Arbitrary Utopia

This is going to be a fun one.

I don't know why but I finished GEARS of DRAGOON -迷宮のウロボロス-, in the sense that I completed every ending and collected every CG. All I can say is, what a journey it has been. I almost thought I wasn't going to survive the storm of cliches that the game brought to my little world. Once again I was left speechless, or rather too busy laughing at what I perceived to be a lack of sincerity and professionalism on the game writers' part. How they can read their own stories and not fall off their chairs laughing is beyond me, seeing as how my chair almost fell off me and flew straight outside the window.

Gears of Dragoon is a dungeon crawler, much like the classic Wizardry and the newer Etrian Odyssey, except its poorly designed 3D dungeons are painful to look at and frustrating to navigate through. Wait, I was supposed to start with the better aspects of the game first. It's actually a decent game with a surprisingly addictive enchanting system. I probably had more fun crafting and enchanting equipments than rushing through the dungeons just so I could get to the next chapter. The art is alright and some of the music tracks are fairly good, but it's never a good sign if I brought up the art and music so early. Indeed everything else about the game left a pretty bad impression on me, with the most glaring problem being the terrible writing.

It's like they added Conrad just to fill up the space

Ever wondered what happens when the most generic characters come together in a most generic story? Gears of Dragoon comes dangerously close to that. The main character Ladius, who conveniently has amnesia, is irritatingly impetuous and stubborn. Filia, whom I take to be the main heroine since she gets the most scenes, has a repulsively bubbly personality which turns out to be "fake" as she is really an overpowered and emotionless anti-Durga/Rudra (why the Hindi names?) killing machine called Dynamis. Oh and her only flaw is that she can't cook. Bravo Japan, you've done it again. Who'd have thought that it was a bad idea to put a powerful system on someone who would then develop a weak, dependent and unstable personality? Right, Noel?

It's such a shame because a few of the supporting cast like Jasmine are likable enough and certainly useful party members, but they are helplessly overshadowed by the annoyance that is the main characters. Why is Ladius still so naively impulsive at the end of the story? Why is Filia so useless except when she is an enemy? Why is Stella so much better as a character when her personality is erased? These are just some of the questions that keep me up at night.

Stella, Sheeta, Falco, Ladius, Elen and Filia (from left to right)

So lazy that they didn't even bother to draw the shadows. Here's the thing, the writers tried to wrestle with a heavy issue like "is it right to sacrifice thousands to save one life?", only to resolve it in the most convenient way possible. Well, what's the point then? Furthermore, it's ludicrous to make a bunch of one-dimensional cookie cutter characters and expect the readers to like them without a good reason. This isn't cute girls doing cute things after all. The least they could do is to give the characters some proper development, but I can only conclude that the story and characters were just excuses to give me something to do and play with. I knew that before I started, but it's still a bit insulting that they thought they could get away with such weak writing.

Can't believe they just used a generic cut-in of Miroku for her ending

Despite what the silly title may lead you to believe, Gears of Dragoon has "family" as its central theme, which I interpreted to be "even people of different races and backgrounds can come together and form strong bonds like a happy family". Almost everyone in the game is looking for a family of some sort, as most of them have lost their loved ones. It's not a bad theme frankly, even if it's just "friendship power" in disguise. However it soon became horribly corny thanks to overly dramatic scenes filled with lines cheesier than the fried cheese melt. It didn't help that the game either glossed over or shallowly portrayed how the main cast became so close to each other. I suppose there ain't much to show when we have the idiotic Ladius who can't even peel an apple and Stella who is your typical "uguu am I kawaii yet onii-chan?" useless little sister with no higher function other than being a plot device. The fate of a whole country rests with a petite cyborg like Stella. Who'd have guessed?

Dem sleeves

The story wouldn't have been so laughably bad if the game were developed as a parody instead. The easy remedy of subpar writing is not to take things too seriously. A writer shouldn't pen a drama scene if he can't write it without resorting to meaningless shouting and crying. Gears of Dragoon clearly suffers from taking itself too seriously, because shoveling the tedious drama aside it's actually an okay read. Or maybe I'm just getting old and becoming too opinionated. In all fairness, the game did crack me up many times. For all the wrong reasons.

Don't mind me, just posting the best one of the better girls

Funny how the Law route has the highest character death toll, while the Chaos route true end is happily ever after for everyone. Never mind the nameless masses that got killed off screen eh?

Last but not least, the artist deserves a burnt cookie for such offensively, uninspired, designs. And my chair just went straight through the roof. On a serious note though, the issue of blatant copying has been prevalent in various industries for so long that I don't think most people even care all that much now. Unless, of course, you are Apple.

The ride never ends.