#renoodle

Dis meee (ID in alt)

Links!!

https://www.pinterest.com/Cryptids_and_constellations/https://m.youtube.com/@NotOkNoah/featured https://en.pronouns.page/@Noah-noodles

INTERESTS

top Obsessions rn: Voltron: Legendary Defender, The raven cycle, malevolent, Old Gods of Appalachia, TF2

It changes a lot but ummm

Media:

gravity falls, hannibal nbc, fallout prime, foundation (i haven’t fished it yet), house md, supernatural, spiderman, red white and royal blue, stranger things, malevolent, magnus archives, magnus protocol, welcome to nightvale, king falls am, camp here and there, old gods of appalachia, mil-liminal/seemingly dark, juno steel, hazbin hotel, the raven cycle, desert skies, little shop of horrors, newsies, floyd collins, bonnie and clyde, the great gatsby, the raven cycle, marauders/atyd, dont let the forest in, the witcher, watcher lore, hermitcraft, evo smp, life series, kwite, call of duty mw, compound fracture, strange æons, the spirit bears its teeth, dead boy detectives, good omens, marble hornets/slenderman, daisy brown, Hoppers (pixar)

Bands/music:

ghost, will wood and the tapeworms, lemon demon, tally hall, miracle musical, mcr, the crane wives, the amazing devil, the oh hellos, green day, autumn J, madeline mai, mcCafferty, elyotto, vera lynn, arctic monkeys, hozier, mother mother, penelope scott, cavetown, yaelokre, fish in a birdcage, the lumineers, poor mans poison

general:

spelunking, cryptids, ghost hunting, art and writing, diy, sewing, skateboarding, guitar, cello, singing, hiking, civil air patrol

side blogs

@cryptid-in-your-art - art

@cryptid-in-your-writing - writing/OCs

@the-tamagotchi-process - disability stuff 👍

@the-eyeris-collective - System Blog!!! surprise we're plural :3

@prettiest-trash-in-da-dumpster - politics and punk stuff

@until-i-forget-my-mind - gay shit (occasionally nsfw, rarely used)

@collared-coyote - Kin and Therian posting

i might make some aesthetics blogs later idk

Gameplay

Dude, I LOVE escape rooms. In real life, online, physical games, video games, I can’t get enough of the stuff. If I’d known the main gameplay was straight up escape rooms (I was expecting smth more close to Ace Attorney I guess?) I’d have played it way earlier. Sorry story lovers I know the story is what hooks fans and I did care about the story too of course but I was also like “yes yes Akane collapsed again that’s very troubling when is the next escape room tho.”

The puzzles themselves were also a really satisfying difficulty level, I think. There’s been some irl escape rooms I’ve done where the difficulty was inflated in kind of bullshit ways, but I didn’t get arbitrarily stuck anywhere. And yet they were difficult enough that I was super proud that I was able to solve every part of this game with zero (haha zero) outside help!

I guess, with the exception of the final puzzle, the difficulty felt rather flat throughout? Like it doesn’t really get easier or harder at any point outside of bringing back concepts that you’d previously worked with. But I don't think that's a terrible thing. I thought it was silly (/lh) how deceptively simple said last puzzle was, while the player’s probably sitting there overthinking the whole thing (I certainly was for a bit).

As for the visual novel sections, that’s more story, but I REALLY appreciated being able to jump around and not replay the entire game at least 4 more times to get all the endings.

Story/Progression

I do still stand by my point that Junpei could have stood to be less immediately aggressive about everything, but I do think it was probably exacerbated by the English translation and English voice acting lol, and also circumstantially I can give it a bit of a pass.

I will not lie, my FIRST exposure to the series was watching my roommate’s bf play part of the middle of vlr (so I have a few spoilers going into that one) and being thrown in the middle with zero context I wrote it off as kind of a stupid series for a while until I properly tried it out myself lol. But I get it now! They really do just throw 9 of the weirdest geniuses you can find into situations, of course they all suddenly go on tangents like that.

ANYWAY. I think they do a pretty good job of having a strong setting and letting the details of it be uncovered as you play! There are plenty of games where either the situation is too mysterious to get invested, or they won’t stop throwing unnatural exposition at you, so I was relieved to have a good balance here lol.

Also I think the idea of incorporating the fact that the player already knows what happened in other routes they’ve already played as an actual factor in the story is a REALLY cool idea. I’d admittedly have liked for JUNPEI’S experiences with it to somehow pop up more clearly before you’ve triggered the true ending, so I hope they play around with it more in the sequels too.

As for critique, this may have been a me thing, but my biggest thing is that there was a huge disconnect between how much Junpei cared about Akane and how much I cared about the fact that he cared. Not like I didn’t like her—I loved her character and overall role as the true main character. But like, Junpei would be like “no… with these digital roots Akane and I can never be in the same group…” and I’d think “ok I feel like you’re making a bigger deal out of that than is necessary.” Idk, maybe they didn’t do a good enough job of selling me on their bond in the very beginning? Obviously Clover and Snake also were attached to each other so maybe Junpei’s inner monologue was just annoying about it lolol

To again clarify this has nothing to do with their characters. Either way imo it made the bad endings where she dies in your arms kind of fall flat because I definitely wasn’t invested in her in the… WAY that the game wanted me to be.

For the rest of the characters, Snake is still my guy that guy’s the GOAT, but I did like everyone! I was neutral on Ace which was kind of convenient, considering. Lotus was the one who grew on me the most I think. Kind of similar to the Junpei aggression thing, she really rubbed me the wrong way at first but the more I settled into the situation that they were in the more I understood where she was coming from. I forget if I said it before but her “realistic to the point of cruelty” was a great contrast to Akane’s “idealistic to the point of hindrance.”

Uhhh who else, I’m also pretty neutral on Santa ngl, Seven was also a GOAT. Clover’s narrative path was really interesting and I really like that so much of getting the true ending is helping her avoid completely drowning in her grief.

Also I think I read that Ace kills everyone in the endings where you’re stabbed? Even in the one where you see him already dead? Someone said that he was faking but. Idk it’s not really important enough to make a deal out of but that’s why I was like “who is this mysterious person?”

This is so all over the place but I’m not really good at having organized thoughts in less than 7 business days.

Visuals

I think the art is fun! The backgrounds are nice and the characters are all modeled nicely. Obviously there was a bit of a sprite quality issue playing a DS game on a PC, but with the exception of parts of Clover’s sprite you really couldn’t tell.

I do have to say it tho bc I was thinking about it a lot while I was playing: character design-wise, I think Zero Escape respects women narratively, but doesn’t fully respect them as like… people? People detached from the male fantasy? Not like it isn’t par for the course but they do put Lotus in. That. Also the male character designs are varied in body type and features and stuff and then the female design is “three cute girls.” But again it’s par for the course.

It’s also an issue with a decent amount of jokes; maybe asexuality go brr but with the exception of the “you cool with a mother?” one they were not funny to me at all.

Anyway back to the art, with the exception of a few hand sizes and that one where boobs don’t work like that they’re also super nicely drawn. I especially like the way facial expressions get handled there! I’ve started VLR and I have to say uh… not a huge fan of those “CGs” so I know to be grateful for 999’s.

Audio

Music’s good! Don’t really remember any tracks in specific but I remember enjoying the “boom crash guitar sting bad things have happened” song a lot.

As for voice acting, I think the characters’ voices fit them very well in both English and Japanese. I started playing with JP audio because I tend to prefer it, but I was getting too impatient with how long the dialogue was so I switched to English at some point. And I do have to say… in English sometimes it felt like the tone was off? Like the characters were saying their lines as if they were in a different situation from the one they were in. Or like as if they were feeling a different way than what the narrative seemed to be pushing for. I don’t think it’s the VAs' faults tho; it kind of felt like they may have been reading their lines without the full context for the scene.

Shoutout to all the “…” lines tho, it’s always so funny to see what they try to do with it like “My brother… might be dead.” “Hmm…” “Hm?” “Grr…” “Eughk.”

Uhhh in conclusion