Finished Fire Emblem Echoes. So short! *spoilers*

Turns out Fire Emblem Echoes is a lot shorter than I’d expected. Act 5 is the final chapter of the game and it’s just a long dungeon with the final boss fight at the end. The game ending where it did blindsided me because I’d heard there were 6 Acts, but in reality there were only 4 and a quarter, maybe even less than that.

Warning to others: once you reach the Sage Hamlet with Celica it’s very hard to come back! And when you reach the top floor of Duma Tower that’s the end of Celica’s party until the final battle! If I’d known that, I would have backtracked to promote people like Boey (useless) and Atlas (promising) and Saber (very promising) and Sonya (very very promising) to the next level. All that trouble Dread Fighters gave me and I never got one of my own. There seems to be post-game content available, but except in very rare cases I don’t do post-game content.

Please, Mother Mila, give me a brain.

Besides, I lost most of my motivation in the final hours because Celica was being such a moron, determined to sacrifice her soul to Duma because a totally-not-suspicious man with purple skin told her so. Grapes have purple skin. Sweet potatoes have purple skin. If it has purple skin and it’s not a grape and it’s not a potato then it’s a villain. It says so right here in the textbook for RPG 101. But truth be told, such idiocy is beyond my power to comprehend, and I don’t have the energy to get mad about such things any more. At least everyone around Celica realizes it for the senseless act of stupidity that it is, so that helps a little bit.

The final conclusion boils down to the usual “Mankind needs no gods, you are not alone, we can do anything if we work together” JRPG spiel, though the gods here are portrayed a little more sympathetically than they are in most JRPGs. It’s probably because they were originally dragons and Fire Emblem has a fairly positive relationship with dragons overall. And it seems they aren’t actually killed but are put to sleep – not in the vet and faithful old dog way but in a magical way which opens the path for a sequel or… something? I’m up for other Valentia games as long as Celica doesn’t show up again.

I don’t feel qualified to talk about the battle system because I don’t feel I really explored its depths. If it has any depths, that is. I only promoted most characters once, never got a Dread Fighter, never got whatever Pegasus Knights promote to or Sages promote to or Gold Knights promote to, and on and on. I didn’t get to evolve most of my weapons or teach most of my characters various Arts. I didn’t even use Arts much because on Normal+Casual mode you can get along fine regardless.

The game was cut short just when I had figured out the strengths and weaknesses of my party and things were about to get good. Most likely this was done to get you to play the post-game dungeons, but as I said, I don’t do PGC. Especially in games where the combat is fun and all but not particularly compelling or addictive. And especially not in games where I’m not particularly invested in the characters. It’s even harder to be invested when you read the character endings and see so many “X disappeared and was never seen again, Y went for a walk and never came back” endings for your favorite characters. Kliff! Sonyaaa!!! Yeah, I’m done here.

Moving on~ So glad I finished Atelier Rorona and Fire Emblem Echoes so I can move into September with a clean slate. The Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment game I mentioned a while ago is probably going to end up in the “stuff that didn’t work out” pile. It’s… not very good. Operation Abyss is dropped but not dropped-dropped, just dropped until I feel like playing a dungeon crawler again. I’d like to finish it and play the sequel sometime so it’s merely on hiatus until then.

Schedule for September: probably Dragon Quest VII… People I know who’ve played it aren’t very enthusiastic but I want to try it. Probably Trails in the Sky 3rd Chapter. And then whatever else catches my eye or fancy.

Finished Shin Atelier Rorona – Glad I played it

By “finished” I mean I successfully completed all of the king’s assignments in Shin Atelier Rorona, not that I’ve done everything the game has to offer. After the credits and the ending rolled I was offered an extra year to do some forging and foraging and stuff. I’ll save it for next time I need an alchemy kick, I’m pretty satisfied right now.

The nice thing about this game is that you can see several different endings in one playthrough as long as you meet the requirements. I got the following three endings after finishing with a 100% approval rating from the townspeople and an unspecified number of yellow stars from the assignments:

  • An ending where Rorona is a super busy and super popular alchemist. So busy she doesn’t have time to cook, so Iksel comes over to make her lunch. There are hints that he may have romantic feelings for her, but she doesn’t seem to reciprocate or even notice.
  • An ending where people gather outside Rorona’s atelier to watch her blow stuff up. Cordelia comes over and gets caught up in an explosion. Rorona is well-liked but doesn’t get a lot of alchemy requests and is always in the red.
  • Rorona and Hom decide to leave town and go on a journey to learn more about alchemy. They leave Sterk to take care of the atelier in their absence.

All decent endings, though the explosion one felt a bit hollow. I don’t know what the “True Ending” is like, but I’m not really motivated to find out. I suppose it will explain why the minister wants the atelier gone so badly, but seeing as he just gave up halfway through the game and was never seen again, I suppose it doesn’t matter.

Final thoughts on Shin Atelier Rorona. I will be brief. I WILL be brief!
  • The number of recipes available did increase, but not as much as I would have liked. For the last assignment I handed in a really good elixir in the first few days and spent the rest of the time making the same items over and over again.
  • Money was a bit tight. If I’d known how easy it would be to increase popularity once you can register items, I would have taken a few more of the trap requests.
  • I had no idea Hagel sold alchemy books till the final year >___< Long years of playing Atelier games have conditioned me to never buy weapons and armor from the blacksmith so I never bothered to check his inventory. Boy did I kick myself then.
  • I like the “decorations” gimmick. Especially since they carry over to subsequent playthroughs. I wish some of them had been available earlier but that’s the point of the future replays.
  • I still don’t like the side characters. What I hate most is the way they leave Rorona out of the loop all the time. Rorona will have a scene with someone and walk off, then Astrid will show up or Esty will show up and they’ll talk about stuff that happened in the past blah blah blah I don’t care blah blah blah. If I play a game about Rorona I want it to be about Rorona, not about whatever Sterk and Astrid and Esty had going on 10 years ago. Get your own game, guys.
  • Monsters were hard to avoid. I don’t like allegedly avoidable encounters.
  • Bright happy colors! Cute character designs!
  • I’m happy I got to do a lot of alchemy and fight a lot of bosses and explore a lot of dungeons. The boss fights were the best part, especially since I barely scraped through some of them by the skin of my teeth. It’s punishment for all the years I spent cheesing Atelier fights with tablets of time.

I’m glad I played Rorona just to get it off my chest. I’ve been wondering for years what it and the other Arland games were like and now I know. I had fun, I guess, but it’s more a feeling of “Okay I scratched that off my bucket list” than anything else. As a plus I can also skip over the other two games (Totori and Meruru) since they feature much the same cast and the same items. But I’ll play them anway because I just can’t help myself when it comes to Atelier games.

Enough about that. It’s an okay game you can play it if you want. I’m a bit tired of Fire Emblem Echoes because of the stupid cantors that keep summoning more and more and more terrors all the time. I might well shelve it for a bit and start something new once I finish Act 4, depends on how things play out and how much dumber Celica can get. We’ll see how it goes.

Halfway through Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

Just finished Act 3 of 6, about 17 hours in. Opened both sluice gates and started marching on the upper half of the continent. Slight spoiler: Celica promotes once she reaches the Temple of Mila, just FYI. You’re encouraged to promote as soon as possible in Fire Emblem Echoes so it’s not that big a deal, but it still caught me by surprise.

Once I did move forward, though, I realized my unpromoted troops just weren’t cutting it any more. That Dread Fighter in the Dead Man’s Mire, rrghhh. Back to the Temple of Mila. On Alm’s side but I’m not impressed with the damage output from jokesters like Lukas, Python and Forsyth, so I’ve beaten a strategic retreat to the Sylvan Shrine to class everyone up up. Promotions for everyone! C’mon Clive, you can do it! You can stop being the squishiest cavalier known to man. Well at least now we know why the Deliverance was so eager to have Alm take over as leader.

Okay, all done! Hmm, Forsyth and Lukas as Knights, eh? Lukas’s speed is horrible. Forsyth has better speed and Res. But they’re just level 1 so there’s no telling how the chips will fall. I like Knights in Fire Emblem games. Knights and Mages and Archers. Of course I enjoy the other classes as well, but I have a special place for the slow and vulnerable… though Archers are ridiculously hardy and dangerous in Echoes. But only when they’re on the enemy side, hmm Python?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I suddenly have a whole bunch of new toys to play with. I wasn’t sure what to think when I heard of all the new twists to the FE formula (the dungeons in particular) but Echoes is a pretty awesome game 😀 Gameplay-wise, anyway. About the only thing I don’t like is that sometimes your party members will start out far away from the enemies in random battles and never get a hit in before the battle ends. On the other hand I love the way enemy bosses make a mad dash for your party as soon as the battle starts. That’s the kind of boss guts I like to see. Of course those guts will soon be splattered across the battlefield, but it’s the same whether they come to me or I go to them so I admire their courage either way.

The story, though… the main characters are just too dumb – seriously Celica, you can’t figure out who this masked guy is? And Alm, aren’t you going to press Mycen for a few answers? Question the old man in the castle about the past? Send someone to Ram Village to make a few inquiries? I don’t mind clueless protagonists. I don’t even mind willfully clueless ones, but you’d better not come crying “You tricked me!” or “Why didn’t you tell me!” down the line, got it?

This would have been a joint update with Shin Atelier Rorona, but after a heavy gaming session yesterday I’m about 10 game days away from finishing the last assignment from the palace. Thoughts and impressions when I’m done.

Ooh, I just leveled Clive up once and he got some speed and luck. There is hope for him yet. Okay I really must go. See you next time for a final review of Rorona!

Nothing much happening in Fire Emblem Echoes and Shin Atelier Rorona

The downside of playing lots of games at the same time is that you don’t make much progress in any of them. Which is okay because a good game shouldn’t be rushed, but it does mean I don’t blog much because I don’t have anything to write about.

I said I would try to finish Operation Abyss over the weekend, but I think it needs a longer timeout before I get back to it. According to a FAQ I’m only a dungeon and a half away from finishing the game. Seems like a bit of a waste to drop a game so close to the end so I’ll definitely finish it. Just don’t ask me when.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Playing a little bit of Celica then a little bit of Alm then a little bit of Celica. It’s more fun than I’d expected. I always feel a bit disoriented when I first switch but then I get used to the new party… then I get tired of the new party and switch to another and get disoriented again…

Storywise On Alm’s route, I just finished clearing Desaix’s fortress. That Cantor in the corner is such a pain in the posterior, constantly summoning those pesky weak summons. He also packs a punch with his magic so be careful who you send over there. Now I have to go save Luthier’s little sister or something like that.

Celica is a short distance away from Grieth’s place. There are two assassins lying in wait for me, but they can jolly well keep lying while I take my time exploring the cave in front of me. Dungeon exploration isn’t too bad as long as you get the jump on the enemies and not vice-versa. So far none of the dungeons have dragged on long enough for fatigue to become an issue. I’m really enjoying Fire Emblem Echoes, much more than I’ve enjoyed an FE in the past little while. When’s the next one coming out?

Shin Atelier Rorona: Haven’t progressed at all from the last time. I was exploring a place called Nebel Lake or something when the game… froze. I’d forgotten the 3DS could do that =_= It doesn’t seem to be a common problem and hasn’t happened since, but it did dampen my enthusiasm just a little bit.

When I restarted, I did Esty’s quest that unlocks the requests with more vague requirements. Hopefully this should make it easier to fulfill quest and raise the townspeople’s affections, which is bound to affect the ending somehow. I’m beginning to doubt I have it in me to play Rorona more than once, at least in quick succession, so I’m now aiming for a fairly good ending right off the bat.

And that’s all I’ve been up to since I last posted. I hope to have something more substantial to report next time.

Halfway through Shin Atelier Rorona – Mostly good, a few nitpicks

Shin Rorona no Atelier (New Atelier Rorona) is a 3DS remake of Atelier Rorona, a 2009 PS3 game. I’ve never played the original. Back when it came out I was still hung up on the character designs of the older Atelier games. Thus I decided I just didn’t like the “piss-and-watercolor” style of the new series and refused to even try it. Ooh, so edgy ^^;;. But the years passed and I ran out of Atelier games to play so… here we are!

I suppose there’s no point rehashing the story or anything since anyone who’s interested must have played it by now. But there isn’t much story so it will only take a few seconds: Rorona is an apprentice alchemist, the government wants to shut down her master’s atelier, the government gives the master assignments to do, the master says “You do them, Rorona” and Rorona does them, the end.

Every 3 months Rorona is given an alchemy assignment to complete. If she passes, the game continues. If she fails, it’s an instant game over (? haven’t failed yet). She gets rated based on the quality, quantity and traits of the items she submits. It probably affects the ending somehow, I wouldn’t know.  I’m on my 7th task right now, something about making cold items for summer. Hope you like Leheruns, your Majesty!

Passing assignments is easy enough, but passing well requires spending more time or attention on alchemy than I’m willing to devote right now. Right now I fill up all the yellow stars but don’t bother with all the rows of red stars… I’m not supposed to fill both up all the way, am I? Hope not, it would be too much work. I love synthesizing items and all, but I’m using this first playthrough to see the world before shooting for a better ending in later playthroughs so I can’t be standing around stirring a pot all day.

After all, alchemy takes up precious time that could be spent adventuring and battling instead. I’m having fun exploring all the dungeons available. Traveling takes time but foraging once you’re in a location doesn’t, which is much better than Lise and the other DS games.

Even better, the “piss and watercolor” complaint doesn’t extend to the largely bright and colorful dungeons either. Even the underground locations like the Catacombs and National Mines feel airy and spacious. I get to explore lots of pretty areas and pick up lots of stuff, what’s not to like?

The battle system is charming as well. I don’t know what kind of combat the original had, but Shin Atelier Rorona has an SRPG-style system like the DS games. Only with a bigger field and much faster and much more fluid battles. There are squares and movement ranges but you also have the illusion of free movement within that limited range, which is kind of fun. It’s mostly cosmetic, but I’m playing Fire Emblem Echoes at the same time and this feels a lot less stiff and formal even before you account for the party member who likes to whack enemies with a frying pan.

Don’t let the FE comparison fool you, though, it’s not particularly strategic. Kill enemies with earlier turns, get behind them where possible, that’s about it. But each battle moves fast, even bosses aren’t too hard, most enemies are dodgeable and you can escape without penalty from most fights. EXP is plentiful and level ups are frequent. It’s the most enjoyable combat system I’ve seen in an Atelier game… though the competition isn’t exactly fierce.

Back to assignments and alchemy and that stuff… I think the recipe selection is a bit lacking and alchemy takes too much time. If Shin Atelier Rorona had been a handheld game to begin with I wouldn’t say anything, but for a former console game it’s way too limited.

You’re supposed to make the same item with different traits and properties, but I would prefer different items in the first place. For example you have your regular Healing Salve that heals just a little HP. Get better quality ingredients and you can make one that heals a lot more HP, that sort of thing. IMO having three different kinds of potions would be much more interesting. It might all boil down to the same thing in the end, but these cosmetic changes do a lot to hold my interest.

The alchemy process also takes far too long for my liking. In the older PS2 games you could make a lot of stuff in a single day to keep you going for a long time, but Rorona is so slow. In a day she can make one item, sometimes two, very rarely more than that. It makes sense since she’s a rookie alchemist, but it also kills my motivation to spend time synthesizing.

I would have groused even more about this, but just recently the game gave me an assistant (Hom-chan) and the ability to register goods with local merchants a la Atelier Judie and Viorate. That takes a lot of the pain out of alchemy by letting me outsource it almost entirely. Hurray for outsourcing!

On the positive side, it’s great to have all-new designs for almost all the items I’m used to making in earlier games, even series staples like Flams and Leheruns. There are a lot of items I’ve never seen before either, which is doubly exciting. It motivates me to make each item at least once to see what it looks like, maybe play with the effects a bit.

Other negative apart from the alchemy: the unpleasantness of the supporting cast. Especially Astrid. I really hate her. And Cor-whatshername too. Tsunderes are annoying. And I thought Frying Pan Man was my friend, but he abandoned me right before I was planning to face a powerful boss. I’m never talking to Frypan-kun again. Call me sensitive, but I never enjoy it when the main character of a game is constantly teased and insulted and put down by those around her, even if – no, especially if they’re supposed to be her friends.

But I’ll leave it there for now. Not because I’m tired of complaining (haha, that will be the day) but because I’m only 16 hours in and less than halfway through the game. There’s still room for lots and lots of character development. Rorona is already more confident and less prone to getting flustered at every little thing. Very happy about that. So you never know, maybe Astrid will die in an “unfortunate” “accident” involving a vat of molten lava and everyone else will get a personality makeover and all will be well.

Right, that’s enough for a starter update. Now back to Fire Emblem Echoes!