Duke Revier's Grand Game Emporium

 Video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRF3nYernuM We immediately cut to a text crawl talking about two kingdoms that have warred for centuries. Long story short, some archeological organization, called "Ethos", enabled them to escalate their battles by digging and repairing giant ancient robots for use in combat. Yep. Lol. Kislev had the upper hand because it got better robots, but a mysterious mercenary group, Gebler, joined the Avehian side and reversed the balance of power. Then, Aveh got emboldened enough to start invading and taking Kislev territory. With that backdrop, we cut to our next location for the story, a peaceful, idyllic...border village. It suffers the fate all border villages eventually suffer, getting set on fire by the enemy forces. We cut to a young man in a dark robot, Fei, kung fuing the enemy robots...or attempting to, at any rate. A man dressed in green, Citan, yells at him to stop fighting. Fei doesn't listen, kicking down the enemy robot agai...

 Video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diwPfzLgMuI We open with a quote directly from the Book of Revelation. Xenogears is heavily inspired by Biblical tales and legends, and as such, isn't shy about its inspirations in the slightest. A huge spaceship flies through the endless darkness of space... But its journey is not as pleasant as it would seem. A bunch of overhead windows seal shut, as the ship's bridge room suddenly fills up with warning signs! The operator at its helm tries everything in her power, but to no avail - whatever is infecting the ship is just too powerful to be handled by conventional tools. To her horror, she discovers that it's planning to hijack the ship and use it to attack the main planet! The captain tries to contact the engine room to setup an emergency sealing. Unfortunately, said room has already been overtaken by worms! The infection gets quite bold, and starts spamming the bridge terminals with an infamous Biblical phrase from the Genesis! Th...

  Welp, here it is - the beginning of a new LP. This one is focused on a game I've commonly seen be labeled a "cult classic", with many people hailing it for its story and lamenting its unfinished "second half". Personally? I think the story is really insane, and more people should get to enjoy its absurdity and grandiosity. Hence, this LP. For this game, I'm choosing to largely convey it through screenshots and written text, as it's extremely focused on its story and its storytelling. Unlike the previous games I've LPed, however, this game actually does a fair bit with its animations and camera movements, and as such, I'll be recording a fair bit of it to capture the "full" experience, so to speak. My commentary will largely be focused on the story, either on explaining it, reflecting on it, mocking it, or even all three at once! Spoilers are fine, as long as you remember to put them behind tags. If you want more Xenogears stuff, check...

So, I just got done watching a rather amazing and hilarious LP of Xenogears, over here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMthTW4vRq8bNjz1PVnn-2YCTWc5vHJ1O Doubtless it is an extremely flawed game, like so many overambitious games; the combat mechanics are undercooked, the dungeon design is horrible, many of the story beats are, at best, loosely connected with each other, and the game simply seems to have no idea about how to effectively exposit its narrative details or provide satisfying bits of gameplay. Yet, despite it all, I find it to possess a strange, compelling charm. It is absurd, for sure, overblown for sure too, and has more than its fair share of writing issues, but at the heart of it all, it's very sincere about what it's trying to be. Rarely does it ever feel like a story moment was inserted just for its own sake, and while there are absolutely moments that drag, there are just as many that are solidly hilarious or moving. It helps that the game knows how to ...

 Today, while discussing the stories of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross with a friend, I hit upon what is a hitherto unexplored angle regarding Kato's writing - Kato writes mainly about proud and grand empires falling to ruin. Seen in this light, the connections between CT and CC become a lot clearer, and CC's narrative choices look considerably more plausible. Take, for example, the Zeal arc in CT, Masato Kato's biggest contribution to that game's story. Now I know from interactions and general posts by CT fans that it is usually considered to be one of the game's highest points. Much less talked about, however, is what its central theme is - that being a grand, if decadent civilization falling into ruin, and its survivors coping with the loss. If we look at CC through this lens, then a fair number of its plot points snap neatly into place. For example, Guardia and Chronopolis fall because they are grand kingdoms, and Masato wanted to write about grand kingdoms fal...

 I am restarting the playthrough to better cover the game. It turns out that making the computer randomly pick wizards isn't great for Expert difficulty, which, despite its name, is intended to be the "default" difficulty for regular players of the game. So let's go about picking a new wizard. I pick 5 Sorcery and Death books each, and then pick the Conjurer and Cult Leader traits. Conjurer makes summons cheaper to research, cast and maintain, and given that Death is reliant on summoning, this only makes logical sense. The other trait, Cult Leader, buffs the effect of religious buildings. This is nice when used in conjunction with races capable of building a wide range of them, and also synergizes well with a Rare spell in Death that buffs them ever further! Having this ample selection of books gives my wizard 4 Common spells to start with, and 1 Uncommon spell to guarantee in the spellbook. I pick Resist Magic to offset the bad resistance of Death's summons, Floa...

 Merlin was, as you'd expect, furious at the loss of most of his territory. He marched a decently sized army to my westernmost cities on his continent, and they were quite threatened, as ghouls, who had been used to strengthen their garrison, had now firmly fallen off as combat capable units. Thankfully, I had the tools to quickly get my two heroes there, with wraithform letting them freely cross terrain, and blocking his spiders' web, to boot! Wraithform is carefully calibrated to counter a fair few effects from the Nature realm, and as such, is a huge source of frustration for Nature wizards, and a huge boon while fighting them. The heroes held for a while, but unfortunately, they were eventually done in by Merlin's own mercenaries and armorer's guild units! These units then attacked my westernmost city and mercilessly slaughtered its garrison. I was running into a serious bind, that of facing a Life wizard's regular armies without powerful summons of my own. Luck...