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skittymon · 3 years

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Finally finished Tales of Eternia!!

And that makes 11th tales games finished and 15th overall played in some degree (Phantasia, Legendia, Innocence, and DotNW being the ones I havent finished yet).

Once I started again in December I decided that instead of liveblogging I’d make a review at the end instead.

So here we go! I will keep this spoiler free as possible!

I’m pretty scatterbrained but I’ll try to divide this into: combat, story, characters, and other game mechanics.

Combat: So obviously, the combat is above Phantasia and Destiny’s, being made after them. I honestly have grown fond of the 2d linear style format. There’s so many different boss fights in this game that can only work in a 2d field rather than 3d.

On the flip side, that’s not always a good thing. I count bosses like the wild dog thing in Vesperia, and Fodra Queen of Graces to be among the hardest mandatory boss fights in tales. Welp, Eternia added one to the ranks. Rem (aka Aska the light spirit) is one of the most frustrating boss fights I’ve done. Apart from constantly slowing healing itself, on the field it brings a shiny ball with it. You cannot destoy the orb, it’s there all fight, and if you touch it it hurts you. And of course it blocks the way to Rem. There is a way past it, it moves up and down so you just have to wait until its up to move past. BUT GUESS WHAT THE AI DOESNT DO. So your party will probably either be dying or constantly in pain. AND REM CAN MOVE THE ORD ANYWHERE. Also you cant physically hit Rem while its casting a spell only far away skills. So if you ever play this game just cheese it and spam variations of Sonic Blade.

Of course, on the flip side it’s every easy for you to cheese boss fights and just back them up into a corner unable to move or do anything until they die, so it evens out.

The sprite animations for the artes are gorgeous. Reid moves so fluidly in his artes, he’s honestly my third favorite protag to play as behind Yuri and Ludger because of this. The caster animations are great as well, granted it can become cluttered and hard to see in when artes like blizzard and earth shaker are used. BUT GOD DAMN I CAN WATCH MEREDY USE METEOR ALL DAY IT LOOKS SO COOL.

Nitpicks about the combat system are, Life, the reviving spell Farah has, takes to long to charge, and for Meredy and Keele to use healing artes you have to mix and match who has what craymel (spirit). There might be a guide but I didnt look beyond reddit so Life was the only resurrection spell I had.

Last nitpick comes from the Aurora Artes. Aurora Artes are skills only Reid can use, but in order to use them you have to have health below 15% and press circle, square, and x at the same time, so it’s very easy to mess up and die. Then to use more Aurora Artes you press the same buttons repeatedly, and after you use them Reid is left with 1 hp. AND the final boss has an automatic kill skill, you have to press the buttons at the right time to activate it and keep everyone alive, or you can cheese it like I did and have Farah hold a reverse doll to revive her after she dies. Did I also mention this skill happens in phase 2 of the fight when the bosses health is less than 20,000 after starting from 300,000? If you fuck up thats like 10mins of redoing.

But to end on a better note for this section, I love the way artes are learned. You have to use certain artes a number of times before you can unlock it (I THINK abyss and vesperia and many others are like this but this is the first time I found it rewarding). I grinded like hell to get the best artes for Reid AND YOU BET IT WAS WORTH IT. Omega Demon Chaos I love you,,,,

Story: Like countless other Tales titles, the conflict comes from two worlds being at odds with each other. However this game does something that none of the other games have done with this story beat. Language barriers! It’s super cool in the first couple of hours theyre just trying to figure out how to talk with Meredy. Of course by the end this point is nearly dropped entirely, everyone else just getting the special ear ring I spent 3 hours to get so the plot can move on.

Like most tales, theres a moment you thought the story would end but BOOM the twist. I wasn’t shocked by it, but that’s because I knew who the final antagonist of the game was prior to playing it, but still it was executed well.

Something that makes this Tales stand out is how they deal with backstory. So the main fours backstory is vital to the story and their characters but they don’t show it till like 20 hours in. It’s like if Graces you start off in main arc and learn about the childhood arc 2/3 of the way through and went “ohhhh that’s why they were distant with each other.” And other stuff about it but I won’t spoil it.

Overall a good story, though I do feel like I’m missing things either from missing some side quests, or because of no skits.

Characters: The main ones to shine are the four main characters (Reid, Farah, Keele, and Meredy), everyone else literally is either one dungeon and/or optionable. Chat does still feel like a character being the owner of the Van Elita aka means of transportation for half the game. Max and Ras tho rip. ESPECIALLY MAX. Ya know how every tales there’s the mandatory Talk Before The Final Battle? Yea well they all get one except Max. You see him, but he doesnt talk, YET THEY CRAYMELS DO.

Another odd, yet charming, thing is that there’s no big moment of character development for anyone like Luke cutting his hair, Magilou keeping the portal open, or punch in the face like Alvin. They just. Slowly change. And its really weird cause for all of disc 1 Keele is basically an unbearable asshole and he just? Learns to be a better person from everything he sees? There’s no callout or moment of realization, he just slowly learns and it’s super refreshing.

Reid is probably one of the most relatable protagonists up there with Jude. I’m sure most of you know the “he doesn’t want to do shit lol” persona he has BUT GOD WHY HE’S LIKE THAT BABY I LOVE YOU. Farah’s personality is also explained in the backstory, so for any of you crestoria players that Farah’s backstory is really different like how Emil’s is, but the sentiment of why she’s like that is the same and stem for a similar event.

Meredy’s also great. I thought I’d get annoyed of her and her “You bet!” but god when she says it the last time at the end of the game, I was pretty moved. I wish I knew more about her backstory but I’m pretty sure a certain section of her life info was left to skits and ya know we didn’t get those till Symphonia :)))

As antagonists go, besides the Craymels who are there to test you before you get their power, there’s just two. Main boss and their lackey. The lackey is eh. You see him once at the beginning of the game, then see him destroy a city, then one last time where you kill him. You do get his backstory and stuff but eh I’m usually not fond of tales mini villains minus Chimerad, God Generals, and Artorius’s lackeys

The main antagonist tho, I really don’t wanna spoil it but it’s hard to talk about why I’m conflicted on it without spoiling. So it’s like Destiny’s final boss but written better in some part and worse in others. So at one point it’s super emotional and pretty powerful with the message eternia wants to send but at the same points its a jrpg where you gotta kill god cause he doesn’t think humans are worth it.

Oh one more thing thats honestly hilarious, there’s literally SINGLE animated cutscene by Production I.G in this entire game minus the op.

Other things: the amount of mini games in this game is insane, but the amount you have to do IN JUST THE SECOND DISC to continue the plot is more than any other tales game I can recall. Some of them are fun like the card game, others like the bomb one I want to throw in a fire.

There’s also so much Destiny pandering in this game. There’s portraits of the characters, you can collect lens, I’m 95% sure the way a certain character is done is because they wanted another Leon, you can SUMMON THE SWORDIAN USERS ARE AS AN ACTUAL SUMMON. While all Phantasia gets is the cameo battle and the Eternal Sword. I mean I didn’t mind cause I’ve finished Destiny and it’s one of my fav tales games but damn it was pretty obvious.

EXPLORATION IS SO FUN IN THIS GAME. Mainly near the end when you have free reigns. YOU CAN DIVE UNDERWAY AND EXPLORE THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA WHAT OTHER TALES GAME LETS YOU DO THAT???

In conclusion: A fun game! I don’t think it was worth 133 dollars tho consider my play file was 35 hours and thats with a good chuck of side quests and ex bosses. Probably in my top 5 combat systems of tales and final villains, but not in terms of story or characters. A really hope it gets remastered soon I’d love for more people to play it.

#skitty rambles #tales of #tales of series #tales of eternia

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teejaydeetrip · 7 years

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A Bandaged Left Hand

I had an extremely vivid dream last night in which I gave myself a vasectomy with a pair of scissors and some extremely small plastic pegs. I remember the skin of my ball sack felt like plastic or polyester and there was no blood. At some point the stitching came undone and I had not taken the pegs out and I ran around the house trying to find some kind of tool to fix it. I was worried mostly about infection. I can’t remember how it started and I don’t think it ended on any proper note on account of a loud truck rumbling past my window and waking me up. The first thing I did was check my balls. The second thing I did was breathe a sigh of releif, and the third thing I did was fall asleep again, because it was only 11.30am and I had been up late the night before.

Being awake at night in Australia is tormenting. Nobody is awake after 1am and nobody is really up for chatting after 12. I don’t think anybody was in Japan either, but at least I had drive there. On the rare night that I wasn’t singing karaoke, or trading stories with other travellers, I was driven. I had things to write. I had things to say. I learned Japanese or sketched ideas. I watched movies in little booths on futons in internet cafes and drank ramen and lay back, contented that the moment I wanted to, I could walk outside into the bright shining lights of 3am in Osaka. Are there many places that bright at 3am in other parts of the world? I hear New York is pretty lively.

Here, even in the trendy parts of Sydney, I’d be lucky to find a service station. Here, I watch Netflix on autopilot. I just watched the second season of The Man In The High Castle, on complete autopilot. I barely registered it at all. It’s a good show, but not at the same time. It’s intensely boring, yet utterly compelling at the same time. TV shows take up too much time. I need to learn to write more. To use this diary.

I haven’t written in days. What have I missed? I don’t think I’ve written yet about The Dove and Olive. This bar hired me as a bartender. I applied for a bartender position, and trialled as a bartender, yet when I started, they put me on the floor. My job is not to pour beers, but to deliver schnitzels and steaks to baby boomers for 5 hours a night, then clean the shitty gross plates up and gather their shitty gross napkins and bin their shitty gross leftovers. I made it known to some of my co-workers. They told me that is just the way it is here when you start. Then others added that that is just the way it is for guys in general. Floor staff have to change the kegs over and girls are too weak for that, apparently.

There are like 7 or 8 girls tending bar here, meaning most nights will have me on the floor. I was not happy with this and I made it known. I didn’t say to the managers what I wanted to say; that any place with an initiation process is not the kind of place that I work at, or that I came here to be a bartender, not a fucking waiter. But I made I certainly didn’t have a smile on me when I had to do these. Every day I started I would walk behind the bar and start pouring beers until someone said “Hey aren’t you on the floor today?” to which I would respond, “I don’t know, am I?”. On Friday, the Manager On Duty didn’t know how to answer me, and just let me pour beers. I don’t know if I was supposed to be on the floor or if he was just shy, It was St Paddy’s day. Pouring Guiness is a bitch. I dropped a pint glass while trying to hang it up and tried to catch it but ended up just slamming it down even harder onto a bench. It shattered and the shards cut my pointer and index finger.

The licensee emailed me on Saturday, after working 3 shifts. She had gotten the hint. It had been passed up the chain of command from the MOD to the DM to the licensee. She asked me if I was comfortable and I checked the Sydney Bartender Exchange group on Facebook and found an ad for a cocktail bartender in Redfern and messaged him asking for the position.

He messaged back 3 hours later to ask if I wanted to come in for a trial shift on that evening.

I emailed the licensee back at the Dove and Olive telling her I wasn’t happy with the way things were at the ol’ Dolive and that I would be happy to finish the shifts I had been rostered on for next week, but that was it. It was all very amicable. She thanked me for my time and I thanked her for hers and we agreed I’d finish next week, then I went and got drunk with Nigel, my old lecturer from uni.

I haven’t seen Nigel in 5 years. Kat and I, both students of his, had emailed him from Japan, when we met up and had a drink over there. He spent some time living and working in Japan and constantly joked about how hot Japanese girls are. He was the perfect sleazy old man charming rogue stereotype, only with real experience in the music industry and genuinely funny things to say. I told Kat and Nigel to meet me at Goro’s.

I drank a lot the night before, and was early. My eyes were pounding in the back of my head and I had a sharp fuzzy feeling scratching at the back of my head. A slight pounding headache. Goro’s was shut. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything except smoke and wait. Nigel and Kat arrive eventually, and we decide to walk to El Loco, a Mexican themed place that used to be The Excelsior. It’s only a few minutes around the corner. You can’t smoke in the outside tables because they serve food there but nobody is eating, so we do anyway.

Kat tells us about her time in London and I tell them about my time in Japan and Germany and Nigel tells us about his time at the uni, where his employment is tenuous at best, and he tells us about how he hates Germany because he got into lots of trouble there and spent some time in German prison. His story was the kind of thing you can see in your head as a movie. Nigel in a leather jacket in the 80′s, careening across Europe like a flaming satellite crashing back down to earth, bringing with it information gleaned from the void. 3 day benders without leaving the same bar in Spain, dangerous meetings with dangerous men in dangerous alleys in Germany, snuff film screenings in warehouses in Amsterdam.

Before it’s all over, we have had 4 or 5 jugs of beer and a full packet of cigarettes in the space of 2 and a half hours and my spiky hangover has been replaced by a groggy hair-of-the-dog hangover and I need to go pretend to be a cocktail bartender in Redfern. I hug the both of them goodbye and we promise to do this again sometime soon.

Moya’s Juniper Lounge. That’s the name of the place. It’s a small bar in Redfern specialising in gin and gin cocktails. On the way, I swing by Henry and Amanda’s place to borrow a black button up shirt. Henry only has two black button up shirts. One has a floral print and the other is a tuxedo shirt. I go with the tuxedo shirt.

The owner, Charlie, sits me down the moment I get in. I apologise for the tuxedo shirt, it was the only one I could get at late notice. He says that’s fine. He gives me the run down. The place sticks to gin classics and sours. He has like 200 different kinds of gin and a handful of whiskeys. Charlie asks about my experience. I answer. He asks me what my availabilities are like and what kind of work I am looking for. I answer. I pretty much have the job interview before the trial, which is a good sign. He introduces me to Nick, the other bartender, here from The Wild Rover, a whiskey bar in Surry Hills. A gangly kid that doesn’t look a day over 17. Nice kid, but a bit standoff-ish.

I fumble my way through conversation with the two of them whilst nobody comes in at all for an hour. A small group come in and I make my second ever Martini. The guy likes it so much that all his friends ask for one two.

So my conversation skills aren’t so great while I feel this whacked out, but I have made the best martini this group has ever had, so at least my martini game is strong. They make them vintage style here. Charlie says he wants his bar to look and feel like it came straight out of the 1950′s. All the stuff you usually have in speed rails is on a table behind the bar, the furniture are all antiques or rescued from Charlies grandparents farm, music from the 30′s, 40′s and 50′s plays through the PA. and the martini’s are made with: -60ml Tanqueray gin -20ml Dry vermouth -2 Dashes orange bitters -1 Olive

We have no other customers until 9.30pm, when about 6 groups of people all mill in seemingly at once. We are chocked. I pump out Negroni’s and Martini’s and Aviation’s and Charlie Chaplin’s with relative ease. I get stuck on the Clover Club. It’s a sour whose ingrediants have escaped my mind, so I’ll have to list next time. The important thing to note here is that I have never worked a cocktail bar that didn’t have it’s egg white’s kept in a squeeze bottle, pre-cracked by whoever does that. I drop the egg yellow into the first mix by accident and ditch the whole mix. On the second attempt, I put the ice in the wrong side of the shaker, and attempt to put the other side, with is mix on top of the one with the ice, spilling the whole mix all over the prep station. On the third attempt, we have run out of squeezed lemons. so I begin to cut up a lemon and slice my thumb open and start bleeding everywhere. I have to ask Nick to finish it, and Charlie finds me a band-aid and opens it up while I keep the bleeding at bay with a tissue.

After I’ve been patched up, I make a couple more negroni’s and aviations (aviators?) and when it hits 10, I check Facebook and realise that I’m shifted on at the club at 10, not 11. I’m about to tell Charlie this, and as I do, he tells me that’s good for tonight and if I need to get off to the club, I’m free to do so.

I’m concerned, but he handshakes hard and strong and smiles many thank you’s He tells me that another lady is finishing up here, but he would be happy to split the time up between us if I have enjoyed myself. To top it all off, he pays me for the trial. It’s a sign of a decent man, if not heavenly entity to pay for a trial shift in Sydney.

I change out of my tuxedo shirt and into a black T and thank Charlie again on the way out. I wave goodbye and walk right next door, into a hip hop bar called Hustle & Flow. I order a shot of tequila, tip the change and grab a cab from outside. I message Marina, letting her know I will be late, and it ends up costing me 20 dollars to get one suburb over. Fucking cabs, man.

I can’t remember the name of the girl who is promoting the party, but she is turnt as fuck. She used to work here, and keeps letting herself in behind the bar to make Margarita’s for herself. I try to tempt her with the offer of a margarita-ish drink but she never takes me up on it, so I offer one to Marina and make her a Whisky-rita. (-60ml Bourbon -30ml Drambuie -30ml Lime)

I try to make Matty a St Croix Sour, but it turns out Creme De Ginger is way different to the ginger liqueur I am accustomed to using.

I drink heaps of tequila on shift. And a beer or three. It’s all good fun. I clean up the bar fine and learn how to use the bottle crusher (Step 1-turn it on. Step 2-put empty bottles into it) and a broken bottle inside it makes a small cut on my finger, but only a tiny drop of blood emerges. It’s on the same hand as the other two.

I walk to The Strawberry Hills Hotel in Surry Hills with Matty and drink a red wine and run into Steve, an old uni friend, and the bar shuts nearly immediately. I take a cab home and stumble into bed at 5.30am on Sunday morning. My weekend has barely even begun.

#depression #bipolar #sadness #sad #writing #journal #tequila #gin #bourbon #tanqueray #bartender #cocktails #cocktail #bars #redfern #sydney #osaka #japan #nightmare #weekend #martini #negroni

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