#actually this all was inspired by a single fe character from a game I never played lmao

[zorkaya-moved]

happy new year from renata (pt. 2)

It's the end of the year 2022 and honestly? Fuck this year from the bottom of my heart in terms of jobs, real life, and all of that bullshit. But you know what made this year bearable and actually survivable? My friends. It's been a tough year for everyone who I've known and I want to extend my hugs, my love and my adoration for every single one of you. You're amazing, you're powerful, and I hope that your 2023 will be a fantastic year.

There are many people who I want to give a shout-out for being the amazing beans that you are. I love you all and you are absolutely gorgeous. There are some people who I want to give some heart-to-heart special messages because all of these people helped me survive this year of 2022 and I cannot thank all of you enough for this.

FUN FACT, THIS POST BROKE TUMBLR FOUR TIMES FOR ME. So this is Part 2 wit the same beginning but tumblr just denied me posting the whole post lmao.

❤ @heincus / Max — Duuuuuude, oh my god, we really just cried about Flamechasers for so long, huh? I love it. You are a creative whirlpool, Max, I admire your creativity and your passion for all of your muses. You are fucking amazing for sticking with them and developing them. And your art? Your art is so fucking good, never stop pursuing that passion of yours because it's gorgeous. Listen, you know I'm biased for Kalpas and Hokori, but in the year 2023 we better throw more characters at each other! Well, I'll throw Zarina at more of ur ocs haha.

❤ @merotm / @cryosewn / Guin — I know that I've been so all over the place when it comes to talk, but I want to tell you that you're amazing for your creativity and for your in-depth research. Be it Caiying or Yuuna, I love how you write your female characters: they are strong, vibrant, and they are unapologetic. They are also so different and I love, love, love them. I remember how we've met in the FE fandom and I'm just so glad we met again!!

❤ @eraba-reta-unmei / @maledictus-maleficus / Everi — MY MUSIC BRAIN CELL SOULMATE OH MY GOD, Everi you and I just really be sharing one galaxy brain when it comes to music, huh? I love it, I love it so much. I appreciate you so much. Be it Miya or Ayden, Zarina also adores them a whole lot even if she makes Miya sigh so many times. You are one of the people who helped me become more comfortable writing my own original oc and thank u for that. Love you!

❤ @sheyearns / Felicia — Feli~ I know we don't talk much anymore because I'm just all over the place and I just zone out a lot, but I always think of you and I'm so excited to see your twitter feed when you play games and see all of your comments. You're a sweetheart and have always been a sweetheart. Love you tons and miss you a lot!

❤ @straye / Yin — Yin, I told you how detailed you are about the social studies and your in-depth study of your characters. I love, love, love how you dive deep into your characters and how you choose your words. It's such a treat to speak with you, scream with you, and just be chill. I'm so glad that I decided to follow you because I was so nervous at first, but look at us now! We're screaming about our characters, discussing different things, and it's just sick. I hope that in 2023 we'll have even more interactions and just have a ton of fun!

❤ @lunaetis / Hina — Hina, we've known and followed each other for so long. I want to thank you for your support and your inspiration. Thank you for always interacting with Zarina and thank you for leaving such sweet comments, always. Your consistent and creative writing style is something I've always admired and the words you choose re so beautiful. I wanted to ask you how do you reach this style and what do you read, but that'll be a question for 2023, haha. Not only that, but I'm so excited about your Lumine and Zarina plots. I'll send them over and I'm just so excited to write more with you!

❤ @itorisen / Yasu — My precious Yasu, the creator of the absolute unit that is Koto Unkaku. I always wanted to tell you how colorful your muses are (just like ur amazing icons and theme). I remember how we were interacting on Cardia and you were writing Zeno, I still cry about that to this day. I also love, love, love how unapologetic Koto is about being herself: the fire, the power, the strength. I love her and I love you so much. It always makes me laugh when Koto and Zarina interact, too, it's always such a treat. ;)

❤ @al-hazen / Calis — Calis!! We've only met this year but thank you so much for being open and honest with all your opinions on the dash. I love how you write Itto, Shinobu, and Al-Haytham. You bring such a unique and different portrayal that dives so deep into each of their respective themes and you make them so different. I love it, I love it so fucking much it's so fun to read your metas and thank you for always reading my metas too. I appreciate it so much, I'm always so nervous about writing too much but thank you for always being here. Here is to more interactions in 2023!!

❤ @scarlxtleaves / Jay — Oh my god, Jay, you're an absolute unit, you know that? The amount of creativity and writing stored in you is akin to a whole universe within you. I know we haven't talked in a while, but I always think about our talks and I love seeing you on my dash. Sinrina and Ganyuha will forever by my OTPs and I really should send Zarina your other muses ways! I hope that your end of the year wasn't too chaotic and I hope that your 2023 will be a delightful time!

But that's not all!! There are so many more amazing people I've met, and I've been loving on my dash throughout 2022 and even more before that! Thank you so much for being such a bright presence in my life and thank you for being so passionate about what you are all doing. Some of you I've met at the end of 2022 and some of you I've met in the beginning of 2022, but all of you are stars and I love and I hope your 2023 will be absolutely sparkling and wonderful!

@yeonban / @kazuiji / @shadowshub / @deathleads / @dawnswine / @suiyuun / @saviata (@suender) / @lykaiia / @xamassed / @prsonatm / @aceparagon / @abyssmalice / @closedcoffins / @constellaris / @fxmiliarity / @azurescaled / @lovedloyalty / @starfallenwishes / @yagyuchan / @sekayuki / @achroanimus / @wiildcardd / @engodly / @veinblooded / @electric-ecclectic / @solaetis / @nulltune / @scarletooyoroi / @exrhlab / @pyreign / @bloodyd / @amalanexus / @cxnvicts / @gosutm / @efloresce / @aiiouros / @yoakenouta / @unmeinoniwa / @pcrdiseseekers / @femtaile / @veqva / @opalscales / @c4rdsharp and so many more of you on this amazing and fantastic dash of mine! I'm surrounded by so many talented people and just one post will not fit all of the people I'm following and who inspire me. If you're not here, please, know that I love you and you're fucking amazing. I'm just a funny scatterbrained ADHD writer who is actually crying at this point because there are so many fantastic people here and that I've known for years and who I've just met in 2022. Thank you all so much for being here and for loving Zarina.

Happy New Year! Bye 2022 and hello to 2023!

[luxusnoname]

Glory Is A Whisper (Part One)

Summary: All his life, Braig dreamed of the honor and prestige that came along with being a hero from the stories of old. So when an opportunity to find a legendary weapon falls right into his lap, how can he say no? But if those stories are anything to go by, things never turn out quite as expected. Part one of (?) in a series. For Day 6 of @apprenticeweek : AU.

Characters/Pairings: Braig, Dilan, Aeleus, bg Dilan/Aeleus. More to come in the next part 👀

Rating: T; some alcohol and swears

Word Count: ~2.1k

Author’s Note: Will be posting part 2 tomorrow for the free day! I started writing this as a one shot but it quickly spiraled out of control. You know what they say: once you start using fantasy name generators for your towns and mountain ranges it’s all downhill from there.

~~~

Glory Is A Whisper

“I just don’t get it,” Braig pondered aloud, kicking his feet up on the rough-hewn tavern table as he tipped back precariously in his chair. “What do all of those legendary heroes have that I don’t?”

The fairy-tales always made it sound so easy. Sure, there was usually a dragon guarding the princess or some ancient necromancer with an army of undead to protect a magical artifact, but the hero's path always seemed to lay out nicely before them. Sometimes it appeared in the form of a magical mentor, sending the hero on a quest or guiding them to great power. Other times it was a prophecy, a pre-destined event that one was born and molded for their entire lives. Braig had neither of these going for him. So what then was an aspiring glory seeker to do?

Dilan, one of Braig’s only friends in the village, sighed and sloshed the liquid in his tankard around. How many times had they had this conversation before? He didn’t look up from his ale as he responded sharply.

“Manners, for starters. Feet off the table, Braig.”

The smaller man gave a dramatic groan, but obeyed. “I’m serious! I’ve got charisma-”

“Debatable.”

“-good looks-”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“-and my skill with a bow.”

Dilan grumbled; he unfortunately couldn’t refute that. If there was anything that could be said about Braig’s potential for greatness, it would be attributed to his keen marksmanship. He was also quick and far more clever than most would give him credit for, but he often acted carelessly on impulse. His personality, boisterous and cocksure, left much to be desired. 

He was a man through and through - by all accounts, the least remarkable race in the realm. And if one asked any of the villagers of Dunstead that knew Braig, he in particular was even less so.

“All I’m saying,” Braig continued, “is that there’s gotta be something more to life than… This.” He gestured to the rest of the tavern and its rowdy, drunken patrons. The irony that he was one of them went completely over his head.

Dilan scowled. “You’re the one who wanted to come here in the first place.”

“You know what I mean! Yeah, I like to come here because sometimes people come through with stories. Stories of places and treasures far away from here. But if this is all I have to look forward to for the rest of my life? What’s the point?”

“I think you’ve had too much ale and it’s muddling what little sense you have left.” He shook his head. “Perhaps it’s time we leave. I have to be at the blacksmith’s first thing tomorrow morning.”

Braig waved his hand dismissively. “I’m not nearly as drunk as you think. You can go if you want, but I’m going to stay a while longer.”

“If you say so.” Dilan stood up with a grunt, digging around in his pocket for a few silver pieces. He set them on the table. “Give these to the barkeep before you leave. Do not pocket them.”

“Give ‘em to him yourself then. Aeleus likes you better anyway.”

He watched his companion leave the tavern, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aeleus doing the same. Braig rolled his eyes. Their mutual infatuation was so obvious to everyone but each other, yet Dilan called him the simpleton. He kicked his feet back up on the table and closed his eyes, listening for any threads of conversation that might be mildly interesting.

“They’re not so much from me as they are an apology for him having to put up with you,” he quipped, with a quick glance at the ginger man behind the counter. “Besides. He’s busy right now and doesn’t need me distracting him.”

Braig shrugged. “Whatever you say, Dil. Have a good night.”

He had spent many a night like this in Dunstead’s tavern, listening to rangers and travelers and peddlers exchange stories in hopes of finding a legend to follow. Preferably something that required his skill with a bow to slay a dangerous beast or defeat a great foe. His fingers itched for a more challenging opponent than the rabbit he hunted for dinner last night.

But these were not the sorts of stories he heard. Most of them were boring and none were even close to anything he would consider legendary. Sure, killing a rabid wolf that had been slowly picking off members of a nearby village was worth some bragging rights, but where were the riches? The grandeur? He wanted recognition and reward for his efforts, but he was beginning to think the opportunity would never come.

And then the tavern door creaked open and the din of the crowd quieted ever so slightly. Braig cracked an eye open and glanced toward the newcomer. It appeared to be an older man judging by his gait, but a heavy cloak obscured his face. He wasn’t a Dunstead local, that much was for certain. More than a few pairs of eyes followed him to the bar where he seated himself. There was a heavy and distinct air of otherness about him that Braig couldn’t put his finger on. He seemed… Powerful. Important.

Maybe he’d had too much ale after all, because he didn’t even think before he stood from his own table and swiped up the money left by Dilan, making his way to the bar. He seated himself next to the stranger and beckoned Aeleus over.

“A pint of your finest for myself and this gentleman here.” Braig handed him a silver piece with a flourish. “You can keep the change.”

Aeleus nodded and set about pouring their drinks. Braig turned to the old man, who had watched the exchange passively. It was strange; even up close, he couldn’t make out any distinguishing features beneath the cowl.

“I appreciate the kindness, stranger.” The newcomer's voice came as a deep and gravely rasp. “Do you often buy drinks for weary travelers?”

“I guess you could say I’m in charge of hospitality here,” he grinned. “The name’s Braig.”

The man dipped his head in acknowledgement. “A pleasure.”

“Your drinks, gentlemen,” Aeleus interrupted, shooting Braig a brief ‘I know you’re bullshitting this man but I’m going to stay out of it’ glance before setting their tankards down and leaving to serve another patron.

Braig lifted his drink in a toast, bumping it with the stranger’s. “Welcome to Dunstead, my friend!”

As they drank, Braig got the feeling that this reclusive stranger was privy to some secret knowledge or power. He just had a feeling. And so he found himself crafting a very elaborate and very false story about how he was a famed archer in the region and basically the hero of Dunstead. He recounted a tale in which he single-handedly defended a young prince who’d been attacked by bandits while passing through the hills on the east end of the village, and was rewarded handsomely for his valor. Most of the money was donated to widows and poor families in town, of course. He peppered in other small, more believable acts of kindness as well, and the stranger listened with rapt attention.

“A shame your deeds are not known elsewhere,” the gentleman hummed at the end of it all. “It is to be expected, of course. Such heroic men are usually only acknowledged in the pages of history. But it would appear I’ve found a legend in the making.”

“Eh, maybe so,” he shrugged nonchalantly. “But helping others is a reward all its own.”

“Me? A living legend?” Braig laughed, playing up his modesty. “As if. I’m just a guy who does the right thing, regardless of reward.”

“Oh, but that selflessness is what qualifies you to be a hero,” the stranger continued. “You’ve risked your life for others with little regard for your own safety. Don’t you think that’s deserving of something more than just the respect of your fellow man?”

“But what if I told you that it doesn’t have to be?”

Braig’s façade almost cracked as whatever he’d been about to say died on his lips. His shock, however, was quickly covered up with an easy grin. He knew his act was working as intended, but he hadn’t expected to get to this point so quickly. 

The man dug around in his robe for a moment before procuring a rolled parchment. He laid it on the bar to reveal a map of the realm. Braig had seen one like it once before, a traveling peddler’s map marked with safe trade routes and profitable towns. But this map… There was only one destination marked on it. An inconspicuous spot at the foot of the Skarnfell mountain range.

“Tell me, Braig, have you heard tales of Whisperwind?”

His jaw nearly hit the floor. Of course he knew of Whisperwind, as did every other child who’d ever heard a bedtime story. It was a legendary elven bow, enchanted so that as long as the target was in sight, its wielder would aim true every time. He hadn’t allowed himself to believe it was real since he was a boy that dreamed of discovering it. Most dismissed it as a legend.

The stranger gave a low chuckle. “I can tell by your expression that you have. Now, don’t you think such a weapon would be fitting for a hero such as yourself?”

“But… I thought the elves left this region long ago.”

“That is what history has told us, yes. But their last settlement before moving on, a city inside the mountain, still stands. And inside, they left behind one of their greatest artifacts.” The man pointed to the spot on the map to reinforce his point. “I’ve searched for it myself, but lack the wits I’d had in my youth. Perhaps you’d fare better?”

“I-I don’t know what to say.” They were the first honest words he’d spoken to the stranger so far, a sure sign of his shock. “I appreciate it, I do, but… Why entrust something like this to me?”

The stranger laid a hand on his shoulder, eyes beneath the cowl silently penetrating his very soul. Was that a flash of gold he saw?

“You are a great man in word and deed, Braig. As I said before, I believe you are worthy of more than just praise alone. This is your opportunity to become something more. A true legend.”

Maybe it was just Braig’s imagination, but was the man’s grip on his shoulder tighter? Or was he just nervous, already imagining the journey ahead? This was what he’d always dreamed of, after all. A legend to chase after. His chance for glory.

His destiny.

“Take this map home with you and think on what I’ve said.” He let go of Braig’s shoulder and rolled the parchment up once more. “A gift, for entertaining this weary old man with tales of valor and generosity.”

Braig stood up, tucking the map into his pocket and shaking the stranger’s hand. “Thank you, mister…” He chuckled awkwardly. “Y’know, this whole time we were talking, I never did catch your name.”

“My name is hardly important. But I’ve affixed the corner of the map with my symbol. If you discover Whisperwind and make it into the pages of history, I would like to be named in your story. My symbol will suffice for such a purpose.”

Braig nodded dumbly, head still reeling from the revelations of the past few minutes. “Yeah, of course. I’ll never forget your kindness, sir. Truly.” He turned to walk away, but stopped short. “Wait, do you have a place to stay tonight? If you don’t, it’s the least I could do to offer you mine.”

The man laughed, deep and rich. “You needn’t put yourself out on my account. I have money for a room at the inn tonight. I’ll be moving on tomorrow morning.”

“Alright, well. I bid you a good night then. And safe travels.”

“Likewise, young man.”

As Braig left the tavern, he nodded to Aeleus, who was doing his best not to make eye contact with Braig. Bless the man, he really did mind his business… Oh right, he almost forgot the tip! Braig stopped just outside the door and dug in his pocket for the silver coins Dilan left, but his fingers found nothing. Huh, maybe he’d dropped them on the way to the bar. They were probably long gone, swept up by some vulture. Not that it mattered, anyway. What was a few pieces of silver to a great weapon from the age of elves?

Braig hardly got a wink of sleep that night. The stranger told him to think it over, but he’d already made up his mind. He packed a bag and was ready to leave at sunrise. The journey would only take a week, so he really had nothing to lose. The most difficult part would be the day spent navigating through Willowmire forest at the northern border of Dunstead. But as long as he stuck to the path, he’d be fine. He had to be, for his destiny awaited him.

[leefi]

Hi, I noticed you did the MBTI types of the ORV characters, and I was wondering what you think the MBTI types are for the Revue Starlight gals :D

Anon, I want you to know that this google doc is 14 pages single-spaced, and I'm still not done.

WITH THAT BEING SAID, I'm so glad you asked!! I'll be breaking this up into four parts so we don't have to scroll through one massive wall of text. The other schools will take a bit more time to publish as I'm still working on a couple from each (I think I have four girls left!).

But without further ado:

Starira MBTI Part 1 - Seisho

Siegfeld

Frontier

Rinmeikan

I had a lot of help with all of this reading @HalfACape’s wonderful character analyses of so many of the girls on twitter, as well as consulting the Personality Database page for the characters I was less sure about (though there were a few I disagreed with on there - none in Seisho, we'll be discussing the others later). But everyone feel free to discuss if you disagree with anything!

Karen Aijo: ENFP

ENFPs’ dominant function is Ne (extroverted intuition) (that running gag Karen has in the game where she mishears words, spouting off suggestions even if they make absolutely zero sense to the situation at hand - “telescope? telephone? telenovella?” - is such stereotypical Ne). Ne is always running towards any possibility, no matter how unlikely it seems, and I don’t need to spell out for you how much of that we saw from Karen in the anime. Ne-Fi feed each other to create a rebel/free-spirit type of personality (Ne seeks all possibilities, Fi holds strong inner values and selfish desires - what do I want, what do I need? How does this make me feel?). Her Te isn’t too developed yet, which is fine because it’s tertiary and she’s still so young. That tertiary, undeveloped Te shows up in her scatterbrained, lackadaisical, go-with-the-flow attitude (but when dominant Fi gets fired up by something - like an old childhood friend coming home - it kicks Te into high gear). Inferior introverted Sensing shows no respect towards rules or regulations - see her revue with Junna (Si-dominant) and the anger she draws out of Maya for (a child of the system and traditionally hard worker) in their Revue of Pride. Karen is the natural rebel, the forever optimist, the sunshine girl - textbook ENFP.

Mahiru Tsuyuzaki: INFP

If you want to see what leading with an introverted function looks like compared to an extroverted function, compare Mahiru to Karen! They share the exact same functions, just flipped on the I/E axis. So Mahiru is Fi, Ne, Si, Te. Karen is Ne, Fi, Te, Si. And Mahiru is a very clear example of an INFP - such a warm, brilliant, awe-inspiring person, but can also be her own worst enemy and others tend to underestimate her. And it’s hard, I don’t blame her! Leading with Fi and not having that physical/in the moment Se to support it (like ISFPs do, just compare her to Kaoruko--yes--they’re only one letter off from each other) means that it’s extremely hard for INFPs to naturally advocate for themselves...so instead, they retreat into their own imaginations where it’s safer (Ne). BUT THEY’RE SO INCREDIBLE!! THERE’S SO MUCH THERE TO RESPECT AND ADMIRE!! *shakes her like maracas* IF YOU WOULD JUST SHOW US!!!!!!! (and this is her whole arc in the anime i don’t need to tell her lol). It’s actually so interesting how she and Karen’s Fi and Ne escapism manifests in their respective introverted/extroverted personalities. These two really are more similar than most of us think!

I love INFPs so, so much because they’re like sleeping giants. Once they get a hold of and develop that inferior extroverted Thinking it’s over - nobody else can compare. They’re like the characters in video games that start off super weak, and then you blink and suddenly they’ve become the most powerful units near the end of the game.

Kagura Hikari: INTJ

ENFP’s stereotypical partner (I swear every other reserved person A/sunshine person B couple in fiction is this type pairing) and while it’s tropey it works because these two types play off each other so well. I actually originally had her pegged as an ISTJ, but I think that her bullheadedness earlier in the anime is more indicative of Ni being stubborn. Hikari is cagey, reserved (tert Fi/inferior Se), and an incredibly high-achieving individual (dominant Ni sets specific goals, auxiliary Te implements). Her tertiary Fi (which INTJs LOVE to keep locked up, right here, forever, until they die) is so obvious as you slowly learn just how much of a sap/romantic she is. It’s her weaker Fi that holds that sentimentality towards Starlight after all these years, her Fi that struggles to hold on to that childhood promise, her Fi that has her following Karen (and eventually Mahiru as well) around like a duckling (though we initially get the impression that the dynamic is the other way around). She grows to care deeply for all the other girls around her and that’s all her tertiary introverted Feeling getting stronger as the story progresses! Like so many people in the fandom have realized, she isn’t a mean person, she’s just socially awkward. Not too much to say on her inferior Se, that mostly manifests in how she’s a homelier person who would rather stay in than go out, and doesn’t actively try to seek new experiences (this was what had me thinking ISTJ at first).

Junna Hoshimi: ISTJ

Karen’s polar opposite - they actually share the exact same functions, just in reverse! So Junna leads with introverted Sensing where it’s Karen’s weakest, and Karen leads with extroverted Intuition where it’s Junna’s weakest. And we see this play out in their revue!

Junna is one of my favorite characters in the series for a reason and it’s because it’s SO rare to see the ISTJ in a rebellious role. Si is all about following and respecting order, and Junna breaks all of that to create her own! We see that dominant Si show up in literally every other facet of her life, though - from her by-the-book attitude to her stringency with deadlines and tardiness to her respect for the creatives of old - Shakespeare, Nietschze, etc. She’s an incredibly bright and successful student as well (any type can be of course but the “kind of student” she is is very much Te supporting Si - super studious and placing heavy weight on studying and getting straight A’s). And her Fi is SO GOOD. SO SO SO SO GOOD AND SO APPARENT - MUCH stronger than IxTJ’s sibling Hikari’s at the start of the anime. That’s where the rebellious part of her spirit comes from - her values, her strong sense of self and desire for autonomy (EXTREMELY Fi thing - Fi is all about the self, how I feel about something, what I want out of this, not feeling trapped by others’ expectations, etc.). Inferior Ne manifests in how she struggles with improvisation, ends up tunnel visioning (see her revue with Karen), and can sometimes struggle to accept new ideas or ways of doing things (Junna works so hard, but it’s evident in the anime and a lot of her starira bond stories that she can end up getting stuck in her old ways if someone else doesn’t come in to offer a new perspective -- see her Jekyll bond story dialogue with Maya!). Another example we see is when her extroverted xSTJ sibling Akira, who has Ne a step higher than her but understands where she’s coming from with their shared functions, guides her towards using it in the High Priestess bond story!

Nana Daiba: ESFJ

Textbook ESFJ!! Caring, motherly, affable; Fe doms are always looking to appeal to the group and make sure that everybody feels comfortable (and, likewise, are very keen on suppressing their own insecurities/emotions/discomforts). Nana is not ambitious for ambition’s sake, and in fact suppresses her own talents to appeal to the group. As for that Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :) Si aux… :)

Unhealthy Si can manifest as an extreme fixation on past experiences and a fear of moving on (we’re going to see this later with Si-dom Fumi too). Her poor tertiary Ne had gotten absolutely quashed by her stronger auxiliary Si in the anime - it doesn’t want to change anything! Claudine and Maya can be the leads again. We don’t need to modify the script. The first one was already perfect, why are we risking failure by changing things?! Also, holding herself back for the sake of everyones’ happiness is so Fe dom it hurts. If you want to see the difference between ESFJ and ENFJ (the two Fe-doms of MBTI), compare her to Michiru, who also suppresses her talents -- yes to cultivate the other girls’ (specifically Akira’s) brilliance but also for the sake of her ulterior motives to one day create her own troupe (aux Ni at work vs. Nana’s aux Si). Nana’s is more deferrant, but still just as ferocious - she’ll defeat Maya 60 times over to get what she wants. And the craziest thing is that all of this comes out of love and fear - she’s scared, and all of that is coming from her unhealthy Si aux. Junna is a very good example for her to follow for healthier Si.

Claudine Saijo: ENTJ

“DON’T IGNORE MY LINES!!!” ENTJs LOVE being at the top - the leaders of the pride, the people in charge, the ones you have to answer to (AND she’s a Leo too. Jfc girl pick a struggle LMAOOOOO). You get the picture - except Claudine isn’t in that position. Maya is. Claudine doesn’t even get a revue or her own song, because she’s Maya’s eternal second. This is a really, really uncomfortable spot for an ENTJ to be in, and it’s evident in how hard she pushes herself - and how antsy she gets whenever Maya is around. But Claudine never blames an outside system or factors like Karen (inferior Si) does for her situation - she just gets angry and more driven to succeed, bulldozing her way to the finish line (dominant Te-tertiary Se interacting). The tragedy of her character is that she will never surpass Maya, so we see her Ni begin to reframe achieving the very top to becoming the only star in Maya’s eye (little does she know that she’s already succeeded). That ripping off of her cloak at the end of the revue duet - “the only loser here is me” - is her inferior Fi poking its head out. At the end of the day, Claudine is an interesting character because she’s a walking contradiction. She’s a star denied a spotlight, but she isn’t a failure either, so she’s forced to grapple with this ambiguous, there-but-not-quite-there middle ground. It’s one big identity crisis in the making, and it’s clear to see why so many people relate to her and love her as a character - a lot of us can empathize with never quite being satisfied, and looking up towards heights that can appear insurmountable.

Maya Tendo: INFJ

She seems so normal and established and then you look closer and realize there’s something seriously wrong with her and oh my god where did this massive god complex come from. Typical Ni dom

From her detached, more “mature” personality to her altruistic and often surprisingly keen insight towards people, she has so many key makings of an INFJ. That dominant Ni is strong in Maya - everything is poured into theatre. Everything. From her hobbies to her interests to her personality, everything Maya does in her life is deliberate and all of it is for the sake of theatre. Ni bitches LOVE to fixate on just one thing, and for Maya, that is the stage. “I have no need for those who lack willpower...Come climb up here if you have the resolve...A single step forward is a step closer to my dream” is just...yeah I’m being redundant. Dominant introverted intuition. Ni Ni Ni Ni. This girl embodies it - while Hikari is also a Ni-dom, Maya shows a TON more of it than her (can’t say I blame the writers - Ni is probably the most difficult function to write because it requires thinking so many steps ahead for your character). We can see a marked difference between INFJs and INTJs here in how Maya and Hikari practice solitude - Hikari purposely isolates herself from Karen to avoid hurting her, while Maya purposely isolates and crafts herself into an untouchable God to serve as an inspiration to others (auxiliary extroverted Feeling). Want to see how this looks with the INFJ’s extroverted sibling, the ENFJ? Look at how Michiru crafts Akira’s public image. That’s Ni and Fe at work, just in different priority slots (Maya is Ni dominant, Michiru is Fe dominant - they share the same functions, just flipped on the I/E axis). That tertiary Ti is very prevalent too - Maya mostly keeps her thoughts to herself, and loves to mull over things. She definitely isn’t the first one to shout out an answer, she prefers to think things over.

One interesting comment that really stood out to me on her personality database page was how she’s an INFJ with an INTP persona in the anime, and I think I agree (INFJs and INTPs tend to present similarly and can be easily confused with each other anyway)! But I want to add on to that - I think that INTP presentation is her auxiliary Fe at play crafting a persona that better coincides with Claudine’s, as ENTJ/INTP matchups are extremely compatible (not saying Maya was thinking about MBTI LOL but rather she brought out and exemplified aspects of her personality that would better complement Claudine’s - their partnership is not a one-way street at all! Maya does so much for her!!). Just compare anime Maya to stageplay Maya, where she gives no headway and is absolutely brutal to Claudine.

Futaba Isurigi: ISTP

Futaba is such a great example of what a healthy ISTP can look like! Dominant Ti shows up in how she communicates with others - she's honest, direct, and to the point, but it's never utilized in a way that’s mean-spirited (contrary to how her girlfriend often can be) - it’s just how she communicates. Claudine (a Te dom which works SO well with Ti) actually points out in Starira that this is why they get along so well. Aux Se shows up in her physicality - her love and strength is in stage fights, she's into mechanics with her motorcycle and does all the maintenance herself, etc. Funnily enough, I think that tert Ni, while a slot above Fe, is actually Futaba’s least developed trait (or, at least, the one she's most guarded about) - she went into Seisho to follow Kaoruko, and her aux Se dominates that tert slot and gives her a … little bit of a lackadaisical attitude? Obviously not as much as someone like Karen, but in many senses she doesn't outwardly display a strong fear or anxiety towards the future like the other girls (completely understandably) do - and it’s that tert Ni getting angry when she feels as if Kaoruko is stagnating in her plans. There’s some inklings of her own plan for the future, but Futaba’s own individual plans are mostly kept to herself, so we don’t know how much or little she’s done about them. (I have more to add but will not continue as I’m venturing into movie spoilers territory, but for those that have watched/read them, try to draw your own conclusions based on what I’ve said!). I think that having such a close relationship with Kaoruko is what pushed her to develop that inferior Fe so early to support her girlfriend's dominant Fi. I actually originally had her typed as ESTP for how strong her Fe was (ESTPs have it a slot higher than their introverted siblings), but she really doesn’t strike me as an extrovert, and ISTPs with developed Fe can be very warm, affable people too!

Kaoruko Hanayagi: ISFP

“Kaoruko Hanayagi’s dream is world domination.”

Kaoruko is such a great example of what an unhealthy ISFP can look like! LMAOOO but no, I’m dead serious - if you want to know what unhealthy introverted Feeling looks like, look to Kaoruko. Everything is me me me me me me me, to hell with what anyone else wants (if you want to compare unhealthy Fe to unhealthy Fi, compare Nana and Kaoruko). Tertiary Ni shows up to support Fi in how surprisingly sharp she is towards other people - what makes them tick, exactly where to hurt, their inner thoughts and feelings (see her bathtub conversation with Mahiru).

BUT THAT DOMINANT Fi IS ALSO SUCH A POWERFUL THING. That “me me me me me me” is going to turn into “my vision, and what I want to create, and what I’m going to do” (once that inferior Te finally develops - which Kaoruko is going to be forced to put work into eventually). This is why, like Mahiru, I think that Kaoruko is seriously going to blossom later on in life - ISFPs and INFPs, the Pisces of the MBTI, have this weird penchant for going under the rader and then becoming insanely fucking successful OUT OF NOWHERE??? Like, they aren’t super motivated and driven with a specific plan like Ni-strong xNxJs, or disciplined and hardworking like Te-strong xSTJs, but???? You blink and suddenly they’re millionaires with four creative projects going on simultaneously (but if they get bored with any of them they’ll drop them instantly - you could not pay me all the money in the world to be an IxFP’s manager it must be an absolute nightmare <3). Just...legends out of nowhere? Rihanna is an ISFP Pisces so I have real world evidence to back this up.

[randomnameless]

Re-reading the completely translated interview, there is something that picked my interest about the so called technology stagnation

Kusakihara: The development team was pretty particular. Basically, they used dishes from the Age of Discovery as a model, then added fantasy-like twists. We especially wanted to give some reality to the ingredients and preparation methods, so we deduced what kinds of vegetables you could grow and fish you could catch based on the topography. Faerghus, Leicester, and Adrestia all have wildly different climates and cultures, so we adjusted how nobles and commoners would live, what kinds of food they’d acquire, and even what flavors they’d enjoy alongside each character’s likes and dislikes, and that’s how we formed Fodlan’s worldview. And if they have magic, then maybe they could make this in the greenhouse, or since there’s ice magic, maybe they could make something like ice cream. We thought of all kinds of stuff like that. The monastery is on top of a mountain, so it’s a bit of a cold climate, so I think the greenhouse runs on magic. It’s a world where there’s magic instead of scientific progress, so they’d have to adapt like that.

So, despite me being the loser who made a post about dishes, their ingredients and what they could mean - which was actually something the devs thought to flesh out their countries, since the game visuals doesn’t tell us a thing - I already noted the magically made ice creams and magically matured meat.

And yet, at that time, I wasn’t really paying attention to all kind of discourse and all, but the “techonology” discourse always baffled me in a way because...

Why are we wondering about lenses to see from afar, when long range magic and siege tomes (magic in this opus) have always been a thing? Are we supposed to believe FE7′s Sonia used a telescope to shoot boltings right and left, just like FE8′s Selena?

Oil could be used to make fire... but every peon with an E rank in magic can use a Fire spell (with crap might though).

Since when technology has been so important in the FE verse? Almyra has boats with canons? Well, I have a Dark Flier who can use magic and bomb their ships with a single spell.

I think the first time I went “nope not dealing with this shit” is when someone pointed out Claude, because Almyra is Middle Eastern inspired, would be appalled at seeing Fodlan’s backward... medicine ? Because - and I suppose this take was made by someone very knowledgeable on medicine and healing in Western Europe during the Middle Ages - Fodlanese people would still try to use leeches to heal when Claude, would know basics of what we call now modern medicine.

And yet... No? Maybe Fodlanese healers can’t perform eye surgery, but why would they need to? Just use a Heal spell, or a Restore spell ! Heal is the very first spell you get when you have a D rank in faith!

You have punctured lung, lost 1L of blood and broke both of your legs? Just use an Elixir, it restores all of your HP!

Of course it might be difficult to roleplay, or to write “gritty novelizations” if you take into account magic, pegasi, swords giving +3 strength and people who can transform in dragons... But this is Fire Emblem. Performing eye surgery has never been an issue.

However, I think it became one, especially with FE16.

Because a certain TV show was running during its development that prides itself on “gritty realism”, and because Fodlan tries to shake off the “fantasy” from the FE series. Manuela will explain the difference between healing magic and medicine, even if, from a gameplay point, both restore HP. 

And also, because the weird mole people are here, and “technology” and “magitech” is used to show how those people, the Agarthans and the Nabateans, are different from the rest of Fodlan people, highlighting their differences - and ultimately influence.

Tl; dr : why is it so important to some that Fodlan people cannot build firearms  when they can already shoot light beams from their hands and heal by snapping their fingers or drinking weird potions?

[four-loose-screws]

FE4 Suzuki Novelization Translation - Chapter 6 Part 1

If you would like to start from the beginning, read a missed part, etc., click here!

FE Game Script Translations - FE Novel Translations - Original FE Support Conversations - Ko-fi

Minor T/W: One antagonist character very briefly expresses rape intentions.

———————————

Chapter 6 - The Bard’s Introduction

Part 1

Upon returning to Evans Castle, Sigurd wrote to both his father and King Azmur for their approval of his marriage.

His father gave his blessing, and wrote that he would be waiting impatiently for the day of his son's triumphant return, so he could meet the bride face-to-face.

King Azmur gave both his approval, and ordered Sigurd to stay stationed at Evans Castle to maintain order in Verdane while pressuring Augustria not to make any sudden moves.

Sigurd and Deirdre held a quiet ceremony at Evans Castle.

-

About a week later, a swordsman came to the castle, and challenged all the sword fighters to a duel.

Knowing that it would be good training, they all accepted his challenge, but not a single one of them so far had won.

Upon hearing the noise coming from the courtyard, Sigurd walked out to investigate, and saw Ayra coming forward to challenge the swordsman. "Wait! Allow me to be your opponent." He stopped Ayra and took the wooden sword she was holding for himself.

"I'll take on everyone and anyone who wants to come at me!" The man said without a concern in the world, and readied his sword.

'I can take him!’ Sigurd thought.

However, though the swordsman's stance looked sloppy, it actually didn't leave Sigurd any openings from which to attack him.

'He just might be better than me…' Sigurd refocused his thoughts, and pretended he was on a true battlefield. He imagined himself leading his army, about to strike down a powerful foe...

As the image became clearer in his mind, he felt his body fill with strength.

"Hiiiiiii-yah!!" He shouted, lunged at his foe, and swung his sword down.

He hadn't put any thought into how the swordsman would react. If the man blocked it, he could easily counterattack, hit Sigurd’s torso, and decide the match.

Luckily for Sigurd, the swordsman's sword broke in two, and the upper half went flying through the air.

"Dammit!" The swordsman cursed and threw away the remaining chunk of his sword.

"The match isn't over just because I broke your sword!"

"No, I lost. ...There is something within your sword that I have never seen before. It is like a great, awe-inspiring spirit. It saw the weak point in my sword, and that is why mine broke. ...Please, tell me your name."

"I am Prince Sigurd of Chalphy."

"So you're the great Prince Sigurd, huh? ...I am Chulainn, a mercenary. …I have only ever fought for money. But your skills made me see just how boring that life is. You fight not for yourself, and that is why you risked it all to defeat me in a single blow. Allow me to join your army, Prince Sigurd. I want to try fighting for something other than myself for once."

"You are welcome to do so, Chulainn. I won't be able to pay much, though…"

"All I need is enough to keep myself fed. In exchange, I may leave whenever I want if I lose interest in you…"

"I am neither your master nor someone you are contracted to serve, so you are free to do what you want."

"I like that idea! For now, you can just provide me with three square meals a day, and I'll be happy."

With Chulainn and the other allies that had joined him along his travels, Sigurd's unit was now starting to look more and more like a proper army.

However, the campaign in Isaach still had yet to reach a conclusion, and the situation in Augustria was getting worse and worse.

-

Eventually, King Chagall declared that he would invade Grannvale, and gave orders to each house in Augustria.

The moment Eldigan finished reading his order to dispatch troops, he called Lachesis into his room.

"Lachesis, I'm going to Augusty to ask King Chagall to stop this foolish campaign."

"Wait, Brother! Rumor has it that King Chagall killed his father! There's nothing you can say that will change his mind! If he could slaughter his own father, just think about how easily he could do the same to you. Please reconsider going to Augusty!"

"Lachesis, I understand what you're saying, but I must go. If King Chagall really wishes to go to war, then I've already made up my mind to protest it. I know the rumors, but there's no solid proof that he killed his father. There's no proven reason to believe I'm being reckless."

"But…"

"Don’t say anything further. If I put my all into persuading him, then the king is sure to understand my point."

Lachesis knew full well that there was no chance Eldigan could persuade Chagall. However, she'd also known since they were small that once he made up his mind, there was no changing it.

Realizing how futile it would be, she became worried for him, and burst into tears.

"Don't cry, Lachesis. I'll be okay. I promise I'll come home. I would never die and leave you alone."

"Eldie…"

Eldigan gathered his Cross Knights and traveled north to Silvail Castle, as it was lacking in soldiers. When one of his soldiers saw the Heirheinian Army marching towards them, Eldigan reassured them that Sigurd would bring reinforcements from Evans Castle soon, then traveled to Augusty with just one attendant to support him.

'How ironic is it that I trust a man from another country more than one from my own?' Eldigan thought. 'All this stemmed from King Chagall misunderstanding things.'

-

When Chagall heard that Eldigan was coming without his unit, he burst out laughing.

He had just become king, so he had yet to establish his full authority. The house leaders still questioned his abilities, and the rumor that he'd killed the previous king was still circulating. Because of this, he hated Eldigan most of all, for clearly opposing him. It also irritated him that Eldigan was Mystletainn’s inheritor.

‘If I am firm with Eldigan, then everyone will realize my power. It'll also be my revenge against him, killing two birds with one stone!’

With his mind made up, he calmly greeted Eldigan.

"Your Majesty, please stop preparing for war! Your father always wished to live peacefully with Grannvale. War will only make the people suffer and curse your name. It is the one thing we cannot allow to happen!"

"Eldigan of Nordion." Chagall said, putting on a happy face.

"Yes, Your Majesty!"

Chagall paused to look at the Nordion King. Then, he sneered at him.

"My father adored you, and I was happy that he shielded me from you. You remember that, don’t you?

"..."

"However… my father is dead, and now I am the one who rules over all of Augustria. Understand?"

"Yes, but…"

"You ignored my order! I cannot let you go unpunished for your crimes! ...Someone throw him in the dungeon, where he can think about how he's made a fool of me!"

At Chagall's order, the two soldiers standing behind him each grabbed one of Eldigan's arms.

"P-Please wait a minute, Your Majesty!" While he yelled as he was carried off, Eldigan did not resist.

'That went just as Manfroy told me it would!' Chagall thought. 'So long as it's an order from his king, he'll obey! At least he has one merit!'

Bishop Manfroy had promised Chagall hegemony of the Jugdralian continent.

-

"If you invade now, Grannvale will be easy pickings, and you will become Chagall, ruler of the entire world! All you must do is become king of Augustria."

"And how do I do that?"

"That much is simple, isn't it? If only your father dies, then you will become king. That's all that needs to happen for you to become the emperor of Jugdral!"

As Manfroy told him so, Chagall imagined a dazzling throne before him. When he sat upon it, countless courtiers bowed to him. From outside, he heard thousands of voices cheer for him as the new emperor.

Chagall killed his father soon after that.

-

Chagall sent a messenger to each house with the order to attack Castle Nordion. 'It's finally begun! Once I've seized Nordion, I'll have all of Augustria’s armies invade Grannvale! Then, the world will be mine!'

When Heirhein's King Boldor received the order, he immediately ordered Prince Elliot and General Phillip's units to ready for battle.

"I’m going to take Nordion from the other houses. I want you two to guard Hehein’s Castle. Do not open the castle gate for anyone without good reason, not even for King Chagall. When I return, Nordion will be ours!"

Elliot was ecstatic to gather his cavalry unit and pass on the order.

"Once Eldigan is gone, we will have nothing to fear! All units, move out! Let's get our revenge!"

As the horses galloped along, Elliot pictured Lachesis in his mind.

'Once Nordion has fallen, I'm going to take that Lachesis and make her mine! She’s so full of herself! Every time I try to talk to her, she turns away! But I wonder what kind of look she'll give me once I’ve ripped her clothes off...'

General Phillip commanded an armored unit, and therefore marched very slowly. Once Elliot and his cavaliers were out of sight, he ordered his soldiers to halt in the middle of a field.

"We will prepare for battle and be on standby here, as our only duty is to keep the enemy from reaching Castle Heirhein."

He did not think it proper for Augustrians to fight amongst themselves.

-

When Sigurd received news from Nordion Castle, he immediately ordered all his units to go and provide backup.

With the castle suddenly in a panic, Deirdre went looking for Sigurd.

She found him giving orders to his soldiers in the reception room. "Are you going to start fighting again, Lord Sigurd?"

"I am, Deirdre. I received a request from Nordian Castle to provide reinforcements. Eldigan's been thrown in Augusty's dungeon, so we must be the ones to save his little sister, Lachesis."

"Then I'm going with you!"

"No, I won't allow it. We won't be fighting any mages this time, and Augustria's armies are large and properly trained. I don't want to put you in danger."

"But you promised you would never leave my side… I'm scared. ...I feel that if we part for even a moment, we'll never see each other again… Please. Please let me go with you."

"I'm sorry… You're right. I did promise that. We'll go together. But you must promise to stay right next to me."

"Yes, I promise."

However, when the army started to march, Sigurd galloped off with the cavalry unit, and couldn't keep their promise. Deirdre fell behind to the rear with the infantry unit.

-

Nordion Castle was surrounded by Elliot's army, but they had yet to break the castle gate. 

'Thank the gods! We made it in time!'

Sigurd immediately ordered his entire army to attack. The cavalry unit clustered together and broke through Elliot's troops like a drill.

They hadn't expected Sigurd's army to show up so quickly, catching them off guard. From that one opening, their entire formation began to fall apart.

Sigurd aimed for the enemies in front of the castle gate, and rushed towards them.

Elliot was surprised by the sudden appearance of an enemy, but knew it was too late to run. He readied himself to fight the man charging at him - who he presumed to be the enemy leader - however, he was no match.

Once they saw Elliot fall off his horse, his men flew into a panic.

Seeing that the enemy was attempting to flee, the Nordionian soldiers opened the castle gate. When Sigurd entered inside, he was greeted by Lachesis, who was dressed ready for battle.

"Thank you for coming to help, Lord Sigurd. You've saved us. For now, at least…"

"I'm happy to see you safe, Lachesis. Is Eldigan still imprisoned?"

"Yes, he is still in Augusty… All the houses of Augustria have turned against us. Please, Lord Sigurd, I beg you, lend us your strength. At the very least, save my brother…”

“I will. I don’t want to fight the other houses, but at this point, we don’t have any choice.”

Sigurd then went out to look for Oifey, so he could discuss their next strategy.

Oifey was atop the castle wall, already assessing the situation. “Lord Sigurd, the fight still rages on. The Cross Knights have returned from Silvail Castle to the north, and are now chasing after the Heirheinian Army. We cannot ignore this. We must fight with them…”

The main force of Sigurd's army split off from those who would stay behind to guard Nordion Castle, then began to march again.

Philip's unit did as they were ordered, and fought without taking even a single step off the plain, leading him and all his soldiers to meet the same fate all together.

Even though that battle was over, the Cross Knights did not stop to rest, instead heading directly towards Heirhein, a strategy so harsh it surprised even Sigurd. He guessed they must be fueled by their grudge towards their king's cruelty.

The two armies pressed on together, and finally captured Heirhein Castle.

With that battle over, they were able to take their well-deserved break. But even then, it wouldn't be long before they would have to fight again.

[markoftheasphodel]

fe character meme: Briggid, Finn, Lachesis, Innes, Eirika, Forde

Answered Finn already.

Briggid:

As herself in FE4 she’s pretty cool but gets narrative short shrift and cringeworthy love convos. She’s got some great moments like telling off Sigurd and dealing with Andrei and she helps complete Aideen’s own arc but it feels rushed. One manga doesn’t help her at all and the other goes places I don’t 100% like. Uh… 7/10? As her spoilerriffic Dea Ex Machina true self she is amazing and perfect and 10/10 and boy howdy am I biased.

Gameplay-wise she’s footlocked and all but I have sniper bias 8/10. :P

Lachesis:

Honestly in the FE4 game text she’s merely “pretty good” to me and it’s bringing the dev notes and Leonster’s Fall and yes, the manga into things that makes her so damn great plus her unseen but present influence on FE5. The FE13 DLC and Heroes have cheap-shotted her but it’s actually seeing her in Leonster’s Fall– as an exile, as a young mother, as someone willing to be Finn’s accomplice but who also-fucking-lutely draws the line at picking up his actual burden of caring for Leif so he can score the honorable death he pretty obviously wants and calls him out on it– that made me love her. That’s the Lachesis who’s been pushed to the edge and adapted and learned and survived, the Lachesis who could conceivably serve as an beacon of inspiration to her foster-son Leif. We, uh, don’t actually see that in the game and so the indelible image she leaves beyond the Eldigan angle is as a really, uh, interesting romantic partner.

Unit-wise: Master Knight/10 and training her is easier than training Leif because staves, yay.

Innes:

Still my favorite male FE character. An intelligent character who’s actually written as such instead of just lionized in the text with nothing to back it up. A peer rival to Ephraim who never gives in to licking Ephy’s boots. A “high-handed dandy” who can get down in the trenches, a prince who inspires believable loyalty in his knights, and a guy who can (sorta) handle being duped by Joshua without flipping his shit. Just a deeply satisfying character, all the more so for being contained within a single game with no loose ends or retcons or “yeah you have to go find this fan-translation of an artbook from ‘99 to understand what happened here.” 10/10 no apologies. A great fusion of the “snarky sniper” that stretches back to Jeorge with the noble peer sorta character we first see in Quan. Actually he’s kind of like a Quan who doesn’t write checks his ass can’t actually cash (unless we count the part where Eirika bailed him out).

As a unit: I have sniper bias and I don’t like Neimi. 8/10.

Eirika:

Up there with Lucina and Celica as my favorite female Lord but I am still digesting what happened to Celica in FE15, and TBH I do adore the idea of Eirika with headcanon attached more than what’s on the screen. Like, I’ve read all the defenses and it still doesn’t change the fact that one of our earliest impressions of her in-game is the painful cliche of the missing bracelet and then Seth Saves The Day. And then Renvall happens and Seth Saves The Day. And then… yeah. It’s not her fault the writers kicked her in the shins, but they kicked her in the shins repeatedly. She succeeds as a compelling character in spite of this, a female Lord in the “gracious” mode epitomized by Eliwood and, like Eliwood, with some of her best moments overshadowed by the more colorful foils. 9/10 with bias and a bit of averting my eyes during the worst bits of writing. 

As a unit: Rapier Lord/10 and I don’t really care about the horse.

Forde:

Dude I love this guy. From his opening scenes in Ephraim’s raiding party to his relationships with Franz and Kyle to his kinda-sorta courtship of Eirika the guy takes the role of the Lighthearted Xmas Cav (with a weird pinch of Fergus in the mix) into new and richer territory. 9/10 because I am really not down with the Vanessa courtship and like Xmas cavs in general he doesn’t have deep plot relevance. Also he and Kyle have a paired ending how cool is that?

As a unit… well, he ain’t the best cav in the game. 7.5/10 and I had fun? Maybe 8 with bias?

[row-writes]

FE Echoes: My travel into Thabes (Spoilers)

I documented my progress into the Echoes post-game because a few friends were very interested in my reaction and thoughts, so here we go!

The fact that Fire Emblem Echoes turned out to have post-game content made this game in the series even more lovable to me, and a good friend of mine really wanted me to document the journey as I go, hence why I’m writing down my experience for the very first time. So without further ado, let’s head off into the oceans to Archanea and drop off this old lady. I just want to note how AWESOME I think it is that we’re heading to Archanea? In the past I often considered how cool it would be for the people of one continent to visit another, so the idea is very exciting to me especially because it’s one of my favorite FE continents. Combined with the ties to Archanea that some of the characters in Echoes have, I’m glad they decided to go for it. And I’m not even on shore yet, haha. Alright, so I’m a doofus and hardly made any screencaps of the first few battles on sea, but they were pretty straightforward to me. Except for the last one with the Blue Dragons, and the other terrors constantly pouring in as reinforcements. My attacking units were fine, but it was Genny and Tatiana that were often targeted by the reinforcements because there’s so little ‘safe’ spaces on this boat. You’re literally always surrounded in the first few turns.

So after restarting a couple of times, in which I also put the game down for a while to get a fresh view on it- I finally managed to get through. Though I have the help of Mila’s Turnwheel to thank the victory to. With the dragons and terrors now gone from our route, we finally reach the Archanean coast and arrive at the continent in a small village. There we drop off the old lady, who is the reason we’re here in the first place (though my responsibility for accepting, haha) We get our reward, and what do we do next? Well, after forging and upgrading some weapons, we don’t head back to Valentia- we go straight ahead into Archanean territory. Because there’s one last place we haven’t been yet, and that’s the Tabes Labyrinth. While I know something great awaits me there, it doesn’t ease down my excitement to explore just one bit. In fact, just entering the place and reading the content on the gravestone ahead of me multiplies it even more.

So Thabes originally housed an alchemist called Forneus? Praised for his intelligence, but eventually feared by all. Sounds like the classic ‘knowledge leads to power, power leads to corruption’. Fantastic. I spend another moment in the room just looking at my surroundings. The old dragon statues, which probably aren’t there just for decoration but perhaps hint at something? I sure hope so. I descend the stairs, eager for what is to come. The floor is straightforward. Not much to mention aside bandits, maybe some treasure here and there, but then I reach a room where we need to jump down in order to progress. I get brief Silent Hill 2 vibes before I decide to do so, landing in a room where I’m presented with another stone tablet. So there’s more than one? This continues on each new floor? Somehow this fills me with a sense of dread.

Alright. Sounds like he was utterly committed to his work. Which isn’t anything new, but upon remembering what the first tablet said, I don’t get good vibes in the slightest. With thirst for more of Forneus’s story, I progress on until I reach the next tablet. Wake the dead and controlling them as his army? Oh... that’s... not good.

I think we all know what happens when mankind tries to create a perfect creature. Don’t we? Holy shit, I now get a better imagination of the state many floors down below me.

Well... I’m not surprised. The guy’s absolutely obsessed and mad at this point in his research. Probably used them for his experiments, whatever that might contain for those poor messengers. Maybe he controlled the ‘dead’ messengers as his own soldiers to take out the ones the Council sent? Because I doubt a single Alchemist can take on a bunch of soldiers on his own.

I guess if dragging the Alchemist off doesn’t work, they decided to just keep him locked up forever? While I disagree that it’s the best decision, I understand why they did so. I mean, you gotta do something to keep an obvious madman, who has potential to create a disaster- in check, right?

Oh boy... dragons. Something is beyond here, I just know it.

Is that... the Fire Emblem? That dragon was sure doing me a favor by guarding it to try and keep me out. This confuses me, because it seems to be the one from the Archanea series. So imagine if it is, then... Forneus was locked up after the events of the two games? If not, they’d have to snatch the Emblem off this sealed door to use in their wars and allow Forneus to escape. Anyway, no time for speculation just yet, but... I don’t like the idea of taking the ‘seal’ off this door, because I’m sure shit’s gonna hit the fan as soon as I continue on. At this point, I retreat from the dungeon and get some extra training in for some of my units. Also because I didn’t want to get defeated and lose all of the progress I made so far. So after a while of recollecting myself, I went back in until I reached this door once more and take the Fire Emblem, which turns out to be called the Sage’s Shield- a shield that held something in Thabes at Bay. Oh boy.

A little further ahead, I find another tablet. So we’re only heading into the actual workshop of Forneus NOW? Heaven’s sake, what enemies could be awaiting for me there if everyone before that was considered to be just the base of the cake, so to say.

Descending down to the next floor, I realize soon enough that things have indeed changed. The halls are darker, a really eerie and disturbing yet beautiful tune is now playing. The enemies are different too, much tougher, and carry a lot of annoying poison. I try my best to maneuver around them without getting spotted, but I get ambushed really badly three times. Luckily I managed to make it out of the battles quite OK.

Are the Death Masks what the enemies were wearing on this floor? So the actual components of the masks are mere insects that awaken the dead when introduced to a dead body? So practically they are parasites, hosting themselves in a body and living through them. Very... interesting, but very disturbing to say the least.

UHHH. The last thing this mad genius needs is the blood of a divine dragon?? This relates to his pursuit of creating a singular perfect being, I assume?

OK, so I’m a bit confused. Because it doesn’t make sense that the Senate would grant Forneus what he needs for his experiments after going to such lengths to make to get rid of him in any way possible.

Is Forneus instead hinting at the messengers and soldiers the senators sent? Does he consider them the gifts he needed to ‘craft life anew’? Using their bodies to test the thanatophages on? Considering Forneus has lost it pretty badly, I can see this being a possibility? At this point I’m convinced that the first successful members of his ‘undead’ army were indeed the poor messengers and soldiers that never returned. Either way, he succeeded obtaining one of the two matters that consumed him- the undead soldiers. Not good, man. Now he’s halfway of what he wants, and now has the confidence of knowing that he indeed can pull this off, and that’s what a madman like him shouldn’t get.

Wait. WAIT. Did he give his blood to a thanatophage? I’m going to assume he also gave the thing the blood of the divine dragon that he obtained, or did he have an actual divine dragon locked up from which he tapped the blood? Because I don’t see the Senate donating either of those to Forneus, ever. Really, all I can do is speculate right now. I’ll have to discuss this with other friends after I complete post-game for sure.

Well, you did feed it your own blood, which is part of yourself. If it can get access to Forneus’s mind just via his blood, who is to say that he couldn’t obtain other parts of Forneus, such as his intelligence and madness? And the fact that this thing began to grow.... well, crap. The text is cut off, so is this where Forneus succumbs to either his own madness or the ‘thing’s’ influence, or did it even get control over him? I wouldn’t be surprised if Forneus turned himself into one of his undead soldiers either. Unfortunate that the text cuts off, because I’m going to assume this is the last tablet I’ll find judging by that...

Also, it’s QUIET HERE. The unnerving music is somehow already being missed. At this point my heart is racing, and I feel just like I felt when I first made my way through Mt. Silver in Pokemon Silver as a little girl, which is an amazing thrilling feeling I’ve ever hardly felt since then.

WELL. We all know who that symbol belongs to. This is where Grima originated?? Was Grima the matter  that consumed his mind that Forneus ended up creating? GRIMA IS MAN-MADE?? BY ALCHEMY AND BY ONE MAN??? WHAT.

Oh my God. There he is. I can only allow myself to quietly and slowly approach up the stairs, watching every movement of the beast with great and yet fearful intrigue. 

The beast roars an unearthly sound at me, summoning Dead masked summons on the field. But I have no eye for them, the only thing I can see is this dark beast and the very apparent Grimleal brand painted(?) on the floor? (I do doubt that was just paint, just saying)

The first thing I notice on the lower status screen is his title: The Creation. I guess in a sense, that’s all he was before anyone found him and worshiped him as a God. Yet, amusingly enough, the status ‘God’ is already present. This thing was created to be as powerful as a god by Forneus, what else could you possibly call a perfect singular being? But he was already a fell dragon, because he came from the inspiration of a great mastermind who fell as soon as he decided to pursue his insane and uncomprehending ideals. AND THE TRACK USED FOR THIS? It’s Forbidden Sanctuary from New Mystery of the Emblem. I don’t even need to look it up, it’s one of my favorite tracks from the game and I listen to it a LOT while I go for walks and while drawing. I used to go to church a lot back in the day, but the Pipe Organ has always been such an intriguing instrument there to me, hence why I love this track so much. The fight itself was as expected: lots of random summoned units after taking them out one by one. Baiting The Creation into battle made me notice another thing; He’s small, much smaller than we’ve seen him in... future visions, so to say. Now you can argue this is because it’s the battle model, but it makes sense with the lore we’ve been presented. The Creation obviously would continue to grow until it reached godly size. (And did the Creation always have such a bloated belly?)

After much trouble, I allow Kamui to finish the beast off with a lovely critical hit. I mean, he doesn’t like dragons, right? Especially necrodragons. Well, I figured: Kamui, feast your eyes on this beautiful beast.

Joking aside; after the battle there’s a quote; “The horror has passed. Yet still a foul air lingers, filling this place with a sense of dread...” Upon proceeding, I obtain a Rusted Ring. Immediately, I like to imagine this belonged to Forneus. Before me remains the almost glowingly red mark of the Grimleal on the floor. It, together with the quote after beating the creation makes it more than clear that the beast and Forneus’ intentions are not gone. Just into slumber, or waiting once more. I think we all know that.

Further ahead a new glowing mark presents itself; the familiar brand of the Exalt. While I understand the reference and the ties it represent, it confuses me. Why is it here? And I’ve yet to come up with anything to explain it’s presence. Standing on it, it teleports me out of the labyrinth, and away from the horrors and tainted creature I’ve witnessed there. Almost like nothing happened in the rest of the continent while we’ve been exploring down there. Almost unsettling so, because nobody does know of the beast’s existence except for the select group of people who confronted it. I’m sure the Senate expected horrible things to come from this madman, but if only they actually knew what was hiding down here, many and MANY floors underneath the desert sand. Probably growing in silence, growing stronger gradually. And the sheer power of this creature in the far future, judging by the events of Awakening. Or they were more than aware, and then the decision of locking Forneus up in his workplace might’ve not been just for the sake of the man, but rather for whatever the man would spawn in his tainted experiments. That said. Holy. Shit. THIS.... answers questions I’ve had involving Grima ever since Awakening. And holy crap, I did NOT expect this kind of lore to be behind him. To be created by one man and to grow into one of the most feared Dragons in Fire Emblem tales? That’s literally unheard of in FE lore, up until this point. My opinion? I loved the HECK out of this! Many people ask why they even included Grima’s backstory in a game that’s not revolving around the events of Awakening- but I LOVE that they did this, because you didn’t expect this at all? I love that they did postgame content like this to begin with, because I don’t think they did it before like this, ever??? And if you think about it, MORE things about the FE lore could be explained like this. I LOVED Echoes as it is, but I think with this... it might just have to be my favorite Fire Emblem game of all time. As much as PoR and RD will forever be personal favorites, I just have to acknowledge that Echoes is currently my absolute favorite FE game. What a FREAKING journey. Wow! Also, just a personal note that I found incredibly amusing and coincidental: Back in October 2016, I wanted to draw some FE Final dragon bosses for the Inktober challenge. Out of ALL the dragons I had to pick from, and picking a few was rather tough because I wanted to draw them all- I decided to go only with Duma, and Grima. ...Both Duma and Grima are in Echoes. A game I never knew I’d play as I was drawing these dragons, but while drawing Duma I so badly wished there’d be a remake of Gaiden, but realized it probably wasn’t ever going to happen. Yet, here we are. A friend of mine made a joke; “Row, you subconsciously predicted both final bosses of the game.” Not just that: as mentioned earlier, the track Forbidden Sanctuary is one of my all time favorite FE tracks, so I listen to it a lot. I also listened to it whilst drawing Grima back in October, because that’s when I just moved the entire OST to my mp3 and couldn’t wait to listen to it. That’s WHEN I realized how much I loved this track. Seriously though. What are the odds of that? It’s almost... weird. Fire Emblem is great.

[sporadicbeepboops]

20 Games I Loved in 2016

The Switch delay. Several big AAA duds. Another year without an official Mother 3 U.S. release. 2016 could have been a disappointing year. (Outside of video games, it certainly took its toll.) But at least from my perspective, the good far outweighed the bad. Virtual reality finally made it out of the gates, and despite some hiccups, it shows real promise. Long-delayed games like Final Fantasy XV and The Last Guardian somehow made it to store shelves AND surpassed expectations. And love it or hate it, Pokémon Go inspired a genuine pop culture craze the likes of which we’ve never seen before, at least as far as games go. I think all of that is worth celebrating.

Before we get to the list, some quick shout-outs and no-brainer caveats…

2016 was not kind to the Wii U, but the 3DS quietly had one of its best years ever. That’s partly reflected here, but I couldn’t make room for Dragon Quest VII, Fire Emblem Fates, BoxBoxBoy!, Metroid Prime: Federation Force and Gotta Protectors, to name a few. Sometimes it felt like Nintendo was just cleaning out its closet — how long ago was DQVII released in Japan? — but we benefited either way.

Overall, I played fewer games this year, but the ones I did play held my interest longer. Thanks to various microtransactions and DLC, 2016 probably hit my wallet just as hard.

What didn’t I play? Stardew Valley, SUPERHOT, Final Fantasy XV (at least past chapter 2), Frog Fractions 2, Hitman — oh, and I didn’t get to stuff from last year like Yakuza 5 or The Witcher 3, either. Yakuza 4 was pretty solid though.

I left off any new ports of games that came out last year or prior, unless there were substantial additions that changed the experience in a meaningful way. That meant The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD and Mini Metro weren’t in the running, while Rez Infinite technically was.

Love making lists, hate ranking items in said lists, just because I’m incredibly fickle. There’s a good chance that I’ll want to shuffle everything around the moment I publish this. But my podcasting buddies are counting on me here, so it’s time to be decisive.

Keeping all that in mind, here are the games I really loved in 2016…

20. The Witness - I’m already cheating because if I’m being honest, I didn’t actually love this game. The Witness takes a couple dozen hours to finish, and I spent at least half of them staring at a notebook, drawing grids, connecting dots, and having no idea how to pave forward. But even if I didn’t love the game, I respect it immensely. I admire Jonathan Blow’s commitment to this singular idea, of taking the kind of puzzle you might see on a restaurant placemat and coming up with every possible permutation of it. And there is of course a “meta” layer on top of that, where solutions to each component change the environment around you — tree top bridges that unfold based on the paths your lines take, or colored glass panels that create new puzzles on top of old ones. It might be cold and off-putting at times, but The Witness is still commendable as the ultimate puzzle box.

19. SuperHyperCube - I bought into PlayStation VR for games like Rez Infinite and RIGs — big, flashy, “immersive” experiences. And they delivered! I’m a very happy PS VR owner, and I hope Sony builds on its momentum this year. (I’m skeptical, but then being a virtual reality early adopter was always a leap of faith.) However, while I got exactly what I expected from most of the launch titles, it's the simple puzzle game seemingly modeled off of “Brain Wall” that I keep coming back to. I turn on the headset to play Job Simulator or Battlezone, but I always play a couple rounds of SuperHyperCube before I’m done. A solid case for virtual reality not as a thrilling roller coaster, but a hypnotic, relaxing voyage.

18. Headlander - The best game Double Fine has put out since Iron Brigade. Free-roaming Metroid-style exploration, a perfect 70s-synth sci-fi score and a fun body swapping gimmick at the heart of it all. I wish there were more vessels for your noggin to control, but there’s a strong foundation here. 

17. Kirby: Planet Robobot - It’s easy to take Kirby games for granted, and that’s especially true of Robobot, which uses the same engine and many of the same powers as the recent Triple Deluxe. What does the former bring to the table then? Smart level designs that take advantage of the new mechs without letting them dominate the action. A novel mechanical world that feels distinct from the typical pastel meadows. New amiibo support. OK, so maybe it doesn’t add that much to the series, but it’s right up there with Super Star anyway. 

16. Pokkén Tournament - This game is a fresher, more enjoyable fighting game than Street Fighter V. It doesn’t even matter (too much) that the single player is pretty thin or that the roster is small. When’s the last time you played a one-on-one fighting game that felt truly new? Pokkén is a great 3D fighter and a great 2D fighter at the same time, which is no small feat. And it’s also a gorgeously animated recreation of those battles we all imagined happening in our Game Boys 20 years ago.

15. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End - The popular sentiment seems to be that Madagascar is when this final Uncharted entry really takes off. Slow drama and frequent cut scenes give way to island exploration and memorable shootouts. My take? The back half is fun and the epilogue is lovely, but I could spend an entire game in Nathan and Elena’s living room, or hopping around the globe for the next story sequence. Wherever you stand, this is a fine way to close out a reliable series.

14. Picross 3D: Round 2 - Seven Picross games — eight if you count the Twilight Princess freebie — on the eShop. That’s a lot of a perfectly fine thing. But none of them are Picross 3D. Thankfully, the real deal finally arrived this year, with hundreds of puzzles and a few extra gameplay wrinkles. Worth the premium price tag.

13. Titanfall 2 - The campaign didn’t need to be good. Multiplayer FPS games live and die by their multiplayer, and many developers seemingly write off the single player experience as an afterthought. That’s why Titanfall 2 is such an unexpected treat. The factory, the time hopping, the airborne carrier — all cleverly designed, with platforming gimmicks that would feel just as suited for a Metroid Prime game. I think the reason the new Mirror’s Edge fell flat for me was that this game featured the same parkour moves in a much more exciting package.

12. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE - This crossover game is Persona-lite, yes, but I think that sells the characters and world a bit short. While its inspiration focuses on the pressures of being a Japanese high schooler, #FE is all about the Tokyo show biz scene. Pop music, soap operas, microwave cooking shows — it’s all very goofy, but the game still takes its protagonists’ dreams and ambitions seriously. #FE also makes clever use of the Wii U GamePad, turning it into a tablet/social app that helps keeps the conversations going. Even if you’re not into this particular “scene,” #FE may still win you over.

11. Rhythm Heaven Megamix - I can’t get enough Rhythm Heaven. They could put 20 new musical minigames on a cart annually and it’d make my list every year. Sumo wrestlers, lumberjack bears, monkey slumber parties — all magic.

10. Severed - A Vita game! It’s great to see DrinkBox Studios stretch beyond sidescrollers with this first person dungeon crawler full of grotesque monsters and creepy, colorful mazes. Swiping and poking on the Vita’s touchscreen feels great. The controls are key to Severed’s success; if battles were menu-driven, the entire game would fall apart. 

9. Pocket Card Jockey - I hope Nintendo keeps letting Game Freak be this weird. It’s not just that it’s horse racing plus solitaire. It’s your jockey biting the dust and being brought back from the dead to repay his debt to the angels. It’s the brassy, big band score that accompanies every race. It’s horses with luchador masks and cats hanging from their backsides. Pocket Card Jockey is a miracle of localization.

8. Pokémon Sun - Yes, another Pokémon game. The Alola region is the best thing to ever happen to this series. Previous games had regions based on cities like New York and Paris, but the results always felt half-hearted. In Sun (and Moon), the tropical island setting influences everything from the creatures you catch to the trials you complete. I’ve never demanded a believable world from this series, but that’s kind of what we get here, and it’s terrific.

7. Inside - This is the type of game where the less you know going in, the better. It’s Limbo — a previous Justin GotY — filtered through a twisted dream logic that I still can’t get out of my head months later. 

6. Paper Mario: Color Splash - I know you don’t like Sticker Star. Rest assured: that 3DS oddity feels like a rough draft for Color Splash, which improves upon its predecessor in every way. A textured, vibrant world that rivals Tearaway in its papercraft. Thrilling scenarios like a train heist, an underwater game show and the throwback above. Hilarious dialogue that mostly makes up for the many, many identical toads. I miss the liberties Intelligent Systems used to take with the Mushroom Kingdom, but everything else about Color Splash restores this spin-off series to its former glory.

5. Overcooked - This year’s couch co-op champ. Cooking with a partner is all about communication, and that’s doubly true when the kitchen is split across two flatbed trucks or on an iceberg rocking back and forth. My friends and I love head-to-head games like Smash Bros. and Towerfall, but it’s nice to play a game that’s all about puzzle solving and careful planning together. And I love the wistful stage select music.

4. Dragon Quest Builders - Minecraft has always fascinated me, but I don’t do well without direction. That’s why I’m so grateful for Dragon Quest Builders, which breaks down the open world construction into small, manageable tasks. I started off just sticking to blueprints and keeping decorations to a minimum; now, I’m spending hours building up towns the way I want them to look, for no other reason than my own personal satisfaction. Even taking the crafting element out of the equation, Builders does a great job of capturing the adventuring spirit of its parent series.

3. Pokémon Go - I didn’t set out to put THREE Pokémon games on here, and in a vacuum, this is much less satisfying than Pokkén or Sun. But we don’t play video games in a vacuum, and certainly not this one. I played Pokémon Go in Central Park, talking to strangers to find out where the Ivysaur was hiding. Or I played on my lunch breaks, exploring parts of South Street Seaport with coworkers that I had ignored for years. Go’s peak came and went, but it remains one of my fondest experiences of the year.

2. The Last Guardian - Another game that’s more than the sum of its parts. The Last Guardian is finicky and sometimes frustrating. Trico is hard to climb. The camera doesn’t know what to do when you’re up against the wall. So what? How many games feature a creature this lifelike? He may be an illusion made up of A.I. routines, scripted animations and fur shaders, but all of those elements come together in a uniquely convincing way. His evolution from reluctant ally to friend has a subtlety I’ve never seen before. I’m glad Ueda spends as much time focusing on the inner struggles as he does the external ones. Hope it doesn’t take another decade for his next game.

1. Overwatch - I didn’t even know what Overwatch was until two weeks before its release, and even then, I didn’t expect much from it. I had played Team Fortress 2 and thought it was just fine. I knew what to expect. Medics, tanks, builders — that sounded familiar to me. But I was so wrong. Overwatch isn’t just a team-based shooter; it’s the superhero team-up game I’ve been longing for since “The Avengers” was in theaters.

All 23 (and counting!) heroes have their superpowers, and all of them have their jobs to do. What really sets Overwatch apart is when these heroes are bouncing off of each other. Any combination of six is going to have its own dynamics. Mei dropping ice walls to give Reinhardt time to recharge his shield. Junkrat dropping traps to help Bastion watch his back. Mercy gliding up to Pharah to give her rockets a little extra punch. Every battle brings new possibilities and strategies to the table. I’ve played over 100(!) hours and feel like there’s still so much to learn.

But it’s not all serious business either. The colorful personalities, animations, costume designs and more do so much to shape the world, even when I know next to nothing about the overall “lore.” Last year, Splatoon felt like the only shooter I’d ever need, but Overwatch has actually managed to supplant it in my heart. That’s something this Nintendo fanboy never thought he’d say. Can’t wait to see how Blizzard builds on their masterpiece in year two.

[entergamingxp]

DualShockers’ Favorite Games of 2019 — Allisa’s Top 10

December 29, 2019 2:00 PM EST

My top 10 for 2019 include some obvious choices, such as Fire Emblem: Three Houses and the Ace Attorney trilogy, and a few surprises.

As 2019 comes to a close, DualShockers and our staff are reflecting on this year’s batch of games and what were their personal highlights within the last year. Unlike the official Game of the Year 2019 awards for DualShockers, there are little-to-no-rules on our individual Top 10 posts. For instance, any game — not just 2019 releases — can be considered.

2019 for me is a year filled with surprises. Although the majority of games on this list were ones that I expected to love, a few of these titles truly threw me for a loop with how much I enjoyed playing them. And for me, that’s the most rewarding part about gaming — finding those hidden gems that reignite your passion for your hobby while challenging your notion of what makes a good game in the first place.

So with that said, here are my top 10 games for 2019.

10. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy

Ace Attorney is one of my favorite franchises of all time, and this collection of the first three in the series–particularly the Switch version–is by far the best way to play it. Not to mention that so many years later the characters, writing, and gameplay still holds up incredibly well.

The writing really is the standout in this series with plenty of heartwarming and hilarious moments conveyed through near flawless story presentation and pacing. With the remastered sprite art, updated translations, and remastered music of the trilogy this already fantastic series has been elevated even more.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Ace Attorney Trilogy.

9. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

After being so badly burned on the lackluster Fire Emblem Fates, all I could hope for the next entry in the main series was something decent. Instead I got my favorite Fire Emblem game in the franchise. The characters are well-written, fleshed out, and with fully realized character arcs.

The gameplay not only polishes the classic tactical formula we all know and love, but also added in bold new mechanics such as the School system. Instead of worrying about future babies, we get by far the most class depth and customization in any FE title. It’s an absolutely solid tactical RPG that continued to blow me away until the very end.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

8. Final Fantasy VIII Remastered

Being able to play Final Fantasy VIII, my favorite entry in the franchise, on my Switch was an experience filled not only with nostalgia but with reminders as to why I loved this entry so much in the first place. Though it seriously misstepped with its romance plot (I’m in favor of removing it all together), this is a game of innovation and risk.

It discarded the hugely popular Materia system from FFVII and instead created one that emphasized on character customization without the need for strict class systems. It introduced summons that have an actual impact on both gameplay and story outside of “doing tons of damage.” And the narrative itself was incredibly subtle and thought-provoking, letting players interpret key plot points without spoonfeeding them story beats. It’s an incredible game that still holds up today, and most importantly, the updated graphics finally let Squall be the most handsome guy in the room.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Final Fantasy VIII Remastered.

7. Pokemon Sword and Shield

I love Pokemon. So, I knew that I would enjoy Sword and Shield regardless of fan controversies, especially with the quality of life changes, brand new Dynamaxing mechanic, fine-tuned battle system, a truly, uniquely designed region, the introduction of the huge Wild Area, and the best 3D graphics this series has seen to date. But what I didn’t expect was to fall in love with the characters so much. The Gym Leaders alone have so much flare and personality, but then we have Champion Leon who’s kind, human, charismatic, and extensively involved in his region.

And of course Hop, the best developed rival character in Pokemon history. His character arc is not only incredibly relatable (living under the shadow of his successful and older sibling) but the way that development is conveyed in the story and gameplay. His animations change to match Leon’s because Hop thinks imitating him is right way of things. He swaps out his first and most treasured Pokemon at one point because a crushing defeat and harsh words damaged his self esteem, and his eventual career choice in the end that’s wholly himself. Hop takes an already fun game and adds tons of heart and that’s what really cemented this game in my heart as one of my favorites of 2019.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Pokemon Sword and Shield.

6. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age

My second favorite entry in the Final Fantasy mainline franchise, its inclusive was also a no brainer. I really, really love Final Fantasy XII. It has a richly detailed and extensive world that’s breathtaking to explore, the characters are interesting and well-acted, and its politically-focused plot is a welcome breath of fresh air that never fails to deliver on its intrigue.

The gameplay is also absolutely phenomenal, as it takes the character customization systems of Final Fantasy VIII and X and combines them together while polishing them to a near-perfect sheen. And most importantly, Vaan’s abs have finally been fixed. If I ever had to recommend a single title in the franchise, this one would be right up there with Tactics.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age.

5. Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaire’s Conspiracy – Deluxe Edition

The Professor Layton series is one that I’ve always enjoyed because of its excellent soundtracks, fun and satisfying puzzles, the charming characters and graphics. The latest entry in the series, Mystery Journey, is no slouch, as it still manages to deliver on all these points even as it changes direction with a brand new protagonist and different style of story progression through solving cases.

It also managed to accomplish something I didn’t realize I craved: returning the Layton series back to its more focused and simpler roots of the first game, Professor Layton and the Curious Village.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaire’s Conspiracy – Deluxe Edition.

4. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux

I played this game last year and then replayed it again in 2019. Strange Journey was always one of my favorite entries in the Shin Megami Tensei franchise even, on the DS. It hits my love for sci-fi, so that’s an automatic point in its favor and the endlessly intriguing and dark story starring nothing but adults doing adult things just speaks to me on every level. Not to mention how refreshing it is to play a game that researches and implements its mythological inspirations with a razor sharp accuracy that’s unparalleled in JRPGs.

Redux takes this game and revamps it with some of the best quality of life updates I’ve ever seen in a remake or port. Even then, it also adds on a brand new dungeon, new characters, a new final boss, and three new endings. I can’t sing enough praises for Redux.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux.

3. Octopath Traveler

When I first tried the demo for Octopath Traveler, I knew I was onto something truly special. Not only was the turn-based gameplay fast and strategic, but the story itself has no qualms about submerging its proverbial hands in the grime and muck of its plot, without losing sight of its characters’ motivations and humanity.

Then when the full game released, I fell in love all over again. The plotlines of the eight protagonists are all so varied yet equally compelling, the graphics beyond breathtaking, the battle system even more polished and rewarding while maintaining its strategic depth, and the character customization is rich. This is easily one of the best JRPGs I’ve ever played and it absolutely had to be on my top list for 2019.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Octopath Traveler.

2. Cadence of Hyrule

Despite how awful I am at rhythm games, I find myself addicted to polishing my skills and learning the ins and outs of this game’s battle mechanics. Based off the original Crypt of the NecroDancer, Cadence is set in The Legend of Zelda‘s Hyrule as you dance your way through hordes of foes to save the land either as Link or Zelda.

The 16-bit graphics are richly detailed and colorful while the combat system, although based in rhythm game mechanics, never feels tacked on or out of place. It’s amazing how much I feel like I’m playing a traditional Zelda title.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Cadence of Hyrule.

1. VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action

Imagine a world where corporations reign supreme, all human life is infected with nanomachines designed to oppress them, and the terrifying White Knights ensure that everyone obeys the laws. This sounds like the setup for an epic tale of rebellion against an oppressive capitalistic society right? But that’s not it. You play as a bartender who serves her customers whatever drinks they desire while listening to them pour their hearts out. It’s a simple premise that’s executed perfectly.

Between the graphics straight out of a PC-98 Japanese adventure visual novel, killer retro soundtrack, endlessly intriguing and raunchy dialogue, and incredibly unique gameplay centered around making good drinks, VA-11 HALL-A is a real standout title.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action.

Check out the rest of the DualShockers staff Top 10 lists and our official Game of the Year Awards:

December 23: DualShockers Game of the Year Awards 2019 December 25: Lou Contaldi, Editor-in-Chief // Logan Moore, Managing Editor December 26: Tomas Franzese, News Editor // Ryan Meitzler, Features Editor  December 27: Mike Long, Community Manager // Scott White, Staff Writer December 28: Chris Compendio, Contributor // Mario Rivera, Video Manager // Kris Cornelisse, Staff Writer December 29: Scott Meaney, Community Director // Allisa James, Senior Staff Writer // Ben Bayliss, Senior Staff Writer December 30: Cameron Hawkins, Staff Writer // David Gill, Senior Staff Writer // Portia Lightfoot, Contributor December 31: Iyane Agossah, Senior Staff Writer // Michael Ruiz, Senior Staff Writer // Rachael Fiddis, Contributor January 1: Ricky Frech, Senior Staff Writer // Tanner Pierce, Staff Writer

December 29, 2019 2:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2019/12/dualshockers-favorite-games-of-2019-allisas-top-10/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dualshockers-favorite-games-of-2019-allisas-top-10

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There is beauty in simplicity. I’ve always appreciated when a game is designed in such a way that it’s able to deliver a compelling experience without overwhelming you with unnecessary clutter or baggage. There’s an artistry to showing restraint when so many others place value in cramming as much as they can into a game. It’s something that we don’t see nearly enough of in video games, but the latest game from Swedish developer Zoink Games, Fe, does a fantastic job of creating something that is both elegantly simple in design and presentation but also features depth and sophistication to keep you engaged throughout the campaign.

The Guardian of the Forest

Fe is an open world adventure game in which you take control of the titular character, a small fox-like creature who has awoken in the middle of the woods with no recollection of where you are or how you got there. Throughout the 6 hour campaign (longer if you’re a completionist) you’ll explore the forest, befriend all manner of woodland creatures,  and try to piece together the mystery of this mystical location which seems to revolve around the beings know as Silent Ones. Slender, armored sentinels who roam the world looking to enslave any creatures that dare to cross their path.

Your main method of interacting with the world is through song. By holding down the right trigger, Fe will sing a tune which gives her the ability to communicate with the animals and plant life in the forest, enlisting them to aid you on your journey. As you progress you will also learn new songs which will grant you abilities such as opening flowers for you to bounce off of or clear a patch of mushrooms which block your way. It’s a style of progression similar to games like Metroid or Zelda, in which your new abilities allow you to backtrack and take paths which were previously closed off to you. You can also unlock new moves for Fe by collecting crystal shards hidden throughout the world. These new tricks such as gliding and the ability to climb trees are critical to your progression and allow you to maneuver through the world more quickly.

A Game of Few Words

One of my favorite design decisions that the developers made was the complete lack of any dialogue or text in telling their story. Not a single word is spoken in the entire game (atleast not in any known language) and it creates a terrific storytelling structure. You piece together the narrative simply by watching the action on-screen and discovering dozens of wall carvings hidden throughout the forest. Each one crudely scrawled like a prehistoric cave drawing that gives you tiny hints as to the history of the world. You’ll also come across orbs which, when held, will transport you for a few brief moments into the mind of the Silent Ones. You’re able to see through their eyes and it gives you a possible glimpse into what their motivation might be. These storytelling methods create a sort of ambiguity to the tale, allowing each player to interpret what they’re seeing in their own way.

Without any spoken dialogue in the game, you’ll spend a lot of time listening to the sounds of the forest and the music in the game. Luckily both are beautifully arranged by composer Joel Bulle and are utterly brilliant. It’s a powerful and at times, emotional soundtrack which is an early front runner for my favorite OST of the year. In contrast with the more simple visual style of the game, the sound design is rich and complex.

Simple and Clean

While the visual design of the game is on the more simplistic side, it is no less effective. The graphics themselves aren’t particularly detailed and they aren’t relying on raw horsepower to impress players, instead they play to their strengths with a simple and attractive art style and beautiful use of color to create a game that is very easy on the eyes. I played the game on my Xbox One X and while the colors really do jump off of the screen, I would’ve loved to see some more impressive textures taking advantage of the 4K definition.

The creature design is top-notch as well. The animals that populate these woods are similar to ones you might come across yourself on a walk through the woods, but they have fantastical touches that make it clear that these aren’t the backwoods of northern Minnesota. Whether you’re soaring through the sky on the back of a great owl or climbing a majestic deer the size of a skyscraper, the creatures are all wonderfully unique and look like they could have jumped straight off of the screen of a Studio Ghibli film.

Time Well Spent

As a person with a limited amount of time to play video games each week, I appreciated that it seemed like this game really respected my time. While you could probably spend 10-12 hours if you wanted to find every collectible and hidden object in the game, you can finish it in about half that time if you just want to casually go through and experience the story. So many games these days focus on cramming countless side quests and extras into a game to artificially boost up the playtime, it was nice to play a streamlined experience that didn’t overstay its welcome.

Features like the ability to summon a bird who will fly in the direction in which you’re supposed to go and the ability to always have your next objective highlighted on the map also help to make things easier for those of us who aren’t interested in wandering the world endlessly trying remember what our current objective was. I do have to say though that sometimes the actual controls of Fe feels a little bit loose or imprecise, especially when compared to some recent platformers which control so effortlessly. It’s fairly minor though and wasn’t bad enough to detract much from the overall experience.

Singing It’s Praises

I have to admit that Fe wasn’t a game that was on my radar this year, which makes how much I enjoyed it a very pleasant surprise. It’s a wonderfully told story of life, nature, and the balance that it must all find. It takes inspiration from some of the all time greats like The Legend of Zelda, Ori and the Blind Forest and Shadow of the Colossus but never feels like it’s just trying to copy their successes. It has a unique vision that makes it it’s own special experience and if you’re a fan of minimalist storytelling like Journey or Inside I think you’ll find a lot to love here.

Fe is available Feb. 16th for the PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch & PC

Review: Fe There is beauty in simplicity. I've always appreciated when a game is designed in such a way that it's able to deliver a compelling experience without overwhelming you with unnecessary clutter or baggage.

[tumblunni]

Speaking of my dumb story ideas, I’ve been thinking some stuff to flesh out the Cathedral Game’s setting! RANDOM IDEAS AHOY LONG POST AHOY

* I’m thinking I need to make some concrete ideas for the villains maybe. When I first had the dream that inspired this all, it was just some sort of ambiguous ‘demon army’, kinda like a mindless zombie plague or i dunno, maybe the demons were sentient but they were all evil except for florin anyway? It was a more boring cliche kind of enemy than I usually write, with no moral grey area. Just an endless wave of foes that would justify the setting where everyone is stuck living inside a church and you have to defend it and try and turn it into a little town. And I guess if we had to have a 100% evil enemy with very little character development then it makes me less uncomfortable if theyre some sort of supernatural nonsentient plague instead of a bunch of people born evil. But then Florin existing as your sidekick was like the first part of the dream and it was never explained why he was the only non evil, completely sentient demon. Plus now I have a different zombie-themed story so mindless plagues would be samey. PLUS... welll... I need to stop being all ‘because I saw it in a dream it is somehow a cosmic message that it has to be in the story and can never be changed’. Kinda the point of being awake is that i can look at things more rationally and plug the ol plotholes, yo!

* So anyway, the idea I had was that it would... just simply be an actual army of actual villains with actual motivations and moral ambiguity. I was thinking maybe the setting could be like the perspective of civilians trapped in-between a civil war between two countries, just trying to survive and hoping that the promise of reincforcements coming to evacuate is actually true. The gamneplay of holding the fort and constantly gunning down enemies could be even more depressing when you know that not all of them are necessarily evil, they’re just soldiers doing their job. Maybe its ambiguous whether your country or their country shot first, maybe its like their country is suffering from some form of recession or illness or lack of resources and they’re only trying to conquer this other country because their families are dying at home? Maybe its some form of religious conflict, or maybe its even something with a very villainous dictator running the show but the people working underneath them are just normal citizens forcibly drafted into a war they dont believe in. There’s a whole pile of different possibilities for moral ambiguity, yo! Not sure yet which would work best, hmm...

* Might possibly be an opportunity to use a character I’ve been sitting on for a while but couldnt find a story that suited her. After I played Fe: Awakening I felt really uncomfortable about how the game treated Excellus as if he was hateable only because he was ugly and ambiguously gay/transgender. like.. he’s a horrible jerk of a villain yet the plot really overfocuses on insulting his appearance and gender rather than retaliating against the things he actually does. Made me feel sympathy for a jerk I never wanted to feel sympathy for! So I kinda ended up being inspired by the wasted potential and thinking up an idea for a similar character who actually IS sympathetic, and has the ambiguous LGBTQ aspect properly explored as a plotline. I think it could actually be powerfully sympathetic to see this villain who’s constantly degraded and misgendered by her teammates, and has a lot of reason to believe the worst of humanity. Someone who could switch sides if shown some basic decency by our heroes, maybe? And I felt it could be good if she did have a very similar personality to Excellus, just like a good version of it. She could still be a comic relief egotistical person, but not a murderous monster. And the ego could be like... sad, because she’s purposely trying to act unaffected and secure and like she loves herself, when really she’s being treated like shit and doesnt know if she deserves it or not. And I was thinking also possibly she could be a greedy merchant type character, like Anna? (also from Fe: Awakening) That could be the role she takes in the town once you recruit her, she could be a savvy businesswoman badass! Playing rune factory 4 makes me appreciate how cool a trader character can be, Arthur is so neato~! He talks about it like its the most amazing job ever, I just feel like it could be even cooler if we had that passion along with a more goofy greedy personality. Like ‘hahaha im only in it for the money’, but no, she really has this kinda cheesy cute reason why she does the job, she just really enjoys meeting new people and being able to change the world a little piece at a time. It reaffirms her faith in humanity after all she’s been through. (Tho also she’s still a total badass, since she was a former general of the villain country, after all!)

* Oh and I was thinking of a really tragic alternative route for her if you don’t recruit her. You could fight her multiple times throughout the game and then when you get to the final one and she realizes there’s no escape she suddenly drops the comic relief act and it gets really somber. I was thinking maybe she could have a mentor type character or a friend or a love interest or something? Or some other something she was trying to keep safe all along, some reason why she still had hope, some reason why she was fighting for an army she didnt believe in, just to save up enough money for... some sort of life goal? I dunno, maybe she has a sibling who’s in the hospital and she’s trying to save up for treatment, and then on the day of the final battle she gets a telegram hearing that they died and she wasnt even there to say goodbye. (And the death would somehow be directly caused by the player’s actions, thus determining whether you recruit her or not) So even though every time before she always flaked out like a coward with a comedic quip as soon as it looked like she was losing, now she just doesnt have anything else left to lose. This time she WILL NOT LET YOU redeem her, she will not let you SPARE her, she doesnt even speak a single word in the entire battle. Her difficulty spikes immensely in this fight to the death, and she only cracks a smile and gives a parting quip once you’ve dealt the final blow. And I was just imagining it could be EXTRA depressing combined with her plot of facing predjudice for being transgender! She’s spent most of this time being treated by the other commanders as ‘sir [name]’, gritting her teeth and bearing all this degredation, trying not to stand out too much. But in the end now nobody else is here to put her down, all those other ‘brave knights’ are the ones who ran away like cowards and left the ‘coward’ to take the last stand. And she doesnt care if she dies anymore. So she hangs up her armour for this fight and instead decides to go out in all her finery, wearing the dress she’s kept locked away in her trunk the whole time. Walking onto the battlefield like a bloody bride, and being one hell of a monster boss battle despite missing all of her platemail. A whirling dance of death! To go out smiling! To maybe make her family proud, and if she can meet them on the other side she could do it with the face she always wanted to wear.

* ....basically make it super depressing so you regret your actions and go back and see what the other option leads to. But also so badass that people wouldnt regret seeing the scene, yknow? And this might be the height of her character arc, kinda, but she’d be able to have whole new character arcs if you choose to recruit her. And you can make your own badass battles with her now! * Not sure tho whether maybe the family member/mentor/whoever might die either way though? That could fit the bittersweet found-family themes of the game, pretty much everybody’s someone who’s lost their biological relations and found new people to love in this new community. It could just be like... the choice between this person dying tragically and causing merchant-general-lady to commit suicide, or them passing away naturally due to their illness after saying goodbye to her, leading to her joining the heroes to try and prevent tragedies like this. * A possible other EVEN MORE tragic idea I had- an alternative where this person has already been dead for a long time before the start of the story, and the villain leader has been lying to merchant-general in order to keep her working as their minion. So the player choice would be like... you can reveal it to her and purposely send her into a suicidal spiral as an attempt to destabilize the enemy forces and win an important battle. Its a complete dick move, yes, but it could save the lives of all your family and friends! But then if you believe that this merchant-general is actually redeemable you could like... do the same thing but with different motives, in a different way. Reveal it in less of a sadistic, tactically-planned way, and more of a ‘no seriously this is why you cant trust your boss’ way. And she’d be likely to actually believe you if you’d been befriending her before now. * Or perhaps maybe her sibling died years ago and she heard about it but was unable to accept it, since it was her only reason to keep on going. Maybe she feels guilt that she was too busy making money to try and save them, and that meant she wasnt there to hold their hand when they passed away. So now she keeps on hoarding money for no purpose at all, except because this routine keeps her going. And she keeps writing letters to someone who’s already dead. * buuuut that might be too similar to Malachi’s plot, since he has memory problems regarding a tragic event in his past. Though it was his own death rather than a family member’s! ....actually I dunno, maybe a twist could be that he’s actually her lost sibling? That’d kinda be wrapping things up too coincidentally though. But on the other hand it could be an interesting plot to explore his relationship with his newly returned biological sibling, compared to the adoptive relationship he’s been developing with Florin. RIVALS FOR TINY BABBU’S LOVE! Buuuuuut I also liked the idea of Florin’s death being very far back in the timeline, and he’s been sleeping underneath those ruins for over a century. It could be cool to have him experiencing a lot of things for the first time, and to get a perspective on the past before the war...

* ALSO ANOTHER POTENTIAL CHARACTER IDEA * Another enemy recruit maybe! I seem to be going in twos, I made two demon characters and now two redeemy people XD The idea I had was that this could be just a random soldier that you keep as a prisoner, and have to decide whether to execute him or not. It can be hard to keep prisoners of war when you’re stuck in this seige situation and you barely even have enough food to keep your own teammates alive! Tensions could run high because you’re choosing to keep this guy alive when its making things worse for us all, plus we cant really trust him, seriously?? He surrendered but maybe its just a trap to infiltrate us! He claims a sob story of his country being forced to invade us because of famine, and being drafted against his will, but can we trust anything that comes from the mouth of one of those scum?? And then there’s the question of what exactly you’ll do with him if you think he cant be trusted! Are you able to execute him in cold blood? Do you set him free and hope this decision doesnt come back to bite you in the ass? Do you try and execute him while pretending you didnt- setting him loose in the forest to die of exposure or at the hands of his own former comrades...?? And its very annoying because the entire time he’s insistantly begging you to kill him, and generally being a huge downer! :P This is what convinces you to spare him, if you pick that option. It starts off as just ‘I’m gonna spite you, I won’t let you die if its what you want’, but eventually you realise he really never wanted to be part of this war, and he’s weighed down so much by his sins that his pleading for suicide was completely genuine. There’s no spy plots, he was just a simple farmer thrown into battle with nothing more than the clothes on his back and the sharpest pitchfork he could salvage from the wreckage of his old farm before it was torn down. The famine ruined his business and he had no way of surviving unless he sold his land to the army, to be bulldozed and turned into the site of a new weapons factory. And even after that he ended up forcibly drafted when things got even worse, losing what little livelihood he’d managed to scrape together again. He doesnt have a home to go back to, he just wanted to die on the battlefield, and by all odds he SHOULD HAVE! This is the condition of this latest round of ‘soldiers’, nobody even wastes armour on them, theyre just disposeable fodder to be mowed down as a distraction. What shitty luck, that he just happened to get captured by some bleeding-heart fools who refuse to chop his damn head off! So basically I’m imagining him like a Nanu-esque depressed grandpa who’s kinda sassy sometimes but also really really needs a hug. And like... model prisoner, to a comical degree. When he comes to terms with the fact he aint gonna get killed no matter how much he begs, he’s just like ‘dammit i cant help but help’. He’s just a normal good guy at heart, he’s not really on your side so to speak, he loved his country but he didnt agree with them wanting to wipe out your country either. he misses how his country used to be, and he doesnt know anything about your country or whether its any better, he doesnt have much hope. But when he’s stuck with nothing to do all day, he just cant help subconciously falling into kindly grandpa behaviours! Gotta clean up this cell! Hey, do you want some cookery tips, mr guard? Oh whoops, mr guard you dropped the cell keys, here have them back! Hey this bar over here has poor structural integrity, I tried to rope it back together with a braid of my own back hair! All the time he’s trying to trick you into agreeing to execute him, and being a total sycophant agreeing with everyone who says he’s evil. CMON IM TOTALLY EVIL, PLEASE STAB ME, I’LL BAKE YOU COOKIES! And then as time goes on he just becomes less of a prisoner and ends up making friends with everyone, winning the trust of even those who opposed him the most at the start. All entirely unwillingly! Agreeing with all their oppositions so hard that they stop opposing XD He ends up just pottering around doing odd jobs as a janitor/groundskeeper type guy, even ends up being the one in charge of keeping the keys to the jail he started off in. Somehow the most trustworthy man in the whole town, cos he’s the one person who will never say he’s trustworthy! His humble goodness just shines through~! And he could help out a lot cos he has inside info on the enemy army, and is able to give a sympathetic perspective of the everyday citizens’s life, and just how much dissent there is, how few people are willingly cooperating with the war and how they can find allies and destabilize this regime based entirely on fear instead of loyalty. He’s like a ray of hope that changes everyone’s perspective on this big seemingly-inpeneterable all-evil army! A grumpy suicidal ray of hope, who never shuts up about how hopeless it is! XD of course, eventually he’d be able to find new reason to live in this own, and make friends, and have hugs and joy~! But it’d be a hard journey! And a journey filled with a lot of ‘geez grandpa stop joking about suicide holy shit’ *disciplinary hugs* * Tho actually I dunno if a farmer would be a good career choice for him, I just picked it cos its the easiest to imagine him losing his livelihood in the war. His career in the town would be being this janitor kindly advice man/treasurer sort of guy, but i dunno... if he was a banker before then that makes him too similar to general lady :P ...maybe he was a janitor on someone else’s farm...? Honestly I would love an excuse to have a badass sympathetic janitor man and go on a bit of a small rant about how service work is very physically demanding and deserves a higher minimum wage yknow. RESPECT JANIGRAMP ... actually the name Jani is a good name his name is now jani it is law Jani the groundskeeper, because jani the janitor sounds dumb. SYNONYMS!

* Thinking of ideas for the fictional religion I’m gonna create for this world! Its more fun if we have a completely fictional set of traditions that’re just a general metaphor for topical questions about real life religion n stuff. And it would sidestep the problem of plots accidentally seeming like theyre ‘oh this one religion is evil and false’, when really the point i want to make is about how people of all religions are capable of perverting their faith’s peaceful teachings and using it as an excuse to wage wars. hell, athiests have done the same thing! ‘this religion is inherantly evil bwaaaah’ stuff IS athiests using their own beliefs as an excuse to hurt others. Thats the kind of athiest I never want to be! I completely respect religion and I think that we can never have an answer as to what’s true about creation or an afterlife, we can never know until we die. I don’t believe in heaven, but I dont think I have absolute proof it’s wrong, and I dont care about proving myself right or converting people. I feel inspired when I see people draw strength from their religion, even if I don’t believe in it! Lots of great things have been done in the name of different religions, just like lots of terrible things have. Human beings are great and terrible things, human beings make choices. This doesnt tar everyone with the same brush of whoever made the wrong decision, just because they believe in the same gods! ....man, sorry, I went off on a mini rant there. But yeah, what I hope to do is to have religion as a framing device and discuss some problems with certain so-called religious people, but also show the positive side of it via the protagonists. I mean, the whole point is that you’re living in a church, after all! The idea is that you’d hear a lot of horror stories of other people acting very ungodly in the name of god, both in the enemy army and in the hidden secrets of people in your own country’s government. But the goal is that you see all this hellish stuff and you still choose to be a bastion of what you believe is good and true, you learn from these mistakes and try and make the true sanctuary that everyone was seeking when they fell into the traps of those other monsters. And also I was thinking it;d be like the protagonist’s exploration of being agnostic, after her faith was shaken from her original church being destroyed in this war. She was the only survivor, maliciously left alive by [currently unnamed main villain rival guy], who wanted her to suffer the grief of knowing she’d failed her role as protector. But instead she travelled onwards and found this other church full of defenseless people that need a new guardian, and she is FUCKING DETERMINED to never fail again! It started as just seeking revenge against that evil overlord, but instead its become about protecting these new people and regaining her faith in humanity. And that doesnt necessarily mean regaining her faith, that’s up to the player. She has a journey of realizing that some things about her former church may have actually been corrupt, and that she was just blindly following instead of making her own decisions, She has her hero worship of her dead comrades dismantled, and has to come to her own conclusions about what’s right and wrong in the scriptures she’d learned, and what she’ll do as she goes forward. Its up to the player to decide whether she regains her faith or decides to become an athiest in the end, or even remains agnostic and decides she isnt able to find an answer yet, but either way she will still be forged into a true blue hero, no matter the reasons behind it! I wanna make all options an equally good ending, its just a personal choice that changes some scenes but not necessarily the course of the story.

* Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah! Religion ideas! I was considering possibly the legend could involve something about ‘an absent god’. The traditions say that humanity failed the creator long ago, and they left us behind because of it. The direction of all religion is based around this idea that we are inherantly born sinful, and have to do certain things in order to appease our ancestors’s sins and bring the gods back. I’m thinking it would be a good idea to create multiple sects of religion that’re variants on the same original holy text, that’s something that fictional religions dont tend to do for some reason. In this case it could be different perspectives on how exactly god dissappeared, and what exactly god saw as our sin, what on earth we have to do to make up for it. And I was thinking that the idea could be that god shattered into a million pieces that were scattered across the world. This leads to territory wars over places that’ve been determined to contain remains of god buried beneath the earth, and people invading indigenous civilizations in the name of holy tasks to dig for these relics. Power struggles over how many god burial grounds your country owns at any given time, controversy every time a digging operation fails to find a crystal. Pieces of god being used practically as currency, used to power magical weaponry in these wars... lies and deceit over fake godstones that no-one can prove you don’t own... * And this way even though magic does clearly exist in this world, it leaves it ambiguous whether religion is true, and whether any of the different sects is more accurate about the true will of god. It would seem reasonable that athiests exist here even when magic exists, thats usually a problem in fictional settings, you have gods right out here in the open yet some people still dont believe in them? XD It’d be like... yes maybe all these crystals that grant magical powers are actually fragments of an absent god. Maybe they grant those magical powers because of the reasons scripture tells us. Maybe if you bring them all together you can meet god and be granted one wish, maybe you could end the war. Buuuuuuuut.... maybe there’s just a natural crystal that grows underground and grants magical powers. Maybe nothing happens when you put it all together. Maybe it’s just like how people considered electricity to be unpredictable divine punishment before we learned how to harness it for ourselves.

* And there could be like... sects of the religion who believe god chose to leave us out of shame for our sinfulness, sects who believe a certain group of humans betrayed god and shattered them, thus holy war is justified against that country. Perhaps even sects that believe that god being shattered was a positive thing, that god chose to give fragments of their power to humans so they could choose their own destiny. (This is considered as scandalous as satan-worship in-universe) And there’s a related sect that believes that humans only even came into existance after the shattering event, that shattering into pieces was how god granted sentience and free will to the angelic servants we used to be. And this has permenantly corrupted us, thus the sin that we need to undo in order to retun god is... individuality, in all its forms. I think these are the ones who had the very extreme fanatical members who ran Malachi’s former church, and committed various atrocities including his murder. (Though, again, this doesnt mean that the viewpoint is inherantly evil. Just the people who took it from ‘tranquility, enlightenment and fealty to fellow man’ to ‘LITERALLY NO INDIVIDUALITY EVER’) ....hmmm, actually the morality system could be even more complex if I nail down a set of different factions of the religion and let you choose between all of them in the end. (or choosing none of them, or choosing your own interpretation) And there’d sorta be a fanatical/critical morality bar too, which determines whether you get the good or bad ending. In this case ‘critical’ would be the good option, I mean it more like... ‘I’ve analyzed everything about this scripture and come to my own conclusions, I won’t do anything immoral out of blind belief unless I actually have reasons to agree that it’s the right choice’. Aka how any normal good person decides on a religion to follow. And the fanatical side would be leaning towards never questioning. So sometimes you would have to like... take options that would seem like ‘the bad option’. Dont just blindly agree with everything that points to a particular faction viewpoint, that’ll lead to badness! Sometimes you have to question things, take it from the perspective of a character who is discovering their own faith, rather than a player who already knows from the beginning what option they want to pick.

* Man this has got complicated lol, I’m starting to ramble!

* Anyway, i was thinking this would explain what the ‘demons’ are, in this world. Normally humans can only use magic by using godstone as a power source, demon is a universal term for all creatures that are made of magic and can use it infinately as part of their very being. They’re considered unholy and must be destroyed, because they’re ‘imprisoning’ a shard of god inside them. And its really unfair because its a complete and utter random chance if someone becomes a demon when they die, you can live your entire life thinking you’re a normal human until the godstone in your heart activates and saves your life. Your life which is now ressurected in a monsterous form and can never return to your old family. The traditions say that it only happens to people who are sinful, thus they totally deserve to be slain, of course! Oh, and I think the main evil army guys would be using demons as weapons, which is part of why the anti-demon sentiment is like... even worse than usual in the protagonist’s country. Its incredibly depressing because demons are completely sentient, and the only way they become mindless battle monsters is if they’re tortured beyond breaking point. The same way you’d reduce a human to that state. But the protagonist starts off not even knowing that demons can talk until she meets Florin, she’s only ever seen these demonic ‘soldiers’ that’re really just whipped and beaten prisoners chained together and thrown towards the enemy in the hope both parties kill each other. “Yeah but why do so many demons ally with the empire?” *florin looks into the camera like he’s on the office* And I was thinking maybe a more positive religious interpretation of the existance of demons could be that they’re actually angels instead. (Yeah, even if this religion is very different its gonna probably have a lot of similarities to protestant christianity since that’s what I was raised in. i dont feel comfortable critcising someone else’s religion that I’m not personally experienced with, yknow?) ANYWAY SORRY FOR THAT ASIDE Yeah, there could be some very rare pro-demon religious folk who believe that those who are reborn after death are actually chosen ones rather than sinful. These fragments of god blessed certain people who were pure enough in heart to earn the power to be able to enact god’s love to the world. Because even though god is in pieces, god very much wants to forgive us. These magical beings are sent as god’s messengers to help guide us on the right path to redemption. That’s why they have such great powers of creation! (though others would say its destruction...) A single plant demon like Florin could watch over and sustain an entire forest, revive it from drought and become a cornerstone to build a whole city around! Though even this faction isnt 100% correct or incorruptable, there are those who’d interpret this as demons having a DUTY to do that. There are rogue members of this faction who enslave demons just as much as the people who use them as weapons. I was thinking a plot could be that Florin almost gets suckered in by a band of these guys, he’s just so overwhelmed to find anyone who doesnt hate demons! But they want to imprison him and force him to grow their crops forever until he dies of exhaustion, because that’ll mean he’s ~happily fullfilled his purpose and rejoined god~. I mean, if he says he doesnt want to, thats just so sad! That means this pure angel has been corrupted by humanity’s sin, he doesnt know what he’s saying! * man i have so many ideas aaaaa

[leefi]

Starira MBTI III - Frontier

1. Seisho

2. Siegfeld

3. Frontier

4. Rinmeikan

Aruru Otsuki: ENFP

Just go and reread Karen’s entry.

FJDKSLDKL in all seriousness leaps and bounds of Ne from both of them. There’s a reason they often catch themselves saying the same things and why Karen sees so much of herself in Aruru. Not only are they both Ne doms, they’re the exact same type! Ne and Fi together hold that naturally sunny and joyful disposition they both have, and that extreme, passionate love for the people they’re close to. And her Ne may be even higher off the charts than Karen’s. From the entirety of Captain Twins, to improvising lines on stage with Misora as kids, to being the embodiment of Frontier’s free-spirit, pioneering nature - all of this is extroverted intuition, chasing at every possibility under the sun, no matter how absurd it may seem. Her STRONG tertiary Te -- which is much stronger than Karen's, by the way -- supports her dominant Ne, and this is where her gung-ho attitude comes from. “We have to write our own play?? No problem, wheel out the whiteboard! Nobody has an idea yet?? That’s fine, I’ll throw one out and get the ball rolling! Misora and I need three more people for our play? What are we waiting for, let’s go find them!!” All of this is tertiary extroverted Thinking, implementing your ideas out in the world.

Misora Kano: ISTP

She is so compelling!!! I wish we got to see more out of her!! She's already cultivated so many of her talents (and her function stack is pretty strong for such a young age too) - she'd really shine if you just gave her the spotlight! The second ISTP in this series who had her inferior Fe develop super early due to having 1) a ton of siblings and working with so many people from such a young age and 2) a gf with Fi in her dom/aux slot. I’m gonna start with her Fe again because, like Futaba’s, it’s so strong for how young she is - she is quicker to pay attention to social convention than Fi-aux Aruru, scolding her whenever she refers to older Karen by her first name, for example (don't let her see Aruru call Akira -chan). We see aux Se in how energetic and in the moment she is - she grew up acting and doing backstage work and helping her family with their troupe, and we never really see her stuck in her head or wondering about things that aren’t in the here-and-now. Her partnership with ENFJ Michiru to create a new Troupe is going to be SO SO GOOD in the future. They really are going to draw the best out of each other. As polar opposites, they have the exact same functions, just in reverse (like Karen and Junna, or Hikari and Ichie)! So Misora has Ti-Se-Ni-Fe, and Michiru has Fe-Ni-Se-Ti. It’s the perfect setup for them to complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

Honestly, I really wish we saw more out of Misora - she deserves more than just being Aruru’s sidekick, and that Feeling function in her inferior slot (extroverted, no less) means that it’s difficult for her to communicate what exactly it is that she wants, both for herself and from others. Like with Mahiru, it’s intuitively hard for her to speak up and say “Hey, I feel like I’m being left behind”. Somebody needs to tap Aruru on the shoulder and communicate that to her - Fe-dom Tsukasa, maybe, or ideally, Misora herself. I think that she’s been kind of shouldered into the straight-man role not just by Aruru but everyone at Frontier because they all have such big personalities (like...she’s got Aruru and Lalafin taking up space, which is already more than enough), and she’s likely been in this position before. She’s been helping her parents run a troupe since she was a child, and now she’s (unfortunately) playing second fiddle to Aruru for the most part at Frontier. She’s been mostly stuck using her Ti and Se, and I really really hope that AA has us seeing her use more of that tertiary Ni and advocating for the goals she has for herself. She deserves to shine so much!!

One final note - I find it so interesting that both ISTPs in this series have such strong senses of faith - Misora is cast as the Faith arcana (and, unlike some of the other girls who are cast as the “opposites” of their personalities, Misora’s seems true to hers), and Futaba obviously has that reverent faith in Kaoruko (and is canonically religious???). It’s a bit antithetical to the ISTP personality type, which values its individuality above all else and tends to be a bit of a rebel. I don’t have much to add here - it’s just an interesting observation.

Shizuha Kocho: INFJ

Lalafin: The Count was such a great actor! I’m sure he would’ve been great on stage too…

Shizuha: Heh heh, maybe!

Shizuha: But still, he never went back to his original persona even after his revenge. He had to stay as the count for the rest of his life.

Shizuha: And he was able to do that because he was good at becoming other people.

Shizuha: ...Although I cannot say if that meant he was happy.

Lalafin: Even after his revenge, he still wasn’t happy...That’s one point of view to make his sadness stand out even more!

Shizuha: Right?...Yes. I think I’ll stick to how I’m doing things now.

THE!! LOVE!! OF!! MY!! LIFE!!!!!!! I CANNOT OVERSTATE ENOUGH HOW MUCH I LOVE SHIZUHA KOCHO!!!! She was my first favorite character in the game (and still is!! But frontier gets no content :’)). As I said with Maya, INFJs are old souls - wise and idealistic, but typically reserved. Auxiliary extroverted Feeling shows up in how she suppresses herself so as not to intimidate or make others feel inferior - we see the exact same thing play out with INFJ sibling Koharu. She’s mysterious but amiable, kind and awe-inspiring - just like INFJ sibling Maya. And we see that token INFJ loneliness playing out with all three, as well. What I love most about Shizuha is that she’s a person of extremes. She is so cerebral and intelligent and dignified in a way that reminds you of Maya but she’s also so!!!! Fucked in the head!!!!! Ni doms baby!!!!!!! (I am fucking crazy. But i am free).

Unhealthy INFJs can develop this obsession with making themselves martyrs, and I don’t think I need to rehash out her AA conversation with Aruru (and her entire philosophy towards acting - see above quote) to get that across. I want to dive into this more. Truly I do. Shizuha deserves 10 pages of writing. But she is one of the last I'm writing and I've clicked through 3 different AA stories and accidentally found Rui and Yukko's first so I diverted and finished writing Yukko's entry and I've already spent so much time on this oh god the doc is already 18 pages single spaced uhhhh Shizuha my loveliest love I will write your character deep-dive later I prommy <333

(Also, seeing her synergy with Aruru is soo so cute. INFJ/ENFP supremacy!! Same dynamic as MayaKaren!)

Lalafin Nonomiya: ESFP

(Se dom).

She’s so athletic and energetic and in-the-moment and improvisational and quick on her feet (Se, Se, Se)! Fi over Ti aux because she has a much more subjective view of what’s “fun” - “what do I want to do? Where do I want to go? What kind of character do I want to play???". She’s got that trademark genki energy that so many ExFPs share, particularly that childlike zeal that she and ESFP sister Ichie both have. In her own way, Lalafin embodies Frontier’s pioneering, fun-loving spirit just as much as Aruru.

Tsukasa: Lupin is usually portrayed as mysterious and polished, no? But the way you perform him is more fresh and open -- almost like the main character from a children’s book.

Lalafin: Oh! Come to think of it, the book on Lupin I read when I was younger was written for kids!

Lalafin: It was about this big and had a realistic image of Lupin right on the cover!!

I don’t really have too much to add. She’s just a perfect embodiment of that excitable, fun-loving Se and Fi dom/aux duo. Childlike and simplistic-appearing at a first glance, but there's such a fire in there - just compare her to her ESFP twin Ichie!

Tsukasa Ebisu: ENFJ

I can see that use of Se - love of fashion, sweets, dancing, going out and enjoying life - yes, she had overprotective parents and could just be making up for lost time, but I think that nice material things are something she just genuinely enjoys for herself as well. So at first I thought ESFP, but we can’t ignore that enormously caring attitude she has for others and the way she gravitates towards caretaker roles, which indicates more Fe than Fi. So ENFJ it is! She has that Fe and Se, and we see that inferior Ti in how she struggled to realize something was wrong when she was trapped in the play. I love, love, loved her leading role in the Arise All You Sons event and how she and Yachiyo interacted to bring out the best in each other - we saw Yachi using a lot of that aux Ti to support Tsukasa’s inferior Ti and dominant Fe!

Her dominant Fe is SOOOO clear and contrasts to every other girl in Arise All You Sons. She’s the first to go “hey, wait, hold on - I’m not sure what (inferior Ti) but something about this feels artificial, and I don’t think it’s actually going to help the kids”. Inferior Ti/Dominant Fe speaks before thinking too - “Why did I say that?! Why did I do x?!” - it isn’t until aux Ti Yachiyo shows up to help her that she’s able to work through her thoughts. While she can get stuck in the rut of her own mind sometimes, Tsukasa is one of the most caring, empathetic, and mature characters in the series - and she does all this without sacrificing her own autonomy and individuality, which can be difficult for an Fe-dom to do.