I’m thrilled to see someone else I know talking about this game. I first played Rule of Rose nine years ago and I’ve loved it ever since. I’ve been meaning for a replay lately. After hitting up the usual suspects (Tvtropes, which I won’t link because your time is important to me) I’d recommend spending days some time on the now defunct fanblogRule of Rose Mysteries. I needed it to quench my thirst.
My posts on the game are literally from nine years ago where my already not-so-stellar writing style was especially not-stellar, so I can’t really link them in good faith, but I can comment a bit here without feeling like a total buffoon. As someone who has played the game through twice, I can say that… yeah. The combat can be very frustrating. Hitboxes are super wonky, and the forced combat rooms are excruciating. The drama of the Mermaid Princess starts to wane a bit when she’s constantly knocking Jennifer down, screeching, and then vanishing before she can recover. The lack of invincibility frames for Jennifer’s recovery makes it stupidly easy to die even to basic bitch mobs who surround you and submit you to a death of a thousand pokes.
Certain enemies are especially bad. The Bird Heads are aggravating, though fairly uncommon, but great googly moogly the friggin’ Pig Heads are the absolute worst. They run around like the damned Juggernaut and facing more than one is a quick ticket to the game over screen. I already mentioned the Mermaid Princess, but Hoffman’s boss battle is almost as agitating. Talk about your beef gates. This all felt especially bad coming off the tail end of playing Haunting Ground another PS2 horror girl-and-her-dog game, but which played infinitely better.
But the rest of the game? God, I am so here for it. The music, the asthetic, and I’m honestly a fan of the terribly cynical, tragic tone. YMMV, of course. Speaking of YMMV…
Wendy.
Hoo boy.
Right, so, I don’t necessarily disagree with what you’re saying. Wendy’s pretty awful. As if the gaslighting behavior toward the other children wasn’t bad enough (though, sadly, not something uncommon among children—or adults—in the realm world) her horrible actions literally led to the deaths of nearly everyone at the Orphanage, and she preyed upon a mentally unstable older man and used him as a literal weapon*. It’s not really actions that could be considered “redeemable”. That being said, I still find that I empathize with her a little. Call it sympathy for the devil—and I don’t think this justifies and/or excuses her actions—but her situation is a little different from Nanami. Wendy wasn’t raised in privilege, and England was an especially terrifying place in that time period. She didn’t have family or friends, and to top it off she was pretty sickly. The desperation she must have felt when it looked like Jennifer, her “Prince”, was going to stop caring about her drove her over the edge. She was just a little girl—and children aren’t known for their emotional maturity. I think Wendy is a really tragic figure, and so much of that tragedy is that she had the power to change the entire situation if she’d just been transparent about her feelings with Jennifer, and come to accept Brown as a friend, but she choose not to.
Then again, how many real life adults make those same self-destructive decisions again and again?
I’m mostly just playing devil’s advocate here. I didn’t love Wendy—I didn’t even particularly like her as a person—but I still found her to be sympathetic in a way.
There’s so much to talk about in regards to RoR that I just went with the biggest point I felt out of what you put. If you end up with more posts about it though, you can expect at least a swooning comment from me.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2019-05-17 06:22 pm (UTC)I’m thrilled to see someone else I know talking about this game. I first played Rule of Rose nine years ago and I’ve loved it ever since. I’ve been meaning for a replay lately. After hitting up the usual suspects (Tvtropes, which I won’t link because your time is important to me) I’d recommend spending
dayssome time on the now defunct fanblogRule of Rose Mysteries. I needed it to quench my thirst.My posts on the game are literally from nine years ago where my already not-so-stellar writing style was especially not-stellar, so I can’t really link them in good faith, but I can comment a bit here without feeling like a total buffoon. As someone who has played the game through twice, I can say that… yeah. The combat can be very frustrating. Hitboxes are super wonky, and the forced combat rooms are excruciating. The drama of the Mermaid Princess starts to wane a bit when she’s constantly knocking Jennifer down, screeching, and then vanishing before she can recover. The lack of invincibility frames for Jennifer’s recovery makes it stupidly easy to die even to basic bitch mobs who surround you and submit you to a death of a thousand pokes.
Certain enemies are especially bad. The Bird Heads are aggravating, though fairly uncommon, but great googly moogly the friggin’ Pig Heads are the absolute worst. They run around like the damned Juggernaut and facing more than one is a quick ticket to the game over screen. I already mentioned the Mermaid Princess, but Hoffman’s boss battle is almost as agitating. Talk about your beef gates. This all felt especially bad coming off the tail end of playing Haunting Ground another PS2 horror girl-and-her-dog game, but which played infinitely better.
But the rest of the game? God, I am so here for it. The music, the asthetic, and I’m honestly a fan of the terribly cynical, tragic tone. YMMV, of course. Speaking of YMMV…
Wendy.
Hoo boy.
Right, so, I don’t necessarily disagree with what you’re saying. Wendy’s pretty awful. As if the gaslighting behavior toward the other children wasn’t bad enough (though, sadly, not something uncommon among children—or adults—in the realm world) her horrible actions literally led to the deaths of nearly everyone at the Orphanage, and she preyed upon a mentally unstable older man and used him as a literal weapon*. It’s not really actions that could be considered “redeemable”. That being said, I still find that I empathize with her a little. Call it sympathy for the devil—and I don’t think this justifies and/or excuses her actions—but her situation is a little different from Nanami. Wendy wasn’t raised in privilege, and England was an especially terrifying place in that time period. She didn’t have family or friends, and to top it off she was pretty sickly. The desperation she must have felt when it looked like Jennifer, her “Prince”, was going to stop caring about her drove her over the edge. She was just a little girl—and children aren’t known for their emotional maturity. I think Wendy is a really tragic figure, and so much of that tragedy is that she had the power to change the entire situation if she’d just been transparent about her feelings with Jennifer, and come to accept Brown as a friend, but she choose not to.
Then again, how many real life adults make those same self-destructive decisions again and again?
I’m mostly just playing devil’s advocate here. I didn’t love Wendy—I didn’t even particularly like her as a person—but I still found her to be sympathetic in a way.
There’s so much to talk about in regards to RoR that I just went with the biggest point I felt out of what you put. If you end up with more posts about it though, you can expect at least a swooning comment from me.