(spoilers)
i can’t remember… exactly how i got there, but after many, many hours of playing this game again today lol, i managed the golden ending in just nine runs — i never stopped to talk to the three villagers, though. i figured out archaic, and the gem stuff and everything early-ish on, so i spent a couple of my runs just repeating stuff and waiting for the game to offer me the opportunity to head for the south. at the start of the eighth run, i was finally offered to leave for the south, and then i got to learn about the plague on their land. so for the ninth run i managed to burn suzette’s reference docs, take the history track after stealing the phoenix gem during graduation, and jo and i banished veris and then used the relics to help the south. after that i chose to go back home and managed to reconnect with mostly everyone! my only regret is that i didn’t connect enough with esteban in this last run, so he never got back into painting, although i just went back to my save file and that was easy to rectify by just choosing to speak to him a bit more in the last run. i used to play this game often a few years ago, and so it’s been really comforting and lovely to rediscover it recently. i love the characters, the setting, and the writing, and how immersive the world is. it really feels like you learn new things about yourself and how your life impacts others as you play, and i love that it has such a wider, profound meaning too.
i also love how much of effort and care was put into this? as someone who kinda played as they talk in real life, i’d occasionally chose another (small) different choice, and it was really fascinating to see how this would take me to the same point or in a somewhat different direction! i love that it’s better to be kind and better to try, but it’s also better to apologise and make mistakes than not do anything at all. a comment i saw on here about two years ago put it perfectly — that ‘living’ in someone else’s life, over and over, really provides maybe the most ‘outsider’ perspective you can ever have on how your own life and the lives of others are shaped by your actions, your kindness. it really feels like ‘zooming out’ in the best way possible… in a world that makes it very difficult to find hope and meaning, this is such an antidote to the lack of both of those things. i love this game so much :)
two questions, for anyone else that’s played this a couple times — does anyone know if you can leave for the south earlier than your eighth run (and if so, how?), and if it’s possible to change your gender at the start of each life instead of just at the start of the game? (coming from a genderfluid person who doesn’t usually ‘shift’ gender very quickly and so doesn’t mind just sticking with one descriptor, but would love if it was possible to b a bit more flexible)