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I'm in the "gently caress about before the final dungeon" phase of Reverie. How many teams worth of characters do I need to have leveled/geared for the final battle, and is anyone mandatory besides presumably Lloyd and maybe Rean/C/Lapis? Also, god drat if Falcom aren't the all time heavyweight champions of punch pulling. It can't have been more than a couple minutes between when that Erebonian base got nuked and when Aurelia shows up to say "actually everybody was out for lunch at the time so nobody was even injured". And a few minutes later Agate chimes in to say, "the stakes have never been higher", which I suppose is technically true because 0 is not greater than 0. Thoom fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Jul 29, 2023 |
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Jul 29, 2023 01:43
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:About the thing midway through the Finale Chapter which I complained about earlier: I visited Prof. Schmidt and also saw the Daydream "One Lucky Stone, One Unlucky Ship," which were apparently supposed to satisfy my complaints. They absolutely did not, but I'll leave it at that, unless someone wants to continue. I just saw that Daydream and it also didn't make me any less annoyed by the thing you complained about, but it's definitely my favorite Daydream so far. It ties so many things together and features some of my favorite side characters.
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Jul 29, 2023 03:11
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Reverie Final Dungeon Elysium is a super-intelligent AGI capable of causing a technological singularity and predicting the future nearly perfectly, but can it predict why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch? The only way any of this makes sense to me is if Elysium/whoever is controlling it wants to lose. How else do AGI-controlled laser turrets have Imperial Stormtrooper-level aim when firing at effectively immobile CPD patrol boats? 
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Aug 3, 2023 07:14
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SgtSteel91 posted:I feel like the point of CS4’s ending and general vibe is that you’re supposed to have this dread about everyone being okay, [Includes spoilers through the main ending of Reverie] The problem with the CS4 ending and the series in general is that I am no longer capable of feeling that dread in any way, shape or form because they have demonstrated such a thorough unwillingness to let anything bad stick. Yeah, Crow and Millium died, but they got better. Yeah, Ilya was hospitalized for a few years, but she got better. Yeah, Angelica got shot, but she got better. Yeah, Emperor Eugent got shot, but he got better. Yeah, Valimar and Ordine went away, but it turns out they've still been fully conscious and watching from Robo-Heaven or whatever. As far as I can recall, the literal only two bad things that have happened to good guys that didn't get rolled back (outside of sad backstories that happened before you meet a character) are Victor Arseid losing his arm and Olivier losing his eye, and even the event that precipitated those turned out to mostly be a fakeout. At no point in Reverie was I ever worried about any further harm befalling anyone. When the surprise Railway Cannon fired at Gaius's family or when Rufus set himself up to die in Babel, I just kind of rolled my eyes and waited for the Deus ex Machina. SgtSteel91 posted:I'm half convinced this thread doesn't understand that CS4 wasn't supposed to be about or think that it's darker than it's supposed to be I don't need the story to be dark. I'm 100% OK with everybody surviving and getting a happy ending, but I'm a little tired of the story wringing its hands and clutching its pearls pretending that anything else is even a remote possibility. It gets tedious (though it was kind of funny seeing that Lloyd had basically figured out that they all have plot armor). One reason I liked the Daydreams in Reverie way more than any of the main story content -- they were mostly honest about their stakes.
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Aug 6, 2023 05:10
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MythosDragon posted:Two compare Trails to its actual contemporaries. Every 10 plus year shounen battle series and fellow recurring plot RPGs Suikoden and Kingdom Hearts. An example of a series that gets around this a lot more gracefully would be One Punch Man. You know from the start that Saitama is never going to lose or even really struggle, so that's never treated as a key element of the drama. Like I said, I'm not asking for stakes, just honesty. One thing I'd really like to see in a future game is Nadia realizing that Lloyd was right about the tendency for everything to work itself out, and abusing that to her advantage somehow, since she's supposed to be the clever one of her group.
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Aug 6, 2023 06:29
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ImpAtom posted:poo poo Rufus murdered someone like a total shithead and that's one of the rare deaths that doesn't get undone and the most you get someone holding it against him is him cartoonishly fighting off Team Swordrocket. Duvalie bringing Rufus a gift basket in the hospital with a facial expression that could only be described as "full tsundere" was definitely the weirdest part of the Reverie end credits.
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Aug 6, 2023 07:53
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After thinking on it a bit more, I think I'm more OK with the (Reverie) Juno Naval Fortress incident and general bloodlessness of Reverie. If one is inclined towards charitable interpretations, it could be explained by the Rean side of Ishmelga-Rean doing his best to pull punches even if he can't exert full control over the process. Another interesting implication of the plot is that Ishmelga is the most powerful malign entity within Elysium's simulation capacity, which we know extends at least a few months into the past and at least 3 years into the future across all of Zemuria. If they try to pull an "even bigger than Ishmelga" threat out of their hats, they need to explain why that threat didn't hijack Elysium instead of/from Ishmelga for its own ends.
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Aug 6, 2023 19:51
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Super Jay Mann posted:”within Elysium’s simulation capacity” probably does the heavy lifting there. I imagine any future threat larger than Ishmelga is one that Elysium wasn’t able to recreate even with all the infinite energy and literal magic at its disposal. The first option seems more plausible. Though if they bother to explain it, it will probably be more like "it had the power to cloak itself from causality because lore and caught everyone by surprise" or something.
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Aug 6, 2023 20:59
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Last Celebration posted:take my new foster daughter around to fix her amnesia If I had a nickel for every time...
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Aug 9, 2023 08:14
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Reverie - Coda. 0th is actual factual the final stratum. The option to add +50 to monster levels is super helpful for raising up your auxiliary teams, just remember to turn it off before the boss. Your two other teams also don't have to be as strong as your main team, their phases are easier.
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Aug 10, 2023 19:50
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Some Numbers posted:Reverie Coda super end: Man, those vignettes were really heavy on the "tell, not show" huh? More like short novellas than the typical Daydreams. They had a very "look at how cool and powerful my OC is" fanfiction vibe, but I enjoyed the one about Renne beating up a snotty rich kid and ruining his dad's political career. Little poo poo had no idea who he was messing with. Thoom fucked around with this message at 08:42 on Aug 13, 2023 |
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Aug 13, 2023 08:10
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Every single Trails game I reach a point where I think "OK, I'm basically done. I can wrap this up in another hour before I go to bed". At best, this has been 2-3 hours before the actual ending. At worst, it's been 10+.
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Aug 14, 2023 00:07
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From CS2 onward I used Cheat Engine to give myself unlimited BP. Felt a lot better than hanging out with someone and then rewinding time so I could have hung out with someone else instead.
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Aug 14, 2023 01:00
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My favorite voice casting thing in Trails is that Lloyd and Guy are voiced (in Japanes) by Simon and Kamina from Gurren Lagann. That feels very intentional.
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Aug 16, 2023 02:39
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I'm pretty sure Ouroboros are genuinely trying to save the world from a real threat, they're just arrogant dickheads about it, and maybe misguided in their solution because they underestimate just how much the Power of Friendship can let you get through basically anything without significant casualties. My favorite comedy option that would piss everyone off would be the Grandmaster knows she's in a video game and the Eternal Recurrence plan is basically "do a bunch of random bullshit for the sake of plot twists to keep players engaged, because when they stop making sequels the world ends". It would make for the world's longest shaggy dog story, and I would find that hilarious.
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Aug 17, 2023 00:44
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Cyouni posted:Are they, though? (CS4) The Grandmaster implies that dealing with Ishmelga extended the lifetime by three years, which appears to be part of their goals. So part of it is specifically provoking that to occur. I just watched that scene since I actually missed it when I played the game. I don't think it conflicts with my interpretation. You could also take her saying "3 years until the world returns to primordial nothingness" with an implicit "unless I do something about it". Also, (Reverie post-game) the new president of Calvard seems to be generally aware of what Ouroboros is going for, and seems unconcerned about it enough to make a non-interference pact with them, which I wouldn't expect if they were actually trying to destroy the world.
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Aug 17, 2023 02:50
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My other wild speculation is that the Grandmaster is actually Aidios or an avatar thereof, mostly based on her theme being full of pipe organs, and that she's the biggest "big bad" we know of and in JRPGs that's always God. Before CS4 I thought the Grandmaster was going to turn out to be C. Epstein, but that's pretty clearly not true at this point.
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Aug 17, 2023 04:46
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I'm conflicted as to whether the George Nome. G. Nome. Gnome. GET IT!? GET IT!? reveal is the best or dumbest part of George's arc.
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Aug 18, 2023 23:52
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I think "spirit" rather than "person" would be closer, but basically yes
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Aug 19, 2023 00:28
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Also, does Copper Georg imply the existence of Iron Ringo, Mythril Paul and Orichalcum John?
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Aug 19, 2023 00:32
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Estelle always gets priority on the high end Stregas even if she's not going to be in the party much.
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Aug 29, 2023 20:30
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Red Red Blue posted:Although for steam it might just be a patch to the version that's already on there Pretty sure I remember Durante saying this was the case. I'm excited for it, it looks like it takes after my favorite Ys games (Oath/Origin).
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Sep 16, 2023 02:04
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Sakurazuka posted:Almost up to the end of the first chapter in Nayuta and it's pretty fun so far, pedigree is a lot more Zwei/Gurumin than it is Ys though, food you eat giving you exp as well as restoring health especially reminds me of Zwei 1, and there's much more of an emphasis on platforming puzzles. Guess I'm going to have to check out Zwei and Gurumin, because I'm digging Nayuta so far. Though I do keep having to remind myself it's a 2012 PSP game because my brain keeps chiming in to tell me "wow, this is insanely impressive for a 1999 PSX game". Kind of the same feeling I got with Ys 2 (from the Chronicles+ release), which looks like an amazing 1993 SNES game but the version I was playing was a remake-of-a-remake-of-a-remake-of-a-remake that came out in 2013.
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Sep 20, 2023 06:56
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Especially at endgame when it just kind of shits upgraded Grail Lockets at you.
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Sep 22, 2023 22:56
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CharlestheHammer posted:One of the biggest problems I have with cold steel is a lot of the villians aren’t terribly interested in what’s happening. Like at least Rufus is invested and going all in on being an evil rear end in a top hat. Falcom loves their half-hearted antagonists. I'm in the back half of Nayuta and there's a whole string of fights against characters who were previously friendly, have now betrayed you because the plot obliges them to do so, and then as soon as you kick their butt they're back on your side again as if the reasons they had to betray you never really mattered that much. Also, while I'm otherwise enjoying the game, the grapple mechanic in Nayuta may be Falcom's most annoying game design since Dark Fact, especially if you've been trained by Mario since 1992 to hold the jump button when jumping for maximum height.
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Sep 25, 2023 03:45
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Finished Nayuta NG. Don't think I have the stomach for NG+. I liked a lot of things that Falcom was trying to do with it, but they fell flat on their face as often as they succeeded in implementing their ideas. All four of the powers you get are cool in theory but quite janky to actually use, in ways that I feel like could have been easily fixed by a designer/programmer pair who had good taste and a couple weeks to work on it. I'm not the most observant player, but the connections I noticed to the rest of Trails included (spoilers for Nayuta and all English-released Trails games) the Astrolabe's home being called a "Garden", which is a term the other games tend to use for hub spaces in places like Phantasma and the True Reverie Corridor, the names "Ordine" and "Herschel", and the first form of the last boss being called a Divine Knight. Pretty thin stuff, mostly, but I'm willing to believe I missed a bunch of obvious clues. Something else I noticed that's either very important or just lazy translation is that Nayuta's planet is referred to as "Earth" specifically, and a lot of the wildlife you find (especially fossils) are just regular-rear end Earth creatures like Anglerfish and Tyrannosaurus Rex. I didn't think too much of that until I found the Meowmeow accessories for Noi in the after story and the descriptions referred to them as coming from a long forgotten civilization, which again is either a joke, lazy translation, or a hint that it takes place on our planet in the distant future. Hard to say what to make of it all.
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Sep 28, 2023 00:39
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Certainly much better than the old school solution of having the boss do a 1-shot attack on your entire party after you've spent X turns burning your entire stock of healing/MP items. Lookin' at you, Xenogears.
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Sep 30, 2023 01:55
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Unfortunately, though, no one has come up with the concept of handcuffs or restraints yet. No prison in all the multiverse can hold an antagonist who the plot needs to recycle.
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Sep 30, 2023 16:33
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Ys IX was finally on a decent sale, so I picked it up but I'm not really feeling it after 2 hours. There's way too much blahblahblah between gameplay segments but next to zero chemistry among the cast, and the moral of the first arc after the prologue was "if you give the poor welfare after taking everything from them and polluting their home, it will only make them lazy". Does it get better?
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Oct 5, 2023 23:42
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Running around got a lot better after I got White Cat, so I guess I'll stick with it for another few hours and see if it hooks me. My main hope is that the later dungeons make good use of the different powers you presumably get from the other members of chuuni lady's merry band of unwilling and disinterested compatriots/hostages.
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Oct 6, 2023 00:06
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I'm in Chapter 4 of Ys IX now and the main story hasn't improved much, but much like Ys VIII there's a B-plot that's more compelling than the main story. Just like the sections in VIII where you flash back and play as Dana before she joined the party, there are flash-sideways sections where you play as a different Adol who is still imprisoned. Which one is the real Adol? Neither? Somehow both? I'm definitely more interested in the answer to that question than I am in anything involving the Monstrums. As with Nayuta, I wish they'd put more effort into making traversal powers feel good, especially since the game is very traversal focused for a Ys. I also feel like it's harder to time flash blocks/dodges than it was in 4/7/8, but maybe that's just me getting old.
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Oct 15, 2023 19:03
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Ys IX Chapter 5: So Raging Bull's backstory is that she's so far been too busy being an adult with a real job and a family to take care of to worry about any of the Monstrum BS unless forced to. I respect that.
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Oct 18, 2023 19:34
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Trails has been enormously helpful for my mental health journey away from compulsive completionism.
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Nov 1, 2023 00:57
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Ys IX Chapter 8: Falcom sure does love their loyal soldier clinging to a long-ended war turns to atrocities out of misguided patriotism characters. The only meaningful difference between (Trails in the Sky, Ys IX) Colonel Richard from Sky 1 and Chatelard from Ys IX is that the latter has an annoying catchphrase and probably won't be rehabilitated. It is sort of interesting to contrast how the authorial perspective on Imperialism differs between Trails and Ys. Trails treats Erebonia as a vicious bunch of dickheads, and their annexations as unjust/tragic. Meanwhile Ys seems to think of Romn as a basically benign/civilizing force, and typically the lesser of two evils.
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Nov 2, 2023 01:25
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Going by Wikipedia: The main writer for Trails appears to be Hisayoshi Takeiri who wrote for every game but Reverie (which he co-directed). Yoshihiro Konda also wrote for 6 games, Shuuji Nishitani for 4, and Syunsei Shikata for 3. No single person has wrote for every Ys game, and a lot of writers only stuck around for a single game. The most prolific contributors are Falcom CEO Toshihiro Kondo (4 games), Yoshihiro Konda (4 games), Hisayoshi Takeiri (3 games), and Syunsei Shikata (3 games). So... kinda yes kinda no.
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Nov 2, 2023 02:20
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Finished Ys IX. I warmed up to the story in the last chapter. As Falcom antagonists go, ---Zola--- was pretty good, though I admit that's not saying a lot. Much like Memories of Celceta, all of the actual clever level design in the game was concentrated in like 2 rooms in the final dungeon. The final boss was probably the best final boss in a 3D-era Ys game, though it doesn't come close to Oath in Felghana or Origin. I just wish they'd managed to find a way to make Feral Hawk/Raging Bull/Renegade's gifts useful during the fight. Speaking of making gifts useful, the game just kind of forgets about Renegade's gift after his chapter. It's used like two more more times in a dungeon and unlocks some minor chests in the city and that's it. The biggest value it offers is if you're playing as Raging Bull and hit L2 accidentally she'll sometimes yell "Shadow... something!" and that's kinda funny.
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Nov 4, 2023 02:41
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I was sad when Grandmaster turned out to be just some random lady we've never seen before. I much preferred when it could have been anybody and I could wildly speculate about them being Epstein or Beryl or something. Unless of course that was just an illusion and it's actually been Estelle the whole time.
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Dec 20, 2023 21:27
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ImpAtom posted:Nobody in Trails can actually die. If you think someone died it is just because they actually went off to become a bartender in another city. My headcanon is that this is literally true in-universe, and some of the cleverer characters like Lloyd have started to figure it out.
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Jan 16, 2024 23:25
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Some Numbers posted:Rufina, Loewe, Weissman, Estelle's mother and Agate's sister all died Note how all of those people died before the Azure Tree incident. Same with Joachim Guenter, Lianne Sandlot, Rutger Claussell, Giliath Osborne, and Franz Reinford. Maybe something happened when KeA was messing with causality. Has any named character that died for their first time post-Azure Tree not come back? For reference, I'm only like 25% serious about this. Edit: Was the razing of Celdic before or after the Azure Tree? I can't quite remember where in Cold Steel II that cutscene happens. Edit 2: Celdic was Dec 24th S.1204, Azure Tree was Dec 26th S.1204, theory survives. Thoom fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 00:16
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SgtSteel91 posted:I don’t get this criticism, even when a character is revealed to be alive it doesn’t somehow negate the emotions of their apparent death by the other characters in the Trails games, and even then the characters treat it reveal that person is alive with the same emotional weight; it’s not suddenly brushed under the rug and forgotten about What it negates is future tension. The series can no longer credibly threaten a character with anything beyond moderate inconvenience. At no point in Reverie was I ever seriously worried about any character who was menaced or presumed dead because overwhelming evidence pointed to any bad thing being undone before the bodies had even had time to cool literally, in at least one case.
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Feb 7, 2024 00:11
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