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it's rather telling that, after Liberation Day, their next title was Sunrider: Academy, followed by some kind of idol thing. Take a gander.
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Nov 6, 2020 16:25
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Anime was a mistake. Moon Slayer, out of curiosity, how close to the finish line are we here? (also will you be playing the academy sequel  )
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Nov 7, 2020 01:36
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One, maybe two updates, plus a short coda. And hell no.
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Nov 7, 2020 02:27
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Haven't played it, but I know enough about it to say that Academy isn't any sort of sequel, but DOES tie in to the the main games in one(?) specific way - which is incredibly strange. Just let it be said that whoever's writing that portion of the plot apparently wanted to go all-in on certain elements. We're not to the end of the game yet though, so holding off talking more about that for the moment. The idol game(s?) have no relation to Sunrider whatsoever - just being a new project they decided to do, presumably as a break before figuring out just what they wanted to do with Sunrider 4. Because there are so many random dangling and mismatched plot threads that it's hard to pin down where exactly it's going.
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Nov 7, 2020 05:25
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Part 4: It’s Only When We Fall We Learn To Fly Tydaria … some time later.   Are you ready? Yes. The commander has already arranged a safehouse a kilo away. Follow me. Okay. I still can't believe Claude was alive all this time. You know, if she had a piece of lost technology which just let her teleport out of the Bianca moments before it got hit, she should just have told us earlier. And on top of that, I can't believe she actually made up the medical report about Chigara not being a prototype either! Argghh ... If only she hadn't been such an idiot we could have known that Chigara was a prototype much earlier! I guess I really shouldn't have counted on a ditz like her to deliver an accurate report. ... No ... There is a matter I wished to discuss with you. In private. Without the other members of the crew. What’s the matter? I have come to suspect there is a great deal of information that our chief medical officer is hiding. What do you mean? I believe Claude was actually the one who has been relaying our movements to the prototypes. What!? Sola! You need to say stuff like this sooner! No ... the matter is far more complicated. I have ... had a vision. Where I spoke to Claude. It was like a momentary trance, where all of my surroundings faded away, and I floated in midair. It was as if I was suspended in deep sleep once more, yet I was still in control of my body. During this ... vision ... I learned that our chief medical officer was, in fact, an ancient Ryuvian like myself. But she could not have come from my era. For she was far more powerful than anything I could have imagined. Indeed, if my suspicions are correct she may have attained a power far more terrifying than even the mightiest Ryuvian Emperors of the ancient past: the power to bend both space and time. Such powers were beyond even the Ryuvians. The implications of this discovery were too terrifying for me to dare speak. Indeed, I feared if I exposed the truth of her identity, she may simply write me out of existence. You're telling me ... Claude is a … time traveler? No … it would be far more accurate to say that she is a god. W-WHAT!? But not a god that seeks to be worshiped or feared. A god that seeks ... amusement. An entity which merely desires to watch over the insignificant little mortals at her feet and nudge them around for laughs. Yet, the situation is still more troubling. I believe the sole reason for Claude joining the crew of the Sunrider was to lead you to me. What makes you think that? Given the revelation that I was in cold sleep for mere months instead of millenia, there is only one remaining explanation as to how I ended up in this time given the circumstantial evidence at hand. I too am a time traveler, albeit an unintentional one. I must have been sent forward in time two thousand years just moments before the activation of the Sharr'Lac's Final Tear. That would further explain why I survived the certain death that the Final Tear would have caused. I have a theory: Claude has come to return me to my own timeline. So that this timeline can be fixed. Already, my existence in this universe has begun to dramatically change the course of the galaxy's history. If I were to remain here it’s possible that the entire fate of the universe may be at stake. Slow down, Sola! I'm ... not quite following. Why does you being here mean the universe is doomed? As I said, my arrival here has already changed the course of the universe's history. If the timeline were to deviate any further, I fear that an irreparable time paradox could occur. I am effectively a rogue agent which should not exist in this universe. If I am to accidentally cause an event which would otherwise be impossible in the original timeline, then the entire space-time continuum could very well collapse. Put another way, if my existence changes the timeline so majorly as to alter the course of history, this entire universe will simply collapse. I am a threat more dire to this universe than either PACT or the prototypes. One which must be removed. No, Sola. You're one of us now. From what you've told me of your time, if you were to go back to it you'd just be used as a pawn again. No, worse, you'll be killed right away! You said it yourself, right? You time warped just a second before the Final Tear. If you go back now, you'll just be dead! And there's not a chance in hell I'll let that happen. Not on my watch! ... I swear I'll protect you, Sola. The universe or time paradoxes can be damned! … thank you, captain. Ahem ... uhh ... ... … You know, you mentioned the time paradox, but you've been here with us for about a year now and it looks to me the universe is still working out just fine. And if anything Claude seems like she's still just observing the situation. Maybe there's still a way out of this without collapsing the universe or sending you back in time. Yes … I shall hope for the best ... while preparing my heart for the alternative. ... ... (Another new problem … For now, with the both of us hidden away on this remote planet, Sola won't be able to change the “future.” Maybe that's part of the reason why she decided to babysit me. As long as we're here, we won't have to worry about the timeline collapsing.) ... Well, for now, let's just leave the time paradox stuff alone. We'll deal with it ... once we have a ship again. And when I can confront Claude about all this. Understood, captain. So ... by the way, what's this hideout that Ava's got prepared for us? It appears to be a small settlement built by the Mining Union which was abandoned decades past when the nearby rocks failed to yield any ore. We will be residing together in the main building until the commander and Asaga return from Ryuvia Prime. Wait, we’re going to be living together? Yes.Meanwhile, in the mindstream …   HUMAN FILTH!!!!
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Nov 9, 2020 00:50
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Coda: What Rough Beast, Its Hour Come Round At Last Deep within the Mnemosyne Abyss …   Report! My lord ... The time portal did not work as anticipated! According to readings instead of being transported to before the battle, we were flung two thousand years into the future instead! Further, it appears the Farari girl was also caught in the temporal blast and flung into this time as well. And our soldiers report that unknown interlopers have destroyed the time device. Fools! I-I beg your forgiveness, my lord … there is some good news. Long range readings indicate that the denizens of this time appear to be nothing more than primitives. S-surely, my lord can expect to easily subjugate. ... Very well. If I am to be robbed of my victory against the Farari lowbloods, then I shall rebuild our glorious empire here. Let these primitives prepare … for my New Holy Empire! Yes, my lord Crow Harbour![/url]
Moon Slayer fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Dec 6, 2020 |
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Nov 9, 2020 00:50
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And that's it! I'll prepare some closing thoughts about the series and what's next, both for it and me. Thanks for reading!
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Nov 9, 2020 00:53
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Wait what no seriously what???
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Nov 9, 2020 00:59
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Who? What? Only months?  Also my brain hurts just from reading the first of those two updates.
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Nov 9, 2020 01:00
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Wait, that's it? This feels very different.
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Nov 9, 2020 01:00
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Sola's dad's rival for the throne is the Ebon Fleet (I'm assuming but it seems pretty obvious).Poil posted:Who? What? Only months? This fact was already known. I can't remember the exact update and didn't feel like going back and finding it but it's not a surprise.
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Nov 9, 2020 01:08
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There actually is quite a bit more but it's considered non canon and is nothing more than a straight visual novel fix fic. While it does address some story issues and explains several things I am not surprised Moon Slayer is skipping it. It has some good moments in it but also its fair share of bad ones. There some other things that I might bring up but I will wait to see what Moon Slayer has to say first.
cokerpilot fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Nov 9, 2020 |
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Nov 9, 2020 01:18
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Yeah that's something I am going to discuss in my closing thoughts post.
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Nov 9, 2020 01:20
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So. We fought a bunch of random clones who stole a revolution to amuse Horny Pink-Haired God, then a random time paradox happened and a dude who looks like he escaped the Fire Emblem Dark Mage academy appeared with some kind of superscience death fleet. Did I miss anything?
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Nov 9, 2020 04:53
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"Claude," or whatever her real name is, actually seems genuinely concerned about the repercussions of the Ebon Fleet arriving.quote:
Are Heroes haven't even heard of the Ebon Fleet, so Sola's assessment of what's going on is based on incomplete information.
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Nov 9, 2020 04:58
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Well, good luck with all of that! Not my concern, really. I’m just here to clean up this temporal disaster. An entire fleet blown from its timeline and just dropped into this one? When people and things start moving through time willy-nilly and events get moved around all out of order, it's only a matter of ... ahem ... time until something reeaallly bad happens to the entire universe. I thought you prototypes could take care of it, but I guess not. Honestly, I don't care one way or another 'bout a boring thing like you prototypes. I think I'd rather take my chances with the other team now.
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So, I sat down to write some final thoughts and realized that most of what I could say about this series I've already said, which can pretty much be boiled down to: I enjoyed it, despite a lot. Doing this LP the whole goal was to punch up the stuff that I liked and downplay/excise the stuff I didn't and I personally think I did a pretty okay job if I do say so myself. Your mileage may vary but that's writing for you. I don't know anything about the development of this series and I really don't care to do any research to find out, but the tonal inconsistency has been remarked on several times. It's pretty clear that one writer wanted to do a space opera and one wanted to do a harem comedy anime and they thought they could make it work combining the two. They couldn't -- not really anyway. The space opera stuff was fairly interesting, and the universe felt pretty well fleshed out; I could see other stories taking place in this setting easily. But as soon as the dial was turned a little back to harem anime it just got dumb and annoying. The second game had more of this problem than the first, I think. I did like the ending! There were some comments about how it seemed extraneous; everything was resolved neatly until Chigara shot Grey. But I think that the ending has a real "season finale" feel to it that I appreciate. The crew's scattered, going off to pursue different goals, Shields is presumed dead, and the new Big Bad has made its appearance at long last. It feels like the end of one of the latter Agents of Shield seasons, or maybe the season two finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender. However, it's undeniable that the ending is a real downer: Chigara is dead and/or a corrupted Force ghost, the ship we spent so much time with is destroyed, Claude isn't dead after all ... I have to presume that the original plan was to make another game. But at some point that might have been in jeopardy and they didn't want to leave the series on a cliffhanger and a bummer, so there was a DLC released that basically undid the ending. No need to go into detail ab out it since it's not going to be a part of the LP. The non-spoilery version is that time travel is involved, the past gets changed and the massacre never happens. Everything gets wrapped up much nicer, the ship doesn't get blown up, and everyone lives happily ever after. But now there is another game under development. And judging from the very little I've seen it is a direct sequel to Liberation Day, meaning that the DLC time travel stuff is now non-canon. Which is a good choice, IMO. Seeing your protagonists get back up after being knocked down hard makes for a better story than if everything had turned out okay. So I hope I'm right and they do just straight-up ignore the DLC; I don't even want them to try to "fix" the canon with some explanation -- just pretend it never happened. Anyway, who knows when that new game is going to be released. Everything I've seen still lists the release date as "TBD." When it does come out I know I'll be getting it, and most likely will be giving it the same treatment I gave the first two (technically three). I've probably got other thoughts that'll come to me and I'll post them when they do. But for now, again, thanks for reading. I hope you got some legitimate entertainment out of this whole thing. I did!
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Nov 10, 2020 00:59
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Moon Slayer posted:I've probably got other thoughts that'll come to me and I'll post them when they do. But for now, again, thanks for reading. I hope you got some legitimate entertainment out of this whole thing. I did! I sure did! Despite all the anime and the weird writing, this was a pretty good ride.Thanks for distilling it for us, Moon Slayer.
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Nov 10, 2020 03:27
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The early bits were definitely much better than the later stuff; I think it was actually quite good up to blowing open the Legion. Then it went downhill.
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Nov 10, 2020 04:11
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I maintain that the problem isn't that the last part is a downer it's that 1) It's a downer after a pretty climactic victory like, drat let the player have their moment the way they continued is just exhausting 2) Everyone's IQ drops to room temperature levels 3) There are a series of character decisions which don't make sense. I also don't like how people are shocked that Chagara was a prototype while also acting like she was a traitor all along when that is obviously not the case. It grates for me especially given how hard this game likes its nakama message I'm actually good with the time travel stuff because okay sure horny not-nurse is a time travelling god who likes space operas gently caress it why not I'm down EDIT: I think Infinite Space did space opera anime much better but admittedly it didn't really try to be a harem like this VN is going for.
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Nov 10, 2020 05:00
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Harem is inherently destructive to narrative and character writing.
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Nov 10, 2020 06:03
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Seraphic Neoman posted:3) There are a series of character decisions which don't make sense. Out of curiosity, what decisions don't you think make sense?
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Nov 10, 2020 06:15
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Moon Slayer posted:Out of curiosity, what decisions don't you think make sense? The main one was Fontana. He lost his poo poo about Chagara which doesn't fit him at all. This was the guy who looked at a superweapon and went "oh right, that thing" He seems like the sort who would have exploited the situation. Either taking Shields prisoner and/or figuring out how to use the ensuing chaos to further Pact's goals. I cannot imagine a guy like that swearing bloody murder when the peace talks failed, hell he seems like the sort who had a plan for that exact situation. The runner-up was Krysta who was disobeyed her orders and basically deserted deciding to go back and smooth things over with the Alliance. I cannot see how that could possibly go well, other than making for a clumsy plot hook.
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Nov 10, 2020 07:18
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One thing the DLC did is that it established the limits Claude is operating under. Sola's whole Claude is a god thing often gets taken 100 percent canon and fact when it is not. Cluade has a very strict set of rules that she is operating under and doing anything more than bending them a little can basically end the timeline. Some other things are also addressed like both what the rest of the crew is up to and some of Sheild's more reprehensible behaviors. A few things that didn't get shown off were a Merc unit, a mining guild Battleship which is both silly, awesome, and stupid at the same time. It has a bunch of mining drills at the front of it and can tractor ships into them if I recall correctly. Another thing that was not shown off was a unit that you can get by doing one of the side missions a Ryuvian "Falcon" a rebuilt boss unit that you take on. There also is some dialogue about rebuilding it or not which also effect an upgrade you can get for Icari. Which is why I was kind of surprised it got skipped over. I don't recall too much about it but I think it was a good unit? Finally, you can also get something called the Wishall which can change hardpoints in the story or can be sold for a good amount of money. You can also just hang onto it. cokerpilot fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Nov 10, 2020 |
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Nov 10, 2020 07:43
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Night10194 posted:Harem is inherently destructive to narrative and character writing. Hey, worked for Quanxi. The thing with harems in anime is that they're seldom actually harems, as in a large group of people in a romantic and/or sexual relationship. You get them sometimes, sure, like in Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans when one supporting character is married to around 50,000 women. (Long story), but most of the time, the "harems" are just extended love triangles, with relationships in a perpetual state of flux, since locking things down before the end means reducing merch sales for the losers. Harems in anime are often essentially anti-story, denying resolution and development to keep the characters in an unbalanced state where they can be maybe making progress. That stasis can itself be used for comedy (Rumiko Takahashi is famous for it), but even that can get tiring as you get the same basic gags repeated. Further, the harem anime setup tends to require that girls treat things like they have no options other than the protagonist, reducing their arcs to revolve around a character who's usually a bit of a void for easier viewer projection. And adding it to an anime without a primary romantic focus just amplifies the emptiness in a lot of these setups, since there's barely the time to properly flesh out one romantic dynamic, let alone five.
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Nov 10, 2020 11:20
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Aw man, I was looking forward to seeing the thread's reaction to the time travel plot. Oh well.
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Nov 10, 2020 11:50
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With the DLC's canon status unclear at best and the next game a ways out, that brings this thread to a close. I'm going to get it archive-ready over the weekend probably, and I'll leave it open for a few days if people have any more closing thoughts. I've got an idea for another LP, but if I do pull the trigger on it it won't be for a while. Got to see how feasible it is. For now I'll just say that the game is extremely not anime. For now, though, I'll just say, again, thank you for reading!
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Nov 13, 2020 18:20
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 02:36 |
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Well, I was a lurker and not a conversational participant for most of this thread, but it was an enjoyable ride, Moon Slayer. Experiencing this game through the lens of your interpretation and experience was a worthwhile... experience. Lookin' forward to whatever you end up doing next.
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Nov 13, 2020 22:08
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