Interdimensional Observer

-Provided you keep him away from all your other units so they don't suffer the -50 Hit & Avoid penalty from being within 3 spaces of an allied unit with Mug.

Secret Shop. As Holmes can access this map again during the second route split, if Narcus found the Guild Key for Runan's team, you can pass the key to him. If you missed the Guild Key, the Fort Ligria item crafter can make you one: "Leather Shield + WLV Plus = DEF Plus Silver Sword + Iron Shield = Silver Shield Brave Sword + Gold Bag = Hero Crest Healing Drop + Amulet = Azioth Thief Sword + Bridge Key = Guild Key" As for the Blahd Secret Shop: Brave Sword (7000 G), Brave Lance (6400 G), Brave Axe (4500 G), Brave Bow (4800 G)

Beautiful weather where I am right now. A sunny day of 66F/19C, 10 to 15F above where it's supposed to be for the rest of month. Not in the mood to play too much today, I have to soak in the rays, do a little reading, perhaps yard work. I'm convinced the coin flip is rigged. I gave up on it. You'll be able to access this map again later, if you want to. The house that asks for items to combine has the following.: "Forge two items to recieve a new one. You must follow this order : Estoc + Silver Shield = Shieldblade Slim Sword + Magic Shield = Wardblade Swordbreaker + Gold Bag = Thief Sword Longbow + Azioth (the "revive on death" consumable item) = Blessed Bow Heal + Repair Hammer = Hammerne" Pardon if any of the names don't match exactly, SF still uses the old translation.

Casual Mode made the High Entia Tomb boss fight too easy, my characters still ran low on HP at one point, but it was bearable. I didn't want to be roadblocked, so I accept my stooping to that low. The boss of Prison Island by contrast a cinch even without Casual Mode, took damage real fast and spent most the short fight Topple-locked. Three on one, fun. Three on more, my face to the floor. I think this applies to Xenoblade bosses (and common enemies) as a whole, and probably JRPGs in general. I know the Switch is getting older and Sakurai is eternally brought the verge of metaphoric organ failure by the toil imposed on him by Smash, but is there any realistic chance of a Fighter Pass 3? Perhaps on a smaller scale? -Not saying I want it, I don't as a non-owner of Smash U, just pondering. Since Maruj is with Holmes, stop by Mars Temple again. 😉

I tried the Tyrea & Solidum Telethia fight. Too hard with the Men of Colony 9 team, even when they're blue to me, it's even worse with Riki replacing Shulk. Either I'm doing it wrong, or lacking for any Gems (or leveled Arts, I've been delaying on doing that even though Dunban and Reyn don't have much reason to withhold AP) is actually that detrimental. The odd thing is, I did a similarly straight and narrow until the Fallen Arm run on the Wii before, and you'd think I'd remember great difficulty here then, unless I went questing at this point, I probably did. Dare I resort to Casual Mode for this skirmish? Gamer's pride is its obstacle. But I can say, that this does mean that XC1 isn't guaranteed to be easy if you're on level and don't think things entirely through. FOOL! Killing them doesn't get rid of them. Killing them fulfills the pact the men who found as babies had made "I promise thee a youth of great talent, oh Goddess of Death. Let him borrow thy power, and your gift is his soul, take it when he is weak.". Unfortunately, the edgelords don't take kindly to being sold to hell, so they will kill the Death Goddess and seize all of her power and resurface with a vengeance against the one who had murdered them in the first place.

Comparing the two: So yeah, you're correct.

I would've expected missing some item goodies if you went into the route splits blind, I wasn't expecting this kind of difficulty. Holmes does say "give me anyone who is weak Runan, I'll train them up!" before the split. I would've expected more unit shifting to team Holmes thanks to that. Ouch that it's hurting you like this. And for a moment there was the hope of something at least comparable to Old Mystery for you.

Or, how about a much more radical idea- the main plot gets dumped in a river from the start, and the central focus becomes the side content? -Not actually suggesting this for 3H, but it could be a different direction to take an FE in. Or maybe an FE side project, perhaps it could be the solution to making an FExfarming sim spinoff work.

I've never played BR's penultimate battle (counting 27 & 28 as two halves of a whole) the "slow" way. When I look at the map, it is unit vomit without care for placement or strategy, and Xander being so weak to start really feeds into the temptation of getting it all done in one turn. I remember SoV drastically changes the enemy unit placement in the Rudolf Zoldark battle based on the difficulty. Would've been great for Lunatic here, as is, the Xander battle is basically a waste of a chapter.

Annnnd it was leaked that Portugal is the final civ of the latest, very possibly last, round of Civ VI DLC. Expected, but disappointing. I wanted North America Native American, them and Africa (North Africa in particular) could use more love. Still going to buy the DLC though, once it's on sale for 25% off the umpteenth time. Not a whole lot else is interesting me at the moment, and I want to try Bull Moose Roosevelt. --- Slowly progressing through XC1 some more, the usually forgettable lizard humanoid battle was unexpectedly brutal, I barely survived even using my stored levels to get a couple above them. I then deleveled back to where I was and unexpectedly won against the assassins though I had not swapped out Shulk. The Dinobeast battle earlier was fun with a Shulk-Reyn-Dunban team (the only characters I've been using), my limited healing kept me on edge, but I still won first attempt. I intend to get through Prison Island later tonight. SF's weapon page indicates it's just called "Gatling Bow" in Japanese, and that the fan translator renamed it. That said... "The Chu-Ko-Nu is a rather nifty repeating crossbow invented in China at the end of the second century AD. The machine looks something like a standard European crossbow with a box bolted to its top, just above the string. The box was filled with crossbow bolts. In operation, the soldier would pull a lever to cock the string and then push the lever back, causing a bolt to drop out of the box and into place to be fired. This gave the Chu-Ko-Nu a faster rate of fire than a standard European crossbow. However, the Chu-Ko-Nu fired a lighter bolt and had a shorter range than a European machine. Which was the superior weapon would depend upon circumstances – the European model might prevail in open terrain against heavily armored opponents, while the Chu-Ko-Nu would probably be better at short-range against large numbers of lighter-armored attackers." ...the renaming wasn't random.

I must've forgotten that.😅 Forgive my aged memory. It looks like they were the primary developer. Maybe not the best Star Fox game, but as a child I enjoyed it. The Aparoids were a nice little taste of sci-fi with a pinch of scariness. I'd be totally fine if Nintendo handed them the reigns again, with the necessary gameplay improvements. No, "improvements" doesn't mean abolishing the on-ground segments altogether, even if flight/on-rails is preferred, it means making the foot segments better.

It does sound like it is that way, Namco loves its retro arcade games and often throws a few references into Tales. Or in the case of Star Fox Assault, they included Xevious as an unlockable bonus. Nonetheless, I found it odd to learn that Monolith was actually the one that wanted it in the first place. Who woulda thunk about including a totally unlike anything else in the game pixel dungeon in the first place? Which might be why Druaga was necessary, it's too out-there otherwise. If you don't understand what to do.:

*Watches the news* *Sees the head of Take-Two defend the price increase to $70 for a typical game in the US, and downplays the criticism against it.* 🤬 You! The Trail of Souls is a little trippy. I like it. It's oddly the only one in the entire game. Wouldn't have been terrible to include this as an optional minigame later. Of course it was!😁 After you told me what the XS Gnosis are, it eventually dawned on me that Gnosis is like the Gnosis. The Gnosis straddle two planes of existence, this Gnosis is literally in two dimensions at once, same idea, just done differently. 😋 Now you know why Mira is my favorite island. When you gonna put something like this in Xeno, Monolith? I want to get ambushed by Sundae, the Caramel Coated. You never left Anuenue, the heroes are descending deeper and deeper into hallucinations induced from smoking Celestial Flowers. Not exactly. - Speaking of Mira, the Tower of Druaga dungeon really stuck with me. Yasuyuke Honne [Monolith, director, art director, map designer]: I wanted to have an original dungeon with pixel graphics, so I tried a few things, but I couldn't see how the dungeon wouldn't get cut. But I got Namco's permission to use The Tower of Druaga, so I was able to pull it off. I can't let you see the entire interview from the BK art book. Got stuff you aren't supposed to know yet mentioned in it. Now, if we got a BK3, since Nintendo owns them now, could we get an LoZ1 pixel dungeon?

Reverberation. The effects of SS have continued to endure, the Paper Mario approach hasn't changed. Simple. They've chosen to focus on trying to make Toads diverse in personality over adding anyone else. Not understanding non-Toads who could be friendly NPCs have existed in mainline Mario games. True, gotta love the Pianta mafia.😎

Looking at the first English translation that came up: "However, for Sticker Star, Mr Miyamoto asked us to create a game using only characters already found in the Mario world rather and not any of our own." https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/11/interview_the_team_behind_paper_mario_sticker_star And hopefully, if another M&L were to happen, that the uniqueness would continue to exist. Why shouldn't spinoffs be allowed to create new species, when mainline 3D titles do so every time? It isn't like there are that many Mario spinoffs which would warrant OC species. I get "keep things "Mario", don't create spinoff universes that lose all connection to the heart of the franchise", but I don't see that line being crossed anywhere. I thought I might've heard once that US citizens living abroad do have to pay some form of taxes, which leads a few to renounce their US citizenship. This said, major corporations and other businesses of a certain size should have to pay taxes in every country they operate, I think that sounds okay. But lone individuals who don't make a whole lot of money and probably have a day job and struggle to make ends meet? That sounds wrong.

Watcha doing stumbling on an image of Suikoden II? And Fire Emblems are great there for the one most memorable fight, considering the boss's attacks either plain physical or fire. Miyamoto's mistake. His Sticker Star dictum against OC characters and species still holds, and in so narrow an interpretation. Although with Goombas, Koopas, Boos, Yoshis, Shy Guys, Bom-ombs, Piantas, Nokis, Lumas, and more recently New Donkers and the other SMO species, things could be a whole lot more diverse.

You say that, and yet... https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/03/japans_35_best-selling_switch_games_in_the_first_four_years_according_to_famitsu ...nowhere in the Japanese top 35 titles over the past four years. Although. I think this might be purely physical sales, XC2 could be a digital-oriented game, as 3H supposedly is.

Permanently lost that is, instead, he gets cursed by the Gerxel Cult and sent to another dimension, until his soul is liberated from his twisted form. Expecting it to be terrible? I don't blame you, adaptations of any game to anime tend to be bad, so I'm told. Usually I consider schadenfreude a lesser sin but still a moral imperfection to an extent, but go ahead.👌

I...

I might overestimate BR enemies and underestimate my own units. I remember my men-only BR run got through the onslaught, or another Lunatic run, my memory is hazy besides Dark Flier!Saizo and Kaden paired to Corrin. The one where I know where I had to resort to the assassination was the females-only. I took a few turns to secure the drops, but spent no longer on the map, because another enemy phase would've killed someone. For dodgetanking, maybe I wasn't stacking enough stuff on Ryoma, but Heroes had scarily-high on the accuracy on him at times on both BR and Rev runs. I have used Ryoma for dodgtanking before to soloing or near-soloing greatness, but usually he has been conditional tanking for me based on enemy composition, I can't bring myself to trust 1 RN that much. For Def-tanking, the problem would've been the Berserkers. Although, I am simply not as good a player as you.😅

The Hans lategame chapter was yet again easier for you than it was for me. I've done it on Lunatic with a full army staving off the hordes before, but I found myself rather unable to that on another. Instead, I took the cheesy strategy you didn't mention here- fly off the left or right over the open air, free of enemies, and ORKO Hans with his spectacularly low Def. Nothing stops you from doing that. Sounds like bad design, but it's BR, and CQ exists, so maybe having an easy option is okay?

They were flying in Gaiden and Sacred Stones too, it's actually better to use a Silver Bow over Nidhogg on them in SS. 3x13 > 2x18.

Drat, shoulda de-leveled everyone to 1 before Sharla, Melia, and Riki joined then. 😆 I think I'll break from my strident course and clear up Colony 6 then, that'll be enough soul-draining questing for a while, and then I'll rush to the Fallen Arm. She can still drop humans to 1 HP, any attacks at 1 HP will miss (and waste weapon uses); and she can kill monsters without any qualms. She is still very very good, or so I think. She can help train your weaker units easily if you want to spin her malus in a good way.

Jake should come back, as others have said, it could ground Anna more and make her a better character. I'm in a good deal of agreement here, she has been overused playing the one trope for 4 games straight. Awakening also had her try to get nude photos of Robin, that kind of invasion of privacy went too far for me and I loathe whoever added that "Tiki is a socialist" line the localizers must have come up with. Anna needs a personality reset. Greed couldn't have defined her original Archanean self, because Secret Shops can't really make money when nobody knows about them. She was mysteriously mischievous, no true indicators of being Mammon in Red Hair. Let's try going in totally different direction with her next time, the benefit of this "Annas more numerous than dimensions" approach is that there should be some rara avis somewhere among them, who aren't Avarice Alive.

Yes.