Zakuzaku Actors
There's power in kindness, in choosing to be someone's friend, reaching out to someone who seems lonely, or seeing through a veneer of callousness and anger to give someone help when they truly need it.
These concepts are the shockingly grounded emotional core of Zakuzaku Actors, a game which loves obfuscating this fact by reveling in silly jokes and frequent gags. And you'd be forgiven for possibly writing off the game as insurmountable at 150+ hours to complete, as amateurish thanks to its charming but flawed original art, or shallow due to being an RPGMaker project and not a "real" game. But please believe me when I say that ZZA is worth the time, and if you are open to an experience that might be far different from the usual, you'll be rewarded with something truly special.
The setup is this: In a kingdom where Summoning Magic has been recklessly exploited for the benefit of a privileged few, people of many shapes and sizes are unintentionally pulled to this world and trapped with no way home. These Hagure, as they're called, suffer prejudice from untrusting natives and are forced to try and survive with no community or support. One Hagure child named Delichi dreams of making a kingdom for those like her, where everyone will be welcome no matter their station. And after coming into possession of a legendary summoning item called the Key of Pandora, her dream becomes much more achievable.
What follows is a loop of taking on a quest that will gain the kingdom fame or resources, going and solving the problem, and then the major characters involved join the kingdom, where those characters will then have suggestions on new additions such as stores or training facilities as well as giving new places to go and seek new quests. Each new character has their own skills and specialties to bring to the table as a party member as well. One personal favorite of mine is Kotatsu Dragon, a girl who wears a kotatsu like a shell and uses it to repel attacks. She can charge up her TP to use special moves or get Serious, but she might start taking a nap in the process. I've never felt more seen.
For a time, it seems like the game will just continue with these silly little character-of-the-week style excursions. But after a certain point the story really starts diving deep into these characters and who they are, and why. Someone you might've written off as shallow reveals a well of sadness you hadn't expected. One has a secret identity that's completely counter to their current persona, and in revealing this they're forced to work through things they thought they'd left behind. Another character who seems infinitely capable reveals that they've been burning the candle at both ends, and this deep exhaustion they don't even realize they carry, has led them to horrific acts. But time and time again, Delichi is the one who chooses to try and fix their problems and be the friend they need. Her relentless kindness really gives the story a level of drive it wouldn't otherwise have, and makes the entire silly concept of a child king with a toy crown feel like something you also want to believe in.
ZZA is also helped considerably by being a mechanically interesting RPG in its own right. You form a party of 8 and can (and often must) freely swap characters into and out of your 4 person frontline every turn, even characters KO'd or otherwise afflicted with status effects. There's food you can give to characters to build up their stats, and a bevy of generic skills to customize their abilities in fights. Fights themselves can last as little as a few seconds for easy enemies, and healing your party is a matter of a few quick button presses inbetween fights provided you've got a healer with the Out of Combat Healing spell. And through the game's entire runtime you are tested again and again on the mechanics and forced to adapt your strategies to win.
And speaking of mechanics, the game is particularly adept at creating compelling story moments in battle through the use of scripted events, and many of these had me yelling at my screen at the hype. Sometimes characters will break their limits and gain a special buff, other times they'll have a special affliction to account for when things are particularly dire. Save points will warn when danger is ahead, and when a fight will end in a deathly game over instead of Delichi teleporting everyone to safety. Very often important battles are riding a razor's edge of wondering what's going to happen, and who's going to make it through. Then when the climax hits, it's like nothing else.
There's a lot of content based around pseudo-random dungeon exploring and grinding, especially after the initial storyline comes to a close at the end of Part 1. The game does not pull its punches in expecting you to master its mechanics and form a solid team that exploits every advantage you've got. This can be a bit much if you're like me and not so tactically minded, but there's a small but dedicated group of fans online who will help if you're willing to ask. I'm one of them! If you'd like a personal bit of advice from me, the Maou Tower interlude does not need to be completed before Part 2 starts in earnest, and I'd suggest saving that Tower's final boss for a bit later when your party's got enough levels to make it more comfortable. I had to take a long break because of how tired I was after losing to her over and over.
Something else I really love is the way the story shifts in the second half, from this wonderful tale that you don't want to end, to a story literally about not wanting the good times to end, and the fallout that occurs from artificially extending the good times out of fear of loss. The dev, hamusuta, was working on this game for something like ten years, and you can really feel by the end that he is musing on the subject of death and time and what it means to be alive. To keep the thing you love going even to your own self-destruction. Those themes in particular resonated very deeply with me.
What ZakuZaku Actors taught me is that we have to believe a better life is possible, that bad times in our lives won't last forever, and that a small act of kindness toward someone else can be what saves them. But kindness isn't automatic, it's something you have to put effort into. Be like Delichi, and practice kindness, okay?
-Gria
(ZZA can be downloaded for free here, courtesy of the amazing effort of translator Rusty Cradle )