#pertisia x maritte

[thanotosomega]

Maritte: I’m Cold. (Pertisia sits on her lap and cuddles up to her)

Ibn: I’m Cold! (Bax blushes and drapes and arm and his cloak over them)

Ifig: I’m Cold. (Aeldra pulls out a knife and screams in rage and stabs the air for making her girlfriend cold)

[lilywily143]

There was this old game I remembered playing a year ago and the urge to make a Ninjago AU where the game's characters are actually Ninjago characters was strong.

So what's the game?

...

Ikenfell!

I love this game so much! Mostly for the story, it's awesome! But, I would rather let you guys play it to know if it is actually good for you.

Okay, now for who is who in this Ninjago x Ikenfell AU!

Spoilers for both the show and the game of each others franchise

Now, I can't ignore the fact that the main character and her sibling should be the Smith Siblings. And Nya has to be Maritte (The one you play as in the beginning) and Kai is Safina!

Wanna know why?

Maritte may have fire powers but; she's younger, doesn't get powers until after her sibling does, and has a visible change in desgin when she embraces her "magic".

As seen here ->

Also Safina/Kai is reckless, getting in trouble with guardian figures. It fits.

I'm also gonna say that Jay is Gilda while Pixal is Pertisia.

Gilda has electric powers, has epic music and dance moves (Super Rockstar Jay, anyone), anytime she fails, she feels bad about herself.

And Gilda/Jay has a immediate love for Maritte /Nya when she first meets her. But they don't really become a thing and Maritte/Nya goes with Pertisia/Pixal.

Pixal x Nya doesn't actually happen in the show, but SamuraiShipping is a ship I like, so let me have this.

And Pixal and Pertisia connections?

Someone who was not so helpful when they and the main character meet, but becoming close after getting to know each other. Have a putfit that shows their left shoulder. A pattern on their faces that are different from others in the canon.

Not a lot of characters have rosy cheecks in the game, or purple prints in the show.

They were also annoyances to Kai/Safina. (Billboard scene anyone?). They were kids of pretty popular people.

And the best connection...

Both had their minds in a different form seprated from their actual bodies. Pertisia got stuck in a mirrror and used her cat to get help. Pixal was AI in Zane's head.

So, by that logic, Zane should be the cat. But I don't want that for him.

I also made some art of Nya and Pixal here.

Love them <3. But this won't be my final design, I think.

And I still need to play the game again, but the XBox I have decided to be dumb and not let me play it...

[baphomet-media]

Blaster Caster - An Ikenfell Review

Genre: Adventure Subgenre: Tactics RPG Developer: Happy Ray Games  Publisher: Humble Games Platform(s): PC, Switch, Xbox; Reviewed on Xbox Series X Release Date: October 8th, 2020

Ikenfell immediately caught my eye in a marketing email from Humble. The art style looked charming, and it stayed on my radar for a while until I gave it a try on a whim from Game Pass, needing something to sink my teeth into on Xbox. I was a little wary at first, as tactics games can sometimes be difficult to get into (I’m looking at you, Fire Emblem), but the art style and whispers of praise I kept hearing drew me in. Does it hold up, though? Let’s dig in!

Story

The story of Ikenfell follows Maritte, an “ordinary” (non-magical) girl who travels to the titular school of magic to find her missing sister, Safina. After suddenly gaining magical powers of her own, Maritte soon realizes that something that happened at the school is causing the world to destabilize and magic itself to distort in strange and unusual ways. Best of all, Safina seems to be right smack dab in the middle of everything.

Along the way, Maritte will meet a number of students of Ikenfell, friends and rivals alike of Safina, with whom she will partner in order to get to the bottom of the strange happenings at the school. One of the best things about the game is its diverse cast of characters, seemingly all of whom are queer to some extent. It felt really nice to have some representation that didn’t try to make a huge deal out of the characters’ identities. That being said, I found it somewhat difficult to keep up with characters’ genders, pronouns, and sexualities, since it’s rarely mentioned by the game. One idea that could alleviate this is if the game could remind you of the characters’ pronouns on their status pages. Additionally, while some characters, such as Maritte, Gilda, and Pertisia, felt fully realized and fleshed-out, the other half of the party seemed to languish in stagnation. While Rook and Petronella had a bit of development regarding their relationships to Safina, Ima had basically no backstory and felt forgotten.

The game has plenty of side characters as well that help to flesh out the cast, particularly the bumbling dandy Ibn Oxley and his surly protector Bax. These two were pretty adorable in their relationship, and I’m always a fan of the incompetent braggart archetype, however I feel like they didn’t do much except constantly get in the way throughout the entire story, and I felt like I was always cleaning up after them. The headmistress, Baudovinia Aeldra, has a very touching, and surprisingly dark, backstory, and she becomes something of a tragic antagonist throughout the course of the story.

Perhaps the thing that impressed me the most was the game’s scope of worldbuilding. In one chapter, you ascend a tower as the game drip feeds you bits of its mythology, and I was really into it. Additionally, I like that there are small hints about the world at large outside of the play area, which made me feel like the school was only one part of a larger world, even if it was effectively the center.

The story itself is fairly basic and somewhat on the short side. There were plenty of touching moments throughout, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was just chasing Safina’s coattails the whole time, as she’s all that anyone can talk about. What’s worse, outside of flashbacks, Safina doesn’t actually do anything the entire game, which was a disappointment. I was looking forward to having a sororal bonding moment that didn’t really come until the epilogue, and even that was a bit lackluster.

Gameplay

At its core, Ikenfell is an RPG. The battles take place on a 12x3 grid, and on each character’s turn, they can move and cast a spell from their repertoire. As opposed to other games that have MP or a fixed number of spells, Ikenfell’s spells are thankfully unlimited. Instead, some spells have a cooldown time, though this is rarely an issue, as most spells with cooldowns are powerful spells anyway. Additionally, each spell has its own effective range, so proper positioning is constantly important. Most spells can be categorized as one of the following:

Single-target damage dealing 

Area-of-effect damage dealing 

Ally buffing 

Enemy debuffing 

Placing a trap 

Other, or some combination of the above 

Despite this, most spells feel different from a combination of their ranges and other unique properties. For example, while Pertisia’s Retaliation spell hits multiple targets for damage, it has the unique range of hitting all allies that are orthogonal to her or her allies, incentivising close-quarters play. This pairs well with Gilda’s Teleportation ability, which lets her teleport to the other side of the battle grid and immediately take a second turn. In all honesty, I found the combination of Gilda and Perty so powerful that I spent most of the game using only those two and Maritte, who becomes so physically powerful by the end of the game that she’s a must-have. Unfortunately, I never found much use for Rook and Ima, as their spells never really stood out much to me, aside from being the only characters able to set traps. Traps become useless pretty quickly, since most enemies can fly or teleport to their destination square, meaning unless they land right on a trap, it’ll more likely hinder your own movement. Nel at least had unique abilities in being the only character able to cast healing spells, but the spells are so difficult to actually perform, and they’re so miserably weak otherwise that it doesn’t feel useful to include them, which is really sad considering their backstory!

Enemies also get the same mechanics as the player, which usually meshes well, however it seems like most enemies get way more turns than the player, especially certain enemies that can use actions that immediately give them an extra turn. It pretty much requires you to use Gilda to provide speed buffs and debuffs just to feel competitive. This is felt particularly strongly during boss battles when bosses can summon minions and then immediately take another turn. It can get overwhelming quickly, especially if one character gets knocked out. Fortunately, if you’re leveled up enough and you stay on top of healing and taking out minions, you should be fine in any battle, though this does put the player in an odd dichotomy where you either stay on top of everything for the entire battle, but you make one mistake and you basically lose outright.

The other mechanic to battles is the timing mechanics. Every spell has a specific timing for pressing the A button in order to deal max damage or buff. You also use the same timed button press to defend against enemy attacks, which gives the battles a slight Paper Mario feel. Unfortunately, I found that timing was often inconsistent. Some spells have helpful visual indicators for letting the player know when to hit A, but many are best used slightly before or slightly after the visual trigger, making it frustrating when you whiff a spell or take major damage despite looking like you were right on time. The game has some accessibility options that can bypass this, by making your attacks auto-hit or skipping battles altogether, but this feels more like cheats than balance, so I didn’t use them.

As far as the overworld goes, you travel between areas to reach various story objectives, giving strong Mother series vibes from your party following along behind you. The game allows you to save your progress by petting cats around the school, which is automatically an A+ from me. The cats also refill your HP, so you don’t have to worry too much about healing outside of battle.

I really enjoyed the equipment system in the game as well. Aside from weapons, each other item can be worn by any character, and usually offer both benefits and drawbacks, so it’s up to you to decide which stats you want to optimize on each character. Though it wasn’t a really tough decision, as there are only 5 stats (HP, Attack, Defense, Speed, Movement), and most equipment only modifies the middle three. I ended up speccing Maritte into Attack, Perty into Defense, and Gilda into Speed, since those seemed to match their play styles and base stats.

There isn’t much in the way of side content in the game, the main sidequest being collecting hidden gems throughout the world. These gems can be exchanged for special accessories that give unique effects. Unfortunately, these accessories don’t provide any stat bonuses, so I didn’t find any of them as useful as just buffing stats. Lastly, the game has a few optional bosses to defeat, which basically require you to hit the, admittedly low, level cap of 30. These bosses were interesting, but at that point I was getting sick of boss battles.

Presentation

Ikenfell is a gorgeous game. There’s plenty of great pixel art throughout, particularly in the environment. The character sprites are very expressive, both in battle and on the overworld. I wasn’t a huge fan of some of the portraits (Perty particularly has some oddly lumpy cheeks), but for the most part they’re perfectly fine.

The music in the game is wonderful, and is largely done by electronic musical group Aivi & Surasshu. Most of the background tracks were a wonderful blend of chiptunes and melancholy instrumental which is definitely my thing. Unfortunately I wasn’t all that fond of the vocals on some tracks, but that’s likely just a personal preference thing. My partner loved them, so your mileage may vary.

Conclusion

JK Rowling wishes she could tell a magic school story this good. At the end of the game, I loved the characters and felt good knowing that I had accomplished everything the game had to offer. I loved just exploring, seeing the different locations, petting cats, and listening to the music. Definitely give this game a try if you love RPGs, queer representation, good stories or music, and DEFINITELY if you have Game Pass.

Score: 8 / 10

[thanotosomega]

Maritte is perfect for a winter girl like Pertisia, she’s warm soothing and comforting like hot coco,

Pertisia is perfect for a summer girl like Maritte, she’s cool sweet and refreshing, like ice cream,

[thanotosomega]

Pertisia: I am a proud Moralsexual i am attracted to heroes and heroes exclusively.

Maritte: Sorry i’m late, i was helping an old woman find the most environmentally friendly firewood option.

Pertisia (Taking off her clothes): You’re so fucking responsible!

[thanotosomega]

Safina (Seeing Pertisia get a call from “Daddy”): HAHAHAHAHA! what a loser! you still call your old man daddy?

Pertisia (Answering phone): Hello Maritte!

Safina: W-wat?