Tales of Graces f: DAY FOURTEEN

[sincere]

Not going to play The World Ends With You. Going to play this instead.


Starting from: the-- even the place name is probably spoilery. On Fodra.

Comments

[rainfall]

It's kind of frustrating. I mean even with that very explicit video clip montage, nobody even slightly questions her black-and-white answer.

This is what comes of hitting Hubert with a rolled up newspaper until he stops questioning obviously suspicious people.

[sincere]

We leave the facility and suddenly Cheria and Hubert are all "Asbel sucks at carrying people and might drop you, so try not to collapse again, Sophie!" What the fuck? He's spent all goddamn game carrying you assholes and nobody ever got dropped. He's been doing it since he as fucking ten. Is this because he dragged Sophie around on a bobsled sleeping bag for the last few hours?

Pascal marvels at how close they all are. I hate this game.

[rainfall]

I'm really, really used to being able to blame this kind of thing on a bad dub job. Especially the ones on TV, for little kids, where they made all the dialogue "funnier". It's exactly the same weird, forced feeling those scenes had, where someone had stripped out the normal dialogue and replaced it with booger jokes and hasty transitions from one scene to the next so that the overall plot still made sense.

But not only do Tales games have good localizations these days, I can tell that all of the bad pacing and awkward attempts at humor were 100% there in the original.

And it makes me very sad.

[sincere]

I mean, I get it. Ha ha, we're such good friends engaging in light-hearted banter by teasing the guy with no self-esteem. I get it.

But this is just stupid. We're saying that Asbel is an Olympic swimmer. A swimmer who tows boats across the English Channel by a rope between his teeth. And then going, "Sophie, don't fall off the raft! Asbel sucks at swimming so he might let you drown! Teehee!"

It's just stupid.

[sincere]

SKIT!

Emeraude: Have I mentioned recently how much I hate Lambda?
Emeraude: I hate Lambda.
Emeraude: I hate Lambda.
Emeraude: I hate Lambda.

Guys? Maybe we shouldn't take her word as gospel truth. idk.

[rainfall]

Seriouslyyyyy. She could not be more clearly tattooing her bias on her forehead, not to mention some serious Grade-A denial. No one will be surprised when it's revealed that Lambda was abused and tricked into violence by stupid, greedy "Amarcians".

[rainfall]

I mean among other things, how could Lambda possibly be solely responsible for the "wars that broke out"? I think the human beings that reacted to whatever disaster by fighting amongst and destroying themselves probably had a hand in it. Call me crazy.

[sincere]

rainfall brought to my attention that it makes absolutely no sense with our established character traits that Hubert isn't very suspicious of Emeraude.

But, hey, that character trait was beaten out of him a long time ago, right? AND HE JUST LOVES PASCAL SO MUCH NOW. SHE'S HIS ONLY FRIEND.

[rainfall]

[sincere]

UNINTENTIONALLY HILARIOUS SUBEVENT! Sophie sees a shiny object and has a flashback to 1000 years ago when she was just chilling here on Fodra and a little girl tripped and demanded Sophie carry her. Sophie asked questions like "Why?" and "But you're unhurt?" and the little girl bitched about cheeky humanoids, but concludes that Sophie wants to be bribed. She offers Sophie a brooch to make her look more human.

A Godzilla monster forms out of the ether!! While Sophie is reciting her protocol for such a monster, it charges into the little girl and knocks her down... fatally. I guess this monster isn't a Sailor Moon villain, Sophie. It's not waiting for you to finish your chant or anything! But it does wait very politely while Sophie bows her head and is briefly sad and then recites her protocol again.

Anyway, present day, they found the brooch. Asbel is inexplicably snarky when Sophie wants to wear it.

[sincere]

Sophie gains the title "Stirred from Detachment", which claims that she "lost someone important right before her eyes".

That bitchy little girl who thought Sophie should be reprogrammed because she was defective for daring to question a human? Really.

[rainfall]

I think the "unhurt" line referred to Sophie herself. (Since the girl said, "WHY? Jeez, are you broken or something?!" So Sophie ran a diagnostic scan.)

Asbel's line really startled me. What is this game.

[rainfall]

Im, important.....................

[rainfall]

Also I guess this was post-the disaster that was all Lambda's and nobody else's fault, huh? Since the landscape looked identical.

[sincere]

Dungeon dungeon dungeon...

[sincere]

Finally. That was stupidly annoying.

[sincere]

There's a random glowing block in the room?? The humanoid robots in the room wake up and start attacking us. BOSS!

[sincere]

The boss's sword is also a hoverboard.

[sincere]

Hubert finally asks Emeraude a question: Why do we need this Macguffin? She explains that derris ore is Lambda-resistant.

Is it... Is it ore from Derris-Kharlan.

It absorbs and reacts to the eleth that powers the abilities of Protos Heis. Wait what? How is that a good thing? It absorbs the eleth that Sophie needs to be superpowered? I don't get it.

Anyway she doesn't see the macguffin, maybe we'll have to build it ourselves--

Oh wait Pascal already did that in her trademark wacky, half-accidental style.

[sincere]

And while she was at it she made herself and Malik superpowered rings because derris ore conveniently absorbs Sophie's power in a way that probably only was established for this very purpose: so now THEY can JOIN the special glowy club!

[sincere]

Cheria: ...Rings?! You two aren't -- engaged, are you?!

Only salvageable part of this scene.

[sincere]

SKIT! Cheria ruins the cute with the rings by turning it into her obsession with marrying Asbel.

[sincere]

Hey guys, so why didn't Lambda eat your world like he did Fodra?

Asbel: Ephinea is home to vibrant people and plentiful natural resources! Clean air, fresh water...

Just-- just not cryas, right? Massive cryas shortages everywhere? People starving and dying? Right?

Asbel: It's pretty much... perfect.

...But what about the first half of the game?

[sincere]

Emeraude concludes that Lambda wants to merge with the Lastalia and then he will absorb all the eleth in Ephinea. But he can't do that unless his host body is converted... in a way that no one has specified. That's good.

[rainfall]

/just lies here sadly, forever

You know, when Natalia was attached to tiny Asch's promise to marry her, she had a damn good reason. It was a really sweet, memorable proposal that tied into her values, and it was kind of -- you know -- serious. Asch really was saying he wanted to marry her.

I've never quite understood the situation with girls like Cheria, who fixate on what were only technically proposals, if squinted at sideways, from extremely oblivious guys who didn't even remotely mean it. The attitude appears to be, "YOU ARE OBLIGATED TO FULFILL THE PROMISE YOU MADE WHEN YOU WERE TOO YOUNG TO UNDERSTAND ITS CONNOTATIONS," as if they can somehow trick or pressure a guy into marrying them and that will result in love magically.

It's one thing if the girl is supposed to be obsessive, dumb, self-centered, or so aggressive that she doesn't care whether or not the guy wants to marry her, as long as she can have him chained to her bed by her royal guards.

But when they're supposed to be sweet romantic girls like Cheria... yeah. IDK.