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Looks like our Flame Champion will be named Iroh. I'll get a new update goin' soon. 
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Jan 5, 2013 02:17
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 12:34 |
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I think my biggest gripe with 3 (and 5) were the nearly intolerable load times.
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Jan 5, 2013 02:21
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Hugo Chapter 1.2 - Lakeside Village All pay their respects to Iroh, Flame Champion and Dragon of the West! Moving on, Hugo and his band were headed to Vinay del Zexay to deliver a message to the Zexen Council.  Before we even get to the world map, however, we're stopped by Jimba.  : "Hugo, I have a favor to ask of you." : "Sure. What is it?": "Take this."He hands over a pentacle emblem of some sort. : "Take this to the Lightfellow family in Vinay del Zexay." : "What is this?": "All I can say is that it once belonged to a brave Zexen soldier who died long ago. When you give it to his family, tell them that he died heroically."Wow, he totally killed a Zexen dude back in the day. : "The soul of a warrior... I'll take good care of it.": "I trust you will do so.": "Consider it delivered.": "When this is delivered, my biggest burden will be lifted. Hurry. May the divine ones protect you."I wonder how long he had that. And why he felt he couldn't take it there himself. : "Thank you. Farewell for now.": "And Lulu--do nothing that would sadden your mother." : "I'll be fine, you'll see. So long, brother."  We're let out on the world map at last. Right now we've got precious few locations, but we'll unlock more as the game goes on. It's also worth noting that it unlocks on a per-character basis, so even if one character can go somewhere, another might not be able to. Our destination is all the way on the left, where the feather cursor is. The map is arranged in a pretty linear way, but you have to go through all the stops between your starting point and ending point to get anywhere. Routes are displayed as green circles, whereas towns are boxes. Yellowish boxes mean Grassland territory, and orange means Zexen. The yellow circles indicate the entrances to certain routes, and they're very picky about these. We'll see this more when we don't have to go in a straight line. Before heading to Vinay, let's take a detour to Duck Village, north of us. To do this, we cross the Northern section of the Plains Amur. The music for this area is pretty relaxing, even if the youtube video Engrishes up the title.  Once you're on a route, it's pretty linear. The map in the top right shows the layout of the screen, as well as where we are and what way we're facing. The plains are pretty boring, it's mostly just a straight line for two screens.  Enemies in this area are pretty boring as well. Here we're fighting a big spider. Basic options are fight, flee, and auto. Fight lets you decide how you're dealing with enemies, flee lets you try to run away, and auto lets them do their own thing, which will usually be to attack whatever is closest. As a side note, when you are a certain amount of levels above your enemies, the flee command becomes a "let go" command, which pretty much auto-ends the battle. You don't get any experience for it, but it's a good way to get things going if you don't feel like stopping for battles. Though honestly, depending on how over-leveld you are, sometimes hitting auto and letting them go at it is faster. You'll notice that Hugo is riding on Fubar. The two of them are treated more-or-less as one unit, like this. Their attack strength is combined, but they can only attack one enemy.  Once you've hit the fight command, you've got a few more options. First, you can normally attack. This is pretty standard. You can also defend, but there's usually no point in doing that at all. The third option is to use a rune, followed by using an item. The first command in red is a unite attack, which can be activated when certain party members are together. Right now, we don't have any available. The red arrow is for when using a rune takes more than one turn, and it pretty much just means "keep casting." Right now, we're not casting anything, so it's useless to us. Let's see what our boys can do with their runes.  Hugo can use two spells with his Wind Rune; Wind of Sleep and Healing Wind. Wind of sleep puts enemies to sleep, and Healing Wind heals. Pretty self-explanatory.  Fubar has a Shining Wind rune. It's only got one spell, but unlike Hugo's Wind Rune, it doesn't have a cap on uses. Fubar can use Shining Wind once per battle, whereas Hugo can only use his rune a total of 4 times before he'd have to stay at an inn to recover.  Joe has a Water Rune, so he can use Kindness Drops and Breath of Ice. Kindness Drops will heal, and Breath of Ice will do damage. Kindness Drops is really useful, but he'd probably do more damage with a normal attack than with Breath of Ice.  Lulu's rune is more of a buff than anything else. The basic Sword of Cyclone use will add wind damage to his normal attack, but it wastes a turn to cast, so you probably won't be seeing it often. Wind Amulet raises his resistance to wind magic, which you probably ALSO won't see much of, since few enemies really use magic. There's a "Sword of ___" rune for all the basic elements, and they're all pretty lame. Now, when you are commanding your units, you can only command them as a pair. This means only one unit per pair can use a rune or item (the other will generally use a normal attack), and if you select attack or defend, they will both do that. It's a little annoying, but it means you have to plan out your formation a bit more.  Characters have to take time to both run over to the enemy and attack, so they can potentially squeeze in more attacks if they're closer to the enemy from the start. There are also skills to increase movement speed and attack speed.  The spider isn't much of a threat, but it's capable of potentially poisoning you when it attacks.  Here's Shining Wind in action -- it creates a big tornado that flies at your enemies in a line.  Aww, look at Lulu's little knife! So cute. Joe has no need for silly rune attacks.  Though honestly, neither do Hugo and Fubar. For comparison, Lulu is doing around 20-30 damage. Though comparing him to Hugo and Fubar is cheating, since the two combine their strength for attacks. Even on his own, Hugo would be out-damaging him though. Joe is still technically the strongest on his own. But enough of that, let's head to Duck Village.  It's probably one of my favorite places in the game. It has catchy music, too.  I guess that doesn't matter much to a village full of duck people, but I imagine it's a huge inconvenience to those that aren't from the Duck Clan. We head over to the duck on the far right next.  : "A Calerian vendor comes all this way just to get soy sauce from our village. Our clan's soy sauce is very popular."Caleria is somewhere we'll see a bit later. It's a Harmonian town to the east, near the Harmonia/Grassland border. This duck also hints at a mechanic we haven't seen yet -- trading. The basic concept is that you pick up a trade item in one town, tote it to a far away place, and sell it for a profit. Early on in the game, this is the easiest way to make money. Now, for the back duck.  : "The waterwheel is fascinating."The Duck Village is just a really nice place, honestly. If I could live anywhere in this game, it'd be here.  Behind that duck, we can see the inn, as well as half of the item shop. Attached to the item shop is an appraiser, but the sign is off-screen. The inside of the item shop is split into an upstairs and downstairs -- supplies on the lower floor and appraisal on the upper floor.  Pictured above, the supply shop NPC. He doesn't have anything interesting to say. There's nothing interesting to buy downstairs, either, so let's check out the appraiser.  It's worth noting that there are a LOT of cats in this village, despite being inhabited by bird people. I guess it makes sense for the abundance of fish, but there are 5 just in this one building.  Had we the proper items, we could hand over ? items to this guy, and he would tell us their worth. It's not worth farming them, as they're usually worth nothing, but sometimes you'll get some really expensive stuff. It costs money, though, and for every crappy item you ended up having, you'll actually lose money. I don't get any of these until later in the update, so I'll have to show this off later. The Ol' Tree Beads are something I picked up from a monster. They aren't useful to us yet, but we can use them once we recruit a bath house guy. Spoiler: there's a bath house guy. Though there's at least one in every game so that's not really a surprise. I'll explain that once we get there.  Also, cats.  Let's check out the inn next.  The innkeeper doesn't have anything interesting to say, but there's this guy hanging out in the back, and he looks pretty unique.  : "Hi! I'm Kidd, the boy detective! If you've got an unsolvable case, ask for me by name!"... Okay, moving on. There's a back exit out of the inn that leads to a couple more buildings and NPCs.  I'm not sure how private our business is, actually, considering the entire Karaya village saw us off.  Going in one of the back buildings reveals this girl practicing with a naginata.  : "Daily training is all you need."Sanae Y. is special in that she's not a recurring character, but she is related to characters from the older games. She is the daughter of Freed Y. and Yoshino, who were both recruitable in Suikoden II. They do not make an appearance in this game, however. She's not the only character that's related to older characters.   The old books are something I won't be going out of my way to find, but you can read them later in the game. They give some backstory and refer to the previous games, so they're an interesting read. Another thing I'll show off once we get there. : "I'm just a cleaner here. I'm no shady character."Yeah, okay. Inside the other building is a single duck sitting on a bed.   : "... I'm.... meditating."We'll just leave him, then, and head back to the main part of town.  This is where we could buy lottery tickets if we felt like it, which we don't. You can buy tickets in a sequence or randomly. About a half hour of gameplay time later, you can check to see if you won any money. While it is a LOT of money, it's a pain in the butt, so we're going to be making money in other ways instead.  Behind the chief is a trading post. : "Hey! Care to trade? Make a little money?" Trading is pretty self-explanatory. Buy things, go somewhere, sell those things. It'll record your price history, so you can see if you're getting a good deal, which is really useful. Generally I buy something super cheap, then just tote it around until I can sell it for a good price somewhere. I would buy Soy Sauce, but we won't be heading to Caleria for quite a while, so it's not worth it. We also don't have much money.  : "My business takes me places, and I can tell you something strange is happening in the west."He fails to mention what he's talking about, however. The tutor and rune shop share a building behind him, though you can only see the rune half of it in this shot. : "Would you like to study?" The tutor is the same as the bujutsu teacher, except for magic. For now, we'll be passing on increasing our magic ranks.  Upstairs is the rune sage, who we can go to for buying, placing, and removing runes. It costs money to get a rune attached to a character, as well as removed, so you need to think carefully. Except it doesn't cost much, so you don't need to think too carefully. Runes are expensive as hell, so I won't be buying them often. A little to the side, we have our first Lizard Clan NPC.   : "I'm a security guard at this store. But there's no action in this town. I'm bored."As you can guess, the lizards are pretty aggressive, whereas the ducks are pretty chill. With nothing else to do inside, we go back out.  : "I'm on patrol. I know we're discussing peace with those ironheads, but you never know what might happen."Speaking of ironheads, let's head back towards Vinay del Zexay. We've touched on pretty much everything in Duck Village for the moment. We have to cut through the Plains again to get back on track, and on the way we run into a new kind of enemy -- the Blade Bunny.  They're not very strong.  Maps will sometimes have these blue orb things on them. They're just save points. On some maps, like this one, they sort of just hang out wherever. When we get to longer areas, they're conveniently and strategically placed. It's worth pointing out now rather than later, though.  Here we see another enemy type, the Furrfly. They're about as strong as they look, in that even Lulu can one-shot them.  But since we have a fair amount of monsters, let's show off Hugo's Wind Rune. Wind of Sleep hits an area centered around an enemy, so it's useful when there are a lot of enemies in a small area.   It puts two enemies asleep. Not really necessary, but what the hell.  We pick up a ?Figurine for our troubles. This is one of the items you can take to the appraiser. We'll do that next time there's one in the area, going back to Duck Village for this probably isn't worth it.  Here we have some Creepers. I hate these things.  They're hard to hit, and they do this thing where they suck you up, bounce around, and spit you out. It does a pretty good amount of damage, especially considering our low HP (Hugo is doing more damage than he has HP), and it takes forever to watch as well. It's also really strange looking. For some reason, Creepers seem to gang up on Lulu. Always. In every battle he's in. I really don't know why.  I'd say they pick on the weakest party member, but that kind of mechanic would be way too much effort. Let's chalk it up to Nature Hates Lulu.  As proof of their strength, these two managed to take down Lulu. In one turn. Which brings me to another mechanic -- relationship-based berserking. Unlike other JRPGs, the berserk status in the Suikoden series is only an attack boost. There's absolutely nothing detrimental about it. You can use runes to berserk yourself, but certain situations will lead to characters auto-berserking. Hugo will berserk when Lulu goes down, and Joe will berserk when either of the boys go down. It's a really nice touch, and sort of cute. Needless to say, Lulu is avenged. After a battle ends, a downed character will get back up with 1 HP, so a quick medicine will fix him right up.  Moving on, we've got to go through make at Brass Castle to make it to the Zexen capital. Brass Castle, while being Zexen territory, is actually somewhat neutral. Grasslanders will get some nasty looks and commentary from the Zexens, but it's not actually that unusual to see foreigners here. Brass Castle is also headquarters for the Zexen Knights.  I like Brass Castle because the screens are pretty small, and don't make my laptop chug. However, this place is full of weird camera angles, and you can't move the camera at all in this game, so you'll have to excuse some of my screens from here on out. It's got a pretty interesting theme, I guess. The music starts off very soft when you first enter the area, and gets louder as you approach the castle walls. I always thought it was a nice touch. Interestingly, our first two NPCs are Karayan.  : "Hey, Hugo, running the usual errands? The ironheads are edgy these days, so watch yourself."   For having been so smug about being their leader, I don't think he's actually familiar with Zexen lands. : "It's more like a giant fort or something. Is this where the ironheads hide out?": "Must be." : "Kuee." : "All right. Enough of this gawking. We're not in Grassland anymore. Let's go!" See that little girl in the background there? She's totally not there outside of that cutscene. Spooky.   The inside of Brass Castle is a bit too full of stuff to add on to this update, so we'll go explore the castle next time! Also, because I forgot to include it in the last update, here's the Karaya Village theme. yokaiy fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Jan 9, 2013 |
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Jan 6, 2013 00:45
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Arachnvore? So I guess that means it's a spider that eats other, smaller spiders. You guys totally wouldn't have to fight them if you didn't keep backing them into corners, you know!
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Jan 6, 2013 01:12
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Arachnvore? So I guess that means it's a spider that eats other, smaller spiders. You guys totally wouldn't have to fight them if you didn't keep backing them into corners, you know! Hugo and Lulu are actually from the Spider Clan, but they screwed up the modeling. Just put an extra six eyes on every portrait.
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Jan 6, 2013 02:37
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Bruceski posted:Hugo and Lulu are actually from the Spider Clan, but they screwed up the modeling. Just put an extra six eyes on every portrait.  
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Jan 6, 2013 03:07
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Please tell me you can make a version with just the bottom pair of eyes.
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Jan 6, 2013 03:14
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dancingbears posted:Please tell me you can make a version with just the bottom pair of eyes. By the magical powers of photoshop, I can do whatever you want. Only the bottom eyes?  Looks real weird, man.
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Jan 6, 2013 03:23
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yokaiy posted:By the magical powers of photoshop, I can do whatever you want. Only the bottom eyes? Looks like we found your new avatar.
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Jan 6, 2013 07:07
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The game really wastes Sword of Magic. It's a neat concept but there's nobody who actually gets much mileage out of them because the intersection of Characters Good with Sword of Magic, Characters with Multiple Rune Slots Open, and Characters Who Aren't Mages is, if memory serves, exactly one character. Who isn't all that good. You actually can attack on the same turn you cast the enchantment, but you have to be a lot faster than Hugo's team is at this level.
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Jan 6, 2013 10:42
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CmdrKing posted:You actually can attack on the same turn you cast the enchantment, but you have to be a lot faster than Hugo's team is at this level. Really? I didn't even know that. Goes to show how little I use that line of runes, I guess.
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Jan 6, 2013 19:36
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Hugo Chapter 1.3 - A Noble Maiden Fair The inside of Brass Castle isn't too different from the outside. It's still very linear. We'll be crossing through this place often as all of our characters, so get used to it now. We start by talking to the guard in orange. Orange is pretty much Zexen's color, so it's in all the soldier's uniforms.   : "I wonder if my mom is doing all right in Iksay Village..."Iksay, another location we won't be heading to until later, is around the border of Zexen and Grasslands, a bit north of Brass Castle. It's peaceful, but in a Zexens eyes, it would be in the danger zone.  : "How strange.... The Captain and Vice-Captain of the Zexen Knights were killed in battle, but I've heard nothing about their funeral."We'll hear more about this as we pass through Brass Castle. It's implied that this happened in the last big battle between Zexen and Grassland, and that it was quite recently. The losses on both sides must have been pretty great, considering how Grassland is hoping to have a peace treaty soon.   Okay. This child, going by appearance, is Calerian. He's a bit far from Harmonia now, though, I wonder why he's here alone.    : "Good and sharp, with a nice shine. ... But it's no match for the shimmering beauty of Lady Chris.... Aw, what are YOU looking at?": "Welcome. We also forge arms for Grasslander hunters, you know, so if there's anything in particular you're looking for..."The blacksmith here is better than the one at Karaya, and our boys could use some strength buffing.  Which is totally why I should have checked our funds before upgrading Hugo's weapon.  Upgrading it twice burned through all but 10 of our potch. Sharpening is expensive.Of note, the weapon he had changed names from Kwan to Gwanga when it jumped from level 4 to 5. Most characters have a series of weapon names. They're not really important, but it's interesting anyway. Sometimes names become very silly after upgrades.  Let's give this guy the benefit of the doubt, mostly because Grassland horses are loving weird. There's an armor shop in the background with the same kind of armor on display that Jimba was polishing earlier. More importantly, however, is the girl to the left.  : "Auugh! I can't believe it won't go in just because of one screw!"Belle here is another case of a character being related to a previous games' character. She is the daughter of Meg, who is recruitable in the first and second game. Like Sanae's parents, Meg won't be making an appearance in III.  Silly duck. They were racist even before that battle. I'm sure it didn't help their disposition any, though.  : "My kid fell down and hurt himself, so I'm looking for medicine... and any bargains that come along."That's sort of low for a mother, to be looking for a deal when her son is hurt.  : "Welcome. Are you running errands for somebody?"The item shop still doesn't have anything interesting, so I didn't bother getting a screen of it.  : "Do they have knights in Grassland, too?" : "Oh, you must be a Karayan! I think it's sad when human beings hate each other. But many people in the castle don't agree. Be careful."Yeah, she definitely seems the type to be feeding birds. You can tell she's one of those nice old lady types before you even talk to her.  : "Don't prowl around in Brass Castle."Going further inside starts up a cutscene.   Somehow I managed to completely miss this guys speech bubble, so I don't remember exactly what he says. It's something along the lines of "Get the hell outta the way, important people coming through."  Joe, Hugo, and Fubar move out of the way, but Lulu is too distracted. To absolutely no one's surprise, the knight bumps into him. : "Hey, watch it!": "I said stand clear!" Behind him, a bunch of knights on horses head in this direction.  Hey, we happen to be Grassland messengers! Looks like the Zexens want a peace treaty as much as the Grasslanders.  : "You mean to say we won't be able to wait for the rest of the Six Knights?" : "No, I'm afraid not. Surely you understand the urgency." Lulu, seems to have gotten out of the way from that first guard, but he steps out of line a bit too far once again to see what's going on. Unsurprisingly, someone runs into him again. : "OOUUHH!"Hugo leans down and gives him a look like 'Why are you so stupid?' Will no one say what we're all thinking?  He's not the only one concerned for Lulu, though.  : "Oops, pardon me.": "Are you alright, lad? Please forgive my companion for getting in your way."Er, actually, it was Lulu doing the getting in the way, but thank you anyway, lady. : "Yeah, well, what do you expect from an ironhead?" Lulu, that is not how we apologize. : "What do you mean, 'ironhead'?" : "And who might YOU be?"We actually have a choice here to be a jerk, or to be a bigger jerk. I went with the lesser-jerk option. Because really, this is all Lulu's fault. : "Of course. I should have introduced myself first. I am Chris Lightfellow, the acting Captain of the Zexen Knights.": "Lightfellow? That name sure sounds familiar."Before Hugo can remember why, however, an elf trots his horse between the two.   : "Captain, time is fleeting. We must be on our way.": "Wait, I must speak with you!": "Get back, young barbarian. Here, WE decide who lives, who dies AND who speaks!"Jerk!  : "Are you threatening me?" : "drat!": "Time is of the essence now!": "Very well. Our apologies once again, child. Goodbye." They start to leave, but Roland decides he hasn't finished being a huge buttface yet, and gives us a few more parting words. : "Be careful what you do here. This is Zexen land." Louis, however, has the sense to not be an rear end before leaving.  : "Everything I've heard about ironheads is true!": "But it IS odd to see a woman wearing armor. Strange indeed!"Even odder is the fact that she is the current captain. Yes, the previous captain AND vice-captain died in the last battle, but she would have had to already be both high-rank and respected to take over so soon. : "Kuuee!": "Not here, Fubar!"...What do you think Fubar has been saying all this time?  I think the better question is 'Can Joe actually understand him?' Well, that was a lovely chat. Chris and her entourage may be headed in the opposite direction, but that doesn't mean our goal has changed from being Vinay del Zexay. So let's continue through the castle.  The game actually spits us out on the next screen after the cutscene, but we haven't seen the middle section, so let's try this again from the top.  Here we go. Had there been no cutscene, this is where we would start on the middle screen. Eventually we'll go straight, but let's talk to a whole bunch of people first. We'll start on the right side.  : "Speaking of Captain Galahad, I wonder when his funeral is going to be held...."We go through the door behind them to the right wing of the castle.  Hey, that blond guy looks fami--wait, didn't he JUST leave with Chris? He did. I have no idea what he's doing here. Not only is Borus not supposed to be here, but he's also a jerk. : "I think everyone felt a bit insecure about their swordsmanship after the battle... but I know I always feel insecure anyway.": "Who are you? Are you a cleaner?" : "I must defeat more opponents and improve my skills... or else I'll never get stronger!!"Then you probably shouldn't be sitting on a bench doing nothing, buddy. : "I'm such a coward! My legs give way whenever I'm facing an enemy. Maybe I should ask for a longer spear so they can't get at me."Or you could be an archer. Just putting that out there.  Interesting as they all were, this is the reason why we went back to the middle section. We've actually got some skill points to use, now, so I take a few moments to buff up our boys to be less lovely. In the beginning of the game, this mostly means upping their accuracy. I hadn't been capping their misses, but Hugo and Lulu are pretty awful at hitting targets. Joe isn't as bad, but I'm not risking it.  I boosted Hugo's accuracy up to a C, and increased his swing to D. Swing will allow him to attack faster, and potentially squeeze in more attacks per turn.  For Fubar, I increase his accuracy to D, and his damage to C.  Joe gets bumped up to a C in damage and a D in accuracy.  Lulu doesn't even have accuracy as a skill, which is bad.  We get it for him, and then increase it to D.   I have no idea who he's talking about. On the subject of stairs, however, we decide to run up them.  The second floor actually connects the right and left wings of the castle, so we'll come out on the other side. There are some rooms, but we'll be seeing far too much of them once Hugo's chapter is over, so I'll put it off for now.  : "I wanted to see the prowess of Lady Chris with my own eyes, but I'm afraid to go to the battlefield."I don't think she has anything to worry about, what with Brass Castle being the knights' headquarters. We can see from everyones reactions that Chris is practically a celebrity among the Zexens. The two knights in the back are standing guard at the rooms I mentioned earlier. The first -- : "This is the room of Lady Chris, Acting Captain of the Zexen Knights."And the second -- : "This is a sitting-room for the knights to use."We'll see them later. We continue to the end and go down the stairs.  : "Her boyfriend is in Iksay Village. I think she's worried about him because of all those barbarians nearby." Oh come on, we're RIGHT here! The camera makes it really hard to see the entrance of the inn until you're literally right on it.  : "Grasslanders are hard on the beds. Not that I'm saying they can't use them, mind you."There's a guy off in the back left of the room, behind the beds and hiding in the corner. Honestly, I'm not sure I noticed him last time I played.   We head out of the left wing, which brings us close to the end of the central corridor.  : "This is the soldiers' barracks. Don't cause any trouble. Backing up a bit lets us see what's left in this area a bit better. We've already talked to those two guards, so let's interrogate the Karayan and the knight to the right.  : "Ironheads on horseback look down on us and shout, 'Out of the way!' I hate those louts.": "I'm famished... but I can't go inside yet... because everybody is still eating...."This guy is standing outside of the mess hall. He'll be standing here the entire game.  The two by the door comment on the guy outside. I believe they're also there the entire game. : "... Why won't he come in? He should come in to eat if he's hungry.": "Did you see that hungry knight outside? Rumor has it that he loves Super Pickles. There's no accounting for taste!"... Okay what the hell is a "Super Pickle" and why is that man's taste in food considered to be good rumor-material? : "... I can't believe we'll never see Vice-Captain Pelize again. I feel like crying...."Me too. Let's check out the kitchen.  : "Sir Leo would like one extra ice cream... Is that right?"Leo is one of the Six Knights we didn't get to see yet. We'll see him and the other in due time. I don't think those jugs of bleach are going to help that situation, lady.  : "It's about time to prepare some Super Pickles. I'm warning you, they really stink..."Super Pickles again?  Adult Stew?? Zexens have really strange food. That's all of the kitchen, let's head back to the center area. We missed a few people in the hall when we went around before.  : "What do you want? I'm busy right now.": "These old ladies gave us this because they like Zexen Knights. Take a look inside... nothing but pickles!"I think this place has a problem with pickles. One more NPC in this area.  Bahahaha. Now for the left side of the inner castle, for real this time.  : "This armor is so heavy, my legs get numb just from standing up in it. But that's a secret!"  We'll start with that child in the back.   The children here are scary.Let's go back to those knights and the horse.  : "Look at Margarita's fine, sleek coat! Just seeing her stand there, you can tell how lively she is! Could you ever find a finer horse?" : "We're keeping an eye on you and your clan. Don't forget it.": "Hey, you! Quit loitering around. If your business here is done, go on home!"We sure are getting a lot of flack already. We haven't even made it into the capital yet. To that woman's right is a magic tutor, so we pop in for a moment.  This is the only example in the game hinting that the countries don't share a language, so I'm not sure if it's lore or just this guy being a jerk. We opt not to up our magic ranks, though, since we don't have the skill points to spare anyway.  : "I'm looking for a cookbook on the latest trend: 'Red Pepper Cuisine.' Now where did I see it...? : "If you want to use magic, you must first improve your magic skills."   : "Well, well! So you're Chief Lucia's son? In the past, I often delivered merchandise to stores in Karaya. My, how you've grown."I like this guy. : "We're about to leave for Vinay del Zexay. We're going to stock up on the fabric we need for clothes." : "... Curses! You barbarian! You heard me practicing my humming just now, didn't you?!"Wait, is that a bad thing? : "Don't let me catch you prowling around here too often."You're the one doing the prowling, you creep.  : "Boo hoo, I can't find him! I SAID we shouldn't play hide and seek in such a big area!"Well, that explains the 'hunted man.' Lets check out the rune shop in the background there.  : "I wonder which one I want...": ".... butterfly... dancing in... the moonlight..."Adults are weird. That silver-haired woman over there looks suspicious though, let's check her out next.  This is Jeane. You may recognize her from the previous Suikoden games. And the following Suikoden games. She is in every main Suikoden game. Even the ones taking place a few hundred years in the past. And a few of the spin-offs as well. The developers have never explained this. She could be a single person, or she could be many people spread out over the game who happen to look the same and act the same. Who knows? This is also her most modest outfit in the series. Jeane is like a scantily-clad, magical Nurse Joy.  There's a couple having a date outside. You can just see a man sitting on a bench behind them, but we'll talk to the lovers first. : "Y-your smile is... is like this flower.... Hey! What do you want?": "I... I wish you'd get to the point and say it out loud."They seem to be having issues, so we'll leave them alone and talk to the man in the back.  I disagree. Onward we walk.   : "He looks so powerful, standing straight as a ramrod... his armor glittering... What a guy!!"And that's the end of the inside of Brass Castle. We continue to the west bridge.  He is referring to rare encounters. When running around, sometimes you'll run into a super strong monster, but it doesn't happen often. Rare encounters are generally terrifying, and his advice of running away is really good, especially at this point in the game. They give a lot of experience and skill points if you can beat them, though. : "I won't stop you from going on in, but you'd better behave yourself.": "Hey, look out, boy, or this horse is gonna swat you with his tail."  : "Hugo... Please don't tell the chief about her. Please...": "I am Zexen, and he is Karayan. ... Even if no one blesses us, we want to spend the rest of our lives together."  : "Heh-heh, look at this dog. He looks like he has eyebrows. Here you go, Brownie, I've got a treat for you!" : "What do you think? The scenery is beautiful, isn't it? I wanted you to see it because it's almost the gorgeous color of your eyes.": "Oh, it's lovely... I've never seen such beautiful scenery before..."It's really strange how many couples are having dates at a fort.  The Zexen Knights are not known for an amazing sense of humor. : "Stay away from the knights. Their Captain was killed by barbarians, so lots of them have a grudge against you guys."I hadn't noticed. It's interesting how, despite trying to be helpful, he still calls us barbarians. The racism between Zexen and Grassland has some pretty deep roots, if their people use derogatory words like "barbarian" and "ironhead" without even thinking.  : "Young people these days! Wasting their time on things like dates! ... How indecent!"The save point on the side denotes that we are done with this place. A short scene plays out while we're leaving.  : "I thought you said you knew the way.": "I most certainly do, and I'm telling you this is it. Even my tail feathers concur.": "Well, if we can't prove it's wrong, we'll assume it's right. Let's keep going."That logic is awful, Hugo. : "Kuuee!"And with that, we leave Brass Castle. Next time, we finally make it to the Zexen capital! yokaiy fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Jan 9, 2013 |
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Jan 8, 2013 02:31
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The smileys in the second half or so of that update are messed up. They're missing the first colon, so they're all :smiley::
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Jan 8, 2013 03:13
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No, I think he just hit the smiley limit.
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Jan 8, 2013 03:15
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Zurai posted:The smileys in the second half or so of that update are messed up. They're missing the first colon, so they're all :smiley:: They aren't missing colons, it's just that SA stops rendering smilies after 20 or so.
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Jan 8, 2013 03:15
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^ Yup, the limit is 20. You should upload at least the most common ones as images if you want to keep using them as portraits.quote: "The griffin is tame. The duck, I wouldn't be so sure."Ah yes, Suikoverse elves. The more I see of them, the less I like them. I rather do like the random racism in the castle, though.Adult Stew is a reference to Suikoden II where it was one of the things you could make with the recipe for Gremio's special stew if you added salt to it. Doesn't make it sound less weird, though, but I guess they were having a hard time coming up with names for everything.
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Jan 8, 2013 03:17
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:They aren't missing colons, it's just that SA stops rendering smilies after 20 or so. Ahh, I was unaware of the specifics, sorry. That's what I get for trying to point out the problem instead of letting the more knowledgeable solve it.
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Jan 8, 2013 03:19
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dancingbears posted:No, I think he just hit the smiley limit. Yeah, I think I just hit the limit. I didn't even know there was a smiley limit. Gives me an excuse to go back and put portraits in for all the NPCs, at least! Which I'll get on, albeit slowly.Pre-emptive edit: Thanks for the confirmation there, Vilk! vilkacis posted:^ Yup, the limit is 20. You should upload at least the most common ones as images if you want to keep using them as portraits. PFFT. Ahhh, I was gonna make a dumb joked to him being referring to Lulu as the "thing" but that is better. There are only two elves in this game, and the other one is a pretty nice person. Roland is just a butt. I think the dialogue is pretty well done when it comes to the racism going on. The Zexens seem a lot more racist than the Grasslanders, though, for some reason. Or at least they're more vocal about it.
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Jan 8, 2013 03:23
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The Zexen folk tend to be more... venomous about their racism. You get the impression that the grasslanders (and really mostly the Karaya and the Lizard) don't like Zexen because they're enemies and fight a lot so you don't like those guys much, while the Zexen don't like grasslanders because they think they're sub-human scum. When we see some of the higher ups in Zexen they are... pretty much exactly what you'd expect if you played through Hugo before meeting them. Also... vilkacis posted:
Roland: Carrying on a proud* tradition. *Why elves are proud of this tradition makes no drat sense. loving elves man.
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Jan 8, 2013 03:37
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Hey at least Roland only hates a certain class of humans, rather than ALL humans and ALL other races. For an elf in Suikoden, that's moderately progressive 
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Jan 8, 2013 04:48
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CmdrKing posted:Roland: Carrying on a proud* tradition. Shiki Dan posted:Hey at least Roland only hates a certain class of humans, rather than ALL humans and ALL other races. Man, you guys are gonna poo poo all kinds of bricks when you see the other elf, and how not awful a person they are.
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Jan 8, 2013 05:16
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Yes, I've played the game. For some reason the female elves always seem to be very chill and understanding. Except in V.
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Jan 8, 2013 05:21
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The one in III has a pretty good reason, albeit simple, for not being a huge jerk. I'll cover that when we meet 'em, which should be pretty soon.
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Jan 8, 2013 05:24
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Yeah, okay, there are some perfectly sane elves out there - it's just that any time you find one in a position of authority, they're a total cockend. "Oh, you came all the way here to warn us that someone is planning to burn our village down? Why don't you sit in the dungeon for a bit and think about how stupid you are.  ""What's that Kirkis, you went to get help so our village won't get burned down? DUNGEON." And now it's like "Look, the little injun boy thinks he's got rights. Terribly sorry, but in Zexen we reserve those for real people. "Then in IV "The enemy has a giant death laser and have already nuked an entire island just to see if it works! Let's see how much we can piss them off." So yeah
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Jan 9, 2013 13:50
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It's interesting how negatively elves are handled in Suikoden, I think. Elves are portrayed as stuck-up in a lot of media and series', but Suikoden's one of the only ones where they are REALLY disagreeable. Like, they're not even pompous, they've surpassed pompous. Now they're just an amalgamation of racism and douchebaggery with pointy ears. I don't really want to say I like it, but... well it's a change, for better or for worse. On an unrelated note, fixed all the portraits last night (though I'm going to have to get better pictures for some of the NPCs and replace them later), and slowly working on the next update. It will be up as soon as I can manage it, but I become pretty busy during the week.
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Jan 10, 2013 00:32
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It's worth pointing out that if you don't play the lottery early to get certain recipes now, they are gone forever.
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Jan 10, 2013 01:17
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yokaiy posted:On an unrelated note, fixed all the portraits last night (though I'm going to have to get better pictures for some of the NPCs and replace them later), and slowly working on the next update. It will be up as soon as I can manage it, but I become pretty busy during the week
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Jan 10, 2013 01:17
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Verbose posted:It's worth pointing out that if you don't play the lottery early to get certain recipes now, they are gone forever. Hahahahaha Ihatethelottery. But yeah, I'm not looking to 100% this when it comes to recipes and the like, so I'm not going to worry about it. Thanks for pointing it out, though! I'll be showing off the mechanic for recipes when we get there, at the very least. I guess I'll show off the lottery at some point as well...  Veyrall posted:If NPC portraits are slowing you down, I wouldn't even worry about it. Except for the story important or interesting ones, of course. It doesn't take any more time to set it up with portraits than it would have to use emotes. I'm just doing one portrait per NPC model anyway, so it's really no problem at all.
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Jan 10, 2013 01:50
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This game seems like it was designed to break completionists of their habit.
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Jan 10, 2013 01:51
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Veyrall posted:This game seems like it was designed to break completionists of their habit. Oh God no, it makes it far worse.
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Jan 10, 2013 02:11
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Oh, that isn't even the first opportunity to miss things. Before you start the game, you're asked if you want to use clear data from Suikoden II -- if you don't, you've already missed some things forever.
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Jan 10, 2013 02:21
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You'd think a few crossbows would turn the tide against a nation that doesn't seem to believe in head protection. Then again, the lizard irregulars are probably helmeted enough.
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Jan 10, 2013 03:35
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This game. I really wanted to love this game. Or, rather, I really wanted this game to be something that it wasn't. I bought Suikoden 2 for $10 at, like, a Costco or Walmart. I actually convinced my mom to buy it for me, I think because I was hanging out with a friend at the time. I played it, loved it to itty bitty pieces, and was delighted to discover, just as I'd finished beating it, that a shiny new 3-D sequel would be coming out in but a few months! I bought this game on release day, practically creamed my pants at the intro animation, started playing and... ...ugh. It's really too early to get into it...this game is like...it's not bad. It's good, but it's good in bad ways. And it's certainly not good in ways that Suikoden 2 was good in. It basically derailed the entire franchise too, since Suikoden 4 was another weird one. Suikoden 3 is guilty of changing way too many things, leaving you with a game bearing the Suikoden name, but not feeling in any particular way LIKE a Suikoden game. Of course, I still played it for, like, 100 hours or whatever because gently caress there's a load of bullshit and super tough secrets and really hard characters to recruit and holy moley. Godspeed on this LP.
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Jan 10, 2013 04:16
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yokaiy posted:Oh, that isn't even the first opportunity to miss things. Before you start the game, you're asked if you want to use clear data from Suikoden II -- if you don't, you've already missed some things forever. To twist the knife a bit, the Suikoden II clear data must in turn have imported Suikoden I clear data in order to get the full benefit.
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Jan 10, 2013 04:33
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Vil posted:To twist the knife a bit, the Suikoden II clear data must in turn have imported Suikoden I clear data in order to get the full benefit. But the bonuses are just so fantastic that you put up with it.
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Jan 10, 2013 08:59
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Does Suikoden 4 require an imported 3 save that imported a 2 save that imported a 1 save for completion?
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Jan 10, 2013 09:01
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djw175 posted:Does Suikoden 4 require an imported 3 save that imported a 2 save that imported a 1 save for completion? Ha ha, nah, because 4 and 5 take place before even the first game. Suikoden 5 was a good game, in my opinion, though it has its own problems. I just wish the series had kept going, but now Konami's let their RPG department completely disintegrate so they've farmed the name out to Tri-Ace.
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Jan 10, 2013 15:49
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Lotish posted:Ha ha, nah, because 4 and 5 take place before even the first game. Suikoden 5 is the game I wanted Suikoden 3 to be.
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Jan 10, 2013 16:00
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Nah. Suikoden V is basically Suikoden II but made in 2006 so they knew a few more things. Regardless of whether you like it or not Suikoden III was definitely trying to be something a bit different from Suikoden II.
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Jan 10, 2013 17:43
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CmdrKing posted:Nah. Suikoden V is basically Suikoden II but made in 2006 so they knew a few more things. Regardless of whether you like it or not Suikoden III was definitely trying to be something a bit different from Suikoden II. This is pretty true, especially considering the same large flaws in II are also present in V, aside from having an actual, and much better, war system.
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Jan 11, 2013 08:33
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