What Games Are You Playing: 2008

[Idun]

Playing Grandia III. Um. Leveling up. Just got the Master Book in Sabatar. But the entrance monster in Melc keeps destroying me, so I figure I should stop being at L30. Officially at L32.

[hinode]

FF3r: Started this up, just got the first set of jobs.  Tentative plans are as such:

Refia: Warrior
Ingus: Thief -> Dragoon
Arc: Black Mage -> Geomancer -> Sage
Luneth: Red Mage (maybe -> White Mage) -> Devout

Not counting situation specific job changes, like the mini-only dungeons.

Warrior sounds good for the whole game based off what I've heard around the DL.  The faqs all seem to hype Knight obsessively, but it doesn't sound worth it aside from final dungeon hype; I don't care how tough Cloud of Darkness is; I'm not suffering through the rest of the game just for a somewhat easier endgame, if Knight speed even makes it easier.  Ingus is going for the Gungnir, while Geomancer sounds really promising.  IIRC Black Mage is supposed to be pretty good up until you get Geo, so Arc starts off as that.  Switching over to Sage eventually for a second healer. though I'm not sure how early I should start building up job levels with it. 

Last PC is the only one I have some uncertainy on.  Definatley opting for RM early on, when it has a pretty good physical still.  Later it sounds like WM vs RM boils down to mass charges of healing vs tankiness with dual shields but needing potions to get through dungeons.  Leaning towards WM there due to laziness, but we'll see.  Not worried about White Mage job levels if I do switch over, as Devout is the endgame choice, and the one who really needs every job level it can afford.

Open to feedback on these classchoices, which is why I'm posting this here.

[Shale]

The main drawback of Warrior is that Advance is your reason for using it, and while the damage bonus is brutal at high job levels, the defense penalty increases in kind. Eventually you're to the point where most any boss attack will brutally maim an Advancing warrior, and their speed isn't bad enough to reliably go after bosses.

Also, as far as the WM/RM choice, bear in mind that you will be drowning in free potions thanks to your thief - something like 90% of enemies have Potion or Hi-Potion as their common steal.

[Scar]

P4: Every day;s great at your Junes!

*sings*

[Excal]

eh, I know Advances down side never really came up that much for me.  Also, why would your thief be stealing instead of attacking?

[Carthrat]

Recently played Iji, it was pretty cool (if fairly easy). I just like the feel of this kind of game quite a lot.

Messed aroudn with a bunch of indie games lately, as usual I play them for like five minutes each, then forget about them. Occasionally dropping to the arcade to play Tekken 6 or SF4, and... that's mostly it for now. Oh! Planescape, cannot forget that.

Red Alert 3 was fun for a while but got old fairly quickly.

Most of my gaming energy is spent on RP... never a good sign for a well-adjusted individual.

[AAA]

MK-Chapter 11. Last boss, again, was almost...almost a challenge. All the bosses in this game are punks. Also, recipe dump ahoy! Finally I can make Altena Ingots and get rid of those ?????s on my list. Say, is there any point to the relationship point things, making Roxis useful aside?

GH3-Played through all the Co-op exclusive songs. Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll was the most fun, guitar wise, but I'll always have a special place in my heart for Sabotage. To be honest, I think I'm done with this game. I could try and beat Take This Life (basically just have to not be completely worn out a third of the way into the song first) and Through the Fire and Flames (Intro...is going to take some serious work. Fuck, might as well learn to tap and that's going to take awhile), but I really just don't care. There are some scores I could improve and if I practiced a little I could get a few more 5-stars and FCs, but apathy sets in. So I guess I'll save beating TTFAF for a rainy Sunday when I'm really, really bored or something.

As for the game itself...it's a step down from GH2. The new HOPO system is great, but takes getting used to, and having adjustable Hyperspeed is nice. The song selection has some good classics and some fun songs I had never heard before (Knights of Cydonia, Cliffs of Dover, Pride and Joy), it also has a lot of songs that are utterly bland. The whole third tier is basically a blank except for Paint it Black, for example. The game throws a bunch of hand-cramping chords in a pathetic attempt to be hard, but all it really is is a unfun mess. Before I Forget is the best example of this, it's like Neversoft specifically tried to make that song as annoying as possible. It seriously kills any urge I have to play some songs because I just don't want to deal with that shit again.

Enjoyable but flawed. 8/10 maybe? Guess I'll focus on beating MK, since that's way overdue. Maybe I can actually finish it by the weekend if I'm not working 10 hour days like I have been.

Final stats: 37/45 5-stars (including co-op songs) on the main setlist, 15/25 bonus songs, 9.1 million career score, 1 FC.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Shadow Hearts 3 - Sidequest time! Finished all the ridiculous Cat-movie parody acting fights, which was relatively amusing. Suffered through Frank's Nice Momonga! crap. I actually enjoyed Natan's UMA hunting - the Legendary Hunt was hard, but surprisingly fun to puzzle out. Dollhouse was less difficult than the previous ones, and no less ridiculously tragic - though infinitely less creepy than the previous games'. Kind of sad, since the only even vaguely 'scary' parts of SH and SH2 were their respective Dollhouses. Does Hilda even have a sidequest? Oh right, Grampa Valentine - snicker.

Finished powering up all the totems, so I'm after Shania's Tirawa now. ...eventually I will do Johnny's Snap Quest... even though I hate it so much...

Team so far:
Johnny, Shania, Ricardo, Natan.

Natan sucks, but sexy Gun-Fu is sexy. Who cares if it's effective?! Or practical? Or realistically plausible?!

Whatever, I liked Boondock Saints, too.

-Djinn

[Cmdr_King]

Trips- you have to max out one party member's character quests or whatever in order to face the final boss.  Chapter 11 is the last opportunity to do this (chapter 12 is basically "final dungeon ahoy"), although if you've kept up with anyone this isn't a big deal.

[Shale]

Hey, it's practical for something, namely ridiculous hit counts, which that party is pretty well built for.

EBA: I've hit the point where you can hit each and every beat and still fail the song miserably because you're not perfect enough. Ow. Throw that on top of Jumpin' Jack Flash's regular kicking of my ass, and I don't think I'm finishing Sweatin' today. Or possibly this week.

[Lady Door]

Did not get the Out on Top theme, though I've now looped. Some dude decided to randomly obtain 4+mil on the day when I decided to blow through the rest of my items for a total of 2.2mil. I dunno what happened there -- the couple days leading into the attempt had been met with #1 at 1.5mil, #2 at 500,000.

Oh well.

Am looped! Have ridiculous amount of awesomeness with me. Have passed Chunin exam and re-obtained the Reaper awesome while still having enough stamina left to run a few extra missions in search of the HoClaus. I'm rocking this thing.

[Twilkitri]

Endless Frontier - Finished.

Shorter than I initially expected, although my expectations on that front had gone down as the game progressed anyway, I didn't think that the final area was going to be anywhere near that short when I got into it.

Valshine wasn't very good; he had a decent MT attack and an overpowered ST attack, neither of which are much help when he's the only enemy in the fight. Especially since the majority of the bosses in the game have a decent MT and overpowered ST attack and they had been coming in groups before this, so he essentially had considerably less damage output than the most recent boss teams, just with somewhat more HP (than an individual boss, not than a whole team put together even). Probably needed to get double action in some manner to be scary.

Also the complete arbitrariness of forced evasion makes me a sad person. Especially when it triggers when you're not even attacking the enemy. Understanding this is something I don't do.

This only occurs if your combo breaks and you drop the enemy to ground. It'll never occur on a first hit, thus as long as your attacks connect, it'll not happen.

I had been thinking it was something to do with the exclamation marks that showed up occassionally and couldn't really see how it related; this way of looking at it helps in some respects, although not entirely. In any case some artifacts of the battle system don't play very nicely with this.
For example, take Aschen, take her first moveset, against a blocking enemy that she smashes the shield of on the penultimate attack, and she'll do her jumpkick while it's too high in the air and miss, and half the time this triggered a forced evasion. So I had to try to remember to cancel out before it got into that sort of situation whether it was beneficial to be cancelling there or not... I've also seen enemies that weigh too much/too little not synch up with an initial moveset and end up triggering forced evasion because of this. It's not as simple as timing each next combo correctly.

The most hilarious instances are probably the multiple times that I hit Support when I had ran out of SP and forgotten, so the support didn't actually happen, but they triggered forced evasion anyway. Thankfully they never chose to counterattack any of the times I did that or that would be highly aggravating.



In any case, some of these characters better migrate into other OG games or I will be a sad person. Don't think I'll be replaying anytime soon... not entirely sure what a clear save does for you anyway, anyway.

[Rozalia]

Did not get the Out on Top theme, though I've now looped. Some dude decided to randomly obtain 4+mil on the day when I decided to blow through the rest of my items for a total of 2.2mil. I dunno what happened there -- the couple days leading into the attempt had been met with #1 at 1.5mil, #2 at 500,000.

You did it as a Sannin right? He proberly got that much because he saved his halloween candy.

[Grefter]

Natan sucks, but sexy Gun-Fu is sexy. Who cares if it's effective?! Or practical? Or realistically plausible?!

Whatever, I liked Boondock Saints, too.

This says nothing.  Boondock Saints is good.

[Sierra]

P4: A hikikomori draws near! Fight/run? And...does Teddie...shout "Bear-sona!" in battle?

...ahahaha, I love this game.

Anywho, the situation is as follows: Priestess maxed, got half a dozen other S. Links sitting in the 7-9 range, all characteristics are at four out of five. Finishing all that stuff will probably have to wait a bit, though, since I'm in September and just got shanghaid by the plot again.

[Strago]

Goddammit would you people please stop making me want to play Persona 4.

Failing that, tell me its gameplay is at least as good as FES's and that its story and characters don't suck as much, so I could conceivably convince myself that playing it would be The Right Thing to Do.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Finished SH3...

Lady/Killer moments are cute.

Good ending is lame. Bad ending is predictable, but shinier. If Shania ending up being a Big Bad in the hypothetical Shadow Hearts 4, that would be kind of cool. Would explain why the game goes to such lengths to make her so damn unlikeable.

Natan is a sexy incan stripper with no personality, but awesome sexy Gun-fu. I'm still stuck on this.

Ricardo/Edna was kind of a nice subplot while it lasted, too. Ricardo still wins the award for coolest RPG bard in existence.

Everyone else was just kind of 'there'... which is fine since they were all supposed to be humor-oriented characters, but the game never really had any humorous scenes.

It was nice to Roger, Lenny, and the Valentine family again, but overall... SH3 is a forgettable story experience. This is kind of a letdown after how much I loved SH1, SH2, and Koudelka for their relatively engaging stories and characters (and at times, dialogue).

The battle system was fun, and most of the sidequests had their moments (but not the damn snapshot quest! *shakes fist angrily*), so I guess it would have been nice to see if SH4 could have improved the story AND gameplay aspects.

But yeah, SH4 will never exist...

Does anyone know why the company ended up dropping the series? Was it just that unprofitable?

-Djinn

[Sierra]

Goddammit would you people please stop making me want to play Persona 4.

Failing that, tell me its gameplay is at least as good as FES's and that its story and characters don't suck as much, so I could conceivably convince myself that playing it would be The Right Thing to Do.

I'll stop making you want to play it when you freaking play it. Anyway, it's basically P3 with polish. This is good! P3's random stupid is mostly gone. Combat is mostly the same but with a few tweaks; the obvious change is that you have full control over the party now if you want it, but there's some other minor additions (like PCs who have high S. Link levels getting nifty support abilities you can use in place of a One More! in battle). I'd call the writing a step up from P3. Can't really give a conclusive verdict on the story yet, though the central plot I'm moving towards looks at least amusingly quirky (as opposed to "The incarnation of death wants to kill everyone. You must stop it.")

~

Oh, and for those playing it: anyone stumbled on a persona that naturally learns Rampage? Chie's doesn't count, no, since I need to make this myself for an S. Link event. Margaret's requests make me something something.

[Cotigo]

Europe:  Beaten.  Crazy game.  Most realistic graphics and interface ever.  Well worth the price tag, as it sucked me dry of well over 500 hours of gameplay.

[Taishyr]

The final boss of that game's always been annoying as heck for me. How'd you fare on it, Zenthor?

[Cotigo]

Eh it was just the first boss but totally not a plot fight.  I didn't think it was too hard.

KoL:  Whee, like, only a week until I've permanently unlocked Bad Moon sign. 

[Meeplelard]

Magna Carta: I finished this right before Mini Meet, but never did a rant, so...here we go!  However, the entire rant will be done in a special style cause, lets face it, the game can only be done justice that way...

Obviously, THERE WILL BE SPOILARS!!! But I don't think any of you care.

THE ENTIRE RANT WILL BE DONE IN BLOOD RED!  Why? Cause the true name of the game is Magna Carta: Tears of Blood[/u]

So where do I start...well, I guess with the music and other audio effects since that's the easiest to deal with.  Magna Carta's music is entirely forgettable, barring that one song in the token "Yason and Humans get along cause its neutral territory!" town.  That song was kind of nice!  Not that I'll ever be able to find it.  Voice Acting...uh...Early PS1 Level.  Granted, the line that sticks out the most is Calintz's "It was over before it started!"  given he says that every time he kills something and he's the best character in the game and...

...ok, good chance to segue into gameplay!  The game works like this.  Its ATB + SRPG + Timed Hits.  No, you did not misread that.  Its an ATB SRPG with timed hits.  Ok, not so much an SRPG as much as there's a lot of free movement, akin to BoF5, AtL4, what have you, but...its close enough damn it!  Also, note that I never hated ATB, and obviously don't hate SRPGs since, well, 3 of my 4 10/10s are all SRPGs! (FFT, FE9 and FE10.)  However, just cause you take two things you like/don't hate and splice them together is not necessarily going to yield good results; ATB and SRPG are things that should NEVER BE SPLICED TOGETHER, but Magna Carta decided to do it anyway.

Ok, that aside, the game works like this.  You have a bar, and the enemy has a bar; this is your Leadership meter.  On the meter, there are triangles; if the bar is filled up to at least as far as the triangle, you can use a turn.  Multiple Triangles can appear if you're fast enough, which means you can get that many turns in a row if you wait long enough.  This sounds fucked up, but watch this video and you'll see what I mean!

Magna Carta Battle!!!

Watching this might help make sense of the below.

Now, one thing that I actually kind of liked from this system?  Whenever someone dies on one side, the opposing side gets faster and the receiving side gets slower.  So if you kill an enemy, your entire team gets faster, and the enemies get slower.  Why do I like this?
It promotes using Resurrection, and for once, bothering to kill the weak insignificant things instead of going after the big scary thing first.  You know what the problem is though?

THIS IS THE ONLY REASON YOUR OTHER PARTY MEMBERS EXIST 90% OF THE TIME.  You know I noted about taking turns?  Any character can take that turn.  Doesn't matter who it is and how many times you do it in a row, you can use that turn by anyone.  Now, characters have different speed scores, so swapping characters on a fly means that when one person can act doesn't mean someone else can.  It seems whoever is the leader of your party is automatically faster than everyone else, then its based on Charisma or some such.  I really haven't figured it out, I just know Calintz was able to triple turn enemies at points when Azel, the only character in his team who had comparable (sometimes higher due to equips) Charisma wouldn't be anywhere near as fast.  Similar results occurred where Reith suddenly became a lot faster once she became a team leader for her sections, and ditto to Raul.

Magna Carta also has out of battle interactivity with enemies, like VP, BoF5, etc.  You hit an enemy with your sword, you get a surprise attack.  This means you get X amount of time to do whatever you want while the enemy has to dick around and just take hits, and when that time is up, they start at 0 Leadership.  If you're attacked with your sword out, both sides start with max Leadership; this actually ends up being advantageous to the enemies cause, you know, you have to rely on Human reaction time, while enemies do things more or less instantly when they get into your range.  If you're attacked and your weapon isn't drawn, the enemies get the surprise attack on you and it really fucking sucks.

Wait, what's this "Sword out" thing?  Well, in Magna Carta, you have 2 modes of travel in dungeons.  Search Mode, where your weapon is drawn.  Pressing a button swings it and such.  It increases your vision of the area dramatically.  Basically, you can only see the basic layout of the terrain and such; you can't see enemies or treasure chests (-_-) unless they're a certain proximity to you.  Search Mode increases this dramatically.  Anyway, if attacked in Search mode, you're led to a neutral situation, and only in Search Mode can you actually get First Strikes.
The other mode is Dash Mode.  You move A LOT FASTER here, but you can't see shit beyond like one inch in front of the character, and if attacked here, you're forced into a surprise.  Only reason to use Dash is if you're certain there are no enemies.  Unfortunately, its hard to be certain cause enemies respawn BASED ON PLOT EVENTS, not based on time, or # of screens left like FF12, or what have you.  So whether an area respawns enemies or not is hard to say.

There's also Rest Mode, which means your team gradually heals as you sit there.  Yeah, you have unlimited healing out of battles, effectively; if attacked here, you're surprised, but in like all scenarios, there's never more than one enemy in a specific distance, so there's no reason to use Rest after every battle.

...if you can't tell, this is why Magna Carta takes forever.  You trudge through a dungeon at a walking pace cause you're afraid of being slammed at a moments notice.  It doesn't help that you have to do dungeons twice on a regular basis cause of the dual party system (game splits its plot into multiple PoVs ala FF6's scenarios after a point.)  And then you have to rest after each battle to recover damage.

Now, back to the battle themselves!
Timed Hits!  Its pretty basic; you see the buttons, press buttons, use attack.  There are 3 button presses; failure = you don't use the attack, and waste a turn.  If you succeed, you pull the attack off.  If you do it perfectly (as in, hit the button dead center instead of within a certain time frame), you get 5% added to your Trinity Gauge.  The Trinity Gauge is basically a one time power up that boosts damage by an amount equal to the gauge; once you use it, it drops to 0%, and you can only use if you have 30% at least.  You basically use this thing at 100% to murder something dead if its taking forever, on your strongest attack.

SPEAKING of attacks, that's another point.  See, the game has 3 methods of attacking: Standard, Combo and Counter.

Standard = You use attack, attack hits.  That's...not all there is though.  See, each Style (aka Skillset) has multiple attacks.  In order to use higher attacks, you weaker moves first and progressively get to the good stuff.  Here's a parallel:
Lets say you're playing a Final Fantasy game.  If you wanted to cast Firaga off the Flame style, lets say, you'd have to cast Fire first, which will let you use Fira next turn; use Fira next turn, and only then on turn 3 can you use Firaga!  You can regress and use a lesser move if you want, which in most games would be because "less MP required" or some such.

Which actually is SORT Of like what Magna Carta does.  See, just about every style in Magna Carta runs off 2 elements.  Now NORMALLY, an Element in an RPG exists for hitting weaknesses and resists.  But not in Magna Carta!
You see that list of letters in the left hand corner of the gameplay video?  That's your Chi.  If its glowing white, its at max; if its glowing yellow, its stable, which is like middle ground, if its faintly glowing, its weak, but still usable, and if there's nothing around the letter, its unusable.
Basically, the higher Chi there is, the stronger the attack of that Chi is, and the more times you can use it before requiring to let it grow.

Now, Styles pretty much always use two Chi; there's like 3 exceptions the entire game (Calintz's ultimate style is pure Celestial, and Chris has 2 with 3 Chi.)  So you regress to a lesser attack that uses different Chi than a more advanced one, cause sometimes the Chi boost makes it actually stronger, or you just can't use that Chi.  They're pretty much always split up like this too:

Air and Celestial
Earth and Mountain (worth noting that "Mountain" is really just Darkness, but fuck if I know why they called it MOuntain; most Mountain Chi attacks are all dark and evil and such)
Water and Ice (OOOH! SOMETHING LOGICAL!)
Fire and Lightning

Thankfully, the Chi are adjacent to the ones they're paired with so its easy to tell if a character can do shit in that style or not.

How Chi is determined is based off Terrain; a Volcano area will have lots of Fire and Mountain Chi, but like no Water or Ice Chi, and varying degrees of others, for example.  There are Chi Stones that you can use Talisman (basically, fancy name for items; no need to explain these, they're RPG items!  Only unique thing about them is they take up half a turn, so its like FF10 with faster recharge rates.  All Talisman have an element attached, but that's meaningless for battle purposes, it matters only for fusing them and what I'm talking about now) to change the Chi, and raise one other.  So if you want to use a Water attack in that Volcano dungeon, find one of these stones, use a Water aligned Talisman, and you'll be able to use it to a degree, if a crappy one.  Talisman mid battle can also manipulate Chi...specific ones mind; they have to say like "Raises x Chi to max!"

Though, there is one piss off moment in this.  You cannot change a Chi stone to one of its opposite.  Trying to change Fire to Ice will cause the stone to explode.  Its the usual Fire <-> Ice, Celestial <-> Dark Mountain, Air <-> Earth, and Lightning <-> Water oppositions, so its not hard to remember which are opposing, thankfully, but its a bitch if you aren't paying attention, and suddenly just killed *2* sources of Chi when trying to raise one.

Anyway, back to different attack methods!

Combo: Learned only when you master a style (use lots of attacks in Standard til you finally unlock the final move; yeah, its done SaGa Frontier/Grandia 3 style -_-.)  In COmbo, you can use a strong attack out of the gate, the Timed Hits are harder, and you lose all your Shields (I'll explain later); it also requires using BOTH elements, not just one, and several uses of Chi in each.  This makes it usually weaker than the higher end moves of a combo, thus worse cause it kills Chi, and loses shields, but its good for ending battles fast since you can use it immediately.  Also hits a bunch of times, which I'll get to why that's good later.

Counter: Basically, you have to guess the right elemental Chi of the enemy (through Button presses; each element has a specific combo between X vs. O, like Celestial is O O O while Air is X O O)...no, there is no way of figuring it out besides either using a FAQ, or fighting enough of the enemy to know what elements they use.  If the enemy uses more than one, just give up using Counter <_<
The advantage of Counter is that on successes, however, you'll use a Standard style attack, but the enemies defenses will be 0.  Furthermore, you'll attack instead of the enemy, thereby avoiding damage.  This helps a shit load against some enemies.

You can equip 3 styles per battle.  Each style acts independently (so using a weaker attack in one style plays no role on the other), obviously, you equip so you have as many elements to work with as possible, as to not be fucked by Chi.

Oh, but that's not all!  There's another factor in attacks.  See, in this game, being Multi Hit means a lot more than simply "flashy way of showing lots of damage numbers."  The way the game handles defense is that everyone has a set number of "Shields."  Each time you are hit in an attack, the shield reduces damage, and you lose a shield.  When you run out of shields, the rest of the hits in that attack are basically hitting 0 defense.  So in this game, Multi hit attacks are better at bypassing defense; if a move hits 20 times, you can be insured at least like 10 of them will get max!  Your PCs can get 5 shields max go figure
So if FF7 was Magna Carta, and Cloud attacks a 5 shield enemy with Omnislash, his first 5 hits would deal less damage than the subsequent 10.  Shields are passive and ever present so long as you are in Standard Style.

Go figure, the higher hitting attacks are almost always the higher end moves; combos also hit a fuck ton of times, and Counters just flat out bypass them.

...I think I've said all there is to say about Magna Carta gameplay.  If you've kept up with all of that, well, congrats!  If you didn't, I don't blame you.

You'd be surprised at how such a fucked up system can yield some of the most boring results ever.  No, I didn't say "deep intriguing gameplay!" I said "fucked up"; as in, you'd think at very least, there'd be more to mock and make fun of it with, and it'd be painful, but no, its just boring, so I can't even make fun of it!

Anyway, ONTO PLOT!

Actually, Magna Carta's plot isn't as bad as you think, especially with the Racist Angle it takes.  yeah, it does a Racist Plot of Humans vs. Yason, they want each other dead, but it fails less at it.  It tosses a Zelda's Axiom in there, though, it breaks the mold after a point.  One thing that helps the plot is the Multi View Point system and how it actually shows what's happening with the villains, what have you. 

...unfortunately, so much goes on in Magna Carta that you just end up getting confused and you don't have any clue what's going on.  It basically requires a replay to fully understand it, and for a game like this, FUCK. NO.

Basically, plot line isn't too bad, but its presentation sort of sucks.

The cast too doesn't suck as much as you'd think.  Lets do it in my usual style!

BUt first, would like to note the whole Talk sessions you can yield with characters certainly helped flesh out personalities.  Its sort of like how LoL2 has campfire scenes, where you can talk to random party members and see what they have to say about the scenario.  You then respond and based on what you do, you can get their trust up (which I think effects speed in battle?), though one thing that pisses me off?  Sometimes being nice to one character makes a random character out of nowhere hate you.  For example, if you encourage Azel, the young upbeat kid, to keep trying in some cliched After School Special way, Azel will be all "Thanks captain!" and trusts you more, but then Haren is likely to pop in out of nowhere and go "Oh, this is pathetic!  You don't believe that shit, do you?"  and then starts to hate you.

Calintz: Actually kind of liked him.  For starters, he's NOT an RPG stereotype.  He's 23 years old, and leader of his own well established Mercenary Organization.  As such, he's NOT this "Lets go on an adventure!" youth type, or some up and coming talented youth, he's actually a well established warrior.  Its just nice seeing someone who actually is experienced in war to a degree for once, and not fall into all those naive cliched traps.  He does have some annoying angst moments, and some psyduck plot twists (Wait, you mean you're the real son of the High Priestess of Amabat, and his best friend Hugo was just pretending to be? The shit?  They never explain how he got separated from his mother either...), but eh, it was just nice to see someone who wasn't your typical RPG main, and not in the usual "lol anti hero" sense.  He had some good interaction with Reith and Serina, I suppose.

In a battle, he's overpowered.  Remember SH1 Yuri?  Yeah, similar case, except he's less overpowered, but there's even LESS reason to use other PCs due to the battle system.  If he's in your team, just use him and don't worry about other characters unless you need healing or something (or rare case where enemies just mock physical attacks.)  Anyway, he's fast, hits hard, can cover a wide array of Chi, and he's durable due to being a swordsmen, thus many shields.
...but no, it doesn't stop there.  Remember Citan of XG?  Remember how he was overpowered for Disc 1, and then the game decides to hand him a sword for NO REASON, making him even MORE obscene, and he's the last character in the game who actually needed an upgrade?  Same thing happens, but the upgrades are even more obscene.
See, first off, after a point, he gets this passive skill called Crimson Scar.  It HALVES ALL DAMAGE dealt to him.  Note that this halving happens BEFORE defense kicks in, so he's nigh immune to physical attacks that hit less than 5 times (he almost always has 5.)  Its just flat out unfair, and makes Calintz nigh unkillable...
Then end game, he gets the Uber Style of unfairness in True Fuget.  Its only one element in Celestial, but it like OHKOs everything until the final dungeon, and in there, you have plenty of Celestial Chi.  It...easiest way to put it?  Its like SH1 For the Children on all your attacks.  The first move is stronger than pretty much every other style's ULTIMATE attacks.  Basically, as if the game didn't say "use only Calintz" already <_<
But nope, there's one more upgrade you get!  With that style, Calintz gets another upgrade.  Remember Counter mode?  Remember how I said you have to guess?  Calintz actually has TELEGRAPHED COUNTERS; you can see what Chi the enemy uses, as in, you can actually see the Button Presses instead of "?", so you now end like all fights with 0 damage, if you're patient (its often just faster to blitz them wtih these idiotically good moves though.)  Oh, yeah, that super Style has Counter Mode, go figure.

...yeah, Endgame Calintz is just ridiculous in every way, shape or form.

Haren: Douche.  Hate him.  He's your token prick of the group whose all "I am tough" and hates being nice.  No redeeming features about him.  You're suppose to feel about his little Felicia backstory, but fuck if I can care about him.  Not much else to say...well, one good thing about him is the way he foils with Chris leading some actually funny lines from him, but that's the only good thing about him.

IN battle? He...uhh...is useful only if you really need Mountain or Earth Chi, since Monks are like Swordsmen but much slower.  Higher HP is more than offset by less shields.  Yeah, he just kind of sucks, and his starting style is garbage too.

Eonis: ...is there.  You need someone with a Vagina in your heroes starting group, and that's pretty much why she exists.
IN BATTLE? She's the only Red Mage in the game, which means she's an attack mage specializing in Fire and Lightning magic, she can get Earth and Mountain magic much later, but yeah.  She's slow as fuck, and can't take hits; she's only good for gunning things with high defense or too many shields.  She has some crowd control, but it usually sucks.  IN FAIRNESS, she gets a lot better late game, but it lasts for only a few hours cause soon after, Calintz gets broken.

Azel: Take an RPG Main stereotype, and turn him into a supporting character.  That's Azel.  They basically swapped roles with him and Calintz compared to most RPGs, as Calintz is his mentor and unlike most mentors, doesn't die (he's the main after all.)  This works for showing the lighter side of things, and its a nice change of pace seeing the upbeat kid being merely a secondary character, instead of center of everything.  Gets points for the game going out of its way to make fun of his stereotype:
Azel: Hey! I just remembered! Today's the captain's birthday!  Happy Birthday Calintz!
Haren: Geez, you're annoying little squirt.
Eonis: While I agree that he can be annoying at times, he is right; Happy Birthday!

In battle? He's an alternative to Calintz.  Essentially, before Calintz gets broken, he's more or less as good, except slower cause he's not a leader.  The Slower thing is about the only thing that stands out, though its significant; I guess his starting style is a little worse, but that only matters early game.

Reith: Token Amnesiac girl with a BIG SECRET!  I was close to guessing the truth behind her plot too.  When I first saw her, I said "...she's half human, half Yason"; turns out she's actually the Yason Queen, but after using some big magic attack to repel the Forbidden Magic, she lost her memory, and...yeah, something fucked up like that.  She has good interaction with Calintz, and has that naive, innocent view point on things in this racist world.  You're suppose to feel sad when she dies protecting Calintz, but unfortunately, MC's writing and plot presentation made it hard to tell what's going on at times, so...uh, yeah.

In battle? Healer.  That's all I can say.  Useful for...staying alive.  Not much else to say.

Chris: Funny guy actually!  Typical failure flirt who is self centered in a playful way, and thinks he's a total genius, what have you.  He's obviously not a serious character, so its not annoying, and looks even better when paired next to Haren.

In battle? He sucks.  He's sort of like Eonis in none of his moves hit shields, but they're physical so they bypass magic defense.  The problem? He's slow as fuck, his moves don't hit very hard, and he's frail.  His one advantage is he's the only character in the game who can use all 8 kinds of chi, so he has some attack available always, but that doesn't save him.

Maya: ...she's a mute.  I...don't know why she exists.  She does nothing in plot besides "Oh, yeah, she's another member of the Tears of Blood (Calintz's mercenary group), and she just wasn't around until now for whatever reason."  She's a little girl with a doll, and she never speaks so uh, yeah.

In battle? ANOTHER HEALER!  Ok, that's why she exists.  See, you get 2 other healers in Reith and Justina, but the game TAKES BOTH out of your team for Reith's side, so I guess they added Maya so you always have at least one Blue Mage somewhere.

Justina: Your bitchy priest...I think.  She mostly existed just to face palm at all of Reith's ultra naive moments that were caused by her amnesia.  Like Reith would try to talk to a bunch of soldiers trying to arrest a guy for whatever reason, she'd be saying some ridiculous things, Justina would say "Good grief, what's she trying to accomplish?"  Yeah, that's...about it.  She mostly existed so Reith's section wouldn't involve her being alone.

IN BATTLE? Another healer!  Yeah, Reith's section starts off with 2 nearly identical characters -_-;

Rianna: Girl traveling the world looking for her husband who left for some big discovery on Chi!  Her husband is actually half Yason, so she has a high tolerance for Yason in general, yay!  Actually, once you meet her husband, learn he's one of the evil trio, and he ends up dying...and said guy just happens to the guy who betrayed Calintz in the past and caused Calintz's home town to burn down, and this guy is actually the eventual "Fuck you Neikan" of the trio, trying to thwart the plans...uh, yeah, he's like a triple agent <_<;  But anyway, she is kind of dropped after that; he tells Rianna in his death speech about Neikan and all that, but yeah.

In battle? SHe's Haren with an infinitely better starting style.  That's about it.  She's more useful, mind, cause she joins Reith's side, so you have someone who can actually take hits (Monks > Mages), and do actual damage (Blue Mages have water/ice damage, but it sucks), and a 3rd PC = you get faster in general, so uh, yeah.

Raul: Care free guy whose only helping you out cause it insures he'll get a meal (aka he's a bum.)  He's also the Celestial Hero.  See, in Magna Carta, 100 years prior or something, there were 8 legendary heroes of each element, and the greatest of the 8 was the Celestial one, supposedly.  Yeah, Raul's damn old, since they each had a shard, and somehow exposure to them has halted their aging.  Basically, he's a hidden bad ass who only shows it when it needs to be.  Yet, the Villain still owns him.  Oh yeah, his best friend Zekart, the Wind Hero and his "Equal" in combat, is Calintz's mentor and like 10x better it seems, cause he teaches Calintz that unfairly good style!  Anyway, unfortunately, Raul is a temp cause they decide to "kill him off" by which I mean, he pulls an FF4 scenario, except the reveal he's still alive is basically an epilogue in the ending showing him laying down casually on a rock, smiling at a sunset.
I will give points to Raul for one thing though.  When the game mentioned the Celestial Hero and the Hero of Wind being equal, I was actually expecting the Celestial Hero to be the villain, and the Hero of Wind, Zekart, was the true hero in the past, but didn't get credit for whatever reason, and would be integral to beating the Celestial Hero.  I was completely wrong too!  Its just a case of Zekart being even more bad ass and the one guy who can do stuff that Raul couldn't <_<

In battle? Swordsmen for Reith.  THIS IS VERY APPRECIATIVE, cause Swordsmen > all in this game.  He's a lot like Calintz, and his starting style is absolutely awesome.  Pity he's not a leader for most of the game, so he's much slower.  Eventually, when Reith leaves, he becomes the new leader, and thus, becomes much faster, so he's like the one character in the game who keeps up with Calintz.  What about when Calintz gets broken?  Well, by then Raul has already left the team, so there you go.

Serina: The person you THOUGHT was the Queen of the Yason the entire time, but was really filling in for Reith!  Basically, she pretends to be strong, but is rather weak willed, and untrusting or something until Reith comes to her senses and eases her pain.  Uh, yeah, its fucked up.  She's Reith's younger sister and was put in a dungeon cause its what is typical of the Royal Family to do with their younger siblings...no, I really don't get this plot, I might just have to read this script again.  In any event, she replaces Reith in all ways...including becoming Calintz's love interest.  That was a neat angle, I guess, that Calintz is forced to protect the person who was effectively standing against the Alliance the entire time, only cause Reith, who was the REAL Queen that he should rightfully hate as well, wanted it so...maybe?  I don't know, this is fucking Magna Carta writing.

In battle?  When I said "She replaces Reith in all ways" I'm not kidding.  She's identical to Reith in every way, down to stats and moves learned.  She's the same deal as Lavitz -> Albert and Shana -> Miranda.  The one difference is she joins with one extra style that Reith didn't have, to make her seem to be a different character.  Oh, one thing she does have going for her is being in the final battle with Calintz!  She also gets OHKOed in that fight and thus is useless so <_<

Orha: Calintz's Yason Rival, one of the "Four Warriors" of bad assness, the typical AntiVillain character, what have you.  He's a good guy and loyal...just to the wrong side.  Now, HE'S a cliche.  The one interesting thing they did with him was how despite him being clearly the most loyal and benevolent guy, Serina, when she's pretending to be Queen Amelia, starts to doubt him, and claims that the two guys who are actually planning an uprising are better.  Yes, you read that right, it basically goes like this:

Amelia: Orha, I am displeased with your actions! I've heard rumors you're planning an uprising!
Orha: What? No! I've been nothing but loyal!  I swear!  Its those two Azhadi and Carian!  They're always talking in secret and I think they're planning something!
Amelia: Nonsense! Compared to you, those two are perfectly loyal!  They're the ones who informed me that you might be starting an uprising.
Orha: I'm sorry, your majesty, I will work my hardest to prove these rumors false!
Amelia: You should be thankful there's no proof of this, and you best not do anything suspicious!

And go figure, Azhadi and Carian are the ones conspiring with Neikan, the game's villain, and the game makes it obvious too pretty early, but I guess that's a dramatic irony thing.

IN BATTE? Orha is a super temp of sorts.  He plays in 3 fights, and his style has one move, but its equivalent to high end moves of other styles, so all that matters its one element.  Two fights are just kind of joke fights.  The 3rd one he's in? Its an actual boss, where you WOULD have only two characters (Serina and Rianna.)  He hits hard enough, durable, high leveled, and has moderate speed, so yeah, he worked.  Certainly less painful than the boss before him where you had to rely on Haren for damage (Eonis and Justina were your other PCs...said boss is a magic tank as well, so Eonis can't do shit.)  The fight before that?  You had Azel, so wasn't too bad (late game, he gets access to Raul's starting style, which is one of the best in the game go figure, so he ends up being as good as Raul, which aint bad.)  So yeah, he turned what could be a pain in the ass boss into a mere repetitive beat up -> Heal -> restore chi match.

NPCS TIME!

Azhadi: One of the Four Warriors!  He's Kefkaya Blight.  His most stand out thing is his line in battle "I'll gut you like a fish!"  and he likes to spin.  Also has a familiar of a succubus.  He's one of the two conspirators.

Carian: Token Sexy Female Henchman of the Quartet.  And by sexy, I mean "she's suppose to be hot, but isn't" in this case.  The other Conspirator, she's the sane one given Azhadi is...yeah, I already said what he is.

Roxy: Every Quartet of Henchman under the villains works under a formula, and this game is no different with the four warriors.  There's always one guy who is the Antivillain, honorable, and possibly defects to your side; that's Orha.  There's the psycho madman, whose Azhadi, and the seductive witch in Carian.  Then there's always that wild card 4th, which is usually the one who just sort of dies somewhere along the way.  That's Roxy.  She's a ditzy girl who can summon a really big freaking Behemoth as her familiar.  She was responsible for the death of Haren's fuckbuddy too.  She ultimately ends up sacrificing herself cause she's secretly in love with Orha, and thus, challenges Carian and an army of Blast Worms (main force of the Yason) so Orha and Serina can escape.

Lehas: Calintz's fanservice secretary.  Very much the super serious character who gets all the paper work done while Calintz does the mercenary missions. She ends up dying on Calintz's birthday, right after making him a huge dinner, cause one of the 3 Evil Guys who are running the show attacks the Tears of Blood HQ in order to get Reith while Calintz was away...and said guy also killed Lehas' general friend back when she use to be a soldier.  Its suppose to be sad, but MAGNA CARTA WRITING.
It did lead to a scenario of Calintz blowing up in Reith's face for actually understandable reasons (losing a friend and she was indirectly responsible, with that level of emotions, people actually don't think things out rationally, so I actually wasn't bothered by it)

Rostin: He's Chris' dad, and best summed up as "Apple doesn't fall far from the tree."  Well, he's the tree.  The one difference between him and Chris is Rostin is a lazy bum.

Sdei: Some guy who was accused of being Half Yason, but they couldn't prove it, and Reith, Rianna and Justina saved! Go figure, he actually is half Yason, and is the Butcher of Hargen, the guy who killed Lehas' role model General, and later Lehas herself.  Reith and co. end up killing him, since she feels responsible for letting him live, and all that.  Basically, he seems like a bit of a bumbling idiot but is actually a total douche, woot!  also one of the evil trinity.

Astal: Rianna's Husband, and half Yason.  Basically, his back story is he went to Fuget, which is where Calintz grew up, and met him there.  Calintz told him all about Fuget and how its protected, cause he was acting friendly to him and such.  After Calintz told him this, days later, Astal steals the object, and causes the Yason to basically kill everyone there.  Calintz would have died if Zekart, the bad ass Hero of Wind who is supposedly equal to Raul, but is actually about far better, wasn't in the general vicinity, and saved his ass.  He is one of the evil trio and what not, but is the guy who wants to pull a fast one on Neikan, the leader, cause he can't find himself agreeing with unleashing the Magna Carta and all that.  It turns out due to all the shit he pulled in the past, betrayal, and what not, he ends up revealing his grand "I was trying to help everyone, I'm sorry for my idiocy in the past!"  plan as he dies, and tells your team some important factors that lead to the next plot arc, yay!

Mistress Ladrine: High Priestess of Temple of Amabat, aka where all Blue Mages train or something.  Your typical HOLIER THAN THOU priest character who isn't evil in anyway.  She does do a few questionable actions, but they were all in good faith, its just she had to keep them under the rug so others couldn't find out (like she used magic to make two soldiers look like Yason to act as spies, but since no one knew about this, the two were treated as Yason as the spell didn't wear off fast enough, so Calintz almost killed them.)  She's also General Agreian's Mother!  By which I mean she's not really, but actually Calintz's mother. 

Essentially, Calintz and Agreian, when they were Mano and Hugo (they changed their names) were best friends when they were younger, Calintz having a bit of an inferiority complex to Hugo who kept beating him (they were raised in Fuget Dojo, hence sword fighting was the norm), but that's an aside.  Eventually, to show signs of friendship, they each gave each other a precious object; Hugo gave Calintz a special knife, Calintz gave him this bracelet, being that's the only thing he had.  It turns out that bracelet was proof of his relationship to Mistress Ladrinne, and Agreian took advantage of this.  How come she wouldn't recognize her own son?  Cause Calintz and Agreian just both happen to have White Hair and are exceptionally effeminate in appearance!  Also she probably never even saw Calintz since he was like 3 or something. 

...yeah, I think I'll move on...

General Agreian: Ok, when I first saw him, I said "...yeah, this guy is evil.  White Haired Bishie who holds a sword, and isn't the main, *AND* has a high standing in the alliance? No way is he good!"  And low and behold, he's Neikan, the most evil of the trinity, and the final boss, whoo!  He's also Calintz's best friend when they were younger, when he was called Hugo.  He didn't recognize Calintz at first (despite Calintz knowing Agreian for like 5 years due to Tears of Blood), until Calintz was forced to be put in jail for an action he didn't do, and was attacked by Astal, and this made Calintz drop his that knife, which Agreian recognized instantly.  From here, Agreian's all buddy buddy with Calintz, cause of past friendships and such.  For a while, I actually thought they were trying to turn Agreian into the "best friend who ultimately sacrifices self thing", and he was almost likable...but no, they just did "Yeah, I was just pretending to be nice! I'm really an evil fucker with unholy amounts of strength for no good reason! Watch as I kick Raul, the world's greatest hero's ass single handedly! I head desked when they pulled that aspect out of their asses.
OH, when he's Neikan, his portrait is a black silouhette, and he speaks entirely in "......" to Carian and Azhadi, so you don't know who he is!

In any event, he wants to release the Light of Salvation, destroy all Yason, take over the continent, etc.  He's just an evil prick pulling some massive Xanatos Roulettes.  His battle can be summed up as "Calintz uses Counter style, rips him in half.  Second fight!  He starts fight by taking off half of Calintz's HP cause you didn't have time to jump into counter style, and Serina dies too!  Calintz uses Counter style! You win like 10 minutes later cause he has high HP and the big moves all have complex animations, and the battle system is slow"

...yeah, I think that ends the rant.  I hope I didn't disappoint people.


And so, the game gets a 1/10.  No, not a 0.  It did a few things kind of barely right, so that already puts it ahead of stuff like Phantasy Star 1, or ADOM.  But its also like the most boring game ever...I can't stress that enough either...

I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND ANYONE PLAY THIS EVER.  IT TOOK ME NEARLY 80 HOURS TO BEAT THIS GAME!  CALLING THE GAME ;_; IN CHAT WAS DONE FOR A REASON.

If anyone is REALLY curious about the game, I can show you some of the fights at DLC4, just so you can taste about 5 minutes of the 79 hours I wasted on this game.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

So wait, it took you 79 hours and four screens of text to figure out it is an awful game?

[Yakumo]

Nah, he was bitching about it in chat nearly constantly.  He just for some reason refuses to stop playing bad games. <_<

[Meeplelard]

I like to finish things I start, even if it is absolutely atrocious.