Board 8 > SaveEstelle & LeonhartFour in New Houses: Next-Gen Edition [SELF]

(+) Yeah! (+)

The one thing I enjoyed most from Seven Wonders Overtime was the discussion on why Kyon won't use nicknames or honorifics for other girls.

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The Office Season 7 Episode 16 complete!

Yeah, I'm not a fan of PDA and thankfully, my wife is not either.

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Dragon Ball Z Episode 23 complete!

...Of course Yamcha lost. Determined Krillin should be good though.

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Literally taken down by an unnamed minion

Speaking of which, I just recently found out that this exists!

https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/dragon-ball-that-time--got-reincarnated-as-yamcha

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Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Episode 10 complete!

Okay, I definitely don't remember Hughes dying when I watched the original, so I think we're in all new territory now.

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that happens in episode 25 of fma 2003. stretch from 14-25 is the best part of fma 03 imo, esp the OP and ED.
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Yamcha sucks always and forever

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These pretzels are making me thirsty

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You don't know anything about this pretzel guy!

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CS4 Act 3-1 complete.

I think this has been the longest section so far. Felt like it at least.

Luna Sanctuary was reveal fest. The curse stuff has never really been a strong point of the plot and that doesn't change here. Black Alberich being an entity that possessed Alisa's dad is kinda eh and I'm actually more interested that Franz was part of the Thirteen Factories before all that happened. Osborne being Driechels's reincarnation is also kinda "okay sure." So instead of going through all that and picking it apart I'm going to instead probably completely over-analyze a different part here - the Holy Beasts. I'll start with Argres, the Holy Beast of Earth. And here I want to focus on the obscuring of the name. We've seen this earlier with Rean but while there I thought it was kind of a style thing to represent the curse causing him to forget everything... with Argres a slew of different questions are raised for me. It also has its name distorted. And like Rean you could say this is curse related. However simultaneously Roselia says it is a name lost to oblivion but also Class VII clearly hears it unimpeded to make the connection that it sounds similar to Arianrhod's Divine Knight. ...So what's up with the distortion in both name and sound? The only one it's apparently affecting is the player which makes me think back to Campanella seemingly breaking the fourth wall in Star Door 14. Like... is there a greater meaning here that only the player is apparently being affected by this? As for the Holy Beast of Fire... what happened to the original? The current Roselia is her familiar but where'd the original go? If she died... how? Holy Beasts are apparently quite hard to kill. The Gnomes went to all the trouble of making Millium and Altina just to get a weapon capable of killing one.

Anyway, questing about was fun. Vivi: "*gasp* Are you trying to leave Alisa and flag the Vivi ending? Bold move, sir!" IS THIS AN OPTION? lowkey i actually think they have pretty good chemistry going all the way back to cs1. Anyway, we eventually go invade the Gargantua because apparently you can just move dimensional spaces around. Gargantua theme was pretty great though. Sharon redemption I buy. George redemption no no no nope. lol Schmidt just shitting on Alberich and to a lesser extent George.

Anyway, this behind us we go to the Draco Sanctuary finally and unsurprisingly Fie is the star of this segment, and consequently 3-1. Fie's Zephyr plot has been one of the best character stories in Cold Steel and the conclusion to it is excellent. Her confrontations with Xeno, Leo, and Rutger are all great at showing how far she's come from the first day at Thors. Her farewell with Rutger was touching too (even if I wish we could have recruited him too.)

Anyway, onwards to 3-2. Haven't really done anything here yet except buy some new equipment and witness the Pom Party difficulty spike that is Gaius. My thoughts above feel a bit scattered and unsatisfying to me but I am actively trying to keep from going on multi-post thoughts on my own!

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xp caught up to me almost. Haven't been playing much lately because I've gotten into Magic the Gathering of all things. (Back into, sort of? I technically played the game for about a year with friends in college a few years ago but that's it. Have played other similar card games more frequently though.)

Rean/Vivi definitely has better chemistry than any of the actual characters the game likes to ship Rean with
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The Office Season 7 Episode 17 complete!

Michael's movie (and the new Haruhi book) are making me want to try to get my wife to watch Haruhi Suzumiya.

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The Office Season 7 Episode 18 complete!

Whew, I might have had to bail on the show if Packer became a regular.

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Dragon Ball Z Episode 24 complete!

Okay, that was an incredibly intense episode.

R.I.P. Chiaotzu

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Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Episode 11 complete!

Ah, the miracle of life.

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Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Episode 12 complete!

Oh hey, we finally learn a little about their dad. Also, Izumi is great.

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Truly a model housewife

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CS4 beated. Neat. Glad its ending was more fleshed out than previous series enders, though maybe not as much as Sky 3's. Some interesting implications with the Ouroboros discussions. Are they going for a Star Ocean 3 twist or Doki Doki Literature Club?

xp1337 posted...

I'm actually more interested that Franz was part of the Thirteen Factories before all that happened.

You sure about that? I think it was just saying that Alberich was part of the Thirteen Factories, not Franz.

xp1337 posted...

As for the Holy Beast of Fire... what happened to the original? The current Roselia is her familiar but where'd the original go? If she died... how?

Nu Roselia is the Holy Beast of Fire. She inherited the memories of Roselia I and became Roselia 2.0 after Roselia classic died.

Gaius was the hardest Pom opponent for me by a lot for whatever reason!
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Mac Arrowny posted...

You sure about that? I think it was just saying that Alberich was part of the Thirteen Factories, not Franz.

That's possible. It could be that Franz talking about having had headaches was supposed to imply he had some Jekyll & Hyde thing going on before Alberich took over completely. But the way I interpreted it was that Franz was just one of the presumably many top engineers who was affiliated with the Thirteen Factories in some manner and Alberich took over right as Sharon was coming in for the routine data/research collection (probably the Panzer Soldats? With Alberich instead turning them over to Osborne rather than Ouroboros.)

Mac Arrowny posted...

Nu Roselia is the Holy Beast of Fire. She inherited the memories of Roselia I and became Roselia 2.0 after Roselia classic died.

Oh, no, I get that current Roselia is now the Holy Beast of Fire, I'm just wondering what exactly happened to the original. Roselia admits she doesn't have all the original's memories and it often shows when she is asked about things "before her time (when the Dark Dragon was defeated 800 years ago)" The original told the then-familiar Roselia to head to the Luna Sanctuary if something happened to her and obviously something did but I'm wondering what exactly happened. The number of things we know that can kill a Holy Beast are extremely limited. Even the curse didn't kill the Holy Beast of Earth and if there was another Originator Zero just lying around back then what happened to it that the Gnomes didn't just go get that instead of enacting a 800 year plan to get a new one?

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so many spoilers

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Okay, we watched the first couple episodes of Haruhi Suzumiya last night. There were a few "why is this happening" moments with Haruhi and Asahina, but we survived the worst episode and she hasn't said she's done with it, so I'll consider it a success!

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let us know her reaction to endless eight

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Spoilers I actually really enjoyed Endless Eight because I didn't know how long it was supposed to go on so I was always eager to see if this was the time they broke through and what the solution was.

That being said, I also have an addictive personality so watching the same episode over and over doesn't really bother me if I enjoy it, and I liked noticing the differences between each episode. But I won't subject her to every episode if she'd rather skip them.

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You watching in 2009 order?
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It's in chronological order on Funimation, and I'm not bothering to look up the original broadcast order because I've never watched it that way.

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2009 order is chronological order, I think, so you're good if that's the case.
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Pretty sure I'm right before the point of no return in CS4, so I opted to beat everyone in Vantage Masters (which I hadn't touched until the finale, but all opponents but one are still playable and that one's card was in Neinvalli). Once I got a good enough deck it was actually kind of fun - went with a Sorcerer and mostly water/heaven cards until the last opponent where I just unloaded everything good.

Also beat everyone at Pom - oddly enough Klaudia gave me the hardest time.

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I had the hardest time with Renne. Took me a good 10 tries or so to beat her. Everyone else was relatively quickly

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Still not touching Vantage Masters. I've only unlocked Jona and Estelle in Pom so far, and it took 2 or 3 tries each to beat them.

I'm actually getting a day off work tomorrow, so hopefully I can make some inroads on Act 2!

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The Mandalorian Season 2 Episode 6 complete!

That was a really good episode. Good to see Boba Fett in action again.

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The Office Season 7 Episode 19 complete!

That's exactly how that proposal should have gone.

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The Office Season 7 Episode 20 complete!

Will Ferrell, huh. All right.

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xp1337 posted...

Oh, no, I get that current Roselia is now the Holy Beast of Fire, I'm just wondering what exactly happened to the original. Roselia admits she doesn't have all the original's memories and it often shows when she is asked about things "before her time (when the Dark Dragon was defeated 800 years ago)" The original told the then-familiar Roselia to head to the Luna Sanctuary if something happened to her and obviously something did but I'm wondering what exactly happened. The number of things we know that can kill a Holy Beast are extremely limited. Even the curse didn't kill the Holy Beast of Earth and if there was another Originator Zero just lying around back then what happened to it that the Gnomes didn't just go get that instead of enacting a 800 year plan to get a new one?

Current Roselia = original Holy Beast of Fire. Original Roselia was not Holy Beast of Fire. I don't think she has full memories of her Holy Beast of Fire days - might not have been totally sentient then.
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Okay, some thoughts on some CS4 stuff.

Interlude:

Pretty solid. Decision paralysis is a pain, but the events aren't too exciting, so I didn't really feel the need to see everyone's. Talking to everyone in the park was pretty enjoyable. Like most of the special events. The promotion to Divine Blade was cool. The final bond events weren't as good as the regular bond events, IMO (which makes sense, since those tied into the story more). Sharon x Anton was surprisingly excellent.

Finale:

Too many locations to visit, but it somehow felt like it didn't take as long as doing so in 3-1 did? Maybe because of less stuff to do on the airship. Visiting everywhere and doing the sidequests was mostly pretty fun, but I expected more of the Diana quest than just "evil demon kidnapping women to eat them". The Hamel one was much better done. The teams for the Pales were hype, especially E-team, but then they got basically no story stuff, so that sucked. Was surprised that the war actually started, but I guess they had to wait for the war to start so they could actually do their attack? Would've been better if they'd focused on the casualties for the conflict, but eh.

Final dungeon: I like the layout with the Garden as the resting point in the middle. This is the gameplay variety I crave. Made it feel less like a long slog.

The confrontation with Lechter and Claire sucked - you beat them and they become good. This could've and should've happened a long time ago, and just feels way overdue here.

Cedric and Shirley were done much better. You actually feel some emotional impact with Cedric, though Shirley feeling totally different from how she was in Crossbell is still weird. Cedric joining Ouroboros is painful, especially his weird motivation: "I won't be fully punished if I stay here, so I'm going to go on a fun journey enjoying the world and doing more evil things" - like what?

Mariabell and Campanella - learned some interesting things here. Kinda makes it seem like they'll go for a DDLC or Star Ocean 3 twist at some point. I think their should've been something more personal with Campanella though, after the way Juna got to him in Crossbell.

Rufus and Alberich - people acting like Rufus is strong is dumb. I mean, we beat freaking Lianne, Rufus is nothing. It was nice that he at least got arrested for his crimes, even if all the Ironbloods should've.

Random comment: there was a line like "They're not the Ironbloods anymore. They're the knights of blood and iron now. There's no going back for them anymore." - I really hope this sounded less dumb in Japanese, because it's just hilarious in English.

McBurn - made McBurn a lot more interesting than before! Was nice to see him finally not feel like a joke. I think he should've shared more of the truth with us, but eh. The fight was annoying, because I crushed him, but he killed Rean with his S-Craft and I wasn't sure what to do after that the first time.

Osborne - this was all good, but it should've been better. The game needed more Osborne. They wrote the final conflict real well, I just think it should've been built-up harder. I also don't really see a point in the whole "Dreichels reborn" thing.

Normal Ending - shorter than it could've been, but had some great emotional impact!

True ending - shame about the lack of emotional impact. Reviving Millium and Crow was fucking garbage, especially since they let Alisa's dad die even though he was more alive than they were. Giving us a long explanation of everything that happened in the world was cool and much appreciated compared to the Sky 2/Azure endings. The wedding part with all the pictures was fantastic, and the best part of the ending, IMO.

Epilogue - why do you have to watch the true ending twice to see this? Very stupid. Was good though! Lots of reveals without giving us the whole story, which is fine. Was cool to see the Grandmaster for real, who looks exactly like Demiurgos from Azure. Explains why Mariabell was so happy to follow her. Fun that Nielsen and 1st Anguis have the same VA.

Overall: pretty good, but could've been better. There were some silly decisions, like making it take place in far too short a period of time. Like, even from Act 1 they're running out of food and drafting people to go to war. Do they not realize it takes months to train freshly drafted soldiers, and that you don't generally run out of food before the war even begins? Two months (or longer) would've been much better. Also, I wish the Cold Steel games had more trains, since that's kinda what they're supposed to be about. Trains have interesting limitations and give more flavor than just relying on airships again and again. They actually managed to use the giant cast pretty well - better than CS2, I think. Still it would've benefited from being more focused than it was. Running around exploring, doing sidequests, and talking to people was generally the highlight.

CS ranking: 1 > 3 > 4 > 2. The CS games don't do high stakes well, IMO. 1 has low stakes, and it's totally believable. I didn't believe any of the stakes in 4 or 2 were real. Would be better if they focused more on emotional development and such. I really didn't care about anything to do with the (early spoilers) war/curse. Fun to play a big, sprawling JRPG though.
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Mac Arrowny posted...

Random comment: there was a line like "They're not the Ironbloods anymore. They're the knights of blood and iron now. There's no going back for them anymore." - I really hope this sounded less dumb in Japanese, because it's just hilarious in English.

tried to track this down, but couldn't find it. There is a line that where Jusis calls him the Knight of Blood and Iron and that he no longer considers Rufus his brother, but...

McBurn: completely agree. It was extremely frustrating for them to drop that bombshell on us and then go "Okay, but we really don't have time for this right now; let's spend the rest of the game pretending that moment didn't happen."
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Oh right, Tennessee vs. Florida today. The curse compels me to watch.

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Still in 3-2, checked out the bonding events and did some (but not all yet) sidequests which were excellent.

Bond Events: what polar extremes we had here. Ash's was absolutely fantastic even if it shot down my Gilvan theory. Fie's was a great epilogue to 3-1 and Rutger. Crow's was also great with his getting closure for the ILF and the surprise Scarlet "appearance." Duvalie's was a nice event. Alisa's was alright. ...And then on the other side of the scale, Elise's was the natural result of what these 4 games have led her character to. "Um... is this a joke?" lmao Rean maybe but one on the player. But the real disappointments here were Emma and Juna. Emma had an excellent first bond event so the bar was high and then it utterly failed to meet even a low one. But Juna's... oh man this one. Juna has been an amazing character in CS3 and CS4, especially CS4 Act 1, and this is what is done to her. At least most of the special memory bond events have a good chunk of them that is not related to romance and is usually actually quite great. But this? This was just straight-up just "Instructor, I like you!" not like this, falcom, not like this.

Altina's gets its own paragraph because aaaaaaaaaaaarggggghhhh. Just like before, this was shaping up to be an absolutely fantastic bond event but then. then. "Is this familial affection? ...Camaraderie?" YES. THAT'S ALL IT BETTER BE FALCOM. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? WHY? STOP. please stop. Seriously, dammit you were better than this once, Falcom. Getting more curious about that machine in the bond event they briefly stop at it. It was curious in Fragments when we were really here and it was brought up again as Rean and Altina passed it.

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Protip: skip one of the special memory events and the later events will have all (or at least most) traces of romance wiped away!
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Bone everyone

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Dragon Ball Z Episode 25 complete!

That one hurt a bit. R.I.P. Tien

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The mystery novel discussion in Tsuruya's Challenge reminds me a lot of Umineko. They even mentioned Van Dine!

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Oh wow, Tennessee takes the lead against Florida. It's only the 2nd quarter, but our offense does look more competent with a different QB.

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Mac Arrowny posted...

Protip: skip one of the special memory events and the later events will have all (or at least most) traces of romance wiped away!

It annoys me that Musse has multiple character notes that require you to see her special memory bonding events.

And full agree on Juna's character taking a nosedive after Act I. Damn shame.

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Argh, that touchdown right before halftime hurt. I feel like our defense is playing fairly well, but Florida is just really good.

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Yeah, we're basically done.

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alright CS4 beated

I honestly have no idea how to compare it to other games in the series since it's so all over the place. There was a lot of good stuff, a lot of stuff that hit me really hard (I cried like... three separate times in the ending sequence), but also a lot of really, really questionable plot points and character scenes. I feel like it's a game that benefits a lot from the established world and characters and makes it easy to get invested in them... though at the same time I'm more than ready for a new arc to start so that we can get a reasonable-sized cast again. Gameplay was kind of an utter joke by the end but that's sort of par for the course for Erebonia (although the last rivalry with Ishmelga was actually kind of tense).

I'm gonna tentatively say 3 > 4 > 1 > 2 for the Cold Steel games, but aside from 3 being clearly the best they're all close and CS4 might fall on a replay like CS2 did. I watched a playthrough of CS4 and expected it to be at the bottom of my overall Kiseki ranking (I'd still put CS2 over Zero/3rd/FC), so in that sense it was a welcome surprise.

Sara is probably still my favorite Class VII character, though Altina certainly gives her a run for it if only because I didn't do her first special moment. Aurelia might be best overall though "Weak." pretty much destroyed the entire Salt Pale section.

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The Office Season 7 Episode 21 complete!

A strong final Dundies Awards.

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The Office Season 7 Episode 22 complete!

Okay, I admit I didn't expect that to make me as emotional as it did.

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congrats on finishing the office

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Hey, season 9 is still good!
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