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Episode 3: Live A Live
62 Plays2 years ago
Turnbased Tangent's episode on a generally unknown SNES game turned Switch remaster. Live A Live was originally a SNES JRPG in 1994 but was only released in Japan. It was recently remastered and released on the Switch. Check out what Poly and Kj had to say about this JRPG that was not on their radar for so long.
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Transcript
Introduction and Grandia Recap
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to episode three of turn-based tangents.
00:00:04
Speaker
We're going to actually do this a little differently than we would have under normal circumstances, because we did not cover the end of Grandia 1 on the last episode, because we had not both finished it.
Polly's Grandia Experience
00:00:19
Speaker
So I am really, really interested. Polly, I want to give you the floor to talk about it, because you finished it, and we chatted a little bit about it.
00:00:32
Speaker
Yeah, take it away. What did you think? So fun fact about the Grandia ending now that I've gone through this new game of alive, I forget a little bit of it, but we're going to try to remember this. But yeah, the ending sequence, like from when you get so talking a little bit about spoilers here, just for anybody who doesn't want Grandia spoiled, maybe just turn down the audio for this little bit.
00:00:58
Speaker
I'll make hand signals when we're going into our introduction for LiveAlive. So anyway, going into like Grandia's discussion of like the ending. So I had gotten, I thought I was a lot closer to the ending than I actually was. And it took me like three nights of playing Grandia.
00:01:18
Speaker
to finally actually beat it. I was not as close to the ending as I thought I was. And so I had just gotten like your final party member. And I honestly, she was one of my favorites. I really liked her. I don't know why, like her aesthetic looked really cute. She had like big elf ears. I mean, I was all for her, for her design.
Strategy and Gameplay in Grandia
00:01:39
Speaker
She was adorable and like, and then she's like comes in with like souped up magic and, but you could still level things up.
00:01:46
Speaker
which I was like unlocking moves and stuff like that, which comparing to KJ found out that he's like, oh, wait, what? And I had like these moves that he had never seen before, like one where you buff the entire party by one stat on everything. So like your attack, defense, movement, everything goes up by one. And you can literally just keep doing that just constantly. I built my characters in a very specific way.
00:02:14
Speaker
like everybody in my party had a very specific like use and that was how they like I played I'm not gonna lie I played grandia like you play lunar one it was like you have
00:02:32
Speaker
one primary damage dealer that you were using some of your other characters to buff that character, and then you have one other damage dealer, and that's it. Rap was my secondary damage dealer, and everyone else was there to keep Rap and Justin buffed and alive.
00:02:52
Speaker
that was the that was the way i played grandiou one like throughout the entire thing like and the more characters i got the easier it became because it was like oh now i can actually just do this like at the end justin was hitting like hitting for like 1500 like i was just like this isn't a problem justin just has ridiculously high attack and i'd have no problem
00:03:16
Speaker
Yeah and I feel like your strategy with like giving him the earth element really early on really helped because it was like strength plus one of everything he did which I didn't do that. So my Justin wasn't hitting as hard but I had leveled up my other characters like magics and stuff like that to do different abilities and it was kind of funny because like KJ basically just used the sword the entire time.
00:03:39
Speaker
for Justin, where I was switching to the mace and the axe all the time. So I got these crazy boobs and stuff. So it was really, really funny to compare on how different we had played this game in terms of battle.
Boss Battles and Ending Spoilers
00:03:53
Speaker
So when I got to the end sequence,
00:03:56
Speaker
Things went differently for me than it went for KJ. So like going through the end sequence and everything and all the plot points of it, I was just kind of like, I was just, it started to pick up really quickly and the ending, I do really, really like the whole ending system.
00:04:15
Speaker
like once you get to the base and you go through that and then you're like going through the layers and stuff. It got to a point where I was like, I was tired of grinding, but I kept still like, you know, I never ran away from a battle. So like all my magic was like super leveled up to the point where Liet had that crazy buff ability. And I didn't realize that until like phase one of the end buff.
00:04:44
Speaker
That's what that ability did.
00:04:48
Speaker
So like I used it against that and like the first stage of it and wiped him really, really quickly. And KJ was like, wait, what? Yeah, so hard on that form. And I beat it like stupid, quick and stupid easily. It was I didn't lose. I might have lost to that form like once. The real problem was like, no, I didn't lose. I didn't lose to it. It was that.
00:05:15
Speaker
You ended up with like one character alive. Justin was the only character that survived that fight. So yeah, it was a struggle. Just one, he was down to one character. I had all four of my characters alive, so I like took like pictures of it set to do it, but he's like, what the fuck? Yeah, that was...
00:05:35
Speaker
So you go you go through like so you're going you're basically going through this this uh uh creatures like body system like so you go through that uh and there's like some like final like rare items you could get through it and then you go into like phase one of the boss fight which you you like when you're playing the game i don't even need to like say who it is because you'll know who it is because it's literally the person they allude to since the like the beginning of the game that you're fighting and
00:06:01
Speaker
And so you go through it and he had like all these moves, but because I was like buffing and canceling him all the time, he never really got one of his annoying moves off. And so I was able to beat it fairly quickly. And I was like, really? You struggled here? And I shouldn't have worded it that way.
00:06:19
Speaker
Because the next phase KJ like wiped through it easily and I wiped I died in that phase and I regretted not saving in between Or not be like I hated that you can't save it between the forms. Oh a save point No, they don't Just save whenever right so I
00:06:42
Speaker
They're like, I'm literally the first, the first phase I had to go through it again. And, uh, only one character died. Um, because I went in like, Oh, this is easy. The first time this will be fine. And his RNG changed. So he was doing a few different moves. And so he ended up killing, uh, I think it was, uh, I think he ended up killing, um,
00:07:03
Speaker
um fina and so like just one character ended up dying whatever so then the next one i i made sure that i healed everything back up to max i did everything and i went in with the strategy of like okay i'm gonna like he has like he got his like main body and then like two pillars that keep summoning tentacles and what my mistake was the first time is that i didn't kill those things before like 30 tentacles were on the screen and just annihilating my party
00:07:29
Speaker
Oh no. So this time I like super buffed Justin and super buffed Rap and had them both like, or Fina sorry, and had them both literally destroying the technical spawns to the point that they didn't spawn any this time.
00:07:44
Speaker
The other thing, they never ever, I got even one spot off and then I beat the main like body. And then there's another form, which I will attest to being an absolute joke. Yeah, the last form was a joke. You didn't, you also didn't have the time stop ability, did you?
00:08:04
Speaker
no and see kj had this ability unlocked with fina where he could stop time for like two rounds you like two free two or three free turns so like it stops the bar for everyone except fina so i would just get it to a point where justin was close to attacking
00:08:24
Speaker
and then freeze time with Fina, buff Justin, and then hit the boss for stupid damage. And then I would just keep doing that. So I was able to isolate each part really quickly so they couldn't do that. They had some Delta attack thing. Yeah, it was wild.
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah. So like with that strategy, you were able to like annihilate the second four fairly easily, which means he didn't spawn out as tentacles because you kept like freezing time. So he didn't get that off, which was incredibly smart. I didn't have that ability. Like out of all my characters, uh, I leveled up Fina, like Fina, I didn't end up leveling up her healing until way later in the game. So like I leveled up Sue's healing and then I gave Sue's healing stats to rap.
00:09:13
Speaker
which was a bit of a mistake. But anyway, as instead of giving them to Fina and so her healing wasn't high enough to get this time stop move. But I had because I had leveled up.
00:09:25
Speaker
Justin so much with the sword, hammer, and axe, Justin had like a stupid, powerful, final attack move. Like that he would make himself and the entire party invincible for the character. You want to say, I'm cheating, but you were able to make your characters invincible. That sounds more cheap.
00:09:53
Speaker
So I did end up utilizing it, except for just for funsies after I beat the two tower things of the final boss, and then you have just the main body. I did it for that, just for shits and giggles. And I wiped them out in two turns. Literally, it was two attacks, even though he had so much health. And then it fuses into the other form. And this was hilarious, because all this other form did was stat debuffs. It doesn't attack. But it put me to sleep?
00:10:22
Speaker
And so I ended up being, because he doesn't attack, nobody woke
Themes and Final Thoughts on Grandia
00:10:26
Speaker
up. So it was like a half an hour of me being just asleep for the end boss fight. And I'm like, please just wake me up so I can kill this thing because it's not attacking me. It's not doing damage. It just keeps putting me to sleep. And it was putting my entire party to sleep. So nobody could attack. So the end form, that was an incredible joke for like an end form of this game. So it's third form.
00:10:50
Speaker
uh i was just asleep for like half of it and i'm going oh and i got real bad so by the time i revived i used uh i used justin's like if like invincible move because it also makes it so status elements doesn't affect your party and i just like one shot it i buffed him with everybody and then just one shot it did the thing with the boss like basically taking it like
00:11:14
Speaker
the other half of its health uh with just it was like 3 000 damage or something stupid like that and uh it was and i just kind of like laughed it was kind of wild um yeah what did you think of the ending like the actual ending
00:11:28
Speaker
so the okay so there's two parts to this ending that just kind of was like i okay it was very cliche of like everybody's happy now yeah kind of thing and it like so there was a character who died uh in the game that like really catapulted the plot forward in terms of like um like justin and fina kind of realizing what they had to do because uh because of this character's death and so
00:11:57
Speaker
uh like Lena's sister or whatever right so then when it got to okay when it got to the ending sequence and they had like beaded and stuff and like Justin and Fina are having this like little monologue and stuff and I'm like okay it switches to the general guy which again please don't look up these characters ages it'll make you very upset um but um it switches to him and then Fina's sister just miraculously for some reason that is not explained comes
00:12:27
Speaker
and i was like come on really this game is built on the power of friendship that's just it is literally the power of friendship revived
00:12:43
Speaker
And I'm just like, oh my goodness. So like no character ended up being dead. And then all your like previous party members and everybody like come in at the end and like see you and like victory and all this other stuff. And you're like, okay. And then it like fades and you get credits and stuff. So like, okay, awesome. That was, you know, like I would give it a solid like 8.5 out of 10. It was a fun game, but geez, they really overdid the power of friendship stuff.
00:13:10
Speaker
And then there's like a final actual cutscene at the very end. Once you get all the way through the credits, there is another cutscene and I got so excited. I was like, oh, so excited. And then you see Sue who comes out and she's a freaking adult. And I was like, yeah, it's like it's like eight years or something like that.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's like fast forward eight or 10 years. And I'm like, OK, all right. So you see one of your child-like pirate members there. And I'm like, oh my goodness. That means Justin and Fina are like 25, 30 years old. This is awesome. Let's go. And so they're talking about them coming home from their latest adventure. And they have a surprise. And you're like, OK, this is awesome. I can't wait to see adult Justin and adult Fina. This is great.
00:13:59
Speaker
And then all of a sudden like miniature versions of them run out. And you're like, oh no, is this the surprise? And there's like 10 of them?
00:14:11
Speaker
And I was like, damn. They were very busy. They were very busy on all their adventures. On their like final adventure where they produced a surprise. Yeah. They produced like 10 surprises and they all looked the same. So I'm like, did she just give birth to like 10 kids all at once? Like, okay. Yeah.
00:14:34
Speaker
It was kind of wild. And they're like picking on Puffy and like Sue is like super excited. And then she and then Sue like turns. It's like, Justin, Fida is just really happy. And then it fades and you never see out of Justin and Fida. And I just flipped my cushion and I stormed out of the room. I was just like, wow, they give you that, but then they don't give you anything else. And none of the Grandia games lead into each other. So like.
00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's just that's how Grandia ends and Grandia 2 and Grandia 3 have nothing to do with each other. So it's just like I was so mad. I just stormed out of the room. I was just yelling. And then I was angry texting KJ. And I was like, this ending is stupid. But all in all,
00:15:21
Speaker
um it ended up being a really really good game at the end and it was so cool that KJ and I played it very differently and didn't even realize it until we got more towards the end and KJ's like well don't you have this move that stops time and I'm like no and then you look it up and it's like it's because he buffed Fina with healing and fire and I buffed her with like fire and earth so I had very different moves except for like the the main like
00:15:46
Speaker
big fire attack that she has. We had that. We both had that. And then he used like rap as another attacker where I used rap as like a status buffer. Uh, so like I was constantly using rap to like boost everybody's attack, defense, that sort of stuff. And then I was going to make him healer too, but rap doesn't get like a heal all move. And I didn't realize that until I, cause it doesn't tell you what moves you're going to unlock. It just says that you're going to unlock another like healing move. And I'm like, okay,
00:16:14
Speaker
What's this gonna be? But he never had like a heal all and I was so I'm like, oh I gotta level up Fina then cuz she's gotta have to have the heal heal all and you get a super powered like Magic character in your party and she doesn't have healing
00:16:30
Speaker
And I'm just like, come on. So I had to start like, so I leveled up. She has some healing magic really late. Wait, she has some healing. I'm pretty sure. She has a status buffing. She has like, she has like one low healing, but she doesn't like, Fida gets stronger healing magic.
00:16:48
Speaker
So it's just like, OK. And so honestly, I just used items in the final battle. I didn't actually even heal using magic because I was like, I need my magic points for other reasons. But it was just one of those things where I'm just like, oh, dang. So it was really interesting that we played it differently. And the ending sequence, like the three boss forms, the first two were great. And then the third one was just a joke. And I'm not entirely sure why they didn't have that thing even attack.
00:17:15
Speaker
But I guess because they're just like, we've just put you through hell two forms. So we're just going to be nice to you in this third form. You know, like how like it's some JRPGs. The third form is literally like, oh, this is just a would be form kind of idea. I think I love that you bring that up because I think that that's such a common thing in a lot of games where like.
00:17:37
Speaker
Especially jrpgs have multiple forms and it's funny because we're talking about live alive and That definitely fits that and it's funny because one of the one of the people in chat p stone He was going through it when he played live alive with the the multiple boss forms Which was great and it is also it one of the things that's been a lot of fun
00:18:03
Speaker
like playing these games and finishing them first is like i see the ending i look at i look at peach and i'm just like oh poly's gonna hate this or poly's gonna really love this and sure enough like a couple days later i just get all of the dms talking about how annoying something was or how great it was it's great it's absolutely great
00:18:27
Speaker
Yeah, because KJ's had a little bit more time than I have this summer or whatever. So he often beats these logs before I do, especially like Grandia and Live Alive. He beat them both way early before I did. So when I get to certain components, I just spam screenshots and just like general gibberish and he always knows what I'm actually playing the game. Like, oh, yeah, you're going to think. And like.
00:18:52
Speaker
We, uh, so, um, for like grandiose specifically, it was so funny because you could play the game so differently depending on who you give magic to and who you, what you level up. And it was so funny when I was like sending him moves and he's like, wait, what?
00:19:08
Speaker
What? And he was so confused because I was like, look at this ultimate, just an invincible attack. He's like, how did you get that? And I'm like, because I leveled up the other weapons and we found out he only had leveled up the sword. He had like a sword plus 72 or some stupid thing by the end. Why use other weapons when they give you a great sword?
00:19:27
Speaker
Yeah, so he just like, we're me, I just like, cause I saw that I could learn new moves if I leveled up other weapons. I was like, you know what? I want cool Justin moves. So I'm just gonna do that. So it was hilarious having KJ have beaten it. And honestly, I love doing these right now. Like we've only, we've done, we've done two so far and it's so hilarious because when one of us finishes something, we just kind of like patiently wait.
00:19:53
Speaker
until the other one catches up. And mostly that's been KJ, except for when we were playing Live Alive, which when we get into Live Alive, we'll talk about it a little bit, because we did things in different orders. And so we were able to... I was ahead of him in some levels, and then he was ahead of me in the other ones, right? Because you could do things in different order. Or like, Grandia, he was always ahead of me, so he would just allude and just be like, have you got to this part yet?
00:20:22
Speaker
And they're like winky face. And I was just like, no. And so I kept going through it and then I would just rage and send it back. I'm like, especially the power of friendship thing because that was brought up a lot in like the second, like the disc two portion of the game. And so, oh my God. And I'm just like, I get it. But like, please.
00:20:43
Speaker
I'm so glad Live Alive didn't do that. And I think we can jump in to Live Alive because we have we have a lot to talk about with this game. Yeah. So to wrap up, Grandia, I did enjoy the ending, even though it was kind of cheesy and a little bit cliche. I would give I still keep Grandia at the eight point five out of ten. It was great.
00:21:02
Speaker
I think we both enjoyed the ride of that. And honestly, I would be super down and interested if they ever did a sequel or something like that to it, because I think it'd be really interesting if they would be able to. Because it'd be so cool to see Fina and Justin adults and stuff like that.
00:21:22
Speaker
and that sort of thing. But at the end of the day, it's ending trolling me. I'm just like, okay, whatever. I'm used to this with
Transition to Live Alive Discussion
00:21:29
Speaker
JRPG. Oh my goodness. I can't wait to talk about endings trolling you. I'm so excited. All right. He seems to be a common theme. He seems to be a common theme.
00:21:39
Speaker
So I'm going to flash my hands. We're done talking about grandia. That's it. That's done. Uh, grandia discussion over now to live a lot. Perfect. So, all right. You want it since most of me talking, you want to start us off with a little live conversation. Yes.
00:21:57
Speaker
So it was really interesting. So we decided to play Live Alive. This is actually the remaster of the game. It actually came out, I believe, in 1994 in Japan only on the SNES.
00:22:15
Speaker
Immediately, we were looking at it, and I was like, oh, this kind of gives me like Chrono Trigger vibes. I see a lot of sort of earlier SNES RPG elements that you would find in some of those earlier RPGs in this game. So I was like, OK, let's play this. Why not? It seems pretty good. I knew that they were going to. So I looked at the box. I knew how many stories they were going to be. I also counted the characters on the front cover.
00:22:45
Speaker
We won't talk about one of them in particular right away. Cause like, if you don't look at the box, you might not realize things. Um, so we'll leave it at that. So we're going to talk about just the seven or first we'll talk about just the seven stories that were kind of, uh, given to you. Um, and it's really interesting cause it is broken up into multiple stories in multiple time periods. So it's, um, prehistory wild West.
00:23:12
Speaker
Imperial China, Edo Japan, present day, which is kind of weird. Near future, distant future. And I think one of the first things that I noticed, so I didn't go in any order. I just picked the game that I, or the character. So my thinking was, I
00:23:35
Speaker
want to pick the character that looks the second coolest, because I want to enjoy the character that looks the coolest after I know how to play the game. So I actually started with near future, and then I was like, oh, that was like, I went near, so my order was near future, distant future, Edo Japan, Imperial China,
00:24:03
Speaker
No, no, no, no, that's not true. Near future, Wild West, distant future, Edo Japan, Imperial China, present day prehistory.
Live Alive Chapters and Strategy
00:24:13
Speaker
That was the order that I went in. Poly went in the chronological order, if I'm not mistaken, right?
00:24:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. My order, it was funny. So, like, KJ went in, like, he went with, like, the most cooling main character, and that's how he started. I started with, like, oh, I want to start at, like, a chronological order. So, I started with prehistory, and then I did Imperial China, Edo Japan,
00:24:41
Speaker
Wild West, present day, near future, and then distant future. So I literally went in chronological order. And it was really interesting because we had talked to the community, so a lot of you members were also playing it. And for example, Snowmans went in the order of the badges. So when you would do one and complete it, you got a little badge, but it was in a specific order. So Snowmans was going in the order to which you get the badges from.
00:25:09
Speaker
So it was really interesting that a lot of us played things in a very different order and our thought process with it, where KJ was going for the cool looking characters. I went through it because I wanted to do it chronological because I thought maybe something might be connected between them. And I was like, it'd be interesting that way. And then Snowman's was doing it in order of the badges and so on. And everybody had their own
00:25:33
Speaker
and then some people were like doing it just with like interest like KJ was so so there's like different ways to do it which I thought was really interesting for an JRPG game allowing you to like like sometimes when they have like story arcs you can only do them in a certain order or or whatever but these ones you got to pick which I thought was really cool yeah and I will say we can we'll get to this a little later but I will say playing it in I would probably recommend
00:26:03
Speaker
now playing it in chronological order. Yeah, we figured this out after we say, and then one of the last segments that KJ left to last, he was like, what? And it was mad about it. But it was more or less like, because I played that segment first, it didn't really bother me because I didn't know what to expect. So when I started with prehistory,
00:26:30
Speaker
And then all the ones after that have voice acting and stuff like that in it. I didn't realize that was going to happen, so it did bother me as much. So there were certain segments that if I didn't, because I did it in Chronicle Autological Order, I found didn't frustrate me or bother me or something like that, than it did for KJ, who started way out of order, because he started with Near Future, is the very first one that he started with.
00:26:55
Speaker
So yeah, both of our recommendations after playing it and going through the experience is to play it in chronological order. Yeah, I think that's the best case. But one of the things I really liked about this was every time period had music and an environment that really
00:27:20
Speaker
fit that time period like the the like the art style of every like landscape and everything fit really well like the wild west you felt like you were in the wild like it very much felt like the wild west edo japan like
00:27:37
Speaker
I'm literally running on buildings as like a shinobi. Like it was dope. It was super cool. And so I really I really enjoyed sort of the feel of that. And I think I don't know if the
00:27:52
Speaker
If the original was like that, I assume it was. I've seen a very small amount of gameplay of the original. One thing I do know about the original is that there were some things that were controversial, because the game came out in the 90s. So there were things that were controversial that they then took out with the remaster. But yeah, I think overall, just the art and the music, they really sort of
00:28:21
Speaker
encapsulated the area really well, and it made you feel like you were a part of the area. The only one that I think didn't really was distant future, but that's because that's also set on like a ship. So it was kind of just like very quiet and empty. But even like the near future one, it had a good feel to it as well for everything. So I think overall, all of the all of the
00:28:50
Speaker
different stories really nailed it in terms of the time period. Yeah. They, I felt like they were like, were really connected to the time period and like the art style of that 2D 2 2 2.5 D sort of look to it, like how octopath traveler and triangle strategy have really amplified things. So like the environments look gorgeous. The character pixels, the graphics and stuff are really nice.
00:29:14
Speaker
And it just, it tied everything in so well that you believed you were in those periods, like even like, like prehistory and like, um, that they all did slightly different things to make you feel more a part of that era, which I thought was very clever. Um, and really like really pulls you in. So like, I was hooked.
00:29:36
Speaker
instantly playing this game. AJ started with near future and I started with prehistory and like even like I was like super hooked into it just because of like the how well the developers did at like remaking it and pulling you in in terms of like the the graphics of the 2.5D which I love octopath and tribal strategy do that and like the music
00:29:59
Speaker
oh my goodness the music really pulled you in like every track in every different time period fit the time period you know like and i seriously felt like i was in china or i seriously felt like i was in japan or the wild west it reminded me of old western movies my dad used to get me to watch like with
00:30:21
Speaker
with Clint Eastwood and stuff like that, which we'll get into when we start talking about the stories on how like, KJ kept all his characters the same name and I changed all of their names. I always, I cannot play a game for the first time and not use the stock name of the character. Like that drives me, I don't know, for me, like my playthroughs, that drives me up a wall. Like if I open up a save file and the name isn't the base name of the character,
00:30:50
Speaker
of mine, like I just straight up delete the file. If I find something like it's something that it's I've I've felt that way more over the course of like getting older. But yeah, I'm I'm it's weird. I'm like a stickler for that now. Like I I won't keep which is funny because you're like super stickler for it. And I was like, OK. And then when I was changing the character names, you were laughing at the names I kept using. So I was just being really silly with them.
00:31:19
Speaker
And so it was such a fun dynamic because he wasn't doing it in his game. It didn't bother him. But he thought it was hilarious that I kept changing the names and which names I picked in each era.
Character Naming and Soundtrack Appreciation
00:31:30
Speaker
So you have that control. And then the music brings you it. And I have to just talk about the boss battle theme is the same in all the different eras and when you're fighting those bosses.
00:31:43
Speaker
and it is so good i love it so freaking much i found like a track of like where somebody took the song and remixed it for an hour and i listen to that now sometimes and i'm just like this music is phenomenal like the ost is 10 out of 10 i can't think of any way they could have made it better it is perfect oh yeah era like
00:32:05
Speaker
the music set you into that tone. And that's a big portion of this is there's a lot of tone in this game. Because of the different stories, they have different directions and different character developments, and the characters are not the same. And so the tone was so important that not only did the voice acting and all that set the tone, but the music really set the tone. So one of my favorite video game soundtracks easily now
00:32:35
Speaker
yeah it was really it was really good it was like really really good hats off to the composer i think it was yoko who did the i have no idea who did the composing for yeah
00:32:46
Speaker
I think it was Yoko, but yeah the music like honestly 10 out of 10 like even if you don't play this game go and get the soundtrack because it is worth it it is just incredible so and then with the voice acting like each era had its own like
00:33:05
Speaker
voices and stuff like that in it, except for one, which KJ will talk about when we start talking about that. That wasn't even my period. That's actually not even my complaint. I think the voice acting, they could have leaned into it a little more like and I didn't think about this until I was actually watching. So Shane GTV who's in chat, he is playing this right now and he did the Wild West and like. I think they could have leaned into some of the voice acting a little more to give you like
00:33:35
Speaker
what you would expect the more traditional voices in a specific time period. So yeah, I think that definitely could have been something that they did a little bit better.
Critiques and Improvements on Live Alive Chapters
00:33:52
Speaker
Yeah, even with prehistory, I kind of agree. So prehistory is the only one without words and dialogue.
00:34:00
Speaker
so prehistory they're going for like a caveman sort of thing where they where they like grunt and point and gesture it's more like it's kind of reminds me a little bit more like anime animated where they have like silly expressions and silly things and so
00:34:16
Speaker
But I think you're right in the terms of like, wow, each voice kind of suited each era. So like, I liked Shifu's voice in Imperial China. Like, I liked a lot of the voices in each area. You're right. I feel like they could have leaned into the personalities a little bit more, and especially for prehistory, because there's literally no dialogue. It's all grunting, having a little bit more emphasis into the emotions.
00:34:46
Speaker
um uh might have been like might have pulled like pulled me in a little bit more and uh because uh we'll talk about like our order of terms of like which ones are of our favorites and stuff by the end but i think both of us had prehistory pretty low on the
00:35:04
Speaker
totem pole of order and so I feel like prehistory is one of the ones where I felt it the most where I feel like I was fine with it not having dialogue because it's cavemen but I think they should have like I wish they would have like pulled in that emotion a little bit more and had a little bit more expressive uh so there's like lots of grunts but they were like the same grunt you know what I mean so it was like
00:35:26
Speaker
uh like it was like there's two similar so like it just was like you i don't know like and then they had the main character and the monkey kind of sounds similar so there was times when like one was grunting and i didn't know which one it was
00:35:46
Speaker
And I'm like, OK, all right, that's great. The only real obvious was like when they bring in like the female character and stuff like that. So like that that was very obvious and like silly. But yeah, so I think prehistory, I think for all the other voice like, oh, my goodness, distant future.
00:36:05
Speaker
other things about this feature aside, Kato's voice was so smooth and soothing and I was like, what is this? What is this right now?
00:36:22
Speaker
um yes i have to explain what grunts are because you know like they just didn't have expressible grunts because you could be like aha or be more expressive and grunting but there was just uh i'm really glad you took a lead on the prehistory thing because like
00:36:38
Speaker
I have nothing but terrible things to say about prehistory. So I'm trying my best not to because, again, I just think prehistory was bad. And I mean, I don't know. All right. So I think we should like so after we're talking about voice acting and stuff, I think it'll be a more clearer as we talk about it. We can still cycle back into voice acting.
00:36:59
Speaker
Let's start baby in chronological order and prehistory, I know KJ's been sitting there biting his tongue right now. Prehistory, KJ, go. Thoughts, opinions, go. It was just so, like, okay. Prehistory is like, it just tried to be funny and it wasn't. Like there were a bunch of poop jokes and like,
00:37:28
Speaker
Just I couldn't do it like no talking. Okay, so like I'm not somebody who dislikes silent protagonists in games Like I'm totally fine with silent protagonists, but if everyone is silent It's gonna be like I can't do it and that's literally prehistory and I didn't think prehistory was gonna be the worst one it I thought that
00:37:51
Speaker
a different one is going to be the worst one because it was basically a visual novel. But actually that wasn't as bad. Prehistory for me, it just.
00:38:02
Speaker
The battles were fine. I didn't like that you had to use the ability to find battles. So one of the cool things about this game is every character has an out of battle. I think every character, or at least most characters, have an out of battle overworld ability, which is something I thought was really cool.
00:38:23
Speaker
And the prehistory character like basically sees the enemies on the field. They come up as like little clouds and then you can go over to them and sniff. Yeah, you like go over and sniff. And but yeah, it was just like, there were so many fart jokes and like poop jokes. I'm just like, this isn't funny. Like,
00:38:45
Speaker
one or two sure that would have been fine but it was like the entire thing like all the attacks are based on it all and i'm just like i get it you're trying to lean into the fact that it's like prehistory and like there's not much but the lack of talking and the fact that like everything had to be grunts or shown as like symbols to then i was just like
00:39:09
Speaker
I don't know. It wasn't for me. And yeah, that's the thing. If something like South Park is your thing, then you'll enjoy prehistory. But it's not for me. That's not my type of comedy. That's a great comparison. Yeah, if you like South Park comedy, you will like prehistory. If you are not a fan of South Park comedy, you probably will not like prehistory. That's a great comparison. Yeah, that's literally
00:39:40
Speaker
that that was it was a it was a struggle like that was definitely something that I had a hard time with so I think overall like that sort of took away from prehistory and then the ending was like
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah, the ending of it. Also, I'm just like, OK, it fits the it fits. Put it this way. They did a good job for what they were going for. But like, I, I don't know.
00:40:10
Speaker
silent silent characters poop jokes and honestly for me with prehistory i noticed that there wasn't really a cohesive plot and i don't know if that was partly because there was no voice acting and it had grunting and it focused more on comedy than an actual story yeah but
00:40:31
Speaker
But basically, you're kind of there and a female, it looks like you're in a little village of all male characters. And so a female character kind of breaks free of another tribe and comes and hides into your thing. So you get an experience of one female character and all this land of male cavemen. Anyway, and monkeys. And so basically,
00:40:57
Speaker
And like, it just keeps kind of cycling of like her getting kidnapped and you going to save and then her getting kidnapped and you going to save, which I guess is kind of like a basic plot line of like a lot of games like Mario and stuff like that, but
00:41:13
Speaker
it gets to a point where it's like trying to actually like suddenly have like a little bit more of an in-depth plot and it had this like and then the boss fight that it had while yes I understand a dinosaur made sense in like caveman times it's
00:41:32
Speaker
It's a little bit harder of like, like, I don't know, like I felt like the plot was kind of like pushed aside for all the jokes. So there was a lot of like, a lot of the joking, a lot of the stuff. So then the plot line kind of got buried. And while it was like very simple kind of plot line, because cavemen existent, it was just kind of like, okay, um,
00:41:52
Speaker
can we get back to the story? And that's what I kept feeling with it. And so yeah, your main character gets this ability where he sniffs and he can like smell enemies. So they end up being a little clouds. And I don't know if you ended up in random accountants, there's outside of them, but there is like that ended up being a mechanic of like, you have to get meat for your tribe right at the start. So you have to like sniff them out and find the ones that when you pop the bubble, it would show a little meat emoticon and you're like, okay. And then you fight that and you would get
00:42:21
Speaker
a little hunk of meat and you had to get a few meat things. So that used that portion of it. And then, um, and so like some of them like mechanics like that. And like, there was little things right at the start I thought was really cute. And it was that like, because they were cavemen, they didn't really have descripting, like being like, here's the sort of justice. No, they had a stick and it was like stick is stick. And that's literally the description.
00:42:49
Speaker
And then it was like, rock used to hurt, ow. And like, things like that where I was like, okay, that's clever. I think those are funny because it was just like, oh, there was like a mask that you got called the laughing mask and be like, oh, we put on laughing mask to laugh and dance and dance and dance. And it's just like, and things like that where you're just like, okay, these are ridiculous descriptions, but it fit the theme.
00:43:13
Speaker
And then you got into your attacks and then that's where it started to lose me, similarly to KJ. And that is like, you had a lot of poop and fart attacks and jokes. And they ended up not being useful, fun fact. I even used a few of them.
00:43:29
Speaker
And they ended up not being very useful. There was very few enemies that were really vulnerable to it. And it just kind of been like, OK. And even in the end, boss, one of the big sequences that I always used was the yell. The yelling was useful. But the poop and fart jokes and stuff like that ended up not even being useful in battle to use. So I didn't end up using them.
00:43:53
Speaker
However, one battle thing that I laughed hard at was when you got your first female party member, she comes into the party and literally one of her moves is sing and she sings slightly off tune.
00:44:10
Speaker
And I didn't realize it until like reading, like when I read a little bit about it and like it was done purposefully and stuff. And I'm just like, okay. Which is just like, okay. And just because like back then they wouldn't have like super focal training and they're not like,
00:44:29
Speaker
that makes sense they don't speak so it made me laugh every time i use that move because she just like she sings like broken sing and and uh a song and that's what heals your priority and i thought that was kind of funny so there was like a couple moves where i was like okay this is interesting but majority of the moves were like especially with the monkey and the main character were just like the poop and fart jokes which i've like
00:44:56
Speaker
Again, a few of them were kind of funny at the start. I'm like, and I laughed because it was juvenile humor. And sometimes I laugh at juvenile humor. But then it was just over and over and over. And they didn't switch up anything. They could have done so much more in the joke department. And they could have expanded through it and everything. And then apparently the monkey gets a harem of female monkeys. I don't know. Then they went to two extremes. They were like poop and fart jokes.
00:45:27
Speaker
intercourse jokes pretty much it was very like extreme and there's like no in between and uh yeah i was just kind of like uh but because i did it first i thought going into the game i'm like
00:45:42
Speaker
Am I just not going to be able to understand majority of this game? Is there no voice acting or is it in the different eras? They're going to be like in China, it's going to be Chinese and in Japan, it's going to be Japanese and stuff. So I was like, okay, like are we just, are we just not going to have like, so because I did it first, it didn't, it wasn't as bad for me because I did it first. But because KJ did it as like one of the last stories he did after experiencing so many of the other stories and how much better they were, um,
00:46:10
Speaker
I think it fell more short. So that's why I honestly believe you should play it in chronological order and start with prehistory and go from there. If I'm being completely honest, I feel like you should go prehistory, distant future, then play in chronological order. Or even start with distant future and then go to prehistory and then go through. Like even like like throwing the order a little bit off like that. But like, yeah, it
00:46:40
Speaker
It's unfortunate when we get to it when we start talking about distant future that it was also one that was a little bit I think and it was like the last one technically a chronological order that you play so it was the last one I played and KJ played a little bit sooner. I think he played it like
00:46:58
Speaker
kind of midway through it? Yeah, let me, I can, I can get my exact order. I didn't, I thought I knew it, but I, I posted in, I went near future Wild West distant future, Edo, Japan, Imperial China, present day prehistory. Prehistory was the last one that I did. So yeah, it was, it was really a struggle because like with prehistory, I don't know, pre, like one of the cool things about this game is it has sort of,
00:47:26
Speaker
every aspect of rpgs that you would expect from like again silent characters and stuff like that to almost visual novel rpg in rpg form so like it was really cool that they had so many different ways to do this however like that means if you go from edo japan to
00:47:51
Speaker
distant future or near distant future it's like you go from a lot of action potentially to no action like yeah there's a little bit of a disconnect there I almost feel like distant future I would have wished especially because I'm an advocate with chronological horror chronological order
00:48:14
Speaker
maybe even having it right after prehistory in the timeline that the the concept that they were going for distant future if they would have taken that idea because I think it was still an interesting idea but having it order in like earlier in the like the history of yeah I think it would have been received a lot better but because I did it last
00:48:35
Speaker
um i was just kind of like what the heck is this like i was i was a little bit disappointed it like there was portions of it that i enjoyed but i was disappointed in it so uh wrapping up prehistory all in all i think both kj and i were kind of in the same thing there was a few things in it that i liked i i i didn't catch on to the the silly singing until like later on when i was just like
00:48:57
Speaker
OK, yeah, that makes sense.
Imperial China and Edo Japan Chapters
00:48:59
Speaker
Because at first, I was just like, well, this is annoying. Why is singing the healing move? But I realized afterwards, it's because, obviously, they're cavemen and they don't talk. So how would they be able to sing so it was super well or anything? So all in all, I think it was the worst one for me, actually. I think prehistory,
00:49:24
Speaker
There's reasons why distant future was higher for me than prehistory. So I think prehistory was my least favorite. How about you? I think they both sucked equally, but we'll get to our distant future. So the next one in chronological order is Imperial China. What are your thoughts, initially, for Imperial China? Imperial China was dope. I was really interested. So the way Imperial China starts off,
00:49:51
Speaker
It starts you off with a character that seems super old and does not level up. And you recruit three characters that all have somewhat troubled pasts. And you train them and stuff like that. So I thought that was really cool.
00:50:12
Speaker
I thought that was a really cool thing. And I don't know if we want to get too far into spoilers, but for story reasons, you end up in a spot where you only get to use one of the characters. And it depends on which character you trained that ends up being the highest level.
00:50:33
Speaker
So I thought that was really cool. And then you kind of go through with that character and the original guy. So it was really cool because it was like, oh, you can see that you're sort of training someone to sort of take over his dojo or whatever. You kind of get that in the very beginning. I thought the story was good. I thought that the
00:51:02
Speaker
the characters even the ones like I only you only get to choose one but like the one that I chose I really enjoyed but the other two I didn't dislike right like I chose the one that I chose because she seemed like the coolest character but
00:51:20
Speaker
If I would have been given one or the other two, I wouldn't have been upset about that. So yeah, and I mean, that was, I thought that was, I thought that was super dope. Like the music was great. As we've talked about, like the music was great. The, like just the environment that everything was in was great. And I thought it was very well put together.
00:51:42
Speaker
Yeah. And honestly, being super overpowered and not leveling up was really interesting because that doesn't happen in JRPGs very often, if at all. It's very rare that you're super powered and you go backwards, even in games where they have sequels where you leveled up really strongly in the first game and then you go and play the second game and you're not that level anymore.
00:52:06
Speaker
Things like that that happens a lot too. So going into Imperial China where you have like this you're a Shifu master and you have this like super immense power right at the start and you're like trying to find your next disciple sort of idea and I love that you were like just super overpowered and he has and and every move he like says different like little proverbs and stuff so it's like
00:52:32
Speaker
you know like the wise fox knows many secrets is one of his moves that he like spins around and kicks you and stuff like that so like i thought that was super cool because i was like it reminded me of like a lot of like old like uh movies that i used to watch and like uh uh chinese movies and stuff where it was like where they had like a lot of like
00:52:55
Speaker
Proverbs sort of stuff like I mean It's not a it's not a Chinese movie. It's actually a Japanese movie Based on our sorry Japanese characters is based on karate. So like the karate kid Mr. Miyagi says a lot of stuff like that too and it's like has all these like little proverbs and stuff for life and and
00:53:15
Speaker
And so it was just really interesting. I thought it brought me really into the story a little bit more. And then you have these three characters. And it was great because like KJ chose the female Lei character. And then I went with Hong Hakka and everybody was confused. It was funny. They're like, interesting, interesting choice. And he actually starts off at the highest level technically. So he's the easiest one to kind of like
00:53:40
Speaker
yet to be your final character. However, I liked him because he reminded me of Poe from Kung Fu Panda and it reminded me entirely of the Kung Fu Panda plot line where it was like they were trying to find the Dragon Warrior and it ended up being like Poe and like this was
00:54:02
Speaker
big panda who likes to eat and this hong is similar he's like he's just a big guy who likes to eat and you know and he's kind of had a rough time of like finding work and employment to make money so that he can eat so he was like stealing and and so his like story and everything and it was just very much reminded me of like hung food panda so it's like i want to be i want to make the uh hungry food obsessed guy the main guy
00:54:30
Speaker
And so I just went full in to leveling Hong Hakka up. I loved his attacks and stuff. And then because of plot reasons, you end up with just the one character at the end. And I'm like, oh my goodness. I love this. I love that you have control over which one. And literally, as Pstone's saying in chat and what KJ and I have found out talking to other people, nobody we know has picked
00:55:00
Speaker
Yun. So like everybody I talked to who's done in burial China either did Hong or Lei. Those were the two characters I hear. But I have not heard of somebody who picked Yun. So I know Lei is like the fastest and that makes sense. Like if you go through like when you recruit her, you're like in a forest and she's like chasing you basically. Yeah. Or you're like chasing her because she's like running away and everything.
00:55:30
Speaker
Apparently, the kid has the best growths of everyone. Which makes sense to me because he's the lowest level when you get him. Exactly. If you want to get him, it's a little bit more of a challenge. I chose Lay because it was just like, oh, she's the fastest. She was dope personality. I was like, hell yeah.
00:55:54
Speaker
Um, and Hong Hakka had like the highest strength, I believe, uh, he had the most damage output. So it was just like, Oh, this is awesome. The ED guy is this. So, but yeah. Young starts off. So like, I think lay starts off at like level three or four. Young starts off at like.
00:56:10
Speaker
level zero when you first met him and by a few random encounters you're about level two before you like actually get him in and you like start start your trading journey with your with your disciples and then Hong echoes like level like four or five or six or something like that he's he starts off at a higher level so in terms of like
00:56:32
Speaker
Easement, you can get Hong fairly easy. Lei, you have to focus a couple more rounds each turn on Lei, because she starts off a little bit lower, but she's a lot faster. But then Yun is the grind, and I haven't heard of anybody who did the grind, except for a couple guides that said that he's apparently super OP, because you do grind him basically from like nothing, where he had no level and you grind him up.
00:56:59
Speaker
And so I thought that was really interesting and that might be one of the only stories that I replay just to kind of see how strong he ends up becoming in the end.
00:57:11
Speaker
I won't replay that one. I'm going to replay the next one probably though. The next one we talk about chronologically. Yeah. So overall Imperial China, I loved it. It is really high up my list in terms of ones I loved. It's like tied for second place for me. It was just done really, really well. It reminded me so much of like the Karate Kid and things like that and just like
00:57:34
Speaker
those older movies, the voice acting really kind of pulled you in a little bit with that one a little bit more. I thought all the characters had different, very distinctly different voices, which was great. Like Lei's voice was different, and Yang's and Hong's and Shifu's and all that sort of stuff. So I think they did a really, really good job with Imperial China. I have no, I have absolutely no complaints with that one at all.
00:57:58
Speaker
Like, I think that one was just perfect. Same. I think Imperial China was my second favorite. Yeah, and it's tied for second for me. So yeah, it was absolutely awesome. So the next one up in the list is Ido Japan. And I know this one is KJ's personal favorite. So I'm going to leave him with the floor. Oh, it was so dope.
00:58:22
Speaker
I got in and I was like, all right, lore wise, I already think I'm probably going to like lore wise and the character sprite. I was like, this is 100 percent going to be my favorite. Like I wanted to make sure I saved this chapter for when I knew how to play the game because I wanted to do as much as possible. So two things really jumped out at me immediately. You go in and I was like, OK, storyline, go into this castle and like
00:58:53
Speaker
do what you gotta do, get to the end of the castle. And then they tell you, like, you can go in one of two ways. You can either be stealthy, so his, so...
00:59:09
Speaker
Aboro's special out of battle thing was to go stealth mode. So you can go stealth mode, and then also there's a system to basically a password system that you can get by different guards and stuff.
00:59:28
Speaker
So if you remember all the passwords and you go and you go stealth mode and everything, you can actually do like a run where you only do the necessary battles. So I thought that was really cool and you get special stuff for doing that. So there's that.
00:59:48
Speaker
or you can go the other route and there are a hundred battles that you can do, a hundred people that you can kill in this area. And I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna go in guns blazing. And I was, I didn't find everyone. I ended up, and it tells you after every fight, it tells you how many characters you've...
01:00:14
Speaker
Like how many battles you fought? There's 100 total, I ended up with like 82. So I have a save that I need to go back and like go through it. I might just try to replay it now that he's like a higher level, but oh my goodness, it was so dope. It's also one of, I think, three chapters with a secret boss.
01:00:34
Speaker
um so that was super dope i ran into the secret boss got absolutely destroyed but it's my favorite chapter so i'm gonna go back and and fight one of the secret bosses um i think there's multiple yes i'm probably gonna fight multiple yeah um
01:00:51
Speaker
And yeah, it's oh my goodness. It was so much fun. Like I had such a blast just like sneaking around in the the like the roofs of places inside and outside. Like, oh my goodness. It was so good. Like I would take if the entire game was out of Japan, I would have just been like, all right, I'm cool with this. Like this is perfect. Like, oh my goodness. The character was so cool. The character models were so cool.
01:01:21
Speaker
Um, you also end up in this spot where like you get more party members. So yeah, that was, that was dope. Um, it's funny cause there's apparently a character that like gives you free stuff. I totally killed that person. They give you free treasures and things. I didn't know that.
01:01:46
Speaker
they were walking around they were they were in a they were in an area and at that time i was like you know what i'm gonna try to get everything um but it's all good but it was also it helped me so much because it was a cake walk
01:02:04
Speaker
the final boss was like the final boss in that chapter was a cakewalk because i was like level 12 by the time i uh by the time i got through so yeah it was it was wild i had a great time with that like by far my favorite chapter
01:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, and it was kind of great because KJ and I, again, played this level very differently. Very differently. It's hilarious that this happened yet again because this is what we did in Grandia, too. And so KJ went in and was like, I'm going to kill everybody. And that's kind of the motto. So I ended up with like 80 kills.
01:02:43
Speaker
i ended up with like 15 kills by the end or something like that and i was going in with like no i have to hide and stealth i was like level four or something like that
01:02:56
Speaker
the end boss because no, I had to do a little bit of grinding because I was struggling on one of the side bosses that you had to fight, which led to one of your people joining your party. And so, yeah, so I ended up having to grind a little bit there. But otherwise, I was like stealthing. I was hiding from everybody. I was remembering all the passwords and codes. So I was like avoiding everybody. Meanwhile, I was intentionally giving the I remembered the password. I would intentionally give the wrong one.
01:03:25
Speaker
Yeah, so that he could fight those. So KJ fought the entire area and then I was trying to be stealthy and hidden. So it was so awesome that you could do such very different takes for the same Edo to Japan. And I love that about it. And for me, so for prehistory, I named my main character Dave.
01:03:51
Speaker
And anybody who's from my community knows that Dave is Derpy and is the name of a really derpy Pokemon fusion I did. And so he was kind of derpy, so I named him Dave. And then Imperial China, I named him Aang, and I kind of regret not naming him Avatar, because it would have called him the Avatar the whole time.
01:04:12
Speaker
But I named him Aang because of the Avatar Last Airbender reference. Well, with Edo Japan, I went with Ricky Maru. And if anybody knows the Tenshu series, it's because instantly coming into Edo Japan, it made me think of the Tenshu games.
01:04:30
Speaker
And so Tenchu is a series of games where you play as a ninja, a shinobi kind of thing. And you are like the primary objective of the game is to stealth kill and stealth through the levels. Like going around and just killing everything will make you have lower ranking system of each level. So you're like trying to go through and like stealth killed stuff. And I love the Tenchu series a lot. I played it a lot as a kid. I thought they were a lot of fun.
01:04:56
Speaker
So when Ido Japan had this option of being stealthy, I was like, I literally was like, like slapping the couch being like, Edo, Edo, I can stealth. And he just laughed at me because I was just going through the entire game trying not to fight anything.
01:05:12
Speaker
and you're like jumping off of roofs and like you're running like on the roofs and stuff and it reminded me so much of like a pixelized version of Tetsu. So I named the main character as one of the main characters of Tetsu that you could play as which is because he was a male character I named him Rikimaru. If he was female I would have named him Miyame because that's the other main character of Tetsu series.
01:05:33
Speaker
and so i named him ricky baru which was like i thought was oddly fitting because he was very similar to ricky baru in the desert game so i thought i nailed that one pretty good so you're running around i'm going through stealthing and so i end up on the secret boss being like level two
01:05:52
Speaker
And I took a picture of it and I'm like, KJ, what the heck is this? And he's like, that's the one I told you about because he talked about running into an optional boss, but he didn't tell me where or anything like that. So I ran into this optional boss and wow. I laughed hard because it's just a giant koi fish. It's just a giant fish. And it one shot at me.
01:06:18
Speaker
And I was just like, what is this game? And I hadn't saved it in a while. So it was very sad. I got one-shotted. So I had to restart a little bit and go through my little stealth experience again. And then when you get to about halfway through the game where you drop to an area with a boss that you have to fight, he was way too hard at level two or three that I was because I was avoiding everything. So I wasn't fighting anything. And any time I got tricked, so there was like, OK, there were guards that were dressed as women.
01:06:49
Speaker
And they're like trying to trick you as being like normal civilians. And I kept getting fooled. So I'd save it every time I saw a female. I'm suspicious now. So I saved it before it, fought it, restarted my save so that I wouldn't end up with the kill record. Did you find the merchants? OK, that's also cheating. Did you find the merchants? There were some merchants that were merchants. And if you called them out on it, they fought you.
01:07:19
Speaker
yeah and so there was a couple of those so i ended up with like a 15 kill because by the by the middle of it i was just like okay whatever i'm just gonna end up with it i would love to replay it trying to do a zero percent run so i was tricked a few times by the female characters and the merchants those were like the only ones where those ended up ranking up my system
01:07:37
Speaker
And so like guards and everything. I remembered each password every time I stealth. I'd like get them to run away from the door and then stealth immediately. For some reason, they just lost where I was and started walking around. And then I could just run to the door and go in. And it was hilarious. And I loved it. It was so good. And then you get to like the end boss sequence and you're going through it like and I had my my extra party member. You got a choice at the end of this.
01:08:06
Speaker
which I thought was very interesting. Because prehistory and imperial China, they conclude the same way. There doesn't seem to be any option to change how they conclude. In Ido Japan, there is. It's a more minor thing, but it was. And I thought that was really interesting because KJ and I, I think, chose
01:08:31
Speaker
differently again we chose different paths and so KJ chose to be to continue on as a Shinobi and I chose to go with the party members
01:08:44
Speaker
So KJ's like, no, I'm a state shinobi. And that's how he ended. And our endings were a little bit similar. The ending little thing was similar, but the dialogue was a little bit different. And later on, it's actually in a cut scene and shows that it is different too, which I thought was interesting. So all in all, Ido Japan is tied for second. Imperial China and Ido Japan are tied for second as my favorite because it was so
01:09:10
Speaker
so good. I highly recommend that era specifically. It was so much fun and being able to either stealth kill or do what KJ did and was like, nah, I'm going to kill everybody. Or do what KJ did. That is savage. I'm sorry that I tried to do it. I didn't want to take lives unless it was incredibly necessary. And KJ was like, nah, everybody die of a shinobi. What are you supposed to do as a shinobi?
01:09:39
Speaker
It was it was great like honestly 10 out of 10 another chapter I cannot I mean maybe a little bit of improvement on the voice acting a little bit um because but at the same time you don't actually end up needing to run into any characters because I was trying to do the stealth run so literally it was only a couple characters where I got tricked by the merchants and the the females that ended up being like where I killed them actually I was like all right we'll have her
01:10:04
Speaker
Um, but you can literally run through it where you hear very little voice acting, except for, and your main character's like a shinobi, so he's a strong, silent, he only says a few things because that is, you know, that's kind of the way. And so, uh, when you get another party member and they're like really talking and stuff like that, like, you know, it was still pretty good. Um, but, uh, yeah, I, I, I went through very stealthy.
Wild West and Present Day Chapters
01:10:30
Speaker
I, I only killed people that I was tricked to kill, to kill.
01:10:35
Speaker
who were like guards of disguise or were the merchants like we're just like uh i called them out of not being merchants so they fought me and then they were stupid weak and i was like oh no i kept getting tricked by them but uh yeah there's different routes you could take there's different areas you can go and get different items in like it's very like for a small like for each chapter is kind of small but like for a chapter i think it was one of the longest ones
01:11:01
Speaker
in terms of capabilities of what you could do. There were so many different passes that you could take to get to your destination and different routes. You could go very quickly by being in the stealth thing, or you could go where you're like,
01:11:15
Speaker
fighting everybody or fighting different things to get different items because you did certain things that you killed too gave you certain items and stuff in the in it too so like there was there are pros and cons of both directions so I thought that was really great like honestly 10 out of 10 again tied for second
01:11:37
Speaker
Uh, but like, so we played these off, like we mostly played it off stream except for when one of my games on stream broke. So we switched to live a lot because I had to beat it anyway. So I stream distant future near future, uh, and the whole, uh, and the whole ending sequence. So that's what I think, but technically KJ, uh, just played it entirely off stream. Um, yeah, I played this, this was all on like my free time.
01:12:04
Speaker
Exactly. So and then I was I was really busy. So then when I finally got to play it stuff, it came to like where it was getting closer, closer to the podcast. So I ended up streaming some of it. But yeah, so we so you know, Japan, I think we both agree. That was like, I think that was KJ's favorite. Yeah, that was my favorite. Yeah, by far.
01:12:25
Speaker
so and it was like my tide for second for me because imperial china and you know japan kind of hit like i i love them both very very much and so um next up is wild west kj what were your thoughts of wild west the wild west i just wish there were more fights it was cool it was really cool and i guess it's it made sense right and i thought i thought it was cool because
01:12:51
Speaker
The Wild West was one of the stories that I felt was the most... sort of... like it was most what I would have expected, right?
01:13:05
Speaker
that that kind of i like i mean you spent most of the time in like a saloon and you're like going through and you're like setting traps for people that are coming to like rob the place and like kill you and whatnot like kill everybody and it's just like they're trying to take over the town and it's like i just
01:13:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the Wild West was very much what I was expecting it to be. I wish there were more fights. I wish it was a little bit longer as a couple of people in chat. And yeah, I mean, I thought it was fun. I thought it was fun. I thought it was a good chapter. It was short. I think it was the second shortest chapter, actually.
01:13:50
Speaker
um i think it was the second shortest chapter but i like the character and yeah i mean everything i don't have anything bad to say about it other than the length of it um let me check my notes really quick let's see if i had anything else um
01:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, I did like collecting like all the things very like so and there's a point where you're like collecting different uh collecting different items in the town to set traps and that was something where it was like oh this is kind of funny like they had like random posters uh like what they kind of made alluded to like pornographic posters that you could set up to distract people
01:14:33
Speaker
Like that was kind of funny. I was like, oh, OK, that's kind of funny because it's like they're coming in on horses and things. So if they're like looking at a poster and then they come in and then like they hit like an explosive that you made or something like that, like that was a trap. That was that was something I found was pretty was pretty funny. But yeah, overall, like I thought the Wild West was a good chapter. I just wish it was wish it was a little bit longer. And I wish there were a few more fights.
01:15:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the exact same thing for me. I just wish it was longer. It felt like I got through it within a couple hours. And I was like, I was telling KJ when I was playing it, I was like, okay, I've got like four hours to play Live Alive tonight. I'm going to start with Wild West. And I like beat it in like a couple hours. And I was very shocked. And I was like, wait, what? And then because I didn't cry a lot.
01:15:23
Speaker
chronological order the next one was also short so I ended up being like two of them in like four hours and so yeah with the Wild West like it reminded me so much of old western movies I named the main character Clint Eastwood not realizing they call him the kid so it was the Clint Eastwood kid
01:15:43
Speaker
And I kind of laughed at that the whole time. I was like, yeah, it's a younger version of Clint Eastwood. Because in a lot of Clint Eastwood's Western movies, like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, he doesn't have a name. His character doesn't have a name. So I was like, I'm just going to call him Clint Eastwood. And the character is very much similar. He's a very strong, silent type, has that gruffy voice. And so I thought it just reminded me so much of all the Western movies. It was great.
01:16:12
Speaker
And the music and everything was great. The characters and story and stuff was great. It was just really, really short. And so when you're doing the trap thing, there comes to a point where it's like I found where I was just like completed everything and just kind of sitting there twiddling my thumbs. And I wish there was a little bit more stuff to do, a more plot to get in that sequence. And I think they could have extended that a little bit more. And you learn a little bit more about the town of the people and stuff.
01:16:40
Speaker
a little bit more in depth and stuff. But yeah, the traps were hilarious when I like that you would set certain traps and then it would show you later on how they were successful based on who you got to set them. So depending on who you got to set the trap or how long it took, it depend on how successful the traps were. And I still like the poster one because literally the characters like why like one of the characters I got tricked was like,
01:17:07
Speaker
like had kind of like was just looking at the poster being like, why is this here? It was just so random of a trap that you could set. And I laughed pretty hard at that.
01:17:20
Speaker
And then you're doing the dueling and stuff, and the end boss and everything was fairly easy. So all in all, yeah. Well, this was great. It was too short. I wish it was longer. I beat it way too quickly. And then I was just left being like, this was great.
01:17:40
Speaker
I wanted more. And so it is one of the shortest chapters. And so I feel like the only thing universally between me and KJ is that we wanted it longer. Because it was entertaining. It was a lot of fun. And I think they could have done more with it. Agreed. I definitely agree. They should have done more with it. It was solid. Yeah.
01:18:03
Speaker
Yeah, it was good enough that I wanted more. So that's a good sign for that chapter. And it was third for me. I think this next one, we actually have a bit of a disagreement. I think we're going to disagree on this next one. Yeah, so the next one in chronological order is present day.
01:18:25
Speaker
And so I'll start off with this time. Yeah, go for it. Go for it. Because KJ and I differ, I think, pretty greatly this one. I actually liked present day. I more or less went into it. It's instantly seeing the reference of Street Fighter. And so I named.
01:18:47
Speaker
the main character, Ryu, because, or Ryu, however you want to pronounce it, because he reminded me so much of Street Fighter and even the aesthetic and everything. So basically your main character wants to be the best fighter in the world. And so, and goes through the fights and stuff. I thought it was really, really cool on each fighter that arguments of
01:19:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly Star Wars Atlas. We're gonna probably argue on this one, but I didn't like this one. I thought you didn't like this one.
01:19:19
Speaker
Oh, okay. Well, maybe we are aligned. I think we're fine. I think we're fine. I thought it was way too short. So this one was the shortest for me out of all of them in terms of play time. And I was frustrated with that because it's a street fighter style game. So you can like pick your fighter and then you learn two moves per each part, part or a fighter, which I thought was really cool because your main character like learns the abilities from the people that he fights.
01:19:45
Speaker
My problem with this one though was, even though it was like very Street Fighter-y and Street Fighter doesn't have like, until you get into more later Street Fighter games, doesn't have like a ton of ton of plot, was that you didn't really learn much about the fighters you were fighting. You didn't really get a whole lot of character development in it.
01:20:03
Speaker
Uh, so there was very little to no story in present day. Um, it was very quick and simple. Uh, and I thought would have been cool is that you fought the six fighters and then you would have to fight them again to like, like, so let's say my improvements for this would have been rather than learning two moves per each fight, you learn one.
01:20:27
Speaker
And then you beat the six fighters and then you get more story of each fighter that leads you to unlock their better ability. So you fight them again to get more story and you get an optional ability, another ability, which is like their strongest move of each character. And it's based on whatever plot line story or whatever that you hear of each one.
01:20:47
Speaker
I thought that would have been really, really cool. And then making that also maybe even that's like optional that people might not have realized right away. So they went beat it. Oh, this is really short. But if you were to replay a refot, you would got better abilities that were really, really cool. And you would hear more of their character story.
01:21:05
Speaker
And then you would lead into the final match of the final boss, which I think, and then have the final boss tied in a little bit more into those stories, bits and pieces so that it's like alluding that they're like, it's alluding to this boss. And then you fight them at the end. I thought it would have been great. It's the optional bit. The optional bit is funny.
01:21:29
Speaker
Good. I didn't know if you had any more but I'll jump in after yeah. Yeah No, that that that was my consensus is like I liked it But it was definitely lower on the totem pole for me And ended up being my second least favorite Like it too much I really enjoyed this chapter
01:21:51
Speaker
I wanted to start off with positivity because I like Street Fighter, so it reminded me a lot of that. But there were avenues of it, like the story was way too short. There was no real reason. Besides fighting them to be the strongest warrior, your character really didn't have any.
01:22:06
Speaker
character development or any personality, really. And so a lot of what I like in JRPGs was kind of lost in this chapter. And so I felt it fell a little short that way. But I liked learning the new moves. And I liked the combat system. And I liked that it was kind of referencing Street Fighter, because I really do like Street Fighter games. But it ended up being my second least favorite. Prehistory was the one I didn't like the most. And then present day was the one I didn't
01:22:36
Speaker
Like second one. Oh wow. Okay. See, yeah. So we definitely have different opinions. I really enjoyed pre, uh, present day. Cause like when I jumped into present day, I was actually really worried at first because you only have to do one fight. You don't actually have to do anything else. You don't have to do all the fights. There's like six or seven fights. You can like be done with it after the first one.
01:23:01
Speaker
Um, I thought it was, so first of all, I always thought that like how people, like how characters learn like that. I think the idea of like a blue major in any game is really cool. Right? Like being able to learn abilities. I liked the way they did it in this where he learns the abilities when he gets hit by them.
01:23:25
Speaker
I don't want to have to do extra stuff to learn abilities. I don't want to have to do extra stuff to get my Blue Mage to be good. That, I think, is the best way to do that, personally. I thought that was really cool. I agree.
01:23:45
Speaker
And I thought it was just a great way to break things up. Like it was it was sort of the play on RPGs that there are going to be some like I kind of look at this as like.
01:23:58
Speaker
them calling out different types of RPGs and how things are set up. And it was almost to me, like they were saying, hey, not all RPGs are going to have story that you even care about. Like some of them, it's just gonna be the combat that matters. And that was what I thought was really cool about this. And that's why I didn't really take many points away from it for not really having a story. It was just, you have this character that is very, very self like,
01:24:27
Speaker
very self-centered and centered on or focused on being the best and that's what he wanted and you fight the people and then you fight the final boss and that's that and I was like you know what like I'm cool with this I'm cool with it it broke things up nicely again it felt very like
01:24:50
Speaker
Street Fighter, I literally grabbed Street Fighter EX-3 off the shelf. It felt very Street Fighter-esque and like I was all for it. But yeah, I really enjoyed it. I mean, I enjoyed it because it was the case where there was a for the amount of time it took to get through the chapter, there was a good amount of fighting. And it was it was a lot of fun. And I think, yeah, that was it was a great time. I had I had a ton of fun with it.
01:25:22
Speaker
Where would you rank it for you? I think it was like middle of the pack for me. Middle of the pack? Yeah, I think... I think it was probably... Are we counting the last chapter? Because if not, then I think it was fourth or fifth for me. Yeah, I'm actually counting the last chapter in like by... Gotcha. Then, yeah, it would have been...
01:25:52
Speaker
then I think maybe it would have been tied for fourth. Okay.
01:25:57
Speaker
So you ended up liking it a little bit more than I did then. Yeah, I definitely did. Hearing your racing about it as being like, some JRPGs just won't have good stories and stuff like that or have like thing. I definitely get it that way. And so I see your side of it. I was just like, oh, what more story? I felt like there was just opportunity that they just didn't take and that you kind of like rush through the six fights and then you go into the boss and then you fight. And it's just like, OK.
01:26:24
Speaker
All right, move on. There's no character development, really. There's no plot line. There's no story at all, really. But you're right. Some JRPGs just didn't have, especially really older ones, because A, maybe they didn't have the capabilities, but also B, they were more focused on other things than the actual story.
01:26:45
Speaker
But yeah, for me, it was it was like it was just above prehistory for me. Wow. Yeah, that's wild. The funny thing is, is my order is like one of them. I think I'm going to shock.
01:26:59
Speaker
KJ, because they were like third least favorite where I think for you it was like your least favorite. Well, this is going to be funny when we get to there. Prehistory was definitely my least favorite. The more I- Okay, so we both agree on that one as being the least. The more I watched prehistory, the more I didn't like it. The more I watched and thought about prehistory and the more I watched one of the other ones, I was like, okay, I think this is better than prehistory.
01:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's fair.
Near Future and Distant Future Chapters
01:27:28
Speaker
So next up, because we just did present day, is near future. Yes.
01:27:34
Speaker
Oh man, I streamed this one. I streamed this one and everybody could go see my reaction because holy heck, I loved your future. And it's funny because it starts off where I'm like, so the main character, I ended up leaving the name the same. So I left it as Akira because it reminded, because of his powers reminded me of the Akira movie.
01:27:57
Speaker
Um, which was an old 1980s anime movie that I really, really loved as a kid. And so I left his name being Akira as the same. Cause I was like, okay, which is kind of funny. Cause as I played through it, I was like, dang, Yami Yugi would have been a bit of a stuff from today because it's a hair look like Yugi.
01:28:14
Speaker
from Yu-Gi-Oh so I was like okay and that had like mind powers which is kind of like yummy so it's just like okay I missed opportunity there because I would have I should have changed it to yummy but I'm glad you kept at least one character's name the same
01:28:29
Speaker
Yeah, I did. I did keep one character named the same. So I left it as Akira. And so you go through whatever. And I kind of like the whole, like they're doing like the whole biker gang sort of like biker look to things. And then it kind of, it's kind of a storyline I didn't see going in the direction because you start off and then all of a sudden it switches to this cut scene that reminds me of like old nineties Gundam anime.
01:28:57
Speaker
where it's like this crazy music and talking about a super giant mobile suit and being like, oh, steal Python. And it's like doing this crazy music. And it's like a minute and a half of a theme song cutscene. And I was like, what is this? I'm like, wait.
01:29:16
Speaker
what is the game they just packed so much in they packed so much in in like that chapter yeah there was so much in near future like there's so much going on a new future it was one of the longest chapters i think in terms of like uh the first seven uh that you could choose from i think it was one of the longest i think it would have been the longest i think it was the longest
01:29:38
Speaker
because there's like there's so much of the plot line and like you learn about like your character's dad dying from a police officer like back in the day and then you like switch to like you're in like an orphanage and then you're grown up for some reason and I called this out and I came in laughing is that your sister doesn't age your sister's sprite stays the same when you're like a little boy to when you're like older and I was like wait what
01:30:05
Speaker
So that was a little weird and threw me off a little bit. But yeah, so you're going through the story and you got like these mind powers so you could read people's minds, which added more dialogue opportunities, making things longer. And so there was a lot of character development. So there's a lot of character development between you, your main character, Lawless, who was also a nether person from the orphanage.
01:30:29
Speaker
who you end up being in your party, you transfer the consciousness of your sister's dead turtle into a robot turtle. I mean, there was a lot of like just, and then weird plot lines like that. There was also like, you could go to the bathroom and I kept knocking the main character because he would go on the toilet cross legged. And I was like, well, that kind of defeats the purpose.
01:30:52
Speaker
and like then you could go like wash your hands so there was like a lot of like interactive bits to the game and there was there for this level and the storyline and like the leveling system the battle system was cool like your character basically being a punk so like his moves were like he would elbow you to the face or he would kick you in the crotch those were his starting moves
01:31:14
Speaker
And it develops as you level up, you get more abilities and stuff where you can heal yourself or heal other people. Your main character was very well-rounded. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, it's talking about needing to revive this giant steel titan, which was like the intro theme music. And you're like,
01:31:34
Speaker
Oh, am I going to get to drive the giant mobile suit? And like the whole time I was like pounding on my desk being like, do I get to drive this? And so you're going through and you're realizing that you need like this mental fortitude and a lot of plot stuff happen, like the people attacking the orphanage and all this sort of stuff. And so then you finally, you finally get to pilot the giant mobile suit and fight it in battle. And I was just like, is this Gundam?
01:32:04
Speaker
Am I playing it custom anime game? And so I loved it. I laughed so hard. I was having such a great time.
01:32:16
Speaker
I honestly, maybe I need to switch the order a bit because I think Near Future and Edo Japan were tied for second and Imperial China and Wild West were tied for third for me because now that I'm talking about it, I think I really love Near Future. It was a lot of fun. And the mobile fight was fights were great. And then you fight the end boss in the mobile suit, which was awesome. Like, I don't know. I could not find it. Voice acting in this one was a little weaker.
01:32:42
Speaker
This one was another example of where I felt like a lot of voices sound very similar to each other.
01:32:48
Speaker
I think it was a lot of them were kids, too. Like there were a lot of kids. You were at center on the orphanage. A lot. Yeah. So there was a lot of kid voices. And I think a lot of the kid voices kind of sounded a little bit too similar because they were kids. And so I think that was my only grip in this one at all. Like everything else was great. I loved it. Like music story. I got to drive a giant mecca suit. I was giggling. I was giggling like a school girl. I was super happy about it.
01:33:16
Speaker
This is what actually stemmed KJ saying that I need to play Xenogears because I was having way too much fun being in a giant robot killing things. It was a lot of fun. But for you, KJ, how did you find here? So this is actually the first chapter I did. I was really excited. I thought the chapter was great. I wish there was more time in the mech. That's probably my first thing. I thought this of the original seven stories had the best
01:33:44
Speaker
the sort of, I would say the best story, but not necessarily the most like flushed out story. Cause I think there were so many things that were happening. Like you go from basically finding the character on a bench to going to the orphanage to like trying to revive your sister's turtle to then
01:34:06
Speaker
like there being these like random thugs that reminded me of team skull from pokemon um trying to like do something and you don't really know what's happening and then you like these are this is this is getting into spoiler territory so my apologies at least for this chapter so like then you find out that lawless who was in your party is actually used to be a thug in the group of
01:34:30
Speaker
in like the gang and like he's the reason your father died and like there's so many different things where it's like whoa that's that's absolutely wild and then he like you see the guilt from him and he like runs off to try to sort of save everything um and yeah there was a lot of there were exactly piece done there were a lot of plot threads that were happening and it was like
01:34:59
Speaker
It was very much all packed into like that all was packed into like three or four hours. There's also a spot where they like try to they like burn down the orphanage. Like there's so many different things that happen and it's like, whoa, this is a lot.
01:35:15
Speaker
This is like a three hour. This is like a three hour segment of the game. And then on top of that, you have the piece that Polly's talking about where they keep alluding to this mech. They keep alluding to this mech and you're like dealing with the old antique shop owner guy. And like he also has this weird crafting system, which P stone mentioned earlier in chat, like the crafting in this in this chapter absolutely sucked.
01:35:40
Speaker
the prehistory chapter did have that was the one sort of good thing about prehistory for me is that it did have a pretty cool crafting system but like the crafting system in near future the crafting system in near future was terrible but yeah it was pretty bad yeah it was like there was a lot of there was a lot of story and a lot of battle like combat in this chapter i think it was just missing
01:36:04
Speaker
More time in the mech and then also it was the case where like you got to the final Boss is I'll say like the people that were The people that were Supposed to be doing But we're supposed to be like pulling the strings for the final boss and it was just like this is
01:36:32
Speaker
this is unfortunate. So yeah, I mean, I, I liked it. I liked it a lot, but I think that it could have been, um, I could have been a little bit tighter, like more tightly put together, but yeah.
01:36:53
Speaker
Yeah, um honestly here you you're right like honestly I was just super excited about a mecha battle so like I think that like overshadowed for me that I just had so much fun in the mecha soup but you're right I think the story did go a little wonky I think I think that's why I ended up putting it in third and not second tied for second so because it
01:37:14
Speaker
it had too much story disconnect and I think if they would have like took out a little bit of stuff like where you're stuck in the bathroom getting Watanabe stealing from your um teacher slash orphanage mom uh like you could not leave until you did that entire segment which was frustrating because I was like it would have been fine if it was a little side thing that you could do
01:37:37
Speaker
But because you could not leave and continue the plot unless you fully did it, it was dumb. Like you're getting like pocket lint in a picture and weird. Yeah. Anyway, there was a lot of weird things where they were trying to like put so much in such a short chapter that it was just too too much chaos. And I think I'm going to go back to my further comment of that. It is like tied for third for me with Wild West because Wild West was too short.
01:38:04
Speaker
Near Future had too much in a small period of time. And they should have fleshed it out a little bit more or cut out a bit of it to bring you into the mobile suit into more of a focal point at least by halfway through it. Because the mobile suit was like the last 20 minutes of the game kind of idea. Whereas it had been alluding to it and had crazy theme music and had been talking about it since the beginning. But you don't even find out about it until halfway through.
01:38:34
Speaker
uh the story so like it just felt like the story kind of was a little bit all over the place yeah and i think it needed a little bit more focus and that that along with a little bit of like honestly the voice acting wouldn't have bothered me that much then if they would have cut out a bit of that because it would have been a lot less of like because the kids didn't really have a
01:38:54
Speaker
relevance to the plot other than that that's where he lived was at an orphanage, right? I think they wanted to so I think the reason for so much of that like world building with the orphanage because they want it was because they wanted to make it feel impactful when they burn the orphanage down.
01:39:13
Speaker
I think that's why they did that. Like if they wouldn't have been as involved, it would have been like, oh shit, that's an orphanage burning down, but it wouldn't have really tied to Lawless or Akira as much. So I think that's why they were much more, they wanted to make it, they wanted to make you feel it.
01:39:34
Speaker
And they also, as the, as the player, and they also wanted to show like, this is the, this is really hitting for the, uh, for the characters as well. Yeah.
01:39:51
Speaker
Yeah, you're right. Having the kids part in there should have been maybe a little bit of variety in the voice acting for the kids. But I would have liked it if they had a little bit more the kids relevance into the plot. I don't know that they could help combine their energy to make the mobile suit run. I don't know. It still felt like I was a little bit like when the orphanage burnt down, I was like, oh, shit. And I even replayed that VOD before doing the stream and going, I hardly react.
01:40:21
Speaker
I hardly react. Yikes. I react more to Lawless because you see more of Lawless. He's more in the plot line. He's more part of the story that he's trying to uncover things and he's kind of like always popping in and out until finally like he tries to save everybody by like giving up his life and stuff. So like it was I was more sad about him in the end than the orphanage literally burning down. Wow.
01:40:50
Speaker
So, yeah, all in all, I feel like near future was so close to being like either the top or near the top for me, but it just had a few things that I just needed to do a little bit better. And now that I'm thinking about it again, that's why I had the order as a period China and you know, Japan tied for second because they did a lot better at the story and pulling you and keeping you even it, even though they weren't like as long as near future, like you know, Japan was very close to being the same like this near future.
01:41:20
Speaker
with everything you could do, but yeah. I still really liked it, but yeah, it ended up being like tied with Wild West for me. Wild West needed to be longer, Near Future needed to have more directed story.
Middle Ages Chapter and Emotional Impact
01:41:35
Speaker
and not be kind of all over the place for a good chunk of it and then suddenly you get a mecha and suddenly you get mecha battles which is the coolest part of it by the way and that was such a brief moment in the game when it had been alluding to it since the very beginning intro yeah so
01:41:53
Speaker
so we have one we have we have one more so all right because i played in stream this and you got to see a lot of what i said about it kj how did you feel about distant future okay i cannot play visual novels i've been trying to play digimon survive it put me to sleep um
01:42:18
Speaker
Distant Future did a little of the same. It was just like, the story, don't get me wrong, the story was cool, right? Like you're on a ship and it's like this like sort of murder mystery, like there's a lot of things going on and it was tied together very, very well. Like the story of Distant Future was great, but it had to be because there was not much combat. You fought the final boss,
01:42:49
Speaker
And you also, you could, what I did learn is you could actually do more fights in the, um, the breaker mini game. I learned that watching peace stone stream. Um, yeah, there's actually more fights. You find like a little like.
01:43:07
Speaker
key or something like that or like memory card it's a memory card you find a memory card and you can use that to actually do more fights in the um like arcade machine but oh yeah i didn't do that it was very story heavy and i don't know i thought it was cool but i just wish there was more combat like
01:43:32
Speaker
But because there was actually communication and talking and there was a good story, it's definitely... I didn't know you could do the mini game without the memory card. The memory card is just gonna save your place. I thought you needed it.
01:43:49
Speaker
But yeah, so I think in general, like, because of everything, I was just like, you know what, I don't want to, I can't put prehistory above this, like, because the story was so good. And honestly, like, it's like,
01:44:09
Speaker
There's a huge gap between distant future and prehistory for me even still like I didn't love distant future But the more I like I beat that I beat distant future and then I watched peace don't stream it and then I watched you Stream it and I was like, you know what? The story is actually really good
01:44:27
Speaker
And to be honest, the character is also like Cube is also a very good party member if you actually like level him up and use him. So, yeah, I mean, I I didn't mind it. I didn't mind it. I was definitely a bit like when I was playing it, it was a bit hard for me to stay engaged because it was only store only story. But overall, it was it wasn't bad.
01:44:56
Speaker
Yeah, and I streamed most of it and I was about to interject being like Hugh. Don't you mean Joe Mama? So my my chat. No, it's got to be round. You he was going to name him roundy.
01:45:10
Speaker
Yeah. And then you're like, no, cube, because he's circle. Yeah. Yeah. OK. But yeah, one of the big things for me and why distant future is above prehistory and present day for me is because this future had a really good story. And I thought the voice acting was really, really done well. I had no idea you could interact with the car.
01:45:31
Speaker
arcade system. It was blinking and flashing and usually I go and click on blinking and flashing things in the game but I was so like trying to like figure out the plot and figure out where I need to go that I entirely missed it so that's kind of really clever. Yeah now that ends up being where you had to go um
01:45:49
Speaker
That's when you, where you needed to go to do the boss, right? So it made sense that now looking back, I'm like, okay, it hinted at me going and interacting with this thing, but I never did it. Um, and so it was like a miss little component to the game there that I missed, but it also really remind, reminded me of like space movies where like you're lost in space or whatever. And like some of them go crazy and some of them like have these things happen to them or like they're literally being hunted by an alien on this
01:46:16
Speaker
spaceship. It had all of those elements in it. That's what made me really like it because I like those kind of movies. Despite that, it didn't have as much combat, which I was also yelling at the screen a lot being like, there could be combat here, but there was none.
01:46:32
Speaker
it scared me like my chat was literally jump-scaring me because it was so freaky to have that alien chasing me and freaking KJ got me one time with like the Kefka React where it's Kefka's laughter and I literally jumped out of my skin because I thought for sure the big alien guy that likes chasing you around because when you interact with it, it instantly kills you.
01:46:56
Speaker
So it's another one of those horror aspects to a game where you can't do anything to defend yourself but run. And those kind of things really freak me out and are the things that can really make me jump. And obviously streaming that was a great thing that I didn't realize because you guys making me jump and scared and stuff really brought me into that. There was a horror aspect. There was a survival horror aspect to this game.
01:47:24
Speaker
And so I ended up liking it a whole lot more. And then Kato's voice, and I'll say it forever, was just smooth as butter. And I just like, can you just read me bedtime stories? It was done so well. And the way he interacts with Cube and everything was done so well that I just I really, really enjoyed.
01:47:44
Speaker
I enjoyed Distant Future a lot more, so I liked it more than Present Day. Present Day was lacking so much story that even though the combat and Street Fighter elements were great, Distant Future, even though it lacked combat, except for the little arcade minigame and or the end boss that you had to fight in the arcade, which was the computer system.
01:48:07
Speaker
I really liked the story of it. And I like that it just kept, and I kept trying to guess who the main villain was going to be. And I literally guessed everybody, but the computer system, which is a, like a trope in like base movies that should have dawned on me right away that it was the computer because that is common in space movies. It's like the AI is what's, what's against you, not an actual human.
01:48:32
Speaker
I printed that pretty early. I was like, oh, this is totally going to be like the ship is actually killing them. Yeah, where I didn't catch on, even though I've watched a lot of those movies and I should have caught on to it, I kept like guessing the different part of like people. And I was like, oh, it's totally the military guy. And then it's like, no, it was the military guy. I was like, oh, it's totally the crazy lady. And it's like not the crazy lady. And it was the A.I. the whole time. I'm like, this is a comet.
01:49:00
Speaker
I come in sci-fi movie trope that the AI is what's thing and the AI was setting everybody up too so all in all it was just like okay like every alien yeah exactly um like it just I should have caught on to it but I didn't but it was still it was still like I liked it it was right in the kind of the middle for me um I wish there was more combat I wish your little cube guy was a little bit more relevant
01:49:29
Speaker
But all in all, I like the whole, and the pacing was a little slow in the beginning. It was kind of slow to pick up and start doing something. So the pacing was a little off as well, which made it kind of boring at the start. And so I think part of me liking it more was also because I streamed it.
01:49:50
Speaker
And I had more interaction with my chat while I was playing the game. And some of you, having already played it, knew when to make alerts go off so that it would freak me out. And so it was just kind of well done that way. I think I liked it a little bit more because I streamed it. That's fair.
01:50:10
Speaker
And I was a little bit more like it being a little bit slow, I made up for like talking to chat and stuff. So there was less of it feeling slow, even though I definitely know it was slow at the beginning. Yeah. Whereas like I was laying on the couch playing and I was like, oh, man, this. Yeah. KJ played it off stream on his own kind of thing. So like it definitely it definitely feels I think it felt worse that way. It felt like longer of a game, but.
01:50:35
Speaker
But yeah, for me, distant future was like right in the middle, right in the middle of the pack for me. All right. So I guess it's funny. We were talking about like if we were going to call this a spoiler or not, if you look at. So if you look at the box. Right. I spent the front cover, there are eight characters. And if you look at the back.
01:51:01
Speaker
There are eight time periods that were mentioned. Probably thought there were only seven chapters, because you actually only get seven chapters originally. So I guess we'll kind of mark this as loose spoiler, but there is an eighth chapter, it's the Middle Ages.
01:51:27
Speaker
um and it's funny because as you're going through um each character i didn't realize this till very very end game um each character actually like their end boss is sort of foreshadowing
01:51:48
Speaker
What is gonna happen in the middle ages and I didn't realize that till again until like I was beating the game basically Yeah, they did a good job of putting that very subtly into it that neither one of us realized it until we were in the final thing which means
01:52:03
Speaker
most most people it seems like that's the case there was a few people who figured it out uh before that if they never played the original but yeah it was they had these little like each boss fight alluding to this thing and going now looking at it like oh that's so clever i'm so sad i missed that so yeah i thought that was i thought that was really cool and like
01:52:24
Speaker
It's like, oh, you start to look and it's like, it's literally just all the names. And I mean, even the most obvious one was the distant future, or the distant future one, where you end up in a spot where it's like OD10. And it's like, oh, you basically like OD-10. And that was like the name of the AI of the ship.
01:52:51
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so the middle age was cool. You take over a character that is like going on like it starts off as like this competition to try to win the princess's hand in marriage and then like she like gets captured or something and you're off trying to save her.
01:53:15
Speaker
And yeah, it's just it's long. And I think that was one of the things I didn't like about it because it like it dragged on, in my opinion, it definitely dragged on. Like I thought the Middle Ages, it was great. It had a good story, good combat, but and great OST, but it just it dragged on for so long because it's like you do everything and you end up recruiting this like you end up going out on a mission to find your wife.
01:53:45
Speaker
But like, you go out with the guy that you had the competition with, and then you sort of get these two, you recruit these two heroes that defeated the Lord of Dark previously, and then go off to try to find her and defeat the Lord of Dark again, because it's like very cyclical.
01:54:09
Speaker
And then it's like, OK. And so, yes, Peastone, Peastone brought it up the twist and turns. It was really interesting because there were a lot of plot twists, right? Like you do this and then you you like go through everything. You don't find her. You don't find the the wife. But then like.
01:54:29
Speaker
you two of the party members die while you're there and then you go back and everybody's like oh you made it back like sorry to hear that they're dead and then you like get manipulated and end up killing the king and there's like then everybody is like you're a traitor
01:54:48
Speaker
And then all of a sudden you're like down this path of like you just riding solo as the main character trying to sort of like redeem yourself. And it was watching Polly's reaction to this plot twist was great. Cause she did this on stream and like you go, you finally get to the point where you're like, all right, I'm gonna fight the final boss of this chapter.
01:55:17
Speaker
You go to it, and it's the guy that you're... It ends up being the guy that you are... It looks like the guy that you are, uh... Like, have that competition with. You kill him. All of a sudden, the wife comes out and she's just like, oh my god, you killed him. We were in love. Like, you only care about yourself. Like, you're so self-centered and only care about your own success, blah, blah, blah. And then she just stabs herself.
01:55:44
Speaker
And like watching Polly's reaction was fucking hilarious. And yeah, then it just like, it's just like the character just gives up and he's just like, well, I'm just gonna give in to the darkness.
01:56:07
Speaker
and that sort of stems a little bit further. So Polly, I'll let you take over, give your opinion, and then we can dive into the final chapter.
01:56:17
Speaker
Yeah. So for me with middle ages, I'm okay with it dragging on some places because it really built up the big blow at the end of everybody just basically screwing over your main character. Like you, I find like I kept going through and it was like, things just kept happening. Like it alluded to that. I was going to be this good guy and the character looked like Isaac from golden sun. So it's like, I'm the name of Isaac and KJ's like screaming and chatting.
01:56:44
Speaker
like no don't name him Isaac he was so sad about this and I didn't realize until after why but I was like no he looks like my boy Isaac and he's gonna be like a hero he's gonna save the world okay just like biting his tongue watching me do this on stream and so I'm playing through it and honestly like I'm just like I kept yelling be like cuz the wife was like oh you know like I
01:57:10
Speaker
I'm okay with this because of your feed. We will be married." And I'm like, you have known me for five seconds, lady. Why is this thing? And I'm just like talking at her because it's like, okay, apparently we're in love now. And then she gets kidnapped and stuff. And then so you are on your way out of the castle and the person you fought for her hand in marriage, more or less, is like, I'll join you. And he's a mage and stuff. And I was like, mm-hmm.
01:57:37
Speaker
all right let's join but I was like okay like I beat you up but we're best friends yay I got my best friend mage and you go on this thing and you find other uh the the other two people who beat the lord of darkness before because lord of darkness is who kidnapped the the your wife which
01:57:55
Speaker
funny enough they never really touch base on how that happened but anyway we'll get to that so she she gets like kidnapped by this like demon like this big demon thing so you think it's the demon lord so you're going on this this quest to do it and i realize it's long but it had to be because you were building up all this momentum that you were going to be the hero then you meet the hero of past and he kind of
01:58:19
Speaker
overshadows you a little bit he's like super strong he has like super strong equipment and I was like oh is he taking my spotlight and I was already offended I was like taking my spotlight as hero I'm the hero I am Isaac I'm the hero and I was like being like all all defensive about it
01:58:36
Speaker
And so you go through, and you get to the cave where your wife here, the princess, was taken. And you go through this whole cave, and there's this sequence. And I didn't catch it. And my chat had to remind me of what happened, because I missed it. This is how subtle it was. So you go into that cave, and you fight. Do you fight something? I think you fight something. And then you're the hero guy.
01:59:06
Speaker
like gets down on his knees and he's like coughing up blood because he had this internal injury from the last time he fought the thing and he ends up like dying on you and you're like
01:59:17
Speaker
Oh, okay. Well, I guess you're not the hero because you just died in front of me. And suddenly there's like rumbling and stuff and the mage is like, we got to get out of here. Like it's going to collapse in on us. So you're like, okay. So you get the old guy and the mage and you run out and literally it happens for a split second. But apparently there was like a scream and then suddenly you only had two party members. I missed it. I got halfway through exiting that cave and went, wait a minute. Where's my mage?
01:59:43
Speaker
Where did my reach go? And like my chat had to tell me like oh you missed the scream and the like tiny dialogue that the thing and I was like can I get him back and I'm like running back and they're like no no no no he did and I was like okay okay so like I run back so I kept running through the cave it was ridiculous so I get out of there and get out of the cave and everything
02:00:06
Speaker
And then you get back to the castle and it segments it to where you're in kind of a dream and there's like the shadowy where the king used to be standing. And so you fight the shadow and then you snap out of it and the guards think you killed the king or like you killed the king. And you're like, oh shit. And this is where it starts where all of a sudden everybody's against you.
02:00:31
Speaker
So you just killed the king. That's why. Yeah. Oh, I just kill it like they think I killed the king. But you're like, no, and I'm yelling at the game being like, no, I killed a shadowy thing. What the hell? And so and the only one who believes in you is the old guy. But he gets like captured and tortured and stuff like that, basically to death sort of idea. And then this is the part of the game where I was frustrated. It doesn't tell you what to do.
02:00:57
Speaker
So you leave, you get kicked out of the kingdom, and then you're like, OK, where am I supposed to go? And I needed Chat's help for this because I was running around aimlessly and I couldn't figure out where I had to go. And it turned out like you had to go up the mountain. You didn't have to go up the mountain, but there's an extra cutscene if you do. If you go up the mountain, you go to the grave, there's a little cutscene about the hero and stuff and how he's like, you know, a hero has to stay strong even in the most darkest times. It's like, OK, this is encouraging. Wait. And then you go.
02:01:27
Speaker
foreshadowing and it didn't really tell you that you had to go to the village. So I go to the village and this little boy is the only one who believes in me, but everybody else is scared of me. And so then you go back to the castle, you get captured, thrown in the dungeon and stuff like that. So and then the old guy dies saving you. And so but he alludes to being like, you have to still save her.
02:01:52
Speaker
we never saved the princess so this whole time I'm just like oh right she's still trapped like I need to still go back for this woman and it alludes to like you know your main character being actually and fell in love with her like oh I should go save her she's the only one that'll be on my side so you go you go into the thing and yeah your friend ends up being the mage who tricked you into killing the king set that up
02:02:19
Speaker
he betrays you and everything. And you're like, okay, I gotta fight this guy. And you fight him and you kill him. And you're like, okay, good, because he's like, he's the big bad guy. And I was like, okay, this is this, you know, the my best friend was the bad guy.
02:02:35
Speaker
So then the princess comes out and she's like, I was in love with him. I'm like, you were not. And it like flashes back. And it's true. She never said anything about being in love. And she's like, but he came to save me. You left. I'm like, the place was falling. I was literally yelling at the game because she kept making all these reasons of why I wasn't a good husband when I was like, listen, lady, I was tricked. I was it.
02:03:03
Speaker
and she just kept doing this and then she's like I need to be with the one who truly loved me and like offs herself with dyes and I was like okay well bye and by that point I was just mad for the main character I was like okay well bye off yourself I guess I guess I wasn't your husband and I was so angry about by this point and then he just he gives into the darkness and I was like you know what
02:03:27
Speaker
This poor guy has gone through, like, trying to be a hero, trying to save this woman, trying to do everything right, and the world literally just keeps shitting on him. And I'm just like, yeah, I see it. He's evil now. Yep. You know what? That's OK. You literally threw shit. It's really interesting because I don't actually. So after thinking about it, I was watching your play through and I started to sort of like
02:03:57
Speaker
theory craft a little bit. And I don't know if that was actually them. Like in my head, I'm thinking I'm like my interpretation of it now is sort of after the after the you get back from the situation with trying to like do I think that so I think that the princess was already dead.
02:04:27
Speaker
I also think that the friend was already dead. Like the friend died when you were leaving the first time. And then from there on out, the main character was just being manipulated.
02:04:37
Speaker
Like I don't think that that's actually like I don't think that she actually killed herself. I don't think that like you actually fought the friend. I think that the main character was just being manipulated at that point and like by the darkness. You know what? That could very well be it. That's interesting. I think that like I don't I've not read up on any of that, but that was just like what I was thinking afterwards because I was like,
02:05:02
Speaker
I just, I don't see that being logical. And I think it was the case where it didn't necessarily have like a vessel and it needed him as to be like that vessel of being with the Lord of Darkness. And so, yeah, I'm actually,
02:05:28
Speaker
And that's very well possible too. Peastone and Chat mentioned potentially all three could have been influenced. So the thing is, I thought that the friend died when the original hero guy died. I thought the friend died too.
02:05:47
Speaker
um yeah see i missed that bit where he's like crushed in the cave portion right like i thought the friend died as well so that's why i started thinking about it afterwards after you after i watched you and peace don't play it like that was one of the nice things about this was that like
02:06:02
Speaker
I finished the game, and then I saw Pestone beat the game, and then I saw you beat the game. And I was like, oh, it really helped to formulate my opinions a little bit more. Because I was like, oh, this makes a lot more sense. I mean, that is the sort of what you want in a video game book club type thing. You start seeing different things and talking about it and formulate opinions. But yeah, after getting another look at it, I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense.
02:06:31
Speaker
so yeah yeah and you talking about that also alludes to that this has replay value because if you didn't watch me play it and you didn't watch peace don't play it you would have had a different opinion yeah so like replaying this game and going through the chapters and replaying certain segments
02:06:47
Speaker
opens your eyes to more things that you might have missed. And now that you're saying that, I'm like, that could very well be because you saw the big goblin wing thing take her away. And then with her being like, oh, you never came to save me and stuff. And when you continue on with the plot and you realize the darkness sort of took over and everything for your main character,
02:07:08
Speaker
It never really talks about how there was that demon taking her away to begin with. Exactly. Like where did that come from? So like you saying like that it was being manipulated from the get-go, honestly that to me sounds way more of what actually happened than your best friend betraying you. Yeah. And there's a part which we'll talk about with the later segment.
02:07:32
Speaker
Um, there's a trial area that you could do and you actually get to talk to the spirit of the dead princess. And she's very like, please, please save him. He know not what he does. And all this like really like, and I'm like, okay, you just like.
02:07:50
Speaker
off to yourself and you did this deliberately did you actually so you saying that now is kind of blown my mind and i'm like oh my god he was manipulated from the start by the darkness the darkness took over they were probably you're right they're probably dead and he they took over like their bodies of their spirits to manipulate the main character into going evil
02:08:12
Speaker
and being the vessel that they needed to break time and space. Which leads us into, so there's the eighth chapter, then opens up another one where you get to pick who your main character is out of the eight chapters you've done.
Final Chapter Exploration and Endings
02:08:29
Speaker
one of them being the medieval one, which I never ended up picking. So I didn't actually end up getting to see what that was. I picked one of the other ones. But, uh, KJ, you picked, uh, you picked the Shinobi, right? Of course. Yeah. So KJ picked the Shinobi and I picked Hong Hakka because I was like, my Kung Fu Panda is going to save the world.
02:08:52
Speaker
Before we go into that, I think we should highlight that there is another option very quickly because you can actually choose the Middle Ages main character and then you go through like a boss rush and it's like the villain main ending.
02:09:13
Speaker
Oh, interesting. And apparently there's another one. So there's another one that if you choose the villain, if you choose the hero from middle ages, instead of having like a flea command, he apparently has like an Armageddon command.
02:09:32
Speaker
which ends up being the exact same ending that you got when, or no, it's not the same ending, nevermind. It's not the, so yeah, there's, it looks like there is one, two, three, four, five, six endings to the game. But two of them are like the same. Which is mind blowing. Yeah. Um.
02:09:54
Speaker
Apparently if you lose to the final boss or if you choose with the actual like any of the other hero endings or if you Go in with
02:10:06
Speaker
the guy from the middle ages and then use that Armageddon thing. Like basically the world just blows up, it looks like. Oh my God, okay. And then there's the chapter, there's the ending where if you choose the hero from the middle ages, you fight, it says seven bosses. I'm assuming those are the characters of
02:10:35
Speaker
Like, those are each of your parties. They are. It is. Yeah, you. Yeah, you basically eat up all your party members, which this is really cool. So not only does it unlock an eighth place, which I mean, going back to it, KJ knew there was eight. I didn't because I didn't really count the cover or the back. And then honestly, you get through the Middle Ages and you find out that your main character has gone evil and everything. And then you get to pick.
02:11:05
Speaker
Like the fact that you get to pick who your main characters that go through it and that there's multiple endings. We should have played through this because it looks like if you choose them, you get to use the bosses and fight the characters.
02:11:24
Speaker
OK, that's really cool. That's really cool. Now I'm going to go back and play this game and pick the bad guys so that I can do that. Yeah, that's really hilarious. That's really cool. This is why this game is just so good because you have these different plots and stories and stuff and then they start to connect in this final chapter where you pick who your main character is. But the fact that you could be evil or good
02:11:51
Speaker
depending on who you choose as a main character, is so powerful in terms of endings, where you get to control the fate of the direction of things. And so with KJ, he followed on how to get the true ending. Which was actually an accident. Which was like an accident, because you were looking something up. So here's what happened. I chose Oboro.
02:12:19
Speaker
And I found Akira, and I was like, oh, I must be able to recruit everyone. So I was like, I'm going to walk around and try to recruit everyone. I recruited everyone except Sundown, the Wild West.
02:12:35
Speaker
And I was like, I have no idea. And I was like, you know what? I found him twice. And I was like, I have to find him a bunch of times. I'm just going to look up where he is. And in the thing that I looked up to see where he was, it said like.
02:12:50
Speaker
you need to, no, I wasn't, I didn't, I actually like, I guess kind of, I kind of like stumbled into the true ending. In saying where he was right afterwards, it said like, this is what you need for the, like, okay, you're ready for the true ending now. And I was just like, wait, so I would have, if I would have found him all six times, I would have gotten the true ending anyway. But like, yeah, I kind of like,
02:13:20
Speaker
essentially stumbled my way into the true ending, which is becoming more common than I'd ever had. Yeah, I mean, there's a few of them that you keep doing this and it's kind of funny. But for me, right away, because so KJ beat it long before I did. So when I got to the ending sequence, he's like, do you want to know how to get the true ending or do you want to do this on your own? And I regret saying, I just want to figure this out.
02:13:48
Speaker
because the ending I got so you go into the sequence where you're basically going to fight the thing and I stumbled on a character too like I clicked on the sign that's what it was I clicked on a random sign and the shinobi drops out of the sky and fights me it was like but you're my part you're my
02:14:10
Speaker
you're my main character, and then ends up being a part of my party. So then that's when it dawned on me. I'm like, oh, I could probably get party members. So that's how I figured it out. So KJ found Akira first, and I found the, because I clicked on a random sign, I found the Shinobi first, who I named Riki Maru. And so, and then we started to progress. And then I found Akira, and already I'm like, well, I've got my three favorite characters right here. Like, who's going to be the fourth one? And so,
02:14:39
Speaker
I found, who did I found next? Oh, I found Ryuu. The present day main character. I also found Distant Futures, but I didn't have the way to wake it up because you needed a special item. And the funny thing about that is you walked right by it.
02:14:57
Speaker
You walk by it because it's on the the snowy area. But for me, like I was exploring everything and I was like, oh, I found this random thing. And I'm like, oh, this must be something to interact with cube. I'm going to like I'm going to keep that in mind. And then I found. Yeah. And that like really made things a lot easier as well, because I didn't have to like backtrack there.
02:15:26
Speaker
And I also stumbled. So each character has like an ultimate weapon. And and you stumbled upon it as well. The the trials like each character has a trial that you can go through to get their ultimate weapon. Yeah, we both stumbled across that because we both found a random like cave or whatever at some point. Well, it was the houses. It's the houses in the in the town there. They are the trial.
02:15:52
Speaker
Like they're, they're Oboro's trial. So I walked in there and I was just like, it said trial of keys. And I was like, um, okay. And yeah, I mean, the trials were pretty simple. Like they took a while, but they weren't like difficult and some of them had bosses. Um, but they weren't, they weren't super bad as long as she was like leveled up and everything.
02:16:16
Speaker
And I stumbled across that and I was like, what is this? Like, cause it was eluding cause I ran in the village and went into the, what a buildings was talking about a trial. And I wasn't, it said, I didn't have the wisdom to do it. So I left and I'm like, okay, whatever. And the funny thing is, is I never went back to the village to do that. And I'm going around. And when I got my next character, I saw this path in the forest. So I went up into it. And then there was this big boss sitting in front of this cave. So I attacked it and killed it.
02:16:44
Speaker
And then when I went in, that's where I got one of the my party members, like like best weapons. And then I was like, who I bet these are all over. Who was that for? That one ended up being for. Oh, no. Oh, crap. Yeah, who did that end up? Was it the present day?
02:17:08
Speaker
No, because the present day had the wraps. I did. Oh, yes, it was present day. Yes, it was. I didn't do that. I did. So I did. My final party was, um. Edo Japan, Imperial China, Wild West and near future. So I got all of those weapons. I didn't do all the other ones. So I had no idea that one. Yeah.
02:17:35
Speaker
So that when I stumbled across of it and that gave me the final weapon for present day because when I was trying to find my fourth party member, I only found Cube and Ryu, and those are the only two that I ended up finding. And I was like, I don't want to keep trying to find who these are. I'm just going to go with Ryu, or Ryu, or whatever, a present day guy. And so I went and I found that cave and it ended up being his best weapon. So it's like,
02:17:59
Speaker
I wonder if there's more of these. And then Akira's, I stumbled on entirely by chance. I just kept teleporting out of battles because I didn't like fighting the mammoths because they had really high HP, but they didn't give you very much experience. So I got tired of fighting those. So I kept teleporting. So I ended up in Akira's by accident entirely.
02:18:21
Speaker
And you go through and that's where you find out the voices of the people that your main character killed. Like their spirits are trapped in this dungeon and you find the the princess and she is very like, please stop him. He knows not what he's become. Please do this for us. Like, you know, like I'm so sad that this is the way they and I'm like she was so emotional about it and so caring that she cared about him and wanted to save him. I was just kind of like.
02:18:51
Speaker
This does not fit in with what I saw you do in the last storyline. So I kept that in the back of my mind, but I didn't think about it until you brought it up during this podcast about how you think they were manipulated from the beginning. And I think you're right now at this point.
02:19:06
Speaker
And so I stumbled across that. And then so I go through, I don't end up finding Pogo, AKA the prehistory one. And I don't end up ever like, I called it on stream because I was in the ice area. I'm like, I bet you the Wild West guy is going to be at the Hermit Hunt. But I couldn't find how to get back to it. And I kept running around in circles. And finally, I'm like, I'm just going to go beat it, whatever.
02:19:33
Speaker
because I never thought that you needed all the characters. So I go to the ending and you, oh my God. So you fight the boss at the end. And my chat had a field day with this because I did it on stream. And basically it's two eyes, a mouth and this winged thing in the background. And it just looks really creepy that people kept doing the eye and lip emote things in my chat. And it was really weird.
02:20:02
Speaker
And that's the final boss that you like. Yeah, exactly. Like KJ is putting in the chat right now. Exactly like that, where it's like the two eyes with the lips. And so I focused on the lips first to beat the lips because they were the closest to all my party members could attack the lips. I killed that first, and then I did the eyes.
02:20:23
Speaker
it was
02:20:40
Speaker
And so you fought this and it was hard or whatever the first time. And I will talk about the second time fighting it because I learned something that even KJ didn't realize you could do in his playthrough because I stumbled across it because like I almost died in that fight the second time. Anyway, so I beat the I beat it. And then it's left with a choice of whether I kill
02:21:03
Speaker
like the medieval guy or I leave him. And so I attacked him. And then you go into a fight where it's just like your main character who you chose and him, and you just kind of fight. And then it ends. And like your main character is like, I think I did something bad. I don't think he deserved this. Shifu, did I do something wrong? And then it like fades and then that's my ending. I was so mad. You missed the part. It says on the screen, the cycle continues.
02:21:32
Speaker
Yeah, the cycle continues. And I was like, I got a bad ending. I was mad. So then when I asked, I was like, OK, now that I've done it, how do I get the true ending? And you said you had to get all the characters. And I was like, I was so close to being able to have the option to choose all because I didn't go try to find Pogo because I didn't like him. And I didn't go try to find the Wild West guy.
02:21:58
Speaker
So I was like, all right. I tried to do it on stream until I realized it was like 1.30 in the morning. And I'm like, this is going to be another two or three hours, isn't it? And so I ended up calling it and doing it off stream. And so I had a very different ending than KJ's, which
02:22:17
Speaker
KJ, what ending did you get? Yes, I got the true ending, but also you could have gotten the normal ending had you not killed him. So if you kill him, regardless of who you recruit or anything, you get the never ending cycle. If you don't kill him, you get the normal. Um.
02:22:36
Speaker
the normal ending, which I don't know what that entails, but the true ending, what ends up happening is you, you have to have the, all the part, all the characters recruited and they have to be in your party for some amount of time. Like no, like just in general, you fight the boss, you fight the boss Apollo's just talking about, and then you get to that point where it's like, do you want to spare him, blah, blah, blah. And then you leave.
02:23:02
Speaker
then you leave and it puts you through a gauntlet of basically everything that you have to do.
02:23:12
Speaker
Like all of the, it puts you through a boss gauntlet of you fight another boss. I can't remember the order exactly. I can't remember if you fight the, you fight the, no, you fight the boss after, right? I think you fight the boss after. Cause you fight all of, you go back and it basically transports everybody back to their time where you have to fight each person, each person's like final boss. And that's where I realized everything was like derivative of Odio, which is the Lord of dark.
02:23:39
Speaker
That's where I was like, oh, this makes so much more sense.
02:23:43
Speaker
Literally all the names of the boss fights that you've gone through the game and the other worlds all had Odeo in the name in some way shape or form or Yeah, it was that was wild Yeah, I'm blowing. I'm very happy I took three hours off stream to still get this ending because that was mind blowing and then so you go through that gauntlet thing where you get transported and you have to fight each of the characters on their own with their bosses again and
02:24:12
Speaker
and then you awaken the true final boss. Yeah, which wasn't too bad because you do some damage. You do some damage to it and then like people start coming in and like helping like the other party members start coming in and helping and it's just it was like not bad at all.
02:24:30
Speaker
I thought it was really cool because as you did it, you realized that you were breaking apart this evil boss to free the medieval main character. You were actually trying, everybody was collectively working together to try to free him. And I thought that was super powerful being like, you know, it's not his fault that he got corrupted by the evil. He's not truly evil. And you're trying to break apart and do that.
02:24:57
Speaker
During your whole journey, you end up picking up a parasite sword if you go around collecting stuff. And when I found out through my second go through of the end sequence so that I could get the true ending is that the baby form or whatever, just before all of this happens, is incredibly weak to it. Hmm. And if you throw the parasite sword at it, it does like a thousand damage, which is half of its health in one hit.
02:25:28
Speaker
I think I had that, but I don't think I actually used it. Huh. Yeah. So I went with the Wild West guy, but because he never, he was never leveled up as much as Ryu. So when I fought the end boss again, I had the wild West guy instead of a present day guy. And so.
02:25:44
Speaker
It ended up being really difficult to the point where I was down to the Shinobi guy. He was the only one still alive. Everybody else was dead. Akira was dead. Hong Hakka was dead. The Wild West guy was dead. And so Sundown was dead. So I only had the Shinobi left.
02:26:04
Speaker
And so I was looking through my inventory of something to attack him with. Cause I'm like, he still had a little under, like he was just under halfway, just under halfway help. And I was like, come on, like, I don't want to have to restart this again. And so I was looking through my inventory and it talked about this parasite sword. And it said the, it said the ultimate weapon of evil, but don't equip it.
02:26:29
Speaker
And I was like, OK, that I didn't end up equipping it in the game. But I'm like, OK. So that I was like, it gave me the option to throw it. So I had to throw it. It did triple nine damage. Instantly killed them. I was like, what? What? Wow. I was like, what? That's broken. Yeah. I did not realize that was a thing.
02:26:50
Speaker
Yeah, so I ended up lucking out beating that, so I was so excited because I was like, good, because I thought I was going to die and had to restart that boss sequence again, which was annoying and tedious. And so and then you do the gauntlet and then you get to that end boss and stuff like that. I had no problem with the next form of where he's got like Isaac absorbed in them. Yeah, that form is easy. That was form was pretty easy, especially when all your party member came in and I just had them keep doing their ultimate attacks, more or less.
02:27:18
Speaker
And so that finishes. And then your middle age's main character, Orrsted, was like, OK. I realized what happened or whatever. I gave into the darkness and stuff. And he kind of becomes a hero at the end and finishes it off, which I was like, this is super powerful. And then everybody goes back to their different time periods. And then you get to see, like,
02:27:46
Speaker
Little cutscenes of how their lives went. Yeah, and I loved that for most of them of course prehistory did the Intercourse joke again. Yep. There's just a bunch of babies And but Imperial China where he's got a dojo and all these little kids. It was so cute.
02:28:07
Speaker
Like, they all go to their different time periods and stuff. And I was like, there's so many bosses and so many things for
Narrative Quality vs. Game Length
02:28:13
Speaker
the end sequence, but when you finally get it, the ending is really good. And I love the little clips at the end of all the, everybody's like story wrapping up. But neither KJ nor I ended up doing the evil route.
02:28:13
Speaker
I
02:28:29
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't, I just, I finished it and I was like, all right, time to, time to move on to a new game. I see credits roll and I'm just like, all right, I'm good. So yeah, it honestly, it was quite the roller coaster of an experience and it easily has become one of my favorite JRPGs.
02:28:54
Speaker
It's really cool of different breaking up. Everything ties in together at the end, which is something where I was worried about. Oh, is there? Can you not hear me anymore? Can anybody hear me? Or am I cut? Yeah? OK. So my audio is fine. Audio is still fine for me. OK. OK. I am back. Sorry about that.
02:29:23
Speaker
Okay, okay. We can, okay. I paused there because Retro was saying the audio cut, so I just wanted to make sure. But yeah, honestly, going through this game to cycle back, going through this game, all the different stories, everything connecting, like Octopod Traveler, I felt
02:29:45
Speaker
Well, I will probably have a different story once I do the secret bosses and all that sort of stuff where it does actually connect. And maybe it's kind of similar to Live Alive. I felt with Live Alive, I liked it a little, like I really, really liked how everything connects in the end. And they're not just separate timelines. They're all connected by having the same boss in each one, which is different variations of the name. The story was really, really great. Like, honestly, I would put this in my, like,
02:30:14
Speaker
top favorite JRPGs of all time. Like it was, it was really, really good. There's like some things that I would say is approve it. So it's not like perfect or anything like that, but I would give it like a solid nine out of 10. How about you? I don't know. I, it was a good game. I, I have opinions on the octopath thing. I think, I think the one reason, one reason why one would say that is because this game was shorter.
02:30:42
Speaker
But I think Octopath, I have a, yeah, I definitely have opinions on that. You haven't finished the final, you haven't finished like the secret boss for Octopath and there's a lot of lore that ties everything together. Okay, perfect. So if everything ties together, that'll be great. That's what I really liked about this game is everything tied together. I thought it was gonna be super separate.
02:31:05
Speaker
I think this game, everything tying together, it was the case where they... It's shorter, yeah. Yeah, it was much shorter and it was less about the...
02:31:17
Speaker
It was less about all of the characters' adventures, where I think a game like Octopath, it really wanted to push each individual story a ton. But drop you small breadcrumbs and things like that to be like, oh, this is how this could have happened to me. And then they tie in everything afterwards. So I think that's definitely something. OK, awesome. But if Octopath does that, then that's probably going to make me super excited. It's just a longer game.
02:31:48
Speaker
Exactly. It's a much longer. Yeah, it's it's double. Double the length of this one, potentially triple. Yeah, I would say more triple. Yeah. Because this one, I mean, I had a lot of like other running around to do, but my time staff was 30 hours. OK. So I beat this in 30 hours. OK. And I mean, yeah, I beat the game in like twenty six, I think. Hmm.
02:32:15
Speaker
And I think it took me main game of Octopath, probably like 55. The last like 20 was like doing a lot of, uh, doing a lot of the, like finishing all the missions, basically a hundred percent of the game. That was the last 20 hours in Octopath. So yeah, I mean, overall, I think.
02:32:41
Speaker
I can understand why that would be the case. And I mean, I think this one of the things I really loved about this game is that.
02:32:50
Speaker
it didn't feel like it was wasting my time. And I think that's, that's, I was talking to, I think I was talking to a piece on about this yesterday in his stream, where for me, a lot of games nowadays, like a lot of modern games, they add in a lot of filler or they try to stretch the story in a way that really makes the pacing difficult. Like,
02:33:12
Speaker
There's no reason a game should like to beat the story in a game. It should be 60 70 80 hours of just like playing off stream and being dedicated to the game like I and that's like I haven't played a lot of these games because I'm intimidated by the fact that it's going to take me.
02:33:32
Speaker
a couple of months to beat the game whether it's on or off stream but like the persona games like especially persona 5 persona 5 royal like the xenoblade games um some of the trails games like those games like
02:33:47
Speaker
I think the Trails games, it's a lot of extra stuff that you get pulled into that does it. But yeah, it's one of those things where some of those games just take a ton of time. And for me personally, I just look at it and I'm like, even Tales games nowadays, like Modern Tales games, you cannot do side stuff and still it drags on. The pacing is pretty rough and like,
02:34:17
Speaker
kind of poor and you end up in a spot where it's like, I feel like I'm about to end the game. This makes sense. And then they hit you with the, but wait, there's more. And like from a, from a standpoint of like.
02:34:32
Speaker
getting my money's worth, that's great. But in the standpoint of, like, I think there's, there's a sort of a balance where it's like, yeah, I want to get my money's worth for the game, but also I don't want to make it, I don't want the game to be so bloated with things that it messes up the pacing and really puts you in a spot where you don't even want to really play the game because you know it's going to take so long.
02:34:56
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's that the argument of quantity does not equal quality. And so making something super, super long while you think you're appeasing to your audience and making it feel like the game is worth the $80, $90 price tag that it's being sold at. If it's not well structured and well paced, it can feel really slow at times and feel like a grind and like
02:35:17
Speaker
and dip in that enthusiasm. It's the same thing that I always say about like anime. I prefer anime that are like 300 episodes or less. I don't think I could ever do like a one-piece marathon even though everybody says the story is great in the
02:35:33
Speaker
characters are great it is such a long grind and a long haul to be able to watch that entire series and so when you have like I'm glad that there's JRPGs that have a mix of long and short and then like a middle round where it's like where it's not too short it's not too long and it's like right perfect where I feel a lot of the earlier JRPGs do that really well like the PlayStation 1 era Super Nintendo PS2 area where they didn't like
02:35:59
Speaker
make it like too too long or too too like some of them were short but like they they they had a better idea of like that balance definitely but now with games like being made in like the higher technology and stuff people are expecting like oh if you're gonna charge me ninety dollars I want to get like a hundred hours of gameplay which is ironic because there's a lot of like triple-a games that sell really well that have like five hours of gameplay and stuff so
02:36:23
Speaker
It's very ironic that they pick on the JRPG segment for that, but it's just like that, like some people can go through those and have the time to do it, but it is a time sinker and Persona is a series that I absolutely adore, but it is also a very big time sinker series, like especially Persona 5 Royal. I'm not even halfway through and I have like
02:36:44
Speaker
I don't know, 50 or 60 hours and do it. And you played the regular one. And I played the regular one. That was the big thing is it's like I played all the way through the regular one and now I'm playing through Royal where there's differences and enough differences to keep me interested. But I had to do it a different way because it's such a gauntlet. So I'm doing like a perfect run of it where I get all the social links maxed out. And so I'm following a guide for that because I wanted
02:37:08
Speaker
something more for the reason why I'm replaying this incredibly long game. And it did the same thing with Persona 4 and Persona 4 Golden. I beat Persona 4 and then Golden came out on Vita and I was like, oh, I think. And I did the same thing I'm doing with Persona 5 Royal where I do the perfect social leg run so I could see all the storylines of every character and follow a guide for it so that I could unlock that.
02:37:32
Speaker
because I needed something more to go through it yet again for that big of a grind of a game. But I don't always have time to do those big, long games. So Live Alive is a perfect game of where it's not too long. It's not overly long, and it's not bloated. There are segments where it could have been longer and still not affect
02:37:53
Speaker
The overall feeling, I feel of it, it would actually approve like the Wild West story if it was a little bit longer and if the present day was a little bit longer and if the near future was a little bit more streamlined and do like a plot.
02:38:07
Speaker
Those are the only things that I would tweak with it. I would not add any more into it, like in terms of like other stories and stuff like that, which was my original idea when I was going through this. And then KJ was like, wait until you beat the seventh one first before you write this down. Because I had a segment like I would have been like so cool with different arrows and more arrows. But no, it was good with how many it contained. It was just some of the stories were a little, little,
02:38:34
Speaker
too short, like Wild West and present day. And then Near Future had a little bit of bloating problems and stuff like that in it. But overall, it's like one of those games where it's like, it didn't go on longer than it needed to go on. Exactly. It felt like a complete solid game where I didn't feel like it dragged on. There's like tiny bits and pieces maybe where I did, but like overall, no.
02:39:01
Speaker
which a lot of, like you said, the newer JRPGs have an issue with these days is because they're taking so much longer on the games now than they used to, like Sprite games, old 3D games used to take a couple of years. Now they're taking five, six, seven years to release these JRPGs. They feel like they need all of this content in it to justify the $90 they're going to sell it for. Exactly.
02:39:25
Speaker
But on KJ's defense with that as well on his side, I would say like quantity does not equal quality. And there is a lot of like RPGs where it has a lot of stuff to do, but it didn't add to the experience. So they could have taken it out. It would have been fine.
02:39:45
Speaker
Um, and so, but for me, like, yeah, persona series is a good example of that. Some of the tales of series is a good example of that. Um, which early on tales didn't have that like tales of destiny is as long as it needed to be it.
02:40:02
Speaker
It was paced well, it was story was well done, gameplay was good. I mean, there was a couple little grinding things that you could do, but overall, it was well structured. But some of the ones I found like Tales of Silia, for example, it did get kind of long.
02:40:21
Speaker
at pork parts, even though I really liked it. And it's one of those things it's like sometimes you just don't have the time to do those really big long grind games and Octopath Traveler is another one too. I don't know when I'll find the time to do the grinding to do the secret classes and secret bosses because there is such a grind to level up to be able to do them and they're ridiculously hard. And so it's like,
02:40:46
Speaker
That's why I ended doing all the chapter four quest and finishing it. And that's what I ended on stream because I'm like, this is going to take a while for me to ever beat this. Yeah, it's really interesting. So I I don't know. I. I think it's. It really depends, and I think doing playing games on stream is also another thing, right? Like playing games on stream, you go because
02:41:12
Speaker
I don't think Octopath would have taken you as long as it did if you didn't play it on stream. I think that's like a solid, I do think Octopath is like a solid 50, 55 hour game. It's just that you play it on stream and it just like sometimes doubles the amount of time you're playing. But what I will say is, as mentioned, like there are some, there are definitely some older games that
02:41:37
Speaker
are longer longer yeah like yeah retro and chat brought up dragon quest seven which is like 100 hours oh yeah yeah i was gonna say like the dragon warrior slash dragon quest series does that a lot um they generally have longer longer games and it's not necessarily a bad thing and i'm not saying it is um for some for some of it works like persona five has so much content in it while it is a very long grind it is a very
02:42:05
Speaker
Good grind. If you like the whole, I'm going to school anime referencing sort of aspect to it. If you don't like that, it can be difficult and tedious. And so it's a matter of like personal, it comes down to personal opinion by that point. But it is one of those games where like, for example, one of our community members, Alina Inverse, like took over a year to beat Persona 5.
02:42:30
Speaker
Yeah on stream because like it streaming that you're adding like double the time So whatever you would take to beat a game you would double that So I think octopath traveler seemed a lot longer to me because I was streaming it So it seemed a lot longer that way, but I think it would have been
02:42:48
Speaker
you're right, it would have been a more reasonably length the game for me if I just didn't scream it. So for something like Live Alive, this is a perfect game to stream, in my opinion, especially the different chapters and stuff. Because people who don't want to see a certain chapter could just look at your title if you put the chapter name being like, hey, I'm doing present day today. Well, they could look at that and like, oh, I don't want spoilers on present day. I'm going to miss that one. But I'll go watch the near future one or the distant future.
02:43:18
Speaker
This is a really good game to stream, personally, in my opinion.
Replay Value and Personal Preferences
02:43:23
Speaker
But sometimes with the super long game, sometimes it works for them, sometimes it doesn't. And so it's like, I don't know if I would recommend, as much as I want everyone to play Persona 5 slash Persona 5 Royal, because I love that story. I don't know if I would necessarily recommend a stream, just because it's a super thing. But where this one,
02:43:48
Speaker
It's worth the price. What was it? $50 USD? Yeah, I think I paid $50 USD for it.
02:43:55
Speaker
Yeah, so this is well worth the price. You get enough content in it that justifies the cost of it. It doesn't feel like overly bloated except for a couple tiny minor areas. It has optional story paths you could take for endings. It has optional bosses you could do. It has different ways you can replay some of the things if you want to to see how they're done. Like for like the EO Japan, for example, you could do a no kill run or a like kill everything run.
02:44:23
Speaker
Um, and so I feel like this is that's why it gets a nine out of 10 for me is because it's not only a great stream game It's a great game to play. It's worth the money Um, and overall I thoroughly enjoyed it and I really like the story of it So like that's why it gets such a high ranking for me personally. Yeah Yeah, I I don't know. I think there were just because it was very much a roller coaster ride for me with some of the stories like I enjoyed it
02:44:53
Speaker
But it was like, put it this way, I didn't enjoy it more than Grandia. Oh, okay, all right. That's my thinking. I didn't enjoy it more than Grandia. I enjoyed Grandia more. So yeah, like solid eight for me. I think it was a good game. I would still recommend. It's not a game. It's a game that I would still tell people if they want to play it. Oh yeah, it's still a great start. Oh yeah, play it. It's a great game, but it's just not going to be something that I want to
02:45:21
Speaker
I probably won't replay it soon, if that makes sense. And if I did, I would be very selective about the parts of it that I would replay because I think overall, like it was good. It was really good, but it's still left more to be desired as bots.
02:45:38
Speaker
Yeah and for me I would eventually replay certain aspects of this game to get the different endings and stuff now that I know the bad endings and stuff I would do that. Oh yeah. Grandia I wouldn't replay at all. I think it wrapped up. I think there was like
02:45:55
Speaker
Honestly, there's a couple options of dungeons I could have done, but I don't know if they would have really added a whole lot to the experience for me. And for me, this ended up being slightly better than Grandia for me because Grandia ended up being 8.5 for me out of 10. This ended up being slightly better because this is something that I definitely would replay certain things. I would try to do the optional boss in the Ito Japan area if I could ever beat that thing.
02:46:19
Speaker
But not anytime soon, but it is something I would replay where Grandia, the only reason I would replay it is maybe years down the road if I forgot the plot. If I forgot the plot or forgot the overall thing, that's when I would probably replay Grandia. But otherwise, it's just like Grandia was great, solid. It was 8.5, loved it. But the story wraps up there, and there's not really a reason to replay it unless I just forget.
02:46:46
Speaker
Whereas Live Alive, I would. Honestly, now hearing about the thing, at some point I might go and do the evil ending route and get the different other endings that way. And I think that comes down to games that have...
02:47:01
Speaker
Alternate endings versus games that don't they still could be really great games like grandiose a really great game It just doesn't have alternate endings or alternate reasons to replay. That's fine Yeah replay for me isn't a big deal Like I don't typically like there are so many games on my backlog, but like I don't typically replay games anyway So like I'm not looking to if I get a game like I want the best experience up front
02:47:31
Speaker
Like, I don't care necessarily to replay it because if I'm going to be replaying something, it's going to be like 10, 15 years down the line, probably. Like, it's not going to be something that I replay or it's going to be replaying it because I'm like, oh, I want to get the hundred. Like, I want to do like 100 percent run or something like that. Like, it's not going to be because because like I I just want to play the game and then be done with it.
02:47:59
Speaker
yeah and see that's what kind of meets is kind of teasing in the chat but it's also true it's like you like to do it and finish whereas i like games where i have a reason to replay it like multiple endings in star ocean 2 i went and got them multiple characters and stuff i replayed it a bunch of times to do that any games that do that i will pop them in over something new because i want to replay and see how things are different so that's why those for me get a little bit higher but that's because i personal opinion wise like
02:48:29
Speaker
games that give you something a little bit more reason to replay it, other than the fact of just replaying it. Now, Grandia would be something I would replay way down the road, especially if I forgot the plot, just because the battle system and stuff was great. And I do that with Final Fantasy VIII, for example. I will replay Final Fantasy VIII, or I'll replay Final Fantasy IX, or I'll replay Final Fantasy VI just because I really, really did enjoy the whole mechanics and everything of the game.
02:48:58
Speaker
But I do tend to prefer ones and why they're higher ranked like Valkyrie Profile, Star Ocean 2, things like that. Because I love doing multiple endings. I love different choices for your characters to go down. And I like those things where you prefer to just be like, I've beaten this, I've finished it, we'll go on. And if I replay it, it's generally super down the road.
02:49:23
Speaker
which is totally fine. It's just two different opinions of it, of how we like our JRPG. So it doesn't make Live Alive any worse or less.
Game Ratings and Recommendations
02:49:31
Speaker
So you had a Grandia at 8.5, so this one's an eight for you then, right? Yeah, that sounds remarkable. Yeah, and I had 8.5 for Grandia, and this is a nine for me, so.
02:49:41
Speaker
It's really funny. I was super excited about this. And I mean, it was good. Yeah. I played it because of you because you were like, you, you were super excited about it. And then you said, Hey, let's make this a podcast game. And I was like, okay, I'm down. And it was reasonably priced that it ended up being like $60 Canadian AKA $50 USD, which I thought is fair for what you got out of it. Yeah. No, I agree. I think this was, I think this was, uh, this was a solid, this is a solid pickup.
02:50:11
Speaker
Yeah. I think we're both on the path that we recommend this game, right? Yeah. Oh, 100%. Yeah, I'd recommend this game for sure.
02:50:19
Speaker
Yeah. And I would recommend it even before like it goes on sale or anything like that. I would recommend it like if you want to play it, get it now. Like it's worth the price. It gives you enough content for what you're paying for, in my opinion. And it's just a phenomenal story. And yeah, highly, highly recommend it. If you if you want a really great JRPG, this is a great remake. I've never played the original. I don't think you have, Gage. I have not. No, I haven't even heard of it until. Yeah. They announced that they were going to be
02:50:50
Speaker
doing a remake this was one of the only like yeah this was this was a game that was not on my radar
02:50:58
Speaker
Yeah, and that's for me, I had no idea it existed. I didn't know there was a original version of this game back way back when because it only came out in Japan. And there was only like fan translations of it. And I wasn't super big in the ROM emulating world to have known that. So I never like this is my first experience of it. And from what I gather from other people, they say it's a great remake of it. And so like I
02:51:27
Speaker
Yeah, I would highly recommend it. Yeah, so I think that's gonna be sort of like the end of this episode of Turn Based Tangents.