LogFAQs > #977031922

Apologies for not updating this more regularly. Act 3 sends us on a detour up to Shambala. I like Egyl, an honourably honourable bird knight and all-around nice guy. I don't use him much in combat though, I've found it's not usually worth the effort as battles don't take too long and it takes a while to set up his hatred stuff. We witness the church creating monsters and shipping them off around the world, kill one of Frederik's generals, and Egyl's humorous cohort and entire village kill themselves for breaking their oath to the church. Jeez. Well, on the upside we can keep Egyl around now.

We head down to the temple where we are told the Vaen are actually bad guys. It's no shock the gods are our enemy but we're told several times how awful they are, and IDK the writing feels a bit clunky here. I do like the scene where we 'meet' them though, and how they turn upon smelling Glenn. The golems are neat too, with their own philosophical confusions. Some more intrigue with Gwayn and other behind the scenes players ensues, naturally.

After a nice winding down sequence of Amalia helping everyone out by preparing a meal (which I definitely don't ace >_>), we set off on a sidequest and wind up recruiting Tomke's granddaughter Mikah (who has a cool skillset, though kinda fills the same niche Sienna does). We get swallowed by the Megaloworm and hilariously everyone else who has been swallowed is living alive and well down there. We kill the beast... offscreen, without so much as a boss fight. How odd. But hey, new party member!

Without any other sidequests to do, we finally reach Reina's grave. Amalia explains why it was hidden away, but it's still a stretch for me to believe the church couldn't have found this themselves with all their resources. The team are split up, and promptly run through Amalia and Ba'Thraz's vital flashback events that we got a glimpse of earlier. The backstories are decent enough, though it's all a little rushed. That seems to be the theme for this act, which I'll come back to later. The two learn the power of friendship, and before you know it we're whisked away to Marylea, the church's floating capital city.

Marylea is a cool place, I don't think I've mentioned it yet but I really like the church being super technologically advanced in this game, and the lore about their organisation is interesting. Lenne meets Markas, team Frederik launch an assault on the capital, and Ba'Thraz decides for some reason to assassinate the adorable black mage pope. No! I mean, sure, it's a corrupt pope, but a pope who looked so cute! And why did Ba'Thraz go straight for the powerless figurehead instead of the true ringleader who was stood right there?

As one would expect, this turns everyone against the party. Robb continues his slow burn into caring for commoners (which is done pretty well), and then Sienna is confronted by her old pal Raphael and her ex-wife (!) Eva. This is another sequence that feels a bit rushed, it should be monumental for Sienna but we pretty quickly kill (?) both of her former allies and transition the plot back to Glenn and Lenne. Most of the party gets some expansion on their backstory this act, but aside from the main duo they all feel a bit lacking. Maybe it's just me! I did love everyone's 'well yeah duh' reaction to Sienna's secret confession about her past. So she discovered the church's atrocities, abandoned it and then I guess gave up on her ethics due to what she'd seen, and decided to be an amoral thief for a while or something. Hopefully there's more to come with her yet.

Meanwhile, Kylian continues switching sides and winds up with the Grand Grimoire, but a moment's hesitation while recalling Glenn's words puts a stop to his ascent/descent for now. They're doing a good job with Kylian and his struggle to be a cold Machiavellian character coming up against his instincts (and Glenn's) that what he's doing is wrong, though I'm curious what they do with him from here. Gwayn has some use for him, whatever that may be.

The main plot of this area, though, revolves around Glenn and Lenne. At first we're teased into thinking he's Timothy from her past, which would be a super twee development. But instead we get the much more interesting reveal that his Echo is Van, the seemingly irredeemable spoiled rich arsehole who sees Lenne as his property. The revelation sends Glenn into a coma, and the act unceremoniously ends here. I keep playing a bit longer as I can't help myself, and get partway through Glenn's mind where Victor tells us his master Bartholomew is also an incarnation of Van/Glenn. I can't judge this yet as I stopped midway, but I hope they don't go the route of 'Glenn's alright because there's a Good Person in his past as well as a Bad one', rather than him seeing himself as his own flawed (and sometimes accidentally genocidal >_>) individual.

IIRC Magnolia's earlier quest was optional so I wonder how this scene plays out if the player hadn't done it. I'm also curious how many more acts we're going to get, they're flying by now!