Just played through the scene with the princess. What the actual fuck man.
I'm all for revenge, but this is some psychotic shit. Not only was the scene very messed up, it has issues with the narrative which I'll go over in just a bit. But the one thing that I detested the most was the fact that there's no alternative scene for different routes, only for scumbag.
As for the narrative problems with the scene: the MC "justifies" his torture + rape by saying she's a lying bitch and he wouldn't believe a word out of her mouth anyway. Problem here is that she has a slave seal and is incapable of lying to him if he so wishes. Second problem is that while she indeed did many shitty things and absolutely deserves to be punished, she's not the one who perpetrates the acts nor is she the one being cruel. She's not even the one behind these happenings, the one that is responsible for the experiments. She's not the mastermind - her father is, with Lucius being her father's tool of choice.
She allows it to happen though, which, again, needs to be punished for sure, but what was implemented was a massive psychotic episode, no room for any nuance.
Look, one of the greatest evils that exist is the evil that becomes "banal". Banalization of evil - when people don't move/act to stop horrible acts, and passively condone/allow horrible shit to go down without doing anything about it, especially if they hold power - usually under the pretense of "I'm just following orders" or "I didn't have a choice" or "It's not my business" or "It doesn't affect me".
If the princess was indeed a psychotic freak, then... fine. I wouldn't have liked the scene but in some messed up way I feel it could be seen as justified. But she isn't - her father and Lucius are.
While the arena scene was getting wrapped up, the first thing on my mind was Lucius. As soon as the guards came around to "greet the new lord" I thought MC would ask them to seek out and capture Lucius immediately. But instead MC only thought about him, what, 2 days after?
Anyhow, the princess only tells you of her motivations if you choose to listen to her. But even if you'd want to go the torture route, the justification of "you're lying and I don't believe you" is ridiculously weak and makes the MC as bad as, if not worse than she is.
Holy shit, what a let down. And the scene is pretty hot too - the animations, pose variations, and camera angles. But that context killed not only the scene, but a good portion of the narrative for me. I absolutely want revenge on her, but this ain't it.
My overall rating of the game dropped significantly after this. In one of my previous posts I mentioned how the karma system is frustrating, yeah? Well, this is exactly the kind of scene that should be locked behind 55+ ruthlessness points. More because of the narrative context (the MC would have to be a scumbag consistently to get that far and do the things he does to her) than because of the content of the scene itself.
If not locked behind a wall of scumbag points, then I'd expect, at least, some variations in the text, dialog and actions based off how many points you have.
And the lack of alternative scene for the other route is just a twisting of the knife.
