LogFAQs > #957814492

In combat, Elise's healing craft is fucking broken. Puts Elies in Zero to shame on its own. I can get used to this. Also, her and Rean have a post battle scene where he gives her a headpat and she says thank you in the most heartfelt voice I've ever heard. Good voice work, but man. I don't even fucking know what their vibe is anymore. Like you said, Rean definitely has a propensity towards the headpats. I know it's an anime thing, but it does feel weird.

We make our way to the Magic Knight part 2, and it's a little tougher. I actually just end letting Elise die in battle. Normally I never do that, but I figured she's temporary anyway so it doesn't really matter if she misses out on some XP here. If she ever comes back I doubt it will factor in. As the battle ends, an absolutely sick song starts playing. I wish there was a way to see the music titles because I'd listen to that track again. It's definitely unique to this game. That was one of the best features of Azure when I was playing the geofront patch, by the way. They added an overlay that displayed the name of the song whenever a new track started playing. An amazing QOL feature that I hope becomes more standard in games in the future.

Valimar is apparently recharging energy just by standing - sorry, epic kneeling posing - there, but he's not connected to any kind of power source or anything. Seems a little dubious to me, but okay. I guess he just gets his energy from the ether. Robot combat begins with Valimar vs the magic knight, and it is just as boring and straightforward as it was in the last game, which is disappointing. Nothing has yet to top Xenosaga 3's robot combat for me, and it looks like CS2 isn't trying to change my mind in that department.

After your robot fight ends, Vita Clotilde shows up, which makes me assume that my earlier assumption was right. +1 on the scoreboard for me. Some exposition and we make our way back to the village due to the attack, but I had the opposite reaction you did it seems. Anime demon Rean coming out right at the start of the game is a disappointment to me. Worst part of his character, IMO. Hopefully we can move past that soon but I somehow doubt it.

Regardless, his father ends up getting shot, point blank, by machine gun fire, so he's obviously dead. Rean goes to bury him and there is a funeral scene, they discuss how the village will proceed without their Elder and Rean agrees to stay and assume control of the village. Oh, no wait sorry, none of that happened because they can immediately tell he's alive because of fucking course he is. In reality, Vita pulls off a pretty sick plan where she convinces Rean that she will help him and then immediately double crosses him and kidnaps the princess. But also, she kidnaps Elise, who they specifically mention was target #2. The princess makes sense as to why you'd kidnap her, of course, but I have to wonder how Elise factors into their plans at this point.

The black-clad Millium doppelganger, after 3 lines of dialogue, already seems infinitely cooler than Millium. God willing, Millium will die and get replaced with this chick and I will never have to think about her again. Somehow I doubt this will occur.

Now, for something entirely different. They cut away to an airship where the big bads of the story appear to be plotting some nefarious deeds. Rufus still seems like that dude, and the villain who is actually on top of things. Duke Cayenne reminds me of a Trump supporter that bought into the Kool Aid a little too hard. He seems to be setting himself up as a good midboss figure, so hopefully I get to kill him later. If they drag it out and make Cayenne the final boss of CS3 or something I'll be pretty disappointed because he's pretty one note at this point.

Ourobouros also joins along and shows up to hang out with them, along with Crow. I do have to wonder, is that armored knight standing next to Bleublanc the one from Crossbell? Ahrienrod or something like that? She sounds like she's 18 lol, which is not at all what my image of her was. So pretty disappointed with the VA casting there, if that is the case. Definitely expected something more gruff. On the other hand though, I don't think she was a brunette in Crossbell, IIRC she was a blonde. So maybe it's just a different woman entirely. No monopoly on armored knights in Ourobouros I suppose. There's also a completely new character standing behind Bleublanc, some freaky blue/pink spiky haired guy. I like the design, so hopefully he ends up being cool.

After that ends I think there's going to be a third anime cutscene within the first hour and a half, but it turns out they're just replaying the opening so I safely skip past that. This marks the end of the prologue, but I did walk around a little bit around town just to explore. I really like that it shows the shop icons on the map now, and when you go to the shop to look at the quartz, it shows the rare versions with the name "Tear R" for example, instead of them just being called Tear but having a different icon. I enjoy that as a QOL change.

Anyway, it seems like the vibe from this point will be that I'm going to roam across the country and find all of my classmates. To be honest, that's a trope that I can 100% get behind. The 'getting the gang back for one last job' trope is honestly badass and I'm about it. It was really fun in Azure too. So I am excited to see where this goes!

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Congrats Black Turtle!