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I'm a sucker for stories where the plot is little controlled by outside factors, instead entirely determined by the grinding of characters against eachother. A Rube-Goldberg machine of psychology, where every toppled domino only craters an even larger one. The unfortunate cowardice present in other works is that we don't get to see much of it. The human mind is hard- but not for WARHOUND. Where other writers would cower, Rho writes nothing off screen. You will see the characters she makes you love fall to pieces, and you will watch and understand every step along the way.
That is important- no one improves over the course of WARHOUND. Everyone is flawed and traumatised; and they aren't allowed to be. There is a person who requires them. This rogue's gallery of guilty transgenders exist to be taken advantage of by a perfect human being: Handler.
She is a simple fascist storm in black leather, written to be perfect. All actions done by her (and by those around her) have the exact consequences she desires. Normally, a character as frighteningly intelligent as her must be tested to the reader, proven; but here, this doesn't have to happen. You feel her presence in every single scene, even when she's not there, she controls the words out of everyone's mouth, on the same level as the writer. She's ontologically above every one else- literally ascended in terms of writing, because she is not a person. She is something that you just accept. As an axiom hardcoded into the story, Handler cannot be harmed or stopped. No weapon grasped against her shall prosper. You can't fight a storm. You just take shelter.
The only critique I have of Warhound is its prose- alot of it is simply weak. Rho repeats a similar structure many times, and the language and vocab use just never blew me away. However, this issue is foremostly present in the first half of the book. You can clearly see Rho improving throughout, and whilst I was still not enamored with it, it became far better towards the end. Her prose still does not hold a candle to her skills in structure or character writing, but it doesn't need to. The best scenes in Warhound are tense, jolting mech fights at a speed. When the actions are as complex as the specific movements of giant robot martial arts, often the best way to write is a precise explanation, and let structure handle the rest.
I can't understate how good the combat scenes actually are. I don't read much, but I believe the medium has little effect on the art itself, so long as it is accounted for. That's why reading the battles the characters are shoved into feels as quick as watching JJK. I got that guttural desire to read as quick as possible. Move my eyes as quick as they could sprint. I pressed my face against the pages like I did as a kid on the TV screen watching Dragon Ball Z. It's really proved to me my own belief- as I've simply never read combat as well-written.
Not to mention that for the majority of the story, the mech that our focus lands upon is Theaboros: a mech designed for cutthroat, risk-reward maneuvers. It's got wings powered by antimatter. Any fight with her is made much more entertaining simply by presence. There's 3 fights with Theaboros at the spearhead, and they all feel different and fresh.
It's also because each fight fucks over Kione (the pilot) even more than the last. That final one rips her soul out. Through the mech. No gun could hurt her as much as the words spoken into her cockpit.
- Handler
Oh, and every scene is shockingly hot. There's no men either. 9/10
I can't get across to you how captivating the world of MOON is. The NPCs, the style, the underlying themes are all so beautiful and unique. It's ending had my soul sobbing. If you want to experience a game that lets you sink into a place beyond reality, where each moving part is strange and weird, but somehow still slots together whilst playing with the boundaries of fiction; you should play MOON. It also has a fascinating live-schedule system which does not shy away from allowing the player to sleep in. If you need to meet an NPC at 2pm, you best be in bed by midnight!
But you probably won't enjoy it. It's a real shame. The gameplay of MOON is interesting at first, but becomes absurdly dull for 80% of it. I can't stress how much a mechanic of this game is Waiting. Waiting and doing Nothing. The action limit mechanic becomes inconsequential after the first few hours- at which point the fun ends.
Have you ever played an RPG, and really payed attention, such that when you are done and the world is finished, there is little left to do to attain 100%? It's only a matter of backtracking through the whole game and maybe using a guide to find the stuff you've missed. It's dull, but it's the afterparty, so it doesn't really matter. The entirety of MOON is like that. That's the entire thing. Many story beats and quests would be so impossible to find without a guide. I only used a guide for the back half of the game, once my patience ran thin. You cant alt+tab, as the game only runs while selected, so I would just sit there and wait. Go on my phone. Read books. I have 23 hours of play time. I guarantee a good half of that I did nothing for.
MOON will be more bearable if you don't 100% it. Just build the rocket and go. Do only the things you are interested in doing. Don't play this if you are a completionist. All I attained at the end for this urge was a vapid sense of boredom. Maybe that's a sign...
Kera-ma-go...