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Magic Fanatic posted:You can remove more than two forms, all told: two duel forms (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PICK TREE AS ONE OF THOSE) and the two party battle forms (Fire and Water). As far as I know, though, the game forces you to have at least four party members for the final boss, at least. I meant 4 forms, but still answered my question.
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Jun 2, 2015 03:28
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TARDISman posted:C'mon, Barbaracle? Really? Not going with Gigalith, the one that actually has "lith" in the name? Also, you could give Claydol a pass since it's ground type and they're about the same thing in the context of Stone. I was operating from "multiple hands" and it's hard to find a pokemon with more hands than that.  Gigalith is really the only one that's spiky enough to match the general aesthetic of the Edelritter, though.
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Jun 2, 2015 03:36
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The Last Battle (1306) [Part 2] The final battle against the Egg.  (Manifest)  Welcome back. This time, I'll be fighting the Egg again... But not the Unlimited Egg, this time. I'll instead be showing off what you should do!  The Water Lord and Fire Lord are free; fight both.   You shouldn't ever choose the Beast or Tone forms as your two permitted duels. Rotten Breath is a pain, but the Egg's Beast Lord form is not very scary. (The Beast Lord is also a complete pain to duel even with A-Listers, so that's another reason it's really not worth it.) The Tone Lord form largely just uses the base form's attacks--giving it more turns to use Star Quake (and more incentive to) is a problem, but all the other forms are worse. The duel lords I'll be fighting are the Stone and Wood Lords, for the reasons you've seen previously: The Word For World is Forest hits like a truck in a game with no multi-target healing and Eternal Curse means you either a) spend a lot of time reapplying Permanence to guard against the Petrify or b) lose a lot of time against a boss designed to grind you down. The Wood Lord's status attacks are similar, what with the way Berserk can totally shut down your magical healing. I don't want to deal with either, and neither should you.   Roberto will be handling the Stone Lord, Meythia will be handling the Wood Lord.   I said previously that you auto-win any Lord fight that takes 15 turns. Defending halves all damage, and this is pre-Defend. The fact Roberto can LP heal every single round with impunity makes this a joke.    So long as you use Permanence to protect against Petrify, the Stone Lord is a free win. Even if you don't, you've got about a 50/50 shot of the Stone Lord never using it.    Roberto is out, but the Stone Lord is dealt with.   The Wood Lord has unpredictable one-hit burst with Charge but is otherwise middling, so Meythia's combination of high HP and low LP is good there. Just defend, strongly consider using Regenerate and/or Stone Armor, and wait it out. So for the hell of it, I decided, "eh, not doing anything for around fifteen rounds anyway, I may as well learn some Martial Arts, I never bothered before."      As it turns out, the Tree Lord's Stab (its most common attack) places Meythia in optimum range for Martial Arts, which vastly increases the chance of Reactions going off. She responds by repeatedly punching it in the face before it can actually hit her. In the above round, the first, she Countered four times in a row, doing gently caress-all for damage but looking incredibly awesome.   Plus some cross-counters, where you and the enemy attack simultaneously.  This results in Meythia getting through the fight while taking weirdly little damage, considering I stopped Defending entirely around turn five or so and you can't Counter Pollen Dust or Leaf Dance. I spend like an hour resetting and messing around here, because the Tree Lord is a good practice dummy for my suspicions about a in-Duel Timed Hits system (it's very easy to notice that you get a red TimelY Action prompt every time if you press X when the "Stab" box is going away, and the window for triggering a counter seems to be at about the point where the "Stab" box stops moving to the center), but I can't get full consistency; the box movement might not be the best measure, since it appears from the left, bottom, or right (each of which has slightly different timing). Or there's some invisible randomness factor to it, which would not surprise me at all (especially since the Counter role increases the odds of Counter and Counter Shot activating). I'll probably keep messing with it on my own time. For now, onward!  With the Fire Lord coming up, I use an option I haven't had reason to use before now:  Action Order lets you enforce who acts in which order in a round, setting first, second, third, and fourth. This isn't some sort of Gambit system, and it doesn't alter action speeds, so Wil isn't moving any faster; he's one of my slowest characters, so setting him to always act first means that everyone else is being slowed down with him. In this case, that's the point! This should ensure that both the Fire Lord and the Egg move before my party every single round. As a bonus, it also ensures that the other party members get Soul Hymn cast/refreshed before they actually attack.    And it works like a charm! 100% consistency. This may not seem like a big deal, but I'd be doing half this much damage if the boss was interrupting and I was getting two two-person combos instead.  Sargon down.   The Last Leaf makes a big difference: Ginny gained a total of +27 magical defense by replacing the Dead Stone, has Tree Anima access for Gale Strike, and she has a lot more SP Enhance (whatever that does!). She's also protected against Poison, which is no small boon when the Beast Lord will very likely be poisoning everyone. The Last Leaf is basically custom-made for this fight, and it's a big part of the argument for killing the Wood Lord. Note Life Water and Regenerate. Everyone that has those Anima has those spells equipped now--no reason to be caught with my pants down.  Primiera gets a Dead Stone; the Nova Heart is to patch up the opportunity cost, since she can't gain SP/SPR from that slot now. She really only needs Fire and Water access so she can use Twin Dragon and revive in a pinch. (Then I discovered that Twin Dragon isn't interchangable with Beast Lightning in this combo order, making it almost useless here. Oops.)  Fixed Wil's spell list this time, in addition to giving him the Birch Ring. That was embarrassing.   The character in slot 1 will generally take more hits from melee attacks when you're fighting a single boss, and that includes Shooting Star. I want that to be Gustaf, since he's a) on the tail end of the combo (and therefore his death still lets me use a three-person combo that round) and b) tough (he doesn't have a Dead Stone lowering his defenses like Primiera does, and he doesn't have the low HP of Wil or Ginny).   I burn four Life Seeds to restore everyone to full, save, and here we go.  (Nightinggale)  Roberto and Meythia being gone doesn't actually change up the dialogue here, they just don't get to say their parts... So let's skip ahead.  (Twisted Form)  Round two with the Egg!   It uses Shooting Star on Gustaf twice, and I get off to a strong start.   First Star Quake on round 2. I can take fifteen more, since Primiera is protected--Grandpa Wil's 17 LP is my time limit now.    First form down, on to what is probably another neutral form. (Water Lord, Tree Lord, and Stone Lord are all dead, so it can't be any of those...)  Time limit ticks down to 14.   I combo it, it uses two Shooting Stars, and Wil and Primiera each attack separately, doing ~3000 damage total and forcing a form switch. Which... scanning the monster data dump, isn't an HP amount that corresponds to any of its forms that have non-DUMMY attacks. I know the monster data dump isn't perfect, because it doesn't have one of the Egg's attacks as displaying for ANY monster in there, but this suggests some weird data voodoo. Just do the standard thing: throw your hands up and move on. Thinking about it longer won't make it make any more sense.  This is the Tone Lord form. Strange that all the Egg forms that are really dangerous don't have sprites while the three weakest do. Budget shortfalls as difficulty!    Down to 13, then down to 12, then down to 11--three rounds in a row! You want to kill the Tone Form quick, because when the Egg effectively only has Shooting Star and Star Quake, it REALLY likes to use Star Quake.   On to the Beast Form.   Primiera's a little lower on HP than I'd like, so I burn an LP on her. Gustaf's been healing with LP every few rounds, since he has a surplus; I have Wil heal him this round instead, since one three-person and one four-person combo should do it for this form.   Rotten Breath is an arc-AOE, and he didn't actually hit Ginny with it at all this time. Kind of annoying, since she's the poison-immune one...   Down to another neutral form. I've exhausted the forms that have poison, so now's a good time to heal that away... Except that I forgot to give Gustaf Recovery Breath. I'm good at this game, really! I promise! The problem with Recovery Breath, though, is that it heals ALL statuses. This includes Regenerate.  And remember previous comments about neutral forms? Down to 10. I drop the poison-healing as a bad idea--I can't spare the turns, not when it'll be happy to Star Quake me to death. One more combo, and...     (Angel of Death)   The Egg Reincarnates for the last time. The Egg's final form has more HP than any of the others, maintaining its Shooting Star and Star Quake attacks and gaining a new trick:    Xenocide. It's a very strong Light-elemental magical attack. (If that seems strange, remember "Light" is the game's catch-all for anything that's magical but isn't Heat, Cold, or Lightning.)  In return, it has lower defenses than the other forms. Burn LP every single round and keep on attacking--its final form is tougher than the others, but not so much tougher. Three combos later...      All of the Animas the Egg has held captive escape explosively, and the screen fades to black. Next: Epilogue
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Jun 4, 2015 22:06
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Right, sorry about the delay. In short, I was trying to see if I could get a video of the last boss and epilogue... But it turns out that my crappy stopgap laptop (which I got because the old one died right before I got my current job) is, well, a crappy stopgap laptop. Can't record quite smoothly. I'll be getting one to replace it fairly soon, but the thread can't exactly wait on that. Epilogue either tomorrow or later tonight; working on it compiling the post now.
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Jun 4, 2015 22:09
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That's cool. I've gotten used to the update schedule anyways so it's feel different without cliffhangers. But yeah I just wanna say: Hamaizu KILLED it with the leitmotif. Jesus I've never been a fan of a overarching, all encompassing leitmotif but SF2's is just so wondrous and amazing that I am more than willing to overlook it. Now I realize why FF13's music was it's most praised feature. Because Todsengel is the best boss theme I have heard in so long. Now if you are like me and want more Hamauzu: There's a channel on youtube literally dedicated to compiling all of Hamauzu's music and posting it on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?MasashiHamauzuFan It has a complete collection of all diigitally released music Hamauzu has made. [e]: There really need to be more classically trained composers in videogames. Rigged Death Trap fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 22:43
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Einander posted:Just do the standard thing: throw your hands up and move on. Thinking about it longer won't make it make any more sense. Congratulations, you finally discovered what SP Enhance does! Or not, probably not.
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Jun 4, 2015 23:09
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Epilogue Let's resume where we left off. (No music, just rumbling. The screen is shaking.)     With the defeat of the Egg, the dissolution of the Egg's terraforming dimension, and the explosive release of its captive Anima, the Star Megalith collapses.        Ginny keeps running ahead of the others, turning around, waiting for them to catch up, and running ahead again.  It's adorable.   (The music slowly cuts out.)   (vooorm)  (Reverence)   The screen fades to black.   Stay away from the Egg! Touch it, and it will consume your Anima.  But we can't just leave it like this.  Why has it grown so big?  It's probably because of the Megalith's power.  Primiera kicks at the ground. Then that battle was all for nothing?  There's a long pause.   The music stops.  And then Gustave XV does what someone should have done a long time ago:  Break the drat Steel Sword in his weapon slot so he can equip the Cinderforge Sword! Goddammit, Gustaf, couldn't you have done that a little earlier!? ...too soon?  Gustave's Sword is broken, and the shattered steel of its blade flies far, far away...   ...but the blade of the single man who defied the wishes of the ancients, who used Steel instead of their poisoned gifts, strikes true.       The Egg is destroyed. (Nightinggale)     I'm fine. But the sword is broken... I guess it's the end of this nightmare. Tycoon Wil, what's wrong? Do you feel ill from the gas?      There's a long pause.      The music stops.   (After the Game)   The credits roll, and the screen fades to black. The music stops.   This file can be used for New Game+, which carries over all learned Arts, allows you to enter any previously unlocked Scenario, and keeps your Circulation (for Custom Tools).   (Mania)   At this point, it begins to show all scenarios in the order of completion, not necessarily the historical order.  "I shall bestow upon you my name, and the name of my ancestors: Gustave. You will be Gustave XIII. Become a great man. A man that will not disgrace our name."  "You good-for-nothing!"  "It will be another twenty years until Gustave sees this castle again."  "Just cut that out, Gustave!" "Why you...!" "Are you crying, Gustave?"  "Yeh've forged a magnificent sword." "This one's only practice. The real sword I intend to forge will be three times longer." "Can there really be a sword as monstrous as that in this world?" "Yes. I can see that sword... Somewhere out there..."  "Sir Gus!!" "We're going, Flynn!" "Wait, Sir Gus!!"  "Well, Aunty Nina, Uncle Paul. I'm off." "Don't come home until you find a Quell."  "I can't sense any Anima here. Are you sure this is a Megalith?" "Who knows? All I know is, we came all the way here for nothing. I guess we'll just have to hear from Alexei himself."  "I'm wondering, Flynn: does Gustave like Leslie?" "What!? They were always fighting, but..." "Hmph, Gustave's still such a kid." "...Uh, Kelvin. Lately, you've begun to sound like Sir Gus."  "I'm going to the granite quarry. If you value your life, don't follow me." (It shows Cordelia's death instead if you finished the game with that version of Infiltrate! Alexei Gang.)  "Alexei! I'll never forgive you!!"  "As for Philippe and Marie, please tell them... I'm very sorry." "......Yes." "Gustave, please let me have a good look at your face one last time." "Yes."  "So this is where it leads... Flynn, notify Kelvin. You can get past the castle walls through here."  (Obsession)  "No... It's only by circumstance that you're a pirate...This may just be a big test to attain your dreams." "......" "People only judge others by appearance, ya know?" "You talk as if you've gone through something similar."  "Looks like you were correct, Wil." "Yes. But now's not the time to gloat. Sir Narcisse, let's go rescue the diggers."  "You should just do as you please. Whether the people decide to follow you or not is a decision they must make on their own." "What are you going to do, Leslie? Will you be coming with me?" "Well, let me see. What should I do?"  "I think I'm about ready to take on a major expedition. How about it, Tyler?" "Yeah. You should be good enough to handle it." "Sir Narcisse?" "Then I suggest you head south."  "I got it! This Megalith materializes your thoughts! I'm the number one digger in the world! I'm Tycoon William!!" "Stop! It'll consume your Anima!"  "However, I do not want the throne. I just want to see what I am capable of. I am sacrificing everyone's Anima for so selfish a motive. How appropriate, coming from a man with no Anima, eh?"  "What is wrong? You have too much pride to speak to a good-for-nothing like me?" "..." "Kelvin, General, I'll leave the rest up to you. Farewell, Your Majesty." "You good-for-nothing! Good-for-nothing!"  "Philippe, Marie, before our mother's Anima left on her journey, she told me to give you this message. I'm very--" "--I'm very sorry, Philippe, Marie." "Mother!" "Motherrrr!"  "No. There has never been such a city throughout history, nor will there be such a city in the future. This city will be the exception!!" "That is brilliant."  "It may be too late already... No, it's pointless to think about that now! I gotta push on!"  "Why? Why did this have to happen!? Someone...anyone...tell me!!"  "It's here! The Egg is really here!"  "It's too late!! The Egg's on the ocean floor. Now no one will be able to get it. ...From the looks of this storm, I think I'm going to be on the ocean floor, too... Father... Mother..."  "I couldn't help myself...I just responded to his orders. Who is this man? How was he able to see through the guise of the Scorpion? It sparked my interest. But beyond that, it felt comfortable to listen to his voice ordering me."  (Success)  "At times, it becomes necessary to cooperate with people you may not like. If you can't do that, only death awaits you." (Interestingly enough, The General's Memories has a different scene show here--in Gustave's epilogue, it was the scene on the balcony. Probably because this part relates to Narcisse?)  "I don't have much time left. Please stay inside, Master Gustave. Just order me to defend this position." "Yes, I'll leave that to you. We'll meet again, Johan." "Come get some, you monsters! I'll show you what my Assassin Arts are all about!"  "Dirk, is that true?" "Yes..."  "Father, please calm yourself. Look at our soldiers. They are in no condition to fight." "Hmm, their hearts are already in Jade..." "I will go in your stead."  "This is a map of the forest. But even with this map, the story is that no one's ever made it to their destination. Mark my words, we're going to find the tower."  "We're doing a job for Kelvin, the Count of Jade. He probably wants to gain an advantage over Cantal in their struggles. It has nothing to do with me, though."  "Rich, what I'm about to say, you must not tell anyone else. Do you swear upon your name and your father's name to keep this oath?" "If you ask me to swear it, I will, but on my honor, not my father's name." "Very well. I need you to go to a certain island and bring back the seeds of a tree that grows there."  "There sure are a lot of weird things in this world."  "It's like a dream...I'm seeing my rainbow come true..."  "Get on the boat now. You can still ride on a boat, right? Head for Wide, and look for my father. If you ask for Richard's father, there's no one in Wide who wouldn't know who you meant."  "I live for my own pleasure. These things called humans are incomplete and puny little beings. Just taking away a little bit of their Anima almost makes them die. Controlling Animas and Quells takes effort and creativity. That makes it fun. Don't interfere with my pleasure."  "...I'm sorry, Diana... ...I won't be able to keep my promise..."  "Kelvin finally obtains glory at the age of 67."  "There are lords that have already given up on the pact. Father, if you leave, the pact will surely crumble."  (Ovation)  "Hey, what else do I need to become Gustave?" (Neither "Fake Gustave Appears" nor "Edelritter" seem to be in the Gustave epilogue, looking back. Huh.)  "I am at your service, Master Gustave."  "Send a messenger to the lords at once. Tell them I am coming to exterminate the impostor."  "Mama, I'm sorry..."  "Captain, we've found a stowaway!"  "The Northern Continent's full of hairy places, you know. On the other hand, that's why there's room to make money, too."  "A young girl like you, huh? I think it's best to quit right now. A long time ago, another young woman also went in, but she never came back." (You don't see the revelation about Rich, even if you learned it in your playthrough.)  "Our army was defeated near the outskirts of Hahn Nova and... Master Charles has fallen in battle."  "That is what I wanted you to confirm, Tycoon Wil. If the Egg is as dangerous as I've heard from you before, then this man will have to be defeated, no matter what it takes."  "There's no mistaking it. That pitch black Anima... It's the Egg......" "Grandpa, are you alright? You're shaking all over."  "Sorry. I was looking for the body of the impostor out on the battlefield." "You couldn't find it... Right?" "Yes. Even his trusted Edelritters have vanished."  "After the Battle of South Moundtop, the lords gather at Hahn Nova. The lords meet for the official signing of the peace treaty. The lords and independent cities across the world sign this treaty. This treaty becomes known as the Hahn Nova Treaty, after the location in which it was signed." (The Gustave-side South Moundtop also has a different scene (or, rather, is slightly earlier in the same one).)  (No scene is shown for The Last Megalith or The Last Battle.)  (Prelude)   It runs through all of your Arts, starting with Martial and going through the weapons. Hybrid Arts are after Spells.  100% completion on Swords and Spears, everything but Grand Slam on Staves, short a few high-level Axe moves and some Bow Hybrids, and I learned both Song of Earth and Soul Hymn. Good enough!  Rank S is the best Circulation rank, rewarded for more than 16384; it was higher before I bought the Limstokes, since Custom Tools remove Circulation. I have no idea what enemy AI level is, but if it's anything like other SaGa games, you get it for fighting more enemies. (I avoided about 2/3 of the fights in my way at any given time.) I found all the characters, so I have all the Roles. (The music stops.)    The game then stops responding to your input at this screen--not even Soft Reset (R1+L1+start+select) works. I hard reset and load the NG+ file.  And that was SaGa Frontier 2! "When your very first foray as an adventurer ends with you saving the entire world, what do you do with the rest of your life? "Just as every student knows the name 'Gustave,' every student of history knows of Virginia Knights. By the time she formally retired at the age of thirty-five, the Digger known as 'Typhoon' was a legend of sword, staff, and spell, the crafter of the first known Star Anima spell, a traverser of every known Megalith and a discoverer of several more. In the second half of her life, she turned her considerable skill at investigating old ruins to scholarly ends, and in time that interest branched out to history more generally. One text in particular, 'On Gustave XIII and His Inheritors,' is still considered the definite authority on the matter, even after all this time. "This is widely known. Less widely known is why--appropriate, that, when her career as a historian began with that very same question. "A young Ginny Knights had saved the world from a Quell known only as 'the Egg,' a device with its own will, and even after it was defeated, she did not know what that will was. No one knew, and the words of the Fire Lord in the Star Megalith had provided only partial answers. The wondering seized her, especially after her grandfather's death over a decade later. So she explored, and she investigated, doing everything in her power to discern the truth of it. In seeking that answer, and in developing the skills to do so, she answered many other questions... But she never forgot that original goal. "Her very final work was a compilation of everything she had learned about the ancients, the Quells, and the Megaliths, an exhaustive description of everything she knew of the Egg's plot. By her description of it, left in the journals which formed the backbone of this account, it was quite the formidible stack of paper. "The moment she set the very last word to paper, she burned it all. "I cannot say what reception she expected her revelations to meet, that the greatest seeker of the truth would choose to so obscure it. The Iron King, perhaps, would have considered it proof of his propaganda, and his defeat may have required a still higher cost. Perhaps she feared it would provoke the Stewards to dig still deeper into secrets best left alone, to create some catastrophe still worse than the Artificial Megalith. Perhaps it was a lingering attachment to a child's dreams of Digging, of exploring lost ruins for objects of great power, or perhaps she simply wished to put the ghost of the Egg to rest. Perhaps she simply considered the work to be below her usual standard. I do not know, and her journals provide no answers. "But the world has changed, and the old dreams have ended--there can be no harm in knowing now. "Let this history stand as a monument to the mother of our craft, and should it endure even a hundredth of the span her work has, I will be content. "Your historian, C.A. Bering" The End
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Jun 4, 2015 23:18
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rip in peace gustaves sword. you got the job done.
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Jun 4, 2015 23:35
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Beautiful.
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Jun 5, 2015 00:05
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It was a good sword.
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Jun 5, 2015 00:29
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Einander posted:...too soon? Yes.  But that was good. Good game, good thread, good ending.
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Jun 5, 2015 00:32
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That'll do, sword. That'll do.
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Jun 5, 2015 00:34
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What a fantastic game. I am glad you did this LP for us. I've always been curious about what exactly was going on in SF2 and this LP provided perfect clarity on as much material as possible. It is, in the end, a very good, if quite obtuse game. I'm tempted to play it myself now. Looking forward to seeing what you tackle next, Einander!
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Jun 5, 2015 00:57
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Your LP was both entertaining and educational. I've learned a lot.  I'm looking forward to your next LP if you are planning on one in the near future.
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Jun 5, 2015 01:16
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I want a sequel to this game in the same setting, drat it.
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Jun 5, 2015 01:18
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I'd break into applause of you and the game. It was a wonderful trip, and I'm happy you guided us through it.
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Jun 5, 2015 01:28
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Goddamn I love this game. I finally managed to finish it thanks to this LP, starting somewhere in the middle of Rich's story and finishing it just before Ginny's section started. Honestly I never would've done it without most of the tricks that you pointed out in the early LP so thanks for that and thanks for an overall great LP!
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Jun 5, 2015 01:40
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Good thing he made that one three times larger then! I also like Gustaf's unstated logic in trying. "Well poo poo, nothing else worked. It's worth a shot."
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Jun 5, 2015 01:59
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Thanks for the LP.
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Jun 5, 2015 02:02
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I'm still annoyed that the magazine ads about this game lied to me. Thank you for the LP
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Jun 5, 2015 02:04
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I really love the ending to this game. You know what you must do next, Einander. Unlimited Saga is calling for you. Embrace the madness.
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Jun 5, 2015 03:26
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I am ashamed that I hated this game for so long as an idiot child. Sure it's arcane as hell figuring out how to play it, and South Moundtop is bullshit, but I let my frustrations blind me to the greater whole and didn't see the wonderful things about this game for what they were. Thank you, Einander. As an aside, if you ever want to give Romancing SaGa 3 a run, lemme know. I was part of the crowd that delved into it's secrets.
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Jun 5, 2015 04:02
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What a beautiful game.
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Jun 5, 2015 04:09
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In a world that's so heavily saturated in magic, to the point where the common lay person can cast multiple spells... it's nice to see that the ultimate solution to the threat of an ancient, world-ending abomination is just some guy smacking the poo poo out of it with a sharp piece of metal. Great LP, Einander.
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Jun 5, 2015 07:17
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Great LP. Hell, thanks you for putting my thoughts of never having finished this game to rest.
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Jun 5, 2015 08:40
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And so it comes full circle, with the last part of Gustave's legacy removing the imposter of his name. I love it when stories do that. Thanks for the LP, as weirdly broken as it looks as a game, it's definitely one hell of a story.
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Jun 5, 2015 08:56
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This was so fantastic. Thank you so much for showing it to us and explaining as much as you could about it. What an incredible little game.
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Jun 5, 2015 11:59
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I tried to play this game way back when but never got into it. Looks like I missed out on something special, thanks a lot for the LP.
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Jun 5, 2015 12:23
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Aw, now I want to hear about Ginny's invention of Star Anima spells, the Iron King, and the Artificial Megalith. Is that real stuff from supporting materials or your own invention, Einander? Anyway great LP, this seems like a game that would have annoyed the gently caress out of me to play so I was glad I got the chance to see the pretty cool story.
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Jun 5, 2015 12:37
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For anyone who is still curious about some of the unresolved loose-ends or lore, here's a few of the PW/Ultimania threads that I've managed to find. I say some, because these threads are (presumably) sadly woefully incomplete on most of the side material provided. Here, here (to save time and energy, just read Niu's posts), and here.
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Jun 5, 2015 19:03
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Woohoo! Thanks for showing off the game in it's entirety Einander. Still gently caress South Moundtop though
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Jun 5, 2015 22:11
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Also, a note: there were comments around the time of the Gustave-side epilogue that David's comments on Gustave proving humans can push past birth or Anima were ridiculous, since Gustave earned his foothold on the Eastern Continent by virtue of his birthright to Finney. There's an in-story reason for this, yes (David is a noble and therefore likely has a particular blindspot for the benefits of nobility, but he's also the son of Charles, who was born to a family of good people but became a total shitheel--an example that David then defied!), but the out-of-story reason is because the writers weren't really talking about the military victories. David's speech at South Moundtop is a chance for the writers to indirectly talk about how Gustave, by pushing the study of Steel further than anyone else alive, defied the plans of the ancients who created the Egg. He defied birth (the world they successfully created) and Anima (the power-based stratification of the world they imposed) to create weapons capable of standing up to the weapons of the ancients (Gustave's Sword and the Paladin weapons, which are stronger than any Quell), ultimately destroying the Egg. This also ties to the idea of the heroic-few-against-the-weak-many that reoccurs throughout the story: Cordelia's death against inferior thugs with superior numbers, the rise of armies and then of Steel armies to overcome better-trained Anima users, the deaths of Gustave and Johan at the Southern Fort, Wil's fear that Gustaf was swarmed and brought down by superior numbers at South Moundtop, crowned by the strategy you're forced to use at South Moundtop (whittle the enemy down to the few, then use your raw numbers). Even the alternative South Moundtop strategy falls into this theme, since you're effectively turning Fake Gustave's own numbers against him. Monsters kill men, heroes kill monsters, men kill heroes: this isn't presented as good or bad, since there's examples on both sides of the fence, but it's very much the way of the world--Gustave and David are just the strongest example of an in-universe law. The Last Megalith repeatedly plays with the heroic-few-and-weak-many: the Egg has more troops (Six Lords and the Egg against your group of six), but they fight individually (so you have the number advantage again), but the Egg will always have more forms than you have characters in the final battle (around ten forms to your six characters when it's Unlimited, about five forms to your four characters if you kill as many Lords as you can), and the Egg also contains the consciousnesses of the previous civilization (so they are many and you are few), but the Egg also seems to have only one mind running the show (so you're many and it's few). And then the Egg is destroyed with Gustave's sword, when the sword is both a symbol of the triumph of weaker men against heroes and also one of the two weapons previously identified as "the strongest in the world." Is the sword the many or the few in this metaphor? I don't know! So basically the Last Megalith is a literary analysis singularity, where the idea of "weak-many-versus-heroic-few" gets crushed into one single dense clusterfuck of perspectives. You have to admire it, but this is best done far, far from the event horizon. GunnerJ posted:Aw, now I want to hear about Ginny's invention of Star Anima spells, the Iron King, and the Artificial Megalith. Is that real stuff from supporting materials or your own invention, Einander? All my own invention, I'm afraid. I'm as curious about what's next as you! A quick rundown of what I was thinking on those parts: The Eternity Staff is basically Ginny's canonical weapon for the last part, what with its position and how she finds Rich's bag in the Insect Megalith. (That's probably when she'd get the Staff in any novelization of the story.) Wil is also the one who finds the Kris Knife, and the Comet Fall spell on the Kris Knife and the Megabolt spell on the Eternity Staff are the two examples of Star Anima magic we see. If background material says Star Anima spells are invented shortly after the game, Ginny is really the most logical person to do it. The Iron King is basically is a "down with Anima!" figure ("iron" was chosen by his opponents, because it's an inferior metal to Steel, and "the Steel" is very much taken). He started agitating a while before the death of David (fifty years after South Moundtop), but only really became a problem in the aftermath of his death. Jade, Finney, and Hahn Nova were all instrumental, especially since this probably happened in Na. (Nothing loving happens in Na during the story, the death of David is a good time for this to change.) The Stewards were a group of researchers that started delving more into the mechanics of Megaliths, once history started being a thing; they discovered a degree of common functionality in the workings of Megaliths, a sort of common program they shared, and decided to create their own Megalith as a testbed for figuring out how they worked. The problem is that most of the "common program" for Megaliths is "convert weak people into monsters to defend the Megalith and kill weak intruders," so these experiments turned out predictably. Grandma Virginia had to come out of retirement for that one. quote:(assorted comments about what's next) Still thinking on this. Sometimes it feels like I have no games left that I really have a burning urge to LP, then I think about it and I realize, "there's like five games I'm considering right now, what am I even saying." No games that I've been wanting to LP over half a decade, anyway. Possibilities: -- Romancing SaGa (Minstrel Song). Great game! ...where most of the characters are obviously and unfixably inferior to others, optimum play involves fleeing in terror from nearly every enemy, it's extremely easy to lose an entire region of the map to a horrifying hellbeast, and loving up by not doing the right quests early enough can turn a face-stomping-hard final boss into an utter nightmare. It's very, very SaGa, both in the good and the bad. -- Unlimited SaGa. I've never played it, but I've played a lot of SaGa games. I've heard enough about it (hard not to, when it comes up in any conversation even tangentially related to SaGa games) that I'm curious as to whether "do one playthrough blind, educate self, then play through competently for subsequent tries" from someone good at SaGa would turn out well... But Demon King Chronicle started as something closer to a blind LP ("there are no resources I know of for this game, so gently caress it, I don't know") and I gave up that part halfway through, so I'm not sure I can do "blind LP" for very long. -- Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. I don't think this has ever gotten a complete LP, but it's fantastic--it's very much in the vein of games I've LPed so far (sometimes difficult gameplay, fantastic story, gets some critical respect but not nearly enough recognition). If it doesn't get a complete LP by the time I finish LPing something else, I'll probably end up doing it. -- Luminous Arc 2: Will. This is probably not in the vein of games I've previously LPed, being a low-difficulty SRPG with a story that's more solid than great... But I find it a lot of fun to both read and play. (And I remembered Rondo of Swords being only pretty good story-wise before I started LPing it, so my memory is demonstrably fallible.) It also has one of the few romances in video games that I actually appreciate, and like the later Fire Emblems, it's got a sort of Support system that ensures everyone gets some spotlight time. This is sometimes a mixed blessing. ( -- Wild ARMs XF. Good strategy RPG, good story. The gimmick battles should make it more interesting to present to readers, since you do some pretty different things... But, admittedly, this is a class-based SPRG where I think "class diversity" is for loving suckers. A diverse array of classes? When you could be creating mobility artillery walls or suplexing all your enemies off of high cliffs? (This "downside" is debatable.) Basically leaning towards one of the last two at the moment.
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Jun 5, 2015 22:17
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Personally with all I've heard about it, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter sounds really interesting. A lot of history behind the game's position in the market itself as well as people always mentioning unusual mechanics when they talk about it.
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Jun 5, 2015 22:30
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Einander posted:Wild ARMs XF I would be so incredibly on board for this. Someone made a thread for it a while back and it looked really neat, but they ran into issues a few chapters in and had to quit so I never got to see where it went. And suplexing people off high cliffs is right up my alley. Plus, I'm really fond of Wild ARMs. 
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Jun 5, 2015 22:44
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All of them are interesting games that I would follow any LP made. Based on the abandoned LP, I definitely would like to see more of Wild Arms XF.
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Jun 5, 2015 22:46
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I've heard so much about Dragon Quarter, never played it, and there was one SA LP of it ages ago which barely scratched the surface as far as I remember so I'd probably vote for that. 2nd vote goes to Unlimited Saga for obvious reasons. I'm sure whatever you do will be a great LP, I forgot that you were the guy who did Demon King Chronicle as well so you're running with a pretty good track record for obscure/difficult/interesting RPGs
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Jun 5, 2015 23:06
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You've got a recurring reader, Einander; whatever you decide next, link it here and I'll gladly read it.
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Jun 5, 2015 23:28
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Romancing Saga is one of those games that I own and have played multiple times, but I am just not spergy enough to get everything that game has to offer out of it. So, I'd really love to see if somebody can actually lp that game and show the gem that it can really be.
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Jun 6, 2015 00:18
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Yeah, counter intuitive mechanics like "run from every fight" are a big reason I never tried minstrel song, so I am curious about that. Ditto Unlimited.
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Jun 6, 2015 01:04
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I kind of don't want to vote for Dragon Quarter since it's the only game I've played on that list -- but the game really deserves a good LP. For the reasons you mentioned. As entertaining as a blind LP of Unlimited Saga would be, at least for one or two updates, it will probably end in tears.
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Jun 6, 2015 01:16
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