All of this talk of animeness and silent mains whom everyone is madly in love with has reminded me that I have been remiss in my duty to share the miseries of
Growlanser: Wayfarer of Time, in a futile attempt to cleanse myself of the stink. I already mentioned a few gems like the optional breast-groping "'sup you were dead but now you're alive" greeting, but there is much much more. As noted before, perhaps the best summation is that LoH: Trails in the Sky is a very very anime tropey game but mostly with the
good tropes, while G:WOT goes for the bad / creepy tropes.
So, since Ephraim has shamefully let this forum down. Let's talk Gary Stu. The PSP version is an improved re-release of the game from the Japan-only PS2 version, and the main thing the re-release added was making sure that absolutely anyone with a heartbeat could be seduced by Our Hero. Actually, no, that's wrong. There are two to three different dead ladies you can seduce as well, along with your purely magical fairy familiar. (Well. Maybe, I assume she doesn't breath etc., but she did require some of your blood to make, so who knows.) The way you're "supposed" to play through is presumably to finish about half the characters mini-plotlines (though it can be close to all if you FAQ heavily), then pick one to go on a romantic date with just before the endgame, which would be fine... except that said mini-plotlines tend to involve the other side getting romantic thoughts fast, so it's not like you're just building friendships. Definitely feels more like "whose heart won't you break you monster" to me, at least if I took these events seriously, which I don't because you have the inexplicably young princess whom everyone loves immediately getting all moony-eyed and spouting gibberish about how she's only really seen you now and can she just keep looking for a little longer practically immediately. There's friendship meters as well, but since the game hands out Dandy Books which raise all the friendship gagues fairly liberally, it's not hard to max all of these for what little it matters. Aside from making everyone admire him instantly when not outright falling for him, Gary Stu is a more general Stuy world savior as well. For awhile he has to share the stage with two others with similar powers, but that eventually gets fixed by him taking all their powers unto himself because, um, okay even a character in-game says "WTF how was that even possible." There are some tragic Stu consequences because using such power might KILL HIM but I wouldn't worry too much, if this power is too much for the human body to withstand, if we modify the power to be EVEN MORE POWERFUL then we'll be fine. And so we are.
* Leona, our nekomimi. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with catgirls. Leona starts off as a rather uninspired one, bouncing her naked butt in front of the camera in the opening video, and being plotless aside from doing standard stupid "wild person being a moron" crap (you know, we need an excuse for all the robots to wake up and attack, so surprise catgirl smashes the controls 'cuz that's how she rolls). Then she joins up for very unclear reasons and starts calling you "Master" because merely one character (your familiar) calling Gary Stu "Master" is not enough, Japanese shut-ins are really turned on by this or something. (I think this is the appeal of the Fate/stay night series.) Okay, whatever, she's never forced but it's harmless to have an extra warm body to mix up my party with, and you can see her hilariously misinterpreting people and saying "mrow" and whatever. Then we get some stuff about her & her brother's backstory, where they're from another world, but humans who speak the same language are there too and RIP OFF poor catpeople but Leona believes in them or some crap, but they got dragged into our world 'cuz. Then her brother gets all mad at her for calling Gary Stu "Master," because Leona is too young, and apparently this is a special term for, uh, sounds like husband pretty much. Yes, because I am bad at telling catgirl ages, apparently Leona is young for her race, and she was just a tad lonely, which is why she latched onto Gary. Of course, while disappointed, she still wants to keep up this Master thing... yeah this is where I nuked that little miniplotline of keeping leading her on, by basically calling it off and letting her off easy. (Props to the game for at least letting me to this rather than forcing me to be a cat pedo.) Apparently I'm supposed to feed her acorns for doing tricks when she rends my enemies in twain or something to actually get the "I love my Master!" ending had I kept going. Yeah no.
* On the note of people who call you "Master" all the time, I didn't realize until it was too late that I could romance my own fairy familiar. I'd call it depraved, but on second thought this is some Time of Eve shit, as romancing a magical being made from your own blood whose literal reason for existence is to serve you is pretty much exactly analogous to romancing a robot programmed to love and obey you. But yes, even from the parts of this plot I managed to get, she gets all apologetic about how she can't (serve? I forget the verb) you "like other women, Master." Apparently if I'd done it properly, this can be fixed via arranging her essence to be stuck inside a homunculus, which I could even adjust the weight & blood type of or something. (This is actually not so bad, because the plot earlier does at least sort of recognize that fairies being psychotically devoted to one person, cheerfully trading their own lives for their master's, is a tad creepy.) Also, before you even make her, you get to have silly conversations about how "Doll type familiars are the best" and hoping she turns out cute, etc. After you get her, you have the "Dollhouse" for upgrading her, where you give her conversation or etiquette lessons or some such. And can also change her dress to various options. Yes I am secure in my manliness, what. (Okay, I also gave her the respectable Edgeworth uniform + cravat the entire game which, rather than a swimsuit or the like.)
* Tricia. So she's this character with wildly implausible breasts who seems to fall madly in love with Gary Stu faster than everyone else (although thankfully, the options allowed me to be fairly rude and uninterested and still recruit her anyway just from interaction!). Fine. But then you're separated for a long time, and she ends up in an army opposed to yours... but yet her main thoughts, much later, are still along the lines of "Gee I hope I don't have to fight Gary." Yes she can end up an ally by a many-months dormant unrequited love, not by any particular opposition to some bad things her side does.
* Maggie. Yes, yes, Urushihara art, it is usually bad, but she's bad in a unique way. Rather than having some kind of impossible breast-job-gone wrong, her clothing takes the cake for ridiculousness. She's your
engineer, and she runs around the entire game in some kind of flight suit with a trench coat over it - except the suit has been unzipped all the way to the waist, showing off her bikini. Even when she's busy firing spellcannons or whatever. It's like some kind of bizarre Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue at the Air Force base.
http://growlanser.neoseeker.com/wiki/Maggie for an idea (but the bare legs can't be seen in game, so it's easier to assume the green is everywhere else).
* Okay this isn't actually so bad, but I'd just like to say that the spoiled rich girl type you meet early on somehow ends up fighting you, and is higher level than you. Humiliating. (There's a reason for it, our villain has strange taste in allies to give superpowers to.) Of course by the end she'll be all feeding you food she cooked while demanding you close your eyes and the like and talking about how she loves you as the ultimate big brother, but maybe something more, blah blah blah blah.
* Badass female knight commander type. I'd presume she should be a tad too old for Our Hero, but no, if you play your cards right (I didn't, and am thankful), she apparently will get all weepy and break down and fall for you as well. She gets all weepy eventually anyway, but at least it's to an old friend of hers in my playthrough, which makes a certain amount of sense. (Even if said old friend is part of another trope I don't like: two silver-haired badass brothers, possibly meant for some yaoi, where one brother is the Responsible One and the other is the Irresponsible Unreliable Badass Playboy whom everyone loves almost as much as Gary Stu.)
* In the realm of spoilers, I'll be brief:
Zombie adoptive sister. Your lover if you want, since she certainly wants it. And possibly if you don't want, merely doing her side plotline some gets you her demanding to sleep in your bed "like old times" or something.Obligatory disclaimer: The game's plot otherwise has some rather good ideas. I can only assume that there were at least 3 writers, 1 of whom was my type who writes some good politics & passable fantasy backstory, and another writer whose job was to come up with more tropes to "romance" with some bland flattery.
Gameplay wise, the game is still a bit too easy in that it doesn't appear to be balanced around the fact that you can walk into every fight with some ridiculous buffs already cast. It does appear to be balanced around healing items being total hax when missions require you to keep NPCs alive, though. That really hasn't been an issue lately, though. There's also two awesome "exhibition matches" at the fighting arena that are fanservice done right, at least for members of the DL crowd: after you get your homunculus machine online, you get to fight the entire casts of Growlanser II & Growlanser III, both PC & villain. These are pretty nasty fights too since you're badly outnumbered, and a stun lock can turn bad fairly fast. Still, switching around my own equipment and using some broken lvl. 9 spellstones like "get two extra attacks", and entering the fight with Haste (Cycle Up) on, means I can reverse the who's-stunlocking-who as long as I can kill the groups fast enough before I get mobbed, so the fights were certainly winnable. Nice design. Enemy mages are entirely hosed by this point in the game, though, so it's not like Arieta or Riviera are going to scare me, but Wolfgang & Carmaine can certainly place a pile of hurt at good rate if they close.
Anyway, just have the final dungeon left, then maybe doing the alternate "join the bad guys" route (which thankfully has an option to immediately go "lol I just did this to kill you" upon arrival), then YouTubing other character endings. We'll see.
