War For Existence

Tonight was a weird one, and I'm not sure how I'm gonna write it. Clear and concise, just to show that I can!

Talking to Garin has him asking us to make a party of four. These four will head to the Life Sanctuary with Enda and Xero, and the other half of our group will join the assault on Barclyss under Slash. Those three are the only locked members. Burns and Asera went with Enda; Sandra, Throng, and Eidol joined Slash. I accidentally made two very good teams!

Team Enda goes first, but we flip back and forth through the next two hours. However, her stuff was pointless, so I'm going to get it out of the way now. In the southeast of the map lies a massive, forest covered continent. In the middle of that is the Life Sanctuary, floating above the world. We fight some unique battles through the forests and the cliffs until we reach a teleporter. From here, we travel along a straightforward path. We have to fight mechanical looking creatures and books, doing a few side puzzles along the way. Nothing is too scary, though. At the end, there is nothing. Enda thought she'd find the Maiden of Life up here, but it turns out she moved away years ago. We then see a scene where the Goddess is overlooking a cliff, lamenting that life will be surrounded by darkness in the future. She grants her powers to her daughter, turns into a leaf, and blows away. When we cut back to the party. Enda, that daughter, still calls out to her. She wants to know what she should do, and Xero wants to learn how to stop the zombies. Neither of them get an answer because Kail shows up. He's learned that Enda is important and wants to kidnap her for his diabolical plans to take over the world.

Kail is kinda easy if you take the battle slowly. He can multi image himself, creating four copies on the field to interfere with us. If we kill a fake, they'll counter with a spell that hurts. Take them one-by-one so as not to be hit by three or four of them in one turn, and you should be fine. Kail's damage is pretty low, and his physical attacks are weak. I don't remember there being any status effects.

For Slash's party, we start by having to defend a choke point. It's similar to FFVI when you have to protect Terra or the Esper in Narshe, but with only one party. We have to defeat several rounds of Judgement Faction members with a boss at the end. Atrophy is undead, so I'm glad I brought Throng along to let our attacks do good damage to it. It was around this time that I learned Sandra's Gattling II tech can do nearly 2000 damage per turn. Let it Rain is also pretty good if you're against something weak to water. Or weak to getting attacked in general. Eidol, though... They did her dirty. She's just not good... After this, a horde of enemies will try to surround us, but wind casters will blow them away. Our first duty is done, but we're not.

Next, we board the airship and get dropped off on the castle ramparts. We have to stop the cannons from firing on our men below. We get a lot of sneak attacks during this portion, which is nice. They're the same old Faction members, so you know them by now. But we're still not done!

Our next attack is to infiltrate the keep itself. We navigate through until we reach Heindrovia. She and Slash remind us they know each other, and then the battle begins. She can change her form again, but without Asera, I don't know what it is. In hindsight, Eidol and Asera should have been swamped. I didn't have a strategy here, I'll be honest. She's pretty tough, and I got lucky. Unlike Kail, Heidrovia doesn't die, though. And, finally, Slash is done. One side sure does feel more important to this plot point than the other, eh?

All of this is happening during a chaotic war sequence. Our allies are fighting zombies, and our dad is commanding them all. All is going to plan. We have a pincer attack on the keep, and we've prepared for all their counterattacks. Earth casters have tunneled a hole into the courtyard only to be chased off by Faction members. But then water casters flood the place, removing countless zombies from the battle. Shiang has infiltrated the enemy ranks and got them to fire off a dome shot early, only for our dome to show up and destroy the second enemy dome. Sandra's men have joined up and shoveled powder into the cannon faster than Barclyss' men could and got a second shot off, destroying both domes. Even Captain Farrell's men split the frontline troops into two with a distraction for reasons I'm not sure of. But all of these wins don't mean a thing...

Barclyss hits the scene and hits hard. Gee, who would have thought he'd show up? He slaughters a large portion of our forces and kills two generals we've known since the start of the game. Magileu and Higgs are no threat to the demon. Eventually, though, Garin finally shows up. The two men have a fun battle that shows off how good the RPGMaker Engine can be and props to everyone involved on the dev side for this scene. Your story needs a little work, but your art, graphics, and timing are top notch. This was exciting and action packed as anything 16-bit. But not even Garrin can win. Barclyss has his opponent prone and is about to pierce his chest when we hear a cry from a distance. Demon birds descend from the sky and attack the Judgement Faction. Not only that, but they start doing damage to the keep. Heyama has shown up to the battle with their army of summoners! This causes Barclyss to panic and retreat back inside, ending the battle in our favor.

But not the war...

A new dome takes to the air and fires off a salvo at our men. We don't see what happens, but we know it injures Garrin. Xero and Endo rejoin the group now, proving how even more useless their side of this was. Garrin is alive, assumes he'll be fine, but he is out of commission for a while. A soldier enters the tent with a communication shard from Barclyss. He tells us that he wants "the girl," which we know to be Enda. She's down to head up there to finish the war, so we'll do that...

...oh, wait! As we go leave, the cute ginger receptionist from Blaze HQ pushes us aside. It is here she tells us about the seven-and-a-half sidequests this game has. Every character, several locations, and a few other assortments all have something for us to do. Many of which I'll try to do...

....tomorrow!

I'm thinking two more days of Forever Home. It was a weak longer than I thought, but that's on me. The game has its flaws, but it does some neat things, as well. But I'll talk about them Friday. Let's see how it ends first, yeah?