LogFAQs > #960571353

Sorry for the wait - had some computer trouble (I'm playing on PC) when I sat down to play yesterday and ended up having to replace my CMOS battery. That was a pain in the you-know-what.

I learn about mana souls or w/e from Seres (some kind of secondary currency?) and overhear two goons in cool helmets talking about a secret passage under the watchtower. Eavesdropping is ALWAYS at the most opportune time - so cliche. Velvet, resourceful as ever, is willing to stage a jailbreak in order to create a diversion so she can get through there, and possibly gain additional muscle. She's already high on my "WOULD NOT FUCK WITH" list.

The next goon I encounter is female, so it's nice that these villains don't discriminate (hard to tell under those helmets). I beat the crap out of them and Velvet incites the jailbreak (there some Jaguaros here), with Aifread (Tales' "Cid") being mentioned alongside Melchior. Those names wouldn't be mentioned so casually now without any payoff later, so I'll just put this reminder here. I go through to sweep for items and notice that some boots I pick up have a random skill of +30 HP. Nice. A few whackos, indecisive idiots, and a shivering goblin - who warns about the exorcists of the world running rampant and Artorius being at the top of the world - are still here, but the boots are the only useful thing.

And then I leave the cell block to find someone who's absolutely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs in the most hilarious way: Magilou. She speaks in rhyme in her perky voice (who's voiced by Erica Lindbeck - aka Futaba and FFVII Jessie - had to look it up because I went "WAIT I KNOW THAT VOICE!"). I can already tell that she's awesome, given how much she had me laughing immediately. Velvet ain't laughing. She quickly goes "Enough of this!" and talks about crushing her to death if she annoys her again. Well I can already tell the character interactions are going along swimmingly. I find a Life Bottle, someone who's smartly waiting to charge the rear, and a Sage plant (those can regenerate!!!) in the rest of the cells. As you can see, I'm being quite thorough. But now that you have an idea of how I play, I'll just sit back and enjoy this...

Boss fight is interrupted when the guy mentions the sword we found earlier. Okay then. I presume he's a party member, too. I also use an Apple Gel and am left wondering... how does that taste after three years and a lot of bloodshed? I... don't wanna know. I head all along the watchtower. The riot quellers show up and get quelled themselves.

FYI: I'm still just mashing buttons instead of using any strategy. The battle system is a little too much to adjust to right now since they're just giving me text and have only demoed the basics.

Velvet makes a daring jump from the tower in torrential rain and uses her daemon claw to survive. Cool stuff. Some nonsense about an oath being a curse and then we're on our way... to the front. Velvet expects fewer guards. She's a smart cookie. She also wastes no time in telling Oscar Dragonia that it's time to die. He realizes the battle's not going his way, and ALL HADES BREAKS LOOSE. His malaks have daemonblight and one of them becomes a dragon and goes for Velvet... and then Seres gives herself up out of nowhere. #Blindside! I was expecting her to be furthering her own ends, not for her to die here (that said, it would've helped me understand all this more if I'd known a little more about malaks). We get a montage of past scenes, though I hadn't yet become too attached to her. She mentions the oath thing again, and that her price was her life. Velvet consumes her and gains the Sorcerer's Ring! Time for Break Souls, it seems.

I beat the dragon daemon - only Break Souling a second time at the end of the battle (to not waste a second soul). Velvet (Therion - that's the word I was missing!) attempts to kill Oscar, but his surviving malak teleports them both away. Rokurou and Magilou show up and Magilou is as hysterical as ever. "It's your lucky day, fishies!" is making it obvious that she's the best comic relief in Tales since Jade Curtiss. Erica's dramatic delivery is so perfectly adorkable. This is even more apparent on the shipwrecked scene after Velvet mistakes the malak boy for Laphi and she wants warm soup and hot tales and words cutting deeper than northern winds. My goodness, she's GREAT! Apparently she was thrown in the clink for "unlicensed witchcraft" - hey, at least it wasn't Salem! I was so disappointed that I didn't get to hear the dramatic rendition of her tales of WOE.

It's odd that 1) Magilou and Rokurou aren't fighting with me yet and 2) the game is only telling me about starting battles with 3 souls and only getting up to 5. I figured that out once I realized that Break Souls DIDN'T carry over. I am also told those mana souls are actually Katz spirits and am hit with so many cat puns that even Magilou is groaning. OMG. (I happened to really chuckle at "Kitten Caboodle.") I get a ten-gallon hat, but despite being Hat Fetish Guy, don't really think it suits Velvet at all.

Malak Kid has the same fixation with compasses as Laphi, so there's that. He leads us to a secret path to a storehouse in Hellawes, so I'm in. Rokurou wants a weapon that isn't a priceless heirloom, yet won't say why said sword is priceless. Different. Magilou is a goldmine; why does it not surprise me that she's a pyromancer? The townspeople also revere Artorius and the exorcists even though they're the true villains. It's nice to see the outside perspective from the start. Refreshing, even, instead of "OH NOES THEY WUZ EVIL TEH WHOLE TIME!" We got to see that Artorius WANTED this for the sake of glorifying himself. Fuck him. Fake heroes give real ones a bad name.

Speaking of, Villain Teresa (who Malak Kid is working for) shows up as we're talking to the shipping guild, and she seems... nice for a villain. For now. She's working for the Abbey - the obviously corrupt Catholic Church like villains - as the Exorcist in Chief here. She doesn't recognize Velvet, but does recognize that she's cold in that getup. At the end of it, Velvet volunteers to capture Lizardfolk smuggler Dyle for the guild so they can clear their names.

Rokurou gets a weapon and Magilou goes off to kill her betrayer. I encounter undesirable townsfolk galore, such as xenophobes who think daemons have lost their humanity, snow war kids, and global cooling. I get out and start beating up monsters, mashing buttons as either Velvet or Rokurou. I even get a flashback from before Artorius executed his vile plot, and Velvet's voice change is so jarring. She went from perky to... angry all the time. So interesting. Princessias signify betrayal, huh? I didn't think that was quite it...

I still don't know the difference between martial and hidden artes. All of Rokurou's hidden artes use elements... which is which here? I also must note how common it is for generic enemies to drop weapons. I take it I can sell those for a fortune? Or is there some kind of synthesis?

I get to the village and meet Eleanor Hume, an Exorcist who I'm pretty certain is a party member (I know that name). She's... crying? A little girl comes up once Eleanor leaves and tells us the Lizardfolk daemon is in a cave to the north. Seems like this little speck on the map has a very different view of the Abbey and all its rules, in part because the Abbey doesn't protect them. Interesting. A tale of two worlds within one. What else is new? Seems like these patrols are there to be openly honest that the Abbey employs dirtbags. I mean, what employer doesn't?

I stopped at the inn. That's enough for tonight. (You can answer my non-plot questions all you like!)

(I really shouldn't write THIS much as I play tbqh...)
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