Interdimensional Observer

I did.😄 ...Although I didn't play very much, stopped midway in the second battle, lack of sleep meant my eyes were struggling to stay open.🥱 I won't post screenshots right now, I don't have the energy for that. But I will make some comments.: First, I lingered on the title screen for several minutes. Too good.😁 ...The Japanese subtitle includes the word "Testament"? How ironic. That title screen, the way the light concentrates in the center, the angular lines, my brain and eyes wanted to visualize a golden Zohar in the dead center of it.😆 As for other remarks.: Expansion into space, space racism. Top notes of Gundam on my palette.😋 Visuals, 2001 was the GBA's launch year, and from glimpses that I've seen, original A released in the same wasn't exactly a looker. So, I forgive TFoM for any graphical primitiveness compared to J and OG2. Plot has to start with boy being thrusted into a giant robot in an emergency situation. Cliched as it gets, doubly so with an amnesia girl, but that's okay. ...The Fist of Mars has character, robot, and lore compendiums. Neither J nor OG2 did, how didn't they pick up on that if the GBA was capable of containing the extra text? I read all the glossary entries first thing, good idea to get acquainted with the world. Cage being extremely dependent on Ares, taking first notice of him when he was playing the piano. ...My brain began going "how does this not sound potentially gay?".😝 -But maybe it's a good thing they obviously aren't, because the War God smells strongly like best-friend-is-actually-enemy evil. Would make for an easy protagonist character arc having read their profile. Metatron is a metal... explains SMT's Metatron.😇 "Animus". Just a codeword derived from Jung, but, I Xenogiggled.😜 "Dreizehn" ...it's just a German number it says, yet it reminded me of a "Dreissen" Mobile Suit. Martian colonies are named after countries on Earth... No SRW, you don't have to bring back G for ZoE's debut.😛 Nadesico though, the Jovian massacre of Mars would have to be reduced, and Yurika's Trolley Problem modified. But if ZoE likes Mars, could be fun trying to mix things together otherwise. Combat... yep, it's SRW. Everything looks familiar.😀 Lack of Spirits? Eh. Yes they can be cheaty-strong, but their absence sounds like a blow to what the pilots themselves contribute to battle. Lack of counterattacking will slow things. Animations being so much more limited I'm fine with. I don't need SRW's magnificent excess in every mecha game I play. IPS? Not sure what this first-person perspective thing exactly does (presumably extra damage when attacking or a higher likelihood of dodging when attacked?). But, I see that it can be skipped, good for faster play than having it on all the time. Too soon to say anything about enjoyability really.😅

Do I? Sunrise? Might as well be the Sun itself, given how much of mechanime has revolved around them. I have been saying I've had no desire to play anything except Berseria. ...Except, I spent yesterday and the evening before that in a vortex of self-criticism😣, I didn't play anything as a result of that. I feel better today, but, do I smash the glass and take what would hopefully -given the original SRW developer made it- be a dose of guaranteed feel-goodness?🤔 I was planning on starting Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars after Berseria, as a palette cleanser before moving on to XC3. I wouldn't be altering my play schedule all that much. However, I know how I am. I've a record of leaving games unfinished for a while, or even forever, especially long JRPGs, I don't want to see Berseria suffer that fate. And if TFoM is so much like SRW, once I start, I probably won't stop until the credits roll.😆 Yet, I've almost 40 hrs in Berseria, surely I deserve to change it up; while the characters remain good, Tales gameplay does get dull going on for that long without anything to break the monotony. ...Overthinking and indecisiveness, as usual with me.😅

?

Yep. Wild remarks by their CEO aside, they seem like they're attempting a comeback after struggling for roughly the past decade. -Attempting, they haven't quite pulled it off yet, there has been delays.

It has been over a week, and only two critic reviews for Megaton Musashi. Is it too niche? Though last week was loaded with notable game releases, I think. The two reviews for Megaton are pretty positive however, I think I've nothing to fear about the quality, whenever I get it. (Grendizer alone of the five free crossover licensed mechs isn't in the game ATM though, so I heard, I'm curious why it wouldn't be.) Level-5 has been getting more attention in the past few days instead for its head honcho saying they'd like to go M-rated with a game. Which, given their output screams family-friendly looking at it, is jarring indeed. --- @Armagon https://www.thegamer.com/unicorn-overlord-interview-akiyasu-yamamoto/ Not much of an interview, but it does reveal there was the desire to have armor taking visible damage mid-battle in UO.

X-2 did feel budget. Not sure if the game would've been made in the present day, or if Square would've instead thrown together some kind of DLC scenario for those who wanted more Spira. To make my point, think of Tales. Symphonia got a sequel that feels pretty similar to X-2, with a limited budget and a story that -understandably since replicating the scope would be difficult- feels much smaller (and also budget -we don't see 6/8 Centurions). Graces got its future arc in the PS3 release, Xillia got Xillia-2. Zestiria and Arise... got DLC scenarios. The changeover I would hazard is the rising cost of game development, and that it took some time for Namco/Tales to get used to using DLC for more than cosmetics. Going back to Final Fantasy, XIII got two sequels, but that was still in the DLC transitory era for Japanese developers, perhaps. XV and XVI were created with DLC scenarios instead, and there was probably no discussion of doing something else. I think that nowadays, you need a really distinctive idea to justify an independent direct sequel to a grand JRPG*, the costs otherwise deter against it. *Excluding JRPGs whose stories are customarily broken into parts, aka Trails. However, I get some sense that Nihon Falcom might be beginning to regret their decision to prolong Zemuria like this maybe that's why they're blowing up the planet at the end of the next game. Another exception could be made for RPGs whose bigness assures enough sales to recoup the costs of a non-DLC direct sequel, meaning- FFVIIR. For what else could I mean? -But Square might be harboring some regrets themselves on that decision, as it seems that while Rebirth didn't sell badly, it left them with concern. I guess some in the industry are only now finding out that what works for books, doesn't exactly work for video games. The Wheel of Time is 14 books of pure fantasy, but all you needed was an author and some paper & pens/a computer for that. Video games of the same scope require programmers and designers of various kinds at a minimum, far more expensive. ...With this in mind, if Tetsuya Takahashi had conceived of the idea of Xenosaga in the year 2024 instead of 1999, it would've been dead at conception. Namco would never have had the chance to kill it. I can't see how a space opera of that episodic ambition could've been financed to completion even at a AA-level. (Well, okay, maybe it could, because Falcom, but it would be a financially-unwise endeavor.) Yes, Monolith did retroactively turn Xenoblade into continuous series, but it wasn't intended until XC2. And even then, XC2 is pretty much a standalone story, and so I've heard without any detail I'd find out myself right now, but Berseria is occupying that play slot the same can be said of pre-DLC XC3. In the present moment, I feel like the video game industry is likely inhospitable to multi-part stories should I prepare a rectangular tombstone for X2 then?.

I didn't realize the bossman was hiring them for other things.😆 -My point was that, IIRC, she couldn't stop dancing. Reason enough to stick her to basic attire outside of combat. And speaking of changing attire, the opening sequence with "Yuna" going from her summoner robes to Songstress... like going from the Madonna✝️ to Madonna🎤. -I'm not judging the tonal shift from X to X-2 though.

No, that was Galuf. I didn't actually play that far into X-2, but I think I recall what happened to Yuna after the battle while wearing the Songstress Dressphere... Mine was Tactics Advance I believe. I would die happy never seeing another snowball fight in my life.😛 You mean the mandatory massage minigame?😜

V wasn't Charlie's Angels + Magical Girls + Too Many Minigames.😛 ...But yeah, they're both ATB and class-based. I was also reading just today comparisons between X-2 and XIII, since the former introduced the idea of mid-battle class-swapping. You could say the concept got refined, as changing classes in battle were rather unnecessary in X-2, while knowing when to swap between healing & turtling, buffing, and going on offense was a big deal in XIII.

The whole thing? Just happen to be in the mood for that? Let me go through the mainlines.: Turn-based. Very basic class system. Turn-based. Ditched classes and traditional EXP for a "gain by doing" system that the SaGa franchise would later build itself around. Turn-based. Improved class system compared to FF1. ATB-based. The very first ATB game. Your 100% fixed-role characters are in continual story rotation for much of the game. ATB-based. Improved class system compared to FF3 (easily the best gameplay in the SNES trio). ATB-based. Every character gets one fixed ability -of varying degrees of useful/lessness- as basically their only real form of (non-equipment) character uniqueness. Magicite is sorta proto-Materia, IMO. ATB-based. Limit Breaks are the only distinctions between characters, as Materia homogenizes even more than Magicite did. ATB-based. Again, Limit Breaks are the primary character distinction. Guardian Forces and Junctions replace Materia, and likewise make for samey -"flexible" would be the positive way to put it- characters. ATB-based. Characters each have a fixed role again (e.g. thief, black mage). Limit Breaks are replaced by Trance mode. Turn-based. Limit Breaks are back. The Sphere Gird is the new level-up system. The Expert version of the Sphere Grid allows for some character flexibility, but the Standard version more or less assigns everyone to fixed roles until the late/endgame. X-2: ATB-based. A class system with in-battle class-changing via Dresspheres. MMO, wouldn't know. ATB-based. A poor man's proto-Xenoblade. Well, that's how it felt to me personally, long after its initial release. I'd say it's rather "micromanagement-oriented", since Gambits let you decide what the AI will do and when in fine detail. Has the License Board system to determine character progression, which later editions of the game refined into a "class" system. -One that I'm not very fond of, because, magic access aside, the primary difference between classes is equipment options, lame. The handful of non-magic command skills are usually very situational, which is very boring. ATB-based. A class system where everyone gets three primary role options out of six, which you can rotate between mid-battle. Feels very "macromanagement-oriented", in direct contrast to FF12. Here, you usually let the AI choose what skills to use, and simply pick which enemy/ally your controlled character should target and when the in-battle situation demands you make everyone swap classes for one reason or another. ...I stopped at XIII. Didn't play any either of its sequels. The SNES-PS1 era was consistently ATB, and similar enough to each other. After that, I'd say the games become more different.

Only Therion no. 7 is left to find. Once that happens, it'll be time to the bad guys to inevitably pull off some great act of villainy that changes everything for the worse. Let's get that over with. Speaking of getting over things, I didn't care to see one of my least favorite schticks used for the plot around Therion no. 6, I skipped a couple scenes there.😑 And... Whatever the case, I'm nearing the 40 hour marker. I haven't played anything else to change it up, and I don't intend to.😅 A meaty, story-heavy JRPG always give me either something that pulls me into wanting to continue the plot, or pushing me out of/over a bad moment therein. The idea of taking a break for something else, especially another story-heavy game, feels like it'd ruin the flow.

Really? Feels more like it's tacked on (not helped by the terrible narration when Part 2 concludes sounding like an actually-lame marketing ploy). Plus, Part 3 Ike Side is more an ensemble cast that happens to include him, than actually being about him, I would say. And in the scope of the entire game, the amount of time spent on IvM is pretty small. Shifting perspectives/storylines, narrative ambition aplenty (I know, too much), that's more what define RD to me. -But again, my FE bias is for Tellius.😆 Narratively/character-wise, my attachment to the franchise slowly began to die for newer games after that, which is my fault, not the games'. More like "dependent", methinks. Like, it's Azelle, Lewyn, or bust with her (Claud has Mag, yet neither Forseti nor Pursuit and Arthur can't use staffs). Lex I guess for Vantage-Wrath is okay too. She's got no Pursuit, and her not-high Mag growth is I guess kept from not being too bad by the fact enemy Res is usually very low. I insist that Tailtiu by a landslide is the mother whose kids are the most liable to being ruined by a bad choice of father. Seliph aside, the game seems opposed to personal unions in general. And even with Seliph, Belhalla is okay but he can't have Chalphy too? How dare Oifey get in the way of the God-King of Jugdral like this! Holsety was younger and held a higher level of good will and sympathy for the humans compared to other dragons. If he had the chance, he would even reside at Jugdral and protect the humans there. However, he was convinced by Narga that it was silly to stay, so he had no choice but to return to Akaneia. Still, his passion and will was inherited strongly within the wind magic tome Holsety. For this reason, the humans who inherit the Holsety tome inherit Holsety’s will as well as his power. From here on SF. ...Forseti doesn't seem very loving to humanity if you ask me. Maybe he's a "likes humanity in the mass, not so much the individual" kind of person. The kind of person you call to help stop the extermination/enslavement of your species, but not have brunch with.

@Armagon https://www.koeitecmo.co.jp/e/ir/docs/ir3_20240430_e.pdf -The pdf says 120k globally for MaRiemake. Minuscule, but I doubt this could truly be called a flop, as it probably wasn't very expensive to make, sticking with the chibi direction. Will Koei/Gust keep going with "preservation remakes" after this (at least to the end of Salburg)? IDK. So, planned lategame abruptness? They didn't surprise surprise suddenly realize they were running out of space. They chose to keep certain things, even if it meant something would have to get shafted. And, proceeded to consciously decide to frontload finite resource allocation, perhaps thinking it'd be better for overall player enjoyment if it was done this way?

*Plot event concludes and FIVE skits follow, AGAIN!*😵 ...I like skits, I like writing, my tiny imagination couldn't possibly create a tenth of what I've beheld. And yet, presented like this, I'm oversaturated. Almost 30 hours in, if Berseria can be divided into three acts, I presume the second will finish whenever the Therion hunt does. So even after all the setbacks/changes that one couldn't possibly see in the game itself, Mana 2 still had to experience ingame curtailments? I wasn't expecting that.😐 Me being a person of self-interest, it's the A/AA Japanese-styled RPGs that now won't be made that catch my interest. I didn't buy Valkyrie Elysium, or Harvestella (I am still considering the latter, on sale, sometime down the road when the backlog isn't as full), particularly because of the lukewarm reviews. Yet, these business changes almost absolutely assure that there won't be a "Harvestella 2" that could've, having taken feedback and worked on developing their place in the farming sim-JRPG hybrid genre, ended up being a 8/10 or the like. And, I guess I see there being something in a A/AA title being made/published by a big name, that's different from the same idea, but carried out by a small dev without big backing.

You've NEVER started writing, only days later, to hit a certain roadblock? -When you REALLY want to include Idea A, but, upon pages and pages of detail, come to the realization that you're struggling to see a "natural, reasonable" way of reconciling Idea A with Ideas B and C? You do see that you might be able to make B and C work, if you amended them, which sounds reasonable. But then, you think "if I change B and C in such & such a way, I'll need to make 50 other fine adjustments", all of which in turn will need to be checked against each other as well as A, B, C, and everything else to assure logical coherence. And, witnessing the immensity of the challenge of retaining A yet STUBBORNLY refusing to drop it, finding the pleasure of writing having reversed into a real headache, you throw your hands up in the air and forsake your solemn insistence on "naturalness" and exclaim the artificiality of all creative fiction. Then, to bury your frustration in a shallow grave, you write "A unicorn did it!", or whatever utter awful nonsense it is that others will come harpoon you for, but they do not understand the Sisyphean hell you were desperate to escape from. *COUGH!*😝 ...Well, I disagree that it's all of Part 3. Five out of the first six chapters are basically unaffected by the Blood Pact (and if Kilvas simply hadn't joined in the first place, it P3 would be pretty much the same as Naesala's factual BP-induced betrayal). The lava caves, the two Crimea-related chapters, neither is really affected by the BP. 3-2, 3-6, 7, 11-F are all BP-heavy; that's 7/15, only half. Although, it just so happens 4 of the 6 are the last chapters of Part 3, and necessary to trigger Part 4.