straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2017-03-13 10:30 pm
straightforwardly) wrote2017-03-13 10:30 pm
124 | Fire Emblem: Awakening, Roguelight, & the first two Lonely Wolf Treat games
► I’m nearly finished with my replay of Fire Emblem: Awakening. I’ve finished Chapter 25, and now I’m just going through all of the DLC Paralogues I couldn’t do in my first playthrough because I didn’t have internet at the time.
But first: Cynthia!!! &heart; ♥ ♥ I didn’t have Cynthia in my last game because I accidentally married off all of Sumia’s potential marriage partners before getting around to finding her a match, and, omg, so much regret, because Cynthia’s easily one of my favorites of the kids. Only Inigo and Lucina beat her. She’s such a delight. ♥ And very shippable! I’m making my way through her supports, and I’m loving her dynamics with pretty much everyone.
I also really loved the paralogue where she appears. It’s also the first thing to make me even somewhat interested in Chrom/Sumia! I still don’t like the pairing, but I do love the idea of Chrom’s daughter!Cynthia following the fake!Chrom out of a misguided sense of filial loyalty. I think I might go for Chrom/Sumia for my next game (whenever that might be) just because of that. (I was initially planning on Chrom/Sully being the next one in line.)
Though, I’ve already made a mistake with her and her supports, ahahaha. You see, in my last game I made a point to get every single possible supports with all of the children characters— including the S-ranks. So now that I have Cynthia, I wanted to do the same thing, right? Except, I momentarily blanked. I’m mostly leaving the children unmarried, but I was determined to marry Lucina to someone because I find her alone text so depressing, and… accidentally S-ranked her with Yarne before getting his supports with Cynthia. ^^;; So it looks like I’ll have to settle for getting all of Cynthia’s supports except for her S-ranked support with Yarne.
With the SpotPass Paralogues: so far, I’ve gotten Emmeryn, Yen’fay, Gangrel, and Walhart, in that order. I have to say, it bothers me that only Robin has any supports with them? I was disappointed but accepting when I realized that Emmeryn doesn’t have any supports with Lissa or Chrom, but I was downright annoyed when I realized that Yen’fay doesn’t have any supports with Say’ri. Wtf??? THEY COULD HAVE BEEN SO INTERESTING. Why. I was really excited to get him because the whole thing between Yen’fay and Say’ri is one of my favorite parts of the game, so this really bugs me. So much dual-survivor’s guilt! Agh.
Tbh, I’m not 100% pleased with the idea of Emmeryn surviving— I think it takes away some of the impact of her sacrifice— but I did enjoy Chrom and Lissa’s reactions to it, so I’m counting it as a wash. I’m intrigued by what’s going on with Gangrel, though I mildly wish that he had supports with Chrom, or maybe even Emmeryn. I haven’t grinded Walhart & Robin’s supports at all yet, and have no opinions about him yet.
On a completely different note… the timeline for the events of the bad future give me a headache. The way the game progresses, it seems to imply that Grima was awakened at the same or similar time in the current timeline as it was in the prior one? But Lucina says that she has memories of her father, and she’s less than a year or two old when Chrom leaves to fight Walhart’s empire— plus, that leaves no time for the second sibling to be born. I suppose that it’s possible that the arrival of future!Grima has sped up events by a few years. But in that one cutscene, it shows Lucina-as-an-adult fighting in the palace when Grima arrives, and it feels like it’s implied that Grima’s just awakened? But that doesn’t make much sense either, because some of the kids seem to have lost their parents earlier than others. Inigo, for instance, doesn’t even seem to recognize Olivia at first…
The last thing I want to talk about is actually something that I’ve been wanting to talk about since I first played this game (and very, very briefly alluded to at the end of this entry), and that’s my thoughts on The Truth About Robin, or my problems with a certain aspect of that. Since I’ve now reached the part of the game again which first inspired my annoyance, I figured this is a good point to finally talk about it.
To be clear, I’m fine with Robin being Validar’s child, and even with her being needed somehow for Grima’s awakening. My problems are with the explanation for her amnesia, her backstory, and, indirectly, her being Grima’s vessel, though maybe I would have been fine with that if it hadn’t tied into my other problems with her backstory.
The thing is, when I first played the game, I honestly thought that Robin was the same Robin we see in the opening cutscene from the future, and that her memory was lost by the shock of her being flung back into time. (This is also why I was utterly unsurprised by the Lucina reveal, though I hadn’t known that she was specifically Chrom’s daughter.)
So when Validar revealed the Robin with him in Plegia, I actually thought that it was the current timeline Robin. Basically, I thought that in the original timeline, Validar sent Robin to infiltrate the Shepherds (hence her tactical knowledge), but she grew genuinely fond of them over time, which was why he had to take control of her to kill Chrom. She was then somehow sent back into time to the current timeline, losing her memory in the process, where she was then found by Chrom & the others. Since there already was a Robin in the group, Validar couldn’t send the one with him to infiltrate the group and kept her with him instead. Loop complete, the rest of the game’s events unfold.
So I was really disappointed when the Robin in Plegia turned out to be future!Robin, and an evil!future!Robin at that, while the Robin of the current timeline was pretty much always a good person— I can go for the evil doppelganger things sometimes, but often it just feels lazy to me, and this was one of those times.
But I was even more disappointed by when Validar said that Robin didn’t grow up with him because her mother took her and ran away. It just left so many questions open! How and why did Robin learn how to become such a good tactician, then? How did she join up with the Shepherds in the original timeline, if she already had a peaceful home life with her mother? Why is Robin’s mother never mentioned again, even in the epilogues? You’d think Robin would at least try to find her once she learns that she might still exist, right? Agghh. I just feel like Robin being an infiltrator turned good made so much more sense than always-good!raised-with-a-normal-life!Robin.
/rant over
► I meant to mention this in my last post, but I’ve been working a bit on cutting down on my backlog of indie games. I have a bad habit of occasionally going on downloading sprees. It’s really hard to resist, especially on itch.io where there are so many intriguing-looking games— and for free!— but it does mean that I have a lot of games on my computer to play through.
One of those games is Roguelight, an incredibly charming roguelike game. You play as an archer going through I love the pixel art, the use of light and shadow, and, of course, the gameplay. I haven’t beaten it yet, but I’m getting closer— I’ve unlocked all but one of the extra abilities/boosting items, and have seen what I think is the boss, though I haven’t beaten it. It’s very fun, and I definitely recommend it!
I’ve also played the first two games (out of four) in the Lonely Wolf Treat series, Lonely Wolf Treat and Friendly Bunny Mochi. These games are pretty much purely story-driven, and pretty short— maybe 15-20 minutes each. They’re really cute! I love the color palette, and the snowy setting. I ship Moxie/Mochi a little bit, and I really like Treat and Mochi’s friendship. Moxie’s definitely my favorite character, and not just because she’s a fox, though that definitely helps.
I played both of these games on the same night, about a week ago, but I haven’t moved on to the third game Clever Fox Moxie yet because I haven’t managed to finish the demon summoning sidequest in Friendly Bunny Mochi. I just can’t get the weak light bulbs! I know where they are, but for some reason I can’t get them, no matter when in the game I try. I’ve looked up multiple Let’s Plays, but nope. For some reason, where others receive the light bulb, I just get a flavor text about how she should maybe tell someone about the burnt-out bulb— even if I follow the exact same steps the other people did! It’s very frustrating.
Other than that, I liked the games a lot, and am looking forward to Moxie’s game.
► I do have a lot to say about the past day of Mystic Messenger (mostly along the lines of goddamnit, Zen), but this entry is long enough, I think. Tomorrow, perhaps.
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