"Stay! Stay! DPRK!" Review - Yes, I went there pt.2

Some of you may remember a review I wrote last year for a game called Panzermadels, a game in which you play as a man going to tank school for the military but who actually ends up going to "tank school" as in school for tanks, as in the tanks attend the school...and the tanks are all anime schoolgirls. I loved the exceptional execution of this concept so much that I decided that I would buy anything developer DEVGRU-P put out. Now, this developer has a new visual novel/dating simulator entitled Stay! Stay! Democratic People's Republic of Korea! so of course I played through it. Let's get cracking.

In DPRK, you play as an American soldier with a name of your choosing who has come to North Korea to visit some North Korean army pen pals. He is stunned to learn that both of these pen pals, Jeong and Eunji, are actually women (and sisters, at that), and now we have our story. Instead of chasing after sexualized tanks, we're chasing after sexualized North Korean military police. The story hits much of the same notes as Panzermadels, so if you played that you'll probably know what to expect from this story...with the exception of certain notable moments, which will be discussed later.
The fact that there are only two love interests in DPRK as opposed to the five love interests in Panzermadels means that there's a lot more focus on developing characters and letting you get to know your interest of choice a bit better. At the start of every day in this week long visit, you choose a North Korean location to visit. Both sisters have certain places they want to go, so every day is a choice of who you want to spend the day with. As a result, your playthrough could look entirely different each time. This is one way in which DPRK does beat Panzermadels. In Panzermadels, there were times when you would have to spend time with a different character and it took some of the focus out of the story. Here, however, you truly get to choose how the story plays out, and you get to know the sister you choose better as a result (goodness, that feels cringy to say). But the problem with that is that these characters just aren't incredibly compelling. Jeong is the friendly, neat, flirtier one and Eunji is the brash and reserved one with a soft spot. That's pretty much all there is to these characters. Sure, the characters in Panzermadels were hardly three-dimensional, but their characters were based off of the pros and cons of the historical tanks they represented, and that was neat. Here, it's just two military police officers with no real depth. That is to say nothing of how sketchy it feels to have a romance story about choosing between two sisters.

Unfortunately the negatives don't stop with the character development. There is an insane amount of repetition in the writing, and especially in the humor. The entire first half of the game is just the following joke format:
Jeong/Eunji: And that's when the glorious leader wrote "We are the Champions"
You: Umm...that song was written by Freddy Mercury.
Jeong/Eunji: Impossible. Glorious leader says he wrote it, so he wrote it.
You: Yeah, but..
Jeong/Eunji: ARE YOU CALLING GLORIOUS LEADER A LIAR?
Over and over and over and over and over and over and over again with different things. We get it. North Koreans are brainwashed. It stopped being funny the second time, and it's less than funny the fifteenth. And it's not just this kind of joke that's re-used too often. The game also pulls eye-rolling, tongue-in-cheek, hey-we're-in-a-video-game meta humor far too much. There were times when it was legitimately funny, but in the end it just happened too often to stay funny for long. Thankfully, this repetition is mostly confined to the first half of the game, but that's still a solid half of the game marred by this issue.

The repetition isn't isolated to the humor and writing, however. Early in the game, the protagonist makes a joke about a bunch of fake food he sees in a supermarket [see the picture]. Unfortunately this is less a joke and more an observation. DEVGRU-P definitely skimped on the artists this time around, and it really puts a damper on everything. In Panzermadels, there were character sprites for every little meaningless character that you happened upon, and every character had several sprites for different emotions and situations. There were, in other words, as many sprites in Panzermadels as there are GIFs from Bridesmaids in your average NowThis news video. In DPRK, however, there are only four characters with sprites: Jeong, Eunji, some woman later in the game, and a secret character who appears once and has only one sprite attached. Each of these characters have very few sprites, so each of them get re-used constantly. The developers couldn't even be bothered to create a set of sprites for the only other major character, and this other character speaks for a long time towards the end of the game. The result of this is that you just end up staring at the background as the text scrolls, not seeing the character. It's a bizarre choice to make, and it isn't one that pays off.

Another way in which DPRK  is different from Panzermadels is the fact that, despite all the eye-rolling meta humor, DPRK tries to be serious at times. There are a few points in the story where you will hear about (and I really do mean hear about because, like I said, they skimped on the artists, so you don't get to see) some of the truly screwed up things that happen in North Korea, and these moments really did make me think. It's obvious that the developers wanted to bring attention to the evils that take place there, and in these moments, the game does bring some emotional depth. Towards the end of the game, the true nature of the plot comes forward, and it actually turns out to be a great story idea (despite its similar-to-Panzermadels execution) that, once again, really made me sit back and think about how much the people there suffer every day. That's all well and good, but it would have been more impactful had I not finished reading a joke about how an Asian stereotype might pronounce the word "election" mere minutes beforehand. It's possible to balance comedy and drama in a way that brings out the best in both, but DPRK is not an example of this. The problem with having a game wherein half the humor is "this is a game, so don't take it seriously" is that the moment you try and make impactful real-world statements, some of the power goes right out the window. You can't roll your eyes, stick your tongue in your cheek, make a joke about how an Asian stereotype might say "panties", tell us that North Korea rewards prison guards who torture their prisoners, and expect that last statement to have the same impact. These moments do have impact, at least in my opinion, but it's a far cry from the excellent protest story that this could have been.

Thus far I've been slamming DPRK, so let's take a step back and look at something it does well. It's a much stronger technical package than Panzermadels was. Sure, as a visual novel that isn't a tall order, but it's still worth noting. Text scrolls at a consistent pace, there's very little loading, and sound effects are well mixed. The same can't be said for the soundtrack, however. In my review of Panzermadels, I mentioned that there was too much silence, and now I wish I hadn't said that. There is very little silence in DPRK, and the same two tracks end up repeating constantly. It got so bad that I had to take off my headphones to keep from losing my mind. So, though DPRK is a stronger technical specimen, it still isn't perfect in that area.

I went into Stay! Stay! Democratic People's Republic of Korea! with low expectations. I knew it wouldn't be able to hold a candle to the brilliance and clever execution of Panzermadels, and though it's obvious that, as with Panzermadels, a lot of research went into making this project as accurate a representation of North Korea as possible, the execution was subpar on nearly every front. There's far too much repetition in this game, and the story struggles to balance its meta humor with it's real-world statements. Though my expectations were already low, DPRK managed to surprise me with how little it does well. It isn't a bad game, but it isn't good enough for me to recommend. This changes nothing on my end, however. I said that I would support this developer for my entire life after Panzermadels, so if they release anything new, you can bet your bottom dollar that I'll be waiting eagerly to play it. I just hope that if they do decide to release something else, that they don't skimp on the artists and that they just put a little bit more effort into it.
So, let's review:

Poor character development - 0.5
Repetition in the writing - 1.0
Lack of sprites - 1.0
Poor comedy/drama balance - 0.8
Grating soundtrack - 0.3

So, the final score for Stay! Stay! Democratic People's Republic of Korea! is...


6.4/10 - Slightly Above Average
Better luck next time, DEVGRU-P, better luck next time.