Hatです

I finished playing Hat World: New Testament last month. The drain of finishing a recorded 131 hours of RPG finally hit after the credits rolled, so I decided to wait a bit before making a big old post about it.

...But now that some time has passed I don't even know what to really say. I'm a bit overloaded on feelings for this game. I'd forgotten just what it was like to go through something so isolated from modern expectations of quality or popularity, just a good-ass story with hilarious characters and gameplay that I hesitate to call traditionally "engaging" so much as it was just... a lot of fun.

But that's why I'm not sure I can give it a sterling review on a standard Game Reviewer scale, because I think my enjoyment of it isn't measurable by those qualities. And it wasn't even that it was the deepest, most raw mindboggling experience either. I just found myself in love with the solid aesthetic and attitude it had toward being itself through to the end. But even then I feel like I'm overembellishing, because I would also understand if someone would handwave it as a middle-of-the-road RPG experience if it didn't click in just the same way.

So this isn't a review. This is a stream of consciousness oversharing post from someone with no outlet.

_{Fair warning: this post is naturally going to be full of spoilers through 100% completion of the game! If you haven't played it, go download the fan-translation for free yourself!!}

---

In the spirit of Too Much Information, I'm going to start with numbers that mean nothing to anyone!

^{Prim hates all these godforsaken stat-filled shitholes! Don't bring her here ever again!}

One thing that you'll unfortunately learn about me is that I experience media consumption euphoria by reflecting on a past experience and extracting every emotion I felt in the process, connecting it all together like the Pepe Silvia meme, not unlike squeezing an orange to savor every bit of juice it's worth and then also eating the peel for some reason.

Anyway there are two factors at play here, the most obvious being how brainrotted I was to the plot as I got deeper, but the other is story depth. I went into this assuming it would be a shallow but fun time, a simple romp through a fantasy land featuring girls with funny hats.

^{Being a Touhou fan you'd think I wouldn't make this exact same mistake twice}

Because of that, going into this, I didn't know which parts were going to be so pivotal to everything else in every other route, and I regretfully didn't document a whole lot of it. In some ways, I loved that I picked Shiki's route for this blind first experience, but in another way I wish I played it much, much later.

I had a lot of thoughts throughout about the order of the routes and how it might affect your understanding of the story and reaction to each plot reveal. Shiki's had such a huge impact with no other information, and the end of the route becoming a near-horror dark glimpse at reality with a twist of hope was the perfect first impression, even in full hindsight. But if I played it after more of the other routes, I would have been gripped by intrigue instead having waited longer to understand Shiki's (and Tsubame's) informed perspective of the world, similar to Natalie.

^{Chocolat had my favorite commentary in every route btw}

And speaking of Natalie, I wouldn't have been as stricken by the atmosphere of Shiki's final dungeon if I already needed eye bleach after hers. Having to hear "the Human Sphere" with no elaboration for four routes, and finally playing it right after the horrible crunching sounds of Janice's final encounters was certainly a choice followup! If I had to rate the shock value of each route, combined with the reveal of the reality of the hats, Natalie's is probably the highest. The lowest would be Lavie's, but I think hers instead had the strongest character development showcase.

^{girl u 2}

I found myself liking Lavie herself a lot more than I expected, given how much of a pushover she was in Shiki and Dora's routes (which were apparently the only routes she was like this!) Her arc and its resolution of her gradually finding the inner strength to realize what was missing in her view of life, especially given her implied background (fully revealed in the final route), presented with the narrative foil of the Perpetual Engine was just fantastic storytelling. So much so that it eclipsed her last boss being truly the dumbest looking bean of all. Yes, it still kicked my ass a couple times before I could hit it hard enough, but the encounter itself was very cool and well executed from a technical perspective.

^{oh you're very welcome}

That said, the most unfortunate in my total experience was definitely Dora's route being in a weird spot of Probably Should Have Been Played First. Going through it right after the stunning tone of Shiki's story made the conflict between Dora and Shadow Dora the Hedgehog and their showdown in evil clown world feel just a little goofy in comparison until the big reveal - and even then, in hindsight, the same reveal was even bigger in Natalie's!!

^{It's just a little embarrassing, isn't it?}

But Dora's story served as the polar opposite to Lavie's: Lavie's personal growth blossomed into a solution for all the world's ails, while Dora's quest for a self-centered solution led to the resolution of her own deep personal problems (and, notably, Did Not Solve Anything for Anyone Else). I don't dislike Dora, but truly her story felt incomplete by comparison... that said, I think the dev knew this.

^{Lines like this always make me wonder what the original text said. Hats don't have noses, silly.}

Feuillitine was so important to the thematic storytelling of the final route, and she even got the opposing overpowered magic gem to Lavie's Love Magic. It has to have been intentional, or at least a happy accident, that her route was split into the finale.

And this is what I mean by the experience being so itself...! A game regulated by a regular dev team to be sold and judged by a normal curve of reviews wouldn't just ignore this kind of incongruency when it very clearly gives you a choice meant to be equal right in the beginning! It's "imbalanced", but because of that it's "unexpected" in an unconventional way when you finally hit those points in each route that give it its unique flavor, and it's not even done with that until the finale of the game!
A 20 hour experience* that follows another 100 hours* that hits an even more complete resolution for all 6+ of the stories that already had endings!!
^{*these numbers based on personal experience}

^{GHGFHGhh. Okay sorry. Normal again.}

Anyway, I realize I didn't mention Janice's route except in passing so far. And you might notice it had an uncharacteristic dip in screenshot count (see!! This was a relevant point!!)

I think the way her route plays out was much more dry, but this also felt intentional. Janice herself had little to say, and almost no ulterior motive compared to the twists and turns the others had. But that made it even more effective when she would bluntly state to each of the others that their time had come, and that they should fight for their life.

^{Really I think she had more to say to others than anyone else, despite that.}

But even with such a simplified story, her final encounter was EASILY my favorite of the six. Just the flavor alone, a 5-way final battle, with bosses said throughout the route to be impossible even by themselves, featuring the main characters of every route AND characters you can't even recruit normally, ending with an insane DPS race true-final boss fight, and it even has branching endings (that still count as complete??) if you fail!! This alone MADE the route, which is to say, I'm glad I didn't pick her first, but I wish I picked her a little closer to last.

^{THIS time you are ;)b}

I also didn't mention Mel's route at all, but this time on purpose: I think hers was the PERFECT lay-up to Yoko's, and the advice I had read to do her route last at all costs was spot-on. I later read on the dev's blog that the original version of Hat World was, in fact, just the Mel route framed differently, and this makes perfect sense to me. Her story is the most front-to-back impactful on the lore of the overarching story in a very obvious way, and the only one with such a melancholy, bittersweet ending. The perfect prelude to Yoko's feelings at the beginning of her story.

^{Okay. Deep breaths. This isn't even the half of it.}

Yoko's story was so much all the time. Turning the format on its head by becoming a completely linear plot and covering EVERY plot point. Every single one of them. In an interwoven story of blind hopes and the crushing weight of despair that a single mistake would ruin all your efforts -

-yes, YOURS! You, Yoko, and You the player, for choosing this path instead of being satisfied with the six other ones!! You both make this choice!!

Yoko's emphasis as the most normal of the girls, possibly even more ordinary than the common side characters you get in every route, is such understated themeing. When you first play the game, she fits a stereotypical isekai character trope, someone special by virtue of being normal, and it really seems that way - only for it to turn that expectation on its head to reveal that not only is EVERYONE an isekai character, she is perhaps the MOST ORDINARY of all of them...

^{I half expected this to lead into an even harder boss encounter than before as a result}

Even if it was already foreshadowed long before that she had more importance than it seemed, being the character to get mid-route bonus cutscenes (not counting Melissa going to the bar), having it all come together - no, collapse in on her - makes you reflect on everything you had been through as a neutral party. And for someone that was already enthralled by the individual presentation of the rest of the routes, for me it was the most gratifying feeling ever.

^weh...

The ludonarrative(game) consistency(feel) here is in full force, too. The Power of Creation™ being the manifestation of one's imagination within this world immediately makes Yoko, who had experienced 6 different story climaxes, much stronger than her ordinary self would suggest, and it explains her ease in immediately handholding Dora through a speedrun of her own story, leaving Feuillitine just completely gutted from being foiled in record time.

Other aspects like needing someone with a hat to get around in the story, not having the safety of a home to retreat to, and actually starting without any hat powers at all bring out the mechanics of the entire game system to the forefront even more than the first time I played. Remixed encounters prevented it from being just an all-routes speedrun even with the jacked up New Game+ strength, like the cafe gang confronting Mel early or Mauricia dragging in Double Jeopardy out of nowhere with no preparation allowed. And because of the chaos introduced to the story from the get-go, I had no idea what to even expect next the whole time, but it was woven together so masterfully in a way that I could actually feel it in the gameplay itself.

It was also messy in a way that would probably be unforgiveable to someone that insists on consistent design, because the bosses really didn't have scaling with the route in mind! Right after fighting Matryoshka at what was undeniably her full strength, you get to fight... the World of Law's first boss, at its regular strength. Hell, you don't even get to another final boss level encounter for... hang on.

^{law 1, life 1 & 2, violetta, min-min, dreams 1 & 2, cafe gang, jacou (violence), law 2 & 3, battle 1 & 2, time 1 & 2, shiki...}

Yeah, for 15 bosses! FIFTEEN BOSS FIGHTS between STARTING the route with Matryoshka, and Clock Girl!! Looking back on it, they went so fast they might as well have been a series of regular encounters. Described out loud it sounds like bloat, but the amount of story shoved into those chapters were so much all at once that not a single bit of it felt like a waste of time so much as it did playable exposition. All the while, Yoko is shoving her feelings of anxiety and stress below her unshakeable sense of care and hope for a happy ending for all, doing her sports-club-schoolgirl best to seem genki and reliable, and it made me so determined for everything to go well too.

And maybe it was this long run of nothing but PLOT, PLOT, PLOT until the interstice in time that made finally slowing down (haha get it) feel like a jenga tower of pent-up stress relieved all at once. I was so happy in this moment that I had picked Shiki first, dozens of hours of gameplay and several months of real life time ago. First impressions are key, and since the very beginning I had considered Shiki to be Yoko's natural pair among the 6 main characters - although Mel fits the bill quite obviously, too. And Janice comes a solid third, either way. What was I talking about?

^sry

Right, feelings. I think it's starting here that things stop being a speedrun montage of my experience playing the game for the 7th time, and this clean weave of story starts to knot and fray and feel prone to falling apart. Things start not going well, stuff stops adhering to the script. Shiki doesn't have her hat anymore. The Human Sphere is fucking gone. We screwed up Mauricia's well-laid plans. Janice is against us. What the fuck is Feuillitine doing. All of this and Yoko barely even has an endgame in mind, and let's be real, neither did I! There was no easy answer and now the remaining answers are even harder, and we're already assaulting the NPG facility!

And right! When! Everything feels most vulnerable!

^{Who the FUCK are you?!}

It was here I realized I was not even close to the end of the story, but merely the halfway point. I had desperately been trying to tie everything up all pretty in such a little world while the biggest problem loomed way over my head. And right after calmly informing me of this, it had the GALL to hit me with the most frantic boss rush in the entire game.