Interdimensional Observer

They could relegate the mechs to more of an extra mode outside the main story, that'd make the absence of them among the XC1 and 2 casts more okay. *Trauma of Ganon and Giant Cucco Modes return.* In a more ideal world, they could do it such that, while XC1 and 2 get more of the main campaign spotlight, XS and XCX get more of the mecha adventure to themselves. Given DW: Gundam exists in three iterations, Koei has experience making giant robots work. Albeit combining them with separate on-foot combat in the same game... thats more resources going into making detailed character models and animations, feels like it'd could cut into the foot roster. As a tangent, in a case where Elma is her lone representative, then I wouldn't even bother including Mira for the stages, a few OC and a bunch of XC1 and 2 would be enough. I'd need at least one more of Lao or Lin to justify giving them any stages. And I'd want to stay away from Primordia actually, because nearby NLA has too many people and would be begging for Vandham and Nagi to appear at least in text boxes, if never physically in the game. Stage-wise, using HW as the main point of comparison again.: 13 or 15 stages? Let me think it out... SPOILERS FOR ALL XENOBLADES AGAIN! I enjoy some XW speculation.😄 I think you're right actually, but whatever it is, there isn't a Mac-friendly version around, and I'm an Apple sheep who had been using an old and reliable one for eight years, and thus didn't feel like jumping ship when purchasing a new computer. Thank you for shutting down that notion for good. I can safely abandon hopes of PS2 emulation then. But if Dolphin was added to OpenEmu for Mac, then PCSX2 is just a matter of its developers making it happen. How do you Europeans get by without air conditioning? I don't sleep in the summer without the AC on and a tabletop fan for extra comfort nowadays. AC even has a pivotal place in American demographic history. The post-WWII era population shift from the "Rust/Frostbelt" of the northern and eastern states to the Sunbelt of the southern and western states wasn't possible except for air conditioning making southern Florida and deserts bearable. Although, uh, try not to convince your friends to buy AC- the extra electricity costs may bite into your country's little bit of reputation as environmentally friendly. I want you stay that way, because somebody has to set a good example in this world.😅

Minoth could be paired with Addam, which would help overcome any degree of sameness with Elma and KOS-MOS. And then Addam gets his Mythra alternative, in case you like two big swords working together. And thanks for informing me about the XS on the gun front. Jr. I guess would take priority over Billy in an ideal but not entirely ideal world then. Prepare for Poppibuster SWT❤️! Super Weaponized Titanic Heart is 3.5 times the size of the original and has room for Tora. Don't forget Malos had his Torna Siren. I'd be willing to bend and give his XC2 maingame incarnation that. Warriors characters don't have to follow strict rules every single minute. They're actiony fanservice fun. Midna can generate shadow wolves (to fill in for the absence of an actual Wolf Link)- she never had that power in Twlight Princess, and Agitha's moveset, like the OCs, is 100% invention. Still it is a shortage of mecha to make it more than a mere "briefly summon as part of the normal on-foot moveset", and there isn't a whole lot of getting around that.

You tell me where to fit them. Kill Morag? Skin Tora alive and use his fur for a new hoodie for Pyra? Does Dunban Thunder!-fart himself to the moon? I haven't played XS either, so I'm not familiar with their roster. Either I get a non-Mac computer that can run ePSXe2 (I'm not going to try Wine on my new MacBook), or I wait for XS I&II DS to be fan-translated. Until then, I only know K&T and MOMO. In an ideal world, of course Fei would get in, his fisticuffs aren't exactly common either. For the rest: Elly and her ether magic + baton would be entirely distinct from Melia. Citan can blend punches with katana slashes to not copy Dunban and Jin entirely. Bart has a whip and thats very unique too, a little bit of Lora aside. Emeralda can reformulate herself- how is that not awesome? Maria of all filler characters can try to rep Xeno's liking for mecha via unending summons of Seibzehn. Billy has a niche, for there really aren't that many gun users in Xenoblade. Rico could be fun too. Though I'm feeling ChuChu can get merged into Maria's moveset- they get their big moments together and both are very filler. But we know thats how it's been. That said, the one time Shion did get in a crossover, she was paired with MOMO, do it again to fit in two XS characters at once? Here is their tag-team fighting, I didn't actually watch this segment of the vid, for the sake of the day I play NxC myself and experience it firsthand.

...How many people have played TRS though? Barely any. I don't think thats a major reason for criticizing it. Also, only Gwenchaos and Carla are like FE7, nothing else really is in TRS. And how can Mark be bad when Mark is barely a thing? Skip Lyn Mode and they don't exist at all. They're no Kris/Robin/Corrin/Byleth. Nergal I'd pin as being the real reason to dislike FE7's plot for those who do. He is insanely irrational, makes sense given he is a husk of a human being consumed by the darkness he foolishly pursued. But that same irrationality means he misses chance after chance after chance to win it all, and thats bothersome. Although, I would agree that the Black Fang as one very crappy league of assassins is another major reason to dislike FE7.

Correction! +Some Gnosis grunts to massacre. Because we know the way things sadly stand. And on the topic of Xenoblade Warriors, when XW happens, how many characters are going to be in the base roster? Looking at Hyrule Warriors for comparison, the original Wii U release had... Looking at other DW starter games: Dynasty Warriors: Gundam looked like about 15 characters. The very first Samurai Warriors, adding in Xtreme Legends (basically DLC before DLC existed) was 18. Warriors All-Stars, after deducting the Samurai/Dynasty carryovers, is 19 (maybe 16 if Ryu, Ayane, and Kasumi use their Warriors Orochi 3 movesets). Dynasty Warriors 2, the first Musou, was 28. -But I don't know if anyone shared movesets back then. Ain't gonna look at Pirate Warriors because Anime is Yuck, mecha sweetened the pill of quickly skimming the Gundam roster. Not sure how many unique movesets Fire Emblem Warriors has, is it 16? Or are there a few more? The DLC added 1 moveset I think (or is Olivia's distinct?) but 9 character models- which is 4 more than the DLC bundle of HW. Now, let me try to make a 19 character base roster for a hypothetical roster in the realm of possibility. And I'll add in 5 paid DLC additions, considering the Spinner of HW required a separate purchase of an Amiibo. I'll throw up an ALL XC GAMES SPOILERS! because I'm lazy.: I was going to add Lin, but I opted to send her the way of the Lone Hero. That way, I could fit Reyn and Sharla for a complete XC1 playable roster included. I was intending to leave Mad Taunt and My Rifle Is Getting Hotter to die trapped in interdimensional space due to failure to properly phase-transition when the world merge happens. And instead, I would've given XC1 and 2 an equal number of characters in the base roster by including the XC1 DLC character in the starting set and replacing them with someone else who I hadn't thought of. I feel that I should to include or leave out R&S as a package deal, it would be awkward if they weren't. And Tora and Nia being around mean I'm not being biased against tanks and healers. I considered making Lin DLC by excluding Lora's first pairing, but I opted to strengthen Torna's representation instead.

Oberon is a mythical male fairy, the king of the fairies married to their queen Titania. A Midsummer Night's Dream anyone? From what I've been told from secondhand sources, he is handsome, a flirt with the mortal ladies (Titania ain't happy about that), but was cursed to be no taller than a human three-year-old.

Annoying characters... I think it varies from person to person, so I can't say if characters who didn't annoy me would annoy you. Though, going off of memory: There is Kaph in LA2, an old man who runs a witch tabloid magazine and his flavor class is literally "Witch Otaku", and also a rather lousy unit so you'll never feel like you have to use him. Ignore him and LA2's cast is fine to me. Kaph's LA1 equivalent on witch-obsession is Nikolai, but I don't remember him being pervy at all, more purely a hopeless romantic. If you dislike shotas merely for existing, Theo and Pip in 1 and 2 respectively may bother you. There is a tsundere in LA2, if that trope you find loathsome. I'm not sure if LA1 had a tsundere, Lucia the main witch would be the closest to one I think, but she lacks one visual trait I've come to associate with the trope. I think I'll throw her in second to Mythra myself. Of the story females, I'll go Mythra, Nia, Brighid, Morag, Pandoria, Poppi, Pyra. I want to elevate Morag and Brighid higher, but I must concede to Nia's stronger development. I am factoring in Torna for Mythra and Brighid. I can understand. XCX is the only Xenoblade without a Japanese VA option (or did Torna lack one? I forget, but I think I remember XC1 original had it), but I likely wouldn't use ever use Japanese VAs if it did. I remember Elma's Japanese VA from one of the early pre-release trailers, it is too soft for her, and there was a shout by Ga Buidhe in there too, it was too high-pitched.

Again, it's from 1992, older RPGs aren't always as easy to get into. Less direction as to where to go, less nuance to the combat. And of course, less dialogue and characterization. Although from the first half of Masoukishin, if you wanted to make a wordy game in the 16-bit era, you could -albeit that game isn't a JRPG and hence was free of the text black hole of countless NPCs. And since you can emulate DS stuff now, let me remind you the first two Luminous Arc games exist with official translations. You may get the feeling you got with Persona 4 of "it's just not as good as the successor", because chances are strong thats how it'll be when compared to Stella Glow. But because emulating is free, you may wish to try them to see if the entertainment value outweighs any steps back. I'd probably go back to LA2 first and not 1 then, it'll be slightly less dated, but still no singing🎶 witches. If you do try LA2, and wish to have the Fatima ending over the Althea ending, inform me and I'll send you the correct dialogue options. Basically, you have to answer questions scattered through the first half or so of the story such that you get at least 9 out of a maximum of 11 points to indicate a clear preference for the Shadow Frost Witch over the wannabe Ember Witch. Going in blind, you'd probably get the Althea ending.

And the power outage is finally over, I think, for now. I wasn’t expecting it to take days to repair, I thought it’d require a few hours, three or five maybe. It was only a tropical storm and it wasn’t a daylong event, it temporarily cleared up into a dry, windless, sunny day at points. From what I overheard, the rest of the town had very splotchy outages, a gas station a seven-minute drive away never lost power. In the grand scheme of it, a few days without electricity and WiFi is a trifle, a joke, there is far worse weather and life in general can do. I had in the past decade gone through an outage lasting ten days, which had incorrectly and blissfully receded in my mind to being only three. And that came with a much shorter running water malfunction and several large fallen trees in my enormous front yard too. It was following that hurricane, that my family purchased a generator, which we used through this blackout to keep a light, a standing fan, and the freezer and fridge running, as well as recharge portable devices. But, this by comparison transient, lack of electricity was still very annoying for modern sensibilities and habits. A day in the era of COVID is already usually an emptier than usual one, no Internet either makes it more of a husk than a Shedinja. I was agonizingly bored, ...waiting again and again for the next fifteen minutes to pass and power to magically come back online at just the right moment. That never came, and I, unserious, cursed the utility company as incompetent, although it seems they didn’t start repairs until the day after the storm had passed. I didn’t find out any real estimate of when things would be restored until the second night, had I known sooner, I would’ve been a bit less irritated. I actually got power back on Thursday around 4:45 PM, ahead of schedule, yay! But I didn’t return to SF then because I while I did surf the web once more, I was too tired to post anything and went to bed very early (and I’m still tired). I had slept through the dark nights without air conditioning, laying on the top of my bed to avoid overheating more than I already was, thankfully the outside air was relatively cool and opening the windows helped. The rest of the house was more humid, and sleeping outside on a lounge chair would've meant waking up unrecognizable with mosquito bites. Then came this morning, some rain and thunderstorms, but nothing significant. Nonetheless, electricity receded again at 7:53 AM, despite the weather being so ordinary that it had no excuse to falter. Initially, it was a “3/4ths outage” in that WiFi and TV were disabled, but some lights continued to function, albeit dimmed after two seconds of total blackout. It reverted to a total absence of power within like two hours of its start, and lasted until about 2:50 PM. Why this happened, I do not know, and who knows, maybe it’ll happen again. Relatives living ten minutes away experienced the flicker of power loss, but not anything more than that. Apparently, Isaiah took down 90% of the power in my county, albeit all but about 10% of it was restored in one day. And they called in over a thousand utility workers from elsewhere to assist with the rest of it. Why my non-coastal, very white and suburban town took so long to recover from what was not even a hurricane and had that momentary relapse for me today? From I’ve heard others say, without investigation on my own, there are two reasons: An antiquated power grid in the area, old to the point of replacement parts being hard to come by because they don’t make them anymore. Funds allocated to upgrade the grid were used for other things. The usual government mismanagement when it comes to maintaining public infrastructure. My town has a profound appreciation for the sublime natural-unnatural artistic juxtaposition of trees caressing power lines. And it seems slices of my town may not be back to normal still. Or nearby ones. As the saying goes, "You don't know the value of water until the well is dry". Be thankful for the modern necessities you take for granted that humanity has wrought in its most recent times through great effort.

Can’t post much here right now. Tropical Storm Isaiah knocked out power on Monday, won’t be back online until tomorrow, or maybe the 11th. ...This world sucks.😩

I decided, after thinking about it for a long while, to begin watching a no-commentary 4 part longplay I found of BKO. I remembered the gameplay fairly well, so I didn't feel compelled to replay the game, despite my GameCube still sitting in the basement, untouched for many years now. I should stop hoarding and sell it. Nintendo, HD remaster everything and I won't feel so guilty letting go. The gameplay is sluggish to start despite the ATB format (for the first two dungeons at least, once more than just Sagi come under your control, it gets better), that didn't fade from me. And it's been reconfirmed that the first boss hits like Jin to Rex, too hard for a first boss. What I really wanted was to refresh myself on the narrative and characters, the outlines of which I remembered, but not the finer details. I can see patina and faults in the plot, not all new to me, nor all able to be excused by the game's age. Nostalgia and the fading over time of memory blurs the specifics and leaves one feeling an amalgamation of the good reflecting one's subjective interests and imagination. But I don't mind admitting that, I still like the game. I've watched 5 hours and 18 minutes of the first part of the longplay, thought that was a good cutoff for now, I should be heading to bed. The thing I wanted most was to reexamine the heroic trio, and I'm happy to say my likings for them haven't changed a bit. They're still good characters as I see it.

I concur. It'd make a good smaller Zelda title after a big project. Things have come a long way since Zelda 2. Say goodbye to a ground combat being limited to a short-ranged thrust and the puniest sword laser ever, Link's arsenal of tools and techniques has grown significantly. Although I'd prefer Link go magic-heavy again, thats fairly unique to Zelda II, or at least a Zelda/other alternative playable character who could could be magic-oriented as opposed to hammerspace tool-user Link. There is no shortage of Metroidvanias on the market, but I wouldn't see Zelda 2R/Sequel as belonging to that. Done right, I'd say say 2D action-adventure with good platformer elements would be its genre. Metroidvania is basically that true, but the absence of a singular giant dungeon you explore and the presence of an overworld is the separator. I'd drop the lite RPG aspect, Zelda doesn't need it. And I'm not sure what to do about the overworld, the random encounters thing was odd and arguably should go. Of course it has alot of flaws, it's an NES game with "2nd game weirdness". Anyone with common sense would would make a Zelda II sequel in line with the spirit of the original, but using the full arsenal of modern QoL and game design in general. I'm sure the team who made A Link Between Worlds could nail it. -- https://gonintendo.com/stories/366204-pokemon-sword-shield-art-director-shares-a-tribute-to-pokemon-col Cool tribute. Whens the HD Remaster?😉 Snap will be back, minus the Blockbuster printouts, we can't rule out a Colosseum revival. May Cipher rule the world again!

I remember that the Ronin class in Etrian Odyssey I & II have "Peerless Stance" as their best stance technique as well. Gotta be a use of musou there. Have fun! My favorite chapter is... I'm not sure, but I might pick one of two opposite extremes: 3 or 6. Favorite partner... Vivian, Yoshi and Ms. Mowz are all charming characters to me. For the original Paper Mario, Chapter 6 might be my favorite, and either Lady Bow or Lakilester for the partner (again, as characters, in gameplay I'll use whoever). The first Shining game is actually "Shining in the Darkness", an old dungeon crawler RPG. According to Koei Wiki: "Before the first game was conceived, Omega Force members were originally planning on making a brand new action game completely unrelated to history. However, since many of Koei's employees are fans of the Three Kingdoms era, the concept of a Three Kingdoms action game was unconsciously made by the team. There were talks over whether they should develop the game in-house or pitch to another developer, but Omega Force won out. When the developers wanted to port the fighting game to the PlayStation 2, they had second thoughts due to the fighting game boom at the time. To make themselves stand out, they envisioned a battlefield scenario and focused on the prospect of the player working with a team to fight against several opponents at once. After they decided to incorporate more elements from the Three Kingdoms era, it eventually became the hack-and-slash hit that it's known for today. Though listed under the action game genre, creators strove to make the series a "fusion of real time strategy and action". Eventually, the series's appeal was allowing the player to be a "one man army" versus the thousands of enemies in ancient China. Kou Shibusawa states that it was his personal desire to capture the excitement and thrill felt by the events in the novel. The series started its own type of genre."

A PS1 weapon-based 3D fighting game, akin to SoulCalibur, featuring characters from the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history ("Sangoku" in Japanese). The international numbering of the franchise is actually 1 ahead of the Japanese. The latest, Dynasty Warriors 9, is 8 in Japan. DW1 in Japan is Sangoku Musou (sometimes merged into one word; don't confuse it with Sengoku Musou- Samurai Warriors). Dynasty Warriors 2 is Shin Sangoku Musou. Think "Super Dynasty Warriors". Internationally there was no change to reflect this.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Musou genre! 20 years ago, Dynasty Warriors 2, the first Musou game, was released on this day, August 3rd, back in 2000. Koei-Tecmo put an anniversary trailer celebrating the entire Dynasty Warriors franchise to its present point.: Ehhh.... they could've done better with this. Far too much time wasted on transitions from game to game- how they'd get this wrong when Musou is all fast-paced flashy action? Same, it's more humane and more environmentally friendly, but I love meat. That Beyond/Impossible Meat burger stuff doesn't taste the same to me at all in a side by side comparison. I've the same problem; my parents never forced me out of the anti-fruit & veggies habit. My palette has grown a bit, asparagus is good, but I'm still very limited. I trying to like watermelon, but my taste buds are sooooooo ruinously adapted to table sugar, high fructose corn syrup and the ilk, that there is no sweetness in it, only watery with bitterness. Salad is my enemy. Whats worse, is because ease of preparation, my parents looooong overstayed the serving of those microwaveable bags of steamed carrot cubes, peas, and corn. Converting someone to liking vegetables via those is like trying to convert someone to Christianity via an auto-da-fe. I consider it to be Peak Sakuraba myself. Maybe a little stronger in EWatLO, but still great in Origins. And, Origins has this, available in the ingame sound test from the start of the game I think: It means "The Wings of Beginning". Might not be the best, but it has a nice backstory to it. Motoi Sakuraba composed the music, his wife wrote the lyrics in Japanese- which were then translated into Italian-, and his daughter- 9 years old at the time- sang them. A quaint family project. The lyrics if you want to know:

Thats Suzuka and her Jyaki-Gun-Oh (Demon-Gun-King) for you. It has no will of its own, it's said she moves it with strings attached to her fans, not that we can see them. She calls it a karakuri, Japanese for a purely mechanical (no power supply) puppet dating back to the 1600s. Wikipedia says karakuri comes from a verb meaning "to pull, stretch, and move a thread", which is befitting. Her various attacks translate as, with the official/fan-translated names to the left: Jyaki-Gun Dancer (lit. Jyaki-Gun's Bullet Chain) Suzuka Beat (lit. Suzuka's Beautiful Threads) Jyaki-Gun Medley (lit. Jyaki-Gun's Beauty of the Underworld) Jyaki-Gun Fever (lit. Jyaki-Gun's Seal Break) Jyaki-Gun Bomber (lit. Jyaki-Gun's Brahmanic Break) Jyaki-Gun Kick (lit. Jyaki-Gun's Rider) Jyaki-Gun Finger (lit. Jyaki-Gun's Sealing Fang) Jyaki-Gun Celeb (lit. Jyaki-Gun's Spiritual Dance) [OD] Jyaki-Gun Toukyou (lit. Jyaki-Gun's Eden) [OD] Jyaki-Gun Maharaja (lit. Jyaki-Gun's Exorcism) It takes a moment for me to get into XC2 Battle myself. And by "a moment", I mean a good Blade Combo, ideally around the 50 seconds into the piece, I'm in the groove of the music once I get to that, but beforehand, it's an iffy start. Time to Fight has the opposite problem I think, a good start, but weakens later into it. -- Heres a track thats a little different.: I know, another from BK, but the soundtrack was imprinted into my introns many years ago. This ToS, and TYYD, my childhood trio of the few GC JRPGs.

I know naught of any of those games in question and because Jude looks hideously redesigned I'll never touch ToX2 but it's a matter of different opinions then. And this is from someone who never intends to have kids. But differences in opinion are perfectly fine. Though maybe to avoid coming off as too critical, I'm sorry, how's this for dancing? Corrected, there's your joke.

The name of the franchise isn't all that meaningful, it's mostly an afterthought. Even more so than Fire Emblem, where most games try to make relevant in some way, DQXI doesn't have any dragons of note at all really. Though I take you made it past a certain moment? If you didn't feel anything then, I think you're dead.😑 That said, you tried DQ, and it fizzled, at least now you know. I'll say the say the same of my university's spring concert, which I unexpectedly discovered included alot of Broadway show tunes, which I learned are definitely not by cup of tea. Eugen, while maybe drunk, punched rude drunkard Holmes. Thats character right there, and this from someone who finds Holmes... as not entirely defined by his jerk behavior and what isn't that to be refreshing in a way. If because of you, they exist, and that DLMC has green hair, I will skip the game, steal your copy/system you own it on, burn it, and then hack your online account and have it buy every shovelware title that exists on the system. I will bear with dragon lolis, but the green hair has to go, any color but green.👿 Xane had red in FE1, never from the very start has FE dragonkind been locked into green alone. It was alright in Awakening, but Mila and Duma started pushing it, and 3H is horrible to me for this boring reuse alone. Goldoa had green, but Dheg was bald now and Ena, Gareth, and Nasir weren't green. Give me variety again at least. FE should not be enslaved to viridian locks. And hate to be the downer, but Mia ranks very low among Tellius characters for me. She is all surface, no depth, not that one has to be looking for the deep. If you want perkiness thats carefree, fine by me, I just don't see the appeal.

You can play Innocent Sin and not feel compelled to play Eternal Punishment, the way you would X2 after finishing XCX. IS ends on a resolved, happy note. You can play Eternal Punishment and not need to know Innocent Sin beforehand- this was originally the case for international audiences actually. Innocent Sin's PS1 original version never got released outside of Japan, probably because Hitler. The West got Eternal Punishment PS1 anyhow. It wasn't until the PSP port of IS that the West got it. And oddly, the West never got PSP EP and had to settle for a PS1 Classic port on the PS3 because the PSP port released in Japan in 2012- the same year the Vita was released. This said, Innocent Sin if possible should be watched/played before Eternal Punishment. It was created and intended to be a duology from the very start, and you will miss out on some impact if you skip to EP. But skipping to EP will spare you the oddity of seeing Maya go from "Let's think positive!" and "It's whoopass time!" to a silent protagonist, Atlus's stubborn insistence on one hurt EP Maya's interactions. This I feel is what reviews, understandably, can lack, but which can turn on or off people. The minutiae will drag down clear, smooth writing in any review, things that would make people want to read the whole thing and not just skip to the summary. But going into a lot of detail with the core aspects of the game and any positives and faults related to them is very helpful. Honestly almost everyone in ToAb starts off a wrong foot. Which character is huggable the moment they join? Guy maybe and thats it? Luke ain't alone, it's a team of abominable snowmen for a while, everyone is so icy towards each other. I haven't played RF4, and I think I'm gonna wait until RF5 instead (I hope it adds gay marriage after SoS: FoMT did). But I can copypaste my thoughts from elsewhere about every other game in the franchise: Skip RF1, it's very lacking. About as fun as playing FE Awakening/Fates and then going back to FE1, it established the skeleton of the franchise, but there is no meat on the bones. Combat is clunky, characters are thinner than a marriage veil. RF2- Definitely much better, they fleshed out the characters more and the combat is better too. The 1st Gen is limiting in gameplay, but if you pick your girl quickly and do whatever it takes to get her fast, you can finish the 1st Gen by the end of your first Summer I think. No marriage in the second being only a kid, but here is where the meat of the gameplay is with forging and full access to the dungeons. Money, monsters, and skill levels all carry over to Gen 2. Frontier- The better game with Raguna (the protag of RF1 and thus the original MC of RF). Characters are maybe a little behind RF2 actually, but nowhere near RF1 bad. Combat is also still on the slower side, again perhaps more than RF2 but less than 1. Also, if you actually want to farm a lot, you'll have to deal with the chore called Runeys at some point. (Fishing as an alternative income source is very feasible.) RF3- Combat becomes fast here, skill levels and forging explode in a good way. The characters in RF2 and Frontier could be compared kinda with pre-Awakening FE characters, and RF3's with Awakening/Fates characters. By this, I mean the characters in RF3 are bursting with zany personality, while those beforehand, though still having shticks oftentimes, weren't so exuberantly into them. I do not cast judgement on any character when I say this. Farming is a bit undercut in this game, which is one of the only faults. The other being Micah is a pretty badly designed protagonist visually speaking. Overall if someone has only played 4, 3 is still very playable with few issues. It is short though. Tides of Destiny- Combat is still good and fast like 3, though I recall enemies being able to sometimes hit like a pile of bricks. Characters aren't so quirky as 3, and marriage to anyone is restricted until after the plot is over and you've at I believe 6 FP with all marriage candidates male and female. Traversing the ocean is a bit of time waster, but I believe the dragon shrine you can sometimes use as a pay-to-warp, and you can set the Golem to move to a pinpoint destination with time moving at an accelerated pace. The farming here is quite hands off, and this is the first game to get rid of plots of farmland in dungeons. And dungeons aren't quite as pretty visually like in the other games. RFs 1-3 are DS titles, Frontier is Wii, and Tides of Destiny is Wii and PS3. But unless you want to emulate an older title first to demo the franchise, stick to RF4 as others say.

So the Yggdrasil IV of XS?😛 Well, Eternal Punishment is. P1 and P2 Innocent Sin are all teenagers (barring Maya) with more of a school lean, but EP after the very first dungeon ditches schools altogether. This is the cast after all: Only Tatsuya is a teenager here, and he gets called out a few times for his youth leading him to foolishly take on the burdens of the entire world by himself. Everyone else in their 20s, except Baofu- 32 and therefore the oldest playable Persona character. I'm sure this means the P5 cast would want to burn them all at the stake. Either way, there are no Social Links or Confidants or life-sim elements to P2, which is why I went for it. I'm not big on high school hijinks either, could they try college for a change at least? It isn't like you've totally figured out life after 18. I totally understand you. I try to be anti-hype myself. I love that quip. It doesn't exist in Japan actually, the Japanese nerd axiom it replaced is "Food fills the stomach. Figures fill the heart." Barring talk of that life-sized Ryza figurine, I find the localization more relevant and therefore funnier. You are aware of the "Michael Phelps races a shark" thing from like last year or another? That was a total misleading lie. Don't get your hopes up for Tyson. -- Completed Chapter 9. *Yawn* Primer->Violent Streak= 60 on the counter. Phase 1 over in like two minutes; time for Phase 2, which should mean I board my Skell, nope. For a moment, I thought staying on foot would kill me, it didn’t. The boss delayed the inevitable via summoning minions which made it invincible as long as they were around. Curiously, it never flipped the weather, did I kill it too fast? Oh, and while Alexa died, Elma and Lin survived on foot too, I was not expecting that. Very quick thinking, maybe too quick, on Elma's narrative part too. Disappointed it turned out Six Stars doesn’t become available until after Chapter 10, why so late for an AM? Sure postgame exists, but it isn’t like Six Stars is statistically objectively superior to any other gear. Now, I need to go up another two levels before I can recruit Celica, I've still some quests to do, so I'll get them done. Almost at 4 hearts with Alexa when she was only at 2 not long ago, wow, Affinity isn't too bad here. I have to complete Chapter 11 before I can do her last AfM though, so no rush on 4 hearts, and unfortunately that means no Maximum Voltage until then.

Actually, we never see Phoenicis engaged in any piracy, though they are said to on Begnion ships alone b/c the Massacre. The one chapter in PoR you're thinking of has him only observing Naesala helping some Beorc kill others of their kind. But face it, Tibarn got into PoR only after Disney rejected him for Pirates of the Caribbean.😁 I haven't watched the video, but I assume he's a shifter again, because now that this game has beasts, it need new units to fill the category now and again. And barring the so far unconsidered path of magically turning non-beasts into beasts for non-canon giggles, that immensely limits who can be a shifter, thus Seasonals are necessary to milk those who already exist. Pirates are fine to me. The class itself was never exactly good in FE due to the limited usefulness of water-walking, but the theme by itself should've replaced a swimsuit banner works to me, shame FE has a rule on no blunderbusses. Excellent character variety is another point.

Now that I think about, modern FE could provide a middle ground solution, a way to keep "intense OD music" and yet not quite override- Ablaze variants. I have not seen this weapon of hers, exclusive to the Ep. 1 body?

If only you had two things: An option to stop Don't Worry from overriding and resetting the music every time you spend even three seconds off the ground. And this has to apply to other instances of override too, because override rhymes with Overdrive and therein lay a big problem- especially if it happens with aBOreSS and The Key We've Lost. Thankfully XC2 did include a no-override option, so I expect to see that again the future. An option for an instrumental version of Don't Worry. The lyrics are the issue, the underlying music isn't so bad. I'd say the same of NLA's hated themes, the music works for a city specifically based on Southern California, it has a cliched fit to it. It's the lyrics that drag it down into burn-in-hell territory. And for character themes, I'll pick two more from FFVI's soundtrack: Edgar's and Sabin's Theme, and Celes's Theme.

From a touch of mystery going down a road, to snow. *sniffles* It wouldn't surprise me that Ys would, as an Action RPG, it doesn't exactly have so many battle themes due to the absence of a transition from field to battle. Therefore, field themes need more attention. Correction! It is German lyrics chosen by a Japanese composer, sung by an Anglophone singer. It's telephone- the lyrics, the equivalent to nonsensical Engrish in Japanese songs which XCX has too. I prefer Sylvalum (Day or Night or CD bonus track Piano). There is that "fresh, take life as it's coming at you" adventuring feel to Noctilum, but I lean towards the sense of wonder in an utterly alien landscape of Sylvalum. I'm dreading Chapter 10 for ruining it. For field themes, I'll name one from an olde Square title, since I don't think the people here would be inclined to play it (no biggie, FFVI needs a remake in the gameplay department), Terra's Theme. Terra's Theme counts, because it's used as a field theme (and for the opening credits), "Awakening" is her real theme for character-related moments.

Want a remix? Battle themes are an important part of any JRPG, you'll be hearing them a lot after all. Not to discredit the field and event music, but the latter is more easily missed b/c you were paying too much attention to the dialogue. I'll toss a good, maybe not the best, but technically quite clean one here, The True Mirror: And, I'll throw one more point to All Correct!, Haken's battle theme in Super Robot Taisen: OG Saga Endless Frontier. The game doesn't have a main battle theme, it randomly picks the theme of one of the characters in the front battle row (or the three mecha in EF, EXCEED can pick any front-row support character's too). Haken's is the best original composition to me (which aren't too many actually: Code: ATA, Fairy Rom-Antic, Crimson Asura, the Dark Knight, Alchemist's Query, BURN NOW!, Brave New World, and maybe Arisu in Fluxland are all borrowed from other games).