VN Talk: Piofiore: Fated Memories - Part 2: Nicola

As previously discussed, Piofiore: Fated Memories has a short prologue with only a few seemingly noncommittal decisions (only two of which can be made on first playthrough), so I wasn't entirely sure what set me on Nicola's route. I actually was hoping for Dante since Nicola's character design suggests someone disinclined to take things seriously, and he's a flirt, which is a character type that rarely works with me. Nicola didn't disappoint though.

Both Nicola and Dante are part of the leadership of the Falzone family, with Dante being the boss and his cousin Nicola being the underboss, and when Liliana nearly gets kidnapped by the Lao-Shu, they take her into protective custody. She doesn't know why, and Nicola's route doesn't go into the real reason, but she's fairly cooperative about it, understanding that whatever the reason, the Falzone are looking out for her, and the head nun of her church is agreeable to this plan of action.

Nicola's route is a nice pop culture showcase of how a mafia man can be a vicious killer, but also be the same guy who goes to church on Sundays and sets up soup kitchens for the poor. The goons who hang out at the family's residence with Liliana are all friendly to her, and in return she often cooks for them as a way to show her appreciation for handling her safety. Nicola ends up being her primary point of contact, though he's not particularly warm about it. That's not to say he isn't friendly, he certainly flirts with her, but you get the feeling it's an arm's length sort of congeniality. Lili herself takes his kindness at face value, but Nicola never masks the kind of person he is or the line of work he does. In fact it often feels like he's trying to warn her not to get emotionally invested in him.

I knew Liliana wasn't going to compromise her church-instilled beliefs, so I just wanted her to be reasonably sensible about her behavior, and she was mostly that. Given her sheltered background and likely some wishful thinking (because it really wouldn't be a good idea to know what her hosts are actually doing), I didn't mind her overlooking things that she could rationalize away, including her inability to go home, but eventually she walks in on one of those moments she really shouldn't have investigated and finds Nicola, Dante, and some underlings torturing a man.

She is rightly horrified, and despite himself (and probably not wanting to make Liliana even more upset) Nicola decides to just cut off the man's ear instead of killing him. This game does not sugar coat that these men are thugs, and I appreciated that his toned down action is still pretty reprehensible.

But before they can properly have a talk over what she saw and why he was doing it, the second half of Nicola's route takes a weird turn. We know the three gangs are in an awkward balance as they maneuver for control over Burlone, and Nicola ends up grabbing Liliana at gunpoint and defects to the Visconti family, which definitely upsets that balance. There she's again treated as an important guest with the usual fact that she's not allowed to leave, and Nicola begins to work for Gilbert. He still comes and sees her, and it's clear something's bothering him, but what bothers me are Liliana's constant pleas that he's actually a good man because he's been kind to her, and I'm like "Have you forgotten the ear cutting thing that scared you so much?"

She does eventually acknowledge that sometimes he scares her, so it might just be the wording used, maybe something was lost in translation, but I find it really weird hearing her call him scary while also insisting that he's kind. It's fine if she's emotionally confused, this is a mafia romance after all, and the juxtaposition of being kind to her while also being a terror to his enemies is pretty much what we expect, but I would have preferred a tweak to the wording so she acknowledges that he can be kind, and not that he is kind, since the former implies it's optional for him and the latter that it is a constant state of being, which is definitely not the case.

I was also a little annoyed that why everyone wants Liliana never comes out and she never asks. We know from the prologue that young women are being kidnapped, and we learn in a conversation away from Lili that the Lao-Shu have been doing this to find her. Now that Gilbert has her, he wants to use her as a bargaining chip to force Bishop Rosberg to deal with the Visconti family instead of the Lao-Shu, which is all great underhanded political stuff. Nicola and Dante know why she's important as well, which is why they bring her under their wing as quickly as they do, but even at the end of the game after the Lao-Shu are broken up and Liliana is presumably safe, there's no closure for why all this happened in the first place. Gilbert doesn't even keep her as a bargaining chip, and just sends her home with Nicola.

In fact, the finale doesn't have much to do with the mafia war at all, though arguably Yang started it in the way that a boulder starts a landslide.

Roberto is a thorn in everybody's side for most of Nicola's route, which is not surprising since he's a cop, but unlike his jaded compatriot Marco, who has an understanding with the Falzone family, Roberto is unyielding in his pursuit of justice. He hates having been transferred to Burlone, hates that the mafia have the run of the city, and hates that the police actually cooperate with them.

He also holds a candle for Liliana, even though he's just as brusque with her as everyone else, mafia or not. Seriously, you wouldn't know he likes her from the way he behaves around her, and then when he finds out she's voluntarily hanging around Nicola he doesn't take it very well. It's the thought of this pure church girl being ruined by a thug sort of a thing. It's pretty gross how he projects his expectations on Lili, and Roberto really goes off the deep end in exacting… revenge? Punishment? (I mean, Nicola is no saint, but he hasn't actually done anything to Roberto other than win the heart of the woman he's crushing on.)

Whatever it is, Roberto really wants to kill Nicola by the end of his route and it no longer matters if he needs to kill some other people along the way (including his fellow cop Marco!) as long as he gets to wipe out every last mafioso in Burlone. So it's rather satisfying that even though Liliana has a walk alone into a suspicious building moment where Roberto captures her to use as bait, it's Lili who disrupts his plans by body checking him when he's trying to shoot Nicola. She might be a church girl who doesn't know how to fight, but that doesn't mean she'll sit back and do nothing! I was very proud of her.

I also was glad that the best ending commits to Nicola killing Roberto rather than having Liliana intercede and convince Nicola not to. This isn't the game for letting bygones be bygones, and Roberto was clearly out of control.

(And as a side note: Roberto acts completely differently on Gilbert and the Finale's routes, which makes his behavior on Nicola's feel like a complete character assassination. I really loved him as a supporting character on those.)

The wrap up at the end of Nicola's route is a little too pat for me though. The reason Nicola defected was because he knew Dante never wanted to be the Falzone crime boss and he planned to help the Visconti take down the Falzone so Dante would be freed from his obligation and could live out his life however else he wanted. But Dante and Gilbert agree on a cover story explaining that Nicola faked his betrayal to draw out the serial killer who was targeting the mafia (presumably Roberto) so he's allowed to go home and Dante tells his cousin that even if he didn't ask for his job, it's now a path he's chosen for himself and he has no intention of giving it up.

With the Lao-Shu gone and the remaining two crime families amicable, things seem safe for Nicola and Liliana to pursue a relationship.

Normally I don't talk too much about bad endings, but I really liked certain elements of Nicola's and since I got his bad ending first without immediately realizing it (since it's so long), I was a little disappointed his best ending was so much happier. The moment the two branch is Roberto's assassination attempt on Dante. In the good ending he ends up shooting Marco instead. In the bad ending, Dante dies, and this really changes Nicola, especially since the entire point of defecting was to free his cousin. Nicola kills Gilbert and comes back to the Falzone with an excuse that he defected to get close to the Visconti and becomes the new Falzone boss, and then he goes on a crazy purge of the city to get rid of all his enemies and make it safe enough to never take anyone from him again (and since this is an otome and some people have a kink for it, this naturally includes locking Lili up in a room and never letting her out again so no one can harm her).

It's not really my cup of tea as far as Liliana's fate goes, but I liked Nicola losing Dante and wouldn't have minded a more blown out version of him having to grapple with that loss. He didn't really seem like a changed person by the end of his route in the best ending, and I'm not sure he even learned anything from the fact his defection had been completely unnecessary, and he would have known that if he actually talked to Dante about it. Instead he goes back to being a relatively pleasant guy (at least around Lili) and the city is a little safer now.

Still, Nicola's route gets high marks from me for the church and mafia ties, the torture scene where Nicola never tries to justify himself to Lili, and for pretty much telling like it is. Though Nicola is able to backstab with a smile (and we see on other routes, he will take the kinds of actions Dante cannot bring himself to do), I really liked that he never tried to make himself look like a "good" person to Lili. As contradictory as it sounds, that's part of the romance I was looking for in a mafia romance.