Andrea's journal

"In the end...a beginning."

Chrono Gear: The Warden of Time is never a game I expected to love so much. I expected to enjoy it, for reasons I'll talk about shortly, but while there's one aspect of the game I expected to hold up it really blew me away how well the entire package holds up even on a re-play.

This is a game that as the title of this post says, about V-tubers. That sudden trend of cute anime girl avatars taking over the entire internet. I'll get into my limited history with them in a bit, but that in and of itself would be something I would pass on. However the developer of the game caught my eye, GalaxyTrail. GalaxyTrail is known for the Freedom Planet Duology, which are games that are clearly inspired by the halcyon days of when Sonic the Hedgehog wasn't known as a bit of a failure. They're great games, so that had my attention. And then it turns out the game is an action platformer in a different way than Freedom Planet, based less on Sonic but based more on something like Megaman Zero. Tapping into a platforming genre that is still speed based but more about precision rather than momentum and physics. Which is the perfect match when the main character is essentially a God of Time. With one of the major gimmicks being the ability to slow time or speed yourself up, with each having different uses in combat and platforming.

So yeah, the gameplay I had faith in, it's from a developer who has already had success replicating a style of gameplay I love while putting their own spin on it, I was excited at the prospect of them doing it with a slightly different style. The story on the other hand? I really didn't know what to expect because what could you expect from a game again, based around Vtubers? And I don't mean that to sound disparaging, but these Vtubing companies, especially Hololive, has a pretty tight grip on the PR of their brand. It's all explicitly built off of Idol Culture, so these girls are pretty micro-managed. And even outside of that any character you use is you basically just doing a fictionalized take on a real person. That's an intimidating prospect to be in as a writer, both in terms of making a big company happy and not putting any character in a light that might be deemed disrespectful to a real person. I fucking wouldn't put myself in that position...and yet...

Our story begins with the creation of five guardians of five different aspects of life. Tsukumo Sana for Space, Ceres Fauna for Nature, Nanashi Mumei for Nature, Hakos Baelz for Chaos, and our main character Ouro Kronii, for time. They eventually came to form a council, pooling their power together to watch over the universe...and to hang out, ya know. The embodiment of hope, Irys, was created before the rest of the council but didn't join until later. (This nuance is not important to the plot at all but they clarify it and I did the research to see if this is how it happened with the actual V-tubers and yep, it was.)

All of them became more and more influenced by humanity but one took it further than any other. Kronii became egotistical due to humanity's obsession with Time. She eventually decided to try to build a machine to make herself stronger, called the Chrono Gear. Specifically the extra power was to try to preserve her timeline, because timelines decaying is a certainty, it's just a matter of when. This leads to a fight with another woman, Laplus Darkness (Technically spelt La+ but the game just spells it all out except for one bit) who tries to steal the Chrono Gear, her intentions are unknown. The game takes place in the aftermath of the fight for the Chrono Gear, with it being destroyed and it's pieces scattered across the different domains of the Council. Most of the plot of the game involves Kronii going to each domain, collecting the pieces of the chrono gear, and reconnecting with the friends she pushed away while trying to build the chrono gear originally. Even as a starting premise that's ballsy for the reasons I talked about above. It's shocking that they allowed a plot that makes one of their own a full on villain and one of them explicitly egotistical and flawed to the level they do. And we're not even at the further developments that I'll discuss in a spoiler section later.

The writing is generally pretty sharp if maybe a little cheesy at times both in the banter and in the earnestness it wants to tackle it's big emotional moments with, but even those have a level of passion behind them that it never feels distracting. It's misses are very few and never truly when it counts, there are better and deeper stories of course, but for the level it's aiming for it succeeds in spades. The final act of the game, which again for anyone who wants the full story I will talk about in a spoiler section, is about as good of a climax as you could ask for, with great straight forward writing alongside storytelling via gameplay. I don't really watch streams so obviously Vtubing isn't really intentionally on my radar but I am a nerd on the internet and they are kind of inescapable so I've seen enough clips to like...I get it. When it comes to the banter between all the girls I understand where it's pulling from and yeah, it's accurate. It's a surprisingly great mix of using the pieces given to them to tell an original story while also staying true to the personalities of the actual women behind the avatars. It's impressive.

I also want to give a special shout out to the music, I don't really have the words to describe music, bit of a blind spot for me, but it's a soundtrack that adjusts to what it needs to be. Every area in the game has it's own sound in a way that is again, impressive considering everything. There are 86 music tracks in this game, and not a single one of them is bad. To hammer home how much of a labor of love this was, there are also multiple songs in the game that are remixes of original songs that these women have sung (Again, idol culture, being able to sing is a necessity to be in Hololive, far as I can tell, it's part of how they make their money). Every piece of this game just seems to be bursting with love and respect for the people and general concepts involved with all of this. Like putting in a powerwash simulator minigame because Kronii genuinely likes Powerwash Simulator is charming as hell. I'm usually the person trying to weaponize my enthusiasm to get people to try things or at least get people to think differently about something they might not give a second glance (Hint hint I'm doing it right now) so I really love how this game has put me on the other end of that. I really can't sing it's praises enough, it just hits every note it wants to hit and does it with class and style.

And now time for me to gush even more now that we're at the spoiler section. Gonna separate the spoiler section with a picture. This is your warning. Go play this game!




Okay are they gone? I think they're gone.

Welcome everyone who decided to stick with me. Let's talk the surprisingly emotional story of this game.

So I told the general premise earlier. Kronii tries to make a powerful device, someone tries to steal it, it gets broken, you gotta fix what was broke.

The plot remains that simple and yet not that simple at all. We learn very quickly that the Laplus Darkness that is our villain of the piece is not the one from what I'll refer to as the "Main" timeline. Most of the boss fights in the game are from the other members of HoloX, which Laplus is the de facto leader of. They all mention how she's different, the implication consistently being that she's more dangerous. They don't know they're dealing with a double. Eventually you run into the Laplus of the main timeline, a much more childish woman who's first "evil" scheme left the group bankrupt, not exactly the villainous mastermind that hangs over the rest of the game. It's mentioned in passing but Laplus is a woman who is cursed with shackles that take away her intelligence and strength (I have to stress that while the story is original all of the lore for each individual character was not made for the game, this is just the real lore of the streamer). Alternate Laplus as the game refers to her as has broken those shackles in a moment of desperation in her timeline, but again, we're not given the full story.

Meanwhile Kronii from the get go is acting pretty suspicious from the get go, even to the audience. Most of the other characters comment that she too is a bit different, though in a more positive light. She's more personable and willing to help than the Kronii from before the first battle with Laplus and the shattering of the Chrono Gear. It becomes increasingly obvious that well...this is certainly AN Ouro Kronii, just not the one from the main timeline. During that initial battle with Laplus where the Chrono Gear shattered the main timeline Ouro Kronii died. This alternate Kronii just filled the vacancy. The reason she was heading towards this timeline at all is because hers is dead.

She too tried to make a Chrono Gear to try to preserve her timeline, and all it did was accelerate the decay. And well of course Alt Laplus is from that timeline as well. With her also accidentally contributing to the decay when she summoned a monster beyond time to try to kill Kronii. It ended with Laplus taking the faulty Chrono Gear of her timeline and jumping to the Main Timeline, where she was free to wage war against that version of the Council to try to take a fully working Chrono Gear to try to restore her timeline, which led to that Chrono Gear breaking and the main timeline Kronii dying. With Alt Kronii not fast enough to help but just fast enough to fill the void before the main timeline Council knew what had happened.

The last two survivors of their timeline. Two women without a home each taking desperate measures to make themselves one. Laplus trying to brute force it by terrorizing another timeline to get the resources to try to turn back time on a universe too far gone. Kronii trying to make a home in this other timeline, trying to run from the truth for her own sake and for those of her friends. As epic as the final battle is and it is VERY epic, and has one of the best boss battle tunes ever:


At the end of the day it's the battle of two women grieving for the family they've lost, but only one was able to come to terms with the new family they were able to build in this new timeline. Laplus' friends and her alternate self from the main timeline would have accepted her, they even tried to plead with her to stop, but she was too desperately trying to get back what was lost to try to even make that connection. Again, not the deepest of all time but the execution really makes these moments land. The ending where Alt Laplus says that she doesn't regret what she had done, what she had tried to do, but that the better version of her would and tells Kronii to make sure that version never releases her shackles, clearly an indication of her innocence, hits hard.

The last third of the game has so many great moments, but the one that surprised me the most on a replay because I completely forgot it was Alt Kronii finding a letter from Main Timeline Kronii, who knew she was going to die and assumed that some other Kronii might step in to fill the void. So she wrote a letter basically urging whatever Kronii tried to take her spot to live the life that she didn't. And like man this is a game about V-tubers, what the fuck?

So I'm just gonna leave this little discussion/review with the ending passage of that letter:

"I'll leave it at this: Take care of your friends and they'll take care of you. Don't become a martyr if you truly mean to be there in my place. We're too petty to die, alright?

Yours before - Ouro Kronii"