#bc it's a prologue chapter and it's setting up a bunch of stuff but it doesn't directly show anything mentioned in the summary | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shipaholic · 4 years

Text

Omens Universe, Chapter 1 Part 1

And here’s 600 years later. Gem powers activate!

Link to next part at the end.

---

(Prologue)

Chapter 1

3404 BC

Aziraphale pushed a hanging tree branch out of his face with a stick. All around, the sun baked the leaves to a gentle crisp. While angels didn’t sweat, his curls were perhaps a little frizzier than usual. He had been out here all day, wandering around the wooded savanna and poking the trees on the chance something would fall out of them. This was as much work as he felt equipped to do.

It wasn’t fair, sending him in unarmed. The main problem was that as far as Heaven knew, he was still in possession of a flaming sword. His stick was a poor knock-off; the best you could say was that it was at least flammable.

The branch swung back into his face. The angel frowned at it until it sidled out of the way, looking sheepish.

A voice from above said, “Is that a permitted use of a miracle, angel? Tree-shaming?”

Aziraphale jumped back and squinted into the canopy. “Reveal yourself, demon,” he said, without enthusiasm.

A pair of golden eyes blinked back at him, followed by a flicker of forked tongue.

“Oh, it’s you.” Aziraphale relaxed. “I see you’re a snake again.”

Crawly yawned, which in his current form was very impressive. “Why veer from a classic, I say.”

“It’s got you plenty of attention, I’ll say that much.”

“Oh yes, the apple thing. Still can’t believe Satan got all the glory.”

“Imagine, the Prince of Lies taking credit for someone else’s work.”

“Point taken.” Crawly slithered to the end of his branch. His long neck [1] glowed and then extended several feet to be closer to Aziraphale. The angel tried not to look perturbed. All angels and demons could shape-shift, but he found it unsettling.

“Is that your form… permanently, or are you still human-shaped most of the time?” he asked.

Crawly uncoiled from his branch and dropped to the forest floor like a silk rope unwinding. The serpent glowed, a ribbon of white among the leaves, and shifted back into a man.

Aziraphale had forgotten Crawly was an inch taller than him. His clothes had changed again since Eden - an ankle-length linen tunic with a waist tie, and a headdress covering his long hair. He must have been discorporated at least once more since they’d last met.

“Still not convinced, to be honest,” the demon said. He held out his bare arms and frowned at them. “Might just go snake full-time. It’s switching between them that’s the bugger. Always worried I’ll forget how to shape-shift back.”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. “Can that happen?”

Crawly looked pleased, for some reason. “Ah - no. But I have an irrational fear that it will. I call it a ‘pho-bia’. I invented it,” he said, proudly.

Aziraphale didn’t see the point, and said so.

“No, no, it’s brilliant. Filling the world with useless things for humans to get upset about. It’s very demonic. I might get a second commendation out of it.”

Aziraphale didn’t even have one commendation. He said, a little stiffly, “But you’ve given yourself a… foe-beer. That can’t be very enjoyable.”

“It’s awful,” Crawly said, smugly. “That’s how I know I’ve done well.”

Aziraphale decided it wasn’t worth his while to argue. “Well. Congratulations.” He began to sidle away. He could probably find more trees to poke.

Crawly did not take the hint. He began to stroll side by side with Aziraphale. “I take it we’re both here on the same mission?”

Aziraphale eyed him. “I don’t know. You seemed to be taking a nap up a tree.”

“Surveillance,” the demon said, breezily. “I saw you coming a mile off. That’s a very nice stick. I hope Heaven gave you their best stick to replace the flaming sword you gave away. Got to admit, I wouldn’t want to swing a fiery blade around a forest. Might set the whole thing alight. Bit of a double-edged…” Crawly snapped his fingers, irritated. “Er. Thing.”

Aziraphale had forgotten how chatty the demon was.

“So,” Crawly said. He managed to imbue the syllable with a lot of meaning. “What have your people told you about -?” He did something significant with his eyebrows.

Aziraphale sighed. “Look, even if we were here for the same reason, which I cannot confirm, there is absolutely no chance I would share confidential intelligence with a demon.”

“Mmm. Fair enough.” Crawly walked by Aziraphale’s side in silence for approximately three steps. “I heard that one of your lot shagged a human and now a bunch of us are down here looking for its unholy offspring.”

So much for avoiding that PR nightmare. “Holy offspring, I think you’ll find.”

Crawly gave a triumphant, “Hah!”

“I’d ask for your discretion, but…”

The demon grinned. Aziraphale didn’t dignify his sentence by finishing it.

“Mind you, it’s not exactly fair to the poor bugger,” said Crawly. “The forces of Heaven and Hell descending on it - ascending, in my side’s case. Must have no idea what’s going on. It’s probably spent its whole life thinking it’s just a big human with a few extra pairs of eyes or something. Any idea what your people have in store for it?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “I imagine the first order of business is to confirm that the creature even exists. I’m not personally aware who… er, sired it. Apparently the culprit has gone to ground [2]. I haven’t been upstairs for a few centuries or I might know who it is.”

“They’re calling it a ‘Nephilim’,” Crawly said. “Means ‘giant’.”

Aziraphale glanced from side to side. The trees were thinning out. “I rather hope I don’t find it,” he confessed.

Crawly waved a hand. “You’ll be fine. You’ve got a stick.”

Aziraphale looked at his stick. It wasn’t even pointy.

He moved fractionally closer to Crawly.

“Ah. Perhaps, if we’re combining our efforts, it would be good of you to manifest your weapon?”

“Mmmm.” Crawly suddenly was interested in looking at a distant point off in the trees.

Aziraphale waited. The demon continued to act as if he hadn’t heard. “I said -”

“Yes, yes,” Crawly snapped. “I’d love to.”

Another pause.

“...Are you going to?”

“Don’t have one,” the demon said, all in a rush. “Stop asking.”

Aziraphale stared in a manner he would have had to admit was rude. The only angels made without weapons were at the very bottommost rung in Heaven. Celestial typists and coffee-fetchers, essentially. [3] Even the ones who were mass-produced in the last throes of the War got something you could lob, slice or stab with.

“My dear fellow - I beg your pardon -”

The demon moved like a whip. His nose almost touched Aziraphale’s; his breath was hot and hissing on the angel’s face. Behind him, his wings unfurled with a fwump and filled Aziraphale’s peripheral vision. The angel felt like a mouse getting its last glimpse before the snake’s jaws snapped tight.

“Do not. Beg. My pardon. Under any circumstances.”

Crawly’s golden eyes, at this distance, blurred into a single sun. Aziraphale, who had fared well in the African sunshine all day, felt a prickle of sweat.

“Quite so,” he stammered. “I meant no offence. Please forgive me.”

A pin could have dropped in the stillness [4]. Crawly slowly backed up so he could glare at the angel from a less intimidating distance.

“You don’t need my forgiveness. Go back upstairs, there’s a limitless supply of the stuff.”

He strode away, wings whipping like a cloak.

Then he took in the same thing as Aziraphale, and stopped dead.

The woods had entirely thinned out. They were in a clearing of tree stumps that had been sliced through so cleanly you could measure them with a slide-rule. Their tops looked lightly cooked, as if they had not just been severed but cauterised.

A young human stood in the middle of the felled trees. She held an enormous blade over her head. It was the kind of weapon that excitable types gave names to like Kingslayer, or Bane of the Damned. To say it was enormous was incorrect; if it was possible to take the concept of enormous and square it, that would be closer. It glowed like an electric coil and hummed an ethereal whine. It shone with the bright, clean light of Heaven.

The teenage girl holding it was the same size as the blade. She had frozen midway through swinging it at another tree. Her eyes were huge as she stared at Crawly and his open wings.

In the middle of her forehead was a glimmering gemstone. Aziraphale recognised it. He knew the angel it belonged to.

He swallowed. They’d found the Nephilim.

“Be not afraid,” he began.

The human screamed and ran towards them.

Crawly decided his wings had got him into this mess and they could damn well get him out. He took to the air so fast he left a demon-shaped afterimage. Aziraphale threw up his clenched right fist. The ring on his smallest finger glowed, and a shield extended from it.

The human barrelled into the shield face-first. She bounced off it and came back with her fist swinging. Her knuckles cracked against the shield with a noise like a wooden xylophone being struck. She seemed uninterested in using her blade, which came as a huge relief to the angel.

The Nephilim turned red in the face as she swung at Aziraphale over and over. The angel awkwardly parried, unsure whether it was a good idea to fight back. So far, this was the level of combat he felt comfortable with.

Crawly flapped cautiously back in range. He hovered behind the human’s head.

“I don’t know why, but I thought you’d be good at fighting,” he said.

Aziraphale was panting slightly. He gave himself a stern reminder that he didn’t need to breathe.

“I mean, they made you a guard. Gave you a flaming sword, for Hell’s sake.” The demon drifted sideways to keep pace as the fight inched to the right.

Aziraphale didn’t know how to explain that his job in Eden was to guard two humans with the trusting nature of toddlers. In fact, there would exist no words to put his role into context until the job of ‘mall cop’ got invented.

“Any chance you could lend a hand?” he asked, testily.

“With what?”

The angel lobbed his stick at him. He heard cursing and gathered it had smacked Crawly in the face, but he seemed to have managed to grab it all the same.

The Nephilim was tiring; her punches came in slower. Aziraphale saw an opportunity for diplomacy. “My dear. Would it not be easier to sit down and discuss this?”

“You are with this devil!” the girl panted. Her dialect was from one of the local villages. Aziraphale wracked his brains trying to recall the grammar. “You’ve come to take me to Hell!”

“Don’t look at me. I didn’t tell her,” Crawly muttered.

She did seem rather well up on what their plans were, Aziraphale had to admit. Or at least Crawly’s plans. Obviously Heaven’s intentions were benign, whatever they turned out to be.

“I assure you, I have no ties to Hell.” The girl aimed another punch at him; Aziraphale raised his shield to block it, but they were both just going through the motions by this point. Perhaps he should cut to the chase. “Actually, I’m an emissary of Heaven. That’s where I’m trying to take you.” He said it in the tones of one offering a trip to a magic chocolate factory.

The Nephilim lowered her fist, but tightened her grip on the scythe-axe. “You want to... take me to Heaven?” Terror dawned on her face. “You’re going to kill me?”

“Er…” said the angel. Heaven had been very vague on the subject.

The Nephilim stepped back. Aziraphale’s heart lifted, until she hefted the battleaxe and he realised she was just taking a run-up. She yelled, a throbbing desperate cry, and rushed him.

Aziraphale had time to wonder if discorporation was going to hurt.

The blade clanged down on his shield and Aziraphale splintered like a pane of glass.

---

[1] Basically all of him.

[2] Which really means something for an angel.

[3] Celestial coffee is served at 10,000 degrees and must be extracted from a neutron star, so in fairness, this is quite an important job.

[4] Displacing any angels hypothetically dancing on it.

---

(Chapter 1, Part 2)

#omens universe fic #omens universe #good omens #steven universe #good omens fic #you can tell it's early days because Aziraphale lets Crowley win an argument #and Crowley lets Aziraphale get beaten up #ok lol in his defence:#they're not friends yet #only Aziraphale has any capabilities of self-defence #and Crowley's still touchy because Aziraphale dissed his manhood errr weapon-summoning ability

5 notes · View notes

humm-plays-fe · 4 years

Text

Some concluding thoughts about NG VW on Maddening, Pt. 2: Battle time

From my previous post, I had a rough plan in place for duoing the game with Byleth and Claude, despite having not beat maddening before even with NG+, let alone without it. I’ll split up how battles went and the strategies I employed into 5 categories: early game, midgame, endgame, paralogues, and troublesome. Chapter breakdowns below the break.

Final Thoughts:

I honestly don’t know if I think this was overall easier or harder than training a standard team. On one hand, it was refreshing to only have to worry mainly about 2 units and once the avoid ball got rolling they were almost invincible. The months between story battles went by quickly because I only needed to focus on training one unit; the others I just left on their default goals. I was able to use most of my points on training Byleth to get onto a pegasus ASAP or cook stat-boosting dishes to help with the early chapters instead of having a bunch of meals.

The problem with this is that that ball doesn’t really pick up speed until chapters 15/16 and the chapters immediately preceding these were some of the roughest in the game to the point that I wasn’t even sure I would be able to beat them. I only got through ch. 6 because I had happened to have recruited Shamir and Cathrine. Sure all the exp got funneled into two units but because it falls off fast once you hit a certain level threshold above the enemy I do feel like that wasted exp could have trained up a third or fourth unit easily.

All that being said even with all the stat boosters I poured into both Claude and Byleth (by the end they both had reasonable def and Byleth had decent res) if they had actually ever gotten hit they still would have died very easily. With the enemy density and maddening’s tendency to have the enemy AI start mobbing and along with the annoying enemy skill sets (swordmasters have QR, wtf) I don’t know that I actually could have found it within myself to keep an entire roster going. So, despite certain hair-pulling scenarios, I almost feel like I cheesed NG maddening. But I did beat it, and I got the title screen, and that’s all that matters to me. And yes, I S-supported Claude at the end.

Feel free to ask me any questions about the run I don’t really have anyone else to talk to about this stuff.

TL;DR for Chapter Breakdowns:

Early Game: a bit of a challenge but fair

Midgame: build is coming together but most of the Troublesome chapters are here and they feel pretty bs when you try and lowman them. Get past those and you’re fine.

Endgame: Easy peasy. AS+ ftw.

Early Game (Prologue + Ch. 1-4)

You would think that the first few chapters would be the most difficult. In a way that’s kinda right. I’m pretty sure these chapters took the most turns out of most of the rest of the story maps.

Prologue wasn’t too difficult, stole Dimitri and Edelgard’s weapons and then used them as meat shields.

Ch. 1: Three Houses - I used whatever I could get here. While I tried to get kills with only Claude or Byleth I definitely used the other students to chip as much as possible or even get a kill or two just to get through the map. I distributed the DLC statboosters before this and Byleth got the movement shoes, which was exceedingly helpful for the entire game.

Ch. 2: Familiar Scenery - this is where the real game starts. The hardest bit of this map is getting through the initial waves of enemies. I brought Lysithea and Marianne for heals and some magic chip if neccessary. Even with healing spells, well, Marianne only has 5 casts atm, so this is where the vulnerary chugging starts. Took a while but not too bad.

Ch. 3: Mutiny in the Mist - I uh, didn’t exactly bother buying torches for this map. Still brought Lysithia (who had heal now) and Marianne (who got physic). I had already accepted the probably inevitability of Cathrine’s squaddies getting bonked (and one did on like turn 2) but after following them across the bottom of the map and then up toward Lonato somehow the other one survived and I got the rewards.

Ch. 4: The Goddess’s Rite of Rebirth - Honestly pretty simple. While this map does have a 25 turn limit the enemies don’t swarm you so I just made my way up the left side with healers in tow and killed the boss. Easy enough. At this point Claude was an archer and thus had better range, but not quite enough speed for Alert Stance to do a whole lot yet.

Midgame (Ch. 6-8, 10, 11)

About the time Alert Stance and Alert Stance+ start to become viable tactics and I don’t need to bring Marianne and Lysithea along to every map. You might notice some skipped chapters. Those get listed as troublesome. At some pont in these I ended up with a Prayer Ring and a Goddess Ring. Both Byleth and Claude had one equipped at basically all times.

Ch. 6: Rumors of a Reaper - I’d list this as troublesome but my failure the first time playing the map was mostly due to me being dumb. I’d forgotten you don’t get your lord this chapter and you have a 25 turn limit to either kill every enemy except the Death Knight (DK) or kill DK. Lemme just say that it is not possible to do either of those things with just Byleth (who was a pegasus knight by this point), at least the way I had played it wasn’t. Lucky me I had both Shamir and Cathrine in my army and because this was the earliest you could get them their stats were enough to take the right side of the map with Lysithea along for heals while Byleth took the right with Marianne for heals. Shamir was well-deserved MVP of this map mostly for sniper range and crits. Took 24 turns to clear.

Ch. 7: Field of the Eagle and Lion - ...I kinda just hung out on the upper edges of enemy ranges on the map and let the other two go at each other? Then once the density decreased a little moving in to start enemy phasing. I’m fairly convinced that as long as you’re the last house standing you win regardless since it definitely didn’t feel like I beat more enemies than the other two. Didn’t really care since I didn’t expect to be using the Blessed Lance that much.

Ch. 8: The Flame in the Darkness - Easy enough. Byleth flew down the right side and Claude took left. Saved all the villagers. Solon actually moves toward DK here so I kinda rushed the end. Ended up with dismounted Byleth in a bush next to Solon waiting and spamming healing while Claude came to bail her out bc she couldn’t one-round Solon.

Ch. 10: Where the Goddess Dwells - More wait spam. Just took a lot of turns thanks to the beasts.

Ch. 11: Throne of Knowledge - Hunter’s Volley’d the Flame Emperor on turn 3 to keep the crest stones safe. The rewards are not worth it, should have killed more stuff for exp.

Endgame (Ch. 15-22)

Yes I skipped a bunch of chapters. Yes there’s a reason for that. At this point builds and class goals are fully achieved and I can basically spam the “Wait” command to win the game. Even with forged training lances and bows. As I got to around this point I stopped exploring as much outside of monthly tea and focused on the extra auxiliary battles for exp and the stat boosters. I’m not gonna chapter-by-chapter break these down because the strat was basically set. Move, wait, repeat until near boss, kill boss. The only exception to this being Grondor 2, where I yet again just let the enemy destroy each other before cleaning up what was left.

Paralogues

These fall into 2 categories: A: Kill boss/perform goal ASAP, or B: slowly kill the entire map while the required but definitely underleveled and useless required units follow you around trying not to die. The approach depends on how easy it is to protect said units. I didn’t complete every paralogue I had access too as I deemed the rewards either not worth the hassle or the map to be basically impossible with my setup.

Rumored Nuptials (Dorothea/Ingrid): Approach B. Byleth was able to zoom over to reinforcement man pretty quickly and then it was a slow slog through the map the scoop up the exp. 66 turns, probably the longest I spent on any map. Got Luin out of it which Byleth could use if I needed some extra oomph.

Land of the Golden Deer (Lorenz): Approach A. Stride + peg knight = turn 1 dead boss. Lysithia get Thrysus and as a result saves my butt later.

Oil and Water (Hanneman & Manuela): Approach B, but with a side of frantic for the first few turns as I raced to take out the enemies nearest Manuela, particularly the peg knights. Not sure the batallions you get are worth doing it but I got exp.

The Forgotten (Sylvain): Approach B after sniping out the speedwing thief. Didn’t care too much about the rest of them. Lance of Ruin goes to Byleth for when nothing else will get the job done.

Tales of the Red Canyon (Sothis): Approach B, except this was mostly Byleth flying around out of the birds’ ranges leaving Claude to basically avo tank solo the entire thing. More Divine Pulse (defo needed) and the knowledge gem which goes to Byleth to have equipped when she doesn’t need the Goddess Ring.

An Ocean View (Seteth and Flayn): Approach B except both Seteth and Flayn are capable of helping out. Seteth has enough stats to not die and Flayn can heal. Spear of Assal gets added to the ever-increasing list of badass weapons Byleth can just whip out of the convoy when needed.

Death Toll (Ignatz and Raphael): Approach A. Takes a few turns to get to get to the boss and a few merchants bit the dust buuut I couldn’t bring myself to care that much.

Sword and Shield of Seiros (Alois and Shamir): Approach A. Hide everyone else in the middle of town and just let Byleth fly over to the boss. Stride helps. Also Lysithia picking off an enemy or two that got too close.

Troublesome (Ch. 5, 9, 12-14)

Welcome to the worst story chapters (imo) to get through while low-manning the game. Divine pulse, divine pulse, divine pulse, restart, divine pulse. Difficult and/or exceedingly annoying either because of additional defeat conditions, green units, or just straight-up enemy mobbing. If you plan on trying to low-man the game keep these chapters in mind because several don’t care how buff your own units are, they will find ways around it.

Ch. 5: Tower of Black Winds - ok this one technically wasn’t so bad I just felt like the strat I ended up using was so dumb it belongs here. Just hang back a little at the start to take care of the reinforcements and you can creep your way forward and snag the treasure chest. About halfway up the right side past the chest and after baiting some of the upper level archers with Claude I noticed that every enemy with a vulnerary decides to charge you. It was here that I gave up on Gilbert and retreated to the only defendable location on the map where I could turtle it out: the chest alcove. Claude took the brunt by Alert Stance avo tanking while dismounted Byleth plinked away with a bow from behind. Problem is I had also brought Marianne and Lysithia, and in order to keep them from getting sniped by archers I had to move them back and forth every other turn or so to get the archers to move either further down the wall to try and get to a position to shoot over it or back toward the slowly decreasing vulnerary mob. It just felt really dumb, ok? Beast Miklan was a piece of cake since he can’t go down the stairs. Claude just out-ranged him.

Ch. 9: The Cause of Sorrow - This chapter wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t felt like I’d gotten screwed over by Jeralt’s AI and RNG. I knew I wasn’t saving all the student but you lose if Jeralt dies (oh the irony) and he kept rushing straight for the other side of the map and getting mobbed by three at once. I basically ended up almost breaking the Blessed Lance this chapter (and I had thought I’d never use the thing, how wrong I was) just to be able to quickly break armor in order for Claude or Lysithia to melt health bars using either Hunter’s Volley or Seraphim (sometimes I’d use Seraphim to armor break and Byleth to melt health). Marianne with Physic kept Jeralt going despite his best efforts.

Ch. 12: To War - Also technically not the worst but even with Claude reaching Edelgard in about 5 turns it was nerve-wracking and frustrating trying to keep the enemy away from the defend tiles. Lysithia, Marianne, and Seteth get to join in to assist in this but they also add the extra layer of making sure they’re out of enemy range come enemy phase. DK’s advance does not help this.

Ch. 13: Reunion at Dawn - screw this chapter pt 1. :) On maddening this map is absolutely filled with snipers and gambit spam. So much so that even dismounting both Claude and Byleth is bushes next to each other didn’t keep them alive. On top of that even if that did work this condemns the rest of the students to death and I wanted to at least keep Lysithia alive. Thankfully, she spawns with the group in the safest corner. I ended up moving my duo north, dealing with the small group of enemies there then moving east across the top of the map. I’d gotten Leonie on a pegasus so she was able to fly up and join the safe corner and follow them along with Lorenz and Ignatz. I don’t think there was any way I was getting Hilda out of that so she got taken out. After joining up with Lysithia’s group I was able to fly over the wall with Claude, take out Pallardo 1, use stride on Byleth and fly to the south side of the map to take out Pallardo 2 on the same turn.

Ch. 14: The Alliance Leader’s Ambitions - screw this chapter pt 2. :)) Ah yes, a defend map with 4 tiles to defend and I have 2.5 trained units. No one really threatens the far right tile after turn 1 so more like 3 tiles but you get the point. If this map were defeat commander the entire time this wouldn’t be a problem, since with the powers of stride and warp I could (and did the first time just to try it) get Claude to the bottom of the map and defeat Randolph on turn 1. When that didn’t work, I took out Marianne and Lysithia and just tried to have Claude aggro as many enemies as possible as far away from the defend point as possible but there was always one paladin or so who slipped past, or the falcon knight reinforcements would just breeze past him. It was also still entirely possible for Claude to get hit at this point despite AS+ and die. I eventually decided I would have to find a way to last long enough to escort the greenie down to the fire trap and trigger the enemy retreat. Byleth was perfectly capable of doing this without issue, the problem was defending the 3 tiles for long enough to get him there. I ended up deploying Lysithia again and thanks the Thrysus, Dark Spikes, and Ashes and Dust I was able to finally defend the tiles long enough to trigger the fire trap and easily beat the map from there. If you can get past this chapter you’re probably fine for the rest of the game.

#fe3h #fire emblem three houses #fe three houses #claude von riegan #byleth eisner #humm plays fe3h

4 notes · View notes

strepitosofight · 2 years

Text

game wrap-up: trails sc

i finally finished the game woo!!! started this beast in DECEMBER 2020 and now shes finally laid to rest. just wanted to put into words my thoughts on the game as a whole in some kind of written form. yeah? yeah.

this basically has no rhyme or reason im just listing things as they occur to me

i really didnt know if this game was gonna edge out over fc for me until i finished it? ill give it to sc at the moment though. i think generally fc was a more well rounded game all around but at the cost that it has very few like. emotional highs beyond the You Know at the end. i’ll say that while sc hits lower lows than fc did for me it hit higher highs and did manage to get my attention back near the end enough for it to make it out on top. it gets points at least for not having as fucking mind numbing a final boss as fc goodness fucking gracious

if i had to rank the game so that my debating its placement against fc makes sense, i’d put it: prologue to chapter 6 >>> latter half of chapter 9 > chapter 7 to first half of chapter 9. i’ll be perfectly honest and say that i took more than half a year hiatus after chapter 6 because of Gameplay Bullshit that i’ll address at the end, so MAYBE you could say that factors into it, but like.... i had the same problems with everything after chapter 6 before i took the break. so.

gameplay was a much smoother experience than fc but i feel like it was. not as interesting to me in the lategame. this mightve been bc of me playing fc having no idea what i was doing, versus me in sc using a quartz guide, but once you hit chapter 6 in this game most if not all your casters will have death scream and that shit just breaks the game in half. most of the spells if they’re not named la tearal, clock up ex, shadow spear, or death scream as either just inferior versions of the above you use for the odd elemental weakness enemy or literally useless. who has ever used sylpharion in their lives. added with the fact every boss is immune to the actual useful status spells and typically a physical damage sponge you’re just spamming death scream until it dies. i just kinda wish there was a reason to actually use non-time arts. the first part of the game didnt really have this problem as bad but good god was loewe a cakewalk compared to fc lol. thats how uninteresting the combat gets lategame for me idk

the virgin “the merciless savior” vs the chad “fight with assailant”

looking back to hearing people online say the first part of sc was a drag because it was all episodic and that it “got better” afterwards was just. so far from my own experience with this game. okay heres the part of the retrospective where i complain about the narrative. for me this game is at its best when it realizes its emotional core was about consuming loneliness and grief. thats what estelle’s journey to find joshua is about, at its core! thats the thematic throughline running through this game! you watch estelle go through SUCH SHIT trying to cope with losing joshua, trying to find him, trying to survive without him! AND THEN THEY JUST REUNITE AT THE END OF CHAPTER SIX? HE DEUS EX MACHINA’S HER? AND THEY HUG AND KISS AND ITS ALL FINE? YES she gives him a lecture at the end but GOOD GOD IT WASNT ENOUGH. joshuas my favorite character of the bunch but after watching estelle go through the entire cycle of grief with this man... the prologue, the fake letter from renne, fighting the dolls, her talk with her mom??? i felt like it was setting up estelle to go through so much pain to finally have a catharsis where she confronts joshua and lets him know how stupid his decision was. but it just doesnt happen. its not.... no, you know what it was. it was catharsis intended for JOSHUA, not estelle. she just gets to have her boyf back no issue while joshua gets to deal with all the loose plot threads we never actually see start, only from flashbacks. like i really felt even the ch 5 stuff was foreshadowing this? how agate needed that shit from tita about not considering other people when he puts his neck on the line like that? when he talks bad about himself? WONDER WHO THIS COULD BE APPLIED TO????? joshua i love u dearly but ur killing me here. it really feels like the entire emotional core of the game just ups and disappears once they reunite

that said the character interactions in this game were a tier. obviously not as cute as the pure estelle/joshua fluff we got from fc but estelle going around rolent, the aforementioned agate and tita stuff, joshua’s solo sections, etc were really charming. i especially kept tearing up during the ch 8 stuff with joshua because it was so cute.

final chapter was... fine..... the first half was so fucking long like geezums but it got better once you got in the axis pillar. i think im simply not a fan of huge worldending crises where the protagonist doesnt have an emotional stake in bringing down the villain beyond “you cant destroy the world, i LIVE here” but thats just me.

KEVIN. HAD NO RIGHT BEING AS GOOD AS HE WAS. i need to watch the ending again when hes in ur party bc i didnt have the sepith to upgrade his stuff and didnt feel like grinding out poms so close to the end. what a great character. its so hard to stop myself from starting the 3rd immediately, because legends is coming out this friday, but good god this mans gonna destroy me emotionally isnt he. help

my only real gameplay grievance beyond the above braindead lategame stuff was no exp share. why would they force u to use certain people but then not give them like halved exp when theyre not in the party. i had to grind up zin and schera like 20 levels. i literally put the game down because of this it was so fucking irritating. i hope this gets fixed in future games?

overall though i really enjoyed sc despite its faults and im super excited to play more falcom bc their stuff really clicks with me :) uhhh CHARACTER RANKING TO CAP OFF. joshua > kevin = estelle > agate > kloe > olivier > tita > schera = zin. anelace is top tier. im not rating the last minute party members because theyre just. nothing in my mind. okay thats it goodnight

#game: trails sc #grey wraps up

1 note · View note