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Last time, we got the only happy "Whole Party Lives" ending in the game and closed out the Let's Play proper. This time, we reflect on the journey.

Stats:

Start of Let's Play: February 20, 2024
End of Cohost: Jan 12, 2025
End of Let's Play: March 20, 2026 (missed it by that much)

Postmortem

If I'm being sappy, then I'd say the LP was part of a grand vision of The Fourth Website. What an idea! Were there any other Screenshot LPs on Cohost? I feel like I saw one or two first updates, but I don't know if they really kept going. I remember thinking that the relatively narrow post window was unkind to games in widescreen; part of why I chose 7SU in the first place was its aspect ratio and readability at low res.

The Death of Cohost as announced in September 2024 was an obvious blow to motivation at the time, and it happened at the same time as some other stuff I've mentioned before. To wit, I'd been mirroring the LP on a small forum that had spun off Cohost. The admin of that forum DMed me to tell me I was annoying then blocked me on all social media before I could respond. I wasn't explicitly banned from the forum but I also wasn't about to stick around after that, so I was effectively cut off from a good half-to-baker's dozen others I liked talking to. I guess you could say that's my fault, but would you want to hang out where the owner hates you? I'm kind of put off of other forums now, too. Sucks! I guess at least I no longer have to reformat every single update for Discourse or whatever.

Refocusing on the LP itself, I never did see The Numbers (and I don't know that I want to, they'd probably be pretty dire). Was this ever considered a fixture in someone's life? Will someone think back in five or ten years and go "man, what happened to that one weird Let's Play?" I feel like even on Cohost, my constant re-shares every Friday were probably getting annoying; I never got the sense it ever really got off the ground even back then. I guess all five or six of you (if that) still reading at this point probably started there? Hell, if you started reading this LP in '25 or later, let me know. That'd be fuckin' crazy.

I downplayed how much work this was compared to video, but I was thinking about a curated, informative, edited Video Let's Play. If you're fine with just talking over some raw gameplay, Endurance Run style, that'd be way easier than this. And yet I still feel like I didn't accomplish much since most of what I did was literally transcribe the game's text. As for any original dialogue, well. One person privately telling you it's cringe is enough to override any number of people saying they like it.

Turns out doing a narrative Let's Play is tough as hell, especially if you want to do it while both A) being funny (of which I evidently did a mediocre job at best), and B) being narratively satisfying (which, well, yikes). I tried especially to keep the Utah and Joey threads going throughout Cascada's playthrough, though I obviously did not succeed. Another blatant fuck-up is that even though Jotaro was voted to be the Best Bud quite early on, I always forgot that when actually recording the footage and Cascada spent most of her time with Joseph, which naturally made its way into the text updates.

Overall, I feel like it's pretty obvious that I gave up on any delusions of non-joke original dialogue around when the second playthrough started. It got too mentally taxing, especially while retreading so much material. I've got even more respect for DidjaRedo's Avalon Code LP, which as far as I'm concerned is the gold standard of the perhaps overly narrow category of Narrative Screenshot LPs.

My biggest regret is probably not getting music links up and working. I actually do quite like the music in 7SU; it's got some fun chiptunes with catchy melodies. I made the call early on that messing with MIDI soundfonts, setting up playable links, and tracking exactly where they go in any given scene would be too big of a hurdle on my end. I had to keep scope small.

Updates I think came out particularly well:

• Update 8, with the Polnareff boss fight. I got to show off some of the game's charm and granularity with the battle mechanics. On the downside, it's probably the only time I genuinely struggled in a battle other than Ult. Being Cars.
• Update 28, which was the return from hiatus after Cohost died. There was some fun stuff to show off and I think the debut of Cascada's Wave Motion Gun went okay.
• Update 37, not because of anything I did but because it has the D'arby minigames in it and I think those are pretty cool.
• Update 58, the mansion survival segment, which again I think is just a good showcase of what makes 7SU compelling.
• If you think of something, let me know!

Things I could have done better:

• Aforementioned music links.
• I know nothing about music and JoJo makes a lot of music references.
• I feel like it's glaringly obvious I started phoning it in around halfway through.
  • The lack of gameplay variety speaks for itself.
  • My commentary kinda collapsed into a collection of random tangents rather than describing the game.
  • I probably could have done a proper third playthrough.
• I didn't actually get an install of RPG Maker 2000 to poke at the game's internals until pretty much the end of the LP. Could've done a bit more there.
• I wish I actually updated weekly like I said I would, thus finishing the Let's Play within a somewhat reasonable length of time instead of over two years.
• If you think of something, let me know!

Conclusion

Will I make another Let's Play? I don't know yet. Working on this one gave me a lot of the same feelings I got when I was DMing tabletop games for my friends. Back then, I'd spend tons of my free time poking and prodding. Hours could pass while I tweaked maps, encounters, spell lists, magic items, et cetera. It's something that felt productive, creative, even satisfying.

In practice, it amounted to a marginally improved couple hours entertainment for a handful of people every other week or so.

Is that enough, spiritually? I don't know. I can't help but consider if there's some alternate timeline where I put all of the energy behind this LP into some sort of endeavor that's actually marketable or productive; I can't exactly use a screenshot Let's Play as a showcase of skills on a resume in the same way that one might with video editing. What if I'd written more reviews or original fiction or something instead? What if I hustled more? Perhaps I only think that way because capitalism and social media has ruined society.

Regardless, that is not the timeline we live in. We live in the timeline where I made a screenshot Let's Play of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The 7th Stand User, an obscure Japanese fangame. Hopefully you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading, and see you again.

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