mean, it seem clotho and wilma not really my cup of tea in term of personality, is there any other character that I can replaced them with?
It’s been years since I finished the game, but if I recall correctly you have Lars, Fran, Klotho, Wilma, Cyril and Valter after the timeskip. But you should use whoever is most useful in battle since the story scenes don’t change either way.
okay thank you! I guess fran will do? because valter and cyril I have good resonace with them
Sure, anyone is fine. Sol Trigger is not one of those games where there’s an optimum party to use and anyone else is bad. Everyone has their uses so pick whoever you like.
Is there a single imageepoch game with a storyline that doesn’t suck ?
Most of the games they made for other companies are okay. Even if there were annoying incidents, the overall story for games like Last Ranker were okay. It’s their “JRPG” imprint games like Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari and Sol Trigger that barely made sense.