Lurker > ZeldaTPLink

I really love this game's cave song

I find Team Rocket again. James is nearly not as hard to take down as Jessie. he has something about bombs but a good dose of AT delays and Binds keeps him from using them, and he doesn't self heal like his sister.

the battle gives me a metric load of fire quartz, which is important because his region has been having a drought of it.

We explore the ship. It's empty. Then General Dick remembers he has a prison under his base and that he could use it to lock some bracers up, so he comes to where we are to arrest us. Called it.

Presumption is innocence doesn't exist here. But hey, that's a realistic portrayal of militaries

I'm mad because I took the right path to the ship instead of the detour that probably had chests and now I have to go back to that maze if I wanna check it out

internet says there are no chests there and I'm going to believe it for my own sanity

now I guess it's time for Bard-kun to save us

and there is bard-kun. All the plot belongs to me to predict. It is all mine. Behold

He is also in prison, though. I should have guessed, since there are two cells. And he was arrested for stealing expensive wine. Typical

The bard doesn't release us. The mayor does. All hail the mayor.

General Dick hates bracers because his best soldier (Cassius) left the army to join them. Yeah I totally believe it's just that. (hes gay isn't he)

The mayor has Bard-kun released, because she also owns the restaurante whose wine was stolen. Holy shit, is there anything she doesn't own? if this keeps going I'm calling Final Villain

Bard-kun offers to join our party to repay the mayor for the wine. She takes it. Since she basically owns eveything and everyone, we have to accept it. Welcome to late stage capitalism, Bard-kun

Olivier dropped all his equipment in our inventory when he left the party, and know he joins with new copies all all of it. I refuse to question it.

even the orbments. holy crap

quest board says I failed an escort quest. I didnt even see there was such a quest. lame

Well that's where my instakill orbment is going to.

so I'm guessing Cassius Bright is world famous and everyone and their dog knows except Estelle

so people go "no way, you are the daughter of THAT Cassius?" and she's like "uh yeah, but hes just a goofball, dunno what the deal is"

I want to see her face when we learn the stuff he actually did

I'm at a point where the game thinks my lv isnt too high so its giving me a decent amount of xp, but I have the best equipment available so battle sare still very easy. Love it

so I'm supposed to find two reporters for info but I cant find them anywhere. I decide to leave the city and explore the region to do some quests

while checking the trail behind a small town to the west, I find a Deathblow orbment. "100% kills the enemy, but orb breaks when you use". Nice

the beast I'm supposed to hunt isnt too strong but is fast and keeps spamming impede. it gets the old fashioned melee beatdown approach

found a thing called shining pom. its immune to magic, almost immune to physical damage and flees in the first turn. but seems to give a lot of sepith. I fail to kill it

the next target is a monster with very good stats. But its not immune to Joshua's blind. Alas.

I finally find the reporter at the bar, after looking online. The problem is I was looking for pink haired photographer, who is not with him this time

I find a red haired dude who is a also a jerk

btw I love how the dialogue accounts for possible sidequest paths. The guy asks us if we took care of the monster in the mine. Which we did, by going to a place we weren't supposed to since I got bored of trying to find the reporter and decided to explore around. I think the normal path would be to find the reporter in the bar, learn about the lead in the mine town then go there.

npcs in the city also take into account the fact I already killed a monster for them. Nice

NFUN posted...

don't you have an information quartz by now that gives you enemy descriptions?

Haven't been using it though. Maybe I should try now that Olivier is stuck with a silver slot.

run into some small bird enemies. very weak

then I run into a big bird with 2 small birds. lots of hp but seems doable. then I attack it and the small ones reflect all the dmg I gave to myself. wtf

then it creates a copy of itself. wtf. I run away

I look online. the small ones always reflect arts but not physical attacks. the big one doesn't reflect but has huge physical defense. that's a cruel setup

round 2. I take a more precise approach. first skewer the small ones with my weapons, then burn the big one to a crisp with fire magic

I... just dealt 1710 dmg to a bird. stacked clock up and morale on Joshua, got a crit turn and used 5x elemental advantage. And this is chapter 1. I think this is one of those games with the crazy numbers.

we arrive at the military base. general dick is not there

a very gay dude is in the bar, though. I also know he's the next party member due to my uncontrollable self spoiling tendencies. I didn't know he was that gay, though

or a pansexual, I guess

general dick arrives, we go meet him, and pan dude starts following us. I'm just wondering why, but estelle asks it 2 seconds later. he says he just thinks they are interesting. Estelle activates the High Font of Doom and kicks him out with a "shoo shoo". Lame.

soldier: "plz dont go wandering in other places" me: "why, I'm insulted you even think I would CONSIDER that".

there is a jail on the floor below. I give it 90% chance we will be imprisoned there. and 89% pan dude will be the one to break us out.

We meet General Dick. he can't know we are bracers no matter what

Estelle rolling deception checks but getting a -10 modifier every time she does is a marvel to see. It's like watching a horror movie.

she eventually rolls a nat 1 and we are kicked out. then just as I think estelle is about to make things worse, Schera is the one who explains in precise detail to General Dick why he is well, a dick.

but before he sends us to jail, pan dude shows up with a lute and starts playing a song to soothe their hearts.
...

I love bards.

Well, I guess that counts as breaking us out.

pan dude introduces himself as Olivier, and promply starts hitting on Schera. He more or less invites himself into the party. I'm not complaining.

he does not think Estelle is fucking material, though. She is VERY not happy about that

our dude sports a gun, better armor than mine, a nice spiral orbment set with 5 open slots, a high ats stat and 2 characters worth of EP. this is gonna be fun.

Thorn posted...

Aerial, on the other hand...

I have noticed.

I used a combo to get Lightning but I could never get a battle with enemies lined up for me to hit more than one.

Are line hitting arts just bad or am I missing something?

Thorn posted...

yes this is accurate

action quartz best quartz

Yeah I gave it to all characters.

Current setup is something like this (not necessarily in this order):

Estelle: action 1, hp 2, defense 1, the one that lets you see distant enemies

Joshua: Action 1, Blind, Attack 1, EP Cut

Schera: action 1, Impede 2, Evade, Hit 1

Must. Not. Click. Spoiler.

Going to the next region, Bose

guards says although I have obtained permission to go to Bose, I don't yet have permission to come back from it. This is... obnoxious

For all people love this queen, she surely has a very authoritarian system going on

this game's exp system is very self balancing. Since Schera joined, Estelle and Josh gained 3 levels each. She's gained none.

Bose has though foes, but so far I've been able to stay ahead of them by using the orbment that shows them in the map so I can sneak from behind. I feel like I'm about to do a lot of equipment shopping to keep up with combat, though

Names to remember: General Mogran. The guy who saved the country from invasion 10 years ago. Going by usual jrpg plot twist writing, that's prime material for a surprise game villain

I explore Bose City, and find the market, with a lot of shops. the equipment selection isnt great, but I get a couple stuff

then I explore more and find the actual equipment shop in a random alley, where all the good stuff are
I don't feel guilty for resetting the game to get my money back

first rule of rpg equipment buying: upgrade weapons first. the way the math usually works is that you have to buy multiple equipment pieces to get to the ideal level of power, while for weapons there is always just one

plus killing things before their turn arrives is the best defense. btw, I've been reading around and everyone and their dog says the best stat in the game is speed. I'm picking my orbments accordingly

the mayor is going to hire us to do the thing we were already going to do. which is awfully convenient
not just for the money but also cuz we get to tell "GTFOut of my way, the mayor sent me here" to npcs

we find the mayor yelling at merchants to make them lower the price of food. I'd vote for her
oh ok she owns the market. classic.

mayor: "I want you to investigate the airship disappearance, because the airspace being closed is bad for business". Capitalism, ho.

basically we are using the power of corporate politics to get the army to shut up and let us pass. this is realistic

we do a small sidequest for a restaurant and they give us a recipe as a reward. Estelle asks them if it's not dangerous to reveal their recipe, to which the woman responds that nope, it's not like estelle has any hope of getting to her level. ouch

Schera's Aerial spell is already miles better than Estelle's AoE attack

I go into the forest to look for the thief. though what I really want is to find a bear claw to complete a sidequest that gives a pathetic amount of money. priorities

and the thief I find, along with her henchmen. One of with is the intern. Knew it!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/2/5/AAO9CbAAEPqV.jpg

Estelle is using high font.

All bets are off.

wow. my ass was completely handed to me

Schera's Sadist Whip is a contender for top 5 scariest move in gaming

beat the boss in the 2nd try. My strategy was going to be to use the Impede skill to attack the boss so she wouldn't heal herself, however I got lucky with Soul Blur hax (20% chance to cause faint) and the rest was just focus firing on the main guy. While the henchmen have high hp but their attack is pitiful, so you are meant to ignore them. The lesson is: if you have a move that inflicts crippling status 20% of the time, SPAM IT.

thief girl has a brother (probably, same hair color) who is her partner in crime. Looks like this is the game's Team Rocket.

Esteless vows to thwack-bam-kapow them the next time they meet. We are all hyped for that.

I receive the local gym badge. I mean, bracer recommendation. and now I have to get the other 4 from other regions to become a pokemon master. I mean, senior bracer. To give some extra motivation, someone made the airship dad was in disappear. Prologue is over. That was one long prologue tbh.

the mine's song is really good

I come here for a mission thats supposed to be simple, but because some intern decided to dig where he was not supposed to, he opened a hole to a den of monsters and now they are everywhere. Godamn interns.

... is it just me or the intern has an agenda?

Estelle pretending she dropped the hyper valuable rock to troll them is awesome

Mayor: "the mucguffin will be safe in here"
Narrator: "It wouldn't be"

3rd slot unlocked for both my characters, and i'm already starting to get analysis paralysis from all the options

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/9/1/AAO9CbAAEPoP.jpg

Urban Dictionary, help me!

escort missions can be annoying, but escorting a goofy photographer who can blind enemies by taking photos of them is fun, ngl

I finally learn an AoE attack (Hurricane) and I feel like I'm going to spam it a lot

I touched a treasure chest after picking the item and the narration scolded me for being greedy

the escorting is less fun when you are fighting 3 spellcaster enemies who like to snipe the npc in the first turn, though

"The chest mocks you with its emptiness"

so this tower houses one of seven elemental goods who drstroyed a civilization 1200 years ago. We are going to have to defend this from some villain later on, right

back at Bracer's guild. Schera tries to invite two underage kids to drink. Then they turn down, and she starts making sexual advances at a 16yo. That is a character right there.

predictably, the ultra rare crystal was stolen from the mayor's house. Whodunnit?

Calling it now: it was the intern

Let's Play Estelle Wright - Ace Attorney

Schera joins the party! "Paper Mario song plays"

she starts 4 levels higher and has one more slot than estelle and joshua do. Okay

catesdb posted...

Have you re-checked any empty chests yet?

Uh... one, while I was backtracking for a sidequest. Said there was a dead spider in it.

Do items in chests respawn or something?

Xiahou_Shake posted...

This bugged the crap out of me during FC but I eventually started thinking of the dialogue as the treasure. Totally ridiculous how much (constantly changing!) dialogue is in these games and basically all of it helps build the world up.

You are not wrong, but still doesn't justify those houses with 3-4 empty rooms each.

this game's battle song has been living rent free in my head for the whole week. It's very catchy

you know what this game lacks? treasure chests in towns. what is the point of designing all those detailed interiors if I can't plunder them? Smh

we go to a farm, and spend the day there waiting for monsters who attack at night so we may kill them. Hmm, where have I seen that? (Majora's Mask).

so the local women are all attracted to Joshua, except Estelle, in classic anime protagonist fashion

yes Estelle, that's the best time to debate where babies come from

monsters beaten. They use magic but their stats arent so high. I guess it helps to do sidequests before engaging with the main story. and this time we explore Joshua's character weaknesses for a change

beating up soldiers to make them realize how much they suck is a peculiar kind of sidequest, but I like it.

maxed out the weapons/armor available from shops, so now I'm filling up the cookbook. I learn of a pasta recipe that's easy to make and heals the whole party, so I'm stocking on ingredients for that. next order of business is to open more slots, but I have a shitton of red quartz and little of the other colors.

So that was a pro-prologue. Hum.

ok, did some sidequests for cash and xp. first is going back to the swerers to pick up a shiny thing for another ungrateful kid. He basically pays in meatballs, which is pretty cool I suppose.

Next is finding a miniboss plant in the way to the farm, where the I'm supposed to do one of dad's quests. On the way I mercilessly destroy all plant enemies, now armed with the knowledge that plants are weak to fire.

I approach the miniboss and decide to rush it with fire plus both my s-crafts. I think I probably overdid it but turns out it was barely enough, because the boss survives and promptly kills joshua. Then I finish it off with Estelle, it self destructs and almost kills her too. Ouch. But it's down and I've made money. I buy a new pair of shoes for Joshua and open one of his orbment slots.

after the entire cast spends the day diminishing Estelle's skills, she starts doubting herself. Then Joshua steps in and cheers her up, also saying being a ditz is what makes her great, not being someone she isn't. Ok I like this guy.

Like, I hate the way characters treat Estelle. Again, compare with Lloyd. He was a non-intellectual, but people only ever made fun of him when he showed that lack of knowledge. When he was being competent and resourceful (which was almost all the time), they respected him. Estelle is almost universally disrespected. She saved a kid's life and he still had the nerve to call her incompetent. She should have dropped him out of the tower's window or something

So Joshua is being corny but it's the type of corny this game needs. I want to play the it just to see Estelle making people shut up, while Joshua helps with that

Estelle's dad seems like a cool guy too but he prefers to be a doofus when his daughter is around so it's hard to get a read of him

He gets a letter from PLOT and leaves us to do sidequests for him. Lame. I wanna go deal with PLOT too!

Josh says some mysterious stuff that will obviously never come up again, and with that, Prologue is over

Ok I just realized this game is actually 3 and I only bought the 1st (and the 2nd is double the price). Also apparently the 3rd is just an epilogue?

Steam takes the FC from the name so I thought I was buying the whole Sky subseries (is that how I call it?) since I read they were originally meant to be one game.

No matter, if this is good I'm playing all of it. Not sure about other Trails games though, the size of this series is very daunting.

After I got to the tower I started checking the monster guide and it told me plants are weak to fire. I'm going to start looking at it more often.

tcaz2 posted...

You do the battle with extra enemies and you get less Bracer Points.

Ngl I was going to do the reckless option for the lulz but I had come this close to a game over in the forest (had to spend all my items on a single battle) and I wanted to just get this mission over with safely.

Either this game is more difficult than the usual for a JRPG or I'm failing to get something.

colliding posted...

the game feels well intentioned but I'm not sure it lands whatever it ends up going for, but I'll definitely take this over what the later parts in the series eventually turns into. estelle being well-written helps immensely.

You mean the other games after Sky?

This game has such a convenient way of teaching recipes (assuming it works as stated) I'm here wondering why I haven't seen any newer games do it.

Recipes are often the one thing I don't bother getting 100% on

Some dumb kids run to a tower to prove they can fight monsters so I gotta save their butts. Classic.

This is usually when heavy plot shit happens as the MC is distracted

Getting to the tower is tough enough, with those plant enemies who push you. How did those kids even manage?

Ok recipes are not as simple as I imagined. Apparently you have to eat prepared meals to get the recipes, not the raw ingredients? But how do I get those?

Im given the option to have estelle run alone to save the kids or run slowly so joshua comes too. I pick the layer and we kill two monsters before the fight starts. What happens if I pick the former? Estelle is screwed because thats a shit plan?

Escort mission beaten. No plant enemies helps

The dialogue after the battle is written in a way that would work whether I picked either option

Blue haired kid is a douchebag. Estelle is ready to give him physical punishment for that. You go girl.

Dad shows up to save us from a stronger monster. But we all know it's because he got tired of waiting for us to bring the newspaper so he came to learn what was taking so long. Those dumb millenials can't even bring a man's news on time.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/5/7/AAO9CbAAEOqx.jpg

that's um... a creative way to express anger

[googles urban dictionary]

I will not play every day, tbh. Though I tend to play a lot more in the weekends.

Greetings. I just bought this thing B8 keeps talking about on Steam and now I'm playing it.

This playthrough is being originally posted first in some discord channel, mostly on phone, which means the text may not be very well edited and may lack capitals letters

Let's go.

------------------------------------------------------------

This was a pain to launch. I had to do some weird menu stuff to make the game open. I get it that it's an old game and I'm not entirely pissed because the option was there, but if steam wants to be a platform for selling and running games, they should make this stuff work more easily too. I had a similar issue with Bastion last year.

Music is good. Man this is from 2004? for some reason I thought it was a newer game. No matter, I love old games.

The opening. I thought it was going to copy the style of the Tales series openings but then it just showed a bunch of characters with no context. The whole things just shows peace times, no conflict. But it was well put.

Estelle and Joshua, the main leads, seem play a gender reversed stuff of the usual JRPG setup, with the dumb and reckless hero guy and the mysterious, gentle girl with ties to the main plot (I briefly read a description from the game that suggests Joshua is important). Also their hobbies suggest she is the melee and he is the caster, though I have no idea if the gameplay fits with that.

Simple put, she is Lloyd and he is Collete.

you start at lv 3? weird. does that mean there are npcs with lower levels or is it just a cosmetic thing?

these characters are fast as hell. I dont remember the last time I saw this fast movement without power ups in an RPG

wild guess, this Fate dude is evil. though odds are hes just unimportant. If you have no idea who I'm talking about, it's the later (I mean the npc guy who says he's old friends with Estelle's dad, really gives me the vibes of that traitor guy from Xenoblade).

the game's dialogue is weirdly sexist (every character keeps pointing out how amazing it is that a girl can do boy things), and I'm not sure if it's setting something up (Estelle will prove that all that sexism is BS) or if the game is a victim of its time and therefore that dialogue will stay commonplace. Either way, Estelle is having none of it.

I finish Very Linear Sewer dungeon and learn the battle system while also joining the bracers. Pretty standard stuff. crafts seem a lot better than arts so far, though they are more expensive. This was mostly easy but i came close to dying in the first boss because I wasted time. I feel like this game is gonna kill me a lot.

Estelle manages to not open a box that was placed there to test her personal resposibility of not opening the box. Except that only happened because Joshua told her not do. Is that cheating the test?

When contest

Can't be an Argentina final without insane amounts of drama.

charmander6000 posted...

I wouldn't call Spain totally un-cookie, they were probably the best team to have never won the World Cup (or second to the Netherlands) from an historical sense.

Hungary was also pretty ridiculous for a while, at least as much as Netherlands.

junk_funk posted...

Croatia last year wasnt a cookie cutter finalist. First time in a long time I believe.

I meant every final had at least one cookie. Not both.

For that matter, Spain was very un-cookie in 2010. That was their first final in history.

I don't think I've played 12 new games in a year since I was a kid.

If France loses because some players decided to go to a club or something between games they deserve it imo.

The same happened with the Brazil team.

Also finals are very dominated by four teams. Other than 2010 and 2018, every final had one of Brazil, Italy, Germany or Argentina.

Brazil has 7 finals, Germany has 8, Italy and Argentina have 6 each.

And after them, the teams that made it to the most finals are France (4) and Netherlands (3), who appear in the two cups mentioned above. There has never been a final without a cookie cutter team in it.

red_sox_777 posted...

An all South America final seems pretty hard. This year, based on the draw it could only happen if (1) one of Argentina and Brazil finished 2nd in their group, or (2) Uruguay or Ecuador made the final. Those are minimum conditions. For the first one, Argentina and Brazil would also need to advance from 6 knockout stage games.

I don't think an SA team other than Argentina or Brazil has made the final in a very very long time so it seems like an all-SA final is extremely unlikely. Maybe more likely with an increased field.

Uruguay made the semifinals twice after 1950 so they are probably your best bet.

I did something fun.

Next world cup has 48 teams, so I'm trying to predict how many of each continent there will be.

This is the current continental math:

Europe: 13
South America: 4.5
North America: 3.5
Asia: 4.5
Africa: 5
Oceania: 0.5:
Host: 1

The halves are continents that have to do play-offs to decide if they get an extra country or not. For example, North America does a play-off with Oceania, and if they win, they get to send 4 countries while Oceania gets none, if they lose, they send 3 and Oceania sends 1.

So next world cup e have 48 teams. 3 are hosts (USA, Mexico and Canada), so the numbers above have to be multipled by 45/31 to get the ideal proportions, giving us:

Europe: 18.87
South America: 6.53
North America: 5.08
Asia: 6.53
Africa: 7.26
Oceania: 0.73
Host: 3

Now we have to round them. If we round them all up and down to the nearest half, we get 48, including the hosts. However, I feel like Oceania really gets the short end of the stick if they still have 0.5 after 16 countries are added. Also, North America already has 3 host countries, they can afford to lose a 0.5. So if we follow that ligic, we get:

Europe: 19
South America: 6.5
North America: 4.5
Asia: 6.5
Africa: 7.5
Oceania: 1
Host: 3

And we can always take that 0.5 from a different country each WC, depending on who is hosting, since WCs going forward are likely to have 2-3 hosts each. For example, if 3 European countries host in 2030, they get 18.5 slots instead of 19, while NA gets 5.

In any case, those numbers are painting a WC with A LOT of fodder.

Dark_Silvergun posted...

To clarify:

AFC = Asia, Middle East & Australia

Btw Middle East is part of Asia.

Only an English guy would stop to get the ball's position and his sock just right before kicking a penalty.

Wow

1- Argentina
2- Morocco
3- Portugal
4- Croatia
5- England
6- France

Argentina doesn't do it cool. It has to be with drama. They have to lose to Arabia. Struggle in Ro16. Struggle in quarterfinals. Take a draw after winning 2-0. Let Holland catch up after leading penalties by two.

The players are emotional, the fans are emotional, they sing and cry and suffer. It's tango from start to end.

I'm Brazilian but I'm rooting for Argentina now. They are just so much easier to care about.

The tango continues for another round.

Argentina has the best fans in this cup. They are just so passionate.

Brazil came into 2006 with the Magic Square: Kak, Ronaldinho, Adriano and Robinho.

Until they decided to swap Robinho for Ronaldo despite him being overweight because he was the 02 star. Did not work, everyone and their dog called the coach stupid.

Though in hindsight, I'm not sad Robinho did not get his chance for glory. Screw that rapist.

MZero posted...

USA made the semi-finals in the very first World Cup tho

Probably skipped that.

That said Europe basically boycotted the first WC so there's that.

I just checked, in 21 world cups, a team not from SA or Europe only made it to the semifinals once: South Korea, in 2002, who was hosting the cup.

Unless you count Turkey and Soviet Union, but they are also from Europe. Turkey also reached the semifinals in 2002, Soviet Union in 1966.

That's one hell of a regional domination.

It's almost as if the favorites losing was because they were warming up in the first game or saving energy in the third one, and when it started to actually count, they started playing at full strength.

I've been playing it too and dropped it right after getting the mantis claw. I think metroidvanias aren't for me.

I don't enjoy the lack of direction, especially if you fail to run into the map NPC the first time you enter a new area. I'm stuck in god knows where with no way of knowing how to leave the fungus region (except that I came from up-ish) and I also forgot how to get back to where I last died. Boss combat is fun but enemy combat can get annoying pretty fast though, like I'm constantly being swarmed by things and stopping to heal every 10 seconds.

I don't think the game is too hard, but imo it feels oppressive, which is how metroidvanias usually make me feel. Like the game doesn't want to be played.

Either way, hope you enjoy it.

Japan is Gordon Freeman.

South America Square

Brazil = Cloud (used to be #1 now always loses to nintendo)
Argentina = Seph (the regional #2. Won a long time ago by doing some wicked things)
Uruguay = Crono (the ghost of a long gone past)

Nintendo Europe

Italy = Mario (self-explainable)
Gernany = Link (not as dominating but its the closest one)
France = Zelda (didnt exist until recently now a force)
England = Sonic (wishes it was relevant again)
Netherlands = Mega Man (never wins but always gets to the top)
Spain = Samus (won once but still not top tier)
Croatia = Snake (actually got really close to winning a few times)
Belgium = Pikachu (lots of fear but ultimately folds when it matters)

Some of those aren't nintendo but whatever.

England is Sonic.

Nuff said.

Following the South America = Square analogy, Crono is Uruguay.

It hasn't been relevant in ages but people still hope.