Interdimensional Observer

@Acacia Sgt 10/10 April Fools' parody.😄 The actual game releases internationally on the 25th of this month BTW. And... Counting the Inti thing as a joke (even if it's real), that's three mecha-related ones in a single year.

Seliph does later refer to Shannan as being like a big brother. Presumably it's mutual- Shannan is just amused seeing his baby bro having grown up and now becoming a man (although Seliph is probably the least traditionally masculine of male lords visually and to think people mocked Brawl!Marth). And I'm sure that in their rearing of the six kids, that Shannan played up his big brotherliness when Dad Oifey couldn't convince the children to do something, a perfectly legitimate parenting tactic. I think I had Seliph go alone into Ishtore's Bolting range, with the Wind Sword and other stuff. I recall getting stuck on an Adept RN for a few reloads.

Did the rest of the Lu Bu storyline today. I surprisingly liked it by the end.😄 They actually kept it in line with history (though a hypothetical split does exist), which means it ended at Xiapi with Lu Bu's execution, delivered by Cao Cao himself (with help from Xu Zhu). There was way less Diaochan than expected, she just ups and disappears after Dong Zhuo is slain. And Lu Lingqi -maybe having his daughter around is why Lu Bu wasn't allowed to have his lover- was just there for another playable (only five playable characters total in this story) and a female. She barely had any characterization and didn't do much to humanize Lu Bu, a tall order in itself. Rather pitiful, given what little of this fictitious fighting female's characterization exists seems to be "became a warrior to be useful to my father". This said, the Lu Bu storyline didn't exactly heroize its titular main character. Though it did try to put some positive spin on him in the unvoiced text given over the map of Han China, it was never denied that, while powerful, Lu Bu wasn't exactly a good guy. A man who begins his journey of less than ten years murdering two adoptive fathers, and the narrative calls him an outright tyrant by the start of his last stand at Xiapi. Any losses he suffers aren't exactly portrayed as poignant tragedies the way they are with the Three Kingdoms + Jin. Add to this Chen Gong, a very interesting portrayal for Koei of a strategist in sharp contrast to all the other ones in Dynasty and Samurai Warriors. You can feel the oiliness of his words, a charlatan who betrayed Wei who is clearly in it for glorious self-gain that he's only barely hiding. Lu Bu only barely listens to Chen Gong when he joins, and by the end he has basically stopped talking to him at all. The most brawny brutish barbaric of warlords with the sketchiest of tacticians and they've no sincere appreciation of each other, it's beautifully dysfunctional.* Truly, it came to feel like I was playing as villains. Loser villains, since it's a historical fact that Lu Bu was consigned to the Mass Grave of Failed Three Kingdoms Warlords.** Cao Cao, Liu Bei, the Sun and Sima families, they represent those who "won" what began as chaos where nobody could possibly have known in advance who would come out on top. Lu Bu and his story is the embodiment of the chaff, the vermin that failed to attain the heights of power, he is a textbook example of "How Not to Warlord", and oh how that brainless berserker of Dynasty Warriors would be foaming at the mouth hearing me call him what he is.😝 Again, for a few hours of mindless action and cheesy story that I wasn't expecting to get much out of, not half-bad.😃 *On Zhang Liao, the fifth playable of this route, he was very quiet and submissive. And yet, being the one with morals even if he speaks of them not, he would end up being the one to survive and find new glory under a truly-worthy master. -Speaking of the manly Zhang Liao as the pure-hearted one in the trio of him, Lu Bu, and Chen Gong, sounds bizarre when I think of how he would almost single-handedly later scare the s*** out of Sun Quan and every man, woman, and child in Wu. **Technically, all warlords are villains, probably? Also, luck/circumstances certainly played a major role in determining how things worked out in the I Wanna Rule China competition, as luck/circumstances does in all competitions in life. -But I'm simplifying things and running with the established narrative of Wei-Wu-Shu-Jin being filled with righteous genius and stuff. Massive lategame superweapons? Endless Space 2 looked in a thesaurus and went with "Behemoths" for their special big ships, the "Juggernaut" specialization being the one with the fleet-destroying... Ion Cannon.😆 Alternatively, you can make a Behemoth into an Obliterator and blow up systems of planets if you prefer scorched earth. (Although, a Behemoth specialized as a Citadel can provide some anti-Obliterator protection on your most vital star systems.)

Seems like there's always somebody in Japan who does the "what if otome spinoff?" schtick every year. Which is a little funny I admit, yet also perhaps slightly demeaning the female-catering VN subgenre by treating it as a joke and not a legitimate genre of game/VN. -Not to be a killjoy, as I don't intend to be by saying this. As for Koei's funny this year- I know they haven't forgotten ManaK exists.😛 Which makes it feel a little odd they're chose this jest at all, since it really isn't all that out-there. MK2 even had playable Punis.

I know WayForward made a real April Fool's game (Cat Girl Without Salad), and Platinum Games did (Sol Cresta), there was a (free it seems, so lower quality) Nekopara catboys game, and Sega put out The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog last year. So April Fools' games that actually exist have been surprisingly existent of late.

"...homage to 90s fantasy and robot anime." I've see it's questionable if this is real or not of course not, it's magical robot, complete with isekai'ed protagonist. April Fool's Day announcement, the visuals not being up to their standards (and near-total lack of UI elements), and this "game" being one of the fake games in the Not-Battle Network they recently announced leaves it debatable. But those same comments say Inti did file a trademark actually, so maybe this is an actual game, perhaps a lesser, sillier project, and these would be early-development stage images shown for the sake of making it look like a joke.

April Fool's is already starting in Japan... Inti Creates looks serious with this though? Visually looks kinda cheap by their standards. Not their best pixel art. 'ello Impact battles! -I guess I'll consider this from them.😛

Tell Alicia she's gonna choke eating a baguette that fast. So you went for it? Enjoy?

I only just remembered I had this image.: Leif's actual army, don't believe this Genealogy nonsense.😝

But Luxaar already croaked. Cryptic cutting-off for a joke.😛 Reminds me of the factually-untrue story that Peter the Great, laying on his deathbed, wrote "I leave it all to..." and never named his successor. -Peter had changed Russian succession law to whomever the prior tsar had willed it to be; not sure if he did that before or only after torturing his son Alexei to death.

The decisions one can make with a sci-fi setting. Sounds cool/fun however you interpret the unintended conjunction.😀

Even if he didn't have the stache, Oifey aged quite differently from Finn. Oifey is 14 at the start of Gen 1, Finn's age is unstated, but that he was allowed to fight... probably a year or two older? Just enough to make the difference in the tumult that follows. ...Just ignore Dew. (Although he's a plain thief, not a knight, thieves aren't a profession with age-related labor laws/standards.) Which is why I was silently disappointed that he wasn't fed both of those odd stat-boosting villages in Gen 1. Finn technically gets the most mileage out of them, that's an argument. -Not sure if he needs them though, I can't even remember which two stats get the boosts.😅

It's weird that in a world where family ties and genealogy matters he doesn't acknowledge Seliph first thing as his first-cousin. "The son of my father's friend" is a strange dilution of a connection that's stronger than that. How much of that tiny percentage of DNA that separate individual humans from each other do they likely share? Tomato tomato. I'll forgive you. Translations and names are a fickle thing really.😛 Either way, Leif is one of the only FE lords I actually have any real fondness for. Hector and perhaps Holmes being the other ones I'd say. I like the imperfect underdog boi. Marshal Nova disagrees. Reference to the obscure Battalion Wars, a Western-developed RTS spinoff of Advance Wars. Somehow, the son of the last tsar of Not-Russia became the leader of it when the country turned Commie. He's a sword infantry in PoR. Those two words are soooooo limiting in themselves that Stefan's stats as good/decent as they are outside of Luck (which hurts for dodgetanking as he should be expected to do), are actually fairly balanced, or even underpowered. RD Steffy is just P4-Endgame ready in case you didn't train up one of the alternative Trueblades. Genealogy still operates with non-HP stat caps of 30 or less. Finn has 22 Str and still has seven levels to get closer to his 27 cap. Even if he never hits it, could you seriously at all say his stats are that much worse than the kiddos with such small maximal numbers?🤔 That is weird indeed. Why did he get one with her? Or anyone really? It's more awkward acknowledging Oifey can fall in love with any Gen 2 girl than excluding him from love convos yet leaving his inclusion intact. Was this foreshadowing that one age-difference pairing you found in Vestaria?

-First, the chance she might be dead is a problem. And moving her alone into the "retreat when gameplay-killed" column for Gen 1 would look weird within the context of Gen 1. Two, it's not a bad idea at all.😀 Edain being the infantry healer girl (Ethlyn at least has a horse and swords) does give the impression that she isn't one for war. However, flipping back to Chapter 1, it does say that she was given the option to become a knight (probably because she is the minor-blooded daughter of one of the six dukes). And the only reason she turned it down for the life of a cleric was to find Brigid (which would make ready sense, with the Bragi priesthood being international she could probably freely travel, pray for/heal others along the way as a job, and find free accommodations at any church she encountered). As an advisor to Seliph, Edain could show more of the warrior's backbone she didn't necessarily portray all that much in Gen 1. Plus be a Team Mom, but a different Team Mom from Eyvel and Titania, the other two in FE who'd count for that role. And if I told you Oifey grew that stache because Shannan wanted some daddy?😜 -Don't take that seriously, at all. I prefer keeping things serious, subdued, and somber with these two if I'm going to ship 'em. The lives they've lived together have not been in the least conducive to silly frolicking. This instance even has total immunity from the variability of existence, since neither character is an unfixed child. It's either writing burnout from creating Gen 1 in all its elaborate detail even though we've pointed out holes in it during this playlog, or a simple mistake.

Fine fine fine fine fine! I've no desire to be spoiled on XC3.😀 But go ahead and alert me if you find the buried-sealed-invisible-translated-into-Harappan filing cabinet where the ending to X2 is gloriously detailed. Because dangit TELL ME ALREADY!

*Is about to start up DW9 again, gets overwhelmed by despair-joy-anger-despair internal cycling before I can.* ...Not the best thing in the morning. Did manage to play the first three Lu Bu story battles last night though. It wasn't a bad start to this odd bonus storyline built around a single hyped-up (yet pretty flat) character. Eunuch-murdering, protecting and then killing Dong Zhuo, not going off into total fantasyland at least to start. -Finish the XCX story first!😛 ...After that, I assume that at some point, Monolith will run out of reasonable room in the present Xeno-verse, and have to start another. To make that transparent when it happens they should change the name to Xenoshield or Xenospear, because swords are overrated.😝 I'm not sure exactly how I can respond to this. XC3 is still something I can't speak on. And for Xenosaga, well the way I experienced it was a tad bumpy, so I don't know if I can see what you can. For Xenoblade though, it is self-contained stories, no characters returning over multiple games (the XC3 DLC aside, which again, I can't speak to and my fearful irrational gut reaction until I play it is that the unimaginable absolute worst case scenario unfolded totally ruining everyone who came back), Xenosaga was episodic. Significant difference. Also on Xenosaga... did MOMO get any character growth in Episode III? Maybe a pinch for the peach biorobot if that? Did KOS-MOS and Shion get that much in Episodes I&II? I'm not sure. Was Jr. the only character to get significant development in all three games? Did chaos get any real development ever? Or being what he is, was chaos pretty much developed completely from the very start?

👏😄 On the other hand, I was only getting increasingly aggressive in my recent ES2 runs. The last I did had me jump into the midgame conquering all the good parts of the half of the galaxy I started in, intentionally stopping short of the ownership threshold I needed to trigger an early win so that I could watch the fruits of my aggressiveness grow. Did it with a faction that is supposed to be pacifist (which ironically ended up being very good at taking the major disapproval hits from owning so much territory) and defensive. Drive. Or Red Pollen Orbs. Takahashish.🍁

Majin Tensei is old and most people haven't played the fan translations. Devil Survivor however, certainly some SMT fans were born because of those two games. -Me being one of them. And I love both entries.😈❤️ Certainly lean more on the RPG side of "SRPG" (whereas FE traditionally leaned on the S), but then that's expectable given what it's a spinoff of. Give it a samsara-spin. By which I mean: The combination of the two individuals sees their souls momentarily return to the underlying reality of the universe. While part of the collective unconscious, the fragmentary ancient memories of other lives contained in those two souls are combined. When all the memory fragments are added together, the one other life which the combined souls possess the most memory fragments of becomes the focus of this fusion process. The fused soul searches for other fragments of this past life in the collective unconscious and collects as many as it can. -If at the cost of shedding some memories of the two lives now one. Finally, the fused soul is physically reincarnated, resembling the old life whose memories were reassembled. ...I think this works?😅 SMT has touched on samsara before, it wouldn't be unusual for it. This is less fusing people, and more... soul-searching?

I went to check as I wrote that out. The answer- they don't. They should've, obviously, since they've the aforementioned two decades of history together. Genealogy Remake would hopefully fix this, and maybe bring both of them into Seliph's new chatty entourage. (I'd definitely want Leif in the modern entourage too. I'd like Ares in there as well because he is a Major-blooded, and then we could have Sig-Quan-Eld Jrs. as a trio. Yet Ares's inclusion would be perhaps excessive, he isn't actually important at all. And I imagine we have to find an obligatory female -or probably two since Julia eventually leaves- to throw into it, to keep it from being total holy swordfest. However, Altena is optional and late, and any other female would feel very forced.)

That's why Edain survived, to non-awkwardly care for Larcei & Lana. The boys -Seliph, Ulster, Lester, Diarmuid- were usually under the direct fostering of Oifey and Shannan. Two now-grown men, who have known each other since 757, and are the only two who understand what each other has gone through in the past two decades. Thus, it should be of no surprise that during that time, particularly as they've engaged in some nontraditional parenting, they've developed certain affections for one another. Although they've rarely shown explicit tenderness to each other, they've been much too busy with more important matters, and Ulster was a such a crybaby that they rarely got to sleep alone for almost a decade.

Quick question- how do the Axe Bros even know Larcei???? She's a rebel, the enemy, who has spent her life alongside the Big Rebel (Shannan) and the Little Big Rebel (Seliph). When, where, and how did they get to know each other? ...Although this wouldn't necessarily apply to Creidne, since she wouldn't be a lesser royal of Issach. Creidne could've possibly joined the rebel army only a year ago or so at best, and could've met the Iu/Jo Bros normally before that without any risk of being taken captive. I mean, the conversation ought to be exactly the same had you gotten Hermina. These conversations have to be a double-serving of generic to account for that.

Where are your physical games made? What about the Switch? And maybe some components of your computer? -You're certainly already giving money to the Red Despotism via your gaming, just not to a Chinese developer. -Though I get declaring these to be different things. That's true of most of us, ain't it? If -I ask upon this Good Friday- there be divinity almighty, may they hopefully judge it fairly that we were practically-powerless sheep, subject to the vicissitudes caused by our shepherds.

I getcha on both counts. I get having a sort of stigma against Chinese games, I've also had doubts/concerns about buying games from there (thankfully, a lot of what they make is gatcha, so no sweat ignoring that). One thing I've tried asking myself though- does the developer have much a choice but to be based in China? Now I'm not talking Tencent and Netease, where it's pretty obvious I'm told that the authoritarian gov't has a strong hand. A small developer though? Should you not buy an honestly & lovingly-made game from them just because they have little practical choice (how expensive would it be for the entire dev team to move out their home country and rebase elsewhere?) but to live under the People's Bureaucracy Of Total Control and any restrictions it imposes? -Not sure if I'm right thinking this.

Dunno why you're holding back, what reason(s) is there for you to resist?😜 -Don't take that seriously, take your time to decide and whatnot.😀 I'm one who seriously overthinks my game buys about as often as I don't.😅

Noooooooooo idea.😆 Although, stealth as an element, not the entire mission.... Well, is it any surprise that you saying SRPG + the girl holding a rifle made me think of Valkyria Chronicles?😄 And sure there's the occasional *walks into a surprise hailstorm of bullets, dies in two seconds*, but the stealth aspect there ain't too bad.😀 Hopefully it's GOOD then!😃🤞