Danielle’s blog

Hi!  Welcome to my blog.  I am a student at the Richard Stockton College in New Jersey and this blog is a project for the class Literary Methodologies. 

I have always enjoyed reading and writing; I also like playing video games.  I recently finished playing a game (this past summer) with the help of my brother Jason.  The game is called Rule of Rose for the Playstation 2.  My dad had played the game before us and then passed it on.  Jason and I were EXTREMELY frustrated by the game for various reasons: the character that you play as (Jennifer) is difficult to control in fights (ex. she has a slow reaction time and it’s difficult to aim your attacks); the puzzles in the game are not complex enough to really deserve the name; and above all, the story has ALOT of holes.  You may be wondering, if we were SO very frustrated, why did we even bother to finish the game?

The answer is closure.  We wanted to at least know the story behind this game that had driven us insane.  So we finished…and were left with even more questions than when we started!  Is Jennifer out of her mind?  Is she dead?  Who killed the orphans?  What’s with that LAST scene, the supposed “good ending”?  All of these were questions I (my obsessive nature) needed answers to.

So I started searching the web…any site that would give me a clue as to what the plot of this game was supposed to be, I visited.  Many were useless…just haters like myself, complaining about this “horrible” game.  So I kept looking.  Then I found the answer to my prayers…Rule of Rose Mysteries by PokerNemesis!  He was my savior!  Not only did he set up timelines for the game (to help put everything in context), he also posts topics about EVERYTHING in the game that is questionable.  Then we, the fans, can comment and together can solve the mysteries of this game. 

Funny, isn’t it?  I hated the game, even after finishing it, but now treasure it and can’t wait to play it again I have loved mysteries ever since I was a little girl and this is one that I can actually have a part in solving.  I believe that that was one of the problems with this game, how it was marketed.  It is not a typical Survival/Horror game.  If the storyline wasn’t so horrific, I would swear it was intended for four year olds (on the game play level).  The “puzzles” require you to follow a dog and have him sniff objects…then he leads you to another; this pattern is continued (ad nauseaum) until the end of the game.  Most battles with enemies can be avoided.  This wasn’t challenging at all, and lead me to be more annoyed than anything else.  But the plot is PHENOMENAL; that should have been the focus.  I would call this game an “interactive storybook” and one in the vein of the Grimm fairytales and those of Hans Christian Anderson. 

Since this blog is about the game, it’s important to know the plot, so that my pages/postings make sense to you.  I will post links as I go along that are supplemental to this understanding.  For example, I interact entirely on the Rule of Rose Mysteries site that I previously mentioned.  I have commented on this site about specific “scenes” in the game.  I will post some of these comments here.  I will also give a little background of the scene being discussed.  I will provide a link to the discussion on the Rule of Rose Mysteries site, so that if you choose, you can see what others had to say on this topic.  I will only post my postings on this blog.  If, after reading the plot summary, you have any questions or comments on what I have posted, please ask and I will do my best to answer.  This applies to the whole blog.

To begin, Wikipedia has a useful summary; it discusses plot, characters and their personalities, and the type of game play.  Here is a link to that page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_Rose

 I think it’s also useful to visit the Rule of Rose Mysteries Document-Based Timeline.  As a warning, it contains spoilers for the game (as does this entire blog), but is useful in understanding the depth of the plot.  The Wikipedia summary is a good beginning, but it does not address the truly dark mysteries that exist in the game.  The Timeline is a great supplement to the Wikipedia summary.

I hope you enjoy my blog and I want to thank PokerNemesis again for his wonderful site.