#archsorceress

[teteotolis-arts]

"let me show you what planar travel does to humans" -Planar archsorceress.

#fantasy art #dungeon and dragons #dnd ocs #dnd witch #dnd art

[pikablob]

All The References - Volume 2:

Here’s the follow-up to my first post, covering every intentional out-of-fandom reference I’ve made in fics written after The Engines Screaming Murder. Enjoy:

Trains In The Night:

Sometimes an express comes past, shrieking like a lost soul; those trains are pulled by sleek electric engines, instead of hissing steam, and the windows of their grey cars glow a sickly green.

The phrase shrieking like a lost soul is a quote from the Railway Series (AKA Thomas the Tank Engine), specifically the story Ghost Train from the book Tramway Engines.

And he and Frida talk for hours about some book series nobody else in the house has heard of (Johanna makes a mental note to get him the last book in the Spirit Morph Saga for his birthday).

The Spirit Morph Saga is a fantasy book series from Steven Universe; Connie is a huge fan and introduces it to Steven. It seemed like exactly the kind of thing that Frida and this AU’s version of Simon would bond over.

To The Hills:

Instead he shrugged off his overcoat, hanging it by the door, and turned to the radio. A flick of the switch turned it on, already tuned to a station he was very fond of. Quiet music crackled out, drowning the awkward silence.

“Now it’s just my luck to have the watch with nothing left to do…”

He found himself singing as he went, the tune from the radio echoing in his head. It was an old habit, one he’d picked up with years of working alone.

“But tonight, some red-eyed Trolberg girl lies staring at the wall, and her lover’s gone into a white squall.”

This is a real song: White Squall by Stan Rogers, albeit with the town name changed. Thanks to a fandom friend I absolutely love the idea of the Bellkeeper being a fan of Stan, so I put this one in the fic since it seemed to fit the tone.

Full Disclosure:

“Head Officer Ahlberg, Associate Deputy Officer Gustav, Special Advisory Officer Pearson,” the mayor said coldly, looking over each of them in turn.

“Ooh,” Argus followed her gaze, “‘Associate Deputy Officer Johanna Pearson’; that does have a nice ring to it, I suppose.”

Johanna’s surname, ‘Pearson’, is taken from Luke Pearson, the creator of Hilda.

“This is a letter the council received at the end of last year.” She practically threw it down onto the desk, done with any pretence of civility. “It was sent by one ‘Agatha Pike’, a trawler captain operating out of Trolberg Harbour.” Suddenly Johanna was sure she knew where this was going. “She alleges that her ship was destroyed, and she and her daughter Erin nearly killed, because you, Ahlberg, awakened a kraken inside city waters and tried to fight it single-handedly. So it would seem you’ve just tried to lie to me again.”

Erin Pike is the main character of The Secret of Black Rock, a graphic novel published by Nobrow Press (who also publish Hilda), that has a very similar plot to the Beast of Cauldron Island and would fit right into the Hilda universe. Her mother is never named in the book, but ‘Agatha’ has always been my headcanon for her.

The sound of distant singing pulled them slowly out of the moment. It was quiet at first, muffled by the walls of the HQ, but it got louder and louder the longer they listened. Soon Johanna could make out the words, the voice behind them deep and familiar.

“Turn too, an’ put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain, and, like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!”

The Bellkeeper is again singing a Stan Rogers song here, specifically The Mary Ellen Carter.

Room For One More:

“Archsorceress Matilda Pilqvist, Enchanter of Livelihoods, Grand Alchemist of the Dark Communion of Halga, First-Blood Sister of the Order of the Black Candle, Tormentor of the Four Regents of the Valley.”

The Four Regents of the Valley are characters from the graphic novel Aster and the Accidental Magic. I don’t think they’re ever given that collective title formally, but they’re a group of powerful magic beings who rule over the seasons in Aster’s valley. In the graphic novel, three appear, with Aster herself briefly replacing Granny as Queen of Summer.

Hideaway:

She stepped through, out into the harsh artificial lights of Argo Station.

Argo Station’s name is a double reference; it’s partially since it’s home to several greek demigods, but it’s also taken from perhaps the most famous filk song of all time, Banned From Argo. In the song, Argo is a backwater planet, and much larger than the Argo Station, but I think it fits.

The exception was a gaggle of children and teens on the upper terrace, accompanied by a woman in her thirties and a greying man in a long brown overcoat.

It had been a gift from the man who had first taken her and her family away from their home universe; a leather-bound journal, stamped with a brass hand and the number five.

The man in the overcoat is Stanford Pines from Gravity Falls. Hideaway’s main plot takes place about the same time as GF actually; Ford played a major role in a lot of stories in the multiverse Hideaway takes place in, and if I ever write more he’s bound to crop up again. There’s actually a total of six journals in this AU, although I won’t say where Journal 4 or Journal 6 is...

She was waiting for a visit from Argo’s Facilities and Maintenance department

“June Bailey, Facilities & Maintenance. I got your support ticket.”

This was meant to be a reference to the IRL University of Surrey; either the department has changed its name since I attended, or (far more likely) I just misremembered, since their maintenance body is actually called Estates and Facilites Management. Oops.

She was technically on-shift, but traffic had been light for the first time since the day the shower had broken, and Osono from the bakery next door had been more than happy to watch the Seabed while she came down here.

Osono is the bakery owner from Kiki’s Delivery Service. Within this AU, her family (including Kiki and Gigi) have relocated to Argo and Gütiokipänjä Bakery is next to the Seabed & Breakfast.

Nobody knew who her family was, or where she lived, but Wilson had encountered her the most, since his workshop was right next to the Facilities office.

Wilson is also an existing character, specifically Wilson Higgsbury from the Don’t Starve series; he has a workshop on Argo’s lower level.

It was brand new, the black fabric soft to the touch, while the inside was lined with even softer brown fur. On the back was a bird, embroidered in blues and greys, wings outstretched wide across the shoulder blades.

While this specific hoodie doesn’t exist IRL, the colour scheme of the bird is based on Ari, YouTuber JaidenAnimations’ pet.

After Hours:

They mostly weren’t the kind of thing she would read; ‘The Basics of Hyperspatial Spirit Dynamics’, with too many co-authors to name; ‘The Truth Of Infinity’, by someone named ‘Martha Laurent’; and finally ‘The Memoirs of Arthur Brownstone’, which, Kaisa noted, she should probably recommend to Hilda.

“And that is how Arthur Brownstone and his daughter Marcy solved the riddle of the Sphinx,” Kaisa finished.

Martha Laurent is my OC mother for Simon Laurent from Infinity Train; she has a prominent role in Trains In The Night. Arthur and Marcy Brownstone are from the Brownstones Mythical Collection, a series of books published by Nobrow Press and written by the same author as the Secret of Black Rock. The events Kaisa reads are specifically the plot of Marcy & the Riddle of the Sphinx.

Problem Child:

She was a younger-looking woman, with pale skin and long dark hair that seemed almost blue in the light of her office. There was something about her, something he couldn’t quite place, that distinctly reminded him of the first Jerry he had met in the Great Before.

“You must be Mr. Gardner,” she greeted, a patient smile on her face. Joe did his best to swallow his uncertainties, meeting her gaze. There was trust in her dark eyes, mixed with a strange weariness.

“That’s me,” he said awkwardly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss…” he trailed off, glancing down at the name plate on her desk. “Roaninish?”

“Please, call me Deidre,” the woman said kindly. “So, I hear you’re looking to adopt?”

Deidre Roaninish is a long-running OC of mine, who gets mentioned briefly in a couple of my other fics before this. She was originally a D&D PC, but I now use her whenever I need a social worker for an adoption fic (it’s a long story). Her appearance is based on Bronagh from Song of the Sea, but her voiceclaim is the OBC version of Beulah Davis from Come From Away.

Apex Breakfast:

He leaned in as she stepped beside him, smirk returning, his voice becoming almost conspiratorial. “It was meant to be just for us,” he admitted, “but then Molly found out, and then Max, and now all the kids want to eat with us.”

The two Apex kids Simon mentions are named after Molly Blyndeff, from Epithet Erased, and Max from Camp Camp. They’re both the kind of kids who could end up on the train, and would absolutely fall in with the Apex if they did, IMO.

A Little Less Lonely:

As she wrapped up a detailed description of why the annual Great Bird Migration was so destructive, she looked over to see Hilda had slumped back against the sofa, Twig curled contentedly in her lap.

The Great Bird Migration (and, specifically, how destructive it is) is a major plot point from Aster and the Accidental Magic. Aster’s mother moves to the wilderness to study it, and the migration itself forms the climax of the first arc.

One was a guide to urban spirits, the other a well-worn copy of The Basics Of Hyperspatial Spirit Dynamics by ‘S. Pines’, ‘F. McGucket���, ‘A. Timmens’, ‘A. Hughes’, and, Johanna noticed with an eye roll, ‘V. Van Gale’. Hilda snapped them both up, eager for any new knowledge.

As a few of my readers have already noticed, this book comes up a lot in my Hilda fics. This is the origin point; the characters named are, in order, Stanford Pines, Fiddleford Hadron McGucket (both from Gravity Falls), Alrick Timmens, and Amelia Hughes (both from Infinity Train). This is not just a reference to those two respective shows, but also to my Forests of Oregon AU, where those four and Victoria Van Gale were a friend group at university. The term Hyperspatial in this context was also coined for one of my AUs, specifically it’s the catch-all for “supernatural” within the Multiverse (the AU that Hideaway exists within).

(excuse my half-baked collage)

#fanfiction

[reginrokkr]

"I heard two cadets talking the other day about souls. Where do you think... a soul goes to when someone dies?" [eight]

Crimson clouds dye the heavens lying in wait outside the Altocrystarium, a facility hidden from people and with restricted access limited exclusively to the Archsorceress and Class Zero. Every step to the altar is punctuated by an ominous echo that gathers a more spectral meaning once the device is activated— intriguing how it apparently registers the mark of the digit or perhaps the very soul in recognition to whether display the true nature of this place to its newcomer or merely remain unmoving and harmless.

Strikes of carmine emerge from where Ace pressed his thumb that illuminate the infrastructure, the golden device turns and reveals a glowing eye that calls forth all the gaseous forms with colors of the rainbow to fly within the confines of this prison.

❝I heard two cadets talking the other day about souls. Where do you think... a soul goes to when someone dies?❞ He hears Eight talk almost hesitantly, who accompanied him to release the phantomas Mother asked them to gather for a new enchantment she has been working in. Cyan irises shift towards the monk momentarily before rising his hand towards his own heart, eyes shutting close to mutter words in a foreign language which serves as the catalyst for the colorful blobs of light to emerge from Ace and join the many others that fill the Altocrystarium. Ultimately, he turns to look properly at Eight in silent thought.

He doesn’t know?

❝Tell me, Eight. What do you think phantomas are?❞ Slight disappointment stirs within the blond cadet when he meets nothing but quiescence from the brawler, albeit he cannot blame him for his ignorance on the matter. Well cognizant he is that in the many years they have spent together, they asked Mother many questions only to be responded with caring words disguised in excuses to not delve any further in the matter. No matter how much he loves her, Ace knows that knowing too much unsettles Mother and being ignorant to the most obvious of topics exasperates her. ❝Phantomas... they are the life essence of every living being. To put it simple, they are the souls you so wonder where they go once people die.❞

A pregnant silence fills the air with the implications of such statement blossom. Vermilion irises widen in what he assumes to be shock, soon to be evaded with the discomfort it causes Ace to look at Eight in the eye in this precise moment. Not many are acquainted with this knowledge due to its immoral connotations— alas, ignorance doesn’t necessarily mean lack of thereof. Not allowing the souls to follow their natural course to return to the celestial father for the sake of enslaving them for magic is nothing but torture. What rest could await to these souls that will never see the other world where they shall be?

❝People die and their souls wander still in the terrestrial world— just temporarily, though. We cannot see them, but they can. They are all around us, until it is time to depart to the celestial world.❞ Solemnity lingers within cornflower irises as the cadet extends his hand just enough for a lavender-type phantoma to hover over the palm of his hand. ❝Mother taught us a forbidden incantation so we can see phantomas and then capture them, right? That is the way we have to hinder them from fading away and tie them to this world. It is unnatural, of course.❞

The albescent phantoma flies away from his hand and he turns to look properly at Eight. This time, however, he sees a silhouette that should not be here. An unnamed and faceless soldier clad in the Rubrum hood standing by the entrance that upon making what seems to be eye contact, smiles at Ace. Fair brows knit in a frown in response, suddenly reminiscing the reasons why he loathes being in the Altocrystarium as he starts hearing a myriad of whispers he cannot comprehend. ❝This is classified information.❞ He continues, walking towards him and patting his golden-plated shoulder as he passes by to emerge from the facility and towards the unmoving person. ❝I expect you not to tell this to anyone. There is a reason why magic research and enhancement has stayed a secret to this day.❞

He can feel it. Heart racing within the confines of his chest the closer he gets to the portal, stirring unnamed sentiments he cannot put name to or discern what they are. Only when the portal is about to engulf him in its light he has the feeling of seeing a pair of emerald eyes, a nose, a scar— but still nothing. All he is left with is an enormous void he doubts he can ever fill.

Who... are you?

@sentofight ⭑

#sentofight #✧･ﾟ*⋆ Let your prayers be heard; the merciful always listens. ┊Ask.┊ #◟༺✩༻◞ Tome V: Downfall of the constellations’ nemeses. ┊Sky of despair.┊ #◟༺✩༻◞ Let your prayers be heard; never cease believing in a miracle. ┊Ask.┊

[scoutception]

Final Fantasy Type-0 review: Depression central

If there’s one Final Fantasy subseries whose fate gets me feeling down, it’s the Fabula Nova Crystallis series, a novel and ambitious concept based around various games and stories of different settings and casts of characters, but sharing common themes and mythos, putting them in different contexts in each. While a fascinating idea, it ran into nothing but trouble with each of its entries, with Final Fantasy XIII and its sequels being very divisive, to say the least, Final Fantasy Versus XIII running into an infamously extended development hell, only to finally emerge as Final Fantasy XV, now almost completely separate from its original concept, and the final big entry, Final Fantasy Type-0, vanishing until 5 years after its announcement in 2006, as a PSP exclusive that only came out in Japan, a rarity for the series when it comes to its higher profile spinoffs. Thankfully, in 2015, Type-0 got a remaster on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC, finally allowing other audiences to enjoy it. Was it worth the almost 10 year wait? Well, that’s something we’re about to find out now.

Story:

Final Fantasy Type-0 takes place on the world of Orience, divided into 4 great nations blessed with Crystals: the Dominion of Rubrum, a place for the study and teaching of magic granted by the Vermilion Bird crystal, the Kingdom of Concordia, a female led monarchy able to communicate and control monsters and, more importantly, dragons, and home to the Azure Dragon crystal, the Militesi Empire, a technologically advanced state able to produce great machines of war known as Magitek Armors, or MAs, through the power of their White Tiger crystal, and the Lorican Alliance, whose citizens are much larger and powerful than any other in Orience thanks to their more direct connection to their Black Tortoise crystal. Orience is, unfortunately, not a place of peace, with each of the 4 crystal states wishing to unite Orience under them, and making plenty of attempts to in the past. The motive behind this is the legend of the Agito, a messiah said to appear during Tempus Finis, an apocalyptic event prophesied in the somewhat dubious, yet widely believed, Nameless Tome, with every crystal state seeing it as their divine duty to create Agito, to the point of Rubrum training so called Agito cadets from its brightest and most magically adept citizens.

The story opens with yet another war being started in the year 842 by Milites, whose emperor has been deposed by the brilliant and ambitious Imperial Marshall Cid Aulstyne (Final Fantasy games have a tradition of having a character named Cid somewhere, and finally, he made it as main antagonist), who immediately sets out to attack Rubrum. What would otherwise be a “normal” invasion quickly turns disastrous for Rubrum when Milites unleashed a new device called a crystal jammer, which cuts Rubrum’s legionnaires from their connection to the crystal, rendering them helpless before the Militesi invaders. Even worse, Milites also deploys a l’cie, a human chosen by their nation’s crystal to become its direct servant, in exchange for immense power and near immortality, the use of which in warfare was mutually banned by each of the 4 nations. Just when Rubrum seems doomed, the mysterious Class Zero arrives, 12 cadets who are unaffected by the crystal jammer, raised by Rubrum’s even more mysterious archsorceress, Arecia Al-Rashia, who proceed to liberate the capital, Akademia. Now, with the addition of two promising but otherwise normal cadets, Machina Kunagiri and Rem Tokimiya, Class Zero becomes a vital part in Rubrum’s efforts to reclaim their lost land and defeat Milites, once and for all.

To just come out and say it, the story’s biggest weakness is the cast, or, more specifically, its use of the cast. While the playable cast alone is certainly large, at 14 characters, and the supporting cast only grows from there, almost nobody gets proper focus. The main 12 members of Class Zero, named after playing cards, consists of Ace, Deuce, Trey, Cater, Cinque, Sice, Seven, Eight, Nine, Jack, Queen, and King, and despite being the “proper” members of Class Zero, they all only have a few character traits each. Trey is a knowledgeable type that tends to ramble, Sice is an arrogant loner, Nine is a violent muscle head, Cinque is nice, but downright weird, and so on. While after a while they all grew on me, it’s still pretty unsatisfying, especially when Ace, the face of the game, gets neglected just as badly. The supporting cast gets it even worse, as outside of Arecia and Class Zero’s commanding officer, Kurasame, most of everyone else that’s notable either has minimal at best story presence, or doesn’t show up in the story, period, being relegated to sidequests. Ultimately, the most focused on characters are the two “normal” people in Class Zero, Machina and Rem, which kinda makes sense, giving a more grounded air compared to off how putting the others can be to begin with, but even they don’t work out quite well. While Rem is fine, she doesn’t do very much interesting with the time she gets, while Machina, on the other hand, is very, very unlikeable to the point of hurting the story, whether it be his own cold attitude or broodiness to put the usual RPG protagonist stereotype to shame, he ends up way more unsympathetic than near anyone else in the story, even most of the antagonists. While the cast overall is definitely flawed, though, they’re definitely entertaining at a lot of points, whether they come from the main cast, mostly Trey or Cinque, or from some of the side characters, mainly the extremely greedy Carla and, most memorably to me, the paranoid, bombing throwing Mutsuki.

Since the story doesn’t focus on the characters very much, the main focus is instead the war itself. While it definitely has a few twists and turns, especially starting in chapter 4, overall, the battles and events of the war aren’t the most interesting subject by itself. More interesting is the elements around the war. This is by far one of, if not the darkest game in the franchise, and it doesn’t shy away from showing just how messed up Orience is. Rubrum’s main strength comes in the form of its Agito cadets, meaning, teenagers, as young as 14, at that, and the tactics the military uses means they tend to die in droves. Even when it’s technically pragmatic, between magic proficiency peaking at teen years and decreasing with age, plus not having many other means to resistance, it’s still very uncomfortable, and keep in mind, this is what the good guys, or the relative ones, get up to. Milites, meanwhile, is all too happy to deploy superweapons, such as literal nukes, and its soldiers are disturbingly fanatic, being more than happy to massacre towns, and even refer to Class Zero as demons. Class Zero themselves were raised to be soliders, and feel almost nothing in battle, and Rubrum’s leadership are paranoid and petty, to the point of the military commander actively trying to get Class Zero killed out of pure spite. Eidolons, extremely powerful monsters able to be summoned by mages, demand the lives of their summoners, and there are outright suicide squads of cadets who are only meant to summon more powerful Eidolons. Additionally, a very important plot point is that the crystals automatically erase the memories of anyone who dies from everyone’s minds, to the point Rubrum’s citizens need to wear dog tags just so it can be confirmed they even existed after they die. While they try to justify it as a blessing from the crystals that allows people to move on and not be held back by the dead, all it’s done is completely desensitize Orience to death, and having characters casually talk about being informed of their friends or family dying, and not feeling a single thing, is pretty disturbing, especially when it’s named character involved. It does a very good job of showing how constant warring and lack of reverence for the dead has corrupted this world, even when many of the characters affected still remain sympathetic.

Unfortunately, the biggest flaw of the story to me is that there simply isn’t a lot of it to be found, at least in regards to the main story. While the game is comprised of 8 chapters, that’s more than a little inaccurate, as half of those consist of a short introduction and a singular mission, rather than the 2 or 3 missions in the rest of the chapters. The story only really gets moving in chapter 4, and even then, many important points aren’t addressed until chapter 8, which is a downright bizarre and sudden change of subject and tone compared to the rest of the game, to the point a second playthrough is required because of how many holes are left otherwise, and even then, it can be a bit difficult to figure out just what is going on. The biggest achievement of the writing, on the other hand, is the lore of the setting. Orience is a fascinating world, with a detailed history of each nation, plenty of info to find on the various characters, and examinations of the various enemies of the game, all stored in a book in the hub called the Rubicus. It’s also quite interesting seeing the perspective flip compared to Final Fantasy XIII; instead of l’cie “merely” being granted the use of magic, and quickly going through their usefulness, at least by their masters’ consideration, along with the main cast being comprised of them, l’cie in Type-0 are near demigods who often live hundreds of years, and are just as fearsome to the party as to everyone else, for instance. Overall, though, while there are certainly many problems with the writing, I can’t help but say it works quite well regardless. Even with the limited time for both the story itself and the characters, it still builds a cast worth rooting for throughout the horrible situations, and an effective atmosphere that’s quite good at leaving you feeling somber. Moments like the entirety of the opening chapter, showing the utter devastation inflicted on Akademia in a mere three hours, and the various costly, large battles are very effective moments, and the ending is easily one of the saddest endings I’ve seen in a video game, for all the right reasons. Even the final chapter, odd as it is, has a lot of cool revelations and setpieces to me, at least now that I comprehend it.

Gameplay:

Type-0 is an action RPG that has you control the 14 members of Class Zero on various missions, each one possessing a different weapon. Ace uses cards, Deuce uses a flute (I swear they aren’t all this weird), Trey uses a bow, Cater uses a magic infused pistol, Cinque uses a mace, Sice uses a scythe, Seven uses a whipblade, Eight fights with his bare hands, Nine uses a lance, Jack uses a katana, Queen uses a longsword, King uses dual revolvers, Machina uses dual rapiers, and Rem uses dual daggers. Each one possesses a vastly different moveset and playstyle, such as Cinque being slow, but strong and tanky, Sice encouraging an aggressive hit and run style of play, even getting stronger for the more enemies she defeats while taking minimal hits, Trey excelling at range to a much degree than anyone else, while being near helpless up close, and Deuce being more of a supporter, having great support abilities, while her attacks are fairly weird to get used to, though effective on their own once you understand them. Despite the huge amount of characters, they’re actually fairly well balanced, all of them having important strengths and weaknesses, and while some can definitely be better than others, with Trey in particular coming to mind, possessing absurd range and the ability to charge his shots, it’s never quite game breaking. You can have up to three characters in your party, though their AI isn’t exactly great. They can certainly distract enemies well, and will make sure to heal you if your HP gets low, they don’t tend to be aggressive, and are terrible at avoiding the attacks of most enemies more complex than your average imperial trooper, and are near guaranteed to die to bosses. Speaking of which, the main wrinkle is that, while it varies, overall, your characters are not very durable, and in fact take hits about as well as wet toilet paper when faced with most enemies. This is balanced by the sheer amount of people you have. One person dies on a mission, don’t sweat it, you’ve got 13 backups. Of course, this also encourages training them all up and learning to play them as well, which is complicated by only characters in the active party gaining experience. Leveling up, in addition to granting the usual stat boosts, also grants ability points, which you can use to purchase or upgrade command or passive abilities and moves.

While just attacking enemies normally is decently effective, it can put you in unnecessary danger, and while you do have items like potions you can use to restore your health quickly, the most efficient way to fight is to use breaksights and killsights. Every enemy has at least one attack that leaves them vulnerable for a short time either before or after using said attacking. Hitting them during this period will trigger a break, or, if their health is low enough, killsight. Breaksights take a good chunk of their health away and stuns them, giving you a chance to attack them freely, while killsights just kill them outright. This one mechanic adds a lot to the gameplay, encouraging you to learn enemy patterns and attacks to see when they are vulnerable, and getting the timing down can make otherwise fearsome enemies easy to take care of. Of course, some enemies won’t take this very well, and may counterattack or even go into berserk states after recovering from breaksights, so you still have to be careful. Every character has 4 commands: regular attacks with their weapons, 2 slots that can either hold abilities or offensive magic spells, and a defensive command, whether it be the cure spell to restore health, putting up a magic wall to nullify some attacks, or just flat out blocking, which, while still causing you to suffer damage, prevents being knocked down, letting you score breaksights easier than if you were to simply dodge. Magic can be upgraded by harvesting phantoma from dead enemies, coming in various types like red for fire magic, green for defensive magic, and purple for unique spells. While powerful, magic usually takes a large chunk out of your magic points, meaning it’s better to save it for more dire situations, though harvesting phantoma restores small amounts of MP. As for equipment, aside from weapons, you have access to accessories that do things such as increasing HP by a certain percentage, giving immunity to status effects, or raising defense, though everyone can only have 2 accessories at a time. You also have three different squad commands: triad maneuver, which simply causes the party to do 3 powerful, rapid attacks, Eidolon, which summons an Eidolon you can control for a short time, in exchange for KOing the character that summoned it, and Vermilion Bird, a powerful spell that, to actually become powerful, has to be upgraded using crystal shards, which, while fairly easy to get most of the time, aren’t very numerous.

Type-0 uses a mission system, throwing you into various locations to complete objectives, though it usually equates to to reach the end of the area and kill an enemy commander. Most locations are pretty linear, though they all have a few side areas you can go to, usually for more items. You get graded based on how fast you completed the mission, how much phantoma you harvested, and how many party members got KOed during the mission, with getting the best rank on all three categories getting you an S rank, which gives a bonus item. Beating each mission on a difficulty above easy also unlocks other bonuses, whether they be additional items up for purchase or unlocking new spells or Eidolons, or just flat giving you a rare item. Completing missions also gives you money, with more the higher the difficulty and the higher your rank. Speaking of difficulties, there are 4 of them: cadet, which is just easy mode, officer, normal mode, Agito mode, which is a hard mode that makes every enemy 30 levels higher than on cadet and officer, and Finis, which is only available after completing the game once, and is, just plain absurd. All enemies have their levels increased by 50, they’re in permanent rage mode, causing them to move twice as fast and hurt twice as much, and you’re restricted to only being able to use one person per mission. It’s not much worth the effort. Aside from completing missions, your main source of items, magic, and Eidolons is from completing special orders, optional objectives that can pop up in various areas. While there’s various generic, white orders that only give items at the end of the mission for doing stuff like not getting hit for 30 seconds or not using magic for a few minutes, there are also specific, red ones with more specific objectives like taking out certain enemies, that give out better rewards. The main problem with accepting them is that, if you fail to complete them, you risk instant being killed over it, though you can avoid it you’re fast enough, as it’s delivered through portals on the ground.

In between missions, you’re allowed to explore Akademia, chatting with NPCs or party members, or engaging in “free time events” which are either conversations with random people, or cutscenes that tend to have much more interesting information. You only have a limited amount of hours until the next story mission starts, with each event taking two hours away, though time doesn’t pass just running around and talking to people without events. While a neat concept that could easily be like Persona, in practice, it doesn’t add much. While you can get some interesting information at times, and doing events also gives you items, it’s not very in depth otherwise. Even the sidequests with the more prominent side characters just consist doing their events whenever they’re available and doing a sidequest for them, eventually getting admittedly very good bonuses at the end of their little storylines. The other thing you can do with your free time is go out into the world map, where you can visit extremely small towns, get into random encounters, visit dungeons, and... not much else. While the world map isn’t tiny, there’s just not much to find. While there’s many towns, they are, again, tiny, only consisting of a single small area with a shop or two, a sidequest, and a little unofficial side quest to get a l’cie stone, which can be traded into a certain NPC to unlock lore entries in the Rubicus. There’s just not much of interest, and you’re very heavily restricted in where you’re allowed to even go on the world map, only being able to go to areas officially reclaimed by Rubrum, or that are the destination of the current story mission. Only in chapter 7 do you finally get some kind of freedom, to the point of being able to gain an airship to allow easy traversal of the world. Plus, most dungeons aren’t even meant to be explored on a first playthrough, with only about one or two being reasonable at that point, not that there’s even much to find besides l’cie stones and a chance at a rare item, emphasis on chance, since they’re always in a specific chest at the end that can only be opened once without reloading your save, and the chance of getting the most valuable item from them is rather low.

As for other activities, you can train in the arena, for downright piddly gains, or take on sidequests, most of which just contain of going out and defeating a certain amount of specific enemies, giving over items, and so forth. Most rewards aren’t great, but a few, namely from the more notable characters like the leaders of Rubrum, Kurasame, and Arecia, give very notable rewards. Sidequests don’t take time to do, but often require you to leave Akademia, meaning you need to weigh the time lost going out to do the quests against the time you could use doing events, which is difficult when you don’t know just what rewards either give out. When it comes mission time, though, you gotta venture out on the world map to your next destination. Speaking of the world map, along with the regular missions, there are also RTS style missions, where you, controlling a party member on the world map, help the dominion army reclaim forts and towns by taking out enemies and having units generated by controlled areas weaken said areas until you can invade them in a regular mission style. Instead of being graded on phantoma harvested, you’re instead graded on objectives completed, as occasionally you’ll get orders to do stuff like defend a fort for a specific amount of time or taking out a large enemy. While technically optional, you get bonuses for completing them beyond mission grade, such as access to “hero units” and direct control of certain areas. There’s a decent amount of these missions in the game, and they do make for an interest change of pace, but they aren’t much notable. You’re even allowed to skip participating in them, though obviously you miss out on rewards.

The highlights of the game are, rather sensibly, the end of chapter missions. Not only are they much longer than typical missions, they have much more unique settings, and, of course, bosses. This game has some very enjoyable, if difficult, bosses, ranging from the giant mech Brionac that is more than capable of wiping you out in a single attack, to the highly mobile mech of Qator Bashtar, Cid’s second in command, to several fights with the near invincible Gilgamesh (another recurring character in the series). My personal favorite is the boss of chapter 5, the dragon Shinryu, which is also all too happy to instantly kill you with most of its attacks, even more so than Brionac, and spend most of the fight enveloped in the darkness surrounding the arena you’re in, only being visible by the lights of its glowing red eyes. It makes for an amazing setpiece, and losing to it is almost more enjoyable than winning simply due to the failsafe implemented since the devs expected most players to lost, the details of which I simply cannot spoil. Finally, on a second playthrough, two new types of missions are available for you: expert trials, and Code Crimson missions. Expert trials are optional missions you can do during your free time, which you’ll likely have a lot of since events you see on a previous playthrough can be viewed again at no time cost on repeat playthroughs. While technically available in the first playthrough as well, they are way too difficult for the average player, i.e who isn’t insane like me. Code Crimson missions, on the other hand, are replacements for the end of chapter missions, consisting of you going off to do other stuff. While an interesting concept, in practice, they aren’t anything special, especially when they’re replacing the most interesting parts of the game, and they barely give any more story context either. The chapter 7 mission is the one exception, being very short, but an interesting concept and adding a bit more to the story. Plus, completing them all on one playthrough unlocks an interesting alternate ending, so that alone makes them worth a go.

As for the hardest challenges to be found, they’re a bit lacking. Aside from the regular optional dungeons, there’s one notable bonus dungeon and two notable superbosses. The bonus dungeon is the Tower of Agito, which can only be reached by airship, which consists of 5 floors where you need to fight 100 specific enemies, such as tonberries and behemoths, with plenty of chests to open in between, ending off on an extremely disappointing end boss that is just a Malboro that happens to be massive. While it certain sounds difficult, and pretty much everything is capable of one shotting you, once you get into a good pattern, it’s really just boring. Most of the time, they just spawn so slowly, and while after a while more of them come out at a time, it takes about an hour and a half at best to get through even if you’re otherwise efficient. As for the superbosses, there’s Nox Suzaku, only available in a second playthrough and onward, who has a chance of appearing whenever you harvest phantoma, stealing everything you try to harvest until it decides to go away. Aside from making it go away on its own, you can beat it up, which is quite a doozy. Instead of fighting you directly, it summons phantoms of various enemies to fight you, and while you could just defeat them all, this doesn’t do anything to Nox itself. Instead, you have to let the enemies defeat you, causing Nox to appear for a short time, allowing you to attack it until it retreats. Rinse and repeat, it’s not that difficult, and the rewards aren’t that great, so the main reason to beat it up is just to make it go away, because it stealing your phantoma is extremely annoying, especially when it can show up during missions, since you can’t just leave to fight it, and it’s entirely possible for it to flat make it impossible to get an S rank on that mission it decides it doesn’t want to leave. Not exactly a fun mechanic. The other superboss is, per tradition, Gilgamesh, in a stronger form than in the story. He only shows up on a third playthrough, at a few different locations on the world map, in the form of a portal. Entering said portals causes him to randomly select one of your characters to challenge. If you win, you get that character’s ultimate weapon, but if he wins, he steals your character’s current weapon. The ultimate weapons are kinda underwhelming, especially considering you may well have everything else done after a second playthrough, and it’s annoying getting specific people picked, but it’s actually a fun and fair fight, if easy to figure out.

Overall, Type-0 has some of the tightest gameplay among all the Final Fantasy spinoffs, and is the main thing that holds it together. It has a fast, hectic pace to it, interesting enemies to tackle, and a wide variety of people to try out. Really, the main criticism I have is the actual missions you have with which to try them out. The other main story missions aren’t much to look at, and same goes for the expert trials and Code Crimson missions. I’m sure this is at least partially due to originating on the PSP, and having to deal with its limitations, something that’s about become a theme in this review. Overall, though, it’s still more than satisfactory.

Graphics:

The visuals of Type-0 are a very mixed big, unfortunately leaning more towards negative. More than anything else, they make it very apparent that Type-0 was originally a PSP game. While the members of Class Zero themselves have decent looking models, if rather unemotive, everyone else, except a few important characters like Arecia, are much lower quality, especially the faces. Here’s a comparison between Ace and Carla.

The textures don’t fare much better, looking very blatantly stretched and blurry, especially on the world map, where bridges are just one long, hideous texture. Most locations outside of, again, the end of chapter missions don’t look anything special, and so many areas are just reused over and over. You go into a town, it’ll look like every other town, at least of that region. You invade a fort, it’ll look like every other fort. Repeat for almost every mission in the game. Thankfully, the big story missions look quite impressive and creative, my favorites being chapter 5′s, taking place on frozen clouds that end up near breathtaking, and especially the setting of the very final mission, which is, to avoid anything too specific, downright insane, in a good way. Another positive are the enemy designs, more specifically, the actual monsters, with enemies such as bombs and flans resembling their earlier FF designs much more than most modern entries. Unfortunately, there’s just one problem: the actual variety of enemy designs is rather lacking, with the majority of enemies being slight alterations or palette swaps. It’s a more minor point than most, but still something. The original enemy designs are quite inventive though, and overall, this is a game that excels more in general design than actual fidelity, like the spiraling Concordian capital surrounded by a sea of clouds.

Sound:

The music of Type-0 is plain great, as is usual for the series. The boss themes especially are fantastic, along with the main theme, The Beginning of the End. It also sounds quite distinctive compared to most of the rest of the series, having a greater focus on metal, fitting the more modern aesthetic. The English voice acting, on the other hand, isn’t quite great. It’s pretty obvious the dub was a rush job, considering Type-0 lacked the simultaneous localization process of the main series games, resulting in it being very lackluster overall. There are some notable voice acting names in it, like Cristina Vee as Cinque, Bryce Papenbrook as Machina, Danielle Judovits as Carla, Cassandra Lee as Mutsuki, and even Matthew Mercer as Trey, and they all do good jobs, but the rest of the cast varies, especially Class Zero itself. Ironically enough, the side characters tend to have much more solid performances, with special props going to Steve Blum as Cid, giving a very menacing perfomance, as well as other characters like Aria, Class Zero’s orderly, and Kazusa, the resident mad scientist. Corri English as Sice and Heather Hogan Watson as Queen also fair quite well. Beyond that though, the performances can be rather forced, like Nine and Cater, or just weak overall, like Rem and Deuce. This is not helped by the normal, in game cutscenes themselves, with their structure causing many long, awkward pauses nearly every sentence. It does, however, improve as the game goes on, to the point of the final cutscenes not being hurt by it near at all.

Conclusion:

Overall, this is a solid recommended by me. Even with the weakness of elements like the graphics and the short, underdeveloped story, the core gameplay just holds up that well, and there’s quite a bit to enjoy in the weaker elements even beyond that. Overall, this is one of my favorite Final Fantasy spinoffs, and the fact that it will most likely never get a sequel due to the departure of its director, Hajime Tabata, makes me very sad. With that unneeded note, this shall be the last of the Final Fantasy spinoffs I play in some time. The next time the name Final Fantasy pops up as the subject of one of my reviews, it shall be about the main series. Till next time.

-Scout

#Final Fantasy #final fantasy type 0 #game review #long post #action rpg #JRPG

[thefaceless96]

Formerly the capital of the Sorcerer’s Council, the Lunar Kingdom has become an independent state after the dissolution of the Council.  It’s monolithic spires and gaols torn down.  It’s philosophy of order has been rewritten by it’s new Archsorceress, denouncing the old tyrannical rule and exemplifying a more meditative approach to order.  Those who would disrupt this peace still find the Kingdom’s Hunters enforcing law, but now they are a welcome sight to those who are in danger.

#Lunar Kingdom #Shared Soul #my art #sigil

[teteotolis-arts]

Planar archsorceress. "let me show you what planar travel does to humans" -Planar archsorceress. Let's go for a fresh start here! I was away for so long... Ahem! Hello ?

#dnd art #dnd ocs #dungeons and dragons #dnd witch #dnd wizard

[reginrokkr]

XVIII. Millennia of lives bound to various shapes of loneliness.

Within the span of hundreds of millions of lives Ace experiences went through as part of the test made by the gods to find Agito, he experienced different grades of loneliness from the beginning to the very end. Starting from the first lives he had, the kind of solitude he feels is in great measure due to the conception those around him have about him. After many years of activity, Class Zero emerged once more with him as its only member, introduced to the rest by the Archsorceress and director of Akademeia as the person closest to Agito. Ace isn’t a case of being special just by word, starting from his presence itself to his achievements, the trust that the Central Command deposits in him (as well as the army, formed exclusively by adult soldiers) and his superior intelligence alongside his enormous learning curve that allows him to develop in other areas with great fluency despite being the first time he does so is everything that forms him in the eyes of others, making of him either a superior being akin to an angel or superhuman and someone who many aspire to be like.

The hidden reality of this is that all his life Ace has been trained with the sole scope of becoming Agito due to his special existence and potential to be the prophesized messiah. From the very beginning he has been alone, being the only exception whenever Arecia Al-Rashia had time to drop by the External Bureau Facility to be with him and monitor his development— her time has been limited, for as the Archsorceress she is a great figure within Akademeia and Rubrum itself, as the power granted by the Vermilion Bird Crystal is plain magic. Ace has zero knowledge of what it is like to act like a normal human, and it will take him a very long time to grow used to it if given the chance. He’s scared of every new thing that involves him on a personal level, making it hard for him to reach out to others. In addition to the fact that he is seen as a superior being to the rest exists the problem that he remains with the belief that if he were to explain his issues to someone else, they won’t understand due to how incredibly different their upbringings are. Ace finds solace and relief in having small talks with someone —something as simple as that suffices to heal his loneliness—, however, that is only temporary.

When other individuals join Class Zero as his siblings in cycles way in the future, he finds relief in seeing that he isn’t the only one going through this. Nobody wants to fight, of course, but there is a sense of solace in knowing that he isn’t shouldering as much responsibilities and enduring such heavy trainings on his own. Nevertheless, that is no different than putting a small band-aid to a huge wound he’s been dragging for so long.

He feels lonely in the middle of a crowd. Given the past lives his new family led before, they are bound to act the same way within the new conditions that will limit them, yet the essence still remains. In many senses, Ace can’t bring himself to understand his actions to the point of finding them annoying sometimes, which leads him to seek solitude to be on his own. However, this isn’t the biggest problem he finds in this new situation he’s thrown into. As the closest person to Agito, Arecia behaves differently with him than she does with the others. With the others, she is more lenient, not half as demanding and allows them to do as they please so long as they move within the limits of the regulations she imposed. With Ace is a different story, for the slightest thing she finds about him that she doesn’t like will be met with punishment that eventually will instil fear in Ace. He notices how different she behaves with him and he’s incapable of understanding why, yet he doesn’t have the heart to express his true feelings or thoughts to anyone for fear that eventually it’ll come back to Arecia and thus he’s bound to be disciplined again.

What in his first lives was easier to do in terms of being more open with his feelings ends up being a load on his chest he keeps for himself, never able to let it go due to the fear he has to Arecia. The only escape he has is to adapt to her way of thinking instead as a defense mechanism to not be punished by her again. Essentially, growing up with others as a family saved him from a kind of loneliness only to be affected by another kind.

#◟༺✩༻◞ Burn yourself in holy flames to born anew. ┊Headcanon.┊ #long story short #he'd need someone to grow close to #one person or just a few is enough #that he feels confident enough #to open himself completely #as long as they aren't associated with Arecia #having a family eventually did save him #but in view of recovering all his memories #he knows that it's false #Arecia did too much harm to him #which will be extremely hard to get away from #specially with her being so attentive #of every step he does in the way

[reginrokkr]

Looking into Ace’s background in more detail from when he used to be alone, I’m more and more impressed that he’s the way he is with people and the way he views himself. All his life was spent in a laboratory alone, all the time being said by Arecia (when she was there which wasn’t too often, given that she’s the Archsorceress and part of the Consortium of Eight at Akademeia) what he has to learn and how— all of that on his own.

Keeping in mind her view on humans as a goddess, it wouldn’t be surprise that some of it rubbed on Ace— specially due to how many times Arecia stressed the fact that he’s special, that he’s the closest to Agito, everything. By the way he talks about himself and how humble he is (not to mention his reticence at approaching people because he literally had no one to talk to during all his life up to his 16 years old), far from being conceited or even arrogant, he almost seems to see himself more lowly than he sees everyone else. Don’t get me wrong, he isn’t one to sell himself short when it comes to everything that’s expected of him as a cadet (skill in battle, political knowledge, strategical mindset...). But as a person, as human, he doesn’t believe in his own value and neither he expects anyone else to do so.

#◟༺✩༻◞ Shall the twilight rain veil the moon. ┊OOC.┊ #◟༺✩༻◞ Heavenly stars bathed in solar luminescence. ┊Addendum.┊ #Arecia literally raised him as a weapon #and he has that so ingrained #that he knows as much #one of the things I did read was him #saying that ' he's allowed to live in the Akademeia ' #almost sounding as if he has no rights to anything #and that his place is to be #in a hidden laboratory away from all human contact #like a weapon you store #until you retrieve it when you need it

[reginrokkr]

7, 17, 27

⭑ Character solidifying | Accepting.

7. What was the economic status of their family?

Given that the one who he calls Mother, Arecia, is a Fal’Cie that has control over the entirety of the world and she involved herself with it as an archsorceress and the head of the Sorcery Division at Akademeia which is the most important considering that Rubrum depends heavily on magic, Fal’Cie or not she would be in a good economic status to raise 12 children, so it wouldn’t be far fetched to assume that it’s wealthy.

17. Did they travel? Where? Why? When?

As a cadet and unmistakably Rubrum’s weapon, Ace travelled everywhere around Orience to fight in the span of almost a year, which is the length of the war since Milites attempted to break the balance between the four nations.

27. How do they relate to their appearance? How do they wear their clothing? Style? Quality?

Given his naturally delicate features, his beauty is often mistaken/compared by one of a girl’s which he doesn’t necessarily mind as long as people don’t bother him, they can think whatever they want. Additionally, he takes great care of his physical appearance by reaching to lengths where he asks one of his sisters to teach him to do his eyebrows so they enhance his features instead of going against the current and he regularly asks to have his hair cut by whoever got used to his meticulous demands. While his speech pattern doesn’t give off the vibe of formality, Ace always makes sure to look presentable with whatever he wears.

#Anonymous #✧･ﾟ*⋆ Let your prayers be heard; the merciful always listens. ┊Ask.┊ #✯⭒* ⭑┊We've no choice but to let go of the past and move forward. (Headcanon) #◟༺✩༻◞ Let your prayers be heard; never cease believing in a miracle. ┊Ask.┊