Level-5’s short story about an attack of tokusatsu shows

Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale is not really a game. It has a couple game-like elements to it, such as collecting glims to craft monster trading cards and battling with friends to gain power and superiority over them, but it’s more or less a short story about being a kid in a Tokyo suburb in the 1970s when tokusatsu shows were wildly popular. These are the type of television programming where giant monsters battle against larger-than-life heroes against a bustling city skyline. Think Kamen Rider and Power Rangers mixed with kaiju monster flicks like Gamera. I’m aware of them, but they’re not my kind of go-to entertainment choice…unless they are being poked and prodded by Joel and Crow via Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Anyways, after a total of three hours, I’m happy to have played Attack of the Friday Monsters!, but I wish it had been more. You control a young boy named Sohta living in a small town in the Tokyo suburbs. Your parents send you out on a simple delivery errand, with your Mom reminding you as you go that today is Friday, which means the monsters come out. She says it quite casually, and everyone in town is fine with the fact that this happens. As you explore the town, you meet some other kids and become friends with them. They teach Sohta how to play Monster Cards, which is based around Rock, Paper, Scissors, with some additional elements to it to determine ties. When you beat someone at Monster Cards, you become their master, now able to cast a silly spell on them to cause them to fall down dramatically. It’s pretty whimsical and innocent, reminding me a bit of my one time playing…you know, I no longer remember the name of the card game. Had something to do with spells and potions.

I played through Attack of the Friday Monsters! over two nights, but one could bang it out in a single setting. However, there is no reason to rush. Take your time and bask in the sereneness of the town, listen to the cicadas, watch the train chug on by. Setting is the star here. I found the story to be pretty light-hearted and teetering on nonsensical, but never offensive. There’s a couple of real cute moments, and keeping the Japanese voiceover work is always good. Also, that opening theme song is stellar. Quests overlap in the same style that mysteries opened and resolved in the Professor Layton series, and your reward for finishing up a task is always more glims. The monster cards are pretty cool looking in terms of art design, and you can combine multiple copies to increase the strength of one card, but other than that…the minigame is probably about 60% luck and 40% skill and never stressful or demanding that you grind for stronger cards. Just give it a go, and good luck.

The game’s titular attack was also a bit of a letdown, in how it ultimately played out. Visually, it’s a lot of fun. But honestly, I was expecting more giant monster stuff throughout, and there’s really only one instance of it, and you are basically a tiny part of the play. After the credits roll, you are placed back in town, free to run around and collect more glims, as well as battle your friends with Monster Cards. I did a quick tour of every place open once more to get what I could, but did not pick up any new quests to do, and so it seems like the only way now to get more glims is to win the card minigame over and over, which, if it was more like Tetra Master, I’d be into. Oh snap. But alas, it’s nothing to write home about.

So yeah, Attack of the Friday Monsters!, a really charming and peaceful tale about being a kid and creating your own world of fun–but just that. A tale.

Harle, wilt thou leave me thus?

RPG party members–they come, and they go. Quite frequently, actually. That’s just how some tales twist, after all. Very recently, I lost Harle in Chrono Cross (sorry, uh…spoilers?), and the whole happening was quietly handled in such an undermining manner that I couldn’t believe she was no longer selectable as a part of my team, despite being there only minutes before a cutscene occurred. But I checked, and she was magically replaced in my merry band by Viper, and no one even asked me if that was okay. Grrr.

Now, to be more specific on Harle’s vanishing act, about three-fourths through the game, she asks FauxLynx a Serious™ question. I thought I picked the answer that would most please her, but she said I was lying, and the next scene is her crying on Fargo’s S.S. Zelbess, watching as the gang sets off to fight some dragon-god bosses. Starky tries to figure out what’s wrong, but Harle won’t give up the details…and then, that’s it. She’s no longer there, no longer in your party, no longer accessible. And I’m the only one that notices. I am holding out hope that she reappears down the line–don’t tell me!–maybe before the final battle, but I really liked having her in my party as a potent healer and damage-disher. She was all about zee moons.

Harle’s suddenly vanishing act reminded me a bit of when Gremio bites the flesh-eating spores bullet in Suikoden, as well as when Sephiroth decided to poke Aerith a bit too hard in Final Fantasy VII. It kind of comes out of nowhere, and suddenly you are short one constant face and voice. Worst of all…you don’t get any of your stuff back. Whatever items, armor, and elements you had equipped goes buys the farm along with its bearer. So long, multiple counts of HellBound, Gravitonne, RecoverAll. You will be missed. Not that I can’t afford to buy more, as money in Chrono Cross is and never will be an issue, but it hurts seeing your hard-earned stuff taken away.

I’m now in the home stretch, but it is a little daunting. Basically, you have to go fight six element-themed dragons to get them on your side or gain a thingy from them. If I have this right, you can fight them in just about any order you want. Think the White Dragon has to be last though. Regardless: the world(s) are your oyster(s). I took on the Water Dragon first, beating it relatively easily, but now I don’t know where I want to go next. This type of openness can be a real danger to me, as without any guidance I could just wander around on the overworld map for all eternity, basking in the game’s beautiful soundtrack. I also don’t know who I am going to replace Harle with, as Viper is just okay. Maybe Zappa or Zoah? I don’t know.

Time marches on, and I creep closer to finally completing Chrono Cross. Can’t let these dragons and their “come at me, bro, in any order” mentality deter me. I will save the world(s). I will. For Harle.

Mean gnomes, friendly fire, tenacious towers, extra elements, and goliath beetles

Alas, I’m still not in a place to really write at length about the videogames I’m playing (or thinking about playing). Y’know, unless that writing is really short and in the form of a haiku. This hard swing seems to happen every summer, and it’s mostly because I’m extremely stressed to day jobbery things that I won’t ever go into publicly and working on laying out a book of my 365 BAD COMICS, but I am still Pauly, which means I am playing games whether there are words to attach to them or not because they help soothe my soul. I figured it’d be easier to give y’all a little rundown on what I’m playing as of late and how it’s going than waiting for the inevitable to never happen.

And away we go.

Fable III

Well, this is not a very good game, in all aspects of something being a game. No, sir. It’s janky and lazy and poorly paced and unclear in its directions and overly interested in telling the player silly data, and I hate the “no menu” mentality, as there is nothing wrong with menus, so long as the menus are designed properly. The dog is pointless to the point of annoying and should have been left behind; that was Fable 2‘s thing. Being the king of Albion is not as cool or special as one might assume. I’m currently right near the end-all battle, but I want to clean up all the remaining side quests (finding gnomes, silver keys, gold keys) because I am never going to play this again. I’m glad it was free, but I’m sad to see how dry and drained it is compared to the previous adventure, something I enjoyed. There are still some very pretty locales and cool beard options though.

Battlefield 3

This is a game I really do want to write more about at length, as I’m playing it for educational purposes, to figure out what it is about realistic, war-themed FPS titles that I find so uninteresting and off-putting. So far, this game has all of that–whatever it is–and then some. I’m also finding it extremely difficult to see due to how real and dark the environments are, accidentally shooting my own teammates. Thankfully, friendly fire is in play–though the game openly states such actions will not be tolerated–so I’m not ruining missions at every turn. But yeah. I’ve done ground fights, tank fights, sky fights, sniper stuff, and so on. It’s pretty boring.

Defense Grid: The Awakening

This is the first free game for us Xbox 360 players with Gold accounts. It’s an old, downloadable RTS game from a few years back, with upgradable towers. It’s slow, as slow as if I was to actually build a tower myself, but I was able to play a few levels past the tutorial stuff. Not sure if I’ll hop back into it, as it is almost the exact opposite of the only RTS game I’ve really enjoyed recently: Kingdom Rush. Oh well.

Chrono Cross

I’m now at the turning point of my sorta re-play of Chrono Cross where I’m experiencing parts I’ve never gotten to before. This is exciting. I always got to the moment in time where Serge and Lynx do the Freaky Friday and then lost interest quickly after that. Despite some hiccups, this replay has been pretty steadily chugging along, and I’m now working on beating a bunch of dragon gods into submission. I still absolutely love the music and the battle system with a passion unlike anything else. More about Chrono Cross later, I promise.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

I am loving my new daily life as mayor of Arni in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, but am taking it pretty slow. In fact, I’ve only gone to the island four or five times now, and that’s the place many players hop to and from to earn big bells thanks to the special beetles they got there. Just finished expanding the museum with a second floor and gift shop, and am now working on increasingly my house to have a larger second room. That’s gonna be where I put all my Japanese furniture. Other than that, it’s the same ol’ addiction and easygoing gameplay from the previous game, and the emergent gameplay in multiplayer is a joy to watch unfold.

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So that’s the handful of games I’m currently playing. Pretty exciting, I know. I’m also contemplating if I’ll pick up Shin Megami Tensei IV or not tomorrow. Hmm, we’ll see…

How do you pronounce Serge in Chrono Cross?

Yesterday, I finally got around to kickstarting my goal of finishing these five videogames some time this year, starting off with Chrono Cross. It’s an RPG I’ve played countless times before, but always only up to a specific point; generally, it is around the time you switch, for story-related reasons, from controlling Serge to controlling Lynx. Tara recently replayed, too–well, back in October 2011–but she ended up getting stuck somewhere. I don’t remember where. Maybe she can elaborate in the comments below. I dunno…I just lose interest after awhile, and then something new and shiny takes hold of me, and I never return, which is a shame as it is one of my favorite gaming adventures thanks to its stellar soundtrack and versatile combat system. I blame myself more than the Frozen Flame.

I’ve got just about four hours under my re-playing belt at this point, but I’ll save my musings and love and admiration stuff for a separate post. For now, let’s talk about something that Tara and I can’t agree on: how to pronounce Serge’s name. To me, I say it like “surge of water,” and given what happens to him in the alternate realm…well, that fits. Tara, however, pronounces it like “ser gey,” with a flair to the whole thing. I’m not so sure how I like that. Since this is the PlayStation 1 and voice acting was extremely limited back in the day, we don’t ever hear anyone say his name out loud, especially since the player can also change it to Pauly or Potasio or whatever they feel like calling our blue-haired silent protagonist. And so I turn to you, dear Grinding Down readers, to voice your opinions.

All right, hopefully there’s a poll below for you to click on. I don’t make many of these so I’m not too confident on how to embed ’em. If it’s there, say your peace:

inFamous 2 is decent fun, but no shock to the system

So far, inFamous 2 really makes me want to go back to free Nazi-controlled terrain in The Saboteur or stop kicking dirt around and finally pick up Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, y’know, the game I more or less got a PS3 for. Well, that and Ni no Kuni. That’s not to say that inFamous 2 is not worth playing, as it totally is…it’s just that the best elements within itself are the ones I’ve already cherished and loved in other videogames. But before I get to all that, I have a wee announcement.

I got a new TV. Now, now, hold on. I have to assume that, for many of you, the TV I got will be No Big Thang™, but you have to realize that all my teenage-into-adult life I’ve learned to live with or live without, and so I’ve been using a large, clunky television from 2005 that does not have all the fancy features one can get with stuff being made some eight years later. And because of this, many videogames I play on it suffer from tiny text syndrome, and unfortunately, that’s going to continue to happen. See, I didn’t get a replacement TV for the living room; instead, I got a wee 19 inch flatscreen for my art studio, which is set up next to where I draw and use my laptop. So now I can watch Netflix while I forever tone bad comics. However, since Tara and I don’t have cable, I needed to move the PS3 over to my new wee TV for all that hot action, which has a bonus effect in that I’m using it a lot more now. I mean, now it just sits there, looking at me, demanding I turn it on and play. Which is probably a good thing for my PlayStation Plus backlog.

Anyways, this is what my new wee TV looks like:

I’m pleased to say that it does the job more than adequately, both for streaming movies/TV shows and playing games. Well, at least the handful of games I opened on it to see how they fared, which consisted of Joe Danger 2: The Movie, Ni no Kuni, and inFamous 2. At some point, I want to switch the PS3 and Xbox 360’s places, to see what Torchlight and Dragon Age: Origins look like, as they were the games I found to have the smallest text in my collection. No real rush on that though.

Right. So, inFamous 2. Never played the original, but it always looked neat, like a modern dark spin on being a superhero, with legit superhero powers. Lightning bolts a-way! The second game seemed to sum up a little from the previous adventure via some cool comic book cutscenes, but it’s not all really clear to me. Something about a Beast (or maybe it’s The Beast) hunting Cole down…I don’t know. I just like climbing buildings, collecting blast shards, and squirrel-gliding from roof to roof like a kid with no restrictions. And you can totally do that, for as long as you want, which is really nice. Morality-wise, I’m going down the righteous path, though I have–on accident, I swear–murdered a few civilians while trying to stop attacking monsters and such. Because it can get hard and chaotic and somewhat confusing once the lightning and bullets begin to fly. Basically, any time there are four or five enemies at once, Cole goes down fast, and I don’t know if it is my fault or not. I’d like to believe I have a decent handle on firing shock grenades and tossing cars, but maybe I don’t. At least the checkpointing is very forgiving.

But yeah, climbing up those towers reminds me of the clunky, but still satisfying climbing from The Saboteur. The way Cole just kind of magnet-like sticks to poles and ledges gets me all jittery for more Sly Cooper tales of thievery (old and new). I’ll probably burn through inFamous 2 rather fast over the next few nights–as I previously mentioned, now that the PlayStation 3 sits right next to my work desk, I’ll be more inclined to use it–but maybe then after I’ll dip back into some old favorites. We’ll see. Probably not. I guess I just like dreaming about this stuff openly.

Be stealthy or be deadly or even both in Super Ninja Slash

Something is happening to me lately, and I’m not sure if I should fight it or just sit down and embrace it: I am moving away from mainstream titles. Sure, sure, I recently burned through BioShock Infinite, but I’ve also been spending a lot of time playing browser-based indie gems like Kingdom Rush and unknown point-and-click adventures like Patchwork and under-the-radar SRPGs like Fire Emblem: Awakening. Well, one could totally probably argue that, with the latest in the series, Fire Emblem has reached it big time. But whatever, I am digging a lot of freeware titles as of late. Which brings me to the latest freebie title I’m enjoying: Super Ninja Slash.

Created as “another game jam game” by Kyle Pulver and with music by Danny Baranowsky, Super Ninja Slash clearly takes inspiration from the not-so-surprising success of Mark of the Ninja, the XBLA title that, in one swoosh, seemingly redefined the stealth genre. Based on its name, you’d think it was a straightforward slice-and-dice action game in the vein of many SNES romps, with you taking down enemies left and right thanks to your untouchable ninja skills. Well, sure, you can do that if you want, but the main goal of the game’s nine levels is to reach the exit alive. You can either avoid guards or, so long as you are quick enough, take them out with a single slash. Other pitfalls include holes in the floor and electrified barriers.

The game looks rather retro, but moves surprisingly smoothly. You can double tap the arrow key to give the ninja a speedy boost, and he/she can wall-jump, though sometimes jumping from a wall to another platform is a little clunky as you have to hold an arrow key in one direction and then hit another as you jump to change directions. Orange-colored guards carry flashlights, which represent their vision cones, and getting spotted once is an instant kill. I appreciate the swift violence they drop on the ninja once alerted. Again, if you can jump and swing your sword fast enough, you can take out some guards. I’ve been doing a bit of both; some levels I snuck through completely unnoticed, and others I had to take out a guard or two to make the path a little easier to tread.

I got up to level 8 (of 9) during my first stint with Super Ninja Slash, but had to close out for work-related reasons. I kind of wish that, just like in Kingdom Rush, local progress data was still saved somehow, but I won’t mind replaying the levels again too much as it is all training for the later, more difficult parts. The website even keeps track of who is the fastest ninja, the deadliest, and the most peaceful, though I suspect I’ll never hit the top of any of those lists due to my lackluster keyboard skills, but that’s okay. Ninjas aren’t meant to be seen, anyways.

Newly joined Henry quickly becomes one for the books

Given the lapse of updates since I lost Sully, you might’ve assumed I haven’t played much more Fire Emblem: Awakening, but you’d be totally wrong. In fact, I’ve played a lot more, an hour almost every night. Granted, that one hour is generally a single chapter, boiled down to one long battle, but it’s forward progress nonetheless.

Basically, I’ve gone from chapter 9 to chapter 13 “Of Sacred Blood,” though I can’t really speak too much about what happened during those four chapters story-wise as things certainly do happen. One of them even caught me unawares. I can tell you, however, that nobody in the Shepherds died during four of the five latest battles, until last night, when dark mage newb Henry strolled on in and, just as fast, strolled on out. Dang it.

Although Henry hails from Plegia, he happily joins Chrom’s army because…well, he loves war. He’s like Macaulay Culkin in The Good Son; looks like a nice, innocent little lad, but then you find out he’s into blood and mayhem and decidedly evil things. Yeah, don’t let him babysit your kids. Anyways, he joins at the beginning of the fight, swooping in as a swarm of ravens, but I wasn’t really paying attention to him during the majority of the fight, as I knew where the advancing soldiers were and how best to handle them with friendly units I’ve come to know very well. Like Frederick and Norne and Stahl. So when enemy troops spawned at unguarded fortresses at the bottom of the map and Henry was all by himself, there weren’t enough Hex spells in the realm to keep him safe. Oh well. I already have my avatar and Nyna for excellent magic spells.

Okay, so Henry’s gone. I also missed out on recruiting a woman named Tharja in an earlier chapter, but I did get a few other newbies to join and remain safely in the Shepherds: Libra, Olivia, Cherche, and [name redacted for spoilery reasons]. Onwards we march, for peace and the Ylissean people…

The Cave, a labyrinthine moral adventure for the tested and tedious

Excited about exploring and seeing what was next, the scientist ran ahead, but fell too far from a high platform and died, turning into a magical puff of white smoke and re-materializing earlier in the level. The Cave, ever watchful and ready to quip, remarked, “There’s no dying in the Cave.” Except there is. There totally is. I died dozens of times in my first–and probably only–playthrough, mostly from falling, but also in a few other scenarios, one involving a hot dog. It’s not a crazy huge deal, but the contradiction exists, and it’s just one of several problems I found with The Cave despite appreciating the dark humor, quirky charm, and wonderfully realized character designs.

Right. So, The Cave. It’s the latest brain-baby from Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert,  a point and click adventure game in the skin of an action puzzle platformer. You start out by selecting three of the available seven characters, each with a unique ability, though you have to mostly figure this out for yourself. Unless you press pause and select “How to Play” like I did, which states each character’s special talent. That’s how I learned that the knight’s glowing ring of light meant invincibility an hour or so into the adventure. Anyways, I went with the scientist, the knight, and the monk. You begin exploring standard levels of the Cave as it berates you for your moral choices, and then you have to tackle specific ones designed for the characters you locked into. That means if you want to see the hillbilly’s level or the time-traveler’s level, you’ll have to replay The Cave, experiencing levels you’ve already puzzle-solved to see fresh ones. You could call that replayability, but it appears more tedious than rewarding, especially when you consider that you’d have to do it all again a third time, since there are seven characters in total, replaying two characters to see the last picked one’s level finally. And don’t even get me started on the element of good/bad endings–for all seven of ’em.

The puzzles are pretty old-school. At least that’s how they felt to me. On more than five occasions, I had to go to the Interwebz and look up a walkthrough after seemingly trying everything. Nothing is spelled out for the player in The Cave; there are no on-screen hints; no nudges from our verbose narrator if left standing still for too long. This was both refreshing and a bit frustrating, as there really is only so much our characters can do: they each can hold one single item, and they each have one special ability. It’s figuring out what to do with all that within the environment that proves tricky. And tedious. Since I was playing solo, that means I had to manually control all three characters, which is easy thanks to the touch of the d-pad, but boring, as it often meant a ton of back-tracking or just moving everybody to be together instead of spread apart. On occasion, when the story deems it so, the other two characters will magically appear near you, but that never happens when you really need them. I wish there had been a “call over” kind of command.

Another problem The Cave has is with its platforming elements, which make up just as much gameplay as the puzzles, since you’re always jumping up, jumping down, climbing ropes, climbing ladders, and moving about. There’s never any urgency, but once you begin to feel the back-tracking blues, you’ll just want to get to where you need to be, especially if you’ve figured out the puzzle, as fast as possible. However, The Cave makes that difficult because grappling ledges and moving up and down ladders is clunky and not 100% reliable. It’s easier to climb all the way down a ladder to the bottom then jumping from the three-fourths mark, as you’ll most likely end up jumping higher up on the ladder, defeating the purpose entirely. It’s a gaming habit you’ll have to learn to break, at least for your sanity’s sake.

Despite being a cave, the level design is quite varied, and I really liked the pristine vacation-esque appearance of the island near the end, as well as the castle level from the knight’s story. If anything, The Cave has a look. A stellar one, with kooky, but charming characters, and nice, multiple descriptions of fire. The voice acting, minimal as it is, does its job well, especially the musing Cave, who I believe is the same voice actor for Captain Quark and DeathSpank though toned down somewhat. He actually doesn’t say all that much throughout the game, and there’s quite a lot of long, quiet stretches throughout.

I don’t know. In the end, I explored The Cave, and all I was found was disappointment. You pick morally coruppted characters, see what makes them bad, and choose whether they continue being less-than-good or head to the light; the Cave comments along the way. There isn’t a whole lot to gain from this. Not going back for a second or third time.

A videogames rundown in honor of Barristan the Bold

Right now, I don’t have any particular thoughts on a particular game, so I figured I could use a post to sum up what’s going on with the games I’m playing currently. As usual, I am juggling several, which does not bode well for efficiency and completing many of ’em, but it does allow me to see a wee bit of each thing. Let me break this out into a little list:

• BioShock Infinite – I am really close to the end on this even though I only just posted my impressions about it recently. Its pacing is such that you keep playing, unaware of how much time has passed. A part of me wanted to just soldier through it last night, but it was getting late, and I suspect there’s an hour or two left to unfold. Regardless, I’ll finish it up tonight and then probably lock myself in a small room, crying over what brain-twisting revelations are revealed. Or spoiling myself via the Internet on all the stuff I missed.
• Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon – Just managed to beat the first mansion’s boss, a particularly crafty ghost-controlled spider, which has now opened up the multiplayer aspect, as well as the next mansion. Have not moved on to either of those yet, but I will soon. Seems you can also hop back into the mansion levels to track down hidden Boos. Where you at, Boos?
• Fire Emblem: Awakening – No one has died since my last post about losing Miriel. Granted, I haven’t played since then, but I’ll take my accomplishments with this brutal SRPG where I can.
• Phantasmaburbia – Haven’t touched it since my last post, but I do plan to get back to it, especially since I know I just need to do some light grinding to get the two boys strong enough to take down the progress-blocking boss.
• Kingdom Rush – I play this during my lunchbreak as I slowly sip down vegetable juice as part of my 10-day juicing fast. I got stuck on the first snowly level and had to drop the difficulty to easy to make it through with a pitiful two-star rating.
• Patchwork – Cannot figure out how to appease the fire spirit (wants something to eat), and since this game is so small and indie and unknown, any online guide or clues are nowhere to be found. Curses, as I really like its art style and music a lot.
• Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch – Stuck fighting Moltaan, the Lord of Lava, at the top of Old Smokey. Probably gotta grind more, especially since I evolved a few familiars, which drops them back down to level 1. Basically, my party is now a tad unbalanced. Oops.
• El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron – Umm, I don’t know. Stopped at Chapter Two. Ha.

Since my last musings on PlayStation Plus, I’ve gone and downloaded several more games I won’t ever have the time to eat up, like The Cave and Demon’s Souls. Unless I clear a few of the above off my plate. Which may or may not happen soon. But hey, with me, you never know, as something entirely new (or old) will grab my attention. Looking ahead, I can’t really see anything that looks enticing, but that’s the magic of the videogames industry; there are always a few well-kept secrets.

Three more have fallen in Fire Emblem: Awakening

Well, this is all going downhill rather fast.

Played some more Fire Emblem: Awakening last night while Tara watched Back to the Future Part II. As Marty McFly ran around trying to fix his future kids, I did my best on the battlefield, but my best was not the best, as three more comrades have fallen. Two of them were brand-spanking new, and one was a rather quiet dude that I didn’t get to know in his short time with the Shepherds. Snartleblast, for sure.

Right, so…farewell Lon’qu, Ricken, and Maribelle. You three were too good for this realm anyways.

Here’s what happened with Lon’qu, which I take full blame for his death; on the Chapter 5 “The Exalt and the King” map, I tried sneaking him around the enemy’s side and was not paying attention to just how far and fast the opposing units could move. In short, he was slashed down rather swiftly, much to my dismay. As for the spritely Ricken and tinny-voiced Maribelle–her voice actor also plays Yuzu in Devil Summoner Overclocked, who I find very tiresome, what with her constant disbelief that the government could have anything to do with demons invading Tokyo–these two are dropped onto the northeast part of the map by themselves, about midway between my units and the enemy. From what it looked like, you have one or two moves at most to save them from downright slaughter, and I just wasn’t quick enough getting over to them.

Clearly, at this point in the game, having now lost six units (seven if you count not recruiting Donnel), any sane-minded gamer would have shut Awakening off and reloaded to fix this, but I finished the map without losing anybody else and recorded my progress. Stubbornness is driving me forward, as I want to know just how far I can go, and I’m also curious to see who will still be with me come the point of no more. Though a certain nervousness did slip over me, as I don’t want to stop playing any time soon, and so I recruited a new character to my team via the Bonus Teams menu in the Bonus Box. Specifically, Nyna, who I guess comes from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. Anyways, she’s a Sage, so I gave her some magic like Elwind and Fire, but haven’t got to see her in action. Recruiting her, a single unit, was costly (around 3,500 gold), and so it’s not something I can do to simply replenish my team once enough people are dead and gone. Might have to look into finding a new archer though…

Let’s end this post with a quote from Plato, in honor of today’s fallen three: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Yup, that’s true.