Parrhesia

No need to submit multiple at the same time, we have enough people to keep it cycling comfortably if everyone's still actively submitting.

How'd you get ahold of an Irish rugby club's shirt?

ced is in a game full of overpowered units and bad design choices pent is a shining light in a sea of mediocrity

[spoiler=Update 8] Cid survived the attack... more or less. His tiny pixel eyes blink open. The mage lives in the Aldanna Range. And Cid, while stable, is in no state to join us. Nofilia's gonna be so mad that they're arguing over the patient. Adele? She's just mad about the wallowing-in-self-pity. Think what you will about her, she has the right idea here. The road's shut down by monsters, and we can take them down. She struts off - it's enough for someone even as dense as Guinness to see the light, and he celebrates by shouting at the dying man. Time to kill a big fucking dragon. Hm... Unsubtle foreshadowing aside, this is the last story mission until we start recruiting, doing sidequests and story progress grinds to a juddering halt. Hint about Mist, which is a proper noun; that's the M in MP. Making the protagonist as ignorant as the player is really handy for exposition! Anyway, Adele says it's the 'root of all magic', and it is. Either way, we're not here to fuck spiders, as the saying that got like a million notes on Tumblr as an alleged authentic Australian saying because people on Tumblr are willing to believe anything about Australia goes. So goes forth the party, in their last run in their current form... and I think I may have downloaded a virus with that stupid 'Foo was here' stunt. Dangerously, they have a, um, jelly, with them. Flans are just elemental magi, pretty much, and they'll explode if you use the opposite element. Easy for fire and ice... less so thunder, since water magic is hard to come by. And Nofilia? She only knows thunder right now. She also knows Cure! Learning it for white magic through a staff also carries over to knowing it as part of red magic. So uh, FFTA2 hired a different guy to draw all non-significant NPCs - mostly guys for subplots that warrant a portrait but not a new sprite or class. That guy wasn't very good at art and his style doesn't remotely resemble that of the guy who did the other 90% of this game's portraits. I savestated before this fight. Because, uh... this is not an easy fight. Fuck the loot, I am going straight for the head on this one. First Phoenix Down of the game. Worth noting the law here prevents fire... so if I fuck up once and don't use Specifically Blizzard with Lawrn, I'm fucked. I then forget to move Kyrie forward. The dragon moves forward and buffs the wolf, but that's okay. The wolf's almost dead and now, better still, they fit into a five-tile cross. Lawrn teaches them about geometry. And Adele gets her revenge. Oh, fuck. Guess what element Kyrie's sweet brass knuckles are, lads? Guinness is eaten by a dessert. The irony is lost on him. And now he's in the Own Zone. Not without company, either. Once again, I'm reduced to using items to keep ahead. Thankfully, the flan - thundering himself and those around him - misses Adele and Kyrie... ... and gets to learn about Reaction abilities the hard way. Fuckkkkk. It's all going tits-up. But I can always hedge with items. Trying to kill the drake would just be hubris, I need to go for the kill. Ah, fuck. I got overconfident. Kilmunto's on like 100 health, that's... like three turns. fffuck What an easy game for babies FFTA2 is, that I am good at, as video games are easy. Incidentally, if you were in any doubt as to how great Archer isn't as a class anymore, this is how long it's taken to get the second shortbow and the first actual status (darkness). ALERT: THERE IS FUNGUS GROWING ON OUR NERD. Kilmunto vapes at us one last time before imploding. Fungusboi is... is... Christ, just look at him. He's like Yoda doing an Elizabethan courtier cosplay. You: "It me" Lezaford, an intellectual: We follow the strange old man to his house. Guinness' existential crises resolved. So the first FFT was the true story of how a man condemned to history as a heretic played an active role in trying to prevent the apocalypse in the midst of the War of the Roses. FFTA was all about taking down a tyrannical world built to fulfil the wishes of those trapped within, freeing them from another's escapism made manifest, and with all concerned coming to terms with reality. FFTA2 is about Guinness filling out his assessment on his summer holidays. Next time on FFTA2: Capitalism ho!

no

Excellen, without comment. My comment is that we're running dangerously low on backlog!

Here it is. And if anyone knows of any reference for what mission plays what music (I don't know any of the names) then I'll happily link them where they show up. Alternatively, if you back yourself to know the relevant pieces of music, you can be the official thread OST provider if you'd like.

[spoiler=Update 7]Let's read some notices! House Bowen fucks shit up... ... magi are arseholes... ... and journalism is fucking dead. Reading notices often unlocks subplots, and Cinqueleur is one of them. The weakest of them is level 44. We will not be doing that yet! We will be doing this, though. More gossip first, though. Anyway, the thing we're looking for is in this new region to the north, the Baptiste Hill. That said, it's still, uh, vaguely southern - we started in the southeast edge of the map, but I think there's more south bits? Anyway, it'll fill up. No signs of Adele, so... our cunning trap has just turned into doing the job we got paid to do. Here's the mark. From memory, these things aren't nearly as tough as they were during FFTA1. Other than that it's just birds (whose skillset is called, notably, 'Territorialism') and dogs. Notably we're allowed to bring six guys along with Cid for the first time. Also the battle music is really nice. Most of the music in this game is. The battle itself, though, pretty straightforward. Even as underlevelled and underskilled as we are, like having a level 3 blue mage with the worst sabre in the game and no skills. Cid is a very good unit trapped in not-very-good AI. Ugohr, though? Not fucking about. And he has some tricks up his sleeve, apparently... 50-ish damage to my three guys and actually healing himself, since he absorbs rocks. Fucker! He also does the standard 'being healed' little twirl and bunny hop in place. Still, it doesn't avail him. Our heroes stand over the dead tortoise, talking very conspicuously about how they have not picked the worthless corpse dry. WH AT ?? oops Guinness is really good at utterly labouring to a punchline. It's okay, kid. You tried. We appreciate that. They get down to business, and ask for the drill back. Which... she's spent. All of. Already. #relatable bye adele Wolves bay in the distance. Vultures circle. And Nofilia attains (one part of) her final form! One fencer and one white mage skill unlock the red mage which combines a decent assortment of basic attack, support and healing magic in one skillset, along with the ability to doublecast. Also has four move, decent stats and, well, the rapier isn't just for show. No fear, though, she'll learn something a bit spicier soon, though. The familiar back of a head in our midst. A couple, actually. I did not (viking!) realise how many fucking cameos Montblanc made. Adele just fuckin' like... Adele decides to tag along since we're 'friends' now. Cid... disagrees. (Paladin! Offstage... arcanist?) I'm lowkey okay with all the shits Adele doesn't give. The lads are elated with this development. Adele joins us properly at this stage - and she is a knifecat amongst pigeons. Thanks to us being underlevelled, she's immediately slightly stronger and more durable than Kyrie while being significantly faster. Sorry, Rodanu, but your time has come for the earlygame. Importantly, she has a really nice knife (that doesn't teach thief abilities) and the ability to counterattack, as well that the armour that teaches it to thieves and monks. Kyrie has it for now, and when he's done, it'll go to Caul, then whenever it's convenient Guinness and Rodanu will probably get it too. Counter is really good. We're on the home stretch. We'll be able to recruit soon. For now, we just head to Graszton. Where Camoa is the quietly lovely high fantasy city at the crossroads of the south, Graszton is basically Scum House. I mean, look at it. The music's all menacing, even. We don't get any dialogue from the mysterious figure. But Cid's is enough to convey meaning. The door slams in his face, and he walks off...

omelette i did not realise there were alternatives

i did not make a very good assignment today, i suspect, so this song made me feel better Disinnocence: "i don't think this song will be moving any mountains in the near future, but it's still pretty good so that's all that matters. "

Solid filler.

[spoiler=Update 6] We start this update on the high of running someone's lunch to them, a process which will take over two days. Rodanu's metamorphosis continues, as does Nofilia to fencer and Caul to animist. Fencers haven't appeared yet, I quite like them. They deal damage and status. Sadly, I don't think there's room for one in my final builds, but we'll have to see. They've got good stats - a bit less bulky, a fair bit faster than the soldier/warrior. I decided to show the portrait of the Black Mage Classic but the fencer also has an amazing case of Resting Bitch Face that I adore, tbh. This is how you force boosting your clan skills. OH, EXCEPT YOU DON'T, BECAUSE GETTING APTITUDE FUCKS YOUR NEGOTIATION, THE TWO YOU NEED. So how does the chat feel about savescumming? Because as far as I can tell this is Literally Just Luck Of The Draw. Wait. Shit. I decided that if there was a winning barrel, then God would want me to find it. it worked out for the best. High fantasy! Anyway, down to the serious business at hand. Gardening. Errr. Wait, what did the bill say? ... Oh. You know, I just figured he was high... ??? (Not pictured: Guinness being put off tomatoes forever, Cid shaking his head gravely and writing it off as 'one of many occupational hazards.) I guess??? Ahh, the id of our team to complement Guinness' id and Cid's id. Then she starts being saccharine at us. This is one of those characters who will be Better After Character Development. Right, I'm sure this person with cat imagery will not hear us from a princely two metres away. Cid and Guinness agree a 4-1 split. She's down. The alraune, subject of our greed - the drills are worth a lot, supposedly - complete with anime anger mark, evil eyes, cape and ineffectual ranged attack. These are the tomatoes. Is it just me or is there a bit of Charles Schultz in their artwork... ? Adele, that's not how you maths. ADELE! Cid's picked up some monk skills - first off, he's the first of our crew who get a reaction ability, something that they do when attacked. Cid can straight-up counterattack people. One of the simplest, and arguably the best. He also can attack at range right now for Hella damage. Oops. Adele, for what it's worth, is a thief that's higher-level than most others around here (we're meant to be doing sidequests, after all) and can also counterattack. er 'All Killer' Nofilia's transition from pacifist healer to sword murderer isn't going smoothly. CID FFS A REGULAR ATTACK WOULD KILL IT After the second time I set Adele on fire I wonder if her survival is actually mandatory for the mission. I don't... actually remember. Apparently not! The mission goes on. She makes a particularly pathetic 'wyaaaah' sound when she dies. The Power of Bees. Cleanup's straightforward, once the line is broken. Cid's got a taste for the finer things in life. Adele's got a taste for theft. Which is perhaps predictable, since she's a thief. I'm not hugely fond of Adele, but I do like this line. BYE NERDS Guinness is tilting. Cid's tilting. But it's okay, because finally, our boi Rodanu's in his destination! (Raptor!) Ribs exposits at us from his vase. The laws were made to vaguely 'avoid profitless bloodshed', which kind of rules. Cid, don't shout at the tubby vaseboi. ... Wait. how imaginitive Ribs tells us there's a Big Enemy people want dead, so... we go on that trail too, apparently? Next time, on FFTA2; Intrigue.

It dictates two of your starting four backup guys in Knights of Lodis, as well as some equipment and the statboosts for Alphonse. Incidentally, I'd recommend playing Knights of Lodis after this game, for... reasons. Admittedly, it's not as polished.

'Philodendron means "love tree". Want to know what I love? Music, of course! (And also Parrhesia.)' I love you too, s m e e e e e e e e e e.

this friend of mine, a professional model and makeup artist, drank a shot of midori once but she found it too hard to swallow and gestured frantically for this chufty prick who i hate to come over and she transferred it into his mouth, like a bird

I feel as though buffs are always nice to have, since it usually takes at least a turn for the melee units to make contact. And, of course, the fact that buffs always hit is huge. I was probably harsh on the class, honestly - but there are very few genuinely bad classes in the game, so just being mediocre (see archer) looks worse than it is and being boring (see soldier) is fatal. Tranq is nice in theory, but I've never persisted with Green Magic that far - this LP will give it a shot! Also, just as a general notice - I've been trying to build up a buffer just so I can post a small update every day, so any suggestions or requests are probably not going to be acknowledged in the LP immediately.

PRESENTING THE THUNDER DOWN UNDER; THE EAST COAST BEAST; XERXES SWOLEGRAD !!!

[spoiler=Update 5] SCENE I. A shady inn in Lutia Pass. Favoured haunt of CLAN DIP of old. Enter EVANGELOS MARLOWE KIDD, THUG 1, THUG 2, THUG 3 and THUG D. KIDD I cannot put into words how grateful I am to you all. For a decade of fierce fighting, the Dips of Lutia have been battling for the pass against the accursed Raw Steel... and alas, the noble Dip Shortbow and Shortsword have been no match for their blades, guns, dragons, infernal hellfire, ability to spawn the - THUG 2 Are we gonna get paid yet? KIDD Anyway, my father has sent me away with four of his best men - with you, in fact. With thousands dead on the hills of Lutia - of my home, damn it! - there is a need for the House of Dip to spread its wings... eastward. To Jylland. Will you follow me? THUG 3 But... wait, if they hear about Clan Dip going this far east... won't those Raw Steel bastards just chase us down? Gods know they've done so in the past, despite having, you know, their mission to save the world or whatever... KIDD Hm, this is true. From now on, then, let us go by a new name. A 'pseudo name', as it were. THUG D Pseudonym, boss. KIDD Right! And so, from this day forth... they shall sing of the legend of the Yellow Wings! THUG 1 Isn't that like the Red Wings, only... Yellow? KIDD Oh, shut up! SCENE II. A disused pass. Enter THE CLAN OF WORMS. Enter THE YELLOW WINGS, erstwhile CLAN DIP. A SYMBOLIC KEY CHANGE. And so it is time to finish the job that whatever I named Marche started. Belf? I think it was Belf, because it was 2012 and that was a meme about direct translations. The Yellow Wings - all of whom are named, um, 'Yellow Wings', apart from the leader Kidd - consist of a thief, monk, black mage and archer, all badly-equipped, and an Animist. Animists are, I guess, moogle warriors that use druidic abilities which are pretty cool. This one in particularly is really fucking annoying because he knows how to Protect/Shell himself. White mage stays home... and I make Lawrn into a white mage, forgetting to put black magic as his secondary, fuck. That's going to make this fight tougher longer. The black mage is, admittedly, no joke - he's the first target, without question. The fight's just a clusterfuck in the centre with the archer smugly looking on but also being an archer with a shortbow. She uses Focus (formerly Boost) to make her next attack worth a damn. Animists, for the record, attack using musical fucking instruments. This one isn't fucking around. Oh well. Realistically, though, the fight's over once their mage is dead. He dealt about 100 damage to my party with one well-placed fireball - but the entire rest of the team are pushovers. Stop trying to prove me wrong, Thug D! It's not happening! Animist gets in position to kill Nofilia and then buffs instead through the power of bouncing sheep. Kidd, also with a chance to murder Nofilia without reprisal, instead steals money. Finally. Still, at the end of the day, they're Clan Dip in a new dress, and we're not. And Kidd's dead, quicker than you can say 'Napoleon Complex'. Yet another 'Guinness loves it here, Cid despairs' conversation. Another line added to the journal. Here we go. This is the proper world map, divided into those segments, and again, those gates will open as the game goes on. You can't place them like you can in FFTA and that is Entirely Fine By Me. Parivir and berserker in the top left! W'ere making real progress on our Panini Class collection. Camoa is just High Fantasy Town. (Fighter! And, um... one of the Gria melee classes!) The Discoloured Seeq Unicorn is right before our eyes. We employ, like, three now! Oh. Mmmm that's some bad exposition right there also note that 'academy' is misspelt Ribs belatedly decides to be useful, and he just wants one thing... Wait, what? Well, that doesn't seem so bad. I guess we get to try our hands at botany! Next time, in FFTA2; UM.

amended;

kafka spoilers: metamorphosis does not end well.

Duke Piston Forever doesn't 'actually know why [he doesn't] own any tempest albums'tag ys i'm balance x2

[spoiler=Update 4] birbs Guinness is a good man. Maybe too good for this cruel world. Wait, what's got their hackles up? "Company," as Cid succintly puts it - a wolf howls. There's... three of them. And both wolves and 'baknamy' (goblins. they're fucking goblins) are pretty bad enemies. Law of the day is 'fire', so basically just... remember that when you're picking your black magic. We get a tutorial about it. Shelving the black mage for now just to not get the temptation - we get a maximum 5 units for this one, Cid the 6th. I immediately get complacent. Aaand maybe I gave wolves a bit less credit than they were due. Still, the one that charged first is dead now and spat this out - loot! Easy, now - we outnumber them three to o- HUH?! Still, it's a really easy fight. As you'd hope, really. Cid cleans up. This wolf drops... a wolf pelt. Er, 'mangy mutt pelt', sorry. Nothing novel in the postmatch talk, until... Guinness finds a book, or rather, Cid notices it and is like, 'what the fuck, you can read?!' And with that, the top screen shifts from a quill on a blank table to... This. And it fills itself in with Guinness' progress through the main questline. Birds don't give a shit. Birds still just peckin' at the ground. Good lads. Anyway - they're off to get to the bottom of this 'book' shit. And, look, people have learned things! That means the next step is about to begin... Okay, look, hear me out. Rodanu may have started out as an archer but he also makes a fucking terrible one. Trust me on this one. I've got Plans. Kyrie is now a monk - that's not necessarily his final plan, but monks have really good skills (especially a couple I don't have quite yet) and are just a really good earlygame class in general... besides, between Cid and Guinness, we already have two other soldier/warriors. I'd change the viera and moogle too, but I'm yet to find the relevant weapons for what I need. Again, the earlygame's a bit awkward. We go back to the village. GUESS WHO'S BACK IT'S THE GOSSIP BOYZ Hunter! Blue Mage! Who Gives A Shit! They're back! They discuss that the road is blocked, which is bad timing, because Cid's caught onto an important fact about Targ Wood - this place fucking sucks. But Camoa, the big city up north, that's where the good shit is. Guinness is learning how to solve problems through violence. Funny thing is, the Gossip Boyz are almost certainly better at fighting than we are. Free AP. One problem - we've not got the fruit. We could do this, and although I said I'd keep Doing Things to a minimum until I had the boyz I needed... this is a sufficiently easy mission, and IIRC the late story missions before recruiting get pretty rough. This is the story mission - we'll take that, too. This man's entire squad was brutally murdered. Just because the Law system works better in gameplay terms doesn't mean that it's any better in-story, and in fact I'm not sure if it's ever really explained. In FFTA at least you lived in a sociopathic brat's totalitarian nightmare wrapped in a Saturday morning cartoon (I stand by that the story would have been good in the better hands of better writers!) but here? Green magi are interesting, but not very good - as per the thread suggestion, I will be using one, but it won't be Nofilia. We haven't actually unlocked the class yet - roughly a third of the game's classes need to be unlocked through quests. Green magic is status. You will notice, however, she has a 40% hit rate to make our thief hit at 50% hit rates. This is a Problem for status classes. Normally, they use maces to decent effect, as well as robes, and they have good stats (though only 3 movement). Three of the magi here, though, are unarmed. They also have great fashion, honestly. Well, two can play at that game! The monk does a spinning kick! Roundhouse just hits all adjacent targets for half damage. It's not great. LAWRN NO Complications. Almost. Thing with support magic is you kind of need more than three pugilistically-minded fashion girls, each called Miss Midori (yes, really), to back you up. Nofilia wakes him up and I'm pretty much done talking about this fight, let's just fast-forward, shall we? Here are the two other kinds of magic, Epilepsy and Crystal Meth. I will never use these again because Fire is the first option so unless there's resistances at play I just hit that. So this thing's a treasure chest, one of the good ones - the ones that actually look like chests contain Garbage Trash and aren't worth opening even though I did anyway. Our boy doesn't want me to stop tutorialising, though, and activates his Opportunity, uh, thing. You know, now that one of them is left. This is for being alone. Next to one enemy and he'll get Frenzy, I think? Where he hits twice. Next to two allies and he hastes both and himself. And there's others, I guess. I mostly try for the above two. Flurry, not Frenzy. Cute. They apologise and teach us to Green - and that's about it for today. Next up: The return of Clan Dip?

Conversely, I'd recommend not trying to game the plotline and making the choices that make sense to you.

11 is a better version of 3, so you'll hate 3. 5's worth playing but might not appeal to you - only way to know is to try, I'd say, but try and be flexible as you can.

Ambling Falchion's plumped for 1/3 of an earlier posted supergroup (which is 100% kosher); 'Since I didn't want to think too much about what I wanted to share next, I went for a repeat artist. Veirs adapted the lyrics from an Arthur Rimbaud poem of the same name and put them to a hauntingly beautiful melody and supporting instrumentation. Honestly one of my favorites, which is why I shared it over a song from one of her other albums. weak justification is weak'