Until recently, I was a game reviewing critic. Sort of.
I won't get into details, but I was let go from an online game review website similar to the likes of IGN or Gamespot. I'm not actually sure if I can claim I was fired, since it was a voluntary position with no salary; the site was founded by a friend-of-a-friend, and only recently so. But I digress.
The point is that this post is a review, and one that I would have submitted to the site if I hadn't been 'fired'. Coincidentally, I don't know if anyone actually bothers to read my blog. I highly doubt it to be honest. But if you do; firstly, thank you. Secondly, I apologise for the lack of content (I mostly write this for my own amusement and to record my musings). I do try to make the posts interesting in case anyone does read, so there's that. But again, I digress.
So yes, the review. At the time I wrote it, I had just finished a Visual Novel (aka kinetic novel, or VN) titled Planetarian ~ The reverie of a little planet ~ on Steam. VN games are an interesting topic on their own, and many have differing opinions on whether they count as video games. Personally I think it's more akin to a book that you read on a PC, so this review focuses entirely on the game's plot.
The plot, without spoiling, is essentially a small character drama. In the far future, humanity has ravaged Earth and themselves via drone warfare. Only the ruins, the automated killer drones, and a small population of survivors remain. Amidst this apocalypse, an unnamed male scavenger, the 'Junker', stumbles on a girl in the remains of a planetarium. The girl, Yumemi, is an android, and this meeting changes the Junker's fate forever, etc. etc.
Overall the story is about 2 or 3 hours long, and developed by a Japanese Development Studio know as Key. I'm familiar with their work (Clannad) and being Japanese myself, I read the entire story in its original Japanese writing; a small detail to note, since English translations may alter the tone or meaning of certain scenes.
So, did I like the story?
Ehhhhhhhhh.
I find myself in a difficult situation. On one hand, its a game developed by Key. If it's a game by Key, It's bound to have compelling story in it. To be fair the writing was actually pretty good (excepting the occasional over-reliance on exposition and unimaginative prose). So I really should like it and recommend. On the other hand.... I simply didn't. I didn't care about the characters, I didn't care about the situation they were in, and frankly I was more interested in the small flashback scenes fro the war.
Personally, the main problem for me lies with Yumemi's character. The problem being that she doesn't really have one. Her main character traits are that she's overly optimistic, innocent and chatters constantly. Unfortunately, these are immediately tied to her being a 'programming error' rather than any genuine personality. She's optimistic because she's programmed that way. She's innocent because her programming doesn't allow for any unnecessary learning. And it's explained that her talkativeness is an actual program bug that was deliberately left unchecked for 'cuteness'.
I was often left confused and frustrated by the story's attempts to characterise her, then immediately reminding us that her 'thoughts' are retelling of given knowledge stored in her data-banks. This implies Yumemi has no internal understanding of human concepts like happiness or sadness, these emotions are not original thoughts that she can experience. Instead, whenever she is 'happy' Yumemi is simply following programming routines telling her she is supposed to be happy.
I was particularly baffled by her apparent understanding of religion and heaven, having learned of the concept from the planetarium staff. Does Yumemi actually believe in heaven and prayer? Does she even understand the concept of religion? What about death, and mortality? The game writers seemingly attempt to display her understanding in the final scenes, but even that left me dubious as to whether she actually understood it or was just re-enacting expected behaviour based on prior knowledge.
All of this leads me to think that Yumemi is not human a character, or even a robot with the miracle of human thought or conscience. She's nothing like Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man. No, Yumemi is simply a machine following it's programmed directives. In short, Yumemi is a 'thing', not a person we can relate to.
So if we can't relate to the heroine, that's just leaves the hero. Thankfully, The Junker is immediately more approachable on account of him being human, and dealing with the struggles of a post-apocalyptic future. I actually liked his recounts of his time in the war, having nightmares about being in combat and remembering his time as a war orphan. These little snippets help build both the character and the world around him, plus struggling against adversary is a very human and relatable topic.
However, that was it. And by that I mean those little snippets was all The Junker had going for him. All we, the reader, ever know about him is that he is an orphan, a war veteran and is generally cynical about everything. That's about as generic of a character archetype you can get without adding 'grizzled beard and voice to match'. True, his meeting with Yumemi and (spoiler-free!) the eventual catharsis of the events that follow are touching, but even those events are typical character arcs that haven't been explored before. The Junker just feels very flat and boring as a character, and if it weren't for the fact we know he's human I'd suspect him of being an android too.
Overall, all I can say is that an interesting concept and a theme of human connection do not a good story make. It did cause me to ponder on artificial intelligence, and at what point we consider a robot to be 'human', but I am fairly sure that Yumemi is not a that point. Add to that a protagonist of 'Cynical Survivor Category 29 Subtype A' and we have a narrative that is generally dull and colourless, despite the unique twist of AI; and let's face it, even the 'AI + human connection' concept isn't exactly original.
Perhaps my expectations were too high for this game. I had heard it was a KEY game, and having enjoyed his previous works I expected something of a similar quality. I will, therefore, say that if you are unfamiliar with KEY or visual novels in general and want to give it a try, be sure to start with Planetarian ~ The reverie of a little planet ~ . It's a very good example of the drama and emotion you can infuse into a video game, proof that it's not always about guns and killing. This is particularly with a genre like VN, where most VN titles involve more mature content (I'm currently reading one about a young man trying to succeed on the stock market).
However, for me this VN left me a little disappointed, and a little nonplussed that it tried to pull my heartstrings with a story about a broken-down robot.
