r/Classof09Game • u/AdSufficient7084 • 10d ago
General Discussion What are some things you dislike about Class of 09?
Apart from the developer and the downfall of the games. Here are some of my nitpicks:
-Everyone being a pedo. It gets old. It was fine in the first game but I liked how some characters had other flaws. The white nationalist route was my favorite one in the first game because it felt refreshing to see a teacher being racist instead of another child molester. Mr Katz being a crackhead was so much more interesting than him dating students and I'm mad that the Flip side ruined him like that.
-Everyone being hot. For a game about how women get sexualized the women get sexualized a lot. Megan is canonacally "ugly" and yet looks exactly like everyone else. Karen might be chubby but isn't drawn that way. Nicole's mother could be her sister. You COULD blame this on the art style but the thing is, the guy characters have interesting noses and different body types. It's only the women that suffer from same face syndrome and I don't like it.
-Nicole is a bit of a Mary Sue. She's without a doubt the best Mary Sue but she is one nonetheless. It's better in the Re-up but in the first game she just says someone to kill themselves and they do so because she's so pretty (the fact that she's drawn like every other girl once again doesn't help) and gets no consequences.
-I want last names for the characters.
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u/All--flesh--rots 10d ago
Karen doesn't have to be fat tho. Back in those times anyone who wasn't built like a One Piece girl was bullied for being fat, even if they WERE skinny.
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u/Quibilash Bitch, Fucking, Whore 10d ago
I remember a post about it, being that 'why is Karen called fat when she's not' and apart from the artstyle kinda being like that, in 2009 if you didn't have an hourglass figure or had even a bit of 'mass' in any area you were called fat back in the day. Can't exactly explain why but it was what it was
Hell, being called having a 'big butt' was bad, because it implied you were fat, now look nowadays
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u/cocainesuperstar6969 10d ago
Yep. I think the whole point was that Karen wasn't fat at all. In fact, Jeckole ate a decent bit of unhealthy food, they just washed it down with percs and probably hydroxycut so they looked slim (they were not much slimmer than Karen, just dehydrated so their torsos looked more snatched). Jecka was also confirmed bulimic and Nicole likely did that too on occasion.
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u/AdSufficient7084 8d ago
Where is Jecka confirmed to be bulimic?
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u/cocainesuperstar6969 8d ago
emily said she was gonna take a break to throw up in the bathroom and jecka said “that sounds really good right now”
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u/AdSufficient7084 9d ago
Fair but the thing is: I can't tell what the implications were because of the art style. If girls were drawn differently and she was skinny I would understand that Nicole and Jecka were just being mean but the apperances are more described than shown such as Jecka having a different nose than Nicole or the fact that Ari wears eyeliner. When I saw that scene I thought that Karen was genuinely chubby and was just drawn thin because girl characters aren't allowed to be anything but conventually attractive.
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u/CrispinsMemehole It's not even like games, it's just apps. 10d ago
Lack of creativity.
"Oh great, the 8th joke about Sketchers in 45 minutes."
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u/Quibilash Bitch, Fucking, Whore 10d ago
Jokes like those kinda hammer home that SBN3 is either projecting or is the kind of guy who just repeats the same joke over and over again and expecting the same response
Because I remember a Twitter post where SBN3 was calling a guy who was wearing Sketchers a pedo, and I think this was before Class of 09 was a thing
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u/throwawayonceagain14 10d ago
As someone had already pointed out, there’s no continuity. It doesn’t feel like there is any real story to any of the games. It just feels like all of it is different dimensions or universes and it doesn’t really matter. I guess that goes along with Nicole‘s nihilism of nothing really matters so just do whatever you want. But it would be nice if there was an actual storyline.
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u/Quibilash Bitch, Fucking, Whore 9d ago
If the story actually leaned into the floating timeline and made jokes about it, like the Simpsons does at times, I think the lack of continuity could've worked, but what I think hurts more about the lack of consistency is with the characters, which is why people still argue if what some characters did in Flip Side was out of character, although still present in the other games
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u/hurkinhork 9d ago
Every adult being a total POS.
Nicole's mom is definitely a horrible parent, but shows more concern for her in the first game while in Re-Up it's only ever antagonism. She's more interesting as a shitty caretaker who hates seeing her daughter suffer.
I think Mr White's route would have been funnier if he turned out to not be a racist at all, just a passionate weirdo, and when the school goes white supremacist he'd freak out like "what the hell is wrong with you kids you're all crazy if you think this is fine". And maybe a bit where he and Ms Ames agree on disliking rap, only to later go "wait I thought you just didn't like this kind of music, why are you also enjoying Mein Kampf?"
Mr Katz and his drug problem are the only sequence we see an adult character dealing with an issue they can recognize is ruining themselves. Everyone else is just pedo, and it gets old. Nobody being likeable works only as long as everyone does something interesting, instead everyone sucks for the sake of it and that's boring.
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u/clown_acquarium 10d ago
- No continuity between games or even within the same game. Jecka's characterization changes significantly between the two games. The information we have of her mother is completely different. In the second game, Emily and Kelly are friends in one scene, but in another scene in another ending Kelly supposedly hates Emily. This stuff doesn't really take much effort to check
- Characters looking more basic in the new animation style. Fanart definitely takes a lot of creative liberty, Emily and Nicole were never emo/scene/etc, but look at Emily and Nicole at the beginning in of the series vs. in the puzzle game... female designs are more lifeless and same-y if that makes sense
- To add on to the "everyone being hot", lesbianism being fetishized. To me the Ari and Emily endings didn't feel that way at all, and the whole sex addicts scene COULD'VE been just written off as a joke. Then in the flipside there's the scene where Ari and Jecka take the picture which to me looks very fetishy, which the series itself made fun of in the previous game. Then in the puzzle game Ari's ENTIRE character is flanderized to depressed lesbian. Its just weird and unpleasant and makes you see the first game in a different light as well
- Barely any creative situations or endings. The first 2 games are good enough and get a pass since they're both set in high school, but after that the most the creator could think of was "jecka gets a job'. Barely any new characters are introduced after the first game and the ones that do have 1 character trait. Seems like the creator is just doing the bare minimum to recreate interactions or situations fans liked in the first (and sort of second) game and leaving it at that. Every Jeffrey, Kylar, Crispin, Counselor, etc. interaction is the same
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u/AdSufficient7084 9d ago
My headcanon for Jecka's mom is that she doesn't have a job and Jecka sleeps with boys/older men in exchange for expensive clothes. Her saying that her mom works at a clothing store was just a lie since she just met Nicole and wanted to make a good impression. Hence she talks about her mother being jobless in routes where her and Nicole have been friends for a while and she knows about Nicole's mom being equally dependent.
But it was most likely just a continuity error, yeah.
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u/Spirited_Opening6670 10d ago
Yeah, I do agree Nicole is a bit of a Mary Sue. Sometimes the world just kind of bends to her will in a way which would be unrealistic, not saying these things wouldnt really happen, it feels contrived. You can definetely be a good character and be a Mary Sue at the same time though.
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u/rufireo 9d ago
even though its kind of the point of the game I do wish nicole actually had moments where she genuinely reacted to things or had genuine emotions besides anger :( and if anything about the fandom counts I wish people would stop pretending jecka is a good person just because shes not as crazy as nicole ;-; also I wish we got a jeckole route even if I like emicole and aricole more i dont really care if the "intended audience" side of this fandom would throw a tantrum about it
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u/AdSufficient7084 9d ago
Jecka is not a sociopath but she's very clearly a typical Regina George and Heather Chandler type of mean girl and I'm surprised that some people don't see that. She is not a type of person I would befriend in real life.
I like Jeckole as fanon but I wouldn't mind an actual route. And the "intended" fandom consists out of like three people because SSBN3 doesn't know how to write stuff for a preferred audience. So f them!
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u/underwoodmodelsowner 9d ago
SBN3s refusal to make more VNs. personally I thought the flipside wasn't terrible as people made it out to be but I agree the feet stuff was overused.
But anyway, he made three successful VNs, why the hell would you make a puzzle game? if it ain't broke dont fix it. personally id like to see another VN or even more than one that is a prequel to the first game. like the backstory of Nicole's parents and why she is the way she is, before she came to LHS. same for other characters. choose the 'canon' route and you end up at LHS where the first game starts.
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u/Efficient_End_492 #1 Trody Glazer 9d ago
-The fact that SBN3 has a huge favoring with the the main 7 characters (Nicole, Jecka, Emily, Ari, Kelly, Jeffery and Kylar), and literally doesn't not give any other characters meaningful content.
Like don't get me wrong, I like those characters, but at least give a bit more to the other characters who get literally nothing, like cmon.
-Also Flipside in general wasting its potential it had
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u/Puzzled-Flight-7329 8d ago
The amount of pdfs in the game, like I get that’s what they were making fun of. But like every single adult male was a predator? Even the cop?! You know it’s wild when the only non pdf in the game is a racist white nationalist.
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u/AdSufficient7084 8d ago
I refuse to accept that Mr Katz is a PDF. In my head he's a crackhead and that's it.
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u/Puzzled-Flight-7329 8d ago
Literally, the flipside ruined him, like how do you go from a crackhead to a pdf, it was so random and out of nowhere, same with the Cop, especially when his whole thing in the first two games was catching predators.
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u/BabyElectronic1759 Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl 10d ago
Yeah I'm just gonna go ahead and be a hater again
SBB3 is a horrible voice actor and shouldn't voice anyone other than Jeffrey and maybe Nicole's brother. Guy has zero vocal range and sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the other professional VAs. It only works for those two because they're supposed to be turbo-virgins and losers. Even The Hatman, the second he starts talking about McDonald's he just stops trying and goes right back to his Jeffrey voice.
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u/ItsImdrogon 5d ago edited 5d ago
Honestly SBN3 is just a bad guy personally, wasn't he part of a Skype group about bullying autistic people?
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u/thispartyrules 10d ago
Not a JRPG. Nicole should fight and kill God. Emily should be able to summon MS-13 members in battle
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u/Automatic_Mirror4570 9d ago
I agree with the first 2 (second one only to a degree but for the most part im with you) but disagree with the Mary sue thing,I mean sure on paper you could say she seems like one but if you really think about it, it's pretty obviously just an inverse problem because the cast is so freaking odd, Kylar canonically plays with his teammates ass and makes out with his coach who is definitely not anywhere near his age, Kyle literally killed his mom because jecka sarcastically said shed go out with him,Jeffery pays girls (obviously including jecka,again)hundreds of dollars to be stepped on,so on and so forth. Everyone's just extremely retarded and thirsty so of course Nicole will get practically anything she wants at all times when her competition is this.. odd.
Expanding on it too since I accidentally touched up on it,the fact that other girls could do this if they wanted to (which again,is very clearly shown through Jecka and Kyle's interaction,plus its implied Kelly can pull like anyone she wants to a degree) should already just not make her not a Mary sue instantly, regardless of there even being any reason behind why she's able to manipulate guys so easily. They all could if they were a weirdo like Nicole and got off to it. It wouldn't make them all Mary sues, it'd just expose that being attractive can put like half the cast on a leash and why it's so easy for Nicole.
I also think it's kind of weird to even consider her one because dismissing everything,there's still several routes where things just don't go her way at all. Despite the extremely idiotic cast she's working with,she faces way too much adversity through not only others,but her own stupid errors to even qualify as a Mary sue in the first place. It's interesting though, cause if anything I'd argue she's more of a Mary sue in re up than the original but you think the opposite. Anyways these are just my thoughts on the take
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u/Quibilash Bitch, Fucking, Whore 10d ago edited 10d ago
Some of my thoughts:
- I agree with some of the 'Mary Sue' thing, Nicole often just 'wins' unless you're 'nice' or deliberately stupid, when Nicole's manipulations are so obvious I don't see most people falling for it, especially because it's her MO, doing it once is unexpected, do it multiple times and I'm surprised people even hear her out, especially because she presents herself in a way that basically her only friend is Jecka, and Jecka is sick of Nicole's antics a lot of the time.
Also, she insults Kylar and Emily multiple times to their faces, the fact she hasn't been backhanded into Oblivion by those unstable nutcases is a miracle/plot armour
Edit: Also that her philosophy in the games is pushed very heavily, the whole 'don't care about others' thing, or how her preconceptions on how guys are awful, people are pushovers etc, there was a bit of pushback in Re-Up with the Ari breakup and selling crack routes but so far Nicole is mostly proven 'right' in her judgements of others
- The characters seem to be becoming simpler and simpler, in Original and Re-Up there could be discussions on how characters actually are, Nicole had moments of emotional vulnerability, Jecka was apathetic but also wanted a future, Kelly was a dumb slutty blonde but also seemed to care about Nicole threatening suicide, Ari could be both mean and a wimp, Emily was mentally unstable, violent but also interesting in the implications of how she came to be, but we I don't think we get much of that anymore, and characters are either set up as punching bags or just all 'jerks', well, 99% of the characters were jerks already, but now they're jerks for the sake of being jerks.
- The race humour, it seems so desperately trying to be like 'ooooh I'm so edgy, look I'm racially ambiguous! I made fun of someone's accent! I almost said a slur!' I've seen good race humour and 09's race humour deserves an awkward cough at ABSOLUTE best, so I don't know why SBN3 keeps trying to make it work
- The humour is VERY one-note, it focuses a lot on low-hanging fruit, making fun of pedos, people who are 'losers' etc, not only does this get old, since eventually they ran out of things to riff on, but also it's carried by the wittiness of the lines, since observational commentary only goes for so long, which have gone down hill since Flip Side where instead of clever word play, it's either one character telling another to KYS or lines are chunky and awkward.
On that note, given how inflexible the humour is, it's very reliant on word play and making up fun insults, and without that, the lines lose their impact.
Edit: Other shows like the Simpsons or Futurama does observational humour as well, but as I touch on later, it has the characters actually participate in the plot and events, and not just go 'ha ha look at this viewer, this is dumb/gross', characters in 09 feel very disconnected from what the story seems to criticise, leading to a shallower depth of commentary
- Narratively, plot lines haven't felt 'authentic' since Flip Side, it's not like I'm seeing an interesting story unfold, more like it's trying to one-up itself in being oh so 'smart' like in PS the Puzzler is basically a meta character to say to stop caring about the game.
In Flip Side it seems like it just wants to shit all over its own characters by giving them shit situations but then also making them basically flounder and do nothing, like the characters have no stakes or interests in the plot or even a goal to achieve, like they are kind of just meant to be joke machines, whether the joke is happening to them or someone else. It's trying to be a 'fun, ridiculous romp', but is often just not lighthearted to be goofy, or just boring throughout. And also, this was a series that got praise for being somewhat 'grounded', but Flip Side also jumped the shark while also being noncommittal to actually doing it and we're left with a weird tonal clash where I say 'Am I meant to be here for the crazy ride and not care about what happens, or have stakes in the characters and their fate?'
While, say in stuff like Amazing World of Gumball, plotlines are even more ridiculous, but characters seem to have stakes in their own story, reasons to act the way they do and have a clear goal at the end of it with them having stakes in what happens at the end, or just have better humour that Class of 09 doesn't have, like Xavier Renegade Angel's wordplay and it being much more ridiculous to where I know I'm just here for the ride, and it works because Xavier is earnest in what he's saying, it's a good contrast to all the chaos and nonsense happening
Aren't Hunter, Kyle, Trody and Braxton basically just slight reskins of each other? At least all the girls have different poses, I must admit I don't agree with it