The video game moral panic of the mid 2000s. I know it's probably hard to believe now, but video games used to be frequently blamed as the main culprit for the supposed downfall of society. Degenerate media that will rot your child's mind and turn them into violent maniacs. Hack journalists and politicians would go on lengthy crusades against the likes of GTA, Call of Duty and Postal, all under the pretense of preventing children from being exposed to violent video games. Never mind the fact that ratings boards exist for a reason and your 5-year-old is the last person that should receive a copy of GTA San Andreas for christmas. As silly as this all sounds, it didn't save a slew of games from being censored or out right banned across the globe. And the topic of today's review was one of the last victims of said moral panic: Rule of Rose.
Rule of Rose was released at the tail end of the PS2's lifespan in 2006 and was developed by Punchline. A small Japanese developer formed out of former Love-de-Lic staff members. If you're well versed in small cult classic games from Japan, you will probably recognize them as the team that developed Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, one of the main inspiration for Undertale. So not exactly developers with the goal of being as mainstream as possible, quite the opposite. Under the new studio Punchline, they would first release the quirky adventure game Tulip, which became a modest hit in its own right. Enough so that Sony of Japan would approach Punchline to make a horror game exclusivly for the PS2. Punchline of course agreed but didnt want to make another bog-standard survival horror title. In an interview with Gamasutra, link at the bottom of the review, assistant producer Yuya Takayma would explain that they wanted to explore the perceived innocence of children in a horror setting. A look into what adults might see as horrifying abuse, but young children only see as innocent games and make believe, entirely oblivious to the long term consequences. And I think if you know anything about video games, you know where the controversy arose around Rule of Rose's content. A video game depicting harm towards children would be a hot button issue today, but you can be damn sure it send people into a frenzy in 2006. During a time where video games were still fighting tooth and nail to escape the image of just being seen as toys for children.
Despite already getting the green light from all the major ratings boards, Rule of Rose was subject to a flood of false claims and slanderous accusations before its release. Most prominently, an article in the Italian magazine Panorama. A piece of writing that has since been scrubbed from the magazine's website, but with the magic of the internet and Google Translate, for all us non-Italian speakers, you can still easily look up the nonsense that was published about Rule of Rose in 2006. Link down below. The gist of Panorama's article being claims about the game's supposed goal to torture children, burying them alive and explicit sexual content that was obviously never in the actual game to begin with. This became such a wide spread rumor that Rule of Rose was even discussed in European Parliament, with politicians calling for an outright ban of the game. In light of this insane controversy, Sony of America and Europe would refuse to publish the game in their respective regions and so the distribution rights would be picked up by Atlus for the US and 505 games for Europe. This still didn't help the game, and its financial failure was already set in stone. The game luckily gained a cult following since then, owing in no small part to the fact that it's still best known as one of the rarest and most expensive PS2 games of all time. So, let's finally look at what had people in such a panic in 2006.
From its opening narration, Rule of Rose makes it clear that it doesn't follow the structure of a traditional narrative. This is a dark fairy tail about a young girl falling down the rabbit hole of her repressed trauma. And much like in Lewis Carroll's famous children's book, our protagonist Jennifer starts her journey by following a mysterious figure into the woods. In Rule of Rose's case, we follow a little boy to a seemingly abandoned orphanage. After a strong atmospheric opening section exploring the dark corners of the orphanage, Jennifer is promptly ganged up on and captured by a group of paper bag wearing children. Locked in a coffin and carried off into the dark of night, Jennifer eventually wakes up on an airship, the game's central location. Here she finds herself at the mercy of a group of children calling themselves “The Red Crayon Aristocrat Club”. A group of kids that have set up a game of princesses and knights, high class royalty and lower class citizens. Courtesies have to be followed and rules are to be obeyed at all cost. Naturally, Jennifer is the runt of the litter, having to subject herself to everything the Aristocrats throw her way or suffering the consequences. So the goal of the game is not exactly what the media at the time lead people to believe, it's more about surviving the cruel hazing rituals the club will put Jennifer through, uncovering the game's many mysteries and understanding the events surrounding Jennifer's past.
I'll fully admit I didn't give Rule of Rose enough credit when I first finished it. To get a bit ahead of myself: Playing Rule of Rose became such a draining and tedious experience, that it started to bleed over into my eventual unwillingness to pay attention to the story. I started seeing it has a run of the mill psychological horror game, trying to copy Silent Hill. Yeah, I have seen children left to their own devices enough times. Protagonist with a dark past ? Lame, get some new material. But after letting it sit for a couple of days and doing some more research, I ultimately came away with the complete opposite opinion.
Rule of Rose tells a fantastic story about childhood trauma and the long term effects of bullying. It's fascinating how the game chooses the instigators of Jennifer's torment to be exclusively girls. The few boys that are part of the club are rude, for sure, but they mostly keep to themselves. Their bullying is entirly blunt and in your face, while the girls choose to torture Jennifer with cruel mind games. That is only one little detail in how Rules of Rose nails the dynamics of hazing circles. You very much have a hierarchy in who is the mastermind behind the most messed up scenes in the game, the bootlickers directly underneath them, the apathetic who just play along because it's a thing to pass the time and the desperate at the bottom of the dogpile. Like one of the game's most interesting characters: Amanda. Not a completely heinous human being, none of the kids really are, but clearly a desperate and broken girl. Someone who clearly longs for some kind of break in life, while also being all too happy to not be the main target of the club's cruelty and bullying for once. The game also heavily hints at Amanda having some sort of mental disability, another one of the many dark places the game's story goes to without ever being outright explicit or tasteless. These are all unique elements I can only applaud Punchline for and more horror games should have the guts to tell stories like this.
Do I have my problems with the story ? Sure, there are elements I wish had been reworked a little. I wish Jennifer had a stronger personality for one. While her silence does serve a thematic purpose near the end of the game, I feel like the interactions with the game's much more colorful characters would ring less hollow for me if I had something to take away from her personal journey. She has a backstory but is otherwise very much left as a blank slate. The other issue for me is the game's ultimate twist, which had me rolling my eyes when i realised what they were going for. Its a step to far in my opinion and the one part of the story where the game's bites off a bit more than it can chew. Less would have been definitly more here. There is an argument to be made that Jennifer herself might just be an unreliable narrator due to her trauma, but I feelt like piecing together the games clues painted a very cut and dry picture of what exacly happened. So im not sure I can let that interpretation slide, unless I missed a crucial detail somewhere. Either way the game's premise alone would have been strong enough to carry it to a powerful and poniend conclusion, without completely jumping the shark.
Speaking of problems, let's talk about the gameplay. Oh boy, the gameplay. Without exaggeration, Rule of Roses gameplay is the main element that delivers a cruel killing blow to the game and the reason why I ultimatly cant recommend it. Its ideas aren't even terrible or unoriginal, but what must have been a lack of budget and time results in one the most tedious survival horror experiences I ever had to slog through. On the surface, Punchline created a pretty standard survival horror game. The twist comes in the form of a little dog named Brown, who you rescue pretty early on in the game. Brown is your trusty companion and can find items for you, via the FIND command. Anything you put in front of his cute little nose, he will sniff out and guide you to. Be it a story critical item or optional collectibles. Every item has an adjacent list of items Brown can uncover at the push of a button. What sounds like a neat system just devolves into Brown becoming a glorified guide arrow, making exploration pretty worthless.
Not that you will have to explore much, cause the map of the airship is woefully undercooked. It's mostly one long corridor that you run back and forth through. Find a roadblock in one direction ? Well, back track the exact same way you just came from and find the story trigger you missed. There are no winding paths or shortcuts, only one super linear direction the game wants you to go down. Mind you, the game is at most 10 hour long, and I was feeling the tedium set in by hour 3. No help in alleviate the tedium is the game's combat.
When Rule of Rose is discussed online, the main criticism everyone seems to agree on is how terrible combat is. I would go even further and say combat is compeltly broken. I refuse to believe this wasn't just thrown together at the last minute or even a had a single day of playtesting. The game's hit boxes flat out don't work, and it's a crap shoot whether or not you will even hit an enemy. Sometimes you can keep a boss stunlocked in an infinite death loop, sometimes you might as well be right up their ass and the game refuses to register a hit. And there is only one single, very hard to find ranged weapon with next to no ammo in the whole game, so your only option is to get up close with melee combat. It is pretty funny to stab a little pig child to death with a desert fork the first time you encounter them, less so when the game locks you in a room with five of them, all doing the same open arm charge attack while Jennifer is stuck in a corner somewhere. Brown isnt much help in combat either, since all he can do is stun enemies for a split second before getting beat up and being out for the count until the encounter is over. I started to go out of my way to hoard as many health items as possible, just so I can damage boost through combat rooms. Something I rarely feel like I have to do with any game, and you could not pay me enough money in the world to actually replay the game anytime soon. It was that bad and infuriating.
I didn't want to hate Rule of Rose. It's a game I heard so much about and one I was beyond excited to finally strike from my backlog. And so I have. I spend a miserable weekend with Rule of Rose, getting engrossed by its story while at the same time pulling my hair out at its awful gameplay. I can now vouch for the quality of its writing. Punchline put a tremendous amount of effort into crafting a unique and frankly incredibly daring horror story. I just wish it was a movie instead of a video game. Go experience Rule of Rose through any means other than playing it. Trust me, you'll have a much better time.
Gamasutra interview with assistant producer Yuya Takayama:
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/thank-heaven-for-little-girls-why-i-rule-of-rose-i-may-be-2006-s-most-controversial-game
Panorama article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20061206190206/http://www.panorama.it/internet/computer/articolo/ix1-A020001038759/idpag1-1
The Rule of Rose controversy:
https://www.timeextension.com/features/how-a-plagiarised-review-turned-rule-of-rose-into-a-ps2-video-game-nasty
