Pretty sure that’s actually a tassel hanging off a spike on the left side of his helmet; he’s facing a bit more forward, not straight to the right. But I can see how it could read that way!
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God Came From Space - Let's Play Xenogears!
- Thread starter Second Duke Revier
- Start date
Pirate Tales - Part 7
Video: Sand Pirates!
Imprisoned, Fei has little to talk about. So he sleeps, and gets this weird dream of Grahf, a mustachioed man and some red haired guy readying themselves for a face off!
The dream stirs Fei out of sleep, and Citan enquires whether he rested well. Then, he begins to apologize for getting him into this condition, as Weltall was a top secret Gear that would naturally attract the interest of both armies. I still feel like he has some underhanded motives for Weltall that he isn't revealing, but eh.
Citan notices Fei being rather moody, and changes tack, asking him if he was pondering Grahf's words about his dad. Fei replies that he's more worried about how Grahf had claimed to trick him into destroying his own village. Which, well, perfectly understandable.
Citan reassures Fei by telling him to not worry too much about it, but privately, he wonders if Fei is the Chosen One. We then cut to a conversation in his past, where an Emperor told him of a prophecy of humans returning to God's paradise and living eternally.
That prophecy was soon to come true, and so, he and his group, the Gazel, had to find God's resting place and resurrect him. This was their only hope of averting an upcoming apocalypse. Hmm. Ominous.
We then abruptly cut to a rather enthusiastic voyeur spying on the couple's detention vehicle. They seem quite interested in the Gear up top. Must be a very fancy machine to draw all of this attention, lol.
The observer turns out to be a yellow haired pirate captain, who immediately orders his ship to attack them!
His butler and his companion try to get him to desist, but he pays them little heed! His ship surfaces and fires upon the vehicle.
Predictably, the vehicle does not take the hits well. It starts keeling over and...sinking? Into the sand? Lol. Whatever, let's buy into it for the drama.
Anyway, Fei and Citan make their way through the sinking vehicle, closing some bulkheads, fighting some desperate soldiers, and getting blown away by random explosions in the engine room. One nice touch to this area is that you can actually see the place fall apart as the vehicle keeps sinking and the engine keeps sputtering out of control, with more craters forming and more tiles coming off.
Eventually, they reach the outside, where Citan urges Fei to walk across a spindly crane arm to retrieve Weltall before it is lost to the sands. Hmm. Very odd behavior for someone arguing for its repairs to move it away from Lahan not too long ago.
This leads to a bizarre but short minigame where Fei has to maintain his balance while running across. Thankfully, it is not possible to lose via cheap falls, as Fei will quickly pick himself back up. There is a timer, though, and once it runs out the game resets the entire segment. Kinda annoying.
The Gear activates, and flies the two to safety. Fei reveals that it acted on its own, almost like it had a mind of its own!
But before they can figure out anything more about Weltall, the pirate captain from earlier challenges Fei to a fight in his own Gear! He proves to be a rather easy opponent, however. Maybe Weltall is really that good, lol.
Unfortunately, both of them get so caught up in fighting, they end up getting sucked in by the sand. Heh, rather anticlimactic. Well, let's hope someone fishes them out soon, else this is going to be a very short game!
Or they could end up in some caves right below the quicksand. Sure.
Anyway, the pirate captain lets up after seeing Fei leave the precious high tech Gear, and introduces himself. He's Bart, a pirate captain operating within the desert. Fei briefly explains his situation to him, and Bart, relieved to not be dealing with an adversary, proposes a "truce" with him until they get out, with a fair bit of smugness on his face.
Elsewhere, we see that Citan was safely rescued, and that the pirates are a decent bit more magnanimous than their first impressions would suggest - they willingly rescued all soldiers and personnel that had survived the attack on the vehicle. Also, they do have a search party looking for Bart. Good, nice to see they're well organized pirates. Lol.
Also, the pirate's companion gets a name - Sigurd. Apparently he knew Citan in his past, and is quite disapproving of Bart's attitude. Lol. Also, Citan changed his name from Hyuga. Citan doesn't say much, besides vaguely talking about destiny making them meet again. And scene!
We then join back with Fei and Bart, who tackle the game's first Gear dungeon. They're essentially like "normal" dungeons, only they have Gears running and jumping through them. The main gameplay concern here is lacking access to any direct healing, meaning that conserving HP and fuel by carefully picking fights becomes paramount to surviving them.
The player can get their characters out of Gears in these dungeons if they wish, but often there isn't any real reason to, outside of accessing small passageways and doors.
Most enemies in Gear dungeons are Gear-sized, and as such, they deal considerably more damage to characters than to Gears. Adorably, these dungeons also feature human-sized enemies every so often, letting us observe just how frail humans are against them, lol.
The enemy in focus here is a Tin Robot, a rickety gear clearly built more for mining than for fighting. It doesn't do a lot of damage, and it tends to stumble and fall, dealing damage to itself! The humans are raiders, and are, as mentioned before, easily dispatched. As an aside, each Gear has separate animations for attacking human sized enemies, and they're all quite goofy, lol.
Bart's sensors detect a way out of the cave! There's a rock on their path, and Fei gets Bart to push it along with him, despite his great reluctance.
The rock is pushed aside, but Bart immediately begins whining about how his Gear's leg is starting to give away, and how it would suck if it broke down in this cave. Fei asks him about whether his crew isn't looking for him, and whether Citan is safe. He lies to Fei about the former and reassures him about the latter.
Fei then pointedly informs him that they got into this situation because of his brashness - if only he'd have bothered listening to him instead of fighting him, they could've easily avoided all of this. Bart, taken aback, decides to turn the blame on Fei, while blatantly lying about "going easy" on him and threatening to fight him again when Fei calls him out! Jeez. Yeah, he's a bit of a brat, lol.
Thankfully, Fei steps away and makes him see reason, pointing out that he had made a truce because they needed to help each other to escape the cave. Bart resignedly accepts this, and drops the argument for now.
Ahead, they run into a random excavating Gear. It tells them about a gate that was activated to stop excess sand from flowing in, as this was an excavation site. Until the flow is stopped, it advises them to wait in a shelter ahead.
The two are surprised to run into someone in the shelter, especially one looking this old. He comments on how they seemed to be riding good Gears, with one of them having leg problems. He could make out all of this just by hearing them, he's just that good! Also, he's straight up called Balthazar. Yep. Just a casual wise man in this here cave.
Bart, somewhat crudely, enquires him about his choice of habitat. Balthazar, unfazed, informs them that he has been collecting fossils from the excavation site, and then shows them his collection of bones. He asks them to see if they can identify anything. Bart, casual as ever, dismisses it as "just" a "pile of bones", but Fei is able to recognize that human bones only begin to show up after a certain point on the shelf.
Balthazar then explains what this means - human beings only started showing up on this planet 10,000 years ago, and showed up with their skeletal structure already in place. This meant that they were not native to this planet, but were transported here by something. Hmm. Perhaps the colony ship in the intro had more survivors than just the one lady?
Also, Bart brings up that Ethos teaches people that humanity evolved from other animals, and Balthazar brings up that the concept of humanity evolving might very well be a lie. That's an interesting contrast to our reality, lol.
Balthazar then starts straight up quoting the Genesis' story of humanity's expulsion of paradise, with the added twist of humanity making giants to fight God. God destroyed them and most of humanity with his wrath, but was wounded in turn. He then retreated into his paradise to rest, and hid it under the ocean, where it has been lying since. He also created another batch of people to replace his last rebellious batch, lol. These people are supposedly the ancestors of all humans on this planet.
Alternate Genesis tales might be interesting, but the two have bigger concerns right now. Like getting out of this cave. Balthazar decides to point out exactly how to open the sand gate, as he doesn't like being barred by it either. They need to turn off two sensors, and then he'll operate the gate's controls to open it. Simple, right?
He also serves as our first Gear store! Gear stores are capable of repairing Gears, as well as selling upgrades for them. Since Gears get no experience, this is basically their only progression system. Gear upgrades are pricey as fuck, but extremely impactful, and so should be obtained as soon as possible. Especially since some Gear-like enemies start ramping up their defenses significantly.
There's honestly not a lot to talk about this dungeon. It's mostly a rather bland and boring affair, with very dull looking rooms and rather uninteresting foes, despite some charming gimmicks. There isn't even any background music for most of it! What a drag!
Also Bart is our first weapon user. Both Fei and Citan don't use any weapons, as they are fist fighters. Bart swings whips, in a rather curious choice of weaponry. Perhaps he likes seeing them flail about? Not sure really.
Anyway, they get the sensors shut, and Balthazar keeps his end of the bargain, opening the way forward. But, before doing so, they decide to stop at his shelter for a short rest. Bart queries him about an ancient Gear that was so powerful, it was dubbed the "God Gear". Balthazar thinks about the legend, but ultimately dismisses it as make believe, and then leaves to check on their Gears.
Bart mulls about how he wishes for such a powerful Gear, and how the Gears extracted recently are nowhere as powerful, being only a few hundred years old. They talk about their history, and it turns out, there aren't any solid historical records for either relatively recent Gears, or ancient Gears. The Ethos controls all of the available information, and so it's hard to find out much about them.
Balthazar returns, very curious about Fei's Gear. It turns out, Weltall is, per his words, a host for a god slayer. Hmmm. Fei, getting curious himself, tries asking him for a clarification, but he abruptly blows the two off, telling them to leave as soon as possible! Well okay then.
Past the gate, things get a bit more interesting. This freaky mantis robot hybrid looks cool, even if its moves are mechanically rather bland, outside of its defense lowering breath.
There's a gondola ride with a tiny, human sized gondola. It's almost adorable how tiny it is from the pov of a giant combat robot.
There's also this dug up area which was clearly dug up using much smaller, human proportioned vehicles. Lol.
And with that, we're nearly done with this dungeon!
But not before a fight with our "first" boss, Mr. Chonky Gear. Chonkbot is, as far as I can tell, a huge physical attacker. So it's not really into tricks, and Bart's little accuracy debuff actually helps a lot here. Aside from that, the fight is pretty simple - pummel it with everything we've got! It's got a fair bit of defense, but as long as both Gears are upgraded, it's not too hard to wear it down with constant offense.
Chonky Gear tries pulling a fast one on Bart after defeat, but Fei, startled by the situation, quickly rushes to stop him, unleashing some dark punches! This leads to an awkward situation afterwards, where Bart constantly prods Fei over his cool new technique, which he pulled from his angry spirit in a fit of desperation, and so knows nothing about. Lol.
And NOW, we're finally out. Phew! What a dull, tiresome dungeon that was. Bart casually drops some tidbits about his origin, mentioning that he's from the capital of Aveh itself, Bledavik. He points Fei to a rendezvous point with his ship, the Yggdrasil.
At the ship, Fei is at last reunited with Citan. Bart gets some hilarious admonishments from Sigurd, Fei mulls over his god slayer vessel, annd we finally get out of the desert and into a brand new "town".
But what shall happen next? Will Fei and Citan fully support these pirates? Will these pirates take them on a daring new adventure? What exactly is Bart's deal? Or Sigurd's, for that matter? Find out all this and more next time!
Video: Sand Pirates!
Imprisoned, Fei has little to talk about. So he sleeps, and gets this weird dream of Grahf, a mustachioed man and some red haired guy readying themselves for a face off!
The dream stirs Fei out of sleep, and Citan enquires whether he rested well. Then, he begins to apologize for getting him into this condition, as Weltall was a top secret Gear that would naturally attract the interest of both armies. I still feel like he has some underhanded motives for Weltall that he isn't revealing, but eh.
Citan notices Fei being rather moody, and changes tack, asking him if he was pondering Grahf's words about his dad. Fei replies that he's more worried about how Grahf had claimed to trick him into destroying his own village. Which, well, perfectly understandable.
Citan reassures Fei by telling him to not worry too much about it, but privately, he wonders if Fei is the Chosen One. We then cut to a conversation in his past, where an Emperor told him of a prophecy of humans returning to God's paradise and living eternally.
That prophecy was soon to come true, and so, he and his group, the Gazel, had to find God's resting place and resurrect him. This was their only hope of averting an upcoming apocalypse. Hmm. Ominous.
We then abruptly cut to a rather enthusiastic voyeur spying on the couple's detention vehicle. They seem quite interested in the Gear up top. Must be a very fancy machine to draw all of this attention, lol.
The observer turns out to be a yellow haired pirate captain, who immediately orders his ship to attack them!
His butler and his companion try to get him to desist, but he pays them little heed! His ship surfaces and fires upon the vehicle.
Predictably, the vehicle does not take the hits well. It starts keeling over and...sinking? Into the sand? Lol. Whatever, let's buy into it for the drama.
Anyway, Fei and Citan make their way through the sinking vehicle, closing some bulkheads, fighting some desperate soldiers, and getting blown away by random explosions in the engine room. One nice touch to this area is that you can actually see the place fall apart as the vehicle keeps sinking and the engine keeps sputtering out of control, with more craters forming and more tiles coming off.
Eventually, they reach the outside, where Citan urges Fei to walk across a spindly crane arm to retrieve Weltall before it is lost to the sands. Hmm. Very odd behavior for someone arguing for its repairs to move it away from Lahan not too long ago.
This leads to a bizarre but short minigame where Fei has to maintain his balance while running across. Thankfully, it is not possible to lose via cheap falls, as Fei will quickly pick himself back up. There is a timer, though, and once it runs out the game resets the entire segment. Kinda annoying.
The Gear activates, and flies the two to safety. Fei reveals that it acted on its own, almost like it had a mind of its own!
But before they can figure out anything more about Weltall, the pirate captain from earlier challenges Fei to a fight in his own Gear! He proves to be a rather easy opponent, however. Maybe Weltall is really that good, lol.
Unfortunately, both of them get so caught up in fighting, they end up getting sucked in by the sand. Heh, rather anticlimactic. Well, let's hope someone fishes them out soon, else this is going to be a very short game!
Or they could end up in some caves right below the quicksand. Sure.
Anyway, the pirate captain lets up after seeing Fei leave the precious high tech Gear, and introduces himself. He's Bart, a pirate captain operating within the desert. Fei briefly explains his situation to him, and Bart, relieved to not be dealing with an adversary, proposes a "truce" with him until they get out, with a fair bit of smugness on his face.
Elsewhere, we see that Citan was safely rescued, and that the pirates are a decent bit more magnanimous than their first impressions would suggest - they willingly rescued all soldiers and personnel that had survived the attack on the vehicle. Also, they do have a search party looking for Bart. Good, nice to see they're well organized pirates. Lol.
Also, the pirate's companion gets a name - Sigurd. Apparently he knew Citan in his past, and is quite disapproving of Bart's attitude. Lol. Also, Citan changed his name from Hyuga. Citan doesn't say much, besides vaguely talking about destiny making them meet again. And scene!
We then join back with Fei and Bart, who tackle the game's first Gear dungeon. They're essentially like "normal" dungeons, only they have Gears running and jumping through them. The main gameplay concern here is lacking access to any direct healing, meaning that conserving HP and fuel by carefully picking fights becomes paramount to surviving them.
The player can get their characters out of Gears in these dungeons if they wish, but often there isn't any real reason to, outside of accessing small passageways and doors.
Most enemies in Gear dungeons are Gear-sized, and as such, they deal considerably more damage to characters than to Gears. Adorably, these dungeons also feature human-sized enemies every so often, letting us observe just how frail humans are against them, lol.
The enemy in focus here is a Tin Robot, a rickety gear clearly built more for mining than for fighting. It doesn't do a lot of damage, and it tends to stumble and fall, dealing damage to itself! The humans are raiders, and are, as mentioned before, easily dispatched. As an aside, each Gear has separate animations for attacking human sized enemies, and they're all quite goofy, lol.
Bart's sensors detect a way out of the cave! There's a rock on their path, and Fei gets Bart to push it along with him, despite his great reluctance.
The rock is pushed aside, but Bart immediately begins whining about how his Gear's leg is starting to give away, and how it would suck if it broke down in this cave. Fei asks him about whether his crew isn't looking for him, and whether Citan is safe. He lies to Fei about the former and reassures him about the latter.
Fei then pointedly informs him that they got into this situation because of his brashness - if only he'd have bothered listening to him instead of fighting him, they could've easily avoided all of this. Bart, taken aback, decides to turn the blame on Fei, while blatantly lying about "going easy" on him and threatening to fight him again when Fei calls him out! Jeez. Yeah, he's a bit of a brat, lol.
Thankfully, Fei steps away and makes him see reason, pointing out that he had made a truce because they needed to help each other to escape the cave. Bart resignedly accepts this, and drops the argument for now.
Ahead, they run into a random excavating Gear. It tells them about a gate that was activated to stop excess sand from flowing in, as this was an excavation site. Until the flow is stopped, it advises them to wait in a shelter ahead.
The two are surprised to run into someone in the shelter, especially one looking this old. He comments on how they seemed to be riding good Gears, with one of them having leg problems. He could make out all of this just by hearing them, he's just that good! Also, he's straight up called Balthazar. Yep. Just a casual wise man in this here cave.
Bart, somewhat crudely, enquires him about his choice of habitat. Balthazar, unfazed, informs them that he has been collecting fossils from the excavation site, and then shows them his collection of bones. He asks them to see if they can identify anything. Bart, casual as ever, dismisses it as "just" a "pile of bones", but Fei is able to recognize that human bones only begin to show up after a certain point on the shelf.
Balthazar then explains what this means - human beings only started showing up on this planet 10,000 years ago, and showed up with their skeletal structure already in place. This meant that they were not native to this planet, but were transported here by something. Hmm. Perhaps the colony ship in the intro had more survivors than just the one lady?
Also, Bart brings up that Ethos teaches people that humanity evolved from other animals, and Balthazar brings up that the concept of humanity evolving might very well be a lie. That's an interesting contrast to our reality, lol.
Balthazar then starts straight up quoting the Genesis' story of humanity's expulsion of paradise, with the added twist of humanity making giants to fight God. God destroyed them and most of humanity with his wrath, but was wounded in turn. He then retreated into his paradise to rest, and hid it under the ocean, where it has been lying since. He also created another batch of people to replace his last rebellious batch, lol. These people are supposedly the ancestors of all humans on this planet.
Alternate Genesis tales might be interesting, but the two have bigger concerns right now. Like getting out of this cave. Balthazar decides to point out exactly how to open the sand gate, as he doesn't like being barred by it either. They need to turn off two sensors, and then he'll operate the gate's controls to open it. Simple, right?
He also serves as our first Gear store! Gear stores are capable of repairing Gears, as well as selling upgrades for them. Since Gears get no experience, this is basically their only progression system. Gear upgrades are pricey as fuck, but extremely impactful, and so should be obtained as soon as possible. Especially since some Gear-like enemies start ramping up their defenses significantly.
There's honestly not a lot to talk about this dungeon. It's mostly a rather bland and boring affair, with very dull looking rooms and rather uninteresting foes, despite some charming gimmicks. There isn't even any background music for most of it! What a drag!
Also Bart is our first weapon user. Both Fei and Citan don't use any weapons, as they are fist fighters. Bart swings whips, in a rather curious choice of weaponry. Perhaps he likes seeing them flail about? Not sure really.
Anyway, they get the sensors shut, and Balthazar keeps his end of the bargain, opening the way forward. But, before doing so, they decide to stop at his shelter for a short rest. Bart queries him about an ancient Gear that was so powerful, it was dubbed the "God Gear". Balthazar thinks about the legend, but ultimately dismisses it as make believe, and then leaves to check on their Gears.
Bart mulls about how he wishes for such a powerful Gear, and how the Gears extracted recently are nowhere as powerful, being only a few hundred years old. They talk about their history, and it turns out, there aren't any solid historical records for either relatively recent Gears, or ancient Gears. The Ethos controls all of the available information, and so it's hard to find out much about them.
Balthazar returns, very curious about Fei's Gear. It turns out, Weltall is, per his words, a host for a god slayer. Hmmm. Fei, getting curious himself, tries asking him for a clarification, but he abruptly blows the two off, telling them to leave as soon as possible! Well okay then.
Past the gate, things get a bit more interesting. This freaky mantis robot hybrid looks cool, even if its moves are mechanically rather bland, outside of its defense lowering breath.
There's a gondola ride with a tiny, human sized gondola. It's almost adorable how tiny it is from the pov of a giant combat robot.
There's also this dug up area which was clearly dug up using much smaller, human proportioned vehicles. Lol.
And with that, we're nearly done with this dungeon!
But not before a fight with our "first" boss, Mr. Chonky Gear. Chonkbot is, as far as I can tell, a huge physical attacker. So it's not really into tricks, and Bart's little accuracy debuff actually helps a lot here. Aside from that, the fight is pretty simple - pummel it with everything we've got! It's got a fair bit of defense, but as long as both Gears are upgraded, it's not too hard to wear it down with constant offense.
Chonky Gear tries pulling a fast one on Bart after defeat, but Fei, startled by the situation, quickly rushes to stop him, unleashing some dark punches! This leads to an awkward situation afterwards, where Bart constantly prods Fei over his cool new technique, which he pulled from his angry spirit in a fit of desperation, and so knows nothing about. Lol.
And NOW, we're finally out. Phew! What a dull, tiresome dungeon that was. Bart casually drops some tidbits about his origin, mentioning that he's from the capital of Aveh itself, Bledavik. He points Fei to a rendezvous point with his ship, the Yggdrasil.
At the ship, Fei is at last reunited with Citan. Bart gets some hilarious admonishments from Sigurd, Fei mulls over his god slayer vessel, annd we finally get out of the desert and into a brand new "town".
But what shall happen next? Will Fei and Citan fully support these pirates? Will these pirates take them on a daring new adventure? What exactly is Bart's deal? Or Sigurd's, for that matter? Find out all this and more next time!
Aveh March! - Part 8
Video: Bart's Ship
Alright, it's time to explore Bart's wondrous ship. We begin in his huge Gear hangar, so huge that Citan and Fei are shrunk down to blob size in the camera.
As expected, it holds Gears, and engineers dedicated to servicing and maintaining them. They chat about the particulars of the Gear they're maintaining, including any amusing stories, technical details, and more. They even let us rename the Gears, if we wish!
Apparently, Bart intentionally broke half of his Gear's sight sensors to make an eyepatch! Also, Fei's Gear, Weltall, has some "black boxes" that none of the engineers assigned to it have been able to figure out. Thankfully they don't get in the way of maintenance, but it's still an odd bit of the Gear. One has to wonder just who made it, and how advanced they must've been. Could it be that they're hiding something?
The hangar even comes with a well stocked Gear parts shop, selling considerable upgrades for Weltall!
Outside the hangar, we find the local dormitory, full of Bart's men.
A medical room, with a nurse who seems rather keen on measuring Fei and Citan's weights. Lol.
A mysteriously well decorated room, with a fine blouse hung up top, and a toy penguin on one of the beds. Hmm. Wonder who this room's occupant is.
A fine bar, apparently constructed by Bart's butler, Maison. He was worried about Bart becoming too uncultured by hanging around rough men, so he got this room built, albeit at a great expense to himself.
He also doubles up as a shopkeeper, though there's not a lot interesting on him. He does have the hilariously overpowered Omegasols though, which refill ALL HP and MP of a character outside combat, and go for the low, low price of 50 gold! Quite easy to solve dungeons with these, lol.
There's a bunch more fancy rooms downstairs, though not as elaborately decorated as the room earlier.
The engine room, where we get to learn a little about Bart. Apparently his and Sigurd's eyepatches aren't just for show, they genuinely had one of their eyes put out in an engine accident! Sheesh.
Also there's a cute engineering dog in the room, lol.
And at last, the bridge. It has many operators controlling various parts of the ship, most noticeably a dolphin operator who randomly plays one of the game's many samples on request! How adorable!
Alright, enough screwing around. Let's head for Bart's hideout.
As soon as Bart emerges out of his ship, he's welcomed by some tiny children, and then his men! The children pester him for some cool new toys, which he answers by giving them some amber. Lol.
He then leaves to attend to his Gear, letting Maison guide the two through his hideout.
Maison leads them to a grand dining hall, where he serves them his tea. Then, he casually drops the fact that Bart is in fact secretly royalty. After a fake show of having been a bit too lax with words, he drops the truth behind Bart's current state - he is the legitimate prince of Aveh, but has been hiding from a coup organized by his prime minister, Shakhan.
His pirate act was to capture more Gears to eventually overwhelm Shakhan and reclaim his rule. He did not stand a chance against Aveh's armies otherwise, their Gear fueled firepower was too overwhelming even with him having a fancy armed ship.
Citan readily buys into their movement, apparently being convinced that them housing children made them the "good guys". Hah! If only it were that easy to tell people apart...
Citan then inquires about why they haven't actually assaulted Shakhan for such a long time. It turns out, he has Bart's cousin, Margie, imprisoned. Margie is a major religious figure of Nisan, essentially the Vatican of this setting.
Shakhan imprisoned her because she had part of the Fatima Jasper, a key to acquiring some sort of grand treasure. Clearly, he's only keeping her alive to find this treasure, and once it's found, her life is forfeit.
Citan and Maison begin speculating on what exactly the grand treasure could be, and how it could save their kingdom. Then, Bart walks in, proclaiming that must be a Gear! After a short explanation of why he showed up so soon, he elaborates on his point, claiming that there are ancient Avehian illustrations of a Gear.
Indeed, he does show an ancient illustration depicting the very first king of his dynasty making an oath with a Gear. Honestly, it's incredible how this game seamlessly mixes in both old and new elements in its lore, so it can depict advanced things like giant humanoid robots through the lens of age old paintings.
Anyhow, that's not the only illustration in his hands, he also displays another illustration depicting the king burying the Gear in the ground. The problem is, he has no records of where the Gear could be hidden. Odds are, the royalty intentionally kept it secret so as to not have it fall into the hands of an enemy.
Bart delivers this hilarious comment as Citan shows himself to be suspiciously well informed on a lot of these matters. The doctor is definitely not what he seems, lol.
Eventually, Bart gets to the point - he needs help, and Fei seems like a good fighter. Couldn't he join his cause? He frames it as a mutually beneficial relationship, but it's pretty obvious he has the upper hand, and is trying to twist them into falling in with him.
Naturally, Fei, who has had a rough few days, bluntly turns the offer down. He's in no mood to be anybody's warrior, especially not for someone who was acting cocky with him not too long ago.
Fei decides to go behind some children and explore the Gear hangars to kill some time. Nothing interesting happens there, but on the way back...
Bart shows up again, and tries his hardest to get Fei to join him, showing sympathy for him and offering an apology for his dickishness earlier. Of course, such parlor tricks are hardly enough to budge Fei, who refuses him outright, again.
Fei then accuses Bart of being a selfish warmonger, which he tries to counter by claiming that he fights for good reasons. Fei quickly plays into that by pointing out that he has no reason to fight, and so will not participate in any of his battles. He just wants to live in peace and solitude, and doesn't want to see people get hurt ever again.
Bart decides to insult Fei by claiming that he's running away from responsibility and dreaming of an ideal, and then spins it into a talk of how it's selfish people who cause wars and suffering, and how he's merely fighting to get rid of such people.
He ultimately thinks it's Fei's responsibility to use his power to protect the innocent, rather than to simply become a recluse. And there's a bit of truth to this, but given the context, it's pretty obvious that Bart is being a bit of a hypocrite, trying to paint his responsibilities as Fei's to guilt trip him into joining his side.
Regardless, Fei is left a bit shaken by Bart's arguments, and heads back to the hangar to ponder his choices.
He's interrupted by Citan and Sigurd, who decide to manipulate him further by showing Bart brooding over his helplessness against his usurpers. Sigurd then implores Fei once more to shoulder Bart's burdens and help ease his pain by joining his side. Fei, at this point pretty conflicted, tells them that he needs time to think, which they thankfully grant. He goes to sleep, and the scene fades out.
We then cut to a bunch of interlopers breaking into the hideout's hangar! They begin attacking the Gears stationed there, sounding the alarm!
Fei, shaken awake by the alarms, heads down and begins pondering again. Citan tries steering him into action, but to no avail. He's just too conflicted to make up his mind, even with the chaos all around him.
We're then thrust into battle against the interlopers as Bart and his companions. It turns out they're Gebler soldiers, and thus all have unique Gears. Despite this, they don't really put up much of a fight, choosing instead to run rather quickly after being mildly hurt. Perhaps they were just planning a night raid, and didn't expect to be found out so quickly.
Citan, itching to help, throws himself into a Gear that's under maintenance. It turns out that said Gear works well enough in his hands, with him singlehandedly dispatching one of the Gebler soldiers! Of course. How could a mere soldier challenge the good doctor?!
The doctor remarks that these soldiers seem to be tripped up on combat drugs, which is apparently why they've been fleeing instead of falling apart when defeated in battle. Huh. Really odd sorts of drugs, these.
Lastly, Fei himself shows up, stopping one of the soldiers from terrorizing some children! Alright, looks like Bart's enemies played themselves here big time. Lol.
This gauntlet of trivial fights is capped off by Schpariel, yet another trivial fight. The only thing really notable is that it stays for a lot longer, choosing to fight till the "death", instead of running away at the first sign of trouble. It's nice that the game also emphasizes Fei's power here, making him do double the damage of any other character! Either that, or Fei's Gear is the only one to have the latest upgrades. Heh.
Well, it took one horribly botched night raid, but Fei is now firmly in Bart's team! They quickly plan to sneak into Bledavik, Aveh's capital, to rescue Margie from Shakhan's clutches. Bart briefly visits the women in his hideout to see them off, and we end this session, with things looking much more optimistic for once.
But what shall happen next time? Shall they successfully infiltrate Bledavik? Will they pick up any clues on Margie's location? How exactly will they rescue her? Will they be able to save her in time? Find out all this and more next time!
Video: Bart's Ship
Alright, it's time to explore Bart's wondrous ship. We begin in his huge Gear hangar, so huge that Citan and Fei are shrunk down to blob size in the camera.
As expected, it holds Gears, and engineers dedicated to servicing and maintaining them. They chat about the particulars of the Gear they're maintaining, including any amusing stories, technical details, and more. They even let us rename the Gears, if we wish!
Apparently, Bart intentionally broke half of his Gear's sight sensors to make an eyepatch! Also, Fei's Gear, Weltall, has some "black boxes" that none of the engineers assigned to it have been able to figure out. Thankfully they don't get in the way of maintenance, but it's still an odd bit of the Gear. One has to wonder just who made it, and how advanced they must've been. Could it be that they're hiding something?
The hangar even comes with a well stocked Gear parts shop, selling considerable upgrades for Weltall!
Outside the hangar, we find the local dormitory, full of Bart's men.
A medical room, with a nurse who seems rather keen on measuring Fei and Citan's weights. Lol.
A mysteriously well decorated room, with a fine blouse hung up top, and a toy penguin on one of the beds. Hmm. Wonder who this room's occupant is.
A fine bar, apparently constructed by Bart's butler, Maison. He was worried about Bart becoming too uncultured by hanging around rough men, so he got this room built, albeit at a great expense to himself.
He also doubles up as a shopkeeper, though there's not a lot interesting on him. He does have the hilariously overpowered Omegasols though, which refill ALL HP and MP of a character outside combat, and go for the low, low price of 50 gold! Quite easy to solve dungeons with these, lol.
There's a bunch more fancy rooms downstairs, though not as elaborately decorated as the room earlier.
The engine room, where we get to learn a little about Bart. Apparently his and Sigurd's eyepatches aren't just for show, they genuinely had one of their eyes put out in an engine accident! Sheesh.
Also there's a cute engineering dog in the room, lol.
And at last, the bridge. It has many operators controlling various parts of the ship, most noticeably a dolphin operator who randomly plays one of the game's many samples on request! How adorable!
Alright, enough screwing around. Let's head for Bart's hideout.
As soon as Bart emerges out of his ship, he's welcomed by some tiny children, and then his men! The children pester him for some cool new toys, which he answers by giving them some amber. Lol.
He then leaves to attend to his Gear, letting Maison guide the two through his hideout.
Maison leads them to a grand dining hall, where he serves them his tea. Then, he casually drops the fact that Bart is in fact secretly royalty. After a fake show of having been a bit too lax with words, he drops the truth behind Bart's current state - he is the legitimate prince of Aveh, but has been hiding from a coup organized by his prime minister, Shakhan.
His pirate act was to capture more Gears to eventually overwhelm Shakhan and reclaim his rule. He did not stand a chance against Aveh's armies otherwise, their Gear fueled firepower was too overwhelming even with him having a fancy armed ship.
Citan readily buys into their movement, apparently being convinced that them housing children made them the "good guys". Hah! If only it were that easy to tell people apart...
Citan then inquires about why they haven't actually assaulted Shakhan for such a long time. It turns out, he has Bart's cousin, Margie, imprisoned. Margie is a major religious figure of Nisan, essentially the Vatican of this setting.
Shakhan imprisoned her because she had part of the Fatima Jasper, a key to acquiring some sort of grand treasure. Clearly, he's only keeping her alive to find this treasure, and once it's found, her life is forfeit.
Citan and Maison begin speculating on what exactly the grand treasure could be, and how it could save their kingdom. Then, Bart walks in, proclaiming that must be a Gear! After a short explanation of why he showed up so soon, he elaborates on his point, claiming that there are ancient Avehian illustrations of a Gear.
Indeed, he does show an ancient illustration depicting the very first king of his dynasty making an oath with a Gear. Honestly, it's incredible how this game seamlessly mixes in both old and new elements in its lore, so it can depict advanced things like giant humanoid robots through the lens of age old paintings.
Anyhow, that's not the only illustration in his hands, he also displays another illustration depicting the king burying the Gear in the ground. The problem is, he has no records of where the Gear could be hidden. Odds are, the royalty intentionally kept it secret so as to not have it fall into the hands of an enemy.
Bart delivers this hilarious comment as Citan shows himself to be suspiciously well informed on a lot of these matters. The doctor is definitely not what he seems, lol.
Eventually, Bart gets to the point - he needs help, and Fei seems like a good fighter. Couldn't he join his cause? He frames it as a mutually beneficial relationship, but it's pretty obvious he has the upper hand, and is trying to twist them into falling in with him.
Naturally, Fei, who has had a rough few days, bluntly turns the offer down. He's in no mood to be anybody's warrior, especially not for someone who was acting cocky with him not too long ago.
Fei decides to go behind some children and explore the Gear hangars to kill some time. Nothing interesting happens there, but on the way back...
Bart shows up again, and tries his hardest to get Fei to join him, showing sympathy for him and offering an apology for his dickishness earlier. Of course, such parlor tricks are hardly enough to budge Fei, who refuses him outright, again.
Fei then accuses Bart of being a selfish warmonger, which he tries to counter by claiming that he fights for good reasons. Fei quickly plays into that by pointing out that he has no reason to fight, and so will not participate in any of his battles. He just wants to live in peace and solitude, and doesn't want to see people get hurt ever again.
Bart decides to insult Fei by claiming that he's running away from responsibility and dreaming of an ideal, and then spins it into a talk of how it's selfish people who cause wars and suffering, and how he's merely fighting to get rid of such people.
He ultimately thinks it's Fei's responsibility to use his power to protect the innocent, rather than to simply become a recluse. And there's a bit of truth to this, but given the context, it's pretty obvious that Bart is being a bit of a hypocrite, trying to paint his responsibilities as Fei's to guilt trip him into joining his side.
Regardless, Fei is left a bit shaken by Bart's arguments, and heads back to the hangar to ponder his choices.
He's interrupted by Citan and Sigurd, who decide to manipulate him further by showing Bart brooding over his helplessness against his usurpers. Sigurd then implores Fei once more to shoulder Bart's burdens and help ease his pain by joining his side. Fei, at this point pretty conflicted, tells them that he needs time to think, which they thankfully grant. He goes to sleep, and the scene fades out.
We then cut to a bunch of interlopers breaking into the hideout's hangar! They begin attacking the Gears stationed there, sounding the alarm!
Fei, shaken awake by the alarms, heads down and begins pondering again. Citan tries steering him into action, but to no avail. He's just too conflicted to make up his mind, even with the chaos all around him.
We're then thrust into battle against the interlopers as Bart and his companions. It turns out they're Gebler soldiers, and thus all have unique Gears. Despite this, they don't really put up much of a fight, choosing instead to run rather quickly after being mildly hurt. Perhaps they were just planning a night raid, and didn't expect to be found out so quickly.
Citan, itching to help, throws himself into a Gear that's under maintenance. It turns out that said Gear works well enough in his hands, with him singlehandedly dispatching one of the Gebler soldiers! Of course. How could a mere soldier challenge the good doctor?!
The doctor remarks that these soldiers seem to be tripped up on combat drugs, which is apparently why they've been fleeing instead of falling apart when defeated in battle. Huh. Really odd sorts of drugs, these.
Lastly, Fei himself shows up, stopping one of the soldiers from terrorizing some children! Alright, looks like Bart's enemies played themselves here big time. Lol.
This gauntlet of trivial fights is capped off by Schpariel, yet another trivial fight. The only thing really notable is that it stays for a lot longer, choosing to fight till the "death", instead of running away at the first sign of trouble. It's nice that the game also emphasizes Fei's power here, making him do double the damage of any other character! Either that, or Fei's Gear is the only one to have the latest upgrades. Heh.
Well, it took one horribly botched night raid, but Fei is now firmly in Bart's team! They quickly plan to sneak into Bledavik, Aveh's capital, to rescue Margie from Shakhan's clutches. Bart briefly visits the women in his hideout to see them off, and we end this session, with things looking much more optimistic for once.
But what shall happen next time? Shall they successfully infiltrate Bledavik? Will they pick up any clues on Margie's location? How exactly will they rescue her? Will they be able to save her in time? Find out all this and more next time!
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
That's funny, I wondering if it was an error, or just a reward for exploring?
The lack of interesting female characters in this game is such a bummer. So far we have immediately fridged "Girl Who Might Like You But Is With Someone Else" and the others are all trope mom/magical girl roles from my awareness of the game. Product of the times and all, but siiiiiigh.
Probably just a poorly balanced item, after all, they have to balance for two modes of gameplay and probably just assumed that the character based gameplay didn't merit having expensive items for recovery. Gear upgrades do take a lot of money, and are downright mandatory, considering how sharply the game scales up enemies.
Considering the material shown so far, I totally see that. Mild spoilers, but it'll be a long while before we actually get Elly into the party, and while there is an upcoming lady who's quite funny and snarky, I'd hesitate to consider her an important character, lol.
The Dusky City - Part 9
Video: Bledavik
We finally get control over Bart's ship. This doesn't actually open up much, it can only travel through the desert and we aren't obstructed by it exactly. Kislev has tight security on their border, so we can't visit their side. Nothing to do but to steer it to the Avehian capital then.
Upon entering the city, we're greeted by a huge plane flying into it.
The plane hovers down into an underground hangar.
We then cut to its bridge, where we see its captain, Ramsus, and his secretary, Miang, complaining about their arrival being apparently lackluster. They're going to meet Shakhan and one of his generals, Vanderkaum.
Outside, Shakhan tries to butter them up, but Ramsus doesn't listen. Instead, he walks up to his general and berates him for his recent failures. He openly despises him, thinking him too brutish and too focused on raw displays of force over proper strategizing.
Shakhan accompanies Ramsus as he paces deeper into the base, talking about an upcoming ceremony to celebrate his country's 500th year. Ramsus, continuing to ignore him, pointedly asks him about the Fatima Jasper, the key to Bart's royal family's treasure.
Shakhan misinterprets this as a query for their recently excavated weapon at first, but after Ramsus clarifies his question, he replies that he hasn't been successful finding the other half of the Jasper.
Ramsus, continuing to be pointy, then asks if he's been taking proper care of Margie. He doesn't want to have her be mishandled by anyone. Shakhan reassures him that he has been behaving well with her, and knows that he dislikes indiscipline.
Ramsus and Miang then meet Margie in her room. He asks her about the Jasper, but she denies having any knowledge of the missing piece, and then complains about how she hasn't been able to eat well since her capture. Ramsus decides to humor her by promising to get her favorite cake next time, and asks her for any further wishes, but she only wants to return to her hometown. Relatable, lol.
Then we zoom out, and it turns out, Shakhan was spying on them all along! He's worried that Ramsus knows about the Fatima Jasper, and suspects a leak among his staff. His concern makes him order his assistant to force a truth serum on Margie as soon as possible, as he wants to find the Jasper before Ramsus does.
We leave that ominous moment behind and are treated to the grand sight of Bledavik's bazaar! This city is arguably the first "real" city of this game, and it has a lot of genuine flavor to it, authentically capturing the hustle and bustle of a bazaar city.
We find Bart's contact while jumping across the rooftops. She's a nun from Nisan, and she's been trying to collect information on Margie's whereabouts. So far, she hasn't been successful at finding much, besides the fact that she's being held somewhere in the royal palace. Time for the gang to go snooping!
I must point out that the game has a wonderful way of presenting city exploration: big cities like Bledavik get an overworld of their own, with notable spots marked on them. This helps sell the idea of traversing a huge, built up city without the tedium of having to actually navigate one. It's a nice idea, and more RPGs could stand to take it.
It doesn't take long for them to discover that the city is hosting a tournament to celebrate its 500th anniversary. Citan makes a daring plan - have Fei join the tournament and put up a grand show to distract security, creating an opening for Bart to swoop in and find Margie. There's just the matter of finding that opening...
And, sure enough, they find it soon, in the form of a grate to a waterway leading to the castle. Only problem is, said grate has been locked for a long while, and the key is on a boy who loves hiding around the city.
It takes a bit of searching, but the team eventually catches him hiding behind some barrels. What a cheeky boy! He reveals that he had once accidentally fallen into the waterway, and the grate had been locked since then. As for the key, well, actually he doesn't have it. Thankfully, he does know of who does, and it's not too hard to find him - he's sitting at a corner near the grate itself!
He's only too happy to learn that the team is trying to break in to rescue Margie - as you might imagine, Shakhan is a crude despot, and nobody is all too keen on his rule. With the plan fully laid up, the party sleeps, eager to begin working on Margie's rescue.
The next day, Fei and Citan head for the tournament grounds, which are right outside the royal palace. Fei is ushered in backstage, where he gets to chat up other competitors. Including Dan! Yep, he's back and he's pissed. Didn't expect him as a fighting contestant, but oh well.
The tournament organizer announces the start of the tournament, and everyone leaves. But this mysterious hooded man stops Fei, and comments on how he's eager to see him and Dan duke it out. What a weirdo, lol.
With the tournament kicking off, Bart quietly opens one of the waterway's grates and heads in. Welp. The plan is officially in motion. It's time to rescue aprincess grand pope!
But how exactly will this rescue go? Will Fei be able to draw enough crowds? Can he win his way through the tournament? And what of Bart? Will he get to Margie in time? Will Shakhan extract knowledge of the Jasper? And will Ramsus stay out of the way, or foil their plan? Find out all this and more next time!
Video: Bledavik
We finally get control over Bart's ship. This doesn't actually open up much, it can only travel through the desert and we aren't obstructed by it exactly. Kislev has tight security on their border, so we can't visit their side. Nothing to do but to steer it to the Avehian capital then.
Upon entering the city, we're greeted by a huge plane flying into it.
The plane hovers down into an underground hangar.
We then cut to its bridge, where we see its captain, Ramsus, and his secretary, Miang, complaining about their arrival being apparently lackluster. They're going to meet Shakhan and one of his generals, Vanderkaum.
Outside, Shakhan tries to butter them up, but Ramsus doesn't listen. Instead, he walks up to his general and berates him for his recent failures. He openly despises him, thinking him too brutish and too focused on raw displays of force over proper strategizing.
Shakhan accompanies Ramsus as he paces deeper into the base, talking about an upcoming ceremony to celebrate his country's 500th year. Ramsus, continuing to ignore him, pointedly asks him about the Fatima Jasper, the key to Bart's royal family's treasure.
Shakhan misinterprets this as a query for their recently excavated weapon at first, but after Ramsus clarifies his question, he replies that he hasn't been successful finding the other half of the Jasper.
Ramsus, continuing to be pointy, then asks if he's been taking proper care of Margie. He doesn't want to have her be mishandled by anyone. Shakhan reassures him that he has been behaving well with her, and knows that he dislikes indiscipline.
Ramsus and Miang then meet Margie in her room. He asks her about the Jasper, but she denies having any knowledge of the missing piece, and then complains about how she hasn't been able to eat well since her capture. Ramsus decides to humor her by promising to get her favorite cake next time, and asks her for any further wishes, but she only wants to return to her hometown. Relatable, lol.
Then we zoom out, and it turns out, Shakhan was spying on them all along! He's worried that Ramsus knows about the Fatima Jasper, and suspects a leak among his staff. His concern makes him order his assistant to force a truth serum on Margie as soon as possible, as he wants to find the Jasper before Ramsus does.
We leave that ominous moment behind and are treated to the grand sight of Bledavik's bazaar! This city is arguably the first "real" city of this game, and it has a lot of genuine flavor to it, authentically capturing the hustle and bustle of a bazaar city.
We find Bart's contact while jumping across the rooftops. She's a nun from Nisan, and she's been trying to collect information on Margie's whereabouts. So far, she hasn't been successful at finding much, besides the fact that she's being held somewhere in the royal palace. Time for the gang to go snooping!
I must point out that the game has a wonderful way of presenting city exploration: big cities like Bledavik get an overworld of their own, with notable spots marked on them. This helps sell the idea of traversing a huge, built up city without the tedium of having to actually navigate one. It's a nice idea, and more RPGs could stand to take it.
It doesn't take long for them to discover that the city is hosting a tournament to celebrate its 500th anniversary. Citan makes a daring plan - have Fei join the tournament and put up a grand show to distract security, creating an opening for Bart to swoop in and find Margie. There's just the matter of finding that opening...
And, sure enough, they find it soon, in the form of a grate to a waterway leading to the castle. Only problem is, said grate has been locked for a long while, and the key is on a boy who loves hiding around the city.
It takes a bit of searching, but the team eventually catches him hiding behind some barrels. What a cheeky boy! He reveals that he had once accidentally fallen into the waterway, and the grate had been locked since then. As for the key, well, actually he doesn't have it. Thankfully, he does know of who does, and it's not too hard to find him - he's sitting at a corner near the grate itself!
He's only too happy to learn that the team is trying to break in to rescue Margie - as you might imagine, Shakhan is a crude despot, and nobody is all too keen on his rule. With the plan fully laid up, the party sleeps, eager to begin working on Margie's rescue.
The next day, Fei and Citan head for the tournament grounds, which are right outside the royal palace. Fei is ushered in backstage, where he gets to chat up other competitors. Including Dan! Yep, he's back and he's pissed. Didn't expect him as a fighting contestant, but oh well.
The tournament organizer announces the start of the tournament, and everyone leaves. But this mysterious hooded man stops Fei, and comments on how he's eager to see him and Dan duke it out. What a weirdo, lol.
With the tournament kicking off, Bart quietly opens one of the waterway's grates and heads in. Welp. The plan is officially in motion. It's time to rescue a
But how exactly will this rescue go? Will Fei be able to draw enough crowds? Can he win his way through the tournament? And what of Bart? Will he get to Margie in time? Will Shakhan extract knowledge of the Jasper? And will Ramsus stay out of the way, or foil their plan? Find out all this and more next time!
And if I'm remembering correctly, this isn't even the really bad obligatory sewer level we're about to see.
(Unrelated: I'm playing Baten Kaitos Origins, and it's actually really interesting how much the overworld maps in that game take from the "city" overworld here.)
(Unrelated: I'm playing Baten Kaitos Origins, and it's actually really interesting how much the overworld maps in that game take from the "city" overworld here.)
I know exactly which level you're talking about, lol.
Interesting....tell me more!
The ones from the TMNT games?Is there such a thing as a good sewer level?
Fair point.
So, an example of a world map in Baten Kaitos: It's got the same inverted pyramids for the points of interest you can enter, and the extensive additional city areas that are there, but inaccessible. It gives the impression of larger, more realistic settlements while still limiting what you need to interact with.
Cool, nice to see at least one developer picked up the idea, lol.
Stealth Mission - Part 10
Video: The Tournament
Alright, it's time for a tournament!
But not before a nice little nationalist speech by our good friend Shakhan. Like most nationalist speeches, it sounds nice until you start paying attention to the implications. Yeah...he's definitely not a good guy at all...
Ramsus hilariously walks in just to curtly wish him goodbye. Shakhan tries to invite him to watch the tournament, but he bluntly refuses, lol.
Miang attempts to soothe things over, but Ramsus, continuing to be a sharp aleck, delivers this absolutely amazing line! With Shakhan so thoroughly humiliated, he has no choice but to silently watch him strut away. Thankfully for him, Miang does choose to stick around and offer him some company.
She's even impressed by Fei's physique, catching sight of him just before his first match! Heh, well I doubt they're ever going to end up together, but who knows.
And so, we begin the first battle of the tournament! Gonzalez here is a fairly straightforward opponent. His one gimmick is to retaliate against unique combos with his own powerful strikes. But aside from that, he doesn't really have much going for him, and is soon thoroughly wacked out of the tournament!
Annnnd then we cut back to Bart, who's busy navigating the waterways.
Yes, this game has two gameplay segments play out in parallel, and yes, Fei's performance in the tournament does influence how Bart's part plays out. It's a pretty cool concept, even if each segment is admittedly a little simplistic on its own.
There's not a lot interesting in the waterways, despite its looks. Bart can take a peek at some places, like the aquarium at the restaurant or the pool, but he has a cousin to rescue, so he just heads straight for the palace.
Once there, he meets the caretaker, who gives him a warm welcome! Well, sort of. He's rather senile and rambles on about the good ol' days, but he does recognize Bart as the king's son. Vaguely.
Bart, after a somewhat confusing conversation, heads up into the palace proper. But before he gets there, we cut to Fei's second match, with Big Joe as his opponent. He was the punk rocker we met back in...Dazil. Yeah. He's kind of a recurring mascot.
As for his combat performance, he hits quite feebly himself. The problem is his fans, who are only too eager to throw confetti at him to considerably heal him up, or soda cans at Fei to noticeably wound him. Both of these moves are random, and there's not much to do in response, except to appropriately heal and go on the offensive, depending on the situation. Luckily, they didn't play too rough, and so defeating Joe was rather trivial, if time consuming.
We then cut back to Bart, who's now in the palace proper! This is where this update's titular "stealth mission" begins, as Bart has to sneak through the palace while avoiding the guards, else they'll run to him and trigger a fight. At least, that's the theory. In practice, the guards don't hit very hard, and Bart needs the XP for an upcoming fight, so you're actually encouraged to fail the stealth here. Bizarre.
Also, Bart's victory pose is quite awesome. There's something really adorable about his exaggerated thumbs up, lol.
There are some amusing conversations to be enjoyed in the palace's rooms, though once again, Bart can't really stop for a chit chat, he's on a timed mission. The palace is honestly pretty well detailed actually, with lots of well decorated rooms and a fair number of non hostile people inhabiting them.
Bart enters the palace's main hall and checks out its second floor, prompting yet another cut back to the tournament! This time, Fei faces Scud, a pharmacist who chooses to fight with their medicines rather than raw force. They can either heal themselves, deal damage, or inflict statuses with their wide bevy of drugs. They can also just choose to throw an endless supply of knives and deal pathetic damage.
The statuses can get a little awkward, but otherwise, this is yet another easy opponent. Trust me, there will be an actual challenging opponent soon. Lol.
Cutting back to Bart again, he fights a few more guards and sneaks into the palace's library, where he learns a bit more about Bledavik's history. Apparently, it was originally just a castle built to protect an underground spring, the city sprung up because the people living around the desert found it a convenient source of water and protection.
Also there's a Shakhan loyalist blatantly trying to rewrite history and discard anything inconvenient to his rule. Ah, good ol' governmental manipulation...
This part of Bart's adventure is cut pretty short however, as up next is Fei's semifinal match against none else than Dan! Dan is pissed as hell, and seeks revenge for the destruction of Lahan!
However, we're...not going to fight him.
Dan's attacks are, as you'd expect from a kid, all rather pathetic, with the exception of this hilariously over the top mind laser. Anyhow, as a friend of mine following this LP elsewhere told me, Dan is not actually capable of killing Fei, unless you aren't attentive enough. Simply heal and defend enough, and eventually...
Dan gives up, feeling rather dissatisfied at the passivity of Fei, and throws him a memento of the Lahan incident - Alice's wedding dress! It's not that strong defensively, as you might expect, but it provides a decent bit of magic defense. And yes, Fei can put it on, why do you ask?
Anyway, back to Bart. He meets a few officials wholeheartedly supporting his return, and hilariously ends up in the same room Shakhan was spying on Margie from. In fact he can use the camera himself, but well, it's better if he physically gets to her room first. So he continues to navigate the castle's central hall...
And we cut to the final match, Fei pitted against the blue cloaked, mysterious man! There's a slight problem, however...
The cloaked man, styling himself "Wiseman", effortlessly dodges all of Fei's attacks! He's effectively invincible. Worse of all, though, he doesn't bother fighting back, either.
Naturally, the spectators are bored, and demand a proper fight. But Wiseman begins talking to Fei, pointedly asking him why he fights.
Fei, taken aback by the sudden questioning, refuses to answer him. In turn, he mocks Fei for being too directionless. Fei, frustrated, tries throwing another punch, but Wiseman effortlessly evades it, like all of his other attacks. He then backhandedly compliments him for superficially regaining his strength, at least physically, and recovering from his wounds as a child.
Fei, surprised, tries to ask him about his own backstory, but Wiseman, realizing that he's spoken too much, quickly bows out of the fight, to the consternation of everyone else. The referee, taken back by the clusterfuck unfolding on the arena, quickly declares Fei winner to save face!
We cut back to Bart, for the last time, and, after a minor scuffle with some guards, he finds Margie at last! She's overjoyed to see him, and wastes no time accompanying him on the way out.
Alas, Ramsus and Miang catch them almost immediately. Welp.
What shall happen next? Shall Bart and Margie leave safely? Will they be both held prisoner? And what of Fei and Citan? Shall they mount a rescue? Or are Aveh's hopes at an end? Find out all of this and more, next time!
Video: The Tournament
Alright, it's time for a tournament!
But not before a nice little nationalist speech by our good friend Shakhan. Like most nationalist speeches, it sounds nice until you start paying attention to the implications. Yeah...he's definitely not a good guy at all...
Ramsus hilariously walks in just to curtly wish him goodbye. Shakhan tries to invite him to watch the tournament, but he bluntly refuses, lol.
Miang attempts to soothe things over, but Ramsus, continuing to be a sharp aleck, delivers this absolutely amazing line! With Shakhan so thoroughly humiliated, he has no choice but to silently watch him strut away. Thankfully for him, Miang does choose to stick around and offer him some company.
She's even impressed by Fei's physique, catching sight of him just before his first match! Heh, well I doubt they're ever going to end up together, but who knows.
And so, we begin the first battle of the tournament! Gonzalez here is a fairly straightforward opponent. His one gimmick is to retaliate against unique combos with his own powerful strikes. But aside from that, he doesn't really have much going for him, and is soon thoroughly wacked out of the tournament!
Annnnd then we cut back to Bart, who's busy navigating the waterways.
Yes, this game has two gameplay segments play out in parallel, and yes, Fei's performance in the tournament does influence how Bart's part plays out. It's a pretty cool concept, even if each segment is admittedly a little simplistic on its own.
There's not a lot interesting in the waterways, despite its looks. Bart can take a peek at some places, like the aquarium at the restaurant or the pool, but he has a cousin to rescue, so he just heads straight for the palace.
Once there, he meets the caretaker, who gives him a warm welcome! Well, sort of. He's rather senile and rambles on about the good ol' days, but he does recognize Bart as the king's son. Vaguely.
Bart, after a somewhat confusing conversation, heads up into the palace proper. But before he gets there, we cut to Fei's second match, with Big Joe as his opponent. He was the punk rocker we met back in...Dazil. Yeah. He's kind of a recurring mascot.
As for his combat performance, he hits quite feebly himself. The problem is his fans, who are only too eager to throw confetti at him to considerably heal him up, or soda cans at Fei to noticeably wound him. Both of these moves are random, and there's not much to do in response, except to appropriately heal and go on the offensive, depending on the situation. Luckily, they didn't play too rough, and so defeating Joe was rather trivial, if time consuming.
We then cut back to Bart, who's now in the palace proper! This is where this update's titular "stealth mission" begins, as Bart has to sneak through the palace while avoiding the guards, else they'll run to him and trigger a fight. At least, that's the theory. In practice, the guards don't hit very hard, and Bart needs the XP for an upcoming fight, so you're actually encouraged to fail the stealth here. Bizarre.
Also, Bart's victory pose is quite awesome. There's something really adorable about his exaggerated thumbs up, lol.
There are some amusing conversations to be enjoyed in the palace's rooms, though once again, Bart can't really stop for a chit chat, he's on a timed mission. The palace is honestly pretty well detailed actually, with lots of well decorated rooms and a fair number of non hostile people inhabiting them.
Bart enters the palace's main hall and checks out its second floor, prompting yet another cut back to the tournament! This time, Fei faces Scud, a pharmacist who chooses to fight with their medicines rather than raw force. They can either heal themselves, deal damage, or inflict statuses with their wide bevy of drugs. They can also just choose to throw an endless supply of knives and deal pathetic damage.
The statuses can get a little awkward, but otherwise, this is yet another easy opponent. Trust me, there will be an actual challenging opponent soon. Lol.
Cutting back to Bart again, he fights a few more guards and sneaks into the palace's library, where he learns a bit more about Bledavik's history. Apparently, it was originally just a castle built to protect an underground spring, the city sprung up because the people living around the desert found it a convenient source of water and protection.
Also there's a Shakhan loyalist blatantly trying to rewrite history and discard anything inconvenient to his rule. Ah, good ol' governmental manipulation...
This part of Bart's adventure is cut pretty short however, as up next is Fei's semifinal match against none else than Dan! Dan is pissed as hell, and seeks revenge for the destruction of Lahan!
However, we're...not going to fight him.
Dan's attacks are, as you'd expect from a kid, all rather pathetic, with the exception of this hilariously over the top mind laser. Anyhow, as a friend of mine following this LP elsewhere told me, Dan is not actually capable of killing Fei, unless you aren't attentive enough. Simply heal and defend enough, and eventually...
Dan gives up, feeling rather dissatisfied at the passivity of Fei, and throws him a memento of the Lahan incident - Alice's wedding dress! It's not that strong defensively, as you might expect, but it provides a decent bit of magic defense. And yes, Fei can put it on, why do you ask?
Anyway, back to Bart. He meets a few officials wholeheartedly supporting his return, and hilariously ends up in the same room Shakhan was spying on Margie from. In fact he can use the camera himself, but well, it's better if he physically gets to her room first. So he continues to navigate the castle's central hall...
And we cut to the final match, Fei pitted against the blue cloaked, mysterious man! There's a slight problem, however...
The cloaked man, styling himself "Wiseman", effortlessly dodges all of Fei's attacks! He's effectively invincible. Worse of all, though, he doesn't bother fighting back, either.
Naturally, the spectators are bored, and demand a proper fight. But Wiseman begins talking to Fei, pointedly asking him why he fights.
Fei, taken aback by the sudden questioning, refuses to answer him. In turn, he mocks Fei for being too directionless. Fei, frustrated, tries throwing another punch, but Wiseman effortlessly evades it, like all of his other attacks. He then backhandedly compliments him for superficially regaining his strength, at least physically, and recovering from his wounds as a child.
Fei, surprised, tries to ask him about his own backstory, but Wiseman, realizing that he's spoken too much, quickly bows out of the fight, to the consternation of everyone else. The referee, taken back by the clusterfuck unfolding on the arena, quickly declares Fei winner to save face!
We cut back to Bart, for the last time, and, after a minor scuffle with some guards, he finds Margie at last! She's overjoyed to see him, and wastes no time accompanying him on the way out.
Alas, Ramsus and Miang catch them almost immediately. Welp.
What shall happen next? Shall Bart and Margie leave safely? Will they be both held prisoner? And what of Fei and Citan? Shall they mount a rescue? Or are Aveh's hopes at an end? Find out all of this and more, next time!
So if you fight back against Dan here, do you cut off future plot points with him?
I’m also reminded watching the video, both frikkin gorgeous the sprite animation in this game is, but also how tedious it can get at points like this when the optimal move is just to spam the same long multi-hit special combo over and over again.
I’m also reminded watching the video, both frikkin gorgeous the sprite animation in this game is, but also how tedious it can get at points like this when the optimal move is just to spam the same long multi-hit special combo over and over again.
No, you just don't get the wedding dress.
BTW, while we're on the subject of the wedding dress, my personal theory on why it's unisex is that its gender flags were somehow switched with the Pilot Uniform that Elly starts with.
As far as I know, not really. But Dan is a fairly minor character anyway.
Only too true lol. You don't really play this game for the gameplay, you play it for the gorgeous environments, pretty animations, and of course, the story.
So I guess that means he doesn't use headbutts?
Sadly not. I guess he wants to keep his pretty little baldhead pristine, lol. Which, valid tbh.
Escape! - Part 11
Last time we checked, Bart and Margie were in a spot.
Ramsus, seeing Bart unwilling to give Margie back, pulls out his sword. But Miang tries to negotiate a deal with him - he could get back his kingdom and oust Shakhan if he gave Margie back to them. She explains that Shakhan is naught but their pawn, and they don't care too much about who rules Aveh, so long as they're cooperative to their interests.
Bart, of course, finds such an offer inacceptable, and so squares off against Ramsus!
Miang and Margie both stand in the sidelines, being untargetable but offering support to their respective sides. The support comes mostly in the form of small heals, though Miang is also capable of clearing out status effects, thus countering Bart's accuracy debuff.
Aside from that little detail, this fight is absurdly simple. Ramsus slashes a few times, then enters a defensive stance. Hitting him during said stance triggers a massive counterattack, so all there's to do is to hold back and heal when he's defending, and attack while he's attacking. Simple, right?
Eventually, Fei jumps in and delivers a huge punch, knocking Ramsus to the floor! Fei and Bart try to catch up with each other, but Ramsus, after quickly getting back on his feet, interrupts them both, commenting on how Fei's fighting style strangely reminds him of someone...
We briefly flashback to a strange red clothed man pulverizing robots barehanded. Ramsus, recovering from his surprise, boldly challenges the two.
Of course, fighting him with two characters only makes him that much easier. The fight itself barely changes, and between Fei's chi based healing and Margie's healing spells, it's hard to actually lose the battle.
Ramsus, collapsing once again, begins pondering who Fei could be. We briefly flashback to someone talking about Fei being their child, which spooks him! But before he can do anything about that, Fei delivers a strong knockout blow, giving Margie an opportunity to hurl some smoke and get them out!
They quickly hurry into the elevator as it springs open, taking it downwards! We linger on Ramsus developing a bit of an existential dread, wondering if Fei's presence makes him "worthless" or a "reject". Hmm. Seems like someone here has had some unpleasant memories of their past.
Back to the trio, they chatter a bit about their current escape plan. It turns out neither of them know where the elevator leads, they just have to hope they get lucky. Lol.
Unfortunately for them, it leads to Gebler's secret base, where a bunch of soldiers are ready to arrest them! Eek! Gotta admit though, the running animation on those soldiers is extremely hilarious, especially when they run in perfectly straight lines, lol.
Fortunately, they lose the guards by hiding in Elly's office, though not without Bart throwing some fits about her being a Gebler officer. He continues to throw suspicions about her, and Fei through association, which prompts Elly to share her adventures with Fei, and also apologize for the incident at Lahan. Fei instead apologizes for becoming angry and lashing out at her.
That out of the way, Fei explains why he's with Bart: he's trying to help him rescue his cousin, Margie. Elly, understanding the situation, shows them an escape route.
Also Margie can sense people's nature or something. She hilariously insists that Elly must be a good person, because she's offering to help. Bart, still being very untrusting, snaps back at her. But with both Fei and Margie eliciting to follow her, he has no choice but to obey and fall back behind them.
Elly, true to her word, leads them to a gear hangar, and gives them the code to launching any of the parked gears. Fei tries to persuade her to leave Gebler, as he thinks she doesn't fit in such an evil organization, but she firmly declines, choosing to stick to her duty.
They pick a robot and quickly leave! Ramsus tries to set up a search party, but is dissuaded from doing so by the doctor, who sends him a message in secret. Convenient! Seems like the doctor may have deeper ties to Gebler than he lets on.
With the trio safely back at the ship, Sigurd asks Margie why she let herself voluntarily get captured by Shakhan. It turns out, they had arrested some members of her sect, and she turned herself in to free them. Sigurd is rather skeptical of this, and comments that it was most likely a false rumor intentionally spread to make her expose herself to capture, but Maison tells him to calm himself and not be too rude to her, thinking her actions justified as she greatly cares for her sect.
Bart, dissatisfied, yells at Marge for having needlessly put herself in danger. Marge then replies back that she only did what she thought was right, and that, with them executing her grandmom and mom, she couldn't bear to see more people die for her.
With that awkward fact brought up, the conversation abruptly stalls out, with Maison sheepishly offering to show Margie her room. As she leaves, Bart boldly tells her to not risk herself again, and to tell them if she faced such a situation again. She agrees, and heads below deck. Sigurd instructs Bart to be gentle with her, as she's been through a stressful time.
Ah well. Let's just try and relish our victo-what's that?
It's a strange stuffed toy that's hilariously preventing them from accessing the bridge. Wait what?
It's a...talking stuffed toy? Which they can't move? Huh?
Aha. It's a sentient animal capable of speech. Or perhaps just a very furry robot. Well okay then.
The animal, Chu-Chu, briefly hits on Fei in a comical (and somewhat disturbing) fashion, and Bart jokingly walks out of the room to give them some romantic time together.
Once alone with Fei, Margie reveals her true motives - she wanted to help Bart by turning herself in and stalling Shakhan for as long as she could, but she regrets that it didn't work, because in the end Bart decided to rescue her. She then recalls how, when they were first captured by Shakhan, Bart had protected her and had taken the beatings meant for her. That moment left a strong impression on her, and she's been trying to make up for it ever since.
With that sob worthy moment out of the way, we are free to pilot the Yggdrasil again! Join me next time as we head to Margie's home city, the holy city of Nisan, and perhaps uncover yet more revelations. See y'all then.
Last time we checked, Bart and Margie were in a spot.
Ramsus, seeing Bart unwilling to give Margie back, pulls out his sword. But Miang tries to negotiate a deal with him - he could get back his kingdom and oust Shakhan if he gave Margie back to them. She explains that Shakhan is naught but their pawn, and they don't care too much about who rules Aveh, so long as they're cooperative to their interests.
Bart, of course, finds such an offer inacceptable, and so squares off against Ramsus!
Miang and Margie both stand in the sidelines, being untargetable but offering support to their respective sides. The support comes mostly in the form of small heals, though Miang is also capable of clearing out status effects, thus countering Bart's accuracy debuff.
Aside from that little detail, this fight is absurdly simple. Ramsus slashes a few times, then enters a defensive stance. Hitting him during said stance triggers a massive counterattack, so all there's to do is to hold back and heal when he's defending, and attack while he's attacking. Simple, right?
Eventually, Fei jumps in and delivers a huge punch, knocking Ramsus to the floor! Fei and Bart try to catch up with each other, but Ramsus, after quickly getting back on his feet, interrupts them both, commenting on how Fei's fighting style strangely reminds him of someone...
We briefly flashback to a strange red clothed man pulverizing robots barehanded. Ramsus, recovering from his surprise, boldly challenges the two.
Of course, fighting him with two characters only makes him that much easier. The fight itself barely changes, and between Fei's chi based healing and Margie's healing spells, it's hard to actually lose the battle.
Ramsus, collapsing once again, begins pondering who Fei could be. We briefly flashback to someone talking about Fei being their child, which spooks him! But before he can do anything about that, Fei delivers a strong knockout blow, giving Margie an opportunity to hurl some smoke and get them out!
They quickly hurry into the elevator as it springs open, taking it downwards! We linger on Ramsus developing a bit of an existential dread, wondering if Fei's presence makes him "worthless" or a "reject". Hmm. Seems like someone here has had some unpleasant memories of their past.
Back to the trio, they chatter a bit about their current escape plan. It turns out neither of them know where the elevator leads, they just have to hope they get lucky. Lol.
Unfortunately for them, it leads to Gebler's secret base, where a bunch of soldiers are ready to arrest them! Eek! Gotta admit though, the running animation on those soldiers is extremely hilarious, especially when they run in perfectly straight lines, lol.
Fortunately, they lose the guards by hiding in Elly's office, though not without Bart throwing some fits about her being a Gebler officer. He continues to throw suspicions about her, and Fei through association, which prompts Elly to share her adventures with Fei, and also apologize for the incident at Lahan. Fei instead apologizes for becoming angry and lashing out at her.
That out of the way, Fei explains why he's with Bart: he's trying to help him rescue his cousin, Margie. Elly, understanding the situation, shows them an escape route.
Also Margie can sense people's nature or something. She hilariously insists that Elly must be a good person, because she's offering to help. Bart, still being very untrusting, snaps back at her. But with both Fei and Margie eliciting to follow her, he has no choice but to obey and fall back behind them.
Elly, true to her word, leads them to a gear hangar, and gives them the code to launching any of the parked gears. Fei tries to persuade her to leave Gebler, as he thinks she doesn't fit in such an evil organization, but she firmly declines, choosing to stick to her duty.
They pick a robot and quickly leave! Ramsus tries to set up a search party, but is dissuaded from doing so by the doctor, who sends him a message in secret. Convenient! Seems like the doctor may have deeper ties to Gebler than he lets on.
With the trio safely back at the ship, Sigurd asks Margie why she let herself voluntarily get captured by Shakhan. It turns out, they had arrested some members of her sect, and she turned herself in to free them. Sigurd is rather skeptical of this, and comments that it was most likely a false rumor intentionally spread to make her expose herself to capture, but Maison tells him to calm himself and not be too rude to her, thinking her actions justified as she greatly cares for her sect.
Bart, dissatisfied, yells at Marge for having needlessly put herself in danger. Marge then replies back that she only did what she thought was right, and that, with them executing her grandmom and mom, she couldn't bear to see more people die for her.
With that awkward fact brought up, the conversation abruptly stalls out, with Maison sheepishly offering to show Margie her room. As she leaves, Bart boldly tells her to not risk herself again, and to tell them if she faced such a situation again. She agrees, and heads below deck. Sigurd instructs Bart to be gentle with her, as she's been through a stressful time.
Ah well. Let's just try and relish our victo-what's that?
It's a strange stuffed toy that's hilariously preventing them from accessing the bridge. Wait what?
It's a...talking stuffed toy? Which they can't move? Huh?
Aha. It's a sentient animal capable of speech. Or perhaps just a very furry robot. Well okay then.
The animal, Chu-Chu, briefly hits on Fei in a comical (and somewhat disturbing) fashion, and Bart jokingly walks out of the room to give them some romantic time together.
Once alone with Fei, Margie reveals her true motives - she wanted to help Bart by turning herself in and stalling Shakhan for as long as she could, but she regrets that it didn't work, because in the end Bart decided to rescue her. She then recalls how, when they were first captured by Shakhan, Bart had protected her and had taken the beatings meant for her. That moment left a strong impression on her, and she's been trying to make up for it ever since.
With that sob worthy moment out of the way, we are free to pilot the Yggdrasil again! Join me next time as we head to Margie's home city, the holy city of Nisan, and perhaps uncover yet more revelations. See y'all then.
As a side note, that led to Bart developing a fear of whips, which Sigurd and Maison helped to cure by training him in the use of the whip, which is why that's his weapon of choice. At least, I remember reading that somewhere…
Divine Conspiracies - Part 12
Video: Nisan
We set off for Nisan! But not before Sigurd pondering the presence of Ramsus at Bledavik. He knows that he's not any random general, but the commander in chief of Solaris himself! His existence here meant that the empire had some deeper interest in Aveh beyond his ancestral treasure.
At Nisan's secret dock, Citan finally rejoins the team. He and Sigurd both seem rather familiar with Ramsus and Miang, with the latter in particular making Sigurd concerned. It seems like she has some sort of fearful power that she's hiding from the world. They're both hiding their suspicions from Bart, because they don't want to make him worried, not when he has a kingdom to reclaim!
The residents of Nisan warmly welcome Bart, and inform him of the military situation. It turns out the town has been gaining lots of supporters from people fed up with Shakhan, but at the same time, news of Aveh's armies marching towards them has made them uneasy, and some of the residents are taking refuge in the nearby mountains.
And finally, we arrive at the town itself! It's a small town built around a grand lake, with its main feature, the grand cathedral, located on an island at its center. A very picturesque location indeed!
Margie rushes to the cathedral, where she's received with utmost joy by her sisters. After a rather emotional reunion, she invites Fei and Citan to tour the cathedral with her.
As you might imagine, the cathedral is quite tall indeed.
Quite imposing in its sheer scale, too. Margie lets her playful side shine here, taking a few jabs at Bart for his childishness.
But it's not long before she snaps back to seriousness. She depicts the cathedral's main focus of worship - two angels with a single wing each. According to her, God intentionally made humans imperfect and incomplete, so that they would be forced to aid each other, and these statues were a grand representation of that fact. Citan hilariously ends up overanalyzing them, and Bart complains about God needlessly making things too complicated. Hah.
Finally, Margie takes them to the topmost floor of the cathedral, housing the room dedicated to her religion's founder, Sophia. There, Citan and Fei discover something very curious: not only does Sophia in her portrait look a lot like Elly, the portrait looks a lot like Fei's art! Not only that, the painting was also left unfinished at its bottom edge for some reason. Also, when Fei leaves, he briefly has visions of a past self painting Sophia! Peculiar.
Sadly, neither Margie nor her sisters can help out in this matter - almost all material pertaining to Sophia was lost over the years, her portrait is the only thing they have. Unfortunate, and also rather peculiar. How did a religion around her teachings develop if all of the written material about her was lost? And, for that matter, how did her portrait survive while her writings didn't? Ah well, yet more mysteries to uncover.
Sigurd sets up a private meeting in town to discuss their next course of action. Bart takes this as an opportunity to figure out why he knows so much about Solaris and Gebler. It turns out, both he and Citan are former officers of Solaris seeking refuge on their world. Solaris is a technologically advanced yet evil empire that blatantly discriminates against surface dwellers and flagrantly abuses them as manual labor and experimental subjects.
Despite their abuse, they stuck around because Ramsus had promised them a fair, meritocratic system where they'd be able to excel, despite their low status due to their birth. However, the meritocracy turned out to be little better than Solaris' existing hierarchical system; it was still an exclusionary system meant only to benefit a few people, only instead of using birth, it used "performance" as an arbitrary sorting criteria.
Bart, taken aback by Solaris' atrocities, walks outside to ponder things. Citan thankfully consoles him and points him to his next course of action - reclaiming his kingdom to gain a strong power base to oppose Solaris. Bart, seeing the obvious wisdom in this, immediately accepts, and they then travel to the town hall to plan out their coup.
But that shall be for next time. Until then!
Video: Nisan
We set off for Nisan! But not before Sigurd pondering the presence of Ramsus at Bledavik. He knows that he's not any random general, but the commander in chief of Solaris himself! His existence here meant that the empire had some deeper interest in Aveh beyond his ancestral treasure.
At Nisan's secret dock, Citan finally rejoins the team. He and Sigurd both seem rather familiar with Ramsus and Miang, with the latter in particular making Sigurd concerned. It seems like she has some sort of fearful power that she's hiding from the world. They're both hiding their suspicions from Bart, because they don't want to make him worried, not when he has a kingdom to reclaim!
The residents of Nisan warmly welcome Bart, and inform him of the military situation. It turns out the town has been gaining lots of supporters from people fed up with Shakhan, but at the same time, news of Aveh's armies marching towards them has made them uneasy, and some of the residents are taking refuge in the nearby mountains.
And finally, we arrive at the town itself! It's a small town built around a grand lake, with its main feature, the grand cathedral, located on an island at its center. A very picturesque location indeed!
Margie rushes to the cathedral, where she's received with utmost joy by her sisters. After a rather emotional reunion, she invites Fei and Citan to tour the cathedral with her.
As you might imagine, the cathedral is quite tall indeed.
Quite imposing in its sheer scale, too. Margie lets her playful side shine here, taking a few jabs at Bart for his childishness.
But it's not long before she snaps back to seriousness. She depicts the cathedral's main focus of worship - two angels with a single wing each. According to her, God intentionally made humans imperfect and incomplete, so that they would be forced to aid each other, and these statues were a grand representation of that fact. Citan hilariously ends up overanalyzing them, and Bart complains about God needlessly making things too complicated. Hah.
Finally, Margie takes them to the topmost floor of the cathedral, housing the room dedicated to her religion's founder, Sophia. There, Citan and Fei discover something very curious: not only does Sophia in her portrait look a lot like Elly, the portrait looks a lot like Fei's art! Not only that, the painting was also left unfinished at its bottom edge for some reason. Also, when Fei leaves, he briefly has visions of a past self painting Sophia! Peculiar.
Sadly, neither Margie nor her sisters can help out in this matter - almost all material pertaining to Sophia was lost over the years, her portrait is the only thing they have. Unfortunate, and also rather peculiar. How did a religion around her teachings develop if all of the written material about her was lost? And, for that matter, how did her portrait survive while her writings didn't? Ah well, yet more mysteries to uncover.
Sigurd sets up a private meeting in town to discuss their next course of action. Bart takes this as an opportunity to figure out why he knows so much about Solaris and Gebler. It turns out, both he and Citan are former officers of Solaris seeking refuge on their world. Solaris is a technologically advanced yet evil empire that blatantly discriminates against surface dwellers and flagrantly abuses them as manual labor and experimental subjects.
Despite their abuse, they stuck around because Ramsus had promised them a fair, meritocratic system where they'd be able to excel, despite their low status due to their birth. However, the meritocracy turned out to be little better than Solaris' existing hierarchical system; it was still an exclusionary system meant only to benefit a few people, only instead of using birth, it used "performance" as an arbitrary sorting criteria.
Bart, taken aback by Solaris' atrocities, walks outside to ponder things. Citan thankfully consoles him and points him to his next course of action - reclaiming his kingdom to gain a strong power base to oppose Solaris. Bart, seeing the obvious wisdom in this, immediately accepts, and they then travel to the town hall to plan out their coup.
But that shall be for next time. Until then!
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Sorry for taking a bit of a hiatus from this, I've been busy with some irl projects, and have been using my gaming time to revisit Final Fantasy 6 again. I'll be trying to get back to this as soon as possible.
The Plan is Set! - Part 13
Citan gives a rundown of the current military situation. As expected, Bart's men are heavily outnumbered by the Avehian army. The latter have divided themselves into three groups, one supervising the path to Nisan, one guarding the capital, and one guarding the border with their rival nation, Kislev. Naturally, the latter two contain the bulk of their soldiers, with the Nisan group being merely a skeletal force.
He begins laying out his plan. The first step is to stage an attack on their Nisanian force with Kislev gears. Makes sense, it's the weakest force, and causing a diversion there would pull troops away from the other more important forces, especially the one guarding the capital.
Of course, the moral aspects of this move draws more than a few concerns, but Citan reassures them that he doesn't want Nisan to draw Aveh's ire, it's just that with their military situation being so bad, he needs to take some risks.
On to the next part of the plan. Citan mentions that the force at the Kislev border is the largest and strongest one, featuring an old yet mightily armed ship. This causes Bart to worry, but Citan reassures him that, despite everything he just said, dealing with it wouldn't be too hard - its commander, Vanderkaum, was demoted to the post because of his recent incompetence. He's apparently too old fashioned and too stubborn to adapt modern tactics, especially those involving gears. Not only that, his force also had its count of gears reduced.
Of course, it would not be wise to underestimate the force, despite all of that. So Citan suggests making Fei assault that force to keep them occupied. And here's where I start having objections. Why not have Fei leading the charge at the most important location, the capital? Why send him off to fight the border forces? What Citan is suggesting is essentially diluting the strength of Bart's force to fight a very uneven war.
Fei thinks this plan better than me, as he unhesitatingly agrees. Bart and Sigurd show concern, but he reassures them. Citan then urges them to conduct this plan as soon as possible, and Bart, in agreement, chooses the very next day.
He also utters these overtly enthusiastic words which, um, don't really inspire much confidence in me. Nor does the ominous music which announces the dawn of the next day.
But hey! At least Margie is here to mildly poke fun at Bart. That's good.
At the harbor, they go over the plan once more, before Margie and Bart tease each other over the latter soon becoming a king. The relationship between the two is genuinely very funny, and it's a little unfortunate that we won't be seeing much of Margie for a long while.
Once the party is gone, Agnes starts pushing the idea of the cousins marrying and fucking each other. Ugh, gross. Margie doesn't care much for the idea, but Agnes, ignoring her protests, keeps talking about how she's quickly maturing into a "beautiful woman" and how Bart won't be able to "ignore" her for much longer. Weird.
On the ship, Fei and his squad prepare to take off for their mission. But before Fei can leave, Bart stops him to express his concerns for him and also to get him to promise to take care of Margie if he dies. Uhh, you're really not helping the mood here, Bart.
There's a really brief CGI scene of Weltall being launched out of the ship, and then we cut to Citan visiting Maison in the middle of the night. Maison muses about how he may have burdened Bart too much in his childhood, and how it's sad that he barely got to know his home city.
Citan, after briefly consoling Maison, heads up to the deck, where he catches Bart and Sigurd having a heartfelt chat in the moonlight. It turns out Bart feels he isn't worthy to be king, but Sigurd insists that it doesn't matter - he's not loyal to him because he's the "rightful ruler", rather he fights for him because he likes him for who he is, and believes he should be restored to his rightful house.
Bart, reinvigorated by Sigurd's chat, vows to fight Shakhan with all his resolve. Sigurd takes this opportunity to mock Bart's poor hygiene, while Citan silently admires his talking skills from afar. This game really loves running through the entire gamut of emotions.
The very next scene is Ramsus suffering through a nightmare of the mysterious red man destroying his forces. We see Grahf silently observing everything in the distance, as the red man enters a red gear and begins destroying Ramsus' soldiers with even more ferocity, before descending on and killing Ramsus himself!
Ramsus, naturally disturbed by his nightmare, wakes up panting. Miang tries to reassure him, but he just walks away. She then senses Grahf's presence in the room, and calls him out amusingly.
Grahf veiledly threatens her to not plot against him, but she's clearly quite nonplussed. She lightly comments on how he seems to know about everything, and casually promises to not "steal" Fei and to cooperate with him. Damn shadowy people and their shadowy plans!
As if to deepen the engima, the next scene has the operator of Bart's ship comment on a mysterious presence underneath the sand. Before we learn much about it, news about the Avehian armies getting distracted and being sent away from the capital floods in, much to the delight of Bart. Maison, like me, feels uneasy, but Bart was never one to take things cautiously, and simply dismisses him. Welp.
We cut to Gebler's barracks, where the Gebler goons prove themselves very charming by mocking Elly, who's their commander, for being a woman. Great. The writers surely didn't spend any expense in making them sympathetic whatsoever.
Random mook sexism aside, this scene does have a purpose: it introduces a new gear that can apparently only be operated by people with strong psychic powers. Odds are, we'll be fighting it quite soon....
And with one final cut, we're thrust back into gameplay, with us getting control of Fei amongst his squad. Yeah, errr, the game is extremely heavy on its story, and since I did take a fairly long hiatus, I figured I'd get an extra long update out and get all of the setup out of the way, before seeing the payoff, aka the outcome of the plan itself. That shall be next time. See y'all then!
Citan gives a rundown of the current military situation. As expected, Bart's men are heavily outnumbered by the Avehian army. The latter have divided themselves into three groups, one supervising the path to Nisan, one guarding the capital, and one guarding the border with their rival nation, Kislev. Naturally, the latter two contain the bulk of their soldiers, with the Nisan group being merely a skeletal force.
He begins laying out his plan. The first step is to stage an attack on their Nisanian force with Kislev gears. Makes sense, it's the weakest force, and causing a diversion there would pull troops away from the other more important forces, especially the one guarding the capital.
Of course, the moral aspects of this move draws more than a few concerns, but Citan reassures them that he doesn't want Nisan to draw Aveh's ire, it's just that with their military situation being so bad, he needs to take some risks.
On to the next part of the plan. Citan mentions that the force at the Kislev border is the largest and strongest one, featuring an old yet mightily armed ship. This causes Bart to worry, but Citan reassures him that, despite everything he just said, dealing with it wouldn't be too hard - its commander, Vanderkaum, was demoted to the post because of his recent incompetence. He's apparently too old fashioned and too stubborn to adapt modern tactics, especially those involving gears. Not only that, his force also had its count of gears reduced.
Of course, it would not be wise to underestimate the force, despite all of that. So Citan suggests making Fei assault that force to keep them occupied. And here's where I start having objections. Why not have Fei leading the charge at the most important location, the capital? Why send him off to fight the border forces? What Citan is suggesting is essentially diluting the strength of Bart's force to fight a very uneven war.
Fei thinks this plan better than me, as he unhesitatingly agrees. Bart and Sigurd show concern, but he reassures them. Citan then urges them to conduct this plan as soon as possible, and Bart, in agreement, chooses the very next day.
He also utters these overtly enthusiastic words which, um, don't really inspire much confidence in me. Nor does the ominous music which announces the dawn of the next day.
But hey! At least Margie is here to mildly poke fun at Bart. That's good.
At the harbor, they go over the plan once more, before Margie and Bart tease each other over the latter soon becoming a king. The relationship between the two is genuinely very funny, and it's a little unfortunate that we won't be seeing much of Margie for a long while.
Once the party is gone, Agnes starts pushing the idea of the cousins marrying and fucking each other. Ugh, gross. Margie doesn't care much for the idea, but Agnes, ignoring her protests, keeps talking about how she's quickly maturing into a "beautiful woman" and how Bart won't be able to "ignore" her for much longer. Weird.
On the ship, Fei and his squad prepare to take off for their mission. But before Fei can leave, Bart stops him to express his concerns for him and also to get him to promise to take care of Margie if he dies. Uhh, you're really not helping the mood here, Bart.
There's a really brief CGI scene of Weltall being launched out of the ship, and then we cut to Citan visiting Maison in the middle of the night. Maison muses about how he may have burdened Bart too much in his childhood, and how it's sad that he barely got to know his home city.
Citan, after briefly consoling Maison, heads up to the deck, where he catches Bart and Sigurd having a heartfelt chat in the moonlight. It turns out Bart feels he isn't worthy to be king, but Sigurd insists that it doesn't matter - he's not loyal to him because he's the "rightful ruler", rather he fights for him because he likes him for who he is, and believes he should be restored to his rightful house.
Bart, reinvigorated by Sigurd's chat, vows to fight Shakhan with all his resolve. Sigurd takes this opportunity to mock Bart's poor hygiene, while Citan silently admires his talking skills from afar. This game really loves running through the entire gamut of emotions.
The very next scene is Ramsus suffering through a nightmare of the mysterious red man destroying his forces. We see Grahf silently observing everything in the distance, as the red man enters a red gear and begins destroying Ramsus' soldiers with even more ferocity, before descending on and killing Ramsus himself!
Ramsus, naturally disturbed by his nightmare, wakes up panting. Miang tries to reassure him, but he just walks away. She then senses Grahf's presence in the room, and calls him out amusingly.
Grahf veiledly threatens her to not plot against him, but she's clearly quite nonplussed. She lightly comments on how he seems to know about everything, and casually promises to not "steal" Fei and to cooperate with him. Damn shadowy people and their shadowy plans!
As if to deepen the engima, the next scene has the operator of Bart's ship comment on a mysterious presence underneath the sand. Before we learn much about it, news about the Avehian armies getting distracted and being sent away from the capital floods in, much to the delight of Bart. Maison, like me, feels uneasy, but Bart was never one to take things cautiously, and simply dismisses him. Welp.
We cut to Gebler's barracks, where the Gebler goons prove themselves very charming by mocking Elly, who's their commander, for being a woman. Great. The writers surely didn't spend any expense in making them sympathetic whatsoever.
Random mook sexism aside, this scene does have a purpose: it introduces a new gear that can apparently only be operated by people with strong psychic powers. Odds are, we'll be fighting it quite soon....
And with one final cut, we're thrust back into gameplay, with us getting control of Fei amongst his squad. Yeah, errr, the game is extremely heavy on its story, and since I did take a fairly long hiatus, I figured I'd get an extra long update out and get all of the setup out of the way, before seeing the payoff, aka the outcome of the plan itself. That shall be next time. See y'all then!
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
[deep frustrated sigh]
Anyway, Citan is kinda too good at everything, huh?
Yeah the writing for lady characters does show its age, though admittedly I've seen worse, and some of them do eventually get their own agency, despite all of the rather blatant sexism around them. Still does feel bad though.
And yeah, Citan is way more knowledgeable/important than he lets on. This will only get more blatant as the game goes on.
And yeah, Citan is way more knowledgeable/important than he lets on. This will only get more blatant as the game goes on.