Ren'Py Completed Tropicali [v1.0.0] [Story Anon]

[billyjoebobmartin]

Since Tropicali is all about provoking thoughts let me leave you with this. People can imagine all they want but it doesn't change the fact that the ending is written and done. It is a forgone conclusion. A useless undertaking.

depends on which ending the second tropicali game builds off of. i would think it'd build off the current bad end, as the game more or less guides you to it despite the narrative choice words (the lack of any 'good guy' like path with full or near full harem is a testament to that). hypothetically if this alt account guy is storyanon or not, that could change though. (my bet is storyanon, the tone of the post reeks of his personality of what little i've seen of his posts before he started hiding offline)

You know I actually enjoyed the ending, I can see why some might not but Holy Fuck.
There's been 300 messages since the release and most of its been bitching and groaning that it didn't fall into the typical "Everyone is okay with polygamy, gets married, pregnant, the end".

thanks for the effort bro. but i'm not gonna be using the mod. not because i disagree with it, some long ass pages back i even mentioned how i wish there was a route for MC to be a mob boss and 'nice' (without sacrificing sex or pregnancy) to his harem and all that. but because i already deleted the game and my save files. so i'm not gonna bother with re-downloading AND replaying. however i do hope the next game fallows the mod's direction, and will prob play that when it comes out.

 

[Leo D. Marstone]

depends on which ending the second tropicali game builds off of. i would think it'd build off the current bad end, as the game more or less guides you to it despite the narrative choice words (the lack of any 'good guy' like path with full or near full harem is a testament to that). hypothetically if this alt account guy is storyanon or not, that could change though. (my bet is storyanon, the tone of the post reeks of his personality of what little i've seen of his posts before he started hiding offline)

Yeah I see that as well.
If a Tropicali 2 will be made than for sure it will follow the "bad end".

As you said the game pushed and nudged you in that direction and the game being a porn game, the choices presented were no brainer for many players. Of course you would go for sex options in your first playthrough.
So for 95% of people who played this game saw the bad end first. It is also a better stopping point to continue a story off than the happy end imo.

Tropicali 2 for sure will also continue the overall tone of the first game however so at least people can expect more or less of what is to come when going into the game and won't feel so surprised.

People use the argument that the game literally tells within the first lines of the game that this game leads to misery but then again it is a game. How many games did you play with a foreboding beginning and the player still could turn the events to a better situation at the end. I mean you could do that in Tropicali...you had choices but you aren't allowed to pursue anyone sexually....and with that we are going in circles again xD

I say it again I enjoyed the game for what it was and even the ending but I guess many people just had this subconcious thought when playing the game because they are trained that way.

Or maybe Story Anon subverts expectations again and Tropicali 2 will be a happy harem game
I think however he will crank it up a level so at least I found a game with a Evil Power Fantasy.

Anyway lets let it rest now.

 

[thedolphinsays99999]

I mean...cool? For sure there will be people that will use that but the only single thing I don't understand since the ending debate.

Why the hate and why the insult to people who like classic happy harem storys? As if those are the most brain dead monkeys who can only think of jacking off till they die.
What does this say about fans of Out of Touch which is presumably exactly that? A feel good harem story?

Your post has the same energy as the game. A pure shitpost with the sole reason to mock and make fun of people. At least on the surface.

The statement "create your own happiness" reminds me of the latest patreon post about Tropicali and using the term coomer I just feel a bit inclined to think that this might be an alt account of story anon...no really xD
No one else is using this term on here other than the dev or people on his discord...which either way you must be from

Edit: Read the section about Juni. So my assumption was correct.

Also this is your first post since conception of your account 2017 and the debate about the endings for this particular game has stopped you from lurking and post this modification? Bravo this must have really irked you.

I also really doubt that your average porn game enjoyer would have put this together in just 2 hours without prior coding knowledge of renpy. Sry.

Since Tropicali is all about provoking thoughts let me leave you with this. People can imagine all they want but it doesn't change the fact that the ending is written and done. It is a forgone conclusion. A useless undertaking.

I can also imagine my dead mother in my head if I want to see her but it doesn't change the fact that, no matter how hard I want it to be true, that she is still dead and that I am miserable about it.

If you're looking for the programmer: that's me, and I didn't make the mod. Your assumption that someone without prior coding knowledge couldn't have made these edits is entirely incorrect. Renpy is designed to be easy to use for people with no prior programming knowledge, and I purposefully left the game code as raw unpacked rpy files so people can make edits easily if they have to do stuff like bug fixes or unlock the gallery.
Story Anon also has better things to be doing than this. I can tell you this isn't his work either.

I'm not against people making mods. I personally like the ending as is, but I said in the Discord that if someone really cares about changing the ending, no one is stopping them if they want to put in the effort and "be the change they want to see in the world" instead of just complaining about it like many others. I've got a lot of respect for that.

 

[Leo D. Marstone]

If you're looking for the programmer: that's me, and I didn't make the mod. Your assumption that someone without prior coding knowledge couldn't have made these edits is entirely incorrect. Renpy is designed to be easy to use for people with no prior programming knowledge, and I purposefully left the game code as raw unpacked rpy files so people can make edits easily if they have to do stuff like bug fixes or unlock the gallery.
Story Anon also has better things to be doing than this. I can tell you this isn't his work either.

I'm not against people making mods. I personally like the ending as is, but I said in the Discord that if someone really cares about changing the ending, no one is stopping them if they want to put in the effort and "be the change they want to see in the world" instead of just complaining about it like many others. I've got a lot of respect for that.

Thank you for your input and no I wasn't looking for the programmer of the base game. Why would I?
You did a fine job I haven't encountered any bugs during my playthrough. So credit where credit is due.

I never worked with or looked into renpy as an engine my whole life and I wouldn't even know where to start. What files to adjust or to move around. 2 hours maximum just felt too quick.
Anyway I just take you as face value that when I go into the files of the game right now that it would be immediately understandable what to change etc like the dude who made the mod made it out to be.

The thing about the alt account was just a snark remark and as for changing the ending by yourself....well that doesn't change the ending however that was intended by Story Anon.
I don't see a reason to change an ending when if a Tropicali 2 is made it will never be build upon the headcanon of a mod. Change things around in the middle of the game or for the management aspect sure...but the ending?

Whats left is either people liked the ending or they did not. Let them complain and provide feedback if they didn't like it. What should they do. Keep silent?

I hated the ending of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake for example or the shows finale of Games of Thrones but I just can't go in willy nilly and change the ending just because I didn't like it.

 

[Dawnhammer]

Everything Story Anon makes is GOLD, he just don't miss. Can't wait for his next project.

 

[sabadongelov]

I'm not arguing that at all, you can't just assert whatever you want my argument to be as you please as a means to declare some kind of hollow victory in an internet argument. A cartoon villain is the type of character that acts exactly as evil as the scene requires him to be even if there was no logical consistency to his action.

Regardless of what you mean by “cartoon villain”, what I meant with comic book villain, is someone who does evil for the sake of evil.

An actual nuanced anti-hero however has to either have some kind gradual transformation or some kind of consistent thought process that explains both his good and evil actions. This game practices the former, not the latter. The two Fernando personalities clearly contradict each other. This is obviously more of a Bakura from Yu-Gi-Oh situation than it is a Walter White situation. Except that here you don't even have that magic necklace to explain the sudden changes in his personality, so it's just straight bad writing.

No, a protagonist doesn’t have to have some sort of moral arc in any direction, they can be the same, morally, throughout the story. And while you don’t feel the MCs actions are consistent, I do. I have no problem understanding why he’s doing the things he’s doing and unlike you, I don’t perceive any “sudden changes in personality”, because, for the third time, people can have both good and bad within them (and to be honest, as I have also stated before, I perceive much of what you call his good side as quite self serving too).

Also, you are talking about some need of a corrupting arc for the MC, but you remember that you can choose that the MC was a criminal before going to Tropicali. Why on earth would that kind of character need a corrupting arc in order to be a bad guy? That's their starting point.

And the tags are irrelevant. There's a difference between technically having those themes and actually executing upon those themes coherently. All it takes to be listed for any of those tags on this website is a single scene, regardless of if they fit into the game. That doesn't mean you built up to them properly.

No, the tags are not irrelevant if they are actually represented in the game and they are! For instance, the MC has a slave (two slaves). You can try and explain that away as much as you want, but it is there.

And as I’ve also already pointed out, you have to decide, is the game bad throughout because the different sides to the MC doesn’t mesh, or is it just the ending that is bad, because up to that point, the criminal slave owning MC who has a harem of damaged women he manipulates and exploits and plan to impregnate in secret for his evil mistress is such a good guy that the bad guy ending comes out of absolutely nowhere!

Why the hate and why the insult to people who like classic happy harem storys? As if those are the most brain dead monkeys who can only think of jacking off till they die.
What does this say about fans of Out of Touch which is presumably exactly that? A feel good harem story?

Your post has the same energy as the game. A pure shitpost with the sole reason to mock and make fun of people. At least on the surface.

Dude. In many threads, any type of criticism of the game will more or less result in death threats from the most invested fanboys. The counter-critique here is very mild in comparison, not to mention, there are more people shitting on the game than defending it.

Secondly, a reason to be critical of the people shitting on the game for not having a happy ending and a happy harem story (including all those tanking the game in the rewiev section) is that the game is very clear from the beginning that this game is not that kind of game. It's not the devs fault a lot of the players of the game don't pay attention to what is actually happening and what is actually said in the game.

This is akin to the anti-NTR crowd mobbing NTR games and shitting on them for containing NTR. If you don't like NTR (I don't myself), just play another game. Stop trying to destroy every game that doesn't cater to your personal preferences.

And a third reason, which you might have missed, is that the hate is very much a two way street in this thread. Just one exampel from today:

For those who liked it, congratulations, your taste is shit.

 

[sabadongelov]

Sure, from the beginning he wasn't written as a pure good-hearted guy, but that is precisely how he acted with all the girls, implying he truly cared about them.

No, he didn't. He is manipulative and exploitative throughout the game, taking advantage of the LIs vulnerability to both get sex and relationships from them as well as their labour. He takes one of the LIs as a slave and agrees to impregnate the women in secret and against their will to serve the interest of his evil mistress. On top of that, he is after all building a harem, which in the real world is a shitty thing to do (that is basically doing NTR on the LIs). This is very in line with him being a bad guy in the beginning, acting like a bad guy throughout and ending as a bad guy. Also, the game tells you repeatedly that he will ruin the lives of the LIs. That being said, he is not the kind of bad guy who does evil for the sake of evil and he is charming, up-beat and kind of cares for his LIs in his own (often self serving) way.

 

[Tehemai]

No, a protagonist doesn’t have to have some sort of moral arc in any direction, they can be the same, morally, throughout the story. And while you don’t feel the MCs actions are consistent, I do. I have no problem understanding why he’s doing the things he’s doing and unlike you, I don’t perceive any “sudden changes in personality”, because, for the third time, people can have both good and bad within them (and to be honest, as I have also stated before, I perceive much of what you call his good side as quite self serving too).

If you had actually read the passage you quoted, I stated that either the character had to have some kind of transformation OR some kind of consistent thought process that explains both his good and evil actions. He can have both good and evil moments, but there still needs to be some logic that explains all of it. Not just some of it. For example, a character that does everything for the good of his family might stand up to the bullies making fun of his crippled son in one scene. And then sell meth to make money for them the next. The same thought process explains both the good and the bad.

Here you have Shrodinger's Fernando. Where he both cares enough to ramble on and on in his mind about how to solve the inane problems of a vacationing middle aged single mother. And then shortly after cares so little that he condemns that same woman to a life of eternal fear and misery. All without even a moment of hesitation. Normally to make such an extreme decision, he would have at least needed to confront the part of himself that does care about her. As in this would be the moment to have the usual long winded internal monologue. But he doesn't. He instead completely drops the part of himself that cares as if it never existed, all for the sake of a dark ending. That is not depth or nuance, that is just a contradiction in personality. One that any person that thinks about what they read would pick up on.

That is the stuff of comic book villainy. Or more aptly saturday morning cartoon villainy as comic book characters tend to have some reason behind their madness. Such villains are exactly as evil as any scene requires them to be, regardless of reason. Like having Team Rocket torturing Ash's pokemon in one episode. And then the next goofily cheering Ash on to win the pokemon league. That's Fernando.

Anyway, this conversation is going in circles so this likely will be my last reply.

 

[PrimeX]

wtf was that ending? I'm here to fap not to see the consequences of my decisions

 

[Ass bandit]

MC is a complete asshole from day 1. He only cares about his sister (when not choosing the rage-filled possessive options) and Juni. Everyone else is merely a decoration.

And no, his inner dialogue does not change this. In fact, it makes it worse. Deep, deep, deep down, he knows what he is doing is evil, but he never once stops.

 

[Ohbabc]

The statement "create your own happiness" reminds me of the latest patreon post about Tropicali and using the term coomer I just feel a bit inclined to think that this might be an alt account of story anon...no really xD
No one else is using this term on here other than the dev or people on his discord...which either way you must be from

Edit: Read the section about Juni. So my assumption was correct.

Also this is your first post since conception of your account 2017 and the debate about the endings for this particular game has stopped you from lurking and post this modification? Bravo this must have really irked you.

I also really doubt that your average porn game enjoyer would have put this together in just 2 hours without prior coding knowledge of renpy. Sry.

Embarrassingly I picked up "Coomer" from watching Vtubers. I'm not suprised if it's used on anime porn VN discords, I'd imagine the venn-diagram between the two is a near perfect circle.
I'm only on VN Discords myself for Previews and Memes, I find they're pretty cringe circle-jerks otherwise.
I don't like to post because generally it wastes more time than it's worth, I'm shy, and people on the internet are generally dickheads.

You'd be suprised how quick and easy something like this is. You open the Story.rpy file in notepad, edit the words in between the quotation marks, and hit save. I've done it several times over the yearsfor my personal enjoyment when I feel VNs miss the mark a bit on my specific tastes and fetishes. I figured it out from opening the scripts to route VNs when playing before the walkthrough mods were a thing. You can call opening a text doc, making some small changes, and copying and pasting sections together "Coding experience" , but I feel like thats the equivalent of making toast and saying you know how to bake.

The images were easy as well when I saw after unrening that they had the same poses in both endings, just overlay the two and eraser the frown so the smile pops through.

Normally I'd just do this if I wanted to add it to my vault to replay in a few years time. But when I saw most peoples complaints were about just the final event of the game, and would take barely any time to cut together. I had a surge of Autistic hyperfocus to knock it out.

I never meant to imply it'd only take you 2 hours to replecate on your first try, just that you need only a bit of time and horny inspiration, no coding knowledge because the scripts of these things are clear as day.

Thanks. Here's hoping someone pays you. Oh wait no one will since you're not the Dev of the game/nor is it your game/nor did anyone ask for this. Congratulations in wasting your time.

Thanks, I waste my time a lot but it doesn't usually earn me congratulations.
Usually it just means I'm told to up my Ritalin dosage.

The thing about the alt account was just a snark remark and as for changing the ending by yourself....well that doesn't change the ending however that was intended by Story Anon.
I don't see a reason to change an ending when if a Tropicali 2 is made it will never be build upon the headcanon of a mod. Change things around in the middle of the game or for the management aspect sure...but the ending?

Whats left is either people liked the ending or they did not. Let them complain and provide feedback if they didn't like it. What should they do. Keep silent?

I hated the ending of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake for example or the shows finale of Games of Thrones but I just can't go in willy nilly and change the ending just because I didn't like it.

You absolutley can go in and change the ending for yourself in a novel, if you have a bit of imagination. If you have Aphantasia it might get a bit difficult but thats an edge case.

Video games its a bit harder if you want to actually play it because obviously that takes a lot of skill and effort to edit. But for something text based or a VN its entirely reachable.

The author does not own a copyright within your mind, you can re-tell a story to your own liking and no one will stop you except yourself. It's Death of the Author, you just choose to kill him a bit earlier and take over.

If you only play VNs and experience them within the strict confines of what the author gives nothing will ever match the fantasies of your own mind, your own imagination, so why not let it run wild and rapid to satisfy your desires. If that's hard for you, IDK try drugs while jacking off to VNs or something, might help.

 

[Leo D. Marstone]

Embarrassingly I picked up "Coomer" from watching Vtubers. I'm not suprised if it's used on anime porn VN discords, I'd imagine the venn-diagram between the two is a near perfect circle.
I'm only on VN Discords myself for Previews and Memes, I find they're pretty cringe circle-jerks otherwise.
I don't like to post because generally it wastes more time than it's worth, I'm shy, and people on the internet are generally dickheads.

Fair enough.

Yeah at least bigger discords with a tight knit community is pretty difficult to get into because as you said they are pretty much circle jerks and yes sayers and offering any kind of criticism or negative feedback will get you lynched on the spot. Especially when you are new around.
Then again such is just a nature of a discord I guess.

For example take Story Anons discord. A massive server. I joined for a short time last month just to congratulate to a finished project and that I liked the game and the ending despite being controversial. The people there were nice and sweet but Story Anon itself was...weird? Not at all how I imagined him to be after a short interaction with him back when OuT was first released.
I admit my wording could have been better but I asked nonetheless if there will be more actual pregnancy content coming if a Tropicali 2 will be made since impregnation was a huge theme in the first game.

The answer to that from him was to kill myself xD
And from there it spiraled into a weird dynamic for me and I just dipped again on the same day.

Also sry if I came over as a dickhead. Over the years I got pretty impulsive and type out my thoughts on the spot. Either way your effort is appreciated but your post felt so much like the tone of the game I just had to react to it xD

You absolutley can go in and change the ending for yourself in a novel, if you have a bit of imagination. If you have Aphantasia it might get a bit difficult but thats an edge case.

Yes you can absolutely do that but for me it is difficult to imagine things in my head in general. Thats why text only smut content doesn't work for me as well.
I am also bad in explaining things so I guess I never will be able to get my point across xD

It's not that I don't love to imagine my own stuff in my head but not something to change that has already been created. Might sound cringe but there is basically an ongoing series like an anime I imagine stuff for since my teen years.

Anyway do post some more. Not everyone are dickheads even if it seems that way.

 

[cyphre]

Nobody with any amount of literary and common sense is bashing the ending because it's too "realistic" or because it's a bad end instead of "everyone is happy" type of ending. It is drawn into mud, deservingly so, because it is extremely inconsistent with tone of the story, as well as protagonist prior actions and thoughts, which is, unless this inconsistently was serving a specific point, is objectively bad writing.

Let's set something straight right away. People who say "protagonist was an asshole from day 1" or "he was bad and this was foreshadowed in first lines of dialogue" literally didn't read the VN or are lying through their teeth to be contrarians. There was an extreme amount of positive, romantic and caring thoughts which completely negates the claim that he was just using them, and denying this only shows that whatever you read went into one ear and left through another, so to speak. If it went the "he wanted to use them but became emotionally attached and really fell in love" route the ending would reflect this narrative train.

Equally nonsensical is an argument that "he is just moralyl grey, it's realistic, characters aren't just black and white". The issue is, MC isn't consistent with his own internal logic, and not in a "i changed my mind way", but in a way that he was written as a completely different character depending on whatever scene dev had in mind without any regard to continuity or his character.

Imagine you are reading 1984, and in the last 20 pages it becomes a heroic shounen, Big Brother is defeated and peace is restored by magical girls while Sailor Moon theme is playing in the background. Genre defying for a dystopian genre? Maybe. Did it make any lick of sense or was satisfying? You be the judge.

It doesn't matter if a character is an asshole or a saint, what matters is that his thoughts, actions and motives stay consistent to HIS OWN internal logic. It doesn't matter if an ending is a morbid disaster or a hopeful sunrise, as long as it was deserved and tonally consistent with the rest of the narrative. Tropicali critically fails at being tonally consistent and also fails at building up it's narrative to a deserved conclusion, that's the issue people are having with it.

 

[くもり空]

There's been 300 messages since the release and most of its been bitching and groaning that it didn't fall into the typical "Everyone is okay with polygamy, gets married, pregnant, the end".

I wish I had a dollar for every time a piece of entertainment media was ruined and made the audience unhappy for trying to "sUbVeRt ThE sTaTuS qUo."
Your story isn't deep and thought-provoking just because everyone is miserable in the end. If you want to go against the status quo just for the sake of it, then don't expect standing ovations. If you finish a story with a good ending and feel like it's not original enough, then your story just sucks. A good story can be unique AND have a good ending, but blue-balling your audience right after the climax tends to leave people dissatisfied. Who would've thought?

The lack of proper resolution feels tonally deaf and doesn't make the reader's investment pay off. It's just a complete whiplash that makes you think "Wait, that's it?"
And as someone above said, it's okay to like this ending. Some people just have shit taste.

 

[rouge_g]

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View attachment 4669661

Absolute crime Juni is at the bottom of the list, I bet she'd make it into a retconned DLC if enough people voted for her.

 

[Nennius]

Absolute crime Juni is at the bottom of the list, I bet she'd make it into a retconned DLC if enough people voted for her.

If you think she's gone-gone, I've got a brdige to sell you.
They've got a cloning machine after all.

More signifigantly however, Anon mentioned a year ago that Juni was originally going to be solely in part 2, but got brought into part 1 early.

 

[Ballistic 9029]

I wasn't quite expecting discourse here to be...THIS much of a train wreck.

I almost forgot why I came here on seeing all the fighting, but I got what I came for-

My two cents is simply-

Tropicali 1 is probably just act 1 of the overall story, and it fits with anon's writing style to mix very high highs with very low lows, admittedly, he doesn't typically end arcs on completely low notes, but I could see multiple ways 1 could lead into 2, depending on the other endings which I haven't seen all of-

While it may not be perfect, it could very well be that Tropicali 2 starts off with an option to "pick your Tropicali 1 ending" at the start of a playthrough, similar how you can pick between three similar but different "Fernandos" at the start of 1.

Only instead of academic, jock, and criminal, Tropicali 2 might start with more extreme archetypes that correlate with the endings in this game like-

"Good boy, fuck boy, bad boy" as an example, one where you start off as a "good" Fernando that more or less tries to do the right thing while still being indulgent, one that's more manipulative and has maybe started taking advantage of a lot of the girls, but probably didn't go full into basically selling his soul for Mio and Gloria, and what the community seems to be dubbing "postal/insane" Fernando that got the full bad end and went all in on breeding everyone for dominance and fortune, simply because he could.

It opens up to a player friendly experience, more long-term story telling options, and potential redemption or corruption arcs to follow.

It'd probably be a lot more work to keep player agency intact for the planned trilogy, but I could see it happening nonetheless-

Regardless, the first Tropicali isn't a self-contained story, and it doesn't really feel that way either.

It feels like whatever the Tropicali story is, this is only the beginning, Laoise's story and character is basically only vaguely hinted at and introduced, there's still the entire "land of the dead" concept to start exploring, Jess' ghost husband is pretty squarely in the "We'll deal with this in a sequel" zone, any potential relationship with Gloria is mostly gonna be just getting started in a sequel, Kaoru is a whole thing, Mio is basically the primary driver of the main plot for the series, and basically the only thing that we fully wrapped up in the first game is we understand and pretty much fully on board the Yoko and Rina train.

Also Juni "dies" but will probably return in some capacity in 2.

I see this less as an ending for a story, and more as just the ending for what I presume will be the business mechanics, as Tropicali 2 and 3, as I understand it, will apparently be upping the stakes and probably be following different themes mechanically speaking as Fernando branches out in the ways he pursues power.

Main thing I'm curious about is how long the early release versions of Tropi 2 will take to start coming out, so that any cliffhangers won't stay cliffhangers for too long hopefully.

 

[Ass bandit]

Nobody with any amount of literary and common sense is bashing the ending because it's too "realistic" or because it's a bad end instead of "everyone is happy" type of ending. It is drawn into mud, deservingly so, because it is extremely inconsistent with tone of the story, as well as protagonist prior actions and thoughts, which is, unless this inconsistently was serving a specific point, is objectively bad writing.

Let's set something straight right away. People who say "protagonist was an asshole from day 1" or "he was bad and this was foreshadowed in first lines of dialogue" literally didn't read the VN or are lying through their teeth to be contrarians. There was an extreme amount of positive, romantic and caring thoughts which completely negates the claim that he was just using them, and denying this only shows that whatever you read went into one ear and left through another, so to speak. If it went the "he wanted to use them but became emotionally attached and really fell in love" route the ending would reflect this narrative train.

Equally nonsensical is an argument that "he is just moralyl grey, it's realistic, characters aren't just black and white". The issue is, MC isn't consistent with his own internal logic, and not in a "i changed my mind way", but in a way that he was written as a completely different character depending on whatever scene dev had in mind without any regard to continuity or his character.

Imagine you are reading 1984, and in the last 20 pages it becomes a heroic shounen, Big Brother is defeated and peace is restored by magical girls while Sailor Moon theme is playing in the background. Genre defying for a dystopian genre? Maybe. Did it make any lick of sense or was satisfying? You be the judge.

It doesn't matter if a character is an asshole or a saint, what matters is that his thoughts, actions and motives stay consistent to HIS OWN internal logic. It doesn't matter if an ending is a morbid disaster or a hopeful sunrise, as long as it was deserved and tonally consistent with the rest of the narrative. Tropicali critically fails at being tonally consistent and also fails at building up it's narrative to a deserved conclusion, that's the issue people are having with it.

I find it truly amazing, how badly you failed at basic reading comprehension. Everything the MC does has his thoughts of 'how can I use her', 'she is my possession', 'tell her what she wants to hear', 'I need her to make money', 'time to gaslight her', etc.
Sometimes there is a twinge of guilt, or the thoughts of the narrator, but these never stop him from using everyone except for Juni and maybe his sister. It is even spelled out very clearly when he gets the hotel from Mio...power, women, money...'I want to be king'. A king with slave(s) who exploits the poor and desperate.

'But he comes across as friendly and helpful!' Seriously. You are the mark.

As for the endings, they suck not because they are out of character, but because they are rushed and half-arsed. This is only half a game.

 

[sabadongelov]

Here you have Shrodinger's Fernando. Where he both cares enough to ramble on and on in his mind about how to solve the inane problems of a vacationing middle aged single mother. And then shortly after cares so little that he condemns that same woman to a life of eternal fear and misery. All without even a moment of hesitation. Normally to make such an extreme decision, he would have at least needed to confront the part of himself that does care about her. As in this would be the moment to have the usual long winded internal monologue. But he doesn't. He instead completely drops the part of himself that cares as if it never existed, all for the sake of a dark ending. That is not depth or nuance, that is just a contradiction in personality. One that any person that thinks about what they read would pick up on.

You never thought that maybe the reason he tries to help her is that he needs her for everything from sex to a competent chef to work at his resort? To me, he never comes across as particularly altruistic. Everything he does, at least when always picking the "let's seduce and corrupt the LI"-option is interwoven with what he wants and needs. So doing more nefarious things, if that is what is required, is never far away for him.

Also, why do you return to the ending? What does the ending have to do with your complaint of lack of moral consistency? If he is written inconsistently, as you claim, then it is, once more, the whole game that is bad. Not just the ending.

If anything is inconsistent, it is to both complain about the ending being bad and at the same time claim that the game is inconsistant throughout.

Anyway, this conversation is going in circles so this likely will be my last reply.

Sure.

 

[sabadongelov]

I wish I had a dollar for every time a piece of entertainment media was ruined and made the audience unhappy for trying to "sUbVeRt ThE sTaTuS qUo."

There is no subversion, it is just not the porn version of a Disney film.

Your story isn't deep and thought-provoking just because everyone is miserable in the end. If you want to go against the status quo just for the sake of it, then don't expect standing ovations. If you finish a story with a good ending and feel like it's not original enough, then your story just sucks. A good story can be unique AND have a good ending, but blue-balling your audience right after the climax tends to leave people dissatisfied. Who would've thought?

The lack of proper resolution feels tonally deaf and doesn't make the reader's investment pay off. It's just a complete whiplash that makes you think "Wait, that's it?"

"Wah, wah, since I like good endings, all games must have good endings, because only I matter in the world!"

And as someone above said, it's okay to like this ending. Some people just have shit taste.

It is not about taste, it is about reading comprehension. The game makes it very clear where it is headed from the very beginning. If you failed to grasp that and played through the game without ever picking up on what kind of story it was or what kind of character the MC is, that is on you, not the game. If you dislike gay sex, you should avoid gay games. If you dislike stories that doesn't have a Disney ending (at least not if you choose to play as a sociopath), then you should avaid games like Tropicali. Simple as.