Tales of Xillia 2: Started the game, have a stupid debt because Ludger's female friend is a total ditz who goes from serious to all "PAY UP ^_^" in a manner of 20 seconds (at least the game is fully self aware of this), and grah, I hate her already.
I knew of a number of quirks the game had thanks to DLCon 8, like the aforementioned debt nonsense, as well as a silent protagonist and Elle the little girl...and "Risky Encount" but they removed that
Ludger is actually not as bad as I was expecting. Make no mistake, a silent protagonist doesn't really help Tales at all, but at least they seem to be making a legitimate attempt to establish him as a character, just someone whose life you're controlling as opposed to "you're watching these characters do things!" It's appreciated that your decisions actually adjust how he interacts with cutscenes (even if the end result is the same), as opposed to just flavor text nonsense that sounds like it's more unique than it is. Also, he's not a Mary Sue at all, at least early game. NPCs aren't all "OMG YOU'RE THE GREATEST!" and they don't go for the other extreme of disrespecting you. In particular, Julius being firm and practical when you two are on the job because business relationship, and then being the supportive, friendly older brother when you're back at home? That's ok! So far they've avoided the situation of you being prompted to say something, you go with the "You suck" option and their response is "Hey! That's mean...but you're right, I do suck." So props to that much. Also, I do appreciate Ludger having occasional 1-2 word lines here and there, and not having to rely entirely on dialog prompts and body language. You don't really compromise a silent protagonist too much having him say an occasional "Yes" or "Ok"; it helps make the scene look more natural when he can actually respond, even in the most basic of ways!
...still would prefer he was an actual character. Also would prefer if he had a more interesting design, since he's basically a stock-anime teen. Most Tales protagonists at least have something that makes them stand out, be it their outfit (like Jude), a unique hair-style, what have you. The most unique thing about Ludger is he has some pale black hair in the front mixed in with his white hair...making him basically an inverse Reiji, except Reiji's Black/White hair was very obvious, this is just kind of like "oops, my ink smeered a bit...meh, I'll just make his hair always like that."
IN ANY EVENT, so far Ludger hasn't really done much GOOD for the game, but he's not as bad as I expected considering silent protagonist, so I suppose I can tolerate him.
Elle on the other-hand already is pissing me off. I was originally going "little girl can't be that bad; it's overblown how bad that is"...took all of like 2 scenes for Elle to prove me wrong. Her initial scene is an introduction that says nothing about the character. Then she randomly tags on with Ludger without him noticing and then frames him for something and OF COURSE everyone believes her immediately since little kids NEVER lie.
The sad part is, my sarcasm is suppose to sound more cynical than it does in text, because this is how reality works too. Being a teacher, if a kid says anything seriously bad about you, you're in deep shit even if the kid is blatantly lying. I've heard legitimate Real Life stories of teachers getting their lives ruined because some kids had it in for them and said teachers didn't even do anything wrong, because kids are apparently super trustworthy. Just proof how MORONIC higher ups can be, they don't care, they just want to abuse power. (yeah, I'm bitter about this since I was once almost fucked over by something I didn't do but some kids embellished some details a lot and grah. Luckily, things worked out, and it was just an inconvenience but still an example of just how bad this is.)
...ok, tangents aside, Elle is just bad. They can't decide if she should act like a completely naive 5 year old who knows nothing, or a 12 year old, which is that age when you're capable of holding conversations with adults and knowledge-able enough that you can give some information, but still clearly young. She's done nothing but be all "Canaan!" and "Give me back my watch you meanie!" and...if this keeps up, she may be my most hated Tales female, and that's saying a lot seeing as this is a franchise that contains such wonderful females like Anise.
Was surprised to see Jude appear as quickly as he did and join up. Also shocked the game did legitimately address Mega Man Syndrome with simply noting Lillium Orbs are gone, there's a new thing which is still developing, so ok, Jude and co. have an excuse for being weaker than their endgame selves. Yeah, video game sequel logic, and I don't mind this for gameplay, but it's kind of jarring in plot when you have the heroes be bad ass and save the world, but then the sequel comes along and suddenly they struggle with these new guys who are clearly significantly weaker than what they fought previously. Addressing why characters can't deal with new, lesser threats is a plus in my book, so doing the whole Lillium -> Allium Orb thing, while cheap, gets the job done.
Bravely Default: Beat Land Turtle!
So I took on Artemia and Mephilia. The latter first because that's just how I did things. Not much to say about either, it's the same fight more or less. Put the lancer to sleep, in Artemia's case, kill the Archer because chaos, this prevents her from summoning more support, and then use Default every 3rd turn to avoid Girantbulu. This took me a few tries because the trickiest thing? She calls support on turn 5, aka one turn before her next summon, so you're going to have to Default there or risk getting exploded, which means her support gets a turn.
Artemia didn't stand out really at all, just healer and beat down; toughest part really is her multi-hit move because characters will randomly die based on how it focuses and there's little you can do to stop it other than maybe casting protect and equipping everyone with shields. Nonetheless, beat her first attempt.
Ringabel gets summoner, Tiz gets Ranger. Summoner isn't really a big deal, but Ranger kind of is. Tiz was relying on Thief as a crutch, because Bows are great, and Quong Wave and Hidden Dragon from Monk did help some, but honestly, getting an S in Bows, and access to Hunting skillset is big. Targetting is like Quong Wave (I'm probably spelling that wrong but shut up), and more to the point, the slayer skills. 8 MP to deal 50% damage to various enemies is big, and it compliments the Bow special. Tiz is now outdamaging Edea when Edea isn't hitting a weakness via Spellblade pretty regularly. While I submit Ranger isn't the greatest Job, considering Tiz was relying on Thief as his best job until this point and Ranger is basically a better combat class in all ways save for speed, I'll take the upgrade. Also, further establishes that Bows are well balanced.
Land Turtle was...uneventful. Amusingly, I did throw 4 summons at him because Reflect, did 1700 damage; Blizzara did 1100 damage for much lower MP granted. This was not a fight I was caring about other than Tiz got killed, revived, tried to steal and failed and yeah, when a fight isn't hard, you don't take it seriously.
