(reposting my old muv-luv entry from my best works list as a standalone essay)
The Muv-Luv trilogy is a statistical impossibility. The premise is probably the hardest sell of any game ever - the epitome of a slow burn - so I will try my best to make this clear.
Have you ever had a series that has been hyped to you by so many people that you have a negative prejudice going into it, and you want to dislike it? Muv-Luv is a series of visual novels that contains three arcs - Extra, Unlimited, and Alternative. Visual novels have no gameplay, only static characters and backgrounds with voiced dialogue and occasional player choice. You could even consider it as merely a really badass powerpoint. Alternative is the highest ranking VN on both the American Visual Novel Database, and the Japanese erogamescape. When researching them, I had literally never seen one review that described MLA as bad in any way. On the contrary - multiple sources called it ‘the greatest story ever told across all mediums.’ So naturally, I took it with a grain of salt when I decided to give it a chance. Not to mention the stupid title. At first it is so underwhelming that I almost gave up several times. However, after finishing it, I can say that those droning mindless Muv-Luv fans are right in a way few people will ever be.
The first arc, Extra, is your run-of-the-mill rom-com and is quite frankly pretty awful the first time you play it. Every single one of these tropes have been done before. It is an eroge with awful pacing and at the end you get a terribly cringeworthy H-scene with the girl of your choosing. That’s right - already this game was only marketed to people 18+, AND the first part is boring, AND probably the only people that bought it in 2003 were otaku looking for a new source of moe. What you don’t realize is that the game planned this from the beginning. All it was aiming to do in this first act was get you acquainted with the characters, and make you care about them. Oh, AND you have to beat it twice to unlock the second act. Sound alienating yet?
Unlimited, the second arc, takes things in a surprisingly different direction. The universe suddenly becomes an alternate earth where humanity is on the brink of extinction from an exceptionally realistic alien invasion. The high school setting turns into a pilot school, and the students into cadets. Okay, that’s a neat twist, but so what? This part is still entirely too lighthearted and nothing bad happens - until the very end, when the quality spikes sharply up. You start to realize that the first two games were merely setting the stage for this final act, and that they were written this way on purpose. Three years later, in 2006, Muv-Luv Alternative was released.
Alternative is more emotionally draining than any other story I’ve heard, and it has a high barrier of entry - not only do you have to suffer through 20 hours of bullshit to even get to it, but you have to have been morally accepting of the explicit content and three year wait. Oh, and the games only came out in Japan, so you have to torrent it and use a fan translation patch. In addition, Muv-Luv Alternative has some very, very fucked up scenes. Thankfully the H-scenes are mostly gone - only two in the whole game, but one of those is EXTREMELY disturbing. It is also paced horribly at the start, just like the first two.
So why am I still writing this? Because all of the prior content is a trial that the creators are posing to you. You must suffer through it - you cannot skip any of it or the story does not work. And in exchange for your efforts you will be given one of the greatest experiences you will ever see. Bafflingly enough, this is a rare case in which the final chapter retroactively makes the first part excellent. So there’s my Muv-Luv rant. I absolutely would not recommend this game to anyone not in it for the long haul. Hell, I wouldn’t recommend this game to almost anyone even if they WERE in it for the long haul. Very few people are open-minded enough to accept all of the things they will throw at you. Even so, this is my favorite visual novel, and moreover, my favorite video game.
Themes/Motifs: quantum physics, many worlds theory, extraterrestrial life, sacrifice, and at the bottom…
――それは、語られなかった他なる結末。
――The untold alternative ending.
とてもちいさな、とてもおおきな、とてもたいせつな、
A very small, yet very large, and very precious,
あいとゆうきのおとぎばなし――
fairy-tale of love and courage――
Recommended for: People who will dedicate 50 hours of their lives to something with a stated goal of emotionally crushing you
Not recommended for: Absolutely everyone - very few exceptions
dailybridgerton
snowghoul
janainaart
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
