If you liked Muv-Luv Extra, then get ready for the sequel to throw your emotional investment in the garbage for an alternate universe post-apocalyptic war story. It raises the question of why MLE needed to be an entire game; it's only required reading because you need to get a feel for the cast and their interactions.

They look at Muv-Luv Extra as a chore that they need to begrudgingly complete before they get to the good stuff.

In those cases, how do you get your reader - who was invested in the characters' simple day-to-day lives - invested in a story that's in a different world and a different genre, even with the same characters?

Not really. It's because the story is about a romcom moege protagonist being thrown into a world where the same rules don't apply and learn that even in his world most people don't live by moege rules.

As well as attachment to characters, alternative versions of which we are here to experience, exploring how the same people would act in a completely differenet set of circumstances and with completely different life experience, and how their relationships would form with Takeru who stayed the same. Without Extra most of this won't make sense.

Not really. Extra, for what it is, is a fun, lovingly crafted moege with silly characters and zany comedy, which has great art and detail appled to it. Everyone is expressive, there's a huge sprite variety, and every shot is a "scene" with characters actually standing somehwere on the location instead of being sprites layered on a static background. MLE is a fun, cute game, which just happens to be a foundation for the rest of the series.

You do exactly what MLU did. Dunno, you seem to be the special case here, me and everyone I know were completely invested in MLU. And looking at the reviews, most people also only really got hooked at this point. They got to see more of the cast from a different side and see the protagonist grow as a person.

but the rest of the game as it applies to Muv-Luv Unlimited is pretty frivolous

agree that that was probably *supposed* to be the point of MLU, but the problem is that they largely just act the exact same

What I *am* saying, however, is there's definitely a significant amount of people that feel differently. You can even see that in the user reviews on this site; I'm not just making stuff up.

...Okay. What - are you trying to imply that my opinion is wrong, or something?

The rest of the game is it splitting off to a heroine route. I don't know what do you want: for the game to have a common route, but have no opportunity to actually date the girl you want? Huh?

They share personality traits, but they don't act the same. Meiya doesn't live in her fantasy world of the rich anymore, she just speaks in a fancy way due to her education. Kei is no longer a slacker, Mikoto is a girl, and the rest start to show in MLA because that's the meat of the story and that's when most characters start to stand out, as it's the meat of the story. I agree that the story seems long, but I don't agree that it *needs* to be short. Both games are fine for what they are. You just want to rush to MLA instead of experiencing ML for what it is. The structure of the trilogy only really becomes understandable after you are finished with MLA, but that's how it is. Alot of the parts from it won't make sense if there was no MLE and MLU to back it up.

And I don't know why this should be pointed out as an issue when it clearly wasn't an issue for you. People want cool mech battles, and Muv-Luv is not about that. What people want and what the story wants to say clearly doesn't align most of the time, but I don't see how it's the story's fault.

No. I'm trying to say that you are clearly talking about yourself, not "the reader". You just appealed to the mass opinion before, and now you are trying to frame your own subjective take as an objective issue.

Clearly most people didn't have issues with how Unlimited is structured, since by this point most people who expected heavy action got filtered anyway. As well as most people didn't have an issue with the dynamics being reset, and only the protagonist being carried over.

If you don't like this, then MLA is here for an another rough awakening for you. The sooner you understand that it's a protagonist centric story and not a heroine focused one the better.

And, no, I don't want to rush to MLA; if that were true, I'd have probably started the game by now, but I haven't. But, I'll see if Muv-Luv Alternative contextualizes the things I dislike about Muv-Luv Extra (which, wasn't very much) and Muv-Luv Unlimited (which was a damn lot).

very unserious vibe despite the setting

Takeru was also a big part of the problem

how do you then proceed to not take your situation seriously for like, almost half of the game!?

I don't understand why rusing is such a huge part of your argument, because honestly it would be better if you did rush.

Takeru is not a problem, as him being a clueless dipshit is part of what the story's message and the fundamental structure of it's narrative. Him not being a likeable person is intentional.

It's called a coping mechanism and escapism. Accepting that your life of peace and yakisoba sandwiches as well as your childhood friend are likely gone forever is a pretty hard thing to do if you are a priveleged highschool kid who never worked a day in his life and never faced a significant hardship or dealt with responsibilities.

I can also advise you to stop applying your own logic to the logic of a character who's a completely different person from yourself, and instead of try to understand why would he think the way he does in his set of circumstances, and go from there.

Trying to judge the early parts of the story without the latter part is a pretty silly concept by itself, and while you can blame the devs for not packaging everything together, I think the perpetual brokeness of studio age is already telling enough about why they didn't. Most of your complaints are either solved, adressed, or explained in MLA, while others will probably continue haunting you either way, it's not a series for everyone. I see no further point trying to dissect MLU now, as this will probably involve spoiling the rest of the story, and I can only advise you to just move on for now instead of grappling with why didn't you like the chapter 2 of a 3 chapter story which you haven't finished yet.

Don't just conjure up arguments that I didn't make

I don't think it made sense for him to do it through like, 4-5 chapters of the game.

The game should be judged on its own merits

I only said what I said, I didn't imply that you hate Takeru. I did get an impression that you at least dislike him from how you worded the paragraph though. Plus, you literally said that Takeru himself is a problem, so don't blame me for thinking that you dislike his character.

He stopped seriously thinking that he's in a dream pretty early on (as soon as he got restrained by the soldiers, in fact), this was just the wording he chose to fall back to to convince himself that the world's not real. He may be in a coma or in a simulation, which would still mean "a dream world", so in this context dream=not real, which is what Takeru likes to think due to not having much attachment to the world he's in and due to not wanting to build said attachment, as he believes it would stop him from going back to his world. This is pretty well explained, you just took the word "dream" too literally.

I agree, and that's why I said that the original plan was for it to be a single game, age just ran out of money mid production and had to delay, relasing the finished parts as is. The trilogy is not even itself a series, but a singular story split into 2 products due to development issues. MLA was intended to be an unlockable part of Muv-Luv, just like Unlimited was. While I agree that yes, it doesn't excuse MLU feeling lackluster, it should still be understandeable why it is so. It's by all means, not a stand alone product.

and it has everything to do with how he's using it to treat the situation lightly

They should have found a way to make that part of the story feel like an arc leading towards an actual conclusion (instead of the climactic even just happening out of nowhere).

Yes, because he wants to treat it lightly because he doesn't want this world to be real. That's the point. It's called escapism, exactly what someone like Takeru would do in his situation. It made perfect sense to me.

The devs ran out of money... so they need to spend more money? Huh? The structure of the story is such that you boot up MLA right after you finish up MLU, as it picks up right after. Plus MLA takes a new loop and doesn't continue with Unlimited timeline and there's no way to tie the story up in any other way that it did.

One question that came up, well im not sure if it's a question you already have the answer to or not but basically why was the first game as long as it was and a full game instead of an introduction to the sequels?
Well I can try to answer that. The first game was made to be a lighthearted romcom with sol and a bit of drama, nothing too crazy and sticking to a predictable pattern. So that it would seem pretty standalone in nature maybe. As we know it was made to be this way in order to do a shock genre twist for the sequels. Correct me if im wrong on that btw.

At the time that this was done I would guess it was very effective at drawing in interest in the sequels and achieved that goal, by drawing in a lot of curiousity. Unfortunately that was then, and this effect may have aged poorly. For people who read it much later (like myself since I cant read JP) we are griefed by the knowledge of the game being a trilogy and having this twist so our expectations are different. Hence the general statements like 'you have to get through the first episode to get to the good parts' etc, which were among the first bits of advice I read before taking up the trilogy. I think that has skewed peoples expectations a bit before they read the trilogy.

So what if I were to change that mindset and consider my enjoyment of the first game as if it was completely standalone? well it's not a bad game by any stretch, I enjoyed it for it's light entertainment and sol. Though I don't think my opinion of it's quality would have changed. To me it was a pretty average, no surprises and generally positive experience so I scored it to reflect that.

Now where we differ in opinion ofcourse is the sequels, since I thought they were fantastic. The only thing I can really put down on unlimited is for me it was the lay up for the final game and the spinoff, I don't think it would work well as a standalone so I find it difficult to rate it on its own without the context of the sequels to unlimited. With that in mind I actually do understand your confusion about the episode and why it might seem like a mess. The response I can give you to that is maybe with full context of finishing the trilogy (and perhaps the day after too) will help when it comes to that. It might change your outlook afterwards. Or you might hate it as some people have who knows.

But yeah for me when I think about like individual ratings I could not really rate unlimited as a standalone, so instead it was the first game, and then the second and third together for me. In a way you could consider that a weakness of unlimited in terms of comprehension and to me that's a reasonable criticism.

Another thing that I find interesting is one aspect of the sequels that I think is good is the way that they bet on the readers investment into the characters from the first game. Leading to feelings of wanting to go back to that, and my guess is you felt that way too since from what im seeing you enjoyed Extra.

The game plays on that feeling more and more towards the end of the second game and in the final game, mainly doing that through the protagonist and the story itself. I thought that was done really well, but I can also understand how that has the potential to ruin the experience if the reader is unable to get invested into the different story/plot's that emerge. Sort of like a double edged blade I suppose. That's the risk they took though, in the shift. Appealing to a different target audience, while at the same time attempting to draw in the previous audience if they are curious enough despite changing genre.