#medieval 'realist!!!' flair is a box already ticked with

[randomnameless]

Land 1 done!

Without crossing the bridge to get rekt'd by the final boss and trigger a bad ending, of course :p

I know the game puts more emphasis on gameplay than on characters, unlike, say, FE 8x2, but damn if every little situation you recruit random characters makes me think of past FE events in different titles and it just... fits? Somehow?

Like, evil empire has trouble conquering a party of Cornia, but behold! A mysterious plague pops up, that is totally not tied to the shady as fuck necromancer who works with the evil empire and says it'd be annoying if people find a cure.

So we have some guy and his army of cleric wearing plague doctor masks trying to find a cure by, uh, experimenting/working on people who already caught the plague, even accepting to work with the evil empire because curing the plague is more important, right?

Ends justify means yadda yadda... save for the part I earlier mentionned, that it is heavily implied the evil empire is the one who created that plague to begin with!

Now, imagine in a FE game if, in the background, we had to rescue people or hear about people being afflicted by a strange and unknown disease... and if that disease was engineered by people for a further motive...

8x2? Nah.

We also have quests where people are fighting for the evil empire who is occupying their land because they believe as long as they obey their people won't be put to the sword...

(I watched my bro play the final chapter, we know how it ends lol)

Not!Cyril fighting against bandits, finding and helping a witch fend off people who are trying to "catch her" - we even get a flimsy excuse for a bikini attire in the process and an answer to the "why do i use spells to rejuvenate myself in a sexy body? It's because I won't be able to move as fast as I can now if I was a crone" other flimsy excuse, etc etc.

Now it's time to enter the land of fucked up siblings relationship (sure Virginia is Alain's cousin - who looks like his mom - and can end up with him, but this is not the kind of Jugdralian stuff I had in mind) and let me tell you, all those plot bunnies I had in Jugdral about Lester believing he was going to become Lord of Jungby all of his life, only to have his role/throne snatched before his eyes by a bum who's apparently his cousin and can use the legendary shiny bow of legend is... basically Drakengard (Drakenhold in english?), but up to eleven.

Ah, and it wouldn't be a post from me if I don't find a way to rant about the localisation lol

Josef, upon meeting Virginia, basically goes in the audio "it's been a long time since I last saw you". In the english version?

Like what are you implying Josef, she wasn't a princess when you saw her last time or didn't have the "standing" fit for a princess?

Besides, I hope the release of the october book won't blow a hole in the Josef's "you were a teenager when we last met" by releasing character ages, but that's not really that important.

This however

Alain greets his long lost cousin, nothing wrong here right?

Well, in the JP audio, he calls her with the "hime" suffix, showing as much deference as Josef, who is a retainer of the royal family. Virginia doesn't use any suffix because that's her, but in Alain's various support convos, we learn that he had to learn and to behave like a proper noble after escaping from his castle 7 years ago, and all this noble/formal stuff is something he doesn't use with his commoner friends.

Ergo, this minor thing here is important, especially in the Drakengard themes : siblings/relatives used to be close, but reuniting after a long period of time or several life changing events, they are changed and even if they want and try to, cannot be as close as they once were.