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gascon-en-exil · 4 years

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Bottom Ten Three Houses Characters

I decided after a while that I couldn’t fulfill an anon request to do a top 10 list for the whole series, because it would overlap too much with ones I’ve already done - lord privilege is a thing that exists, and I’ve ranked those before - and because it’s really difficult to compare so many characters (~600 if we’re being thorough) across so many different games. Instead I decided to go negative with it, although around 2/3rds of these ought to be totally uncontroversial at least in my corner of the fandom. Starting from the one I dislike least:

(Dis)honorable Mention: Anna, for putting in such a lackluster showing that she doesn’t deserve a spot on this list despite technically being in the playable cast. It’s not only the lack of supports, although that hurts, but also how obvious it is that the writers have no new material for her. Anna’s gimmick worked fined when she was an NPC and perhaps for the space of a single game as a playable character, and Fates originated the meta idea of making her paid DLC so you have to shell out real money to use her, but that’s the extent of her here too. As a unit she’s far from spectacular, and her paralogue isn’t even good for much but a ton of (mostly mediocre) drops and a tiny bit of context for that Pallardó guy from non-CF Chapter 13. Here’s a revolutionary idea: for the next original FE it might be good to have Anna back to being only a wacky dimension-hopping NPC shopkeeper.

#10 Constance - It pains me that she’s on this list, more than anyone else by far. I really wanted to like Constance, and at first glance she’s right up my alley as a haughty impoverished aristocrat coping awkwardly with her diminished status. I like the dark flier class she’s built around, and her default personality is an even louder pre-timeskip Ferdinand whom you know I love. However, it’s that “default personality” bit that sours me on her, because she’s got two of them. What could have been an interesting take on Constance’s struggles with identity and self-esteem in the wake of her family’s disgrace is presented in such an over-the-top comedic manner that it’s impossible to take her very seriously. It’s more reminiscent of FE13′s Noire than anything, and at least she has the excuse of a mother who performed dark magic experiments on her and fractured her psyche. Constance also supports Jeritza and yet somehow they do no more than lightly allude to their personality issues which is as much a missed opportunity as you can get with such a terrible character (see below), opting instead to try softening Jeritza with his fondness for roses. Lovely.

#9 Leonie - Fandom exaggerates her Jeralt fixation, although it does pop up at the worst times (see: her Byleth support right after his death). As I’m not very concerned with Byleth’s nonexistent feelings though this placement more comes down to general indifference. Leonie feels completely disconnected from the rest of the Deer, and although she’s a supposed reflection of the house’s more egalitarian bent there’s nothing connecting her to the politics or larger culture of the Alliance until you learn about her student loan debt. She really is best understood as a Jeralt fangirl first and foremost, which is why perhaps the most surprising thing about her is when reality comes knocking in her endings and it turns out she picked up her mentor’s vices as well. Jeralt himself would be even further down this list were he playable, but as he isn’t I’ll have to settle for side-eyeing all of his adoring fans. Which brings me to....

#8 Alois - Remember that dating sim Dream Daddy that people were talking about a few years ago? The one that willfully misunderstands what the term “daddy” means in gay male spaces to write fluffy dad joke-laden romances intended for a presumably not-gay audience? Alois is the spirit of that game personified as an FE character, which is not something I ever would have thought to know that I didn’t want. He’s got some funny lines here and there, but that’s the most you can say about him when otherwise he’s just passable midgame filler (of a unit type each house including the Wolves already has one of) standing in Jeralt’s imitation Greil shadow. I don’t even mind the platonic S support all that much because it’s still only Byleth, but it occurs to me that just about the only thing that would have made Alois memorable would be if his S support was romantic but he remained married to his wife. I can’t think of a time when this series has allowed the player to indulge in adultery, so even if it had been limited to an option for f!Byleth it would have been a fascinating option.

#7 Cyril - This isn’t about his devotion to Rhea, which is fully understandable given his circumstances. Nor is it about his performance as a unit which in my experience at least is actually rather good for a Donnel/Mozu-style villager archetype. No, what gets me is that he’s a self-righteous workaholic which makes for quite the grating personality trait. I understand that he finds meaning in his work and that he’s got some entertaining supports calling other characters to task for their terrible work ethics or ignorance of the lives of commoners (VW should have really dug more into his back-and-forth with Claude), but the lectures on not interrupting him or telling Byleth to get back to work are as tiresome as they are frequent. It’s petty I know, but one can only hope he grows out of it eventually. At least he doesn’t wear a pot on his head....

#6 Mercedes - Like Constance, she’s the type of character I wanted to like from the start. She’s pious pseudo-Catholic clergy, with a quirky thing with ghosts and some quiet lesbianism with her BFF that I can take or leave but that I know some people really enjoy (and also she’s bi-for-Byleth, but no one talks about that). Unfortunately as I touched on when talking about Marianne in my Top 10 characters list, Mercedes’s appealing points are sharply contrasted against her more annoying ones. The breathy voice acting I can mostly get used to, but her backstory is unnecessarily convoluted - three families and two flavors of evil adoptive father - and as is also true of Constance her association with Jeritza drags her down a fair bit. To this day I still have no idea what we’re meant to make of the Lamine siblings’ dynamic, but Mercedes’s eagerness to overlook her brother’s crimes and unrepentant bloodlust so she can coo over what a sweet boy he is deep down say some pretty odd things about her personal moral code. Maybe it was implied all along with the paranormal fascination that she’s not as orthodox as she appears to be, but the dissonance is real especially in CF where she gets a support line with Jeritza that tries to woobify him and affirms how much she loves him...and meanwhile in monastery exploration she’s wringing her hands over how much she hates the idea of fighting Faerghus and the church. There’s no through line here, and as justification for characters siding with Edelgard go this one is pretty flimsy.

#5 Gilbert - Similar to Cyril, I don’t dislike Gilbert for the reasons that most of the fandom does. Yes, he’s a crappy father, but as I’m pretty indifferent to Annette and to father-child bonding in general I can appreciate the fresh spin he places on the archetype of the devoted knight. In short, he’s a knight who wasn’t devoted and ran away from his duty, and his arc in AM is all about making up for his past failures both to his family and to his liege. This is an angle to knighthood FE doesn’t delve into often, and it makes him an explicit foil of Dedue as explored in their supports. The reason that Gilbert is on this list though in fact has more to do with that opposition, because I am painfully aware that had AM not killed off Dedue by default in service of self-insert romance Gilbert would not have had to be scripted as Dedue’s replacement both as a unit and as a retainer figure. It’s not his “fault” of course, insofar as one can ever blame fictional characters for the actions of their writers, but whenever I’m running AM and have to take those randomized supply run quests from Gilbert instead of the route’s actual retainer I’m reminded of how we were robbed of power couple Dimidue (in AM anyway - CF of all routes delivers on this point). Gilbert could have been father of the year to Annette and freely given Byleth his (grand)daddy dick and it still wouldn’t overwrite the fundamental problem that Byleth screwed over all three AM-exclusive characters in different ways. As to that, well...look at #1.

#4 Raphael - It’s hard to describe just how much wasted potential there is to this guy. Along with Ignatz and Leonie he could have illustrated the greater social mobility of the Alliance and the increased opportunities non-nobles enjoy there, but all three are mostly side characters. He’s repeatedly positive in the face of tragedy and remains motivated by his love for his remaining family, but 90% of his dialogue revolves around either eating or training to the point that he’s arguably the closest FE16 comes to gimmick character writing (something almost every FE is guilty of, but that has come under heavy scrutiny in recent years because of how much Awakening and Fates used it). He has a sweet friendship with Ignatz with even a bit of chemistry that sits in good company with the kind of simply affability he has with almost everyone he supports, but they have a no homo ending involving one of the game’s eternally offscreen characters. He supports Dimitri, but the bara content is thin on the ground and their line stands out as easily the least substantial of the house leaders’ cross-house supports. Even as a unit he’s lackluster, in the same repetitive category as Alois with nothing that makes him really stand out from the other axe-and-brawling guys. Highest HP growth in the game...whee. I’ve seen arguments that Raphael’s simplicity is the source of his charm, and while I can sort of see that he feels like he belongs in a game like the GBA or Tellius titles where characters have a much smaller amount of overall content to their name. In a game like Three Houses the sheer torrent of lines about food and training wear thin quickly.

#3 Bernadetta - see #8 here. To sum up, she’s annoying, her sex appeal falls flat with me and is frankly just kind of confusing, it bugs me that a significant portion of the Ferdibert fandom headcanons her as Hubert’s bestie when the man clearly does not do besties, and the most positive thing I can think to say about is that based on her habit of befriending known murderers among other things she might be a bit of a sociopath. That’s not very flattering, but at least it’s somewhat interesting. Oh yeah, and Edelgard setting her on fire at the Gronder rematch is good for a meme although I suppose that isn’t technically attributable to Bernadetta.

#2 Jeritza - Jeritza sucks. Everyone, apart from the small number of fans into Bylitza for some reason, is aware that he sucks. He’s a bloodthirsty serial killer we’re meant to like because he killed his father to protect his sister and also because he likes ice cream and kittens...and because he’s clearly mentally ill in some way and Edelgard is weaponizing his illness for her war which means all the murder is okay, I guess. Jeritza is like FE7 Karel if he was somewhat important to the plot and that instead of a redemption arc between games he got Karla and some other characters swearing that he’s really sweet deep down and also he can romance the male self-insert - yay. I love the line of thinking sometimes espoused in anti circles that M/M Bylitza is the only non-Problematic™ Byleth ship because he’s their only gay romantic S rank partner who’s not one of their students, a loli, or Rhea who is obviously the most evil character in the game. As I’ve mentioned above Jeritza also makes other characters he supports worse by association, although he’s not quite as bad in that regard as #1. Do I even need to bring up the painfully affected voice acting? It’s ironic that the vocal director for the English localization turns in unquestionably the worst performance among the named cast, and I have to assume he picked the role for himself solely because he sounds like an imposing Death Knight and not because his voice is at all suited to the troubled twunk underneath the armor. Just about the only thing that would have salvaged Jeritza for me would be if he and Hubert got to have an epic competition to determine once and for all which of them is more evil. Hubert would wipe the floor with this poser.

#1 Byleth - see here at the bottom. They fail as a self-insert, they fail to be a properly realized character even more than previous Avatars, they damage other characterizations and arcs all over the place, and Three Houses overall would have been vastly improved if they didn’t exist or at least weren’t the PoV character. In that previous post I listed just two reasons why I still prefer Byleth to Robin as an Avatar, one being that their significance to the plot is set up before the game even begins and the other being that their lack of a voice makes f!Byleth a less obtrusive presence when it came time for me to have her S rank all the guys to fill out the support log...not enough to where I could treat her as a self-insert, but any amount helps. I do however have to add a third small bit of praise for Byleth, in that they apparently drive antis up the wall for the most asinine of reasons which is always entertaining to witness. I recall when this game’s school setting was first revealed that everyone in the fandom nodded their heads and made the easy prediction that there would be teacher/student sex because that’s just how FE rolls, but somehow still there’s outrage over it. Even so, Byleth is horrible by every significant parameter, and it’s a shame we’ll only be able to imagine what FE16 would have been like had the developers not felt the need to write the whole thing around an Avatar.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses

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bleedingcoffee42 · 7 years

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Absent- Part 27

I forgot how much I like playing with Kimblee. I am sorry this got so long. I am sorry this whole story is so long.

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“What toll?” Riza countered. “I'm not an alchemist and I certainly didn't perform human transmutation to get here so exactly why do I owe you anything?”

“The only reason you have any answers here is because you are more of an alchemist than you realize. Do you honestly think that seeing yourself as the Flame Alchemist was really that much of a fabrication?” Kimblee asked. “The truth is that you are more terrified of what you would have done had you been in Mustang's position during Ishval than what you did sniping from the rooftops. Admit it, you have some serious Daddy issues. You pride yourself on your abilities and had you had flame alchemy at your fingertips instead of a trigger you would have been so much worse than him. That drive to be the best cadet, the best marksman; it all stemmed from that deep rooted desire to get the accolades and attention your starved for growing up. It felt good to be recognized didn't it? What is Truth other than your own hubris, your damned pride. Without pride, who would dare play God and try to make a human? Or control fire? Or deliver the kill shot to a complete stranger, deeming yourself the superior in race, morals and life in general. So deep down you fear becoming me, because you felt that thrill when you hit your mark and it scared you more than anything.”

Riza finally sank into the chair he pulled out for her and stared at him as he flashed his palms, the array tattooed on them and she felt a pulse of some energy go across her back... her own array tattooed into her skin. Then he wove his fingers together, rested his elbows on the table and set his chin on his hands in display of satisfaction and waited on her. To be that good in any field you had to be drive had to have some degree of pride in what you did. Perhaps she always did question how she could be good at something that was only practically used for killing. “So you're Truth because you will tell me exactly what I don't want to hear.”

“That's what you expect of me.” He shrugged. “Am I not the embodiment of pride? So proud of my superiority over mankind and immunity toward the most crippling weakness humans have, sympathy?”

“I believe it's called sociopathy.”

He chuckled. “This isn't about me. You're the one pouring over books about psychology and dreams and damned near anything under the sun to conquer what haunts you. It would all go away if you just accepted that it was the choice you made and that deep down you are proud of yourself for thriving in a contest of survival of the fittest. Do I look like I lose any sleep over it? You're more terrified over what you did that you never thought you could do, than the actual lives you took. Truth”

“That's not...”

“Do you remember their faces or just the ones that you were forced to look at? I remember each and every one of them. So the question is, do you really value the lives you took or just hate yourself for your inability to stand up and do the right thing?”

“I did my duty.” Riza snapped. God they were nothing alike and his sick satisfaction at remembering faces was hardly appreciating the lives he took other than for his own pleasure! Why did it have to be him here, judging her? Anyone else.....

“A lovely word, duty. All encompassing in it's ability to deflect blame and decision making onto a superior, patriotism or some other entity.” Kimblee put his hands on the table and smirked. “Consider if you will that the reason you are here with me, beyond those doors of Truth and Knowledge behind you, is because you have been lying to yourself and that is what your subconscious is screaming at you to see each time it replays your war flashbacks. Not what someone made you do, nobody made you do anything. You could have missed, but you didn't. You couldn't, because you were an excellent marksman and they made an exception to the rule for you and let a cadet go to war. You were the only woman in the sniper unit. You felt special and you did your job so well to keep that feeling of pride no matter the cost. Just like Flame, we all knew he was the youngest ever commissioned and that he had something far deadlier than we could ever compete with and he was even a good military man...top of his class. He was the perfect soldier.”

Riza leaned forward, she was tired of Kimblee having a podium to preach at her for all her failings. She was tired of hearing him talk down to her, as if he had that right. “Something you can't comprehend, being a sociopath, is that being human is about having the full array of emotions and a conscience. Having sinful ideas is completely different than acting upon them. It's about having a concept of morality that guides your thoughts at all. Selflessness versus selfishness. There are sins and virtues. There are also situations were there is no win and each path is terribly wrong but lack of action even worse. Decisions, life..being human is not done without pain or error but it's how you deal with it afterwards that defines you. I make no excuses for my actions during the war, but Roy and I emerged from that with a greater purpose and dedicated our lives to making a chance to benefit the entire country. What did you do? Saw the end of your fun and decide to test how far you could go before they took you down? Turned on your own? You quit because life after the war didn't look appealing.”

“If you only aim to be better than me, that's a pretty low standard.” Kimblee smiled.

“What is the point of all this? Confession? Acceptance?” Riza shoved the stack of books at him. “Tell me how to get out of here.”

Kimblee opened a book. “Shell shock. This one is an old edition, I gave them something else to write about after Ishval. You should have seen that first wave of soldiers come through town after the first time the Alchemist Corps went through. What a sight! Body parts and blood splattered everywhere. Buildings collapsed on people. Charred and melted bodies. Even some of the veterans, the ones who had been there for six years finally saw something that shut them down that day. Flame was sloppy. He hadn't honed his craft yet. Left most of his victims alive, just melted and oozing....too damaged to scream out in agony but you knew they were suffering. I...humanely destroyed his little mistakes.”

Riza ground her teeth. She was about to say something but he laughed and continued.

“Imagine if it had been you, a hunter. Someone who understands how to properly put down their kill.” Kimblee flipped a few pages and rolled his eyes at some 'ye olde medical drawings' that looked like something out of a torture manual. People 'helping' could be more cruel than anything he ever did. Idiots. Humane thing to do was kill, anything else was just fulfilling a selfish desire to cling to a life spent or prove their ability to elude death with medicine. Fools. “You could have been so much better as the Flame Alchemist from the beginning. Focused, deadly, beautiful. Fully realized potential from the start.”

She could feel herself react to that, the idea that she could have been in Roy's place. She didn't want the title or his job, but if she could have saved him....

“Remember 'Naive Happy Roy' is dead and laying in a morgue in East City right now. Brain liquefied and dripping out his orifices. So happy and carefree he walked right into the fucking serial killer's hand and never put up a fight.” Kimblee clucked his tongue. “Think instead of you, Major Riza Hawkeye the Flame Alchemist. You're walking down the streets of some miserable little desert town, screams and explosions everywhere and you with your fingers on the trigger....of your Daddy's little family secret ready to help those poor people meet their God.”

He said it in the most mocking tone and she never wanted to shoot him more than this moment.

“Deny it. Go ahead. Tell me, Truth, that you wouldn't have done your duty and put down your prey as humanely as possible. A gunshot to the head would have been better, but you have only your gloves and this wealth of knowledge passed down to you by a father you loathed. Here is your chance Flame, stand here and show that worthless father of yours how capable you always were and how you are even better than him. Able to not only use his life's work but also use it better than his apprentice could because you have the training of a skilled hunter. You don't need people to accept you, you grew up in isolation with a cold emotionless parent. You were the perfect candidate. You know how to most effectively dispatch an enemy and you do it without hesitation because you have honed your skills to pull the trigger immediately when the shot presents itself. Feel that swell of pride as you walk past men like Alex Armstrong quivering on the ground and too weak to carry on with his duty. Society's elite, he had everything you didn't have and yet here he is unable to do the most basic duty with his prized alchemy! You can feel those stares now, not as a pariah but as a God. They look at you with awe, respect and fear. You're one of the best and this war will end because of your contributions. The entire country knows your name and you are the hero. How does it feel?”

“I would have given anything to save Roy.” She replied honestly. “I would have walked his path for him if it meant he could be spared, but....being that weapon and seeing exactly why there could never be another Flame Alchemist because of what I did in the name of duty. I would have had to have been destroyed. I would have never seen past the end of the war, I...could not live with this heavy of a burden more or less used it to fuel a passion to change things. I hate what it did to him, what I did to him, but this entire alternative reality has lead me to see that it really is equivalent exchange. There is nothing that powerful that does not come without a cost. This guilt, reliving my mistakes every time I close my eyes, it reminds me of why it's so important to accomplish our goals. So perhaps I would have been worse, but in this scenario the lives lost would have been for nothing because the Flame Alchemist would not have been compelled to change this country.”

“Interesting take.” Kimblee said. “I suppose I am biased. I always thought it was a shame Flame Alchemy rested in the hands of one so weak, so sympathetic....so conflicted.”

“That's why I chose him, because he understands the weight of his curse.” She said. “Even in our darkest hour he was weighted down by the guilt not the power.”

“So we have explored your alternatives of being the Flame Alchemist in both aspects: One as a hermit and the other as a participant. Each one ends with death, though you have attributed a higher value on a man you deem capable of changing the country despite the quantity of nameless Ishvalians that are on the other side of the scale.” Kimblee held out his hands, palms up, symbolically showing the weights and them being on an even plane. “Interesting.”

“I think I forgot how much I hated talking with you until now.” Riza said. Fireside chats with Kimblee were always unsolicited and condescending, but typically short lived due to someone trying to strangle or hit him. If this was about dredging up old war memories bravo subconscious, however it was helping her get seriously pissed off at this whole scenario and start fighting back instead of being whipped around in the storm. “Perhaps I do fear becoming like you which is not a compliment in any way, it's simply just applying a more personal face to the devil.”

“How rude.” He said and frowned.

“We were naive, we didn't quite grasp the weight of the job we were signing up for. We wanted to be soldiers to protect and be part of something good. We thought there was a real enemy to be defeated. How...how does anyone comprehend something so horrible as war without seeing it? How did we know our government was orchestrating a genocide? How would anyone know about the corruption without being immersed in it? You were right, killing was part of the job I signed up for when I put on this uniform. To defend our country, to defend our way of life. I had my eyes opened in Ishval, but my oath and belief in my duty have not changed. I will help put a man in power who will not declare way on an entire race. He will end the military's hold one every fiber of this country's livelihood. I will kill again to protect my country and those I love. I wear this uniform still and believe in it. Has my perception changed, yes, but for the better even if it is a darker vision of it all. What you don't understand is that some of us made the selfless decision to serve our country and that does not change even if it means changing the country so that future generations do not endure what we did.”

“That, my dear, is called treason not loyalty.” Kimblee replied.

“Like you're one to lecture on the definition of either.” Riza countered coldly.

#fic #absent

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recentnews18-blog · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/the-quiet-man-review-silence-is-stupid/

The Quiet Man Review – Silence is Stupid

During Square Enix’s bizarre 2018 E3 conference we mostly saw nothing of value. However, there was one game that caught my eye. This was The Quiet Man, and I’m not sure it captured my attention for the right reasons. Since seeing more of it, I realize I was excited not as a game but as a possible train wreck. Now it’s in my hands, and simply, it’s hard to be quiet about how hilariously awful the game truly is.

You play as Dane, a name I only know because I read the game’s Steam description. The best I can figure is that Dane works for a crime boss and is in love with some lounge singer. Then, some guy in a bird’s mask shows up and kidnaps the lounge singer. After that, I totally lost the plot. At no point does The Quiet Man even try to make sense. Sometimes there are hints of supernatural stuff. I think three different characters betray you. I’m not sure any of it ever matters.

It’s the Hush Hush Lad!

The reason I can’t figure the game’s plot out at all? Dane is deaf. The Quiet Man attempts to emulate this by playing no sound at all at any point in the game. This is a novel idea that can totally work if the developers build the game around it. However, The Quiet Man is not that game. It’s overwhelmingly obvious that this was a regular game that quickly shoehorned this in. Cutscenes will go five or more minutes yet include absolutely nothing but two characters talking. There are no subtitles, there are no translations, there is no way to tell what they’re saying. As such, the plot gets totally lost.

However, The Quiet Man seems particularly strange about this. The excuse given is that you “experience the world as Dane does.” Yet, Dane can understand sign language, so why isn’t any of that subtitled? It’s later shown that Dane can read lips, but the game still isn’t telling you what anyone is saying? Why are scenes that don’t even have Dane in them silent too?

The truth is, The Quiet Man has no interest in showing you how a deaf person experiences the world. Instead, deafness quickly becomes an insulting gimmick. It’s all part of an attempt to try to make a subpar beat ’em up stand out from the crowd. This especially feels true when you finish the game and it flat out tells you that you didn’t actually get the story before showing a countdown timer that shows how long before they release the patch that puts all the noises back in.

The Quiet Man uses his Quiet Hand to deliver a beat down

It should be noted that many of the game’s cutscenes are actually FMVs. It’s clear this is a very low budget production, as the game only uses FMVs for the most simple of moments. Long car conversations play out in FMV and the game awkwardly transitions to CGI the minute any action takes place. It’s hilariously obvious when these moments happen, as the CGI is awful. Sometimes the transitions are sudden, hidden behind a flash of white light. Other times the camera slowly pans to something innocent, like a wall, transitioning as it does so. I got the feeling the goal was to amaze players at these transitions. Instead, they just caused me to burst into laughter.

When its time to actually play The Quiet Man, you’ll be punching people in the face. The game has a very basic brawling system where you combine light and heavy attacks into something that vaguely resembles a combo. I say vaguely because all of the attacks feel sluggish and I was never sure which button did what. There’s a dodge button, and I could dodge attacks to counter-attack in theory. In practice, this only worked about once every five or so times I tried it. There’s no tutorial or interface of any kind. If there’s some secret to how to get consistently working counter attacks, it never revealed itself.

It’s the Quiet… Girl?

There are a few attempts to mix things up with a focus system. At certain times you can focus on an enemy to deliver a special super powerful attack. However, it’s never made clear when these times actually are. The only way I ever got focus to work was by smashing the button until it eventually let me use one. The attacks themselves are only really noteworthy for how underwhelming they are. Nearly every time I performed a focus attack, I got the same one. A really goofy open-palmed slap to the top of an enemy’s head. It’s the kind of thing that makes you just want to say “boop” when it happens, and not once did it look actually threatening.

Not like any of this matters once you learn how easy it is to exploit the combat system. Every single enemy in the game falls victim to the same problem. You can pin them against a wall and lock them into an endless combo by mashing the light attack. This includes bosses and even the final boss. It turns an already boring beat ’em up into a trivially easy one that makes you a tired man. It’s not like there’s even simple enemy variety to change things up. Every enemy is exactly the same, even if they’re holding a weapon. I can’t think of a single fight where I had to do anything other than mash light attacks against a guy pinned against a wall.

I hate everyone in this room

The lack of sound is also present in combat, contributing to a constant feeling of apathy. A dull muffled “thud” is the only feedback you get from your attacks. As you can imagine, this fails to actually sell your hits. There’s no soundtrack at all, which seems weird because it’s not like adding a soundtrack would do anything other than make the game feel a little better.

Everything about The Quiet Man is just plain ugly. Animations are stiff and fail to convey any weight. One awkward scene saw the main character dodging a boss’ punch, but it’s tough to buy when the boss’ fist clips right through the main character’s face. Speaking of Dane, his design looks like someone decided to mash together Spider-Man 3‘s emo Peter Parker with a 16-year-old version of Resident Evil‘s Leon S. Kennedy. The result is a character that I can safely say made me laugh at every scene he was in.

This is a totally normal thing that can happen on the streets of NYC

Look, even as a “so bad it’s good” game, The Quiet Man doesn’t work. It’s a boring, baffling, and genuinely insulting video game that fails at every single thing it tries. The story makes no sense as the protagonist’s deafness becomes a mere gimmick. The beat ’em up elements are absolutely no fun, the controls are awkward, and the game is ugly. The only positive I can pull from this is that I always wanted to see how much worse it could get. The Quiet Man deserves to remain silent.

TechRaptor reviewed The Quiet Man on PlayStation 4 with a copy purchased by the reviewer. The game is also available on PC and Xbox One.

More About This Game

1.0

Awful

Summary

The Quiet Man is an absolute disaster of ideas that don’t work, bad design decisions, boring combat, ugly graphics, and attempting to use a real disability as a gimmick in a way that feels borderline insulting.

Pros

There May Be Great Voice Acting?

Cons

Dumb, Nonsensical Story

Poorly Used Deafness

Terrible FMV to CGI Transitions

Boring Gameplay

Ugly Graphics

Have a tip for us? Awesome! Shoot us an email at [email protected] and we’ll take a look!

Samuel Guglielmo

Associate Review Editor

I’m Sam. Been playing video games since PlayStation. Favorite games include Ace Combat 5, Perfect Dark, Final Fantasy IX, Metro 2033, and MonsterBag. Also loves books and can be found face first in one all the time.

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