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Coming up are the best chances for Shining Pom grinding!

Well I did preface the rant by admitting it was a bit of toxic cynicism XD

I play a mix of "mainstream indie" and "weird and obscure indie" (aka, "hipster indie"). Like, yeah, I'm currently playing Stardew Valley and Balatro, which are extremely and moderately well-known respectively. But then looking at other games I've played recently, there's also stuff like Regency Solitaire II and National Park Girls, which probably nobody else here has even heard of. And then the full spectrum of mainstream/obscure between the two extremes. Though I will add as well that even for the most mainstream of indie games, they mostly tend to reach the mainstream on merit rather than through corporate marketing juggernauts. If there's a widespread buzz over some indie game, it's probably because a lot of people like it; if there's a buzz over the latest title from EA or Activision, then it's probably because they spent a lot of money advertising it. So even for mainstream indie, I do think there's still a meaningful distinction, for the sake of this discussion, from games made by big corporations. Fair enough. I wouldn't argue with that. But if that's your position, then I think you were vastly overstating it originally with the way you worded things.

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Oh we're of course free to presume that. It is, after all, precisely why it ends up being the only location other than Chalphy to be in three different chapters. I just mean in how it's never referred to in the plot and is kind of a forgettable place when listing the names of sigificant locations from the game.

Hang in there, Carrefour.

On the contrary, I have to imagine it would be a constant flashpoint, given its proximity to Grannvale and the unfriendliness of both Verdane and Agustria. The Verdanites did launch multiple raids on Grannvale in the past, and I have to imagine some opportunistic Augustrian king could have thought of using it as a launch pad for their raid/invasion. Granted, we know little of how Verdane thinks of Augustria, or vice versa, and we know little of the Grannvale/Augustrian border either, but we can presume it must be fairly defensible for Elliot to choose striking at Evans instead of any of the Grannvalian cities.

I'd absolutely be on for some revisit to Verdane and Agustria even if its just the fringes, just so we can have some idea of what happens there. So would we get Hilda at Evans, Scipio at Jungby and Alvis at Chalphy? Would Julius and Ishtar still appear (oh, eh, you do know he takes the field in this chapter, I hope). And how can we force a Jungby seize before Chalphy? Usually the force the final castle to be seized last using mountain valleys or a river crossing, but it's a bit more blatant if you're just having yellow tiles on an empty field. Either Jungby should be skipable or we'd need to alter the landscape of the prologue a bit, maybe by tossing in another river or something, so Chalphy is isolated enough to block the player off from it. My issue is still be just how geographically far that is to transit off screen. Even Miletos is a bit of a hop, but this is half the continent. Therefore I propose a restructuring of the continent to look more like this. Isaach is moved further south while Munster and Thracia have been rotated slightly and moved south west into Miletos's position. This layout would change remarkably little in terms of gameplay. Also I have to point out that your suggestion would put Evans on a total of four different chapters. Which I just find kind of funny given how unimportant it is as a location in universe, being basically just a border fort, but being positioned at a tripoint that just gives it an excuse to keep coming back.

As comparison, my much simpler suggestion of smushing ch.1 and the prologue together: So basically, Seliph arrives at Genoa by boat; from there, he captures the strategically important Evans; after that, the Grannvale reaction is to attempt a surround with collaborateurs from all over Jugdral: Verdanian axe bois and hunters from the southwest, Agustrian paladins from the northwest, Silessian pegasi from the southeast where there is just the ocean and definitely nothing else, and probably some dark mages stationed in Jungby. Could possibly make for the equivalent of Victory or Death in BlaBla, Murdock's map in BinBla, Clash! in PoR etc.pp. If Kaga absolutely wanted Miletos to exist on Jugdral's map, there could still be half of an island in the bottom right - with the castle just out of sight, similar to Nordion and Marpha on the other side of the map, so that Seliph doesn't have to go seize it. Plonk a village or two on there that only Fee or Altena can reach, and you can have a little bit of backstory fluff about Miletos, too. I agree that it makes sense for Seliph to first operate at the fringes of the Empire's control. However, I still think that you don't actually need Miletos to create that story structure, and that the story doesn't actually do anything with the new setting it introduced. Hilda could be stabbing children in Verdane (or Agustria, but that doesn't work geographically) just as well. Narratively, I think it would me much more interesting to return to Sigurd's old stomping ground - it's a cause to reminisce about Sigurd meeting Deirdre, or a little drama that Ares, Nanna and Dermott must fight their countrymen, or even the question if Sigurd is to blame for the desolation in Verdane (and/or Agustria) because he was always thinking with his seize button.

A tough guy dressed up with a Toad Cap to act as Toad/10

Not enough of one to talk to his family evidently.

The High Entian assassins is precisely the reason I say sentient life from Bionis rather than humans. Because the High Entians aren't humans. They are creatures from Bionis, however. And, while we have no gameplay opportunity to fight a Egil or any other Machnia before the Monado is powered up, I reckon it would be able to hurt Machina. I mean, Egil's not a coward and is pretty smart; if the Monado was kicking his forces' collective ass so hard in Dunban's possession and he was fully immune to it because he's human shaped then he no doubt would have taken to the field and fought Dunban himself. Plus, we have to question why the Monado even has this limitation in the first place. What I definitely don't think is that it's because Zanza is a super nice guy and didn't want any "humans" to die. Nah, Zanza is a total dick. He might harbour some secret desire for companionship very deep down, but the guy is a total douche who doesn't really give a crap about the life he created. What makes much more sense that he made it so his Monado can't harm him specifically, and the Monado mistakes life from Bionis of sufficient development as part of Zanza himself. Of course this is all moot as the Monado can be powered up to harm human-like life and the OP never specifies what Monado it is. So I choose the end game Monado III, which I can only presume is more powerful since it overcame Zanza and Mayneth's Monado at once. Of course everyone has their own Monado as it's almost literally the friends we made along the way, being nothing more than the manifestation of self-acutalization of programmes in a computer system modeling its own universe. Man, I fucking love the first Xenoblade game.

We don't know how he miraculously survived the first time. Dude just has nine lives don't question it. How will I convince him? Okay, I choose to be part of the Medeus Faithful and my plan to convince Gharnef (and the thoroughly annoyed soul of Medeus) to try a third time is pointing out that Medeus saving the world would immediately sway the people of Akanea to our side. Doing away with the heretical god Narga and pleading for our Dominion. I'm betting the Monado has a very liberal notion of what a human is. As seen with the Face Mechon which lacks any recognizably human features or even a human will. The reason the Monado can't cut the outer shell of these clearly robotic beings is that it detects some human life inside. And it would be bold to assume the rules would change just because the world changed. For all we know, the Monado in a world that lacks Ether would never turn on and simply be a plastic toy. Also I'm not convinced of the designation "sentient life". As you can cut down so many organic creatures of Bionis. Surely some if not most of them meet even the most conservative definition. Furthermore, When you're ambushed by High Entian assassins, Shulk's attacks do no damage to them. So don't go accusing them of gameplay/story segregation. What counts as 'Human' is probably just the ability to verbally communicate. Assuming the Monado Works, and works how it does in its own world, my expectation of the Black Knight interaction is that it would either glance completely off the armor like with Face Mechon, or it would cut the armor and stop short of cutting the human inside. Now it's awkwardly lodged in his armor. You'd need about a dozen clean hacks to cut the armor off and what you're left with is still one of the best swordsmen in Tellius. It's a losing fight. I'd sooner put my money on Mog.

Mayhap Loptyr was less interested in human-annihilation, and more "Hey, this place has plenty of will-be slaves and none of those bothersome Divine Dragons. I hereby declare myself Emperor and I will have others build my vacation house right here!👇 Nooooo other dragons allowed 🚫🐉, nobody, my continent!".😛 -Just an idea.😜

The greatest mystery of Kirby- what is the relation of Bandana Waddle Dee to Sailor Waddle Dee, and both to Crystal Shards Waddle Dee?🤔 Thank you for the info! DK is an orphan, got it. You're so hysterical you question what kind of mushrooms got in the entree?🤪 -Glad it was thrilling.😃 I've been feeling like it's time that I sink myself into something long again, but every day I annoyingly find some petty reason not to. Don't give me a reason to complain about XCX again. Think on the bright side- you'll probably get a conclusion.😛 Can't say the same for everything out there. Wasn't enough that you had to sink Golden Sun, Dark Dawn, you had to do it on a serious cliffhanger with two-dozen unanswered questions.😑 Shenmue fans had their millenarian hopes raised, then razed beyond all belief.

I would be up for depicting Miletos as the "harbor country" of Jugdral. Put in docks and ships(perhaps in poor condition, given current Loptyrian rule) and have like, one or two villagers be immigrants from other continents and comment on how horrible it is that Loptyr shut down all trade and transport, blocking their path back home, and there you go.

Well, no, because that map is my completely fan made idea for what we could have got if Miletos didn't exist. The bit of sea south west of Melgen (which I had to turn into a lake) suggests there isn't a path there because there's a mountain in the way. The path Quan and Ethlyn most likely took was the same one we see them on in Chapter 5, only from there they would have turn west and approached Edda from the south. I'll brook no praise for them. They are not good. The mix of palettes is hideous and I have a forest poking out into the ocean. This was a very time consuming low effort activity when I really should have been doing something better XD Genealogy's maps are just fantastic for that scale and and immersion of the story though. It was a ballsy move making every chapter in the game almost 4,000 tiles big and half coveredi n mountains and ocean the payer would never go to, but it was one that paid off. Well we do see the children running from Ridale who are presumably from Miletos. And they're typical generic anime white children. That being said, I wouldn't be entirely against blackening up Miletos a bit of it were to get a few characters. It's in the south after all, and that's mostly what I'd care about when it comes to these things. Though, I suppose, Thracia is just as far south as well, and I don't think I'd react kindly to black Travant, but, idk, Miletos just feels sunnier because they used a dark palette for Thracia and a surprisingly bright one for Miletos. You also have the exotic trade hub angle with Miletos as well, which would make the idea more palettable. Maybe there is a southern continent they have access to which gives rise to all this trade and foreign travelers (though introducing something like that to the setting would give the inevitable question of why Lopt never conquered, though I suppose Lopt did know about Archanea and never found his hate boner for the mere existence of humans so great as to invade his homeland where all the humans he actually hated in life lived). SNES just had the character limitations stopping the class from being named "Drag Queen" (don't think too hard about what that might suggest for Hilda).

Oh of course. We're adults. We determine what society is. Everything is our fault (not facetious). But that goes back to ShantyPete's initial comment which he deemed "toxic positivity", which I would say is just plain true (the content of the comment, not the branding of it as toxic). There isn't much merit in getting upset in trends in media when the option to just watch other media in a huge landscape of options is right there.