(Note: I’m just gonna write the name of the city as Laplace.)

Folks, we are back to talk about the second half of Kawano’s Noel: The Mortal Fate! As it happens, splitting talking about this game in half was rather appropriate. When the game originally released on Steam, the first seven parts were released in one package, with the future episodes being DLC.

The Complete package thus made all those DLC segments free for everyone that got the pack with the first half of the series… which actually really sucks for most of the people that bought those DLC episodes. In fact, most of the negative Steam reviews I see are people that bought the DLC before they were brought all together with no compensation. I don’t blame them for being upset, honestly.

But let’s start talking about this with the villain I neglected to talk about before, Russell Burrows.

Burrows was a man that was groomed by his father to take his place as the next mayor. Burrows went “yeah, bet” and did so with Caron’s aid: murdering his dad and starting a fight between mafia families so that he could set himself up as the hero to clean up crime. Burrows, though, cheated Caron’s contract: Burrows would “get power as mayor by his own hands” and Caron would curse him with a downfall. Burrows cemented his power by getting people to form contracts with devils to do things that’d benefit him, so he very technically isn’t doing things “by his own hands.” He even goes demon mode sometimes with his own variant of Caron’s chain bullshit and Caron can’t even do anything about it.

And turns out, Burrows really fucking hates his job. In the first half of the game, I thought, okay, why don’t you quit instead of being a little bitch about it? Why are you ruining the lives of multiple people for the sake of a job you hate?

The second half of Noel answers that, though. Laplace happens to have a special role for the government of whatever country this is. Laplace has a vault that allows people to easily access devils to contract with. This secretive vault is a national secret referred to as the Shadow of Laplace, and by becoming the mayor, Burrows was forced to stay as the mayor because his position opened him up to learn about it.

But Burrows got a bright idea. If he cheated a devil like Caron, why not cheat the entire government while he’s at it? Why not become something greater than a mayor? Put a pin on that for the spoiler section, but I enjoyed this guy’s whole deal, and it justified why he put up with the job.

With the disaster at the end of the seventh season of Noel, greater powers entered the fray. The OCT – or the Order to Contain Terrorism – has rolled in, viewing Noel and her posse as terrorists that need to be suppressed. The OCT becomes an occupying force and wow, feels kinda bad in our current American moment. Dratton saying this? Buddy, this nation may as well just be America.

For most of the second half of Noel: The Mortal Fate, Burrows steps back to have the OCT clean up his mess for him while he advances his plans. Leading the assault are demon members of the OCT, because in true government fashion, illegal powers are bad unless the government is doing it. There’s the leader Dratton, with fire powers to rival Fugo’s, who’s also monitoring Burrows’ use of demon power. Luce Marie, his captain, sees the potential for something interesting for her; Dratton’s honestly just kinda whatever to me, but Luce Marie ends up becoming a fun villain for spoiler reasons.

Out of the OCT characters, the lieutenant Ribellio gets the most play. His power is to be immortal, a super version of Oscar’s nonsense. In contrast with Noel and her relationship with Caron, Ribellio extremely doesn’t have a good time with his host devil, Spica. Though, when he learns more about Spica, he kinda takes a more friendlier tone with her, treating her as more of a little sister that needs a step in the right direction.

And Spica really is that little sister character. The comedy moments of Noel suddenly acting way younger disappears as she fully locks in on her revenge plot, while it feels that that aspect of her is transferred onto Spica. She’s a nice contrast to the professionalism that Caron and Lillian’s devil Caesar demonstrated while also acting more like a stereotypical devil. There’s also something else that makes her different, but that’s a fairly big spoiler. Ultimately, I thought she was a nice addition to Noel’s cast and lore.

Also I guess Ribiello has an old squad of six more guys that shows up. I literally didn’t care about them. In fact, the two completely unnamed OCT members accompanying Ribellio and Spica that banters with them and goes out of their way to save Ribellio from a tough spot? They feel more like characters than those six guys, these two are real gooners.

Speaking of gooners, I think my favorite season outside of the endgame was season 9, which focuses entirely on Fugo and his squad trying to escape the enclosing OCT. There’s flashbacks for each member, with Toad and Slug being runaways with their own histories of child abuse and Python being an ex-mafioso forging a new future. They all rallied behind Fugo as a crime family looking for stability, and I ended up getting a better appreciation for them.

Though, one of my big hang-ups with the game is that Fugo’s gooners really don’t feel like Noel’s friends, too? The game treats them like they’re friends, but they really feel more like associates. In fact, Caron has a closer relationship with Python than Noel has with any of the gang.

You know how I said there was a filler season dedicated to Noel and Caron hanging out? I really feel that the filler season should have been about Noel hanging out with the gooners instead. There’s actually a few time skips where Noel’s with the gang, there absolutely would have been room for a filler arc where Noel bonds with them so they can actually feel like the friends the game presents them as.

Gameplay in Noel: The Mortal Fate is a strange mix. The main way of fighting is simplified where you can readily bump into things to damage them, but you’ll take damage if a parry hasn’t reloaded yet. Those extraneous stances I complained about are gone, so that’s good.

There’s a bigger focus on clicking on things, which felt a bit jarring. You always could control Noel with clicking, but it used to just be telling characters where to walk. I actually wondered if Noel got a mobile release because it felt like it was made with mobile in mind and the publisher Vaka Game Magazine actually used to have a specialist app dedicated to playing things like Noel… which no longer exists! Technology is truly incredible.

Anyway, Fugo and his crew’s focus season has a board game sequence where you have to direct them to a spot, while avoiding or ganging up on OCT members. I actually thought this was kinda fun and it helped cement season 9 as one of my favorites… and then Noel just never does it again? There’s also one section that’s structured like a survivalist game where you have to craft your own items which is extremely just kinda whatever. I mean, it’s neat that Noel tried different things and it’s not as bad as Evoland 2, but it’s jarring that they’re just one-offs.

On a technical level, the latter half of Noel is a bit all over the place? The eighth part of Noel immediately gave me a bad impression because the translation work wasn’t as strong. There are just floating ellipsisus all over the place, and I can tell that whoever did the translation work just copy-pasted dialogue into RPG Maker MV because the same weird text glitch happened to me with my own work. Meanwhile, as a whole, the translation for “Laplace” just keeps bouncing around.

Later seasons cleans up the writing, but there was a new issue of the game occasionally freezing then crashing. I don’t know if this was a specific problem for playing on Steam Deck, but it’s jarring when it happens. I was grateful that Noel frequently hits you up with save points, at least.

I don’t know how the seasons were received when they were originally released as standalone DLC things. When put into a whole product though, it absolutely feels that the dev team didn’t give things a pass to see if the latter seasons were consistent with the first half. It’s not straight up unplayable, but it’s a definite downgrade from the first half.

And now, we’re going into outright spoiler territory. Like I’ve done with some things, I’ll put down a Safe for Work Sasuke barrier for everyone. So, here’s my non-spoilered final thoughts:

While I enjoyed Noel: The Mortal Fate overall and I think it ends nicely, I definitely think that the second half of the game is weaker than the first. I think Noel should have spent more time with the characters we already know instead of introducing a whole lot of them. As I said, the filler season should have been about Noel hanging out with the gooners.

Additionally, I really think we should have learned about more devils outside of Caron, Caesar, and Spica. Fugo and Oscar got their starts through devils, and you know, the whole plot hinges on devil handling; in fact, given that both Fugo and Dratton have similar powers, the game could have explored if they sourced it from the same devil. Granted, this goes against my criticism of introducing new characters all the time instead of spending time with old ones, but if there were to be new characters, I’d prefer it be the devils Burrows has been lending out for contracts instead of Ribellio’s squadmates who are extremely just whatever.

Now, moving on, Luce Marie emerges as an independent force after Dratton gets incapacitated for a while. She just fights for whoever can get her more power, and when she takes Dratton’s position, she directs the OCT to help Burrows. In exchange, she’d get access to the devils that Burrows guards, and her goal in life is to min-max the fuck out of devil contracts.

Luce Marie is a strong contrast to Jino, who turns out to be alive and fucking hates her. Jino has no devil blessings and insists on building his own natural strength. Meanwhile, Luce Marie wants to build up supernatural strength by contracting with lots of devils. Jino had developed his mindset from past experience with Luca Marie, trying to be her antithesis.

Oscar’s strongest arc is with regards to them. Oscar learned his human skills from Jino, who only developed those skills because of Luce Marie in some toxic bisexual yearning. Despite everything, Oscar forges his path as a force of true justice and uses the signature thrusting technique to defeat Luce Marie and truly gets the respect of Jino.

…What? Signature thrusting technique? I actually looked back on the past Noel episodes, and Oscar and Jino never showed off a thrusting technique. This element that Luce Marie created that she passed on to them was only created with her, Noel just decided to give Oscar and Jino a signature technique now. If it was a small thing I’d just ignore it, but the game absolutely pulls your attention on this. Like, going along with my thing of wanting the standards of the latter half of Noel to be lined up with the first half, they really should have looked over all the episodes for consistency. Either retroactively add this stuff in the earlier stuff or just remove it entirely, it’s weird.

That said, I liked Luce Marie’s whole deal of gaining power through min-maxxing. It felt like a good accompaniment to Burrows’ way of getting more power. And I’ll be honest: Spica calling Luce Marie a MILF is cringe, but she’s also kinda right.

But back on the topic, we got Burrows.

Burrows has much grander goals than politics. He wants to become a devil himself: the Devil of Beginning. And it’s entirely possible, as Spica can attest to. Devils in the Noel universe are born of concepts that’s strongly thought of, but humans can become devils too if a person is strongly associated with a concept. Spica was associated with a haunting star and a coincidental famine. She was killed and her head was paraded as the star Spica – and thus Spica was born as a devil of destructive power.

By putting his name out as a mayor – even though he fucking hates it – Burrows becomes a famed man everyone relies on. He can achieve people’s wishes in a mundane way and the supernatural way of lending out devils to people. The fact that he’s survived multiple assassination attempts? That’s a mythos right there, and all legends gotta have a mythos like a famine. Burrows is seen as a wish-bringer, somebody that could give people new beginnings… somebody that may as well be a devil of wishes, and he hopes that the upcoming mayoral election makes it real.

Playing on through the second half of Noel, I couldn’t help but feel that this was the dev team making their own take on the whole Shido plot of Persona 5. Slug even makes graffiti that feels like a Persona 5 calling card. Instead of taking a backseat presence like Shido, Burrows is a very in-your-face threat. Even when getting gooners to do his work for him, there’s plenty of scenes focusing on Burrows instead of doing exposition through some jobber SIU Director that doesn’t even get a name. Burrows just feels like Shido but good, to be honest.

Throughout all of the game, Noel and her gang fight through demons, the police, the mafia, all kinds of haters in Burrows’ employ. But when Noel and Caron break into Burrows’ mansion for the final assault, they face one last obstacle: regular people.

These people know that Burrows is bad news, but they’re willing to stand in Noel’s way. No, they’re not being controlled or anything. The problem is that they’re happy with things under Burrows and doesn’t want that to be threatened. If Burrows hurts someone, as long as they’re not the ones being hurt, they don’t care.

Going back to Persona 5, there are still people that believe in Shido despite him being made to publicly admit to his crimes – but this is because of some magic bullshit. In Noel, this set of Burrows’ supporters are more true to life: these guys are just the median American voter. As long as their lives are going good, fuck everybody else.

Burrows is only truly defeated when he’s injured and cast out in front of non-median voters and the non-demonic OCT members. He heals from his injuries because of his demon/devil nature, and everybody witnesses it and realizes that he’s been illegally dealing with the supernatural and that the terrorists may be right. With those doubts, Burrows’ potential power wanes in a satisfying climax that achieves Noel’s revenge.

You may be wondering, “hey, what about the larger conspiracy of the Shadow of Laplace?” The thing is, Noel addresses that to be unimportant to her story. Noel’s sole focus is getting revenge on Burrows, and she explicitly says multiple times that she’s not aiming for a revolution. But despite that, Noel’s friends follow her because regardless of how much good will come out of Burrows being toppled, it’ll still be pretty good. Pretty lib of me for not wishing for more, but given that almost all the problems in the story stem from Burrows, within the boundary of the story, all’s well that ends well.

Though, on the subject of the ending, I feel that more could have been done, particularly with the characters introduced in the second half of the game. The heroes are shown meeting up at the end! Noel and Caron are there, Fugo, his brother and the gooner squad are there, and heck, Lillian’s here too! Ribellio, Spice, and anyone else? Uhhh, they’re just kinda non-entities? It reeeally doesn’t fight my belief that the game should have focused more on the characters we already know.

Again, I overall enjoyed Noel: The Mortal Fate, but I definitely think the second half is weaker. I like Burrows plot, how Spica parallels him, and Luce Marie, but man. It could have done more with devils – especially since the game goes into how devils are born – and I know that some people would be bothered by the Shadow of Laplace feeling unresolved. When it comes to Noel, though, I think it ends in a good place for her.