Deemo II

[adevyish]

Deemo II is a mobile rhythm game that came out earlier this year from Taiwanese developer Rayark. The music is mainly (neo/post-)Romantic piano and piano OST j-pop.

As a rhythm game, the charts are decent, but can be too Romantic or jazzy — even easy charts have rubatos. Also, in other rhythm games, the musical repetition of pop or dance music leads to chart repetitions, making them easier to learn, but there’s not much of that here! I wouldn’t say it’s inaccessible for a rhythm game newb — the scoring is very forgiving compared to most rhythm games — but it’s not like some rhythm games where you can partly memorize the chart after a few plays and ace it.

The IAPs work out to just above $1/song. It seems very expensive compared to other mobile rhythm games; however, Deemo II doesn’t do gacha mechanics — you get what you pay for. I suppose they have to make up for the lack of gambler money by charging for extra songs. It’s still quite pricey in terms of play hours per dollar.

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The story is … sort of plodding along. The first arc could have been longer and used more of the station residents, so that the cutscenes could be more spread out.

I think the young girl / pianist in the credits is both Deemo and Echo. You have the father showing up with flowers to her recital, implying an absent father? much like the composer who left Deemo behind. And, Deemo and Echo both grew/grow up running around the train station unsupervised. Perhaps Deemo represents the pianist’s sense of duty and Echo her sense of joy.

It’s likely the pianist’s father is probably someone who works on the railway. Perhaps he was transferred to a mountainous train station when she was a young child: known to be dangerous and involve flooding and earthquake-linked landslides, both of which are key to the story.

The main thing I haven’t figured out is who the Outlanders are. I do think it points towards Deemo II being set in a directly post-WW2 era — occupying forces in tactical gear who speak a foreign language that Deemo, an adult, understands, but Echo, a child, doesn’t.

(Central Station’s architecture does remind me of different small — even smaller than Deemo II’s — central stations in Taiwan, all built in the European style during the Japanese occupation. Central Station definitely is more Euro though, except for the signage, the boiler room tiling, and the birds. Meanwhile, Hillside Station has English signage but a Taiwanese soldier.)

(Edit: Talked to Sgt Chen again, and he mentions the “Voidwalkers” don’t recognize him any more. Which is … interesting? The Central Station memories are all from the POV of the composer, and vaguely suggest he’s trying to preserve his memories after the “earthquake”. Others have suggested this hints towards a Deemo plot, where the game is revealed to be a rage against the dying of memory — but that doesn’t quite tie in with the credits scene.)