音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

Since I'm not a brain scientist, today's topic is of course about the ultimate (?) ridiculous Psycho Break AKUMU difficulty.
However, I managed to get it done!

... with 400+ deaths, and I have to mention, that I loaded my manual save in chapter 6 to upgrade, and thus I "lost" ~200 deaths in the never-ending two-room. So the real death count should +200 roughly though (I had LOTS of upgrades).
Still, it's better than what I thought, which could be over 1k deaths.

Halfway of the play through, I gave up recording the death count categorised by different enemies. After each death and during the 30-second-ish long loading screen, I tended to think about the strategy rather than drawing an additional line in the piece of death record paper.
AKUMU it's challenging, but I don't think I'll come back to do it again! I don't mind the one-hit death, but once again, the loading time is just way too long (I'm not confident at all to "not" die due to this or that mistakes. -_-'')

I didn't skip any cut scenes this time, hoping to find more new clues about the story. From the very beginning when the city collapsed, I began to think about Inception, which sadly I've forgotten most parts about its plot. Indeed the environment of such a ruined city is my favourite through the game... it's not what I want to talk though.

I haven't played nor got spoiled by Kidd's DLC, so for now, its my current understanding. After seeing the ending scene, I'd like to think they didn't escape/wake up completely, yet. Even with all the surrounding people from the police, it's still inside of the dream. In my opinion, the only "real" scene is the moment right before its ending, where we see Kidd and Tatiana together. The rest, all in a "dream" or a sort of advanced version of "nuroimaging", when multiple's brain are connected together. In chapter 1, the three receive the order and head to the hospital, soon the interruption comes, indicating that's already inside of such unreality. In the following chapters, unrelated scenes keep getting blended and transmitted into each other, including people involved like Joseph or the doctor. Previous memories imported into STEM system, and exported into current receivers at the terminal. In the very, very centre of that layers of worlds made from imagination, that's Ruvik and his spreading pure evils.

Being a nerd in studying living being's brain alive or in a bizarre way, Ruvik caught the attention from Doctor (don't know how to spell his name at all). They soon "collaborated", and Ruvik could make even bigger progress because of "samples" from Doctor. His goal, since lost his sister, could have become to get her back to life, perhaps through STEM. At a stage when it's mostly finished, Doctor betrayed, could because he wants to get all the honours, and has realised Ruvik's brain would serve an important role in STEM, plus (?), Ruvik might cause huge problem because of his research (pure guess).

Yet inside STEM, Ruvik became the core. Thoughts sent into STEM later from people who couldn't survive gradually turned to monsters. All of them want to return to the reality, and in my understanding more like reincarnation through replanting back into some living person's mind. In that case, according to those many audio records, two thoughts inside of one brain clashes, they would either kill each other, or eventually reach to a state of coexistence. Ruvik's target is Leslie (finally I understood why Doctor murmured "Leslie is the key" in chapter 4), but he perhaps also attempted to test on everyone inside of his world. After the second Laura fight, he said something like Joseph is not of hope for him, and later on when Seb helped Kidd, there's a scene that Ruvik attempts to transport into his mind.

Regardless, Ruvik might have a chance at the end when Leslie "melted", Laura won't be revived, because Ruvik is dead, and even after that, she becomes the ugly spider lady and just kills everyone she touches -- impossible for her to come out!

Too many memories and living thought get connected, and the inner world is exploding and becomes more and more complicated. As a new recipient, s/he may have an independent "core" with a mirror of Ruvik at the centre. The two are linked somehow, and to escape, one has to defeat the mirror core, like what players do in chapter 15, go out of "this" layer of STEM, sees Ruvik's brain, destroys it, and returns to the "previously recognised" reality. Meanwhile, the deeper core somewhere far away is still affecting this layer of normality, and this layer gets to merge into another one. Maybe after many layers, Seb will really wake up. I'll believe Joseph would survive too, so would Kidd who is an agent that is all I know from a quick glance of spoiler. Posters and newspaper and all other notes are fragments remained when two minds merge, while they're all based on the reality. After the story begins, we learn more truth from touch others' thoughts, which in turn all gather to one single point, the STEM core.

When someone dies inside STEM, others could see that when they wake up, and thus there's nobody in Leslie's tub, maybe he's alive in another layer, or maybe he really melted. Others may be forcefully connected to STEM, but I just don't know why Doctor is there too. Maybe to look for Leslie, who is another precious sample after surviving from Ruvik's connection but got lost this time.

I like this type of story (and I just hope what I've just wrote above is making a bit of sense), while the ending is sort of open, yet from all clues, it seems there's a clear answer. Definitely I'll find a time to get the DLCs and find more hints!

Besides, I just got this:

Pretty much because of people I follow on youtube keep referring to this and thus got me being curious.
Yet the first thing I did after game start was something worthless...
that to knead out a Leon S. Kennedy face! without knowing a single thing like what this game is all about AND knowing the character will have a hood/hat/etc...
By the way, I named the character "Ruvik"... (´・ω・｀)