Jotari

Totally going to be Glass. He's as legendary as they come.

Why did you read Thracia's plot before reading Genealogy of Holy War? That's just...bizzare. Anyway, Julius was just casually talking to Ishatar (they are sort of a couple), if he really cared he could have gone to Bloom directly. Reinhardt is also Ishtar's personal body guard, so it's natural that he'd report to her. Not sure what Fred is talking about, can't remember the context of that. The long and the short of it though, is that, as daughter of Bloom and future wife of Julius, Ishtar has a lot of unofficial power.

Ugh, I know. I preferred it back when she was implied to be a genderbender. So much more interesting than the stereotypical benign to all goddess that we have now.

Ah yeah, that's pretty direct (I was actually just in the process of reading Xane's expo dump). Still, it's weird, because he also says; After that, Narga left behind a will to his own people, which was to protect mankind. To his own people seems like an odd turn of phrase considering his own people was just two guys and his infant daughter. Still, regardless what Xane said and what was reiterated in New Mystery, we can take it as retcon that there were no more Diving Dragons other than the three we see, given Nowi exists and Mila and Duma were retconned to be Divine Dragons.

Where does it say they're the only survivors? Also clearly Nowi's parents are Gotoh and Xane

Ishtar is queen by virtue of the fact that she betrothed to Julius I imagine. I can't recall anyone ever calling her Queen or reporting to her in any official capacity though. What two members of your party have Lopt blood? There's Deirdre and...Alvis? But he's not a member of your party. Maybe you thought Julia has lopt blood, she doesn't, neither does Seliph despite their mother having it. There's also nobody in Thracia with confirmed lopt blood (except for Julius). None of the crusaders fought for the good of the people, the person Alvis was talking about was Maria (he has a less feminine sounding official name now, but I like calling a dude Maria) who is his decedent via his mother. He rebelled and failed to defeat the lopt empire a few decades before the crusaders. None of his descendants have any connection to the crusaders (that we know of!). A pretty nice cameo that could make the Lopt church be a bit more nuanced (and actually give us a dark magic user) could be if Salem was added to the game as just another ally of Leif's when you first encounter him in Chapter 7.

Recall that Gotoh and Xane are Divine Dragon survivors. So it's never like the games were pretending the Divine Dragons were wiped out completely. It's just that none of the ones that did survive were considered important enough to mention (hey, I wonder if any of them agreed with Medeus. Would be kind of cool if you fought a random divine dragon in one of the last maps).

You seriously don't have any ground to stand on until you've actually played the game. You can look at all these things and complain, but until you've actually played the game, you have no genuine knowledge as to how they work. Yes, Ced is better than Saias, that doesn't break the game's balance. Ced is meant to be over powered. That's his role. Saias is basically a guest character for one chapter. It's not like Samson and Arran, you actively have to prevent yourself from recruiting him. And even then, he can hold is own. If you were allowed to permanently keep him, he'd be just as worth fielding as Ced. Ced might be better, but Saias isn't useless, that's the point. He can do things. Olwen can do things. Leif can do things, Dalsin can do things even Marty of all people can do things. Every character in Thracia is worth fielding, there's honestly no other game in the series I can say that for. Some characters are better than others (anyone with a stave is instantly A tier), but the level in which they're better than others is not as extreme as every other game in the series. Thracia was intentionally designed to have a balanced cast, that's why there's actively a mechanic that forces you to train up more characters than you can deploy. Because they're all worth using. Just play the game. You really don't know what you're talking about until you played it. Thracia is a completely different beast than the rest of the series.

To be fair to Medeus, he couldn't actually leave his castle and keep his full strength. So he didn't have many options in stopping Marth from waltzing up to his front door, other than sending armies at him, which he did, and they didn't work.

I reckon they didn't have Yune protect everyone is because they hadn't fitted Bastian and Renning into the plot before that point, and they also wanted Caineghis to show up in the finale.

Don't forget Yune was being punished by getting put in the medallion. She wiped out half the world with a giant tidal wave and was defeated in a war against Ashera. It makes sense that she has access to less power as she was sort of the bad guy last time they were awake (even if they sort of forgave her, oh and put "creating a giant tidal wave" as something Divine Dragons are never seen doing. Though, I could imagine Grima capable of doing that just by going for a swim, and Mila was able to build something that contains enough water to flood half her continent). Don't forget, Tiki's powers were said to be strong enough to destroy the world, as far back as the third game (I think? Certainly in Shadow Dragon which is preAwakening).

Well if we examine their actual powers. 1.Reviving the dead 2.Creating a zombie army 3.Blessing or creating holy weapons 4.Resistance to anything but specific holy weapons 5.Petrifying almost every one on the continent to stone with a precision laser beam. Only the last one is something we haven't seen Divine Dragons do...which isn't at all an indication that it's something they can't do. Turning people to stone (and curing them of that state) is a generic magic in many of the games (though as far Archanea goes, only Veld in Jugdral I think?) The biggest feet is the guided laser aspect of it.

I think it is at any rate. My save file in DDS2 got corrupted just before the second last dungeon, so I could only extrapolate based on watching the last cutscenes online. The characters have absolutely no illusions of dominating their god at any rate, just appeal to it to stop destroying the planet. Said appealing being in a massive dungeon and boss fight is just video game logic.

I'm pretty sure the merchants themselves say they were protected by proximity in one of the following base conversations. Everyone else who was "strong enough" essentially had plot armour. Digital Devil Saga seems to have an almighty (Hindu) god as the final boss. They get away with it in that the god isn't actually malicious. Even though it's power is absolute, it barely has any sentience, as the mind of a god is so far beyond that as a human as to be unrecognizable. It's just causing trouble by reacting to extreme human emotions calling out to it.

Yeah, Ced is miles better than Sais, but you actively have to go out of your way to keep Sais and not recruit Ced. And even then, it's not like Sais is useless. He comes with A staff rank and 18 magic, giving him tonnes of utility. It's stupid that you can't use both of them, but Ced being so much better than Sais isn't stupid. Ced and Galzus are meant to be better than everyone else. They're Gotoh archtypes. They don't destroy the balance of the game because the arrive in the last four chapters. Name a single mage in the game that you have trouble killing things with. It doesn't matter if they lose attack speed, Mages are still great in Thracia. I didn't even know they worked along different lines than other units because they're just as capable in battle as anyone else. And the tomes you mentioned need something nerfing them. Dime Thunder is a magical brave weapon, Resire restores health and Yotsmungand poisons (okay, well it doesn't for the user to stop you cheesing bosses, but it does for the enemy and they work under the same rules, and you only have one character that can wield Yotsmungand and he's really, really good even if he couldn't use dark magic).

Paul - Mysterious Envoy? 2 Wins 0 Losses Paul survived the events of the war, and continued to preach about the visitors. He completely vanished one day, never to be seen again. Many others have claimed to have seen these Visitors since.

This is a beautiful theory. And well, not that farfetched. There must be a reason Leif is the only one with infinite stamina, and him hoarding his own private stash is a good an explanation as any.

Also on the timeline, it reveals that both Duma and Mila's remains got buried where the Mila tree sprouted up. Man Duma kind of got the short end of the stick with that one. I guess people kind of blamed him for the whole aggressive Rigelian war thing. There's reference to Mila still be worshipped in Awakening, but not Duma. Still, that does bring up the Demon's Ingle where it was previously assumed Duma was buried. So is that just a retcon and he was never put there, or is that a completely different demon of note? Well you automatically take his lance if you defeat him in Shadow Dragon. But there is alternate dialogue where if you don't defeat him in battle, the game acknowledges that he vanishes and Nyna still holds out hope that he's still alive. Given how this results in both Marth's army not getting the Gradivus, and Camus living, it seems more likely it's the canon encounter (how exactly he managed to get to Valencia is still a quagmire however, as it either depends on him acting out of character, or being so bad ass he could drift across an entire ocean without food or water).

Huh. According to the timeline, the White Wing Sisters brought Gradivus back to Archanea (wonder if Harding had started dressing in furs and big intimidating armour when they presented it to him). That means the Gradivus in Duma's temple is canon, and not just a fan service reference. We can also assume it winded up in Valentia because of Camus, which would imply Marth not engaging him in battle, yet Camus still disappearing in the midst of the battle some how, is the canonical choice in Shadow Dragon (not in the original though, you're forced to kill him in the first game because he sits on the castle, Lorenz is the one that chases you around the map).

Make sense. And also makes Earth and Divine Dragons that much more high tier. If Nergal wants to steal the quintessence of a Divine Dragon, he doesn't just need to be able to defeat it physically, he needs to be strong enough to absolutely dominate it in battle.

Archanea does have terrors. We see plenty of them in Thabes. It's probably there are more all over the place and Marth and co just never see them because they're small in number. It's clear that the plague of terrors is a new thing for Valentia, and previously they just hung out in the depths of Mila shrines. Which also gives them a connection to the dragons. The increased number of them is probably down to the Duma faithful who are said to research them, hence Cantors summoning them everywhere. How they summon them...no idea. Also given how they're all over Thabes and hanging out with Grima and the degenerated dragons, plus how they appear in Mila shrines, it's clear that the terrors have some link to dragons. What kind of link? We'll probably never know. But their origins come from dragons some how.

I don't know what you mean by no buffer, but if you're suggesting mages aren't useful in Thracia, then that's just blatantly untrue. I can't think of a single mage in the game who isn't really good (though I haven't used Miranda or Ilios due to route splits).

Playable Ike and Roy and Marth, I'm okay with. But these extra dungeons are the things I don't like about Amiibos. I feel like I'm missing something out by not having access to them. They could at least make them DLC or something, and then people with the Amiibo just get them for free. Anyway, even if they are ethereal beings, it still makes a link to White Dragons and Fafnirs. Why would Mila and Duma's servants look like those two types of enemies if there wasn't a connection? And was we're discussing in another thread currently, ghost dragons are very much a thing in the series.

We joke, but Mila's whole stick is that her kindness turned to hedonism over time. It's not actually impossible that she's into recreational drugs. One of the gifts the dragons gave humanity was alcohol, after all (and the only use of alcohol in the game is presenting it to her statue).

Gaiden didn't have a prophecy at all though, right? I at least don't recall one at any point. Alm's birthmark is just a birthmark, used only to be recognised by Zeke (and as a more subtle hint than the Royal Sword that Rudolf is Alm's father). I am, admittedly, in the process of reading the timeline (and getting distracted by many other things), but I still find it irritating that Rudolf is revealed to have a brand only in external material. It would have been so very easy to mention it in game. And it's not strictly even needed. We've seen other weapons in the series being linked to blood lines without Brands or Holy Blood being needed. Hell the Royal Sword itself is an example, unless only every few generations of Rigel's royal family were able to wield it. Thanks for translating the timeline BTW. EDIT: Actually, doing that further reading, it turns out the prophecy was only made after Rudolf was born, and by Halcyon. I can't recall if that gels with the game (always got the impression the prophecy was much older), but it does resolve basically all the plot holes and allows both royal families to consistently have the brand. Still kind of feel like they easily could have fitted that information into the actual game, though.