![WTC: Relentless Protagonist [SxS] – Review](https://3rd-strike.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/WTCRelentlessProtagonist-2-130x74.jpg)
Developer: Triority Interactive Novels
Publisher: Triority Interactive Novels
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
WTC: Relentless Protagonist [SxS] – Review
When hearing the abbreviation WTC, most people’s minds will immediately go to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. For this reason alone, developer Triority Interactive Novels’ series of visual novels could have perhaps gone with a different title, even if the abbreviation stands for something completely different. Welcome To Chichester, as this is what WTC stands for in this case, is actually a long-running series, with the first novel having debuted in 2018, and roughly a dozen entries since. The latest entry is WTC: Relentless Protagonist [SxS]. As you’ll find out from our review, having WTC in the title isn’t the only poor decision that was made here. Read on to find out why Relentless Protagonist is the worst visual novel we’ve sat through in a long time.
Story
We should note that prior to reading Relentless Protagonist, we were unfamiliar with the WTC series as a whole. As such, we can’t quite say how this entry ties into the overarching WTC universe, and because of this, we’re approaching Relentless Protagonist as a standalone title instead. We do suspect that the whopping three separate prologues refer to earlier stories, and if this is the case, it’s nice to see that Triority Interactive Novels cares somewhat about getting new players up to speed while also giving longtime fans a refresher at the same time. Even with the exposition delivered through these prologues, however, Relentless Protagonist’s story is a mess, and we often felt lost when the narrative made vague references to secret organizations and characters that played a minor role in the story. It’s clear that Relentless Protagonist mainly caters to existing fans first and foremost.
Before we get ahead of ourselves, however, let’s take a look at Relentless Protagonist’s narrative in a vacuum. Players can choose whether to follow the story from a male or female main character. We went with the male one, named Ethan Lewis, for our readthrough. Ethan works as an agent for a secret organization, and when we meet him, he’s on a mission to steal a secret weapon from an enemy force before they can unleash it on the world. During his attempt, he runs into Grendel Jinx, a rival secret agent from another organization. Compared to the blank slate that Ethan is as the “reader” character, Grendel is… a bit much. She acts both as Ethan’s partner and the story’s villain. She’s a master thief who has stolen a lot of cash from Ethan, while also being tremendously wealthy, owing to the fact that she and her mother happen to own and run every bank in the city. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Grendel. It felt like things kept being piled on top of her character traits, resulting in a character that feels like the ultimate Mary Sue, even though she’s supposed to be the bad guy… we think?
There is clearly history between her and Ethan, as evidenced by the dialogue, and it’s likely that the WTC series has been building up to a story where the two characters have to work together against all odds. The pair are forced to team up when things go awry, however, and somehow, they end up in an alternate reality where they are school children. What then follows is the pair’s attempts to return things back to normal. Everything before Ethan and Grendel found themselves in this school was merely setting things up. If you’re feeling lost by now, it’s not just you. Despite the relatively short runtime of 6 to 8 hours, depending on your reading speed, Relentless Protagonist is a poorly paced, incoherent mess of a story, and we had to take notes during our readthrough just to keep up. You’d assume that after more than ten previous novels in the series, the writer would know how to pace things and keep the confusion to a minimum. If this is the culmination of five years worth of writing, we’re afraid to visit earlier entries in the series. It’d be a different matter altogether had the dialogue at least been enjoyable, but the pacing is poor, and the attempts at humor fall flat. None of the characters are likable either. That’s not necessarily an issue, as evidenced by shows like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but here, there is nothing to really hook the reader.
Graphics
We recently took a look at Giant Wishes, a *ahem* different kind of visual novel. In our review, we said that Giant Wishes’ art was wonky, but it looks like we owe developer Hentai Room an apology, as compared to what we’re getting with Relentless Protagonist, Giant Wishes looks like the Sistine Chapel. From the hideous interface to the artwork, which often looks squished or poorly compressed, Relentless Protagonist’s visuals make it appear like you’re dealing with a beta build or a cheap Flash game. The game isn’t shy about recycling assets and the facial expressions of the static character portraits are often copy/pasted between different models. There is often a disconnect between backgrounds and characters as if they were pasted together from different sources. On top of that, the choice of default fonts and menus is outright ugly and doesn’t fit with the overall art direction. The character art isn’t always terrible, but it’s often uneven and resembles the drawings that anime-obsessed 16-year-olds post on DeviantArt rather than something you’d expect from a product you pay for on Steam. In fact, the difference between the backgrounds and the character art is so massive that we wouldn’t be surprised if Relentless Protagonist made liberal use of pre-existing stock art for these.
Sound
The one thing that stands out the most about Relentless Protagonist’s soundscape is the text-to-speech mode that is included. While there is no actual voice acting present, you have the option to have a robot voice read you the story. Apart from this, there is a wide variety of royalty-free music present, with the credits providing a full track list of the tunes that you’ll hear as you read. The audio quality is decent enough and the selected tunes fit the scenes that they play in, but overall, there isn’t anything outstanding or special about Relentless Protagonist’s soundtrack.
Gameplay
Shoddy presentation aside, we were pleasantly surprised by what was present in terms of “gameplay”. Yes, this is a visual novel in the strictest sense, so there is no real gameplay here aside from making choices, but Relentless Protagonist goes above and beyond in terms of accessibility options and bonus features. There are the standard features that we’ve come to know and love like a skip button and a text log, but here you are able to adjust the font size and spacing and change the contrast to improve legibility to name a few of the many options. There are Steam achievements for those who are into that kind of thing, as well as a gallery and a music player where you can listen to the tunes at your leisure. With various unlockable endings and a 6 to 8-hour runtime, it doesn’t feel like a ripoff at its €6.99 price point, but after having read through Relentless Protagonist once, we’re not enthusiastic about going back to see how things play out when making different choices. Make of that what you will when it comes to judging the novel’s replay value.
Conclusion
With several prior novels and years of history behind it, it’s clear that the WTC series is a passion project. While we’re sure that there is enough here to appeal to a very specific niche audience, we also can’t ignore the obvious reasons why WTC hasn’t broken through to the mainstream audience. Relentless Protagonist’s story is a poorly paced mess, the cast is utterly unlikable, and the visual presentation leaves a lot to be desired. Perhaps we’re just not the target audience and perhaps WTC is exactly what a very specific set of fans demands, but we can’t really recommend Relentless Protagonist to anyone outside of that very specific fanbase.
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