The White Devil of Fafnir Returns

Yep, its time for a ressurection post; much like I did with Return of the Desirable Drakahn earlier in the year. This time, I’m recalling this old post from 2009, with a re-drawing of Zakura Fafnir, given my upgraded drawing skills. Without further ado, here she is:

Yadda, yadda, click to see full-sized.

Zakura is a well-loved NPC from my first 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons campaign (I’m now on the third such campaign, which is set 70 years afterwards). You can read of some the parties exploits in the ancient post this one is linked to at the top. After that and more, she ended up being the mother of a Player Character in the second campaign, and also an NPC there for some time, in her middle age (that one was 20 years after the first).

However, this picture is obviously her from the first campaign when she was 23 years old (much like the new redraw of Alicia was of her being 25 in the first campaign). Again, like Alicia’s new version, Zakura’s outfit underwent a metamorphosis to more closely match what I described her wearing at the time rather than being limited by what I felt I could draw. Her fairly generic off-white robe thing transmuted into a sort of corset and short skirt affair with long purple spats, allowing her to show off her ample (!) cleavage. This is, I should note, entirely due to her vastly overconfident personality and reputation as a beauty among beauties in the Alogian Chain. She did, after all, have 26 Charisma~ and in Dungeons and Dragons, 10 is considered average, so yeah… (as an aside, Alicia had 22 CHA)

Her cape is still wizardly with the high collar, but has been shortened to a half-length one held up with the aid of her pauldrons rather than being stitched to the rest of the outfit. This, combined with the corset/outfit and the more detailed armlets, gave her more chance to show off her Fzvir. As I noted in the prior post, Warlocks of all varieties in my setting gain a ‘Fzvir’ (pronounced Veer), which is a large tattoo along their left arm as an expression of their contract (usually with an angel of a certain deity~ Infernal Contracts with Saulm, Star with Kinah, Fey with Corticarte and Dark contracts with Dahlia). It seems to be a pseudo-living thing, which writhes, snake-like, along the skin, when a Warlock casts a spell.

In Zakura’s case, she is immensely strong due to having contract with three seperate angels [Wilheim, Drayke, Ansuz]. One of these angels was actually killed by the demi-goddess Iliya in the second campaign, and replaced with one called Kylar after the party visited the underworld.

The three angels of darkness are expressed on her Fzvir now, in any case, and Dahlia’s symbol (The Bloodied Black Butterfly) dominates her hand. And yes, the Fzvir is now on her left arm, as it actually should have been in the original (derp).

Oh, and she actually gained her runic hat which she equipped with the entire game. It was an awesome hat with writhing runes along the brim, and it really needed to be represented. So now it is.

I’ve also made a joint wallpaper of both Alicia and Zakura for desktops. Here:
Has a few marginal photoshop tweaks (mostly cleanup). Enjoy!

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As an aside, I’ve had a visual novel surge recently, having played through the Al Azif route of Demonbane (which was pretty epic), and also checking out the 50% patch of Fate/Hollow Ataraxia (also awesome~ but needs to be finished!!). It’s possible that I may considering doing a VN diary again of one of them (no guarantees, though).

And now for a random overview of the prior anime season:

I’m glad that Fate/Zero continued to very closely follow its novels, and it obviously took the cake for best show, though they did actually skip out on a few bits and bobs this time. Nothing crucial, I guess… the main loss was Lancelot’s backstory and his fight with Arthuria, which was overshadowed by the Kirei vs. Kiritsugu fight. However, the latter was awesome so I can just about forgive UFOtable for the cut (especially as they popped a little bit of the missing backstory in the epilogue to compensate~ still not all of it, but it helped). Now they need to go off and animate the Heavens Feel route of FSN, and then do Hollow Ataraxia. And if they have time, come back and re-do the Fate route and Tsukihime. They certainly have the skill!

Haiyore! Nyaruko-san sadly lost steam as it went along. It had a great start, full of great jokes, but degraded into a generic romantic comedy that took the piss out of its own (lack of) plot too much. This is unfortunate as it had alot of potential had they have had the guts to steer it away from just being “My harem of malign deities!”. It still continued to have its moments (Nearly everything up to episode 5, Nyaruko using the cliched body swap to her advantage, Kuuko in general being hilarious and very emotive) so it’s still worth the watch if you’ve got a spare hour or two. Also, Marasy played the OP on piano, cementing it’s awesomeness.

I’ve dubbed Hyouka the “Mundane Mystery” show, because that’s really what it is. Despite that, however, it takes these otherwise really boring things and turns them into fascinating problems, which is showing some great skill on the writers part. Although Chitanda likes to abuse her mystic eyes of compulsion curiosity, I just find that funny, so its okay, especially given her other antics (getting drunk on whiskey chocolates?).

The other surprise hit for me was Natsuiro Kiseki. It was very cliched in parts, but had dollops of WAFF to pile on and make you feel good about watching it. I didn’t even tag it in my preview post, but its worth a look.

Bizarrely, all of the ‘cautiously optimistic’ items from the April preview turned out to be busts for me. I didn’t get past episode 3 of Shining bread whatever. Acchi Kochi made me wait too long for most of its jokes. Zombie season two immediately fell flat on its face and… well, flatlined, still failing to match its early greatness from the first season.

Anything else of note? Not really. That’s actually about it.

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Visual Novel Diary: Galaxy Angel

Well, its been far too long since I last did a VN diary. To be fair, this is mainly due to having not too many to play, and also due to my work commitments, but even so.

Anyway, Aroduc is responsible for this Galaxy Angel translation; his next translation project after Battle Moon Wars was done and dusted (well, this and Daibanchou), so hats off to him as always. The patch is basically complete at its 0.98 version; which is just missing the fmv subtitles (I think) as far as I can tell.

So, some of you might be familiar with the Galaxy Angel anime and its spinoffs, right? Well, they have absolutely NOTHING to do with the games on which they are based, much to my surprise. Besides the characters and universe setting, that is. The game is an intergalactic war story; with you protecting the last heir of the Transbaal Empire, Prince Shiva, from certain death as you retreat from the villanous usurper of the throne, Eonia and his creepy loli pet Noa.

As a game; its what happens if you take Homeworld, slam it into a squad based strategy RPG, and add a well executed non-H visual novel as topping. It sounds like an eclectic mix, and it is, but its certainly one that works a charm:

You play as Tact Meyers, Colonel of a outlying fleet that is suddenly put in command of the Empire’s top of the range prototypes, the Emblem Frames, born of lost technology and piloted by a bevy of lovely young ladies who form the Angel Wing.

Each chapter has several VN sections that give way to a bunch of space battles. Space battles occur on a full 3d plane; as you might expect:

The Elsior is Tact’s flagship from the second chapter, seen here, unloading its main batteries into a frigate. Despite its looks and apparent status as top of the line battleship though, most missions involve protecting the Elsior, which rarely sees a good fight despite its excellent range, due to its low speed, surprisingly low durability, and the fact that the angels typically outclass the massive warship. (!)

These sections are very reminiscient of playing Homeworld, but there is no resource management. The only focus is on your movement and strategy and keeping the Angels alive long enough for them to whup the enemy into shape. The interface for this is pretty good, all in all, since there’s the ability to pause and give commands with hotkeys, which I liked (and is a lifesaver) at several harsher moments of battle.

Since Emblem Frames apparently grow in power in relation to their pilots mental state, Tact’s duty as the Angel Wing commander is to ensure all of the ladies are as happy as they can be! Talk about a cushy military assignment! As a result, in each of the downtime periods between fights, you get to wander the ship and chat to the ladies:

But of course, you typically only get six picks in each downtime; so theres alot of time management. On top of that, there’s often a multiple choice question in each of the scenes; and choosing the correct response is what causes the ladies to like you more. Naturally, showing courage and tenacity are nearly always positive; but each girl has certain needs you should tune into as well:

Each Angel also pilots a unique emblem frame, and its quite true that making them happy affects the ships. As affection goes up, the Angels start to get pretty serious buffs for combat, and the girl you eventually select as your valentine gets truly obscene bonuses and turns into a death machine.

If you’ve seen the anime, you should be familiar with the girls, but their units are of interest for me to discuss here, so I’ll do a bit of both, going top to bottom, left to right:

Ranpha is the tsundere that loves fitness and fortune telling as well as exuberant girly things (she has a streak of ojou-sama, and pulls out ~the laugh~ every so often to prove it). She doesn’t like to show weakness to others (especially Tact) and initially despises him, though she does a hilariously amusing turnabout if you pick up the right events.
Her Emblem Frame is the Kung-Fu-Fighter, which is intially a Fragile Speedster, but turns into a Glass Cannon if you get up her affection. She gets into trouble easily due to her vastly outstipping the others in speed; but can really clock up kills too. She has dual vulcan cannons and a single launcher, and her ultimate weapons shoots two rending claws; each of which literally destroy 1/2 of the targets max. health; making it a pretty much guaranteed kill, though only single target unlike some of the other specials.

Ranpha on her attack pass; she loves to play chicken with cruisers!

Mint is the telepathic refugee noble girl who joined the military to escape her father and his overbearing mercantile roots. She has a great fondness for tea and sweets; as well as honesty. She has a secret hobby of dressing up in weird cosplay outfits.
Her Emblem Frame is the Trick Master, which is the Carrier type. Its marginally faster than Happy Trigger; but offsets its mediocre speed and average armament of a couple of launchers by having a wing of ion cannon drones that independently attack the target, allowing her omnidirectional coverage and high accuracy. Her special is to launch all her drones at once which spam beams at everything in an area of effect. If you’re lucky, this can be the best offensive special as the enemies often fly in formations.

Milfie is the genki air-head girl with ‘ideal wife’ characteristics (loves to cook and clean). She also has extreme luck; which swings from obscenely good to terrifyingly bad (she wins the lottery 1st prize five times in a row and then nearly causes a forest fire the same day!).
Her Emblem Frame is the Lucky Star (LOL) which has high speed and is above average in most other things, sporting a good selection of mass drivers and missiles; and she has a giant pink laser as her ultimate weapon that literally destroys anything in a line in front of it, across the ENTIRE map. Sadly, only a few enemy fleets dutifully line up for her to take advantage of this.

Milfie’s Pink Laser of Death. What you don’t see is that health bar suddenly reduce to zero and the mobile battle platform exploding about 1.2 seconds after this screencap.

Forte is the ‘big sister’ character, stern and wise yet flirtateous and stunning at the same time. She’s the nominal squad leader of the angels, as the oldest and only one who’s a 1st Lieutenant. She also loves gunpowder guns in an age that has embraced energy weapons; and has a huge selection. She is perhaps the most grounded one of the Wing.
Her Emblem Frame is the Happy Trigger, which is the Tank. Its the slowest by far, but its a gunship that’s bristling with about eight launchers and at least 5 mass drivers, allowing her to seriously lay smackdown onto whatever wanders into her sights. She has no unique weapon; her special is to simply boost and discharge her entire arsenal in a single huge barrage. Since each weapon gets a big accuracy boost as part of this attack, its usually pretty decent damage.

Vanilla is a hardworking silent girl that is uncomfortable in social situations, but she becomes vastly more vocal as the game progresses, especially with the right events. She controls nano-machines and loves animals; and devotes most of her time to earnestly helping others in need to her own detriment.
Her Emblem Frame is the Harvester, which has the highest defence and is the only one with the ability to repair the others (but she can’t repair Tact’s Elsior). She also has a decent rack of swarmer missles and a cannon or two, and is average elsewhere. Her special is a total lifesaver, sending a huge wave of repairing nanomachines that give a full-heal to all of angel-wing, no matter where they are on the map.

Vanilla goes in to support Milfie’s dogfight. The missile barrage is about to begin.

Of course, as already noted, your favourite girl becomes a death machine regardless of her usual battle role, however:

This was shortly after I started heading up the Vanilla Route; and as you can see, she went on a bit of rampage. To give perspective; in Vanillas case here, with the love buff all her swarmers suddenly guarantee a hit and each does a bucket of damage, and she charges up her map-wide full heal continually, which makes everything a bit hilariously easy if you do the same as me. I’ve heard the others get similar huge leaps in power, like Ranpha dodges everything and decimates battleships in a single pass; Mint’s drones go mental and so on.

Well, I think that just about covers it all. Hope you enjoyed this little soujorn and tune in again soon!

EDIT: And just a quick edit; to showcase the Vanilla End:

Dawww! Vanilla melts me with her cuteness. An amusing reversal, ne?

I guess I’ll head back and do the Ranpha route next since I like my Tsundere’s almost as much as my hard-shelled girls.

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Touhoumon Blue

Well, I’m about 3 months behind the actual release and I didn’t even realise! Still, as you may guess, the !Strongest! Shut up Cirno newest, shiniest version of Touhoumon has been released in English.

You can get it HERE

Online Touhoudex wiki is HERE

Choose the link there for ‘Touhoumon Blue Version Final’. Its a pack that includes everything you need already; VBA, a Text Touhoudex, Locations Chart, and a Changed Strength/Weakness Diagram, so I don’t have to provide a starter pack myself this time.

This is a now fully complete hack of FireRed; so as usual, please don’t DL if you don’t own a copy yourself.

Can’t say I’ve got too far yet, as I’ve not had time, but here’s some initial shots:

First of all the proper Intro with a Chen attacking a Wriggle has been added:

And of course, all of the menus and speech are now fully ‘Touhou-ised’ by the looks of things, as in all the NPC dialogue has been changed so that it mentions Touhou instead of Pokemon. And the fact that only female avatars are now available (Renko and Maribel) has been noted and added during the initial speech from the Touhou Professor:

Another fabulous invention is immediately apparent upon starting the game: you can run immediately, and also run indoors, a feature still sorely missing for some reason from all Pokemon games (though I haven’t played Black/White yet).

Also, the forced linear nature of the game has been removed; and you’re only restricted by the HM skills you have now.

Personally, I’ve chosen to start my quest with a Marisa again:

I like her new sprites. Especially the new EX Form:

And maybe its because I love having an Electric/Fire type Sweeper as my starter, who knows? But then, I guess having an Ice/Steel Sakuya or a Flying/Normal Reimu is fine too.

Its a little odd to see that Gary is back, rather than the opposing trainer sprite; but then I guess thats sticking closer to the original.

Edit 1: Well… had less time than I thought I would for this; my team is only in the low/mid teens at the moment, but here they are:

Click to see the above full sized.

Finding Rinnosuke was quite a pleasant surprise; and helped by Karate Chopping Brock’s Tenchi down to size (Wriggle got eaten by Suika!) but I guess I’m fairly predictable with the remainder.

I did also have a Suwako, but I’ve just switched her out for Kisume, since I love the bucket girl (and moreover, I immediately found one with a +DEF/-ATK nature, which is absolutely perfect for her with her base 140 DEF she has later on her final evolution (which will buff to 154! And only making ATK go from 40 to 36 in the process). Talk about tanking!

Finding Alice early was also nice; I’m quite sure she only used to be available in the Safari Zone, but is now in Veridian.

Ah, and another thing thats good so far with this version; it seems like after reaching Pewter you do indeed gain a bit more freedom than before: You’re no longer forced to fight Brock before proceeding East; and you can immediately access Yamame Cave (old Diglett cave) and skip the usual order. Of course, Yamame Cave is still full of lvl 15- 25 wild Touhou’s which can seriously give you some smackdown (I found a level 35 Parsee in there that proceeded to OHKO my Marisa!) so you’ll have grind a bit if you do want to break the sequence. Nevertheless, having the choice is always nice.

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Visual Novel Diary: Sengoku Rance

Its been awhile since I’ve done one of these, eh? I believe Kanon was the last one.

Anyway, this has been consuming ludicrous amounts of my spare time over the past few days, since a full-english translation was released on the 10th of October for it thanks to the efforts of the hardworking guys of Yandere Translations (and TakaJun, who seems to be everywhere!).

This is actually the SEVENTH game in the long running Rance series by AliceSoft (hence, Sengoku). As far as I’m aware, previous Rance games were dungeon crawlers with Visual Novel Elements. This one, however, is a tactical strategy game with Visual Novel Elements:

(This is showing the Items and Inventory screen, by the way)

Rance himself is…well… I guess, in a way, he’s like the fantasy version of James Bond. ‘Sex Freak’ doesn’t even begin to describe him. He unashamedly asks random women his just met to sleep with him and even seems to draw power from the act. He’s beyond arrogant and isn’t above forceful, dirty tactics to get what he wants. And yet…for all his arrogance and being a total dick, he’s a surprisingly likable character. His ‘Strongest man in the world’ claim isn’t just self appointed either; he really is one of the best warriors in the world, and is the bearer of one of the few legendary sentient demonslaying blades, Chaos. And underneath the lust is actually a strangely decent guy. Although:

Expect to see this alot. Gahahahaha. Rance has the ability to strip out of his Half-Plate in about 7 seconds when he thinks he might be able to get some. Which is impressive, I’ll give him that…

In short, the opening story is: After his adventures in Zeth, Rance decides to come and visit JAPAN (yes, in capitials) with his slave, Sill, in order to visit the hotsprings and of course, have sex with as many girls as possible. Rumours of the beauty of the princess Oda Kou lead him to the territory of Oda, where he meets a seriously chill version of Oda Nobunaga, whom apparently finds running a dango store to be more enjoyable than actually running his country.

Apparently (for no real reason) the two get along, and Nobunaga decides to appoint Rance as the new Shadow Ruler of Oda. Rance accepts, feeling this is a great oppertunity to test his strength (and of course, after conquering countries, its also a good oppertunity to exhert his right as the victor and test his bedroom skills…) Since Nobunaga is a pretty dozy guy, theres about to be a rebellion, and your first battle of the game is leading the remaining loyalists against the rebels (whom are actually an atrocious force, but I suppose this could come down to it being the first battle and hence, meant to be easy).

After surpressing the rebellion, Rance is told to basically do what he wants with the country. Leading you to this:

You’ll spend some time here, of course. Clicking on a country gives you many options for actions in the top left box.

This ranges from preparing for battle and searching for dungeons to advancing the plot and talking to your various commanders (Purple ???’s show something brand new).

Speaking with commanders raises their affection towards you, and once you accumilate a certain amount, they’ll usually have a special ??? event which raises their trust level (Its Hate > Normal > Trust > Love on a sliding scale). Each time the trust level goes up, the commanders unit levels up, allowing you to give them a new ability or upgrade their stats. Of course, only female units can reach Love and as you might imagine, raising female commanders to Trust and Love also usually results in H (and more Satisfaction for Rance).

Each time you do an event or battle of any kind, you’ll use an action fan. You normally start with two (I have 3 here, since this is from a new game+).

There’s also resource management involved, with items, gold, national power, and Rance’s Satisfaction (Sat.) to keep track of. As you might imagine, you get gold from taxes, items from winning battles or clearing dungeons, power from developing or conquering countries and satisfaction from doing Hentai type things with girls. The latter is surprisingly important, as every 10 satisfaction gives you a great bonus, from upgrading Rance’s Unit and getting more action fans, to calling for reinforcements and getting really rare items.

Rance’s objective (at least initially) is to simply conquer all of JAPAN. This can and will change as the game progresses, as you can go onto different story routes. Usually, you’ll end up having to deal with the demon lord Xavier and his demon army in some form or another.

This naturally leads to battles, which look a little like this:

You pit up to six of your units against up to six foes. Initiative order is shown on the top hand tabs. As you get to one of your turns, you select an action and a target. Troops have a number of action banners, and time counts down on the middle column. To win, you have to either annihilate all the enemy units or have the battle rating (the topmost bar) in your favour when time runs out. The number of troops left in a unit acts as its HP (a little like Advance Wars). The above shot shows the Ninja unit of Gekkou (and his Loli sidekick). Of course, winning a battle is rather strategic, and it helps to use a nice variety of units, which come in lots of types:

This is the Unit Roster, currently focused on Kanami the Ninja girl.
I’ll list the types in the order shown in the list above:

• Rance himself leads a Warrior unit. These naturally excel at doing lots of damage really quickly, especially once they learn Guard Break. Once you recruit Kenshin, she is arguably the strongest Warrior unit in the game.
• Footsoldiers are defensive. They halve damage against them when they have their guard up, and can leap in the way of attacks targeting other units. They deal pretty mediocre damage though.
• Knights are a special unit (you only get one, led by Leila, through a Satisfaction bonus). They combine the offense of Warriors and Defence of Footsoldier, but are very expensive to recruit.
• Archers are naturally backrow units and are useful mainly for versatility, since can target either row, though not for huge amounts of damage. Yamamoto Isokoru is best since she can learn penetrating fire that hits an entire column and can’t be guarded against.
• Musketeers (not actually shown in this shot) are front row units with atrocious defence but high offence. They can be a bit dubious though since they also have a low action count and they’ll be slaughtered by Warriors.
• Cannoneers are special (again, you get Maria through a Satisfaction Bonus) and are upgraded Musketeers (they’re actually a huge unit of girls with rocket launchers!). They can shoot from the back row and deal high damage, making them generally pretty good.
• Miko’s are your healing and utility unit, able to replenish dead troops. They can also provide archery support  (though not as strong as actual archer units), and with a certain ability, also grant buffs to male units at the start of a battle (apparently, in this version of Japan, Miko’s are also ‘working girls’, if you catch my drift, hence the buffs to male units).
• Mages are special units again (you can get three, two from satisfaction bonus, one from a New Game + bonus). They are ‘western’ mages in the traditional sense, in that they typically throw fireballs (though Rizna learns a hit-all, Angel Cutter, whilst Magic and Shizuka learn a Penetration laser Beam).
• Diviners are the ‘eastern’ mages, who use spellpaper and shikigami. They are the best artillery units with their charge up hit all attack, and can also throw up damage prevention shields that completely negate a single attack against a unit.
• Ninjas are fast, dealing about as much damage as archers with Shuriken. However, Ninja Shuriken also cancels spell charging, which is very useful against enemy Diviners. They can also assassinate enemy commanders, which if it succeeds, OHKO’s an enemy unit (however, it succeeds only if the number of ninjas exceeds the foes unit and then not all the time, and regardless of outcome, always uses all of the Ninja units actions).
• Tacticians add buffs to your units at the start of battle and as a command. They can also de-buff enemy units (making them important to bring along if the enemy also has a Tactician), and finally, provide archery support (at a lower level than normal archers though, like Miko’s can).
• Cavalry is only recruitable by capturing enemy units from Takeda (horses don’t exist in this world, and these cavalry ride large ostritches which can only be bred in Takeda). It basically acts as a more mobile Warrior unit, able to attack from the back row and against the enemies back row, making it pretty deadly. They are hence both rare and expensive.
• Finally, Monks are a utility unit. They have decent attack (higher than footsoldiers, less than warriors) but awful defence. However, they can give other units actions, heal themselves, remove enemy buffs, stop enemy footsoldiers from guarding, and various other weird things.

Thats all that I’m going to explain about the game. The AliceSoft Wikia goes into a ludicrous amount of extra details if you’re interested. I’ll just finish with some more screencaps:

Yep, Kenshin (right) is a girl in this game. She is known as the goddess of war and is the best swordswoman in JAPAN. She also likes fighting for underdog, randomly defending nations that are under attack (including you, or nations you attack), until you engage Uesugi. Of course, when you do, the poor girl gets more than she bargained for with Rance:

Maybe its because he actually duals her and blocks her blows? Or perhaps its just the whole him saying ‘you look beautiful even up close’ scism? In any case, its love at first sight for her. Poor girl.

Nevertheless, once recruited, she becomes a ludicrously strong unit for you. With her Commander Charge, she often personally kills about 300 troops before her own troop then attacks immediately afterward. Brutal. (Rance has a similar move with RANCE ATTACK!)

Yuzumi the Musketeer girl adores cute things, apparently.

Souun is the head diviner of what I call the ‘Triforce nation’ (LOL). He is, naturally, the most powerful diviner unit, as this might suggest!

After taking over the Blacksmith nation, Rance’s sentient Sword, Chaos, gets some very special treatment from the female blacksmiths! I LOL’ed at this scene.

And to finish, Rance at the cherry blossom festival with (left to right) Suzume, Sill, Nobunaga and Kouhime. 3G, their Youkai minister, is in the far right background. Sill is very pink, isn’t she? (and yes, Suzume is indeed a catgirl ninja, sigh…though her ability to use Naruto like clones in her scenes is quite…disturbing…)

Anyway, that was a long post, ne? If you like your tactical strategy, this game will keep you going for at least 120 hours if you follow all of the routes, and its pretty darn addictive, so I’d recommend it solely on that. Of course, theres also the VN side attached with an above average story and lots of fun easter eggs (and of course, H-scenes, if you’re entirely here for that…) so its a very substantial, slickly presented package.

Thats all for now. I’ll probably do the last couple of reviews for the new anime season soon, so see you then.

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Exploding Bunnies and Delicious Literature

“One day, someone stuffed lit firecrackers into the mouth of the classes pet bunny. The bunny died horrendously.”

Well, thats not a line you read every day. O_o’

What kind of elementary students would actually do that? Or was I just an immense goody two-shoes in primary school?

Then again, this same novel, Bungaku Shoujo, has a female protagonist that eats literature.  She forces her Kouhai to write short stories. And then scoffs them as snacks. No really.

Notice the teeth marks on the book pages.
It is delicious literature you must eat it.

Certainly one of the most strange light novel translations I’ve read recently.

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In other news, I’ve been working on a new version of an ancient patch I made for Fire Emblem 4 in the distant past. So most of todays spare time has been spent hacking away. Evidently I’m having a FE resurgeance at the moment.

This patch is called ‘The Geneologists Nightmare’ and the main purpose of it now (as it was before) was swapping the characters bloodlines and classes around, so that the player of this version of FE4 loses the two normally broken ultimate weapons the player is given, the Holsety tome and the Balmung, but instead gets to use two of the ultimate weapons normally locked to the CPU, the Torhammer and the Swanchika.

More importantly, its goal was to do so in a way that not only required a five minute hack, but in a way which completely changes the game experience. Alot of planning was required to ensure everything worked not only smoothly, but well. That is to say, as many old pairings that used to be possible or canon should still be possible and good, the levels and enemies should proceed glitch free with slightly increased difficulty, and the player should have to think about the game in a fresh light.

Also, the patch is meant to try and fix a personal tick I have with the game. That being strange inheritance issues. Like Aideen having Lester with blue hair when her husband has green hair (she was cheating?!?). Or Fin saying ‘You look just like your mother‘ to Rana when Rana looks very little like her mother.

I’ve been having some issues with colour palettes at the moment, and may have to change or alter some portraits still, but I’ll present some early alpha version screencaps for you to stare at:

I just thought it would be funny to have Sharlow as the castles primary defender. No wonder he had an epic fail.

Alec Oifaye now has a split personality. One part cheeky knight, one part master strategist.

Actually, my name is Corpul, but since you insist on calling yourself Aira, we’ll call it even.

Crazy Ethlin Strike!

Ardan finally has Pursuit, just like he always wanted!

Azel loves fiery wenches swords, dont’cha know?

Anyway, I was also planning on adding another Spot the Difference post eventually, (probably tommorow or thursday) since the K-ON one is ludicrously popular. It’ll be more amusing things from recent animes than all concentrated, however, most likely. See you then.

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Fighting Fire with Fire

Seems awfully counterproductive, if you ask me.

And yes, SHOCK, Its been exactly two weeks since I last posted. I think I kind of had a burnout from the last humongous post about this upcoming anime season and shyed away from blogging for a little while. I haven’t even been checking up on the place until yesterday! For this I apologise. Call it a necessary break, if you will.

Anyway, first of all, I have another new sketch:

As always, click it for the full size one

Well, Ellen is also from Romancing SaGa 3. I thought Monica might be lonely by herself, LOL.

Anyways, Ellen usually makes it into my party since I absolutely adore having a decent user of the martial arts moves. The throws (especially Niagara Buster) do ludicrous amounts of damage against minions, though they sometimes fail against bosses (not really a surprise if the boss fills the screen and a 20 pixel tall character tries to throw them. Its most impressive when it actually works though!). And…I can’t bring myself to like Boston as an alternative. Its just kinda…odd…for a giant humanoid lobster to be doing martial arts. So more often than not, Ellen ends up staying. She is based upon this image:

I guess some liberties were taken in the conversion this time since I chopped off her sleeves and made the jeans into denim shorts with wooly bits. Her hair is also central rather than parting to her left side. But then, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, not alot of details are immediately inherent in a sprite upscale, which is why I like doing them.

Nevertheless, I guess she also looks a bit like a kung-fu Risa (from my own game, The Enemy Within)!

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I’ve also been spending these last couple of weeks starting to play the translated Fire Emblem 5 (Thracia 776).

Despite the fact that I’m a Fire Emblem affectionado, I’ve never actually got around to playing the 5th game, so I figured its about time. Interestingly enough, FE5 was (I believe) the very last game ever to be released on the SNES, coming out during the Playstation era as the N64 was in development.

And as people have said…its hard. VERY HARD.

Theres definately no contest between it and its predecessor, Geneology of the Holy War (which is in my opinion the greatest of all the FE games) in terms of difficulty. It even makes the Hard Mode Micaiah stages from FE10 go and cry in a corner.

I’ve been having a shocking time of it too, since I made the promise not to use more than 3 savestates in a chapter. (well, actually, I first thought to not use any. But that soon went out the window, since I’m not THAT hardcore!)

Even so, I suspect I’ve been having an easier time than some people because the RNG has been absolutely lovely to me for level ups. Not so nice concerning a certain squad of dragon knights with killer lances continually critting everyone, but we’ll forget about that for a moment. Leaf and Nanna have been more than blessed. Especially Nanna. She’s already nearing her caps at level 11, which is totally shocking. It almost makes me think Levin, not Fin, must be her father, such is her Speed! And Leaf is stronger than the big guys holding axes. Which is just silly. Though I guess in his case he has been holding the Noba scroll since we got it. I figured, it is technically his, after all (well, his or Altennas). Check out the stats  I screencapped:

I keep thinking I might have overused the Light Sword a little bit. But then, thats what Safy and her repair staff is for when we get to zero, right?

Jeez, Nanna, you’re on a rampage. She’s even exceeding her dad in most areas:

Well, except in Defence, Build and HP, anyway.

Of course, in an actual game of FE4, I usually pair Lachesis (Nanna’s mother) up with Azel (not Fin) since I like to use Delmudd and Nanna as mounted magical sword users with Pursuit and Charisma (and it also makes Nanna a disturbingly good healer too due to Fala blood). Of course, the Canon pairing is that Lachesis actually has her son, Delmud, with the mercenary Beowulf, then has her daughter Nanna, by Fin after the battle of Bahara, so we’re to assume that here is the case.

If you have no idea what I’m going on about, don’t worry about it. In brief, this game actually occurs between Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 of the previous game. Its not a prequel or sequel. More a midquel? Is that even a term? And in FE4, whom you pair and support with whom detemines what the children will be like, and you get to use said children in the second part of the game. Its multi-generational, which one of the things I love about it.

As for FE5, why is it so hard? Well, mainly because the enemy is relentless and has decent stats and equipment. There are very few mooks for your characters to gain XP from without a least a moderately difficult fight. More importantly, you don’t get given any money. None at all. If you want any dosh, you have to steal equipment from people and sell it or fight in the arena. For this reason (probably), this is the only FE with the Capture system. Basically, you can reduce your accuracy and power to deliver a non-fatal blow with your weapon. If you do so, and you have sufficient build to capture the foe, they pass out and are carried by your unit. You can then steal all of their equipment before letting them go like the merciful dude you are (LOL). Doing this is actually essential for getting some of the Gaiden chapters and is also basically a requirement to grab magical books since the shops don’t sell them. And yes, despite this, weapons still degrade at the usual rate. Talk about juggling resources!

Anyway, with that, I shall call it day. See you again soon.

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