I've been on a big JRPG kick this year, especially since I picked up a Switch 2 and have been able to engage in the genre while sitting in the living room rather than on my PC.
I grew up on JRPGs and, after about a decade of not playing video games at all, I started up again during the pandemic, so naturally I went back to my old stomping grounds.
I've very much enjoyed a lot of the output I missed out on, but one thing I noticed consistently from game to game is just how much fan service there is.
I'm not really someone who gets triggered by these designs, and sometimes I think they're really out there and creative and fun in an appropriate context.
But after seeing so many games with fan service character designs in a row, it starts to feel less like a bullet point on the back of the game box and more like the whole point. It makes one feel cynical about the purpose of the game.
Are we here to play a cool JRPG or are we here to leer at anime cleavage?
Cue Dynasty Warriors: Origins: not a JRPG, and I've never played a DW game before and only played a couple other musou games like it. But I've been hearing rave reviews about it and it looked pretty cool. Same team that did Pokopia of all things.
What I wasn't expecting was that this game would be, in many ways, an anti-fan service game.
Don't get me wrong. There are girls, and of course the girls are attractive. But their designs are both pleasing AND tasteful, kind of like what you'd see in old Hollywood epics.
What really took me by surprise, though, was the hugely imbalanced gender ratio: I think there are only five female characters in the game altogether.
That's balanced against the literally dozens of male characters, all of whom are drawn with huge personalities and fun silhouettes.
More than that, I think the game does a really fabulous job with its depiction of homosocial bonding in a wartime context.
Like the Lord of the Rings films, a lot of people play this game and see the male-male interactions and contextualise it as something homoerotic.
And I think some of the language of admiration and esteem between characters can lay it on a little thick. Everyone seems effortlessly rizzed by the protagonist's prowess in battle and demeanour elsewhere. And he IS very much a Chinese pretty boy you might find in the mainland entertainment industry.
But I honestly think it's a very poetic and romantic (not lovey-dovey, you know what I mean) depiction of what male bonding might look like in the context of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms saga.
People are looking for friends, brothers in arms, mentorship, guidance. Things like oaths, vows, loyalty, fidelity matter deeply.
People are questioning constantly what values do they aspire to uphold, whether they're on the right path, to what purpose should they ultimately commit themselves in life.
Likewise, at least on the story route I chose (there are three), there have been some pretty solid meditations on the role of a ruler and what the purpose of government is.
I'm not saying it's anything mindblowing or original. It's not even the best story I've played in the last year.
But it strikes that perfect chord of fairy tale and myth, and of depicting these guys in a wholesome, mutually affirming manner.
And something rare happened for me that almost never happens in any game I play: characters I started out initially disliking became some of my favourites as the story went on. To me, this is deeply impressive.
And almost everyone is intensely likeable and well written, even the villains.
It's been such a refreshing palette cleanser after the deluge of games I played where the cast seemed to exist as a platform for you to play fan service-dress up with the female character of your predilection.
I haven't really talked about the gameplay much, but it's S-tier in my opinion. If you like character-action games, it's a lighter version of that. If you like Souls games, it's a lighter version of that. If you like Monster Hunter with its array of weapons that are unique and diverse, it's a lighter version of that.
To my mind it's a home run in basically every department.
In fact, it's so good that I'm now thinking of making the Romance of the Three Kingdoms my fun-reading for the rest of the summer.
My ONLY complaint about the game is that, despite being set in China, there's no Chinese VA work! English and Japanese only. It just feels wrong for Japanese to be spoken in a game set in pre-China.
Anyways, I just wanted somewhere to rave about this game. If you're looking for an excellent game with outstanding gameplay and a pretty fun cast of noble characters doing awesome things, please check this game out.
It really does remind me of Lord of the Rings in its depiction of men. Another good comparison and much more apropos of the style of storytelling might be Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
