Singing the Body Electric

It really is. Nothing to do but surrender myself to my fate.

Ha, some characters are just like that, aren't they? There are several out there right now that friends of mine are into but that haven't grabbed me, but when I look at their deal on paper, I'm like: "Yes, I see it, that very much tracks."

Vampire Therapist is by one of the voice actors from Hades, which I haven't played, but which resulted in a lot of promos and appeals crossing my feed. I figured what the hell, art looked nice, queer characters and immortals from different time periods were promised, game wasn't expensive - but I think it's the empathy to judgement balance that's throwing me off.

The game is very much in dating sim style, which isn't necessarily a bad idea for the purpose of teaching about cognitive distortions through conversations. You meet up with different characters through different rounds of interactions, talk with them, and hit the right buttons to show you understand what's going on with them. But for me that's a bad fit for a game about a therapist and patients, particularly one pitched about being focused on healing and where you're playing the therapist (who is admittedly also a patient, but you're predominantly playing him in his therapist role).

It has the shallow, cartoony characterizations you find in a lot of dating sims, but I think that works for dating sims because you're expected to choose a character type that appeals to you, maybe bring your own thoughts and feelings to the encounters to fill in the specifics, and not feel bad about rejecting other choices. But in a therapy setting...there's not really the right focus on the patients' interiority. It doesn't feel like it's about the patients' unhappiness or innate well-being, but just about them being obnoxious, pitiful, or dangerous because they're Doing Things Wrong. The protagonist doesn't come across like he's operating from a place of compassion in wanting to be a therapist, but from a place of evangelism for this model of thinking that helped him.

I also suspect there were deliberate attempts to make it clear there wasn't going to be any patient/therapist romance, which is obviously fine and good, but that results in leaning toward the protagonist just being constantly contemptuous, paternalistic, or weirded out by everyone he interacts with. It also extends to the portrayals of sexuality in the game, which for me is landing in a place of paying lip service and playing sex educator when it comes to sex positivity, but presenting horniness - particularly outside of a committed, intimate relationship (itself so far only shown between a het couple) - as immature or inappropriate.

It's definitely possible the game's heading toward a revelation for the protagonist, since the story is about him addressing his own cognitive distortions. But I'm a decent ways in and I'm not picking up any hints of that yet. Without any characters having hooked me, I'm not sure I'm inclined to keep playing to find out.

I wasn't familiar with Andres Segovia's work before, but now I've spent a good bit of the afternoon listening to him. Thank you for the introduction!