LogFAQs > #967444261

Played quite a bit last night until I passed out. Here's what I remember.

Gododdin is this game's Aball. It's so... weirdly cheerful and upbeat despite a clearly large amount of malevolence. It seems that this village chief is the source. It doesn't make any sense, and makes me wonder if this is an illusion, and this is actually in the past.

But that's wrong - after Edna learned Rock Smash (and almost knocked Sorry out for asking for her age... uh, dude, really?), I find that the only connection to the past is how the Abbey is back to smuggling opium, this time disguising it as Elixir. Or at least the Pope, who's posing as the village elder, is. This place is quite remote so it's hard to trade, the land is unsuitable farming, and it's quite small. Pope Masedra seems quite friendly, yet troubled. Apparently his family disowned him because he was too committed to being a people-pleaser that he forgot about them, and he ran away in shame to die in the woods. He then found Gododdin and the people there took to him quickly, becoming like a family to him. Because they gave him a safe haven, he started smuggling drugs to save the village from ruin, or at least abandonment a la that little place in Hyland. This gave the village enough money for substantial upgrades, including a schoolhouse.

That said, his health isn't very good, and he has an apparent heart attack while Sorry and the crew were discussing what to do with him. Thankfully, it was just a minor thing, and he gets up an hour later no problemo. Also turns out that he has the inscription memorized, and it says that we must go to the temples of four Great Lords to undertake trials to attain blessings from each. This is sans Maotelus, whose temple... is the Empyrean's Throne, most likely. The convenient thing is that the Fire Temple, the trial of Musiphe, is right here and we're told to go in there and undertake its trial. We do.

This place smells like a Zelda dungeon, only the puzzles are restricted to torch-lighting boredom. Oddly, the monsters in here are resistant to earth and wind as opposed to fire, which makes no sense given the monolith at the entrance saying they're weak to fire. The temple is unremarkable; the only "puzzles" are torch-order things. The first I do trial and error for and then Rose is like "I dunno, look for subtle differences or something" I realize those are on the floor. I was expecting a "twenty-three is number one" kind of thing. There's also vermillion ore growing in here, and that had to have been created by something insanely strong. Musiphe, probably.

At the end, there's obviously a domain, and the boss is some fire dragon knight. It's not an easy fight. It's hard to touch the four tablets without getting killed, and I get to the point where I just leave Rose lying there unconscious. After the seraphs come back, there are several more KOs (I stay armatized almost the entire time) but I manage to make it through. Afterward, he introduces himself as Ekseo, Musiphe's protector seraph, and that he was just testing us to see if we're worthy of Musiphe's blessing. We passed. He also knows Sorry and Lailah's names, as he was probably watching the birth of the Shepherd via the Earthen Historia or something. He lights Sorry's blade on fire and tells him to either imprint it upon his face or Lailah's. I expect a choice since it's been a while since I've had one of those, but there isn't one. Sorry chooses himself, but Lailah chooses herself because she's sick of Sorry's self-sacrificial bullshit since that's eventually gonna do more harm than good. No, Sorry. You are the SHEPHERD. You cannot be replaced so easily. The power ends up being a Mystic Arte to use when armatized with Lailah. Like all of the other Mystic Artes so far, it's pretty cool but rather short.

Sorry and Mikleo learn that some seraphim used to be humans. Lailah apparently lost something. And she compares him to an Apple Gel, saying he tastes great. So is armatization sexual to her? I also remember her revealing something about her oath. Don't recall what. May find out more later.

I save after. I would expect the Water Temple to be the same as in Berseria, the shrine to Amenoch in Southgand, but.... that doesn't appear to be on the map. I also gotta go report to Sergei that the Pope is a-okay, but doesn't want to come back. He's not gonna like that news, since it means the Cardinal is in charge of the Abbey, and he don't like her. We're most likely gonna siege the church - gotta wonder how huge it is, since they were building quite the labyrinth a thousand years before. But Loegres isn't even arranged the same, which I still find so odd. You don't move stone walls. You just don't.

The game so far is... inoffensive. I can't understand the seething hate for it just yet, but I have seen the seeds of what people rant about. We'll see what they blossom into. I presume we're headed back to Loegres next, which the game locked us out of for whatever reason. I do wish that the next part was open world and that we could do the shrines in any order, and that enemies' levels scaled with us. But that's probably too much to ask of Tales.