i love his premise and i LOVE the start of this game so much

(i'm gonna do my best to keep this plurk as sodium-lite as possible)

i love how at the start, there's a lot of "them vs us" speech with regards to humans, with sorey tentatively falling on the seraphim side but obviously not about to be like "yeah ur right humans are bad"

plus like

he's just so CURIOUS about alisha when they first meet, and it's cute!!!! there's nothing even romantic about it, especially not after you play the game more and it's obvious that he and mikleo are soulmates!

it feels like at the start sorey clearly doesn't see himself as a human; something other than a seraph, but like, not a HUMAN

and it's not until he keeps going through the plot that he starts to accept that he's a part of human society whether or not he actively chooses to be, just because he IS human

IT'S JUST A REALLY INTERESTING PREMISE

plus, his and mikleo's differences in opinion on what it means that sorey joins human society

sorey's like "yeah i mean human society and seraphim society should both be joined" whereas mikleo sees it as "sorey leaving seraphim society and joining human society, and i guess i need to go with him so i suppose i'm leaving seraphim society too"

sorey is balto

OKAY BUT HE KIND OF IS

NOT A DOG NOT A WOLF

he's also extremely AWARE of his circumstances

i know i've probably talked this part to death, but sorey definitely never felt left out or lonely in elysia, for SURE

i find it fascinating in a grim sort of way that gramps raised them hoping theyd be shepherd and sublord to bridge the gap between humans and seraphim again and in the end sorey is sleeping to literally bridge that gap just not as intended

YEAH.......BUT ALSO LMAO GRAMPS LIKE HUMANS ARE DANGEROUS STAY AWAY and sorey right there

yeah i can imagine sorey having some complex feels about it sometimes but lonely doesnt track

sorey was undoubtedly doted upon

gramps probably not thinking of sorey as human anymore either

hes not a human hes OURS

bc also seraphim might want to avoid human society, but they're not a naturally spiteful or hateful species

they're beings of nature

there's so many that WANT to stay around, and help, and shower blessings, but they CAN'T

many seraphim are just like "well humans cant help their nature so i dont hate them c: c:" and like thats not great either

i wonder how many of the elysia villagers knew that gramps was raising sorey and mikleo for the purpose of shepherd and sublord

true that

there were like 3 other seraphim with him so at least them lmao

but also most seraphim are so OLD

yeah

it's gotta be difficult to NOT treat humans like misbehaving children

old people are also set in their ways a lot

when it serves you well for tens to hundreds of years, why change

the majority of seraphim you free from malevolence are more distressed about being corrupted than angry at humans for causing malevolence

yeah

like ohhh how could i become a hellion

idk maybe the poison literally everywhere

LMFAO

the worldbuilding really doesn't leave a lot of sympathy for the human race in it, but then again humans also turn into hellions and suffer and die also, so i guess like

sure, if you wiped all humans off the earth, maybe that would be better

but also that's psycho talk

(i would love a third game that explores this more)

(we will never get it)

we only get glimpses here and there in zesty and bers

SOB

BUT YEAH

GOING BACK

sorey has such an interesting origin as a character; no wonder he seems so odd to alisha, and not just because he keeps sneak-flirting with an invisible person who doesn't exist (from her perspective)

she goes in search of basically HEAVEN ON EARTH

and finds out this RANDOM BOY WHO HELPED HER is LIVING THERE ALONE

he helps her, and sends her back down the mountain like, bye!

no wonder she reveres him so much, even BEFORE he becomes the shepherd! he just kind of gives off that otherworldly heavenly feel she probably thinks seraphim do, if she had the resonance to perceive them (confirmed when she finally can)

i wonder if she ever had a moment of "was he secretly a seraph and he just didn't- no, no."

she might've!!!!! how could she tell

this weird ethereal boy who talked to nothing

maybe his family was the mountain itself

SERAPHIM SPEAK TO NATURE??? idk

LMFAO

she's like what if.....he really does have seraphim up there.......and her 20 maids are like my lady he was a crazed mountain boy

please do not speak of this to anyone else

I should one day finish this game

legit got to nearly the very end and then fell off lmao

i mean if you were close to the end you'd seen most of the good stuff tbh

(except epileo. you missed out. loser)

yeah. I ... legit cannot remember most of the plot but I know I'd gotten to the "I have to go here to Finish The Game so let me trawl along the map and do what's left of the sidequests"

and then I hit something big and hard to do and fell off lmao

lmao sounds about right

lmao but I'm sure I can see epileo on youtube

tho idr what the hard fights were, maybe i was too overleveled

I have vague recollection of looking for something in a place and not finding it because it was hard to navigate or... something

idk it's been 84 years

lmao

Kayjayyy: YEAH HONESTLY the last 3rd of the game is....difficult to get through

i will say that i enjoyed sorey's slow walk on his way to stab human heldalf in complete silence tho

very heavy

at least that was a nice way to wrap things up

yeah i think they handled that part good

man i wish some of the ending stuff had gone like the manga

the fact that heldalf doesn't even change at all, isn't like, grateful that it's over or anything

he's just fucking pissed as hell

that was GOOD

i was re-reading it earlier and god some of the end scenes are so good

YEAH HONESTLY

alisha and soreys final chat and mikleo eating her riceballs with uno

does the manga follow the game storyline fully?

Kayjayyy: uhhhhh kind of

well it omitted a LOT, its only 4 volumes (plus 2 of alisha's side story) but yeah it follows mostly

^

lmao gotcha

i think it adds some really nice depth to the characterization too

the game narrative kind of fucks it up because it makes it seem like all the stuff rose is saying at the end is the CORRECT way to think, which if the player disagrees with rose it's easy to come to hate her (like i did)

i would've liked more ideology conflict at the end instead of just "shrug well sometimes you gotta kill people and rose is right"

if you pull it out of the actual game narrative, the decisions they make CAN be reasoned with using sorey's own moral structure

RE: eizen; they might die at the fight with heldalf, and if they do then eizen will be left to terrorize humanity. this is the kindest way they can handle the problem, even if it's not what sorey promised and even if it tears edna apart to do it

i don't think the game makes that reasoning easy to come to without spending a lot of thought on it OUTSIDE of playing the game

oof that's rough

overall it just feels rushed, and that's because it was

this might just be me but also them finding out the cost of separating heldalf from maotelus in the heat of the battle is so much better than sorey immediately going yeah ok ill kill my friends just talking chill with mayvin

like in the moment its like OH... OH WE GOTTA DO THIS NOW

honestly i didn't even realize it until after

games need to strike a better balance between "I understand this after six hours of discussion outside the game" and "game I got it the first time you don't need to repeat it every two minutes"

i was like UH....WHY ARE THEY..............OK

LKSDFMF

Kayjayyy: they do but from what i understand, the team for this game was under a lot of pressure to get the game out in time for the 20th anniversary

if they'd taken a couple more years to polish it, it would've been SO GOOD imo

ohhh yeah that tracks

the framework is there for a REALLY GREAT game, but because it was rushed through, there's lots of threads dropped, missed opportunities for character growth and discussions, and some holes in the world building

rose becomes less of a character and more of a driving narrative tool at the end

plus you see like, these copy-paste burnt out husks of what were TEENSY villages just kind of plopped into the open world, right?

i bet if they had the time, those would have been entire things. more obvious signs of just how fucked up things are

but because they didn't have the time, you mostly get some "as you know bob, the world is fucked up" discussions and that's it

(well ok, some fucked up stuff happens)

u know what, the crops dying and the endless rain in pendrago was nice

maybe more obvious signs of starvation would've helped impress upon the player just how dire things were

yeah i feel like pendrago was one of the strongest sections for "oh things are BAD"

I SAID I WOULD GO LIGHT ON THE SALT GOD DAMN IT

yeah it is

pendrago was fairly solid

man im trying to find where the whistling arrow line is bc i will remember it till the day i die

i think with the distance i can just kind of sadly go "i wish they'd spent more time on it" but the genuine anger/frustration isn't there anymore

i think it mightve been in a novelization

replaying this reminds me of how much i love alisha tho ,-_- what a great girl

so mad we didn't get more of her but at least we got that DLC story

same

the manga was also real cute i wish theyd done an english release too

didn't they??? i have the four volumes in english

no the alisha manga

OH you- yea

yeah me too ,-_-

i just have the jp version

alas i can only have mikleo gazing longingly at the pillar of light in japanese

sorey and mikleo pretending everything is normal and ok while refusing to be out of each other's sight for months

every sorey interaction has a secret mikleo inside

sometimes hes nappin sometimes hes readin a book sometimes hes judging the other person's everything

what's the page count on that volume actually and would u be willing to scan it if i paid a friend to translate it

i think i already scanned it tbh. ill have to check i think its on my old laptop

or maybe it was lost to the abyss of my dead harddrive idk

page wise theres 2 volumes and each about the size of the zesty books? maybe a little smaller

a lot of it is one for one with the dlc since they had the space to do it all. i think. ill check when i get home

ok no rush, imma ask abt rates

ill also check taleslations bc they might have done some already too

happy to chip in some monies for it if u go that route

ok taleslations didnt do it so thats off the table

maybe bc no one published scans

i'll check in with my buddies and see if they are taking projects/commissions o/

i'd have to check if my scanner works but i can probably scan it

ok!!! don't do it yet esp if you don't really want to without a translation

i guarantee even if i say i'll do it right away i'll get distracted and not do it

have some sadleo in the meantime

sadleo too badleo

get madleo

ITS 2024 AND I'M STILL MAD ABOUT HOW QUICK ALISHA GOT DUMPED

SHE IS ONE OF MY FAV CHAR TYPES FOR GIRLS AND THE REPLACEMENT ROSE IS ONE OF MY LEAST FAV CHAR TYPES

ILL BE MAD ABT IT UNTIL THE DAY I'M DUST

BANGS POTS WITH

alisha dlc is a weak concession bc she and sorey were such cute friends

(slap fight kinda funny tho)

THE MUTUAL RESPECT AND ADMIRATION

i forever appreciate the manga for giving them a REALLY cute pre-final battle talk