What Games are You Playing 2018?

[Laggy]

Lute continued

Because I love to screw myself over and totally don't recall what abilities trend towards what forms on monsters I overwrote BoltBreath at some point in the name of trying to absorb new stuff and experiment. I'm good at this game.

To be clear setting Stat-Level Up to 0 on enemies does not appear to shut off growths completely; I still get them but with far less frequency than normal, and reading up on the BMG it looks like there's still always gonna be a chance to get stat growths but once stats reach a human's personal growth value they'll be severely diminished? So it's not "you only get your initial stats" by any means but yeah it's definitely LLGish, Lute's clawed his way up to around 169 HP while Hamilton has barely moved (267 from initial 250). HP/WP/JP also seem to tick up a bit more than other stats, I should prolly actually deep dive the BMG at some point.

Also I am using Lute because he is the HEROIC PROTAGONIST, geez NEB have some respect for immersion. No other RPG protagonist has such a compelling backstory of "mom kicked me outta home and then I found out my dad was a vigilante trying to take down the evil world setting dominating corporation and got murdered by the guy who gave me a free ride, gee I dunno if I wanna take revenge tho". Thanks for reminding me Shield actually uses caster stats. <_<

Shingrow is next. I run into Sonicbats which destroy my entire party except for T260, who solos them down with Kusanagi. This is unsurprising. Other randoms are a joke and I score myself the DuelGun for Hamilton and several juicy upgrades for T260 (JumpSuit, MemoryBoard). I duck into IRPO just to see how bad an idea that dragon fight really is and haha yes 600-700 damage from all attacks right now and RedDragon only dies at the cost of losing everyone not named T260 okay let's not do that. On reflection, EngineerCar is probably a better early Mec honestly since I don't have enough good pieces to justify T260's extra equipment slots over innate 3PB RepairKit and starting with some attack skills but screw it, I've made several suboptimal decisions already so we'll just keep rolling with it.

The wipe lands me back at my save point in Koorong before to IRPO and I decide to hit up the sewers for loot down there and buy that SecretBoard I recall being there. Why do these BlackX goons that hustle you for the troll toll explode after you beat them up? I notice the BR bumps up here as things finally start getting not OHKOed by literally anything. A MiniDragon absorb gets me BoltBlast which lets me to swap over to TrisaurJr again, yay? No I appear to be stuck in Axebeak... oh well, it suffices. I get a Real Bargain and T260 is now 815 HP, 99 Qui. I skip the HideRune cave for now because I haven't bought spells yet and don't want to quite lock myself in.

I head over to Devin fixing that, giving Lute Rune spells because FreedomRune is a spell and Lute believes in #FREEDOM like a proper Yorkland good boi. Rouge gets Arcane. At least I can be pretty carefree about my money since I don't have much to spend it on!

Speaking of FREEDOM I think it's time to go get that, I remember NEB's commentary about laser traps triggering BR+2 Mec encounters and think it's time to see if T260 can learn anything meaningful since I enjoy being hard carried, so let's just mosey on over there. Annie seems perfectly happy to take me to Despair despite having no Runes but I remember FAQs griping that she won't take you unless you've already made progress, so that's wrong I guess?

I honest to god have forgotten completely the layout of this place and immediately ditch Annie at the start to try to regain my bearings, and also because I might actually care about the random loot this time around! Heading into the locker room and stealing a LightBazooka I forgot that the place has an entire stealth element where you're not supposed to get detected by the cops oh right. There's a ShellShield around here which I do in fact care about! Also Lute has been getting 0 actions ever due to being the slowest party member; I start queueing up VictoryRune on him to build his JP some. Hamilton picks up TotalShot for some more MT goodness. I also fuck around with absorbs enough to actually get to TrisaurJr which friggin' owns right now as well. Did I mention that Saga attack animations are the best, watching a triceratops run off screen to fetch a massive boulder and chuck it at an enemy makes me irrationally happy

H-eee-y enemies that survive one round of combat! Thank you based laser traps, I fight Hermes and T260 collects CombatMastery after two fights :ok_hand: There's even a 4 Mec random that forces me to take it seriously and Lute does his FIRST USEFUL ACTION EVER which is learning Deflect, thank fuck! im so proud of mah boi ALSO DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN'T SAVE IN THIS ROOM? lol

So Nidheg comes along, here's what party damage curves looks like right now
T260 (Kusanagi): 2226
Thunder (Axebird, GroundHit): 1151
Rouge (FlashFire): 660
Hamilton (TwoGun DuelGun physical): 505
Lute (Osc-Sword physical): uh huh

Oh he does spark WillowBranch and okay I guess that's like a move, that he can use and OH GOD SCREAM SAGA SONIC ATTACKS NOOOOO everyone is dead except T260

Fortunately this is FINE because game is Mec Frontier, although it's worth noting Nidheg did survive like 8 rounds so I'm not sure how the fuck I would've won this without the carry.

We taste FREEDOM! Lute shares his photo collection on his journey through despair #freedomisntfree



Did you know that you can open these boxes in Despair? I didn't! They don't have anything of course.



Everything about this room is amazing, I'm pretty sure you can't even get down there

DID YOU KNOW WE ALL HAVE A SPOOKY SCARY SKELETON INSIDE OF OURSELVES

[Pyro]

Dragon Quest 8 DS bonus boss rush.

Memoria is the DS bonus dungeon that is unlocked by picking it as a reward for beating one of the aftergame  Dragovian Trials. (Unlocking it takes the place of making the alchemy pot instant, since in the DS version it is instant from the moment you get it). So in tackling it you get access to two Timbrels of Tension. The fights also let you have the caravan so you can switch PCs as a free action (including KO'd PCs if need be). You can leave and heal between fights if you want, and you can skip bosses you already defeated once.

I load out Guv with spears/Courage, Jess with Magic Burst/Staves with enough Life/magic/skill seeds to improve her survival and make Magic Burst hit its cap (5000) really easily. Angelo with Charisma/Staves/swords (he gets more SP in the 3ds version). I sub out Yangus for Red, who is hyperfast and as durable as Angelo with ST fullheal, a 2.8 mult sword attack, and Dance of Life (KaZing). Angelo and Red get the Timbrels of Tension.

Geyser: Double-acts, so suddenly the MT ~90% curse is just rude. Fortunately the offense is anemic (MT 8HKO and a physical with a 50% crit rate) so beating him isn't so much in question as how long it will take.

Still-Tormented Soul: A refight of a forgettable boss fight that is equally forgettable. Pitiful offense and gets blown up by Magic Burst + tap kills him.

Trap Master: doubleacts with a devastating OHKO crit and casts KaThwack. Nasty fight and I had to use Yangus' Kerplunk to recover after my front row wiped.  Kerplunk revives the caravan backrow PCs too. A good string of dodges, sneaking in a tension'd Magic Burst, and sacrificing monster teams to it worked.

Don Mole: The 4 moles have significant damage (~170) and Don Mole doubleacts with either a solid 2HKO, MT 3hko, or full-field Confuse that isn't very accurate. He can re-summon the support but only one at a time. Magic Burst and Lightning Storm off the moles and Don falls soon thereafter.

Great Argon Lizard: Whoah. Triple acts and crits with an OHKO 1/4 to 1/2 the time on his physicals. Has MT 3HKO or so and, most annoyingly, Roars to knock down your Pcs. Which is just ridiculous with the other offense on a triple act.  I lose this fight outright the first time. The second time I equip to optimize evasion (a good idea in general as magic/breaths hit a plateau and physicals become the biggest threat). Stacking defense and Agility buffs helps (agility buffs at max increase evasion significantly). His durability isn't that significant, so a little offense here and there (along with the sacrifice of 6 brave monsters) leads into a turn of blitzing to score a win.

Captain Crow: Thin Air Attack doesn't scale up so this isn't that hard! He goes down pretty easy. It helped that he seemed to waste most of his turns oggling Jessica.

Gemon (evil bird demon fought on top of Empyrea's nest): Only double-acts but comes with two boss caliber supports who also double-act. I kill them both with MT damage (Magic Burst!) but Gemon resummons them both with one action. Still manage to eke out a win. Again Jessica's curves eat the support's turns. Not going to argue! (L60)

Leopold: Decently fast, triple-acts with a high "You are dead" 650 damage crit. And has multi Target stun. The MT damage isn't high but there is just no way to mount any kind of offense. He gors first and kills both Yangus and Morrie when I lose the front row, before Yangus can Kerplunk.

[Captain K]

Dragon Quest XI: Damn these backgrounds are gorgeous. Which makes the Toriyama eyes stand out even more as an eye-sore. (I can make puns too, DQ)

I'm not even sure it's Toriyama's fault. Like this looks decent:



But the NPCs have these colossal eyes that take up half their face.

I don't have the ugly old man yet but I am sure he is the best character.

[SnowFire]

Dragon Quest XI
Captain K: Yeah, the art style is in general pretty good, but holy crap those anime eyes are large.  Especially on the ladies.  You can sorta see it in group shots where Luminary & Eric have vaguely normalish sized eyes, and Serena & Veronica's eyes are just blatantly bigger relative to their face.

For those who didn't play the game, a sample:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1550711262

Example close-in of eyes of doom:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1550711741

--
Anyway, I recently finished Gallopolis, and time for...  well, not exactly a rant, but call it an extended musing about a certain oddity in the DQ11 game setting/themes.  Let's call it:

The SnowFire Danger Scale for fiction

1. Looney Tunes.  Nobody is in remote danger of dying.  You can drop as many explosives on Wile E. Coyote or Bowser as you like, they can take it.
2. Amusement Park.  Silver Age comic books (by reputation), "juvenile" fiction.  Some extravagant villainous plans might theoretically involve tons of people dying (poison Gotham City's water supply, use a stolen superweapon to conquer and rule Alaska) but they never come close to completion, so sure let the villain out of prison to try again, why not.
3. Heroic saga.  Operas, Zelda games, PG films, most Trails games, etc.  Characters might die, but only for really plotty reasons: a heroic sacrifice, a villainous stab in the back by the Main Villain.  This will be rare and any time it happens it's a Big Deal and even if it happens there might be some convenient back-to-life mechanism.
4. Heroic quest.  Your standard Final Fantasy game, most epic fantasy novel series.  Same as the above, except mooks can die.  Named characters are almost as safe as #3, they won't die without a "reason", but now it's okay to have nameless soldiers be mowed down by the bad guys to show what a threat they are, or have the heroes shoot up the employees guarding the Bond villain lair rather than having the guards be monsters or robots.
5. Gritty.  Your standard "low fantasy" novel series.  Characters can die, and not necessarily in dramatic fated duels.  Characters who make mistakes or do stupid things or cross the wrong person are at special risk.  While named characters are still "special", they don't act like they have an aura of invincibility, and if they do, others look upon them as foolhardy and dangerous loose cannons even when they get away with it.
6. Merciless.  A GBA Fire Emblem hardcore playthrough, Game of Thrones, D&D with a Gygaxian DM, etc.  People can die for no reason other than bad luck on a roll of the dice, even seemingly "important" people.  Sorry King Hayden of Frelia, your children died in combat with bandits after a lucky critical hit saw Tana's head chopped off by an axe and Innes was ironically sniped by an enemy ballista. 


As an example, Dragon Quest 8 is solidly at setting #3, and a reasonably well-done one at that.  No mook deaths on either side, just hordes of monsters, but everybody at Trodain Castle is cursed and there are the 7 sages whose lives are gonna suck, as well as Empyrea's kid, and the plot takes these parts appropriately seriously.  Hell, Alistair's death is Jessica's whole motivation to join up - revenge.  But even the other sages seem to have friends, relatives, etc. who are hurt by their loss.  (If I had a complaint about DQ8 on this, it's the part where Our Heroes & the corrupt priest guy just kinda meekly submit to Marcello's goons locking them in prison.  You guys are like superheroes now, I realize that these soldiers are individually innocent, but there's big stakes here, fight your way out even if it means killing humans.)

Okay, so I bring this up for DQ11 'cuz it's kinda indecisive about where it wants to be.  Things can get weird if the PCs think we're in setting #2 (everybody is safe, enemies are just monsters, villain has an evil plot but it's a pipe dream), but the actual plot as written seems to be #5 (screw up and you're dead).  (EARLY GAME MINOR SPOILER WARNING)   There's a monster out there called the Slayer of the Sands, and it needs killin'.  So the sultan/king sends his young son Prince Faris, who has just turned of age, out to kill it.  Prince Faris is quite reluctant as this beast has already slain some of Gallopolis's "finest knights" in the past, but the sultan is insistent and blandly confident that this will be No Big Deal.

So how dangerous a mission are we talking?
* In the previous-previous dungeon, there are soldier corpses on the ground, attacked by minions of the Dark One or whatever.  So..  you can definitely die in combat as a mook, we're at least at #4.
* In the previous town, people tell you about how the town's leader and her son went off to battle a dragon, and triumphed, but the son was mortally wounded and died.  And they have names, the son is Ryo.  So even "important" people can die (even if this is, granted, backstory).
* People in town, if you talk with them, are legit worried about the Prince's safety and seem to back up the idea that yes, "finest knights" have died in combat before with this monster, not just injured or scared off.  Sylvando, heroic mysterious origin jester (clearly somebody decided to combine DQ4 Panon with Mara/Maya and give the dancer skillset to a dude for once, I approve) who you're supposed to think knows what's up, is also worried about the Prince's life.

So, I would propose that at least somebody in the writer's group wants there to be tension here.  This monster is a mortal danger!  And yes, we're willing to write sad stories about how a parent sent their only child off to die in combat only to rue their decision later!  (And, from a real world perspective, parents who have no idea about their children's true skillset getting them in trouble with bad commands is something some of my friends have run into personally...  not to mention that from a military perspective, this kind of terrible mission allocation is sadly common and deadly.)

Anyway, the Prince is incompetent at combat but at least has the sense to know this, so he's gonna recruit the traveling adventurers to help him out.  And...  oh man, the PCs are contemptuous as hell, calling him a pathetic prince and a coward.  If you turn him down he's bawling on the ground for his life until you accept.  If we are in Danger Setting #5, this is fucked up!  We have basically a civilian bawling about being sent off on a suicide mission where he will 100% die, and Our Heroes are smack-talking him?!  I don't blame him for being scared to death!  You could have some crazed samurai bushido thing about dying pointlessly 'cuz it's your responsibility is awesome, but I dunno if even that actually applies to a 16 year old who just came of age.

Of course, I don't mean to be too critical here: the answer is obviously that we're more like danger level 2.5 or so, and we should treat the Prince's reluctance in the same way as a kid who doesn't want to do their chores or homework and wants to copy somebody else's work, not as a child about to literally die trying one last-ditch plan to save himself via some traveling adventurers.  I actually rather like how Gallopolis's plot works out, ultimately!  I just wanted to ramble about how the attempted tension really doesn't jibe with some of the other elements.

The Slayer was extremely, extremely badass too (well, on Stronger Enemies setting, which is basically Hard mode).  He can OHKO Veronica or Serena with desperate attacks or massively wound Luminary/Eric, he has a solid 3HKO that's MT before you get multi target healing that can also apply a blind that won't wear off, he has a weaker 4HKO MT damage attack that still adds up, he has a somewhat inaccurate MT confuse ability that is still scary 'cuz storebought confusion healing doesn't exist yet, and he DOUBLE ACTS.  Luckily he'll "waste" some turns casting Kasap or doing single-target ~2-3HKO attacks which are easier to keep up with, and Sylvando (your guest) will absorb the occasional attack and use confusion-healing to eventually break your characters out of that.  I beat him with the Luminary at 10 HP and everyone else dead casting a desperation Zap with a loss surely following had the battle gone one round longer, and that was using ~1000G worth of Strong Medicines as well.  (Turns out that Serena would have learned Midheal at L16 had I grinded an extra level, which would have made it a tad easier, at least.)

[DjinnAndTonic]

It's kinda weird, actually. Gallopolis and the Mermaid Quest seem like the only parts of DQ11 that are part of that 'modular' scenario-writing that other DQs seem so fond of. Most of the rest of the game is pretty solidly connected to the main throughplot! So if Gallopolis and the Mermaid Quest seem at differing levels of Danger scale, it is almost certainly because they were clearly written by a completely different writer.

[Cmdr_King]

DELTARUNE- https://medium.com/@cmdrking/deltarune-survey-impressions-speculation-etc-8a22fefa54fa

Not sure I have anything else to add for now!

[DragonKnight Zero]

Mana Khemia:

  I have a lot to say about this game, predominantly good, sometimes poking fun at it.  Wanted to document a very lucky bonus boss win.

  Beat the first bonus boss, what a relief.  He has a gimmick where every 4th turn, he uses a move that heals himself for thousands of HP and boosts his offensive and defensive stats making it harder to undo his healing.  So it is very much a damage race to win this fight.  A key factor to victory is that all of his attacks are physical so Pamela can safely sit at low HP.  It also just so happens that Bear and Let's Be Friends will damage Pamela such that she has exactly 1 HP after her first two attacks.  No Bullying thus becomes one of my sources of doing lots of damage in a short amount of time.  There's also a mechanic in that time card skills, if they go off in Burst Mode, actually increase the gauge a bit.  My goal is to take advantage of this with Flay and Roxis to have the offensive boost last as long as possible.  When I did this, I had all the offensive stat boosters filled out in the grow book but didn't bother trying to synthesize anything with Attack++ or Magic++  A number of my characters had Critical+ L but I hadn't gone out of the way to make sure everyone did.

  With plan in place, it was still an extraordinary win.  Start with Jess, Flay, and Pamela less out of conscious choice and more because they're at full power with Vanye, Anna, and Roxis in the support row to recover MP.  First set of actions: Flay uses Raiden Charge, Jess tosses Pamela a Chessecake, Pamela uses Bear.  Jess has another turn so she fires off a Grand Ray.  Boss goes to attack Jess, blocked.  Flay uses his regular attack to fill up the Burst gauge.  Jess isn't needed to heal so she uses Grand Ray again and brings out Vayne.  Pamela uses Friends and is now at 1 HP ready to deliver pain.  Boss attacks Pamela, immune.  Vayne uses an Unipuni pudding on himself for the Atk buff.  Flay uses Buster Star; This also activates Burst.  Pamela gets to use No Bullying for glorious 5 digit damage.  Vayne casts Overrealm.
  Next move of boss is a Twin Blade on Pamela, whiff on physical immunity again.  Some Buster Stars plow into the boss.  Realize I hadn't put a defense down yet.  Flay goes before Vayne and uses Drill Twist and brings in Roxis.  Vayne spends his Overrealm turns on Chaos Devotion x2 and Analyze chain into Anna Support.  She uses Quick Slice once and then a Grand Ray (more knockback) bringing Flay back in.  Roxis purifies the boss' timecards.  Flay uses a buffed Finishing Burst for around 8000 or so damage.  Pamela is next and uses another No Bullying for about 9000 more damage and the win.

  A win's a win but one where the boss failed to land any damage is so lucky.  Sometime later, I dive even deeper into the bonus dungeon. 3 trips later, I actually defeat the second bonus boss.  She has the potential to be very dangerous if she uses her multiact move to launch 3 (or was it 4) attacks in a row.  She does have a weakness which was key to me pulling out a victory on the first attempt.  For now, I'm not going to disclose it.  She doesn't heal herself but there's something else I'm referring to.

[Pyro]

Tales of Berseria: The intro to the game is wickedly powerful. Solid voice acting and a focus on themes of willingness to sacrifice others and the role of emotion in decision-making. This was hammered home in Laphi/Velvet dialogue (bear hunting for Laphi), as well as directly in Arthur's/Velvet's conversation. In the middle of that the game established Velvet's dependency on Laphi, her idollization of Arthur, and gave some genuinely great character interaction with the villagers.

I had a hard time walking through the blighted village and seeing the children's corpses, newborn baby and mother included. This is something I couldn't forgive Zestiria for because it threw children's lives around constantly as a kind of hamfisted way to add weight to the story. The deaths would happen and everyone would just kind of shrug and move on. In Berseria the villager's deaths were handled with suitable buildup and dramatic effect. You can tell the whole event contributed to Velvet's snapping. The writing quality is very different from its predecessor..

The combat is fun enough with positioning and attack area of effect playing an important role so far.

[Luther Lansfeld]

SaGa Frontier - I decided to do a full replay of this game for whatever reason. I did the quests in order of Asellus -> Blue -> Emelia -> T260G -> Lute -> Riki -> Red. It’s probably been 10-15 years since I did a legit full run of the game, so it was interesting to re-familiarize myself with everything.

A few general notes:

-My memory for the dungeons that you can explore in all quests was amazingly good. Even my reflexes for dodging specific monsters in specific locations was still very good considering how long it’s been. I managed to find a few extra items in a couple of dungeons because of increased ‘RPG-fu’. Octopath Traveller in particular really motivates the player to look hard for treasure. Feels good to learn new stuff about the game.

-Knowing the method to get DSC makes getting it a lot easier than just brute force, which is what I did before. Knowing what moves lead to what other moves was such a value for my hunt for DSC. Fun fact: On my Asellus run, Gen got DSC before Emelia got a single gun move. It was very interesting to discover that Emelia is actually not a very good gunner because that’s the moveset she starts with when she joins in the Arcane quest.

-The game actually does a pretty good job of curving the random encounter difficulty with your level. I think the idea that all random encounters scale with your level is so brilliant because it means that no matter what order you do dungeons or how much stuff you do, you will always get to fight competent enemies. The game’s randoms are quite dull at first but are more interesting.

-The game is weirdly ahead of its time in a few ways. The game heals you after every fight, using instead the LP system to punish you for dying in battle. It’s so nice not to have to go through the laborious process of healing and status healing after fights. Quicksaving is also a godsend and a feature that you really appreciate after going back and playing other PS1 RPGs.

-I really like the concept of the four different races that play by different rules, even though mecs are overpowered and mystics/monsters are a bit underpowered. It could be really good with a little twinking. In particular, I think mystics need more abilities on their Sword/Boots/Gloves that are legit really good, and being able to tell the stats you will get before absorbing them would be nice. (And knowing what all of the stats do lol). Monsters needed higher end damage at the end of the game. To be honest, aside from Thunder and the special monsters, they need more damage for most of the game. Increased transparency in the way they transform would be nice too.

-There is some pretty annoying bullshit trying to navigate the quest-specific stuff. I played the game with a guide the first time and my memory for that stuff wasn’t nearly as good, so I struggled with some of the plot triggers. Some particularly irksome ones were the start of Asellus’s quest, the start of Red’s quest, and the T260G thing where Leonard only talks to her if she is in her original body. Also, I accidentally locked myself out of the Rune quest on Red’s path because I didn’t talk to Annie at the right time or something. Not even mentioning Lute’s amazing trip to the final dungeon because I knew better than to get thrown into that shit.

-There is some seriously lazy writing in this game. Emelia and Red both have a dungeon in the Shingrow Palace where they chase their respective anime rival. All of the dialogue is literally Find-Replace one villain’s name to another. The game’s writing is generally fairly poor, which I was already aware of but good to remind myself of. The translation is also not great. Both Emelia and Red have some outright incomplete parts of their quest where the scene abruptly ends for no good reason. Asellus’s quest has some glimmers of good plot (and every man in it is David Bowie so that’s something) but overall not good.

-Megawindblast is still OP as fuck and Shadow Magic is fucking terrible.

-Forget the Magma Slimes, what the fuck is wrong with that Tanzer fight in the beginning of Riki’s quest? Also, seriously, the first hour of Red’s quest is the freaking worst. That was why I did those two last.

-Liza is the queen and I won’t hear otherwise.

-There are ~so many colors~ in the game. It’s kinda wild.

Next in the 'play old shit' extravaganza - Breath of Fire III.

[DjinnAndTonic]

If people are gonna 'play old shit' after SaGa Frontier, you really should check out Romancing SaGa 3. It is basically proto-SaGa Frontier and has a lot of the same charm with a new setting.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I might try it out at some point.

Breath of Fire III - Tales from the Brood

Good grief it’s been a long time since I played this game. I initially considered making it a no-dragon run, but I decided because I wanted to experience the full game more throughly that I will use dragons after all. So there you go.

The child arc is a pretty well-constructed, low-stakes plot that brings some level of emotional weight (the mob potentially murdering your friends) and a lot of action. The child arc ends on quite a dark note, of course, with the Garr betrayal. Momo is quite an underdeveloped character (she mostly just talks about how great her dad is) and Nina is fine if not that exciting. I like that Nina is a bit spunkier and more in control of her own life than some princess characters.

The gameplay is very interesting thus far. Both the bosses and encounters have some teeth and are often well-designed. I really like that the randoms aren’t just something to button mash through, but using strategy to defeat them is the way to go. One that stands out is the Specter, who steals about 5-6 AP from your entire party if he gets a turn. But if you strip Momo and have her cast Heal on him, she will go first and kill him before he can do that. You can change equipment in battle, so you can set that up at will.

I’ll post more about the adult arc later. I remember there being a lot of time-wasting there. The game has held up better than I expected so far, but I remember the third quarter being quite weak.

[Grefter]

Ima need some opinions on the music sometime.

[Luther Lansfeld]

It's fine. Not bad, not great, not as good as 4's.

[Sierra]

If people are gonna 'play old shit' after SaGa Frontier, you really should check out Romancing SaGa 3. It is basically proto-SaGa Frontier and has a lot of the same charm with a new setting.

Just chiming in to confirm Romancing SaGa 3 is a trip, dooo eeet.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Lobster, Snowman, Dracula-only run, please. (Well, I guess you can use your forced main character too, if you're a coward.)

[DjinnAndTonic]

Double-posting like a rebel.

Dragon Quest 11:

Finished! Again, sort of! Nonspoiler stuff: I liked the atmosphere and characters overall, most of the storybeats were good. There was one thing that kinda makes me hate it now.

SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hate minitext, so consider that warning enough.

So the one thing that kinda makes me hate it? Good Time Travel Setup, very VERY poor execution. They really drop the ball at the end if you go save Serenica by allowing her to... go back in time and undo all the hard work you went through to save the world? Or... not undo it because now she's in a new timeline... but that would mean that the Hero just decided to abandon the half-ruined original world just because Veronica died, and Original-Serena will never even get to meet the newly 'saved' Veronica in timeline 2 and instead the Hero just disappears out of everyone's life.  Fucking Asshole move. Either on the part of the Hero, or the Game Itself for inexplicably changing how time travel works midgame. (Heh, maybe it's more like Chrono Trigger than I thought?)

The whole time travel portion of postgame in general was handled really clumsily compared to the overall seamless and well-polished earlier portions of the game. Specifically, the middle-third with its very obvious parallels to FF6's World of Ruin in both tone and structure was a real treat.

But the Time Travel aspect of postgame literally undoes all of the interesting character beats of Act 2. But then tries to sort of shoehorn in a bunch of happy endings covering similar plot beats without any of the emotional buildup or story tension that made the stories work the first time around. Kind of the worst bits of and Bravely Default all at once there.

Good Stuff:

Everything about Act 2. Lots of tension, good build up, difficult and interesting fights, each character gets some kind of story beat that ties into one of their in-combat abilities.

Hendrik: Surprisingly great. I kind of assumed that since he wasn't the typical shounen archetypal hero that he was actually going to be the main antagonist throughout the game. His turn and joining of the party was a joy to watch and played out very organically to me. His interactions with Sylvando were amusing too.

Sylvando: Great*! *with some caveats that homosexual representation in Japan still has a long way to go, but the localization deserves some kind of award for walking the line between "offensive stereotype" and "respectful representation of a generally-maligned minority personality" without ever falling over it, despite the source language's blatantly insensitive handling of a LGBT character...

Other named characters: Nice, charming Dragon Quest archetypes. Feels a lot like DQ8's cast (I mean this as a compliment) with even more screentime dedicated to their development during main plot sequences, rather than just party chatter options.

Hero: We've talked about him at length, but he's kinda awful and REALLY needed to talk. (Seriously, he never even tells the others about his time travelling, even when it literally is necessary to save their lives, and he just lucks out that no one dies on his second try...)

Villains:
King Carnellian: Okay, my initial impression wasn't so great, but he overall works great as a 'starter' villain by just throwing the Luminary in the dungeon. And later on, he gets a bunch of backstory flashbacks that flesh him out more than I would've expected and he's pretty nuanced. Of course, most of his villainous actions are the result of...

Mordegon: So yeah, Possessed King isn't exactly a novel trope by any means, but Mordegon sells it in the few scenes that matters. When I got to the first ending, I remembered thinking 'man, what a lame and motive-less villain THAT was, but oh well, Dragon Quest." But the one good thing that the Time Travel postgame did was that it retroactively expanded a bit on Mordegon's identity, which... yeah, admittedly kind of surprised me. It's especially amusing that they expand on it long after he stops mattering as a threat, but kind of ends up helping the heroes? The closest thing the game has to a twist, I guess? I think it was handled well and not overdramatized when the reveal happens.

Dark One Calasmos: Flush. Literally a Dark God who exists to snuff out Light. Not very interesting, but effective enough to drive the action forward. At least he's foreshadowed subtly enough? Using the cute little darklings as foreshadowing, the player really doesn't get a sense of WHAT exactly is being foreshadowed in the "obviously-something-important-is-being-signposted" scenes.

Jasper: I actually liked this guy as a villain. His character trajectory was obvious from basically the moment he and Hendrik had their first on-screen conversation which set up their dynamic, but I enjoyed watching how it all played out anyway. Him being the main antagonist you actually fight more than once and during the best segment of the game helps a lot.

Gameplay things I liked:

Character-building is great! Skilltrees are handled very well and allow for re-speccing at savehouses.

Pep Up/Tension is back from DQ8! And this time it allows Dual Techs a la Chrono Trigger! (And Triple and Quad Techs even!)

All Characters get at least one skill that directly relates to some story beat or character development arc they go through! Story/Gameplay Integration like this is one of my favorite parts of JRPGs!

You can defeat certain enemies to ride them around like a pony! You also get a flying whale as your Airship! It eventually gets Flying Whale ARMOR! (Pssh, Horse Armor is so 2010...)

Everything else is a little too 'bog-standard' safe JRPG gameplay to really get excited about...

THEMES:
BETRAYAL!!! - So there's an awful lot of betrayals in DQ11, and I kept thinking they were going to use this recurring theme to make a statement at some point... But the postgame kinda loses track of it because they made a Big Bad that didn't have any kind of motivation at all.
In the game's defense, if you consider the idea that the story 'actually' ends after Act 2, then your Final Boss is Mordegon, who we later find out is actually another Traitor who was once the Luminary's Ally and started the whole cycle of the Luminary's fight against Darkness in the first place. So it at least ties it all together. And the Postgame is where we finally learn this backstory on Mordegon, so it's not a complete narrative waste!

ANTI-THEMES:
Not sure quite how else to phrase this. It's not that this is something that DQ11 was trying to make a statement about... but more that DQ11 goes out of its way... twice!... to undermine a really common theme in most fantasy stories about learning to accept some pretty universally hard truths.
You can't bring someone back from the dead.
You can't go back in time and just play around and expect things to work out.

DQ11's message here seems to be: Nah, everything is great, don't worry about the permanence of Death or Your Choices, there will never actually be consequences to those For You, because you are The Hero and you never make mistakes.

Like... I can appreciate some wish-fulfillment, but DQ11 doesn't even attempt to address the idea that trying to do these things might be bad or have terrible repercussions. Or that not being able to accept Death or Your Choices is a serious character flaw that you should probably not indulge in...


END OF SPOILERS!!!!
---
tl;dr: Game is charming and exceeds expectations, but since this is a Dragon Quest, you know what to expect and that's not very lofty in the first place. Great polish of a basic formula with better characters than I would have dreamed possible in a Dragon Quest game! Still probably the least-exciting JRPG I've played this year...

[Niu]

Lobster, Snowman, Dracula-only run, please. (Well, I guess you can use your forced main character too, if you're a coward.)

Playing RS3 alone is cowardice.
Play RS1 or RS2 or U.SaGa and suffer if you have the courage.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I've started Octopath Traveler, playing as Primrose, going counterclockwise and just got Ophilia. Fun, solid game. Rabbids is my Great Gameplay RPG of the year and Berseria is my Great Writing RPG, this one seems likely to slide neatly in between.

Also for something completely different, I've started 999 (thanks Snowfire!). Still early. Not much to say.

I did a couple runs of Super Metroid for old times' sake, got almost to 100% but got bored eventually. Second one was a pseudo-speedrun but I was way too rusty for it to be anything impressive, 1:04.


And finally, I finished my sword-only run of Conquest, here are the final updates:

Treason (C26): Three rooms to conquer, and as always each presents a unique threat. First, the heroes backed by a status-slinging Maid. After some experimenting I realize that Xander backed by Inspiration and a Camilla dual strike can barely take out the Maid, so I have her smash a Hero in the face then Xander kills the maid. Two other non-Corrin tanky units (Peri, Silas) complete a wall around my Inspiration-healer (Corrin can't be used because of all the Wyrmslayers) and tank the Heroes' assault, then I mop up next turn. The second room (I go right to face the Sorcerers), I don't have too much to say about, swarm around the door (the sorcerers won't attack until the door opens) then swarm through and take them out with a combination of high offence types and dual strikes. The room is a death trap if you try to tank it but this works every time. Finally the south, with all the generals and berserkers, is the toughest. Beastslayer Generals are pretty much the worst, especially the one with a Beastslayer and a Brave Lance who just does huge damage to everyone. I end up locking that one down with Freeze while Xander and Corrin tank and carve through some of the enemies. I'm then able to push forward a bit and take that general out, I also bait Hans' support (along with Hans) and kill Hans on the next turn. I screw up when dealing with the reinforcements when I underestimate my offence in my attempt to kill yet ANOTHER Beastkiller General and need to waste a Rescue Staff to fix this, but eh I get away with it. Iago's not a problem, just have to watch his range like a hawk. 2 resets total here, one against the Heroes and one in the south room.

The Empty King (C27): ugh hate Master Ninjas. I actually have 3 resets here, 2 of them from just losing a duel to that asshole. Eventually I learn to move a bunch of people towards him first turn so whoever gets Entrapped can get support. Usual strategy of lure Garon's guards away from him then sneak in the back door; Swordmaster Corrin with all her stat boosters from the Ryoma duel is almost unfair here, taking out Garon in two exchanges with little danger.

Night Breaks Through (Endgame): 1 reset here. As always it's a tight balance between charging down but not overextending oneself. Turn 1: bait the mages (I try to set up for a OHkO with Xander but my math is off and I just miss, so I need to devote some people to stick around and clean up) along with the Oni Savages, while staying out of the Maid's Freeze range. Turn 2, mop up and set a wall against the Heroes. Corrin charges down and KOs the Maid (Duelist's Blow helps me dodge the counter), then I rescue her back. Turn 3 I bait one Ninja and the most dangerous group of all for my team, two Maligknights and a Beastslayer Paladin, using a pair of Corrin Dual Guards and Levin Sword counters; she barely survives with Rally Res/Inspiration/Gentilhomme support. Also most people survive the hide from the Takumi death beam this turn. Turn 4, Xander baits the two generals and ninja, and otherwise I move as close as possible but stay outside the Hexing Rod's range. The four pairups at the bottom charge forward at this point but I ignore them. Finally, turn 5, I dance for Corrin so that she can reach Takumi, and use my final Rescue Staff to bring Xander/Peri down as well, their combined offence kills Takumi without much issue. 1 reset to get this strategy down, but on the winning run I lose nobody, which is cool.


KO counts:
Gunter 9
Leo 14
Shura (Hero) 26
Sophie (Paladin) 36
Laslow (Hero) 42
Soleil (Bow Knight) 42
Xander (Paladin) 51
Odin (Swordmaster) 62
Selena (Hero) 66
Peri (Great Knight) 76
Silas (Paladin) 79
Camilla (Dark Knight) 100
Corrin (Swordmaster) 199

Camilla/Corrin MVPs overall, Xander also very notable. Not really anything too new here. Levin Sword rules and its big evade penalty was the main thing which kept Corrin rampaging over lategame maps with it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Okay I changed my mind, I have things to say about 999 now. Mostly a thoughtdump here about the mysteries so far. Also why didn't anyone tell me that this is Number Theory: The Game?

Trying to play this game as blind as possible so please don't respond to anything (or if you do, use spoiler text and I'll come back and read it later~)

For the record, since I have inferred that this game has some plot branching, my own progress: I went through Door #4 with Santa/June/Lotus, reached the hospital with the 3-7-8 doors, and now Snake has gone missing. I talked with the various searchers, then saved and have had some time to gather my thoughts.

The game had an decent setup but it's reaching this point that things have really gotten interesting as it's become clear that there are AGENDAS lurking beneath the surface. Theory time!

I realized pretty quickly that the current team of 8 can, if we were to discover door #9 together, all escape. The digital root (i.e. modulo 9 sum) of the party's numbers is 9, so it's pretty easy to split them into two groups that each have modulo 9, and thus we can all escape. Simple example, 1+2+6=9, 3+4+5+7+8=27=9. This was true both before and after the apparent death of the 9th man. (I'm kinda surprised no character has spelled this out in-game.) Additionally, as long as we are provided with two doors which sum to 9, we can both proceed on, and this was the case out of the initial area; 4+5=9, so there were various ways we could partition the group such that one group goes through 4 and one goes through 5.

It wasn't until I had some time to reflect on this that doors 3/7/8, if those are our only way on, present a conundrum. There is no way for two groups of our party to pass through these doors (3+3=6, 3+7=1, no way to get to 9), so if they're are only way on, someone is screwed. I posit that Snake's disappearance is due to the fact that someone else realized this too. (Although, removing him still does not make it possible for all seven remaining people to pass through both doors, so it's hard to see him as the "best" candidate to dispose of, but since he's blind someone could be opportunistic...?)

I ran some numbers and am pretty sure that with Snake's disappearance, the maximum number of people who can make it through the two doors is six, and then at most five of them can get through door #9. Interestingly, though there are various ways to make this happen, the only ones who MUST be part of the maximum five exit group are Junpei himself, Seven, and Lotus. Are the latter two therefore more likely suspects...? I'm probably reading too much into this - not like there was THAT much time to formulate the perfect murder target - but you never know...!

Lotus's conversation during the search was also very interesting. She proposed to Junpei and June that the three of them and make a move through a door immediately, and also bring Seven with them (since he's the only fourth who would allow the three to move on). Junpei points out that they wouldn't be able to get through door #9, and she reacts to that kinda nonchalantly. Junpei (and I) think this behaviour is weird! You don't propose a plan to abandon half your team without thinking it through! Even weirder, though: they actually COULD get through door #9... 5+6+7=18=9. They just need to leave Lotus behind. Lotus shows every sign of being mathematically adept (knows about statistical significance, hexadecimal, and even what "nonary" means) so it's virtually impossible she didn't realize this, which makes me wonder if she is deliberately trying to make someone else escape rather than herself. Probably Seven since there seems to be some connection there, and Lotus didn't seem to give a damn when Junpei and June were in danger of freezing to death earlier. Regardless... Nine and Snake obviously received their own information from Zero and I suspect they're not alone. It's possible Zero made some sort of promise to Lotus, or she could just be acting on her own. She's certainly acting sketchy though. Also acting sketchy: Santa, he's said all sorts of kinda creepy things.

I've suspected from the start that Zero might be one of the contestants and nothing has really changed there, but it's hard to get definitive evidence on that front, aside from the fact that it's surely not Seven (and somewhat unlikely to be Ace either) just because Zero looked slight of build, and while it's possible to fake that under a cloak by stooping, there are limits.

Current party member trust level: Ace > Seven > Clover > Snake > June > Santa > Lotus. Snake's based on where I had him before his disappearance; he's kinda untierable otherwise until I know how/why he's gone!

[Cmdr_King]

The main thing I found with 999 is the cast feels... flat?  I dunno, I couldn't get super invested in the mystery because I didn't care all that much about the cast.  Granted, the mechanical clunkiness isn't helping.

That trust list is *fascinating* because really it's about spot on if you swap Ace and Lotus

[Luther Lansfeld]

Breath of Fire III - Tales from the Tableflip

As remembered, the adult arc is definitely been weaker than the child arc. I think the beginning is quite good, with Garr mulling on the moral consequences of his long-term actions, but once you get into the ‘regular’ part of the game again, the plot flaws seems quite apparent. I think Rei’s plotline in theory should be interesting and well done, but in practice, it feels like an arc that really should have just been done in the child arc instead, because after ten years it just feels weird that he’s been hunting for revenge against the mob for all of this time, especially because Balio and Sunder are dead. I think Rei is still fairly interesting because he is goes hard chaotic neutral in the adult arc. He basically wants to go rampage in McNeil village for them being dicks to him 10 years ago, which is kind of creepy. Dude’s messed up. I used Garr against Mikba and he wasn’t too bad. Nina is cool to watch in action during this arc because she does stuff and seems to actually be helping her dad instead of just being a princess or whatever. Props for that.

So we next have to investigate the Plant, where we find out about Momo’s dad’s intriguing backstory. Momo’s personality continues to be “I love daddy and machines”, which is kind of sad. We then get Nina’s parents being hardcore controlling and creepy (her mother said “remember, you belong to me” which is not sinister in the slightest) and despite her insistence that Ryu is a nice person, her parents continue to not believe her. OMFG HER PARENTS ARE DICKS. SO she runs away from home again. Congrats mom and dad for your assholery driving your daughter away.

So we then go to see Geist, who we have to punch in the face to unlock Deis. It’s pretty sweet because I know Deis will be a great master soon though. After that we have the (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ part of the game where we do a fucking minigame to pull a fish from the water, fight an easy boss, and then search for parts in a minigame that is literally just rotating the camera at the right time a lot. What a fucking fantastic minigame. SOMEHOW IT GETS WORSE. THE SHISU MINIGAME IS A DISASTER. THERE IS FISHING. THERE IS HEADBUTTING A TREE. THERE IS BACKTRACKING TO A PREVIOUS DUNGEON AND OMFG THAT VINEGAR MINIGAME WHY CAN’T I JUST BUY VINEGAR AT THE GROCERY STORE? ? ? ? ? I’m not sure how many of you remember this minigame, but it is awful awful awful. You have to count the exact number of times it takes pushing the triangle button to get to the bottom and then push the x button the same number of times. The visual cues lie and you have to go a certain speed but still count them. Truly a tableflip. And then to make it worse, you have to make the shisu at the right ratio or what the fuck ever and it is just so fucking bad.

Well, there’s two and a half fucking hours I’m never getting back. To end off this amazing arc is the black ship, which is very boring and has bad randoms. Fuck this entire part of the game with a rusty spork.

Bosses… HugeSlug and Shroom are both pretty damn easy for BOF3 bosses, which isn’t THAT easy still. Geist was kinda lol with Frost Warrior, Angler is a terrible boss, and the Ammonites were… ok. I died to the Zombie Dragon though!!!! Random design is definitely also weaker in this part of the game. Ah well.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Breath of Fire III - Tales of the Brood

So now I am on the other side of the ocean, where the stupid minigames have ended and we mostly just have a shitton of gameplay left~

So we arrive at a creepy town with creepy, robotic like people and we decide to venture into the STEEL GRAVE! It’s a pretty normal overworld/map dungeon with no boss but some pretty solid random encounter design. I found Nina and Rei quite useful here due to the large amount of flying enemies in relatively large groups. Nina’s brutal HP has really started to rear its ugly head, though. After that, we go to Colony, where we work to turn on the teleporter. This dungeon is pretty similar to the last except with some extra complexity. Not too bad, but again, no boss! Grabbed the Radiance gene and got some new spells from Deis (before Nina gets them, hooray) and then went to Draginier. So a creepy old man wants to fight me and wants me to bring Garr and Nina. Okay, that’s great.

Sooooooooo the boss OHKOs Nina. Great. This character is semi-forced against this boss (you can leave but it’s extra work) and she is one-shotted by his physical. ARE YOU SERIOUS NINA? I fought the boss with two PCs. Oh well. He would have been harder if he didn’t have a bad back every three turns!

Then there’s Factory which is fine. Then… the desert of death. Okay, I actually really like this part. I think it’s really fucking cool to navigate via stars, even if from a gameplay perspective it is really not that great. Once you finish the trial, you have to fight a boss!!! who is hilariously easy. Oh well. I felt like the mages were generally more useful in this arc than the fighters because there’s a lot of randoms and few bosses, one of which was this joke boss in the Desert. The Elder was the place where Nina’s durability really hurt the most.

After wrapping up some loose ends with masters on the other continent, I head to the final dungeon. The game is pretty good about having a central location with a rest/save/switch point, so I feel pretty free to switch between party members at will. I tried to use everyone at least some of the time. As usual, Nina is pretty good against randoms and bad against bosses, which is fine but not great. Rei was pretty good, Speed and goes fast and can do MT damage is a nice niche, especially after putting him under Deis. Rei’s Weretiger also came in handy for wiping out some high-def randoms. Garr got the job done; tanky and hits hard. Momo had Might and Speed and healing. Overall, I was happier with Nina and Rei in randoms and Garr and Momo in boss fights. Not terrible character balance as far as those things go.

Chimera (Momo and Garr) was a joke; Arwan was a bigger one. Teepo (Rei and Momo) was not too bad but was definitely trickier, and Myria (Momo and Garr) was scary but I didn’t game over. Final dungeon has fun randoms and is reasonably cool in general. I really like its design as this ancient city with some remnants of that time.

The plot of the game hits its stride late, really delving into the lore and setting work of the whole series. I really like some of the character work in the lategame. In particular, I really like Garr, who regrets his involvement in genocide and is confused about the purpose of his life. As much as the journey is framed as Ryu’s quest to find himself, the quest really seems to be about Garr’s own journey to understand his own sins and the reason for his being. He even admits as much in the dream world, that dragging Ryu along was just his excuse to find himself. When you visit the dragon town, you can feel how lost and uneasy Garr feels as he has the eyes of the people who hate him upon him for his horrible sins.

I didn’t really remember Teepo very much from my old playthroughs, but he plays quite an interesting role as a foil to Ryu, as someone who has turned to despair/nihilism due to being shown ‘the way’ by Myria. As we later see with Myria herself, Teepo does not want to fight the party and is not interested in things that the average lategame antagonist wants. He genuinely believes in peace and he believes that the only way to truly have peace is to lock himself away forever. His sprites are quite interesting; he makes a lot of poses and has just… very arrogant posturing in general. I think it’s an interesting choice. I thought his small role was pretty impactful and I think it really enhances the stuff that comes in the conflict with Myria later.

(Incidentally, the dream sequences with Nina, Rei, and Garr are all interesting and give you insight into how those characters tick, so those were a good touch. (There’s no salvaging Momo from being hilariously boring. I think she talks about her dad… again.))

Once you learn about the backstory of the game, you begin to understand where Myria comes from. She is not truly a god in the sense that we think of our god; she did not create the world and does not have infinite power. And she is aware of this. But she is the most powerful creature on the planet, so she tries to save the people from disaster, both by separating the desertification from the part of the world with life. She also kills all of the dragons because she believes that their power is the greatest threat to the world, and to protect all of the other creatures that live in the world, she feels she needs to destroy them threw her guardians. When she encounters the party, you get the impression that she is fond of the party and really hopes to convince them that her way is correct. She isn’t totally crazy, but she does come off as an overbearing parent who doesn’t trust her children (kind of like Nina’s parents, funnily enough). The different PCs have different reactions to Myria, but Rei is definitely the PC who leans hardest on that chaos spectrum, so he really bristles against her, whereas Garr of course is more logical and rational about the whole thing.
Ultimately, Garr decides that he made the wrong decision in committing genocide (how surprising) and the party decides to go at her.

When she loses, you see her asking God to help her children, the people of the world, and Deis laments on the insanity of her sister and the world is released from its mommy’s control.

Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with the setting work and the lategame plot, for all that the game feels a little stretched even at 30 hours. The character work is decent if not exceptional. Silent main is a bummer. I would have enjoyed a legitimate sequel to the game, but I guess that ship has sailed. Instead we got a prequel and whatever-the-fuck-Dragon-Quarter is. Alas.

[Niu]

Does Ciato hates onion? Peco got skipped entirely. Not saying the onion is worth mentioning.

But Myria really needs to shut up about her self justification that's nothing but a blatant lie.
My super high tech people destroyed themselves with their great powers! So great powers are bad, so I need to purge the brood who holds great powers too, she said.
The thing is, that high tech civilization came to existence post BoF2 after Myria escaped from her confinement, while she was already wanting the dragons dead in BoF1.
Just admit that you are doing this out of spite and hate.

[Sierra]

whatever-the-fuck-Dragon-Quarter is

Ciato you forgot how to spell "masterpiece."

Man, Niu, I haven't played BoF3, but Myria sounds fine as-is. People are really good at convincing themselves that they have valid, rational reasons for doing awful things that they simply want to do.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Octopath Traveler - Finished all the chapter 1's and got all the sub-jobs, time to advance the plot again. Good times.

999 -

Got the "axe" ending. #4 with June/Lotus/Santa -> #8 with Lotus/Clover -> #1 with Ace/Clover -> dead. Started a new file, went through door #5 this time (with Snake and Seven, the two characters I never saw too much of before, so that's a plus).

I ended up accompanying Clover through both doors #8 and #1 so I got to see her descent into madness. Also, c'mon Junpei. Maybe tell the others Clover stole stuff from the Captain's Room? And then don't let Ace and Lotus abandon you (although that one might have been harder). Kinda some bad decisions leading to the end there but it's not like it was total idiot ball stuff, it's certainly plausible enough.

I had assumed the bracelets wouldn't open doors after their wearers were dead. Clover seemed to think otherwise (as, for that matter, did the Ninth Man), though I don't think she could have tested this yet? It certainly changes some things if they can. In particular, it overturns Clover's own theory that Santa and Seven must have murdered Snake.

Updated theory, which admittedly I only arrived at after being learning that bracelet #9 survived the detonation and can allegedly still be used: Ace took the 9th bracelet, and used it (1+2+9 = 3) to kill Snake via door #3. May have used a tranquilizer on him first, since we know he found those! After Clover and her victims went through door #2, he took Lotus to the exit (1+8+9 = 9). Problems with this... why kill Snake? The best explanation I can think of is that he wanted to test if bracelet #9 still worked, and killed his witness so nobody else would know he had it. But... yeesh, that's cold, and very risky for not much payoff. Also, why did he want to go through door #1 (and was satisfied after he did)? Don't think I have the whole picture here. It will be interesting to see if Snake is murdered on the path I'm on now, what with Ace not going through door #5. If Snake survives, it casts more guilt on 4-route Ace, though neither outcome is definitive evidence either way.

I think Clover is honest. An honest psycho to be sure, but honest; I don't think she's Zero. Get revenge, murder witnesses, hope to God this whole ordeal isn't caught on camera. It's kinda hard to continue to guess at who Zero is because well, what are his/her motivations? At this point I have no idea. Ace, Santa, and Lotus all have unexplained sketchy behaviour so it could be one of them.