Trabia Garden

Tem and I have been replaying AI: nirvanA Initiative. This entry starts out just trying to discuss the game and rapidly descends into a hideous conversational nightmare. I'm very sorry.

I hate Lien and Kizuna's romance even more than I remember, and I remember really hating it. Lien sees Kizuna in a restaurant, decides he's in love with her without knowing anything about her, and asks her to marry him. She says no. He stalks her and hassles her, despite being repeatedly turned down, until she eventually gives in and agrees to date him. The game somehow expects us to root for their relationship and think they're cute??

Outrageous that Ryuki gets tied up by the killer, and yet we don't get to see him tied up. This is such a horny game! How could it miss this opportunity?

Tama: It's my dream to do it on a sofa.
Riona: That seems like a very achievable dream.
Tem: Well, not if you're an eyeball.

And now the hideous conversational nightmare begins. (For anyone who has not played this game and wants context: Tama is Ryuki's artificially intelligent and extremely horny synthetic eyeball. You may feel you need more context than this. You're not getting it.)


( The Great Eyeball Sex Debate of 2025. )


I suppose Tama's also capable of having sofa sex in someone else's dream. But, slightly tragically, not with Ryuki, or at least not with the actual living Ryuki (as opposed to someone else's dream of Ryuki); Ryuki doesn't have a physical presence when they enter people's dreams together.

Maybe Tama can be present in Ryuki's dreams when he's sleeping, though? I don't think it ever comes up.

Anyway! Regardless of the mechanics, Ryuki is definitely in a relationship with his own eyeball, and it's... weirdly cute sometimes?

More AI: The Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative! I've just finished Gen's Somnium.

You never know whether this game is going to give you dick jokes or philosophical lectures. It's a real rollercoaster.


( Notes on AI: The Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative. )


I wish real cooking just involved pressing the right sequence of buttons on a controller. I'm okay at that. I'm a disaster at cooking.

I tried to make soup a few days ago. The recipe said it took twenty minutes to make; it took me an hour and a half. I used a frying pan instead of a saucepan, I boiled it instead of simmering, and I think I burnt myself on a wooden spoon.

('I just burnt myself on something, but I don't know what it was. There are a lot of hot things around, but I don't think it was any of them,' I said, bewildered. My housemates laughed at me.)

'I apologise for everything that's happened here,' I said, serving the soup up. Seconds later: 'I forgot spoons.'

It was my birthday yesterday! And it was far too warm, but I had a great time.

Tem gave me a copy of AI: The Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative, so we spent some time playing that together. It's absolutely ridiculous. We're enjoying it enormously.


Game character: I've known Date for a long time. We're so close we've seen each other's buttholes.
Tem: What?
Riona: They're so close they've seen each other's buttholes, Tem.
Tem: Riona, I'd say that you and I are quite close.
(pause)
Tem: However.


And then I went to the theatre!

In late 2019, I saw The Book of Mormon in the West End and loved it. I thought it'd just be fun and mindless, but I got genuinely invested! It was recognisably by the team behind South Park, with all that entails, but it was a lot warmer than I'd expected, I liked the characters (particularly Elder Kevin Price, a flawed but well-meaning teenager who makes terrible decisions and struggles with guilt and increasingly falls apart, i.e. absolute catnip for me), and I thought it had some really interesting ideas about the power of fiction and how things don't have to be real to have value.

I wanted to share it with my mum, so I bought tickets for her upcoming birthday.

This was 2020. Her birthday is in late March.

For obvious reasons, the show was cancelled, and I received a voucher for the value of the tickets. The voucher was due to expire this summer, so I decided I'd take Mum to The Book of Mormon for my birthday instead.

My mum really enjoyed it! She was laughing all the way through. I'm glad; I thought she'd probably have a good time, but The Book of Mormon isn't going to click for everyone, so I couldn't be sure.

Dom Simpson remains absolutely perfect in the role of Elder Price, and I'm so glad I got to see him again. I'm constantly watching Elder Price in any scene, whether he's the focus or not; I probably missed a lot of things going on elsewhere on the stage! But I have no regrets; he was wonderful.

!!! I just checked, and YouTube has a professional video of a Dom Simpson song performance! It was impossible to find any video of him as Elder Price the last time I saw this show! Here it is: 'You and Me (But Mostly Me)'.

I love the hell out of Kevin Price - this earnest little shit, basically good-hearted but deeply self-absorbed - and I think Simpson is absolutely stunning in the role. Getting to see it up close like this, I caught a lot of fun little details about the performance that were hard to spot from the circle, too!

Rei's partner Tem and I have an arrangement: whenever Tem visits, the two of us will play weird videogames about murder together.

Tem: Riona! Tomorrow, there will be murder.
Riona: Absolutely.
Rei: You can't say things like that!
Riona: We just did.
Tem: What are you going to do to stop us? Murder us? That would just be playing straight into our hands.

In weird-videogames-about-murder news, I'm surprised and delighted by the announcement of a sequel to AI: The Somnium Files! That's actually the game that kicked off this tradition; Tem and I tend to be awake before anyone else in the house, so we'd hang out and play it in the mornings. Looking forward to more of this absolute nonsense.


Of course, I'm also still playing Persona 5 Royal. Here's my latest batch of notes.

Can't believe I almost turned down Ryuji's invitation to see a film in order to hang out with a politician. I need to get my priorities straight. Boyfriend time is more important than spending my time as efficiently as possible.

'With Ryuji next to me, the movie was almost as fresh as the first time I saw it.' Aww!

Takemi calls me 'good boy'. She remains terrifying and I'm into it.

I keep going 'oh, I'm still at the beginning of the game, I'm only two Palaces in, Makoto hasn't joined my team yet, I've barely started,' and then I catch sight of the game clock and realise I've been playing for over thirty hours.

I love that Makoto prepared for spying on us by reading detective novels.

There's a whole new shopping district to explore in Royal! Ryuji's hanging out with me and commenting on everything I look at! I got a bravery bonus for sitting on a display sofa for ages! This is delightful.

'I keep forgettin', but your glasses are fake, huh?' WHAT, I REJECT THIS NEW CANON, OF COURSE THE PROTAGONIST NEEDS HIS GLASSES, HOW DARE YOU. Yes, I know he doesn't wear glasses in Palaces, but obviously he's got a corrective magical mask.

(pict informs me that 'the protagonist doesn't actually need glasses' was already canon in the original game, which I am also choosing to ignore.)

It's strange how rarely we see characters who canonically have vision problems, given how common vision problems are in real life.

Also puzzled by Akechi later going 'oh, so those glasses are just for the aesthetic?' in response to 'I see a lot of things'. Maybe I see a lot of things because I am wearing my glasses, Akechi. From two paces, I can barely tell whether someone has eyes; with my glasses on, I can see individual hairs on their head. The fact that I can't see things without assistance doesn't mean I can't ever see things; that's what glasses are for!

This darts date with Ryuji is very cute.

'I feel like I understand something better after pairing up with Ryuji!' You bet, Rei.

Caroline calling the waitress over with 'Hey! Person!' is sort of incredible.

I scored 69 points in a round of darts and got the message 'NICE ONE'. It was the first time I'd seen that message, so I didn't realise until I got a similar score later that it had just been a coincidence.

I've now finished AI: The Somnium Files. I think it could fairly be described as 'an experience'. Below are notes I made at assorted points in this game.

For a second time, Date's eyeball got him to move to where she wanted him by going 'there's a porno magazine over there!', and he ran over at incredible speed and then went 'hey, where'd the porn go?'

Meanwhile, the best character, a twelve-year-old girl, beat up a bunch of thugs with her 'favourite metal pipe'.

In a later action sequence, actual porn magazines appeared! I blew up a porn magazine vending machine so the magazines would distract my enemies.

Date also took one of the magazines, naturally, but in the next shootout he had to throw it to act as a lure. He cried.

What I'm saying is that every action sequence in this game involves porn magazines in some capacity.

Ginger: Aiba must have to watch Date wank.
Riona: Maybe he's got a wanking eyepatch.

Possibly the most bewildering development in a very bewildering game: I WENT INTO SOMEONE'S DREAM AND SHE WAS DREAMING ABOUT LET'S PLAYING MINECRAFT AND I HAD TO PLAY MINECRAFT TO PROGRESS.

WHAT IS THIS GAME


( More spoilery notes on AI: The Somnium Files. )


Rei's girlfriend watched me play the entire game, from start to finish: all thirty hours of it. 'Thank you for coming with me on this journey,' I said to her afterwards. 'Thank you for being my left eye, without whom I would have no evidence that this ever happened at all.'

Q: Riona, do you really have time to write mini-reviews of every game you've ever played?
A: I absolutely don't.
Q: And yet.
A: And yet!

Some of these are more just reminiscences than reviews, but I've said at least a line or two about every game. Possibly. I've almost certainly forgotten about some.

For the most part these are listed alphabetically, so you can easily track down any games you're interested in, but games in a series are listed together, so, for example, 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, Virtue's Last Reward and Zero Time Dilemma are all under Z for Zero Escape, and World of Final Fantasy comes under F. I've put a (LP) next to games I've only experienced through Let's Plays. Flash games, text adventures and electronic versions of card, tile or board games are not included.

Games I first played after originally posting this entry are marked with an asterisk.


( Thoughts on every game I've ever played, or close enough. )


I'm glad I've put this very important and necessary entry into the waiting world.