Hoho wow, I almost bought it a couple days ago at the big Squarenix sale for like 12$ off, but I never got the account activation e-mail and went "eh, fuck it". So, I guess I'm glad their forcing me to get an account got in my way long enough to save me twice the money.
In other news. The most recent kerfluffle about Dragon's Crown (if you haven't heard of what's been going on,
this Kotaku piece is a good place to start if you allow a broad enough definition of the word "good") gave me a thought. Said thought probably needs refining but let's see.
Where was everyone when Odin Sphere and Muramasa had good strong female characters and positive plot developments? Vanillaware's women have historically been pretty rad. (I'mma
spoil the shit out of those games now. Be warned.)
-Gwendolyn is a valkyrie, a proud warrior who views an eventual marital life as a fate worse than death. Her father Odin eventually allows her to be shackled to a love spell on account of ancient tradition, a fact which makes him out to be a coward and which causes him no end of guilt and regret. However, the man she is promised to, Oswald, refuses to activate the brainwashing part of the spell because he finds the process loathsome, and instead allows her to make up her own mind about what to do with her life. Eventually, every character who was okay with the custom of giving women away as prizes ends up dead, and the world is left in the hands of Gwen and Oswald who both have first-hand experience about how that stuff is complete BS.
-Mercedes is a little fairy girl who ends up leading her nation to war against Fantasy Viking Land and she is a right badass.
-I don't remember much of Velvet's story but I'm pretty sure she Got Shit Done too.
-At the end of her story, Momohime has the opportunity to go through with an arranged marriage to a man who admitted to not loving her. She essentially goes "I've seen Heaven and Hell, my arms have beaten gods and killed demons and banished ghosts, I have way the fuck more interesting shit to do than to sit around your castle and make anyone's babies, see you never, you asshole". Except she doesn't actually say that because she is a classy lady, but you know she's thinkin' it. She does start out as a bit of a wet noodle on account of her upbringing but she is faced with some crazy stuff and it does not break her.
-Torahime is a warrior-priestess who raises an army of giant undead samurai in order to assault the capital and depose the emperor, who has murdered her clan and stolen an evil sword. The male protagonist of the story assists her, but though he loves her dearly, he does so not because he thinks it'll earn her love, but because he hopes it'll earn her forgiveness.
You know what? If George Kamitani wants to make one game with a giant amazon who is so hella tough she doesn't even need armor (male warrior dude almost passes for some wuss in a tin can by comparison if you think about it for one half of one second), I say we let him. Guy's got some credit in the bank. And if someone starts going on about the designs being unrealistic, well they're gonna have to look for their realism in games that aren't about people with magic powers fighting dragons. (I don't know what DC is about but it seems like it fits that sort of bill.)
Now do I think the world needs more games without 9 foot tall half-naked women in it? Yeah of course that is quite clearly the case, I am not a dang moron (most of the time). But that goal ain't getting reached by making sure the world has less games with 9 foot tall half-naked women in it. It is accomplished by making sure the world has more games with women that have a reasonable amount of clothes on and the body of a possible human being. It is possible to compete against sex appeal and win, and if someone believes otherwise then they are part of the problem. If these games are made and they are any good then I reserve the right to buy the f out of them, and you can take that to the bank, ladies.
(Yes I do own Beyond Good & Evil and Mirror's Edge and Recettear and a bunch of Metroids and probably a lot more that I'm not thinking of because seriously I buy games because I think I'm gonna like them not because their main characters have dongs or no dongs.)