>>82428
Criticanon, can you tell me more about what you think about Cause for Concern?
Personally, at least in terms of characterizing a party full of gluttons (and one maneater), i think CfC is still leagues above Evoria, I do agree with you that a lot of the Evoria's main characters are basically all feel the same in how they express their piggishness, and also the fact that they all wish their tits and ass get bigger from that fact. It does feel samey and formulaic. It's like they're all blending together to become the same character with some minor quirks to differentiate each other. Plus, Renee and Mitzi being antagonistic with each other with Naomi in between, while it does make sense logic-wise, it is executed poorly. It feels annoying just to read their back and forth, at least in Chapter 8 where they really dialed it up. I can also see what the writer's doing with Mitzi's plot, but I think it's a bit trite. Plus, I don't think she actually does anything to make the party dynamic better. Lilith would have been a better fit than Mitzi partywise, and would have played better against Naomi than against Renee, whom I think is more of a central character to the story than Naomi is.
Honestly, my favourite characters in Evoria would have been Lilith and Bea, unabashed voracious predators who just eat when they want, and they even approach it differently from each other. While Lilith still suffers from the same problems as what Renee and Naomi would eventually become, I think her being a self-centered narcissist worked better than Mitzi. Plus, I think Lilith being technically the first that leaned more into it in her chapters played off well with the other characters at the time. Mitzi could have been better as a side character like the others, like Bea.
Also, I do agree, they did built up Mitzi to be a 'Literally Hitler' kind of character with how she worked narratively and character-wise. Though I do think they could have done it better, it does strike me wrong that the writer tried to write her this sad backstory especially when they already pulled that with Lilith. It feels somewhat generic too, with how it was an absolute sob story to the point that it borders on ridiculous. I see what they're trying to do, but I think there's much better ways to go about it if that's what they wanted to do, and I think it would have been more interesting if they turned her into someone like VD from the Shrink 'High games (maybe the Gakuen one, at least in how VD acted there), where she's a different character whom you occasionally clashed against while still also being on your side. I could have seen her trying to flee during the court case, actually have her break free from the grasp of the players while also fighting against the Modernites after she gets abandoned to actually build up her redemption arc, especially given that she literally killed Renee's mentor/mother figure. I can see what they're going with Renee basically denigrating her to the point that Mitzi just self-destructs, I like that part, but I think if they wanted to go that route, Mitzi and Renee should have been actively combative to reinforce the mutual hostility, and them actually splitting apart before the attempt at reconciliation (Mitzi not wanting to move and telling Renee to go fuck off and leave her alone), and even then, Renee seems suddenly lenient to Mitzi after Mitzi's breakdown and reconciliation. Renee should still be stewing in her hate and give her time to process that, because it feels too sudden and jarring when she suddenly accepted Mitzi, and Mitzi quickly recovering and being somewhat back to herself afterwards only hurt that part. It made her look like a child (in a bad way) and it also ruined the gravitas and depth of the scene. Renee should have split off from Mitzi at that time to solve the problem on her own, Mitzi brooding for a while until she then does something on her own to try and save Naomi since she's the only one that actually treated her nicely (but still viewed through a selfish lens, like getting one back at Renee, make herself feel less useless and prove Renee wrong, etc.), and eventually slowly working together with each other. That would have gone a lot better, as it wouldn't ignore the fact that Mitzi did genuine terrible things, and murdered Renee's mother figure and had fun with it.
Overall, it's just a mess emotionally, the whole game. Naomi could have played more the corrupted innocent girl, becoming more driven by her naked hunger and voraciousness without talking about how she'd be a lot sexier with it (since it clashes with her original characterization) and slowly becoming more selfish and more self-driven, her no longer being 'innocent' but still keeping her genuine heart of gold core (so basically a good girl who occasionally lapses to her own hedonism and trying to find loopholes to indulge in it like an addict). Renee could keep her desire to be sexier and make her tits bigger through eating other people, it being a result of Naomi slowly twisting to indulge in its hedonism, but through the lens of how pleasurable it feels for her and how much hotter it makes her afterwards, specifically she eats because she finds it hot and makes her hotter. If they really have to make Mitzi a permanent part of the party, they could have differentiated her by characterizing her voracity as her feeling powerful and having control, as her doing it because it makes her body hotter doesn't really follow from her previous characterization, it should have leaned more on her being a power-tripping power-hungry bitch, absolutely loving how powerful it makes her feel, how much control she has over her prey, literal life and death at the palm of her hands etc. And them becoming more voracious could have been more explicitly been Naomi corrupting them.
And even with all that, they would have still kept the story as is. As I've said earlier, the story feels like it's written for manchildren, and like what
>>83063 said, it also tries to make the story feel deep. While its not impossible to write a story for children with depth and complexity (not like they're incompatible, a lot of old stories already do this, shame about modern media though), it tries to hard to have its cake and eat it too, and it executed things poorly. It has the outline, it has the skeleton, but the meat is rather thin and lacking.
>>83063
>Would had been okay if he had just keep the story simple. Your typical hero party defeats the demon lord type of story.
>Unfortunately tried to make his story "deep", can't really see how that can be pulled off successfully for these types of games.
You can, but it has to be specifically built for that type of serious storytelling The original Shrink 'High did pull it off quite well, the whole premise is the fetish taken seriously (though it still has its fun with the premise). Some Bullshit worked well because it parodies the genre and genuinely has good writing to back it up. Plus, I think aping Some Bullshit is a terrible idea, you should only really do it if you're good at writing in the first place. The only thing worse than a serious game written terribly is a parody written terribly.