[Show Intro] Jala Hey, thanks for coming! I'm glad you're here. Come on in! Everyone's out on the patio right now. Looks like a couple of people are in the garden. I can't wait to introduce you! Can I get you anything? [turned away] Hey folks, our new guest is here! [Intro music] 00:00:01.79 Jala Hello world and welcome to Jala-chan's Place. I'm your host, Jala Prendes (she/her), and I am in the den gaming one more time with my good friend Daniel (he/him), to talk about Shining Force 3 Scenario 3 - the end of that game, and then kind of recap the experience of playing Shining Force 3 back to back, like the whole thing over this past two years of playing it. So hey, Daniel, how are you today? 00:00:31.37 Daniel Hey. Doing well. How are you? 00:00:35.47 Jala It's hot. 00:00:36.56 Jala It's triple digit temperatures here today 00:00:41.66 Daniel We're finally getting nice days here, and I feel sad about that for you. Oh. 00:00:45.72 Jala Yeah, well, you know, it's going to be triple digits for me for like months and months. So it's also the beginning of storm season. So that means that I have not yet, but I, well, I started the project of trimming the trees. I have a lot more trees to trim, not just the growth from the last year, but also there are some limbs that got a little bit too long that are hanging over in places that scare me. So I need to make sure that I take care of those. Like I don't want them falling on somebody else's car and then that being something that we get sued for. So, uh, you know, I have to go and take care of all of that in the middle of this triple digit weather. 00:01:18.09 Daniel yes. 00:01:21.94 Jala So, um, wish me luck whenever I get to that. I don't know it's going to be today, after podcasting or whatnot, we'll see, but in the future I will be doing that and doing some hot and heavy lifting. Yay! But I'm super stoked to be talking about the end of Shining Force 3 Scenario 3, in part because it's been such an experience playing it and then talking about it in depth with you this whole time. You know, that we have right now four episodes. This is the fifth one, fifth episode on this title. 00:01:56.08 Daniel yeah 00:01:57.91 Jala This is, wow. And every one of them has been like three hours long. So yeah, without any more preamble, you're currently still aspiring to eventually do stuff on Twitch, right? At some point in the future. So we'll get there when we get there. I am streaming on Twitch, although I did not this particular week, but I will be resuming next week. um So you can catch me there. And whenever Daniel is streaming, it will be one of my recommended stream folks on the bottom of my so page. So that'll be a thing folks can check out. 00:02:33.78 Daniel Awesome. 00:02:35.30 Jala So yeah, anyway, about us in this podcast, you can find us on ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. You can kick us a few bucks to help us continue to do these things and pay for the hosting services and all that other fun stuff. So without any further ado, I want to get into the end of this game. I'm ready. Let us talk about chapter 6 of Shining Force 3 Scenario 3. It's called Metropolis at the End of the North World. So Julian and company decide to rest in a small village named Dormant on the other side of the mountains, which are supposed to be, guess what? Dormant volcanoes. We'll see more about that in a little bit, but, uh, NOT so dormant volcanoes. 00:03:17.32 Daniel Ha ha ha ha 00:03:20.79 Jala Anyway, Donheart asks around about Synbios' army as everybody expects them to have passed ahead quickly, but he finds out that Julian is the first to arrive. There is no word of any other army. So just to recap a little bit from last time, Julian and company passed the North Wall. They went through some tall grass, which we camped on for a while. We had a lot of lore dump about, you know, stuff about the Vandals and the Innovators and how those things happen and the ties to Shining the Holy Ark. And Gracia became Gracia Fieri and became a true Innovator. 00:03:56.55 Jala and ah then we saw maki the snow vampire/yuki onna in the mountains and now we have passed those mountains and now we're on the other side still heading for Remotest which is the remotest place and that's so far away and that's where the final battle is supposed to take place so uh we're still rushing ahead we've got to go uh the team is worrying that the Rainbloods have delayed Synbios and resolves to head back out onto the road to look for them and possibly back them up if they are in a fight 00:04:10.19 Daniel So far away. 00:04:28.41 Jala Leaving Dormant, they find Rook and Queen exiting a cave. Now, these are two of the Rainbloods. They say that Synbios and company have fallen into their hands. And while Synbios isn't dead yet, he's in critical condition. Assuming that Synbios is in the cave that the Rainbloods came out of, the Force heads into battle. So this is battle number 23 against Rook and Queen. 00:04:51.95 Daniel Yes, I didn't find this battle to be very challenging. The big thing here is not to move your guys too far ahead at once, because you can get swamped. They can come at you from multiple angles, but if you pay attention, notice the bad guys in the trees, take them out slowly, steadily, and then work your way up to the runes, and then don't try to separate your forces by putting a bunch of guys in the runes and then sending guys across. 00:05:00.42 Jala Right. 00:05:13.95 Daniel Just be patient at that point, and you can steadily take out the guys. This is one of the more fun ruins, too. I'm going to let Java talk about that, though. 00:05:21.07 Jala Right, right. So on your main battle map, you've got ah lich, gargoyles, brass knight, skeleton lords, earth dragon, queen, and rook. So you've got some folks that can fly and they will come at you from wherever they are on the map. So, you know, as Daniel's already stated, you can get swamped if you're not careful about how you're placing your guys and how you're maneuvering down this battlefield, even on a normal mode, you can have that happen. So, um, something to be aware of now, the ruins, it's basically off to the side and you have to cross like a little bridge to get to it. Inside the ruins, there are five cannons aimed at thieves that you can't physically reach. So you have to run your little guys over to the different cannons to mount, you know, man the cannons and then shoot the thieves after they open the treasure chests. And even though you can't physically reach them, you should still get the items when you hit the thieves with the cannon. And they, right, right, right. 00:06:14.47 Daniel It's fantastic. It's like pinball. 00:06:18.48 Jala It's like pinball or something like that. And you end up basically, I don't know what the purpose is of this, but all the thieves are running kind of pell-mell around to the different chests to the point that it's supposed to be confusing to you because the thieves will run past certain treasure chests near them to go to other treasure chests and they're kind of doing this thing kind of like you know here's the ball it's underneath one of these cups kind of shuffle game is what they're attempting. 00:06:53.72 Daniel Or like ducks in a barrel kind of thing where you're trying to win prizes at a carnival. 00:06:57.76 Jala Yeah, yeah. Something like that. 00:06:58.04 Daniel And you have to shoot the thing specific ways and you have to pay attention to where everything is. It's very yeah it's very unique, but it's a fun room. 00:07:05.38 Jala Right, right. So it's interesting and different because you've not seen something like this before. You have had to use cannon to shoot things in the past couple of scenarios, but this is the first time that you are shooting thieves with cannons. So, you know, it's carnival prize-y for sure. So in this ruins, you can get an earth wand, a chaos blade, Tiamat rod, and orichalcum. So this is not a hard one. You just have to have enough people to man all the right cannons. So you still have to get people that can move fast enough to get to the further cannons in order to hit all of these thieves. 00:07:42.58 Daniel And if you know the order of operations, you can use four guys to beat this, but it's tricky. 00:07:46.85 Jala Right. 00:07:48.63 Daniel So it's recommended that you take at least five. 00:07:51.42 Jala Yeah, I think I put five, maybe even six people, just I had an extra one just in case I needed somebody else's movement range, I think is what I did. But I kind of stalled out on the main map. I let my people just kind of hang out for a little minute until the people came back out of the ruins before advancing to the next part, just because you can get swamped. 00:08:07.75 Daniel Yeah. 00:08:11.29 Jala So from there, at the end of the field, Rook will remain in place. He kind of moves forward to guard this path towards the Queen. Basically, there is a river, there is a bridge, and Rook will hang out there at that bridge to stop you from getting to queen. you can If you get up in Rook's face, you can actually do... um or if you hit some of the other people on there with one of your big AoEs you can hit Queen with an AOE hitting somebody else in that area while Rook is still in place. But that's like-- 00:08:47.21 Daniel Especially the Spark 2 and 3 spells work specifically really well there. Yeah. 00:08:51.77 Jala Absolutely. And to the sides of Rook, there are two earth dragons. And what I did is I tried to take out one of the earth dragons with some of my ranged characters. And then also my flyers, I tried to get over there and take them out before I tried to get to Queen. And that's kind of tricky because those earth dragons will really like lower your defenses and stuff-- 00:09:17.56 Daniel Yeah, they're pretty nasty. 00:09:19.33 Jala Yeah, and I was trying to get them for Cyclops. I was trying to get Cyclops to recruit them, but I was not able to get him over there to do that. I was like, oh, well, we're just going to have to deal with it. 00:09:28.14 Daniel Yeah, he can do a lot of damage but and then then get them as allies. But yeah, it's tough to get that sequence to happen. 00:09:36.25 Jala Well, especially because with Rook in the way, you have to take out Rook, but then you also have to get Cyclops maneuvered over there while both of the dragons are still alive, but they will, you know, come after you and ambush you, and come and hit you from both sides while you're also attacking Queen. And the debuff stats that you end up with after they hit you will really mess you up with Queen if you're not careful. 00:10:03.07 Jala So ah you have to... 00:10:04.10 Daniel You can use Support and should be using Support to help yourself stay up though. 00:10:06.45 Jala Yeah. Undo that. Right. 00:10:09.43 Daniel And I think Resist will help against her too because she can cast spells. 00:10:09.65 Jala Right. 00:10:13.23 Jala So what did you think overall about like fighting that end section of the map? 00:10:22.53 Daniel I didn't find it to be too challenging. For me I was held back until I finished the ruins and then everybody kind of gathered together. And once I had them all grouped together I'd already taken out the lich and everything so then we just pushed the Rook and the dragons, and then we slowly devoured the Queen. 00:10:38.24 Jala And that's really, that that's how I did it too. Like, Rook is not a challenge on his own. You know, he's not a big deal. 00:10:43.03 Daniel No. 00:10:43.98 Jala It's really just like... 00:10:45.33 Daniel He's there to prevent you from just swamping her 00:10:48.10 Jala Right, exactly. So once you do that, you hurry into the cave and then Julian finds Synbios' force waiting for him along with the final Yasha. Masqurin informs the team that the Rainbloods came in an Imperial ship and that Synbios is assumed it was Medion and thus they were caught by surprise. They thought it was an ally, but really it was a Rainbloods and the Rainbloods came after them. So Synbios is now trapped in ice and Yasha is holding him hostage in order to force Synbios' army to do his bidding. So this runs this is one of those you know one of the several chain battles in here. So this is battle number 24 against Synbios Battalion. Now, before we get into that, how did you feel about this as, hey, by the way, off screen, this stuff happened, and that force that you had control of totally got swarmed and taken over. How did you feel about that, Daniel? 00:11:39.71 Daniel The first time this happened to me, because this isn't my first playthrough through, the first time it happened to me, I was like, oh no, this isn't good. I thought these guys were supposed to be allies. This is a major betrayal. And I really thought that it was a really unique way to do the that part of the story. But having known that what the cause of events and the things that happened, I still feel a little bit betrayed here. It's like, come on, guys. Yeah, I understand that Yashas are bad, but just rise up against him. Don't let him do this to you. It was kind of like, oh, do you have to? And then to pick particularly this time through, my Synbios Force is all level 30. So that was a little scary going up against guys with 10 or 15 more HP than you every single every single fight. And Masqurin actually killed some of my guys here. 00:12:26.93 Jala She did what? 00:12:28.25 Daniel Because she got... She Spark 3'd me. 00:12:32.38 Jala Hmm. Yeah. 00:12:33.25 Daniel Twice. 00:12:33.54 Jala That'll do it. That'll do it. 00:12:36.88 Daniel Yeah, and then I was like, no, we can't let Masqurin live, so Bye, Masqurin. 00:12:39.67 Jala Oh no. Right. Well, and then it's so, the whole idea here is that Yasha has Synbios trapped and the only way to save him is by working, like doing what Yasha says, because they can't get through the ice. The only thing that will open up the ice and save Synbios before he freezes to death is Yasha himself. And Yasha is telling Synbios' Force to fight against Julian. So they're like, I'm sorry, we have to do this because we don't want Synbios to die. And that's the whole thing. And I'm like, everybody, every single bad guy has gone back on anything that they have told you this whole time. Don't you think that he's playing you for a fool? Like, don't you think... 00:13:26.58 Daniel Yeah. 00:13:28.10 Jala But, and that's the thing where I'm like, I'm not buying it. I can't buy this. I can't get it. They would go on with the larger mission. I don't believe that they, you know, like maybe some of them would fight for Yasha, but not all of them, you know, like maybe the core Dantares, Grace and Masqurin would, but I don't think that everybody else would. 00:13:38.15 Daniel No. 00:13:47.22 Jala Whatever, whatever. We're just gonna set that aside. In this world, it happened that way. It is cool, it is cool, narratively speaking, to have this happen here. Now, for me, you already know that I had my screwed up save data, so I didn't have any save data for Scenario 1. So these guys were pansies, they were pushovers, they were not a big deal to me because they were all lame. And that boded really ill for me in the last chapter when I had to level them up. Because I got control of them and I had to level them up for the last battle. 00:14:16.87 Daniel yes 00:14:19.84 Jala And I'm like, oh no, oh no. 00:14:21.77 Daniel And you have the tiniest army in the world. 00:14:23.83 Jala Yeah. And it was like not even a full 12 people. 00:14:25.99 Daniel It's 10 characters. 00:14:26.11 Jala I had 10, 10 characters at the end. 00:14:28.59 Daniel Yeah. 00:14:28.74 Jala Yeah. Well, anyway, moving back to this battle though. You have Dantares, Masqurin, Grace, plus at least four other members of Synbios's army. You also have Master Ninja and Yasha as a boss. There are some items. There's Small Mithril in the right wall alcove, Aurihalcum in the left wall alcove, and then another Aurihalcum in the left candlestick, if you happen to go over there. And you can kill Synbios' forces or not, depending on your preference. Narratively, I would prefer not to kill them, but they were in my way and they kept on doing stuff when I was trying to fight. 00:15:02.70 Daniel Yeah. 00:15:03.49 Jala So I just killed them off. You can resurrect any of anybody that you need to before the final battle. And it doesn't have an impact other than you get to see their sad, disappointed text as they die. 00:15:14.76 Daniel Yeah. Sorry, buddy, but your turn to go. 00:15:18.91 Jala It doesn't feel good narratively, but it makes sense tactically to kill them here. 00:15:24.59 Daniel Unless you really unless you really wanted to kill Synbios' army, then it feels great. 00:15:28.96 Jala Yeah. But Yasha has a nasty spell that will affect a Spark-level radius and do modest damage, but it does freeze your characters in place, which can screw you up unless you're like Daniel and you have everybody ranged. Or, you know, I happen to have a mixture of ranged people in there, so my ranged characters could still take him out in any anyway. 00:15:43.78 Daniel Yeah. 00:15:48.87 Jala So it wasn't a big deal to me. 00:15:50.58 Daniel The other crazy thing about that ability, though, is that that ability is not affected by luck. Even with 9 luck, you still get frozen in place, I believe. 00:15:58.90 Jala Yeah. Yeah. Like without a doubt, everybody gets frozen in place. There's no not being frozen. 00:16:03.36 Daniel And that's one of the only spells that affects you, even if you have 9 luck. Even Soul Steal. Soul Steal, I think if you have 7 luck or higher, you're immune to Soul Steal, but that thing, no matter what, you're still going to get hurt by that. So part of the reason why I love having ranged characters is so that, hey, yeah, you did that spell to me. Now I'm going to hit you with all this. 00:16:21.87 Jala Yeah, right. It's like, I don't care. But yeah, for me, I had a mixture of range people and I actually like for any boss in general, it's always best practices to have your range people in position before you even get your big hit or heavy hitting manual fighters up front to do it if you have you know one range. But anyway, you take out Yasha. How was this fight for you? I mean, it shouldn't have been too bad since you had ranged, guys. I mean, oh, well, I say that. I guess Yasha specifically. I mean, your Synbios is worse. You already said that was a pill and everything. 00:16:54.24 Daniel Yeah they were all pretty high level so it was fun challenge. I tried to approach it the way I approach every fight swamp the guy swamp the guy swamp the guy and move forward slowly and it I think it took it I don't think I went back, I don't think I retreated in this one I think it was one try. But yeah like I said masquerade killed at least two people and I was pretty sad because one of those was Cyclops and the other one was Thousand. I had grouped them together and hadn't put anyone else with them because they have higher range. And I was trying to sneak past her. And she was like, no, no, no. 00:17:24.67 Jala Wow. You know, what's funny about that is that we talked so much last time we were camping out on how much we love Thousand. And I feel like it's right around here or right after that Thousand starts to like peter off and he's still useful because he's a flyer and everything, but like he doesn't hit as hard as some of the other characters start to at this point, at least for me in my playthrough. 00:17:49.70 Daniel he can be really He can be really buffed up, though. If you give him a White Ring or a Gale Ring, he gets really good defense with that, as well as having some bonus attack. 00:17:55.83 Jala Right. 00:17:58.72 Daniel And then if you give him a Movement Ring, if you have access to that, and if you've buffed his Movement, he can move up to 9 or 10 squares in a round. So assuming you do these things, he can be a tank and a wall for you, and he does some really good damage if he gets his specials off. So he can be really strong. 00:18:17.57 Jala Right. Mine was really high defense. He didn't have a high movement or anything. Like I didn't have a ring for that or I put it on Isabella. I don't remember because, you know, I use Isabella to attack everybody all the time. So I don't know if I gave it to Isabella or if I just didn't have one. But my Thousand was just he was a tank, but that was about all he was. And I was like, I got a lot of heavy hitters. I'll get my heavy hitters out. So he didn't get used in my last battle. But Cyclops, though. Cyclops has died for you in the last several battles now at this point. 00:18:47.46 Daniel Yeah, just about every time. 00:18:47.87 Jala Like, he's dying a lot. So, like, I'm curious. Did he end up in your final team for this? Or no? 00:18:53.81 Daniel Ah yes, he did. 00:18:54.92 Jala He did. 00:18:55.14 Daniel Yeah. Oh, no, not not for the final final fights, no 00:18:58.78 Jala Okay. 00:18:58.83 Daniel He made it all the rest of the way, but at the final parts, I was like, no, no, I need to swap in for more magic. 00:19:04.88 Jala Right. 00:19:05.10 Daniel So actually, I think right after this, I swapped him out for Primula. 00:19:05.46 Jala Right. I use Primula too. She was in my final battle. Anyway, we'll get to that. Let's go back to this though. Yasha, after you beat him, tells you his life story before he dies. And then he mentions Rodi, who is from Shining the Holy Ark. 00:19:23.15 Jala And Julian remembers meeting Rodi in Einrich. And he was one of the warriors who stopped the Vandals' plot to open the Holy Ark and revive the Thousand Year Kingdom. So that that was part of the Holy Ark's thing, like the story of that game. 00:19:36.15 Daniel Mm-hmm. 00:19:37.58 Jala So, uh, Rodi was branded as a rogue ninja and he had several assassins sent after him from other clans, all of which he defeated. Yasha and his brothers were sent after Rodi. Of course, they were all defeated, but after getting a taste of the world, they decided to become rogues themselves. And this wasn't taken too kindly, especially since they killed the ninja master of the Far East village to get their hands on an ancient scroll. And they found themselves the target of assassins. In the end, they managed to avoid this by gaining employment with Emperor Dominant. So... I mean, like, there's a whole story that they just unloaded to you right now. And it's like, why can't we have that as like... I mean, there's not DLC in this time, but like, that feels like a DLC to me. Like, where we just play Yashas, you know, the Yashas' quest and them stealing the Ancient Scroll. Like, what did this scroll have to do with anything? Like, you know. 00:20:31.87 Daniel I think it's how they, because I imagine, or from what I recall, that it allowed them to become ascended ninjas, from what I from what I recall about lore in the games is that it allows them to be better ninjas than they were. So they were, they gained the scroll and it gave them some extra power, which essentially made them top notch ninjas instead of just being like, as they were. But I don't recall if it was, you know, that might actually just be fanfiction thinking about it now, but it does make sense that there would be nice to have more content about why. 00:20:54.44 Jala Gotcha. 00:21:05.82 Daniel I'm thinking about that at this point. It's like, yes, it would be fantastic to know. And so that might be something that we could create a mod for some point down the road. 00:21:14.87 Jala Right. Well, and not only that, but you know what? Something else that I feel was totally lacking in the in the end of this game that I want to see. And like this is getting into like after we talk about the rest of it, but General Steel, you don't get to fight him. I want to fight him so bad. 00:21:31.01 Daniel Yes. 00:21:31.21 Jala So... So yeah, like we'll put a pin in that. We'll come back to this. um So anyway, Yasha tells you his life story, tells you all this lore ties in into Holy Ark some more. And then after that fight, you also learn that Yasha is the only buddy, only person that can free Synbios from the enchanted ice. So he will slowly suffocate now that Yasha is dead. So you kill him and then you find out, oops, I can't unlock the enchanted ice. And so Synbios is going to die, but you know what happens, right? The thing that always happens. 00:22:00.12 Daniel You lose half your gold. When Synbios dies, you lose half your gold. 00:22:03.42 Jala Right, right. No, no, just then our stalker Jane appears and offers a solution. She's going to crack open the ice because she knows that Julian wants to save Synbios. And so because the stalker wants to please her target of affection. She is going to break this ice. And once that happens, her Vandal power will encase Synbios in Dark Water. And the only way Synbios will survive is if Gracia blesses the water immediately with their holy power. So she's using the dark magic of her Vandal soul to open up the ice to get Synbios out of there. But then, he's still going to die unless Gracia helps. So it has to be like a tag team thing. So this is the plan. 00:22:48.18 Daniel Yes, combine the powers that we have together. This is the Voltron of the show. 00:22:52.42 Jala Right, right. So as this plan is executed, Jane is injured by Gracia's Innovator magic, but she's happy to have saved Synbios because of course she has to be like, Oh, to have sacrificed myself for my love, you know? And as usual, she then deuces out and disappears again because that's what she does. She shows up after stalking Julian and waiting for the opportune moment to show up and help him and then leaves again. 00:23:20.70 Daniel Oh, he doesn't need my help yet. Oh, now he needs my help. Here we go. 00:23:26.96 Jala The force then returns to Dormant and dumps Synbios into the hot spring, which helps cure him. It's allegedly supposed to be a healing hot spring. This is a very Japanese thing. You know, like there's the healing hot springs. Let's go take him to the healing hot springs. And he isn't 100% yet. He says, look, I can even stand. And all of his text when this happens is all shaky because they do all the text effects and everything. I love that part. 00:23:51.15 Daniel Yeah, it's fantastic. 00:23:53.24 Jala It's very silly. And then while Julian and company are considering staying to wait for him to heal up, Donhear arrives and informs everyone that Medion is heading north as the last two Rainbloods are hot in pursuit. So as a result, Julian decides to head north to aid Medion because he has a feeling, a nasty nagging feeling that maybe something bad is going to happen. 00:24:16.97 Daniel It involves the Rainbloods. It's got to be dealt with. 00:24:20.21 Jala Absolutely. And, you know, of course, it's like they can't just do the thing to Synbios, you know. I knew the very first time I played this through. I'm like, OK, since we had to fight Synbios' team, that means we're going to have to fight Medion's team. That's going to be a thing. It's obligatory at this point. 00:24:34.59 Daniel Yeah, you fought one of them, you have to fight the next one. It leads hand in hand. 00:24:37.20 Jala Right. So in town at this point, though, if you buy meat from the item shop and talk to the little guy that's walking around town and then head to the well, you can recruit Turk and Orga. And so Turk is this little goblin guy with long ears. Is he a goblin? 00:24:56.83 Daniel I'm trying to remember what he's referred to as. I don't really use him much, so... um 00:25:02.25 Jala Really? I used him. I think he might have even been in my final team. I don't even know. We'll find out. I used him for a while. But anyway, Turk is a little goblin guy or something. 00:25:12.71 Daniel I think he's a goblin, right? Yeah, he's an ogre rider, so I would imagine he's a goblin. 00:25:16.62 Jala Yeah. And he rides on Orga, which is a gigantic ogre. And the two of them, like basically he's the eyes and the brains and Orga is the muscle. And the two of them fight together and they are hungry and Orga eats a lot. So they decide to fight Bulzome in exchange for food. 00:25:34.62 Jala That's a good deal. Good deal right there. As long as you feed us, we'll fight demon God. It sounds great. 00:25:42.12 Daniel That's a great deal, yeah. 00:25:44.54 Jala So leaving town to head for Remotest again, the force encounters a masked monk who is there to halt their advance. And then we have battle 25: The Floor is Lava. That's what I called it. 00:25:58.55 Daniel It totally is. 00:26:00.15 Jala Yeah, yeah. So in this fight, you have Salamanders, Lesser Demons, Lich, Dark Gunner, Blue Cleric, and the Masked Monk. And the volcanoes, despite being in the apparently poorly-named Dormant Mountains, are spewing lava. So the battlefield is being consumed, and you need to keep ahead of the flows as the lava will deal 20 damage every turn. 00:26:22.82 Daniel It's pretty weak lava, if you ask me. 00:26:25.08 Jala Right, right. I mean, like, just the fumes of lava alone should kill you from a distance. But that's a thing that I have a gripe about in every single video game. Every video game. It's like, Resident Evil 5, in the middle of all of a volcano. Sure. Sure, that'll work. 00:26:41.61 Daniel Yeah. Totally a great plan. 00:26:43.90 Jala But during the battle, the Force sees an Imperial ship that just is coming down one of the waterways and then it just gets subsumed by lava and destroyed. And Benetram wonders if this has happened to Medion. Oops, did that happen to Medion? Did Medion die in the lava? But of course he didn't. We don't know who was on that ship, but they done died. So how was this battle for you? 00:27:17.34 Daniel It's a bit tricky. If you don't pay attention to the lava flow and you're not quick, some of your guys take a lot of damage. And the problem is that 20 damage over four or five turns is enough to kill most of you guys at this point. So you have to really be paying attention and keep moving them forward and in the right way because it kind of flows around the map. It did take me one or two turns of realizing that, hey, this is dangerous, and I did take some damage with a couple of my guys because I was trying to go all the way up, and I think you have to kind of zigzag this map to do it effectively. 00:27:51.86 Jala The lava will flow in as you're going up. It'll flow in from the left. So you have to veer your team over to the right of the map. And then it will start coming in from there. But I think if you stick to the right side of the map for most of it, that that will work. Because I think that's the way that I went around. 00:28:16.90 Daniel But doesn't it also come in from the right at the top? I think it comes in from the right at the top, too. 00:28:22.16 Jala Yeah, it will at the top of the map. But just to get to the end part of the map where you have your choke point and the final people that you have to kill. You can get there just by sticking to it. 00:28:34.03 Daniel And it's it's not a big map, either. 00:28:36.16 Jala No, it's not. But there are mountains in the way and there's also a bunch of flyers. So, I mean, there's the salamanders who are not damaged by the lava. And then you've got all of the flying people, the lesser demons and the lich and everything. And those lesser demons in particular can do a lot of damage if they swarm you, especially. And I sent some of my flyers up into the mountain to go deal with that, like Primula and Thousand. And I forget if I had anybody else. Are those your only flyers at this point? 00:29:05.38 Daniel Yeah, I don't think Rollie flies. Not a Pegasus. We talked about this. She's a unicorn. 00:29:13.29 Jala Yeah so Primula and Thousand went up there and then I had my minions because I had Cyclops so I had an extra dragon as well. You should have and Honesty too. So I had Honesty and Thousand and Primula and I had all of them plus one of the dragons just to soak up some hits. Cause the dragons at this point don't do very much damage. 00:29:44.32 Daniel Yeah, those are those are your sacrifices. 00:29:46.41 Jala Yeah, yeah. So I had that up there. And then that's how we took out a lot of the lesser demons/stalled them out so they would leave the other guys alone. So I could take out the salamanders. The salamanders are pretty strong, too, if you're not careful, especially if anybody's weak to axe attacks. 00:30:05.16 Daniel Yeah, that's not very much fun. 00:30:07.10 Jala Yeah. So how was the end of this battle map for you? It wasn't difficult on normal mode. 00:30:16.05 Daniel Once I got past lot of problems, then yeah, it was pretty easy. 00:30:16.13 Jala Once I knew where the lava--you've got a cleric and a mask monk and a gunner, and that's not too hard at the end of the map, but there are some pop-up, um, salamanders that show up behind you and the lava comes up. 00:30:31.53 Daniel Yeah, if you keep ahead of those, it shouldn't be too much of an issue. Like I said, just don't be slow. If you're moving all your guys as best you can, then you might avoid the rear guard salamanders coming at you. 00:30:42.55 Jala Right, right. So as the Force pushes northward, the weather worsens into a blizzard and near an iceberg, the team finds the Flagship stuck in the ice and head aboard to see if Medion needs any help. However, once aboard, they find that the prince and his army are gone. They advanced on foot across the glacier and the Rainbloods would have been hot on their heels. So they ran off across the glacier to keep pushing northward after the Flagship got stuck. So basically they just left all the sailors on the ship like, bye guys, good luck surviving the blizzard. Hopefully you don't die. 00:31:17.96 Daniel Yeah. Well, we'll see you later. We're going to leave a priest here in case other people come by. 00:31:24.38 Jala Right, right. So as you're heading off and chasing after Medion, then you have battle number 26 against Knight and King, because of course you have the other Rainbloods you have to fight here. So in this one, you've got Liches, Dark Gunners, Lesser Demons, Blue Cleric, Ice Golems, a Mask Monk boss, Knight, and King. There's also some items to pick up. There's the Abyss Wand in a chest. There's Nimble Ring. That is from exiting from the mountain where the Rainbloods appear. Orihalcum on the left island near the start. So, this one is interesting cause it has cracks on the ice. And if you stop on that, that'll do damage, like that'll fall through. And then like your guy, I don't know, does your guy die? I didn't actually sit on any of the cracks. 00:32:17.79 Daniel I think they die, yeah. 00:32:19.10 Jala Yeah, yeah. So you have to use flyers to get the items. So that's important. How did this battle go for you? So your battlefield's changing because the ice is cracking as more and more people appear. There's some things that pop up on the screen as you're moving through. 00:32:35.56 Daniel I was able to actually do this battle in a very few amount of turns, and the ice didn't get fully cracked for me this time. But that's because I understand this level very well. i had a lot of problems with it the first time through. 00:32:47.81 Daniel So I've kind of memorized what to do. And if you send enough guys straight up the map to the left a bit, then when the ice cracks and starts to crack on the right, you can go because that first crack comes across. And if you're far enough to the... I want to say to the left of where you start. i don't know if that's north or what direction that is, but if you if you move a far enough to the left from the beginning, you will go around that piece of ice really easily, and then the crack happens right above that. So if you're paying attention to where the cracks start to form, you can pretty much circumvent and go around all the cracks. And I was able to get the Rainbloods in a couple turns, and instead of letting them come to me or letting the ice golems fully get on the map because they start to appear after a certain point too, Because there's the Ice Golems are... Yeah, they there's like four or five Ice Golems, I think. 00:33:36.77 Jala Yeah. And they only appear after the cracks in the ice and that's like to deter you, to slow you up when you're trying to get around everything. 00:33:43.85 Daniel But if you can if you can get far enough ahead of that, then you can just have just deal with a couple of those instead of trying to deal with all four at once, which I found to be the best strategy for this map. So that's pretty much what I did. I rushed to the rest of the bosses. Sent Thousand over to get all the bonus items on the map, and he was the only flyer that I sent, other than, I think, Primula near the end. She went in to get that Nimble Ring. 00:34:06.08 Jala Right, right. So for me, I took my time and that's partially because at this point I had Turk and you know my tendency where I have to level everybody up evenly you no matter what. So I was doing that thing and I was trying to get him caught up in levels, but he moves very slowly. So even though he's got a large range, he's such a slow mover that it's hard to get him where he needs to be. So all the ice cracked for me. And I did stop and take out all the golems to get the extra XP. Because again, you know I'm not grinding. I'm not repeating battles. I'm just doing one and done. So I went made sure and let everything pop and killed everything on the screen. So it was not a difficult battle. like King and Knight are not hard. They don't hit as hard as like some of the other-- 00:34:48.96 Daniel I think they're melee specific. I don't think either of them have spells either. 00:34:51.12 Jala Right. 00:34:52.60 Daniel So as long as you're keeping track of that and you take out the Masked Monk healer, long as you're able to take him out or neutralize him by Sleeping him or whatever early on and then getting rid of him as fast as possible, then it becomes much easier to deal with that. Them being able to heal and or you being able to suffer AoEs here is really painful, especially since the Ice Golems can surround you. But I found that it was easy enough to pin each Ice Golem down three guys on the side and then having them up against one of the, one of the cracks on each of the two guys that I had to deal with on the front. And then I also did the same thing with the, with the Rainbloods. I was able to corner them by having guys fully surround them. So they weren't able to move on any of my guys. So I could choose which targets they were picking. 00:35:34.50 Jala Right. Right. That's what I was doing as well. And also Thousand was being a tankier for me. So he was tanking hits because he has so many HP and such good defense. So you know he was tanking hits a lot for me in this part. 00:35:48.94 Daniel Yeah, because he had a nimble ring for me, though, I was like, I'm to send you across the map so that you can take care of those two things that you need to get so that we don't have to be here forever just to get those two items. 00:35:54.57 Jala Right. Right. I think I sent Honesty and Primula up but then Primula circled back around and was able to do some damage with magic, but then Thousand was in the middle of everything like being a tank for me so. 00:36:09.01 Daniel Yeah, he's good at that. That's his main job, really. High HP pool, lots of defense. 00:36:16.19 Jala Absolutely. So after the battle, the force finally reaches Remotest just in time for the Dark Priest who heads Bulzome's Temple to appear. And he has ensorcelled Medion who is at this time going to fight Julian and company with his team. He is under the dark spell and he's like, yes, I believe in Bulzome. And, you know, cause of course he's gotta be the one ensorcelled cause he's the emo guy. So now he's got something else to be emo about. 00:36:47.34 Daniel All these bad guys with their underhanded tricks. This is fantastic. 00:36:50.44 Jala Right. Well, and then it's funny, though, because then Medion's team is like, what do we do? I mean, we can't just abandon Medion. What do we what do we do? Well, if we don't do what the Dark Priest says, then, you know, bad things are going to happen. It's like, yeah, bad things already happen. He's already ensorcelled. What do you what else do you think is going to happen? But they end up fighting you, of course, because you already fought Synbios' team. So ah in this battle, battle number 27, you have Campbell, Synthesis, Uryudo, and at least four other characters from Medion's Force, along with Blue Cleric and Dark Priest. So there is a Brave Apple in the upper left tree and orichalcum in the lower left tree and the lower right tree. Of course, as you might imagine, you are not to kill Medion. You do not kill Medion. um You can resurrect him any of the other entourage later, but if you kill Medion, it's game over. 00:37:45.74 Daniel I did that the first time this time around I forgot and also missed that rave apple but yeah I was going to go was like yeah I'm just going to take Medionn out and make this easy and I'm really glad I saved like a couple of round before this because I went and murdered him and then i was like oh well yeah that was dialogue I missed the first time through so yay completion is happening but yeah. 00:38:10.17 Jala Well, this Medion fight for me feels a lot like training for the Heroes' Test at the end of the game, because you have to basically trap Medion in a spot and let him just exhaust himself using Spark before you really go after that priest. At least in my case, that's what I did. 00:38:27.50 Daniel Or you could Sleep him. Yeah, you can also sleep in, but I wanted him to run out of magic. So I let him go ahead and do that. 00:38:33.32 Daniel Oh. I think Brigit also has some MP drain at this point. 00:38:38.80 Jala Right, right. 00:38:39.52 Daniel So you could do that too. 00:38:39.80 Jala And I did, I had Brigit up there to suck some of his MP out, like right at the end, because I was sick of dealing with this shit. And i wanted to finish the battle. So I was like, hey, Brigit, go get some MP. But it took her some time to get up there because she's slower. 00:38:56.61 Daniel Yeah. And you don't want her to get murdered. 00:39:00.22 Jala So, how was the dark priest for you? 00:39:04.21 Daniel Oh, very easy. The main concern, like I said, I screwed up and had to redo the whole battle again because I had killed everybody. And then I was like, yeah, no, I'll just deal with Medion first and then I'll, oops. But other than that, yeah, this fight didn't pose any challenge for me. I did forget, as I said, to get that Brave Apple, which makes me kind of sad now looking at it there going, could have been a whole free other level, but I didn't need it. And yeah, it was it was a fun battle. I like the way that it's, you can go up either staircase that, that kind of makes me feel, it reminds me of a lot of fire emblem kind of games where you have multiple choices to get to the same boss. 00:39:39.19 Jala I like the multiple paths option myself, not like, there's only one way to do this map. And it's always fun to talk about that those strategies as well. 00:39:52.05 Daniel Yeah. The illusion of choice. Cause you still end up at the same place. It's fantastic. 00:39:58.74 Jala As usual, I split my team up, and I had half on one side and half on the other. So, you know, that's how that goes. So anyway, you fight the Dark Priest. Doesn't he have Inferno? 00:40:13.55 Daniel Yeah, I think it's Inferno. It has to be because he uses that ring and it does... it Yeah, it's Inferno. Which is great because not enough characters get to use that on you. 00:40:26.40 Jala Right, right. So that can hit you pretty hard if you're not careful, but depending upon who you place in places and if you use your resist spell, um you know, that can be neutralized. And of course, like you can also MP drain him and, you know, do all the other stuff that you have in your list of things that you can do, your whole kit. So after you'd vanquished the Dark Priest, Medion and company are totally vacant-eyed zombies. And the priest tells you that the powers of light... Oh oh yeah, that's right. The reason why Medion's team is fighting you is because they were zombified. They were under the spell too. And then that spell breaks. 00:41:02.35 Daniel They're so ensorcelled towards fighting another enemy. They're thinking that you're bad guys. 00:41:07.10 Jala Right, right, right. They think that you're an enemy. And then like, if you defeat them in battle, then they wake up and go, oh shit, I was fighting Julian. I didn't realize. And then they die. So that's even worse than the Synbios armies thing because they didn't even know they were fighting you. And that's terrible. Well, anyway, so the priest tells you that the powers of light, including Gracia's blessing, will not be enough to snap them out of it. The only way to break the spell is with dark power. So you know what's coming, guys. 00:41:35.94 Daniel Ha ha. 00:41:36.16 Jala But first we have to have some histrionics. So Julian, who seems somewhat hysterical at this point, at least to me, because he's been so chill the rest of the game. And suddenly he runs up to Medion and starts shaking him, trying to wake him up out of his stupor and is like having the drama music in the background. And this is, of course, for the effect, because you know, Jane the stalker is going to come and she's going to be like I'll use my Vandal power to help you Julian because I see that you care about this guy so you know i know because I've been watching you in the shadows this whole time anyway ah the super stalker shows up and says that she's going to help fix this so that Julian can have you know peace of mind or whatever. Julian she says this is a quote I wrote down, "Julian's heart is weeping. His deep sorrow called me." no it didn't your horniness for Julian called you is what it was but whatever we're gonna go with that we're gonna be like oh yeah she's really in love anyway after the after this fact she uses the power. She wakes up Medion. And then everybody is suddenly worried that this time she's definitely anger angered the Bulzome Sect and is going to be punished. Never mind all these other times that she has helped Julian this whole time. NOW they're worried. 00:42:53.14 Daniel Yeah, she's finally gone too far by helping Medion out. It's like, yeah, okay, so helping Synbios wasn't enough. Now that you've helped everybody and rescued everybody. 00:43:03.42 Jala Well, you have to, it has to be the hot prince. I mean, oh no, you cannot save the hot prince. There's no way. So, well, anyway, they are correct because of course they're correct because you know they have this, ooh, yeah, she's gone too far. They're going to definitely do something. Oh shit, the Valkyrie showed up. 00:43:20.84 Jala So the Valkyrie appears and beams her up and then floats away. So ah this causes Julian to now want to go save her. 00:43:30.39 Daniel Yay. Sorry, Mario. Your princess is in another castle. Mm-hmm. 00:43:33.35 Jala We have to go save somebody. It's always got to be some bullshit like that. Because at this point, Julian is just kind of along for the ride because he tried to fight Galm and failed to kill Galm. And that was his purpose in life for the last 20 years. And now he's like, I don't know what to do. I guess we're just going to go help the Godchild kill Bulzome or something. Oh shit. Now I've got to go save the princess, you know? But then Jane has some lines. She's like "to be cared for like this", "it's better this way". "At least I was able to do something meaningful in this world." Oh my God, shut up. 00:44:09.95 Daniel Yes, Princess, you go to the other castle now. 00:44:13.08 Jala Yeah, please, please just go to the Valkyrie. Please just go. And you know, I love it because it's very much like Princess Peach because this is a mushroom that just took her. 00:44:23.33 Daniel Yes, Giant Flying Mushroom has come and abducted you. Where's Bowser? I need my Shining Force 3/Mario crossover. 00:44:30.98 Jala Right. So Benetram then tells Julian that surely since the Valkyrie did not straight up attack Jane, she will be held prisoner at the Bulzome Temple waiting for Julian to rescue her. And this is hilarious for two reasons to me. One is, of course, this is the princess in another castle bit, but also Benetram telling Julian that his newfound purpose to save Jane just happens to also be where Benetram wants him to go. Awfully convenient, Benetram. 00:45:04.87 Daniel sounds like he planned this all along he saw this incident he saw this in scenario one is like I'm gonna get Julian to go to the castle 00:45:06.77 Jala Yes, he the Navigator. Yep. So anyway, Medion and his army snap out of it, and it's revealed that they did not even know they were fighting Julian and his team. They apparently had a vision of some other enemy before them that they were fighting, which we already talked about. Synbios and company conveniently then show up right about this time and go, oh, we missed the battle, rats. 00:45:33.56 Daniel Oh, gee. No XP for us. 00:45:34.70 Jala I'm... By the way, yeah and no XP, which makes me weep. My soul is crying. Where's Jane to come save me with my levels? That's right, she's in the Valkyrie. 00:45:45.70 Daniel need more brave apples. Yeah. 00:45:49.62 Jala Anyway, at this point, Keeper, the priest, awaiting the legendary expedition, greets everyone and ushers them into Elbesem's fortress, which is next to the Bulzome section of Remotest. 00:46:01.55 Jala So basically at the end of the world in this place called Remotest, there's the Elbesem Sect. And then you've got the Bulzome Sect and they're all just hanging out together side by side. And they're just kind of chill. 00:46:13.55 Daniel Yeah, it's almost like Utopia or something. It's like good and evil can exist to together side by side without any problems. 00:46:19.87 Jala Who would have thought? 00:46:20.19 Daniel Imagine that. yeah 00:46:21.23 Jala Yeah. Except not because we still have to go fight and kill Bulzome. So, I mean, whatever, yeah. 00:46:26.07 Daniel Yeah, that that is a small problem. 00:46:29.07 Jala Right, and then not only that, but there's also been a Thousand Year War between the two, but somehow in this one place, they've got like a Switzerland situation. Anyway, so the inhabitants of Elbesem's fortress are all Spirit Bearers, but not Innovators. They do not possess the power to fight the Vandals, so they have been waiting for the Legendary Expeditionfor the past thousand years so they've just been hanging out in this place holding out this last bastion as like a refill station on the way to the Temple for the Legendary Expedition so and yes indeed so don't forget to get your snacks. 00:47:00.00 Daniel The last gas station at the end of the world. Complete with blacksmith and yeah all the items you could possibly need. 00:47:09.13 Jala and it's hilarious because you don't get those from Elbesem people. You get that from the Bulzome Sect and sells it to you, which is even funnier. 00:47:17.01 Daniel They need money. 00:47:18.54 Jala They got to live too. They got bills to pay. So anyway, that's the end of chapter 6. We are now finally in Remotest and everybody's here. The gang's all back together and we are ready to regroup for our final battle. So Shining Force Forever chapter 7 is coming up. The three armies are there. It is decided that they each have to prepare themselves for the final battle. And then the game toggles you to start with Synbios. So at this point, this is like, you know, your grind up. And chapter 7 is just grind up and then the end. You know, so that that's all this is. There's no more filler battles other than going through the Heroes' Test and preparing for your final confrontations. So again, this right here with Synbios was the worst because I didn't have any data. So all, didn't I tell you it was like they were level what, 15 promoted maybe? 00:48:12.69 Daniel Fifteen unpromoted. Because you are first promotion, so you have to level them. You can promote them right away and then level them up again from there. Or you can level them up some and then promote them. 00:48:25.91 Jala Right, right, right. So I had to level them up some because I think I got them all to level 20 and then promoted them and then had to get them promoted again. Then leveled again. And I think when I finally finished the Heroes' Test, after grinding through the Heroes' Test several times, and by the way, any items that I found in the Elbesem place or anything else at this point all got given to Synbios because he needed it because he had nothing. They didn't have any of the items and special stuff that I had gotten when I played scenario one because of the save data fiasco. Level 15, there were 10 characters. Synbios, Dantares, Masqurin, Grace, Obright, Chivalry, Eldar, Khan, Murasame, and Finding. So...That means there was no archer. I didn't have an archer. I didn't have any archers, no Hayward. 00:49:15.35 Daniel No Hayward, no Justin, no Horst. Yeah. 00:49:19.82 Jala So yeah, this was terrible. 00:49:21.35 Daniel That's just, sounds awful. 00:49:22.67 Jala It was terrible. And I was stuck. I was stalled out on Synbios for a while. And that's part of what made the Heroes' Test eventually like, because you want to go through the Heroes' Test with everybody here, really, to be comfortable for your end battles. So having to grind through it multiple times with Synbios Before then I changed over to Medion and then to Julian and having both like Medion and Julian, I just had them go through once and then that was it. Then they were done and and we moved on from there. But Synbios, I had to go through there several times. So I ended up seeing way too much of the Heroes' Test at this point. And, you know, because this is a whole chapter, I really feel like at the end of the game here, there's a lot of slowdown because you don't want to see that much of that Heroes' Test, you know? So like it's going you're going to want some breaks in between playing some of that because you're going to otherwise get kind of petered out. At least I was feeling that way because of Synbios, especially like my soul left my body and I'm like, oh no. 00:50:18.41 Daniel Well, you do have to farm up orichalcum so that your Synbios team can have orichalcum equipment. So that takes a good couple hours just doing that, even if all you do is run through the first level over and over and over again until you have, in your case, 10 pieces. So at least 10 runs just for that team. And then you need to do that again for Medion's team if you don't have anything for them. And if you already, like, because if the game doesn't really it only provide you so many pieces up to this point if you get them all. So assuming you've been using them on all Julian's forces, might everybody there might have one and you might have a couple left over. So you need to farm up almost 35 or 40 pieces if you want every single person to have them. That's something I didn't even do. I equipped all of my main 12 characters and that was it. 00:51:00.01 Jala So here's the thing. I didn't make more than one weapon for anybody in Julian's team. And I got every piece of orichalcum along the way. And I had that stored up. So I already had some in storage. And I gave all of that to Synbios's team and gave them weapons as many as I could. So I didn't have to run through 10 times I had some or how come saved up. So I was able to use that for Synbios' team. 00:51:28.69 Daniel That's good. 00:51:33.75 Jala And then as I was grinding through Synbios and having to repeat that gave me some more orichalcum so I didn't have to go through for orichalcum too much thankfully but I did have to for the leveling and things like that just to get them up to speed and of course that Heroes' Test was a slog with with Synbios' team in particular especially the last couple of levels with no archer and only like one mage and everything like that was terrible that was terrible. Around town, though, you learn that Jane is, in fact, the child of Bulzome with an Innovator woman, which you read about back in Maya. And we talked about that last time. And she has both the powers of light and darkness in her and was subject to research by the Bulzome sect. So she is like a test subject type person. And then Death Helen protected her, I guess, from the Bulzome Sect doing research. And she and Jane became like sisters, which is why Jane intervened to save Death Helen so many times before. and They have a very close relationship. And some of the Elbesem kids hang out with the Bulzome kids, even though they're not supposed to. And you learn about that. And the fun thing, like this is something I don't know if you did this or if it was just me. um and Daniel, but if you go to the Bulzome church, you can opt to tell the priest that you want to convert to the Bulzome Sect. Did you do this? 00:53:00.46 Daniel Not on this playthrough. I did it in the first playthrough. This playthrough I remembered from, but yeah, that is hilarious. 00:53:06.02 Jala If you do that, he tries to eradicate the light in you, but you are too corrupted by heresy and cannot be saved. And then you're banned from the church. And it's so good. It's so good. 00:53:19.32 Daniel Yeah, it's just perfect. too You're too corrupt. You can't be helped. Even Bulzome himself doesn't want you. 00:53:25.34 Jala Yeah, it's great. It's great. So there are the usual shops as well as a blacksmith in the Bulzome section of town. And there are items for you to get around. You can get a goddess tier or goddess tears, multiple potions, fairy powders, angel wings and coins. So there's just like some basic items around that you can get picked up here. 00:53:44.13 Jala So yeah. And for me, like I said, I had to shuffle as many bonus items as I had in my um other teams. I had to sacrifice some of those and give them to Synbios' team for them to even stand a chance. 00:53:59.57 Daniel You can also get one more character here if you want him. 00:54:02.53 Jala Oh, yeah. Unoma, right? 00:54:03.50 Daniel Yeah. If Julian talks to Unoma in Julian's headquarters then Unoma is finally recruitable. Having seen him in every game so far and not being able to recruit him at all. 00:54:13.86 Jala I didn't end up seeing him in my headquarters. I didn't see him in there. I went in there, but I didn't see him there. So I don't know what. 00:54:20.85 Daniel should be there at the He should be there at the far wall over where, um if you come down the steps, he would be in the bottom left-hand corner. He should be sitting there. I think you have to have talked to him in every other game. 00:54:35.76 Jala Okay. So that's because I didn't have my Scenario 1 data. 00:54:38.87 Daniel Ah right, right. So because of the missing Scenario 1 data, you wouldn't have talked to him in the bar in Storich, which means, yeah. 00:54:43.04 Jala yeah. Right. Yep. So I got screwed. I didn't even get to see Unoma this time. 00:54:50.80 Daniel It's okay. I've never put him on the team. 00:54:53.85 Jala I was wondering whether or not you ever used him. 00:54:55.19 Daniel He's an absolute joke character. I would never touch him. I find him morally reprehensible, so I and can't even be bothered to try and consider leveling him up. He's one of the only things that I would never take anywhere. Because I level every other character up. Everybody gets levels, but he gets to sit there and do his thing and be on his own. 00:55:18.88 Jala Right, right. So as mentioned before, this this chapter is literally it's the Heroes' Test preparations for each of these teams. And then you head off to your final battle. 00:55:29.55 Jala So we're going to talk about the Heroes' Test because that's a primary thing that you need to do in order to go through. So like if you are on a normal playthrough of this game and you are playing on you're playing on normal and you're not really grinding, you're just going through the game the way that I've been doing. You can run through and with like with my Medion and with my Julian. I ran through the Heroes' Test one time, got all of the items, finished out the Heroes' Test once. And then I was good to go in case you, unless you need some more orichalcum, then you might need to repeat, you know, just a few of the levels just to get some orichalcum. But um this is a hundred percent doable. Just run through it once and then you're okay for your final battles. But, you know, again, I had to grind with Synbios. So that was a pain in the neck, but there's 10, 10, 00:56:14.47 Daniel and it's not required let me let me clear that up too a little bit is it's not required to get any orichalcu if you don't want it just makes your character stronger so you can beat the game with mithril gear if you want if that's something that people choose to do it does make insane difficulty a lot harder because that extra 20 points in damage really helps buff your guys up and some of those specials are a lot better than the ones on the mithril items 00:56:20.37 Jala Right. You don't have to. So for me, it wasn't a question. I had to go through at least once with all of the characters just to get the extra items and just the levels and everything and to make sure I got that gear. So let's talk about the Heroes' Test and how that works. So there's 10 levels of it. They're all laid out the same, but sometimes your party is split and other times it's not. I made notes about all of these levels and which ones split your party. This can be run through multiple times, as we've mentioned, and each team gets a special reward for killing the boss of each floor. If you return a second time after having gotten that reward, then you get orichalcum in its place, which is how you can grind. So you have to go through um once and then you have to egress out of battle and then come back or you know or finish the entire Heroes' Test and then come back to get orichalcum if you want orichalcum. If you have a full inventory, when you beat the boss, the prize item will go to your headquarters stash. So you don't have to worry about losing that prize item. Any other items that you are supposed to get from monsters normally, you will not get. The only thing you get is the item from the boss character on here. So you don't get anything else. No other drops. And between floors, surviving characters are healed with MP replenished at the start of the next level. So, you know, as long as the character has one hit point left, you will start fully replenished on the next level of the Heroes' Test. So that's something else to know. And if you can equip items that replenish HP and MP, this will also help tremendously on the last several levels of this in particular. 00:58:11.16 Daniel Yeah, this this is a good spot to bring out your goddess tears if you still have a bunch of those. Yeah, 00:58:15.43 Jala Yeah, that and then if you have any equipment like rings or, or you know-- 00:58:19.72 Daniel Magic Rings or Protect Rings that can heal you. All of those help. 00:58:23.74 Jala or any of the any of that, like if you have the lances or whatever that regen your health or whatever, just having that in your inventory and switching over to it or whatever, like that's useful to you if you need to, because they will have a lower attack at this point than what you can do with your orichalcum gear. But if you switch to it and then switch back to your orichalcum, if you need to fight, you know, like it when that character is not actively attacking anybody, you can regen HP or whatever. And that is useful during the last levels. 00:58:52.55 Daniel There's also an Ankh or two that you can get that have things like Aura 2. And those are extremely helpful to put on your spellcasters or at least have them in the inventory so that you can give your team a little bit extra healing too. 00:59:06.18 Jala Right. And is it called the Holy Lance or the Blessed Lance or something? But that one also has Support? 00:59:13.48 Daniel I think, yes, the Holy Lance gives you Support level 2. Things like the Arc Calibrate are fantastic to have just to give yourself some AoE if you need it. 00:59:22.46 Jala Yeah. And then there's an axe. I think there's an axe that gives you like a healing spell or something as well. 00:59:26.44 Daniel Aura Level 1. I think it's called the Holy Axe, but I could be wrong in the name of that, but it does it does have Aura Level 1 on it, which is helpful. It's very hard to use because that has to be used by somebody who has access to axes. So I think Produn is one of the only people that you can use it on in Julian's Force. 00:59:45.51 Jala There's Leon, right? 00:59:48.01 Daniel And Leon too, yes, you could use it on Leon. But I never use Leon, I don't think. I'm pretty sure I'm Produn-focused. 00:59:54.48 Jala Yeah. As much as we have thoughts about profound stupidity. 00:59:59.95 Daniel Yes, he's so deep. 01:00:01.81 Jala Yeah, so deep. 01:00:02.10 Daniel Except for the parts of him that are very shallow. 01:00:05.33 Jala Which is all the rest of him, except for the one specialty. Anyway, still so let's talk about the levels in the Heroes' Test. You've got level one, which is Lizardman, Killer fish, and a Harpy as a boss. Your party is together. The prizes that you get um are a Goddess Tier if you're Synbios, Health Bread if you're Medion, and a Potion if you're Julian. This is just your level one. ah it's not It's not a difficult one, because at this point, like even the... the um default team from Synbios don't have a problem with this level I'll just keep reading through some of these until we get to the more challenging ones and Daniel if you have anything to say pop up so level two you have ghoul green dragon and Bulzome golem and that's your boss and um you can get the where you can recruit the green dragons but at this point they're just so generic and bad you know with Cyclops that it's not really worth it 01:00:56.98 Daniel I wouldn't touch them personally. 01:00:58.12 Jala yeah No. So ah the party is split up. And what this means is there's four different cardinal directions and you have three guys in each of these sections. And for me, since I had Synbios and I had ah my default data, that meant I had two people on two of these sections because I only had 10 people total. 01:01:16.09 Jala It was terrible. 01:01:16.27 Daniel Yay. 01:01:17.44 Jala It was terrible on the later levels where they split your party. 01:01:20.79 Jala Anyway, Synbios gets health bread, Medion gets power wine and Julian gets quick chicken. 01:01:27.27 Jala Level three has sting worms, red dragons, and Hydra as a boss. The party is split. Synbios gets ah brain, all of them, everybody gets brain food. So, you know, cool. 01:01:37.58 Daniel Hooray, MP bonus. 01:01:39.15 Jala Yeah. Level four Minotaur slash bat and Kerberus. The party is together and then Synbios gets power wine. Medion gets quick chicken and Julian gets power wine. 01:01:50.78 Jala Level 5, Hellhound, Blue Dragon, and Griffin is the boss. Party is together. You've got Armor Milk for everybody as a prize here. 01:02:00.28 Daniel The blue dragons are worth recruiting if you feel like you need some extra muscle. 01:02:04.19 Jala Right, right. They have the Frost spell, so... 01:02:05.29 Daniel Yeah. Yeah, and they're a little bit beefier than the red and the green dragons, so they are a nicer addition to your force if you're looking to recruit a dragon or two. 01:02:13.91 Jala Right, right. So the next level, level six, has Bugbear, Chimera, and Earth Dragon. The Earth Dragon is worth recruiting if you want that um you know that slow weakening um skill breath weapon thing that it's got. 01:02:25.51 Daniel Yeah, he's another good one to pick up, yeah. 01:02:27.99 Jala Right, and so you've got the party split up, and the prizes are Quick Chicken for Synbios, Lucky Cookie for Medion, and Health Bread for Julian. Level seven has Cerberus, Skullfish, and Blue Cleric as the boss. 01:02:42.07 Jala We're not, like, really, it's the like the last three that are kind of starting to get, mostly the last two. 01:02:45.41 Daniel Yeah, most of these up to this point have been... This is a grind fest. 01:02:48.28 Jala Pretty easy. 01:02:49.83 Daniel If you need XP, sit on a level where they're giving you 30 to 40 XP a hit or kill. 01:02:53.81 Jala Right. 01:02:54.81 Daniel And other than that, keep pressing forward. 01:02:57.22 Jala Right. So Kerberos, uh, blue skullfish and blue cleric, as I mentioned, the party is split up. Synbios gets lucky cookie. Medion gets healing rain and Julian gets running pimento, running pepper, you know, quick, whatever the pepper is called anyway. 01:03:10.87 Daniel Yeah, running pimento now. 01:03:11.53 Jala Yeah. yeah 01:03:12.48 Daniel Yeah, that's the right term for it, i think. 01:03:14.32 Jala ah So level eight is Skull Warrior, Lesser Demon, and Durahan as the boss. ah The Skull Warrior and Lesser Demon ah folks, if you are doing your default Synbios data, these are tough to fight and I had to stop here and come back ah because level eight was hard. 01:03:30.06 Daniel this whole This whole level is a step up, actually. 01:03:33.02 Jala Yeah. And the party is all together at least. 01:03:33.86 Daniel Yeah. Yeah, 01:03:35.02 Jala So you have everybody together so you can do whatever you like here. and When the party is together like this, I tend to split them 50-50 on all of these and have half on one side and half on the other ah to take out either side before I come back to the center to fight the boss is how I usually run it um on all of this. 01:03:50.56 Daniel it's about my so my text too. Yeah. 01:03:53.29 Jala Yeah. So Synbios gets the Kusanagi, Medion gets the running pimento, and Julian gets a chaos ring ah from this one. So this one can be trickier just because like those enemies do hit a little bit harder. And something to note too is that some of the earlier fights where you have Cerberus and things like that, if they hit you and they do like a paralyzed um status effect or something, I think that actually doesn't get wiped. I think you stick you end up with that... 01:04:21.35 Jala carrying over to the next level, if I'm not mistaken. So like you do need to have either Rollie or somebody with antidote to, um you know, depending upon what team you're on, or you need to have fairy dust, fairy powders that you can 01:04:32.78 Daniel Yeah. Or you can add resist spells, or is it, was which one is it that buffs your agility? um You use that spell, and that will help to restore your agility up. 01:04:44.64 Daniel You'll suffer the defense loss, but you can restore your agility, so you keep your turn order using the spell. 01:04:48.95 Jala Right, depending upon it right depending upon like what kind of debuff you've got, you just have to be mindful of that it will carry over to the next level. 01:04:57.80 Jala So then the last two levels are tricky. You've got level nine with salamanders, which those hit hard, black dragons, which hit hard, and colossus as the boss. um The colossus is a pain in the butt. 01:05:08.91 Jala Your party is also split up for this level, which makes it that much harder. You've only got three people, or in my case, Synbios with his two little guys. 01:05:19.68 Jala Synbios gets a Chaos Ring. Medion gets the Kusanagi. And Julian gets the Light of Hope. Which gives all like full MP and HP right refill, doesn't it? 01:05:30.74 Daniel I think it's just a MP, actually. 01:05:32.47 Jala Is it just MP? Okay. 01:05:33.77 Daniel Healing Rain fully restores Yeah. 01:05:36.68 Jala Yeah. But I thought the Light of Hope did everything. Because isn't the... um the What do you call it? The... No, no, no, you're right, you're right. That is the MP. Because I was i was thinking back and I was like, wait, there was something like that in one of the ruins, that one, the ruins with Edmund, that I was so mad that I couldn't get that last item. 01:05:46.01 Daniel Yeah, the Light of Hope is full MP. 01:05:55.98 Jala Yeah, that's MP. So that's what you need. 01:05:58.62 Daniel That's why it's Hope, because it restores all your MP back so all your healers can heal and all your damage dealers can damage. 01:06:02.98 Jala Yeah, right, right. So um this one's a little bit trickier. And so the way that I approach this is I try to get any of my range three people to hit the dragons just as they get into a corner. like because so the way that these um the map is set up in this Heroes Challenge is you start at the cardinal directions, north, south, east, west, and then you have, basically it's a big square, and then the enemies that you're fighting are in the corners, you know, like the northeast, southwest, whatever, all of that. 01:06:35.34 Jala And then ah there is one ramp down that will take you to the lower level where there are um two other enemies and then at the bottom yeah of this kind of inverted pyramid you've got the boss character that's stuck in a little pit in the center. 01:06:50.15 Jala So um the boss character stays where they're at in that lower pit until you get down to those those lower levels. 01:06:58.39 Jala And the characters that are kind of patrolling around the boss character, they stay in the periphery unless they happen to be able to hit you with something or you get close enough down the ramp and then they'll come after you. 01:07:10.53 Jala um So you basically focus on everything on the exterior and then you can go down to hit everything on the interior. So the salamanders are your primary concern in level nine. 01:07:22.52 Jala And once you take those out, then, you know, like um I tried to hit, you know I tried to hit while I was attacking the salamanders. If I had any distance attackers and the salamanders weren't giving me too much trouble, I would try to hit the dragons when they got right into the position where they were, you know, hittable from that distance and ah take them out before I even get down there um because 01:07:39.20 Daniel Yeah. If you can use ranged on them, that's the best because you don't want those black dragons to hit you. They are really tough. 01:07:46.93 Jala they are tough. 01:07:47.25 Daniel I would say you could try to recruit them, but having Cyclops be in range and being able to kill them is a bit of a challenge here. 01:07:54.98 Jala Well, and not only that, but it's a challenge here in part because ah if you get down to where Cyclops can attack the dragons, you also have the Colossus hitting you with massive AoE damage. 01:08:08.06 Daniel Right, because they can also use Inferno to level 2. 01:08:08.55 Jala So. Uh-huh. Yeah, Inferno too. 01:08:12.06 Daniel And I think Spark... and Do they also have Spark? 01:08:13.77 Jala Spark. Yes, they have Spark. 01:08:14.70 Daniel Yeah, so they do some massive damage. 01:08:15.77 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:08:17.26 Daniel They are scary things. And ah it's great that you only fight one in this level. 01:08:19.18 Jala And they have like 500 MP, don't they? Something like that. 01:08:25.31 Daniel Yeah, you will not run them out of MP. 01:08:25.49 Jala It's a lot of MP. So I did. 01:08:29.23 Daniel You will kill them before... Well, okay. Jala is crazy. 01:08:33.38 Daniel But I will kill them before before I run them out of MP. 01:08:33.91 Jala I did it. Uh-uh. 01:08:36.68 Daniel There's no way for me to do that. Oh. 01:08:38.25 Jala No, I ran them out of MP every time. Every time. I sent one little guy out there, like a Thousand sometimes if I had Thousand in the party. But if it was Synbios or Medion, I sent somebody else out and I ran them out of MP before I went down there. 01:08:50.99 Jala No, I was not. 01:08:52.17 Jala I was not. So anyway, yeah, like you will get hit. You will get bombarded. So it's tough. But also Cyclops didn't end up in your end team anyway. So what did it matter for you? Yeah. 01:09:03.60 Daniel Very true, very true. I wasn't worried about it myself. I'm just trying to give advice for other people. 01:09:07.09 Jala Right, right. So anyway, like that's a tricky level. And um so the Colossus, you can just go swarm him, but you need to have everybody like in range and ready to go and attack him at once. And ah for your play style, Daniel, having all ranged people, that makes it way easier to go through this Heroes Challenge. 01:09:30.18 Jala In terms of that anyway, not like your difficulty setting, but in terms of like you know how you set yourself up. 01:09:37.24 Daniel Yeah, it was it was pretty easy for me to get through, at least up to this point. Level 10, though, that's another story. 01:09:44.55 Jala well we'll talk about it now. Level 10, you fight arch demons, which are terrible. um 01:09:49.97 Daniel Oh, yeah. 01:09:51.02 Jala They hit real hard. And ah Colossus, with there there's two Colossus, two? Two or three? Two. Two, right? There's two Colossi circling around the boss. 01:10:00.53 Daniel I think there's four. 01:10:03.70 Jala Oh, crap. 01:10:03.92 Daniel Isn't there one on every direction? This one in every direction. 01:10:06.04 Jala You're right. There are. There's a lot of them. You're right. There's four. Okay. So there's four Colossi and then there's Tauros, who's the boss in the center and Tauros has spark and can hit you. So like, if you go down in that pit, it is death. 01:10:18.42 Jala It is death. 01:10:19.03 Daniel Yeah. 01:10:19.51 Jala And not only that, but your party is split up again. 01:10:24.52 Daniel Yep. 01:10:25.35 Jala I had on my Synbios team, two people trying to fight the demons and trying to get away from the colossi who can also, depending upon where you are on the outer ring, they can sometimes hit you on the outer ring too, if you're not careful. 01:10:38.17 Daniel Yeah, it's not fun. 01:10:38.59 Jala So yeah. It is tough. 01:10:39.79 Daniel It's not pleasant. 01:10:40.86 Jala There's a lot of heavy, heavy hitting stuff in this area. So ah resist spell, if you have that available to you, is very important to use. Support spell is important to use. 01:10:50.93 Daniel Oh, yes. 01:10:51.16 Jala All of that stuff. 01:10:53.75 Daniel Yeah, you got to stay buffed in this level. This is a real challenge, actually. It's pretty... um I found it to be very difficult. The arch demons, once you figure out how to deal with them, it becomes a bit easier. And once... The other thing we didn't mention about this so much is that this Heroes' Test, these enemies don't respond. 01:11:12.56 Jala Right, right. They don't respond, quote unquote, easier. 01:11:13.30 Daniel Which makes this easier... But the Colossus are not easy. 01:11:18.73 Jala no 01:11:18.70 Daniel On Insane, they do a massive amount of damage. So you don't want to fight them more than one at a time if you can help it. 01:11:25.59 Jala Right, right. 01:11:26.43 Daniel And what really saved me here was being able to take, I think it was, was it Rollie? 01:11:31.33 Daniel Who has sleep? Rollie and Brigit, right? Yeah, Rollie and Brigit both have sleep naturally. 01:11:36.17 Jala Yeah. Yeah, I think. 01:11:37.16 Daniel So I was able to take Rollie and sleep one of them. 01:11:40.33 Daniel And that worked most of the time. to keep one of them from hurting me too badly when I proc two of them once. 01:11:42.44 Jala Right. 01:11:46.28 Jala On Synbios, I told you, I sat on this battle for hours with Synbios' team. 01:11:50.77 Jala Hours. Literal hours. And not only that, but like, so the prizes. let me Let me tell you about the prizes and why this is sometimes such a pain in the ass. So the prizes for Synbios is the Shining Sword. 01:12:05.03 Jala So like when Synbios starts out, he defaults to a specific type of sword. And that's the type of sword that you get as a prize at the end of the game. ah For Medion, it's the Ark Rapier. 01:12:16.41 Jala And then for Julian, it's the Force Blade. So I put Rapier, like I did not retrain the Synbios. 01:12:22.05 Jala I left him with the sword that he came with because of the default data. But both Medion and Julian were using Rapier for me. 01:12:25.86 Daniel Mm-hmm. 01:12:28.88 Jala So Julian having the Force Blade at the end meant nothing to me. it's It's not a good good thing for me because I already had him on a Rapier. Uh-huh. 01:12:36.13 Daniel Yeah, Rapier is a much better weapon overall across all three scenarios. So I'm pretty sure all three of my guys had Rapier as an option. 01:12:44.81 Daniel But again, I also trained Synbios in knives because that was a preference. 01:12:46.78 Jala With a knife. Right. Mm-hmm. 01:12:50.35 Daniel And then Julian, I think I used blades for some of the game too, just because they you start out with one or something. 01:12:56.21 Jala Yeah. 01:12:56.54 Daniel No, I don't think you... 01:12:56.85 Jala You start, yeah he starts out with the force, like he he starts out with a blade and in the first scenario and you can switch his weapon. 01:13:02.13 Daniel But I gave him a Rapier early. I gave him a rapier type early. 01:13:04.81 Jala Yeah. 01:13:05.39 Daniel So he also had rapier trained up. So I don't know that I ever switched Julian off of rapier after I did that because it just didn't make any sense. 01:13:08.74 Jala Yeah. 01:13:14.37 Jala Right. And that's the thing is like, you know, the weapons that you get here, you only get one Ark Rapier and Medion gets it. And like that's the only one that gets a rapier. So like these prizes might not even mean anything to you. And Talos has ridiculous HP. 01:13:28.35 Daniel Yeah, it's only 6,000 or something, right? 01:13:30.91 Jala It's like 6,000, but he's also got spark. And you've also just fought all those colossi. And when you don't even have an archer and you have one mage and you're fighting a Synbios, this was horrible. 01:13:41.43 Jala This was horrible. 01:13:42.02 Daniel Oh, yeah. 01:13:43.42 Daniel Yeah, that could, that title load could take hours. 01:13:45.68 Jala ah That did. It did. It took hours because, again, i had, and this is this is why I started running those Colossi until I got to Julian's team. I wrote ran all of the Colossi out of their magic because with Synbios's team, I couldn't afford not to. 01:14:00.05 Jala I didn't have enough hitting power to be able to handle those Colossi without taking out their MP. 01:14:04.55 Daniel And once they have no MP, they're very, very not scary. They hit you for a very small amount of damage, especially on normal. 01:14:08.71 Jala Right. 01:14:11.85 Jala But like my Synbios, by the time I was done with this fight, I didn't have any items on anybody anymore. 01:14:16.89 Jala Like they used everything, like all of their healing items. 01:14:19.65 Jala And I brought, I filled up everything in their in their inventory. It was totally full of healing stuff. And I ran out of healing items by the end of this because it was so hard. 01:14:29.75 Jala But I did it. I did it guys. It was horrible. I will never do that again. 01:14:34.23 Jala If you don't have data, you need to go back and replay and get the data back. Cause, oh man. 01:14:39.51 Daniel Or use some of the other methods to get that data, because there are a couple other ways we'll talk about. 01:14:43.05 Jala Right. There are some ways we talked about before, but I i had already gotten partway through a scenario two when we were talking about it. And I'm like, I'm not going back and redoing all of that. And now at this point I was like, oh you know, i probably i probably spent just the same amount of time as I would have to redo the part in scenario two, as I did stuck in in you know the Heroes' Test with Synbios at the end. 01:15:09.59 Jala I paid my dues somewhere, you know? 01:15:11.73 Daniel Yeah. 01:15:12.18 Jala Time tax was still there, you know? 01:15:14.03 Daniel Yeah. You could have gone all the way through scenario one and done, and done the Heroes' Test there like twice or three times and had a much stronger force going into this. 01:15:16.33 Jala Yeah, probably. 01:15:23.87 Jala That's a little bit, that, that's, so that's a little, okay. That's, that's a bit much. I didn't spend that much time in this Heroes' Test, but yeah, it was, it was rough anyway. So that was a nightmare. Um, but I got through it. We, we survived and, uh, how was, so how was it for you? 01:15:38.55 Daniel It was fantastic. Um, I didn't have much trouble with Julian's team or Medion's team, Synbios' team. 01:15:45.09 Jala Right. 01:15:45.40 Daniel I had to retreat a few times. But again, that's also because that game ends so early. 01:15:49.73 Jala Yeah. Yeah. 01:15:50.92 Daniel But because I had leveled everybody up to around level 30 that I was going to use, I was able to just promote those guys and then level them up to 15 or 30, I think it was for most of them. 01:15:55.77 Jala Mm-hmm. Right. 01:16:03.09 Daniel No, I leveled everybody up to 30 again. So it did take me a little bit of time. 01:16:05.67 Jala whoa Well, I mean, you were still, were you still, 01:16:08.39 Daniel But once i once I got there, it was pretty easy to beat the last couple fights. Oh, yeah. 01:16:13.59 Jala Were you still on insane mode? And was that what? 01:16:15.65 Daniel ah yeah 01:16:16.20 Jala Okay. Okay. Yeah. Cause like for me on normal mode, um I, I leveled everybody up to, I want to say something like, like, I think Synbios' team was somewhere between eight to 12. 01:16:30.48 Jala And then the other people were around like level 15, like for Medion and Julian's teams. And that's maybe I, so I survived the last battles with, with Synbios that way. 01:16:43.19 Daniel I'm just a mad over-leveler. I did spend time... I'm not going treat it like it was nothing. It wasn't not nothing, but it didn't feel like a long slog the same way it felt for you. 01:16:53.42 Jala Right. 01:16:53.43 Daniel For me, it was level up, level up, next level, level up, level up, level up, next level. 01:16:59.20 Daniel So i don't I think I had to retreat at level... What was it again here? Let's see. Yeah, I had to retreat at the Hellhounds. 01:17:05.72 Daniel Part of the problem is that I have a mod on that forces everything that everybody does in combat to proc 100% of the time. So if I use a special that sleeps a guy, that's 100% guaranteed to sleep them every time. 01:17:18.20 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:17:18.30 Daniel If I get hit with something that sleeps my guys, as a chance, it's going to 100% happen. 01:17:23.50 Daniel So luck is basically negated in my playthrough for every character across the board. The only thing that that doesn doesn't have that problem is that Soul Steal doesn't 100% work on either team because that's still random. 01:17:35.33 Daniel And things like if you get hit with the sleep spell or the paralysis spell, that's a guarantee. So paralyzing guys really worked well for me. 01:17:45.80 Daniel Sleeping guys really worked well for me. And being slept really was very negative. 01:17:50.93 Daniel So anytime that I had those kinds of issues, um and like the Cerberus, every time they attacked, they used those specials. So I was quite often slowed and or um defense driven. And so I had a lot of time where I was like, okay, let's just cast the resist spell. 01:18:06.99 Daniel Let's just cast the protection spell that gives you extra defenses. Let's just buff my guys over and over again just to be able to survive the hits. And then I used a lot of aura four. 01:18:16.07 Jala Right, right. 01:18:16.77 Daniel I was the main saving grace for every fight. 01:18:17.00 Jala Or if or... 01:18:19.84 Jala Aura IV is the saving grace for everything. And again, that's part of the reason why it was so hard with Synbios because um I didn't have as many of the MP regen items because I didn't have any any when I started this. 01:18:32.07 Jala And I had to give him whatever was left over from the other teams and then just kind of give him you know give him whatever I found in the fortress. 01:18:40.19 Jala So it was tough. It was tough. 01:18:42.21 Daniel And if you if you put your hope light that you get in scenario one in the item shop for 10,000 gold at the ah end of the game at Mallory Castle, if you if you buy that from the item shop for 10k gold, you can give that to Grace and leave that on Grace until this moment. 01:18:56.19 Jala Right, right. 01:18:56.63 Daniel Which really helped out in the last fight there because Taras was going to kick my ass and I was like, no, no, no, wait. 01:19:01.78 Jala Yeah. 01:19:01.79 Daniel I have the light of hope. I am going to win this fight after all. 01:19:03.50 Jala You've got it. Right, right. Well, and then what's worse is that that that level, at the last level of the Heroes Challenge, Heroes' Test, is harder than the last battle for Synbioss in the game. Like, by far. 01:19:16.45 Jala By far. 01:19:17.08 Daniel Yeah, which is the exact same way that the first scenario does it, because of scenario one, if you remember, that Dragon Lord or whatever in there, he's got 6,000 HP, and he hits like a truck, and you can fight the Colossus, or the um the Iron... 01:19:17.91 Jala So... Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. yep 01:19:29.90 Daniel What is the guy at the end of the scenario one? 01:19:32.49 Jala it's the big giant yeah he's a colossus titan yeah whatever okay i think i think when they brought it to the u.s they called it a colossus though but i don't know maybe not i don't know i don't remember anyway 01:19:32.55 Daniel Is he also called Colossus? Titan. That's what they call him now. He's the Titan. So you can fight and destroy the Titan easier than you can fight and destroy the Dragon Lord. Yeah. Yeah. 01:19:48.21 Daniel he's known He's known as the Titan of Aspinia in the newly translated version. 01:19:52.73 Jala Well, i was playing the original um I was playing the original game on my original hardware until my hardware decided to have a malfunction. 01:19:53.72 Daniel That's what they call him. Yeah. 01:19:59.49 Jala And then I had to switch. But anyway, moving right along, though. 01:20:01.39 Daniel Yeah. Yes, moving back on. So yes, we we got through it. 01:20:04.26 Jala ah we got Yeah, yeah, we got through all that. Now we're moving into our final, final, like penultimate battle here. the The battle where we have all three forces on different maps actively fighting at the same time because you have to open up the Bulzome Temple. And the only way to do that is for Synbios and Medion to tackle the two temples on the sides and, you know, to hit the switch at the same time so that way they can go. 01:20:30.55 Jala Now this, the way that they had presented it in the text was that they had to do it simultaneously. So I was so stressed at this point where I'm like, but he's not going to hit it at the same time because whatever. And then like, that's that's not true. You just need to hit the buttons. It finished the map and hit the buttons with Synbios and Medion before Julian can finish his map. 01:20:50.35 Jala So, so that's, that's how that plays out. 01:20:50.52 Daniel Yeah. 01:20:53.64 Jala So ah don't worry. 01:20:54.66 Daniel Technically Julian can finish his map first, even. 01:20:59.41 Jala Yeah, but he can't progress to the last battle and he can't finish it. 01:20:59.92 Daniel So what happens there, and I was worried about this, but I had this happen to me. 01:21:02.61 Jala Finish it. Uh-huh. Right. 01:21:05.28 Daniel Julian finished his map before Medion finished his map. 01:21:07.96 Daniel So what actually happens is that it just goes straight to Medion's map or whoever's left and forces you to play that over and over again until you win. 01:21:15.38 Daniel So instead of taking turns again, and continuing to do the turns thing, once you finish that map, that team pauses and just goes off to the side and waits. 01:21:23.24 Jala Yeah. Cool. 01:21:23.89 Daniel Which is very handy because I was worried about that too and I i accidentally did that and i was like, oh no, it's like cool let's kill, let's not finish it. 01:21:28.52 Jala It's not, it doesn't actually have to be. 01:21:30.64 Jala Yeah. It's just, you yeah, it doesn't have to be. 01:21:31.14 Daniel Yeah. Yeah. 01:21:33.32 Jala And then not only that, but it's real cute. Cause right before you go out for this battle, Synbios is like, Hey, I bet I'm going to win before you do Medion. I'm going to beat mine first. 01:21:44.17 Jala And so, you know, ah it was, it was this whole thing and it was very funny because, you know, I, I, for that reason, i had Medion finish his map first. 01:21:57.39 Jala Just because like um wanted to stick to Synbios. 01:22:00.87 Daniel You've got to have the hotness winning over top of the bold and noble. 01:22:05.32 Jala Well, I just wanted to do that because he was being a little snot. So I i just wanted to stick it to Synbios for that reason. So ah first for Synbios's map, Synbios has a Lich, dark Dark Gunner, Blue Cleric, Lesser Demon, Dragon Newt, Durahan, a Demon Knight, and then a Great Priest for a boss. 01:22:24.41 Jala And for my team, my ending team were the defaults. I didn't get to pick. I only had 10 guys. I don't have the ability to switch guys. So I had Synbios, Dantares, Masqurin, Grace, Obright, Chivalry, Eldar, Khan, Murasame, and Finding. 01:22:39.96 Jala And that's it. So. 01:22:41.35 Daniel Yeah, and I actually just switched out Finding for Hagane and Elder for Noon. So those were the only differences I had. 01:22:47.95 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:22:49.22 Daniel But again, keep in mind that my Obright. 01:22:50.13 Jala But you had 12 guys. Yeah, you had a couple other guys. So you probably put in like Noon or Hayward or somebody. 01:22:53.28 Daniel And then I also... 01:22:56.22 Daniel Franc. Franc, I had Frank got on the team. 01:22:57.97 Jala Franc. Okay, Frank. 01:22:59.96 Daniel And trying to remember who the last person I had on was. um Oh, it was Irene. 01:23:05.00 Jala There you go. Cool. 01:23:05.83 Daniel Yeah, yeah. 01:23:06.89 Jala Rock on. So um this fight is not particularly tricky in my opinion. um You just have to make sure to um place your guys such that like you can hit them all. You can... so like embrace all of the bad guys and keep them in that one little spot so you can hit them with AoEs because that's what I did. 01:23:28.19 Jala I had to hit them with AoEs. 01:23:28.92 Daniel Yeah. 01:23:29.57 Jala Masquerade had to be up front because I i didn't have a second magic user. And so, you know, like she was my major raid. 01:23:34.80 Daniel Yeah, you have to yeah to punch as much as you can with Spark 3 there. 01:23:39.76 Jala So, and then tank everything else. 01:23:41.60 Daniel yes It's basically an AOE slog. 01:23:44.57 Jala Yeah. And then like Grace had to be like MVP had to be using that aura for, you know, spamming aura for, 01:23:49.29 Daniel Every turn. 01:23:50.52 Jala for my team particularly. So um like the actual map has some columns that you have to kind of navigate around. 01:23:52.94 Daniel Yeah. 01:24:00.45 Jala um That's the only other thing that's a little bit trickier because that breaks up the map and you can't put a bunch of people side by side camping out as easily on folks. And for me, since I had the default weapons and everything, that meant that you know I didn't have but like Masqurin for range. 01:24:17.11 Jala That's it. Everybody else was stuck. 01:24:19.04 Jala So ah that sucked. That sucked. And then, so for Medion's team, Medion is fighting Lich, Dark Gunner, Blue Cleric, Lesser Demon, Dragon Newt, Durahan, Demon Knight, and Great Priest. So same guys, basically, as Synbios' team, except he is in a forest area, so that slows up all of his centaurs and other folks like that. 01:24:43.90 Jala ah My team... 01:24:45.18 Jala was Medion, Campbell, Synthesis, Uryudo, Waltz, Zero, Hazuki, David, Hedva, Hera, Robbie, and Puppets. 01:24:55.12 Daniel I switched out Puppets. So I'm trying to remember who else I also had there though. um I know I didn't have Puppets because I rarely take them with me, but I can't remember who else it was that was in that place. 01:25:06.94 Daniel So I'll have to look at my notes and, and remember that, but. 01:25:09.38 Jala And a change for this too is some in scenario two, puppets could have multiple guys that you could have as ads on the map. So you could have like four adds, but in Scenario 3, you can have one, one add. 01:25:25.22 Jala You can only, you can recruit a bunch of guys. You can have them in your, you know, stable or whatever back at the headquarters, but only one little guy comes with you. 01:25:30.59 Daniel yeah 01:25:34.25 Jala So it got scaled back in here. 01:25:34.74 Daniel So it's often recommended that the most useful adds that you can bring for this are either the hydras or the griffins. 01:25:45.47 Daniel And the reason that the griffin would be most useful is because of its abilities, but also because it can fly here. 01:25:50.13 Jala Right. Right. 01:25:50.80 Daniel So very helpful for extra damage and doing status elements and effects. 01:25:55.50 Daniel But yeah. yeah It's not a huge bonus to have the extra guy, so I just swapped Pepettes out for somebody else. I'm trying to remember who it is at this point still. if i If I remember, I'll i'll bring it up. 01:26:06.91 Jala and Right, right. So then on Julian's map, he has Lich, Dark Gunner, Blue Cleric, Lesser Demon, Dragon Newt, Durahan, and then Braff and Basanda as two bosses at the end of the map. 01:26:18.72 Jala And Julian's map is basically a corridor with the Valkyrie right in front of Braff and Basanda shooting lasers down this lane. And there's like some little cubbies off to the side that you can take refuge in. 01:26:31.32 Daniel Mm-hmm. 01:26:33.12 Jala Otherwise, you're going to get hit with an AoE every every turn. that the Valkyrie is in, you know, is active. And of course it has the staff on the ground that Gracia can hit with the shining ability to turn it off, but it's at the end of the map. And by the time you get there, it's not even worth it in my opinion to bother. 01:26:49.40 Jala So um in any case, my team was Julian, Gracia, Donheart, Kate, Isabella, Cyclops, Maki, Leon, Produn, Jube, Primula, and Turk. 01:27:02.07 Daniel And I took, and I just have a photo of this that I'm using my for reference here, but I have Julian, Isabella, Gracia, Kate, Leon, Brigit, Produn, Jube, Marki, I do have Turk, and Thousand and Primula were my team. 01:27:19.14 Jala Cool. Cool. 01:27:20.14 Daniel Yeah. Again, mostly AoE. 01:27:23.11 Jala Yeah. Yeah. 01:27:24.07 Daniel Gotta have those mages doing their work. 01:27:25.84 Jala Oh yeah, absolutely. So, um, the battles, the battle for medium was a little bit trickier than Synbios just because of the forest in the fact that I had some guys that were especially slow trying to get through there. 01:27:38.60 Jala Um, but otherwise it wasn't too bad to get through that battle. And Julian's team what is the power team. So like that wasn't, this wasn't a challenge. Basanda and Braff were not a challenge. 01:27:50.58 Jala It was just like, right, right. 01:27:50.80 Daniel Yeah, that was mostly a good flavor. it felt It felt really nice to put an end to that situation. 01:27:57.00 Jala Right, right. It's good to have, you know, finally to take out those two because Basanda has been a thorn in your side this whole time. And Braff is, you know, was taken away a yet again and still alive somewhere for you to fight one last time. And then, you know, you get to murder the last of the family and destroy the rest of the family. So there's nobody left to come after you anymore at this point because you killed ah all of them. 01:28:21.02 Jala Fafhard, Basanda and their son Braff. So hooray. 01:28:23.87 Daniel Yeah. Yay, eradication. 01:28:27.14 Jala Yay. So while Julian's going down that map, though, if Synbios or Medion finishes their map, then, you know, at the beginning of the next turn, then Julian says, oh, hey, there's the signal. 01:28:38.36 Jala And then you see a little firework go off in the sky, you know, because they shoot a flare or whatever, whatever the magic world equivalent is of a flare up into the sky for you. 01:28:48.50 Jala And um you know then yeah it goes on from there, no big deal. And once the buttons are pushed, then um Julian goes on and he goes up, like a stairway shows up and then he can go up the stairway to go into the temple proper. And Synbios and Medion too, once they finish their maps, they have this little conversation with everybody and they're like, man, I wish I could be in the final battle, but it has to be Julian because we have to push the button. 01:29:14.77 Jala And then they do a little reflection of, man, I hope that they can survive okay against blah, blah, blah. 01:29:15.63 Daniel Yeah. 01:29:19.53 Jala And they just have flavor text and a little bit of, you know, characterization right at the end. 01:29:24.21 Daniel It's a nice little nod to everything you've been through. 01:29:27.43 Jala Right, right. 01:29:28.50 Jala So then we get into the two part, sort of two part final battle, final, final battle, battle 30. So 30A is against the Bulzome priests. 01:29:40.16 Jala So ah you go into the temple and then you've got Goliath and Death Helen and fear, and they're all hanging out in there. And then there's Bulzome, but Bulzome, like the three priests, when they see you coming, they go, oh shit, 01:29:52.65 Jala let's use our magic powers together and then put a barrier up to protect Bulzome. So they put a barrier up and you have to take out all three of them before you can get to Bulzome because that that that barrier is not going to break until you kill them. 01:30:06.88 Jala So ah you also have Jane who is being held captive and there's some text there where Bulzome and Jane are talking and and everybody's talking. 01:30:16.59 Daniel Yeah. And that's not a bad little part of the fight. um One thing that you can do is if you're absolutely nuts, you can wait until after you've destroyed Death Helen and then Jane will come down. 01:30:28.51 Daniel And if you don't talk to her or do anything until she's angry at you, then when you go to cast Blessing on her, then she will actually not, like because eventually she'll get angry and try to attack you. 01:30:39.31 Jala Because she's mad that you just killed her sister. 01:30:40.06 Daniel And if you, because she's mad that you killed her sister. 01:30:42.72 Jala Right. 01:30:42.98 Daniel So if you let her get angry at you and then cast Blessing on her, she becomes an uncontrollable NPC. 01:30:50.55 Jala And you you can do that. ah And so it's so when you get to that point, so there's a couple of things. There are two infinite, I think they're infinite spawn, arch demons that show up in the upper part of the map that will fly down and come and attack you. 01:31:05.51 Jala And then there's just the three ah boss characters, Death, Hell, and Fear, and Goliath that you have to fight. 01:31:05.89 Daniel Yes. 01:31:11.79 Jala It's really important that you have some folks go over to the side of the map where Jane is if you want to get her as a playable, well, I say playable. 01:31:20.79 Daniel You can use her in this map, yeah. 01:31:22.22 Jala Yeah, yeah, play a character like that's on your side because she can turn on you and just start attacking you and then like you you're forced to kill her and stuff. 01:31:25.92 Daniel Mm-hmm. 01:31:31.46 Jala So not a good thing. 01:31:33.80 Daniel Or you can cast Blessing on her to turn her into an NPC. 01:31:39.16 Jala So there's that. But you need to make sure that right after Death Helen goes down, you are there to cast Blessing in order to make things a little easier on yourself and to get Jane as a character. 01:31:49.95 Jala Especially if you want to use her in the premium disc, you have to have this happen here. So Gracia needs to be there to use Blessing on Jane so that way she doesn't turn on you at all. 01:32:01.70 Jala And um this battle is not too bad for me, basically with the archdemons, because the archdemons will continue to show up in the second half of this battle when you're fighting Bulzome. So I ran a character up, like basically after my magic users used up as much magic as they had, I would go take them and put them up there. 01:32:17.89 Jala Or, you know, um i think I had Cyclops, didn't I say I had Cyclops? Yes, I did. So I took Cyclops' as little minions and put them on the little square. 01:32:27.26 Jala i had one minion, and so I put it on one of the squares and the other one. I think I used Primula after she used all of her MP and I just put her over there on the spot because if you put a character on the spot where the archdemon shows up, then it will stop spawning. 01:32:42.09 Daniel And again, for me, when because I had the sleep spell handy, I would just cast sleep on the guys and they would just sit several rounds and not do anything. 01:32:49.18 Jala Yeah. Right, right. You can also do that. 01:32:51.07 Daniel Which made it easier for me to deal with. 01:32:51.86 Jala That's fine. Right, right. So it just depends on, you know, if you want to sacrifice a character to hang out over there and just sit on the square. But like for me, Cyclops' ad wasn't going to be doing anything anyway. 01:33:03.16 Jala And then Primula isn't going to be able to do anything with her little like biffing biffing bosom with a wand, like the whatever, that's fine. 01:33:03.88 Daniel Yeah. 01:33:10.40 Daniel it takes Take three damage, Bulzome. 01:33:10.47 Jala And I was... Right, right. 01:33:13.01 Daniel Heal 20 every round. 01:33:14.60 Jala Right. Well, I mean, like, and then not only that, but um I didn't need to use any items on her to regen her magic or anything like that because I didn't need her magic at that point because on normal, like, I had it under control with the rest of my force. 01:33:15.26 Daniel Yeah. 01:33:28.80 Jala So I was able to put her over there and it was fine. 01:33:32.47 Jala No big deal. 01:33:32.76 Daniel Whereas she was the main damage dealer for the entire fight for me. 01:33:35.34 Jala Right, right, right. So ah how was the fight versus the priest for you? 01:33:40.27 Daniel Pretty easy. Again, Death Helen is the focus, so for me, I would take every character and run around that side to the left instead of going anybody to the right or any other part. 01:33:48.65 Daniel Everybody focuses that space, and I get Gracia as close to gen as I possibly can while still keeping him out of range of everybody, and if I fight Death Helen and Fear and Goliath on the stairs. 01:33:55.38 Jala Yeah. Right. 01:34:01.91 Daniel Try it like the initial stairs, because Goliath doesn't come at you right away. You have to take that fight to him, but because everybody that I have is ranged, including Jubei, 01:34:05.46 Jala No. Yeah. 01:34:09.92 Daniel I'm able to throw ninja stars at him and get him to come to the edge there and then everybody can kind of gank him without having to go up the stairs towards Bulzome. 01:34:11.89 Jala Right. 01:34:16.25 Jala that That's what I did, too. I i pulled ah Goliath and had him come closer to where everybody could hit him. 01:34:22.39 Daniel Yeah. 01:34:23.98 Jala So, yeah, this wasn't too hard with me. But unlike you, I put Gracia in the middle of shit. Because my Gracia did a lot of damage. Like, he could... They can do all this damage. They, um like, hit pretty hard, actually. 01:34:36.41 Jala Mine did by the end of this game. 01:34:37.67 Daniel he was He was almost exclusively a healer for me the entire the entire game. 01:34:40.64 Jala Oh, no. No. No, they were... 01:34:42.74 Daniel i rarely ever ah rarely ever used Blessing or um Inferno with him. I only ever used Aura IV pretty much every round with him. 01:34:51.72 Jala So here's the thing. um Thousand at this point did less damage than Gracia. Gracia did so much damage. I don't know how, but he ah like the damage was just off the charts. 01:35:04.91 Jala So um but I just had Gracia as 01:35:06.48 Daniel Gracia probably can. i just never bothered. 01:35:08.19 Jala Yeah. 01:35:08.97 Daniel For me, it made more sense to have the healers every round. 01:35:09.32 Jala Yeah, I don't know. 01:35:12.12 Jala You would think. 01:35:12.38 Daniel and because And because then I had two healers, right? 01:35:12.79 Jala um 01:35:14.66 Daniel Because Isabella would also heal. 01:35:15.85 Jala Yeah. Well, I also had Isabella. 01:35:16.64 Daniel And then I also gave and i gave that Ankh to Brigit. So once in a while, if I absolutely needed spot healing, Brigit would also pull out aura too. 01:35:25.26 Jala Right. 01:35:25.53 Daniel So it depended on how much damage I took. Bulzome has a chance to attack twice. Or think he does attack twice every round. 01:35:31.00 Jala And he does attack twice. 01:35:32.14 Daniel And when he attacks, he gains back 20 or 40 HP or something every time too. 01:35:36.26 Jala it's I think it's 20, total of 40 every round because he attacks twice. 01:35:40.52 Daniel Which is just nuts. so And the fact that he can cast two AoEs, because I believe he can. 01:35:46.88 Daniel So some rounds you want to heal to double. 01:35:49.83 Jala Yeah, for sure. 01:35:50.37 Daniel Because you might, depending on your speed, he might go and then you heal and then he might go again for AoE. 01:35:55.70 Jala Well, the way that I had all my people spread out, I didn't have to heal twice ah in my fight versus Bulzome. um But I did definitely have to maneuver Isabella because I was using Gracia for other things. 01:36:08.87 Jala And so, like, you know, Gracia, like I would alternate Gracia. 01:36:09.49 Daniel Yeah. 01:36:12.33 Jala Then once Gracia ran out of magic, um they were just attacking from there. But anyway, so, so since we're already sidled into it, the, the fight versus Bulzome, then you have the showdown with Bulzome and, um, that, you know, like you can't get people all the way around him because, you know he's so big and like the space is such that like, there's a wall right behind him. 01:36:32.95 Jala So, um, you know, you have to be careful about like, you you can't fit a bunch of people up there if you have anything other than range. So, I mean, like ranged again is, is great for this battle, uh, in particular because you can hit him easier from everywhere. 01:36:43.57 Daniel Yeah. 01:36:47.14 Daniel And because he has, i think it's four squares in front or three squares in front at the very front of him, the way he's set up, he's got three wide. 01:36:55.48 Daniel Most bosses are two wide or less. 01:36:55.72 Jala Yeah. 01:36:56.96 Daniel i Like the big bosses, like the golem is like two. 01:36:59.66 Jala Yeah. 01:36:59.65 Daniel He has three. So you can attack him at range three from very far away on that platform. So I was able to get every single character up there and fighting against him at range three, two, three, the way i wrote I worked it. 01:37:09.14 Jala Right. Right. 01:37:10.71 Daniel So for me, I was able to just swarm him and stomp him and, That 5K HP just kind of melted. 01:37:16.68 Jala Yeah, this wasn't too bad for me at all. um this This fight was I'm still, again, and like the Talos down at the bottom of the Heroes' Test was way harder, way harder than this last fight, especially with those Colossi. 01:37:23.41 Daniel Yeah, way harder. 01:37:29.66 Jala Oh, man, that was terrible. So ah this fight was not too bad. So um after that, though, did you have anything else or are we good to move on to the end of the games? 01:37:39.86 Daniel Yeah, so again, one of the strategies that I employ there is when the demon knights come out, instead of putting a guy and wasting a guy on moving them all the way to the spaces, this time around I just let them come at me and then Brigit and Rollie would be on either side and they would just sleep the guy. 01:37:54.70 Jala Right. I actually... 01:37:55.05 Daniel And then it was at my discretion whether I wanted to kill them off and let a new spawn come or just love leave them asleep. 01:37:59.50 Jala ah Well, neither Rollie nor Brigit were in my final team. So ah for me, I didn't have either but either person with sleep. 01:38:07.43 Jala So I just like, you know, like I said, I moved. 01:38:08.47 Daniel Oh, did I? Actually, I don't think I had Rollie. Let me double check my cast list here. Because I don't think I had Rollie. 01:38:13.29 Daniel So who did the most of that? Oh, it was Marky. Marky had access to sleep. 01:38:16.20 Jala Okay. ah you Probably a sleep run. 01:38:17.78 Daniel So yeah, it was Marky and Brigit. 01:38:20.30 Jala So, so yeah, but like, um, Cyclops' ad doesn't do anything against Bulzome and isn't going to really help whatsoever. 01:38:27.16 Jala So like that, that, you know, that ad from Cyclops just went to the one side and then once Primula didn't have any magic and I had it, I had it held down with the other people. 01:38:28.16 Daniel Yeah. 01:38:34.68 Jala I was like, eh, who cares? 01:38:36.13 Daniel One again, Hope Light for me, so I never ran out of magic. 01:38:36.73 Jala But right, right. 01:38:38.68 Daniel I had one more of those to use. 01:38:40.23 Jala Right. Well, you know, I was spreading my, my items so thin because of Synbios situation with the save data. 01:38:45.10 Daniel Yeah, that was that was absolutely brutal for you. 01:38:45.79 Jala Right. Right. yeah So, so let's move on to this epilogue though. After you defeat Bulzome, he tells you that even though his vitality has been drained as a pure Vandal, he's not going to die. 01:38:50.69 Daniel Yeah. 01:38:57.25 Jala He begins absorbing negative energy from the world and will regain his power. If not stopped, he tells you that gracious ancestor could not truly kill Bulzome. and thus sealed him with the power of the sacred stones of light, which were made by the creator, which this is news. 01:39:13.06 Jala Nobody's heard about this until now. 01:39:14.81 Jala So, well, um although you've seen one, but you've seen one before you've seen it in the lighthouse where Paul Cis was in the first game. 01:39:15.00 Daniel Where were these, where are these stones? 01:39:22.21 Daniel That's right. You're right. 01:39:23.25 Jala But over the past Thousand years, he and his followers have shattered all of these stones with dark power, and there aren't enough of them left in the world to seal him anymore. So ah everyone tries to figure out what to do since Bulzome's not going to die. And eventually, Benetram says that Gracia needs to use the Staff of Bessam. 01:39:41.73 Jala And this is hilarious to me, that nobody understands what to do here, because what's been the answer to every... Like, what's been the deus ex machina for everything, this entire game that you've had, Gracia? Gracia. 01:39:52.35 Jala The staff of Besem. 01:39:52.93 Daniel Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 01:39:53.57 Jala The staff of Besem. Hey, guess what, guys? What do we need to do here? We need to use the staff of Bessem. Surprising no one. Or shouldn't. 01:40:00.56 Jala You know, it's like Proton is rubbing off on Benetram and everyone else on the team is what's happened here. Damn it, Proton. 01:40:08.18 Daniel yeah 01:40:09.79 Jala Anyway, Bulzome tries to stop Gracia saying that they will also die if they use the staff and Gracia is like, so? And does it anyway, which I love that because Gracia has got some real balls and I love that. 01:40:22.61 Daniel It's like, i I'm ready to go, man. Let's go. 01:40:25.56 Jala This is the thing that I was assigned to do. This is my purpose in life. So I'm a do it. Let's go. 01:40:30.19 Daniel Yeah, I am the one. 01:40:31.93 Jala Yeah. And when the light fades, Gracia is laid out, but Bulzome is left as a silhouette on the wall. He's like ah a stain. He's a stain on the wall. 01:40:39.61 Daniel Yeah. 01:40:40.06 Jala That's all he is. And that's it. So Gracia tries to use the staff to heal themselves, and it does not work because they have just lost their power as an Innovator. they In order to negate the darkness of Bulzome, they had to give up their own power of light because in order for there to be balance, you have to have both or have none. 01:41:01.05 Jala ah yeah, now they're a normal child and everyone. 01:41:05.11 Daniel I'm a real boy now. 01:41:06.42 Jala Yeah. Well, and then everybody is acting like this is the worst possible fate. Oh no. And that's because it's like, you know, the gifted child who was told they were gifted their whole lives is now suddenly out in the real world and finds out that they're, they're not really a special snowflake after all is really what just happened. 01:41:23.38 Jala And, um, 01:41:23.79 Daniel not Now he can be special because he's himself, not because he's a godchild. 01:41:26.42 Jala Right. Right. Exactly. Now, now you're special because, um you know, you are you not because you are a function. Right. 01:41:34.87 Daniel me out. 01:41:34.92 Jala So ah Jane says that she's all alone. She keeps on going off in these histrionics. I'm all alone, even though she's surrounded by people ready to support her, including the man she's been stalking for seven chapters. Right. 01:41:46.03 Daniel Yeah. 01:41:46.23 Jala ah But I'm alone in the world now because you killed Death Helen. It's your fault, guys. Your fault. And everyone prepares to return to their respective homes and behaves as if they can't ever travel to see anybody or arrange a reunion, which is hilarious. They're all like, we'll never see each other again. 01:42:03.86 Daniel Oh, no. 01:42:04.19 Jala it's so terrible that we'll never see each other. 01:42:05.87 Daniel ah I'm going to go off and be a hobbit now in my little hole in the world and never, never leave and never see a anyone. 01:42:10.41 Jala Right. It's... It's super like, you know, we're returning to the, or we're going to the West or whatever. Gracia and David discussed the challenge of having to rebuild the Elbesem faith once they get back, because they're like, how do you rebuild a faith when your God and in all of the energy of the God is now gone along with the energy of the the evil guy that you were, you know, facing? 01:42:32.21 Jala How do we do this? Hmm, this is going be difficult. 01:42:34.09 Daniel Luckily for them, there's still churches in every single town. 01:42:36.98 Jala Right. I mean, it's like, okay, well, whatever. um and Jane, meanwhile, has decided to go even further north. There's somewhere even further north than here. Past Remotest is a town called Sorrow. 01:42:50.32 Jala That's an appropriate place for Jane. ah where yeah Where the remains of her mother are buried. 01:42:52.71 Daniel sounds lovely 01:42:57.22 Jala And we don't even have a name for the mother. It's just like the Innovator Woman, which that's some bullshit right there. Like, 01:43:04.66 Daniel Yeah. 01:43:05.62 Jala But anyway, ah the Innovator mother's remains are buried there and it's a stronghold of the Bulzome sect. so um So Julian decides that he's going to go with her because he's realized he can't kill Galm and there's no equivalent Innovator power left in the world to neutralize Galm. 01:43:22.65 Jala So he has to repurpose himself because at the least he's not going to go run off and go kill himself fighting Galm anyway. so 01:43:30.57 Daniel Not anymore yet. 01:43:31.22 Jala blessedly... 01:43:32.38 Daniel His plans have changed a bit. 01:43:33.95 Jala Right, right. And I'm glad that he had ah this ah glow up here and figured out that he needs to change plans. I'm glad that happened anyway. 01:43:41.83 Daniel Me too. 01:43:42.30 Jala So back in remotest, Julian and Jane prepare for their journey to the North. And everyone talks about how Julian's only friend is loneliness itself, which that's some bullshit. 01:43:53.72 Jala You have fought next to how many different armies and made how many friends on this journey that you've been going on? But his only friend is loneliness itself. Like, what bullshit is that to tell somebody? 01:44:03.29 Daniel That's a terrible nickname for James. 01:44:04.65 Jala By the way... 01:44:07.93 Jala Right. 01:44:10.54 Jala So anyway, they're all talking about how sad Julian's life is since he lost his father. This may be the first time he has ever experienced love. Wow. They are they are pretty, pretty harsh, man. 01:44:25.35 Daniel Camaraderie means nothing. 01:44:27.11 Jala I know, apparently. Well, anyway, ah they're underlining that they're both very deeply sad people and they need to go to a place called Sorrow together where they can be sad sacks together, I guess, in the far, far north. 01:44:38.82 Daniel you Cue the My Chemical Romance soundtrack. 01:44:42.22 Jala Right, right? So it's like, man, I'm surprised that it's Julian who's ending up the sad sack. I thought it was gonna be Medion since he has been emo this whole time, but no he's been out-emoed by Julian, wow. 01:44:55.25 Jala ah So anyway, then we get the credits and during those end credits, Julian and Jane trudge through the winter snowstorm. Turning, they spy an immense floating fortress which houses the Holy Ark. 01:45:07.43 Jala It is presumably on its way to its final resting place. And on a distant mountain, Galm and Elise, the last two true Vandals, discuss what all happened. Golm was, of course, using the Shining Force to destroy Bulzome and stop the coming of the Thousand-Year Kingdom. 01:45:25.36 Jala Even killing Julian's father was part of his long con. And then after the credits, we returned to Gabriel and the ferry. And Gabriel tells you, don't worry about what happened to everyone. It turned out fine because of what you did. 01:45:38.00 Jala And that's the most hand wavy thing I think they could have put here. But they ran out of budget. They ran out of time. They ran out of space on the disc to put anything further. they We need to wrap the story up. 01:45:49.48 Jala We don't get the post-credits sequence, you know? 01:45:53.23 Daniel thanks for coming bye yeah 01:45:54.84 Jala Yeah, don't worry about everybody else and all the massive things that they have to handle now. 01:45:59.47 Jala We're not worrying about that. It's fine. They literally tell you it's fine. So anyway, after that, he decides that he's tired and he wants to take a nap. 01:46:09.77 Jala And then the fairy says she's also tired and will rest herself. And then she goes and, you know, um sits down next to him and then transforms into Jane and then falls asleep with her head in Gabriel's lap. 01:46:23.13 Daniel So is Gabriel actually Julian? 01:46:26.10 Jala I don't know. i mean, we already saw him in the middle of the game. We know he's not. But like, why is, why did the fairy turn into Jane? 01:46:30.76 Daniel But if Jane... So him here's the here's the thought process. 01:46:32.78 Jala I don't know. Uh-huh. 01:46:35.27 Daniel Some people think that that fairy is Primula. Some people think it's one of the characters in one of the earlier Shining Forces. If she's actually Jane, then this would make sense because Jane wouldn't age as an inner handle as an Innovator Vandal. She wouldn't age, and Julian would. 01:46:52.76 Daniel So that could be Julian and Jane. 01:46:55.08 Jala Yeah, but then who's the Gabriel that you met in the game in Maya? 01:46:59.06 Daniel That could also be Julian because you can do game plus. So he could be time traveling. 01:47:06.70 Jala ah Okay, now you're adding time. Oh, I mean, then again, there's there's there's Innovators and Vandals, and they've got magical mushroom things in the sky and other technology. 01:47:08.55 Daniel I am. Yeah. 01:47:16.35 Jala Time travel is an option. 01:47:16.50 Daniel It's just a theory. 01:47:17.99 Jala Sure, why not? Why not? 01:47:19.49 Daniel It's just a theory, a game theory. 01:47:21.06 Jala Oops. We'll go with We'll go with it. Okay, so that's the end. That's the end, guys, of all these these games that we've been talking about. 01:47:25.93 Daniel Yeah. 01:47:28.94 Daniel Oh, wow. 01:47:29.33 Jala Whew! Whew! Yeah, now we get to kind of... 01:47:32.59 Daniel That only, that only took us what? Uh, three, six, nine, 12. We're at, uh, yeah, we're at only at almost 15 hours here. no. 01:47:39.98 Jala 15 hours to get here. 01:47:41.92 Jala all You could play half of Shining Force Scenario 1 by this point. So yeah, yeah. 01:47:45.52 Daniel oh no 01:47:47.70 Jala So yeah, we're gonna take a quick music break right here. And then when we get back, we will have a little wrap up discussion and then we'll kick it from here. 01:51:36.83 Jala And we are back. And now we're going to have just a few little discussion questions, few prompts ah to go through, and then we'll get on out of here. 01:51:56.83 Jala So to wrap this up, let's start with talking about how did this play through compared to your last full run through the game? So Daniel, I'll let you talk first. 01:52:07.01 Daniel Yeah, so my last run through, i believe I was on version 24. And so this version, when I created the mod, I found the modding process to be significantly improved. 01:52:18.85 Daniel And then I also now at this point have obtained a Fenrir with ah with a Saturn. So I now have an optical drive emulator and I can play on real hardware. So when I decided that that was how I wanted to enjoy this run through, I really found that it was very nostalgic. 01:52:34.90 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:52:35.25 Daniel taking me way back to being like a kid again and being able to actually do the full series because as ah as a kid, we only had access to scenario one in English and my Japanese is very, very poor. 01:52:44.17 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:52:47.78 Daniel So I was able to massively enjoy this and run through it as if um as if it was the first time again. um And also having only completed it fully once before, it did feel pretty much like doing it for the first time yet again. 01:53:03.50 Daniel It's not a game that I've sat down and played all three scenarios all the way through a bunch of times. I've done scenario one over and over again because it's pretty epic. And as I said, I got that as a kid. So for me, this was a chance to re-experience the story, notice parts that I missed the first time through, um and also work towards getting all the characters, which has been a lot of fun and exciting. 01:53:25.43 Jala Right, right. 01:53:25.63 Daniel It was a good goal. 01:53:25.99 Jala And There's so much to this game and there's so many different secret items and different things that you can work on and change things up and everything. 01:53:36.80 Jala um And so like when I first played this game, the very first time I played through this game, I only had scenario one, the US release. And then I had scenarios two and three in Japanese. 01:53:49.25 Jala And although I could understand enough Japanese to understand what they were saying in the barks during combat and stuff like that and go, oh, my God, these voices are so much better than the voices in the English version, the American release. 01:54:02.37 Jala um Other than that, like ah insofar as the actual text, I couldn't understand anything that anybody in town or any of the books were, you know, any of that stuff was saying because the translations that I could get off Shining Force Central, which still exists there, um those translations are just of the primary text from all the little like cut scenes and stuff like that. 01:54:23.43 Jala So I could get that text, but I was missing all of the other flavor text And super important information that you get from all of the other characters in the towns and things like that. 01:54:33.82 Jala So I was missing a large portion of this game's narrative, but I was able to play through it. 01:54:40.60 Jala So, you know, like I had a piecemeal sort of understanding of it the first time. The second time it was also like I played through several times this way um through the Japanese versions of this game. 01:54:48.80 Daniel Yeah. 01:54:51.13 Jala yeah And um so this was my very first time to play ah the entire game through in English, thanks to the translation team. Because like I mentioned, you know, the last time I was really looking at this game and sitting down and, you know, like itching to play the entire thing, it was the translation team hadn't finished the game, kind of translating the game and didn't have put out the patch yet. 01:55:12.36 Jala So like I had, you know, i didn't have the ability to play it all through. And then like when I found out that the translation team had actually finished it up and it was patched and it was this and that. It was actually fairly recent that I found that out. And so I'm like, oh, they're on version number one now. 01:55:27.53 Jala but yeah OK, you know, and um so that's when I was like, man, I really need to play through this game. 01:55:33.26 Jala I want to play it for podcast. And it's been a great experience because even though I had played it in this sort of handicapped way, if you will, um with the fact that I couldn't understand anything from inside the towns or anything the several times that I had played it on my original hardware um years ago, right? 01:55:50.38 Jala um Like before I had the knowledge of enough kanji and kana to be able to piece together stuff. 01:55:50.84 Daniel Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:55:57.30 Jala Cause I probably at this point, if I were to go through all my original hardware and have the same data work the whole time, ah I would have been able to parse a good deal of what it was saying. 01:56:08.05 Jala uh still in the towns and things like that but like in terms of um you know like getting all the deeper nuance of meaning and stuff like the translation has been really the way to go yeah And I've appreciated it and appreciated just like its place in the Shining series. 01:56:26.52 Jala And, you know, really this has been like a great cap on you know, the Shining games in general as a series, because after this, they were no longer, you know, made by the same team and same developers. 01:56:38.96 Daniel Yeah. 01:56:39.98 Jala And so like, ah to me, this is the end of the Shining series is this. yeah. 01:56:45.02 Daniel ah At least until the fans do something about that. 01:56:47.41 Jala Right, right, exactly. And then those the of fans will bring The Shining Series onward from there. But um this game, because it has such an expansive kind of scope to it in terms of having you play through different people's scenarios different different quests that they've got, different situations that they're dealing with that are unresolved at the end of the game that they have to go back and go do. Like it really sets itself up for more games in the future that never occurred. So um I can 100% see some fans looking at this game in particular. And even if they don't want to do something 100% original in terms of like new characters and new environments and new whatever, like if they don't want to do that, 01:57:32.11 Jala They could just take these characters in this, this, this setting and everything and continue the story with something else, you know, with these same people, because it leaves off in such a way that it's unresolved in a lot of ways and you just have to make it up in your head. 01:57:45.93 Jala So what better place? 01:57:46.45 Daniel Yeah, what happens in but happens in Sorrow? 01:57:48.22 Jala Yeah. 01:57:49.14 Daniel It would be really neat to see what goes on there. And does do Jane and Julian recruit more allies to help them out dealing with Bulzome through that? Because there's still a Bulzome sect. There might not be the bad guy anymore, but there's still his followers to deal with and still places on the map that obviously exist. 01:58:05.21 Daniel So more things could be done. 01:58:07.13 Daniel And we could deal more with Galm. More stuff could happen with Elise. 01:58:09.86 Jala Yeah. 01:58:11.35 Daniel We could go back and touch back the Far East Village from Shining the Holy Ark. There's all kinds of development that could happen. 01:58:16.37 Jala Uh-huh. Yeah. mean I mean, you can give me that DLC of Yasha. You can give me the Yasha story. 01:58:23.24 Jala There's so much. 01:58:23.51 Daniel that is the killer That is a killer idea, and I'm going to propose that in the Discord, actually. 01:58:25.85 Jala Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, that's ah a solid idea. That's a solid thing you can work on because, like, it's right there. It's right there. You could you could do so much. So. 01:58:36.23 Daniel And the models exist. So if you have the models in Scenario 3, you can take the Yasha and probably put that as a character. You can probably turn that into a good guy, and or a playable guy anyway, and figure out how to make a team around him. Maybe he has disposable ninjas that you can use up every map. 01:58:52.13 Jala Yeah. Yeah. 01:58:52.92 Daniel You can throw it the at the bad guys. 01:58:53.19 Jala Well, you know. Yeah. So you can do that kind of thing. 01:58:56.33 Daniel Yeah. 01:58:57.14 Jala It'd be a lot of fun. So, you know, um we're already talking about one of the other discussion prompts, which I guess we're going to go ahead and talk about now, which is what would you want out of a shining force for if the fans were to make one, you know, or, or Camelot or whoever, I doubt the Camelot is ever going to do it, but like whoever. 01:59:04.92 Daniel Okay. 01:59:12.57 Daniel We've already done some discussion about this in private, about bringing Shining Force 4 and doing the Thousand Year War arc and going back through GOM's history and Bulzome's original origins and developing something for that. 01:59:12.71 Jala Right. Right. Right. Yeah. 01:59:21.20 Jala Yeah. 01:59:25.10 Daniel So I really would like to eventually, when I have time, and when you have time, we'll sit down and do up some art and do up some gameplay and create something fun and interesting. 01:59:25.80 Jala ah yeah 01:59:34.00 Daniel I'm hoping to actually make it for the Dreamcast. 01:59:37.68 Daniel That would be my hope. So make a new Dreamcast game that actually does all this stuff. And the only reason I say Dreamcast is because then we're not limited by the hardware that the Saturn has. 01:59:45.36 Jala Right. Right. 01:59:46.50 Daniel So we can develop slightly newer stuff, slightly more. um It doesn't have to be graphically amazing. and I'm not looking for killer 3D art here. 01:59:54.55 Jala Right. 01:59:54.74 Daniel But I do want to create a nice story that flows well and has all the functions and the expanded memory that the Dreamcast would have. 02:00:02.20 Jala Right, right. So, um yeah, that like, there's, there's so much potential that with what you're given in this game, it doesn't feel like a you know, because it isn't a fully resolved story. And so there's a lot of potential, there's a lot of things that happen off, off screen, you could even have a thing where you have, you know, like little, little short blurbs, you know, like you could do for like, 02:00:26.77 Jala just test runs. You could do maybe a map of here's the Synbios team fighting against the Yasha when, you know, or Medion's team when they, you know, right before they get overtaken by the dark priest or whatever. 02:00:38.26 Jala You could even do some of those things that happen off screen. You could get those stories. You could even do Julian. Like where did Julian come from? Where did he come from right before he comes into the Synbios's army? Cause he's got some levels. 02:00:48.72 Daniel Yeah. 02:00:49.35 Jala What was he doing before he got here? You could do that whole story and just fill in all the blanks in between, you know, some of that stuff. 02:00:56.89 Daniel Yeah, maybe Julian has a whole other pre-promote set of levels where you grow him up as a kid and go from when you when you first find him and his voyage over to um and from the Enriched Kingdom over to 02:01:10.85 Daniel Destonia or Aspinia or any of those places. 02:01:14.96 Jala Right. i mean like there's 02:01:15.16 Daniel And then just have him boot around a little bit until he runs into Synbios. 02:01:18.01 Jala I mean, because like they say he's a mercenary. Well, so he's got to have done something, right? So surely you have space to work on something there. 02:01:24.83 Daniel Yeah. 02:01:25.73 Jala And like, that's a thing where, you know you already have assets you could work on. You could, you can make a thing like that. So, you know, that's another, another, another place you could work on if you are well versed enough in Holy Ark to be able to do all of that. 02:01:38.59 Daniel And you mentioned DLC. Well, there's already some DLC out. Some of the stuff that the translation team has been putting together include things like um there's a Sega Saturn Extreme contest every year where they have, they submit different articles and different updates as well as people submit all their patches and any new games they're working on because there's lots of homebrew and stuff. 02:01:41.85 Jala Mm hmm. 02:02:02.63 Daniel And in the contest this year, I actually personally submitted three maps for the online multiplayer version of Shining Force 3. 02:02:10.69 Jala There you go. There you go. That would be awesome. 02:02:12.38 Daniel Which, if you if you if you hear that sentence again, online multiplayer idea. 02:02:13.54 Jala Right. 02:02:17.33 Daniel So it's not 100% done, it's not 100% ready, but there's proof of concept and maps available, for and AI available for you to go online, and it would it's not currently like, I go and fight my buddy across the street or down the road or in another state. 02:02:32.52 Daniel But the goal is to eventually have it where you can boot up the game or boot up a version of the game and play against people in online matches. 02:02:39.43 Jala Right. 02:02:39.53 Daniel Have a roster, have shops, do some things, and then go fight somebody. 02:02:44.24 Daniel That's one of the goals that they're looking at for mods for this game right now. um The proof of concept is currently you boot up a map and you can find a custom map using whatever custom team that you have assembled or available. 02:02:56.99 Daniel against other people who are running a Shining Force. So you're not fighting other people right now, but you're fighting NPCs, and they might be running like a Medion army, and you're running a Synbios army, and vice versa, which is pretty pretty cool. 02:03:07.65 Jala Right. That's cool. Yeah, that's cool. Because like, you've already got the seed of that idea in Scenario 3, when you are fighting Synbios or Medion team. So, you know, they've already got that, that kind of concept already set up in the game itself. 02:03:22.03 Jala So this is cool. This is very cool. So ah something else. 02:03:26.37 Daniel Yeah, and there's a, the next question that you have here is, what do you, what is, what do you like best about each scenario? 02:03:34.50 Daniel So I'll let all start that one off. 02:03:37.97 Jala So scenario one, ah scenario one for me really lays of some solid groundwork in terms of world building. That's where you get the most world building until you get past the wall in Scenario 3. 02:03:49.67 Daniel Mm-hmm. 02:03:52.26 Jala ah So you get a lot of the world building, a lot of the political situation, a lot of the the personal struggles. 02:03:52.31 Daniel Mm-hmm. 02:03:58.31 Jala And like you get a real strong sense of where human civilization is south of the wall in scenario one and you get, you know, like strong sense of what's going on in the empire and in the Republic and how they're struggling. And, you know, you get all these reflections that Synbios has on humanity and the ways that people can still have the same goal, but come at it from different perspectives and then end up butting heads just because, you know, they're coming at it from different angles. 02:04:31.17 Jala you know how there can be these conflicts even though the goals are still the same and i like all of that because that gives you know like a lot of JRPGs especially from this time frame have this real black and white kind of way of going about everything where it's like oh this is the bad guy and you're a good guy and x you know like that that kind of a unquestioning morality sort of situation not everything is like that but Like there are more often than not JRPGs are rife with this kind of thing at this time period when this game came out. 02:05:03.76 Jala And then here's a game that's like reflecting on, no, I actually am forced to fight people on my own side because of these, you know, differing perspectives and stuff. And I like that because it gives it dimensionality. 02:05:16.09 Jala It gives it depth of character, things like that. So for me, more than, you know, like, this is also your introduction to Shining Force in 3D, you know, which is a new thing. 02:05:25.62 Daniel Yes. 02:05:27.16 Jala And mechanically, it still works a lot like the other Shining Force games do. But like there's added elements with like you know the friendship levels and things like that that you have um going on in here. 02:05:38.20 Jala ah So like there's some mechanical upgrades that make this an interesting and cool first you know um introduction to the way that the game plays now. 02:05:49.66 Jala But also just like story wise, like the other Shining Force games don't have this level of depth. So um having this in here, you know, felt like a step up in terms of the narrative as well as the mechanics. 02:06:03.45 Jala So, um, scenario one is, is a really solid introduction to this is what Shining Force is now, you know, and, and this is really where Shining Force sits for me. 02:06:03.82 Daniel Yes, yeah. 02:06:13.44 Jala This is where it shines is in this series. So, and this series of games, specifically Shining Force three series of games ah to clarify. Um, so before I go on to my next thing, cause I've been talking for a minute, what's your favorite thing about scenario one, Daniel? 02:06:29.18 Jala Yeah. 02:06:30.11 Daniel I do agree that the story is epic and they do an amazing job of conveying how human these characters are. 02:06:36.28 Jala Right. 02:06:36.59 Daniel you watch You watch the cinematics, you pay attention to the cut scenes, you pay attention to the story. Even as a kid who didn't really care about politics, I wasn't really um interested in anything that dealt with stuff beyond, oh we're good guys fighting bad guys. That didn't really strike me as a kid, but... 02:06:55.25 Daniel Reading it and watching it now and experiencing it now, yes, it's very full of political and social and economic information that gives you an amazing sense that this is a big, big world and that there's a lot of moving parts going on here. 02:07:10.90 Daniel And even just watching the opening cutscene, which is probably actually some of my absolute favorite bits of this, is the opening cutscenes in every game. Shining Force 1, you see those wheels turning 02:07:18.66 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:07:21.69 Daniel And they keep bringing those back for further themes, but the wheels turning there that really indicate that the the Colossus is are the Titan is an amazing ah a mechanical beast, those wheels are also the social wheels and the economic wheels and the political wheels turning behind all the plots. So that was an excellent metaphor in the beginning of the game that you don't even realize how deep that runs. 02:07:44.15 Daniel Until you start getting into the fact that, oh, Saraband's a moving city and Vagabond has all this all this hidden stuff in it that's going on with all these people living their lives and just trying to survive outside of any system. 02:07:56.05 Daniel And in today's world, you can't get that. You can't get out of the system very easily. You can't live on your own somewhere with a group of people and not have to to pay for that in some way. 02:08:05.48 Jala Right. 02:08:05.72 Daniel So I just think that there's such depth and they did such an amazing job of Scenario 1 in particular showcasing the world. 02:08:13.27 Jala Well, and 02:08:13.58 Daniel And all they had to do from there was build on it. 02:08:15.57 Jala Right, and not only that, but you absolutely have a sense in this game, ah in scenario one specifically, of things have been happening in the world before your game starts. 02:08:26.56 Jala Things continue to happen and will continue to happen after your game's over with. 02:08:28.34 Daniel oh yeah. Oh, yeah. 02:08:31.32 Jala And um this one in particular, because even though Shining Force Scenario 3 um has all this, oh, there's a Thousand year war and all this other stuff, like it's happening over there somewhere that, you know, is off screen yeah away from everything else. So it doesn't give you that same sense of things happening because you' you're not seeing the impact, you know, but like in scenario one, you're dealing with the consequences of the actions of your father and all the other people who, 02:08:59.74 Jala created this Republic and broke away from the empire and are still struggling, you know, and the Republic is struggling to, to survive independent of the empire and all of this other mess. So like, I love that because it's, it's giving this history in this sense of the weight of the history of what's been going on, you know, before this game starts right at the beginning, like from the beginning, you are dealing with that and you know, you're stuck in the middle of it. 02:09:22.81 Daniel Yeah. And I also, i got I got huge Star Wars ties. 02:09:25.61 Jala Right. 02:09:27.88 Daniel I just finished watching season two of Andor, and I got huge Star Wars ties with Republic and Empire and the tie-ins between those and the um and the fighting for hope, which is something that you experienced throughout all three scenarios, but that fighting for hope, that belief that things will get better. 02:09:47.55 Daniel if you just put in the effort and you just continue to show up every single day and do your best, has been a real driving force of the series, and I really enjoyed that too. Scenario 1 had so many great parts. 02:09:58.43 Daniel I think the absolute best, the most memorable moment in Scenario 1 is where Dan Terras gets yelled at for closing the window, because that sets you up for so much entertainment and such a fun story, but also such an involved story. 02:10:06.48 Jala Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:10:13.10 Daniel You can just feel that they've done a great job with this. The dialogue never feels stale, which is another thing that is amazing in a game of this scope and a series of this scale, is that the dialogue, you listen to it, you watch it, you read it, and you're involved in it. It brings you in very easily. 02:10:30.83 Jala Well, for me, the one of the most memorable like cinematic slash whatever moments for me is when you finish the fight with Fafhard and you end up, you know, beating him. 02:10:41.05 Jala And then, you know, he he's you you end up having fought him because of misunderstandings, you know, and and how many fights in our real world happen because of misunderstandings. 02:10:49.32 Daniel Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:10:52.85 Jala Right. 02:10:53.34 Daniel Oh, so much. 02:10:53.63 Jala And then like you end up with consequences from this whole thing, the fact that you fought him, even though fear comes and finishes him off. 02:10:54.71 Daniel yeah 02:11:00.98 Jala It's not actually you that kills him. But like, you know, all of this thing happened. 02:11:03.53 Daniel Yeah. 02:11:05.67 Jala And then you like you have to bear the weight of that. And then you end up having to kill his lover/wife/whatever Basanda was and son, because they're after you because you killed him. 02:11:15.05 Daniel Mm-hmm. 02:11:17.73 Jala But really, it was fear that killed him. So I mean, like, that's messed up. 02:11:22.10 Daniel Yeah, again, another huge misunderstanding. 02:11:22.15 Jala That's messed up. And like, Right. 02:11:25.12 Daniel Going on to scenario two, what is your favorite part of scenario two? 02:11:26.56 Jala um So scenario two for me, really, the thing about it that I like best is the fact that it is such an interpersonal within your family dynamics struggle against like, you know, a struggle to deal with, um you know, parents and, you know, the the way that you are different from your parents, your independent people and your parents are trying to basically make you in their image. 02:11:51.63 Jala And like you have feelings for your parents one way or the other, but you still, you know, like have have some kind of involvement with them for one reason or another. 02:11:52.26 Daniel Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:12:01.54 Jala Like in Medion's case, it's not just his emotions. It's also because of the greater good of the empire or whatever that he's also trying to deal with there. um And so, you know, like his struggles of trying to be a good son and also trying to reconcile what he needs to do with a father as terrible as his father ah in all of that. 02:12:22.60 Daniel Yeah. 02:12:23.04 Jala Like, you know, it's mostly Medion's focus, even though you're running around doing Empire shit, Medion's focus is so much more on how he's feeling. 02:12:28.92 Daniel Yeah. 02:12:32.89 Jala Like it starts out with him on a pier being moody and feeling ways about things. And that's the whole game is Medion dealing with his feelings while also becoming this great, you know, ah hero of the people. 02:12:47.08 Jala And also, you know, trying to toe the line between his loyalties to his friends and his loyalty to both his country and to his father. 02:12:56.33 Daniel Is that maybe why he's so hot? Because he's trying to be the most noble person out there? 02:13:01.51 Jala Right, right. Well, he's somewhere in there. yeah He's in the middle of trying to reconcile a lot of things. He's got more inner conflict, I think, than either Synbios or Julian. 02:13:13.89 Jala Neither one of them have the inner conflict that Medion's got, you know. Medion's in a... 02:13:17.51 Daniel Even in the opening text, we're talking about naming the characters. that's ah That's a point that Gabriel brings up. 02:13:21.44 Jala Right. 02:13:23.82 Jala Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. 02:13:24.63 Daniel right clear Clear himself out and then he can become the dragon that soars across the battlefield. 02:13:29.22 Jala Right. But he's got to get through all the clouds before he can get there. 02:13:32.93 Daniel Yeah. 02:13:33.20 Jala So, so yeah. So ah that's, that's for me. What about you? What do you like best about scenario two? 02:13:39.38 Daniel ah The joke answer for that Medion is hot. Because that is just amazing that they they carry that over and they just can put out the fact that he's such an attractive person to people, but it's not because he's attractive. 02:13:52.52 Daniel Because let's face it, that armor is just atrocious. 02:13:55.03 Jala Well, until he gets his promo, and then he's got his boob window in the ab window. 02:13:55.26 Danie The cut in the middle. That is the but it's the dumbest. Oh, it's just the dumbest. 02:14:00.35 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:14:01.98 Daniel Just terrible design. Somebody's just going to drive a sword right through your heart, buddy. 02:14:04.89 Jala Yeah. 02:14:05.37 Daniel But aside from that, he's just such a burning light that he's so positive and he does such a great job of trying to help everyone. 02:14:14.41 Daniel He doesn't care where you come from. He's that Rigs to Riches ah success story of this is a guy who grew up practically the richest person in the planet, and yet he's still trying to be and and relate to all the commoners and relative people he sees in his day-to-day life. 02:14:32.11 Daniel So he's still trying to be a great person for himself, not for anybody else. He's not dealing with the love interest stuff. He's not trying to work at something that makes him better for someone else. He's trying to work at that stuff so that he can feel good about himself and that he can feel okay with what he's doing, regardless of his parentage, regardless of his history, regardless of anything else going on around him within his family and all the schemes and everybody trying to stab each other in the back. 02:14:56.18 Daniel And he's just being the good guy, being the guy who's out there that's wanting to help, wanting to succeed, wanting everyone else to succeed at the same time. 02:15:00.70 Jala Right. 02:15:03.24 Daniel So I really dig that about scenario two and about Julian or about Medion. 02:15:07.66 Daniel He's, he's, he's my favorite part of the whole scenario two. 02:15:07.96 Jala Well, mm-hmm. Right. Well, and then not only that, but I have to also say the the bromance with not just Synbios, but also with Campbell, because Campbell is such a solid bro. 02:15:19.14 Daniel Yeah. 02:15:20.31 Jala Like he is, you know, such a solid, like he, he talks about, you know, he would, you know, teach Medion when they he, you know, Medion was younger, but then also, you 02:15:21.02 Daniel Yeah. 02:15:30.31 Jala you know, like they would just bro around town together. And then, you know, like synthesis is like, yeah, Medion found me basically in the trash in the slums and then, you know, brought me back to the castle and helped me out. 02:15:38.86 Daniel Yeah. 02:15:40.74 Jala And like everybody on his team talks about how he helped them out of whatever squalor or struggled situation. And he's just so empathetic and, you know, like whatever. And then not only that, but, you know, Campbell is offered this position, you know, this massively huge general position for Magiron or Majesty. 02:15:59.46 Jala and turns him down. He's like, no, i want to stay with Medion, who's also a commoner, since you like to call him a commoner. 02:16:01.27 Daniel Yeah. 02:16:06.05 Jala You know, like, I'd rather stay with him. 02:16:06.37 Daniel Yeah. 02:16:07.89 Jala He understands me, and he's not going to stab me in the back like you guys will, you know? And... 02:16:11.80 Daniel Yeah, the romance is strong with this one. 02:16:14.00 Jala Right, right. And, like, that's the thing, is that Medion inspires that from people in a way that, like, you know, yeah it's supposed to be there for Synbios, too, but really, like, you feel it with Medion, I feel, you know? 02:16:19.38 Daniel Mm-hmm. 02:16:25.13 Daniel Yeah, Synbios is a rich kid who grows and becomes a great general, but you don't feel that sense of desperation from him at all in the beginning. 02:16:28.48 Jala Right. Right. No. Right. 02:16:33.54 Daniel like He doesn't have that. He's just who he was. 02:16:36.29 Jala Right. 02:16:36.67 Daniel And he doesn't his character reigns fairly flat throughout scenario all three scenarios. 02:16:42.18 Jala Right. 02:16:42.39 Daniel Synbios is a great guy, but Synbios started out as a great guy and didn't struggle with that at all and never had to really prove that to anyone. 02:16:47.18 Jala Mm-hmm. Right, right. Whereas Medion has had nothing but conflict the entire time and he's just doing in his best. 02:16:53.45 Daniel Yeah. Yeah. 02:16:55.17 Jala So let's move on then. like How about you tell me what you think about Scenario 3? What's your favorite thing about Scenario 3? 02:17:01.44 Daniel My favorite thing about Scenario 3 is Marky's boobs. No, I'm kidding. 02:17:05.29 Jala but Well, I mean, that's a good answer. I love Maki. I love Maki as a character. 02:17:11.06 Daniel She's fantastic. 02:17:11.95 Jala So, yeah. 02:17:12.42 Daniel She's a wonderful, wonderful Witch of the North. 02:17:15.03 Jala Yeah. 02:17:15.29 Daniel But she does some great things with the with the cast. And if you do that that wrong, you can she can die on you very easily. 02:17:22.28 Jala oh yeah. 02:17:22.73 Daniel ah But it is a fantastic game. Scenario 3, I haven't played it enough to really nail down what I think my absolute favorite part is However, i think that the once you get past um chapter four, 02:17:37.36 Daniel the game really opens up and you start to experience what the game really should have been the whole time. 02:17:42.58 Jala and 02:17:42.56 Daniel Because up to that point, it feels kind of like you're waiting and you're doing the same things that you were doing before. You're just kind of exceeding the expectations of the bad guys. You're just kind of progressing to get to the next spot. 02:17:53.49 Daniel So it's kind of a bit of a wait. It's kind of a bit of a slog. And then you finally get to the end of the dealing with Aspinia and moving on to the North Wall. 02:18:01.59 Jala Right. 02:18:01.60 Daniel Then you're like, oh, now we're into some territory where it's really cool. We get to deal with giant ants and we get to deal with 02:18:05.21 Jala right 02:18:07.29 Daniel bugbear enemies and we get to deal with oh look at these neat dragons and all this other the demons that you're that you feel like you should be fighting from the beginning of the scenario so I felt that that transition at that point was really the best part of scenario 3 when you finally start to feel free you finally start just to feel like you're breaking out and actually dealing with Bulzome 02:18:27.78 Jala Right. Well, for me, I have to say, past the wall is also my favorite part, hands down. And that's partially because now you're in territory that's not familiar anymore. You're not in the same space you've been treading for all the other scenarios so far. 02:18:37.09 Daniel Yes. 02:18:41.26 Jala You are now in a space where and everybody looks at you like you're an alien because you've got metal armor and because they didn't know that you look like a human still after a Thousand years of being south of the wall. 02:18:51.74 Jala and all of this other mess. And then like you find out about these flying houses and then there's all this other stuff and this lore with the Holy Ark and then the Technodrome shows up and you're like, what is going on? Like, okay, everything here is totally different than what I've known. 02:19:05.17 Jala have no idea. like a ah deep sense of discovery, but also history because it ties it into the rest of the Shining series, especially Holy Ark. 02:19:14.38 Jala And it ties it in with like, you know, this deeper long running sense of things. But it also at that point zooms it out from this struggle of human people that you've been dealing with, with Synbios and Medion, and it gets bigger. 02:19:27.79 Jala And it's like, oh, no, the creator ah did the did this thing. 02:19:30.92 Jala And there's actually this whole big test that's going on. And if you don't pass, the whole world gets destroyed. And then it gets remade. And then we are no longer existing anymore. 02:19:41.82 Jala And all this mess. 02:19:42.81 Daniel Yeah, they do put a lot of burden on Julian's shoulder this year. 02:19:46.42 Jala Right, right. 02:19:46.67 Daniel It's pretty crazy. 02:19:47.14 Jala But i mean, like, no, I understand that like the concept of, oh, well, the world's going to be destroyed if you don't fight the god boss or whatever. Like that's a JRPG trope thing. But like, it doesn't feel the same here because this is like a neutral entity that is saying, i just want to see what y'all do, you know? 02:20:05.65 Jala And I like the fact that at the end, Gracia has to give up their god power. 02:20:10.58 Jala They cannot be an end of Innovator if they are getting rid of Bulzome, you know. 02:20:15.44 Daniel And the assumption there, even when you when you read the text, is that Gracie is giving up his life. He is creating the ultimate sacrifice so that we can finally put Bulzome to rest, so that there's no more wicked you know or wicked Vandals out in the world causing havoc, which is which is actually really an end to where Shining Force 3 really exists, is that there's no more super wicked evil Vandals out there. 02:20:40.37 Daniel There's still Vandals. Gob still exists. Elise still exists. They're still around. You can see them. 02:20:44.79 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:20:44.79 Daniel And you know that they're there. So it's not the end of that, but it's the end of the terror that's been plaguing the series for so long. 02:20:51.04 Jala Right. Right. Absolutely. And you know, like I, I like, especially like the, the, the very, very end when it's that whole discussion with Bulzome with a whole discussion with Gracia. 02:21:02.28 Jala I mean, not all of the weird, like the everything at the end where the characters are acting like they're never going to see each other again. And some of that stuff like that felt kind of stilted to me, like that, that, that didn't really um hit home for me the same way, but like, um, 02:21:17.34 Jala At the same time, like seeing your character go off, um you know, at least this character is not going off alone. Like, you know, in Shining Force one Max decides after the final battle that he's just going to disappear, like deuce out, disappear from everybody and everybody else thinks he's dead, but he's actually just wandering around the world by himself. 02:21:34.71 Jala you know, and like that, that felt weird to me when I i played that. I'm like, that's, that's kind of suck. Like you, you built this camaraderie with all these people and then you're like, bye, I don't want to deal with, with the the deal you deal with the trappings of hero Ness or anything. 02:21:51.19 Jala I'm just going to go away and not talk to you. 02:21:52.10 Daniel It's very, it's a very D and D very D and D ask, you know, where you're just like, Oh yeah, we reached 20th level. 02:21:54.71 Jala Right. Right. 02:21:57.52 Daniel Let's retire these characters. 02:21:58.90 Jala Right, well, whereas like here, it's like Julian is not going off by himself. He, a lonely sad bastard, has a lonely sad bastard female friend that they can go be sad bastards together in a place called Sorrow. 02:22:12.15 Jala And, you know, like that's fine. They can go over there and go be sad together over there. 02:22:14.66 Daniel Yeah. 02:22:16.95 Jala And like, at least they're not alone. They have each other. So, I mean, that's cool. And everybody else, like everybody else saying goodbye to them. Like, i don't know if I'll see you again because you're just going to be a sad sack over there. you know, like, that's fine. Okay, cool. 02:22:28.51 Daniel Go to your Eyore thing in the back room. 02:22:28.71 Jala you know 02:22:31.52 Jala I kind of just wish that they had had a little bit more like resolution text in terms of like not just like what these characters are going to go back and try to deal with, but like I wish they had at least a little bit more of these are the things that happened afterwards. 02:22:32.47 Daniel Yeah. 02:22:44.83 Jala you know But they can't they didn't have enough room or time or energy at this point to do it. 02:22:48.85 Daniel and think I think they ran out they ran out of steam, but they could have they could have given us an end scene that showed where people returned to even. 02:22:49.83 Jala so Right. 02:22:55.45 Jala Yeah, like that's... 02:22:56.33 Daniel Just putting them on a boat and then saying, oh, we're going home. 02:22:59.29 Jala Right. 02:22:59.50 Daniel Okay, that's great and all, but you're dropping some people off in the um Empire, you're dropping some people off in the Republic. Someone's going to go back to Vagabond. I'm sure Justin's probably going to go back to Vagabond. 02:23:08.23 Jala Right. 02:23:10.66 Daniel People are going to go do their separate things. And showing us what some of those characters are doing, even just the main couple out of every squad, would have been enough resolution there. 02:23:16.26 Jala ah well in Well, and so the ending of Shining Force, like the original Shining Force, during the end credits, you have all these scenes that show like all of the battles against some of the stuff that you fought, like the bosses, but also some of the strong enemies along the way. 02:23:34.01 Jala It shows you like that kind of stuff with this cool battle theme going at the same time. 02:23:38.25 Jala It's so great to watch the credits. 02:23:41.58 Jala So Lunar also does this thing where they show you snippets of Where are they now? And they show like, you know, Nash and Mia hanging out at the Magic Guild together in the library or whatever, like all the different people doing their thing after the game is over. 02:23:54.78 Jala Like, where are they now after they've gone back home? And like, they could have just done some stills with, you know, here's Medion and whoever trying to help the kingdom or whatever, or watch Dominant or something. 02:24:07.30 Jala something like they could have done like a few of even just a few of the characters but you know again like they ran out of budget they ran out of time but that would have felt better to me like if the translation team wanted a suggestion for a way to help wrap the game a little bit more that would be a thing I would love would be somebody to make some art to put in there to show like this is what happened you know but right 02:24:28.45 Daniel Even just recreating assets and then running some extra text dialogue to just show, look, we're back in Saraband. but um i guess Synbios would go back to Flagard, you know? 02:24:37.89 Jala Right, right. Mm-hmm. 02:24:38.57 Daniel that kind of stuff to show some conclusion there. Maybe even just some lines about what Masquerade is doing and stuff. Because I imagine she would hang out with Synbios after this point. 02:24:46.60 Daniel That makes sense to me. 02:24:47.64 Jala Yeah, that would be cool. 02:24:47.78 Daniel I just wanted to mention those Lunar spoilers that you just gave me because I haven't played those games yet. 02:24:51.31 Jala Yeah. There are no spoilers at the end of the game. Like, you see the characters and they just go back home. The end. I mean, you know. 02:24:58.76 Daniel Yeah. I don't know where their home was yet because I have played like 10 minutes of Thunder. 02:25:00.38 Jala So. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. 02:25:03.45 Daniel But that's okay. It's all good. I'm just making a note there. It's fun. ah So which leader do you like best and why do you like that leader? Yeah. 02:25:09.58 Jala um I have to say Medion still, even though he's emo, just because like he's got the most actual conflict. I mean, like he doesn't have... like Julian does a little bit of growing, but at the end of the game, he's still a sad sack. 02:25:22.16 Jala So, I mean, not that much growing, you know? 02:25:23.09 Daniel Yeah. yeah 02:25:24.61 Jala But Medion feels like at least he's gotten somewhere growth. 02:25:30.03 Daniel Medion is the most growth, and I do agree with that. 02:25:31.64 Jala Right. 02:25:32.51 Daniel Although as a kid, I liked Synbios the best because I didn't know of the other two. 02:25:36.70 Daniel I would see box art, and I knew that there was two other scenarios, and you encounter them. 02:25:41.12 Daniel So I'm like, oh, that's the guy that you get to play as in scenario two, and this guy gets to play again in Scenario 3. I didn't even know Julien was in scenario two for any length of time. I had no idea. 02:25:50.50 Jala Right. 02:25:51.17 Daniel because hadn't touched those. So I didn't know. 02:25:52.34 Jala Right. 02:25:53.43 Daniel And getting to finally play through them, yeah, as a kid, of course, Synbios is going to be my guy, because that was all I had. But having witnessed all the rest of the story, my answer has now shifted to Medion, because he is just such an amazing, and he grows so much, even being amazing to begin with. 02:26:09.62 Daniel And he's so hot. 02:26:11.24 Jala He's so hot. And not only is he hot, he's so compassionate. 02:26:13.32 Daniel Everybody wants him. 02:26:15.13 Jala He's so compassionate. 02:26:16.21 Daniel Everybody wants him. 02:26:16.38 Jala ever Everybody's got want him. 02:26:17.52 Daniel All the housewives, all the daughters. Hide your daughters, hide your wives. 02:26:21.53 Jala Hide Synbios. 02:26:21.68 Daniel Because he's coming. Yeah, put away your hymns. The only person not after him is Produn, and that's because he's got other things coming. 02:26:25.60 Jala Right. 02:26:29.02 Jala Right. He doesn't even know what he's got coming. 02:26:32.28 Daniel Yeah. 02:26:33.57 Jala Anyway, so, so yeah. 02:26:35.06 Daniel Produn Jr. is going to be a handful. Yeah, yeah. 02:26:36.82 Jala Oh, I know for sure. Good Lord. It's poor Stella. So anyway, 02:26:40.64 Daniel Yeah. Yeah. 02:26:41.95 Jala yeah But like, what are your favorite units? Like overall, we already sat on Thousand. Ha ha ha Thousand who sits on people. 02:26:47.73 Daniel yeah 02:26:48.71 Jala Yeah. Thousand still is ah MVP for me. I love Thousand. I love Maki. i also love Hedva. Hedva is one of my absolute favorite characters. 02:26:56.95 Daniel It was really amazing. 02:26:58.38 Jala Absolute favorite. 02:26:58.57 Daniel Yeah, she's really cool. 02:26:59.80 Jala I love Kate because she's snarky. 02:27:00.17 Daniel Yeah, Uryudo, he's cool. 02:27:02.53 Jala Uryudo is also pretty snarky too. i like him pretty well. Yeah. Yeah. 02:27:07.01 Daniel My absolute favorite characters in the whole series, I think, have to be... Well, obviously, the three mains are pretty epic because they have all the really cool sword fighting techniques and swords are the best. 02:27:13.32 Jala yeah 02:27:16.54 Daniel But after them, Franc is one of my absolute favorites. 02:27:19.33 Jala Franc is awesome. Uh-huh. 02:27:20.73 Daniel Oh, he's just a machine. The whole Frank Zappa thing, From the Shining Force 2 to Shining Force 3, that was an excellent way to pay off that homage. 02:27:28.50 Jala Uh-huh. 02:27:28.79 Daniel I love his original design and the fact that you have to push him into headquarters to get him to join you. 02:27:33.02 Jala Uh-huh. I love that too. 02:27:34.04 Daniel All that stuff. 02:27:35.07 Jala but yeah 02:27:35.20 Daniel And I would never have known that if I hadn't read the magazine article that indicates how to do that. 02:27:39.52 Jala Right, right. 02:27:39.92 Daniel Because back in the day, there was no there was no internet for a lot of that stuff. You could look some stuff up if you had a really good connection. 02:27:46.28 Jala Right. 02:27:46.50 Daniel And we didn't. So I didn't really get online to do that stuff. I had magazines as my answer. And finding out how to get Franc was fantastic. And he was a big part of why I love the Scenario 1 so much. 02:27:57.36 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:27:57.42 Daniel Going past Scenario 1, though, yeah, a Thousand is amazing. um I really love Kate. She's just got a great personality. 02:28:04.36 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:28:05.36 Daniel Jane is really cool. 02:28:05.86 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:28:07.45 Daniel And I would be remiss to say that i didn't actually also love Produn. And I don't love Produn for his sword skills abilities. I love the fact that he's a ranged character. 02:28:16.61 Daniel that you can throw ah an arrow tomahawk or whatever on him and get that huge range, but also just because his design is really cool. 02:28:23.43 Daniel I like the way he looks, his promotion armor and his pre-promotion armor. 02:28:24.98 Jala Yeah, he has a cool design. 02:28:28.07 Daniel And if I was ah were to be a character, that would be the character I would like to embody. Not for his, his um what do you call it, his idiocy when it comes to his wife, but outside of that, everything else about him strikes me as just being very noble very capable and very cool. 02:28:37.13 Jala Right. 02:28:44.11 Daniel So I really like him as ah as a character. 02:28:44.20 Jala Well, And also he doesn't have the same abilities as the primary characters, but he really feels like when you're playing him, like one of the primary characters, like a backup primary character, kind of like when you are a Synbios or Medion and then you have Julian in your team also. 02:28:52.25 Daniel Yeah. 02:29:02.46 Jala He feels like one of those characters, even though he's not. 02:29:02.77 Daniel Yeah. 02:29:05.30 Jala And that's something that's kind of interesting about him. So I love Frank. Got a second Frank. I have to say also, I still love Dantares. He's my favorite centaur. I don't know. I'm sorry. 02:29:14.03 Daniel yeah 02:29:14.23 Jala I don't know. He's just my favorite. and 02:29:15.67 Daniel He is, he's really good. 02:29:17.27 Jala I like him. 02:29:17.27 Daniel The voice acting even, he's a solid character. 02:29:17.73 Jala Yeah. 02:29:19.87 Daniel He's absolutely a beast. 02:29:21.40 Jala Yeah, I love him. 02:29:21.75 Daniel Literally and figuratively. 02:29:23.26 Jala Right, right. 02:29:24.78 Daniel And then also, i would i would also be sad to forget about Spiriel here, or Spirited. 02:29:29.04 Jala oh yeah, Spirited. Mm-hmm. 02:29:30.40 Daniel She's amazing. 02:29:30.56 Jala Spirited is solid. Love her. 02:29:32.29 Daniel She's one of them strong women who don't need no man. 02:29:35.52 Jala Right. Right. 02:29:36.00 Daniel And she could just do it all herself if she had to. She would be Bulzome killer if she had to be on her own. She could just go in there and just smash him to bits. 02:29:42.53 Jala Oh, absolutely. Do it somehow. Yeah. And, uh, 02:29:46.33 Daniel That death drive is just so cool. 02:29:48.05 Jala Oh yeah, it's so cool. She's an awesome, awesome character. um I also have to say I love Manipul or Ratchet, if you will. I love the little inventor. 02:29:56.21 Daniel but 02:29:59.03 Jala i don't even know what he is. He's a little guy with big eyebrows, the little critter. 02:30:02.81 Daniel little imp of some kind or something. 02:30:04.17 Jala Little imp or something. 02:30:04.37 Daniel He's kind of like an imp. Yeah. 02:30:05.63 Jala I love him. i love him so much. I love him so much. He's super... 02:30:09.37 Daniel His design was great. His implementation, not so much. I didn't like his movesets and the things that he does for combat, but if you take him for story and plot, he is amazing. 02:30:12.90 Jala Right. No. But I just love him as a design. Yeah. I love it And his little voice. I love his little voice. 02:30:21.79 Daniel Yeah. 02:30:21.92 Jala It's great. It's very good. um So I just love him as a character design for sure. Not so much for actually using him, although I did insist on using him anyway. But... 02:30:30.12 Daniel Yeah. 02:30:30.88 Jala you know It's kind of like I told you, I also have a soft spot for Arthur, and I used Arthur. 02:30:31.00 Daniel Yeah. 02:30:35.55 Jala and He was not in my final battle in Scenario 3, but I did power up Arthur and use him for all of Scenario 2. 02:30:36.21 Daniel Oh, no. 02:30:42.92 Jala Even in my final but battle of Scenario 2, I had Arthur. Yeah. 02:30:46.07 Daniel He gets really strong. The thing with him is for him to be strong. i can't remember if it's the first promotion or the second promotion, but once you get past level 30, he gains decent stats. 02:30:57.54 Jala Yeah. 02:30:57.81 Daniel So you have to level him lot. 02:30:59.30 Jala Oh, so much. yeah 02:31:00.79 Daniel to get him To get him to be good. 02:31:01.48 Jala Right. 02:31:02.35 Daniel He's kind of like in in um a lot of the Final Fantasy references when you have the Onion Knight. 02:31:07.47 Jala Uh-huh. 02:31:07.44 Daniel Onion Knight sucks to level 96, and then 96 to 100, he gets the best stats in the game times 10. So it's kind of like that style where you have this character that's okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. 02:31:13.51 Jala Right. 02:31:17.74 Daniel And then, oh, look, he's getting plus three in every stat up. Plus three in every stat up. I don't think it's quite that good, but you get the idea. of Like, he gains all the stats, he gains all the skills. 02:31:24.23 Jala Right. 02:31:26.73 Daniel He can do a lot of magic. He is really offensively good if you take the time with him. 02:31:32.00 Jala Right. 02:31:32.07 Daniel It's similar to Pen. Pen is good if you start with Pen in the beginning of the game. 02:31:33.40 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:31:36.55 Daniel The Shining Force 3 Scenario 1 Randomizer allows for that. I have a seed that I started with Synbios, Grace, Pen, and Sybil. 02:31:47.87 Daniel Or, yeah, so I was able to just sit around with those guys and level them all up from the beginning, and they were a powerhouse team. It was just ridiculous. Almost nothing gave me challenges, because Penn is actually really overpowered, but you start with him so weak that you don't notice how overpowered he is, or at least that's how it seems to me. 02:32:04.68 Daniel I'm not sure if that's everyone's experience, but... 02:32:06.30 Jala I feel that too because like um when I was playing through scenario one I did level Pen up and you know like every time that I've leveled Pen up once he's caught up to everybody else he's strong Penko not so much and I don't even remember how Pendolf does because I don't remember what I did with him um back in the day on the server right so but Pen can be like a pretty strong character 02:32:23.28 Daniel I've only ever used Pendolf in the Heroes' Test. Yeah, that's tell the only time I've ever used him. 02:32:31.58 Jala So yeah, like what are your favorite battles? And this is like for the whole series. We've already talked about like um ones for Scenario 3, but like overall in the series. 02:32:40.78 Daniel I really enjoyed the puzzle battle where you have to move the guys into the different spots for your promotion. 02:32:45.04 Jala Yeah. Uh-huh. 02:32:46.12 Daniel that was That was pretty cool. um The waterfall battle in scenario one is amazing. 02:32:51.32 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:32:51.43 Daniel That's just so much going on there that that's hands down. Saving Irene in the trains is pretty memorable right before you get on the train or right around that point, getting Irene. That battle is pretty cool. 02:33:02.60 Daniel um For Scenario 3 specifically, I really love the battle where you get Jubei because you can you can do a lot in that battle and there's a lot of different paths and it's very complex. 02:33:13.10 Daniel And also very fun. It's an entertaining battle for me. The next in my in my list of great battles is the one where you are getting grace. 02:33:23.56 Jala so for me i would say some of the ones that I like best I love the train battle like the the saving the refugees battle that's which point battle that is my top favorites for sure 02:33:29.71 Daniel Yeah. Yeah. Switchpoint battle? Yeah. Yeah. 02:33:34.92 Jala um from the first scenario. 02:33:35.15 Daniel Mm-hmm. 02:33:36.73 Jala um Second scenario, that's kind of difficult because i like I'm trying to remember what all we're doing in the second scenario. I like playing the Kraken crack and the crack and battle in that one. 02:33:45.06 Daniel Cracking is interesting. Yeah, that's a fun one. 02:33:46.35 Jala that's ah That's kind of a cool battle. um And then Scenario 3, if I'm picking one one from every scenario, Scenario 3... Hmm. Lighthouse battle, probably. Lighthouse battle. 02:33:57.00 Daniel Oh, that was a cool one too. 02:33:58.22 Jala That's a cool one. 02:33:58.40 Daniel Yeah. 02:33:59.14 Jala That's like narratively and otherwise that's a cool battle. But there's more than that, but I'm just trying to to keep it pared down because otherwise we'll be here all day talking about the battles all over again. 02:34:02.21 Daniel Yeah. 02:34:04.77 Daniel We're just doing the best of the best here. Let's... 02:34:10.10 Jala Right, right. So, um yeah, I think we kind of covered most of my questions um other than what's next on the agenda. What are you what are you doing next? 02:34:18.83 Daniel So I personally am actually working on stuff for my translation project for Riglord Saga 2. So I don't have a whole lot of Shining Force things going on. 02:34:25.98 Jala Oh yeah. 02:34:28.10 Daniel As I mentioned, I created some multiplayer maps um and we're working on some more things for that. Custom game mods are coming and coming on all the time. 02:34:38.84 Daniel Somebody is working on a randomizer for scenario two at the moment. They're actually having troubles with the Kraken battle. 02:34:44.61 Jala ah yeah 02:34:44.77 Daniel So once they get that figured out, it'll be pretty much almost done. um And on top of that, we're eventually someone's going to tackle probably the same person. She's really interested in this. So I think she'll tackle Scenario 3's randomizer. 02:34:58.25 Jala Right. 02:34:58.57 Daniel So there'll be a couple different randomizers. We are looking at, or someone in the in the Discord is looking at porting the game onto one engine so that all three scenarios fit in the same space. 02:35:08.33 Daniel And then once that's done, we can start doing custom maps, custom battles, custom story. And i would like to do some custom story with that engine and just move all kinds of stuff around, change some characters. 02:35:16.60 Jala right 02:35:19.22 Daniel There's some hidden stuff that if you look on the cutting room floor, there's some hidden things that exist in the game and exist in the engine that aren't implemented in any of the games. 02:35:28.30 Jala Right, right. 02:35:29.06 Daniel So some of that would be fantastic to pull out. There's some Halloween type stuff that we could do. Every year somebody generally does a Halloween style map. 02:35:37.20 Daniel So we'll get somebody together, then they'll do the one year they did ah a map where you had to fight the Kion Chi in a different way. So that kind of stuff. um Everybody's always constantly on the Discord asking about new things and working on new things. So the game is still growing. It's not done. 02:35:53.44 Jala Right. 02:35:53.45 Daniel We think it's done. We feel it's done. The official version has been completed, but we are still finding things to translate, re-translate. Some of the names of some of the items got updated this last year to match better with the series and to to feel better in the fans' eyes. 02:36:01.01 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:36:07.95 Daniel So if you have an opinion, you want more stuff put into the games, if you have an idea for a mod like y'all suggested with the Yashas, get a hold of me, get a hold of someone else on the Shining Force 3 Translation Project Discord, and we will try to our best to make it a reality if it's possible. 02:36:22.51 Jala Right, right. So insofar as what I'm doing next, I'm going to take a little bit of a break from JRPGs just because I've been I've been playing this one and right before this one I was playing Lunar, the first Lunar. 02:36:35.19 Jala ah Lunar 2 is still going to be a thing that'll be coming up later this year, but I need a break from the JRPGs for a minute. So 02:36:42.40 Daniel It's been constant for you, yeah. 02:36:43.77 Jala Right. So I am still going to be doing assignment play. The next assignment play I'm going to do is Lone Wolf Remastered, which is ah based on the Lone Wolf game books by Joe Dever. And I'm going to be doing that for podcasts. 02:36:55.41 Jala So that's going to be a podcast episode coming up in the future. 02:36:56.37 Daniel Mm-hmm. 02:36:58.21 Jala And that'll be cool. And I'm not giving myself a deadline or scheduling that I'm going to do it when it's, when it's done, I'll get to doing in the podcast. 02:37:03.97 Daniel Yeah. Mm-hmm. 02:37:06.86 Jala So ah that way it's a little bit less stressful. 02:37:09.54 Jala And then Lunar 2 will be after that in terms of like assignment play. Insofar as stuff that I'm currently playing on stream, I don't know if I'm going to be playing the same things on stream when this episode drops and in a couple of weeks, but um right now i am in the middle of playing Resident Evil 6 with Rookie co-op and that will continue. 02:37:30.21 Jala I will be playing that. I'm still going to be playing that when this episode comes out. So that'll be a thing. 02:37:34.64 Daniel Mm-hmm. 02:37:34.69 Jala Also, all the VODs are existing. 02:37:34.78 Daniel Mm-hmm. 02:37:37.18 Jala um I'm also playing Alterium Shift. It's an early access JRPG, but made by you know Western folks. And it's got a lot of very cool mechanics and things that they're working on. 02:37:50.05 Jala Since it's early access, I don't want to go through the whole game, though. So I probably am only going to play like one or two more sessions and then call it until more stuff has been updated because they're overhauling a lot of stuff about the game and adding more to it as they go. 02:38:03.54 Jala So I kind of want to save my my um gas for a full playthrough until it's actually done done, you know, because they're overhauling so much. 02:38:11.70 Daniel yeah 02:38:14.09 Jala But I'm playing that one. i am also in the middle of playing Nina Aquila, Chapter 4, Sacred Feathers. And that one I will finish through. That's the newest chapter of the basically Ace Attorney inspired courtroom drama battle game thing. But also it's a and adventure game set in the RPG Maker you know, kind of set up, but like ah the creator of that, Ethan Fox, does a bunch of different stuff to where each of the chapters has a theme based on like ah a genre of anime. 02:38:46.44 Jala And so like you've got one that's based on Yu-Gi-Oh! 02:38:46.87 Daniel Mm-hmm. 02:38:49.37 Jala You've got one that's based on like initial D or fashion Fast and the Furious type stuff. ah this This one that I'm currently playing, Sacred Feathers, is based on Magical Girl anime. The next one i think is Mechs. 02:38:59.73 Daniel Ah. 02:39:01.67 Jala like so it's like robots big robots and stuff I think uh is the next one so 02:39:03.83 Daniel Mm-hmm. 02:39:06.37 Daniel That would be neat. 02:39:07.78 Jala So yeah, and they're fun. They're fun. I've been streaming that. ah Some other things that I've been doing. Oh yeah, i also started streaming co-op with Dave. We started playing Trine 5, which is a co-op puzzle ah adventure game. 02:39:21.81 Jala So I will continue doing that at some point in time and we'll be chipping away at that. So I'm also playing Trine 5. So I've got lots of games I'm in the middle of playing. And then I've got a whole list of other things I'm going to do on podcast or on stream after that. 02:39:30.48 Daniel Yeah. 02:39:34.83 Jala So... You know, you can kind of stay tuned to that if you go to twitch.tv/jalachan. But otherwise... 02:39:41.59 Daniel Yeah. 02:39:43.42 Jala People can find you on Discord. I've got the links to that. 02:39:45.90 Daniel Yeah. 02:39:46.69 Jala Uh, people will eventually find you on Twitch via my Twitch probably. and so I'll have that stuff, um, on, on my Twitch. Of course, once you start streaming again, i am currently streaming on Twitch. You can find me there and blue sky and discord, et cetera, at the usual places, @jalachan in all the places, including jalachan.place where you got this episode and all of the others. 02:40:10.36 Jala So do you have anything else to wrap us up here, Daniel? 02:40:13.76 Daniel I think that's great. We've done an excellent job of this. I think i feel like we've covered pretty much everything out there. 02:40:19.00 Jala We have covered everything in the universe and back until the next time when we probably talk about shining the Holy arc. I don't know. I'll, I'll have you on in the future for something. 02:40:26.71 Daniel That'll be fun. Yeah. 02:40:28.47 Jala It's not going to be until next year. 02:40:30.15 Daniel Of course, yeah. Okay. 02:40:31.44 Jala So thank you so much. And for everyone listening, thank you for hanging in here for all of these 15 ish, 16 ish hours, however many hours of this ah for going through this game with us. So, 02:40:45.99 Jala In the meantime, take care of yourself. Remember to smile and Medion is hot. 02:40:53.13 Daniel Have a great day. 02:40:54.21 Jala Have a great day. Medion is hot. The end. [Show Outro] Jala Jala-chan's Place is brought to you by Fireheart Media. If you enjoyed the show, please share this and all of our episodes with friends and remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. If you like, you can also kick us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on at ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. Check out our other show Monster Dear Monster: A Monster Exploration Podcast at monsterdear.monster. Music composed and produced by Jake Lionhart with additional guitars and mixed by Spencer Smith. Follow along with my adventures via jalachan.place or find me at jalachan in places on the net! [Outro Music]