Thirsty Suitors is an incredibly charming, super fun and beautifully queer game that I wish more people would talk about Part 2
Continued thoughts on Thirsty Suitors, read part 1 first. I wrote this after my second night of playing it, after I finished the game.
Thirsty Suitors is indeed a very lovely experience, very heartwarming and sweet and queer and, the characterization is very strong, it's some of the most personality I've seen in a game. I actually finished it last night and it is now one of my new favorite games. I defeated the rest of the 3 exes that were left which I guess I'll just say, you do end up eventually having to face Tyler but I'll get around to that.
The first was the most dudebro guy in the game, named Bruno who was actually just awful and is probably the only person who was worse at relationships then Jala. He leaves town afterwards and is the only one of the exes that you can't text and do side quests for which, good.
After that you face Andile who, it seems like there was a very messy 3 way love triangle at one point between them, Tyler and Jala? They are very close with Tyler now and are a lovely person, who mostly seems to be facing off against Jala for her sake. Also Andile is nonbinary which it was cool to see some enby rep and also, the way they actually talk about their experience as a more masc presenting nonbinary person, not being perceived as the person they feel like, it made me very happy that they thoughtfully discussed these experiences that nonbinary people have. They even mention that when most people think of nonbinary people, they think of someone who is much smaller and more feminine which I do know is a thing.
But then the last of the exes you need to confront is Tyler, which you do after finishing helping her investigate what exactly is going on with the weird bear cult in the skatepark. I didn't fully understand the plot but from what I can gather, the bear mascot guy was using outcast and queer kids who had been mistreated to band together to help him take over the place and go against the Mayor? Which kinda sounds like a good thing but I think the bear is implied to have some sort of ulterior motives which is the part I didn't get. Also at this point, Jala does end up reconciling with her sister in a very sweet scene and you find out that it was Jala's sister who had set up all her exes to confront her in the first place because she wasn't ready to talk to Jala yet.
But anyway, so the final battle does end up being against Tyler which was very much the most emotionally devastating of the exes. Tyler was a very important person to Jala, they were child friends, Jala was there to support Tyler during her transition, and as a romantic partner she was always who Jala would come back to. But what was hurting Tyler was that Jala would always leave her for someone else, and that she felt like she was being played with at this point. Jala recognizes how shitty she was to her, they do end up reconciling in a really beautiful scene and they do agree to take things slow, as friends for now. I cried so much during this scene though, just for Tyler and how she's the person that Jala always comes back to. I'll skip ahead a bit and say that at the end of the game, you do get scenes of Jala with each of the exes hanging out and out of all of them, the scene with Tyler does suggest that they do end up back together fully in love.
The final boss after Tyler though actually ends up being Jala's grandma, who's arrival has been dreaded throughout the entire game, who arrives to attend Jala's sisters's wedding. And this is where you find out why Jala's mother is so awful and yes, this is a story about generational trauma. Because grandma is a lot worse, and you see that with each generation we move away from being controlled by these primitive roles and "traditions", and that Jala's mother is considered rebellious compared to grandma. And because grandma couldn't live vicariously through her daughter, she's now trying to control Jala, but Jala needs to teach her that she needs to be her own person, and also that she herself was just being controlled by expectations which she is now forcing on Jala's mother and now Jala. This was a another fight that obviously got very emotional and, something I loved about this as well is that, before this Jala ends up loosing her inner narrator who takes the form of her sister because she didn't need her a comping mechanism anymore, but she does get another voice who helps her get through this battle and it's her true love Tyler.
In the end though Jala is able to reconcile with her grandma and make things right between the multiple generations of family. So yeah it was an amazing ending for a really beautiful game, about queer love, community, self improvement and generational trauma. Probably in my top 10 and I would very much recommend playing it yourself.
