#legend of mana gameplay

[markrosewater]

Having read your answer to a question about removing mana screw, this is my response to you. Being a big fan of both MtG and riot games' Legends of Runeterra, and having played Mojang's Scroll (may it rest in peace) I've found that resource generation and designing around the cost of creating that resource can be interesting. I find that LoR's system, by also using a region system similar to the color pie, but maxing out with 2 regions means it's more about resource management of cards in hand, and tools to use to advance the game plan of reducing your opponent's life to 0, and Scrolls was unique in that you had to give up scrolls to add to your mana cap to generate a resource, so it was interesting design.

Overall, I've found that in games that use a universal mana system in which everyone gets an additional mana to spend each turn, it becomes a challenge of "how do we maintain a level of variance that ensures the game doesn't get stale?" I think that magic as it is designed now could never be changed to prevent mana issues. The game was always designed around the variance that lands provide. Games like hearthstone and LoR went with deck building restrictions and other systems to ensure enough variance is maintained. If a game is designed to provide mana to each player each turn, other design choices must be made to ensure variance is maintained.

I personally think each system has its pros and cons, and each game I've played has done well to design around the pros and minimize the cons.

I think I forgot to make an important point in my answer. I was talking about making a trading card game that was designed to appeal to both enfranchised and non-enfranchised gamers.

If you’re aiming at a more enfranchised gamer, like yourself, you do have more options open to you because that type of gamer is much more comfortable handling complex decision trees and tension.

That style of gameplay though can drive away less enfranchised gamers. One of the big reasons players exit a game early on is being overwhelmed by it. They get too caught up in the choices they’re asked to make to enjoy the fun of the game.

This gets into what I call lenticular design, where you create your game in such a way that the more complex decisions are hidden to the less experienced player. The mana system does that really well.

I hope this clarification helps.

[jadecascade]

Dewprism Interview

It’s from 2020, but below is an interview I translated with Threads of Fate/Dewprism Programmer Koji Sugimoto and Writer Daisuke Watanabe. A link to the original article is below. Enjoy!

https://www.inside-games.jp/article/2020/01/16/126852.html

Looking Back on Twenty Years of Dewprism! Reader Comments, Words of Appreciation from the Development Team—and What Fans Can Do Now. (Interview)

 "Dewprism," an action RPG for the PS1, is still beloved by many users to this day. For the game's twentieth anniversary, we asked the development team for their memories and secrets! Please take a look.

 Back in 1999 when the universally popular Playstation console was still in its adolescence, numerous beloved titles that have gone down in gaming history made their debut.

 Even SquareSoft (now Square Enix) of Final Fantasy fame put all their focus on the Playstation console, and in 1999 they launched several new series like Seiken Densetsu: The Legend of Mana. Another new ambitious IP, the action RPG Dewprism, released on October 14th, 1999.

 The story follows the adventures of the kindhearted Rue and Mint, the selfish princess of the East Heaven Kingdom. With two different protagonists as well as two unique storylines, Dewprism's style successfully blended drama and comedy. Each character's special abilities and battle techniques also added to action-based gameplay.

 The charming characters, lively 3D animation, and countless heartfelt, memorable scenes have produced a work beloved by many and still discussed on social media to this day. It holds a special place in this writer's heart as well.

 Flash forward, and now the delightful Dewprism has reached its twentieth year on October 14th 2019! To celebrate this anniversary, we interviewed staff from the original development team. In addition to questions about the road to Dewprism's conception and fond memories, we delivered fans' honest comments to the staff. Please be sure to read until the very end!

The Birth of Dewprism!

—First, please check out how Dewprism got its start.

Koji Sugimoto: As director, first I drafted a rough proposal. We initially decided on "a casual full 3D action game for children" and build on that as we discussed what kind of game and story to make. Later, since Masaki Kobayashi-san and I were the only programmers, the two of us wrote most of it.

Koji Sugimoto Profile:

Senior Lead Engineer

 Works:

 · Chrono Trigger

· Xenogears

· Final Fantasy X, X-2, Type-0

· Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core

· Schoolgirl Strikers

 Masaki Kobayashi Profile:

Lead Programmer (Luminous Productions)

 Works:

 · Radical Dreamers -Unstolen Jewel-

· Xenogears

· Final Fantasy X, X-2, XV, Type-0

· Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core

 Daisuke Watanabe: I joined the development team when Dewprism was about half a year into production. Around that time, the characters and world setting still involved a lot of trial and error. We wrote the script while working out the details. That's probably why there was still plenty to figure out later. (laugh) However, a lot of good came out of it.

Daisuke Watanabe Profile:

 Writer

 Works:

 · Mobius Final Fantasy

· Final Fantasy X, X-2, XII, XIII, XIII-2

· Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

· Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories

  —Dewprism struggled to gain a foothold. On that note, how did the opportunity arise?

Sugimoto: Square was developing several big titles at the time, but it was company policy to make even the smallest game a satisfying challenge. Amidst all this, it was a "raise your hand if you're interested" kind of situation. I figured "why not" and jumped on board. We had just finished Xenogears, so they asked the (empty-handed) staff and found about twenty volunteers. We actually had a playable demo for the presentation, which is probably why it was quickly approved.

—So, development was a twenty-person crew. What kind of scale did you work on?

Sugimoto: It was a pretty small scale. There were a lot of minor projects at the time, but twenty people was almost unheard of.

—Games were being released left and right. Front Mission 3 came out a month before Dewprism, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross came out just a few months later, then Parasite Eve 2.

Sugimoto: Late 1999 was hectic.

—Making a 3D action game with only twenty people sounds difficult. How was it?

Sugimoto: Since Xenogears was also in 3D, we had gained a bit of know-how. I think that helped a lot. We weren't sure how much our limited manpower could handle, so we made two main characters and storylines to maximize our data... Well, that was the idea at least.

—In other words, the story grew bigger.

Sugimoto: I told myself it would all work out somehow. I was young and reckless. (laugh)

—A portion of the story fell to Watanabe-san as the volume increased, right?

Sugimoto:  (When Watanabe became involved) Writer Makoto Shimamoto has already planned out the basic synopsis and characters, but the finer details hadn't been finalized yet. This role was gradually transferred to Watanabe-kun.

Watanabe: When I joined the project, Rue and Doll Master were already fleshed out. Rue's basic goal to revive Claire with the Relic was set, but Mint's motives were still undecided. We needed a simple-minded character to break that deadlock, and her objective became world domination. (laugh)

—That IS simple-minded. (laugh)

Watanabe: It's her trademark. (laugh) And that's how Mint became the character you all know and love.

Sugimoto: I feel like we asked a lot of you.

—Doll Master is an important figure to both Rue and Mint, but was the link between Mint and Doll Master added later?

Watanabe: Rue and Doll Master's connection had already been decided, but initially Mint was totally unrelated. That wasn't very interesting though, so we thought maybe they could be from the same hometown. The East Heaven Kingdom was soon born, and that's how Mint went from a treasure hunter to a princess out for world domination. However, once we decided to give each storyline a unique atmosphere, a key character was added as a foil for both protagonists. That was Mint's younger sister Maya.

—Let's talk about Maya's importance.

Watanabe: Maya's aura differs between the two storylines, but she isn't two-faced. People's attitudes often change to reflect their surroundings. We don't behave the same way at work as we do with family. In that way, I wanted to make a game that showed multiple sides of a character that varied according to their situation and those around them.

—Maya certainly seems different in Rue's route than Mint's.

Sugimoto: Maya is the most beautiful character. (laugh) The story came together wonderfully thanks to Watanabe-kun's contribution.

—Many others were involved as well, but Sugimoto-san helped get Dewprism off the ground while Watanabe-san polished the characters and story to a brilliant shine.

Creating a Sense of Motion! The Hard Effort Behind Flowy Clothing

—I'm speaking from personal experience here, but didn't the NPCs in Dewprism look directly at your character? Even if the player moved, their gaze would follow you. Dewprism was the first time I'd seen something like that. It was a huge shock.

Sugimoto: Our thought was to create as much expression as the technology would allow. We did it on a whim since the neck could calculated at different angles, but I'm glad you were pleasantly surprised.

—It really threw me off guard.

Sugimoto: It's almost too small to notice, but both the pupil and eye white textures move as well. I think details like that help the characters come alive. We calculated movement into every part of the body.

—Speaking of "coming alive," it wasn't just characters and clothing. The props and decoration were equally intricate.

Sugimoto: At the time, a lot of characters in other games were empty-handed, so we said, "Let's distinguish ourselves by including detailed accessories and equipment. CPU processors are faster these days, so we can add more polygons!"

Watanabe: Exactly! When I first saw Rue, he had proper footwear and travel gear. I thought to myself, "Wow, this guy is ready for anything. He's not the type to recklessly charge ahead."

—Did the characters seem to evolve as you worked on the models and animation?

Watanabe: Absolutely. I learned a lot about motion in particular.

Sugimoto: While putting together the Dewprism team, I approached Motion Designer Takeshi Kanda first. We had worked together on Xenogears, and I wanted the game to highlight his skill. He was by far one of the best in the business. In addition to the two protagonists, he also handled most of the other characters. The quality visibly improved as a result.

—Next, I took the liberty of collecting reader comments for this interview...

Sugimoto: Wow, look at all these. I'm thrilled!

—Many readers praised the animation, particularly Mint's foot stomp. (laugh)

Sugimoto: The foot stomp was so novel, I doubted anyone else could have thought of it. Kanda-san truly outdid himself. The fluttering (clothes) were his idea too. Just as we were about to calculate and ready the program, he'd already perfected the effect. So, everyone decided it was best to leave any billowing outfits to him.

—So, it was done manually?

Sugimoto: Yes, it was all manual. In the time since Dewprism came out, I feel like billowy movement has grown more popular. Other companies now include it as well.

Mint's Hatred of Pumpkins was an Afterthought?!

—What do you remember most about making Dewprism?

Watanabe: Good question... Everything, I guess? (laugh) It was a pretty hectic time for me. After all, I'd never written a game scenario before. Before then, I was in the publishing business as an editor for Kadokawa's Dragon Magazine and Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. In that industry, stories mostly depend on one writer's grandiose imagination. However, (for Dewprism's development) we had all these ideas but production couldn't keep up. Figuring out what we could accomplish with our limited time and resources while keeping concepts reasonably in check—it was a tall order. (laugh) I became obsessed as I considered how to make things interesting.

—Game development sounds like hard work.

Watanabe: As we discussed earlier, various aspects like Mint's character were finalized. However, the chronological scenario from start to finish was nowhere near completion. For example, since the game didn't have any voiceover, lines could be tweaked even late into production. It was released in October, but if you look at the original data, there are some notes that say, "Modified in July." (laugh)

—If you take distribution and PR into account, that's cutting it close.

Watanabe: It wasn't just about aligning the game with the story either. Sometimes we had to go back into the story while making the game. The biggest example of this...was Mint's hatred of pumpkins added at the eleventh hour.

—Even though it's a huge part of her character?!

Watanabe: While tossing around ideas for low-level monsters with Planner Haruyuki Nishida, rolling pumpkins were brought up. This led to "Wouldn't it be funny if Mint really hated pumpkins?" and it added to her character.

—Isn't her distaste made obvious at the start of the game?

Watanabe: Actually, the opening scene was made towards the end of production. (laugh)

Sugimoto: There's even more hidden history—Character Designer Tsutomu Terada came up with the pumpkin motif on Mint's bag. (laugh)

Watanabe: Oh, yeah. Is it okay that we left it in? (laugh)

—She probably chose it on purpose to help overcome her phobia. (laugh) At any rate, it sounds like working on Dewprism was quite the learning experience.

Sugimoto: Definitely. There's no question I grew a lot over the course of the project.

Watanabe: We didn't wing it, that's for sure.

—It seems like everyone on the development team came up with ideas even while working on other projects.

Sugimoto: Yes, that was especially true in the beginning. We'd all get together and ask each other things like, "How about this for Fancy Mel's stage?" and "Wouldn't stars look cool?"

Watanabe: Oh yeah, like Starlight Duke. (laugh)

Sugimoto: Once everyone gradually grew busier, the design team and I worked out the rest of the details. Speaking of development memories, we buckled down on corny jokes. You know, like "Oh, my boots are untied." (laugh)

—That was when Mint tried to jump kick Rue and missed when he crouched down to tie his boots, right? (laugh)

Sugimoto: Nishida had said something like, "Promises are called 'promises' because they have a definite sense of intrigue." It started out as a silly idea, but in the end we laughed at the actual scene. The game was for kids, but I figured that if everyone else shunned these kinds of jokes, we might be the first. I wanted to keep that energy.

—A lot of comments we received mentioned the boot lace scene. (laugh)

Watanabe: You can't beat the classics. (laugh)

—Incidentally, about half of the comments were from people in their thirties. It's been twenty years since the game's development, so such players were between 10-19 years old at the time. Was that your target audience?

Sugimoto: Yes, we roughly had that demographic in mind. Since our previous game Xenogears had a lot of kanji and a complicated storyline, we were aware that elementary school kids might not enjoy it as much. Dewprism was the result of our desire to attract a new generation of Square fans and create a game that younger children could enjoy. In addition, I thought perhaps Square would appreciate a cheesy fantasy instead of science fiction.

—Dewprism is undoubtedly a fantasy, but unlike the medieval fantasy titles that were widespread at the time, there's a somewhat folksy quality to it.

Watanabe: At the time, Final Fantasy Tactics was the poster child for medieval fantasy, and the team working on Vagrant Story was right next door. In that kind of atmosphere, we had to be original. This influenced Dewprism's artistic direction.

Sugimoto: The East Heaven Kingdom was your idea, right?

Watanabe: I wanted Mint to come from a distant land. I'm an old man who enjoys fantasy like D&D, (laugh) but that wasn't my aim. In the end, I took inspiration from various sources. By the way, I really liked Panzer Dragoon. I was Team (Sega) Saturn.

—Panzer Dragoon also has a unique fantasy vibe.

Watanabe: My girlfriend (at the time) and I bought a Playstation and played FFVII, but she took everything after she dumped me. (laugh) I told myself, "I can't take this anymore!" and "I'm going to live for me!" and applied to Square. After Dewprism was finished, Sugimoto-san bought me a Playstation. (laugh)

—If she hadn't left you, Dewprism probably would have looked very different. (laugh)

Watanabe: You may be right. (laugh)

—The world of Dewprism has a mysteriousness unlike most fantasy titles.

Sugimoto: You can thank our Designer Terada for that. In addition to the main character designs, he did several of the environments as well.

Watanabe: His art direction struck me deeply. For example, the forest wasn't just a row of trees but rather a fitting stage for our protagonists' adventures. The world was born from these environments.

 Mint's Influence on Future Characters

—Please tell us more about the two main characters.

Sugimoto: Shimamoto had proposed Mint's character, and her simple innocence really surprised me. She wasn't like many game protagonists at the time, which might explain her popularity among female players. Rather than a damsel in distress, Mint is someone who forges her own path.

—[Our company] Inside focuses on male-targeted games, so our female readership is relatively small. However, the comments we received for this interview were 53% male and 47% female. It's very rare for us to hear from so many female users over a single game.

Sugimoto: I'm glad to hear it.

—At the time, most action RPGs were targeted towards boys, right?

Sugimoto: You're right. In Dewprism's earliest stages, we intended to have one female heroine. But in those days the consumer market was primarily male alongside most game protagonists, so we were told a heroine would be a tough sell. So, we decided to include both.

Watanabe: The overall opinion seemed to be "(Boys) won't want to play as a girl."

Sugimoto: Elementary school boys would probably be too embarrassed. On the other hand, we thought girls who had been playing as male characters up until that point (because there was no choice) would appreciate it.

—Female main characters are much more common these days.

Sugimoto: Indeed. I'm glad the player community has become so diverse.

Watanabe: Also, there's a difference between a heroine that's fun to watch and a heroine that's fun to play as. I've never really liked the helpless type, and when writing a game scenario, you'll get nowhere if the character has no will of their own. No one wants to play a game where you just wait around for something to happen. The player needs to step forward and set off on their adventure. For me, Mint felt like a source of inspiration as I later fleshed out Final Fantasy X's Yuna and Final Fantasy XIII's Lightning. She showed me that heroines can be both endearingly cute, strong, and capable.

—In a way, she was the start of it all.

Watanabe: I'd like to consider it a successful experience.

—Mint's tale is very much about her relationship with her sister Maya. Furthermore, it is also revealed that Rue and Doll Master share a brotherly connection. Is there a reason you included these familial themes in each story?

Watanabe: I honestly can't remember what I was thinking twenty years ago. (laugh) ...I decided to make both Rue and Doll Master dolls, and I also wanted to give Mint a unique quality that was easily understood. Something like "rivals at a magic school" would require significant explanation, but a relationship between sisters is immediately understood. I choose this connection in order to convey the most information in the shortest amount of time. At the time, I felt like a lot of games were hyper-focused on complex lore and thought, "Even if we create an intricate world, we don't have to explain every little detail." That's why Dewprism's terminology is kept simple; there are no big words or katakana. We kept it as short and sweet as possible.

Sugimoto: It was also a huge help that the characters could express themselves in 3D.

 Mint's Missing Father Was a Muscular Mage?!

—Can you tell us more about the gameplay?

Sugimoto: (As a player) I'm not very good at action-adventure games, so I wanted to make it as easy as possible. If the player presses a button, the character will automatically turn around and attack, so there's no need for advanced controls. ...Still, that decision probably made some areas more difficult than others. (laugh)

—...I think I know what you mean. (laugh)

Sugimoto: We aimed for a fair balance between Rue and Mint's skills. Their jump height is the same, and even their attack power was mathematically adjusted. I don't recall any discrepancies, but Mint's flying kick was a fan favorite. (laugh) Maybe it just felt satisfying, but apparently some players beat the game with that alone.

—I can understand the desire to specialize in flying kicks. It really became part of her character, didn't it? (laugh)

Watanabe: Mint is a magical girl who knows how to tussle. (laugh) This didn't make it into the final game, but the East Heaven Kingdom has a family motto: "Magicians can't equip weapons or armor. So, what do we do? Strengthen our bodies!" They probably trained in iron clogs or something. (laugh)

—Mint's flying kick must've been the fruit of her labors. (laugh)

Watanabe: It's also why she eats so much. (laugh)

—By the way, I heard Mint's father was supposed to appear.

Watanabe: Yes, as a meathead magician. (laugh) He's probably the one who came up with the family motto.

—What kind of character would he have been?

Watanabe: All brawn and no brains. (laugh) He'd take a swing while saying stuff like, "My FIST is the real magic!" I'm totally kidding though. (laugh)

—I can see the family resemblance. (laugh)

Sugimoto: Like the Bull Demon King [from Journey to the West].

Watanabe: Exactly. A magician who is better with his fists. (laugh)

—I would've loved to see that. (laugh) Speaking of which, both Mint and Rue have their own unique weapons. Most people associate fantasy heroes with swords, but axes (Arc Edge) and rings (Chakram Rings) are practically unheard of.

Sugimoto: Yes, the rings were unusual.

Watanabe: When I first watched Mint wield her Chakram Rings, I thought, "This is awesome!!" Later when I saw Rue, it was more like, "This chill-looking guy sure has a terrifying weapon." (laugh)

Sugimoto: The motion team was incredibly innovative to combine the two rings in one magic attack. Who would've guessed?

Watanabe: It wouldn't have been possible with a wand or staff.

—So, that animation was the motion team's work?

Sugimoto: Yes, the movement at least. The idea for the rings themselves came from Shimamoto.

—Mint can use magic and Rue can transform into monsters. Was it difficult to create such drastically different skills?

Sugimoto: The design team proposed the "transformation" idea, but we decided to have Rue transform and Mint cast magic instead. Nishida always had the best suggestions and provided both magic and post-transformation illustrations, so we quickly implemented everything.

—Spells in most games are independent of each other, but the magic in Dewprism is a combination of "Color" and "Effect." Was it difficult to keep track of them all? I should think so.

Sugimoto: Yes, but at least we didn't need to include every single combination.

—Even so, there are over thirty spells. That was an impressive number for action RPGs at the time.

Sugimoto: I thought it'd be more interesting to combine different effects than just choose one magic and press a button. Our Programmer Kobayashi provided various magic animation.

Watanabe: I saw that one ring spell fly out and thought, "This is like Gradius." (laugh)

—You must mean the blue Ripple magic. (laugh)

Sugimoto: The groundwork for the game's program was pretty much complete by that point. We just had to polish it up, so there was an excited energy.

Reading Fan Comments and a Look Back on Dewprism

—We've received a lot of comments about how Rue's ending left a deep impact on people.

Sugimoto: I see.

—Many were surprised by his realistic reaction. Although he had finally reunited with Claire, he couldn't speak or even look at her.

Watanabe: Even now, when writing a scenario it's my worst fear that whatever I put into words will ring false.

Sugimoto: Cutscene Planner Yaeko Sato would sometimes use both "space" and the camera to create atmosphere without any dialogue. I think it was very effective.

Yaeko Sato Profile:

 Planner

 Works:

Final Fantasy VIII, XI, XII, XIV

 —There were also a number of comments about Mint's threats. (?) Like, right before the final battle when she yells, "Your butt's going to hell!" and Maya joins in with a "We will triumph!" (laugh) You could definitely tell they're sisters.

Watanabe: I like when the same line has a different nuance. She had made constant threats up until that point, but they took on a cool flair. Even for Rue, the curse that once controlled him, in the end, set him free. I suppose you could might call it foreshadowing.

*Translator note: The Japanese line is 「ボコボコ」and remains pretty much unchanged throughout the game, but the English version is a bit more varied. I reflected this in the translation.

Sugimoto: Maya's "We will triumph!" was the end goal, right? A disciplined character like her wouldn't speak out like that.

 *Translator note: For context, Maya's line in the JP version, 「ぼこぼこですわ！」is much more out of character for her than the official English "We will triumph!" translation.

Watanabe: The fact she doesn't show that side of herself in Rue's story also adds a layer of interest. I think the fist fight in the hotel was the worst of it, and neither princess admits they're sisters in Rue's story.

—There are surprises if you play Mint's story first then Rue's, and vice versa.

Watanabe: The "zapping" method was popular back then, but it would have revealed half the story. Instead of giving away spoilers in sequential order, we thought it'd be better if each character had their own route.

—Another reason why Dewprism is so unique.

Watanabe: At first, I couldn't get a grasp on Maya's character. However, I wanted her to contrast Mint, and the rest is history.

—Is there a scene in Rue's route that left a deep impression on you?

Watanabe: I only remembered this recently, but Rue and Claire live in a snowy cabin at the beginning of the game. That image reminded me of Moomin.

—Oh!

Watanabe: This is just me personally, but that cozy life deep in the mountains is a lot like the Moomins. Although quiet and naïve, there's an inner fortitude. It feels like a supportive environment and a fine place to grow up.

—Rue does have a rather refined air.

Watanabe: He snaps on occasion, but I agree. (Reading fan comments) Ah, the "Sukatangou." How nostalgic. We chose that name early on. It just felt right. (laugh)

*Translator note: The Pinto, Mint's name for the Pulsar Inferno Typhoon Omega, in English.

—So, "Scarlet Typhoon Excellent Gamma" came from "Sukatangou." (laugh) Based on the comments, Rue and Mint are easily the most popular characters.

*Translator note: The "Pulsar Inferno Typhoon Omega" in English.

 Watanabe: That's great.

 Sugimoto: I'm glad there's no obvious discrepancy.

—More than a few Mint fans even call her "Mint-sama." (laugh)

Sugimoto: Among the staff, we always called her "Mint-san" to show respect. (laugh)

—Unsurprisingly, Maya is a close third. There are also those who love Duke. "Starlight Duke's" star is far-reaching. (laugh) Many were also touched by his relationship with Belle.

Watanabe: All the women in Dewprism are tough cookies. (laugh)

—No kidding. (laugh)

Watanabe: Speaking of which, there's a touching scene in Rue's story right before the last dungeon. He goes to Fancy Mel's, and they discuss his resolve. Choices are offered throughout the conversation and the player can answer as they please, but in the end she wishes you good luck. This is right before you head to the last dungeon, so I made sure to include words of encouragement regardless of someone's answers. I've been writing game scenarios for a long time, but ultimately games are supposed to be fun. I love nothing more than cheering the player on and telling them, "You've got this!"

—Motivation is key.

Sugimoto: Still, I can't thank everyone enough for their comments. There's passion in every word.

—Mint is so selfish and conceited that she could have easily turned people off. It's pretty amazing how she's this popular.

Sugimoto: You can't deny her quirky charm.

Watanabe: As I was writing Mint's character, I realized she's honest with herself and others.

—Yes, her words always ring true.

Watanabe: Mint doesn't hide her selfish desires, but she's a good person at heart. I won't hesitate to sing her praises.

—Since there's no pretense, you can trust whatever she says.

Sugimoto: Reading these comments, many have praised the animation. I'm glad to see we achieved our goal. And, of course...there's countless mention of the untied boots. (laugh)

Watanabe: We must embrace the corniness. (laugh)

Sugimoto: The scene was the first one our Planner Sato worked on after finishing up Final Fantasy VIII. She really brought it to life.

Watanabe: I doubt the joke would have landed if we'd only used text and portrait art like in a visual novel. (3D characters) can truly perform and capture the mood. On another note, it was also memorable to walk around town after all was said and done. With the last boss vanquished, it made you want to explore this new, peaceful world and say farewell to everyone.

—Most games will roll credits after the final boss is defeated and the final cutscene plays. Once again, Dewprism is unique in that way.

Sugimoto: Sato, the Planner I mentioned earlier, loves endings and has completed various games on her own. She said, "I want a save point before the ending," so we added one in. Sato was mainly in charge of the final cutscene after the last boss. It was her dearest wish to end the game on a high note.

—I speak only for myself here, but I'm the type who likes to save before an important scene. I was thrilled to find out I could do so right at the end. The Gallery function is more common in games nowadays, but not back then. A manual save was a good substitute.

Sugimoto: In those days, players could only wish there was a Gallery. There was no room for error.

 Dewprism, Beloved by Players and Staff Alike

—By the way, how old were you when you directed Dewprism, Sugimoto-san?

Sugimoto: I was 23. Still, I'd been in the business for five years by that point, so I guessed I seemed like a veteran.

Watanabe: Oh right. Back then, five years was veteran status.

—The release of the Playstation ushered in a new era of game development, didn't it?

Sugimoto: I was very fortunate in that regard. There were veterans who had been with the company since the Famicom era, but as 3D became more widespread and the programming language switched from Assembly to C, it felt like everyone's level of experience had been temporarily reset. Thanks to that, a newbie like me could stand at the starting line and still get ahead. I was truly blessed by my circumstances.

Watanabe: It wasn't like we could create whatever we wanted. Rather, it was a matter of doing our best within those limitations. Everything was born of necessity, and we did our absolute best to make it work. The pumpkins were the same way; the idea hadn't been intentional, but other factors contributed to its creation. In that way, the world and characters naturally came together. We were so efficient because there was zero room for error (laugh), but in a way, the amount felt manageable. Like, "Yeah, I can somehow finish this if I pull an all-nighter." (laugh)

Sugimoto: Thanks to Xenogears, we'd gained a lot of 3D experience. In game development, you steadily improve with the second and third titles.

—Dewprism's timing really was impeccable.

Sugimoto: Still, late 1999 was rush season for the entire industry. In that way, it wasn't too ideal. (laugh)

—There was a lot of competition, wasn't there?

Sugimoto: We were a small team, so our expectations were modest initially. The objective was to create a game that provided a decent challenge on a shoestring budget. However, Dewprism drew a lot of interest online and scored a worldwide release when it was included as a demo alongside Seiken Densetsu: Legend of Mana. That led to further development, and expectations for the game gradually rose. It was incredible.

—I'm sure it felt like all your efforts had paid off.

Sugimoto: Exactly! Unfortunately, the sales report after its first day of release was dismal. Although deflated, we weren't too surprised. However, later market research indicated this was due to insufficient promotion. (Because of this) We felt a bit relieved and were just glad to get an international release.

Watanabe: Who would have ever imagined we'd be here talking about it twenty years later?

—It's clear from these many comments that Dewprism is still beloved today. I don't mean to digree, but after Dewprism was finished, what projects did you move on to?

Sugimoto: Unfortunately, we could never make a Dewprism sequel, so the both of us moved on to Final Fantasy X, and others were transferred to Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XI.

Watanabe: Yes, we focused entirely on Final Fantasy X after that.

Sugimoto: Yoshinori Kitase-san thought highly of Dewprism, so it was easy for our team to get in touch with him.

 Yoshinori Kitase Profile:

 Head of Square Enix's Creative Business Unit I

Producer of Final Fantasy Remake

 Works:

 Final Fantasy V, VI, VII, VIII, X, X-2, XIII

Mobius Final Fantasy

Others

 Watanabe: When I did a live broadcast for Mobius Final Fantasy with Kitase-san, he said, "Aren’t you going to mention Dewprism? You definitely should!" and "This character was inspired by Dewprism, right?"

 —It sounds like Dewprism is well-regarded among Square Enix's creators.

Sugimoto: Yes, thank goodness. (laugh) Like I said before, it was impressive that Dewprism saw release despite such a small team and budget. It also looks like those who had specialized in 2D almost seamlessly switched to 3D afterward.

 Watanabe: When I was out drinking at an izakaya, I ran into Yasumi Matsuno-san. He called out, "Hey, Watanabe-kun!" and when I recognized him I couldn't believe my eyes. (laugh)

 —Not only does Dewprism have countless fans, it has surprised fellow creators as well. Thank you for this opportunity to look back on the past twenty years.

 Watanabe: Although we made Dewprism, it's no longer ours alone. It belongs to everyone. Of course, I keep this desire in mind with each project. Two decades ago, I never could have imagined how Dewprism would connect people around the world and elicit so many warm comments. It's only thanks to everyone that we've reached this incredible milestone. Like all those who supported Rue throughout his journey, I can feel their voices of encouragement push me forward. I'm truly grateful.

 —Yes, just like Rue's friends, Dewprism's countless fans are cheering you on even now.

 Sugimoto: It sounds really cool when you put it like that. (laugh)

 Watanabe: Well, I am a writer. (laugh)

 Sugimoto: I don't think I can deliver the same flair as Watanabe (laugh), but I'm truly proud to create a game that kids who played our game twenty years ago still remember as adults. I never guessed something like that would happen in a million years, and I'm once again glad that we gave it our all. In commemoration of Dewprism, I'll be on Twitter on 10/14 to keep the momentum going. If you see #Dewprism, be sure to check it out and Tweet.

 —Thank you very much!

#threads of fate #dewprism #Japanese Translation #video games #square enix

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Afterschool Dice Club

Hey this is a blog where I tell you stories about games so what if I told you about a story that tells you stories about games? Well, would you believe there’s an entire anime in the Cute Girls Doing Cute Things genre that’s just… about games?

No no no – not videogames. Nor making videogames. Not any of those anime about MMORPGs. Not even the ones that are tie-ins to games like the Atelier or Persona or Legend of Mana anime. I mean an anime about board games. Yeah, I found one of those!

It’s really mid! And I love it!

Afterschool Dice Club is an anime so tepid in its overall hook that it sounds like a setup to a twist. It’s an anime about a small group of friends, in high school, who start a board game club. They play board games with one another. They have names and individual experiences and anxieties about being the age they are in the place they are, but none of them are remarkable, or challenging standouts that you’d be surprised to hear about. One of them has transferred mid-semester. One of them is afraid of being left behind. One of them is maybe crushing on a boy. This anime is some mild tea, which means the next thing to ask, is, okay, if that’s what happens in it, what’s it about?

When an anime is ‘about’ something it’s often actually about one specific author’s specifically narrow vision of what that thing is. Sometimes this works out to the benefit of the work – Beck is an anime that benefits immensely from being about the music that its author thinks of as important, because even if that’s a narrow collection of artworks to build out of, that collection is still definitionally something that you need expertise to represent, and the way the manga and anime represent that demonstrates that the author is meaningfully aware of true things about the form they’re commenting on. Sometimes you’ll see an anime that wants to be ‘about’ something that doesn’t seem to understand anything about what it’s talking about.

I wouldn’t conventionally call it one of your healing anime. It’s not an anime where relationships are pre-eminent. It’s not a story where there’s long, indulgent shots of things that are meant to make you go that’s nice. It’s structured almost like a sports anime, but because it has to explain to you the sports each episode, the stakes can’t really get higher. There’s no ‘best’ or ‘drive’ in it. It’s just learning about a new thing every week.

The term I feel applies here is authenticity, and when it comes to authenticity, well, Afterschool Dice Club absolutely authentic. It’s not about board games as the author imagines them, or board games the way that lesser games are about ‘a card game’ where they have to break the rules to make tension or drama happen in the story. It’s about actual, real, commercial product board games you can go to a store and buy and play right now. In fact, if you watch the anime episode on a game, you can probably play the game. The sections of rules explainers in the anime are detailed enough that they’re clipped out on Youtube to serve as rules explainers for how to play the game, like Watch it Played was about adorable girls rather than an adorable Rodney. Sorry Rodney.

There’s a taste to the games I consider somewhat classical. There’s obviously a bias towards German games, but it’s more a sampling preference. This anime doesn’t seem to have a love for representing social or negotiated games – these are games that are sometimes criticised for being wholly isolated, where players can play the game without crossing any kind of language barrier. People place their pieces and let their gameplay do the talking for them. These are fine games – I particularly like Diamante, as an example of a really good, pure game with a tight engine that puts you very close to some decisions. I also love Cockroach Poker, a game that I have owned and never gotten to play with anyone who isn’t paying to be there, because the game is an anxiety engine.

Which is how they represent it.

A lot of what you watch anime for is to basically be advertised to. You’re tuning into something that’s using a story as a vehicle to show you things that you can then merchandise your love for. You wanna see cool characters being cool and neat mecha and amazing character moments and things that the great anime industry can then, somehow, turn into money through giving you opportunities to express your love through money. It’s not even a joke, the anime industry as I understand it is essentially trying to sell you being a fan of this anime specifically. It’s why so many anime have been trying to key into pre-existing fandoms, like light novels and the like.

I feel like the thing Afterschool Dice Club is trying to get you to get into is like, following their youtube channel for game tutorials. It’s a niche interest that feels like maybe someone who runs a board game store franchise was trying to finance it into existence. And like, surely that’s not true. Surely that financial conspiracy is nonsense, just natural paranoia bubbling away that nobody makes anime for nice reasons. Which isn’t true, lots of anime get made for nice reasons! But the people making it are nice, the people signing their cheques, those people are buttholes.

And I don’t know what they’re getting out of it.

There’s a message towards the end of the story. I’m always reluctant when I want to refer to ‘the message’ of an anime, or what a story is trying to do as opposed to what I get out of it, what my impression was, but in the case of Afterschool Dice Club there’s a very clear, very specific incident in the last episode, where the players play a communication memory game, and then explicitly use the language of that game to talk to one another about their feelings.

I talk about the idea that games are ways we can practice emotions. In Afterschool Dice Club, the story is about kids who aren’t good at talking about their feelings using games to give themselves the language to do that. That’s cool! That’s demonstrative! That might be markedly non-typical ways of learning communication methods! This may be an anime for dorks like me with macaroni soup for brains that makes us like board games and then shows ways that we can make words in that macaroni soup.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media #Story Pile

[lilyblackdrawside]

I play a lot of Slay the Spire. Like, a lot a lot. I like this kind of game in general. Played a bunch of Monster Train too. Recently I found Astrea - Six-Sided Oracles and Lost Branch of Legend. Astrea revolves around dice, so it's a bit different, but the structure and sensibilities are the same, while LBoL feels like a very high effort StS mod.

They're both good games, but ultimately I "went back" to StS, in that when I think of playing either, I just play that game instead.

Long post.

With Astrea the reason is easy: It's dice. Dice are fine, but I like cards. Astrea also tends to kinda feel samey and I don't really like playing half of the characters. With StS I like playing all four of the characters.

But why is it that I'm not that into LBoL? It's Touhou, it's really pretty, it's StS - I should like this.

I even really like the main thing differentiating this game from StS: The mana system. In short, it has MtG style mana, which allows for card costs to be a lot more granular than 0, 1, 2, 3 (4+) and makes for interesting balancing. This is that game's strongest point.

But similar to Astrea, when I start up the game I find myself struggling to pick a character to play, not because I like all of them, but because I don't. Reimu is boring and cumbersome, Sakuya is always "My hand is full" (Which just feels bad. I should have to work to see this happening, but with Sakuya it's just the default state of being), Cirno is clunky and just has the most awful time at the start of the game and then there's Marisa.

My eternal saviour, Marisa. She's the only fun character - and only half of her, truly. One half of hers is reminiscent of a Marisa character mod for StS where you build "Charge" with certain cards and when it reaches a threshold you go into Powered Up mode where you do more damage for the rest of the turn. It's a very ebb and flow kinda gameplay and once you've built your deck enough to get it going does feel nice.

Her other half is potions. You use cards that shuffle potions into your deck that when drawn hit a random enemy for decent damage, create 1 all-colour mana and draw a card. You have to put in an up-front investment with all these potion cards to then get an explosive turn or two later. It feels really nice when you've stacked your deck with potions, helped it out with some scrying to then watch them all go. This is the most enjoyable character in the game. I do also enjoy playing Sakuya, because she has some similar combos going but unlike Marisa, her knives that are similar to those potions, stick in your hand, leading to "My hand is full".

But if it was just that, so what. I can still get a fun run out of Reimu or Cirno as well, it'd be fine.

No, what bothers me is that two of three Act 3 bosses suck ass and the True Ending boss also sucks ass most of the time in just the least fun ways.

The Act 3 bosses are Sanae, who emulates The Awoken by gaining power from you playing this game's Power analogues, Remilia who is just Time Eater (which is the only bad part of StS. If you want to make an StS-like game DO NOT PUT TIME EATER INTO IT) and Junko, who turns your coloured mana into colourless mana.

Sanae is fine. She just hits you, heals herself a bit, drains your Strength and Dex and gets stronger if you play a certain card type. All of this is just fine.

Junko can just suck so much. Obviously you need coloured mana, but some decks can handle having less of it. Some decks aren't even affected by her trait at all, because she can't uncolour all-colour mana. That stuff's just immune, so if your deck happens to produce a lot of that, you're good. (Potion Marisa does this)

Remilia is Time Eater. This is especially egregious because there is another boss in Act 1 who punishes you for playing too many cards and that is Sakuya: She just punches you in the face every so often but that's it. You can implement a punishment mechanic for spammy decks, you don't have to forcefully end my turn! Just drop my stats, deal damage, force a discard or two or drain some of my mana there are so many ways to go about it that aren't "Oh let's just make Time Eater again." Everybody hates Time Eater!

And then there's Seija, as the True Final Boss. She comes in with the classic The Heart trait of only taking up to 300 damage per turn, this is fine. It's boring, but it's fine. I get it, you don't want her to get FTK'd as well as hitting you for 1 damage for each card played (another fine way of punishing spammy decks). Aside from that, she also gets several effects based on artifacts she picks at random. I will only go over the three that she can pick from for her first one, because the problematic one is right there:

Teapot with Long Spout: Suffer either 3 Weak, Frail or Vulnerable each turn. This is fine. Get some debuffs, sure.

Pendant that emits evil spirits: Seija summons some trash mobs every turn. This is fine. You should be able to handle small stuff by now.

Overdecorated Gold Cup: Lose all non-Shining, non-Mythic Rare exhibits.

Exhibits are Relics. Shining Exhibits govern your mana base. You start with one based on your character and get another after each boss. Mythic Rare Exhibits are a special type that you can start with in a special help-mode. You don't get these in normal gameplay.

So this just sucks. It's not fun. Even if your deck doesn't rely on your relics, it's just dumb. Having relics is fun but now you don't get to play with them anymore. And what if you do rely on them? What if you got the Shuriken-analogue at the start of the run and built your entire deck around it? Now you're stuck throwing rubber knives at Seija. Countless other such cases. This would be fine on like an Act 2 boss.

With the Act 3 boss, you do get some advance notice either way by virtue of having the entire third act to "prepare" for it, but if it's Remi and you're already a combo deck you're not getting off that. You can reasonably pick up some cards that are less heavy on coloured mana or that produce all-colour mana to help with Junko though.

with Seija you only know what she picks when she picks it.

There is a random event where you can get info on which Act 3 boss you'll fight or what Seija's first item will be. You can pick either or, but you also have to get the event in the first place.

But even if you pick to scout Seija and learn that she gets the Cup, what are you going to do about it? Not grab relics anymore? You can probably handle it, but you know it won't be an enjoyable fight.

The way to open the path to Seija's fight isn't even difficult. You just have to pick the correct option at three certain nodes that you're forced to pass through anyway, but I never want to do it because there's a 1 in 3 chance that the fight is going to be unfun.

There are other annoying encounters too, such as the two lunar rabbits who are "regular enemies" and will just end your run if you have no multi-hit attacks, but all that is fine. I'll slug through a sucky Act 1 boss, who gives a shit it's Act 1. What I don't like is how there's always a good chance for the final boss to not be fun.

#long post

[adventuringalchemy]

Sorta a note since I saw you compare illagers and witches. Witches aren't actually illagers! Gameplay-wise witches are villagers that turned into witches by being hit by lightning. So they aren't born illagers even.

But also meta wise and what could be gathered from raid descriptions on the wiki (idk if the note is still there) and flavour from MC dungeons, witches aren't connected to illagers at all! They are more like... allies! They just hang out with illagers for the fun of it, but have no further ties to them?

Technically and by category, witches aren't illagers. Possibly they are their own thing. Villagers turned bad? Magic mishap villagers? Simply born as witches?

The closest would probably be evokers or enchanters, but those seem more like book savvy magic users than anyone who brews potions. A villager cleric does indeed seem to fit the best!

ANONYMOUS SENT AN ASK .

yeah, i had a friend on discord message me like RIGHT AFTER i published the ask and told me. 😭😭😭

i just always thought they were illagers because they spawn in raids and in bedrock edition, they hurt the villagers. and as i told my friend you can definitely tell i grew up on bedrock because jesus christ java is so fucking different. like i've had to play it recently because most of my friends play java edition and i'm okay with playing it, but much, much prefer bedrock. 💀

but ivor knows about enchanting as well! he is very fluent in the ancient texts that enchantment books have and always knows what to use / say / the amount of mana to give. he is an expert on that just as much as he is brewing! and i always headcanoned that his mentor helped dabble with him in it, but he primarily learned it all on his own. after the experience with his mentor, he wouldn't be too keen on having a mentor again. at least, not one for like a decade and a half of his life. and he certainly wouldn't sit around and be walked on anymore. nope.

i see witches being neutrals though. because they can also aid the human, can't they? in minecraft legends, i think. so i believe that they very much do whatever they want for their own benefit. as a witch myself i am very much the same way. if someone purchases a hex from me i do not ask. business is business. 💀

fun side note: i do headcanon ivor to be so fascinated by the magic of the illagers! he would want to put himself in their society, just so he can learn about their powers. he would want to know how to spawn vex himself so he can use them for his own gain. or maybe even turn vex into allay to make them more docile. he would also just want to learn how to do it because he just wants to know. he seeks knowledge. he wants to know!

#⚗️ OOC . #⚗️ ASKS . #⚗️ HEADCANONS .

[errantnight]

Playing FFXII for the nostalgia and I was thinking on how the tutorial is kind of 'patronizing' because it has a whole section on how to move the character with the left stick and the camera with the right and how to go up and talk to someone and hitting x to talk to them and so on. Because. obviously, everyone already knows how to do all of that.

And I realized, very suddenly having a burst of 'sonder' I guess, and realized that every single game might be someone's first game. It's not like there are beginner video games specifically for newbies. A lot of things we take for granted in a game is something we learned at one point.

I got into gaming in my teens and no one else in my family played games except for one having a nintendo back in the day. My first console was a PS1 my first game I randomly picked because I liked the cover and the name was Legend of Legaia. I almost gave up gaming after that but was convinced to try a different game. If you've played Legaia, you probably know what I mean!

But my second game was Legend of Mana and damned if it isn't decades later and I've played that game every few years since then for nostalgia.

The point is that I learned how to play games with those games and worked out how things worked in general. (ironically those games have such unique gameplay that isn't like anything else at the time so I kept learning after getting Final Fantasy games which are a little more usual for JRPGs)

But who knows what someone plays first?? Who knows what they need to learn before it's automatic and easy to assume?

#video games #nostalgia #sonder

[jockoppressor]

3, 8, 22 for the video game thingy

3. 1-3 games you’ve played in the past 12 months that you really enjoyed

Pokémon Scarlet is, I think, the only game I’ve fully played through in the past year. I’m including Legend of Mana and Trials of Mana as well, though, since I’ve played through at least some hours of both and they’re two of my favorite games

8. A series you haven’t played but are interested in trying

Fire Emblem. The concept and gameplay really appeal, and I love the medieval fantasy aesthetic, but Important Character Permadeath scares me off

22. A game ending that’s really stuck with you

The way .hack//Quarantine ends really stands out. I don’t wanna spoil it, but it’s very emotionally satisfying and compelling.

[atnak16]

I love Legend of Mana and will love it forever, but everytime I saw a fellow fan try to rec this game to other people all I could think is "This is not going to end well" =_=

Mana series has a small fan base and within that fan base, Legend of Mana was only liked by like half of them.

For non-fans of the series I bet the rate is even lower.

Yes this game is a big either you love it or you hate it. But objectively the gameplay is bad. Hard to recommend honestly.

#legend of mana #my post

[niuttuc]

What’s your take on the draft environments of Baldur’s Gate and 2X2? I found 2X2 to be surprisingly fun, but waaaay too expensive for what enjoyment I got from it. Baldur’s Gate I didn’t even have a chance to draft because of how close it was to 2X2

Take what I say with a grain of salt, because I've done one CLB draft, and zero 2X2 drafts (though I've experienced it vicariously.)

CLB felt pretty good, and less slow than the first Commander Legends. The deck I drafted felt like a "real" commander deck with its ramp, card draw and synergies. I don't know about the depth, dragons feel like at an advantage because Big Fliers are not only good, but they can also easily take the Initiative whenever, and some commanders are clearly better picks than others, but overall a very fun experience.

2X2 is a "push your greed" format, which is appropriate considering the price point, where you'll try to cram as many bombs from as many colors as possible into your deck while making your mana stable. Cryptic Spires is great at that, and from a game design point of view, it works great, it's rarely a bad pick. From an actually-playing perspective, a bit less positive on it. Ultimately, it's definitely not five times better than any other draft to require five times the price, and as always I feel bad for the designers who spent month crafting the limited gameplay of these sets when most people can't ever experience them and the majority only care about the reprint value.

#mtg #opinions #draft #CLB #2X2

[her-reidiance]

I like hearing you talk about stuff so what's your favorite game from your childhood? I think mine's either Chrono Trigger or Legend of Mana. Both really beautiful games if you never played.

Oh I've played Chrono Trigger, just never beat it! I have woefully poor attention span (thanks, ADHD!) that if I fall off a game for more than a certain time, I may as well restart it (I have almost had this happen during my Elden Ring run, and had it actually happen in my Yakuza 0 playthrough)

Favorite game from childhood... There's a LOT of choices I can make here. What did I play the most? What do I remember most vividly (if I picked it up today could I still just play it like it was yesterday)? What affected me most emotionally? What shaped a lot of my modern tastes? What just makes me happiest when thinking about it? So many factors, leading to so many choices.

But if I had to choose the one over all that solidifies itself as My Game... It has to be probably one of the most silly, maybe unexpected, but definitely fun choices I could pick, and that is... Coming up after this commercial break! (Hold for applause, banter with contestants)

Welcome back friends, when last we left I was going to reveal my favorite childhood game. And that is... StarFox 64 on the Nintendo 64! I have so, so many reasons to pick this: the music is so fun, the gameplay was mind-blowing for little me, the voice acting was sublime, the replayability was perfect for my tiny brain, and honestly, the True Ending where James McCloud leads you out of the final battle... Still hits me in a particular spot of the heart. But most of all, I just remember wanting with all my heart to be a member of StarFox when I was a kid, flying in the distant cosmos and fighting hordes of enemies... And if I picked it up today, I would still be able to reach that True End.

Yeah... If I had to pick a favorite game from my childhood, that would be the one. Excuse me, I have an emulator to download when I get out of this hellish 12 hour shift.

#rei answers #cornelia89 #thank you so much for the ask! #thank you for enjoying me talking about things! that means so much to me! #maybe... just maybe... someday i will give chrono trigger the finish it deserves #friggin lavos #wolf voice CANT LET YOU DO THAT STARFOX

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Random ask that may or may not be foreshadowing; if you were to completely drop persona cold turkey, what other rpg series do you think you'd hyperfixate over instead?

Hmmmmmm hard to say.

If it's something I've yet to play then I dunno.

But if it's going back and playing older games I've played the hell out of.....hmmm let's start there I guess:

I like Pokemon, but I'm not gonna compete to be the biggest know-it-all with that franchise (esp with the amount of conflicting info and canons and possibly mistranslations). It's astronomical compared to MegaTen.... (what applies to Pokemon can also be applied to Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh too....)

Dragon Ball.......Tbh I'm not that into fighting games, maybe if I ever get a Legacy of Goku 4 fkjdlajf; Gimme some good RPG DB games and I'm down (I have Kakarot and the Legacy of Goku games tho)

There's really no plot/character/story analysis I can do on the Tony Hawk games.....

I like DMC and Nioh, but I feel like those games and fandoms are more focused on the gameplay mechanics....plus they aren't exactly easy games to just "kick back and enjoy" I have to really concentrate which is draining...... (more so Nioh than DMC, but I'm more invested in Nioh than DMC so that's an issue TT0TT)

I love Assassins' Creed, but even I know the amount of content I'd have to hard core consume (between AC and AT LEAST Watch Dogs......oof). Just thinking about it might explode my brain. u_u

Love Rule of Rose, but other fans have dug deeper done everything with it. So there's nothing for me to really bring to the table.

.hack.....maybe I could get back into that? My knowledge is mostly in the novles/manga I've read tho. ("But Silly! Isn't that technically a fantasy game?" I mean.....yes but it's modern day chars playing a video game. I dunno I always found that idea novel alongside 'oh people are dying' mystery. It's why I watched SAO because it reminded me of .hack! ....I'm not getting into SAO tho >_>)

Most heavy fantasy.....probs not likely but not impossible. The thing with Persona/Megaten is that they usually have a very "grounded in real life" kinda vibe going on. Which was nice because it felt like less stuff I had to memorize to understand the world. Plus it was more of a vibe I liked..... (but I'll mention some of the well known franchises....mostly cause they are the ones with the most entries to get into)

Love KH but I don't really wanna deep dive into it (I think the writing was best in KH1 and CoM, I think Sora's char has really devolved over the games, and I hated 3D and KH3). I am keeping an eye on KH4 and maybe even Verum Rex (which I'm pulling for us to get, outta all the FF games, FFvs13 was always one I was super interested in).

FF.....I'll play them, but I'm not that invested into them. (12's ok, 7's ok, 7R's ok but I need to finish those three first.... I liked 15 even tho it was messy, I hate 13 with a passion, I should try 10 cause it reminds me of Destiny Islands. 15 and 10 are the best contenders for me to be invested in tbh).

Tales of...... tbh Xillia always interested me the most. I should go through my backlog......I'm like halfway through Arise so I should probs pick that back up.

Maybe I should try Ys? Or finish the Trails of/Legends games I have too, tho I'm not very invested in that that.

Atelier series.....I should finish the games I have of that....then again....it's related to Mana Khemia right? I actually played and liked the first game of that (I sucked at it so I don't think I finished, that and I think I got P4 within that year so that ended up consuming me not long after)......I should give Mana Khemia another chance.

Oh there's also the Lunar series......I was always interested in that after I was graced with the game Lunar Dragon Song as a kid. :'D Weep for me yes, weep. I know. u_u IYKYK

I like Harvest Moon/Story of seasons.....but not enough to like...deep dive into stuff.

I mostly play Slime Rancher for the gameplay loop than the analysis too tbh.....

Far Cry 5 is a heavy contender. I did get lucky, outta all of the FC games....at least this one not only got a direct sequel with New Dawn (even tho it deals more with the Highway men than the cultists *sobs*), it also got a tie-in DLC with FC6......plus I got that novel, and the little bit of supplementary material. The issue, which is a double edge sword....is that it ends there. There's a lot of side content I could probs find and dissect, but once I find it all it ends.

At least with Persona, I can expect the world to keep going and expanding (either it's main continuity or the larger continuities in general). FC I'm not sure.....they might have diff timelines but no in an interactive way like MegaTen does.....

I guess I can try a swing at Mind=0, Tokyo Xanadu, Caligula 1/2, or Monark. Both with finishing and attempting to hyperfixate....but they just don't hit the same. Plus I run into a similar problem as with FC5....it's pretty much it when it ends (and unlike FC5, I doubt those games have as much content).

.hack might be a heavy contender.....

I am very Avatar-pilled atm....and I'm going through those games. Which was something I meant to do like 10 years ago during my last hyperfixation on the franchise (but I think I got distracted by PQ1 jklsdfj;). So maybe expect a small deep dive on those? Platinum's Korra will probs reign supreme for me tbh klfdjsa;f

Hmmmm I've heard good things about Suikoden......same with Phantasy star, Chrono trigger, Mother/earthbound.....maybe actually finish FE 3Hs......

Tldr; I dunno. At least game wise. Other media (either exclusively a diff format or one that's multimedia'd)? That's a bit more easier/open ended. (I'm juggling Atla/Korra, Addams' Family, and Naruto like a lil' court jester, we'll see how this goes)

#silly asks #silly answers

[pitikmyid]

[dynamite-derek]

Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest: Another Side, Another Story

Please note, this is the latest entry in my series of Final Fantasy retrospectives that I write for a website called vidyathoughts.com. I am not able to post every single one of them on tumblr due to image restrictions, so please consider checking out the site and reading my other reviews in full. This post was edited slightly to remove some images that put me over the limit, so I apologize for the occasional long block of uninterrupted text. Thanks!

Here’s your new Final Fantasy, bro

Final Fantasy IV had come and gone and Square was very intent on making a push into North American markets. They had released SaGa games and redubbed them as spin-off Final Fantasy titles (The Final Fantasy Legend, Final Fantasy Legend II and Final Fantasy Legend III.) The first Mana title had also made the journey stateside, rechristened as Final Fantasy Adventure. The franchise seemed ready to really spread its wings with Final Fantasy V set for release in Japan in December of 1992.

Let’s revisit a quote related to the release of Final Fantasy IV in North America.

“I guess the biggest change is that they made it a little bit easier for the U.S. market, but that was because we already had Final Fantasy I, II, and III in Japan, whereas Final Fantasy I was the only one released in the states,” Final Fantasy IV lead designer Takashi Tokita said in a 2007 interview with 1up. “Final Fantasy II and III had some experimental elements to them, and so for U.S. users to suddenly dive into IV… it just seemed a little bit difficult. So we balanced it out to present it as a follow-up to Final Fantasy I. And, you know, the NES platform had a very wide range of users where the bottom end was very young, and we took that into account as well”

The difficulty issue was weighing heavily on the minds of those at SquareSoft. Final Fantasy V was the most difficult Final Fantasy title yet and the West was comprised of RPG babies at the time. They didn’t get to experience the other two Famicom titles and grow with the franchise, so they could not be expected to handle the hardcore gameplay of V. So a decision was made to release a Final Fantasy game specifically for North American audiences in order to get them more accustomed to the genre. Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest was born.

Despite being made for an American audience, development for Mystic Quest was handled by an internal Japanese SquareSoft team led by Kouzi Ide. Ide’s most notable work to this point was as the lead for the third SaGa title, which North American players would receive as Final Fantasy Legend III. Ide would only direct one more game after Mystic Quest, Treasure of Rudras, which only saw release in Japan. I would normally say that since it’s been nearly 30 years you shouldn’t count on ever getting a version of that game in North America, but they released Live-A-Live over here eventually so I guess anything is possible.

Mystic Quest is also the first game credited to Ted Woolsey, who was the lead localizer at SquareSoft during the SNES era. His translations are known to be a tad bit more colorful than your typical works of the time. This leads to a lot of his writing quirks being referred to as Woolseyisms. This ranges from his take on Frog speaking in olde English in Chrono Trigger (despite nobody else in the middle ages knowing what thees and thous are in that game) to Kefka’s infamous “Son of a Submariner” line from Final Fantasy VI. Most of his work has been retranslated over the years, but odds are if you played a SNES game made by SquareSoft, you’ve experienced his work in some way.

Woolsey at his finest, in my opinion anyway, is Super Mario RPG. I think his quirky style helped give that game a lot more of a life than it could have had. SMRPG was my very first role playing game and I credit it with getting me into the genre. It accomplished what Mystic Quest was trying to.

Here is what Woolsey said about the prospect of moving Final Fantasy V westward in an interview with Super Play Magazine in 1994:

“The Final Fantasy series basically has two separate tracks: the odd series (FFI, FFIII and FFV) are controller command drive games, whereas the even series are more story line driven games. As for FFV though, well, although we’re sure it’s a great title it hasn’t been a hit with too many people in our focus groups, although experienced gamers loved the complex character building – it’s just not accessible enough to the average gamer. But we’re determined we want to release it so we’re going to wait and introduce it once there’s a larger audience for that particular style.”

Now obviously Woolsey isn’t a major decision maker at Square. He didn’t pull aside upper management and warn them about the dangers of the Job system. But he would certainly know of what games are being localized and why certain ones are being skipped over.

Mass appeal

From the above quote, we can guess that Final Fantasy V’s fate might have been determined by focus groups. Before I even sat down to write this retrospective, the feeling I had while playing Mystic Quest was ‘this is a focus grouped Final Fantasy.’ It’s nice to have the lead localizer sort of confirm that there might have been a little truth to that. The original plan for Final Fantasy V would have seen it released as a spin-off title of some sort, but I will get more into what they did with V later (Spoiler: not release it in America at all until the next console generation.)

Mystic Quest would release in North America just two months before the Japanese release of Final Fantasy V. It would later go on to release in Japan as Final Fantasy USA: Mystic Quest in September of 1993. Final Fantasy VI was released in April of 1994, so expectations probably weren’t too high for the spin-off title in Japan.

The first time I saw MQ was as a middle schooler. I wasn’t terribly interested in playing it, I was too hyper-fixated on the PS1 Final Fantasy games I could not play for myself at the time, and for some reason a shard stuck in my mind that correlated Final Fantasy II (IV) with it. So for a long time I knew the first four mainline Final Fantasy titles North America got as: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II: Mystic Quest, Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy VII. The 90s were a different, more confusing time.

In discussing how Mystic Quest differs from your standard Final Fantasy, let’s explore the focus group idea a little bit. Allow me to pretend to give feedback to SquareSoft as a non-RPG playing fella on Final Fantasy IV and talk about how these concerns were addressed. Remember: Square wants Final Fantasy and role playing games to be a massive hit in North America. They want what Enix had with Dragon Quest where Japanese police officers beg them not to release the game during the school week. Final Fantasy definitely had a host of hardcore fans in North America, but an absolute mainstream fervor would not encompass the west until Final Fantasy VII’s release.

“Five is a lot of party members, I can’t keep track of all this stuff!”

Mystic Quest trims your party down to only two characters and if you so choose, you only need to control one character. The game defaults to your secondary character acting automatically, though you can press a button to change to manual commands. MQ also utilizes the Final Fantasy II and IV approach of having characters constantly entering and exiting your party. The secondary character is always a fair deal stronger than your main character when they show up but by the time they leave, your protagonist should be equal to or greater than them. It’s an easy way to determine whether someone is going to leave your party soon or not. Are you their level? If so, prepare to say goodbye!

I find that if you play on auto, the computer will cheat for you. At some point I switched to auto mode because I wanted to move this along. The combat system isn’t terribly deep with two people so the battle-to-battle strategic decisions didn’t matter so much. I would notice on certain turns that sometimes my main character would get hit with a big critical by an enemy and then my partner would heal me back up before it became time to input moves again. My character gets stoned – no I do not know a better way to word this – and my partner would cast heal. In manual, I would have had to plan ahead for that. I guess they try to give you every leg up that they can?

There were a couple of times later on I had to switch back to manual combat for my partner to do something specific, but it was very seldom.

As a result of having only two party members, battles don’t have a lot of strategy. Towards the end of the game, some encounters will feature minor hurdles with enemies that will reflect your magic or give you a status effect if you attack them physically, but outside of that most encounters feel the same. The only real differences come down to the sprites. You either both attack or one of you heals. There are status effects to manage but there’s no buffs or nerfs. It’s very straightforward.

“This ATB system is so hard to figure out. I was browsing that old guy’s spells looking for meteor and some random bad guy called Red Eye swooped in and killed me while I was looking!”

True turn-based gameplay is back. So if you were getting sick of holding it in while you wait for battles to play out, you can once again tell your main character to act and then run out to the bathroom while everyone takes their turn. Given that you only have to put in your main protagonist’s commands if you’re on auto battle, this can lead to some very repetitive encounters. For a large portion of the game, I was just having my two characters attack. I know I said in my FF1-3 recaps that I spend most of my battles just physically attacking but at least there were four party members to choose from. Like if I wanted to attack enemies in other ways, I definitely had options. It felt a little more in depth.

“What’s the deal with all these status effects? How do I cure them? What’s the difference between confused and charmed?”

Status effects remain, but dealing with them is a little simpler than it was in the past. Up to this point, each status effect could be cured with a specific item. There was also the ‘cure all’ item, remedy. These are usually rare and expensive, so it encouraged the player to only use those in emergencies. Better yet, use Esuna! Forget items!

In MQ, there is only one item that heals status effects. It is pretty easily obtained and ensures that status effects will never really hamper your playtime unless you just outright ignore them for some reason. Which you can certainly do because I tackled the first major dungeon of the game poisoned for at least 3/4 of it. Your rotating secondary party member almost always has some white magic, so they’ll usually be able to heal you too. And if they can’t heal you, they’ll probably have the Life spell which will revive you. They also very generously make Life the equivalent to Full Life in Final Fantasy IV, i.e. you respawn with full health.

I will say that with two party members, encountering enemies that throw around status effects willy nilly can be slightly frustrating. There were a couple of times where both my party members were confused or asleep or something and I had to wait for the enemy AI to smack me before I could do anything. I also had a couple of unlucky battles where both of my fellas would get stoned right away, which is an instant game over. It doesn’t happen enough to be annoying but it does happen. Generally if you heal status effects as they come, it’s no big deal.

“Why are there so many spells? How do I know which one to use? Is Fire 2 better than Blizzard 2? Why does Fire need a sequel? It takes me forever to see my spells!”

Your total spell count is really low. Observe.

The spell book on the left is the main character’s magic and those 12 spells represent your entire catalogue. You have four white magic spells, four black magic spells and four wizard spells. For white magic you get Cure, Heal, Exit (for leaving dungeons) and Life. Black magic gets Quake, Fire, Blizzard and Aero. Wizard magic gets Thunder, White (holy, or as Kingdom Hearts fans know it as, Pearl), Meteor and Flare.

First, as you can see the magic charge system is back for some reason. I don’t understand the logic behind it because it’s far less user friendly than MP but whatever, maybe they were operating under the assumption that Americans were scared of big numbers not tied to their health pool. The game defaults to having a lifebar instead of HP numbers, you have to opt in to seeing more precise health statistics. Second, the limited number of spells really lowers the number of strategies you can use in battle. No buffs, no debuffs, just the basics on white magic. Black magic? In what could be described as a series tradition at this point (not counting IV), black magic isn’t very useful. There are some enemies with elemental weakness out there, but usually you can just hit them every bit as hard as you can magic them. It’s also really weird that the first spell you locate (we’re back to finding our spells, the main character can’t learn anything) is quake. Quake! That’s endgame shit! Well, not here, but you know what I mean. But there is another reason black magic isn’t useful.

Wizard spells just eat their lunch. It’s black magic but good. I have no idea why thunder was upgraded to a wizard spell away from its blizzard and fire brothers but good for it I guess. If you’re ever in an argument over which basic magic spell is the best one, I guess you can just point to Mystic Quest. Every single wizard spell hits hard. Yes, you have fewer magic charges for those, but they can get you through battles very quickly.

Now you might be thinking having fewer magic charges for wizard spells helps balance things. You might feel desperate enough to actually use quake or something! But no, because…

“This item conservation business is hard work. I run out of MP or mana or magic or whatever weird thing halfway through a dungeon and it sucks. Why can’t I just buy ethers easily? Rydia should be able to nuke at will. Also why are there like eight different potions? What’s the difference?”

MQ offers you the ability to purchase MP restorative items called seeds. Seeds are fairly cheap for how effective they are. You only need to spend something like 25GP to get one and there really isn’t much to spend your money on so it’s pretty easy to get a whole horde of them to carry you through the majority of the game.

By the time I unlocked White, which was immediately my best spell by a country mile because it targets every enemy and hits them for a respectable amount of damage, I basically exclusively used that ability. There was no reason not to because why would I conserve? Yeah I only had like four wizard spell charges but the second I run out, I can just pop some seeds and go right back to town. It makes battles go blazingly fast but it just lowers the already low difficulty level. I am not kidding when I say I barely used black magic. I do not think I ever ran out of black magic charges. Wizard charges though? Wewie brother, I was popping those seeds like mad to keep it up. I think by the end of the game I had eight charges, which felt luxurious. I could make it through eight battles without opening the item menu!

There are other consumable items, but just like with seeds, you don’t ever have to second guess using them. You only have one type of potion that cures something like 300 HP. They are littered all over the map and you can also buy them. You get bombs and arrows but around every other corner there is a treasure chest that contains 10 bombs or a merchant that will sell you a bomb for 10 GP. It’s so wild going from playing Final Fantasy I, a game that demands the player horde their items like some sorta dragon, to playing MQ, a game where you have such an embarrassment of riches that tossing out an item here or there just doesn’t matter. Nothing matters! Why I could say this is a commentary on the haves and have-nots in society but I don’t have enough brain power to activate a think piece like that.

“I keep getting lost. I don’t know where Mysidia or Myst or Riven or whatever is and it’s seriously driving me insane.”

The world map as you know it is completely gone. Instead, you get what looks like a Super Mario World map.

You just guide your little protagonist to the next area and go from there. You usually go to a town and talk to a bunch of NPCs and one of them will say something like “hey bro, go to the bone yard to get the earth crystal” and then a new map will open up for you to explore and you go from there. There’s no fear of getting lost or deciphering NPC dialogue to determine where certain towns are. I mean, as someone who gets lost all the time in real and fictional life, I certainly appreciate that there are people looking out for me. But this format really hampers this era of Final Fantasy where world exploration really feels like it’s part of the experience. A map of this style wouldn’t come around again until Final Fantasy X and X-2, where I feel it’s handled a lot better for what those games are going for.

Part of the leveling process of old Final Fantasy titles was running into random battles while you desperately searched for where to go next. Since that’s no longer the case, Square implemented 10 encounter long “battlefields” throughout the map. You just fight 10 battles, one at a time, and at the end you get an award…sometimes. Other times it’s just a bunch of EXP. So if you ever feel underleveled, just do those. I did them all because I hate myself and try to do every objective that comes across as long as it’s reasonable, but the average person can just skip these. I do not see ‘being underleveled’ as a problem many people will have with this game.

Probably the strangest part of this title is when at the very end you need to backtrack for an item called the Thunder Rock. Since you don’t need to get into an airship to fly to a different part of the world, you just move your character across the map city by city until you get to where you need to go. Then you go into the city, talk to the NPC, and then go back. There isn’t a boss battle, the NPC doesn’t give you any narrative, there’s no trick – you just get your item and that’s that. It takes like five minutes and I can’t understand the purpose of it. It’s like in a modern game when you need to flip a power switch but oh no! The power is out! You need to flow power to it in order for the switch to work! It just comes across as pointless padding.

“I never know when I’m going to get into a battle. Cecil will just be walking around and POW I’m in a fight. That’s so annoying, I’m just trying to become a Paladin.”

For the first time in the franchise, random battles are completely gone. Instead, you just see enemies on the world map. They are always in the same spot no matter what you do and they will always reload if you exit the dungeon or whatever you’re doing, but you can avoid excessive battles if you want to. Even though the implementation of encounters is kind of basic and makes the world feel very artificially created, it’s still nice to see this in a SNES Square game. They would later go on to do this better in Super Mario RPG. Really if you look at the basics of how this game operates and then compare it to Super Mario RPG, it’s very similar. One is just way better and actually did convince people to try this strange turn-based genre and the other is Mystic Quest.

For mainline Final Fantasy titles, non random encounters would not appear for quite a while. I don’t count XI in this because an MMO with random encounters seems absurd, so the first single player game you see this in is Final Fantasy XII. Encounters have been not-so-random since then. It’s interesting that they kept that staple of the franchise in for so long since other Square games like the aforementioned Mario RPG and Chrono Cross both ditched them.

“Why are there so many weapons here? Should Cecil use a sword? A bow? No weapons? It’s a little overwhelming.”

Early Final Fantasy games were pretty lenient with what they would allow your characters to use. With I and III it makes a lot of sense because those characters are just avatars for the player, but II and IV were pretty loose with it too. If you’re more familiar with later games in the franchise, you’ll know that they eventually migrated to a system where each character has a weapon dedicated to them. You can’t have Squall equip one of Quistis’s whips for example.

Mystic Quest dumbs this down to the point of just removing the ability to equip things entirely. Yes, you will find new weapons and armor, but they will just stack onto your character and replace what they had beforehand. If you get a sword upgrade, you can’t switch back to the old sword. You just have your new blade. Going to the equipment screen is just for reference. Your character has access to four weapons (sword, axe, a grappling hook-like thing and a bomb) and you can switch between them as much as you like by pressing R and L. In old Final Fantasy titles, flying enemies were often weak to bows but not very many other enemies had weaknesses related to physical attacks. That is not quite the case here, with multiple enemies having weaknesses to your various weapons. I would like to think this is to make up for how shallow the magic system is.

To me, the way this works comes across like an old Zelda game. I’m thinking Link’s Awakening here. You get your seashells and then you get your fancy new sword and the old one just vanishes. That works pretty well for a more action-focused game but in a turn-based RPG, I think it takes some of the player agency away. What if I wanted to have a challenge run and equip really weak items? I guess you could just avoid all treasure chests if you really wanted to but…oh who am I kidding, who the heck would try a challenge run of Mystic Quest?

“The overworld is so boring. All you can do is walk and talk to people. You can’t even swing your sword out there!”

Speaking of Zelda, I feel this part of Mystic Quest was probably designed with games like Zelda in mind. In the overworld, your character can take various actions. You can swing your sword or axe, you can blow up certain rock or bone formations with your bombs or you can use your grappling hook-like-thing to climb up walls. You can also jump! This leads to some dungeons having some very light puzzle elements. Combined with how massive some of these places are – seriously the dungeons here are about as long as Final Fantasy II’s and definitely longer than most of IV’s – you have some really annoying levels.

My least favorite was probably the ice temple. This might have been my emulator legal SNES playing tricks on me, but this was the one place in the game where random encounters were turned back on. Enemies were still stationary but I couldn’t see them, so it felt like an older game. That dungeon was like a giant maze where you had to jump carefully over things, fall down multiple floors and flick switches with your sword to open new paths. Combining that with the non-random battles, it was probably the most miserable I have felt playing one of these games so far. I was trying to figure out where the hell to go and then every fifth step I’d have to fight some battle and it’d really break the flow of things.

The jumping thing leads to some really unfun positioning puzzles that require you to leave the area and come back in some way. They aren’t hard by any means, but with the glacially slow walking speed it sure is annoying putting blocks in the right place. This game would have been a lot more tolerable if it kept things simple. But hey, it’s neat that jumping made its debut here. The next Final Fantasy title to try that was X-2 and it was in very limited quantities. You couldn’t jump on will until XV. No, MMOs do not count.

“This story is too wacky. Some moon guy hypnotized some guy named Golbez and also Golbez is your brother? A little kid fell into some weird dimension and aged into an adult? What the fuck is a Namingway? Also those fakeout deaths had me sweating.”

MQ is like a meeting ground between NES-style Final Fantasy storytelling and the FFIV style. The overall narrative is very straight forward – the crystals have been shut off and the world is fucked and you need to fix everything. You go to four distinct areas and fight your new version of the four fiends and then you find out the true master behind it all and deal with him. NPCs have more dialogue here than they do in the older games, but it’s more flavor text than anything.

You don’t actually learn anything about your character though, he’s just a plucky brave kid trying to save the day. There are no character arcs to be seen here, but your entire cast is still well more defined than the main cast of II I suppose. It’s not bad or anything like that, it’s just exceptionally dull. It feels like a giant step backwards from Final Fantasy IV.

Now you might remember IV had a lot of fakeout deaths. I would like to think this was based on feedback from Final Fantasy II, but whatever. Some characters are gone for hours of game time only to pop back later.

Here, there is exactly one time a character is seen to be in mortal danger. You’re walking along a bridge and some bad guys attack you. Your party member of the hour, Reuben, bravely sacrifices himself so you can escape. You aren’t even allowed to think he’s dead for a millisecond as the screen pans down so he can assure your protagonist that he’s okay and you just move on. Come on Reuben, the enemies in this area were kinda weak, I probably could have just cast White and finished them! There was no need for that kind of bravery!

“So if I lose and I didn’t save, that’s it? I lost hours of progress?”

Here is what the game over screen of Mystic Quest looks like:

If you click no, it just restarts the battle from the beginning. It’s a convenient feature because you will waltz your way into an accidental death or two, but it makes marching into any battle feel bereft of consequences. Going into battle and just mashing on the A-button over and over again will usually get the job done anyway, but if you blindly do it and get yourself killed, it’s cool. Just try again.

I think retries are fine. It’s just that this game is already so devoid of challenge that placing a little player inconvenience there wouldn’t really hurt. You can already save whenever you want, so even if you did die to a random battle, odds are you wouldn’t lose a whole lot of progress. Still, a feature like this is console generations ahead of its time. Very few games just send you back to the title screen anymore. It’s just a little weird to see such convenience in a 90s RPG for the SNES.

“That music sure kicks ass”

You’re damn right it does and I can say that Mystic Quest also has an excellent soundtrack. The main composer credited is Ryuji Sasai and he turns in a performance that is different from what you’d hear from Nobuo Uematsu, but is still one that you won’t want to mute.

I’ve mentioned the walking speed very briefly before, but let me reiterate: it’s slow. Like, heinously so, to the point that I think most players would probably drop this game without utlizing an emulator’s fast forward function. If this game had a bad soundtrack, I truly believe most people would bail in order to play something a little more fast paced. The music here truly carries MQ and in some ways saves it. This is a game almost nobody talks about anymore and yet it earned a place in the most recent Theatrythm (Final Fantasy rhythm game) title. That’s impressive! I don’t think it’s a top-tier Final Fantasy OST by any means but it could have been so much worse. Like, have you played Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood? …If not, please don’t.

While I may have come off as slightly harsh on this game, please understand that there are things I do like about it. It’s not one of the worst games ever made, or even close to it really, but it’s painfully boring and slow. It feels like a weird missing link between the Famicom titles and Final Fantasy IV, even though it was released AFTER IV came out. The cover art does say “Entry-Level Role Playing Adventure” so I guess they do try to warn you a little bit.

Notable characters

For the playable characters, this title does not include character portraits like the mainline games do. So I grabbed character portraits from the instruction manual (thanks to the Final Fantasy wiki) so you could get an idea as to what your heroes are supposed to look like. The chibified character art is pretty common in the series up to this point, as seen in the Super Famicom cover for Final Fantasy IV.

I like that the art style can at least be tied to the original series.

Protagonist

Here is the very first screen you are greeted with in Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest

It starts out totally blank, implying that there is no true name for this fella. However, if you open the instruction manual, you will find out that his name is Benjamin. Very cool. I decided to just name him after myself, like any good middle schooler would do. “Benjamin” is the only character in the game that you get to name. So if you wanted a group of you and your best bros to take on the Dark King, well, too bad. I have referred to him as ‘the protagonist’ up to this point in this retrospective, so I will continue to do so. Though if I accidentally call him Benjamin, Benny, Ben or Benmothy…I apologize.

The journey starts with your main character’s village getting destroyed by an earthquake. A mysterious old man shows up and tells him that this is because a group of villains called the “Vile Four” stole the power of the crystals and locked up the Focus Tower, which is at the center of the world and basically brings everyone together.

The old man says that there is a prophecy that states a hero will show up and save the world and wouldn’t you know it, the old fella thinks you’re that hero. Exciting!

The protagonist is the only character you have complete control of for the entire game and yet he spends a lot of the game being outclassed by your other party members because they always join like five-or-so levels above what your protagonist currently is. This changes in the late game when your protagonist has the best magic, but until that point your buddies will often be more useful than you are. Some legendary hero! I guess he’s by far the most useful character by the end of things, so it all works out.

Kaeli

Early on in the game, the protagonist travels to the Level Forest – a bad name for one of the first areas in the game, made me think the fire area would be called Level Lava or something – and discovers it is in bad shape. He takes a withered branch and presents it to Kaeli who is something of a nature lover and vows to go to the forest and help you fix it. It’s unveiled that an evil minotaur is poisoning everything in the vicinity and he also poisons Kaeli, but that doesn’t stop her from helping you send the Minotaur packing to save the forest. She still collapses from all this and your main character must now focus on saving her! Wouldn’t you know it though, the cure for her illness is in the BONE DUNGEON which is also where your first crystal is. How about that! Her illness leads to one of my favorite exchanges in the game.

It gives me some serious “LOOK MOM IT’S A DIGIMON, IT’S NOT A POKEMON, THEY ARE DIFFERENT.”

Kaeli’s defining combat characteristic is that she has an axe. It makes her very useful against creatures of the forest, like evil trees, because they are weak to axes. She comes back later in the game with an even better axe to use against even more evil trees. Heck, you enter a giant tree during her return to root out the evil in th…wait a minute, did Ocarina of Time steal from Mystic Quest!?

I think they hint a couple of times about her having romantic feelings towards the protagonist, but I might have been trying to find a character where there wasn’t one.

Tristam

Your mandatory ninja companion! You meet him while trying to save Kaeli and he agrees to let you have the elixir if you help him clear out the BONE DUNGEON. This works out because, as I said, the earth crystal is there. He sells you explosives once you get there, which will go on to become one of the most important items in the game.

When you get your single fake death in the game, Tristam rejoins you very briefly. Like 20 minutes later you run into another character who says he might have found a treasure somewhere and Tristam immediately takes him at his word and fucks off for the rest of the game. Well until the credits. I had a good laugh at him leaving you at the mere suggestion of treasure though. Maybe this fella was inspiration for everybody’s favorite Final Fantasy ninja, Yuffie Kisaragi.

Tristam uses ninja stars, which are not an infinite resource. I never ever came close to running out of ninja stars so I don’t know what happens if you ever do, but the number ticks down every time you attack so I figure it’s worth noting. He teases you early on with a grappling hook only to just give you one for free later on, which is very nice of him.

Tristam is probably in your party less than any other character in the game and that probably makes him my favorite one. As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder!

Phoebe

You meet Phoebe while you are trying to find your second crystal. Her hometown, Aquaria, has been frozen over because the water temple has been taken over by an evil Ice Golem in the Ice Pyramid. Killing the golem frees Aquaria. Phoebe is the character you probably have in your party the most, simply because she is your companion for the final boss of the game, the Dark King. You’d think it would give her more of a character, but no. The only thing you need to know about Phoebe is that she loves her town and that her grandfather likes to dig a lot.

From a gameplay perspective, Phoebe hits really hard with her arrows and has the highest magic stats in the game. She has access to a wizard spell in thunder, which is extremely useful when you recruit her. During the final stretch of the game, she gets access to the White spell and has 10 wizard charges which is really nice. But for me, she was basically just around to heal the protagonist if he got put under a status effect or something. He has access to more powerful skills, so even if his magic stats are technically weaker, he still is more valuable than Phoebe because Phoebe can’t cast flare.

She’s also your partner during the most annoying part of the game, which most definitely put her in a negative light in my eyes. I cannot stress how much I hated the Ice Pyramid.

Reuben

Your final party member! Hey you make four friends and the main bad guys are called “The Vile Four.” Do you think there’s a correlation there? Who can say. You meet Reuben when you’re trying to find the fire crystal. He tells you his dad knows where it is, but his dad is trapped behind a boulder somewhere and he needs your help to save him! So everyone wins by this alliance. Reuben is the first party member you get who doesn’t seem like he wants to ditch you, so the game invents a reason for him to ditch you by giving him the half-a-second fakeout death I mentioned above. How rude. He comes back later to help you reach the final dungeon but quickly leaves again.

Reuben hits really hard but his magic skills aren’t terribly useful. The first time you get access to him, the only spell he knows is Life. Life is handy in case an emergency happens, but it’s not something you would get a use out of in every encounter. He returns with White much later on, but much like Phoebe, by the time he returns to the protagonist, your main character is just too strong. He’s there to support and keep ya moving. By the end of the game, I was pretty ready for it to be over so maybe I’m being unfair to these guys, but if the protagonist can solo most everything so efficiently, why would I shake things up?

Spencer

When grabbing screens for this game, I forgot to grab some for characters I thought were important. Every single stinking picture of Spencer I have in my FINAL FANTASY: MYSTIC QUEST folder is from a side profile, the end of the game with the entire main cast that would be really weird to use here or from the back like this. So I went ahead and attached my favorite Spencer screen and just hastily placed front-facing Spencer on there. There might be one or two more guys I do this with. Plus I just love this dialogue exchange because Spencer just likes digging. Dudes rock, ya know?

Spencer is Phoebe’s grandfather. He is trying to dig a tunnel from underneath Phoebe’s hometown of Aquaria all the way to a lake where another important character, Captain Mac, is trapped. The goal of this is to get Aquaria’s water into the dried lake where Mac is stuck. A one man digging operation seems like the most efficient way to do this, sure. Unfortunately Aquaria is frozen over when you reach that area and Spencer is trapped down in his little tunnel. Not to worry, his plight is why Phoebe joins your party, so his suffering is your gain. When Spencer gets free, our good friend Tristam lures him away from his work with the promise of a treasure hunt. He bails and then in the best scene of the whole game, Phoebe gets frustrated and throws a bomb in an effort to complete the tunnel really quickly but this fails and just destroys this guy’s hard work.

Despite not really needing his zany tunnel anymore, he goes back to it at the end of the game to continue digging. Even though Spencer doesn’t get a ton of dialogue, he came across as a crazy old coot (kinda like FFIV’s take on Cid) to me and I found him very charming.

Arion

This Indiana Jones looking guy is Arion. He is Reuben’s father and a major reason why that particular rapscallion joins your party. Just like with Spencer, the crystals going haywire has trapped him somewhere. In Arion’s case, he’s trapped behind a boulder that can only be destroyed by mega grenades (an upgrade for your bombs that Tristam so nicely hooked you up with). Once you save him, he just tells you where the Fire Crystal is, which allows you to finish up your journey through the fire nation.

Arion is also the NPC that you have to visit for that garbage fetch quest I mentioned above regarding the thunder rock, so I am inclined to dislike him a little bit.

Otto

This guy’s full name is apparently Otto CID Bekenstein. That’s right, even Mystic Quest has a Cid! Now I didn’t encounter this anywhere in the game myself, but I read it online and I choose to believe it. It also makes sense because Cid is a mechanic which falls in line with every single incarnation of Cid ever up until this point.

Otto operates a machine that generates a rainbow road, which would help the party get to the wind crystal that is located in Pazuzu’s tower and doubles as a sick go-kart track. Pazuzu is one of the Vile Four, for the record. His daughter just so happens to be trapped there too, but unfortunately there is a lot of wind disturbance going around and his machine is broken so he tasks your crew with fixing that and then saving his daughter. He’s also involved with the thunder stone fetch quest I mentioned earlier, so I can’t say that I’m a fan.

Since this is the last time I’ll mention it, I’ll just explain it real quick. The thunder stone is used to power up the rainbow bridge machine so that the bridge extends to Spencer’s zany tunnel, which allows your party to get to Captain Mac and his boat, which then allows you to get to the end of the game. Cool? Cool.

Captain Mac

Mac is Kaeli’s father and goes on an expedition at the start of the game to learn more about the prophecy that states a warrior will take down the Vile Four and restore the crystals. Unfortunately while he is sailing, crystal shenanigans occur and his boat is stranded in a dry lake. Using the powered up rainbow machine, your protagonist proceeds to set off another bomb in Spencer’s place which floods the lake Mac’s boat is stuck in. Whenever you reach the captain, he informs you that there was more to the prophecy than anybody realized. He states that the true fiend behind this is someone who is commanding the Vile Four: The Dark King. You then can take his boat, head to Focus Tower and finish the game.

Mac is strange because I feel like the game talks a lot about him before he shows up, but when looking over my notes while writing this section, I have towards the end “I still don’t really know who Mac is.” He’s important because he unveils the mastermind of everything, but I’m not sure how everybody in the world knows who he is or why Spencer is trying desperately to save him. I guess all we need to know is 1. he’s an explorer 2. he’s Kaeli’s dad 3. he has found some neat information and 4. he gives you his boat.

White or "Mysterious old guy"

Throughout your journey to save the crystals and the world, a weird old guy will pop in and give you vague information and then go away. He seems to know a lot about the workings of this world and he shows up a lot to sort of guide you along. You might even briefly think that he knows too much, but at the end of the game the nature of the mysterious old man is revealed.

He’s a crystal! Like, you know, one of the tentpoles of the franchise at this point? Kind of an interesting idea for a character reveal because it makes sense that a crystal would be interested in saving the crystals, but I wish this idea had been explored in a Final Fantasy game that actually has an interesting narrative. Wait…I activated and rescued all four crystals. How could he contact me while deactivat-

The title screen hinted at this. Five crystals! It’s right there! Well played.

The Vile Four

The Four Fiends return again and just like in the Famicom titles, they even come back from the dead at the very end of the game as part of a little boss gauntlet during the final dungeon. In the above compilation, the original bad guy is on the left while the revived one is on the right. The little fella in the middle is the overworld sprite of the original encounter. The final dungeon is probably my favorite dungeon of the game because it reminds me of Hyrule Castle in Ocarina of Time. What I mean by that is it���s comprised of tiny bite-size portions of the major dungeons you’ve encountered so far. This part of the game is pretty straight forward, so even the annoying ice pyramid isn’t so bad when it only lasts two screens. I’m just a sucker for when a game puts you through a microcosm of itself. It’s a trip down memory lane!

As for the boss fights themselves? They all kind of run together. The only one that requires any strategy is Pazuzu because there is a brief period during battle where he will counter your magic abilities. It is one of the few times the game outright forces you to ‘strategize’ so it stands out. The rest are just ‘cast a big spell and heal’ so I will take what I can get.

The Dark King

Here’s the final boss of the game. He’s the only baddie in MQ with multiple forms. He has four of them and in the little grid above they are ordered clockwise starting in the top left. There doesn’t seem to be any differences in the four forms as far as combat goes, so just look at it as a way to tell your progression. My favorite one is his second form because he looks like a poor man’s Gilgamesh from other Final Fantasy titles. Just like every other non-Pazuzu boss, all you need to do is hit him hard and heal and you’ll be fine. Somehow he is harder than the final boss of Final Fantasy II, but to be fair I used a blood sword when dealing with that boss so I might have had an unfair advantage.

As our good friend Captain Mac told us, the Dark King is the one behind everything. He’s the key to all of this. He has basically no personality outside of “boss of the bad guys.” It’s not quite a Necron situation because you’re explicitly told he’s the main bad guy by Mac before the final dungeon even starts and wait shouldn’t White have told you about him? He should know about this guy! Oh whatever. He’s evil and you need to kill him. Simple as that.

It started here

I’m not going to pretend later Final Fantasy games pilfered ideas from Mystic Quest, but I still wanted to point a couple of things out. Think of these as an early cameo.

No overworld, retries instead of a game over

Both mentioned above. The no overworld thing is interesting because every mainline Final Fantasy title would have one until Final Fantasy X. Then they just kinda vanish until Final Fantasy XV. That’s not to say other SquareSoft titles evaded an overworld, the other beginner friendly Square title Super Mario RPG also chose to go with a level select screen, but it’s definitely interesting to see a SNES title with Final Fantasy branding just not have that.

Battle damage

I would like to think focus groups were bothered by how you just can’t tell how much health random enemies have (without casting magic that explicitly tells you), so their solution to this problem was having enemies have different sprites based on how much health they have. It’s fun when you one-hit a bad guy because their battle damaged form will pop up very briefly before they vanish entirely. It’s actually admirable how they gave every enemy multiple sprites because not even later Final Fantasy games do that, usually the only characters to show a ‘weakened’ state are boss monsters. Going back to Final Fantasy X, a lot of bosses show fatigue when they’re close to going down but I can’t think of a single regular encounter that has enemies acting differently when they’re about to die. Mighta been kinda nice for when you’re fighting Sand worms or a Zu, ya know?

My favorite sprite in the game is the werewolf as seen above (you thought I forgot about that in my character recap? hah!) He’s CLEARLY waving a white flag. He’s surrendering to you! And yet the protagonist must wail away on him anyway to get that sweet EXP. My second favorite is the little Edgehog because it looks like he got a bad haircut. It’s cute.

Bosses have multiple damage sprites, which helps give character to those battles and helps those characters stand out from the rank-and-file. Hey man, the battles themselves aren’t that interesting so they gotta do something, right? The Dark King seems to eschew battle damage to give you forms, which I think is a poor substitution because it just makes the Dark King stand out as the only bad guy in the game who doesn’t show proof of your prowess.

Spin-offs

Now you might try to take me to task by claiming that Final Fantasy Legend or Final Fantasy Adventure count as the first spin-off titles but I disagree. Those were SaGa and Mana games that got rechristened so a North American audience might be willing to try something new. Mystic Quest, from the ground up, was designed to be a Final Fantasy spin-off title. It may not be the greatest game ever, but there are roughly 83,000,000 Final Fantasy spin-off titles now and this is where they start.

Before you ask, no, I’m not going to do retrospectives on every Final Fantasy spin-off game. The only other one I plan on doing right now is Final Fantasy Tactics. I will be doing select sequels (like X-2), but I don’t consider those spin-offs. I chose to recap Mystic Quest because it was the first major spin-off title and it is also what Westerners got instead of Final Fantasy V.

In conclusion

This is likely a game many people wouldn’t even bother with (myself included) if the words FINAL FANTASY were missing from the title. It’s a game that would probably be forgotten to history if it wasn’t for those two simple words. It’s not absolutely horrible by any means, it’s just dull and forgettable. A middling title in a sea of more interesting Super Nintendo games.

I think if Square’s aim was to get Western children into RPGs, this was a bad way to do it. They would eventually figure it out with Super Mario RPG, but I don’t think a playthrough of Mystic Quest would convince anybody to try out Final Fantasy IV or the relatively soon-to-be-released Final Fantasy VI.

#Final Fantasy #Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest #Final Fantasy retrospectives #video games #vidya thoughts #opinion #super nintendo #squaresoft #square enix #retro gaming

[ramimalek-imagines]

AGGRESSIVE LUNOX MONTAGE FT. EYES OF ETERNITY I MLBB

AGGRESSIVELUNOXEYESOFETERNITYMLBB #AGGRESSIVELUNOXMLBB #lunoxmlbb

Hello everyone, this is nyfexus gaming bringing you a game (gameplay) of mobile legends for cell phones (android cell phones, xaomi) ranked (rank) with the female character maga (mage) lunox, I will show you the best moments of her being played aggressively and catching several kills.

Character description: Lunox is a character from the game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, an extremely popular MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) for mobile devices. Lunox is a versatile mage who utilizes the duality of light and darkness to manipulate the battlefield in her favor. Her story is shrouded in mystery and intrigue, adding depth to her character.

Physical description: Lunox is portrayed as a charming and enigmatic young woman. She has long purple hair and bright eyes that reflect her dual nature, with one blue eye representing light and one purple eye representing darkness. Her attire is elegant and mysterious, with shades of purple and blue that reflect her power over duality.

Skills:

Starlight Pulse - Lunox fires a sphere of energy that deals magical damage to enemies hit. This attack can pierce through multiple targets, making it effective in group combat situations.

Darkness Arrow (Chaos Assault) - Lunox conjures an arrow of dark energy that damages enemies hit. This ability also increases Lunox's movement speed, allowing her to move quickly across the battlefield.

Order Light (Order and Chaos) - This unique ability of Lunox allows her to shift between her Light and Dark forms, drastically altering her abilities and attributes. In Light form, it is more focused on dealing long-range damage and sustaining allies. In Dark form, she becomes more aggressive, dealing more damage and controlling the battlefield with crowd control abilities.

Immortal Order (Eternal Light) - Lunox's powerful final attack, where she channels energy to deal area damage to nearby enemies. This ability also heals Lunox and her nearby allies, increasing their durability during intense confrontations.

Passive Skills:

Power of Chaos - Lunox gains increased movement speed and mana regeneration whenever she uses her dark abilities. Power of Order - Lunox increases her magical resistance and health regeneration whenever she uses her light abilities. Lunox is a versatile character who can adapt to different combat situations. Her control over the duality of light and darkness makes her a strategic choice for both dealing damage and supporting allies, depending on the team's needs. If played with skill and intelligence, Lunox can dominate the battlefield and guarantee victory for his team.

#8ZlS #tutorial on how to play quickly and easily with lunox from mobile legends bang bang mlbb #AGGRESSIVE LUNOX MONTAGE FT. EYES OF ETERNITY I MLBB #volts fanny #volts lunox #how to play quickly and easily with lunox #new fanny mikasa skin #new fanny skin #Youtube

[busyninjaac]

AGGRESSIVE LUNOX MONTAGE FT. EYES OF ETERNITY I MLBB

AGGRESSIVELUNOXEYESOFETERNITYMLBB #AGGRESSIVELUNOXMLBB #lunoxmlbb

Hello everyone, this is nyfexus gaming bringing you a game (gameplay) of mobile legends for cell phones (android cell phones, xaomi) ranked (rank) with the female character maga (mage) lunox, I will show you the best moments of her being played aggressively and catching several kills.

Character description: Lunox is a character from the game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, an extremely popular MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) for mobile devices. Lunox is a versatile mage who utilizes the duality of light and darkness to manipulate the battlefield in her favor. Her story is shrouded in mystery and intrigue, adding depth to her character.

Physical description: Lunox is portrayed as a charming and enigmatic young woman. She has long purple hair and bright eyes that reflect her dual nature, with one blue eye representing light and one purple eye representing darkness. Her attire is elegant and mysterious, with shades of purple and blue that reflect her power over duality.

Skills:

Starlight Pulse - Lunox fires a sphere of energy that deals magical damage to enemies hit. This attack can pierce through multiple targets, making it effective in group combat situations.

Darkness Arrow (Chaos Assault) - Lunox conjures an arrow of dark energy that damages enemies hit. This ability also increases Lunox's movement speed, allowing her to move quickly across the battlefield.

Order Light (Order and Chaos) - This unique ability of Lunox allows her to shift between her Light and Dark forms, drastically altering her abilities and attributes. In Light form, it is more focused on dealing long-range damage and sustaining allies. In Dark form, she becomes more aggressive, dealing more damage and controlling the battlefield with crowd control abilities.

Immortal Order (Eternal Light) - Lunox's powerful final attack, where she channels energy to deal area damage to nearby enemies. This ability also heals Lunox and her nearby allies, increasing their durability during intense confrontations.

Passive Skills:

Power of Chaos - Lunox gains increased movement speed and mana regeneration whenever she uses her dark abilities. Power of Order - Lunox increases her magical resistance and health regeneration whenever she uses her light abilities. Lunox is a versatile character who can adapt to different combat situations. Her control over the duality of light and darkness makes her a strategic choice for both dealing damage and supporting allies, depending on the team's needs. If played with skill and intelligence, Lunox can dominate the battlefield and guarantee victory for his team.

#8ZlS #tutorial on how to play quickly and easily with lunox from mobile legends bang bang mlbb #AGGRESSIVE LUNOX MONTAGE FT. EYES OF ETERNITY I MLBB #volts fanny #volts lunox #how to play quickly and easily with lunox #new fanny mikasa skin #new fanny skin #Youtube

[kylabayer]

AGGRESSIVE LUNOX MONTAGE FT. EYES OF ETERNITY I MLBB

AGGRESSIVELUNOXEYESOFETERNITYMLBB #AGGRESSIVELUNOXMLBB #lunoxmlbb

Hello everyone, this is nyfexus gaming bringing you a game (gameplay) of mobile legends for cell phones (android cell phones, xaomi) ranked (rank) with the female character maga (mage) lunox, I will show you the best moments of her being played aggressively and catching several kills.

Character description: Lunox is a character from the game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, an extremely popular MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) for mobile devices. Lunox is a versatile mage who utilizes the duality of light and darkness to manipulate the battlefield in her favor. Her story is shrouded in mystery and intrigue, adding depth to her character.

Physical description: Lunox is portrayed as a charming and enigmatic young woman. She has long purple hair and bright eyes that reflect her dual nature, with one blue eye representing light and one purple eye representing darkness. Her attire is elegant and mysterious, with shades of purple and blue that reflect her power over duality.

Skills:

Starlight Pulse - Lunox fires a sphere of energy that deals magical damage to enemies hit. This attack can pierce through multiple targets, making it effective in group combat situations.

Darkness Arrow (Chaos Assault) - Lunox conjures an arrow of dark energy that damages enemies hit. This ability also increases Lunox's movement speed, allowing her to move quickly across the battlefield.

Order Light (Order and Chaos) - This unique ability of Lunox allows her to shift between her Light and Dark forms, drastically altering her abilities and attributes. In Light form, it is more focused on dealing long-range damage and sustaining allies. In Dark form, she becomes more aggressive, dealing more damage and controlling the battlefield with crowd control abilities.

Immortal Order (Eternal Light) - Lunox's powerful final attack, where she channels energy to deal area damage to nearby enemies. This ability also heals Lunox and her nearby allies, increasing their durability during intense confrontations.

Passive Skills:

Power of Chaos - Lunox gains increased movement speed and mana regeneration whenever she uses her dark abilities. Power of Order - Lunox increases her magical resistance and health regeneration whenever she uses her light abilities. Lunox is a versatile character who can adapt to different combat situations. Her control over the duality of light and darkness makes her a strategic choice for both dealing damage and supporting allies, depending on the team's needs. If played with skill and intelligence, Lunox can dominate the battlefield and guarantee victory for his team.

#8ZlS #tutorial on how to play quickly and easily with lunox from mobile legends bang bang mlbb #AGGRESSIVE LUNOX MONTAGE FT. EYES OF ETERNITY I MLBB #volts fanny #volts lunox #how to play quickly and easily with lunox #new fanny mikasa skin #new fanny skin #Youtube