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Let's Play Tactics Ogre TKOL: Death of the Archer


Route Split  

8 members have voted

  1. 1. Which route do we take

    • Route A (Cybil)
      2
    • Route B (Rictor)
      6


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Have you ever heard the tragedy of Dark Alphonse the Unwise?

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Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis is a prequel to Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (and the Ogre Battle games too, or at least OB64) and the last original entry in the series to be released. It stars characters from the nation of Lodis (aka where the Dark Knights are from), something like 20 years before the events of the previous game, and tries to expand on Lodis and on its newly-created land of Ovis and how they play into the wider world. If you've played either version of LUCT, the gameplay of Knight of Lodis should feel quite familiar, but it also has some fairly cool and unique ideas of its own that would end up utterly unused by the LUCT remake several years down the road. To be honest, of the Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre games, this one's probably the least good, but I'm still a little fond of it; it has a certain pluck I admire.

While I'm hoping this LP will be a comprehensive playthrough of one of the game's routes (and we'll get to the route split later), I am generally less well versed in this game's systems and secrets than the previous one, so we may miss something. Fortunately, there are multiple excellent guides and fansites out there to help, but even so, if you think I may have missed something, please let me know (and don't jump the gun and tell me about endgame secrets while we're still fighting the tutorials).

I do ask that no one put obvious spoilers (especially regarding a certain character's identity) out in the open. Stick it in a spoiler or just don't mention it, please and thank you. While the plot isn't quite as good as LUCT's, it's still got some fun surprises in store, and while I'm well aware that Parrhesia already LP'd the first half of this game, I'm assuming that some readers haven't read that LP and starting fresh, both for their sake and also because I'd like to give my own thoughts on the game instead of just blatantly copying him. Plus it's more fun for me this way!

Alright, all that out of the way, to the experience!

Part 1 (Intro-Lutra Island): Fortunate Meeting

Spoiler

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RIght off the bat, we can see a notable artstyle shift; one that is, frankly, mostly a downgrade. Everything's just a bit too saturated and bright compared to the more muted palette of LUCT, and it can't get way with it quite as easily as OB64 does with its own bright palette due to how pixelated everything is.

 

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One notable improvement is the portrait art, though. While not as good as the portraits of the LUCT remake, it's still pretty good and definitely better than some of the frankly deformed-looking portraits of the previous game.

 

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Anyway, this Dark-Haired Knight here is our main character, but since we can name him he goes nameless for most of this cutscene. His default name is "Alphonse", and I'll be going with that when it comes time to name him.

Quote

Dark Haired Knight: “I’m more concerned with my new family name...When I heard the name “Loeher” it just doesn’t sound right. I’d rather it hadn’t changed at all.”

Young Man Named Rictor: “Come on, don’t be so cold. Once our ship departs, you won’t be able to see her for awhile.”

Sounds like our buddy Alphonse might've had a less-than-willing marriage of some sort.

 

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Rictor: “It sounds like you think this’ll be a vacation! I’m not sure you realize what we’re getting ourselves into.”

Dark-Haired Knight: “Excuse me, Commander Lasanti.”

Rictor: “Was that supposed to be sarcastic? This may be my first time commanding...but I am expecting a lot from you.”

Dark-Haired Knight: “Count on me, Sir.”

Despite clearly having a rapport, Rictor's still Alphonse's commanding officer, and doesn't appreciate feeling disrespected.

 

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Here comes the plot excuse for the limited customization we get at the start of the game!

 

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Aw, c'mon, Rictor. Think of the plot hooks this could give us!

Quote

Dark-Haired Knight: “......”

Rictor: “What’s wrong with you today? Why the sudden interest in fortune telling? Well, do as you like. I’m heading back. You better return soon, too.”

Dark-Haired Knight: “Yes, I know.”

 

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And off he goes, leaving us with the glorified game mechanic.

 

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I do appreciate this game's attempt to give its customization a reason for being. It's better than SNES LUCT's bizarre "say random contextless words to some gods for some reason" way of doing things, and more customizable as well!

 

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Anyway, I let Alphonse keep his default name and gave him a very good and cool birthday.

 

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Fortune Teller: whispering in this recesses of your mind...They take form and scream out, “Let it begin!”

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She's now gonna ask us six questions, with each one determining our starting party, starting alignment, and starting element. Unlike LUCT, the latter two things are not nearly as set in stone as they previously were, so this is mostly important for choosing the starting party.

 

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Anyway, I selected Truth, spawning a little soldier on the fortune-teller's table.

 

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Here's my answers to each question, in order. We'll get to what this gave me eventually, for now don't worry about it.

 

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We hold on these little figurines for a second before the screen cuts to black.

 

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Unlike last time, the intro explaining the setting and backstory isn't broken. Hooray!

 

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One thing I appreciate about TKOL is its attempts to define Lodis and its culture in ways the original wasn't too worried about, since there they were foreign to the main conflict and just existed to cause a Big Epic Battle Of Destiny at the end. It still doesn't go super in depth compared to fleshing out the game's actual setting, Ovis, but it's nice and flavorful.

 

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And as we can see, Lodis wasn't any better back then that it was when they showed up in Valeria.

 

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Just Evil Empire Things!

 

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"Peace" ain't worth much if it requires brutality to achieve and maintain, but you do you. I'm definitely not tying this into any modern day conflicts, no sir.

 

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Unlike the previous entry, this one doesn't "number" itself, likely because it was probably conceptualized after the initial plan for eight games. Given that those other games are pretty much dead, this is the best we got.

 

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Anyway, let's cut back to Alphonse on his "heroic" journey.

 

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Quote

Alphonse: “The ship can be repaired but it may take a while.”

Rictor: “How about the captain?”

Alphonse: “He said we should wait for the storm to settle first.”

Rictor: “Well, I guess there’s nothing we can do in a situation like this. I didn’t think the stormy season would come so soon. Our ship has been drifting for so long that I haven’t a clue where we are. We should be thankful that the ship didn’t sink.”

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Uh oh. Only bad things come of generic soldiers shouting from offscreen!

 

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See? We've got some trouble to deal with.

Quote

Soldier: “We have no idea who they are or what they want!”


Alphonse: “No way!... At a time like this!?”

 

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Well, at least we outnumber them.

 

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Stan: “Hehehe. That crest, those clothes...You must be from Lodis! I’m sorry but we can’t let you land on this island. Die here!!!”

Rictor: “Who are you? What do you want with us?”

Stan: “We’re hired men. We were told to give the knights from Lodis a warm welcome!”

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Ah, what a familiar sight. TKOL doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel when it comes to battle objectives; most are still "Defeat the Leader".

 

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One thing to note about this game is that, unlike LUCT, turns are phase-based rather than speed-based. That is to say, the player's units all move first, and then all the enemies move, as opposed to everyone moving in an order determined by how fast they are. I prefer this for a lot of reasons, but I appear to be in a bit of a minority since most people list this as a negative against TKOL compared to LUCT or the FFT games. Maybe something Berwick-esque would've made people happier, but then this game operates with much smaller armies than that one does.

 

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Like the tutorial of the last game, we can't control anyone but the main character, and the fight is practically impossible to lose. Here's Rictor explaining something that was already explained earlier.

 

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Here's Orson, an Archer, explaining how archery works.

 

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Unfortunately, he largely just kinda demonstrate's his own class's general ineptitude in this game.

 

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The generic soldiers will give tutorials later in the fight; now it's our turn to move.

 

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I'll get backt to explaining stuff after this fight, for now this is where we are.

 

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A little scene plays at the start of the enemy phase. I'm actually not quite sure how old Alphonse is, though I'm sure it's mentioned somewhere in the game.

 

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The generics take a bit of a beating. Thankfully, even if they die, we were never going to see either of them again anyway.

 

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Rictor himself is fairly tough, and could probably handle this himself, but he likes to hang back spamming missile spells at everyone except the boss, instead of fighting the guy he asked us to focus on. Not like the fight's too hard without him, anyway...

 

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This is actually somewhat important; attacks from behind don't trigger a counterattack like they did in LUCT, so they're always a safe bet provided positioning doesn't screw you over.

 

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Justin just gives a generic "Let's use teamwork!" message while also ignoring his own advice and rushing straight into the middle of the fight.

 

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Anyway, there's not a lot to say about this battle, so let's get out of here.

 

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Press F for Stan, we hardly knew ye.

 

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He drops his axe, which is a nice weapon this early on. Unfortunately, most player classes specialize in basically every weapon except the axe, so later axes won't be quite so lucky (though some are powerful enough to ignore the lack of specialization).

 

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Good eye, Alphonse.

Quote

Rictor: “Our presence was requested by the people of Anser. It must be forces from the North that attacked us.”

Alphonse: “Anser is in the South and Rananculus in the North. Is the conflict between the two really that bad?”

Rictor: “It’s more than a conflict. There’s a sizeable forest that separates them. Winter snows block both land and sea routes. They’ve not associated with each other for hundreds of years.

Alphonse: “And then, unexpectedly, soldiers from the North crossed the border...What is your father, the Duke of Felis, saying about this?”

Rictor: “To be honest, he doesn’t seem very concerned. It’s happened several times before, but he ignored the situation. This time, at the people’s request, he finally decided to do something.”

Alphonse: “I see. When I received these orders, I was surprised by how small our force was and that most of the knights were inexperienced, like me.”

Rictor: “My father didn’t want to go to the trouble of sending, so he sent me to take care of things instead. Are you worried?

Alphonse: “Not really...just curious.”

Rictor: “Well, if we need more soldiers we can just hire some. It’s cheaper than sending reinforcements by ship. Since my father became the Duke, he’s been very stingy. I don’t have much admiration for him.”

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This is a bit of expansion on the whole deal with Lodis: I may merely be forgetting, but SNES/PSX LUCT barely hints at the borderling-theocratic elements of Lodis, or at the religious function the Dark Knights serve.

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Rictor: “I don’t know anymore. My father wants me to inherit his position as Duke of Felis so that he can hold the reins of power even in retirement.”

Alphonse: “By the way, didn’t you say that you’ve visited Ovis before?”

Rictor: “I was only a child. I can barely remember.”

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Suddenly, an assassin!

 

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Alphonse pushes Rictor out of the way, gets shot, and activates his Morph Ball mode as he falls into the sea.

 

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Honestly buddy, if that generic soldier can one-shot you, you weren't gonna do anything to Rictor.

 

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It seems like we've been separated from our buddies.

 

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But fortunately for us, someone else has come to help out.

We'll be back with more tutorial fights, meeting the best character in the game, and maybe hints of a deeper plot yet to come.

 

Edited by epilepsyduck
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I always loved Knight of Lodis, so I will be watching this for sure! Amazing game besides the fact that it plays a tad slow without an emulator to speed it up. 

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Ooh, good to see some Tactics Ogre love! Especially for Knight of Lodis. The game I still dare to say it's better than FFTA1.

I'll be taking a look into this!

Edited by BergelomeuSantos
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4 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

RIght off the bat, we can see a notable artstyle shift; one that is, frankly, mostly a downgrade. Everything's just a bit too saturated and bright compared to the more muted palette of LUCT, and it can't get way with it quite as easily as OB64 does with its own bright palette due to how pixelated everything is.

It's not that bad imo, and beside i'm pretty sure it's an issue with the GBA rather than the game itself.

As a matter of fact, lots of games ported on the GBA from other consoles (mostly the SNES) got a color-fixing patch from romhackers.

 

4 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Here's my answers to each question, in order. We'll get to what this gave me eventually, for now don't worry about it.

And if anyone can't wait till then:

http://www.tacticsogre.com/secrets.htm#4

 

4 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

One thing to note about this game is that, unlike LUCT, turns are phase-based rather than speed-based. That is to say, the player's units all move first, and then all the enemies move, as opposed to everyone moving in an order determined by how fast they are.

In short: just like "Fire Emblem".

(And i guess most people liked it better when archers were the OPest class in the game)

 

4 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Unfortunately, he largely just kinda demonstrate's his own class's general ineptitude in this game.

Case in point, though i personally don't think they are THAT bad here either: they are the only class with bows proficiency, and their awful stats growths won't matter too much as long as you don't feed them too many levels outside of training (during which you'd switch them to some other class)

 

4 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

The generics take a bit of a beating. Thankfully, even if they die, we were never going to see either of them again anyway.

Uh, actually...

Spoiler

... we will, at least in the canonical route (which we will NOT follow though)

 

4 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

He drops his axe, which is a nice weapon this early on. Unfortunately, most player classes specialize in basically every weapon except the axe, so later axes won't be quite so lucky (though some are powerful enough to ignore the lack of specialization).

In LUCT knights were completely outclassed by bersekers, in KoL knights are the best melee class while bersekers (aka bandits) are outclassed by frigging soldiers instead (not that it matters though, since they are enemy-axclusive here for some reason)

4 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Honestly buddy, if that generic soldier can one-shot you, you weren't gonna do anything to Rictor.

Case in point.

(Also, i'd like to mention the female soldier has my favorite battle sprite in the game: too bad the class itself is barely viable due to lack of skills/spells and proficiencies)

Edited by Golb89
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5 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

And as we can see, Lodis wasn't any better back then that it was when they showed up in Valeria.

Well, that's one way to maintain continuity.

5 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

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Alphonse pushes Rictor out of the way, gets shot, and activates his Morph Ball mode as he falls into the sea.

I guess he forgot it's roll to dodge, not roll after the attack.

Actually, the brighter colours are almost certainly due to the lack of a backlight in OG GBAs. A lot of games end up like this in the first three years, as an attempt to deal with the issues that would follow with there being no backlight. And then you have Circle of the Moon going all into the dark.

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Awesome sadness, here we goooo !

I "like" how there's a little girl looking over the corpse of what seems to be one of her parents, it renforce the tragedy of war. 😞
The church have Black Knights, always crack me up.

17 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

We'll be back with more tutorial fights, meeting the best character in the game, and maybe hints of a deeper plot yet to come.

Waifu, sadness and a lot of unfairness ! Yay ! 😄

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Glad to see so much enthusiasm right out the gate! Hope you enjoy!

Let's see what's become of Alphonse after his unfortunate little tumble into the sea.

Part 2 (Scabellum): Errant Errands

Spoiler

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After that blond girl found us on the beach, she immediately built an entire bed and house around us, all without waking us up. How talented!

 

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Probably not near your military pals anymore, but other than that, who knows?

 

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Ah, a generic "girl". Nice to see how the plot-unimportant folks are doing.

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Alphonse: “Well...not too bad.”

Girl: “...Good. You’ve been asleep from a long time...This is a church in Solea. You were washed up on the beach outside.”

Alphonse: “Did you save me...? Miss...?”

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Oh, you have a name. I guess you're going to matter after all.

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Girl: “I’m not a nun, but I am helping the priest of this church. A...Are you from Lodis?”

Alphonse: “I am a knight of Felis. ...My name’s Alphonse, Alphonse Loeher. We were headed for this island by ship, but a storm hit and we lost our way. With our ship in shambles, we were attacked by pirates.”

Girl: “Did you fall overboard?”

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I'm sure you did fine for someone who'd been shot with a crossbow.

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Eleanor: (giggle) “Maybe a mermaid saved you. There aren’t many left, but some still live around here.”

Alphonse: “Mermaid? A woman with a fish’s tail?”

Eleanor: “It was a long time ago, but once I saw a beautiful mermaid. Her whole body was shining in gold...”

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Enough subtle plot hooks, Eleanor. We've got a semi-important (and also The Best) character to meet!

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Alphonse: “Who are you?”

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Softspoken Woman: “I was once a soldier of Rananculus, but now I am on my own. Eleanor, may I speak with him a little?”

Eleanor: “Of course.”

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Alphonse: “You said that you were a soldier of Rananculus? Was that with the northern White Fang Troops, the cause of this island’s troubles?”

Ivanna: “That’s right, but that was nearly 10 years ago. Eleanor told me about what happened to you. I wanted to speak with you. Felis...The Order of the Sacred Flame...You were sent here by Lodis at the request of Anser?”

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Hey, she shared a bit of backstory with you, Alphonse. It's only polite to share back.

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Ivanna: “I’ve heard that, in Scabellum, there’s a group of knights in unfamiliar armor. Are they comrades of yours?”

Alphonse: “Hmm...”

Ivanna: “There are no organized troops in the South, and their accent and manners are different. Rumors spread quickly.”

Alphonse: “We were separated by the storm. If this is true, then I must contact them.”

Ivanna: “I have some errands to take care of in Scabellum, so I’ll go with you. I’ll come again tomorrow. See you then.”

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Off she goes, giving us yet one more chat with Eleanor.

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Alphonse: “I appreciate your kindness. I will leave here tomorrow afternoon. Thank you.”

Eleanor: “...You’re welcome.”

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Eleanor: “Father Hamen’s calling me. I have to go.”

Alphonse: “Father Hamen?”

Eleanor: “He’s the priest here...and my foster father.

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Here's a fun out-of-context screenshot for everyone. Knight of Lodis has a significantly more competent translation compared to Let Us Cling Together, so there's not as many of them here as we saw last time.

 

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We get our first glimpse of the world map. The flag represents our location, while the sword is the cursor. We'll explore the functions of the map later, for now let's just go where the game asked us to.

 

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The classic "congested man saying "Fight It Out!" through a sock-covered microphone" plays as we enter the second tutorial battle.

 

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This map feels mildly familiar from LUCT somehow, but I don't think it's actually copied. All the towns in both games tend to look samey.

Quote

Alphonse: “So quiet...It doesn’t seem like a port city.”

Ivanna: “Since the White Fang troops arrived, the people in the towns around here have been more cautious. This port used to be bustling with activity...”

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Alphonse interrupts Ivanna's somber reflections to warn of approaching danger.

 

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Judging from your generic portrait, I'm guessing you're a throwaway boss, so maybe you should be introducing yourself to me!

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Ivanna: “The woman in the middle looks like a knight of Rananculus. They’ve already filtered into this town. We may have no choice but to fight them.”

Alphonse: “She’s...from Rananculus...?”

Ivanna: “I’d guess from her attire that she’s a spellcaster. Alphonse, be mindful of the elements. You know about the four natural forces that protect us, right?”

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Look, Ivanna, I'm gonna cover that fancy elements stuff soon when I do a bit of a deeper dive into the game's mechanics. Don't waste my time with pointless tutorials!

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Alphonse (B): “Of course I know! Let’s go!”

Mullin: “How annoying. If you get in our way, we’ll kill you.”

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We've got to kick the mage girl's ass to end this battle. Once again, though, we only control Alphonse; Ivanna is just a guest, and while she's strong she's not always as aggressive as I'd like. Still, the enemies are relatively weak, and we'll be getting some backup before long, so it's not a tough battle.

 

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Alphonse positions himself just right to be harmlessly shot with arrows.

 

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The boss tends to run away, especially on the first turn when she can't yet cast.

 

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Ivanna's a fair bit stronger than Alphonse, likely due to being a better class than Soldier. If only she'd stop dawdling and be a little more proactive.

 

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I dunno about that, Alphonse. There's not THAT many of them.

 

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With so many characters already introduced, there's not telling who this could be!

 

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Oh, it's just you.

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Alphonse: “And you as well!

Rictor: “We’ll celebrate our reunion after we deal with these rogues.”

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The bots largely take care of the rest of the fight. We could sit back and let them finish it for us, if we wanted.

 

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But I figured it didn't hurt to get some experience too, as well as to mistime screenshots and show tutorial messages instead of the actual level-up animation.

 

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The boss is the only foe who does particularly impressive damage. Even so, being MP reliant means she can't spam it effectively.

 

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There's not a lot to this fight, so let's just jump directly to the boss dying.

 

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The boss drops one of her spells, Thunder Flare. This is equivalent to the Thunder spell of the previous game, and is generally better than the other attack spells we have this early on.

 

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After the fight, we cut to Rictor chatting with us in some attic or something.

Quote

Rictor: “we boarded a small craft and came to this port, where we spoke to the mayor. The townspeople have been willing to provide information, but not money or soldiers.”

Alphonse: “Are they too cowardly to protect themselves?”

Rictor: “They take our protection for granted. Since the island was subjugated by the Holy Lodis Empire, Ovis has fallen under the jurisdiction of Felis.”

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Well, that just seems unreasonably rude. I mean, who would have problems with you guys?

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I just can't figure it out!

Quote

Rictor: “Things probably won’t go very smoothly even though this is Lodis’ territory, but it’s also true that Southerners want nothing to do with Rananculus.”

Alphonse: “They dislike both us and the people of the North.”

Rictor: “As for the task at hand...Our mission is to investigate and resolve the conflict here. According to our information, the number of foreign soldiers and pirates has increased over the last year or two. We also heard that pirates were spotted here a few days ago, so we hid and waited for their return. Then you showed up.”

Alphonse: “The White Fang Troops are under the direct order of the Lord of Rananculus. He must have some hand in the current problems...”

Rictor: “The Batraals...They’ve ruled Rananculus for generations. The current lord is Naris. Before inheriting that title, he was the head knight of the White Fang Troops.”

Alphonse: “I doubt this is merely a show of power...So, have you discovered their intentions?”

Rictor: “No. I’m not certain of anything yet. They’ve been acting in small groups. Their leader’s a knight, but the rest seem to be disorderly fellows, maybe bandits. Oddly enough, they’ve made no demands, they’ve just been excavating ruins and collecting old books.”

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You don't know that. Maybe Lord Naris just takes education very seriously!

Quote

Alphonse: "What do you estimate their numbers to be?”

Rictor: “We know little about their strength or true objective, but we do know that the troops which are causing the recent problems are stationed by the ruins southeast of Naja. Their leader is Nichart Briffaut, a knight of Rananculus.”

Alphonse: “Will you attack them head on?”

Rictor: “No, if we attack them directly, the enemy will have the advantage because they’re more familiar with this area. Therefore, my plan is to attack them from the flanks. That way, they’ll have their backs to the ocean. I’ll go through the forest, and you’ll cross Vespa Hill and attack from the west.”

Alphonse: “But, we are too few to divide in half.”

mRWzlQG.png?1RPnNdvr.png?1

Well, if you're gonna bribe me to leave, I guess I have to!

Quote

Rictor: “Prepare your troops using these campaign funds. Enter the ruins while we lure their main force out. Capture their leader and find out their purpose.”

Alphonse: “Alright.”

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We're back on the map, with a new location open for us to visit.

 

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We also have full access to the game's menu systems. We'll put off examining that for now, though.

 

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Instead, we'll just save. Next time, we'll be making little-to-no forward progress as we examine what exactly makes TKOL tick, what's changed between games, and what sorts of ideas it has to set itself apart.

 

Edited by epilepsyduck
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2 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

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Judging by the last part he's a natural diver though.

2 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

With so many characters already introduced, there's not telling who this could be!

 

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Oh, it's just you.

It's pretty convenient that he happened to catch up with his troop so quickly.

I think I might have tried this before, or at least seen up to this point. Maybe I should consider it (or TO in general), but it'll have to take a ticket in the queue that is my game pile. Also, I actually like FFTA a bit, considering I finished it and not FFT.

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On 6/4/2020 at 8:35 PM, epilepsyduck said:

mRWzlQG.png?1

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Well, if you're gonna bribe me to leave, I guess I have to!

(Between RicHtor's portraits and the tone of their conversation, that's actually perfectly plausible)

Edited by Golb89
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On 6/5/2020 at 6:59 PM, Golb89 said:

(Between RicHtor's portraits and the tone of their conversation, that's actually perfectly plausible)

Rictor confirmed Alphonse-hater.

This is gonna be a rather slow update here as I just explain some of the basic game mechanics for folks who might not be familiar with it, as well as how things differ from our last little excursion to Ogre land.

Part 3 (Scabellum): Ogre Emblem

Spoiler

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Instead of going to Vespa like the game wanted, we're gonna stay around Scabellum for now and monkey with the menu functions currently provided to us.

 

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First off, we come to the Organize menu, the place where we can examine and customize our party.

 

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Hitting A on a character then brings up a familiar (although condensed) menu, showing the character's stats and equipment. One notable change is the stats themselves: Vitality, Mentality and Dexterity have all been dropped, and most of their effects have been folded into Strength, Intelligence and Agility. This means a character good at dealing physical damage is usually good at taking it as well, and the same is true for magical damage and for both hitting enemies and dodging attacks. Stats also still level in class-dependent ways, but now there's a slight variance in how many points a stat can go up in; a character with a growth of 5 in a stat may gain 4, 5, or 6 stat points in a given level, seemingly randomly.

Another thing to note is the Movement stat, which displays as 4.8 for our boy Alphonse right now. Classes still have their own unique base movements, but that movement stat is now lowered by the weight of their equipment, with heavier pieces offering greater reductions. This is likely to compensate for equipment no longer making a unit's turns take longer, and while it still discourages wearing too much heavy gear it no longer punishes units for having any armor heavier than a robe. The decimal is simply to prevent all heavy equipment from lowering movement by a full space; it always rounds down, so only the first number matters to your character's actual movement.

Movement types are also back, and represented by two symbols; the shoe represents the base movement type, while the little figure in the water represents how the character handles water. Water is a slightly more important mechanic than before, so there's actually multiple ways for units to handle moving through it. We'll see more diverse movement types as the game goes on.

The last thing to note is character Alignment and Element; namely, they're no longer a permanent stat of affairs. Characters can change elements and alignments by using certain items on themselves or on other units, meaning you aren't doomed if you wanted your character to become a certain class but they had the wrong alignment for it, or if you had too many characters of a certain element. While elements still function as they did despite this (elemental alignment with one's own gear makes you stronger, certain elements mutually do more damage to each other), this does kinda nullify alignment as a mechanic, since it no longer effects anything as far as I'm aware; it might've been better to drop it if they wanted to change it like this. 

tl;dr: stuff has changed a fair bit from LUCT, so don't expect knowledge of the previous game to carry you to victory.

 

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Hitting left or right brings us to my favorite addition of Knight of Lodis, the Emblems page. Characters acquire these emblems by doing various things in combat, such as dodging deadly attacks or finding hidden items. These emblems then go on this page, and more importantly, cause some sort of effect on the character that lasts throughout the rest of the game. Most emblems have positive effects, but some have negative or purely cosmetic effects, and for some the effect's utility depends entirely on the unit who has the emblem. Alphonse always starts with one emblem depending on his answers to the fortune teller; we'll get to the one I picked and what it does in a moment.

 

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Pressing Select still brings up the little cursor that gives you more info on things (and is generally more useful than the info the previous game gave you). One interesting note is that the Loyalty mechanic has been totally dropped. Instead, highlighting a character's name with the Select button gives you their "Fortune", which relates to the hidden Luck stat and the Biorhythm mechanics that affect it. I'll be honest, I have no idea how these mechanics function, and the guides online are not very helpful, but I can assume a good-sounding fortune means good things, while a bad-sounding one means bad things. That's about the best I've got for this particular mechanic.

 

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The various item menus all work pretty much as you'd expect; they show you the items in a list and allow you to equip them to your characters or view their stats by hitting Select. Notably, consumable items now have their own menu, as they're no longer considered "equipment" and no longer take up a slot that could go to a character's armor. Units now just use these items from a collective inventory, which makes them a tiny bit more practical and, in some cases, a little broken.

 

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The Class menu now shows how many of a given class your army can currently have based on everyone's stats, instead of merely showing what classes a specific unit can have. At the start of the game, the tree for male and female units is likely to be limited to Soldier + whichever two classes the fortune teller gave you, and while a bit of training will unlock a couple more, most classes now require specific emblems in addition to having minimum stats, so you'll need to go into actual battles and make progress in the game to get the rest.

 

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Dismiss has fairly obvious applications, allowing you to get rid of units you don't want. Not gonna do that when our team consists of five people.

 

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Sort, meanwhile, allows you to sort this screen via various criteria, notably sorts via all of the criteria present instead of just selecting one, in the order you placed them on the list. It's handy, but the default organization is fine for right now.

 

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We escape from the Organize menu at last, now it's time for the familiar Training menu.

 

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One exceptionally good change is the prep screen; no longer are we limited to placing our units on an abstract rectangle and hoping for the best. Instead, we get a large area where we can place our units, directly on the map so we can actually see what we're doing. The unit limit is 8 now instead of 10, likely to make the battles a little simpler.

 

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As Alphonse moves, a dizzying array of numbers appear, representing various mechanics, some of which we've covered and some we haven't. The most notable is the little gauge over in the bottom right corner, the unit's Mental Gauge. This affects a unit's ability to both land attacks and dodge them, and while it's usually set to 0, there are various effects that can move it up or down, with the caps being -2 and +2. We don't have any way to effect it now, but that'll change.

Also, in the upper right corner, we have terrain. Terrain still has effects on various elements, but now instead of a stat boost to characters of an element, it instead affects the power of elemental magic, with both the caster and the target having their terrain affect the outcome. Terrain now also directly affects hit and dodge/block rates, and this effect is element-neutral and instead depends on the unit themselves; some classes are better on some terrain than on others.

One final note is MP: it starts at 0 and goes up by 10 every turn, as opposed to raising in a somewhat unpredictable way based on unit speed like in the last game. Of course, with the ability to access the inventory to use MP boosters, one can still cast fairly early in the battle without having to give up equipment space to do it.

 

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Past that, things aren't too different. Attacking no longer lets you throw a rock, sadly, though some classes have abilities that replace that, and items allow you to access a shared pool of stuff as I said earlier.

 

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Hitting R brings up a system menu, allowing you to change who the AI controls in training, look at the status screens of every unit, and adjust the game options. It also just lets you straight up leave, which is what we're doing.

 

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With all that training out of the way, it's time for a relaxing shopping trip. As you can imagine, the options aren't too different from last time, though Auctions are gone so you can no longer sell animals to make a tidy profit. I guess PETA caught wind of my moneymaking schemes and decisively put a stop to it.

 

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The Buy menu is still divided into Item and Spellbook.

 

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The Item menu starts out with a very basic set of gear, but it updates fairly regularly so we'll be able to get better stuff eventually.

 

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Spells aren't too different, either, though at least this game gave us healing and support spells and not just basic attack spells.

 

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Then we get to the Hire menu. Like last time, this lets us hire male and female troops plus one non-human soldier, with the latter depending on the location and the in-game date. You can now hire them at a higher level than just level 1 for 200 Goth a level, but given that this means leveling your troops in the rather poor Soldier class you shouldn't give them too many levels this way.

 

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I ended up buying a Soldier of each gender, plus a Hawkman, generally the best of the non-human classes. This completely drained my cash reserves, however.

 

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With our shopping out of the way, let's take a quick peak at what the System menu has for us.

 

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The first two options are just Save and Load, which I feel I don't have to explain. Here, though, we have the game's hint system.

 

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It brings up a menu full of gameplay tips. Unlike the similar menu is LUCT, this isn't poorly-translated gibberish, so it's actually somewhat useful if you don't understand something, though what is does and does not consider important enough to get its own section is rather strangely distributed.

 

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We've also got Options and Return to Title, which are also self-explanatory. What an easy and simple menu!

 

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Before you march off to Vespa, you should spend a bit of time training in each of the three maps available to us. Not for the EXP (though that's also nice), but to grab certain items you couldn't get before.

 

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Hidden items are back, and unlike LUCT, where they were nice but generally not that helpful, this game's rewards are usually fairly practical, and thus it's worth grabbing them as soon as you can. The Dragon Shield is always acquired from that particular space, but the other items are random and drawn from a list of appropriate gear.

 

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I ended up giving my Hawkman here a special emblem relating to picking up treasures as a result of my thoroughness. The Glass Pumpkin's another guaranteed item in this particular map, and it's a rather useful accessory that also ties to a fun sidequest.

 

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I did let my folks engage in the old training method of punching the fuck out of each other. This takes a lot longer in TKOL than it did in LUCT; I think this game automatically lowers unarmed damage.

 

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Once we were done with that, my characters ended up with a lot of new emblems. I figured now was a good time to go over some of them;

First, we've got Arbitration, an emblem awarded for persuading five enemy units to your side (and we'll get to some of the mechanics on that once we reach Vespa). However, Alphonse here can actually just start with this emblem rather than needing to earn it, depending on his answers to the fortune teller. Its special effect is to make the character better at persuading enemies; it adds a 30% boost to your persuasion chances, which is rather handy.

 

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We also have the Knight's Certificate, which is granted by performing multiple melee attacks on enemies from the front or sides.. Its only effect is to unlock the Knight class for the character, but none of my characters have the stats to access it yet so we won't be seeing it until a bit later.

 

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The Book of Initiation emblem is awarded for dodging or blocking 3 consecutive attacks. The reward is a class that we won't have the stats for until mid-game at least, so we'll save that for later. It's a male-only class, so female units gain no benefit from this emblem.

 

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The Miracle emblem is awarded for dodging an attack while at very low HP. The reward, in a very Fire Emblem fashion, is to have your dodge rate increased when your health is low. It's not a big increase, but every bit helps!

 

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The Self-Preservation emblem is awarded for killing a foe with a counterattack. It makes your counter attacks do more damage than your normal attacks, and thus is quite desirable for frontline tanky-type units.

 

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The Berserk emblem is awarded for one-hit killing an enemy. The prize for this affects Biorhythm in some way, but as I have no real clue how this mechanic functions I don't really know the value of it.

 

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The Fist Fight emblem is earned by killing an enemy with your bare fists (and also without any other equipment, from what I can tell). This causes your punches to become a lot more powerful, and is rather useful for bow-using units, whose weapons generally leave them unable to counterattack well.

 

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Speaking of archery, the Sniper emblem is granted by hitting units 5 consecutive times with a bow. The reward is a +10 boost to Agility, which is handy for everyone, not just bow-users. Don't be afraid to cheese things a bit to get everyone a boost!

 

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Finally, we come to Embodiment of Desires, which is granted to units who pick up 5 hidden treasures. This causes all future treasure spaces to generally give better loot. You might wanna sacrifice some of the earliest treasure spaces to get this on a few different units instead of picking them all up with the same guy; more units with this emblem makes it easier to get the best stuff, and even at their best the early treasures are nothing particularly amazing.

 

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With emblems out of the way, it's time to talk about classes. We're only gonna deal with the ones we currently have; we'll talk about more as we gain access to them.

Soldier's are the gender-neutral replacement for the Soldier/Amazon dichotomy of LUCT, as part of TKOL's tendency to turn previously gender-specific classes into gender-neutral ones. As you might expect, they have rather unexceptional stat gains; pretty much the only stat they get much growth in is their HP. The class isn't strictly terrible, but it's something to get out of ASAP so your characters don't end up kinda mediocre by the end.

 

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The Ninja returns from LUCT, and while it's a little nerfed, it's still rather handy. Most of their growths aren't much better than the Soldier's, but they do have considerably better Agility, and the class has actual special abilities that make it worth staying in. They have far more movement than other human classes at the stage of the game we're in, and they can walk on water as they could before, in addition to being better at jumping up and down from various heights. They can equip a single "missile" spell (which have hit chances and are single target; a bit worse than their previously more expansive spell list) and throw a shuriken attack that's reasonably powerful early in the game. They've unfortunately lost their dual-wielding, but their sheer mobility makes them a useful class, and the extra Agility never hurts. Katana specialization is a bit unfortunate, since those weapons are uncommon, but there's nothing stopping them from using swords or bows.

 

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Archers are also back, and they haven't fared nearly as well in the transition from LUCT to TKOL. Their advantages of excellent hit rates, significant attack range and good movement remain, but the fact Agility no longer factors into damage the way Dexterity did in the last game hurts quite a bit, and their growths are barely any better than the Soldier's; Agility is the only stat they're better in, and not by as much as the Ninja is. While they're not unusable, they're rather mediocre, and the fact they have no special abilities does them no favors. You might want to switch a bow-using character back to this class once they're done leveling to grab that tiny extra bit of specialization damage, but they're not something to level in.

 

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Now we get to the Wizard, the early-game caster. Little has really changed for this class; they still specialize in attack spells, they still have high Intelligence and kinda bad everything else, and they still start out strong but get roundly outclassed once better casters come along. One thing to note is that male wizards are generally less useful than female ones; female wizards have multiple useful options to eventually graduate to, while males only have one rather mediocre class and one powerful but very-endgame class, and they share the latter with female wizards anyway.

 

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The Cleric class is similar to the Wizard, and similar to its old situation from LUCT, though their spell list is a bit less restrictive. Notably, Clerics actually have better Intelligence growths than the Wizard, making it a useful class to dip into for your attack mages, though the alignment differences between the two can make that challenging at times. One thing to note is that anyone who wants to stay a Cleric and not use it as a dip should never fight non-undead foes; the eventual class this transitions into has a maximum kill allowance, and it's a rather low one at that. Given that the Cleric is kind of wimpy in combat and only has one rather bad attack spell, though, this shouldn't be too hard.

 

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Next we come to the Beast Tamer, our first gender-restricted class; only men can be one. It, too, suffers in the transition between LUCT and this game; it's not really meaningfully better than the Soldier, and for characters with hopes of being magic-users, it's actually worse. Slightly higher Strength makes it at least strictly better than Soldier for training, but even then, its Strength is still somewhat iffy compared to other melee-oriented classes. Giving a boost to the Mental Gauge of allied Beast units, and being better at persuading them, gives it at least some minor niche, but past that you're better off ignoring it. Even specializing in Whips isn't enough to make it an attractive option for more than a dip.

 

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Practically everything I said about Beast Tamers applies to their female counterpart, Dragon Tamers. They actually have stats that are almost identical to Soldiers, and thus are pretty much interchangeable with them; they just trade a bit of HP for some MP, a mostly-lateral move. They also specialize in "Thrusting Swords" like Rapiers, but these weapons are generally poor so this doesn't do them any favors. They can also cast missile spells, which I guess is kinda okay, but really, if you're using one, you're using it to either recruit or empower Dragon units; there's simply no real reason to bother past that. At least Dragons tend to be better than most Beasts.

 

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Moving on to the single non-human we have, let's meet the Hawkman. One nice thing TKOL did for non-humans is make their special abilities run of an MP-like resource called SP, which charges at the same rates but can't be boosted by MP items. While that's a little unfortunate, the fact they no longer have to chew through their own health makes these abilities generally less risky and more consistently useful. Unlike last time, where generic Hawkmen had no special abilities, here all of them have Thunder Arrow, a blatant copy of Canopus and his Wind Shot, which is rather handy for more melee-focused birdboys. Really, though, Hawkmen tend to make better archers than fighters; their Strength is rather good compared to the Archer class, and their ability to fly ensures they can always find a good vantage point to fire from. While they're not as all-around powerful as Canopus, they're still very practical and worth picking up.

 

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That's enough explaining shit, I feel, at least for the time being. Next time, we're gonna finally go where the plot wants us to and get into a fight with some folks because of some reasons.

 

Edited by epilepsyduck
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20 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Stats also still level in class-dependent ways, but now there's a slight variance in how many points a stat can go up in; a character with a growth of 5 in a stat may gain 4, 5, or 6 stat points in a given level, seemingly randomly.

Really?! First time i've heard of it!

 

20 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

this does kinda nullify alignment as a mechanic, since it no longer effects anything as far as I'm aware; it might've been better to drop it if they wanted to change it like this. 

That's not true in the least: it just means you now have a chance to change an existing character's alignment and element (not their name though) if you really want/need to, but as far as i remember the items needed for that don't exactly grow on trees so it's not like you can do it the same way you swap equipments.

 

21 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

though the alignment differences between the two can make that challenging at times

Case in point!

 

20 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Hitting left or right brings us to my favorite addition of Knight of Lodis, the Emblems page.

Actually, i think they should have done a better job with these: the fact some emblems do f@ck nothing or even have negative effects has always irked me.

 

20 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Units now just use these items from a collective inventory, which makes them a tiny bit more practical and, in some cases, a little broken.

This is another thing that's always bothered me: sure, the way consumable items where handled in LUCT was a bit cumbersome, but the actual solution for that was to just add a different set of equippable slots for them (just like they did in OB64, for instance): the shared inventory thing ripped off turn-based RPGs seems cheap and lazy imo, and makes infinitely less sense in a tactical RPG.

 

20 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

most classes now require specific emblems in addition to having minimum stats

Still baffled the Sniper emblem is not actually required to unlock the Archer class, especially since it's very easy to acquire in training and you'd want everyone to get it asap anyway for the Agility bonus.

 

20 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

One exceptionally good change is the prep screen; no longer are we limited to placing our units on an abstract rectangle and hoping for the best.

That wasn't too bad in LUCT though as far as i remember: FFT on the other hand...

 

20 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Auctions are gone so you can no longer sell animals to make a tidy profit.

But you can still buy them (i.e. i HIGHLY doubt the dragons and beasts you can hire in the shops are there on their own accord, though the demi-humans probably are)

 

20 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

You can now hire them at a higher level than just level 1 for 200 Goth a level, but given that this means leveling your troops in the rather poor Soldier class you shouldn't give them too many levels this way.

Non-human troops would be fine hiring that way though, but since the max level you can hire them is that of your highest level unit (most likely Alphonse) you'd most likely be better off powerleveling them through training instead (since preforming ANY action on ANY character gives exp proprotional on the level difference)

 

20 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

We also have the Knight's Certificate, which is granted by performing multiple melee attacks on enemies from the front or sides.

More like letting the attacking unit get countered, actually: pretty sure it wouldn't have worked if you attacked a melee unit with a bow.

 

21 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

You might wanna sacrifice some of the earliest treasure spaces to get this on a few different units instead of picking them all up with the same guy; more units with this emblem makes it easier to get the best stuff, and even at their best the early treasures are nothing particularly amazing.

Guranteed items and spoils of battle count toward that too though, so you don't actually need to sacrifice anything.

 

21 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

The class isn't strictly terrible, but it's something to get out of ASAP so your characters don't end up kinda mediocre by the end.

As i mentioned earlier, class-based stat gains don't mean much if you tend to mostly level up in training: what really kills soldiers (and many other classes) is their lack of skills, spells (which reminds me, the way those are treated as equippable gear is another thing that irked me, both in this game and the prequel) and proficiencies.

 

21 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

While they're not unusable, they're rather mediocre, and the fact they have no special abilities does them no favors. You might want to switch a bow-using character back to this class once they're done leveling to grab that tiny extra bit of specialization damage, but they're not something to level in.

Again, case in point, for both of the topics i mentioned above.

 

21 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

They can equip a single "missile" spell (which have hit chances and are single target; a bit worse than their previously more expansive spell list)

Pretty sure they can equip ANY spell a Wizard could: try with that Thunder spell you got from Scabellum's battle.

 

21 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Next we come to the Beast Tamer, our first gender-restricted class; only men can be one.

I know they eventually made all classes gender neutral in LUCT's remake, but i'm still baffled they didn't went all the way on that front here too (especially since they removed the most "problematic" classes like the Berseker and Terror Knight)

 

21 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

At least Dragons tend to be better than most Beasts.

Not nearly as much as in OB64 though...

 

21 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Really, though, Hawkmen tend to make better archers than fighters; their Strength is rather good compared to the Archer class, and their ability to fly ensures they can always find a good vantage point to fire from.

It also means they can fly right behind an enemy and wack then in the back without risking a counter, for that matter.

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10 hours ago, Golb89 said:

Actually, i think they should have done a better job with these: the fact some emblems do f@ck nothing or even have negative effects has always irked me.

The execution certainly isn't perfect, but I really enjoy the concept and I was rather sad that it didn't return for the LUCT remake, or get poached by other SRPGs.

 

10 hours ago, Golb89 said:

Pretty sure they can equip ANY spell a Wizard could: try with that Thunder spell you got from Scabellum's battle.

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Well, shit. So many other mage-fighter types got stuck with missile spells I just kinda assumed they did as well.

 

It's time to move on to our first non-tutorial battle, where we meet the best Cressida in Tactics Ogre and have to decide if we want a cool knight lady to join us or not (we do).

Part 4 (Vespa): Never Forget

Spoiler

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I've done basically everything I want to do in this part of the map, at least for now. It's time to skedaddle.

 

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Cressida: “I will never forgive you for all that I lost 15 years ago. You burned down my town and killed my parents!!! Thankfully, I’ve acquired the skills of a soldier.”

Well, that's not a great introduction. I'm guessing she doesn't want to be our buddy.

 

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Alphonse: “but that was a long time ago...”

Cressida: “It’s long forgotten for the victor, but we still endure the painful memories...Words can’t describe it. Does everyone in Lodis think as you do? Knowing your ancestors’ merciless deeds, don’t you feel any remorse? And to repeat the same mistakes again? The teachings of Lodis are said to be sacred, but in the end they are simply the rationalizations of the subjugator.”

While Matsuno doesn't appear to have had any direct involvement with this particular game in the series, his tendency to be a bit ~p o l i t i c a l~ remains in the writing. Given that that's kinda the Ogre series' whole thing, I approve.

 

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With that, it's time to assemble our troops.

 

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Notably, TKOL allows you to see the winning and losing conditions before starting the fight. Admittedly, these conditions are usually pretty easy to guess beforehand anyway, but it's a nice bit of QOL.

 

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Anyway, aside from being better than the mopey necromancer she shares a name with, Cressida and her team are not particularly threatening. That's good, since this is the player's first real fight and it shouldn't be too punishing, and it's also good since it gives me ample opportunity to fuck around and gather treasure or persuade people.

 

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Ivanna is still a guest in this battle. She'll mostly be hanging back and casting healing spells instead of fighting, but that's okay since now we have an actual party.

 

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As is typical, the first turn is spent with our two armies just moving towards each other.

 

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Quote

Ivanna: One strategy is to persuade enemies to join your troops. But, don’t assume everyone will be persuaded. Foes with high HP usually won’t listen. Furthermore, some of your characters may be more persuasive than others.”

Thanks for the tutorial, Ivanna. Save me having to do it!

 

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This particular spot always drops one of these Glass Pumpkins. The others are random, and while you can grab them during training I ended up getting them all here anyway.

 

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One thing to note is that a lot of units, both ours and the enemy's, have rather weak equipment this early on, so they don't exactly do the most impressive damage. Short Bows in particular are pretty lousy.

 

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Still, we do have at least a few better options.

 

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Anyway, let's demonstrate that persuasion stuff, shall we? One thing Ivanna didn't mention is that certain classes get bonuses when recruiting other kinds of units; Soldiers, for example, get a bonus to recruiting other Soldiers, and the Tamer classes get bonuses to recruiting their critters of choice. These bonuses are fairly sizable, too, so it pays to have a diverse swath of characters for recruitment purposes.

 

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While it was a bit of a long shot, I had our Soldier here try to recruit this fellow. It paid off!

 

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This nabs our girl here the Vixen's Whisper emblem, as she's a female unit who recruited a male one. It unlocks the Witch class, which she doesn't quite have the stats for yet, so we'll have to check it out later. I'm sure some of you already know where we're going with this.

 

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Let's patch this lad up. He'll be a guest until the end of the fight, and the enemies will be quite merciless to their old comrade.

 

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The Bandits are probably the most dangerous foes here, purely because of their axes, so they're a bit of a priority.

 

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Since I dropped Alphonse into Ninja, I figured I'd give him a spell. Even at its most unreliable, magic is a pretty good source of damage.

 

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Some treasure spots require Fire-element spells to be cast on them before they give up the goods. For 6 MP, a stat booster is a nice find.

 

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Our newest recruit gets pretty peeved at the boss, and rushes up to her to accomplish nothing of note.

 

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Alphonse grabs some more treasure hidden in the grass, and gets a rather nice (if slightly overkill) healing item, as well as the emblem I was aiming for on him.

 

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Alright, that should do it. Let's go smash the boss.

 

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Given that bow-users love to run away, it's best to surround them once you want them dead.

 

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Quote

Cressida: “You can fool yourself with your rationalizations, but eventually you’ll suffer the consequences. Oh...Mother...Father...”

In true Ogre series fashion, a lot of the bosses make you feel kinda bad for killing them, even when they attacked first.

 

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Instead of mourning her, though, we should snatch her stuff! This bow is a pretty good upgrade over the Short Bow, and the fact it requires two hands is an acceptable sacrifice.

 

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I'll keep this dude around for now. We could always use a little extra muscle.

 

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After all that, we found a comfy place to camp.

 

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It's also the perfect place to learn about our new pal.

Quote

Ivanna: “I told you that I used to be in the White Fang Troops. Their size doesn’t compare to the troops of Lodis, but they were the personal troops of the Lord of Rananculus.”

Alphonse: “I heard that the Batraal Family gained their power during the early settlement of Ovis.”

Ivanna: “Now they rule the northern region. They are the descendants of the colonists who left Galicia 400 years ago and settled in Rananculus with other foreigners. The troops were formed to defend against the wild beasts and demi-humans of the frontier, and to cultivate the land.”

Alphonse: “Why did you leave? Do you know anything about the current conflict?”

SDZbtsL.png?2QXmt7lr.png?1

Ah, a revenge story. How juicy!

Quote

Ivanna: “I am Ivanna Batraal, daughter of the former Lord of Rananculus.”

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Alphonse forgot who that family was in the span of six sentences.

Quote

Ivanna: “My uncle, Naris, became lord after my father died of illness 15 years ago.”

Alphonse: “15 years ago...the year of the Reformation. The island became the territory of the Holy Lodis Empire and was placed under the rule of Felis...”

Ivanna: “That’s correct. The Order of the Sacred Flame was sent to represent Felis. Southern Ovis refused to accept Lodisism, so the military forced them to convert. But in Rananculus, my father signed a peace treaty with their leader, and we were able to avoid a conflict. My father died late that year. My mother told me it was a heart-attack, and I believed her at first. However, a few years later, I heard a rumor that he was killed by my uncle.”

Alphonse: “Wait. Wasn’t the leader of those troops at that time... Bernard Lasanti, current Duke of Felis? Does your uncle still have contact with Felis?”

Ivanna: “I don’t know, but my uncle was strongly against the treaty.

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I'm gonna hold you to that and expect to see that emblem in his possession, Ivanna.

Quote

Ivanna:  But my father was lord and heir. My uncle may have been jealous of my father, who stood to inherit everything. Alphonse, I want to know the truth of my father’s death and to confront my uncle. Please, may I accompany you? My uncle must be behind all this, pursuing some ulterior motive.”

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You can, if you want, reject Ivanna. I have literally no idea why you would, but whatever floats your boat!

 

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She's coming with us, obviously. I have a fondness for knight ladies.

Quote

Alphonse: "It’s encouraging to have you fight alongside us. I know little of this island. Your help would be greatly appreciated.”

Ivanna: “If my uncle had found out that I suspected him, the lives of my mother and sister would’ve been in danger. So with the help of my sword instructor, who had taken care of me since I was small, I left the troops and hid here.

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Back to the map screen we go!

 

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Ivanna isn't worlds different from our current troops. Her Strength is a bit higher than our generics, and her Intelligence a bit lower, but it won't make a super-huge difference in the end. Ivanna does have the minor misfortune of being a "special" character, and thus she cannot leave her current class without the game considering her, from a story perspective, to be fired/dead. Fortunately for her, Knight is a fairly respectable class even in the endgame, so it doesn't sting too bad compared to others. I don't know why TKOL does this when LUCT didn't, but it is how it is.

 

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We should talk about the Knight class itself, I suppose. While in LUCT it was a thoroughly underwhelming class, here it's actually quite solid and a good class for your melee fighters to grow in. It grows similarly to the Soldier, but with significantly more Strength in exchange for only a very minor loss in HP. This makes it quite a strong and tanky class, and that's aided by its ability to equip low-level healing spells to patch itself or allies up. Probably the worst thing about it is its rather low-ish movement, but even so, its far from the least mobile class, and it shouldn't fall too far behind unless you really weigh it down. It'll eventually get overshadowed, but early on this is the melee fighter of choice.

 

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With that out of the way, it's time to pause. When we return, we'll be taking on a fiercer foe, experience some contrived misfortune, and meet the character who'll eventually decide our fate.

 

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On 6/7/2020 at 3:11 AM, epilepsyduck said:

Finally, we come to Embodiment of Desires, which is granted to units who pick up 5 hidden treasures. This causes all future treasure spaces to generally give better loot. You might wanna sacrifice some of the earliest treasure spaces to get this on a few different units instead of picking them all up with the same guy; more units with this emblem makes it easier to get the best stuff, and even at their best the early treasures are nothing particularly amazing.

Oh boy. Would I be wrong to assume that some people got really far and got everyone this emblem in certain ways to optimize loots ?

So basically, all current classes sucks, except Ninja which got nerfed but still great and got magic. 🙂

52 minutes ago, epilepsyduck said:

Cressida: “It’s long forgotten for the victor, but we still endure the painful memories...Words can’t describe it. Does everyone in Lodis think as you do? Knowing your ancestors’ merciless deeds, don’t you feel any remorse? And to repeat the same mistakes again? The teachings of Lodis are said to be sacred, but in the end they are simply the rationalizations of the subjugator.”

Lady, it's been years and your talking to the wrong person... aaaaah, the cycle of hatred...
They're not very subtle about the political part, though.

52 minutes ago, epilepsyduck said:

You can, if you want, reject Ivanna. I have literally no idea why you would, but whatever floats your boat!

I'm resisting the urge to make a joke about their sexuality.

Pretty cool LP, it's good to have you back!

Edited by B.Leu
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15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Short Bows in particular are pretty lousy.

They are the only 1-hand bows in the game though, which might be kinda nice early on to give a ranged option to melee units (or viceversa)

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

While it was a bit of a long shot, I had our Soldier here try to recruit this fellow. It paid off!

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Let's patch this lad up. He'll be a guest until the end of the fight, and the enemies will be quite merciless to their old comrade.

https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/friends-like-these

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

WrfYrRe.png?1

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

In true Ogre series fashion, a lot of the bosses make you feel kinda bad for killing them, even when they attacked first.

Uh...

On 6/4/2020 at 8:35 PM, epilepsyduck said:

fD4jIYo.png?1TxeOktn.png?1

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

EdzTZHR.png?1

Alphonse forgot who that family was in the span of six sentences.

Or the translators forgot to put a "!" beside the "?", which seems much more likely imo.

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

You can, if you want, reject Ivanna. I have literally no idea why you would, but whatever floats your boat!

Not only you get literally nothing from doing that, but i'm pretty sure Ivanna herself just disappears from the game...

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

I don't know why TKOL does this when LUCT didn't, but it is how it is.

bb6.gif

 

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We're marching to Formido tonight, where we meet a number of soon-to-be-important characters and the plot starts getting just little more complicated.

Part 5 (Formido): The Tide Is High

Spoiler

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There ain't much for us to do but march forwards. While there's a special event we could get by leaving Vespa and reentering it, it's mutually exclusive with later versions of the same event and I'd rather save it for later.

 

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I did spend a little time getting everyone to level 5, which let them leave the crappy Soldier class behind for better options, and earned our Cleric the Heavenly Spirit emblem for performing multiple heals. This Emblem unlocks the Priest class, a straight upgrade to the Cleric in terms of spell options, but it has fairly steep stat requirements so it'll be quite a while before we see it.

 

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With that out of the way, it's time for conquest!

 

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Unlike previous battles taking place in random fields or towns, Formido is a proper fortress. As you can imagine, it marks a (fairly mild) jump in difficulty.

 

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Please guess which of these two knightly fellows is important to the story. It's tricky, but there's subtle clues all over!

 

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Does this count as a title drop? I guess Cressida was closer last chapter, though...

Quote

Grimal: “The ones sent from Felis at the request of the South?”

Imposing Knight: “I hired pirates to attack them, but some survived and made it ashore. Grimal, use the troops stationed here to protect this fortress.”

Grimal: “Yes, sir...But how about you, Commander Briffaut?”

Nichart: “That young lass’s calling me. She’ll be mad if I don’t come soon.

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Wow, really? What's with all these video game armies entrusting leadership of their troops to teenagers with attitude?

Quote

Nichart: “They’re making fools of us!”

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Speaking of.

Quote

Alphonse: “Abandon this fortress and withdraw to Naja immediately. Otherwise...”

Grimal: “Commander Briffaut, look!”

Nichart: “They’re here already? Much earlier than I anticipated! This fortress is critical to movement in the South. It’s up to you, Grimal!!!”

 

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And off he fucks, though not without a little bit of sass from Alphonse.

Quote

Nichart: “Shut up, kid. I have no time for you. Remember, I’m Nichart Briffaut, the leader of the White Fang Troops.”

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Well, with only three soldiers defending this place, I'm sure taking it will be a-

 

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breeze. Nevermind.

 

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This battle requires us to climb up this fortress from the bottom, while Grimal and his troops attack us. Their height advantage can prove a problem, but once we're up there ourselves there's ways to use it to our advantage. You'll mostly want Ninjas, Archers and Hawkmen for a fight like this; everyone else is gonna struggle a bit trying to scale the cliffs.

 

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Oddly, it started raining as soon as the battle began. I thought it might give me a chance to show off another neat mechanic of TKOL, but the battle ended before I got the chance.

Quote

Grimal: “A kid like you is the leader? Luck’s been on your side so far, but that ends here!”

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It's a defeat the leader map, but some of the foes drop/carry fairly desirable items so it's worth it to kill/persuade them before you do it. There's also decent treasures here, but those can be easily gotten later, though once again I got them all immediately anyway.

 

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Here's one such random treasure. We won't be able to buy these for a little while, and while only one kinda crappy class specializes in whips, they're still pretty good weapons. Extra range is always useful!

 

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Our mage here had to spend a tragic amount of time as a Soldier, so I had her use a stat booster to make up for her slightly mediocre Intelligence. For whatever reason, you have to use these in battle; you can't just use them from the Organize menu.

 

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If everyone was still a Soldier, getting up this hill would be manageable but annoying. Getting a bunch of folks into Archer or Ninja eases the irritation simply because of how much more mobile they are.

 

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Our poor Cleric isn't quite so nimble, but the range of her spells makes that less of an issue.

 

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While their height advantage is a little problematic, the fact most of them are still wielding kinda weak weapons prevents it from being too much trouble.

 

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One notable exception is this female Archer, who has a Great Bow and is a little bit more dangerous. She doesn't drop it, so if you want it you'll need to persuade her.

 

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The boss also has somewhat above-average damage, but thankfully our vanguards here are the dodgy sort.

 

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Trying to return fire up the cliffs meets with failure. Curse these semi-realistic arrow physics!

 

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Another random treasure, and it's another practical earlygame weapon! Spears are even better than whips, and getting one so early is a nice deal.

 

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I want this second Great Bow more than I want the stat booster this girl drops, so she's coming with us. That Arbitration emblem ended up paying off!

 

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Our mages got a little left behind, and the enemy wasted no time capitalizing on that.

 

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Their own mages aren't feeling super healthy either, to be fair.

 

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Other units would have a tough time contributing stuck down there, but Wizards don't care about silly things like "elevation" and "line of sight".

 

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Speaking of Wizards, the enemy one drops the Earth-aligned version of Thunder Flare. While we'll be able to buy these once the battle is over, getting one for free never hurt.

 

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Our Wizard buddy here does a rather nice job defending herself, for a squishy bathrobe-wearer at least.

 

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Anyway, remember how I said we could use the elevation here to our advantage?

 

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Here's how. Would've been nice if the fall had killed him, but it pretty much removes him from the battle at least.

 

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Killing this Cleric gives us the status-healing Cleanse spell, and unlike Crag Crush, it'll be a little bit before we can get this spell ourselves. We can buy the Purify spell, which functions identically, but none of the classes available to us yet can equip it.

 

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Up in the corner here, we find the only guaranteed treasure on this map, the Dragon Gem Sword. While it's not an amazing weapon overall, it's stronger than any of our other weapons right now and will come in handy for the next few battles.

 

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Murdering a defenseless, drowning man earns one of my troops the Sniper emblem. Good work, I guess?

 

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That's the last of the little hidden doodads. Let's kill these jerks and take this place for ourselves!

 

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Our newly recruited Archer has shown few qualms about filling her boss full of arrows. Maybe he didn't pay her enough.

 

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Aaaaaand we're done!

 

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The boss drops his armor, which is a pretty good upgrade over leather. The weight penalties kinda sting, though.

 

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In addition to her bow, this Archer has a nice headband that we'll be taking from her. She probably won't be sticking around past that.

 

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In addition to all the drops, we get this mysterious book. This links to a fun feature The Knight of Lodis has, but we'll cover it next time.

 

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Quote

Ivanna: “No. I don’t recognize him. Maybe he joined after I left.”

Alphonse: “But, what happened to Rictor? Well...we have no choice. We’re going in.”

I don't really know how this bit differs if you turn Ivanna's offer down earlier. Even the script dump I have doesn't mention it!

 

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We cut to Alphonse exploring the interior. Clearly these troops were some real slobs.

 

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Folks tend not to stick around when you take over their shit, yeah.

 

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As he keeps exploring, a new face emerges.

 

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I guess she's not a new friend.

 

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Well, good job Alphonse. Where were all your troops during this?

 

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Quote

Alphonse: “Where am I...?

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Our captor emerges, with that smug night dude in tow.

 

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Quote

Alphonse: “You coward!!! What a dirty trick!!!”

Nichart: “Did you think I got scared and hightailed it out of here? It’s your fault for letting your guard down after defeating Grimal. I feel sorry for him, but at least he bought me some time. Everything’s going as planned.”

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The mage kid chimes in. She doesn't end up getting a name yet.

Quote

Nichart: “I know, I know. Don’t be so uptight. Well, tell me, knight of Lodis...What are Lodis’ true intentions?”

Alphonse: “...Intentions...?”

Nichart: “Right. The true reason why the troops of Felis were sent here. When Lodis takes action, there’s always something they’re after.”

Alphonse: “Reason? It was a request from the South...”

Young Sorceress: “Don’t play dumb. You say that the South requested help, but has Felis ever sent troops for such a thing before?

Alphonse: “I don’t understand...Let me go! Release me!!!”

Nichart: “You’re so hot-tempered, kid. You still snap at us even in chains. Do you realize the situation you’re in?”

jp0IM8o.png?1

Whoa, what's your problem? I bet that's against the Geneva Conventions!

Quote

Alphonse: “Ugh...ugh...huff...This all began by your aggression!”

Nichart: “Lord Naris has ordered us to find out the real reason for your presence here. If you wish to be freed, then talk.”

 

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Just to show what a dick he is, Nichart goes and does it again. I'm guessing he's some sort of villain or something.

Quote

Nichart: “Hmph. Kid, I’ll ask you once more. What’s your true purpose here?!”

Alphonse: “Ugh...I told you......I don’t know...”

Young Sorceress: “Commander Briffaut, perhaps he really doesn’t know. Of course, he may just be strong-willed. In which case, I have no choice...”

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Thanks for asking for me, Nichart. I could barely see that she was holding anything at all.

Quote

Young Sorceress: (giggle) “Just a potion. This’ll make him talk, but he won’t feel so well when he wakes up.”

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After that cheery scene, we cut to Alphonse in some real hot water.

 

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Quite an astute lad, he is.

 

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I guess that explains why no one stumbled upon Nichart's little Christian Grey roleplay, but the game doesn't really explain why they'd leave without Alphonse. I guess they just don't like him that much.

 

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Our mysterious savior(?) decides to stop lurking around in the shadows like a weirdo.

Quote

Alphonse: “You’re going to save me?”

Mysterious Woman: “That depends on your answer. I don’t care if you die here or not.”

Alphonse: “Alright. I’ll do as you ask, but...I’m concerned about my comrades.”

Mysterious Woman: “Don’t worry, they are safe.

 

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Didn't feel like helping out, though? Lazy bum.

Quote

Mysterious Woman: “Don’t forget, we have a deal now!”

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After freeing Alphonse, we're joined by a rather mediocre Naruto cosplayer. You could've at least tried to get some orange in your outfit!

 

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Quote

Shiven: “retreated to the north.”

Alphonse: “It seems I should’ve been more careful. What happened to the troops that were supposed to attack from the south?”

Shiven: “They entered the Forest of Gryllus, but retreated to Scabellum. I have no idea why.”

Alphonse: “I wonder what happened...”

Cybil: “Shiven, return at once and inform headquarters.”

Shiven: “Yes, Commander.”

Alphonse: “And...what should I do?”

Cybil: “Rest for a while. We will cross the Meleagris Mountains at dawn.”

Alphonse: “The Meleagris Mountains? But why?”

Cybil: “I’ll tell you later.”

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Well, that certainly isn't ominous. I suspect Cybil here's not entirely on the level!

 

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We'll be following our new friend(?) wherever she feels like heading and getting one step closer to The Big Decision that, strangely enough, isn't very big at all.

 

Edited by epilepsyduck
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15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

We're marching to Formido tonight, where we meet a number of soon-to-be-important characters and the plot starts getting just little more complicated.

At least KoL handled the

Spoiler

"surprise, it's all demons' fault"

plot point much better than FFT (which isn't really saying much, but eh)

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Our mage here had to spend a tragic amount of time as a Soldier, so I had her use a stat booster to make up for her slightly mediocre Intelligence. For whatever reason, you have to use these in battle; you can't just use them from the Organize menu.

You could have used them during training though.

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Murdering a defenseless, drowning man earns one of my troops the Sniper emblem. Good work, I guess?

You bothered leveling all your units up to 5 yet you didn't make them earn the sniper emblem?

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Well, good job Alphonse. Where were all your troops during this?

Presumably in his pockets they had all been incapacitated and captured like him while he wasn't looking (see what happens when you don't raise their INT stat high enough?)

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

I guess that explains why no one stumbled upon Nichart's little Christian Grey roleplay, but the game doesn't really explain why they'd leave without Alphonse. I guess they just don't like him that much.

Pretty sure she meant the enemy soldiers, not ours: they were most likely being held captive in some other cells and then freed by Cybil, just like Alphonse.

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Didn't feel like helping out, though? Lazy bum.

Then how was she supposed to hire us for free had we not gotten caught like idiots?

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

We'll be following our new friend(?) wherever she feels like heading and getting one step closer to The Big Decision that, strangely enough, isn't very big at all.

Because we are obviously gonna choose the non-canon route, right?

tumblr_nn9xupcJHk1sk47ceo1_1280.jpg

RIGHT?

311b5783-cf15-4959-bb48-91f856cb6653.jpg

 

Also:

On 6/4/2020 at 2:07 AM, epilepsyduck said:

Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis is a prequel to Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (and the Ogre Battle games too, or at least OB64)

You can remove the "OB64" bit, as it's obviously set after MotBQ (and most likely concurrent with LUCT)

Edited by Golb89
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Obviously it's the guy in armor who's important !
...to be fair, he looked cooler.

Indeed, where is your army when you were tortured ? At least Cybil's hot.

That Ninja was ugly though.

22 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

We'll be following our new friend(?) wherever she feels like heading and getting one step closer to The Big Decision that, strangely enough, isn't very big at all.

Careful ! Canon is SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT.

7 hours ago, Golb89 said:

At least KoL handled the

  Reveal hidden contents

"surprise, it's all demons' fault"

plot point much better than FFT (which isn't really saying much, but eh)

Really not saying much. 😛

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Today we'll be taking the briefest sampling of a cool bonus mode TKOL provides, before eventually returning to Alphonse being dragged through the swamps by his mysterious rescuer to accomplish whatever goals she has in mind.

Part 6 (Ardea): A Sinking Feeling

Spoiler

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Before we move on with the plot, we've got a fun thing to take a peek at. Remember that weird book we grabbed in the last fight? That ties to the game's "Quest Mode", accessible from the title screen.

 

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While it's accessed from the title, it still ties in to your actual save file, and I believe saves that don't properly have access yet can't access content from saves that have unlocked it. Don't quote me on that, though.

 

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This menu not only allows us to use that weird book we found, but also serves as the game's multiplayer menu, allowing us to get into linked battles and exchange items. The latter two are obviously of no use to me, so let's just got to Quest.

 

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Here we can select which book we want to access. Obviously, we only have the one right now.

 

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This allows us to go to the battle this book provides, and set our winning condition for it. Quest Mode's entire purpose is to effectively replace the Hell Gate bonus dungeon stuff from the last game; every fight Quest Mode provides is infinitely repeatable (though later ones cost money to enter), and provides a randomized (and usually rare) reward based on the objective you set for yourself. This first fight mostly provides rewards that are good relatively early on but taper off later, but there are some exceptions. Overall, I prefer this to the awful Hell Gate stuff of LUCT, but I do wish it had been tied into the game itself a little better; it's weird to have these quests be a separate menu like this. I also wish there was a little more content for it; there's only five of these fights, total, and two are slightly obscure to unlock.

 

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You can only bring five allies into these fights, but in this early fight the enemy also only gets five units so it balances out. Later ones will be less generous.

 

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I'm actually not quite ready to take these folks on just yet; while it's far from impossible to beat them at a low level, I want to be able to beat them quickly, so we're gonna need to level just a little bit before we' take this on. We'll be back to do a proper battle later.

 

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Enough messing around in strange menus disconnected from the main plot. Before we head where Cybil wants us to go, we've got some shopping to do.

 

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Our options have opened up a bit, equipment-wise. The Bow Gun is the game's only crossbow, and a bit of a shadow of the fairly strong crossbows of LUCT; given that this is a prequel, I guess the technology wasn't quite there yet.

 

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We can also buy resurrection items, if we want. The easy availability and use of these items arguably kinda undermines the game's difficulty a bit, but I guess they're pretty expensive so it at least kinda evens out.

 

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The elemental spells have updated their wares a bit, including the AoE spells for each element and a handful of other useful tricks. Funnily enough, the support spells have the opposite problem LUCT gave us last time; while it was easy to get an early Witch but have almost no spells for her to use in LUCT, in TKOL support magic is available before you're likely to have a Witch or other support magic user unless you already know how to get one and go for it right away. Status-effecting support magic has gotten a bit of a nerf, sadly, but other spells are still decent so it's not a total waste to get someone on that.

 

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Virtue magic hasn't changed at all, but we've finally got our first Bane spell, Nightmare. Sadly, it's also been nerfed a bit; fewer classes can equip it than before, and its Sleep effect seems far less likely to activate (though that might just be my poor luck). Still, there's some utility for it, but we'll have to wait to see it.

 

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One of the non-human troops available in Formido is the Gryphon Griffin. Sadly, these lads have not fared well in the transition between games; their movement has been nearly halved, so they no longer have their formerly excellent mobility, and their combat stats are honestly underwhelming. They no longer have Wind Shot, but it's been replaced by Windstorm, which functions similarly but hits in a + shape once they level up enough; a good upgrade, to be sure, but not quite enough to compensate for their other issues. They're far from unusable, but with their mobility taking such a hit it's hard to justify using them over other flying characters, unless you just really like beast units for some reason.

 

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Alright, enough faffing about. Let's head to the plot!

 

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Oh, a random encounter?

 

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I guess not.

 

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Well, you look a little familiar. I'm guessing you know that other mage kid.

Quote

Young Sorceror: "as planned, and Lethe's with him. Nothing of consequence seems to be happening to our west."

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And you seem like some sort of important villain or something. Dunno what gave me that feeling.

Quote

Middle-Aged Man: "Things never go as smoothly as planned. Speaking of which, what's the Duke of Felis's son up to?"

Young Sorceror: "Rictor Lasanti's troops failed to make it through the Forest of Gryllus. He must be reestablishing his troops at the port city. Incidentally, weren't many people massacred there by soldiers of Lodis?"

Middle-Aged Man: "The village of Blete, 15 years ago...Those worshippers of nature refused to convert to Lodisism. And so, their homes were burned down as a warning to others. Nearly all the villagers escaped to the forest, but the soldiers surrounded it and set it ablaze. The villagers were burnt to death. I heard that the souls of the dead still wander the forest. I can't believe they went in there. If only they had been possessed or killed by evil spirits!

If you hadn't picked up on the strong "Lodis are not the good guys" vibes yet, we get yet another good example of the kind of shit they get up to. Probably helps establish their evil empire credentials for folks who never played the other Ogre games.

 

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This guy knows the player is currently listening and wants to give a tantalizing hint to us without actually giving anything away. Not that it matters too much, since we learn fairly soon after anyway.

Quote

Young Sorceror: "Sir, there's something I've been worried about...The soldier of Felis who was captured at Formido......has escaped."

Middle-Aged Man: "Not to worry...I gave Nichart no information of consequence."

Young Sorceror: "I see, sir."

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Quote

Young Sorceror: "She seems OK. She said she's feeling better."

Middle-Aged Man: "I see..."

Seems like Middle-Aged Man has someone he cares about at least. I suppose he can't be all bad.

 

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Okay, enough surprise interludes, let's get to fighting.

 

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This battle has no real story context; it's just got some non-humans for us to slaughter. I guess, to be fair, we were told there'd be threats like this here beforehand.

 

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This fight sucks, honestly. Not because it's hard (though it can be if prepared for wrong), but because of how tedious the terrain can make it. Most of the map is water, and at this stage you're somewhat unlikely to have water-based characters, so your best bet is Hawkmen and Ninjas, as the former can fly over the water while the latter can walk on it with little trouble. Note that they still take some stat penalties for standing in/on the water, though; unfortunately, there's not much solid land to stand on, so you're just gonna have to deal with it. At least our foes are affected by these penalties too.

 

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Despite Cybil demanding we not lag behind, she's gonna primarily stay around the starting zone due to her awful movement in the water. This map's not kind to magic-users.

 

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Since they have no leader, we've gotta kill all these guys. The Hawkmen are probably the most threatening, due to their highly damaging hammers; the Griffins don't have Windstorm yet, and the Fairies have none of their useful support abilities and are reduced to weakly chipping at us with their bows.

 

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I brought a Cleric because healing is still important, but she is going to suffer trying to keep up with all the Ninjas. Thankfully, the range of her spells makes that less of an issue.

 

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Like I said, the Fairy enemies are a joke; even the threat of the Hawkmen is reduced if they have to fight from in the water.

 

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For that reason, it's a good idea to maintain the little solid ground there is. Things get sloggy if you fight exclusively from the water.

 

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One of our Ninja pals got (what I believe, anyway) is the party's first crit, knocking the foe back a space. Didn't matter too much, since it was also the killing blow.

 

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The Leather Whip found its way into Alphonse's capable hands. Though I imagine he has mixed feelings about it, given the story's events.

 

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Despite Cybil's tendency to get left behind, she still gets a bit of a chance to show off. Magic is helpful when dealing with these super-dodgy Fairies.

 

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I saw how the little fuckers were lined up, and took a strategic opportunity.

 

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The Lancer emblem is granted for units who've struck two foes in one blow with a spear. The reward is access to the Valkyrie class, and it's actually a class we're likely to have access to fairly soon. Male units gain nothing from acquiring this emblem, sadly.

 

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A Griffin managed to position itself just right to attack Cybil and accomplish nothing of note.

 

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Honestly, once you've dealt with the terrain challenges of this fight, there's not much else to it, so let's just skip to the end.

 

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Nobody drops anything particularly unique or interesting. This horn here is used to summon storms, which has minimal utility and is actually more likely to hurt you than help, depending on the map it's used on and your party makeup.

 

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Alphonse asking the real hard-hitting questions.

Quote

Alphonse: "Would you mind explaining our current situation? I'm sure my comrades are also wondering..."

Cybil: "I serve the Church of Lodis."

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Thanks for telling us, Al. It's just some yellow-ish pixels from this perspective.

Quote

Cybil: "Oh, you recognize it."

 

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Love Cybil's immediate subject change here. Not gonna give the kid even a second to consider what he's just learned, there's more important matters at hand!

Quote

Cybil: "Oh, you recognize it. Listen. To the west is the Tinea region. Most of the land there is forest and swamp. It's known as the Paradise of the Beasts."

Alphonse: "According to a map I saw, Answer is to the south and Rananculus to the north. Right?"

Cybil: "Yes. We're heading northwest to Urodela Cape, at the foot of the Meleagris Mountains. It's at the far western reaches of the island, and home to the only city in Tinea."

Alphonse: "Urodela Cape? What's there?"

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I might be wrong about this, but I believe TKOL is the only Ogre game that really makes much of a plot point of the existence of non-human races; they tend to simply be around without too much fuss being made about them in other games, but the mermaids actually factor fairly strongly into this game's story.

Quote

Cybil: "before humans migrated here. They used to appear on the beaches and small islands, but nowadays only a few remain, and they live in the western sea."

Alphonse: "You're looking for a mermaid? Why would someone from the Church be...? And that mark on your hand...I can't believe the rumors were true...I've heard that there are loyal members of the Church of Lodis who have the Mark of the Pope somewhere on their bodies, and that they are acting in secrecy to restore the authority of the Pope."

Cybil: "Interesting story. So there are those who still fear the Pope regaining power."

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Given what acquisition of power looks like in Lodis currently, I imagine this Pope fella must've been real bad news.

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Cybil: "At Galius, the center of operations for the Church of Lodis, they collect manuscripts detailing ancient ruins, rare weapons, spells, and mythology. It is said that when people arrived at Ovis 400 years ago, the mermaids living here fought against them with a spear of light. One document says, 'Beams of light from the Sacred Spear, wielded by a beautiful mermaid, sent hundreds of soldiers to their graves...' We've been on this island since last summer, investigating whether a spear with that kind of power really exists. Unfortunately, others have also learned of the spear and are determined to obtain it."

Alphonse: "Not...Naris Batraal, Lord of Rananculus?"

Cybil: "Yes. I don't know why he's looking for it, but if we want to establish a strong nation based on the teachings of Lodisism, then we'd best not let him get it before us. That's why we must speak to the mermaids and bring the spear to Galius at any cost."

You sure they're gonna let you have it? If they're already having trouble with humans then I doubt they want to help you folks "establish a strong nation".

 

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Suddenly, we're rejoined by the Naruto concept art dude.

Quote

Cybil: "Yes? What happened?"

Shiven: "Armed soldiers have arrived at Urodela Cape."

Cybil: "Soldiers of Rananculus?"

Shiven: "I'm not sure, but quite likely."

Cybil: "Are they aware of our presence? They, too, may have discovered the relationship between the spear and the mermaids..."

Shiven: "That's a possibility. The locals are keeping out of sight. They're probably trying to avoid any conflict."

Cybil: "I see...We must find a boat to take us to the mermaids' sanctuary. Maybe if we drive away the soldiers, the locals will help us as a token of appreciation."

Shiven: "As you wish."

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And off he fucks, again. Never sticks around that long, does he?

 

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Weren't you the one who explained the whole "Mark of the Pope, secret Church inquisition" stuff to us, Alphonse? Don't be so surprised.

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Cybil: "Don't ask too many questions.......It's better that you don't know. You've already turned your back on Felis, right? Then don't dwell on the past. Acknowledge your present situation and choose the best course of action."

Alphonse: "I know. I'll follow your orders. I'm grateful that you saved my life, and I gave you my word, but..."

Cybil: "But what?"

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Well, I'm certain these doubts will never come up again.

 

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With Swampy Bird Land taken care of, we're just one more stop away from the game's route split. We'll be deciding how we feel about this Cybil person and her weird church group via the power of democracy, so get ready for some voting!

 

Edited by epilepsyduck
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15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

This menu not only allows us to use that weird book we found, but also serves as the game's multiplayer menu, allowing us to get into linked battles and exchange items.

Actually, i think it lets you exchange units too.

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

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Young Sorcerer: Well...

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... she's doing fine. Maybe.

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

This fight sucks, honestly. Not because it's hard (though it can be if prepared for wrong), but because of how tedious the terrain can make it.

You can just chill on your starting "island" and let them come at you though, pelting them with ranged attacks/spells until they come close enough to be wacked by your melees (though chasing the fairies afterwards can indeed be a massive pain...)

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

The Lancer emblem is granted for units who've struck two foes in one blow with a spear. The reward is access to the Valkyrie class, and it's actually a class we're likely to have access to fairly soon.

I actually though you already had the stats for that but no spears yet (when did you find that one again?): Valkyries and knights are two out of three of the best melee classes in the game and are both FAR more accessible than the third one.

 

15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

Given what acquisition of power looks like in Lodis currently, I imagine this Pope fella must've been real bad news.

Oh...

the-evolution-of-sheev-palpatine-during-

... you can't even begin to imagine...

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15 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

With Swampy Bird Land taken care of, we're just one more stop away from the game's route split. We'll be deciding how we feel about this Cybil person and her weird church group via the power of democracy, so get ready for some voting!

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I was like, what's the point of multiplayer, until you told us it was the bonus dungeon. Happy to see it still hating people!

We live in a society.

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Tonight we'll be deciding the fate of Alphonse and pals once and for all. Before get to that, though, we've got yet more generic bosses out for our blood.

Part 7 (Urodela): The Revenge of Shinobi

Spoiler

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Now that we're out of Birdshit Swamp, we're ready for the next leg of our journey. Hopefully it'll be uneventful!

 

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It's nighttime. The perfect time for sneaky clandestine shit, like just how Cybil likes it.

 

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Quote

Cybil: "but it's already dark."

Alphonse: "It's really quiet...I don't hear a sound."

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Yeah, there's absolutely nobody around, especially not in any extremely well-concealed hiding spots.

 

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Fortunately, our main characters are adept at hide-and-seek, so his ambush is foiled.

 

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He's not really in the shadows anymore, game. He's just standing out in the open.

Quote

Voice from the Shadows: "We won't let you interfere!"

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He assembles an entire horde of foes, which are all ninjas with no exceptions at all.

 

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Here's how I laid out the starting positions.

 

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I dunno, buddy, from the sound of it they don't know where it is either. Shouldn't it be the mermaid's treasure?

Quote

Cybil: "They must be lookin for the same thing we are. Sounds like they haven't found it yet, though."

Sitri: "What are you mumbling? We know what you're after. We won't let you snatch it from us...You've always resorted to using force. You're responsible for the death of my family! Since then, I've lived with nothing but vengeance to sustain me."

Cybil: "Fool. Do you live only for revenge?"

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Despite being yet another generic boss with sympathetic motivations, we must cut him down like all the rest. There's a few item drops off his allies that are worth grabbing first, though; in particular, one of the female Ninjas has a Necklace of Resist, a replacement for the last game's Black Shield/Necklace that nullifies magic against the target. Since healing items are easier to use now, this allows you to use it with far less of a downside than before, and since beasts and dragons can now equip accessories it can be given to them to boost their durability. The Witch also has a decent robe that you could try persuading her for, but I ended up not doing that and it's not a unique item regardless.

 

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While Cybil is generally going to be a bit more useful in this fight than the last one, she can make it tricky to grab items off the enemy given her aggressive behavior. If you want to grab everything, it may be necessary to heal the boss once or twice, though I didn't bother with that either.

 

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The first turn is spent like many first turns, us moving towards our foes while they take potshots at us.

 

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The boss is generally the most dangerous of the Ninja; the others aren't very strong or durable.

 

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Turn 2 and we already have our first enemy casualty.

 

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The Nightmare spell animations has changed a bit; it now shows some kind of goat-demon thing appearing near the target. I'm sure some folks don't think of that as a nightmare...

 

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It's not a spell you equip for damage, but for the Sleep effect. Unfortunately, it seems like that effect is rather uncommon, though Sitri managed regardless.

 

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We do, thankfully, have the Cleanse spell now, though Ivanna still loses her turn.

 

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While the other treasure spots are random, this particular one gives an excellent reward, the Hyacinth fan! Fans are a slightly odd weapon category; while the only class to specialize in their use is a mage class, they provide no bonus to Intelligence and are thus more useful for warriors instead. This particular fan has very high damage for how early in the game you can get it, and while other weapons will outclass it eventually it'll be a while before it falls completely out of use. It's our first elemental weapon, specifically of the Wind element, making it especially useful for Wind-aligned characters.

 

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Enemies have access to a party-wide inventory of healing items, too. I don't know what limits, if any, are placed on this, but it can be real annoying!

 

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Witches have access to a unique Charm-causing status spell that only they can use. Like many status spells in TKOL, though, it's not very good. It's also apparently prone to freezing the game on some emulators, though I haven't experienced that.

 

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While is allies aren't much of a threat, the boss is actually a bit painful. Ivanna has some of my best armor equipped right now, so just imagine what he could do to a squishy mage!

 

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The rain decided to show off another fun mechanic of TKOL, water levels! Water plays a bit more a factor in this game compared to the previous one, and certain levels can have the water level rise or lower depending on if it's raining or not. Since different units have different skill at moving through water, this can make having some water-oriented units an asset, though it drops in usefulness later on since most endgame maps have little water.

 

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Once Cybil gets enough MP to start spamming spells, most foes stand little chance against her. Unfortunately, she's prone to killing the boss before you're actually done with the battle.

 

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Since time is a bit of a factor now, I focused down our magic-resisting friend to loot her corpse of that cool necklace.

 

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I also let one of my own units land the killing blow. No sense letting an NPC have the experience!

 

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Sorry, buddy. Maybe if you'd had a unique portrait.

 

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The boss drops the game's first Katana, the Matsukaze. It's a good enough weapon, and also quite a bit stronger than most of our other melee weapons right now, so it'll be handy.

 

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Once the boss is dead, we're greeted by an old ally.

Quote

Rictor: "Last I heard, you disappeared at Formido...Are you alright?"

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Rictor: "Many soldiers were wounded by undead creatures in the Forest of Gryllus. Because of the confusion, we had no choice but to retreat."

Alphonse: "The enemy's been saying that someone's after them. They must've been talking about you. Tell me, what exactly are you looking for, and what is your true mission?"

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Well, that's rather thoughtful of you. You're a lot less cryptic and unpleasant than my current traveling buddy.

Quote

Alphonse: "I'm sorry, but I can't do that, Rictor. This woman saved my life in Formido. I am in her debt. Please forget about me. I have no intentions of returning."

Rictor: "Are you out of your mind? You're a member of the Order of the Sacred Flame. Listen, Alphonse. You're smart, and you have the potential to grow stronger. When I become the next Duke of Felis, I want you to be my right-hand man. I will govern and you will head up the country's defenses. If you want, I will make you the head of the knights. You're vital to the future of Lodis."

Alphonse: "I appreciate your offer, but...my destiny lies elsewhere. I may not know exactly what my future holds, but I intend to find out."

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Has he? Because so far he's mostly just gotten injured or captured and needed saving. How long was he working for you beforehand, given that he's only 15?

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Rictor: "and with your help, bring stability to Lodis. I've been thinking about this for some time, but...did you plan on leaving all along?"

Alphonse: "That's not it, Rictor. I need to discover what I can accomplish on my own, without the help of my family, my status, or you."

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Mostly "you owe me your life, do as I say" and "don't ask questions". Very above-board stuff.

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Rictor: "Do you even know who she is? Let me ask you something, then. Why are you here? We came here in search of the White Fang Troops, but instead, at this late hour, we find you sneaking around with this spy of the Church."

Alphonse: "That's because..."

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Quote

Rictor: "You're a member of the Hand of the Pope. What is the Church plotting? To restore power to the Pope?"

Cybil: "Plotting? You make my work sound so ugly. My mission is to do the Lord's will. What more can I do? The Hand of the Pope obeys the Pope and Filarhh without question. I've dedicated my life to them."

Rictor: "Then, why don't you pursue your goals openly? God sees all, including your dubious ways..."

Cybil: "Hmph! And what about you? If your mission was to halt the White Fang Troops, then why are you here?"

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Whoa, three exclamation marks. You know he'd be swearing if this was the old LUCT translation!

Quote

Rictor: "Your miserable life was saved by the mercy of Lodis. How dare you vulgar people talk to me like that!!!"

Cybil: "I'm sorry, but there's no point in talking to you now. There's no getting through that thick skull of yours."

Rictor: "You infuriate me!!! Alphonse, I suppose you're on their side, too?"

Alphonse: "What are you saying? Didn't you hear what I said? I a here of my own will. Please understand, Rictor..."

Rictor: "Your own will...? Hmph! You must be dreaming. You let the current be your guide, only you convince yourself it's the path you've chosen. Even meeting this woman was just coincidence. This is your last chance to rejoin us."

Alphonse: "I'm sorry..."

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Probably, yeah.

Quote

Rictor: "Alright. That's it. I can't stand people who try to manipulate history from the shadows. If you want to go with her, go ahead. But if you try o get in my way, don't expect any mercy."

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Well, that's one bridge burned. I'm sure it won't come to blows, though.

 

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After all that, Cybil took Al to a little fishing shack. Presumably for a purpose, and not just to give him a quiet place to sulk.

 

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Quote

Cybil: "We'd better hurry if Rananculus has its eyes on the western sea. After we find a boat, we'll head down to sea of Rana and find the mermaids' sanctuary. I heard the leader's lived for over 400 years. She must know something about the Sacred Spear. Are you listening?"

Alphonse: "I am...But, there is no way you can sail in this rain."

Cybil: "Are you still concerned by what he said? Then start taking responsibility for your actions. That's why you're always treated like a child. Listen, you can't have freedom without bearing the responsibility. People have the right to choose their actions freely, but they are responsible for the results of those actions."

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To be fair, most teenagers are pretty unfamiliar with both of those concepts.

Quote

Cybil: "Understand? You declined his offer. There's a possibility that he'll become your enemy, but you have to face reality and accept that fact."

Alphonse: "I don't want to...no, I can't...fight with Rictor."

Cybil: "Then, why did you refuse him? You could have gone with him."

Alphonse: "I had no choice..."

Cybil: "'I had no choice,' you say! You're so naive!"

Alphonse: "You don't understand!"

Cybil: "Of course not. I'm not a mind reader. But I do know you made it clear that you won't be going back. You have no place to return to anymore."

Alphonse: "I don't know what to do...but I had to speak truthfully."

Cybil: "We can't relive the past, but we can start anew. Time waits for no man. The past has led you to the present, but you build your own future with choices today. Throughout your life, you will face many difficult decisions. There's no right or wrong...just paths that lead to different futures. That's all the advice I can give you."

Alphonse: "...Cybil, why did you become a member of the Hand of the Pope?"

ueIHULp.png?1

+A motivation.

Quote

Cybil: "No reason, really. I was a war orphan sent to Galius at six and educated to become a member. Now, I've dedicated my life to serving the Church."

Alphonse: "So that's the life you chose?"

Cybil: "Yes. Regardless of what I hoped for, I had to make choices from the options available to me in my environment. I am here right now as a result of those choices. Listen...Your birth, your status...these things are part of your environment, they're what you've been given. People strive for the things they want and give up on the things they don't want. Choosing not to decide is still a choice."

h2MVtXY.png?1

Guess we're done with Philosophy 101 with Cybil. I'm sure nothing she mentioned will matter, truly.

 

R6Z8osU.png?1aEHK5PS.png?1

Quote

Head Fisherman: "The currents outside of Yema Bay are complicated. Besides, it's the stormy season now. Even if you bypass these hazards, you'd still have to navigate around the sunken rocks is Rana. I'm sorry, but we can't help you."

Alphonse: "What if we wait until the ocean calms down...?"

Head Fisherman: "You said you're looking for the mermaids' sanctuary? Listen, don't be foolish. Don't take the sea...or the mermaids...lightly. They're monsters. They tempt men with their beauty and their singing, and then drag them into the sea... We had such an incident last summer. We have rules for our safety, but you outsiders think you can solve everything with your money and your logic."

Alphonse: "...Let it go, Cybil. They're just thinking of their own safety."

Cybil: "Alright. Thanks for your cooperation."

Head Fisherman: "If you want to meet the mermaids that badly, then capture one. She'll call for help and others will come. Then follow them to the sanctuary. I must be on my way. Please don't hold a grudge against me."

PmnCT7Z.png?1

Mood.

Quote

Alphonse: "What do you mean?"

3U0wrWo.png?1AkYlGon.png?1

Whoa, not mood! That's a real dick move there, Cybil.

Quote

Cybil: "Then we'll follow them to the leader."

Alphonse: "Hold on...I'm not so sure about this. The mermaids have nothing to do with your treasure hunting. How can we use them like that?"

Cybil: "Then tell me, Alphonse, what should we do? The sea is endless. We are powerless to it. We need a practical solution, and that's the best idea we've got. Save your sympathy, unless you can think of another way. Otherwise, follow my orders."

SPvySoH.png?1

And here we are, the big decision that splits the game down one of its two paths, eventually leading us to either remain with Cybil (choice A) or return to our old ally Rictor (choice B). To be quite honest, when I first got to this part, I didn't realize that this was the choice that led to the route split; without context of what this choice leads to, it feels almost inconsequential, compared to the far higher stakes and immediately clear consequences of the choice that led to LUCT's route split. I feel like it would've made more sense to have the previous encounter with Rictor be the route split, where maybe we decide to go back to him right away instead of always staying with Cybil early on, but I guess that would've required them to write drastically different scenarios for some of the following battles, and this was an easier alternative.

Regardless, what we say to Cybil here will have a huge impact on the rest of the game. I'm gonna set up a poll, so y'all can decide on what we'll be doing for the rest of the run. Make Palpatine and his love of democracy proud!

 

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21 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

The Nightmare spell animations has changed a bit; it now shows some kind of goat-demon thing appearing near the target. I'm sure some folks don't think of that as a nightmare...

 

21 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

sK7VaCB.png?1

While the other treasure spots are random, this particular one gives an excellent reward, the Hyacinth fan! Fans are a slightly odd weapon category; while the only class to specialize in their use is a mage class, they provide no bonus to Intelligence and are thus more useful for warriors instead. This particular fan has very high damage for how early in the game you can get it, and while other weapons will outclass it eventually it'll be a while before it falls completely out of use. It's our first elemental weapon, specifically of the Wind element, making it especially useful for Wind-aligned characters.

The Hyacint fan in action:

6b24b933-038e-4fd7-a6a7-7e9476879fb2.jpg

Maybe.

 

21 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

USVktRs.png?1

Sorry, buddy. Maybe if you'd had a unique portrait.

Actually, he does (even though it's just a recolor)

 

21 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

xb5p0Ag.png?1

0d7141e07b1545e239ae9e6fd783ebbd62dc8b5d

 

21 hours ago, epilepsyduck said:

To be quite honest, when I first got to this part, I didn't realize that this was the choice that led to the route split; without context of what this choice leads to, it feels almost inconsequential, compared to the far higher stakes and immediately clear consequences of the choice that led to LUCT's route split. I feel like it would've made more sense to have the previous encounter with Rictor be the route split, where maybe we decide to go back to him right away instead of always staying with Cybil early on, but I guess that would've required them to write drastically different scenarios for some of the following battles, and this was an easier alternative.

My thought exactly, though at the very least the "easier alternative" here is not as bad as in LUCT (i.e. bipolar Vice)

 

Also, we are going through Route B: if anyone wants to go through Route A so badly, then they can just summon Rapphlesia from whatever plane of existence they've slipped into and persuade them into finish their KoL LP! (And their Wesnoth one too, while they are at it)

tumblr_nqkdii1Pmz1s4cujlo1_540.gif

 

(I said all that and then i forgot to actually vote...)

Edited by Golb89
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