Some Problems I Have with R1999

Preface

I love this game. I think they put a lot of effort into the stories, the gameplay is fun and engaging, the art style and animation is beautiful, and the character design is near masterful. I just love the voice acting and the sound effects, I love how easy it is to get resources, and I love the music and soundtrack.

These are just some thing I noticed that they can improve on in my opinion. I understand this is a Chinese game so obviously they cannot include some things such as lgbtq representation in any explicit way, what I'm about to mention conflicts with none of the rules.

Ethnicity/Setting

Obviously they don't have to include one of every race but they have been to every single continent except Africa. They don't have any African characters and not a single dark-skinned character. They only have one mid-shade range character and that's Shamane, a punjabi character. Kaala Baunaa and Kanjira are both fair-skinned Indians and that's valid fair-skinned Indians deserve representation too. Ramona is a Mexican character who is done well admittedly. The rest of the characters are ghost pale. When you look at the Greek characters they all have fair skin which a good amount of Greek people do but also a good amount of them don't. Point is, if they can go to Antarctica they can go to Africa and create a dark-skinned or even a mid-shade North African character and they can have more mid shade characters because they've done it before with the Indian characters. I will not except a white character from South Africa by the way, not saying that white people in South Africa don't count as Africans but it's such a cop out. Maybe I would except it if they included other darker/mid shade characters alongside a character of that nature.

Personally I was very excited for the Tristes Tropiques part of the story because I thought they were going to craft a very well done Brazilian character like they do with almost every other region they've been to but they didn't. Besides one Colombian character all the other characters were European in origin and in culture. Sure there were a couple of throwaway Brazilian npcs but it's just not the same.

How they Dealt with WW1

I'm not going to pretend to know everything about world war 1 but the way they're portraying it is just not right. I appreciate that they have moments of utter despair and moments of hope but they need a playable character or a very important npc who is actually on the front-lines and we slowly see him lose hope and we see him form bonds and lose those bonds violently overtime instead of getting one measly throwaway story chapter. The arcanist lore they're adding is interesting but they can do a better job of tying in the hopelessness ww1 brings ESPECIALLY on the German side.

Arcanists vs Humans

I wish they showed more on why the arcanists and humans have such a rivalry. Like I get the human side but if these Arcanists have such great power why do they let the humans treat them like that? I have a feeling they'll let us know with more time I just wish they gave more crumbs as to why.