Naomi had potential. Still does, I reckon, but the Dev lingered forever in the shitter era and now nobody wants to give her the time of day. I'm starting to doubt if a non-shitter era for Naomi is ever coming.
Eh, even at the beginning she's still pretty insufferable. The whole boat arc of her quite literally steamrolling over everyone attempting to speak and alert her that
Eh, even at the beginning she's still pretty insufferable. The whole boat arc of her quite literally steamrolling over everyone attempting to speak and alert her that
That's what I'm talking about though. Naomi started as a shitter, which is a good place to start a character. It gave her plenty of room to grow as a person and have an interesting arc. Nobody would've given a fuck about Todoroki's daddy issues if he hadn't started off as a frigid cockhead and then developed into a friend while his backstory was parcelled out for context.
The difference here is that Todoroki didn't linger in his asshole stage for very long. He was introduced as an ice king who never spoke, then when the tournement arc rolled around they showed he was a dick, but then they concluded it by initiating his de-ass-ification.
Naomi, contrarily, has been a cuntasaurus rex for the majority of the game. The idea of having her change is clearly the goal here, but we're sitting around waiting for it for ages and that's letting it sink in. Nobody would've liked Todoroki if he'd been the kind of asshole he was at the start of the Sports Festival all the way up past Gentle Villain and them, and that's kinda what's happening with Naomi.
To use another example, if you're not an anime guy, Han Solo from Star Wars is introduced as a sleazy cockhead too. He has an even quicker turn-around to his assholishness though as his arc more focuses on how sleazy he is. But one of the first things he does on screen is shoot a motherfucker in a seedy bar.
There are ways to write assholes that make them interesting assholes. Gendo Ikari is an interesting asshole. Walter White is an interesting asshole. Unfortunately, Naomi is not, and I believe the reason she's not an interesting asshole is because she's waited too long to start becoming not an asshole (and she's a very down-to-earth asshole, particularly to a character we DO like, so it's immensely frustrating because we know a Naomi IRL and now she's picking on our waifu, thus why the Walter White Villain Protagonist treatment doesn't work either.)
I was reading back a few pages to see what I'd missed, and apparently the heist/maze is a problem for some people. I actually mapped this out for someone who was really struggling, so I spent a bit of time, cleaned it up, and used some Kenney (CC0) tiles to lay out the map so it's a bit easier to see (and so it's not a janky GIF).
I don't know what the value of stars is beyond getting more time in the maze, but the maze has multiple dream events locked behind it, so I figured I'd post the entire thing out.
