Hmm, how to phrase this…as usual, I cannot be concise (edit: who am I kidding). Also, I believe this post will strain my non-native tongue skills quite a bit.
TL,DR:
This game made me feel things more than usual, this game has lots of really heavy stuff, buyers beware!
A little (ba-DUMM-tzz) context, I am a 44-year-old straight single white male lower middle-class drone. Videogames and reading are my primary hobbies, and I put heavy emphasis on world-building/ lore/ character development over gameplay guy. I play or read anything and I mean ANYTHING if it has the slightest bit of a hint of stuff that can me excited. To give an example. I hate shooters, first person, third person, doesn’t matter. I was peer-pressured into early CoD/ MoH MP in my younger years when belonging to a “bro” group was still very important to me (don’t roll your eyes yet, this becomes relevant later on). I hated every nanosecond of it. It soured me on Multiplayer as a whole and ultimately interacting with that group. With that in mind, it becomes clear how incredibly strange (lucky?) it is that only a few years later I wholeheartedly sacrificed my very soul to the Borderlands franchise. Both in SP and later in MP. And yes I have played BL3 do I hear excessive snarking? So, if it has an interesting world I suffer through anything, remember - I played and finished Xenoblade 1 and 2, and I abhor the gameplay in both games. Good storytelling or world-building is important for me because I use that as a tool for escapism primarily.
With that being said, this game is mechanically a combination of a Visual Novel, Colony Sim, and rogue-lite deck builder. Without spoiling anything about the story at all it is fundamentally a coming-of-age story amidst an ongoing catastrophe. The game starts at the protagonist’s age of 10 and ends at the latest 10 years later. That is relevant because I haven’t really played any “coming-of-age” games at all, and this game has it all. Peer pressure, teenage angst, rebellion against defined roles, hormonal imbalance, exploration of the self and others as well as the physical and mental development from a child to an adult. All that while trying to survive in a crashlanded “generational” colony ship on a strange and foreign planet with no hope of help from Mother Earth as a backdrop.
It has been nearly a 1/4 century since I myself had to struggle with the problems each and every child has to face on their way to becoming an adult. Also, I have no offspring to watch this play out in front of me. Therefore I really was interested in the heavy focus of the story on that part (with enough sci-fi mystery planet exploration sprinkled in to keep things fresh and grounded). The presentation with the “cut-out paper” models is also really appealing as well, and the music is very good as well. Both help to bring the narrative to life. It plays out as a visual novel, but you move your character between different spots to interact with the other colonists on a top-down map, but ultimately the focus is on dialog boxes. A LOT of dialog boxes. As visual novels do this game has a lot of required reading. Skipping through the dialogue is not recommended since it gives hints on the consequences/chances of following
crucial choices you have to make. Also, the “rogue-lite” element comes into play in later playthroughs which are (for a lack of better term) mandatory for experiencing the “whole” story. There are about a dozen “main” endings with about 50-200 “minor” outcomes (depending on your definition of “different outcomes”). The success or failure of your decision plays out in a "deckbuilding poker-esque"
minigame. I do not know how BELATRO plays so I don’t know if there is a quicker/easier way to describe it but fundamentally you get cards for different activities/chores in the colony which are used in the “decision success/failure” minigame. Similar to poker you have numbers on four suits (colors?) and can make pairs, straights, flushes, etc to beat the required score for the decision at hand. Those cards have plenty of modifiers and conditional score modifiers on them to keep the deckbuilding aspect fresh.
In regards to the colony sim aspect of the game, this is the device to drive the plot /decision progress in the game. Your Character has 12 different traits in 4 main categories, and the more chores/activities you have the better your traits are and the better cards you can get which are bound to these 4 categories to beat the increasingly difficult target scores throughout the gameplay. Since you cannot max out all 12 Traits the game has a clever way to encourage repeat playthroughs to focus on different traits, different cards and different plot points/story events and ultimately different endings.
So I have waxed a ton about visual novel/ colony sim/deckbuilding and the rogue-lite fundament as well as the plot premise but nothing on your REAL question…“are the triggers that bad?”
Well, I did all that to circumvent discussing any spoilers. Also my inexperience with the “coming of age” setting. My 24923824928ß427366726 JRPG I have played do not count as experience, because a teenage boy meets a teenage girl to fight a god to prevent the end of the world with the power of FRIENDSHIP(!) more often than not have enough tropes to dunk the plot in without going for the “REAL DEAL” problems of growing up.
The above-mentioned framework is used to throw every possible narrative problem and the kitchen sink at you. Keywords: growing up, mystery world, fight for survival, community interactions in front of looming disaster. While the game has its cute slice of live moments it is primarily focused on the struggle. Every possible struggle the framework can provide.
Now down to the triggers…different people have different resistances and weak points to pain, trauma, and grief. Nature vs Nurture, upbringing vs surrounding environment, and all that jazz.
This game may look cutesy on the surface but it pulls no punches. I linked the content warnings page of the developer here (no spoilers). If you get heavily invested in fictional (real) characters and/or emphasize heavily with fictional (real) trauma this game might (will!) impact you way more than the factual content warning page can tell you beforehand. This game made me cry and weep several times over, it made me happy and it made me very very sad multiple times. I hate this particular idiom but it is sadly appropriate: “It is a rollercoaster ride of emotions!”
I am a bit too emotional at times when playing games but despite being used to “have feelings” about games this game was ultimately on another level.
Oh, and it also messed up my sleep cycle several times. (Why is it getting brighter outside…dinner was only 30 minutes ago??)
Final note:
This may need no mention here, since the “stately” community is well above average in maturity and tolerance IMHO, but the game is also VERY uh…er…liberal so I do not count it as a trigger itself, but… LGBTQ+, this game has it.
