The battle system is surprisingly fun. It’s not groundbreaking, innovative, or new, but it just works. I ended up doing some side/random fights to get Lucy to learn a group heal. That and the Georgia runoff election was tonight, so guess where my head was at?
We leave the city of Illuster and pass through the Timber Road, and we come across a group of adventurers, or what we hope would be. They quickly infer that they’re sent by Alphonse and are here to kill us. It’s a conventional fight, but I’m glad I got a group heal. This game can be sneakily hard. The fight teaches us about treasure chests and climbing. There’s one treasure chest high atop a tree branch I couldn’t reach, so I’ll be back when one of my characters can jump. After the fight, Reiner does some digging through the corpses. It sounds creepy, but it’s fine. On one of the bodies, he finds a signed note from Alphonse. The note states he hired the group to kill us. A perk of being Marked is that all laws no longer affect you. Because of that, we were without a way to legally arrest/kill Alphonse. Thie note now triggers a different law: the Arbiter Self Defense Law. We can now kill our ignoble enemy in self-defense. Kyrie then walks off, and Anadine and Reiner discuss how Kyrie is upset at how corrupt the Arbiters, and even the Immortals, have become.
The next area, Alpine Woods, is a fight with wild animals. It mostly introduces us to the potential of a broader array of enemies. We killed Ixion from FFX.
We next pass through the town of Centina to pick up supplies. There’s an arena here, but it’s closed for now. We continue on to Gyaum Tor.
We’ve caught up to Al! We casually walk up to his subordinate, who runs to have an interesting conversation with his boss. Al comes to greet us and is shocked that it’s us. He calls Kyrie a wench again, and we prepare to march in. That is, until, Anadine spots a group on the ridge above us. With that realization, and with Alphonse running into this group on the ridge, we prepare for battle.
This one got dicey. We run into our first mage and healer, the terrain is narrow and high, and there’s a large wannabe boss on the field. Having Reiner use his new ranger skill, Root Strike, was a bad idea, too. Root Strike is a skill that keeps a target from moving. It sounds like a great move to learn until you use it on someone stuck in a narrow path... Fortunately, Lucy taught me how to heal, and First Aid is good enough, so we had enough healing to go around. Battles seem like they can go either way at the start but can quickly cascade into a stomp.
Alphonse got away, so we camp out for the night to make sure he can’t sneak past in the cover of night. We’re on the only way into and out of the temple Al is pilgrimaging to. Reiner cooks a stew for everyone. Suddenly, the sound of thunder and a pillar of light appears in our camp. We are graced by The Immortal, Quintus. He asks everyone to leave as he wants to talk to Kyrie alone. After a quick shooting of the breeze, where we learn Kyrie’s parents adopted Reiner when he was a boy, we get to the meat of the talk. He has come to inform us that the Council has overridden our Act of Self Defense. He recognizes that everything he’s worked his long life to make has been ruined. The Immortal Council, the Arbiters, all seeped with filth. But he does have a plan. Quintus still hasn’t Marked anyone for ascension, so if he Marked Kyrie... She protests for a while because she’s a just person but is eventually talked into it after remembering her loyalty oath. He then turns the skin around her right eye blue and teleports off. Marked is a new class she can turn into, allowing her to do light and dark damage. It, from a story perspective, now enables us to act with impunity. ...
Tomorrow we kill Alphonse. Maybe? I don’t know the story...
Not gonna lie, I thought Anadine was the main character, and I was kinda hoping she’d get the special plot stuff. Oh well. With the world ending on a slightly longer timeframe than before, I have no real reason to not get a good, long play tomorrow.
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