#I can never seem to get good screenshots of the mage origins but we make do

[dragonologist-phd]

Introducing: Shay Surana

In Summary:

Circle Mage turned Apostate, Somniari

Elven Mage (Spirit Healer)

Main School: Spirit Magic

Intelligent; Reserved; Focused; Secretive

Relevant Fic: And So They Burned

more rambling:

Backstory:

A mage with prodigious talent who was taken to the Circle at a very young age. They know they come from the Denerim Alienage and that their name was "Shay"; beyond that, they know nothing of their origin. "Surana" is a surname they picked out themselves

They were a quiet child who spent most of their time hidden away with books. Their talent with spirit magic was obvious from a young age, and Wynne took them on as her personal apprentice

Their Harrowing occurred when they were very young, and it kickstarted their Somniari talents

For the next few years, they kept their Somniari status hidden from everyone, knowing that if it got out they would be seen as a threat

They aided in Jowan's escape, but were caught by the Templars. With no Wardens around to interfere, they were sent to Aeonar as punishment

Connections:

Wynne: Being so young when they came to the Circle, Wynne was the closest thing to a parental figure Shay had. As a child they would follow her through the tower, and even sit in on lessons she had with older apprentices. They viewed her as something between a teacher and a mother, and often turned to her for advice or comfort. As they grew older, however, they became quietly frustrated with some of her advice- an occurrence which Wynne chalked up to Rosalind's bad influence

Jowan: Jowan was Shay’s first real friend at the Circle, and vice versa. They were both quiet, awkward children who preferred to spend time away from other people and did their best to look out for each other. As much as Shay tried to keep their head down and follow the rules, there was never any doubt that they would help Jowan escape

Rosalind Amell: Ros arrived at the Circle at an older age and was quickly brought into Shay and Jowan’s friendship. Among the the three, she was by far the most rebellious- yet Shay couldn’t help but be drawn to her, even when they knew she was heading for trouble

Sloth: Despite their talent, Shay nearly did not survive their Harrowing; the sudden attention from demons and discovery of their Somniari abilities overwhelmed them. Sloth protected them, and continued to do so for years; in exchange, it fed off Shay’s dreams and the weaker demons they attracted. Shay knew better than to trust the demon, but it was useful- and, in some ways, it was a familiar and comforting presence

Cyrion & Ellimere Tabris: After escaping, Shay finally managed to reunite with their father and adopted sibling. The relationship was an awkward one- especially with Ellimere, who’d had bad experiences with magic and spirits- but the reunion did give Shay a sense of closure

Romance:

Shay had a crush on Ros from practically the moment they met; the two eventually got together when they were still in the Circle. Like most relationships between teenagers, it was an open secret- technically not allowed, but people would look the other way so long as they maintained a level of discretion

Their relationship was always an open one. Shay had no interest in others, but Ros liked to flirt and fool around, and they didn’t mind

Their crush on Jowan was much more subtle, and they didn’t fully realize it until Jowan announced his plan to escape and they realized he’d been gone forever. By then they assumed it was too late to do anything about it

The three of them did eventually work things out and became a polyamorous trio

During the Blight:

After they were caught helping Jowan escape, they were sent to Aeonar with Lily as punishment

Ros and Jowan, having escaped the Circle and Redcliffe respectively, launched a rescue together. They were able to save Shay, but at great cost

Sloth had been destroyed by the Wardens, but a small piece of them remained behind as a Spirit of Repose, which sought out Shay and joined with them much like Faith did with Wynne

Epilogue:

Shay, Rosalind, and Jowan are all presumed dead by the Circles at this point, so they lay low and travel the rural areas of Ferelden, helping refugees where they can and doing work for the Mage’s Collective

When the mage rebellions kick off, the three of them aid the rebel mages. They remain wary of the Inquisition and its connections to the Chantry, but do offer their help as agents when circumstances become dire

By the time Inquisition happens, I think the three of them also have a kid together. Not sure of any details beyond that but I do think it happens

Misc:

Shay has a special interest in maps, atlases, and geography, partially inspired by their life spent in a tower

They’re a healer first and foremost and keep violence as a last resort. Even so, between them, Ros, and Jowan, they are by far the most dangerous

Music is something they really appreciate. They’re not Andrastian, but all Circle mages were required to attend services; the only part of that they enjoyed was singing the Chant

Sometimes they do miss the routine of the Circle, simply because it made things simple and was less overwhelming than the rest of the world (That said, they would never go back; they had too many choices taken away from them by the Circle)

Birds are their favorite animal, and they’ve always wished they could fly. If they ever had access to shapeshifting knowledge, they’d learn it just for that

[fruitpunchjollyrancher]

my shitty treatise on "ants from up there" and gale dekarios

this is the gale album of all time. and i WILL elaborate. (also warning im only posting this because i have been obsessed with this fucking album and gale for a WEEK and need it out of my brain. im probably not going to explain too many lyrics and i get nervous expressing my ideas because tbf to me it seems quite obvious but ofc i can explain, assuming anybody reads this post)

"Concorde" immediately stood out to me like oh this is so gale. i dont even think i need to explain how gale this is. the rest of the song is super gale too, i just don't want to include screenshots of the entire song

"Bread Song" has a LOT of worship imagery and also below alluding to appearing fine but rlly inside he is not well <3

oh my god. "Good Will Hunting". the mentorship but also wanting her to depend on him a little but it's unfeasible, weaving a whole life in his head that can never be because mystra will never see him as an equal... also the pre-chorus 👍 i am so well

"Haldern"... i literally dont know how to explain my feelings about this song in relation to gale pls someone tell me u see the vision

"The Place Where He Inserted the Blade" is more headcanon/my interpretation but im just gonna focus on the parts that i think everyone can agree on. first 2 lines arent super applicable to mystra but ig i can rationalize it as her being detached from the world/not rlly participating (i.e. why didnt mystra just stop the absolute herself (im aware its because ao doesn't like it when they meddle, im smoking that true forgotten realms pack trust me)). but the MAIN part of this song that is so gale to me is the vines breaking bones, bones heal, our school friends sign our cast on the playground, my body is yours. like holy shit being a chosen of mystra is a huge fucking deal and despite the pain it can cause (that he doesnt even notice because "tied me up slow with your vine stuff / it takes a few years") but it's definitely encouraged among wizards/mages in any circles he was in and by elminster ("we tell all our school friends / and they sign our cast in the playground"), then of course the last line breaks my heart. rest of the song is also rlly fucking good please listen to this album.

"Snow Globes" has more religious imagery but tbh i dont know precisely how i feel about it in relation to gale so im just gonna skip it

"Basketball Shoes" shows a more hopeful future but still #suffering because thats just how it is. concorde being mystra/his relationship to her tears his life to shreds, defines his life, leaving him with nothing. keeps seeing her everywhere (wizard stuff, his damn earring, he's always saying "by mystra" like bro you're intersecting at the market town on purpose atp (i get it)). i interpret the part after that line break (idk why genius doesnt just say its a different verse, don't quote me on this idk anything about music theory) as post-game where he's still Not Great but it's better and moving on, there is a future. doesn't look to mystra anymore (throughout album especially in good will hunting and bread song the s/o is mentioned through headphones, wifi passwords, phone calls, so "never look at our phones anymore" means he isn't thinking of her anymore or trying to curry her favor).

alsoooo should mention that i didn't include the part of "The Place Where He Inserted the Blade" that mentions a lunch metaphor in relation to panic attacks and possible cheating so the "feelin kinda normal with a packed lunch" is doubly meaningful, he isn't freaking out while making lunch anymore

this verse is tav (or whoever u romance as gale origin idgaf)/gale as he is trying to find a new object of devotion in his romance. "the clamp" could be many things, from reminders of mystra to all his perceived inadequacies to lost opportunity to become a god w/ the crown of karsus.

third section of the song im kind of undecided on w/ gale like we got the religious imagery again, could interpret "generous loan/crippling interest" as mystra's deal for him to return the crown of karsus in exchange for no orb. but yea idk yet

and that is the entire album (- chaos space marine, i didn't really think of anything related to gale when listening to it but it's still a great song, PLEASE listen to this album). so yeah if im horribly wrong on any of my takes be sure to send me hatemail k thanks bye

[guerilla935]

My Favorite Games That Made Me Care About How I Looked

I’m very self conscious about the way I look in video games. Not only is it normally very easy to change an outfit or get a haircut in a video game it also says something about how I’d like to be perceived, especially in an online game. There are a lot of games that allow their players to express themselves in a lot of really fun and unique ways and I think that it’s really special when you get to celebrate a style that you would never get to portray in real life. These games that I am about to talk about are all games where I was able to look at my character and feel some ounce of pride at something that I had created. Some full disclosure for these images, I pulled them from official gaming outlets and developer blogs but none of these that you are seeing are my original characters. If anyone would like to request to see any of my characters from these games (or any other games!) I would be happy to go and grab screenshots of those characters.

Grand Theft Auto Online

This is a pretty easy choice for most people. I chose specifically GTA Online over any GTA game or Red Dead game because I think the really special part about this is its setting. Your image is not only your character and your outfit in GTA Online but also your car, your house, and your business. There are a lot of different places to choose to call home and there are a lot of things to get “invested” into. For example, my good friend mojo5 runs a night club and wears suits and spends a lot of time gambling at the casino. That’s a character that would be different than mine who dresses and acts like a street racer. It gives your character a kind of personality and back story that is hard to achieve in other games. I have always kind of considered Grand Theft Auto Online to be a modern MMO of sorts, a playground. And as much as it is a huge lobby where you wait to start activities, it is also a sprawling city-space where you can essential live, make money, create this fun fictional life for yourself. And as far as fashion goes, the outfits, the cars, and the real estate help you shape that fantasy. Basically, I can tell you that I spent way more time customizing my character than I spent in actual activities in Grand Theft Auto Online.

Saint’s Row Series

I love Saint’s Row. It is very similar to the last entry in this article but has this unique and goofy style that makes a lot of things okay that I would never do to my GTA character. In Saint’s Row I can have a neon blue Mohawk wielding a 10 foot melee weapon that is designed to look like something extremely unmentionable while driving a night rider space car that is also a tank and it’s totally fine because in the next cut scene you are about to fight Roddy Piper in Keith Davids nightmares. The games are incredibly wild and I love how I can let loose with a lot of different styles, and in the same way that I feel like I am creating my gritty street racer in GTA, I can make my goofy crime lord super hero secret agent in Saint’s Row. I think specifically in Saint’s Row 2 I took it a little more seriously because the tone of the game is a little more serious than the other entries however I have a specially place in my heart for how wacky each game allows me to be.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

You knew we couldn’t just not talk about Animal Crossing: New Horizons. With the current situation, the Animal Crossing community is insanely huge. I cannot avoid the heap of Animal Crossing videos and screenshots all over social media. On my island of Sandover Village, I am patiently awaiting the Able Sisters to set up shop so that I am able to put in codes from everyone else’s custom designs that I’m seeing on twitter. That is because I have on my phone a stockpile of sweatshirts, sweaters, robes, and hats that I am actually really excited to show off in game. I tried to create some of my own but I am not one of the gifted seamstress’s that there seems to exist on the internet. I am not very far into Animal Crossing but by looking at other peoples games I know that I have only scratched the surface of my options in the game. I have to commend Nintendo on the amount of individualization that the design pro feature gives to its players. I have never seen a game give players the option to design their own clothing and it makes the social experience of the game feel so fresh.

Dark Souls III

One of the most badass games that I have ever played as far as character design is concerned is Dark Souls III. When I put on a new set of armor I sit in awe of how it looks because I can see each tiny tear in the cape, every dent in the helmet, and the wear and weight of the armor. I was dragged through this game by some friends (because I could never in a thousand years have the patience to beat it by myself) and I followed them to every cursed swamp and death crypt because I wanted to see every weapon and every armor set. You look absolutely ghoulish in every armor set and I love it to death. This game allows so much in the way of customization and I think it helps that almost every gear set is good enough to get you through the entire game and that allows you to play with a lot of different looks and game play styles. This game is tough, really really tough, but you look really good even when you die.

Splatoon 2

Splatoon 2 is a really special online shooter. I think in the month that I played this game religiously the thing that kept me playing was coming back to the stores to see what kind of clothes were in stock and what kind of items I could steal off the players in the lobby. I think that the developers of Splatoon 2 knew that the players were in it for the threads because every reward for playing the game was most likely a piece of clothing. The clothing options kind of vary from academy prep to Patagonia camp wear to skater outfits. And it comes together in this very hipster overall aesthetic that blends really naturally. The game features a mechanic that I really like wear you can walk up to anyone in the online lobby and look at what their wearing and order it. By the time I logged on the next day I had (a noticeably weaker version of) the exact same item but it really makes you feel like anything you see, you have access too which is really cool. And the ordering of the items kept me coming back to play every day.

Final Fantasy XIV Online

I’ve heard it said many times that the real end game content of Final Fantasy XIV Online was the glamor and housing systems, and for most people they aren’t wrong. I will never stop being surprised at the outfits that players can put together in this game. I have seen millions of players in my 750 hours in Eorzea and I have not seen two characters look the same. The customization options are really limitless and I truly believe that. I played a healer mage and in my time at max level I had outfits that made me look like a cowboy, a thief, a fox spirit, a grim reaper, and even one that made me appear like a real healer mage. The clothing options throw a Final Fantasy twist on every kind of style that they set to replicate. So even though all the outfits can be wacky they never feel out of place in the world. If you want a game that you can make almost 50% just about customizing your character and taking it out to the town to show it off or in big raids to flaunt your style then this might be your game.

Pokemon Sword And Shield

Pokemon is still trying to get it right but Sword and Shield is Game Freaks best attempt at trainer customization. The clothing options in the game are very European, well, they have always been that way but they are ESPECIALLY European in this one. Probably the greatest customization offered is the hair which in the world of anime characters is the most important one. I loved designing my character in this game but it was just so brief because shopping in this game is so boring as most clothes in the actual stores are very samey which makes the act of shopping pretty boring most of the time. I would roll up to a new town really excited to see what kind of stuff they had in the shop but it was just new colors for the same weird duffel bag that your character had already. Note that the game is mostly about the Pokemon so they really didn’t have to put any trainer customization in the game to make it a good game but they did a half decent job putting this much customization in the game and I feel like it’s going to keep getting steadily better the more times they implement this feature into their games. Big plus, you can design your trading card in the game and it is the most adorable thing and feels like a huge payoff to have a cool card if you’ve put a lot of effort into your trainer.

Soul Calibur VI

So I haven’t actually played Soul Calibur VI, I bought the game and went immediately into character creation and started making my own roster of fighters that I ended up using maybe once or twice and moving on from. The character creator in this fighting game is really special. So the idea is that you choose a character that already exists and you keep their move set and fighting style but change how they look and immediately the things that came out of the community were hilarious. Some are kind of terrifying but they come shockingly close to being somewhat recognizable. For me it almost comes down to that being someone who is unfamiliar with the cast of Soul Calibur VI I cannot tell the difference between actual characters from the game and characters frakensteined together in the character creator. As on of the most fun character creators I’ve ever used I think it’s at least worth googling what other people have created.

God of War (2018)

The newest God of War introduced something that we never got in the older games and that was the ability to change out what Kratos was wearing. While it was important in the game to maximize his stats, it also made you look cooler and cooler as the game went on. I wouldn’t say that you have a lot of options of things to wear in this game but I always felt bummed when I picked up something with relatively low stats that looked amazing. Later on the armor sets become more like trophies for completing hard tasks. The design of each piece of armor is really intricate and amazing to look at and while you can’t just pick whatever you want, I really wish that you could.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls

In the Reaper of Souls expansion pack a new vendor was added to Diablo III that changed the way that I looted in the game. The vendor was called the mystic and she would make a piece of gear look like any other piece of gear of the same type. This meant that I could look amazing all the time without sacrificing strength. The way that the database of appearances you could pick from expands over time gave so many options that I couldn’t decide at some points. The coolest armor in the game was now accessible at any time. And the armor in Diablo III looks tight, sometimes I would argue that unless you pick some unique stuff it doesn’t make that big of a difference because of the isometric point of view in the game but it is really fun to have an added layer of customization in Diablo.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

So this is actually a section dedicated to Nexus Mod Manager because Skyrim in itself doesn’t actually have a whole lot of variations in the ways you can dress. But with the powers of modding you can now do absolutely anything and there are a whole group of 3D modelers out there getting you immersive and lore friendly items that make you look a whole lot cooler. The wonderful world of modding can turn kind of creepy very fast, a lot of very suggestive mods are out there and a lot of very inappropriate things so you know, a fair warning. It’s incredible when you can make it work and keep it from getting to the level of ultimate Skyrim. You can change and add clothes and weapons, add hair styles, and even add entire races into the game. Sometimes though I really believe that I like browsing mods a lot more than I like actually playing with them but I found that it is really satisfying to download a mod like Immersive Armors and see just how much it changes how diverse the selection of armors that not only you but everyone in the game now wears can be.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

So I believe that some other previous Zelda titles had the ability to change Links outfit but never to this extent. What I think is the coolest part about the clothing system in this game is that you wear certain clothes to survive certain climates but you can also forget all that and make a yummy meal instead that lets you be warm wearing the desert clothes in the snow. The amount of armors that you can amass in this game starts off kind of underwhelming but becomes really fun and interesting and serves all sorts of fun fan service for fans of the series. This game doesn’t have the versatility and variety of some of the other games in the series but any game that lets you cross dress to sneak into a city of warrior women is credited for its costume design in my book.

League of Legends

I have spent a shameful amount of money on skins. I hate League of Legends and I hate most of the business practices of Riot Games but their skins just look good. I can appreciate when someone I don’t like makes something good and they consistently pump out awesome looking skins that are frankly worth the money if you play the game regularly. Back when I played this game daily I put up way too much money, even I think about 18$ just on a skin that changed colors when you typed a specific command. Anyways that’s really all I have, there aren’t a lot of games where I like the skins, especially the fact that they are mostly behind pay walls but League gets a pass I suppose.

Destiny Series

I used to be really into playing a specific game mode in Destiny named Iron Banner. I played a lot of it in Destiny and a good portion of them in Destiny 2. When you played enough Iron Banner in a year you were able to collect an armor set to commemorate the achievement. Almost all the cool armor in Destiny has purpose to it. Not only do you get to decide how you look but it also is you showing off the fact that you completed a raid, were really good at sparrow racing, or kicked major ass in the crucible. Each armor was recognizable and everyone knew what it meant. I think that is what makes the customization in Destiny so rewarding, its that it is in itself an actual reward for completing hard tasks that not everyone will be able to complete.

Code Vein

Out of all the anime games I’ve played I think what stands out to me the most is that their character creators have all been really bad. This is where Code Vein really shined. Code Vein has this dystopian vampire aesthetic that is really unique and allows for a lot of ways to make cool characters that fit into the look of the game. I don’t think that what they’ve done here is completely new but they have this style that is exciting to play with. Making a revenant is fun and builds this anticipation for the rest of the game. I also respect the games decision to allow you to make modifications to your character after the game has started which is not something that most games would allow. Code Vein has these cape’s that you can wear to gain abilities and those are cool to add onto your outfit but I don’t think that it outshines what the character creator has done here. It’s a niche thing I guess but if you have always wanted to make your own anime vampire then this is it.

A Persona

I really like making characters for a reason. I think a lot of the escapism of video games hinges on me placing myself into the character on the screen. That’s why I love what you can do in games like Animal Crossing that is all about creating exactly what you want and Final Fantasy XIV Online where you get to exist and share in a world as a persona of sorts. Being able to customize a character in a video game does not make that game good or bad, but I think that when you are given the option the developer is given an opportunity to make it a very special experience and allow you to be unique within a community of people online. And the internet has made that sharing of characters really special, allowing everyone to see how unique of an experience you can have with a game by beating it with “your character”.

Special Shout Outs For Stylish Games And Characters

SSX series being dripping in 90s style

Also NBA Street Vol. 2 for the same reason

Persona 5 for being the most stylish game ever

Halo because space marines rock extra style points

Katana Zero for being badass and 80s neon will always be in style

Specifically Graffiti Mario in Super Mario Sunshine he had flair

Samurai Legend Musashi for having a stylish game case but being a horrible game

Devil May Cry just for existing

[scottymcgeesterwrites]

Final Fantasy Review

Year: 1987 Original Platform: Famicom Also available on: Nintendo (NES), GameBoy Advance (Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls), PlayStation One (Final Fantasy Origins), PSP (Anniversary Edition) Version I played: PSP

Synopsis:

The world is in danger. Four monstrous fiends, each corresponding to an element of nature, have wreaked havoc on the world, causing each of the four elemental orbs (in later remakes, crystals) to turn dark. Four Heroes of Light, each holding their own orb, meet and band together to take on these fiends and restore nature to its proper balance.

Gameplay: The original game introduced the Job System. The six jobs are Warrior, Thief, Monk, Black Mage, White Mage, and Red Mage. Each have their own stats. You are free to name each of your heroes. Later on the game, each job can be upgraded.

We are introduced to a classic setup of turn-based combat. Final Fantasy was notable for being the first video game RPG to show your characters on the right and the enemies on the left; all previous video game RPGs had a first-person view with the enemy directly in front of you.You choose your action between Fight, Magic, Drink, Item or Run. Then the enemy takes their turn.

It’s a simple system that at the time was already well-known. It was really the Job System that intrigued players. Black Mages perform destructive magic, White Mages heal and restore, Warriors are the powerhouses, Monks deal damage without weapons, and Thieves can run from battles successfully (they cannot steal, as later games would introduce that). The game can be quite difficult on the original Famicom and NES. It was made at a time when technology was limited, so developers had to make the game harder so that people spent more time playing it. There’s a gaming term that I’ll be using in many of these Final Fantasy reviews called “grinding”. Grinding is when you end up having to run around and fight monsters for the sake of leveling up your characters. There is a lot of that in this game, as well as the early Final Fantasy games in general. Unlike games today, the direction isn’t fully laid out. You are thrown into the world and wander about from town to town to figure out where to go next. Instead of games like today where other non-playable characters (NPCs for short) tell you what to do in cutscenes and whatever, you actually have to approach the NPCs and find out the information. The overall effect is more open-world. You walk across fields and oceans and deserts. There are caves and other secret places to find more items. From a modern gamer’s perspective, the exploring can be quite bare and – for lack of better word – boring. The remakes, like the PSP version that I played, brightened it up with updated graphics. They also added a couple extra dungeons. I actually spent time in those extra dungeons believing they were part of the story, appalled by how difficult they were, when I later found out they were extras put in for the PSP version. That has happened a lot to me with remakes of old RPGs (Chrono Trigger for the DS, another example). A little more obvious sign would have helped to make me realize that I didn’t need to finish those extra dungeons. The pace is definitely slower than the other Final Fantasy games. Most of your time is spent grinding. Grinding can sometimes be a wary word when talking about video game RPGs. If an RPG is too boring or tedious, grinding is the last thing you want to hear. But even when an RPG is fun, grinding means that you need to spend time battling enemies, and that means hopefully you don’t have a huge backlog of other video games. It's probably why I never got around to finishing the original NES version on an emulator. Once and a while I'd be pumped up about going through with it but then as I played I just. . .got distracted by other video games that I wanted to finish.

You definitely need time and patience. The most aggravating thing about the original version (Famicom/NES) is that if your character is set to attack an enemy but another one of your characters defeats it first, that character attacks nothing but air when it's their turn. It was a very annoying issue that they fixed in all subsequent remakes. When comparing the original to any other version, the original always is the best way to experience the game. It can also be the hardest and most time-consuming. You would need to pay attention to this game entirely and not be distracted by anything else.

The PSP version is watered down. I found it infinitely easier than the NES version. I actually played them side-by-side to figure out at what point the difficulty branched off. Right away when you venture to save Princess Sara, I realized that the PSP version gives more XP per battle than the NES version. Hence, you have to grind more in the original version.

Graphics:

Everybody loves some 8-bits, but let’s be honest here – there’s a whole lot of black empty space going on when you battle.

But hey, that was due to the limitations at the time. Battles may seem more boring to you due to the lack of detail to catch your eye.

The later remakes added a floor or ground where appropriate. The PSP remake did a good job of giving a facelift to the original, as shown below. It has this cute, rounded feel to the characters.

(My favorite battle background was in the final battle.)

The opening FMV sequence is ripped straight from the Playstation One remake. That didn’t age well. It’s awkward as hell. Want to see how awkward it looks? It looks mad awkward. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Just look it up. I don’t want to sully this post by posting a screenshot. In my opinion, they should have created a brand new opening FMV sequence for the PSP version.

Story: The first several minutes of the game acts as a prologue. The Four Heroes of Light save a princess - Sara - from the clutches of Garland, and then the King of Coneria allows a bridge to be built for them to enter the world and save it. It’s not until that bridge is built that the game truly starts and the title screen actually displays – much like a late opening title in a movie. In retrospect, saving a princess probably seemed like the most common trope in video games throughout the '80's. Gamers would have been used to it by then. That short prologue acts like a trope-breaker. The average gamer would have probably expected the game to be like Mario or Zelda. Oh yeah, save the princess from some evil fiend, okay, got it. They would have then maybe been perked with interest when they "defeated" Garland so quickly, and then when the King of Coneria lets them pass into the world and the title screen opens up with the theme song, they maybe were like, "Ooooh. NOW it starts." Final Fantasy then plunged them into a wide open world.

The bulk of the story is mostly comprised of self-contained incidents. You run into someone who needs help with a thing so you do that thing and then you’re on your merry way again. You know what would be a great adaptation of this game? A Netflix series. It’s very episodic. First you deal with these pirates led by Bikke, then get a ship to sail across the land and go on a sort of delivery quest for a crown, a crystal eye, an herb, a magic key, until the main story picks up with defeating the Four Fiends and bringing light to the darkened orbs. There's no real huge spoiler other than the time travel paradox at the end, which had me wracking my head a bit. It's quite admirable that a game this early in video game console history produced a higher concept plot involving time travel. Music:

Composer Nobuo Uematsu created a legendary score that immediately became on par with the Mario and Zelda theme songs.  The Prelude/Crystal theme – the harp-like scale that we are all familiar with – was actually composed last. Uematsu had complete the score when Sakaguchi approached him at the last minute realizing they needed music for the game’s introduction. None of them had any idea that the theme would become a staple for Final Fantasy.

Due to the technical limitations at the time, you can imagine that the soundtrack is limited, but even so it was still quite expansive for its time. There are several individual tunes for dungeons, for sailing your ship and for flying your airship. The map theme will have you humming it without realizing it.

Uematsu drew his inspiration from two sources – classic rock and living in Shikoku, an island off Japan. The melodic world map theme in Final Fantasy (and the rest of the series) derives from the picturesque memories he has of the island. The town theme is reminiscent of the sleepy villages – as he was never a city person. Meanwhile, the battle theme has undertones of rock music.

There’s only one battle theme, even when fighting bosses and the final boss, but the amazing thing is that it never gets old.

Final Fantasy games are known for their great battle songs. The opening bassline always gets you in the groove to fight. You’re fighting but want to sing at the same time. Maybe that’s the brilliance of Uematsu; because of the fact that you need to grind many times in these old Final Fantasy games, he created a tune that you wouldn’t get tired of because it’s not so serious or mundane.

Not to crap on other great developers, but other video game RPGs at the time of Final Fantasy didn’t quite have memorable battle music. Just look up the battle theme to the first Dragon Quest game (released before Final Fantasy). You can imagine how that simple tune could get old really quick. I could be pulling this out of my ass, but after Final Fantasy, it seemed that battle music in video game RPGs suddenly got better. If you listen to the Dragon Quest IV battle theme, there is a portion that sounds similar to the battle theme of Final Fantasy.

The PSP version adds more tracks, specifically to the boss battles, and I like how they incorporate the original battle motif thrown into the new battle songs. The original battle theme has a guitar and drums added, which is the style that Final Fantasy battle music was known for by then.

There is one last thing to note about the score that I found very interesting for its day and age. You see, in a movie score, you have themes and motifs, just like a video game score. But in a movie score, other tracks reference those themes and motifs. For example, you have The Raider’s March in the Indiana Jones films; that’s the theme for the character Indiana Jones. Then in the movie, whenever Indy does something badass, you hear his theme blare in that instance. Obviously the entire theme doesn’t play, but it is incorporated in snippets throughout.

Uematsu actually does this with the Town Theme. He incorporates it at the ending music in the epilogue. It took me a while to try to understand why. Then it hit me. The epilogue mentions the heroes becoming legends as people talk about them. Legends are told and spread in towns.

It’s a very small detail. It’s such a small detail that it could be nothing but if it is what I think it is, then it’s cool that he was already in the mindset of passing on themes and motifs throughout the game, treating it like a movie.

Notable Theme:

I already posted the main themes in the introduction, but here’s the original battle theme:

Verdict:

A strong debut to the Final Fantasy series. To a modern gamer though, you may be spoiled by the fast-paced, eye-catching video games of today. When console games first hit the market, developers had to create games that took longer than the average arcade game to finish, or else kids would get bored with their games in minutes and gee, wouldn’t that be a waste since they paid way more than a quarter? Thus, that’s another reason why old games are harder. Given the technical limitations at the time, developers couldn’t expand much on the game, so there’s a lot of leveling up and grinding because what else could you do? You know? Ultimately, playing a video game back then was all about honing your skill with that game.

Ideally, you could play through every Final Fantasy game in order of their release, and that would give you a greater sense of the evolution of the gameplay and the series as a whole. However, most people reading this (and me) are probably more modern gamers – and as such, our perspective is biased on what feels “exciting” and “remarkable”. The first Final Fantasy game could feel boring and tedious to you now, but if you put it in the context of when it was made, this was entertainment for hours on end. This is basically like watching one of those silent adventure films starring Douglas Fairbanks. Yeah, you’ve been spoiled with more amazing stuff like The Matrix and Star Wars, but golly – this stuff blew people’s minds back in the day.

Direct Sequel? No. However, there have been multiple remakes, which I have already listed above.

[thedinanshiral]

DRAGON AGE!

News have been given, in the form of new concept art and comments from the developers, and we’re all very excited! So here’s my two cents to add to the many analysis and videos that are coming our way.

For the sake of brevity, i’ll just share some screenshots and comment on them. I’m saving theories for now, as what we got is mostly visuals and not actual information or details on plot or characters. 

The Anderfells! At last, we may get to visit Weisshaupt, headquarters of the Grey Wardens, and if you read Last Flight, you know what to expect. I admit i imagined the place to be slightly more..flat, on the horizon, but i’m not complaning.

Somewhere in snowy mountains there’s a dwarven structure ready to be explored. Ruins of a tomb, an entrance to a thaig or the Deep Roads? As i don’t see us returning to the Frostback Mountains with the action heading north, could this be somewhere in the Anders as well?

We got more red lyrium and mysterious sacks so Deep Roads is most likely happening. Again. I’m not exactly a fan of the Deep Roads. 

Next we have some cityscapes, and i’ve seen people ready to assume it’s Tevinter but i digress. 

With things pointing towards Antivan Crows presence (both in this reveal and Tevinter Nights), there’s a chance we get to see Antiva, and even Rivain. While all three nations have important coastlines, what appear to be canals in the second picture don’t strike me as Tevinter (someone once described Antiva to me as being based on Venice and it makes sense), and recently Patrick Weekes said on Twitter that concept art is meant to set a mood, but nothing in these pictures gives me a “oppressive slaver empire of blood mages and abysmal social inequality” vibe. It looks oppulent, sure, but not in a Tevinter kind of way. Also the domes on those buildings look more similar to a sketch illustration of Rivain from World of Thedas Vol.2:

Where’s Tevinter then? I think it may be this one:

Tevinter architecture has been shown to have sharper, more menacing lines, and parts of their buildings are said to be magically suspended in the air (WoT vol. 2, Tevinter Nights)

Speaking of! Floating ruins also make an appearance in the new concept art

This could be either from somewhere in Tevinter, or ancient elvhen ruins. I’m more curious about the floating transport they got there...

This that i’m referring to as “the bazaar” is one of my favourites, there’s so much going on in there, it’s amazing. Shoutout to the little candle/oil lamp tiny dudes carrying tiny scrolls, and the big shoulderpads mage eating a slithery treat. I hope we get to see some of that busy and colourful city life we’ve never really had before in DA games. 

Next we have some creatures, so yay, dragons!

And this guy could either be an undead or what would be even worse, a red lyrium darkspawn..

I’m interested in these gigantic creatures, The Horror of Hormak from Tevinter Nights gave us all ideas of what Ghilan’nain did as a hobby and these creatures fit right in. The tentacles one immediately reminded me of this journal from Trespasser

Finally, characters! I’m getting i deas but as this is just concept art and only intended to set a mood for the game, we may not get all we see here. Party vibes include more rogues than i can count, female qunari companion, certainly Antivan Crows, the mandatory mage..

People see Dorian in this underwater piece but going by the armor and Dorian’s own character, i strongly disagree and think that guy is another Crow. The figure in the back is possibly a Nevarran undead. It’s a thing:

From this epic looking line up, one might be a companion as well (far right). We have already been introduced to something similar in one of the stories from Tevinter Nights.

Here we see more Crows, and the qunari lady we all already love and want to marry, but i can’t help but be somewhat mesmerised by Tevinter fashion, those pointy hoods get to me and the outrageous feathery shoulder pieces puzzle me.

One of the themes for DA4 is said to be powerlessness, what do you do when you don’t have power and those who do won’t freaking use it for good. This poor guy here seems to be asking a massive Qunari warrior for just one sec to catch their breath

We’re definitely getting Grey Wardens, too. 

And this, THIS ONE, for some reason i love it. It’s a kind of magic we haven’t seen yet, it’s so mysterious. Do they conjure these artifacts from thin air or are they originally part of their armor and the pieces detach by magic to form a shield, a bow, whatever they need? From the background, and general aesthetics, these could be temple guardians, that is, more elvhen. Just an idea.

Last but not least, another potential Crow, or as some have said because of the mask that resembles an unused concept for an Orlesian butterfly-inspired mask from Inquisition, an Orlesian bard. 

Frankly i’ve had my overdose of French accents in DAI and would like to hear more Antivan accents, plus we’ve had an Orlesian bard before and would like to see as much new things as possible. 

So there we go, the mood for Dragon Age 4 is looking fine, i’m loving everything, and i’m super excited to explore new places and see new people. AND THIS OLD MAN.

[mezzopurrloin]

Mezzo Plays Final Fantasy X: Part 3

Surprisingly, Tidus isn't dead.

He's just washed up on the coast of some island. He's hit in the back of the head with a blitzball, and spies some people on the beach waving to him.

He decides to do a midair flip kick to send it back, impressing their leader.

Then he swims to shore and introduces himself, first saying he's from Zanarkand, then after that confuses everyone, telling people he was infected by Sin's toxin.

His name is (probably) not a Pac-Man reference. Tidus asks if it's true Zanarkand was destroyed a thousand years ago, and Wakka dispenses some exposition.

"It was just as Rikku had said. Wakka and Rikku couldn't both be lying. Why would they? I appreciated the fact that Wakka was trying to cheer me up. But at that time, all I could think about was... everything that happened to me -- all of this -- started with Sin. Maybe if I could find Sin one more time, I could go home! For now, I'd just live life until that time came. No more worrying about where, or when, I was. Sure it was hard not to think of home. But I started to feel better already. A little better...maybe."

Wakka decides to escort Tidus back to his village.

Of course, they end up meeting some fiends along the way. Wakka fights using his blitzball as a weapon, which seems a bit odd, but it makes for a good throwing weapon apparently.

He also tells Tidus about a big blitzball tournament coming up. Wakka says that maybe someone there will recognize Tidus if he plays, and Tidus agrees to help out.

Here we get a nice view of Besaid Village. Wakka joined the Aurochs 10 years ago, but the team hasn't won a single game since then. He's about to give up on the blitz, but wants this last tournament to be his best yet. Tidus agrees and hopes to steer the Aurochs toward victory.

Just before entering the village proper, Wakka asks Tidus about the prayer, which of course just makes Tidus more confused.

You just put your hands in this position while saying "Praise be to Yevon."

"Any blitzball player would know that prayer. It was the blitzball sign for victory."

Time to loot some stuff! This house was wrecked by Sin and the owner never bothered rebuilding it, so it's not like they have any use for these things anyway.

There's also a little lodge here belonging to a group called the Crusaders. They're sworn to battle Sin, but no one's ever been able to truly defeat it, so their duties mainly involve keeping it away from populated areas.

One thing I forgot to mention about save points is that they also provide a full HP/MP recharge. This makes them a convenient replacement for the inns of other RPGs, though you're free to rest at the Crusaders' lodge if you want.

Once that's done, Tidus heads into the temple. It's the biggest building in the village, and faces away from the ocean, as that's where Sin comes from.

Inside the temple plays the Hymn of the Fayth, another plot-important song. No, 'fayth' is not a typo.

"It was then, standing in that place. I began to realize how different this world was from my own."

Tidus talks to one of the temple attendants, and after using the toxin excuse again, gets some more exposition.

"It was funny hearing myself make the same excuse over and over. Funny, and a little sad."

"So what he meant...was that we should respect some kinda great men or something like that...I figured."

Tidus goes back to Wakka's place for a quick nap.

Which leads us to another flashback sequence. Young Tidus is happy to see Jecht gone from his life.

His mom isn't quite that sympathetic to him.

After he wakes up, Wakka is gone. Tidus heads back to the temple to find out what's going on.

It seems that the summoner is in trouble, and Tidus immediately runs into the temple depths to help.

Monk: "The precepts must be obeyed!"

Tidus: "Like I care!"

This takes him to the Cloister of Trials, a puzzle that must be overcome before reaching the chamber of the fayth. This one's pretty simple and teaches you the basics of these rooms.

The puzzles are based around spheres. Glyph Spheres open the way to the chamber, Destruction Spheres destroy things to uncover hidden treasures, and each temple also has its own type of sphere. Only one sphere can be held at a time and you can stick them into sphere-shaped slots to activate things.

In this case, there's a Besaid Sphere powering this lovely Tron lines complex.

If we replace it with a Destruction Sphere...

It blows up a wall to reveal a hidden chest. Inside is a Rod of Wisdom, which we can't use yet. It's important to get every Destruction Sphere treasure we can, as there's a late-game reward for obtaining them all. And generally, it's important to grab everything we can the first time, since backtracking isn't really a thing for 90% of the game.

Anyway, after completing the Cloister of Trials, Wakka meets up with Tidus again, and he explains that only summoners, apprentice summoners, and their guardians can enter. Wakka is free to enter because he's a guardian. Summoners go on a pilgrimage to every temple in Spira, and the guardians protect them.

We meet some more guardians outside the chamber. And then the door opens, revealing...

"Man, was I surprised. And here I was, thinking summoners were all old geezers."

The group heads out to the town square, and the summoner decides to show her prowess.

"I had never seen anything like it in my life. Sure, it was a little scary, but still... I could feel a strange kind of gentleness from it."

You get to pick a name for the aeon too. Her canon name is Valefor, but I went with Yvonne on a suggestion from Umbra.

The celebration continues into the night, and Tidus and the summoner finally get to meet face-to-face.

Yuna forgives Tidus for barging in, as she feels it was her fault for taking so long.

"I remember... That night, we talked for the first time. I didn't know it then, but after that night, everything changed. For everyone... For me..."

If you haven't already figured it out, yes, Yuna is the main love interest. After talking to her, Tidus heads to the Crusaders' lodge to sleep.

It's only been one day and you're already having dreams about her?

Yeah, yeah, Rikku's cute too.

Jecht, stop being such an asshole. This is why your son hates you.

Tidus awakens and sees Wakka and the girl in black, Lulu, talking.

You know how they say Final Fantasy characters are obsessed with belts? Yeah, here's a prime example. Apparently they made Lulu's dress entirely out of belts as a challenge to the animators.

The camera moves up so we can get a nice head shot of her too.

Wakka gives some context on the conversation after coming inside. His brother Chappu joined the Crusaders, and was killed by Sin. Wakka learned the news on the day of the last blitzball tournament, which understandably threw his game off.

In the morning, Wakka presents a gift to Tidus.

This sword is called Brotherhood, and is quite fancy. It was originally meant to be a gift for Chappu, but he never used it. Tidus leaves the village with Yuna's group, as they're going on the same ship.

Well, not quite yet. There's one more thing to grab first. See my comment above about how it's really important to pick stuff up the first time around.

No, I don't get it either.

Once that's done, the group stops to pray at the monument above town. Chappu didn't pray at it the day he left. While making their way back to the coast, we get some more random encounters.

Flying fiends are Wakka's speciaility. They have a big evasion bonus vs. melee, but Wakka's ball can hit them with no problems.

This slime monster looks dangerous, though. Its amorphous body gives it strong resistance to physical attacks.

Time to call in our black mage. Lulu uses these adorable little plushies as weapons and as focuses for her magic. Many are references to other Final Fantasy creatures, like the moogle up there. She also takes the time to explain this game's element system. Fire and ice oppose each other, as do lightning and water. This blob is water based, so...

Zap! Problem solved.

Tidus runs a bit ahead of everyone else when we reach the next area...

And runs into this furry guy, who we saw at the temple earlier. He doesn't take kindly to Tidus and attacks. The two trade blows for a bit, until everyone else comes in and puts a stop to it.

He's another one of Yuna's guardians. He doesn't talk much, and can't be used as a party member yet, but he will be later.

I know this post is already overloaded with screenshots but really, check out the view here.

Anyway, upon encountering a large flying fiend, Wakka decides that rather than handling it himself, he lets Yuna try out her summoning. You can swap party members in and out at any time during a battle.

Time to see what our aeon can do. By using the Summon command, Yuna calls Yvonne to the field. All other party members disappear while the aeon is summoned.

Yvonne can use standard attacks, cast black magic much like Lulu, and has the Sonic Wings special which deals damage and delays the opponent's turn.

Much like players, aeons have their own Overdrive bar too. That's what picking up the thing from the dog was all about. In this case though, I decided that her first Overdrive, Energy Ray, was enough for this fight.

She charges up a laser in her mouth, then fires it at the ground.

Then, explosions. Perfect for taking out any irritating fiends.

One last encounter to show here. In this case each character is up against the type of fiend they're specialized against. You want to have Tidus hit the wolf thing, Wakka go for the flyer, and Lulu cast Thunder on the blob, and they're finished off easily.

All of our other party members have their own places on the Sphere Grid, and they gain S.Lvls and spheres the same way Tidus does. Tidus learned a new ability too: Flee, which guarantees escape from any non-boss fight. Some say that fleeing from battles is cowardly, but it's still handy to use in a pinch.

Oh, by the way, that Rod of Wisdom we found? It's a weapon for Yuna. It gives a good magic boost and the Sensor ability, allowing her to show enemy HP and traits. When not using aeons, Yuna acts as our white mage, giving out heals and buffs when needed.

One last thing to grab as we hit the beach. This is a component for a postgame weapon for Yuna. I don't know if I'll get into the postgame for this LP, but it's good to have anyway.

Yuna and her crew board the ship. Yuna waves goodbye to the villagers as they set off.

[downtroddendeity]

SHARE WITH ME the thoughts and predictions on gameplay improvements...... I am Interested

ALL RIGHT SO. This is… really long, so, cutting it.

Things we know for sure about remake changes based on released info:

There are three difficulty settings

They’re adding a feature (I think only in easy mode?) where if you knock out enemies with Strike you can insta-kill them and get the XP and cash reward without fighting them

They’re willing to mess with order of events enough to change available party composition for at least one boss fight (there’s a Mist Spider screenshot with Marco in the party)

Enemy turn panels now have icons indicating what enemy they are, as well as where they are on the grid(THANK GOD)

Sound/music/voice volume sliders

Minimap

Possibly more if I spoke a word of Japanese and didn’t have to rely on incomplete translations

Things I’m pretty sure about, based on stuff that’s been released:

This was screenshotted from a status menu: icons for all the status effects, plus what looks like fire/ice/lightning. My bet is these are resistances, which implies that enemy attacks are going to have elemental attributes now- before, the game just treated it as magic damage or physical damage.

I couldn’t tell during the stream, but it looks like they’ve effectively switched the screens in the combat interface. The turn order now appears on the bottom screen, which hopefully means that when you’re changing turns/using Turn Break you can select them with the stylus.

The “condition” button here might just be the same old “Help”/skill description button we’re used to, but I’m hoping it means we can get a list of buff/debuff/status information for enemies and allies.

Stuff I think is likely:

The reason Rosch is always underleveled is because for some ungodly reason people you can’t add to your party get no XP. This is a really easy fix which would markedly increase Rosch, Gafka, and Eruca’s usefulness at various points.

Strike- that is, the ability to knock out enemies on the field- had a really wonky hitbox in the original, making it so you’d often juggle enemies four or five times before they got knocked out. I’d bet that one way or another, that’s not going to happen as much, though I suspect there will be different tweaks at different difficulties.

Giving enemy attacks elements and adding elemental defense is going to require a massive equipment rework and rebalance. I’m actually all for this- RH’s equipment balance is all over the place, and by about midgame a lot of equipment seems to be distributed completely at random, resulting in a lot of stuff being useless. Aht’s equipment is particularly bad: upgrades for both her weapons and armor (at least, ones that give her the magic and defense boosts she needs, rather than relatively useless ATK and MDEF) are thin on the ground until SH Ch. 6, when you get access to the ridiculously powerful Promised Knife and like five better pieces of armor shortly after each other. You can go to a lot of work grabbing a rare, unique steal from a boss and then find it’s worse in every way than the thing you picked up in a treasure chest five minutes ago (*glares at bear*). You can easily get Stocke’s second-best armor in SH Ch. 4, resulting in him taking a fraction of the damage everyone else takes for the entire rest of SH, and the best armor is only available as a rare drop from a random enemy in the final dungeon, so you’re probably going to keep the other one on him for the entire rest of the game. I think odds are excellent they’re going to straighten the mess out, in part by putting elemental and status resistances on more equipment.

Building off that last bit, I think we’re probably going to see a huge jump in enemies using debuffs and status effects, and the success rates of both in general. In the original, you could go through the whole game and never see a successful Fear, Curse, or Petrify. Debuffs had such a low success rate that you could often ignore them entirely from the enemy side, and you never wanted to use them on your side because that was a turn you could be having Eruca cast G-Frost again instead of doing a crap-damage phys hit that might make her next spell do more damage. I suspect we’ll see enemies weak to more status ailments than just poison and sleep, and maybe some skill set changes so there are ways to inflict the other ailments other than items.

I will not be surprised if enemies now have elemental resistances as well as weaknesses, somewhat reducing the efficacy of my favorite tactic, Will o’ Wisp spam.

More enemy manipulation of the grid. I expect we’ll see more formation attacks and effects, and probably either the ability for enemies to move and act in the same turn or a bunch of abilities that move the user on the grid when they’re used.

Speed buffs and debuffs get a boost, possibly directly rewriting the turn order the way enemy summons do. They’re essentially a waste of a turn in the original- you might get a single bonus turn for your efforts before the fight ends, but the odds of getting two before everything’s dead (which would actually make it worth it) are pretty much nil.

My personal wish list:

Ability to scroll through lists quickly with the left/right buttons.The lack of this is a grade-A pain in the ass in the original, especially when trying to select skills or use items.

Better scene skip function. The current one a) is never indicated anywhere in the game, b) will only skip one scene at a time, and some nodes have three or four EVERY TIME you visit them, and c) can occasionally cause you to miss scenes, because changes to events are registered as part of an old scene instead of a separate one. So, e.g., you can accidentally permanently miss the scene where Stocke scares the crap out of Hedge because you tried to skip the conversation with Garland before it. (I’d probably do a button you push that toggles skipping all scenes you’ve already watched but doesn’t affect new ones.)

Reevaluation of some skill sets. All the ladies have physical skills which you will probably never use because they don’t have the stats to make them worthwhile. Seriously, there is no point when you ever want Raynie to use Rush.

Reevaluation of some damage numbers. There are two separate bosses you can kill in two turns before they can even move by pushing them into a Volt Star Trap, and a third you can kill in four turns if you lead with Dancing Death/Heat Blade on the cannons in front of it, then push it into a Volt Star Trap. You can beat every one of Gafka’s skill boss fights in one round by popping Sky Hammer. Eruca gets G-Frost at level 32 and it’s her highest single-target damage all game.

Shuffling some nodes around, whether by promoting random events to nodes or strategically adding additional choices with bad ends. There are some points in the game where it’s annoyingly difficult to reach things because if you jump back in time, you have to go through several dungeons and/or boss fights to get back to where you were and it’s a pain.

Reevaluation of when you get some skills. Aht only picks up Frost Star Trap at the bottom of the Imperial Ruins… and there are no enemies after that that are weak to ice and can be moved, rendering it effectively pointless. On the flip side, Burst Light murders absolutely everything and negates all need for strategy while Eruca is in the party once you get it, and the pact for that is available before you even meet Master Vainqueur.

Final dungeon rework, so you get Eruca back halfway through instead of at the end. Seriously, it’s stupid to have one of your party members gone for the entire last three dungeons, and you really don’t need an extended “save the princess” thing to want to get on with the plot at that point. If anything, plot tension would be heightened by getting her back and then continuing along with her. 

Improve Raynie’s bonus skills. The only remotely good one is Sleep Break, and even that’s not exactly something you spam in every fight. Resist Boost in particular is pretty much a waste of a skill.

Improve Raynie’s MP. She’s a black mage, why does she have worse MP than Marco?

Eruca’s Mana Bursts get changed from physical damage to non-elemental magic damage to use her stats better. Preferably Aht’s Imperion too.

More variety in Mana Burst effects. Most of them are just “heavy damage to one/all targets,” so there’s often not a lot of reason to use them over anything else (especially when Turn Break is a unique effect). The only interesting ones are Marco’s (multiple buffs, target all), Aht’s Lucky Breath (fill someone else’s MB), and Rosch’s Seyfried (launch everything into the air).

Eruca gets Frost. I think Mana Shot is supposed to do the same damage as a basic elemental spell, but in practice it doesn’t seem to, and it can’t hit weaknesses. And there’s a pretty good chance that if you’ve been skipping monsters, she might not have G-Frost yet when you get her, so her DPS is kind of crap.

Better armor for Gafka. For a character who’s clearly supposed to be tough and tanky, his armor sucks, especially early on- I usually end up giving him defense accessories just so he doesn’t die the first time some goblin mages sneeze in his general direction.

For that matter, Aht and Eruca also have armor problems- it’s often best to use armor that’s allegedly “worse” because their armor upgrades prioritize MDEF over DEF, but they have naturally high MDEF and terrible DEF.

In-game display of enemy steals (and possibly item drops). I’m not asking for a full-scale Etrian Odyssey bestiary here, but it’d be nice to not have to keep a running list of which enemies I’ve robbed just in case one of them has good loot.

One-on-one boss fights rebalanced, so there’s more to the strategy than “change turns and heal until you’ve got a bunch of turns in a row, then nuke them, taking off all their health in one round.”

Press B to walk/Press B to run toggle. Someone who can read Japanese might be able to tell me if this was in the config menu in the stream, but it’d be really nice to be able to turn off auto-run in the sewers.

A decent magic bonus on Historica. It’s kind of ridiculous that there’s an Endgame Sword of Plot Importance restricted to the main character with a special superboss fight to upgrade it… and the magic bonus is less than the Sorcery Epee you bought from a shop thirty levels ago. Like, no, screw that, I’m not taking a 27-point hit to Stocke’s magic stat when he doesn’t have any physical skills that even begin to compete with G-Fire/Heat Blade/Will o’ Wisp for DPS.

[thoughts-of-loyalty]

Fire Emblem Echoes: Observations and Character Theories from newly unveiled material

So, recently, there’s been a new trailer for Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, as well as some new screenshots.  As someone who’s recently been playing through Gaiden and having enjoyed the it, I want to discuss various things seen from these recent releases.  In particular, I wish to theorize on the various characters we’ve seen and figure out who they may be.  Potential character spoilers underneath.

Team Celica

The group that has gotten the lion’s share of the focus recently is Celica’s party, who are first introduced and playable in Chapter 2 (think of them like separate acts in a play, with the maps being scenes in the acts).  This screenshot comes from the Zofia’s Call trailer:

This is what I figure to be Celica’s party going through a dungeon, considering the context of the video.  I think that, while the dungeon crawling seems to allow for ten characters max at a  time, these 10 make up the entirety of her party.  To support this, I think it is also set during Chapter 3, in part due to these two:

Meet Catria and Palla, veterans from Marth’s game who DID indeed appear in Gaiden.  They first appeared in Chapter 2, but would be recruitable in Chapter 3 if they survived Celica’s first map.  Considering their appearance, I have a theory as to who the other 8 are:

In Chapter 2, Celica’s starting party is herself, a healer (Genny), and two mages (Mae and Boey; related, Boey’s redesign has already been confirmed).  They quickly gain a mercenary, Saber (who it seems has already been promoted).  After a few maps, they then run into and save Valbar’s group, who join them if they survive their introduction (Valbar’s a prepromoted knight, Kamui’s a mercenary, and Leon’s an archer).  Presuming that no new characters are introduced, this would logically be Celica’s party at that point.

On a related note, here we see an archer who is preparing to fight a revenant using an Iron Bow.  While the archer’s name nor his sprite isn’t shown, I believe this to be Leon, considering his similarity to the above sprite.  If so, Leon got VERY handsome for this game, especially compared to his Gaiden look.

As a closing point, it seems that Celica has a range of three, looking at the red squares.  Thunder was a 1-3 range spell in Gaiden, so I think this means that Thunder is still a part of her spell list in Echoes.  No idea if it’s still the same level learned.

Team Alm

While Alm hasn’t been given as much focus as Celica as of late, we have gotten a look at some of Alm’s group in recent pictures.  First one I wish to look at is this:

First and foremost, I don’t recall there being a Deliverance Hideout in the original Gaiden.  So whether this is a new location or just a renamed old one is to be seen.  But luckily, the game gives us a peek at Alm’s party, I’m assuming during Chapter 3 (considering the other screenshots provided).  I’ve taken a closer look, with guesses as to who is who.

So, it’s hard to make too accurate a guess, but I think this is correct.  We’ve already seen Alm, and they already shown who is likely to be a promoted Lukas beforehand, so that should still be him.  Considering their resemblance, I figure 3-6 are Gray, Tobin, Kliff, and Effi (it’s what I’ve got for her until Nintendo gives us an English name for her), considering their resemblance to previously shown versions of themselves.  7 is Silque, Alm’s first naturally occurring healer, who’s been identified earlier.

While we don’t have a solid confirmation yet, I figure 8 is Clive, considering that he is a blond cavalier, like 8 is.  Which leads me to guess that 9 is Python and 10 is Forsyth, as Clive came with an archer and a soldier. If this is accurate, than Python hasn’t changed greatly (he was blue-haired in Gaiden, too), but Forsyth has changed a good bit (Forsyth was red-haired in Gaiden).

On a related note, the classes Gray, Tobin, and Kliff have been promoted to in this preview pic were some of their best ones in Gaiden - Gray benefited from Mercenary due to it fixing his low Speed growth, Tobin was best suited for Archer due to his stat setup, and Kliff was an amazing Mage thanks to his spell list and growths.

Effi being a cavalier is a somewhat new sight for previews, but it sadly tells us nothing new about how female villagers will promote.  She’s been shown as a mage before, and a Cavalier here, both of which are available to both genders (sort of, you never get a female cavalier, but you do get a female paladin).  Hopefully we’ll learn more soon.

Finally, likely due to only having 10 units when dungeon crawling, we don’t see Clair, the Pegasus Knight that joins Alm early on.  We have seen her before, though, and she definitely resembles Clive a lot more, as she’s blonde too.  We’ve seen her in the first trailer, when they discussed promoting characters:

That’s really all there is when it comes to identifying Team Alm, though there are two more screenshots of Archer!Tobin, one looking at his stats, and the other in combat with a Revenant:

It seems like, as it was in Awakening, modifiers to stats are shown next to the stats as a +/-.  These numbers are merged for combat, as we can see Tobin’s Atk is shown as 13.  There’s also a couple of dots shown beneath the Steel Bow, though I’m not sure what relevance it has just yet.  There’s also a smiley face next to Tobin’s face, but no explanation as to it’s relevance just yet, either.

I at least hope I’m on the right track here.  If you have any thoughts or theories, I’m open to hear them.

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Girls’ Last Tour 1 - 2 | Juuni Taisen 4 - 5 | Ancient Magus’ Bride 2 - 3 | Idolish7 1 - 2

The only one I’ve properly kept up with out of my 5 shows this season is Juuni Taisen, so I’m going to roll out the tag for that show first. Also, the Idolish7 first two episodes became free recently so I cover them here too.

Girls’ Last Tour 1

Pipes…grunge…hey, doesn’t this look familiar? *glares at Princess Principal*

I’ve only seen one episode of Made in Abyss but I get a bad feeling about these character designs…

I’m worried about this falling into the Yuri Divide. Sure,the fandom can do what it wants, but please don’t ship the lolis.

Oh right. Wind, meaning there’s an opening somewhere.

That dramatic eye opening made the outside world seem like an anticlimax. C’mon, show. You can do better than that.

I feel like Chito says “shut up” a lot, even though she’s only said it twice. I get how she’s kind of relatable, but this show’s not on the level of MMO Junkie or even Juuni Taisen. It’s just kinda…average.

Did Tangled ever teach you how to use a pan, Yuu?

Everything’s kinda WWI-esque. It’s kinda unsettling for a person who’s never properly seen war.

Even in this snowy world, you could still learn to hunt and cook, right?

If you kill your friend in a post-apocalyptic world, you’ll be lonely by war. Don’t kill each other, kiddos. Lives are precious.

This is serious, kiddos! C’mon!

Eating snow is meant to quench your thirst, but it’s not any good for hunger. Apparently.

Well, I’m quite lukewarm on this. I’ve already found my seasonal hits and I study globalisation, so it’s no surprise I find this stuff a lot like my weekly content. Nonetheless, whoever decided to put Classicaloid behind a paywall’s gonna have to pay (pun not intended)!

Girls’ Last Tour 2

I half expect a “hey you!” joke but they don’t work in Japanese…

What are the wiggly things on the ground next to Chi and Yuu in the OP??? Leeches???

Oh geez. Now they even draw cleavage on the lolis. Meaning these guys are just drawn young. That’s both a good and a bad thing.

Those letters seem to be…no language in particular.

Book burning. What a thing to throw in.

Oh. The blocky writing is actually hiragana or katakana. You just need to look at it closely.

I think that was meant to be comedy…but it was so cruel. Poor book.

I think what they’re saying is “don’t burn history”, but I think we learnt that a long time ago when the Chinese burnt books.

Maybe if these gals had Bear Grylls they’d survive a bit longer…?

Lemme guess: either Yuu burnt them all, destroyed them all or read them all.

The original joke was gomen wa, where ne is similar to wa. At least, I think it’s a wa. It could be a re.

The red circle said Yuu wrote the me wrong, so it’s actually probably gonun ne.

Well, someone funded a sakuga ending. Like the one from ACCA with dancing Lotta.

Juuni Taisen 4

I find it heavily symbolic that Nezumi likes eating eggs. Eggs represents chickens…and conundrums…

Ooh…bam. Nisio Isin’s going the Middle Eastern proxy route.

Hmm. Interesting, it’s basically Bystander Effect: the War.

The anime’s currently ahead of the manga, so I got slightly startled by Boar’s appearance. However, I’ve read some spoilers elsewhere, so I knew she was going to be in Monkey’s story somewhere else. I just didn’t think it was this soon.

Recycled footage…bad show! Bad!

LOL, CGI tank. Sorry for ruining the mood, but that stood out a bit too much for my liking.

“…participation is mandatory…” – Huh. I never saw that detail coming.

“Ow. I thought you were against violence.” – (LOL.) Yeah, but apathy isn’t good when something’s coming to get you in the sewers, so I’m with Monkey on this.

Wa-wait! Y’mean, Rabbit can use Chicken to use Eye of the Cormorant…so Monkey will die this ep??? [Monkey dying]’s exactly what I’ve been fearing for the duration of this episode. Update: If you want the spoiler version from the end of the ep…she didn’t die.

Notice Monkey uses moves that use the strength of her opponent against her. It’s a very pacifist touch, so to speak.

There are a series of images that flash by before the casual clothes part of the ED. If you observe them closely, you’ll see a lot of them involve the number 12. (Example: the cubes have lines on them that read “12”.)

LOL, I think I only just now spotted the bodyguard behind Boar. He’s hard to spot behind all the splatter.

Home boy and his T-bars make me laugh every time. Then of course, there’s Mr Floofy Jacket.

Oh, it’s Duodecuple who’s doing these next ep previews. I couldn’t figure out who it was last time I tried.

Juuni Taisen 5

Genius, with a capital letter? They keep calling him the Genius of Slaughter in his backstory, so I guess that’s where it’s from.

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing is the same in Japanese as it is English, so at least the pun is there.

LOL, this episode is pretty much all “stuff goes kaboom!”, and that’s pretty much the way of the Sheep. Haha.

Of mice and men, eh??? (I read enough spoilers to know who the victor is…but I don’t know how they win.)

Whoa, yeah, baby! Bring that action! (That happens to be exactly the way I imagine my own action stories – from the front seat, so to speak.)

The snake’s winking! So cute! I want me some plushies like those!

Old-Timer. Haha, great pun on so many, many levels.

Ancient Magus’ Bride 2

I started doing a productivity blog and got caught up in it so much, I neglected anime! Imagine that – me, neglecting anime!

Oh, there’s a little “open” sign near the door.

It’s anime Hogwarts! Only the train is more colorful…LOL. (Actually, Little Witch Academia is anime Hogwarts, so scratch that.)

Ooh, Elias has a good taste in faces. Not that I’m complaining or anything. (Looks like En-chan, to boot.)

Elias is like the NEET genius of the magic world here. It’s kinda funny.

What’s a Gem’s Bee? (No spoilers, I’m not a manga reader!)

Angelica’s like her (Chise’s) mother, LOL. Seeing Elias properly emote is hilarious, hilarious! (Why I procrastinated on this show? Because it’s a slow mover that should be appreciated in its own time, but I’m not good with binging so…that’s why I’m only watching it now.)

Oh! No wonder Angelica seems like a mother. She is a mother.

Ooh! Ice flowers. Pretty. I’ve already gotten way too many screenshots for my own good out of this show…As a writer, I feel like I could never make a story like this.This is a story best fostered under someone else’s hand.

Poppies, eh? To me, poppies symbolise war and sticking out, but that’s just a product of where I was born. In the case of war, poppies represent the blood of the fallen and those who rise above that.

Speaking of stories I couldn’t write, I’m currently bringing Next to Me to a close. I feel like that’s my best match to AMB, which is why my thoughts dwell on stories so much right now. Next to Me is one of those stories where the world matters just as much as the character building, if not more, which is why the understated majesty of AMB is a good match.

Seeing a blonde Englishman use –kun like a Japanese is a bit disorienting.

Simon really treats Chise like a child, eh?

The “open” sign now says “close”. What is this house, an apothecary?

The CGI door was a bit weird…

Whoa! That was a bit of a fast approach into the dragon scene, but apparently the dragon part of AMB was really hyped…

Ancient Magus’ Bride 3

How does skelly-man see like that?

The dragons look like…Pokémon! (That was my first thought, LOL.)

This blonde is Lindel from the promo material I’ve read. He looks like zaShunina (Kado), so it’s best to be wary of him.

Ooh, now there’s an application of shadows I’d never be able to think of!

Holy flame spirits, Batman! Elias has a tongue! (I got spoilered on that by ANN, but it’s crazy seeing it in context.)

Ancient mages shouldn’t be hot like zaShunina! Where are the real old fogeys like Kiku(hiko, SGRS)?

Uncle Nevin! I found it extremely charming this uil has a name beyond “Uil”.

Can these dragons read minds? Or is it just the power of Dragon Knowledge (TM)?

When they say “Anime saved my life”, I guess they never meant it this literally…or at least, Chise never meant it this literally.

That dragon has way too many eyes!!! Yipes.

Huh. I haven’t felt this feeling since SGRS. The feeling of a masterpiece on my eyeballs.

羽鳥チセ <- That’s how you write Chise’s name, so they did another “Western creature uses Japanese knowledge” thing…

D’aww. That was beautiful! No wonder people like it, now I like it too. Nothing short of majestic, guys, nothing short of majestic.

Hey, the guy who voiced Nevin is called Ryuuzaburo. Ryuu means dragon in this case. (Meta pun!)

Idolish 7 1

Crunchyroll really tried to hype this thing up! Wow. So, here I am at what could pretty much be called a premiere event of the simulcast commentary. Enjoy, friends.

By the way, I’ve tried a bit of the Idolish 7 game (but since it was on BlueStacks, I couldn’t do the “rhythm” part of the rhythm game very well and subsequently couldn’t get too far) and of course, there’s a vested interest through Shirai, Masuda and Nishiyama. Update: There’s no Nishiyama in sight. Sorry, guys.

Oh wow. This is exactly as I remember it in the game, right down to the word!

Yay! I was looking forward to seeing the basketball scene adapted, since it’s possibly the only scene I got to experience in the game in its (Japanese) entirety. Bring the dang game to the Western world, Bandai!

Riku is such a pure cinnamon bun when he gets the basketball back.

LOL, Nagi is such a flirt, kyaa~ (semi-sarcastic).

I don’t remember them dropping Trigger’s name so early…geesh, my memory must be sketchier than I thought it was.

Just as a reference, Iori (black) is 17 while Riku (red) is 18.

Ooh, I just spotted a Trigger ad on one building during that cut.

Ooh, good sense of drama these guys have got going.

Idolish 7 2

Expressiveness for a grump like Yamato, LOL.  

LOL, there’s a shark in the back…

Iori has a cat shirt, hahaha.

Cool and sharp…stationery? Like a compass?

Iori’s so sarcastic, I can’t tell f he’s ever being serious or not.

I don’t know who’s my favourite so far out of these i7 boys. Probably the one similar to my husbando, Tamaki.

Ahh, gotta love me a good, honest hardworking anime gal. You don’t see them very often, y’know. It’s refreshing.

That was a great Iori impression Mitsuki did, even visually (note: I didn’t listen to Mitsuki do the impression, I only read the subs…hence my comment). Troyca really captured the style of the game, to boot, which is another cherry on the cake.

Notice Iori stands in front of the D.C. (da capo) and leaves to reveal it.

I researched who Riku’s brother is while I was watching ep 1 and…(spoilers for the uninitiated!) the brother is Tenn of Trigger!

There was a soba ad in the back in one lingering shot…

Hey, I get the feeling there’s CGI involved in this dance segment, but it’s…hardly detectable! Amazing! These guys seem to have gone a long way since the horribly animated Monster Generation MV.

Notice they (Troyca) only use CGI in (mostly) shots which don’t involve closeups.

Of course Nagi winks in the middle of his performance…

Whoo, yeah. That was a bold move by Crunchyroll, and of course that would grab me more than just leaking the first ep. I wonder if any critics covered this on their blogs…? Or would it not matter, since critics wouldn’t cover this “uncritical slop” anyway? Nonetheless, I covered it, and that’s what matters! (Update: Yeah, all the critics – Frog-kun, Lauren in Space, Mage in a Barrel etc. - passed on it. As expected of those critics…)

[thoughts-of-loyalty]

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia - Japanese Overview Trailer Analysis (Megapost)

Hoo boy, Nintendo dropped a massive video on us today.  Nintendo of Japan, that is.  We’ve gotten an Overview Trailer for Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia.  While most of this was probably explained before, we finally get a lot of demonstration as to how it is going to look when playing Echoes.  We also get a look at some new character designs, either through actually seeing their portraits, via combat models, or map sprites.

There’s really a lot to sift through, so I’m warning you all now, there is going to be a very long post under the cut.  As always, spoilers for Fire Emblem Echoes.

So, we finally get out full-ish look at one of the Chapter 1 maps that Alm goes through.  I could be wrong, mostly because it’s been a while since I’ve played that map, but I believe that there’s been another soldier added, on the far right.  Not that it changes much, but if this is the case, it’s cool to see they’re tweaking the maps some.

This isn’t really anything new, but I just wanted to quickly post a screenshot of Gray in the Mercenary class, mostly just because it’s cool to see his appearance as one.

We also get to see what look to be the new characters Berkut and Fernand (if that is their English names) in combat with Alm’s group.  So they’re definitely encountered as enemies during the story.

Now, funny thing is, this looks like a map in Chapter 3, where Alm fights a group of 3 Paladins (if memory serves).  This may mean that some of the various generic enemies you encounter along the way now have Berkut and Fernand as enemies instead.  But who knows, it could be a new map entirely.  It’s too early to tell.

We then get a quick look at Clair’s combat model, getting to see what she looks like in Echoes.  There’s not a whole lot that can be gleaned from it, considering we don’t have too many clear shots, but it appears she’s got a more practical hairstyle, being tied back and all.

We get another look at Berkut and Fernand again, this time with Berkut as a Gold Knight (at least, that’s what the class generally was called) and I think Fernand may have become a Paladin now.  This means that the two might be recurring enemies of some sort.

We also get to see group exp distribution in action, in what looks to be shortly after the completion of Celica’s first map in Chapter 3.  This was standard for Gaiden, where Group EXP was earned and divided among units after a map’s completion, but we never saw the process.

We then see that, if I am correct, the game announces when a unit has reached point at which they can promote.  This was in the original Gaiden, where it’d be mentioned you could progress to the next class.  Considering that Lukas is a Soldier, I figure that mean’s he’s reached level 7 and is going to become a Knight.

Just a small blurb, because I intend to go over the screenshots related to this in another post: we get a small information on how the villagers can promote into five different class lines.  Nothing we didn’t know before, but I want to talk about it more in another post.

Moving on...

We finally get our first look at Catria, who I’m sure a number of you have seen in either Shadow Dragon, Awakening (as one of the extra teams), or Heroes.  She was indeed in the original Gaiden with her two sisters, Palla and Est.  She looks very nice, but it’s gonna be hard to get used to her after having seen different looks for her in both Shadow Dragon and Heroes.  Eh, well... still cool to see!

We also see a quick tidbit where Alm’s learned a skill from the Levin Sword, which I take to mean that all the weapons have skills of some sort, likely a number differentiating each other.  I figure these skills are gained through repeated use, like weapon ranks in other games were.

We then get a quick idea of what some of the skills will be like:

Sadly, I don’t have too many ideas on what the skills are or what they do in particular.  That said, there are two things I manage to take particular note of: 1) You aren’t required to be in the third tier to get these skills.  This probably isn’t surprising, but it’s good to confirm.  As we can see, Kamui is noticeably a Myrmidon and Leon is a Sniper, both of which are second-tier classes.  So the skill learning probably doesn’t entirely depend on what class you’re on in the line. 2) Alm’s Levin Sword skill seems to double the Levin Sword’s power.  The Levin Sword dealt a straight 15 damage, and knights had 1 Res.  So, if he dealt 29 damage, this likely means the Levin Sword is dealing 30 damage as a result.  The more you know~

Following up on that last screenshot with Catria, I take a closer look at the boss and I think that’s Vrai, a boss from Gaiden in Celica’s path.  I figure it’s him due to his hair (which resembles its look in Gaiden), the shield (which indicated he was promoted to Myrmidon, which he was in Gaiden), and the sword, which I believe to be Vrai’s Darkness Sword.  He wasn’t a major boss, but it’s cool to see him looking unique all the same.  He especially looks unique considering...

We get a clearer look at Deen and Sonya, two bosses Celica had to choose between fighting in Gaiden.  Whoever went unfought would be recruitable when defeating Grieth, while the other was, well, dead.  It seems Deen has had an update to make him unique from Vrai (who was literally a pallet swap), having spikier hair now, and Sonya’s a bit changed too (not by much, though).

Sadly, we don’t get any close-ups due to how the video is structured, but we get our first look at Forsyth (green) and Python (blue), a soldier and archer (respectively) who join Alm in Chapter 1.  Though I do wonder what they’re doing in a village, considering that they were recruited in the Deliverance HQ in Gaiden.  Guess we’ll see eventually.

We also finally get to see Atlas, the only villager in Celica’s path, who joins in Chapter 3.  He’s definitely changed a lot from his Gaiden days, as he’s definitely more handsome now.  Though I guess time will tell if his usefulness has improved with his appearance.

Interestingly, it seems you’re prompted when someone’s going to join your party, at least in this case.  This is definitely interesting, as Gaiden just added them into your party after conversation. I wonder if this will be common, and why you might have the option to turn them down.

We then see a bit of exploration, where a sword of some sort is resting in what looks to be a barracks or something.  It seems that it zooms in slightly when going for an item, so I wonder if this will occur when examining other items, and if it’s required to get specific things.

Now, humorously, we see Alm do a little bit of a spin when it’s his turn.  We’ve seen him raise his sword triumphantly, but this spin...?  That’s new.

#DoTheAlmTwist

We also get to see Jesse as this game’s volunteer for the difference between Classic and Casual defeats.  It seems that the portrait used is different in these cases, too.  Furthermore, it looks like they’re fully voiced (my poor heart).

As we also get to see the Mila gear in action now, where the turns are indeed rewound back up to what seems to be the start of your previous turn.  It does seem to undo EVERYTHING, though, so caution should be used so as to make sure you have it ready for when it counts.

Thanks to the rewind, we get to take a look at some of the units that we haven’t really gotten a chance to see before, as well as some promoted versions of already-revealed units.  They are, from left to right: Top Row: Gray (Myrmidon), Alm, and Tobin (Bow Knight) 2nd Row: Clair (Falcon Knight?), Faye (Paladin), Lukas (Knight), Mathilda (Paladin), and Python (Bow Knight) 3rd Row: Luthier (Mage), Kliff (Sage), Silque (Saint), Clive (Paladin), and Tatiana (Saint) Bottom Row: Delthea (Mage) and Forsyth (Knight)

It’s nice to see some of the newer map sprites, they really look cool and I can’t wait to see their combat models!

And then we get our first look at Juda, one of the main villains in Gaiden.  And hoo boy, does he look different.  So, props to them for updating Juda’s portrait so that he no longer looks like a toe.  Flip side is, though, now he looks like Dracula’s hunchback friend.  Eh, well, I guess it’s an improvement?

And then we get to see this mysterious cavalryman who is currently unnamed.  I’m willing to bet he’s a relative of Celica’s (come on, his hair), but as to what their relation is, I don’t know.  He definitely can’t be a random soldier, though, there’s too much effort put into his appearance there.

We then get to see Saber as a Dread Fighter, fighting against a heavily armored monster of some type (I think, anyway).  What exactly it is, well, I’m not sure.  It’s cool to get our first closer look at the Dread Fighter, though, so hey.  And they’re definitely keeping the acrobatic-ninja aesthetic there.

We also get our first look at I think Mathilda, in her base Paladin class.  We sadly don’t get too much of a look, so I can’t make a real assessment of her looks or the like, but she does definitely look good!

And finally, we get to see... NUIBABA??  Yep, that’s right!  Everybody’s favorite gremlin has been given a major makeover, so much so that Nuibaba’s now a female!  That’s... well, I didn’t expect a genderflip, but Gaiden was always hurting for female villains.  Either way, it looks like Nuibaba gets a bit more focus now!

And that’s all the really stand-out parts about this newest trailer!  Gods, this looks like it’s gonna be a really cool game, at least design wise.  I’m really excited for it!

Did I miss anything?  If you think so, don’t be afraid to message me and tell me what I’ve missed!