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Episode 15: The Last Story
41 Plays1 year ago
Come see Poly & Kj's thoughts on the Mistwalker RPG for the Wii!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Episode
00:00:00
Speaker
All right, so welcome everybody to the next episode of Turn Based Tangents. I'm KJ.
00:00:06
Speaker
I'm Polly. And we're reviewing the last story, which is a Wii game, um, dubbed by Mistwalker.
Mistwalker's Legacy and Creators
00:00:13
Speaker
So anybody that doesn't know anything about Mistwalker, um, they've put out some heat, like specifically Lost Odyssey, Lost Odyssey. I, I will tell you about Lost Odyssey. Like everybody that knows me knew that like we were covering a Mistwalker game. I was going to bring up Lost Odyssey at least once. Like let's be real.
00:00:33
Speaker
Oh, but yeah, no, so Mistwalker is actually a company that was created by some big names that people will know, specifically Sakaguchi, who is credited with like being basically the father of Final Fantasy, effectively.
First Impressions and Game Collectibles
00:00:52
Speaker
And all the music is done by Naboo Oumatsu, which, again,
00:00:56
Speaker
somebody that was very prevalent in the Final Fantasy world. And I think they were they were on pretty much everything up through 10, right? I think it is. Yeah, I believe it. I think so. Yeah. I think they start changing off around Final Fantasy 10. Yeah. But yeah, there it is. There it is. And I'll probably have to copy. I had a copy of the game, however, and do not take this as me.
00:01:26
Speaker
not liking the game or anything, but I knew I wasn't going to replay it. So I did sell my copy. Don't, don't, don't watch the VOD of this. It's okay. It's okay. Like I said, it's fine. Sometimes it happens. I have sold plenty of games that like I enjoyed, but will never replay. That is, that is the thing. It's like, maybe that's a little bit of foreshadowing. Maybe it's not. Maybe I did hate the game.
00:01:53
Speaker
Well, we'll never know. Well, actually, you will know if you watch the rest of this. So keep keep tuning, listening, keep listening. Yeah. So I have the collectors. I think this is the collector's edition that comes with the. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like an art book, a CD. I think one other thing in the game.
00:02:22
Speaker
Yeah, I don't have the CDs. This particular one, I got a bit of a deal on it because it didn't have the CDs. And it was a little bit torn in one corner. The box, like it's like...
00:02:34
Speaker
up here like a little bit of a torn there so I got a I got a pretty good deal on this but at some point I'll get the CD to complete it because I mean the CD is like five dollars on eBay so I'm like I keep completed at any time but but one thing that I really liked with the collector's edition one it looks like a book which I thought was really cool did like the outer case looked like a book yeah
00:02:58
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I wish more RPGs did that, because RPGs just feel like interactive books sometimes. And I think this is just a really cool concept for cover for Collector's Edition. But I also absolutely love the little art book that they included.
Art and Visual Critique
00:03:15
Speaker
It's just a little one, but seeing their concept art and the process of everything and the characters and how they figured out the characters and their outfits and stuff like that was really cool. It's all in this little cute little art book.
00:03:27
Speaker
The cover like wraps around. So it's like you have the main character are on the front and then like it wraps around, which I think is really cool. It's it's the same cover that that is. But I thought it was really neat. And I like what you get with the with the collectors and stuff like that. But yeah, it looks so cool. And that's probably a great segue into just like the art of the game in general.
00:03:56
Speaker
I'm going to defer to you as the artist because I actually think I might have some hot takes, but we'll see. I'm going to start with the concept art since I already have the book here. I want to start with the concept art because I think the concept art is actually fantastic. I think the style of the characters, so I'll pull one up since it's the main character.
00:04:23
Speaker
I think the concept art is beautiful. The drawing is really nice. It's shaded and detailed. Looking through this art book, it's a little bit of a spoiler. Fun fact, it actually spoils one of the bosses.
00:04:38
Speaker
like one of like the later end game bosses. Oh, that's great. Okay, so don't look at this away from the art book. Don't look at don't look all the way through here. It also spoils like some of the characters and stuff like that as well. So yeah, don't look at the art book until after you've only played the game.
00:05:00
Speaker
But I'm glad that I didn't because I usually don't look I'm terrible at this, but I usually don't look at the manual because I'm always scared of spoilers. So I I did not look at the art book before playing the game. I just looked at like the cover and stuff, but it's beautiful. Like it's absolutely beautiful. I won't show too much of it because it does actually spoil. But like, oh, my God, that's a spoiler, too. OK, this this this is this isn't a spoiler. There we go.
00:05:27
Speaker
pages. And I was like, spoiler, spoiler. But for those listening, I'm just showing off the the art book that comes with the collector's edition. But yeah, concept art is great. It translating to the game, though, I feel like
00:05:45
Speaker
Not quite. So like going through the concept art book, it is rich with color. It's beautiful. It's rich with color. And I think part of the thing is that you can customize your characters like outfit colors. I think that might be part of it because it kind of just defaults you into like generally blacks and grays and then you kind of go in and manually change it and brighten it up.
00:06:13
Speaker
But I also just kind of found that the concept art was very... How do I put it? Like very alive, very bright, very vibrant. And some of that didn't quite translate in the game. So I think I like the concept art a little bit more. But I also... Okay, so with the character models,
00:06:42
Speaker
Some of the characters looked really creepy when they smiled. They were going for a very anime-slash kind of look to it. They had the anime eyes and the anime mouths and stuff like that, and sometimes
00:06:59
Speaker
when they had the characters like smile or talk to you. Sometimes it would get stuck in a smile and that just looked creepy in like the dialogue scenes. The ones where it like panned out and showed the two characters and they're talking to each other. Sometimes it would get like freeze framed on this like weird, creepy smile. And I'm like, and I'm like, this is just unnerving. That is an attention detail that I did not pick up on because I was not really like,
00:07:27
Speaker
I was not really looking at like, I don't know. I definitely agree with you on the fact that like the game felt very muted. I think there were a lot of situations where I was like at first we were talking about it and you would mention that you like were doing all of the color things and I was like, I'm not going to change the default colors. And then honestly got to the point where I was like, I have to do this because a lot of the characters like the characters that have like white or blonde hair
00:07:55
Speaker
all start to kind of blend in together. And I was like, oh, no. And then on top of that, two of them, like, there were two different characters that were mages, too. And I'm just like, oh, I have to change them. I have to change their colors. Like, so this person has to have blue on. This person has to have green. This person is going to have orange. This person is going to have red because I needed to differentiate between all the different characters because the game throws all of the characters at you.
00:08:20
Speaker
Basically at once, like you almost have your pretty cool at the beginning. You get a lot of your party members at the very beginning and like they don't really give you a lot of differentiation between them. Like in the very beginning, you're just like, OK, these two people cast magic. Then you start to realize, oh, this is my fire mage. This is my ice mage. This is my wind mage. It's like, OK, now you kind of have a little bit better of an understanding about that. But in the beginning,
00:08:48
Speaker
Not at all. So, yeah, I felt like I was like, wow, the colors are very muted. Now, that said, when you start getting into various places in the world, like in the maps, they start to look a little different and it does get to get to be like a little bit more colorful. Even like the dungeons, I would say, like some of the dungeons they had, they still did a really good job of like mixing combinations of light.
00:09:15
Speaker
with like, yeah, like the first little intro bit. I totally agree. Like it started to like, uh, open up a little bit with the, like the dungeons and stuff like that. But if you don't customize your characters colors, they all default very bland. And I told KJ that's exactly what I did is, uh, right at the beginning. And he thought he was just like, uh, and I was like, yeah, I just color coded them. So I knew who was who on the map.
00:09:42
Speaker
So I didn't have to like think like, oh, who's, okay, I've got three guys in black over there, which one is it? Like, which character is it? Because they just default to these like, just like blacks and grays color schemes. So it was often too hard for me to be like, okay, who's in that corner? Who just ran that way? Like, why is my party, like, why is that member over there? And like, I was color coding them made life so much easier.
00:10:10
Speaker
Honestly,
Battle Mechanics and AI Behavior
00:10:11
Speaker
it wasn't even for like in battle for me. It was just like it was it was mostly early on when I didn't really know the characters. Having them having different colors on made me again think like, oh, Yurik is wearing blue. So I know that that's who that is. Like when it came to like walking around and like seeing them in cut scenes or like those different things. That's when I started to remember like, oh, OK, well, this is this person's backstory. And like they're wearing blue.
00:10:40
Speaker
So yeah, it helps with remembering the character. I didn't even think about that. That's smart. It wasn't because like on the one actually battling like, I mean, we're going to get into this a little bit later, but like I feel like I.
00:10:55
Speaker
not relied on, but like definitely used the supporting cast a little more than you did. So like, I don't care where you are on the field, I just need you doing these various actions. And like, I'm handling my business fighting whatever. Like, that wasn't necessarily the case for me in terms of like,
00:11:22
Speaker
color-coding them on the field, because I wasn't even, honestly, in terms of their placement on the field, because I couldn't control them, I wasn't thinking about it, right? Fair, yeah. And that's totally fair, because they are AI-controlled, but I like your point of changing the colors also just help you kind of connect the character a little bit better.
00:11:43
Speaker
And I think that's a brilliant thing to recommend if you're going to play this game. Definitely color code your characters. Go through, customize the character colors. So it just adds a little bit more life to the character. Because I did that super early on. I think the brightness of my TV is not as great. So I found sometimes like...
00:12:04
Speaker
It was just it was a very muted game. Like, yeah. So there was like a lot of times where like they would hide behind something in like a dark quarter. And I didn't know if it was like Marania, Marania, Eurek or freaking.
00:12:22
Speaker
sometimes I didn't know who was at the corner because they all defaulted to the really dark black color scheme. Then the muted colors along with the dark shadows, they would literally hide in that shadow. I'm going, I have no idea who's over there if I need to protect them or not.
00:12:42
Speaker
I don't know if they're in DPS over there or if they're a mage. So like when I see like enemies going to them and stuff, so I'm like, okay, I need to switch to colors. And I did that like super early on. But honestly, it did actually help me connect the characters. And we'll get into like the story plot and stuff like that a little later. But I laugh really hard at what I did, like what I color coded somebody. I think it's really funny. AI in your game was a lot more dumb than the AI in your game.
00:13:12
Speaker
I don't get it. Did you play off the Wii or the Wii U? None of my characters that were like damage dealers were hiding. Like they were always in the thicket. Mine hid. Mine hid. Mine hid. I had often, often, Dagrin just would just run off the screen somewhere. He wouldn't even go after the enemies. He was just
00:13:38
Speaker
Gone to like some corner and then he like hiding behind a pillar for a little bit and they come out of the tax of things I'm like, you are a freaking DPS. Why are you hiding behind? Come out and fight them with me like a while. Yeah. Like the mages would like stay in the back. So like Lowell or Lowell or whatever his name is and Yurik and Marania and Calista, they would all stay in the back.
00:14:02
Speaker
like Dagrin and Seren were in the fight all the time. And it was like 50-50, they would actually be like fighting and stuff, especially in the beginning. And I'm like, I don't know why it just keeps like, they would just kind of like run off. At one point, Dagrin got stuck in a wall.
00:14:22
Speaker
You had a very interesting experience. In a boss fight, he got stuck in a wall. And I couldn't use him at all. And he wouldn't get out of the wall. And I was like, dude. I was like, I'm just like having a soul in this boss right now. Because you won't get out of the wall. I don't know what happened. I think he did one of his moves, one of his attacks. And then he just glitched into the wall. What happened? So I guess we can start talking about the battle system a little bit more.
00:14:50
Speaker
Did you, cause so the way that the, the way the combat system works, right? So you're only controlling the main character. However, you have like the ability to use a, like you use, you get like.
00:15:06
Speaker
almost like a stamina meter type thing, that if it's full, you can give commands to the entire part. And so it's either like, you end up being able to issue either like, they have typically a support skill type thing, a offensive skill type thing, or eventually they end up getting a special, and then they also have like retreat, which is just run away and hide, right?
00:15:31
Speaker
So if I were in that situation where somebody were glitched into the wall or glitched out, I would have tried to then command them to do something. Oh, I absolutely did. He did the command in the freaking wall. Oh, that's amazing. I was so upset.
00:15:47
Speaker
Yeah, I had him do his like, I think it was, what was it? Like power, power, power strike or power gain or whatever the like his, his one move was, um, the, the left move and I had to do it and he did it in the wall.
00:16:03
Speaker
And the boss, okay, in perspective, it's like I was in this like, kind of like a dungeon-y thing. It was early-ish on in the game. And I think it was like chapter, like, I don't know, like eight or nine or something. It was early-ish on. And I'm fighting this boss, and the boss is like completely on the left side of this grade. Like, I'm not even kidding. He's not in the middle.
00:16:25
Speaker
He's not near where Dagran got stuck. He's on the left side of the screen. And then there's this weird like pillar rock formation thing in the right corner and Dagran just got stuck in there doing an attack. And then I waited for my thing to build up. I'm like, okay, I'm just going to command him. It's totally fine. I can hold the, I can hold down the fort. Even though I'm like yelling at the TV being like, Dagran, I'm pretty sure I yelled at the characters sometimes. And it was probably just like, what the fuck?
00:16:54
Speaker
But I was like, take her, get out of the wall. And finally, finally it builds up. I do the command. I'm like, okay, this is great. I'm going to have my mages do their thing. I'm going to attack. Daggett's going to come out of the wall and back me up and like, you know, I'll take the front and he'll get the back. And no, he does the attack in the wall.
00:17:14
Speaker
The funny thing is, I wish I was recording it because I had like so so many little things like that where I was like, OK, but I mean, I could forgive it because it's a Wii game. Like, right. And I feel like. I felt like the AI was good. Like, I actually thought the AI was pretty good. Like, I never had an issue like 50, 50.
00:17:40
Speaker
Another thing about the battle system is, like, there's a life system. So you have your health bar, but then every character in every battle you get into, every character has five lives. So you have like a mode that you can basically go into where you draw all of the enemy's attention to you. And when you're just super handy. Yeah. And when you're in that mode, you can also revive your characters. Otherwise they're alive.
00:18:09
Speaker
They were alive in like a minute or two. They had like a timer on them. But as long as they weren't out of lives, as long as they weren't out of lives. Then you were pretty much true. I felt like the AI was so good. And it was like, other than the only thing I would have wished for with the AI was, again, Seren always went aggro. So she would have one life and
00:18:36
Speaker
She would just be like, she'd be on the front line. I'm like, yo, you have one life. We don't have meter yet. I cannot get Marania to revive you. What the hell are you doing? And it was just like consistent, like, especially later game. Yo, the last couple of fights, Seren was Seren died a few times because I had to like, I'm just like, this is so ridiculous.
00:19:02
Speaker
Um, or anything. So yeah, you just, yeah, we played this very differently. Um, but yeah, uh, I feel like like sometimes, sometimes they were, they were fantastic. Great. Like, uh, I found, I think my most consistently, um, um,
00:19:21
Speaker
Uh, I think my most consistently person who would like, I was like, never had to really worry about, um, was, uh, was Lisa. Um, other than Lisa. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You using the game name. Um, uh, I found, she was good. I found Marania was pretty good. Uh, and the work was pretty good.
00:19:46
Speaker
For some reason, Lowell, like he's a mage, but he would like sometimes like run in and attack. And I'm like, no, get your butt back behind the pillar and cast magic. Like I was using my command to make him do his magic because sometimes he would just go like go up and like attack for a little while. And I'm like, no, stop attacking things. He's like an in between.
00:20:13
Speaker
Like, yeah, I think he was in between, but I found him squishy. Like, I found like if he did go into the attack, I was like, no, you're going to die. And sure enough to like whack him and die. I'm like, OK, bye. So I am curious. How did you build out like because different.
00:20:29
Speaker
Different armor when you upgrade it does different, like, are set for different things. So the way I built him was like, I wanted him to be able to do both, but then I also made sure he had armor that gave him more physical defense instead of magic defense.
00:20:49
Speaker
that way who would go out into the fight in case I needed another person to kind of like take some of the load off of me and Sarin. So that was kind of my how I sort of built him. Like I I went through and one of the cool things like with the with the upgrade system is that like you get items that you can then upgrade weapons and armor. And so like super cool. I was trying to just like
00:21:16
Speaker
make sure that I was playing to the characters, what they were kind of missing. So like, I knew he was going to go out and do his own thing. So I made sure he had physical defense, whereas like I knew all the mages needed magic defense because like they were just staying in the back. I was like, perfect. Stay in the back, cast your magic, do your thing. And yeah, we'll go from there.
00:21:38
Speaker
But yeah, I I one thing that I really liked was the customization of the characters and stuff like the armor and everything you could get and the armor that you would put on changed their appearance, which was kind of cool, which was any time I changed the armor, I had to like go in and play with my color settings again because I was like, no, I'm like, this color clashes with this color. So I'm like, no, this has to be a good accent.
00:22:04
Speaker
I was one and done. I changed the colors once and that was their color. I had I had a little too much fun with that, but I loved that your upgrading equipment was a little less frequent, which was cool. And you get so many different kinds of weapons and stuff. So I built so the cast of characters that you could get that you have access to the game, you pretty well start with.
00:22:33
Speaker
pretty well all of them, which is really cool. I like that concept within a JRPG like this because I'm so used to RPGs where you like go on a quest and you collect your characters as you go along. Having all of them at the start made for you being able to like customize them
00:22:51
Speaker
rate at like rate early on and kind of build them a little bit. How are like, like, I mean, you had your majors in your thing, but you could like customize them and like really set them up early on. And then they just kind of switched between like some missions, some of them would come, some of them wouldn't come and just kind of flip the flat, flop that like that. But one thing I was telling KJ that I absolutely love about this game and I wish more JRPCs did that if one of them left your party temporarily, you could still take their equipment
00:23:21
Speaker
and move it around, which is so handy. And I wish more JRPGs would do that because one of the most infuriating things is having a character leave your party and they have some really good equipment on them. And you don't know if they're coming back or when they're coming back and they actually leave with it. You don't get that item back. Like some JRPGs will put it back into your inventory, but some they just go off with your items and you're like,
00:23:49
Speaker
Can you come back with that badass helmet, please? It was also nice in the regard of like there were there were long stretches where some characters weren't in your party. However, yes, because so like, for example, I think. I think.
00:24:09
Speaker
Yeah, anyway, it doesn't matter what the specific character, but it was nice when it was like, okay, this character isn't in the party. And not only do when they come back, they like level up faster. That was kind of nice. It's also a case of...
00:24:24
Speaker
them being gone, you could still upgrade their equipment. So even if they're not getting levels, at least you could upgrade their equipment if all of your other characters were upgraded. So I was able to keep all of my characters' equipment pretty well on par because I kind of foresaw various things and felt like I knew who the final party was gonna be, if anybody was gonna leave the party, anything like that, or if I was gonna have any options. I knew who I was gonna be rolling with, right? So I looked at it and I was like, oh, okay.
00:24:53
Speaker
I'm going to make sure these characters have upgraded things because this is how I want this to be.
00:25:02
Speaker
Yeah, and I and it was nice that the characters didn't have like like they couldn't use an equipment because they weren't high enough level. They didn't have any like level caps or anything on the equipment or the weapons and stuff like that, which is really super cool. So yeah, you could literally customize and level them up their items and stuff. So when they did get back into your party and then they just like you kill one thing and their experience goes through the roof.
Character Progression and Equipment Upgrades
00:25:25
Speaker
They were at least dealing good damage and they still had decent defense or they still had decent magic defense of the item, the equipments you had, which is such an amazing quality of life thing to do if you're gonna have party splits.
00:25:39
Speaker
If you're going to implement that, it's such a nice thing to have where you could still level things up so that when they do come back, I get it doesn't make sense because the characters left, so they took the armor with them. But this is a fantasy world.
00:25:55
Speaker
just just give us the quality of life upgrade and that's what this game had which was fantastic because like anytime somebody was out of the party for a portion of time and I'd find like a really good like mage dagger thing or I'd find a really good armor I can like stick it on them before they came back and you know they weren't so squishy when they did come back while I powered level them
00:26:19
Speaker
to like, so that they would catch up, right? So in the sense of like, you'd like kill like two things and they just like, go from like, level like, what, like nine to 15.
Story Structure and Optional Content
00:26:30
Speaker
And you're like, yeah.
00:26:31
Speaker
this is happening so I honestly think with these fantasy games like I get in I think in the developers mind they're like oh but you don't need to put hyper realism into it and I think if you're gonna do party splits the last story does it's so nice like reference this game and do it like that because being able to level up the equipment or even just get
00:26:53
Speaker
the stuff back. Like, even when they leave the party for a duration of time and they're going to leave the party for a duration of time, at least get the stuff back that you upgraded, that you put on them, especially for first playthroughs, because we're not following a strategy guide. We're not like we're playing this game and having it suddenly ambushed on us that that character's gone for a while. And then they take the stuff that I would just put on them, either if you didn't have a previous save point where you could have taken everything off before they left, you're kind of just like,
00:27:23
Speaker
SOL of having that stuff back. This game does it so well and I very much appreciated it. It made me not hate party splits. Usually I don't like them either. I didn't mind the party splits in this game at all. I didn't either because it got me to use like I liked that it did that sometimes because it got you to use some of the other characters and they kind of like swapped around.
00:27:44
Speaker
And you didn't end up being like super overpowered in some cases, because I was like, I mean, you have the potential of so many characters, right? So in those instances, it made it a little bit more of like, you know, balanced out in terms of like the what you were fighting and the bosses you were fighting and stuff, which like, sometimes they drop you down to four characters, sometimes they'd have you at five, sometimes, you know, that sort of stuff. Sean walked around that.
00:28:11
Speaker
Early on, it definitely felt like there were characters that were dead weight because it was like they were so underleveled that you had to be just like pushed through. And I will say, yeah, one of them particular, I'm thinking of.
00:28:25
Speaker
Two different things I was thinking about. One, you mentioning the fact that the like party splits, the way they did it, like the chapter system was really weird. There were like 44 chapters or something like that in total, but you never knew when it was going to be a long chapter or when it was going to be a short chapter. Like there were some cases where like, oh, I sat down for two hours and I got through 10 chapters. And I'm like, but then there were some times where I sat down for two hours and I got through like three chapters.
00:28:51
Speaker
And then also like chapters were tied to optional quests and different things like that. And it was kind of all over the place with like difficulty swings and all of that. That was a weird structural decision.
00:29:05
Speaker
But I think, again, these things kind of tie in because if you look at it like, oh, they're splitting the party and those party splits are tied to when different story events are happening in different chapters, it makes sense as to why they would be like, oh, well, you don't know when there's going to be a chapter change because they're so inf... they're so frequent or infrequent depending on where you are in the game. And you don't like...
00:29:32
Speaker
you don't, because you haven't played the game, you don't necessarily know like, oh, I should grind here because I'm gonna be stuck with this character, because they do give you opportunities to like grind with these things they call summon circle, which I didn't actually end up using until the very last one in the game, funny enough, but. Yeah, and so like, because you don't know really when to do all of that, then it's like, okay,
00:29:58
Speaker
the fact that they give you the option makes sense. And to answer the question, there were 44 chapters and the game was about 20 hours. I think my final save was like 1750 something in terms of time. So. Oh.
00:30:13
Speaker
Mine was higher. Oh, right. I did. Right. I did all the stuff. Yeah. I actually think they were. So this being a book kind of combined kind of it dawned on me after I had beaten it and I was really thinking about the chapters and stuff like that. It kind of reminded me of how like a book does it. So like
00:30:33
Speaker
Like sometimes you read a chat, like you're reading a story and like the one chapter is like two pages and then you get to the next chapter and it's like 12 pages long. And that's kind of what it feels like they're referencing. They're like really telling you, which I mean, it's in the title, they're really telling you a story, which
00:30:53
Speaker
was kind of jarring for somebody who has the experience of JRPGs, for the sense of like, I'm used to things like RPG games, like spacing them out evenly generally, or things like that, if they even do have a chapter system. Whereas after I had reflected on it, because it was, yeah, it was like, sometimes you'd get through like 10 and two hours and like one or two and two hours, right?
00:31:19
Speaker
But it did kind of remind me of a storybook a little bit more like that. And even the narrative in the game, it narrates a lot, is very story centric and stuff. So I think they were just kind of trying to do that and keep that little bit of, like you said, element of surprise.
00:31:37
Speaker
when you didn't know when a character was coming back, or when party splits would happen, or when they happened, how long it was till that person would come back. And if you felt like you were underleveled, you did have these summoning circles, where after you had beat a bunch of enemies and stuff like that, there'd be a summoning circle there that you could do, where you could fight them over and over and over again until your heart's content, or to however level you wanted to get to.
00:32:02
Speaker
I only ended up ever using one. And the funny thing is, is I think I was really underleveled. So I did a summoning circle, and it was one of my only time, I think it was the only time I game over. No, I game over done a boss, too. It was one of the rare times I gave game over because I think I was underleveled. And that's when when you're like one of the first optional things comes up. So I started doing those. And then I didn't have an issue with levels every
00:32:32
Speaker
But I did a summoning circle and I got annihilated. And I was like, what happened? What just happened? Because it was like my characters were all running forward and I did a summoning circle. So I was just soloing everything. And then when they finally got back, like I had died multiple, multiple times. And then they came back in and then by the time like I didn't have a revive yet on myself, it just ended up being like I ended up dying one too many times.
00:33:02
Speaker
Like, I think it's five. I was real bad. What's that? I said your A.I. was real bad. I don't know what happened. We played the same game. The best part is my only game overs were actually in solo fights. So when you first fight the when you go to like the top of the like trial area. Oh, OK. Yeah. There once.
00:33:29
Speaker
OK. And then you're leaving that trial area and the asshole poisons you or inflicts death on you. Oh, yeah. OK. I died there. I could not like because the screen when you get death inflicted on you in this game, the screen starts to go black. And that was the first time that happened to me. And I was just like, you got to be fucking kidding me. And it's just like you're racing against the clock. There's no way to cure it. You have 30 seconds.
00:33:59
Speaker
That was the trial area. The boss at the top of the trial area definitely was rough. There was just a bunch of things. To that point, I hadn't had to use any of the various mechanics. Yeah. That was one of the only times where you actually really needed to start using it, because bosses from then on started to need those mechanics. That was the thing. The bosses,
00:34:29
Speaker
always had the so you have a thing like the main characters attack can like diffuse the various summoning circles that may just put down. So like that they played on heavily. It was like whether it was healing, whether it was like reflecting. You had to be really.
00:34:48
Speaker
that like holy magic, whether it was burn poison, like they are freeze. They did all of that really well. Like they made you, there were multiple bosses. You had to diffuse the circles to beat. They didn't, the only boss you had to use the slash command or the like vertical run, like run up the wall and come down with the attack was that fight. And it was like,
00:35:14
Speaker
I didn't even know how to do the run off the wall attack until that fight. I learned how to do it in that fight because I was like, they're giving me this mechanic, but in a lot of cases, I'm not going to be thinking about running up a wall. So when they show me the- Not when you're being overthrown with baddies, you just don't have time. You're like, no, I got to kill these things.
00:35:37
Speaker
It doesn't stun you, but it's a slight stun lock if you do that. But that said, once I got to that fight and had to use those things, I was like, oh, cool. I'm going to start using these. And so I went out of my way to run off of walls and attack people because I was like, fuck it. That's just how we're doing this now.
00:36:01
Speaker
It's funny that you say that because I found that I started to use a lot of the mechanics and stuff when I did the optional things. When I was doing the optional things, I was just messing around with stuff and doing some of the mechanics and some of them you needed to do it. One of them was this, you had to go investigate this haunted mansion.
00:36:22
Speaker
And that's where I actually started using the, um, the crossbow bore and like switching between like arrows and stuff like that, because it's an enemy. You, you end up, you end up, you end up fighting a very similar boss later on where you have to shoot it with silver arrows to hurt it. Oh, yes, I remember that. Yep.
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that actually happens in one of the optional dungeons, like chapters before that. So if you had done it, you had already had like figured it out and stuff. So that was the good thing they did because that was a later boss. And they did tell you, like, we have to shoot it with silver. And then every enemy was dropping silver arrows. It was like, OK, cool.
00:37:02
Speaker
Like, yeah, which which which is nice because it made it so it didn't punish you for not doing the optional stuff. I like that. They did that for like a few of those different mechanical things where they like told you how to do it, except for, you know what, maybe I don't remember him
Character Development and Backstories
00:37:20
Speaker
actually. No, he didn't tell you how to do it. So, yeah, doing that trial boss. You're right. That was one of the only instances where they didn't
00:37:49
Speaker
I went on the ship. I went on the ship and like found your ex like dad's dagger or whatever. I did that. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. I did things that seemed like they were going to be
00:37:50
Speaker
tell you again.
00:38:06
Speaker
for character story. Like I went and I talked to you. Did you do the did you like have the side conversations with Lowell and Marania? Yes, I did. Yeah, which I I'm a little OK, so I have a little I'm a little disgruntled with that on the sense of this was character development. Oh, yeah. That you could be missed.
00:38:27
Speaker
You can miss it entirely and not have context for like your party members, which I didn't like that. That was missable. I don't think they should have made it missable because it wasn't even an optional dungeon or anything. It was literally just a optional time of talking to them and you would get this context.
00:38:48
Speaker
Like you get so much. Yeah, because there are scenes later on in the game between like a couple of the characters where I would have been horribly confused had I not of.
00:39:01
Speaker
like done that because there was like no real signs before that that that was a thing until you do these like optional little story bits which they weren't done they weren't chapters or anything like that they weren't set up that way you just kind of stumbled you you were lucky if you went back to the tavern at a particular point um and talked to them
00:39:22
Speaker
You even did it a little bit more weird too because some of the characters are like the the when you I think it was like chapter 14 and 15 like those are like
00:39:33
Speaker
Yurik and Mirani as story building chapters, right? Why did they put it there? But then you have to go, like you said, you have to go back to the tavern and you have to talk to Lowell and Seren. You have to talk to them in a specific order. Yeah, it's a specific order too. That's right. I remember because I was like suddenly mad and I was like, why are you mad? And then she mentions Lowell and I was like,
00:39:58
Speaker
Oh, am I supposed to go talk to him first? So like I'm like running around the tavern trying to find this guy, finally find him in the guy's bedroom or whatever, just kind of sit there and you talk to him. And then I went back to talk to her and then it actually gave me a prompt to continue the conversation. So it's like, OK, if you were going to do this in a specific order, could you not made this more obvious? Yep, I did the exact same thing. And yeah, it's just one of those things where I agree with you. I think if you're going to give us
00:40:29
Speaker
Backstory on characters don't make it hidden or optional because honestly don't we want that character development like Going through at first. I was like, oh Lowell is a character. I was just gonna write off. I was like No, I want no part of this character Or you're like, huh
00:40:48
Speaker
You feel for him why he is the way he is. And it's like the reason why he is the way he is. Yeah. And so you feel for him a little bit. Um, and, and like Yurik, I spent half the game wondering why he had an eye patch. Like I thought he just had that because like one of the little optional things you could do, he kind of goes into detail a little bit about his dad. And I was like, Oh, well, maybe
00:41:16
Speaker
He just wears it. He just wears it covering his eye because he wants to remind himself of his dad. But you get actually context. If you talk to your rec at this random specific time, you actually get to find out context about that portion of things. So these are actual crucial character development things that you learn about these characters.
00:41:38
Speaker
you're kind of you're kind of thrown into the game where you're kind of a band of mercenaries and you're they're just like all friendly with each other and already knowing each other so you don't get that like meeting the character and learning who they are portion of JRPGs they're just kind of already there learning each other yeah they kind of just they already knew each other and it's like you don't like you said you don't get that sort of like
00:42:00
Speaker
We're going on an adventure and we're going to learn about the different characters and stuff like that. And you're also not picking really honestly, you're not really picking up other characters on the go either. So it's like you have all your characters and they all know each other. This is so like.
00:42:16
Speaker
Yeah so it's like you don't even get to learn a whole lot about them except for you you get to know more about diagram because he's so connected with the main character but with everybody else they're just kind of there and you don't know anything about them you're just kind of thrown in your party and you're like okay and I honestly didn't start caring about them.
00:42:35
Speaker
until you started doing some of the little optional chapters where you go off with Marania, you go off with Yurik, and then when you get these optional story bits that should not have been optional, I didn't really have a super big connection to them until I got those character-building moments. So to have something so crucial that
00:43:03
Speaker
gives you context of these characters behind something that's not even an optional chapter you could have chosen, that's legitimately just kind of a chance that if you went back to a tavern and started dogging to people, that you kind of uncovered it. You didn't even have to go back to the tavern. I often went back to go talk to the equipment salesperson because I was like, oh, does she have anything cool? Or I'd go over to Horace's shop just around
00:43:27
Speaker
beside it and like upgrade stuff. So like I went back very frequently. I was lucky that I went back when I did because I'm pretty sure you didn't have to. And so you could have missed it entirely. And I'm like, I would have missed crucial story of characters that like, I get it. It's supposed to be like, it's told from sales perspective and it's sales journey. I get it. But like, give me my character.
00:43:54
Speaker
Stories, yeah. I ended up really liking Yurik knowing more about his character, why he was wearing a high patch and things like that. I ended up really liking Yurik. Marania, I thought her connection with things was interesting. I even started to feel like I didn't like lull the whole game up until that point.
00:44:18
Speaker
I mean, yeah, before you get his background, I can understand why you don't, why you don't like him. And honestly, like you don't get his background until relatively late or not relatively late. I would say probably close to halfway through the game almost. But, you know, when you took the eye patch off and got like super move. Oh my goodness. That was so good.
00:44:36
Speaker
So good though. And like, and he explains like how he did it and stuff like that. I was like, you're, you're fucking cool. Like I like you. Um, and there was several characters and stuff with that stuff. And, uh, that you got to know about them a little bit more.
00:44:53
Speaker
And I'm going like with Lowell, he's just kind of like the the Ice Mage guy or whatever. And I'm like, OK, you freeze everything. That's great. But he he starts off in the game very like lecherous and very like womanizing and very like that kind of a character, which usually doesn't like.
00:45:11
Speaker
like reside with me. So getting more context with his character and everything was really important. And honestly, I recommend anybody going to play this game. Please frequently go back and check the tavern because you will get extra plot points of your characters. You will get extra dialogue. Please, please go back and do that. It's so important.
00:45:36
Speaker
It's like you need, like it gives you so much context with several characters and even just like the dialogue between some of them as well that you might've missed if you hadn't gone back to the tavern and like after certain chat, like after chapters and stuff like that, almost any time we got back to the city and was able to move around, I went back to the tavern. Same. Just to make sure we didn't miss anything.
00:46:03
Speaker
But, uh, but yeah, so honestly, um, with like, with the, you play, you ended up playing right off the, the, the Wii, right? Or the sort of not exactly. Okay. Maybe, maybe I just was just cursed with my, maybe my, my version of the games AI was just like, no, I, I found, um,
00:46:32
Speaker
Unlike KJ, he was like, yeah, I'll rely on my people. My AI in my game was a little weird. My mages would group together behind the same pillar sometimes. And I can't control them, right? So your teammates, you can't control in this game. You can only control yourself, except for certain parts of the game where you can then control.
00:46:52
Speaker
one of your teammates based on plot stuff. I'm trying to be a little bit vague for people who don't want spoilers, but there are certain portions you worry about. But generally speaking, you're using the same main character with the same mechanics and the same sort of thing. And so they all grouped behind. Like so I had three mages, three, and they all decided to hide behind the same pillar and the boss just nuked the pillar and killed all three of them. And I just like I just remember looking at their dead bodies like
00:47:22
Speaker
Why? Why would all of you go under the same pillar? Like there's pillars all over the place. He hasn't like destroyed anything. No, no, no, no, no. You all hide behind the same. No, wait.
00:47:34
Speaker
Oh, no, I think at that point it was three because I think it was Yurik, I think it was Yurik, Mirania and Lisa. So I think those three were the ones that I had at the point. They all they were all behind the same pillar and the boss was like, oh, pillar and nukes it. And I'm just standing there with my jaw on the floor being like, that's everybody dead. And then so I if you wanted to revive your characters, you had to turn on Agro to yourself.
00:48:03
Speaker
That was perfect, though. They they stayed in the same spot for you so you could revive them all at the same time. That's I mean, I made that easier. But then the boss pointed at me. So like I'm running and dodging the boss, trying to get to them to revive them so that I could get a heel circle up. And like I'm like zigzagging and like I'm doing like
00:48:24
Speaker
duck and weave like rolling and trying not to die from this boss because my party all decided to hang out underneath the same pillar and just all die in the same spot. I mean yes reviving them was easier I just I just ran into the middle and I ran like mad and turned off aggro and all three of them came back alive and uh luckily the boss was still focused on bees so they got their magic off but oh man I was mad I was like
00:48:48
Speaker
There are, there are like 10 pillars. Pick a different pillar. And I must have yelled at the AI so much of this game. I just, I don't know if I just had a bad luck with it. Like sometimes it was great. Fantastic. But I think I had a little bit more bad luck with the AI than generally speaking.
00:49:07
Speaker
Because after I beat the game, I looked up reviews for the game and stuff, and I read people's reviews and overall consensus of it. And I saw that people were talking about that even though you didn't get to control your party, often the time they were pretty decent. And I'm just like, did I get the potato copy of this game? Did I get the game that Mistwalk was like, we're just gonna hide shitty AI in one of our games and sell it? And I just got unlucky with it.
00:49:35
Speaker
But honestly, I got so unlucky with A.I. early on that brute force Munet came out and I just made a tank. I mean, come on.
00:49:50
Speaker
I tried to actually like use my party and rely on them for a while. But when they would all stick under the same pillar and die, I was just like, you guys suck. I'm just going to handle this on my own. You guys just sit in the corner. And if you're going to do something, that'd be great. But if not, I'll handle the blast unless it was something that I needed their mechanics for. But generally speaking, I just took on everything. And that's actually where I perfected my jumping up the wall and slamming on the enemies. That's wild. I used ice spam.
00:50:20
Speaker
I spammed Gale with magic, defusing circles. Like that was my go-to strat. Oh, that was fun too. Yeah. When I got my party to actually get their magic and stuff like that off or whatever, or they weren't doing something stupid or, you know, one character stuck in a wall and then I command them and they do the move in the wall. Thanks, Dagrin.
00:50:42
Speaker
When I wasn't, when they were casting Magic and stuff, oh, I used Diffuse all the time. I used that Gale move so much that I kept trying to do it when I had no SP. And then being like, why can't I do it? It is because you need to let it recharge, Polly. And I was like, no, I want to do it again.
00:51:01
Speaker
Because the heal was great because it would take off status elements to you. So the death, the confused sometimes, the paralysis that you would get in this game, all of them would be defused by the magic circle if you did your little gale move. And for those who don't know what we're talking about, it's really cool. They really tried to play around with the mechanics of this game. Being on the Wii, they were trying to implement the Wiimote.
00:51:31
Speaker
more into the fact that like, yo, you're playing this on the way, even though I played in classic controller mode, same, not we mo. No, I don't I don't we mode either. I'm sorry. I I almost did. I was like, oh, maybe I should do this like from like the original experience. I was like, no, classic controller all the way.
00:51:48
Speaker
But they did try to implement the Wii stuff more. And I mean, that both was good and bad in some cases. But one thing I really thought was cool is that you could have your mages cast like a magical circle underneath the enemy or near the enemy or even underneath themselves.
00:52:12
Speaker
Uh, and it would just kind of emit a particular magic spell, but then you can use your main character to basically what he does is just runs, runs up and like slashes and wind shoots out. But it's like he, it's called diffusing the circle and you do that. And it would do like different things, like put a barrier on your entire party or heal your entire party or guard break some of the enemies, which was so useful or, uh, slip fall was so
00:52:43
Speaker
Oh my god, I can't pronounce names today with the ice magic and like putting it down and then me doing that and having the enemy slip every time they step was so satisfying. You just saw your enemy like you're fighting or your boss just like fall over and I just cackled with laughter because I'm like,
00:53:03
Speaker
like Attack of War. It was really such a cool mechanic to do that. It was kind of clunky at first to get used to it a little bit. They didn't really explain it super well in my opinion. They didn't explain it well, no. I don't like the tutorials. I found the tutorials more confusing than just sitting in a battle I know I could win, keeping a few enemies alive that kept responding in the battle because I didn't
00:53:29
Speaker
advanced to stop the battle from happening. I would just kind of like figure things out and like learn the mechanics from trial and error. I felt like the explanations were they didn't explain it very well, especially the vertical. The vertical slice was not explained well. The only one that wasn't super great. Honestly, I just read the like read the tutorials like three or four times and like, OK, I think this is what they mean. And then I kind of went from there.
00:53:58
Speaker
Yeah, where I just like trialed it. I just like I got into the battle and I'm like, I'll just figure it out. And one thing with like the vertical slice was like you had to like run at the wall and then change your camera to look up the wall to get it registered. You going up the wall, which is really
00:54:21
Speaker
Okay, you hardly ever needed to use that looky around joystick, but unless I really had to seek something or whatever was part of the thing, I didn't need to use it a whole lot, except for you needed it for that one vertical slice move.
00:54:40
Speaker
depending on the wall height, he wouldn't run up it. Or. I never used that for the vertical. I never used that for it. I just ran at the wall and he would just run up it. Oh, really? I didn't like I, for some reason, every time I would run at the wall, he wouldn't go up and he wouldn't go up and I was like, how do I do this move? And then I just started messing around buttons and then I moved that one second joystick and like down or down or up or something like that for him to look up. And then suddenly he went up the wall and I was like,
00:55:08
Speaker
Oh, it was like slightly delayed, but yeah, he would still run up the wall and do it. So. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I guess maybe I just didn't have the patience, which is also understandable. Um, I might not have had the patience. So I'm just like lucky. Yeah. But after I figured that out with the, like the look joystick, I was able to do vertical things all the time. And I just had fun, like running up a wall, backflipping it, smashing on the ground. And I loved killing enemies that way. It was just satisfying. Like.
00:55:37
Speaker
Sometimes Dagrid would be like struggling with the enemy and I'm like, don't worry, Dagrid, I got you. And then I like turn around and run up the wall and do a backflick and smash. And like Dagrid would just stand there and like look at you and I'm like, yeah, that's right.
00:55:52
Speaker
I was like showing off in front of my party, not that they're sent in or anything, but like it was it was kind of funny. Like I had a lot of fun messing around with that. So when you got to that part in the trial where you were required to do that, I ended up not losing against that guy at all and be vague. I don't want to say names or anything like that, but I didn't end up losing in the trial because I was running up the wall. It's spashing.
00:56:23
Speaker
And it was so satisfying. Like I was just, I was having a blast with it. So I, I found it was clunky at times. I would curse, but I feel like I just had bad eye eye. So I was cursing at my party a lot, um, because of the doing silly things with the, which is being silly and stuff like that. And I swear Edo was probably just tired of me just like yelling at the characters being like, move.
00:56:48
Speaker
I know I can't control you, but move. And then I'd wait till the command goes up to like, get them to do something or get them to retreat or get them to move or whatever. Um, and, uh, yeah, like that one time when I had dagger and stuck on the wall, he just like, he's like, Oh, you want me to attack? I'll do it in the wall.
00:57:05
Speaker
Cause he was stuck. So I was like, all right, cool. Thanks for your help. I'm just going to go. And I swear I wish I was recording it. Cause I think that was so funny because you could only see his head and his arm and the rest of him was clipping in the pillar wall.
Gameplay Mechanics and Controls
00:57:22
Speaker
So he just went, he just went nothing.
00:57:31
Speaker
And I was like, oh my God, man. And there's just there's just your main characters. Like I was like looking at him just standing there like. The fuck are you doing? So I wish I like those. Those are the moments where I'm like I was playing right off the Wii U loading times was a little.
00:57:52
Speaker
I don't know if it was the Wii, like if I played out on the Wii, I, the loading times would have been a little bit better, but I found the loading times a little, a little rough sometimes. Sometimes it would take quite a while for it to load. I don't have any issues with load times. But I'm wondering, um, cause I played it off the Wii U rather than the Wii. Um, and I'm wondering maybe you had something to do with that, but like my disc was like perfect or whatever. So like, I don't know, maybe, maybe my Wii U needs to be cleaned. Maybe I'll have to look at it to clean it. But, um, yeah, it was a little weird that I had a few like loading
00:58:23
Speaker
issues, but again, I looked up and I was like, oh, other people aren't really talking about the loading issues, so it's got to be just a me thing. So I realized when I was like writing out my notes for this review off the game and everything after beating it, I was like. I think some of these are going to be a Polly only scenario, and I don't think majority of you will have my problem. But if you get one of your characters stuck in the wall, that doesn't help.
00:58:53
Speaker
Learn that the hard way. Oh, it's funny.
00:58:57
Speaker
But no, the the mechanics were really neat. I appreciate that they were trying to do something different and it was very different. I think it was just kind of in that era of when RPGs were put on the Wii where they were like really trying to get you to use like the the Wiimote motion sensor motion controls and stuff. And maybe I might have would have appreciated it, but I was never a huge fan of that. Yeah, I was never really sure there was no shot. I was using the Wiimote and honestly, not a fan.
00:59:27
Speaker
I think I went classic. I think they pushed it a little bit with like the look commands and stuff like that, which they tied some of that into the story. I don't want it. Honestly, I feel like not getting into the story too much is probably a good idea, but I do think I think that there is it's like it's only a 20 hour game, right? So it's like it's kind of a very.
00:59:49
Speaker
traditional-ish story with how they give the characters and everything. But I do think there is something we need to talk about that is gonna be massive spoilers.
Storytelling and Plot Twists
00:59:58
Speaker
I think we do need to talk about it. It is, okay, so that's probably your heads up that we're about to spoil a big story thing. It's a big plot twist in the story. So we'll give you a second. Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers. This plot twist was very obvious to me from the beginning.
01:00:18
Speaker
I called it out quite early. Polly also called out quite early. You called it out after I was ahead of you for a duration of this game. And you were just like, oh, I think I'm just like, because I had just gotten a little bit further, like I was a little bit further in the plot. I'm like, yep, Sippy's. You literally what I was saying. Whenever something happened that was important in the story, that's like,
01:00:45
Speaker
went wrong, whether it was the race of characters that you're at war with randomly attacked, or there's some knowledge that randomly got leaked, or someone happens to die when there's a random thing going on.
01:01:08
Speaker
always one person missing fucking daggers always always and that's why it was extra anger inducing for me because like I was calling it and then he pulled the shit where he got stuck in the pillar and I was just like yeah of course your traitor ass is the one that fucked me over in this boss fight it was so obvious I'm just like this dude so like again when your character dies he runs off to help
01:01:38
Speaker
And all of a sudden, the character's dead. Mm hmm. They set up another character. All of a sudden, it's like, oh, yeah, he did that. Not me. I didn't do it. He did it. It's like there were so many things. It was so obvious and obvious. Yeah, I think I called it in like chapter seven. I was like, oh, this dude is totally going to turn on you. Like because there was no way that like he was just so
01:02:07
Speaker
And he was so obviously the bad guy that it was just like...
01:02:11
Speaker
This is so obvious. It was wild. And then, like, after you beat the final boss, what you think is the final boss, they hit you with the, but wait, there's more. And you find him and they're talking and it's just like, yeah, it was, like, the characters are so surprised and they're like hurt and heartbroken. I'm like, yo, y'all are dumb. Like, this was, you could've been able to tell this back when, randomly,
01:02:40
Speaker
the bad guys invaded when it was like they should have had no idea that they could have been able to invade at that point.
01:02:49
Speaker
It was just lines often to the main character. Like even the way he talked to sale, he was very much like, Oh, are you just thinking for yourself? Are you thinking for the better bit of everybody else? And it was very foreshadowing that he was thinking for himself all the time and putting himself thing. And then he was consumed or whatever by his own selfish thing. But it was like, he would constantly look at sale being like, Oh, are you doing that? And when sales like,
01:03:17
Speaker
Man, I'm out here trying to save the world and save my friends and get the girl. What do you mean I'm doing this for me? Sales, he's just not exuberate that energy ever, but with him constantly questioning that, I'm like...
01:03:33
Speaker
you either don't know your buddy or you're letting on something a little bit more. And it's like stuff like that, that it was just, it became so glaringly obvious that I was like, like when the really was, it's like, Oh yeah, I'm so, I'm so shocked. But
01:03:48
Speaker
It's unfortunate that it was so obvious because it was one of the only, like, potential, I don't know, big plot reveals of the game. Yeah, the game kind of, that's, I think, the story kind of unraveled the way I expected it to.
01:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, the story kind of went with like a kind of a typical if you played RPGs, even if you've read like fantasy books, it's it did a very typical sort of straight line sort of to the goal sort of scenario. Right. So and it was very obvious who your love interest was going to be within like chapter two or some stupid thing. Like I don't think it's a bad thing. Like I'm fine. It's totally fine. It's just.
01:04:33
Speaker
If the game was longer, I think it would have been a problem because it would have been like, okay, this is the fact that a lot of it was telegraphed and like you knew what was gonna happen. You kind of knew how a lot of things were gonna unravel. I think the biggest like plot twisty type things were probably, or biggest unexpected things were probably in a lot of the optional content. But like, I felt like the main story stuff for the most part, like it was like, even as far as
01:05:01
Speaker
the big hero that everybody looks up to trains the main character and then shit pops off and you're like, okay, this dude's going to die. Like, yeah. Yeah. I was, I was one of two ways. I was like, he's either going to die or he's going to also be in cahoots with dagger and like, I was just protect. I was predicted dagger for the whole thing. I was like 100% certain he was going to die.
01:05:22
Speaker
I was like, and, and built up where he was the one who was like trying to defend you. He was the honorable one. He was against the count from the beginning, blah, blah, blah. I was like, Oh no. Oh no. He's so doomed. Knew it. I knew it was coming. And the funny thing is, is he's the one who I was referencing earlier with the creepy smile in the cut scenes I had with him, where it's shifted out with the dialogue. His face kept like just.
01:05:51
Speaker
permanently being like, yeah, that's so weird. As he's talking to you about something serious, I'm like, dude, fix your face. Your face does not match the context of this conversation. Your copy of this game is definitely possessed.
01:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I had quite the, I got had to quite the funny experience, but, uh, I was also like, kind of like, I did find I was like analyzing like the character models and stuff like that too. Cause they kept being like, Ooh, how did they do that? Who would do that? I was just kind of like looking at it a lot more closely too, but like, um, that cursed sometimes.
01:06:25
Speaker
But I was playing a different game, apparently. I was playing the investigate the 3D models and break the AI, apparently. But it's totally OK for a game to be like kind of linear in its story and stuff like that. And I think if it's not, it doesn't go longer than what it needs to. And I think the last story does such a great job of not going longer than it needs to.
01:06:53
Speaker
I think it being a shorter game actually really benefits it in terms of like the story, although predictable and kind of like what I thought it was going to happen, was still enjoyable. Like it was still an enjoyable experience. You're like, ooh, I'm a mercenary who wants to be at night.
01:07:14
Speaker
And your main character was enjoyable. He was just trying to help people, and he wanted to protect people. And his dream was to protect people. And he fit that very well in the story progression. And even the leading lady, who right from chapter two you knew was going to be the leading lady, I always put her in blue because you see her the first time in blue. Get her in orange.
01:07:43
Speaker
No, I put Dagrid in orange because I was like, best twin hates this color. So out of all the colors of this choice, I don't really hate any of these colors, but best twin hates this color. So I put in the guy I don't like in orange. He was the only one that the
01:08:02
Speaker
that orange actually popped on. So I put her in orange. I didn't even, I knew, I was so convinced that Gagran was gonna betray us that I did not even customize him. I did not customize him. I did not give him any kind of custom armor or anything. I think I customized his armor once. And then I was like, oh fuck, I didn't mean to do that.
01:08:23
Speaker
And then I just changed it and I was like, all right, cool, we're done. Like, I never customized Dagram because I knew like I was I was ready to take my entire play through on the fact that I put him in the the worst color that I could think of in there that I knew like people didn't like and then it on him. I was like, yeah, you look goofy. This is the suited color for you.
01:08:46
Speaker
And it was so funny because in the last segment, he's a bright fluorescent orange trying to be the bad guy in the conversations at the end. And he's a bright fluorescent orange.
01:09:04
Speaker
I laughed really hard all the time. He was talking and monologuing and stuff like that. He just shows up at the top of the stairs and he's just like, the reveal. He's in just bright fluorescent orange. I was like, I can't take this guy seriously at all. It made me laugh so hard.
01:09:30
Speaker
And I was cackled pretty hard at that. But even though you got like the leading lady right at the beginning, you knew who she was, she was an enjoyable character too. She was kind of being like forced into something she didn't want to do, but it was like,
01:09:42
Speaker
like her, like marrying her off. But she was also very much like the classic damsel in distress sort of like motif, which is OK that I didn't love. It's actually really funny. These two characters remind me a lot of two. They remind me a lot of two Fire Emblem characters that are in a similar situation of like
01:10:10
Speaker
male-female lead. For those of you that know, they remind me a lot of like Alm and Celica, especially in the sense of like,
01:10:20
Speaker
She does some things and I'm just like, why did you do that? That was such a bad idea that put you and everyone else you're trying to protect also in a bad spot. I drew so many parallels to those two characters and I was just like, oh my goodness, I'm playing
01:10:43
Speaker
Fire Emblem, Shadow of the Valencia all over again. Like, that's what this is. Like, oh, my goodness. Yeah, there were there were a lot of parallels. It's funny that I know, Al, because we made the sword, I think, for you. Yeah, but in general. Yeah. Yeah. The sword behind you is is almsord, right? Yeah. And then Celica, I've done stuff of Celica, too. I have not played this game that made it. That makes me laugh. That makes me laugh. But yeah, so
01:11:14
Speaker
You know, like they're enjoyable and stuff like that. I also loved how spunky like Seren is. Yeah, she was a fun character. She was fun character, she was spunky. Just before you're introduced to the leading lady, I actually thought maybe she had like a little bit of a thing for Zael, just the way she said certain things to him.
01:11:36
Speaker
But then immediately when the leading lady gets out, I was like, no, no, it's it's going to be her. It's going to be her. And it's like classic. He's he wants to be a knight and she's the classic damsel of distress. Like it's like the game. And it was very just like you can predict what's going to happen. Like it. Everything about the game just.
Character Archetypes and Relationships
01:11:59
Speaker
It was.
01:12:00
Speaker
And again, there's nothing classic. It was a classic telling story of somebody who's aspiring to be a hero and now it gets to be a hero in the end. Like, and you have the dance of distress and you kind of have like the spunky character. And honestly, like you're kind of throw it through me for a loop, like him being like a super interesting character, uh, doing the side quest with him, learning about his dad, learning about his upgrading, all that sort of stuff. And like with little picture of his family and oh my God, I was like, oh,
01:12:30
Speaker
I was emotional. That kind of stuff gets to me. And then you talk to him in the bar or whatever, and he's just like, oh, you want to know what's under here? And I was like, yes. Yes. I've been wanting to know if this is like a fashion accessory, a memento, or you actually got some weird fucked up eye under there.
01:12:57
Speaker
And then you have this like conversation or whatever and he shows you and I was like, yep, yep. Perfect. Perfect. Was one of the three things I wanted it to be. Um, but he ended up being really interested character. However, I was a little sad that like, while they, they had very limited optional dungeons. Uh, well that's fine because it's a short game. Some of the optional dungeons had plot
01:13:24
Speaker
plot to it that explained things a little bit better than what was explained in the game. Like something with Marani as one, for example, she wants to go to this thing because it's alive. And I never even thought about it being like, what do you mean it's alive? Like it really is alive. And it's just like, oh, you know, like things are like fading out dirty thing. And I'm like,
01:13:46
Speaker
Oh, and you go into this forest and you and you're kind of trying to investigate why everything is dying, why the flowers are dying, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, and then suddenly I started to notice it like when you went to town, like they had like wilted plants and stuff like that. And the little things like the little subtle things like where some stuff there was like greenery, but other places it was like wilting it stuff. And I'm like, oh, this all makes way more sense now. And so but that's put
01:14:15
Speaker
That's behind an optional dungeon. You didn't need to do that dungeon. Say with Yurik's past stuff, and then again with the optional dialogue being character development as well, I really wish they would have just added to the character, not left things out when it was optional.
01:14:38
Speaker
and kept that as a mainline thing. And then the optional dungeons could have just been just fun, quirky things. Like the haunted mansion was funny because people kept like disappearing. Like you go from like a full party to like you and freaking Horace. And that's like it. Who's like this? I didn't do the mansion. I didn't do the mansion at all. I saw him on the I saw him on the bridge and I was like, I want to do this. And I'm like, not really like this character. I'm not doing this.
01:15:08
Speaker
Yeah, so Horace asks you to investigate a haunted mansion where his wife has disappeared. And a lot of people have disappeared and you're like, what the hell? So you go through and it's so funny because like your party slowly disappears as you go through this freaking dungeon. And eventually you find them later on in it. And like, it was just
01:15:28
Speaker
an enjoyable time the boss mechanics like figuring that out was kind of kind of neat and you end up fighting that boss again in the storyline similar boss in the storyline to it with similar weakness and stuff but like it was just uh just a funny moment where it was like i actually got to see lighter sides of dagran for example where he was like joking around with like being like bah
01:15:50
Speaker
to Eurek. Eurek's like, Stu, freaking me out. Like, like he was like all like upset because he was like freaked out by this mansion and Eurek was like, yeah, I don't like ghosts. And you like it to learn a little bit more about Eurek and like Daggard keeps like fucking with him and like Daggard's one of the first to go missing, which makes me laugh because I'm like there, there, you got it.
01:16:11
Speaker
You got it. That makes sense. Yeah, you get like kidnapped into this thing. And then after you finish the haunted mansion and you talk to your accuracy, I never want to go freaky stuff like that again. And you find out that you're just like afraid of ghosts through this like little thing. That's a fun little later. I do feel like you played a different game.
01:16:34
Speaker
Cause like I said, I, and don't get me wrong, like I got, I felt, I did not feel like my experience was like, I had a good experience with the game and we can talk about that very shortly, but like I had a good experience with the game. I just didn't do, I didn't get as much of this cause I didn't do as much of the side content stuff. Like I did the chapter with, with, uh, Yurik, I did the chapter with Marania. I did some of the extra stuff later on. Like I went back to like the Garak fortress and stuff like that, but like,
01:17:01
Speaker
some of the other things like I did not because it was just like I didn't feel I would have only done the extra stuff like I was worried if I did the extra stuff I would feel broken like super broken in the game and it wasn't until I got to the end of the game and they like gave me a summoning circle I was like oh I should use this and I used it and I leveled I killed the things and I leveled up like two levels and I was like I
01:17:26
Speaker
Oh, that must mean I'm underleveled.
Boss Battles and Strategies
01:17:29
Speaker
So then I grind it out until I didn't get any more levels from it. And then I was like, OK, well, until I was getting like limited level or limited experience. And then I was like, all right, now I'm of the right level. But other than that, like I didn't feel I didn't necessarily struggle with the game boards or anything like that. So I was like,
01:17:48
Speaker
shouldn't need to do it now. There was one fight that killed me several times before I really got the mechanics down and that was the summon fight where it was the big black and red dragon thing and then your whole thing is waiting out time and the first time I didn't know that.
01:18:08
Speaker
so I died, that you're like waiting for basically Kalista, Lisa, to cast this special summon to have a summon, fight a summon, rip off its wings so you could just like sit there attacking it. I didn't realize that was a time thing. So like my characters were like all like, a lot of them had died multiple times. I had died multiple times. And then by the time I got to that aspect, I just didn't like, I was so low life. I think I only had one life left that I died.
01:18:36
Speaker
and because of the stupid electricity and stuff. But after, like, I think it was the second try, I beat it. Second try, either second or third. I had figured out the mechanics and stuff like that, did it. And it was an interesting boss fight. It was hard. It was hard. And I liked that it was hard. And even being a higher level than probably you were doing it, those lightning bolts still like either insta-killed me,
01:19:03
Speaker
I think I think they really dropped the dropped my health down if you know what I think I had buried so I wasn't getting as much like.
01:19:16
Speaker
I yeah, I don't know. OK, like I if you were doing the barrier regularly, that's what I ended up doing to be like, yeah, that boss wasn't nearly as bad for me because again, like by that point, I was like, oh, yeah, barrier will help here and stuff like that. Like, yeah, I didn't have a ton of issue. And it just ended up being the case where I just had all the mages cast and then the pillar issue that I talked about. That's that fight.
01:19:43
Speaker
all three of my mages hid behind a pillar and got nuked. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, they did. They they grouped up. They did group up in that fight for me as well. I don't think that that was necessarily like like that particular that's a mechanical thing. Maybe they were like supposed to or something like that because the problem is the boss lands on different pillars. You have to knock the pillar. You have to knock it off the pillars.
01:20:06
Speaker
So no, that's a different fight. That's the that's the one before it. That one I had no problem with. That's the one where it's like a tiger thing and it's like running around in circles. No, I'm talking about the big flying one. No, I remember. I remember what you're talking. I remember the flying one. I just. Oh, you know what? You're I think you're just missing. I think you're you're mixing the two fights. Yeah, because one of them has multiple. One of them has multiple stages.
01:20:33
Speaker
Yeah. That's the, the, the, the pillar one, I think. Yeah. The pillar one has multiple stages. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, the one I struggled at was where it was the bird summon thing, um, where you just start off as you and Kalista.
01:20:47
Speaker
And then it's a time waiting until Calista could do her big summon thing. You summon the thing, you rip off the wigs and then you just go hammer at it. But my problem was, was the first time I didn't realize that I was waiting for that.
01:21:04
Speaker
And then when she was talking about the summit thing, I was going around and like trying to do the mechanics of like, they use the silence thing, I diffuse it, it knocks to the ground and I fight it. While I heard that what she was saying, I didn't realize was cause she, she wanted me to use a move until finally my thing built up and I did it. And I was like, Oh crap. But by that point I had already had so low lives. I think it was all my last life that even though it ripped off the wigs and things started to get a little easier, he annihilated me.
01:21:33
Speaker
And then the second time, I think I died three times because the second time I had the group thing where they kept grouping up, they grouped up, he nuked them. And then so I tried to get to them, aggro and resurrect them. And then he just went like hammered on me, killing me. And then when they finally revived or whatever, he turned to kill them. And like when I tried to keep pulling as an aggro or whatever, it was just a mess. Third time I like,
01:22:00
Speaker
Um, really worked with the game mechanics and what it did and didn't like do a whole lot until she was able to do her move and it was fine. But the, the, the pillar one was, I thought that was a fun mechanic thing. Like I, where you knocked him off the pillar, uh, when he like chucked the thing and you sent it back. Um, and then knocks them off the pillar, or you had your mages attack the pillar and knock them off. And then you go over and you're just like, go ham. I thought that fight was great.
01:22:25
Speaker
I thought they did a lot of cool things and they did a lot of cool things and they made the mechanics interesting and interesting for different boss fights, like where it wasn't just I'm just going to run up and like attack this over and over and over again. You had to actually think about what to do in a lot of the cases and stuff like that. So, yeah, I thought that I thought it was really neat and. Anything else that I want to.
01:22:52
Speaker
I don't want to cut you off with my- No, I'm trying to think if there's anything else I wanted to bring up because that was one of the things where it was like them all hiding behind the pillar I mentioned earlier. Yeah, that was the fight.
01:23:05
Speaker
Uh, oh yeah, dagger daggers reveal being a fluorescent orange killed me. I cackled so loud. Oh, so speaking of mechanic things, I thought it was really fun in this game that you have a crossbow where you could shoot stuff. Um, and like human characters, you shot like para paralysis arrows and then paralyzed very early on. You could paralyze all human characters pretty much. So any fight that had a human character in it, I was shooting paralysis arrows to see if I can
01:23:33
Speaker
And every non-human thing, if you shot a prank banana at them, where you basically throw a banana bill on the ground, they will slip on it. Yup. Repetit, like one of the big bosses, like you can just for both of them, you can paralyze a big boss and you can also trip a big boss with bananas. It's so bananas. It's so funny because he's like, he's this big, intimidating, like,
01:23:58
Speaker
You know build up of a evil boss the entire game sort of build up and you and you're literally throwing prank bananas He's falling and he's like dropping his sword and you grab his sword and like what you attack him I ended up with that sword in my inventory At the end being like wait, I got to keep his sword and I thought it was gonna be this epic thing But no
01:24:20
Speaker
No, my weapons were much better. But in terms of playing the game differently, I did all the optional content, I did all the optional dungeons. Some of them were kind of funny, where like, one of them where like Dagrin was like whining about Goa, like, okay, Dagrin was, this was funny. He's like,
01:24:40
Speaker
Oh, there's not that many stairs. It's fine, because the party was complaining about the stairs. They had to climb to like a leave. He's like, oh, it's fine. And the party's like, yeah, okay. And then it
New Game Plus and Replayability
01:24:49
Speaker
comes up that it like, it fades to black, it comes up that you're on stair 3,698. And your party's at the top and Dagran's at the like,
01:25:00
Speaker
bottom just like huffing and wheezing and like like making like almost like he's gonna puke noises and the party's like what's the matter dagger and i thought you thought this is easy and he was like you all suck i just laughed because i didn't like i didn't like this character right
01:25:23
Speaker
So I didn't like this character. It was built up that you didn't like him. I even thought his reasoning for being a bad guy was stupid. I was like, you're stupid. And your reason's stupid. But one thing I will say is you get new game plus in this game. So when you beat the game, you could start the game over with your levels and equipment being the same.
01:25:45
Speaker
I was a little sad to see that that's really all you got. You get to level up your weapons and get cooler weapons and stuff like that as you go through the game again. But there wasn't any like optional story stuff or optional bosses or anything extra that you got to do with New Game Plus. And I had an idea like the extra weapons. So like I know when you're like.
01:26:10
Speaker
Some of the late game bosses drop weapons that you can't really upgrade. And then one of the really late bosses drops a weapon that you can't really upgrade. And then when you're leaving the boss area, you can actually collect a couple of different weapons and stuff that bosses drop.
01:26:29
Speaker
And you'd be able to upgrade those and stuff like that. But yeah, I went and I I looked at it because I knew the game had new game plus and I went and looked and I was like, OK, is there really anything I wasn't able to find anything now? Obviously, people can leave in the comments or like reach out or anything if if there is something.
01:26:45
Speaker
extra is there any besides because i went through and i did all the dungeons right so i'm like i already did all the optional content is there any like special optional dungeon or anything if you do new game plus please leave in the comments uh if uh if you know if there's anything like that but i was a little disappointed because i came up with like kind of like a plot idea
01:27:05
Speaker
which I think would have been kind of interesting because the party brings up with Dagrin. Dagrin's like whole reason of this is that he was just wanted revenge. And the party was like, why didn't you ever tell us that you were suffering from this? And he's like, oh, you know, like he tried to play it off that he didn't care about them. He only used them as pawns. But at the end, when you get to like when you're doing the end game stuff and you beat him, he kind of it's very clear that while he was blinded by revenge, he still cared about everybody.
01:27:35
Speaker
I thought of something interesting because he gives you the memento sword between him. It was like him and the main character's promise and they give you the sword and you actually get that sword in your inventory at that point. I thought it would have been really neat if a new game plus thing was like you somehow got to talk to Dagran with the knowledge that you had of the game and change his fate.
01:27:59
Speaker
and
Personal Experiences and Game Rating
01:28:00
Speaker
get an alternate ending or something like that. I think that's asking for a lot. I think it was asking for a lot. I mean, again, it's a weekend. You're asking for chrono levels of... It might have been too much, but I came up with this and I was like...
01:28:17
Speaker
Also, the cool thing where you could have saved him before he was like a bad guy. And I think I think your idea of new game plus is a little skewed from some time traveling things. OK, let's say Chrono Trigger is fantastic. Don't add me of my favorite game, man. You're asking for we're going to let's move on from that. I think your aspirations for that are a little a little big. But yeah, so I mean, overall,
01:28:47
Speaker
How are you feeling about the game? Uh, that's where I found rating it kind of difficult. Um, really? I found it hard to rate this game. Cause I was like, I obviously know that I, I had a different experience than people did, uh, with the AI and stuff like that. So I found that I, I was more self-reliant and like by the end game, my sale was like,
01:29:14
Speaker
Oh, like, like I was able to do the end boss. No problem. I didn't even have a try. I didn't, I didn't die anymore. Since the, that bird, like the summons fight since then I hadn't even like full on like game wiped game over. So I did everything else first try and the end boss and stuff like that. Cause I was a little like doing all the optional dungeons made me at a level that, you know,
01:29:39
Speaker
I didn't really struggle with at all. But I think it made your party a level that they didn't really struggle either because that was the thing. Yeah, I didn't. They didn't really have an issue either. I was a high enough level, but my party definitely struggled. But now I get that. So yeah, I didn't really rely on them either. So like I was I was doing really good attack. And you're having that like I love that you're gets a move like halfway through the end boss fight. I thought that was fucking cool.
01:30:08
Speaker
Um, he gets this big over freaking move and I love, I loved using that. That was fun. But like, mostly I just like, I, I, I beat up dagger. I felt like Zael needed to do this. He needed to beat up dagger. And because of all this, this was his buddy that betrayed him and stabbed him back. And I was like, nah, I'm going to, I'm going to do this on my own. Um, and, uh, didn't use the party too, too much except for the barrier and the odd like magic attack. But, um, I think it was a little overleveled. So I think.
01:30:39
Speaker
Well, I mean, doing all the optional content, I didn't do any grinding. That's the thing. I didn't do any grinding. I did one summon circle to see what it did. And I got wiped and I was like, what? And then I did it like I did it again when my party was closer to me and I handled it fine. So I was like, okay, this must have just been a fluke. And then I never did a summon circle again.
01:30:59
Speaker
Yeah, I only did the one at the very end. Oh, I did an optional thing that wasn't a dungeon. I don't know if you did this. Um, it started out where I was like kind of doing like optional things where you're like catching frogs and then it turns into that you're like Zael fighting like cougars in the city.
01:31:18
Speaker
No, I didn't do that. Like cat things and stuff like that and you're fighting them. Yeah, so I did that. And I think that's why Zael ended up such a much higher level because when I did that, he leveled up a bunch, but it was a solo fight. It was just him. So he ended up being so much higher level than everybody else. But otherwise, yeah, I would rank this game. I like the music. The music was great. I know we didn't talk about it, but the music was fantastic.
01:31:44
Speaker
I mean, it's, I think it was Nobu Imatsu who did the music. Yeah. So I mean, like he is classic. Like the music was fantastic. Uh, good themes, emotional stuff at the right points. Like, uh, found the colors a little bit muted. The art style was a little muted. Uh, I had some clunky stuff with the AI, but I think that was more me. I think my game copies cursed.
01:32:07
Speaker
I think it's a solid RPG. I think it's for me, I think it's, um, I think it's like a seven and a half, seven, like that's a solid RPG. It didn't do anything like super groundbreaking, but what it did, it did. It was entertaining. It was fun. Um, I'm glad it didn't go on longer than it did. Uh, I think the, the, the length of the game was fine for the direction and everything they went with. I wish they would have made it a little bit more of a twist with dagger, but that's not a huge.
01:32:35
Speaker
critique of it. Yeah, I think I'm around that range. I think for me, to get into the eight, there's something that has to highlight from the game where it stands out of things. And I think the last story is
01:32:52
Speaker
really, really solid JRPG, but there wasn't anything super that stood out for me with it. Um, but I did like, I mean, maybe the battle system puts it at like the 7.5 because I think they, with the Wii and the limitations and like the, the whole,
01:33:09
Speaker
We portion of things where everything had those motion controls and stuff I think they tried to make it clever and the battle system was kind of yeah I think I'm gonna go with like closer to the 7.5 for me personally That makes sense. Yeah. No, this was this one was a it's funny I sold my copy and I'm higher on this game than you were For me, I think honestly, it's just one of those games that like
01:33:36
Speaker
I think it did. I think it's the first time you're higher than me. I think it did a lot of things. Well, I think it's. The things that it didn't do well, I think are sort of like.
01:33:50
Speaker
not as big of a deal for me. And I think it's definitely one of those things where the combat was unique enough that it kept me interested, even if there were times where the story was a little slow or that the story was a little predictable and I didn't necessarily care about it. All the different mechanics I thought were really cool. I thought that the fact that I didn't necessarily have to always rely on AI, but I also could
01:34:17
Speaker
really utilize them to my advantage in battle. I thought that was really cool force. Yeah, no, honestly, I thought that it was it was really cool. I think the upgrading system, while simple, is also really good. I do think and based on the the new game plus, like.
01:34:34
Speaker
sort of layout of things there are some equipment that you get that you can't upgrade even though like you can't upgrade to its fullest because there's items that you can get a new game plus to be able to upgrade those things so like yeah i think overall this game is pretty
01:34:53
Speaker
pretty dang good. I, I really, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a really, I'm not saying like me not being in an eight or whatever makes this bad. No, I really enjoyed it. And like, I, I liked the art book a lot. I liked the art style, concept art and stuff like that. So I'll be, I'll be keeping mine. I'll be trying to find the soundtrack to just complete it and keep it in the collection. I'm a little disappointed with the new game. Plus, uh, I almost feel like it's not a feature they necessarily needed to add into the game. If they weren't gonna
01:35:19
Speaker
Potentially do but I don't I don't know everything that comes with new game plus So maybe there's like an optional dungeon or a few little optional things that you could have done which is fine But it's also with how short the game is and everything Maybe they felt pressure to have some sort of a new game plus and that was a that was another thing I think the game didn't wear out its welcome like yes with what it did is
01:35:43
Speaker
it very well. If the game was an extra 10, 10 hours, I would have been, I would feel a lot worse about it because again, yeah, I think when the game is predictable and a game is like,
01:35:57
Speaker
just drags on like that when you know what's going to happen and it just feels like it's filler and like it's happening. They did a great job with pacing of this game where they when they were done it was done and they didn't try to stretch it out with more content they didn't try to stretch it out with more boss fights they didn't try to
01:36:15
Speaker
you know, do these things. Also interesting enough, something I did that KJ didn't do that I didn't realize is once you beat the game, it's one of the first games that I played where you can run around in the town again, even after you've beaten the end boss.
01:36:32
Speaker
Yeah, there's like a lot. There's like a few chapter epilogue. There's an epilogue thing. Yeah, you could do a few of the like the optional dungeons you missed. You could do a few like different like dialogue things. You could do a few little optional stuff around the city. But one thing that I found was I really liked the character Tharius. I know he was like kind of like a very predictable character, but he was my silver haired guy. And I was intrigued by him. And he was one of my. I facepalmed.
01:37:02
Speaker
Listen, listen, at least they gave me a guy. This is not a tangent that's happening. I'm shutting it down. This is not a tangent that's happening. I am not letting you bring unhinged to the podcast. I'm not going to go that way. I promise.
01:37:17
Speaker
No, that'll be for the last story after dark review. No, I really enjoyed like Darius as a character. I actually thought maybe like just with how straightforward like the general was as opposed to him. And he was a little like snooty with you at first, but you kind of like as he sees you and your potential and stuff like that, he like grows on you and stuff. And when he has a situation where he gets like,
01:37:44
Speaker
Stabbed in the leg and I was like don't you do it game? Don't you take another silver head guy away from me? I swear I swear I will throw this copy. I will sell it like I'm gonna be bad, but no I'm kidding. I would have done that but I
01:38:01
Speaker
I really like there is, but I couldn't find him at the end stuff. So I was like, don't tell me they're gonna like, give me this like, oh, he died. I was like, don't you freaking dare. He was stabbed in the leg. He can survive that. Like, so like, I'm running around and I'm trying to find him. And I went down into I think it was where you find Oh, it's where you find
01:38:22
Speaker
So and so dead. He's there. He's down there. And you talk to him because one of the maids, I ran into one of the maids and they're like, oh, there is was looking for you. They're near this area. I was like, oh, crap. OK, so I ran to that. Sure enough, I ran into him. And he's like, so I made a promise to you. And he's like a sales like, yeah, he's like, let's do our one on one. And you get to do a one on one fight with him like the trial.
01:38:52
Speaker
but with serious and I was like, I'm going to kick your ass. I was like, yo, I'm beeline and I beat the final boss. Time to put a time to put this time with a nice little bow on this game and call it a day.
01:39:10
Speaker
Yeah, I I I kind of like at the end I was like it was weird being able to like run around the thing But I wanted to I wanted to say my goodbyes to Therius and what better way than to fight him in a duel and beat us off So I did that and then I ended the game. I ended the game. I finished it. I was I was I was mad mad They didn't kiss
01:39:33
Speaker
Where's my kiss? But anyway, other than that, it was solid game is a 7.5 for me, I think for an eight, for it to start getting into the eight, I wanted to have like, something a little bit like, like a, like a bigger, like,
01:39:51
Speaker
I don't know, RPG to it. But 7.5 is still really great score for me. Yeah, I think it's a really good game. I liked it. I might replay it again someday in the future. That's why I'm going to keep it. I'm not going to replay it. So that's this game is definitely fun. So but that's fair. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I finally learned what's a new game plus. No kidding. Yeah. Yeah.
01:40:16
Speaker
This is the first time where I'm a lower ranking than you because I think we've tied And I think I've been higher than you a couple times Definitely on Kodaka. I was higher than you on that Order line bad But
Closing Remarks and Future Plans
01:40:32
Speaker
I don't have to go back and rewatch but I don't know if I've been lower than you before interesting, but I mean 7.5. It's not a bad score. I'm Nothing wrong with 7.5 in my opinion
01:40:46
Speaker
All right. So two no kiss. You know what? Swike is right. I didn't get my main characters didn't kiss in the end. So that's what dropped it from the eight. They would have kissed. It would have been an eight. Oh, my goodness. On that note, this has been the episode reviewing the last story. Next month, we will
01:41:08
Speaker
potentially, or I won't say next month. So March and April will potentially be playing Unicorn Overlord. It is a new vanilla game that came out, or that's coming out on March 8th. And we're trying to figure out if we're going to be interested in playing it. I think we are, but there's no guarantees. I'm all in. Holly hasn't played it yet. I played the demo. I love it.
01:41:33
Speaker
I'm going to be playing the demo this weekend, so we will make the announcement if we are not or if we're going to pivot. I don't play this type of game very often. So generally when this happens, we've done this with Tactic Ogre Reborn before, as well as some of you may know.
01:41:53
Speaker
Tactics Ogre Reborn was originally on the fence being a podcast game. And then I tried it on stream because Square gave me a copy of the game to try it. So I tried it on stream and I ended up falling in love with it. And I was like, I was all in. I was like, KJ, we're doing this. So I did it. So similarly aspect is I'm going to try the demo. KJ's already tried it. He tried it on his channel and he definitely loved it. So he's all in.
01:42:17
Speaker
Um, but, uh, I'm going to try the demo, uh, probably before the end of this weekend. So we'll have the announcement this like before, like before the game comes out, obviously, uh, it'll be the next one. If it's unicorn overlord, it will be our, I, our next podcast game will be a two monther. Um, I both.
01:42:38
Speaker
Yeah, it'll be March and April. So, KJ and I both have PAX East, so we're away for an entire week. Well, I'm away for a week, but I'm at KJ's for a week. We'll be doing PAX East, and then there's a bunch of other things. We both have three-year anniversaries that we're celebrating on stream in March.
01:43:00
Speaker
I have women's free trade that I'm helping organize in March. There's a lot happening in it and it was just a lot going on that we were like, and it's a potentially long game because it's not out yet. Nobody knows how long it's going to be because it's a brand new game. Oh, did they tell? Did they say?
01:43:17
Speaker
50 plus hour game. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it's a, it's a longer game. And so, but it's also, we have a lot less time. So we're, we're doing the podcast game, um, for March and April, uh, this game. So it will either be unicorn overlord or we will pivot to another game, but we will definitely announce that. But it's,
01:43:36
Speaker
I'm going to be I'm going to be trying it before the end of the weekend. So I wanted to play it yesterday, but things happened. So I did not get to play the demo as per planned, unfortunately. But yeah. I'm excited to try it, though. I'm excited to try. It's very unique. I don't think I've quite ever seen or played a game like it before. Like, I feel like it's a combination of a few different kind of games. And so I'm really intrigued. I'm really intrigued.
01:44:04
Speaker
Do you know what the pivot might be? I think we both already discussed it. I have other ideas also. But we also have other ideas. We're not sure. We're not sure, but we have a few ideas to pivot pretty quickly that if I end up not liking this game or not liking the demo, KJ's going to still play Unicorn Overlord, but we'll pivot for the podcast if I don't end up liking it.
01:44:32
Speaker
But I mean, I feel like I hope, hopefully I can think, I feel like KJ is going to go ham. So he's definitely going to be somebody that it looks, it looks like there's a lot of mechanical stuff in it. And, uh, sometimes I get a little like brain overload with that stuff, but I'm like, well, KJ is going to go ham. So he's probably going to be ahead of me at all times of this game. So I'm like, I'm just going to,
01:44:56
Speaker
I'm already because you've already played the demo. I haven't played the devil yet. The demo bleeds into actual like you can carry your savings. I love that. I love I love when people I love when companies do demos like that. And I think like when you're doing an RPG, that should just be like the universal rule that the demo leads into the game. But yeah, it's where the start is. But yeah, so that's the that's going to be the end of this episode.
01:45:23
Speaker
But, yeah, happy one. We're at one on one. Nice. We will definitely be. Be playing something for March and April. We're not exactly sure what yet. Thank you, everybody that came out on the YouTube side of things. And if you're listening on, whether it's Spotify, Amazon podcast or music or whatever, or
01:45:49
Speaker
Google podcasts or whatever you're listening on. Go check out the YouTube channel. You'll get to see our live reactions while we're also recording these. And honestly, it'll just be a huge support. So it'll be a huge help. So really appreciate that. And yeah, I think we're I think we're going to we're going to wrap up here. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. And also, thank you very much.