Just watched a video about Linda³
Yesterday, while working, I put on some random video on YouTube and it ended up being about this 90's JRPG that wasn't released outside of Japan called Linda³. And, man, what a weird little game. For starters, it has 3 modes of play that work kinda like difficulty selectors, but each mode has its own independent story. The game has a somewhat biblical theme of "collecting two of each animal and putting them in the ark", but it's permeated by this sort of open-world with "environmental storytelling" and NPC dialogues that fill in the blanks about people's lives on the planet. It's also extremely sci-fi with some pretty harrowing, horror-worthy stories and substories going on. It's like, so weird, and although I won't be playing it anytime soon, I loved it.
I'm somewhat biased, as I'm not that big of a fan of the typical JRPG structure, the "no-name hero who goes on to fight god and save the world". I have nothing against that, I enjoy many classic games in this format, but I find the more experimental ones, like the SaGa series, more fun to play, at least for me. And Linda³ seems to be just like that. I'm a sucker for exploration tbh, I enjoy it more than most stories out there — be it JRPGs or western games.
Anyway, the game seems to be about collecting creatures for the ark before a comet strikes the planet and kills everything in it, but in each mode there is a complex storyline being woven as time goes on, with (apparently) complex characters with complex lives, all involving the protagonist and his girlfriend, Linda, in some way. And it's pretty nuts. It's a long video — 2 hours of content covering the 3 game modes — but it's worth watching it, because I could never explain in written words how weird it can get without playing it.