Brother Jaybird

I am starting to enjoy the Tundrica arc; this sad band of misfits is starting to shade into Konosuba Lite.

I have a Formal Complaint to Lodge with the Maker of the Coin Pusher game. I got to the Zoma fight and died twice because the game kept throwing crummy monsters at me. Historically, it really hasn't been difficult collecting the gear. Maxing it out is definitely a chore, though. I'm not too worried if I miss out, though; I'm sure we'll be seeing it again sooner or later.

The shack has been noisy recently.

You're welcome!

I have seen true misery, and its name is a twice-revocated Chinese battlemaster. Luckily, I have befriended true misery, and can sic him on my enemies. You probably won't get coins directly from the games very often; I'm pretty sure the direct coin-earning method is by clearing the missions and raising your level. Admittedly, one of the missions is getting jackpots in the king slime coin pusher thing, so you'll get at least a few coins that way, I imagine. I've already got the event missions to worry about (and a new continent, which I have yet to explore), so I only intend to jump in and complete the daily missions for the Station.

I'm so proud of you.

Welp, so much for that. There are some odd placeholders in there because the forum won't let me edit the post any more. Sorry, everyone. LankyLarry's tale, it does henceforth continue. Behold the journey. So less than five hundred feet away from the salvation statue, I started to get a funny sensation in my stomach, like the exit would be harder to get to than expected, brief respite notwithstanding. You ever get one of those sinking feelings sometimes? 'Cause I do. So me and The Man from HOOD get chased through the caves by some newly discovered relative of the Great Dragon. Unlike the guards, I did not see fit to actually challenge the dragon, as the game seemed determined to run us through the set piece and I figured it would be less painful to just run with it. Or away from it. (I note with some chagrin that the game taunted us by dropping half a dozen metal slimes just out of reach while we were running for our lives). We escape from ??? to safety. Ha! Fooled you! The game subverted our escape from having to flee the guards by having us escape right back to fleeing the guards! Hahaha, what an intelligent expenditure of player time! We could easily have done without the dragon sequence. It really adds nothing except foreshadowing what will probably be a middle game boss fight. The mystery of the king of Heliodor (and his affairs from the prolog) is a vastly more intriguing thing than the fact that there happens to be a dragon in a cave, even if it's a very specific cave. So the guards chase us through the sewers/catacomb/necrogond and we end up emerging from a tunnel next to a waterfall. The Man from HOOD, clearly a thief and lifelong cynic, makes the smart, rational choice and figures on negotiating with the guards, who don't actually want us dead. Oh, this is going to be a painful relationship. So the fideistic flatskull here has basically latched on to me as the messiah, bless his heart, which I'm pretty sure should earn him a spot on the shortlist for the local end-of-days suicide cult. Never tell this man to jump off a cliff. See? Complicating things is the fact that I am, in fact, the messiah. I'm really not digging Erik's "character development", if you can really even call it that. He's some rando who spent months in jail (basically capable of escaping at any time, as he clearly demonstrates when he punches out a guard through the bars of his cell) on the word of a seer, and the predicted Luminary finds him on the last day of his task, and the most he has to show for it is mild shock. Even if I didn't find the subject matter of his faith in a fictional messiah distasteful, there's nothing in his character remotely appropriate to the situation -- no exhaustion, no lingering doubt, no frustration, none of the cynicism appropriate to his vocation, no annoyance at himself for what to a normal person would take as the mother of all fool's errands, just a moderate quantity of "Neat! I believe in you, now!" His development is undercooked at best and insincere at worst. Secondly, what does putting his faith in the Luminary even mean? On what actual grounds does he have to think that plummeting thousands of feet won't kill him instantly? Is that a promised power of the Luminary? Erik just sounds more and more like an authorial sockpuppet talking nonsense about faith to highlight my status as the luminessiah. (And to be pedantic, yes, he does have a choice -- taking on the guards is something I know both characters are more than capable of doing, and even giving up is an option let's him stay alive for at least a little while, as the guards clearly object to the characters plummeting to their deaths). So Erik ends up Saved By Faith, and drags me off to a nun, whom we end up lying to and sneaking away from awkwardly, and it turns out he has an errand to run back in Heliodor, and for that we'll have to sneak in. So once this failed Final Fantasy audition finishes giving me advice about not standing out in a crowd, we return to the seedy underbelly of Heliodor, where Erik finally starts acting like a thief, not that he'll actually use the word. We meet Rose, and Roxy, and Cammo, who insists Rose used to look like Roxy, which is very nice to think about, but really the neatest thing about Rose is how Erik flirts with her, which is a much more whole and wholesome relationship than he ever had with me. We also briefly get to sample a new Loyal Attack Dog (Bullseye Model). Unfortunately, we also return to Erik's "faith" theme, where once he fails to find the Orb, he immediately latches onto his conviction that his old partner in crime, Derk, has double-crossed him and run off to a life of luxury, which is mostly believable, except the game makes a point of repeating Erik's understanding of the situation and inadvertently foreshadows the coming twist that Erik will be wrong. (I don't really hold this against the game; it's fair to say I'm probably genre-savvier than the target audience). And wrong he is; so it turns out Derk accidentally went straight trying to solve the Erik's In Jail problem and gave the stolen orb back for the reward and has since become a merchant; even took a wife (who is a little odd -- I'm pretty sure most wives stop referring to their husbands as "magnificent" a few weeks after they start dating). Erik apologizes for doubting, expresses minimal self-reflection on his tendency to latch onto his beliefs, and ends up with a second relationship that is also more worthwhile than anything he shares with me. I turn out to be a pretty crummy luminessiah, happily agreeing to help Erik Notathief re-steal a treasure of the kingdom that imprisoned me. But first we get to return to Cobblestone and see if Gemma gets a better part in the story! (No, seriously, I will happily trade Erik for Gemma, I still have a pair of burgled commandeered fishnet stockings just sitting in my bag). We have to take the long way 'round, though, as the Heliodoran army wouldn't like to see us; through the Manglegrove we go, finding new monsters and talking cows (it's good to see Dragon Quest taking so much inspiration from Ocarina of Time, really makes it a modern feeling game). Moving past the several uncomfortable questions this raises about the production of meat, along the way we get the Fun-Sized Forge (which is more fun than I originally thought it would be, though I lament the apparent abandonment of alchemy; at least the Great Krak Pot talked to us), our first boss, and a new superpower! So one of the benefits of being the Luminessiah is that the glowing tree in the sky really loves us, so if we encounter one of her bejeweled roots, which show up in random locations and are totally not an object of poaching for some reason, she shares her save states with us. This allows us to find and kill the Tricky Devil, who was hiding in an empty treasure chest that really was empty when I passed by it the first time, which frees the Woodcutter from being turned into a dog (which the Tricky Devil never tried to do to us, go figure) and allows us to continue on our way. Another benefit of being the Luminessiah? Great hair. A last couple of notes before leaving the manglegrove: everyone has a unique dancing animation, which is neat, and I'm still hyped about that Cyclops I saw on the deeper jungle floor. Anyway, finally we get back to Cobblestone, and let me tell you it is great to see everyone again. Unfortunately, not everyone seems to feel that great about seeing me. They don't even recognize me, for some reason. Maybe Mom knows why. Aha! We've gone back in time! That's what's going on. (This was really sudden). Thanks, Mom! (I am a little underwhelmed by the game directly reusing mom's model, which is not only mildly insulting to the woman, but accomplishes nothing except to delay the twist by about ten seconds). Oh, well, we can't go home again, but we can still walk and talk and see what was going down when the old haunts were still new. She's adorable. You're cute, too, Gemma. Here, let me clean your mess up for you. (I'm glad to see that the creators gave you a new model; at least they put some effort into your character). Oh, no, you don't. I don't care how much your cuteness intensifies, Gemma, you won't distract me from the fact that I just broke the whole timeline over my knee. I hear the sound of Dragon Quest V intensifying in the background, but it's nice to know that we had at least something of a personality once upon a time. I can totally understand a six-year-old girl who loses things in trees getting along swimmingly with a six-year-old boy with a ladder. This is the stuff crushes are made of. Also, grampus Chalky is here, too. Don't you look at me like that, old man. Don't sit there and pretend you've adapted savvily and mysteriously to this whole affair. This town already has a couple thimble-deep mysteries to it that I still have to solve and cute blonde who could've been really cool in another timeline, I don't need you complicating that. So, anyway, it's a nice treat to see Grampus Chalky again, and we discuss timeline matters for a bit; he drops a vague line about being "no longer around" in my time and gives me instructions to go dig up some buried treasure... and then he vanishes, which raises some pretty radical questions about how this Inexplicable Time Travel works. So apparently it's time to go all of a sudden. I get to see the kids one last time, and I'll admit I can totally see why the village ships them. But anyway, we're going back to the future! Now we'll get to say hi to everyone for real this time! Oof. This is a terrible scene in exactly the right way. It's legitimately upsetting, in the same way DQV was, and for most of the same reasons. It's even staged well, using the transition from the past to the horrible, horrible, present. I'm starting to think the Heliodorans may not be quite the heroes they're touted to be. The "good guys" sure seem to be good at viking raids. Unfortunately, the scene also highlights a core weakness of the silent protagonist and possibly the story, in that an actual human would be completely distraught and horrified, but the luminessiah turns out to have the emotional depth of a teaspoon. Erik's response is also rather weak, especially considering he's supposed to be emoting for the both of us, but at least it's accurate to the situation. It's also kind of morbid to just wander emotionlessly through the ruins of your hometown and help yourself to the loot now available in the ruined church. We have one of the most horrifying occurrences in all of Dragon Quest history right in front of us, and it gets written off in the scene of one cutscene. Nobody dwells on the horror of the event, nobody expresses any hope or desperation that someone might've survived, it just happened and we only technically acknowledged it before moving on. (DQVII was much better about this sort of thing, with Maribel actually being noticeably affected by the fear and misery you encountered). Erik thinks that our trip to the past was a souped-up vision from the local Yggdrasil root, which isn't carrying a jewel, but has hidden sigils anyway, and it turns out there is buried treasure containing information from our trip to the past, which raises still more questions, like how does the time travel affair work? Was this information always here in this timeline, have we modified the past and wound up in an alternate timeline, exactly how alternate is this possibly alternate timeline, given that Chalky knows that the once-recommended trip to the king goes south, what is even going on? (Incidentally, we're the prince of a kingdom that doesn't apparently exist anymore; I've been selling every bit of my true homeland's currency as a cheap curio). I want to pause again and take note that we have two different mentions by Chalky of "don't hold grudges" within ten minutes of each other, and I seem to recall someone attributing it to him earlier in the game, so that may end up being the theme of the game, rather than Erik's psychological problem. Also, "I'm just an ignorant old man from a little village in the country"? Grampus Chalky, you are the most blatant liar I've ever known, Mr. Here-Have-a-Keystone-that-opens-Magic-Doors. In hindsight, this is a game with a lot of intrigue (and scenery), but the character development and emotions could really, really use some work. But anyway, we go back on the road to re-steal a treasure from a kingdom that employs apparent mass murderers as heroes, because the luminessiah's word is his bond. There's a tent out in front of the kingsbarrow with a book we can't read, which is unfortunate, so let's go see what they're up to. I see you boys had quite the party, huh? How'd it go? So there's trouble afoot in the kingsbarrow, and we do the dungeoneering thing. The dungeon is pretty straightforward, minimal branching, some external areas, but near the end we are introduced to the new mechanic of steeds, which promises to be fun. It is immediately less fun when the direct implication is that we scooped out the eggoskeleton's guts. So the heart of all the trouble turns out to be a couple of grim gryphons who are also after the red orb (and are really quite inefficient about getting it and skedaddling) trying to get into somebody's good books (Ha ha~ the game isn't gonna tell us anything!). I like the boss battles with their full voice acting, which is delightful to listen to, and a step up from DQVIII. Once Erik gets his orb back, he admits he thinks I'm a lucky charm (what, the thousand foot drop didn't do that?) and that he has secret affairs of his own that he totally expects me to contribute to, which is better than all his earlier chatter about faith in the luminessiah, but not by all that much. I'm able to pilot the eggoskeleton husk through the dungeon and past the entryway, where all the corpses have been removed for some reason, but I must abandon it on the outside. Well, a limited but fun mechanic is still a fun mechanic. I tinker with the fun-time forge some more and upgrade the Supplicant accessory to +3, so now I get a free 3 MP every turn, which is very useful because I also gave Eleven Zap. My gameplay style so far has been to keep Eleven on Show No Mercy while using Erik to Half-Inch everything in sight for extra loot, which hasn't failed me so far. I like that Erik has lines -- "Yoink!" and "What's yours is mine!" -- but I would like them a lot more if they went along with actual confirmed steals, because when they don't they inevitably degrade into noise. Anyway, the luminessiah and his looter disciple continue east and are forced to abandon our horse to make our way through some undergrowth. We emerge into a clearing with some hades condors (looks like 'em anyway), but we're not allowed to explore this section (shame on me for not checking earlier), because a chase scene finds us. Hax! I call hax! There's no playable horse in the game that could climb up those rocks, and how dare you flaunt your unicorn armor in front of me when I just abandoned my own horse, which is totally a gift from the town you apparently razed to the ground and not a generic steed that just shows up when I ring a bell. So Hendrik and his goons, whom, remember, we have pretty good reason to think might be horrible mass-murderers and psychopaths, not that we bother to talk about it, chase us across the clearing, which is a little silly because I saw the size of the clearing and there is way too much chase scene for this tiny spit of land, pretending it isn't also ridiculous that the horses don't catch up to us when we're on foot, and that it isn't worse when there just so happens to be an extra horse standing around waiting for us to commandeer it, and further when Hendrik shoots the dumb horse from nowhere, knocks us to the ground and still can't catch us. I abandoned my horse to steal a horse and the second horse got shot. Would it really have been that awful to just let us walk across to the door? So the door hides a portal and the portal sends us very far away, to a rocky place with a very beautiful active volcano nearby. I do love me the bongo drongos with their chimpish drums. But most importantly, time to sweat! Hotto is a hot land of large and restful saunas. Erik quickly departs. I do not depart, but make up for my past lack of exploration. I thought we were lost, but foreigners are here, too. Not as lost as thought. The house of Tetsu, who found the Mini Medal. What is his is mine. Little redcap bites, and bites again with her tongue. Deal with her later. I find Miko soon, above us in her temple. Deal with her later. I soon find the bath, and am strictly forbidden, from going astray. But not little girls, who may wander in at will. Good thing we're all clothed! I find the Puff-Puff, but this time was not a trick. Connie's right there, too. It is much too bad that the girls' sauna has such poor security. Redcap in the square, causing more trouble for all. Connie's not her sis. Redcap's sis is lost, in monster hands, most likely. She tags along now. Meet the silent deer, who do not share the weather and won't interact. Despite her big stick, redcap does not speak softly. Can't hit hard, either. We climb the mountain, and find one foe to challenge. This was a mistake. We explore elsewhere and find the robber rabbits. Cute, but no real threat. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. Time is lost to find another rabbit rare drop. I lost mine to death. We find the monsters and their faraway hideout. Erik sure is spooked. Ah, such a good find! An unattended chest here; I'll just go get it. A new type of steed, with new and unique motion, but only one use. Inside a chest here, a robber rabbit's rare drop. I kick myself hard. I believe this place was once a temple, with the root and the statue. Redcap and greendress, make quite a pair united. Let's kill a dragon. We have a name now, the Lord of Shadows it is. Redcap's still tiny. Arboria's name reminds me much of Arba. I miss King Doric. Connie's dad is free, but, wow, is he suspicious. Poor, poor, poor Connie. We corner Noah, pretending to be a drunkard. Props for the mean look. We save with the priest, the missionary nearby. We will resume soon.

Redacted.

Nice find! Thanks for sharing.

All things considered, Marcello is a better character than Angelo. He has character, style, and a decent arc; Angelo's got style, but his character really just starts and ends with his brother and the church, but never particularly goes anywhere afterwards (like Jessica, come to think of it; they're even both in it just for the revenge). ...It's just that Marcello's a bad fit for DQ VIII as a whole.

I have finished Alphadia and wish I'd never started. The characters were vapid; the story was trite; the world was shallow; the dungeons were empty, long, and winding; the grind immense; and the ending was pointless. The neat elemental combo system is only a secondary grind that only serves to mete out a few extra spells to characters who may or may not be able to use them, and will probably be less useful than the spells you get by maxing out each character's single element.

I could listen to this all day, Fun fact: The original Psycho Soldier theme was actually the first music track with recorded lyrics in video game history.