Interdimensional Observer

The Light Magatama are: Ankh Iyomante Narukami Nirvana Geis Kamurogi Adama Sophia The Dark Magatama are: Marogareh Shiranui Anathema Miasma Djed Satan Gundari Gaea The rest are Neutral and hence won't affect the DF's alignment. If you've an equal amount of Light and Dark mastered (all skills learned from them), you'll count as Neutral. Magatama boosts don't affect it indeed. What you need is 18 Luck and 25 Str and Mag to open every single stat door. I ignored these parts of the kalpa, but if you were a real completionist (nobody says you have to be), you'd want to get the Luck eventually, because separate Burial Chambers are in the Lck and Str sections. Completing all the Burial Chambers in the turn limits they suggest gives you an extra Press Turn ...on NG+ only.😑

There are three Shady Brokers in the 3rd Kalpa, which you get access to is dependent on two things: Whether the Demi-Fiend is Dark, Light, or Neutral at the moment, which is dependent on which Magatama they've mastered. And if they met the required stat thresholds to pass through a door. The three Brokers are: Str and Dark- This Broker sells a demon with all the Megido spells. Mag and Light- This Broker sells a demon with a bunch of defensive spells. Lck and Neutral- This Broker sells as many Deathstones for Fiend fusion as you can afford. You can always come back later with higher stats and a changed alignment if you want to.

...My once-and-done detailed description of BK made me forget to add that, while I do have games in a backlog I'll never get to, I don't have anything new to play right now. Nor can I think of very many titles that I can realistically emulate that I actually want to play.

I see a lot of people are criticizing Atlus for charging extra for Dante. Was it wrong of me to think its fine for the cost of the Capcom license and new VA work? -Although I wasn't aware that Atlus is charging a full $60 for the HD remaster itself. That is a scummy move, regardless of the Dante cost. --- Thinking of Xenogears makes me think of that pipe dream called a remake, and XG's iffy combat reminds me of a totally different PS1 JRPG with similar-ish combat.: I never played very far into this game as a child, and playing it on a PS3 or emulation tends to permanently freeze up about 2/3rds in at a particular story event I'm told. So I'll likely never finish it. Sure it ain't complicated, but part of me lightly fantasies about XG looking like this with modern graphics. --- Don't get to looking into my suggestions of the Devil Survivors and Luminous Arc!😜 -No, you don't have to, thats just me making a joke. --- Also, I will gently mention another part of Monolith's gameography which I have spoken of before- the Baten Kaitos duology (albeit I don't think Origins was planned from the start) released on the GameCube. They aren't perfect (although I have not played XS), I do think they rank below the Xenos generally speaking. The games were co-developed by Monolith's B-team, which seems to have been more inexperienced, the other developer being called Tri-Crescendo. It seems Monolith handled the story and graphics, while Tri-Crescendo did the sound and gameplay. (This is the opposite of Namco x Capcom, the Endless Frontier games, and Project X Zone- where Monolith made the gameplay and the writing was left to an employee of Banpresto.) Curiously, the interview I took that from, which I cannot link because it contains major spoilers, had one Monolith Soft employee say BK was intended to be the "anti-Xenosaga", that term wasn't meant to criticize Xenosaga they said, but annoying they didn't go further into what it meant. The two games use battle systems based around cards called Magnus, though how they go about it is very different. Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean is turn-based, everyone has their own deck of cards, and in general more complicated; whereas Origins is Active Time Battle, has one deck all three characters draw from, and simpler. The battle systems have some faults, and may be acquired tastes, but some may like them. Where I personally will say the two games indisputably shine are the soundtracks- two of Motoi Sakuraba's very best, and the visuals. Baten Kaitos seem to be the last of the pre-rendered 2D graphics in a 3D world that was popularized on the PS1 with the Final Fantasies of that era and still used somewhat in FFX. I can understand why the aesthetic died out, but Baten Kaitos was the pinnacle of its positives. For instance, this: In terms of story and characters, the first game is fairly JRPG standard, but possibly stronger on the overarching story compared to the prequel, whereas Origins definitely has a better cast (and far better voice acting than the first). Rewatching Origins, the character interactions feel oddly restrained, when I compare what's in my mind Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the Origins interactions feel like the characters were right about to hug, but then remembered social distancing and kept six feet apart. Like I can visualize how the scenes in Origins if placed in XC2 would be more exaggerated and emotively excessive. ...And going into a tangent now, if the games were ever to be remade/HD remastered with refinements, I would love for an extra playable character or two in Origins. I've rewatched some of the Diadem segment of Origins, and darn it, young Gibari is good by me😄, he can't be like more than two years younger than Sagi, so why not let him fight?

And to be fair, I like going out of my way to find criticisms. For critique can be a good thing, as little in this world is perfect. Also, SF tends to be unusually biased towards Tellius compared to other sites. I found one place where someone got emoji nausea at the mere mention of Tellius. If you like RD, but PoR not so much, thats fine too. While I love both halves of Tellius and can't choose between them, there are numerous fans, some who enjoy both halves and others who don't, who express a strong preference for PoR or RD. And thats fine, no permutation of FE rankings is impossible, and no one should tell you otherwise. If you love Binding Blade, there may be someone who vomits and asks how? if you add you also like RD, but almost nothing in video game tastes is logically irreconcilable.

Too easy & slow in gameplay and too safe & boring narratively are the usual criticisms people make of PoR. So you've company on those fronts. Did you never see these criticisms before?

While all the Annas mostly look the same, and seem to be nonchalant and friendly towards the others, the reality is that among the sheer number of Annas, more than a few bad apples have come to exist. An unserious comic strip makes me write up something 100x longer, going on a total tangent, and serious. Inspiration is a wonky visitor.😅

Dante from Devil May Cry is returning for the Nocturne HD Remaster after all! ...But you will have to spend 980 yen, or ~$9.00 USD, for him to replace Raidou Kuzunoha. Thanks for the license cost Crapcom. And they've fixed his one little flaw- they added Pierce to the effects of Son's Oath, the dude won't be junk for the TDE final boss now.

I have found snippets of everyone's Japanese VAs. Lin... wow, probably nothing out of the ordinary for Japanese, but she sounds like she's younger than 13, not good for her. And by Western standards, Phog sounds like he could be voiced by a woman to me (I rarely play games with Japanese VAs enabled if I have the option). On the positive side, L's eccentricity sounds present. Though I wish I knew his linguistic oddities and word shuffles in Japanese, that had to undergo localization. I'm especially curious about the "asscaves", what would Japan have instead for this half-swear phrase when Japanese swearing doesn't exist so much?

Have you not paid attention to all those XCX superboss vids? Not caring about the other characters during those things is perfectly normal there. It is far less so in XC2, but with an optimized kit I can see forgetting about the others as acceptable for the super challenges. I have noticed it in an Affinity Mission or two. One instance:

I usually loathe hot springs/bathhouse scenes in games, too often they're merely straight male perversion, not interesting, rather annoying to me. If you drop the "ooh I can't wait to spy on the nekkid girls talking about bust sizes!" stuff. And leave out any "humor" related to wacky stuff happening while nude and being embarrassed about it. I would be fine with bath scenes, a soak and a conversation by itself is perfectly acceptable. That said, having artwork of women and men!- provided they're not underage- in skimpy towels or less isn't bad! Why? Taken ...from a spa scene.😄

Will Hell do? It's hard to find pristine and HUD-free scenery artwork for Vanillaware games.

Honestly, besides that, they're a little weak. They come so close to the end, and yet still have elemental weaknesses, that I didn't realize that must've been cost me dearly, and running Amaterasu (one of my constant lategame trio, Titania and Wu Kong being the other two) against the last. --- Didn't realize Ys Origins was coming to Switch sometime unannounced, maybe I'll pick it up. I confess to playing on the normal difficulty in Ys 8, I'm no Bayonetta May Souls person. My reflexes aren't dead, but I never seem to learn and fall into my stupidity again and again.

I remember that being the case against one set of bosses, and not just for mirror use, it happens if you have Null/Absorb/Reflect to their used element on your active team, but the bosses came really late. Otherwise, I don't remember it being used much. A quick search found this: A seven-minute kill isn't fast, but the person admits it wasn't fully optimized. Still, seven minutes for the most durable enemy in the game? Not bad.

I getcha. I apologize if I'm to blame for compelling you to do it, I only meant to offer advice if you chose to do it on your own accord later. I don't remember it myself, but some minigames and quests in games are so bad they deserve a guide or bust, and this is one of them. It wouldn't have been as terrible if you didn't have to do them all in a single sitting, that and it's a requirement for completionists because of that so-so Magatama being unobtainable any other way.

A FEnoblade crossover is fine, but I want Xeno's sci-fi to have some influence on FE. No Monado-Falchions, what I want is the Fire Emblem to be a pair of Aerods or the like. Also, armor units will stop generally being on the weaker side if their armor is a giant robot. Only in North America. Radiant Dawn was November 11th, 2007 in NA, Super Mario Galaxy was November 12th, 2007. For Japan, SMG released ten days earlier, but RD came in February earlier that year. You Europeans got SMG on Nov 16th, but RD not until March 2008. Don't forget that Phog and Frye share two AfMs, and in couple other instances where there was multiple-character interactions in the AfMs, although I'd like more in the sequel. I never got around to doing them, but in general, how were those XC2 DLC-sidequests demanding multiple Rare Blades? Throwaways, or actually entertaining?

I don't think we should expect a support chain to be all of the interactions the characters in question actually have, I hope not if they're bonding together in the same army. They should be the core moments and pivotal highlights, between which lay space pregnant with possibilities for our imaginations to do as they want, be the imagined interactions as mild as ancho chiles or as spicy as ghosts. With regards to romance in particular, while it may be boring, what I ultimately look for is the presence of a sufficient "prelude to love" in the A (and ideally it should build on the prior supports). If I don't see that chemistry and understanding that could lead to marriage, then the support failed in this regard. I've seen it in some cases, in others, not at all.

It was about time, it's not like men really needed that many romance options in every prior game. (RF2 would be slightly tricky to implement with a female option I concede.) Although, I can visualize the audience they were initially expecting with Rune Factory as being male-dominated in the JRPG/isekai/dating sim/young adult light novel/anime-consuming mold. To look at the Story of Seasons ancestor, they did start on female versions as early as 2000, with Harvest Moon 3 GBC and the Japan-only "For Girls" version of Back to Nature. But ignoring HM3GBC, it took until Magical Melody in 2005 for them to begin packing the male and female options in the same game. And as for where I hope RF5 goes in terms of relationships, the remake of Back to Nature- SoS: Friends of Mineral Town- added the "Best Friends" ceremony once used in the Japanese version of HMDS Cute: "Best Friends?" Sure, tell Grandma thats what Aunt Popuri in relation to the woman whose house she lives in, Granny has a fragile heart you know. Marvelous let localizers do as they wish, and so... ...North America dropped the lie and called it what is, romance and marriage. T'would be a very nice thing for RF5 to up the inclusivity with this, FE's been slowly expanding it on too after all, but I won't spew venom if the game doesn't have it. I didn't mean literally stealing them at the altar the way you can in RF2, or anything like that. (Here is a video of the RF2 altar stealing, it's basically generic and the same with every couple.): But the way rival marriage has worked in the past, is that if you don't wed someone by a certain date, the rival will propose to them first, and I believe in the SoS games with it, you may have had to have viewed all the rival events leading up to that particular marriage as well. I wouldn't know, but maybe some people were bothered by the chance of losing out on their beloved, which they in their anger would call "theft" -thats what I meant. But if you're really devotedly pursuing a potential spouse, what's the chance that would actually happen? If they chose to do a little plot point where the entire town has to combine in thoughts and prayers and that usual JRPG/anime junk, it'd be better if everyone was in a relationship. It's not just you and a ~half-dozen people who think you're hot that are the source of the Power of Young Love and Friendship, it'd feel more communal this way and sincerely for the better. My sympathies. 🙂 I feared I'd have to do that, until I learned otherwise. She did do this for what I think was a gatcha Otome (Otome Yusha):

The demo data carries over to the actual game, but I understand if you feel like it'd be too jarring to do that. Or, you can wait for the sale, play the demo to its end to see if you really like it, and then purchase the game while the sale is still ongoing. That'd let you fully test it out, without the narrative disconnect from having put down the game for a while. You will have to put up with random encounters then, which makes things a bit tougher I would think than being able to dodge visible enemies on the map as you can in 3D. Also, narratively, I believe the game will reset some recent events for some reason if you play partway into a "segment", so if you want to swap from 3D to 2D or vice versa, do it after the plot resolves what you think would be a "chapter". Setting that aside, Tickington exists in the game to give you a small dose of optional 16-bit fun. When you visit Tickington and any of the snippets of the prior DQ games within it (some areas peaceful, but a few dungeons too), it will always be pixilated. Same. And it makes the world feel more real than you being the only one looking for love in town, that smells harem-y. As I read, they ditched the concept in Story of Seasons because male players got angry at the NPC bachelors for trying to steal their would-be spouse ("Get a life you incel!" I'd shout at them for being infuriated over pixels), and female players felt unworthy for the love of who they wanted compared to the rival. Of course, there are two ways to address this, the first is to give the rivals cold feet until they ask you "I've had been having feelings towards X, should I confess to them?" and you answer "yes". The second is easier- an "off" switch in the options menu that keeps rival marriages from happening and maybe pre-marriage rival love events too. Children exist in the other RFs, but they're an afterthought that don't do anything from I'm aware (and you can have 3 kids in RF3 for some reason). Not that I ever played until a baby was born outside of RF2, I rarely even married because I was noncommittal, more substantial postgame content would help with this. Admittedly, it's difficult to give a ton to unplayable kids when they can't fully age because the games have no time limit. And I don't want Rune Factory: A Wonderful Life. To be precise you have: RF1: 11 Bachelorettes Pick based on looks, because every girl gets like 1 event at most. Creating the foundation of the franchise seems to have absorbed all the creative juices, leaving nothing for characterization. RF2: 7 Bachelorettes Must marry in order to move on to the meat of the game- the 2nd generation. You can "pretend marry" in the second Gen, but it's purely for fun, since you are now a child. RFF: 13 Bachelorettes Six are from the first game, and the remaining seven are new. Two of them are basically the same person. And Eunice the chubby girl can be put on a diet for a smaller visual difference if you think she'd look better that way. RF3: 11 Bachelorettes Must marry one to finish off the last bit of story. RFTOD: 9 Bachelorettes and 3 Bachelors +Whoever you didn't pick of Aden and Sonja to play as in the postgame. Finally, a game where you can play as a female! However, you cannot marry until after finishing the story and have gotten every bachelo' character to 6 FP. This is because it'd be weird to date and marry while Sonja is stuck in Aden's body. RF4: 6 Bachelors and 6 Bachelorettes A game at last where you can be female from the start. And as an unspoken rule, every game has at least one mother who you'd want to marry, but can't.

I don't get why they upped shop costs on Hard, that so was sooooooo unnecessary. The second-to-last Magatama costs 450000 on Hard. If you want all the Magatamas, just use a guide for that Pyro Jack block puzzle mini game in Asakusa, because you have to complete all 20 levels in one sitting. And that maze I guess you mean was that flat floor with all those invisible walls? Yeah, that was annoying. Daisoujou is great, Meditation + Prayer at level 39 means that he'll be an amazing healer. And fun fact, the Hell Biker demon is called "Hell's Angel" in Japan, fears that rough and tumble bikers would hire men in suits to file a complaint in a court of law made Atlus change the name aboard.

If it was only remasters, they'd have to be bundled together at a single price. The first is so not worth it standalone, it'd want for a remake to fill its empty vessel. And RF2 had potential, but it could use expansions on what it already had. The mother doesn't get any special scenes with their kid IIRC, that needs to be fixed, I might even suggest hiring a few people from IS. Other changes... Forgive me for sleeping. Nice job of making that far in. Although if you visited the entrance to the 3rd Kalpa, White Rider showing up now is going to be cruel- they better fix him in the HD remaster. Hope the game works out well for you!🙂 If you need any advice I can offer it. If you bought the demon from the Shady Broker in the 1st Kalpa, that will come in handy throughout the game. Also, when you visit the Yoyogi Park much later, the full park, not the tiny bit you get to see early on, you can make a fairly cheap yet good demon. You might have to wait until you finish it first, but recruit a Titania, it's immune to Expel and Death and resists all four magic elements, while learning Glacial Blast and Mediarahan/Prayer. If you use an Aquans or Eryths to fuse it into an Oberon, you can add Ziodyne and Tornado (Sacrifice Fusion will make getting these quicker). Then you can use a Flaemis or Aeros to bring it back down to Titania for the better set of resistances. Those two Elements can be the carriers of yet more good skills, like Energy Drain, some Kajas/Kundas, or some form of fire spell to complete the magic set. A Titania served me to the final (non-True Demon Ending) battle without issues.

When a trip down memory lane makes you facepalm, but then somehow smile afterwards.😆 And I dusted off an old file of the original Paper Mario I had on my Wii U. I left it back in 2017 in the middle of the volcano. If they ever rerelease it again, plz adjust for input lag! Action-commanded Hammer strikes I can nail fine, but guarding is much harder, "mash stick/button" skills are very hard to max, and my jumps require me to press A at about the time of peak of the jump, not right before impact. I'll add that the charm is visual in the first PM, not so much in dialogue, which according to its defendants are what CS/TOK have. Although TTYD is generally better than PM1, so maybe they got the combo of visuals and personality there, I think so, but memory can be unreliable. Both of them are going to be dated by comparison. Every RF definitely seems to have been a gradual improvement over the last, and maybe RF4 was an even bigger improvement. Characters will likely be a little thinner, I can assure you that the games probably won't be as long as 4 and with very weak narratives. There will be less stuff in the gameplay and in the case of Frontier, the combat will be noticeably stiffer and slower. Farming in Tides of Destiny is very hands-off, too much. Get to an island where you can grow crops, recruit a monster, see what it grows, wave a magic wand over the soil where you see green circles appear, the monsters will seed the ground and do all the crop rearing, all you have to do is harvest them later. Your ore is earned the same way with the winter island- you have monsters grow it and you hammer it out once its at full size. The other issue with ToD is a very empty ocean, you'll be wasting daylight dragging a golem limited by stamina through quiet seas en route to another island, once in a while dredging up a mini-island, or fighting very simply a giant monster with your golem. Frontier's farming is more normal, but you'll find your crops taking longer to grow if you don't interfere with the Runey system. Think of Runeys as a magic food chain, one that if you don't mess with it at all, will naturally bring itself to complete and utter extinction. Runeys don't matter outside of farming though, and fishing can become a sufficient source of cash by the time you're done with the first dungeon. This said, if you can get the games for a bargain now, your loss wouldn't be big even if you found them antiquated.

Sounds very optimistic. Wonder when they'll start showing off real footage of the game then. I'm skipping RF4 for now, but I might want to get back into it with 5, depending on what it adds and all. I prefer top-down for different reasons. Frontier was fine in full 3D, Tides of Destiny not so much, but I liked the appearance of hand-drawn environments over 3D graphics. RF might have a bigger budget this time, but I still don't see the polygon counts and textures being first-class. Then again, with the transition off of pure portables to a hybrid system, maybe the changeover is inevitable. I don't want the abandonment of 2D portraits during conversations either, ToD's choice to do that was stylistically unpleasing, some "anime" artwork beats closeups of second-rate 2D model. If it sounds like I'm picking on ToD, it's because visually, it feels "cooler" but not as "quaint, vibrant, harmonious fantasy nature" as the other games. Frontier held onto this vibe, with a rustic touch.

Another Wii U port isn't bad, in that the Wii U was an underplayed flop. I did play the first two Pikmin games when I was younger, but I never finished either. The limited time of the first game was not good for me, and the second, I did play far enough in to complete the Emperor Bulbax cave, but I never got to going any further. Not sure why Pikmin faltered for me, although I don't think I was a great player in terms of minimizing casualties, and nowadays, some of the creature designs creep me out. I won't say I dislike it though.

Thats the rather unserious secondary remark of an outsider without a real lens into that which they're commenting on. I entirely concede without embarrassment that it was a faulty perspective (albeit I knew to be tempered a little by virtue of what I once heard of Russian oil imports).