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 Hello everyone, and welcome to this LP of Black/Matrix A/D, a dark fantasy isometric strategy RPG, somewhat in the style of Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre and other games of that ilk! A Bit of History Actually, the name of this game requires a bit of an explanation. So, first there was a game called just Black/Matrix, published in Japan only on Sega Saturn in 1998 by Flight Plan and NEC Interchannel. Then the game was remade on Dreamcast under the title Black/Matrix A/D in 1999, where "A/D" stands for "Advanced", indicating the game's improved technical qualities compared to the original. This version was indeed mostly better in every way: the story was expanded, anime cutscenes were added, and a bunch of other things. And as if that were not enough, then the game was remade again (!) in 2000, but this time on PlayStation 1 (yes, PlayStation 1), under the name Black/Matrix + (where "+" stands for "cross"), but this was more of a "de-make" since this version again removed some of the Dreamcast ehancements (like the animated cutscenes), kept some others and again changed some things a bit. As you can see this is kind of a messy situation with all the different versions and the result is that there's not a single version of the game that really has everything; however, the version for Dreamcast is generally considered to be the most complete, so that will be the version of choice for this thread. But none of the versions ever made it to the west, and it will soon be clear why. What is This About, Really? So the opening cutscene (which we'll take a look at shortly) does a pretty good job of setting up the game's premise, but briefly it goes like this, paraphrased freely from the Wikipedia article: quote:After the war between the forces of Heaven and the forces of Hell ended, the forces of Hell won, and like you do when you win in a war, they set out to rewrite the history. We play the game in the role of one of the white-winged slaves (well, check out the cover image above), but who ends up a bit special. So as you can see, we're definitely in for a chill time in this game and it should be clear now why there was never a western release (although one was considered at the time, but due to the game's heavy pseudo-religious themes, it just wasn't going to happen back in the 1990s). The game itself is, as already mentioned, an isometric turn-based SRPG, superficially a bit like Final Fantasy Tactics although certainly with a number of quirks of its own. About the LP Obviously, there is no official translation of this game (nor a fan one), so you'll have to deal with my imperfect one, but hopefully it should be possible to follow the story. Other than that, as you might expect, this will be a standard screenshot based LP, with cutscenes presented as video with English subtitles for your convenience. In addition to that, the game has a pretty eclectic and unusual soundtrack so I will definitely be posting links to some of the music and highly recommend checking it out. The Final Words Please refrain from posting any spoilers, although again I don't expect many people have played this game anyway. And with that, let's go and CHECK IT OUT! LIST OF UPDATES Chapter 1: Pandora's Miniature Garden • Part 1 • Part 2 Chapter 2: The Golgotha Prison • Part 1 • Part 2 Chapter 3: Temple of the Sun • Part 1 • Part 2 ivantod fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Apr 30, 2024 |
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All right, let's get this show on the road! To begin with, let's watch the game opening cutscene which gives us some initial setup!  Well, that was kind of... brutal?  Anyway, let's get going! The Dreamcast version actually comes on 2 discs, hence the helpful reminder in the title that we're on Disc 1 at the moment.  The game does actually have a difficulty level selection, but we'll just play on "Normal". The main point on "Advanced" level is that you get less EXP in battles, but some of the battle rewards are more rare items and such. Anyway, "Normal" it is because this is not going to be a challenge run or anything like that.  And then we get a bit of an unusual prompt to "select our buddy". This is actually a misnomer (or just a bad translation into English), because the Japanese text is actually prompting us to "select our master", which, based on the cutscene we just saw, is definitely closer to the reality of this world. So let's start "Mov'in On Cursol Left or Right" and see what choices we have. Don't worry, this is the last time we get any kind of "significant" amount of English text in the game, so we won't have to deal with translation issues from this point on. Anyway, here are the choices for our master in order in which the game presents them:      Whatever you choose doesn't influence the game a whole lot, but the ones you DIDN'T choose will be possible to recruit as team members later in the game. In addition to these five ladies, by inputing a secret code on your controller (no, not the Konami code), you can enable the secret sixth master, Zero:  So a male option for the master does exist, but it's a little bit hidden. However, Domina is more or less a "canon" choice, so that's what we'll go with here. As mentioned, the changes in the game depending on your choice of "master" are fairly minimal. Anyway, after this choice, the game finally actually starts! To start with, we find our main character waking up in pain.         Our black-winged master, I suppose.  I should mention that, despite the initial few thoughts from him, our protagonist will be of the "silent type" for the rest of the game. It's one of those games, and the developers have commented that they prefer it that way because it gives the player ability to imagine whatever response they prefer. To be honest, I'm not sure how much I agree with that, and especially in this game I feel like it would have benefitted from having a protagonist that actually speaks, but... I guess we'll just have to deal with it and "imagine his responses".  And the game uses this situation to let you select the name for our protagonist! The canonical name is "Abel", and it doesn't make any difference for the gameplay itself. So in the interest of keeping thigs simple, we'll keep the default name. Interestingly, the game does actually let you use Latin letters in addition to Japanese kana, but the maximum length is still only six letters.  Again, you can change her name if you want, but it really makes no difference, so we'll leave it as is.    And there, somewhat abruptly, ends the first day of our regained consciousness.   As is usual, the dialogue in parentheses represents a character's thoughts.   Huh, looks like we're already back on our feet!  (By the way. Notice how the hair colour on Abel's sprite doesn't match his hair on the dialogue portrait. That's because the portraits were redrawn for the Dreamcast version, but the sprites were just copied over. It affects other characters too and it's somewhat annoying. The different releases of this game are a bit of a mess.)   Aaaand... gameplay, finally!  As mentioned, the game has quite an eclectic soundtrack, so it's worth clicking on the music links as you never quite know what's waiting on the other end. I will, however, point out those which are specifically worth checking out. As for the game, it's divided in a bunch of chapters. This first one doesn't actually have an in-game title screen (only at the end), but here we are. In fact, I have a confession to make. I promised you a SRPG game, somewhat in the style of Final Fantasy Tactics, but... acually this first chapter has a completely different style of gameplay and there won't be any battles to be fought yet! This chapter is all about Abel's rehabilitation and building up his, uh, stats. So, if you open the top menu...  ...alongside all items in your inventory, you can also see Abel's current stats as above. So let's go over the basics briefly: — HP: I think this should be obvious — BP: Blood points, a bit like MP in other games. — STR/Strength: Increasing this stat will increase the damage done by physical attacks. — INT/Intelligence: Increases the power of magical attacks and also magic defence. — VIT/Vitality: Increasing this stat will increase physical defence power. — DEX/Dexterity: Increasing this stat will increase attack evasion and movement range. As the game develops, there will be a bit more to this, especially when BP is concerned, but we can talk about it when we get to that point. For now, we have the following situation: Abel needs to build up his stats (well, technically he doesn't NEED to, but... we'll see about that part in a moment). So, how do we do this? Well, let's take a look at that screenshot again.  There are two important things there for now: the AP gauge, and also the season indicator (which is currently showing that it's Spring). AP are, of course, "Action Points" and the basic idea here is to spend AP to perform various actions (which have various effects on your stats) and to build them up that way. When the Action Points are depleted, it's time to go to sleep and wake up the next day with a full AP gauge. The actions themselves are performed in and around the house (we'll check it out in a moment) but there are also some actions which you can do and which consume AP, but which don't have any direct effect on your stats. As for the season indicator, well, it means that time is ticking (sort of) and that we have a limited amount of time to increase our stats. The time is actually not ticking--the AP is depleted only by actually doing stuff and the days advance only by actively choosing to go to bed, so you can relax a bit here. One season consists of ten days. As you saw previously, we do also have an inventory of up to 10 items which Abel can hold, and we'll see some of those as we go through the chapter and how they are used. So, let's go and have a look around to start with. Just simply walking around doesn't take up any AP, so you're free to explore. First of all, here in the living room the door on the "northwest" side goes to the bedroom. Also th exit in the "southwest" corner leads outside. In addition to that there is a chest of drawers which you can examine and sometimes randomly (or in one case not so randomly) find an item. Examining various storage containers in the house consumes 1 AP if an item is found. If no item, then also no AP consumption. Here we have also a fireplace, but since it's Spring, it's not in use at the moment.  Over on this side, you have a bucket and a mop to clean the house. This gives you STR+2 and VIT+2 and costs 2 AP. But I should probably explain this a bit. As we saw earlier, Abel's starting strength is 11, so you might think that doing cleaning will bring it up to 13, but that's actually not the case. The "+2" means you get 2 points "towards strength increase". You only get strength to go up by 1 when you collect 50 points! So as you can see, our final stats at the end of the rehabilitation aren't going to be hugely increased. In fact, for strenth the maximum the game will allow you to increase it to is anyway just 15. Unfortunately, the game doesn't let you see how far you are from the next stat level, so you have to keep track of it yourself. Nor does it even tell you that that's how it works--in fact, the game manual doesn't even say anything about this part of the game (the controls for each minigame, which buttons to press, are explained in the game itself, but I skipped that part). Interestingly, this was changed in the later PS1 version, where you can actually see how far you are from the next level of each stat and I think also that leveling was made easier (i.e. you get more points for actvities than in this version). It's really weird with this game, neither of the three versions has "everything" in it, although, as mentioned, the Dreamcast version does have the most stuff. Even the minigames themselves are also slightly different in each version and the PS1 even has one which is not present in the other two! In any case, for other activities, I'm not going to go into such detail, especially since this doesn't matter any more after we move on to the next part of the game. In this corner you do also have a barrel where you can take a bath (and the master will sometimes join you), but it's a bit complicated how to make it happen so probably easier not to bother. The time is limited so you have weigh what is worth doing and what is not. Anyway, another thing here is the kitchen along the southwest wall, there you can perform the action of "Cooking" which gives you points towards INT, but you also get items which can be useful for other things.  Over here is the bedroom with two beds, one for Abel and the other for Master. No activities can be done here except sleeping (gives points towards HP increase) and looking at drawers/barrels/under the master's bed for possible items.  On the other side of the house are still some storage barrels and boxes...  ...and also some more barrels and boxes alongside some bookshelves. Bookshelves have books you can read, which gives you points towards INT, but also some lore about the world we're in which is pretty useful. We'll be reading all the books over the course of our recovery.  The exit to outside is maybe a bit not obvious, but it's here in this corner. So let's go out and see what's there.  Over here we have a tree stump, which lets you do some log splitting (giving you points towards STR, but also firewood item which you can use later on in colder seasons).  Over here is the actual garden which we can plant, water and harvest in that order (to increase STR and/or VIT depending on which part you do) and also after harvesting you get an item as a result.  You can go around and climb up here.  This path here...  ...leads to the actual way to leave the house and go into a nearby town. But doing this ends this "prologue" and starts the main part of the game. It's nice that you're not forced to go though the prologue if you don't want to, and people sometimes don't, especially if they've played the game before. Taking the path in other direction from above the house...  ...leads to here, where you can do Hunting (points towards DEX), but it's only available after your VIT is at least 12, which ours is not, so this will have to wait. By doing the hunting, you can also obtain a semi-important item which will make a bit of a difference in the last chapter of the game. Ok, now, I hear you ask already, but how on earth are you supposed to know that? Especially since even the appearance of said item here is rare in the first place and you might not even know that there's something more here? And well, you can't know. This part of the game has a fair number of hidden things and items that you have to take non obvious actions to get and there aren't really any hints for it in the game. To be fair, except for this one thing I just mentioned, the rest just make it easier in different ways to get more stats, so it ultimately has no effect on the rest of the game, but still. I will show off a few of those, but there is at least one thing I was not able to get but oh well. We'll live.  Anyway, continuing down the path, you get to this large tree. It does have a purpose, but more on that shortly.  And finally continuing on the path we make a full circle back here. There's a few more things to discover, but again we'll get to that. Let's start our proper rehabilitation process! *** SPRING — DAY 1 ***  We'll do some planting/plowing in our little field. Funnily enough, this is actually already part of getting one particular secret/hidden item! Planting consumes a full 5 AP.  Next we do some cooking! Cooking only takes 3 AP to do.  The way it works is as follows: first you are shown a list of "ingredients" like this.  Then you have to in the space of 10 seconds, quickly press one by one the button on Dreamcast controller which is the same colour as the current item (e.g. in this case red button). The possible colours are red, blue, green and yellow and the game does ease you into it so that the first time you do it there are only two different colours, next time three and thereafter all four.  Here we go!  We get a cabbage as reward. It may not seem like it, but this item is also part of our secret plot which started with plowing the field!  This left us with 2 AP, which we can spend on cleaning since it consumes exactly 2 AP!  Hmm. It seems that the game starts you close to the 50 point boundary in STR and DEX, so just by this one action we do go over and increase both by 1! It will not be this easy from now on.  We've spent all our AP, so time for bed I guess!  *** SPRING — DAY 2 ***  You do get usually a comment from Master in the morning, but they do tent to repeat later on.  In our quest for a secret item, we continue today with out field work, in particular watering (you can't chose what kind of field work, they always go in order of: plowing, watering, harvesting and then repeat).  Then we do some more cooking (as you can see now there are 3 different colours that you have to worry about).  As reward, we get a bell pepper. No secrets with this one, but we can still make use of it. In fact, let's give it to Domina!  Aha, so that's another thing. You can give ingredients to Master and she will make you a dish to eat (which usually also helps build up your stats). As hinted by this line, Domina is actually vegetarian (she is however fine with eating fish or eggs) so you miss out on a couple of dishes that are made of meat that she won't do for you (which other Masters will). Anyway, once you give her an ingredient, the next morning the food will be ready. Unfortunately, giving her items does consume 1 AP which leaves us with 1 AP unused. I don't find any useful items in drawers and such, so...  ...to bed it is I guess. Unused AP does NOT carry over. *** SPRING — DAY 3 ***  As I mentioned our meal is ready and it's, somehow, an omelette! Well I guess you can put bell peppers into omelette, why not. Abel can of course eat it, for points towards VIT, BP and HP which is not too bad at all!  Anyway, today, more cooking! As you can see, I've started to "fast forward" a bit through things we've already seen. Our reward today is a banana which I guess we'll do something with later (or at least just eat it directly). We're not doing any field work today, so...  ...let's instead do some log splitting. The goal here is to split all the logs within 20 seconds as that gives you the biggest amount of points towards strength. In order to accomplish this, you need to press the button as close as possible to the top most position of the axe in Abel's swing. The higher it is, the faster he'll swing it down...  ...like so. But be careful not to go too high, as then...  ...he'll fall over and you fail the minigame! Anyway, in addition to any strenght points you always also get one firewood as a result. We can't really use it now, but it will come handy in Autumn and Winter. Today I will just do a second session of log spliting for a another firewood item. Besides we do need to build up strength for... you guessed it, another secret thing.  Oh, hey, I found a candy in one of the boxes! Eating it will give you a small STR increase--I wish it worked like that in real life, though.  Anyway, bedtime!     *** SPRING — DAY 4 ***  I feel like...  ...doing some harvesting! Normally, harvesting in Spring would net you something like a turnip, but if you do it exactly on the FOURTH day of spring, you get instead...  ...a caterpillar. But not just any caterpillar! We got exactly the one which will eventually turn into a Cabbage White butterfly! You might recall that we already have some actual cabbage in our inventory, but there are still a few more steps here. Although, as you can see, even this kind of thing is not nearly as bad as when Gabriel Knight had to use cat hair to make a mustache in order to impersonate a man who doesn't actually even have a mustache in the first place.  With this done, let's do some more cooking!  For this one, we get an apple as reward! We'll need this soon, in order to uncover another secret thing!  We finish the day by using our remaining 2 AP on cleaning. And with this, we finish the day. *** SPRING — DAY 5 ***  We'll start the day by doing some reading. Despite what it looks like, there are actually three different "sets" of books here (and not two or four!), so we'll just go in order. The first shelf gives us the options to read the following texts: — The End of Humanity — The New Seven Deadly Sins Dictionary — The History of Gods (Part 1) — The History of Gods (Part 2) Let's go in order, so we'll read the first one for now. THE END OF HUMANITY (ARMAGEDDON) The world will continue in its bad state unless the seven seals on the throne of heaven are broken, but when the Lamb of God breaks the seals one by one, disasters, death and conflicts will spread though the world. Finally, when god gives the seven trumpets to seven angels, everything that has been holding the world back from collapse will be broken and the apocalypse will be unleashed on the world. When the seven trumpets are sounded by the angels the earth will be struck by unprecendented chaos and disaster and finally a great dragon red as fire and with seven heads and ten horns, called Satan, will appear and deceive all mankind. Satan, the dragon, will fight with Michael, the angel representing the heavenly world. Satan will escape to earth and use two beasts to control mankind. Uh, so, if you were wondering why this game never got localised into English back in the 1990s, well, here is your answer. Religious themes were not exactly a thing Western publishers were particulary comfortable with back then. The game was actually considered for a US release at one point, but was ultimately rejected exactly for these reasons as it was decided that it would be "too controversial". Also, an interesting fact: Armageddon is actually a real place in Israel.  Let's read one more. THE NEW SEVEN DEADLY SINS DICTIONARY In this world there are seven deadly sins that no humans should ever commit. Let us reconsider together the meanings of thse forbidden words, which no one even tries to mention any more. Well, that's all there is in this one, I guess. But don't worry. We will be able to read more detail about seven deadly sins and also the seven virtues.  We finish the day with some log splitting with our remaining 4 AP (reading a book consumes 3 AP a piece). *** SPRING — DAY 6 ***  What shall we do today, then?  I kind of want to read a bit more about this world. THE HISTORY OF GODS (PART 1): THE DAYS THE EVIL GODS WERE DRIVEN AWAY FROM EARTH It is said that the black-winged angels, the ancestors of us, the chosen people, were originally living deep in the bowels of this earth. A world of rising magma, blood-chilling cold and dry deserts, it was a place where any weaklings would be simply exterminated--it was a world of straightforward survival of the fittest. In order for people to survive, they had to give it their all. It was a perfect place to acquire strength and an unyielding fighting spirit! It was a blessed enviroment and a true and perfect paradise! And let's not leave ourselves hanging, so we'll read also the second part! THE HISTORY OF GODS (PART 2): THE DAYS THE EVIL GODS WERE DRIVEN AWAY FROM EARTH However, one day, the gods put our ancestors living in such a paradise to the test. Yes, to invade the filthy earth where evil gods and demons roamed... The gods wanted us to sanction the evil gods who had been spiritually corrupted by living in the warm climate conditions by fighting against their army and the Great Evil God, the source of all the demons in the world and to contain them in our blessed natural environment. But, many among us are now about to be corrupted as a result of changing our dwellings to this corrupted sunlit earth... I'm not sure where one even begins with this.  In any case, we'll finish the day with some more log splitting. *** SPRING — DAY 7 ***  We start the day by eating this apple we obtained a couple of days ago!  Going to this bookshelf, we find out that now there is an extra book available! Eating the apple causes it to appear here, otherwise you'll never know it exists! So, let's read. A SUPPLEMENTAL MAGIC SPELL (LILITH'S VERY EFFECTIVE BLACK MAGIC) Are you a shy girl, who can't pin him down? I'm going to teach you some recommended black magic! The ultimate way to win a man! It is said, that on 14th February, the birthday of Lilith the archangel of sloth, you have to make your prey eat chocolate. Speaking of Lilith, she was originally the first female sinful monkey created by the great evil god. She was the first wife of the male monkey called Adam. Because of her unique charm, she was chosen as one of Mephistopheles's brides and as archangel of childbirth it is said that she continued to give birth to 100 children a day! The spell is very simple. First, make homemade chocolate. Ingredients are roasted cacao beans, milk, butter and sugar. If you add hemp leaves and aconite as finishing touch, it will turn out perfectly! Now all you have to do is give it to your prey! Once he gets it in his mouth, he'll be dizzy with love immedaitely! There's no need to worry, because cooking is for everyone! What in the world.  Also, remember this big tree?  Turns out, you can climb it. Apparently, it's very tall, because climbing it gives you kind of a view of the world around you:  Pretty cool, and you can even go to it in each season and see what the world looks like in that particular season. It does consume a full 5 AP, but you do also get a reward item in Spring, Summer and Autumn. This time we get a bird, which we apparently picked up in the tree? *** SPRING — DAY 8 ***  Oh. I guess it was that book, huh? Well, it's actually safe to eat, and very much worth doing it as it gives you +20 points towards STR! But there's another hidden thing here. After getting the chocolate...  Examine this chest of drawers in the bedroom and you find Master's diary! Since we are completely uncouth, let's read it! Day X, Month Y. Weather: Cloudy I... I decided to be brave this year and give him the chocolate. But... He's completely lost his memory of me... I don't know what this act of giving chocolate even means to us women any more... I guess it's easier this way, because if he does remember... Ah, what am I doing? What am I even hoping for? There are in fact more diaries to be found over the course of this chapter, but in order for that to happen, you need to return it to her after reading! Otherwise the next ones will not appear even if the correct event is triggered!  After all this, we still have enough AP to get started on the second bookshelf.  Here, we have the following things to read: — Seven Deadly Sins: Freedom — Seven Deadly Sins: Justice — Seven Deadly Sins: Human Rights — Seven Deadly Sins: Weakness — Seven Deadly Sins: Friendship — Seven Deadly Sins: Equality — Seven Deadly Sins: Love As usual we start from the beginning. SEVEN DEADLY SINS: FREEDOM What a shameless word! How many wars has humanity fought over and over again until now, in the name of freedom! Whereas a person once they are born, are in fact already tied to the rules of the word and they may never escape them. Even the very act of uttering this word is already a devils deadly sin of trying to spread chaos around the world!  *** SPRING — DAY 9 ***  We go back to some plowing today.  And then some watering. *** SPRING — DAY 10 ***  After some harvesting...  ...we get a turnip this time! This is the normal thing you get in Spring when it's not the fourth day. We'll give it to Domina and see what she prepares for us tomorrow morning!  Let's continue reading our book about Seven Deadly Sins! SEVEN DEADLY SINS: JUSTICE There are as many things that people believe are right as many there are people in this world! And yet, people try to impose on the others what they believe is right! It is not possible to think of it in any other way except that it is a completely aberrant behaviour! Therefore it is a Devil's Deadly Sin which would spread madness around the world!  It's time for bed.    And with that somewhat ominous statement, the Spring ends!
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 All right, let's get into the summer! *** SUMMER — DAY 1 ***  The next morning, we get Pickled Vegetables that Domina prepared from that turnip! Eating it, increases our BP points by 15!  Also, because we had in our inventory the caterpillar and the cabbage... well, no surpirse that we now have a chrysalis instead! This happens on the first day of summer.  For a while now, we've had stats to do some hunting (for DEX increase), so let's try it.  It works like this. There are a few different kinds of animals crossing back and forth in front of you and you can shoot them with an arrow. The animals are: rabbit, fox, and boar and the speed in which they cross is in that order with boars being the fastest. Caught animals can be used as ingredients with Master (although not with Domina because she's vegetarian) and also for something else a bit later on. Foxes and rabbits are easy to catch but they don't really bring all the much stat gains. So you generally want to catch a boar which appears in the spot furthest away (and is very fast to cross):  The trick here is that the bush will shake a little bit before it appears, so you should already pretty much fire as soon as you see the bush shaking and this will allow you to catch it. Above you can see the boar speeding across! Hunting does also have a secret within it, but more on that shortly.  And then we do some cleaning.  *** SUMMER — DAY 2 ***   As gift, we get a "Super T-Shirt"! We should definitely use it, because it gives +30 points towards STR.  Today we're back at the hunting grounds, because it's time to catch a super-secret rare prey! It only appears very rarely in the farthest "row", but there is not a time limit here, so as long as you know that you need to look for it, you can simply wait it out. It does move super fast, even faster than a boar!  Ah, there it is. I honestly can't tell you what that's supposed to be. Everywhere it's just called a "blue spinning thing"!  But for catching it, you get a "Mysterious Scroll". Again, there are absolutely no hints in the game what this might be used for.  Since we have exactly 3 AP left, we can do one reading session before the end of the day! SEVEN DEADLY SINS: HUMAN RIGHTS There are many misguided fools who claim that all people are born with the same right to live, without understanting that when someone claims a right against another person it always comes with an obligation. Most of them continue to loudly insist on their rights, even though they haven't even fulfilled the basic obligations of contributing to the society in the first place! This is the Devil's Deadly Sin of trying the make the world weaker on the whole! *** SUMMER — DAY 3 ***  Let's continue the reading. Apart from learning about the world, we also want to bring up our INT to at least 11, as that will unlock another secret. SEVEN DEADLY SINS: WEAKNESS Essentially, humans are no different from many other plants and animals who live on this earth. They are nothing more than an animal called "mammals", and not a self-centered hypocritical creature called "a primate". It can be said that "survival of the fittest" is a driving principle in the natural world, and an unchanging way of all things. Therefore, even among humans, the weak are destined to perish! The distorted idea of a society trying to protect the weak can be said to be a horrible blasphemy against the laws of nature! It's Devil's Deadly Sin which could destroy the natural order of the world! And one more. SEVEN DEADLY SINS: FRIENDSHIP Originally, humans aimed to mutually assist each other with those who were likely to help them out in a crisis. They are creaturers who try to form groups of some kind, but ultimatly these are only transactions of emotions related to mutual interests. What a disgusting and nauseating act. It is a Devil's Deadly Sin which threatens to lead the world astray! *** SUMMER — DAY 4 ***  For today, I thought...  ...we might climb this tree again! Let's see how the world looks like in the Summer!  From the tree, we get another apple!  Then we do some more cleaning. *** SUMMER — DAY 5 ***  Today, we take a bath. This requires you to warm up the water first by using one log item. Also, if you follow a couple of special steps, the Master may join you in the tub. Bathing will also boost your HP but it does use a full 7 AP when you count both using firewood to warm up the water and then the 5 AP used for bathing itself. So probably not really worth actually doing as it pretty much consumes the whole day just for that! *** SUMMER — DAY 6 ***  We get a bit of a special event today! Unfortunately, it does consume 5 AP, so you have a choice whether to do it or not. Since we want to see as many things as possible in this first chapter, we'll go ahead and do it.  I guess it's just an excuse to include a bathing suit picture of your master?  Also, on the sixth day of summer, if you did everything right, instead of a chrysalis, you now have a butterfly in your inventory! If we use the "USE" command on the butterfly...  ...we get a new item instead, but for the life of me I couldn't tell you what it is (again!). The game calls it just "Mysterious Item". But it has a secret use!  Again, we have 3 AP left, so we'll spend them on more reading! SEVEN DEADLY SINS: EQUALITY Has there ever been a moment in history when all people were in the same position from the moment they were born? One person is born into a rich family and is given sufficient education and nourishment. The other doesn't even have food, let alone a home, and has got not even this much energy to chase away the flies that land on them! What would they think if you told them that they are both in the same situation? Those who say such words, ignoring the class system that exists virtually anywhere, are nothing more than hypocrites! It is a Devil's Deadly Sin which would bring disorder to the world! *** SUMMER — DAY 7 ***  Today, we start with some hunting. I've just been catching a few more boars for later. Two sets of hunting is actually all we'll do today. *** SUMMER — DAY 8 ***  Today we'll just catch up a bit by doing somethign we haven't had the time to do yet. In fact, we'll give to Domina that "Mysterious Scroll" item that we got from hunting.  She gives us back a candy in return, but more importantly, doing this will make some things a bit easier near the end of the game. It does not have any impact on the plot, though, just to be clear.  Today it's time to try something compeletly new. But in order to get to the right location, we'll have to use a ladder. What ladder, I hear you ask? Well, the one right in front of Abel there. It's almost impossible to see, I know...  ...but it's definitely there!  It leads us down to the river, where we can perform the activity of fishing! Fishing increases our VIT, depending on the size of fish that we catch!  The way it works is that the float will bob up and down about 4 times, and then you need to as quickly as possible start mashing the controller button repeatedly. The amount of time it takes you to press the button for the first time will determine the size of the fish (large, medium, small)...  ...and then you have to keep mashing the button in order to fill to bar up to the marked point--the marked point decreases towards the "LOST" side initially until you press the button for the first time. The more the marked point is towards the right, the bigger the fish, so you need to have quick reflexes with that first button press. Another important thing here is that the hand and button indicator on the right will be showing you the rhytm and speed of the button presses and you have to follow it exactly, otherwise you won't be able to reach the marker. Finally, by having the "Mysterious Item" we got from the butterfly equipped, makes is so that the button presses go 2x slower, making it much easier to do this. Hence why we never did any fishing before we got this item! By being successful here, you simply get in your inventory the fish of appropriate size. If you get the marker almost all the way to the right, you will catch a special item, which increases the rate of appearance of the "Blue Spinning Thing" in the hunting game. But we already did that, so we don't need to worry about that. By the way, if you look carefully behind Abel, there's actually a cave entrance there, which is also very hard to see.  But there's definitely a cave here! But we don't need to do anything here just yet. So let's just go back to the house.  By the way, by looking around random trees in seasons other than Winter, you can sometimes get a random flower. They give some small stat increases but you can also give it to Domina to get back a candy. *** SUMMER — DAY 9 ***  We start the day by giving the large fish to Domina. Let's see what she will make us to eat!  I will catch some more, because the thing she makes out of a large fish is pretty useful.  Reading time! SEVEN DEADLY SINS: LOVE Talking about such delusions, which should never have existed in the world from the beginning... In reality it's just an animal in a mating season, so there's no real substance to it, but people come to believe in such superstition. People overrule their ability to judge and act solely on emotion, leading to murder, arson, suicide and even mass murder, which has disrupted the lives of hundreds of millions of people! It is said to be the most serious Devil's Deadly Sin in the world, because it can completely destroy the prosperity of this world! *** SUMMER — DAY 10 ***  From the large fish, we get a "Special Hamburger" (Fishburger I guess?) which is pretty nice because it gives us points for all of STR, INT, VIT, DEX! So it's worth going through the whole process with the caterpillar as it lets you easily catch the large fish which you might want to do a few of when you have AP available. Incidentally, this brings ou actual INT to 11, which means...  ...there's another diary to be found here in the chest of drawers in the living room! Of course we'll read it! Day X, Month Y. Weather: Clear Finally... Finally, he woke up! I'm so happy! Happyhappyhappyhappy! I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight...! But it seems he's lost all his memories... Please... Please let him remember soon! As you can see, because you can find these in the game in any order depending on what you do, they won't necessarily be in chronological order when you read them. As usual we'll return it to her. We finish the day with another session of cleaning and I also give the apple to Domina, so let's see what she will cook us! *** AUTUMN — DAY 1 ***  Welcome to Autumn! From this point on I'm going to start skipping the details (or the days where nothing special happens) since we've already seen most of what there is to see. So we'll stop fast-forwarding only on unique events (plus for more reading!). As for the food, we get a plate of curry. I'm not completely sure how that comes out from an apple, but sure game. It gives us points towards dexterity when eaten.  We can of course climb the tree to see what the world looks like at this time of year.  *** AUTUMN — DAY 2 ***  Over here, we have one more bookself to read! The choices are: — Seven Virtues: Wrath — Seven Virtues: Pride — Seven Virtues: Envy — Seven Virtues: Sloth — Seven Virtues: Gluttony — Seven Virtues: Greed — Seven Virtues: Lust So, let's start. SEVEN VIRTUES: WRATH Of all the emotions, anger is the driving force which motivates people into action the most, constantly changing the world for the better. It can be said that this is an important emotion. It is an essential source of power for people to live more actively! *** AUTUMN — DAY 4 *** This morning, it's very windy for some reason!  But there's no minigame here. You just get this:  The typhoon situation takes away 7 AP, so this day is pretty much wasted--the typhoon will always happen on a day in Autumn.  However, after the typhoon happens, you can find another diary here under her bed. Let's see. Day X, Month Y. Weather: Rain Today, I... made a bold statement that surprised even me. After all, when it was just the two of us warming ourselves by the fireplace, the atmosphere got really nice. And then I could see myself reflected in his eyes... I'm so happy about such a simple thing. I wish the days like this could continue forever... *** AUTUMN — DAY 5 ***  On the fifth day of Autumn, it becomes officially too cold so from now on the fireplace will be lit! But this means that a new game mechanic is in play! You can burn stuff in it and get other stuff! Mostly this applies to various items of animal origin which you can grill, but there are a couple of other things. "Grilling" caught animals gives you meat which you can eat to increase stats, e.g. grilled boar gives you a decent increase in STR and VIT points. An additional wrinkle here is that burning some items requires "stronger fire" (up to +2 level), but of course this is accomplished by adding logs onto the fire one or two times. E.g. grilling a boar requires fire strength +2, so you have to add logs to the fire twice (of course, the logs are ones you got from the minigame, so you can always obtain more). So I'm going to proceed to use up all the meat to bump the stats as much as possible over the course of subsequent days. *** AUTUMN — DAY 10 ***  I make a journey to one of the caves, in preparation for something we will need later.  We obtain a chunk of "Mysterious Ore". You can only find this item if you STR and DEX are both at least 12 (which generally should not be a problem by this point, but...) And thus ends Autumn and Winter begins! *** WINTER — DAY 1 ***  Going otuside...  ...it definitely looks wintery!  But we have a tree to climb!  Feels cold! One thing about winter is that, other than splitting logs, outdoor activities are no longer available. So you should leave the winter seasons mostly for those things which can be done in the house (e.g. a large part of finishing all the reading, whatever things you want to burn in the fireplace and so on). But fishing, field work and hunting are no longer possible. *** WINTER — DAY 2 ***  Today, we're going to build up the fireplace to +2...  ...and then burn this rock!  As a result, we get a Gemstone! We'll find out soon what this is useful for! *** WINTER — DAY 4 ***  Reading time! SEVEN VIRTUES: PRIDE It is a natural duty of the strong to let those around them know in advance that they are strong, because if they forget this, they will have to keep fighting forever against new challengers who aim for their position. In other words, it's the bare minimum of manners towards the fools who are weaker than you. SEVEN VIRTUES: ENVY The more talented a person is, the more envied they are by the people around them; in other words, it shows the person's excellence.It's the easiest barometer to understand! Also, between men and women, it is used as a check to ensure that their descendants are passed the good characteristics. It can be said that it is one of the most effective methods! *** WINTER — DAY 5 ***  Well, yes. As it turns out today is her birthday! In fact, we should give her a gift! Isn't it lucky that we have that gemstone with us? Good news is, I think you have just enough AP to still be able to do it during the day today, if you didn't do it before. But of course, for that, you need first to know that this is something you can actually do! And like with most other stuff, there aren't any hints in the game--well, one can reasonably assume something like birthday when she asks you this, but there are no hints what to give, so I suppose the idea is that you should experiment and see what happens. The game does let you save and load whenever you want, so at least experimentation is pretty easy. Anyway, after giving her the gemstone... Her present to us are "Super Boots", which also give us a boost to the stats, like the T-shirt.  Reading time! SEVEN VIRTUES: SLOTH The desire to rest one's body is like a danger signal to an animal is trying to keep itself in the best physical condition possible. When it wants to rest, it should rest! This is the main principle of health care in nature! SEVEN VIRTUES: GLUTTONY People never know when they will lose their job and starve, so they eat as much as they can when they can. This is also what happens in the natural world with the survival of the fittest. This is an important law of nature. *** WINTER — DAY 7 ***  It seems that our master is feeling a bit under the weather with a cold! If we talk to her some more... Oh, how did you know what I was going to do? In fact we'll go ahead and look for medicine.  In fact, in this cave down here by the (now frozen) waterfall...  ...you can find some medicine! I find it hilarious that the game depicts it as a jar of pills! But anyway, let's bring it to her!  I guess she's angry that we went on our own while she was sick? *** WINTER — DAY 7 *** The next day, she's already in a better mood.  Ok, well, glad we cleared the air there. *** WINTER — DAY 9 ***  Final reading time! SEVEN VIRTUES: GREED Basic needs such as appetite, sex drive, and need for sleep are all essential emotions for animals to survive in the natural world, and pursuing these needs is a completely natural behavior for them! Furthermore, since the survival of the fittest is the law of all things, it is also a law of nature that the strong will obtain everything! Animals that abandon their desire for these things will simply disappear. SEVEN VIRTUES: LUST One of the most important roles for all animals is to make their own species flourish. It can be said that having lust for someone and working hard to have children and multiplying one's own relatives is a basic desire backed by the instinct to preserve the species. Of the seven virtues, it is this sentiment that should be observed the most! And with this, we have finished our reading sessions. *** WINTER — DAY 10 ***  But on this day, our Master is not here! No matter where you look, you won't find her. So there's really only one thing to do...  Maybe we should venture forth into town? Doing this effectively ends this "rehabilitation" part and advances the plot. So before we leave, is there anything that we missed to do? Well, mostly two more diaries. One of them can only be obtained on "Advanced" difficulty and the other one requires you to eat a lot of food. This eventually causes Abel to throw up and then after that another diary appears. I think other than those two things, we pretty much saw everything. If you do find at least four diaries, then you can continue the rehabilitation even after one year and are not forced to end it at this point, but I have never been able to trigger the fourth diary so we're going to have live without it I think! As mentioned, you don't actually have to do any of this (especially if you've played the game before) and it's perfectly fine to just proceed directly into town immediately on the first day. Also I should mention that from this point on, the minigames and the items don't matter any more. The only thing that carries over is your stats (and of course, who you chose to be your Master). I find it absolutely fascinating that they implemented this whole other small game just for the initial chapter! But they did. As we leave...  Wait, but where were you before? What's going on? Anyway, It's cutscene time!   All right, here we go!  Yes. All music tracks in this game have random weird names like this. But you should definitely CHECK IT OUT because I have a feeling that you will be quite surprised when you hear at least this one. Anyway, we can't actually do much here, but we can talk to a few people. Like that black wing guard there. The white wing slave slouching in a corner there is not as talkative:  A couple more blackwings here... The other one is not much better. Also, there's a white wing leaning against the fence there.  And over here is a black wing with (presumably) his slave. The slave, predictably, says nothing. So we've not really accomplished anything by coming here. Let's go back to our house.  As we leave, the white wing guy in the corner starts talking to us after all. Well, that's not ominous at all. But upon returning home...  ...it appears that he's right. Because it seems we have been discovered by the Inquisitors!     After this, we get a brief scene which ends this chapter.   Chapter 1: "Pandora's Miniature Garden" — The End And so, Abel gets taken away and what happens to Domina, well, I guess that remains to be seen. Taking a break for a second... Since we're playing this on Dreamcast, you might be wondering if this game uses the VMU display for anything, and the answer is no. It just shows a static game logo, looking like this:  So you don't get anything here like Sakura Wars 3 using it as a pager. Anyway, let's go a bit further.  CHAPTER 2: THE GOLGOTHA PRISON   ...in which Abel is unceremoniously dumped into a prison cell...  ...and is then being hassled by the prison guard. But then our cell mate pipes in:   All righty then, let's stop here for now. Hope you're enjoying this unusual game so far, but from now on we're moving into the promised isometric SRPG territory, at least as far as the gameplay is concerned. Anyway, see you next time and until then, take care!
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Apr 4, 2024 20:41
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Well this is interesting. The opening stat-raising segment reminds me a bit of Tokimeki Memorial 2's prologue.
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Apr 4, 2024 21:35
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An interesting game. Though, those descriptions for the new sins/virtues gave me a headache in their incoherence. I guess it's no wonder these guys need prisons and inquisitors to keep their insane system running.
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Apr 4, 2024 21:42
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Libluini posted:An interesting game. Yeah, sorry, Japanese text is also like this written in huge run on sentences and in weird "preaching" tone of voice. So the original is not any better to read!
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Apr 4, 2024 21:48
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Man, I can always count on Ivantod to show off weird Japan-only RPGs that I've never heard of but that are very much my thing. Maybe I'll get lucky and this one will get a fan translation the way Linda³ did (they actually just finished it this past January). So, does your choice of master actually change the story, or is it always a "forbidden love" thing? Given that they just made up the "Devil's Sins" rather than using the actual Seven Virtues (Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, Faith, Hope, and Charity), the writers may have intended the six masters to each represent one of the various "sins" (with Abel himself standing in for the remaining one, presumably Weakness or Freedom). I don't know how long the rehab chapter takes to play through, but it may be worth a bonus update or two to show off any significant differences.
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Apr 4, 2024 22:16
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I hope our waifu is alright 
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Apr 4, 2024 23:48
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I do so enjoy when a game makes clear it's gonna go places  in on the ground floor hell yeah
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Apr 5, 2024 00:06
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:I hope our waifu is alright I'm sure she'll be just fine. Being a big voice actor nerd, I did a little checking, and Domina is voiced by Noriko Hidaka, whose credits include Akane from Ranma 1/2, Jean from Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Near from Death Note, Kikyo from Inuyasha, and most important, Noriko Takaya from Gunbuster (among many other credits; she's had a very successful career). I assume getting the scroll means that in the end of the game she'll just one-shot the final boss with a Super Inazuma Kick. For reference: -Prica's VA is Mika Kanai, who hasn't done a lot of roles that would be recognizable around here, but the few that would be include Jigglypuff (among many other Pokemon), Arche from Tales of Phantasia, Kaguya from Code Geass, and Mio Sasuga (the pilot of Zamzeed, Elemental Lord of Earth) from Super Robot Wars. -Michette's VA, Yuko Miyamura, is another one that'll excite Super Robot Wars fans, as she voiced Asuka from Evangelion, Regina from Brave Police J-Decker (which debuted in the most recent SRW), and Parfait from Ramune & 40. She's also Aisha Clanclan from Outlaw Star, Casca from Berserk, and oh right also Chun-Li (actually kind of a big TIL moment for me, that Chun-Li is also Asuka Langley Soryu). -Craze's VA is Junko Shimakata, whose career apparently never took off, as none of her roles are particularly noteworthy. -Prague's VA, Wakana Yamazaki, is another icon of long-running nineties anime, as she's the voice of Ran Mori from Detective Conan. She's also the voice of Ayane from Dead or Alive, Arukenimon from Digimon, and a bunch of supporting roles all over the place. Note: One interesting coincidence is that Noriko Hidaka played Belle-Mere, Nami's adoptive mother in One Piece, while Wakana Yamazaki played Nojiko, her adoptive sister. This isn't that surprising, given that, by this point, roughly half the population of Japan has done at least one voice in an episode of One Piece. -Zero's VA is Kentarou Itou, probably best known as Renji Abarai from Bleach, but who's also played Akagi in Dai-Guard, Barry the Chopper in Full Metal Alchemist, Boss in Hamtaro, N'Doul from JJBA, Jun from Nadesico, Choji from Naruto, Kurou from Demonbane, and Yun from Street Fighter. And if you're wondering, our boy Abel is voiced by industry veteran Hiroshi Kamiya, currently making steady money as the voice of Trafalgar Law on One Piece, but also known for playing Levi Ackerman in Attack on Titan, Nozomu Itoshiki in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (as well as Omota Uramichi in the spiritual successor series, Life Lessons with Uramichi Onii-san), Tieria from Gundam 00, Michel from Macross Frontier, and an absolute boatload of other roles in more niche series.
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Apr 5, 2024 05:04
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Definitely interested to see where this goes. The opening chapter feels like the devs had played Harvest Moon 64 and thought to themselves "Hey, something like this would be a great opener for our Strategy RPG!"
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Apr 5, 2024 18:03
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EclecticTastes posted:Man, I can always count on Ivantod to show off weird Japan-only RPGs that I've never heard of but that are very much my thing. Maybe I'll get lucky and this one will get a fan translation the way Linda³ did (they actually just finished it this past January). So, does your choice of master actually change the story, or is it always a "forbidden love" thing? Given that they just made up the "Devil's Sins" rather than using the actual Seven Virtues (Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, Faith, Hope, and Charity), the writers may have intended the six masters to each represent one of the various "sins" (with Abel himself standing in for the remaining one, presumably Weakness or Freedom). I don't know how long the rehab chapter takes to play through, but it may be worth a bonus update or two to show off any significant differences. There isn't really a significant difference in the first chapter no matter which master you choose. Just some minor changes in dialogue and some food items are different depending on the master, but that's pretty much it. As I mentioned, the masters you DON'T choose will be possible to recruit as characters to be used in fights over the course of the game, but otherwise the game more or less plays out the same. There is definitely no branching storyline based on your master selection. However it may be interesting to see how some of the events of the first chapter play out with different choice of master so I might prepare that in a form of an extra episode at some point. It wouldn't take long to do since I would skip doing anything which is not relevant to triggering the events themselves.
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Apr 5, 2024 18:07
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Is Zero's version of the prologue as homoerotic as the girls are ship-teasy, or is there less flirting/teasing from him?
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Apr 5, 2024 18:08
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Junpei posted:Is Zero's version of the prologue as homoerotic as the girls are ship-teasy, or is there less flirting/teasing from him? see my first thought is that the post about how they're all the sins is right, and only domina is really in love here. but who represents human rights
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Apr 5, 2024 18:27
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Junpei posted:Is Zero's version of the prologue as homoerotic as the girls are ship-teasy, or is there less flirting/teasing from him? Mister Olympus posted:see my first thought is that the post about how they're all the sins is right, and only domina is really in love here. but who represents human rights
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Apr 5, 2024 18:46
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Anyway, if Domina isn't a healer or mage of some sort when she becomes a party member I'll be suprised.
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Apr 6, 2024 03:26
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I can appreciate the irony someone named Domina is fairly hands off and passive.
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Apr 6, 2024 03:32
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Oooh, this looks fun. Subbed!
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Apr 6, 2024 05:20
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this games already looking like a unique experience, especially the first like hour or w/e being a kind of life sim  out of curiosity, did the other versions get noticably diff promo art like the protags art changes?also im glad they give u the option to have a guy hit on abel as well
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Apr 6, 2024 07:31
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Booky posted:out of curiosity, did the other versions get noticably diff promo art like the protags art changes? Yeah, actually the Saturn and the PlayStation 1 versions have a different cover art, looking like this:  (this is the PS1 version, but Sega Saturn cover art is identical) This even more reinforces the notion of Domina being the canon choice as she's even present on the cover. The other characters present on the top half of cover art are not any of the masters.
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Apr 6, 2024 09:31
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I do feel like the whole "falling in love with your slave" is kinda inherently sketchy as a premise, even if you play as the slave rather than the master. The game's promo feels like an 80's grungy anime intro though and that's cool, I also really like the sprite-work. I assume that by the fact that you mentioned the changes in choosing who the master is are relatively minimal that there is a limited amount of gameplay variance between other master options? SITB fucked around with this message at 10:47 on Apr 6, 2024 |
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Apr 6, 2024 10:20
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Instead of complaining about how I hate the animes I give you this.ivantod posted:
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Apr 6, 2024 13:03
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DON'T HURT ME NO MORE Ahem, sorry, where was I... SITB posted:I assume that by the fact that you mentioned the changes in choosing who the master is are relatively minimal that there is a limited amount of gameplay variance between other master options? There's not really any gameplay changes at all depending on your choice. The only difference is that over the course of the game you can recruit into the party all masters EXCEPT the one you selected. Even that ability to recruit other masters is one of the things which was added in the Dreamcast version of the game.
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Apr 6, 2024 14:26
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Just got back to my main PC and here's an old joke for olds
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Apr 6, 2024 16:45
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Wait so by selecting Domina we've lost the ability to acquire her as a party member, and in our run she's now just an NPC? Or is it just that you can recruit the others later on, but by selecting Domina she'll be in our party guaranteed?
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Apr 7, 2024 01:22
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This looks interesting. E: ivantod posted:DON'T HURT ME NO MORE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGvZa3tiYwY never forget Quackles fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Apr 7, 2024 |
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Apr 7, 2024 07:05
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Junpei posted:Wait so by selecting Domina we've lost the ability to acquire her as a party member, and in our run she's now just an NPC? Or is it just that you can recruit the others later on, but by selecting Domina she'll be in our party guaranteed? I guess the idea is that your master has been taken away so you can't also have her/him in your party too at the same time. Something like that. I... I actually don't know how to react to this lol. 
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Apr 7, 2024 10:07
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I'm sorry I just can't get over how Domina looks like Yu-gi-oh's Tea Gardner and the dynamic is really messing with me. Also our cellmate is the protagonist from Legend of Dragoon. Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 05:00
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 PREVIOUSLY ON BLACK/MATRIX...  Love is said to be the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins in this world. The woman who uttered love is now considered to be one of the worst sinners and has been taken away somewhere by the Inquisitors... After losing his memories, Abel has also now lost his master, who was everything to him.  Pushed to the brink of despair, he's been labelled a rebellious slave and taken to a gloomy prison named Golgotha. Little did he know, that this place would be the turning point in his life, which will determine his future harsh destiny... AND NOW, THE CONTINUATION!  CHAPTER 2: THE GOLGOTHA PRISON ...in which Abel is unceremoniously dumped into a prison cell... ...and is then being hassled by the prison guard. But then our cell mate pipes in. And then...   Ah, well, it looks like we have to fight as the game starts tutorialising about initial unit placement. It's very simple. As is usual for this type of game, things play out on a grid; some of the grid positions are available for you to place your units (the highlighted squares). In this case we only have one unit, Abel. We can just leave him where he is, as it's not going to make much of a difference anyway as you'll soon see. In this "initial position" mode...  ...you can also check out Abel's stats. He's on level 1, and his stats are exactly as you built them up to in the first chapter... with one exception. Although his maximum BP is what we had in chapter 1, we can see that his actual BP is 0, More on this topic shortly, but for now it will not make a difference. It also shows the current type of weapon used (just a stick) and what kind of damage it deals--in this case, the damage type is a vertical hit (縦).  It's also possible to check out the enemies. As we can see, this guy is a fair bit stronger than us at level 3 so this is unlikely to go well. Anyway, for this first battle, after positioning the units...  ...we just go straight into it.  From here, we just give commands to our characters by choosing from the menu. It contains the usual suspects like Attack, Move, Magic, Item, Status, but there are also some "unusual suspects", such as "Blood Replenishment", "Standby Mode" and, uh, "Armour Summon". We'll cover all of these in time, but right now they're not really relevant.  For now, let's keep it simple. As you can deduce from the screenshot, Abel's movement range is 3, so we have enough to move him up other guy's face.  Before we attack, just quickly one other thing. On this menu screen you can see the notification about "TURN" and "CT" numbers. This simply indicates the duration of the battle in two different ways. "TURN" of course stands for the number of turns, except in this game player turn and enemy turn count as one turn each. "CT" stands for "Command Time" and this gives a more "accurate" picture about the battle duration--each action performed consumes soma amount of "command time" and it differs per action. As you might expect, at the end of the battle you will be ranked on a scale where C is the lowest and S the highest, and both of these numbers play a part in determining your rank (alongside some other factors). Anyway, that's just a side note, but now let's get back to Abel who was about to bonk the other guy  With this weapon, the range of attack is just 1, so...  That's... not a lot of damage. I can see this fight not going well.  I mean, yeah, attacks from the side or from behind deal more damage and have other benefits too. Anyway, after this, all that's left to do is to end the turn and let the other guy do his thing.   As you can see, he's smarter and will attack us from the side.  And, that's half our HP gone, just like that! After this, it's time for the second turn, which plays out just the same as the first, except...  ...Abel's HP is almost down to zero.  And the battle ends. You can't win this one, no matter what you do and even if you manage to survive, it will still end automatically after 5 turns. There's no ranking given or EXP or anything else and we just go straight back into a story segment.    "Reprobus", as in, the original name of St. Christopher. He's said to have been around 7.5 feet/2.3 m tall and strong and fearsome, so that definitely fits.  And then...  ...prisoner from another cell tosses over an apple?     Suddenly the guards decide to show up! Sorry,the sprites are once again not matching with the portrait *shrug*.   But wait, is that someone sleeping on the floor there? But, then the bundle on the floor starts speaking... in a very scared sounding voice.  Then the other guards just start straight up kicking Philip!   And then, a female voice is heard from off screen... And, for some reason, Prague has come to visit!  As mentioned, other potential masters will appear in the game if you didn't choose them initially!   Finally she comes in.  With this, she leaves! However, you might be wondering. If we had chosen Prague as our master at the start of the game, then clearly she can't be here as the prison warden, right? Well, yes, that's right. So then, how does this scene play out in that case? Well, as it turns out, if Prague's your master, then this scene plays out with a completely different character instead, like so: quote:
If you did not choose Prague as your master, then you can still meet this guy later on in the game! On the other hand, in the original Sega Saturn version of the game, the "unchosen" masters did not actually appear later in the game, so in that version of the game the scene always plays out with this guy. The PS1 version in this case retains this change introduced in Dreamcast version so the masters do appear there too. Anyway, after her departure, the chief guard is only too happy to obey the orders:  After this, the guard goes away too.  Huh. I guess we might need a black mage in our party?  And then, I guess said old guy addresses us from off-screen!   During the night, Abel hears the echoes of the words that were said that day...      A bit later during the night... Abel can't sleep. Yes I know. Trust me, that's Abel sitting awake on the bench and not Reprobus.  Philip approaches him.   Abel tells him his life story, well, whatever part of it he still remembers anyway. Rather than boring us with something we already know, there's simply a fade out to black for a second!  Someone is secretly listening to this conversation, though... Nevertheless, Abel and Philip are unaware and continue...  I guess we have more people listening, huh? But more importantly...  ...Philip opens the door to our cell!  Well, first of all, you could have phrased that a bit nicer, but also be careful what you wish for, because... Prague is still listening without being seen... ...but she's about to witness a thing happening.  Uh-oh.     Yeah, about that...  And here we go! Time for the first actual battle!  BATTLE 2-1: "THE ESCAPE" VICTORY CONDITIONS: ALL ENEMIES DEFEATED Why does this title screen look like a ransom note? No idea, but anyway...  We get this little pre-battle menu. It lets us check out all the characters' condition, items and a few other things we don't need to worry about now.  Here we can see the current stats for all of our characters. I should probably explain a bit that a display such as "STR 17 (15)" indicates that the character's actual strength stat is 15, but including the equipment bonuses it's brought up to 17. The screen above shows Abel, and you can see that his base stats are exactly how we left them at the end of the last chapter. You can also see what kind of weapon the character uses, but there's a more detailed screen for that.  Here's our friendly prison guard, Philip. As you can see he's really weak, but does have better HP and defence than Abel. His physical defence is pretty decent, but that's mostly because he has better clothes than others.  Here is also Gaius. He's level is slightly higher and mostly it's important that he has a higher movement stat. His base movement is 4, but when going up to a higher terrain it's only 2 (or conversely 3 when moving to a lower level terrain). Difference in terrain level between one of our characters and an enemy also impacts the strength of attack and defence for physical attacks.  And finally, Reprobus. As you can see, he's by far the strongest physically of our characters and has the most balanced movement stat which essentially is not even affected by the height difference.  As mentioned, we can also check out what everone has equpped (and also change it). The prisoner characters all have just a wooden staff and prisoner clothes, which is not super fantastic.  Philip, though, has a short bow as a weapon and leather clothes which provide quite a bit more defence (the number 4 in the bottom right corner indicates the range of the bow, as it is of course a ranged weapon--the damage does drop off with distance after a point).  On this screen, if we select the "Leather Clothes", we can see that they are responsible for that +5 in VIT that Philip is benefitting from. If any of our characters had magic we could also check it out here. Unfortunately that high priest dude is not part of this battle. We also don't have any items in our inventory, so no need to worry about that either.  The final option here in this menu is basically "Deploy" and will start the battle.  After choosing "Deploy", we get to pick the units that we want to go into the battle with (up to a pre-defined maximun number of units which is shown in the very top right of this screen). The units with a "sword" icon next to them are mandatory to be used in a particular battle. As you can see, in this battle we simply have to use everyone, so we can just move on. There is one other screen here where we need to make a choice, but it's not relevant right now, so we'll cover it next time!  To start with, we get a panoramic overview of the battlefield as the game scrolls around. As you can see, this has a pretty standard look for an isometric SRPG from this time period. It is NOT however possible to rotate the camera around to see things from a different angle. This can be a bit of an issue sometimes if things get a bit crowded. This time, the setup is pretty simple. We basically need to make our way up that staircase there. Our way is blocked by six prison guards; five of them are ordinary guards with about 21-23 HP, and one is the chief guard (thats's the guy at the very top of the stairs) and he is a fair bit stronger. As we saw at the beginning, we have to defeat all of them. As usual, we start with positioning our units within the highlighted area. In all honesty, it doesn't matter too much in this one, but it's benefecial to put them towards the left side so that they have less distance to traverse.  I think this will be fine. Reprobus and Gaius will be leading the charge with Philip behind them and Abel to the side. And then we start, as usual on a player turn.  We simply move everybody forward as a group, to start with.  Before we let the enemy take their turn, there is one very important option in the menu! This option is called "Standby Type". The choices are "Counterattack" (when attacked, the character will always counterattack), "Dodge" (when attacked, the character will have a chance of dodging and taking 0 damage, based on DEX stat) and "Defend" (when attacked, the character will suffer reduced damage). These ordinary guards are kind of chumps, so it's beneficial for now to set Gaius and Reprobus to "Counterattack" to speed things up. The other two will stay on "Defend".  During the enemy turn the first guard moves forward and bonks Reprobus for 5, but is then counterattacked for 14, which is about 2/3 or his health! Sometimes you get some little comments from characters in battle like this.  The second guard can't reach, so he only gets up to here. Not a spectacularly good idea as he's in range of both Reprobus and Abel. We will need everybody around later to defeat the chief guard, so Abel moves over to finish off that first guard.  This nets us also 7 BP, and so now you know the secret behind the fact that BP was always zero so far! You need to earn it by defeating enemies! But also notice how the defeated guard stays on the battlefield. Although he counts as "defeated" in this state (and we got the BP), by using the appropriate spell (or items), his compatriots can actually still revive him (sort of like Phoenix Down kind of thing). In order to make the death permanent, you need to do one more attack on the defeated enemy (but the strength of the attack here doesn't matter). For this battle, we'll use Philip to finish them off with his bow, although here enemy doesn't have any way of reviving the others. However, another reason to "really" finish enemies off when you can is because unitl you do, that square counts as occupied and you can put your own units on it.  And here you can see Philip turning that guard into a skeleton. In this state the enemy is actually dead and the skeleton is just a decoration and that square counts as free for units to be standing on.  Reprobus makes a start on the second guard. By the way, enemies are all set to counterattack mode here, so we do suffer a small damage every time we attack them. Yes, the wooden stick has attack range of just 1, so...  Gaius can't really reach to the guard, so he'll just move over here to be ready for the next turn.  In the next enemy turn the big guy at the top of the stairs tries to move a bit back. Not sure what's the deal with that.  Anyway, Abel moves behind this guy and finally puts him down (Philip will finish him off).  Reprobus and Gauius move forward and Gaius starts working on the third guy.  The said third guy moves over and tries it on Gaius, but is not very effective. In fact, the counterattack makes him close to death...  ...which Gaius makes happen in the next turn!  Now it's just those guys at the top of the stairs...  ...so we'll start moving that way. You actually need to be a bit careful here, because if you manage to pull just the two regular guards and kill them, the boss will start retreating all the way back down that upper pathway. This will cause you to waste time chasing him and lower your battle rank at the end. So try to make sure that doesn't happen.  Luckily for us, they actually start coming town towards us. High ground does give them a very slight increase in attack, but hey.  The other guy wants a piece of the action too! Counterattack is doing good work here, actually.  The big guy decides to join in too, but he can't reach to anyone to attack them! It's a bit crowded on that staircase, so it would be amazing to be able to rotate the camera around, but alas it's not possible in this game. Also the two regular guys switch to "Defend" mode at this point. This will make it harder to deal damage.  But Abel does bonk this guy for 5. It's not enough to kill him.  Gaius will join in, but he also can't reach anyone.  But Reprobus at least can finish the other guy. We get from him a Knife (a weapon). Not much happens in the next enemy turn as the big guy doesn't try to reach Gaius. In general he seems to usually tend towards staying back as much as possible and not really advancing much. In our next turn, Philip finishes off the guy in front of Reprobus to free up that square.  This finally allows Reprobus to start working on the big guy, dealing 13 damage. This is actually not too bad since his total HP is 42. But the problem is, he has strong attack and is in Counterattack mode! So we'll have to be careful. The counter damages Reprobus for a whole 11 HP!  Abel finally finishes the lower guy, and this also gives us an item, a health potion! These item drops are not random, and the same enemy will always drop the same item when defeated. So these two guys will always net you a Knife and a potion.  Anyway, Gaius climbs up and hits the chief guard from behind for another 11 HP. As you can see the idea is kind of to catch the chief in a sort of a pincer attack. I don't quite succeed to block him as he will move in the next turn, but it works out well enough.  The chief guard manages to move up here, but it's fine. we'll plonk him again with Reprobus.  Reprobus and Gaius are a bit damaged right now!  But first we bring Abel up for still more damage. This brings the chief guard close to death.  Then we'll just use that potion on Reprobus.  And hen one more attack on the big guy and...  Yeah! Let's see how we did in the battle report!    Nice. We achieved this with 13 turns in total (as mentioned, our turns and enemy turns count as separate turns) and a total command time of 69. The bonus item is "Gale Fruit" and it's an item which gives you DEX+1 temporarily when used. Let me explain a bit how battle ranks work in this game, however. Essentially there's an internal points system. You start with a certain number of points and then gain points for fulfilling obejctives (like finishing within certain number of turns and certain amount of command time). Points are deducted for things such as an ally character death, usage of recovery items (not for healing magic, though) and so on. The rank is then given based on your total points at the end of the battle. So other than being under the limit for turns/command points, there is not actually any benefit for being faster than that. If you want to achieve S ranks, the biggest obstacle here at the start is limitation on recovery/healing item usage. But don't worry, soon we'll have ways of dealing with that. Anyway, after this battle report...  ...we get to distribute the received EXP (in this case 700). So, unlike some other games, here all EXP gained is battle is shared, and you can give it to whoever you want to level up. It's completely your choice!  So we'll level up Abel twice up to level 3, and then also Philip and Gaius for one level, to 2 and 3 respectively. It's actually even more flexible. After leveling up, if you want, you can even manually redistribute the gained stat points across the stats and don't have to take what the game gives you! Anyway, that concludes our first proper fight. Next time we'll continue our escape from the prison and until then, take care! Also, flying zombies.
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Apr 10, 2024 23:12
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We're a chosen one! Who could have seen that coming? I think I'm going to die from not-surprise!
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Apr 10, 2024 23:27
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The soundtrack of this game goes extremely hard, good lord. Bossa nova, electroswing, house, trip-hop, even some light jungle influences. I did some digging, and from what I can tell, the music is by a group called The Hustlers Concept, made up of Hiroshi Taniguchi, Katsunari Kitajima, Makoto Katsuma, Atsushi Toshima, and Norihiro Ogata. This seems to be their one big work, it looks like. It reminds me of moon, where the sound design team formed their own band, the Thelonious Monkeys, and rounded up a bunch of local musicians from around Tokyo to create tracks for moon's unique do-it-yourself BGM.
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Apr 11, 2024 00:08
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Can enemies also skeletonize your guys?
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Apr 11, 2024 00:26
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this game is an aesthetic and a half for sure
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Apr 11, 2024 00:57
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is there character-based equipment restrictions or could anyone use Phillip's bow?
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Apr 11, 2024 01:18
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Honestly it's actually a really cool system to have EXP go into a pool to be distributed at your discretion upon mission completion. Helps avoid the issue some SRPG's run into where the already strong characters can do all the leg work and make it difficult if not useless to try and bring up weaker characters. Granted, the obvious drawback there is that no one is getting stronger mid battle, but I imagine that'd scarcely be an issue anyway.
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Apr 11, 2024 03:16
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Plot continues to evoke a strong feeling of 'so what' , at least the mechanics seem fine.
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Apr 11, 2024 03:31
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By popular demand posted:Plot continues to evoke a strong feeling of 'so what' , at least the mechanics seem fine. It's pretty bog-standard late nineties/early-2000s edgelord anime fare, woulda sold a fuckton of merch at Hot Topic if it had come stateside just a few years later. Biblical themes, "complex" morals that are just "what if, like, love was illegal and murder was okay?!", moody twinks with Issues, an intro with a desaturated collage style over a mottled background with overlapping text in a grainy font, a contemporary soundtrack regardless of setting or genre, and, of course, plenty of leather.
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Apr 11, 2024 04:52
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That pre-title opening cutscene is pure 90s, real Batman Beyond/X-Men stuff. This game looks like something I would have eaten up as a Sega kid and I am here for every moment.
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Apr 11, 2024 13:58
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Junpei posted:We're a chosen one! Who could have seen that coming? I think I'm going to die from not-surprise!  Seraphic Neoman posted:Can enemies also skeletonize your guys? Junpei posted:is there character-based equipment restrictions or could anyone use Phillip's bow?
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Apr 11, 2024 18:41
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