I'm genuinely surprised there isn't more discussion about this, because holy shit, the story is gripping as hell.
This is a story with actual substance, not like the typical gacha narrative where the plot is an afterthought and the hero goes on an endless adventure solving everyone's problems.
Stuff like The Surviving Lucem and Shaper Ripples arcs feels like religious experience that made me FREEZE with how raw Kuro can depict humanity and love in the face of absolute despair and war.
Seeing characters suffers beyond comprehension and praying to see them overcoming it messed me up so bad. Especially the fight in the Church and Liv decision in that chapter 17.
And I haven't even mentioned the "side" characters yet, looking you Selena, Vera, Discord, etc... and for some reason Kuro can even make us care for the NPCs like Stanley and Chiko????
Clearly there were tons of effort pour both into the world building, like how the virus acts and evolve and the characters' internal struggle as well.
I guess the slow start and no voice acting can be a turn off for some, and it's really sad to know not many can know about this absolute diamond
I recently made a video to share with the world about this gem of a story, like what make PGR story so good and also highlighting that infamous The Surviving Lucem arc. I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.
I've always found 2d VN-style gacha stories to be much better than the big name 3d open world gachas. Yea it's basically a book with some images but it beats out high-budget cutscenes more than often for me.
It's usually the case really, doing 3D means rigging animation, expression, environment details... it's basically a new horizon that costs way more to make. Still, I believed the story quality really started to picked up around Fake Ascension
It's precisely because it's 2D VN that you need to invest more in writing and telling a good story because there's no animation, visual spectacle, and dynamic pose to compensate for it. Honestly, the most important thing that could actually add the immersion more to PGR story is voice acting. 3D storytelling also face a lot more different problems compared to 2D, not to mention the time it took to deliver continuous update without stopping so it is understandable if some didn't live up to expectations.
damn mentioning Stanley gave me a flashback lmao
Yeah imo the side character writing has gone up alot in the new chapters
Nikola, Hassen, Asimov, and Wells screentime and character development (finally)
with new unique sprites for side charas, it's actually getting slightly hard to tell which side characters are gonna die or not (still pretty easy tho but I can't help but root for them now)
I get sad whenever there's no large discussion in this subreddit each patch, be nice if there were more ppl talking abt the plot
I think after the sync patches, less people are caught up to the current story. it used to be more active i'd imagine due to cn being ahead in story, so people already know if the upcoming patch is hype or not.
PGR is one of my favorite stories that I’ve ever read. A masterclass in “nobledark,” where things get really messed up, but there’s always hope, faint as it may be. As a story, it never sinks into nihilism.
Characters are written fantastically (with most chapters being something of a character study for their respective character), the worldbuilding’s pretty good, et cetera et cetera.
I always get the feeling the story is planned out with how the world function and characters' arc instead of thinking on the go. That "nobledark" atmosphere is pretty amazing
Fr man, surviving lucem made me adore Liv, I liked her before but now it's a completely different thing, I don't think I've ever felt so much for a fictional character
Fr fr, when I played surviving lucem I did it all in a row, it took 9 hours and that part was at night, I literally cannot forget it, I now occasionally prowl the internet hoping to find an artist that had my same desire to hug Liv and poured it in a drawing
I also appreciate how we really got to know the characters. No one trusted us immediately in chapter 1. We had to earn those relationships, I mean Lee thought we were incompetent, Vera was sort of a bully, Alpha straight up gives us the cold shoulder at the end of Homecoming Voyage. There’s actual dynamics which stay consistent.
Real asf, the way they portray despair and hopelessness is actual masterclass. There were scenes that legit got me blank-staring at my screen for a whole minute. Noan's chapter still lives rent free in my head with how good they got me emotionally invested, just to strip it all away so quickly. 10/10 would suffer again
I agree, the wanshi screen where he see the commandant hand inside the snow is also really good. You see wanshi is so sad about the commandant and really want to save him
The beginning definitely was the hardest to get over as it's slow and only give players the main outline of how Punishing Virus (PV) came about, what it does, and Gray Raven team main composition. No voice-over made it harder to get into the rhythm/focus in reading the story (I do find myself getting distracted/doing other things while reading at times). I mean, idk about you, but feels like not many people read books these days, and just want the rush of dopamine 'bomb'.
Also, there wasn't much at stake yet. But as the story progresses, more and more things are at stakes and they start to pile up. The only way to make everyone not give up is to give them "hope" (which is what GR does as what Hassen says).
Chapter 17 was one of the few chapters that placed the GR members, humanity and everyone at stake. If nothing's done, the PV would've pretty much took over everything had Liv not been fitted onto her Empyrea frame with the Omega weapon. And then the only people who would be alive then are those in Babylonia (And may still get invaded if Gestalt fails). Liv could've been corrupted/gone had we not been woken up by Ishmael. This chapter also showed the dark side of humanity when they are pushed to the edge of life and death which not many games would do. Additionally, they showed that death isn't as easy as people thought it out to be where it's not instantaneous, but slow and agonising instead.
What I like about PGR is that they build your affection/understanding of each character from the ground up. It's unlike WuWa where you had those affection/understanding before but MC forgets them while they don't, so the build up and emotional damage hits different. (At least this is so for me)
The newer chapters after Chapter 33 onwards definitely may get confusing because of worldline/timeline changes, but I think it's ok considering the Hetero tower causes the time to flow differently from the outside and inside of it and we corrected/rewrote it. My only complain is that some/many of the chapters after Chapter 33 were lackluster other than Vera's ER chapter. Story started getting better from Chapter 40 onwards with Nirvatia, ER15 for Kamui, and Chapter 41 for Alpha. I do hope with the current new team of story writer, the story writing will remain the same as it did.
I'm currently replaying the story and I'm at Chapter 18. Can't wait to reach Chapter 31 and bawl once again.
I really enjoy this game's story, and I really wanna get my live reaction out. This game's emotional damage is insane and the only game that made me bawl so hard
I have even cried with certain chapters like 17 and 27.
At this moment, the only chapter of the story that really felt tiring to read was 28 to the point of me taking almost two weeks to finish it which is impressive because I usually finish the chapters in three days maximum.
The rest of the story has been awesome so far including side stories and even arcade anima.
I think that the whole side story with certain AI going rogue hurts the pacing badly. There is simply more things at stake when the story makes you go through that backstory.
Looking back, Qu quotes are still the highlight to me. What she said was so fire I gotta to use it as my YT video intro to frame the entire atmosphere 🔥
I love PGR story. It's very interesting and way better than the usual gacha stories. It's bleak, hard to digest, very sci-fi, and makes you think a lot. That said, the closure for me was in dreams rebound. Seemed like a perfect stop for, act 1? After the latest Alpha's patch I'm not enjoying the story at the same level. Maybe reading all of it in one go enhances it.
Yeah that's chapter 36. Dream Rewound sounds like nice stopping point, like a "part 1 closure". A Better Tomorrow or Homecoming Voyage is still really good, but doesnt feel as "tight"? These recent chapters don't feel like theyre aiming for any specific path, prob still setting the ground for sth else.
i think the huge gatekeeper is just the lack of voice acting, like they can definitely afford that especially now, where they voice the affection stories
Pre Withers to Shine and the whole story before that was really good; I enjoyed how stories like Shaper's Ripples and Surving Lucem don't struggle to make them suffer, and not everything is sunshine and rainbows (I love stories that do that). Even ones like Aeons Reforged taught a really good lesson, while ones like Cradle Parade made me cry my eyes out cause that was a depressing chapter. After the Withers to Shine arc, though, there are certain stories, like Vero's, that have inconsistencies, while other chapters, like Liv Limpy's chapter introducing tropes that are not the best, or Karenina's story, struggle with pacing. I'm not the biggest fan of how the story handled time traveling after the Withers to Shine arc as well, since it feels like it's being used all willy nilly when before there were stakes, and it's quite confusing at times.
Yeah, Wither To Shine basically removed all impact from Shaper's Ripples. They shouldn't have written Shaper's Ripples if they weren't willing to commit to anything being different.
Kuro has great writers and they know how to write a story that keeps you invested. And I say that as someone who has severe lack of patience to actually sit through the endless cutscenes and reading, and yet I often find myself actively forcing myself to sit and read because I'm very interested and I want to know everything that's happening, and when I'm having trouble concentrating on all that reading I always look for like a story breakdown online because I desperately want to know what's happening and all that.
Granted I do wish they'd give us more gameplay in the story chapters. I feel like they used to have even amounts of story and gameplay at the start, but as the game progressed it feel most like 90% cutscenes and barely 10% gameplay. I wish they'd figure out a new formula for a more interactive story telling where I'm actually playing through it. I understand the lore and exposition is important to some degree, and you can't just play through every detail of the story, but I'd just like to have more interactivity.
PGR's story is definitely in the upper echelon of Gacha game stories from a pure writing standpoint for sure. I think the saving grace is that the concept of frequent 'new characters' actually just being the same characters allows for a much wider room for fleshing out and polishing the character writing which is the heart of any gacha game (both in story and monetization, never really seen a gacha that isnt primarily carried by its characters). This is why I have a problem with gacha games that take the conveyor belt approach, basically one character per patch and then drop them off a cliff (and if they do reappear, it feels more like cameo rather than being a core focus), they can write all the emotional stories they want but unless they are a world class writer, they aren't gonna be making 3 hours worth of characterization have the same substance as 30 hours worth of characterization.
In terms of story games as a whole I would put PGR at 'pretty damn good' tier, certainly above average, but not masterpiece. Dont get me wrong its a masterclass in certain aspects of writing a story indeed like atmospheric immersion/building and emotional writing (Ex. The constant sense of despair and suffering in Lucem or the emotional gut punch of Lucia's death in Shaper's), but at least for my personal subjective taste, I prefer stories that perfect other aspects like character writing or dialogue/prose craft or thematic execution (how well the concept/idea of a theme is actually played out and integrated within the story)
Solid 10/10 writing, Some characters lines from main to side and extra stories really wrote well and sometimes does references from books I heard and mixed with comedy of course
In short, Yes it is written well. Which is why I read both of these games I'm playing
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u/kumoreeee Engr. Force, your Captain has returned 21h ago edited 20h ago
I've always found 2d VN-style gacha stories to be much better than the big name 3d open world gachas. Yea it's basically a book with some images but it beats out high-budget cutscenes more than often for me.