Does the story get better?

[Ninethousand]

I am past the point where you suddenly play the fetus, that should clearly have died, because it was a month old fetus, LYING IN SOMEONE'S HAND, that has grown up into some kind of drug addicted prostitute, and man...

From the moment on where Grey just lets Hans snap his fingers again, and she should have died, if it wasn't for the RANDOM trolling lady, everything just sucks. WHY did Grey let him snap his fingers? For all SHE knew, he still had his powers, and she should have gotting hit by lightning again!

Was it SO hard to have Grey just either punch him before he uses his spell OR you know... do the Anime thing, and have her be faster than the lightning? Then Hans can go "Oh no help!" and the troll lady still gets her chance to announce to the player what a cheating bunch they are, ruining ANY surprise in the whole "You can't have Lily back!" troll.
No way! They JUST betrayed the guy that swore loyalty to them years ago, and i though they were honest people!

Whoever wrote the first part deserves an award. Whoever wrote the ending for the unvoided run and the "modern age" playthrough... PLEASE don't work on any more games! This could have been a great game if your garbage writing didn't completely destroy it.

Am i right when i assume that the game will never ever let you save the princess with Grey, and you can never go back to their original time, and everything from here on will just be edgy reallife drama? "Oh no! My Daughter looks like Poison from Street Fighter! Where did i go wrong?". That's the story now, am i right?


Also... Why is everyone saying that the game has like 1 million secrets?
I must be incredibly bad at finding secrets. I found 1 "secret" on my own, and i am almost certain that at some point i would be told where to find hp...
None of the items or gems i have are secret in any way.

[Pontus]

I haven't read the majority of it, but I got to tell... Gray picking the fetus over the princess was so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid, I have cringed.

Also, the storyline of the first arc is 90% similar to the Golden Age of Berserk. It is so similar it is uncanny.

[Ninethousand]

The story is extremely basic, i didn't mind that too much, since the storytelling was really well done, but... with 1 snap, it just went COMPLETELY down hill... as if they changed writers, wanted to keep the old script, but the writer REALLY wanted to tell a completely different story...

From that moment on i basically hated all characters, except for Lily, she had everything set up perfectly. Grey gets to live in exchange for her freedom, and then Grey frees her... AND WHAT THE HECK DOES SHE DO??? SHE SCREWS IT UP!!! WHY??? That wasn't a hard choice! Everyone with a brain would have picked Lily! How would bringing back the unborn child even work??? Yeah... even the devs don't know... Grey just carries a freaking FETUS with her!!!

I really wanna know how old the guy who wrote this is...

[brickey.8]

I feel like you have to be trolling if you describe the decision of "save the life of a person you care about or the life of a baby (and specifically the daughter of said person you care about)" as a slam-dunk decision that anyone should be able to make easily. Maybe you would have made the other choice, but it's certainly not a plot hole to choose the baby. Also it's implied that she was trying to prepare Lillie to rescue her mother in Gray's place, between telling her about the void lords and teaching her to fight. Trying to have her cake and eat it too.

Also bizarre that you think it's a plot hole that she didn't run several feet and deck a guy *faster than he can snap his fingers*.

There is actually a second route where you do rescue the princess as Gray, though you have to start over to do so since she's already dead before Lillie enters the dungeon. Getting that ending requires solving all of the brand puzzles and some extra puzzles that they lead into, and reveals a lot more lore.

It sounds like you've already made up your mind to dislike the story though.

[Lyo]

The fetus surviving did throw me, it's not immediately believable. Tiny spoilers: you learn later they were taken immediately to the hospital. Also it is implied that it's life is protected by the contract made to the void lords. I think the fetus should just be drawn older but then why wasn't lily showing pregnancy etc. We already have reality editing wish magic it's fine.

Putting "Gray the destroyer" hype aside, I don't think she could have sprinted the distance in time if his fingers were ready the entire time. A mild spoiler: Gray survived the lightning for actual reasons.

I doubt the story will regrab you. Mainly because of the many of hours of puzzles required for the story to answer your questions. The game is rather merciless for when and how it gives hints.

Originally posted by author:

"Am i right when i assume that the game will never ever let you save the princess with Grey"

The yes/no small spoiler answer is: No, you are mistaken.

Continued answer: You have a lot of game and especially puzzles left before you understand how to accomplish this unless you just start spoiling yourself.

Probably should just start spoiling yourself on what the next puzzle you need to do is.

If you are really done with the game permanently, then read the following huge story spoilers: 3 different endings save Lily, two send her to the distant past, and one sends her to Lillie's time. Lily hated her life as a princess and her kingdom was already destroyed with Johann sacrificing the populace. So all 3 endings are a better outcome then going to her original time.

[Ninethousand]

Originally posted by brickey.8:

It sounds like you've already made up your mind to dislike the story though.

Yeah, i hate "most" of the story i guess, since only the smallest part ist about Grey and Lily. Sucks that there isn't much more about those two. That part was awesome. Don't care in the slightest for the fetus story.

Originally posted by brickey.8:

I feel like you have to be trolling if you describe the decision of "save the life of a person you care about or the life of a baby (and specifically the daughter of said person you care about)" as a slam-dunk decision that anyone should be able to make easily.
It sounds like you've already made up your mind to dislike the story though.

If you live in a dirty castle in ye olden times, and you get the chance to save satan's unborn 1 month old fetus... DON'T!!! It's a TRAP! It WON'T survive AND it's the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ antichrist!
There are 5 billion reasons to save Lily, and 0 to save the fetus.

Even if, as the post above this suggests, the fetus survived because of magic... This is EXTREMELY inconsistent. They screw their loyal servant over because of a tiny little detail, that THEY themselves screwed up, but YOU, some rando, for YOU they bend their "you get to take a soul with you" into "and it gets magical life support"???

Grey is only making idiotic decissions, and it's pure random bs that leads towards the dumb fetus story. From what we and Grey knew at that point, she should have died from the second lightning strike, that didn't happen because lololololol!

@Lyo

Yeah i spoiled myself with a few things, but the story only seems to get dumber. Have not seen anything about Grey and Lily except what i played through.

But there doesn't seem to be that much game left, except replaying the same tedious garbage with other characters. Not interested in hardmode at all. Oh hey, i can see the exact same rooms i already saw, just with minor tweaks that make them even slower and more boring! Great!

Let me take a WILD guess... the third playthrough is exactly like the second one, but THIS time, you have to do it without the sword and wings? Oh boy! How exciting! I am already not doing it WITH the items, leave alone without them...

Guess i'll just check out what i missed tomorrow on youtube or whatever.
What a shame that someone had to cram all this garbage into the game, when the base story was already like... 80% of it's way to being perfect. I had the sword, they should simply have let me fight those 3 powerrangers and done! Princess saved, good game!
But no! It's Anime! Gotta have a timeskip after which everything sucks!

Edit: Yeah i think i pretty much saw everything now. Didn't see any good endings though. What a load of garbage this game is. This went from being one of the most interesting game i have played in years, to being my most hated game of all time. Can't think of any game that promised more and delivered less...

With ALL THIS GARBAGE in the game, was it really SO HARD to have a simple good ending? Why does EVERYTHING have to be this idiotic cringe fest? 2 days ago i LOVED Grey, now i hate her more than any other character i can think of.

Seriously hope that whoever wrote this will never ever write anything again. You are easily the worst writer i have ever come across in over 3 decades of playing games.
This was so insanely bad, i feel like i shoud get compensated for this crap!

[Pontus]

The OP really has a point.

[Ame-kun]

how can the op have a point when he thinks Lillie is a drug addled prostitute

[Ninethousand]

I just tried to solve the puzzles i missed from the wiki, and dear god... does the Tail puzzle suck!
I pieced the pictures together PERFECTLY and it wasn't correct. Nope, in the actual solution there is a part where the snake just gets folded up... Hope she didn't need that spine!
And on a part on the right side, my solution fits better than the real solution.
Again, was it SO HARD to just divide the sides of the screen into parts and NEVER use the same part twice?

I just wanted to do another round with Grey and solve the leftover mysteries, because the good ones are so intriguing, but if the solution is just plain wrong, because my picture looks more correct than the real solution, this just sucks!

Also the puzzle where bighead gets moved by the nerd makes ZERO sense.
How does "me going back a few floors" cause her to get moved, but "me going back a few more floors" doesn't get her moved?
This is clearly not a "puzzle" designed to be "solved"! THIS is actually a secret, the things that i thought i wanted more of! But no! This sucks! This is designed so ONE player stumbles over it and then post it online...

The NPC in the game say you can't solve puzzled always with brute force... Then PLEASE! Explain to me the logic of this crap!

And there is so much stuff that still makes no sense to me, even though i already googled so much... Like... Nothing seems to explain anything about Lotus Eater Machines. I googled it, and what i found made zero sense. In movies it's machines making you dream about your personal paradise to keep you prisoner, while in the game, you just go in and out of the dreams as you please, and it's obviously not paradise...

Originally posted by Buri:

how can the op have a point when he thinks Lillie is a drug addled prostitute

Have you seen her sprite? And the picture when she picks up the staff?
And apparently it IS meant to look screwed up, because she cut her hair off to piss off Grey or some dumb garbage like that.

[brickey.8]

I'm gonna be honest, even as a person who liked the game I looked up a handful of puzzle solutions and looked at some hints for others. The biggest one being that I just read the solution to Tail's brand puzzle, because that particular puzzle just did not sound fun to me, And there was content I did enjoy hidden behind it.

As for Gor (the giant head) being moved, you don't have to do that to reach the ending. That whole side dungeon and the boss it contains are just an optional secret area. All you actually have to do to kill her is talk to her while you have the sword.

I do feel like the method for finding that secret area was a bit too obscure considering how much content is in there, but there is at least a chain of logic: She gets moved if and only if she gives you a hint about how to solve brand puzzles. And she's explicitly moved as punishment for doing that. It's just that the method of getting her to say it is something few people would think of on their own.

There's definitely meant to still be some unanswered questions after seeing both endings, mostly relating to what Dis is and why it's like that. Unanswered questions at the end of a story is not a bad thing. There are some hardcore-secret-diver level secrets which drop extra little tidbits of lore, but you're meant to get a satisfying experience without them and they don't answer all the questions either.

[Ninethousand]

Incredible how few people seem to even talk about this game.
I browsed the wiki and other sites for what feels like hours, and i CAN'T even begin to understand how to do the 4 seals on 000.
NOBODY ANYWHERE ON THE ENTIRE INTERNET ever talks about the seals! WTF?
I understand that you need to kill Bighead, Snakelady and Mr. 3, but WHO the heck is the 4th one???
I can't find a single secret or area or ANYTHING that i have not read about yet, and i still don't get it!
The only thing i can ASSUME is that that thing is supposed to be a chest and contain a better rod, because i saw like 5 people talking about a super rod, and 1 guy somewhere else mentioning that 000 is a chest.

Sad, but i guess it's to be expected that not many players finished the game, when the devs are literally trying to make the worst story ever. "And then she is a knight! And a princess! But no! She is a single mom, dealing with edgy teens! No wait! They are powerranger demon mutant ghost hunters from dimension x! Nononono wait! CRAZY ONION DOCTOR!!!"

Seriously and in all honesty, whoever wrote this story, i hope i am speaking your language when i tell you: "Stop it! Get some help!"

[Lyo]

Originally posted by Ninethousand:

Incredible how few people seem to even talk about this game.
I browsed the wiki and other sites for what feels like hours, and i CAN'T even begin to understand how to do the 4 seals on 000.

A combination of reasons, the community seems to hate spoilers, and the in game hints for these are a specific rock/egg hidden in cifs chamber(a location which the Egg in B197 suggests you find) and context clues from the story in the game tells you. So people talking about the game expect you to have played it. Still arguably better communicated than Super Metroid's statue where you wander around and kill stuff hoping to find ridley with no instruction.

Not sure how you could have searched for info on just the seals for more than 15 minutes without finding out there are only 2 seals active, just kill the head and tail. that's it If you play the game normally it tells you how, and by that point in the story you know it all if you haven't skipped ahead.

I will agree the tail puzzle sucks, even if it does have tiny arrows that tell you where the diagonals are on the scales.

It's totally fine to dislike a game, especially ones with intentionally narrow appeal.
So far, it seems like you read the cliffnotes for a book and started on the last few chapters and are mad you missed stuff.

You seem very focused on the story. This game's total playtime is literally around 5-10% dialog and cutscenes,(like 3 hours) 95% void and puzzles. Depends on speed and optional content.

Since you don't seem to understand the appeal of the game:
The game is supposed to be a load of garbage.

It's an interactive game, not just a story.

It's a game that intentionally instills despair and suffering into the player, breaks their mind with difficult or tedious puzzles, forces you question if the goal is even worth it and refuses to give you a single inch you didn't rightfully earn. That is the intended emotional experience. You don't even need a story to relate to Gray, you are already feeling everything Gray feels as she torturously descends the void trying to understand. Then you finished Gray's Route and you found out you weren't Gray, Gray was someone alien with motivations you didn't understand. Why isn't Lily here? Why would Gray even make such a STUPID choice? You entered Lillie's Route and that is exactly how Lillie is feeling, who the hell even is Gray to her, where is her real mother, and why isn't her real mother here now? Why the hell did Gray even bother raising her? Why the hell did Gray die and leave all this crap for us to deal with?

For a glorified gameboy game it does a masterclass job of making the player emotionally resonate with the horrible garbage experience the character is going through.

If you don't earn anything that the game has to offer then you simply won't earn anything.

The fact that you are having intense emotions from the game at least speaks to part of that. Even if it lost you halfway through.

[Ninethousand]

Originally posted by Lyo:

Originally posted by Ninethousand:

Incredible how few people seem to even talk about this game.
I browsed the wiki and other sites for what feels like hours, and i CAN'T even begin to understand how to do the 4 seals on 000.

A combination of reasons, the community seems to hate spoilers, and the in game hints for these are a specific rock/egg hidden in cifs chamber(a location which the Egg in B197 suggests you find) and context clues from the story in the game tells you. So people talking about the game expect you to have played it. Still arguably better communicated than Super Metroid's statue where you wander around and kill stuff hoping to find ridley with no instruction.

Not sure how you could have searched for info on just the seals for more than 15 minutes without finding out there are only 2 seals active, just kill the head and tail. that's it If you play the game normally it tells you how, and by that point in the story you know it all if you haven't skipped ahead.

I will agree the tail puzzle sucks, even if it does have tiny arrows that tell you where the diagonals are on the scales.

It's totally fine to dislike a game, especially ones with intentionally narrow appeal.
So far, it seems like you read the cliffnotes for a book and started on the last few chapters and are mad you missed stuff.

You seem very focused on the story. This game's total playtime is literally around 5-10% dialog and cutscenes,(like 3 hours) 95% void and puzzles. Depends on speed and optional content.

Since you don't seem to understand the appeal of the game:
The game is supposed to be a load of garbage.

It's an interactive game, not just a story.

It's a game that intentionally instills despair and suffering into the player, breaks their mind with difficult or tedious puzzles, forces you question if the goal is even worth it and refuses to give you a single inch you didn't rightfully earn. That is the intended emotional experience. You don't even need a story to relate to Gray, you are already feeling everything Gray feels as she torturously descends the void trying to understand. Then you finished Gray's Route and you found out you weren't Gray, Gray was someone alien with motivations you didn't understand. Why isn't Lily here? Why would Gray even make such a STUPID choice? You entered Lillie's Route and that is exactly how Lillie is feeling, who the hell even is Gray to her, where is her real mother, and why isn't her real mother here now? Why the hell did Gray even bother raising her? Why the hell did Gray die and leave all this crap for us to deal with?

For a glorified gameboy game it does a masterclass job of making the player emotionally resonate with the horrible garbage experience the character is going through.

If you don't earn anything that the game has to offer then you simply won't earn anything.

The fact that you are having intense emotions from the game at least speaks to part of that. Even if it lost you halfway through.

The difference between Super Metroid and this game, is that SM was a NINTENDO game, so obviously every second kid in your class had the game and was talking about this.
I highly doubt that i will ever talk to a person in reallife that even heard about this game... And then i read that this game has COMMUNITY PUZZLES! What a load of garbage! WHO am i supposed to solve them with???
This is like a failed version of the puzzles in Animal Well, and THOSE already sucked, because... how would you solve the 50 people puzzle? Finding 50 people without someone coming in and posting the solution, because some nerds solved everything aftrer 3 days???

How is there only 2 seals? There are 4 strings on the statue, and i know about 3 seals. Snakelady, Bighead and Mr. 3 all clearly have seals...

The diagonals are not what suck about the tail puzzle, it's that the bottom part of the puzzle fits WAY better on the right side.

"The game sucks on purpose"... So ANYTHING that is done "on purpose" is a good thing?

"Lost you half way through" Yeah, more like... 10% through. Game is not even worth 5 bucks, since the part i enjoyed is ruined by completely dumb writing done by some edgy kid.

They could have made a GOOD game "on purpose", but no...
What if a game sucks? Just watch an episode of AVGN, then you know what happens.
No need to make a whole game that just sucks "on purpose"
Especially when half way through the puzzle solutions start to be wrong.

Reminds me of that famous professor layton puzzle where literally EVERY answer between like... 1 and 12 could be right, depending on the way you twist the question. But no, the answer is 7! Because the dev says so! That's not fun and literally everyone agrees! Have a CLEAR right solution. Don't give the player something that is a solution with NO means of figuring out that it is wrong.

The tail TIES THE MURAL TOGETHER... IT TIES IT TOGETHER!!! Why in the world would i assume that when finished, the puzzle shows the whole mural? I thought it would... you know... TIE IT TOGETHER! If you tie two rocks together with a rope, the rocks don't become rope! But yeah... "puzzle sucks on purpose!" right?

Why do people even make games like this? How much would you have to hate players, to serve them THIS insane garbage?

Edit: Just another user i just stumbled over: Recently i went to cif brand room and the rock there told me to kill the 3 traitors and go to 000.

And again... HOW are there only TWO seals??? Apparently multiple things in the game make you think that there are more than 2 seals. WHY would i EVER go back to 000 without doing them all??? Oh right... Game bad on purpose... i forgot!

[brickey.8]

First off, while there's not a lot of discussion in forums and stuff, there is a "Guides" section in the Steam community which has VERY good and comprehensive hints for this game. Anything that has you stuck, those guides can help you. I'd especially recommend this one: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3045528518

The lore reason for the seals: Three seals were created, for the three void lords who are considered traitors. The hint in Cif's brand room (B223) explicitly tells you to kill what's left of the three traitors and return to 000. However, Mon (the guy with paper taped to his face) already snuck into his brand room and broke his seal. You can see it lying on the ground in there, just like the other two seals are in their respective lords' rooms. He's the only one of the three who faked his death and can wander freely instead of being trapped in one room, and he knew you were gonna need to break the seals for his plan, so it's not that much of a stretch.

[Ninethousand]

I got most of that, but i didn't see a broken seal in any screenshot or read about it, and i can't remember if that was there in Grey's playthrough.
I only knew that "There was a seal here, but now it's gone!" or something like that, and that was in my eyes OBVIOUSLY telling you that his seal is the thing he has in front of his face, which gets cut in some cutscene.
Sorry for thinking that the OBVIOUS seal cutting was a seal being cut...
Then what is the "Seal is gone now!" part about? Just a red herring?
Again, i think that's terrible storytelling...

Anyways, i think i saw everything, and literally nothing past Hans' second finger snap is even worth reading. Even the "Really final secret mega true ending" seems to be freaking idiotic, and it's for the 20th time, the devs just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ all over the story.

They make a game, that almost nobody will play, and it's catering to people who like cringe memes AND played another game that almost nobody played...
Just why? I can't imagine that the game earned them any money, looking at how many players it had and how cheap it is.

Edit: And yet i punish myself again by trying another thing in the Grey route... How the heck do you even do the first room after entering the blank brand?
Google and any guides are completely useless, they barely mention those rooms.
The guide that was posted here, only says something dumb like "Super easy! Moving on!"... I have NO clue how to beat this room. Rock says kill enemies, that does nothing, if i fall i die, if i go down the stairs it's a reset and if i move the floor i get zapped and none of the statues are movable...
Sure! "Super easy! MIght as well be B003!"
I don't know what is written worse, the game or the guides...
Only ONCE i saw a guy in some random comment go "The solution is UULDDRRRRRDLLULUDDRDLURD". The only person in the entire community that knows how to write a solution to a puzzle...

[Grotera]

Originally posted by Ninethousand:

I got most of that, but i didn't see a broken seal in any screenshot or read about it, and i can't remember if that was there in Grey's playthrough.
I only knew that "There was a seal here, but now it's gone!" or something like that, and that was in my eyes OBVIOUSLY telling you that his seal is the thing he has in front of his face, which gets cut in some cutscene.
Sorry for thinking that the OBVIOUS seal cutting was a seal being cut...
Then what is the "Seal is gone now!" part about? Just a red herring?
Again, i think that's terrible storytelling...

Anyways, i think i saw everything, and literally nothing past Hans' second finger snap is even worth reading. Even the "Really final secret mega true ending" seems to be freaking idiotic, and it's for the 20th time, the devs just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ all over the story.

They make a game, that almost nobody will play, and it's catering to people who like cringe memes AND played another game that almost nobody played...
Just why? I can't imagine that the game earned them any money, looking at how many players it had and how cheap it is.

Edit: And yet i punish myself again by trying another thing in the Grey route... How the heck do you even do the first room after entering the blank brand?
Google and any guides are completely useless, they barely mention those rooms.
The guide that was posted here, only says something dumb like "Super easy! Moving on!"... I have NO clue how to beat this room. Rock says kill enemies, that does nothing, if i fall i die, if i go down the stairs it's a reset and if i move the floor i get zapped and none of the statues are movable...
Sure! "Super easy! MIght as well be B003!"
I don't know what is written worse, the game or the guides...
Only ONCE i saw a guy in some random comment go "The solution is UULDDRRRRRDLLULUDDRDLURD". The only person in the entire community that knows how to write a solution to a puzzle...

It's not the community's fault that you are incapable of looking up a puzzle guide properly.