LogFAQs > #935266441

continuing!

good lord, Noah is a gigantic piece of shit, isn't he? that haiku on him summed it up perfectly.

as the cutscene continues and he tells me a story, he lets me know about a trip where he randomly wandered the desert with his daughter. there are fewer dads worse than him in my head right now. cutscene continues and-

WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU CALLING ME THE LUMINARY IN FRONT OF HIM. YOU'RE THE SMART ONE. BE SMART.

goddamn are these two stupid.
"hey so a lot of people think you're going to bring the end of the world, you literally ran from an entire country to get here, but we're going to tell this guy who we just established is a career drunk and rumor hoarder exactly who you are and the next place you're going to be at."

does this guy know what a Luminary is? probably.
does he know we ran away from another country? not yet probably but should soon.
why would you want to do this?

well the aftermath of this stupidity is the two girls join. expectations have been subverted, i thought i'd get a third party member but nope, i get a third and fourth. so let's get into what they can do.

Veronica:
Staff, Whips, 2H/2H
Hairband, inferior to Feather Cap
Silk Robe, dunno how it matches to the dress in shop.

Serena:
Wand, Lance, 1H/2H. Can use shields with a Wand.
Hairband, inferior to Feather Cap
Silk Robe, dunno how it matches to the dress in shop.

equipment's simple enough, quick upgrade with the caps will do. what about skills? as for stats, Veronica's a glass cannon so i also give her the Gold Chain to get some more HP on her. Serena's got similar defense as Erik but less HP than me, though since she's got the benefits of shields i expect her to be a little tankier down the road. anyway, skills. new tutorial thing opens up telling me how to pick this thing from a list, cool. also talks about Recitification, which is basically skill point reset. nice.

Veronica:
3 trees to work with, none connected. already knows the first Vim spell, her unique tree, which protects me from offensive magic. stat buffs, res, lowering res, MP regen. whips are... status effects and smacking humanoids. they hit groups. reminds me of a shittier boomerang but considering status effects can be a big deal and the first skill Erik learns is 6x damage if sleep or confused, i guess that's the incentive. lastly, heavy wands. staffs for short. second skill is heavy damage to demons and paralysis, later one is antimagic, aka, Silence. there's also some MP recovery going on at least so this is obviously a strong line and there's even some HP healing. so let's see...

Hypnowhip - first whip skill, costs 3 points, can cause confusion. good for Erik and team synergy when those occasions are necessary.

MP Absorption, Beelzefreeze - staff skills. got one good one for demons with it.

also this skill tree so looks like it's incomplete here, like a lot needs to be learned later, but whatever. i do also check to see what spells she's got already, debuffs, fire ST, fire MT, ice ST, and magic barrier, which is similar to her skill. hm. her pep powers are all dual and triple techs right now, so moving along, then.

Serena:
attrib check first.
spell list: heal, squelch (antidote), buff, dazzle (illusion). simple enough.
abilities: barrier for fire.
pep: dual and triple techs but immediately more useful than Veronica. a defenses buff, shared one with Veronica for healing + HP/MP regen, Erik gets to do 2 moves per turn as his attributes go up - so stealing - and repeating spells for Veronica. on to skills.

Wands, spears, harpistry. last one's easy: elemental res. looking at spears... beasts, undead, and group attack. this is notable because wands get their first offensive skill 3 deep, one good against demons and can "beguile" them, whatever that means. a skill to have a party member avoid instant death, a status ailment skill for a party member, got it. mostly support with one offensive move that i cannot even learn yet so if i want her to deal damage, well, spears for now. eventually i assume there's a holy spell of some kind but for now...

Cattle Prod - first spear skill, good for beasts.
MP absorb, mending +10 - necessary to get to either MP Regen or the only offensive skill on this chain.

it appears they join you based on your level so maybe it would've been wiser to level up since me and Erik are soon done and these girls just got to LV12. whoops. anyway, it's off to leave town to the next area now that the girls have given me the pass. as we leave Veronica stops us to somehow make me learn Zoom. can i Zoom back home...? no, no i can't. so it's only going forward. alright, off to Gallopolis. Mount Huji isn't a place i can get through yet i figure, fortunately it's a quick teleport back.

as i get almost the next town a blue thing's talks to me. tick tock something something? FINALLY.
blue things are relevant.
they're called tockles and all speak like the mad hatter. nobody else can see these things but i can. and suddenly the game is in 2D mode.

so these things' mission is to make sure time flows as it should. they're time guardians, got it. i am to go to the echo chamber, where all my political views will be reinforced by-- wrong echo chamber, this isn't twitter. but i am jumping into other people's save files, basically. i'm cool with this. there was also one of these things along the way to my next location so i'll gladly talk to another one of 'em.

also i must say, this is my first time trying out the 2D so far. it's really cute. breaking pots that are my size is amusing. anyway, while we're sidequesting here i guess i'll go to the first book/save file, we're in Galenholm. no treasures around, game still stuck in 2D. got it, so everything about this place is only 2D. the music in this book is also very different than the rest of the game, we're in chiptune land now. the enemies are incredibly weak so i don't need to worry about anything and the battle system is notably different. instead of whatever it was using before, agility stat or something maybe, it's classic turnbased.

tutorials that were done in 3D mode exist still in 2D mode, as if you've never done them. also no more enemies on screen means wild encounters are gonna be random again, oh boy.

holy fuck this encounter rate.
i wish i had holy water.
also tried using the Fun Sized Forge, it doesn't work here. so when i leave i'll try it, my thing is orange so let's find out why later. anyway, there's a quest for an old man here wanting me to slay a monster for a harp thing. can do! and the enemy we meet to get the Lyre back is a Wrongo Bongo. i fully approve. i beat hi