THE Nameless Blog

So the context I meant it in was the progression of the bad ends, specifically how dark they can get. In that post, Chini was talking about how shocked and impacted she was by it, and from that I was thinking like "just wait til you get to Nameless", and that's why I said I was glad she was playing the games chronologically. Nameless is kind of a big step up from Dandelion in terms of how dark it can get, and then Mystic Messenger is a little bit darker in some aspects (though personally I'd say that Nameless is darker, but it just feels like Mystic Messenger can be more explicit. Like for example, both Nameless and MysMes contain the use of drugs, but Nameless' use of drugs is only implied, while MysMes actually talks about it out loud to the player more. They both cover the same topics: MysMes doesn't have to censor it, but Nameless' use of it just...feels darker. In some ways!)

I think most can agree though that Tei's character is a darker/more mature story than Jisoo's bad ending, and that's basically what I'm trying to say about that. Playing the games in order, especially blind, is a much better experience of Cheritz's games, as they kinda feel like they grow up with the player, and that the deeper you go into the games, the darker the topics you get to explore

I mean, Nameless' story doesn't even have to always have explicit/mature topics in them to make you feel like you're soul's being ripped out. The Cheritz games get more mature as they go on not just in terms of, like, yknow, age rating, but also just in terms of the emotions they make you feel. I remember how I felt when I played Another Story for the first time. The emotions I felt were so strong that they were one of the biggest reasons why I had to stop playing for a while. Unknown's/Ray's story was just too sad.

Anyway tho...I'm assuming you thought I meant about other contexts of Cheritz's development, like writing quality, and yeah there's plenty of stuff to say about that too

This isn't inherently something that says you're a good writer or not, but something that always comes to mind when I think about Cheritz's development is the characters' relationships with each other. In Dandelion, all the love interests are competing against each other; in Nameless, the boys don't all hate each other per se, but they don't really love each other either. Mystic Messenger (and this is my favourite aspect of the game) has characters who all have complex relationships with each other, outside of the protagonist. I really do like the character dynamics in Dandelion and Nameless, but there's something about a cast of love interests who genuinely like each other that in my opinion really shows good writing, especially of an otome game. Makes the characters feel way more real when they don't disappear without the player. Plus, good polyship fodder.

One thing tho that I don't like about MysMes and Ssum is that they sacrifice the main character's uhh character. Which is really disappointing because we already know that Cheritz is really good at writing protagonists. You could argue that they were only able to make such a fleshed out cast of love interests with complex relationships with each other because they sacrificed the main character, but Dandelion and Nameless proved that they can write three dimensional protagonists at the same time as having three dimensional love interests

A critique I often see about MysMes is that the game doesn't have enough romance, and the main character just acts as a therapist to the love interests and solves all their problems for them through the power of unconditional and often undeserved love. And I disagree with that argument on multiple bases: the reason that the main character acts as the LIs' therapist is because the main character has no character!!! I don't even like calling her a main character, cuz "main" implies that the story is about her. It isn't. It's about the boys and one girl that she can romance. It's kind of impossible for the game not to make everything about the LIs and have the MC act in that way when the MC isn't really even a character at all

Which, again, I'm gonna say isn't necessarily bad writing, and I know there's actually Lore reasons for why she doesn't have a character, but it's just. Certainly a choice. I don't so much mind it, it makes sense for the vibe of MysMes and Ssum's play styles, but if Cheritz releases another game, I'd really like for them to go back to making protagonists again, cuz I'm really getting tired of this blank MC.

They're also amazing at world building when they really want to be, and its the characters' complex relationships though that go hand in hand with that world building: all of the characters' relationships are directly tied to the world that Cheritz builds in each of their games. You know your world building is good when the characters would be massively different if you took them out of that world. What would Jihae and Jieun even be to each other if they weren't from Grass? If they weren't nobility? I mean, Eri's relationship to the dolls would be hugely different if they weren't dolls. That's how you know your characters really fit the world that you've built for them as well

Their stories have definitely become smaller and smaller tho I think. Small just referring to the world building tho, not in terms of actual length or anything. I mean like how in Dandelion they introduced this entirely new planet with new rules and magic systems and timeline shenanigans. In Nameless, they introduced the idea that dolls in the Cheritzverse have souls, but that only really has consequences when the Wizard gets involved, and the game centers on this ordinary girl - no royalty, no one in any particular position of power. Then MysMes focuses on this small group of mildly powerful people, again on a series of events that will kind of only affect them and a cult that was also started by one of their members. The only world/new rules they introduced was the cult really

And I don't think that's necessarily a good thing or a bad thing either, but it kinda means they get less ambitious as they go on. Usually, when you make a sequel to something, you expand on the universe of the story as you go. It just means there's less work for them: if you make lots of details for the world you're building, eventually you'll forget some of the rules cuz it's way too big to keep track of, and you'll end up creating plot holes where you didn't mean to

And plus. Getting less ambitious means being more likely to attract a wider audience. A mobile dating sim set in the real world, dating human people where the goal is to get to know some people while you prepare for a charity party is not that niche. A world where cats and rabbits are sentient, humanoid people with their own planet and society is way more niche. Dandelion and Nameless' premises can even be creepy in their own ways- a lot of people are scared of dolls. Not so much of human people tho

(The reason I haven't spoken much about Ssum yet is cuz I'm not as involved in that game as I am in the others, so I can't say much about something I don't know about. But the Jumin having a brother thing is kind of what I meant by creating plot holes when your world building gets too big cuz it slightly goes against his character for him to have a brother he doesn't mention in MysMes.)

I'm sorry that this got a little bit rambly word vomit kind of thing, but it's a bit of a broad subject, so I tried to dip my toe into as many different areas as I could since I wasn't sure what specifically you wanted to hear about