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* When last we left off, we had acquired the Very Vital Spy, who has not been given a portrait, name, or fully voiced lines and thus I rather think he's not long for the world.
* Which route should they take at the fork: fast but dangerous, or long but safe? It might be--
* Oh hey he just got shot by Sudden Arrow. I hope he wrote down his Very Vital Intelligence.
* Stocke's response to "the spy is wounded, bad!" is to run toward the direction the arrows came from, with his sword, and then stop as soon as he doesn't immediately encounter an enemy. Our premier intelligence agent, ladies and gentlemen! Maybe there's a reason this country is losing the war...
* Oh no! Crates! We can't possibly go down this path! None of us highly trained operatives is capable of climbing those!
* "Are you two all right?" Stocke asks his unshot, standing party members, while not even looking at the arrow-stabbed guy on the ground next to him. "What about the spy?" You... you could look, dude.
* Yeah he's dead. They solemnly conclude they need to go report about this failure. No one searches his body. Has no one in this profession heard of WRITING?
* "There's no other choice but to go north." Or stepladders!
* Battle! I wonder what system aspect I'll learn this time?
* Huh. You can swap around the battle order. You can even swap enemies around in the battle order, though they get a free attack on you if you do. Good for setting up combos, but it makes you more vulnerable. I suspect I will not be very good at this tactic.
* I have discovered a cave with a single chest behind unclimbable crates. Hm. Perhaps there will be a Crate Management Skill later on!
* Stocke's voice actually has a tiny waver as he looks at the army ahead and says, "There really are a lot of them..." Aw, Stocke, you'll be okay, I put this game on Friendly.
* "Careless fighting will only put us at a greater disadvantage." Ah, like when I was trying to figure out the Change system.
* ...apparently Friendly mode lets me kill (non-plot) enemies by just walking into them, but I can walk into them again if I want to practice the battle system, holy heck.
* After rampaging about the screen one-shotting the troops and giggling, it's time to confront "High Colonel Dias... and Palomides the Executioner!" Yeah, those guys got voiced lines, names, and portraits. We have to fight them for real.
* Palomides wants to fight us alone! Dias is all "Yeah sure seems legit, that never ends poorly when the dramatic villain walks away from the protags who are beneath his notice during the tutorial section. Will definitely not come back to bite me later."
* Raynie and Marco beg me to go on ahead and warn Alistel that we totally have no intelligence and the army that was reported to be in the hills is indeed in the hills! They'll sacrifice themselves for me! Hm. Maybe not, guys? I mean, I leveled you and everything.
* Battle starts! Palomides one-shots Marco and Raynie in the first move! ...awkward.
* "No... I can't fall here..." I mean, the dude does 6k damage at a hit, so I'm not sure you have a /choice/ as such, Stocke.
* Palomides laughs mockingly! Backs Stocke down a bridge! Suggests he pray to Prophet Noah, if he believes in the guy so much! ...praying to Noah in the rain is either very ironic or very appropriate, not sure which.
* But, honestly, Noah is really /not/ the guy I'd choose to pray to if I actually wanted to be /saved/ in the middle of rain. It's kinda not his gig. Not unless you're a goat or something.
* Stocke decides the only way out is to jump off the bridge into the river. THat's... pretty sensible, really.
* Palomides is sensible enough to tell his troops to search for the body downstream, but dumb enough to say "If you don't find it, that's cool, it means he's /definitely/ dead and swept away."
* Stocke has, in fact, swept up in some sparkly grove full of giant crystals and floating green lights and twirly purple ferns. JRPGs have taught me that means good things.
* ...and now he's in a realm of floating stairs, where the glowing wonder elf twins hang out. Cool.
* The elves (who Stocke calls 'children') are a little disappointed that Stocke doesn't know who they are. Lippti and Teo look anxious! Maybe because they're meddling with the time stream!
* (The 3DS screen is split such that Lipti and Teo sit on the edge of a platform on the upper screen, while Stocke stands on one on the lower screen, and it gives a nice sense of scale to the chibi art.)
* "This place is called Historia. A world nestled in the gulf of time, formed by the almighty power of Flux." So... Gallifrey?
* "The White Chronicle is a powerful relic imbued with Flux and given dominion over time." And Stocke is its rightful holder. (Don't say 'Tardis', don't say 'Tardis'...)
* Stocke reflects on what happened recently, and is angry. This is why he avoids leadership positions! All the ally death scenes!
* "It's all because I told them to head north!" The Elf Twins say this is accurate, but suggest keeping a thumb in the CYOA book so he can flip back and pick a different route if he hits one of these insta-death results.
* Stocke is a little weirded out by hanging out in an endless realm of floating staircases talking to elf kids who know a lot about tactics, but time travel? That's just crazy talk!
* Yay, Stocke is back in the real world! ...boo, he's still severely injured! But he's found his friends chilling with the spy, shortly before arrows were scheduled to appear.
* Yay! He can warn people of arrows! Spy isn't dead yet! (Very 'yet'.)
* Clearly, if north leads to Certain Death, then south is better! Maybe they'll figure out a way over those crates.
* While Stocke is contemplating the immovable crates, the twins show up for a private chat with him. "Alas, it seems you have reached a dead end. I suppose history is destined to give you trouble." Then, [Superhuman strength flows through Stocke's body!] You... you couldn't have just given him that the first time, guys? Ah well.
* Stocke then grabs a giant crate and just manhandles it while Raynie and Marco stare. That was rather satisfying.
* "We've made it through!" "I can't believe it!" "What could possibly go wrong now!" ....okay, the last one is not a direct quote, but still. I'm suspicious.
* Marco and Raynie are super impressed at Stocke's amazing skills! Stocke decides not to tell them timetravel and superstrength were involved.
* At this point, Stocke collapses from his wounds, because when he time-travels, he takes /those/ with him. Marco, our healer, helpfully notes that a 'quick fix spell' is not going to handle this much. Which does rather nicely establish that hitting 0 HP in a battle isn't so much 'death' as 'can no longer keep fighting', and healing magic only helps with the 0+ range. I like it when they address that kind of thing.
* Anyway, back to Historia! Stocke decides the most important question to ask is /why/ there's an uber-powerful time travel book, anyway? Because "such an object seems too powerful for human hands" and he kinda has a point.
* The twins clarify that this time travel only lets you go to fixed points, so no 'fixing your entire conversation' options, Stocke. Big decisions only.
* "So, uh, how do I know when one of those has happened?" Basically the twins show up and tell you. Handy!
* So, the basic restrictions: 1) only takes you to specific important decisions; 2) that you were there for personally; 3) without changing the /personal/ effects of the prior timeline you experienced, so don't die, Stocke.
* Teo also says this whole time travel thing is under a strict NDA. Yeah, even with the dude who gave you the book! For... mysterious reasons they totally can't tell you about!
* Apparently the twins are supposed to be Neutral--though clearly not in a prime directive sense--which is part of why all the decision-changing has to be made by Stocke, even if they can make, ah, suggestions.
* Sudden change to... Granorg Palace! 'Blonde Girl' has long flowing hair, an innocently pretty face, and is no doubt going to join our party at some point.
* Princess Eruca, you're great I'm sure, but it's after 11 and at some point they need to give me another save point.
* Anyway, her mother is "the oppressive Queen Protea" so I'm sure that's not a biased statement at all on the part of the game's narration, which also explains that she enacts policy "at her whim" and the "chaos and misfortune of war" are all her fault. And not, say, the result of the resource scarcity caused by desertification that started near this kingdom and has affected it most heavily.
* Ahem.
* (Also she has dramatic eyeshadow and is over twenty so you know she's gonna be evil.)
* Eruca wants to know how her job program proposal is going! It has been... REJECTED. For budgetary reasons.
* "You wouldn't want to meet the same end as your brother, would you?" Yeah, this is why regencies so seldom end well.
* Eluca storms out, and Selvan, a hot redhead, swans in. He has a portrait and the queen likes him, but he doesn't look evil, so I'm saying, 40% chance of him joining our party, 30% chance that we have to kill him but feel bad about it.
* Eruca has made a dramatic decision! Cut back to narration about Stocke before we can find out what it is!
* Stocke is awake, and his boss has come to see him in the hospital. (Still about a 50% chance of evil from that guy.) The war's going well! They've retaken that hill, and the Sand Fortress! (Chances we're going into the sand next: high.) Soon there'll be another mission!
* "Did the White Chronicle prove useful?" Stocke contemplates the wording of the NDA, and says, "Yes. As a lucky charm, just as you said." Good job.
* Heiss and Stocke ... at each other a bit.
* As I attempt to find my way to a save point, I run into... Sonja! A name /and/ a portrait! She's got a sort of Heidi look going on. She also scolds Stocke for not being more careful, and says that everyone in the army is like that! Risking their lives for the nation! That's... that's kinda how the military works, lady.
* "I'm sorry if I worried you. But this is my job." I mean. Yeah.
* ...sudden attack from random soldier! Who is surrounded by a weird black glow!
* Sudden Rosch vs. Sudden Attack is a clear win for Rosch. Hi, sad friend in giant armor! I still like you.
* The smushed soldier says, "St... ite... cle..." and gets more black glow, then collapses into a pile of sand. Everyone is rather startled.
* "Something about it seemed strange." Maybe the bit where he turned into sand?
* "The Sand Plague, most likely." ...wait. There's a sand plague?
* There's a sand plague. But it's apparently distant/rare so most people have never seen it, around here.
* Apparently usually when people die, their Mana leaves, but if it leaves while you're still alive... SAND PLAGUE.
* Sonja figures she should get back to work! But also no one should mention the sand plague! Her boss, Fennel, told her she should keep it quiet. ...okay.
* Rosch wants Stocke to be the adjutant for his new corps. Stocke hesitates, and there's a sudden dramatic SOUND as he realizes he's making a significant choice.
* (I want to go to bed, game! But not until I get to a save point...)
* Flash forward to... dead Rosch in grass. And Stocke standing over him with a sword. Creeeepy.
* Stocke bops over to Historia to ask what's up with all this. Very nice visual effects with stairs and pillars and doors and so forth. This is apparently a decision about who to align himself with: Heiss or Rosch.
* I mean, just judging by portraits--which you can 95% of the time in a JRPG--you should support Rosch.
* Stocke is a little leery of this 'bring about the true history' thing, which I think is fair. What happens if he does nothing?
* "The world will perish."
* So, that would be bad.
* The twins point out that the march of desertification is just going to make the wars worse as arable land gets more scarce.
* Also, have some mana crystals to use for special full party heals, it's cool!
* I can now jump between points in time at nodes! There is all of one node right now--this choice--but I can see a very FFXIII-2 journey ahead of me.
* Fortunately these nodes are also save points, so SAVE and GOOD NIGHT.
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"...apparently Friendly mode lets me kill (non-plot) enemies by just walking into them, but I can walk into them again if I want to practice the battle system, holy heck."
EVERY GAME SHOULD HAVE A STORY MODE. I mean that in the sense of every game should have a narrative mode, but I also mean that everything should have a narrative difficulty. There are times where I play a game like Pillars of Eternity because it reminds me of Baldur's Gate, when I can hyper-analyze a character's spell list and weapons and special abilities, and there are times when I play a game like Pillars of Eternity because it reminds me of Baldur's Gate, where Jan and Nalia and Korgan have ethical debates and then someone loses a hamster. I'd REALLY like games to always let me swap between them, but I get that people want to have difficulty and achievements and whatever.
The desertification stuff is super neat. I know that almost all JRPGs eventually have The World In Peril thing, but I really like the reason Radiant Historia's world is freaking out. It's got a lot more flavor than just "he casts the spells that make the people fall down."
Life is Strange taught me that every game that lets you make important choices between two options is terrifying, and Life is Strange also made it so you don't get to see what those consequences are right away. I think this is different?
How did time travel work in Final Fantasy XIII-2? I did not get on with that first game at all, so did not play anything in the other... two? games of that series.
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Time travel in XIII-2 meant jumping between different points on various timelines, so frequently you'd visit the same location in two different timelines and have very different experiences with the same NPCs and map and all. Sometimes frustrating, sometimes very cool. And sometimes if you solve a particular plot problem in one version of the the node, it'll unlock further ones that derive from it, so you can see the long-term effects of what you did... I liked the premise of that game more than the execution at times, and the ending was dumb, but I honestly enjoyed it quite a lot.
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You'd think something called a "plague" would be known to be infectious, and therefore probably a source of alarm when it shows up...
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Since most people think the sand plague is mythical, I guess that's why people aren't necessarily alarmed on that point? It's not clear what causes it, so 'plague' may be a misnomer. This being a JRPG, it's probably caused by an Evil Pope or something anyway.
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*beth cracks up*
40% chance of him joining our party, 30% chance that we have to kill him but feel bad about it.
*giggles more*
*cheers the "livetweet"*!
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