Criticize Wizardess Heart
So I’m starting my criticizing series. I know I said I’d do Pokemon but, then again, I didn’t say that I’d be limiting myself to that. I just wanted to devote something to one of my most favorite animes and I have opinions about other things I’d like to get off my chest, too. Anyways, I’m starting my criticize series with, well, ‘criticize’ and then I follow it by whatever I’m criticizing. So here I go!
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So I only really have problems with two guys whose routes you can pick. Particularly in how they’re characterized. So the first guy is a blond named Elias. I have played several routes before him. Elias would show up because he’s the protagonist’s classmate and I would see he’s sweet, thoughtful, and always willing to help. I look forward to playing his route when I got around to it and what do I get? The exact. Damn. Opposite. Elias became hostile, distant, and, above all, whiny. What the fuck? He goes on and on about how his grades are important to him and the protagonist shouldn’t drag him down. Then Elias leaves, like that’s all he has to do. Except the protagonist isn’t the best academic student. She struggles in intelligence. So, naturally, she was gonna mess up. The reason why Elias says crap like ‘don’t drag me down’ is because, in Wizardess Heart, the protagonist is more often than not gets paired up with another student because of a buddy system in the school they’re enrolled in. One half gets poor grades and the other half gets poor grades as a result. I don’t have any sympathy for Elias because all he ever does is whine, complain, and be distant. For all that shit he spews out that his grades are important to him, Elias sure doesn’t protect him like how I would expect him to. If his grades were really worth anything to him, Elias would want to make sure how well the protagonist knows her damn stuff, tutor her in anything and everything she doesn’t understand. That way, the protagonist can actually get better grades and so it’d be protecting his grades. Except no, he doesn’t do that. He never does that. Not until the protagonist bends herself backwards just to appeal to the selfish whiner. If you ask me, it was likely that Elias knew that the protagonist was just a provisional student and was hoping she’d fail the initiation test that she’d have to take after the first two weeks of being enrolled at the school. Because, yeah, that’s a thing in this game and in the school’s system. If what I think is true, then that means Elias is willing to endure two weeks of bad grades because he thinks helping the protagonist with her grades is even worse. Either way, my rant goes to show that, whatever Elias’s priorities were, it was clearly not grades. I am just so disappointed that this guy, someone I was looking forward to imagining a romance with, is just so unlikable and unsympathetic. Elias’s brother had enough fricking common sense to tutor the protagonist so that his own grades don’t suffer. And he also did it for the protagonist’s sake! Elias couldn’t even do it for his own!
Another guy I was disappointed by was Zeus. Now, I’m not as disappointed by him as I am by Elias. That’s because Zeus was intentionally characterized as a jerk and the other characters acknowledge it. However, I found Zeus to be more likable outside his own route. In his route, the writing was kind of off. Sure, they’d acknowledge that he does selfish things, like banging on the protagonist’s window at the middle of the night just because he wants to hang out with her without ever considering or caring whether or not it’d scare and/or inconvenience her. However, I feel like they skip some steps in the process of Zeus becoming more caring and less of a jerk. For one thing, I don’t think that - as far as I played, anyways, I didn’t finish the whole route before wanting to quit - the writers had Zeus apologize for any part of his behavior. In fact, you wanna know what the very first thing Zeus said to the protagonist? That she had an ugly or plain face. Definitely not beautiful. Zeus still never apologized for that. Or anything else, for that matter, as I’ve said. Yet Zeus is just becoming nicer because the protagonist is learning to go at his pace; that’s what it felt like when I was playing his route. The saddest part is that he’s better characterized outside his own route. I mean, he’s still a jerk but he becomes nicer and the progress of that feels more natural. At least, outside his own route, Zeus has the excuse of becoming a better person off-screen or whatever you say for a dating sim phone app. In his actual route, the writing just feels like it skipped a step or two in the whole redemption thing. So Zeus is still disappointing. Just not as much as Elias, as I’ve said at the beginning. At least I wrote my own OCs for that!
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If anyone’s curious about those OCs I meantioned, then send me a message and I’ll get to it when I have time. Thanks to anyone who does! Also, Wizardess Heart belongs to NTT Solmare Corp. Only the OCs are my own actual idea and, even then, it was inspired from my outrage over the characterization over a couple of their characters. Finally, the game itself is still good; I’m just stating opinions and having a rant about it