LP Beach

It was already hard to take Geldoblame seriously with that getup. It was even harder to take everything seriously after learning that He Bo etc was literally just the first two letters of general body parts. Then the moobs appeared.

But I guess that was only a side story anyways. As long as it doesn't take the cowards way out and redeem before the end.

Part 30: Mintaka Imperial Fortress

This video is an...intermission of sorts. Before we move on with Part 2 of the game proper, we need to re-establish a few things, most notably our new protagonist.

Those 8 guards in the throne room? Vital for the continual functioning of the government.

Also for a world facing an army of demons and the impending apocalypse that city was remarkably calm. Nothing gets in the way of a good festival there.

Kibayasu wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 18, 2020 8:23 pm

Also for a world facing an army of demons and the impending apocalypse that city was remarkably calm. Nothing gets in the way of a good festival there.

I mean, that was also the case back when the Empire was the big threat of the day too. Remember how they were like "Nah, we got a big magical shield, we're just gonna throw a big party instead"?

Part 31: Interdimensional Cracks (Part 1)

Anyway, it's time to get the gang back together. Melodia was courteous enough to put everyone in these nice, easy-to-locate individual prisons, so we might as well take her up on the offer.

You could say that keeping everyone secured in their own individual cells in different locations has its own benefits and drawbacks, really. It makes it harder for an internal escape, and in the event of a single escape you don't have as much risk of everybody getting free. On the other hand, you have to split your resources, so an outside rescue attempt becomes more feasible, as we've seen.

The real security problem is when you leave vague hints at how to unlock the door you don't want unlocked around for anyone to find.

Part 32: Interdimensional Cracks (Part 2)

It's part 2 of this riveting saga as Xelha bounces from island to island. These are technically different boss fights and don't you forget it.

I'm not sure I want to know what Mizuti means by "great hunger" immediately after being freed from dimensional jail.

Part 33: Interdimensional Cracks (Part 3)

We've got the gang back together, so it's time to formulate a new plan to tackle Melodia and Kalas. Said new plan is...well, it isn't very new.

I'm starting to notice that Xelha's voice actor sounds incredibly patronizing whenever she talks to anyone in the party. There's a very different tone of voice when she talks to NPCs.

Part 34: The Ice Cliffs of Gomeisa

We're off to Wazn to investigate this mysterious Ice Queen. Surely, *this* is the time that chasing a wild legend of the past will turn out to work in our favor, right?

They must have been talking about another queen that wasn't Xelha because when she left at level 1 that wasn't very powerful at all!

...you know what, I think I can get behind the whole "This magical ruler of a lost kingdom may be able to help" plot point getting turned aside not by some weird vow to not interfere in the workings of the world, but by the myths being a bit overblown and it turning out we had said ruler in our party the entire time.

I do wonder if her ability to cast all elements of magic is particularly unique at all, considering we haven't really seen or fought any other mages besides The Great Mizuti, and we all know The Great Mizuti is able to wield all of them just because they're so great and mighty.

Part 35: Cursa, the Snowy City

Cursa is an extremely pretty town with an absolutely incredible boss. The best designed encounter you'll ever see.

I'll never complain about a video game fight being random ever again.

Just go to Jukkasjärvi and you can see what it feels like to sleep on ice!

https://www.icehotel.com
(If you have a stupid amount of money lying around that is.)

Part 36: Kaffaljidhma, Castle of Ice

You might think that now that we have the Ocean Mirror, we're ready to go fight Kalas and Melodia, but oh no my friend, you foolishly skipped over the most important part of this whole sequence. See, just because we're the rightful queen of Wazn and we have a world-ending artifact on our hands doesn't mean we can just waltz out of here on our big new dragon. No, you're going to have to earn that dragon, in the dumbest way possible.

That dragon better have something kick ass hidden under its wings because riding around exposed on its back does not seem like a step up from a luxury interior. Maybe it could pull the other ship around.

Still rooting for killing Kalas.

No update tomorrow, due to some scheduling issues. We'll be back Friday as normal. In the meantime, have you heard the good word of Trails of Cold Steel IV? It is...an experience.

Yeah that's... an accurate description of that game.

Oh no what did they do to Trails of Cold Steel IV? Haven't quite caught up on the Cold Steel games because I decided to wait for the Crossbell fan translations from Geofront (which was probably not the best move in retrospect but I'm too committed now) but I've heard the localizations have been... not the best?

The localization isn't actually *that* big of a problem in my opinion, it has a bunch of classic NISA issues of broken textboxes and incorrect UI text as well as a small handful of legit term errors, but it reads pretty well and the VO is still good (though the recasting of Laura and Osborne really hurts me). I would assume -- or hope, at least -- most of this will be fixed with a patch.

But the game itself? CS1 already struggled to make its cast of around ten main characters remain relevant, imagine what CS4 does with quadruple of that. Pile on top of that a Rean harem that is worse than ever and some really dumb plot turns and you end up with mess that sometimes works surprisingly well but more often than not buckles under the weight of its 8 game legacy.

I'm only ~25 hours in (fairly early on in Act 2) so I can't speak to the back half of the game but so far it's displaying all those classic Falcom-isms, including "what the fuck is pacing, anyway", "more characters = better, right?", "okay so we're gonna do a plot twist here, anyone got anything? literally anything". If we hit "okay I know we just had a nice, poignant and thematically appropriate ending but what if we included 10 more hours of gameplay and another ending that doesn't make any sense but it's happier which automatically makes it better" then we'll have Falcom Bingo.

E: And to be clear when the game stays small, it's really good! The opening chunk of the game where you don't have Rean and are getting by with just new Class VII is fantastic, Juna especially. But she was already the best character in 3 so that's not saying anything new.

The Fragments chapter was amazing.

So too is the Final chapter, which is all I'll say on that.

There's some bonkers overpowered accessories.

Rean and Co. would absolutely still consider Kalas a good friend who was merely a little misguided in claiming the power of an evil god.

Since SA has now reached the Kalas reveal, a quick fun fact - you can actually immediately see that the Che End Magnus is missing immediately after the encounter with Melodia.



Prior to leaving Anuenue, we have the End Magnus safely in our possession.



After the encounter in Parnasse (this was taken in Detourne), it's missing.

Ah, hell, I never noticed that. A lot of attention to detail there, I guess!

Aaah Wazn...home of one of the most annoying photos to get (the Ice Goddess's). That game is nice but damn if it doesn't require a guide sometimes.

Part 37: Mintaka Imperial Fortress Redux

Armed with our dragon and the Ocean Mirror, it's time to take the fight back to Kalas and Melodia...sort of. Once we save the townsfolk from the inconvenience of walking 40 feet outside of town, anyway.

lmao the one question they didn't give the player a chance to answer. "We're going to save Kalas right?" "Uhhh..." "Okay lets go!!"

Also I think that random soldier had better voice acting than all the main characters so far.

Part 38: The Sanctum of Malpercio

Strap in, because this one's a big boy. Finally, we've accomplished our main objective: Stealing the Emperor's bath water.

That climax was just a mess between the tin can voice filter and the wooden stage directions. The voice actors were clearly trying their hardest but couldn't carry the scene by themselves. At least we'll get to see what in the world is going on with Mizuti?

Melodia: "I'm doing this because Malpercio wants to be reborn."

Me: "Okay, but why would you want to let him be reborn?"

Melodia: "Ages ago, humanity destroyed him-"

Me: "Nnnnnnnnno, I'm pretty sure they said he tried to swallow the ocean and drowned."

Melodia: "..."

Me: "Also that didn't answer my question. At all. Why do you care about doing any of this?!"

Evil is as evil does.

What a wreck.

Part 39: A Moment of Respite

So we got Kalas back, at the cost of our mirror. Now what? Well, we do have one more lead to work with, although getting there is...a little suspect, let's say.

Kalas was a secret child of destiny, Xelha was a secret queen, Savyna was a secret war criminal, Lyude is basically a fascist collaborator, Great Mizuti is from secret civilization, Gibari is... good with oars?

It is kind of amazing how consistently bad everyone is at planning anything unless they're doing something evil.

Kibayasu wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 22, 2020 4:37 am

Kalas was a secret child of destiny, Xelha was a secret queen, Savyna was a secret war criminal, Lyude is basically a fascist collaborator, Great Mizuti is from secret civilization, Gibari is... good with oars?

Gibari is a secret-but-not-very-secret former knight, which is pretty damn easy to forget since that was all the way back when we first stormed the castle to save King Ladekahn.

Oh yeah, but even that is well on the scale of "normal" just convenient.

Part 40: The Labyrinth of Duhr

The labyrinth is a lot less intimidating than it seems, aside from the starting area, there's only a couple splits and they all dead end very quickly. There isn't even a boss!

I can't think of any other games than this and FF8 that use this kind of maze gimmick.

It's a weird one, for sure.

I was going to get extremely annoyed at having a maze with a fixed camera angle behind the player and right angles and extremely similar textures everywhere but then I saw that map and yeah that's basically a straight line as far as RPG mazes go.