Interdimensional Observer

If you needed any advice, I'd be willing to offer it. Not that I remember everything about either game, but I should remember enough to be somewhat helpful. And, I'll throw this your way, the original DS version's opening- which got replaced with an entirely new one in the enhanced 3DS port.: The new opening is good, but the replacement of "Reset" with "Soul Survive" as the opening song was a touch questionable, since Reset is actually used sans lyrics ingame. Darned for you it doesn't look like the digital version had a permanent 1/2 off price cut in Europe as it did in the US. DS2 Record Breaker might be on sale for Europe right now though. Don't feel pressured to splurge spend though (and of course, if you don't like the games at all it turns out thats fine too). So a blend of Rest and Retire in one. The -15 levels hit sounds excessive, though the first two DS Etrians had a -10 levels cost to Rest. Although, someone might argue the -2 levels of modern Rest is too small a cost. I would hope EXP gain is really really rapid at a lower level, otherwise thats a ton of grinding you'd have to do to catch back up.

This does make sense. Chapters 1, 2, and 4 are all built around Tsubasa starting up and developing herself as an idol. Itsuki is fairly unimportant, he's got near-zilch in narrative importance or good characterization, he is practically but not technically silent, and unlike a slew of silent protags, he isn't at all special. His only real moment in the limelight is at the very end of the game.

I won't. I'll keep you alive, forever. Reborn with every death, all memories inherited at that moment. But no matter how hard you try, how much you yearn to change the world, you never will. You could conquer the ends of the Earth, and I shall thwart any lasting legacy. Resign yourself to eternal life ever futile. But seriously, if you still have a working 3DS, it's not too late! The first Devil Survivor was my gateway to SMT, they're still very good games, and relatively easy by SMT standards. A couple other details: Movement is done on a grid as with an SRPG- no dungeons to crawl through, but when you attack an enemy, it transitions to typical SMT combat. Extra Turns are very similar to Press Turns. Each game is spread out over 7 days from morning to night. Each event/important battle you attend consumes 30 minutes of your current day, Free Battles are for grinding and cost no time- you can do them endlessly. You can't attend absolutely everything, so choose what you want to see wisely.

Considering the second Hot Springs CG featured a very much underaged girl in the center of the image with a generous sideshot of them, I think it's perfectly reasonable to tone it down. If it was Syrene or Cierra, it'd be still very pervy, but acceptable, a little girl is pushing it too far I'd say though. The rest of the second CG and the first? Well, it's next to impossible for them to not be pervy, but they don't sit on legal boundaries so much, well Lina kinda does, but not so blatantly (though I heard she might be older than Fia). Good, it does not deserve to be played. 😄 The game in no way improves on the original duology, and continues to have and possibly even worsens some of the problems of the first two games in narrative and gameplay. 😡 It set up a cliffhanger at the end begging for a sequel, but because it was so bad, it killed the series instead.😭 And if you ask why I'm using emojis, it because Matthew the clone son of Issac and Jenna is a silent protagonist who speaks only through four stupid smiley faces.😜 The only good thing to come of Dark Dawn was Sveta, thats it.

The major differences between Portable and FES, from what I gather: FES: Playable epilogue called The Answer. Gameplay-wise it's on the tedious side, a supposed "30 hour grindfest", no Social Links or school stuff in this bonus story, and the writing is a mixed bag. Might be better to just YouTube this afterwards. Characters cannot be controlled other than the main protag, at most, you get to set the AIs to specific behaviors. A world you can walk around in 3D. Anime/FMV cutscenes. Portable: All characters can be directly controlled. Option to play as a female silent protag- this is the only Persona to have a gender choice. Social Links can significantly differ with her, and a few pieces of music are replaced with new ones too. You point and click to various locations instead of walking around. Anime cutscenes replaced with in-game graphics. I've seen opinions divided over which version is better.

Never displayed much interest in FE Cipher, but artwork was pleasant. Random light desire- are there such things posters that consist of nothing but tens to hundreds of trading cards arranged tightly into a rectangle? Each is a modern mini piece of art, art museums should collect them I most sincerely say. I would love to decorate a bedroom wall with a cascading collage of FE Cipher or Pokemon cards. Yeah, it's ironic that a game with a music vibe to it, the Wii U disc even looks a bit like an old record, that the soundtrack is not so memorable outside of the songs. I can see and can agree with a lot of what you said. Touma and Kiria best, dungeon puzzles can get a bit tedious (the maid dresses redux come to mind), and the game's style and efforts big and small to maintain that flair was impressive. And because I forgot to say it before, congrats on making it through to the end of TMS!😉 Persona 3 comes in three versions: the original release, FES- an update on the original, and Portable. Portable lets you control everyone by default. If you can emulate PSP games alright, then you could try that, although there are some presentation differences due to differences in tech capabilities and additional content that lead some to prefer FES to Portable. If Portable runs smoothly and FES does not though, Portable might be your best and only option. No Devil Survivor? For shame! DS1 is classic SMT alignments done with not-so-flat characters in a thrilling setting. DS2 is still apocalyptic, with an 11th hour alignment decision. But DS2 has been called Persona-esque with its "Fate Levels" being akin to Social Links/Confidants for each of the playable characters. And there is a good bit of humor- does "Operation Box" sound at all serious to you? A tsundere and a slight perv scene (which you can opt out of) are additional signs that this is "anime". I've found myself largely resistant to feeling the darkness of SMT at this point, unless I end up fighting someone I kind of like because I picked a different alignment- but that guilt I can feel with any game. I wanted to feel drained when they threw me in jail in Sector Bootes in Strange Journey and you could see and hear humans being experimented, tortured, and killed by demons, but I didn't feel it as much as I wanted to. This said, there is one part of SMTIV that gets me every time (SPOILERS): That sounds oddly akin to something I was reading yesterday. Quantum Devil Saga, a set of 5 novels that is based on Digital Devil Saga- but not the same thing- had droplets of Sera's blood easing the feral craze induced by the hunger of the Avatars. In DDS, that isn't the case, Sera needed only to sing a song to return the humanity to the bearers of the Atma.

Of the unpromoted magic trio, prefer Lucius over Canas and Erk. Similar offense to the latter, and instant Restore access on promotion with easy Physics acquisition means I can bench a low leveled Priscilla if need be when Pent comes. Luna is not very useful outside of boss-slaying, and four Nosferatus at most with -6 AS, well, it won't result in Canas's doubled demise, but he won't ORKO with it. This said, the practical difference in CEL isn't very big, and they're all good. Only for Hector, Damian obeys the tripwire aggression in Eliwood Mode.

And Reyn is the musclehead bro character who is there to back the wimpier childhood friend Shulk, not uncommon RPG faire. Reyn served in gameplay as "how aggro works and how you can deal with it for beginners"- he taunts the enemies into hurting him, while Shulk does the damage via positional stabs and slashes. Shulk also does the Breaking and Reyn the Toppling afterwards, to introduce that mechanic. Morag, offscreen, is leaping over Pandoria with a near-minimum of space between between the former's crouch and the latter's headspace. Nobody has time no time to worry about touching backsides or other body parts, Land of Challenge simulator Malos and Akhos are no less threatening than the real deal. Nia, Rex, Tora and their Blades are eating popcorn in an unseen part of the stoney stands. They're taking some pleasure in seeing how the Grand Inquisitor and Zekenator struggle against the Torna duo after they misspoke and made some unserious remarks of "how bad it could it have been in Uraya?", which touched a nerve. I liked the Xenogears reference I'll say for sure, but the Bart colors didn't look so good on Zeke, I'm not sure I'd ever have him wear it. The Sigurd recolor isn't so ketchup and mustard, so it's definitely the better one to me.

Don't belittle yourself for toning down the difficulty, if it's too much to be fun, do what makes things enjoyable again. Set difficulty machismo aside. The final battle of any game always has the fine excuse of wanting to wrap things up too. As for that one little plot point... ---- Done with the 2nd Stratum in EOV again. I had been preparing since the end of the 1st for my clash with the Hippogryph, the final ordeal before the Master Classes unlock, but it turns out I was still somehow underprepared. I went in at a good lvl 29 on everyone, and I had bought the best armor I could. Yet the Hippogryph was OHKOing my Necromancer and without Line Guard my Masurao could meet the same fate. Why was this possible Atlus? Knowing a stoned boss is no boss, I spent three tries trying to Black Mist + Petrify Gas the Hippogryph, but I failed and got slaughtered each time. Fourth time was the charm, Petrify landed, then it was High Ground + Ruinous Prayer + Volt Prayer + Chain Shock + Volt Jar + Armor Pierce + Soul Cry. When Petrify wore off a few turns later, I brandished Chain Blast + Poison Bomb and continued the Chain Shock-prioritzed assault. The boss was dead in 8 turns, having never hurt me with anything but puny basic attacks. Now, I begin the fun part of EOV- embracing the expanded skillsets of the Legendary Titles! I'll finally have my chance to experience an Etrian dodgetank in the Phantom Duelist. They shall be stripped of all equipment for greatly increasing their evasion, if at the price of dying almost inevitably if it's ever hit. I don't think I'll need Deft and Revenge Thrusts. My Blade Dancer will shed all armor for quadruple katanas and extreme offense, including the Phantom's Lure. The Shield Bearer will Divide Guard the Blade Dancer so it won't be OHKO'ed, and if it has the chance, Dragon Roar on the Phantom to increase enemy aggression towards it. The Divine Herald will Haste Prayer to buff the Phantom's evasion, use the basic elemental Prayers for when Cut damage won't cut it, and Appease Spirits + Holy Flame will heal the damage the Phantom can't attract. The Spirit Broker will do its own independent thang. Poison Bomb the world again, Zombie Powder for good instakill, Fair Trade the Wraiths provided by Zombie Powder for damage, Sacrifice + Gates of Hell for making high HP Wraiths when I can't Zombie Powder some up, and a point in Life Exchange for on-demand healing. But first, I Rest to free up all my Skill Points for these radical retoolings.

Ruin. Debilitate is 40 EP per use, but it provides all three of the stat drops in a single skill.

When it comes to gaiden chapters, most feel like filler constructed around a character- namely the one you recruit therein- or in FE6's case, a legendary weapon. FE7's gaidens aren't immune to this criticism, but Port of Badon and Night of Farewells feel like they aren't gaidens, which is great to me. Though, perhaps you are right, and gaidens should feel fillery, because otherwise missing them is missing out on too much. Maybe theres a solution to non-filler/item & character-get and yet not make the chapter too important? If you delay on engaging them, you can aggro the Mage, the Shaman, and maybe the Archer and someone else from the north, above the first red house east of the vendor. You can do this without tripwiring the rest of Fargus's crew into action.

From my replay, ally my characters no higher than 63.: Phase 1: Mostly used Yashiro and Touma, but I swapped to Kiria and Tsubasa sometimes b/c status or low HP. Touma used Debilitate as needed, the Sorcerers and Druids were slain ASAP. I might have used a Rakukaja Stone or two, and a Dekunda Stone when hit with Dark Breath. Cured the ailments with items right away except when HP needed to be patched up. Since there is nothing after this fight, I did use a rare Bead Chain for a heal (and a common Maca Leaf or two), and I conserved my SP for Mamori's Microwavin' Heart and Soul for healing. I thankfully never needed to use Soul though, even if I came close. Touma and Eleonora had the Blades of Domination passive, which frequently shoved Medeus to the end of the turn lineup. Most damage to Medeus came from Itsuki's Wyrmicide, but Yashiro, Touma, and Kiria tried chipping in. This phase required I stay on my feet, but not too bad. Phase 2: I used only Touma, Yashiro, and Tsubasa and Microwavin' Heart for healing here. Dies Irae was the biggest problem, even with constant Debilitate, it hit for colossal damage to everyone, I should've used more Rakukaja Stones. Energy Drain was bad, though I had 6 Chakra Pots going into this battle. I made it worse on myself by equipping the Masakado's Sword Carnage to Yashiro, since it made him weak to Energy Drain, equipping the Kusanagi no Tsurugi would've prevented that. Thus I swapped him for Tsubasa later. While Dekunda meant Medeus would dispel the Debiltate debuffs, he had to waste an action to do so, sparing me one painful attack from him. I'm not sure if Medeus would use Dekunda if he had been inflicted with only one debuff like Tarunda, but if so, that would be a lot cheaper on EP. If you dug up old Hamstring, Touma could Session off of Medeus at the same time. Wyrmicide was again my main damage source. This phase was certainly tougher, but I managed eek out a victory. Perhaps I was lucky in that I never had two characters KO'ed at once. Dies Irae could drop two in the red and one dead with a followup attack, but that was as bad as I had it. I never once used the Naga's Blessings Special Performance exclusive to the final battle, since I don't know if Medeus has any pattern to Dies Irae. But spamming Clap Tracks if you have a stockpile with one character, having Itsuki summon Tiki every other turn, and the other active cast slot alternate between healing and offense might be viable? There is a Tokyo Destinyland dungeon in the first SMT, pink walls and floors and teleport galore. It's where Echidna leader of Chaos and giant head without a body hangs out. From checking the SMT Fandom for an image when it turns out it doesn't have one, I just discovered P5 brought it back decades later, unexpected. And, that a port of SMT1 included evil Mickey and Donald demons that the original version had left unused, both are so terrifying I dare not destroy your mind with their horrifying visages. I very much regret clicking the link to them. Digital Devil Saga, a nice duology if you could ever emulate PS2 games, had a similar but totally unrelated fantasy castle dungeon, complete with a not-Tinkerbell automation as your guide for the puzzles inside.

Ah yes, the "I'm the narrator whose recollection of the war with additional evidence of events gathered postwar is being told and experienced here" approach. FE hasn't used it yet, so it's not a bad/overused idea for it. Thats what Valkyria Chronicles has been using for every game, minus an avatar nevermind I find Welkin to visually resemble Male Robin.

Yeah, PoR Titania is a sine qua non in some instances. Though she is more necessary than Marcus, in the sense that PoR severely limits your earlygame units, it's not until "Manster-lite", the flight to Gallia, is over that you finally start accruing a real army. Though, the severe unit restrictions came at the narrative advantage of developing the Greil Mercenaries a good deal.

It's Berserk Mode from Digital Devil Saga 2 (the first didn't have it for some reason). When the radiation phase cycles into 7/8ths or Max, there is a good chance that the heroes upon entering a battle (never a fixed encounter/boss though) will become Berserk. That is say they're put into a state that isn't fully human, nor entirely their Avatars (demons they become): This state of limbo judging from the sounds they make is not so good on their minds either. In gameplay, winning a battle while Berserk earns you 2.5x Karma- EXP. Yet, Berserk lowers your Def, crit resistance, accuracy (never good in a Press Turn game), and you can't Revert/Transform, nor use non-Phys & Hunt skills On the positive side, your attacks ignore Phys resistance/null/reflect IIRC, and have a 90% crit rate. A 100% success rate if you try to flee while Berserk means you're never forced to fight this way.

Video games can be art, not everything, but there are clear instances of it. Kojima was wrong, interactivity does not inherently destroy the artistic nature of video games. And art's definition deserves to expand as human advances, nobody criticizes the inclusion of cinema to the arts in the 20th century. Also, my interpretation of Hamlet- procrastinate and everybody dies. Either resolve to do your duty or don't do it all, things will end most miserably if you get stuck in-between. -- Single-malt Scotch whisky does not taste better if aged 50 years in a barrel (ideally charred American oak used once beforehand for bourbon). The fine characteristics reaches peak maturity in 18 years tops, going longer potentially diminishes the good traits and leaves behind a more bitter drink. If one purchases Scotch aged beyond this, you aren't paying for price, you're paying merely for scarcity, since most of a distillation's volume will have already been sold, and "the angels' take"- evaporation- will have reduced the remaining amount of whisky even further. Really old single-malt Scotch is therefore more of a status symbol of whom you desire to associate yourself with, and a sign that in general you have excess money to spend on consumption as you wish.

Do away with them for a game or two, or relegate to pretty much gameplay-only. I will concur the XCX Cross approach is sufficiently nonexistent to my tastes. Of course, with modern unit flexibility, the big sell of an avatar in gameplay you can make them whatever you want, is lost. Yet, Kris the first avatar was introduced in a game with super easy reclass for everyone not Marth, Xane and the Thieketes. And Byleth is far less customizable than any predecessor avatar, while the customizability of everyone else is higher than in Awakening and Fates (barring their kiddos). So the avatar is debatably now more around for narrative self-insertion than gameplay uniqueness.

Visually, I don't care for either Byleth, but male is less worse. Relationships are irrelevant. If I were to make a strictly gameplay decision, it seems female the clear winner for Byleth (as it was with Corrin b/c early Jakob; Robin optimally was better female too for GF; only Kris prefers maleness for Knight/Fighter start on Maniac & Lunatic), so I'd go with that. For Robin and Corrin, I usually alternated between the two genders, as I did Gold & Kris, Brendan & May, Red & Leaf, and whatever the DPP duo's names were the eons ago I played Pokemon. I've only done one NM run, but I used female Kris (who is fine visually) for another good Peg, and to save male Kris if ever do Lunatic (not very likely).

Sounds believable, Hector call Florina's Pegasus a "he" in their support and depending on how it landed it on him, he may have gotten very good knowledge of its sex. ...However, Florina says "mare" in her Ninian support, and "she" in her Nino. I'm at a loss, does Florina not know her pegasus's sex? Seems like translation incompetence. TBF, Nintendo of America probably wasn't used to translating wordy games in 2003, most non-FE 1st party Nintendo games I'd guess didn't usually need so much effort, maybe just Zelda and Paper Mario. ...And looking at the FlorinaxFarina support, apparently the feminine version of "marquess" is "marchioness" -a random aside.

💉🎈💥 Sorry, but thats a mistranslation/wrong. "Makar" is her musician-friend's name from a sylvan island 60 days south-southwest of Dread Isle and the Tactician's name mistranslated, maybe. "Huey" is her Pegasus's actual name. RIP Kent, Fiora never got to meet the man of her dreams.

I know how that feels... Hhhh... your flesh looks so... lively. I never played it, but looking at the eShop images, I think Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth (Persona 3&4xEtrian) had an Alice in Wonderland theme for its first stratum. Thats even worse than Classic SMT protags, whose only uses are: items, summoning demons, and swinging a sword or shooting a gun. At least their gun damage was usually good or at least serviceable from the start to the end, and endgame swords rocked. Of course, your magic-toting heroine companion could do everything the hero could minus the demon summoning, but with healing and slinging an Agi or Zio, so she was better. Right Nemissa? I'm not sure I'd ever pick up the Mary Skelter games, even if I do like a dungeon crawler. If the anime girls look a little too... excessive... I'd skip it. I wanted to use a Necromancer on my 3rd EOV run, and since I used a male Necro before, I wanted a female this time for gender equality. For the first and only time in all my EO playing, I found my choices so unpleasing and incapable of being stomached, that I picked the generic Celestrian female. I made her more undead by giving her the abnormally pale with a hint of purple skin tone, made her hair a poisonous magenta, and gave her heterochromatic eyes, the right red & yellow, the left green and a blackish blue. She has since won 85% of my random encounters (I'm up to 10F again) with Poison Bomb and no real help from anyone else. That said, as a fellow fan of dungeon crawlers, good luck and have fun! Wasn't the original Meme Run yanked off the Wii U eShop within days of its arrival? Must've been so magnificent that the awe it radiated caused players to literally explode because they couldn't handle it.

Fjalar wasn't in the least a bad person from the nothing we know of her, Arvis is mixed. And, she is a she, thats gives her increased superficial appeal. Njorun would be Altena on a horse, so a genderbent Quan. NES programming is easy to bug up. Underflow error caused the Orb total to skyrocket. The difference is one of them is married to another lord, the other is not.

You have a point. More options are usually better, but, for practical purposes, a game usually needs to be balanced around one specific set of criteria. Too many options, and perhaps the developers don't know which or choose the wrong ones to construct the balance upon. Though variance in player skill levels must be taken into consideration too. It may for someone like me be too easy to dismiss Casual as rendering real difficulty nonexistent. Yet, other players may find challenges I find simple with Casual to be hard. I'd say "it's best to balance everything around the hardest difficulty", but considering the gulf between Awakening & 3H Lunaddening and their Hards, perhaps FE needs to be finely balanced twice- once at the mild Hard, and once at the intense difficulty. Though, I will still say that Fatigue as an option would be not too much different from Permadeath as an option. I contrast this with something like Genealogy's No-Trading system, where you can't simply turn program an on/off switch and everything else will run fine. If trading were to be enabled in FE4, then the individualized unit funds and the Pawn Shop become utterly meaningless, Thieves lose their primary purpose, and the Arena and villages would need modification to their gold payouts. IS would need to do so much revamping, it'd become questionable whether it'd be worth the extra effort including the old system as well. Not every game can be like Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir, where the questionable item-based "Classic" gameplay was kept alongside the far smoother action of the new "Refined" gameplay.

There are a total of 11 Stamina Drinks: 1 from a Chapter 9 village 2 from Chapter 10 Thieves 1 from Tina 1 from Homer 6 in Chapter 14x And chapters 9 and 14 let you buy infinitely more, but 5k per Drink is very expensive in game where no free money is given. Considering a blind player could easily miss out on Tina and Homer, it's possibly 9 Drinks for them. My stance on Fatigue is simple- options baby options. Some people don't like Permadeath, so IS invented Casual Mode, while keeping Permadeath around on Classic Mode. A Fatigue on/off switch should be no harder to add, and Stamina Drink functionality can be imbued to a rare and limited item with a second use that works without Fatigue in effect. Let the Fatigue fetishers have it, let the Fatigue haters have nothing to do with it, thats the gift of options.

Fascinating, thank you. The structuring and stylings of a language you don't understand, in this case in tandem with gender, is a mind-expanding topic. Any chance of an Everyday Life of Heroes skit where Bramimond is surrounded by Owain, Delthea, Loki, Bartre, Mitama, Jagen, and several others?