Amnesia:Memories: The Joker Route (SPOILERS!)

Fifth and last route, folks! The Joker Route was my second favourite after the Diamond Route and an interesting conclusion to the overarching storyline of Amnesia:Memories. Orion's initial collision with my character's brain was justified in a rather convincing way, as well as all of Ukyo's seemingly random actions and weird declarations in the four other routes. If not for the uncanny amount of babbling and superfluous rehashing of the other routes' themes (I was vomiting the whole "childhood friends/big brother" drill with Toma and Shin at that point, I swear), the Joker Route could actually have been my favourite route of the whole game. Oh, well.

My exploration of the Joker Route led me first to its ridiculously numerous bad endings. We're talking about seven bad endings there, people, and I uncovered all of them first thing. Six of them belong to the 'branching path' category and can be smelled from afar; of course, I had to see what they had in store for me, and I jumped into the lion's den with some giddy masochistic satisfaction. Oh, the fun of being killed in a million different ways! I was murdered by Ukyo, kidnapped by Toma, crushed to death, burned alive and so on, in a deliciously gruesome display of bad luck. The seventh bad ending is tied to the Parameters and happens if the Trust and Affection Gauge are not filled enough after the other six bad endings have been successfully dodged. This was the last bad ending I uncovered; and after witnessing that most entertaining collection of grisly outcomes, I started hunting for the better endings in earnest.

During my first 'bad endings special' run, I had tried my hardest to convey my love to Ukyo and had been very demonstrative to him, forcing my attentions and my presence on him as much as the dialogue choices allowed me to do, only to get stranded in the ultimate seventh bad ending after dodging the other six. I then started a second run in which I tried to be more compliant and to go along with Ukyo's wishes. His main demand throughout the whole route was that I kept my distance from him, and I did exactly that while still being kind to him when we interacted. This behaviour paid off and I was rewarded by the normal ending, leaving me just one ending away from sweet, sweet completion.

I must insert a disclaimer here; although I unearthed that ultimate good ending all by myself, I have to admit that I didn't manage to pinpoint the exact requirements for uncovering it. My winning strategy involved uncovering all the memories from other worlds involving Ukyo and dodging the memories from the Joker Route involving anybody else while simultaneously trying to max up the Trust and Affection Gauges. My reasoning was that if I managed to avoid all memories of the Joker world until the scripted event that would trigger the memory of my encounter with Ukyo in that world, then Orion would not separate from me and would be able to save the day, leading me straight to the good ending. It turned out that this reasoning was unvalid and that Orion being kicked out of my consciousness was actually a scripted event as well; yet my strategy ultimately paid off and generated the good ending. Since I had reached completion at long last, I didn't play a test run in which I could have checked the validity of my hypothesis regarding the requirements for the good ending, for instance by triggering memories of the Joker world involving other persons than Ukyo. That is why to this day, I don't know if the good ending is tied to the Parameters, to the recovering of the memories of Ukyo from other worlds or to a mix of both. Well, that question will have to linger unanswered until my next playthrough of Amnesia:Memories.

If there is a next playthrough, that is. Although I will certainly not erase the game now that I've forked out some cold hard cash to purchase it, the inherent lack of replay value of visual novels may prevent me from ever replaying it. That doesn't diminish the game's merits in any way, though: this was an excellent gameplay experience and a really fun ride. I've been pondering whether or not Amnesia: Memories was intended as a deadpan parody of otome games. The game's assiduity when it comes to offering bad endings by the truckload and its zeal to craft entirely unlikeable bachelors—well-intentioned guys treating you like shit or psychos treating you amorously, pick your poison!—certainly comes across as humorous, but that may just be my own penchant for dark humour and satire speaking. At any rate, I want to play more visual novels with an otome flavour, which is why I ordered Norn9: Var Commons and Code:Realize just after clearing Amnesia:Memories. If you know other good visual novels with an otome touch, feel free to fill me in! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!