When first playing this game I chose Saren and I was a bit taken aback by how he was labeled the most loyal slave with outwardly little sign of resentment of being such on his part. (Finding out later in various conversations it does get dragged out of him that he certainly wasn't having the greatest time of his life... yet somehow he still thinks very highly of Loren and Karen, the ones who have/had power to improve his and those like him situation but for whatever reason before the start of the game turned a blind eye to.) My interpretation was that the player character was likely suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.



And thus began my roleplaying mission to make Saren/Elenor the mentally healthiest little game heroes you ever did see.



The one and only attempt to romance Loren with Saren ended pretty quickly, before I even reached the end of Chapter 1. I had a hard time getting past how Saren did a lot of praising despite Loren having not done much at that point to have actually earned such. It came across as a captee trying his best to keep his captor from doing bad things to him; something that would just exacerbate the Stockholm Syndrome even if it did lead to genuine love between the two. MUCH prefer the friendship path with these two characters.



Next up was Myrth with Saren. Got as far as the scene where Saren tries to give her a flower only for Myrth to freak out and declare he would certainly make some woman happy someday, with it getting interpreted that the woman was not going to be her. I can't really fully explain why I suddenly lost interest in Myrth as a romance option for Saren. Only thing I can think up is that by that point it came across as Saren having gotten led on by her only to very gently dump him. I did really like Myrth's general cuteness though. I do at some point want to go back and check out what the rest of this romance is like, but at the time my rping mission was for healthy!Saren/Elenor.



I ended up deciding Karen wasn't a very good romance for some of the same reasons as for Loren, combined with the possible interpretation of Elenor as the rebound relationship. Karen in my opinion seemed to have gotten over the death of her last love a little too quickly along with declaring Elenor another great love of her life a little too soon. Personality wise I did find Karen to be one of the more compelling characters. Would have liked to have learned more about why she decided to simply run off with her male lover instead of trying to change the rules to accept males more in her kingdom.



Had very high hopes for Chambara--I really like that character archetype, but the pursuit for a healthy!Saren meant that as soon as it became clear that Chambara wanted to just be Saren's new owner I had to go back to a previous save. Haven't tried this route yet with Elenor to see if the whole "I want to own you instead" is different.



Not into He-Man types. Especially ones that spend time trying to seemingly undermine what bit of self-importance and pride that the poor sufferer of Stockholm Syndrome managed to cling to, so no Amukiki for Saren/Elenor. Is it bad that I took a certain amount of joy in being able to convince Amukiki to either kill himself or single-handedly beat him up near the end of the game...?



I ended up liking Rei the most for Elenor. She gets to learn more about her race, he gets to learn how to develop a non-superficial relationship with a woman. Unfortunately, I happen to like Mesphit a great deal and can't really bring myself to fully like Rei due to his obsession in wanting to kill him. Especially not after seeing the love triangle 'conversation' between the three characters. I just could not bring myself to side with Rei after his "people like you" comment.



Mesphit was in desperate need for a hug (that I wanted to give to him, don't judge me! >.> ), but it seemed like only Elenor was the one who got to actually do so and live happily with a half-demon who learned how to control himself. According to the epilogues I've come across Saren never really gets that happiness with Mesphit due to all the continued chasing he has to do. Apparently Saren has to sacrifice himself at the end of the game for Mesphit to learn how to fully control the demon side of him. So, yay healthy!Elenor, but still no healthy!Saren. Why couldn't Saren and Mesphit be happy together too? T_T Not only does Saren get to suffer from lack of self worth due to being forced to live as a slave, but going this route means the object of his affection can't seem to stop running away from him.



Which leaves Draco, who somehow manages to have less sense of self worth than Saren. The first part of this relationship came across as Therapy 101, with both praising each other and getting shocked that somebody seems to genuinely like them. I also thought this relationship seemed to grow the most organically and seemed to 'heal' both Draco and Saren the most. I really can't think of a downside when it comes to this route, which makes it an automatic #1 when it comes to best healthy romance.



Now to see what the most traumatic pairing would be....

My Saren was romancing Draco and him simultaneously, so Amukiki took Saren aside and told him that he deserved someone more worthy than Draco. You can choose to flirt with him or you can argue that Draco is worthy. If you do the latter, Amukiki asks you "What am I worthy of?" Then turns away and adds "Perhaps nothing." This is freaking heartbreaking. I've seriously considered writing a fanfic consisting of just 4 lines where Saren stops him and tells him "it's not you, it's me" (in other words, of course.)

Have to agree with Choklad on Amukiki. He's actually my favorite romance for Saren, oddly enough, but I feel like his route is one that has to be played all the way through for it to be really appreciated (unless you've already done that and still don't like it, in which case you can disregard this entire paragraph ) . There's a lot he isn't willing to admit about his personal feelings and desires, both to himself and to Saren/Elenor. And it's because of that that for most of the romance he comes off as rude or uncaring.



I personally felt like the real breakthrough with him only happens during the big confrontation (/slash/ angry sex scene) toward the end, at which point the tone of the relationship completely changes, which becomes especially apparent in the epilogue. But if you didn't get to that point, I can absolutely see how you would think of him as trying to undermine Saren/Elenor, even if I don't feel that's the case ultimately. So yeah, I'd recommend giving him another go.



And I suspect we might just have different tastes in love interests (nothing wrong with that!), because despite him being one of the most interesting routes to play for me, Mesphit actually struck me as one of the least healthy relationships in the game, at least for Elenor. It's pretty much the only reason I can't in good faith call him my favorite, though he gets pretty darn close. My memory of Saren's interactions with him are a little fuzzy, but I do remember thinking something very similar for Elenor/Mesphit that you do with Saren/Loren, that Elenor has this overwhelming feeling that Mesphit is a good person deep down, despite him not having done much at that point to indicate it.



Even though she turned out to be right in the end, her constant insistence of it, even when he continuously pushed her away, and even got violent with her at one point, struck me as a bit...I dunno. Self-destructive, maybe? Not sure what the right word is for it. So while I can definitely see how Mesphit is able to heal and grow through his relationship with Elenor, I'm not entirely sure that it equally benefits her.



Don't get me wrong, I love the romance as a whole, but by the end of it I still had this lingering feeling of "eehhh wow, this really isn't a very healthy relationship, is it?" But again, I think I just read the situation in a different way. I have faith that Mesphit will only continue to conquer his demons, both literally and figuratively, in the second game.



As for Rei, I will say that it is possible to change his view of dark elves, and even get him to realize that Mesphit is not his enemy. I don't think you even need to be in a relationship with him to do it. His romance epilogue is super cute though

The farthest I got with Amukiki was confronting him after he had undermined Saren's authority after choosing whether to go after the succubus or corrupt barbarian(Is his name Krul? Oh, well for this post his name is now Krul.) first. I did know at least most of Amukiki's background and struggles, but I also believed it has to go the other way around as well when it comes to Amukiki trying to understand Saren's viewpoint--which I think wasn't really there. My memory might be a little hazy, but I think most of the dialogue I came across between the two of them was of Saren questioning and asking about Amukiki's past and beliefs. And yeah, Saren wasn't always very nice, but he was also the first to actually apologize.



So when I reached that scene of Amukiki trying to publicly take away what little respect and authority Saren had when Loren asked about who to go after first... I suddenly stopped caring about what was going on with Amukiki. To me it came across as his sense of pride being of so much importance that Amukiki did not really care if it harmed anyone else around him. How he acted during the confrontation with the corrupted barbarian pretty much reinforced that to me as well, that Amukiki was more interested in his sense of honor and pride even if it hurt (or potentially killed!) the people around him. After all, there he was still insisting to do everything his way when it came to fighting the other barbarian even though the rest of the party was mere moments away from getting slaughtered by the orc army. If it wasn't for Saren deciding to take orcs prisoners or just straight up attacking the corrupt barbarian himself, everybody there would have likely died.



I still don't understand how if you choose the taking orcs as prisoners option as somehow something Amukiki felt some pride in about... wouldn't holding others hostage to get what you want be against a sense of honor and pride? Especially since it just lead to convincing/manipulating the orcs to kill Krul themselves. How is that honor in battle? I thought the point of Amukiki insisting on taking on the other barbarian in a duel was to actually defeat the other in 1 vs 1 combat with some rules that have to be followed. If he didn't have a problem with unfair odds, then Saren and the rest attacking Krul shouldn't have bothered him--after all, by then Krul had the orcs attack Amukiki, Dora had gotten stab happy, and Rei had shot a bolt in Krul's neck. Duel? What duel? So again, it came across as Amukiki's pride worth more than the lives of others. As long as he didn't do anything to harm his sense of self, it didn't matter how it actually effected others.



While what I had seen of this relationship path was well written, I found it greatly detrimental in my search for a healthy!Saren/Elenor.



There's probably a lot of redundancy in what I just wrote, but please forgive me. I suffer from lack of coffee. Will try to fix when I am more awake.

At some point I do plan on finishing all the romances, so maybe I will in the end enjoy the romance with Amukiki. I can certainly see why others would like the whole 'two people trying to find worth in their life' rivalry/love. It is indeed pure personal taste on my part in disliking that character archetype the most. Probably due to how in RPGs I almost always play rogues, who are practically the worst enemies for honorable warrior sorts.



The reason I didn't get the same kind of reaction with Mesphit like I did with Loren pretty much comes down to how it was revealed that Mesphit hadn't specifically wanted to turn into an insane half-demon at times. He had simply wanted to help improve the lot of his people and was willing to do whatever it took, even at the cost of himself. It was just unfortunate that he wasn't smart enough to question and wonder about any loopholes Jul might take advantage of when he sought more power to help other dark elves. I think that is the goodness Saren/Elenor saw in Mesphit--that desire to help others even at the cost of himself. To me it seemed that Aren/Elenor learned/gained from Mesphit is someone who made her question what is or isn't evil, along with someone who was willing to listen to him/her when it came time to talk about what s/he went through as a slave in one particular scene. Elenor specifically mentions how much she needed that. For someone to listen to her and be there for her, who specifically needed her in turn to help push back the demonic insanity. Wonder why that was taken out of Saren's path. A lot more is straight up said in Elenor's than it was in Saren's.



And yeah, I know what you are saying about Rei. By completing his personal quest and choosing a certain dialogue option near the end of the game when he wants to shoot Mesphit you can get him to be more accepting. Wonder if what Rei says in the love triangle confrontation changes if you complete his personal quest before then. >.>

I hate his guts as a character, but the romance story was pretty darn well written and the character development was a treat to read. However, as Mesphit can be seen uncomfortable and dangerous/self-destructive romance option, with triggers to intra-relationship violence.... I tolerated those pretty easily (probably that genuine goodness-streak under all that half-demonness). Instead, I got stuck on some less dangerous, but in my eyes more trope-ish sides in Rei's story. An attractive ladies' man that Elenor converts into monogamy after she dutifully falls for him because he "educated her" about her own culture? Umm, no. There are always certain qualities in characters and/or storylines that don't resonate well with certain players due to mostly personal preferences. I'm not typing this to wish that anything was changed in the storyline, I like my expectations to be challenged and a strong negative reaction is for me sometimes more valuable an experience than being perfectly "pleased" with all the components... It would have probably suited my personal tastes better if Elenor would have had a one-night stand with Rei pretty early on in the game and leave it there without any grand feelings and conversions between them, but at the same time I'm glad that the storyline was there. I don't have to choose it as one of my favourites although I would list it as one of the best written. If that makes any sense.....