We’re having a normal one, aren’t we folks? It’s been a while, but I finished up Rise of the Third Power, which I checked out a bit ago. How do I feel about it? Uhhh, definitely better than Ara Fell, but I do have problems, and my problems are largely influenced by current events. I’ll talk about it in a bit.

Playing Rise of the Third Power was still good. Still a pretty competent experience. Some of the boss battles, particularly toward the end, feel health spongey, but I have no complaints with the battle system itself. When no major story beats were up, I enjoyed playing through battles while watching stuff.

On the subject of sidequests, I’m… kinda more divided on them now. It’s still good to do because of the stat increases they give, but… most of them just aren’t interesting. It wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that more substantial, character building ones do exist.

Corrina has a whole sidequest centering around her that deals with loose ends from her criminal past, while Reyna has a more extended endgame quest about liberating an early game town and setting her up to become the next religious leader. These two are inexplicably good quests that make the rest look bad in comparison, which is a shame because other characters could have stood to get more screen time.

Speaking of which, how about those characters? Since the initial post, three more characters were introduced and… they’re kinda hit or miss.

Rashim comes from the democratic country of Tariq and joins up when his government is unable to help the party. He’s the biggest voice of reason in the party and… that’s kinda it? He’s extremely just There. Like honestly, it feels like he could be cut from the story and you wouldn’t be missing much? His unique endgame sidequest isn’t even about him, but him protecting the right to respect the troops, no matter what country the troops are from. He’s the weakest party member in terms of writing and the most neoliberal party member. He’s nice to use in regular battles, though.

You’d think he’d be a leader type character, but that role instead falls to Natasha, the resistance’s spymaster and a former high-ranking Arkadyan officer that helped seat the king. She was initially a true believer in his cause, but defected when Noraskov started getting imperial interests. While Rowan leads the party moment to moment, she directs the party’s general direction for the second half of the game. Besides playing a big role in the plot, she’s also a pretty dang good party member. She can poison people’s weapons and heal, which makes her a good fit for any team composition, and she can do pretty high damage on her own with her past assassin abilities. Honestly, Natasha’s the MVP for me.

Natasha’s got a plan to fight her former king, and what is that plan? Start a civil war in Arkadya with Prince Gage to challenge the throne, preventing a worse war for the rest of the world. With that, I’ll fully be heading into spoiler territory, so I’ll be putting a bunch of screenshots all Safe For Work Sasuke style if you’re still into checking out the game for yourself.

So I’ll do a non-spoiler summary here. Rise of the Third Party is a perfectly alright game – if you can deal with some half-baked ideas about fascism, which I really couldn’t because of current events. There’s also a pretty late game moment that really requires suspension of disbelief to accept, because I feel that it’d be something that’d really annoy some people. Otherwise, sure, play it if you’re into games like this.

We finally reach the last playable character, Prince Gage, who is a character that I had conflicting thoughts on as I played. You see, he was very on board with Arkadya’s plans – until he learned that it’d mean the deaths of his in-laws. When he’s arrested, he kinda gets an “are we the baddies” moment as he realizes that his father is also persecuting Arkadyans that don’t live up to his ideal image. I can’t help but feel that he was fine with everything until he realized that people he cared about would be affected.

He gets better, but for a time he feels like an apologist. In the escape after his break-out, he insists that the party should tie up enemy soldiers because “they were just following orders” and he’s very judgemental of his father for not exhibiting the virtues instilled in him because I guess he never learned of lying. All fascists talk up having strong morals, they need to convince themselves they’re virtuous above all else to justify what they do, but I guess Gage didn’t get that memo.

For a time, I kinda read Gage as a lesser evil type of guy that’s nationalistic himself. By the end of the game though, I realized that he was just raised horribly and wants to do better himself as a ruler. And to be honest, this perspective is mainly shaped by the fact that there’s only a handful of actual true believer fascists. Point is, I think my issues with Gage is more so due to the game’s very confused portrayal on fascism. More on that later.

Meanwhile, Arielle’s still a pretty good character! Her arc deals with reclaiming the throne from an Arkadyan agent turning her country into a puppet state for Arkadya and becoming a leader in her own right. Maybe predictable, but enjoyable! She winds up getting married to Gage in an impromptu sea wedding officiated by Rowan and… I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. The story explicitly calls it a political marriage, but the game still hints at sincere feelings being between Arielle and Gage and… no, I honestly don’t buy the relationship. Gage is a nice guy (kinda) to Arielle, but they just don’t have the sauce for me.

As for Rowan, I actually liked him a lot and he gets a surprising amount of storytime when I fully expected him to end up being a perspective character while Arielle would carry the story. What surprised me was that the game actually comes to a stance with his alcoholism and treats it seriously. Rowan is pushed to drink by someone that turns out to be Arkadya’s spymaster Sparrow multiple times, leading to him leaking information to her that winds up getting almost everyone in the resistance killed. With that, the guilt drives him to finally go cold turkey, with his drinking skill getting turned into a more normal buff. Skills changing to reflect changes in the story? That’s kino.

However, while that in itself is neat, another bit to it presents a big problem.

I’m a fan of inter-party conflict when there’s a good opportunity for it. I’m a Yukari and Ken Persona 3 respecter, but…a potential conflict just doesn’t happen here. This would be alright if it weren’t for the complication that Rowan suspected that he was an accidental leak for a while and the Arkadyan resistance didn’t get slaughtered as a direct consequence. Rashim straight up tells him that this would have been avoided if he just told everyone what was up. So many people are dead because of him – including Corrina’s adopted dad – but besides Rashim casually grumbling about this every so often, the show must go on.

I feel that this aspect of the conflict would have been resolved if they stripped out Rowan’s suspicions, because really, there’s no good reason for him not to talk about this. Have it be something for the party to puzzle out when the worst already happens. Have Rowan come to the realization that his drinking caused this and not, well, knowing he already fucked up, doing nothing about it, and changing after the fact. Either make the characters meaningfully mad at Rowan or remove that specific thing that should have incited that anger, because I think that this would be a pretty sore spot in the story for people.

I guess that’s how it is because Rowan’s final battle is meant to act as his redemption moment. He takes on a squad of soldiers led by Sparrow with Corrina while the others go on ahead. It’s an outright suicide mission with no positive outcome no matter how many soldiers you kill, and while Rowan and Corrina will get up again and again, they’ll eventually fall. But that’s alright by them: Rowan sees it as his way of making up for his mistakes, while Corrina’s embracing her game-long dream of dying as a martyr. Honestly? This was the best part of Rise of the Third Power’s final act. The fight after’s kinda whatever in comparison, and the actual final battle may as well just be the Cloud of Darkness from Final Fantasy III.

Speaking of Corrina, well, I think she’s the third-weakest character in the game. She does have that sidequest dedicated to her and a defined life outside of the plot, but she herself doesn’t really factor into the plot. Going back to the whole conflict with Rowan, I think there was a real missed opportunity there. She could have had an actual conflict with Rowan, hating him for the last stretch of the game until that last stand, where she sees that he’s willing to die for the cause and for the things he’s done. It wouldn’t just be a redemption moment for Rowan alone, but it’d be something to redeem himself to Corrina, fighting side by side like they did at the start of the game to potentially die together. I dunno. I like her personality and vibes, but wish she did more.

As for the second weakest character, Aden, I left the first post off wondering where he goes from there. Turns out, not very far! Besides getting a crush on Arielle, he’s just so laser focused on killing his sister. He’ll do the dirty work when the party needs it to be done, but otherwise he’s just kinda There. He doesn’t even get fun banter in a lot of the downtime moments, just quips about him brooding. Really, your enjoyment of the character comes down to how much you enjoy his bit, because he is mostly the bit.

Granted, I might be missing something because I didn’t do his endgame sidequest. His sidequest looked like the most involved out of everyone in that it required you to go around and collect things while everyone else’s (that I played, anyway) were just “go here, fight a jobber, get some story out of it, maybe.” I was at the end of the game, so I honestly didn’t want to do the quest. Again, the quality of the side quests are kinda just all over the place.

Oh yeah, and Reyna’s still around. Still nice to have her around but she just kinda gets upstaged by Natasha in my eyes. Sorry.

But enough rambling about side stuff. We need to address the main plot and its politics, since politics are just an inescapable part of the game.

As I said before, Arkadya feels like an amalgamation of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, though I ultimately found it to be leaning toward the latter, with Noraskov seeing the Aryan – I mean, Arkadyan people as chosen to rule. And well, I’m really mixed on how Arkadya is treated.

After getting bits of the imperialistic nature of Arkadya, the party gets a full taste of Arkadya’s fascism when they try to rescue Gage from the capital city. While leadership holds a military rally, soldiers are making a cleanse of the city. Undesirables are put into ghettos, and as the party’s poking around, they witness attempted deportations and killings, with boat loads of people being shipped to parts unknown. It’s honestly pretty tense.

How did this fascist machine get started? Well, I think that’s where my problem with the game’s take on fascism lies. To be accepted as ruler of the country, a race of sages in the mountain have to light a beacon signaling the arrival of the new king, which Noraskov accomplished through force, convincing the population that he was legitimately crowned..

It just feels like the naive view on how German fascism was formed. Plenty of people think that Hitler simply rose to power because he was so convincing and tricked people into supporting his views. It’s a take that ignores pre-existing problems and beliefs, painting him as an abnormality. In fairness to Rise of the Third Power, it does try to replicate Germany’s rise by virtue of Noraskov rebuilding the country after a disastrous war by the previous leader. However, while Noraskov preaches values of racial superiority, there’s no explicit “other” to be superior to, nobody with pre-existing prejudices to be projected on and be blamed. Yes, Arkadya’s performing a cleansing of its people, but it’s also very non-specific beyond getting rid of people that don’t agree with Noraskov It feels really weird because Rise of the Third Power’s almost there to portraying a fictionalized Nazi Germany, but it just kinda chickens out from fully committing.

What particularly bothers me is that the people of Arkadya really buy into the beacon lighting tradition. There are barely any actual true believers in Noraskov’s cause. The final conflict of the game revolves around relighting the beacon to crown Gage as the new king, and the moment that’s done, all of Noraskov’s foot soldiers that accompanied him immediately flip sides. It feels particularly egregious because just before a soldier did object to Noraskov and was personally executed by him, but his soldiers still stand with him until the moment that beacon is lit. I guess Prince Gage was right about capturing soldiers, because the soldiers don’t believe in Noraskov, they just believe in a stupid light, regardless of how or why it’s lit.

Funnily enough, contributing to my mixed feelings about the handling of fascism, one of the few true believers was a former resistance spy. He was a proud sleeper agent, but he’s also a business owner, and he flipped to wholeheartedly supporting Noraskov because he’s good for business. Rise of the Third Power recognizes that capitalists would side with fascism, but thinks that ordinary people are just tricked into it. It’s just a weird mix of messages.

What really frustrates me about this is that we’re currently getting a taste of fascism with how Zionist Israelis are treating Palestinians. Zionists are very clearly killing Palestinians indiscriminately while being propped up and defended by all western governments in spite of this being condemned by everyone Normal and in the know. Freaks will say that any criticism of this is antisemitic, but that’s ignoring the large swaths of Jewish people within and outside of Israel protesting this. Meanwhile, Zionists are eager for war, posting tiktoks mocking Palestinians with the resources they deny them and shifting the discourse to make every Palestinian a member of Hamas or a Hamas supporter to justify their deaths. I see evidence of civilian Palestinian suffering everyday while most Zionist proof of suffering is that dude just trust me post. It’s a fascist machine run by true believers just blatantly trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza, if not beyond.

“But Hamas -” Does Hamas have the autonomy to turn off electricity and communication to Palestine? How much harm has Hamas made toward Zionists compared to the sheer number of Palestinian casualties that’s continually growing? “Oh, maybe Hamas should stop using human shields-” Fucking George Bush criticized Israel for way less in 2002! We’ve shifted so far to the right in the past two decades that the version of the guy that started the War on Terror has the moral high ground!

Like, yeah, this is unfair to the game, but seeing fascism unfold before my eyes just makes the limp wishy washiness of Rise of the Third Power’s conflict feel weaker. With this real world conflict, this fictional conflict that can’t fully commit just doesn’t land.

So, with the fascist threat, you may wonder, what alternatives are there?

Despite one of the characters being a queen, the game doesn’t go fully into “good king” stuff. In fact, it’s critical of monarchy. Arielle’s father is outright acknowledged to be a collaborator with Arkadya for the sake of his own ambitions and was using his daughter as a political pawn. While Arielle writes out a letter to him, she acknowledges his wrongs and it’s ultimately more of a way for her to reflect on herself and everything that happened instead of resolving her dad.

Gage himself also thinks the monarchy is bad at the end when the sage initially refuses to crown another. Gage makes the proclamation that he’ll be the last king, and while his ending’s still up in the air, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He has those nationalistic leanings, but well, maybe it’ll all work out.

Meanwhile, there’s Tariq, the only big democracy in the world. When the party arrives to get political aid for Arielle’s claim for the crown, it’s in the middle of a riot and the party gets arrested in all the paranoia. Wealthy NPCs sneer at the protesters while guards try to keep the peace. The party sticks around when the riot settles down and when they actually meet the Senate… they have to take things into their own hands because Tariq’s political processes will take weeks.

Rashim acknowledges that the system is flawed, but it’s still preferable to having a monarch. What was the riot about? Oh don’t worry, that kinda ends offscreen so we don’t have to think about it too hard. Though, given what the other powers have done, you can’t deny that Rashim has a point within the context of the story. Maybe he isn’t the best judge of character as a “respect the troops” guy, but eh.

But oh man, the cynical aspects of democracy Rise of the Third Power shows is outright hopium compared to democracy right now. It fucking rules how the American public is so opposed to America’s aid to Israel’s war crimes – and nearly all politicians in both parties are for it. Protest? Get arrested, idiot. Boycott? Sorry, you’re an antisemite now, even if you’re a straight up Holocaust survivor. Unhappy with Biden? Well, better get over it and vote for him if you still want democracy. News flash assholes, if this is democracy, then democracy is already fucking dead. I feel like I’m going insane. People II: The Reckoning was right about politicians.

I actually want to take a moment to apologize to Rise of the Third Power. If I played this at any other time, I’d probably be more positive, because the actual gameplay part is okay, even though those character beats surrounding Rowan could have been used better. However, at this moment, this game has a bizarre naive view of the world that it made me actively angry to play. However, if you can put up with it, it’s a perfectly okay game. Maybe the game’s hopeful yet bittersweet ending will ring more bitter than sweet, but it is what it is.