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
, set 1000 years later. This was Imageepoch’s chance to answer all those nagging questions (spoilers abound) at the end of that game. However, while they do tell us what happens to Wolf and co. after they escape, what I really wanted to know was stuff like how Sabi Chantier built those machines, what they did with the magic they extracted and where they are now. Especially since Litora (a.k.a. Littler) built her own machines based on those designs — waitaminnit, how did those machines get to where Wolf and co. had settled? Does that mean the new settlement got attacked again? Could they take another onslaught from Sabi Chantier? See, they just added more questions than they answered!
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.
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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.
Also the story needed a bit more work. Before I proceed, I must confess that I haven’t finished Summon Night 3
is to enjoy scenes and minor events that aren’t present in the anime/manga in addition to the regular anime events. Sorta of “official fanfiction”, if there’s such a thing. It’s very much a character game, just like Ookiku Furikabutte is very much a character show and the sports, while very well done, is just there as a medium of expression. So if you’re a fan of the characters and you can read simple Japanese and you really want to see, say, Tajima, Mihashi and Izumi hanging out after school or Sakaeguchi and Suyama fooling around before practice or 10 extra scenes of Abe yelling at Mihashi, this is your game. For everyone else it’s a cute collection of minigames, but not really worth going out of your way to play.
, a tough but enjoyable Metroidvania-meets-dungeon crawler type of game.
